Web Video / Alpharad

"Our cause is just."

John Jacob Rabon IV (born December 19, 1995), better known online as Alpharad, is a YouTuber best known for his content related to Super Smash Bros. and other Nintendo games. As a self-proclaimed "internet funnyman", his videos are mostly fast-paced and highly edited gaming videos.

Alpharad first became popular making videos about Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and has since has made videos on a variety of video games and has branched off into other genres. His channel features many popular series such as the CPU Championship Series, a series of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournaments between CPU fighters.

His second channel is Alpharad Deluxe, a Let's Play channel made alongside his friend Jo with less edited and more long-form content that that is often an ironic parody of Let's Plays. Jacob has also released music under the name Ace of Hearts and made the podcast How Did We Get Here? with fellow YouTuber CONEY that discusses a variety of random topics.

Jacob is currently a member of the Let's Play group channel Wildcard Lets Play.

---

Alpharad provides examples of:

• Adaptational Badass: In his randomizer Nuzlocke of Pokémon Black and White, Bianca is a ridiculously strong trainer with a team filled with legendaries (including Zekrom, Zapdos, and Raikou), a far cry from the original game where she is a rather weak trainer. She is easily the greatest threat of the run, and Jacob spends the entire run in a permanent state of fear at the very sight of her and plays final boss music whenever she shows up.
• Aesop Amnesia: Following the infamous Onix incident, Jacob says he's never taking advice from Captain Kidd again, because his advice always leads him to disaster. Come the Emerald Nuzlocke, and Jacob ends up abandoning this statement and brings Captain Kidd back on; even offering to name his Wartortle after him.
• Ambiguously Bi: In some of his earlier videos, Jacob made jokes about the attractiveness of both male and female characters. This stopped being ambiguous when he came out as bisexual.
• Anti-Climax: One of the factors in Jacob's decision to have his Randomized Emerald Nuzlocke end by losing to another trainer's Groudon was the fact that in his successful run, the Champion's ace Pokemon was a Delibird.
• April Fools' Day: For his 2024 April Fool's Day video "Can You Beat Pokémon Emerald with ONLY Mega Rayquaza", he played a nuzlocke of Pokémon Emerald using only Mega Rayquaza, the strongest Pokémon ever. Despite using a Pokémon way more powerful than any other and one that can easily take down any enemy, Jacob used Insane Troll Logic throughout the video to show why this is such a difficult challenge, when in actuality it was very easy.
• Audience Participation: In his "Clickbait" series, all requests for clickbait thumbnails that Jacob made were submitted by fans on Twitter.
• Author Appeal:
  • He often edited pictures of Kate Upton in a bikini into fake clickbait thumbnails for his "Clickbait" series due to being a fan of hers.
  • His videos generally focus on games that he is a fan of, such as Super Smash Bros..
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • At the start of "I stranded my friends on a deserted island", Jacob claims that he is forcing his friends to survive in a dangerous island, only to quickly reveal that this is a lie and the video is actually about putting his friends on a Hunger Games simulator website. ** In I forced youtubers to play my favorite game", Jacob claims that he is making a Minecraft SMP and invites his friends to join. In actuality, he made a Roblox SMP.
  • The trailer for "Mr. and Ms. Multiverse" initially seemed to show an attractive woman putting on a dress and was narrated by a man with a deep voice. The end of the trailer reveals that Jacob was wearing the dress and that Amouranth was the narrator.
  • His short video "I Hate this YouTuber too" has the video seemingly loop like shorts do when they're over, only for Jacob to pull the screen aside and reveal that the video wasn't really over.
• Becoming the Mask: Jacob, in his effort to appease Pokémon Challenges, creates the "perfect" Nuzlocke run out of sheer spite. As time progresses, however, Jacob starts to abandon the ideology of treating Nuzlocke Mons as companions and begins to treat them as mere weapons, which eventually secures him his victory with very little casualties.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: "I Attempted My FIRST Pokémon Scarlet Nuzlocke" goes unusually well for Jacob, with no deaths whatsoever multiple gyms into the game... until he realizes that he's played so much competitive Pokémon that he's now playing it safe and intelligently instead of running on gut feeling and the Rule of Funny, prompting a major freakout.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Jacob has made fun of many of the businesses and products he has sponsored in his videos. He also commonly makes a lot of jokes at the expense of Youtube.
