- ♪ James told Zoran to make his own show ♪
♫ But all of his ideas were a tragic mess ♫
♪ He was staring down the barrel of a huge crossbow ♪
♫ When the lil' shit appeared with a magic chest ♫
♪ DVDs of horror classics with a special audio track ♪
♫ The slasher's super secret thoughts ♫
♫ Much to Zoran's shock... ♫
Zoran: They Talk!
They Talk! is a Gag Dub series featured on the Dead Meat YouTube channel, hosted by James A. Janisse's editor, Zoran R. Gvojic. The series itself has the Dead Meat crew adding their voices to the silent horror movie slashers, often putting a new twist on the pre-existing stories.
Episodes
The series can be watched here
.
They Talk! contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Coatface's drain cleaner murder becomes the result of her missing her grab at a can of Coke and pouring the Draino down her victim's beer bong before she could fix her mistake.
- Actor Allusion:
- In Friday The 13th Part 3, Jason talks about "some Goonie kid named Tommy” as a nod to Corey Feldman, who played Tommy Jarvis in the Friday series as well as “Mouth” in The Goonies.
- Scream:
- Ghostface namedrops a ton of movies as reasons to target his victims, with Rotten Tomatoes stated as his employers. Adam Sandler is also called out as a source of bad movies. The list is as follows:
Drew Barrymore / Maureen: Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Freddy Got Fingered, Doppelgänger, Blended.
Neve Campbell / Sydney: 54, Drowning Mona, The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, Rotten Things, Three to Tango.
Henry Winkler / Arthur Himbry: Little Nicky, Sandy Wexler, Click. Ghostface also mentions Barry to complement him as he dies.
Rose McGowan / Tatum Riley: Charmed (1998), Doom, Monkeybone, Ready to Rumble, Jawbreaker.
Skeet Ulrich / Billy Loomis: When seeing him from the back, Ghostface mistakes him for Johnny Depp and warns him about his work in Jack and Jill. When Ghostface actually recognizes him, he calls out Touch (1997), Armored, Chill Factor, and Austin Found. When Skeet survives the initial attack, Ghostface calls him out for “coming back like a second season of Jericho" and calls him Jugheadnote .
Jamie Kennedy / Randy Meeks: Malibu's Most Wanted, Son of the Mask, Dr. Dolittle 2, Farce of the Penguins, Larry the Cable Guy's Christmas Spectacular, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, and Tremors.
“Kevin Smith”: Yoga Hosers, Tusk. When Ghostface realizes he accidently killed W. Earl Brown, he sadly praises him for Deadwood.
David Arquette / Dewey Riley: Airheads, Ready to Rumble. - Predator:
- The voices the Predator uses for his mimicry are drawn from Arnold Schwarzenegger's movies, including Kindergarten Cop and Jingle All the Way.
- When the Predator first confronts Arnold, the former starts rapid-firing references to the latter's other movies, such as calling Arnold a "choir boy" and a "party pooper", two insults Arnold used in End of Days and Kindergarten Cop, respectively, calling Arnold out for "terminating his buzz," and asking whether Arnold is pregnant.
- Happy Death Day: Babyface’s “obscure reference” when she calls Tree “Tater-Tot” is based on Jessica Rothe's role as Andie in Tater Tot & Patton.
- Halloween:
- The John Carpenter radio station calls out Dark Star, John's first feature film.
- Fittingly for a video about taking a character played by Jamie Lee Curtis to prom, there are a few nods to Prom Night (1980). Michael's "If she's not home by midnight, she won't be coming home" quote is the film's Tag Line, and his Imagine Spot of him and Laurie dancing together is taken directly from the film.
- Trick R' Treat: Quite a few, and all of them related to Brian Cox's previous work.
- Sam asks him about his role in Succession, his hand refers to him as "The Super Troopers guy", and the narrator calls him "the original Lecter" at various points.
- One of Sam's threats to Kreeg is that the old man will be taken out "like Wolvie in X2," which starred Cox as Stryker.
- As Kreeg tries to leave his house, the episode has some Fun with Subtitles captioning some of his meaningless noises as "Daphne's dad whimpering" and "Bourne to scream".
- Friday The 13th The Final Chapter continues the trend of nodding at Corey Feldman's other roles from the previous episode.
- Jason calling Corey Feldman “Pine Tree” is a joke about the kid’s role in Mork & Mindy, with Corey’s character in that show attending the “Pine Tree Day Care Center.”
- Continuing the Corey Feldman Goonies reference from the previous Friday The 13th episode, Tommy demands Jason do "the Truffle Shuffle" using audio from the movie (a reference Jason recognizes and admonishes him for), and Jason quotes Sloth’s “Hey You Guys” as Tommy kills him.
- Urban Legend:
- Coatface puts Sorority Boys and Smallville season collections in Parker's microwave. Michael Rosenbaum, who played Parker, had prominent roles in both.
- Michelle buys a Good Guy doll (that turns out to be Chucky) from the gas station attendant. Both are played by Brad Dourif.
- Adaptational Heroism:
- In a certain sense. They're still slasher villains, but additions to their personalities in the dub include Jason trying to score a date with Chris instead of killing her, Ghostface, Babyface, and Coatface being Punch Clock Villains, The Jungle Hunter having a Blue-and-Orange Morality with his goal to have a good party and kill any party poopers, and "the little shit" stopping Zoran from killing himself in the title sequence.
- Episodes with an Evil All Along character drop the twist in favour of making the killers their own characters. Billy Loomis / Skeet Ulrich in Scream (1996), Lori in Happy Death Day, and Brenda in Urban Legend all become innocent bystanders as a result.
