Command & Conquer Legos

Command & Conquer Legos (known as Tiberium Legos from 2007 to 2011) is a machinima created by Zee Hypnotist from CNCNZ.com, with input from the rest of the site staff and fans. It is basically a re-imagination of Command & Conquer games, with which it shares endings, but often goes off-canon to create its own story, often in a comical manner.

Season 1: First Tiberium War (2007)
The first season is focused on the world of Tiberian Dawn and follows the appearance of Tiberium and the following war between GDI and Nod. After GDI was sent to investigate strange activities near the Tiber river, Kane deploys a Limpet drone to eavesdrop. Dr. Ignatio Mobius doesn't believe MIT members who state that Tiberium is radiated, but nearby Tiberian fiend and Visceroid prove him wrong.

Nod developed the Tiberium harvesting technology before GDI did, so a GDI strike team was sent to capture a Tiberium refinery. The base is guarded by a turret, but it was destroyed by an off-screen unit from a cutscene on the very mention of that video. GDI and Nod soldiers start a gun fight, in which the engineer gets killed. The Commander, who will later be referred to in the next few seasons, loads the game just before the engineer is killed and manages to save him and use him to finally capture the refinery. Meanwhile, a Nod strike team sets a small camp to destroy the Ion cannon deployment facility on an island.

A white craft lands somewhere near a GDI base, with two soldiers quarrelling over the question whether it is an ORCA Assault Craft or a Scrin ship. The Nod soldier tells them it is a Carry-all that drops vehicles on airfields, but got shot down by friendly fire. The GDI soldiers attempt to tell the truth to the fans, but didn't make it through the Tiberium field. This is visibly a joke on a mysterious white spacecraft-like thing in the second GDI mission of Tiberian Dawn.

In a dilemma to destroy the Hand of Nod or the Airfield, the Commando destroys the former and finds out that Nod is still there. A stealth tank singlehandedly decimates a GDI battalion, even though the GDI and Nod forces had a briefing simultaneously on the same table. However, this did not stop the siege of the Temple of Nod in Sarajevo. A new Hover MK (crossover between the Hover MLRS and Medium tank) was introduced after nine failed prototypes. After a Nod ambush that was quickly repelled, the Hover MK was relocated to GDI's new base near Sarajevo. The Temple was destroyed by an ORCA craft instead of the previously disabled Ion cannon, which made one of the forum members really pissed off, leaving Kane under a large pile of rocks.

Season 2: Second World War (2007)
The second season, also known as Red Alego, focuses on Red Alert 1 and the Second World War.

Einstein and Kane arrive in 1927 to eliminate Hitler from the timeline and prevent World War II. However, after the famous handshake that generates the Red Alert Universe, Kane leaves the year of 1927 before Einstein does. Later, in the 1950s, an Allied outpost is under construction and a soldier asks where to put the barrels filled with unreasonably high amounts of inflammable petroleum, and the commander tells him to put them dangerously close to their key structures. A small Soviet raiding party attacks the base, proving the rocket soldier, modded sniper and field medic completely useless in the open battlefield, especially after the Soviets have destroyed the turrets by shooting a barrel. Tanya is able to disable the enemy infantry, but destroying the heavy tank required extra help from a cruiser from a cutscene, much like in season 1. The Allies retreat from the destroyed base, leaving it tactically irrelevant to the Soviets, but Einstein returns from 1927 on that very spot, surrounded by Soviet troops sent by Kane.

Einstein is captured by the Soviets, but manages to escape. He is stuck in a base composed of a power plant and a Tesla coil, and asks the Allies' help. They send two strike teams whose mission is to destroy a backup power generator on top of a cliff (shelf), infiltrate the main power plant and extract Einstein and finally, disable the ore truck before an ore refinery can be built. The generator is easily taken care of, as well as the soldier guarding the ore truck. A spy infiltrates the main power plant, but an Allied soldier is still killed by the Tesla coil because spies only monitor the power. An engineer captures the power plant while a soldier and a medium tank were distracting the Tesla coil. Einstein proposes chronoshifting the ore truck to water (a sink).

