From right to left:Edouard, Death Toy, Tempo
WarpZone Project is a French Web Original made by the same team as Noob, including Fabien Fournier as director and writer.
The series basically combines the Direct Line to the Author with Fiction as Cover-Up runs with the result: Speculative Fiction in all its forms is actually true history and Everyone Is a Super. However, to keep the latter under control, a Masquerade is enforced so everyone thinks super powers exist only in fiction. The story follows a young man named Téo on whom the system meant to hide the world's "fictional" aspects has stopped working. That lets him see what the world is really like. He also discovers that people in his situation are the few super-heroes and super-villains that were able to develop their powers.
Tropes featured in this series include:
- Age Insecurity: Eve Bones is immortal, but looks the late-twenties-to-early-thirties of the actress playing her. When she chooses the destination of a time travel and takes the cast to the 19th century (that she needs to remember to be able to do so), the protagonist, who doesn't know her that well, wonders about her age. Her only answer is to advise him to not ask a lady her age.
- Alien Sky: When the Weirdness Censor is turned off, one can enjoy the sight of a half-destroyed Death Star in the middle of the day.
- And I Must Scream: Eve Bones realizes that since she's immortal, she will end up eaten again and again until the end of time with the Zombie Apocalypse if she doesn't do anything.
- Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Eve Bones. Justified as she's been in jail for 100 years (and apparently learned nothing of the progress huamanity made) combined with the fact that she is Really 700 Years Old.
- Bus Full of Innocents: Discussed. At some point while being held prisoner by Tempo who's giving exposition about the WarpZone Project to Téo, Death Toy asks if he can leave because he's apparently late to take a schoolbus hostage.
- Call to Adventure: Heavily referrend to by the narrator in Episode 2.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Téo loses his ability to speak whenever he is around Léa
- Card-Carrying Villain: All super-villains are this to an extent by the mere fact they engaged themselves as villains, but Deathtoy stands out as one who seems particularly proud to be so.
- Combo Platter Powers: People have only one "natural" powerset each, but can apparently somehow acquire other powers. The only known requirements for getting a new power is having access to the person with the power one wants and the person in question remaining alive, so Eve Bones is probably far from being a rare case.
- Come with Me If You Want to Live: Said word for word by a time-travelling Téo to Eve Bones.
- Eve Bones: Well, technically I am immortal, so...
- Comic Books Are Real: So is every novel, tv series and video game ever.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Edouard.
- Contemplate Our Navels: The narrator via a
Cliché Storm so obvious it has to be deliberate. - Cool and Unusual Punishment: Tom inflicts this to Mozart Sinclar by trapping him in the Video Game/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|1989}} NES video game. When eventually freed, he can't bear turtles anymore.
- Cool Shades: A ridiculous amount of characters wear sunglasses, even when there is no point to it.
- Correlation/Causation Gag: Played for Drama. Eve Bones causes an accident right next to Téo right when he's trying to see if his power will show up if he concentrates hard enough. He fears to be the cause of the accident until someone else sets him straight.
- Cute, but Cacophonic: Léa. She is quite attractive in her own right, but she sings incredibly bad, to the point that her singing teacher collapses after her lesson. Needless to say, this is quick to bring Mozart Sinclar's wrath...
- The Dreaded: Eve Bones. She has caused more deaths than anyone in the whole world. The kick? It's implied she doesn't do it on purpose.
- Enemy Mine: That trope meeting Time Travel can basically sum up the plot of Episode 6. The Super Heroes and Super Villains seem to have litterally started their fight the second the problem was solved.
- Everyone Is a Super: The "everyone on earth is a super" variation gets deconstructed and the Warp Zone Project was created to keep the number of people who know they have super powers low.
- Fiction as Cover-Up: Or a what happens when all fiction is a cover-up.
- Funny Background Event: A person indicated as Léa's singing teacher collapsing in the background after she's done with her lesson.
- Good Is Boring: Death Toy's main (if not only) argument to get Téo to choose him as a mentor rather than Tempo is his claim that Tempo is boring.
