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Gorillaz / Tropes N to Z

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Gorillaz Trope Examples
A - D | E - M | N - Z
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    N 
  • The Name Is Bond, James Bond:
    2D: I know there's a rumour going round that my real name is Stuart Tusspot, but that's not true. It's Pot. Stuart Pot.
    • Apparently only half-true; it was "Tusspot" when he was very young, but his father decided he didn't want Stuart to suffer the same teasing he did, so he changed the family name to "Pot" to head it off at the pass somewhat.
      David Pot: But deep down both myself and Stu are still Tusspots.
  • New Sound Album: Pretty much all of them following their self-titled debut. It's fair to say that Gorillaz doesn't bother putting out a new album unless they're doing something new.
    • Demon Days (Album) built off the foundation of the self-titled album and introduced a darker, more theatrical take of its sound with heavier and more political lyrics, as well as introducing more features to diversify things further.
    • Plastic Beach featured an even more eclectic variety of genres and sounds, as well as one of the most clear-cut album concepts surrounding the titular tropical trash heap. It also featured an even wider array of featured artists, firmly cementing Gorillaz' status as a massive collaborative project among its fans.
    • The Fall is a quieter immediate follow-up, but still manages to be a unique departure in of itself, featuring far less features, and containing more stripped-down, minimalist production inspired by ambient, blues, and chillwave. Also notable is that it was mainly composed through Damon's iPad using a number of different composition apps, and was based on his observations and feelings from traveling across the US while on tour.
    • Humanz once again returns to a fuller form, featuring much sleeker, modernized production with emphasis on electronic and R&B elements, as well as jam-packing the amount of collaborative crossovers up to eleven. Funnily enough, it also somewhat counts as Revisiting the Roots, as rather than trying to go for a cohesive thematic, it features a looser "assorted mixtape" vibe, hearkening back to their first album.
    • The Now Now is another Breather Episode album, once again cutting down on epic collaborations for a quainter aesthetic à la The Fall, but taking a much softer, retro-inspired sound based on genres such as soul, synthpop, and new wave.
    • Song Machine is an unusual case somewhat influenced by its format, being a series of assorted singles rather than songs designed to fit a cohesive album (although it has been compiled as such). Nevertheless, it continues the trend of Humanz by including lots of collaborations, but featuring more relaxing, upbeat, yet still eclectic tunes that primarily feature 2D. It's considered both a return to form in line with "classic" Gorillaz as well as a solid way of incorporating other artists without overshadowing the Gorillaz side of the music.
  • New Technology Is Evil: The basis of "Busted and Blue", a lament on technology's dominating effect on humanity. Touched on in the preceding track, "Broken", which includes a verse about using television to fill in the gaps of a shaky relationship rather than working things out.
  • Nice Guy: 2D is one of the sweetest guys imaginable, too bad he spends all of his time with Murdoc.
  • No Fourth Wall: A strangely inconsistent case. Sometimes the band will directly address their status as fictional cartoon characters, other times they'll maintain the illusion of being real people.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: 2D's fights with Murdoc usually end up like this, with 2D getting beaten to a pulp. Particularly ugly in the iTunes interviews once chloroform is brought into the picture.
  • No Name Given: Noodle, who was named as such because it was the first thing she said to the other characters when she met them; it was the only English word she knew or could remember at the time.
  • Non-Appearing Title: There are many, though they usually make some sense.
    • Gorillaz
      • "Re-Hash", arguably a statement about repetitious pop music.
      • "5/4", the time signature of the song.
      • "New Genious [sic] (Brother)", though the word "brother" does appear.
      • "Clint Eastwood" includes a recurring sample from the theme of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
      • "Man Research (Clapper)"
      • "Punk"
      • "Sound Check (Gravity)", though, again, "gravity" does appear.
      • "Double Bass" is mostly instrumental, and does feature a lot of bass.
      • "19/2000" shares its name with the Cool Car the band drives in the music video, but also refers to the turn of the century, which is the main theme of the song.
      • "Latin Simone (Que Pasa Contigo)", again, includes the parenthetical but not the main title.
      • "Slow Country" involves the narrator moving away from the city.
    • Demon Days
      • "Dirty Harry" discusses gun violence— and the character was played by Clint Eastwood in the film.
      • "Feel Good Inc.", though the phrase "feel good" does appear.
      • "El Mañana" translates to "The Future", which is what the narrator is hoping for.
      • "Every Planet We Reach Is Dead", though an extended live version includes the phrase.
      • "Fire Coming Out of a Monkey's Head" does not appear in the song, but does appear on the very next song on the album.
