Web Video / Korra Bridged

"Kneel before your elemental god mortals!"

Young Korra's first line of the series.

Korra 'Bridged is an Abridged Series of The Legend of Korra created by DemonGroceryStore.

All episodes of this series can be viewed here:

1. Book One (Episodes 1-8)
2. Book Two (Episodes 9-19)
3. Book Three (Episodes 17-?)

There is now has a Prequel Series called Road to Lotus:

1. ''Episode 1
2. ''Episode 2
3. ''Episode 3

Their work can also be viewed on Vimeo here.

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Tropes used in this Abridged series include:

General

• Abridged Series
• Adaptational Badass: Every single one of the major villains gets this, one way or another.
  • Amon, in the original series he was a highly skilled bloodbender. In the series however he's capable of internally freezing his target's blood into spikes and impaling their heart with it!. He uses this techniques to kill his brother Tarrlok and almost succeeds in doing the same to Korra (thankfully Raava steps in at the last second).
  • Unalaq is actually trying to help Korra in the long run. His incompetence as a villain is all deliberate sabotage of Vaatu.
  • Vaatu has been acting as The Corruption and successfully orchestrated most of the other villains actions. He only gave up his more powerful spirit form to become the Dark Avatar by accident, and then got distracted by the high of Showing Off the New Body.
  • Zaheer overthrew the Earth Queen just a handful of episodes into the third season.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Raava, Kuvira, and Vaatu debut near the end of Book One.
  • Kuvira shows up around the end of Book 2, showing how she came to work for the Beifongs and expanding her backstory.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Zig-zagged with Mako. He doesn't cheat on Asami, nor make the dumb decisions that fueled the love triangle of cannon, but he also fails utterly to recognize that he and Asami aren't dating. On the other hand, he fails to recognize this largely due to a genuine inability to understand social cues and reading too much into Asami's actions.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Over and over...
  • Mako crushing on Asami and Bolin briefly crushing on Korra is the closest the series gets to the cannon romantic mess of season 1.
  • To work with Unaloq's Adaptational Nice Guy, Eska and Deska are his secretaries rather than his children.
  • Raava and Vaatu were married. And mortal enemies.
  • Instead of feeling Hero Worship towards his father, Tenzin resents Aang for being a Manchild who failed as a responsible adult and forced Tenzin to fulfill the responsibilities he was too immature for.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Zig-Zagged Korra develops feeling for Asami much earlier in this series.
  • Baatar Jr. is explicitly bi, as he's dating Wu when he and Kuvira first meet.
• Adaptational Villainy: Tarrlok, in this version he's shown to be willingly working with Amon, to an extent.
  • Asami's father loses any sympathetic qualities he might have had in the original series. Not only is his racism towards benders is purely because of his own prejudice (his wife is never even mentioned), but it's later revealed that he stole his daughter's own ideas for the mecha-tanks and sold them behind her back, taking full credit for their design.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Korra's desire to fight escalates into Blood Knight territory.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Jinora. In season 2 she abuses her prodigal spiritual abilities to form a book club with complete strangers, getting overly-attached and clingy to the people she met anonymously in the spirit world, much like a teenage girl failing to practice internet safety. In season 3, she starts to Thinks Like a Romance Novel.
• Butt-Monkey: Bolin tends to be on the receiving end of the most of the abuse.
• The Corruption: Vaatu is the personification of this.
• Oh, My Gods!: Most notably Tenzin, but several characters will swear by Raava's name as an expletive.
  • When Trolling Korra with faux homophobia, he says "Wan and Eve, not Wan and Steve."
• Physical Religion: In this universe, Raava is known to and worshipped by the public- or at least, worshipped by the air nomads.
• Police Brutality: Basically Lin Beifong in a nutshell.
• Stating the Simple Solution:
  • In the season 2 finale, Mako of all people comes up with the idea to use the Northern Spirit Portal which is barely guarded, instead of the Southern Spirit Portal where Unaloq has parked his entire army.
  • Asami comes up with the suggestion to use the old abandoned air temples to house the air bending refugees. Before that, the group had been trying to get the Earth Queen to fund their training, with obvious results.

