virus
From Homestar Runner Wiki
Strong Bad Email #118
Strong Bad experiences some "technical difficulties" with Compy 386...and the rest of the Homestar Runner universe.
Cast (in order of appearance): Strong Bad, Strong Sad, Coach Z (easter egg) Homestar Runner, Strong Mad, Marzipan, The Poopsmith, The King of Town, The Ugly One, Bubs, The Cheat, Rather Dashing, Fightgar (easter egg)
Contents |
Transcript
STRONG BAD: {singing} I got the email, you got the email, I got the email, you got the email. {starts reading email}
ert+ y76p; '0lu8jkyee;u4p;e'/Rh Strong ba15456 `-------++++++gf +++++-//==========/*8901ikg
{Pronounces "Ert plus: Why seven-six pee! Ohlyuu eight--" then stops}
STRONG BAD: What is this? Did the Quadratic Formula explode? I see a "Strong ba" in there, but it's getting eaten by some... Linux or something. Wait a minute! Is this one of those VIRUS emails? Like the kind that moms and offshore casinos send you? I'll take care of this!
{Strong Bad types "deleted," but the screen replies "NICE TRY!" A red line of text appears reading "That didn't work."}
STRONG BAD: What?! I said deleted!
{Strong Bad types it again, this time in capital italicized letters, but the screen flashes "NOTTA CHANCE!!" A red line of text appears reading "That neither."}
STRONG BAD: Oh, a wise guy, eh? Maybe I should introduce you to my main man, Edgar!
{Strong Bad types in edgarware.exe, bringing up the following text on-screen}
Edgar the Virus
Hunter
programmed entirely
in mom's basement
by Edgar c1982
{Strong Bad hits a key, and the screen switches to the following text}
Virus Protection version .0001 Last scan was NEVER ago. scanning...
STRONG BAD: OK Edgar, now drop a train on 'em!
{The following text now appears on the screen}
Scan Complete! 423,827 Viruses Found! A New Record!!
STRONG BAD: {alarmed} Waaugh! That is not a small number! That is a big number!! What'm I gonna do?
{The following text now appears on the screen}
FLAGRANT SYSTEM ERROR Computer over. Virus = Very Yes.
STRONG BAD: Computer over? Virus equals very yes? That's not a good prize!
{The text on the Compy 386 screen melts off, and slides onto the floor}
STRONG BAD: Oooh!
{Strong Bad jumps out of the way. The camera zooms out to a view of the computer desk}
STRONG BAD: And the Compy just peed my carpet.
{The corner of the computer desk briefly flashes, showing an underlying gridwork to it, The No Loafing sign becomes the following text and falls off the wall.}
<head> <href>No loafing</href> <body>
{The Floppy Disk Container gets swallowed by the computer desk, and Strong Sad walks in, but his head has been replaced by his emoticons from Strong Sad's Lament which floats a foot to the left of where it should be.}
STRONG SAD: Strong Bad, what is going on?
STRONG BAD: WAH! Uh, I dunno. You forgot to wear your neck?
STRONG SAD: Have you been using the internet irresponsibly?
{The top of the Main Page starts to creep into the top of the email, with the text "Stave it off, 1, 2, 3," in the corner in place of the "What's new" text}
STRONG BAD: No more irresponsibly than usual.
STRONG SAD: {Lower body starts walking away in place} Did you get a virus?
STRONG BAD: Uhhh, no.
STRONG SAD: Did you get four hundred thousand viruses?
STRONG BAD: {shaken} Yes... very yes!
STRONG SAD: Well hurry up and do something about it before it gets worse!
{Strong Sad turns into a Strong Sad trading card and flies up and off the screen. The Main Page at the top of the screen disappears}
STRONG BAD: {scared} The Cheeeaaat!
{Strong Bad runs off the screen and into the black to the right of the computer desk, then stops}
STRONG BAD: What the? Whoa! It's cold out here!
{Strong Bad tries to jump back onto the screen, but it shifts left, causing him to still fall on blank space}
STRONG BAD: Hey!
{Homestar Runner walks onscreen. His body is 1936 The Homestar Runner's body, while the rest of him is normal. Instead of his legs moving, he just glides on, producing several ghost images of himself}
HOMESTAR RUNNER: Never fear, Strong Bad! I know how to fix your computer box! {he turns to the Compy}
STRONG BAD: {stands up} No no! Don't touch that!
HOMESTAR RUNNER: Your super box needs words. {His head falls off and onto the ground} Like these right here!
STRONG BAD: No, stop! That's not supposed to be possible!
