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Lets Play / Many A True Nerd

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Many a True Nerd' is a YouTube channel for the lesser known website that focuses on Let's Plays for action, strategy, RPG, and simulation games. Hosted by Jon, a master Deadpan Snarker Brit, the channel has come to focus on high-difficulty playthroughs or unusual Self-Imposed Challenges, such as Pacifist Runs, using none of a particular resource, or attempting single life bar, no-heal runs where death means a game over. He is particularly focused on the Hitman and Fallout series, though he has done strange runs on games in similar-styled series. He also likes to try and show off new or lesser known strategy and simulation games, and has also done limited runs or one-shots of lesser known games or old favorites. Jon is sometimes assisted by fellow MATN member Claire, usually as the second player in a two-player game or on occasions when he needs help making sense of an alternate French universe version of things.

Many a True Nerd provides examples of:

  • A-Team Firing: During Medieval II, in one siege Jon's units of Norse Archers - 360 men in total - manage to fail to kill a single surviving enemy swordsman standing still in the city center, even after repositioning to point-blank range. Though this is less to do with accuracy and more an extremely durable unit laughing off very weak archers.
  • Abnormal Ammo: Jon has way too much fun with the Rock-It Launcher in Fallout 3, using it to pass money to beggars with explosive results, offer consoling teddy bears to children at horrendous launch speeds and attempting to do the world's fastest organ transplants on injured patients.
    Jon: Come back and accept your inevitable gnoming!
  • Accentuate the Negative: Refreshingly inverted; With the exception of exceptionally bad games (read: Ride to Hell: Retribution and the remake of XIII), Jon tries to emphasize the positives of whatever game he's talking about and what he feels are great qualities that he's enjoying about it.
  • The Ace: Julianus Vatinius quickly becomes this after his promotion to General in Rome: Total War. The episode he appears is even titled "The Chosen One."
  • Achievements in Ignorance: invoked In his video for Gato Roboto, Jon accidentally performs a Sequence Break by Rocket Jumping to an area he's supposed to need the double jump to reach. He then proceeds to spend nearly half the video using the rocket jump as a substitute for the double jump under the assumption that the game is supposed to be about trick jumps and that he simply hit a Difficulty Spike.
  • Action Girl: Jon tends to play as a female character in pretty much any game that allows it, Many of which are action games. One notable non-Player Character example is Pontifex Maxima Aphroditia from one of his Crusader Kings II playthroughs, a woman with such absurdly high martial stats that Jon enforced gender equality on his empire solely to get her on the throne. At her peak she had a base Martial score of 39, and an effective Martial score of 71, while her Personal Combat Skill was a staggering 185.
  • Actual Pacifist: Jon's character from the New Vegas No-Kill Run. Except for firing a few shots to take weapons out of enemies hands, she never raises a hand against anyone, and has the zero-kill stat at the end to prove it.
  • Adipose Rex: Jon the Fat from Crusader Kings II really lives up to his Gluttonous trait. Even during a smallpox-induced isolation, he lives on pickled boar heads, and when those run out he still eats more than he should of the limited food supplies in the castle, before finally resorting to rats.
  • All for Nothing: During his preview of Cruader Kings III, Jon spends decades trying to reform his religion so that it wouldn't condemn him for his infidelities, and maybe be a bit lustier in general. In the end, he not only has made his religion more dogmatic, but his character is too old to be producing children anyway.
  • Animal-Themed Superbeing: The Great Brit-Ant, an alias Evil Jon temporarily adopted in Fallout 3.
  • Art Shift: Part 11 of Total War: Warhammer has "different graphics" because his hard drive crashed while filming the last episodes. Since he didn't want to re-film it but still remembered how it had ended, he proceeds to act out the finale on his kitchen table using random items around the house to represent things. The Empire becomes a bottle of ketchup, the French are now powdered garlic, and the Vampires are represented by a TARDIS mug, for example. It goes on for seventeen minutes and becomes increasingly hilarious because he can't keep straight which item represents which faction or town. It even extends to his customary channel trailer at the end, composed of stick figures scrawled on notebook paper reenacting the games.
  • Assassin Outclassin': Discussed when he stealth-kills a bunch of Morag Tong in the Skyrim: Dragonborn expansion.
    Jon: There is nothing more badass than sneaking into the hideout of a team of assassins and then actually taking them out without them ever realizing I was there.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Kicks in often during Jon's Skyrim playthrough, which he refers to as Many A True Nerd-ing. A straightforward journey from Whiterun to Ivarstead, for example, ends up taking over three hours because he keeps wandering off the path to explore and delving into dungeons he finds on the way.
  • Author Appeal: Jon loves to make references to both The Simpsons and classical Mediterranean history (primarily the Roman Empire and Ancient Greece).
  • Author Avatar: On the channel anniversary videos, Jon will always appear as a talking carton of eggs. This includes his Creator Cameo in Door Monster's "CKIII: Technically Not Tyranny" where he is a carton atop a suit of armor.
  • Battle Couple: In part 5 of his let's play of Total War: Three Kingdoms, Jon assigns Kong Rong's wife Liu Huimin as a general alongside him, making them a slightly (but only slightly) less hands-on version of this.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Jon regularly puts out polls asking his viewers to decide what the next game he's going to livestream should be. At one point, he had the poll be between two games he really didn't want to play (Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, because it's incredibly Nintendo Hard, and Ride to Hell: Retribution, one of the most infamous and reviled video games in history that he included as a joke option). Cue most people picking the latter game and poor Jon and Claire being driven to the brink of insanity by the game's baffling level of awfulness.
