Web Animation / A Generic Adult Sitcom

2 Following

Just your typical Animated Shock Comedy, following the adventures of Dad Character, Punching Bag Wife, Marketable Sidekick, and Emo Daughter. That's all there is to it. Absolutely nothing sinister going on at all.

The pilot is available on YouTube.

All spoilers for the pilot are unmarked

Tropes in this series include:

• A Man Is Always Eager: Parodied. Dad Character randomly tells Punching Bag Wife "I'm going to have sex with you" in reaction to her complaining that he won't do the dishes.
• Ambiguously Christian: In the background of a few shots, a framed fresco of Adam and God from the Sistine Chapel can be seen on the walls of the family, hinting they might be religious.
• Ambiguously Related: Marketable Sidekick and his Evil Doppelgänger are both anthropomorphic ducks, implying some sort of connection, but the nature of that connection is never elaborated upon.
• Bait-and-Switch: Early in The Snowy Filler Episode, Marketable Sidekick sets up a Cutaway Gag about being written by Vivziepop. Instead of the usual joke that follows this, Dad Character randomly starts rambling to Marketable Sidekick about bugs in his skin that he needs to cut out.
• Black Dot Pupils: The main characters are all animated with round white eyes with black pupils.
• Black Eyes of Evil: The monstrous version of Marketable Sidekick has pure black eyes.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The "embarrassing" stories told in The Snowy Filler Episode have Dad Character and Punching Bag Wife giving short and goofy nonsense stories, followed by Emo Daughter's lengthy, traumatic memory of catching her best friend's mom cannibalizing her husband when she was a child.
• Bully Magnet: In episode 2, Emo Daughter mentions frequently being harassed at college.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In The Snowy Filler Episode, Punching Bag Wife has a comedic flashback where it's implied the spooky church she went to as a teen might be the source of the series' demonic happenings.
• The Corrupter: The mysterious horned ungulate with human hands has an effect that's essentially The Corruption. At the end of episode 2, touching its fur turns Dad Character into an eyeless cannibal and based on the character designs in Emo Daughter's flashback, it appears to have corrupted her best friends' family as well.
• Cosmic Plaything: Punching Bag Wife lives up to her name.
• Cracks in the Icy Façade: The vicious and abusive Dad Character is visibly horrified when he witnesses a baby being drowned. Though he's too stunned to actually do anything.
• Creepy Catholicism: Dad Character finds himself in a Church with grotesques of his entire family screaming carved into the wall, where he witnesses evil versions of his wife and daughter drowning a child.
• Creepy Doll: The button-eyed elephant plush that shows up throughout the series is quite uncanny.
• Cutaway Gag: Remember that time Dad Character became a ghost?
• Death of a Child: The Undead Counterpart versions of Punching Bag Wife and Emo Daughter drown a baby in holy water.
• Dom Com: Set in the world of a generic family sitcom.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Emo Daughter has blanched skin and black hair.
• Empty Eyes: Dad character is animated with white irises, outlined in black, when he glumly disembowels Marketable Sidekick.
• Evil Doppelgänger: Marketable Sidekick, Punching Bag Wife, and Emo Daughter all have twisted horror versions of themselves who appear throughout the show.
• Expy: Dad Character and Punching Bag Wife are Expies of Peter and Lois Griffin.^note Word of God is that this is mocking Family Guy knockoffs rather than the show itself.
• Eye Color Change:
  • The center of Dad Character's eyes go white when he's in fear, and when he disembowels Marketable Sidekick.
  • Emo Daughter's eyes turn red when reliving the worst night of her life.
• Fat Bastard: Being a carbon copy of carbon copies of Peter Griffin, Dad Character is a cold-blooded killer with a prominent gut.
• Feathered Fiend: The monstrous version of Marketable Sidekick is a horrifying, homicidal duck.
• Fiery Redhead: Punching Bag Wife has red hair and is in a justifiably cranky mood throughout episode one.
• Foreshadowing: In episode 2, the photo of four silhouettes on the wall briefly appears to have a bite taken out of one of the faces. At the end of the episode, Dad Character eats Punching Bag Wife's face.
• Fuzz Therapy: In episode 2, Marketable Sidekick the duck comforts Emo Daughter because of her severe post traumatic stress disorder.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The family includes 2 male characters and 2 female characters.
• Genre Roulette: Episode 2 features a handful of Art Shift scenes. The Cutaway Gag about being written by Vivziepop is drawn and animated in the same style as the Hellaverse shows, and each of the embarrassing stories told soon afterwards has a different style to them.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": The main characters are all named after their sitcom archetypes.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: After dismembering a talking duck, Dad Character gets dismembered by a talking duck.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Dad Character asserts he's going to have sex with Punching Bag Wife immediately after he takes her name too literally.
• Kid-Appeal Character: Marketable Sidekick is a talking duck.
• Lazy Husband: Dad Character never helps around the house.
• Medium Awareness: In episode 2, Marketable Sidekick starts noticing and verbally addressing the divergences from the show's stylistic conventions.
• Men Act, Women Are: Only at the beginning of episode 1. Fitting with the genre conventions of the shows being parodied, the plot of the episode revolves around the male characters' investigation of mysterious household noises while Punching Bag Wife and Emo Daughter do pretty much nothing proactive until the genre shifts to horror.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Played for Horror. The monstrous version of Marketable Sidekick is an Uncanny Valley abomination.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: At the end of the Snowy Filler Episode, the family runs out of food and Emo Daughter has to cannibalize Dad Character for survival.
• Missing Child: The main cast all have missing posters.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: Glitchy scene transitions mark the progressively worsening horror of the cartoon.
• Ominous Multiple Screens: The pilot ends with the show being paused on the screens in a mysterious, sci-fi type room with a dingy atmosphere and very little lighting.
• OOC Is Serious Business: The normally snarky, goofball family becomes dead quiet and genuinely concerned after Emo Daughter shares a traumatic childhood memory. Marketable Sidekick in particular maintains this attitude throughout the rest of the episode, dropping his antics whenever she's around and trying to help her get through it.
• Parenting the Husband: Punching Bag Wife has to cajole Dad Character into doing the dishes.
• Pet the Dog: Though he mocked Emo Daughter at the beginning of the episode, Marketable Sidekick shows his support for her after learning about her PTSD.
• Queer Colors: As seen in episode 2, Emo Daughter's room has a transgender pride flag on the wall, and in a few visual snapshots of her memories, she's shown wearing a rainbow bracelet.
• Religious Horror: Churches are prominent in both episode, and the villain of episode 2 is quite obviously some kind of demon.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Marketable Sidekick is a sassy and effeminate duck who addresses Emo Daughter as "girl," and he spends episode 1 alongside the brutish and domineering Dad Character.
• Sphere Eyes: As in any self-respecting generic adult sitcom, the main characters all have round eyes.
• Subverted Sitcom: A Disguised Horror Story in the form of a generic adult sitcom.
• Supernaturally Violent Animals: The eldritch beings who manipulate and kill the humans tend to be animals, such as the duck monster, the elephant doll, and the horned thing.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Every member of the main cast has an eldritch alternate version of themself.
• Toothy Bird: Marketable Sidekick and his Evil Doppelgänger both have teeth, the former of which is cute and cartoony, and the latter of which is uncomfortably detailed.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Played for Horror. Dad Character beats his wife, disembowels Marketable Sidekick onscreen, and never does the dishes.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Dad Character's accent sounds like a combination of Australian, British, and Southern United States.