Web Animation / Space King

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Space King is a sci-fi action comedy webseries made by Flash-Gitz Animation. The show is concerned with the violent, dysfunctional, and xenophobic empire of the titular (and absent) Space King as it attempts to bring an even more dangerous and insane universe around it to heel while searching for its lost monarch by retrieving various artifacts scattered throughout the vast parts of the galaxy.

The episodes focus on the reclaimer squad of the Star Defenders legion, who are assigned various missions from their High Command. The members of the squad are Captain, the leader of the Star Defenders who is a Father to His Men that also happens to be very irritable, Chestnut, the squad medic and arguably the least malicious due to his meek behaviour, Bryce, the rather friendly Imaginator of the bunch who prefers more strategic methods to various situations, and Hatemonger, the rudest (and surprisingly the most competent) member who really, really hates aliens, even more so than his teammates.

Most of the episode plotlines involve the reclaimer squad trying to complete said missions, which are usually artifact retrieval-related, while encountering various aliens and other legions of psycho-warriors along their journey. However, due to the squad’s flaws, they tend to cause more trouble both for themselves and others either intentionally or not, usually screwing up their mission right at the last second and sometimes creating even more problems for their empire to deal with.

It's totally not based on Warhammer 40,000, but if it was, it would be a spiritual successor to Flashgitz's previous fan animations about that franchise. But it isn't, so it's not. Compare and contrast Nemesis the Warlock, which would be a proper forerunner too.

The whole series (with the exception of the promotional shorts) can be watched here.

Praise be to Space Tropes:

• 24-Hour Armor: Psycho Warriors appear to keep their Psycho-Armor on at all times, even when they're sleeping. The only time when they don't wear it is after they've been reborn into a new body, and in most cases, a new set of Psycho Armor is molded onto them seconds afterwards.
• Absolute Xenophobe:
  • Seems to be the hat of the Beholders legion. Hatemonger is the only one in Captain's squad not transfixed by the alien queen's boobs, on the grounds that she's an alien (to the sniggering of the rest of the team). In the Captain's Sweatshop ad short, Captain claims that the Beholders condemned the production of the promotional t-shirts as "heresy", since the Star Defenders are using captive aliens for materials.
  • Hilariously, Hatemonger himself only applies this to aliens, as he actually preaches tolerance and understanding for different human cultures he encounters. Unless that culture involves coexisting with aliens in any way.
  • According to episode 3, the Empire exterminates any and all aliens they encounter as a matter of course, peaceful or not.
• Affably Evil: The Coagulators legion are creepy as hell and have an grotesque blood theme, but are nothing but friendly, patient and understanding, with a philosophy of remaining positive (or "B positive") at all times. It's enough for Chestnut to consider leaving the squad to serve with the Coagulators instead. Unfortunately, they've been subverted by an alien parasite that they're convinced has a telepathic link to Space King, and they have no compunctions about killing anyone who threatens it — Hatemonger is fed to the parasite (a fate explained to destroy holy globules) and the looming guards make it clear that Chestnut would have been next if he tried to back out of the initiation ritual.
• Affectionate Parody: The series as a whole could be seen as a parody of sci-fi settings, particularly ones with Testosterone Poisoned Super Soldiers who follow a Scary Amoral Religion.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Bryce is part of a genocidal organization and he helps his allies attack the Alien Queen, but when he's killed by her, he has a somewhat heartfelt moment with Captain before he succumbs to his injuries.
• Alien Blood: All of the aliens have various colors of blood. For example, the Tau Expies in the beginning of the first episode have dark cyan blood.
• All for Nothing:
  • After Bryce and Hatemonger are killed trying to get the Female Alien to relinquish the Artifact's power, they manage to do so until Captain drops a grenade into the hole the Alien and her babies fled into, causing her to leap out in anger... and force Chestnut to shoot her head off. This causes her headless body to fall over and crash into the Artifact, dropping it onto Captain and killing him while breaking the Artifact, causing the team's efforts to be all for naught.
  • After a long, arduous trek to find the Grim Lord's son that got Hatemonger killed again and forced him to kill the Coagulators he had befriended, Chestnut desperately cuts Hatemonger's Globules out of the alien monstrosity that had swallowed them. However, they're already dissolving, if Hatemonger is to survive, they must be implanted in a host body... and the only one available is the boy Chestnut had personally promised to save and return to his father. To cover their tracks, the team use the Coagulator's ship to kill the Grim Lord.
  • A comically smaller version occurs when Bryce is tasked with repairing the teleporter aboard the Coagulator's ship. He spends hours cleaning the electronics and mechanisms from all the blood filling them, patiently lecturing the Coagulator technician helping him about the blood causing malfunctions. Finally, he fixes the machine and hands the newly functional activation switch to his counterpart, who lowers his head to inspect Bryce's work. Which immediately dumps a fresh load of blood all over it, shorting it out.
• The All-Solving Hammer: Captain is real quick with the Genocide Bombs, which is becoming such a headache for High Command that he gets banned from using them.
• And I Must Scream:
  • In "Captain's Sweatshop", Captain went over a species of metal men whose souls remain trapped in their bodies regardless of the abuse they get. He demonstrated this by crushing one of them with giant mallets, then stated that it's a method that he uses to make the aglets for the promotional hoodies. Shortly afterwards the camera zooms into one of said aglets, which was letting out a faint screaming sound.
  • Anyone the Star Defenders convert into a Servitor. They're functionally turned into a machine that can only move and act at the behest of their operators, but they're still aware of their situation, are living in utter agony, and can't do anything about it. It's played for very dark laughs.
