Prelude is a Geometry Dash animation made by rafer. Created for the Geometry Dash 2.1 Awards, a community awards show run by Viprin, it acts as a prelude to the show and premiered as a part of the video announcing its nominations.
The story takes place on Cubearth, a planet populated with Geometry Dash icons. In Topalia City, an unnamed green squarenote (voiced by GD Colon) and Norcda Childa (As Himself) stumble across a flyer advertising the 2.1 Awards. The two follow the flyer to the GeoStorm Theater, which leads into the actual out-of-universe awards show it was released with.
The animation by itself can be viewed here
, and the 2.1 Awards nominations video with it included is here. The planet Cubearth also makes another appearance in The Cubearth Saga by rafer and J735, making it a 'Verse of some of rafer's Geometry Dash Fan Works.
Prelude provides examples of:
- Bland-Name Product: Norcda's phone has an app titled "CubeGram", a version of Instagram. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook appear as simply "T" and "F" and have mostly different logos with the same color scheme as their real counterparts.
- Cameo Cluster: Most speaking roles in the animation are from prominent Geometry Dash community members, with many appearing as themselves. The exception is the game's developer RobTop, who is voiced by Samifying.
- Comical Overreacting: After TrusTa tosses away the flyer for the 2.1 awards, there's an overtly dramatic shot of the one handing them out bursting into tears and screaming in agony.
- The Face of the Sun: A shot of Cubearth from space shows the sun with a realistic face staring at the camera.
- Fight Unscene: Played for Laughs. The green cube escapes being taken away by the guards in an instant, just reappearing next to Norcda as he starts walking into the theater acting as if nothing much happened (although he appears bruised). As they head off, one of the guards is rolled across the room on a stretcher that starts heading off uncontrollably after the person pushing it trips.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: RobTop's face changes for a split second when he starts panicking as the 2.1 Awards audience starts rushing at him.
- No Name Given: The green square is not named at all, and character teasers for the animation outright avoid giving him a name. He does start to say the name of his Geometry Dash account at one point, but quickly gets cut off.
- Precision F-Strike: At the end, when one cube reaches a Rage Breaking Point over the fake reveal for Update 2.2:
- Self-Deprecation: The green cube calls Geometry Dash "that game that was famous back in 2014" and says he "didn't know [it] was still alive".
- Shout-Out:
- The GeoStorm Theater is named after the Geometry Dash player clan GeoStorm.
- One poster in the theater has a picture of Hungry Humphrey from the Geometry Dash custom level of the same name.
- Another poster advertises rafer's own custom level In Silico.
- The scream at the beginning of the episode is Hexhammer's legendary reaction to completing Supersonic.
- Multiple to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Norcda asks the green cube what he thinks of Tonio's food.
- Sound effects from the anime are used at some points, such as the ones used by The World's time stop ability and Killer Queen's detonation ability.
- Transformation Sequence: In order to get to the theater in time, Norcda and the green cube go through one where they dramatically gain giant legs. This is joined by an Activation Phrase: "SUPER EXTRA SHINY SPATIAL LEG TRANSFORMATION!"
- World Shapes: Cubearth, as its name implies, is shaped like a cube. Its sun is cube-shaped as well.
