Webcomic / The Chosen Four

"If a man yells loud enough, he can do anything!"

Straight from the mouth of a bee with big eyebrows comes a tale of courage, friendship, and the kind of silliness that will have you rolling on the floor! Will Giygas prevail or will the world's last hope band together and strike this intergalactic foe down? It all rests...upon the Chosen Four!

The Chosen Four is a fancomic based on the Nintendo video game EarthBound. It is posted at Starmen.net by Darrow and is currently over 900 pages. The comic can be found and read here or on Darrow's DeviantArt page here. Also, the forum thread where the comic is originally posted by the author is quite entertaining in its own right.

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This series contains examples of:

• Adaptational Badass: The Photoman, who is able to toy around with Poo, and invokes enough fear in Ness that a hallucination of him is able to order the group around. Played for Laughs, of course.
  • Adaptational Villainy: He acts much more malevolent than the game he appears in.
  • Master Barf is, in the original game, a relatively easy miniboss fought in Deep Darkness. Here, his nature as a Blob Monster makes him nigh-immortal, and Poo arriving to obliterate him with PK Starstorm is treated more as a much-needed Big Damn Heroes moment than just a coup de grâce.
• Adaptation Expansion: Adds extra bits of exposition to the Chosen Four about Giygas' past here and there. It also added the return of Ninten and his friends.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Subverted by Ness, who works up the courage after a while, but he then stutters and Paula loudly interrupts him and plays it straight.
• And I Must Scream: Ninten has been trapped in the Mani Mani statue's illusions for an unknown amount of time, and resorts to a Heroic Sacrifice to escape, although Word of God states he may instead return home.
• Anti-Villain: Shrooom!, a dorky Shrinking Violet. He even pulls a Heel–Face Turn when he's defeated, and is left alive as a result.
  • Thunder and Storm. They only wanted to make people laugh, a desire that was twisted and warped by Giygas. They're also left alive, albeit heavily injured.
• Arc Words: "If a man yells loud enough, he can do anything!"
  • Parodied later with, "If a man dances hard enough, he can disco anywhere!"
• Art Evolution: This◊ is what it used to look like. This◊ is what it looks like now.
• Ascended Extra: The Exit Mouse item is treated as a gag character that pops up now and then.
• Badass Adorable: Paula, naturally. When she's not sporting fangs, anyway.
• Badass Normal: Jeff, the only one of the Chosen Four who doesn't have PSI. He makes up for it by being a Gadgeteer Genius.
• Bait-and-Switch: When the four defeat all of the Starman Supers attacking them, a present drops just in time for a cliffhanger. When the next comic finally came out, it turned out to be...a Super Bomb.
• Battle Aura: Ness sometimes gets one of these. At least once, he triggers it just to scare monkeys. No, seriously.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't take Ness's hat. Or hurt Paula.
  • Poo doesn't take too kindly◊ to certain people having the audacity to annoy Ness to no end. And definitely not to enemies defiling his ancient culture.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Paula. Learned the hard way by Pokey and the Jerkass delivery man in Threed, among others (including, of course, Giygas' minions).
  • Ness, too, especially given that he has access to one of the most powerful PSI moves in the series. If somebody is capable of vaporizing the Kraken, it's generally a bad idea to go poking his Berserk Buttons.
  • As well as Poo (see Berserk Button).
• Bishie Sparkle: Venus. A lighting effect, or maybe she's just that good.
  • Gorgeous later shows off some of those sparkles. Lucky tells the heroes he got them from Venus.
• Blood Knight: Ness sometimes gets a little too excited about fighting enemies.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Thunder and Storm.
• Breaking Speech: How Jeff defeats Smilin' Sam, which is played for laughs.
  • Pretty much everything that happens at the end of the Moonside arc, and it's not played for laughs. At all.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Heck, there's practically no fourth wall! One of the funniest examples of this is when Paula steals a baby picture of Ness from his second Your Sanctuary.
  Ness: With the melody recorded I guess we should move on, then! It's a good thing the inner images only appear to me, though, otherwise... Hey! You're not supposed to see this! How did you even do that??
  Paula: Why bother worrying about logic at this point of the story? Help me carry this home so I can hang it in my room!
  • Pages 405◊ and 406◊ are full of this.
• Brick Joke: During the fight with the Trillionage Sprout, the senile boss calls Ness "Billy". We later find out Trillionage Sprout was actually mistaking Ness for Shroom!, whom he had a close father-son relationship with.
• The Cameo: Link seems to think of Ganondorf when he hears the word "pig"◊
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: Zany and wild at first, though more plot driven as it went on. Then came the Moonside arc, which wasn't Played for Laughs at all, with a nightmarish preview of the Final Boss. It went back to comedy afterward, but didn't quite recover all of the old wackiness. It currently oscillates between funny (vs Thunder and Storm, Magic Cake, Scaraba Desert) and seriousness (vs the Plague Rat of Doom 1/2, vs the Guardian General, Stonehenge), then dips back into Nightmare Fuel (Poo's Mu meditation, vs the Kraken, vs Starman Deluxe).
• Chase Fight: Pages 236 to 241.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Paula to Ness. Especially when they meet Venus. Deconstructed when it results in bad blood and a lot of negative feelings between the pair after the Venus incident, though much of this turns out to be the result of the Plague Rat of Doom's Hate Plague on the group, and the pair takes the time to apologize to and make up with each other.
  Paula: Those are MY cheeks! Those cheeks belong to ME!
• Cloud Cuckoolander: A lot of people, but special mention goes to Tony and the Magic Cake lady.
• Color Failure: Carpainter loses all his color (except his red blood) after being hit with PSI Rockin' beta.
  • Reggie loses his color after being tied to the crows nest for the entire fight against the Kraken.
• Cooldown Hug: Ness gets lost in Dungeon Man and grows frustrated and angry to the point of he is bursting with psychic energy and he scares minions away with only glaring at them. Then his friends find him, Paula hugs him... and he suddenly feels completely cheered up. He even forgets what he was upset about.
  • Word of God confirmed that is a hint of Giygas is trying influence him by fueling his negative emotions, but his friends are keeping him sane.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: A benign example, as it came after Defeat Means Friendship, but Frank without his Cool Shades is... not a pleasant sight.
• Crutch Character: Invoked by Paula's father, who claims to be of too high a level to keep things dramatic.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Once the whole team is brought back, the battle with the Plague Rat becomes this.
  • On the other end of the stick, Starman Deluxe dishes out a pretty nightmarish one until Jeff uses the Neutralizer.
  • Turned around again with the Electro Specter. As Poo gets the Diadem of Kings and Paula talks to him, Ness and Jeff beat him offscreen.
• Cuteness Proximity: Paula in general. However, it still wasn't strong enough to stop her from level grinding on Foppies.
• Dance Battler: Captain Strong, in the literal sense.
• Deadpan Snarker: Everyone at some point, but Jeff has this role most of the time.
• Defeat Means Friendship: The aftermath of Frank vs Ness.
• Down the Drain: As in the game, the group has to go through a sewer level to get to the fifth Sanctuary. Ness is not amused.
  Ness: ...You're kidding. Really? I had to go through all of that and THIS is what I get? A sewer level?! Sewer levels are the worst! We should have just ignored the call!
• The Dreaded: Ness fears the Photoman, which is Played for Laughs. However, the Photoman is the most powerful being in the comic, as per Rule of Funny.
• Dungeon Bypass: Jeff and his Bubble Monkey do this in the maze by leaping over the rock barriers.
• Dynamic Entry: The Photographer.
• Enemy Within: Word of God says that Ness's outbursts are the result of Giygas influencing him, which will eventually lead to Ness's Nightmare...
• Everything Trying to Kill You: A non-video game (sorta) example, but it's still Earthbound. Everything from the crows to the road signs might be an enemy. In fact, several enemies and bosses are harmless at first, with the Happy-Happy cult members helping Ness up after he lands in the village from a Territorial Oak explosion, or the Trillonage Sprout mistaking Ness for Billy. Unfortunately, as soon as Ness tells them who he is, they immediately turn hostile.
• Expy: The comic justifies the similarities between EarthBound's Ness, Paula, and Jeff and EarthBound Beginnings' Ninten, Ana, and Loid by having Giygas' mind so twisted and distorted, he mistakes the former three for the latter and takes his hatred of Ninten out on Ness.
  • Teddy is pretty much Kamina, complete with motivational speaking, Hot-Blooded epic manliness (and a side of Large Ham), and temporarily badassing himself back to life to help our heroes. He even has the epic sunglasses.
• Eye Scream: Part and parcel of Poo's meditation on Mu.
  • For added Nightmare Fuel and Squick, the spirit of the ancestors rips out Poo's eyes with his own disembodied arm.
• Fan Web Comics.
• Fatal Family Photo: Parodied. Paula's stuffed teddy bear regrets he did not even get to show off a photo of his kids before dying.
• Faux Horrific: The ghosts in the tunnel scare our heroes and the Runaway Five with ADVANCED CALCULUS and a COPY OF SUPERMAN 64! AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
• Felony Misdemeanor: A mini-UFO in #72 successfully strikes Ness with a ray... giving him a cold.
• Final Boss Preview: One appears in Moonside. For those familiar with Earthbound, you know by now what we're dealing with.
  • A second one also shows up during the second Coffee Break segment.
• For Science!: Apple Kid's excuse for having a nuclear-powered doomsday microwave.
• Freudian Excuse: The Plague Rat of Doom tries to pull this while begging for his life. His excuse for being evil is someone once told him that he looks like a peanut. No one is convinced.
• Funny Background Event: The entire Electro Specter battle is relegated to the background and just off-screen. The action is in Poo and Paula talking about the Diadem of Kings, with the boss's corpse falling next to Paula.
• Gorn: Poo's Mu training. Oh dear god, Poo's Mu training.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Again, Poo's Mu training.
• Giant Mook: The Happy Happy cultists have a VERY big one. Not that he made a difference.
• Hate Plague: Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo go through this under Fourside Sewers, courtesy of the Plague Rat of Doom.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Played with when Paula throws her teddy bear to divert Mondo Mole's attack; she'd been manipulating him off-panel to give it the illusion of sentience, so this part was played out as the bear sacrificing his "life" for hers.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Monotoli describes Pokey like "such a nice boy, but a bit troubled". Seriously. It is not a wonder Pokey was able to exploit him.
  • Electra the maid as well, thinking Pokey to "be harsh at times, but is a kind, caring soul." Just because he gave her a potato sack and called it an "exotic dress."
