Toast Boy, our mentally scarred hero.
Good beetles, we are.
Spoilsbury Toast Boy is a series of three short flash animations created in 2004 and 2005 by David Firth, the same man who brought us the Mind Screw known as Salad Fingers.
So one can guess what is to be expected from this creation of his.
The series is set in an unidentified (but rather empty) world run mostly by beetles of either normal or human proportions. Toast Boy, the nervous eponymous character, lives with his grandmother and works in a sweat-shop type toast factory with his sister, Liache. One night, the beetles decide that "pleasant thoughts are unhealthy", and burrow into Toast Boy's head through his ear. Then the nightmares and hallucinations begin...
One of David Firth's lesser known works, the series is told from end to beginning as followed: Spoilsbury Toast Boy
, Spoilsbury Toast Boy -1, and Spoilsbury Toast Boy -2. Firth says more episodes are planned. (NSFW).
This show provides examples of:
- Back to Front: The story is told like this, as we see the ending episode which has Toast Boy getting the "Brain fixing procedure and the episodes that come after it show what lead up to it.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The beetles come in two sizes: an inch or two, and as big as a human being. One beetle is about as large as a house.
- Blatant Lies: A good portion of what the beetles say.The beetles: Beetles know this. Beetles are good doctors.
- Body Horror: Like Salad Fingers, the series is rife with these, however, a special mention goes to the the beetles in Granny's gash.
- Clip-Art Animation: Some of the smaller beetles are clip art pictures.
- Compelling Voice: During the hallucinations, the beetles will often tell Toast Boy what he should do. Another more forceful one comes from a large speaker that will appear out of nowhere and tell the slave children what to do.Hallucination beetle: (to Toast Boy) I think you should kill her... slit her open and burn her nipples...
- Crapsack World: It's David Firth, what do you expect?
- Creepy Child: Toast Boy. Liache also might count.
- Deranged Animation: The animation is a little off kilter
- Downer Ending: The Bad Guy Wins.
- Given the similar character design of the creepy obsessive boy in Salad Fingers 4, and the scarring on his head, one could say that the machine worked... more or less...
- Fat Bastard: The giant beetle the children are forced to make toast for.
- Foregone Conclusion: At the end of the first short, Toast Boy is stabbed to death by the beetles' "Brain Fixing Machine".
- Freak Out: Toast Boy has these, as shown when he finds his grandmother dead.
- Gross-Up Close-Up: Mostly of the grandma.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Though not cartoonish in the slightest, most of the human-sized beetles wear only hats, vests, and jackets.Beetle #2: Oh we're such jokers.
Beetle #1: Jokers in trousers.
Beetle #2: Well, we're not wearing shorts!
Beetle #1: It's not really the weather for it. - Insane Troll Logic: The beetles practically run on this.Beetle #1: Why, this girl is full of keys.
Beetle #2: You know what this means, don't you?
Beetle #1: Yes. We must remove her nipples. - Kill It with Fire: Toast Boy's grandma is found dead, tipped over into the fireplace by a beetle.
- Mad Eye: Toast Boy and Liache, with one eye being shown bigger than the other.
- Mind Rape: The beetles seem to enjoy inflicting this on poor Toast Boy.
- Also literal Mind Rape... and yes, it is as horrific as it sounds.
- Mind Screw: All of it.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate:Doctor Jill: (To Liache) Do you find the mucus in your nasal passage makes breathing a chore? (Liache nods) Well then, perhaps you don't deserve to breathe at all.
- Nightmare Sequence: Several but he most notable is in ep.2 when the beetles "take care" of the boy's "unhealthy" pleasant thoughts.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: The Nightmare Sequences are full of these.
- Orifice Evacuation: Even though the beetles crawl through his ear, Toast Boy spits a few out of his mouth.
- Orifice Invasion: The smaller beetles enter Toast Boy's body through his ear. And enter his grandma through her vagina.
- Parental Abandonment: Toast Boy and Liache seem to live with their grandmother. Their mother isn't seen or heard and one oddly pleasant dream reveals someone who might be their father but it's never explained what happened to him, which leaves how they came to live with her mystery.
- Peek-a-Boo Corpse: Toast Boy stumbles upon his grandma's burning corpse in the second short.
- Personal Space Invader: The mass of beetles crawling all over Grandma's face in -2.
- Sanity Slippage: Often, for both Toast Boy and possibly the viewer.
- Scare Chord: Whenever Toast Boy enters a Freak Out, and when he finds his dead grandma in the fireplace.
- Sensory Abuse: The nightmare sequences are divided by rapidly flashing erratically animated disturbing imagery accompanied by loud distorted noises.
- Shout-Out: The beetles distinctive way of speaking appears to be based on Mr Deltoid from A Clockwork Orange. Also, the series seems to take it's name from "Pillsbury Doughboy".
- Beetles being the antagonists is possibly a reference to the Aphex Twin song "Beetles".
- Surreal Horror: The series is frightening and pretty disturbing with the odd horror to match.
- Talking Animal: All of the beetles talk, regardless of size.
- The Swarm: The smaller beetles.
- Three Shorts: Really, there's only three released shorts in the series.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Spoilsbury Toast Boy experiences frequent hallucinations because beetles live inside his brain. It's unclear if all of it is happening inside his head though.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Toast Boy is often seen in one, especially during the first short.
- The Unintelligible: Most of the voices are garbled but relatively understandable. Toast Boy, on the other hand, speaks in nothing but odd tones that require subtitles to be understood.
- Unusual Euphemism: The granny's gash which poor toast boy has to give a moisture with that cream.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The doctor beetle gives Liache this lecture when she complains about her stuffy nose:Doctor Jill: Mucus is a living thing you know. It has a certain degree of intelligence.
