Web Animation / The Leftovers (2023)

The Leftovers is a web animated OSC short and the one to kickoff Metropolis as the first short of the third 48 Hour OSC Film Festival.

Someone had ordered a homicide with extra pickles well past midnight and four detectives came down to the grisly scene of the crime for takeout. However, the cold trial and lack of concrete evidence mean different theories come into mind when cracking the case, some of which don't add up or make sense at all.

The short can be viewed here alongside the original soundtrack "Save Me".

Not to be confused with the HBO series of the same name.

Contains the following tropes:

• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Cigar wears a trenchcoat and fedora to sell that hard-boiled detective look. If only he had the intelligence and competence to match.
• Anti-Climax: After spending the entirety of the short speculating and arguing over Burger's murder, having four whole Imagine Spot segments in the process, the detectives were left speechless when the murder victim came to life and explain what really happened: He tripped on a rock and was knocked unconscious.
• Art Shift: The Imagine Spots of the characters are in different art styles which progressively degrades with every reenactment.
• City Noir: The first short in Metropolis to be one made obvious with its monochromatic setting and four detectives solving a murder case at a club late into the night.
• Clueless Detective: Cigar got the detective attire and gruff Private Eye Monologue down to a T but other than that, he's an entirely incompetent moron who contributes nothing to the case and even hinders it with his Insane Troll Logic. It's like he was hired for aesthetic purposes rather than actual detective work.
• Comically Missing the Point: After Burger himself tells the detectives that this murder was just an accident, they are stunned in utter disbelief until Cigar, still convinced his theory is right, has this to say:
  Cigar: "So you didn't have a friend that tried to steal your pickles?"
  [Fountain Pen socks Cigar so hard that he knocked him unconscious]
• The Comically Serious: Cigar builds himself up as this stone-cold, brooding hard-boiled detective, wearing a trenchcoat and fedora while smoking a cigarette, when he's nothing more than absolutely useless in actual detective work and says his outlandish theories as matter-of-factly truth, infuriating his colleagues to no end.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The short is entirely black-and-white to emphasise the City Noir setting and plot where the universe takes place.
• Dirty Cop: Downplayed. Fountain Pen is an affable detective determined to find the truth and bring the murderer to justice but he's not as straight-laced as he appears when revealing to have bought salt packets (The film's equivalent to cocaine) from a dealer once in a while.
• Dope Slap: Fountain Pen, completely fed up by Cigar's nonsense and uselessness towards the case, punches him out cold and straight into a wall.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Fountain Pen's reaction to Cigar's absolute idiotic nonsense is the most adverse out of his colleagues and later punches his lights out than hear another word from him.
• Flat "What": Fountain Pen offhandedly mentions how he personally knew the salt-packet dealer was because he was one of his customers despite how illegal the substance is and that he's a cop, eliciting the response from Handcuffs.
• I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: According to Fountain Pen, salt can boost your confidence and is taken in by inhaling but will make you go crazy when overdosing (Sounding awfully similar to cocaine). He would know this because he occasionally buys some from a dealer for recreational purposes.
• Imagine Spot: The detectives must figure out an impossible murder case at the nightclub where the strewn body^note It's less graphic than it sounds since the victim is a hamburger and a broken glass door are the only two pieces of evidence. Thus, all four had their own varying theories as to what went down complete with unique illustrations:
  • Binoculars knew a bit about the nightclub and how insane of a ruckus it causes but becomes way more intense on nights with Disco Ball, a popular DJ who also doubles as the nightclub's disco ball, working there to the point that he often falls off his stand and into the crowd. So Binoculars believe it was one of those crazier nights but Disco Ball had fallen right on top of Burger and in the ensuing chaos, the still-raving crowd scatter and toss his remains out the front door. His imagine spot was drawn in a looser, less-detailed art style.
  • Handcuffs speculated Burger was in a fight with someone over flirting with the latter's girlfriend which then escalated into being punched out of the window. Either that or he saw a cool-looking blimp and jumped out the window to reach it but failed. Fountain Pen points out in both scenarios that the glass door should be broken instead but Handcuffs thinks the culprit is covering their tracks. The segment was animated more crudely than Binoculars'.