• Bittersweet Ending: "Learning How to Speedrun Mario Odyssey in 1 Week" ends with Jacob finally beating his personal best speedrun. However, he continues to attempt more speedruns to improve on the mistakes he made but was unable to lower the time after many attempts. At the end of the video, he accepted that he wasn't getting any better.
• Black Comedy: In "Winning with EVERY Character in Elite Smash", Jacob says that King K. Rool "hits like a drunk uncle".
• Blatant Lies: The channel Not Alpharad claimed to not be run by Jacob, although it was a Paper-Thin Disguise as Jacob constantly appeared in videos.
• Born Lucky: Jacob does very well in luck-based games. This is best exemplified in "Pokémon, but you can donate to release them" in which Jaiden suggests they use coin flips to decide which of them should release a Pokémon, which they quickly abandon because Jacob was winning every single one.
  Jacob: Lady Luck is real and God has favourites.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: Inverted. "Recreating Wipeout, but not quite as 'safe'" sees one of the hosts, "Wipe Out"^note played by Jacob himself express concern over Jacob potentially suing the show after almost dying.
  Pat Rick: Okay, if he dies, he can't sue, that's all I'm saying.
  Wipe Out: That is a very good point, you know what, I'm hoping for the worst!
• Butt-Monkey:
  • During his New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe playthrough, while he (as Mario) actively tries to beat the game, his efforts are hindered by Jo (as Nabbit, who keeps trying to get his teammates killed either directly or indirectly), Turv (as Toadette, who abuses the bubbling mechanic as much as possible), and an unfortunate tendency to accidentally either bounce on another character or get bounced on. And he ends up losing his last life the second the final boss is defeated, which leads to Toadette and Nabbit getting recognition for beating Bowser in the ending cutscene, but not Mario. He's not happy, to say the least.
    Jacob: I played a real-ass Mario game until the very end, and this is what I get?! Nothing?!
  • The Talent Show video. Jacob decided to make the reward for any contestant who achieves a score of 21 or higher a chance to post anything they want on his Twitter (except self-promotion). His friends just happened to give every single contestant such a score, leading to an increasingly displeased Jacob to end the day with a swarm of questionable tweets under his name.
  • In his earlier Among Us videos, Ross is often targeted and killed first for no reason. However, this became less common over time.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: His "Clickbait" videos show that he is a fan of Kate Upton, partly due to her large breast size.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:invoked Parodied with Jacob's channel Not Alpharad. The channel claimed to be run by a separate person from Alpharad, hence the name. This is despite the channel constantly having Jacob appear. However, he eventually revealed that his true identity is...Alpharad.
• Censored for Comedy:
  • In "Recreating Wipeout, but not quite as 'safe'" and some other videos, bare feet are censored as if it was for nudity.
  • In multiple of his "Clickbait" videos, he made "nude mod" clickbait thumbnails by censoring images of characters to make them appear naked.
• Character Catchphrase: Jacob often says "And just like that" at the end of the video after beating a game or challenge.
• Character Tiers:invoked Jacob has made multiple tier list videos to rank various subjects, such as Pokémon and final smashes.
• Clickbait Gag: In his "Clickbait" series, he uses images sourced from Google to photoshop fictional clickbait thumbnail images based on suggestions submitted to him via Twitter. Images of Kate Upton are frequently included as part of these.
• Comically Missing the Point: In multiple instances, such as his Pokémon Scarlet and Violet playthrough, Jacob wildly misunderstands the plot due to skipping through much of the dialogue. In that game, he comes to the opposite conclusion about Team Star's motivations than the game presented.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Jacob jokes that Kieran from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is a dark version of Deku from My Hero Academia.
• Cosplay: He has dressed up in cosplay for some of his videos, such as a Princess Peach costume.
• Cross Player:
  • In general, Jacob typically plays as the female avatar in a video game when given the option.
  • In Super Mario Bros. Spin-Off titles, such as Mario Kart or Mario Party, Jacob's go-to character is Princess Peach.
• Depraved Kids' Show Host: Less so kids' show and more contest, but Jacob has a tendency to host various kinds of contests without letting up on his trademark manipulative tendencies, sometimes rigging the contests to favor one side. Considering he's cited Total Drama's Chris McLean as one of his favourite characters of all time and a key influence on his Alpharad persona, this tracks.
