Web Video / Destripando La Historia

Hello friends! Welcome to Gutting the Tale, with Pascu and Rodri!

Destripando La Historia (Gutting the Tale or Spoiling the Tale), also known as DLH, is a series of Spanish videos made by Pascu and Rodri, in which they make musical videos about the origin of famous stories or legends and illustrate them in the style of a Draw My Life and later with actual computer-assisted animation.

They are very popular in Spain and Latin America, with more than 4 million suscribers.

Their videos gained popularity due to their catchy songs, constant lampshading of tropes, and their pop culture and media references.

Can be watched here.

You can also watch their most popular videos (the ones with the various divine pantheons) with English subtitles here

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Tropes appearing in their videos:

• Action Girl: Mulan (who joins the army), Snow White (who confronts her stepmother with a sword), Rapunzel (who raises a child on her own in the wild), the greek goddesses, Joan of Arc (who leads the French army into battle several times).
• Adaptational Name Change:
  • The fable of Yeh-Shen is called Chinese Cinderella.
  • Sun, Moon, and Talia is called Italian Sleeping Beauty.
  • The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights is called Russian Snow White.
• Adaptational Villainy: For Robert Baratheon in The History of Game of Thrones, implying that instead of genuinely believing Rhaegar kidnapped his betrothed, he spread a lie out of jealousy.
• Agony of the Feet: Yeh-Shen's feet are bound, and later her stepsister has her toes cut off to fit into the resultingly tiny shoe.
  And even though it's hard to believe, this plan didn't work out.
• All-Knowing Singing Narrator: In every video, as Pascu and Rodri explain the story to the audience.
• Art Evolution: The first digital animated stories are more sketchy and unpolished than the latest entries of the series.
• Asian Speekee Engrish: Everyone in Chinese Cinderella.
• Bedroom Adultery Scene: Hephaestus caughts Aphrodite and Ares making out and humiliates both of them by trapping them with an indestructible net and inviting the other gods to mock them for retribution.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Ariel's sisters sacrifice all of their hair to the sea witch so her sister could have a chance to escape the fate of being turned into sea foam.
  • The brothers of the last wife of Bluebeard quickly dispose of Bluebeard as he was about to kill her.
  • Zeus, despite being the youngest, frees all his siblings from Chronos, and is shown to be overprotective (or jealous) towards Demeter and very kind and supportive towards Hades.
• Big Eater: Thor, whose appetite is the only thing that makes his enemies suspect he's not a bride, and Loki, who almost defeats Fire himself in an eating contest.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Persephone. In Demeter's video she appears as a sweet and dutiful daughter, while in Hades's video she appears as a rebellious teenager with a sadistic streak and who finds her mother's protectiveness annoying.
• The Bluebeard: One of the episodes features his story.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Zeus tries to flirt with his sister Hera who clearly isn't interested in him, so he tricks her and marries her. He also beds his other sister, Demeter.
  • Admittedly, all the greek god videos are full of this, true to their mythology.
• The Burlesque of Venus: In their video for Aphrodite (Afrodita).
• Burn the Witch!: Joan of Arc's final fate, although this turns her into an Inspirational Martyr and motivates France to keep fighting and win the war against the English.
• Butt-Monkey: In Ares' video, the god of war is rejected by his father, told off by his mother, trapped in a jar, defeated in a duel and trapped yet again under a net while in bed with his aunt, causing all the other gods to mock him. His only "win" is when he avenges his daughter and is declared not guilty in the following murder trial. And the Romans adore him.
• Call-Back:
  • In Hera's video, Hercules once again yells "¡Me quemo, leche! ".^note  I'm burning, damn it!
  • In Italian Sleeping Beauty, the Queen's last words to the Crown Prince before she's sentenced to burning are "YOU GODDAMN PIG!". Later in Rapunzel, Talia yells the same thing after finding out her husband cheated on her with Rapunzel.
• Catapult Nightmare: Baldr often wakes up this way after having his constant nightmares, worrying Odin and Frigg.
• Catchphrase:
  • Demeter always says MY DAUGHTER! in all videos she appears.
