'MURICA!
"America's greatest eagle-statue-detective takes on his hardest case yet in this thrilling feature-length adventure."
— YouTube description
Detective Heart of America: The Final Freedom, is a feature-length film created by Jason Steele, better known by his internet persona as FilmCow.
While it's unclear when exactly the development started, a Kickstarter for the movie began around October/November of 2013, reaching a total of over $30k more than the targeted funds by November 8th. While the movie was initially slated to be released on July 4th, 2014 (for obvious reasons), the movie in its entirety was released for free on YouTube in August 2015. It can be viewed here
Tropes:
- Acrophobic Bird: Heart of America is unable to fly until he gets shark powers.
- Animalistic Abomination: Reggie's mom is a fifth-dimensional being named Gorslax. She looks like a rabbit wearing a dress and bonnet.
- Applied Phlebotinum: Americium, essentially Valhalla for Americans, is powered by cubes which are in turn powered by America. Amongst other things, they allow Jesus to bring Heart of America back to life multiple times, and
watch people while they jerk off. Oh, and spheres need juice for some reason. It's also implied that the other realities were somehow powered by cubes as well, since cube energy was keeping Brendan alive somehow. - Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Fannie and Earl in one of the film's only serious moments.
- Bandaged Face: Pinnochio has bandages covering his face after being shot in the face in the first episode of the series.
- Brick Joke:
- Heart of America constantly mocks (or at least has a rivalry with) the Ouya in the Kickstarter campaign videos. Ouya ends up being a major player and initial antagonist in the film.
- Heart of America wonders if Garfield still exists in Fug, and hopes that it doesn't. It does, and forms the foundation of the Forbidden Knots.
- Chess Mate swears that he will kill Heart of America by dropping a suitcase on him from the sky. He ends up saving Heart of America from an alien when he does it later in the movie.
- Boom, Headshot!: Heart of America shoots Pinnochio in the face in 1, an incident Pinnochio survives with minimal injuries.
- Chekhov's Gun: Chess Mate states that he has organized a suitcase full of acid to fall exactly where Heart of America is standing. However, the suitcase is timed to drop tomorrow, and Heart of America gets hit by a car before it drops. Later on in the film, Heart of America and Glorslax are trying to drive away from an alien approaching their car. Just when it's about to reach the car, the suitcase (with Chess Mate inside) falls on top of the alien, killing it.
- Comic Relief: Invoked with Fug the Cat, who tries to be upbeat and comical, but only succeeds in annoying everyone present at the resistance.
- Continuity Cameo: Fannie and Earl, from the FilmCow series of the same name appear as characters in The Final Freedom.
- Crapsack World: The world that Ouya comes from. It originates from an alternate future where a race of higher beings, the "aliens" (though not really; information on their exact nature is vague), have eradicated free will and subjected all life on Earth to a tyrannical regime that has essentially rendered free will obsolete. They maintain this control using reality warping devices, of which Ouya is. At some point, a resistance movement was formed that Ouya joined after it began to question its creators, only to be crushed almost immediately. Ouya remained the sole survivor of this movement, and used its abilities to travel through time and space, repeatedly dismantling and reestablishing civilizations over countless ages in an effort to prevent the future it came from from ever existing. It comes close to completing its goal when it obtains a much more powerful reality warping device from the "aliens", but thanks to Heart of America, it fails.
- Death Is Cheap: Heart of America dies several times throughout the film. Half of his deaths are due to Jesus bringing him back to life in midair, after which he falls to his death again.
- Downer Ending: The end credits confirm that the Bad Future was not prevented.
- Dying Declaration of Love: Done simultaneously by all the Fugmerican natives, and Fannie and Earl to each other.
- Eagleland: While still heavily parodying this thanks to Heart of America's immense jingoism, it's also deconstructed when Pinnochio and Madison Square Garden try to recreate America by finding the Fugmerican natives and slaughtering them.
- Faux Symbolism: The Fugmerican natives drop some of this:Debrah: A dark wind sets upon a cold land…
Heart of America: …What?
Debrah: Nothing. That means absolutely nothing. - La Résistance: Late in The Final Freedom, Heart of America learns of a resistance party residing in his hotel room consisting of all his friends and acquaintances.
