Web Animation / Les Kassos

When life is bringing you down, the social comes around.^*Clockwise from top-left: Groucouac, Lieutenant Dirty Gadjètte, Zizimir, Sandy, one of the Tortues Clodos, Grodébilix, Gigi, Muldor, Monsieur Patatos, one of The Proumpfs, Aspégix, one of the Canards Joyeux, Dark Papy, Captain Olivio.

Les Kassos (The Wakos in English) is a French animated web series created by Balak (one of the guys behind Lastman), released on YouTube in December 2013, Accessible outside of North America if you have a different browser that doesn't allow any foreign videos outside of your country.

The series is about a social worker who just happens to take care of a wide array of parodies of fictional characters, from every sort of medias. Hilarity Ensues. The shorts typically takes the form of said characters being received as appointments in said social worker's office and describing her their problems.

An English dub titled The Wakos was available on Vice in the United States, but has been taken down for unknown reasons. It is, however, still available on Youtube, although some episodes are missing.

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Les Kassos provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Not-Homer Simpson, to a truly horrifying extent. Played for Drama way beyond the usual Comedic Sociopathy of the show.
• Accent Relapse: Jacques Sparreau usually speaks with a snobbish French accent, but as soon as he discovers that the social worker and him have a common relative, he relapses in a thick French-Caribbean accent.
• Accidental Misnaming: Not-Nounours is so drunk he refers to Pimprenelle as Nicolas, which is her brother's name.
• Adaptational Dumbass: In Death Note, Light Yagami is a genius who can make very complex plans. His Kassos counterpart is an idiot who can't write someone's name right and who writes his own name in the Death Note, resulting in his own death.
• Adam Westing:
  • Brigitte Lecordier voices Nicolas's expy in the Bonne nuit les petits parody. This is about three decades after she voiced Nicolas in the original Bonne nuit les petits series.
  • In the parody of Stranger Things, Kaycie Chase reprises her role as Dustin.
• Affably Evil: The Predators are presented as a very friendly group who organize get-together to hunt the Alien every Sunday, kill the xenomorph that knocks on the door (it's the social worker's next appointment), offer her the best part of it, and, when she refuse it, switch to Space Marine sausage.
• The Alcoholic: Aspégix and Grodébilix's problem. That... "magic potion" of theirs might contain a little bit of alcohol.
• Anime Hair: The main point of tension in the "Dragon Boule" episode: Sanduku is furious that Veguetta messed up his Super Saiyan 3 brushing.
• Art Evolution: Between the first and the second seasons. Especially glaring for Aspégix, whose design changed drastically, despite his season 1 appearance still being used in the opening.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Sanduku and Veguetta aren't actually speaking Japanese, but rather Japanese-sounding gibberish.
• Ass Shove: Sandy is asked on her Youtube channel how to easily achieve the "inside-out suck" effect, to which the demonstration involves shoving her entire forearm into her rectum. Given looking closely at the video title calls it the Prolapse, it's no wonder she's wheelchair bound with what appears to be her organs dropping back out at the end of the episode.
• "Be Quiet!" Nudge: Leya Sodo punches her father Dark Papy when he starts saying "You're not his father—" to Yann about their son. The fact the latter growls like a wookie might be a hint....
• Big Ol' Unibrow: Yann Sodo (the Han Solo parody) has a unibrow big enough that it covers his eyes (most of the time — Eye Takes are still possible).
• Black Comedy: Most of the shorts have silly yet dark humor, with death, violence, and other situations being Played for Laughs.
• Black Comedy Rape: Happens frequently, mostly in regards to Disney parodies, like the not-Olaf and Not-Anna sketch and the not-Beast and not-Belle one.
• Break the Cutie: The Canard Juniors get hit hard by this when they move in the 4000 Pâquerettes (4000 Daisies, a parody of the 4000, one of the worst urban ghettoes of France) and get bullied to insanity by the local thugs. They somewhat get better... by becoming thugs themselves.
  Social worker: Wait, the 4000 Pâquerettes, that's the Seine-Saint-Denis...!