    • Plastic Beach
      • "Empire Ants" describes mankind as ant-like in our organization.
      • "To Binge" has the narrator in love with a drug addict and unsure how to help her.
    • The Fall
      • "The Snake in Dallas", "Aspen Forest" and "Seattle Yodel" are instrumentals.note 
      • "Shy-Town" is a nickname for Chicago.
      • "The Joplin Spider" contains samples of Damon talking about a spider in Joplin, Missouri.
      • "Amarillo" was titled after the place where it was recorded.
      • "The Speak It Mountains"
      • "Bobby in Phoenix" features Bobby Womack and was recorded in Phoenix.
    • Humanz
      • "Ascension" does have a choir singing "higher!" repeatedly.
      • "Saturnz Barz" is never spoken as such, but does mention Saturn and its rings, and the protagonist repeatedly mentions going about bar-hopping in order to pick up girls to sleep with.
      • "Submission"
    • The Now Now
    • Song Machine
      • "Aries" barely subverts this by how its title is announced at the very beginning of the track, but otherwise, it doesn't appear in any of the proper lyrics.
      • "Friday 13th" is a rumination on misfortunes throughout life, especially one with drug-fueled excess.
      • "The Pink Phantom", though the single word "phantom" is mentioned several times.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: In the interactive DVD Celebrity Take Down, an investigator is given the option of going into different rooms in Kong Studios, once there, he has a limited time to examine, if he stays for to long, an automatic cutscene is activated offhandedly disposing the intruder. It isn't pretty.
  • Noodle Incident: Punny Name aside...
    • Appropriately, Noodle's abduction into Hell, with Murdoc going to rescue her. For now, he's purposefully keeping most of what happened a secret in hopes of a movie deal. We're not even sure now that he actually even went to hell in the first place, he may have been drunk out of his skull. As mentioned rather explicitly below, Murdoc is an Unreliable Narrator at best.
    • Essentially the entirety of Phase 3 past the initial part is one of these due to it getting cut short. What was clearly an elaborate plot was half-explained by Murdoc, but then immediately proven false when the video for "DoYaThing" contradicts several of the explanations he gives.
  • Noodle People: To at least some extent, 2D, Murdoc and, appropriately, Noodle. Averted with Russel, who is comparatively short and fat.
  • No One Could Survive That!: The ending to the "El Mañana" video.
  • Not Allowed to Grow Up:
    • Averted; the characters age in real time. Noodle is visibly older, Russel has grown and then shaved off a beard, and Murdoc's hair has started to turn grey and he's gained a noticeable beer gut. 2D has also gained a more lined texture to his face, though these may be stress lines considering Phase 3.
    • Ace looks at least 20 years older as the band's replacement bassist compared to his original appearance in ''The Powerpuff Girls (1998), with a thinning hairline to match.

    O 
  • Oh, Crap!:
  • Old Shame: In-universe; in Rise of the Ogre the characters reveal that they're very unhappy that they included "Rock the House" on their debut album, feeling that it doesn't fit their style at all, and are even more unhappy that they chose it for one of Phase 1's singles/videos at the urging of their label.
  • Ominous Multiple Screens:
    • Murdoc's lair. On the screens you can see video feed from rooms you've already been in, as well as a broken Vista screen, Murdoc's Website/Facebook page, the Matrix, a view of Kong Studios, and a corpse from the bunker.
    • The music video for "Feel Good Inc." has these.
  • One-Man Song: The band has song titles "Clint Eastwood" and "Dirty Harry", not that their names actually matter to the songs themselves.
  • Only Sane Man: Who holds the role switches with each Phase, mostly because the band falls more and more apart after each one. In Phase 1, Russel was the most calm and reasonable bandmate, but the loss of his literal soul brother between Phases causes him to breakdown, forcing the now matured Noodle to take on the role. By Phase 3, both Russel and Noodle are absent, forcing 2D to take up the role by simply being less insane than Murdoc.
    • Played for Drama for the in-lore creation of Demon Days (Album). Noodle's new understanding of English allowed her to comprehend the 'subliminal drivel' being fed to society through TV and radio, and partly penned the album as a response to the feelings of isolation this awoke in her.
  • On the Next: Each episode of Song Machine ends with a brief snippet of the next song and their accompanying video.
  • Organ Theft: Murdoc had most of his internal organs surgically swapped for 2D's.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: Rise of the Ogre details hordes of undead overrunning Kong Studios, created by (and feeding on) the "disease" of manufactured pop culture transmitted through television and radio airwaves. Six of them get stuck up the studio chimney, annoying the band with the stink.
