Widget Series: Difference between revisions

[[File:nahnaaaahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnah.png|link=Katamari Damacy|frame|[[It Makes Sense in Context|It makes more sense in context]][[Makes Just as Much Sense in Context|...]] [[Mind Screw|sort of]].]]

 

 

 

Sometimes they have small, short releases to test the audience, although they may have a guaranteed viewing among ''[[Otaku]]''.

Japanese cultural differences are the reason this trope exists ''and'' the reason it's not more popular. The Japanese are fond of ambiguity, particularly enjoying open-ended conclusions that create more questions than they answer. This is in contrast to Western (particularly American) storytelling, where ambiguity and loose threads are seen as flaws; and the ending is expected to explain and resolve all major plot points. Simply put, Japanese culture can be refreshing to an outsider, but too much may cause a feeling of overload.

 

 

A weird series doesn't have to be Japanese to qualify as a Widget: some European and American series, like the ones from the examples below, are weird enough to compare with their Japanese brethren. [[Fun with Acronyms|Terms]] you'll likely see in this page include:

* WST ('''W'''eird '''S'''candinavian '''T'''hing) and WIT ('''W'''eird '''I'''celandic '''T'''hing).

* PEGS ('''P'''eculiar & '''E'''ccentric '''G'''erman '''S'''ubject)

 

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' seems like your avarage [[Gotta Catch Em All]] [[To Be a Master]] show, right? A closer look reveals that this show can be ridiculously bizarre: [[Psychic Powers|Sabrina]] turning people into dolls, [[Draco in Leather Pants|Meowth's thoughts about the boss, which often become overtly sexual]], and Team Rocket. Especially James' repeated crossdressing.

** From the same people: ''[[Puni Puni Poemi]]''. Two ''[[OVA]]'' episodes of sheer insanity. The 'magical girl transformation' involved shoving a knife up the bottom of a talking, dead, fish.

* ''[[Paprika]]''

* ''[[Sexy Commando]]'' (a.k.a.: Sexy Commando Gaiden: Sugoi yo, Masaru-san!)

* ''[[Super Milk-chan]]''

* ''[[Macademi Wasshoi]]''

* ''[[Moetan]]'' with its bizarre combination of [[Older Than They Look]] [[Fan Service]], genre-parodies and English lessons. Yes, they try to teach viewers English. Really.

* ''[[Gintama]]''. Its humor relies on a lot of Japanese puns, references to Japanese pop culture, Japanese-style humor, and a basic knowledge of famous historical Japanese figures.

* ''[[Yakitate!! Japan|Yakitate!! Ja-pan]]'' is a show/manga about bread. No, it does not teach you how to ''make'' the bread (one exception for bread-in-a-rice cooker). It focuses on tournament-style battles between bakers. And puns. Lots and ''lots'' of [[A Worldwide Punomenon|delicious Japanese pans.]]

** It was quite tame at first...then the reactions of the referees to the bread the bakers made got weirder and some turned into parodies and puns upon puns.

** Anything by [[Studio Shaft]] qualifies. Even the [[Ef a Tale of Memories|entirely serious ones]].

* ''[[Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan|Bludgeoning Angel Dokurochan]]''

* ''[[Dai Mahou Touge]]'', which is sort of a mix between ''[[Puni Puni Poemi]]'' and ''[[Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan|Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan]]'', with a protagonist who compensates her lack of hyperness with pure evil.

* ''The [[Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service]]'' is weird enough by itself but it's also weird ''about'' Japan, showcasing vestiges of ancient traditions still practiced there.

* ''[[Seven of Seven]]'': A normal schoolgirl is subjected to [[Cloning Blues]] when she's split into seven copies of herself... who then all try to go after the boy she was interested in. Eventually, they take turns being the 'real one'.

* ''[[Cromartie High School]]'' is a parody of old shounen shows, about a normal(ish) guy that starts going to school full of "badasses". And a gorilla. And a robot (that doesn't realize he's a robot). And a mute man that looks strangely like the deceased lead singer of [[Queen]].

* ''[[Nerima Daikon Brothers]]'', from the director of ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]''. An anime musical series about farmers who want to become musicians but are constantly low on cash. One of the characters falls in love with a panda. Aliens appear.

* ''[[Tokyo Pig]]''

* ''[[Akikan]]'' is a series about about empty soda/juice cans doing battle to determine whether steel or aluminum cans are superior, for the standardization of cans into one format, strengthening the industry. Oh, and the cans take the forms of [[Moe Anthropomorphism|cute girls in strange outfits...]]

* ''[[Ninin ga Shinobuden]]''. Attempting to explain the weirdness (especially Onsokumaru) will get you some weird looks.

