death as comedy

The Best Background Characters: The Tip-toeing Nazi Soldier

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Every story has a cast of characters that we follow and watch and come to love… but what about the background characters? The nameless masses who rarely get our attention? This column examines my favorite background characters who deserve a moment in the spotlight.

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The Game:

‘Wolfenstein II – The New Colossus’

The Character:

A tip-toeing Nazi soldier.

The Scene:

(The soldier appears at 2:03)

Why He Deserves A Moment In The Spotlight

In the opening of 2017’s, ‘Wolfenstein: The New Colossus,’ the player’s enormous U-boat hideout is boarded by dozens of Nazi commandos intent on killing him and his allies. At one point, the player meets up with Set, a Jewish scientist, who defends both of them with the use of a microwave-lined hallway, which obliterates multiple Nazis as they blindly run through it. But near the end, one soldier realizes that something’s not right about the hallway and stops to consider his next course of action, which is to carefully – and hilariously – tippy-toe through the hallway… only to be blown up like everyone else.

The common Nazi in ‘The New Colossus’ exists (as they rightfully should) to be mowed down by the hundreds. Players expect them to be little more than cannon fodder, which makes moments like these great because it gives individual soldiers a little personality and makes them stand out in a crowd of characters we’re conditioned not to care about… but because this soldier’s still part of the most monstrous regime ever to exist in human history, we laugh at his explosive death instead of mourning him, because f*** Nazis.

The Best Background Characters: The Backflipping Goon

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Every story has a cast of characters that we follow and watch and come to love… but what about the background characters? The nameless masses who rarely get our attention? This column examines my favorite background characters who deserve a moment in the spotlight.

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The Movie:

‘The Matrix Revolutions’

The Character:

A goon with radical backflipping skills.

The Scene:

(The guy in question appears at 2:03)

Why He Deserves A Moment In The Spotlight

You’ve probably heard the saying, ‘Don’t bring a gun to a knife fight.’ Another equal saying should be, ‘Don’t expect aerobatics to save you in a gun fight.’

The goon in this scene distinguishes himself when, after running out of ammo for his pistols, decides that the best course of action is to do backflips across the room. Then he’s shot and dies, complete with a ‘you failed!’ music cue on the soundtrack.

Much like one of Snoke’s guards, this goon stands out because his actions are so nonsenscial. Tactical backflips may look cool, but it’d have been more effective to take cover behind a pillar and survive to keep fighting. But with his sacrifice, Backflip Goon provides a valuable lesson to fighters in fiction: Unless you’re in a comedy where exaggerated actions are used for humorous effect, staying alive in a fight is more important than showing off how acrobatic you are.

Favorite Moments: Journey (Alternate Ending)

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We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.

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The video game:

‘Journey’

Why it’s great:

Journey – a 2012 game by ThatGameCompany – is one of my favorite video games for how unique it is: Instead of running around with big, powerful guns trying to kill bad guys or grotesque monsters, you play a red-robed… being trying to reach a distant mountain. It’s a hauntingly beautiful game with gorgeous scenery, a beautiful musical score, and a simple, yet satisfying theme about taking a journey and enjoying it (while occasionally avoiding robotic fish monsters), instead of blasting everything you see into bloody mush while screaming ‘AMERICA!’ and flexhing your digital, steroid-infused muscles.

And then there’s the ending, where, after coming so far, you end up freezing to death… and then this happens:

I adore this ending. It’s a beautiful, almost spiritual experience to finally reach the peak of the mountain and walk into the light. It’s a satisfying, wonderful way to end a game.

With all that said, here’s a different take on how to end the game:

What I find so funny about this ending is that it takes such an uplifting, spiritual moment and then suddenly stops it with an incredibly goofy voice and a long, comical scream as the robed being plunges to his death. It’s the equivalent of a bride walking towards the alter and marrying the love of her life… only for a trapdoor to suddenly open and have her plunge from sight with a Wilhelm scream. It’s tragic, yes, but also funny because of how unexpected it is, and how a happy mood suddenly switches to ‘What the hell just happened?!’ and ‘Did I really see that?!’

What we can learn from ‘Limbo with Lyrics’

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NOTE: The music video for this song features a child drawn in a stylistic manner repeatedly dying violent deaths.

When it came out in 2010, ‘Limbo’ quickly became one of the most famous independent video games ever created, quickly putting developer Playdead on the map. With it’s beautifully dark art style, bleak aesthetics, brutal violence, and haunting soundtrack, ‘Limbo’ is a masterpiece of grim video games… so, naturally, parodies starting coming our way, including this rather amusing song.

There’s only one lesson to learn from this video, but it’s a good one:

Be cautious when doing making light of real-life horrors

If you haven’t played ‘Limbo’, here are two videos to show you what kind of game it is:

When I initially started this article, I was going to write about how the use of an upbeat tune and comedic sound effects makes for comedy gold when contrasted with very dark media (which it does very well). After all, such a mix has worked before:

However, I then realized that while that combination of lighthearted fun and horrific suffering is funny for fictional stories, it doesn’t work as well when used in real life: A fun Reggie song about concentration camps in Nazi Germany would be rather… tasteless. So would a happy jazz tune about atrocities committed by ISIS to innocent people. It’s easy and fun to parody Jason Vorhees, Darth Vader, and the Alien and Predator, but when it comes to poking fun at torture, genocide, or the mutilation and murder of ordinary people, we walk a very dangerous line between making a point and being tasteless.

Now, nothing is off limits when it comes to comedy. Writers should be free to do dark comedy if they wish, on whatever subject they wish. But discretion is important: Doing a parody song about how millions can’t pay their bills, afford insulin, or even a place to live can be funny because it critiques society and makes a point. Doing a Reggie song about children having limbs hacked off because their parents couldn’t make daily quotas on a rubber plantation probably won’t have the same effect.

When audiences watch or read comedy, they want to laugh and get away from the horrors of the world, if only for a few minutes or even a few seconds. As writers, we have to be careful how we use horror to make them laugh. If we use the horrors of a fictional world, we have more leeway because those horrors don’t really exist. But if we use the evil that surrounds us in everyday life, we must be careful of the point we’re trying to make… unless we’re talking about people who push shopping carts in grocery stores at half a mile an hour and block isles so that no one can get past them. They’re fair game.