Long Gone Gulch is an animated web series that focuses on a sheriff named Rawhide and her partner Snag, who do all that the can to keep their town of Gulch safe from danger. However they have a habit of causing collateral damage, much to the anger of Mayor Rhubarb.
The pilot was released on YouTube
on January 11th, 2021.
This work contains the following tropes:
- Abnormal Ammo: At one point, Rawhide uses her slingshot to launche a tumbleweedian at Mako's gang.
- Animal Motifs:
- Snag has a subtle fish motif. He has a protruding chin and a fang, pale greenish-skin, and his hair is styled to look like a fin. The spikes on the back of his jacket vaguely resemble more fins. Snagging is a method of fishing that entails catching a fish using hooks without the fish having to take the bait with their mouth.
- Rawhide has cat theming - her hat is drawn like a pair of cat ears, she jumps around in a feline style, bites, takes the part of the cat in a "Hang in there, baby" sign, and is briefly drawn as a Funny Animal cat in a Freeze-Frame Bonus during the showdown.
- Rhubarb has a bit of a chicken theme despite being a jackalope. His legs often bend more like a chicken's than a rabbit's, he resembles an uncooked rotisserie chicken with his fur torn off, and Snag calls him a "cornish hen." His front teeth are even shaped like a beak.
- Bad Bedroom, Bad Life: Rawhide and Snag live at the sheriff's station/jail, with the former specifically substituting a dresser drawer for a bed. This paints a clear picture of how thankless being sheriff of a middle of nowhere podunk like Long Gone Gulch is.
- Bar Brawl: Between Rawhide and BW, complicated by them becoming possessed by cow demons.
- Berserk Button:
- Rawhide appears to have a few.
- Rawhide gets very angry whenever somebody touches her badge, as shown when she attacks BW for swiping it off of her.
- Rawhide also can't stand it when somebody implies that she isn't a sheriff.
- Don't trash talk her father either. Rawhide will especially show you no mercy if you do that.
- Never—under any circumstances—should you mistreat Ronette in front of Snag.
- Rawhide appears to have a few.
- Brats with Slingshots: Rawhide brandishes a slingshot.
- Butt-Monkey: The Mayor goes through a lot of pain, from losing his hair and an antler, to being used as a piñata by Mako's gang.
- Caustic Critic: Mako's gang present him with a birthday present - a painting of (probably) Mayor Rhubarb with a childish crude drawing of Mako's face taped over it. Mako comments on it as though he were a professional art critic, pointing out all its flaws, but declares it perfect anyway.
- Chair Reveal: Snag barges into Mayor Rhubarb's office to demand Ronnette back, only to find Mako sitting on the Mayor's chair.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The singer BW's potion mutates slinks away after turning into a giant snake monster—he comes back in the climax to swallow Mako whole.
- Chekhov's Skill: Early on, Snag displays the ability to launch Rawhide two stories high. While a just a quick sight gag the first time, it comes in handy later when Rawhide needs to get to the roof to fight Mako.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Pinchly doesn't seem to be all there. He celebrates when he gets nominated as sheriff and celebrates when he gets fired.
- Content Warnings: At the beginning of the pilot there is a warning that says the content is not suitable for children under the age of 7.
- Crapsack World: The Gulch shows shades of this. The Saloon is rundown and broken, the Mayor is completely incompetent, and Snag and Rawhide—two teenagers—are left completely homeless without the Sheriff job.
- Cute Is Never Tarnished: Averted very heavily in Rawhide's introduction as she bursts out of a dead fish, covered head to toe in goopy pink guts.
- Dead Guy on Display: Mayor Rhubarb's predecessors are publicly displayed as taxidermy in the town hall (as is traditional with "real life" jackalopes).
- Demonic Possession: Both BW and Rawhide get possessed by spirits coming out of the cow skulls hanging on the saloon walls.
- Disney Villain Death: Zig-Zagged: Mako's eyes get dried during a staredown with Rawhide and he inadvertently falls over the side of the roof. However, a worm mutant from earlier shoot up with Mako alive and in his mouth... except that, in the credits, Mako found the "exit".
- Eaten Alive: Mako gets swallowed whole by a giant worm mutant near the end of the pilot. The credits show he is still alive inside the mutant looking for a way out.
- Eye Scream: Characters get their eyes hurt multiple times; most notably, Rawhide beats Mako in their staredown by blowing dry air in his eye, causing him to stumble back and fall off the roof.
- Fantasy Americana: Takes place in the Weird West. Populated by a cavelcade of strange creatures of mythic floklore.
- Fearsome Critters of American Folklore: Mayor Rhubarb and his secretary Marigold are jackalopes, as were all the past mayors, judging from the display at city hall. (One of his ancestors has a single horn, perhaps making her an al-mi'raj.)
- Fish People: Mako and his gang are fish mutants.
- Floral Theme Naming: All of the town's previous mayors, presumably Rhubarb's family, are named after trees native to the American Southwest (which makes the current mayor the Odd Name Out, as Rhubarb is an Old World plant).
- Foreshadowing: The Mayor's precious spoons can be seen in a frame in his office a few minutes before Mako and his gang steal them for musical instruments.
