The first episode. Especially the absurdly cheerful dialogue at the end that summarizes the whole thing.
"And so, on this day forth, our hero has slain 30 men. And he would later admit to having a good time while doing it, too."note "Thirty-two people actually, if you count the zombies."
Hell, the mere fact that this all started with a fight over a boombox.
In the third episode, Avenger:
When the Improbability Drive is activated, its effects are either Nightmare Fuel or plain bizarre. Some notable non-scary effects are a giant marshmallow randomly crashing down, the sun coming to life while retaining its goofy cartoony grinning face only to proceed to fight Hank, and a couple of whales also falling from the sky while Hank is fighting.
You might be wondering why the skies in Nevada are constantly dark with an eerie red glow following this episode; this is because Hank knocks out the Sun with a stop sign after it tries to fight him!
The ending of Apotheosis. Everyone dies but Tricky, who surveys the scene. Then, he just shrugs and puts a record on, and guess which one? The Chicken Dance from the very first Madness Combat.
"AND HE DANCED."
"YOU DO NOT KILL CLOWN! CLOWN KILLS YOU!", followed by Tricky's super happy smile. Awwww.
In Madness Combat 5.5, Tricky's Epic Fail of trying to use the upper half of Jebus' severed head to resurrect two agents, whose heads simply explode. Afterwards, when Sanford and Deimos have left, he stomps into the room angrily screaming "HOW COME THIS DOES NOT WORK?" before flinging it aside. The reason? Jebus' halo is the source of his incredible powers, not his brain. What makes it even funnier is that it looks like Tricky is using Jebus' head as a hat.
This sets up a whole chain of funny events involving Jebus leaving the agency throughout the following episodes. In 6.5, he retrieves his head and plants his resignation notice (which he somehow wrote while missing his eyes) in sight of a camera so the Auditor can see it.
Well into 5.5, Deimos and Sanford find themselves being hit by a massive wave from the Improbability Drive. Despite the ensuing carnage and Tricky involved, there are several funny moments, including when Tricky bounces like a high-powered superball, followed by a long Zerg Rush of Elite Mooks where Sanford wields two swords at once! Reason why it's funny? Deimos kicks back and has a cigarette, watching the battle.
Even better, when Sanford's finished off the last enemy, he turns around to see Deimos just standing there smoking and makes a one-handed pointing sort of gesture at him as if to say, "Come on, are you kidding?". Deimos promptly throws the cigarette away.
The signage shows just how little patience the Auditor has for Tricky even at this point.
"ANYONE CAUGHT POSTING PARAPHENALIA IN REGARDS TO THAT GOD DAMN CLOWN WILL BE SHOT TO DEATH. DO NOT TEST ME."
In Antipathy, while Hank fights the grunts and agents inside the building, Tricky, without a care in the world, goes outside and buys a hot dog.
A bit before that, Tricky detaches the train cars from the train and tries to use his stop sign to shoo/smack away Hank, who's clinging onto the tail end of the locomotive. Naturally, Hank grabs onto the signpost, leading to a hilarious moment with Tricky trying to shake Hank off like he's a piece of tape stuck to the sign. You can almost hear him yelling, "Get off!"
Sanford and Deimos clothes shopping while agents prepare to breach the store they're in, and Sanford's response to Deimos' new outfit.
In Consternation, when Hank first encounters MAG Agent: Torture he unloads an entire magazine into his face in a Bullet Time moment... to absolutelynoeffect. If you watch carefully he gets about a second to regret it before Torture decides to punch him through a support beam, then club him clear across the canyon using his shotgun like a golf club. Somehow Torture gives the impression of being completely unfazed yet peeved enough to retaliate in the pettiest manner possible.
After dispatching Torture with a chainsaw, Hank gets shot in the ribs by an Agent a floor down. Clearly reaching a boiling point, he proceeds to jump down and massacre all four agents in the span of five seconds, and the only reason it took five was because the poor bastard who got stuck with a carpentry hammergot cold feet and tried to climb up the ladder to get away.
In the room just before, one of the posters on the wall has a picture of Hank, in his current gear, captioned with what starts out as a Madness Mantra of "MURDER MURDER MURDER" before devolving into inarticulate gibberish punctuated with a " :-| " emoticon. One gets the feeling that the repeated defeats and blows to the head, as well as getting the top of it sliced off did a really bad number on Tricky.
