Gorillaz / Tropes E to M

Gorillaz Trope Examples
A - D | E - M | N - Z

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E

• Early-Bird Cameo: The "Superfast Jellyfish" logo appears on a billboard in the video for "Stylo".
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the Apex Tapes interview, Russell's voice sounds significantly higher in pitch, and uses much more Jive Turkey in his dialogue, a sharp contrast to his baritone down-to-earth personality that would define him going forward.
• Eclipsed by the Remix: While the original "19-2000" is still respected in its own right, the Soulchild remix of the song had significantly further reach in its success to the point that some actually think it is the original. Considering it was engineered to have crossover appeal, this is a possible example of an invoking.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Evangelist sure is... tentacle-y. However, the Boogieman is a more clear-cut case as the Evangelist is apparently good.
• Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: 2D's got a mild case of this. It goes away completely when he sings, for obvious reasons.
• The End of the World as We Know It: The last spoken verse of "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head".
• Enemy Mine: Implied in the lyrics to "Rhinestone Eyes":
  This storm brings strange loyalties, and skies.
• Enforced Method Acting:invoked
  • Rise of the Ogre reveals that the band wasn't told about the 300-foot elk at the end of the "19-2000" video so they'd react to it authentically.
  • Noodle did know the island was going to be shot down in "El Mañana", but the stunt helicopters didn't show up; the ones depicted are actually trying to kill her, and everyone thought it was All Part of the Show until too late.
  • 2D's and Russel's reactions during their brief appearances in the "DARE" music video are not acted. Noodle didn't tell anyone that she was going to record the video, so the other members were genuinely wondering what on earth was going on.
  • According to Murdoc, the "Stylo" video was not scripted and the car chase-scene was accidentally filmed by the camera crew that was following Murdoc at the time.
• Ensemble Cast: Other than Russel, the remaining three members of the band have pretty equal stake for the title of The Protagonist. Murdoc tends to drive the plot, Noodle's past is one of the main story arcs, and 2D is the viewpoint character during the majority of events.
• Epic Instrumental Opener: "Opium" is a nearly 7 minute track that spends its first two minutes building up an increasingly elaborate drum beat before anyone sings a note.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Murdoc seemed genuinely distressed when finding out the real Noodle was under attack by pirates, and he immediately rushed to help her — it couldn't be simply for the sake of the album because he still had Cyborg Noodle.
• Everyone's Baby Sister: Noodle, being the youngest of the Gorillaz roster, tends to be treated like a little sister by the others, who are older than her by a few decades. Even Murdoc has a soft spot for her.
• Everything Is an Instrument: Found on every album, to varying extents.
  • Rise of the Ogre mentions things such as "chucking ostrich eggs at sheets of metal and leaping into buckets" as some of the work that went into creating their self-titled debut album.
  • "We Are Happy Landfill" has, among other things, car horns screeching throughout the track.
  • "Seattle Yodel" featured a novelty toy picked up from a shop in Seattle.
• Evil Laugh:
  • The repeated laughter in "Feel Good Inc."
  • Murdoc does a pretty effective one at the start of the "Clint Eastwood" video.
  • Murdoc also gives a few evil cackles in the "Hey, our toys have arrived!" G-Bite.
  • "The Apprentice" features this element occurring in the background of the track.
  • "Charger" has evil laughter from the song's collaborator Grace Jones.
• Eye Beams: Used by the sea god (Leee John) in "The Lost Chord" to destroy Plastic Beach.
• Eyeless Face: 2-D appears to have this, but it's actually a case of hyphema caused by the injuries Murdoc gave him on D-Day giving him 8-Ball Fracture so severe that the blood leakage causes his eyes to appear completely black.
• Eyes Always Shut: Noodle in Phase 1.
• Eye Scream: 2D's backstory, which consisted of Murdoc first ramming a truck into one of his eyes, then ending up hurting the other one during Murdoc's ill-advised car stunt. Ouch.
• Eyes Never Lie: The Happyfolk and Strangefolk in "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head".

