Fake News Rumble

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"You'd think they'd never seen a gigantic ship erupt from the ground and open a monster-spewing tear in the fabric of space and time before." —Stephanos, Chapter 1

Jon Stewart: You can ... teleport?! AND you have telekinetic powers? Anderson Cooper: Err ... yes? Jon Stewart: I'm still having trouble wrapping my brain around the whole 'everyone I've ever known has superpowers' thing. Cooper: Oh please, Jon. It's not as if I've been hiding it! —Jon Stewart and Anderson Cooper, Chapter 5

An unofficial fan webcomic by Page Branson wherein Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and many other 'fake news' corespondents receive superpowers, receive a magical MacGuffin, or just happened to have had superpowers all along and they've just come in handy today, because today's the day that Dick Cheney reveals himself as an Evil Alien Overlord bent on destroying our planet, stealing Stephen's magical MacGuffin, and drinking the blood of pandas. Our heroes fight their way through monsters, possessed comrades, Evil Twins and mountains of tropes on various Fetch Quests and rescue missions.

Can be found at star-crossedcomic.com.

See also: The Colbert Report and The Daily Show

Tropes used in Fake News Rumble include:

• Alternate Universe: All the villains so far came from one, as well did Tek Jansen. To make things better, each universe contains some version of of Stephen and Jon.
• Arrogant Kung Fu Guy: Tek Jansen.
• Art Evolution: The waiting periods between updates provides time for this.
• Badass: Everyone, to some extent. Mostly Jon and Stephen, especially when they use their magical weapons.
• Badass Normal: Anyone on the cast who didn't get superpowers makes the most with whatever's lying around.
• Badass Longcoat: John Oliver has one.
• Battle Aura: Color coded, too.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Dick Cheney - Evil Alien Overlord.
• Berserk Button: Riggle’s appears to be people harming John Oliver.
• Canada, Eh?: Samantha Bee and Jason Jones have taken The End of the World as We Know It as the signal to start the Canadian invasion of America.
• Car Fu: Anderson.
• Celebrity Power: What the comic runs on. Everyone in conjunction with The Daily Show or The Colbert Report has superpowers, or something that gives them superpowers.
• Chekhov's Gun: Just tell me this line isn't going to be relevant later:

Yonatan: I can smell something hidden... Something even greater than the blood of a time lord. Something monstrous...

• Chromatic Arrangement: Played with, since Stephen is red, Jon is blue and Steve is green, even though Jon seems to be the protagonist, Steve acts like The Smart Guy and Stephen... Well, Colbert seems to be The Lancer if anything. He wishes he was The Hero, though.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: Almost everyone, especially the bad guys.
  • Each character is color coded with an aura and the color of their eyes that shows a bunch of stuff such as the color purple to denote anything//anyone on the side of evil, or if it's a protagonist, their eyes and auras represent their powers. See the entry for Technicolor Eyes.
  • When Stephanos and Yonatan are released from Cheney’s hold on them, the purple in their outfits and eyes drains away, to be replaced with red and blue respectively. Lampshaded here.
• Compelling Voice: Brian Williams. It's called "gravitas."
• Cool Versus Awesome: Current event and politics comedians use magical melee weapons to fight an evil vice president from a parallel universe.
• Damned By Faint Praise: All of Tek Jansen's compliments of Jon are like this.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Yonatan in the arms of Stephanos. Maybe?
• Distracted by the Sexy: Actually helps Jason Jones to break free of Stephanos’s mind control.

Jason Jones: You, like many before you, have once again underestimated the power of the boner!

• Eldritch Abomination: Cheney and his ... things.
• Everything's Worse with Bears:

Stephen: "A bear. Of course it's a bear. Why would I have thought it would be anything other than a bear."

• Evil Alien Conquerors: Dick Cheney.
• Evil Twins: Stephanos and Yonatan to Stephen and Jon.
• Fastball Special: Rachel Maddow is positively gleeful about being able to try it.
• Flash Step: Stephanos and Anderson Cooper can both do this, and John Oliver can as well when he can get his time travelling screwdriver to work.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Anyone possessed by Cheney.
• Heel Face Turn: A long-awaited one for Yonatan, dragging Stephanos along with him.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Jon says this almost verbatim to Stephen.
  • Later on, Riggle gives John Oliver a speech in the same vein.
• An Ice Person: Samantha Bee.
• If You Ever Do Anything To Hurt Him: A frankly scary one from Jon to Stephanos and Yonatan regarding Stephen’s trust to ensure that their Heel Face Turn stays turned.
• Insult Backfire: Stephanos enjoys being evil.

Jason Jones: You *cough* bastard! Stephanos: Oh, flattery won’t save you now!

• Kick the Dog: "Or did you mistakenly believe yourself to be something more?"
• Lampshade Hanging: Stephen tells Jon that Jon's Evil Twin is in love with Stephen's Evil Twin.

Jon: Great! Jesus, start the fan fiction now, ladies!

• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Played with, since John Olliver can't remember what happened to the rest of the time lords, but he has pretty good memories otherwise. It's just why he's on Earth and how he got here that's been giving him trouble.
• Let's Get Dangerous: The end of chapter six:

Jon: Get ... your hands ... OFF OF HIM!!! Stephanos: Oh, so the fangs come out. I've had to hear about you all night. It's about time I found out what all the fuss is about. focus on Jon's Determinator expression* Stephanos: Let's get started.