  • The Beard: A double example in Crusader Kings II, when the gay Emperor Polyphemos marries the lesbian Tatyana. Surprisingly enough, not only do the two genuinely fall in love, they also manage to pop out a few kids despite their seemingly Incompatible Orientations.
  • Bears Are Bad News: Skyrim's ursine population proves to be nearly as menacing as dragons during Jon's adventures there.
  • Becoming the Mask: In the second Crusader Kings II campaign, Count Leon of Zeta was only faking his Slavic paganism so he could get into a warrior lodge, but by the time he's conducted a Human Sacrifice, Jon admits "I'm gonna be honest, I'm getting into this, this is good stuff!"
  • Berserk Button:
    • His playthrough of Ryse: Son of Rome reveals that the game manages to hit several of them at once, with Jon citing various inaccuracies in Roman history, plot holes, and flaws in gameplay.
    • He was also pretty unamused over the inaccuracies of Battlefield 1.
  • Bodyguard Crush: Played out in Jon's Skyrim playthrough with companion of choice Benor. After several episodes adventuring as a Sword and Sorcerer duo, Jon plays out some occasional hints of a crush and an eventual marriage. From there on, things get a bit more twisted when Benor gets Mistaken for Cheating with a newly-hired Housecarl. Jon immediately murders him, spends multiple questlines in mourning, and after realizing the mistake reanimates his body as a much-abused Dead Thrall.
  • Bribe Backfire: In Medieval II, out of desperation to have someone in Europe on his side, Jon pays the Byzantines 40,000 florins to sign an alliance with him. They proceed to use the money to raise several full armies they attack him with just a few turns later.
  • Burning the Ships: In Skyrim, when Jon decides he's finally ready to let Benor go, he kills his former Dead Thrall, then revives the corpse using a normal necromancy spell, specifically because once its duration ends, the body will be reduced to a pile of ashes that can't be reanimated again.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Jon paraphases the trope-naming speech after his Space Romans devastate an enemy empire in Stellaris. And in Crusader Kings II, he has this response when King Connor the Seducer is inducted into Lucifer's Own by some sex ritual.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: When doing a Kill Everything run, Jon has a disturbing habit of becoming this. While still claiming to be the good guy.
    Evil Jon: Dance with your dad, Billy, dance with your dead dad!
  • Catapult Nightmare: Does so (within Fallout 3's limited parameters, anyway) after accidentally killing everyone in the only settlement he actually likes, Paradise Falls.
    Evil Jon: Thank god... I had the nightmare where I killed all the Slavers and was the hero of the children again. It's okay, I'm back in Tenpenny Tower... I'm back in Tenpenny Tower with my dead robot wife, Godfrey.
  • Catchphrase: So many of these:
    • At the opening of every video: "Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jon, this is Many A True Nerd, and welcome to (name of game)."
    • At the closing of every video: Ladies and gentlemen, I've been Jon, this has been Many A True Nerd, and this has been the really rather (adjective) (name of game). Thank you very much, and goodbye!"
    • "So that's all 100% fine."
    • "The bear is still around!"
    • "Where's Benor?"
    • "Hello, headquarters?"
    • "All of the [ITEM] in the world!"
    • "Oh, flip" and other variations of "Flip" since Jon is mostly a PG-13 Gosh Darn It to Heck! type of man. Occasionally he'll use "cocking" where other people might use a similar word that starts with a slightly later letter.
    • "[ITEM] times many."
    • "Game? Are you ok?" Whenever the game does something stupid, like forget how to walk.
    • "Job flipping done" whenever things go right. It rarely lasts long, leading into:
    • "I've made a mistake!" With rising panic and lots of running away (more often than not with bears, dragons and/or zombies in hot pursuit).
    • "So, let's just have a little look-see...": Usually when investigating a place he knows he probably shouldn't go because it's a distraction or he's not prepared. Often followed by the above quote a few minutes later.
    • "Caution, Not Danger" began as something of a Madness Mantra for Jon during his YOLO runs of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and has continued to act as such in every one of his playthroughs of 4, as well as in Frost, Dust and 76.
    • "Well lah-di-dah" when the AI has something good and "fancy", like an ability or an item, that he doesn't.
    • "Turns out, I am a genius at X!" when he does something impressive in a game by complete accident.
    • "X could be of interest," or "very, very useful indeed."
    • "Keep on keeping on."
    • "It's time for 'Let's talk all about The Things Jon Got Wrong'!" about his errors in previous videos. Often because of corrections in the comments.
  • Challenge Gamer: Not exclusively, but he has done a large number of challenge runs.
    • FTL: Faster Than Light:
      • A Hard Mode runs of regular and Advanced Editions of the game.
      • A run with the Lanius ship; Lanius are, according to Word of God, a metallic lifeform who are also biological, and whose biological composition somehow drains oxygen from the room they are in. Simple enough. But he also had a human character aboard as well, and like all humans Steve needs oxygen...
      • A No Oxygen run with a normal Engi B-Style ship which he renamed from The Vortex to Out Of Milk.
      • A No Shields run as well. As you have probably guessed, shields reduce, or in this case; absorb, most of the damage coming your way, before it hits your ship.
      • Most of these runs also last for several parts, with a few even managing to get to the final boss, the Rebel Flagship.
    • Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas:
      • A "Kill Everything" Run in both games. The Fallout 3 one included all of the DLC.
      • A "No Kill" run in Fallout: New Vegas. note 
      • A Permadeath Run for Fallout: New Vegas appropriately titled "You Only Live Once" where he's not allowed to use any healing items at all; if he made it through the main game, he would move on to the DLC. He also did a similar run for Fallout 3. note 
      • Complete Fallout: New Vegas on Hardcore Mode without ever eating, drinking, or sleeping, effectively forcing him to do a speedrun before his character died.
