Web Video / Metaverse

A small, but growing Web Original Superhero Shared Universe found on primarily on Youtube, but otherwise finding its home on Facebook.

The Metaverse, or 'One World Real Life Comic' is rooted heavily in the Real Life Superhero community, with many characters lacking superpowers, and justifying the extraordinarily low budget used by the majority of the contributors. Typically productions are humorous, quite frequently made up of 'Villain Blogs' but on occasion there can be found attempts at proper storytelling and continuity.

In an unusual twist, the majority of the videos focus on supervillains as opposed to heroes. This can be mainly attributed to Evil Is Cool.

As stated, the community is mostly glued together via Facebook groups. The use of the word 'Meta' refers to Metaficition, used to differentiate themselves from individuals with similar gimmick who take the whole hero/villain thing too seriously.

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Big Name Contributors of the Metaverse include...

• Captain Kalabalik: Premiere Swedish supervillain who speaks with subtitles.
• Coyle Command: An organisation with similarities to COBRA of G.I. Joe.
• Crimson Blur: A red clad speedster who protects San Diego.
• Dr. Vandanger: A classic mad scuientist.
• Frogman: The super-anti-hero of Weird Town, Portland.
• Hazmat Citizen Crusader: A comically serious, green clad superhero.
• Jester Jokette: A Monster Clown villainess, rarely of ever seen without her partner Ace.
• Lord Malignance: A masked villain who rules Colarado and rival to Sector III.
• Low Budget Man: The cowardly, low budget defender of Springfield.
• Magnus Obsidian: An Affably Evil scientist who answers questions from viewers.
• New Villain Order: A (somewhat) more traditional supervillain team with a frequently rotating roster.
• Octavius Fong: An evil puppet styled after your typical Bond villain, leader of the Roaming Eye of Doom.
• Sector III: The main division of the Roaming Eye of Doom.
• Verbish: Self proclaimed official Supervillain of England and a minor operative of the Roaming Eye.

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The Metaverse gives examples of:

• Aborted Arc: A sadly frequent side effect of the low budget, hobby-like nature of the videos, particularly frequent when it comes to planned crossovers.
• Affably Evil: Does Magnus Obsidian even SEEM like a bad guy most of the time?
  Kalabalik: World Domination sounds so ugly. Unity sounds much nicer.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Chrome Dome suffers from severe Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, betraying the nVo and taking over, and taking his own creators job shortly after. His AU counterpart Professor Chrome isn't much better.
• Alternate Universe: Several have popped up after the NVO used a nuke to weaken the walls between worlds, notably, the worlds of the Order Of Villains and the Naziverse.
• Ambiguously Human: Coyle Commander and Doctor Pocalypse. The former seems to flip flop on whether his wearing a mask or not, and the latter apparently doesn't even need to eat.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Frogman.
  • Knightfox.
  • Wolfgang.
  • Nightingale.
• Anti-Hero: Many of the 'heroes' are willing to use lethal force, even if they don't actually get to.
  • Frogman calls himself a Super-Anti-Hero for a reason.
• Arch-Enemy: Knightfox and Mr. Shade.
  • Coyle Command and COMMANDO.
  • Crimson Blur and Diesel.
  • Low Budget Man and The Minor Annoyance.
• Arc Welding: The 'Verse was created by welding a number of unrelated series' together, and those involved are willing to accept new 'rules' for the setting when new contributors join.
• Ascended Fanboy: Verbish's infamy has earned himself a number of fans who try to emulate him. Verbitch ascended to the point where she had her own Goon while Verbish himself was struggling to still call himself a bad guy.

• Beware the Silly Ones: Silly villains abound, but most of them are still dangerous.
• Beware the Superman: Superman X (No, not that one) has fought Lord Sock and Chrome Dome...and yet, is listed as part of the NVO...
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Octavius Fong, Coyle Commander and Demon represent the main villainous organisations in the 'Verse.
  • Big Bad: Professor Chrome serves a more singular purpose, even having the nVo, and multiple other characters against him...should the Troubled Production ever work out.
• Big Good: Mayor Bruce Balbowski for San Diego, having started up The Dreaded Heroes and playing Comissioner Gordon to The Crimson Blur.
• Broken Pedestal: Frogman used to idolize Batman. Then he got beaten up by him after he realised he was a menace to society.
• City of Adventure: Costumed vigilantes, dinosaurs; its safe to say Shrewsbury fits this.
• Civvie Spandex: Very few of the costumes are spandex and capes, mostly as costumes are often whipped together.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: It's be easier to count people who didn't fit this.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Subjecting people to obnoxious music seems to be a recurring theme when it comes to torture.
• Crapsack World: Played with. There are super criminals as far as the eye can see, competant heroes a rare commodity, Colorado is ruled over by a supervillain, and thanks to Coyle Commander England has a nasty dinosaur infestation, so the Metaverse doesn't seem like a very nice place to live. But that said, most of the supervillains in question are laughably incompetent/harmless and the world seems to widely ignore the superpowered antics going on. Plus that dinosaur infestation boosted England's economy.

• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Octavius Fong has a human girlfriend, Josie Venture.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Often for very petty things. Mr. Shade, for example, is infuriated to learn that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were intended to be aliens in their film reboot.
• Evil Counterpart: Nazi Verbish to Verbish. Though in this case its more like Worse Counterpart.

