cartoons!!!!!! mostly!!!
— YouTube channel description
Cas van de Pol
is a Dutch YouTuber and animator best known for his series of Ultimate Recap Cartoons — humorous, cutely-animated and parodic abridged recaps of popular films, videogames and TV series... With truckloads of added Bloody Hilarious Gorn, vomit, Black Comedy, Toilet Humor, and so on. It's very much Web Animation + Subverted Kids' Show.
In December 2022, inspired by the success of The Ultimate Minecraft Recap Cartoon, Cas produced a series of four Ultimate Minecraft Cartoons, featuring short stories set in the world of Minecraft with a bit less gore involved, suggesting that there may be more to come.
Cas van de Pol's works contain examples of:
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General Tropes
- Couch Gag: Most of the videos begin with Cas' avatar (pictured above) producing a speech bubble with the words "A cartoon by Cas", accompanied by a blehhh sound, usually combined with some form of Logo Joke appropriate to the work being parodied.
- Reference Overdosed: Most of his videos will be jam-packed with Shout Outs, Company Cross References (for Disney and Pixar works), and memes.
- The Ultimate Zootopia Recap Cartoon in particular is roughly 50% memes by volume.
- Subverted Kids' Show: Downplayed. It's not intended to replicate a kids' show like most examples of the trope, but the cartoons feature brightly coloured, cute animations that would seem entirely small-child-friendly, were it not for the buckets of gore.
- Speaking Simlish: Characters in any of the cartoons usually communicate in mumble-speak — whenever someone or something does speak English, it's for a gag.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Happens more or less Once per Episode, in all of his videos.
Ultimate Recap Cartoons
- Achievements in Ignorance: The Ultimate Minecraft Recap Cartoon features a 'noob player' character, "Game_Pro2001", who manages to achieve numerous feats that are Beyond the Impossible in the game seemingly through sheer stupidity, including mining diamonds, obsidian and bedrock with a wooden pickaxe, constructing a 3x3 Nether portal, and sleeping in the Nether.
- Actor Allusion:
- In the Monsters, Inc. recap, Randall meets his end by getting thrown into a woodchipper.
- At the end of the A New Hope recap, Darth Vader utters "Simba".
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Several commenters have noted, not entirely unseriously, that Luke and Leia in the New Hope recap are more affected by their adoptive parents' death and Alderaan's destruction respectively than they are in the actual film.
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: The recap for The Nightmare Before Christmas removes everything after Jack's sleigh is shot down, making it a fullblown Downer Ending by default.
- Adaptational Dumbass:
- Luke Skywalker, in the A New Hope Recap, is a moron who manages to stick a lightsaber through his own skull within seconds of being given it, and destroys the Death Star by accident.
- Cas' version of Mr. Incredible is a bumbling Fat Idiot, despite being reasonably bright, if no genius, originally.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: The Ultimate Harry Potter Recap Cartoon is based off of the film version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone but features Draco Malfoy as the Slytherin Seeker. Although Draco is introduced as Harry's rival in Stone, he does not become Slytherin Seeker until Chamber of Secrets.
- Adaptational Karma: The Monsters, Inc. recap inverts this, having a newspaper reveal Waternoose got off scot-free due to being rich.
- Adaptational Villainy: The rogue robots in the WALL•E Recap abuse and kill the humans on board the Axiom, rather than simply being a little eccentric but otherwise friendly.
- Adaptational Wimp: Or Adaptational Badass, depending on which way you look at it. In the Kung Fu Panda Recap, the Furious Five and Master Shifu get bowled over instantly by Tai Lung, while both of them put up a reasonable if one-sided fight in the film.
- Call-Back:
- The first appearance of the Genie in The Ultimate Aladdin Recap has him morphing his head into past recap appearances like Mufasa, Aang, Stitch, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Frodo.
- In The Ultimate Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Recap, when Harry looked into the Mirror of Erised, Dumbledore looked into it and was shocked to see the censored animation of Mort worshipping Julian's feet from the original version of the Madagascar recap.
- In The Ultimate Emperor's New Groove Recap Cartoon, the scene of Kuzco crying in the rain is interrupted by Stitch coming to the scene and biting into Kuzco, brutally thrashing hm around as he screams for help.
