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"What's up, Doods, Max here."
Max

The Online Warrior is an ongoing series of YouTube videos, made by "Miles923", primarily now known as Maximilian Dood (real name: Maximilian Christiansen), or in fighting-game circles, as simply Max. Originally covering both fighting and FPS games, he has become notably known for the former genre with his content creation, focusing on bridging the gap between casual fighting fans and the hardcore group.

Max gained notoriety among fighting game fans with the fourth episode of his Marvel vs. Capcom 3 series, doing something different- a character guide for individual characters, called Assist Me, beginning with Doctor Doom. This series was a departure from his normal fare, with actors playing the parts of the various characters, and something resembling a storyline. It was even picked up by Capcom to promote the release of Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, with 6 episodes covering 12 characters, and Marvel vs. Capcom Origins. As time went on, Max's content became primarily fighting-game-based with playthroughs (including a subseries called Boss Rage, where Max will play on the hardest difficulties), online matches, and his individual thoughts and reactions to fighting game news and reveals.

Among the fighting game community, Max is well-received as a content creator who certainly knows his ins-and-outs of a wide variety of games (especially Capcom fighting games), but with a style and demeanor that is intentionally welcoming to newcomers. Various fighting game figureheads such as Katsuhiro Harada, the current producer and director of Tekken, have praised his efforts in growing the community.

One staple of the channel was Max's Pomeranian named Benny. With a very expressive face, fans quickly latched onto him as the mascot of the channel and often appeared in Max's videos and merchandise until the later stages of his life due to Benny's declining health and increasing anxiety. Sadly, Benny passed away in 2022. Max has stated Benny will continue to be the mascot for the channel.

While Max primarily focuses on fighting games, he still will often play through other notable games outside the genre as well. He also has a second channel, ''Yo Videogames!'', a casual gaming channel with friends Matthew Simmons, Kenny O'Brien and Steve Springer (with guest appearances by Max's wife, Jessica, and their infant daughter Ripley). While the four are fighting game enthusiasts, the channel covers many types of games, especially on older hardware, and will often dedicate specific nights and weeks to a specific genre or console. Both channels are first streamed live on Twitch then are pared down into edited episodes for YouTube shortly after.

NOTE: Please add any tropes related to Assist Me or its alternate channel Yo Videogames in its proper page.


Games with their own Online Warrior Series:

Max notably doesn't regularly cover Killer Instinct (2013), partially due to the fact he's actually credited as the Story Mode Cinematics Director from Season 2 onwards.


This series provides examples of:

  • Accidental Misnaming: In his reviews of Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, as Max's knowledge of Power Rangers barely goes past Season One of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, he'll name characters other silly names, such as referring to the Magna Defender as "Dark Souls Dude" and Kat Manx as "Catwoman Ranger".
  • Angrish: Max will pedal backwards into this whenever things don't go his way during games, or after them. He starts to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  • April Fools' Day: Max posted a video, as a follow up a similar video that wasn't even done on the day itself, where he trolls his subscribers into believing that you can get the voiceovers of Wesker, Doom, and Deadpool from Assist Me onto the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 disc. Even funnier is Max treats this as absolutely horrible.
  • Apologetic Attacker: During matches, being the nice guy he is, Max will occasionally apologize for not holding back if he's playing against opponents who aren't as skilled as him. He'll especially apologize if he accidentally taunts his opponent, as Max considers taunting in fighting games to be Unsportsmanlike Gloating unless a game has Practical Taunts.
  • Apologises a Lot: Whenever Max runs into an opposing player who has their in-game microphone on, he'll mute it to preserve the quality of the recordingnote . Quite often he'll get people who recognize him ("Oh shit, am I fighting THE Maxmilian?!") or are fans of his ("I watch you videos all the time, dood!"), which leads to him thanking his opponent for the kind words and fervently apologizing for having to mute them.
  • Author Avatar:
    • Max has two in Soul Calibur V. One based off of Mitsurugi, the other based on Siegfried. He also has avatars of him and Doom for the action RPG Dragon's Dogma.
    • Max has also stated before that he likes to think of choosing fighting game characters based on the one playing in some way, shape, or form. Thus, he tends to focus on blonde men that wear red. (For example, Ken.) He'll lampshade this tendency of his once in a blue moon, like when he called the Troubleshooter in DNF Duel "this handsome bastard right here". It should be noted that the character's official DFO art makes him look like an almost dead ringer for Max.
