Web Animation / Tasty Cools

Hey Nick. Where's Dinner?

"Well, man... I'm just trying to eat him."

— Coach, summarizing the series in eight words

Tasty Cools is a Garry's Mod machinima web series created by YouTuber Seibmoz staring the cast of Left 4 Dead 2, as well as characters from other franchises such as Half-Life, Max Payne, Resident Evil, Hitman, and PAYDAY: The Heist in supporting roles.

Instead of being a zombie survival horror series as in its source material, Tasty Cools is a horror comedy series where Nick is being constantly pursued by Coach, who is chasing him with the intent of eating him.

The entire Tasty Cools series can be found in this playlist here.

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Tasty Cools provides examples of:

• Affably Evil: Coach is a reality warping cannibal that will stop at nothing to make Nick his dinner. However, that does not stop him from being a polite, jolly, and comical man willing to spare those who do not interfere in his affairs. He even formed a mutually affectionate bond with zombies. Ultimately, he repays Nick's kindness in freeing him in Tasty Cools 9 by letting him go after seeing how much of a mental toll his actions caused Nick.
• Back from the Dead: Francis in Tasty Cools 9, but ultimately Subverted as he was only brought back as a clone for the movie studio.
• BFS: The knight actor in Tasty Cools 9 wields a blunted longsword to fight Burger's clones when the actors revolt. While it cannot cut, Coach is able to swing it with enough force to break necks.
• Bittersweet Ending: Tasty Cools 9 is the implied finale of the series. After defeating Director Berger, his clones and his actors, Coach spares Nick from all the suffering and running that he had endured up to this point. However, both of Nick's friends, Francis and Chris Redfield, had sacrificed themselves to cover Nick's escape, Ellis is critically injured (again), and the fate of Zoey's sister is left unknown. By this point, Nick has had enough of his arch-nemesis' bullcrap and begs Coach to finish him off when he thanked him, and rudely fends him off with a gunshot when he decided to "stop this series right here in this room" instead.
• Chekhov's Gun: At the midpoint of Tasty Cools 9, Nick steals a pistol from one of Director Burger's clones, to which the clones he threatens with it explain that it is just a prop (implying the shots previously fired were blanks). This turns out to be a bluff as Coach shoots one of the clones dead using said gun, saving Nick's life. Nick, in turn, uses it to fire a successful warning shot to drive off Coach.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Director Burger and his clones run a movie studio that seeks to make a biopic of Nick. This wouldn't be so bad if not for having abducted him by force, bribing Coach's prison so he can play as himself (albeit with a shock collar), questionable HR relationships with his actors, and his cavalier attitude at cloning Nick's best friend Francis, followed by Nick himself when he declined their offer.
• Cowboy Cop: Sergeant Louis. If the spin-off series LOUIS is to be believed, he can survive falling more than six stories and is the only police officer able to keep up with the likes of Gordon Freeman. However, he tends to go into situations solo, and his idea of a "bad cop" routine is to forcefully challenge detainees to martial arts combat during an interrogation. In addition, his memetic drug addition is present in this series, which ends up costing him his job by the start of Tasty Cools 9.
  • Max Payne was prepared to extrajudicially kill Nick while he was hospitalized. Not only is this a blatant violation of due process, but he would have ended up murdering an innocent victim of Coach's campaign of terror.
• Disney Death: Ellis is thought to be shot and eaten by Coach, even going as far as to mention him in the "In Memory Of" text, only to come back in Tasty Cools 6 to escort Nick out of the city. At least until Tasty Coosl 8 where he's punched in the gut by Coach, leaving his fate ambiguous for the time being.
• Disproportionate Retribution: It is implied in Tasty Cools 5 that the reason Coach intends to eat Nick is because he refused to share his donuts in a past incident. Though it should be noted that Coach's strange behavior predates this incident.
• The Dragon: A bearded Barney Calhoun acts at leading muscle for Coach's cult in Tasty Cools 8, keeping tabs on Nick's whereabouts, escorting cultists for punishment, and personally assisting him in subduing Nick and killing Zoey's sister, which he fails spectacularly when she shoots his grenade out of his hand, gibbing himself, and getting Coach blasted by his bandolier of other grenades.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Tasty Cools 1 and 2 do not feature Coach's cannibalistic tendencies. Instead, they focus on him hoarding piles of food in his arms. In the case of 2, the food belonged to Nick.
  • Tasty Cools 3 is devoid of comedy and plays its Slasher Movie elements completely straight.
• Edible Ammunition: Coach is able to use donuts as binoculars, throwing stars, and a bola.
• Guns Are Worthless: In Tasty Cools 4, Nick's Desert Eagle, of all things, is proved to be the most useless weapon in the series. It has missed three times due to panicked shooting, hit Coach once without hurting him and hit Ellis without killing him. Justified as Coach is an invincible human being, while Ellis was likely shot in the shoulder, enabling him to survive the shot and come back in Tasty Cools 6.
• Hero Antagonist: Max Payne is a police officer serving as a secondary antagonist in Tasty Cools 6 and 7, pursuing Nick and co. under the false belief that he is responsible for Coach's murders. He learns by the end of 7 that Coach is the real murderer and corners him at the beginning of 8 with a SWAT Team. Coach makes easy work out of them.
