(also available on YouTube) is a web animation series by Joshua Palmer, better known online as Zeurel, following the misadventures of cut-rate mercenary duo Shrike and Beebs as they cruise the galaxy in search of decent-paying contracts. Unfortunately for them, there's plenty of heavily-armed psychopaths standing between them and their next big payout, not to mention hints of nefarious happenings going on way above their paygrade.Episode 1, "The Ghost Egg", released in July 2022. Episode 2, "Lythop Liberation", released in April 2023. Episode 3, "Us & Them", released in December 2023.
Provides examples of:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: The crystalline growths that some lythops possess are sharp enough to cut through just about anything, even the nearly indestructible stony hides of the lythops themselves. Dr. Agness has killed countless lythops to forge a sword out of these crystals.
- Artificial Gravity: A common but expensive feature of spaceships and stations in this setting. Monkey Wrench can't afford to install it on their ship, forcing them to walk around in magnetized boots and duct tape themselves to the bed whenever they want to sleep.
- The Assimilator: The Cataclysm is revealed to be this, and it's overtaken a quarter of the galaxy by the time the story begins. Not only can it corrupt organic life and turn entire planets and species into extensions of itself, but it can also take control of technology just as easily.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- Professional Killer Kara is introduced assassinating a prominent birdlike alien that had a bounty put on them. When she finally manages to capture Nobert, another bird alien with a massive bounty, almost all signs point to Nobert's impending demise... but Kara's actual goal was to return him to his parents.
- In the second "Scratch's Emporium" ad—this one for a stuffed Beebs plush—Beebs sees his plush for the first time. He looks supremely disapproving...and then reveals it's because Scratch was supposed to let him know when the plushies were coming in!
- BFG: Relatively speaking. During the big fight over Nobert, Scritch wields a laser cannon that's as long and wide as his entire body... which is about the same size as a normal housecat.
- Bilingual Bonus: Shrike sprinkles Spanish into his lines, adding a few funny or sarcastic moments here and there.
- Bittersweet Ending: Lythop Liberation ends with Dr. Agness arrested for her crimes and L.A.W. giving Monkey Wrench 400K for the bounty and a new job, but the Lythops are all still dead with only one last survivor. And Shrike and Beebs didn't get paid for the old job.
- Bottomless Magazines: Averted. Shrike's gun runs out of ammo at a critical moment, forcing him to try to stop Kara by throwing a roll of duct tape at her.
- Bounty Hunter: The Monkey Wrench crew end up fighting their way through quite a few when the client requesting an escort turns out to have a ten million-pixel bounty on him.
- Butter Face: Queen Potoo has a very beautiful body and a strange-looking head.
- The Cameo: Vinethop, the Lythop who chiseled out the prophecy foretelling of the 'Mother Crystal' is voiced by Vinny of Vinesauce fame, has a green mushroom growing out of his head, and has Vinny's hair and facial hair.
- Sr. Pelo voices El Bandito alongside another Vinesauce member Joel as the duende in the the third episode.
- Chekhov's Skill: The fact that Shrike and Beebs are accustomed to living on a ship with zero gravity at all times leaves them better prepared when the space station they're fighting in has its gravity shut off.
- Comedic Strangling: When the crew is hurdling toward a sun doing a job for Scratch, Shrike begins to take his anger out by choking Scratch. He continues to do this even after they are saved by Us.
- Cosmic Horror Reveal: A fairly early one, but Episode 3 explains that the goofy sci-fi galaxy of Monkey Wrench is currently in the process of being devoured by the Cataclysm, a voracious black-and-green mass that turns everything it touches into an extension of itself. A whole quarter of the galaxy has fallen, with the infected area so thoroughly overrun that it looks like a gargantuan cloud of dark green smog. It's also revealed in the same episode that the Cataclysm was created by none other than humanity.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Nobert is a very odd fellow, and his fearful ramblings about the "Ghost Egg" seem like pure nonsense at first. But as it turns out, an invisible, egg-shaped craft really is pursuing him. When it finally reveals itself at the end of the episode, Beebz and Shrike are left dumbstruck that the Ghost Egg is real.
- Dem Bones: Ricket's species resembles nothing quite so much as an ambulatory skeleton.
- Dressed to Plunder: Ricket and the Fodders, members of Queen Tyreen's Space Pirate crew, dress like stereotypical buccaneers, and even their guns look like they came out of the Age of Sail.
- Duct Tape for Everything: It doubles as a safety restraint (artificial gravity not being in the budget) and as a surprisingly effective bolas.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: Ships can achieve FTL by jumping into "blue space". It's basically hyperspace, but it leaves a blue residue smeared all over the ship when you come out. There is mention of some locations still taking multiple days to reach via blue space. Queen Tyneen's ship is shown utilizing a red version.
