History WesternAnimation / InsideJob2021

* ConspiracyKitchenSink: A major part of the series' premise is that (almost) all UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories and UrbanLegends are true, albeit with a few comedic twists here and there. In the first episode alone, we learn that a ReptilianConspiracy exists, the weather is actually controlled by someone, and that there is a shadowy organization running the world. One of the few conspiracies that ''isn't'' true is that [[FlatEarth the Earth is flat]]. This is lampshaded when Brett is genuinely confused by the details of the MoonLandingHoax, as Cognito has so many conspiracies running simultaneously that he can't keep them all straight.

** "The Brettfast Club" is this for Brett, though it also gives Myc a solo B-story of his own.

The series was [[https://www.timeout.com/news/netflix-wants-to-make-conspiracy-theories-fun-again-061521 announced]] in 2019, with a 20 episode order. Part 1 premiered on October 22nd 2021 and consisted of ten episodes. Part 2 was released on November 18th 2022, with a sneak peek released as part of 2022's Netflix Geeked Week alongside the announcement the show [[https://deadline.com/2022/06/inside-job-renewed-season-2-netflix-1235040797/ would be receiving a second season]]. However, for unknown reasons, the second season was [[https://twitter.com/shhhhhionn/status/1612257517165514753?s=46&t=IRAPQslBWkygfRmQlBpaPw canceled]] in January 2023.

The series was [[https://www.timeout.com/news/netflix-wants-to-make-conspiracy-theories-fun-again-061521 announced]] in 2019, with a 20 episode order. Part 1 premiered on October 22nd 2021 and consisted of ten episodes. Part 2 was released on November 18th 2022, with a sneak peek released as part of 2022's Netflix Geeked Week alongside the announcement the show [[https://deadline.com/2022/06/inside-job-renewed-season-2-netflix-1235040797/ would be receiving a second season]].

* TheConstant: [[spoiler:Rand's attempts to mess with reality and time to find a timeline where he and Tomiko never divorced and Reagan never distanced from him leads him nowhere. It's implied they'll never be all together as a proper family unit, him mentioning that there are times where he manages one, but not both of these relationships.]]

Set InAWorld [[ConspiracyKitchenSink where nearly every single conspiracy theory conceived throughout the ages is unambiguously true]], [[TheMasquerade Cognito Inc.]] is a secret organization pulling all the strings to ensure they remain conspiracies. Antisocial tech genius [[GadgeteerGenius Reagan Ridley]] (Creator/LizzyCaplan) stands out among the reptilian shapeshifters and psychic mushrooms just for believing the world can be a better place, but she has to constantly wrangle her paranoid, unhinged father, Cognito co-founder [[ConspiracyTheorist Rand Ridley]] (Creator/ChristianSlater) from blowing their cover, and her dysfunctional co-workers, which include D.C. yes-man [[LovableJock Brett Hand]] (Creator/ClarkDuke); free-spirited yet strung-out biochemist [[TheStoner Dr. Andre Lee]] (Creator/BobbyLee); half-man, half-dolphin, 100% jingoistic super-soldier Glenn Dolphman (Creator/JohnDimaggio); Cognito Inc.'s Head of Media Manipulation and Subliminal Messages and gossipy PR officer [[GossipyHens Gigi Thompson]] (Creator/TishaCampbell); and a snarky psychic mushroom from Hollow Earth named [[{{Jerkass}} Magic Myc]] (Creator/BrettGelman). In doing so, she'll discover what it truly takes to rule the world.

Set InAWorld [[ConspiracyKitchenSink where nearly every single conspiracy theory conceived throughout the ages is unambiguously true]], [[TheMasquerade Cognito Inc.]] is a secret organization pulling all the strings to ensure they remain conspiracies. Antisocial tech genius [[GadgeteerGenius Reagan Ridley]] (Creator/LizzyCaplan) stands out among the reptilian shapeshifters and psychic mushrooms just for believing the world can be a better place, but she has to constantly wrangle her paranoid, unhinged father, Cognito co-founder [[ConspiracyTheorist Rand Ridley]] (Creator/ChristianSlater) from blowing their cover, and her dysfunctional co-workers, which include D.C. yes-man [[LovableJock Brett Hand]] (Creator/ClarkDuke); free-spirited yet strung-out biochemist [[TheStoner Dr. Andre]] (Creator/BobbyLee); half-man, half-dolphin, 100% jingoistic super-soldier Glenn Dolphman (Creator/JohnDimaggio); Cognito Inc.'s Head of Media Manipulation and Subliminal Messages and gossipy PR officer [[GossipyHens Gigi]] (Creator/TishaCampbell); and a snarky psychic mushroom from Hollow Earth named [[{{Jerkass}} Magic Myc]] (Creator/BrettGelman). In doing so, she'll discover what it truly takes to rule the world.