* ''[[Fireball]]''

** And ''[[Saint Young Men]]'' by the same author, which is about Jesus and Buddha sharing an apartment in modern-day Japan.

* ''[[One Piece]]'', okay so you have a kid who wants to be not just any pirate, but the KING of the pirates, and he eats a magical fruit that turns him into a [[Rubber Man]], then he befriends a soda powered cyborg, a woman who can make extra limbs bloom like flowers, a break dancing french chef, and a man who uses three swords, ''at the same time''! And then there's a talking, shapeshifting reindeer doctor and a singing skeleton. And those are just some of the main characters.

* [[The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]], and especially its two spinoffs, ''[[Haruhi-chan|The Melancholy of Haruhi-Chan Suzumiya]]'' and ''Nyoron Churuya-San'' definitely qualify. Just read the lyrics to Haruhi-chan [http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/haruhichan/imamadenoarasuji.htm theme song].

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'', despite all the [[Creepy Cool Crosses]].

* The short ''[[Mori no Ando]]'' is... strange to say the least.

* ''[[Chinko no Tsubuyaki]]'' is a manga about boys who have talking penises. Talking. Penises. This one is so bizarre that it's often brought up in internet conversations purely as a benchmark of "how weird can Japanese media get."

* ''[[The World God Only Knows]]''. There is no possible way an idea like that could have come from anywhere but Japan, plain and simple.

* ''[[Patalliro]]'' is an oldschool example. It's a very weird shoujo comedy with BL elements that started in the late 70s and is still running today.

* ''[[Mawaru Penguindrum]]'': Two brothers must find a mystery object known as the 'Penguindrum' for an entity residing in a penguin-shaped hat that is possessing and keeping alive their [[Ill Girl]] sister, in company with small cartoonish [[Everything's Better with Penguins|penguins]] that only they can see. And ''then'' the copious amounts of [[Mind Screw]] start.

* ''[[Haiyore! Nyaruko-san|Nyarko San]]'': The formless crawling chaos of Nyarlathotep takes the form of a cute [[Manic Pixie Dream Girl|hyperactive schoolgirl]], along with Cthugha and Atlach-Nacha as other [[Moe]] girls.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* ''[[Madman (Comic Book)|Madman]]''. It's hard to place it in one particular genre or the other. Usually, it's every genre all at the same time.

* ''[[Savage Dragon]]'' is too violent and sexual to be a typical superhero book but way too fun to be a serious adult comic. Some of the villains this series has seen include a man who fires human waste with enough force to decapitate, a deadly [[Flying Brick]] with a chicken head, and a cute 3-foot tall warlord that takes over entire galaxies (and was friends with the hero's adopted daughter for a time). Then we have strange twists on [[Expy|expies]] of [[Doctor Doom]] or [[Captain Marvel]]. Then we have the other end of the spectrum with characters like Darklord and the Fiend who are very disturbing and deadly.

* ''[[Paperinik New Adventures]]''. Let me explain: '''[[Donald Duck]]''' has a [[Secret Identity]] as Paperinik, known in English-speaking countries as Superduck or the Duck Avenger; he once finds an [[Artificial Intelligence]] in a skyscraper. [[They Fight Crime]].

** Debatable: Paperinik had originally been created as [[Who's Laughing Now?|Donald's way to get back at the world for being]] [[The Chew Toy]] (his very first story involves him breaking into Scrooge's house and stealing the mattress he was sleeping on for bragging rights, and framing Gladstone for the deed), and the first stories showed him as [[The Dreaded|capable of scaring the crap out of the whole city by just showing up]], before [[Depending on the Writer|the stories portraying him as a superhero started to outnumber the sadistic avenger ones]]. While more light-hearted than the original stories, [[Paperinik New Adventures]] is [[Darker and Edgier]] than the superhero ones, and it's shown many times that Paperinik is just that dangerous: it's implied that he didn't kill the Evronians in the first issues so they could get back to their leaders and tell them that Earth wasn't an easy target, and that the cops don't try and arrest him for the crimes of his early career (or the ones he gets framed for or commits in pursue of the greater good) because they've learned they'll break in the home of the chief of the police and wake him up trying to arrest him if Paperinik he's in a good mood (it happened).