  • Author Appeal: Overlaps with the above trope. Most of Max's notable mains like Ken and Siegfried are based on his own criterion stated above. Aside from these, he is also known to play the following characters in other fighting games (some of which would go on to be featured on his channel's animated opening):
    • Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Dr. Doom, Strider Hiryu, Wesker, Nova, Dante, Akuma, Wolverine
    • Persona 4 Arena: Akihiko
    • Street Fighter III: Third Strike: Dudley, Q, Oro, Alex
    • Injustice: Gods Among Us: Batgirl, Batman, Superman
    • Super Smash Bros.: Marth, Captain Falcon, Link, Snake
    • Street Fighter X Tekken: Yoshimitsu, Ogre, Lars
    • Killer Instinct: Orchid, Jago, Spinal, Fulgore, Glacius, Sabrewulf, TJ Combo, Hisako
    • Guilty Gear Xrd: Sol, Ky, Leo
    • Mortal Kombat X: Takeda, Reptile, Predator, Ermac, Erron Black, Sub-Zero, Triborg, Xenomorph
    • Ultra Street Fighter IV: Evil Ryu, Oni, Cody
    • Street Fighter V: Nash, Alex, Akuma, Zeku, G, Gill, Seth, Dan, Akira
    • Injustice 2: Robin, Sub-Zero, Swamp Thing
    • Tekken 7: Akuma, Miguel
    • Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite: Strider Hiryu, X, Ghost Rider, Jedah, Dante, Ryu, Monster Hunter, Sigma, Venom
    • Dragon Ball FighterZ: Team Time Travelers (Trunks, Goku Black, Hit), Super Broly, Baby
    • BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle: Team Scythe (Gordeaunote  and Ruby)
    • Mortal Kombat 11: Noob Saibot, Sub-Zero, Shang Tsung
    • Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl: Ren & Stimpy
    • Mortal Kombat 1: Smoke, Reptile, Havik
    • He also holds Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Resident Evil 4 in high regard, naming the first game as his personal game of the year for 2013.
    • Asura's Wrath had Max say it's one the best games he's ever played from The Seventh Generation of Console Video Games.
    • The above trend when it comes to mains was broken in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, as he mostly plays Mega Man, despite the Blue Bomber being meh at best, simply because he's a big fan of the franchise. Similar treatment extends to the later additions of Ryu, Cloud and Bayonetta.
    • While Max does have his preferred sense of style, gameplay is what counts most in his book; he'll give characters a fair chance if he considers them cool, but will only stick with them if they're fun to play. A big example came in the form of Kage from Street Fighter V Season 4: Max was super hyped for the character because he seemed to be a fusion of Evil Ryu and Oni, two of his favorite characters from Street Fighter IV. However, he dropped the character after only a couple of days because his Glass Cannon nature combined with slow movement speed meant that fighting anyone except other Shotoclones was a massive chore.
    • Even though his channel and his hobbies are dedicated to fighting games, Max has stated multiple times that Final Fantasy VII, a role-playing game, is his favorite video game of all time. He did a whole playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Remake on his channel, and showed massive levels of hype for the game during its pre-release as he saw trailers and news footage about it. He was even told by the creators of FFVII Remake that they liked his reaction upon seeing the game's first teaser. Max was also quite happy to see both Cloud and Sephiroth added to Super Smash Bros. as DLC characters, the former in Smash 4 and the latter in Ultimate.invoked
    • If a character's looks isn't what ropes Max into playing them, a character that's some variation of a Shotoclone will. As he puts it in "What is... A Shoto?":
      Max: ...but there's a lot of variances in between these [gameplay styles]. In fact, if we looked at the ultimate shoto game, Ultra Street Fighter IV [...] Why do we say Ultra Street Fighter IV is the ultimate shoto experience? Well, it's the only Street Fighter game - which essentially "established" shotos, right? - to feature an absolute metric shit-ton of shotos, hybrid shotos, and New Age shotos, and almost every single way you can stick a shoto, they stuck it into this game. [leans into microphone] ...and I fucking love it.
  • Atomic F-Bomb:
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Max decided to spectate people fight in Street Fighter 6's Battle Hub using their custom characters. Considering the limitations (or lack thereof) of the game's Character Customization. Max was fully expecting to see several abominations beat eachother up. He managed to get that, with the last battle he watched having a character so deformed (and using Blanka's moveset, no less), that Max began comparing it with Gollum. It was this one fight that made him call it a day as it left him very disturbed.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Plain and simple: Natsu = Salty Max.
