Tricky the Clown

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Tricky the Clown is the secondary antagonist of the Madness Combat series, once an assassin hired by the Sheriff and later the primary antagonist of the Tricky Saga, however becoming the primary antagonist briefly during the Auditor Saga. He is Hank's nemesis throughout the series.

His mod was created by Banbuds, Rozebud, KadeDev and Cval, with contributions from Moro, Jads, YingYang, and Tsuraran. His main week has 3 songs: Improbable Outset, Madness, and Hellclown. Clearing the week on Hard difficulty unlocks a final extremely difficult and unfair track in Freeplay, Expurgation.

Appearance
Tricky is a green-skinned zombie with curled, red-orange clown hair. He wears a gray cloak and a dull blue ruff with light blue orbs and a matching pair of dull blue shoes.

During Improbable Outset, he wears a iron slab hockey mask, and shakes slightly due to the Improbability Drive. He holds a microphone in his left hand.

During Madness, after being shot by Hank, his mask is blown off, exposing his face. He lacks skin on his jaw and mouth, a common trait shared with zombies in the Madness Series. He shakes noticeably more than he shaked in Improbable Outset, due to the Portable Improbability Drive becoming activated. He still has a microphone in his left hand.

During Hellclown, due to the Improbability Drive being turned on to its full power, he is transformed into a gigantic flaming-red demon, with all of his body, including his hair becoming made of fire, except for his hands and head. His head becomes a monstrous, inhuman skull, and he has pure white eyes, along with a new set of large, sharp teeth, as well as having claws on his hands. He no longer holds a microphone, or shakes.

During Expurgation, he' seen in a relatively smaller form. His skeleton is black and orange, with no flesh or skin at all, has glowing red eyes, and a missing jaw. At the top of his head lies a halo, changed by the Auditor's energy. He shakes incredibly violent, to a point where he is hard to get a clear look at, and he floats in the air.

Gameplay Mechanics - Flame/Dark Halo Notes, Minions, and Streetsigns
During Hellclown multiple black and red flaming notes appear. Hitting these notes takes away about 20% of the players health, meaning the player has to intentionally miss these on a playthrough (these do not appear on Easy mode however and seem to have no effect on Tricky, as he is shown hitting 4 flaming notes in Madness).

In Expurgation, the flaming notes are upgraded to Dark Halo Notes, which instantly blueball the player if hit.

Additionally, in Expurgation a "HP Gremlin" will occasionally appear and pull down the players health bar manually taking about 50% of your full HP. It takes progressively more and more health as the song progresses. You also cannot lose/gain HP by missing/hitting notes while this happens. Near the very end in one of the more calm sections, it will pull your bar for a lot longer than usual, albeit slower. If you don't have enough HP before this happens, you are guaranteed to lose.

Stop Signs will also appear during Expurgation, blocking parts of the players side. These signs progressively ramp up in speed, amount, and obstruction throughout the song, getting to up to four at once.

