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Lets Play: Raocow
WARNING: non-sequitir content ahead
tagline for his Youtube account

Raocow (real name Samuel Tanguay) is a notable, though somewhat minor, personality in the Let's Play community, known and loved by many for his Non Sequitur commentary and pleasant-yet-amusing voice. He became a YouTube partner on March 17, 2011.

Also artist and co-creator of Artificial Time XS. His community forum, Talkhaus, created A Super Mario Thing, which Raocow also contributed to.

Games that Raocow has LP'd:

A full list can be found here.

Tropes that apply to Raocow:

  • Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: He has a surprisingly large English vocabulary, but often pronounces things strangely, due to English not being his first language.
    • He stated that he doesn't mind people correcting his pronunciation, but that sometimes his odd-sounding words are on purpose. In addition, words that have a French origin often confuse him due to his uncertainty of which native pronunciation to use.
  • Advancing Wall of Doom: An extremely annoying version can be seen in this VIP 4 video in the Temple of Homing level, where the entire second half the level is trying desperately to outrun a homing missile at top speed, including flight (link to video)
    • The Sawdust level in Mario Gives Up.
  • Always a Bigger Fish: Poochy is basically the unreliable steed to Mario's unreliable steed.
  • Alt Text: Raocow uses the tags on his videos for basically the same purpose. To quote the tags in this video:
    I tend not to use tags properly instead [I tend to use] them as one of those alternate image tag joke things you see sometimes in webcomics and whatnot
    • This eventually verged into Easter Egg territory when YouTube stopped showing tags on the pages— as of August 2012, they're only visible through reading the site's source code.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: Referenced. During his LP of Runman, he notices the still shot of a serious-looking Runman during World 2's intro cutscene. Raocow says "that must be American Runman".
  • Amusing Injuries: Raocow accidentally fractured his foot during his VIP 3 playthrough. He makes fun of it.
  • And Now For Something Completely Different: Occasionally, his normal silliness gives way to much more educational material, such as his explanation of humans' abilities as endurance hunters.
    • Episode 60 of his An SMWC Production LP abruptly switches to an LP of Santa Mario due to technical difficulties.
    • When he's having trouble with an especially hard game, he'll often randomly switch to playing Voxatron for a day or two.
  • Angrish: Inverted when he, after numerous attempts, completes level 8-5 of MariAri2. It's complete gibberish to symbolise relief.
    BASHISHUSHAJBUAY! Whew! Which I'm pretty sure is pig latin for bashishushajbuay.
  • Arc Words: While his stream of consciousness commentary style may seem completely random at first, certain words get referenced semi-regularly. Raocow himself mentioned he notices he uses the word "laundromat" a lot when he tries to think of a random word.
    • New Jersey and Tim Hortons are referenced a lot as well.
    • And buckets. Lots and lots of buckets.
    • As well as lozenges and McCain.
    • "Mayonnaise!"
    • "Video game!"
  • The Aristocrats: Invoked after completing a rather arduous desert level in A Super Mario Thing.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Every episode of his LP of Craz'd is named after a mental disorder, like Paranoia and Bipolar Disorder. Episode seven is named Lactose Intolerance.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: "It's a little known fact that every single talkhaus member... ooh, little shiny shinies with my fingers!"
  • Ascended Extra: Not with Raocow, but with N!SMW2 Yoshi's Island, Lord Puddington was originally just a one-level appearance enemy (Although it did make another appearance in the GBA version) that wasn't necessary for collecting any Red Coins or Flowers.
  • Bait and Switch: Done in this video.
    Raocow: Now, I've got a lot of requests here to play as a certain green-hatted dude*, so... sure, I'll play as Luigi.
  • Berserk Button: Oh, mentioning Youtube video errors on his videos' comments page.
  • Bilingual Bonus: Raocow occasionally speaks his native Québécois French, leaving what he's actually saying to whoever else understands the language. Most of the time though, he's just venting his frustrations with the level at hand, incorporating the French cuss words of "merde", "tabarnak" and "simonak".
    • On a few occasions, he does translate:
      Raocow: Hello. How's it going? Rock'n Nonne. That's the name of Sister Act in [Canadian] French, for some reason.
    • In one video, after realizing that he needs to start the level all over, he spends the last 5 minutes performing the commentary in French. A translation video from a fan exists.
    • In one video, where he finishes a Castle, he proceeds to read the English text as if it were French.
      • Double Entendre: The episode title "La petite Kappa" translates (with some awkward French grammar included) to "The little Kappa", aka Nitori, the main character of the game he was playing. But, seeing how he replaces one word in all the episode titles in Nitroid by "Kappa", one can figure out that the title is actually a reference to the French expression "la petite mort" (little death), which roughly translates to "having an orgasm". Said expression very accurately describes his commentary in that particular episode.
  • Black Comedy: Discussed at the end of his playthrough of Mario Gives Up 2. His consensus is that, while the ending (Mario sending Peach into a lava pit, like in the intro of the first game) would have been funny to him if he were younger, it strikes him as disturbing as an adult.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Oyster's translations of the VIP level titles (which were out of context, sans kanji) resulting in, among other things, the memorable "Dodge The Beefsteak."