While Einstein explains the commander how do the Chronosphere and gap generator work, a Soviet tank ambushes the base. Einstein tells the commander to shoot him. With that done, Einstein leaves the Second World War and is not seen until the next season.

Meanwhile, Soviets have developed the Iron Curtain as an answer to the Cruiser cutscene intervention. An Allied infantry team is sent to investigate it and take photographic evidence. A Soviet rifleman whose clothes are affected by the Iron Curtain scares them, but they run in the direction of the base itself, leaving them no option but to fight like men. The Allied soldier takes a simple battle stance, while the Soviet one demonstrates his skills in martial arts. A sniper kills him in fear of the Allies' defeat. After nearly all Soviet guards have been eliminated, the Allies ask a Soviet officer to take a picture of them in front of the Iron Curtain. They were satisfied with the shot and killed the officer.

A desperate Stalin accepts Kane's suggestions on modernizing the Soviet arsenal with stealth tanks, cyborgs and attack bikes. This job is given to a team of (incompetent) engineers who spend a long time designing the weapons, and are almost arrested by the communist police after they attempt to get some grains to eat. The Allies, eager to fight, attack the Soviets, who were attempting to field-test the new weapons. The attack bikes were late, so an improvised camouflaged tank (with trees scattered around its hull) is sent in. A rocket soldier manages to kick it and destroy it. Volkov was killed by Tanya, and Chitzkoi was countered with Steve Irwin. Kane, nauseated, retreats to his base to build a nuke. The attack bikes appear after the battle was over, but they were nothing but simple bicycles ridden by soldiers.

Tom Burdette creates a TV report on a Soviet base with a nuclear missile silo, and attempts to interview Kane, who shoots the camera. Tanya is sent to infiltrate the base, but is at gunpoint of a Soviet conscript, who is called back by his wife in the last minute, telling him to eat his dinner. Tanya calls for reinforcements, but after they are disabled, she is forced to destroy the base on her own. She runs in the face of a sentry gun, but manages to shoot a barrel near two Demolition trucks. Stalin is severely injured by an earthquake, leaving him under a pile of rocks. An Allied soldier covers his head with another rock to prevent him from crying for help. Tanya receives a decent funeral, during which Tom Burdette states he is having a son and that he intends to call him Gregory.

Season 3: Second Tiberium War (2008, 2011)
The third season focuses on the storyline of Tiberian Sun and Firestorm. Long after the First Tiberium War, Nod emerges from its shadows, along with its leader, Kane. McNeil is ordered to eliminate all Nod forces, despite his soldiers' opinion that he does not actually do anything in Tiberian Sun.

A strange spaceship crashes and a GDI task force is sent to investigate. They meet heavy Nod resistance and retreat to make way for the Commando. GDI sets up a base near the Scrin ship until the Tacitus is retrieved. However, Nod starts a counterattack - the Commando is killed by a sniper and an ion storm starts. In a digression during the gunfire, Einstein emerges, asking if this is Tiberium Wars for a yet unknown reason. The nearby soldier gives him directions, and Einstein leaves GDI and Nod to continue with the shooting. A random tank makes short work of the Nod forces and is used to evacuate the remaining GDI troops, along with the Tacitus. Not far from there, an airplane was shot down during the mentioned ion storm. A mutant survives the crash, and McNeil starts to interrogate him on the whereabouts of the Tacitus, implying that GDI might have lost it at some point. He knew nothing, and was insulted by GDI. Nod offers the Forgotten help.

Between March 2008 and March 2011, Tiberium Legos went on a hiatus due to Zee Hypnotist's absence. A return teaser was released on March 14, 2011, which was a special, unrelated episode featuring Allied/GDI forces liberating Zee Hypnotist himself from a guarded prison.

