Krapopolis is a 2023 adult animated fantasy sitcom created by Dan Harmon. It stars Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry, Hannah Waddingham, Pam Murphy, and Duncan Trussell.
Set in Ancient Greece, the series follows a dysfunctional family of gods, demigods, and mystical beings as they attempt to run one of the first cities in the world. The series premiered on Fox September 24, 2023. Three seasons have already been ordered before the series premiered. In July 2024, it was announced that the show was picked up for a season 4. In May 2025, the show was announced to be renewed for season 5.
Krapopolis contains examples of the following:
- Abusive Parents: Jerkass Gods do not make good parents for their demigod children.
- Shlub's dad was so awful that everybody who knew him celebrated when he died. His mother is also shown to be elitist and very emotionally abusive especially to Shlub for not being a full centaur.
- Accents Aren't Hereditary: Zig-zagged; Stupendous and Hippocampus are respectively the children of Deliria and Shlub, who have British accents where they don't. Meanwhile Tyrannis is the son of both Deliria and Shlub, and seems to have inherited a British accent.
- Actor Allusion:
- Not Matt Berry's first time playing a sex-obsessed monster. Not even his second time, either.
- The hydra Camille, who acts as a stand in for the internet/social media, is voiced by D'Arcy Carden, who is best known for playing Janet on The Good Place, where she serves a similar role for the residents of the afterlife.
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: How the death of Shlub's father is described, as he was just that hated a tyrant.
- Animation Evolution: The majority of the first season is animated in traditionally via outsourcing to the Korean animation studios NE4U and Saerom (The Philippines-based Toon City only animated the series premiere episode) Starting in Season 2 and onwards, they shifted the medium to rig-based animation done in Toon Boon Harmony when the Ireland-based Boulder Media (who also animated the series’ intro since season 1) took over animation duties of the show.
- Asshole Victim: Noticably averted in The Stinger for "Big Man on Hippocampus" where it's revealed that the giant that Hephaestus has encased in armor which forces him to gestulate like a robot and make announcements for Vul Con is actually a doctor. He also states that he has a family, loves to travel and is a foodie. He also pleads with the visitors to tell his story.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
- After an entire episode of squabbling, Tyrannis defends Deliria's honor when Athena dismisses him, and Deliria shows up to defend him afterwards. When Athena turns him into a snake later, Deliria gives a Big "NO!" in response.
- Deliria also protests the budding relationship with Tyrannis and Demeter not to spite Tyrannis or enforce a status quo, but because she knows this is type of relationship does not work well for one party.
- Bamboo Technology: Despite the setting, the characters use a lot of items that approximate modern conveniences. Daily newspapers are replaced with vases, and in one episode, a hydra fills the same role as phones/internet.
- Brick Joke: The beginning of "Mr.Boogins" has the town and Ty discussing a "knife-hawk" that Hippo had let loose. At the end of the episode, the knife-hawk gets its story told with a very jaunty tune.
- Cynic–Idealist Duo: Tyrannis is the quintessential idealist. His mom is the main cynic, but a lot of people fulfill the cynic role.
- Deconstructor Fleet: As expected from a Dan Harmon show, the series deconstructs many story and genre conventions. In this shows case, it plays with both family sitcoms and Classical Mythology. Also being a show about creating a civilization, it also deconstructs global politics as well.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The gods have a habit of changing people into embarrassing things or using unusual torture for even the smallest of slights. For example, Deliria has covered her bard in spiders, changed his lute into an angry cat (which he's allergic to) and when he complains about the unfair give and take, she teleports him outside and changes his hands into angry cats. All because he annoyed her a bit.
- Divine Conflict: There are a lot of conflicts between gods that teeter between comedic and dramatic because they're all a Big, Screwed-Up Family. The first episode is about Deliria's issues being exiled from Olympus and getting into a fight with Athena in the climax.
- Dysfunctional Family: Tyrannis, Shlub, Deliria, Stupendous, and Hippocampus all create a very flawed and dysfunctional family dynamic.