  • Overly Long Gag:
    • Your travel down the stairs to Murdoc's secret lair in the Plastic Beach online adventure game. It takes a good four to five minutes of unskippable spiral staircase animation to get there the first time through. At least you opt to have an entertaining conversation with Murdoc while you gallivant your way to him.
      Murdoc: You can't have a secret lair and pop it right next to the door, can you? People would hear your secret chair scraping around on your secret floor, now wouldn't they?
    Strangely enough, it doesn't take any time at all to make the trip back up... But M.C. Escher apparently designed the stairs, so who knows.
    • There's also the bathroom gag in their MTV cribs, which is almost a minute of watching Murdoc pee.
  • Overly-Long Tongue:
    • Murdoc's.
    • 2-D's can lick up the inside of his nose, although having no front teeth definitely helps.
  • Overly Narrow Superlative: The MTV Cribs episode for the band has Murdoc describing Russel as the best drummer in Gorillaz. He then backtracks, stating he himself might be better.
    • An announcer once described Gorillaz as "the most successful animated band ever." (Take that, The Archies!)
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: "Broken" was the best received of the Plastic Beach demos, but when the album was released the fans gravitated to "Rhinestone Eyes" and "Empire Ants" and the singles chosen were "Stylo", "Superfast Jellyfish", and "On Melancholy Hill". "Broken" doesn't really get a look-in anymore, despite being an improvement on the demo.

    P 
  • Papa Wolf: It's easy to imagine Russel being this as far as Noodle is concerned, especially since he's already said that he'd do anything to protect her.
  • Peace & Love Incorporated: "Feel Good Inc."
  • Percussive Maintenance: Dave, the repairman Murdoc has on Plastic Beach, insists on "repairing" the wires in the basement with a frying pan. Justified, as he's not actually trying to fix anything; he just wants to extend the job for as long as possible so he'll keep getting paid.
  • Perfectly Cromulent Word: On the Demon Days (Album) song "Fire Coming Out of a Monkey's Head", Dennis Hopper describes the eruption of The Mountain Called Monkey as "a castrophany". Presumably, this is a portmanteau of "Cacophony" and "Catastrophe".
  • Person of Mass Destruction: Both Noodle and Cyborg Noodle.
  • Pet the Dog: Murdoc has his moments. Attempting to save the manatee in the "On Melancholy Hill" video comes to mind, as does the way he apparently panicked and rushed to save the real Noodle, according to his Twitter page. But then he segues into Kick the 2D immediately...
    • In a bizzare case, the 2001 Dazed & Confused interview has Murdoc, after talking about how the charts are full of "turdy music for children's parties", admitting that he quite likes Kylie Minogue.
  • The Philosopher: Seagull from Plastic Beach.
    • All the band members, to some extent, pilosophize on the essential message of their music in interviews.
  • Police Are Useless: Murdoc isn't exactly subtle about his illegal activities, but he's only suffered legal consequences on two occasions (the ram-raid, and the brothel incident in Mexico), and nobody's managed to rescue 2D yet.
  • Portal Door: The Song Machine-era Kong Studios apparently has various doors that allow teleportation to any given location in the world. However, it seems that the band has very limited control over where they go to, or even when they go somewhere, considering that the music video for "Valley of the Pagans" ends with the band being unceremoniously and abruptly dumped in the ocean, right in front of Plastic Beach...
  • The Power of Love: The main moral of "We Got the Power" is how amazing the human race can be once they harness this.
    We got the power to love each other no matter what happens
  • Production Throwback: "The Lost Chord" off of Song Machine is widely seen as Gorillaz hearkening back to Plastic Beach, featuring the same low-key, introspective, and psychedelic-inspired sounds off the album, as well as having its video be a Continuity Cavalcade to Phase 3 that takes place on Plastic Beach itself.
  • Prophet Eyes: In recent phases of Gorillaz, 2-D's eyes are now almost always completely white, as opposed to the black eyes he previously had in the first few phases.
  • Protection in Mouth: While briefly giant, Russel runs into Noodle out in the ocean (recovering from having her ship blown up), and the two reunite with the rest of the gang. Initially he carries her on his head, but while approaching the chaos ensuing at Plastic Beach, he protects her inside his mouth. The very last shot of the music video for Rhinestone Eyes is this reveal, with Noodle slowly crawling out from between his lips.
  • "Psycho" Strings: Used in "O Green World".
  • Punny Name: 2D is so named because of the two dents in his head, but being a cartoon character he is in fact 2D. His real name is Stuart Pot, which he shortened to Stu-Pot, as in "Stew Pot".
