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Off Book: The Improvised Musical - TV Tropes

  • ️Fri May 31 2024

Off Book: The Improvised Musical is a podcast, starring Jessica McKenna and Zach Reino, where every episode is a full-length, fully-improvised musical. It premiered in 2017, and the last regular non-live episode was released in late 2023.

A conversation with the Special Guest inspires the subject of the first song, and the plot kicks off from there. The story and songs are invented on the fly by the singers and musicians, and the improvisation continues until the musical reaches a logical conclusion. At the end of each episode is a improvised bonus song, an unrelated song with some sort of challenge in either its prompt (an existing movie that doesn’t have a musical adaptation, the last text on the guest star’s phone, etc.) or its structure (a Patter Song that gradually speeds up, a rap battle about a random subject, etc.).

The podcast inspired the Game Changer episode Welcome to Mountport, as well as the later spinoff show Play It By Ear, which Zach and Jess appear in every episode of.

Tropes:

  • Abusive Parents: In Shrugging Destiny, the parents of the main characters disown their children for singing terribly in the school play, not even allowing them to ride home in their cars.
  • Accidental Misnaming: In Cinderella Name Game, King Charming forgets his subjects' names, and accidentally calls Nadeen Shoeperson "Nico".
  • Alliterative Name: Two of the main characters in Always Sad, Always Happy have names like this, and they both mention how delightful it is.
  • Analogy Backfire: In Princess LiveJournals, Steve's metaphor for friends growing apart is quickly picked apart by Kyle and Kelly. They attempt to salvage the metaphor in the following song "If We Are Your Bonsai", but it still doesn't work quite as initially intended.

    Steve: You know, sometimes a bonsai tree just grows in different directions. Not that it plans to, it just gnarls away from each other.

    Kyle: I feel like a bonsai tree is very specifically a very guided type of growth on a tree.

  • Animal Talk: Zig-zagged in Everything is Nature. A raccoon, a squirrel, and a redwood tree all communicate with each other in what sounds like English to the audience, but the raccoon has trouble pronouncing the name “Terry” because it’s “from another language”. However, the tree and the squirrel can both pronounce the name easily, and are confused as to why their raccoon friend is struggling. Never mind the fact that the trio all have human names themselves, and the raccoon is named John.
  • Animate Inanimate Object: They feature in multiple episodes.
    • During the song “No One Wants To Eat At Chipotle” in Shrugging Destiny, the floor of a Chipotle comes to life and sings.
    • In Everything is Nature, the wind is sentient and able to speak and sing.
    • In When You're Here, You're a Machine, the objects in the bathroom of an Olive Garden become sentient and evil.
    • The talking desserts in All of Our Business (and possibly some of the “robot” objects) fit this trope.
    • In Princess LiveJournals, one of the main characters imagines that the contents of his pocket are alive and singing.
  • Answer Cut: In Everything is Nature, when Cynthia is imprisoned, she shouts “Who will save me?” Cut to Terry.
  • Ass Shove: In Arms Race the arms dealer pulls a nuclear grenade out of Devon's ass.
  • As You Know: In Everything is Nature, the crab reveals two things in this way: the ocean and the forest hate each other, and all crabs can see the future.
  • Attention Whore: Valerie from Run to you Bride loves to make a scene, and once tried to get the entire state of Alaska to look at her at once.
  • Audience Participation: At the end of the live shows, the hosts will frequently play the parts of the “cast” and “crew” of the play, and answer audience questions. All of this is improvised, and the hosts must build off of whatever ridiculous details are established in the questions asked by audience members (for example, the question of why all of the human characters were played by animals).
  • Bad People Abuse Animals: In Princess LiveJournals, Steve's manic behavior includes eating a stolen chicken alive while it's hugging its children.
  • Bait-and-Switch:
    • In a song from Always Sad, Always Happy introducing the townspeople of Sadsalot, most of which have grunts or similar sounds for names: “Her name is *cough cough* — sorry, I coughed. Her name is *cough cough* — sorry. Her name is Cherise.”
    • Becomes a Running Gag in Stranger Sings with "T-T-T-T-Larry", who stutters on syllables before saying words that start with completely different letters.
  • Barehanded Bar Bending: In Run to you Bride, after realizing that he’s entirely muscle, Kevinry grabs Douglas’s pistol and bends it in half.
  • Battle Rapping: Multiple of the bonus song games played at the end of episodes involve rap battles.
  • Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Property Yeti Brothers features two yeti as the main characters.
  • Blind Bats: The fruit bats in Limitless Visionless Vision Quest claim that they cannot see and use echolocation to sense their surroundings. In reality, not only is no bat completely blind, but megabats (many of which are fruit bats) have large eyes and keen vision, and don’t use echolocation at all. One of the fruit bats claims that he is quite big, supporting the theory that they are megabats and should not be able to echolocate.
  • Blow You Away: In Everything is Nature, the wind appears as a character, and (logically) it has this power. At one point, it puts this power to use by launching the crab back into the ocean to prevent him from drowning Terry.
  • Bond One-Liner:
  • Bookends: In the first episode of the podcast, Zach, Jess, and guest star Paul F. Tompkins improvise a musical called Shrugging Destiny. In the three hundredth episode, the very last regular non-live episode of the podcast, Paul F. Tompkins is the guest star once again, and the musical they improvise is titled Shrugging Jeopardy.
  • Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: In Pillaging For Your Dreams, Sharon doesn’t allow Brittany to date any of the pirates in her crew.
  • Captain Ersatz: The 6-part episode Marvel Sing-ematic Universe features Lord Mader, who is an Ersatz of Darth Vader. Vader is the Ersatz of Mader in-universe because Mader was the one who inspired George Lucas to create Star Wars.
  • Changing Chorus: For most of “It’s Midnight…” from Stranger Sings, the chorus is “It’s midnight, and we’re biking to our teachers’ houses.” Once all the teachers have been gathered, it changes to “It’s 1 A.M., and we’re biking to Larry’s house.” It’s also briefly reprised as “It’s 2:30, and we’re biking back to the school.”
  • Comically Missing the Point:
    • In “Find the Wolf Man” from Wolf/Tuck, the cast sets off to find the wolfman who founded the town, despite their friend’s assurance that he’s been dead for many years.
    • In the final song of Everything is Nature, Jesus appears to the sharks, and gives them a message of acceptance. The sharks agree with his message, and attempt to start a religious war, much to Jesus’s dismay.
  • Controversy-Proof Image: Conversed in one episode. To quote the guest star:

    "I see a lot of, you know, really problematic people out there winning Oscars and really sorta keeping on with their career. I saw Chris Brown recently in a funny video! I was like remember that this is a problematic person, I mean come on, seriously, there's a lot of problematic figures succeeding in entertainment!"

  • Convenient Coma: One of these is employed as a plot device in "What's In Grocery Store?" to explain how the two leads had a child neither of them knew about.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Legally Can We "Let It Go"? features a group of Broadway producers and Illumination Entertainment executives who decide to kill everyone working for Disney so that they can use "Let It Go" in their musicals.
  • Crapsaccharine World: Downplayed in Always Sad, Always Happy with Copenhagen. The Danish town really is that delightful, but excessive laughter at its delights can lead to serious medical issues.
  • Crapsack World: Sadsalot from Always Sad, Always Happy is a gloomy, miserable place where no one smiles and everyone's name is a sad grunt or moan.
  • Cutaway Gag: What’s In Grocery Store? has three short cutaway songs, one after another: “Screamin' at the River”, “Whisperin' at the Creek”, and “Talkin' at the Pool”.
  • Cut Song: In-Universe cut songs are performed at the end of most live episodes.
  • Damsel in Distress: The song "It's Fun To Be Kidnapped" from Princess LiveJournals is about the thrills of being one of these.
  • Death by Irony: Run to you Bride contains a Downplayed example of Defeat by Irony. Douglas, a Russian spy, attempts to gain sensitive information from his fake girlfriend Katelyn, and all for the reward of a delicious hard cookie with a soft jelly center. Later, Kevinry defeats him by twisting him like a pretzel, and remarks “Now YOU look like a hard cookie with a soft jelly.”
  • Dodge the Bullet: One of the protagonists of Pillaging For Your Dreams does this effort while contemplating whether he was a bad son.
  • A Dog Named "Dog": The macaws in Hungry LOST Survival Games are named Macaw 1 and Macaw 2.
  • Dreadful Musician: In Shrugging Destiny, most of the main characters are so terrible at singing, their parents disown them.
  • Drink-Based Characterization:

    Rebecca: I'll have a Montenegro neat.
    Dom: You need to always be very careful of a woman that orders a Montenegro neat.
    Glen: Grandpa! One of the lesser known Italian amaros!

