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Congratulations. You’ve reached The Amelia Project. This phone call isn’t happening. If you’re not serious about this, hang up. Now. If you continue there’s no way back.
The Amelia Project is an audio drama produced by Imploding Fictions and written and directed by Philip Thorne and Øystein Ulsberg Brager. Each episode focuses on a character who reaches out to The Amelia Project — a secret agency tasked with faking clients' deaths — and their reasons for wanting to begin a new life. The tone of the show varies from darkly comedic to patently absurd. The one thing listeners can rely on: Someone will always offer up a nice cup of cocoa.
Tropes found in this work include:
- Affably Evil: Most of Amelia's clients are blatantly unethical people who nonetheless are pretty friendly and more than willing to have a friendly chat with The Interviewer about their situations.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Siiri is a super intelligent AI which eventually evolves into something which could potentially threaten all of humanity and is only stopped due to a failsafe installed by her creator.
- Ambiguously Gay: Tara and Lily, a pair of thieves who are extremely close and wish to retire and live together in luxury. It's unclear if they're Heterosexual Life-Partners or an Outlaw Couple.
- Arc Symbol: The Amelia Project uses The Phoenix as its symbol, its significance for death and rebirth tying into their death-faking business. The symbol appears in more places throughout the organization's history:
- The company's predecessor was the Brotherhood of the Phoenix, dating back thousands of years, for which the Interviewer and Kozlowski are long-time employees.
- Afer fleeing Berlin in the 1920s, the Interviewer and Kozlowski fled to Phoenix Island
in the Pacific Ocean, where they later met Amelia Earhart. - In the early 1900s, the Interviewer and Kozlowski used a London-based newspaper called The Daily Phoenix as a cover for the Brotherhood's death-faking business.
- In Day 7 of the "Twelve Deaths of Christmas" special, Joey and Salvatore plan a fake death involving a huge firework rocket. They named the fake company that delivers it "Phoenix Fireworks".
- Asshole Victim: Todd in Episode 28 is a serial killer deliberately modeled after Sweeney Todd. No one feels bad when Amelia tricks him into jumping to his death.
- Been There, Shaped History:
- The Amelia project has helped several historical figures disappear.
- The Interviewer claims to have helped hide the Kremlin during WWII. Whether or not he's telling the truth is left ambiguous since while he is aware of secret passages inside the building, he's wrong about where they lead.
- Bookends: The first episode of Season 4 ends with The Interviewer, Alvina and Amelia singing together after being reunited. The last episode ends with The Interviewer and Alvina singing the same song together before The Interviewer tells her his story.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Antony Welbey, a client from season 2 ends up returning in season 3 as a prisoner in Golovin who helps the interviewer plan Julio's fake death.
- The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Alvina's constant exasperation with the Interviewer's eccentricities are a big reason why she's the resident Butt-Monkey.
- Counter-Earth: Antithon, the cult Zale Indigo Ravenheart leads is built around the belief in the Counter Earth and Zale wants to escape his plan to go to the Counter Earth.
- Crossover: The podcast has made some crossover special episodes with other podcasts:
- The three-part "Forgive Amelia" is one with Forgive Me!. Set before season 1, it has the Interviewer, Alvina and Amelia hurry over to Father Ben's church to get absolution from him after a job goes wrong.
- The live show "Andy Spark" was a crossover with We Fix Space Junk, the first half of which took place in the present day at the Amelia Project office and the second half in space with the cast of We Fix Space Junk.
- The episode "HAMMER" was a crossover with the SCP Archives podcast where Alvina is interviewed by an SCP agent regarding a hammer left behind at the office by a client.
- The World Audio Drama Day special "Percy Part 2", a Sequel Episode about the client who knows he's a podcast character, has the Interviewer take him to many other podcasts produced by Fable & Folly Productions looking for one where he wants to live, like Victoriocity and Alba Salix, Royal Physician.
- "The Perils of Freelancing" is a crossover with Where the Stars Fell, in which the Interviewer and Alvina hire one of the main characters, Dr. Edison Tucker, to assist them in faking deaths.
- "Mark W Wants to Die" is a crossover with Greater Boston performed live at the London Podcast Festival. It consists of three parts:
- Greater Boston character Chuck Octagon tracks down the Amelia Project office and sits down with the Interviewer.
- The Interviewer has an appointment with the title character, namely actor Mark Wahlberg.
- The narrator of Greater Boston lets himself into the Amelia office and comes to the Interviewer and Kozlowski with a business proposition.