  • Fountain Pen recognizes Burger as an infamous salt-packet dealer, even admitting to buying his goods but that's another story, which means the murder could be a deal gone wrong when one of his customers overdosed, killed him and ran away with his supply. Handcuffs call it smart citing the lack of evidence as evidence but found upon closer examination that the body is not a cheeseburger the dealer was specified as. Fountain Pen's reenactment was shot in live-action on pencil and notebook paper with shaky camera SFX to emulate a Line Boil.
  • Cigar has the most dramatic of the retellings, with lighter greyscale and well-detailed sketch art to boot, but the theory itself sounds like a nine-year-old who made it up on the spot. It goes as follows: Burger was with a friend named Soda Cup at the nightclub but while they partying it up, Soda got hungry so the most obvious and logical choice for them was to beat up Burger and ate his pickles. Realising what they had done, Soda ran away in tears not because they killed their best friend but because they were deadly allergic to pickles and needed to use the bathroom. His colleagues were so dumbfounded that they cut off Cigar's monologue to point out all the inconsistencies and absurdities like how did he know Burger had a friend or pickles, why said friend was stupid enough to do that and why is he so obsessed about them going to the bathroom but completely ignored the broken door which never came up in the story.
  • While everyone was arguing over Cigar's idiotic theory, Burger turns out to be alive as he wakes from his prolonged nap to vividly recall the night for them. In poorly-drawn Microsoft paint art, what really happened was Burger walked past the nightclub when he tripped over a rock and was merely knocked unconscious by the time the cops arrived, simple as that (Although this doesn't explain why the club's glass door was shattered in the first place).
• Insane Troll Logic: Cigar's theory on Burger's death was so outlandish and unfounded that it has to be seen to believe it:
  Cigar: "It... was tragedy. The story of two friends. They came to the nightclub looking for fun but his... his friend was sooooo~ hungry, he stole his pickles and ate them! He ran away but not because he murdered him but because he was allergic to pickles and went to the bathroom—"
  [Cuts back to his colleagues' baffled and unamused faces]
  Binoculars: Dude what? "
  Cigar: "Hey, I didn't interrupt you guys did I? As I was saying—"
  Fountain Pen: "Where did this guy come from? How did you know this guy had pickles? And why are we talking about him going to the bathroom?"
  Cigar: "Let me finish please!"
  Fountain Pen: Answer my questions first!
  Binoculars: "Cigar, you're actually useless!"
• Medium-Shift Gag: The animated short switches to live-action for Fountain Pen's segment.
• Monochromatic Eyes: Fountain Pen is the only object with white eyes given he has a darker coloring in the black-and-white City Noir.
• No Mouth: Binoculars' face consists of an eye in each lens with no room for a mouth (But can still talk somehow).
• Not Quite Dead: Burger, the murder victim whom the detectives spent the entire plot figuring out how he died, was actually asleep the whole time in spite of his body being scattered everywhere. It turns out he just tripped over a rock and got knocked out from the fall.
• Smoking Is Cool: Cigar smokes a cigarette (Even though he is one) to give off the impression of being a hard-boiled detective.
• Stating the Simple Solution: The detectives had their fair share of speculating complicated murder ploys for Burger's death, leading to an all-out argument over Cigar's absolute mentalness, until Burger himself woke up from the commotion to reveal the grandeur truth of... tripping over a rock. Cue Face Palm and disbelief-stricken expressions as the detectives tried to process what they just heard.
• Stylistic Suck: The Imagine Spot everyone has except Cigar (Ironically) which gets increasingly worse and cruder the more characters voice their theories and cultivate in Burger telling his story in terribly drawn MS Paint.
• The Unreveal: The detectives suspect the broken glass door of the nightclub to be a major clue in the case, yet none of their Imagine Spots can give a solid answer and in the end, it's never explained how the door was shattered in the first place even after Burger's flashback.
• Who Needs Their Whole Body?: The murder victim's remains or rather toppings were scattered everywhere on the sidewalk which would make a gruesome crime scene if only Burger didn't turn out completely fine from this ordeal. It just so happens he had simply fallen over and woke up from his nap with no worse for wear.