 

== Film ==

** ''[[The Giant Claw]]''

** ''[[Glen or Glenda]]''

** ''[[The Rocky Horror Picture Show]]''

** ''Grim Prairie Tales''

** ''[[Repo! The Genetic Opera]]''

** ''[[Total Recall]]''

** ''[[Attack of the Killer Tomatoes]]''

* '''WTF''' (Weird Thing from France)

** ''Save The Green Planet'', a film by South Korean director Jang Joon-Hwan.

** ''[[Sweet Movie]]''

** ''[[W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism]]''

* The weird German movie ''Sei zärtlich, Pinguin'' (Be gentle, [[Everything's Better with Penguins|penguin]])

* [[Santa Claus]] lives in outer space with tone-deaf singing [[Five-Token Band|children from all over the world]]? His sleigh is pulled by [[Nightmare Fuel|laughing reindeerbots]]? He teams up with his pal Merlin to battle an effeminate [[Poke the Poodle|poodle-poking]] [[Our Demons Are Different|demon]] in red tights? You can see all of this and more in the [[So Bad It's Good]] [[Cult Classic]] ''[[Santa Claus (film)|Santa Claus]]'', a Weird Mexican Thing.

* All the movies starring the Mexican luchador [[El Santo]] also definitely qualify as a Mexican Example Of Weirdness (MEOW).

* ''Mystics In Bali''. Oh lord, ''Mystics in Bali''! It's basically a WINDOT, a.k.a. Weird Indonesian Thing. Even weirder is that a lot of it is actually based on [[wikipedia:Leyak|Indonesian mythology!]]

* ''[[Black Sheep (2006 film)|Black Sheep]]'' is a black comedy STANZA about [[Killer Rabbit|Killer Sheep]].

 

== Literature ==

* Since ''[[Total Recall]]'' is already under Film, [[Philip K. Dick]].

* ''Wicked!'' and ''Deadly!'' by Morris Gleitzman and [[Paul Jennings]] are two children's series revolving around the bizarre, including a killer superadvanced sheep army, and immortality-conferring tea. Anything by [[Paul Jennings]] generally counts.

* [[Bizarro Fiction]], as a genre, is comprised hugely of WATs, wabbits, wickets, and STANZAs as of this writing. However, multi-language examples are slowly rising.

 

* Combine a [[Game Show]] and [[Cooking Show]] format in ''[[Iron Chef]]''. ''[[wikipedia:Iron Chef America|Iron Chef America]]'' is a more "normal" but more fast-paced version of the original.

** Some have said that the problem with Iron Chef USA (the one with Shatner) was that the creators assumed the original was only popular for laughing at wacky foreigners, so they didn't take it seriously. ICA occasionally pokes fun at the [[Kayfabe]] of the show (According to Alton, there are several Kitchen Stadiums, at least one of which is in space), but otherwise takes it seriously as a competition between culinary masters.

* ''[[LazyTown]]'' is a ''Weird Icelandic Thing'' (WIT).

* ''[[Takeshi's Castle]]''. ''[[Most Extreme Elimination Challenge|MXC]]'' is a WHAT (Weird Hilarious American Thing) made from it.

* ''Téléchat'', a French-Belgian puppet show from the 80's, the series is a parody of tv news presented by a black cat with an arm cast (which he uses as [[Hammerspace|an all-purpose box]]) called Groucha and his female counterpart, an ostrich called Lola. The news (which Groucha does with the help of a sentient microphone) relates the life of "gluons", supposedly the smallest things in existence . Sometimes Lola will also have a talk round, with a fork and a [[Funny Spoon|spoon]] ([[Uncanny Valley|with human faces!]]). There are also nonsense commercials with a green orang-utan in the jungle, who [[Running Gag|always]] manages to screw up the take, to the chagrin of the spot's director; and Léguman, a parody of Japanese Sentai show.

** Because of its quirkiness and freakish ambiance, [[Nightmare Fuel|this show scared a whole generation of french kids.]]

* In the same vein of odd children's shows we have [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBSflK1FTSY Telefrancais], a '''Wicket''' which features, among many other oddities, a talking pineapple puppet that lives in a junkyard and looks like a rejected furby; A fourth-wall breaking ''annonceur''; and ''Les Squelettes'', a musical group consisting of singing, dancing, instrument playing skeletons who will occasionally perform a number on ''the outside of a moving plane''. It was also made in [[The Eighties]].

* ''La Vie des Botes'' was a French sitcom about a robot family and talking objects (just like ''Pee-wee's Playhouse''), this show aired regular cartoons between the live-action segments, the channel, TF1, put many hope on this project (because it was a co-production with Canada, some designers from E.T and Alien worked on it) but it wasn't successful and it stayed for just one year, today, very few people remember this show.

** Greatest stunt? Pitting several ventriloquists against each other in the Puppet Petrol Pump challenge - the vent.s themselves had to put petrol in a car blindfolded, and the ''puppets'' had to shout to tell them when to stop. Closest to £20 worth won.