      • A run using the JSawyer mod, which creates a more balanced version of the game according to New Vegas's director. He also tries to take options he has never taken before in any of his previous playthroughs of the game, and tries a new mod each week.
      • A Survival Run of Lonesome Road (a DLC recommended for Level 25+ characters). This was done at Level 1, with the added challenge of being done with absolutely no gear, only being able to pick up armor and weapons upon his entry into The Divide.
      • A run called "The Worse Courier", where Jon starts a character, Useless Steve, that has every single SPECIAL stat set to one and no Skills tagged. He then goes through Old World Blues the same way after Useless Steve suffers a series of unfortunate events.
    • Fallout 4:
      • A "No Guns" run, where his character is restricted to melee weapons and explosives only. Also, he must always pick the sarcastic option if available.
      • A straightforward Survival run.
      • A Survival run doing only Nuka World, a DLC generally recommended for Level 30+ characters, at Level 1. Unlike Lonesome Road (and because of the Gauntlet), he was allowed to prep before arriving, being mindful that the more places he explored to get equipment, the more likely he was to run into enemies and locations that would raise his XP past Level 1 before arriving at the Nuka World Transit Center.
      • A Permadeth Run, also titled "You Only Live Once," consisting of a heavily modded Survival playthrough.
    • Hitman:
      • A No Kill (And Other Stuff) run for Hitman: Blood Money.
      • A Kill Everything run for A Murder of Crows
      • Averted for Hitman: Absolution; he's done a straight run through to see if the game was really as bad as he remembers.
    • Mass Effect: A unique challenge for the first game where he was not allowed to use guns, but he could use biotic powers to kill enemies.
    • Democracy 3:
      • A Coalition challenge, where both himself and Claire attempt to run the country.
      • A Kill Everything challenge, where he attempts to kill off as much of the population as possible in a single term. Unfortunately, he eventually finds out the population figures are fixed - or as Jon puts it, the British cannot die in this universe.
    • A Stellaris "Impossible Run," a game on the highest difficulty setting, with a maximum number of AI empires, all of them starting out more advanced than his own with their bonuses and aggressiveness set to highest, and with amplified Crisis events that can start triggering as soon as possible.
  • The Chew Toy: The Republic of Venice is initially a major threat in Jon's second Crusader Kings II playthrough, but after he takes control of the Byzantine Empire, it goes from a rival to a joke Jon sacks whenever he needs money or just wants to de-stress for a bit.
  • Chaotic Stupid: How Jon characterizes Portugal's campaign AI in Medieval II Total War, since it all but abandons any Iberian aspirations in favor of landing invasion forces in Normandy, Wales and Ireland.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Thanks to him getting repeatedly Jump Scared by headcrab zombies and just being utterly terrified of them in general already in Half-Life: Alyx, the last act of his video showcasing the game primarily consists of this trope, to the point where he put a language advisory in the video's comment section.
  • Crossover: With Nerd³ and Mattophobia - he runs a podcast with both on the former's YouTube and Twitch channels, and has done a few collaborative videos with the latter.
  • Cute Kitten: Tabitha, a.k.a. Tabby, Jon and Claire's late cat. She appeared in a few announcement vidoes, and one of the benefits of being on Patreon was occasional pictures of Tabby. She sadly passed in June 2022.
  • Damager, Healer, Tank: In his Skyrim playthrough, it's usually a summoned minion dealing damage, Benor acting as tank, and Jon staying in the rear providing buffs or healing, though he's not adverse to working the flanks to deal direct damage too.
  • Dead Man Writing: How he introduces his april 21st 2021 FTL: Faster Than Light video.
    Jon: If this video went live, it means that I'm dead. Or moving houses, one of the two.
  • Deus ex Machina: During his Stellaris "Impossible Run," the Snivlet Friendship's fortunes change dramatically when they discover the Head of Zarqlan ("all glory to Zarqlan") Relic, allowing them to periodically reinforce their fleet with incredibly-advanced ships from a Fallen Empire and giving them a fighting chance against the enemies that surround them.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: Jon's hit by this in Skyrim when he joins the Companions (purely to gain access to the group's Ultimate Blacksmith).
    Vilkas: I've never even heard of this outsider.
    Jon: I'm the cocking Dragonborn! And also, the thane of multiple Holds! And also, I'm the king of the magicians! How have you not heard of me?!
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: Jon describes Thorkel of Kalundborg's death as this in Medieval II, since his death animation played at the same time as a Timurid elephant's — "He punched an elephant to death!"
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Evil Is Petty: In his playthrough of Knights of the Old Republic, he states that his main motivation for choosing the dark-side ending is that it's the ending that would upset Carth the most. He then lays out his plans to psychologically torture Carth for the rest of his life despite not even really remembering why he hates Carth so much.
    Jon: "And every time he settles down, every time he makes any planet his home, the fleet emerges. We burn down his home and his family over, and over, and over again for the rest of his life. Anywhere he ever tries to settle, we burn it to the ground. That's gonna be his punishment for... I can't remember what he did wrong, I think he just annoys me slightly."
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
    • The Kill Everything runs, as well as the "No Kill And Other Stuff" Hitman: Blood Money run.
    • Jon defends his rampant warmongering in Medieval II: Total War by pointing out the game has "got war in the title, you can't be too surprised."
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
    • In Crusader Kings II, Jon is at first excited to have his first queen character, then he remembers something about how claims work in the game.
      Jon: We welcome our first female ruler: welcome Queen uh oh... How many weak claims exist against us right now? 'cause, probably quite a few, and now Queen Yuselass is on the throne, they can all be acted upon - like, the downside to my plan of going around spreading my dynasty around is, there's a lot of people out there who probably have weak claims on me. UH OH.
