"cartoons!!!!!! mostly!!!"
— YouTube channel description
Cas van de Pol👁 Image
is a Dutch YouTuber and animator best known for his series of Ultimate Recap Cartoons — humorous, cutely-animated and parodic abridged recaps of popular films, videogames and TV series... With truckloads of added Bloody Hilarious Gorn, vomit, Black Comedy, Toilet Humor, and so on.
In December 2022, inspired by the success of The Ultimate Minecraft Recap Cartoon👁 Image
, Cas produced a series of four Ultimate Minecraft Cartoons, featuring short stories set in the world of Minecraft with a bit less gore involved.
Works given the "Ultimate Recap" treatment
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Bambi
- Brother Bear
- WALL•E
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)
- How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
- The Incredibles 1
- KPop Demon Hunters
- Lilo & Stitch (2002)
- The Lion King (1994)
- Monsters, Inc. 1
- Minecraft
- My Neighbor Totoro
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Shrek 1
- Shrek 2
- Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
- Super Mario 64
- Ratatouille
Cas van de Pol's works contain examples of:
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General Tropes
- Couch Gag: Most of the videos begin with Cas' avatar (pictured above) producing a speech bubble with the words "A cartoon by Cas", accompanied by a blehhh sound, usually combined with some form of Logo Joke appropriate to the work being parodied.
- This also gets used when the guest animator duo Barracrewda animates the cartoon where they do some harm to Cas, such as capturing him in "The Ultimate Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Recap", or push him into his doom such as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" as a pair of Oompa Loompas.
- Reference Overdosed:
- Most of his videos will be jam-packed with Shout-Outs, Company Cross-References (for Disney and Pixar works), and memes.
- The Ultimate Zootopia (2016) Recap Cartoon in particular is roughly 50% memes by volume.
- The Ultimate Team Fortress 2 Recap Cartoon contains countless shout-outs to memes and creators in the game's fandom.
- Speaking Simlish: Characters in any of the cartoons usually communicate in mumble-speak — whenever someone or something does speak English, it's for a gag.
- Subverted Kids' Show: Downplayed. It's not intended to replicate a kids' show like most examples of the trope, but the cartoons feature brightly coloured, cute animations that would seem entirely small-child-friendly, were it not for the buckets of gore.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Happens more or less Once per Episode, in all of his videos.
Ultimate Recap Cartoons
- Achievements in Ignorance: The Ultimate Minecraft Recap Cartoon features a 'noob player' character, "Game_Pro2001", who manages to achieve numerous feats that are Beyond the Impossible in the game seemingly through sheer stupidity, including mining diamonds, obsidian and bedrock with a wooden pickaxe, constructing a 3x3 Nether portal, and sleeping in the Nether.
- Actor Allusion:
- In the Monsters, Inc. 1 recap, Randall meets his end by getting thrown into a woodchipper.
- At the end of the A New Hope recap, Darth Vader utters "Simba".
- Adaptational Achilles' Heel: In KPop Demon Hunters, there's nothing that says that Gwi-Ma is weak to water. However, Rumi defeats him in the Recap Cartoon by pouring a bucket of water on him.
- Adaptational Alternate Ending:
- The recap for The Nightmare Before Christmas removes everything after Jack's sleigh is shot down, making it a full blown Downer Ending by default.
- The recap for WALL•E ends with the plant being destroyed by a rogue robot after humanity returns to Earth, resulting in their extinction and ending with a Sudden Downer Ending.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
- Several commenters have noted, not entirely unseriously, that Luke and Leia in the New Hope recap are more affected by their adoptive parents' death and Alderaan's destruction respectively than they are in the actual film.
- In their main incarnation, Miis lack any emotion due to them just being the avatar for the player, but in the recap of Wii Sports, the main Mii character ends up showing depressed emotions regarding the miserable situation he was put under after losing a lawsuit after he accidently threw a bowling ball backwards, causing it to hit a man in the face and be crushed into a wall. It causes his wife and son to leave him, and for him to get fired from his accounting job. He is shown to be crying in the shower, and also Drowning His Sorrows at a bar.
- Adaptational Dumbass:
- Luke Skywalker, in the A New Hope Recap, is a moron who manages to stick a lightsaber through his own skull within seconds of being given it, and destroys the Death Star by accident.
- Cas' version of Mr. Incredible is a bumbling Fat Idiot, despite being reasonably bright, if no genius, originally.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: The Ultimate Harry Potter Recap Cartoon is based off of the film version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone but features Draco Malfoy as the Slytherin Seeker. Although Draco is introduced as Harry's rival in Stone, he does not become Slytherin Seeker until Chamber of Secrets.