* ''SASUKE'' and ''Kinniku Banzuke'', which air in the US as ''[[Ninja Warrior]]'' and ''[[Unbeatable Banzuke]]'', respectively.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' veers off into Weird British Thing territory every-so-often. Especially when they make jokes based around British humor or accents.

** One episode had Rose Tyler trying to get the Queen of England to say "We are not amused." Hilarious for British audiences (and probably several Western audiences familiar with that real-life meme) but to Asian audiences, it would be odd-sounding and out-of-context.

* ''[[The Upside Down Show]]'', a show involving [[No Fourth Wall|interaction via pressing buttons on the remote control]] such as the "Heavy and light" buttons, is most definitely a [[WAT]] Also qualifies as a STANZA, given that it was filmed in Australia with an all-Australian cast.

* ''[[The Mighty Boosh]]'' is definitely a Wabbit.

* ''[[Twin Peaks]]'' definitely counts as a WHAT. It features an FBI agent with a sweet tooth as the main protagonist, a quirky soundtrack, an [[Cloudcuckoolander|eccentric]] [[Eyepatch of Power|eyepatch-wearing]] woman with [[Super Strength]], and {{spoiler|a dimension populated by strange beings who have the ability to [[Body Snatcher|control other peoples' bodies]]}}. If that isn't a WHAT, I don't know [[Incredibly Lame Pun|what]] is.

* A Weird Dutch Thing: ''[[Big Brother]]''.

** Within Sentai itself, there's [[Battle Fever J]], which has bizarre costumes and a lot of dancing. However, it introduced the first robot in Sentai, and was thus the first ''Super'' Sentai. Toei eventually added Goranger and JAKQ into the ranks of Super Sentai, possibly to ensure that Battle Fever J wasn't the first one on the list.

* ''[[The Monkees]]'' is filled with enough randomness and absurdity to qualify.

** Especially during the second season, where they were either stoned out of their minds or simply went aloof with their adlibbing antics…[[Everybody Must Get Stoned|”Frodis,” anyone?]]

* From the creators of ''[[Italian Spiderman]]'' comes ''[[Danger 5]]''. Danger 5 are an international team of spies charged with fighting against the Nazis and, ultimately, assassinating [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler|Hitler]]. This is a difficult task, as the Nazis are armed with dinosaurs, diamond women soldiers, and various other useful weapons. It's also set in an [[Alternate History|alternate 1960s]], despite being about [[World War II]].

* Any of [[Conan O'Brien]]'s late night shows would count as a WHAT. Yes, even his tenure on [[The Tonight Show]].

 

== Music ==

* Go on [[YouTube]] and search for "Halfby". You will not be disappointed.

* [[Neutral Milk Hotel]] - WHATs, but they're not humorous.

* [[Bjork]] is a Weird Icelandic Thing.

*** Half Japanese were founded in Coldwater, Michigan in 1974 (or '75) by two teenage brothers with no formal musical training. Or interest ''in'' formal musical training. Especially chords. To boot, their first full album was a ''triple-LP set''.

*** Suicide were formed by an organist and a performance artist in 1970 as a kind of free jazz outfit, and were probably the first band to self-identify as "punk". The New York duo's music was so weird and abrasive that no studio would touch them until 1977.

** Another very early (pre-'77) "punk" group, [[Talking Heads]], simply fit the WAT trope to a T...

* The Australian "little bands" scene of the late '70s and early '80s is a STANZA among STANZAs.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfss4Julqv4 The Boredoms].

* The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band were a WBFT in the 60s before [[Monty Python]] existed, and have been cited as a major influence on Python. (Neil Innes later went on to work with Python, [[The Rutles]] and [[Terry Gilliam]], while Vivian Stanshall had a less successful career performing comic monologues that were even weirder.)

* Jonny Jakobsen, also known as Dr. Bombay, Dr. Macdoo and Carlito is case of really wierd sweden made music. A notable [[Fauxreigner]].

* To many, [[Rush]] qualify as a Weird Canadian Thing. Political undertones in [[Sesquipidalian Loquaciousness|long-winded, wordy lyrics]] all wrapped up in a crispy [[Power Trio]] shell, while their singer/bassist/keyboardist sings at such a pitch that it takes a few listens to figure out whether he's male or female. And then people find out it's [[Better Than It Sounds]].

* [[Black Sabbath]] qualified as a Wabbit when they first popped up. Heavy metal was brand new and apparently, at least once, one of their very first songs during an early concert sent half the audience running out of the venue screaming. And despite being hated at first, they've been [[Vindicated by History]] and are now widely hailed as the fathers of heavy metal, with each of the original members (and [[Ronnie James Dio|one replacement]]) being called a virtuoso or musical genius in his own right.

