Web Animation / Pimp Lando

The hero, in all his pimpin' glory!

"What the foo?!?"

— Pimp Lando

Pimp Lando (no, not that one) is a series of animated comedy shorts from the late 1990's/early 2000's made using Microsoft's 3D Movie Maker. The eponymous Lando (who is not actually a pimp, as the creators are careful to point out; he just looks like one) is somewhat of a Jive Turkey who gets into all sorts of wacky hijinx, sometimes aided (or hindered) by The Evil Guitarist, a large redhead with a monocle who has all sorts of "evil" possessions, and Dow Jones, a mysterious character who is obsessed with clam chowder and whose name is always followed by a villainous musical sting. The antagonist of the series is Bruce (the Thumper), who mostly does evil For the Evulz but holds a grudge against Lando due to a time-traveling incident where he thwarted Bruce's attempt to Take Over the World.

The episodes in the main series are:

• A Pimp on Wall Street: Lando buys a cursed donut that gets stuck to him and he has to get it off. Hilarity Ensues.
• What the foo?!? (A Pimp Lando Story): Lando goes to Boston to get some clam chowder for Dow Jones, who had helped him in the previous episode, and has to deal with a Cheers parody, rampant coffee shops, and horrible drivers.
• A Pimp in Time: Lando visits a bazaar, but a mishap sends him back in time, where he runs into a young Bruce (the Thumper) plotting to take over the world. Eventually he finds himself on the U.S.S. Enterprise-D and must get home.
• Pimp Land U.S.A.: Lando's jacket is stolen, and he has to get it back. Hilarity Ensues.
• Pimp Lando's Non-Denominational Holiday Special: Lando throws a mid-December party and invites all his friends of differing faiths. Some snowball fights ensue, and Bruce tries to (incompetently) ruin everyone's day, but in the end everyone is happy.
• Pimp 2K: Instead of following a plot, this episode is mostly parodies of different TV shows/movies/video games with Lando characters in them. It does end, however, with a cliffhanger that wouldn't be resolved for four years.
• Love Changes Every Pimp: With the cliffhanger resolved, Lando visits Orbisonia, Pennsylvania (where the mayor is Roy Orbisonia) and falls in love. Subtitled "Pimp Lando: The Musical", it also features several parodies of songs from popular musicals (most notably The Phantom of the Opera). This episode also marks an increase in the quality of the animation from the first six.
• Multipimpcity: Bruce decides to ruin Lando's reputation by making evil clones to wreak havoc across the world. Said clones immediately turn on him, then wreak havoc anyway. Meanwhile, Lando is infected with Disco Fever.
• The Pimp, the Whole Pimp, and Nothing but the Pimp: Bruce gets arrested and put on trial for his vague misdeeds, while Lando gets shipwrecked on an island and nearly forced to marry the daughter of the chief of the local village tribe.

Most of the humor in the early episodes comes from the Absurdist Humor approach (as did many other 3D Movie Maker comedy series of the time), though the later installments tone that down (though it's not eliminated completely) for more character and situation-based comedy that nevertheless still relies quite a bit on parodies. Despite its name, the series is generally family-friendly.

In addition to the nine main episodes, a special edition of the first episode was released, as well as a blooper reel from the first six. A tenth episode, "Pimp Lando X", was planned, but currently lies in Development Hell, and all that was released was a short teaser video.

The series can be found on Youtube.