• Do Wrong, Right: Variation: Jacob openly admits that he will "cheat backwards" if it means producing better content, whether it's deliberately fudging and editing a Hunniepop speedrun so he'd get the 69th best time on the leaderboard, or intentionally ending his Randomized Emerald Nuzlocke with a Total Party Kill from an opposing trainer's Groudon.
• Don't Think, Feel:
  • In his first Nuzlocke of ''Scarlet and Violet", he uncharacteristically plans carefully to ensure his win on a deathless run, only to lose on the last battle by overthinking it. He decides to stop planning carefully and just go with his gut when trying again, leading to him easily defeating the champion by spamming one move. He decides to do what feels best without thinking too hard from now on.
  • In Jacob and Jan's Soul Link Nuzlocke, Jacob's fun playstyle ends up being overall more successful than Jan's analytical playstyle.
• Downer Ending: The first World of Light Nuzlocke ended with Jacob losing to the final boss despite the many hours he put into it.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Jan is critical of Jacob's playstyle in Nuzlockes. However, Jacob and Jan did a Soul Link Nuzlocke in which Jan made multiple mistakes and Jacob played very well. Despite this, Jan told Jacob that he still didn't respect him afterward.
• Emotions vs. Stoicism:
  • Part of the reason why Jacob and Jan have a rivalry is due to their differing approaches to Nuzlockes, as Jan plays with careful strategy and analyzes every choice in a battle, while Jacob plays for fun, making choices that would be funny without any strategic benefit.
  • Played with in their Two-Player Nuzlocke, wherein someone in Jacob's chat disparagingly comments on Jan's stoicism. The two respond by temporarily swapping roles, with Jan becoming the energetic one and Jacob becoming the stoic one.
• End of an Age: Starting from 2021, the commentary over gameplay style (as well as constant Smash content) that defined Alpharad generally became less common in favor of narration over gameplay and big events between content creators overall. The videos that truly cemented the shift in content were his reactions as well as first gameplay of the Smash characters that would be released afterwards (Pyra/Mythra, Kazuya, and Sora), which instead were uploaded to Alpharad Deluxe, breaking the tradition of uploading them to the main channel.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite making several dead mom jokes at Cubone's expense in the past, even he was utterly shocked by its fusions with Kangaskhan.
• Exact Words:
  • A major part in the setup for "I forced youtubers to play my favorite game" was the fact that, even though Jacob said he was gonna do an SMP, at no point did he say he was doing it with Minecraft. It's only when it went live that everyone who agreed to take part realized they agreed to play Roblox Outlaster.
    Jacob: So, I feel like as long as I don't mention Minecraft, I have deniability, and it's on them for assuming.
  • After receiving a Groudon as his starter in his randomized Pokémon Emerald Nuzlocke and getting its movepool in order, Jacob makes a promise to the viewer that from that point on, every single fight will end the same way; with a Groudon spamming Earthquake. True to his word, they do. After all, he never said it had to be his Groudon doing the spamming.
    • This also still applies even after he later admitted to faking this ending; he decided to intentionally lose to Groudon to make for a better narrative, which meant deliberately invoking the trope.
  • In the short video Jaiden lost me $500^note regarding a trip to Vegas, Jacob had asked Jaiden for advice upon deciding to bet on a roulette table. Her advice was to bet on black.
    Jacob: Soooooo, I went over to the roulette table, they spun the wheel, and sure enough, it landed on black! ... And that's the story of how Jaiden lost me $500 dollars.^note The implication is that Jacob chose to ignore her advice.
• Excuse Me While I Multitask: During "It Took Me 20 Years to 100% Sonic Adventure 2", it turns out that he had scheduled an appointment with his hairdresser after his stream, only for it to run way longer than expected. So he spends the last chunk of SA2 getting his hair done while streaming, by a hairdresser who's clearly having way too much fun at the whole thing.
• Fanservice Cover: His "Clickbait" series features risqué thumbnails, with some showing Kate Upton in a bikini. The thumbnails are purposely fanservicey to parody clickbait thumbnails.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • When Jan reaches the part of Jacob's Randomized Emerald Nuzlocke where Jacob gets swept by someone else's Groudon, Jacob rhetorically asks "What Youtuber uploads a Nuzlocke that they don't win?"
