Series / The Afterparty

We’re all stars of our own movie.^note Clockwise: Chelsea, Aniq, Zoe, Walt, Xavier, Yasper, Brett, and Danner.

The Afterparty is a 2022 comedic murder mystery television series created by Christopher Miller^note  Miller created the series and directs the first season as a solo outing, in contrast to his collaborations with Phil Lord and executive produced by him and Phil Lord. The eight episode first season premiered on January 28, 2022 on Apple TV+.

The first season follows the events of a high school reunion and its afterparty held by a famous alumnus, the pop sensation Xavier. However, when Xavier is killed during the party, the guests are interrogated by an eccentric detective — each one’s story taking on a different genre — to solve the case.

The series stars Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson, Ilana Glazer, Ben Schwartz, Ike Barinholtz, Zoë Chao, Jamie Demetriou, and Dave Franco.

On March 2nd, one day ahead of the first season finale, the show was renewed for a second season. So far, Haddish, Richardson, and Chao are set to return along with a new cast comprised of Ken Jeong, Elizabeth Perkins, Zach Woods, Paul Walter Hauser, Poppy Liu, Anna Konkle, Jack Whitehall, and Vivian Wu. The story will follow Danner as she is called to a wedding to solve the murder of the groom. The second season premiered on July 12, 2023. Following the second season, Apple canceled the series, although the producers have stated their intentions to shop the series to other outlets.

Not to be confused with the 2019 indie game of the same name.

Tropers beware! Many of the trope names themselves may be spoilers, so if you want to avoid them it's highly recommended you watch the series first.

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HOW GREAT ARE THESE TROPES?

• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Grace's affair with Hannah is instigated by Edgar's frequent business trips.
• All There in the Manual: The plot of the in-universe Hungry Hungry Hippos movie was laid out by Chris Miller in an interview:
  Chris Miller: We created hippos whose hunger could only be sated by balls of pure energy. So those poor guys, Dave and Forte, are really in a pickle because much like Owen Grady, they love hippos, they raised them from birth, they’re like the Master Splinter of the Hippos. But also the hippos are all-consuming, endless metaphors for humankind’s rapacious, endless appetite for destruction. So the movie concludes with a real question: Do we need to destroy the thing that we love in order to save the planet? To save the future?
• Alphabetical Theme Naming:
  • The main characters' names start with the first and last four letters of the alphabet: Aniq, Brett, Chelsea, Danner, Walt, Xavier, Yasper, and Zoe.
  • Episode 7 features a completely different but thematically similar mystery featuring characters named Tatiana, Uma, Vaughn, and Willow.
  • Season 2's main ensemble features characters named Edgar, Feng, Grace, Hannah, and Isabel; plus Sebastian, Travis, Ulysses, and Vivian.
• Anachronism Stew: The episodes of season 2 indulge in this whenever a character chooses a period-specific genre, like a helicopter in Grace's regency-era romance or Google in Travis's Golden Age film noir.
• Aspect Ratio Switch: Occurs with each testimony/Genre Shift. Indigo’s art house testimony has a 1.19:1 aspect ratio, for example.
• Auto-Tune: Xavier's voice is autotuned to hell and back in all of his songs, sometimes to create a distorted effect and sometimes because, judging by the times we hear him sing live, his voice is actually pretty bad.
• Awkward Stoplight Moment: That Yasper (driving Aniq, Chelsea, and Walt) and Brett ended up at the same red light while driving to the afterparty is a recurring event in the testimonies. Aniq remembers Brett yelling a death threat, but Brett (who imagines this event as part of a The Fast and the Furious-style car chase) was really yelling about his daughter's stuffed animal.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Isabel slaps Travis several times after he insinuates that she's an accomplice in Edgar's alleged cryptocurrency scheme. Not for questioning her character, but for wearing white to the rehearsal dinner.
  • Sebastian talks about recruiting top-notch criminals whom Edgar's never met to pull off a successful heist. Yasper is then revealed in prison (still chipper as ever), but the camera pans across the room to Sebastian's cousins who are inmates in the same prison.
• Based on a Great Big Lie: Brett's relationship with Zoe is eventually revealed to have begun due to Zoe mistaking a mix CD Aniq made for her as being created by Brett and Brett playing along.
• Big Fancy House:
  • Xavier has a mansion on a cliff overlooking the beach. It happens to be where the afterparty (and his death) occurs.
  • The Minnows vineyard mansion in Season 2, which is so massive that a whole wedding is held there. Danner even outright calls it an "estate".
• Bitch Slap: Isabel deals out several to Travis during the rehearsal dinner.
• Black Comedy: Zoe and Travis handling Edgar's corpse to look for clues. It's her struggle in reopening his eyes (which she had just closed out of sympathy) to unlock his phone that's the cherry on top.
• Book Ends: “Angel” performed by Shaggy and featuring Rayvon plays at the start of episode one and at the end of episode eight.
• Brick Joke:
  • Aniq describes Brett as the answer to the question "What if a human butt could wear a jacket?" in episode 1. During Zoe's animated testimony in episode 5, Brett's face at one point literally morphs into a butt.
  • As Danner enters the mansion, she slips in a puddle of what turns out to be Jenn 2's amniotic fluid. As the final episode nears its end, she slips in the same puddle after Yasper is arrested.
  • Throughout the first two seasons, people will constantly compare/mix up Aniq with Steve Urkel. In the final scene of Season 2, Aniq learns that Jaleel White is playing him in the movie based on Season 1.
• Brutal Honesty: Edgar often operates on this.
  Edgar: My mother says hello. She wanted to be here but she was busy with silence and alcohol.