    • In Medieval II: Total War, not long after one king dies and Jon discovers his new prince has terrible stats, the new king in turn is murdered.
      Jon: I think the Hungarians just assassinated the king! But that means the new king's OH NO.
  • Failed a Spot Check: Jon has an infamous and downright memetic ("-1 Perception", the comments inevitably say) tendency to miss crucial information on the screen, to the rage and hilarity of the viewers. Highlights include:
    • Besiege: When attempting to create a catapult, he attempts to use other parts to act as a basket for a bomb... not realizing there already is such a part.
    • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Jon wonders why someone built a lighthouse so far from the sea while panning his gaze across the coastline of the Sea of Ghosts.
    • Empire: Total War: Constantly putting his men in front of other infantry. Often, he'll forget to tell his infantry to stop shooting as cavalry crash into the enemy unit's flanks. He never notices the discrepancy between the amount of men the enemy killed and the amount of men he lost, and sometimes says a few piddling friendly-fire casualties are acceptable losses.
    • Half-Life 2: Spending a full hour going through the game without realizing that some crates have ammo and health hidden inside them. Not only did he never break crates of his own volition, he also failed to notice when the game broke supply crates for him and goodies spilled out. The apotheosis was definitely "Oh, no that just says 'Supply', I thought that was important."
    • Imperator: Rome: Taking nine episodes to notice that, in his efforts to unify Greece, he's overlooked the independent province of Troizen smack-dab in the middle of his territory.
    • Medieval II: Total War: Discussing Venice backstabbing him in purely hypothetical terms, while he watches two Venetian fleets blockade his ports and an army march on the Danish-held citadel of Bran.
    • Stellaris: Utopia: Accidentally restricting a newly-conquered species' right to reproduce, making them hate him even more for ten years until he's able to change the policy back.
    • Stellaris: Apocalypse: Taking ten minutes to realize he hasn't conquered a system yet because he ordered his Colossus to destroy the wrong planet.
    • Stellaris: The Impossible Run: Somehow forgetting that the Prethoryn Scourge controls several systems directly on his border, with forces with over a million combined fleet power, which have been occasionally attacking one of his fortress worlds.
  • For the Evulz:
    • A major factor whenever Jon does Kill Everything. A recurring theme is Jon going above and beyond what would be necessary to kill a person because he thinks it would be funny.
    • For Jon, the difference between Skyrim's Thieves' Guild and The Dark Brotherhood is that the latter are "the fun sort of evil," while the former break shopkeepers' prized pottery.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Jon starts his second Crusader Kings II campaign as Count Leon of Zeta, an "absolute nobody" who basically decided one morning he was the founder of a noble house. 15 episodes later House Choirosphaktes is in control of the Byzantine Empire, four episodes after that they manage to repel the combined might of Catholic Christendom, and four episodes after that they've managed to re-introduce Hellenism and are moving to reform the pagan Roman Empire and restore it to its old borders.
  • Game Mod: Has used these on Fallout runs a few times:
    • There is an entire run using JSawyer Mod, a special mod made by New Vegas's director that is supposed to make the game more balanced. In addition, Jon would also show off different fan-made cosmetic mods for the game's weapons, characters, and environments every week.
    • He has also done run through of two high-difficulty mods, Fallout 4: Frost (taking place in a nuclear winter ten years after the bombs dropped) and Fallout New Vegas: Dust (taking place ten years after the events the game if all the worst stuff happened).
    • There's also a twelve part play-through of the extensive Fallout: New California mod, an unofficial prequel to New Vegas.
  • Gender-Blender Name: Jon has a tendency to choose a female Player Character when the opportunity presents itself, but they are still almost invariably named Jon.
  • Girl on Girl Is Hot: Jon likes to play female characters. Jon often pursues lesbian romance options, especially if there's a nerdy or geeky girl. Guess what type of girl his girlfriend and editor is?
  • Give Me a Sign: In Medieval II Total War, Jon jokes that King Thorgils asked God for a sign whether He approved of Denmark's warmongering and brutal conquests, and the result was The Black Death breaking out all across the world.
  • Godzilla Threshold: During his Stellaris Impossible run, Jon decides that one way to combat the endgame crisis is to open up the L-Cluster, hope it contains a midgame crisis, and that the two crises get in each other's way. It doesn't take long for him to realize that this is actually making the galactic situation much worse.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Jon's experience in his Crusader Kings III preview video. He wants to reform his religion to make it more accepting of his character's lustful, adulterous lifestyle, which will require building up Piety to change it. To do that, he spends decades going around waging wars to capture people for Human Sacrifice, securing his faith's holy sites in the process. This nets him a lot of Piety, but his religion flourishes as well, gaining lots of adherants who believe warmongering and mass human sacrifice are wonderful, so even with his high Piety, Jon still can't afford to reform it into something more sex-focused.
    Jon: I've accidentally started a mass death cult.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: It's pretty flipping common.
    • However he did swear in Episode 11 of his New Vegas: Kill Everything series.
    • Another notable incident of Jon swearing was Episode 3 of his Fallout 4 Survival Mode play through - which was the result of being jump-scared by a deer.
    • When doing Crossovers with Nerd Cubed, he is also much freer with his swearing.
    • He's more relaxed with the swearing in his livestreams, too.
  • Gratuitous French: Episode 17 of the New Vegas No Kill Run has an entire segment where Claire plays instead of him and comments in French, with subtitles thankfully.
  • Gushing About Shows You Like: invoked Both of his "_____ is Better Than You Think" video essays (for Fallout 3 and 4 respectively) are dedicated to Jon praising the two games and emphasizing what he thinks are their best qualities, though he's also a lot more critical regarding the latter and later released a third video where he talked about some of his constructive criticisms and complaints regarding the game.
