Web Animation / The Nightly News at Nine

"Bringing you the latest stories from all four corners of Figuria and the deepest reaches of space. With the newscasting team you've come to trust, in-depth reporting direct from the field, viewpoints and public opinions on the important issues, instant information from a semi-omniscient perspective, magical tracking of intangible weather phenomena, and the latest from the world of sports. Broadcast live from TV Tower in New Block City — this is the Nightly News at Nine, with Phil and Sherry."

— Eye of Eyes

The Nightly News at Nine is a LEGO stop-motion animated comedy series about a team of reporters made by Dave Pickett. The series spans across several short videos that make up two full half-hour-long "Chapters". The videos are hosted on Pickett's YouTube channel BRICK 101, which also features a series of videos explaining how to build most of the characters and props featured in the videos, as well as several unrelated builds based on existing franchises.

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This show provides examples of:

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: At the end of the SVELT commercial, among many crime categories listed such as Arson and Smuggling are decidedly less evil-sounding ones like Business Management & Accounting and Yodeling.
• Aborted Arc: In many of the “How to Build” videos and other such behind-the-scenes insights, creator David Pickett hints at ideas he had planned to explore in future episodes of the show. With Chapter 3 never coming to be, most of these ideas went on the cutting room floor with it.
• Alliterative Title: Nightly News at Nine
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Sort of. The last 3 sports Robert Vylan lists in his segment are "Brickity-Block", "Blockity-Brick", and "Brickity-Blockity-Blue-Ball".
• Brick Joke: No pun intended. As Zundar is listing the various types of Head Melons Legsharks like to eat, one of the last ones is a Brickity-Blockity-Blue-Ball (Though it notably uses a different piece than in Robert's segment).
• Built with LEGO: The show is made using stop-motion animation with LEGO bricks.
  • Characters are shown removing and reattaching limbs with ease.
  • Some characters refer to real-life LEGO product lines.
  Random guy: Woo! Go Wolfpack!
• Cape Snag: One of Malifios's numerous attempts to destroy New Block City fails due to his cape getting stuck to the propeller of a plane.
• Color-Coded Characters: Blue for Phil and Red for Sherry. Also invoked regarding Green and Orange, which are at war with each other- Zundar is Green and the Eye of Eyes is Orange, which causes some beef between them.
  • Most of the villainous characters, particularly those related to SVELT, have Green color schemes.
• Comically Missing the Point: Phil does this a lot.
• Commercial Switcheroo: In "Robots! Robots! Robots!", a Belville doll wonders what to do with all the robots in her house until the announcer of the commercial asks "Got more robots than you know what to do with?", which makes her think the commercial is about a product that'll get rid of the robots. The commercial, however, isn't advertising such a product and instead suggests activities for the robots to do...that is, until the commercial suggests the robots fight in the Green Militia, revealing the commercial is actually a recruitment ad.
• Compilation Re-release: The various short segments were edited together to create two 25-minute-long "chapters".
• Complexity Addiction: Malifios's schemes tend to be either something that clearly doesn't work (such as making a machine that spins Octopi without doing any noticeable damage to New Block City, seeming pretty sure that it will), or too needlessly complex to work (he plans on setting a fire to a farm... By having a cow kick it as opposed to starting the fire himself. Amusingly, he gets kicked as soon as he gets initiative to start it on his own). Persephone Verada states that he could just get his degree in villainy if he just went for a more simple approach.
• Dada Ad: The "Orange Beats Binary" commercial.
  Who needs binary when there is orange?
• Deadline News: Steve Deepsea gets eaten by a legshark after trying to interview him.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Orange and green have declared war on each other, all because a Figurian decided he preferred orange over green as his favorite color.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In addition to generally being shot less well than later videos, the pilot episode tells an entire news story in just a couple minutes whereas the actual two chapters were 25 minutes each. Malifios's alias is also stated to be "Bob Vile" as opposed to "Robert Vylan".
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Grabbor cannot stand the idea that Report-O-Bot-O-Phelia is interviewing him "on behalf of the Figurians."
  Grabbor: You are allied with the flesh BLOBS!?! Are you not a robot?
  ROBOphelia: I was built to protect, not invaaaaade!
  Grabbor: Then you were built wrooooooong!
• Expy: K0P-3R is this to ROBOphelia. Not only do they share the exact same head and a similar model, but K0P-3R even interrogates one of the Cowboybots in the exact same manner as ROBOphelia did to a Pinchbot in "ROBOphelia vs. Grabbor":
  K0P-3R: "Ha ha ha ha! Where is your leaderbot?"
  Chuck Malarkey: "And don't give us no malarkey!"
  • This gets lampshaded in the next episode, in which Phil points out how similar the two are, even showing a comparison on both "interrogation" scenes to prove his point, in which Sherry brushes it off since many robots can be built similarly.
• Extreme Omnivore: Legsharks eat almost anything that's in front of them.
  • Duckbot from the "Robots! Robots! Robots!" segment eats: 2 white plates, 3 fish, 1 radio, 3 gold cups, 2 parts of the table, 1 orange bowl, 1 mushroom, 2 wine glasses, 1 yellow book.
• Funny Background Event: You can find a lot of wreckages or weird going-ons in the background of any given episode.