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: "It's a cat! It's a bubble! It's a Bubble-Cat!"
  • Breathless Non Sequitur: All the time. Let's just say that if you don't enjoy Non Sequiturs, you won't enjoy raocow. One example from this video:
    "That guy is wearing a helmet, but it doesn't protect him from the dangers of mustard. Probably because mustard is something you eat. I've once received a drop of mustard on my head and I don't think I've suffered a lot of brain damage although, I mean, I could be wrong. I've been wrong about a lot of things in the past such as: Yogurt is not a cat, I had to learn that the hard way, and you can not play the piano if your piano is resting precariously on top of the CN Tower."
    • The title of his Youtube channel even says "WARNING: non-sequitur content ahead"
  • Brick Joke: Black Plague, the hilarious True Final Boss of Super Mario Infinity, shows up years later as the (rather weak) True Final Boss of A Super Mario Thing.
    • The same boss is referenced in one of his Bowser's Last Stand videos, when the identity of the Man Behind the Man is revealed in the penultimate castle- he refuses to use its actual name and calls it Black Plague instead, since both are equally as ridiculous.
    • While playing Mushroom Kingdom Meltdown, Raocow spends several minutes on a non sequitur about skeleton growth being the cause of bodily aging, to the point where the skeleton will pop out of the flesh. Weeks later, during Nezumi Man, this happens. He mentioned skeletons pushing on skin several times in the LP; it's one of the few jokes that he repeats. If I'm not mistaken, he also makes the reference in his Yoshi's Island hack LP.
    • The legendary ending of SMI2 is not the only time he has faced a time bomb.
    • During The Great Empire, in episode 10, there's a stage called "Boomerang Bro Bonus". It features a single Hammer Bro, rather than a Boomerang Bro. In episode 11, he calls a Hammer Bro's weapon a boomerang.
    • In one episode of Vip 4, Raocow goes off in a tangent about a squid that had too much power. In Super Mario World Freedomn, he runs into a giant Blooper, calls him Ikachan (referencing another LP of his), and then says he shouldn't hold that much power.
    • In Distorted Travesty 2, early on Claire mentions a key boss. Now, where did we hear that before...
    • In Super Talking Time Brothers 2, he pretended to have forgotten Kirby's name, calling him "Zbambabar", among other random words (see Laser-Guided Amnesia in this same page). When playing the prequel, he says that "it's a shame that Zbambabar is not here".
    • In one episode of Notte Luminosa, he jokes that him saying "oh man" actually means "brrr," because he lives in Canada and it is cold. Later, at the end of the episode:
    "Oh man. (beat) I really should close that window."
    • In ASMBXT, the final boss is the Key Boss. The Toads you meet just before the battle are talking about how they finally found a way to beat him once and for all.
  • Buffy Speak: He is fond of referring to everything as a thing with a thing, and enemies as guys ("Hey there, guy").
    • Justified, as Raocow is from Quebec, and French in Quebec has many, many words that mean "thing" with different connotations that don't translate well into English.
      • Particularly arduous levels are especially often referred to as being "a thing."
    • He decided on "Mr. Bean Man" as his name of choice for the Meep enemy in the Commander Keen Let's Play.
  • Butt Monkey: Yoshi, the green mistake of nature. Except for Yellow Yoshi, whose fart-powers apparently amuse the Cow of Rao.
  • Canada, Eh?: Along with Psychedelic Eyeball, one of the two big French-Canadian LPers to have come out of Something Awful.
  • Canon Discontinuity: Raocow does not make any mistakes. Any mistakes he makes are either "demos" to show off what happens when you DO fail, or experiments done For Science!. When he does make a mistake, he will call a mulligan.
  • Catch Phrase: "Hey there, everyone, this is Raocow..." "That was a demo." "That's pretty great." (sometimes pronounced "S'pretty great") "Oh boogers." "Chipmunk time!" "Panic panic panic." "Not gonna lie." "Like it was no thing." "Science." "Jesus-hell!" "Good times." "This is Raocow, see you guys."
    • "Destroy the world!" when something chaotic is going on.
    • "That totally happened." He says this when state-rewinding to avoid a cruel and/or unfair trap.
    • His earliest LPs have "I am not feeling this one." and "That was pointful." He even mentions that he hopes the former doesn't become a catch phrase.
    • "Join me next time, possibly/probably tomorrow..." at the end of his videos.
    • "Isn't that great? Not really."
    • "That's crazy town!"
    • In more recent episodes, after particularly nonsensical non-sequiturs he says "What am I even saying here?"
    • "That guy, he has opinions."
    • He often describes things as "destroying the world" when said action only involves destroying a small object of little significance.
    • He sometimes calls people "happy Dan"s, including himself.
    • Hitting an enemy while the enemy hits him back is often referred to as "an exchance of services."
    • There's also the occasional reference to beefsteaks and dodging them (in reference to a particularly nonsensical alternate reading of one of the level names in the VIP series.)
    • "Oh man".
    • As well as repeated mentions of Raocow being the greatest video game.
    • "Fart."
    • After making a mistake: "I'm pretty good at video games, by the way."
    • "What's the story, Wishbone?"
