The Chosen Four

"If a man yells loud enough, he can do anything!"

Straight from the mouth of a bee with big eyebrows comes a tale of courage, friendship, and the kind of silliness that will have you rolling on the floor! Will Giygas prevail or will the world's last hope band together and strike this intergalactic foe down? It all rests...upon the Chosen Four!

The Chosen Four is a fancomic based on the Nintendo video game EarthBound. It is posted at Starmen.net by Darrow and is currently over 600 pages. The comic can be found and read here. Also, the forum thread where the comic is originally posted by the author is quite entertaining in its own right.

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Tropes used in The Chosen Four include:

• Adaptation Expansion
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Subverted by Ness, who works up the courage after a while, but he then stutters and Paula loudly interrupts him and plays it straight.
• Anti-Villain: Shrooom!, an Adorkable Shrinking Violet. He even pulls a Heel Face Turn when he's defeated, and is left alive as a result.
  • Thunder and Storm. They only wanted to make people laugh, a desire that was twisted and warped by Giygas. They're also left alive, albeit heavily injured.
• Arc Words: "If a man yells loud enough, he can do anything!"
  • Parodied later with, "If a man dances hard enough, he can disco anywhere!"
• Art Evolution: This is what it used to look like. This is what it looks like now.
• Battle Aura: Ness sometimes gets one of these. At least once, he triggers it just to scare monkeys. No, seriously.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Paula. Learned the hard way by Pokey and the Jerkass delivery man in Threed, among others (including, of course, Giygas' minions).
• Berserk Button: Don't take Ness's hat.
• Bishie Sparkle: Venus. A lighting effect, or maybe she's just that good.
  • Gorgeous later shows off some of those sparkles. Lucky tells the heroes he got them from Venus.
• Bishounen: Ninten. No, seriously.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Thunder and Storm.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Heck, there's practically no fourth wall! One of the funniest examples of this is when Paula steals a baby picture of Ness from his second Your Sanctuary.

Ness: With the melody recorded I guess we should move on, then! It's a good thing the inner images only appear to me, though, otherwise... Hey! You're not supposed to see this! How did you even do that??
Paula: Why bother worrying about logic at this point of the story? Help me carry this home so I can hang it in my room!

• • Pages 405 and 406 are full of this.
• Brick Joke: During the fight with the Trillionage Sprout, the senile boss calls Ness "Billy". We later find out Trillionage Sprout was actually mistaking Ness for Shroom!, whom he had a close father-son relationship with.
• Cameo: Link seems to think of Ganondorf when he hears the word "pig" ^{[dead link]}
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Paula to Ness. Especially when they meet Venus.
• Crutch Character: Invoked by Paula's father, who claims to be of too high a level to keep things dramatic.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Once the whole team is brought back, the battle with the Plague Rat becomes this.
• Dungeon Bypass: Jeff and his Bubble Monkey do this in the maze by leaping over the rock barriers.
• Dynamic Entry: The Photographer.
• Excited Episode Title
• Expy: The comic justifies the similarities between EarthBound's Ness, Paula, and Jeff and EarthBound Zero's Ninten, Ana, and Loid by having Giygas' mind so twisted and distorted, he mistakes the former three for the latter and takes his hatred of Ninten out on Ness.
  • Teddy is pretty much Kamina, complete with motivational speaking, Hot-Blooded epic manliness (and a side of Large Ham), and temporarily badassing himself back to life to help our heroes. He even has the epic sunglasses.
• Eye Scream: Part and parcel of Poo's meditation on Mu.
• Fan Web Comics.
• Final Boss Preview: One appears in Moonside. For those familiar with Earthbound, you know by now what we're dealing with.
• For Science!: Apple Kid's excuse for having a nuclear-powered doomsday microwave.
• Gag Boobs: The zombie lady in Threed.
• Gorn:
• Giant Mook: The cultists have a VERY big one.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Played with when Paula throws her teddy bear to divert Mondo Mole's attack; she'd been manipulating him off-panel to give it the illusion of sentience, so this part was played out as the bear sacrificing his "life" for hers.
• Hot-Blooded: Ness, while fighting the Dept. Store Spook. Also see the page quote.
  • Ness invoked this trope to achieve the PK Rocking attack.
• Ignored Enemy: The worthless protoplasm was too worthless for Jeff to even notice
• Incredibly Lame Pun: All over the place.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: The Plague Rat Of Doom, Played for Laughs.
• Love Bubbles: These appear when Paula kisses Ness.
  • They return when Tony calls Jeff.

Jeff: Well, I should probably go before you flood this panel with bubbles.

