Follow TV Tropes

Following

WMG / Black Mirror: Shut Up and Dance

Go To

Shut Up and Dance is a modern Alternate Universe of Hotline Miami.
Specifically, an alternate universe in which 50 Blessings' assassination attempt failed, and the group was subsequently disbanded by force, and life was normal up until present day... and no more nukes dropped by the US or Russia to boot. Any surviving members of 50 Blessings decided to flee America to the UK to lay low for several years in hopes that they could rebuild and, perhaps, finish what they started. And thus, in the present, they decided to pose as a malware remover software... thing. And sure enough, it's business as usual once again.

The reason for this theory is due to the fact that the events of the episode mirror many elements of Hotline Miami. The hackers from the software downloaded are sadistic and malicious, and can interfere and sabotage the lives of their unwitting "messengers" on a whim, willing to go to any means necessary to get their pawns to follow orders - in this instance, Kenny and the others - much like 50 Blessings did with the likes of Jacket and Biker; they made it very clear that they did not take disobedience lightly and would threaten them to get them to listen - and sometimes, bad things actually happened, as Jacket eventually attests to when his girlfriend gets killed by Richter on 50 Blessings' orders. The hackers are also linked with a form of communication, which primarily becomes Kenny's phone, just like how Jacket got his orders from his own phone before his levels start, and the hackers set Kenny (and presumably others before and after him) missions that end up causing chaos such as the bank robbery, akin to how 50 Blessings managed to fool their good soldiers into fighting for America and to destroy the coalition with Russia, and of course, bloody carnage ends up ensuing as a result.

Of course, some who worked under the hackers and 50 Blessings didn't really wish to - the likes of Kenny and Hector for the former and Richter for the latter. To say nothing of both villainous sides being able to screw their "subordinates" over by the end; with the secrets of the hackers' pawns, Kenny included, revealed at the end when they have completed their assigned tasks and 50 Blessings' representatives telling Biker that their plan has already succeeded courtesy of Jacket and that it would only take 5 years for their plan to fall into fruition... even though the latter ended up with 50 Blessings and America getting more than what they bargained for in canon as they get nuked.

And especially with the, ah, "revelation" in Shut Up And Dance, Kenny even has parallels with Jacket as a person - they may be seen in a sympathetic light at times due to their personal struggles, but you have to remember that they've done bad things - what with Jacket slaughtering nearly 300 people over his span and the reason why Kenny follows the hackers' orders in the first place.

As a final insult, the hackers attend the trial and give a "Praise God, Our Justice is Done" speech at the end.
Just to hammer in how screwed Kenny is, they attend the trial wearing strange masks but are ignored because of the severity of Kenny's crimes. At the guilty verdict, they all begin chanting and praising in verses, practically announcing to the underworld that they did most of this and are going to get away with it, encouraging other trolls to go after bad people and blackmail them into doing unforgivably evil things. And the worst part is that the government will covertly endorse this behavior, because finding sexual deviants and using them as disposable, deniable soldiers kills two birds with one stone.

Top