What Animation Program Does Alan Becker Use?

The main characters of the series. ^note Pictured (top to bottom, left to right): ViraBot, the Animator, the Chosen One, the Dark Lord, Yellow, Blue, the Second Coming, Green, Red. Not pictured: victim, Purple, Orange and many side characters.

An animator is pitted against his creation, the Animation.

That's this work in a nutshell. But the fun part? The craziness that ensues goes on a higher level each new installment! Created on Adobe Animate and posted on YouTube, Newgrounds and DeviantArt by Alan Becker, aka noogai (who, by now, is not at all a new guy), it stars himself as the animator who'd draw a stick figure for...well, animating. It's just that they go sentient and use various methods to attack him, prompting him to fight back. They can also exit his animation program! The full series can be watched on Alan's Youtube channel.

Throughout its timeline:

• After a three-year hiatus, a successful Kickstarter campaign caused the fourth installment to be released on October 2nd, 2014.
• In 2015, a spinoff episode called "Animation vs. Minecraft" was announced, along with a Patreon page to fund the animations.
• In December 2016, it was announced that a second spinoff episode, "Animation vs. YouTube", is in production, and a three-minute preview was updated, followed by the full episode in early August 2017.
• In November 2017, a short called "The Rediscovery - AVM Shorts Episode 1" was released, along with the announcement that new episodes of this series are to be expected monthly.
• In July 2018, another spinoff was announced called AVA Shorts, with "AVA" standing for Animator vs. Animation. These shorts would follow the life of the Second Coming along with the animator after "Animator Vs Animation IV". The AVM shorts series will not be cancelled, but they will air concurrently. These shorts were later compiled into a longer video titled "Animator vs. Animation V".

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Entries

Main series

• Animator vs. Animation (2006)
• Animator vs. Animation II (2007)
• Animator vs. Animation III (2011)
• Animator vs. Animation IV (2014)
• Animator vs. Animation V (2020) ^note Originally started out as a short series called AvA Shorts, consisting of four episodes before they were merged together into one video

Spin-offs

• Animation vs. Minecraft (2015)
  • AvM Shorts - Season 1 (2017-2019)
  • AvM Shorts - Season 2 (2020)
  • AvM Shorts - Season 3 (2020-present)
• Animation vs. YouTube (2017)
• Animation vs. League of Legends (2018)
• Animation vs. Pokémon (2019)
• Animation vs. Super Mario Bros. (2019)
• Animation vs. Arcade Games (2021)

Other

• Blue's New Superpower - Plug for #TeamTrees

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    In General

• Absentee Actor:
  • The Animator doesn't appear or interact with the animations at all in Animation vs. Minecraft, Animation vs. YouTube, the AvM Shorts and Animation vs. Super Mario Bros..
  • The Second Coming, Red and Yellow were all absent for "The Nether" and "Villagers".
• Art Attacker: Both the Animator and the stick figures can use digital drawing tools to create weapons.
• Artifact Title: The Animator and his animations haven't been hostile to each other since AvA4, so most entries taking place after it are titled "Animations vs X" instead. This is played straight when the Animator vs Animation Shorts series started, and the Animator is still allied with his creations, but fighting a virus that has infected his computer. It's a subversion; it turns out The Dark Lord, created by the Animator in AvA3, is the one who created the virus.
• Author Avatar: The Animator is, both literally and In-Universe, noogai.
• Badass Normal: AIM. Though they end up getting killed, they manage to hold their own against The Chosen One with nothing but their wit and paintbrushes.
• Big Bad:
  • The Animator himself. After a Heel–Face Turn in IV, however, he became the Big Good instead.
  • The Dark Lord is this, as proven in the AVA Shorts, where he and the Chosen One wreck havoc across the entire Internet, not to mention that he created Vira Bot and was one of the two people that caused the Blue Screen of Death in III.
• Breather Episode: The entire Season 2 of the AvM Shorts could be considered one for the spin-off, given that the second half of Season 1 involved a story arc and Season 3 had a story arc since the beginning.
• The Chosen One: Used as a "difficulty level" for the Animation in 2 & 3. Parodied in 3, again through the Animation.
• Cyberspace: Pretty much where the series takes place. First, the Animation and Animator duke it out on the Flash program, causing a lot of damage to the interface. Then, in the latter 2 installments, the Animation hops out of Flash and wreaks havoc on the Animator's desktop!
• Death Is Cheap: Or at least, it is when the stick figures are operating on Minecraft logic, as "PVP" demonstrates. Additionally, anything from a web page that is damaged or destroyed can be restored by refreshing the page, including deleted individuals. Subverted with The Chosen One, who escaped (off-screen) to the internet before Alan's first computer crashed.
• Early Installment Weirdness: Considering the airdates of the older videos, how dated they are pretty much shows. Besides the fact the Animator used to have Windows XP, the SFX sounded low in quality, among a few other things.
• Easily Forgiven: In the main "Animation vs. (Video Game)" videos, the antagonist is always forgiven by the end of the video (except Herobrine who they barely noticed the existence).
• Exploiting the Fourth Wall: These videos are based on this trope. The Animation (a stick figure) interacts with everything from various applications' interfaces to icons on the desktop to system menus, trying to destroy the Animator (the mouse cursor).
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Almost constantly, from the second installment onward. Throughout all the intense action, there are often Easter eggs to be found in the background.
• A God Am I: The Animator is pretty much thinking this, if you consider the fact that he's supposed to be the one calling the shots, and literally the one who allows the computer (and anything on it) to run at all.
• Gag Dub: The first three installments, done by text-to-speech programs.
• Improbable Weapon User: AIM uses paintbrushes as weapons.
• Improvised Weapon: Both Victim and The Chosen One use whatever they can use on the desktop as weapons.
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Nearly anything that gets drawn in Adobe Flash/Animate comes to life, especially the stick figures. This is also true for the video game characters, who start breaking their rules due to either an outside interference from a foreigner or having developed their own desires on their own.
• Interface Screw: Everything the Animations ever do when fighting noogai causes damage to his computer's GUI, to the point where both sides end up weaponizing it to some extent.
• Living Drawing: The series is about animated stick figures coming to life and rebelling against their creators.
• Living Program: This animation series is about stick figures drawn in Adobe Flash becoming sentient as they are created. They live inside a computer and interact with their animator. Desktop icons, anti-viruses and videogame characters may also spontaneously become sentient. The same can be said for the video game characters, who begin displaying their true personalities the moment they're disrupted by a foreigner (or in rare instances like Q*bert's, acting up on their own).
• Medium Awareness: The stick figure being antagonized in each video is aware that he's inside a computer. His attempts at foiling the Animator involve doing things such as messing with the interface, destroying the Shut Down button, and even breaking the computer.
• Order Versus Chaos: Simply put, Both Sides Have a Point. While Animator was explicitly villainous in the first episode, The Chosen One is pretty destructive even towards bystanders, and the Animator lets the violent little stick figure live (your mileage may vary whether this was a Fate Worse than Death). In episode two, The Chosen One throws the first punch, and Animator is simply trying to survive.
• Physical God: Noogai, The Chosen One and The Dark Lord all have god-like power in a way or another.
• Playing with Fire: The Chosen One and the Dark Lord can breathe and shoot fire. Also, Firefox which is a fox with fire powers.
• Rage Against the Author: The entire premise is built on this.
• Running Gag: The Animator's required essay isn't safe from the animation's presence, being shoryuken'd in 2, destroyed by his battle with Clippy in 3, and exploded by TNT in vs. Minecraft.
  • Of note: In vs. Minecraft, he wises up and has a backup copy of the essay saved, but it gets blown up too. He also has a copy in the "STORAGE" folder that remains untouched.
    • Although since the first zombie crawls out of that one to fight the stick figures, it's too safe to assume that the words and letters inside the file would be in one piece...
    • However, the damage done by the game was reversed at the end of the video, so we can assume that the Required Essay is back to normal.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: The Chosen One at the end of 2 and into the beginning of 3.
• Show, Don't Tell: Dialogue in any form is very rare, with the characters doing the vast majority of their communication in purely visual manners. The exceptions are mostly in text:
  • The Animator sends AIM messages to a programmer friend in 2.
  • The Animator's Facebook page is open in 4, and he communicates with someone off-screen out loud. At the end, the Second Coming starts speaking in text, whereupon the Animator creates a text box to reciprocate; this carries over to the first AvA Short.
  • In vs. YouTube, YouTube speaks (briefly) with annotation boxes, as well as by playing isolated words from different videos.
  • In vs. Pokémon, the Pokémon characters speak in HeartGold text boxes both in and out of the DS.
  • In "AVM Shorts" as of "The Titan Ravager," the stick figures sometimes communicate with poorly animated drawings above their heads. As shown in "Lush Caves," they can be physically interacted with.
• Stick Figure Animation: Victim and his clones, the Chosen One, the Dark Lord, the Second Coming, and the stick figures of the "Stick Figures Fight" website.
• Suddenly Speaking: Downplayed. The stick figures never speak per se apart from the Second Coming briefly speaking in text in AvA 4 and the start of AvA Shorts 1 , but they do occasionally make sounds beyond the normal wooshing movements and footsteps.
  • In The Building Contest, the Second Coming falls asleep while everyone else is building, snoring before the timer goes off.
  • In The Dolphin Kingdom, Green sobs after everyone escapes from a swarm of Drowned, losing hope that they'll be able to return home and see the Second Coming again.
  • In Cave Spider Roller Coaster, everyone pants heavily, catching their breath, after destroying the Nether Portal.
  • In Titan Ravager, Blue and Yellow's conversation is depicted with drawings above their heads. The same is true with Red and the Second Coming in Lush Caves, with the added effect of being able to physically interact with the drawings, implying that they're not just for the benefit of the audience.
• The Voiceless: Everyone, with the exception of Clippy, the Animator, the Second Coming, and YouTube. Notably, YouTube communicates using annotation boxes and splicing together voice clips from different videos, making Mad Libs Dialogue.
• Rule of Funny: Alan Becker did these for comedy. It shows.

