Premiering in July 2011, Bro Team Pill is a YouTube series described by its creator(s) as "video game reviews for the modern intellectual."
In actuality, Bro Team Pill has relatively little to do with reviewing games in the traditional sense, focusing instead on delivering non-sequitur looks of video games that are equal parts hilarious, satirical, and surreal. Though primarily a comedy series, the "creative" reinterpretations of games' characters, plot, and mechanics often do serve as a subversive and incredibly sarcastic review of a game's content. The series' modus operandi is using professional quality video editing to distil commentary from the perspective of a stereotypical "bro," wildly creative overuse of profanity, LOTS OF YELLING, and rapid-fire clips of gameplay into a potent 2-4 minute summary. The series is also notable for not cleanly falling into any existing category of Editing Works, coming across as a hybrid of a Video Review Show, Abridged Series, and sometimes machinima.
Bro Team Pill has been steadily growing in popularity through word of mouth over Image Boards and news aggregators, amassing a buttload of subscribers and becoming featured content on Machinima's YouTube network. In 2021, his channel was removed from Youtube, though some of his videos are preserved by other channels attempting to Keep Circulating the Tapes.
Bro Team Pill Provides Examples Of:
- Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Used frequently, with a signature pronunciation of "woman" as "WAH-min."
- Angrish:
- Featured in many reviews, and especially prominent in Blacklight: Retribution.
- Different flavors of angrish appear in different videos, ranging from psuedo-German gibberish (Minecraft), to furious incoherent screaming (Star Trek Online), to just plain unhinged. (War Inc.)
- Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: When announcing his plan to start a new channel
, Bro Team's rant about Digitom Productions is greeted by Nelson of that very group, who excitedly asks if he's working on a new video and expresses high hopes for it. - Audience Participation: "Fate of" video series, where he and some hangers-on party up on random (usually bad) multiplayer games.
- Berserk Button: Everything, but in a meta-sense, Bro is as harsh as other internet critics when it comes to big name releases, like Skyrim. Compared to smaller releases, which usually consist of gibberish, twisting the plot into weird quests for drugs and/or boobs, Bro will often straight-out excoriate flaws in Triple-AAA games with little humor. See Caustic Critic.
- Boomerang Bigot: About his homeland of Canada.
- Broke the Rating Scale: The series gives decidedly odd ratings when it decides to give
- Garshasp gets a "Cool out of Yes".
- Tribes: Ascend gets a "*cough hack wheeze* out of 10".
- For F.E.A.R. 2, he simply states "I would rate this game."
- Ignores rating Battlefield 3 in favor of rating the review itself as being better than his FEAR 2 review.
- Sniper: Ghost Warrior gets a Tau Epsilon, with no scale given).
- His Hybrid review, he would give a hug. (hee hee hee~)
- He gave Alpha Protocol to his brother (and now he won't give it back!)
- Bystander Syndrome: In-game, dying civilians and allies are generally shrugged off in comedic ways.
- Caustic Critic: Usually delivered in a bizarre, Plinkett-on-cocaine-and-meth speedscrew of Angrish and chopped up with non-sequiturs to the point of nonsense, but he drops his persona to eviscerate big name games:
- Bro takes time to not appreciate
overused memes, lame jokes, questioning why Angel would return, and criticizing the co-op in Borderlands 2.- Though he seemed to enjoy it enough to play the DLC campaigns, and really liked the Bro Team reference in "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep". Still thinks the co-op is dumb, though he blames that on his friends rather than the game itself.
- 99% of the Skyrim rap was attacking the game for being, in his opinion, dumbed down, generic, glitchy, not very improved over Morrowind, and short. "Caustic" really is the word here.
- The whole of The War Z's video was spent criticizing the Obvious Beta state of the game, the absurd degree of micro transactions (to the point where he accuses it of being a scam in a freeze frame), and how monotonous the actual gameplay is along with the ridiculously long respawn queue. All set to a nightmarish rendition of MIA's Paper Planes.
- Similarly, the DayZ video mocked how boring gameplay was.
- Bro mocked the enemy design (which varies wildly and is almost Paper Mario-esque), dungeon crawling, and characters of Recettear.
