Web Animation / Barry Tales

Series Title Card

Barry Tales is an animated web series which premiered in 2013 and is created and produced by Lionel Richardson (known as Kartoon Management) on YouTube. The show follows the life of the titular character Barry Ponds as he goes through his daily life as a college student at Bearhouse College. It can be viewed here.

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• The Alcoholic: There is one student hoping to pledge as a Beta Eta Alpha Rho frat brother that has a serious drinking problem. How bad is it? When the fraternity cuts off his access to alcoholic beverages, he tries to drink rubbing alcohol as an alternative.^note  Interestingly, that bit is Truth in Television
• Art Evolution: The animation becomes smoother in later episodes.
• Cat Fight: Discussed Trope. Claude, knowing his compatriot Specs is seeing two girls (namely Autumn and Bearnisha) at once, asks him to invite both of the girls to their post-midterm frat party specifically for the possibility of ripped clothing and exposed skin if the girls duke it out.
• Character Title: It's named "Barry Tales" after the main character, Barry Ponds.
• A Day in the Limelight: Grizzly gets his own episode in Episode 9.
  Grizzly: Uh-oh! Grizzly Episode!
• Deadpan Snarker: Just about everyone, but Pandora and Dean Bearhug take the cake.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Apparently, everyone can hear Barry's internal monologues.
  Earl: "Hey migga, could you stop narrating? Everybody can hear you."
  • Autumn, in episode 23, slips up and calls Barry "baby." For context, Autumn was dating Grizzly (Barry's best friend), but started to relapse into her old self after developing a secret inner desire to sleep with Barry, Pandora's boyfriend. Keep in mind that Pandora is Autumn's best friend. When Barry is hospitalized, all three of his aforementioned friends check on him, and Autumn can barely keep it together during the conversation, eventually resulting in the above slip-up.
• Dirty Old Man: When Pandora brings up that everyone flirts with Autumn, the show cuts to a scene where an old man makes clear his intentions to sleep with Autumn...only to drop dead afterwards.
  • Mr. Ruxpin. See Teacher/Student Romance down below.
  • Claude's father, on top of being quite sexist.
• Dirty Old Woman: Autumn's grandma and it seems that she wasn't the only one in her family either, as her Grandma was probably the same way.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Barry does this in episode 30, after Pandora decided to transfer to a different college and end their relationship. As it turns out, it was actually apple juice.
• Dude, Not Funny!: At a stand-up comedy gig, Fozzie Bear tells some knock-knock jokes that get the entire crowd laughing. The crowd instantly turns on him when he tries setting up a knock-knock joke with Paul Walker as the subject, less than a month after his death.
  • When one of the Beta Eta Alpha Rho rushees gets his head shaved, the other rushees poke fun at him. When one of the others says that he looks like "Stage 4 of Hodgkin's Lymphoma," everyone is quick to chew out the offender for it.
• Everybody Knew Already: Apparently, Barry thought that only Autumn knew of his breakup with Pandora. Bearagamo tells him that the whole school knows when he sees Barry depressed at a bar and drinking apple juice. However, everyone else only found out because Lea Official managed to catch wind of this.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Barry tells Autumn that his dad got him some new jeans because he was wearing the same ones for a year, and both of them then look at the viewer. See Limited Wardrobe.
  • In Episode 10, Barry alluded to previous episodes where he's had homework.
• Funny Animals: All the characters are anthropomorphic animals of one species or another, but mostly bears.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: More like "Bad Cop/Worse Cop," when Specs is interrogated by two police officers concerning what had happened to Autumn during a frat party. They even prevent him from pressing charges, when it turns out Specs did nothing wrong, by making it clear they'll instead kill him and make the death look justified.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: Invoked Trope. While Autumn is in the hospital, Autumn accuses Pandora of having a thing for Barry, which Pandora vehemently denies. So Autumn decides that she's going to thank him for checking on her.