    Animator vs. Animation 1

• Badass Normal: Victim. At least, until he starts cloning himself.
• Combat Pragmatist: Victim is this, much more so than his successor that appears in the sequels. To be fair, noogai created this iteration of the Animation specifically for torture (aptly naming it "victim"). It's only natural for this little guy to come up with some dirty tricks to fight back.
• Self-Duplication: Victim does this.
• Sequel Escalation: The first: a small fight against a normal Animation who eventually clones himself.
• Updated Re-release: This epidode reuploaded in HD on YouTube in 2015.

    Animator vs. Animation 2

• Ambiguous Gender: The AIM icon. While the animator and The Chosen One are referred to as male in the artist description, AIM is never referred to with gendered pronouns.
• An Ice Person: The Chosen One. He freezes Mozilla Firefox with an ice-cold hand blast.
• Beam-O-War: Between the Adobe Photoshop icon and the Chosen One.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: The files in the Recycle Bin are labeled "crap", "junk", and "crappy junk".
• Crazy-Prepared: Rather than starting from scratch like with Victim, the Animator prepares for this incident with a Library full of weapons, that can all be scripted to aim and fire autonomously. Sadly The Chosen One is too powerful and renders the lot of it useless due to Interface Screw.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • The Animator contemplating whether to send the dead AIM icon to "Graveyard" or "Heaven".
  • Many of the files Avast! goes through on startup, namely "alanis.dll", "alanisgood.dll", "alanisgoodat.dll" and "alanisgoodatanimation.dll".
  • The icons on the start menu mirroring their dead and damaged desktop counterparts.
  • The conversation between the Animator and the programmer:

^{The Conversation}
noogai3: HELP!
programmer021: What's up?
noogai3: i dont have much time to talk
noogai3: he might kill aim soon
programmer021: Who?
noogai3: how do i beat him?
noogai3: the stick figure
programmer021: Ohh...
programmer021: That guy
programmer021: What level is he?
noogai3: i made him the chosen one
programmer021: Are you crazy?!
programmer021: That's suicide,man
noogai3: so how do i beat him??
programmer021: Hey, no worries
programmer021: This is what you should do:
<AIM dies>

• Gone Horribly Right: Well, the Animator called him the Chosen One for a reason.
• High-Speed Missile Dodge: The Chosen One does this.
• His Name Is...: The Animator's programmer friend was just about to reveal how to stop the Chosen One when AIM was killed.
• Hoist by His Own Petard
  • AIM is killed when The Chosen One throws the open AIM window at him.
  • My Computer shrugs off The Chosen One's attacks, but having his disks thrown back into him makes him lock up.
• Mundane Utility: At the end, the Chosen One is forced to use his powers to destroy pop-up windows for the Animator.
• Shock and Awe: The Chosen One, again. Burns the Flash 8 icon with a storm cloud's lightning bolt.
• Serial Escalation: In-universe example; When the Animator goes over what power level to make the new Animation, he goes through "victim", "killer", "BEAST", and finally stops on "The Chosen One".
  • Fittingly, in the flash game for Animator vs. Animation that was made after the sequel was released, these names served as Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels for playing as the Animator.
• Sequel Escalation: The second: An bigger battle against a tougher, fire-breathing Animation that goes beyond the Flash editor and onto the Animation's desktop. The Animation uses his desktop icons against the Animator, but some of them fight back.
• Updated Re-release: This epidode reuploaded in HD on YouTube in 2015.
• What Were You Thinking?: The Programmer's response to Animator creating a stick figure called "The Chosen One".
• Wreathed in Flames: When The Chosen One bursts through its restraints.
• Zerg Rush: How The Chosen One is ultimately neutralized; he's rushed by several bolts from Avast! that restrain him so he can be trapped in a chest.

    Animator vs. Animation 3

• Bullet Seed: The Chosen One eats a chunk of the Animator's essay and spits out letters (that coincidentally spelled out "waddup") at the Animator.
• Bullet Time: The video uses this frequently.
• Defeat Means Friendship: After The Chosen One defeated the Dark Lord, they teamed up to get revenge on the animator.
• Double Knockout: Happens when the stick figures are fighting in the solitaire game and hit each other with cards at the same time, although they get back up after a few seconds.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: One of these done by the Dark Lord and The Chosen One at the end.
• Evil Counterpart: The Dark Lord, who possesses similar abilities to the Chosen One and is a red stick figure.
• Evil Overlord: Averted with the Dark Lord. He's actually The Dragon, and from the moment of his creation, it's pretty much established as such.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • The Stick Slavery.com page.
  • Clippy's eyes widening upon seeing the blob of letters flying at him.
  • Yahoo! Messenger's emoji's reaction to being pulled out of the Recycle Bin into the stick figures' black hole.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: The Dark Lord rallies the desktop icons to help fight the Chosen One.
• Groin Attack: Clippy's tornado attack with the letters does some of this.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • After being defeated, The Dark Lord he teams up with The Chosen One to destroy the Animator's computer.
  • invoked On a more meta level, the Animator. It's pretty clear that as villainous as he may be, he's pretty much defenseless and is merely trying to survive The Chosen One's Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Dark Lord and the desktop icons may have stood a better chance of winning had the Animator not left a game of Minesweeper open.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Dark Lord turns against the Animator when he realizes that the animator was playing solitaire the whole battle, completely oblivious to the fact that his creation was about to get killed.
• Screw Destiny: The Dark Lord's very purpose in life was to destroy The Chosen One. They eventually team up to get revenge on the animator.
• Sequel Escalation: The third: An even bigger battle against the Animation where the Animator creates another Animation whose sole purpose is to end The Chosen One. The entire battle is what destroyed the Animator's old computer.
• Shout-Out: Pitting together the Chosen One and the Dark Lord is, of course, one to Harry Potter.
• Stuff Blowing Up: A Minesweeper game Gone Horribly Wrong.
• Took a Level in Badass: Mozilla Firefox. In 2, it was quickly subdued with an ice attack. Here, he does more damage.
• Unexplained Recovery: AIM, who was killed in 2. Since then, it seems the Animator revived them, or he re-installed the program.
• Unwanted Assistance: Subverted. You'd think Clippy offering his help to the Animator would be quite ineffectual like in real life, but he turns out to be a surprisingly competent fighter.
• Villainous BSoD: Literally. The Animator gets a blue screen of death at the end. And he's the Big Bad to boot. The flashback in the second AVA short has him Head Desk at the bluescreen, showing that his feelings match the status of his device.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Clippy isn't seen again after he gets kicked out of Microsoft Word.
• Zerg Rush: The desktop icons gang up against the Chosen One.

    Animator vs. Animation 4

• Aesop Amnesia: Despite the issues in the previous episodes being started by a stick figure going rogue, the Animator is still animating one in the intro. Could be downplayed when he says in the chat that it had been three years since the last incident, making it not implausible that he'd assume it was safe to let his guard down.
• Badass Normal: Unlike previous iterations of the Chosen One, the Second Coming does not appear to have any superpowers.
• Call-Back: To the first Animator vs. Animation. The final battle happened in the Flash editor, only the roles are reversed, as it was The Second Coming who lasso'd the animator before forming a plasma gun.
• Came Back Strong: After the Animator's cursor gets destroyed, he navigates to his mouse properties and selects a bigger and tougher cursor so it won't happen again.
• Continuity Nod: The Second Coming is apparently The Chosen One's Return, according to the Task Manager.
• Dark Reprise: When the Animator is about to delete all of the Second Coming's animations, only to hesitate when he realizes they're far better than his own, the background music is a sad reprise of the theme music.
• Defeat Means Friendship: In the end, the animator finally defeats the Second Coming, and he and the Second Coming become an animation team (though, this is only after the animator revives his friends).
• Death Is Cheap: The deaths of the Second Coming's friends fuels his desire for revenge against the Animator, and he initially refuses to work with him after he's defeated. One simple page refresh later and the Second Coming's friends are back and playing cards as if nothing happened.
• Distant Finale: Well, if a handful of months is considered "distant". Nevertheless, Noogai's figure drawing skills have improved dramatically thanks to Second Coming teaching him how to draw better.
• Drop What You Are Doing: Noogai drops his clothes basket full of laundry that needs to be folded when he sees The Second Coming and his stick figure friends jumping all around his browser and desktop.
• Earn Your Happy Ending Noogai finally makes peace with one of his creations.
• Easter Egg: The "Stick Figures Fighting" page that the Second Coming's friends come from actually exists.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The Second Coming flashes into the Chosen One from previous installments for mere split-seconds as he resists The Animator's process-ending.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The Animator notes that it's been three years since his last stick figures broke his computer. This animation came out exactly three years after the previous one.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": When the animator walks in on the Second Coming and his friends jumping all over his Facebook profile. The stick figures are panicking because they know they're about to be deleted, and the animator's panicking because the last time this happened his computer got destroyed, and he doesn't want it happening again.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero/Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Depending on which side you think the Animator is on; When he initially finds the stick figures playing around, they're not doing any real damage and he just deletes them out of paranoia. Only after he does this does the Second Coming start fighting back.
• Non-Standard Character Design: The Red, Blue, Green and Yellow stick figures have quite a different style from The Second Coming or any of the previous main Animations (longer limbs and smaller, solid-colored heads), because In-Universe they weren't drawn by the Animator. They were just characters from an unrelated "Stick Figures Fight" flash movie that happened to be open in another tab.
• Pose of Supplication: The Second Coming does this after the animator deletes his friends, and it lasts just before he declares war on the animator's computer in revenge.
• Restrained Revenge: Initially. The Second Coming's friends have all had their tasks ended, so what is his first act of revenge? Liking someone's Facebook post. ^note Said post was one of those "I give up on life"-type statuses and the person got very annoyed at the animator for "liking" it, calling him insensitive. It's still very mild compared to, y'know, mass murder.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The Second Coming's attack on the animator's computer (and then his phone) notably only begins after he deletes the other stick figures he befriended in the open "Stick Figure Fight" window. As a result, he ends said rampage when the animator refreshes the page for his friends to come back.
• Sequel Escalation: The fourth: Another battle against an orange Animation, who has four friends and eventually draws more Animations to dismantle the Animator's Flash interface. The fight even leaves the computer altogether (albeit temporarily), The Second Coming leaping over to the Animator's iPhone via iTunes.
• Stylistic Suck: Noogai is apparently a Terrible Artist, telling from the sketches of birds and horses around his work station. The Second Coming helps teach him how to draw anatomy in the Distant Finale.
• Suddenly Speaking: Since this one is viewed from the real world, we hear the animator's voice for the first time.
• Tempting Fate: Downplayed, the episode starts with the animator discussing the events of Part 3 with a friend on Facebook, and noting how it's been three years since then and nothing's happened since. He doesn't specifically say it probably won't, but it's clear he has no reason to believe it will.
• This Is Gonna Suck: The cursor slows down a bit once Alan reads off The Second Coming's file name in the task manager, revealing him to be "The Chosen One's Return", as if Alan is starting to realize that getting rid of him isn't gonna be as simple as ending his task.
• Time Skip: According to the animator in his Facebook chat box, three years have passed since the third installment.
• Trilogy Creep: The third video was originally intended to be the last one, hence why it ended with the Animator's computer being destroyed.
• Troubled Fetal Position: The Second Coming, upon seeing the other stick figures relentlessly beat each other up. Though it's hard to tell if it was intended to look Troubled, or if he was just eagerly watching a movie.
• You Can Talk?: Near the end, when the animator finally has the Second Coming in restraint, the Second Coming makes a Big "NO!" in text, leading to this reaction from the animator.