  • Dumb Muscle: Kevinry from Run to you Bride.

    Katelyn: Your voice sounds weak, but you're literally all muscle.

    Kevinry: Oh, I never noticed!

  • Dumbwaiter Ride: Bruce and Grumbles briefly attempt this in Guardians of the Hollywood Tower of Terror, even though Mr. Jameson Terror points out that it is too small.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The first few episodes use prerecorded mini-songs to transition into the ad breaks.
  • Edible Theme Naming: The episode When You're a Shark: LIVE! features a pair of twins named Fudge and Taffy.
  • Face Hugger: The alien in the bonus song “Contact” from Everything is Nature wants to implant these in humans.
  • First Contact: The bonus song from Everything is Nature, based on the film Contact, involves humans receiving a transmission from aliens for the first time.
  • Food Slap: In Run to you Bride, when Doug reveals that he was only dating Katelyn to gain intel and calls her an unmemorable person, Kevinry throws potato skins at him.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: Among the imaginary princesses in Princess LiveJournals, Anne Hathaway is disliked by the others for her annoying habits, such as bringing plain celery as a snack.
  • Friend-or-Idol Decision: In Shrugging Destiny, protagonist must choose between performing at a festival and fulfilling his dreams of becoming famous, or performing at his friends’ funeral.
  • Friendship Song: The bonus song in Princess LiveJournals, sung as part of the game "8 Smile", is a very positive rap about the hosts and guest's friendship.
  • Goggles Do Something Unusual: In Sham Wowowow, the glasses from LensCrafters allow those who wear them to see a positive future.
  • Goo Goo Getup: In Barely Indiana, a member of the Peace Corps wears a diaper in hopes to inspire people to have a childlike sense of hope for peace in the world.
  • Groin Attack: The Cincinnati Spaghetti Shrimp basketball team from the episode More Sports describe their fondness for groin attacks in the song "Elbow to the Wiener".
  • Hanukkah Episode: Off Book has three Hanukkah-themed episodes: A Very Accurate Hanukkah: 8 Crazy Brothers, Breadtime: Who Will Survive? and A Very Wolves of Glendale Hanukkah!. Rachel Bloom guest-stars in the first two.
  • Hot Teacher: We Object To Fear features the song “Mr. Picou”, an ode to a hot ceramics teacher sung by two of his students.
  • Human Disguise: In Pillaging For Your Dreams, bears disguise themselves as human workers at the dock.
  • I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You!: From When You're a Shark: LIVE!:

    Fudge: Wait, do we need her to guess the day of the week or the date?
    Taffy: She'll never guess it's Wednesday, February 26th.
    Rebecca: Wednesday, February 26th!
    Taffy: I said it too loud!

  • Imaginary Friend: In Princess LiveJournals, Steve's mental break leads him to imagine the ghost of Princess Diana, as well as Princess Zelda, Anne Hathaway, and Princess Peach. After Steve "breaks up" with his friends Kelly and Kyle, the latter two get bored and create their own imaginary friends: rejected cereal mascots for Kelly, and sentient versions of the objects in his pocket for Kyle.
  • Improv: As implied by the title, nearly everything in the show is improvised. Each episode’s musical is made up on the fly by both the singers and the pianist, with only the initial conversation as a prompt, and the bonus songs are equally improvised from a slightly more challenging prompt. Even the ad reads are partially improvised!
  • Intercourse with You:
    • In Limitless Visionless Vision Quest, Jess sings a song about getting pounded by Edward Cullen.
    • "True Measure of a Pirate" from Into the Thick of It.

      Jess: Well, that's the sexiest song we've ever done.