• Bystander Syndrome: Despite her job, the social worker sometime doesn't react much to people being dangerous to others or themselves. One of the worst examples is when she doesn't do anything when, right in front of her, Not-Homer starts abusing his wife and his son.
• Cast of Expies: The series consists of parodies of fictional characters (sometimes themselves used as parodies of real people) visiting their social worker to talk about their problems. In some episode, the social worker thematic is pushed aside to make way for more straight parodies, and the social worker is outright absent in season 4.
• Catchphrase: Dark Papy, being a Darth Vader parody, naturally has "I am your father..." as a catchphrase, to Yann Sodo's mounting annoyance.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Scoully to Muldor, obviously, trying to defuse the latter's obsession with Alien Abduction. And making sure he's taking his medication.
• Culture Equals Costume: In-Universe — the Yellow Power Roger is an Asian woman. She's perfectly aware of this, understandably pissed, and chews the Red Roger out about this. When said Red Roger assures her it's merely a coincidence, the Black Roger opens up his visor and reveals he himself is a Black man.
  Black Roger: Oh yeah? A coincidence? You're sure about that?
• Deadpan Snarker: The social worker usually tries to be helpful, but from time to time she can't help but letting the sarcasm come out.
  Social worker: Okay, so, that's what you're going to tell at the tribunal: that you confused two Chinese women dressed as prostitutes. Eh, no doubt, you're saved...
• Destination Defenestration: Muldor, at his most paranoid, jumps through the window despite Scoully's efforts at calming him down.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Grokouak does a good job of this when mentioning that they live in dark times, then trying to explain that he wasn't saying it about the social worker, who is Black.
• Dirty Cop: Inspector Gadjètte, re-imagined as a lonesome, violent and racist cop.
• Dirty Old Man: Papi Fougasse, in all likehood, since he cannot tells a riddle that doesn't involve his genitals.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Gadjètte is brought before the social worker because he beat up to death an old lady and a little kid who were respectively jaywalking and stealing some candies.
• Dodgy Toupee: Yann Sodo wears one, as revealed when his father-in-law (Dark Papy) moves it with telekinesis.
• Domestic Abuse: Not-Homer again, while he is at it. Have some handkerchiefs at ready, it's almost as awful as the real deal.
• The Door Slams You: For "Moc & Darty 2", in 1955 Moc is crushed behind the office's door by another time-traveling Moc opening it suddenly.
• Double Entendre: Poor Sandy. Her sex addiction therapy is going well, but she has to have a conversation with the social worker that is filled with them....
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Wilson (the volleyball from Cast Away), finally shoots itself in the... ball since Chuck refuses to acknowledge their former "relationship".
  • Charles Lee, too, ends up hanging himself after complaining that nobody notices him... not even the social worker.
  • Not-Wile E. Coyote, after finally killing his archnemesis, breaks down Cry Laughing and blows his brains out.
• Drives Like Crazy: Diesel and Unleaded keep getting into accidents and, when they're seeing the social worker, have to get their driving licence back for the seventh time. Although their driving ends up saving the social worker when they crash into her office, running over Charles Ingalls who was about to kill her.
• Dub Name Change: The English dub changes most of the characters' names, usually because the original names are based on French words^note Example: "Les Canards Juniors" to "The Little Ducks", a Punny Name based on the original character's own Dub Name Change from English to French^note Example: "Captain Olivio" to "Captain Kielbasa"; Captain Tsubasa was called Olive et Tom in France, to add a new pun^note Example: "Hello Kiki" to "Hello Pussy", or because of a reference that wouldn't translate^note Example: "Zizimir" to "Horney"; L'Île aux enfants and Casimir would not be recognized outside of France, while Barney & Friends still gets the basic context of the joke across while being more familiar.
• Dumb Muscle: Vin Diesel is reimagined as a muscular man who talks like a toddler.
• Empathic Environment: When the Canards Juniors break into their rap song, which has a few sad undertones, the weather goes from clear to raining.
• Enraged by Idiocy: The sheer stupidity of this series' version of Light tends to get on Ryuk's nerves.
  Ryuk: [exasperated]' Just shut the fuck up, I'm begging you.