• Anyone Can Die: Given the show's (completely theoretical) influences, this is still very much in effect.
• Arc Symbol: The psycho-warriors are often associated with the visage of an angry face modeled after their God-Emperor, Space King. Said face is even printed onto their weaponry as well.
• Arc Words:
  • “Praise be to Space King!” Alternatively, "Praise Be!" by itself is just as heard as much.
  • The second episode, "B-Positive", has the titular punny phrase often said by the Exsanguinator.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Terry's projectile gun can effortlessly pierce psycho-armor, at least at point-blank range.
• Art Shift: The show occasionally freezes on a frame that transform into a highly detailed, black-and-white, grimdark shot that wouldn't look out of place on a metal album cover.
• Asshole Victim: Captain and Hatemonger are killed off but given they were genocidal xenophobic psychopaths (who were also massive jerks to their own teammates) and the Alien Queen was genuinely reasonably and trying to care for her children, their deaths are entirely karmic. However, unlike most versions of this trope as long as their Globules are safe they can be brought back to life. They subsequently return next episode.
• Atop A Mountain Of Bodies: The main reclaimer squad of the Star Defenders are introduced this way along with dozens of their battle brothers.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: When facing the Alien Queen, the Star Defenders charge her from two directions, with Hatemonger serving as a distraction so Captain and Bryce don't get enthralled by her boobs again. Hatemonger gets killed within five seconds, prompting the other two to panic and retreat back behind pillar.
  Captain: Let's go! SPACE KIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGG!
  (He and Bryce charge the queen from the right, while Hatemonger attacks her from the left. Heroic music plays. Hatemonger is promptly zapped, and the music stops.)
  Captain: Oh fuck! Go back! Go back!
• Authority Sounds Deep:
  • Captain's voice isn't so much gravelly as it is boulder-y. Whenever he starts yelling, it sounds like he's a Death Metal vocalist. According to Word of God, his voice actor took voice lessons to do Harsh Vocals properly, so as to avoid "blowing out his throat."
  • Averted by High Command, who is downright shrill despite being the size of a house.
  • The Exsanguinator has, in contrast to Captain's harsh tone and abrasive personality, a very warm and chesty booming voice that gives him a fatherly air to compliment his encouraging and understanding personality.
• Badass Biker: A Star Defender astride a huge motorcycle appears during the opening battle, managing to land his rear wheel directly on top of an alien soldier and pulverize his foe with a quick rev of his engine before speeding off.
• Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Psycho-warriors naturally have it in their globules that they must slaughter any alien they see and mustn’t be reasonable (hence why Space King called them as such), so any psycho-warrior that is the opposite of their usual behaviors (for example, the misfit psycho-warriors) is seen as a heretic by them.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • High Command chews out the squad over them needlessly wiping out a densely populated planet with a genocide bomb. Specifically, over them wasting a valuable genocide bomb. The fact that 20 billion people died over what amounts to Captain's fit of pique doesn't even come up.
  • Captain, moved by Bryce's appeal to try and accomplish their mission without resorting to a genocide bomb despite how cool it would be, thanks his teammate for his counsel and seemingly begins to key in the code to reactivate the Star Defender's radios. Only for his computer to cheerfully announce "Geno-Bomb Online!" as his squad panics and attempts to restrain him.
  • During the "Captain's Sweatshop" short promoting tie-in clothing, Captain cheerily went over how the materials of the shirts were acquired from abusing an alien species. Then after going over how the aglets for the hoodies are made:
    Captain: (in a threatening tone) And for those CRYBABIES among you who wants to know what happens to an alien (grabs the camera) once it lived out its usefulness... (calmly as the camera cuts to a serene meadow with aliens sitting around) they're sent to this beautiful field to live out the remainder of their lives.
    • And then that gets bait-and-switched as Captain messes up his subsequent line, then cuts right back to the meadow as he beheads all those aliens.
  • In Episode 2, after Chestnut botches his timing and closes a hatch door seconds too soon for Bloodhound to get in, leaving him at the mercy of the aliens, the seemingly angry Exsanguinator turns to Chestnut and says "WHAT. JUST. HAPPENED," in a way that sounds like he's about to give him a furious lecture and punishment for his failure. Only to then immediately continue in a softer tone: "Was a tragedy! But you can't beat yourself up over it!"
  • Meta-example for episode 3. We're lead to believe that the Female Psycho-Warrior will be an important plot point. The planet she's on is Exterminatus'd inside of the 30-second Cold Opening, and she's brought up again as a gag midway through and near the end.
• BFG: Psycho Warriors wield these as standard issue. Each Psycho Blaster has a barrel large enough that a Psycho Warrior could comfortably fit his arm down, has very little cooldown between shots and is capable of blowing a hole clean through Psycho Armor like it was tissue paper.
  • Bryce wields a quad barreled version of the Psycho Blaster which is as big as his entire torso and has burst fire functionality.
• Blunt "Yes": Chestnut tries to insult Hatemonger by calling him a bully. This is all he gets in reply.
• Boob-Based Gag: The Alien queen has comically large breasts bigger than her entire torso which cause the Star Defenders to be awestruck (Besides Hatemonger). She then remarks that her breasts have shriveled because of lack of nutrients.
• Cast of Expies: No, almost every character here is definitely not based off of a pre-existing character or faction in Warhammer 40k.
• Celibate Hero: A tapestry of the Space King depicts him shielding his eyes whilst he combats dozens of scantily clad alien temptresses.