  • In Jacob's Emerald Kaizo run, against a double battle against two Grass-types, his Dragalge ends up using Sludge Wave against them, and Jacob learns that it's a move that hits your teammate as well as all 2 opponents, although luckily said teammate was a Ferrothorn. The very next battle has his aforementioned Ferrothorn and a Shiftry up against Professor Oak's Nidoqueen and Charizard, which seemed bad until Charizard missed a Focus Blast ^note and threw an easy, more guarenteed kill away by not using a STAB Fire move against any of the Grass types, followed by Jacob's Shiftry using a Normal Gem boosted Explosion to barely miss out on the KO against both of them... and then Nidoqueen uses Sludge Wave, killing its teammate while accomplishing nothing since Shiftry was dead, and Ferrothorn managed to live the Explosion and of course was immune to Sludge Wave. This basically snowballed into Jacob winning the battle despite it being a 4 v 6.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Parodied in a couple of his interactions with Jan. In their two player Nuzlocke, when they do the sandwich minigame in two player mode, he jokes about "what if their pickles touched" while literally putting pickles on a sandwich, and a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the "I went to Japan (and spent way too much money)" video shows them kissing. Fans have joked about the two having an "enemies/rivals to lovers" arc.
• Foregone Victory: In "I created an UNSOLVABLE escape room", PointCrow of Team A made a bet with Team B's AnthPo where the winner would get to post something embarrassing on the loser's Twitter account. Since Team A were a plant by Jacob, whose job was to pretend they'd completed the escape room in order to mask the fact it was unwinnable, PointCrow was already guaranteed to win and he knew it, as did the organisers, who did nothing to stop him.
• Four-Point Scale: In "A talent show where the prize is my Twitter password", any contestant with a score of 21 or higher is allowed to tweet whatever they want from Jacob's Twitter account. It quickly becomes apparent, to Jacob's mounting frustration, that all three judges are going to give anyone who shows up at least a 7 regardless of their talent, simply so that all of them have their chance to humiliate him.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In "I went to Japan and Spent too much Money", we see Jacob making out with Jan at karaoke for a split second before it cuts away.
• The Gadfly: Jacob has a tendency to place his friends in inopportune situations, then act as though everything is normal, which leads to them eventually going insane from his antics.
• Gallows Humor: Around the time of TwitchCon 2022, Jacob decided to put together his own version of Wipeout with an inflatable obstacle course... but due to being severely dehydrated, and taking a particularly bad bump, he wound up injuring a kidney and needing to spend time in the hospital. In the main channel video concerning the event, the hosts "Wipe Out" and "Pat Rick" are casually blasé about the ordeal.
  Wipe Out: (as the lifeguard approaches Jacob in the water) That is unfortunate!
  Pat Rick: That is a time loss for sure!
  Wipe Out: That is bad for our legal department if that lifeguard has to do their job.
  • And then "Pat Rick" points out that they would avoid a lawsuit if Jacob died, causing them both to start hoping for that to occur.
    Wipe Out: But before we comment on the next match, let's hand it over to Deanna and Caleb to see if we have a death on our hands!
• Grandfather Clause: The channel's earlier profile pic is a cartoon version of Jacob. This image was made when he had brown hair and was clean-shaven, but it remained the same even after he dyed his hair blond and grew a beard because it was an iconic picture. While the picture was eventually changed to give him blond hair, it did not give him a beard, unlike in real life.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: What ultimately does him in during his Emerald Randomizer Nuzlocke. After winning so many battles by simply having his Groudon spam Earthquake, he ends up losing to Juan, who wields a Groudon that spams Earthquake. There's also a double meaning to this- the reason Juan's Groudon wins the Earthquake war is because it used Bulk Up to boost its attack and defense, a move Alpharad passed up his Groudon learning earlier.
• I Hate Past Me:
  • At the start of "I played Sonic Boom, so you don't have to", Jacob admitted that he had such high hopes for the game, that his second ever video was about how Sonic Boom would be good. He promptly deleted it after the game came out.
  • To celebrate ten years of his Youtuber career, Jacob made a video reacting to a Let's Play he made for Pokemon Sapphire when he was 17... and later deleted for being cringeworthy. Such highlights include the awkward editing, an entire video getting scrubbed due to the audio not being recorded, a section where he dragged his 9 year old sister for wanting him to take her to cheerleading, copious instances of stolen art, and various instances of GarageBand music.