    • "Bad Ping," for people with choppy internet connections. This includes his own internet.
    • Max considers taunting to be offensive and Unsportsmanlike Gloating. He makes an exception for games with Practical Taunts like Street Fighter III. The few times he's taunted another player, it was either an accident (for which he apologizes profusely), or in response to the other player's taunting.
      • By the same token, teabagging quickly turns him into a salty revenge-driven player. Since Mortal Kombat 11 makes you tap Down repeatedly to grant Mercy, Max tends to perform the input while jumping so it doesn't look like he's teabagging.
    • Max dislikes it when people choose the training stage in online matches, since he thinks it defeats the purpose of the game having stages in the first place.
    • Max isn't particularly fond of people in the chat trying to tell him what to do or how to play. If he doesn't put the chat into sub-only mode, he'll likely do the opposite of what he's told just to spite them.
    • Crappy netcode is something that gets on his nerves a lot, especially as someone who plays online a lot instead of tourney-hopping. Max has been championing the cause for better netcode to Japanese devs at almost every convention he's gone to in the past few years, to no avail. It got to the point where he once dedicated a 20-minute pseudo-"Real Talk" episode solely on the topic, specifically on "Not Invented Here" Syndrome, citing the myriad proprietary Japanese game engines and proprietary, not-GGPO netcode, eventually boiling down the reason to "we can't be bothered to spend money learning foreign technology". His "Hype Check" video on Dragon Ball Fighterz elaborates on how this issue affected his enjoyment of the game; after a few months of loving it, he became disillusioned by the netcode problems online not being addressed, and abandoned the game early in 2019. Even when he returned in February of 2020 to play it again, he expressed that he would very likely not play online because he was sure it had not been fixed. Max finally had his grievances on this topic addressed, albeit indirectly, in a "Fighting Game Developer Roundtable" conference held late July 2020, when Katsuhiro Harada (Tekken's executive producer) talked about the technical difficulties of adjusting 3D animations for rollback netcode and how their development team plans to overcome those difficulties. Multiple times throughout the video, Max tells his audience how happy he is to see literally any Japanese developer, much less Harada himself, finally take the issue seriously.
    • Max hates the idea that fighting games need to be for only hardcore players. While Max likes to play with skilled players and enjoys high-end play, he above all wants to have fun, and gets really annoyed at how many fighting game communities act like "Stop Having Fun" Guys. In Max's mind, this kills the FGC's chances of growing and just comes across as elitist. This is part of why he doesn't participate in a lot of big name tournaments — while Max likes the talent, he can't stand the attitude.invoked
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Max is mostly cordial and very nice, although he gets cocky every now and then, but press one of his buttons and all things tend to go downhill. Most of the time hilariously.
    • In another video Max puts up with Doom's antics a lot but snaps when Doom, in quick succession, interrupts his Call of Duty match, brings up gross Latvernian customs, sets the curtains and Ammy on fire, and disconnects the host. We don't see anything but it's not pretty.
      Max: I'm gonna take your melted disfigured ponies AND SHOVE 'EM DOWN YOUR THROAT!
    • He seriously lost his shit when Final Fantasy VII was coming to PS4, ported from its PC release instead of being remade. Several months later, when he discovered that Square Enix effectively trolled everyone, and actually were making Final Fantasy VII Remake for PS4, he lost his shit again in a much more positive way.
  • Bias Steamroller:
    • Defied as much as possible. Max does have his biases (he's not really a fan of modern anime aesthetics, most JRPGs, and similar genres), but he does his best to keep an open mind and give everything he plays a fair shot. He's openly said that he tries not to call anything "bad" outright (unless it's something universally recognized as broken or low-quality, like Kasumi Ninja); most of the time when he drops a game, the worst thing he'll say is "It's just not for me", and he'll still try to point out the aspects that he liked. That said, there are quite a few times where he had a lot of fun with games or characters that fall outside his normal range of interests, such as Them's Fightin' Herds, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, or his maining Ruby Rose in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battlenote .
    • Played straight with Simmons, who actively hates most anime and is not shy about it.
    • As Max explains in "Max is Killing the FGC", he tries his hardest to downplay the Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy mentality of The '90s arcade-era fighting game players (of which he grew up with) by helping people who want to graduate from being a casual rather than gatekeeping them.
