History ComicBook / CinemaPurgatorio

* BornInTheTheatre: Played for horror in ''The Picture Palace Mystery''-- the EldritchAbomination can be just as easily explained as a hair in the projector gate and the film jamming and melting. Unlike most examples of this trope, the characters never consider this, or may even be ''unable'' to.

* {{Irony}}: The protagonist complains a lot about how movies that spend more time telling rather than showing, praising movies that leave some quiet and implied scenes, leaving to the viewer the chance to piece things together. However, the story shows that she herself is entirely unable to read between the lines, failing to notice the recurring themes and truly unsubtle hints being dropped until the cinema drops all pretenses and straight-up show her her own life. *And even then* she only notices it at the very end.

* {{Irony:}} The protagonist complains a lot about how movies that spend more time telling rather than showing, praising movies that leave some quiet and implied scenes, leaving to the viewer the chance to piece things together. However, the story shows that she herself is entirely unable to read between the lines, failing to notice the recurring themes and truly unsubtle hints being dropped until the cinema drops all pretenses and straight-up show her her own life. *And even then* she only notices it at the very end.

* DoubleMeaningTitle: The final film is called ''Helluva Girl'', which can be said as "someone who is big/interesting/important". But Helluva can also be read as "Hell of a" which reflects [[spoiler:how either Geraldin living with an abusive mother was Hell, or the fact that the movie reflects the actions of our protagonist has now dropped her ''in Hell''.]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cinema__purgatorio.jpg]]

** In one notable case, ''One Hell Of A Girl'' ends [[spoiler: with the protagonist realizing that she's dead and the Purgatorio is her punishment; she'll spend the rest of eternity here and there'll never be any chance for redemption or forgiveness. As vile as her crime was, it's still pretty depressing.]]

** ''Hell's Angles'' features Creator/HowardHughes dying, only to wind up right back in his private cinema at the start of his descent into madness, watching movies alone for all eternity.

* JustOneLittleMistake: As the final film, ''One Hell Of A Girl,'' reveals, [[spoiler: the protagonist did her best to make it look as if someone else had murdered her daughter; she wrapped the body in a carpet, dumped it in the swamps some distance from her house, and even pulled down the corpse's underwear to make it look like a sex crime. She then called the police to report a missing person, clearly hoping that this would be enough to put them on the wrong track... only for her to be undone by the photo provided to the police: in the picture, her daughter can be seen standing on the very carpet she was found wrapped up in. From there, her arrest, confession and conviction swiftly followed.]]

** ''It's a Breakable Life'' is ''It's a Wonderful Life'' with all the main plot points flipped: instead of George learning how the people in his life would suffer if he was never born, he instead learns how the "angels" (stuntmen) currently suffer to keep him alive -- effectively meaning he can never die. Rather than take this to heart and learn to appreciate their role in his life, he becomes even more reckless and cares little for who he puts in harm's way. And while he ousts Mr. Potter and improves his living situation, his final comments imply his upcoming "Baileyville" is going to be [[BadFuture Potterville]] in all but name.

* MistakenForFlirting: The protagonist mistakes Mr. Flicker's invitation to the projector room for him making a pass at her. When she starts to undress and he doesn't react as she'd thought, she quickly runs back to her seat out of embarassment.

* NakedNutter: By the final issue, the usherette has given up on wearing clothes and is now doing her job stark naked, and can be seen masturbating over the brutal murders occurring in the last film. [[spoiler: Presumably, she's been driven insane by being trapped in the Purgatorio as punishment for her sins.]]

** One of the early films features two characters in a Roman Empire PeriodPiece becoming aware of the fourth wall and the artifice of the movie they are in, to the point that they even notice the studio and other actors in waiting just off-screen... without ever gaining awareness that they are mere fictional characters within that movie. Growing increasingly horrified by things like wristwatches, prop scrolls without writing and fake beards, one of the characters comes to the realization that his entire life is a lie and begs to be put out of his misery; the other tries to oblige, only to find that his sword is made of wood, forcing him to strangle his co-star to death. In the end, the remaining actor is left alone, staring in existential terror as the scene fades out around him.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: The final issue opens up with pretty much all of the cinema staff suddenly opening up to her and treating her much kinder than usual. The protagonist doesn't think too much of this, but when the final twist hits it's apparent that it's because [[spoiler:they know the protagonist will be getting properly "hired" soon]].

* RapidAging: In ''The Time Of Our Lives,'' a young couple prepare to move into a new house, oblivious to the fact that time has started accelerating on the property, as signified by months falling off the calendar inside. Before long, the husband and wife begin to feel the effects, aging as they inspect the house until they start to forget what they were doing there in the first place. Confused, they head downstairs to find that the floor is now swamped with torn-off pages from the calendar; as soon as he reaches the landing, the now-ancient husband suffers a heart attack and collapses into the sea of paper, dying somewhere under it. By now too senile to remember her husband or where she is, the wife weeps in terror for the remaining panels of the comic until, too old to claw her way out of the rising mass of paper, she sinks beneath the surface and dies as well.