In the episodes following the aforementioned return, GDI manages to retrieve the Tacitus, which was placed in the Kodiak and headed towards the Southern Cross base. However, another ion storm crashes the Kodiak, giving Nod an opportunity to reclaim it. A GDI engineer finds a strange-looking device in the remains of the Kodiak. With the help of the Forgotten, Nod easily destroys the GDI base nearby, reclaiming the Tacitus. When CABAL learns about this, it goes rogue, ordering his cyborg army to steal the device. GDI uses the opportunity to sneak into the base and finally retake the Tacitus. McNeil is surprised with the Tacitus' appearance, but the general tells him they weren't actually given information on what it looks like.

Nod develops a technology for using Tiberium veins to destroy GDI forces. They establish a Tiberium waste facility near a veinhole and send an engineer to look for more. He does so right behind the newly founded base. Meanwhile, they attempt to capture a baby visceroid. GDI establishes a base nearby to prepare an attack, but Nod retaliates with a stealth tank, a Subterranean APC and mobile artillery, but all attempts are easily countered by GDI, leaving the Nod commander capable of nothing more than complaining on the game's imbalance towards Nod. The Nod base loses power because the engineer cuts a wire that supplied the base, liberating the baby visceroid, which merges with another to create an adult. Nod fires a Chemical missile, but their base is completely decimated by a horde of adult visceroids that were, illogically, created after the Weed eater was destroyed by the veinhole monster.

McNeil orders the setup of the Ion cannon for the final assault on Kane's temple. His idea is to eliminate Kane so Nod will be forced to team up with GDI against CABAL. ICBMs are destroyed, and GDI destroys Kane's temple with the Ion cannon, but Kane manages to mysteriously leave it seconds before the blast. The joint GDI and Nod forces capture the CABAL control towers, but GDI soldiers kill the Nod riflemen because they hid during the gunfire. McNeil is enraged by Kane's disappearance and leaves his base. CABAL releases his Core Defender, destroying the Mammoth Mk. II that was sent to retaliate. The angry McNeil, however, crushes the Defender to the ground with his bare hands and commands the Ion cannon strike on the CABAL Core. While GDI forces are still under the impression of McNeil's victory, Einstein returns and takes the viewer to the Third World War.

Season 4: Third World War (2011-2012)
The fourth season, the first one to bear the new name Command & Conquer Legos, is focused on the world of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge. After the initial attack in the USA, the Soviets have been developing new technologies to destroy the Allied forces. A Navy SEAL and a Sniper are sent to investigate by infiltrating a Soviet battle lab, because spies had been causing the presence of Chrono Ivans throughout their territory, destroying things as they please. After the SEAL had infiltrated the lab, he planted a C-4 explosive, even though that was not part of the plan. The information gathered from the lab indicated a nearby Psychic amplifier. A spy was sent to deactivate the power supply, but was mind controlled by a Psi-Corps trooper. The sniper took him out, and the spy completed his mission. The SEAL made short work of the Tesla coil and the Amplifier, leaving an oblivious conscript behind.

The Soviets were funded by Premier Romanov to create new weaponry for the war, after they had seen the new Mirage tank and Chronosphere in action. The engineering team was composed of the children of old engineers that created the camouflaged tanks and attack bikes during the Second World War. They developed a V2.5 Rocket Launcher, a strange Terror drone prototype and a Crazy Ivan. All of these projects failed on their shakedown tests against the Allies. The Apocalypse tank, which was fresh out of the oven, succeeded in decimating the capitalist forces. However, the Allies chronoshifted a Mirage tank to the location of their Iron Curtain Device, leaving the Soviet victory in vain.

Yuri went rogue, mind controlling Romanov, faking his sickness and taking charge of Soviet forces. The Allies have developed the Prism tank, but the Soviets attacked every sample they found. However, for each Prism tank the Allies lost, another came seconds later after the GIs opened crates that were spread across their part of the battlefield. Shortly after, they killed a Yuri Clone, thinking it was the original. Meanwhile, Carville was almost killed by a Crazy Ivan, but a SEAL from the future saved him in the last moment. Now, they were focused on capturing Romanov. Tanya was sent to infiltrate the Kremlin base with her team, but a nuke silo was launched rather soon. A spy managed to redirect the missile to the Soviet base, killing himself in the process. Tanya and the sniper infiltrated the Kremlin base, with the help of Einstein's Weather control device. Romanov was captured and placed in an APC, but Boris and his rebels saved him.