Trivia

 * According to Krinkels, the creator of Tricky, this is canon to Madness Combat.(citation needed)
 * Version 2 was planned to be released on June 6th in the official trailer, but it was eventually released on June 2nd, four days earlier than the initial date as bug testing was done early.
 * In his second Q and A, Banbuds revealed that the sign was supposed to have an animation where it would slam down on boyfriend and his head would slice off, but the code for the game over animation is severely broken, so it is just a few still frames, explaining the awkward and initially confusing look of it.
 * In the same Q and A, Banbuds says "the signpost has bones because fuck it why not, I thought it was funny" also explaining the game over screen.
 * A unique visual trait of Tricky in this mod is words occasionally flashing during his turn, becoming more prominent in "Madness" afterwards. These words have the same font and color as his dialogue throughout the Madness Combat series.
 * Tricky's real identity is Dr. Hofnarr, shown in MADNESS: Project Nexus (although the canonicity of Project Nexus is unclear).
 * The song titled "Improbable Outset" has its etymology in the name of Tricky's power source, which is called the "Improbability Drive."
 * The song titled "Madness" comes from the title of the series where Tricky comes from; Madness Combat.
 * The song titled "Honkers" is titled as a reference to clowns and possibly to insanity.
 * The song titled "Hellclown" may refer to the Hell dimension from Madness Combat 11: Expurgation.
 * The song titled "Expurgation" comes from Madness Combat 11: Expurgation, the episode where the skeletons appear for the first time.
 * Tricky's weapon, his silver street sign, comes from when Hank hit him on the head with it and stabbed him in the chest with it in Madness Combat 3: Avenger. Since then, the sign becomes Tricky's main weapon throughout the series.
 * The reason Tricky is shaking is not because he is angry, but because his Improbability Drive is activated, making him unable to fully control himself.
 * Tricky's mask comes from Madness Combat 4: Apotheosis, where he dons the mask for his "DJ Tricky" persona and has been subsequently damaged throughout the series' progression.
 * Tricky's theme from Avenger, Calliope, can be heard faintly throughout Madness and as a very noticeable leitmotif at several points, and the cutscene music, "Honkers", is a slower version of the leitmotif.
 * In Expurgation, a small leitmotif of the common circus theme, "Entrance of the Gladiators", can be heard as well as a part of "Hellclown".
 * The same motif is also heard multiple times within Madness Combats Expurgation, like at 1:36.
 * Tricky flips the bird in phase 3 for his left pose, a massive one at that.
 * Tricky flipping the bird is also a reference to Madness Accelerant.
 * Tricky's third phase was teased in the Friday Night Funkin': The Full-Ass Game Kickstarter trailer. This teaser has notable differences from the final version, such as Tricky being much smaller than he is in the mod proper.
 * Tricky in "Hellclown" is one of the largest Friday Night Funkin' mod characters so far, being able to come close to the TordBot in terms of sheer size.
 * Tricky's laugh/scream heard on the "Hellclown" cutscene is the same sound used in Madness Accelerant.
 * "Hellclown" is the first modded song to not be in a 4/4 time signature. It instead changes time signature several times throughout the song. It changes to 5/4, 7/4, 4/4, and 9/4.
 * It was stated by the developers before the update there was no Phase 4 or 5 of Tricky, however Phase 4 was included in the mod, but as more of a bonus.
 * There is a Roblox hat called Big Tricky Head that was authorized by Krinkels and the Tricky Mod devs.
 * There is also another head named after the page and character, Tricky The Clown. It resembles the Tricky head, but without the mask. It's unknown if the item was authorized by the Tricky mod developers and Krinkels.
 * There is a third Tricky themed item on the catalog, the Metal Mask of Improbability, which resembles a somewhat inaccurate version of Tricky's mask with red markings. It is unknown if it was authorized, and it is credited as a suggestion, so the creator may not have even known.
 * There is a FOURTH Tricky item on the catalog, the Big Tricky Phase 3 Head, which of course is based off of phase 3 Tricky. It was authorized by the Tricky mod developers and Krinkels.
 * Both the Google Drive link to download the mod and GameBanana had crashed because too many people were attempting to downloading it, similar to Newgrounds with Week 7.
 * As of 6/5/2021, the number of people still downloading the mod has affected the download speed of GameBanana, sometimes going as slow 20 KB/s.
 * In Version 1, there was a chance that the Nevada sign on the menu background will change from "NEVADA" to "Amogus", accompanied with a fragment of the "Dead Body Reported" sound effect from the game Among Us.
 * The new menu screen layout for Version 2 is a direct reference to Madness: Project Nexus (Classic), which has almost the same layout.
 * The menu music for the mod's menu is a remix of the menu theme from Madness: Project Nexus (Classic), Catastrophe by Cheshyre.
 * There was a teaser for "Expurgation" which featured the instrumental of the choir part and a chiptune of the piano part, and was titled "Distant Chuckle". This has caused much confusion, with some saying "Distant Chuckle" was a scrapped song with parts reused, but it is confirmed to be only a teaser, with the name never being a song name.
 * The cutscene music "Honkers" is made by YingYang48, the creator of VS. Hex.
 * The song that plays when starting up Version 2 is a remix of the DJ Birdy version of "Chicken Dance", the song that plays throughout Madness Combat 1 and at the end ofApotheosis.
 * In the cutscene that plays after "Hellclown", Tricky punches Hank and a red lightning appears around him on impact. This is a reference to the games Super Smash Bros. 4 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where said red lightning effect appears when a hit that is guaranteed to knock out a player makes contact.
 * During the Post-"Hellclown" cutscene where the Auditor is seen behind a computer screen (likely an Improbability Drive monitor), the same red eye from "Glitcher" from the VS. Hex mod and seen in mods such as Vs. Whitty and Anders can be viewed when the screen glitches.
 * During Hellclown, Tricky's sprites are so big that they had to be scattered over 5 spritesheets, one for each animation.
 * This also makes Tricky the second modded character to have multiple spritesheets that make up his character, the first being X-Gaster.
 * This is also why some players may experience lag spikes the first time Tricky does his poses, as the game is loading these 8192x8192 pixel spritesheets for the first time.
 * Tricky's Hellclown idle spritesheet is 11706 pixels wide and 10864 pixels tall.
 * In the game's files, there is a picture of Gegcoin named "donated 20$" . Gegcoin is a YouTuber who posts Friday Night Funkin' mod showcases.
 * The music from the new Game Over is a slowed version of the "Chicken Dance"
 * In one part of "Expurgation", Tricky can be heard screaming "HANK" and even has a unique sprite for it.
 * Tricky's vocals can be heard in the title screen theme. He is the second character to do this, the first being Impostor.
 * Once you beat Expurgation, a mini flame Tricky will appear on the menu, who you can click on and annoy. Sometimes he will meow, which is a reference to Madness: Accelerant where he also meows.
 * Krinkels has said that neither men nor women exist in Madness, thus making Tricky and the rest of the cast genderless.
 * Tricky has a remix of his first two songs on the Friday Night Funkin' UpSide, which is a seperate mod itself.
 * There is a chance that Tricky's roar in the start of "HELLCLOWN" is an edited version of Demon Tricky screaming in Madness Combat 11 : Expurgation.
 * This is the third mod to include a new type of arrows, being in this case the "Red arrows", the second was the Friday Night Funkin' HD, which included the warning arrows, and the first being Vs Noke, which included gem arrows.
 * However, in version 1, during the song "Madness" after the midway point, Tricky uses the "Red arrows" twice, both times being all four arrows at once. Noke's mod came out After version 1 Tricky, so Tricky was technically the first modded character add a new type of arrows.
 * There is a 2% chance of the Among Us Crewmate appearing on the main menu. He will cover every option on the menu if you try to select it, shaking his head whilst doing so. In order to access anything, you have to click on the Crewmate, which kills it.
 * Jebus's menu music was found in a ARG several weeks before the V2 update released.
 * Tricky so far is the only character to have a special pose when it hits all four notes, as seen in Expurgation.
 * However, this is simply an animation programmed to appear only that one time that Tricky screams "HAAAAAAAANK!".
 * Even Krinkels himself commented "Tiky" in the live chat during the premiere of V2 on Kade's channel.
 * Tiky is a meme that is based off Amogus, no further explanation is needed.
 * There is a secret test song found in the files, it is a remix of "Chug Jug With You" made by Retrospecter for April Fools where Tricky sings it along with a remixed instrumental.
 * The vocals were voiced by Banbuds as well.
 * Similar to the base game, there is a picture in the assets that is a twitch comment saying "yo kade put me in the TIKY gamefiles".
 * Tricky's misheard lyrics like "Cookie" in Improbable Outset, "Ooga Booga" and "Si" in Madness have spawned countless memes in the Friday Night Funkin community.
 * There is a 3 second sound file called "dontListenToThis", which unsurprisingly is one note from Among Drip.
 * All of the menu themes have leitmotifs based on which character is currently on screen. For example, if Jebus is on screen, the Madness Combat 7 theme plays.
 * According to Rozebud, any time Tricky seemed to have said anything (besides when he says "HANK") is purely coincidental and not intended.
 * Masked Tricky (Improbable Outset) is the only one of his forms that actually appears to bop to the beat in his idle animation. However, this animation is set to be looped in-game which means it does not actually follow the beat unlike Boyfriend and Girlfriend.
 * In the files, there is an unused version of the fire notes in Week 6's pixel art style. This was possibly added for compatibility if someone were to add fire notes to Week 6 charts. However, there is no code in the game that allows these to pop up, most likely because all the weeks from the original FNF were removed.
 * There isn't a pixel variation for the halo notes in Expurgation.
 * Looking through the source code there are a few interesting things:
 * Originally, normal notes had a 1 in 3 chance of turning into a fire note.
 * The fire and halo notes are harder to hit late than normal notes.
 * There is a trollface ASCII art hidden in PlayState.hx at lines 591-605.
 * The Tiny Desk Tricky that appears in the menu upon completing Expurgation is based on the Tiny Desk Engineer (and Thus the Tiny Desk Team) a meme product by Doctor Lalve
 * There is an old version of Madness' chart that notably has a lot more jacks.

