History WebVideo / PuppetHistory

* EarWorm: Many of the Professor's songs qualify as this.

** In "The Defenestration of Prague", [[spoiler: The Professor not only USING the [[RealAfterAll "complex victory algorithim"]] and glitching out upon Ryan not winning but.....''something'' in a tree branch when the Professor is discussing being thrown pit a window]]

* ActorAllusion: In "Hatshepsut: The Forgotten Pharaoh", the Professor ponders the mystery of why Hatshepsut’s successor obscured her legacy. “[[WebVideo/BuzzfeedUnsolved The mystery as to why her [Hatshepsut] legacy was erased remains…not fully understood]].” Ryan knowingly chuckles at this line.

* AnimateInanimateObject: A great deal of the guest singers are these- specifically, we've seen a pile of diamonds, a propeller from the HMS Britannic, an old-fashioned steam train, [[GeniusLoci Mt. Vesuvius]], the Olympic Torch, a Music/RandyNewman-esque coin, a boat oar and a sword that ''used'' to be a boat oar, a spool of thread, a snowman, the sacred Golden Stool, Ziryab's oud (an oud is a type of string instrument similar to a ukulele), a pair of poison bottles, a flower-bearing boat, a cute little piece of wheat, a chest of gold coins, a book, a freaky stained-glass window, a cloud that knows [[WhoShotJFK Who Shot JFK]], and the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs.

** Both the Goose Mummy and Mushashi's Oars show up again in "The Story of St. Nicholas" to sing "Mummified Goose" and "Either Oar", respectively, following their first appearances in "Hatshepsut: The Forgotten Pharaoh" and "The World's Greatest/Rudest Samurai".

* DisproportionateRetribution: The Bye Bye Brothers in “The Affair of the Poisons” advocate poisoning your dentist for telling you to eat less sugar, people who save seats the movie theater, and people who don’t use their turn signals. Ryan agrees that the last one is a killable offense for him, too.

* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: The ''penultimate'' episode of season 5, by itself, contains [[spoiler: the reveal that the Professor who's been teaching this season is actually a hologram from the puppet purgatory who has developed an intense desire to assume a corporeal, flesh form and is willing to trick and kill Ryan as comeuppance for causing the real Professors death (which is also revealed to have not stuck) in order to do so, even singing a whole VillainSong about it]]. Now compare that to season 1, where the closest thing to Lore is the deliberately PlayedForLaughs appearance of God in the final episode.

** ''Never'' has this been as prominent as ''The Story of St. Nicholas'', as despite the points being tallied The Coveted Cup isn't up for grabs since it's the Christmas special [[spoiler: and The Professor doesn't even declare a winner in the end.]]

** If both contestants choose B for a multiple-choice answer, the Professor calls them “B-Boys.” If both contestants choose C for a multiple-choice answer, the Professor calls them “C-Dogs.”

* HypocriticalHumor: The Professor derides Ancient Egyptians for their consumerism, then in the next breath starts shilling [[https://www.gianthugs.com/collections/watcher-entertainment Puppet History merchandise]].

* SpiritualSuccessor: The series itself is this to ''both'' of Shane's original projects under Buzzfeed: ''WebVideo/RuiningHistory'' and ''The Hot Daga''. While it has the core premise of ''Ruining History'', pared down to two participants rather than four, its paper cut-out puppet segments and the original song that caps every episode are hallmarks of ''The Hot Daga''.

* AnimateInanimateObject: A great deal of the guest singers are these- specifically, we've seen a pile of diamonds, a propeller from the HMS Britannic, an old-fashioned steam train, [[GeniusLoci Mt. Vesuvius]], the Olympic Torch, a Music/RandyNewman-esque coin, a boat oar and a sword that ''used'' to be a boat oar, a spool of thread, a snowman, the sacred Golden Stool, Ziryab's Oud (an oud is a type of string instrument similar to a ukelele), a pair of poison bottles, a flower-bearing boat, a cute little piece of wheat, a chest of gold coins, a book, a freaky stained-glass window, a cloud that knows [[WhoShotJFK Who Shot JFK]], and the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs.

* BlackComedyCannibalism: Unavoidable given the season finale episode being about the Donner Party, with jokes about how messed up what they did was, on top of the TraumaCongaLine they had to endure.

** The very existence of the Dancing Plague episode is one. [[invoked]][[AluminumChristmasTrees Because Ryan clearly didn't believe Shane when he talked about the dancing plague in]] ''WebVideo/BuzzfeedUnsolved'', the Puppet History episode is a lighthearted TakeThat. Hilariously, this episode also happens to be one of Ryan's absolute best performances; the episode ends in a tie, and Ryan loses the tiebreaker only after clearly not trying very hard.

* ButHeSoundsHandsome: The Professor never fails to praise the other puppets' musical performances, much to Ryan's chagrin.
-->'''Ryan:''' You really gotta stop complimenting yourself at the end of these through the veil of a puppet.

* CameBackWrong: [[InUniverseNickname The pickle boys]] from the ChristmasEpisode, "The Story of St. Nicholas". After St. Nick boasts about having resurrected them from the dead in his musical number, they pop up to dance. Santa notes that they suck at dancing, and once the Professor points out that they don't look all that well in general, he wonders if maybe he shouldn't have done what he did, all while they never stop - or say a single word. Ultimately subverted, as they do wind up getting lines in the second Christmas special and cheerily claim that being undead pickle people isn't so bad, although they do still look… off.
** [[spoiler: Despite him trying to pass it off as an UnexplainedRecovery, ''HEAVILY'' implied with the Professor in "How Hippo Meat Almost Saved America", with various subtle (different eye shade, Shane using his regular voice more) and overt (stopping mid lesson to drool over the thought of meat, literally SNARLING and snapping at Ryan when he tries to touch him) moments throughout the episode.]] [[spoiler: However, this is ultimately averted due to TheReveal in "The Bloody Life of England's Fastest Surgeon" that the Professor who's been hosting the show for the entire season is actually a hologram imposter.]]

* ChristmasEpisode: ''The Story of St. Nicholas'', a holiday-themed episode released between Seasons 2 and 3. It’s different from standard episodes in that it has a running plot of the Professor stressing over what gift to give Santa Claus, the episode’s special guest, resulting in previous episodes' puppets (The Pile of Diamonds, Musashi’s Oars, and the Goose Mummy) dropping in to give him ideas. In the end, [[spoiler: Santa refuses to sing, so the Professor does the episode's song]]. Additionally, [[spoiler: no History Cup is awarded. Instead the Professor gives both Kate and Ryan presents.]]

* DealWithTheDevil: [[spoiler: "The Demonic Possessions of Loudun" ends with The Professor getting attacked by the Genie, having his powers removed, and being sent to the Cretaceous period to die. It's revealed that Ryan had made a deal with the Devil [[DisproportionateRetribution simply to get a trophy]], but it's implied that not only did Ryan not know the full scope of the Devil's plan but it's clear that he regrets doing so after realizing what he did.]]

* DemBones: Downplayed, since Death’s puppet isn’t made of bones.
** Terrifyingly played straight with [[spoiler: Santa Claus/St. Nicholas.]]

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Due to either history repeating or the guests trying to make sense of the story you'll get some of this happening.

** In "The Beast of Gevaudan", the Professor reveals in a skit clearly written to invoke this trope in relation to COVID management that the villagers of Gevaudan continued going out and about their business despite the risk of beast attacks because while the government encouraged them to stay safe at home, it refused to support those who'd be hurt by their resultant inability to work. Ryan guesses before the skit that things would've been "business as usual" in Gevaudan based on pandemic observations, and after it, both he and Sarah effectively respond with "oof".

** The episode about Smallpox during the American Revolution, due to being produced whilst COVID-19 was still a problem, contains some subtle and not-so-subtle snark about how the reactions to the Smallpox pandemic are not all that different to how people reacted to a similar plague now.

** When Donner Party member Patrick Breen wrote that it was “hard to get wood,” The Professor and Joyce start using it as a euphemism for something else.

* DoubleStandard: The Professor points out in "Stealing The World’s Most Expensive Necklace" that Rohan got a light punishment and was released to cheering crowds, compared to Jeanne who got whipped in prison (even though she got herself out) and Marie Antoinette’s reputation was permanently sullied even though she literally had ''nothing'' to do with the plot and didn't even want the necklace in the first place.
* EarlyBirdCameo: Horse, the musical guest for season three's finale, shows up in that season's second episode, "The War of the Golden Stool", to do an ad-read for Skillshare. He also does this two additional times.

* EmbarrassingNickname: To avoid confusion in the Hatshepsut episode, Ryan Bergara offers to go by "R.B." The Professor and other Ryann immediately start calling him "Arby's" which [[DidNotThinkThisThrough Ryan hates]]. The Professor spends the rest of the episode calling him "Beef Boy" or "Beef Man."

* EvilAllAlong: [[spoiler: The first four musical guests in season five (the hippo from the Fritz Duquesne episode, the window from the defenestration episode, the white tiger from the Trung sisters episode, and the cloud from the Bessie Coleman episode) are revealed to be in cahoots with Holo-Professor in "The Bloody Life of England's Fastest Surgeon". However, this is downplayed in the tiger's case, as his song has him freely admit to having enjoyed murdering innocent humans.]]
* ExactWords: In "The Story of St. Nicholas", the Professor tells Ryan and Kate that he got them "little gifts". The phrasing isn't for nothing, as it turns out he got Kate a little book of Shakespeare quotes that doubles as a tree ornament… and got Ryan a very, very little $100 bill.

* INeedAFreakingDrink: By the time the musical performer of "The Grisly Journey of the Donner Party" shows up, a snowman with its head on its bottom half, the episode has guest contestant Joyce Louis-Jean saying that she's planning on having "a big drink of wine after this".

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: The Professor clearly rigs the game against Ryan, has a HairTriggerTemper and it's hard to tell if he's being genuine or baiting when he says he's rooting for Ryan, but he's showcased a lot of interesting historical figures and events and he actually sounds small and upset when called "rotten".

* KilledOffscreen: [[spoiler:''All'' of the puppets, save for supernatural entities like Death, Asmodeus, God, and the Devil. The party that had been built up during the Puppet Pop-Ins turned out to be a trap by Satan to capture all of the puppets turned by the Professor in one place, and killed them all. Their souls were then put in the Wondrium Theatre until Big G figured out where to put them all.]]

* LetsDuet: There have been four so far: "Gore On The Shore", "Either Oar", "Bye Bye Juice", and Horse's currently unnamed song, which becomes a duet with [[spoiler: God]] after a couple of verses.

** The Beast of Gevaudan is an astonishingly similar singer to Music/DavidByrne. Guest Sarah Rubin remarks out loud that his song sounds like a Music/TalkingHeads song.

* NoPartyLikeADonnerParty: The TropeNamers are the subject of the second season finale.
* NotSoAboveItAll:
** Ryan (who almost always is exasperated while listening to the musical numbers) can't stop himself from bobbing his head a bit, quasi-dancing, to the upbeat, high-tempo Hatshepsut song.
** Near the end of Horse's song in "The Great Molasses Flood," Ryan actually ''bursts out laughing''.

* PingPongNaivete: Whether the Professor is participating in the more adult humor or innocently wondering what the guests are talking about is solely dependent on RuleOfFunny.

** Starting in season three, the point totals ''literally'' mean nothing as the Professor cites a "complex victory algorithm" which determines who wins, regardless of who earned more points during the episode.
* PreAsskickingOneLiner: [[spoiler: "Class dismissed, you little blue ball sack." Cue Holo-Professor getting [[DestinationDefenestration thrown out the Example Window]].]]

* RewatchBonus: In the fourth season, during the Puppet Pop-Ins, someone (later revealed to be the Horse from the third season finale) is always trying to disrupt the connection between the guest and The Professor, though it is unclear what they are trying to say at first. However on rewatch, in "Jose Rizal: The Philippines' Reluctant Revolutionary," [[spoiler: The Horse can be heard (through the link's disruptions) saying something akin to "Don't trust Ryan Bergara and his friend."]] This actually foreshadows the twist in the finale.

** The wheat from "The Great Emu War" is regarded the same, and is made deliberately cute and agreeable [[spoiler:to llull the viewer into a false sense of security before the Emu eats it]].

* RuleOfThree: Garrick lampshades this trope by name when Musashi bests the third Yoshioka clan samurai [[spoiler: by arriving early and ambushing him]]. “You gotta do something different on the third!”

** If both contestants choose B for a multiple-choice answer, The Professor calls them “B-Boys.” If both contestants choose C for a multiple-choice answer, The Professor calls them “C-Dogs.”
** Whenever rations get mentioned in The Donner Party episode, the Professor imagines they’re Slim Jims and M&Ms.
** Whenever Isaac Newton's name was mentioned in his eponymous episode, a graphic was shown of the great philosopher getting conked on the head with an apple, culminating with a giant one dropping on him at the end.
** Season two has constant mentions of the Professor's JerkAssGenie nemesis as an option during multiple choice segments. It's to the point where, in "The Grisly Journey of the Donner Party", the option for it merely says "A long-winded genie anecdote" while the Professor rambles for half a minute.

** Beginning in Season 2, establishing shots will often have the phrase "Phosphorus fucked here" somewhere on a building, stemming from an actual piece of graffiti from the Roman era discussed in the Mt. Vesuvius episode.

* SexyPriest: In "Stealing The World's Most Expensive Necklace", Ryan comments that the quoted description of Cardinal Rohan sounds almost erotic, and the Professor jokes he had to excise the frequent instances of the word "yum".

-->'''Ryan''': Oh, he’s going Creator/DanielDayLewis Lincoln.
-->'''Kate Peterman''': He sounds like [[Literature/HarryPotter Voldemort]]. “Come, Nagini!”

** The puppet representation of the Guaduas junta in the Policarpa episode is ''definitely not'' made up of reused puppets from earlier in the season.[[note]]Despite their leader clearly being Hatshepsut[[/note]]

** Shane is a tall man in a cramped space operating a puppet theater for the first time, so plenty of [[invoked]]{{blooper}}s occur. A screen with a neon glitched Professor’s face pops up occasionally when that happens.

* DarkReprise: The song from "The Puppet History Holiday Spectacular" is a slower, melancholically reflective (though still somewhat silly) song that repeats parts of the melody from the prior episode's upbeat "Asmodeus"; and the song from "The Dreadful Demise of the Dinosaurs" is a reprise of it in turn that [[spoilers:is played almost entirely seriously and sincerely as an elegy, keeping comical moments to a ''bare'' minimum as the Professor and his parents prepare for the Chicxulub asteroid's impact.]]

The episodes so far:
[[folder:Season 1]]
* Life During The Black Death Pandemic
* Stealing The World's Most Expensive Necklace
* Surviving The Titanic: History's Luckiest Woman
* The Dancing Plague
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Season 2]]
* How America's First Female Detective Saved Abe Lincoln
* The Terrifying Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
* Hatshepsut: The Forgotten Pharaoh
* The Disastrous 1904 Olympic Marathon
* UsefulNotes/IsaacNewton's Nemesis
* The World's Greatest/Rudest Samurai
* Policarpa: The Revolutionary Teen Spy
* The Grisly Journey of the Donner Party
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Season 3]]
* The Beast of Gevaudan
* The War of the Golden Stool
* Ziryab: The World's First Rockstar
* The Affair of the Poisons
* Ching Shih: The Pirate Queen
* The Great Molasses Flood
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Season 4]]
* [[UsefulNotes/TheEmuWar The Great Emu War]]
* Mansa Musa: The Richest Man Who Ever Lived
* America vs. Smallpox: How Vaccines Saved The Nation
* Jose Rizal: The Philippines' Reluctant Revolutionary
* The Bloody Revenge of Saint Olga of Kiev
* The Demonic Possessions of Loudun
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Season 5]]
* How Hippo Meat Almost Saved America
* The Defenestrations of Prague
* The Vietnamese Sisters Who Fought An Empire
* America's First Black Aviatrix
* The Bloody Life of England's Fastest Surgeon
* The Dreadful Demise of the Dinosaurs
[[/folder]]

* ActorAllusion / ProductionThrowback: In "Hatshepsut: The Forgotten Pharaoh", the Professor ponders the mystery of why Hatshepsut’s successor obscured her legacy. “[[WebVideo/BuzzfeedUnsolved The mystery as to why her [Hatshepsut] legacy was erased remains…not fully understood]].” Ryan knowingly chuckles at this line.

* AnimateInanimateObject: A great deal of the guest singers are these- specifically, we've seen a pile of diamonds, a propeller from the HMS Britannic, an old-fashioned steam train, [[GeniusLoci Mt. Vesuvius]], the Olympic Torch, a Creator/RandyNewman-esque coin, a boat oar and a sword that ''used'' to be a boat oar, a spool of thread, a snowman, the sacred Golden Stool, Ziryab's Oud (an oud is a type of string instrument similar to a ukelele), a pair of poison bottles, a flower-bearing boat, a cute little piece of wheat, a chest of gold coins, a book, a freaky stained-glass window, a cloud that knows [[WhoShotJFK Who Shot JFK]], and the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs.

* VillainSong: The penultimate episode of season 5 has one for [[spoiler: the holo Professor]]

** In "The Defenestration of Prague", [[spoiler: The Professor not only USING the [[RealAllAlong "complex victory algorithim"]] and glitching out upon Ryan not winning but.....''something'' in a tree branch when the Professor is discussing being thrown pit a window]]

'''Nicholas:''' The name's Nicholas… and ''don't make me check you twice.''

** The very existence of the Dancing Plague episode is one. [[invoked]][[AluminumChristmasTrees Because Ryan clearly doesn't believe Shane when he talked about the dancing plague in]] ''WebVideo/BuzzfeedUnsolved'', the Puppet History episode is a lighthearted TakeThat. Hilariously, this episode also happens to be one of Ryan's absolute best performances; the episode ends in a tie, and Ryan loses the tiebreaker only after clearly not trying very hard.

** Season 1, in general, is this for the show since it merely showcases the bare bones of the show going forward. Alongside the above mentioned examples the first season of the show seemed aimed to be an actual, genuine Quiz show where Ryan and The Professor have a similar relationship to {{Series/QI Alan Davis and Stephen Fry}}. It also appears that Ryan was throwing the tie-breakers on purpose since, as the only regular contestant, Ryan would've had plenty of opportunities to win an episode which seems to have actually been something he could've done in this Season. There is also very little in the way of lore and backstory for the Professor, and the puppets who sing at the end of the episodes have no hints to their horrific origins and eventual purgatory.

** The very existence of the Dancing Plague episode is one. [[AluminumChristmasTrees Because Ryan clearly doesn't believe Shane when he talked about the dancing plague in]] ''WebVideo/BuzzfeedUnsolved'', the Puppet History episode is a lighthearted TakeThat. Hilariously, this episode also happens to be one of Ryan's absolute best performances; the episode ends in a tie, and Ryan loses the tiebreaker only after clearly not trying very hard.

* ContrivedCoincidence: PlayedForDrama, with the unlikelihood being part of the point of its presentation. The Season 5 finale sees [[spoiler:the Professor teaching his dino parents all about their kind's own history - and future, including their ultimate extinction. As he does so, he grows increasingly uneasy remembering that he's in the Cretaceous Period, even as he assures himself and them that given the period covers a span of millions of years, they shouldn't have anything to worry about. Then his "mom" offhandedly mentions that they're in Mexico, which would put them in point-blank range if the meteor ''were'' to hit… and then his "dad" points out a strange new glowing thing in the sky. The Professor laments the unfairness of how little time he's wound up having with his new family, and the rest of the scene, including the song that carries it out, are about [[TheAntiNihilist finding peace when confronted with the brevity of life by embracing love, beauty, and uncertainty.]]]]