• The Cameo:
  • Channing Tatum appears in episode one in a fictional Hall & Oates biopic opposite Xavier.
  • Will Forte also appears with Xavier in a fictional movie adaptation of Hungry Hungry Hippos.
  • Jaleel White as himself and as Aniq, Gemma Chan as Zoe, Daniel Radcliffe as Xavier, Keke Palmer as Danner and Elijah Wood as Yasper all appear in a in-universe movie that's being created based on the events of Season 1, created by Danner.
• Can't Tie His Tie: Edgar doesn't know how to tie a bowtie and asks Aniq for assistance, leading to a fast friendship.
• Central Theme: Several.
  • Danner lays it out at the beginning that “we’re all stars of our own movies”. This sets up not only the genre shifting but also how each character focuses on their own issues during their statements.
  • Second chances are a major theme. Aniq and Brett both seek a second chance with Zoe. Yasper is looking for a second chance at fame, espousing that you “only get one shot, twice”. Even Walt is using the reunion as an opportunity to be remembered by performing the streak that he never could at the St. Patrick’s Day party.
  • Revenge. In Brett’s flashback, Xavier claims that he will have sex with his ex wife, Zoe, as revenge for his bullying. Chelsea wants revenge on Xavier after he claimed to sleep with her at the St. Patrick’s Day party, ruining her reputation. Aniq and Xavier engage in a smaller cycle of revenge at said party. And then there is Yasper, who kills Xavier in retribution for refusing to bless his track.
  • Love is a pretty big focus so far in Season 2. The setting is a wedding this time around, Aniq and Grace both have romantic genres (though differing between period drama and comedy) as the focus during their recollections, and the question of love is frequently raised by Zoe as she fears Grace is falling into an unhappy marriage and Vivian, who makes it clear to Aniq she only wants to know if he truly loves and cares for Zoe. Some of the characters are also motivated by their unrequited love, such as Grace having an affair with Hannah because of Edgar's constant business trips, Hannah deciding to leave when Grace ultimately chooses to end the affair and Edgar is shown to love Grace, or Ulysses being exiled into being a global wanderer because of his love for Vivian.
  • Money is another major theme of the second season with many of the characters suspecting that Edgar was murdered for his money and the different socioeconomic levels of the Zhu and Minnows family being a through line. Throughout their testimonies many characters express a disdain for money and the circumstances it brings, such as Grace not signing the prenup because she doesn't want to be thinking about finances before her wedding, Travis going after Edgar's cryptocurrency Bucephalus because he was tricked by a similar scam in the past, Sebastian wanting a sentimental item more than millions of dollars, Feng trying to impress Edgar to solve all his money problems, or Isabel being convinced Edgar is putting her into a conservatorship to attain her money.
  • Family is the final major theme for the second season. Most of the characters are part of one of the two families getting married, the Zhu’s and Minnows and both sides try their best to prove that a member of the other family killed Edgar. Even as they try to defend their families many of the characters show they failed or betrayed their family either in the past or at the wedding, such as Vivian and Ulyesses’s past affair, Grace and Hannah’s recent affair, Edgar’s abuse of Isabel, or Feng lying to his family about his money troubles to impress them. A quote from Edgar gives a good summary of all three major themes.
  Edgar:Statistically, most family fights are about money or affairs, and since you clearly don't value money…
• Chase Scene:
  • There's a car chase between Brett and Aniq over Aniq accidentally taking Brett's daughter's toy, though he mistakenly believes that Brett is trying to kill him. While it's fairly understated in Aniq's testimony, with Yasper making sure to not run any red lights or go above the speed limit, it's far more dramatic and drawn-out in Brett's.
  • Subverted in the finale, where Yasper tries to flee from the police, but is stopped by the heavy entrydoor to Xavier's mansion.
• Chekhov's Gun: Xavier's phone is brought up as missing early on in the series. In the finale, Aniq and Danner deduce that Yasper stole it and murdered Xavier for his song ideas, calling the mobile to seal the deal.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Aniq designs escape rooms for a living. After his testimony makes him the prime suspect, these skills are put to good use in finding clues (such as destroyed death threats and similarities in handwriting) in clearing his name.
  • Yasper's offhand comment to Aniq about his many gymnastics participations trophies and his flagrant show off in his retelling imply that he's quite the capable gymnast. He used his skills to safely jump off the balcony after murdering Xavier so that people wouldn't see him exiting from his room and raise suspicion.
• Class Reunion: Several character dynamics, including the murder, are triggered by tensions overflowing at a high school reunion, and several of the flashbacks show the events at said reunion (including embarrassing slideshows, a photobooth, karaoke, and so on).
• Cliffhanger:
  • In Season 1:
    • One ends on Brett having been caught trying to sneak out of the house
    • Two ends on the reveal of a hidden camera in Xavier’s room.
    • Three ends with Jennifer 2 disappearing, a flask being found on the beach, and Chelsea admitting it was hers
    • Four ends on Danner ordering her men to find the missing Aniq… not realizing that Aniq was eavesdropping on them from the next room.
    • Five ends with Zoe coming to Aniq’s defense, revealing that she had developed a grudge against Xavier over the course of the night.
    • Six ends with Culp, having exhausted his trust in Danner, revealing that he has gone behind her back to take control of the case from her.
    • Seven ends with Danner having an epiphany on Xavier’s murder and needing one more witness to tie up all the loose ends. Cut to Zoe’s daughter Maggie being brought back into the house.
  • In Season 2:
    • One ends on the reveal that Grace put a pill in Edgar's drink, right before he went to bed and died.
