One of the least horrifying shots from the short.
"Jimmy, watermelon! Now, remember: don't eat the seeds, or one's gonna grow in your belly."
Watermelon: A Cautionary Tale is an All-CGI Cartoon short film by Kefei Li and Connie He that they directed while attending Ringling College of Art + Design.
The three-minute short features Jimmy, a young boy that swallows a watermelon seed, despite his mother’s warning. What follows is a series of Body Horror events involving him turning into a watermelon.
Tropes featured in the short:
- Accidental Suicide: Potentially two, depending on your perception of when Jimmy stops living. Eating the seeds counts if you believe him to be no longer living the second he turns into a watermelon. Jumping off the swing while he was still transforming is the other if you think he dies on impact with the ground.
- All-CGI Cartoon: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The animation in the short is done almost entirely in CGI.
- Balloon Belly: Before turning into an actual watermelon, Jimmy's stomach swells large enough for him to slide across the floor on it, resembling this trope.
- Body Horror: Jimmy’s transformation into a watermelon is shown to take place over the course of a day, and is shown to be very painful for him.
- Book Ends: Ends with Jimmy's fellow classmates eating his remains, seeds and all.
- Chainsaw Good: So many watermelon vines grow out of Jimmy's nose and ears that the school nurse pulls out a chainsaw to deal with them. He runs away before she can use it.
- Crazy-Prepared: Why the nurse has a chainsaw to deal with plant vines growing out of students' orifices is anyone's guess.
- Death of a Child: After Jimmy completes his transformation into a watermelon, he falls and cracks open, effectively killing him. Then his classmates eat the watermelon pieces.
- Dissonant Serenity: Jimmy is wayyyyyy too happy about vines growing out of his nose and ears, his blood turning into watermelon pulp, and his entire body turning into a watermelon. Right until he flies off the swingset and gets an Oh, Crap! expression on his face as he realizes what's going to happen when he hits the ground.
- Doomed Protagonist: Jimmy is warned if he eats watermelon seeds, he'll turn into a watermelon. He does it anyway. If there was any guess as to where this was heading, that quickly gets resolved when the first vine pops out of his nose.
- Downer Ending: Partially Played for Laughs, but Jimmy ends up becoming a watermelon and his classmates ate his remains.
- Exotic Eye Designs: In the middle of his transformation, Jimmy's pupils become watermelon seeds.
- Here We Go Again!: The short ends with the playground kids eating the watermelon-Jimmy pieces, seeds and all, with cartoon vines appearing over their heads as the screen turns to black, heavily implying that they too will turn into watermelons.
- Horror Hates a Rulebreaker: Jimmy chomps down on a slice of watermelon, seeds and all, even though his mom warns him not to eat the seeds or they will grow in his belly. He ends up transforming into a watermelon and gets eaten by his classmates.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Played with seeing as how alive you're supposed to consider watermelon-Jimmy is up in the air, but after he cracks into watermelon pieces, he is immediately eaten by the other kids at the playground.
- I Taste Delicious: Jimmy discovers that his blood is now watermelon pulp and seems to quite enjoy the taste.
- Nasal Trauma: Jimmy starts growing vines out of his nose and when he is sent to the principal's office, she pulls one out causing him to have a Nose Bleed...that Jimmy immediately tastes to discover that his blood is now watermelon pulp.
- Plant Person: Jimmy becomes a watermelon-person with vines growing out of his ears and nose. He shifts closer to the plant side later on, becoming more like an anthropomorphic watermelon with arms, legs, hair, and a face before he completely turns into a watermelon.
- Silence Is Golden: Jimmy's mother has a couple of lines at the beginning, but otherwise the short lacks dialogue.
- Terminal Transformation: Over the course of the short, Jimmy becomes a watermelon-human hybrid, concluding by transforming into an inanimate watermelon. This might result in a Death of Personality, but it's left as a moot point as this final transformation occurs at the very moment that Jimmy jumps from a swingset: unable to course-correct, he hits the ground and bursts into pulpy chunks. And then the other kids eat him.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Jimmy's mother serves him watermelon at the beginning of the short, warning him not to eat the seeds. He does, starting his terrifying transformation into a watermelon.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The metafictional variety in that it's not clear whether or not Jimmy is still alive and sentient when he fully transforms, which adds a layer of horror to the ending due to the ambiguity of just how human we should still consider him.
- You Are Who You Eat: The short's entire theme as Jimmy eats a watermelon, then turns into a watermelon.
