Web Animation / Sock Series

Evil hamster 9.99.

— Cash register

A man purchases a demonic hamster from a pet shop. Things quickly get out of hand.

The Sock series is made by Grey Gerling, who is known for his unique hand drawn style of animation. There are 3 parts, the last of which was released in 3 separate episodes. The series is available on Newgrounds.

The series is comprised of:

• Dawn of Sock (2007)
• Advent of Sock (2009)
• Empire of Sock (2013-2014, divided in 3 parts)

There is also a prequel comic called Genesis of Sock made in 2011.

Although the video series stopped after the third episode, Grey Gerling wrote a timeline that conclude the story of Sock and Gerling's other series in one go, tying all of his animation series in a single canon on the same time of finishing them.

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The Sock series provides examples of:

• Acid Attack: When Ceriazibus's guts are flailing around, hanging out of their body, they spew gastric acid everywhere.
• Alien Blood:
  • Gaeous' green parasitic plant liquid serves both as their tears and their blood.
  • Uquorion seems to have both purple blood when they gets bitten off and gray blood when their corpse falls on the ground.
• All There in the Script: Nobody but Sock is named in the shorts themselves, but several names are revealed through character artwork Gerling posted on his developer blog. The white god is Hothica the god of storm, the green god is Gaeous the god of dirt, the blue god is Uquorion the god of fluid, and the cerberus-like monster is Ceriazibus.
• Ambiguous Gender: We neither know the gender of Sock, their monsters or the three gods.
• Amputation Stops Spread: Ceriazibus opts to amputate one of their two remaining heads after getting infected by having Gaeous' blood on their tongue.
• Animalistic Abomination: Sock is a heavily stylized, smiling hamster and a reality-warping God of Evil.
• Art Evolution: Empire of Sock has a much richer color palette than the first 2 installments.
• Art-Style Dissonance: Despite the cutesy and stylized art style, this series is full of human misery, Body Horror and hellish monsters.
• Author Avatar: Sock's owner looks like how Grey Gerling represents himself.
• Author Tract: The whole concept of Sock's cultists is a jab at religions in general, something Grey Gerling is against. While this is only represented as a subtle visual metaphor in Empire of Sock, Sock lore side material indicates that in the past, most of Sock's cultists separated into various real-world religions while a few stayed loyal to Sock as we see in the videos where Sock rises again. This basically means that the origin of all religions is a group of fanatics worshiping a world-destroying hamster for no reason.
• Bad Moon Rising: The moon and stars have turned blood red during Advent of Sock.
• Berserk Button: The smoking demon does NOT like getting his cigarette put out.
• Black Bead Eyes: Sock, the humans and the smoking demon have these, Sock's owner also have them but they are more line-shapped, Gaeous Appear to have this but they actually have holes for eyes.
• Blow You Away: One of Hothica's powers. They can manipulate wind in many ways.
• Body Horror: The series is ripe with this.
  • After Ceriazibus slices a giant plant that crushed them, they have a big hole in their belly and their organs are flailling around. Their big wound also appears to have teeths.
  • People affected by Sock's radiation powers become horrific masses of flesh.
  • When Sock's owner finds the receipt for his evil hamster, he starts to cry lava. Then, when Sock is turned into a cross by his cultists and seemingly brings the apocalypse to Earth, the owner's head turns into stone with a big hole spewing lava. It's like he became a fusion between a stick figure and a volcano.
• Cephalothorax: In term of physical appearance, Sock and the three gods are just tiny floating heads as bodies. They don't even have legs even if Sock's is supposed to be an hamster. This make him more cute looking and thus make his status as an apocalypse bringer even more scary.
• Classical Elements Ensemble: Sock and the three gods each represent an element. Sock can produce fire with radioactive properties, making them representative of the fire element. Hothica can control wind and storm, making them representative of the air element. Uquorion has control over water and submarine life, making them representative of the water element. Gaeous can grow plants and fungi and is known as the god of dirt, making them representative of the earth element.
• Company Cross References : In Empire a little girl is seen holding a plushie that looks like the Fetusaur from The Faster The Treadmill, another animation by Grey Gerling.
• Cosmic Horror Story: A rather bizarre one, considering the group of Animalistic Abomination Jerkass Gods involved look like cute hamsters.
• Cut Short: Development of the fourth installment, Rictus of Sock, unfortunately stopped when Grey Gerling decided to pursue another project. He later said that he won't continue the series at all in the future. But on his blog, he posted a timeline and a conclusion for of all of his animation series, including Sock.
