Web Animation / Shadows of the Past

The cracked comedy machinima Shadows of The Past is a Halo based comedy another day at the office comedy based in the Exile level of Halo 4.

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This series provides examples of:

• Affirmative Action Girl: Venus
• Color-Coded Characters: Mostly due to Halo's game engine, each character is visually identified with a color.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Zero,he can take on behemoths ten times his size with just an assault rifle and babbling nonsense. Eieon becomes this in Episode 20 when Pyro and Blacksun are trying to kill his friends he goes from being a pacifist to the batman in two seconds.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: This is Episode 20 in a nutshell the gang accidentally does this by using their own selfish plans to work together in beating Pyro and Blacksun also the giant mech known as Blinky decimating their home.
• Only Knownby Their Nickname:This whole show is based on this trope
  • Zero is always called Rookie by everybody but Scoots.
  • This also applies to Scoots whose full name is revealed in the credits (Annabelle Scootsingdal) and Tank whose full name is (Phillip Norris).
  • Surprisingly this applies to everyone on Group Sigma Pyro (Peter) Blacksun (Dale) Venus (Vennessa) Moriarty (Sherlock) Daxter (Butch) Firefly (Suzzie).
  • This also applies to Doc (Isaac) Pinky (Frederick) Dinky (Sparklez) Blinky (Shimmer) [Subverted by Doc and Pinky because they always call Dinky and Blinky by their birth names] Gizmo (George).
  • Scoots takes this trope to eleven with her short term memory loss with names,she calls everyone a nickname that she feels fits their personality or job position best. Sage (Boss) Zero (Laughy) Eieon (Asian Man) Doc (Doc Evil) Pinky (Prince) Dinky (Nurse Evil) Delta (Eggman or Eggy) Venus (Dykey) Tank (Big Red) Pyro (Fanboy) Blacksun (Prissy) Daxter (Loverboy).
• The Faceless: Everyone, by necessity, as the Halo games give everyone helmets.
• First Law of Tragicomedies
• Five-Man Band: It could be said that Sage's house and later/Venus (more or less) plays it straight, while Doc and Pinky's clique parodies it.
  • Sage's/Venus Squad:
    • Sage is the defacto leader of the group. He's certainly the most levelheaded of the group though he's been known to be as zany as the others.
    • Eieon is more laid back (thanks to pot) than Sage and considers himself a super nerd first and soldier-ish second.Technically, he's more competent then Sage but is not interested in bothering Sage about being leader so he just takes the orders he gets (if any).
    • Tank is master engineer and master of robotics whenever he's seen.
    • Zero is freakishly strong. Because of his IQ he can't feel initial pain like everyone else allowing him to push his body to the limits.
    • Scoots is the only female (by extent) soldier and will speak at length about her numerous sexual exploits. And even going far as to Struggle Snuggle Sage,Eieon while they're in their coma's and made Delta her sex slave.
  • Doc and Pinky's Clique:
    • Doc is the defacto leader of the group. He's the least qualified leader ever but because he's a lazy genius he lets Pinky take care of most of the work.
    • Pinky is more competent than Doc but he is just as crazy as his companion and because he's prone to anger and sort of Ax-Crazy he can't ever lead the group.
    • Gizmo since he is a robot is the a smartest one of the group.
    • Blinky. In the short time she was in the group she was able to grow twenty times her size and is shown to be very powerful.
    • Sparclez Dial-Up Genesis aka Dinky is the girl on the team but since she is the artificial cyborg daughter of Doc and Pinky she never acts like a girly girl. Since she is one years old she is shown to play little girl games such as a demented version of princess. She does show her girl side once she's hyper aged to sixteen years old.
• Flanderization: Almost everyone, though Tropes Are Not Bad as this led to Zero becoming less of a carbon copy of Sage and created the character Scoots and caused funny moments to become much more common.
  • Zero starts out as a medical engineer in the Early-Installment Weirdness version of the show and quickly becomes the shows token kid and Cloudcuckoolander since an unknown break in his head called "Cupcakes" makes this an in-universe Flanderization.
  • Sage goes from being a slightly annoyed down to earth leader to an erratic Manchild using the word "fuck" "shit" and "ass" in every sentence.
  • Pinky's bullying of Sage goes to outright attempts at murdering him.
  • Doc's initial laziness and apathy become a phobia of work even though he's a genius.
  • Zero goes from being ambiguously metro sexual to Camp Gay very quickly.
    • Sort of justified because he's in-universe an seventeen year old kid and kids experiment around that age.
    • It probably doesn't help that his father is a Depraved Bisexual
  • Scoots goes from slightly sultry in her manor to not being able to go three sentences without mentioning sex.
  • Venus goes from being a level headed chick to a zany accident prone badass in order to survive the gangs way of life.
  • Eieon begins a neutral nerdy pacifist to becoming a badass nerd with a batman complex.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Sage - classic Choleric, Doc and Pinky - classic Phlegmatic, Venus - Melancholic, and Eieon - Sanguine
• Friendship Moment:
  • When Sage is Shot by Venus Scoots and Eieon display horror.
  • Whenever Eieon or Sage are shot,maimed,killed or worse both of them are generally horrified when it happens.
• Hired Guns: Venus and Group Sigma
  • Bounty Hunter
• Informed Attractiveness:
  • Scoots despite being implied as being transgender or intersex has been praised in her looks by several different characters. Delta complimented her on her southern charm. Even Zero who filmed Delta and Scoots in sexual acts stated that she was pretty physically fit.
  Zero-"Wowie Scoots, you look uhhhhhh how the peoples say fucking smoking! WEEEEEEEEEE!".