      Max: The "realities" of fighting games are kind of what I explained; that things aren't easy, things are very hard, and it's hard to get into this community. But, to be honest, guys... we're not gang members. We're not, you know, criminals. We are dudes playing video games, and I think that can be shared with almost anyone.
    • Max's reaction to Minecraft's Steve getting into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was, at best, polite disappointment. However, he clarifies that, unlike the resulting outrage that occurred following Steve's announcement, he's ultimately happy that Steve's in the game since his inclusion makes other people happy. He also stresses that he's not obligated to hate Steve just because he's the polar opposite of Max's gaming preferences.
    • Max discusses this issue when playing Alien: Isolation. He's a huge fan of the Alien franchise, but isn't really the biggest fan of horror games due to his jumpy and easily frightened nature (as he has admitted). When he played the game back in 2014, he hated it and stopped playing it, but came back around to it in 2020 and admitted that he liked the game, and attributed his initial dislike of it more to do with his feelings on the horror genre than the game itself.
    • "REAL TALK: The Casual Appeal of STRIVE and "Re: Casual Players" has him reiterating for the umpteenth time that yes, casual players in a fighting game scene are perfectly okay, and they're the biggest reason the "Stop Having Fun" Guys of the fighting game community even have a soapbox to stand on.
      Max: People are 100% allowed to play a game for two weeks, not learn dick, but think it looks really cool and never play it ever again.
    • As he points out in his Rate The Supers video on The King of Fighters XIII, "he's biased, but he's not an idiot," and gives Athena Asamia her dues as having one of the best Supers in the game in his opinion.
    • In contrast to most other fighting game tutorial channels, his response to "How do I get good at (insert fighting game here)?" is "just go play the fucking game". He explains in the Real Talk episode "The HUGE Gap w/Casual & Hardcore Players" that learning things like frame data or movement techniques (specifically referencing Korean backdashing in the Tekken series), while ultimately helpful, doesn't do a whole lot to help new players who still struggle with fundamentals like blocking or special move inputs. He also believes this misguided but well-intentioned advice on high level play is what gets casuals to stereotype the entire genre as "working for your fun", with Max hoping that the Real Talk series can help dispel some of the stereotyping.
    • While Max was watching the December 2021 Project L update video, Max takes a moment to pause when lead developer Tony Cannon explains that simplifying controls isn't about helping new players beat pros with little effort, but to unlock the fun at all levels of skill. Max then says that he's been reiterating this for literally years, believing the latter to be an unattainable goal fighting game devs need to stop fruitlessly pursuing, and he's personally glad that a dev team finally validated his viewpoint for once.
    • Max is one of a few big name FGC figures that openly advocates for future Allegedly Free Game versions of fighting games, especially established brands, as evidenced by a small series of videos he made in response to the Japanese Fighting Game Roundable livestream discussing the idea in April 2022. He's well aware of the pitfalls of such a business model — as his fans have pointed out, issues like Bribing Your Way to Victory, Fake Longevity, more hackers due to low barrier of entry, etc. — but he does firmly believe F2P fighting games can only mean good things for the genre's exposure despite the pitfalls, usually citing Killer Instinct (2013) as a good example of this.
  • Boss Battle: Invoked in Max's "Boss Rage" series, where he takes on the final bosses of certain fighting games at their hardest possible difficulty. He tallies his total attempts against the boss, which factors into his final rating. Defeated bosses include Eyedol, Shadow Jago, Inferno, M.Bison, Galactus, Apocalypse, Cyber Akuma, Gill, Shin Akuma, God Rugal, Oni, Shao Kahn, Corrupted Shinnok and Master Core. He also occasionally delves into non-fighting game Boss Rages with games like Asura's Wrath (specifically the DLC battles with Evil Ryu and Oni) and Monster Hunter: World (where he, Simmons, Steve and Kenny hunted all the monsters in the beta).
  • Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
    • Twice, in his Gargos Week of, where he does this in his battle against Kim Wu.
    • Also, this gem from one of Overwatch Hype and Rage Compilations:
      Egdelord Max: Yes, I dyed everything. I dyed my eyes, I dyed my lips, I dyed my hair and I dyed my dick.
  • Broke the Rating Scale:
    • Max loved the Dramatic Finish for Super Saiyan Blue Gogeta vs Super Broly so much he gave it an 11 out of 10.
