Unforgotten Realms is a web animation following the adventures of Sir Schmoopy of Awesometon, dual-nunchuck-weilding sorcerer, and Eluamous Nailo, wizard in-training, as they quest to find a magical herb that will cure Sir Schmoopy's dying grandmother of her illness. Wait, no. Actually, the show follows Rob and Mike, two "friends", as they play Unforgotten Realms, Mike's roleplaying game as Sir Schmoopy and Eluamous Nailo, respectively. Rob's... interesting roleplaying style quickly and frequently results in throwing Mike's game off the rails, no matter how hard Mike tries to keep things on track. The group is quick to pick up two more allies: Petey, the (totally not evil) Undead dire rat, and Jacques, the magical talking axe. Other important characters include Evil Overlord Timmy the Evil, who plans to destroy Sir Schmoopy, Roamin the crime-solving rank-11 paladin, who tracks down crime with Gaary, a midget who is far more competent then Roamin, and the mysterious Kobolds.
The series was originally created as a series of poorly-drawn flash animations on Newgrounds, but after seven episodes, the creator was hired to make Unforgotten Realms for The Escapist
, and proceeded to reboot the series, starting with episode one, and making a new episode every other week. The new series follows the same plot as the first one, and the first three episodes are the same as the first three of "Season Zero", with better animation and plot, but from the fourth episode on, it has deviated from the old series into something with a good deal more plot and direction, while keeping many of the old and favorite jokes and catch-phrases.
The majority of the humor comes from Sir Schmoopy's interactions with the campaign world, which often results in the plot being ignored, strange characters showing up, and explosions.
The show's contract with the Escapist ran out, causing the show to be rather unceremoniously removed from the index on the main page. They can still be viewed there as well as the old episodes which are still on Newgrounds.
Currently the creator of the series is fund-raising by selling DVDs of the first season while he produces the rest of the the third season and eventually a fourth. This information is available on the website at http://www.urealms.com. He also produces the GRR Podcast with Gaary and Roamin's real life counterparts, as well as doing a daily (usually) stream http://www.twitch.tv/rurikar22/videos.
In 2012, the series was put on hiatus as Rob was working on an Unforgotten Realms videogame. Unfortunately, due to financial and personal issues, Robert Moran canceled both the game and the series itself.
In 2015, the series was brought back as a Board game called Unforgotten Realms Live, later renamed U Realms Live.
In August 2022, a new series called Unforgotten Realms Z was released on Newgrounds and other platforms. Presented as a Soft Reboot of sorts (the previous episodes happened, but the lore and history are being largely ignored in favor of a fresh start), it stars Mike and Rob once again playing Unforgotten Realms, but with a few twists. The first is that they're playing the latest edition of the game, which offers ludicrous levels of player freedom, so much so that it requires an AI GM to run with any sort balance in mind. This leads to the second twist, that Rob and Mike are more directly meant to be working together rather than Mike being running a GMPC like he had previously, except that Mike is acting rather oddly, to the point that while Rob is remaking Sir Schmoopy for the new game, Mike is playing Maelstrom of all characters. The first episode can be found here.
This show provides examples of:
- A Day in the Limelight: Episode 20.
- As You Know: Episode 10
- Art Evolution: Compare the early episode of the first series with the new one.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Occurs in Episode 47.
- Bull Fight Boss: The
Large Sea MonsterSmall Land Creature - Big Bad: Timmy the Evil and (maybe?) Malestrom.
- Sort of. Timmy is far more powerful though, as he is able to change anything about the game.
- Malestrom is the Big Bad within Mike and Rob's game. Timmy the Evil is the overall villain, being more meta.
- Breather Episode: Episode 20, A Day in the Limelight with ROAMIN.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Timmy the Evil spends his time in his evil lair discussing his evil plans for the not-so-evil adventuring party with the evil Professor Walrus, using indestructible evil crystals to complete his evil plots. Evil.
- Although as Walrus points out, Timmy is the only major character who hasn't committed murder.
- Catchphrase: So very many from Sir Schmoopy:All right. * heavy breath* I wanna cast a spell.By fire be purged!I cast Flare!Feel the wrath of Canadian lumber/Canuck steel fool!Hah. Fatality, bitch.
- Possibly Roamin shouting the name of his attacks.
- Couch Gag: Every episode in Season 1 starts with a black screen that tells you something about "The Following Episode", whether that is the fact that it may contain the word "tiddly-wank", that it is kind of long, or that it is protected under Zimbabwe copyright law.
- Episode Eight parodies itself, with a completely black screen, and the voice saying that "The Following Episode does not have one of those 'The Following Episode' things at the start of it."
- Episode Nine actually doesn't have one, it goes right into the recap and opening theme. And at the end, the familiar screen informs you that "The Following Episode is over."
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Rob is a combination between this and Too Dumb to Live.
- Cursed with Awesome: The Dragon Warrior and his descendants were cursed with immortality. See Who Wants to Live Forever?, below.