F

• Fading into the Next Song:
  • The album versions of "Dirty Harry" and "Feel Good Inc." run together with some seriously creepy laughter.
  • "Don't Get Lost in Heaven" flows almost perfectly into "Demon Days"; so well you can only tell the song change by looking at the track switch in the device you are using it to play. And for vinyl fans, good luck telling when "DGLH" becomes "Demon Days".
  • The music video for "Stylo" leads directly into "On Melancholy Hill".
  • All over the place on The Fall. One place is in "Shy-Town", which flows into "Little Pink Plastic Bags" which in turn flows into "The Joplin Spider".
  • One of the wailing synths that ends "Superfast Jellyfish" segues into the very start of "Empire Ants".
  • "Andromeda" ends on a beeping noise that becomes the intro to "Busted and Blue".
  • "The Non-Conformist Oath" ends on the first few notes of "Submission", but intentionally stops to wait for the audience to stop laughing before starting over.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: "Strobelite", in both the album version and the radio edit.
• Fanservice / Fan Disservice:
  • Murdoc fits one or both in everything he's in. In about half of his appearances he's naked, shirtless, and constantly gyrating in one way or another. Special mention goes to his appearance in "Saturnz Barz", where he spends the majority of the video naked with only pixelation covering his crotch...And for a few hours the 360 version didn't have it.
  • 2D could fall into either category as well, given his looks, though he's meant as the Brainless Beauty of the band.
  • The cut "5/4" music video was to have featured several scantily clad women, full-frontal nudity, and an opening shot of an anonymous girl masturbating. Once again, Jamie Hewlett's art style makes it tow the line between erotic and off-putting.
  • However old you were when the video for "Dare" came out probably determined whether or not you found Noodle's dancing sexy.
  • Then there's 2D wearing ridiculously short jogging shorts (practically underwear) that show off his long, smooth legs in the "Humility" music video, not to mention him spending most of the video riding around on his roller skates and dancing in a way that consists of him frequently shaking his hips around. Even with the usual artstyle, it's hard to see it as anything other than fanservice.
• Fanservice Pack: Noodle is made a bit more feminine for Demon Days, as she ages in real-time and went from ten to fourteen between albums. By Phase 3, both Noodle and the Cyborg are much more femininely shaped, and Noodle wears a dress and lipstick.
• Flat "What": De La Soul gave this response to a sample of David Attenborough saying "The sea has gone silent" on "Superfast Jellyfish" from Plastic Beach.
• Flowery Insults: Murdoc comes up with a few doozies.
• Foreign-Language Tirade: In her introduction video, Noodle initially talks about herself in English, but suddenly starts cursing at her video game in Japanese.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the video for "Stylo", we see signs for "Superfast Jellyfish" and "Sweepstakes" which are both titles of other singles from the Plastic Beach album.
  • "Sleeping Powder" was released after Damon Albarn thought that 2D felt a little unrepresented in the Humanz album, what with singing a little less than usual, and there's a bigger emphasis on collabs. This foreshadowed his major presence in the new album, The Now Now, released next year, where there's just 3 collabs (George Benson in "Humility", and Snoop Dogg and Jamie Principle in "Hollywood") in the whole album, and 2D sings in all the songs.
  • Jamie Hewlett posting a video of Ace bullying a kid with a ball months before the band announced that he was the new bassist that would replace Murdoc.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Sanguine: 2D, a kind-hearted and talented simpleton, who is often a Butt-Monkey and mostly regards his surroundings with an absentminded daze.
  • Choleric: Murdoc, who is unhygenic, irritable, cruel, and generally a big piece of shit to almost everyone who meets him.
  • Melancholic: Noodle, a Cheerful Child who matured enough to take a sort of leadership stance in the band by Phase 2, then became a Broken Bird in Phase 3.
  • Phlegmatic: Russel, a Gentle Giant who doesn't emote much due to the tragedies he suffered in the past, but has a softer side that he reveals to those he considers his friends.
• Free Wheel: In the Music Video for "19-2000".
• Freudian Excuse: Murdoc blames his father for the way he turned out.

