Web Animation / Arfenhouse

2 Following

Arfenhouse is a collection of flash movies by Disaster Labs, based loosely upon their RPGs, with the first movie appearing in 2002 at Newgrounds. 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 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.
• Bond Gun Barrel: The first Arfenhouse video opens with this, except instead of shooting the viewer, Housemaster just laughs at them.
• Bilingual Bonus: Arfenhouse 6 has a scene with katakana that reads "ゴトヘルアナダイ ファキュ". ^ExplanationIt reads "Gotoheruanadai Fakyu", which roughly transliterates into "Go to hell and die. Fuck you!'"
• Brick Joke: One that takes a few movies: in Arfenhouse 2, Housemaster made plans to go to Hawaii. The heroes eventually make it to Hawaii at the end of Arfenhouse 6.
• Butt-Monkey: Joe, in spades.
  Housemaster: "OHH FUK!!! TEH COMMUNITY CHEZZT FORCLOZD ON MA BEEEEEEF JEERRRKKEEE!!! j0 GOZ 2 JAYL!!!"
  Joe: Hey!! Let me see that! ... '...Beef jerky... Joe goes to... jail'? 'Get $400, Joe goes to jail'... 'Get out of jail free except for Joe who goes to jail'... 'Everybody wins except for Joe who goes to jail'?! ...Y'know what? Forget it! Why did I even come here thinking I could play a decent game of Monopoly with you people?"
• Chest Monster: Played for Laughs when Good Kitty bursts out of Joseph's stomach in Arfenhouse 6, much to the latter's horror and pain.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: "FOOL! All we do in Hell is play DDR!"
• Eye Scream: L3MUNAA@@AIIIIYYYYDdd!!!!!1
• Headdesk: Arfenhouse Teh Movie Too has a random interscene with someone saying "BREAK TIME" repeatedly while bashing his head against a desk. And bleeding.
• Fridge Horror: Invoked in-universe by Seppel.
  Seppel: Wait a minute! What was Professor Utonium doing making little girls in the first place?!
  [Beat]
  Misteroo: Ew.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Joe is aware that there are scripts.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: Near-constant, except the "Matrix" in this case is reality itself, or whatever passes for reality here. Sometimes commented on: "Oh no, it's doing it again! I feel nauseous!"
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: From Arfenhouse 6, after Joe quits playing Monopoly:
  Dog: d1d j00 AWWNAA n0 h0w I |_00k NEKKID?!?!
  Joe: HELL NO!
• 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. Though Joe still stands out because he's the only character who isn't Stylistic Suck.
• Numbered Sequels: Played with by the movie series, which goes straight from 4 to 6.
• Only Sane Man: Poor Joseph tries to keep things on track. He is always outnumbered and the universe hates him.
• 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: Saying these videos have a plot is extremely generous, considering how prevalent the random events are.
• Real Trailer, Fake Movie: Kill Billy recreates the entire Kill Bill trailer.
• 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!!!!!!"
  • "I AM INTERFACE!"
  • The beginning of Arfenhouse 2 has a recreation of the intro to ''Excel Saga''.
  • Housecraft.
  • More obscurely, the Pincushion Man.
• Stylistic Suck: The backgrounds and objects are drawn as this. only Joseph is drawn normally.
• Take That!:
  • Done to the many crappy 8BT ripoffs flooding Newgrounds at the time twice: once in the beginning for Arfenhouse 2, the other as a standalone movie entitled 8-Bitch Fyve. The latter has a Freeze-Frame Bonus that elaborates further upon this, while also having a few cutaway jokes about how Dragon Warrior is better than Final Fantasy.
  • From Arfenhouse 6: "@dV|\|7 (|-|1|_|_|)|2|\| $uUuuUU|_||<DD!!!!1!"
• Un-Installment: There never was an Arfenhouse 5