They Might Be Giants

This item, non-player character or location was introduced during a special event (e.g., Holiday, War) and will not be available again until the event repeats, or possibly never again.

TMBG John F. John L.
Faction:	None
Race:	Human
Gender:	Male (both)
Title:	They Might Be Giants
Location:	Collection
Status:	Alive

John L.: Yes we're both named John."
John F.: "We get that a lot."

John Flansburgh and John Linnell are the musicians who compose the alternative rock band They Might Be Giants and landed themselves a place among The Collector's ever-increasing collection, alongside the Hero and Drakath.

History

Active since 1982, the band has since released 23 studio albums, 10 compilations, 10 live albums, 8 EPs, and 11 singles. Having sold more than 4 million records, their success is undisputed and got the attention of Artix Entertainment and The Collector. The two were invited as guests for AdventureQuest Worlds' 3rd birthday event.

Collection

In his crusade through time and space for the ultimate rare collection, The Collector came upon and captured John Flansburgh and John Linnell. The two were trapped inside an extra-dimensional little miniature world inside a sphere which The Collector likes to call "People With Great Destinies" where they would stay for eternity.

Once inside the Collection TMBG had their voices surgically altered and were kept locked inside the sphere for at least ten years with their basic needs met but with no hope. Over the years they tried everything they could think and were capable of to escape, all to no avail, leading them to in time give up and conform with their new lives as play-things. Over time they were joined by a few other people with great destinies they were yet to fulfill, such as their slightly creepy super-fan Malorie, the young prince Drakath Slugwrath and the Hero.

A decade after their capture They Might Be Giants greeted their last housemate, the Hero. Despite their warm reception with music, the duo quickly fell back into depression and advised the Hero to accept the new reality. The Hero as usual defied that prison and worked together with Drakath to break out of it. With the boy's brains and the Hero's brawn they scouted the Collection, collected food and materials to build a catapult to break the wrapping glass which seemed to briefly revitalize the spirits of John F. and John L.

The catapult was a failure, the rock they flung towards the sphere did not even scratch the glass, but ricocheted back at John F., incapacitating him for a while. The Collector in response cloned the both of them with his own preferential changes, particularly the voices he never liked about They Might Be Giants. Despite their perfect voices the Dopplegangers of They looked little like the duo they were supposed to be exact copies of, being deformed and oversized. A mistake in their genetic code The Collector would try to fix once the Dopplegangers stole the original Johns' life energies.

After the Hero gravely injured the Dopplegangers of They The Collector once again appeared to salvage them and try to make new clones, but the Hero used the catapult to shoot themselves through the portal The Collector opened to get back his creations, once out of the Collection the Hero stole The Collector's Vigilette and used it to get themselves as well as TMBG and Drakath out of the sphere. Unfortunately the Hero knew not how to use the Vigilette, causing the group to be transported to a land in pre-historic times instead of their respective homes.

Pre-Historic

After accidentally landing in a deserted jungle and losing the Vigilette the group were quickly followed by The Collector, who apparently did not need the Vigilette to travel between universes, it just made it easier. By hiding in the foliage they evaded his covetous sight. After waiting for The Collector to go away they explored the area and noticed at first sight that the place seemed to be stuck in a time before recorded history, the group quickly found out it was not so as evidenced by roaming dinosaurs wearing highly advanced armor.

Their next efforts were focused on finding the Vigilette to get out of there, and they'd have to search the area for it. The first obstacle arose when thick trees blocked the way, John L. suspected they could find the Vigilette at the top mountain close to where the group landed and proposed building an axe out of the armor from Tyranno-Rawr-Us Rexes and Gigantosaurus to chop down the trees in the way, an effort that took them five days to complete as none knew how to build an axe.

Another problem flew up to them at the mountain as a Mother TerrorDOOMKill made her nest at the top. John L. speculated the foe was too dangerous for the Hero to simply fight and suggested collecting the sticky green and gooey spit from the dinosaurs around to stick on top of the TerrorDOOMKill eggs to trap the mother to the ground, allowing the Hero a much easier kill.

With the Mother TerrorDOOMKill killed nothing was left between the Hero and the Vigilette, except The Collector appearing out of thin air to reclaim his belongings. The fight for the Vigilette as it transported everyone around various dimensions resulted in an overload, causing it to explode and pieces to fall everywhere in a futuristic alien world.

Future

With TMBG, the Hero and Drakath stuck at an alien planet with no obvious means of escaping, The Collector temporarily let them be to build himself a new Vigilette, being aware that it would be faster to craft another one than to pick up the old one's pieces to rebuild, although he still needed a single piece from it. And so with him gone to search for a missing piece, John F. wanted to waste no time and hurried the Hero to find all the pieces and take out the aliens that came for them.

While hunting for the pieces of the Vigilette John F. advised the Hero to disable the Shadow Spy-Eyes that watched their every move, allowing the aliens to track the group as well as the locations of Vigilette shards, and so the Hero did with an alien blaster acquired from the corpse of a red-eyed alien.

After collecting the last few shards from the aliens, John F. declared that it was time to teach The Collector a lesson and get the last piece from him. After a beatdown and the last shard acquired, the Hero transported the group back to the Collection, They Might Be Giants took the Vigilette from the Hero and decided they were no longer allowed to use it and before they could use it themselves a realization came. TMBG, Hero, Drakath and The Collector found themselves inside of an even bigger collection of another Collector. Without the Vigilette The Collector had no means to escape the bigger Collector and so he was left all alone as John F. and John L. took Drakath back to his bedroom in Dreadhaven and the Hero to Greenguard a few hours prior to being first captured.

Before leaving for their reality the Hero asks the band to stay for a little more as they still had to warn the Hero of a threat so the Hero could rescue the two. The Hero wrote a letter and asked TMBG to put on brown robes and read it out loud to the past Hero in a few hours so the timeline could happen as intended.

Quests

John F.

• More Aliens Than You Can Handle?
• Spy Eyes
• Smashed to Pieces
• Tired of My Vigilette Dreams
• You're Not the Boss of Me Now
• Alien Annihilator

John L.

• The Treasure That You Seek
• These Trees
• Ewwww... Totally Gross
• The Eggs, Exciting and New
• Someday (Today) Their Mother Will Die
• Dino Destroyer

Quotes

John F.: "Hey! A new inmate."
John L.: "Welcome to your never-ending nightmare."
John F.: "You're not asleep."
John L.: "Yes I am."
Hero: "Hey, you must be my fellow collectibles."
John F.: "I'm John."
John L.: "And I'm John, nice to meet you."
Hero: "You're both named John?"
John L.: Yes we're both named John."
John F.: "We get that a lot."

Trivia

• They are two of several real life people to appear in-game, although TMBG have since gone Rare.
• John F. and John L. provided the voice acting for their in-game characters.
• After the event went Rare, John F. and John L. were replaced by Will and Fred.
• The songs sang by the duo are: Dr. Worm, The Mesopotamians, Ana Ng, Birdhouse In Your Soul and Doom Doom.
• Doom Doom is a song composed specially for AQW.
• According to John F. The Collector never really like their voices and tried to fix them several times, despite being initially weirded out, the two quickly got used to it.