- Adaptational Karma: The Monsters, Inc. 1 recap inverts this, having a newspaper reveal Waternoose got off scot-free due to being rich.
- Adaptational Ugliness: The demons in KPop Demon Hunters are basically just humans with purple skin and patterns, while in the Recap Cartoon, they're weird, tiny squiggle monsters.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- The rogue robots in the WALL•E Recap abuse and kill the humans on board the Axiom, rather than simply being a little eccentric but otherwise friendly.
- Amy Rose destroys Sonic instead of Metal Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
- Adaptational Wimp: Or Adaptational Badass, depending on which way you look at it. In the Kung Fu Panda 1 Recap, the Furious Five and Master Shifu get bowled over instantly by Tai Lung, while both of them put up a reasonable if one-sided fight in the film.
- Adapted Out: Celine, despite playing a major role in the original film, does not appear in the KPop Demon Hunters Recap Cartoon in any capacity.
- Animated Shock Comedy: The cartoons tend to have a lot of gratuitous gore and gross-out gags purely for shock value.
- Art Shift:
- The art style between the Ultimate Recaps of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine becomes less rasterized and more smooth to reflect the shift between console generations.
- Rumi falling into Jinu's embrace is given a much more anime-esque style than the rest of the cartoon.
- Bilingual Bonus:
- Red Skull in The Ultimate Captain America Recap Cartoon actually speaks legitimate non-subtitled German.
- While Rumi's dialogue is just mumbled gibberish, Mira actually speaks to her in untranslated Korean during their argument.
- Call-Back:
- The first appearance of the Genie in The Ultimate Aladdin Recap has him morphing his head into past recap appearances like Mufasa, Aang, Stitch, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Frodo.
- In The Ultimate Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Recap, when Harry looked into the Mirror of Erised, Dumbledore looked into it and was shocked to see the censored animation of Mort worshipping Julian's feet from the original version of the Madagascar recap.
- In The Ultimate Emperor's New Groove Recap Cartoon, the scene of Kuzco crying in the rain is interrupted by Stitch coming to the scene and biting into Kuzco, brutally thrashing hm around as he screams for help. Later, in The Ultimate Lilo & Stitch Recap Cartoon (and its "remake", which is literally the same video, likely because Cas was disappointed by the 2025 live action remake), the scene is repeated when Stitch's heart-wrenching "I'm lost!" scene is interrupted by Kuzco crying in the same place, only for Stitch to devour him before the events of Stitch's story continue.
- Censored for Comedy: Mr. Popo is pixelated out in The Ultimate Dragon Ball Z Recap, and a very uncomfortable Kami keeps trying to shove him out of the way.
- Clip-Art Animation:
- In the Madagascar 1 Recap, Alex giving into his hunger and wild nature is symbolised by having him transform into a photo of a lion. Multiple photos of lions (and a hand, at one point) are moved about and used for scenes of him running, roaring and sulking.
- The same thing occurs in the Zootopia (2016) recap, to portray the animals under the influence of Night Howlers.
- Content Warnings: Due to the cute and colourful art style, many of these videos are prefaced with the warning NOT "made for kids"!, given that they contain tons of Gorn. This is at least partially to stop them appearing on YouTube Kids.
- Crossover Punchline: In the Lilo & Stitch (2002) recap, the scene of Stitch realizing that he's lost segues into the opening scene of The Emperor's New Groove, with Kuzco as a llama crying in the rain. This encounter ends with Stitch devouring Kuzco.
- Curse Cut Short: In a recorded message, after realizing that the last BNL Starliner has departed, Shelby Forthright's exclamation of "Ah, SHI-" is cut off by the holo-screen closing.
- Death by Adaptation: Almost every episode has a character be brutally killed off. It's not always permanent.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first 2 Recaps for The Lion King (1994) and Bambi lack the gore and Animated Shock Comedy following Recaps contain.
- Eaten Alive: In the Lilo & Stitch (2002) recap, the frog and Kuzco as a llama are both devoured alive by Stitch, which gets a Call-Back in the recap of The Emperor's New Groove.
- Every Man Has His Price: In a subversion of what happened in The Emperor's New Groove, Pacha rejected the plan for Kuzcotopia, only for Mickey Mouse to show up with a bag of money to turn his village into Disneyland, much to Pacha's approval.
- Flipping the Bird: In a few instances, the characters will grow disproportionately large hands to flip off another character.
