Breaking The SyFy Cypher

UPDATE: NEW SHIRT BASED ON THIS COMIC!!!

SciFi SyFy Tv-Movie Title Generator Shirt

Science Fiction TV-Movie Title Generator T-Shirt @Topatoco!!!

There is also a PRINT of this design too!

BEHOLD! I have decrypted the ancient science fiction alchemy from which unspeakable beasts are birthed! What monsters will you create now that you know the secret? Dinoyeti? Chupaconda? Arachnodile? Tractorsaurus? Sharkshark?! TO THE COMMENTS WITH YOU!

Comicpalooza Houston TX March 26-28


[Edward shirts now at Topatoco!]

Feel free to use the chart to create your own monster pairings, and divulge what would be the climactic scene/death scene in the movie (ie the megashark eats a plane out of the sky or the dinoshark eats a surfer mid-wave, etc). Feel free to reuse prefixes and suffixes, mix the columns and add new animals or object modifiers as you see fit. If you are feeling super frisky, why not draw one of these creatures and post a link to it in the comments.

Don’t forget, this weekend is Comicpalooza in Houston, TX!!! I will be doing a webcomics panel with Randy, Malki! and Phil Foglio so come out and say hi and buy stuff and we’ll have a good time.

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62 Comments

  4. Hi i'm new to Hijinks ensue and I've just started listening to the old podcasts. I noticed that the podcasts stop at January. Have they stopped doing podcasts or are they just taking a break?

  5. Tractorpus versus Chupasaurus. With his eight metallic green arms, Tractorpus clambers onto land, stealing the herds of prehistoric goats that were the Chupasaurus's main source of nutrition. This drives Chupasaurus into the near sea-side town of Pleasant Harbor, frightening citizens and forcing them to flee to the ocean for safety. Tractorpus eats the townsfolk in the same order as all good horror/slasher/monster movies. In the end Tractorpus is stopped when his green shell is devoured by the baby Chupasaurui (sauruses?) that were born on the beach.

      • Don't forget the subplot surrounding the male hero-scientist and his estranged park ranger/lifeguard/boat tour guide girlfriend/wife. You can even add a sub-sub plot about how he tried to warn the local town government/EPA. Yeah, I think we just made a movie.

  6. A power surge occurs as the cyberghost is attacking a juvenille detention center, causing the kids, two adults, and the monster to go back in time. Shit happens, some people die. They encounter raptordactyl, more death, and a final battle causes a cataclysm killing all but 3 kids, who get sent back to their present after a literally exlosive battle

      • You should pitch that to cartoon network or someone. Kids would eat that up! Sharkshark vs Robotopus: Robotopus wants to steal the magical remora of Lagoonsville, but Sharkshark has sworn to protect them. With his sharky powers he must fight off the neoprene clad Robotopus through fair means and foul.

    • Dang it! that was the first thing i notice to. They could totally do it as a vampromance, get in some teen girls. Megaghost (Boo-berry) would be the villain who tries to poison the world's milk supply. then, in the sequel, we have Man-Yeti (Frankenberry) trying to alter the time stream so his is the only breakfast cereal in existence.
      P.S. I'm totally laying claim as originator of the term "vampromance"

  9. Sharktopus VS sabredroid: I shark with tentacles uses them to achieve the ultimate terror; walking on land. The only hope for the world is for Debbie Gibson (played by Lucy Liu) to travel to to the underworld in order to obtain the soul of a legendry ancient samurai swordsman and transplant it in a state of the art military fighting droid. Fuck it, I’m making this film

  12. Sabrepus VS. the Mansaurus!
    Jack, a boy in medieval times, sells his family's last cow for magic beans, which in fact turn out to be the testes of the Sabrepus, who was castrated in it's sleep by the mysterious salesman! As the Sabrepus hunts down the bearer of it's missing testicles, Jack runs home and plants them in his garden.
    The next day, there's a giant beanstalk in his backyard, and an angry Sabrepus at his door. Jack eludes the half-cat (other half also cat) temporarily by climbing the stalk, but before long realizes that cats can climb too, and since this is a half-cat half-cat, it climbs twice as fast!
    Reaching the top, the two find themselves in a land of clouds and dinosaurs. Jack slips away, and before long is accustomed to the life of a savage.
    He is no longer Jack.
    He is the Mansaurus! Mighty hunter of the ancient cloud jungles! He and the Sabrepus meet one last time, and, as gentlemen, they begin their final battle, culminating in Mansaurus throwing the Sabrepus from the heavens to the ground. Naturally, this splits the Earth, letting all the demons of Hell loose. But the Mansaurus doesn't care: the true hunt is on!

  13. First I laughed my ass off reading this comic, and kept on laughing creating absurdly horrific monsters. Well done Joel, you have made a breakthrough. Then I clicked on the "logic" of Roger Corman link and I had another laughgasm at his dead serious justification and plot synopses for these movies. SyFy channel has a good ten years worth of content with your formula, what with all the sequels and "Son of…" spinoffs. This is gold Joel! It's gold. I want to see Manosaurus vs. ArachnoWolf. Shit, I need to pitch this to SyFy and Roger Corman right away! Hell Corman referred to James Cameron as his "protege" and that's just so damn funny because it's true! I think that you putting the SyFy cipher down on paper heralds the Apocalypse or something. Freaking hilarious!!

  14. I think Arachnopus or Megapus would be creatures I would be interested in seeing. Half Arachnid, half Platypus, this creature is half menace half God's drunken joke. All must cower in fear!