  • Heel Realization:
    • In Part 79 of his Skyrim playthrough, Jon looks back on what he's done and comes to an uncomfortable conclusion.
      Jon: I'm feeling very conflicted indeed, 'cause, you know what? When I joined the Dark Brotherhood, I just wanted to kill everyone in the world. And now I've killed the most important and difficult-to-kill person in the world, and... I just feel, like in many ways, I'm not actually the good guy anymore. Like, I'm actually a vampire-serial killer-assassin-thief. And that just feels like the sort of thing that, when the history books of whatever era we're in right now — the Fifth Era I think — when they write the history books, I feel like that person is not going to be remembered as the great hero of the world. I think I've... I've made some mistakes. I've taken some missteps. And in many ways, killing everyone as a vampire serial murder, is actually not the right thing to do.
    • During his run of The Last of Us he realizes he may have gone too far with the flamethrower.
      Jon: And FLAMETHROWER!!! Flamethrower, flamethrower, flaaaamethroweeeeer... okay, so this is definitely morally questionable. The point where you start singing the flamethrower song, potentially you've gone over the line.
  • Hidden Depths: As mentioned in the very first episode of his Ryse: Son of Rome Let's Play, Jon is a trained classicist, with him having even done an entire module on early-to-mid Imperial Roman history. It helps explain (at least part of) his annoyance with Ryse for its many egregious Anachronism Stews, and he's gone on to frequently comment on classical Mediterranean history when tackling any game touching on that wide period of history (i.e., Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and Rome: Total War).
  • The High Queen: Queen Yuselass the Holy from Crusader Kings II, a pious, virtuous woman who lays the groundwork for the creation of a Cornish Empire.
  • Hollywood Tactics: While Jon was playing Total War: Three Kingdoms, he would often win battles, and then send spearmen to "chase down" fleeing cavalry. Men on foot very seldom catch up to men on horses, even when the men on foot are not carrying heavy polearms.
  • Hypocritical Humor: When forced to repay a blood-debt by the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim, Jon singles out one particular victim after learning he's a mercenary.
    Jon: Who would go around the countryside, selling their sword-arm, and murdering- oh, wait, me. Well you know what? Let's get rid of the competition.
  • I Meant to Do That: Jon triggering traps in Skyrim is just him getting a chance to level his Restoration magic, or have the full dungeon experience.
    • During his Worst Courier run of New Vegas, he drags a scorpion into Goodspeings early on hoping the town residents will kill it, but the opposite happens, many residents getting killed by the creature. Then after some amount of time with Jon tiptoing around the scorpion, the powder gangers attack and get wrecked by it.
    Jon: My stupid, stupid plan worked!!! It turns out I'm a genius!
  • Ignored Epiphany:
    • Several times during his Stellaris: Apocalypse playthrough, Jon notices that his habits of betraying and conquering his neighbors, and blowing up worlds with a planet-cracker, are making his attempts at diplomacy difficult. He never changes tactics, though, and ends up winning a domination victory, in part because he's noticeably reduced the total number of habitable worlds in the galaxy.
    • In Skyrim, after his first murder-for-hire, Jon declares that maybe the assassination business isn't for him and muses about joining a "Guild of Kittens" to pet cats and find kittens good homes. Then he's abducted by, and immediately joins, the Dark Brotherhood.
  • Implausible Deniability: During his Mass Effect: Legendary Edition playthrough, Jon uses the melee attack to knock unconscious the Zhu's Hope mind-controlled civilians in order to not kill them... but Wrex shoots one right after she got knocked down and she incinerates. Against all odds, he gets away with it.
    Jon: If anyone asks, she melted of natural causes.
  • Inadequate Inheritor: Comes up often during Jon's Medieval II campaign, but the standout is King Skapti due to unexpectedly taking the throne after the previous king, who Jon spent a lot of effort making a chivalrous, awesome ruler, is assassinated by the Hungarians, leaving Jon stuck with a low-Authority leader right when he's got Mongols coming at him.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun:
    • Never underestimate the lengths Jon will go to for a pun.
      Jon: [puts down pizza] Have a slice! [kills man] Three hours, I've been waiting to use that pun!
    • After becoming the Great Brit-Ant, he dubs Dogmeat the "Brit-Ant-y Spaniel."
    • In The Pitt DLC, after killing a Raider named Friday, he picks up her corpse and throws it off the roof because "She's gotta get down on Friday." He then cracks up and declares any remaining viewers are welcome to unsubscribe from his channel over the badness of the joke.
  • Informed Ability: Jon will try to lecture on science and engineering during certain games, even though he has no higher educational background in either; he actually has a degree in Classics. He also clearly has no idea what he is talking about.
  • Insane Troll Logic: He'll sometimes resort to this to justify why everything he does is morally right, such as in Knights of the Old Republic where he justifies destroying the galaxy's main source of medicine by claiming that without medicine to heal the soldiers there will be less wars.
  • Insistent Terminology: Upon realizing that Oblivion’s alchemy system allows him to make a potion out of bread and cheese, Jon starts referring to all of his potions as sandwiches. After capping the skill he declares himself the world’s best sandwich maker.
  • Insult to Rocks: During the Ride to Hell stream, when someone in the chat says that the game in question is as bad as a David Cage game, Jon says that while David Cage games are terrible, they're not that bad.
  • Ironic Echo Cut: In his video on the release version of Parkitect, during a thunderstorm:
    Jon: It's fine, [the guests on the Ferris Wheel] probably won't be struck by lightning. [cut to precisely this happening] Nevermind, the Ferris wheel was struck by lightning.