HOMESTAR RUNNER: {simultaneously} Uhh, this one {picks up "downloads" from the bottom menu} and this one {picks up "games" from the bottom menu} and this one. {picks up "characters" from the bottom menu}
{Suddenly, several pop-up windows (including a real one) titled "Click on the Monkey!!" and featuring oldschool Homestar in them appear saying "Making out with Marzipan is totally awesome!" spawn. Strong Bad starts screaming and pounding the side of the screen with his fists. Cut to Marzipan's living room. Strong Mad is standing nearby and Marzipan is standing next to a huge stack of VHS tapes}
MARZIPAN: Well I think it's fantastic, Strong Mad! That's the best stack of VHS tapes I've ever-
{Marzipan suddenly turns into a ASCII rendering of herself, and her voice becomes extremely deep and distorted making her words unintelligible}
STRONG MAD: I CAN'T SPELL YOU!
{Strong Mad turns into a picture of himself from his character video inside a large M, which walks offscreen. Text appears at the top of the screen reading as follows}
If anyone is truly a big lug, Strong Mad is. This guy is dumb strong, and that's pretty much the definition of a lug. One ti his brother Strong Bad asked him to pick up this one car. An he did, but it was the wrong car. See? Dumb and strong. He'
{Cut to the King of Town's castle. The Poopsmith is standing with his shovel extended and some you-know-what on the end of it, as the King of Town stands nearby}
THE KING OF TOWN: A little to the left... {the Poopsmith extends the shovel towards the King} Good, good...
{The scene suddenly changes to a TGS style piece of paper, with the text "issue 3.14159265and the rest" at the top. The Poopsmith is gone.}
THE KING OF TOWN: Ooh! Poopsmith?
{The Ugly One appears out of nowhere, her mouth huge and distorted}
THE UGLY ONE: I can do it! I can do it 9 times!
{The Ugly One extends her arm and starts slapping the King of Town}
THE KING OF TOWN: Uh! No! Please! Stop! I'm old! And fat! And rich! And cool!
{Cut to the Homestar Runner loading screen, which splits and reveals a screen with the text "It is now safe to turn your computer off." Bubs walks on from the side of the screen. His face is a broken JPEG, his legs are rendered in a fashion suitable for red/blue 3D-glasses, his belt is transparent, and he's carrying one of Homestar's legs in his left arm. His other arm is continually waving about.}
BUBS: I shoulda done this, like, a million years ago.
{Cut to a cloud scene. Strong Bad is here and extremely glitched up and disproportioned, as is The Cheat who keeps floating around the screen randomly, interchanging between different versions of himself. A pitch-black Rather Dashing and a colon continuously fly by in the foreground. As Strong Bad talks, his left arm detaches from his body and starts flying around the screen.}
STRONG BAD: {Using an old version of his voice} With Marzipan's Radish we gonna win the competition!
{An explosion sound effect is heard, and suddenly everything returns to normal, revealing Strong Bad and The Cheat standing by The Stick.}
STRONG BAD: Hey! He fixed it! That Bubs is a computer genius man! Let's do a dance for the computer genius man!
{A salsa rhythm starts up, and Strong Bad and The Cheat start dancing. The camera pans to the left to reveal Bubs holding a shotgun}
STRONG BAD: Thanks Bubs! How'd you get rid of the vi- wait...why do you have a shotgun? {shaken} What did you do? Where's my Compy?!
BUBS: It's in a better place, Strong Bad. Or rather, it's in the same place, but now it's got a big hole through it!
STRONG BAD: {still shaken} YOU MURDERER! You killed my brother! {nearly sobbing} I mean, computer!
BUBS: Look, Strong Bad, my mouth was a broken JPEG. I had no choice!
STRONG BAD: You don't understand! You all understand! I mean, don't understand. AAAUUUGGGHHH!
{Strong Bad runs off screen, very distraught. The Cheat makes some Cheat noises, and follows him. Homestar hops onscreen on one leg, holding his other leg up}
HOMESTAR RUNNER: Hey, Bubs! Can I have my leg back now?
{Cut to the Compy 386, which now has a giant hole through its monitor and most of the wall behind it. Strong Bad is sitting in front of it, head bowed}
STRONG BAD: {very distraught} Dear Strong Bad, I don't know the crapfully yours. {hits head on keyboard a few times} I-I don't know the crapfully yours. *sniff* I can't relate. {hits head on keyboard again} I can't relate! {hits head on keyboard again} I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get in there and MIX {hits head} it up.
{The Paper comes down}
STRONG BAD: {still very distraught} I don't remember your name, Davey! {hits head on keyboard again} Dear Strong Bad. {voice trailing off} How do you text with boxing gloves on?
Easter Eggs
- If you click on the cog on the left at the end of the e-mail, you can see Compy 386 on sale at Bubs' Concession Stand.
- If you click on the fan on the right, you can see a Cheat Commandos excerpt, but instead of a gun, Fightgar holds Homestar's leg (which curiously works the same way.)
- When the Main page is encroaching on the top of the screen you can still click the Quote of the Week, Sketchbook and Weekly Fanstuff buttons to see them.
