My Friends in the Basement is a Sitcom-esque Fan Webcomic series created by DeviantART member Toxicanvil243
, and co-created by her boyfriend. It's a more lighthearted and comedic take on The Binding of Isaac game series created by Edmund McMillen, taking place in an Alternate Universe where the monsters are benevolent and take up Isaac under their wing after his usual experience with his mother trying to kill him. Most of the comics focus on their humorous exploits throughout the vast, cavernous dungeon they live in (simply known as "The Basement") and their interactions with each other as they deal with their contrasting personalities.
A character log can be viewed here. An Ask Blog was temporarily opened but closed down in favor of writing Gag-per-Day Webcomics for the series.
A comedy-drama chapter story for the series titled "The Big Spill" was eventually published in January 2020. While still retaining the similar comedy style of the comics, it has a lot more serious moments in it, dealing with similar heavy subjects found in the game and focusing on Character Development of the cast. A sequel, "72 Hour Weekend", which details Isaac's teen years was released in March 2021.
My Friends in the Basement provides examples of:
- Adaptational Heroism: The monsters are the ones who save Isaac from his mother.
- Adaptational Intelligence: The bosses here with the exception of Larry Jr. are sapient and behave like humans, rather than being mindless beasts like they were in the game. Taken up to Eleven with Gemini who serves as The Smart Guy.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Most of the monsters, of course. In the game, they're trying to kill him. In this comic, they're his friends.
- Adapted Out: Quite a lot of the bosses such as Hush, Little Horn, the Fallen, and pretty much all alternate bosses were excluded for the sake of variety and convenience. The player characters were excluded too with the exception of Eve.
- Adipose Rex: Queen Layla, Rag Man's former pharaoh. Although she falls into the Big Beautiful Woman category.
- Alcohol Hic: Characters tend to do this when drunk.
- Age Lift: Although Isaac was stated to be five-ish by Edmund McMillen, he starts out 7-8 years old in this comic. Eve also gains an age up being 13 years old.
- Alternate Universe: In this fanfiction, the basement is real, the monsters aren't evil, and Isaac is Spared by the Adaptation.
- All-Stereotype Cast: Comedy archetypes. Isaac's the Tag Along Kid, Chub is the Big Eater (and to a lesser extent, the Valley Girl), Loki is the Keet, Pin's the comedian, Gemini, is the TV Genius, Bloat's the Jerkass, Mega Maw's the grump, and so forth.
- Alpha Bitch:
- Jennifer "Jen" Johnson, the Big Bad of "The Big Spill" and Eve's primary victimizer at her middle school is pretty much a deconstruction of this trope. Rather than being a cheerleader, she's a Chris Hargenson-esque Barbaric Bully whose actions cross into juvenile delinquency and sociopathy.
- On Isaac and his friends' side, there's Levi, who behaves more like a textbook example, with Chloe reluctantly serving as her Beta Bitch.
- Greed and Pride both act like Alpha Bastards in the monsters' case, though Greed tends to have his nice moments. Pride though, not so much.
- Big Brother Bully: Big sister bully in Jen's case. Isaac's stalker Chloe is Jen's younger sister, but Jen has no love or respect for her.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Some of the monsters are stated to have this.
- Gurdy has human organs but they're shuffled beyond recognition.
- Monstro can survive with one lung and grow back his organs.
- Pin has no organs, due to being a tapeworm.
- Loki's is similar to that of a frog's, and he breaths through his skin.
- Averted with Dark One, who states his internal anatomy is identical to humans. This fortunately allows him to know how to perform CPR to save Eve.
- Call a Human a "Meatbag": Mega Maw calls humans "fussy primates" while Bloat calls them "naked mole rats".
- Characterization Marches On: Pretty much everyone was a flat character in the first few comics, and it wasn't until later that they were given personality traits.
- Children Are Innocent: Most of the monsters' Fantastic Racism towards humans tends to be exclusively towards the adults, while they Would Not Hurt A Child and are shown to actually like most human children. They end taking up Isaac under their wing knowing that he wouldn't be a threat to them and that he was a victim of his mother, and go out of their way to protect Eve. Though that doesn't mean there aren't children that they do dislike, such as Isaac's and Eve's bullies.
- Averted with Bloat, who is a Child Hater, and Dusk, who is a Child Eater.
- Crapsack World: The human world is portrayed as realistically grim with lots of unrepentantly horrible people residing in it, to the point where the primitive, filthy basement is more preferable to live in for the main human characters.
- Demoted to Extra: Monstro rarely gets any appearances or speaking lines, ironically despite him being the mascot of the game.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Monstro was said to be The Leader at first, but eventually that role was given to Gemini while Monstro was put in the background.
- Extreme Omnivore: Pretty much every non-human character can be considered this due to their scavenger diet, but Chub and Bloat stand out the most. Chub once details the time she accidentally ate bombs thinking they were jawbreakers, and Bloat has a taste for Earth animals namely small pets, much to the disgust of everyone else.
- Fantastic Racism: On both sides, no less. Monsters have experienced this a lot throughout history from humans, which is why they mostly live in the basement and rarely go outside, to the point where they became urban myths in the eyes of modern-day humans. These bad experiences resulted in a lot of them having a disdain for humans.
- French Jerk: Leuchloir, Rag Man's rival.