- The Federation: The League of Aligned Worlds, or L.A.W. for short. Shrike takes a rather dim view of it, suggesting that a high-profile murder victim had it coming by dint of being a supporter.
- Fictional Currency: All transactions in this universe are paid with something called "pixels".
- According to Palmer's official tumblr blog for the show, they're worth "more than USD", usually come in flat squares of copper-to-gold colour, and can be compressed into 100,000-pixel cubes known as "Voxels".
- Flat "What": Scratch lets one fall when he realizes that Shrike is not sending him the bounty, and is instead drawing a bead on his ship with a turret.
- Foreshadowing:
- Kara's comscreen gives her target's name as "Nobert Potoo". Queen Tyneen later says the Potoos are the ones who put out Nobert's bounty, which should clue eagle-eyed viewers in on the twist of the episode.
- Kara's comscreen includes Nobert's last name, while the contract he gives Monkey Wrench doesn't. This is because her contract issuer wasn't Nobert, but his mother Queen Potoo.
- Beebs feels that something's not quite right when the planet that's about to explode in 4 hours doesn't even show signs of tectonic activity, or that Agness wanted to save only the Lythops from such a biodiverse planet. Sure enough, the planet isn't doomed and Agness has far darker plans for the Lythops.
- Four-Fingered Hands: Almost all characters are rendered like this, even the human-looking Beebs.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Several, but most noticeably with the Merc Rankings leaderboard, including #51867 - HOPEUPAUSED2READTHIS
- Friendly Enemy: Shrike and Ricket pause in the middle of a firefight between their two sides to chat with each other about Nobert's bounty, Ricket revealing that there's a massive reward for turning the bird in which hooks Shrike.
- Funny Animal: Many of the characters resemble anthropomorphic animals, playing off that classic sci-fi trope of aliens resembling earth species. Examples include Beebs (a walrus), Scratch (a cat), Tyneen (a lizard/dinosaur), Nobert (a bird), Kara (a caracal), and Agness (an anglerfish).
- Less obvious, but
Word of God says Shrike was based on a couple species of deep sea squid.
- Less obvious, but
- Grievous Harm with a Body: In the big fight at Oberon Station, Tyneen snares Nobert with her Grappling-Hook Pistol arm and swings him into Scratch like a wrecking ball.
- Homeworld Evacuation: In "Lythop Liberation", Monkey Wrench is hired by a kindly scientist to help evacuate the endangered lythops from their home planet, which will soon implode. Except the scientist is lying. The planet is in no danger, and her intentions for the lythops are far from benevolent.
- How We Got Here: Episode 3, "Us and Them," begins chaotically, with the Bucket on a collision course with a blazing sun or star. Most of the episode takes place "2 Hours Earlier," when we can see what events led up to the beginning.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes: Humanity, or "terrans", was responsible for creating the Cataclysm, a corrupting force that has since consumed a quarter of the galaxy. While the exact circumstances of the Cataclysm are unknown, L.A.W. considers humans extremely dangerous and has a standing bounty on the entire species (or whatever remains of it). Despite this fear, pre-Cataclysm human artifacts are considered valuable enough to attract salvage hunters and smugglers to the quarantine zone, and Shrike enjoys human media and cuisine (particularly pizza).
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Upon meeting Nobert and learning what he wants them to do, Shrike bets Beebs ten thousand pixels that "this'll be boring as all hell". Cue the door literally exploding off its hinges as a mob of Tyneen's pirates barge in to try and claim Nobert.
- I Surrender, Suckers: Scratch accosts the Monkey Wrench crew while they're traveling through blue space, threatening to blow them to scrap unless they hand over Nobert. Shrike seemingly relents and asks Scratch to send him the coordinates of his ship so he can send Nobert over. When Scratch obliges, Shrike promptly trains a cannon on that spot and opens fire, knocking Scratch out of blue space.
- Leaking Can of Evil: It's revealed that the cargo that Chester sent to L.A.W. (which was then sent for the Bucket to deliver) contains something infected with the Cataclysm. Even with it held in a sturdy cargo, a small collision is enough for its influence to spread outside — a shake in the Bucket causes some of the energy to leak out and infect its systems, and when Them accidentally collides with the cargo box, it infects Them.
- Like Cannot Cut Like: Lythop crystals are sharp enough to cut through practically anything, but when two crystals clash, they produce an energy field which stops them from cutting each other.
- List of Transgressions: The authorities read off a list of the crimes that Dr. Agness committed at the end of "Lythop Liberation".Sixty-Two: Illegal weapons production, arms trading, impersonating a L.A.W. Science official... genocide?! Boy! These are some hefty charges.
