Web Video / CalebCity

Thanks for the views

CalebCity is a YouTuber and former Vine star known for his popular skits parodying various character archetypes and story tropes. His skits only have one actor: himself. Thus his show basically runs on Acting for Two (or three or more).

---

Ayo, the tropes are here!

• Affably Evil: The titular drug dealer in "If they let a drug dealer into a musical." is a pleasant and friendly man who breaks into song and dance when explaining how he sells drugs to children and families.
• Agony of the Feet:
  • invoked In "This is how it feels sometimes", Caleb runs out of his room in order to deliver his roommate's laptop charger before his battery runs out. Before the roommate can warn him, Caleb stubs his toes on a chair and collapses on the floor from the pain, blood leaking from his mouth. The whole situation is Played for Drama until Caleb notices his foot doesn't actually hurt. After removing his sock to check the damage, however, pieces of sausage, smeared with ketchup, fall off the sock.
    Roommate: Wait... What are those?
    (Beat)
    Caleb: MAH TOES!!! NOOOOO!!!
  • In "I didn't even push you that hard", when Caleb pushes his brother to the floor, his ankle breaks (somehow). Taken up to eleven when the broken foot somehow gains sentience and seeks revenge against Caleb by dragging both itself and Caleb's brother on the floor, much to their collective horror. Then it's taken up to TWELVE when Caleb accidentally (or not) breaks his own foot while trying to escape, only for his own foot to also gain sentience and menacingly twist itself as it turns towards Caleb, with both brothers left unable to stop screaming in abject horror.
• Always a Bigger Fish: A robber attempts to rob a house when he thinks the residents are away, but it turns out they're not. He ends up hiding in the closet where they're practising recording a Soundcloud rap, where the singer describes how he brutally killed a house robber the previous day. Cue Oh, Crap! from the current robber, who also sees the other robber's corpse hidden behind the couch as he attempts to leave.
• And I Must Scream: Parodied when Caleb has sleep paralysis and can't do anything about the people robbing his house. The robbers find him in his state and proceed to mock him while stealing his stuff.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In "Villains with TRASH reasons on why they're evil," Regal explains to Bill that the reason he's been robbing banks is that the owners are horrible people responsible for money laundering, killing his parents and sadistically torturing Regal himself, running his city into poverty, and worst of all, cancelling all his Amazon pre-orders.
  Bill: THEY DID WHAT?! HELL NO!
• Artistic License: Lampshaded in "How garbage pistols were in the 18th century"; the duel rules are simpler in this skit than real life because, as the referee admits, the skit "left out like fifteen of 'em". As you might have guessed from the title of the video, the intricacies of 18th-century honor duels are not exactly the important part of the joke.
• Aside Glance:
  • In "The "where I'm from" type of people" Caleb gives one to the camera after the titular "where I'm from" character reveals that when they got hungry in their city they would kill people and feed off of death.
  • The protagonist gives a deadpan look of disgust at the camera in "How fearless enemy minions are in ANY video game" when the fourth Mook still wants to throw down against any self-preservation.
  • In "Anime characters that turn EVERYTHING into a motivational speech." The friend gives this towards the end of the video when the anime character was yelling at 3 in the morning about losing sleep over his exams and needing his uncle's words.
• Atomic F-Bomb: The first non-censored time he says "Fuck" and it's on LongBeachGriffy's channel.
• Awesome, but Impractical: All of the applicants in the superhuman interviews. The invisible-powered applicant can only turn invisible by doing a backflip, which he can't do (without hurting himself, anyway). The time-loop guy has terrible short-term memory. The time-reversing guy accidentally freezes himself in time.
• Ax-Crazy: Quite a few characters in his videos end up being insane and murderous:
  • The wasp in "If Insects had to Introduce Themselves" enjoys hurting people for no reason other than his amusement.
  • The villain in "When the Hero is Just as Smart as the Villain" plants bombs around the city to blow up, as well as attempts to blow up the hero's dry cleaners.
  • "It's at the bottom of the bag" features a villain in the friend's bag who enjoys punching old ladies.
  • The robber in "If You Learned How to Quick Save in Real Life" walks around with a bat, and he's a bit too eager to murder anyone that gets too close to him.
  • The guy in "how objects feel when you're raging on a video game" at first is just a normal gamer getting mad at a video game and taking his anger out on objects near. However, him later on acknowledging that the objects are sentient when he asks why the water bottle is sweating, and then him pulling out a freaking ax to attack the poor bottle, while repeatedly stating he's gonna delete the game, shows that he's actually pretty crazy.
• Beat the Curse Out of Him: The hero in Heroes when ANY of their allies are under mind control attempts to do this to his friend... much to the horror of the villain.
• Big "NO!": In one of his vines he does this after being asked if he wanted to hold his baby after seeing it's appearance.
  • Done at the end of "Overpowered Villains (again)", when Jermaine sees the villain running right at him with a sword. He gets cut off by the outro.