Book One

• Big Damn Heroes: Raava stops Amon from killing Korra.
  Raava: "That's my bread-and-butter you're fucking with!"
• Call-Back: When Aang attempts to show Korra a memory from his past, he accidentally goes back to when he faced off against Oozai.
• Distracted by the Sexy: In Episode 5, upon discovering that Hiroshi Sato is working with Amon, Korra quickly tries to warn her friends... only to go completely brain-dead the moment she sees Asami in her swimsuit.
  Korra (blushing): "You look.. uh... so-uh... h-hot... and uh.. eheh heh... oh g-what was I talking about...?"
• Even Evil Has Standards: Needless to say, the Chi-Blocker Lieutenant is creeped out by Amon.
• Freudian Excuse: Parodied, Amon apparently became what he is because a girl blocked him on social media. Although his abusive father and Vaatu might have had something to do with it as well...
• Greater-Scope Villain: Vaatu, even more so than the original series as it's revealed that he was behind Amon's actions as well.
• Heteronormative Crusader: Tenzin, briefly in episode 7, invokes this just to butt heads with Korra.
• The Man Behind the Man: The Stinger reveals that Amon was being manipulated by Vaatu.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: After having been stuck with demeaning grunt work under General Iroh despite her skills, Kuvira loses her temper in a bout of drunken rage and destroys their only means of communication out of spite, preventing him from calling for backup.

Book Two

• Adaptation Deviation: The entire story shifts significantly, so as to close the many plot holes of cannon and provide better continuity. In fact, every major character gets a unique storyline that's totally original:
  • Korra spends months in the spirit world training with her past lives, and her absence in turn affects the lives of those around her. She also struggles with dealing with her irresponsible parents- from handling their arrests, to coming out of the closet to them.
  • Asami's personal issues are related to her feelings for Korra rather than her company failing. After Korra's disappearance Asami is unsure if the woman she loves is alright or even alive, and struggles with a personal sense of failure as she feels she should've done more to help Korra.
  • Mako is an "official unofficial volunteer police officer" (ie Lin Beifong sends him into danger when she wants something done that she doesn't want to take the blame for), also tagging along with Asami and playing a critical role in helping her face her demons.
  • Bolin struggles with his long-distance abusive relationship with Eska and his abusive work as an unpaid intern forced to pull double-duty interning and acting. It gets so bad he personally sabotages the premiere of the Nuntuk film, just so he won't be forced to come back for the sequels.
  • Tenzin struggles to balance work and his family, especially with his jealous, deadbeat siblings showing up and inviting them along on his family vacation.
• Adaptational Explanation: Instead of Korra making the phenomenally stupid decision to leave the spirit portals open, she's unable to close them. Turns out Wan was the one who closed them before, Raava wasn't paying attention, and with his memory gone Korra's left without guidance and unable to do a thing about it.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: As Korra’s parents are now irresponsible anarchists, her uncle Unaloq became a much larger presence and more reliable figure in her life. His betrayal hits her harder as a result, and it isn’t done out of malice or insanity but desperation- Vaatu has been tormenting him since he was five and promised to leave Unaloq alone if he helps him take over the world. Even so, Unaloq offers critical help during the final battle with some timely advice.
• Adults Are Useless: Pre-series, Aang was one of these to Tenzin. Rather than struggling to follow in his father’s footsteps, Tenzin is trying hard to be the responsible adult that his father failed to be- and many of his personal family issues stem from having to grow up too fast to compensate for Aang’s failures as a father.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Whenever Raava temporarily fused with Wan to swap out his elemental powers, her entering him is played like she's "entering him."
• Fiction 500: Asami's company got contracted by general Iroh after he was impressed by the weapons he saw in season 1, and she's made bank as a military contractor.
• Instant Expert: Notably averted when it comes to Korra's spirit-bending- Unaloq specifically taught her a handful of basic techniques that would only take a few hours to learn.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: A variant with Wan- he's long dead, but he does become a source of wisdom and advice for Korra once he's able to talk to her. Then in the season finale the Avatar Cycle is shattered, and their ability to communicate is lost forever.
• Open-Minded Parent: In Episode 15, Korra comes out of the closet... and her parents are completely supportive of her (they admit they had their suspicions due to her crushing on Azula when she was 8), with her father vowing to find proper-fitting hunting armor for her eventual lover while her mother invites her to her next hunter meeting to meet some nice women. They even warm up to Asami surprisingly quickly.