• Improv: His video "Romeo and Juliet, but without any rehearsals" is an improvised reenactment of Romeo and Juliet.
• Insane Troll Logic: In "Can You Beat Pokémon Emerald with ONLY Mega Rayquaza", Jacob constantly tries to show how difficult this easy challenge is through huge leaps in logic. For instance, he pointed out that the fire type gym was difficult because one of them could have the ability Cloud Nine, which eliminates the effects of weather and would prevent his ability Delta Stream from taking effect, making it so he would take a lot of damage from ice beam. This is despite the fact that no fire type Pokémon have Cloud Nine and none of the Pokémon in the gym know ice beam.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: He doesn't necessarily wear it on his sleeve, but Jacob has a semi-recurring habit of crossdressing, be it Lyra in his SoulLink Nuzlocke or Princess Peach in his Mario Kart IRL video.
• Karma Houdini: Jacob argued that Penny in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet deserved a greater punishment for her crimes than in canon, as her punishment for stealing from the Pokémon League was rather minor.
• Kick the Dog: As pointed out by the Wipeout hosts in "Recreating Wipeout, but not quite as 'safe'", even though Jacob got first place with the fastest time, he was then immediately disqualified due to "not doing too well".
  Wipe Out: And don't worry, he's heading off to the hospital, aaannnnddd I wish that was a joke.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Despite actually being a skilled gamer, Jacob often makes unnecessarily risky plays that lead to him dying or losing.
• Lethal Eatery: Jacob and Jaiden hated the restaurant at Super Nintendo World and half-joked that it could give you Salmonella (which, given that the Bowser's Meatball Challenge was raw almost entirely throughout, is probably true).
• Make an Example of Them: During "Pokémon, but I added 50+ NEW Types", shortly after getting a Master Ball, Jacob decides to capture Latios, meaning he's using it correctly "for the first time in the history of [his] channel". And then:
  Jacob: And, I know, it might feel wrong for most of you... (turns to the camera) But, hear me out-
  (hard cut to Jacob saluting as he releases Latios)
  Jacob: We don't take handouts.
• Mercy Kill: In his playthrough of Pokémon Infinite Fusion, Jacob treats defeating the Muk/Koffing fusion as putting it out of its misery due to its disturbing design.
• Midas Touch: He seems to be cursed with the ability to unknowingly turn any character or person he likes into a Rule 34 sensation, much to his dismay. As a kid, his favorite Pokémon was Gardevoir, who became the poster child for Pokémon Rule 34, and as an adult, his favorite Pokémon for a while was Vaporeon, who ended up becoming tied to a Rule 34 copypasta. Rubber Ross presses this further by asking Jacob who his favorite Animal Crossing and Final Fantasy VII characters are, to which he replies with Ankha^*(who became popularized through a Rule 34 animation by ZONE-sama) and Tifa Lockhart^*(who had a pornographic animation of her played in front of the Italian Senate) respectively. He once complained about this to Jaiden, who had this to say:
  Jaiden: So, who's your favorite storytime animator?
  • invoked It gets even funnier when you remember that Jacob and Jaiden are currently living together.
• Misère Game: "Mario Party, but you win by losing" and "Mario Party, but you lose by winning" see Jacob and his friends race for last place in Mario Party Superstars. This is made harder by an added rule that players must take a Star whenever they're able to.
• Money Dumb: Jacob makes a lot of jokes about spending way too much money on merchandise during his spending spree in Japan. However, the end of the episode shows that these purchases were not a waste, as he gave everything he bought to his friends.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg:
  • While watching one of the cutscenes in Balan Wonderworld, Jacob exclaims "Look! It's everyone, all of your favorite characters, and the girl who died to a dolphin!"
  • "Recreating Twitch Plays Pokémon" involved "seven of your favorite streamers, and PointCrow."
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Invoked in "Attempting the 'PERFECT' Pokémon Nuzlocke". After Jan of Pokémon Challenges criticised his sloppy play in his previous Nuzlocke videos, Jacob responded with a heavily optimised, meticulously planned-out run that followed all of his advice to the letter. Predictably, this leads to him breezing through the game with little resistance, which, as he spends much of the video pointing out, makes for a far less entertaining run than when he's being reckless.