- Bro takes time to not appreciate
- The Comically Serious: All of the Cricket Revolution review is delivered in a calm, dispassionate tone.
- Couch Gag: Many episodes have a unique audio clip after the appearance of the title and Pill, ranging from simple exclamations like "INTERNET!" to whatever the hell this sound is.
- Contractual Gag: Combined with his own running gags and mocked in the Guns of Icarus review."I sure hope JEFFREY shows up! Or that I end up in a SEWER!" (Laugh Track)
- Cuckoolander Commentator: As applied to video game commentary and criticism. Especially noticeable in the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine video where the game's many doors and elevators take precedence over the ultra-violent battles with hordes of demons and aliens.
- Curse Cut Short: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine ends with "If you don't stand behind our troops, you might as well stand in front of them and get fu-BRO TEAM!"
- Determinator: Bro Team isn't very good at action games, but this doesn't stop him from sticking with even the worst of them until he's finished.
- Drinking Game: His "Life is Dranks" playthrough of Life Is Strange, in which he takes a shot at anything he finds cringey about the writing/dialog.
- Driven to Suicide: His avatar in TERA Online.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: A canned-laughter version in the Guns of Icarus review. Bro isn't very happy about it.
- Eye Scream: Bro Team's eyes melt from becoming too good at videogames while wearing GUNNAR Optiks gaming glasses.
- Fusion Dance: The explanation for Bro Team seemingly consisting of one person."Bros COMBINED to form the team, you fucking guy!"
- Free-Love Future: Combined with Crapsack World in Bro Team's take on Syndicate."In the future, the human erogenous brain decides when and where shit's gonna go down. Humans are mere victims to their boner motives."
- Freudian Slip: Played for laughs in the Modern Warfare 3 review."This shit's more interactive than your most terrifying wet dream, but in this you don't wake up before you get to suck your teacher's dick!"
- Hurricane of Puns: The Singularity review. Doubles as a horribly dangerous Bro Team Drinking Game if you take a shot for every "time" pun!
- The "Fate of TERA" video is this taken to a new, unbearable extreme, courtesy of a few dozen compatriots on Mumble chat.note
- In Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Bro proclaims a torso blown in half at the waist to have a "leg up in the competition".
- The "Conte" NPC name joke writes itself.
- I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: Bro Team contemplates the many round objects of Singularity, including a pair belonging to a female character that seem to rob him of all free will."There's even balls on the front of this guy's shirt, and for some reason they make me want to do whatever this guy says."
- Lampshaded Double Entendre: In Guns of Icarus."We're gonna need a specialist: Me. Specialized in one-handed cranking, and also beatin' off my stupid dick."
- Last-Second Word Swap:
- In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood:"When we all know it was the JEWpiter Worshipers.
- In Dishonored:"We all know you don't rock out with your Sit on my lap."
- In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood:
- Laugh Track: Also in Guns of Icarus, apparently to mock his running gags.
- Logo Joke: When Bro Team mocked the Pill in the introduction to the Singularity review, it refused to perform in the next video.
- Mad Libs Dialogue: The Urgent Message from Vin Diesel uses snippets of Vin Diesel's interviews to protest Bro Team being linked to Machinima.
- Malaproper: Frequent, sometimes even combined with Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: Bro has to stop and freeze every time he sees his Tera Online creepy avatar. He breaks down in tears after he makes her commit suicide.
- Musical Episode:
- The Skyrim review is delivered in the form of a rap.
- The War Z review is set to an Angrish rendition of MIA's Paper Planes. Itself a Stealth Pun regarding the game being accused of being a scam ("All I wanna do is... and take your money")
- Nightmare Face: During the Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood review:That's because he knows he's entering a world of SHIHIHSHIHIH- (Bro appears, creepily flicking his tongue at the camera)
- No Indoor Voice: Gradually ramps up throughout the series, becoming a staple around the Painkiller review. Lampshaded in the following exchange from the Guns of Icarus:*Knock at the door* "HEY!" "WHAT?!""You got mail, man." "Oh, fuckin' THANKS DUDE!""NO PROBLEM!" "FUCK YOU!" "FUCK YOU!" "FUCK YOU, MAN!"
