How to Kill a Mockingbird
is a 12 minute-long Flash movie made by Anthony Scodary and Nico Benitez. It centers on a book report of To Kill a Mockingbird made by a little boy who didn't read past the first chapter, and instead decides to make up his own narrative about Scout Finch being a robot who clashes with pirate captain Boo Radley, an army of Ninjas, and a mechanical monster known as the Mockingbird over a buried treasure.
This Flash movie provides examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo: The guns on Boo Radley's laser sword shoot out other swords.
- Achilles' Heel: The only way to kill a Mockingbird is by hitting it with the moon.
- All-Powerful Bystander: Zeus watches the nine year battle between the pirates and the ninjas and laughed, 'cuz he's immortal.
- Alternate Character Interpretation: In-Universe. The boy interprets Boo Radley as a pirate, Scout as a robot guy in disguise, and Calpurnia as a Magical Negro slave.
- Artistic License – History: The Line of Time gives us this order of events: Ancient China (where the ninjas lived) the invention of fire, days of yore, Boo Radley being born (from an egg), Jesus, the French Revolution, dinosaurs, the Great Depression, the Age of Pyramids, recent times. That's right: dinosaurs are more recent than the French Revolution.
- Artistic License – Linguistics: The book How to Kill a Mockingbird is written in "African".
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Everybody, for the (final) ultimate climactic battle
- Bears Are Bad News: Bears that are on fire.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The Mockingbird isn't a small little bird that imitate the sounds of other animals; it's a massive, flying, mechanical monstrosity from outer space that can only be killed by getting smashed with the moon.
- Completely Off-Topic Report: The central gag
- Detonation Moon: It's the only way to kill a Mockingbird.
- Deus ex Nukina: The pirates use "all the nuclear explosions in the world" to blow the moon into the mockingbirds.
- Enemy Mine: Happens twice, first the Pirates and Scout team up against the Mockingbirds, then the Ninjas join the alliance
- Every Body Dies Ending: Subverted/Downplayed. Almost everyone dies, but the survivors include Scout and Calpurnia.
- Flying Seafood Special: The pirates ride on the backs of flying sharks... That are on fire!
- Giant Flyer: The Mockingbird is a giant cyborg-bird monstrosity with two heads, one of which is that of Pat Sajak, and blades like those of a helicopter. And it's on fire. Cold fire.
- Gratuitous Ninja: You probably wouldn't expect ninjas to show up in an animation based on To Kill a Mockingbird. Even more so, you'd expect them to be found in Feudal Japan, not Ancient China.
- Imperial China: Ostensibly. According to the book report, this is the home of ninjas and predates the discovery of fire (even though everything is on fire)
- Incendiary Exponent: The sharks and bears are on fire, and the Mockingbird is on "cold fire".
- Large and in Charge: Inverted. The first Mockingbird eventually summons an army of other Mockingbirds that are described as being "even bigger and blacker than him."
- Laser Blade:
- Boo Radley's laser sword with guns on it.
- The mockingbird can shoot lightsabers out of its mouth. Lightsabers that are on fire.
- Lens Flare: The flying pirate ship has a lens flare and motion blur, which is mentioned by the narrator.
- Made of Iron: The pirates can survive falling a million feet to the ground below, because they're pirates.
- Magical Negro: Calpurnia, the mysterious slave woman.
- Ninja: The characters encounter an army of ninjas in Ancient China.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Quite possibly one of the most over-the-top examples ever made. The ninjas can transform into dinosaurs and presidents, and the pirates wield laser swords with attached guns (that shoot other swords), to name just a couple examples.
- Ominous Floating Castle: Which doubles as a time machine.
- Our Presidents Are Different: They're actually ninjas who transformed themselves into presidents. Wait, not presidents, volcanoes.
- Pirate: Boo Radley is actually a pirate, with a whole crew of pirates working with him.
- Pirates vs. Ninjas: In one of the earliest examples of this trope (possibly one of the Trope Codifiers), the pirates travel to Ancient China and end up warring with ninjas for nine years.
- Pyrrhic Victory: The mockingbirds are apparently defeated, but almost everyone dies.
- Real Trailer, Fake Movie: The April Fools trailer for a fake sequel, How 2 Kill a Mockingbird: Return of the Revenge. Serial Escalation appears to be in full effect.
- Ridiculously Potent Explosive: All of the nuclear explosives in the world (which, in the movie, appeared to be a few dozen at most) were somehow powerful enough to blast the moon out of orbit and completely destroy it, using its fragments to kill the Mockingbirds. Realistically, even if you detonated every nuke ever built at once on the surface of the moon, you'd just get a bright explosion and a new crater.
- Robotic Reveal: Scout is actually a robot guy.
- Rule of Cool: The narrator is prone to amending parts of the story on the fly based on this trope. He even refers to the Pirates vs. Ninjas sequence as "the most awesome final battle to end all battles", making it clear that his priorities lie in making this story as cool as possible.
- Rule of Funny: The Rule of Cool is used to such a ridiculous extreme that it ends up becoming hilarious.
- Samus Is a Girl: Completely inverted. Scout turns out to be a badass robot guy.
- Sky Pirate: Boo Radley and his crew.
- Smoke Shield: Not only was the mockingbird unharmed, it had grown another head, which was even bigger-looking.
- So Bad, It's Good: Intentionally.
- Sound In Space: But they really didn't care at that point.
- Space Pirates: The pirates go into space for the final battle.
- Stuff Blowing Up: It happens a lot, with the same stock effect.Narrator: The pirates are like, "We're going to explode!" And then they exploded, just like they predicted.
- The Juggernaut: The Mockingbirds are seemingly completely indestructible until their weakness is discovered.
- Time Travel: The characters use a time-traveling castle to travel to Ancient China.
- Time Skip: There is a nine year time skip during the ninja vs. pirate battle.
- Trope Codifier: Given how old the short is, it could probably be this for Pirates vs. Ninjas and Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot.
- Visual Pun: Dill is played by a pickle.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: The ninjas transform into dinosaurs, fireballs, volcanoes, and presidents.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never explained what happened to the treasure after the Mockingbird stole it. Apparently everyone just forgot about it because they were so obsessed with getting revenge on the Mockingbird.