* [[Versailles]] is a widget band in a [[Visual Kei|widget genre]]. Still managed to get a decent international following, despite the cursed-with-immortality backstory, Kamijo's [[Chewing the Scenery|love of the stage]], and [[Dude Looks Like a Lady|Hizaki's]] [[Elegant Gothic Lolita|frilly dresses]].

* Watch the music video for Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's Ponponpon. Weird Japanese Thing times one hundred. Also, [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?]]

* Much of the humour of the STANZA [[Flight of the Conchords]] (and their TV show, where New Zealand is a [[Cloudcuckooland]]) comes from exploiting this trope.

 

== New Media ==

* The ''[[Asdfmovie]]'' series is a rather odd series of sketches not tied together at all that involves potatos with guns, throwing cheese at aliens and "doing an internet".

* The ''[[Italian Spiderman]]'' series on [[YouTube]] is a STANZA. It is filmed in English, dubbed into Italian and then subtitled back into English. As well as being a parody, its' plot is fairly nonsensical, and it features various wonders such as surf-offs derailed by attacking penguins, and detachable exploding boomerang moustaches.

 

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

* ''The Knight Life'', a [[Life Embellished]] webcomic with a tendency towards parody, is very much a WHAT. Such characters as a housewife who puts on an armless costume and fights crime as "The Masked Maggot," or a lowlife who works as a human rug and can identify shoes by how they press into his back, make sense if and only if one's familiar with the parts of American culture they're mocking.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* ''[[Maid the RPG]]''. Original flavour Japanese weirdness in RPG form.

* ''[[Ho L]]: Human Occupied Landfill''. Hand-written in several late-night sessions in an IHOP, and originally offered no character creation since "everyone just makes the same types of characters over and over again". When character creation was included in the expansion, stat rolling included several strange and useless abilities, such as an "Almond Joy" stat. ("Roll 1-3: Sometimes you feel like a nut. Roll 4-6: Sometimes you don't.")

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'': This is game series in which you play as an Italian plumber and have to repeatedly rescue a princess from an evil turtle-dragon, while fighting off his armies of walking mushrooms, talking bombs, and bumper-car-like turtles. To help in your quests, you get such things as leaves that turn into raccoon-suits which give you flight, flowers that shoot fire balls, mushrooms that make you grow, and an [[Extreme Omnivore]] dinosaur that you can ride. The reason such weirdness doesn't really get addressed by fans all that often is because 1) At the time the original was made, video games rarely made sense to begin with, and 2) although the former is no longer the case today its long standing popularity has gotten people used to it.

** ''[[Mario vs. Donkey Kong]]'' was developed by the Redmond, Washington-based Nintendo Software Technology Corporation, making it an example of a WHAT sub-series to the above. The games involve Mario facing Donkey Kong after the latter wants some of the Mini-Mario toys the former produced.

* ''[[NiGHTS Into Dreams]]'' could be considered an example of this - some of the weirdness comes from the fact it's about dreams, of course, but you can bet if it had been made in the West they wouldn't have gone half as weird, no matter what the subject matter demanded. Plus, the western-marketed sequel is considerably more generic.

* ''Super Galedic Hour'' seems to be a recreation of some kind of game show, but it's hard to be sure when one of the events is Butt Sumo, and all the contestants are voluptuous women in skimpy animal costumes. [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpl-v6ZJQic It really has to be seen to be believed].

* ''[[Cho Aniki]]'' is a game famous for its [[Manly Gay|comically exaggerated]] [[Ho Yay|homoerotic overtones]].

** Incidentally, there's also a recent Japanese meme centered around muscular gay porn star Billy Herrington, a.k.a. Aniki, arguably the real-life version of this. Viral videos derived from this meme commonly use footage of overtly homoerotic wrestling, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTr7jing36U such as in this one].

* ''[[Doshin the Giant]]'' probably qualifies, especially the sequel, where you must save Doshin by pissing on things.

** You aren't just pissing on things, you're running around the show floor of a business convention pissing ''floaty pink hearts at the booth babes''.

* ''[[Chibi-Robo!]]''. [[Gi FT Pi A]]. Let's face it. ALL of skip Ltd.'s games fall under this trope. It's most telling when they use the popular idea of a [[Crossover]] video game to make ''[[Captain Rainbow]]'', about the title character and his [[Secret Identity]] Nick helping out second-rate Nintendo characters get their wishes granted.

* Similar to the above, the ''[[Parodius]]'' series, which plays like the Gradius games... except nowhere in the Gradius series can you play as a torpedo-riding [[Playboy Bunny]] who blasts a fifty-foot tall Vegas showgirl while dodging incoming fire from giant penguins.