- Pun-Based Title: Alluded to in the April Fools video of Cricket Revolution."Well, it sounds like the word 'protein,' but that's not actually what's being said."
- Refuge in Audacity: One of the mainstays of the series, like the Killing Floor review's insistence that the game is about Irish police officers.
- Running Gag:
- Sewers, the Mace of Trit, MARTIANS, Canada being crappy, "Shit's FUCKED", Jeffrey the giant eagle, murdering the hostage, and EVAC helicopters being blown up.
- Crysis 3 requiring that Bro tear apart and "improve" (read: destroy) his computer to play the sweet graphics.
- The Fate of Planetside 2 video referring to the MAX power armor as "Mexicans" resulted in faux-Spanish gibbering and La Cucaracha blaring over Proximity Chat, which resulted in one fan's visiting Mexican family to call him an asshole.
- Rogue Warrior had "isn't expecting A KNIFE TO THE THROAT" and variations thereof.
- Shout-Out:
- The Hybrid review has "I want more LIFE, FUCKER!"
- The Dishonored review has I AM THE LAW
- Many videos feature brief allusions to Twin Peaks.
- Shower Scene: Well, a bath scene. From Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. It's interrupted by Bro enjoying the fanservice too much.It's time to take a bath in olive oil, you greasy motherfucker~. Enter, bitches, and wipe my dink.
- So Much for Stealth:
- Intentionally abandoned for Alpha Protocol and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
"If anyone sees you the mission's FUCKED! ....Try to keep a low profile."- Rogue Warrior has him pull an Overly Long Gag about running up to the Russians and executing the insta-kill knife attack, each time with an increasingly less restrained "THE NEXT GUY ISN'T EXPECTING A KNIFE TO THE THROAT".
- Screams Like a Little Girl: A few times, most noticeably when he's killed by a surprise melee attack in the Crime Craft review.
- Squee: Terraria."Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
- He wants to give Hybrid a hug.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: In the "Internet Dating" video, Bro Team (posing as a woman) is questioned whether he's actually a man.lol as if i'm a guy who made this entire profile and is streaming this to like 479 people on the internet
- Take That!: The Modern Warfare 3 "review" is actually Modern Warfare 2 footage. If you don't get it, it's basically saying Modern Warfare 3 IS Modern Warfare 2.
- The Skyrim rap, which attacked the game for being generic fantasy, removing or simplifying many elements from Morrowind, and being extremely glitchy.
- Most of the Borderlands 2 review was jokeless, and consisted of Bro trashing the reappearance of Angel, the overused jokes and memes, and (in his opinion) bad, needless co-op.
- Bro hated Battlefield 3 for its slow-paced multiplayer and mocked the DLC, which he deemed unnecessary.
- The fake speedrun of Gone Home might be one. If you can hear what Bro is saying.
- Bro thinks Recettear (or at least Mark of the Ninja) "fucking sucks" for its enemy graphics, lack of visitable locations, and anime art style.
- Apparently, Gearbox asked Bro to advertise a new MOBA of theirs. He posted a vaguely coherent video about how you can totally play as previous Gearbox heroes, like Adrian Shephard (you can't), "or something like that".
- Take That, Audience!: The Star Trek Online review, which consists almost entirely of him screaming unintelligibly (as opposed to him screaming more intelligibly in other videos). At one point he shouts"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT!? YOU FUCKIN' PIGS! YOU SKULLFUCKERS!"
- The DayZ review, a game which Bro Team repeatedly refused to review, begins and ends with the audible sound of sheep bleating. The review itself is much more overly negative than their usual videos - which, in a series that has very little negativity, says something...
- The Skyrim review ends with Bro saying that only utter retards would think Skyrim is good.
- All Sagacious Interrogatives are read in gibbering, retarded voices... except for one or two delivered in perfect, calm English, just for comedic effect.
- The Triple: In the review of Lord of the Rings Online:"You will listen... You will observe... You will EAT TATERS!"
- Unreliable Voiceover: Comes with the territory of rewriting games' plots for broness, fun, and profit.
- Vulgar Humor: The mainstay of the series.