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Very much on the cynical side of the scale, though there are still glimmers of hope and idealism here and there.

** "[=Whoas-Feratu=]" has [[ItMakesSenseInContext Reagan grimly proclaim at one point]] "If I want to save my mom, I have to do what ''Film/TheLakeHouse'' couldn't: ''Kill Creator/KeanuReeves''."

** Andre also considers being ForcedToWatch old ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' clips related to the inconveniences of airline travel as [[SuicideAsComedy grounds for suicide]].

** [[MoonLandingHoax The Apollo 11 moon landing as we know it is actually a cover story for]] UsefulNotes/BuzzAldrin and UsefulNotes/NeilArmstrong [[SpaceColony successfully building an entire city on the Moon]]; the men claiming to be Aldrin and Armstrong are actually actors hired to play out the rest of their lives, while the real guys never returned to Earth.
** It's revealed in season 2 that [[spoiler: Rand and JR are actually from an alternate timeline originally.]]
* AlternateRealityEpisode: "Project Reboot" sees the gang trying to find Reagan's father, who is swapping realities around with project Reboot, a machine that randomly alters a past events and sends everyone to the new reality created. This leads them across multiple iterations of the universe, including things such as the USSR winning the cold war and Andre becoming a famous TV doctor.
* AmnesiaMissedASpot: [[spoiler:It's revealed in the season one finale that Reagan used to have a childhood friend called Orrin, who her father erased all memory of from her mind to get her to focus solely on her scientific pursuits. However, it turns out that Reagan was a one-password person like Brett when she was a child, and even after the memory wipe, she continued to use this friend's name as a password for several years without knowing why she felt the urge to do so]].

** "The Brettfast Club". Having happy memories is great and all, but a NostalgiaFilter is harmful, especially when you try and retreat to an idealized version of your past. It's best to just accept the past with WartsAndAll and start living in the present.

* AngerIsHealthyAesop: Since his introduction, Brett has shown to be worryingly positive despite having every right to be angry in situations that aggravate him. [[spoiler: For example, when he learns that his family recast him in a political advert because they always thought little of him and were always embarrassed to be seen with him, he immediately makes excuses for them. Reagan is concerned by his reaction and encourages him to ruin his brother's political career as revenge. Brett's character arc in season 2 is normalizing his emotions, learning that being angry and disliking someone isn't going to end the world and it is perfectly healthy to feel those emotions.]]

** In season 2, it's revealed that the six groups who control the world are Cognito Inc., the Illuminati, the Reptoids, the Atlanteans, the Catholic Church, and... [[{{Juggalo}} the Juggalos]].
* ArtisticLicenseGeography: Played for laughs when Rand gives the flat earth society a list of meaningless numbers (that he read of a lotto ticket) as the coordinates to the edge of the earth. The coordinates in question, in case you're curious, point to a patch of wilderness next to the [=N15=] highway in Cameroon.
* AscendedMeme: In the Season 2 trailer Reagan is seen swordfighting Keanu Reeves, [[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/conspiracy-keanu Conspiracy Keanu]] is real.

** Creator/OprahWinfrey, Creator/LinManuelMiranda, Music/{{Beyonce}}, and Music/JayZ are prominent members of the Illuminati.
** Creator/KeanuReeves, Creator/BradPitt, Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio, Creator/BradleyCooper, Creator/NicolasCage, Creator/LarryDavid and Creator/JohnnyDepp are vampires who drain the blood of women much younger than them to look young using {{Magitek}} provided by The Illuminati.
** The Catholic Church and the Juggalos of all people are two of the six societies ruling the world.
** According to the opening, Benjamin Franklin was a demon and UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln also a Reptoid.

* FictionalSocialNetwork: "Sex Machina" features "[=RightSwipe=]", a Tinder-esque app that Cognito Inc is able to purchase at the start of the episode.

** Additionally, the intro has a single frame between the shot of ROBOTUS waving and a pile of 100$ bills showing a black-and-white photo of J.R. captioned "Fantasy Golf? Hell Yeah"
** "How Reagan Got Her Groove Back": Lin-Manuel Miranda dressed as Hamilton appears as one of the people in the Illuminati.