    • Two ends as Travis drops his folder, which spills open and reveals he was stalking and looking into Edgar.
    • Three ends as the main trio realise that various plants that Hannah grows are in fact poisonous, and were even used in the wedding, making them a serious suspect.
    • Four ends with Danner and Aniq's realization that Edgar had just fired Sebastian, who is making important business decisions while impersonating him.
    • Five ends with Danner attempting to make Aniq confront the possibility that one of the Zhus could have committed the crime, as Zoe witnesses Grace and Hannah possibly rekindling their relationship.
    • Six ends with Zoe hiding the teapot in Edgar's room in the bathroom closet.
    • Seven ends with Zoe bringing up Kyler's Instagram, intending to use his videos of the past weekend as material evidence.
    • Eight ends with Isabel, having brought up by Danner after one of Kyler's videos seemingly incriminates her, admitting Grace wasn't the murderer.
    • Nine ends with the cops, having been called by Sebastian, arriving at the premises shortly after Aniq debunks the possibility that Isabel killed Edgar with the cake switch, and Isabel once again accusing Grace of the murder.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: The majority of the cast can be described as this, each with varying degrees of eccentricity and disconnect from reality.
• Color-Coded Characters: Each of the characters involved with the case wears a dominant color:
  • In season 1, Xavier: Purple; Aniq: Blue; Brett: Black; Yasper: Green; Chelsea: Pink^note Specifically, bright pink in 2006, but faded, almost-white pink in 2021, reflecting her loss of popularity and Broken Bird status.; Walt: Beige; Zoe: Red; Jennifer 1: Yellow; Jennifer 2: Orange; Ned: Salmon.
  • Downplayed in season 2, but still prevalent to an extent. Zoe and Aniq retain their colors; Edgar: Black; Grace: White/Pink; Travis: Gray; Hannah: Red/Orange/Yellow; Ulysses: Brown; Sebastian: Green; Feng: Purple; Isabel: Blue; Vivian: Yellow.
• Continuity Cameo: Ben Schwartz returns in season 2 as Yasper, serving a life sentence at the same prison as Sebastian's cousins.
• Covers Always Lie: Both Season 1 and Season 2 feature Xavier and Edgar posing and reacting to something out of sight, respectively, along with the rest of the main cast, despite the fact both die less than a minute into both Seasons. It's likely to show off the Ensemble Cast together rather than actually mislead the audience.
• Dramatic Entrance: Xavier comes to the high school reunion by helicopter.
• Dramatic Irony: In the flashback to 2006, Yasper regards pop as a passing fad compared to ska and decided to split ways with Xavier to go solo. As the audience is well aware, Xavier's the one who ends up the pop sensation.
• Easter Egg:
  • Each episode contains a hidden code that gives a clue to who the killer isn't:
    • Episode 1: During Aniq and Zoe's conversation on the bleachers, a light behind Zoe blinks in Morse code, spelling out "NOT FIREMAN".^note The killer is not Brett, who is a volunteer fireman.
    • Episode 2: Everyone in the photos of Brett and Zoe's relationship has their arms posed in semaphore code, spelling out "NOT PUDDLE".^note The killer is not Jennifer 2, whose water broke and created the puddle Danner slips in during episode one.
    • Episode 3: The cities, theater names, and dates on Xavier's tour jacket form a cipher that spells "NOT MAD DOG".^note The killer is not Danner, whose nickname is revealed to be ”Mad Dog” in episode seven.
    • Episode 4: Following the eyelines of the student photos on Chelsea's yearbook page creates a path. The middle initials of the students along this path spell out "NOT THE LEFTY".^note The killer is not Indigo, who is left-handed as shown when Aniq has everyone write "diarrhea."
    • Episode 5: The multicolored dots on the TV screens behind the bar spell out "NOT THE SKIER".^note The killer is not Ned, who played a prank on the unconscious Aniq involving skis.
    • Episode 6: As Zoe and Xavier are flying to the party, they pass over a building with a few lit-up windows next to a billboard reading "Another Of Those Cloaked Easter Eggs." Transposing the text onto the building creates the phrase "NOT THE CAKE EATER" in the windows with lights.^note The killer is not Chelsea, who is seen eating cake at the St. Patrick's Day party.
    • Episode 7: The empty spaces on the bulletin board behind Danner spell out "NOT THE BEAR".^note The killer is not Zoe, who has a literal Mama Bear as one of her personas in her flashback.
    • Episode 8: The numbers on the screen while Maggie is playing in the recording studio when decoded, read "NOT THE OBOE HOLDER".^note The killer is not Aniq, who found Xavier’s oboe when hiding in the recording studio.
  • The name on the outside of the building where the reunion is held changes in each episode. The letters that change spell out "OPEN DOOR." The closet door in Xavier's room is closed in everyone else's account but open in Aniq's, proving that the killer must have hidden in the closet.
  • Some of the costumes change slightly between recollections:
    • Yasper's story has him wearing different, fancier sneakers and a jacket with a more colorful lining than what he's wearing in reality, reflecting the fact that Yasper sees himself as the star of a flashy musical. He also remembers Aniq wearing a different blue floral shirt than the one he actually has on.
    • In Brett's story, he's wearing a leather jacket with shoulder pads, making him look more like the broad, muscular action hero he pictures himself as. Zoe is also wearing fishnets in his story, befitting her role as the (in his mind) love interest for the action hero.
    • Chelsea's story has Yasper wearing a duller and more lightweight jacket than the green wool one he actually wears.
  • Season 2 continues the hidden message tradition - though notably, unlike season 1 where these directly exonerated a suspect, these instead remove other possible avenues (people outside the suspect circle, methods of murder and poisoning, etc.) as to how the crime took place.
