Web Animation / HeroStorm

(Honk-Honk!)

You know that Hero Brawler game, Heroes of the Storm? The one where the characters from Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, some classic Blizzard games and now Overwatch duke it out in a 5-on-5 battle arena contesting objectives and destroying the opposing bases? The one that looks like the Blizzard Entertainment edition of Super Smash Bros.?

Take that game, chibi-fy it a bunch, tweak the personalities of various units, imagine them being a caricature of some gamer style of that game while still battling the objectives, then throw in a healthy serving of Hilarity Ensues, and you'll get an idea as to what this series is all about.

Produced by Carbot Animations, the people behind StarCrafts and WowCraft, proving that they really are genuine fans of Blizzard Entertainment, Hero Storm (or Heroes Storm, the logo image says so, but the video is titled with singular word) is a animated web series available through Youtube released on roughly a monthly or bi/tri-weekly period (along side Carbot's other series). In each short little episode, the two sides do their routine battles like you'd expect, but hilarity usually ensues in any ongoing battles, at expense of some heroes. The series is usually carried in 6 episodes covering an arc, which ends in a mass (wacky) team battle reuniting the cast from the previous episodes set with one shining never-seen-before star, before moving on to the next arc.

Blizzard themselves has also used Carbot's works based on this series to promote some of their events in the game, such as Heroes of the Dorm and Recruit-A-Friend. And eventually, avatar/icons from his works start appearing in the actual game as unlockable items.

Hero Storm includes examples of the following tropes:

• Affectionate Parody: Of course, if you notice Carbot's other works. This is to show their dedication to Blizzard's games.
  • Dehaka Park episode is also one to (if you couldn't figure it from the name yourself) Jurassic Park.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Deathwing is depicted as a giant literally Unstoppable puppy, like an even more destructive version of the Ultralisk. Tychus eventually drives him off by spritzing him with a spray bottle.
• Annoying Laugh: Taken to the next level in Lunarhahahaha!, wherein Lunara's laugh^* Taken from her Leaping Strike heroic is used relentlessly to drive Ragnaros up the wall. It takes Stukov's Lurking Arm to get her to stop.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In 'Banshee Queen', Sylvanas' ability to disable any tower she attacks is represented by her running into the tower and up the steps, beating up the two minions manning the cannon, ripping the clothes off one of them, shoving his sock down the cannon's barrel, unplugging it, then just for good measure, throwing a rock at it (making a small dent). Then she runs back outside again to continue shooting arrows at it until it falls over.
• Ascended Meme: Carbot did get Azmodan in the Azmodunk costume and doing the deadly three-point shoot BEFORE Blizzard announced the official Azmodunk skin.
• A-Team Firing:
  • Hanzo in Dragon vs Dragoon misses a Scatter Arrow on a stationary minion and ends up hitting himself in the head with it, before going on to miss a Dragonstrike on Fenix at point-blank range. Justified in the latter case because Dragonstrike has a minimum range in this game, but still.
  • Every spell Chromie casts ends up missing horribly.
• The Beastmaster: Rexxar here is Played for Laughs. Sure, he's the trope, but he's very abusive. Poor Misha and friends...
• Break Them by Talking: The truth behind's Leoric's Drain Hope is he does this trope a lot to the point of leaving his victims in tears. He even gets some creative ones too:
  No one cares about your Facebook status!
• Blinded by the Light: This managed to get to Illidan in spite of him being already blind, when Johanna lights up her shield on him.
• Bloodless Carnage: If a character is dismembered, they generally look more like action figures that got torn apart.
  • This makes its subversion in Five Nights at Braxis a bit more jarring, with Valla's decapitated body slumped against a wall with "GG" written in her blood.
  • Subverted as well in "Roundabout", which has Qhira snap her fingers to activate Blood Rage and causes Tracer, Alarak and Tychus to explode into giant puddles of blood. Hanzo, who she just saved, seemed to be understandably traumatized at that scene.
• Blowing a Raspberry: Raynor, all the time, to emphasize him being the 'beginner hero'
• Butt-Monkey: Illidan. Any time he appears, some hilarious misfortune is going to befall this guy.