- Love Dodecahedron: As the Fugmerican natives are being massacred by spectres, they all admit their love for each other.
- Mighty Whitey: Parodied, of course. The Native Fugmericans push Heart of America into this role while constantly lampshading that they are doing so. It makes him very uncomfortable.
- The Movie: The Final Freedom was adapted from a duo of shorts after a Kickstarter campaign was launched in 2013 to help fund the film.
- Not Quite Dead: Pinnochio and the baby both survive after supposedly being killed by Heart of America in the series.
- Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Shark Council. Supposedly they've been protecting their part of the ocean for 12,000 years, and are very effective and important. All they seem to actually do though is give people shark powers and talk about finance.
- Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: At the end of the movie, Detective Heart of America uses the reality warping device Ouya wanted to use to erase the tyrannic control of the "aliens" and create actual free will to instead recreate America and turn the entire Earth into his own vision of America. As shown in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, he is awarded a free two night stay at the JW Marriott for his "heroic" deeds, Sabina starts her own company and Reggie turns in his badge to begin working for her. Every other character in the movie dies.
- Not to mention the fact that Detective Heart of America's meddling with Ouya's plan essentially does nothing to change the fact that free will does not exist and the universe is still being controlled by tyrannical overlords. In fact, the very last flag shown in the credits sequence has a center design that looks suspiciously like the alien tyrants' masks.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: At the end of the movie, Heart of America uses the permanent reality warping device to turn the whole world into America, because he'd rather have America back than go with Ouya's plan, which would create true freedom, but not bring America back.
- Remember the New Guy?: Played straight and subverted/lampshaded. Heart of America's partner, Reggie the Rabbit, appears as if he wasn't a new character, but when Chess Mate appears and speaks about ending his long-running feud with Heart of America, Heart of America has no idea what he's talking about, and doesn't remember ever meeting him before.
- Remembered I Could Fly: When the Resistence gets attacked in their hotel room, Reggie tells Heart of America to fly out the window. Heart of America then remembers that he can fly, because he has shark powers.
- Reset Button: Ouya uses Bitcoins to buy all of the US debt from China, and retroactively revokes the Constitution, meaning that America is not and never was a country. As a result, the country is reformed into a new land named "Fug". Brendan implies that this has happened multiple times, stemming from a land named "Slamzone".
- Ridiculously Long Phone Number: Inverted - the phone number of the resistance is 8, and so is their address.
- Running Gag: Reggie's mom Gorslax keeps getting caught in a vortex.
- Santa Claus: One of the Fugmerican natives is shown to have killed Santa Claus and stolen his outfit.
- Skewed Priorities: Jesus considers watching everyone in the world jerk off to be more important than restoring America. He is only convinced otherwise when Heart of America points out that if he doesn't save America, there might not be anybody left to watch jerk off.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: The Native Fugmericans are definitely not an acting troupe that got lost in the woods. No sir.
- Take That!:
- Several towards Lost. He says that Futurama not existing is evened out by Lost not existing and he lists Lost as one of the bad things about America.
- When Ouya is explaining his reason for creating the supercomputer, we get this jab at the system's popularity (or lack thereof):Ouya: I created computers in my image and sold them as video game machines. The plan was to put an Ouya in every home in the developed world, to create a global network of Bitcoin-generating machines.Detective Heart of America: And that worked?Ouya: No. Only eleven people ever purchased an Ouya.
- The creators make no effort to disguise their disgust of Pizza Hut, carrying over from one of FilmCow's previous works, Fannie and Earl.
- Totally Radical: Brendan, the cool guy, based on the Kickstarter's highest-level backer, is the epitome of this trope. He even comes from a previous world named "Slamzone" where acting as such was the norm.
- Unknown Rival: Heart of America doesn't even know Chess Mate exists until he shows up and starts talking about their rivalry like they're long-time enemies.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: When Pinnochio confronts Heart of America, he tells him to "put on [his] dress and go home". Heart of America responds angrily, saying that there's nothing wrong with dresses and that he'd even wear a dress himself. The next time they meet, he actually is, and everyone admits that it's a very nice dress.