    • Also Flash's super in Injustice 2 where Max gave it a 13 out of 10 and called it one of the greatest supers of all time
    • Max gave both Terry Bogard's and Sephiroth's trailer in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate an 11 out of 10 and 15 out of 10 respectively and called both of those trailers two of the greatest trailers of all time.
    • SNK Galactus scores Do Not Attempt/10 in his Boss Rage episode.
    • When rating the supers for The King of Fighters XIV, he reacts in Stunned Silence to Xanadu's "The Wisdom", doesn't rate it and moves on to the next character.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Doom to Batman in Max's review of Injustice: Gods Among Us, after the Dark Knight lets the two off the hook for withholding information.
    Doom: Yeah, well, your rogues gallery is cooler than you, anyways.
  • Call-Back:
    • At the beginning of his Final Fantasy VII Remake reaction video, he shows a summary of his horrified reaction to the Final Fantasy VII remaster PS4 release announcement, illustrating how different the two FF7 reactions end up being.note 
    • When playing Skullgirls, Max says "I'll carve my own Steak" which is something he said when using Patroklos' Critical Edge
  • The Cameo: Max and Benny have appeared together as an Assist Character in the Beat 'em Up Jitsu Squad.
  • Capcom Sequel Stagnation: Discusses the trope on a Guilty Gear trailer, specifically referencing the X2 series's propensity for extremely long titles.note  While he doesn't explicitly say he dislikes this trope (he is a Capcom fan, after all), he does at least acknowledge that it's "super polarizing".
  • Catchphrase: See the page quote.
    • "HOI!"
    • "FINGER LASERS!". Directly from Assist Me.
    • "My body is [not] ready."
    • [Insert special move's name here] + Large Ham
    • "VIDEOGAMES!" or "LET'S GO VIDEOGAMES!"
    • "Let's go, son!"
    • "That's a thing!"
    • "GET HYPE!"
    • "HypehypehypeHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPE!!!" (When about to do something awesome in a quick time event)
    • "Sanic! Gotta go fast!". In Yo Videogames!
    • "Get that dick!" (Taken from Nidhogg)
    • "Salty Runback!"
  • Clothing Damage: Max goes on about the application of this in Soul Calibur V.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Max is prone to this whenever things don't go his way or his opponent pushes one of his Berserk Buttons.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
    • Max always has this problem when switching between the various Online Warrior series.
    • As far as intra-series examples go, he discusses this trope while watching pre-release Guilty Gear Strive videos - particularly for Leo, one of his favorite characters in Xrd. Leo lost a lot of his follow up options after one of his special moves, plus an aerial command grab, and he admits that it'll be tough to wrap his head around the changes.
  • Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Playing as Vergil in Ultimate Marvel Vs.Capcom 3 is treated as one of these.
    I sold my soul, and it was worth it.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: His attempt at analyzing Jack-O's reveal trailer is briefly derailed when he pauses on a frame where she's in a particularly provocative stance.
    I mean, since I don't know... (zooms in on a bent-over Jack-O) WHAT THE FU-
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Possibly at the end of Max's review of Injustice: Gods Among Us, when The Joker offers his services to Doom, who has just sworn revenge on Batman for dumping a yogurt and cutting the mane off of a Rarity doll during his interrogation.
    Joker: So, having a bit of a rodent problem, are we? I believe I can help with that. Here's my card. *laughs maniacally*
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The channel used to feature a lot more Call of Duty gameplay (Modern Warfare 2, in particular), arguably in equal measure to his fighting game content. Max will occasionally relive these days whenever a new Call of Duty game comes out, with the last big stretch of CoD-related videos pertaining to Black Ops 4's "Blackout" mode.
  • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: He actually suffered from vertigo during his playthrough of Deadpool whenever Vertigo used her powers.
    • For the same reason, he barely could play Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. The game gave him terrible motion sickness, and he had to stop playing it for his own health.
  • Funny Background Event:
    • Max frequently lampshades the ones that occur when he plays Skullgirls.
    • If Max is live watching a presentation and he's really bored he'll stand up and start spinning the chairs in his streaming room.
  • The Gadfly: While Max isn't malicious enough to be a Troll, he likes screwing around with his audience and friends. If the chat nags at him to do something, he'll generally do the oppositenote , and he loves facetiously making fun of things that other people like such as Minecraft to get a rise out of people.
