Establishing Character Moment / Web Original

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• The very first line of the first ever installment of The Angry Video Game Nerd, opening the "review" of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest:
  "This game sucks."
• Ash & Cinders:
  • Thavian's introduction is like the fantasy equivalent of Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka. He noticeably limps across a frozen river, and once he's got everyone's attention, he throws his wolfskin cloak and staff aside, and the first thing he does is "a wordless, gleeful cry" before conjuring up a whiskey bottle.
  • The Rock Lord, in its first appearance, is given a descriptions similar to the Great Goblin in the Hobbit. Its first act in the story is to grab a Stonewight by the throat and hammer him alive into a brutish sword. Turns out, that's where all its Evil Minions get their weapons.
• Camp Camp:
  • David with his first dialogue exposes how cheerful and optimistic he is no matter how mundane the situation is. In fact, once an episode there is a moment dedicated to reminding the audience how overly cheerful and optimistic David is.
    David: Can you believe it Max? We're getting not ONE, not THREE, but TWO new campers today!
  • David and Gwen are both summed up pretty much perfectly with their first dialogue together.
    David: Good morning, Gwen!
    Gwen: MOTHERFUCKER!
  • Five seconds into Nikki and Neil's arrival at camp, Nikki bites David's hand to 'assert dominance' and Neil timidly asks if they're at science camp.
  • When the camp counselors are talking about the variety of their curriculum, each of the other campers are shown, and it explains exactly what they're all there for and what their shtick is. Furthermore, in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, the camper struck by Nerris' "lightning bolt" is Harrison, establishing their rivalry.
• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
  • Ciro's introduction has him acting as the mediator in a study group that's stressed from the upcoming finals.
  • Finn is introduced by openly mocking and deriding the performance of a girl in the acting club.
  • When Jacob is first shown, he's sequestered himself away in a storage room in order to focus properly on his studying. When the screams of the other students reach him, he ignores them and instead sets out to find somewhere more quiet to study.
  • When Jemimah is first shown, she's cheerfully beating up a tree in the park, blissfully unaware of the other characters meeting nearby to discuss their superpowers.
  • Hyeon's cousin Jae is first introduced when he cusses Hyeon out for the destruction of school property, setting up the vitriolic and estranged relationship between the two.
  • When Jessica first shows up, she snaps at a kindly janitor when he seems to be ignoring her.
• From Dino Attack RPG:
  • When he first appeared, Montoya initially came off more or less seemed just another petty crook looking for money, acting casual and occasionally joking with his partners. However, the brief glimpse into his personal life and his subsequent calling out of his own partner for refusing to tip a waitress quickly showed how likeable a guy he really was and turned him into an Ensemble Dark Horse.
  • Rotor probably got his establishment as a rough and cold-minded but extremely competent leader when he lead the initially assaults on the XERRD Fortress, considering he got to show off his talents rather nicely.
  • Cabin's introductory scene more or less established her as a realist, though she had a few later moments that showed off another side.
  • Pharisee arguably got his when we first met him, coldly looking over the case files of several controversial individuals and judging them each harshly. It certainly sets up several things, among them his brutal beat down of Montoya.
  • Unintentionally subverted with Trigger, whose introductory scenes attempted to establish him as a badass and an expert in the Maelstrom, but only caused people to see him as a complete Jerkass and an idiot.
  • Sarah Bishop's rather violent No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of Rotor, not to mention bludgeoning Cabin in the face when she tried to break it up should give you a pretty good idea of her mental state by this point.
  • A simple example, but Pierce was first introduced as a doctor helping Zenna after she sustained serious injuries. That should give you a pretty good idea of his role in all this.
• The Red Guy's first line in Don't Hug Me I'm Scared series is "That sounds really boring," after Sketchbook says that they use their hair to express themselves. This sets up his general lack of enthusiasm and inflection throughout the next six episodes.
• Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog introduces himself by interrupting Billy's song in arrogant fashion, landing on top of the van he's remotely commandeered, and smashing the remote control receiver, causing the van to go out of control and endanger civilians while he jumps off to flirt with a female passerby. The van very nearly runs over Penny, who Hammer "saves" by pushing her into garbage, and is only stopped when Billy regains control and hits the brakes, but in the process making it look like Hammer stopped it himself, which Hammer plays up to his advantage. That and his treatment of Billy himself more than cements just what kind of guy this guy really is.