    • Episode 1: The letters on the tables during the wedding reception spell out "NOT THE SNORER".^note The killer is not Aunt Ruth, one of Grace and Zoe's Chinese aunties who's seen snoring in Kyler's videos.
    • Episode 2: Edgar's itinerary has various locations with airport codes that spell out "NOT THE SKATER".^note The killer is not Kyler, the skateboarding influencer Feng hired as a videographer.
    • Episode 3: Edgar's office has a list of potential names next to a ten-star rating for each, with the names all having 10-letter last names. Taking the letter corresponding to each star placement gets you "NOT BY^*The code in the episode misspells to "EY"; Chris Miller confirms it's a mistake. SUICIDE"^note Edgar didn't commit suicide, and was definitely murdered.
    • Episode 4: Hannah's calendar has a 5x5 highlighted area underneath and the word "Wanderlust" is shown prominently. Creating a Playfair cipher with that as the key, and using the symbols drawn on the highlighted calendar as the marks for the rectangle decoding sequences gets you "NOT COLONEL".^note The killer isn't Colonel, the Minnows family dog.
    • Episode 5: Solving the crossword on Travis' newspaper at the start of the episode, and then reading the letters along the diagonal from the bottom left corner to the upper right gets you "NOT BY CAMELS MILK".^note Ulysses' koumiss is not directly involved in the crime.
    • Episode 6: The food piled on top of Dr. Devereaux is arranged in Braille - when translated, it spells out "NOT BY A TEAM".^note The killer acted alone.
    • Episode 7: Throughout the episode, words in the NATO phonetic alphabet are placed in the dialogue between characters. Arranging them in order gets you "NOT THE DJ".^note The killer is not Judson, Sebastian's cousin who infiltrated the reception as the DJ.
    • Episode 8: The timestamps on Kyler's video footage, when ordered by minute from shortest to longest, and then having the seconds be converted to the corresponding letter, get you "NOT THE SPITTER".^note The killer is not Aniq, who spat out the koumiss at the rehearsal dinner.
    • Episode 9: The letters in the intersections of Edgar and Isabel's Scrabble game spell out "NOT WITHOUT PLANNING".^note The crime is to some degree premeditated, and not impulsive nor accidental (in the sense that the use of poison in itself was an accident).
    • Episode 10: The barcode on the package in Edgar's closet is actually a vertically stretched message that spells out "NOT THE WAITER".^note The killer is not Jaxson, the other cousin of Sebastian's who infiltrated the reception as a waiter.
  • In addition to the "not" clues, Season 2 has a second series of hidden ciphers pertaining to flowers. Typing each episode's flower into the season's website then unlocks a puzzle, each with a hidden keyword.
    • Episode 1: The vases in Aniq and Zoe's cottage correspond to base 3 numerals, which when converted to base 10 and then substituted for a corresponding letter spells out "TULIP".
    • Episode 2: Grace's typewriter has a keyboard with a different layout to QWERTY, which if you type in the alphabetical order of the QWERTY format results in the message "NICE YOU HAVE FOUND A SUNFLOWER".
    • Episode 3: One of the books Travis examines in Edgar's bookshelf conspicuously has all of its first letters capitalized: "Doves And Handkerchief Lessons: Ira Anderson".
    • Episode 4: A couple of Hannah's hobbies have a shelf in the frame with a number of items on it (such as a shelf with two armadillos). Taking the letter of the name of each item that corresponds to the number of items on each shelf gets you "ROSE".
    • Episode 5: The tools laid out on Sebastian's table when planning out the heist spell out "DAISY".
    • Episode 6: The flags in "The Sing Sing Room" are international code flags. Translating them gets you "MARIGOLD".
    • Episode 7: Ulysses' room in San Francisco has a seemingly broken digital clock; filling out the dead space spells out "POSY".
    • Episode 8: Converting the points of each dart on the dartboard in the room into a corresponding letter and then arranging them by tail color in the order of the rainbow gets you "ORCHID".
    • Episode 9: Isabel's spice table has a set of 10 spices neatly arranged in a 5x2 formation. Taking the common letter between each pair and arranging them from top to bottom spells out "LILAC".
• Ensemble Cast: The series boasts a decent sized cast with most characters getting a chance to shine through their respective flashbacks.
• Establishing Series Moment: Indigo's art house movie flashback establishes the series’ genre shifting set up.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • In season 1, Danner has an epiphany about the murder in episode 7 that she explains in episode 8. After Culp brings up an old case of hers involving a woman who was murdered when she opened the door, Danner realizes that the closet door in Xavier's bedroom was closed in every story except Aniq's, meaning the killer could have hidden there and killed him before Aniq went upstairs. She quickly pieces who it could have been and guides Aniq to the same conclusion in the finale.
  • In season 2, Danner and Aniq have epiphanies one after the other - after Isabel repeats her story about thinking Edgar had intended to poison her but the poison reached the wrong target when she swapped the cakes, and Aniq later realizing that there's a possibility that that the killer didn't have a motive to kill Edgar, the two come to the conclusion that Edgar was nothing more than an unintended casualty, and the killer was targeting someone else, who then inadvertently switched glasses with the actual victim. Shortly after coming to these realizations, they name the culprit in 5 minutes.
• Everyone Went to School Together: As the backdrop is a class reunion gone awry, most of the cast are old high school acquaintances.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Xavier's murder, the events leading up to it and the subsequent investigation all take place over a single night. The only exceptions are the flashbacks to the St. Patrick's Day party and Danner's past.
• Face Doodling: The party guests draw all over Aniq while he’s passed out at the party.