  • Odin's is LET'S GO! every time he sets on an adventure.
  • The Crown Prince is I'm gonna give you all my love, oh yeah! every time he's about to have sex with a girl.
• Complete Immortality:
  • All Greek gods.
  • Sun-Wukong gains this ability and maximizes it by eating and drinking various items that grant it.
  • This was attempted by Odin in order to protect Baldur by forcing everything to swear to not harm his son, but this proved unsuccessful as he dismissed the mistletoe, resulting in Loki tricking Hodr into killing Baldur with it.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting:
  • Loki is modeled after Tom Hiddleston, the actor who played him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
  • Heindall is modeled after Ricardo Milos, a Brazilian erotic dancer whose dance became an internet meme around 2018.
  • Iason, Zeus's nephew Demeter fell in love with, is modeled after Timothée Chalamet.
  • Poseidon is modeled after Jason Momoa.
• Connected All Along: Turns out that the Crown Prince from Rapunzel is the same prince that appeared in Italian Sleeping Beauty. Needless to say, Talia isn't amused.
• Creator Cameo: Not the original creators of the stories, obviously, but Pascu and Rodri always appear in the videos. Their level of interaction with the characters varies from video to video, though.
• Crossover Cosmology: Implied; Loki appears in the song of Demeter, Demeter and Sun Wukong appears in the video of Thor.
• Curse Cut Short: Happens twice in Pinocchio's song:
  He runs around naked, you can see his... face
  • And later:
  Fairy Godmother: I'll take care of you if you promise not to be such a colossal di...
  Pascu and Rodri: STOP! THERE ARE CHILDREN!!
• Day of the Innocents: On the twenty-eight of December, there was a Jupiter video, which was just Zeus' video with his name being swapped for Jupiter's and his face being covered by the faces of real life Jupiter statues and the likes. And a little Retcon to fix a SeriesContinuityError stating that Persephone was Zeus' granddaughter, when she is his daughter.
• Death Glare: In Baldur, the entire nordic pantheon give this to Loki upon witnesing that he was the only deity happy with Baldur's demise and after hearing from him that he killed Baldur.
• Deconstructive Parody: In their Lion King video they tell a alternative version of the story which the lions taking actions that the real life lions would take Mufasa mating with all the lionesses, Scar doing the same when he bacame the king and Simba killing all Scar's sons when he becames the king.
• Disguised in Drag: Thor and Loki, who disguise themselves as a bride and her bridesmaid. Thor doesn't even bother shaving his beard.
  • Mulan, who enlists in the army as a man.
  • Joan of Arc travels to Chinon disguised as a man to meet the Dauphine. This is later used as a charge against her in the Kangaroo Court.
• Don't Try This at Home: The Spoof Aesop to Thor warns against Thor-level violence.
  He is a god and you're not
  Take your medication
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The first videos were done as doodles in a notebook. As the series gained popularity in the hispanic community, they switched to digital flash animation.
  • Zeus is the first of the Olympian Gods to get a video, which includes a cameo of his siblings except for Demeter, who makes no appearance. The video also incorrectly calls Persephone Zeus's granddaughter, when she is Zeus's daughter.
• Enfant Terrible: Pinocchio starts up as a completely rotten kid. His actions include getting Geppeto into jail, killing the cricket and selling the book Geppeto gave to him to have a good time at the puppet show.
  • Also, Mowgli.
  • And Anastasia.
  She threw a stone at her sister's head.
  She cheats on cards, goes and steals your beer.
  If she hits you, you put up with it,
  don't mess with your highness!
• Evil Stepmother: A given with fairy tales.Yeh-Shen's in Chinese Cinderella, Snow White's, and Rapunzel's.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Downplayed in "The Little Mermaid" where the prince is a really good-looking Jerkass.
  • Snow White's stepmother is a straight example.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Hestia is stealing a bit of all her sibling's oferings, Demeter's is shown to be a huge cake with the words "For Demeter: Please don't kill us!" written on it.
• Go-Go Enslavement: The prince from "The Little Mermaid" has slaves who dance for him.
• Glorious Mother Russia: As portrayed in Snow White and Anastasia's tales.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Hestia's name is spelled "Es tía"^note  Spanish for "She's an aunt" once in her song just before the line "She's got a lot of nieces".