    • By the same token, the chat will occasionally try to screw with Max. During his playthrough of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, they fed him false information to get him killed by the Nemesis and lied about Jessica sneaking up for a Jump Scare. That said, it's never actively malicious; the chatroom is generally positive and supportive, and Max has repeatedly stated that he's proud to have one of the nicest audiences on all of Twitch.
  • Groupie Brigade: Max has said that he stopped attending EVO in person because of the sheer quantity of people that would want to meet him at the event. It got to the point that EVO staff warned he would need security escorts to prevent people causing fire hazards crowding him. Shaking hands with strangers also got him sick enough times that he doesn't want to deal with any more. He still loves EVO, though, and makes a huge event of watching the events and following the news on his channel.
  • Guest Fighter: Naraka: Bladepoint's free-to-play update added several cosmetics based off of Max, including a skin that resembles him in an attire befitting the game's style, with the trailer even featuring Benny as Max's lifelong companion.
  • Heroic BSoD: Played For Laughs. Whenever Max comes across something in a game he's playing that leaves him speechless or one of the Yo Videogames crew says something outrageous (Simmons being the main culprit of these moments), he will often stare off into space and then cut to his "Thanks For Watching" stream outro for a couple seconds before he continues with whatever he was doing in-game
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • Max tries to cover a new weapon for Modern Warfare 3 only for Doom to cut in and tell Max to stop camping. Eventually Max hands Doom the controller and tells him to show him what's not camping. Doom then immediately started camping.
    • When Max manages to get Skarlet's unmasked face option in Mortal Kombat 11, he deliberately causes Kenny to Rage Quit due to looking for it for weeks, and spends the rest of the stream celebrating the Quitality, despite the fact Max hates rage-quitters with a passion.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Max calling Super Skrull's Inferno attack "hot" in one The Online Warrior video.
  • Insistent Terminology: He calls fighting games with extremely large Lag Cancel windows "loose", most prominently with DNF Duel. He uses the term often enough that he even made a "loose" vs. "tight" tier list to explain his positions better.
  • I Shall Taunt You: Played with. Max is not fond of taunting midmatch or post-match, believing it is unsportsmanlike conduct. However, for Deadpool's taunt or Practical Taunts in 3rd Strike, he says it's alright.
    • Max, however, is more than happy to pay back any sort of taunts back if he has the chance.
    • In one instance Max accidentally taunts his opponent once the match is over and feels terribly guilty about it.
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Max will often claim to be an expert at things he's clearly inexperienced with, such as when translating foreign languages when subtitles aren't available. If the chat attempts to correct him he'll disregard them and claim he's right. Thankfully it's Played for Laughs and is all in good fun.
  • Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Max has this mentality when playing fighting games, as he dislikes rage quitters and post and mid-match taunting. (A bonus is that he often employs the Trope Namer while playing Third Strike.)
  • Little "No": Max's reaction to seeing Hugo in this Boss Rage. Considering what Hugo does to him, he has every right to be concerned.
  • Nice Guy: Max is this, really. He never has a bad thing to say about any opponent he faces online (no matter how outmatched or inept they are), and will heap large amounts of praise on them if they play well.
  • Please Subscribe to Our Channel: Defied as much as possible. The closest he'll get to advertising anything helmed by him is video reminders on YouTube that he's streaming on Twitch, which he removes once they stop being relevant. It's to the point where he felt uncomfortable playing this trope straight once changes in YouTube engagement algorithms essentially forced him to in late 2021 (although he's since sidestepped this issue by having a less obtrusive animation of a subscribe button being clicked).
  • Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Max usually isn't too well-versed with video game IPs outside the scope of his Capcom fighting game interests.
    • Simmons had to give Max an "explain it like I'm five"-styled summary of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 when Pyra and Mythra were released for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
    • He's not the biggest fan of anime fighting games, and for ones he has played, such as some games in the Guilty Gear series, he'll readily admit he doesn't know anything about the overall story.
    • During Capcom's E3 2021 presentation, he admitted he doesn't know anything about the Phoenix Wright games, how or why they got popular, or the titular character beyond his Fighting Clown portrayal in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
    • Max knew so little about the extremely popular and arguable MOBA Trope Codifier League of Legends that he dedicated an entire 20 minute video looking at the game's roster and character lore, feeling the need to at least give it some attention to it before the release of League's fighting game spinoff, Project L.