• Fair Play Mystery: In both seasons, all the clues needed to solve the mystery are given to the viewer, all of which are shown in each season's final deduction sequence:
  • In season 1, a particularly astute individual may be capable of solving the case - that is, figuring out the trick behind the murder and who the killer is - before the St. Patrick's Day party is disclosed to the audience.
  • In season 2, it takes up until the second act of the case before everything that is needed to solve the case is given to the viewer - in particular, the point at which the viewer may be able to solve the case is during the two accounts of the Zhu brothers.
• A Family Affair: Grace cheats on Edgar with his sister Hannah, while Vivian cheats on Feng with his half-brother Ulysses.
• Fan Disservice: Along with the expected Fanservice Extra backup dancers, Xavier's "Imma Live Forever" music video features several elderly funeral employees and attendees performing the same hyper-sexualized dance moves as everyone else.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During his own focus episode, Brett is annoyed to run into Chelsea in the halls, instantly recognizing her despite never encountering her in the reunion so far. Its an early indication that Chelsea was the one Brett had an affair with; a fact he left out of his testimony.
  • Ned's first encounter with Chelsea has him nervously insist that he's happily married, seemingly proving Chelsea's point that everyone thinks of her as a homewrecker. Given the reveal that he and Chelsea dated in high school before the Saint Patrick's Day party, its more obviously a sign of his painful history with her.
  • In many episodes, Yasper is clearly seen holding a phone that doesn't feature his signature green case. Finally brought to light in the final episode, where Aniq correctly deduces that it belongs to Xavier and Yasper stole it to record all of the song recordings.
  • Zoe’s animated episode was foreshadowed by her drawing of Aniq durring his flashback, where he receives a drawing himself in the art style used durring Zoe’s episode.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Rather than being presented as a flashback, Feng's episode, by nature of being a Found Footage pastiche, is mostly spent with Aniq, Danner, and Feng reviewing material evidence (that being Kyler's documentation of the weekend that he intended to edit for Instagram).
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The suspects of the case consist of five men (Aniq, Brett, Yasper, Walt and Ned) and five women (Chelsea, Zoe, Jennifer 1, Jennifer 2 and Indigo). Furthermore, the two detectives investigating the case (Danner and Culp) are of opposite genders. Even taking into account the victim (Xavier) and the secret witness (Maggie), the gender ratio remains balanced.
• Genre Roulette: The show is overall a mystery, but each testimony is framed as a different genre.
  • Season 1:
    • Indigo: A pretentious A24 style art house drama.
    • Aniq: A Romantic Comedy about him trying to woo the newly divorced Zoe.
    • Brett: An Action Genre piece about him trying to win back his ex.
    • Yasper: A Musical Episode about him trying to get Xavier’s aid with his music career.
    • Chelsea: A tense Psychological Thriller about her trying to take revenge on Xavier for a past misdeed.
    • Walt: A high school comedy film set in the past at the infamous St. Patrick’s Day party.
    • Zoe: A surreal girls night out story (with herself) told in 2D animation.
    • Danner: A police drama centering on her past with Germain.
    • Maggie: A goofy, exaggerated version of a kids show complete with sound effects and puppets.
  • Season 2:
    • Aniq's story is once again framed as a Romantic Comedy, this time as a Meeting-the-Parents Sequel.
    • Grace: An Austen-esque period romance about her relationship with Edgar.
    • Travis: A hard-boiled Film Noir about his investigation of Edgar's affairs.
    • Hannah: An indie Coming of Age dramedy in the style of Wes Anderson, about her life in the Minnows estate.
    • Sebastian: A heist film in the style of Ocean's Eleven, about his plan to steal his Justin 'Turder' baseball card back.
    • Danner: A psychological thriller with elements of an Erotic Film, about a past case that made her quit the force.
    • Ulysses: An Oscar Bait romantic epic drama, with elements of dance films and global adventure films, about what led to his global expeditions and subsequent return.
    • Feng: A series of Instagram videos shot by Kyler over the weekend, shown in Found Footage style.
    • Isabel: A Hitchcock-style melodramatic thriller about her experiences after the death of her husband.
    • Zoe: An Evil Dead-esque campy horror flick about her run-in with Colonel in Grace and Edgar's room.
    • Vivian: An 80's Telenovela, replete with constant zooming, about her, Ulysses, and Feng's meeting under the weeping willow.
• High-School Sweethearts:
  • Subverted with Brett and Zoe, who married out of high school but are effectively divorced by the time the series begins due to Brett having had an affair.
  • Ned and Jennifer 1 are another married couple formed from a high school relationship, but are similarly implied to have a rocky relationship.
• Hollywood Board Games: Edgar keeps a running tally of his Connect Four games with Sebastian, starting from childhood. His intellect is shown by the way he guarantees victory by trapping his opponent in a play that allows a win regardless of the next move.
• Homoerotic Subtext: The breakup of Yasper and Xavier's high school ska band plays out very much like a romantic breakup, with Chelsea even commenting on the similarities to her own breakup with Ned.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Invoked when Hannah resigns herself to Grace's marriage to Edgar.
• I'll Kill You!: Subverted. Aniq recalls an Awkward Stoplight Moment where his carpool ends up at the same red light as his thuggish romantic rival Brett. Brett yells "I'll kill you!" at Aniq. In Brett's recollection, however, he's actually yelling about his daughter's stuffed koala, which Aniq has.
• Intoxication Ensues: Aniq takes a swig from Chelsea's flask, thinking it's a regular drink. He gets woozy very fast when he arrives at the party and starts spouting nonsense and mistaking candles for jello shots before passing out. Chelsea's testimony reveals he had actually drunk cat tranquilizers.