• In Dream High School, most of the characters have one very soon after they're introduced.
  • Corliss' second line:
    She gasps excitedly. "You're from Central High, right?!"
  • Gavin:
    One of them tenses, his shoulders shooting up. He turns around slowly, his face downturned but eyes glaring up at Corliss'.
  • Nara, when she gets Corliss off your back:
    "Hey, no problem, that's what best friends are for! I can tell you're stressed out."
  • When Micah explodes on Page 14:
    "Look, you don't even have any friends besides Nara, and all you do is hole up with her in this house! You need to get out there and make more friends, and here's the perfect, lowest-risk opportunity to do it! You're a loner, a loner! And you've been this way ever since Mom died, and I'm-" he uses a passion word I never thought he'd use- "sick of it!"
  • Principal Wyatt, when she talks to you about the dream scenery on page 24.
  • When Iris leads the group of actors your way on Page 27.
    "Iuh- saw you swoop in yesterday night. THAT was funny! Uh, anyway, you'll probably be joining US! WE'RE THE DWARRVES!"
  • Roy's introduction:
    "...Roy."
  • Aidan tries to bug you as soon as you meet.
    Aidan gets in my face with a giant smirk: "Jiiiiiiiii-dooooooooww? Or do you prefer to go by 'Grok'?"
• Zack from Echo Chamber gets his before the opening credits roll on Episode 1:
  Tom: Thank you, Zack, for ruining the 20th take.
  Zack: You're welcome, man.
  Tom: You're not sorry, are you?
  Zack: Nope.
• The first episode of The Guild is just a long string of these for each of the characters, first establishing Codex with her weblog:
  Codex: So, it's uh Friday night, and...still jobless, yay. I haven't left the house in a week. My therapist, uh, broke up with me. Oh yeah, there's a, there's a Gnome Warlock in my living room, sleeping on my couch.
• In Half-Life but the AI is Self-Aware, the first thing Benrey does is to ask Gordon for his passport, and follow him around and harass him when he fails to produce it, claiming Gordon is a thief and dismissing any attempt Gordon makes to prove he works at Black Mesa, in spite of the massive evidence to the contrary. As he does this, he also tries to talk Gordon into jumping off an elevator to his death, and gets upset when Gordon refuses to. This establishes him as a Lawful Stupid Jerkass with a penchant for Gaslighting.
• Sarah's Stick 'em Up prank in the lonelygirl15 episode "Crazy Emo Chick".
• In the very first game the Mario Party TV group played, Mr. Doom won the board and Holms, in his anger, Rage Quit the game (by shutting the entire game off). Sets the tone, don't it?
• Even though she's much more developed now, The Nostalgia Chick's massive ego was seeded with her very first line:
  Hi, I'm your Nostalgia Chick, and I, like most of the world, am an American."
• Likewise, The Nostalgia Critic's Sad Clown-ness started with him being Driven to Suicide at a dumb song in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.
• Everything we need to know about Old Man Henderson can be seen in his very first scene: After a conversation with his parrot, he barges into a Cultist meeting, screaming "MUCKLE DAMRED CULTI 'AIR EH NAMBLIES BE KEEPIN' ME WEE MEN!?!?", chews up the DM's latest lazy attempt at killing him with a shotgun, aces his sanity rolls through pure crazy, slaughters everyone else including his friend's Player Character, and burns down the entire church because he thought they stole his lawn gnomes and wanted them back. As the second narrator (the aforementioned friend) said, he knew the game would never be the same after that.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • Church is introduced spying on the Red Team with Tucker and angrily pointing out to Tucker that asking what the Reds and by extension the whole war is pointless, are doing is pointless, since all they ever do is stand around and talk. When Tucker asks what they're talking about, Church declares that he hates him, establishing him as a sarcastic, misanthropic Jerkass and the resident Only Sane Man.
  • The second episode serves as this for most of the Reds. Sarge makes numerous threats against Grif's life and treats the conflict between Reds and Blues as Serious Business, establishing him as an unhinged Blood Knight with a pathological hatred of Grif. Grif asks somewhat sarcastically if they can go home and calls out Sarge's insane thought process while being ignored, establishing him as Red Team's Only Sane Man who is too lazy to do anything about it. Simmons goes along with Sarge and caters to his every whim, establishing him as a Professional Butt-Kisser.