G

• Gainax Ending: The music video for "Hallelujah Money" randomly ends with a sample of SpongeBob SquarePants loudly sobbing. If you look into it, you'd learn that within the context of the episode it comes from, it's as a response to Mr. Krabs telling him "You're fired!", referencing Donald Trump's infamous catchphrase from The Apprentice. This is fitting, as the song criticizes Trump.
• Genre Mashup: Nothing sounds quite like them. Their music is a mix of Hip-Hop, Rock, Rap, Electronica, Soul, Country and many many more.
• Genre Roulette: Numerous albums don't seem to stick to any one or two particular styles of music. Plastic Beach changes among numerous musical genres over the course of the album, and "Song Machine" doesn't have a single song that remotely sounds similar to any of the others.
• Gentle Giant: Russel. That moniker became more appropriate than ever when he became gigantic from ingesting loads of polluted material on his way to Plastic Beach.
• The Ghost: Pretty much every character outside of the band and a select few others is only referred to in passing and never actually appears in person.
• Giftedly Bad: Originally, Murdoc's singing voice was described as sounding like a strangled crow. He insisted in RoTO that "Technically, my voice is a lot better than 2D's." This, however, suffers from Flip-Flop of God. In RoTO they also say that he sung the song "White Light", while closer to rapping than really singing, which wasn't an awful singing voice, and in his "Session Obsession" interview he sang along with a song and was pretty damn good. That said, Phil Cornwell (the voice of Murdoc) may have forgotten he wasn't supposed to sing well. Or, if you prefer an in-character explanation, maybe he just sounds worse if he's trying too hard. According to a recent Pirate Radio interview, he did the (heavily distorted) vocals on "Detroit".
• Girl with Psycho Weapon: Both Noodles have some pretty cool guns.
• Gory Discretion Shot: "On Melancholy Hill" has two. First when Real Noodle kills one of the pirates pilots we see some blood on the canopy of his plane but nothing else. Secondly, we see the jellyfish blood but we don't see them actually see them going through the propeller of one of the submersibles. Also averted when Cyborg Noodle pukes up a live octopus in the same video in close up.
• Gratuitous French:
  • "We Got the Power" contains a repeated clip of Jehnny Beth saying "On a le pouvoir de s'aimer, okay?", which translates to "We have the power to love another, okay?"
  • A vast part of "Désolé" is in French (the title meaning "Sorry"), featuring Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara in her native languages (the chorus is in fact in Bambara, another national language of Mali). The "Gratuitous" part comes from 2D, who's shown in the video reading from an English-to-French phrasebook while singing at one point.
• Gratuitous Japanese:
  • Noodle speaks Japanese in "Left Hand Suzuki Method" before providing rough English translations.
  • "MLS" has a featured contribution by Japanese band CHAI, who mix their verses with Japanese and non-native English.
• Gratuitous Spanish:
  • Exhibited by "El Mañana" and "Latin Simone (¿Qué Pasa Contigo?)", although to more extents with the latter. For "Latin Simone", it's not just in the title—the whole song is in Spanish (although an English version was released several years later on G Sides).
  • In "Dead Butterflies", Roxani Arias raps half of her verse in English, other half in Spanish.
• The Grim Reaper: Appears to have it in for Russel, what with directly being involved in the gang shooting which killed Russel's friends and later removing Del's soul from him, for as-yet-unrevealed reasons. Also, judging from Murdoc's tweets regarding the "On Melancholy Hill" events, maybe the Boogieman.
• Groin Attack:
  • In the "Clint Eastwood" video, a zombie ape reaches up from the ground, grabs Murdoc's crotch, and yanks him down. According to him in Rise of the Ogre, it hurts rather a lot.
  • The "Rock the House" video — at least Murdoc got to wear a protective cup for that one, but 2D didn't.
  • Murdoc ends up getting hit in the crotch by an asteroid whilst flying around in the "Saturnz Barz" video.
• Gross-Up Close-Up: The first 38 seconds of this clip is just Murdoc staring at the camera — cold sore, oily skin, nose hairs and all.