    • Zigzagged with DNF Duel. Despite being the world's most grossing IP while its first few trailers released, Max knew next to nothing about the characters that were showcased. However, the game is extremely niche outside of east Asia, making his reaction justified. On the other hand, Justin Wong (another high-profile fighting game player and friend of Max) used to show up in DFO advertising years ago, making it a bit surprising he hasn't at least heard of the game from Justin.
    • Max claiming that Geese came back from the dead when he pops up as part of the second DLC team of The King of Fighters XV is erroneous. This is because the King of Fighters continuity is separate from the Fatal Fury one; while Geese is and stayed dead in the latter, he's still alive and well in the former, first appearing in '95 as a cameo before his playable debut in '96, and literally made an appearance in the base roster of XIV, the game before XV.
    • On a separate (though still tangentially related) note, when playing Idol Showdown, Max has made it very clear that he barely knows anything about Virtual YouTubers like the ones in hololive, those being what the game is all about. He even admits while rating the game's supers that he would likely give them higher ratings if he understood the references.
  • Precision F-Strike: Thrown around from time to time, though rarely by Max, unless he's feeling salty.
  • Rage Quit: Averted; Max almost never rage quits if he's losing. And his "Boss Rage" video series is all about how he won't quit until he beats a boss on the hardest difficulty (if whichever game he's playing has difficulty levels). Max also created a whole video explaining why no one should rage quit. Max argues that besides it just being good manners to not quit when you're losing, many games now have Anti-Rage Quitting, and leaving early might penalize you.
  • Rousing Speech: He's done a few of them, in some of his RAGE QUIT videos:
    (against Oni): We travel lightly down this path—the path to enlightenment. At the end lies a demon—a demon that cannot be surpassed unless motivation and spirit guide your soul. LET'S ROCK.
  • Running Gag:
    • Whenever someone in the chat asks Max to explain the plot of a video game (usually the one he's playing right now), the synopsis he gives is always a warped version of Super Mario.
    • Every time SNK comes out with a new silhouette for the next character (and their trailer) in The King of Fighters XV, expect Max to say it's Rock Howardevery single time.
  • The Scrappy: In-universe; Max and his friends are not fond of Bo' Rai Cho. Case in point.
  • Shout-Out: The end of Vanilla Marvel vs. Capcom 3 The Online Warrior episode 7 plays the fanfare from Back to the Future with Doom coming in like Marty at the end of the second movie. The segment serves as tie in to the next episode, which has Assist Me featuring Wesker.
  • Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: From 3rd Strike: The Online Warrior there is UFCgym, a player perpetually AFK who is there solely to steal matches from people actually trying to play the game.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Inverted. Max is a very humble person and he would have to be well known in order for Capcom to approach him to assist the release of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3
  • Tempting Fate: His Max Reacts videos are full of this.
    • Right after the FFVII Remake announcement, Max mentions that it's one of "the most requested games that was never made", besides Half-Life 3. Then he remembers Shenmue 3... right as it's announced.
    • He's watching the Nintendo Direct for 2015, and he invokes it twice. The first time is a minor one, where he decides Cloud won't be in Final Fantasy Explorers because it's a Nintendo title, only for him to appear at that exact moment, then he lazily declares it's the inevitable Super Smash Bros. announcement, only for his eyebrows to raise at the music that starts up... The introductory music for Final Fantasy VII... Apparently, Cloud is in a first-party Nintendo title...
    • He does it again with the Capcom "Kitchen" VR demo, first telling Capcom that, if it wants to make horror games like this, it should just make a Resident Evil; then making a "Resident Evil 7" joke. Cue Big "OMG!" as Capcom reveals the "Kitchen" demo was a tech demo for exactly that game.
    • Just before the Capcom 30th Anniversary celebration, his thoughts on the big announcements are a fake announcement for Mega Man Legends 3, along with a new mobile game. He didn't expect, at all, Mega Man 11...
    • When the announcement of Sakura for Street Fighter V comes in, he's initially all for it, until Capcom shows a group of silhouettes, pushing one of his Berserk Buttons, then they effectively seem to have heard his complaints, as they announce everything else in a trailer a few seconds later!
    • On a less happy note, during his Master Fortress Boss Rage, he - playing as Cloud - decided to end the battle with Finishing Touch, a move that requires fully charged Limit Break and deals only Scratch Damage, but has very high knockback. After fully charging the move, he turned to camera saying "We can smile again" and unleashed the move... but Core wasn't damaged enough and wasn't KO'd. He repeated it with the same result, and before he charged third attempt, Master Core unleashed its Desperation One-Hit Kill attack, forcing him to restart the run from the very beginning.