- Censored for Comedy: Mr. Popo is pixelated out in The Ultimate Dragon Ball Z Recap, and a very uncomfortable Kami keeps trying to shove him out of the way.
- Clip-Art Animation:
- In the Madagascar Recap, Alex giving into his hunger and wild nature is symbolised by having him transform into a photo of a lion. Multiple photos of lions (and a hand, at one point) are moved about and used for scenes of him running, roaring and sulking.
- The same thing occurs in the Zootopia recap, to portray the animals under the influence of Night Howlers.
- Content Warnings: Due to the cute and colourful art style, many of these videos are prefaced with the warning NOT "made for kids"!, given that they contain tons of Gorn. This is at least partially to stop them appearing on YouTube Kids.
- Crossover Punchline: In the Lilo & Stitch recap, the scene of Stitch realizing that he's lost segues into the opening scene of The Emperor's New Groove, with Kuzco as a llama crying in the rain. This encounter ends with Stitch devouring Kuzco.
- Curse Cut Short: In a recorded message, after realising that the last BNL Starliner has departed, Shelby Forthright's exclamation of "Ah, SHI-" is cut off by the holo-screen closing.
- Death by Adaptation: Almost every episode has a character be brutally killed off.
- Eaten Alive: In the Lilo & Stitch recap, the frog and Kuzco as a llama are both devoured alive by Stitch.
- Every Man Has His Price: In a subversion of what happened in The Emperor's New Groove, Pacha rejected the plan for Kuzcotopia, only for Mickey Mouse to show up with a bag of money to turn his village into Disneyland, much to Pacha's approval.
- Flipping the Bird: In a few instances.
- Funny Background Event: During the Brother Bear recap, a bear can clearly be seen twerking in the background at the Salmon Run.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Stitch even moreso than in his source movie. For instance, when coming across Mertle, he grabbed her, bashed her against the pavement, emptied an entire gun on her, poured gasoline over the mangled remains and set them on fire while laughing maniacally. All because Mertle stuck her tongue out at him.
- Implausible Deniability: Obi-Wan shows Luke a series of photographs on his Tatooine home's wall chronicling his relationship with Anakin, including young Anakin with Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and Jar Jar, the pair with Ashoka, Obi-Wan with Captain Rex — and Obi-Wan grinning as Anakin burns to a crisp in Mustafar's lava. Obi-Wan then hurriedly yanks the last one off the wall and gives Luke an innocent look. Luckily for him, this version of Luke is probably stupid enough for this to work.
- Running Gag: The main character of the recap gets beaten on the ground by the supporting cast.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Played for Laughs. In the Monsters, Inc. recap, after Waternoose is arrested by the CDA, there is a Smash Cut to a newspaper headline "Waternoose gets off scot-free" with the subheading "'Because I'm rich!' says Waternoose".
- Shapeshifter Mashup: At the climax of The Ultimate Emperor's New Groove Recap Cartoon, Kuzco decides to take all of Yzma's potions at the same time. This results in him becoming a grotesque, humongous mass of flesh with body parts of several animals sticking out of them.
- Shout-Out:
- The Ultimate Finding Nemo Recap has Marlin and Dory meeting the school of fish, who formed a simplified loss comic much to Dory's amusement.
- In The Ultimate Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Recap, Hagrid assumed his PS1 face while patting him on the head.
- Judy slapping Nick is a nod to a certain infamous Zootopia fan comic.
- The way that the Ginyu Force (excluding Ginyu and Guldo, who die in an overall similar fashion to canon) die in The Ultimate Dragon Ball Z Recap is when Goku crash lands into them when landing on Namek, similar to how they're taken out in Dragon Ball Z Abridged's Kai Abridged series.
- The Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine portion of The Ultimate Sonic the Hedgehog Recap has Robotnik shouting "Snoo-PINGAS usual, I see!"
- In The Ultimate Kung Fu Panda Recap, Mr. Ping is represented by the goose from Untitled Goose Game wearing his clothes and walking around like it does in-game.
- Spared by the Adaptation: In The Ultimate How to Train Your Dragon Recap, Hiccup teaches the Red Death to boogie with a snap of his fingers like the other dragons, rather than it being killed in battle by him and Toothless.