• Hot-Blooded: Ness, while fighting the Dept. Store Spook. Also see the page quote.
  • Ness invoked this trope to achieve the PK Rockin' attack.
• Ignored Enemy: The Worthless Protoplasm was too worthless for Jeff to even notice.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: After multiple fakeouts, the actual introduction of the Sword of Kings.
• Implacable Man: The Guardian General, who shrugs off the heroes' attacks and keeps coming. It takes a pyramid collapsing on top of him to finally stop him, and even then he keeps trying to crawl after Ness & company until he completely falls apart.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: All over the place.
• Indy Escape: The Guardian General, again. At one point, he curls up into a ball and rolls after our heroes.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Clumsy Robot. So much. His arms can't hold the weight of his armaments and are constantly snapping off of him. His idea of repair is to repeatedly adhere them back onto his body with the aid of Mr. Saturn band aids. They are a temporary solution at best.
  • Worthless Protoplasm. It's all there in the name.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: The Plague Rat Of Doom, Played for Laughs.
• Kill It with Fire: Paula, being the only person who can use PSI Fire, does this a lot.
• Kill It with Ice: Both Paula (when she's not killing things with fire) and Poo.
• Large Ham: Out of ALL characters and enemies, the Worthless Protoplasm is one. Not that it makes him any less worthless, but still...
  Worthless Protoplasm: “Once upon a time, a lone worthless protoplasm looked upon his very soul and found what it means to become a master of supreme POWER! Power unlike any the world has seen before! Oh, yes, you will feel the burning hot fury that flows through my system, like a brewing cup of coffee too bitter for even the evilest of evil entities to sip upon!
  Oh, may the furious nectar of life spring forth from this very body and pounce upon thee, rending body from soul! Never count your chickens before they’re hatched, otherwise said chicken will peck at your eyes, and this chicken has a beak that will show no mercy!
  Shake, shake in fear of my many forms of martial arts, including the legendary Sleeping Monkey, Contemplating Giraffe!"
  NEVER AGAIN SHALL I BE CALLED 'WORTHLESS'! PREPARE FOR A SPANKING MOST LEGENDARY!!
• Logic Bomb: Jeff decrees that since Smilin' Sam's existence is illogical, it is incapable of being scary.
• Love Bubbles: These appear when Paula kisses Ness.
  • They return when Tony calls Jeff.
    Jeff: Well, I should probably go before you flood this panel with bubbles.
• Madness Mantra: Well, it is Earthbound, so...
  Giygas: NESS NESS NESS NESS NESS
• Metagame: Jeff does this during his chapter in Winters, intentionally going out of his way to fight tougher enemies to increase his experience to equal Paula and Ness's when he meets up with them, and using the picnic lunches the Cave Boys drop to be able to fight more of them, leading to... well...
• Mindlink Mates: Ness and Paula's psychic powers let them know whenever the other is feeling a strong emotion, leading to awkwardness when another female character shows attention to Ness.
• Mind Screw: Moonside. Just... Moonside. Holy CRAP.
  • In fact, every enemy of significance has one. Played for laughs again. Shrooom!'s is the only one that isn't treated like a complete joke.
    • Subverted by the Plague Rat, whose attempt at invoking this only serves to show how unsympathetic he is.
• Mood Whiplash: Fourside is MADE of this. We go from the usual humorous plot development, to the minor Fanservice that is Venus, to a rather scary burst of Unstoppable Rage from the main character, to the freaking nightmare that is Moonside, to major revelations about Giygas, then crazy Hot-Blooded antics, and finally back to talking monkeys. Whew!
• Mushroom Samba: A mushroom monster in #66 puts Ness in a musical version by placing an actual mushroom on his head (utilizing a song from the original Mother soundtrack, no less). It continues for another page even when the mushroom was removed!
• Mythology Gag: The second time the above-mentioned Arc Words are said is when Ness first uses PSI Rockin'; the first "default" option for "Favorite Thing" in Mother 2 (which "Rockin'" replaced) is Kiai. Similarly, Ness remarks that the only way the pencil statue could be weirder is if it were an octopus.
  • Another of the "Don't Care" options for "Rockin'" is "Gifts". This gets a Take That! in the form of Ness wondering who would name an attack "Gifts".
• Nerves of Steel: Jeff had Nerves Of TITANIUM reinforced with Alloy-Z and Adamantium. They may be facing a frightening or hugely powerful enemy, his friends or his father may have been kidnapped... but even if he is visibly upset, you can see he forces himself to remain calm and focused in solving the situation at hand.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ness's little outburst at the top of the Monotoli building is what eventually causes the events of MOTHER3.
  • To be completely fair, Pokey had it coming.
  • Giegue basically says this trope to Ness and Jeff after they break the Mani Mani Statue keeping him from regressing into Giygas. You can guess what comes next.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: He can measure the universe!
• No Sense of Direction: Several characters note Ness is awful at following directions.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Poo comes to the realization that both he and the Guardian General are focused on protecting their masters to the exclusion of everything else, including self-preservation. It's that realization that opens the way for his later Character Development.
• Oh, Crap!: Ness's reaction to the effects of the Magic Cake.
  • Don't forget The Plague Rat of Doom's face when he's about to get hit by Ness after he maxes out his Guts stat◊.