    • "I can tell you that, using words of the English language."
    • "Hey there ___, how's it going?"
    • When responding to text in the game, he says "You don't say".
  • Character as Himself: Raocow is a playable character in A Super mario X Thing. As if it wasn't meta enough already.
  • Character Development: He overcomes his abject terror of squashing eyeballs during his Drama Mystery playthrough. "That's good, that means I'm growing as a character".
  • Characterization Marches On: It's really weird hearing Raocow swear a lot in his earlier videos. Though you probably won't hear a Cluster F-Bomb, he still swears a lot more in his earlier LPs. Also, his typical Talkative Loon personality evolved slowly, to the point that he barely even seems eccentric in his early videos.
  • Cloud Cuckoo Lander/Talkative Loon: raocow's Lets Plays are filled with some of the most bizarre and surreal commentary one would ever hear. It helps that he's a French-Canadian for whom English is a second language, although he's still rather fluent in English.
    • He periodically speeds-up random bits of footage to squeeze a video in Youtube's 11-minute (or 15-minute as of July 29, 2010) mark. Sometimes the chipmunked footage is no less intelligible than the real-time.
  • Cliffhanger: This video ended right after the game explained to him that the level he was about to play could potentially break the game simply by playing it.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: During his Let's Play of Super Mario Infinity: Mystery of the Magic Wand, he talks about a point in another game he was trying where it becomes a series of "'Fuck you' after 'fuck you' after 'fuck you.'"
  • Continuity Nod: When experiencing a lot of slowdown in the fourth video of his Romancing Mario LP, he says "Hey there, everyone, this is Raocow playing Mushroom Kingdom Meltdown." Later in the same video when he got to a section that had a white foreground and white background, he said, "Hey there everyone, this is Raocow playing What the Hell."
  • Convection Schmonvection: Lampshaded in a YouTube Let's Play of the 2ch VIP2 Super Mario World romhack
    • He more specifically addresses this here.
      Raocow: This is just barely hair-singing me, because you know, lava, normally, like, at this proximity, Demo would be something like evaporated by now, but I mean we're talking about reverse-gravity lava, which has COMPLETELY different physical implications.
  • Corpsing: There are some videos in which Raocow laughs continuously for several consecutive seconds (sometimes even minutes). It helps that he has perhaps the most contagious laugh you will ever hear.
  • Cuckoolander Commentator: As mentioned above, his trademark style of commentary.
  • The Cuckoolander Was Right: Raocow's preconception of the level 90 Degree Climate in Super Talking Time Bros. 2
  • Cute Kitten: (Let's Play of cat planet!)
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory:
    • Invoked in his Kouhai 2 Let's Play, when he notes that playing Super Marisa World's squirrely controls has made it hard to go back to Super Mario World.
    • He discusses it when he goes from Super Mario Bros. X's controls to Super Mario World's slightly looser controls, and the differences cause him to (among other mistakes) die 8 seconds into the first level of the ROM hack Romancing Mario.
  • Deadpan Snarker: mostly in the YouTube comments (as opposed to his usual hyperactive Cloud Cuckoo Lander in the videos, but that has shades of it too).
  • Department of Redundancy Department: As Raocow himself put it: "I need to resist the allure of constant repetition."
    • His "cat planet cat planet planet cat cat planet" LP of cat planet.
    • "Hey there, tap-tap the tap-tap," in his Super Mario World 2+ LP. Which later becomes "Tap-Tap the Tap-Tap the Tap-Tap the Tap-Tap".
    • One video title from Mario Gives Up, taking place in a cloudy world, was titled "cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud".
    • In the same video, "literally and I mean that in the literal sense"
    • Repo Man. Repo Repo Repo Repo Repo Man. Repo Man. Repo Repo Repo Repo Man. Repo Man.
    • Everything is a robot in Monsteropolis. Even the robots.
    • It's boss time Mister Guy!
      • All the time during CRAZ'D, in fact.
    • "Right, macey mace mace the mace mace?"
  • Dethroning Moment of Suck: In-universe: New! Super Mario World 2 Level 2-E is the one of the few levels he's publicly insulted outright, and by his own admission, the least fun he's ever had playing a mod. Just clearing through it left him drained mentally and emotionally, (you can hear his controller hit the floor when he's done) and by the end, he was downright angry at the creator.
    • During his playthrough of the English patch for VIP 1, he mentions that he felt the giant floating mass of carnivorous plants in the film adaptation of Life of Pi was the point where the film "jumped the shark."
  • Dissimile: All the time. Just one example:
    Raocow [While playing TSRPR]: "A castle without forest is like a dalmatian without a tongue. It has a lot of trouble eating."
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Invoked repeatedly throughout Kirby's Dreamland 3 when a helper character attaches themselves to Kirby.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: His first LP, The Second Reality Project, is downright lifeless. He improves dramatically after that.
  • Easter Egg: The video tags after they got removed, since they still can be found in the pages' source codes.
  • Easy Mode Mockery: Inverted. When he turned the difficulty down for the Climax Boss of Distorted Travesty just to see what the final phases would be like, he stated that the game has become unfair in his favour. Could also be seen as a reversal, as he's essentially mocked the easy mode. Note that the game did proceed to kick his ass anyway for a while.
