Trivia / The Needle Drop

• Approval of God: Anthony expressed amusement with a parody channel "theenedledrop", which posted fake reviews in his style, using AI to (very shoddily) recreate his likeness and voice. He expressed visible disappointment when the channel was suddenly terminated by YouTube, and soon after allowed the creator, kingcon2k11, to briefly take over for his official review of Imagine Dragons' Mercury Acts 1 & 2, which is done by the A.thony I.tano.
• Blooper: The initial upload for his review of ScHoolboy Q's BLUE LIPS featured a glaring editing goof where portion of an earlier, unedited take played over top the final review. This version of the video was quickly made private, and the current version of the review doesn't feature this mistake.
• Bury Your Art: thatistheplan was shut down in 2017 to protest YouTube's monetization policies. Fantano hasn't reuploaded any of the channel's videos, stating in a 2020 interview that he was uncomfortable with its association with "toxic and problematic" internet humor.
• The Cast Showoff: On several occasions over the years, Anthony has shown off his skill on the bass and guitar.
• Colbert Bump:
  • This happens to pretty much every artist he devotes positive attention to, especially if they weren't well known before. Let's be honest, if he hadn't reviewed Floral Shoppe, it wouldn't be half as well-known as it is, for better or worse.
  • Some of the lesser-known albums he's given a 10/10 have gotten this hard, namely Daughters' You Won't Get What You Want and especially Spellling's The Turning Wheel, as the latter album didn't even have a Wikipedia article before his review dropped. Spellling's own article was also only a paragraph long before then, without even a discography section.
  • It's not even restricted to albums he gives proper reviews to; in an episode of Let's Argue about underrated albums, he gave one to Japanese fusion band Shibusashirazu's 2004 album Shibuboshi. On both YouTube and RateYourMusic, the album's comment section is full of "Melon sent me here" jokes.
• Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer:
  • Seen by many as the reason why Anthony's review of House of Balloons is so disliked. In the video, he claims that The Weeknd is a group (it's one person), says that Auto-Tune was used on the mixtape (it wasn't, for the most part), and glosses over the mixtape's concepts to such extents that many were infuriated.
  • In his review of blink-182's Nine, he refers to the band's former guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge as "the long-time bassist". He eventually corrected this on an episode of Let's Argue.
  • He also listened to the first half of Biffy Clyro's Opposites without knowing that it was a double album. When he eventually found out, he decided not to listen to the second disc, having not enjoyed the first.
  • Many were rubbed the wrong way by his negative review of MIKE's Weight of the World, in which he takes MIKE to task for being a blatant Earl Sweatshirt "protégé"...even though Earl has gone on record stating that his change in sonic direction during the late 2010s was actually from MIKE (and his collective sLUms) influencing him.
• Creator Backlash: While the demise of "thatistheplan" was — at the time of it shutting down — ostensibly in protest of Youtube's mishandlings over monetization, Anthony has further distanced himself from its signature brand of vulgar, politically incorrect, 4chan-inspired humor, claiming that it had attracted too many "grubby, close-minded, young, aggressive male types" and in general looking back on 4chan as "toxic and problematic". Especially in light of the FADER incident which largely drew upon the channel and its fanbase, this is what Anthony claims provoked him into being more outspoken about his politics and advocacy for social justice issues.
• Discredited Meme:
  • While usually fine with memes surrounding him, he's voiced how tired he is with the Memetic Psychopath status fans joke around with after the infamous Fader article, feeling they've run their course and are unflatteringly deceptive.
  • If his Let's Argue videos give indication, he's sick and tired of people reminding him over and over that he gave MBDTF a 6/10 and DAMN. a 7/10.
  • He's against his fans making memes from his infamous breakdown to Mac Miller's "Good News", not just because it was such a genuinely vulnerable moment for him, but because he dislikes it being deliberately juxtaposed to crass nonsense. Unlike the other two examples, fans have been more willing to relent.
• Fan Community Nickname: Has been known to call his viewers "Needle Drops" (especially in older reviews), although that's not really an official nickname.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • A handful of Anthony's earliest music reviews (circa 2009-2010) is unavailable on the main account either due to being made private or deleted, some speculating to be the result of him originally playing segments of the music he was reviewing and not wanting to risk getting hit with copyright strikes, with fan mirrors being the only way to view them. This includes a swathe of reviews of old releases that were requested by people who donated to his website, such as his review of J Dilla's Donuts.
  • Following the deletion of his first personal side channel, "thatistheplan", all content from it only exists in fan reuploads.
• Missing Episode:
  • All of the "thatistheplan" videos following their deletion from the titular channel — ostensibly in protest of YouTube's demonetization system, but more likely the result of it being the target of the infamous hitpiece against Anthony by FADER that primarily cited the channel — only some of which have been preserved through fan reuploads.
  • Anthony reviewed Deathspell Omega's The Furnaces of Palingenesia and gave it an 8/10, but he eventually privatized the video when allegations of implied vocalist Mikko Aspa's involvement in far-right political projects became known to him. Anthony, being a politically driven person, stated he was uncomfortable with the information he learned, along with also pointing out that while some could use his older reviews of Deathspell's other albums or even his Burzum review (where he acknowledged Varg Vikernes's white supremacy views), he states his views have changed over time and couldn't ignore the allegations. Most believe, however, that he privatized the video out of fear of having another FADER incident.
  • His review of Breaking Benjamin's Dark Before Dawn is also unavailable, but unlike the above example, Anthony has no idea why; he never consciously tweaked its status, it simply vanished off YouTube, possibly as some kind of glitch.
  • He initally posted a review of Blur's The Magic Whip that, unbeknownst to him, was actually a fake, "leaked" version slapped together from various old demos and B-sides from Blur, Graham Coxon, and Gorillaz. He quickly deleted the review and replaced it with a review of the real album (which he was much more positive on), and the original has been lost to time.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: After shaping up to to be a semi-regular series on the main channel in 2017, his STINKPIECE series has gone completely silent since the following year. The reason for its cancellation has never been given, but it's very likely related to the Fader controversy in late 2017, his response to which being the last video of the series.
• Schedule Slip: Anthony briefly began a side series of cooking videos on his "fantano" channel called "It's Food" in 2018, only releasing two (currently private) videos, with sporadic promises on Twitter that he'd be making more. It took until 2023 for him to do a third "It's Food", itself framed as a Soft Reboot with a new editor.
• Throw It In!: His review of Hopsin's No Shame has a moment of him accidentally stating that the album's a "light to decent 7" before immediately going "Oh fuck, what am I, on crack?" and correcting it to a 4. "Light 7" even appears on screen before being corrected.
• What Could Have Been: At some point in the mid-2010's, Anthony had briefly negotiated with [adult swim] regarding a potential album review show, though it fell through as he wasn't sure that his format would work for TV.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: As discussed in his video on Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign's VULTURES 1, part of the reason why Anthony refused to do a proper review of it (as well as future albums in the VULTURES series) is that in light of just how viciously controversial the former had become, he felt unable to trust his audience to remain civil from him giving his opinion on the album, especially since he had negative expectations going in that didn't change upon listening to it. Even if he had more constructive things to say on the album, the combination of people giving up on Kanye on principle plus the toxicity from overzealous Kanye fans aggressively drowning out the discourse led to Anthony deciding that it just wasn't worth trying to pursue.

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