  • Interspecies Adoption: In Hungry LOST Survival Games, two macaws adopt a human teenager.
  • Interspecies Romance: Exaggerated in All of Our Business. Within one musical, there are romances between a human and a cat, a stapler and a flan, and a crème brûlée and a quarter.
  • In Their Own Image: In the live episode Infinity Time, Infinity Wine, a primordial being known as the First Bird spreads his DNA throughout the cosmos to turn everybody into birds.
  • Jaw Drop: The receptionist in "A Meeting with Destiny" manages to portray this trope in an audio-only format. After a sudden cough, she explains it was triggered by a fly flying into her mouth because her mouth was agape after hearing Doug's story about the sneaky booby-trapped letter.
  • Kaiju: The subjects of Monster's Bubble Ball, a musical about underwater kaiju preparing for a dance.
  • Kid Hero: Played straight in many episodes. The science teacher in Stranger Sings attempts to defy it by refusing to let the young students follow the teachers on a dangerous quest, but the students manage to convince him with a song.
  • Kill All Humans: The goal of the forest’s animals and plants in Everything is Nature.
  • Kill It Through Its Stomach: In the bonus song “Contact” from Everything is Nature, the alien wants to implant eggs in humans’ stomachs.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In Limitless Visionless Vision Quest, the protagonist ask the creatures of the jungle to say what they are when they appear, as they are completely blind, and Jessica (played by Zach Reino) remarks “It’s like we’re in an audio-only medium!”
  • LGBT Awakening: In the live episode We Object to Fear, Spencer suddenly realizes that he's sexually attracted to Atticus Finch.
  • List Song: In Avengers Infinity Monopoly Company War, the leaders of the Infinity Company sing a song about all the different things they own.
  • Magical Land: In Electric Daisy Jamboree, a father and his daughter accidentally travel to a Narnia-esque magical land.
  • The Mall: The main setting of Sham Wowowow.
  • Meaningful Name: In the town of Sadsalot from Always Sad, Always Happy, everyone is sad. A lot.
  • Misplaced Wildlife: In Everything is Nature, somehow, a singing crab appears in the redwood forest to spark the love between two people. Also, in Arctic March Madness, multiple animals that should not be in Antarctica appear, such as a dog.
  • The Missus and the Ex: The conflict of Run to you Bride starts when Katelyn, Douglas’s current girlfriend, meets his ex-wife, the attention-seeking, scene-making Valerie.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: The butterfly protagonists in Are You There God? It's Me, Goo metamorphose into seahorses with goat faces, horsefly wings, burning eyes and many tiny legs.
  • Moment Killer: The waitresses in Sham Wowowow repeatedly ruin moments.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: In the song “Everything is Nature” from the titular episode, Terry shows Cynthia the nature-esque wonders of a regular office building.
  • The Musical: Every episode is a new one.
  • Musicalis Interruptus: "Stick, Stick, Squid, Squid" from A Partial Architect is interrupted twice; first by a museum docent, who is then convinced to join the song, and then by the President of the United States, who also joins in and finishes the song.
  • Nature Lover: Terry from Everything is Nature adores all parts of nature.
  • Nested Mouths: In the bonus song “Contact” from Everything is Nature, the alien has “a mouth inside of [his] mouth”.
  • No Antagonist: Many episodes have down-to-earth, low stake plots that don't involve any kind of villain.
  • Nuclear Mutant: The monster in Stranger Sings is revealed to be one of these (before becoming a monster, he was a student at the school.
  • Obliviously Evil: The crab from Everything is Nature attempts to drown Terry in the ocean because he wants a merperson friend and doesn’t realize that humans can’t breathe underwater.
  • Ode to Food:
    • In Run to you Bride, an entire song is devoted to singing the praises of hard cookies with soft jelly centers.
    • When You're Here, You're a Machine contains an entire song about the cuisine available at Olive Garden, which turns out to all be breadsticks.
    • Don't Ghost This Date contains yet another breadstick-centric song, this time focusing on a restaurant's surplus of breadsticks and how to consume them efficiently.
    • Stranger Sings has “Ain’t No Meat in a Minced Meat Pie”, quickly followed by “Ain’t No Prunes in a Chicken Pot Pie”.
    • In Cinderella Name Game, the witch sings about the joy of properly preparing delicious tortellini.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts feature in a number of episodes, with their specific properties varying from musical to musical.
  • Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: After the ending of Princess LiveJournals, when the hosts are discussing alcohol, they advise the listeners not to underage drink like their characters did, and claim that they "have to say that officially as a podcast" (though they follow it up by saying that, if you do underage drink, you should make good flavor choices).
  • Patter Song: Performed at the end of multiple episodes, as part of the bonus game “What’s the Patter?”
  • Pirate Song: The episode Into the Thick of It features "True Measure of a Pirate," a song about how sexy pirates are.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: From "54 Years":