  • Ironic Name: As Jon notes when he dies, King/Emperor Catastrophe in Crusader Kings II is not the best named of the dynasty's rulers, considering he ended his life as a wise scholar and Magus of the Hermetic Society who united the dynasty's kingdoms into an empire.
  • It's Up to You: This annoys him while going through Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood missions.
    Astrid: Look, we've got to deal with this situation. You've got to deal with this situation.
    Jon: He didn't stab me, why do I have to go and deal with it? I'm already basically taking point on the whole "assassinating the emperor" thing, which is apparently quite important, how about someone else in this flipping guild of assassins take care of the rest of it?
  • Kissing Cousins: King Iliad in Crusader Kings II has a baby with his cousin Yuselass, much to Jon's shock.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: From his Fallout 4 Frost run, when he spots a brahmin:
    Jon: This is going to take all my skill and cunning as a hunter to sort out DIE, DIE, YOU MOOING BASTARDS, DIE!!!
  • Loophole Abuse: All over the place in Jon's second Crusader Kings II campaign.
    • After the Kingdom of Serbia joins the Byzantine Empire, Jon's plans of expansion are halted when the emperor bans external vassal wars. So Jon switches his primary title to the Kingdom of Croatia, which he also controls but is outside of the empire's de jure legal control, and proceeds to go on campaigning.
      Jon: Like, the Emperor's just told me to do something, I've excused myself, stepped outside, I come back in wearing a slightly different hat, and now I'm claiming the law doesn't apply to me.
    • After Jon's dynasty takes over the empire, he expands to the point that all his neighbors form defensive pacts against him. Key word, him - those pacts don't fire if Jon's vassals declare their own wars of expansion, and since he's set the realm's laws to allow external vassal wars, the empire continues to grow without any direction from Jon.
    • Putting an army in Raiding stance and moving into a neighbor's territory makes that neighbor hostile, but is not technically a declaration of war. This allows Jon to use his own retinues and levies to support his vassals, by going on raids that just so happen to coincide with their own wars of expansion, or weakening enemy holdings so that they're easy pickings for a vassal's forces.
  • Loyal Animal Companion: During Jon's adventures in Skyrim, he picks up Vigilance the guard dog in Markarth, who accompanies him and Benor on their adventures. After Benor's death, Jon declares the "saddest, most tragic thing of this entire runthrough" is watching a dismissed Vigilance leave Breezehome to go home, which Jon interprets as the dog walking the length of Skyrim in search of Benor. Who is in Peru. Where there's no phones.
  • Make It Look Like an Accident: Jon's idea of disguising some of his unnecessary killings in Skyrim is to drag the corpses into a firepit to make it look like a "tragic cooking accident." Which is admittedly better than his attempt to leave a corpse draped over a trunk in a "tragic chest accident."
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: The assumption during the Stellaris: Utopia playthrough is that Space Rome's clone armies consist of mass-produced Tabbies combined with mushroom men, swarming planets with cat-fungus creatures that act like they want tummy rubs, only to viciously murder the local forces.
  • Mole in Charge: Attempted in Medieval II: Total War, when Prince Henry of France, who Jon is at war with, contacts him with a mission to assassinate King Michiel. Jon is happy to comply, since he wouldn't mind a ceasefire, the 5,000 florin reward, and installing a new French king with zero Authority, meaning the French armies would start going rebel left and right as soon as Henry became ruler. Unfortunately it doesn't work out because Jon kills the French king in battle rather than with an actual Assassin, and the now-King Henry benefits from an overflow glitch that makes his Authority "fall" from 0 to 5.
  • Murder the Hypotenuse:
    • As part of his drive to "take the Raxar to the prom" during his Stellaris: Apocalypse run, Jon ends up destroying any empire they form a federation with, in hopes that they'll be willing to form one with him once they're "single" again.
    • In Skyrim, as soon as Jon learns that Astrid is married to Arnbjorn, he identifies him as who he needs to kill if he wants to get with Astrid.
  • Necromantic: Jon's Skyrim character becomes one via the Dead Thrall spell after "realizing" that Benor wasn't actually cheating with Iona.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • In Stellaris: The Impossible Run, Jon fending off the Zero Index comes back to bite him when the Prethoryn Scourge arrives right by their general location. The Zero Index, previously extremely powerful, is no longer strong enough to take on the Scourge after Jon helped subdue them.
      Jon: Basically, by saving the galaxy, I have doomed it.
    • Then, during the same run, he decides to try to slow down the endgame crisis with a midgame crisis by opening up the L-Gates, which not only puts the entire galaxy under attack from what was in the L-Cluster (namely, the Gray Tempest), but also allows the endgame crisis to attack through the L-Gates instead of being contained to one quarter of the galaxy. As one YouTube commenter memorably put it, Jon's attempt to fix the situation was essentially analogous to "unleashing bears on the fire fighters during a forest fire."
      Jon: Oh no, what have I done?! I've accidentally doomed us all! The Gateway network's actually gonna hand them the keys to the entire cocking galaxy! Aw, they're all going! Oh no! Nononono - what do I do?!
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Jon's Skyrim build only avoids being a Master of None because he somehow makes it viable. His character starts off as a lightly-armored melee fighter using a sword and shield, moves into the magic schools of Conjuration and Illusion to summon allies and befuddle enemies, picks up a companion and plays healbot with the Restoration school, gets good enough at sneaking to backstab unaware foes, becomes a Vampire Lord, improves and enchants a suit of armor allowing him to serve as a frontline Magic Knight, cures his vampirism only to become a vampire again so he can properly defeat some vampire hunters, then goes from that to werewolf, cures himself of his lyncanthropy, and briefly becomes a vampire a third time just to turn in a quest before curing himself for good. Jon occasionally refers to himself as a "Necro-White Mage" and at one point was "a vampire-serial killer-assassin-thief."