• Humanoid Abomination: In addition to his newfound cannibalism, Coach displays Reality Warping abilities in his attempts to capture Nick, including Super-Reflexes, flight, and super strength.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Coach's primary goal through the whole series is to capture and eat Nick. In Tasty Cools 3, he succeeds in killing and eating Rochelle.
• Insistent Terminology: Coach demands that his cultists refer to Nick not as his "prisoner", but "dinner".
• I Will Fight No More Forever: Nick and Coach at the end of Tasty Cools 9. At this point Nick is tired of fleeing for his life. Multiple friends and acquaintances died trying to keep him safe, and he started driving the rest off for the sake of their safety. Worse, a movie studio was seeking to reenact and exploit his traumatic experiences for profit. By the time Coach recaptures him, he begs him to end his life rather than continue their cat-and-mouse pursuit. (Un)luckily for him, Coach is grateful to Nick for freeing him from the studio, and is sympathetic enough to finally leave Nick be.
• Little Miss Badass: Zoey's sister is a skilled gunwoman and martial artist, able to single-handedly kill Coach's entire cult, rescue Nick from them, and even get into a melee fight with Coach and win. Which is a little Fridge Brilliance when you consider who she was raised by.
• Me's a Crowd: Director Burger had to create a lot of clones of himself to run his movie studio.
• The Mockbuster: In-Universe example. An Easter Egg reveals that the director and his clones are filming an alternative version of Tasty Cools 6, named "Hasty Fools 6", which is the reason why Nick and Coach were offered (read: forced) to star in it.
  • One of the other films Burger is directing stars Mississippi Jones
• Odd Friendship: Nick is friends with BSAA agent Chris Redfield, who in turn helped ferry Nick during his rescue of Ellis, and later hired the PAYDAY Gang to assault a police station to break Nick out.
• Only in It for the Money: The PAYDAY Gang. At first, they help with Nick break out of a police station in Tasty Cools 6. However, in the following video, they assist Agent 47 in capturing him, either because he promised payment or in vengeance for the rescue mission resulting in Chain's and Wolf's deaths.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Not to be confused with the Green Flu infected from Left 4 Dead, the zombies in Tasty Cools 7 come from a chemical serum stolen by Coach. In addition, they are slow, mildly intelligent, and show restraint around Coach and Nick.
• Papa Wolf: Agent 47. He is the father of Zoey and her sister, and pursues Nick in Tasty Cools 7 under the belief that he abducted them.
• Purple Is Powerful: Pictured above, the purple light shining on Coach (the color based on his shirt) is a warning to his adversaries that their death is imminent.
• Religion of Evil: Coach starts a cult in Tasty Cools 8 to assist in abducting Nick. Its members, meanwhile, join for free burgers and the power to kill innocents at their pleasure.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Coach is around, you better start running.
  • In Tasty Cools 4, after Ellis seemingly kills Coach, Coach ambushes Ellis and Nick, shoots Ellis, and forces Nick to retreat and leave Ellis to an uncertain fate.
  • In Tasty Cools 7, a SWAT member screams like a girl as zombies surround his team in pitch darkness and flees for the restroom. The Stinger shows that he survives the events of the episode, but is then killed at the stinger's end by zombified Chris.
  • In Tasty Cools 8, Coach beats the ever-loving hell out of a SWAT team, causing its remaining members to rout while Max Payne tries to confront him on his own.
  • In Tasty Cools 9, the actors fight Coach in defense of Nick. Until they see him punt a man into the air and realize the disparity between them in power.
• Shout-Out: Sometimes this series likes to practically breathe on pop culture and video game references, with a mix of Continuity Nod. Notable examples include:
  • Tasty Cools 4: Coach using his thermal vision to spy on Nick and Ellis is one to Predator, except he does so by looking through a bunch of donuts.
    • The subtitle for the video is a parody of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
  • Tasty Cools 5: Francis can be seen re-enacting the pub scene in the opening of Shaun of the Dead.
  • Tasty Cools 6: Francis' death is animated after Gandalf's death.
  • Tasty Cools 7: Ryo Hazuki appears here as a news reporter on TC News, asking Nick if he had seen a "creepy-looking guy wearing purple clothes"^note a line originally used to describe Chai.
  • Tasty Cools 8: Coach dodging the bullets a la The Matrix and his fighting style being a major reference to Akuma from Street Fighter, even performing his version of the Raging Demon to knock Zoey's sister out.
    • The video's thumbnail is a direct reference to the cover art of Shaq Fu, a Fighting Game featuring Shaquille O'Neal.
  • So much in Tasty Cools 9 that Seibmoz had to upload all of them in a separate video.
• Stealth Pun: The name of this series was unironically supposed to sound like "testicles".
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: As Nick is Coach's primary target, Max Payne found out the hard way that Coach will not let anyone else take him down.
  Payne: One down, two to go. No begging, no bribes... Both of us knew how this would end. In pain and suffering—
  Coach: HEY! Don't be doin' that!
• The Tooth Hurts: As Zoey's sister fights Coach in Tasty Cools 8, she trips him while he's carrying a gravestone, which causes him to drop it on himself, permanently costing him a tooth.
• The Voiceless: Zoey's sister does not speak, but rather has her expressions speak for herself.
• Villains Out Shopping: Coach will often take a break from chasing after Nick by eating at the Burger Tank.
• You Have Failed Me: A cultist appears to about to suffer this fate when Coach's "dinner" (Nick) escaped. Subverted when Coach reassures the cultist and merely stomps off. Instantly Double Subverted seconds later when Coach punches the cultist's head off.

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Coach will return