- Everyone Has Standards: The gods have displayed sexual appetites both extremely odd and deeply perverse, but even they think Ares forcing members of winning armies to line up and spank him after a battle to be too weird and disturbing and kick him out of Olympus for it. Ares is very quick to point out the hypocrisy.
- Eye Scream: In the clip, Hippocampus' machine to protect against Medusa does so by shoving lit matches into the eyes of its wearer, rendering them blind.
- Fish People: Hippocampus is an anthropomorphic fish that wears a bowl of water on his head.
- Forced Transformation: Gods can freely transform mortals into whatever they want. The first episode has Deliria and Athena turning the people of each other's respective cities into snakes.
- Genius Cripple: Hippocampus can't breathe air and is incapable of walking without support on land but is practically the smartest mortal or monster anywhere.
- Genius Ditz: Shlub will occasionally have his moments of wisdom such as in the pilot when he helps his son Tyrannis deal with his relationship with his mother by asking him the question "If your divine gift is for deal making, why is it you can't deal with your mother?"
- The Gods Must Be Lazy: As seen in the clip, the goddess Deliria is more interested in sitting around and drinking wine than actually helping with the Medusa problem.
- Gossipy Hens: Hermes is depicted performing his messenger duties, though most of his messages are just him running the latest gossip by Deliria.
- Hybrid Monster: Shlub is basically this as he is a Mantitaur, part Centaur and part Manticore. Pretty unique, don't ya think?
- Incoming Ham: How Deliria and Shlub are introduced in the pilot.Tyranis: The past is behind us.Deliria from offscreen: Goddess on a monster coming in hot!Tyranis: The past is behind me isn't it?
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Hephaestus is an Insufferable Genius who believes he's above everyone but is also desperate for his family's approval so he works to build them whatever they like, no matter how petty or frivolous it is. He's perfectly aware that they're dysfunctional and insane, but has decided that it's the only worthwhile thing he can work towards.
- Informed Ability: Inverted, and in this case, an upending plot point. The Gods discover that while they are more powerful than mortals, their titles (AKA God of War, God of the Sun, God of the Harvest) are ineffective and random.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Shlub basically looks like a monster version of Matt Berry and Tyrannis is Richard Ayoade without glasses and with purple hair.
- It's All About Me: Deleria and the gods in general are extremely self-absorbed.
- It Will Never Catch On: A Running Gag in the first season is multiple characters mocking the idea of written language.
- Jerkass Gods: The first episode shows how self-centered Deliria is, particularly when it comes to her social standing among other gods since she's banished from Olympus. She justifies it as mortals dying regardless of how they're treated, while immortal lives means immortal social lives.
- Loser Deity: The minor gods are shown to be mostly joke fodder for major gods, with titles such as "The God of Nocturnal Emissions" and "Goddess of Oranges... But Just the Rind." Mortals don't take them very seriously either, with most being ignored due to their jobs being too hyper-specific or rediculous to treat with any real respect. When Ares is kicked out of Olympus, the other Majors amuse themselves setting up a fake competition to figure out who should replace him, but have the "winner" picked out well before hand and instead use it as an excuse to humiliate the Minors.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Tyrannis makes love with one of the Greek gods in public. Additionally, Deliria and Shlub make love when one has been transformed into an infant, freaking their kids out.
- Mobile Fish Bowl: Hippocampus wears a fish bowl on his head at all times due to being an aquatic being.
- Nice Guy: Shlub can fall under the Mr. Vice Guy trope as well as he can be inappropriate and Innocently Insensitive sometimes. Despite that, he is a rather likable and agreeable person (or mythical creature) as well as a loving and supportive dad to Tyrannis, Stupendous, and Hippocampus.
- Objectshifting: Miriam, a random extra, is revealed to have been... that chair at the end of "Don Tyxote", when the Wizard turns her back to normal.
- Offing the Offspring: When Hippocampus meets his mother, she eventually admits that she ate some of Hippo's broodmates. She then makes the comment that they were delicious and she hasn't had baby in a while.