  • While he hasn't had as many appearances, Artanis's luck isn't much better.
  • Kharazim also seems to exist solely to serve as a punching bag. Thus far, he's taken a needle to the eye from Abathur before getting buried alive-ish, been curbstomped by Varian, gotten the crap beaten out of him by an entire team, turned into a pile of body parts by Sonya, and laughed at by Lunara when he tried to tag out. Even when he does get a legitimate moment of awesome by killing Cho'gall Fist of the North Star style in "Two For One", it promptly gets invalidated by Auriel resurrecting them in The Stinger.
  • Misha is pretty much the 'swinging punching bag' by Rexxar, taking abuses meant for Rexxar while he just gives very little damn about it.
  • Diablo has often been one as well. Beat up by Valla in his first appearance, he has been tossed around and taunted by Garrosh, literally melted by malthael and vikings, destroyed while breathing fire by Kel'thuzad, and effortless dodged by Illidan, among others. Powerful looking but ineffective attacks are a common theme in this cartoon version.
  • Ragnaros is another perpetually unlucky character, often getting beaten up by enemies while said enemies run circles around him while his attempts to fight back are almost universally fruitless.
  • While Tassadar isn't necessarily a punching bag like the others, a lot of humor in earlier episodes was derived from him being basically helpless on his own.
• Butter Face: Kael'thas hilariously has this in "Citizen Cain"
• Call-Back: Episode 25 starts where Diablols: Reaper of Souls ended.
  • At one point in Trust the Nydus Touch, in the background you can see Sylvanas shaking a gate apart and charging the fort beyond, just as she did in The Banshee Queen.
  • Bonus episode 44, which is all about Raynor's rework, uses the same Raynor animation from StarCrafts where he controls a spacecraft with a controller (in this case a new single Banshee). Also, since it takes place in Haunted Mines, the scene where Raynor was just playing around with his gun from "Illidumb Hunting", but killed the enemy minions anyway is recycled with more recent animation style, with addedexplosions.
  • Abathur returns in "Haters Gonna Hate" with his shovel from "Enemy on the Gate"
  • In 'Kill Thuzad', the video ends with Kel'Thuzad casting Frost Blast on Illidan, who promptly flees the country on a plane to try and escape its homing. Illidan was put in the exact same situation by Kael'Thas's Pyroblast in 'The Chase'.
• The Cameo: During the 'Hopeless' episode, since Leoric has a lot of original lines, new voice is required. Carbot managed to nab Wronchi to do that.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Lunarhahahaha! starts off with Ragnaros waving goodbye to Stukov, who is hearthing back to base. Stukov comes back near the end of the short, and saves Ragnaros from Lunara with his Lurking Arm ability.
  • A similar instance occurs in "Poke-A Polka" where Arthas initially flees from Junkrat, leaving Tassadar to fend for himself, only to come back near the end to root Junkrat's Rip-Tire and buy enough time for Tassadar to poke Junkrat to death with his finger beam.
• Cherry Tapping:
  • At the end of 'Dragon Knight's Shrining Moment', the Dragon Knight is shot down just before it can destroy the enemy team's Core. The Abathur controlling it tries to flee, only to be blasted as well. As he dies, he spawns a single locust, which spits one last needle at the Core- causing it to collapse in a heap of rubble.
  • All of Abathur's appearances, really. Him slapping enemies to death is pretty much a Running Gag in and of itself.
    • The final scene of Heroes of the Brawl depicts ten Abathurs slapping each other.
  • Alarak's debut episode features him making use of Last Laugh to escape a deadly trap set by Chromie, after taking heaps of abuse from just about everything else. The thing that finally finishes him off is a slime burst from Murky.
  • Subverted in "Unkillable". After Zul'jin takes just about everything the enemy can throw at him and hanging on with 1 HP, it finally seems like Tassadar is going to finish him off with his low-damage beam... except Tassadar's beam is too weak to do even that.
    • Justified, since Zul'Jin wasn't really hanging on the last hit-point; one of his teammates grants him life-steal while Taz'Dingo is active. Tassadar might not have known this.
