Avez-vous déjà vu... ? (Have you ever seen...?) is a weird French animated series. Each episode lasts one minute or less, and presents something that you have probably never seen. Like spitting houses. Or a Space soap opera. Or a serial-killer egg.
150 episodes were released, starting in 2006, each around 45 seconds long. The narrator of the series' original version is Alain Chabat, who is a master of French nonsensical humor.
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN... A list of tropes appearing in Avez-vous déjà vu... ?
- Alien Invasion: One episode features a group of aliens discussing laughter, to try and initiate peaceful relationships with the human race. However, because they're so huge compared to humans, they end up inadvertently destroying buildings by throwing pies at them, or crushing people by trying to tickle them.
- Animate Inanimate Object: The focus of many episodes.
- Art Shift: The animation style changes from episode to episode. Compare "A guy who's laughing all the time
", "A noise shop" and "A tourist group on Mars", for instance. - Bears Are Bad News: As shown in "Un ours gonflable" ("An inflatable bear").
- Black Comedy: Some of the episodes fall under this. "Une fanfare dans un champ de mines" (a marching band in a minefield) may be the most extreme example.
- Blind Without Them: La Fée Fagot.
- Body Horror: "Un rendez-vous de squelettes", i.e. "A date between skeletons". Doesn't sound that bad? Remember that skeletons "live" in the human body. Now think what happens when they get out for the night. Still better than when they invite their date home, though.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: From "Un mec qui se plaint tout le temps" ("A guy who's always complaining"):Oh no, my tie is ugly. Oh no, my strawberries are flabby. [...] Oh no, I have a flabby strawberry stain on my ugly tie.
- Captain Ersatz: Grodzilla.
- Cassandra Truth: "Les predictions de Nostradamus des Cavernes" ("The predictions of Nostradamus of the caves").
- Catchphrase: The title, and the ending: "Maintenant, oui." ("Now, you have.")
- Crapsaccharine World: Any episodes involving the toupoutous, gentle sweet murdering tellietubbies.
- Disproportionate Retribution: "Super-Roi, le Super-Héros des Rois" ("Superking, the superhero of Kings). The King orders the decapitation of all bakers, milk producers and cows in the kingdom. The reason? His cousin's slice of bread and butter fell down on the buttered side.
- Epic Fail: A few episodes feature these.
- The most extreme example may be "Un crime pas parfait du tout", which is the absolute opposite of The Perfect Crime (see also Implausible Deniability below).
- A villain trying to pull a Sadistic Choice (see below)... on twin superheroes.
- Great Escape: "Une évasion de raviolis" ("a ravioli escape").
- Grossout Show: Not the entire show, but some of the episodes definitely fall under this: for example, one episode revolves around an elderly alien imitating a human exploding for his grandkids.
- Hope Spot: "Une fanfare dans un champ de mines" (a marching band in a minefield) goes about as well as you would expect. In the end, however, a single musician escaping the minefield... Only to be mowed down by a sniper.
- Implausible Deniability: The assassin in "un crime pas parfait du tout". He is caught, in the house, with the knife inside the victim. His alibi is that he was at the movies at the moment.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Poppi, a small dog that can only bark, but that everybody seems to understand. He has appeared in several shorts as a witness in court, a hostage negotiator, a Shakespearean actor and a radio show host — on an advice spot, no less.Caller: Hello, Poppi? I have been with my husband seventeen years now, but lately I find that he is...
Poppi: Woof.
Caller: Yes, that's it! And sometimes I even...
Poppi: Woof.
Caller: I'LL KILL HIM! I'M GONNA FLAY THE SWINE!! [click] [dial tone] - Let's Meet the Meat: Taken to the Logical Extreme with "Nuf Nuf à l'école des charcutiers" — Nuf Nuf is a young pig attending a butchers' school, and he even brags that being a pig makes him the best at it.
- Magic Plastic Surgery: In a few episodes.
- "Une poule qui veut devenir un éléphant" ("A chicken who wants to become an elephant") gets exactly what she wants.
- "Un taureau qui veut devenir un escargot" ("A bull who wants to become a snail") gets... less convincing results.
- Subverted in "Un oeuf qui veut devenir une poule" ("An egg who wants to become a chicken"). The surgeon proposes a complicated and very expensive operation, but the egg reveals himself as a reporter and calls him a charlatan — because eggs don't need surgery to become chickens.
- "Deux jumeaux qui veulent devenir siamois" ("Two twins who want to become conjoined"): the doctor even proposes to create two conjoined couples — each composed of half of one twin and half of the other.
- Our Fairies Are Different:
- "La Fée Fagot" can create life from wooden objects. Pinocchio is often her victim.
- Another series of episodes revolves around an overweight, lazy-ass fairy who uses her magic wand to do pretty much everything.
- Professional Killer: "Un poisson à gages" ("A Hitfish").
- Sadistic Choice: A villain takes two women hostage, ties each to a bomb on the roof a different building, and taunts the superhero. Unfortunately for him, the superhero is Super-Jumeaux (Super-Twins), with the power of being two people instead of one.
- Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle: "Le fameux cirque Patatrasnote " ("The famous Patatras Circusnote "). So long, in fact, there is just a couple of seconds left for the sketch itself...
- Shout-Out:
- "La Guerre des Nez" ("War of the noses")
- The alien taxi driver episode has one to Star Wars: as the taxi is flying through space, you can see a Tie Fighter chasing an X-Wing.
- The entire episode about a washing machine being possessed by the Devil is one to The Exorcist, complete with
Suspiciously Similar Song.
- Spaghetti Kiss: Done with two vaccuum cleaners. You can guess what happens when one of them decides to leave the meat ball to the other.
- Superhero:
- "Super-Arbre, le super-héros des arbres" ("Super-Tree, the trees' superhero")
- "Super-Roi, le super-héros des rois" ("Super-King, the kings' superhero")
- "Une aventure de Super-Jumeaux" ("An adventure of Super-Twins") — notable in that being twins is their only superpower.
- Swashbuckler: "A swashbuckling movie made by flies".
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: in "Une animalerie du futur" ("A pet shop of the future") we learn that dogs tried to wipe out the human race.
- Twin Tropes: The author must have loved these, because there are several episodes revolving around twins.
- Conjoined Twins: One episode is about non-conjoined twins who want to become conjoined.
- Coordinated Clothes: Twins in the series always have these.
- Single-Minded Twins: This is often the case, to the point that they don't just finish each other's sentences, they Speak in Unison.
- Subversion in "Deux jumeaux chez le chirurgien" ("Two twins visiting a surgeon"), where the twins want to get plastic surgery but remain identical to each other. They speak in perfect unison until the surgeon asks what they want to change on their face, at which point they give different answers... And end up fighting (a perfectly symmetric fight).
- Wonder Twin Powers: Taken to the (il)logical extreme with Super-Jumeaux (Super-Twins), whose only power is being twins — but they'll call it "Ubiquity", thank you very much.