- If you hold tab until it highlights over where the updates are posted and hit enter, it takes you to Halloween Fairstival.
- If you mouse over the Quote of the Week, it bounces around the screen until it gets lodged at the top. When you click "Hear it," a pixelated broom scrolls vertically along the screen and makes a loud distorted noise, the same as is heard by Marzipan moments later and some of the links dissapear off the bottom of the screen. When you click the "X" to close it, the Quote of the Week box wobbles a bit and then falls off the screen and the links reappear.
- If you click on the Sketchbook, a picture of Coach Z upside down appears, with his arms and legs wrapped around a white space the shape of The King of Town's head. This image is from Where's the Cheat?, when Coach Z attacked The King over a misunderstanding involving The Cheat and a grill. The picture has a lot of numbers at the bottom. Scroll over the close button,which is misspelled as OC(x)LSE, and the words 'A BOOK' appear in green.
- If you click on Weekly Fanstuff, the Flash MX color mixer appears. Scroll over it and a green X appears overtop.
Fun Facts
- The Cheat is on a rotation of four different versions of himself:
- 1. The Awexome Cross version.
- 2: One that looks like one of The Cheat's styles from The Cheat Theme Song.
- 3: A drawn version, from The Reddest Radish.
- And 4: A far more pixellated version of him, with a thin black outline around it.
- "Click on the monkey" is a reference to various popups where if you click said object (ranging from targets to, well, monkeys), your computer will usually get bombarded with spyware, viruses, etc
- Marzipan says Strong Man instead of Strong Mad in the E-mail. This is the name of the Old Timey version of Strong Mad. This may be by reference or by accident.
- The navigation and the email are combined into one flash file (so that Homestar can grab the words).
- If you click "main" on the navigation bar it says the 404 error. The address is http://www.homestarrunner.com/mainNaN.html. NaN is the computer term for Not a Number, which is obtained (among other ways) by dividing zero by zero.
- This may be because of an (intentional or faked, in this email's case) error in the code for randomizing the number used to select a main page.
- The quadratic formula is a mathematical equation used for finding solutions to quadratic equations.
- "Linux" refers to the Free Unix-like kernel originally written for the 386 by Linus Torvalds in 1991, or part of an entire operating system which uses this kernel ("GNU/Linux"). The name is often thrown around as a buzzword by those who do not know what it is, which explains Strong Bad's absolutely random use of the name.
- Bubs' computer expertise was first recognized in The System is Down.
- Strong Bad saying "Oh, a wise guy, eh?" is a reference to the Three Stooges, where Curly uses the very same phrase often.
- While the liquid is leaking out of the screen, the contrast buttons are still clickable and make the back of the screen turn blue.
- The Floppy Disk Container on Strong Bad's desk is labeled "Spy vs. Spy" before it melts into the desk. Spy vs. Spy, based on the feature comic of Mad Magazine, was a game for old computers and the NES that featured innovative split screen gameplay.
- "FLAGRANT SYSTEM ERROR" comes from 50 emails. His response that it's not a "good prize" comes from Pumpkin Carve-nival.
- The fate of Strong Bad's table may be a reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation. When the holodeck went haywire, patches of it would appear only as the underlying grid, just as the table does.
- The vector-ized table also references the game StrongBadZone with its red and black graphics.
- It could also be a reference to the old movie "Tron."
- When Strong Sad appears after the water flows out of the Compy 386, if you look to the top right corner you see the words "Stave it off 1, 2, 3..." which is an obvious reference to the Strong Bad e-mail for kids.
- The "Current Mood" descriptions over Strong Sad's head are a reference to similar postings on the Strong Sad Blog.
- The card that Strong Sad transforms into is from the original deck of Trading Cards that has since been removed from the site.
- The part where Homestar is followed by "ghost" images of himself is a Flash in-joke, refering to the onion-skinning feature of the program that will display translucent images of previous frames as an animation guide.
- When Homestar appears on the screen his body is that of Old Timey Homestar.
- After Homestar removes the words "games", "characters", and "downloads" from the bottom of the screen, all of the other words, except for "toons", are still clickable.
- The "Click the Monkey" phrase, "Making out with Marzipan is totally awesome", was once the phrase necessary to trigger the Strong Bad Talker from the Homestar Talker. It has since been changed, though. The phrase is also heard in The Cheat Theme Song.
- Strong Mad's description, which appears when he glitches, comes from the last iteration of the Characters page (The Yearbook).
- As does the picture of him inside a giant M.
- Note that the sound Strong Mad makes as he leaves off the screen is the same as Homsar's movement noise.
- The letters that make up ASCII Marzipan refer to parts of her body. "E" for eyes, "f" for face, "h" for hair, and "d" for dress.