- The Friend Nobody Likes:
- Bloat and Pride, the former out of "Seniority" and "Pity" (and possibly "Goodwill" and "Fear" for nicer characters such as Isaac and Chub), and the latter out of "Seniority" and "Proximity" (he's a Seven Deadly Sin and can't leave the other sins).
- Downplayed with Pin. He's not necessarily hated but the others get really annoyed by his jokes. He's still more well-liked than the former two characters due to the fact that he's at least friendly to everyone else.
- According to Gizzarda, Dusk was this towards the Legend of Bumbo bosses, even before they found out his disturbing secret.
- Gemini occasionally also falls into this because of his Insufferable Genius tendencies, and it seems to have gotten worse in "72 Hour Weekend" due to the fact that he Took a Level in Jerkass.
- Gross-Out Show: The references to the monsters' disgusting lifestyle are rather prevalent.
- Hate Sink:
- Quite a lot. There's Jen, a sociopathic Alpha Bitch who has bullied Eve to the point of near-suicide, Jen's Jerk Jock boyfriend who is equally as bad as her, Eve's alcoholic, abusive father, and a few characters from the game series who have undergone Adaptational Villainy.
- Averted with Bloat, ironically despite being considered
The Scrappy among the fandom. He starts out as an oafish Harmless Villain Played for Laughs, eventually becoming a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Hungry Jungle: Parodied. in "Gemini and Dark One's Rainforest Adventure!", Gemini explains to Dark One all the Amazonian animals he should avoid. Seconds later, Gemini ends up getting attacked by these animals.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: A belief among some monsters, though it's learned that they're not all bad.
- Hypocritical Humor: Bloat is often prone to this.
- Immortal Immaturity: Chub and Lust behave like teenage girls despite being Really 700 Years Old. Although justified with Chub in that monsters aren't really immortal, just long-living, and she's 160, which is 16 in monster years. However, the same can't be really said for Lust since she's instead an Anthropomorphic Personification.
- Jerkass: Most of the characters are Adaptational Nice Guys, but there are some exceptions:
- Delirium is a criminal supervillain who constantly holds a grudge against the other monsters for banishing him.
- The Bloat is the biggest one among the monsters, constantly insulting and being a douche to the others including Isaac.
- Pride has a massive ego and is a complete dick to the other Sins, befitting for the sin of Pride.
- Mom is still the same Abusive Parent as always who tries to murder her son at the start of the series.
- Isaac and Eve's classmates, who often tease them.
- Karma Houdini: Jen initially gets away with causing other students to hurt themselves or go missing. Eventually, subverted, as it's stated that she got sent to a behavioral boarding school, something that she never wanted to go to. And it's all the way in Alaska, on top of that.
- Lighter and Softer: Started out as this, at least compared to the game it's based on. Although the tone eventually shifted to more Denser and Wackier at points. Then came "The Big Spill", which tackles the same themes of depression, suicide, and child abuse as the games.
- Non-Human Undead: Bloat and Cage are undead monsters and despite being human-like, are certainly far from being actual humans.
- Oh, Crap!: Bloat has this reaction after getting caught trying to feed Isaac bad advice.
- Original Character: Some characters were created for the AU.
- Otaku: Often exploited by Dark One, who's able to walk out in the open under some circumstances by passing himself off as an anime fan in a demon cosplay.
- The Pig-Pen: Pretty much every monster exhibits a lack of cleanliness. The exceptions are Gemini who has developed a disgust for this, and Pride who considers himself "too perfect".
- Revenant Zombie: Both Cage and Bloat are referred to as "zombies" yet still behave like every other character.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: In "72 Hour Weekend", Bloat has this reaction after Gemini announces that he's going to assemble a search-and-rescue team for a runaway Isaac.
- Sir Swears Alot: Out of the characters, Dark One, Mega Maw, and Bloat swear the most. For the former two though, it's usually only when they're angry. For Bloat, it's essentially his fluent language.
- Slice of Life: With supernatural elements thrown in.
- Slut-Shaming: Eve receives this from the Alpha Bitches at her school. Unlike most of the other stuff in this comic, it's NOT Played for Laughs.
- The Speechless: Mask of Infamy and Suture note never talk.
- Stalker with a Crush: Chloe is a girl at Isaac's school who is obsessed with Isaac and constantly stalks and harasses him.
- The Smurfette Principle: Out of the rather large cast of characters, there are not very many female characters. Of the monsters, Chub, Gurdy, Lust, Widow, and Mask of Infamy are the only girls.
- Take Over the World: Just like pretty much every villain, this is what Delirium wants to do when he's done getting revenge on everyone.
- Take That!: The Bloat is massively considered The Scrappy and That One Boss for Isaac players. So how is he written in this A.U.? By being made an insufferable, cowardly Manchild who no one in the basement likes.
- Telepathy: Being psychics, Meg and Masky have this.
- They Would Cut You Up: The main reason why the monsters stay hidden.
- Toilet Humor: Occasionally, as part of nod to the original games that were filled to the brim with this.
- Token Evil Teammate: Delirium was this before he was banished. Nowadays, Bloat takes up this role, though he's more of a bullying Jerkass than full-blown evil.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Chloe used to be a brat who stalked Isaac, but when she is a teen she is gentler to him and accepts his request to invite his friend to her party along with him.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Widow finds the idea of making a meal out of Isaac's mom unappetizing. Although that's mainly for Isaac's sake and because there is just way too much of Isaac's mom.
- Sure enough, she gets sick after eating Eve's father. Though unlike most examples, he is already dead at this point.