• Character Development: Captain begrudgingly learns a degree of temperance, and how to respect the thoughts and feelings of his battle brothers, even bringing himself to be more open about how much he actually values them. And so he dies a better man than he started the episode as, and even retains these lessons when he comes back in the 2nd episode.
• Christmas Episode: The fourth episode, Kingsmas, has the psycho-warriors preparing for the titular holiday, which involves them celebrating Space King’s birthday while they go off to slaughter heretics in his name. It also has a Whole-Plot Reference to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964).
• Creepy Good: The Coagulators are absolutely obsessed with their blood theme, their home ship being absolutely filled with the stuff, and have even customized their Psycho Armor to be an Iron Maiden lined with spikes that constantly tear their flesh so they may bleed at all times. They're also very friendly, encouraging a culture of enthusiastic positivity and reinforcement among their brothers, as well as being happy to lend their assistance to other chapters even if there's seemingly nothing in it for them, in contrast to the outright hostile and confrontational attitude the Reclaimer Squad received from the other Psycho-Warriors helping them earlier. Which makes the revelation that they're a cult who intentionally bind themselves to a monstrous alien parasite and murder anyone who learns the truth all the more depressing.
• Company Cross-References: The armor color scheme of the other reclaimer squad’s leader in the 2nd episode is similar to the color scheme of the Ostrogoths, a space marine chapter originating from Regular Marine, a webcomic made by Flashgitz.
• Composite Character: Many and varied.
  • Space King himself is The Emperor of Mankind crossed with Vulcan's promise to return when enough of his stuff is collected.
  • Psycho-Warriors are the Space Marine chapters (wrath-fuelled Super Soldiers) crossed with the Imperial Navy (have the authority to press-gang darn near whoever they want).
  • Reclaimer squads are Sternguard Veterans (given special missions) crossed with the Deathwatch (made up of a mixed force from at least two legions).
  • The High Command skulls are a mix of Space Marine Chapter Master and the High Lords of Terra, plus a pinch of the Big E himself (being stuck to the wall with tubes and wires like the Golden Throne is).
  • The Alien Queen is a cross between a Tyranid ravener (snake-tail, raptorial limbs, crested skull, and chest-blaster) and a Keeper of Secrets (huge bazongas and a willingness to use them as a distraction in combat, and the ability to steal soul-energy to empower herself). Her backstory even includes eating humans and having a true home in Another Dimension.
  • The Techno-Fiends take cues from Chaos spawn (grotesque parody of the human form), tyranid lictors (love of ambush tactics and scythe-arms coming from their shoulders), and some of the lesser-known xenos from non-codex RPG sourcebooks (aforesaid scythe-arms seem to be cybernetic augmentations).
  • The Coagulators are a mishmash of various Space Marine chapters, those being Loyalist: The Flesh-Tearers, Space Wolves, Salamanders, Traitor: The Fallen, Death Guard, and World-Eaters, with a dash of Genestealer Cultists.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Being killed by the alien parasites in episode 2:
  "The bugs suck all blood and organs out through the butthole, making death both permanent and shameful!"
• Deader than Dead: As long as a Star Defender's Holy Globules remain intact, he can be revived simply by implanting them into a suitable host (a young boy). But should they ever be destroyed, then that Star Defender is dead forever.
• Death Is Cheap: Zig-zagged. The second episode establishes that the psycho-warriors have Resurrective Immortality, so long as their globules survive to be implanted in a new kid's body. Not only is the whole squad back together, but Bryce dies in the opening battle and is restored in minutes, thanks to a spare child the squad keeps in their dropship. However, it’s also shown that if a psycho-warrior’s globules are destroyed, then they’re a goner, as mentioned when the other reclaimer squad’s leader states that Grix, one of their squadmates, is dead forever due to Chestnut accidentally crushing his globules, and when Hatemonger’s Hate-Mace states that due to his wielder’s globules being corroded by the Brood Mother, they must be quickly inserted in a host.
• Decoy Protagonist: The pilot begins following a boy taken for conversion into a Star Defender, undergoing the enhancement process and being deployed into his first battle with a special assignment from High Command. Then his drop pod gets shot down, at which point we meet up with Captain and the reclaimer squad. Grievously wounded, he manages to re-enter the plot just long enough to drag himself to Captain and deliver a message before bleeding out. He reappears one last time when Captain offers up one of his Holy Globules to the female alien.
• Defiant to the End: The blue alien king may have been overpowered by the much larger Star Defenders, mercilessly beaten, interrogated and had a dubious translator device jammed into his skull, but the moment his foes don't have him physically restrained he pulls a gun and fires one last defiant blast right into Captain's crotch.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Captain gets so furious that he attempts to call in a Genocide Bomb to kill all 20 billion aliens on the planet they're on...purely because the dying alien king shot him in the crotch and slightly chipped his armor.
• Disappeared Dad: Furthering the theme of the Psycho Warriors being teenage boys given superpowers, Space King leaving is framed as a father abandoning his children. All of the Psycho Warriors, Captain and Hatemonger especially, treat it as a child in denial would, desperately hoping that if enough artifacts are found, Space King will come back and love them again.
• Ditzy Genius: Bryce is smart enough to create a translator that would allow him to understand alien languages, but is just the right amount of stupid to jam the device directly into a target's skull causing them to let out nothing apart from now comprehensible screams.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Pretty much most of the psycho-warriors’ actions and their interactions with their higher-ups such as their High Commands are evocative of bratty children and their parents, and if the allusions weren’t enough, Word of God states that most of their equipment were designed with toy weapons in mind. Though to be fair, the psycho-warriors are created by using captured boys after all.
