4 Gregs

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Revision as of 15:18, 30 January 2019

This article is about the toon. For the squad of characters, see The Gregs.

"Not one, not two, not three, not five, four Gregs."

The Gregs go to a varsity football game.

Cast (in order of appearance): Sci-Fi Greg, D n' D Greg, Open Source Greg, Japanese Culture Greg, Tompkins, Cheerleader, Short Girl, Mascot/Regular Greg, Color Guard Maiden, Football Players, So and So, What's Her Face, The Ugly One, Strong Bad

Places: Football Stadium, Computer Room

Date: Monday, February 16, 2009

Running Time: 3:20

Page Title: I knew they'd come back to me...

Transcript

{"4 Gregs" appears in the center of the screen on hexagonal-grid paper.}

TEEN GIRL SQUAD VOICE: Four Gregs!

{The numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5 appear, and each number is crossed out over the next line.}

TEEN GIRL SQUAD VOICE: Not one, not two, not three, not five...

{"4 Gregs" appears again.}

TEEN GIRL SQUAD VOICE: Four Gregs!

{Sci-Fi Greg appears, holding a bubbly-looking toy gun.}

TEEN GIRL SQUAD VOICE: Sci-Fi Greg! One Greg!

{Sci-Fi Greg holds up one finger. Cut to D n' D Greg holding a twenty-sided die.}

TEEN GIRL SQUAD VOICE: D n' D Greg! Two Greg!

{D n' D Greg holds up two fingers. Cut to Open Source Greg holding a laptop.}

TEEN GIRL SQUAD VOICE: Open Source Greg! Three Greg!

{Open Source Greg holds up three fingers. Cut to Japanese Culture Greg, holding a robot action figure.}

TEEN GIRL SQUAD VOICE: Japanese Culture Greg, four Greg! {Japanese Culture Greg holds up four fingers.} Four Gregs!

{"4 Gregs" appears again. Cut to the four Gregs standing together.}

SCI-FI GREG: Shields up, everyone. I figured out what we're doing tonight, and it's not any of the stuff you're about to suggest.

D N' D GREG: Play some serious tabletop—

JAPANESE CULTURE GREG: Staring at vinyl figurines?

OPEN SOURCE GREG: Downloading several hours of—

ALL GREGS EXCEPT SCI-FI GREG: {disappointed} Oh.

SCI-FI GREG: Tonight, new Earthlings... tonight, we go... TO A VARSITY FOOTBALL GAME!

OTHER THREE GREGS: {gasp, with the word "Gasp!" drawn above them}

{Each Greg starts to tremble their voices at the last word.}

D N' D GREG: Into the dragon's lair?

{The text bubble remains the same but points to Japanese Culture Greg, with the word "Robotic" inserted with a caret into the sentence as he says it.}

JAPANESE CULTURE GREG: Into the robotic dragon's lair?

OPEN SOURCE GREG: Into the Apple store? {As he says "Apple", the text bubble has a "bite" taken out of it, and a leaf appears on it.}

SCI-FI GREG: That's right. It's the one time we can co-exist at the same social function with football players, but they will be powerless to ridicule and/or wedgie us!

D N' D GREG: Revenge is at hand!

OPEN SOURCE GREG: Huzzah!

JAPANESE CULTURE GREG: {his head suddenly looks extremely animeish} Otaku!

{Cut to the back of a football player wearing a jersey that reads "AT THE GAME", with "888" written below it. Then cut to a set of stands. All of the Gregs except Open Source Greg are visible.}

SCI-FI GREG: Here we are. In the middle of it all!

{Cut back to show that the three Gregs are sitting in the corner of the stands, and there is a huge radius around them where no one else is sitting; the stands are otherwise packed. There are 14:54 left on the clock, the Growlbacks have "000000" points, and the "Visitor" has 24 points.}

CROWD: YAY!!!

JAPANESE CULTURE GREG: How does football work again?

{Cut to a closeup of the Gregs.}

JAPANESE CULTURE GREG: Is it anything like drift racing?

SCI-FI GREG: Uh, I think there are some foots {said to rhyme with "loots"}... and uh... perchance a balls?

{Cut to a closeup of D n' D Greg. He's smiling and has sharp teeth. A scroll appears next to him, which he begins to read:}

D N' D GREG: The offensive team has four chances to advance the ball ten yards at a time with the objective being to...

{D N' D Greg cuts off. The other two Gregs are visibly confused. D n' D Greg looks at them with annoyance. Crickets chirp.}

SCI-FI GREG: It's like I don't even know you anymore.

D N' D GREG: Fantasy football still counts as fantasy!

{Open Source Greg appears, holding a box of food.}

OPEN SOURCE GREG: Gentlemen, I've taken advantage of a security flaw in the concession stand mainframe and bit-torrented us some Sugar Daddys and hot dogs!

