Web Animation / Dr. Tran

A TRUE AMERICAN LEGEND... FROM AMERICA!

Tran: I'm not a doctor!

Narrator: YES, HE IS!

Dr. Tran is an animated web series by Lone Sausage Productions that follows an unfortunate 5-year-old boy whose life has been turned upside down by a disembodied "trailer narrator"-type voice. It was all started by the 2003 short Here comes Dr. Tran, in which the Narrator describes Tran as a secret superagent and the star of at least 30,000 Dr. Tran movies (and a doctor), while Tran tries (unsuccessfully) to drive the voice away. The short has quickly become popular through Memetic Mutation.

Other shorts in the series include:

• Roybertito's - A Spanish-language ad for a Mexican restaurant featuring special tie-ins to Dr. Tran products.
• Dr. Tran's Quiet Log Time - Tran enjoys a quiet evening by a campfire. Hilarity Ensues
• Summer Splash - Introducing Leland the Cough Drop and Fat Friend, who argue whether Tran is a superhero or not.
• Mr. Tran & The Toy Cack - Tran and Leland are driven by Leland's grandma to a toy store.
• 100% ICE - Grandpa lectures Tran, Fat Friend and Leland on how to advertise their products. Introduces Hotel Soap, to whom cocaine is like vitamins.
• Fruit Hat - Tran is sitting in a subway station. An old lady asks him to buy some chewing gum for her, and Hilarity Ensues.
• Dr. Tran Fanmail - Fourth-Wall Mail Slot series in the style of the original short.

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This series provides examples of:

• A Chat with Satan: The Trope Namer!
• Adults Are Useless: There are three adults in the series, and they're all senile old people.
• Angrish: Literally everything Dr. Tran says in the original video after the narrator says, "Come and get 'em!"'
• Arch-Enemy: The chicken is (rather humorously) portrayed as Tran's nemesis.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Leland. "Toy stoooore!"
• Badass Bookworm / Genius Bruiser: Dr. Tran has a PhD. in kicking your ass.
• Been There, Shaped History: The old lady in Fruit Hat regularly gets cookie recipes from James Van Der Beek, and when he gets uppity with her, she reminds him "who showed you the creek?"
• Berserk Button: Tran's is pushed in Here Comes Dr. Tran. Unfortunately for him, it just comes across as adorable.
• Big "NO!": Episode 7, where Dr. Tran is forced to go through with another fan letter after wounding Fat Friend with his trusty pneumatic nail gun.
• Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: As the original short wears on, Tran produces insults that are a cross between Blunt Metaphors Trauma and Flowery Insults;

  Dr. Tran: You... are so bad! Are there no windows in your house? You come from sad whale family very deep in the ocean, you are EVIL! Your family is a dog!

• Big "WHAT?!": Tran's response to the narrator's claim that he's off to eat "hickory smoked horse buttholes" is:

  Dr. Tran: Hickory WHAT?! Smoked WHAT?!