• Fun with Acronyms: Report-O-Bot-O-Phelia, or ROBOphelia.
• Get Out!: Trifacto Jones bluntly asks Steve Deepsea to go away after their prophecy is over. When he doesn’t, they start getting creeped out.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Malifios.
  Persephone Verada: Malifios' plans are always miraculous displays of failure.
• Insistent Terminology: Robert Vylan is a sportsmaster, not a sportscaster.
• Kent Brockman News: The show embodies this trope. Phil and Sherry bicker constantly and spend most of the show reporting on what matters to them personally.
  Phil and Sherry: Only on the Nightly News at Nine: Bringing you the stories that matter to us.
• Land Shark: One of the people Steve Deepsea interviews about Malifios's escape is a Legshark, a shark that walks around on two legs. Phil gives it Steve's job after it eats him.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: The colors green and orange keep trying to prove that they're superior to one another in the form of propaganda commercials.
• Look Ma, I Am on TV!: A Funny Background Event during one of Steve Deepsea's interviews has a man driving by, slowly backing up to wave to the camera, and then getting into a wreck.
• The Magic Touch: One of the chiselbots in "Orange Beats Binary" gains the power to make the depressingly gray factory happy and orange after touching a contagiously orange brick.
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: In the Police Show advertisement:
  Some Cowboybots invaded our town, and now they're looking for trouble
  So we're gonna give them trouble
  'Cuz that's our middle name
  Police Show, Police Show, with Chuck Trouble Malarkey
  And K-0-P-Trouble-3-R!
• New Neo City: New Block City.
• Noodle Implements: At the end of a Deleted Scene, Robert Vylan checks his to-do list regarding his evil plan, which reads "Escape Prison, Join NNN, Ice Blockey, Destroy City." Robert then attempts to talk about Ice Blockey in "The End of Sports," only to be stopped by Sherry before we can learn anything about it, meaning we still have no idea what "Ice Blockey" is.
• Noodle Incident: When arguing about whether or not Robert Vylan should be hired as the new sportscaster, Sherry brings up an incident involving a tree.
  Phil: Lousy tree... I'LL HAVE MY REVENGE!!
  • During Steve Deepsea's segment, a farmer he interviews mentions the "Horse Rebellion".
  • Another civilian he interviews states that Malifios once tried to hypnotize muffins for something.
  • According to Phil, Deepsea once got into hot water over something regarding flowers.
  • When Sherry suggests Phil eat something other than pizza, Phil brings up "The Pretzel Incident". All we can tell from a provided image is somehow Phil acquired a massive pretzel and it didn't end well.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted: There's Steve Flatwise and Steve Deepsea.
• Only Sane Man: Sherry is the only one who thinks that it's a terrible idea to hire Robert Vylan, as well as a Legshark that just ate their last reporter.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Malifios adopts the alias Robert Vylan to apply for the Sportscaster job after Steve Flatwise is taken hostage. While Sherry can tell it's very clearly Malifios, Phil is completely fooled and gets him hired because of it being his decision week.
• Parody Commercial: Alternating with the fake news segments are fake commercials. They tend to be thematically or directly related to the top news stories.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: ROBOphelia tells Grabbor this after an interview with the Pinchbot leader:
  ROBOphelia: I have one last question: "Are yoooou ready to be destrooooooyeeed?"
  • Bond One-Liner: After she successfully "destroys" Grabbor:
    ROBOphelia: Well, I guess that answers that question!
• Punny Name: Phil Brickley and Sherry Tiles both of whose last names reflect the fact that they're Built with LEGO.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: Parodied in "ROBOphelia vs. Grabbor" where the two robots' programs keep being in sync when they're trying to introduce themselves to one another, and so they play Nut-Bolt-Washer to decide who's going to start. Bolt beats washer.
• Shaped Like Itself: Police Show!, Police Show! It's a show about police.
• Shout-Out: The scene where ROBOphelia traverses the Pinchbot Leadership homages the classic Mega Man games.
• Show Within a Show: Police Show.
• Silly Reason for War: The colors Orange and Green are at war with each other across the videos. Yes, the colors themselves are at war, and it's stated a lot of damage occurs as a result. It apparently started because one Figurian decided to change their favorite color from green to orange. Lampshaded by Zundar, who suggests they could have settled it over a pie, or a nice fruit salad.
• Spiritual Successor: To an old HBO series from the 80's, Not Necessarily the News, which featured a similar mix of a fake newscast and skits parodying commercials.
• Spreading Disaster Map Graphic: Zundar uses a map of Figuria to illustrate the consequences of the Orange-Green War.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Phil loves pizza. He even states that he could eat all the pizza he wanted if he could.
  • Legsharks are also very fond of anything shaped like a minifigure head, except pumpkins, as they're allergic. That is, unless you give them a green wizard hat. Then they basically go to town on those pumpkins with no reaction!
• The Unintelligible: Q'#!*, one of the interviewees appearing in "On the Street with Steve Deepsea".
• We Interrupt This Program: In "The End of Sports" the Toymaster General of Figuria interrupts Robert Vylan to advertise the new mini-pinchbots.
• Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him?: The SVELT Henchbrick, disappointed in Malifios’s Complexity Addiction getting the better of him, suggests if he were to just take a load of dynamite he could accomplish his goal of destroying New Block City in no time.

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