Tiny Ryan is a short film uploaded to the YouTube channel The Almost Random Show on December 4, 2019.
It follows Tiny Ryan, a Lilliputian running around and interacting with his environment.
The video was notably shown on Jacksfilms' Grading Your Videos video, where he complimented it on its editing.
Due to the contents of the ending, many tropes associated with the work serve as spoilers themselves. You Have Been Warned.
Tiny Ryan contains examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: The human removes one of Ryan's hands at the end.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Deconstructed with the ending. With an outside perspective, we might see this human a Jerkass at best and having a Lack of Empathy at worst, but since we've been following Tiny Ryan this entire story, we see him as a
Complete Monster, and he's as terrifying to us as he is to Ryan. - Body Horror: The sequence where Ryan is tortured is suddenly so much Bloodier and Gorier than the rest of the episode, which only featured Slapstick, like with the squirrel.
- Black Comedy: The Mood Whiplash from the dark and mostly Played for Horror ending to the outro, featuring Tiny Ryan doing a Fortnite dance with bossa nova music playing in the background employs this to a T.
- Blood from the Mouth: The human experimenting on Ryan pushes down on Ryan's chest hard, eliciting this from him. It's implied he died.
- Brick Joke: The footage of Ryan doing a Fortnite dance appears twice, once midway through the video, and then after the horrific ending sequence.
- Content Warning: For "red ooze".
- Cruel Twist Ending: The titular Ryan is caught, tortured, and implied to have been killed by a human.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Ryan fights a squirrel, which goes down in one hit.
- Funny Background Event: Ryan's Adele shirt.
- Lilliputians: Tiny Ryan is one. The short film revolves around this idea of him interacting with things we'd use in our day-to-day life.
- Mood Whiplash: The ending. Ryan is all but killed off completely, having an arm removed and caused to bleed from the mouth profusely. Then, it cuts to slowed footage of him doing a Fortnite dance with calm, soothing easy listening music playing in the background.
- Musicalis Interruptus: Ryan runs on a record player at one point, and when he falls off, the music abruptly stops. This is aptly combined with a Record Needle Scratch.
- No-Dialogue Episode: Other than the "Tiny Ryan!" at the beginning, there is no dialogue throughout.
- Perpetual Smiler: The actor playing Ryan always has a big, goofy smile on his face. This also carries on to the horrific ending sequence, where he's still stuck in a smiling position as he's tortured.
- Protagonist Title: Tiny Ryan.
- Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: The film starts out generally light-hearted, interspersed with tiny bits of comedy. Then, when the ending rolls around, the mood is suddenly grim and horrific as Ryan is mercilessly tortured. Then, the mood whiplash comes in, and the whole scene is suddenly Played For Dark Laughs.