- Funny Background Event: During the Brother Bear recap, a bear can clearly be seen twerking in the background at the Salmon Run.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Stitch, even more so than in his source movie. For instance, when coming across Mertle, he grabbed her, bashed her against the pavement, emptied an entire gun on her, poured gasoline over the mangled remains and set them on fire while laughing maniacally. All because Mertle stuck her tongue out at him.
- Implausible Deniability: Obi-Wan shows Luke a series of photographs on his Tatooine home's wall chronicling his relationship with Anakin, including young Anakin with Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and Jar Jar, the pair with Ashoka, Obi-Wan with Captain Rex — and Obi-Wan grinning as Anakin burns to a crisp in Mustafar's lava. Obi-Wan then hurriedly yanks the last one off the wall and gives Luke an innocent look. Luckily for him, this version of Luke is probably stupid enough for this to work.
- Mood Whiplash: The Wii Sports video at first is just a straightforward recap of the game... then comes Bowling, which becomes a tragic tale of a Mii losing everything from a lawsuit...and then becomes a Dance Party Ending after the Mii gets a strike.
- Naked People Are Funny: The old man in the bathhouse wears a towel in the original film, but in the Recap Cartoon, he's completely nude.
- Only One Female Mold: Gender-Inverted. The Huntrix girls all have distinct designs, while most of the Saja Boys use the same base mold. Romance Saja is the sole exception, staying in his demon form due to Rule of Funny.
- Rapid-Fire Comedy: "The Ultimate Team Fortress 2 Recap Cartoon", which doesn't try and follow the game's plot, such as it is, but is instead made up of dozens of short skits featuring the Mercenaries, most of which are only seconds long.
- Running Gag:
- The main character of the recap gets beaten on the ground by the supporting cast.
- At least one character will utter "Simba" in Mufasa's voice.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Played for Laughs. In the Monsters, Inc. recap, after Waternoose is arrested by the CDA, there is a Smash Cut to a newspaper headline "Waternoose gets off scot-free" with the subheading "'Because I'm rich!' says Waternoose".
- Shapeshifter Mashup: At the climax of The Ultimate Emperor's New Groove Recap Cartoon, Kuzco decides to take all of Yzma's potions at the same time. This results in him becoming a grotesque, humongous mass of flesh with body parts of several animals sticking out of them.
- Shout-Out:
- The Ultimate Finding Nemo Recap has Marlin and Dory meeting the school of fish, who formed a simplified loss comic much to Dory's amusement.
- In The Ultimate Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Recap, Hagrid assumed his PS1 face while patting him on the head.
- The recap for The Nightmare Before Christmas replaces Lock, Shock, and Barrel with Skid and Pump from Spooky Month.
- Judy slapping Nick is a nod to a certain infamous Zootopia fan comic.
- The way that the Ginyu Force (excluding Ginyu and Guldo, who die in an overall similar fashion to canon) die in The Ultimate Dragon Ball Z Recap is when Goku crash lands into them when landing on Namek, similar to how they're taken out in Dragon Ball Z Abridged's Kai Abridged series.
- The Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine portion of The Ultimate Sonic the Hedgehog Recap has Robotnik shouting "Snoo-PING AS usual, I see!"
- In The Ultimate Kung Fu Panda 1 Recap, Mr. Ping is represented by the goose from Untitled Goose Game wearing his clothes and walking around like it does in-game.
- The Ultimate Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Recap had Mike Teavee be put through a very different channel-changing Trapped in TV Land montage that is composed of him in The Backrooms, Rocket League, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate where Charlie and Wonka beat him up in the very last one.
- One of Arthur Fleck's hallucinations in The Ultimate Joker Recap involve him and Murray Franklin doing the Happy Happy Joy Joy dance, with the hallucination breaking off during the part the two bump butts, predictably resulting in a broken TV set.
- When Shadow is walking through the streets of Japan in The Ultimate Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) Recap, he passes an obese Bomberman, Mrs. Pac-Man and Alex Kidd.
- Also from ''The Ultimate Sonic The Hedgehog 3 Recap", the Chao Garden scene has Tails replaced with Detective Pikachu, which also references the Shout-Out in the actual film.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- In The Ultimate How to Train Your Dragon (2010) Recap, Hiccup teaches the Red Death to boogie with a snap of his fingers like the other dragons, rather than it being killed in battle by him and Toothless.
- The old man who scolds the Huntrix girls in the bathhouse gets his soul sucked out almost immediately after in the original movie, but in the Recap Cartoon, he shows up at the end unharmed.
- Smoking Hot Sex: As R2 repeatedly inserts his scomp link into the Death Star computer to suggestive music, it then cuts to him lying down with a cigarette attached to his dome as the others back away from the control room nervously.