H

• Halloween Town:
  • Kong Studios and its surrounding environments are basically this, with Kong Studios serving as Haunted Headquarters for Gorillaz that is defined by its supernatural elements
  • The Spirit House, which was basically a successor to the original Kong Studios, is an example of this as well.
• Hand Cannon: Bruce Willis' revolver in the "Stylo" music video.
• Hartman Hips: Noodle from Phase 2 onwards.
• Haunted Headquarters:
  • Kong Studios, the studio where Gorillaz live in and produce all of their material. It was originally built on a hilltop above an abandoned graveyard in West Essex, England and was haunted by various zombies, demons, ghosts and other supernatural beings who reside in and around it. Today, a revamped Kong Studios is located in West London, being less haunted but still maintaining a haunting aesthetic.
  • The Spirit House being a haunted house also makes it this, as it's the primary environment Gorillaz lived in during Phase 4.
  • Downplayed with the new Kong Studios debuting in Song Machine. While it looks quite ominous on the outside, it's a pretty normal place with a cozy and brightly-lit recording area. It is still haunted, by the Pink Phantom of the titular song who has the power to create the portals seen in the videos.
• Haunted House: The setting of "Saturnz Barz" as the band goes house hunting. While seemingly smaller than all their previous homes, they discover that it's much, much bigger on the inner inside. Also, it's not as unoccupied as it looks.
• The Heart: Noodle. The other three don't care much for each other — though, Russell and 2D get along a bit better with each other than Murdoc — but are willing to put up with each other for her sake. The band splits up after her apparent death in "El Mañana" during Phase 2, and while it did somewhat get together in Phase 3, it was only because Murdoc had to use force. With Noodle back as of Phase 4, Gorillaz is back as well.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • Russel and Del, the spirit who lived inside him. Described by Russ as his "life-long soul-brother".
  • In a much, much more twisted way, 2D and Murdoc could count as well.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Murdoc and the talent contests.
• Hi, Mom!: 2D says this while introducing himself in a radio interview.
• Homage: Does Damon Albarn have a copy of Krazy Kong by Wild Willy Barrett? "Don't Get Lost In Heaven" sounds a lot like "Return of Kong", what with the angelic backing harmony and the reggae-like rhythm. Put on top of this that Krazy Kong is about a monkey-like character who is a bit volatile.
• Hope Springs Eternal: Supposedly the ultimate message of Demon Days (Album), both the track and the album. Noodle compares it to a train ride she experienced in China, seeing the desolate desert at night to then wake up back in beautiful scenery once more.
• Horrible Hollywood:
  • "Hollywood" zig-zags this idea. The song repeatedly juxtaposes the bright promises and temptations from the titular city with a more skeptical outlook, finding it far more dark, materialistic, and manipulative in reality, but with Jamie Principle's verses in particular, it seems to find it an in-between: it has everything you could ever want, but also everything you don't.
  • "The Valley of the Pagans" also has a mixed opinion. On one hand, the song celebrates Hollywood as a place of exciting debauchery and thrills equated closely to spiritual transcendence, but it also calls attention to the darker artificiality behind it; an escapist fantasy for people with a lot to escape from.
• Human Mail: Noodle arrived at Kong Studios in a crate once, and traveled back from Japan by mail another time.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Boogieman in Phase 3. He looks like a man wearing a sinister gas mask, but there's something... off about him. He seems to be border on "eldritch".

I

• I Call It "Vera": Murdoc's bass, "El Diablo".
• Imagined Innuendo: Murdoc claimed he thought Russel was using an Unusual Euphemism when he mentioned he'd been "living in Ike Turner's basement." Russel actually meant it literally.
• Immune to Drugs: Murdoc has been perpetually drunk for several months and is still alive.
• Indecipherable Lyrics: Ten years on and still no one can figure out just what 2D is singing in "Punk".
• Instant Home Delivery: Noodle's crate arrived seconds after Murdoc put the phone down after placing an ad for a guitarist.
• The Invisible Band: Prior to 2006 — the actual humans behind the music never presented themselves as Gorillaz, and live shows concealed the performers by putting them in silhouette or behind a movie screen. Since the Demon Days Live performance, however, they've essentially dropped The Masquerade.
• I Shall Taunt You: Preteen Murdoc intentionally provoked a bully into breaking his nose.
• It's All About Me: Many of Murdoc's actions qualify him for this. He constantly refers to Gorillaz as "my band", he claims to own 2D and uses this as his excuse when he kidnaps him and keeps him against his will on Plastic Beach, and he actually wrote and released a song entitled "Murdoc Is God".
• It Tastes Like Feet: Non-eating example; Noodle once claimed in an interview that Murdoc smells "like halitosis on toast".