• Only Sane Man: Poo often plays this role, with Not So Above It All moments related to his defensiveness of Ness and periodic service as The Comically Serious.
• Panty Thief: The octobot. Funnily enough, it steals Jeff's underwear instead of Paula's.
• Post-Kiss Catatonia: Ness gets this when Paula kisses his cheek.
• Pre Asskicking Oneliner: Plenty of them.
  Worthless Protoplasm: PREPARE FOR A SPANKING MOST LEGENDARY!!
  • This is, in fact, a subversion, since while he was throwing dramatic speeches and one-liners around and being so hammy as possible, Paula and Jeff were ignoring him completely. They did not even notice he was there.
• Pungeon Master: Mondo Mole.
• Puppy Love: Ness and Paula.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Carpainter's BlueBlue Rangers, who are really regular Happy-Happy cultists with gimmicks.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Pokey hands out a truly frightening example, made all the more frightening by the knowledge that he will win his twisted game. The Call-Forward just hammers it home.
  • Although Ness gives one straight back to him.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Crops up anywhere from Paula getting ticked off to the Guardian General while it's under Giygas's influence.
• Relaxo Vision: Used when Paula and the bears are beating up Mondo Mole. Inverted during a segment in Scaraba parodying the infamously crude marketing campaign for EarthBound in the U.S.
• Retirony: Parodied. Paula's stuffed teddy bear regrets he did not even have a line about being several days away from retirement before dying.
• Rocket Punch: One of the Threed enemies uses the grisly, disgusting version: he rips his own hand off his arm and throws it at Ness and Paula.
• Sanity Slippage: Giygas is undergoing one for the duration of the comic, as he appears fairly early in the story still in his original, humanoid form but over the course of the story literally cracks and falls apart into the familiar, incomprehensible Eldritch Abomination.
• Scary Shiny Glasses/Specs of Awesome: Jeff is prone to this.
• Sea Monster: The Kraken.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Reggie the mouse is ignored during boss battles, and Chicken shows up even less than Reggie.
  • Reggie disappeared completely while they were in Moonside, and showed up again the very page it was over.
• Shout-Out: Now with its own page.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Ness to Pokey◊—FINALLY—when the latter◊ gives◊ his◊ "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Monotoli's helicopter.
• Silly Simian: Lampshaded in the description of page 136:
  "How's Jeff going to maintain reader interest as a solo character?! Easy! Pick up a monkey that loves gum. Studies show that monkeys increase the chances of hilarity by 100%."
• Spell My Name With An S: Darrow plays with the various examples of this trope from the games in his comics. For example when jokes are made in the comic related to Jeff's EarthBound Beginnings counterpart are made, the name is spelled Lloyd. But when Jeff and Ness encounter an illusion of Teddy in Moonside, he spells the name Loid. Also, the name Giegue (the spelling from Earthbound Zero) is used to describe the physically and mentally intact version of the antagonist, while Giygas (the spelling from EarthBound) is used to describe him after his body and mind broke apart.
• Slasher Smile: Giegue right before he and Moonside turn into Giygas.
  • A TEDDY BEAR pulls this off to Reginald.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • Everdread has a bunch of bags stored in his house. All of them are labeled "Not Stolen".
  • He also gives Ness and Paula a wad of bills (following the game's plot) and he tells it is most certainly not stolen twice, out of nowhere.
  • The girl in the Twoson Theater greets Ness and Paula saying: "Hi! I am a stalker not at all!"
  • Shroom informs the heroes he is definitely not suspicious.
• Stalker with a Crush: Mr. Spoon. HE LOVES VENUS EVEN MORE THAN HE LOVES HIS BACON COLLECTION!!! HE'S TOTALLY NOT CREEPY!!!!
  • And Tony for Jeff. Poor, Poor Jeff.
• Stealth Pun: "I bet your one of those types that always wants to be number one. Well, I'll beat the number one out of you, and maybe even the number two while I'm at it!"
• Stock Ness Monster: Tessie, the creature that provides a lift for Jeff in Winters.
• Take That!: To Superman 64, see Faux Horrific above. Also handed out to one of the preset names for PK Rockin' (See Mythology Gag above) and EarthBound's infamous marketing campaign.
• Talking Animal: All the animals can talk, understanding them is another story.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Averted; Frank nearly trounces Ness, but takes the time to give a Badass Boast, complete with his backstory. While he's doing this, Ness beats up some of his goons for EXP, granting him another level and allowing him to fight Frank on more even grounds.
• Tears of Blood: The Mani Mani Statue, before Giygas emerges from it.
• That's No Moon: A variant. During the boat journey to Scaraba, a deafening rumble sounds as the captain and the kids are passing by an island. The captain then wonders if the sound might be coming from a nearby volcano. Then the Kraken emerges out of the sea and the captain stares at it, an Oh, Crap! expression on his face as he mutters "By the Goddess, that's no volcano".
• This Is Unforgivable!: Ness cannot forgive Pokey for insulting his family and friends. Paula cannot forgive an Octobot for stealing her diary AND reading a particularly embarassing entry, and Poo cannot forgive Pokey for writing an incredibly cruel hate message directed towards Ness on a billboard in Summers.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Ness succeeds in hitting Titanic Ant by throwing his bat clear across the room. Unfortunately, it doesn't miraculously return to his hand afterwards, and as Titanic Ant points out, he has more than enough power to keep Ness away from where it landed anyway.

