Wallace and Gromit: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

== The films are, in order: ==

* ''A Grand Day Out'' (short - 1989). Wherein Wallace and Gromit realise that they're out of cheese and the shops are closed. The solution? Build a rocket in the basement and take a trip to the moon... which, as everyone knows, is made of cheese. While there, they have an encounter with a coin-operated robot who's desperate to go skiing.

* ''A Close Shave'' (short - 1995). Wherein Wallace's crush Wendolene turns out to have ties to the local wool shortage, leading to Gromit being imprisoned for sheep-rustling, forcing Wallace to stage a daring jailbreak with the help of a woolly jumper-wearing lamb named Shaun. The three must face the real [[Big Bad]] in a final showdown for all the yarn. Shaun later got his own [[Spin-Off]] called ''[[Shaun the Sheep]]''.

* ''Cracking Contraptions'' (short-shorts - 2002). A series of 5-minute films showcasing Wallace's latest wacky inventions.

 

 

== The ''Grand Adventures'' episodes are, in order: ==

 

In 2010, [[The BBC|BBC One]] commissioned a television program, ''Wallace and Gromit's World of Inventions'', an educational program about famous or revolutionary inventions, hosted by the two. It begin airing in November with the episode ''Nature Knows Best''.

 

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{{tropelist}}

* [[Animation Bump]]: The first short, ''A Grand Day Out'', was mostly made by Nick Park himself, with Aardman Animations only coming in when the film was half complete. When compared to ''The Wrong Trousers'' (the first one with a lot of Aardman work), there is a world of difference in animation between the two.

* [[Aside Glance]]: Gromit. All the time.

* [[Background Halo]]: Lady Tottington gets one, along with a set of background ''wings'', when she advocates trapping the were-rabbit humanely. Lord Victor Quartermaine, who wants to just shoot it, gets a pair of background horns.

{{quote|'''Wallace:''' "We've tested this on Gromit. Haven't we, lad?"

* [[Bigger on the Inside]]: The house in ''Loaf and Death''. Somehow, a full bakery factory with machines, chutes and cogs manages to fit into the dimensions of a small two-story house - which still has room for a kitchen, dining room and bedrooms.

* [[Blessed Are the Cheesemakers]]: Wallace's cheese obsession. The producers have great fun referencing the most bizarre and obscure cheese names possible.

** This namedropping, in fact, ''saved Wensleydale cheese'', which was right on the cusp of disappearing before Wallace and Gromit created a new demand for it.

** Played with inasmuch as Wallace and Gromit are working as window-cleaners when they meet Wendolene; "Windolene" is a cleaning product sold for cleaning glass.

* [[British Accents]]: Wallace has a distinctive [[Oop North]] accent.

* [[British Brevity]]: Americans who are aware of the franchise might be surprised to know that in twenty years, there have been only ''six'' installments, and only one of those six is feature-length.

** In one of the comics, we encounter another three named Derek, Derrick and Eric. They invent a wind-up mobile phone, an automatic winder that you have to wind up, and a key to wind up the automatic winder. Mind you, in another one of the comics Wallace invents an indestructible shoe that eventually nearly destroys the Earth because he couldn't find his slippers.

** The "Cheese Lover's Yearbook" features, as well as the creations of the original shorts: the Recyc-O-Matic, which worked fine until he gave it arms and it ran amok in the town centre eating everything in its path; the Automatic Dairy Maker, which was scrapped after it turned out the "Creamy Wallaby" cheese it produced caused some people to come out in a grassy rash; and the Push-Button Gardener, which raked up all the leaves and dumped them on the living room carpet.

** Poor Gromit falls into this all too often... (usually thanks to Wallace's stupidity).

*** Though to balance it out Wallace himself often gets it pretty bad too.

* [[Cartoon Cheese]]: Averted in ''A Grand Day Out'', as moon cheese doesn't look anything like typical "orange-y swiss" cartoon cheese. More like cheddar. Wallace names several terrestrial cheeses in an unsuccessful attempt to determine what moon cheese tastes like, and finally concludes, "It's like no cheese I've ever tasted."

* [[Catch Phrase]]: "CheeeeEEEEeeeeeeeese!" (with Wallace's trademark excited hands).

** Also, once things inevitably fall apart, Wallace's "GROMIT! HELP! DO SOMETHING!," or the less emphatic "Gromit! Do something, lad!" There's no ceiling on how many times Wallace will say this in a single episode.

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: In any of the times we see one of the many [[To the Batpole]] segments in the opening, it will usually play a crucial role in the climax.

* [[Civilized Animal]]: Gromit is usually depicted as walking upright, and is capable of creating and operating complex machinery. Generally he's shown to be ''significantly'' more shrewd and sensible than his master. However, despite all of this, everyone treats him the same as you treat ''any'' dog. He has both a room in the house and a kennel in the yard, and walks on two or four legs as the plot requires. He's also been shown to eat from a dog dish or at a human table on different occasions.