  • Noodle Implements: Sometimes in the Fallout series, unrelated items will be found near each other and Jon will speculate as to their purpose. In his Fallout 3 Kill Everything run, he notices a tricycle and a harmonica in a Raider brothel and supposes they must have catered for some very specific fetishes. In the same run, he finds a vacuum cleaner and a hockey mask in Elder Lyons' trunk - "a good weekend'.
  • Odd Name Out: King Catastrophe's sons in Crusader Kings II are named Joy, Delight, Happiness, and Brian.
  • Oh, Crap!: A frequent occurrence, usually when Jon gets surprised by something or gets far too cocky. As a general rule, he gets louder as he gets more worried.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: Evil Jon from the "Kill Everything" Runs of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas is bent on killing pretty much everything and anything possible, including herself at the finales. There are some characters that can't be killed; in those cases, if Evil Jon can't get rid of them by other means (usually enslavement), he will do everything possible to make their lives miserable, such as lay out mines or steal all their food.
  • The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: invoked Despite his overall apathy for Ryse: Son Of Rome, Jon does admit the game is actually quite gorgeous, with him being especially impressed with the animated flashback sequence concerning the Black Centurion's knife.
  • Patricide: In Crusader Kings II, King Iliad is murdered by his son Achilleus by way of exploding manure.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Upon learning that the Snake Oil Salesman he's contracted to kill in Hitman 2 is also attempting to exploit the mailman's short remaining lifespan to sell Altantide to him, he immediately declares he is "so looking forward to killing this guy". After a quick restart so he can have the proper gear on hand, he then proceeds to poison the salesman's coffee, and gets the Silent Assassin title for the mission.
  • Pet the Dog: Evil Jon's treatment of Melody the slave girl's teddy. He won't tear it apart in front of her, though he will happily tear apart the legionnaire who took it from her in the first place.
  • Planet of Steves:
    • Used whenever a nameless NPC discovers another one dead: "What happened to Steve?"
    • He also adapts the name to be era-appropriate when necessary (such as using "Stevius" in Rome: Total War)
    • The courier in "The Worst Courier" run is appropriately called "Useless Steve."
    • Any and all children, pets, and/or animals in games become Timmy. Taken to the extreme in House Flipper when he builds a room for his and Claire's four imaginary children: Timmy, Timmy Jr, Timmy Sr, and the Timmy We Don't Talk About.
  • Please Select New City Name: Jon renames several settlements in Medieval II Total War. Aarhus and Tbilisi become Ourhaus and Tabby, respectively, because Jon can't pronounce the original names, and similarly he renames Caen and Rheims to Cannes and Rhymes due to his trouble with French. Antwerp is renamed Peasantwerp in honor of a unit of Peasants that somehow fended off some Armoured Sergeants, while Smolensk is renamed Lasagne (specifically Tesco lasagne) after hundreds of Russian cavalry are slaughtered there; Ryazan later becomes Lasagne the Second for the same reason. Bruges becomes Iron Bruges after being upgraded to a fortress, then Iron Eystein in honor of a dead royal family member. And Moscow becomes Moss Cow and London becomes Milton Keyes more or less for funsies.
  • Poor Communication Kills:
    • In Fallout 3, Evil Jon tries to sneak Rory out from underneath the slavers' noses so he can complete the "Rescue From Paradise" quest to be let into Little Lamplight. When the slavers spot Rory, he is forced to fight them so he can save Rory and finish the quest. It doesn't end well...
      Evil Jon: [running into the Paradise Falls infirmary] Doctor! Doctor, there's been about seventeen tragic misunderstandings!
    • In Stellaris: Apocalypse, the Tenets of Tabby keep receiving offers of starting a joint war from the Othari, which Jon keeps declining. The negative diplomatic modifiers quickly add up, turning the Othari from a valued ally to a mortal enemy, all because, as Jon puts it, their emails were accidentally marked "spam."
  • Punny Name: Some of his Space Romans' planet names in his Stellaris: Utopia run include Jonstantinople, Clairethage, Pondpeii (an ocean world settled by ducks), Aurora Sporealis (a cold world settled by mushroom men), etc.
  • Put Them All Out of My Misery: Jon's motivation for joining the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim is that "If I don't get to live in a world that has Benor in it, I don't see why anyone else should get to live, full stop."
  • Pyrrhic Victory: In his Fallout: New Vegas "You Only Live Once" playthrough, Jon does some Brotherhood of Steel quests as early as possible so he can get access to power armor, in order to increase his survivability. In the process, he takes two big hits of damage from a shotgun trap and giant mantis that cost him a total of 63 HP, which he concludes is not a good trade for Damage Resistance against future damage.
  • Reincarnation: According to Jon, Please Don't Shoot of his New Vegas "You Only Live Once" run was pre-incarnated into the protagonist of Fallout 3, and named after her first words in that life, "Oh, Not Again."
  • Sanity Slippage: Jon and Claire both take a certain level in insanity when Jon has to play a livestream of Ride to Hell: Retribution.
  • Sequence Breaking: In Skyrim, one of the first things he does in Riften is use creative jumping and Shouting to get into a house that's normally out of reach until the very end of the Thieves Guild questline, which he steals several valuable items from, including a legendary weapon and evidence of a guild member's duplicity. After reading warnings in the YouTube comments, Jon breaks back into the manor to return a quest item so that he's able to properly steal it later.
  • Serial Killer: A disturbingly common theme is Jon's characters becoming this, particularly in the Kill Everything runs.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Space Romans: In his second Stellaris playthrough, he tries to recreate the Roman Empire IN SPACE!.