- At the end of Urban Legend, Michelle ends up picking up Chucky, who makes no visible attempt to harm her and even attempts to save her life by warning her about Coatface.
- Adaptational Personality Change:
- Jason and Michael are both endearingly dorky slashers who are just looking to score, Jason wants to finally get laid while Michael is desperate for a prom date. Also, Michael eating a dog once has been Flanderized into canines being his Trademark Favorite Food, even as a kid.
- Babyface is a student in killing related academia, and is only killing so she can pass her courses.
- Ghostface is an assassin hired by Rotten Tomatoes to kill actors who've been in bad movies.
- The Jungle Hunter is a total party animal who's set off to Earth for a bachelor party.
- Affably Evil: While Ghostface is pursuing his victims, he cheerfully spouts random trivia on the reception of the films their actors starred in.
- As Himself: In the Scream (1996) episode, Ghostface is hunting the actors themselves down for their career choices, referring to the characters as the people who played them. This extends to Neve's stunt double, who Ghostface has to ask to leave so Neve can come back.
- Companion Cube: Babyface's cupcake, her self-described "only friend" who she confides in during later time loops as she suffers from Sanity Slippage. In the final loop, Babyface ends up eating the cupcake.
- Content Warnings: Parodied with the Happy Death Day episode, which starts by warning the viewer about the upcoming Hurricane of Puns.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- Ghostface is targeting characters for being played by actors who were in poorly received movies. To be fair, he's being hired for this, but his attitude implies he agrees with his employers.
- Kermit the Frog calls the cops on Chris for interrupting him while he is singing a parody of "Rainbow Connection".
- Driven to Suicide: Babyface's falling ambush on Tree is recontextualized as the killer attempting to take her own life when faced with potentially getting kicked out of school and just happening to find herself next to her target.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Coatface may be a murderer, but she vocally refuses to be microwave a dog evil, instead destroying DVDs of media Parker's actor starred in. Accidently killing a rodent puts her into a depressive state for a few scenes.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: The Happy Death Day episode uses this as expected, but with a twist: Babyface is the one trapped in the time loop.
- Inertial Impalement: Chili's death in Friday the 13th Part III is recontextualized as Jason picking up the poker sitting in the grate because someone left it there and Chili runs right onto it.
- Medium Awareness: Ghostface exploits the fact that he's in a movie on several occasions by asking the editor to put him in advantageous situations. He also lampshades the nonsensical Offscreen Teleportation in one scene by asking Neve to not look down the road and see him running away.
- Offscreen Teleportation: An often Parodied Trope.
- In Scream, Ghostface Lampshades the nonsensical nature of the trope by having Ghostface ask Neve not to look down the street to see him running away.
- In Friday The 13th, Halloween, and Urban Legend, teleportation becomes an actual power exploited by the killers. In the case of Jason and Michael, the trope is poked fun at by having the teleportation occur onscreen in a puff of smoke, with Jason even using a magic wand.
- Parody Assistance: Danielle Harris, who played Tosh in Urban Legend, did her character's lines in the episode parodying the film.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: A plot point for the Happy Death Day episode, where Babyface is trying to come up with good post-kill puns for Professor Krueger's "Pun-damentals" class.
- Punch-Clock Villain:
- Ghostface is an assassin working for Rotten Tomatoes who kills actors with low Fresh ratings, and in the video for the second movie is a film studies professor.
- Babyface is a student in Krueger's "Pun-damentals" class. Unlike the source material, Babyface has nothing personal against Tree, they just want a good grade.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Being a parody of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Sam and the narrator spend most of the Trick 'r Treat episode rhyming.
- Running Gag:
- Ghostface rattling off on movies starring actors from Scream (1996).
- Babyface and her puns.
- "Adorable Giggle" (Babyface giggles a lot, and the episode has a lot of Fun with Subtitles appropriately describing each giggle).
- Sanity Slippage: Babyface goes a bit loopy (no pun intended) during the time loop, with the final instance of the loop resulting in her eating her cupcake, spouting a massive Hurricane of Puns ending in a Precision F-Strike, and ending the episode in a straitjacket.
- Self-Deprecation: Thanks to some Adaptational Context Change, Sydney / Neve Campbell ends up taking some potshots at some Dead Meat series.Ghostface: Well how 'bout our new show, They Talk? It's got more meta references than a Deadpool speech!"Neve: That's so unoriginal, I'm disappointed in you.Ghostface: Dammit, Zoran! I knew it was a hard sell.
- Stealth Prequel: The Urban Legend video is one to the Happy Death Day episode, the ending revealing the killer to be Babyface as well as the origin of the Pun-Damentals course.
- Take That!:
- Ghostface has to clarify that he doesn't kill actors from Adam Sandler movies, he kills people from bad movies. It just so happens that Sandler makes a lot of bad movies.
- During Danielle Harris' cameo in the Urban Legend video, she bemoans in-character how Jaime Lloyd's setup as Michael's successor in the Thorn Trilogy Halloween movies was squandered with nonsense like psychic powers or being forced by the Cult of Thorn to have his incest baby (the latter of which causes Coatface to puke in response to hearing about).
- Also in the Urban Legend video, Pinhead tells Coatface at the end not to get her hopes up about a career in sequels, as they won't bother reusing characters or following the story.
- In the Scream 2 video, during the film class debate on sequels, Zoran inserts himself to take some potshots at Jamie Kennedy's role in the later Tremors films, which Ghostface also calls out while killing Randy.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In the Happy Death Day episode, Tree actually sees Nick's murder happen and barely responds until Babyface directly targets her.Tree: Okay, I'm officially over this.