  • Eloquent In My Native Tongue
  • Eskimos Aren't Real: Exaggerated; he often claims that a thing isn't real because he just encountered it in the game.
  • Even The Subtitler Is Stumped: Turn them on and enjoy the insanity.
  • Evil Is Hammy: He noticeably enjoyed playing an Evil Overlord in Psycho Waluigi.
    • Although the main character is not actually evil, Raocow's behavior during Copy Kitty suggests this, especially during the extra missions.
  • Excuse Me While I Multitask: Averted - Raocow has issues doing two things at once (not including talking). Cue him playing "Multitask" and failing repeatedly.
  • Failed a Spot Check: Happens fairly regularly, justified most of the time as him rambling and not noticing the flying fish that's about to land on him. And then sometimes he fails to spot the difference between foreground water (which Mario can swim in) and background water (which Mario cannot). In any case, he'll just shrug (or laugh) it off.
  • Fair Weather Mentor: Raocow arguably falls into this when he is teaching fellow troper AOD to play Super Mario World for the first time.
  • Fake Difficulty: He sees the wind sections in Hyper V as these.
  • Fan Nickname: invoked He's come up with a whole mess of them.

  • Fauxlosophic Narration: The "story" in the Rise to the Challenge hack.
    • His explanation of Samus Aran's backstory during his play of the Super Metroid Legacy hack...
      "We don't even care about the story, it starts with the same thing. It's about a guy who, y'know, goes to the bathroom and he ends up in an alternate dimension where he's a lady in a space suit."
  • Flat "What.": During the discussions surrounding ASMT, this was Raocow's reaction to Rule 34 of his character being made.
  • For Science!: His justification for exploring an area, finding it leads to death, then rewinding.
  • Foreign Cuss Word: "Tabarnak" (approx. "goddammit") "voyons" (approx. "Oh, come on!") and "simonak" are common, with "Merde" on occasion.
  • Funny Character, Boring Actor: Raocow has admitted that while he's doing his videos he's incredibly, well, weird, he has difficulty maintaining that state of mind all the time.
  • Gag Sub: Youtube's Auto Captions are CONFUSED by Raocow's speech.
  • Genki Guy: Pretty much the only time he runs out of energy to commentate is when a level is really hard.
  • Game Mod: Raocow plays many Super Mario World mods, which have been a mainstay of his LP ensemble since he began. The members of Raocow's community have also designed a mod for him to play titled A Super Mario Thing, complete with tons of Shout Outs to Raocow's many Catch Phrases.
    • He's also made his own Kaizo-level romhack appropriately titled What The Hell?
  • Genre Savvy: Raocow is very genre savvy when it comes to platform games. He can sniff out a secret exit with almost no hint of its existence, and he even figures out puzzle levels, the bane of most platformers, without too much difficulty, mostly because he's Seen It All by now.
  • Gentle Giant: In his "tagged" video, he says he's 6'5", and in "Opening Pandora's Box," he described himself as "nearly two meters" tall. Both in and out of character, he seems like a friendly, easygoing guy.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Lampshaded in one of the GMC Jam games that Raocow plays. The game ends with the Microsoft Sam-voiced Final Boss helicopter from the creator's previous Jam entry appearing and proclaiming "I AM HERE FOR NO REASON."
  • A God Am I: In his Copy Kitty Let's Play, Raocow gets just a little drunk on power and declares himself the Supreme Being. He then goes on to destroy the world (as usual) and kill Satan.
  • Good Bad Bugs: invoked In Super Mario Infinity, he likes the glitched "Course clear" screen that reads "Course cleior."
  • Good Bad Translation: invoked Raocow gets a big kick out of the strangely-translated Portuguese of Drama Mistery, including a sign that reads "OK SON, YOU ARE DOING THIS WELL" and a character named "JOWEY, the poison cow".
    • When talkhauser Otane did a "proper" translation of VIP1 for raocow, she left the level named "Dodge the Beefsteak!" alone because that was just too damn funny. (The actual translation was more along the lines of "Avoid the enemies".)
  • Gratuitous German: This video. It's actually pretty good.
  • Guide Dang It: This Game Maker game provides very little instruction of any kind. Conequently, Raocow has a little trouble figuring it out.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Essentially every time he submits a level to a collab hack, just to die hundreds of times in traps of his own design when playing the level on record.
    • Some of the difficult levels in ASMT were of Raocow's own design, including the infamous Trial of Iron.
    • Yes, he's the one responsible for this mess. He hides it at first, presumably to receive unbiased feedback from his watchers, but owns up to it at the end of the second video.
    • He also made a level in SMBX, named "murder death place zone". Here it is. You can actually hear him throw his controller across the room.
  • Horse of a Different Color: Yoshis, which he even calls "horses." Inverted, too: when he comes across an actual horse in one mod (and the same horse in another) he calls it "Mr. Dinosaur."
  • Hot Blooded: LPing Copy Kitty tends to bring out the Hot Blooded, Ax Crazy god of destruction within Raocow.
  • Hypocritical Humor: After the name "madcow" appears in Karoshi 2.0's credits, he comments on how silly it is to have the word "cow" in your username.