- Deadpan Snarker: Gaary to Roamin. One example from Episode Nine:Roamin: "Gaary, why are we even friends?"Gaary: "Well, no-one will be friends with you, and I enjoy pissing on people's parades."Roamin: "Better reasons then most, I suppose."Gaary: "Not really, it's probably the worst reason to be friends out of everyone who as ever used the word 'friendship' to describe their bond with another person."
- Dual Wielding: Sir Schmoopy duel-wields nunchucks, even if he gets accuracy penalties.
- And James's beaver tails with butter knives attached to them.
- And Maelstrom swords!
- Exactly What I Aimed At: "I only needed four more experience!"
- Eyepatch of Power: Maelstrom, again
- Fantastic Racism: Kobolds and everyone.
- Gambit Roulette: Timmy the Evil's plan to ensure his own creation involved sending the heroes back in time to, through a convoluted series of events, stab him with an enchanted blade that reverses his alignment under the assumption that "Timmy the Super Nice Guy" is actually Timmy the Evil in disguise - whereas he is in fact Timmy the Super Nice Guy, and thus stabbing him with the blade turns him into Timmy the Evil.
- Game-Breaker: (In-universe) Timmy The Evil has a selection of spells that technically gives him infinite turns. Before you ask why Mike does not just disallow it, keep in mind that a Big Bad who flagrantly bends the rules of a tabletop game makes for a funny episode.
- It's probably also got something to do with the fact that Timmy doesn't actually get up to any of these shenanigans until Mike and Rob have to step away from the table for something, so how aware Mike is that this is going on, and how aware he is that it's Timmy specifically, is up for debate.
- Game Master: Mike tries, but Rob tends to ignore his authority.
- The game also seems to operate somewhat independently, since both Mike and Rob are often surprised by new developments or rules Mike forgot about until he is reminded by the effect. This occurs even without Timmy's changes to the campaign notes.
- Mike must just be a really good roleplayer.
- As of episode 31, he has completely succumbed to the chaos and is now openly making things up as he goes.
- The game also seems to operate somewhat independently, since both Mike and Rob are often surprised by new developments or rules Mike forgot about until he is reminded by the effect. This occurs even without Timmy's changes to the campaign notes.
- Genius Ditz: Due partly to his Munchkin nature, Rob is quite capable at exploiting random loopholes.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: The "pure good" Nader does not understand evil and is completely incapable of causing harm.
- Harmless Villain: Timmy The Evil - Not in the game, where fighting him directly is impossible, and anything you do to stop him is only what he wanted you to do. Rather, Timmy himself has completely failed to be the Killer DM that will ruin the game his big brother won't let him play, and has actually helped create a better campaign than Mike's original idea.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Sir Schmoopy has, to date:
- Killed a defenseless old beggar after blinding him, and then stole the clothes off his body,
- Befreinded a dire rat who was an obvious random encounter moments after killing the beggar,
- Blinded Eluamous just so he could loot a broken-down carriage,
- Attempted to steal the money to repay a debt to the Kingdom of Cottswell, from the Kingdom of Cottswell,
- Threw Jacques, Eluamous, and Petey into a well to get at some shiny stuff at the bottom,
- Killed two defenseless
princesseswitches, - Stood idly by and benefited from a Paladin engineering the body theft of a trio of adventurers. Joined in on tossing their bottled pee bodies away into a body of water.
- And threw two out of three innocent villagers into a lake of acid due to not thinking thoroughly about a convoluted magical riddle, sparing the lady because she was a girl (in their defense it was kinda the mage who gave them the quest's fault for being in grammatical error and putting his sons and people's lives in general on the line).
- Hoist by His Own Petard - the following quote explains it all:
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Gaary, if only in comparison to Roamin.
- Jerkass: Rob is honestly rather mean (though funny).
- Let's Get Dangerous!: When Rob stops screwing around and focuses on fighting something, Schmoopy can pull of some seriously amazing stuff.
- Munchkin: Sir Schmoopy kills a hobo and loots his loincloth, stating that Eluamous not doing so is why Mike sucks at video games.
- Also his plan to hide inside Petey and wait for the ogre to die from the poison.
- Like Cannot Cut Like: Their plan to destroy one of the Nader Gems, in order to stop a evil aligned Deligoth Nader is to use the one they got from the future to forge into a weapon.
- Musical Episode: Episode 49, in celebration of the shows returnRob: Man, Mike, this place is amazing. It almost feels like we should just jump into some sort of... singing and dancing number!
- My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: In the original series episode four, Rob tries to speak wolf and says this verbatim.
- Newspaper Dating: Mike uses this as a quick and easy way so Eluamous and Schmoopy find out they are in the past and can move on with the plot.
- No Fourth Wall: The recap at the start of each episode has Mike and Rob recapping the last episode to the viewers. Interestingly enough, when the episode proper starts, Mike and Rob, fourth wall in place, will often will also recap the events of the game to each-other.
- In Episode Eight, Jason the ghost warlock searches his magical library and produces the script for Episode Eight.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Petey (a dire rat) and Jacques (a magical axe).