• Bilingual Bonus/Gratuitous Spanish: The Roybertito's ad is almost completely in Spanish.
• Black Comedy: Toy Cack
  Grandma: To be honest with you Tran I haven't taken my medication. I'm having difficulty seeing right now.
  Dr. Tran: Are we going to die?!
  Grandma: I'm not supposed to be driving. I've never even had a license. (Thump) And I just keep hitting little boys! What are the odds!
  Dr. Tran: Let me out!
  Leland: Watch out for that baby on crutches! (Thump)
  Grandma: How did we end up at the Children's Hospital?!
• Blatant Lies: After Grandma Norma runs over a little boy for the first time, she tells Leland it was a flock of geese.
• Bloody Hilarious: "Dr. Tran & The Toy Cack" in SPADES.
• Bold Inflation: The voice and accompanying text talks like this.
• Brick Joke: In Mr. Tran & The Toy Cack, when Leland's grandmother first offers to take Tran and Leland to the toy store, Tran (who presumably has never been to a toy store) remarks that now he can buy more soap, to which Leland's grandmother responds by saying that she doesn't think they have any soap. At the end of the episode, it turns out that Hotel Soap is the mascot for Toy Cack.
• Butt-Monkey: Tran.
• Call-Back
  Tran: Please leave me alone. I have to do... pool... chores.
  • When Tran gets "an irritated pants boner" while in the back of a station wagon:
    Grandma Norma: Another little boy?
• Catchphrase: "I'm not a doctor!"
  • For Hotel Soap: "Everything's F**KING WONDERFUL!!!"
• The Chew Toy: Tran
• Cluster F-Bomb: The Furious Little Cinnamon Bun, for no reason at all.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Leland on several occasions. Also, his grandma.
• Continuity Nod: Lots of 'em.
• Curse Cut Short: "I love to put carob right up my a- *hits little boy with car*
• Department of Redundancy Department: From the original, Tran, when his Berserk Button is finally pressed by the ever-persistent narrator: "You make me mad, and you make me angry!!"
• Drives Like Crazy: Leland's grandma.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: The old lady in Fruit Hat thinks Tran is an ugly little girl.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Yes, he is called Fat Friend.
  • His actual name is Barbara.
• From Bad to Worse: Grandma Norma's vehicular homicide gets taken up a notch near the end of Toy Cack. How, you ask?
  Grandma Norma: How did we wind up at the children's hospital?
• Girls Have Cooties: "Girls are grody!"
• Gratuitous English: "Dear Dr. Tran, Why I always have so an hard feeling in my pants at the morning?" from Fan Mail episode "Keith Cares"
• Groin Attack: Leland promises to smash your dick in the door of your fancy Sedan at Tits.
• Humiliation Conga: Any skit that involves Tran and a narrator can be viewed as this. A little Asian boy whose entire world is being manipulated by some unseen voice, the situation gradually becoming more and more hilariously insane at Tran's expense, until he's a knotted ball of frustration. The first Dr. Tran short and Nail Gun are prime examples of this.
• Hurricane of Euphemisms: Leland's grandma gives one in "Dr. Tran and the Toy Cack", and it goes on and on until Tran says, "SHUT UP! WHY DON'T YOU JUST SHUT UP RIGHT NOW?!"
• I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: The talking chicken defends his obsession with gum by saying it's an illness.
• Improvised Weapon: Dr. Tran has apparently killed his own mother with a broken lawn chair.
  But... I love mother!
  • And the trusty pneumatic nail gun hot glued to his left hand, which he fires every .5 seconds
• In a World…: Here Comes Dr. Tran
• Inherently Funny Words: Dickable.
• Interactive Narrator: Well, who d'ya think?
  • There are three of them. The main Narrator, the old man narrator from Dickable Afternoon, and the narrator for Roybertito's.
• Japanese Ranguage: In the original short: "I've never been to Amellica!!"
• Jerkass: The talking chicken and Grandpa, but especially the Narrator. He apparently loves screwing around with Tran's head, and his reality, for no reason. We don't even know why Tran is the one he screws around with. One way to look at it is that the Narrator really believes Tran is an action superstar, which is sort of backed up by the appearance of two alternate Trans, one in the 1940s, another in the 2040s. Of course, given his power, he could've just created those two Trans solely to mess with Tran once again. Two examples come to mind:
  • In one of the fan mail segments, Tran gets a letter from a little girl with AIDS asking Tran to make an appearance or to donate some money to her hospital. Tran thinks the girl sounds nice (even if doesn't know what AIDS are), while the Narrator basically tells her to go bitch to someone else. He then rubs it in by saying Tran is too busy at the "Venezuelan drug lord dance party", wearing sunglasses "black as the night [she] got cancer!"
    Tran: What is cancer? I thought you said AIDS.
    Narrator: Same thing.
  • In another one, Tran gets a letter from a guy named Keith who says that he and his wife understand that Tran is just a little boy who is being misidentified with someone else, all the while being accused of doing horrible things "for America". Tran actually asks to answer this letter, but the Narrator decides that Tran should read another one about a kid asking questions about boners, all the while Tran is pleading to talk to Keith.
