Web Animation / SMG4 Movie: Western Spaghetti

WARNING: This page contains unmarked spoilers for the previous SMG4 episodes and movies, in particular the Anime Arc, the Genesis Arc and SMG4 Movie: It's Gotta Be Perfect.

Get ready for a wild, rootin', tootin' adventure! (And please ignore the ominous hand above).

You have arrived at the town of Western Spaghetti. Come and shoot cowboys, ride horses and do literally NONE OF THAT. HELP. GOD PLEASE HELP-

SMG4 Movie: WESTERN SPAGHETTI is the fifth movie-length episode of SMG4, premiering on July 8, 2023.

Previously on… SMG4, Meggy learned that her childhood idol, One-Shot Wren, disappeared after falling off, only to somehow resurface as the sheriff in the titular town of Western Spaghetti. Determined to figure out what happened to her personal hero, Meggy and her friends set out to Western Spaghetti to find him.

However, between the bizarre train ride there and Tari suddenly becoming extremely stressed, it's evident that things are amiss, and that someone – or something – has something sinister in store for the Glitchy Gang...

What awaits for our heroes in Western Spaghetti? What has become of Wren? And how is Tari connected to it all?

Watch the trailer here.

Other Stuff Leading Up to This Movie:

• help.bsp ^Explanation  This is a file on the Steam Workshop that Glitch made public following the premier of "Ready to Ride" and linked to it in that episode's description. Its description simply reads "help" in Zalgo-text. It's a Gmod map of the train used in the episode. Playing the file shows all the characters in each passenger car minding their own business in simple animation loops with generic Western music. However, trying to enter either the engine car or the dining car teleports you to whichever passenger car you weren't in – i.e. it loops infinitely. Noclipping out of the train allows you to look into the engine car (but NOT enter it) to see the television from IT'S GOTTA BE PERFECT is driving the train. Noclipping out of the map entirely warps you to a dark concrete room where Tari is alone, on her knees and holding her head in terror. Touching her causes the game to cut to a black screen with the TV logo seen in "Our New Home" with the text "READY FOR THE NEXT SHOW?" and Gmod crashes soon after.
  
  The file was updated soon after the WESTERN SPAGHETTI trailer dropped. Playing the post-update version shows multiple changes – the background music is gone, every character is frozen mid-animation, the train has stopped, and Tari is completely absent. There is also a new building outside the train. Noclipping out of the train and approaching the building causes the screen to cut to a logo that reads, "YOU'VE FINALLY ARRIVED". Like before, Gmod crashes after this.
• "GET OFF THE TRAIN" ^Explanation  This was a 44-hour livestream leading up to the movie's premier that began as soon as the official trailer (linked above) aired. Several cameras were placed around the help.bsp map (also linked above) to focus on different characters. Every hour on the hour, the camera would switch to a different character. At the T-minus 24-hour mark, it cut to Tari in her stone prison. When it cut back to the train characters, everyone was frozen just like in the updated help.bsp file and the video quality became increasingly degraded until it resembled a seventh-generation VHS tape, or analog horror as some call it. The final hour was simply a countdown until the link to WESTERN SPAGHETTI became public.

Tropes:

• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite everything, Meggy still is saddened when Wren dies in the destruction of his lair.
• Ambiguous Situation: How did Wren know about Meggy being a Splatfest champion? The logical conclusion would be that he saw or heard about it on the news, as Meggy winning the last Splatfest would definitely be news in their world. However, Wren became homeless after losing his title, which would muddle this theory unless he knew beforehand. Another theory is that the TV entity that supplied Wren also somehow knew about both Meggy's accomplishments and her hot buttons, and passed that knowledge onto him.
• And I Must Scream: Wren attempts to break Meggy by trapping her in a "Groundhog Day" Loop where he kills her over and over and over again. After a full month of enduring this, the poor girl is an absolute wreck.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Mario and Swag are the only cast members besides Meggy and Tari to live through the end of the simulation and are key in defeating One-Shot Wren by taking his minions out of action with a distracting dance and shooting his gun out his hand respectively.
• Bait-and-Switch: Durning the climax, it looks like Mario and The Big Bad are set to have a duel, complete with Mario in fully badass cowboy mode pulling a Nonchalant Dodge on a rocket shot at him. Instead, Mario channels Chris Pratt's other big role and distracts Wren's minions with a square dance, letting Meggy gun them down while they're distracted.
• Big Bad: One-Shot Wren, who kidnapped the Glitchy Gang and trapped them in a Wild West simulation after getting the tech from the same being that sold SMG4 the Cursed Keyboard in the previous movie.
• Big Damn Movie: The fifth for SMG4. FM announced ahead of its premier that Western Spaghetti is the biggest project in the show's history. Sure enough, it clocks in at just over 50 minutes, not counting the customary merch plug at the end.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Glitchy Gang manages to escape the simulation and return home, and Meggy and Tari come out of the ordeal stronger than ever. However, Meggy's image of Wren is shattered even if she does feel some sympathy for him despite all he's done, and Wren dies alone and unloved. Also, the TV entity that supplied Wren is still at large.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Happens multiple times, given it's a Western. It's played for both comedy and drama at different points. Most notably, Swag of all characters manages to shoot One-Shot Wren's gun out of his hand to save Meggy and Mario.
• Bloodier and Gorier: This is the first SMG4 project to show actual blood when Meggy gets shot for the first time by Wren, complete with a closeup of her bullet wound and Blood from the Mouth, to show that Wren means business. Most of the other times she's shot, however, it's Bloodless Carnage.
• Boom, Headshot!: Wren's preferred method of killing Meggy after the first couple of times. It lives up to his name.
• Breaking Old Trends: The trailers for the previous four SMG4 movies all consisted of original animations. While an original animation is the crux of this movie's trailer, it features snippets of footage as well this time.
• Break the Haughty: The Big Bad starts out as a tranquil and smug villain, seeing as he basically controls the whole entire town. When the gang starts fighting back he grows increasingly angry and resorts to more desperate measures to try to win, including giving all his bandits rocket launchers. His breaking moment was when Swag of all people disarmed him, causing him to jump on him and try to strangle him while yelling "You stupid sheriff!" He carries it further once the gang leaves his simulation, at which point an enraged Wren starts trying to bring his bandits into the real world, despite Tari's warnings that the machine won't be able to handle it.
• Broken Pedestal: Meggy is downright furious after Tari confirms that Wren, her hero who inspired her to become Splatfest champion, has become a villain who kidnapped her and her friends to put them in a simulation.
• Call-Back: The expression Meggy uses while encouraging Tari to "Focus!" during gun training early in the movie is exactly the same as when Tari herself encouraged Mario nearly five years earlier in her debut episode.
• Collapsing Lair: Once Meggy and Tari manage to break free of Wren's simulation, he goes utterly batshit and attempts to force them back in by bringing the stimulation into the real world, which causes the machinery to malfunction since it can't handle the process. This in turn causes the building they're all in to begin falling apart from the tremors of the exploding machine. Everyone manages to flee from the lair, except for Wren.
• The Cameo: Inkura from Alex Spider makes a quick appearance as the Inkling who dethroned Wren as Splatfest champion.