  • Put on a Bus: Noodle and Russel were absent for the majority of Plastic Beach, on account of the phase being Cut Short before their real contributions were really delved-into.
  • Put on a Prison Bus: Murdoc was temporarily replaced by Ace during The Now Now, as he was in a prison in Mexico at the time.
  • Putting the Band Back Together: Whether they like it or not. Although the band effectively broke up after "El Mañana", Murdoc is so determined to produce the Plastic Beach album that he kidnapped 2D and built a cyborg replacement for Noodle, made partially from the real Noodle's DNA, for that purpose. Russell was left to his own devices and replaced by a drum machine, although once hearing about the band he decided to swim to Plastic Beach.

    R 
  • Reality Subtext: The video for "The Lost Chord" conveys the song's message of moving beyond the trauma of the past for the sake of progress through the metaphor of Plastic Beach getting destroyed. While this has in-universe significance to the band (the island brings back memories of severe emotional trauma for all four of them), it also serves as a rumination on the phase associated with the island, which was by far the most ambitious storyline the band ever attempted to tell but was unceremoniously Cut Short and Left Hanging as a result of various real world complications. By showing Plastic Beach getting destroyed, the song acknowledges the tragedy of its story never being given a proper conclusion while also asserting that, for the band to continue evolving, we must all accept that it never will.
  • Really Gets Around:
    • Murdoc, despite his ugliness, still manages to attract the ladies (both in-universe and out).
    • 2D at least went through a phase of this as well in Phase 2, going by the fact that he now has ten illegitimate children.
  • Rearrange the Song: "People" is essentially a reskin of "DARE", as it heavily relies on a modification of its beat.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
    • Noodle goes on quite the vitriolic rant in Rise of the Ogre against modern celebrity culture and the mainstream music industry in general.
      Noodle: Artistic skill and the ability to enlighten, educate and entertain through displays of ingenuity, insight and discipline should not be treated as a useless exercise in moronic entertainment. As Murdoc always says, "True talent should be food for the soul, not turds for the mind". Your "Pop Idols" are buffoons, nothing more than landfill, and you are shovelling this garbage into the heads of your own children.
      You are asking your children to aspire to idiots and are sowing the seeds of your own downfall, growing vacuous, sickly weeds. These weeds will grow up to strangle you of any oxygen. You may laugh while your empire crumbles, but you are putting chemicals in the foodchain.
      Murdoc: It's just a bit of fun, love. Calm down.
    • She also delivers one to Murdoc in Machine Bitez #15, albeit in rapid-fire Kansai-dialect Japanese. As translated by NotRay (with some edits):
      Noodle: That's why no one will ever trust you. We're always telling you, "What goes around, comes around". It's the same with Plastic Beach. If you are like that, you will be reborn as a big slug in the next life.
  • Recursive Reality: Though it's not explained further, "DARE" has the entirety of the video taking place as a nightmare of Shaun Ryder in a nightmare of Murdoc.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Murdoc has one red eye in Phases 1 and 2.
  • Reset Button: Phase 3's exceedingly convoluted and Cut Short storyline was by and large completely abandoned at the beginning of Phase 4. A few of the individual "Book of..."s made an effort to quickly wrap up some of the plotlines (Russel's transformation into a giant, 2D's Disney Death), while others were more or less ignored entirely (Murdoc's apparent immortality, the role of the Boogieman). Otherwise, the band has mostly returned to their usual characterizations and the events of Plastic Beach seem to have had no lasting impact on any of them.
  • Revisiting the Roots: Starting Phase 4, following the tumultuous events around Phase 3, the band returned to a mostly peaceful and upbeat status quo reminiscent of their earlier days, with only loose plot and mixtape-style releases of music rather than full-blown Concept Albums. They even started working in a brand new Kong Studios.
  • Revolving Door Band: This example isn't referring to the animated band; it is referring to the fact that Damon Albarn is the only man to consistently provide the music for Gorillaz. But when the band is fictional and is run behind-the-scenes by real people, this kinda thing is to be expected.
  • Rhythm Typewriter: "We Are Happy Landfill".
  • Ridiculously Human Robots: Cyborg Noodle. Despite being technically a robot, it looks eerily like Phase 2 Noodle. Then again, that was Murdoc's intention when he made her.
  • Roger Rabbit Effect:
    • This has been one of the bands primary aesthetics since the beginning, from depicting the band in live action city streets of London in their first music video, "Tomorrow Comes Today", to the Nambian Swakopmund Desert in "Dirty Harry" and the ghost town of Calico California in "Stylo", the Roger Rabbit Effect has always been a key element to the Gorillaz aesthetic, and has become an even bigger part of their aesthetic since their return in 2017, with every music video since Humanz & The Now Now using this effect to an extent. This aesthetic continues to be used in Song Machine.