• Ironic Echo: The instrumental to "Three Dots From Stardom" scores the scene as Yasper plugs his music to reporters while being hauled away for murder. He ends up getting the attention and "stardom" he felt he deserved, but rather than fame and fortune as a musician, it's infamy and notoriety as a murderer.
• Irony:
  • Yasper breaks up his ska band due to believing Xavier was a dork trying too hard to be cool and that pop music was a passing trend while ska would have staying power. Flashforward to the present where Xavier is a record-breaking pop star and Yasper is a desperate loser trying to get his old bandmate to bless his track so he can get famous.
  • The heavy emphasis on colors and their meaning in Season 1 isn't given much emphasis in Season 2. However, it becomes quite funny to see Isabel, one of the meanest and domineering characters in the show overall so far, wearing blue, which represents sensitivity and freedom.
• It's All About Me: Each of the suspects' testimonies portray them in a more flattering light than their peers and treat their own personal problems as being the most important part of the night the murder happened.
• Ivy League for Everyone: Brett got into Brown on a squash scholarship. While not Ivy League, Aniq was accepted into the similarly prestigious Stanford and Xavier was waitlisted there (though it's unclear if either were actually able to attend it), Yasper went to UC Berkeley, which is ranked on par with Stanford, and Zoe went to the Rhode Island School of Design, one of the most prestigious art schools in the US.
• Jerkass: Isabel, full stop. Not only did she immediately misname her son's girlfriend and berate Grace for correcting her, but she goes as far as to print her and Edgar's wedding napkins out incorrectly on purpose, insult and demean Aniq, botch her speech on purpose to mock them, and takes the cake by immediately accusing Grace of Edgar's murder. Episode 9, "Isabel", paints Isabel in a more sympathetic light: all the perceived insults of Grace were in fact the result of Edgar gaslighting her.
• Lampshade Hanging: During each interview, Danner points out what genre they’re veering into and occasionally calls out their bullshit. Justified somewhat due to her viewing each testimony as a movie.
• Love at First Sight: Grace and Edgar become enamored with each other from the moment they meet at her antique booth.
• Love Dodecahedron: The relationships between the attendants of Grace and Edgar's wedding are a lot more complex than initially let on, with no less than 3 affairs having happened in the course of everyone's stories, 2 of which are active. As Sheriff Reardon puts it in the season 2 finale:
  Reardon: God damn you're a handsy bunch.
• Meeting-the-Parents Sequel: Aniq's recollection of events in the first episode of Season 2 is heavily influenced by this trope, as most of the episode consists of him trying to impress Zoe's parents. Danner even outright calls it a sequel, and it's reflected in the episode title: "Aniq 2: The Sequel".
• Mundane Made Awesome: Yasper's testimony portrays him badgering his more successful high school friend into noncommittally agreeing to collaborate with him as a flashy and uplifting musical. Subverted, as it turns out Xavier never agreed to a collab.
• Mushroom Samba: By the time he gets to the afterparty, Aniq is both high and drunk, causing his recollection to get both trippy and inaccurate.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Detective Culp accidentally deletes the footage from the hidden security camera in Xavier's bedroom which would have shown exactly how he was killed. Subverted, as it turns out Yasper stole Xavier's phone to delete the security recording of him pushing Xavier off the balcony.
  • A small example, but Travis and Zoe inspecting Edgar's corpse results in them spending a great deal of time trying to pry open his eyes to unlock his phone, right after Zoe closed them out of sympathy. Travis even literally almost breaks a vase at one point.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Among Xavier's accolades is an MTV Movie Award for Best Comedy Sex Scene. While we get almost no insight into this scene, there was apparently an "upside-down part" which even Aniq admits was really funny.
  • Apparently the last time Edgar danced in public, a vicar mistook him for a ghoul and submitted him for exorcism.
• Once More, with Clarity: Details that were fuzzy in one person's story are cleared up in another. Like in Aniq's story, when Brett was chasing after him shouting "I’ll kill all ya! Kill all ya!", while Brett's story clarifies that he was shouting for Aniq to return his daughter's stuffed koala.
  • Another notable example in Season 2 - Aniq recalls Isabel's tampered wedding speech as a bizarre, half-hearted pile of gibberish. It's only when Isabel recalls the event from her perspective that he (and some other people in the room) realize it's just the lyrics to MMMBop.
• One Head Taller: Edgar is almost a foot taller than his wife Grace, with Zach Woods standing at 6'4 compared to Poppy Liu's height of 5'5.
• Opposites Attract: Edgar and Grace. The former is a Silicon Valley billionaire who is always looking to the future of tech, while the latter has a deep love for antiques and comes from a more financially-modest background. Deconstructed when Zoe asks her if she truly wants to marry him.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Xavier is a total Asshole Victim who's always promoting himself and his ego in the different witness accounts. Around Chelsea, however, his smugness plummets and he's shown to be incredibly uncomfortable during the entire conversation.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Xavier’s death by from his bedroom balcony kicks off the murder mystery. The episode hasn’t even crossed the one-minute mark when it happens.
• Product Placement: The characters all use iPhones. Naturally, giving the streamer.
• Race Against the Clock: Danner is set on solving the case herself before a ringer from LA - a selfish former colleague who cares more about his arrest record than the truth - arrives at dawn.
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • After Xavier costs him his chance with Zoe at the St.Patrick’s Day party and then mocks him for it, Aniq snaps and goes full Walter Sobchak on Xavier’s new car.