J

• Jerkass: Murdoc. Despite 2D treating him as a friend, he continues to treat the poor guy like shit, which gets worse with each Phase.

K

• Karma Houdini: Murdoc, again, especially with his abuse of 2D. Then his protection wears off in Phase 4, resulting in a Humiliation Conga off-screen. By Phase 5, he's in jail for unknown crimes, with his bandmates shedding no tears over it and even replacing him with Ace.
• Kavorka Man: Murdoc, if the huge list of women who complained he slept with them and then stole their purses is anything to go by.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Among plenty of other things, Murdoc slaps one of the kids in the "Dirty Harry" video.
  • In the animatics for the "On Melancholy Hill" video, it seemed like taking the manatee was the Boogieman's intention all along. However, in the official video, he goes to leave without the manatee, then seems to reconsider and take the manatee with him just to be cruel!
  • In the "Humility" video, we have two instances: Ace taking a basketball from two players and popping it with a switchblade, to their unamusement; and Russel tripping 2D in the middle of rollerskating, then watches as 2D starts slipping and fumbling around like an idiot.
• Kids Rock: A school choir sings the refrain of "Dirty Harry": "I need a gun / to keep myself from harm." The kids seen in the "Dirty Harry" video are apparently based on the children from that choir.
• Killed Offscreen: Apparently, this was the fate of Daley. A skeleton in "The Lost Chord" lies on the beach next to the same patch and a similar pair of glasses to those he wore in "Doncamatic".
• Killer Gorilla: A group of zombie gorillas show up in the music video for "Clint Eastwood".
• Knockout Gas: In the short animated idents for Plastic Beach, 2D is kidnapped by Murdoc gassing him in his Beirut apartment.

L

• Lamarck Was Right: 2D wasn't born with his trademark blue hair, but his multiple illegitimate children have somehow inherited it.
• Last Note Nightmare:
  • "On Melancholy Hill" ends with an eerie bell chime that doesn't even remotely fit with the rest of the song.
  • There's also "M1 A1", which has this trope in reverse — up until about 1:40, it's a clip from Day of the Dead (1985) that features a man shouting "Hello?! Is anyone there?!" and getting more and more desperate as time goes on... but then the song turns much more upbeat. You could turn "M1 A1" into a stereotypical Last Note Nightmare by putting it in reverse, but then you have Whole Song Nightmare...
  • "The Speak It Mountains" ends with what sounds like digitally-altered screams of pain. It's actually just a picture of a mountain that you can find by putting the song through a stereograph◊.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the video for "Friday 13th", Russel lip-syncs to the lyrics "I don't talk too much, man" (a notably deliberate choice as 2D is the only band member that says anything), which may be a comment on his relative silence compared to his bandmates.
• Let's Meet the Meat: The jellyfishes' gormlessly happy expressions in the "Superfast Jellyfish" video give a distinct impression of this. Even more disturbingly, they still appear to be alive and sentient even after being microwaved and therefore appear to have been eaten alive.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: In the "Saturnz Barz (Spirit House)" video. Murdoc gleefully lampshades it.
• Licensed Game: Parodied in "PAC-MAN" which features 2D playing a Gorillaz-themed version of Pac-Man which is just the same game but with tweaked character sprites featuring caricatures of the band.
• Like Brother and Sister: Noodle and everyone in the band. Her relationship with 2D especially, is described by her as a "zen bond".
• Literal Metaphor: In We are the Dury:
  Murdoc: I'm speaking metaphorically, D. I'm using the analogy of the chimney flue to describe the, um, passageways of our flowing creativity. The zombies, in this case, are used as a metaphor for blockages to the airways, figuratively speaking.
  2D: Really?
  Murdoc: No. There really are about six undead carcasses stuck up the studio chimney.
• Little Bit Beastly: All members of the band look like humans with ape-like features, hence the name "Gorillaz".
• Locked into Strangeness: 2D has blue (purple in Phase 1 and teal in Phase 2) hair apparently caused by him sustaining a massive blow to the head falling out of a tree as a child, causing his hair to fall out and grow back in blue.
• Lord of the Ocean: In "The Lost Chord", Leee John portrays a gigantic, shackled, barnacle-covered and coral-crowned sea god who emerges from the ocean to destroy Plastic Beach.
• Lyrical Cold Open:
  • The filtered 2D at the start of the Soulchild remix of "19-2000".
  • The immediately recognizable laughter that opens "Feel Good Inc.".
• Lyrical Dissonance: More than a few.
  • An example would be "Superfast Jellyfish"; it's a happy, bouncy tune while its lyrics are about how we're overfishing till the point there is nothing living left in the sea. It could also be seen as a metaphor for the modern music industry, with people demanding entertainment "just in time for breakfast" and disregarding quality. Depending on how you interpret it, "Superfast Jellyfish" is either an environmentalist ballad or a scathing criticism of pop culture. Either way, it's pretty eerie.
  • "To Binge" seems like a happy, beachy song, but is actually a pretty heartbreaking song about being in love with a drug addict.
  • "Chalk Tablet Towers" has an upbeat, new wave-inspired pop instrumental, but the lyrics are about feelings of entrapment and harmful codependence, either on drugs or a former lover.