  • Ice Cream Koan: Raocow would sometimes say seemingly political or controversial sounding phrases in his Lets Plays that might just actually be meaningful and insightful. But if you think of it for a while, you will realize that it's just a plain Non Sequitur.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Nearly every LP has its own pattern to episode names. See here for more information.
  • I Meant to Do That: "That was a demo."
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Isn't the goomba in his SMBX level a-door-able?
  • Infallible Babble: Discussed early on in the LP of An Untitled Story.
  • Inherently Funny Words: According to Raocow, "laundromat". Also "parsimony", "clement".
  • Insistent Terminology: SMBX is an engine, not a game.
  • Instant Web Hit: It's usually commented that any video uploaded by Raocow, or having Raocow as one of its tags gets 3,000 to 4,000 views by the end of the day. This includes demos, silly cuts, audiosurf songs, or whatever.
  • Internet Mimic: A lot of Raocow's fans imitate his idiosyncrasies, catch phrases, and speech patterns on his forums and video comment sections like it was, provorbially, no thing, yo.
  • I Think You Broke Him: Often times when a level is extremely difficult or annoying, Raocow would either go crazy or silent. This leads to comments accusing the creator(s) for "breaking Raocow".
    • Probably the best example of this is this level. One of the highest rated comments on this video is "Raocow broke."
  • Jump Cut: Often used to get him back to where he was before dying, or to remove several failed attempts to get to a place. Often paired with him jump-cutting mid-sentence.
  • Kindhearted Cat Lover: Very much so.
    • During his LP of Clarence's Big Chance, Raocow outright refused to bring harm to any of the cats in the game, despite them actually hurting you if they made contact. While he accidentally defeated one of them once, he proclaimed "That never happened."
    • Exemplified in this brief, simple, but very moving tribute to his cat who passed away. If you listen closely, you can hear him stifling tears in the background.
  • Late Arrival Spoiler: SMWCP's level Rupture in Reality was made by Raocow, although he tried to hide that when he played his own level.
  • Large Ham: "I FOUND A HEART!"
    • And "JUMP HEIGHT! UPGRADED!!!!'"
    • Later, he found another kind of heart.
    • And earlier than that: "The power of [color] Switch...YOU HAVE!!
    • WHO DARES TO TRY TO STOP THE TIME BOMMMMMMMB?
  • Larynx Dissonance: While voicing many female characters ingame, he usually has a varying level of result, but his voice for Marisa Kirisame is just bizarre....
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Invoked(?) in this video, where he seems to have forgotten Kirby's name.
    raocow: Your name is not Yoshi. What's your name again? Pizza? Zbambabar?
  • Lawful Stupid: In his Newgrounds Roulette, he made up some rules for himself: He'd pick one game from Newgrounds' daily top 5 each day to LP, "game" meaning anything with even the slightest bit of interactivity. This resulted in him LPing a small animation collab simply because you could choose which animation you want to watch.
  • Law of Conservation of Detail : Due to the way he cuts his videos, you know that if a reattempt of a level is shown at normal speed, or from the beginning of a section he would normally jump-cut, he will succeed during that attempt, or at least something interesting is going to happen.
  • Lethal Joke Character: Any enemy that was meant to be point fodder in the original Super Mario World gave Raocow lots of trouble during his ascetic run.* One enemy in particular - the suicidal koopa of Vanilla Dome 3 - gave Raocow lots of strife as he tried to avoid it. This koopa' lack of self-preservation instinct seems to be unintentional though - it behaves more reasonable in the GBA version.
  • Logic Bomb: In "Mushroom Kingdom Meltdown" he claims he has voices in his head, but can't hear them.
  • Mad Libs Catch Phrase:
    • "Scary like X (Bananas usually)"
    • Before starting levels, he often says, "We're gonna [part of the level name] it up."
    • As of recently, "Nuts to you, X!"
    • "There's an X there and his name is Y."
    • Mentions of various people eating their weight in X.
    • When an enemy starts behaving strangely, Raocow comments that "That (enemy name) doesn't know what the hell."
    • As of late 2012/early 2013, he's taking to adding the suffix "-on" to random words.
  • Madness Mantra: CATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCAT!
    • Yellow hurts!
  • Major General Song: A fan-made one.
  • Meaningless Lives: Double Subverted. In VIP5, he dies a ridiculous amount and still has plenty of lives. Then, in the level THE GREED, he loses almost all of them... and immediately goes grinding.
    • There are quite a few hacks he's played with a location that pretty much doles out free lives. Or at least has a vine next to a Bullet Bill generator so he can exploit a bug to farm for lives.
  • Milkman Conspiracy
    Raocow: [while playing An Untitled Story] You can't destroy the Milkman!......don't tell that to Kiwis, cause it might get infected. INFECTED WITH THE TRUTH!
  • Mind Screw: THE PURPLE HORSE!
  • Missing Episode: The Viddler-hosted episode of his VIP 3 LP titled "Mercy" was lost when Viddler closed his account.
  • Musical Episode: He routinely sings his commentary to the tune of the level music.