- "Somnium" has the Amelia team cross paths with the cast of Midnight Burger when their dimension-hopping diner appears in the middle of Piccadilly Circus, leading to them setting up a new life for the diner's new passenger.
- Cryptic Conversation: Every conversation with Kozlowski is this due to his constant philosophizing.
- Dead Person Impersonation: How Alvina met Amelia. Her rich boyfriend died and she wanted to help make sure the charity ball he was putting on went right, so she pretended to be him until she realized that she couldn't keep up with it.
- Deal with the Devil: Faith Griffith made one to save her father's life, promising to give up her soul in forty years. She turns to Amelia to escape the deal and seemingly succeeds by being canonized as a saint.
- Dream Episode: Season 2's "Cole" almost completely consists of a nightmare MI-5 agent Cole has because of the long hours he's put in investigating the Amelia Project.
- Ear Ache: President Julio cut off a young Pablo Perez Garcia's ear as an example to the members of his tribe.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Antony Welby is a kind Entomologist who just want to conduct his research in peace. He turns to Amelia when an experimental Cy-Bug goes missing and he has to go on the run from world governments. Unfortunately he ends up being captured by the Russians and forced to help President Julio fake his death. The last we see him, he's in a happy relationship and has a position within the new Panaraguan government that will allow him to continue his research.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The Amelia Project only does consensual disappearances and its members are reluctant to work with particularly heinous people like serial killers. The episode "Saga" also establishes that they have a policy against collateral damage and thus don't give its clients new identities where they will be directly responsible for hurting people or where they are likely to get killed.
- Feminist Fantasy: In Universe, Mai-Linh's book series The First Female Knight is this, to the point of inspiring a new genre called "femme fantasy."
- Fictional Country: Panaragua, a major focus of season 3, is a fictional South American country in the middle of a civil war.
- Fictionalized Death Account: Some of the past clients of the Amelia Project and the Brotherhood of the Phoenix include major historical figures who faked their deaths and then died differently during their new lives than how they died in real life, like Amelia Earhart, who faked her disappearance and then became in charge of the Brotherhood's operations, and Humphrey Bogart (who is said to still be alive in Season 1).
- Flashback Episode: A lot of episodes in the later seasons mostly take place in the past, showing the Interviewer and Kozlowski's past work in the death-faking business.
- Foreshadowing: When The Interviewer is in the Kremlin he tries to use a secret passage to navigate it faster, but ends up going to the wrong room. This is implied to be a symptom of his mind deteriorating due to him Secretly Dying.
- Freak Out: The only time we see the Interviewer truly panic is when he learns that the rest of the Amelia Project went missing on their way to Russia.
- Freudian Trio: The main three members of the Amelia Project are this.
- The Interviewer is the Id being hedonistic and childish, more interested in having a good time than doing his job.
- Alvina is the Superego being businesslike and serious minded, constantly exasperated at the various problems she has to deal with.
- Amelia is the Ego being temperamental and aggressive but not letting it get in the way of her job and being willing to put up with The Interviewer's eccentricities despite being occasionally exasperated with his actions.
- From Beyond the Fourth Wall: Inverted, the Interviewer reveals that he subtly inspired the writers to write Percy's episode, knowing that they would write themselves into a corner which would allow Percy to disappear.
- Groin Attack: When MI5 is investigating Amelia's office, they're ambushed by the CIA and Agent Cole gets one from CIA Agent Jackie.
- Historical Rap Sheet: The Amelia Project has apparently helped several famous people disappear, including Humphrey Bogart, D. B. Cooper and Harold Holt.
- Incomprehensible Entrance Exam: In the Alvina Archives episode "Villa Bianca", Alvina gets one last challenge from the team before she officially becomes part of the Project. It's chosen at random by pulling a Scrabble tile and becomes standing on one leg and singing "La Marseillaise". Afterwards, the Interviewer and Kozlowski say the other tiles had even weirder and more difficult challenges, like making a whole country disappear.
- Karma Houdini: President Julio ends up getting a new life courtesy of Amelia and Alvina in exchange for him helping to swap Pablo with Miguel.
- Interservice Rivalry: The MI5 and the CIA agents are constantly butting heads in their pursuit of the Amelia Project to the point where the CIA operatives accidentally allow Amelia and Alvina to escape the country. This is averted with their bosses who are pissed that their bickering has hindered the investigation.
- Living Lie Detector: Alexandra Demopoulos can see through any lie and hates how much people lie.
- Loophole Abuse: The Interviewer seemingly gets around Faith Griffith's Deal with the Devil by realizing that it says her soul will be claimed upon her "natural death" and threatening her with an unnatural death. Unfortunately, the contract rewrites itself to account for this and he has to try something else.
