Bonus Stage: Encyclopedia - Bonus Stage

Bonus Stage

Bonus Stage (abbreviated BS) is an animated Flash action/adventure/comedy series by Matt Wilson that focuses attention on the randomness, sarcasm, and parodic moments of life. The entire cartoon is a spin-off of High Score, another cartoon by Matt Wilson with the same characters. Bonus Stage takes place in a virtual reality that Joel himself created.

The cartoon is focused on Joel Dawson, a wannabe scientist that has a giant hobby for action. He lives in his friend Phil's house, but treats it as if he owned it. Phil Argus, a normal person with superpowers, follows Joel in his adventures and is mostly frustated, serious, and expressing facts. He is the straight man to Joel. Phil also has a mom, named Jessica Argus. She's middle-aged, but due to one of Joel's experiments, she's a 25-year-old woman who just wants to now fit in with the crew. She arrived when she couldn't stand her son, Phil, describing his life as miserable and empty. She slowly goes insane over the course of seasons 5 and 6, possibly due to side-effects of the experiment.

Rya Botkins is a robot created by Joel to be Phil's girlfriend. She is a cynical monster who verbally rips people--mostly Phil--apart, and she is not really his girlfriend. In episode 79, Rya is killed for real when she becomes human in the virtual world and loses her ability to come back after death. It's not known why Rya has a robotic voice while June, another robot built by Joel, has a normal sounding one, but this is could be attributed to the bizarreness that is Joel. Another explanation, according to June, is that she is human-- her boyfriend (???) simply fabricates rumors and lies about her and everyone around him, including himself.

Bonus Stage - Other Characters

• Elly Strife is a loner and does not have many (maybe any) friends after the 'Evil' incident (Episode 50: Evil's New Groove). She is left alone along with the other secondary characters on Earth while the rest of the crew host the show in space. After a set of events on the 5th segment, Elly builds her own spaceship, desperate to reach Joel and Phil, and goes into space, along with a man named Andrew (see below). During Episode 75: The Day the Earth Did Stuff, she decided to make Andrew her boyfriend. She is crazy about her relationship with Andrew, but still has feelings for Joel.

• Andrew Wonderful is a normal person, created randomly by Matt. He will be more focused upon in the 7th segment. He is the only volunteer to have joined Elly in her desperate attempt to reunite with Joel and the rest of the gang, but the reason for why he came remain a mystery. He possibly has a secretive agenda, or possibly just possesses the role of a nutcase. He will often say something, some that incoherently make sense, that's anything but important, but he usually acts as a leader while Elly goofs off. He is currently Elly's boyfriend. In the later episodes, he suggests using Rya to create chaos in the real world. His agenda or actual persona at this point is unknown, though he is being shown as more of a malevolent force than previously.

• Brad is Joel and Phil's neighbor. He is also 5 years old. Brad appeared in the first episode, stealing Joel's car and giving him a box back. Ever since he has been a simple filler character. He apparently likes watching Rya sleep, as revealed in episode 76.

• Treelor is a Christmas tree salesman that tries to act like a dark lord of some sort. He claims to be the God of Christmas. If anyone leaves his lair, he begs for them to take the three trials to purchase a tree. He's horrible at his job. He is also used as a filler character.

• Evil (Elly in a dark costume) is a supervillain who has major issues and is an arch-nemesis of Joel and Phil for no adequately explored reason. His evil plots are often rather stupid. In episode 50, it is revealed that Elly was Evil all along. After that, Elly supposedly stopped being Evil until episode 78 when Evil returns, with new powers. Elly denies any part in it, however.

• Craig is a slow talking guy with slurred speech, so he gets annoying sometimes. He was also Rya's husband for 4-5 episodes (e.g. weeks), but then they got divorced after having a child named Rygar, apparently because of something Evil did (as revealed in episode 50). Apparently, he didn't realize that Rya was a robot, despite the fact that she blew a hole in his crotch while they were "counting the sheep". Craig is supposedly based on the character Jim from the short-lived WB cartoon "Mission Hill".

• June Crane is Joel's first attempt for a 'trophy girlfriend'. She is much nicer [than Rya] and always states the obvious, like "Impossible's not a verb." and "(But it's not 101%!) That's computationally impossible." Joel often mocks and insults her, most of the time forgetting her very existence. She seems to have developed a bit of a mean streak as of late.

• The Tandy Bros., (Thomas and Tyrone), are two brothers that have Tandy computers for heads, raised on the streets of Eternia. They torture everyone (but especially Phil), once took over Phil's house, and almost took over the world. Luckily, they're incredibly stupid.

