Arfenhouse
Arfenhouse was a series of RPGs and Flash movies made by a group of disturbed internet celebrities who, in their 15 minutes of fame, were collectively known as Disaster Labs. They released their first Flash movie in 2002. After the movie series "Arfenhouse: The Movie 1-4" was released piece by piece on Newgrounds, it became popular enough to get its own IRC channel, #arfenhouse.
The games were intentionally made to look awful, which was reflected in the Flash series in all the character designs.
- Housemaster is the guardian of Arfenhouse. He has a piece of bread for a face, and is clearly a Heroic Sociopath of some kind.
- Piakchu is Housemaster's pet, an obvious pixelated styling of the mascot Pokémon, who he feeds jelly beans like the blob from A Boy and His Blob.
- Dog is one of the other characters to join Housemaster's party. He's an icon made from a photograph of a dog's face, and happily joins in any insanity that Housemaster starts.
- Evil Kitty/Good Kitty is one of the early villains who plays turncoat and joins Housemaster. Like Dog, she's an icon from a photo of a cat's face.
- Joseph is one of the only fully-drawn characters, a humanoid character from another RPG who got warped into Arfenhouse. He tries to play the Straight Man role, but nobody listens to him.
- Woogy is one of many round, two-colored ball guys who frequently trade non-sequiturs with each other and the other characters.
- Billy is the main villain of the series, an 8-year old brat represented by a yellow ball with a face, who tries to make popular Flash movies using stolen content (i.e. copyrighted video game characters), among other methods of gaining notoriety.
Tropes used in Arfenhouse include:
- Author Avatar: Billy, who also serves as the Big Bad.
- Colony Drop - The "plot" of Arfenhouse 3.
- Combined Energy Attack - The ending of Arfenhouse 3
- Groin Attack - Housemaster kicks Billy in the groin, causing him to go to sleep for a thousand years.
- Heel Face Turn - Evil Kitty becomes Good Kitty. Dog also turns good.
- Ice Cream Koan - "A HART WIT OWT LUV IZ A HAT WIT BEEZ!!"
- Interspecies Romance - Housemaster/Good Kitty.
- JINT Mooks
- Lampshade Hanging
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Billy: You sound like a self-help booklet! |
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- Multiple Endings - Arfenhouse 3
- No Ending - Arfenhouse 4
- Our Monsters Are Weird - One of the enemies in Arfenhouse 3 looks like a huge Pringles can, and is even described as one.
- Plot Detour - Arfenhouse 3, when Housemaster decides to forget about the astroid and go to the moon instead.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad - Team Rocket in Arfenhouse 3.
- Samus Is a Girl -When Housemaster dies, his body explodes to reveal Samus from Super Metroid inside.
- Shout-Out - Several, mostly to The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy.
- Storming the Castle - The Very Definitely Final Dungeon of Arfenhouse 3.
- Super Mode
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Housemaster: Super Sayan Bread Makeup! |
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- Sword of Plot Advancement - The Housemaster Sword.
- Updated Rerelease: The first Arfenhouse was remade in Flash, boasting groundbreaking new features such as animations consisting of more than two frames and voice "acting".
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon - Billy's castle.
- Weddings for Everyone - The ending of Arfenhouse 3.
The Flash series has examples of these tropes...
- Animation Bump: The sixth and final film as a whole has more fluid animation than the others.
- Art Shift: A couple scenes from the sixth movie stand out.
- Battle Cry: Teh BUHHS/BUHAAZZ (Pringles cans) always do their signature cry whenever they appear. And it's hilarious.
- Non Sequitur Scene: The second movie devolves into a whole bunch of these.
- Bond Gun Barrel
- Butt Monkey: Joe, in spades.
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Housemaster: "OHH FUK!!! TEH COMMUNITY CHEZZT FORCLOZD ON MA BEEEEEEF JEERRRKKEEE!!! j0 GOZ 2 JAYL!!!" |
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- Creator Backlash: Unfortunately, yeah.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: "FOOL! All we do in Hell is play DDR!"
- Eye Scream: L3MUNAA@@AIIIIYYYYDdd!!!!!1
- Head Desk: Arfenhouse Teh Movie Too has a random interscene with someone saying "BREAK TIME" repeatedly while bashing his head against a desk. And bleeding.
- In Name Only: The third and fourth movies.
- Large Ham
- Mind Screw: Oh boy, where do we start?
- Non-Standard Character Design: The characters are depicted in so many different styles, it would probably be safe to say that Arfenhouse has no standard character design.
- Numbered Sequels: Played with by the movie series, which goes straight from 4 to 6.
- Only Sane Man: Poor Joseph.
- Overly Long Gag: Arfenhouse 3, which, after a very brief fight between Housemaster and Billy, does a credit roll that just lists off names from a phonebook.
- Random Events Plot
- Real Trailer, Fake Movie: "Kill Billy
- Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies
- Except, as an Easter Egg reveals, for Joseph. Who ends up back in his own RPG.
- Running Gag: "JO'Z HEER"
- Shout-Out: "h0lD THIZ. TY!!!!! h3v33 M@SH33NGNU!!!!!!"
- Take That: Done to the many crappy 8BT ripoffs flooding Newgrounds at the time [1] twice: once in the beginning for Arfenhouse 2, the other as a standalone move entitled 8-Bitch Fyve
- What Could Have Been: A teaser poster for Arfenhouse 9 appeared on Misteroo's Deviant ART page on 2008. Nothing ever materialized, however, and Misteroo was never seen again. Disaster Labs itself closed down in 2010.
- What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?
- ↑ a Freeze-Frame Bonus rant in 8-Bitch Fyve elaborates on this.