Civil Protection

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From Ross Scott, the maker of Freeman's Mind, a Machinima from the Half-Life 2 Universe that focuses on the life of two Civil Protection agents, Mike, who has a passion for dealing out justice, specifically the Combine brand of justice and his oddball partner, Dave, who is quite prone to reckless or weird behavior.

Find the whole series here.

Tropes used in Civil Protection include:

• Accentuate the Negative: Mike is extremely cynical and never misses an opportunity to show it. Example:

Dave: (After telling Mike to sing) I've been working on the railroad, Mike: Every pointless day. Dave: I've been working on the railroad, Mike: While my life gets pissed away. Dave: Can't you hear the whistle blowing? Mike: Shatter my dreams in the morn! Dave: Can't you hear the captain shouting? Mike: Wish I was never born.

• Amusing Injuries: Mike and Dave fall victim to this at the end of nearly every episode.
• Apocalyptic Log: The journal in The Tunnel.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted;

Mike: (After witnessing Dave get hit by a car and get back up) Wow. I guess you're getting your money's worth out of that body armor, huh?

• Buddy Cop Show
• Cloudcuckoolander - Dave strays into this territory at times.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Illustrated quite specifically in "Aliens".

Mike: Isn't that what they call the invasion now? The Seven Hour War? Do you wanna know why? Dave: Because it lasted se- Mike: (interrupting Because it lasted seven hours, that's why! Dave: Well that's just because they caught us off guard. Mike: Okay, what if we had been ready for them? We'd call it the Ten Hour War?

• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Lampshaded in "What is Machinima?"

Dave: [Talking about a type of illegal drug] You'll smoke yourself retarded with one of those! Mike: Yup. So...uhh... don't do that!

• Enemy Chatter: In this case, the whole point of the series.
• Funny Background Event: In Morning Patrol, one of the cars hits a civilian and continues driving.
  • In "Aliens" you can see a Vortigaunt apparently selling drugs to some guy in the background.
• Gas Mask Mooks - Mike and Dave are a pair of these.
• Green Aesop: Combined with Broken Aesop when Mike and Dave discuss the oil crisis and how the Combine invasion solved all energy and social problems.
• Genius Ditz: Dave may be an idiot sometimes, but apparently he speaks Bulgarian and is an expert on birds.
• Head Bob - Their heads bob whenever they speak.
• Hypocritical Humor - They planned to arrest The Guy With No Shadow for jay walking yet Dave gets run over while jay walking.
• I Am Not Shazam - A lot of people seem to get Mike and Dave's names mixed up, which is mildly justified, seeing as how they look exactly alike. So, remember; Mike is the Straight Man who hates his job, and Dave is the Cloudcuckoolander who tries to make friends with all the dangerous aliens.
  • Or you can just remember that Mike is Gordon Freeman.
  • Also they have numbered armbands.
• Jump Scare - Done twice in The Tunnel.
• Kill It with Fire - In the environmental episode, Dave seems a little too into this idea.
• Living Shadow - Well, not exactly, but there's no closer trope. The Guy With No Shadow... is exactly what he sounds like, then suddenly gains a shadow while Mike and Dave are distracted and the camera is off him.
• Made of Iron: Mike and Dave tend to avert this most of the time, but they do recover spectacularly quickly from injures that should break their limbs or even kill them. The worst example is probably the end of the Halloween Safety episode. They are perfectly OK in the next episode.
  • I'm not certain if the Halloween Safety episode was in continuity, pretty much because it ended with everyone getting attacked by zombies. Snap Back, maybe?
  • Morning Patrol ends with the duo encountering a houndeye. Dave lands on a roof, and Mike gets smashed across the street and bounces off a telephone pole, before getting hit with anothershockwave. They're fine next episode, of course.
  • And in The Tunnel, Dave gets hit by a car and goes flying 20 feet in the air. He gets up a few minutes later like nothing happened.
• Mind Screw - Dave wishes he could mind control everyone.
• Mood Whiplash - The Tunnel episode, for people expecting more of the screwball comedy of previous episodes.
• Nightmare Fetishist - Dave; "Aliens" demonstrates this repeatedly, what with his response while dumpster-diving ("This better not be a dead cat." "Better!") and then trying to befriend a Strider.
• Odd Couple - Mike and Dave.
• Oh Crap - Mike's reaction to pretty much any alien. Dave is often the exact opposite.
  • A combined one, after they've both been talking to a citizen for a few moments, Mike and Dave both suddenly realise something peculiar about him...

Dave: Look at him! He doesn't have a shadow! Mike: Oh, it must be the angle. We're probably not casting shadows eit- [looks down]...What the- [looks up at the sun]...holy crap, you're right!

• Oh, No, Not Again - Mike uses this line at the end of the "Morning Patrol" episode.
  • Technically doesn't count, though, since it's in response to the Houndeye coming after him again, which only happened a minute or so ago.
• Our Vampires Are Different - Conversed. Mike insists that the guy with no shadow is a vampire.
• Radio Voice - The voices of the main characters are filtered through the vocoders in their masks, much like Civil Protection officers in the game.
• Room Full of Crazy - Apparently, whenever Dave blows the faces out of his paper shooting range targets, he draws smiley faces in the gaps and uses them to decorate his apartment.

Mike: "It's good to know you're not PSYCHO or anything."

• Punch Clock Villain: Mike and Dave, as described above, are just in it because they don't have any qualifications for another job, and rarely ever abuse their power like the CP's you see in Half life 2. In fact, it is even debatable whether they count as villains in the first place, as, judging by the new episode, they go out of their way to help someone when they think they are trapped in a cave with something attacking them. And in the first episode, Mike asks Dave to stop bothering the citizens, because they're "Just on their way to work". They also are happy to give The Guy With No Shadow directions to the train station (until they discover his...anomaly). Aside from him, the only other person they even talk to face-to-face is a Vortigaunt, and despite his suspicious behaviour, all they want is to ask him if "Combine" is a stupid name for an alien race.
• Psycho for Hire: Dave is an extremely minor version, as he is not actually very violent or psychopathic. He is mostly just a happy and cheerful Cloudcuckoolander but, as described above, he apparently has a few mental problems.
• Seinfeldian Conversation - Mike and Dave's most common form of conversation.
• Shout-Out - The Miskatonic Tunnel
• Slasher Smile: The man who lives in the tunnel.
• Something Completely Different: "The Tunnel" shifts the mood from comedy to a Lovecraftian horror story.
• Straight Man - Mike.
• The Ghost: The sarge.
• Warped Aesop: "Killing five billion people did wonders towards solving our social problems!"
• What the Fu Are You Doing? - Dave acting like a ninja and making Funny Bruce Lee Noises in "Friday."
• The Wonka - Dave.