    • This trope is taken to an even further extreme in 2005 when they attempted an actual holographic performance at the Grammy Awards. There were talks of plans for a holographic world tour in 2008, but the idea was eventually scrapped as it was very expensive and there was a high risk of significant technical difficulties that could suddenly shut off the projections if the bass was loud enough. On broadcast, the performance looked and sounded relatively great, but in-person, the sound had to be as quiet as possible so the holograms wouldn't glitch or shut off, which made it nearly inaudible to the audience that was actually there.
    • The band not only uses this for animation, but many illustrations for Gorillaz as well depict the band members placed in the real world and interacting with actual humans.

    S 
  • Sampling:
    • An interesting example as the sample in question doesn't come from a song. The clip heard at the beginning of "Superfast Jellyfish" (along with the sound bite of a man going "Are you kidding?") comes from an old 1980s commercial for "Swanson Great Start Frozen Breakfast Sandwiches", which can be seen right here.
    • "Dracula" contains snippets from, of all things, a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
    • The opening of "M1A1" samples Day Of The Dead.
    • The source of the loud, distorted scream in the middle of "Ascension" has been speculated to be a meme. No, really.
  • Sanity Slippage: Quite evident with Murdoc in Phase 3. Just listen to him in the radio hijacks. Though for now, it's hard to tell if he's really cracked or if the rum's just gotten to his head. 2D has also undergone something of a slippage.
  • Scatting:
    • A verse in "Slow Country". Murdoc complains about this in Rise of the Ogre:
      Murdoc: It was a pretty good song till you started with all that muppets "manamana" crap.
      2D: I was just singing along. I didn't know the mic was still on.
    • It's not really audible in the full song, but if you listen to the vocal multitrack for "Dirty Harry", you can hear to 2D singing "BOW-ba BOW ba-da-da-da-da-da" to the melody of the instrumental part after the first verse.
    • Half the lyrics of Rockit are just "Blah blah blah blah".
    • 19-2000 features a lot of this.
  • Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: The room on Plastic Beach where 2D was held captive.
  • Self-Backing Vocalist: Most noticeable in slower songs like "O Green World", "Empire Ants" and "Revolving Doors".
  • Series Fauxnale: "DoYaThing" was released as the final song of Phase 3, after a large portion of its plot and music was Cut Short due to Executive Meddling, unsatisfactory sales and a small falling out between Damon and Jamie. Compared to the previous music videos of the Phase, it is a Continuity Cavalcade that features the band living (relatively) peacefully together and ends with them getting evicted from their building, implying that they will have to separate in order to find new places to live. Due to its distinct "series finale" vibes and the uncertain future of the band, many took it to be a final send off to the fans. However, this was later disproven several years later with the announcement of Phase 4 revealing the band to still be going strong, along with the distinct implication that the content of "DoYaThing"'s music video was Retconned out of the band's history entirely.
  • Shared Universe:
    • For The Now Now, Ace of The Powerpuff Girls slotted in as bassist while Murdoc was in jail. This isn't completely out of left-field, as both Gorillaz and The Powerpuff Girls have referenced each other from as early as Phase 1note ; for instance, the back cover of G-Sides features 2D wearing a Mojo Jojo shirt◊, and The Powerpuff Girls Movie features a cameo advertisement for Gorillaz Live in a newspaper◊.
    • On a less explicit note, Rise of the Ogre includes a biography for Russel that mentions him attending the Xavier School for Young Achievers, clearly named as a reference to Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters. The fact that he left the school after being possessed by a demon certainly doesn't seem out there for that institution.
    • Ultimately subverted in "The Valley of the Pagans", where the band originally took a joyride in Los Santos. Despite having permissions, the video didn't properly credit Rockstar Games and had to be pulled. The edited re-upload of the video places more focus on Beck himself, with the vehicle driving along a nondescript CGI highway. Whatever connection Gorillaz had to the Grand Theft Auto franchise no longer exists.
  • She Is All Grown Up: Noodle went from an Ambiguous Gender-ed kid to a very obviously female young adult over the band's run.
  • Shirtless Scene:
    • Murdoc is seen without a shirt more often than with one.
    • 2D in the "Dirty Harry" video.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Murdoc openly admits he got the idea of kidnapping 2D from The Prisoner.
    • The album cover of Demon Days (Album) is a homage to that of The Beatles' Let It Be. Inside the album's booklet, the pages for "Every Planet We Reach is Dead" has another shout-out in which the band members strike poses that mimick the album cover of Help!.