• Merchandise-Driven: Parodied. In-universe, you can apparently buy anything with Dr. Tran on it. This gives Tran a hard time; denying being famous is a bit difficult when one is standing in a Dr. Tran Inflatable Pool.
  • The series also includes two Dr. Tran product commercials: Peanut Butter Square Hula Quest and Dickable Afternoons, plus an ad for a fictional restaurant that uses Tran's image in their products.
• Mind Screw: The Furious Little Cinnamon Bun. Really, a giant penis comes down from the sky and crushes the bun?
  • After crossing the border.
    • And ordering a Cerveza.
  • Also, the entire Roybertito's clip.
• Motor Mouth: Roybertito's narrator.
• Noodle Incident: Leland's grandma taking off her top and being killed by Greg Kinnear.
  • Perhaps it happened at Toy Cack. After all, it IS the store's motto.
• Offscreen Inertia: A probably unintentional example due to the series being abandoned. The last we ever see of Tran, he's uncontrollably firing a seemingly endless supply of nails from a nailgun stuck to his hand. Apparently, he lives like this now.
• Oh, Crap!: The look on the talking chicken's face when Tran finally sees him in Fruit Hat.
• Only Sane Man: Tran, barring somewhat of an obsession with soap.
• Overly Long Gag: "Where are you going to take us?"
  • To clue you in, the response is a Hurricane of Euphemisms that lasts for a full forty seconds.
• Plot Hole: In Here Comes Dr. Tran, Tran clearly states that he's never been to America. However, The Furious Little Cinnamon Bun would imply that he has, since Leland heard the cinnamon bun cross the border, and it's made clear from that that Leland lives in America. However, given the power of the narrator, he could have warped Tran to America some time during the course of the series.
  • Or Dr Tran went to America after Here Comes Dr. Tran, the first shot, where he met Leland and Fat Friend, before moving back to Vietnam by the time of Dr. Tran Fan Mail,.
• Precision F-Strike: Grandpa during Part 1 of the '100% ICE' sketch, causing Tran to blanch in shock.
  Grandpa: [Discussing Hotel Soap] And he's so fuckin' wonderful, he could be the only reason people buy your smokable ice, or Ice-Over-My-Hammy.
• Random Species Offspring: Leland is an antropomorphic cough drop while his grandma is a human.
• Reality Warper: The Narrator, it seems. Aside from, well, being a disembodied voice, his achievements include: Changing Tran's clothes, turning the scene into 3D, summoning a heavy rain during a sunny day and, though this is probably stretching the trope, contacting Tran's past and future selves.
• Real Trailer Fake 30,000 Movies
  • Well, for the most part. There actually is a "Dr. Tran 30,000 DVD Box Set," but it doesn't actually contain 30,000 movies.
• Retraux: The Dickable Afternoons commercial, zipping in and out of sepia and black and white and full color.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Leland the Cough Drop.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Grandma Norma in ''Toy Cack'.
  Grandma Norma: BAIL OUT!
  Tran: No, wait — she left!
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: The Old Man in the 100% Ice shorts.
• Sex Sells: One of the bits of advertising advice that Grampa gives to Fat Friend.
  • The narrator constantly espouses Tran's sexual prowess.
  • One of the posters has topless female spies on it.
  • Leland takes Grampa's advice, just naming his roadside stand business "Tits".
• Shout-Out: Right before having the seventh Dr. Tran Fan Mail episode inflicted on him, Tran is happily building a birdhouse and whistling the theme to He-Man.
• Skewed Priorities: When Grandma Norma thinks she ran over a flock of geese, she immediately decides she has to write a letter to ask Jesus for forgiveness. She does NOT stop driving, instead having 5-year-old Tran hold the wheel while she writes.
• Stylistic Suck: The Peanut Butter Hula Quest and Dickable Afternoon commercials.
• Synthetic Voice Actor: "I love Dr. Tran. I am an Asian male."
• Tears of Blood: One of the guys in the Roybertito's ad.
• Visual Pun: Look at that fat cock!
  Sorry Doctor, that was fucked up. It was a rooster. Come on.
• Vocal Dissonance: Tran does not sound remotely like a five-year-old.
  • Played for Laughs in the Roybertito's Ad, where a rather unenthusiastic woman is dubbed over by an incredibly overly-enthusiastic male.
  These quesadillas are DAY-LEESH!
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: It's ambiguous where Tran actually lives.
• Would Hurt a Child: No matter what she does, Grandma Norma just can't stop hitting little boys.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: The "Keith Cares" Fanmail episode.
• Your Mom: The narrator either has Tran kill his mom, or kill your mom, but not before giving her the best orgasm ever.
• You Say Tomato: Fat Friend says "hev" for have, "melk" for milk, and "pellow" for pillow.

  • From the "Time Machine" Fanmail episode: "hay Dr. Tran, i was wondering do you HEV i time machine or i laser cannon and how much ice did you sell?"

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