  • "No One Can Stop Death" has Malthael taking down Diablo and Cho'Gall and sending Dehaka scurrying away. He then comes face to face with the tiny, unimpressive Murky. Cut to Malthael facedown in the dirt, covered in slime and fish.
    • In-game, however, Murky is a solid counter against Malthael, not only because of his very minimal HP, but also because of his rapid health regeneration.
• The Comically Serious:
  • Stukov is completely straight-faced and emotionless in a series of incredibly over-the-top characters.
  • In "Laughter is the Best Medicine", Sylvanas just rolls her eyes at Lunara and Whitemane laughing up a storm.
• Conveyor Belt o' Doom: "Volley Ball Lightning" sees Arthas jimmy together one by rooting Tychus who is trying to escape him while standing on one, and holding up his sword.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • Raynor may be The Ditz, unable to communicate in any apparent way apart from blowing raspberries (aside from the first episode), but he is still comically formidable, able to: One-Hit Kill Illidan in "Illidumb Hunting", scatter the enemy team by summoning the Hyperion underground in "Team Battle", and bombard the enemy team with only his rifle and a miniature Banshee in an episode featuring his rework.
  • Johanna comes across as spacy at best, but she can casually wade through messy teamfights by seemingly just not noticing things that are supposed to be hurting her. "Kill Thuzad" demonstrates this with her walking up to Kel'Thuzad and bashing his face in while shrugging off everything he throws at her.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Jaina does this to Li Ming during her "Jaina the Frost Mage" musical by beating her to death with a shovel. Seems there's a bit of bad blood between those two.
• Dead-Hand Shot: Just one of many Jurassic Park shoutouts in "Dehaka Park" has Nova taking Raynor's hand when running into a bush to hide from Dehaka. Only the hand in question isn't attached to anything due to Raynor having been dismembered by Dehaka earlier on. Cue the screaming.
• Deadly Hug: In "Team Battle", Kerrigan pulls Raynor towards her with Primal Grasp and gives him a hug. Just after Raynor becomes eye-hearted, Kerrigan impales him. It's even made it to a spray of that very scene, aptly named "Bad Romance".
• The Ditz: Uther, as a parody of a 'heal bot' player with seriously skewed priorities and being a noob, ignoring Artanis' plea for help. He also puts his book on his head and prone to make derpy closeup faces with tongue sticking out.
  • Morales is pretty much the same, slavishly devoted to healing a single target no matter what shape the rest of the team is in, and with little to no concern for her own safety. Maybe Carbot has something against bad support players...?
  • Also Raynor, probably as a carryover from Starcrafts, since he's the beginner hero. As such, the trio of Raynor, Uther and Morales is often depicted with all of them sticking their tongues every time, and especially for Raynor, most of his quotes would be him Blowing a Raspberry.
  • Chromie completely misses the timing AND positioning of all of her abilities, even when her target is standing still or after using Temporal Loop.
  • All of Ana's teammates, who either dodge unnecessarily away from her healing darts, run away from the enemy when nano-boosted, and get in the way of shots meant for other allies. Topping it all is her team's Genji, who manages to drown in a healing fountain.
• The Dog Bites Back: "Banshee Queen" has Sylvanas tearing through enemy forts with impunity throughout the episode. Then Dehaka drags her into one and the opposite occurs.
• Double Entendre: In "Triple Bypass": "Who can grab me booty first?" Cue camera zooms to Samuro's butt (where his flag lodges in place so it doesn't fall off.)
• Drama Queen: Illidan's scream after being blinded by Johanna's shield was, shall we say, excessive. Even the other blinded heroes took notice, in addition of the obvious "You're already blind, why are you affected anyway?"
• The Dreaded Pretend Tea-Party:
  • "Haters Gonna Hate" has Lili hosting a tea party as an attempt to capture a mercenary camp as Alarak ordered. The latter unwillingly joins in.
  • Apparently, Alarak seems to be annoyed on how the utensils on the table are improperly arranged.
  • The epilogue has Lili hosting another one. Anub'arak seems to enjoy it.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: "Aspire to Inspire" has Raynor actually speaking in complete sentences and generally not being as much of a ditz as his characterization in the rest of the series.