• Dem Bones: There's a giant skeletal monster who appears in every video. In Empire of Sock, we see there are multiple of them.
• Downer Ending: With Grey Gerling canceling what was supposed to be the final episode, the video series ends with Sock bringing the apocalypse on Earth after a brutal city-scale carnage while no one seems to be able to stop them. While Gerling later wrote a story to conclude the Sock series and his other web animation series in one go, it ends with a giant baby eating the Earth and killing everyone.
• The Dying Walk: Shortly after the big fight against the gods is over, Ceriazibus takes a few steps and falls over, likely dead of exhaustion and from losing two out of their three heads.
• Eating the Enemy: The smoking demon kills Uquorion by eating half of their body in one bite for putting out its cigarette.
• Eldritch Abomination: Sock in spades. By the end of Empire he and his cult seem to have outright broken reality itself.
• Finger-Snap Lighter: The smoking demon doesn't have fingers, but the way it uses the tip of its tail to light a cigarette with is pretty evocative of someone using their thumb like a lighter.
• Flower Mouth: Ceriazibus' mouths look like flowers when they are open.
• Flying Sea Food Special: One of Sock's monsters is a flying angler fish manifested out of spirits.
• For the Evulz: The only reason Hothica and specially Socks do anything. Presumably, this is also Sock's cult motivation, as they have nothing whatsover to gain by following it.
• Fungi Are Plants: Gaeous's parasitic fluid can grow both plants and fungi alike.
• Glass Cannon: The three gods have very destructive powers but can be killed in rather simple ways, such as being crushed by a magical shrinking cylinder, being cut in half by a tongue or being bitten in half.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Sock exhibits a sickly green variety when he makes the giant cocoon hatch.
• Green Thumb: Gaeous's powers. They simply have to cry on something to create giant sentient flora.
• God of Evil: Sock is worshipped by his cult as this, rampantly murdering and torturing people seemingly for kicks... Not that the other gods are much better. In Empire we get a look at the Cult of Sock's creation myth, depicting Sock descending from a crack in the firmament with the other gods, implying some rather disturbing things about them all.
• Good Is Not Nice: The gods who arrive to defeat Sock are utterly indifferent to human suffering, to the point that Hothica steals their bones for a wind spear, Gaeous using them as mulch for their creations and Uquorion stealing all the water from their surroundings to attack with, including the water inside humans. Although with Sock it's kind of necessary.
• Grotesque Cute: Sock is a cute hamster who sacrifices a pizza delivery man, summon creatures from hell, and bring the apocalypse.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Gaeous dies by getting cut in half from behind by one of Ceriazibus' tongue.
• Healing Factor:
  • When Ceriazibus get freed by Gaeous' vines by Sock's cultists, they have some wounds that instanly disappear. They can't regrow their heads though.
  • When Sock gets wounded it never last.
• Hellhound: Though not a canine per se, Ceriazibus is definitely evocative of Cerberus. Even the name is very similar.
• Holy Halo: A stained glass window depicts Sock's owner with one.
• Hope Spot: For the citizens when the gods arrive. It's quickly made clear that they only care about fighting Sock, with complete disregard to the destruction and death they cause in the process.
• Human Sacrifice: Done to an unlucky pizza delivery guy.
• Hydro-Electro Combo: Hothica and Uquorion do a combo attack on Sock that consists of Uquorion shooting water blasts at Sock while they are engulfed by Hothica's thunder.
• An Ice Person:
  • Hothica does not directly control ice, but they can produce wind that is cold enough to freeze a water pillar in a single second.
  • When Hothica and Gaeous are killed, Uquorion create some ice arms that shoot high pressure water to pin Sock against the ground.
• Ignored Enemy: At no point are the gods seen attacking Sock's cultists, which bites them in the ass because a group of them trap Hothica in a magical cylinder and crush them to death while another group free Ceriazubus from the vines they were trapped in which allow them to kill Gaeous, the one who wrapped Ceriazibus in the first place.
• In the Hood: Sock's cultists wear hooded robes that hide their faces.
• Killer Rabbit: Sock is an adorable hamster. They are also a seemingly unkillable demon that commands an army of monsters from hell.
• Land, Sea, Sky: The three gods that fight Sock.
• Lightning/Wind Juxtaposition: Hothica can manipulate lightning and wind alike.
• Line Boil: Due to everything being drawn on paper.
• Major Injury Under Reaction: Sock's owner seems more distraught about losing his sandwich than getting one of his arms lopped off.
• Making a Splash: Uquorion's powers. They can manipulate any water in their vicinity, including the fluid in human bodies.
• Man on Fire:
  • In Dawn a man in hell has to endure being on fire with a bucket of water just out of reach.
  • In Empire a guy is bowing before the trio of gods, seemingly unaware that he is ablaze.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Gaeous sounds like "Gaia" which fit for someone who has power over nature.
  • Uquorion sounds like "aqua" and has power over water.
  • Ceriazibus sounds like "Cerberus", the creature they are based on.
• Mind Screw : The intro sequence in Empire shows Sock being crucified... by himself.
• Mix-and-Match Critter: In Genesis of Sock Uquorion uses their power to fuses various sea creatures together which either results in nonfunctional masses of twitching meat or monstruous leviathans.
• Multiple Head Case: Ceriazibus has three heads. When the left one gets infected by Gaeous' parasitic blood, the middle head simply decapitates it before the rest of their body gets infected.
• Must Have Nicotine: The smoking demon. Getting between him and his nicotine fix is a very bad idea.
• Mutagenic Goo: Gaeous's tears and blood is a green parasitic fluid which turns any creature that touches it into a giant plant in a few seconds. A few plants and fungus can be seen growing when the fluid is spilled on the ground.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Most humans look basically like actual humans, though depicted in a stylized artstyle like you would expect to see in a children's book (even though this series is not for children). Sock's owner however, looks like a stick figure with thick legs.
• No-Sell: When Gaeous covers Sock with their parasitic fluid, Sock burns it by engulfing their own body in fire. Although the fact that Sock did not mutate after being covered by the fluid for more than a second implies that Sock is already immune to begin with.
• Oculothorax: There are flying eyes the size of beach balls. They passively float around like balloons at first, but eventually merge into a giant eye Kaiju covered in pupils.
• Off with His Head!: Ceriazibus loses two heads out of three. The right one explodes from inside after getting parasitic fluid on the tongue, that makes a giant plant grow where the head was. The left head is decapitated by the middle one for also getting infected by the parasitic fluid, to stop the creature's whole body from getting infected
• Overly-Long Tongue: Ceriazibus's tongues are so long that they can wrap them around one of their head multiple times.
• Perpetual Frowner: Gaeous has an unchanging morose look on their face.
• Perpetual Smiler: Sock never loses his enthusiastic grin.
• Planet Eater: The timeline mentions the moon being transformed into a baby and eating Earth.
• Playing with Fire: Sock has power over fire and even engulfs the city in a fire storm.
• Power Nullifier: The intro of Empire implies that Sock's powers were completely negated by a mundane hamster cage. There's a few hints that Sock's powers have no effects on plastic at all.
• Prehensile Tail: The smoking demon is just a head with a tail, but it can move its tail like an arm.
• Prequel: The Genesis of Sock comic was made between Advent of Sock and Empire of Sock and show the origins of Sock and the 3 gods before the video stories started.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Ceriazibus has red eyes and is one of Sock's most dangerous monsters.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: In Empire, the sky has turned fiery red.
• Religion of Evil: Of course, Sock's cult follows one. Black cloaks and pentagrams included.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The can in this case being Sock's cage, which nullifies his powers by being made of plastic which Sock cannot affect.
• Shock and Awe: In addition to creating wind Hothica has power over lightnings has they are the god of storm.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Despite all the terrible things going on around him, Sock's owner is more concerned about getting a snack.
  • At the end of Empire, Sock's owner is looking in his house's wreckages for Sock's receipt, all while sporting a mildly annoyed expression, despite the fact that the city he lives in just got completely destroyed by a demonic hamster, an army of monsters from hell and three gods. He's even happy to finally find the receipt, as if bringing back his evil hamster to the pet shop would change anything.
• Swallowed Whole: A giant ghostly black angler fish eats a bunch of humans in one bite, leaving their skeletons.
• Swirly Energy Thingy: Sock creates a purple vortex◊ within their owner's fridge, though it's never shown if the vortex leads anywhere.
• Swiss-Army Tears: Gaeous can create plants by crying.
• Too Many Mouths: The smoking demon can grow a fanged maw out of his head.
• Whale Egg: Sock (and possibly the other three gods) is meant to be a hamster, but they come from an egg spawned from a crack in the sky.
• Weak Sauce Weakness: As powerful as Sock is, his radiation powers cannot affect plastic objects such as bottles or plastic bags, which is why a simple hamster cage renders him harmless.
• The X of Y: All parts of the series follow the "X of Sock" formula.

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