JAPANESE CULTURE GREG: But the concession stand is just some booster club okasan {the word in the text bubble is "moms" until he gets to it; his face returns to the "anime" style on that word alone} with a shoebox full of ones.

OPEN SOURCE GREG: Then who did I launch my denial of service attack against?

{Cut to a drawing of a computer screen. On the screen is a web browser viewing the page "www.tompkins.tv", which is for "Tompkins' Hot Lady Escort Service". Tompkins' face is in the middle of the screen. The page has been viewed "2.4" times.}

NARRATOR STRONG BAD: {in a high-pitched voice; the word appears across the screen as he says it} HAXXORED!!!

TOMPKINS: Ow! All my client!

{Cut back to the game. D n' D and Sci-Fi Greg are in the background, as Cheerleader and a short bespectacled girl in braces walk by.}

CHEERLEADER: Didja hear when we walked through the seniors' section? That one boy only got BOTH my names wrong!

SHORT GIRL: You have been chosen.

SCI-FI GREG: Uh, Cheerleader, shouldn't you be out—

{Cut to a closeup of his mouth, showing misshapen teeth.}

SCI-FI GREG: Uuuuuhhhhhh...

{Cut back.}

SCI-FI GREG: —leading cheers?

CHEERLEADER: No, I'm more a cheerleader in the way I dress... and in the way I treat other girls.

SHORT GIRL: That's right.

CHEERLEADER: {smacks the short girl, yelling:} YOU DON'T SPEAK UNLESS SPOKEN TO!

{Cut to a ratty-looking mascot.}

MASCOT: COME ON GROWLBACKS! WE'RE NOT DEAD! AT LEAST TRY TO BEAT THE SPREAD!

{He does a cartwheel near an exasperated-looking color guard member.}

MASCOT: YAAAAY!

{Cut to D n' D Greg.}

D N' D GREG: That level 4 shambling Krenshar is attacking that slightly attractive, slightly overweight color guard maiden!

{He is then seen stomping on the mascot. The color guard member smirks lightly.}

MASCOT: Oh! Crap! Dang! Ribs! Oof!

{He takes off the mascot head.}

REGULAR GREG: Stop! It's just me, Regular Greg from AP Calculus!

D N' D GREG: Trying to take human form, eh? I'll not fall for your sorcery, shapeshifter!

{He continues stomping on Regular Greg. Cut to a hot dog with a face.}

NARRATOR STRONG BAD: Halftime!

{Cut to Sci-Fi Greg.}

SCI-FI GREG: There's a... halph-thyme?

{Cut back to all four Gregs.}

OPEN SOURCE GREG: Uh-oh.

{A bunch of football players crowd around the Gregs and chuckle to themselves. Cut to a scene of some underwear and jock straps flying around, with the words "EXPLiCiT WEDGiE!!" in the middle.}

NARRATOR STRONG BAD: {in a high-pitched voice} EXPLICIT WEDGIE!!

{Cut to the Teen Girl Squad on regular notebook paper. They've actually been the ones drawing the cartoon. They laugh as "HA HA HA HA"s move around above them.}

WHAT'S HER FACE: Those Gregs are such losers!

{Cut to the Gregs back on their paper. They've actually been drawing the Teen Girl Squad drawing the cartoon.}

SCI-FI GREG: Hey! No way! Whats-Her-Face would totally come to my defense!

{Cut to the Teen Girl Squad. They've actually been drawing the Gregs drawing the girls drawing the cartoon.}

WHAT'S HER FACE: Eww! Don't put that! No I wouldn't!

{Cut to the Gregs. Each successive cut until the end of the toon shows the other group drawing everything that's happened so far in increasingly nested levels and with paper strewn everywhere.}

OPEN SOURCE GREG: Now make them have a pillow fight!

{Cut to the Teen Girl Squad.}

THE UGLY ONE: Make them play with action figures!

{Cut to the Gregs.}

JAPANESE CULTURE GREG: {with his anime face} AKIHABARA!

{The Teen Girl Squad}

SO AND SO: So good!

{Gregs}

D N' D GREG: SWORDS!

{Girls}

CHEERLEADER: BOYS!

{Cut to Strong Bad, drawing that last scene, falling over.}

STRONG BAD: Waugh!!

{He weakly holds up one hand.}

STRONG BAD: It's... over?

{Cut to the "4 Gregs" screen.}

TEEN GIRL SQUAD VOICE: Four Gregs!

