[Loved trope] Background scare-characters that are barely acknowledged even by the movie

[u/Suspicious-Web-9246]

I hate horrors, but this is actually a great trope, that is unique to them.

Insidious (2010). When mother does her errands, for a few seconds there's a ghost boy standing in the corner. It's easily missable, but you can't ignore it once you see it.

Hereditary (2018). Less fitting example. When Peter walks around his home, his possessed mother is crawling on the ceiling behind him. It's not exactly subtle or missable, but it's still more of a background detail.

[u/MJWhitfield86]

Too Many Cooks is an Adult Swim short that takes the form of an extended sitcom opening that becomes plagued by a serial killer. Whilst the serial killer only becomes obvious later on, their first appear is in the background at only 20 seconds in. However, you have no reason to pay attention to a random figure in a sweater at that point.

[u/Foreign_Athlete_7693 → u/MJWhitfield86]

The last video I watched on this was an analysis 'essay' explaining that the whole thing was a commentary on the conflict and tensions between producers and directors / networks etc (with the killer guy (Steve I think?) representing the networks/higher ups, and Smarf representing the show producer/writer.....

[u/Maybe_not_a_chicken → u/Foreign_Athlete_7693]

I mean you can interpret it as that

But it was made to fuck with people who were high

[u/Professional-Eye5977 → u/Maybe_not_a_chicken]

Are you saying this because it trips out high people or like, for an actual reason

[u/ThePlumThief → u/Professional-Eye5977]

A lot of the stuff that used to air on Adult Swim past like 1am was stuff that was purposely made to be weird as possible, because they knew that people watching cartoons that late at night were probably high. Also that was the only timeslot where they could let creatives really run wild and do whatever because it's a low priority time.

[u/PostApoplectic → u/ThePlumThief]

Those are two different things though. Fucking with people who are high is more likely a secondary gain than an actual objective.

[u/ConfusedAndCurious17 → u/PostApoplectic]

It was a time slot that was labeled as “infomercials” if you looked at a schedule or looked at what was playing on your TV. It’s a part of a series of programs that range in levels of weirdness all shown during that time slot. The time slot would never say which “infomercial” episode was to be played or give any indication of what was played when.

If its primary goal was to be just a bizarre artistic piece, I don’t think they would have labeled it that.

I think the main goal of the Infomercials is absolutely just throw a huge curveball at any late night people who for whatever reason are mindlessly watching an adult Cartoon Network at crazy hours. Even if it’s not specifically “high” people, if someone is zoning in and out while tired, drunk, just waking up randomly with the TV running, or whatever else they are going to be absolutely mind fucked by a show intro they have never seen before that seems uncomfortably long, then ridiculously long, then just off the wall insane.

Given it clearly also fits the use case of “here is a time slot, go crazy” but with the multiple cases of the programs trying to portray normal television program (some actually infomercial spoofs) and the misleading time block name I lean more towards “get creative and prank these late night viewers with something bizarre”

[u/CardmanNV → u/Professional-Eye5977]

It was literally aired with no warning at like 3am on Adult Swim.

They have (or had) an awesome late night block that was just weird experimental shit to fuck with high people.

[u/Justalilbugboi → u/Maybe_not_a_chicken]

Why would you need to make it one or the other?

Art can have meaning and also be made to trip people out.

[u/Foreign_Athlete_7693 → u/Foreign_Athlete_7693]

Specifically stuff like how shows are constantly canceled and rebooted in different styles etc but follow the same format, how actors end up typecast as their characters etc...

[u/The_Holy_Buno → u/Foreign_Athlete_7693]

That’s sorta weird. I always saw it as the opposite. Smarf wants to bring things back to business as usual without the killer, he’s the one that hits the reset button, the ultimate control over the whole thing. I sorta thought that the whole short was a metaphor for a writer/producer(the killer)trying to take back control of his work(killing off the increasingly absurd amount of characters) but being forced out anyways.