This page lists the tropes tied to the characters from the The Red Eclipse by indie animator Insane Inkorporated.
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Heroes
The Red Eclipse
The titular superhero. Multiple supervillains have gathered to take him out.
- Anti-Hero: Verdict mentions "torture" among the Eclipse's crimes, which would pin him as one.
- The Ghost: Doesn't appear at any point in the animation.
- Rogues Gallery: The actual cast of the short are his, who are all plotting together to hire an assassin to kill him.
- Spell My Name with a "The": Out of all the characters he's the only one with an article in front of his name, presumably an invoked trope so as to make him appear more impressive despite not appearing onscreen.
- Uncertain Doom: The post-credits scene depicts Origami in her apartment with the money the other villains paid her, so it's unknown if she successfully killed him or if she's merely been paid in advance.
Villains
Verdict
"I'm a judge, I'm used to patience, but as a judge I don't like my time wasted."
Voiced by: Sam Sutton
A judge turned supervillain who sees himself as bearing the responsibility to bring the Red Eclipse to "justice" for the "crimes" he's committed against villains and henchmen alike.- Bald of Evil: He's completely bald under his wig.
- Evil Old Folks: An elderly judge who's also a supervillain.
- Eye Glasses: His eyebrows going over his glasses create this effect.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: A violent villain who wears glasses.
- Hypocrite: When all the villain vent their frustrations with the Red Eclipse, Verdict lists the crimes the hero has technically committed while fighting evil and saying "This man can't keep getting away with this!", all while being a supervillain, himself.
- Shout-Out: His design is one to the judge from Pink Floyd's The Wall.
Lady L
"What do you have, that beats my ten foot looking glass in the summer sun?"
Voiced by: Jahliely Salcedo
A light themed villainess with a fully functional lamp for a head.- Awesome, but Impractical: Her only scheme we know the intricacies of was an attempt to fry the Red Eclipse by focusing sunlight through a giant looking glass.
- The Faceless: We don't know what her head looks like under the shade, assuming her neck doesn't just end in a port for the lightbulbs.
- Informed Attribute: Lady L speaks with a calm, candid tone, however, according to Miss Conduct, she has a habit of lying to save face with the other villains, about things like how many of her goons the Red Eclipse has taken out.
- Light Is Not Good: She has a lampshade for head and wants to use sunlight and a giant looking glass to blind the Red Eclipse with.
- Ms. Fanservice: Downplayed. Her costume underlines the shape of her body although her head might cause the opposite effect.
- Non-Human Head: She's not just wearing a lampshade as part of her outfit, her head is an actual working lamp with interchangeable bulbs.
Miss Conduct
"What, I mean, what are we doing here?!"
Voiced by: Gia Ochsenbein
A bombastic villainess whose body is made of electricity. She's prone to outbursts of both emotion and power.- Elemental Hair Composition: Just like the rest of her body, her hair is also made of constantly flowing electricity.
- Expy: She can be seen as one of Livewire, being an unpredictable electric powered villainess.
- Eye Glasses: Or rather, goggles, also double as a Red Eyes, Take Warning, given her volatile nature.
- Large Ham: She's the loudest and most expressive villain out of the cast.
- Mad Hatter: She loves being a supervillain, but still acknowledges that she and the others need therapy.
- Mad Scientist: Her goggles and hair certainly make her look the part and there's a good chance it has something to do with how she got her powers.
- "Miss X" Pun: Her name is "Miss Conduct", like "misconduct" — fitting for both her electricity powers and her villainy.
- Psycho Electro: Downplayed. She gets angrier than the rest when the Red Eclipse is mentioned and has ADD but she is pretty level headed and savvy enough to recognize that supervillains could really use a psychotherapist.
- Mood-Swinger: She shifts between extreme emotions quite quickly, which is sometimes followed by her body emitting a shockwave.
- Psycho Lesbian: Becomes attracted to Orgami after seeing her brutalize Encyclopath's factotums. Goes so far as to etch her phone number on Orgami's costume.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Not only is she a supervillain, but she's one with a short fuse that's closely linked to her ability to send out power surges.
- Shock and Awe: It's not just her villain gimmick, it's her whole body.
- Shout-Out: According to the creator's Patreon, her design is one to Anton Ego from Ratatouille.