  Jacob: And just like that, the perfect Nuzlocke comes to a successful end. But is this the ending that I truly wanted? If I can be completely honest with you... yeah, I still prefer using legendaries and losing.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He lost a Mario Party tournament in the first round because he purposely lost a 1v1 minigame to help his friend, only for his friend to beat him and eliminate him from the tournament.
• Non-Indicative Title: In an interesting twist, the short video "Jaiden lost me $500" is accurate to what the short is about^note namely, Jacob falling victim to Jaiden's infamous bad luck while in Vegas, but has no indication that it was because he apparently disregarded her advice^note he went to a roulette table, she said to put money on black, and it's implied he chose red instead.
• Once per Episode: At one point in every episode of the "Clickbait" series except for the last, he includes an image of Kate Upton in one of the thumbnails.
• Overly Long Gag: In "Winning with EVERY Character in Elite Smash", Jacob plays the entirety of Sephiroth's supernova, which lasts two minutes, when he is hit with the Final Smash.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: Played for comedy, when Jacob admits that he can't really claim to be the most famous person from his relatively small hometown of Norman, Oklahoma (that'd be Trae Young, who's even a year younger than him) but at least he's the most successful Youtuber to come out of his high school... or he could be if wasn't for the small fact that he went to school with Ray William Johnson.
• Physical God: Like the original Twitch Plays Pokémon Jacob's Chat treats the Hoppip/Jumpluff named Baabu ): as a religious figure dearly.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With JaidenAnimations, who even calls him her "best buddy" in the video where they went to Japan together.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story:invoked Jacob often skips past the story and dialogue of the games he plays, missing much of the plot.
• Playing Card Motifs: Jacob often uses card symbolism to represent himself. Most notably, he uses the name Ace of Hearts to release music.
• Progressively Prettier: Over time, Jacob became more and more attractive, going from average and nerdy-looking to very handsome.
• Properly Paranoid: In some of his prank videos, the subjects are rightfully wary of Jacob's intent.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: The three-part Nuzlocke series is one for Jacob. He starts his FireRed run as an Idiot Hero, who, despite losing many Pokémon to stupid mistakes and recklessness, genuinely cares for his team and leads them to a hard-fought victory. In his Emerald Randomizer, he's a Tragic Hero; despite being granted ultimate power in the form of Groudon, he's undone by his own hubris and never even makes it to the Elite Four. By his "PERFECT" LeafGreen Nuzlocke, he's become a Villain Protagonist driven entirely by spite, no longer seeing his Pokémon as friends; only weapons to be used and discarded once they've served their purpose.
• Queer Colors: While playing Among Us, Jacob uses a bi flag as his background, and many of his queer friends also use pride flags as their backgrounds.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: His videos are highly edited and fast-paced, quickly making joke after joke.
• Reaction Video:
  • He has posted multiple reaction videos, most notably reacting to Super Smash Bros. character reveals. He has also posted a reaction to a reaction of the channel Pokémon Challenges reacting to his Nuzlockes.
  • A since deleted sponsored video had Jacob and Joe comedically react to a trailer for Watch Dogs: Legion.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Has this dynamic with Jan with their videos and streams about their friendly rivalry. Jan's more deadpan delivery and calculated playstyle makes him the blue to Jacob's red with his more larger than life showbiz persona who can and will throw for content just because it'd be funny.
• Reformed, but Rejected: In his playthrough of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, he refused to accept Penny's attempts at redemption for her actions within Team Star, instead arguing that she belongs in jail.
• Revisiting the Roots: Jacob's second channel Alpharad Live is intended to be more like his older content, featuring longer, slower-paced videos unlike his newer, highly edited videos.
• Right Behind Me: This trope is referenced by the title of "Among Us, but she's right behind me, isn't she?"
• The Rival: He considers Jan from the channel Pokémon Challenges as his rival due to making videos critiquing his Nuzlockes, and they have developed a friendly rivalry.
• Rule of Funny: Jacob claims that whether or not he has good or bad luck in any situation depends on which is funnier.
  • He admits that he purposely lost the randomizer Nuzlocke because it would be the funnier outcome.
• Running Gag:
  • Jacob constantly playing pranks on his friends or putting them in wild situations.
  • Multiple episodes see appearances from a Bruno Mars impersonator.
