Let's give em' hell.
The Fedora Chronicles is a Team Fortress 2 Machinima series created by The Winglet focused on the adventures of a fedora-wearing RED Spy and his teammates.
It currently has four episodes:
- The Fedora Chronicles: Operation 2Fort
: Fedora storms the BLU base to get the Intelligence. - The Bolted Behemoth: BLU sends a robot to destroy RED.
- Live and Let Spy: RED sneaks into the BLU base to capture the Intelligence (again), but they find something much more sinister...
- The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly: Continuing from the last episode, RED works together to find Gray Mann, who now controls BLU and an army of unstoppable robots.
There is also one spin-off, Burning Through Space, which focuses on the RED Pyro that the Bolted Behemoth threw into space. This spin-off later received a sequel, where the RED Engineer becomes aware of the Pyro's situation and leads the RED Team into space to bring him home, but have an unexpected encounter...
The Fedora Chronicles contains examples of the following tropes:
- Advertised Extra: The surviving RED Demoman and Pyro from Live and Let Spy were hyped up to be major characters in The RED, the BLU and the Ugly's trailer. The Demoman sacrifices himself within the first act, and the Pyro dies in an even more unceremonious way when they drown themself.
- Air-Vent Passageway: How the RED Scout infiltrates the BLU base in Live and Let Spy.
- Alien Invasion: The second RED team fights off one of these in Burning Part 2.
- All for Nothing: The intelligence briefcase RED busted their asses getting since Operation 2Fort turned out to be completely empty (just some dust and spider webs), much to Fedora's rage.
- Art Evolution: The animation just gets better with each entry. Compare the stilted movements in Operation 2Fort with the incredibly smooth animation of Live and Let Spy.
- Artistic License – Space: The mercs in the Burning Through Space spinoff have no problem surviving in space without spacesuits, and Pyro doesn't seem bothered by the lack of oxygen either. Medic in Burning Through Space 2 says it best:"I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS!"
- Ascended Extra: In Operation 2Fort, the RED Soldier only makes one appearance at the beginning and the RED Scoutnote only appears as an enemy Spy's disguise. Both of them become main characters in The Bolted Behemoth.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Fedora goes back-to-back with a teammate twice: once with the RED Sniper in Live and Let Spy to fight against BLU mooks attacking from all sides, and again with Soldier to take on Grey's robots.
- Badass Crew: The Burning Through Space team. They fought off an alien invasion force in space and all survived to tell the tale—a first for the RED team.
- Berserk Button: If you make fun of Fedora's hat, he will end you.
- Big Bad:
- The BLU Medic acts as this in Live and Let Spy, though he's only a frontman in comparison to Gray Mann, his employer.
- Gray Mann himself takes this role in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly.
- Big Badass Battle Sequence: Each episode is one in and of itself, really.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Soldier brings the rest of their RED team to save Fedora and Scout in Live and Let Spy.
- In The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, after spending much of the climax trying to learn how to read, Scout saves Fedora and Soldier from an Australium-charged robot Heavy who had been curbstomping them up to that point.
- Bowdlerise: After The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly got age-restricted by Youtube's algorithm, Winglet uploaded a YouTube-friendly version that censors some of the more graphic violence. For instance, it starts from a shot of a destroyed robot instead of Heavy's corpse, Scout's Flying Guillotine only slits a BLU Soldier's neck instead of decapitating him, the interrogation scene is almost entirely removed, and Soldier executing the BLU Sniper no longer involves an exploding head and the amount of blood splatter was toned down accordingly.
- Brake Angrily: Spy slams on the brakes when he learns the Intelligence everyone risked their lives was empty all along.
- Cartridges in Flight: The Bolted Behemoth has slow-motion sections depicting bullets being fired with cartridges still attached (though that could be chalked up to the animator not being able to find a correct bullet model at the time, as this is rectified in Live and Let Spy).
- The Cavalry: In Live and Let Spy, both Fedora and Scout get caught and are about to be executed when Soldier bursts onto the scene with the entire RED team to save them.
- Chekhov's Gun: Around halfway through Burning Part 2, Engineer finds one of Pyro's flare guns floating in space. At the end of the video, he uses that very same flare gun to shoot the brain slug off the Pyro's head.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The entire Burning Through Space team turns out to be this in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, as it's revealed that their Engineer is a contact of Fedora's, who wants their help to fight Gray Mann.
- Concealment Equals Cover: Most noticeably used by Fedora when he hides behind a broken crate in Live and Let Spy. Both he and Soldier use this trope again when fighting against Gray's robots in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly.