Yuri showed himself again, activating Psychic dominators across the world. The Allies were attempting to capture enough Tech Power Plants to power the Time machine, same as the Soviets. However, they went too far back in time, the Second World War to be precise. A Soviet power plant was nearby, but the guards ignored the engineer because they thought he needed three more companions to capture the building, but were surprised to see him do it single-handedly (depicted in a superhero-esque montage). They returned to their predefined time after powering up. A SEAL was sent to prevent Carville from being killed to complete the temporal circle, while Tanya destroyed the Dominator on Alcatraz while it was under construction. Yuri switched his focus on Los Angeles.

The Allies are aided by Flint Westwood, Sammy Stallion and Arnnie Frankenfurter to destroy Yuri's Grinders in Los Angeles. While Sammy and Arnnie were wreaking havoc to Yuri's bases, a filming team recorded them for a movie conveniently titled Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge, but Flint stood behind. Later, the heroes sent the filming team to the Allied base, ruining their chances of a good film. However, two Conscripts show up and the movie filming is continued. The three heroes finish off Yuri's forces and the mind-controlled Conscripts.

In Egypt, Yuri has captured Einstein, holding him inside of a pyramid. Carville sends a Navy SEAL to rescue him (as Zee Hypnotist could not find a voice actress for Tanya at the time). Two mind-controlled rocket soldiers shoot down a plane with premier Romanov as its passenger. The Soviets assist the Allies in rescuing Einstein and demand doing the same for Romanov in return. While GIs are busy joking with the German Tank destroyer, a Crazy Ivan rams an IFV into Yuri's outpost.

As the Soviets managed to get a full episode for themselves, they went to the Moon to kill Yuri in his base. Early on, Soviet Cosmonauts were mind-controlled by a Mastermind, but it collapsed after four of them were attached to it. The Soviets attempt to destroy the base with a new V3 rocket launcher, but forget that they are in a zero-gravity environment, so the rockets fly away inertly. Meanwhile, engineers think of a way to fly with booster packs, but the only tester rams into a Lasher tank. An Allied soldier in a Ranger offers help, but a Cosmonaut furiously refuses, kicking his vehicle and causing him to fly away. The Soviets manage to manually direct a V3 rocket to the outpost, but Yuri escapes with another rocket.

In the final battle, the Allies and the Soviets work together once more. The Allies ignore Boris and send Tanya, a SEAL and two snipers to execute the attack. Romanov is offended by Carville's complaints on the Soviets' incompetence, while Boris cleans up behind the Allied task force. The armies find themselves attacked by their old mind-controlled comrades, in spite of their attempt to destroy a Psychic Tower. The SEAL loses his Ranger in a car chase, and the main union's base is under heavy attack, even with a new Chaos Drone. Seeing that the Allies have failed in all their attempts to kill Yuri, Boris takes it upon himself to call in a MiG squadron to destroy his base. As Yuri emerges from the rubble, Boris kills him with his rifle. In a conversation between two GIs, it is revealed that the Allies and Soviets are forming the Global Defense Initiative, announcing the fifth season. Humorously, one GI squishes a passing scorpion, a reference to the Brotherhood of Nod.

Season 5: Brotherhood (2012-2013)
The fifth season aims to finish the circle of the series by explaining how Red Alert 2 could have been connected to Tiberian Dawn, including some ideas from the cancelled Renegade 2. Its primary focus is the formation of the Brotherhood of Nod after the dissolution of the USSR spawned the Scavengers faction. GDI meanwhile has become more of a police world with soldiers seen in every public place. When a meteor of Tiberium crash-landed on Earth, Kane manipulates the public through the media that GDI slaughtered innocent civilians who came close to the crash site.

After retrieving enough weapons to call themselves an army, Nod wishes to infiltrate an old Allied war factory to capture a Mirage tank in order to replicate its technology. Seth (voiced by Eric Gooch) is sent to do this. He manages to capture the tank and destroy the facility that stores more of them, but he returns it in a bad state due to the resistance he stumbled upon. A Nod task force with a new vehicle that sports enhanced Mirage tank technology (which can pose as any natural object even while moving and firing) is sent to obtain all salvagable data of prism, mirage, gap and other Allied technologies and destroy all data that cannot make it to Nod headquarters. The task force succeeds in raiding the facility and sends only partial data, as the GDI commander-in-chief destroys all files from the computer from his headquarters before Nod completes the job. Kane orders the construction of a Temporal Displacement Device.

GDI has gotten a lead on Nod and are ordered to take them out. Meanwhile the Temporal Displacement Device is finished. However the Nod scientists could not gather enough energy to transfer anything bigger than a ball. Kane orders Seth and his men to kidnap Einstein at his lab, which is identified by the small Chronosphere in his yard. Einstein comically manages to drive away, leading two Nod men to pursue him in another jeep. The Nod soldiers chased Einstein through three portals into three different time periods, from the Third World War to the Third Tiberium War and the First GLA War. In the last realm, Einstein triggers a hidden demo trap, killing him as well as denying Nod the information it needs. However there is small compensation that the GLA troopers gave Nod the knowledge of tunnels and chemical weapons. GDI soon attacks the Nod lab where Kane is, and Seth's group immediately rush back from Einstein's lab to reinforce. GDI breaches the Nod base and kills Kane, though not before one of the Nod scientists manages to get away with whatever data they got. Seth's group arrived too late. As Nod was being systematically eliminated by GDI, the Nod scientist sends Seth back in time using Einstein's equipment to plant a bomb near the Nod base where GDI first ambushes them (to the point where the scientists explained the problem to Kane). The bomb explodes just as GDI was in position to launch their assault. A Nod soldier investigates the scene to find a note containing instructions for a time machine and setting up some bombs at the note's exact spot.

With Nod becoming an increasing threat, GDI has officially declared war against them and frozen all known funds and assets linked to the Brotherhood. Kane, through Lieutenant Gambol, has Nod start researching in Tiberium harvesting and weapons development in Africa. One team had already started developing weapons from the Tiberium collected by their new harvester while another team attacked a GDI position to capture some "test subjects". After capturing some GDI prisoners, Gambol devised a plan to distract GDI from what Nod is conducting, allowing a prisoner to escape with a briefcase seemingly containing intel. Acting on the intel, GDI captured a Nod briefcase in the belief that they could uncover Nod's weapons research. Nod attacked one of GDI's intelligence bases, further supporting this belief, where one Nod soldier field-tested a gun modified to fire Tiberium rounds. The analyst arrives and discovers too late that Nod planted a bomb in the briefcase. Nod then demonstrated to a GDI commander via video a Chem Warrior spraying a GDI prisoner which instantly turned him into a Visceroid. As a Nod engineer realised the whole thing was all a trick, Gambol noted that Kane would be pleased with the results. The episode ends with a Nod engineer's increasing irritation of EVA's "silos needed" warning.

Still needing more funds, Gambol plans to rob a GDI bank. One Nod team distracts GDI by transferring funds at one bank, then attack it to lure the GDI soldiers to protect the bank while the other team prepares to actually physically rob another. As the GDI commander-in-chief prepares to give a public statement about the latest Nod activity, Dr. Moebius reveals to the GDI commander from the last episode that he has a plan to eradicate Tiberium and end the war for good. As the second Nod team robs the second bank, the first team pulls away as more GDI troops arrive, neither side firing a shot due to their weapons being short-range, though a Nod trooper had the cheek to throw a rock at one of the GDI soldiers. Meanwhile Mobius and his guard prepared to record the experiment. Using a chemical he prepared earlier, Moebius poured the fluid onto a Tiberium crystal, which instantly turned blue and exploded when the guard shot it. All this was being monitored by a Nod spy, who informed Gambol as Moebius and his guard left after conducting more tests. Successfully having robbed the bank both Nod teams pull out, the robbers passing by the GDI commander-in-chief who was just finishing his press statement to the civilians. Gambol, however, sends both teams to ambush Moebius. Although Moebius and his guard managed to flee (by using a blue crystal as a grenade to kill a Nod soldier), the ambush team recovered the camera that recorded the experiments. Seeing the footage, Gambol prioritises to stop the research from continuing. While people seriously start to question GDI's ability to protect them and end the war, Nod's recent terrorist activities meant that people would not be supporting them any time soon.

In the series finale, Kane and Seth plan to kill Dr. Moebius and steal his research. Lieutenant Gambol directs three teams each led by a Nod commando to capture GDI's power plant, comm center and back-up generator while Seth infiltrates Moebius' lab. All three teams capture their respective targets but unbeknownst to them, the GDI base commander spots the infiltrators from a lookout point, and alerts the GDI troopers to root them out. A GDI soldier recaptures the backup generator while a GDI squad kills the Nod team that barricaded themeselves inside the comm center with a grenade. In the commotion, Seth manages to reach Mobius's lab. However the ball from the third episode chronoshifted out of thin air, distracting Seth enough to allow Mobius to blind him and escape. Seth was left to retrieve Moebius' research and plant C4 around the lab. With GDI now recapturing the power plant, all GDI soldiers converged on the lab. Gambol rides to the lab to assist Seth's escape. Seth hijacks a jeep that fell from space and, in an action-packed sequence, makes his escape with Gambol's help from GDI. As the GDI commander was utterly bemused by this turn of events, Moebius' lab was destroyed. For his actions Kane promotes Seth to a place in his Inner Circle but was disappointed by Seth choosing to imitate Kane's goatee. When Kane asks Brother Marcus for the clippers, Marcus (having already grwon his own beard) decides to shave his off. The UN Security Council enters a closed session in response to the latest Nod violence (which included a terrorist bombing in Indiana) while Greg Burdette questions GDI's competence.

GLA Diaries
The second and fourth season feature an after-the-credits bonus called GLA Diaries. The first iteration follows GLA terrorists that try to hijack a plane. After several failures, the last terrorist succeeds in hijacking it, since the pilot let him. However, he is unable to lift and crashes off the table to the ground, since civilian planes don't fly in any of the Command & Conquer games, which was actually proven to be wrong in Zero Hour.

The second iteration is more varied in topics. Several GLA soldiers attempt to destroy American forces, but fail due to carelessness, incompetence or friendly fire. In the third episode of the fifth season, a rebel was impressed with the Nod logo on the soldiers' chests and was about to tell his men about this before an American jeep ran him over.

Presentation
The storyline is depicted through Lego figures and models. The characters are impersonated or parodied, while tanks and buildings are attempted to be as faithful to the original design as possible. Zee Hypnotist stated that he would not feature any mod references other than the sniper in the second season.

Main characters share their personalities with their video game counterparts, while the soldiers keep their mentality throughout the show. They are often grumpy and cynical, questioning some ideas of the show and Command & Conquer mechanics. This is especially seen when Nod and Soviet soldiers complain on the games' imbalance in favour of the good guys.

Technical details
C&C Legos are recorded using stop-motion animation. Newer episodes count more than 1,500 images that are being used throughout the show. In the first two seasons, episodes last three to five minutes, while later episodes last up to nine minutes. As of the season 3 finale, C&C Legos can be watched in the 16:9 format, while the season 4 debut pioneered the 1080p HD format. Most recent episodes are limited to 720p due to some technical issues Zee Hypnotist encountered with his movie editor.

Reception
The fans generally praise the videos on YouTube. However, after the original CNCNZ.com YouTube channel was deactivated by Youtube in 2009 under never defined circumstances, the videos gain only about 6,000 views in average per episode, somewhat relying on the official Command & Conquer Facebook and Twitter feed.