• Rygar is the son of Rya and Craig, and he is a rowdy-rough robot. He defeats most of the villains quickly and easily and often gets excessively violent. Died in Episode 75: The Day the World Did Stuff when Rya ate him.

• The Action Squad Detective Force, also known as ASDF, is a group of three spherical blue things with hair that resemble Bogey of the webcomic Kid Radd crossed with the videogame charater Kirby. The squad consists of Rjgikossuxvd, which is pronounced 'Ryu', the green-haired leader, Fyre, the red-headed female, and Spink, the blue-haired tough one who is overly random and says "Bang-Bang" a lot and lampoons Cowboy Bebop's Spike Spiegel.

• Satan, as you may expect, is the ruler of Hell. However, it isn't as you expect. Hell is actually on the sun, and presented Joel three choices on how he was to spend the rest of eternity there, either by watching Time Squad 24/7, Shrek 2 for 24/7, or eating his mom's horrible spaghetti. According to Phil, he and Satan go bowling on Thursdays and that he uses a skeleton as a bowling ball.

• Keen is based on id's Commander Keen. He has had various jobs, usually ones that have no apparent purpose. He defended Phil in episode 23, 2 Legit, against Rya's claim that he had murdered Joel. Keen has had the following jobs: Lawyer (#24, 2 Legit), Doughnut Baker (#29, Virtual Mailman), Eyebrow Raiser (#39, CurSING!), and Taxi Driver (#49, HACKCURS Was The Worst Movie Ever Made). He was arrested in episode 50 for pooping on Commander Keen's lawn and renamed himself Ken Rogers in order to differ between the two. He appears in a later episode as a camp director, suspicious that the camp was actually a cover for a alien drug ring, but he is soon fired.

• Mr. Malice is an undead skeleton who owns a racetrack in space. He stowed away on the eShip, and managed to survive by carving a vessel out of Jessica's body. He is able to summon WAV files from the Netherworld. Because of this, every time he speaks, a bizarre sound comes out. However, everyone seems to understand him perfectly. His lines are always subtitled. The sounds that come out vary from episode to episode, and include creepy sucking noises (#57: First Place in the Face), MIDI music from an old computer game called "Chip's Adventure" (#61: Fist World), high-pitched chipmunk-like chanting (#63: Last Exit to Charismaville), the Mega Man theme song (#64: Life in the Blast Lanes), and Matt Wilson speaking backwards (#68: Elly In Chains). He was recently blown up along with Hydrox (#75: The Day The World Did Stuff). Whether or not he's really dead remains to be seen.

• KOKOR is a robot, apparently from space. He hates Keen, and once tried to blow up his house. The bomb was accidentally delivered to Joel and Phil's house, and Rya kicked it into KOKOR's spaceship. His source of power is the Cup of Infinity, and he died when Jessica took it in episode 55, Fight Cup. He later returned from the dead and planned to kill Joel and Phil, but he failed. He is apparently dead.

• The Stomach King is a fat alien that wants Joel and company dead. He appeared in episode 51, kidnapping the party and telling them about his plans. During his rant, they escaped. Later on, he kidnapped Rya and made a ray gun that would destroy the planet. When Joel and the others came to get her back, the ray gun fired and they died, as did the Stomach King. He reappeared as KOKOR's lackey (even though he was paying for the entire thing) in the season 6 finale. He appears later, trying to amass an evil league of villains, but only ends up recruiting one villain, Brainio, a parody of Superman's Brainiac, who turns out to be only in the Stomach King's head.

Bonus Stage - Character and Theme History

Joel Dawson
- Season 1-2 (4 black hairs with a hat, red shirt, blue pants, regular voice)
- Season 3-5 (Same look, but with a skimmish voice and a full head of blond hair)
- Season 6 (Same look, but blond hair is curved)
- Season 7+ (Same look, but more 3-D hair design, hair on other side of head)

Phil Argus
- Season 1-2 (Orange hair, upside-down triangle eyes, orange shirt, brown pants, skimmish and deep voice)
- Season 3-4 (Same look, but a more curved outward torso, huge feet, curvier hair, half circle eyes, and calm voice)
- Season 4-6 (Same look, but his torso is less curved)
- Season 7+ (Same look, but hair slightly different, curved down more and less hair; In episodes 62 and 83, Phil's eyes are shown to be pink) (NOTE: In episode 19, Joel wishes that he could switch voices with Phil. It remains that way for the rest of the series.)