    Animation vs. Minecraft

• Boring, but Practical: When Possessed!Red builds a cobblestone mecha, Blue fails to pierce it with arrows from his dispenser-turned-machine-gun and Red just extinguishes Yellow's TNT grenades. Then Green and the Second Coming just start mining it down, which works great until Red rebuilds his mecha with obsidian.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Instead of the Animator duking it out with one of his stick figure creations, 4 out of the 5 have to fight their possessed friend and come very close to losing.
• Chekhov's Gun: Early on, one of the first things the blue stick figure does is accidentally launch himself in the air by growing a jungle tree. He uses this at the end to destroy the red stick figure's obsidian mech.
  • The items the Second Coming creates when he is given an inventory-load of items turn out to be useful for when they go inside the STORAGE folder.
• Chekhov's Skill: The Second Coming is the only one to figure out crafting and is able to do so very rapidly, the structures Green (functioning windmill) and Yellow (beacon and colored pistons) build show their ingenuity, and Blue takes an interest in the plant growing mechanics. All of these play a role in the final showdown.
• Crazy-Prepared: Why did The Second Coming think they'd need fishing rods? Especially since those same materials could have been used to make spare bows instead.
  • Truth in Television: In Minecraft proper, fishing rods cam be used on almost any mob as well as other players to control their positioning, and are a favoured tool of PvP specialists.
• Demonic Possession: The red stick figure, by Herobrine.
• Funny Background Event: In the "STORAGE" and "STUFF" folders, pay attention to the filenames. Highlights include: "chords-empty room", "Behind You-Lyrics", and "How to Pull Off a Triple Spin Combo"(best seen when a stick figure is doing just that) in "STORAGE", and "Ninja Ambush", "Required Essay" and "The Ultimate Showdown" in "STUFF"
• Good-Times Montage: The Second Coming has one while Possessed!Red is beating him to within an inch of his life, remembering all the good times the pair had together.
• Here We Go Again!: At the end of the episode, Yellow steps on the League of Legends icon on the toolbar, causing it to open a HUD in the same way the Minecraft toolbar did at the start of the episode.
• Reset Button: Tossing the Minecraft icon into the recycle bin causes all the blocks created from it to go away.
• MacGuffin Melee : At the climax, Both !Possesed Red and the Second Coming and his friends fight for the Minecraft Block.
  • No Ontological Inertia
  • World-Healing Wave: A concussive shockwave knocks the stick figures to the ground as it shatters all the Minecraft elements and repairs the damage to the normal interface.
• Sequel Escalation: The fifth: a Crossover adventure starring the Animation and his friends, outside of the boundaries of the monitor.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: When the stick figures are fighting the skeleton ambush, a creeper appears after some of the skeletons are blown up with TNT. It starts off looking down at the figures, pan down to the stick figures, pan over to the remaining skeletons, and pan back to the figures with the creeper now standing among them. (And in front of Yellow too, yet Yellow doesn't spot it immediately.)

    Animation vs. YouTube

• Adaptational Jerkass + Badass: In a way. The site has its flaws and redeeming qualities... but here, it's a literally-giant douche who only cares about hurting the stick figures in any way once provoked.
• Annoying Pop-Up Ad: The animations have to deal with a few ads that pop up while they are watching YouTube. Later when they are fighting the website itself, ads interrupt the fight, and both sides express their disdain before skipping the ad and resuming their fight.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: The Second Coming hits one of YouTube's hands while it's skipping videos, causing it to click on a video of a kid screaming.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Second Coming uses the fullscreen button to enlarge himself, allowing him to severely damage the YouTube interface. Unfortunately for the stick figures, YouTube manages to refresh the page, returning the Second Coming back to his original size and undoing all the destruction.
• Call-Back: One of the videos YouTube plays happens to be the original Animator Vs Animation.
• Car Fu: YouTube uses videos of cars driving by to attack.
• Chekhov's Gun: It was established back in 4 that any damage done to a webpage or its contents can be undone by simply refreshing the page. This works both for and against the stick figures at various points.
• The Cameo: Various well known YouTube videos make an appearance.
• A Day in the Limelight: In contrast with vs. Minecraft, which had all the stick figures sharing the stage, this short focuses on Green and The Second Coming, with the others not appearing until the very end.
• Floating Limbs: The like and dislike buttons function as YouTube's hands. Once they're destroyed, it resorts to creating makeshift hands out of annotation boxes.
• Here We Go Again!: The animation ends with Red trying to punch a buffering video.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Youtube's main strategy in fighting the stick figures is to rapidly switch between videos. During the climax, The Second Coming quickly switches to a video with a water hose to propel Green towards the Upload button.
• Hope Spot: The stick figures nearly win when the Second Coming enlarges himself and unleashes a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on YouTube, but YouTube uses one of the remaining buttons left on its player to refresh the page, rejuvenating itself and leaving the still very battered stick figures at its mercy.
• I'm Okay!: When Blue, Red, and Yellow come in to see Green and the Second Coming collapsed on the ground and the YouTube UI destroyed, Blue nudges Green, who in turn raises one hand to indicate this.
• I Shall Taunt You: When YouTube manages to refresh the page, thus undoing all the damage while leaving the stick figures exhausted, it gloats by playing various celebratory clips, including Numa Numa.
• Kill It Through Its Stomach: How the stick figures win in the end; Green uploads himself as a video, and then The Second Coming plays him in the playlist. Green shows up on the YouTube screen, and destroys him from the inside.
• Mad Libs Dialogue: When YouTube threatens the stick figures, this is the site's other way of communicating — using clips of various people saying specific words from their videos.
• Meet Your Early Installment Weirdness: One of the videos in the playlist is the original Animator vs. Animation.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Or this case preview. The preview used the old YouTube layout while the animation itself used the current layout. Justified because the layout was changed between the making of the preview and the animation proper, as Alan himself pointed out in his announcement video.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The majority of the fight is this, with YouTube repeatedly smacking the stick figures around using its hands and video clips. The Second Coming briefly returns the favor when he enlarges himself... but then YouTube refreshes the page, undoing all the damage he'd dealt.
• "No. Just... No" Reaction: Green's reaction the video that is played before the We-Suck Vacuums Ad. ^note In the preview, it's Markiplier's "Meow" while in the animation, it's MrWeebl's Badgers
• No-Sell: YouTube is able to smack around the stick figures with its hands throughout the video, but is completely unable to touch Green when he is uploaded inside of the YouTube screen.
• Our Slogan Is Terrible:
  • "Try WeSuck Vacuums, because we suck more than any of our competitors!"
  • "Introducing Drag Vacs, "Because life is a drag."
• Percussive Maintenance:
  • When the video Green and the Second Coming settle on first has buffering issues, the Second Coming kicks it to get it to play again. Next time it stops, the Second Coming gets up and repeatedly punches it until the buffering icon morphs into a clearly unamused face.
  • At the end of the animation, Red is going to punch the buffering video before it cuts to the credits.
• Post-Victory Collapse: After YouTube is defeated, Green and the Second Coming manage to high-five each other before collapsing completely, though their lack of a face makes it hard to tell if they actually fainted or not before the others enter and check on them.
• Running Gag: Vacuum cleaner advertisements.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: When Blue and Yellow sit down on the couch and Red starts scrolling through the video playlist, Green and the Second Coming immediately jump up and run away, to the bemusement of the others.
• A Truce While We Gawk: When an ad suddenly pops up while YouTube is in the midst of walloping the stick figures using different video clips, all of the combatants react with exasperation instead of using it to their advantage.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: While the other stick figures show clear concern at seeing Green and The Second Coming lying exhausted on the ground, it's dispelled as soon as Green gives an I'm Okay! gesture, and beyond some brief surprise they don't give much thought to seeing the Youtube UI completely destroyed.

    AVM Shorts - Season 1

The Rediscovery

• Aesop Amnesia: Downplayed; the Second Coming seems a little too eager to be able to play around with Minecraft again, considering the problems it caused last time. However, the stick figures make sure to set up all the necessary precautions before handing the cube to Red, in case he gets possessed again.
• Continuity Nod: Picks up after the events of "vs. Minecraft", and includes several flashbacks to it. The stick figures are also shown to maintain the same interests in the game they did before, judging by the items they obtain from the creative inventory when they first get the icon back—The Second Coming prefers crafting, Green prefers building structures, Yellow prefers building redstone contraptions, Blue prefers growing plants, and Red is implied to prefer spawning mobs.
• Dope Slap: After Red fakes everyone out into thinking he was possessed again before spawning harmless rabbits (and appearing a little too pleased with himself for that), Blue takes off his diamond helmet and smacks Red upside the head with it.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Everyone's reaction to Red's fakeout above, especially Blue.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The flashbacks reveal that Red went Brainwashed and Crazy in "vs. Minecraft".
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Once The Second Coming reveals that he recovered the Minecraft icon, the other stick figures immediately freak out and try to get rid of it.
• No Kill Like Overkill: Before letting Red try out Minecraft again, the others deck themselves out in diamond armor and set up several deathtraps—jungle saplings ready to be grown, TNT ready to fall, and arrow dispensers ready to fire — so they can neutralize him quickly should he go Brainwashed and Crazy again.
• Troll: Red is shown to be a bit of one. After spazzing out and getting in the same posture to scroll through the creative inventory that he did when he was brainwashed(the latter almost freaks Yellow out into firing at him before The Second Coming stops him), he pulls out a spawn egg, causing everyone to duck for cover...and Red just spawns rabbits.

