Trivia / The Spoony Experiment

• Acting for Two: Spoony occasionally shares the screen with other characters played by himself, including Dr. Insano, Chef Ramsay, Squall Leonhart, Fu Manchu, Spencer D. Bum, the Ultimate Spoony, Cap'n Smiling Jack D'Arcy, the Gate Cleaner, Hulk Spogan, Terl, "Spoonette", Spoontock! of the Klingon Empire, Chuckles the Fucking Jester, Tidus, The Avatar, Yuna, and Sephiroth.
• Approval of God:
  • In January 2020 Reb Brown has stated that he loves Spoony's Rebruary videos.
  • In 2022, Paul Morgan Stetler aka Curtis Craig contacted and interviewed Noah to talk about his Let's Play of Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh. This reached truly epic heights of meta irony when Paul and Spoony did a Let's Play of Ripper, another game that Spoony had previously played.
• Artist Disillusionment: Spoony suffers this every so often, thanks to a large group of posters on his website being incredibly rude to anyone who's not Spoony or his brother Miles.
  • It Came From Beyond Midnight, a canceled public access TV show in which Spoony has a small role. He uploaded it in addition to his own content, only for it to increasingly come under fire by his fans for not being fully Spoony-related content because it bloated the front page of his website every time Spoony uploaded a new segment (seven videos per episode). He got mad about it and called out his fans on Twitter, saying his friends are more important than the opinions of the whiners.
  • Fans attacked his then-girlfriend after one appearance.
  • The above was likely due to backlash from the Mashable's "Funniest Person to Follow" award, which Spoony won. The celebratory video (which was deleted almost immediately) showed Scarlett draping an ermine cape around Noah. The joke went over everyone's heads and was interpreted as boasting. Among other posts were invitations for Noah to kill himself, fake posts from "Noah" himself claiming that his brother had died, etc.
  • Apparently Linkara and Noah have exchanged stories about the ridiculous overzealous they've encountered whenever they do a cross-over.
  • Film Brain's collaboration with Spoony for Tekken (2010) led to his brief return for the DOA review, where Spoony's fans lay a medieval siege upon Film Brain's home.
  • It doesn't help when fans have shown up at his house, in full costume no less, and have had to be removed by the police for refusing to leave. It's implied this has happened at his parents' house as well.
  • This has gotten so bad that he disabled all comments on his videos.
• Attention Deficit Creator Disorder: He is rarely working on fewer than two projects. He's admitted defeat to this disorder and attempted to hire an editor to get projects out on rails.
• Author's Saving Throw: He originally defended the infamously unpopular ending to Mass Effect 3, but only because he believed in the "indoctrination theory," saw the ending as-written as a blatant Sequel Hook, and was disappointed that the fans weren't clever enough to pick up on the Genius Bonus. When the Extended Cut came out, he described it as Bioware assuring everyone "Oh no, our ending ''really is'' that bad," and has stated that the ending to the Ultima IX review, where the Sadistic Choice the Guardian presents Spoony with tints each option red, green, and blue, is his attempt to "recant" his old views, since in hindsight he considers it almost as big a betrayal and insult to the fanbase as Ultima IX.
• Colbert Bump: He has been responsible for a few of these:
  • He was the first pre-established internet celebrity to join Channel Awesome, in summer 2008, drawing attention to the site from people who weren't already fans of The Nostalgia Critic, and opening the floodgates for other producers to join the community. He was the anchor talent of their "Blistered Thumbs" section about Video Games.
  • His early and frequent crossovers with Linkara probably contributed to the latter's rapid rise in popularity.
  • In his review of Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge, he went on to note that it was almost impossible to find hints, reviews or any information at all about the game, touting that game as being the one game that the Internet forgot. The problem was quickly rectified when the video was released. He mentioned in the commentary that the game had suddenly become harder to find after the video as fans bought copies to try. He begged them not to, it really was as bad as he said.
  • After YouTube suspended The Cinema Snob, he hosted a few of his videos, boosting his popularity immensely and paving the way for him to join Channel Awesome as well. He briefly did the same for Guru Larry when he was dropped from ScrewAttack. In general, Spoony likes to occasionally host videos that he hasn't produced, such as tribute videos and responses to his reviews, including at least one YouTube Poop.
  • There wasn't a Mazes and Monsters trope page until Spoony did a review of it.
  • The SWAT 4 trope page was only created long after his Let's Play.
  • His videos gave a huge one to Reb Brown, who was a relatively obscure action star until Noah started covering his films for Rebruary.