    Somehow when you have more rights, I have less
    That is the equation, I understand it I guess
    When you have things, you take them from me
    I can't have that in the USA, ya see

  • The Power of Love: In Everything is Nature, by kissing Reginald the redwood tree to show their love of nature, Cynthia and Terry get the forest to forgive humanity for all the harm they’ve done to nature.
  • Precocious Crush: In Stranger Sings, teenage Eugene has a crush on his adult teacher.
  • Precognition: According to Everything is Nature, all crabs have this power. One crab foresees a fire starting and the earth splitting in two if Terry and Cynthia do not fall in love with each other. Possibly subverted when it’s revealed that the crab was actually trying to trick Terry into living in the ocean with him and becoming his friend.
  • Princess Classic: In Princess LiveJournals, the ghost of Princess Diana describes being a princess as wearing a fancy dress and smiling wide.
  • Pun: In Run to you Bride, when asked if he likes a woman who makes a scene, John Cena replies "I like a woman who makes a Cena."
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: CEO Phoebe Thunderstein in A Meeting with Destiny proves to be one of these.
  • Rhetorical Question Blunder: In Everything is Nature:

    Terry: When you’re behind a desk…are you really behind a desk?

  • Rhyming Names: The episode Billionaires and Future Children features a boy named Clamato Lamato Smamato.
  • Running Gag: Too many to list in the episodes themselves, but the show overall has a few, including the “It’s Midnight…” songs and interpreting a missing comma between “Germany” and “Online” in a list of countries in one of their ad reads as indicating the existence of a digital nation called “Germany Online”.
  • Screwball Squirrel: Sam the Squirrel from Everything is Nature talks fast and keeps sticking nuts in people’s mouths.
  • Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: In the bonus song “Britannia Waives the Rules” from Run to you Bride, the British claim to be able to disregard any rule they wish.
  • Second Coming: Near the end of Everything is Nature, Jesus returns to Earth, this time in the deep ocean (presumably as a shark). He tries to give the sharks his message of love and acceptance, but they misinterpret it and start a religious war, resulting in all sharks being wiped out by a holy light. This causes problems for the Discovery Channel.
  • Secret Path: In the episode Movie Night: LIVE!, King Centipede worries that the 20 secret passages he installed in his castle make it easier for enemies to get inside.
  • Seinfeldian Conversation: Characters occasionally get sidetracked by pointless conversations (or songs) due to the improvisational nature of the podcast.
  • Self-Deprecation: In Princess LiveJournals, Kyle and Kelly (played by Zach and Jess) say that if they started a podcast, they'd be too boring to do it themselves, and they'd have to have a Special Guest on every episode just to have something to talk about.
  • Shout-Out: Has its own page.
  • Snakes Are Sinister: This trope is played straight in Monster's Bubble Ball where sea snakes are the antagonists, and referenced in Cinderella Name Game in a song about how Cinderella and the snake are both misunderstood, mentioning that snakes are traditionally symbolic of evil.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: The song “Was I A Bad Son?” from Pillaging For Your Dreams is a heartfelt ballad sung while dodging bullets.
  • Speaks Fluent Animal: Terry from Everything is Nature understands the crab’s speech, and claims to be able to talk to all sorts of animals.
  • Special Guest: Nearly every episode has at least one.
    • Look Who's Talking to You features Conan O'Brien making a surprise cameo because he happened to be recording in the same building.
  • Spoof Aesop: Multiple examples in Everything is Nature:
    • After declaring that they need to enjoy their lives because global warming will eventually kill everyone, the cast realizes that Jesus may be the bridge between all of nature, and believe that he will save them and they don’t have to care about global warming at all. Jesus himself says that they’ve misinterpreted Christianity entirely.
    • A second terrible aesop from Jesus himself: Everything is something, and that something is also a thing!
  • Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: An audience member pulls this off in Cinderella Name Game during the post-show improvised Q&A by claiming to be Etzel from the pretzel stand "Etzel's Baked Goods".
  • Sugar Bowl: Copenhagen is portrayed as this in Always Sad, Always Happy, with every part of it being delightful enough to make its citizens laugh.
  • Take That!: In “Please Tell Us Why We Are LOST” from Hungry LOST Survival Games, the characters ask to know why they’re lost in a timely manner without any convoluted plot arcs delaying the explanation.
  • Talkative Loon: The waitress in Sham Wowowow talks excessively, ruining several moments.
  • Talking Animal: Many episodes contain talking animal characters.
  • That Cloud Looks Like...: The subject of the song "Looking at Clouds" from We Object to Fear.