• Everyone Has Standards: The social worker usually remains calm or professional even in the worst cases, but when the Proumfs are in their hipster phase...
  Social worker: I don't know why, but I suddenly feel an urge to beat up some blue things.
• Eye Scream:
  • The leader of the Elfen has an Eyepatch of Power and his daughter is holding Froton and not-Sam at arrowpoint. A sudden movement, a few improbable ricochets later and he's screaming he's afraid of the dark.
  • The Sand Merchant throws magic sand at Pimprenelle's face to make her sleep. Said "magic sand" is actually completely normal sand which hurts Pimprenelle's eyes.
• Eyes Out of Sight: Grouchy Proumpf has his cap obscuring his eyes; taking it off reveals a head of curly hair that still mask them. (Although he later shaves it.)
• The Faceless: Because the episodes are seen from the point of view of the social worker, we never see her face, only her arms occasionally.
• Failed a Spot Check: The social worker doesn't notice Mr. Invisible at first, despite him wearing visible glasses she should see floating.
• Follow the Bouncing Ball: The intro has one over the lyrics of the theme song. Although on the last syllable, the ball falls from the words and hits Dark Papy in the helmet.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Pause at a strategic moment, and for one frame, you'll see the Red Roger's "package".
• Funny Background Event: Happens sometimes when the social worker has an appointment with more than one person. For example, try concentrating on what not-Dinky Winky is saying after you realize that, behind him, not-Dipsy is playing with his rectum...
• Gag Nose: Not-Magneto. In fact, Aimanto looks like a proboscis monkey.
• Gag Penis: In episode 59, Stephane (the donkey) reveals he has this, much to Shrank's shock.
• Groin Attack:
  • A particularly wincing example occurs with the Subway Bunny, who puts his testicles on a mousetrap. Voluntarily.
  • There's also Hello Kiki punching Zizimir in the groin when the latter starts flirting with her.
  • "Go-go-gadgeto-taser-in-your-balls!"
• Gross-Out Show: The episodes are chock full of gore, all kinds of gross bodily fluids, comical deaths, and (sometimes censored) sex, among other things; with all of it Played for Laughs.
• Hearing Voices: Charles Ingalls's problem. His Axe told him to punish his family and now they're buried under a concrete floor.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Naio, Trinité and not-Morpheus are dressed in dark leather coats, pants and clothes. Unfortunately, as it's the middle of August: the leather keeps squeaking when they move a single bit (thus ruining not-Morpheus speech about the Matrice and forcing him to restart each times) and they're way too hot and uncomfortable. So Naio and Trinité gets clothes appropriate to the weather and immediately ruins not-Morpheus's effect.
• Hollywood Tourette's: Porkypute's affliction.
• An Ice Person: Elisa, just like the character that inspired her.
• I Love the Dead: Not-Olaf in the "Frozen Yogourt" episode. He uses his carrot nose to have sex with Anita's corpse, just after she has been frozen to death by her sister's powers.
• Invisibility: As indicated by his name, Mr. Invisible is invisible.
• Invisible Streaker: The social worker realizes with disgust that if she can't see Mr. Invisible at all while he's in front of her, it means that he's naked.
• Involuntary Shapeshifter: Aimanto and Misstrique's marriage suffers that the latter shapeshifts in her sleep.
  Social worker: Don't you think you're overreacting?
  Aimanto: Yeah, well, this morning, I woke up next to Gérard Jugnot!
• I See Dead People: Invoked by Monsieur Man, who is indeed seeing ghosts...
• Kill It with Ice: Happens incidentally when Anita and Elisa see each other again. Cue to Elisa fleeing the social worker's office saying she is a monster.
• Lighter and Softer: The Jokerini are a duo of magician who makes a pencil disappear in various way and then retrieve it. The Social worker is amazed that, despite looking carefully, she still hasn't found the trick.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Just after Anita got accidentally frozen to death by her sister.
• Literal-Minded: When not-Ryuk tells not-Light to ask for not-L's name and then kill him, as in, writing not-L's true name in the Death Note, not-Light takes not-Ryuk's words literally and asks for not-L's name before throwing the Death Note hard enough at his face to kill him.