  • Hatemonger's presentation on hatred uses rhetoric and diction typified by internet racists.
• Downer Ending: Most of the episodes usually end on one due to the main crew screwing things up. For example, the pilot episode ends with most of the squad dying, and Chestnut accidentally breaking the artifact by shooting the Female Alien, causing her headless body to collapse into it, sending the Artifact crashing into the floor onto Captain (which kills him) and destroying the piece of the Space King's soul in it in the process.
• Establishing Character Moment: All four of the main squad’s members get one in the pilot episode, showing exactly the type of people they are.
  • Captain is introduced as a seemingly badass leader fighting off his (supposed) enemies, that is until the king of the blue aliens shoots one last blast at Captain’s codpiece, chipping a small piece of it off. This gets him pissed off enough to launch a geno-bomb, showing that he has a bad temper and tends to get mad easily.
    • In a scene after that, he turns his radio on and is informed that he’s on the wrong planet, also showing that he often goes head into battle before listening to instructions or making a plan and is rather dull in the head.
  • Captain asks Hatemonger how the interrogation of the blue alien king is going, cut to Hatemonger pulverizing the alien and angrily shouting where the artifact is. This establishes his character as an Absolute Xenophobe who loathes aliens, whether or not they’re hostile or friendly.
  • During their Imagine Spots of being praised by Space King, Chestnut’s “praise” has Space King insult him and say that he’s a “worthless piece of shit”, prompting him to look down in shame. This cues the viewer about his self-loathing and meek personality in the series.
  • Bryce’s moment of characterization is shown when he makes a translator device in order to hear the alien's language in their tongue, but it only tracks screaming due to the painful method it involves to use it, which puts him in the role of being the Gadgeteer Genius that like to suggest more innovative, but poorly executed methods to situations.
• Expressive Mask: The helmets of the characters can change expressions, with their visors even lining up with their wearers eye movements.
• Expy: Given this is a parody of Warhammer 40,000 a lot of the characters resemble the characters from there, with the Legionnaires essentially being the Space Marines.
  • Both the Space King and the High Command are based off the Emperor of Mankind, the Space King being a living legend the Legionaires venerate and the High Command being a skeletal figure bolted to a wall connect to a bunch of tubes which is the current state of the Emperor of Mankind.
  • Chestnut's Legion is based off the Apothecaries given his green and white color scheme and recovering the Globules from fallen Legionaires like how the Apothecaries recover gene-seeds from dead Space Marines.
  • Bryce is based on a Techmarine given that he is a Gadgeteer Genius and also appears to be cybernetically enhanced with his eye.
  • Hatemonger takes most of his characterization from the Black Templars. He's zealously hateful to the enemies of Mankind and deeply pious and has an X-shaped "chapter badge" (four chains coming off of a ring, mimmicking the BTs maltese cross). His color scheme, though, takes after the Ultramarines (a deep-blue paintjob with a grey helmet).
  • The noseless blue aliens the Legionaires slaughter in the beginning resemble the Tau, complete with their preference for laser weaponry.
  • The Alien Queen seems to be based on the Tyranids with her visceral insectoid design as well as Chaos Daemons due to her kin living in another dimension.
  • The metal men whose souls remain trapped in their bodies are a clear reference to the Necrons.
  • The occupation of Grim Lord seems to fill a very similar niche to that of a Rogue Trader.
  • The Techno Fiend the Psycho Warriors battle in the beginning of Episode 2 is an amalgamation of a Chaos Spawn, with its extensive and grotesque mutations in a deliberately sick parody of human anatomy, and a Lictor, with its two massive bone scythe arms that can tear power armored super soldiers apart with ease, lightning fast speed and tendency to lunge at its targets from murky or obscuring cover.
  • The unnamed Mad Scientist Imaginator from Episode 3 is one for Fabious Bile, what with his unhinged gloating and a pet project best described as "an Abomination of Science."
  • The God-Weapon is a reference to a Dark Age of Technology AI who decided the Imperium of Man was evil after they murdered his crew for having an AI-enabled ship. It's also crossed with the Necrons and Eversor Assassins, as it has several Unnecessarily Creepy Robot sub-bodies that resemble flayed corpses wearing death-masks. It's title also seems to be a takeoff of Titans, who are referred to as "God-Machines" (maybe even the proto-Titan from Dark Adeptus, considering that it's incredibly old to the point it pre-dates the Empire of Space King).
• The Faceless: Hatemonger is the only member of the reclaimer squad whose face we never see. His helmet's mouth/visor is very small and high up, so even when it's open his face is completely hidden.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The main reclaimer squad never succeeds in any of its missions. At best, the boys might get part of an artifact, but most of the time, they fail to do anything meaningful for their empire and just make things worse. Meanwhile, the empire as a whole never gets anywhere close to finding Space King because of all the stupidity, violence, corruption, and Inter-Service Rivalry running rampant throughout all of its assorted Psycho-Warrior legions. Even the one guy who had managed to find a map to Space King after making a deal with a powerful supernatural entity abandoned it because someone made a female Psycho-Warrior, meaning he had to drop what he was doing to hunt her down, along with literally every other Psycho-Warrior except the ones who sacrificed themselves as to not slow the others down.
• Fan Disservice: While the uncensored version of the pilot does feature uncovered alien boobs, it also contains an extended close up of Hatemonger's freakishly deformed penis. Small wonder Chestnut has to dry heave after touching it.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • As can be seen for a split second when Captain offers one up to the Female Alien, a Star Defender's personal profile is printed on their globules. This includes their "Last Birth", which was one of the first hints of the nature of their implant-based Resurrective Immortality. The specific globule being shown belongs to "Xavery", the Decoy Protagonist of the opening sequence.