• Continuity Nod: While training Tari how to use a real gun, Meggy tells her to focus the same way Tari herself tells Mario to focus in "The Ultimate Gamer".
• Don't Try This at Home: A disclaimer is put in the bottom-right of the video stating not to shoot oneself in the face when, during the after-movie merch plug, Luke advertises the AniMatez figurine of Meggy as good for people who "love being shot in the face".
• Driven to Madness: In an attempt to break Meggy's spirit, Wren hunts and shoots her over and over again, driving her to the brink and reaching its apex when she holds SMG4 at gunpoint.
• Driven to Villainy: The Big Bad discusses this process with Meggy. At some point after he gave Meggy his beanie, Wren lost his title as Greatest Splatfest Player. Once he did, no one in Inkopolis wanted anything to do with him anymore. He was forced to sell his possessions and live on the streets. It was at that point he received an invitation from the Greater-Scope Villain to be hooked into a simulation where he could forever be at the top of his game.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After over a month in the Wild West, the gang breaks out the simulated world without any casualties. Meggy and Tari, who suffered the brunt of his machinations, are able to come out of the incident stronger than ever.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: During the final duel, Meggy keeps shooting and missing the Big Bad. When he finally shoots the gun out of her hand, he starts berating her, saying that with all those years in Splatfest training she wasn't able to aim. She reveals that she wasn't trying to shoot the Big Bad. She was aiming at the nooses around her friends' necks, setting them free.
• Extra-Long Episode: By far the longest episode in the series, clocking in at a total of 53 minutes counting the merch plug, three minutes longer than the previous record holder, REVELATIONS.^note  With only the movie, REVELATIONS is two minutes shorter as its merch plug didn't last as long. That movie also had live action segments lasting a couple of minutes total, so WESTERN SPAGHETTI undeniably takes the cake on the animation front.
• Failed a Spot Check: When Sheriff Swag is trying to hang Bob… forgetting that Bob has blades for arms and can just cut the rope. Swag even lampshades it after Bob frees himself.
• Face Death with Dignity: The Big Bad calmly closes his eyes as his lair collapses.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: A little over a minute before he walks onscreen, Axol can be seen playing piano in the background while Tari is reading a book. Shortly after that, he and Desti stare blankly towards Meggy when she turns away from them. Both serve to hint at things not being as they appear, since both characters were Killed Off for Real.
• Foreshadowing: Hints that Meggy and Mario are still in the simulation:
  • Meggy and Mario woke up in a room by themselves instead of with everyone else.
  • The "Mario Dance" appearing on the ceiling lights.
  • As Meggy leaves in anger, Tari tries to tell her about something.
  • Meggy and Mario found their way to Wren's inner sanctum within seconds whereas getting to Tari's terminal had been a slog through endless hallways. Even Mario noticed and pointed out it was too easy.
• Freeze-Frame Introduction: This happens frequently within the first few minutes, where several familiar characters get introduced with new Western-themed names (Miscellaneous Seven^note  Shroomy, JubJub, Rob, Belle, Whimpu, Jeeves, and Old Man Hobo, Buffalo Bob, Sheriff Swagmaster^* 69696969…, and Boop the Kid), much like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. This ends after the plot veers from a Western spoof to Psychological Thriller.
• Get Out!: Tari says this to Meggy in the middle of a Freak Out when long-dead friends like Desti and Axol show up, urging Meggy to run for her life to escape.
• A Glitch in the Matrix:
  • Meggy first realizes that the whole town isn't real when she runs into Desti and Axol at a saloon.
  • Tari herself is this due to her game-warping abilities.
• Greater-Scope Villain: While Wren is the primary antagonist of the film, the equipment to create his simulation was provided to him by an unknown party that bears the same mysterious TV symbol as the site that sold SMG4 the demonic keyboard in IT'S GOTTA BE PERFECT and listing for the Showgrounds in "Our New Home".
• Go Out with a Smile: As Wren's lair is collapsing, Meggy says that she wishes they could have been friends. In response, he smiles and tells her that at least she was one hell of a rival. Subverted when Meggy just turns away with a look of pity and he solemnly closes his eyes and waits for the end.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Wren subjects Meggy to one, killing her repeatedly and resetting the day so only she notices, which lasts an entire month and drives her mad. Tari is also unaffected without his knowledge, giving her ample time and motivation to create a safe haven for Meggy in the digital ether.