** ''One Hell Of A Girl'' ends with [[spoiler: the protagonist beginning to scream as she finally realizes that she's watching her own fate play out on the screen - concluding with her being murdered in prison; fleeing the theater in a blind panic, she's herded upstairs to the projector, where she despairingly succumbs to the revelation that she's been condemned to remain a prisoner of the Cinema Purgatorio for all eternity.]]

* TakeThat: ''The Picture Palace Mystery'' mocks the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Film_Foundation Children's Film Foundation]] films' purported tendencies to be saccharine and dull to their intended audience by having it swiftly turn gruesome.

** In ''Hushed Up!'', the lone cop that calls out the others for shooting the civillians is killed to keep him quiet.
** In ''A Night at The Lawyers'', Sammo is the least "funny" of the Warner Brothers and self-admitedly the most personable. When he becomes the first of them to die, he laments his brothers are going to steal the credit for his decisions.

* ActorRoleConfusion: In ''The Last Temptation of Old Mother Riley'', Kitty switches between referring to Old Mother Riley as herself and as Arthur Lucan, whom plays her. Old Mother Riley likewise switches between referring to Kitty as her daughter (as she is in the films) and as her wife (as her actress was to Arthur), since both the character and the actress have the same name.

* HintDropping: Several films the protagonist sees appear to encourage her looking into what's going on at the cinema. It starts with ''The Picture Palace Mystery'' having three kids react in horror upon finding something wrong in the theater that permanently scars them, and ends with ''Hell's Angles'' outright being about a dead person cursed to watch his sins for eternity, "[[TitleDrop in this Cinema... in this Purgatory]]". Only when [[spoiler:a movie about her plays]] does she finally get the hint.

* HintDropping: Several films the protagonists sees appear to encourage looking into what's going on at the cinema. It starts with ''The Picture Palace Mystery'' having three kids react in horror upon finding something wrong in the theater that permanently scars them, and ends with ''Hell's Angles'' outright being about a dead person cursed to watch his sins for eternity, "[[TitleDrop in this Cinema... in this Purgatory]]". Only when [[spoiler:a movie about her plays]] does she finally get the hint.

* AdaptationalVillainy: In ''It's a Breakable Life'', George, upon learning he's effectively immortal, quickly gains ImmortalityImmorality and does reckless stunts knowing it will only harm the stuntmen who protect him. He then kills Mr. Potter with his bare hands, deliberately ignoring his pleas for help, then ends the film bossing everyone around, implying things will only get worse from there.

* CliffhangerCopout: ''The Flame of Remorse Returns'' riffs on old serials tendency to do this by having the criminals repeatedly try to kill the titular hero and his girlfriend who, in the very next moment, are always revealed to have survived in increasingly impossible ways.

** ''And The Blackness Moved'' tells the story of Creator/OttoMessmer and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Sullivan_(film_producer) Pat Sullivan]] in the style of the silent ''Franchise/FelixTheCat'' cartoons.

* CliffhangerCopout: ''The Flame of Remorse Returns'' riffs on old serials tendency to do this by having the criminals repeatedly try to kill the titular hero who, in the very next moment, is always revealed to have survived in increasingly impossible ways.

* TheGrimReaper: The titular Bat of ''Revelations of the Bat'' introduces themself as "the very soul of murder and enigma", and claims they will be present for everyone's eventual death as they were Velma Todd's. While the characters themselves are skeptical, thinking they may be someone involved with the case, unmasking them only shows the Bat's cape was hiding nothing at all, and that they really were just an incarnation of Death.

* AuthorPowers: In ''And The Blackness Moved'', the animator actively intrudes upon the events of the story just so it can be made clear that Pat suffers entirely for the amusement of his creator. He then erases the environment around him in favour of a BlankWhiteVoid, draws in a gallows that Pat can walk off, and paints in an endless shadow that Pat can tumble into. [[spoiler: He reappears in the final issue, erasing Bugsy Siegal from the comic.]]

* RunningGag: Bugsy Siegal's bullet-ridden corpse keeps reappearing in various films, usually for the sake of BlackComedy. The PeekABooCorpse the narrator sees in the front row is also implied to be Bugsy, as his couch is later brought in for people to use.

* PopCulturalOsmosisFailure: For all the things Jacko controls, he doesn't seem to know a lot about his [[Creator/WarnerBrosAnimation Animation department]] -- he takes one look at it, with all the workers inside stylized like ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' characters, and guesses that they're in charge of making WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse shorts.

--> '''Woman:''' [[spoiler:Oh God! Oh no, it's ''me!'' [=It's=] ''me!'']]

-->'''Prisoner #1:''' Who could have ''killed'' somebody and pulled her panties down like it was a ''sex crime''. [[spoiler:Your own ten-year-old daughter, you '''heartless bitch!''']]\\

* PayEvilUntoEvil: ''One Hell of a Girl'' has [[spoiler:the male prisoners armed with screwdrivers intended to use it as rape on the woman for trying to frame the death of her daughter as if it was sex crime.]]

** ''One Hell of a Girl'' has the woman trying to clean in the prison showers surrounded by numerous male prisoners with screwdrivers. But for what reason?