- Connected All Along: The BLU team featured at the climax of The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly all come from The Art of Spychecking, one of Winglet's other videos. Likewise, the same episode reveals that Fedora is in contact with the Burning Through Space RED team, and that they plan to help out with fighting Gray Mann coming up.
- Continuity Nod:
- Part of BLU's String Theory that Fedora discovers in their Secrets room references the events of Bolted Behemoth.
- The RED Demoman and the RED Pyro who survived the events of Live and Let Spy help out in the beginning of The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly. Neither of them live to the end.
- Didn't Think This Through: In The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, the RED Scout's plan to infiltrate the robot factory in awesome manner, culminating in the Fedora's crew massacring the supposed BLU team inside. Turns out there was nobody inside the building and the crew hurt themselves badly in the process, with the Pyro dying from drowning.
- The Dragon: The Chef Hat Pyro, to the BLU Medic in the Live and Let Spy.
- Dual Wielding: Soldier, who primarily uses the Equalizer as his melee weapon, can be seen fighting an Australium-charged Heavy with both it and the Escape Plan in The Red, the Blue, and the Ugly. Fedora also gets in on the action with two machine guns in Scout’s Imagine Spot, and uses a mix of the Ambassador and a sawed-off Half-Zatoichi to fight some of Gray's robots.
- Downer Ending: Burning Through Space. Pyro is left weeping after the alien Scouts and alien Spies that were living on the Pyro's body destroy each other in a massive war, as the Pyro is once again completely alone in space. Made even worse by how kind and helpful the Pyro was to the Scouts.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: The RED Demo from Live and Let Spy ends up biting the dust in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, but manages to blow up the massive truck BLU were using to escape with the intelligence. Fedora and Soldier even pay their respects to his Stickybomb Launcher (or his severed arm in the Director's Cut version).
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Operation 2Fort, in addition to having less refined animation, lacks several traits common to the latter two installments, most notably Soldier and Scout. Its style is also vastly different from Winglet's other animations as a whole, as it lacks the tongue-in-cheek humor and Creator Thumbprints.
- Enemy Mine: Fedora proposes this to the surviving BLU teammates in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly after Gray orders them to be killed. They gladly accept.
- Fastball Special: Burning Through Space 2 has the Heavy performing a Human Hammer-Throw on the Scout while the Medic Ubercharges him, turning the Scout into a human missile.
- Finger in a Barrel:
- In Live and Let Spy, the RED Scout does a variation of this to the BLU Chef Hat Pyro, disabling the latter's flamethrower by plugging the nozzle with a baseball.
- In Burning Through Space Part 2, Engineer pulls the same trick on the Brainwashed and Crazy Pyro.
- Flipping the Bird: In a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, the Bolted Behemoth does this to Scout when he launches several baseballs at the Behemoth's head to absolutely no effect.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- After Spy beats up a BLU Heavy unlocking a Supply Crate he was hiding in, Spy emerges wearing an extremely rare Unusual hat which he unceremoniously throws back inside.
- When Soldier is sneaking past the Snipers, one of them is seen holding a Bushwacka as though it were a sniper rifle.
- The BLU Medic's Solemn Vow (a bust of Hippocrates used as a weapon) has a plaque reading "Do Harm".
- In the Director Cut version of The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, when the RED team members pull their weapons over to a sudden noise, Soldier is seen aiming with the severed hand of the Demoman he was mourning over earlier. It was replaced by his Stickybomb Launcher in the Bowdlerized version.
- Funny Background Event:
- While Fedora goes over The Plan using the Soldier's action figures in Live and Let Spy, Scout can be seen pocketing the Ms. Pauling toy.
- A random waving RED Sniper can be seen in the background of The Bolted Behemoth as Scout is beating down a BLU Sniper.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: This happens all over the place in the videos, particularly when it comes to weapons. Several class-specific weapons are briefly held or even used by various characters. Examples include Scout using both a stock Flamethrower and a Powerjack to fight his opponents, the BLU Medic holding onto Fedora's Ambassador (though he never gets to fire it), and Soldier lugging around an Engineer's wrench and teleporter to get the rest of RED into BLU headquarters. Exaggerated in the trailer for The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, where Pyro emerges from the water holding a Cleaner's Carbine, and Fedora uses a sawed-off Half-Zatoichi and two machine guns that don't even exist in the base game. As it turns out, the machine guns and Cleaner's Carbine scenes are actually from Scout's Imagine Spot, which justifies this trope in that instance. As for the sawed-off Half-Zatoichi, it was an actual Half-Zatoichi before being broken by a Sniper bot.
