The main character, "Dick Head".
It's the one game i've found in my dumpster long ago.
— The description of the first two videos
Sheriff Domestic is a series of YouTube videos chronicling the bizarre experiences of someone with a mysterious PlayStation game they found in a dumpster called "Sheriff Domestic."
The first video was uploaded on October 31, 2019.
The web series is an Affectionate Parody of the horror series Petscop, with plenty of in-jokes and references to old video games thrown in for comedy value. The story depicts Ed, a normal guy who found the titular game in a dumpster and decided to play it. The game follows several characters, but primarily two: Dick Head, the titular sheriff, on his mission to arrest several criminals (the replacement for the Pets) who are terrorizing Dave's City and the surrounding areas; and Pickle Chin, a hero who is sent to stop Dave and the Gun, who are out to kill said criminals, from rampaging across Dave's City. Meanwhile, the "Group" later takes over Ed's channel for themselves, and seem to have their own agenda...
As of February 2024, the series has twenty-four entries (three of which are not focused on Sheriff Domestic and are simply spin-off games in the same universe) and has a loyal following in the Petscop fanbase that even includes Petscop's original creator.
See also Household Felony, a similar Spiritual Successor that sticks to the horror vibe of the original.
Sheriff Domestic shows examples of the following tropes:
- Actionized Sequel: Or Actionized Spiritual Successor. The original Petscop was more of a slow horror series with focus on exploration and mystery, with no combat system to speak of. Sheriff Domestic has a Paper Mario-esque RPG battle system.
- Affectionate Parody: The series is a clear parody of Petscop, to the extent of looking like a Game Mod for Petscop itself.
- Animate Inanimate Object:
- Song, the sentient disc with a face, limbs, and wings.
- Gun, who is Dick Head's partner in crime. It's a gun with eyes.
- Another Side, Another Story: All of the different names in the "choose your name" menu are linked to different characters in the game, with some stories intersecting.
- April Fools' Day: Two videos were uploaded on the date: a "Retract Mode" recording of someone playing as a toilet, which is mostly just the toilet sitting in the one place for overnight 15 minutes as befitting an April fools joke, and a playthrough of Davemension's previous game The Awoglet How, which somehow managed to be even more stylistically sucky than Sheriff Domestic, but has actual content.
- Another one was uploaded for 2023, consisting of Someone who looks like the Guardian getting out of the toilet and exploring the landscape.
- Art Shift: Dick Head arresting Dave is portrayed using the first (and so far only) low-poly 3D cutscene in the game.
- Attract Mode: Just like the series that Sheriff Domestic is parodying, leaving the game alone on the title screen for long enough plays a recording of a past play session with the text "Retract Mode" flashing in the bottom left corner.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Like in Petscop, there are multiple antagonists, with each story having their own:
- In Ed's story (the real world), the "Group" (Expy for the Family) takes over Ed's channel and are after him for some reason.
- In Dick Head's story, the various criminals (the Expy of the Pets) are causing trouble around Middle Dave and Dave City, with Dick Head called upon to capture them.
- In Pickle Chin's story, Dave and the Gun are perpetrating a massacre of the criminals and corrupting Dick Head, and Pickle Chin is called upon to gather the three discs to get through the temple and stop them.
- Captain Obvious:
- Some of the loading screen tips are this:
- "Pro tip: You are playing this game with a controller."
- "Pro tip: Your partner is a partner."
- "Pro tip: being fast is required" after the player has passed a speedrun section where said tip could even be remotely useful.
- There's a sign that says you can move with the controller. After the player has already used said controller to go to and read the sign, too.
- Some of the loading screen tips are this:
- Cast of Expies: With the notable exception of Gun, Song, and the speaker in Episode 11, every character is an Expy of an actual Petscop character.
- Company Cross References: The loading screen for Toilet is an in-universe one for The Awoglet How, depicting the jungle from the beginning of the game.
- Cutting the Knot: In Sheriff Domestic 12, after spending a long time on a tedious puzzle, Song informs the player that they can simply fly over the door and into the next room.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Dick Head arrests Dave for... brushing his teeth with a gun.
- Donut Mess with a Cop: In the first video, after being dropped off, someone from the police station calls Dick Head, then the caller ends with saying he must continue eating donuts.
- Dungeon Bypass: Pickle Chin gets to skip some annoying puzzles by flying over closed doors with Song's fly ability.
- Evil Weapon: The Gun, who is found in an alley in Dave's City and proceeds to convince the player to "schüt" someone with them.
- Gainax Ending: To The Awoglet How: "THANK YOU FOR PLAYING THE AWOGLET! PRESS 'START' TO PLAY AWOGLET DANCE." Pressing Start treats you to 3 minutes of a poorly rendered 3D Awoglet spinning around to an extremely compressed version of "You Spin Me Round," then (if you don't choose to restart the dance) an end card reading "thanks you for play the agowglets .HOW" and "Keep an eye out for our next game Sheriff Domestic."
