Fifty Percent Grey is a 2001 animated short film (very short, 2:50) directed by Ruairi Robinson.
A soldier, in full combat gear, comes to consciousness in some strange featureless white room. Blood drips from him as he gets to his feet. A television on a cart rolls over, and the soldier presses Play on the attached VCR. The message on the TV screen tells him that he has died and gone to Heaven — which appears to consist of nothing but a TV playing video of flowers and green fields and such. The shocked soldier runs off, and gets some more surprises.
Tropes:
- Afterlife Antechamber: Where the soldier wakes up — maybe. He's greeted with a message telling him that he's dead, but there doesn't appear to be anywhere else for him to move on to.
- Ate His Gun: The second time the soldier tries to kill himself. He's already dead, so all that happens is that he has a big goopy hole in the back of his head.
- Dramatic Drop: The confused soldier drops his helmet when a TV on a stand comes rolling up to him.
- Driven to Suicide: The soldier tries this a couple of times, but shooting himself doesn't work, because he's already dead. All he's left with is a clean hole through his head from the first time, and a hole in the back of his head the second time, when he Ate His Gun.
- Fire and Brimstone Hell: When the third TV tells the soldier he's in Hell, it shows lava and volcanoes.
- Hell of a Heaven: Heaven is an endless grey plain, marked only by a fancy TV explaining where you are and why. Purgatory and Hell are exactly the same, except the TV is cheaper and the explanation is different.
- Nameless Narrative: There's only one character, who is never named.
- The Nothing After Death: Featured rather ironically. Heaven, purgatory and hell are all identical White Void Rooms, except that the TV explaining the situation is increasingly cheaper in the worse afterlives.
- Purgatory and Limbo: The Purgatory that the soldier wakes up in is the same white void room, but the TV shows footage of an industrial facility.
- Shoot the Television: The soldier's reaction when a third TV shows up and tells him that he's in Hell. It was his last bullet, not that it matters since he can't kill himself.
- White Void Room: The soldier wakes up in a completely featureless white room, with nothing in it other than a TV set on a cart.