  • The interior of the Reclaimer Squad's personal dropship in the second episode has been vandalized by its owners like its the locker room of a high school gym, including childish graffiti, a trash heap of human skulls in the corner, a Brain in a Jar with googly eyes stuck to it and a Dartboard of Hate of Chestnut.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Chestnut. Not even Space King apparently likes him, calling him a "worthless piece of shit". Considering that he ends up sabotaging the operation and making the team's efforts All for Nothing in the end, there may be a good reason for this. Episode 2 expands more on this by showing that the team doesn’t really like him due to his lack of confidence.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Bryce manages to build a pocket sized universal translator to help speed the reclaimer squads efforts. Unfortunately he's very much a Ditzy Genius too, and the translator has a massive, crippling design flaw.
• Gag Penis: Implied in Hatemonger's case; When Chestnut attempts to recover his Holy Globules after he died, the container's computer informs him that Hatemonger's "Sacred Membrum" is obstructing the process, implying it's bigger than that of other Star Defenders and thus requiring Chestnut to manually move it out of the way for extraction to continue. Fully revealed in the Patreon-exclusive episode, his "membrum" looks to be several feet long.
• Giant Mook: The stand-in for Titans are simply ginormous robotic psycho-warriors with lazer gun hands.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: Subverted. While the Leigionaires feel no guilt over committing genocide, their targets are not Always Chaotic Evil and only are attacking the Legionaires out of self-defense.
• Groin Attack:
  • The transformation process for a Legionaire involves a young boy having his testicles replaced with "Holy Globules".
  • If you really want a Psycho-Warrior dead, you have to destroy their Globules along with their more obviously vital organs. Even slight damage can have permanent effects.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: The Grim Lord's son ends up getting his legs torn off during another of Chestnut's badly executed attempts to protect him. Hatemonger shares his fate after Chestnut is forced to implant him with the Psycho Warrior's Globules, leaving the resulting resurrected Hatemonger basically a torso.
• Have You Seen My God?: Or God-Emperor in this case. The Space King vanished for unknown reasons and part of the goal of his men is to find him.
• Heel Realization: Invoked and Defied. When a number of recruits for the "Slay Team" are placed in a simulation to test their ability to identify and destroy heretics, it begins with an alien mother lamenting the death of her baby. Cue a very serious and mature looking Star Defender, with a very serious and mature sounding voice, looking remorseful, and asking "Guys. What if... we're the bad gu-?" At which point all the recruits immediately pull their Psycho-Blasters on him and literally shoot him to pieces without hesitation.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Inverted, given their design it's doubtful that Psycho Armor helmets can come off at all. The "mouth" can snap open and shut like an unnecessarily large visor, which reveals there's a good foot or so of clearance above the soldier's head inside.
• He-Man Woman Hater: While they round up little boys to be converted into Star Defenders, any little girls they catch are put in a sack and tossed into a volcano instead of being simply ignored. Later, a mural depicting Space King shows him shielding his eyes as he sets fire to scantly-clad alien temptresses. This seems to stem from the Star Defenders being mentally immature, as Captain and his squad (with the exception of Hatemonger) are transfixed by the sight of a giant alien woman with giant boobs. Hell, the one thing that gets every Psycho-Warriors legion on the same page is "no girls allowed."
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Zigzagged. On one hand, all the aliens (and AIs) encountered in the series are depicted as benign and sympathetic, with the Psycho-Warriors initiating every conflict and always attacking without provocation. But on the other hand, the Psycho-Warriors, who are the ones that instigate every conflict, can hardly be called human; they're highly indoctrinated Super Soldiers in service to a spacefaring empire, and they treat normal humans just as deplorably as they do aliens.
• Hurricane of Puns: The second episode is filled to the brim with blood-related puns, due to the Coagulators having a bit of an obsession with the stuff.
  Exsanguinator: And remember, Captain: B-positive!
• The Igor: In episode 3, the Mad Scientist is shown to have the requisite ugly lab assistant. Rather than being a hunchback, though, he's abnormally tall and gauntly thin. His morals are at odds with his boss', causing him to hit the panic button when his master succeeded in transgressing the Laws of Nature.
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: The Alien flashes her enormous breasts at the Star Defenders, causing 3 out of 4 of them to be enamored.
• Idiosyncratic Cultural Gesture: The Psycho-Warriors have this custom of putting their hands together so that their fingers form a shape similar to the gaping mouth that is common to all the depictions of their venerated quasi-god, the eponymous Space King; they usually do this when in front of a statue or painting of him.
• Imagine Spot: While the Star Defenders are being harangued for their latest screwup by High Command, they all drift off and imagine Space King speaking to them individually and assuring each of them that their mindset is the correct one that he most approves of. Save for Chestnut, who only gets called a "worthless piece of shit" to his own disappointment.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • An alien soldier gets a battle standard hurled at him like a javelin, which nails him square in the face and pins his corpse to the ground.
  • A Psycho Warrior gets stabbed by the tremendous, scythe-like arm blades of a Techno-Fiend before it tears him in half lenghtwise to finish the job.
• Implausible Deniability: A meta example when it comes to the series, but it’s definitely not related to Warhammer 40,000 in any shape or form, no sir.