• Everyone Chasing You: The entirety of "Trust the Nydus Touch" has Zagara being chased by an entire team while slipping back and forth between Nydus Worms, complete with "Yakety Sax" soundalike.
• Expy: Several heroes are portrayed similarly to other Carbot variations on Blizzard characters.
  • Artanis is pretty much drawn like a somewhat fancierBob the Zealot.
  • Thrall is basically a more coherent Tobrac the Orc Warrior with black armor and hammer.
  • Tychus is drawn very similarly to common Terran marines in Carbot's style, you really can't differentiate them if you take out his minigun (although Art Evolution eventually gave him a more distinctive appearance by having his visor up most of the time). Raynor is similar, but has also been likened to "Derpfestor in a marine suit" due to his mannerisms.
  • Deathwing while visually different, acts like a winged, flaming the Ultralisk as he romps around the battlefield.
• Goofy Print Underwear: In "Dragon Knight's Shrining Moment", Arthas is knocked out by Muradin's hammer and has his heart-patterned underwear briefly exposed.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Rexxar throws birds at enemies and uses Misha as a bludgeon.
  Youtube commenter: Someone please tell Rexxar that's not what "right to bear arms" means.
  • In a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, "Enemy at the Gate" has Abathur throwing a Locust at ETC.
  • "Pwnisher" shows a Punisher beating Jaina over the head using Sonya.
• High-Pressure Emotion: In "Uplifting Friends & Enemies", Garrosh pulls out his ultimate to taunt Diablo, tempting him to hurt the former. Just before he charges to Garrosh, his face becomes white-hot in anger since he is already red.
  • Cue Jaina, Valla and Tychus in the background; who tried to help Diablo hold his anger; facepalming, shaking her head and sweating in exasperation respectively after Diablo falls for it.
• Homing Boulders: "The Chase", much like the trope, depicts Kael'thas' Pyroblast ultimate which does this. He casts it onto Illidan after a close fight with him, Illidan uses The Hunt on a distant minion and Hearthstones back to flee it, realizes it's still following him, goes to the airport to take a plane, the pursuing Pyroblast gets arrested as Illidan runs off his plane, the Pyroblast is released from prison (complete with a Time-Passage Beard) and finds Illidan's house in the phonebook and then inevitably appears at his door step to explode.
• Hurl It into the Sun: Stukov does this to Xul in 'Within Arms Length'.
• Impossible Theft: In "The Blind Fighting the Blind", Mal'ganis's Dark Conversion ultimate is represented by him stealing Illidan's health bar and beating him up with it.
• Insult Backfire: Artanis is obviously not pleased with how unhelpful Uther was to him.
  Artanis: You lack honor!
  Uther: Thank you!
• Jerkass:
  • Fittingly enough, Alarak, best shown in The Last Laugh with him knocking his teammate Kerrigan off of a mercenary camp just so he can cap it and smugly tell her to 'go and tell the others of the victory I have won here', followed by him rudely smashing Li Li's cup of healing brew for no reason.
  • Mephisto spends his debut episode ruining Li Li's tea parties while laughing maniacally. Considering that even Alarak doesn't stoop that low...
• Jump Scare: Unsurprisingly done at the end of Five Nights At Braxis.It was Murky.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After acting like a complete Jerkass to his own side in The Last Laugh, Alarak gets taken down by Murky of all heroes due to the titular talent reducing him to 1 health.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Yrel in "Medivhal Times" starts the episode by chasing Chen into a fort, seemingly oblivious to Chen completely shrugging off her attacks), with predictable results, and later tries to charge at an entire enemy team by herself. Medivh tries to stop her both times, to no avail.
• Left the Background Music On: During 'Dragon Knight's Shrining Moment' the Dragon Knight tramples over a small orchestra of minions who are performing the 1812 Overture the video is set to. Unlike most examples, this doesn't stop the music.
• Literal-Minded: The joke explaining Rexxar's Wildfire Bear talent in 'Kill Thuzad' - he literally douses Misha in gasoline and takes a lit match to her.