  • His videos often make jokes about Jacob’s ridiculous luck.
  • For his Pokémon videos, deliberately using the one Master Ball he gets to catch a Com Mon.
  • In his "Clickbait" series, he often photoshops images of Kate Upton into clickbait thumbnails.
  • In multiple videos on his channels, he uses a dramatic black and white thumbnail of him looking distraught parodying thumbnails used in YouTuber apology videos. The videos are never actually serious despite the dramatic thumbnails.
  • Baabu ): the Hoppip/Jumpluff somehow managing to follow Jacob into almost every Pokemon game he plays ever since his faithful Twitch Plays run. Some of her appearances make sense, for example, in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Hoppip is a Pokemon you encounter pretty early. But in others, it gets more ridiculous - namely Shiny Hoppip appearing in the shiny-only run (and found by Jaiden, no less) and Jumpluff acting as the legendary dragon itself in his Pokémon Black and White randomized nuzlocke.
  • In his Pokémon Scarlet and Violet playthrough, he pretended to be shocked every time he landed a critical hit when using Flower Trick, a move that always lands a critical hit.
  • Jacob names every Oddish he catches Carl (or Carly if it is female).
  • Many jokes are made about Jacob constantly making risky plays and dying, such as saying he is like Icarus, flying too close to the sun.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: In the "NOT" series, Jacob plays games that are cheap knockoffs of popular games, such as Pretender, a poorly made Among Us clone.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis:
  • Pokémon Challenges/Jan, a Pokémon-centered YouTuber and self-proclaimed Nuzlocke expert who's made a series of videos centered around reacting to other people's Nuzlocke videos — including Jacob's, while not even being subscribed to him. As a result, Jacob has named his rival after Jan in multiple Nuzlocke videos and even made an entire video dedicated to using (and poking fun at) Jan's Nuzlocke strategies.
  • Jacob's very own Twitch Chat found theirs during a run of Twitch Plays Pokemon Crystal in the form of Hiker Anthony, who kept killing their Pokemon over and over and ruining their progress. What really cements him in this trope is not that he was just a random trainer, but a completely optional random trainer. Even after Chat finally beat him, he left a dying curse in the form of his phone number. Chat had the last laugh however, as they coordinated to finally delete his number.
• Skewed Priorities: Upon being caught blatantly killing Desbug, Jacob is asked to defend himself. His method of doing so is to do a NordVPN ad read.
• Small Role, Big Impact: A meta version: DougDoug inviting Jacob to participate in his Twitch Plays Pokemon tournament both snowballed into Jacob going from wanting to beat the first gym to beating the entire game, and also got Jacob streaming on Twitch again for the first time in years.
• So Bad, It's Good:invoked Jacob considers Sonic Chronicles a terrible game, yet he has a lot of fun playing it due to how bad it is.
• Space Whale Aesop: From his first ever Nuzlocke.
  Jacob: Kids, let this be a lesson in toxic masculinity: It is better to he called a pussy than a serial murderer.
• Spoiled Brat: Jacob interprets Penny and the rest of Team Star as a bunch of whiny, spoiled rich kids, although this depiction does not match up with canon.
• Spot the Thread: When discussing how he had actually faked the ending of his Randomized Emerald Nuzlocke, Jacob points out that he accidentally left in footage from his successful run in the video (specifically how at one point, he included footage of his Victory Road team, when he had a different team when fighting Groudon), something Jan noticed and was confused by.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • In "My most interesting sponsorship experience", Jacob creates a purposely terrible trailer for the game Brawlout after being given given a sponsorship deal. The trailer is filled with cheesy, outdated jokes and memes alongside terrible acting.
  • "Romeo and Juliet, but without any rehearsals" was made with purposely little planning or direction and no script.
  • His since deleted sponsored reaction to a trailer of Watch Dogs: Legion features obviously fake and purposely over the top reactions.
• Take That!:
  • He has made multiple jokes at the expense of Donald Trump.
  • The tenth video of the "Clickbait" series features many insults towards Ajit Pai for attempting to end Net Neutrality.
  • Whenever Jacob creates a tier list, he considers anything below even the bottom tier as being on the same level as 13 Reasons Why.
  • When going to Universal, he only stops by Harry Potter World to shake his head in disapproval, as Jacob has been critical of JK Rowling's transphobic comments.
