Murder Drones

Editor's Note: This entry contains spoilers for Murder Drones; read at your own caution.

About

Murder Drones is an animated web series about a post-apocalyptic exoplanet that's been taken over by worker drones after the human race has wiped itself out. The parent company that created the worker drones, JC Jenson, decides one day to wipe them out with murder drones, seeing them as rogue A.I., inspiring a group of worker drones to fight back. The series, created by American animator Liam Vickers, is produced by YouTuber and animator SMG4's production company Glitch Productions and is the first series from the company not created by its founders Luke and Kevin Lerdwichagul. It is animated in Unreal Engine.

History

On June 25th, 2021, American animator Liam Vickers posted a short teaser for his upcoming series Murder Drones to YouTube,^[3] gaining over 779,000 views in five months (shown below).

On October 8th, the trailer for Murder Drones was posted to the GLITCH YouTube^[1] channel, gaining over 1.3 million views in a month (shown below).

On October 23rd, Liam Vickers posted a clip introducing the characters in the series to YouTube,^[4] gaining over 671,000 views in a week (shown below).

Premiere

On October 29th, 2021, the SMG4 Instagram^[5] page posted, "LET'S GOOOO!!! Murder Drones is OUT!!! 🥳🥳It's like nothing you've seen before from Glitch, I'm so excited to see your reactions" That day, the pilot episode of the series was released on YouTube,^[2] gaining over 1.3 million views in three days (shown below). The episode follows a worker drone named Uzi, a rebellious young girl who wants to rise up against the worker bots' oppressors and gets excited over the idea of killing humans. In the episode, she creates a railgun and sneaks out to kill a murder drone. She then meets Serial Designation N, a murder drone that instead becomes her friend. It's revealed that Uzi's mother was killed by a murder drone.

Online Presence

Reception

The pilot episode received a largely positive reception from viewers and holds a positive like-to-dislike ratio on YouTube with over 104,000 likes and 811 dislikes as of November 1st, 2021. On October 30th, YouTuber Viger posted a video reacting to and reviewing the series, praising it overall (shown below).

On the same day, YouTuber adel aka posted a review of the episode, saying he thought he wouldn't enjoy it based on the animation but ended up loving it, saying it starts slow but it's better than one of Glitch Productions' other series Meta Runner (shown below). The video gained over 4,500 views in two days.

Fandom

The series has inspired numerous works of fan art, particularly following the release of the pilot episode. On October 30th, Twitter^[6] user @rolypolyphonic posted a poster muck-up based on the show, gaining over 1,700 likes and 320 retweets in two days (shown below, left). On the same day, Twitter^[7] user na_navo posted a piece of fan art similar to the Mary Jane Defending Peter Parker meme with Uzi defending Serial Designation N, gaining over 1,100 likes and 220 retweets in the same span of time (shown below, right).

On October 31st, Tumblr^[8] userrolypolyphonic posted a drawing of Serial Designation N smoking a doobie, inspired by the Ralsei Doobie meme, gaining over 50 notes in a day (shown below).

Search Interest

External References