  • My Future Self and Me: Sort of: in some of his Hyper V videos, he's been adding post-commentary in the sections where his live self (or Livecow as he calls him) gets quiet from frustration. This sometimes leads to him talking over himself, and he's even told his past self to shut up at points, making his videos even more surreal than they already are.
  • Nightmare Retardantinvoked/Laughing Mad:
  • "No. Just... No" Reaction: After realizing that he hadn't 100-percented the revised New! Super Mario 2 Yoshi's Island level 2-E, which featured a near level-long, life-or-death !-switch run, was loaded with obstacles and allowed absolutely no room for error:
    No.
  • Oh Crap: while Let's Playing VVVVVV, Raocow sees the entirety of "Doing Things The Hard Way". And then it sinks in just why it's considered the single most difficult token to get. Also leads to the fastest fast-forward to date.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: He lapses into this quite often during his LP of Copy Kitty. It reaches its peak here.
  • Once an Episode: Starting somewhere in the summer of 2012, punctuating dumb mistakes with the phrase "I'm pretty good at playing video games, just in case you didn't know" and an exasperated cry of "Video games!" became this.
    • After someone complained about this in the comments, Raocow going out of his way to find other words to illustrate his incompetence became a Running Gag.
  • Orphaned Punchline: A lot of his quotes can seem like this, but they're usually non-sequiturs. This actually happens occasionally when he stops fastforwarding midsentence.
    raocow: ...and I am not a time-ologist, unfortunately.
    • Also occasionally happens due to jump cuts.
    raocow: ...twenty-five days to write non-stop.
  • Overly Long Gag: The ending to the 25th video in his A Super Mario World Central Production LP in which he repeats a fake laugh for nearly a full minute. The laugh even appears at the start of the next video.
    • "Oh man, I'm building more bridges, ain't that amazing?"
    • It's boss time, Mr. Guy! It's boss time, Mr. Guy! It's boss time, Mr. Guy! It's boss time, Mr. Guy! It's boss time, Mr. Guy! It's boss time, Mr. Guy!
    • Oh man, I'm swimmin'. Oh man, I'm swimmin'. Oh man, I'm swimmin'. Oh man, I'm swimmin'. Oh man, I'm swimmin'. Oh man, I'm swimmin'.
    • "My name is fart. My name is fart. My name is fart. My name is fart. My name is fart."
    • Near the end of the eighth video of his "Ascetic Super Mario World" run, he starts listing names of symphonies Ludwig van Koopa composed. For forty seconds straight, his commentary consists of nothing but him replacing words in the titles of popular symphonies, books, and movies with "Koopa."
  • Overused Running Gag: Lampshaded here when raocow goes farming lives off a bullet bill cannon for at least the 6th time.
    raocow: Yeah, this part has stopped being funny by now.
  • Padding:invoked If a video ends up extremely short on content (like not even coming close to 10 minutes) he'll often play a few Voxatron levels at the end.
  • Perfectly Cromulent Word: Raocow actually drops the trope naming word here.
  • Pet Peeve Trope: Again, invoked.
  • Platform Hell: Raocow has played through some of them. The Kouhai series are a good example.
    • This one level has the gimmick of killing you if you score any points. Everything in Super Mario World gives you points, including coins. Raocow's reaction is in the link.
    • His own romhack, What the Hell, also falls under this a good deal, especially since most of the enemies are invincible.
  • Player Tic: He always jumps through the Yoshi's Island goal rings backwards.
    • He'd also occasionally make Mario dance by rapidly hitting the D-Pad buttons.
  • Precision F-Strike: Oh, it happened. Occurs during a rather frustrating tower of boss fights in Bunny Must Die. One of the rare occurrences of the F-word a) being uttered, and b) being clear enough to not miss.
  • Previously On: This video. Before he starts playing, he shows the footage from the Cliffhanger example on this page again.
  • Rage Quit: This infamous video (Of an episode of him playing "Cave of Elements"). Only level in that game where he got extremely frustrated playing through.
    • WARNING: If you REALLY want something depressing, just go to 17:52 (And it goes downhill from there). Not a pretty sight. And the ending's quite miserable too. At least in the next episode he's quite cheerful compared to frustrated. He even says that it's one of the only few levels that he has ever ragequitted.
    • It is mentioned that he did it with Acid Labs Inc. from Mario Gives Up 2. He just straight up deleted the footage and just played the level all over again.
    • The final level of Marisa & Alice was so unforgiving that it caused Raocow to give up on the game entirely, going so far as to dump the game folder into his Recycle Bin and and empty it on camera.
    • In the extremely unfair hack "S. Mario" ("S" as in "sadistic"), Raocow has had to "Rage Quit" a couple of times. Although one of the levels wasn't implied, he showed a video of one of his "scrapped takes" and it actually isn't too bad.
    • Particularly unfair levels get the "OH NO the game just crashed!" treatment:
    • Stalagmite Ruins in Distorted Travesty made him decide to take a hiatus from that game, at least until he was done with N!SMW2.
    • Bugs introduced by the compiler of Tower Of Biased 2 caused Raocow to give up on two levels. On one, hitting the midpoint did absolutely nothing, and the other, on several occasions, actually crashed.
