The Boys: Diabolical is an Animated Anthology spin-off of the Prime Video series The Boys (2019), showcasing eight animated short films set in the show's universe. It premiered on March 4, 2022 and is produced by Titmouse.
Executive produced by Eric Kripke, Diabolical features stories by Seth Rogen, Andy Samberg, Aisha Tyler, Justin Roiland and Awkwafina, and feature the voice talents of Jason Isaacs, Don Cheadle, Kieran Culkin, Kenan Thompson, Christian Slater, Ilana Glazer, Michael Cera and John DiMaggio. They also feature cast members from the series including Antony Starr, Giancarlo Esposito, Chace Crawford, Elisabeth Shue and Simon Pegg.
According
to Word of God, only "Nubian vs. Nubian", "John and Sun-Hee", and "One Plus One Equals Two" are canon to the TV series.
Now has a Character Page.
The Boys: Diabolical contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: The premise of "An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents" is a group of Supe youths killing the parents who had mistreated and rejected them because they didn't have "big ticket" superpowers. Considering what awful pieces of work the parents are established as, it's hard not to side with the Supes.
- Adaptational Backstory Change: Nubia was not killed and brought back to life with Compound V, she and Groundhawk were not kidnapped by John Godolkin and they make no mention of the G-Men.
- Adaptational Context Change: While it was Black Noir who ended being the last straw in Homelander's corruption in the comics as well, there it was in a much more cruel and elaborated form: Black Noir was a clone of Homelander who commited several heinous crimes, recorded it and gaslighted the actual Homelander into beliving he did it, in "One Plus One Equals Two" he does that out of pragmatism in a much more simple and mundane form.
- Adaptational Intelligence: Unlike the comics, Groundhawk can say a lot more than "Gonna".
- Adaptational Villainy: In the comics, Super Duper is a team of young, mentally impaired heroes with useless and embarrassing powers. They're also the most genuinely nice and innocent characters in the whole comic who earnestly try to be heroes. Their animated counterparts in Episode 2 are vengeful kids who brutally murder their abusive parents.
- All Just a Dream: The majority of "Boyd in 3D" is just a hallucination Boyd had after being mutilated by Envision, just before his head explodes.
- Alternate Continuity: "I'm Your Pusher", written by Garth Ennis, is set in the continuity of the comic, with Simon Pegg voicing the original version of Hughie. Eric Kripke has stated that only the last three episodes are canon to the TV series.
- Animesque: "BFFs" and "Nubian vs Nubian".
- Art Shift: As an anthology, each episode has their own art style and a different animation studio attached to each.
- Asshole Victim:
- The Vought tactical team in "Laser Baby’s Day Out" who run their van into a street vendor to catch Laser Baby and then promptly get lasered to death.
- The parents of the young heroes deserved their deaths for how they abused their children.
- The Great Wide Wonder and Ironcast in "I'm Your Pusher" are both killed horribly when Wonder overdoses on drugs and flies through Ironcast before colliding with a wall.
- According to Butcher, Wonder took two women high up in the sky for a "flying fuck", froze them to death from the high altitude as part of his fetish, and left them in space to cover his tracks.
- Ironcast, on the other hand, recreationally drank the blood of terminally ill children and enjoyed it so much that it gave him an erection. According to Butcher, he enjoyed drinking their blood because he could "taste the despair".
- Deconstructed in "John and Sun-Hee". The Vought mercenaries and tactical team are obviously not meant to be sympathetic, seeing as they're willing to kill an elderly couple, one of which is terminally ill. John even lampshades this when Sun-Hee is horrified about her powers killing them, stating that if Sun-Hee hadn't fought back, they would be dead. Sun-Hee still thinks it wasn't okay and is traumatized by what Compound V has turned her into.
- A Boy and His X: "BFFs" is about a girl and her talking piece of poop.
- Bad People Abuse Animals:
- In Episode 2, Booby-Face's mom seems like the main exception to the Supes' Abusive Parents at first, as she's shown running toy drives and donations. Then Flashback reveals in the span of five seconds that she might be the worst parent they've encountered, having dissected Booby-Face's puppies right in front of him. They do not hesitate to kill her shortly after that.
- In Episode 7, while a bit more downplayed than the previous entry due to the creature's more beastly nature, the first thing the mutated cancer does after escaping Sun-hee's body is trap and violently consume forest animals one by one, from squirrels to rabbits to raccoons to deer to bears.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Maya wanted to prevent her parents' divorce, she succeeds with Groundhawk's help, but she has to witness him being beaten to a bloody pulp by them and endure hearing their "reignited passion" all night.
