Lets Play / Persona 4 Endurance Run

"Look at this guy! He's got the face of sales!"

"Get ready to throw the rest of your life away, because Vinny's spending the rest of his playing Persona 4, and he's inviting you to watch."

— Jeff Gerstmann

The Let's Play of Persona 4, as played by Jeff Gerstmann and Vinny Caravella of GiantBomb.com.

As the story goes, Jeff bought Persona 4 while the Giant Bomb staff were on break, but soon realised he would never be able to finish it in his spare time. The tale nearly ends there, until the day Jeff decided to ask Vinny to review the game, an offer which Vinny countered with "Why don't we play the game in the office, and record it?" to which Jeff's reaction was, reportedly, "What?".

So began the legendary adventures of high-school student Charlie Tunoku, shadow-slayer and ladykiller, as he searches for the truth behind a multiple murder case taking place in the sleepy country town of Inaba. Along the way he'll get jobs, pass tests, make friends, and cast Bufu on things he shouldn't, all accompanied by the MST3K-esque commentary of Jeff and Vinny.

Here's the link to the episodes. A more user-friendly playlist is available on YouTube.

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Tropes:

• Alternate Character Interpretation: In-Universe; they come from Jeff and Vinny themselves. For starters, Funky Student and Fox are drug dealers; Charlie is a Gundam model enthusiast who is afraid of cops; Ayane, the girl from the band social link is Chiaotzu; Yukiko likes the Scathatch; the doctor at the Inaba Hospital is the world's most incompetent doctor; Dojima is an Ax-Crazy Abusive Parent (this predating and most likely inspiring Hiimdaisy's take on the character); the Ghoul Persona is lonely and just wants some company; and Chihiro and presumably the rest of the student council drink cough syrup. Oh, and the Heaven dungeon is a stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
• Advice Backfire: Averted, but barely. Going into the Shadow Yukiko fight, Jeff and Vinny had gotten some good advice from a viewer: get a Slime, train it until it gets Red Wall, and fuse Senri. To someone who's played the game before, the reasoning behind this plan is pretty obvious: use the Red Wall Slime in the Senri fusion, so you end up with a Senri (who is immune to fire) that knows Red Wall, so you can cover Chie's fire weakness without exposing yourself to fire damage. Unfortunately, Jeff and Vinny weren't yet that savvy about persona fusion and only remembered the broad strokes of the plan, leading to them avoiding using the Slime in fusing Senri (because they remembered that Slime was important but not why). This ultimately resulted in them repeatedly switching to Slime, which is weak to fire, in the middle of Shadow Yukiko's battle to cast Red Wall on Chie. Fortunately, this did not end up getting them killed, but it did cause them to run a very risky strategy without realizing the danger they were in.
• Angst Aversion: Invoked. Jeff and Vinny get rather turned off by how upset all of the Social Link characters are, which is partly what draws them to Chie, since her Social Link is relatively lighthearted.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Jeff and Vinny think that Kanji's dungeon is going to be a boring textile shop-themed level where all the enemies are carpet monsters and such. A few minutes later, they figure out exactly what kind of place Kanji's dungeon will be.
• Big "NO!": A rather sarcastic one upon the revelation of Naoto's true gender.
• Big "OMG!": A rather epic one upon seeing the result of their first fusion mistake: Abaddon.
• Big "YES!": The response of the guys upon upgrading Charlie's Social Link status with Chie to girlfriend.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: One instance of Shuffle Time:
  Vinny: "I kind of want the hot pixie, the hot bondage chick, or the hot pixie bondage chick."
• Butt-Monkey: Kanji and Nanako. However, Nanako is one of the NPCs that they grow the most attached to, and they later regret not being able to progress Kanji's Social Link to its conclusion.
• Catchphrase: As far as Jeff and Vinny are concerned, "Get bent!" is Kanji's catch phrase. This is despite the fact that he only says it once in the game.
  • Although he does say it sometimes when using Atomic Press.