• Mickey Mousing: Also during 'Dragon Knight's Shrining Moment', the famous cannon shots from the Overture are synched with crushing impacts in the action, such as Falstad being repeatedly booted back towards the fountain or Morales being smashed around like a tetherball by Muradin.
• Mobile Shrubbery: Valeera uses a cardboard box to hide from her adversaries in "Rogue Won".
• Mythology Gag: When Yrel defeated an orc in Yrelly Makin Me Mad, she looted three pictures of a family of giraffe, revealing the orc to be Tobrac who killed the giraffe patriarch while waiting for a PvE.
• No-Sell:
  • Johanna just stands there and walks like nothing happened to her while she's being beaten, slashed and getting some fire shower by Kerrigan, Illidan, Arthas, Diablo and Gazlowe. Because that's kinda her thing.
  • Chen completely tanks Leoric's Drain Hope and beating by drinking himself crying, because drinking himself means he gets more armor.
  • Rexxar completely blocks off Artanis' Spear of Adun by just playing dead.
  • Varian can shrug off everything by parrying with his swords: Kharazim's flying kicks, Tassadar's Psionic Storm, Stitches's stomach, Beam Spam from a Battlecruiser, Ragnaros's giant hammer and lava wave...
  • Qhira just spins around Alarak with a dopey smile on her face as everything Alarak, Tracer and Tychus try to hit her with does nothing at all.
  • Deathwing is, of course, permanently Unstoppable and immune to crowd control in his episode. But despite how this renders him immune to any attempt from Qhira to chain onto him, Kel'Thuzad, Qhira and Maiev all chain onto him and fruitlessly hold onto their chains as Deathwing goes on his merry way, because it's funny.
  • Maiev and the Vikings survive massive, deadly, powerful explosions through the power of jumping.
• Pet the Dog: "Haters Gonna Hate" has Alarak sitting down for a tea party with Li Li. Considering their first interaction in the series had him knocking over her brew because he could, this is a pretty big improvement.
• Piano Drop: Ragnaros finally getting his payback on Lunara takes the form of him hitting her with a piano on fire.
• Prayer Pose: Ragnaros in "Within Arms' Length", as he tries to use Molten Core on his Fort.
• Running Gag:
  • Every time Illidan tries executing The Hunt, he fails miserably - in the case of trying it on Stitches, he gets swallowed.
    • Illidan gets chased by Homing Boulders in 'The Chase', and at the end of 'Kill Thuzad'.
  • Morales is always focused on healing Thrall, and nobody else.
  • Abathur sneaking up on someone from the shadows.
  • Chromie always misses with her abilities. The Stinger in The Last Laugh even has her teleporting Alarak back in front of her with Temporal Loop, only to promptly miss with Dragon's Breath (keep in mind, Temporal Loop leaves an indicator of where its target will be teleported to):
  Alarak: You're not good at this, are you?
  • Hero's mounts are represented by stick-horses, tricycles, or Segways. Also, everyone rides a mount, even Sergeant Hammer.
  • Varian doing nothing but parrying incoming attacks, no matter what the attack is, going beyond Parrying Bullets.
• Scratch Damage: Malfurion's Moonfire, which is depicted as him shining a flashlight on the enemy.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Quite a lot of characters of both genders when being chased by something terrifying, but the leading example is probably Abathur when E.T.C is chasing him in circles around his fort... for a full 20 seconds.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Most of Tassadar's later appearances have him simply throwing a shield around himself and vanishing with Dimensional Shift to get away from an enemy (or, in "Knives to Meet You", failing miserably at it). That is, until his rework.
• Shell Game: Appropriately Samuro in "Triple Bypass".
• Shout-Out:
  • Anytime Lunara appears, she's carrying a pair of coconut shells that she clops with.
  • When Leoric is mowing through the minion wave with huge swings of his mace in 'Hopeless', it's a direct recreation of Sauron mowing through the ranks of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, complete with the camera swinging from side to side as the bodies fly everywhere.
  • Dehaka using his tongue will always be accompanied with Yoshi's sound tongue.
    • "Dehaka Park" is full of references to, obviously, Jurassic Park, from Nova having Raynor's dismembered hand fall on her shoulder, to her desperately trying to pull a metal shutter down in time to hide in a tower while Dehaka bears down on her.