- Look, a Distraction!: When cornered by both Scratch and Tyneen's gang, the Monkey Wrench duo get free when Beebs points and shouts "look, the ghost egg!"Tyneen: Can't believe I fell for that.
- MacGuffin Melee: Poor Nobert ends up at the center of a brawl between Monkey Wrench, Scratch, Tyneen, and eventually Kara.
- Meaningful Name:
- "Nobert" sounds like "No Bird." He is a bird who says "No" a lot.
- Scritch and Scratch are both sounds a cat makes while sharpening their claws.
- A potoo is a really dopey looking bird, which fits Nobert and his mother to a T.
- Kara is a feline with a long face and long, tufted ears—in other words, a caracal.
- "Rickets" is a childhood bone disease, and Ricket is a living skeleton.
- Mêlée à Trois: Scratch and Tyneen's crews ambush Monkey Wrench right as they're about to complete their contract with Nobert. Then Scratch and Tyneen's second-in-command Ricket start arguing about which group has a better claim to the bounty on Nobert's head, leading to a three-way fight for possession of the bird.
- Mistaken for Masturbating: Shrike walks in on Nobert while the latter is seemingly masturbating. He is understandably disgusted at first, until he realizes that Nobert is just playing with some action figures. Then he becomes annoyed.
- Production Throwback: The toys Nobert plays with in "Ghost Egg" are Spoiler and Black Ace, early characters of Zeruel's known for participating in Original Character Tournaments (including Law Of Talos) on DeviantArt.
- Professional Killer: Kara, a feline masked assassin introduced to the audience in the middle of completing a contract. L.A.W. is apparently quite powerless to stop her.
- Retool:
- Shrike and Beebs were characters that Zeurel frequently used in DeviantArt's Original Character Tournaments, which followed their own canon. Monkey Wrench does away with the previous stories and much of the cast while reinterpreting the main duo.
- The Cataclysm is all but stated to be the Beast from The Walking City, a 2015 OC tournament Zeruel participated in with characters connected to the Monkey Wrench universe.
- Rock Monster: The lythops are a species of tiny little rock people.
- Saying Too Much: Ricket cheerfully lets slip to Shrike and Beebs that their client has a bounty of ten million, only to immediately realize he probably shouldn't have told them that.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: "The Ghost Egg": After suffering through 6 days of Nobert, delivering him to the agreed spot, fending off Scratch and Tyneen's forces, and cornering Kara, Monkey Wrench's contract is rendered void when Nobert's mother Queen Potoo arrives and aggressively convinces him to return to his princely duties. Kara leaves, having completed her bounty, while Shrike is left distraught and Beebs needs to carry him away.
- Show Within a Show: Shrike enjoys a Terran cartoon called El Bandito. Covers are seen in episode 2, and Shrike is seen watching a scene in Episode 3
- Side Bet: Shrike's fond of making these, including whether or not he and Beebs are about to get attacked at any moment.
- Sickly Green Glow: The Cataclysm as well as entities infected by it are black but sport an unnatural green glow to them.
- Skewed Priorities: Before "Lythop Liberation", Beebz sent Shrike to buy a discounted artificial gravity generator for their ship so they can finally stop duct taping themselves to the bed whenever they want to sleep. Instead, Shrike spent the money on a fancy new paintjob. Beebz isn't happy about this. Later on, Shrike is more upset that Dr. Agness ruined the Bucket's paintjob than with the fact that she made him an unwitting accomplice to genocide.
- Space Whale: The last job Monkey Wrench had before "The Ghost Egg" was removing ticks from a space whale's hide. Shrike does not have fond memories of the experience.
- Tempting Fate: As they're preparing to drop off Nobert at the space station terminal, Shrike asks Beebs what he'd bet that Scratch or Tyneen will show up at the last second. A bewildered Beebs asks why he'd want to win that bet. Cue last second ambush, and Beebs shoots a dirty look at a rather sheepish Shrike.
- Terms of Endangerment: Scratch insists on calling Shrike his amigo while trying to shake him down.
- [Verb] This!: Scratch insists on calling Shrike his amigo while trying to shake him down for Nobert. Shrike's response upon finally getting rid of Scratch is as follows:Shrike: Amigo that, pendejo!
- The Virus: The Cataclysm seems to be an energy-based form of this trope, capable of infecting both organics and machines alike while also being The Assimilator — it turned the once-peaceful agari into a Horde of Alien Locusts, and a tiny shred of it is able to corrupt systems on the Bucket and turn them hostile, hijacking the ship outright once it bonds with the remains of Them to gain physical mass. The quarantine zone installed by L.A.W. to keep the contagion at bay spans nearly a quarter of the galaxy.