  • Earlier in that same video, Pascu and Rodri are singing "Su llama verás arder en cada ciudad"^note  You will see her flame burn in every city , with llama refering to a flame, but they show a burning llama, as in the animal, a llama en llamas.
• Kangaroo Court: Poseidon demands Ares for having killed his son Halirrothius, who had raped Ares's daughter. He loses the case immediately, as the court is ruled by Hestia (who hates rapists), Athena (who has a grudge against Poseidon) and Demeter (who was raped by Poseidon in the past).
• Kick the Dog: Disguised as a Jotun, Loki refuses to cry for Baldur's death, ruining the plans of the nordic gods to resurrect Baldur.
• Kissing Cousins: Belle and the Beast.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: The main reason why Sun Wukon became megaimmortal. The only time he regretted it was when Buddha imprisoned him under a mountain.
• Mama Bear: Demeter demands to Zeus and Hades to release her daughter from the underground and nearly destroys all humanity due to her refusing to take care of the earth's growth.
  • Isis from the Egyptian mythology conspires against Ra and Seth after the later murdered her husband to make sure her son Horus can ascent into the throne and giving him the power he would need to fight the later.
• Nightmare Sequence: In "Baldur" we see the god experiencing a nightmare where he's completely alone in a dark forest and being watched by a sinister figure with red eyes, symbolizing his death.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: After Hercules's mother has twins by different fathers.
  It can happen! We checked it!
  Gynecologist: Is true.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Anastasia's father didn't like of Rasputin's methods and forces him to leave.
  Anastasia's father: Get away from my daughters
  Rasputin: hmmm... daughters
  Anastasia's father: Enough!
  • Ares instantly kills Halirrothius when his daughter Alcipe reveals he raped her.
  If someone abused his daughter, Ares will stick him his spear
  • Upon hearing that Baldur's nightmares were a sign of his death coming soon, Odin forces everything (except the mistletoe) to swear to not harm Baldur. When this fails, he makes sure Loki paid for his crime.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality:
  • In many of the stories like the one about Sun Wukong and Thor. Lampshaded in the "The Little Mermaid" video, in which the mermaid rescues the prince she has a crush on and nobody else.
  All the other men drowned to their deaths and Ariel didn't care...
• Really Gets Around:
  • Hercules, in whose video they list at least 15 lovers (without counting women).
  • It Runs in the Family, as his dad Zeus is depicted as a guy who flirts without any control.
  • Poseidon is described than he may have an even worse case of this than Zeus.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Played hilariously straight. As Ares, the bloodthirsty god of war is depicted with pink skin.
• Regional Riff: Exploited in their videos: Many times they choose rhythms and melodies based either on the story's origin (Such as Russian Snow White or Chinese Cinderella) or the story's theme and setting (like The Little Mermaid).
• The Remake: The song about Thor was remade on late 2019 by changing the doodles pics to animation.
  • In late 2020, the song about Hercules was remade in a similar way, and upgrading the previous designs of the Greek gods to their current incarnations.
• Running Gag: They try to fit a «Lairalá» at least once per video. (And some times they do it by lampshading that they didn't do it).
  • There's a rabbit that also appears about once per video. Eventually they made a video telling its story.
    • After the Snow White, the Bogatyr's dog also started appearing once per video.
• Series Continuity Error: Zeus music video incorrectly states Persephone is his grandaughter. She is his daughter.
• Shout-Out: There are too many to count, but most of their videos are filled with cameos from other properties, or memes that were popular at the time of release.
  • There are multiple characters from Pokémon, Adventure Time and Dragon Ball in the background of the videos. The Sun Wukong video in particular greets the viewers as Saiyans, due to Son Goku being inspired by Journey to the West.
  • There are a few characters that resemble JoJo's Bizarre Adventure characters.
    • Helios, the Sun titan of Greek Mythology, is modelled after Dio Brando.
    • Narcissus was modelled after Bruno Bucciarati.
    • Triton bears a striking resemblance to Joseph Joestar.