- The Stoner: In the Zootopia recap, Flash the sloth is reimagined as this — he's got Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes, Nick is seen selling him a baggie, and he gets arrested for smoking a joint instead of speeding.
- Take That!: Genie's transformation montage in The Ultimate Aladdin Recap ends with his head becoming that of the Will Smith genie from Aladdin (2019). Aladdin and Abu both respond by screaming in terror.
- The Ugly Sonic is destroyed by the negative reception it received at the start of the Sonic 1 and 2 recaps.
- They Killed Kenny Again:
- In The Ultimate Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Recap, there were instances where the characters get mauled violently only to come back as if nothing happened, like early on when Minerva McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore were flattened by Hagrid riding the flying motorbike.
- In The Ultimate Shrek 1 Recap, Donkey is killed both by Farquaad's men and by Shrek at various points, yet he's always back, unharmed, in the next scene.
Ultimate Minecraft Cartoons
- Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear whether Steve is supposed to be Herobrine, or if the act of hacking gives you Herobrine's Blank White Eyes.
- And Show It to You: After learning how to code in order to stop the hacking Griefers, the Sheriff uses an X-ray hack on the Gamer Chick griefer (who had previously used this against the villagers) to see her heart and pull it out of her chest, killing her.
- Base on Wheels: The giant golem in, erm, The Giant Golem serves as a coal-fuelled walking home for its two resident players.
- Driven to Suicide: The blacksmith in The Village Attack hurls himself into his own workshop's lava pool to avoid being eaten by zombies.
- Failure Montage: In Sheriff's Revenge, the titular sheriff and his Village Defence allies come up with a variety of schemes (building a wall around the village, weaponizing beehives, making a Trojan Horse, or just hiding underground) to try and protect their village from a bunch of game-hacking Griefers, all of which fail miserably.
- Fantastic Drug: Whatever the Cleric is brewing up in The Village Attack, it's given him Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes.
- Forced Transformation: After Sheriff Max obtains his own hacking powers and defeats all the other griefers, he turns their leader into a pile of diamonds, emeralds and gold.
- Interspecies Romance: Throughout several Funny Background Events in The Giant Golem, an Enderman and Skeleton are seen making out and having a child together. Somehow.
- Lighter and Softer: While the gore and general Black Comedy of the Ultimate Recap Cartoons is still there, it's very significantly toned down, with a greater focus on storytelling and atmosphere, plus quite a few feel-good moments.
- Mook Horror Show: Of a sort. The Village Attack shows just how awful it must be to be a Minecraft villager, helpless against attacking zombies and greedy, uncaring players. At least, until that villager Takes a Level in Badass, anyway.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Farmer villager not only survives the zombie attack to become the Village's Sole Survivor, but manages to capture his zombified son, too — and given that this is Minecraft, he's significantly more dangerous than a regular zombie to begin with. This is perhaps Foreshadowing his Hidden Badass tendencies.
- Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: In The Village Attack, a comically large fountain of blood spurts out of the first villager attacked by a zombie, causing the others to panic.
- Papa Wolf: The farmer Villager in The Village Attack goes quite literally to Hellnote Well, the Nether, anyway. and back to de-zombify his son, fighting (and defeating) Steve in the process, too.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Parodied. Sheriff Max's Village Defence brigade consists of him, his horse, a Villager, the derpy-faced Noob, a sheep, a chicken, and a zombie.
- The Stinger: Present in the latter three cartoons:
- The Village Attack: After being defeated by the Villager, Steve has respawned and he's pissed off now.
- The Giant Golem: As the titular golem strides away into the distance, Steve is shown freeing several shifty-looking players from blocks of ice. His eyes then turn white as he manipulates Minecraft's code.
- The Sheriff's Revenge: In a direct Shout-Out to the ending of WandaVision, the eponymous character is shown being corrupted by his newly acquired knowledge of hacking.
- Takes One to Kill One: The Sheriff is only able to beat the gang of hacking Griefers by learning how to manipulate the game's code himself — though judging by The Stinger, this probably wasn't a good idea.
- Teeny Weenie: When rushing back to get his clothes after being killed, Sheriff Max has a very small Censor Box covering his privates.
- Token Heroic Orc: One of the members of the Village Defence is a zombie. He initially tries to attack some of his comrades, but seems to grow out of it.
- Training the Peaceful Villagers: Played with. The Sheriff attempts to raise a Village Defence force to face down the griefers, but in the end they are only defeated after the Sheriff learns to hack Minecraft for himself.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The Giant Golem features two bickering friends who live together in the titular golem, who happen to be dressed identically to Pat and Mat.