• Face–Heel Turn: The Jade Sorcerer creates 'Dark Items' in order to turn Crimson Blur into Shadow Blur. He tries it twice, with both times short lived. Hinoken however is turned and so far remains turned.
  • Verbish's origin story.

• Friendly Enemy: Verbish seems to get on quite well with Brick Justice they aren't focusing on the time Verbish killed all his team mates.
  • The Farter Fighters seem awfully friendly to the NVO, considering the whole Hero and Villain thing.
• Fun with Subtitles: Kalabalik. *Very Swedish Mubmling*
• Gasshole: The Farter Fighters, Bananaman and Fruit Fly. Cos they're vegetarians.
• Great Offscreen War: Some of the villains have rather largescale operations or participate in rather enormous battles. We don't usually get to see them.
• Groin Attack: How Syph defeats Nazi Verbish.
• Harmless Villain: The Minor Annoyance is so much of this that he at times fails to even live up to his name.
• Hero Killer: Verbish has this as a hobby.
• Hidden Depths: Frogman manages to write a surprisingly creepy and non-comedic Halloween poem.
• Humiliation Conga: British supervillain Lord Mole invades America in order to get revenge on Hazmat for an insult. It goes...poorly.
• Hero Antagonist: Expect this, given the mass of Villain Protagonist s.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Ace loves making cupcakes, but Jester finds them disgusting. Coupled with some little slips when discussing what to do with their victims...
  • Pocalypse thinks the decapitated head he received was delicious.
• Kaiju: Lord Sock, Coyle Commander's pet mutant serpent.
• Kid Hero: Less Beloved Lad, Low Budget Man's Hyper Competant Sidekick.
• President Evil: In response of the 2012 Election, most every villain tried their hand at participating, each with rather blatantly selfish intentions. Including, most surprisingly, Hazmat.

• Made of Explodium: Coyle Commander's favorite element. He even has a sword composed out of it.

• Meta Origin: Volvers, who supply most of the powered characters (though pretty much exclusively to The Quest), were all given powers by the experiments of Vector Labs.
• Monster Clown: There is an entire sub culture of 'Jokers' and 'Jokettes.' Notable individuals include Jester Jokette and Jay Insano.

• Minion with an F in Evil: Minion, Anni and OLIVR. Minion is dim and mostly says 'Yay' over and over, but has been useful now and then. Anni is dumb as a bag of bricks and openly despised by his master. OLIVR is simply kindhearted, without an evil bone in his body (...metaphorically speaking).
• Morality Pet: OLIVR seems to be a subversion of this to Professor Obsidian. The professor is usually very calm and collected, and he seems to have a soft spot for the little guy, but the robot's kind nature is usually enough to piss him off.
• Non-Powered Costumed Hero: Possibly the only Shared Universe to be feature these as the majority of the characters.
• Not Quite Dead: Verbish, though to be fair he was only shot in the arm.
• Offscreen Villainy: Most villains have at least a few cases of this, given that an episode is usually dedicated to something else.

• Shout-Out:
  • Coyle Command's laywer, Vic Valhalla, seems somewhat familiar.
  • Jester's title cards indicate she is a fan if My Little Pony. Ace loves making cupcakes, which Jester insists are absolutely vile. Take a moment to remember that these two are mentally unstable supervillains and...
• Split Personality: Verbish and Other Verbish.
  • Jester Jokette and Ace Jokette too...possibly.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Coyle Commander has a sword literally Made of Explodium.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Verbish's Intro music is very energetic, upbeat, and happy... while the visuals have people getting stabbed and generally murdered.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Disel from The Quest and The Tank from Low Budget Man. Subverted in that neither series knew of the other's existance prior to joining the Metaverse.
• Superhero Packing Heat: Frogman when he kills Robin as well as the League of Extras of Shrewsbury.
• Super Team: The Dreaded Heroes.
• Take That!: Constantly at each other. Some more affectionately than others.
  • With its origins with the RLSV/RLSH' community, the droves of useless, powerless heroes can be considered a Take That! at Real Life Superheroes.
• The Comically Serious: Hazmat, usually.
• The Faceless: Coyle Commander, Kapten Kalabalik and Mr. E, though the former have masks covering theirs while the latter's is blurred out.
• Thememobile: The Hazmobile and the Knightfoxmobile. Mr. Shade calls it 'The Foxtrot.' Rolls off the tongue better, ironically.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Some villains tick the boxes of being menacing, having an evil lair, or even having an arch enemy, but unfortunately are unable to check the somewhat important box of committing crimes.
  • Captain Wormfury is a pirate superhero who, being a good guy, does very few pirate related activities. Verbish Lampshades this.

• This Is Gonna Suck: Said pretty much word for word my Professor Obsidian just before his lab is destroyed.

• Thou Shalt Not Kill: From Crimson Blur threatening to kill Diesel, to the gun toting League of Extras, this attitude doesn't have come up veryy often. In the case of the latter, Verbish at least notes that their style is out of the ordinary for good guys.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Villains love their Kraken!
• Transformation Sequence:
  • Parodied by Tom Fury, who can't quite get it right and needs to get into his uniform the old fashioned way.
  • Played Straight by Kid Sideburns when he became Captain Mental to defeat Coyle Commander.

• We Can Rule Together: Verbish offers this to his Distaff Counterpart Verbitch. She declines on the legitimate grounds that given their statuses, he should be asking to join HER.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Coyle Commander and Sector III both tried (and failed) to cause this.