  • Spanner in the Works: Basileus Symeon is this to... well the entire Byzantine Empire, really, due to him outlawing vassal wars, effectively neutering despot Perun's ability to expand or fight the (many) enemies of the Byzantine's.
  • Spoof Aesop: In Assassin's Creed: Odyssey when rescuing Phoebe from the Cyclops's thugs:
    Jon: The important moral lesson I've learned here today is: The real treasure is the actual physical treasure that exists inside treasure chests.
  • Stalker with a Crush: His empire of Tabbies in Stellaris became this towards the Raxar. They never wanted to form a Federation with him (or as Jon phrased it, '"take them to the prom"), and so when things became irreparable between them, Jon did the only rational thing one can do in such a situation: Build a Death Star, move it into orbit around their homeworld, and declare that Prom Night was here...
  • Tautological Templar: After insisting that he's performed a Heel–Face Turn late into his Skyrim playthrough, Jon explains that going against foes like necromancers automatically makes him the good guy, even though he's harvesting their souls (meaning that he's condemning to an eternity in the Soul Cairn) and fighting alongside his own Undead Thrall.
  • Technical Pacifist: Jon in his first Stellaris run. He made the Mighty Ducks, a race of Pacifist, Materialist ducks. He spend most of the game "liberating" his neighbors, American Style.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Jon's relationship with Serana devolves into this over the Dawnguard questline, despite him being initially happy to meet another necromancer lugging around an Elder Scroll. Their friendship quickly starts to sour when both Jon keeps attacking her reanimated minions by "accident" and Serana keeps strolling in front of him while he's having conversations with other NPCs. A good example of their unintentionally antagonistic dynamic is Jon repeatedly blasting Serana over cliffs with Unrelenting Force to get her down them followed by Serana then "accidentally" knocking him off an overlook. The real tipping point can be argued as when Serana sits in a fancy chair before Jon can park his rear in it.
  • Theme Twin Naming: In Crusader Kings II, Emperor Happiness' Half Identical Twin children are named Matt and Cat.
  • Troll: He will often pretend to offer assistance to a character in the game before simply ignoring or killing them.
  • Troll Bridge: Invoked in Rome: Total War, when Jon sends Spurius the Ugly, who has the Scares Small Children trait, to guard several key bridges on his northern border.
  • Took a Level in Badass: High Chief Perun of Jon's second Crusader Kings II campaign, who started as a skinny nerd whose only advantage in personal combat was the fact that he was basically wielding the hammer of Thor. After a few months on campaign, he's picked up the Brave trait, and went from Weak all the way up to Brawny, turning him into both a killing machine and the despot of Serbia.
  • Unfortunate Name: During the RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 playthrough, Jon decides to name his swinging ship ride "Captain Jon's Arrrrr-some Adventure" before realizing it actually sounds like a creepy pun on the word "arse." So, he then names the ride "Captain Jon's Non-Sexual Pirate Adventure"... except the name exceeds the character limit, so it just comes out as "Captain Jon's Non-Sexual Pirate". And it turned out he had actually renamed a guesty on the ride due to a missclick.
  • Unfriendly Fire: Jon's artillery in Medieval II Total War has a bad habit of inflicting as much damage on his own forces as the enemy. Standouts would be the time he killed his own general by charging into an enemy unit his cannons were already bombarding, or the siege of Mosul, when Jon managed to destroy his own gates by trying to shoot an enemy on the other side.
  • Uriah Gambit:
    • Jon's plan on getting rid of the old, infertile wife of one of his Crusader Kings II characters is to send her on missions to provinces suffering from plague outbreaks. But see below...
    • In Medieval II, where you can't manually change your faction heir, Jon resorts to this to get rid of some inferior princes. Prince Ulf - or rather his mounted bodyguard and an accompanying unit of Scouts - at least manages to achieve an improbable victory to take a rebel settlement in the process.
  • Wham Line: From his Skyrim playthrough:
    Jon: Welcome back... Benor.
  • "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The last video in the Rome: Total War series discusses what happened to various cities and family members in Julianus Vatinius' empire.
    Jon: The people of Nepte came up with a dance so sexy that Julianus Victor had no choice but to ban it. Julianus Scapula is still terrible. Paerisades died in Palmyra; when Julianus Victor was informed, he responded, "Who?"
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
    • Jon mentions in his Fallout Survival playthrough that Venus Flytraps creeps him out.
    • Jellyfish and similar-looking creatures also give him the willies, such as the Spectral Wraith in Stellaris and the Netch and Silt Striders in Skyrim.
  • Why Won't You Die?: His reaction to the wife of one of his Crusader Kings II characters, who not only keeps recovering from diseases but seems to be actively driving them away.
    Jon: Why?! Just die, please!
  • With Catlike Tread: During his Skyrim playthrough, Jon enjoys "being a badass" by sneaking up on enemies for a Back Stab. Problem is, he installed a lighting mod that makes interiors really dark, so to compensate he got a buffed Candlelight spell to help him see, leading him to try creeping through dungeons with a brilliantly-glowing ball of light orbiting his character's head.
  • Would Hurt a Child:
    • His Evil Jon character doesn't hurt any children because you can't kill them in the later Fallout games unless you use specific mods. It sure doesn't stop him from trying, though; he still fires weapons at them, enslaves any children he can, mines the entrances to their homes, and steals all their food only to replace them with drugs.
    • During a House Flipper build, he not only makes a tiny room that barely holds two sets of bunk beds for his imaginary children, but proceeds to add knives and guns to the room. After doing so, he realizes forgot something, so he goes back to do the only responsible thing he can think of... he adds a first aid kit to the room.

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