- In "John and Sun-Hee" the main character steals some V to save his terminally ill wife. It does, but it also mutates the cancer inside of her allowing it to gain an animal-like intelligence and an all consuming hunger. After his wife adamantly refuses to just let the thing wander and destroy, he finally realizes that it doesn't matter if his wife is cured if she can't live with what it took to get that cure.
- Bloody Hilarious: Much like the original comics and TV show, there is a lot of over-the-top bloodshed, a good chunk of it played for
insanely dark laughs. - Broad Strokes: In the words of showrunner Simon Racioppa, most of the shorts are non-canon, but it's not that far off from things that could actually happen.Racioppa: They're almost all alternate-reality versions of things that could happen in the world. Like Justin Roiland's episode, probably you're not gonna see a character with a speaker for a head in the actual The Boys series.
- Butt-Monkey: Groundhawk in "Nubian vs Nubian". Not only does he have a stupid and borderline useless power, but his living condition is deplorable and his physique has seen better days. He also gets brutally beaten up by Nubia and Nubian Prince after agreeing to help Maya with her parents' marriage. The fact that the episode starts with Terror humping a plushie of him is the cherry on top.
- The Deep, as usual. Losing to a girl with the power to control poop and have that be called a better power than his is certainly a new low for him. The fact that this happens to him on a sewer, surrounded by black water, must add salt to the wound.
- Cat Girl: Cherry becomes a humanoid feline woman upon using the Envision cream in "Boyd in 3D."
- Couch Gag: The title sequence for every short has Terror doing something different (e.g.: peeing on a bullseye, licking his scrotum, humping a doll of Groundhawk, etc.)
- Crapsack World: Every episode shows in different ways how the existence of superpowers, superheroes and Vought makes the world worse than one where they don’t exist.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: It's The Boys, what other sort of death is there?
- Episode 1: Laser Baby's heat vision slices, dices, and punches through all of the Vought goons sent to assassinate her.
- Episode 2: Hoo boy...
- Human Tongue constricts the bodies of her parents until their heads burst open like grapes.
- Aqua Agua slips into his parents jacuzzi while they're having sex, which distracts them long enough for Fang to drop a live flatscreen into the jacuzzi to electrocute them, leaving both parents charred husks.
- Boom Box breaks into his parents' house and turns himself up to high volume, causing his parents' eardrums to rupture and bleed out.
- Kingdom douses his fathers with blood and turns himself into a shark to ravage them.
- Picante Balls gives his father a forced teabagging with his superheated testicles.
- The Narrator jams a spoon through his father's chin, then (offscreen) rips off his face and wears it as his own.
- Finally, all of the protagonists save for Ghost are lasered to death by Homelander.
- Episode 3: The Great Wide Wonder, high out of his mind, accidentally punches his way through Ironcast, shattering his own arm and compounding his own spine in the process, before smashing into a wall. Ironcast also qualifies on account of the giant hole Wonder blew through his stomach.
- Cruel Twist Ending: Most of the events in "Boyd in 3D", including Boyd's reconciliation with Cherry, turn out to be a drug-induced hallucination Boyd had after the Vought doctors accidentally overdosed him on Envision. Then his head explodes.
- Darker and Edgier: The first six shorts are full of Bloody Hilarious Black Comedy that the original series was known for. The final two, "John and Sun-Hee" and "One Plus One Equals Two" are a story of an old man trying desperately to save his dying wife and an Origins Episode for Homelander respectively.
- Death Seeker: In episode 2: Ghost admits to her dad that she wants to die because of the hell her power, constant uncontrollable intangibility, puts her through, but it won't even let her do that. So she settles for killing the man responsible for putting her through that hell in the first place. The fact that she's the only survivor when Homelander lasers the others doesn't help.
- Denser and Wackier: Some episodes also push harder for comedy than the live-action series. The show starts with a Looney Tunes parody for crying out loud.
- Downer Ending: Several episodes end like this, not surprising given the nature of the series.
- Episode 2: While the protagonists did get revenge on the parents who abandoned them, all of them (except Ghost) are ultimately put down by Vought when they're found.
- Episode 4: What appears to be a reconciliation between Boyd and Cherry turns out to have been a dream the whole time on Boyd's part, who never even talked to Cherry as his head blew up from the Compound V lotion.
- Episode 6: Since Maya's attempt to bring her parents back together Gone Horribly Right and worse, short-lasting, she decides it's better if they divorced.