  • His Ultima retrospective introduced a lot of new fans to the series. While Ultima was massively popular in its time and paved the way for almost all future Role Playing Games, the fact it's more or less a zombie franchise now, it's not as well known as it used to be.
• Creator Backlash: At the beginning of his FF XIII review, while apologizing for being so harsh towards FF VIII, he specifically apologizes for the gay joke he sang to the tune of the game's theme song (and for using the word "eponymous" wrong).
• Creator Breakdown: This has become something of a trademark for Spoony, unfortunately.
  • The most visible examples were his 2011 breakup with his longtime girlfriend and webmaster Scarlet, which led to a serious bout of depression and many uncomfortable on-camera moments, and his very public meltdown in 2012, in which a flap with another video producer over an off-color joke led into a days-long Twitter rant aiming anger and obscenity at friends, fans, and critics alike. Shortly thereafter, Spoony was diagnosed as bipolar.
  • He reveals in his To Boldly Flee commentary that there was some form of breakdown for him and a handful of Channel Awesome contributors who met with congressional staffers about the SOPA bill. He claims that the meeting forced him and the others, particularly the Walkers, to consider the longevity of their productions, hence the Reality Subtext throughout much of To Boldly Flee about the potential end of their way of life.
  • He was actually a movie reviewer for Knights of the Dinner Table magazine but was fired because, essentially, he was too caustic to beloved geek movies. He didn't take this well, as one would expect.
• Development Gag:
  • One of Spoony's Unstoppable Rage freakouts about Tidus in the first part of his Final Fantasy X review cut to a 'Technical Difficulties' card dubbed over with Bruce Willis singing "Swingin' on a Star" from Hudson Hawk as a Sanity Slippage Song. This is a reference to how around the same time he had announced plans to review that film, but eventually abandoned the idea.
  • In Doctor Insano's Ferris Bueller's Day Off review, he's shocked at the prospect of going to Chicago and not visiting the "Urkel House". This is a reference to when multiple media outlets mistook Channel Awesome shooting a video there for their first crossover with a "pilgrimage" by fans of the show.
• Development Hell: When he started his Patreon, Spoony put up a goal of $5000 a month in donations, upon achieving this he'd begin producing his own full length movie. When this goal was exceeded, he put out a heartfelt video thanking everyone, apparently humbled by the support. Other than a number of Patreon update blogs, the movie had no progress and is assumed to be abandoned along with most of Spoony's work. His Patreon page is still active as of 2024, despite producing no content since 2016, and the amount of monthly donations is less than five percent of what it was when he first announced the movie was definitely happening, with the new goal is set to $5000 dollars to actually start it.
• DVD Commentary: Does commentaries for many videos, including for Kickassia.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Spoony's riff of After Last Season was taken down under polite request by the film's producers on the grounds of copyrights infringement. Now it's only available as an iRiff on RiffTrax, which requires a copy of the film itself. To Spoony's credit, he discourages illegal downloads of the film despite fans suggesting otherwise on the comments section of his site, and admitted that he was in the wrong for planning to post a movie in its entirety on his website. This is also a perfect opportunity for Spoony to put money where his mouth is regarding his challenge to TNA's Dixie Carter and see how many of his fans are willing to support him and buy his iRiff of the film instead of just illegally downloading the movie elsewhere.
    Spoony: "I won't condone piracy. I simply ask you to support the site if you enjoyed the rifftrax. $1 isn't much to ask for an evening's fun."
  • Following the demise of both his website, and the various video hosting sites he relied on through the years, Spoony's YouTube channel remains his only real outlet — and even then, his older videos have been gradually thinned out by a combination of ContentID and DMCA takedown notices. This means that you'll have to look elsewhere for copies of said videos.
• Long-Runners: His scripted reviews ran from January 2007 to late 2016 - just under ten years.
• Lying Creator:
  • After he repeatedly denied that Spooning With Spoony 2 was never going to happen during the TGWTG charity drive...barely an hour after Spooning With Spoony 2 had been shot.
  • He announced the storyline of being banished to the Black Hole by the Gatecleaner if he didn't review a series of VCR board games within a year was being cancelled... only to pick it up again after that year had passed, with the Gatecleaner not being too happy that he failed to review them.
• Real Song Theme Tune:
  • "Break Me" by The Irresponsibles.
  • On the rare occasions that Dr. Insano does a review by himself, the theme tune changes to "Weird Science" by Oingo Boingo.