** It's actually a lot more difficult to explain than that. Parodius probably out-widget most widget series in general. Just trying to describe Parodius boss battles will make anyone sweat and tremble, then fall into a coma. Look at it yourself. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=poYXjPoh5G4&t=2m10s\]

* ''[[Earthworm Jim (video game)|Earthworm Jim]]'' is another fine example of a WHAT.

** Partly a WHAT, partly a Wabbit (many Earthworm Jim developers, including the lead developer Dave Perry who also set up Shiny Entertainment, are British). Is there a name for multicultural weirdness?

** Whatever the hell ''Crimsoness'' is, it's certainly not angsty. There's WAY too much aggressive face-punching for that.

* Swedish example: ''[[Mondo Medicals]]'' and ''[[Mondo Agency]]''. Just...''what the fuck''.

* While the first two games of Konami's ''[[Crime Fighters]]'' series were straight arcade beat'em ups with just a few oddball things here and there, the final game in the series, ''[[Violent Storm]]'', goes all out Widget, it's a pastiche of Post-Apoc locales with post-apoc punks and all kinds of weirdness culminating in a boss battle with a [[Akira|pre-fetus Tetsuo]] expy. And his bodyguard gives [[Final Fantasy VI|KEFKA]] a run for his money on the ridiculous-looking bishie clown angle, looking like an effeminate [[Street Fighter|Blanka]]. There's also a shout-out to [[Cho Aniki]] with Julius the bodybuilder, possibly the funniest 'stampeding fat guy' enemy type ever created, the lollypops (yes that's their name. Like [[Final Fight|Andore]], they come in regular and Jr. varieties), a Ninja Turtle expy in Sledge, a train conductor with a gigantic ticket puncher, and cameos by a few of the programmers who can be beaten up and knocked off the stage. And on said train stage, there's a momma pig with little baby pigs walking around. The baby pigs can be [[Improvised Weapon|picked up]], and when thrown become FOOTBALLS. (the American kind)

* ''[[Battle Circuit]]'' from [[Capcom]] is a lesser widget entry than the above, focusing more on anime/game references than the weirdness, though the final boss and Dr.Saturn more than make up for it. And one of the characters is a little girl riding a pink ostrich wearing an eyepatch. The ostrich, not the girl. And the ostrich is MALE. Also for no apparent reason one of the bosses is an Elvis impersonator.

* ''[[Monster Party]]'' features the most bizarre assortment of [[Everything Trying to Kill You]], including a [[Sequential Boss]] that starts as a shrimp and turns into an onion ring and then a kebab. Bandai never released the game in Japan; it sold poorly in America, probably on account of its awful gameplay mechanics.

* ''Project Rub'' (aka ''Feel the Magic XY/XX'') is absolutely mindboggling. At one point you have to get some goldfish out of a man's stomach, at another you follow a helicopter on a unicycle, and at another you dance with a girl at a campsite (incorporating the fire into your moves), and at yet another you have to bowl a man rolled into a ball at some people waiting for a bus. As you can probably guess, those who do buy the game are in for a real treat.

** Also see ''The Rub Rabbits'', the sequel/prequel, in which you [[Meet Cute|meet your true love]], [[First Guy Wins|win her over]], [[Protection Mission|defend her from other suitors]] (who dance, or parachute from the sky), and [[Stalker with a Crush|fend off the advances of a perky schoolgirl]]. You do this by running up the down escalator while dodging sumo wrestlers, paddling a log across a giant-crocodile-infested sea, eating delicious cakes (and avoiding the bad ones) while tied to a chair, closing the rapid-fire pop-ups on her computer, doing aromatherapy to help her do yoga, and fighting a mecha-bear.

* ''[[Zeno Clash]]'' is a Wichet (as in, '''W'''eird '''Ch'''ilean '''T'''hing).

** Anything else from ACE Team, like ''[[Rock of Ages (video game)|Rock of Ages]]'', also qualifies (okay, except for ''[[Batman Doom]]''). They're to Chile as [[Cactus]] is to Sweden.

* ''[[Kirby]]'', anyone? The game about a [[Big Eater|constantly]] [[Black Hole Belly|hungry]] pink puffball living in a dream land full of happy people, sentient trees, insane walruses, and chef potatoes?

* ''[[Gaia Online|zOMG!]]'' is a game that [[Everything Trying to Kill You|has you fight, among other things, gift boxes, lawn gnomes, jackets that behave like wolves, and cyborg alien rodents.]] Your weapons are rings, which have effects such as launching beehives, wrapping the monsters in duct tape, and covering yourself or an ally in cooking spray. Pop-culture references abound. And the game takes place on a [[Planet Eris]] as it is. Definitely a WHAT.