  17. Alienosaurus VS Weredroid.

    In the distant future, a diabolical experiment is carried out, which turns the subject, Joe Schmoe, into the weredroid, an ordinary man most of the time, but during the full moon, his flesh is replaced by gleaming metal, and he becomes a dangerously uncaring robot, causing murder and mayhem until dawn. To rid themselves of the foul metallic creature, the lab that created him decides to send him billions of years back in time. Joe is surprised to find that he is not the only sentient creature here in the time where dinosaurs roamed. A race of aliens has been watching the gigantic prehistoric creatures, studying them, and even performing genetic experiments on them, splicing the dinosaurs' DNA with their own with the hopes of creating a race of sentient half-alien half-dinosaurs. All their previous tests had ended with failure, but the aliens have finally successfully spliced their DNA with that of a Tyrannosaurus, with horrifying results.

  19. You know, I always thought that they just flipped to a random page in the D&D Monster Manual but I think you've cracked the code.

    I like Arachnosaurus because the name sounds cool but makes absolutely no sense. Or Tractordactyl, because it's just fun to say.

    • "Tractordactyl" sounds like a Fisher-Price toy. Or like an 80s-era cartoon based on a Mattel toy that transforms. Maybe its the missing Dinobot?

  21. Add "-gina" and "-penis" to Column B and you COULD come up with Syfy movies that…well, would probably sell a little better, to be honest.

    "Werepenis VS Arachnogina: The Final Phallic Fight!"

    • Sounds like a horror movie I'd see on Logo…you need something more like "Megapenis vs. Cybergina: The Birthening".
      But, that sounds like something for Spike….hmmm.
      "Son of Sabrepenis vs. The Bride of Yetigina!"
      Yeah, that's better.

    • The Arachnogina has already been done in the anime "Wicked City." Come to think about it, I think there was a Werepenis in that one, too.

  22. Cybervamp vs. Sabrevamp
    All was well in Supervillainville, until the epic intellectual property battle over whether Sabrevamp had ripped off Cybervamp's name. Cybervamp, an established villain and self-made man, was outraged that this young upstart, already rich and moderately famous from his previous career as a software mogul, was trying to steal his villainous thunder by taking on a similar costume and name. Sabrevamp insisted that the color scheme of his costume and the pronunciation of his name were different enough from Cybervamp's that he could not be accused of copying him outright. The ensuing lawsuits devastated the economy of Supervillainville.
    Now, with both villains having died several years ago (Cybervamp of end-stage renal failure, Sabrevamp of an accidental drug interaction) and the scandals escalating to a fever pitch in the tabloids, the surviving family members battle over who will inherit what's left of Sabrevamp's estate…

    • Yeah, that's too obvious, unless it's "Rise of the Manaconda" starring Amanda Huggenkiss and Rod Slapsalot.

      And now I'm making syfy pr0n…I missed my calling…

      Next on syfy "The Masters of the RoboChoad"…rated PG for "Please Go (watch something else)"

  29. I gotta say, the comic was awesome, but that interview may have been funnier. I think my favorite line may have been, "An octopus, we did a little research on this, has of course the long tentacles." Really? How much did that set back your research department?

  30. I keep trying to think of a brilliantly horrid pairing, but I'm continually distracted by the fact that tacking '[a]dactyl' to the end of anything and everything makes it infinitely cooler… sounding. TRACTORDACTYL, by the way, is now my new favorite multi-use, non-offensive exclamation.

    MANDACTYL vs. CHUPADACTYL
    Two brothers. One whose father was a human and one whose father was a chupacabra.
    One mother. A pteradactyl.
    WHICH… ruthless creature wants to ruthlessly destroy the earth? And which hopeful one wants to hopefully save it?
    WHEN… can humans safely rise from the safety of their underground safe houses?
    HOW… could a female flying reptile ever hope to hide two non-flying, non-reptilian men from each other?
    WHO… dares to change the channel?
    WHERE… is Bruce Campbell when we need him?
    WHY… do we get the feeling that if Joss Whedon had thought of this, it'd be PURE GOLDEN AWESOME?
    HOW… the hell do we sleep at night knowing what atrocious acts we must commit to get this stuff produced?
    FIND OUT… tomorrow night on SyFy.

    • "And which hopeful one wants to hopefully save it?"

      Chupadactyl, who is misunderstood because of who his father is, and is hounded to his death by the humans, who don't seem to notice that Mandactyl is picking them off, one by one – even when they're standing right next to the latest victim, as he's being eaten. They continue rallying around Mandactyl, saying things like "he's one of us! sort of!", and attacking the two or three characters who wonder if this is really a good idea, but never think of running away, themselves. "I guess being human doesn't mean much to you, does it", somebody says to one of them. The movie ends with a Mandactyl burping for a full minute, signaling the end of humanity.

      The cast of the movie then goes on to speak at the United Nations about the impact of racism on the world, and nobody sees anything odd about this … http://io9.com/#!5173862/the-night-battlestar-gal…

  34. Clearly you put WAAAAAY more thought into this than the SYFY guys ever did.

    Hell, I always assumed it was a dartboard in some sterile office space somewhere with a shit-ton of monster/animal names tacked up on it waiting for the sure pitch of an executive's dart so it can be green-lit.

  35. Manaconda VS Raptordroid!

    The fools finally did it. They resurrected one of the greatest killers of the dinosaur age – as a killer robot! After an electrical storm, the mechanical menace is loose! Mankind's only hope lies in another abandoned military experiment – the superhumanly strong half-man/half-snake, Manaconda…

    (Incidentally, you can buy Chocodiles at most convenience stores – they're chocolate-coated Twinkies.)

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