M

• Machinima: The (now deleted) video for "The Valley of the Pagans" features the band taking a joyride throughout Grand Theft Auto V's Los Santos, merging animated footage of driving with in-game footage, even placing Beck's appearance through the in-game phone.
• Madness Mantra: 2D's lyrics in "Stylo" qualify as this, considering he had been kidnapped by Murdoc and had his life uprooted by "this guy who just won't leave him alone", the whole Noodle situation, and singing it all while he was in the middle of a car chase that could have killed him. "Overload, overload, overload, comin' up to the..." And repeat.
• Mad Scientist: Murdoc has shown himself to be one, putting Cyborg Noodle together with some of Noodle's DNA bits that he kept in a jar, robotic parts that he had shipped out to the island and a Noodle wig from eBay.
  • In Song Machine, Murdoc builds an Orgone Accumulator to use as his own personal portal for the new Kong Studios after discovering that it had multiple portals that the other band members used that he was unaware of.
• The Man in the Moon: In the "Strange Timez" video, Robert Smith's face is imposed over the moon (and later over a satellite). With the added context of the song itself (which is about how the world of 2020 is experiencing strange times), this establishes him as singing from the perspective of an outside observer, one coldly interpreting the Earth and humanity as merely going through the motions.
• Meaningless Meaningful Words: All over the place in "Rhinestone Eyes":
  I'm a scary gargoyle on a tower
  That you made with plastic power
  Your Rhinestone Eyes are like, factories far away
  With the paralytic dreams that we all seem to keep
  Drive on engines till they weep with
  Future pixels in factories far away.
• Medium Awareness: It seems to vary as to whether the characters are aware that they're cartoons. The puppet version of Murdoc is very much aware of the fact that he's a puppet, and that his voice was recorded by an actor weeks in advance. Resident Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant Murdoc also uses his status as a cartoon at one point to defend his lack of consequences for a murder he commits during the creation of the Demon Days album. In his words: "I'm a cartoon, mate. You'd have a hard time pinning anything on me. I don't even have fingerprints."
• Medium Blending: The videos, the website and other related artwork fuse together cartoon drawings, CGI and real footage.
  • The first one, "Tomorrow Comes Today", uses real backgrounds behind the 2D characters.
  • Later clips, starting with "Clint Eastwood", mix traditional animation with many CG elements. In "19-2000", the Gorillaz themselves are in 3D for wide shots, though still 2D for close-ups.
  • Likewise, "Rock the House" has several CG-animated characters, including Del the Ghost Rapper and the inflatable gorilla cheerleaders.
  • "Feel Good Inc.", "DARE" and "Dirty Harry" add live-action to the mix (with guest stars De La Soul, Shaun Ryder and Bootie Brown, respectively).
  • Later clips have the characters more and more often in 3D, including for "live" performances. The MTV European Music Awards 2005 in Lisbon had the three-dimensional Gorillaz on stage, thanks to an updated version of the old Victorian parlour trick named "Pepper's Ghost". Repeated for the Grammy Awards 2006 in Los Angeles, this time alongside Madonna as guest-star.
  • In Phase 3, the music video for "Stylo" is almost entirely live-action with just three of the Gorillaz in quasi-realistic 3D (and Bruce Willis as the antagonist).
  • "On Melacholly Hill" returns the characters to 2D (save for Cyborg-Noodle who stay CG-rendered, to keep her appart from the real Noodle) amongst plenty 3D vehicles, creatures and backgrounds.
  • The clip for "Saturnz Barz" also has the group in 2D, CG demons interacting with them and very realistic backgrounds.
  • The "Sleeping Powder" video has a seemingly motion captured 2D dancing on top of Stock Footage background.