  • Tucker establishes himself as the resident Casanova Wannabe by complaining that the Red Team has received a car while the Blue Team is only getting a tank, because "You can't pick up chicks in a tank."
• The first episode of Satellite City is basically an extended ECM for all the regular cast.
  • Lucy's first lines of dialogue are (in order) asking Sullivan if 1) Hyzenthlay is what they're eating for dinner that night, 2) if she can skin Hyzenthlay and make her into a hat, and 3) if she can decapitate Hyzenthlay and play with her body. All while Hyzenthlay is standing right there.
  • When Lucy makes the aforementioned comment about ripping Hyzenthlay's head off "because that would just get in the way" of her playtime, Shuck rolls his eyes and sarcastically adds "Obviously."
  • Hyzenthlay just sort of watches quietly without complaint or fear while Lucy is talking about all the horrible things she's going to do to her.
  • Fleischer yells at Lucy to stop biting Winifred.
  • Winifred just lowers her ears and looks down when Lucy asks if Winifred likes it when Lucy bites her.
  • Sullivan admonishes Lucy not to eat Hyzenthlay and asks Shuck to help him with dinner - both with equal casualness - then tells Lucy to stop spitting up her fangs all over the carpet because trying to clean them up ruined his vacuum cleaner.
  • In a later episode, Wexle, Ludwig and Fontaine come in together and get theirs at roughly the same time. Wexle first appears to be a rather sinister horned black demoness with lightless black eyes and tentacles, until she begs Ludwig to let them stay at Sullivan's over the holidays because she loves Christmas so much. Ludwig, by contrast, criticizes her for practicing what he calls "simian tradition". During this same conversation, Fontaine takes Wexle's side against Ludwig and (quite cheerfully) calls Christmas "a good distraction from the bleak reality of our situation."
  • Quinn arrives in the middle of an argument between Ludwig and Lucy, and despite having an important message to deliver, nervously asks if this is a bad time and he should come back later.
  • Felicity interrupts Quinn while he's in the middle of delivering a message to enthusiastically greet him and then challenge him to a race.
  • Jones stalking down some poor schmuck through his phone and then presumably murdering him on the streets of London.
  • Yeshua's brash intelligence, dedication to helping others, egotism, and capacity for crudeness are all clearly established in his first lines of dialogue.
    Yeshua: Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed for I am your god. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous hand, or, or some shit.
  • Locket mauls and kills Holly just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and is then shown calmly drinking tea and reading a book.
• Simon Wood's first scene on the island in Survival of the Fittest sets up his central theme: coming close to succeeding then falling at the final hurdle.
• In Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG, the very first entry gives the reader a very good idea of the kind of person Mr. Welch is:
  1. Cannot base characters off The Who's drummer Keith Moon.
• Most of the main characters in the Whateley Universe get them:
  • Chaka starts off as a young black teenage boy sharing a room with his unpleasant Gangsta Wannabe older brother, except he's not only becoming a mutant and having to go to a Superhero School but turning into a girl as well, because this setting is basically X-Men with the gay rights allegory promoted from subtext to an actual plot point... And she is absolutely goddamn stoked about it. She also loudly and angrily calls her brother out on his bullshit.
  • The headmistress, Dr. Elizabeth Carson, gives the welcome speech and immediately comes across as someone you'd better not cross. Then later on, at Halloween, we meet her other identity, Lady Astarte, and we find out she's really someone you shouldn't tick off.
  • Trevor James Goodkind is a Sheltered Aristocrat, heir to billions in a wealthy anti-mutant business family and being groomed to be one of the Goodkinds who takes over the reins of power. We first see him and his family at dinner, being waited on, having a staff of chefs, and Trevor is plotting about how, when he grows up, he's going to get his favorite chef to come with him when he moves out. The next morning, he manifests as a mutant and things rapidly go downhill from there, with a series of Break the Haughty scenes.
• In Wolf 359, Isabel Lovelace arrives on-board the Hephaestus in a radioactive, homemade spaceship, carrying an empty gun containing a hidden audio recorder, with a bomb wired to her pulse, set to explode should her heartbeat go too fast or stop.

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