* ''[[Rose and Camellia]]'' and its sequel, two Flash games about [[Cat Fight|noblewomen bitchslapping]] each other.

* The ''[[Power Instinct]]'' [[Fighting Game]] series has, in addition to a retinue of [[Serious Business]] martial artists typical for the genre, not one, not two, but ''three'' [[Never Mess with Granny|little old ladies]], a perverted old man, a hulking amazon (well, [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]; fighting game women tend to look like slender beauties, not wrestlers), a [[Magical Girl]], her [[Stripperific]] roller-blading alter-ego, a man in a dog suit (really!), a fat kid wearing nothing but a giant bib and has his... [[Fan Disservice|objects show when knocked into the air...]] well, rest assured that's not all. A usual fighting game might have [[Joke Character|one such character just for laughs]]. But these weirdoes are what ''[[Power Instinct]]'' is really about.

* ''[[Nezumi Man]]'' is gameplay-wise a ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' clone, but includes a sentient fridge, a kangaroo, and a dragon cosplayer among its bosses. Oh, and nearly everyone is a [[Super-Deformed]] ''rat''.

* The ''DJMAX'' series has a Weird Korean Thing in the ''NB Ranger'' series of music videos, which consist of ''[[Power Rangers|Power Ranger]]'' lookalikes opposing love by ''beating up couples on dates.''

** Ditto its [[Spiritual Successor|Spiritual Predecessor]], the ''[[Gobliiins]]'' series.

* ''[[Toss the Turtle]]''. Get a [[Turtle Power]] , a cannon, your [[Weapon of Choice|Gun Of Choice]], and add several crazy things like smoking French phoenix-like birds, bananas who can shoryuken the shit out of you, and angry ground creatures with a tenuous hold on their sanity, all for the purpose of getting cash, and you got something that is a grade-A '''WHAT'''.

* ''[[Gadget Past As Future]]'', by Haruhiko Shono. It resembles ''[[Myst]]'', but without any real puzzles; you play a brainwashed secret agent in a nation resembling that from ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' and have to help a group of scientists gather a bunch of gizmos to build a spaceship to escape earth before a comet hits and [[Gainax Ending|its ending gives redefines the meaning of not providing any fucking explanation for anything]].

* ''[[Flower]]'' definitely belongs here since it's a game about opening flowers and the inability to lose.

* Another Weird Swedish Thing is ''[[Garden Gnome Carnage]]''. The premise: You're a garden gnome tied to a building on wheels, and you're trying to hold off elves from dropping Christmas presents into the chimney (because gnomes hate holidays) by swinging into them and dropping bricks on them, in addition to the occasional air strike. Oh, and this game was made by [[Daniel Remar]] (of ''[[Iji]]'' and ''[[Hero Core]]'' fame).

* Parodied in ''[[The Simpsons Game]]''. ''Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game'' is a stage built entirely from references to ''[[Okami]]'', ''[[Pokémon]]'', and ''[[Katamari Damacy]]'', while also using series gags like Mr. Sparkle. Furthered when every character explicitly notes it as being in Japan, much to Homer's frustration.

* ''[[Vib Ribbon]]'' - You control a rabbit wandering across a mobius strip dodging random obstacles that appear in time with the music. Oh, and despite being made in the late 90's, everything is using [[Vector Game|vector graphics]] like it's the early 80's. And you can make your own levels by putting in your own CDs. It's proof positive that WJTs and minimalism are quite happy together.

* ''[[Tail Of The Sun]]'' - You lead a tribe of cavemen in building a tower out of mammoth tusks tall enough to reach the sun.

* ''Vegetable Game''. As far as we can tell, it's about a crudely-drawn bear hugging escalatingly bad people, from "Jaywalker" up to "[[Adolf Hitler]]". No vegetables involved at all. Also, the game repeatedly tells you not to play it.

* The localization of ''[[Samurai Zombie Nation]]'' changed the player character, tasked with defending the United States from an [[Eldritch Abomination]], from a floating tengu mask into a floating samurai head, disguising its WJT-ness not one bit.

* ''[[Catherine]]''.

* ''[[Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom]]'' is an [[Adventure Game]] where a cucumber hero and a baby persimmon sidekick [[Save the Princess]] and battle with farmers in games of [[Rock-Paper-Scissors]].

* ''[[Hatoful Boyfriend]]'' is about a human hunter-gatherer girl who goes to a high school for pigeons and doves, and discovers romance along the way.