And right after being thwacked like the first tee-off at the Masters, Hank lands on some poor Agent running drills outside and kills him on impact. He was a smoker anyway.
Tricky's reaction to Jebus mercy killing Hank is hilarious with his wide-eyed look and indignant "HAY!!!" as he sticks his oversized head through the wall. Also, when he dies from Jebus destroying the Portable Improbability Drive, the device's final integrity readout before it fails is "%X_X"
The fact that Tricky's downfall was because he removed his drive to get it serviced while he fought Hank. He failed because he decided to be completely rational and avoid risks for one moment.
In Episode 7.5:
Deimos opens fire with a huge machine gun on a big open room full of mooks. Sanford is right in the line of fire, and drops to the floor right before Deimos starts shooting. Sanford then proceeds to scoot himself backwards, still flat on his front, until he's safely behind Deimos. It's easy to miss, but it looks absolutely hilarious.
The Auditor's overly-long reply to the ATP Soldat's IM confirming that Sanford and Deimos have arrived. It doesn't even come through until the two Soldats are already out the door. One gets the feeling that the Auditor doesn't do a lot of IMing.
The fact that the Auditor's handle is "BIGBADAUD999".
The bomb's timer is rendered as N0:PE, moments before it blows and takes out the entire Soldat program.
Episode 8 Inundation:
Early in the episode, Jesus telekinetically throws a crate through a wall. Cut to two Agents in the next room staring at the crate, which is now embedded in the opposite wall after turning the top half of an Engineer into yellow mush.
There's something to be said about how the Auditor is just casually sipping from his drink while he's working at his computer- er, Improbability Drive.
How does one of the MAG Agent V2s tell the Auditor that Jesus is raiding the base it's stationed at? With an instant messenger chat. Even the agent's camera feed and text are magnified.
Jesus goes down an elevator, into a room of Agents who begin firing at him from behind cover after he manages to kill one Agent and an Engineer. His reaction is to go back up the elevator immediately, before telekinetically moving one of the boxes as cover for when the Agents inevitably go after him. The box is also positioned gently on the corpses of two Agents, using them as a platform for more height.
Deimos' solution to being engaged at melee range by an Agent while being forced to lug around Hank's body for recovery? Throw Hank at him and knock him over a railing. Sanford does not react at all to this blatant disregard for a comrade's corpse. The best part is that Deimos has Sanford nearby to help and had another gun stashed on his back... so throwing Hank at the guy was purely for the fun of it.
Deimos sneaks up on Sanford and tries to freak him out with a Mook's mask. Sanford's not impressed, and Deimos gets slapped for it.
Sanford's irritated gesture at Hank's body using his hook right after this. For a series with no speech, the moment was conveyed perfectly.
Sanford has to step aside and reload his revolver. An Engineer comes out from the door he's standing next to, and stabs him in the ribs. Sanford... doesn't even stop to look at him until he's got the cylinder secured, pushes the Engineer to the ground and stares at him in mild annoyance before shooting him in the head, then in the ribs on principle before even bothering to take the knife out.
Episode 9.5:
Upon Hank arriving in Hell, his death reads as denied once again, and you can just feel how annoyed the dimension is with him.
One poster in hell refers to Hank as a "tourist". It's like the dimension itself is used to Hank dying and reviving.
At one point in Part 2, Hank kills an ATP Soldat by ramming their handheld tablet computer through the top of his skull. He then uses the Soldat's corpse like a macabre holder, revealing the words "OUCH" written in massive letters across the touchscreen, before it transitions to casually insulting him ("Turn around, you dingdong") for no apparent reason.
During Antipathy Hank's rampage in Part 2, as he takes on a bunch of AAHW mooks one Agent gets kicked hard enough to go flying into a wall and ends up falling headfirst into a conveniently placed trashcan. An Engineer at the scene turns his back on Hank to watch this happen, as if extremely curious to know whether he will successfully "score a basket"!
When Hank stumbles into a group of agents gathered around Tricky, the clown is half-submerged in the ground as if he's sitting in a hot tub, and makes only a token effort to put distance between Hank and himself as if he's too comfortable watching him tear mooks apart to bother.