• Living Toys: The non-Toy Story characters and Andy's new (sex-)toy...
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Sandy is a female variant of this. Yes, she clearly suffers from sex addiction, but when she's not in her "nymphomaniac" mode, she's sweet and nice.
• Madness Mantra: After all she went through, not-Arya is reduced to recite the names of all the people who died in her series.
• Major Injury Underreaction:
  • Brainy Proumpf gets burned alive during his "buddhist monk" phase, and later gets stabbed by an arrow in the ass during his "Na'Vi" phase. The former causes him to declare that it stings a bit, the latter that he's experiencing excruciating pain, both times in a completely neutral tone.
  • After getting her arm blown off, Gora states she absolutely needs to go to the hospital with the same happy tone she always has.
• Masculine Lines, Feminine Curves: There are plenty of examples, among which:
  • Muldor and Scoully.
  • Leia Sodo and Yann Sodo.
  • Lt. Gadjètte and Gora.
• Mean Boss: Froton, who has not-Sam carrying him around for no good reason while he badmouths him.
• Meaningful Name: "Kassos" is a contraction of "cas sociaux" ("social instances"), a term that was used to describe people in serious need of social help, but which quickly developed a derogatory meaning.
• Meaningless Meaningful Words: How Sachatte tries to convince the social worker that Pokémon battles are not just animal pit fights mixed with animal cruelty and doping. It somewhat works until he tries to give a "little pick-me-up" to his Pokémon by stabbing it with a syringe of steroids and makes it explode by trying to shove it in its Pokéball...
  Sachatte: Oh shit.
• Medium Blending:
  • Characters use 2D digital animation, while backgrounds are made of photo-realistic assets.
  • Pingu expy Goupine is animated in Claymation, just like the show he's parodying.
• The Mermaid Problem: Sharon, being an inverted mermaid, mercilessly taunts Ariel about it.
  Sharon: So, so? At least I got a pussy! A pussy! Not a hole full of scales that smells like winkle.
• Miniature Senior Citizen: Dark Papy (the Darth Vader parody) is a geriatric midget.
• Misplaced Accent: Not-Wolverine has a very thick Quebecois accent. Yes, we know Logan is Canadian, just not French-Canadian... Justified as he is likely also a parody of Garou, a French-Canadian singer who was part of the French The Voice jury.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Often used for comedic purposes.
    Social worker: Please stop with the riddles, I don't have much time left!
    Papi Fougasse: Me neither... Me neither...
  • The "Pirate of the Antilles" begin with the social worker berating Jacques Sparreau for being a smuggler, only for them to realize some of their family members are married to each others and partying. Jacques's face also goes Super-Deformed.
  • The RFL episode starts with the social worker remarking that she hasn't seen the Canards Juniors in a while and cheerfully asking them how they are doing. Then they break into a rap song for the rest of the episode.
• Mushroom Samba:
  • Weird LSD pills taken at high doses, and bam! The Teleboobiz experienced one that lasted for 10 years straight. Not-Dinky Winky is starting to come down, but the others are still tripping balls...
  • In their second episode, while the other three are still tripping balls, not-Dink-Winky is apparently still having a bad time coming down and they found a girl that tried to go through a rabbit hole, and then a keyhole.
• Musical Slapstick Montage: In episode 49, courtesy of the Subway Bunny's various ways to deliberately hurt himself. It's set to a pastiche of the Jackass theme, for good measure.
• My Own Grampa: Darty ends up becoming his own father... which results in heavy mental retardation.
• National Stereotypes: The show sometimes plays with regional stereotypes in France:
  • The Britons Aspégix and Grodébilix are full-blown alcoholics.
  • After their Corrupt the Cutie phase, the Canards Joyeux talk like Parisian suburb thugs, including the occasional Arabic word.
  • Ouai-Ouai speaks with a chti (northern French) accent and is an unrefined dumbass that cares more about his car than about his family.
  • The Predators speaks with a Marseilles accent and satirize the good-natured, prone-to-eat-disgusting-things and trigger-happy hunters from rural France.
  • As soon as the social worker and Jacques Sparreau discover a common relative in the Caribbean Islands, they start drinking rhum and dancing on tropical music.