** [[Captain Obvious|Yes,]] [[Interspecies Romance|with]] [[Uplifted Animal|the]] ''[[But You Screw One Goat!|birds]]''.

* Namco's ''Wagyan Land'', a [[Platform Game]] where you fight with projectile katakana and bosses try to defeat you with [[Shiritori]].

* ''[[Hellsinker]]'' is this with a healthy heaping of [[Mind Screw]].

** To further drive the point home, one of the main characters is a frail blind girl who uses a naked crystal fairy as a sword, another one is an artificial [[Hermaphrodite]] half god. {{spoiler|Also in one of the final battle's you fight a kitten togheter with the spirit's of four dead children inside a computer system of some sort}}.

* ''[[Umihara Kawase]]'' is a game where you control a schoolgirl using a lure on rubber line to maneuver through Bizarrchitecture stages with multiple pathways, and avoiding various species of aquatic life, including fish with legs.

* ''[[Bunny Must Die]]'', a game where you play a playboy bunnygirl cursed with cat ears and that can manipulate time, who fights such enemies as a photorealistic picture of a cat and an expy of Dracula that spouts [[Zero Wingrish|Zero Wing quotes]] and inflicts instant death by flashing you. Those are just some the named characters, never mind some of mooks.

* The ''[[Edna and Harvey The Breakout|Edna & Harvey]]'' [[Edna and Harvey Harveys New Eyes|franchise]] are a rare example of a PEGS, since both games are [[Point and Click Game|point-and-click adventure games]] in which you play insane female protagonists.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[Princess Pi]]'' tends to rely on nonsensical logic.

* ''[[Dolan]]'' is the epitome of a Weird Finnish Thing.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

** ''[[The Problem Solverz]]''.

** ''[[The Amazing World of Gumball]]''

** ''[[Robotomy]]''

** ''[[Secret Mountain Fort Awesome]]''

* [[Adult Swim]]'s original animation block is filled to the brim with a variety of American widgets, starting from ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]''.

** ''[[Perfect Hair Forever]]''

** also, ''Pic Pic André Shoow'' by the same authors

* ''[[The Ren and Stimpy Show]]''... when it's not being [[Ho Yay]]-laden [[Nightmare Fuel]], anyway.

* ''Les Renés'', another ''Weird Thing from France'', a series about a cyclop family, created by the French artist Hervé Di Rosa.

* One of the earliest French CGI series, ''Chipie & Clyde'', a series about a selfish wolf called Clyde who live in a loft and his antagonist, a girl called Chipie, who is able to send him by magic to make a test each time he says the [[Cluster F-Bomb|F word]].

** in the same case, ''Les Quarxs'', a scientist who shows some weird creatures that came from nowhere which caused him some serious problems in his work.

* ''[[King of the Hill]]'' comes across to outsiders, even within the United States, as a Weird Middle American Thing.

* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJYxCSXjhLI Rejected]," by [[Don Hertzfeldt]]. Or just about anything by him.

** Or INSPIRED BY him, like [[Let's Meet the Meat|those Pop Tarts commercials]].

* ''[[Pingu]]'' is totally a weird Swiss thing. It's a [[Claymation]] series about a [[Bratty Half-Pint]] little boy [[Everything's Better with Penguins|penguin]], who [[Rubber Man|can stretch and squash himself into any shape he desires]], who speaks a [[Speaking Simlish|non-sensical babble]] thus leaving the stories of the show to be told through inference via body language, and of which several episodes have been [[Banned in China]] due to [[Nightmare Fuel]] and [[Toilet Humor]].

* ''[[Kappa Mikey]]''. That is all.

* ''[[Alpha and Omega]]''

* ''[[Gumby]]'', anyone?

* ''[[Celebrity Deathmatch]]''

* ''[[Fat Dog Mendoza]]'': The adventures of [[A Boy and His X|a boy in a superhero costume and his dog (which looks more like a giant cat's head with legs and a tail)]]. They're best firends with a girl who has [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|purple hair]], their teacher has two heads [[Punny Name|(one named Polly, the other Esther)]], the villains include a guy with feet for hands and another with a giant green head... and that's just the ''premise.''

 

* Most small Toyotas since about 2000 have this to some extent or another. Matter of fact, on the international front, ridiculous little dinky cars and hatchbacks from all around the world are perceived this way by Americans.

** The ultimate example would probably be the autorickshaw, a demented little car-thing built around a ''motorcycle''.

* Pretty much everything shown on [http://www.wtfjapanseriously.com this site], really.

* There are also the Japanese vending machines which dispense things like live crabs/lobsters and ''used panties''.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Fiction]]

[[Category:Absurdity Ascendant]]

[[Category:Japanese Media Tropes]]

[[Category:Show Genres]]