Fun Facts

Explanations

• Hexagonal-grid paper is commonly used for tabletop role-playing games.
• Drift racing is a style of car racing originating in Japan where drivers slide or drift through corners at high speed.
• Otaku is a Japanese word denoting a fan of something. Outside of Japan, it denotes specifically a fan of Japanese popular culture. While the term is frequently adopted enthusiastically by non-Japanese individuals like Japanese Culture Greg, in Japan the word can have a negative connotation.
• Akihabara is a shopping district of Tokyo specializing in electronics, computers, and pop-culture goods.
• "Okasan", properly romanized as "okāsan" or "okaasan", is a formal word for "mother" in Japanese.
• A denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users and is often considered a crime.
• BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for sharing large amounts of data.
• "Beating the spread" is a phrase in spread betting referring to whether the difference of the two scores in the outcome of an event is above or below a predetermined amount.
• Open source is an approach to computer software design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge).

Trivia

• The toons menu description reads "The spin-off no one was asking for!"
• The full text of the scroll with the rules of football reads:

The offensive team has 4
chances to advance the ball
10 yards at a time with the
objective being to cross the
opposing teams goal line
using either running plays
or passing plays or any
combination thereof.

• There are 10 nested levels shown: Strong Bad is drawing the Teen Girl Squad drawing the four Gregs drawing the girls drawing the Gregs drawing the girls drawing the Gregs drawing the girls drawing the Gregs drawing the girls drawing the Gregs in the main part of toon.
• When each Greg is announced, they each have their own music style playing that fits their character. SciFi Greg's is futuristic, D n' D Greg's is medieval, Open Source Greg's is digital beeps, and Japanese Culture Greg's is a koto.
• The YouTube description for this toon is "The 4 Gregs go to a varsity football game."

Remarks

• During the title sequence, D n' D Greg, Open Source Greg and Japanese Culture Greg have four, four, and five fingers per hand, respectively, despite the fact that all the Gregs (and indeed almost all Teen Girl Squad characters) are normally drawn with only three fingers per hand.
• The notion for a spinoff based on the Gregs was previously entertained in the DVD commentary for Teen Girl Squad Issue 11.
• The TV Time menu preview shows Japanese Culture Greg holding a different robot from that shown in the actual toon.
• Despite the title, there are "5 Gregs" that appear in this toon, if you include regular Greg that was in the Growlbacks costume.
• Japanese Culture Greg pronounces "Akihabara" wrong: he pronounces it "Aki - ha - baruh", with an unstressed vowel at the end. While this is common among English speakers, in Japanese, all vowels have the same value; in this case, /a/.
• During the Teen Girl Squad sections, the notebook paper from Episodes 1 through 10 (including the end of Episode 7) is used instead of the paper from Episodes 11 through 15.

Goofs

• When D n' D Greg moves after saying "Fantasy football still counts as fantasy!", the text "dn d greg" remains stationary while the apostrophe moves with D n' D Greg.

Inside References

• Open Source Greg and Japanese Culture Greg were previously seen, though unnamed at the time, in the Easter egg for Teen Girl Squad Issue 9.
  • The page title is also a reference to that issue.
• "Haxxored!" is an example of Internet slang.
• "Ow! All my client!" is another use of Ow! My X! and Singular Instead of Plural.
• D n' D Greg has fangs when explaining football with the scroll.
• The toons menu description is a reference to the Easter egg in Teen Girl Squad Issue 14.
• The Mascot stating "AT LEAST TRY TO BEAT THE SPREAD" in his cheer is an instance of gambling.
• Sci-Fi Greg believes that What's Her Face will defend him because they dated previously, as revealed in Teen Girl Squad Issue 9.
• "Halph-thyme" is another instance of homophones.
• The Growlbacks' helmets feature a prominent G.
• "The Spin-off no one was asking for" is a reference to Teen Girl Squad Issue 14, when The Total Adventures of Strong Badman in the Easter egg reads "The CROSSOVER no one was asking for!"
• The -xored suffix was previously used in Teen Girl Squad Issue 3.
• Crickets chirp when D n' D Greg realizes he has lost the other Gregs while explaining the rules of football.

Real-World References

"Into the Apple store?"

• Open Source Greg mentions the Apple Store. As he does this, the edge of his speech bubble turns into Apple's logo.
• The text on Cheerleader's shirt is a reference to Hollaback Girl.
• A Sugar Daddy is a caramel lollipop made by Tootsie Roll Industries.
• Open Source Greg's laptop/hot dog box has a picture of a penguin on it, a reference to Tux, the mascot of the open source operating system Linux.
• The "shambling Krenshar" that D n' D Greg mentions is a melding of the names of two monsters from Dungeons & Dragons.

External Links

• watch "4 Gregs" on the old Flash site
• view the Flash file for "4 Gregs"
• watch "4 Gregs" on YouTube
• forum thread re: "4 Gregs"