Crash Zoom is an animated web show created by Thomas "Tomska" Ridgewell (of asdfmovie fame) in partnership with Turbo Punch Productions and animated by Ben "Wonchop" Smallman. It currently spans two season with six episodes covering the first series.
Crash Zoom follows amateur animator Lucy, her Mad Artist best friend Ben, an amateur filmmaker, and Ben's Cute and Psycho little half-sister Kate on their strange, episodic adventures.
This series provides examples of:
- Ambiguous Gender: Lucy's ex, whose cartoon avatar is androgynous and is never referred to by any pronouns.
- Ambiguously Gay: Lucy has an ex whose gender is undefinable, but aside from him/her never shows any romantic or sexual interest to anyone else in the show.
- And Show It to You: Chaos rips out her heart and shoves it in her presumably ex's face.
- Author Avatar: In-Universe, the cartoon Lucy animates in "Movie Massacre" is about a super hero named Chaos, who badassed-ly saves the day by throwing her exploding ex at the Spaze-lazer-ponies, obviously meant to be Lucy venting some frustration at a past relationship.
- Asshole Victim: Antagonistic characters don't last long in this series. The pervert cops who get vaporized in "Movie Massacre" though they did returned in "Shell Shock" alive and well, the many zombie criminals in "Grave Mistake" (though they arguably pull a Heel–Face Turn), the extortionist flight attendant who gets the Turbine Blender treatment in "Sky Scam", etc.
- Becoming the Costume: In "Orcs & Dorks", which takes place during a mass LARP meet, Kate finds a Spell Book, and one of the first things she does is transform the players into the beings they're dressed as with real abilities. For example, Lucy is able to conjure a lightning bolt for real. This is reverted after the spell book is destroyed.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In "Grave Mistake", Ben and Kate come across armed robbery (a zombie stealing from another zombie), arm robbery (a zombie who steals arms), and Robb Armory, a zombie who stabs people.
- Brick Joke: Near the start of the "Orcs and Dorks", Lucy keeps Ben out of a LARP session with covering his eyes with a sheet to make him think it's nighttime and fall asleep. At the end of the episode when Kate goes on a rampage with a giant bird, Ben suggests throwing a sheet over it.
- British Brevity: Given its nature of origin, Series 1 is only six episodes long with all barely reaching the 5-minute mark.
- Character Overlap: Tom from Eddsworld, which TomSka was showrunner for at the time, appears in "Orks & Dorks" as the giant monster Kate summons, and even turns back to normal (albeit crushed under a rock) after Lucy destroys the book. Another character from Eddsworld, Mark, also has a cameo in the comics.
- Chekhov's Gag: "Orks & Dorks" opens with Lucy facing off against a LARPer who says his armor is anti-[whatever Lucy's trying to attack him with], who accidentally suffocates himself after saying his helmet is air proof. After Kate sends everything into chaos, Lucy defends herself against the giant monster by saying that her armor is proofed against whatever it tries attacking her with, and because Kate made everything magic, it actually works.
- Circling Birdies: In "Out of Time", Lucy gets bonked by the minute hand and sees cat shaped bowls to spin around her, along with a Non-Sequitur.
- Curse Cut Short:
- In Movie Massacre:Lucy: "Did you just say 'hugging' instead of fu- AHH!"
- And again in Cover Up when the Soldier throws a grenade into Ben's mountain of coats and it pops back out.The Soldier: "Aw shi"-BOOM
- In Movie Massacre:
- Downer Ending: Usually Played for Laughs.
- In "Sky Scam", after jumping out of the crashing plane in a parachute, Lucy and Ben's parachute deactivates from not getting sufficient funds and they fall into the ocean right before their plane crashes onto them, but at least Kate is with them now.
- In "Out Of Time", after Lucy prevents Kate and Ben from pulling the time adjustment lever, Ben pulls the other nearby lever, and they're all turned into babies, causing Lucy to cry and Ben to say "Uh oooh..."
- Faux Affably Evil: In "Sky Scam", Jodie the Flight Attendant pulls on a sympathetic behaviour only to extort Ben and Lucy into buying junk to fuel the plane they're flying on, and doesn't seem to care that said plane is crashing.
- Foreshadowing:
- Chaos throwing a grenade at the Spaze-lazer-ponies foreshadows how the gang defeats the alien invaders in the pilot episode.
- In the same episode, the old lady asking "Is this Earth?"; Lucy and the audience both initially assume it's just her being senile, but the ending reveals that she was actually the alien invaders' queen in disguise.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: A running gag in the series is using the word "hug" as a substitute for the F-word. Ben's Establishing Character Moment is telling Lucy that he wants to make a movie "right hugging now" (which Lucy starts lampshading before he forcibly drags her out of the room) and in "Sky Scam", Lucy angrily screams "MOTHERHUGGER!" in response to learning that she and Ben have only purchased enough fuel to keep the plane flying for two more seconds.
- Granny Classic: Movie Massacre features a sweet old lady that Lucy takes a liking to. Until she has to shoot her in the face. Subverted at the end, when it's revealed that she's actually an alien.Granny: I baked a pie.
- Grave Humor: Pretty much all the tombstones in "Grave Mistake".
- Gravity Is Only a Theory: A scientist who plummets to his death says this word-for-word in "Cover Up".
- Hate Sink: Jodie the Flight Attendant in "Sky Scam"; she's a passive-aggressive Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who keeps the plane that our heroes are on from crashing by extorting money from them (seemingly not caring if the plane crashes and kills countless people, and herself) and when they inevitably run out, her only reaction is cold indifference. As a result, it's hard to feel sorry for her when she falls out of the plane and gets shredded by the turbines.
- High-Pressure Blood: In "Movie Massacre", Ben lightly stabs someone, which causes a fountain of blood that sprays all over town.
- Mad Artist: Ben, oh so much. In his own words, he considers every job an "action movie," and so directs as such. In fact, it gets him and Lucy fired from many jobs in Firing Squad, as well as get Lucy nearly killed.
- "Oh no! Space-lazer-ponies! They're baaack!"
- In Firing Squad, the Dr. Tedderson has a room containing dinosaurs, lazer weapons and explosions, much to Ben's awe.
- Only Sane Man: Lucy always seems to be shoved in this role by her two eccentric (at best) colleagues.
- Retirony: The Russian soldier in "Cover Up", who was on his last day on the job and had 16 children, whose photos he shows off in his wallet.
- Shared Universe: Seems to be this with Eddsworld, as Ben, Lucy and Wonchop show up in a flashback in the episode "PowerEdd".
- Terrible Artist: The very first scene of the show is Lucy's mediocre animation followed by an exhausted/bored sigh when her animating program crashes.
- Totem Pole Trench: Subverted. Firing Squad had what appeared to be a toddler in a trench coat, but turned out to be an adult with a "horrible deformity". Lucy is clearly unnerved from finding out.
- Turbine Blender: When Lucy opens the plane door so her and Ben can escape, Jodie the flight attendant gets pulled out and subsequently shredded by the plane's turbine.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: The relationship between Ben and Lucy is somewhat strained by the former being an extremely eccentric moviemaker who regularly gets the group into trouble and the latter being the Only Sane Woman who constantly have to keep everything in line, but in the end, they still care deeply for each other, as they consider each other as the best friend they could ever have.