- The issue number of the Teen Girl Squad is the first nine digits of Pi (3.14159265 and the rest). The "And the rest" may be a reference to the fact that Pi is an irrational number.
- The Ugly One's line, and the sound effects played after that come from The Cheat's cartoon in crazy cartoon/Crazy Cartoon (toon).
- The "It is now safe to turn off your computer" screen is from old Windows 95 Machines which could not turn themselves off.
- They got it slightly wrong in the cartoon though--"It's now safe to turn your computer off." This may have been intentional.
- During the big glitch scene right before Bubs "fixes" the computer, we can hear the song from the intro of Parsnips-A-Plenty and That a Ghost.
- Strong Bad talking about radishes is from The Reddest Radish, and in fact is the actual clip of his voice from that cartoon.
- As Bubs is walking across the screen the first time, his right arm is moving as if stuck in position #5 and his left arm stuck in position #4 of a game of Dancin' Bubs.
- The sound that the shotgun makes (i.e. everything returning to normal) is the same sound as when The Cheat's head explodes.
- sounds more like the sound Tandy (post explosion) makes when one of its contrast buttons is clicked (in Gimmicks' easter egg) to me
- After the computer is destroyed, the contrast buttons are no longer clickable.
- Bubs selling the broken Compy 386 (easter egg) is a reference to KoT E-mail, in which we learn Bubs had also sold the broken Tandy 400.
- This is most likely the end of the Compy 386 era. We should see a new computer in the next email or so. The last computer change was in invisibility.
- On the DVD commentary for invisibility, they were discussing the possibility that they would retire Compy and replace it with a laptop named "Lappy;" the part about the laptop may or may not be a joke.
- This is one of only a few emails where the characters seem to "break the fourth wall" by recognizing their existence as cartoon characters on a computer screen rather than in a fictional world of their own. Other emails where they do this are flashback (they extend the size of the display area and Homestar is "behind the black"), for kids where Strong Bad alludes to the idea of children at home watching the emails, the process (the entire email implies that Strong Bad is aware that he is a cartoon being watched by people at home), and extra plug (the scene at the end with the cast making a fake e-mail give the impression that Strong Bad knows someone's watching, and that they want to see the e-mail finished).
- The page title is "Compy 386??", which is referring to the fact that the Compy 386 is clearly destroyed in this e-mail.
- When Bubs walks across the screen with Homestar's leg, his lower half is done in two layers of red and blue. Watching this scene with red and blue 3D glasses makes Bubs vaguely 3D.
- When Bubs' mouth is a broken JPEG, it has the letters "TH." This is a reference to his other identity, The Thnikkaman.
- If you click on the 'Quote of the week button easter egg', the buttons at the bottom that are eventually removed by Homestar are removed prematurely, yet still clickable. Close the box, and the buttons reappear.
- The 'Quote of the week' box is actually mirrored at the time that it falls off the screen. Also, instead of the usual 'Download It' option, it says 'Don't TAPE it'. It is clickable, pressing the mouse button down over the word shows 'Don't TAKE it' in a different colored font, but nothing happens when you release the mouse button.
- When the screen comes up to say 'It is now safe to turn off your computer', the rest of the navigation buttons at the bottom disappear, and don't reappear the entire rest of the toon.
- ERT+ is shorthand for the female hormone estrogen.
- When Strong Bad says, "Meet my main man Edgar," it might be a reference to the 2 years e-mail, where he says his main man is Van Mundegaarde.
- Edgarware is probably a spoof of Norton Anti-Virus, which also uses a generic-looking bespectacled computer nerd as a front man.
- In order for Strong Bad to obtain 423,827 viruses, he had to obtain roughly 786 viruses a day. That's about 32 an hour, and 1 every two minutes. (This is only if Strong Bad had had the Compy 386 for 77 weeks, which is not totally, but technically true, considering there are many times where he hasn't had an e-mail every week.)
- The fan and cog in the Compy 386 are the same fan and cog that were visible when the Tandy 400 exploded.
- The Compy's screen melting could be an obscure referance to the horror movie "The Ring" in which the victim's TV screen started leaking right before they died.
- Strong Bad screaming and pounding on the edge of the screen while the popups are appearing could be a reference to Where the Crap Are We?
- Strong bad being outside of "normal space" (where he exclaims "it is cold out here!") could be a reference to a bug/feature in Peasant's Quest where you can also end up "out in the black".
- The pixelated broom induced by the glitched Quote of the Day is the same graphic used in Peasant's Quest for the broom the baby knocks over to let you into naked man's cottage.
- The three "main page" easter eggs (Quote of the Week, Fanstuff, Sketchbook) stay open throughout the e-mail if you don't close them.
External Links
- watch "virus"
- view the flash file for "virus"
- view the "click the monkey" popup
- view the flash file for the "click the monkey" popup
- forum thread re: "virus"