  • Adachi: "Bitch" and to a lesser extent "I'm a creepy raper guy".
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Invoked for the playthrough, and also played with. Vinny gets so used to having Yosuke, Chie, and Yukiko as Charlie's party members because of their elemental coverage and how long he's forced to use them before Kanji joins the party, and as a result that's the only party he ever considers for more serious dungeon crawls and the boss fights. He sometimes tries to use Kanji and Teddie (and Yukiko) as a "B Team", however.
• Determinator: Jeff and Vinny themselves in Part 61. Despite frequent, random power outages at their office, the guys hook up the PS2 and recording gear to a backup power supply and keep on rolling.
  Jeff: "Nothing stops the Endurance Run, mother fucker!"
  • Charlie becomes one later after getting up despite just having been murdered by a Goddess
• Did You Just Punt a Tank?
  • Later recreated in their Quick Look of WarioWare DIY.
• Ending Fatigue: Invoked, Vinny's a little exhausted of the game once he reaches Izanami's dungeon.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: One instance where they're fusing personas.
  Jeff: "It's a unicorn, just like the sign says!"
• Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: Invoked in their Naoto impressions.
• Fan Disservice/Squick: The guys' reaction to Izanami's up-skirt.
• Filler: Played with. Some episodes have Vinny make little to no progress (especially 42, 86, and 125), but the idea of the Endurance Run is that they go through the whole game, uncut, and don't have too much time to spare playing the game.
• Flat "What": Multiples:
  • Their reaction upon seeing Namatame's shadow, Kunino-sagiri.
  • Also when the doctor announces that Nanako came around.
• Forgetful Jones: Jeff and Vinny sometimes forget things about the game mechanics that they've previously learned.
• Full-Name Basis: When referring to their colleagues off-mic, Vinny sometimes calls Ryan by his first and last name.
  • Also applies to any time they make jokes about Nanako dying and/or being kidnapped.
• Genre Savvy: Being video game reviewers, this comes into play.
• Harem Seeker: Charlie manages to make almost all the girls of the Investigation Squad his girlfriend and tries to do this with Sayoko the Nurse. He ends up being Just Friends with Naoto due to the somewhat Guide Dang It! nature of that relationship and Sayoko's arc ended up on a completely different note.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In-universe. Charlie and the team discover that Morooka was killed, and Vinny feels a little bad for making fun of him in the previous video.
• He's Just Hiding: Invoked. Vinny believes this to be the case for Nanako. He's later proven right.
• Hulk Speak: Whenever Charlie goes into his Hug Animation
• I Hit You, You Hit The Ground: From Part 93's description:
  "This'll be over in two hits Yosuke, me hitting the X button and you hitting the floor."
• Insane Troll Logic: "You can't kidnap a dead person! We'll out-kill the killer!"
• Lower-Deck Episode: Parts 95 and 96 are another B-Team excursion (meaning Kanji and Teddie are in the party instead of Vinny's usual setup), and they fight their first boss in Part 96.
• My Personas... and Ghoul.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Vinny humorously lampshades this in regards to himself and Jeff for having ordered so many items from Tanaka, thereby allowing Nanako to become more familiar with the deliveryman and later get kidnapped by him, as he's not a stranger to her.
• Official Couple: While Charlie builds up a small harem, Chie is considered his de-facto girlfriend.
• One True Pairing: Invoked through Jeff and Vinny, Charlie and Chie are this.
• Punny Name: An unintentional one, but Charlie's full name can be one for Starkist mascot Charlie the Tuna, given "Tuna" is what the pair originally wanted to name him.
• Random Number God: Sometimes it smiles upon them, sometimes it doesn't. Still, they're actually very lucky, managing to beat notoriously difficult bosses in the first try.
• Really Gets Around: Charlie.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Jeff and Vinny, respectively. Interestingly, Vinny is the one more likely to go on impulse despite being the more mellow one, while Jeff advises him to think things through, despite being the one with bigger reactions.