The Building Contest

• Foregone Conclusion: Green built a windmill as soon as he knew the Minecraft "inventory block" was a thing. Of course he won the titular contest.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: When it comes time to judge the creations, the others ask Red why there's a cat sitting on his. It's because the excavator they used for a reference has the label of "CAT" on the arm.
• Sore Loser: Blue and Yellow decide to blow up Green's creation because he won.
• Suddenly Voiced: SC apparently snores.

The Roller Coaster

• Acting Unnatural: While experimenting with redstone constructs, Yellow accidentally punches through the toolbar of the PC. Panicking, he replaces it with black wool and tries to walk away. He then comes back curious.
• Egopolis: Downplayed, but Yellow has two giant statues of himself along the path of the roller coaster and a third at the end.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: For a given value of "reality", anyways. At the end of the roller coaster, the minecarts suddenly obey Minecraft physics and drop straight down from a ramp instead of arcing like the stick figures expected.

Potions

• Brought Down to Normal: The pig, after the effects of all the potions it's consumed expire. Too bad for it that Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress.
• Drunk on Milk: Blue ends up experimenting with potions a little too much. When Red finds him, he's passed out on the floor with a ton of empty bottles lying around.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: The pig's potion effects expire when it is high above the "ground" (the bottom of the monitor screen). As a result, it hovers briefly before Minecraft physics kicks in, causing it to turn into bacon from the fall.
• Here We Go Again!: At the end of the short, Red mourns for the self-inflicted death of his pig... only to get the idea to spawn a llama. One Beat later, and it spits onto his chest.
• Took a Level in Badass: Red's pig, after it drinks up all the potions Blue left lying around. It proves to be more than a match for all five stick-figures even after they themselves have taken potions of their own - until the effects wear off.

Note Blocks

• "Eureka!" Moment: The episode starts with Red and Blue trying to create a chicken statue. While trying to decide what block would serve best as a beak, they discover what note blocks do, and the chicken gets dropped.
• Insomnia Episode: The punchline to the entire animation is Second Coming not being able to sleep while all the other stick figures are playing their music. After he dials their noise down to zero via the volume slider, they double its original value; Second Coming gets startled right out of bed for their ending riff.

Command Blocks

• Chekhov's Gun: AVA IV and vs. YouTube showed that refreshing a web page undoes any damage that the stick figures might have done to it. While the desktop is being corrupted by the glitching command block, Second Coming sees the Start button floating by and applies the same logic to the PC by clicking Restart. Sure enough, the desktop comes back up with all five stick figures right as rain.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Turns Command Blocks into glitchy messes that cause incredibly unpredictable effects. A second lightning strike causes them to corrupt the entire desktop.
• Mundane Utility: Red's magician act is based entirely on the presence of command blocks behind-the-scenes.
• Troll: What does Yellow do when he learns about command blocks? He trolls Red with an unobtainable cake. If you pay attention to the code that was onscreen right after a dispenser gave Red a bunch of cakes, Yellow was about to turn the cakes in his inventory into rotten flesh before Red caught on.
• We Are Not Going Through That Again: Once the PC is restarted, the first thing Yellow does is throw the Command Block into a fire.

PvP

• Disproportionate Retribution: Second Coming starts removing Green's build because he's also trying to build and there's not enough room for both. Green retaliates with a PvP fight.
• Escalating War: It starts with Second Coming deciding to build over Green's construction because there's not enough space for both. Green draws his weapon. Blue fails to calm him down, the other stick figures take sides, and everything escalates from there.
• Here We Go Again!: After Green respawns, he gets the idea to surprise the others at their own funeral. Blue and the Second Coming accidentally kill him again in response.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Yellow and the Second Coming vs. Blue, Red, and Green, when their builds end up encroaching upon each other.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Second Coming, after he kills Green to prevent him from detonating the pagoda build.
• Silly Reason for War: Green and Second Coming start a full-on brawl over conflicting builds.

The Nether

• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Green accidentally hits a Zombie Pigman with his pickaxe while he and Blue mine for Nether Quartz. As a result, all the Pigmen (and later, just about everything else in the Nether) attack them.
• Rule of Drama: In Minecraft proper, Nether portals within 128 blocks of each other are a shared destination for a portal in the corresponding Overworld coordinates. The portal to the Mac that Purple comes from is within that range of the portal to Alan's PC, to say nothing of the massive network of portals two blocks away from each other revealed after The End, the nearest of which is within that range of the Mac portal.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Blue and Green rope a Ghast with fishing rods, and then use it as a Power Up Mount to open fire on the mobs chasing them.
• Sequel Hook: Before they can return through the Nether Portal, Blue and Green notice a purple stick figure exiting another Nether Portal. They decide to go through that one instead.

Villagers

• Bait-and-Switch: When Blue and Green offer their resources to the villagers, it seems as though they will revolt against Purple. Then the villagers build a better castle for Purple, giving him a new respect for the two of them.
• Previously On…: Begins with a brief recap of "The Nether".
• Sequel Hook: Ends with Purple, Blue, and Green jumping through the End Portal under Purple's throne room.

The End

• Friend or Idol Decision: Purple is forced to choose between saving Blue and Green from falling into the void or retrieving the Enderdragon's egg. He chooses the latter.
• Monster Is a Mommy: The Enderdragon, which leaves as soon as it reunites with its baby.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Purple steals the Enderdragon's egg and brings it back to his kingdom... which is promptly destroyed when the mother comes knocking. Overlaps with Nice Job Fixing It, Villain, since this causes the villagers to overthrow him and (presumably) bring peace to the community.

SkyBlock

• Cliffhanger: The portal the stick figures used to enter the SkyBlock round goes out when a Ghast deactivates it from the other side, and the Second Coming enters a different portal with no knowledge of its destination.
• Epic Fail:
  • The adventure begins with the stick figures losing the bonus chest and a sapling. Thankfully, Bag of Spilling didn't apply to them as they still had a ridiculous amount of resources amassed from their previous adventures.
  • A single Creeper explosion at the mob grinder brings the entire base down as well as the house being set on fire by a bolt of lightning.
• With This Herring: Subverted: The SkyBlock round starts as normal with a solitary tree, a small patch of land and a bonus chest. After losing the bonus chest and a sapling, the stick figures realise that they still have a lot of their own resources.

TNT Land

• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: The Second Coming manages to reach the portal before the rabbit while the area was exploding by distracting it with some rabbit meat.
• Blowing a Raspberry: Alan does this in the end of the whole video.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: It turns out the stick figures could have escaped from the enemy mobs by just jumping into the ocean beneath them.
• Killer Rabbit: The rabbit turns out to be a carnivorous killer who's proficient with weapons and loaded its house with death traps.
• Spoiler Title: The title isn't shy about saying that the land is actually made of TNT.

The Dolphin Kingdom

• And Now You Must Marry Me: The Elder Guardian apparently has shades of this towards the Dolphin Queen. Naturally, she's not having any of it.
• Damsel in Distress: The Dolphin Queen is captured by the Elder Guardian.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: After the Elder Guardian is stranded in his now water-free chamber following the Dolphin Queen's rescue, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment shows a water droplet coming from his eye, akin to a Single Tear. Perhaps he's genuinely saddened that he's lost whom he considers his true love?

Cave Spider Roller Coaster

• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: The Wither shows up unexpectedly to fight the Cave Spider King, giving the stick figures enough time to make their escape.
• Deus ex Machina: Once it looks like the Spider King is about to defeat the Second Coming and his friends, a Wither comes out of a portal with no explanation to attack the Spider King, allowing the Second Coming and his friends to escape.
• Insect Queen: The Spider King serves as the antagonist.
• Tantrum Throwing: The monarch of the spider army throws its crown on the ground in annoyance upon being told the army failed to defeat the stick figures. Of course, after it sets out to do the job itself, it webs the crown back.
• We Are Not Going Through That Again: The stick figures just barely manage to escape the grasp of the monarch spider and a whole lot of Nether creatures. Shortly after returning to the Animator's desktop, they sigh deeply, turn back to the Nether portal they just exited from, and hurriedly destroy it with diamond pickaxes before stopping to catch their breaths, clearly done with portals for the time being.

    AVM Shorts - Season 2

Redstone Academy

• Amusing Injuries:
  • During the redstone class at the beginning, Yellow takes everyone by surprise by having the floor fall out below them to take them to different classrooms.
  • During the lesson on "Outputs", everyone gets smacked by their respective output; Red gets hit with a door, Blue gets tossed upward on a piston, the Second Coming gets hit by a dispensed snowball, and Green gets tripped by a minecart.
  • When Yellow is waiting for everyone to finish building, he's idly tossing his redstone torch. At one point, he catches the lit end of it, burning his hand.
• Brick Joke: The Second Comings's first redstone creation is a game of whack-a-mole, with some wool on a stick serving as the hammer. After both he and Green lose, he hands Green a consolation trophy, rigged to hit him with that same hammer.
• Call-Back: Green's first contraption is a game of DanceDanceRevolution playing the song from Note Blocks.
• Dark Horse Victory: We're led to believe either the Second Coming or Green will win the redstone contest. The winner ends up being Red's pet washer.
• Hidden Depths: Yellow might be the team redstone expert, but Green and the Second Coming prove proficent enough at it to make functioning versions of several classic games.
• Serial Escalation: The Second Coming's and Green's redstone contraptions. The Second Coming makes Whack-a-Mole, then sees that Green made DanceDanceRevolution, so he tears his down and makes Pong. Green sees this and tears down his game to make Tetris. When it comes time for Yellow to judge everyone, we see that the Second Coming made Terraria while Green actually made Minecraft.

