Funny / The Pop Arena

Animorphs Book Guide

• In keeping with the opening of Animorphs #11: The Forgotten, Greg foregoes the usual "Superbook" intro in his review of it and instead plays square dancing music and footage and is very panicked and confused.
• His increasing frustration over the Animorphs' unwillingness to reveal where they are by name, but give away every single last detail about the town, eventually reaching critical mass in the opening to The Escape.
• In #18. The Decision, when it's explained that the Yeerks hit the number two guy of the Secret Service with a car in a botched attempt at making him a Controller, Greg humors the idea that the Yeerks are so desperate for high-ranking Controllers that they've been reduced to hitting them with cars.
  Minion: Visser Three, I'm afraid Plan "Hit Him With A Car" was a failure, though I would like to note that Aldershot did fly around comically like that one scene from Meet Joe Black.
  Visser Three: I was afraid of this. Well, that leaves us with only one option. Men, break out the clown hammers.
  (Cut to scene from MST3K where Mike is hit on the head with a clown hammer.)
• Greg's confusion over Japan getting involved in a Middle Eastern debate in the David Trilogy is one of his funnier underrated moments.
  • Also from the David Trilogy, we have the over-the-top parody skit of the six world leaders kicking German Chancellor Helmut Kohl out of the Middle East conference for stealing Lionel Jospin's delicious cream-filled cookies as a way to explain the typo that made it seem like Germany had never been a part of the conference.
    Tony Blair (Greg): So I said, yes, but if we legalize the letter L, my name would be Tony Bair.
    Ryutaro Hasimoto (Greg): Hohoho, you funny, man.
    Tony Blair (Greg): Well, thank you, Hasimoto.
    Lionel Jospin (Greg): Oh, this is dreadful!
    Ryutaro Hasimoto (Greg): What is wrong, Jospin?
    Lionel Jospin (Greg): I had made delicious cream cookies for everyone, but now they are all gone!
    Tony Blair (Greg): Well, there's only us six here, so one of us must've taken them.
    Lionel Jospin (Greg): Who took the cookies from the cookie jar? Bill Clinton took the cookies from the cookie jar!
    Bill Clinton (Greg): Who, me?
    Lionel Jospin (Greg): Yes, you!
    Bill Clinton (Greg): Couldn't be.
    Lionel Jospin (Greg): Then who? Who took the cookies from the cookie jar? Boris Yeltsin took the cookies from the cookie jar!
    Boris Yeltsin (Greg): Who, me?
    Lionel Jospin (Greg): Yes, you!
    Boris Yeltsin (Greg): Couldn't be.
    Lionel Jospin (Greg): Then who?! Who took the cookies from the cookie jar? Helmut Kohl took the cookies from the cookie jar!
    Helmut Kohl (Greg): Who, me?
    Lionel Jospin (Greg): Ah, I knew it! It was you, Kohl! It is always the Germans!
    Bill Clinton (Greg): That is totally uncool.
    Lionel Jospin (Greg): If we cannot trust you with my delicious cream cookies, how can we trust you with the Middle East?
    Helmut Kohl (Greg): Fine, I don't want to help the Middle East anyway! And your cookies were dreadful.
    Lionel Jospin (Greg): Play him out, Mr. President!
• "Tremble, my minions, tremble at the sight of my glorious boobies!"
• Three words from his review of the Animorphs TV show: "Stars fucking move!"
• Greg's description of the Yeerk minions' plot-enabled loss of hearing:
  "These kids could have held a performance of Les Misérables behind this guy and he wouldn't even have noticed till one of them tripped over their shoes."
• The increasing rage over the editing oversight in #34. The Prophecy when Aldrea reveals she doesn't know where the book's MacGuffin is... and then reveals it again and everyone acts like this is the first time they've heard about it.
• "And then the Dracon beam blew up the buffalo!" This line from #39. The Hidden is delivered in a hilarious fake Southern accent as Greg loses it over this line.
• The return of the Batman Voice for the player character in the Alternamorphs books.
  • Also from the Alternamorphs books, we have Greg's rant over the editing oversight which makes it seem that flies are the natural predators of spiders, which is one of his memorable comedy pieces as he concludes the player character must eat spiders as a human being and chalks that up to the rest of the player's bad habits, complete with the image of a young girl chomping down on a spider.
  • If you make the wrong choice in his Alternamorphs video, you may randomly die with the line, "Oh no the yeti!"
• Greg's spoof of depression medication commercials in Animorphs #41. The Familiar.
• His faux-cutesy description of the "Animal Emergencies" series in Animorphs #42. The Journey.
• When Animorphs #43. The Test reveals Tobias has been hearing Taylor's voice taunting him ever since being tortured, we get some speculation on what it was up to in #36. The Mutation:
  "Yaaaah, Tobias! You vile, evil bird! You're in Atlaaantis! What's a bird doing in Atlaaantis?! You suck! You're disgusting! Are those Fish People?! You're in Atlaaantis! You're a bird in Atlaaantis!"
• When Cassie's mother assumes Ax is some mutated forest animal, Greg gives a bitterly sarcastic "Oh good, it's genetic."
• Casually referring to Marco morphing the Governor as "cougar morph."
• His guess at how Jake summing up the entire series for the National Guard in #52. The Sacrifice went.
  • It mainly entails alternating between sped-up footage of a clock and Jake mentioning the more ridiculous moments of the series. He does something similar between the Ellimist and Rachel's ghost.