  • Due to his friendly rivalry with Jan of Pokémon Challenges, he has made many jokes at his expense.
• Talent Contest: In "I hosted a dinner party with no ulterior motives", Jacob makes his friends participate in an impromptu talent show.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Following him dyeing his hair from brown to blonde, Jacob also adopted a more trollish personality that wasn't as pronounced prior to the hair change.
• Trauma Conga Line: Jacob can't catch a break in "How I Accidentally Ruined a Sponsored Video". He has horrible luck throughout the entire video, as not only does he lose the footage for an important sponsored video that he needed to upload the next day, but he also lost the tournament he was hosting. Other random bad things happen to him, such as him spilling his food and damaging his new microphone.
• Troll: In multiple videos, Jacob plays pranks on his friends and other YouTubers, such as having them go through an inescapable escape room.
• Turn Off the Camera: Says this word for word at the end of "Mario Kart in real life is dangerous" when the camera cuts to him in the bathroom dressed as Princess Peach.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Played for Laughs. Jacob was rather bemused by the fact that after the massive headache that was organizing a last-minute award show for an ever-increasing number of friends flying into LA, they all thanked him by voting him "Biggest Slut".
• Unreliable Narrator: By his own admission, Jacob is not above lying in his After-Action Report videos if he thinks it would make for a more interesting story.
  • According to his Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke video, he ended his battle with Lance by having Coughing the Weezing nobly sacrifice itself with Explosion to bring down his Dragonite, only realising that Goku the Magneton could have easily handled it after it's already too late. In his actual run, he did use Goku to finish off the Dragonite, while Coughing was unceremoniously killed by an unlucky Critical Hit from one of Lance's Dragonair. Jacob ended up fudging the results so that Coughing got to go out on a higher note, while keeping the broad strokes of what happened the same (Lance was defeated and Coughing was dead).
  • More significantly, his Emerald Randomizer Nuzlocke had him deliberately throw the fight against Juan's Groudon for the sake of a better ending. As he explains, he managed to complete his actual run, but nothing interesting happened after the Juan fight so winning would have been a huge anticlimax, while suffering a Total Party Kill to another Groudon was both ironic and served as a payoff for a lot of potential foreshadowing throughout the run.
  • To a lesser extent, the Elite 4 run in his "PERFECT" LeafGreen Nuzlocke was actually his second attempt, but only because he forgot to record the first one.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Jacob puts on the persona of an arrogant jerk in many of his videos for comedic effect.
• Unwinnable by Design: Jacob pranked some of his friends by putting them in an unsolvable escape room in "I created an UNSOLVABLE escape room".
• Vocal Evolution: Jacob's voice became a lot more expressive and higher since his early videos.
• Wild Card: Altrive, also known as Pikmin 4 and Pikmin 5, tends to be very unpredictable in Among Us. Rather than playing by the rules, he will often sabotage himself for no reason or ignore the imposter.
• The Wonka: Jacob has been the host of multiple charity events, and even as a host, he still maintains his eccentric, trollish personality, which ultimately leads to more traction and more revenue due to the uniqueness of the events.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When playing Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Jacob, who was already feeling rather sour about Team Star effectively avoiding punishment for their truancy, completely lost his shit when Penny admitted to hacking into the school's database and paying him and Clavell off with stolen funds and the latter mere stated that it was "out of his jurisdiction", meaning that as far as he was aware, Penny got off scot-free for multiple felonies.
  Jacob: Put her in jail, not in a fucking dorm!
• YouTuber Apology Parody:
  • In the aptly titled "YouTuber Apology Video", after getting cancelled by FamilyJules, Jacob apologizes for time-travelling in Animal Crossing, due to struggling with depression. The sad music and his cat in the thumbnail only makes it more sincere.
  • In the final round of "Proving that ANYONE can be a YouTuber", the two remaining contestants are tasked with recording their own apology videos for a panel of judges.
    Jacob: I'm a little disappointed in both of you. Neither of you mentioned that you were "in a dark place" when this happened, neither of you said that you're now in therapy, and neither of you sat down with a [deep sigh] at the start of the video.
  • In Beating Pokémon with ONLY Shinies, Jacob jokingly confesses to his Twitch chat for increasing the odds of finding a shiny Pokémon while sad music plays in the background.

---