  • The social worker herself has a heavy Antilles accent due to the cliché that Antilles natives mostly work in administration or as civil servants.
• Ninja Prop: The intro has a bouncing ball over the lyrics of the theme song while some characters are singing and dancing beneath them. On the last syllable, the ball falls from the words and hits Dark Papy in the helmet.
• Ninja Run: Mocked in episode #60, where a whole gym class of Naruto parodies (with Might Guy as the gym teacher) run this way, except for "Naroute" who thinks it is dumb to keep your arms behind your back while running.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Elves that refuse to let pass Frodo and Sam because they are Hobbits are thinly veiled parodies of the Le Pen family who leads the French far-right party. Marionde (parody of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen) only expresses herself through bleats.
  Not-Jean-Marie Le Pen: We let one or two pass and in ten years everyone speak Hobbit, smokes hashish and walks around barefoot.
• No Name Given: Although every episode aside from season 4 is seen from the point of view of the social worker, she is never given a name.
• Ocular Gushers: In the "Yu Gi Uno" episode, not-Joey reacts to losing the card game with streams of tear.
• Off with His Head!: The ultimate fate of not-Mei under the claws of Totogro.
• Oh, Crap!: The social worker has this reaction when she realizes she's facing someone or something dangerous, such as Totogro.
• Older Than They Look: Hello Kiki looks like she's 6 years old; she's actually nearly 40. This has disastrous effects on her love life.
  Hello Kiki: The only persons who are interested in a cute little cat are little girls and disgusting pedophiles!
• On Second Thought: At first, Aimanto says he doesn't want Miss Trique to change shape and that he wants to be with the "true Miss Trique". Then, she reveals her blue-skinned-woman form is also a construct, and that she actually looks like a spawn of Shub-Niggurath. So he quickly asks her to forget what he said and to shapeshift back to her iconic form.
• Pædo Hunt: Zizimir the gentle monster claims that he's the victim of one. Of course, the accusations might be not entirely unfounded...
• Pimped-Out Car: Ouai-Ouai's car, which is taking him so much time that he doesn't provide for his wife and baby.
• Protagonist Title Fallacy: In-universe in episode #61; Not-Link is really, really sick of being called "Monsieur Zelda" by everybody... including Not-Zelda herself. So much that he lowers her back into the lava trap.
• Punny Name: As we're dealing with parodies of famous characters (and in order to avoid copyright infringement claims), all the names are altered to varying degrees. As a result, this frequently crops up.
  • For example, Kirikou becomes Ptiripou, which means "Li'l rotten/corrupt guy".
  • A subtle one, however, is with their Little Mermaid parody: she's named Ariel, just like the Disney one, however, the episode focuses on her rivalry with her sister Sharon...
• Quest for Identity: The three Proumpfs are basically going through a variant of this. They ran away from the Proumpf Village (which is depicted as a sect), but now they have a hard time deciding what they should be now.
• Rabid Cop: Lieutenant Gadjètte. There's a reason he's nicknamed "Dirty"...
• Riddle Me This: Papi Fougasse, an expy of Père Fouras, is obsessed with telling riddles. The answer is always about his dick.
  Papi Fougasse: My slap is not lethal, but I sometimes hurt. Often I'm erect, and smell like the tide. Who am I?
  The social worker: I don't know... A Briton lighthouse, maybe?
  Papi Fougasse: Wrong! It's my dick.
• Self-Deprecation: Coupled with The Cameo: The I-Men episode has a character named Irrito, "the boy with the most annoying voice in the world". He's actually voiced by the French YouTuber Squeezie, who is often criticized... for his annoying voice.
• Sexophone: The "'70s porn soundtrack" variant plays whenever Sandy's nymphomania kicks in. Lampshaded by the social worker.
  The social worker: May I ask you where the hell this satanic music is coming from?
• She Who Must Not Be Seen: The social worker is of The Voice variant. The show is always shot from her point of view, so the most we see of her is her hands. We do know she's a portly Black woman with a French-Caribbean accent, but that's all.
• Shovel Strike: The Tortues Clodos making a demonstration of their ninjutsu involves a shovel and a lethal strike to the brain....