- Non Sequitur, *Thud*: "What's that, Mom? Sure, I'd like some pancakes for dinner!" *thud*
- Off the Rails: No matter how much Mike just wants to run a regular old game, Rob will constantly throw in random stuff in for equally random reasons. Timmy has managed to shift them onto his own set of rails by changing Mike's notes.
- Only Sane Man: Eluamous seems to be this being as he is one of the two characters done by Mike the other being Maelstrom Most likely Douglas and Gaary as well.
- Our Kobolds Are Different: Kobolds are a recurring foe. They look like furry animals, but they are actually small Rock Monsters who eat rocks and have magnetic properties. They're also not very bright, as shown when they tell a moving cardboard box to stop moving around, since cardboard boxes don't do that. They also have a habit of saying "Kobold!"
- Pokémon Speak: Played straight with most Kobolds, but subverted with Groundbolds who still say nothing but Kobold. Subverted again (maybe averted, but definitely not a double subversion) when it turns out that Groundbolds can speak normally.
- Power Copy: The magical Crystal of Absorb lets a person take on the powers of a dead foe by drawing that creature's soul into the user's body. Rob instantly equates this to being like Mega Man.
- Rule of Cool: Sorcerers arent' actually proficient with nunchucks, and duel-wielding drops Sir Schmoopy's attack bonus even further, but in Rob's own words "then I will die looking like a totally badass dual nunchuck-wielding Abraham Lincoln."
- Running Gag: A few, like the
nonexistentLumberjack class, and the notion that all wizards wear monocles.- "I Cast Flare!"
- Shaped Like Itself: "Ten thousands gold pieces of gold!"
- Schmuck Bait: Double Subversion in the Tower of Ultimate Wizardry. The first floor is a room with a spiky ceiling, and a jolly red candy-like button. The spiked-cieling trap triggers automatically, slowly lowering the spikes, and pressing the button resets it. However, there's no way out of the room. If you don't press the button, a door opens, and the trap resets, all at the last second.
- Shout-Out: Many, usually to video games.
- Episode Six's title, WTB Ogre-slaying knife, was a shout-out to the Dead Ale Wives. The title is a parody of Forgotten Realms. Roamin' attempt to make Dragon Ball Z jokes.
- And Schmoopy's Catchphrase "Be fire, be purged!" is a phrase said by the World of Warcraft raid boss Ragnaros during a fight with it. Considering the creator's past World of Warcraft Machinima, it's clearly entirely intentional. Roamon's righteous fury and retribution spec also reference WoW.
- Roamin ringing up the judge to go bowling — "Ey cousin, let's go bowling" "No, Roamin" — is straight out of Grand Theft Auto IV.
- Straw Critic: In the second season, practically every episode has had straw criticism in some form (whether it be the narrator calling people idiots for asking questions, or straw criticism acted out between the two main characters. Of course, this isn't suprising, given to the fact he frequently rants about all the criticism he gets on the forums.
- Stereotype Flip: In-universe.Rob: Yeah, I think I'm gonna veto the decision to have the only black guy in the game be a thief.
- Smurfing: Episode 10
- Soul Jar: The evil Indestructible Crystal of Change swaps a soul in the crystal with the soul in the body of the one using it. Schmoopy used this to survive an explosion and get into a wolf body Roamin used his Pee as literal souljars.
- Space Jews: Elves: Keep in mind that Rob's wife is Jewish in real life, and this is so blatant as to be a possible parodyElf: No, we elves aren't known for our metalsmithery. Most of us are doctors, or lawyers, or accountants, or bankers, or gold...catchers.
- Stuff Blowing Up: There's a reason Sir Schmoopy is referred to as Mister-quick-to-blow-up-himself-and-everyone-around-him...
- Theme Song: Roamin has Gaary rap his whenever he's introduced:R-O-A to the M-I-N, he's a crime-solving, rank-11 paladin. To the R-O-A to the M-I-N, he's a crime-solving, rank-11, paladin. Yeah.
- Third-Person Person: Ursa Arcadius, Archduke of the High Bears, would like you to know that he, Ursa Arcadius, Archduke of the High Bears, often begins his sentences by spelling out his title (Ursa Arcadius, Archduke of the High Bears) to everyone, even non-Archdukes of the High Bears.
- Unsound Effect: A rare audible form: Ogres grumble "Ogre Sound" when they're not talking to people.
- "Question-mark face?"
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Invoked and heavily lampshaded in episode 18.
- Verbal Tic: Kobooold!
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Roamin and Gaary have openly questioned their "friendship". Mike has done so himself in respect to Rob.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Descendants of the Dragon Warrior are immortal. They do not age, but they can be killed, and they also do not grow, i.e., they cannot level. This factors heavily into Maelstrom's motivation toward claiming the Nader Gems, in order to become strong.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: After the hiatus, Mike recaps the basic plot of their roleplay. He then realizes how retarded it is. Rob stands up for it, saying that the original plot was just as stupid, if not moreso.