    • The greek hero Jason looks like Jonathan Joestar (albeit with green hair).
  • The dragons of Demeter's chariot are Toothless and his mate from How to Train Your Dragon.
  • When Rapunzel reunited with her lover, she was just done putting the head of Teemo on a spear.
  • In her song, Hestia is often drawn resembling the protagonist from Himouto! Umaru-chan.
  • Hera declares war on Troy because she was rejected by Orlando Bloom.
  • Again in Hestia's song, when talking about her flame (llama), Kuzco points and laughs at a burning llama.
  • And immediately after, Daenerys appears dancing with Hestia.
• Slut-Shaming: Aphrodite, in Hestia's video.
  Artemis and Athenea are the best!
  Pure and untainted goddesses.
  Unlike Aphrodite. She's so disgusting!
• Space Whale Aesop: At the end of every video. They range from «Mussels are the most lethal weapon» to «If a mirror talks to you... you may have gone crazy»although in the video about Bluebeard he gave a real aesop «If a someone is widowed six times, is already time to suspect» alongside other Space Whale Aesop « Install a drain in the murder room».
• Spared by the Adaptation: Megara is seen screaming in horror when Hercules kills their children, but no mention is made of Hercules killing her as well.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Mulan.
• Tone Shift: In Loki's video, Baldur's death is treated in a typical Black Comedy way with the dialogue played in an hilarious way, playing with the song's fast paced fun loving way. In Baldur's video however while it does repeat the same dialogues with their respective scenes the slow paced and downright melancholic song along the much more serious sounding of those serves to highlight the event as a Tragedy.
• Tranquil Fury: Upon hearing from a drunk Loki that he killed Baldur, both Thor and Odin decide to punish the trickster by tying him to a rock with Loki's child intestines as chains, ignoring his pleas to stop.
• Uncertain Doom: At the end of Anastasia, the duo mentions that it's unclear if Anastasia survived the deaths of her family.
• Unreliable Narrator: The Greek Gods, to a degree.
  • Demeter truly believes Persephone to be a sweet and dutiful daughter, although Hades and Hestia's videos show her to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing that finds her mother's overprotectiveness annoying. Also in the Greek Gods songs she's shown to be fat and muscular, but she has a thinner figure in her own song.
  • When Persephone is brought back to her mother and Hades gives her the condition that she must come back to Hell ever winter, Demeter claims she gracefully accepted his conditions. Hades's song shows her making a tantrum at the thought of being separated from Persephone again and creating the four seasons, which is actually what happened in the actual Greek myth.
  • In Hades's song, Zeus pleads with him to bring Persephone back to her mother. Demeter's song shows that it was Zeus himself who gave him permission to kidnap her in the first place. Both happened in the actual greek myth.
  • Ares's song implies Aphrodite was humilliated after their Bedroom Adultery Scene with Hephaestus. Then Aphrodite's song shows she was actually glad about being single again.
• Visual Pun: In Hestia's video, Pascu and Rodri are singing "Su llama verás arder en cada ciudad", with llama refering to a flame, but they show a burning llama, as in the animal, a llama en llamas.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Every god from Greek mythology seems to be able to do this. Zeus and Poseidon are notable to use this power to trick their romantic interests
  That eagle coming fom you... is Zeus!
  The golden rain falling over you... is Zeus!
  That swan over there... is Zeus!
  And your lifelong friend, oh yeah, she's Zeus!!!
• Whatever Happened to the Mouse?:
  • In Demeter's song, the lyrics adapt the story of the goddess pretending to be an old woman to a famous king (Celeus, unnamed in the song) who took care of both of his sons (Demophon and Triptolemus, both unnamed in the song). The story tells how she tried to bake Demophon to turn him into a god, but after she is found out by his mother, the song shifts to Zeus looking for Demeter. The song ends with Triplotemus getting Demeter's chariot as a gift, so he can teach the mysteries of agriculture to Greece, but Demophon's fate is never revealed.
  • In Loki's song, after he tricks Hodur into shooting Baldur, his son Narfi's entrails were used to bind Loki beneath a venomous serpent as punishment. However, there's no mention of his other son Vali being transformed into a wolf and killing Narfi.