• Shout-Out: Episode 49 has a montage parodying and paying homage to Jackass, complete with logo and lawyer-friendly take on the series' theme.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Hello Kiki being nearly 40 isn't random; the Hello Kitty franchise was indeed 39 years old at the time of the episode.
  • The Lara Croft expy has triangular boobs, just like how the polygonal graphics of the Playstation rendered Lara's chest in the first Tomb Raider games.
• Smurfing: The Proumpfs, naturally, exchange another word with "proumpf" now and then.
• Straight Man: The social worker, of course. She's firmly grounded in reality, only to better contrast with the utter wackiness coming from every one of her visitors. She only slips once when partying with Jacques Sparreau, but then again they're family....
• Stripperiffic: Gilles explains that he beat up a random Chinese prostitute because of this trope: he thought she was Chun Li, as "all the female Street Fighters are dressed like hookers".
• Subverted Catchphrase: Dark Papi subverts his usual catchphrase ("I am your father...") when the Sodos present their son to the social worker, as he starts saying to Yann "You are not his father!", but he's interrupted by Leya punching him.
• Super Zeroes: The I-Men are trying to audition to be accepted by the X-Men, but they all have lame costumes, names, and especially powers. Polystiro is a mutant of class 0.5 with control over Styrofoam. Brise can create small gusts of wind (strong enough to close a window). Graviton experiences 25 times Earth's gravity (which makes him barely able to move). Irrito is a Manchild with the most irritating voice in the world. And finally Pr. Genealogio can read in your family tree. The Professor X and Wolverine parodies aren't impressed, although not-Storm gives them points for trying.
• Tattooed Crook:
  • Joe Daltonne. And his brothers have their evasion plan tattooed on their back, which is just "Dig a hole" and "with a shovel".
  • The Team Rocket parody also sport various obscene tattoos.
• This Is Gonna Suck: The social worker, when she realizes The Little Prince is one hell of an annoying brat.
• Throw the Book at Them: Not-Light takes Ryuk's advice to "ask for [L's] name and kill him with the notebook" more literally than Ryuk expected, though it gets the job done.
• Too Important to Walk: Froton doesn't walk, but rides on not-Sam's shoulders everywhere.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Some of the parodies, compared to their inspirations, such as not-Huey, not-Dewey and not-Louie, who quickly adapted to their new (violent and difficult) neighbourhood...
• Too Kinky to Torture: The Subway Bunny. In real life, he's a mascot used for warning children about letting their fingers on the doors of the subway cars and getting them stuck in. In this parody, he's actively trying to get parts of him stuck in things because he gets off on the pain. And when physical damage isn't enough anymore, emotional damage gets him going just as hard.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Aimanto and Misstrique. But later subverted when Misstrique reveals her real form to her husband.
• Unexplained Recovery: In the first Death Note parody, the Light Yagami expy accidentally kills himself by stupidly writing his name in the Death Note, but he's alive and well in the second Death Note parody, which is a direct sequel to the first one.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The social worker is rather chill about being visited by aliens, super-heroes, talking animals, robots and any other kind of unusual people.
• Vocal Dissonance: Before getting traumatized, Not-Dewey has a neutral-sounding adult voice compared to his brothers' more appropriate child-like voices.
• Wimp Fight: The Knights of the Horoscope fight between themselves with light slaps — fittingly, as they're very much Camp Gay.
• Would Hit a Girl: Gadjètte does this on occasion. Especially that one time he did his "gogo-gadgetto-american punch in your face!" to an old lady for jaywalking, punched Hello Pussy in "Super Smashos", and attempted a cardiac massage on Gora but instead uses his fist.
• Would Hurt a Child: Gadjètte, because in his eyes, All Crimes Are Equal and shoplifting candy deserves capital punishment.
• You Need to Get Laid: The social worker's conclusion about the "Yu Gi Uno" youths is that they need to give up playing their card game and start looking for girlfriends. She's so fed up with them that she finally calls on Sandy herself (who is happy to help).
• Your Mom: The "RFL" rap song starts with Not-Louie saying "Your mom".

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