Encyclopath
"This perfidiousness has propagated to my nearest benefactors and auxiliaries."
Voiced by: Paul Johm
A cold, calculating villain who styles himself and his henchmen (factotums) around only speaking with convoluted, antiquated words and phrases.- Badass Bookworm: As should be expected of a vocabulary themed supervillain.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: His costume is just a Blue suit and fedora with purple accents.
- Bad Boss: He casually sacrifices over two dozen of his cronies to see if Origami is up to snuff.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: His Factotums are a pretty racially diverse group, with even a female member. Not that he treats them at all well, mind you.
- Expy: A rather on-the-nose one of the Riddler.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He wears glasses and is a supervillain, of the gimmicky gangster variety.
- Lean and Mean: Encyclopath is a tall, thin and ruthless villain.
- Not So Above It All: He plays it cool for most of his screen time but Blot does manage to get under his skin by making fun of his gimmick.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: It's his whole villain motif, even each one of his "factotums" has a codename on their hat in the form of an obscure word.
- We Have Reserves: Cares nothing for loss of the minions he sent against Origami, even Maven.
The Factotums
"Factotums."
Encyclopath's henchmen, a bunch of (mostly) normal humans. They dress in 1940s-style purple and blue gangster outfits to match their boss.- Badass in a Nice Suit: Well, for most of them, not so badass, but given that even the weaker ones show a fair amount of gun and knife skill they would probably have been fairly threatening if they hadn't been sent to fight Origami. Maven, of course, plays this completely straight, his lack of a suit jacket aside.
- Badass Normal: Maven doesn't seem to have any explicit supernatural powers, but is strong and skilled enough to match Origami in a sword duel and durable/determined enough to survive her headbutting a massive hole into his forehead (at least initially).
- Curb-Stomp Cushion: Maven manages to get a few good hits on Origami, but also has to rely on Combat Pragmatist antics like tossing his hat to blind her, and even though he survives getting his head caved in by a headbutt from the assassin, he ultimately dies when she decapitates him.
- Elite Mook: Maven, the final Factotum we see, puts up an incredible fight against Origami and manages to surprise even her with his durability and dedication when he gets up after having his head caved in from a headbutt.
- Fat Bastard: One of the first Factotums introduced is a massive man almost the size of the Blot. He's the first to die when Origami cuts open his throat, and then his corpse is used to crush Cockalorum to death.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The short doesn't call any attention to the codenames written on their hatbands apart from Cockalorum, the most prominent of the first three Factotums, and most of them only get a few frames of visible screentime.
- Gorn: Lots of them end up with gorey fates, but Maven takes the cake. After being headbutt he has a massive crater in his forehead and he spits his own eye out on the ground. By the end of the fight his head is reduced to a nauseatingly destroyed state by Origami's final buzzsaw head attack.
- Lean and Mean: The majority of the goons are very skinny, particularly the unnamed third Factotum from the initial trio that appear.
- Meaningful Name: The ones whose names can be seen tend to be fairly descriptive. "Cockalorum" means a self-important man, "Termagant", the only female Factotum, has a name meaning a mean-spirited woman, and of course "Maven" is a word meaning a expert or connoisseur, matching his skill level.
- Mook Chivalry: Subverted. As many as four try attacking Origami at once, but given there seem to have been more than a dozen of them there to begin with, it's a wonder we didn't see them being more aggressive. However, we also see this being partially reconstructed as two goons kill Termagant with errant gunfire and one gets his hat knocked off by another's stray bullet.
- Mook Horror Show: Invoked by Encyclopath, who intentionally has them attack an assassin who's way outside their weight class as a test for the latter.
- Mooks: They're Encylopath's disposable goons.
- More Dakka: About half of them seem to be carrying tommyguns and use them quite enthusiastically. This doesn't help them much.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Each one of them has a codename on their hat in the form of an obscure word.
- The Smurfette Principle: Termagant is the only female Factotum seen.
- Suicidal Overconfidence: Each one attacks Origami even after presumably witnessing every previous one get slaughtered. Given Encyclopath's Bad Boss tendencies, they may not have had much of a choice. Averted by Maven, who can actually pose a threat to Origami even if she does end up killing him.
- Use Your Head: Maven tries this against Origami when his swordfighting doesn't work. This ends up being his undoing when her head proves much more suited to this than his.