** Fluffles in ''Loaf and Death'' is similarly capable, though she's generally shown on all fours for much of the film. {{spoiler|Notably, her moments of bipedalism happen either out of the sight of her abusive master, or at the film's end when she finally stands up to her and remains bipedal for the rest of the film.}}

** Feathers McGraw is apparently capable of showing up and ''renting rooms'' from humans, but the film still ends with him at the ''zoo''.

** When Gromit is put in prison in ''A Close Shave'', there's graffiti on the wall reading "Feathers Woz 'Ere".

** When Piella crashes into the zoo at the start of ''Loaf and Death'', to the right of the gate is a poster saying [[One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing|"One Of Our Penguins Is Missing"]], complete with a picture of what looks like Feathers McGraw. To the left of the gate is a ladder propped against the inside of the wall -- with a rope made of sheets hanging down the outside.

** When Wallace leaves Gromit alone in the van in ''Were-Rabbit'', he's parked outside a hairdressers called ''A Close Shave''.

** There is a "have you seen this chicken?" poster with Feathers McGraw in the Were-Rabbit licensed game.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: While Gromit is usually a [[Silent Snarker]], the duo's mutual diary - published as the Cheese Lover's Yearbook - has little typewritten notes expressing Gromit's reaction to whatever is happening. After the entries for "A Close Shave":

{{quote|'''Wallace''': Relieved to have come out of this in one piece.

'''Gromit''': Instead of several hundred, like Preston. - G }}

* [[Defanged Horrors]]: ''Curse of the Were-Rabbit.''

* [[Dramatic Thunder]]: Piella's house. Also, the "a bullet" scene from ''Were-Rabbit''.

* [[Duck]]

* [[Early Installment Weirdness]]: The first short was much more surreal than all of the others.

* [[Fan Disservice]]: {{spoiler|We get to see Wallace's ''buttocks'' in "A Matter of Loaf and Death".}}

* [[Fun with Acronyms]]: The comic "Anoraknophobia" has SPARROW - an operation to '''S'''teal, '''P'''ilfer '''A'''nd '''R'''ecklessly '''R'''equisition '''O'''ther '''P'''eople's '''W'''ork. Wallace gets somewhat sidetracked by there being only one P in "Sparrow".

{{quote|Wallace: I'm in bread myself!

[[[Aside Glance]] from Gromit] }}

** Lady Tottingham inviting Wallace to see her secret garden is probably the most risque.

* [[Girl of the Week]]: All of Wallace's love interests.

* [[Hammerspace]]: As befitting the trope, the Telltale ''Wallace & Gromit'' games feature this, truly reaching a ridiculous point when Wallace ''uproots incredibly large flowers '''and somehow stuffs them into his pockets'''.''

* [[Human Ladder]]: Well, sort of. It's a Sheep Ladder, in ''A Close Shave.''

** Not to mention all of the cheese-themed classic titles behind which Wallace's secret cheese dish is hidden.

* [[Hypercompetent Sidekick]]: Gromit.

* [[Identical Grandson]]: The Prickly Thicket Country Club has portraits of people involved in the founding of the club centuries before: Rory MacBiscuit, the Duchess Flitt, Witlace and Gimlet. They look remarkably similar to Duncan MacBiscuit, Felicity Flitt, Wallace, and Gromit, respectively.

** Also Jeeves-like are his highly expressive eyebrows.

* [[Kick the Dog]]: A literal, yet surprisingly subtle example. Piella kicks Fluffles ''twice'' before her true nature is revealed, yet both times the action could be interpreted as her nudging the poodle to greet Wallace. Of course, Fluffles [[Break the Cutie|downcast]] personality gives the game away to the audience, but not to [[Too Dumb to Live|Wallace]].

{{quote|"Ow! Wallace, he bit me!" [[Don't Explain the Joke|Gromit has no mouth]].}}

*** Dog bite marks are also completely different from human bite marks, but Wallace is so enamored, he probably would have seen whatever Piella wanted at that point.

* [[Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard]]: Locking Gromit in the balloon storeroom.

* [[Man in a Kilt]]: Duncan McBiscuit.

* [[Meaningful Name]]: Wallace can be diminutised as "Wally", a slang term for a naïve or foolish person. A grommet is a rubber ring used to seal the edge of a hole, to stop it chafing the insulation of wires passed through the hole.

* [[Minimalist Cast]]: In all of the films except for ''Were-Rabbit'', only characters relevant to the plot make an appearance. This meant that ''A Grand Day Out'' and ''Wrong Trousers'' had a cast of only '''three''', of which only one (Wallace) has a speaking part.

* [[Mini-Mecha]]: With oven mitts.

* [[Newspaper-Thin Disguise]]: Several of them.

* [[No Mouth]]: Gromit

{{quote|'''Lord Victor Quartermaine''': How on earth would those tiny-minded buffoons ever catch such a big rabbit?

[[[Face Palm]] from Gromit. Hurrahs from everybody else] }}

** A deleted scene from Curse of the Were-Rabbit shows him dumping all the rabbits Wallace was catching over the border into Yorkshire.

** Multiple characters affectionately address Gromit as "Chuck". In context it's something like "dear" and is a local colloquialism.