After Antipathy Hank smashes Tricky across the head, the flow of time pauses and Tricky conveys a shockingly casual message for what he's known for and what he's about to do.
No matter how horrific is it meant to be, there's just something utterly silly about the warped Tricky's broken jaw..
Doc's resurrection tracking system once again manifests as a button console smashing against the target's face. Either its an act of frustration with how hard it is to find these troublemakers, Hank especially, or it earnestly needs to smack someone at full force to work.
As Antipathy Hank climbs down a wall, a QR code can be spotted on the wall. Accessing it leads to a short audio play of a gravelly-voiced, clownish individual calling the Auditor... One who is not Tricky, as apparently the clown is either tapping the Auditor's phone line or is still trusted enough to screen his calls. Tricky patches the unnamed caller through, and he and The Auditor talk about the next Employee of the Month before it segues into asking about a "ninja problem" the caller mentions The Auditor having. The mystery caller tellingly informs the Auditor that he has some "Anti-bat equipment" he can lend him, they make the appointment official, and the caller hangs up and walks away from the phone booth as he laughs maniacally, indicating that this was in fact the Lawyer-Friendly Cameo it appears to be.
The above-mentioned call portrays most dialogue on the other line as indecipherable squeaking, with the only exception being The Auditor opening the call with a "Hello?" that sounds like it came from the mouth of a very tired, unassuming retail manager who was called in the middle of the night.
Episode 10 Abrogation:
In Abrogation, Sanford and Hank play rock-paper-scissors to see who will go into the building first. Hank loses to Sanford and has to go first.
Speaking of Sanford, before he ends up barraged by Tricky Demon's M60, his foe actually adjusts the sight on it. What's funny is that every single adjustment is followed by a [ACCURACY ++].
Since we are mentioning "stats", Hank's Auditor-induced upgrade near the end of the episode finishes with the lines: "Violence Required" and "Violence Acquired".
Even the Malevolent Architecture of the Auditor's Hell gets in on the fun as at one point Sanford knows Tricky is going to appear three seconds ahead of it happening because there is a burn mark shaped like Tricky's head in the top corner of the room....for no apparent reason at all.
A healed and renewed Hank is fighting the halo-carrying Tricky Demon and, after a fairly even fight, he's sent flying at high speed... and crashes into Sanford, who was looking at the fight from afar.
Just before picking up the M60, Tricky's original signature weapon before his zombification, the clown lets out what can only be described as a gleeful salivating noise punctuated by a goofy little "huhuh!", as if he's happy to see an old friend.
Incident: 001A: After being shipped to the enemy in a box, Hank comes upon a comically oversized blender, and is overcome with giddy awe, so much so that his hands start shaking with excitement. When he switches it on, he gets so amazed that he even has to take a few steps back to compose himself!
Not only does Hank dispose of the MAG Agent by means of a comically oversized blender, he spends the last part of the episode jumping up and down on the MAG Agent's head to force them down into the blender's blades.
Viewers also noted that, after disposing of over a dozen agents, Hank decides to pick up an axe rather than one of the many guns strewn across the floor.
The ending of Incident: 010A. After slaying a horde of zombies and agents, Hank is promptly and unceremoniously torn in half by a MAG Agent v4. His reaction just before his demise sells it.
The Incident ends on the MAG Agent pulling Hank's sword out of his head and using it like a toothpick to poke holes in Hank's body repeatedly, with no signs of slowing down even as the screen goes black. All while the guy that Hank dragged around for the whole episode just sits back and has a smoke (and yes, this is the only smoker in the entire series that gets away with it).
Incident: 011A: At the very end, the guy with the M203 wipes the blood off his face with his hand, then wipes his hand on the hot dog vendor's apron. The hot dog vendor is not pleased.
In the non-canon Incident: 100A, the beginning of the animation has Sanford and Deimos betting on whether or not Deimos' decoy works. It does, and Sanford is not pleased when he has to pay up. At the end, when they find out they grabbed the wrong guy, you can plainly seehis rage at losing a pointless bet.
From Incident: 110A:
There is a moment where Jesus splits an ATP Engineer in half with his telekinesis, but the lower half walks a bit before falling over.
Later on, an ATP Soldat tries to kill Jesus with a shotgun, but Jesus summons a reflective shield that ends up deflecting the shots to the agents around him. The Soldat continues firing, unaware of this until he gets killed by the deflected blast.