This series provides examples of:

• Action Figure Speech: Along with all 3D Movie Maker movies. The program was too primitive to move the lips of any of the characters, so more often than not they end up Milking the Giant Cow just to talk. Only partially averted with Outlaw 2 (the Doraemon expansion that he is from allowed the characters mouths to move, though they weren't synced to any lines and they still gesticulated wildly).
• Anti-Climax: The Cliffhanger ending of "Pimp 2K" is completely resolved before the titles roll in "Love Changes Every Pimp".
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Testimonies against Bruce include, "He stole my puppy!", "He stole my baby!", and "He stole my puppy's baby!"
  Lawyer: Don't you mean a puppy's puppy?
• Butt-Monkey: Whenever the Evil Guitarist shows off something "evil", he always demonstrates it on the same poor character, who invariably gets injured offscreen with a Stock Sound Effect. (The character is named Mr. Smiles the Hitman in the credits.)
• Call-Back: The first episode centered around a cursed donut. While none of the later episodes do, donuts still get an occasional reference, and Pimp Lando almost always reacts badly.
• Catchphrase: For Lando, there's "What the foo?!?"
• Christmas Episode: "Pimp Lando's Non-Denominational Holiday Special" which is also a Hanukkah Episode, a Kwanzaa episode, and a Ramadan episode, though the episode really has little to do with any of these holidays.
• Courtroom Episode: "The Pimp, the Whole Pimp, and Nothing but the Pimp" is mostly one of these.
• Drives Like Crazy: The Evil Guitarist runs over/crashes through old ladies, children, cats, skeletons, giant coffee mugs, Darboe, and, of course, Mr. Smiles.
• Evil Twin: Inverted with the "Good Guitarist." Pimp Lando's clone Evil Pimp plays this straight, though he's more of a petty evil than anything truly malevolent (he blows up an orphanage offscreen, but almost nobody is hurt, and other than that he just performs Jump Scares and evilly chuckles.)
• Gainax Ending: The ninth episode (and therefore the series so far) ends with an attack on everyone by killer potatoes. This comes at the end of a Courtroom Episode.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck! / Unusual Euphemism: Pimp Lando's catchphrase, "What the foo?!?"
• Hair-Trigger Sound Effect: Dow Jones's full name is Dow Jones *villain music*
• Harmless Villain: Bruce is mostly this, though he does become legitimately threatening at the end of "Pimp 2K."
• Jive Turkey: Pimp Lando, especially in earlier episodes. The Kwanzaa Krew takes this to extremes.
• Kent Brockman News: A newscast from "Multipimpcity" has shades of this, especially in the sports and weather sections.
• Informed Judaism: Darboe being Jewish becomes a Running Gag in later episodes, despite not doing anything differently.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase: The Evil Guitarist has this:
  Some character (usually Pimp Lando): Why do you call it the evil X?"
  The Evil Guitarist: 'Cause sometimes it does this.
  (X does something to injure Mr. Smiles, who walks on just for the occasion)
• Meaningful Name: Random Comment Guy is pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It's later revealed that his name is actually Guy Bergeson (though in an earlier episode he was revealed to be Ricardo Montalban).
• Nonindicative Name: Pimp Lando, who isn't a pimp. Also the Evil Guitarist, who isn't all that evil and isn't a guitarist.
• Out of Focus: The last two episodes focus much more on Bruce than on Pimp Lando.
• Recycled Set: Inevitable due to 3D Movie Maker having only about nine sets to choose from without mods. Lampshaded by Lando when he remarks that Boston (and later Orbisonia) look just like Wall Street, due to them all being the same "city" set.
  • A title comes up once declaring a scene to be on "A Different Street" despite said street looking identical to the one in the previous scene.
• Send in the Clones: The basic plot of "Multipimpcity", though none of the clones have the same personality as the original.
• Shout-Out:
  • Bruce (the Thumper)'s name comes from the Twisted Metal series.
  • The coffee shop in the second episode is a clear parody of Cheers.
  • Abuk, Master of Locks, from the holiday special, is an obscure reference to a bit character from Betrayal at Krondor.
  • "Multipimpcity" is a play on Multiplicity.
  • The Evil Guitarist likes to sentence people to the Phantom Zone.
• Spell My Name with a "The": It's "The Evil Guitarist."
• Status Quo Is God: "Love Changes Every Pimp" ends with Lando and his new girlfriend flying off into the sunset. She breaks up with him in the epilogue, though.

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Why do you call it the Evil Trope?

'Cause sometimes it does this.

(offscreen crash)

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