Tome of the Unknown is a 2013 animated short film by Patrick McHale, which later spawned the miniseries Over the Garden Wall.
The brothers Wirt and Greg, along with a talking bird named Beatrice and Greg's pet frog, are wandering a mysterious land called The Unknown, looking for the titular Tome. They come across a town inhabited by vegetable people, and, tired of walking, try to find an alternative form of transport.
Tropes:
- Aborted Arc: In this film, Greg and Wirt are for some unspecified reason looking for a book called The Tome of the Unknown. When the movie was adapted into the miniseries, this storyline was dropped however.
- Bad Moon Rising: The full moon is colored red when the crows arrive.
- Brick Joke: Early in the story, Greg suggests they should find a goose to ride on. At the end of the film, they find a giant goose and it becomes their new mode of transport.
- The City vs. the Country: A main plot in this film; John Crops, the vegetable man Wirt and Greg meet early in the movie, wants to leave country life behind and move to the big city. They help him, but once there he quickly finds out it isn’t what he imagined it to be. At the end of the film, he decides country life suits him better and moves back there along with the lady he met in the city.
- Cool Car: The car Wirt and Greg borrow is entirely made out of a watermelon and vegetables.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Rather than being lost in the woods and trying to find their way home, Wirt and Greg are on a quest to find the titular Tome of the Unknown.
- In the series, a major part of Wirt's Character Development is seeing Greg as something other than an annoyance and to stop treating him so callously. Here their relationship seems much better from the start, with Wirt even finding some of Greg's antics funny.
- The Beast and the Woodsman, both important characters in Over the Garden Wall, are not seen nor mentioned.
- The show only has narration at the beginning and end, but here it's spread all throughout the episode.
- Feathered Fiend: Giant crows and turkeys are the main villains
- Giant Flyer: The crows that attack the vegetable people are at least the size of humans. The goose is even bigger.
- Hell Is That Noise: Greg’s screaming, at least as far as the crows and turkeys are concerned. It successfully drives them off.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: As if the crows and turkeys aren’t bad enough, an alligator also shows up and attacks the car.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Wirt crashes the vegetable car into a scarecrow, causing it to fall down when he drives off again. Without the scarecrow, nothing stops the giant crows from attacking the town.
- Plant Person: Wirt and Greg find a whole town filled with people whose body parts are made of vegetables.