    • The statue of Pazuzu (an in-universe religious figure revered by Murdoc) largely seen in the related media of Demon Days and Cracker Island (including the cover of D-Sides), as well as some other music videos like those of "Humility" and "Desolé", is based on a statue seen in The Exorcist.
    • "Clint Eastwood":
      • 2-D's T-shirt says T-Virus.
      • The Gorilla zombies dancing is very reminiscent of Michael Jackson's "Thriller".
      • Including the title, the music video has vague Western influences. The musical yelling at the beginning sounds similar to Tuco Ramirez's Leitmotif.
    • Russel's cap in "Feel Good, Inc." has the ENCOM logo on it.
    • The aesthetic of the video for "Stylo" is clearly influenced by Mad Max.
    • "Talking birds? What is this, a Pixar movie?"
    • A fictional four-part band named after Monkees.
    • The demonic Boogieman is also sometimes referred to as "Sun, moon, and stars": a Black Sabbath reference.
    • The entire "Saturnz Barz" video takes cues from Scooby-Doo.
    • The cover to Humanz, while primarily being an Internal Homage to the cover of Demon Days (Album), features the bandmates who are depicted as visual references to photos of other famous musicians.◊ Specifically, Noodle is based on Björk, 2D is Beck, Murdoc is Keith Richards, and Russel is The Notorious B.I.G..
    • "The Non-Conformist Oath" is lifted directly from the Steve Martin comedy show "A Wild and Crazy Guy."
    • In the video for "Strange Timez", Murdoc enters into a monolith and ends up hurtling through a multicoloured light tunnel just like in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Moon having Robert Smith's face might be a reference to A Trip to the Moon.
    • In the video for "Pac-Man", Russel is shown hitting a punching bag in time to the music, resembling a sequence in Rhythm Heaven. Also, Noodle briefly appears drawn in the style of Peanuts (albeit with only four fingers instead of five).
    • In the Gorillaz Almanac, one picture shows Russel Hobbs as a young child, and appropriately, he looks like a black version of Calvin, complete with a stuffed panther.
  • Singer Name Drop:
    • "19-2000" has this line:
      Stop dancing to the music
      Of Gorillaz in a happy mood
    • This trope also pops up in "M1 A1":
      M1 A1
      Thousand miles an hour
      Gorillaz got the bass drum
      Gorillaz say I want some, some
    • "The Sounder", a B-side to "Rock the House", has multiple instances of the band's name being mentioned.
    • A downplayed example occurs in "Clint Eastwood", with Del namedropping Russel twice in his second rap verse.
  • Singing Voice Dissonance: 2D speaks with a cockney accent, but when he sings, sounds like... well, American.
  • Single Stanza Song: "Dirty Harry", with the exception of Bootie Brown's rap at the end.
  • Smart Jerk and Nice Moron: 2D and Murdoc, at least in Phases 1 & 2. Murdoc beat him up, stole his girlfriends, regularly insulted and humiliated him, yet 2D still referred to Murdoc as his 'best mate' and often either aided in his antics or looked the other way from the more... dubious behavior. He finally seems to have sharpened up in the Plastic Beach arc, openly resenting Murdoc and his growing insanity.
  • Smoking Is Cool: It's a Jamie Hewlett story, what did you expect? Noodle was the only one shown not to smoke in Phase 1 and 2, due to her age. However, it's played straight in Phase 3 and 4, where there are pictures of her with a cigarette in her mouth.
  • Sneeze Interruption: "Reject False Icons" is about Damon Albarn singing and interrupting himself with a sneeze. The crowd applauds while he sheepishly apologises.
  • Social Services Does Not Exist: More like "Social Services is incompetent." Why else would they be allowed to keep Noodle when they found her? Or "punishing" Murdoc by making him 2D's primary caretaker while 2D was in a coma?
  • Soprano and Gravel:
    • "DARE" has Noodle's smooth vocals mixed with Shaun Ryder's warblings.
    • "Man Research" is an interesting variation, with both high and low pitched parts being provided by 2D.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: Both "El Mañana" and "On Melancholy Hill" have an at least peaceful, if not upbeat melody, both of them have videos where Noodle is attacked with bombs and rockets.
  • Special Guest:
    • Del tha Funkee Homosapien appears on guest vocals in multiple songs on Gorillaz, including "Clint Eastwood" and "Rock The House".
    • In the "Stylo" video, it's Bruce Willis! As a hitman!
    • Plastic Beach has guests through the majority of the album, including various rappers and indie artists.