• Mind Screw: Moonside. Just... Moonside. Holy CRAP.
• Monster Sob Story: Starman Jr. gives one upon his defeat. Played for Laughs.
  • In fact, every enemy of significance has one. Played for laughs again. Shrooom!'s is the only one that isn't treated like a complete joke.
    • Subverted by the Plague Rat, whose attempt at invoking this only serves to show how unsympathetic he is.
• Mood Whiplash: Fourside is MADE of this. We go from the usual humorous plot development, to the minor Fan Service that is Venus, to a rather scary burst of Unstoppable Rage from the main character, to the freaking nightmare that is Moonside, to major revelations about Giygas, then crazy Hot-Blooded antics, and finally talking monkeys again. Whew!
• Mushroom Samba: A mushroom monster in #66 puts Ness in a musical version by placing an actual mushroom on his head (utilizing a song from the original Mother soundtrack, no less). It continues for another page even when the mushroom was removed!
• Mythology Gag: The second time the above-mentioned Arc Words are said is when Ness first uses PSI Rockin'; the first "default" option for "Favorite Thing" in Mother 2 (which "Rockin'" replaced) is Kiai. Similarly, Ness remarks that the only way the pencil statue could be weirder is if it were an octopus.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ness's little outburst at the top of the Monotoli building is what eventually causes the events of Mother 3.
  • To be completely fair, Pokey had it coming.
• New Age Retro Hippie: He can measure the universe!
• No Sense of Direction: Several characters note Ness is awful at following directions.
• Oh Crap: Ness's reaction to the effects of the Magic Cake.
  • Don't forget The Plague Rat of Doom's face when he's about to get hit by Ness who has his Guts stat maxed out.
• Only Sane Man: Poo
• Pungeon Master: Mondo Mole.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Carpenter's Blue Blue Rangers, who are really regular Happy-Happy cultists with gimmicks.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Pokey hands out a truly frightening example, made all the more frightening by the knowledge that he will win his twisted game. The Call Forward just hammers it home.
  • Although Ness gives one straight back to him.
• Relax-O-Vision: Used when Paula and the bears are beating up Mondo Mole.
• Retirony: Parodied. Paula's stuffed teddy bear regrets he did not even have a line about being several days away from retirement before dying.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Jeff is prone to this.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Reggie the mouse is ignored during boss battles, and Chicken shows up even less than Reggie.
• Shout-Out: Ness' Rider Kick against the Happy-Happyists.
  • Ness doning a cape in the desert before Fourside and telling now he looks a superhero for real.
  • One of the Threed zombies detach his hand off his wrist and throws it at Paula.
  • Apparently Poo knows legendary Hokuto Shinken martial art.
  • "42 is just a number, and there is no secret to revive General Leo."
  • This page includes cameos by R.O.B., WALL-E, and Johnny 5.
    • Plus the first robot's error screen includes the phrase "Ye Not Guilty".
  • Jeff wears Mega Man underwear.
• Shut UP, Hannibal: Ness to Pokey--FINALLY--when the latter gives his "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Monotoli's helicopter.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Darrow plays with the various examples of this trope from the games in his comics. For example when jokes are made in the comic related to Jeff's MOTHER 1 counterpart are made, the name is spelled Lloyd. But when Jeff and Ness encounter an illusion of Teddy in Moonside, he spells the name Loid. Also, the name Giegue (the spelling from MOTHER 1) is used to describe the physically and mentally intact version of the antagonist, while Giygas (the spelling from EarthBound) is used to describe him after his body and mind broke apart.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Everdred "Don't mind all the money laying around, it's definitely not stolen."
• Stalker with a Crush: Mr. Spoon. HE LOVES VENUS EVEN MORE THAN HE LOVES HIS BACON COLLECTION!!! HE'S TOTALLY NOT CREEPY!!!!
  • And Tony for Jeff. Poor, Poor Jeff.
• Stealth Pun: "I bet your one of those types that always wants to be number one. Well, I'll beat the number one out of you, and maybe even the number two while I'm at it!"
• That's No Moon: A variant. During the journey to Scaraba, a deafening rumble sounds when they are passing by an island and one of them wonders if it is the nearby volcano. Then Kraken emerges out of the sea and the captain stares at it with a Oh Crap expression and mutters "That's no volcano".
• This Is Unforgivable!: Ness can not forgive Pockey for insulting his family and friends. Paula can not forgive an octobot for stealing her diary AND read a particularly embarassing entry.
• Training from Hell: Mu training, full stop.
• Unstoppable Rage: Ness, after Paula is kidnapped.
• Unusual Weapon Mounting: The Clumsy Robot has a rocket (and bologna sandwich) launcher mounted in its butt.
• Unwinnable: Threatened (to the point of nearly restarting the comic), but miraculously averted...in just the way it happens in-game. How Paula managed is an open question.
• Vile Villain Saccharine Show: Giygas. He's introduced telling Master Belch to outright kill Ness and friends, while his face is clearly cracking apart, and he only gets much much, much worse from there.
• Webcomics Long Runners: While not even close to Long Runner material (only 400 strips and about two years of existence), it deserves a mention for being the only EB-based comic that actually got past Onett, the first city.
  • Now it's three years old and at the battle with the Kraken, at roughly 600 pages and only a little more than halfway done!
• Webcomic of the Game
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Paula suddenly gains these when she meets Ness in the Monotoli building.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: A mini-UFO in #72 successfully strikes Ness with a ray... giving him a cold.
  • Later the ghosts in the tunnel scare our heroes and the Runaway Five with ADVANCED CALCULUS and a COPY OF Superman 64! AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
• You Shall Not Pass: Parodied. Paula's stuffed teddy bear regrets he not even got to yell "you shall not pass" while charging in heroically before committing Heroic Sacrifice.