• Let's You and Him Fight: In Chapter 2, Jon gets into a violent disagreement with Samantha Bee and Jason Jones before the later two finally realize what's going on.
  • Later on, it happens with a possessed Stephen and Jon.
• Love Martyr: The cries of "Oh, Yonatan." are beginning to wipe out the normal fandom cry of "Oh, Stephen." because of this trope.
• Magic and Powers: And how!
• Mind Control Eyes: Stephen, after he gets possessed. Bonus for still following the color scheme with purple = evil.
• Mind Rape: Cheney to Stephen.
• Minion Shipping: Stephenos and Yonatan have all-but declared this to be canon.
• Mr. Exposition: John Oliver. Also other characters, from time to time.
• Hello, My Name Is Inigo Montoya You Killed My Father Prepare to Die: Tek Jansen Chapter 15, Page 17.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Stephen is rather Genre Savvy when he checks to see if there are any guarding the lance under the studio.

Stephen: No curses, no zombie pirate ninjas?!

• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Averted to a hysterical level.
• No OSHA Compliance: On Cheney's Lair:

Stephen: Jesus, can this place get more ominous? Jon: Needs more spikes. And glowy shit.

• Oh Crap: Jon during his fight with a possesed Colbert. Seen here.
  • Done by Yonatan here right before he gets a tree dropped on him, also doubling as a Curse Cut Short.
• One-Winged Angel: Stephanos gives the speech almost verbatim here
• Our Presidents Are Different: Bush is a classic President Buffoon as shown at the begining of the story.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Turns out that John Oliver was turned into one of these in order to win the Time War.
• Pietà Plagiarism: Stephanos holds Yonatan this way after the latter’s Heroic Sacrifice.
• Please, I Will Do Anything!: Stephanos’s bargain with Jon Stewart if he saves Yonatan’s life.
• Power Gives You Wings: Kinda-sorta here when Stepehen gets his spear.
• Sand in My Eyes: “And for the record, there’s dust in my eyes. Manly dust.” (Spoilers)
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Steve seems to have enough money to do this to the laws of physics via some sort of wealth-related magic.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers: Part of Bad Wolf’s skill set.

Riggle: I mean, who needs all those silly rules about time and paradoxes when apparently you can simply choose to ignore them? Colbert: That is a frighteningly good point.

• Shipper on Deck: Stephen appears to be gleefully and actively playing matchmaker for Stephanos and Yonatan.

Stephen: He meant he loves you! L-O-V-E! Love! He wants to jump your man bones! He wants cuddles! Damn! He really is thick, isn't he?!

• Shout-Out: Loads and loads of them. The main ones are (obviously) to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but shout-outs and references to Doctor Who, Sailor Moon and Star Wars are very prevalent.
  • Rob Riggle's costume is from Street Fighter, and Samathan Bee and Jason Jones are wearing Sailor Moon outfits.
  • Aasif Mandvi has a flower that grants him fire powers.
  • Steve's bag of money looks like a giant gourd strapped to his back.
  • Wyatt Cenac has a pair of familiar-looking shoes that give him superspeed.
  • Contrary to popular belief, it is Paul Dinello who is the current owner of Cap's shield after he grabbed it off of Stephen's mantlepeice during the fight with the hellbear.
  • Eric got his lightsaber from the same mantlepeice during the same fight as mentioned above.
  • The monster in the sewer is a giant mutant ninja turtle.
  • The thing behind the gate A.k.a. Steve Carell looks like the prison for the nine-tailed fox.
• Speak of the Devil: Tek Jansen really should have known better.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Bad Wolf.
• Taking the Bullet: Yonatan does this for Stephanos, although it's less of a bullet and more tentacle-claw things.
• Technicolor Eyes: Everyone. No, seriously, just about everyone with any sort of super powers has this in order to showcase their powers and alignments due to the color coding that will match their similarly colored battle auras. The only exceptions are the characters who get their powers from items, and even then some of said characters still have it.
  • Anything evil will have purple eyes.
    • Including the possessed.
  • Jon's are blue for his lightning bat.
  • Colbert's are red for his fiery spear.
  • Steve Carell's are green for his affinity for money-magic.
  • Anderson Cooper has light blue eyes for telekinesis and teleportation.
  • Samantha Bee has ice blue eyes since she's An Ice Person.
  • John Oliver has yellow eyes to denote his time travel theme. Or else it's just because he's a time lord.
  • Allison Silverman has silver eyes, though that's most likely more of a play on her name than the fact that she can clone herself, since she hasn't really displayed much of an aura yet.
• Thief Bag: He didn't steal any of it, but the giant sacks of money Steve Carell wears on his back certainly count in appearance at the very least.
• The Big Guy: Rob Riggle, listed on his profile page as "Comedian/Last Action Hero."
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Jon Stewart and other Fake News comedians were saying that Dick Cheney was evil for years. Too bad nobody believed them until it was too late.
• The Obi-Wan: Tek's Alpha Squad Master who happens to be Jon's double for that universe.
• The Power of Friendship: Both played straight and brutally subverted, depending on the occasion.
• This Is Gonna Suck: More than once, usually from Jon or Yonatan.
• True Companions: Everyone involved with The Daily Show and//TheColbertReport, really. Inspirational speeches and all.
• Try Not to Die: Yonatan’s advice in preparation for the final battle.
• Vice President Evil: Dick Cheney and how.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Yonatan, here.