Cameos in other mods
Note: All of these cameos are not canon to Madness Combat's or the Tricky mod's story.
 * In B-Sides Mod, he appears at the second floor of "Week 5" mall stage.
 * In Vs. Sketchy Mod, he appears as a drawing in the background.
 * In V.S. Static Mod, he appears in a TV screen in the background during Primetime and can also be seen driving a car in the background during Genesis.
 * In The Weeg Mod, he appears in the background of Week A.
 * In V.S. Pompom, he appears as a carving on a tree in the background of Pompom's week as well as under a sewer grate for the last song in Mackie's week.
 * In VS Clownso, he appears as an unlicensed plushie sold at the fair.
 * In V.S. Jester Mod, he appears in row 2 of the crowd.
 * In Vs. Henry Stickmin, he appears in the background of Chase.
 * In Starlight Mayhem he appears in the crowd during the first cutscene.
 * In Vs ASCII, he appears on a window.
 * In VS Codist, he appears in a poster.
 * In Friday Night Funkin' HD, he can appear on a billboard that passes by in Week 4.
 * In VS Violastro, he appears in the top right crowd.

Music
Note: We will use icons from other mods for immersive purposes.

Download Links

 * GameBanana Gamebanana.png
 * Game Jolt Gamejolt.png
 * GitHub GitHub.png (Source Code)
 * Google Drive Google Drive.max-1100x1100.png (Voice Assets)