Note Block Battle

• Awesomeness Is Volatile: When SC intervenes, it's with an electric guitar solo so amazing that it summons lightning and destroys the rest of the note block setups.
• Brick Joke: Note Blocks started with a chicken and soon turned to note blocks. Note Block Battle starts with note blocks and soon turns to a chicken.
• Insomnia Episode: Once again, SC is kept awake by the other sticks' note block shenanigans.
• Rule of Cool: Creating note-block based instruments isn't quite this trope, as they still consist of a note block atop another block that provides the sound type ^* the sticks having already demonstrated the ability to brandish constructs, i.e. Purple's scepter in "Villagers". Using lightning strikes on them to create electric guitars, on the other hand, is definitely this trope.
• Rule of Funny: Using a note block as the reagent in a brewing stand produced a Potion of Musicality, which when applied to a person gives them exceptional skill with note blocks. Does this make sense? No. But it's absolutely hilarious.
• Sequel Escalation: Compared to the original Note Block episode, the sticks are much more experienced with note blocks (and, by extension, Minecraft as a whole), allowing them to escalate things well beyond what they did the first time.

Build Battle

• Bystander Syndrome: Green is left to fight The Wither on his own while the other stick figures carry on with the build battle.
• Epic Fail: At the end of the video, Green accidentally summons The Wither while building. His build is blown up, and when the others get to it while voting, it has been reduced to a flaming mess.
• Funny Background Event: Green accidentally summons the Wither while building. While SC is judging everyone's builds, Green is battling the Wither in the background.
• Running Gag: Two:
  • The other stick figures throwing TNT at Green's build whenever he wins.
  • SC trying and failing to stay awake while waiting for the timer to go down.
• Selective Obliviousness: When Green gets attacked by The Wither, no one pays him any mind. Heck, when part of Blue's build is damaged by an explosion, he just repairs it like nothing happened.
• Slap Yourself Awake: SC tries this. It fails.
• Sleepyhead: SC is this. Every time he waits for the timer to go down, he fails to keep himself awake, at least until the timer goes off.
• Sore Loser: Everyone is so irritated with Green's win streak that they keep trying to blow up his builds.
• Suddenly Voiced: Whenever SC falls asleep, he snores.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Upon winning the first round, Green does a Fortnite dance. In the second round, he goes full-on Large Ham when showing off his robot.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: In the second round, this is how Yellow reacts to Green's impossibly functional robot.

Texture Pack

• Oh, Crap!: Yellow and Red have this reaction when they realize that they've rearranged the textures so much that they can't tell what's what anymore.
• World of Chaos: Rather than trying to fix the textures, the other sticks decide to simply learn what everything looks like now and carry on with it, resulting in TNT-textured cake and carrots that look like swords, among others.

Lucky Blocks

• Mundane Solution: The Second Coming tries to craft more Lucky Blocks via trial-and-error. Green just looks up the crafting recipe on his phone.
• World of Chaos: The Lucky Blocks dimension is full of random objects and entities spawned by a glowing orb in a temple, which are picked up by Block drones and projected into Lucky Blocks onto the playfield.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Blue recognizes the texture on the first Lucky Block and asks for it to be put above him so he can hit it from below. This doesn't work and hurts him.

    AVM Shorts - Season 3

The Piglin War

• All for Nothing: After a long journey the place where Blue gets his Nether Wart is already bare.
• Chekhov's Gun: The Warped Fungi Blue got from the young Piglin allowed him to guide the Striders through the lava lake.
• Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Blue going through a Nether Portal with a Second Coming lookalike.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Blue's obsession with Nether Wart has been a running joke throughout the AVM series, but when it gets to the point where he's sneaking out to a dangerous location behind his friend's backs in order to get more, you have to wonder if it's really just the taste that Blue's obsessed with.
• Forgot About His Powers: Blue didn't think to grab the master Minecraft block and use Creative Mode to grab a ton of Nether Wart with no hassle, instead deciding that sneaking back to the Nether is his best course of action.
• History Repeats: Once again the group is split and has to find each other through the Nether portals.
• Rule of Funny: The Piglins switch from aggressive towards Blue to docile and cooperative based solely on whether he is wearing any gold armor, within a split-second of each other. In Minecraft proper, they would need to be distracted by being handed a gold item, or else have Blue escape their aggro range, in order for his equipping the helmet to pacify them. (Losing the helmet would have an instantaneous effect, though.)
• This Is Gonna Suck: As everyone is heading into the Nether Portal, the Second Coming's body language makes it clear he is not looking forward to it.
• Wham Shot: Once Blue is in despair due to the lack of Nether Wart, some is thrown to him by the Second Coming. Even though he shouldn't know that Blue was looking for Nether Wart and is without Red, Green and Yellow. The next shot shows Second Coming still looking for Blue with the others, which means Second Coming Blue met is a lookalike with unknown intentions.

The Witch

• Call-Back:
  • Red's Pig once again drinks a ton of potions to gain power, only this time the pig does it to save the stick figures from the Witch.
  • During the pig's beatdown to the Witch, at one point it uses the same combination of attacks the pig in Potions did to The Second Coming when they first fought.
• Character Development: When the Fighting Stick Figures decide to follow Purple through another Nether Portal, Second Coming decides to stay with them this time, in contrast to when he let them go alone in Season 1.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Once the pig gets super-powered up by potions, he utterly destroys the Witch despite her best efforts.
• Here We Go Again!: When Purple invites Alan's sticks through another Nether Portal, Second Coming remembers everything that happened in the latter half of Season 1 and tries to convince the others to just go home. It almost works, until the others see Purple depressed against his portal and decide to go with him anyways.
• Morphic Resonance: When the sticks all get turned into dyes, each's color of dye reflects their original color.
• Near-Villain Victory: Near the end, the Witch has turned all of the stick figures into harmless dyes, has them trapped between flame blocks, and almost succeeds in burning them to death until Red's Pig saves them.
• Shapeshifter Showdown: The brief duel between Blue and the Witch has the two of them rapidly transform themselves into monsters and animals as they fight.
• Shout-Out: Among the myriad of buffs Red's Pig got, two of them are "Gotta Go Fast" and "Techno Power".
• Something Only They Would Say: Although Red's pig is able to identify the transformed sticks, Second Coming gets verification with a non-verbal version of this trope (after confirming which stick is which creature with colored wool). Llama!Yellow is given a pile of redstone supplies and creates a convoluted machine, while Salmon!Red affectionately leaps on the pig. Getting careless with a seemingly non-violent zombie costs them the pig, but Sugarcane!Green is offered a note block and begins to play Jazzy Note Blocks from Season 1. And Piston!Blue makes a Big Damn Heroes entrance by brewing potions to unmake everyone else's transformations, and his own.
• Spoiler Title: The Reveal of the Doppelaganger's identity could've been more shocking if the title was different.
• Spot the Impostor: During the battle, Yellow gets turned into a Witch and gets mixed up with the other Witch, causing the fight to pause as everyone tries to figure out who's Yellow. The situation is resolved when the stick figures try to get Red's Pig so he can sniff out who Yellow is, prompting the Witch to use a portal to stop them.

Parkour

• Bad Boss: Orange eradicates the AI of one of his Piglins for revealing that Green has escaped.
• Bait-and-Switch: Purple invites the sticks to a first-to-three-wins Parkour Warriors bout. After ten courses of the sticks interfering with each other lands them all two wins, Purple insists they stagger themselves on the last course. Which starts editing itself to split them up to different courses.
• Call-Back
  • The events of the original Animation vs. Minecraft are used to illustrate Orange's plan. Specifically, the power Red had when he had the Master Block.
  • Yellow ends up interacting with Command Blocks again. Having learned his lesson, he just leaves the command field blank this time.
• Chekhov's Gun: Purple demonstrates early on that falling in the Parkour world just warps them back to the last checkpoint. Second Coming exploits this to bypass the Piglin trying to trap him.
• Cliffhanger: Purple is en route to the Animator's computer to get the Master Block, Yellow and Blue are on the run, the Second Coming and Red are in a desert, and Green and the Pig are imprisoned. Damn.
• Death Is Cheap: When everyone first enters the Parkour map, Yellow fails to make a jump and falls into the void. Cue Mass "Oh, Crap!" from everyone except Purple until Yellow reappears where they started. Purple falls on the ground laughing at this for a few seconds before throwing himself into the void to establish that yes, this is how it works. Technically subverted by Minecraft rules, as it's not death-and-respawn; Command Blocks are positioned to teleport falling players to their last checkpoint.
• Evil All Along: Purple was never a good guy, and instead working for another stick figure.
• Evil Plan: Orange's plan is to get the Master Block to gain ultimate power.
• Large and in Charge: Orange dwarfs the rest of the stick figures and is the king of a group of Piglins.
• Le Parkour: Duh. The short is about the stick figures competing in parkour courses not unlike those seen in Minecraft Championship.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Purple has Alan's sticks stagger themselves on the last parkour course. If they hadn't been interfering with each other on all ten courses beforehand, they might have been suspicious of Purple's decision; before the course starts editing itself, the choice looks downright reasonable because of the sheer amount of conflict that preceded it.
  • If the Second Coming hadn't gotten the bright idea to break reality by touching beacons together, Yellow would've found him and Red during his escape in addition to Blue, and the four would've all escaped together. Instead, Second Coming ended up bringing Red with him to a desert in the middle of nowhere...
• Reality Warper: The Second Coming soon realizes he can affect the dimension he's in by touching a teleporter to another teleporter, causing the area he's in to glitch out and warp everything randomly. This gets taken further when he and Red touch three teleporters together, causing them both to eventually warp in a completely new world entirely.
• Weaponized Teleportation: The Second Coming utilizes the teleporters between the parkour levels as defense against the Piglin chasing him by picking it up and forcing the Piglin to touch it whenever it tries to attack, warping the Piglin back to its spawn point every time. The Piglin eventually meets its final fate when Second Coming and Red force it to touch two teleporters at once.
• Wham Shot: Purple kneels down before an orange stick figure.

Titan Ravager

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Ravagers are usually about two blocks tall. The Titan Ravager is at least ten blocks tall.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When the Titan Ravager proves immune to conventional attacks, Yellow and Blue's solution is to set up automatic farms to just keep feeding it until it's sated and leaves them alone. This just encourages it to bring a couple of friends with the promise of easy food.
• Out of the Frying Pan: It looks like the day is saved when the Titan Ravager has its hunger satisfied and leaves. Then it brings two more Titan Ravagers. When only one of them is able to be fed, the other tries to eat the Villagers.
• Picky Eater: Inverted. The Titan Ravager quickly grows tired of being fed just potatoes, and Yellow and Blue are forced to expand the farm to grow several kinds of crops to keep it happy.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Orange is hailed as a hero by the Villagers after he kills the Titan Ravagers. While Blue and Yellow agree to follow Orange through a Nether Portal, Yellow notices that Orange has a Command Block on his staff.
• Villainous Rescue: The Titan Ravagers are stopped when Orange uses his staff to kill them.