In The Stinger. Having depleted the counter of surviving enemies to 0, Jesus picks up a minigun and starts mowing down a huge stream of mooks. The scene cuts out again just as the counter goes down to -20.
Despite otherwise being Nightmare Fuel, the Deimos shorts have a few humorous bits.
In ANAMNESIS.fla, while what he sees on the other side isn't funny at all, the small window Deimos peeks through has graffiti on the other side that says "DUMB IDIOT" with an arrow pointing down at Deimos while he is looking in.
A few days after the release of Expurgation, Krinkels teased the next animation.
Deimos: (clinging to the back of a giant ATP engineer) ayyy pal, lemme see them POKEMON CARDS
Dedmos Rebuilt:
When Deimos clears the first room of giant grunts, he advances to the next room by jumping around like a cheerful child.
Deimos, after dodging a chain and getting a giant agent impaled on it, decides to casually saunter along the chain over to him (complete with a few bars of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head") and steal his Cool Shades before caving his face in. The fact that the shades are bigger than Deimos' face make him look hilariously funky.
For a split second after Deimos grabs the agent's shades, the word "melon" and an arrow pointing to the agent's head appears behind them, just before Deimos smashes his head like one.
While transitioning to another area, we come across a grunt repeatedly using a doorbell ad nauseum. There's something funny about how mundane this man's plight is in the midst of literal hell.
Deimos dabbing while a giant ATP Engineer aims at him.
After embedding a baton into a giant agent's throat, Deimos just gives him dual finger guns, taunting him as he flounders away with it still lodged inside him.
After 2BDamned fishes Deimos out of Hell, some giants start emerging from the rift created as well. The former's reaction implies enough familiarity with the latter's antics, that of course he'd piss someone off so much they'd follow him out of hell just to kick his ass.
2BDamned: Goddamn it, Deimos.
It's even funnier when you consider the posters, two of which have an annoyed 2BDamned warning Deimos against this, which also reveals that Deimos wouldn't have needed to go through all the trouble he experienced in the previous episodes if he just stopped moving!
LISTEN HERE
Things that are going to be required of you;
- You gotta stop moving so much
- Dude, I mean it, relax
- Okay look, the further in you go the weirder it's going to be when you return
The Soldat stationed at the cliffside for the raid has a set of binoculars. Because his vision is monocular, however, he's taped one of the lenses shut.
When 2BDamned hacks the Soldat's mission panel, it's changed from a neutral set of bullet points telling him to fire a stun rocket through the window, to a far more casual message.
We need you to frag the door. It'll totally work :D
When he falls for this and kills most of his team thanks to both the +SPICY ROCKET+ and an explosive 2BDamned placed on the other side, he misses one last message left on the panel as he tries to see what happened.
Sanford and Deimos are watching the entire thing, and after witnessing it all, Deimos only drops this deadpan comment: "Damn, that's crazy."
In ROMP.FLA when Deimos and Sanford are continued to be followed by the strange unarmed mooks, a clearly confused Deimos glances at his friend and holds his arm out as if asking what they should do about the situation. Sanford's immediate response is to start shooting, which startles Deimos into joining him.
One of the mustached mooks gets one of the funniest deaths in the series when Sanford throws his revolver at the guy hard enough to lodge it in his head, and while trying to pull it out, the mook manages to accidentally shoot himself, blowing out another chunk of his head. He still manages to point at Sanford and Deimos one last time before he dies.
Counting Sanford's shots leading to this moment reveals that the revolver somehow manifested a 7th bullet just to allow this to happen.
ROMP.FLA is in general this, even when it gets unnerving; as creepy as the mooks' wide grins are, they also look too exaggerated to be taken entirely seriously. This comes along with the line "BETRAYAL UPGRADE IMMINENT", the mooks carrying signs saying "YOU ARE BETRAYED" and their strangely bemused expressions prior to the "betrayal upgrade". It's just plain absurd, even by Madness Combat standards, and Sanford and Deimos' utter confusion feels more than justified.
To announce a Makeship campaign for a plush of Tricky, Krinkels and Tricky's voice actor Wallium put together an infomercial-styled video ad put together by the clown.
◊ goes into a blind panic at what's about to happen to the Auditor.