• Halfway Plot Switch: The first quarter of the movie plays out like a typical SMG4-style parody of The Western in the same vein as "Wild, Wild Mario", only feature-length. Then Tari starts questioning where she is, while Meggy fails to notice dead characters have come Back from the Dead, until Tari has a full-blown Freak Out that wakes Meggy up to the strangeness around her. This leads to The Reveal that they're all in a Lotus-Eater Machine and the movie takes a hard turn into Psychological Thriller.
• Hard Truth Aesop: Never meet your heroes. Meggy learns this the hard way when she discovers the rumors of Wren falling off were true, and it drove him over the edge.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Throughout the first part of the movie, Tari verbalizes how she feels totally useless – she's not brave, she's not strong – only for Meggy to reference this trope. As the movie shifts from a Western parody to a psychological horror, Tari proves Meggy right. She uses her knowledge of Meggy and Mario's quirks to lead them partway out of the simulation so she can explain Wren's Lotus-Eater Machine to them. Being forced to watch from a distance as Wren killed Meggy over and over again for a month filled her with determination to create her digital ether. Her kind, pacifying nature is able to calm Meggy down just enough after Meggy has completely lost it over said month. Finally, her plan uses Wren's control-freak nature against him by having Meggy distract him long enough that she can break the rest of the gang free of his mind control, at which point Wren gets so angry he starts making mistakes.
• Here We Go Again!: Back at the Showgrounds at the very end of the movie, Meggy and Tari accidentally destroy part of SMG4's construction site while playing by launching Mario into it. They apologize as he looks on in shock.
• The Immune: Given that she has the power to enter virtual worlds, Tari is initially the only one to see through Wren's simulation.
• Irony: For once, Tari – usually the go-to for female slapstick in this series – is the one who makes the Three-Point Landing while Meggy is the one to comically ragdoll when Tari takes Meggy to the virtual ether she created to avoid Wren's gaze.
• Karmic Death: After the absolute hell he put Meggy and her friends through, One-Shot Wren dies when he overloads his machine, alone and with nothing to show for it.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: It turns out everyone has been in a simulation since between "We Interrupt This Broadcast" and "Ready to Ride".
• Mad Bomber: During the whole simulation SMG3 is obsessed with using dynamite to solve all his problems. This continues even after he's freed from Wren's control, and becomes a character trait in later episodes.
• Memetic Mutation: Invoked and discussed. Tari needed to lead Meggy to her terminal so they could speak. She knew Meggy upon waking would immediately look for Mario, and she knew Mario would get distracted by a meme (in this case, Captain Lou Albano doing the Mario) and follow it, and Meggy would follow him.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Discussed. Tari had to spend a month acting like she was under the Big Bad's control so she could create her digital ether when he wasn't looking.
• Played for Horror: This movie has roughly the same premise of the 2017 episode Wild, Wild Mario, where the SMG4 cast inexplicably plays Western personas and gets into gunfights with with no explanation. Unlike that episode, which focused on Mario who couldn't care how odd it was, the strangeness of everyone's personality changes and new obsessions are picked up on by Meggy and Tari, and are a key sign that something is very wrong. Turns out, The Reveal shows that this Western Wild is actually a simulation, turning the Western theme on its head.
• Pun-Based Title: "Western Spaghetti" (the name of the movie's apparent setting) is a pun on Spaghetti Western, a subgenre of The Western produced in Mediterranean countries, usually Italy, due to lower costs.
• Reality Warper: As the master of the simulation, Wren can warp the reality within to his whims. He's somehow able to manifest his minions out in the real world but doing so causes the machine to self destruct from the strain.
• Red Herring: Prior to the premiere of the movie, many fans assumed that Tari might have been possessed or something, or that something is happening to her due to her strange behavior that has occurred during the events of "Ready to Ride?". They were eventually proven wrong when it is revealed that the real reason for Tari's strange behavior is that she knew something was wrong with everyone else barring Meggy and herself, and that she was aware of what is happening. This is even taken up further when it is revealed that she had started seeing through Wren's simulation.
