"Should we shoot it?"
"Fuck yes, Coutts, let's shoot it."
"Fuck yes, Coutts, let's shoot it."
A squad of overly masculine American soldiers come across a CIA experiment gone wrong: specifically, a nigh-unstoppable cyborg grizzly bear.
Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson (of Kung Fu Panda 2 fame), based on a short story by Justin Coates. Joel McHale voices Morris, while members of the squad are voiced by Seth Green (Folen), Gabriel Luna (Nielsen), Steve Blum (Coutts and Macy) and Andrew Kishino (Erwin).
Tropes:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The story is set somewhere during the active US involvement in The War on Terror, and most definitely after 2002. When exactly is left unspecified. The Honey Badger reference would imply sometime after 2011, assuming the writers cared about little details like that.
- Affectionate Parody: Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson describes the film as this to 80s action movies.
- All Animals Are Dogs: When running away, the giant bear makes sounds like a whining dog.
- Bears Are Bad News: Especially when they are full of cybernetics and about four times the regular size.
- Book Ends: The short opens with someone peeing down onto the camera. It ends with the bears head flying up toward the camera.
- Bond One-Liner: The soldiers seem to be having a competition about who will drop the cheesier one-liner.
- Cool Shades: Macy is always wearing a pair of aviators, no matter the time of the day. And there is an entire rack of those in the armoury, too.
- The Comically Serious: Part of the humor, according to the director, is how seriously the characters take the utterly absurd situation.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Loads of swearing. There's even a dance remix in the credits.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: After getting his leg torn off, Folen has such a moment in Sarge's arms, along with "Please, tell my wife" monologue.
- Die Laughing: After the above monologue, Folen cackles briefly before expiring.
- Dying Declaration of Hate: As he's dying, Folen implores Sarge to tell his wife... that he fucked her sister.
- Elaborate Underground Base: The CIA hidden base, which seems to stretch for a few miles into a solid mountain - in Afghanistan.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: Even after being destroyed, the bear still activates a Self-Destruct Mechanism, which wipes out the whole mountain top with a mushroom cloud, taking down Sarge and Macy.
- Eye Lights Out: The cyborg bear apparently dies when its red eyes go out. Subverted when the bear turns out Not Quite Dead.
- Face Death with Dignity: Sarge, upon seeing the Barghest's eye is also a bomb, simply exclaims "Oh, fuck."
- Five Rounds Rapid: The fact the giant bear is completely unaffected by small arms fire doesn't stop the soldiers from still trying to shoot it.
- Foreshadowing:
- Folen wears skull facepaint, and he's the last person to die directly from the bear. He's also the first person we see, and the squad predicts he'll get himself hurt. Albeit by getting shot "riiight in the dick", not getting his leg bitten off by a cybearg.
- The three pictograms at the end of the intro animation are three skulls, possibly referring to how the whole team will die.
- Gun Porn: The Wall of Weapons, which the CIA guy helpfully informs the team that he jerks off to.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: The first soldier to die is bitten in half, with both ends of his body outside the mouth of the giant bear sent flying.
- Hope Spot: The Barghest falls over and powers down just before reaching the last three soldiers. Folen, thinking they've killed it, tries to kick it, and then the Barghest rips his leg off.
- Immune to Bullets: The honey badger can shrug off regular bullets.
- Impeded Communication: The soldiers can't reach HQ on the radio, no matter how many times they try.
- It Can Think: The bear manages to wipe out a few dozen heavily armed soldiers offscreen, followed by an entire secret CIA base that knows about it, and then it realizes the protagonists are setting it up for an ambush and comes straight through the wall, and then it plays possum to lure the protagonists closer. This may have something to do with genetic tinkering by the Bio-Weapons Lab Dept that created it.
- If I Do Not Return: "Tell my wife... I fucked her sister."
- Ludicrous Gibs: The remains of Team 2 are as graphic as they are comical. And it only goes crazier from there, with half of the humour hinging on the bloodbath.
- Meaningful Name: The bear is codenamed "Barghest", which is a fairly obscure Northern English mythological dog. It does serve as an 'omen of death'. Presumably some Langley suit wanted to make use of his mythology elective, or the CIA was running low on more recognizable cool codenames.
- Mechanical Animals: The Cyborg Bear resembles a bear but it's all metal and wires on the inside.
- Memetic Mutation: In-universe, the honey badgers also don't give a shit.
- Mildly Military: The soldiers would fit right into an 80s action romp with their absolute disregard for any military protocol, wisecracking jokes and machismo.
- Military Science Fiction: A squad of soldiers on some spec-ops mission, only to end up fighting against a gigantic cybernetically enhanced bear.
- More Dakka: The soldiers re-arm themselves with bigger caliber guns and heavy ordnance to beat the cyborg bear. It does absolutely nothing to even slow it down.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Or in this case, giant Frankenstein-bear-cyborg.
- Nuke 'em: The bear has a nuclear self-destruct mechanism.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The cyborg bear has red glowing eyes.
- Riddle for the Ages: Why, exactly, did the bear go nuts?
- Robot Dog: The MAARS-Bot, which is a dog-like drone armed to the teeth with rockets and a minigun. It gets completely obliterated without much effort by the bear.
- Shout-Out: After most of its external tissue gets destroyed and its body blown in half, the bear still drags itself toward Macy. Just like the T-800 in The Terminator.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Everyone with a speaking role.
- Spider Limbs: The Cyborg Bear has appendages coming out of its back that mimic a spider.
- The Squad: The soldiers are a literal example, being just one of the squads making up their platoon.
- Stylistic Suck: The short takes every single cliche of your cheaply made, action-packed 80s movie about a tough squad of wisecracking badass soldiers and cranks it up to eleven. Including Retraux grid-based computer models and general aesthetics of a toyetic, military-themed cartoon.
- Taking You with Me: Even after being torn in half and having its head beaten in with an M72 LAW, Project Barghest is still able to activate a nuclear self-destruct mechanism to kill the last of the surviving cast.
- Testosterone Poisoning: An over-the-top depiction of an armed group of military men fighting a Cyborg Bear with a variety of guns, bazookas and grenades. If G.I. Joe was ever made with an R-rating, it would be something like this short.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Sarge has this reaction several times in regards to the Barghest, but his final words are an exasperated and resigned "Oh, fuck" in response to the Barghest's eye popping out and revealing itself to be a bomb.
- Turned Against Their Masters: The cyborg bear was a secret US project, only to go haywire and start killing everything in its path indiscriminately.
- Wall of Weapons: The armoury inside the CIA base, naturally, plus a few pairs of cool shades. If you pay attention, it's mostly the "cool" guns from 80s action movies, rather than anything the military would actually use or stock in quantity. It is a secret CIA base in the Middle East, so they might be useful for the odd False Flag Operation.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The bear shrugs off any form of attack, but is easily subdued by a high-pitched sound.
- World of Snark: Pretty much every character has a vulgar quip ready.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: The bear only pretends to be dead, getting the drop on Folen.
