Jail Break



"You wake up locked in a deserted jail cell, completely alone. There is nothing at all in your cell, useful or otherwise."

Jailbreak is the first webcomic under Andrew Hussie's Troperiffic MS Paint Adventures, originating in September 2006 as a humble Interactive Comic game run by Hussie and played by friends of his on an early precursor to the current MSPA forums. It stars an otherwise nondescript man trying to escape a strangely built jail, which isn't rife with pumpkins.

It was left unfinished for years with Hussie stating he didn't intend to continue it, but he capped off with an ending in September 2011 during the long Homestuck pre-end-of-act-5 hiatus. Compared to its successors, it doesn't make any pretense of having a coherent world or story - it exclusively exists for and is fuelled by Rule of Funny. It was something of an early prototype for the likes of Problem Sleuth, and it is the origin of many of the running mythology gags that MSPA is so famous for.

Just for the sake of posterity, the original forum threads can be found here, here, here, here and here.


 * Cut Short: Jailbreak was unfinished until September 2011, where the ending was written after at least a five-year hiatus. That's got to be some kind of a record.
 * Driven to Suicide: The stump has some sort of properties that immediately drive whoever is near it to suicide, apparently.
 * Expressive Mask: Averted; the Pumpkin Helmet does not change shape to match the face of the character unless it is physically twisted from its frowny face to its smiley face. At one point it gets stuck halfway between the two.
 * Faceless Protagonist: Other than the fact that he is male (and perhaps androsexual), the main character has absolutely no distinguishing features whatsoever.
 * Fantasy Kitchen Sink: For no reason at all, elves feature in the story.
 * Fully-Absorbed Finale: The story of Jailbreak takes place in the Problem Sleuth universe, which incidentally explains some of the aspects of what happened in the story.
 * Fundamentally Funny Fruit: What? Why's this listed here? I assure you, there are no pumpkins here.
 * Gorn: Lovingly rendered in pixelly monochrome, and incredibly messy at its best. For example, the attempt to use a prison guard as battering ram or the usage of intestines as rope.
 * Interactive Comic
 * Makes Just as Much Sense in Context
 * Major Injury Underreaction: The main character gets a harpoon in his stomach and manages to get all the way out to the woods and near the suicide stump before finally dying of bloodloss. He is perfectly cognizant of his actions and is even able to move about and do quite a number of things without behaving as though he is in pain.
 * Only Six Faces: Only one face, actually. There is very little to tell the characters apart, which might be part of the reason why they make their pumpkin armor later on in the story.
 * Powered Armor: Minus the power part. One of the two guys builds a robot out of ladder pieces called Logorg, which he later enters.
 * A bit later, the main character and the one who builds the robot get a suit made of pumpkins and a pumpkin helmet respectively.
 * Random Events Plot
 * Reset Button: here.
 * Rule of Funny: Undeniably its sole motivation.
 * Running Gag: Pumpkins, which may or may not be actually there.
 * Shout-Out/To Shakespeare: Attempted by a character, but sadly he doesn't know any lines.
 * This is Drillgorg
 * Toilet Humor
 * What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: The denizens of the forum at the time were a strange, strange group, if the suggestions used are anything to go by.
 * Would Hurt a Child: Subverted. The main character takes three children hostages in order to get the elves to let him inside their bungalow, but the gun he is using to threaten them has no bullets.
 * You Can't Get Ye Flask: What pumpkin?
 * You Wake Up in a Room: A textbook example, and provides the page quote for the page.

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