  Autumn: "Okay, I'll thank him personally. With my mouth."
  Pandora: (angrily rising from her chair) "What, bitch?"
  Autumn: "Uh-huh. Just like I thought, he's your boo."
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Used in abundance (usually with a reference to Care Bears as a euphemism for homosexuality), but especially during the Description Cut to Buttrape Bear.
  Buttrape Bear: "I'll rape the shit outta ya.... No Care Bear, tho."
• Hurricane of Puns: This web series is full of them, and most of them are bear-related.
  • The main setting is a college campus aptly named Bearhouse College, a play on the real-life Morehouse College.
• Limited Wardrobe: All of the characters wear the same clothes throughout the series. It was jokingly demonstrated when Barry gets ready to wear a new outfit, only to have it revert to his original outfit off screen.
  • This was later averted in Episode 10 where the main cast attends a concert. Episodes since then have shown them in different outfits.
• Medium Awareness: The characters in Barry Tales casually mention certain events that shouldn't exist in-universe.
  • In episode 21, Barry tells Grizzly that he has the "Pussy-whipped" badge. Grizzly denies it until an "achievement-unlocked" banner appears on screen.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: All of the celebrities in the show are voiced by soundalikes and are flanderized.
• Noodle Incident: According to Episode 14, Barry's mother has been in prison and her appeal is still pending, however, we don't know as to what led to her being there...until episode 33.
  • It was implied by a couple of episodes that Autumn's parents have died but we don't know how...until episode 24.
• No, You Hang Up First: Autumn and Grizzly do this in episode 21.
• N-Word Privileges: So far, mostly brown bears can say "migga.", though Pandora gets a pass because she's of mixed ancestry.
• Previously on…: Usually courtesy of Pops or Lionel himself. If there is a considerable gap in between two episodes, Pops will usually lampshade this by ending with "'cause we've been gone for a while." For each scene shown in the following montage, Pops gives a short, humorous recap, referring to the character the scene focused on as "This migga" or whatever word best describes them.
  Pops: "You caught up, let's go!"
• Proportional Aging: In one episode, a high-out-of-his-mind Paul tells Barry about his attraction to a teacher. Barry, not believing what he's hearing, tells Paul that the teacher in question is 20 years old. While that may not seem to you that the teacher is that much older than a college student, that's only because you are thinking in human years. Bears don't live quite as long as humans; a typical bear year is 2 human years. In human years, a bear can live to be in their 30's (especially in captivity), an equivalent to a human being in their 60's.
• Punny Name / A Dog Named "Dog": Besides names like Paul and Autumn (to name a few), most of the first names of characters have "bear" or have bear references in them. Two examples would be Pandora (a panda, who happens to share the name of a character from Greek mythology) and Bearnisha (a ghetto brown bear). For the most part, if the character's first name is not some sort of bear reference, the last name is. An example would be Paul, a polar bear, whose last name is Snow.
• Ripped from the Headlines: In episode 16, a polar bear cop kills an unarmed grizzly bear, inciting a city-wide movement. ^note  This is supposed to represent the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" movements in the United States.
• Running Gag: A few.
  • Pops will often imposes limits on what Barry can do by reminding him that "You ain't got no job!", usually to Barry's frustration.
  • Bearquan can literally laugh himself to death, often preceded by him saying "I'm so dead!" This usually ends in a Smash Cut to his funeral. The basketball coach tells Barry that he actually does this at some point every time they practice.
  • Loud being able to fly around due to his stoner habits.
  • Barry being referred to as BP, his initials, much to his annoyance. This usually results in an explanation that a lot of bears would mistake his initials for something homosexual-related or otherwise off-color, complete with at least one example.
  • Barry being referred to as a "honey-glazed ass migga."
  • There is a polar bear professor that occasionally explains something pertaining to how brown bears operate in this universe. Each time he does, he says something that would not sit well with a brown bear. This results in Bearagamo preparing to beat him up, with the professor giving a Big "NO!", before the scene cuts to something else.
