Bodybuilders Go is a series of shorts by Dorkly parodying the Pokémon franchise while also telling an original story.
The story focuses on an 11-year-old boy named Byron Oakington III, who lives in London during the 1800s. With his loyal butler Aloysius, he travels around with surgical abominations called "Homunculi" and battles them against the ones created by others. A compilation of the current four episodes can be found here.
This series contains examples of:
- Bedlam House: St. H.H. Holms Hospital, where the Homunculi are 'healed', doubles as a mental prison. We don't see the condition of the human patients, but given that the surgeon uses maggots and leeches it can't be good.
- Body Horror: The creations that bodybuilders battle qualify, being combinations of body parts from different creatures.
- Crapsack World: This takes place in Victorian London, and as such England is economically stratified and heavily polluted.
- Hedge Maze: There is one behind Byron's mansion.
- It Will Never Catch On: Professor Nox states that an electrified rat has no appeal to children and isn't marketable at all. This is an obvious reference to Pikachu.
- Our Homunculi Are Different: The ones in this story are created by wealthy children and made to fight against each other for sport and entertainment.
- Reduced to Ratburgers: The second episode shows three poor children drinking water from a polluted and corpse-filled river, and then eating an opossum's head.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: The nurse in the healing center has one after seeing the injured Homunculus.
