All The World's A Stage
is a fanfic by Nullen Void, the author of Operation: B.U.T.T.E.R.F.L.Y. and Oogway's Little Owl. It is a crossover between Naruto and The Muppets. Yes, really.
Ondori, a Suna puppeteer, is injured on duty by Jiraiya the Toad Sage. While recovering, he begins experimenting with a new kind of puppet design out of sheer boredom. His "Mock Puppets" as they come to be known prove to be a big hit with the village children as entertainment, and things quickly snowball from there into something no one could've predicted.
All The World's A Stage contains examples of the following Tropes:
- Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear, even to those close to him, how genuine Ondori's antics are; does Ondori genuinely believe the Muppets are alive and he has no control over them? Or is he just getting very into character? A number of characters who encounter him, like the Leaf Shinobi, genuienly believe he's insane, but he seems perfectly capable of differentiating between the Muppets and their performers when anyone else is in control of them, like Gonzo with Sasori or Miss Piggy with Jiki. On the other hand, Miss Piggy punches him in the balls at one point when he's puppeteering her. Even he doesn't seem to know why he made her do that.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: In true Naruto fashion, Ondori's skills as a shinobi see a drastic increase at the same time that his apparent sanity drastically decreases. While he rapidly improves as a puppeteer after inventing the Muppets, he also quickly seems to become incapable of recognizing they aren't actually alive, or not unconsciously controlling them and giving them voices.
- Companion Cube: Ondori quickly becomes oddly attached to his new puppets, to the point of talking to them and mourning Wilkins when he's destroyed in battle. Sasori notes that all puppeteers bond with their creations, but he's never seen someone pour as much of themselves into their puppets as Ondori does.
- Confusion Fu: This soon becomes Ondori's fighting style with his puppets, either using the Muppets' mid-battle banter to throw off his opponents, or switching between them and his more combat-oriented puppets like Sweetums at a rapid pace.
- The Diva: Jiki, the ceramic pupeteer, became a missing nin apparently just because she felt her genius wasn't appreciated in Suna; she rapidly loses her patience (violently so) when she feels she isn't being taken seriously, and is easily manipulated by flattery. To the surprise of no one she provides Ondori the inpsiration to create Miss Piggy.
- Entertainingly Wrong:
- Two spying shinobi from Tanigakure see a Suna puppeteer with a toad(frog?) on his shoulder accompanying a merchant caravan, and instantly think Suna and Konoha are in talks and the caravan must contain something very important. The actual Toad Sage showing up just reinforces their point, and the moment the frog goes down to some skit, they attack.
- The Ino-Shika-Cho team are looking for a mad puppeteer out in Field Country robbing people, and though they thought their target was a woman, a Suna puppeteer who treats his puppets like real people and never stops controlling them or speaking for them certainly sounds "mad". They don't know that Ondori is tracking down their actual quarry, Jiki, a Suna rogue-nin and porcelain puppeteer who might sell their secrets to Kusagakure.
- Expy
- Yaji and Chosho are two older Suna puppeteers of Chiyo's generation, who mostly sit on a balcony and heckle Ondori's mock puppet shows, as counterparts to the Muppets' own hecklers Statler and Waldorf. In-Universe the situation is reversed, with Yaji and Chosho making Statler and Waldorf for the Muppet Show.
- Hand Puppet Mockery:
- The origin of the mock puppets. Wilkins the frog was created as a way to make fun of Jiraiya the Toad Sage, and later Rowlf was created as a mockery of Sakumo Hatake (who killed Sasori's parents).
- The Kazekage takes a little issue with the fact that Ondori called one of his mock puppets the Dekukage. Ondori quickly clarified it was his main assault puppet wearing a costume and playing a bit, and he is going to rename him Sweetums.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Sort of? Wilkins gets used as a bomb to save Ondori and co.. This gets treated like this trope by Ondori and pretty much no one else.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Ondori himself admits he's an entirely ordinary ninja. Not bad, but nothing special or noteworthy. His main motivation for trying to steal wood from Konoha's sacred grove is that it would allow him to create a puppet that would make him stand out. He fails, but creating the mock puppets has set him on a different path to do it.
- I Thought Everyone Could Do That: Ondori's skills as a puppeteer rapidly increase to the point where he's mastering skills even his fellow puppeteers are impressed by, such as controlling multiple Muppets with a single chakra thread, which is implied to be very difficult to do. He's completely oblivious to all of this, possibly because he's comparing himself to the obscenely overpowered Sasori, who can control upwards of a dozen puppets at once as a teenager.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Shikaku insists that Ondori is the ninja they're tracking down, as what are the odds of there being two mad ninja puppeteers out in Field Country at the same time? Cue Inoichi showing up, having seen proof with his own eyes.Shikaku: I refuse to believe that there are two insane puppeteers in Fields, and we just happened to run into both at the same time only to get them confused for each other.Inoichi: Shika! Jiki is a Suna nukenin who's trying to contact Kusa to trade secrets for sanctuary! We got the wrong guy!Shikaku: [heavy sigh] I wanna do this day over again.
- Let's You and Him Fight: With the Ino-Shika-Cho trio initially believing that Ondori is the mad puppeteer they're looking for, it's not hard for the actual mad puppeteer Jiki to meet them first,
confirm their suspicions, and sic them against Ondori. If she didn't get so insulted by the Muppets' existence as an affront to her craft and for stealing her audience that she decided to confront him directly (and drop her control over her actual princess puppet where Inoichi could see), she might've gotten away with it. - Meaningful Name: 'Ondori' is the Japanese word for rooster, also known as a Hen's Son or Henson.
- Original Flavor: When they put on the first "official" Muppet Show with the entire core cast, many commenters expressed the opinion that it felt very much like a real episode of The Muppet Show, complete with skits, behind-the-scenes gags, and a Very Special Guest Star (in this case, Pakura The Scorcher).
- Portmanteau: Suna's puppeteers call Ondori's puppets "mock puppets" to differentiate them from combat puppets. Ondori shortens that name to "Muppets".
- Too Dumb to Live: Ondori, before the story starts, tries stealing wood from the sacred Senju groves — trees grown by the First Hokage that are borderline sacred to Konoha Shinobi. He was lucky that Jiraiya was the one to find him, as most Konoha shinobi would've killed him for that, and it might've started a war.
- This Banana is Armed: Wilkins, in an attempt to subdue two enemy ninja, keeps disorienting them with fake explosive tags that barely suffice as flash bangs. However, they do serve in infuriating them enough to focus all their attention on him, and when he pulls out one more tag, they just laugh at him... until it goes off with appropriate explosive force.
- Trauma Button: Pretty much anything to do with Sakumo Hatake — Kakashi's father — is this for Lady Chiyo and Sasori; after all, he killed Sasori's parents. Jiraiya might not have asked one of Sakumo's summons to deliver a message to Suna, and specifically to the puppet workshop, if he'd known that.
- Wax On, Wax Off: Putting on shows by himself, which means controlling multiple muppets at once, have led to an increase in Ondori skills in using his battle puppets, allowing him to have far more control with his puppets' movements and allowing him to control his two combat puppets at the same time each in a different fight.
