"Someday, I'm going to be rich, and I'm going to buy a fourth wall."
—Triangle
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Triangle and Robert is a long-running Web Comic by Patrick Shaughnessy about the antics of a band of geometric shapes. It is deliberately poorly drawn and utterly absurd. Due to its length, Loads and Loads of Characters and use of Two Lines, No Waiting, there are numerous plotlines, but it has a central arc focusing on the heroes' struggle to Save the World.
Among the cast of characters:
- The Cartoonist: The narrator, and a terrible artist. Despite his apparent status as the creator of the comic, the characters often refuse to listen to him, and several of them insist that everything was better before the Cartoonist showed up and started poorly drawing everything. Needless to say, there is No Fourth Wall in the comic.
- Triangle: The Chosen One (he's not happy about it) and the Only Sane Man. Later, his status as the Chosen One grants him Chef of Iron powers.
- Robert: A rhombus, Bunny Ears Lawyer and Cloudcuckoolander. He has an amazing amount of Medium Awareness (his feats include starting a fire with his speech lines), and can accomplish impossible feats by Rule of Funny. He and Triangle are Wacky Scheme Consultants for hire. If you need to do something wacky, absurd, or impossible, give them a call.
- Cube: A cube (or a 2D image of one, anyway), and a secretive Adventurer Archaeologist. His subplots either uncover the history of the world before polygons became the dominant life-form, or parody spy dramas.
- The Cornersheep: A sheep (Or rather, a box labeled "insert super-intelligent telepathic sheep" mutated by electromagnetic radiation (Robert tried to hotwire it and steal it) who gained intelligence and telepathy. He employs various Mad Science gadgets in his quest to Take Over the World.
- Orpuddex, the Pudding-Watcher: A ghost of pudding from beyond time and space, tasked with keeping lumps from forming in the pudding that makes up the universe (it's a long story). Triangle is supposedly tasked with destroying him, but he couldn't care less. A Harmless Villain with occasional flashes of competence.
- The Sentries of Food: Chefs Of Iron who embody the powers of the food groups (Vegetables, Meat, Grain, etc.). They tend to bicker a lot and go on sidequests, but they can be devastating when they team up.
...and many more supporting characters.
The comic began in 1999 and finished in 2007, running for 2,513 strips (and 31 ending pages of 12 panels each). It can be found here.
Tropes used in Triangle and Robert include:
- Adventure Duo: Triangle and Robert
- Alien Geometries: The Tater Fizz plant has a very strange corridor.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Memphis Barbecue Massacre.
- Amusing Injuries.
- A Tankard of Moose Urine: Tater Fizz is the soda version.
- Blessed Are the Cheesemakers: The Fondue of Four Thousand Cheeses.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The strip went from jokes about how a geometrical shape can eat to an epic fight to stop the universe from turning into pudding. Or something like that.
- Chef of Iron: Cusine-magic, in any form.
- Cooking Duel: Cusine-magic sometimes involves these.
- Deus Ex Machina: Invoked by the Cartoonist a few times.
- Fight Unscene: Since the Cartoonist can't draw, most of the fights happen off-panel.
- Humongous Mecha: One at the Memphis Barbecue Massacre, and another at the Tater Fizz plant.
- Medium Awareness: Everyone knows whether or not they're on-panel (and some plans hinge on the Cartoonist not looking). Robert takes this Up to Eleven.
- No Fourth Wall
- Noodle Implements: An essential component of any of Robert's wacky schemes.
- Odd Couple: Triangle and Robert. Sane and crazy.
- One-Winged Angel: Orpuddex's Galactic Form. Naturally, it's always off-panel.
- Recap Episode: The Recapulon
- Shout-Out: Numerous.
- The Smurfette Principle: Linda Concarne is the only female regular.
- Serious Business: Anything to do with cooking.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Discussed In-Universe with "Prozac the Setting".
- Stealth Pun: One of the plotlines involves Triangle fighting things to recover a series of "Dragon Circles", which are lettered A, B, C, etc. When he gets to the 25th one, Dragon Circle Y, he discovers that's the end of them, there are only 25. "Somehow, avoiding the pun makes it even worse."
- Thunderbolt Iron: The Starham.
- Wall of Text: At one point, an expository Wall of Text fills up an entire panel, driving out all the air and resulting in a character's death of suffocation.
- World Shapes: Triangle and Robert's world is not a sphere, but a four-dimensional hypertaco.
- Zany Scheme: Robert's speciality.