- Gory Discretion Shot:
- The camera cuts away when the Bolted Behemoth gets beheaded by a buzzsaw. An odd example given that it's being applied to a robot in a series where most deaths are on-screen.
- Another one appears in Burning Through Space Part 2 when the Soldier stomps on the Party Hat Demo's head.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Grey Mann is this to the BLUs.
- Groin Attack: Fedora does this twice in the series.
- Operation 2Fort has him dealing a low blow to the Engineer during the last fight.
- Live and Let Spy's Medic gets one for insulting his hat.
- Humanity Ensues: The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly has a Heavy robot superpowered with Australium, turning it into its human counterpart.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: In The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, the RED Soldier interrogated a BLU Scout to death, but the Soldier forgot to remove his gag. Also done to the BLU Sniper who snatched the BLU Intelligence by Fedora, but the RED Soldier shoots him just as he's about to reveal something.
- The Juggernaut: The Bolted Behemoth No Sells everything RED team throws at it and has a small army's worth of weapons built in. It only goes down when Fedora finds its weakness: namely, that the controller used to activate it is just as susceptible to a Sapper as any other of the Engineer's equipment.
- Knight of Cerebus:
- The BLU Medic in Live and Let Spy when the full scope of his plans are revealed.
- Gray Mann becomes this upon being introduced in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly.
- Literal-Minded: To eliminate what remains of the BLU team, Gray orders his robots to "execute the humans". The robots surrounding him take that as a cue to point their weapons at him as well, which causes Gray to quickly clarify his order.
- Look Behind You: In Live and Let Spy, RED Soldier uses this trick to kill some BLU Mooks.
- Macguffin: The Intelligence.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": RED team's reaction to the titular Bolted Behemoth.
- Mooks: The members of BLU team get taken out en masse throughout the series. As of The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly however, Gray's robots also have taken this role.
- Mook Horror Show: The RED Pyro killing the BLU Spy in The RED, The BLU and The Ugly is framed in a way that references The Shining.
- Mythology Gag:
- The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly has a BLU Medic discovering Crystallized Australium on behalf of Gray Mann. Soldier later fights a robot Heavy that's being powered by the stuff when RED jumps in. Australium is a prevalent source of power in the TF2 comics.
- When Scout is using his Imagine Spot to describe how the rest of RED plans to storm Gray's base, Soldier snaps a Sniper's neck, with the words "NECK SNAP!" appearing as he does it. This is also taken from the comics, although it's usually attributed to Saxton Hale.
- During the fight against the Austalium-powered Heavy in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, Soldier dual-wields an Equalizer and an Escape Plan. In early versions of Team Fortress 2, the Equalizer was a single weapon that also had the Escape Plan's bonuses; it was split into the two weapons later on as a Nerf.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: When he and Scout are surrounded by robots, Soldier pops the pins off both the grenades on his belt and delivers a Badass Boast...and then we cut to Fedora fighting the BLU Medic. The next time we see them they're completely unscathed, and the robots are presumably destroyed.
- Oh, Crap!:
- In Live and Let Spy, Fedora's reaction when he accidentally blows his cover.
- From the same installment, when the RED Engineer notices many stickybombs on his sentry gun.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Scout tends to get most of the comedic moments, although Soldier was also made sillier in Live and Let Spy.
- Power Trio: Fedora, Soldier and Scout, obviously.
- Punctuated Pounding: In Live and Let Spy, RED Soldier does this to a bunch of Soldier-bots with his Equalizer after being saved from a fiery death by RED Medic's Ubercharge.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The brain slugs in Burning Part 2 brainwash people by attaching to their heads, giving them glowing green eyes in the process. Removing the alien undoes the effect.
- Railroad Tracks of Doom: The area for the final showdown in Live and Let Spy has train tracks running through it. BLU Medic ultimately gets run over by a train on said tracks.
- Red Shirt Army: The RED team, fittingly enough. Fedora, Soldier, and Scout have Plot Armor, anyone else is fair game.
- The Reveal:
- Live and Let Spy reveals that BLU murdered Blutarch Mann on Gray's orders, and plan to create more robots on his behalf to take over the world.
- The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly reveals that the Burning Through Space RED team and Fedora's RED team are not one and the same, as Fedora enlists them for their help in taking down Gray Mann once and for all.
- Running Gag: As with most of Winglet's works, Medics tend to get offed in excessively brutal ways.