  • "The Pink Phantom" animates Elton John into the Gorillaz art style, but retains [6LACK] in live-action with a digitized filter applied.
  • "The Valley of the Pagans" has the exterior car shots recreated in Grand Theft Auto V, the interiors with the band traditionally animated and a live-action Beck appearing on the on-screen phone.
• Mickey Mousing: In "PAC-MAN", Russel is hitting his punching bag in sync with the beat. He's literally beat boxing.
• Missing Mom: Murdoc's mother.
• Mondegreen Gag: Bizarrely (and possibly as a kind of joke on the audience), the official lyric videos for many songs on Song Machine are incorrect, often attributing lyrics based on this — what are the odds of listening to "PAC-MAN" and hearing "you can call me glad and cyborg" over "you can call me mad and stifled"? At one point in the video for "Simplicity", 2D's lyrics near the end of the song are simply "transcribed" as "cant make out what 2D is saying", suggesting that the videomaker is merely deciphering lyrics by ear rather than getting actual official word from the band itself.
• Modesty Shorts: The storyboard for the cancelled "Rhinestone Eyes" shows Noodle wearing these under her shirt/dress.
• Monochromatic Eyes:
  • 2D's are black, which were caused by his eight-ball fractured eyes. On occasion, he's depicted with white eyes.
  • Russel and Del have white eyes.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • When 2D starts singing in "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head", it transitions from a nice fairy tale to a song where people are dying due to greed, though said message ultimately parallels what happens in the fairy tale.
  • On the Self-Titled Album, the clanging, ominous "Man Research (Clapper)" is followed by the frenzied and upbeat "Punk", which in turn leads into the slow-building, dub "Sound Check (Gravity)".
  • On Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, the peppy "Chalk Tablet Towers" is followed by the wistful "The Pink Phantom". The respective lyrics are however much more in line.
• Morality Chain / Morality Pet: Noodle to Murdoc, arguably the only thing keeping Murdoc from lapsing into a monster. Confirmed by his rapid moral decline after the events of "El Mañana", and the panicked tone of his Twitter posts upon discovering she's alive and in trouble.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Murdoc received a baccalaureate in Anti-Social Anthropology from Sodsworth Comprehensive school in his youth and took an open university course during his stay in Mexico, earning him a degree in "Amateur Administration of Pharmaceutical Medicine" and the title Doctor Niccals — "legally entitled to experiment on monkeys", apparently. See Mad Scientist above.
• Mr. Fanservice: Deliberately invoked with 2D. His original bio included the words "Voice like an angel, arse like a satsuma." Murdoc even admits this is why he picked 2D to join the band in Rise of the Ogre. "Girls would go crazy for his looks!" From the iTunes Sessions:
  Murdoc: What an image. Tall, pretty, blue, spiky hair...
  2D: No eyeballs...
  Murdoc: No eyeballs... I knew that he had to be the frontman.
• Multinational Team: 2D and Murdoc are English (2D comes from Sussex, Murdoc from Stoke-on-Trent), Russel is American and Noodle is Japanese. During Phase 5 Murdoc is replaced with Ace, another American.
• Musical Squares:
  • Famously, the cover of Demon Days (Album), as a homage to that of The Beatles' Let It Be.
  • The digital release cover of Humanz also features art of the band members in a similar fashion to Demon Days.
• Mythology Gag: The music video for "The Lost Chord" is essentially an extended homage to Plastic Beach and its storyline, and features appearances by Cyborg Noodle, the Boogieman's mask, Noodle's cat mask, a gigantic Russel, the whale that tortured 2D, and the island itself.

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