Written 2020/7/14
Why Pretzel? Because they'll tie themselves into a knot trying to do anything right.
Task Force Pretzel is, to put it bluntly— a complete joke. However, they know too much— and due to various unique circumstances, simple brainwashing cannot work. Either they live with other ACF personnel, have a rare resistance to brainwashing, or cameras for eyes— they won't forget what they've seen.
To make matters worse, they cannot simply be killed— either due to them being connected with other personnel who would really rather not see their friends and family killed, holding public-facing positions, or being frankly not worth the time and expenses to kill and cover up. Instead, the ACF opts to send them far, far away— where they cannot do any harm to anything of actual importance.
Members of Task Force Pretzel are those who are deemed incompetent, or, as other personnel tend to phrase it: “!@#!!**@!$%! morons.”
Hey, let's see how many of us can fit in it's mouth!
Why don't we say hello to it?
Personnel who botch numerous jobs, place themselves or others in danger, or lose the foundation a great deal of money frequently find themselves reassigned to Task Force Pretzel. Task forces are often paid fairly well, and Task Force Pretzel's purpose is known only to those at the very top— so to many, their reallocation is seen as a “promotion.” As personnel are not allowed to disclose their pay to one another— the foundation is easily able to pay Task Force Pretzel as little as possible. All of their equipment are hand-me-downs from the other task forces, or even outright plastic.
Does this knife feel funny to you? Hold still, I want to see if it's plastic.
Operations assigned to Task Force Pretzel are almost always made up, and typically leaves them out of the foundation's way for extended periods of time as they hunt down fake anomalies such as “the trash man” or “the cupcake car.” A broken clock is right twice a day, however, and they have accidentally discovered a handful of actual anomalies. This includes the Living Wall— made up on the spot as Bin was staring at a vacation photo— that disguised itself as bricks along the Great Wall of China and devoured lone tourists.
Thirteen members of Task Force Pretzel died in this operation, as the idea that they might not want to search alone for the creature that specifically hunted those who were alone never occurred to them. Another discovery was that of the Island Made Entirely of Candy— which also turned out to be real, and very, very poisonous. Only one operative survived the encounter, a woman who was on a strict diet.
Who knew poison could be so delicious?
Task Force Pretzel is so undesirable, in fact, that they don't even have any corporate sponsors— like every other task force. The foundation is all too glad to not have them ruining their reputation with another sponsor after the incident with Dave's Very Fragile Things Emporium and A-54, a sentient wrecking ball anomaly.
The foundation had to pay millions out of pocket to keep Dave quiet, and had to send in another task force to retrieve A-54.
You've all been assembled here today for a special— absolutely critical mission. This thing has terrorized people across the world and will eventually kill us all. The uhm ....the ....uh ....the ....whatsit—
Whatsit? Got it! Consider it dead, we won't let you down, sir!
They just...hung up. Wow. I didn't even tell them where to go! Well, that was easier than expected. Hey, James, yeah— the idiots are gone. We're on for discogolf tonight!
Operation Whatsit was begun almost entirely by mistake, sure, the intent was to come up with yet another ad-libbed task to get the troublesome group out of the ACF's hair— but the instructions for the pseudo-operation were never even finished before Task Force Pretzel left eagerly to complete it. They have been missing for five years since, and nobody seems particularly bothered by this.