  Korra: "But... why would you accept it so easily?"
  Senna: "Because we're halfway decent people who love our duaghter!"

• Spared by the Adaptation: Vaatu survives his defeat at the hands of Korra, albeit now stuck in the form of a cat.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Mako claims that after three days in prison, he no longer remembers Bolin. Season 3 implies it may be Obfuscating Stupidity or genuine mental illness.

Book Three

• Bloodier and Gorier: While Book 1 had it's moments, Book 3 gets more graphic during Episode 18, with it blatantly being shown that Zaheer, Ghazan, and Ming-Hua brutally murdered the guards upon escaping.
• Bullying a Dragon: The Earth Queen attempts to threaten Korra into submitting to her when she tries to free the Airbenders. Naturally, Korra doesn't budge.
• Comically Missing the Point: The only thing Mako and Bolin's family gets out of Mako's poignant quote about the follies of racism is that Mako can read- as this makes him "a smart person in this bloodline".
• Deadpan Snarker: Korra's response to the Earth Queen claiming she's a God.
  Korra: Killed a God last year, not impressed.
• Dissonant Serenity: The Earth Queen is an unusual variant- she's completely nonchalant while talking about her own horrific plans to torture Korra and brainwash the next Avatar.
• Engineered Public Confession: Instead of simply killing the Earth Queen, Zaheer uses this tactic to spark a revolution in the Earth Kingdom.
• Everyone Has Standards: Zaheer has great contempt for Hiroshi Sato, Amon, and the Earth Queen. He feels Korra needs to die- and was willing to kill her as a child- but he does plan to make it quick.
• Expy: The Earth Queen and her Beleaguered Assistant Gan are Yzma and Kronk.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: The Earth Queen is even worse than cannon- she literally considers her will to be divine, makes no illusions that she sees her subjects as her slaves, and plans to torture Korra and her friends for their acts of defiance. Even when faced with the consequences of her actions, she still plans to hole up in her palace and wait out the coming revolution with her army.
• Hidden Depths: Despite being originally characterized as The Ditz and his social inadequacy propelling much of season 1 and 2's plot, Mako has apparently read about previous avatars well enough to quote one of them at his Racist Grandma.
• Honor-Related Abuse: Mako and Bolin's paternal family beat up Bolin for the "sins" of his father having gone to Republic City and married a woman from the fire nation.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: On top of not being unable to possess anyone without their consent, Vaatu has ended up becoming Kuvira's pet.
• Racist Grandma: Bolin and Mako's Earth Kingdom family all hate their father San for moving to Republic City and marrying a Fire Nation woman. For years they refused to see him, despite his many letters, pictures, and pleas to make amends. Upon learning that San is dead, their grandmother soon says that this wouldn't have happened if he'd been content and stayed home "with his family" (ignoring that Bolin, Mako, and their mother were San's family). And she assumes a firebender killed him and his wife- it was a waterbender.
• Refusal of the Call: Tenzin is absolutely desperate to avoid having to train the new airbenders- and increasingly frustrated when they prove to be eager students happy to learn and leave their old lives behind.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: After his ultimate defeat at the hands of Korra, Vaatu is left stuck in the form of a cat
• Something We Forgot: Mako and Bolin got left behind in Ba Sing Se for the airbender rescue.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Lin, when taking the group to see her sister.
• Waxing Lyrical: Zaheer gets a good one:
  Earth Queen: You will regret this! I am the Earth Queen! I am the GOD of this country!
  Zaheer: Let's see how a god deals with nonbelievers.
• You Are Number 6: Bolin and Mako's family names their kids after their birth order- their cousin is named "Two," and their father was named "San," presumably after the Chinese word for three.

Road to Lotus

• Ungrateful Townsfolk: Despite Ming-Hua saving her village from bandits, the villagers avoid her soon after due to her brutal methods.