- Groin Attack: 2012!Eve Bones to Charles Darwin.
- Harmful Healing: Eve carries a cure for death around with her.Zombies aren't technically dead, right?
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Léa.
- In Spite of a Nail: The world seems pretty much unaltered by Charles Darwin's children being erased from history to keep a single descendant from destroying Ether city.
- Knight Templar: Mozart Sinclar loves music and is trying to end the existance of bad music. By attacking and apparently killing anyone whose music he consider unbearable.
- Tom: "Why attack people like her then? Just go for the Star Ac'"(think American Idol in terms of genre)Mozart Sinclar: "I already did that! Why do you think they cancelled the show?"
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Stated to be the true nature of earth. Episode 2's final shot showing a half-destroyed Death Star in the sky while Téo just got visited by supers give a good idea of how many different fictions are overlapping.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: One of the worse cases ever occurs when Edouard's designated mentor gets killed within minutes of announcing that he's his mentor and before getting to teach him anything.
- Missed the Call: Since Edouard was spying on super-villains when he got found by his intended mentor, said mentor ends up killed by the villains, resulting in him not getting any explanation on his situation.
- My Future Self and Me: Due to her long life and getting plenty of Time Travel opportunities, Eve Bones has gotten so used to that happening that her 19th century self starts chatting to her 2012 self as if she's an old friend.
- Mythology Gag:
- Characters capable of getting inside video games spent a little time inside Horizon 2.0. It turns out that Noobs that can't heal are known as "Sparadrap" in terms of In-Universe MMORPG speak. Bonus points in that it's Téo who gets called this. In Noob, Matthieu Zecchini's character is the game's best healer and the original Sparadrap's younger brother.
- Everyone also ended up in the same garb as their Noob characters.
- Nuke 'em: This is how the army decides to deal with the Zombie Apocalypse in Ether City.
- Personality Powers: Deathtoy, being a Psychopathic Manchild, possesses the ability to turn toys into lethal weapons.
- Mozart Sinclar, a fan of classic music, possess the ability to control sound.
- Tom, a major geek, has the ability to control pixels.
- Power Incontinence: Edouard. Unfortunately, the power in question is Super-Strength.
- Pragmatic Villainy: As evil as they are, the villains are willing to collaborate with heroes whenever it's required for everyone's survival.
- Also Eve Bones is ready to everything to get her hands on Téo's power. That includes protecting him and even resurrecting him as long as she still needs it.
- Production Throwback: The Noob comics and DVDs can be briefly seen in Téo's appartment.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Death Toy in his first appearances, though it seems to have been toned down later. When his life is in danger, he actually acts sane.
- Really 700 Years Old: Eve Bones. Immortality is stated to be her primary power.
- Second Episode Morning: The first episode depicts Téo and Tom obviously remembering the battle between Tempo and Death Toy that just happened in front of them as part of the comic. The second episode shows Téo dreaming of the battle and waking up, which later turns out to be the sign that the Weirdness Censor has stopped working on him.
- Super-Strength: This is eventually revealed to be Edouard's power. Too bad he can't control it...
- Tagalong Chronicler: Each super-hero and super-villain is supposed to have one in the form of an author, but only Death Toy's has been shown due to having powers of her own.
- Time Master: Tempo, though he can only accelerate and slow time, not travel through it. He can do so when his power is boosted though.
- Trapped In Video Game Land: A side effect of Ophélie's technopath powers and the main one of Tom's.
- Too Dumb to Live: While being one of the few survivors in a town overrun with zombies, Léa's first reflex when seeing armed soliders who are too far away to notice she's not dangerous is to get out of cover and wave at them. She gets shot down.
- Villain Takes an Interest: Eve Bones is interested in Téo's power and intends to steal it from him when she will get the opportunity.
- Weirdness Censor: Pretty much exploited for the Masquerade with the following logic "If you ever see something unusual, you'll think you're just rembering a scene from a movie or a comic book.".
- Yellowface: A European historical figure is played by Asian Carmen N'Guyen.