  • After Xavier derides him for thinking they could bring the band together at the reunion, Yasper snaps and plans a revenge plot that includes him murdering Xavier and stealing his song recordings.
• "Rashomon"-Style: The season revolves around the same murder case, with each suspect giving their own interpretation of events leading up to the death.
• Red Herring:
  • Chelsea acts evasively whenever she appears and outright states that she has Unfinished Business with Xavier in Yasper's testimony shortly before the murder happens, making her an obvious suspect. It's only when we hear her side of the story that we learn said business was intended to be leaking unsolicited nudes of him online, and that she ultimately couldn't find it in herself to go through with doing even that.
  • Aniq spends half the series trying to figure out who wrote the threatening note he found, convinced it was written by the killer. It then turns out in episode five to have actually been written by Xavier, and it's just rejected song lyrics.
  • Intentionally with Brett. Connecting the dots, Danner accuses him of the murder as no one saw him in the room when Aniq was passed out, which he cannot defend and accidentally blurts out an "I'll kill you." She spins this theory to evoke a response from Aniq, who saw Brett leaving the house during the timeframe when the murder was committed.
• Revealing Cover Up: The murderer probably could've gotten away with killing Xavier if he didn't steal his phone or made another plan of how to get his songs. That aspect of the crime is what results in solid evidence that marks him as guilty, as Danner rings Xavier's cell and finds his ringtone coming from Yasper.
• Rewatch Bonus: After Yasper is revealed as the killer, several details throughout the series previously seen become more obvious in displaying his guilt.
• Reunion Revenge:
  • According to Brett, Xavier's fixation on Zoe throughout the night was a failed attempt at taking revenge on him (her husband) for bullying him during high school.
  • Chelsea’s motivation for coming to the reunion was to drug Xavier with cat tranquilizers, strip him, and post his nude pictures online in retribution for an incident at a St. Patrick’s Day party that ruined her reputation.
• Rotating Protagonist: Due to the "Rashomon"-Style format of the show, every member of the main cast gets a turn playing the protagonist for an episode when giving their testimonies. In the sections outside of the testimonies, focus is divided between Danner and Aniq as they each lead separate investigations into the killer's identity.
• Running Gag:
  • Aniq repeatedly gets various liquids splashed on him.
  • Every testimony features Walt attempting to ask the focus character if they know who he is only to get blown off without getting an answer.
  • Characters repeatedly stumble upon their old chemistry teacher Mr. Shapiro and his former student Heather having sex.
  • Xavier's poor grasp of the Spanish language comes up a few times.
• Self-Deprecation: The in universe Hungry Hungry Hippos movie doesn’t seem too dissimilar to the creators’ past works.
• Sequel Escalation: Season 1 primarily took place over the course of a single night, and every suspect testimony (with the exception of Walt, who mainly just testifies about the St. Patrick's Day party in 2005) is contained within that night, with the most stylized "mind movies" being Yasper's (which is a musical complete with musical numbers) and Zoe's (which is animated). Season 2 takes place over the course of a weekend, and without a unifying incident that links all the suspects together, each suspect account also goes into how they ended up at the wedding in the first place, with testimonies that span from weeks to decades. The genres are also a lot more greatly stylized, with nearly everyone featuring more lavish production values ranging from crowd costume changes to entire sets being replaced.
• Serious Business:
  • In Brett's action movie-styled testimony, winning back his wife and retrieving his daughter's plush toy is treated with the same seriousness as defusing a bomb or avenging a dead partner. And don't ask about the literal pissing contest...
  • When Brett dismissively compares Aniq to Urkel, Detective Danner immediately gets pissed, as Urkel was her first crush.
• Shout-Out:
  • The in-universe Hungry Hungry Hippos movie night put one in mind of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle from its visual alone.
  • The Hall and Oates biopic is a clear parody of similar films like Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman (2019).
  • Indigo's Le Film Artistique flashback, complete with 1.19:1 aspect ratio and monochrome presentation, is clearly inspired by The Lighthouse.
  • Brett presents himself in his flashback as a gruff badass with a dedication to family, not unlike Vin Diesel in the The Fast and the Furious movies. Capping off this comparison is a high-speed car chase.
  • Brett compares Aniq to Steve Urkel.
  • While introducing herself, Danner compares the state of the house to Barnum and Bailey's Circus.
  • Xavier references the plot of Parasite (2019) to excuse himself from a conversation with Chelsea.
  • Aniq is drugged, passes out, and wakes up with drawings and crude phrases doodled all over his face. This is similar to what happens to Ed Helms' character in The Hangover, albeit Helms was tattooed, not sharpied.
  • Xavier’s first hit single is titled "X Marks the G-Spot". This may remind long-time Lord Miller fans of the song “G-Spot Rocks the G-Spot” from the duo’s first series, Clone High.
  • Xavier's toast speech at the afterparty has him declare to his classmates that "We started at the upper-middle, and now we here."
  • Episode 5 is set at a Wild Teen Party that might bring to mind Superbad or Project X (2012).
  • Aniq going off on Xavier's car might echo John Goodman's Walter Sobchak's actions during the famous "Find a Stranger in the Alps" scene in The Big Lebowski.
  • At one point during Xavier and Aniq's Wimp Fight at the St. Patrick's Day party, they start spinning around with their arms outstretched. Yasper yells from the sidelines to "stop Sound of Music-ing", a reference to the iconic opening shot of the movie.
  • Grace's retelling of the wedding weekend is an homage to regency-era romances, most notably the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, from empire-waist dresses to Edgar's Darcy-esque sideburns. It even includes the iconic shot of his hand flexing after touching hers.