Lush Caves

• Arrow Catch: The Second Coming grabs an arrow fired by a skeleton during his fight with Red, while Red grabs two arrows fired by a Minecraft player, the second without even looking at it.
• Blame Game: The Second Coming blames Red for convincing everyone to go through with Purple in the first place, while Red blames the Second Coming for the beacon-crossing trick getting them stranded.
• Call-Back: Much like the original shorts, Second Coming and Red engage in some computer shenanigans with alexcrafter28's PC, via emailing themselves to Alan's PC in a similar manner to Second Coming using a phone cable and Dropbox to travel between Alan's iPhone and his PC.
• Cliffhanger: The Second Coming and Red get home to Alan's PC, just in time to see Purple coming through the portal.
• Didn't Want an Adventure: During the argument, The Second Coming points out that he didn't want to go with Purple, and had everyone listened everyone would be safe at home instead of separated and in danger. Red's counterargument just seems to be that that'd be boring.
• Funny Background Event: During the Mêlée à Trois between The Second Coming, Red, and the mobs, a Husk can be seen approaching the Second Coming from behind before stopping as if realizing attacking him isn't a good idea. It later moves more slowly so another Husk behind it would get ahead.
• Human Mail: Second Coming and Red use alexcrafter28's computer's email to send them back into Alan's PC.
• Ignored Enemy: While The Second Coming and Red are having a fight, they are surrounded by monsters who try to attack them both. The two stick figures barely acknowledge the monsters, besides the few moments where they grab them to throw them at each other.
• Let's You and Him Fight: More than a half of the episode is spent on the Second Coming and Red's argument-turned-fight.
• Living is More Than Surviving: Red seems to have this attitude during the Blame Game, countering the Second Coming's insistence that everything would have been fine if they'd listened to him and gone home by saying they at least had fun on the Parkour course instead of dying of boredom back home. The ensuing fight ends when the Second Coming looks around at the beautiful Lush Cavern biome around him, something they wouldn't have seen if he'd had his way, and decides that Red is right.
• Mêlée à Trois: The Second Coming vs. Red vs. various mobs.
• Ninja Prop: During their argument, Red and the Second Coming occasionally knock each other's Pictorial Speech Bubble off, as if they physically existed.
• Offhand Backhand: Second Coming and Red end up killing the mobs around them just trying to get to each other. The most classical example of the trope is Second Coming punching a Creeper from over his shoulder, killing it before it has a chance to blow up.
• Pictorial Speech Bubble: A variation without the bubbles: The Second Coming and Red's argument is conveyed with small sequential pictures above their heads.
• Quit Your Whining: When Red crumples to the ground, overwhelmed by hunger and despair, the Second Coming (who is just as hungry with no complaint) implicitly tells Red to stop being a baby; the accompanying image is the Second Coming holding a crying, mini-Red in a diaper.
• Secret A.I. Moves: Parodied. The Second Coming and Red are clearly confused by Alexcrafter's limited movements.
• Talking Is a Free Action: The Second Coming and Red are introduced wandering in the desert, on the brink of death by starvation, and proceed to get in a massive, extended fistfight about it without any sign of ill effects. What's more, the Second Coming ends up feeding Red a Glow Berry but doesn't eat anything at all in the entire episode.

The Ultimate Weapon

• Acting Unnatural: When Purple sees the Master Block in Alan's PC, he tries to get closer to it while acting overly casual. Red and the Second Coming don't fall for it and keep watch over it, forcing Purple to take it by force.
• Brick Joke: Orange throws a Pigstep disc into his music player, which undergoes a Diegetic Switch for the rest of the video (in the form of an enhanced version by Scott Buckley and Aaron Grooves) and plays for the extended fight scene that follows. After the fight scene is over, Orange lands on the record player, the impact ejecting the disc just as the song ends.
• Call-Back:
  • When Purple initially arrives at Alan's PC, the first thing he does is go to the toolbar looking for the Minecraft icon. His reaction to not finding it there is similar to Second Coming's reaction in the first AVM Short.
  • Blue is hesitant when Orange gave him a crown and a throne because he remembers what happened with Purple back in Season 1.
  • Red ends up going through a portal that sends him to the world from the Skyblock episode.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • The young Piglin from "The Piglin War" gives Red a lift on a Hoglin, allowing Red to catch up to Purple.
  • The Second Coming goes back to alexcrafter's PC to get their Master Block and use it to create a Nether Portal.
• Cliffhanger: All of the stick figures have been separated: Red was sent into the Skyblock world, Blue and Yellow returned to the village from Titan Ravager and took Orange's command block with them, Purple escaped into an unknown world with Green following him, the Second Coming ended up in a Deep Dark biome, while Orange was knocked out, without his command block or the Master Block. Also, the whereabouts of the Master Blocks are unknown.
• Dark Is Evil: The Master Block used by Orange has a black glow, and he mostly uses dark colored blocks such as obsidian.
• Diegetic Switch: Orange plays the music disc Mellohi in his throne room while he tries to win over Blue and Yellow. The music is still heard in the scene at Alan's PC. Later, when Green breaks into the throne room and reunites with his friends, Orange changes the music to Pigstep for his battle against them, as well as the Second Coming and Red's fight against Purple at Alan's PC. At the end of the video, it becomes somewhat of Left the Background Music On when Orange falls into his throne room and lands beside the jukebox as the music ends, and the disc pops out onto him.
• Face, Nod, Action: Yellow and Blue nod at each other before going back through the portal from "Titan Ravager" to escape the carnage.
• Grapes of Luxury: After Orange convinces Blue to join him with a throne surrouded by Nether Wart, Blue's slouching pose on his throne as he chows down is invocative of this trope.
• Hope Spot: Green, Blue, and Yellow nearly succeed in defeating Orange, having separated him from his staff, restrained him with a fishing rod, and having him at bowpoint. Then Purple gets the Master Block, which absorbs all of their equipment, giving Orange a chance to turn things around.
• Knuckle Cracking: When Green reveals Orange's plan to Blue and Yellow, Orange cracks his neck and shoulder before preparing to fight them.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Orange, a Hidden Villain in his previous appearances, is on the center of the thumbnail. His role in the story, however, is as spoilery as ever.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Purple is known for his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. Orange ends up betraying him.
• Light Is Good: The Master Block used by The Second Coming has a white glow, and he mostly uses light colored blocks such as iron.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: After being abandoned by Orange, Purple runs away and enters a Nether portal, with Green following him.
• Source Music: Before Orange throws down with Blue and Yellow, he throws a music disc into the Jukebox behind him which proceeds to play Pigstep for the entirety of the fight scene. The song even ends as source music when Orange's unconscious body slams into the Jukebox, ejecting the disc.
• Rule of Symbolism: During the final moments of the Second Coming and Orange's fight, they start fighting with quartz and obsidian, as in the yin-yang.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Orange ditches Purple once he achieves the power he wanted.
• We Can Rule Together: Orange tries to persuade Blue and Yellow into joining him.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Just when the gang manages to reunite, they end up getting separated again.

The Warden

• Chekhov's Gun: The book. It contains musical sheets belonging to a now extinct village, which causes the Warden to remember its past as the village's guardian and befriends Second Coming.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: When the Second Coming brings the Warden to finish off Orange, whose staff is empty, it quickly becomes clear that Orange is horribly outmatched, since he's being attacked by the strongest mob in Minecraft.
• Hope Spot:
  • The Second Coming seemingly escapes the Warden when he crawls into a one block tall tunnel. Then the Warden starts widening the tunnel by breaking the blocks above it.
  • With the Warden at his side, the Second Coming seems to have an easy path to victory against Orange, especially since Orange's staff is empty. Then Orange manages to find one of the Master Blocks.
• Improvised Weapon: It's revealed that any valuable block will give the staff some power, as Orange demonstrates with a gold block. It's nowhere near what he could do with the Master Block or even his Command Block, but it's better than he fared with the empty staff.
• Mundane Utility: Second Coming uses a Golden Apple to briefly distract the Warden. Then he tries mining the floor with a book, alterting the Warden.
• With This Herring: All the Second Coming manages to find in a chest is an enchanted golden apple, a book, a stick, and a candle, all while being attacked by the Warden. The apple provides a last ditch distraction, the book contains music sheets, and the Second Coming creates a makeshift slide flute using the candle and stick. Playing the song in the book causes the Warden to remember the people it used to protect, leading to the Warden becoming friends with the Second Coming.

    AVA Shorts/Animator vs. Animation 5

• Plot Hole: This episode contradicts some plot points from the third and fourth episode.
  • The Virus and The Flashback reveal that The Chosen One never died, which contradicts both the file description in Animator Vs Animation 4, which says that The Second Coming is a resurrection of The Chosen One and The Second Coming's name.
  • The Flashback shows that after The Chosen One and The Dark Lord escaped Alan's computer at the end of Animator Vs Animation 3, they started to wreak havoc on the internet. Despite this, Alan thought they were dead until The Virus, which canonically happens about seven years after they escaped. Realistically, Alan should have learned that the two stick figures he created were causing chaos on the internet shortly after they escaped his computer.
• Updated Re-release: In 2020, after the AVA series finished, Alan released "Animator vs. Animation V", which is really just the 4 episodes edited together plus a new soundtrack.