• Inter-Service Rivalry: The assorted Psycho Warrior legions might all serve Space King and his empire with blind zeal, but they don't get along too well with each other. Most of the protagonists, who are part of the Star Defender legion, take an immediate dislike to the oddly friendly and blood-obsessed Coagulators. They also get into an argument with another team of artifact reclaimers over who gets to take the artifact in question (or more specifically, the side of a candle with the wick).
• Jaw Drop: Done by Captain's armor in reaction to learning he's invaded the wrong planet. Right after he ordered a genocide bomb dropped on it.
• Jump Scare: Opens on one. A young boy is sleeping peacefully in his bed when a Star Defender explodes through his wall, bellowing "LITTLE BOY" at the top of his lungs, and drags him off.
• Just the First Citizen: In the absence of the Space King, the empire is being run by the High Commands, a series of giant robotic skulls who are each charged with leading a legion of Psycho Warriors.
• Karmic Death: Captain is killed shortly after he threw a grenade at the Alien Queen and her children, even after the Alien queen returned the Space King's essence back to the relic. Had he just left her alone, she wouldn't have attacked him and caused his death.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Not only is a regular gunpowder-driven pistol described like a kickass Sci-Fi weapon, it's shown to go through psycho-armor like it's not even there.
  "So, you're saying there's a fucking hammer that hits the back of a metal spike, causing an explosion INSIDE the gun, which then blasts the spike into the aliens!?"
• Large and in Charge:
  • If the suit of armor artifact containing part of his soul is of any indication, Space King was several times larger than his already enormous troops.
  • High Command is similarly immense in scale, being so massive that the Legionnaires would barely be able to touch his bottom teeth if they stood at his chin.
• Laser Blade: Psycho Warrior melee weapons are energy constructs of mundane weapons: swords, axes, knives, etc.
• Lost Technology: Firearms. Terry's Imaginating of projectile weaponry is described with the childishly gleeful tone that laser guns would inspire in the 21st century.
• Magitek: Interestingly, Bryce shows the ability to create this on the fly with his Soul Cannon, which draws in ten thousand year old souls from the "other side" to infuse them into a laser beam. Rather different from that other, unrelated grimdark franchise, where such an invention would likely be considered tech-heresy.
• Meaningful Name: Chestnut collects the "globules" of his fallen comrades and put them in a compartment on his chest.
• Metaphorically True: Aliens that are retired from the Star Defenders' apparel-producing factories do indeed live out the rest of their lives in a peaceful, beautiful meadow. Captain didn't take them out of it before killing them, after all.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Exaggerated. The alien king chipping a tiny piece off his armor causes Captain to drop a Genocide Bomb on their world, which will wipe out all 20 billion inhabitants.
• Mistaken for Gay: Captain assumes Hatemonger is gay because he was the only one unaffected by the Female Alien's gigantic... weapons. Hatemonger denies this by saying he just hates aliens, no matter how attractive they are.
  Captain: I mean me too, but... (points at Female Alien swinging her "weapons" around) Come on.
• Monster Is a Mommy: While they're battling some hideous aliens in the second episode, Chestnut notices one is pregnant. It's enough to make him hesitate in shooting it, even while it's charging directly at him.
• Monster of the Week: Each episode brings with it some new alien creature to serve as the antagonist for the Psycho Warriors.
  • Episode 1 has the Alien Queen laying claim to the artifact containing a piece of Space King's soul that the squad are sent to reclaim.
  • Episode 2 has the tick aliens that have taken possession of the Coagulators, mainly through the Brood Mother’s influence.
  • Episode 3 has the God Weapon, a super advanced adaptive AI commanding a personal army of skeletal drones that the entire base was constructed to contain.
  • Episode 4 has the Abominable Space Mentivore, a massive alien attracted to "loud thoughts" that serves as a stand-in for the Bumble.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: In the pilot’s climax, the Alien Queen leaps towards Captain in an act of revenge for him killing her children, prompting Chestnut to shoot the alien in the head. This would be a Throw the Dog a Bone moment for him to finally shine and prove his capability, however it ends up setting a small series of events causing Captain to be killed and the artifact to be destroyed, causing the mission to be All for Nothing in the end.
• Nerd Glasses: Bryce's helmet has big round eyes evoking coke bottle glasses.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer for the 3rd episode sets the Heretic Imaginator up as an antagonist crucial to the episode’s plot, however, in the actual episode proper, he only has a measly few seconds of screen time right before he’s Exterminatus’d.
• No Kill like Overkill:
  • Captain has a bad habit of dropping Genocide Bombs at the drop of a hat to the repeated chagrin of both his squad mates and High Command.
  • The Space Kingdom’s response to a singular heretical Imaginator breaking the “no girls allowed” law they follow via the creation of a female psycho-warrior? Exterminatus him and everything else in the planet he’s on, of course!
• No-Respect Guy: Chestnut, through and through, even though his teammates are terminally dependent upon him doing his job to ensure their Resurrective Immortality functions properly. They've got a decent reason for this, though, as Episode 2 demonstrates his lack of confidence actively makes him worse at his job, a liability in combat and easily persuaded into abandoning his duties when offered only a small amount of praise. While Bryce at least just teases Chestnut about having to fondle his balls in the course of his duties, Hatemonger makes it clear he thinks Chestnut is worthless and has actually made a Dartboard of Hate of the guy. Captain, of all people, phrases it pretty diplomatically as, "You're not frontline material." However, by the end of the episode, he seems to have gained some respect after Captain considers him a honorary psycho-warrior after killing the Coagulators on his way back.