Sage and Eieon were implied to be really handsome by Scoots who took off their armor for them.

• Ironic Echo Cut: Both played straight and played for laughs many times.
• Lampshade Hanging: Sage does this Episode 17 after Eieon states that it would be fun to film an indie film after they get rescued about their time there.
  Sage: "Who the fuck would want to watch a movie about this place all we do is talk and kill each other,it should be a fucking Quintenn Tarantino movie...but with out y'know...good actors... " (Side glance) (cricket noise)

Again in Episode 17 where Zero's reply to Tank sating why he hasn't been around all year (Season 1).

Scoots: "You're a chronic masterbater?"

Delta: "Your voice box was screwed up?"

Zero: "Your voice actor was absent?"

Tank: "No. No. And what...maybe,don't question it!"

• Love Triangle: Delta to Scoots and Dinky (Although Dinky may not love love Delta).
  • For Delta, this is also a case of Robo Ship.
• Made of Iron: Anyone can survive a devastating attack generally unharmed provided it would be funny for them to do so. Any pain or injury will be played for laughs and forgotten as soon as the joke is over. Conversely, this invincibility can be revoked at any point, if the character's death is important for plot reasons.
  • Sage may be the patron saint of this, given his state as the physical Butt-Monkey and Doc and Pinky's constant attempts to put him in the grave. At one point he takes a tank shell round point blank to the chest, and shortly after takes a Five Rounds Rapid to the face, twice. He is fine (complaining but fine).
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: This will alway apply to the outcasts of the gang Delta,Zero,Gizmo and Daxter (most of the time).
• Only Sane Man: Sage, who is usually the only person to both understand when a crisis is happening and be motivated enough to do something about it. Most of the other characters are either one but not the other, or neither. Venus might qualify in some episodes, but she has a habit of having mental breakdowns because of the gangs zany lives.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Sage becomes this in Episode 9 when Dinky removes his "celestial essence" from his body.
• Rule of Three: The running "HOLY SHIT!!!" gag is usually done three times in a row.
• Running Gag:Anyone who is known to curse screaming "HOLY SHIT" whenever a tank shot or explosion in general interrupts their banter.
  • Among others:
  Pinky: Ruddington!!!
  • Sage will always call Venus a bitch
  • Eieon will always reference a movie or video game in battle
  • People who die say something over the top hammy or using weird noises until they drop." People react to hearing explosions by yelling "HOLY SHIT!!!"
• The Smurfette Principle: Venus is the only true girl in the show for quite some time, not counting Scoots and Dinky who are debatable in gender, though in a case of positive discrimination, she's definitely the best fighter on either team.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Given the high amount of swearing, this one inevitably crops up once in a while quite a bit.
• Throw It In!: Many lines from anyone Chris voices enter this trope.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Zero became this from the early abandoned series Shadows of The Past is based,he was a medical engineer but quickly became the shows ditzy headed Cloudcuckoolander.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Most of the cast.
• What Could Have Been:Many ideas were dropped in the creation of the show.
  • Word of God is that Shadows of The Past was originally a two hour movie but the idea was dropped because he was way over his head with time and voice actors skill. The script is announced finished and still on a very old laptop in his attic.
  • According to Word of God,Shadows of The Past originally had a plot where robot duplicates were going to attempt to take over the world and the early gang (many key characters missing) were going to be trained by aliens to fight the robot invasion.
  • Word of God also stated that Scoots estranged little sister Scout was going to be a southern paranoid and conspiracy theorist who was the only one to figure out key plot points before everyone else but no one would believe her. The reason that she never was created was because her voice actor gave Chris the cold shoulder after she agreed to one season.
  • The entirety of the Break The Loop saga that was dropped for several reasons this also applies to Outpost Beta the very first edited project for Shadows of The Past and the Oddverse this was full of OOC moments and Early-Installment Weirdness all around.

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