• Running Gag: Lots.
  • Kanji's "get bent" and variations of it, such as "man, I'm bending all over the place!"
  • Let's spend time at the capsule machines!
    • You spent time reading the tropes page. It's time to go home.
  • Ghoul and Black Frost.
  • Popularity leads to intimacy.
  • Fox/Funky Student being competing drug dealers.
  • Their theories about how Persona 5 will be.
  • Adachi can't stop calling people bitches.
  • That's it, this endurance run is over!
  • Aha! Is this a running gag?
  • "Hey Dave, we're gonna fight the king!"^note Dave sits in for an episode, where Jeff and Vinny promise they'll go fight the bonus boss in Yukiko's dungeon. They never get around to it in that episode, and keep joking about it whenever Dave enters the room later on.
  • "Look away from the cards!"^note Jeff having fun with the dramatic wording used to denote the option to opt out of Arcana Chance at the ends of battles.
  • Investigation Team, go!
  • Jeff lampshading the adjectives in the shadows' names.
  • Chie's victory quote, "Who's next in line for a stomping?" to which Vinny answers, "Me."
  • Vinny sighing whenever Charlie comes home after Nanako and Dojima are gone.
• The Scrappy: Invoked within the Endurance Run. The guys quickly drop Yumi's Social Link due to her Wangst and almost completely ignore Ai for being an Alpha Bitch. They do go out with Ai once later on, but that leads to them getting caught by Yukiko.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: They make fun of Tough Guy for fleeing once Shadow Kanji is defeated.
• Shout-Out: Many to various Hip-Hop songs and rappers, including, but not limited to, mentioning JJ Fad when they acquire the "Supersonic" item, mentioning Ice Cube when getting the "Ice Cube" item, and the description of Part 93, which is a reference to a Notorious B.I.G. line.
  This'll end in two hits, Yosuke, me hitting the X button, and you hitting the floor.
  • Vinny: "The world ends with Charlie!"
  • The Princess Bride gets a shoutout when Naoto mentions being prepared for an incapacitating chemical, and Vinny name-checks iocane powder.
  • Discussing the delay between recording and posting of videos: "When will then be now?" "Soon."
  • Several to Metal Gear games.
  • According to Jeff, World 4 of Magatsu Mandala is the giant world.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Invoked concerning the Endurance Run itself. It gets these sorts of responses on YouTube, as Vinny's Persona fusing methods and battle strategies aren't quite optimal. All of that criticism, despite the fact that he gets through the game just fine regardless (in addition to being recorded years prior, and meant as a blind playthrough).
• This Is Gonna Suck: In Episode 77, featuring one of the first normal battles with Rise as Combat Commentator, Jeff realizes early that he's not going to like her.
• Too Dumb to Live: At one point, Jeff and Vinny decide to auto-fight against high-evasion enemies with Hama. They got hit by one, and lost an hour of grinding.

• Unwanted Gift Plot: For their gift to Nanako from the trip to Iwatodai, Charlie chose the lamp. Regardless, she still loves it.
• Useless Useful Spell: Jeff and Vinny initially think that a couple of instant death skills are these. They learn their lesson later.
  • They also get a love-hate relationship with Yosuke's confusion spell, Tentarafoo.
• Video Game Caring Potential: The group quickly grow attached to the characters. For example, later on in the game the guys are quite disturbed by the obvious foreshadowing of Nanako being the next victim.
  • Especially noticeable in Part 130 when Nanako dies. During a large part of it they are a lot quieter and unfocused compared to other episodes.
  • Despite all the jokes leveled at him, the guys express on more than one occasion that it'd be pretty cool if there was an option to date Kanji as part of the social link.
• Was It Really Worth It?: Parodied in Part 128. Vinny jokes that he's not sure that Charlie is a good person to have around, since everyone he cares about by that point is either angsting, risking their lives to stop a murder case, or in the hospital.

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