Wave Twisters is a 2001 animated film set to the album of the same name by DJ Q-Bert, best known for scratching on Dr. Octagon. It starts out with the simple premise of a group of heroes saving a lost culture. What follows is a screwy quest across the stars to spread hip-hop to the masses and thwart the plans of a purple worm overlord living in the navel of an equally purple infant and his headless horde of space bikers. Our heroes are Dr. Julio Azul DDS, his secretary Honey Drips, his robot assistant Rubbish and an elderly b-boy named Grandpa.
Trope Examples:
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Most characters except for Honey Drips and the Playmobil-esque civilians.
- Carpet of Virility: Dr DDS, a.k.a. Dental Commander, is a bit hirsute underneath his scrubs.
- Cool Old Guy: The breakdancing Grandpa.
- Damsel in Distress: Honey Drips, particularly when she first gets turned into an ostrich, trapped and bounced around in a "universe of pure sound", and eventually captured and sent into the arena and forced to watch Ook's Elite Mooks' demonstrations of power.
- Dance Battler: How Dr. DDS deals with the weaponized subwoofer.
- Death Ray: Apparently the turntables of Lord Ook's Elite Mooks have powers equivalent to this. Among other things, they laser people's heads off, smash bricks, twist metal, and "torture" Dental Commander in effigy by using the laser to give his blue, underwear-clad effigy a wedgie (as well as burning a signature into its "skin", slicing off the limbs, and eventually re-knitting it into a huge blue sock).
- Deranged Animation: Goes with the territory of setting a cartoon to Q-Bert.
- Eldritch Location: The "universe of pure sound" where Honey Drips gets dropped into, and quite frankly, played around with, by Lord Ook.
- Enfant Terrible: Lord Ook and the Red Worm, though it's not entirely clear if the baby figures are the personalities themselves, or the talking worms in their navels.
- Evil Overlord: Ook.
- Forced Transformation: Honey Drips temporarily turns into an ostrich.
- Hip-Hop: The group's goal is to teach everyone the four pillars.
- Humongous Mecha: Our heroes have one that turns into a jet.
- Hypocrite: Lord Ook and Red Worm are seeking to oppress hip-hop, yet have scratching assassins do their dirty work.
- Medium Blending: The musicians involved with the album are depicted in live action.
- Mickey Mousing: The onscreen action follows the rhythm of Qbert's scratches.
- Musical Assassin: The (live-action) Imperial Skratch Warlords in Ook's employ, whose turntables have all the powers of a Death Ray and more.
- Mooks: The Chinheads, alien bikers with only big mouths on their otherwise featureless, "chin-shaped" heads (hence the name).
- Police State: Quasar 16.33.45.78 under the rule of Lord Ook and the Red Worm, who took away the Lost Arts from the native people, but use the same Lost Arts to repress them.
- Portable Hole: Ostrich!Honey is hypnotised into following a moving hole (following the logic that ostriches bury their heads in the sand). When she gets her head in it, she falls in and is brought to Lord Ook that way.
- Pac Man Fever: There are plenty of homages to retro games, from an Asteroids sequence to the Pitfall!-inspired DVD cover.
- Sampling: Nah, ya think?
- Sexy Secretary: Honey Drips is actually one for Dental Commander when they're just seeing patients.
- Shout-Out:
- Hardwired into Rubbish' internal memory is a chip bearing the Three Laws of Robotics, which gets fried (and starts reading gibberish) when he gets eaten by one of the alien tentacles on the quasar planet where Ook is holding sway.
- William Telling: Ook's Imperial Skratch Overlords (the live-action DJs) demonstrate their powers by aiming their turntable Death Rays at an apple on a hapless Playmobil-ish citizen's head—which quickly segues into …
- Off with His Head!: … lasering it clean off (the mix even says "Drop like a guillotine!"). And then they proceed to carve a face into the replacement apple like it's a Halloween pumpkin. And then later they reflect a laser into the audience, taking out another spectator's head with it. It's all pretty sadistic.
- Vapor Wear: It's rather obvious that Honey Drips doesn't have a bra on. At least down there she does have something on, because she actually gets a Freeze-Frame Bonus Panty Shot while being smacked around in the "pure sound universe".