The Virus

• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: A virus called "ViraBot" infects Alan's computer.
• The Assimilator: When The Second Coming first opens the Start menu, most of the default programs(such as for music and photos) have been replaced with things like "ViraTunes"
• Big Damn Heroes: The original Chosen One arrives to help stop ViraBot.
• The Bus Came Back: After his very long absence, Animator finally comes back in the series. And the original Chosen One comes back as well.
• Computer Virus: ViraBot, which infects Alan's computer and plans to destroy everything.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Second Coming draws stickmen to help Alan with his animation, akin to how Victim copied himself to destroy the desktop in the first animation.
  • After ViraBot destroys Alan's cursor, he tries to retrieve a new one like he did in 4. ("Tries" being the keyword here—ViraBot stops the attempt by destroying the Start menu.)
• Darkest Hour: ViraBot deletes the cursor and blocks off Alan from creating a new one, as well as trapping the stick figures in webbing.
• Drop the Hammer: Second Coming asks Alan to draw one to hit ViraBot with. It doesn't work.
• Four-Legged Insect: Virabot, which is odd because its desktop icon showed eight legs.
• Forced to Watch: After ViraBot destroys Alan's mouse cursor and stops him from making a new one, all he can do is watch as ViraBot easily subdues the stick figures and closes in on Second Coming for the kill. Downplayed in that no-one's forcing Alan to stay and watch, but it's not hard to understand why he wouldn't want to walk away and leave his friends to their fate.
• Heat Wave: When the Second Coming goes to recruit his friends to help fight ViraBot, they're shown to be feeling the computer's abnormally high temperature—Yellow's wiping sweat off his face with a cloth, Red's fanning himself, and Blue and Green are sprawled out in clear discomfort.
• Heel–Face Turn: Given that it destroyed Alan's previous computer beyond repair, this apparently happened to the original Chosen One when it arrives to stop ViraBot from doing the same.
• Mythology Gag: Second Coming draws a bunch of missiles with the pencil to hit ViraBot with. This was the Animation's primary attack when using the pencil in the web game, albeit that it drew tiny ones that time.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Almost literal; while ViraBot was already doing damage to the computer itself regardless, it isn't until Second Coming hits its desktop icon with a hammer, cracking it open and releasing ViraBot, that it becomes an actual threat to the stick figures and the interface.
• Oh, Crap!: When Alan and Second Coming notice that the computer is abnormally hot, the former checks the Task Manager and finds ViraBot using up 97% of the CPU.
• Unexplained Recovery: We're given no hints as to how The Chosen One survived the destruction of the computer he was on in order to return.
• Triumphant Reprise: The intro music is a lighter, more upbeat version of the intro music from 4, which was the last time we saw the Animator.
• Wham Shot: Just when ViraBot was about to kill The Second Coming, a flash appears, from which The Chosen One comes out and then proceeds to fight the virus.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Second Coming draws a couple of (relatively crude, compared to him and his friends) stick figures to help him with Alan's latest animation, only for them to be returned to the pencil tool as soon as they're done. Nothing is made of the implications of a stick figure casually making and then erasing other stick figures. The only saving grace is that they willingly jump back inside the pencil.

The Chosen One's Return

• Enemy Mine: The Chosen One comes back to destroy ViraBot, it's eventually learned that the Dark Lord created it.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The title outright gives away the plot twist of the last episode.
• Shout-Out: During The Chosen One's final No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of ViraBot, he performs combos that look like they were lifted straight out of Dragon Ball.

The Flashback

• Deus ex Machina: Retroactively Subverts this with regards to the Chosen One's appearance and intervention in "The Virus", showing that he survived the destruction of Alan's last computer by jumping into the internet at the last second, as well as why he chased ViraBot to Alan's computer.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Chosen One thinks it's too far to outright have a virus able to vaporize anything it touches, thus breaking the alliance with the Dark Lord.
  • Even if he has to help Alan despite everything that's happened 8 years ago.
• How We Got Here: This episode shows why both ViraBot and The Chosen One arrived in Alan's PC.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The Chosen One came to regret his alliance with The Dark Lord after seeing all the destruction they've caused together during their 8 year rampage.
• Technology Marches On: To confirm that the flashback happens in the past, one of the first camera shots is of a flip phone lying on Alan's desk.
• This Is Unforgivable!: After The Dark Lord shows how ViraBot can vaporize anything it touches, The Chosen One realizes that ViraBot will outright kill people; The Chosen One decides he can longer tolerate The Dark Lord's evil.

The Showdown

• 11th-Hour Superpower: After watching his friends die and being beaten to a pulp by the Dark Lord, the Second Coming activates latent powers similar to those of the Chosen One, and uses them to finish off the Dark Lord for good.
• Awesomeness-Induced Amnesia: After waking from his Post-Victory Collapse, the Second Coming is shocked to see his friends alive, as well as confused to see the Chosen One bowing to him. This implies he remembers nothing of his actions when he was tapping into his 11th-Hour Superpower.
• Back from the Dead: After defeating the Dark Lord, the Second Coming is able to use his new powers to revive the other stick figures.
• Bigger Stick: The Chosen One and the Dark Lord are about evenly matched when both are dueling with their inherent powers. After the Dark Lord puts on a wristband that gives him additional attacks and apparently allows him to No-Sell the Chosen One's Eye Beams, however, he becomes too powerful for the Chosen One to fight alone.
• Bloodless Carnage: Though knocked around a fair bit, the Chosen One sustains no visible injury after being impaled by several spikes that the Dark Lord had summoned. This makes it all the more shocking when the Dark Lord's later assault on the Second Coming leaves gaping wounds.
• Call-Back:
  • After the Second Coming's 11th-Hour Superpower manages to defeat the Dark Lord once and for all, the Chosen One bows to him much like he and the others bowed to the Chosen One after the latter defeated ViraBot
  • The Second Coming's new powers in general, given their similarity to the Chosen One's, harkens back to when he was called "The Chosen One's Return" by the Task Manager in AVA IV
• Chekhov's Gun: Once again, the Stick Figures Fight sticks are deleted by someome who tries to do the same to the odd one out, only to discover what The Second Coming a.k.a. "The Chosen One's Return" can do.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: In contrast to their "death" in AVA IV, where they just poofed out of existence, the Fighting Stick Figures are slowly dissolved into nothingness when struck by the Dark Lord.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The Dark Lord defeats the second generation stick figures with little effort, up until the Second Coming activates his 11th-Hour Superpower.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: The Animator is taken out of the fight by the ViraBot swarm, but it takes a lot more work on their part than it did for the original ViraBot.
• Darkest Hour: The Dark Lord and his army of ViraBots overpower Alan, the Chosen One, and the Second Coming, and the other stick figures are deleted.
• Defiant to the End: All of the second generation stick figures demonstrate this, continuing to weakly flail at the Dark Lord well past the point where the battle is clearly lost.
• Deus ex Machina: After the Dark Lord kills the Second Coming's friends and is about to kill the Chosen One and leave a harshly wounded Second Coming stomped into a wall, the Second Coming gains super powers out of nowhere, heals himself, curb stomps the Dark Lord and brings his friends back to life. The last one is a bit justified as the Second Coming just hacked the Dark Lord's console instead of using magic.
• Evil Overlooker: While it's debatable if he's really looking at the heroes as he has no eyes, the official poster has The Dark Lord above The Second Coming and his friends. The same can be said for ViraBot who is in the background and above everyone except the Animator.
• Group Hug: When The Second Coming and his friends are reunited, they hug, overjoyed to be alive.
• Heroic RRoD: The Second Coming collapses after using his 11th-Hour Superpower to defeat the Dark Lord and revive his friends.
• Hope Spot: Yellow manages to contact the Animator for help in fighting the Dark Lord. Working in unison, the Animator and the Chosen One gain the upper hand against the Dark Lord, but are overwhelmed after the Dark Lord summons his ViraBot army. The viruses crash the program that Yellow had used to bring to the Animator to their location, preventing the Animator from interfering again.
• Impairment Shot: When The Second Coming wakes up, he blinks awake, seeing his friends hovering above him.
• Killed Off for Real: The Dark Lord is obliterated by Second Coming's laser eye blast.
• Mundane Made Awesome: From the Animator's perspective, the fight looks like a simple (if fast-paced) click-and-drag game that takes up only a small window on his computer screen, but to the stick figures, the battle is of titanic proportions, with the Animator's cursor manifesting as a giant icon that can tear up the landscape.
• Near-Villain Victory: The Dark Lord almost certainly would have succeeded in his goals if the Second Coming hadn't activated Eleventh Hour Superpowers.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Downplayed; all we know about the password to the Dark Lord's computer is that it's 10 characters long, but the fact that Yellow guessed it first try means that it couldn't have been too complicated or obscure.
• Post-Victory Collapse: After defeating The Dark Lord and reviving all his friends, The Second Coming loses his superpowered side and collapses in the compound, falling unconscious.
• Recursive Canon: Somehow, "The Showdown" already exists as a YouTube video within the story, even while the events of the video are taking place.
• Shout-Out: When The Dark Lord put on the band that added a ViraBot's powers to his own, his main weapon is bladed energy, similar to Goku Black.
  • When Second Coming unlocks his powers and fights The Dark Lord and the ViraBots, his energy is green, just like Broly.
• Stacked Characters Poster: The poster mentioned above has The Second Coming, Green, Blue, Yellow and Red in the front, The Chosen One and The Dark Lord above them and visibly larger, and at the top, the Animator with ViraBot behind him.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Yellow creates a program using the Dark Lord's computer to contact the Animator and allow him to join the fight. It works until the Dark Lord evens the playing field by bringing in his ViraBot army.
• Taking the Bullet: The Animator uses his cursor to block an attack intended for the Chosen One by the Dark Lord. This doesn't seem to inconvenience the cursor much, and the Dark Lord is only able to lock the Animator out of the fight by crashing Yellow's "Animator Combat Tool" program with his ViraBots.
• Why Won't You Die?: Unlike the other stick figures, the Second Coming does not dissolve away after being impaled by the Dark Lord's weapon. The Dark Lord settles for brutally slashing him repeatedly instead, taking the Second Coming out of the fight until the Second Coming's 11th-Hour Superpower kicks in.
• Zerg Rush: The Dark Lord has a whole army of ViraBots at his command, which allows him to turn the tide against the combined onslaught of the Chosen One and the Animator.

    Animation vs League of Legends

• Chekhov's Skill: When everyone's trying out their skills once they first start up the game, one of Second Coming's skills just seems to give a flashy speed lines effect, underwhelming everyone. It turns out to increase attack speed, which comes in handy when Second Coming is racing to destroy Purple's crystal.
• Demoted to Extra: The Animator only appears in the opening seconds, playing the game.
• Idiot Ball: When Purple is attacking the Fighting Stick Figures' team crystal with a giant worm, he has it down to less than one hit's worth of health before the Second Coming starts attacking his team crystal. Despite (a) Second Coming being on the other end of the map, and (b) his damage rate (even accelerated) being insufficient to destroy the crystal in the time it would take Purple to finish off his own, Purple directs his worm to charge at Second Coming and stop him. Possibly subverted since Purple looks surprised when the worm turns around and starts heading towards the Second Coming, implying the worm went to attack the Second Coming on its own accord and Purple just couldn't stop it in time.