• Slipping a Mickey: Grace spikes Edgar's drink with Adderall in an attempt to keep him awake for longer so that they can enjoy their wedding night together.
• Smart People Play Chess: Lampshaded by Sebastian in his testimony. His first encounter with Edgar is when they meet as roommates in boarding school; Edgar offers a game of chess to win a baseball card off of him, but Sebastian counters with Connect Four instead.
  Sebastian: I knew a hustle when I saw one. I wasn't gonna beat him at his own game. But Connect Four? The poor kid's chess? That I could play.
• Stealth Pun: Aniq's mix tape for Zoe is titled "Zoe's Tropes: A to Z". A zoetrope is a device used for animation that predates film, befitting the character whose focus episode is animated.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • The Hungry Hungry Hippos movie and the Hall & Oates biopic that Xavier starred in are not very good, with Bad "Bad Acting" and even worse writing. Case in point…
    Xavier: (In a bad Steve Irwin impression) Those Hungry Hungry Hippos have lost their marbles!
  • Xavier and Yasper's old Ska band Ska-Pe Diem is recognized as having sucked in-universe by everyone other than Yasper (who is clearly in denial). The one song of theirs we get to hear is just about the most trite-sounding thing it could possibly be.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Aniq tries putting his Amateur Sleuth skills to use by performing an investigation of his own independent of the police, and finds a pattern in two seemingly unrelated pieces of writing that he believes to be a lead to who the true culprit is. As it turns out, the two pieces of writing were created by Xavier, the victim, and provide no relevant information about the killer's identity; something that Danner, an actual professional crime solver, puts together in seconds once they're presented to her.
  • Danner got into police work for the sake of justice and keeping the peace. As she and other academy hopefuls discover during her career, the majority of police work is still work rather than exciting car chases and investigations. Many of her colleagues are shown to become lazy or unnecessarily brutal out of sheer apathy towards the routine domestic disputes and complaints. Others take the shortest route possible towards solving a case in the interest of climbing the ranks as fast as possible, such as Germain.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Subverted. Throughout the series, most of the cast are shown at their most sympathetic when dealing with Xavier, even Brett. These stories are meant to make you understand to an extent why someone would want to kill him. Turns out it was Yasper who isn’t sympathetic at all since years ago he was the one who cut off Xavier coldly because he thought Xavier was holding him back in his rose to stardom. Quite the opposite. Xavier catapulted to success while Yasper went nowhere and pathetically tried to glom on to Xavier’s success. When Xavier justifiably turned him down, Yasper murdered Xavier for supposedly taking the game that he decided was so rightfully his.
• Take That!:
  • Xavier is more or less a parody of hyper-sexualized pretty boy pop stars from the prior ten years, such as Justin Bieber or Justin Timberlake.
  • The aforementioned Hall & Oates biopic is one towards similar biopics of musicians such as Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman (2019), with their similar story beats.
  • There is a jab towards Hall & Oates themselves with Xavier as Hall telling Channing Tatum as Oates to “go high” and that he’ll “go the exact same high” in the film.
  • Indigo is one for New-Age Retro Hippie and Beatnik characters. Her flashback is dripping with pretension, she interprets a prank as an art piece, and she refuses to look at any television screens. Not to mention her promotion of cheese made from human breast milk because of how “barbaric” it is that humans drink milk from other animals. Chelsea's testimony goes on to reveal that she is also part of an incredibly shady pyramid scheme involving a nutrition supplement and is also an anti-vaxxer.
  • While hiding out in Xavier's music equipment room, Aniq finds an oboe and drops this gem about pop artists trying to improve their credibility by making a New Sound Album.
    Aniq: Oh god. He was making a serious album?
  • Danner describes Marshall Law, an in-universe cop show akin to Walker, Texas Ranger as being "everything wrong with how TV portrays police work in a corny 44-minute package". For bonus points, the episode she says this in is a pastiche of cop shows.
• Teacher/Student Romance: A belated example, but the cast continues running into their former chemistry teacher Mr. Shapiro while he's in the middle of having sex with their former classmate Heather.
• Tempting Fate: This song by Xavier. For one thing, it’s called "Imma Live Forever"...
  Oh-oh! I got enemies / I betcha wanna push me off a balcony…
• Unknown Rival: Aniq portrays both Brett and Xavier as his hostile romantic rivals in his testimony, whereas Brett's testimony makes it clear that Brett never viewed him as a threat and that he saw his rivalry as with Xavier. Every instance of Brett acting aggressively toward Aniq turns out to have an explanation unrelated to trying to sabotage his chances with Zoe.
• Unreliable Narrator: Naturally for a "Rashomon"-Style story, there are various discrepancies, and with a few exceptions, it's hard to tell what is the accurate version of events and what isn't. A major example with Yasper's account, as he previously presented Xavier as being accepting, but overall dismissive of his request to bless his track. This encounter, in fact, ended with Xavier sarcastically brushing him aside after proclaiming that he'd never help Yasper.
• Urine Trouble: Early testimonies point towards Xavier (from his bedroom balcony) accidentally peeing on Jenn 1 (on the lower balcony) as evidence of his disgusting jackassery. It turns out to have been Xavier pouring out Chelsea's tranquilizer cocktail. Jenn 1 doesn't think this was an improvement.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Yasper and Xavier used to be in a ska band together before Xavier broke out on his own.
  • Chelsea used to be friends with Zoe and the two Jennifers as well before the infamous St. Patrick’s Day party. The affair with Zoe’s husband Brett was also a factor in their current hostilities.
• Wham Shot: In Episode 7, when Danner reveals she has one more secret witness to interview, the camera cuts to Maggie, Zoe and Brett's daughter.

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