- Winglet's own Author Avatar (the BLU Demoman sporting a party hat) tends to suffer the most humiliating deaths of the lot. The most embarrassing one has to be his death in The RED, the BLU and the Ugly, where he gets pushed out of a moving car by the Scout and promptly gets mowed down by three other BLU cars in quick succession, with his corpse being snacked on by coyotes for good measure.
- Samus Is a Girl: The ongoing debate of Pyro's gender gets a nod in Burning Part 2, where the Pyro's missing poster refers to them as "her".
- Sequel Hook: At least one for each major instalment.
- The Bolted Behemoth ends with the BLU Pyro returning the intel to their base, which is directly followed up by Live and Let Spy.
- Live and Let Spy, in turn, ends on the reveal that Gray Mann has been masterminding Blu this entire time and that he's been secretly constructing a massive robot army.
- Burning Through Space 2 ends with the Engineer responding to a call from Fedora, who tells him that they need his team's help.
- At the end of The RED, the BLU and the Ugly, Fedora's RED team and the remaining BLU team members have defeated the first wave of robots, but Gray Mann tells them that he has more on the way and that they should prepare. After a BLU Heavy points out that they need more men, Fedora then calls up the Engineer from Burning Through Space, revealing that their teams have been in contact this whole time and that The Red, the Blu and the Ugly had been taking place concurrently with Burning Through Space 2 up to this point.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: The Bolted Behemoth ends with the Intelligence, which RED team was fighting to secure over both that video and Operation: 2Fort, being returned to BLU's base. The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly reveals that the aforementioned Intelligence (which they struggled to get in Live and Let Spy) has nothing inside it.
- Shout-Out:
- The titles for episodes 3 and 4 of the series are references to the James Bond film Live and Let Die and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly from Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy. Fitting, given that the TF2 mercs were based on those 60s and 70s action movies.
- When Gray Mann's name appears in print, it's often abbreviated to form G. Mann. Or perhaps should we say, G-Man?
- In The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, the RED Pyro hacks into a train container with a fire axe and a BLU Spy inside screams in horror.
- The RED Scout's plan in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly involves the RED Soldier stepping out of the truck as he shoots the front tire of a motorcycle ridden by a BLU Sniper, flipping it into the air, and the Soldier catches the Sniper and slams him onto the ground before snapping his neck.
- Signature Headgear: Hats are mainly used as a way to distinguish different characters. Fedora's fedora and Soldier's cap are the main recurring ones.
- So Much for Stealth: In Live and Let Spy, Fedora takes out a BLU Heavy. This Heavy tumbles down from Well's upper floors and into a crate below, causing a huge crash and drawing everyone's attention to his killer. Naturally, Fedora goes for a more passive strategy until he is ultimately caught.
- Soft Glass: In The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, the RED Scout's plan of infiltrating the robot factory involves him breaking into a window, accompanied by an Imagine Spot playing this trope straight. Subverted when he did that for real, as the resulting shards hurt him badly.
- Space Battle: In what is likely a first for SFM, Burning Through Space Part 2 has RED team fighting a fleet of flying saucers in space using jetpacks. Yes.
- Space Is Noisy: Present in full force in the Burning Through Space episodes, where sound effects of all kinds are clearly audible. A particularly notable case is Engineer yelling for Pyro when looking for them. The climactic fight likewise gets pretty noisy with all the laser blasts, explosions, and RED members shouting to each other, though that last one can be justified by them having communication equipment in their helmets.
- Space Is Slow Motion: Zigzagged in the Burning Through Space videos; things floating off into space do so in slow motion, everything else is the same speed as normal.
- Space Mask: In Burning Through Space 2, the Red Team has to battle an alien armada outside of their spaceships and all equip helmets and jetpacks, but no actual spacesuit for their bodies. Scout even Lampshades how cold it is out in space.
- Spin Attack: Done by a Sniper robot in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, which deploys a pair of arm-mounted blades and starts spinning toward Fedora, with the blades themselves shearing a Half-Zatoichi to pieces. Fedora deals with this by simply taking a step back and shooting the robot.
- Stating the Simple Solution: In The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, Fedora tries to track a crate belonging to Gray Mann using a rather intricate device that keeps unfolding and unfolding... until Pyro and Scout point out that the crate has its address written on the bottom.
- Spy Cam: In The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, Fedora is revealed to have an invisible camera on his signature hat.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: The Chef Hat Pyro pulls one on Scout during the climax of ''Live and Let Spy".