- Episode 7: Sun-Hee sacrificed herself to kill the cancer mutated from the Compound V that John gave her.
- Episode 8: Because of Black Noir's actions, Homelander begins to stray from the path of sincere heroism and towards becoming a preening, entitled megalomaniac.
- Everyone Has Standards: The scientist in "Laser Baby's Day Out" is horrified by the death of the horse when they had the sheer bad luck to land in an unguarded piranha tank while they were escaping crocodiles.
- OD is visibly disgusted by how Ironcast gets a boner from drinking dead kids' blood.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents".
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Some of the shorts open with Butcher's bulldog Terror doing something that would be a theme/element in the short.
- "Laser Baby’s Day Out": Terror pisses on a target board.
- "I’m Your Pusher": Terror rips up a bag of blood.
- "BFFs": Terror emits gas while sleeping which wakes him.
- "Boyd In 3D": Terror slobbers into the camera.
- "Nubian Vs Nubian": Terror humps a Groundhawk doll.
- "John and Sun-Hee": Terror growls at the Cancer monster rather than whimpering upon sight.
- "One Plus One Equals Two": Terror chews on a severed leg with exposed bone.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Nubia's contacts include several Vought supes such as A-Train, Big Game, Black Hole, Buzz Cut, Country Mama, and Critter.
- Gone Horribly Right: Maya tries to help mend her parents' marriage by staging a fight with Groundhawk since she knows they're only happy when fighting together. Not only do they brutally beat Groundhawk far more than necessary, but they also proceed to have incredibly loud sex that night. This convinces Maya it would be better for everyone if they divorced.
- Gorn: It wouldn't be The Boys without it. Episodes 1 and 2 are especially relentless with it.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power:
- Parodied in "BFFs". Sky realizes that she did gain powers from drinking Compound V, allowing her to bring any feces to life. She uses this to create a whole army to attack The Deep, who is so disturbed that he decides to leave. Also useful for sneaking some poop into an alleged friend's coffee.
- The protagonists of Episode 2 have mostly genuinely useless powers, but there are a few hints that they could be put to use if used creatively. For example, the Human Tongue is capable of strangling a person thanks to being essentially a giant muscle. Boombox is capable of delivering lethal sound waves. Big is a superstrong giant while Ghost is immune to all harm.
- I Love the Dead: It's implied that the Great Wide Wonder gets off on having sex with women after they have frozen to death in space.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: Nubian Prince and Nubia get so turned on by beating Groundhawk that they proceed to have incredibly loud and passionate sex that same night.
- Interactive Narrator: One of the Supes in "An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents" has the power to narrate everything. He is aptly called the Narrator.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The Reveal that real supes all got their powers from Compound V was from late in season 1. Here it's a recurring plot point.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: Sun-Hee's cancer becomes a sentient entity after being exposed to Compound V and uses its Combat Tentacles to eviscerate and consume everything in its way.
- Mile-High Club: "I'm Your Pusher" reveals that the Great Wide Wonder did a plane-less variant of this to two female students from Columbia University, taking them way up high for a "flying fuck". Unfortunately, high altitudes lead to extremely cold temperatures, resulting in the women freezing to death and possibly suffocating. Even worse, Wonder didn't care about how the cold would affect them as it was "part of the fun" for him, and apparently never bothered to retrieve their bodies from orbit.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: Groundhawk worries that Maya coming to him for help is how this could be interpreted, she even uses this to blackmail him. Her parents also beat him up for thinking this.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Episode 2 focuses on a group of young Supes who were abandoned by their parents because the powers they developed weren't what the parents asked for when they signed up for Compound V. Upon realizing this fact, the Supes decide to take their revenge.
- Mythology Gag:
- Groundhawk says "Gonna" several times before passing out after getting throttled by Nubia and Nubian Prince.
- Groundhawk's complaints of being called a pedo may be a reference to how Godolkin molested the children he kidnapped for the G-Men.
- There's a briefly seen comic of the Avenging Squad, the predecessors of Payback.
- No-Dialogue Episode: "Laser Baby's Day Out" has no dialogue at all, save for Laser Baby calling Simon "dada".
- Origins Episode: "One Plus One Equals Two" reveals the events that pushed Homelander into becoming an entitled psychopath.
- Parental Abandonment: The protagonists of Episode 2 are a group of teenaged Supes who were abandoned in what amounts to a shitty assisted living facility because their parents had them infused with Compound V but ended up with freakish and/or lackluster powers.