• Riddle for the Ages: Where has Meggy seen that TV symbol?
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: The Big Bad resorts to this by arming his goons with rocket launchers when the gang "ruin his scene". Saiko even calls it cheating.
• Running Gag: "So good you can eat 'em raw!"
• Sanity Slippage: A month straight of being shot and killed by Wren in the simulation takes a psychological toll on Meggy, and she snaps to the point of holding SMG4 at gunpoint. It takes Tari bringing her to a digital ether she created to snap her out of it.
• Shout-Out: Two big ones to Tari's series Meta Runner:
  • The terminal in which Meggy and Mario see Tari looks almost exactly like the Project Blue computer used to create Tari in her own series. The leitmotif from that series also appears as background music.
  • The digital ether Tari created to hide herself and Meggy looks a lot like the one her counterpart created at the end of Meta Runner for herself and Theo.
• Space "X": When Bob is shot he shouts "Ow, my western ovaries!"
• Spanner in the Works: Wren had covered all his known bases but never expected Tari and her game-warping abilities could break his simulation. A smaller example is Mario being too stupid to control at a critical moment which caused Wren to lose control of his minions.
• Suddenly Speaking: One-Shot Wren and the Inkling child that Tari and Meggy coach at the end both have actual English dialogue with a reverb effect in this movie. Before this, all Inkling characters only spoke Inklish, including Wren himself in this movie's own flashbacks.^note  The only other time before this where an Inkling had identifiable dialogue was Meggy herself in WOTFI 2017 and 2018 during the final song, also heavily processed.
• Suicide as Comedy: When outgunned by Meggy, Sheriff Swag opts to join the rest of the gang on the gallows.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Despite her righteous hate for Wren making her friends suffer just so he can live out his own sick fantasies, followed by an entire month being psychologically tortured by him, Meggy gives him a final sad look and says she wishes she could've been his friend, showing she understands the rejection he suffered made him who he was.
• Tears of Joy: When Tari brings her to the digital ether dimension and explains how she's been training hard to improve her skills, Meggy bursts into tears and hugs Tari tightly, telling her she's so proud of her.
• Three-Point Landing: Tari pulls this off when bringing Meggy to the digital ether …while Meggy falls flat on her face.
• Time Skip: During the movie, at least two months of real-world time pass while the gang is trapped in Wren's simulation.^note  Tari's exact words are that the Glitchy Gang had already been in the simulation for "a few weeks" beginning sometime between the previous two episodes. This was before Wren took advantage of Meggy's temper and subjected her to a straight month of being one-shotted over and over again.
• Took a Level in Badass: Tari becomes especially active once she realizes that everyone is trapped in a simulation, faking being controlled by Wren and secretly building an ether dimension for her and Meggy to hide in. Afterwards, she effectively hacks Wren's simulation at crucial points to end the simulation and actively frees everyone afterwards. And during the ending she proves to be more physically adept as well.
• The Unsolved Mystery: Like the last movie, what exactly the TV entity is goes unrevealed yet again, at least for now.
• Unstoppable Rage: When Meggy finds out One-Shot Wren, her idol, is responsible for forcibly putting her and all her friends in the Wild West simulation, she loses her shit. Tari wasn't kidding when she said Meggy wasn't going to like hearing it.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Mario's response to being told by Tari that he and the gang are in a simulation? "Dear God… Just a normal day."
• Villainous Breakdown: Wren suffers one near the tail end of the movie. After Meggy and Tari beat him in the simulation and escape, he forcibly tries to pull them back in by bringing his simulation goons into the real world. This puts too much strain on the machine and has it undergo Explosive Overclocking.
• Weird West: At first the Western setting is "weird" in the usual SMG4 sense, but this trope comes into play when it's revealed the entire "wild west" they went to is actually a simulation, the entire Glitchy Gang sans Tari and Meggy have been brainwashed into acting like Western stereotypes, and Wren can pop in any time at any place to hurt or kill them however he pleases.
• Worthy Opponent: Double Subverted. The Big Bad hoped Meggy would be this, but she turned out to be no challenge for him whatsoever. However, after Meggy destroys his plans and he dooms himself, Wren admits she was "one hell of a rival".

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