Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (animation)

Comin' atcha!

The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (1999-2000) was an animated television series, based on the The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot comic. The Big Guy was the old warhorse robot superhero who was to be replaced by an all-American Rusty; however, Rusty's inexperience forced the Big Guy back out of retirement to serve as Rusty's mentor and partner. Complicating matters was the fact that the Big Guy, Rusty's hero and role model... wasn't actually a robot. Unable to develop a working AI in time, the government secretly converted it into a Powered Armor, piloted by Lieutenant Dwayne Hunter, who poses as the Big Guy's mechanic to the outside world. The secret has to be kept from Rusty, as well, for fear of what the shock might do to his mind.

You can watch all of the episodes now, on Youtube. Unless you're in the USA, ironically.

Tropes used in Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (animation) include:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: For the most part if the robot doesn't have an emotion grid like Rusty they turn out to be evil.
• Aliens and Monsters
• Ascended Fanboy: Rusty, surprisingly enough. Yes, the boy robot is a huge fan of the Big Guy, and overjoyed to be working with him. Even though he was designed as a replacement.
• Badass Adorable: Rusty. No surprise, considering whom he is an Expy of.
• Badass Boast: "Fact: the only thing more piping hot than Mom's fresh baked apple pie is the sting of my anti-lowlife-terrorist mag popper. Want a slice?" He didn't.
• Bald of Evil: Legion Ex Machina bots.
• Big Bad Friend: In the episode Harddrive, the titular Evil Counterpart of Big Guy turns out to be a Powered Armor piloted by Griffin, Dwayne Hunter's old friend.
• Blob Monster: Two: one is a jealous cleaning product and the other is a Grey Goo.
• Bowel-Breaking Bricks: The Big Guy, at the opening of one episode, terrifies a villain in an less impressive suit of Power Armor into ejecting and surrendering in fear (unlike the Big Guy's this fool's armor didn't have anything to cover the pilot). Naturally, ejection occurs out of the back end of the mech.
• Become a Real Boy: Averted. Rusty doesn't want to become human. Even when given the opportunity to experience human feeling, he opted to switch back.
• Brain Food: Dr. Neugog and later Pierre after accidentally using the same device that turned Dr. Neugog into a monster.
• Brand X / No Celebrities Were Harmed: Averted with references to such celebrities as Jerry Seinfeld and product such as a Sony Playstation being blatantly mentioned.
• Cassandra Truth: Dr. Neugog tells Rusty straight out that Big Guy isn't a robot, but a pilot in Powered Armor. Rusty's response? To laugh in his face.
• Catch Phrase: 'For the love of Mike...'
  • Don't forget Rusty's 'no pain receptors'
    • Rusty actually has several: "Comin' at ya!", "Sure as shootin'", "Ready and rarin' to go!"
• Clothes Make the Superman: Despite being just a Powered Armor, the world believes Big Guy to be an actual sentient Super Robot, because its creators didn't want to admit failing to produce a real artificial intelligence.
• Convection, Schmonvection: When a volcano erupts from under New Tronic City, there is a noticeable lack of people and buildings bursting into flame over the lava.
• Continuity Nod: In episode 7 Rusty is traveling through the internet and visits his favorite Online Game 'Magitek Warriors' in attempt to escape Number 4 of the Legion Ex Machina. Episode 8 shows Rusty playing the same game before being called to a mission with Big Guy.
• Cut Short
• Cyanide Pill: Each member of Legion Ex Machina has a Self-Destruct Mechanism built within to prevent someone from accessing their data and memory.
• Deadpan Snarker: Big Guy or rather his pilot Lieutenant Dwayne Hunter certainly has his moments.
• Did You Get a New Haircut?: Asked by Jenny after Pierre uses the telepathy dynamo. Justified by the fact the increase to his head makes him look like he has less hair.
• Eagle Land: Type1 Retro-future.(but quite tongue-in-cheek)
• Evil Twin: One episode featured an evil robot version of Big Guy.
  • Rusty had tons of evil knockoffs running amok in another.
• Four-Star Badass: Lieutenant Dwayne Hunter definitely counts, even when he's not piloting Big Guy.
• Gatling Good
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: The final episode.

Rusty: Number Two just hit the fan!

• Giant Spider: Dr. Neugog gets turned into one, with the added bonus of still having a human face, and the ability to suck out people's brains.
• Grey Goo: The focus of one episode. However, instead of eating everything, they're out to improve everything...which is not necessarily an improvement when it involved wantonly breaking things first.
• Good-Looking Privates: Helloooo Lt. Hunter...
• Hey, It's That Voice!: It's almost surreal seeing Bobby Hill save the day as Rusty. Also, Donovan is Bill.
  • And R. Lee Ermey is General Thorton. Particularly noticeable when he does the Drill Sergeant Nasty to Earl.
• Hot Scientist: Dr. Erika Slate. And being that she built Rusty she also a Hot Mom. She's Got Legs too.
• It Amused Me: Po the Obliterator.