    • He gave up on one level in A Super Mario Brothers X Thing as the result of a Game-Breaking Bug that resulted in it having No Ending. After spending four hours and over 200 lives even getting to that point.
  • Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: Raocow has taken to reading the musical notes/stars/etc. that pop up in Marisa's dialogue in Mari Ari 2 out-loud.
  • Recycled IN SPACE!: His reaction to the Space Tanks (BONUS 4) level in Mario Gives Up.
  • Rule of Funny: According to the commentary in this video, he usually went into chipmunk time only if he didn't think the commentary was interesting enough to warrant splitting into two videos. With YouTube no longer having a time limit, he still chipmunks just because it's one of his trademarks, and has even lampshaded it at least once.
  • Rule of Three: In this video, raocow insists on saying the word "mayonnaise" a total of three times throughout the entire video. And in doing so, he inadvertently saves Tokyo from a giant butterfly monster.
  • Running Gag: Insisting that the Toad House slot machine game in Super Mario Bros 3 is impossible, even when he's winning at it.
    • Insisting that Yoshi isn't in The Invasion 2, immediately dropping him down a hole whenever he appears. He's eventually forced to admit that Yoshi may, in fact, be in the game.
    • During his playthrough of the GMC Jam #5 entries, the references to the theme of the contest ('facade') were occasionally so blatant that Raocow sometimes just replaced random words with 'facade' when reading any text the games provided.
    • "I FOUND A HEART!!" occasionally returns in other Metroidvania LPs, such as Distorted Travesty.
    • Raocow arguing with the end-of-level horn in Super Talking Time Bros. 2.
    • Raocow causing game designers to patch their games when he LPs them.
    • Finding little graphical slip-ups (usually cut-off graphics without an edge) and stating that the game will never be accepted in Super Mario World Central (usually when the game isn't even a romhack).
    • Any modifications to the Big Boo sprite in Super Mario World romhacks are liable to make Raocow burst into uncontrollable laughter. Black Plague is probably the most famous example of this.
  • Sanity Slippage: Inverted. When especially difficult levels start to grind away at him, Raocow's Breathless Non Sequiturs begin to dry up and he sounds increasingly... normal. Can be rather unnerving when compared to his usual demeanor.
  • Save Scumming: Averted in later videos, but played straight in most of Raocow's earlier videos. For hard hacks like the VIP series, Kouhai, and others, he would use save states all the time, but he later stopped doing that except for the occasional science moment, unless the levels were really unfair.
  • The Scrappy: This is Raocow's opinion of Yoshi the stupid freakin' horse.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: In-Universe: Raocow really does not like wind or homing Bullet Bills.
  • Self-Deprecation: Raocow often informs us that he's "playing super-badly, just to be different."
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: His ascetic run (no coins nor points unless absolutely necessary) of the original Super Mario World.
  • Sensory Abuse: This ironically bad hack in the 2010 vanilla contest had horribly corrupted music, which he commented on repeatedly.
  • Serious Business: Raocow has repeatedly said that he thinks most Let's Players ignore the "let's" part of the aspect. Among other things, this means he insists on keeping the comments open even when people are spamming him with help.
  • Shaped Like Itself: ...So basically, playing a video game is like playing a video game.
    • "This level is a desert. You can tell because it's a desert!"
    • "Welcome to the Forest of Depth. It's a very deep forest."
  • Shout Out: All the time. A notable example is in his Scarlet Devil Mario 2 LP, where when describing how red the Red Switch Palace was, he randomly said Ren and Stimpy.
  • Signature Laugh: His distinct "UAH HA HA HAHAHA"
  • Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Ultimately subverted, when he's eventually forced to admit that Yoshi is, in fact, in SMBX.
  • Slash Fic: Raocow's forums even have its own thread for it. He's stated that he's not even gonna go near it.
  • Soul Jar: In one level, Mario can't let anything touch a skull shaped object, otherwise he gets killed.
    Raocow: Freaking hell, Mario, why did you have a horcrux placed in such an unusual place?
  • Spoonerism: He is prone to saying "Darshgorn it!".
  • Spoof Aesop: Way too many.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Raocow's fans can be creepy at times.
    "It's logical that you don't know how to operate an elevator, after all your house doesn't have one. It has stairs, where your can dropped something that day, didn't he, Mr. Samuel Tanguay? Is your can green? I hope it's green, since it's your favorite color, isn't it, Mr. Samuel Tanguay?"
  • Stealth Pun: In Mario Gives Up part 4...
    "Oh, there's drills there, you don't want to get drilled to death... It's almost as bad as being bored to death, you could say."
  • Stupid Statement Dance Mix: This catchy, hypnotic, and well done remix of some of Something Awful Let's Player Raocow's stream of conscious commentary while playing a Mario game.
  • Sturgeon's Law: Mentioned by name in this video, mentioning that most Newgrounds games are utterly terrible. Taken Up to Eleven when he says that the good is only a small percent of a small percent, rather than the usual ten percent.
  • Stylistic Suck: His... "webcomic", Exupéry, adventures of.
  • Surprisingly Good English: English is Raocow's second language and he's noted to speak English pretty much only for his Let's Plays, yet he verbosity is surprisingly diverse. Given, he flubs words occasionally but on the whole it's quite good.