- Pink Is Erotic: In "Boyd in 3D", Boyd and his partner kiss under a pink filter and proceed to have sex off-screen. It then cuts to a pink diner and a visual innuendo of a waitress putting whipped cream on a pie.
- Rage Breaking Point: "One Plus One Equals Two" shows the exact moment when Homelander suffers his first one. He was already in a bad mental spot after accidentally mangling a hostage he was supposed to rescue, but being outright called a monster by one of the hostages proves to be the tipping point that causes him to completely snap and murder nearly everyone in the room.
- Red Shirt Army: Whenever Vought mooks go against a Supe, they usually suffer from graphic deaths.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Episode 2's montage of the rejected teen Supes gruesomely murdering their parents plays out over "Only Wanna Be With You" by Hootie & the Blowfish.
- Start of Darkness: "One Plus One Equals Two" shows that Homelander originally did start out legitimately trying to be a genuine superhero. The episode also shows how he was set on the path to becoming the psychopath we all know and hate.
- Straying Baby: "Laser Baby's Day Out" is a tribute to these kinds of shorts, with a Vought lab assistant trying his best to keep the titular character out of harm's way.
- Sudden Downer Ending:
- Episode 2: The team is about to succeed in killing off their Abusive Parents until Homelander flies in and lasers every single one of them save for Ghost in one fell swoop.
- Played for Laughs in Episode 4: Turns out most of the episode was hallucinated by Boyd after putting on too much Envision, and shortly after this reveal, his head explodes.
- Also Played for Laughs with Episode 6: While it seems like the Nubians have rekindled their love for each other following the setup fight with Groundhawk and a night of very passionate sex, the two are back to fighting and bickering the following morning and Maya decides to convince them to divorce.
- Take That!: "Nubian vs. Nubian" has a dig at Stephen Collins and his scandal of committing sexual misconduct towards minors when Nubian Prince mishears his daughter Maya as calling Groundhawk a pedo and replies "Like that guy from 7th Heaven?"
- Talking Poo: The result of drinking Compound V instead of injecting it, as depicted in "BFFs". Along with turning any poo into this.
- That's All, Folks!: "Laser Baby's Day Out" ends with, "That's all Boys!".
- Torso with a View: Laser Baby makes one with a security guard about to shoot her during "Laser Baby's Day Out".
- And during "I'm Your Pusher", the Great Wide Wonder flies straight through Ironcast, leaving a massive hole in his gut and killing both of them.
- Toxic Friend Influence: "One Plus One Equals Two" shows that it was Black Noir who convinced Homelander to destroy the evidence of his deeds when the mission went sideways and then pretend that he had tried to save the day, helping set up the careless, Never My Fault mindset Homelander would show in the live action series.
- Truer to the Text: The Alternate Continuity of I'm Your Pusher is more in line with the original comic book than the series, having a perpetually-smiling Butcher investigate a supe's shadier practices (a common plot in the comic) and featuring comic-centric character Jack from Jupiter.
- Uncertain Doom: Groundhawk gets brutally beaten up by the Nubian family after falling for a staged kidnapping. When Maya is out of harms way, they keep attacking him until he draws blood despite Maya telling them it was all fake (which the father mishears as confirmation that Groundhawk is a pedophile). They don't show what happened to Groundhawk afterwards as it cuts to the couple having loud sex and the daughter pushing the divorce in the morning. The lack of guilt from Maya implies that Groundhawk was only hospitalised after what happened.
- Undignified Death: The way Picante Balls murders his father in the second episode. There aren't a lot of ways to get killed that are quite as degrading as being tea-bagged to death by your own son.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: One of the models at the Great Wide Wonder's induction ceremony vomits after a high-out-of-his-mind Wonder gruesomely flies a hole through Ironcast.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: All of the supes at the assisted living facility in "An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents" have powers like these, such as being in perpetual slow-motion or being a giant human tongue.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The first episode is clearly paying Homage to Tom and Jerry, episode 114 "Tot Watchers". The basic premise of the episodes is about babies crawling everywhere through the big city and ending at a construction site and their guardians failing to catch the babies.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Vought goons have no problem trying to kill a baby, even if it's a baby with deadly laser eyes.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Homelander in "One Plus One Equals Two", where it soon becomes clear he Does Not Know His Own Strength. Things get particularly messy when he tries making someone drop his assault rifle by using his heat vision on it, only to cause the gun to explode, blowing off the man's hand and horrifically damaging a hostage. This scares everyone to the point where the hostage takers admit they weren't going to kill anyone.