• No-Sell:
  • A massive barrage of concentrated fire from a team of alien soldiers against the Star Defenders does little more than alert the invaders to their presence, demonstrating how incredibly tough their Psycho Armor is against most weaponry. Which makes it all the more shocking when Hatemonger gets his entire upper body vaporized without even a hint of resistance.
  • The techno-fiend at the beginning of episode 2 appears to be immune to shots from a psycho-blaster given how it doesn’t look worse for wear when it charges at the squad. Doesn’t prevent it from getting knocked out via Hate-Mace though.
• Non-Malicious Monster:
  • The Alien Queen only wanted to negotiate with the Legionaires to bring herself and her children back to the dimension her kin was from. She only attacks them once they attack her first, and even gives back the soul of the Space King back into the aftifact. Not that it stops Captain from blowing her up afterwards.
  • The God-Weapon AI looks terrifying, but can only comprehend pain. It wants to learn the other emotions. Shame Hatemonger teaches him how to hate.
• Noodle Incident: Hatemonger joined the Star Defenders, because he's on the outs with his Legion due to some kind of disagreement with his fondness for statistics.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Hatemonger is the only one of the squad not mesmerized by the Female Alien's breasts, which makes him a formidable asset to fighting her. Until he gets his entire upper half vaporized by one of her beams.
• No Woman's Land: Psycho Warriors are exclusively male, their ranks populated by transformed boys kidnapped from human worlds. Girls are thrown into the nearest convenient volcano. The creation of a female Psycho Warrior is an act of such heresy that it requires the destruction of an entire planet.
• Oh, Crap!: Captain retracts his visor to show us his horrified expression when he hears from High Command that the planet he's genociding in an all-out war isn't even the right one.
• OOC Is Serious Business: The Star Defenders are notably spooked when Hatemonger, the most xenophobic one amongst them, says they shouldn't kill the Alien Queen.
• Painful Transformation: Even if the "applicant" wasn't screaming in pain and fear the whole time, it's clear that becoming a Legionnaire is a mighty unpleasant experience.
• Psychopathic Manchild: The Legionnaires behave like moody, hormonal teenagers when they aren't slaughtering their way across the stars. Which makes sense, being that they're legions of preteen boys converted into roided-out killing machines. Highlighted when Captain responds to being banned from committing genocide like he just lost his computer privileges for a week.
  Captain: "What?! That's so unfair!" (stamps his foot childishly)
• Punny Name: Chestnut has a container for his fallen comrades Holy Globules, or their "nuts", on his chest.
• Rage Helm: Exaggerated. The helmets of psycho armor suits are designed to resemble enormous snarling faces, with the clenched teeth of the scowl being a retractable visor.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: High Command chews out the Space Defenders for being incompentent.
  High Command: You're in so much trouble! Not only do you have one of the worst artifact recovery rates of any reclaimer squad in the galaxy, now you're wasting precious geno-bombs too!... Space King will return to us when we've proven our worth! It's no wonder Space King left. Hell, I would have left too if I had you as my sons! Going around the galaxy, doing nothing important...
• Reforged into a Minion: How the Star Defenders are made, as some of them are sent out to kidnap boys to turn into more psycho-warriors.
• Resurrective Immortality: It's demonstrated in the second episode that psycho-warriors are reborn, memories and personalities intact, when their holy globules are transplanted into a new host.
• Running Gag:
  • Throughout the episodes and the promos, there will be at least one detailed freeze frame of a character doing a pose (accompanied with a musical riff of sorts) before continuing on and switching back to the normal style.
  • There’s also Hatemonger’s Ambiguously Gay status that comes into question from time to time, despite his insistence that he hates aliens.
• Screaming Warrior: The standard battle cry among the Star Defenders is a sustained, wordless, chesty roar.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Captain very quickly decides he'd rather abandon the mission to find the Grim Lord's son than continue to endure the Coagulator's sanguineous attitudes and aesthetics for one more second.
• Serious Business: Episode 2 opens up with two Star Defender squads debating over who get to take credit for a sacred artifact. The sacred artifact in question being a regular candle that Space King supposedly lit once eons ago.
• Shout-Out:
  • The facial designs of the Psycho-Warriors' helmets look like Emperor Zurg.
  • In the start of the pilot episode, when the scene zooms out to show the psycho-warrior breaking through the wall, there are posters of Mario and a headcrab zombie in the boy's room.
  • The second episode has one to reality. The Exsanguinator makes the actual Bloods gangsign (that is, spelling "blood" with one's fingers) whenever he makes a blood-related pun.
• Skewed Priorities: The psycho-warriors will drop everything, battles, giant statues that are about to crush innocent people, their own people about to be eaten by a lava monster, even a map to find Space King himself, to stop the creation of a female psycho-warrior.
• Skull for a Head: High Command is nothing but a gargantuan robotic skull. Also, the motif of Chestnut's helmet.
• The Smart Guy:
  • Bryce seems to be the team's main tech guy, inventing a translating device in addition to having an upgraded weapon compared to the rest of the Legionnaires. He was also the first member to suggest that they need to negotiate with the Alien Queen rather than trying to win a fight they couldn't.
  • Hatemonger is mentioned to have a fascination with statistics, is well-studied enough to know the history and nature of the artifact they find, and is quick to deduce potential threats or difficulties for his comrades. He's also the natural choice for interrogating capture foes, but being that he's still a Legionnaire, his idea of "interrogating" is punching his captive in the face and screaming questions at them in a language they don't speak.
  • Terry, a Guest-Star Party Member in episode 3 is even smarter than Bryce, as he lacks the latter's Complexity Addiction.