- Game Within a Game: One room that Ed finds himself in has an NES that plays Sega Genesis cartridges. One of the cartridges, Operation: Steal Disc 5, is essentially a top-down demake of the game.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: The game revolves around collecting discs (the answer to Petscop's pieces) with some areas even being blocked off until the player finds enough of them. Dick Head's part of the story involves capturing and "arresting" criminals in addition to this.
- Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: In Sheriff Domestic 2, Dick Head accidentally walks into a pit, then hovers over it for a few seconds before realizing they should be falling, and then falling.
- Homage Derailment: The series starts out loosely revisiting The Stations of the Canon: The zany exterior of the game is introduced, a strange event occurs where the music stops playing and an exit leads to a large empty field, and the player finds a long road with a house that won't open. Then everything goes off the rails.
- Lost Aesop: Where Petscop has a lesson about child neglect, Sheriff Domestic appears to set one up about gun violence and/or police brutality with the cutscene in Dave's City... and then completely forgets it, with arcs like the Pickle Chin subquest having nothing to do with guns. When guns do become relevant again, it's usually in a completely ridiculous context, like Dick Head making his gun go off by not pampering it well enough, or Dave brushing his teeth with a gun. This series being what it is, the effect was probably intended.
- No Fair Cheating: After the player starts using a GameShark, the game punishes him by making him play timed Minesweeper, which in one iteration has a mine on every single tile except two. It's ultimately for nothing, too--the game explicitly tells Ed he's wasted his time.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: In The Awoglet How: "You have entered the spacesip. You are safe now..." 10 seconds later, "Oh no. The space ship has malfunctioned."
- Overly Long Gag:
- Every time the main character picks up a disc in-game, the game plays a five-second jingle with the message "You got disk!" These discs are all over the place. The player gets tired of this very quickly and starts actively avoiding the discs.
- Exaggerated with the colored discs that Pickle Chin is tasked with finding in Sheriff Domestic 11. When he gets the blue disc, the game plays a jingle that lasts at least seventeen seconds, not including the cut the creator puts in for the audience's sake.
- The malfunctioning space ship in The Awoglet How violently rumbles for 12 minutes before it explodes. There is absolutely nothing of interest on it.
- The RPG encounters in Episode 14 take about a minute to complete each, and mostly consist of the player and enemy exchanging 10 blows until Random Number God decides who wins. Song has a "heal" ability, which slows this down even more - especially since it tends not to heal more HP than a single attack can take off.
- In Epsiode 15, the player trying and failing to assemble a burger, only to find out that the bun that comes last and looks like a top bun is supposed to be the bottom bun.
- The door in Present Flats, in Episode 19, takes one year to open, probably spoofing the similar door in the Newmaker Plane in Petscop that opens while Paul leaves the game on.
- Plot Coupon: The three colored discs- Blue, Green, and Red- are needed for Pickle Chin to access the back of the temple and get something to defeat Dave and the Gun.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- The game's Pro Tip has this reaction to the initial reveal of the equivalent to the Newmaker Plane- there is no Pro Tip in the loading screen.
- Similarly, Ed has this reaction at the end of Episode 6- after experiencing the Overly Long Gag of every disc having a three-to-four-second animation after collection despite being the equivalent to coins, upon learning a door would take 50 discs to open, he stops playing for the moment.
- Sensory Abuse: A twofer in Episode 16, with Lettuce calling Pickle Chin ("HELLO? IS MY MICROPH-"), shortly followed by Pickle Chin making pizza ("MAKE PIZZA. MAKE PIZZA. MAKE PIZZA. GOOD JOB.")
- Shout-Out:
- Pickle Chin's story is structured like a Paper Mario game, with not only a similar artstyle, but a similar battle system and partner system.
- The Gun frequently says he wants to "schüt" people.
- One of the loading screen Pro Tips says "the end is never the end is never the end is never."
- The Awoglet Dance of The Awoglet How plays "You Spin Me Round," but it's compressed to hell and back, so it's extremely hard to hear.
- The door-opening cutscenes are an homage to the ones from Resident Evil.
- Stylistic Suck: A lot of the game seems to be designed with this in mind, but one notable example in the series is when the player starts speaking in Episode 6, where the microphone is such poor quality and the game music is so loud that you can barely make out a single word he's saying.
- Title Scream: Sheriff Domestic has a monotone variant. The Awoglet How is a more traditional example.
- Tutorial Failure: A sign in the first room of the game tells you "You can move with the controller! Also, you can walk as well!"... but you have to walk into the sign first to read it.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: Happens several times throughout the series, where the game changes to isometric Frogger-like gameplay, one portion that includes very dull RPG combat, and a minigame involving placating Gun that plays like Nintendogs.
- Wham Shot:
- In Episode 12, Song and Pickle Chin find Dick Head's corpse in the Minesweeper room.
- The spin-off episode Songu-tchi features the return of Idiot Loser for the first time since Episode 12.