  • Sunshine being "unprofessional as fuck."
• Sexy Discretion Shot: In Episode 30, a would-be sex scene involving Grizzly and Autumn was replaced with the back wall of Grizzly's jail cell and the music used during Paul and Sister Bear's sex tape playing in the background. Lionel informs his viewers that this is because of YouTube's new policy on content, meaning that any instances from now on will be treated in a similar manner.
• Shameless Self-Promoter: Earl, the janitor turned basketball coach, hopelessly tries on numerous occasions to plug a mixtape he made. No one wants it, and it turns out that it is not even any good. Earl eventually forces Barry to take a copy of his mixtape, but only after Earl casually brings up that Barry could instead be staying on the bench during basketball games.
  • In episode 30, Barry's cousin tries to sell Barry his mixtape while visiting Barry at the hospital. Barry cuts him off from doing so.
• Situational Sexuality: As expected, the prison environment is this for some of the prisoners. Specifically, Buttrape Bear claims this to be the case for him during one of his appearances, and Pops is pretty much certain that Mama is in this situation. Pops thought it was wise to share this insight with Barry before he starts going off on a tangent about their sex life.
• Slice of Life: The show follows the main events of Barry's life.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Starting with Episode 29, all instances of the F-word are bleeped out. This was apparently because of YouTube's new policy concerning content.
  • This appears to have been subverted by Episode 31.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Well, not so much romance, but in Episode 4 Barry calls Grizzly while he's occupied with a professor in a supply closet.
  Grizzly: (whispering to his teacher) "Now you're gonna be a good professor and change that grade, right?"
  • On the other hand...
    • Pandora received unwanted sexual advances from Mr. Ruxpin, her history teacher, during the freshman year. In retaliation for Pandora rejecting his advances, he lowered her final exam score a whooping 24 points, which would have put her Honor Society status in jeopardy. When Pandora confronted him about it, he ultimately gave her one last chance to sleep with him, so that he will record her actual grade. Mr. Ruxpin records her real grade when Pandora then revealed that she had been recording their current conversation on her phone. She eventually tells Barry, by this point her boyfriend, during the sophomore year. Speaking of which...
    • Barry started receiving unwanted sexual advances from Ms. Fields, one of his professors, during the sophomore year after she found out he was on the basketball team. She decided to set up a "meeting" to "get the D up" when Dean Bearhug approached the two out of suspicion that Barry was attempting to sleep with Ms. Fields. When the dean left, Ms. Fields threatened to actually give Barry a D if he did not show up. When Barry avoided her, she waited for him in the showers after the basketball team's next game. She slipped on a bar of soap before anything happened, knocking herself out. So far, there's no word on whether or not the situation was handled, and Ms. Fields has not shown up since. Also, Barry never told Pandora about Ms. Fields, even though Pandora told him about Mr. Ruxpin, so it also could've been a matter of time before this came back to bite Barry...if they were still together.
• Third Time's The Charm: After Grizzly pulls his gun on Barry twice, the third time this happens, Barry responds with a gun of his own, revealing he got it after the second time this happened.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Early into Episode 1, the show stops for a moment to introduce a pair of female twins that were on the bus to Bearhouse College as the Maple Twins as soon as they walk off the bus. This is the extent of their importance in the show, and they have only been in cameos since then. This was averted in episode 34, as the Maple Twins "Toonflix and Chill" with Barry.
  • Also, Ms. Fields. Considering that she has been attempting to force Barry to sleep with her by threatening to give him a D in class, before slipping on a bar of soap that knocked her unconscious, it's quite odd that she has not made later appearances.
• You Did the Right Thing: In Episode 18, Barry told Grizzly that "Whatever happened with you, you didn't go through with it, meaning you're a good dude." Barry was drunk at the time, so he didn't know, and wasn't comprehending, that Grizzly was talking about backing out on killing the cop that wrongfully killed Grizzly's cousin.