- Missed Him by That Much: In Episode 53 "Pretzel", Alvina, Cole and Haines as well as Jackie, Mia and Kozlowski all converge at the same Dover gas station/pretzel restaurant for various reasons, without any of them directly running into each other or recognizing each other until later, when Cole recognizes Alvina's voice from the tapes.
- Medium Awareness: Percy is fully aware that he's a fictional character in a podcast and that he's a Flat Character with no interesting traits. He goes to Amelia to escape from the writers.
- Not So Above It All: Alvina normally complains about The Interviewer's eccentricities but in the 2021 Christmas episode she paraphrases Love Actually to get Mr. Love (Actuary) to leave and has a wonderful time watching the movie with The Interviewer and Amelia (who hates the movie).
- Obfuscating Insanity: Oleg pretends to only be able to say да and нет (yes and no) and that he's forgotten everything he's learned while working for Mikhail in order to keep Mikhail from killing him.
- One-Word Vocabulary: Oleg, a henchman of Boris, can only say "yes" and "no" in Russian. Except it turns out he was faking and can talk normally.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the Season 2 finale, when The Interviewer is strong-armed into getting Chamomile Tea instead of his preferred Cocoa, Salvatore bursts into the room to see if he's ok.
- Overly Long Name: Presidente Julio Che Rodriguez Alvarez de la Fuente, Major General of the Panaraguan Freedom Army of 1972. He is always referred to by the full thing except for when he gives The Interviewer permission to call him Julio.
- Prequel: The Patreon-exclusive Alvina Archives episodes chronicle Alvina's time in the Amelia Project from her first day of employment until she was officially sworn in by the team.
- Recruitment by Rescue: The Amelia Project's services are expensive, but they offer prospective clients to do their fake deaths for free in exchange for lifetime employment with them. Alvina, Joey and Salvatore and Walter were all hired through this process.
- Similar Squad: The episode "Cleo" features a story from the days of the Brotherhood of the Phoenix, the older incarnation of the Amelia Project, as they fake the death of Cleopatra. The Brotherhood team we see has a very similar setup to the modern one, with an interviewer with a similar personality who has two Romans as assistants.
- Single Line of Descent: Amelia's lineage is only ever traced through the maternal line, consisting of her grandmother, Amelia Earhart, a.k.a. Martha Plum, and her Japanese mother who everyone has agreed not to speak of.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Tara & Lily only appear in one episode as clients of the Amelia Project (with a cameo in a later episode) but them stealing information from The Interviewer causes the events of the entire rest of the podcast.
- Shout-Out: The title of the show probably refers to Amelia Earhart, who vanished without a trace after flying over the ocean.
- Suicide as Comedy: Richard Reynolds almost jumps out the window of the Amelia office because his dice tell him to, and gets tied down to prevent this. At the end of the episode when he's untied, he immediately jumps out the window, causing the Interviewer to calmly tell Joey and Salvatore that there's a new body for the morgue outside.
- Time Master: Melissa Menken is a magician with the ability to time travel within about an hour, a skill she uses to always get the best results for herself in any given situation. However this causes issues for her as she can't help but make small changes even when it's not necessary and she wants to disappear after using her power to get rich off of a person's death which made it look like she murdered them to get rich.
- Trademark Favorite Food: The Interviewer loves Cocoa (specifically the kind from Les Deux Magots in Paris) and drinks it in almost every episode, Maltesers are a lesser example but he still eats them a lot. The members of The Amelia Project also have a tradition of celebrating a signed deal with a toast of Veuve Clicquot Champagne.
- Truth Serum: Alexandra Demopoulos is developing one in Golovin for Mikhail, she wants to use it to create a world where no one lies but Mikhail just wants it to help with interrogation.
- Variations on a Theme Song: The podcast likes to use variations of the opening theme fitting with the setting, story and/or time period of the episode, like a death metal version when the client is a morbid musician and an Egyptian style one in "Cleo", which contains a long flashback set in Ancient Egypt. "Andy Sparks", the crossover episode with We Fix Space Junk, uses the Amelia theme song but with a synth sound like Space Junk's theme song.
- Wham Episode: "Cleo" reveals that an organization known as "the Brotherhood of the Phoenix", an obvious precursor to the Amelia Project, faked the death of Cleopatra, showing that the organization's roots run much deeper than previously known.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Mikhail has a tendency to kill people after they stop being useful to him.
Good choice. A new life awaits. You’ll hear back from us within the hour. If you don’t hear back, please consider the whole thing a hoax. Leave your message after the beep.