* LabcoatOfScienceAndMedicine: Of the main characters, Reagan (a roboticist) and Andre (a biochemist) wear labcoats as part of their outfits.

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: In "Inside Reagan", Rand says "If people knew 9/11 was really caused by--" and then a long SoundEffectBleep. He lampshades that he "can't even say that here". Also doubles as NothingIsFunnier.
* LizardFolk: A lot of celebrities and other powerful people are Reptoids, who can shapeshift into human form. They provide Cognito a lot of funding in exchange for them doing nothing about global warming so the world is their preferred temperature.

--->'''Brett:''' Huh. Wow, yeah, that's...that hits different today.

** Rand activates a bunch of animatronic cryptids in the finale, including a Yeti, Loch Ness monster, and Chupacabra.

* PlotHole: Parodied. There are a few inconsistencies in season 2 with the lore set in season 1. [[spoiler:The penultimate episode of the season, the characters explicitly address them and accuse them of being caused by Rand messing around with the timelines. Alpha-Beta calls them Plot Holes that need to be fixed.]]

* SciFiKitchenSink: As part of the ConspiracyKitchenSink, aliens, cryptids, monsters, and futuristic technology of all kinds seem to exist.
* ShockCollar: When the plan to replace the president with a robot fails, Andre sticks an implant in his neck to shock him on demand.

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Very much on the cynical side of the scale.

* StatusQuoIsGod: Defied in the season 1 finale [[spoiler: when Reagan finds out that Rand erased her childhood friend from memory when she was a kid, Rand offers her to hit the ResetButton of the whole revelation by shooting him and Reagan with one of Cognito's memory erasers. Reagan hesitates for a bit but then smashes the memory eraser and tells Rand to get out of her life.]]

* SummonBiggerFish: The gang lets Robotus out of his tube to fight [[spoiler: Bear-O]] in the season finale.
--> '''Andre:''' [[Film/Godzilla2014 Let them fight!]]

** After participating in the Reptillian group hug/orgy, and likely having unprotected sex, Andre learns he contracted multiple Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
** All of The Gang get a reality check in "[[Recap/InsideJobS2E7ProjectReboot Project Reboot]]" when they experience their lives in the new timeline:
*** Andre may have become rich and famous and married to Scarlett Johansson, but due to an accident, he has a horse penis. While that sounds fine (for Andre) at first, having a horse penis is terrible for sex.
*** Glenn gets his human face and his wife back and is honored as a war hero, but he realizes he can't live in a timeline when the USSR conquered America
*** Gigi may have always dreamed of controlling The Illuminati, but she is also has hints of being BrilliantButLazy. She ends up hating her position once she realizes that she will have to do all the work.
*** The only reason Brett has as much of a spine as he does is due to his time at Cognito. While he has achieved his dream of being a professional puppet maker in the new timeline, he is so psychological fragile that he breaks down at the slightest passive aggressive comment of his work.

** Robotus decides to destroy humanity after spending a few minutes on Website/{{Facebook}}. He specifically calls out the posts from [[OnlyInFlorida Florida]] as being disturbing enough on their own. Mark Zuckerberg himself also appears as a creepy awkward half-reptoid hybrid.

** On a background list of PunnyName references to various celebrities who are actually reptoids, UsefulNotes/DonaldRumsfeld - who hadn’t died yet during the show’s production - is on there with his name completely unchanged.
** When J. R. tells Gigi to ensure that Glenn doesn't say anything racist (Glenn [[FantasticRacism hates reptiods]] and the gang is at a reptoid gala to secure a considerable part of the company's funding), she said how it is just like Creator/MelGibson's Hanukkah's special (a nod to Mel Gibson's antisemitic rant during an DUI arrest).
** After Brett met two members of the many frats he was in, he greeted them with the frat handshake accompanied by the line "Up, down, roofie, roofie, become a Supreme Court justice", a nod to Brett Kavanaugh and the sexual assault allegation leveled at him.
** The Reptoid Gala is visually based on the Academy Award ceremony, complete with giant golden reptoid statues and an obituary for all the reptoids who passed away.
** Flat-Earthers are not depicted positively here, with Rand leading them on for a laugh. In fact, that’s one of the few conspiracies that ''isn’t'' real in this universe.