• Reclusive Artist: Following his major mental health and social media debacles, Noah has had a vastly more low-profile internet presence. As of 2017-18, he periodically does gaming livestreams, works in vlog-style review videos, and frequents Twitter (he was briefly suspended from Twitter in 2018 before being quickly reinstated with little explanation), but his major scripted video output has completely stalled out, with the Spoony Experiment website itself expiring in 2019. An unexpected interview in late 2022 saw him in significantly higher spirits and openly expressing interest towards making major review videos again, but only time will tell if he'll follow through on his word.
• Reality Subtext:
  • In his review of "Ultima Underworld 2," he snarls at a Headless invading the review at the end of the skit, "Don't you fucking test me, you headless hairball, not after the month I've had." This was shortly after his Creator Breakdown in 2011.
  • Also in the finale of Final Fantasy X, Dr Insano says the line "What were you expecting? The Ghost Busters?!". This line makes a lot more sense when you know that Spoony originally planned on having a huge finale with the Ghost Busters making an appearance. However, he couldn't get them to come, as they only really do charity events. This and the fact that he planned such a huge finale to begin with (instead of just focusing on reviewing the game) were fuel for his Creator Breakdown.
  • Part 2 of the Ultima IX review has the Guardian delivering a Hannibal Lecture to Spoony about how his fans only watch because they like seeing him suffer, and how he's been abandoned by his friends and co-workers. This not only recalls the number of "anti-fans" who troll Noah for laughs, but also comes close on the heels of his departure from Channel Awesome.
  • The time his apartment blew up at the end of a review was because he was moving in real life. He also wasn't sure if he was going to do any more reviews a that point.
• Referenced by...: The "Burning Man Count" is The Necro Critic's own version of Spoony's "Fuse Box Count". This would go on to become a Running Gag.
  • There's also Civvie 11's "sewer count."
• Schedule Slip: Several things that Spoony may announce at some point may take quite a while to actually get done, for various reasons; most prominently, of course, that Spoony is working entirely on his own.
  • Lampshaded in Film Brain's review of Hudson Hawk in early October 2010. Spoony complains that he was going to review the film & game, and Film Brain admits he did see the list that mentioned this... When it was posted 9 months earlier.
  • Wrestle! Wrestle! started out providing weekly recaps of Raw and Impact, and even added Sean Fausz to cover the workload. Sometimes, however, a month would go by without any updates. The last two reviews were WrestleMania XXVII and Money in the Bank 2011 before the site was abandoned. (The videos are still available on Blip, thankfully.)
  • At the start of February 2011, Spoony announced a list of films & games he was going to review, intended to cover to the end of April. He was actually making decent progress through the list, until Real Life Writes the Plot kicked in.
  • Throughout much of 2015, Spoony didn't release any reviews. His only regular posting were Counter Monkeys, Live Wire (his live video game streams, now on YouTube), and the occasional Wrestle! Wrestle! (which he hasn't done since Night of Champions 2015). His first review in several months, Street Hunter, released in February 2016, has him lampshade the long period between reviews, by opening on the line "Kept you waiting, huh?" This was his last video until an episode of Counter Monkey in November 2016, with his next video, a vlog review of The Last Jedi, not being released until December 2017. He has acknowledged that Real Life health problems are the cause. As of 2018 however, he has once again slipped into disappearing. This time, letting his website go down and not rejoining Twitter after being banned.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally he planned to do a Crossover review of Tekken: The Motion Picture with ShortFatOtaku, but it didn't work out.
  • The Barbarians video was supposed to be made with his Ultimate Warrior character doing the review, but shortly before filming began, it was announced that the real Ultimate Warrior had died and Noah thought the review would be in bad taste and so he did it as Spoony.
  • Spoony's "BETRAYAL!" meme was meant to be referenced in some way in The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (supposedly as an achievement), but it was cut for some reason.
  • The Massacre at Central High review was planned for an upcoming DVD. After an attempt to gain permission from the film's director went nowhere, Spoony decided to put the review online instead.
  • Lewis Lovhaug wanted him to be involved in A Voice from the Dark, but was completely unable to get in contact with him for it.
• Written-In Infirmity:
  • He was drugged up on painkillers when filming the ET review, turning it into an homage to Apocalypse Now.
  • Spoony's real life foot fracture gets a mention when Linkara uses his "You're standing in my spot, sir!" Berserk Button to snap him out of his Black Lantern self into White Lantern form:
    White Lantern Spoony: I think I just broke my foot in your ass!

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