• Soul Jar: The essence of every Psycho Warrior is stored in their globules.
• Space Marine: The Star Defenders are an interstellar army of supersoldiers decked out in Power Armor with multiple chapters devoted to different tasks, and that are in no way based on the Adeptus Astartes.
• Stupid Evil: Captain hates Aliens so much he is willing to genocide an entire planet which gets him reprimanded for wasting resources especially since the planet wasn't their original target. He also throws a bomb at the alien after she kept her end of the bargain and was planning on staying out of their way, leading to her attacking him and causing his death.
• Super-Scream: The amplified war cry of a Star Defender Humongous Mecha liquefies a squad of alien soldiers.
• Surrounded by Idiots: High Command does not have a high opinion of the Star Defenders' intelligence, treating them more like insolent and stupid teenagers than legions of bloodthirsty and psychotic super soldiers. This is not entirely inaccurate.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The Star Defenders' arrival on the Coagulators' ship takes sudden and nightmarish tone, as the presiding High Command skull is shown screaming in agony while blood spills from his mouth and eye sockets. It's definitely a scene that wouldn't be out of place in Warhammer 40,000.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Bryce creates a translation device that, when connected to an alien's skull, allows them understand what it is saying. However, the alien starts screaming in agony due to the huge needle piercing his brain instead of saying anything useful, making the device completely useless.
  • The basis of Chestnut's constant botched attempts at saving the Grim Lord's son in Episode 2. Turns out that trying to pull normal limbs with giant space marine arms isn't a wise idea.
  • The Coagulators obsession with their blood theme has led them to line their armor with Iron Maiden style spikes, so they can continually bleed in reverence to Space King. This also means even their enhanced physiologies are at constant risk of blood borne pathogens, so members have to regularly undergo dialysis. Especially if they're about to expose themselves to the Brood Mother, who they wouldn't want to risk feeding diseased or tainted blood.
• Survivor's Guilt: Chestnut is implied to suffer from this, given that his version of Space King speaking to him calls him a "worthless piece of shit" and by the end of the pilot he's the sole survivor, somberly collecting the Holy Globules of his fallen teammates. It may not have been the first time he went through the same song and dance and wound up being the Sole Survivor instead of dying in the glory of battle like his brothers, thus feeling less worthy than them.
• Take That!:
  • The creators describe most other original animated series on YouTube as "independent animation targeted at mentally ill teenaged girls" (right before describing their own target demographic as "mentally ill teenaged boys and thirty-year old men") while a Composite Character sharing design motifs from Helluva Boss and The Amazing Digital Circus awkwardly stands between them. They also take cracks at modern Hollywood media in general, or as they summarize, "the lamest shit possible", while Star Defenders ransack the Hollywood sign at Mount Lee.
  • The Cold Open to Episode 3 seems to be one to the introduction of female Space Marines in Warhammer 40,000, encapsulating the response it got from some of the more passionate players.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Figuratively and literally, as the procedure of creating Star Defenders involves replacing a boy's testicles with "Holy Globules" that turn them into muscle-bound ragemonkeys (while retaining the overall mindset of prepubescent boys engaging in a power fantasy).
• Throw the Dog a Bone: In recognition of everything he did throughout the second episode, Captain promotes Chestnut to an honorary Psycho-Warrior, and lets him have the honor of blowing up the Grim Lord's ship to complete their cover story of why their latest mission was a complete failure.
• Torpedo Tits: A variation; The alien that the squad fights in the pilot is able to shoot lasers from her tits after absorbing Space King's power.
• Torso with a View: How Bryce meets his end after a laser from the Alien Queen is shot through his chest.
• Town with a Dark Secret: The Coagulators are an unusually friendly and welcoming legion, save for their creepy obsession with blood. It's eventually revealed that they've formed a heretical cult that worships a blood-sucking alien parasite that once fed on Space King, in the belief that it gained a telepathic link to him in the process.
• Transformation of the Possessed: Inserting Psycho Warrior globules into a boy host causes the boy to immediately mutate into an exact clone of that Psycho Warrior, down to specific implants such as Bryce's artificial eye.
• Tyke-Bomb: The Star Defenders legion is created by kidnapping young boys and injecting them with "Holy Globules" that turn them into roided-out Super Soldiers within seconds.
• Villain Protagonist: The Star Defenders are a bunch of genocidal psychopaths, Captain being the most dickish of the bunch.
• Weapon Chooses the Wielder: Hatemonger's Hate-mace is an Empathic Weapon which draws on The Power of Hate, and it violently rejects any would-be wielder who isn't hateful enough for its standards. The mace eventually allows Chestnut to wield it once it realizes just how much Chestnut hates himself and his security system is actually weaponised against the broodmother.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Episode 4 is essentially a complete retelling of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), with the Psycho Warrior Rudolph leading the Psycho Warrior fleet through a void storm with his psychic nose so they can bomb heretics for Kingsmas.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Bryce, relative to the other legionnaires anyway. He's more likely to counsel against unnecessarily excessive violence, even if he thinks its pretty sweet, and likes suggesting innovative or unorthodox strategies.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Legions recruit new soldiers by raiding worlds for young boys to alter and indoctrinate. Young girls instead get tossed into a volcano.
  • After the Female Alien returns to her lair to feed her babies, Captain is quick to drop a grenade in to blow the lot up. This presumably kills her babies, as she leaps out for revenge.
• Your Answer to Everything:
  • Captain's response to any personal indignity or battlefield obstacle is to drop a genocide bomb on it.
  • Bryce's solution to dealing with aliens is to use his translator device.