** Still Valley is the epitome of NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe. The town is rife with sexism and racism, with Andre being increasingly annoyed with how everyone calls him Chinese and pointing out that the running gag of [[Film/SixteenCandles a gong going off whenever he says anything]] is pretty demeaning.

** Season 2 has a couple barbs against Website/{{Reddit}}, presented as a hotbed of incel and violent conspiratorial activities. There are also more jabs towards famous people, such as Alex Jones (depicted as a despicable weirdo who's shown naked and on fire at one point) and Jesse Ventura (as a tinfoil hat-wearing paranoiac).
** "We Found Love in a Popeless Place" (s2e4) shows that the demon animatrones put in the fake FireAndBrimstoneHell under Rome have been made by Disney Imagineers.
* TitleDrop: Done by Rafe Masters in “Ghost Protocol” when he believes Reagan’s “death” was an “inside job”.
-->'''Myc:''' [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall Ha…I get it]].
* TooDumbToFool: The president the deep state-backed in the last election proved to be this. This is why they're having him replaced with a robot. When that falls through, they equip him with an implant to shock him on demand.
* TotallyRadical: Glenn goes undercover as a college student to get his classmates to sign up to be drone pilots. His disguise involves a lot of dabbing.
-->'''Glenn:''' Thanks, bros. Sacrificing yourself to the state is bae.

* TropaholicsAnonymous: Overlapping with MonstersAnonymous. Season 2 ep. 1 has the support group "Anonymous Anonymous", for those whose daily life is affected by living in secrecy or ruling from the shadows. Members have to wear, at least in the beginning, a device that scrambles their faces and voices. Brett convinces Reagan to go there, and so she meets who will become her LoveInterest, Ron Staedtler from the Illuminati. The group is led by a Mothman and among other members there are Bigfoot, a Slenderman, a Moleman (who however thought it was Alcoholics Anonymous), [[TakeThat and Jesse Ventura]].

* WeddingEpisode: "My Big Flat Earth Wedding" focuses on Reagan's mother getting married to...herself (it's either for self-empowerment or just a way to piss Rand off). Of course, her father hears of this and hijacks the ceremony with members of the Flat Earth society.

* WhoShotJFK: In this series, the act was committed by ‘Grassy’ Noel Atkinson, who did the act because apparently, Kennedy had sex with the alien from Roswell and got pregnant as a result. Have to prevent the eggs from hatching, you see. Reagan and Brett later release a clone of JFK for Grassy Noel to kill, only for the clone to release the rest of the clones and cause havoc.
* WritersCannotDoMath:
** At Age 51, Glenn is way too young to be a Vietnam veteran, as the war would have began long before he was even conceived, and ended by the time he started elementary school.

* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: On top of being an evil mastermind that tried to erase everyone's memories, Skullfinger took out the original hardwood flooring in his secret volcano lair.

** Creator/KeanuReeves, Creator/BradPitt, Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio, Creator/BradleyCooper, Creator/NicolasCage, Creator/LarryDavid and Creator/JohnnyDepp are vampires who drain the blood of women much younger than them to look young.

* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: Considering how many conspiracy theories surround historical figures, politicians, and celebrities, this trope pops up a lot. UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy needed to die because he got [[MisterSeahorse impregnated]] by the Roswell alien and UsefulNotes/ElizabethII, Music/TaylorSwift, Creator/PaulRudd, Creator/GuillermoDelToro, UsefulNotes/AlGore, and many more are Reptoids. The second season reveals Creator/KeanuReeves, Creator/BradPitt, Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio, Creator/BradleyCooper, Creator/NicolasCage, Creator/LarryDavid and Creator/JohnnyDepp are vampires who drain the blood of women much younger than them to look young.

** The world has secretly been run by the Shadow Council, a cabal of powerful elites for centuries. However the world isn't as easy to manipulate as it used to be. So they formed Cognito Inc to make the job easier.

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[TagLine Nothing to see here.]]''[[note]]From left to right: Magic Myc, Brett, J.R., Reagan, Andre, Glenn, and Gigi.[[/note]]]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Season 2 ends with Reagan having finally achieved her dream of running Cognito Inc., her co-workers finally respecting her and The Shadow Board giving her their blessing and approval for an algorithm to better manage the world. This is at the cost of having to erase the memory and identity of Ron Staedtler, the only person who ever truly loved her, in order to free him from his burdens; giving him a truly happy life away from her and the shadow government.]]