- Only Sane Man: Tyrannis sees himself as this. However, it also stems from his arrogance, as he isn't always right.
- Parental Issues: Tyrannis's anxieties comes from his troubling relationship with his mother, Deliria.
- Power Perversion Potential: The gods in general are dipicted as sex maniacs who like to use their powers for their many, many depraved sex acts. Deliria and Shlub spend an entire episode trying to disguise themselves so they can check out Hippo's new restaurant without him knowing, but can't make it out of the bedroom, because no form they choose is disgusting enough to keep them from having sex (including a jellyfish and a dead gold fish).
- Zeus takes this to its logical extreme and starts turning into hybrid forms to see which ones give him the most satisfaction. He ends up succeeding so well that he can't be bothered to do anything but pleasure himself.
- Red Shirt: Plenty of people throughout the series die pretty inconsequentially to demonstrate how much more dangerous life was in this era. It's generally done to comic effect as well.
- Semi-Divine: The primary cast has the king Tyrannis, his cyclops half-sister Stupendous and his fish-man half-brother Hippocampus. Tyrannis is the son of the manticore/centaur hybrid Shlub and the goddess Deliria, with Stupendous being Deliria's daughter with a cyclops and Hippocampus being Shlub's son with an Atlantaen fish-woman.
- Shown Their Work: While the exact stories and depictions of the gods aren't 100% accurate and certain things have been changed or added for Rule of Funny, there is clearly someone on the writing staff well-versed in Greek Mythology. All of the gods' titles and general personalities are pretty spot-on. Even details like Hephaestus's face being messed up and his leg crippled, or Dionysus causing people to party till they die just by his presence are shown. But even small details are surprisingly accurate. For example, Hades was said to make his clothing out of damned souls so as to torture them personally. Here, Hades is shown wearing speedos with vague face-like shapes that appear frozen in grotesque pain.
- Take That!: The first time Heracles shows up, there's an elderly couple who looks like his mortal parents from the Disney movie. They then call him Hercules, which he's very quick to correct him on. In the original myths, he was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman and Hera, instead of being his mother, was actually something of a Wicked Stepmother and actually caused Heracles to kill his mortal family by rendering him temporarily insane. So the parents in the Disney version aren't even in the original myths. They also chose to go with Hercules (his Roman name) because it was more well known. The scene can easily be seen as taking shots at Disney for the innacuracies in their version (most of which were made because the original myths are decidely not kid friendly).
- Taken for Granite: As the clip ends, Medusa's head falls out of its bag and most of the people attending the meeting are turned to stone.
- Tech Bro: Hephaestus is revealed to be a Classically Mythological version of this. While everyone knows him as the God of "Makin' Stuff", it turns out that he doesn't actually do any inventing. Instead, he charms actual inventors into doing all the work for him and he peddles their work as his own. He even throws conventions where he works up the crowd with elaborate performances, recruiting nay-sayers to make him look humble.
- Wham Episode: “Krapocracy Now!” opens with Shlub being elected King instead of Ty after the latter’s attempt to give the people a sense of choice goes south. Despite what you would expect, the change actually sticks by the end of the episode, with Shlub now being the full-time official king of Krapopolis while Ty accepts the decision and decides that he’ll simply have to find out what he is without his crown now. The opening is even changed to reflect this change to the status quo with Ty’s crown falling on Shlub’s head after he runs away from the snake.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: In "SHLUB$", Hippocampus invents a device that can split something into its componant essences so he can cure Shlub's diseased lion part. After a series of mishaps, Ty tries to use the ray on himself to split his god and mantitaur parts. When his godly side fails to solve the problem, he splits it again, which makes more of his godly side until he has about a dozen of himself. They all end up glomming together and becoming a very powerful primordial god, but Ty also becomes so erratic and flighty that he spends his time messing about with his newfound powers instead of actually fixing anything. Or as Stupendous puts it:Stupendous: You know how some people go crazy with power? Well Ty's gone stupid with god power.