- Smoking Hot Sex: As R2 repeatedly inserts his scomp link into the Death Star computer to suggestive music, it then cuts to him lying down with a cigarette attached to his dome as the others back away from the control room nervously.
- Take That!: Genie's transformation montage in The Ultimate Aladdin Recap ends with his head becoming that of the Will Smith genie from Aladdin (2019). Aladdin and Abu both respond by screaming in terror.
- They Killed Kenny Again: In The Ultimate Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Recap, there were instances where the characters get mauled violently only to come back as if nothing happened, like early on when Minerva McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore were flattened by Hagrid riding the flying motorbike.
Ultimate Minecraft Cartoons
- Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear whether Steve is supposed to be Herobrine, or that the act of hacking gives one Blank White Eyes like Herobrine.
- And Show It to You: After learning how to code in order to stop the hacking Griefers, the Sheriff uses an X-ray hack on the Gamer Chick griefer (who had previously used this against the villagers) to see her heart and pull it out of her chest, killing her.
- Base on Wheels: The giant golem in, erm, The Giant Golem serves as a coal-fuelled walking home for its two resident players.
- Driven to Suicide: The blacksmith in The Village Attack hurls himself into his own workshop's lava pool to avoid being eaten by zombies.
- Failure Montage: In Sheriff's Revenge, the titular sheriff and his Village Defence allies come up with a variety of schemes (building a wall around the village, weaponising beehives, making a Trojan Horse, or just hiding underground) to try and protect their village from a bunch of game-hacking Griefers, all of which fail miserably.
- Fantastic Drug: Whatever the Cleric is brewing up in The Village Attack, it's given him Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes.
- Forced Transformation: After Sheriff Max obtains his own hacking powers and defeats all the other griefers, he turns their leader into a pile of diamonds, emeralds and gold.
- Interspecies Romance: Throughout several Funny Background Events in The Giant Golem, an Enderman and Skeleton are seen making out and having a child together. Somehow.
- Lighter and Softer: While the gore and general Black Comedy of the Ultimate Recap Cartoons is still there, it's very significantly toned down, with a greater focus on storytelling and atmosphere, plus quite a few feel-good moments.
- Mook Horror Show: Of a sort. The Village Attack shows just how awful it must be to be a Minecraft villager, helpless against attacking zombies and greedy, uncaring players. At least, until that villager Takes a Level in Badass, anyway.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Farmer villager not only survives the zombie attack to become the Village's Sole Survivor, but manages to capture his zombified son, too — and given that this is Minecraft, he's significantly more dangerous than a regular zombie to begin with. This is perhaps foreshadowing his Hidden Badass tendencies.
- Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: In The Village Attack, a comically large fountain of blood spurts out of the first villager attacked by a zombie, causing the others to panic.
- Papa Wolf: The farmer Villager in The Village Attack goes quite literally to Hellnote and back to de-zombify his son, fighting (and defeating) Steve in the process, too.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Parodied. Sheriff Max's Village Defence brigade consists of him, his horse, a Villager, the derpy-faced Noob, a sheep, a chicken, and a zombie.
- The Stinger: Present in the latter three cartoons:
- The Village Attack: After being defeated by the Villager, Steve has respawned and he's pissed off now.
- The Giant Golem: As the titular golem strides away into the distance, Steve is shown freeing several shifty-looking players from blocks of ice. His eyes then turn white as he manipulates Minecraft's code.
- The Sheriff's Revenge: In a direct Shout-Out to the ending of WandaVision, the eponymous character is shown being corrupted by his newly acquired knowledge of hacking.
- Takes One to Kill One: The Sheriff is only able to beat the gang of hacking Griefers by learning how to manipulate the game's code himself — though judging by The Stinger, this probably wasn't a good idea.
- Teeny Weenie: When rushing back to get his clothes after being killed, Sheriff Max has a very small Censor Box covering his privates.
- Training the Peaceful Villagers: Played with. The Sheriff attempts to raise a Village Defence force to face down the griefers, but in the end they are only defeated after the Sheriff learns to hack Minecraft for himself.
- Token Heroic Orc: One of the members of the Village Defence is a zombie. He initially tries to attack some of his comrades, but seems to grow out of it.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The Giant Golem features two bickering friends who live together in the titular golem, who happen to be dressed identically to Pat and Mat.