Oh, one last thing: before Po leaves, he will destroy your planet. Just for laughs.

• Jerkass: Donovan and his monkey.
• Left Hanging: All of the Legion Ex Machina are destroyed, or so they thought until it was revealed that there was a final member still at large.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: The biomechanoid Neo-Cateri.
• Monster of the Week:
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies
  • Kraken and Leviathan: "The leviathan" is awakened from the deep.
  • Magma men.
  • Oculothorax: Seen briefly in "The Big Boy."
• Morality Chip: Rusty's human emotion grid acts as one of these for supercomputer Edie.
• More Dakka: Big Guy has four often used heavy machine guns folded in his elbows, plus two seldom used Macross Missile Massacre dispensors next to them. He also has a number of recurring weapons like a forehead laser, retractable wrist cannons, A shoulder mounted gatling gun, and a couple minor one-off weapons.
  • Rusty may actually have more firepower than the Big Guy. While the Big Guy relies on an assortment of missiles and machine guns Rusty uses what looks like nuclear powered plasma bolts that seem to do more damage (when he hits the target).
    • This was actually brought up in one episode. Rusty's built in weapons are significantly more powerful than anything Big Guy is armed with, but which is more intimidating: a child robot pointing his finger at you, or a thirty foot tall metal superman unfolding his arm into dual chainguns?
  • When Big Guy's Evil Twin is introduced, it's revealed that in order to make room for the pilot, a giant cannon the size of Big Guy's torso had to be removed!
• Motherly Scientist: Dr. Ericka Slate, Rusty's creator, treats the boy robot as her own son throughout the series. This is lampshaded more than once.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Semi-averted. Dr. Slate may be productive inventor, but she is strictly and explicitly a roboticist and computer scientist, though she seems to brush against other disciplines at times, as well. Played straight in that she seems to do most of her inventing single-handedly, even though a creation like (for example) Rusty would require knowledge of everything from software programming to human psychology to nuclear physics to construct.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Rusty is actually more powerful than the Big Guy; he just doesn't yet have the skill and training he needs to be effective.
• Powered Armor: The dirty little secret of the BGY Committee is that the Big Guy is really just a piloted suit instead of a full robot because they simply couldn't get the original AI designs to work after it's designer went missing.
• Psycho Prototype: Rusty's older brother Earl, due to an incomplete, unstable AI.
• Rocket Punch
• Running Gag: No pain receptors.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Rusty's creator in one episode.
  • In the same episode she is also visibly impressed at seeing Lt. Hunter in a suit
• Shaped Like Itself: "It glimmers like a... glimmering thing."
• Shout-Out: The Big Guy's home base was the converted aircraft carrier S.S. Dark Horse.
  • The alien squid-monsters known as the Squillachi were supposedly named for producer Frank Squillace.
  • To Star Wars in the episode The Lower Depths.

Dr. Slate (via hologram recording): Help us, Big Guy. You're our only hope!

• • Another to Dr. Strangelove when Big Guy's repaired AI starts malfunctioning, making it paranoid:

The work's never done, so long as They crave our precious bodily metals.

• • The Ubik chip desired by Edie is a reference to Philip K. Dick's Ubik.
• Spoiled Brat: Pierre.
• Talking Animal: Dr. Donovan's sidekick Jenny. While none of the characters in the show seemed to think it was unusual, except for one Monster of the Week villain who questioned her on the origins of her abilites. Thanks to Big Guy she never got to explain.
• Telescoping Robot: You could maybe, maybe realistically fit all the weapons that come out of Big Guy in there, but not if you still want to have space for working motors and such. Or maybe more than a couple of rounds of ammunition.
  • This is lampshaded (Kinda) by a Legion Ex Machina version of Big Guy, who, after learning the big secret, notes that the inclusion of a cockpit means the Big Guy doesn't have a Wave Motion Gun built in the chest...like he does.
• "Three Laws"-Compliant
• Time Travel: The basis of the plot in one episode.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the comic, Rusty existed only to get stomped flat by monsters & annoy Big Guy. While he still does that in the cartoon, he manages to become a genuinely effective (& likeable) character.
• Twice Shy: Slate and Lt. Hunter
• You Are Number Six: The robots of the Legion Ex Machina are only known by numbers.
  • Technically all the robots have model number names (e.g. BGY-11, EP-327, ARG-12) but are typically referred to by their nicknames (Big Guy, Earl, Argo, respectively).
• Your Brain Won't Be Much of a Meal: About Donovan after Pierre uses the telepathy dynamo:

I'm hungry...very hungry... but I crave nutrition, not empty calories.

• • This was pointed out when Neugog was going to feed on Donovan as well but he planned on doing anyway simply because he didn't like him