- Four-Fingered Hands: The characters have these.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- When Rawhide and Snag are in the Sheriff's Office, Rawhide pulls down a pegboard that shows the various criminals or cases they're on, which shows BW apparently has many different identities she's went under, and a sticky note that simply says "Lore!".
- Rawhide and Mako's staredown in the finale features numerous bizarre expressions that switch back and forth between the two, getting faster as the gag goes on, leading to the viewer to require slowing down the video to catch all of them, which leads to results such as Rawhide's face and the bow on her hat being replaced with an eye, Rawhide and Mako switching clothes and demeanors, Mako becoming a live-action sock puppet, the two being shown in X-Ray, being done in completely different artstyles, among other surreal touches.
- The saloon's doormat reads SCRAM!
- Funny Background Event: Some blink-and-miss-it moments in the pilot stand out, like Pinchly rubbing his face all over after imitating Squatch's thoughtful chin rub.
- Groin Attack: Mayor Rhubarb suffers one at the end of his Humiliation Conga in the saloon.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Marigold starts working for Mako after he takes over the mayor's office. When Mako is beaten, she drops her stuff and goes back to working for Rhubarb.
- Hopeless Suitor: Rhubarb has the hots for Marigold who is clearly not interested.
- Humiliation Conga: Just entering the saloon during Rawhide and BW's fight gets Mayor Rhubarb thrown about, sheared of all his fur and beaten up.
- I Call It "Vera": Snag calls his beloved foldable comb Ronnette.
- Improbable Weapon User: As mentioned above, Snag wields a comb.
- Ironic Echo: "Dustin' out the riffraff". First spoken by Rawhide after Mako's gang is defeated the first time—Mako later uses it to threaten Snag in the mayor's office.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Quite a few characters seem to have fall under this trope, including Snag. BW is the best example though. On her introduction, she torments Rawhide and tells her that she is doomed to fall like every other sheriff and swipes her badge which results in the two of them getting into a squabble. BW only gets violent with Rawhide when the latter inadvertently unleashes cow demons that possess both girls... resulting in the Bar Brawl above. After Rawhide gets fired, BW is the one to motivate her to not give up. The credits even show Rawhide and BW peacefully hanging out together.
- Kick the Dog: Mako, in the Mayor's office, claims to have killed Rawhide's father. He then takes his statement back.Mako, unprompted: ...But yeah, your daddy is dead though.
- Little Bit Beastly: Every character save Rawhide, Snag, and BW are anthropomorphic plants or animals, but even the human sheriffs have their moments.
- Snag exhibits Extreme Omnivore tendencies in the saloon, messily chowing down on a bowl of...something, without even asking what it is beforehand.
- These tendencies are fully on display in the fight in the mayor's office—Rawhide leaps into battle teeth-first, and Snag moves in a decidedly apelike manner while running around.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Rawhide and Mako's "duel" near the end of the pilot is basically a staring contest... that gets increasingly more deranged until the screen is nothing but eyes.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Rawhide and Snag's actions often cause just as many problems as they clean up. At the start of the pilot, Rawhide's work in capturing Mako and his gang result in the town being infested by tumbleweedians after they destroyed their home.
- Noodle Incident: When Rawhide gets posessed in the saloon and starts attacking a similarly possessed BW, Squatch hides in his hat with a fearful "Not again!"
- Whatever happened to land Pinchly on the ceiling in the sheriff's office and Mako's gang out of jail.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Rawhide is able to punch Mako through the roof of Mayor Rhubarb's office rather effortlessly.
- Planimal: The tumbleweedians are tumbleweed creatures that get angry when Rawhide and Snag cause damage to their home.
- Plant People: Pinchly is a sentient cactus.
- Rage Breaking Point: Upon having all his fur shaved off and one of his horns broken, Mayor Rhubarb is so angry that he fires Rawhide and Snag, but is unable to say it properly prompting Marigold to tell them for him.
- Sand Worm: One of the performers at the saloon gets mutated into one of these after a potion gets lodged in his mouth. He appears near the end to swallow Mako.
- Shout-Out: Rawhide hops off of a moving creature onto a nearby hanging sign, much like The Man with No Name in A Fistful of Dollars.
- Tempting Fate: Rawhide celebrates the defeat of Mako's gang, "And with minimal damage, too!" Cue the landscape cracking apart and exploding with geysers.
- Threatening Shark: Mako is a land shark who leads a gang of criminals and serves as the main antagonist of the pilot.
- Toilet Humor: In the credits, Mako, who is inside the Sand Worm, is crawling towards the "exit". Because the spikes of the Sand Worm are pointing away from the worm's mouth...
- Turn in Your Badge: After the incident at the saloon, Mayor Rhubarb demands that Rawhide and Snag hand in their sheriff badges. Rawhide takes it the hardest; not only was her father the previous sheriff, but she had just taken it back from BW.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Rawhide wants to be a sheriff since her deceased father was one.
- Weird West: The setting of the series is in an old western town with tumbleweed-like Giant Spiders, animal people, and assorted fantasy creatures.