• Transformation Is a Free Action: While Ness is trying to figure out how to use his psychic powers, Titanic Ant just stares bemusedly at him. When it becomes obvious that it's working, Titanic Ant continues staring, and laments that he can't seem to do anything but stare.
• Tranquil Fury: Let’s just say that one thing you should never, EVER try to do is put Dr. Andonuts or Tony in People Jars.
  Jeff: This will only take a moment.
• Unknown Rival: The Worthless Protoplasm considers Jeff to be his greatest enemy. Jeff doesn't even know he exists.
• Unstoppable Rage: Ness, after Paula is kidnapped.
• Unusual Weapon Mounting: The Clumsy Robot has a rocket (and bologna sandwich) launcher mounted in its butt.

• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Giygas. He's introduced telling Master Belch to outright kill Ness and friends, while his face is clearly cracking apart. And he only gets much much, much worse from there.
• Webcomic of the Game: For EarthBound/MOTHER 2.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Paula suddenly gains these when she meets Ness in the Monotoli building.
• You Are Already Dead: Subverted in a very (of course) funny way, doing a Fist of the North Star Shout-Out. Ness is lost inside Dungeon Man and getting angrier, more upset and more frustrated every second. A Gruff Goat tries to harass him, and he replies telling "No. YOU listen. You are already dead", suddenly looking right like Kenshiro. It is subverted because Ness had not actually done anything (yet), but the goat got so scared wondering if he was dead and he was now a ghost that he answered Ness' question.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Parodied. Paula's stuffed teddy bear regrets he not even got to yell "you shall not pass" while charging in heroically before committing Heroic Sacrifice.

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Ness, I have the feeling we're not fighting a completely stable enemy. Rather, we may be fighting fractions of a broken mind...

NESS NESS NESS NESS NESS NESS NESS NESS