    • During his stream of the EVO 2020 announcements, he made an off-hand joke that Marvel vs. Capcom 2 would be on the official game roster for the event, even going as far as to say that he'd throw in 100 gift subs if MvC2 was announced. The very last announcement for EVO 2020 was an 8-man tournament for MvC2 to celebrate the games' 20th anniversary.
    • Happened twice during the Street Fighter V Summer Update stream:
      • Prior to the stream, Max had undertaken a Legacy video series on Dan Hibiki as a way of expressing his desire for Dan to appear in SFV, which was a bit unusual as he normally does a Legacy series after a character is announced. Dan ended up being the first character announced during the stream.
      • Later during the SFV Summer Update stream, Max said that if a Rival Schools character was to be announced, it would show that Capcom cares about its' fans and that they're trying to do right by them. The last character reveal during the stream was a Rival Schools character; Akira Kazama.
    • During the Game Awards 2020, Simmons sings "Backstreets back, alright!" During the Smash Ultimate DLC character trailer to which Max jokes, "N*SYNC in Smash!" This is just seconds before Sephiroth made his appearance... who has been voiced by Lance Bass of N*SYNC.
    • The intro to Capcom's E3 2021 presentation had them off-handedly mention that Capcom's fighting games division had news to share. After a brief moment of excitement, Max dialed his expectations back and advised his chat to do the same, because he assumed it was going to be something eSports-related. Sure enough, that's exactly what happens when the presentation gets to Street Fighter V. Max slouched in his chair and went on a tangent comically rolling off depressing movie quotes in response.
      Max: I hate being right, chat. I hate... I hate being cursed with knowledge.
    • Max lampshaded his tendency to predict fighting game reveals in his reaction to Baiken's Guest Fighter appearance in Samurai Shodown, going back to stream from a whole two years prior to his reaction video, where he randomly muses about a popular samurai possibly becoming a guest fighter and saying he'd be happy if it was Baiken. When he realizes that particular stream predated the 2019 installment of Samurai Shodown by two months, he lets it get to his head:
      Max: What I'm trying to say is that I have an unearthly ability to... uh, directly manifest things that are not existing into existence. Somehow, in some way... [Ominous Visual Glitch, Max gets a Voice of the Legion effect] there is a manifestation and manipulation of, um... physics, time, and... my own will, that is having an effect directly on the things that I want and the way that they appear in this real life.
    • Max made a prediction that EVO 2023 would not have any content for Killer Instinct due to Sony, the owners of EVO, not wanting to give press to their major competitor Microsoft. He ate his words when days later EVO announced a celebrity Killer Instinct tournament for the tenth anniversary of the game. Admittedly, Considering how he attended EVO 2023...
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Max's overall response when he does something wrong and gets punished.
  • Title Drop: In Max's review of Injustice, Batman calls him and Doom "The Online Warriors."
  • Took a Level in Badass: Galactus was one of the easiest Boss Rage opponents first time round. However, SNK Galactus put up much more of a fight.
  • Viewers Are Geniuses: Max is a very skilled player, so for a lot of new players a lot of what he says can go right over their heads. To correct this, Max has started creating a fighting game basic tutorial for beginners.
  • Wham Line: At EVO 2023, Max is watching a segment on Killer Instinct, when, as they are about to do an announcement, he gets up and moments later, on the live stream itself, we hear...
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
    • Max's greatest weakness are platform games. Watching him playing any platform game may cause sodium poisoning.
    • He also has a fear of spiders, based on an incident where a black widow bit and nearly killed him. As such, he has a partial disdain towards using Spider-Man in any Marvel fighting game (not that it has stopped him from actually doing so several times).
    • In another video, Max revealed that he used to have a fear of (ironically) dogs, due to a childhood incident where one, in his words, "bit his face off." He overcame this fear for Jessica's sake, since she's a dog person.
  • You Remind Me of X: Max is told quite frequently he looks like Nicolas Cage and Chad Kroger. It comes to a head in Retro Assist Me, when Max meets his alternate self. This returns in the Capcom vs SNK 2 Boss Rage, as he introduces himself as Nick Kroger.
  • Your Mom:

"My name is Maximilian and I'll see you guys next time."

Alternative Title(s): Maximilian Dood

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