    • Much like Plastic Beach, Humanz features guest collaborators on every non-interlude track, ranging from acts as new as Vince Staples and Danny Brown to ones as old as Grace Jones and Jean-Michel Jarre.
    • The video for "Humility" has Jack Black playing guitar on Venice Beach.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Phase 3 could be called "The Murdoc show featuring 2D" considering how basically all material from it is simply the two bickering while Murdoc battles demons. Russel and Noodle don't get a single line of dialogue throughout the entire phase.
  • Stealth Pun: 2D was previously known as Stuart Pot, Stu Pot for short. He also spent some time in a coma — thus, we have a vegetable Stu Pot.
  • Straight Man and Wise Guy: 2D and Murdoc's dynamic in Phase 3 can be summed up as this. Murdoc goes off on long-winded ramblings only for 2D to snark on him. In a bit of a twist though, Murdoc tends to respond with physical violence.
  • Stylistic Suck: The music video to "Sleeping Powder" features some very stiff and shoddy motion-capture, most notably with how 2D's fingers don't even come close to pressing the piano keys he's apparently playing. However, given the surreal nature of the rest of the video and the song itself, this is very likely intentional.
  • Super-Soldier: Noodle, along with 22 other children, was created by the Japanese government for a secret super-soldier project. Noodle in particular was supposed to be a Musical Assassin. The project was scrapped and the children killed when it was decided the children were too unstable to be used, but Noodle ended up the Sole Survivor via her mentor, Mr. Kyuzo, shipping her overseas to Britain in a FedEx crate.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For The Now Now, while Murdoc was in prison, he was replaced by Ace from The Powerpuff Girls, who's also a dark-haired, green-skinned scoundrel (and based on his hairline, about the same age as well).
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: Murdoc's maintenance man most certainly did NOT murder his ex-wife. Don't call the police.

    T 
  • Take That!:
    • The animated band itself was created as one of these towards the vapid shallowness of current musical and pop culture trends. While this has always been part of their gimmick, it was a lot more on-the-nose in earlier phases:
      • The characters make several potshots at boy bands in general during the Apex Tapes interview.
      • The 2001 Dazed & Confused interview has Murdoc slag off Oasis, Sting, Five and Fred Durst by name.
      • Rise of the Ogre has multiple instances where the then-current state of music and pop culture gets roundly mocked, including a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Noodle (see above).
      • "Rockit", as well as the music video, is quite clearly a big one at celebrity culture in general, especially the "manufactured" talent created through such things as Pop Idol and The X Factor.
    • "Humility" can be interpreted as one from 2D's, and by extension the entire band's point of view; they had enough of Murdoc's abusive behavior, and shed no tears over the news of the bassist's arrest. The song title, the recruitment of Ace as Murdoc's replacement, and the lines "And if you're coming back to find me / You'd better have good aim" further implies the point.
  • Tastes Like Chicken: Superfast Jellyfish, allegedly.
  • Taxidermy Is Creepy: Russel has taxidermy as a a hobby. Specifically, sewing different animal parts together. Even Murdoc finds the results unsettling.
    Russel: Since I got into taxidermy I find it's a great way to pass the time and also gives the animals a real dignified ending.
    Murdoc: Are you in some sort of K-hole? There's nothing really dignified about the poses you set them in, Russel. They look really... startled.
    Russel: I just wanted to break new grounds in that area, advance the tradition and bring a whole hip hop attitude to the taxidermy world. I've been cutting and pasting different animal styles together. Yaks with lizards, hogs and zebras... it keeps the whole thing fresh, y'know? Once they're done you can customize the animals with bass-bins, under-lighting, alloy wheels... a kinda "Pimp-My-Rhino" thing.
  • Thick-Line Animation: A defining trait of Phase 1's artwork.
  • Token Trio: 2D is Caucasian, Russel is black and Noodle is Asian. And then there's Murdoc, who's green.
  • Torture Always Works:
  • Transforming Vehicle: The title car in "Stylo" turns into a shark-ish submersible when Bruce Willis chases them off a cliff and into the ocean.
  • Trash of the Titans: The whole group is infamous for their ability to completely destroy a room within minutes.
  • Trash the Set: "The Lost Chord" sees Plastic Beach destroyed, albeit by Poseidon instead of the band.
  • Trrrilling Rrrs: Murdoc sometimes does this in interviews.

    U 
  • Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: Murdoc.
