38 Parrots

A series of Russian puppet stop-motion shorts created between 1976 and 1991. The series as a whole doesn't really have a name, so everyone calls them by the name of the first and most popular episode: 38 Parrots.

YouTube has four of ten shorts online with subtitles:

• 38 Parrots
• What if it Works?
• Great Cover-Up
• Python's Grandma

Each short has a problem that main characters (a thoughtful python, hyperactive monkey, nerdy elephant, and eccentric parrot) try to solve using off-kilter logic and wordplay.

Tropes used in 38 Parrots include:

• Acrophobic Bird: The parrot
• Animal Stereotypes: A curious airhead monkey and thoughtful python.
• Apologises a Lot: The elephant, being a parody of the Russian Intelligentsia, is extremely polite.
• Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny:

Monkey: I don't know how to ponder the same thing twice.

• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Monkey is sanguine; Parrot is choleric; Elephant is melancholic; Python is phlegmatic.
• Hey, It's That Voice!:
  • Karlsson on the roof and Sherlock Holmes is a python.
• Insane Troll Logic: Since (according to folk wisdom) the law of gravity was invented when an apple fell on Isaac Newton's head, we can revert it if we throw a coconut on someone's tail! It doesn't work
• Literal-Minded
• Memetic Mutation: "Measuring in parrots" has become a Russian idiom meaning measuring something with units that don't make any sense, often humourously compared to video graphics cards benchmarks. Also, the Russian version of Google Calculator accepts both boa and parrot as a units and lets you measure, say, the radius of Earth in parrots.
• Nerd Glasses: Elephant's.
• Science Is Wrong: In Great Cover-Up, the protagonists want to cancel the law of gravity... because it's immoral to hit you on the head with a coconut.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Python's grandmother is a python wearing a babushka.