• Truth in Television: Purple attacking the League of Legends icon results in his clones glitching out, causing the attacks of the Fighting Stick Figures to pass through them ineffectively. Anyone who as played an online game against a player on a slow connection (at least, in a game that don't slow down the battle entirely to compensate) will recognize the effect.

    Animation vs Pokémon

• Adaptational Villainy: Ethan of all people, who has his own Pokémon attempt to beat up the Second Coming. He eventually gets over it.
• Art Shift: The Second Coming gains the chibi-like proportions of the HeartGold characters when he enters the game.
• Big Damn Heroes: Ethan has his Meganium hold back the Second Coming's Feraligatr in the DS while he attempts to deal a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the Second Coming in the PC. Feraligatr manages to break into the PC just in time to save the Second Coming and the rest of his team from Ethan's Ho-oh.
• Brick Joke: At one point, the fighting stick figures pull up a couch and some popcorn to watch the Second Coming's journey through Johto. After Ethan admits defeat and goes to leave, he stops stunned when he sees the other four still sitting there, having seen the entire fight prior. Green even waves at him.
• Combination Attack: The Second Coming's Feraligatr, Pidgeot, Ampharos, and Magcargo perform one that takes out Ethan's Ho-oh.
• Cool Shades: Blue puts on a pair of Squirtle Squad sunglasses when he sits down to watch the Second Coming's playthrough.
• Defeat Equals Friendship:
  • Averted compared to the base franchise; not once does the Second Coming have to fight any of the Pokémon that join him.
  • Played straight with Ethan, who calls the Second Coming a fellow trainer after losing to him.
• Dramatic Drop: Once the Animator finally returns with his lunch, he goes to take a bite, only to drop his fork in surprise upon seeing that the Second Coming beat the game in the time he was gone.
• Early Installment Weirdness: Compared to the other "Animation vs. Video Game" videos, this one has a noticable amount of squash and stretch added to the sprite characters while they're in Alan's PC, as well as separating their limbs into individual sprites. Later installments give the characters sprite animations more remnicient of indie games.
• Elemental Rock–Paper–Scissors: Comes into play once the Ethan vs Second Coming battle goes airborne; Second Coming sends out Magcargo, so Ethan sends out Gyarados, so Second Coming sends out Ampharos, and so on.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The Second Coming manages to beat HeartGold in the time it takes for the Animator to make lunch; looking at the PC's system clock at a couple of points reveals that starter to Pokémon League took less than an hour.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Ethan isn't welcoming towards the Second Coming; their first interaction has him tell the Second Coming that he doesn't belong in the game "and never will." When they encounter each other at the Elite Four, Ethan quips that "The world doesn't revolve around stick figures, last time I checked." and attempts to give the Second Coming a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown using his Pokémon. When the Second Coming's other Pokéemon pop out to defend him, Ethan immediately assumes that they too were stolen (even though they all joined the SC willingly). Once the Second Coming defeats him, he gets over it.
  • The two gym leaders we see dialog from seem to have lighter shades of this; Falkner balks at having been beaten by a stick figure, while Bugsy remarks that the Second Coming is "pretty good for a alien creature."
• Kids Are Cruel: Two children attempt to force Slugma into falling in a lake. Luckily, The Second Coming's Heracross stops this.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: After Ethan's Ho-oh is beaten, he concedes defeat and stops his Meganium from attacking.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Unable to gain a decisive advantage against the Second Coming using his regular Pokémon, Ethan brings out his Ho-oh to finish the fight. It nearly works until the Second Coming's Feraligatr joins the fray.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: When Ethan commands his Pokémon to attack the Second Coming during their second confrontation, none of them hesitate. Meganium even readies an attack on its own before Ethan stops it.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Second Coming catches his Pidgey without battling it, like Ash did with his Caterpie.
  • Green is wearing Ash's hat from the Indigo League, while Blue is wearing the Squirtle Squad leader's sunglasses.
  • The team the Second Coming has in his Imagine Spot is Red's team from the same game.
  • The Animator chooses Chikorita as Ethan's starter Pokémon, while Second Coming grabs Totodile; this maintains continuity with HeartGold by leaving Cyndaquil to be stolen by Silver (who picks the type advantage against Ethan's starter).
  • Ethan faces off against the Second Coming right before he's about to enter the Pokémon League, in the same vein as Barry in the Sinnoh games and Hau in the original Sun/Moon.
• Nice Hat: Three of the four Fighting Stick Figures don these when they sit down to watch the Second Coming's playthrough; Yellow puts on a Pikachu hat, Red puts on a Magikarp hat, and Green puts on Ash's Indigo League hat.
• Sacrificial Lion: The Second Coming's Bellossom is the only one of his Pokémon that doesn't get to do much during the final battle against Ethan, only briefly attacking Ethan's Golem before being knocked out by his Crobat. However, its defeat infuriates the Second Coming, who continues the fight with more resolve and ferocity from that point onward. Downplayed, as unusually for the trope, the Second Coming is able to revive Bellossom with a Max Revive after the battle.
• Taking the Bullet: Heracross jumps out of its Pokéball to intercept an attack from Ethan's Gyarados before it hits the Second Coming. The attack brings its HP way down, but doesn't faint it, and the Second Coming heals it with a Hyper Potion soon after.
• Wing Ding Eyes: It's easy to miss due to the art style, but when the Second Coming brings Bellossom back out to revive it, it has X-eyes.

    Blue's New Superpower

• All Just a Dream: The events are shown to have been a dream as the Second Coming wakes up from snoozing on the Animator's desktop. He then sees the Animator about to donate to #TeamTrees and decides to make that dream a reality by inflating the amount of trees being donated towards.
• Beyond the Impossible: Blue is able to grow trees by dropping dollar bills on the ground, including pavement, desert, and ocean.
• Bland-Name Product: The chocolate bars Blue was selling at the beginning are clearly Snickers bars with the name replaced by a blue block.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When the stick figures are driving through the Minecraft world as Blue is dropping dollar bills, the dollar bills are replaced with Emeralds.
• Green Thumb: Blue was already this when it came to Minecraft, but he takes it to another level here, growing full grown trees in seconds just by dropping dollar bills on the ground.
• Very Special Episode: Done as a plug for the #TeamTrees fundraiser.

    Animation vs. Super Mario Bros.

• Collision Damage: The Second Coming tries to shake SMB 1 Mario's hand and ends up damaging him due to the game's rules on this. Fortunately, Mario had eaten a Super Mushroom before it happened. Unfortunately, Mario takes offense.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Red uses a Chain Chomp as an Epic Flail, in the style of Link and Bayonetta.
  • The stick figures create themselves an impromptu Super Mario Maker after befriending the Marios.
• Poor Communication Kills: What kicks off the episode. Due to Second Coming damaging SMB 1 Mario, as well as accidentally stealing his Mushroom, Mario declares war on him and the other stick figures by summon future versions of himself and enemies from other Mario titles from the Animator's Nintendo Switch. They stop fighting by the end of it, instead creating a makeshift Super Mario Maker.

    Animation vs. Arcade Games

• Anti-Villain: It turns out Q*bert was stealing everything because he was trying to feed his family.
• Big Bad: Q*bert, who is stealing objects and characters from the other arcade games.
• Black Hole Belly: Q*bert swallows tons of objects that are bigger than him.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Q*bert makes Pac-Man, a frog from Frogger, Lady, Jumpman, and Mario attack the Stick Figures by controlling them from Yellow's arcade machine.
• Brick Joke: The first time Yellow plays Pong, one of the paddles is replaced by a line block from Tetris. When the Stick Figures end up in Pong while chasing Q*bert, the line block from Tetris is still there.
• Bullet Hell: There are multiple occasions where the Stick Figures are attacked by the aliens from Space Invaders, who can fire projectiles much more quickly than they usually do.
• The Cameo: Luigi only ever appears on the "Mario Bros." game select screen.
• Chekhov's Gun: The cherries. Yellow grabs them in Pac-Man and gives them to Q*bert's kids when he sees that they're hungry. When he saw that they loved them, it gave him the idea to use his computer to spawn more Pac-Man fruit..
• Cutting the Knot: Yellow manages to beat Donkey Kong by just throwing a hammer at Donkey Kong himself.
• Eating the Enemy: As a last ditch effort to save himself, Q*bert uses his Vaccum Mouth to eat all of the stick figures except for Yellow, who had held on to the terrain.
• Hand Stomp: When the Stick Figures end up in Tetris, Green is hanging from a ledge until Q*bert stomps on his hands, causing him to fall into a gap he can't climb out of.
• Handy Feet: Q*bert proves to be quite adept at controlling the arcade cabinet with his feet.
• Hope Spot: After beating Donkey Kong, Q*bert falls from the sky due to the platforms disappearing, but ends up landing on a conveniently timed Pong ball just out of reach of the stick figures.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Characters and objects from Pong, Breakout, Space Invaders, Q*bert, Pac-Man, Frogger, Tetris, Mario Bros., and Donkey Kong all collide here. Near the end, Yellow also adds Galaga .
• No-Sell: The laser cannon from Space Invaders proves useless agains Pac-Man, since he can just eat the bullets. The hammer from Donkey Kong works just fine against him, though.
• Shout-Out: Pixels is referenced when a hammer is thrown at Donkey Kong.
• Stomach of Holding: When the Stick Figures confront Q*bert, he spits out some of the objects he swallowed to hinder them.
• That Russian Squat Dance: A character from Tetris does this, as well as Q*bert when he's about to leave Tetris.
• Vacuum Mouth: Q*bert is able to inhale objects into his mouth.
• Wham Shot: Everything goes well until a log from Frogger suddenly appears in Tetris.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Blinky is shown to be missing from the Pac-Man stage and doesn't appear at any point in the episode.

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What Animation Program Does Alan Becker Use?

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebAnimation/AnimatorVsAnimation

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