Blot
Gorsh!
An inky shapeshifter with a cartoon aesthetic and a knack for impersonation.- Beware the Silly Ones: He's the most playful and zany of the villains, but no less nefarious or bloodthirsty. He's even more powerful than most of his cohorts.
- Blob Monster: He's a sentient mass of ink.
- Card Sharp: Blot's powers include being able to manipulate printed ink. He likes to use it to cheat at cards.
- Copycat Mockery: He's able to take on the likenesses of his associates, which he used to poke fun at Encyclopath's way with words.
- Expy: In addition to the parallels to Clayface as a shapeshifting supervillain tied to entertainment, he also has several similarities to Gossamer, fitting for a cartoon themed villain.
- Piano Drop: Implied to be his proposed method of getting rid of the Red Eclipse. However, Aviv is quick to remind Blot that he didn't bring a piano.
- The Voiceless: Zig-Zagged as he does talk, but only by using the voices of others, leaving it unclear whether he actually has a voice of his own.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Takes on the appearance of famous cartoons (or at least their faces) as well as Wing Ding Eyes to communicate.
- White Gloves: Wears a pair to go with his schtick.
- Wingding Eyes: Blot frequently makes use of these to emote.
Aviv Jacobi
"I'm guessing you're all thinking of ways we could solve this issue."
Voiced by: Mathew Rivera
The no-nonsense mobster who gathered the other villains together to propose a plan to finally off the Red Eclipse.- Ambiguously Jewish: "Aviv Jacobi" is quite a Jewish name, and Jewish-American organized crime does exist. However, he makes no reference to his ethnic background.
- Boring, but Practical: He doesn't have any flashy gimmicks but what he does have are enough resources to track down and hire an assassin of Origami's caliber.
- Expy: Him being a no-nonsense, no-gimmick, sharp-dressed The Don style gangster, whose threat comes more from his calm, cold tactical planning, and having the money and connections to hire, and even unite, villains that are more fantastically powerful than him calls villains like The Penguin or The Kingpin into mind. Appearance-wise, he also resembles Carmine Falcone from the Batman comics.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Subverted as his only scar is a line across his nose, which is usually used in hero designs.
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: The villains would rather indulge in their habits to kill the Red Eclipse but Jacobi is more interested in getting the job done as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
- Only Sane Man: Being a more orthodox gangster, Aviv is this compared to the rest of the cast, though he doesn't deny he needs therapy just a much as they do.
Origami
- 1000 Origami Cranes: The post-credits scene shows her in her apartment with several bills (presumably the money she was paid) folded into origami cranes on her table, implying that she had a wish of some sort.
- Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Comes part and parcel with her origami-contortionist gimmick, but she seems to be able to push it to a truly impossible extent such as rotating her head more than a full 360 to use her pointed face as a buzzsaw against Maven.
- Clothes Make the Superman: Downplayed as Origami is incredibly capable on her own, but her suit seems to be made of a smart material that can extract a bullet from her thigh and form part of itself into a gun from which she fires the bullet back at the henchmen who shot her.
- Contortionist: One that works as a super-powered assassin with an origami-folding theme.
- Expy: She may be one of the The Flash villain Ragdoll.
- Hidden Depths: The brief post credits scene shows that she's staying in a cheap-loooking apartment while she's in town (strange given how much her she apparently makes from her work), and that she's folded the money she's paid with into paper cranes. Given the belief that folding a thousand paper cranes will grant a wish, this suggests that she's not actually interested in the money, at least not just for its own sake.
- One-Man Army: Casually takes out more than a dozen armed gangsters while sustaining minimal damage herself.
- Paper Master: Her paper-like suit grants her additional ways to attack in combat. She is shown using her paper armor to create deadly paper airplanes, a revolver to send back a bullet she was hit with, and a knife that gradually unfolds into a longer sword as she fights with it.
- The Stoic: Very rarely shows emotions. During the fight against the Encyclopath's factotums, it's possible to see her looking momentarily surprised, and she is also shown narrowing her eyes when Miss Conduct etches her number into Origami's suit.
- Use Your Head: As a buzzsaw, even! Her pointed face isn't just for show, as she can use it as a deadly weapon and even spin her head around on her neck in order to turn it into a whirling blade of death.
- The Voiceless: She never says a word.