Shadow Unit
A web original series of short stories that is presented as episodes of a TV show. There is an FBI unit that investigates serial killers all over the US. And down the hall in a tiny conference room is the unit that deals with the ones they can't explain. This is the Shadow Unit: a team of experts in their respective fields joined together to track down and neutralize people who have become hosts for "the anomaly". These people are called gammas. An unknown force takes the host's deepest neurosis and forces them to act on it. In short, it turns them into psychopaths. But not only are the gammas run-of-the-mill crazy, the anomaly gives them a "manifestation", an inhuman power that allows them to carry out their brutal murders. They range from being killed by the idea of a bullet, to choking people by forcing their own tongue down their throat, to being utterly unnoticeable to the point of being invisible, leaving no footprints and being unstainable by blood.
An added twist is that there exist individuals that have been touched by the anomaly. They retain control, but are given inhuman powers too. These are termed betas. Their powers are rarely as well defined or useful, appearing just off the bell-curve. It is implied that the enormous strain on betas' brains as a result of this can be fatal and to survive they need to consume vast amounts of carbohydrates just to stay alive.
The goal of the Shadow Unit is first to prevent the harm done by gammas, and second to capture them alive to understand the anomaly.
It can be found here
- Asshole Victim: 2.01, "Lucky Day," is a whole episode devoted to the concept.
- Badass Bookworm: Pretty much all of the characters.
- Break the Cutie: Chaz and Hafidha.
- Catch Phrase: "Correlation is not causation" is Todd's, and "There are no fates worse than death" is the entire team's. The latter is a whole lot emptier than the former.
- Character Blog: much of the team. Can be heartbreaking.
- Crazy Consumption
- Creepy Crossdresser: 4.02, "Five Autopsies" Pretty much the whole episode. The killer is a male-to-female transsexual who has been denied access to medical transition based on her looks, and kills other trans women because of it.
- Cult: A gamma cult, no less!
- Deadpan Snarker: Brady frequently, Daphne Worth at times.
- Disposable Sex Worker: Totally, 100% subverted, considering Chaz's mother was one.
- Drives Like Crazy: Chaz
- Dropped A Cargo Truck On Her: all right, it works brilliantly in context, but Daphne's death is just damn abrupt.
- Everything's Better with Platypi: Chaz's nickname, fittingly.
- Expy: Chaz Villette for Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds. He's a tall, awkward genius with an eidetic memory who grew up in Vegas, had a terrible childhood, and was kidnapped by an UNSUB with delusions about angels and injected with something (in Chaz's case, blood).
- Slightly less obviously, Hafidha for Garcia. Both are computer geniuses with a decidedly unconventional style of dress and humour. Of course, this is mitigated by Hafidha's status as a beta and her conversion into a gamma at the end of the second season.
- Gay Conservative: Danny Brady
- Intrepid Reporter: What Todd did before he started hunting gammas. His nickname is Duke, after all.
- Killed Off for Real: goodbye, Daphne Worth.
- The Masquerade: The FBI insists that the presence of the Anomaly be kept from the world at large--much to Stephen Reyes's frustration.
- Mismatched Eyes: Chaz's right eye is brown, his left is hazel.
- Manipulative Bastard: Stephan Reyes
- Noodle Incident: Talk to Duke for five minutes.
- Perception Filter: The gamma from Season 1 Episode 7 "Overkill."
- The Profiler: almost the entire cast
- Real Men Cook: Not only Chaz, who practically never stops (hazard of the beta trade), but also Reyes and Danny Brady
- Running Gag: One of these days we'll find out what was really going on with that Argentinian racehorse...
- Shoot the Dog: Or eat, in Mrs. Chow's case.
- Something Completely Different: 2.04, "Getaway," is an episode without a gamma; 3.03, "Always Crashing in the Same Car," is told through a series of letters from the unsub to Reyes.
- "Closet Monster" looks like a gamma at first glance, but in the end isn't. Chaz even comments on how the team has gotten used to their monsters being big and dramatic.
- The Vietnam War: The gamma in 1.02 is a Vietnam vet. It's also implied that Solomon Todd is one and that his is where he learnt the skills that made him the team executioner until his retirement, but bear in mind that this is Sol we're talking about here. It's entirely possible he never set foot in the country.
- Wham! Episode: Episode 3.01, "The Unicorn Evils", where we discover that Hafidha has become a gamma.
- X Meets Y: Criminal Minds meets Darker than Black, heavy on the Criminal Minds. In fact, watching Criminal Minds it's hard not to see plot elements being mixed-and-matched sometimes.