  • Unfazed Everyman: Despite being in a band with psychotic and super powered bandmates and living in a generally awful world filled with demons, zombies and other horrors, 2D reacts to most situations by... doing absolutely nothing, really. Justified in that he's really that stupid, or at the very least heavily drugged at all times. Best shown in the Clint Eastwood video where, after Russel channels a ghost who then raises an army of undead gorillas to attack his bandmates, 2D barely reacts to them at all. Slowly removed from his character over time, to the point where he's all too aware of how terrible his world is by Phase 3. This is around the time he starts weening off his his painkillers, so the "too drugged to be bothered" explaination is probably closer to the truth.
  • Unlimited Wardrobe: In contrast to most cartoons, Gorillaz have been shown to change wardrobe frequently and are rarely depicted wearing the same set of clothing twice, much like the way people change clothes every day in real life.
  • Unreliable Expositor: Murdoc continuously changes his story involving his role in the "El Mañana" conspiracy and the fates of Noodle and himself post-Demon Days, which is just further fuel for the Wild Mass Guessing that he's full of fecal matter on the topic.

    V 
  • Verbal Tic Name: Noodle was named after the only English word she knew when the guys first met her.
  • Villain Protagonist: Murdoc, to an extent. His actions are most certainly not moral and completed exclusively for his profit.
  • Villain Song:
    • "Sweepstakes", if the Boogieman is as bad as Mos Def's interviews make him out to be.
    • "Murdoc is God" can also count when you take into account Murdoc as a Villain Protagonist. The circumstances behind the song's creation certainly don't hurt either: Murdoc locked 2-D in a cage until he wrote a song praising him, and his participation in the death of the Gorillaz's stalker Jimmy Manson.
    • "Cracker Island" is this for the Forever Cult, the Arc Villains of Phase 7.
  • Virtual Celebrity: A Real Life example.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds:
    • 2D and Murdoc. Though at least during Plastic Beach, the "best buds" part is probably gone, what with the kidnapping and everything.
      2D: [Murdoc] sings like someone treading on a duck. Me vocals is way better, blud! So he just makes me sing. I hate that sod.
      • Although since Humanz, that element of their friendship has come back, with Murdoc even completely ending the physical abuse towards 2-D that he was known for perpetuating. As of the music video for "The Lost Chord" this trope has now been fully solidified, as 2-D extends a friendly helping hand to save Murdoc - much to his joy - from being left permanently stranded at sea. Of particular note is how this happens during the band's revisit of the trauma-laden ruins of Plastic Beach, which is where 2-D endured the most abuse.
    • Seagull and Pelican from the Plastic Beach game also fall into this trope.
  • Vocal Evolution:
    • Both 2D and Noodle's voices have gotten deeper as the phases went by. Justified in Noodle's case, as she grows from being a child to an adult as the band ages over time.
    • Russell's voice has gotten significantly raspier during the Song Machine phase.
  • Voodoo Doll: Murdoc used to have a voodoo doll of 2D in the first two phases.

    W 
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: Murdoc only wears a shirt on rare occasions. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is up to viewer interpretation.
  • Wham Shot: In "The Valley of the Pagans" the band takes a portal to Los Santos and goes for a ride. At the end they get into another portal, spitting them in the ocean in front of Plastic Beach.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Invoked, at the end of Valley of the Pagans, the band crashes into the ocean just off Plastic Beach. During the next video, "The Lost Chord", Murdoc and Noodle have just enough time to find, and be disturbed by the remains of Cyborg Noodle before Poseidon arrives and sends her to the depths of the sea. For a double-dose, Cyborg Noodle is in Daley's submersible from "Doncamatic", his remains in the sand nearby.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: 2D has a morbid fear of whales. Murdoc found this out and used it against him. In the animatics of the video for "Rhinestone Eyes", the whale finally does try to kill 2D. Russel takes care of it for him.
  • Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Duh. It's an animated band — to begin with, there is No Fourth Wall. Well, sometimes there is.

    X 
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: Gorillaz's very title, of course. Phase 4 re-embraced this trope, using "Z" in place of an "S", with Humanz and some of its tracklist, including "Saturnz Barz", "Tranzformer", "Circle of Friendz", etc.

    Y 
  • Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Murdoc's are sometimes depicted with a distinct yellow cast (especially in the first three phases), much like his skin being a sickly green.
  • Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: Murdoc named his pet raven Cortez and referred to it with male pronouns before claiming it also laid eggs.

    Z 
  • Zombie Apocalypse: The video for "Clint Eastwood" starts with a line taken (albeit shortened) from Dawn of the Dead (1978): "Every dead body that is not exterminated, gets up and kills, the people it kills get up and kill." The video itself has the band facing off against gorilla zombies. The full version is included in the beginnng of "Hip Albatross" from the same album.

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