    • In a YT comment, he stated that his father being in the military caused him to move around a lot; he apparently mostly went to French-speaking schools, but spoke English in the neighborhoods he lived in. He says this is probably why his accent isn't really all that "French Canadian"-ish.
  • Surreal Humour: His trademark.
  • Take a Third Option: In Facade, when Grace asks him whether or not what he's said so far is supposed to mean something, he replies "yneos".
  • Take That: In the intro of Mega Man: A Day in the Limelight 2:
    Game Intro: DR WILY HAS UNLEASHED A SUPER VIRUS THAT HAS INFECTED ALMOST ALL ROBOTS ON EARTH CAUSING THEM TO DESTROY ALL THEY SEE.
    Raocow: Oh no, SUPER virus?! Not Roboenza! That's a TERRIBLE idea for a plot!
    • Intentional or not, he seems to have a habit of taking lighthearted jabs at the US during his rambling.
  • Talkative Loon: His other trademark.
  • Tempting Fate: "Well, let's just hope I never die ever agai- WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?"
  • That Didn't Happen: Done by him the first time he sees a Yoshi in SuperMarioBrosX. He immediately tells the Yoshi that it's not in the game. And then he throws it off the bottom of the screen.
  • That One Level: invoked He'll run into one on occasion. Called out by name in this video, titled "that one level video". The level in question was incredibly difficult for its place in the game and took Raocow nearly two hours to finish. Not helping was the fact that the midpoint was at the very end in anticipation of a boss that was never implemented.
  • Theme Naming: Raocow has a tendency to name individual videos after certain themes. The Copy Kitty videos were themed after the Tarot and Raocow's joking megalomaniac streak, and the Super Mario Bros X videos were named after trope titles.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Raocow's reaction upon reading the name of this level
  • Three Lines Some Waiting: He tries to make two videos per day, one game for each, but then there are times where he's playing more games than that. Add in some intermission videos, and this trope comes into effect.
  • Throw The Stupid Horse A Bone: Raocow has insulted Yoshi many, many times (see The Scrappy above), including calling him a "green miscreant" and "an insult to all creation". In this video, after Yoshi looks like he's going to fall off a ledge, then doesn't, allowing Raocow to get back on him, he says:
    "Thanks for not plunging in that hole there Yoshi. I appreciate it. I-I usually I don't appreciate you enough, perhaps, some people would argue."
  • Title Drop: Invoked multiple times in the Facade video.
  • Troll: After constantly being pestered for not beating the key boss in Mario Gives Up, he finally uploads this.
    • He trolled everyone insisting that he beat the key boss a couple more times as well.
    • When someone complains about one of his gaming habits (like obsessively checking his menu in a Yoshi's Island hack,) chances are he'll do it anyway, only he'll specifically mention how he's pissing off that one guy who was complaining about it.
    • After someone complained in the comments how often raocow says "I'm pretty good at video games", raocow instead started to say variations such as "I'm pretty skilled at interactive entertainment". The day after that comment was posted, in fact, that was his video intro.
  • Undercrank: Chipmunk mode. He's even done two videos entirely in chipmunk mode.
    • Inverted in one video where a YouTube glitch causes the audio to go into half-speed before slowly cranking back up to normal, albeit about 2 seconds out of sync. Then back into chipmunk time. It's like YouTube found the one way to make Raocow more surreal.
  • The Unpronounceable: One of the many Super Mario World hacks he played was titled :P :P :P. When he had to refer to the game's title, he usually either said "P P P" or blew three raspberries.
  • Unusual Euphemism:
    • "Go eat a ham."
    • He uses "Pumpernickels!" as a swear word occasionally.
  • Verbal Tic: Try listening to see how many times Raocow says "It's pretty great" or "oh man".
  • Vocal Evolution: His voice was a lot softer, calmer and more thickly-accented at first. As he refined his Talkative Loon nature, he also developed a "wackier" tone of voice to match, while becoming more fluent in English. Even his out-of-character videos sound nothing like he did on his first LP.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: Mercilessly parodied on multiple occasions. invoked
  • Who Dares?: to try to stop the time bomb?
  • Why Did It Have To Be Bones?: Raocow admits to being afraid of bones in one video.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Seems to be the case in his Copy Kitty playthrough, although it's played for laughs. His video titles for the series even seem to reflect this.
    Raocow: I assume this is how the world works when you're also, you know, slightly FILLED WITH INSANITY! *evil laugh* The world is a Cloyster of love! Yes! Fill the world with the confettis of my soul!
    • He can't even explain the rules of the game without descending into madness.
    • He outdoes himself after defeating Exgal. His constant laughter through the whole scene makes sure that what's supposed to be scary ends up Crossing The Line Twice.
  • Word Salad Humor: Just about everything out of his mouth will quickly twist its way into this.
  • You No Take Candle: Intentionally mangles English; he's more or less fluent in both English and French. With that said, on occasion some of his structures sound odd, but he'll often comment on how bizarre they sound immediately.
  • Zen Survivor: PPR (Post-Production Raocow).

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alternative title(s): Raocow
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