- Strong Flesh, Weak Steel: Several robots go down pretty easily to attacks that don't look like they should do that much damage. Perhaps the most extreme case is the Demobot that Spy chokes out.
- Suddenly Voiced:
- A variant; Burning Part 2 is the first video in the series with actual voice acting, whereas all dialogue in the previous installments was put together from in-game lines. That being said, it's mostly Engie, Soldier, and Scout who have major lines, and they're still interspersed with in-game lines.
- The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly features Gray Mann speaking from a television screen after merely making a silent cameo in Live and Let Spy. At the end of the episode, Fedora himself suddenly speaks with a new voice actor in order to contact the Engineer from Burning in Space, asking him to bring in his team for assistance.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Scout's plan for breaking into Gray Mann's base in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly involves him jumping through a glass window, Soldier driving a jeep into the building, Pyro ambushing from the lake outside and Fedora Spy kicking down a door, all to emulate an action movie. What happens when they attempt to put said plan into action? Scout ends up severely injured from jumping through the window, with several glass shards piercing his skin, Soldier loses control of the jeep shortly after breaking the wall and crashes it, Fedora gets his foot stuck in the door when he tries to kick it down, and Pyro drowns from being underwater for too long.
- The End... Or Is It?: Live and Let Spy ends with Gray Mann activating his Robot Army. Consequently, RED can be seen fighting the robots in the trailer for The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly.
- They Killed Kenny Again: The BLU Party Hat Demoman has appeared four times in the series, and he gets killed in a humiliating way each time.
- Took a Level in Dumbass: Soldier was depicted as a leader-type character in the first two videos, but Live and Let Spy instead established Fedora as The Leader; Soldier, by contrast, became a lot slower on the uptake, requiring Fedora to explain his part of The Plan twice. That being said, he hasn't become any less deadly in a fight. The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly shows he still isn't that bright, as he interrogates a Scout to death without thinking to remove his gag first, and he later kills the Sniper Fedora was interrogating just as he was about to spill the beans.
- Uniqueness Value: Fedora, Scout, and Soldier were the only RED members of their respective classes until Burning Through Space Part 2, making them stand out from the crowd. As it turns out, both RED teams are from different factions, with Fedora being in contact with the Burning Through Space Engineer.
- Weapon-Based Characterization: Each of the main RED mercenaries has a distinct preferred loadout.
- Fedora uses the Ambassador, the Dead Ringer, and the Sharp Dresser in addition to the default butterfly knife. He later picks up the Big Earner in the fourth episode.
- RED Soldier carries the Black Box, the Shotgun, and the Equalizer.
- RED Scout uses the Flying Guillotine and the Sandman.
- RED Demo and Pyro use the Iron Bomber and the Nostromo Napalmer respectively.
- The Burning Through Space Pyro prefers to use various flare guns. Two at a time, even.
- Weapons Breaking Weapons: In The RED, The BLU, and The Ugly, the Spy prepares to duel a Sniper robot using a half-zatoichi. The Sniper robot extends blades from its arms and starts spinning, cutting Spy's katana apart and forcing him to simply shoot it instead.
- Wham Shot: The end of The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly reveals that the Burning Through Space Engineer is a contact of Fedora's, whom he asks for assistance for in order to deal with Gray Mann.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: A subversion occurs in The RED, the BLU, and the Ugly, where a BLU Heavy wearing Officer's Ushanka whom the RED Soldier shot down in Live and Let Spy meets the Soldier again, even having a Motive Rant of avenging the BLU Spy disguised as the RED Scout whom the Soldier killed. Double Subverted when the RED Soldier shoots him down with a shotgun in middle of said rant.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Burning Through Space is one for the Futurama episode "Godfellas".
- With Catlike Tread: Soldier's attempts at stealth in Live and Let Spy. The crowner is when he has to pass through an entire hallway filled with Snipers, drops the box containing the Teleporter he's trying to place with a very audible CLANG, and let's out a loud "Dammit!"... and not a single Sniper hears him. One of them does look over his shoulder to investigate, only to look the wrong way.
- Ironically enough, it's Fedora that ends up setting off the alarm bells, and Soldier's the only one of the main trio that doesn't end up getting captured.
- Worthless Treasure Twist: When the RED team enthusiastically opens the intelligence briefcase they've fought so hard over, it has nothing in it. Given the cobwebs inside of it, it's quite likely there never was anything in it during the events of Operation 2Fort.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Gray Mann orders the BLU team members he has set to find the Crystallized Australium to be killed by his robots. Luckily, Fedora intervenes to prevent this from happening.
