The Red Ape Family is an animated series that is based on the NFT line "Bored Ape Yacht Club". The premise of the series is as follows:
It's the Year 2130, and the Earth is dying thanks to humanity messing things up. As such, four bored red apes, their pet dog, and their lion doctor leave Earth and go to Mars to start a new life there.
This of course is only explained in the trailer. The real plot of the first episode revolves around one of the Bored Apes stealing an old flash drive from a museum that contains old NFTs, followed by them heading off to Mars.
The show is hosted via blockchain, with each episode being sold as an NFT. It has also been promoted as the first animated series of its kind. note .
Tropes in this series:
- Academy of Evil: Dr. Jeeves has a master's degree in evil from the University of Phoenix.
- Alas, Poor Yorick: Caesar starts reading the monologue from Hamlet as he almost floats away. It's unclear where the skull he's holding is from, especially since it talks.
- Amazing Technicolour Wildlife: Dr. Nwatiti is a red-colored lion with mismatched eyes.
- Angry Guard Dog: Chucky gets chased by a group of Cyborg guard dogs after he picks up the USB.
- Animated Adaptation: Of the "Bored Ape Yacht Club" series of NFTs.
- Apes in Space: It's about a family of apes leaving Earth to start a new life on Mars.
- Art Evolution: Episode 2 gives a much-needed one to the show, with the characters not looking as stiff as they did in the first.
- Artificial Gravity: Gravity sneakers counteract the difference between Earth and Mars gravity.
- Artistic License – Physics: Without gravity sneakers, people on Mars float away. The gravity on Mars is weaker than on Earth, but not that weak.
- Ass Shove: Chucky hides the golden NFT in Rocky's butt because "no one will look there."
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: One of the NFTs which show up in the show is the "SuperYeti" series, which are Yetis that live in space.
- Data Drive MacGuffin: Episode 1 of the show focuses on the titular family stealing an old USB from a museum, which apparently contains an important NFT. It's trying to hide this that is (at least partially) why they've decided to head to Mars.
- Dem Bones: The "Musk-1" (the spaceship that the apes ride to get to Mars) is driven by a talking, walking skeleton with blood all over his face. He apparently became like that following an unsuccessful first flight.
- Everything Is an Instrument: A pair of binoculars gets briefly used as a harmonica in the first episode.
- Fungus Humongous: They're all over the Mars colony. Streetlamps and buildings are built into them.
- Funny Foreigner: Outside of the red apes, many characters have foreign accents just for comedic value, especially in Episode 2. Ironically, Winky loses her British accent between episodes while Dr. Nwatiti's unfortunate-sounding African accent is traded for a more generic English one.
- Gambit Pileup: As of Episode 3, there are the eponymous family (cat-burglars who stole the golden NFT), the neighbours (former criminals who decide to steal the NFT themselves, starting with an attempt to kidnap Hunky in Episode 2), Dr Jeeves (who also wants the golden NFT and whose minions do kidnap Hunky in Episode 2), baby Elon Musk (who wants to groom Chucky as the chosen one), baby Mark Zuckerberg (who hired Chucky to steal the NFT in the first place), and baby Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates who are also supposedly scheming offscreen.
- Historical Domain Character: Donald Trump is still alive in 2130 and has moved to Mars. As of Episode 3, also alive or believed alive are Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates, who turned themselves into giant babies, had a Great Offscreen War, and cloned themselves, although only Elon Musk has appeared in the show.
- How We Got Here: Episode 1 starts in the middle of the apes' journey to Mars.
- Laser Hallway: Chucky comes across a wall of lasers while infiltrating the Louvre. He just walks through the lasers because they are specifically designed to detect (or "detec") humans and only humans.
- Malaproper: Chucky calls the Eiffel Tower the Awful Tower and non-fungible tokens non-fuckable toucans while talking to Winky about the USB stick he stole.
- "Mission: Impossible" Cable Drop: Chucky is shown doing this to steal an old USB stick containing NFTs.
- Mona Lisa Smile: The picture in the museum given the most attention is a Bored Ape version of The Mona Lisa.
- No Name Given: None of the characters' names are said in the actual series (kinda, Dr. Nwatiti does say Chuckie's name in the opening line, but it's incredibly garbled, and Wikny does namedrop the sons, but the art doesn't make it clear which one's which), neither do the credits say the characters' names as well. The second episode clarifies who's who to make up for this.
- Obligatory Swearing: "Fuck" seems to be Chucky's favorite word. The other characters swear a lot too.
- Or Was It a Dream?: Episode 2 begins with Chucky waking up from the nightmare of Episode 1 and all the criticism it got. Caesar's talking skull explains that it was actually a rip in the multiverse. Also, at least some of the events in Episode 1 are still canon, since the red apes still have the golden NFT and are on Mars.
- Public Domain Character: Whose museum did Chucky break into? Who actually owns the golden NFT? Episode 1 implies that at least one of the answers is Laurel and Hardy.
- Shout-Out: Once the Red Ape Family gets their documents back, it's stamped with a square, a triangle, and a circle in a row.
- Swallowed Whole: A minor Running Gag in the first episode's second half involves Dr. Nwatiti doing this to random people.
- Self-Deprecation: Episode 2 has plenty of it, about as much as the Take That, Critics! early on. Including pointing out the poor attempts at accents and jokes.
- Silly Simian: That's why it's about apes, after all.
- Take That, Critics!:
- In response to Saberspark making a video panning the first episode, the second episode includes an unflattering caricature of him known as "Saber Fart".note
- At the beginning of the second episode, Chucky has a dream about videos critiquing the first episodes and he calls the uploaders "trolls" and describes them as "Asshole virgins making reaction videos in their mothers' basements". Note that said scene also contained Self-Deprecation at the quality of the first episode, meaning they were unwittingly conceding that the critics were right.
- In the unreleased third episode, there is an Overly Long Gag of Elon insisting that these "trolls" are purely hate-focused beings that don't have any intelligent reasoning for their critiques.
- Saberspark wasn't the only one who got a cameo...
- Tyop on the Cover: A sign is visible during the first episode which misspells "Detected" (as in "No Humans Detected") as "Deteced". Episode 2 parodies this with a deliberate misspelling of "No Humans Allowed".
- The Unreveal: While the USB stick Chuckie steals contains an NFT, we never see what it looks like.note
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Dr. Nwatiti's supposed to sound African, but his voice comes off more as Middle Eastern trying and failing to sound Sahelian. Episode 2 drops this for a more straightforward attempt at a British accent.