Nick Knacks

• Nick Knacks Episode #002. Pinwheel:
  • Greg decides to count how many songs the cast sings in one hour. As the number grows larger, he writes little messages on the opposite of the screen, to stave off boredom. When he finally reaches the 24th and final song:
    Jake: Boy, I love to sing...
    Greg: (voiceover) Yeah, no shit!
  • Him referring to mimes as 'like the ninjas of clowns'.
• Nick Knacks episode #022. The Tomorrow People (1973):
  • Greg brings up the executives bringing Teen Idol Mike Holloway onto the show, likening the whole thing to Poochie, complete with dubbing over some of Mike's scenes with Poochie's Gratuitous Rap.
  • He really brings home how intrusive the character was by comparing if the same thing happened to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
    "Like, imagine it's the third season of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD. And they bring in a new agent. And it's Harry Styles. And his character name is Agent Harry Styles. And now he's the main character. And also the rest of One Direction is there too, hanging out in the background, and they perform songs every once in a while. And also they kick out Fitz and Simmons to make room for him."
• As Nick Knacks goes on, he discovers that for some reason just about every kids’ adventure show Nick aired in the ‘70s and ‘80s had an episode with a creepy clown. Up through Lassie, his delivery on this reveal keeps getting more and more sarcastic and high-pitched.
• While researching Danger Mouse he was quite amused by a review of it and Belle and Sebastian using a ridiculously simple and childish vocabulary, and reads it in a tone like a snotty kid.
• For his Nick Knacks episode on Dennis the Menace:
  • He begs housewife Alice to "put on some sneakers and watch TV" after a clip is shown of her cleaning her spotless house in heels.
  • When talking about CBS attempting to turn Jay North into a child singer, Greg silently calls out the huge watermarks the original uploader put on the video of North singing.
    Greg: (via captions) Also, do you think your watermarks are big enough there, buddy?
• His absolute joy at learning a contemporary critic described The Donna Reed Show as "antiseptic oatmeal."
• In covering Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, he cracks up upon seeing there's a monster named "Thot". To clarify, he acknowledges that the name also produced differently in this case. Still, we also learn that the mother's name is "Mama Thot".
• His introduction to each new year on Nick Knacks is scored with one of the biggest pop hits of the year. His choice for 1987? Never Gonna Give You Up.
• In the episode on Maple Town, he describes Mrs. Maple, a live-action character/framing device added in the English dub, as someone who "lives vicariously through their neighbors via their Facebook accounts".
• While going over the afterschool specials which were repackaged into 16 Cinema, he can't believe how quickly the writers started recycling their ideas, until finally there's just two earlier stories smashed together.
• He discusses how Finders Keepers was so poorly designed that it's actually possible for a team to do absolutely nothing but still win,^note If a team fails the room search, which are always worth more points than the picture search that got them there, the other team gets those points. driving it home by saying a team consisting of cardboard cutouts of Bob Ross and Guy Fieri would have a non-zero chance of winning.
• Talking about the Doctor Snuggles episode about aliens rising up against their robot masters like it's straight-up Communist propaganda.
• Greg is horrified to find out that Miramax handled the American distribution of The World of David the Gnome.
• He absolutely cannot get over the fact that Nickelodeon intended Don't Just Sit There to be their flagship show, when in fact it's just a local cable level talk show whose kid hosts absolutely cannot get their lines straight, even saying that in the several hours he was able to find, he'd guess there isn't a single minute without some kind of blown line or prop error.
• Greg practically deflates when he lists Dan Schneider as one of the co-hosts of the first Kids' Choice Awards.^note Both Dan Schneider and Brian Robbins, who also co-hosted, were there because of their familiarity on Head of the Class.
• In the Nick Knacks Special "Nickelodeon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade," Greg calls 1997 (the debut of the Rugrats balloon) "one of the most infamous years in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade history," To drive this point home, he overlays the footage of gale-force winds and many popped balloons with "O Fortuna."

The Goosebumps Monthly

• In The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, Greg constantly calls out Grady's dad's shoddy experiment, cutting back to the man who seems to be progressively more drunk with each cut away.
• He finds Walker from Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns so forgettable he notes that he kept forgetting his name. Thus, for the rest of the video, he refers to him by tons of different names. Even after reading an excerpt that name drops Walker, Greg still calls him by a different name immediately afterwards.
• In Legend of the Lost Legend, he says it is part of a subgenre he calls "Eh I don't know I'm making it up as I go, throw some random shit in there, kids will buy it regardless who cares".
• Greg slowly losing it after reading a misprint in the back cover blurb for Night of the Living Dummy that declares that Kris will get her revenge on...Kris, rather than her sister Lindy.
• After reading a passage from Monster Blood describing Andy's brightly colored, early '90s outfit, Greg quips "If we hurry, we can catch the next audition for Wild and Crazy Kids!"
• In his rewrite of Monster Blood II, Greg sarcastically quips "I'm a genius" and "I'm a super genius" after suggesting such cliched ideas as having the book be a metaphor for nuclear war and having the Monster Blood defeated by the power of love in his otherwise inspired retelling.
• In his Say Cheese and Die review, he says the four main characters have the same dynamic as the four playable characters in Super Mario Bros 2 and also struggles to remember which character is which whenever they appear.

Misc

• During his review of the The Secret World of Alex Mack episode where Alex prank-calls someone named Greg, Greg interacts by answering her.