* [[Packed Hero]]: In ''A Close Shave'', the villain intends to do this to the heroes, complete with [[Conveyor Belt O' Doom]] into a machine which produced canned dog food. In the end it is the villain who gets crushed up and delivered into the cans. Not as gruesome as it sounds, since the villain is really {{spoiler|a robot}}.

* [[Powered Armor]]: The Techno Trousers are at the very least half of one.

* [[Punny Name]]: Everybody bar the two mains, and trying to list them all would take most of the entry as even one-offs get names like this.

* [[The Red Stapler]]: The last of the creameries manufacturing the centuries-old Wensleydale cheese were teetering on the edge of closure in the early '90s, until they received a chance mention in ''A Grand Day Out''. Noticing the increased interest, the creamery persuaded Aardman Animation to endorse a ''[[Wallace and Gromit]]''-branded cheese, which worked to rebuild Wensleydale into a thriving product worldwide.

* [[The Renaissance Age of Animation]]: The series premiered it's first entry in 1989 during the initial boom of animation.

* [[Retro Rocket]]: The rocket they build in A Grand Day Out.

* [[Rube Goldberg Device]]: Wallace's method of invention has been described by Nick Park as the equivalent of cracking a nut with a sledgehammer.

* [[Serious Business]]: The veg competition in ''Were-Rabbit''.

** Wallace's business ventures always take otherwise mundane concepts such as window washing or baking to a ludicrous extreme to accommodate the previously mentioned [[Rube Goldberg Device]] methods he feels are necessary to do the job.

* [[Shout-Out]]: Most of Aardman's work use this with amazing frequency. ''Wrong Trousers'' contains an extended spoof of heist movies, just as ''Were-Rabbit'' parodies a number of horror tropes. Individual shout outs are so numerous as to take up a ridiculous entry length, but viewers paying close attention are well rewarded.

* [[Something Else Also Rises]]: In "A Matter of Loaf and Death", when Wallace and Piella touch, we're treated to a shot of bread rising.

* [[Something That Begins With Boring]]: "Cheese Lover's Yearbook" has them going on a caravan holiday...where it naturally rains pretty much the whole time. Entries included "Played I Spy with Gromit all day"<ref>"R for rain featured regularly"</ref> and "There are 756 flowers on the wallpaper in the caravan".

* [[Spin-Off]]: [[Shaun the Sheep]] got his own TV series.

** And then Timmy from that series got his own [[Spin-Off]] in the form of [[Timmy Time]].

** This was done way back in 1995, with several Christmas-themed idents for [[BBC 2]].

* [[Super Multi-Purpose Room]]: Basically every room in Wallace's house has built-in intricate mechanisms and contraptions to help Wallace and Gromit wake up, get dressed, effortlessly get seated for breakfast, get the breakfast prepared, get into their car, and and and ... See [[To the Batpole]]

* [[Technology Porn]]: Wallace's inventions- elaborate, ridiculous, and oh so fun to watch.

* [[Take That]]: Gromit is trying to dispose of a bomb at the end of ''Loaf and Death''. He goes to one window--there are cute little ducks in the pond underneath. He goes to another window--nuns collecting charity for kittens. He goes to a third--the Yorkshire border. He prepares to throw.

* [[Take the Wheel]]: In ''A Matter of Loaf and Death'', Wallace hands the wheel off to his dog while he makes a death-defying leap to save a bread heiress.

** And when Wallace says it, he means it [[Removable Steering Wheel|literally]]. Apparently that particular incarnation of the ever changing [[Thememobile|Wallacemobile]] has a socket for the steering wheel on either side. Hopefully the peddles are replicated on both sides as well.

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: Wallace has been close to death far too often, mostly due to his absent-mindedness, and not paying attention to Gromit's warnings.

* [[To the Batpole]]: ''A Close Shave'', the feature film ''Curse of the Were-Rabbit'', and ''A Matter of Loaf and Death'' all feature our heroes suiting up via a Heath Robinson-esque process, depicted in all its absurd detail. ''A Close Shave'' had Wallace going through a similar scene; Gromit then simply walks through a door from the kitchen, rolling his eyes. An earlier example is established in ''The Wrong Trousers'': Wallace apparently begins every day with his bed tilting up and dropping him into a trapdoor from his upstairs bedroom to a chair at the dining room table, with mechanical arms providing a costume change. Both of these examples are intended as direct references to Gerry Anderson and ''[[Thunderbirds]]''.

** There is also a''[[Tracey Island]]'' gag involving a rotating fishpond.

* [[Trademark Favorite Food]]: Cheese, particularly Wensleydale, is Wallace's favorite, but he's also pretty enthusiastic about toast.

** {{spoiler|Hutch}} in ''Were-Rabbit'' is another exception.

* [[Who's on First?]]: The hare you'll find is much bigger.

* [[Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?]]: Wallace has currently worked on-screen as a window cleaner, an exterminator, a baker and a television presenter.

[[Category:Hugo Award]]

[[Category:Wallace and Gromit]]