TripTank is a animated sketch comedy series produced by ShadowMachine that premiered in 2014 and airs on Comedy Central.
No real theme to the show other than animated shorts in different styles that, par for the course of the network, either deal with satire, Black Comedy, Gross Humor and generally Crossing the Line Twice. Think South Park crossed with the recent televised version of MAD (the Cartoon Network one, not MADtv) and you pretty much get the gist of it.
Spawned a Spin-Off in the form of Jeff & Some Aliens.
TripTank has the following tropes:
- Animesque: Flower Teen Kill Team Go has this style as it focuses on teenage Japanese assassins.
- Art Shift: Made from different animators, so this is a given.
- Attention Whore: Suicidal Attention Whore Chicken
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Dick Genie sketches (about a boy who has a genie living in his penis...yes really) revolve around this. For example, the boy wishes he had the power to see every woman's breasts. He gets his wish—then his mother shows up to deliver his lunch he forgot. You can see where this is going.
- Black Comedy: All over the place, nearly all the sketches deal with it in some form or another.
- Death of a Child: In one sketch about pregnancy, a surgeon eats a newborn baby whole, umbilical cord and all, only to reveal it was a magic trick, since he pulls the perfectly healthy baby out of nowhere. And then the assisting surgeon asks where the other baby is, since the mother is having twins. The head surgeon then flips out, shouting that he just ruined the trick, implying that he really DID eat a newborn whole.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The Suck It Gary sketches usually revolve around three friends who play practical jokes on a guy named Gary because...they just plain don't like him. The shorts always end with them forgetting something and they end up blaming Gary for it.
- Driven to Suicide: One sketch (written by The Perry Bible Fellowship creator, Nicholas Gurewitch) dealt with a corporation whose stock rises when a certain employee gets injured. They corporates then set about ruining the man's life until he ultimately kills himself. Don't worry though, karma kicks in as their stock plummets as soon as the man dies. And then the head of said corporation gets a paper cut and the stock increases slightly. Here We Go Again!.
- Karma Houdini: The Suicidal Attention Whore Chicken has always gotten what he wants and always blows off whomever he's trying to upstage once he gets it.
- Longest Pregnancy Ever: Exaggerated in Ma & Frankie, where Frankie stays inside his mother's womb even when he turns 34, and mooches off her as she carries him around.
- The Magic Touch: One sketch has Jesus entertain by turning glasses of water into wine, only to accidentally touch another guest and give him a slow painful death because all the water in his body has become wine.
- Never My Fault: The titular character of the Bethiffer sketches does this constantly. Blaming others for her rudeness or her stature.
- Self-Deprecation: A recurring sketch is in-universe viewers calling in to the Trip Tank studios and a majority of them complaining about the sketches and how they suck.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The second sketch of Versus has this as a little league soccer team slaughters the Mongolians amongst happy music.
- The Stoner: The "4:20" sketches revolve around an odd three-eyed hippie offering about marijuana at..well, 4:20.
- Subverted Kids' Show: A few sketches have a cutesy backdrop and then delves into some dark territory very fast.
- Toilet Humor: Fart jokes, check. Jokes about cumming and unnatural sex, check. Feces and pooping, check. Vomiting, check.
