The Outsiders SMP was a private, modded Minecraft multiplayer server. It was originally owned by Oeca and Mohwee, with Apokuna as the head writer; later on, OwengeJuice was also enlisted as a co-writer before Oeca and Mohwee stepped down from the series, with the two remaining co-writers taking over as the server owners.
Loosely based on The Maze Runner, the series started with our protagonists ascending in an elevator into a clearing surrounded by a tall stone maze, with most of them having no memory of their pasts except for their names. Their objective? To escape, and to do that, they must find their way through the Maze.
The Outsiders SMP began on July 23th, 2021 and ended on July 24th, 2022.
Note: Unless otherwise specified, all tropes pertain to the characters, not the content creators that play them.
The Outsiders SMP contains examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: For starters, the characters first found in Clearing A include Guts, Mohwee, Rasbi, and Spidey… and then there's Graecie (pronounced the same as "Gracie") and Owen.
- All Crimes Are Equal: Downplayed. Several of the characters who have been sentenced to the Maze are murderers, but this can go anywhere between those who have killed in self-defense and Serial Killers and war criminals.
- Amnesiac Dissonance: It'd be easier to count the former criminals who regained the memory of their crimes and didn't undergo a drastic change in personality, with extreme cases like Oeca and Owen outright developing a Split Personality as a result.
- Anyone Can Die: The series ends with a majority of the POV characters dead.
- Archnemesis Dad: The Organizer, the organizer of the STARR series and architect of the Maze, is Magic's father who sent her into the Maze for rejecting his plan for her to become the series' future Organizer.
- Cult: In its backstory, Krow was raised into and later helped run a cannibalistic Demon cult that believed its family was "royalty" and "gods among the Earth".
- Died in Your Arms Tonight:
- After getting fatally impaled by a monster in the Dark Maze, Ayngel passes away in Ori's arms.
- In the finale, after Krow regains its memories of its past, it has a Freak Out and tries to attack Acho, only for Kyle to take the hit and die in his best friend's arms.
- Dysfunction Junction: Having a traumatic past is pretty much a prerequisite for entering the Maze; so far, we've had dead family members, familial mistreatment, criminal behaviour for justifiable reasons or otherwise, and several characters have entered the Maze due to their own loneliness.
- Ensemble Cast: Played with, since Anyone Can Die. Every POV character is the protagonist of their own story until their story ends, with those who die before the story ends either Passing the Torch or dying a Decoy Protagonist.
- Hearing Voices: The creators' stream chats manifest as voices that the characters can sometimes hear in their heads. A behind-the-scenes stream reveals that the voices are those of the Studio Audience watching the series in-universe. You Bastard!
- Medium Blending: While a vast majority of the series takes place in Minecraft, a handful of scenes — usually particularly gory moments/flashbacks and death scenes — are generally depicted in drawn animations and animatics.
- Mobile Maze: There is a giant one surrounding the Clearings, where the openings to the Maze from the Clearings close off every nightfall until sunrise. Its corridors are filled with traps and its walls sometimes move, opening up new areas for the characters to explore.
- Our Demons Are Different: There are three (actually two) known subspecies of Demons in the Outsiders universe — regular Demons, Half-Demons/Tieflings, and Dragonborn Demons (the latter of which are just modified regular Demons) — each with differing heights, horn shapes, tooth size, and other physical features. Most of the Demon characters encountered in the series are Half-Demons.
- Villain Protagonist: Some of the POV characters are war criminals and/or remorseless murderers who were brought into the Maze as punishment for their crimes.