Elly Strife
- Season 1-2 (Triangle torso and triangle legs, straight green hair with hat)
- Season 3 (Triangle torso and legs become much longer and thinner, smaller breasts, hair and hat still the same)
- Season 4 (Realistic body and shoes added, hair is visually advanced and hat still remains)
- Season 5 (Advanced S4 look, shorter hair)
- Season 6-7+ (Hair's growing back, larger breasts, High Score Kids clothing design: white shirt, brown pants, pink cap with a kitten, and 'anime eyes')

Rya
- Season 2-3 (Narrow trapeziod-shaped pants and torso, round face, round hair with cowlicks, light freckles, 'dot' eyes)
- Season 4 (Black wedding dress, heart-shaped hair, more detailed red eyes)
- Season 4 [after Rygar's birth] (advanced ver. of S2 look with early S4 details)
- Season 5-Ryaconning (Normal-shaped hair with S2 look)
- Ryaconning (After being transformed into a woman, she looks more detailed and her colors are darker; purple lipstick)
- After Ryaconning (Dead for real, but is referenced in post-death episodes. Possibly has a knife wound in her abdomen.)

Theme Intro
- Season 1 (Original music, revamped at some points of the season / Original intro)
- Season 2 (Original music, chords are added / Original intro, S1 pictures)
- Late Season 2 (Same as early S2 music / S2 intro, Elly's part w/50pts., a pizza, and Rya)
- Special 1 (Original music, extended and with a bridge portion added / Rya is added, Elly moved to last part, Keentoons logo added, S1-2 pictures)
- Episode 26 (Original music with an enhanced drum beat, a pad instrument added / SP1 intro, S1-2 pictures)
- Season 3 (Same as Episode 26 without the pad / Same.)
- Episode 38 (Intro is in minor / S2-3 pictures)
- Early Season 4 (Same as season 3 / Same.)
- Late Season 4 (Minor 1st half, catchy new 2nd half / Jessica and Evil are added, new 2nd half, scrolling text on 1st half)
- Season 5 (Action videogame-themed music / CSS logo added, space intro, text scroll horiz. and vert., Rygar is added, Elly only appears on Earth.)
- Season 6 (Theme gets ambiently enhanced on the 2nd half on the season / Jessica appears in the reaserch plant and twitches, Elly appears in space, the space ship crashes)
- Season 7 (Music starts out kinda adventures and slightly techno and ambiant and turns to ska / The Couch Slave Studios part from the Season 1-2 intro starts to play, but then it "breaks down". The screen turns black. Joel (Nick Tiner does it in Episode 78: Revenge of the Pathetic and all following episodes) monologues: "3 friends become the guinea pigs of a brilliant inventor. Their goal, to create the greatest webtoon ever. They failed. Witness the failure! BONUS STAGE!" while it shows the characters with their new High Score designs being transported into the Bonus Stage world. Characters are introduced. A shot similar to Season 1-4 intro is shown with all of the characters.)

Theme Outro (Ending)
- Season 1-2 (Shed Some Skin (by Slow Gerkhin) FL Imitation by Robot Sock / Scenes included comic versions of Matt Wilson designing the show)
- Season 3-4 (An original outro was used / Silhouetted cast going quickly up the screen on the side of the screen, Joel, Elly, Phil, and Rya having quotes)
- Season 5 (A revamped version of 3-4 outro with added instruments / Same outro as of season 3 and 4)
- Season 6-7 (The New Orleans Funk (by Paul Sumpter) / Cast dances to the outro music.)

Bonus Stage - The Charismaville Files

There is a 'serious parody site' called The Charismaville Files (relating parody to The X-Files) and it shows facts and notes about the show, topped with photoshopped pictures of scenes featuring the characters on BS. All the information (or the 'conspiracy') about R.D. and D.G. (Red Dude and Dumb Guy) is only a joke and is not meant to offend people. There is also an interview of Matt Wilson included, information on the early cancelled High Score, and show notes (some referring to R.D. and D.G.) on the episodes of Bonus Stage.

The Charismaville Files is no longer updated. Any info you may find on there today is out-of-date.

Bonus Stage - Information

Latest update: Episode 84: Depart's All Yours

Character quantity from its start to right now: 2 to 25+ to 5+ characters.

Episode quantity: 84 episodes. 16 more left to series end.

Main setting currently: Charismaville, New Jersey (again)

Past settings: Charismaville, New Jersey; the eShip; Hydrox

Bonus Stage Death Count (as of episode 82):
Joel: 33
Phil: 35
Elly: 9
Rya: 13 (her 12th death was permanent, but she died again in episode 82, though we never see it)
Jessica: 5
Other Characters: 52
Total: 144

See also

• Bonus Stage Episode Guide
• High Score

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Bonus Stage", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki