Artifact Title / Web Videos

• Stuart Ashen's "Poundland Special", when it first began in 2009, began as being mostly items from Poundland, but has grown to include items from Poundworld and 99p stores, to the point that most of the tat in the newer "Poundland Special" videos is no longer from Poundland. Lampshaded in "Poundland Special 3", where he states "We're really stretching the use of the word 'special'", and in "Poundland Special: Loom Band Pregnancy Wig", where he states "...where every item costs one pound and came from Poundland, except most of the items which didn't come from Poundland, but came from 99p stores, or Poundworld, or in fact, possibly another place where everything costs a pound".
• Barely Political is actually an inversion. Back when it became popular in 2007, it made nothing but political videos in time for the 2008 election season. Now it's become a Meaningful Name, as most of its videos are The Key of Awesome parody videos. And, finally, in 2015, they changed the name of their channel to Barely Productions, lampshading this trope.
• The YouTube channel Cole and Marmalade is named after Chris' first two cats. Since then, they've gotten several more cats and Cole has died, but the title remains.
• Dross Rotzank is the name of an Internet persona created by Ángel David Revilla principally to review videogames. He has kept that name for his accounts although he has long discontinued the use of that persona in favor of his horror videos.
• That Guy With The Glasses started out as a website where internet comedian/reviewer Doug Walker uploaded all of his videos before other content-creators started contributing to the site. Eventually, the group was moved to the Channel Awesome website, which was more inclusive of all the creators rather than focusing so much on Doug's work.
  • His main series The Nostalgia Critic originally focused on "nostalgic" movies and television shows from The '80s, The '90s, and later the early 2000s (hence the title). Since the revival of the series, the date limit has been removed and the show has become more of a general review show, though still with a bent on relatively "older" films up to at least the mid-2000s, and reboots and adaptations of nostalgic properties.
    • This gets jokingly referenced in a crossover with Linkara and Linkara sarcastically asks him when was the last time he reviewed something nostalgic. Critic responds around the last time Linkara reviewed a comic (as by that time his show now included reviews on TV episodes, movies, video games, and manga). Linkara admits he can't argue that one.
  • Disneycember started in 2011 as a retrospective of the 2D Disney animated films. In 2012 this became a retrospective of the 3D animated films (mostly Pixar, a studio that was not actually a part of Disney until Ratatouille, though the earlier films were distributed by Disney) and in 2013 many of Disney's live-action films. After that, the films talked about became less relevant to Disney:
    • Disneycember 2014 covered the Studio Ghibli films, which were distributed and dubbed by Disney in the USA. Many of these were dubbed years after their Japanese release (sometimes after they had already been dubbed and released by someone else), and outside of the USA weren't released by Disney at all (although usually other English territories use Disney's dubs). Doug even reviews a couple Ghilbli films that weren't even released by Disney.
    • Disneycember 2015 covered franchises owned by Disney, namely the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars, with 11 of the videos covering films/editions that happened to be bought by Disney later on, plus one film that Disney wouldn't gain the rights to until 2023 (The Incredible Hulk) (a bit of an Enforced Trope when talking about those franchises in detail).
    • Disneycember 2016 thankfully subverted this by showing Disney's Direct to Video sequels.
• Text riff series I Can't Believe It's Not AVGN! started out with bad AVGN clones (notably The Irate Gamer, Game Dude and NC17 Productions) but expanded to just bad video game reviews in general. The title stayed.
• PieGuyRulz had nothing to do with pie until he spent the week of March 14th (Pi Day) reviewing pie-themed episodes of cartoons.
• Plainrock124's Bored Smashing - GROCERY STORE PHONES! were Bored Smashes of phones that King purchased from the grocery store. Starting with the 8th episode of that subseries, he obtains the phones via the internet instead, but the title has remained unchanged.
• Played for Laughs in Girl-Chan in Paradise by Egoraptor, which barely features its eponymous character. Even when the characters are standing in a group shot, don't expect to see her anywhere in sight. In the ending theme sequence, she's the last of the floating head lineup to appear. Yusuke even goes so far as to say implicitly that she's worthless and to tell her to shut up when she gives her one line for the entire episode.
• The name "lonelygirl15" made a lot more sense when it was a girl in her bedroom talking to a webcam. Especially after they killed off the title character.
• Look a Vlog isn't a vlog at all anymore.
• Stop Skelatons From Fighting was originally named The Happy Video Game Nerd as he was a parody/inversion of The Angry Video Game Nerd, reviewing underrated retro games with a positive, if overenthusiastic tone. Nowadays, he also includes modern games and more mainstream titles, and has done away with the "happy" in favor of more natural and objective tone.
• Retsupurae is an Engrish pronunciation of the words Let's Play, referring to what they originally made fun of.
• pokecapn's name — he has never discussed Pokémon at large in his videos. As he himself puts it, "things change in 12 years, but screen names are forever".
• Marble Hornets. The eponymous student film arc has been over since about entry #20. It gained prominence again in roughly entry #53, but considering where the plot has gone, this is likely a temporary thing.
• Rooster Teeth's Achievement Horse series hasn't involved any actual games of Horse in a long time, the competitors usually opting to play shorter games of Pig.
• Rooster Teeth's Achievement Hunter was originally supposed to be how to guides in gaining Achievements for certain games. However, their Let's Plays have greatly overshadowed this original intent.
• Stupid Mario Brothers was originally a nonsensical comedy with no real plot. It was mostly just characters from Nintendo games in the real world while engaging in slice-of-life activities. When they decided to add more elaborate story arcs, the show became a lot more dramatic and less "stupid".
• MinutePhysics originally had physics videos 1 minute in length each, but now, the videos are usually 4-7 minutes long.
• Sort of subverted by Who Wants To Be An Alienaire. The show was originally hosted by an alien. But when Alien Man left the show, Kevin (a human) replaced him. Therefore, the show started going by two names: Alienaire and Basicaneer.
• HankGames, since June 2014, no longer features Hank Green whatsoever. It is now exclusively his brother, John, playing FIFA, while Hank has moved to GamesWithHank.
  • Even when Hank WAS still uploading videos to the channel, the John videos outnumbered Hank's around 2:1.
• The Most Stupid Deaths in Super Mario 64 was, at first, about Mario dying (couldn't have guessed that, could you have?) But later episodes kill Mario rarely, instead focusing on his antics and strange adventures.
• Allison Pregler's side-series Manic Episodes started out with the purpose of reviewing weird (and usually not very good) episodes of TV shows.. However focus shifted to reviewing whole series of genre TV shows (most notably She-Wolf of London and Charmed) rather than individual episodes. Subverted after its initial ending though, as on the occasion that Allison brings it back, it's back to the original premise.
• Foldy, the puppet from Folding Ideas, hasn't been seen much in the last few years, with Dan Olson delivering content in-person rather than through Foldy.
• Originally the idea behind Unskippable was to make fun of actual unskippable video game cutscenes, but they now mock skippable cutscenes as well, and even not-particularly-interactive first-person sequences. This is usually Lampshaded, such as in the Quantum of Solace episode, and the Left 4 Dead episode.
• Two Best Friends Play used to refer to Pat and Matt as the only two hosts, but the cast has expanded significantly over time.
• In Sockbaby Part 3, Sockbaby's plot was wrapped up, and he left for heaven or another universe or something. He doesn't appear at all in Sockb4by, which just focuses on the further adventures of Ronnie and Burger.
• The title of The Joker Blogs originally referred to The Joker's treatment tapes at Arkham Asylum being put up on YouTube (something the Joker planned to occur) in a 'blog' format, occasionally featuring updates with tasks for the 'goons' (fans) to do. As of the end of the First Season (around the start of the "Find Patient 4479" arc words), this is no longer the case since the episodes afterwards are in less of a 'blog' format and focus more on the plot.
• David Mitchell's Soapbox was originally a pun on the fact that it was sponsored by a brand of men's cosmetics. They withdrew their sponsorship at the start of the third series, but the title remained.
• The "ot" part of Let's Player and music reviewer Cicabeot1's channel name originally stood for "On Tour", as in Guitar Hero: On Tour. She doesn't even do Guitar Hero videos as often anymore, let alone the On Tour spinoff.
• After a seven-week hiatus on The Muppets Thought of the Week on their YouTube channel, they ran them daily for a week, with Uncle Deadly's opener and closer getting increasingly irritated.
  Deadly: Does anybody besides me realise that a week is seven days, and a day is one day, and you shouldn't have a Thought of the Week every single day? Anyone? Is it just me? Ugh. Apparently, it's just me.
• Averted twice in the case of Beatrice the Golden Witch; when she stopped reviewing exclusively My Little Pony stuff, she changed her name from "DigiBrony" to "DigiBro". Then the "bro" became inaccurate when she came out as a transgender woman, so she started going by "DigiNee" (or just "Digi"), before retiring the "Digi" brand altogether and changing her name to "Beatrice the Golden Witch".
• Jacksfilms's series "YIAY" stands for "Yesterday I Asked You". Initially, it was a daily series, where Jack would ask a question at the end of one episode and read responses in the following one. Now, the series is no longer daily, and questions are typically asked well in advance to allow Jack time to stockpile answers.
• MrBeast's outro of his videos says "MrBeast6000". The outro was left unchanged even when his name was shortened to just MrBeast.
• From Outside Xbox's website:
  Andy was part of the original UK Inside Xbox team, which was both wildly popular and the reason for Outside Xbox's now faintly ridiculous name.
• Ever since he showed his face on camera, The Mysterious Mr. Enter got a lot less mysterious. This was even lampshaded in the title of the face reveal video: "Mr. Enter gets a little less mysterious". This later became a bit more justified after he got a shadowy, mysterious-looking avatar, but it went back to being an Artifact Title when the avatar was changed again to something resembling his real-life appearance.
• Brad Jones renamed his series DVD-R Hell to TV Heaven because the original title was turning into this trope; he admitted in the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving review that he hasn't actually watched titles on DVD-R discs "in, like, 10 years." This may also due to be the show beginning to review content not exactly bad enough to warrant the "Hell" part of the title.
• The Adventures of Zach and B started as a vlog by Zachary Garcia about his opinions and experiences as a gay man in the Deep South, and B was his dog Bronson. Zach's boyfriend Alistair was originally just a recurring guest, though he started appearing more frequently as the relationship progressed. Bronson died in 2020, but by that point Zach and Alistair had gotten married and the channel had already become essentially a couple's vlog about their life together. The title remains unchanged for sentimental reasons, but Zach has since shortened it to AZB to de-emphasize the "Zach and B" part.
• Dumb Lawyer Quotes IRL but in Ace Attorney initially started with lawyers asking stupid questions of witnesses, but over time, the videos also included witnesses giving stupid answers.
• How It Should Have Ended became less about telling different scenarios about how certain things should have ended, but instead consists mostly of comedic skits that center around the superhero parodies that the series created over the years. That being said, many of the skits that depict things going wrong would prematurely bring the plot of the work to an end. The variety of their content is also condensed to just continuing large franchises rather than whatever they decide to make a video on. Nowadays, you'll be lucky to see them make a video on something that isn't related to Marvel superheroes, DC superheroes, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, or the MonsterVerse.
• The YT channel Cracking the Cryptic features two gentlemen solving Sudoku puzzles. In the earliest days, they mostly solved Cryptic Crosswords, which is where the title of the channel originated.
• Solid jj is named after Solid Snake because his earliest videos are mostly Solid Snake's impression. Not too long after, he branches out, does other various impressions (most famously DC and Marvel superheroes) and Solid Snake videos become once-in-a-while thing instead.
• While he did start off with uploading test videos of smartphones, the Filipino charity YouTuber TechRam now has nothing to do with technology or random-access memory for that matter. The "Ram" in the channel's name refers to channel owner Ramil Manalastas, and yet his videos are more into helping indigent people than something along the lines of gadgetry and electronics. Ramil later clarified in a video with news anchor Bernadette Sembrano that he used to have a stall selling smart devices in Manila but was forced to close up shop when then-Manila mayor Isko Moreno enacted a ban on the sale of used electronics due to rampant fencing of stolen goods taking place in malls and street corner stalls in the city.
• "Gal Bepole" (real name Gal Benron), a popular Israeli-born internet personality known for her instructional dance videos, got her name because she started out as a pole dancer. But she mostly stopped pole-dancing years ago, and is now best known for twerking.
• Mr. Coat: He doesn't wear a coat very often anymore.
• Rivals Direct started out as a parody of Nintendo Direct specifically for Rivals of Aether-related announcements. Starting with the third one, the videos no longer imitate Nintendo's, but the title remains.

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