  • When Tyrael summons the Punisher, John Cena's theme music plays while it beats up several heroes using stock Professional Wrestling moves.
  • 'Five Nights At Braxis' is one to Five Nights at Freddy's.
  • 'Dragon vs Dragoon' is one to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • In "Dehaka Park," Nova uses a Capsule to summon her Vulture.
    • In "Within Arm's Length," Stukov kills Xul by pushing him into the Sun, the same way Goku kills Cooler in Dragon Ball Z: Cooler's Revenge.
    • In "Unkillable," after Zul'Jin gets buffed by his entire team, Nova's Scouter lists his power as "9000+".
  • Stukov's "mount" is That Russian Squat Dance.
  • Valeera's cardboard box in "Rogue Won".
  • 'Kill Thuzad' sees Kel'Thuzad introduce himself in a very Team Rocket-like manner (even ending with Mr Bigglesworth popping in as a Meowth replacement).
  • "Two For One" has Kharazim taking down Cho'Gall in the same way that Kenshiro defeated Zeed, complete with snippets of the original audio.
• Skewed Priorities: "Globel Threat" has Stitches be far too interested in acquiring regeneration globes, regardless of how much of the enemy team is around.
• Stock Scream: Most of the hysterical screams of characters will be similar, though male scream and female scream obviously differ.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Ana in '360 No Hope', where her teammates constantly dodge her skillshot heals, wake up enemies she's put to sleep with Sleep Dart before the team can collapse on them, and receive her Nano Boost only to run away instead of fighting. When Raynor jumps around moronically in front of her Eye of Horus, preventing her from saving Kael'Thas, she loses her temper and smacks the crap out of him before storming off in a huff.
• Terrible Trio: During the second arc, one is formed by Jaina, Sonya and Tychus.
• Torment by Annoyance: Anytime Lunara pairs off against Ragnaros, she fights him by staying out of reach and spamming her annoying laugh. The first time she tried it, she was stopped by Stukov, but the second time Whitemane joins in and drive Rag literally insane.
• The Unintelligible: Nazeebo mostly speaks in voodoo cries. He actually does speak in-game, so this is solely because it's funny.
• Unwanted Assistance: "Casa Nova" sees Nova use her stealth passive to escape Imperius...until Morales starts healing her. As Nova continues fleeing the scene, Morales proceeds to just fall down into the ground where she stands, face first.
• Violation of Common Sense: Showing such example is part of the cartoon's bread and butter. Some of many examples:
  • Malthael literally melts gigantic, powerful bruisers like Diablo and Cho'Gall, and scares away Dehaka. On the other hand, he gets handily curbstomped by Murky.
  • How do you survive a huge explosion? Jump in the air a few feet, as seen by vikings and Maiev.
  • ... However, Maiev is unable to jump over Tassadar's Force Wall, smacking face-first into the air above it.
  • An aversion; In game, burrow abilities work on any walkable area in game. Anub'arak finds out this does not work in the cartoon, as he burrows into a dock over water and falls in.
  • Johanna blinds Illidan, who is already blind.
  • Parry and avoid mechanics are unbeatable, avoiding all damage while trapped in place in a bone cage, and stopping a psionic storm, wave of molten lava, among other things.
  • Falstad can trigger and be damaged by Abathur's Toxic Nests, which are basically organic landmines, by flying over them.
• Visual Pun: A couple of episodes show the butcher and other characters actually eating some other character, literally "feeding" them.
• Voice Clip Song: "Nazeebo Rap" consists of some sound clips from the Grave Keeper announcer, sounds from the Gargantuan ultimate, a few voicelines from Nazeebo himself...but mostly his entirely unintelligible voodoo cries.
• Wallbonking: In The Stinger of "Knives to See You", Tassadar is surprised by Maiev and pops his Plasma Shield, Dimensional Shift, and Force Wall to get away. Once Dimensional Shift's invisibility wears off, Maiev gives him a Disapproving Look as it turns out Tassadar dropped Force Wall in front of himself and is mashing his face against it.
• Why Am I Ticking?: Rexxar, thanks to Kael'Thas in Kael Boss.