    Xander's Friend: That one looks like a bust of Beethoven
    Except, it's more like Bach
    Xander: And instead of a bust it has arms and legs and a torso
    Both: I guess it kinda just looks like Bach

  • Theme Twin Naming: The episode When You're a Shark: LIVE! features a pair of twins named Fudge and Taffy.
  • Title Drop: In most episodes, the final line of the musical is a title drop.
  • Title: The Adaptation: The show's title ends in "The Improvised Musical", and most episodes’ full titles end in "The Musical", invoking this trope (despite most episodes not being adaptations).
  • Toilet Humor: In Sham Wowowow, one of the waitresses repeatedly farts in the middle of serious moments, and even soils herself at one point.
  • Trickster Twins: The episode When You're a Shark: LIVE! features a pair of twins named Fudge and Taffy. They take great delight in performing twin switches and making people answer their confusing riddles.
  • Triumphant Reprise:
    • In Run to you Bride, a reprise of “Hell Yes” appears at the end, when Katelyn is invited to become a spy for her country.
    • A partial reprise of “Everything is Nature” occurs in the final song of the episode of the same name, with various lyrical changes of increasing ridiculousness.
    • In Stranger Sings, there’s a reprise of “Stranger Things (Have Happened)”, when Eugene is befriending the monster.
  • The Twelve Spoofs of Christmas: Each Christmas special features a "Twelve Days of Christmas" parody as a bonus song.
    • O Little Town of Doggywood: "Twelve Practical Gifts of Christmas"
    • A Cup of Christmas: "The Twelve Days of Fishmas"
    • Flamingle All the Way: "Twelve (New) Ways to Leave Your Lover"
    • Visions of Sugar Plums Danced in Their Radioheads: "The Twelve Drinks of Horsemas"
    • A Christmas Duet: "The Twelve Days of Sondheim"
    • Teen Christmas: "The Twelve Days of Cryptids"
    • A Good Ol' Mountain Christmas: "The Twelve Bears of Christmas"
    • A Big Strong Stretchy Kiwi Christmas: "The Twelve Days of Catmas"
  • The Unintelligible: Grumbles from Guardians of the Hollywood Tower of Terror.
  • Unusual Euphemism: In Everything is Nature:

    Terry: Everything is nature!

    Cynthia: Do I have to look at Dave’s “nature”?

  • Vision Quest: Limitless Visionless Vision Quest plays with this trope. The "vision quest" the protagonists embark on is actually visionless, as those who embark on it become completely blind, but it is still referred to as a vision quest because it has a "similar vibe".
  • Volcano Lair: The antagonist of the episode Vanessa Shredder Professional Sledder plans to turn a neighboring ski resort into a volcano so that he can have two volcano lairs with a bridge between them.
  • Was Once a Man: Nicholas Huckle from Stranger Sings was a student before a nuclear accident turned him into a monster.
  • We Will Meet Again: Near the end of Everything is Nature, the crab starts monologuing about how he’ll return and succeed in his plans in the future, until he gets eaten by a random shark.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Inevitable due to the improvisational nature of the podcast.
    • Subverted in Are You There, God? It's Me, Goo when an audience member points out the that the corrupt board members disappeared from the story, prompting Zach and Jess to explain what happened to them in the closing song.
  • When Trees Attack: In Everything is Nature, the redwood trees attack the humans with the intent to kill them all.
  • Xenomorph Xerox: The alien in the bonus song “Contact” from Everything is Nature seems to be one of these, with Nested Mouths, Face Hugger spawn, and a desire to lay eggs inside of human hosts.
  • You Got Murder: Part of the plot of A Meeting with Destiny is driven by the fact Doug intercepted a 'sneaky-sneaky booby-trapped letter' in the mail room. It was covered in spikes and razors, contained lasers, coated with commercial-strength glue laced with the bird flu and also rigged with a Bluetooth device that summoned a horse to trample Doug's hands.
  • Young Future Famous People: In the 6-part episode Marvel Sing-ematic Universe, Lord Mader sings a song about meeting a young George Lucas in the '60s and inadvertently inspiring him to create Star Wars.