  • Done again at the end of "Whenever theres ACTUALLY a good dad in ANY show/movie", when the titular dad gets struck by lightning, indoors, right in front of his son.
• Bit Part Bad Guys: Parodied in "How EVERY throw away villain acts when the MC needs to be power scaled." Two random bar thugs waylay the protagonist and threaten to mug him. The protagonist repeatedly warns the thugs that he is so strong that he can defeat a horde of a hundred bad guys who intend to murder him, but the thugs attack him anyway. One thug is killed when just the protagonist's Disapproving Look causes him to explode, while the other dies after attempting to punch the protagonist only to be attacked by his skin oils.
• Blood from the Mouth: "If people in anime actually took their bleeding serious." depicts a superpowered fight where the villain is surprised to take a clean shot to the gut, muses that he might have to use thirty percent of his real power, then stops, is surprised to cough up some blood... completely stops, no, no more fight; he's lost and then some, he is pretty sure something is broken inside and wants an ambulance. Things just get stranger when the hero, who is used to this happening, punches himself, coughs up blood and is all ready to keep going.
• Bottomless Magazines: In "Guns in movie scenes", two bank robbers are pinned by a cop, who starts shooting at them while they take cover. The robbers decide to wait until the cop runs out of bullets before jumping him while he's reloading. Four hours later, not only has the cop not stopped shooting or attempted to reload, the robbers have given up and beg him to stop shooting.
  Robber 1: I'm tired and I regret every decision that led to this point in my life...
  Robber 2: He's not even shooting at us, man! He's just... STOP! PLEASE, STOP!
• Brainwashed: In Heroes when ANY of their allies are under mind control, the friend is this.
• Broken Record: “If NPCs had to do a mission without player interaction” is about characters that can do nothing but ask the player to make decisions, even if there is no player or if it doesn’t make sense for them to be the one asking.
  “So are we just going to sit here twiddling our thumbs or get somewhere?”
• But Thou Must!: In the skit about the gameplay pausing so the player can make a dialogue choice to progress the story, the driver asks for the passenger's social security number (and address, too!) and the passenger is only given the prompts to give him his SSN or give his SSN and even more of his personal info. If he doesn't answer, he can't progress in the story — in other words, he's trapped there unless he gives up his personal info.
  Other Passenger: You gotta progress! Progress the story!
• The Cameo: In King Vader videos.
• Camera Screw: Invoked in Games that have TRASH camera controls.
• Character Death: A blatantly enforced one occurs in-universe during "When the writers REALLY want to write off a character": in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse, two survivors hide in a room and lock the door to keep the zombies at bay. One of them decides to Hold the Line while the other escapes, but his friend points out they can both escape through the backdoor, where Jasper is waiting with a car with more than enough space for the two of them to fit. The first survivor insists that there's no time and tells his friend to leave without him. In the time it takes them to argue, the zombies finally reach the door, but give up after several seconds of trying to open it to no avail and verbally admit they can't get in before deciding to just leave. The first survivor then decides to go outside and fight the zombies while his extremely confused friend escapes.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Azul mentally devolves into one during "The first person to make cheese" when the milk he was supposed to deliver turns into cheese. Justified in that the king he was supposed to deliver it to had threatened to have him killed moments ago if the milk was anything less than excellent.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Calebs in "If insects had to introduce themselves" wear different shirts that match the color of the bugs they're playing as.
• Crossover:
  • In "When You Spend Too Much Time With Your Boo" his personal friend and fellow YouTuber Kimmie D berates Caleb for ignoring her in favor of his PlayStation until she literally turns into him. Kimmie D also appears in "How the writers of some Animes just be letting the villain's abilities make no sense".
  • King Vader appears in "I hate the doctor's office"
  • Caleb also crosses with LongBeachGriffy in two skits they did together. "GPS always points you in the wrong direction" on Caleb's channel and "Getting pulled over" on Griffy's channel.
• Chromosome Casting: Due to the channel averting Crosscast Role, if there aren't any actual women in a skit, all the characters in said skit will most likely be all male.
• Crosscast Role: Averted. With the possible exception of "Drama shows after 12 seasons.", all of the women in Caleb's videos are played by actual women. All the characters Caleb himself plays are male.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Parodied (and somewhat deconstructed) during "How some shows try to make the VILLAIN the friend"; as one of the heroes befriends the titular villain, his exasperated companion gives a long list of reasons (including the loss of his own foot) as to why he can't be trusted and they should simply kill him. He quickly changes his tune when given a very valid reason not to kill the villain:
  Hero 1: He's a villain! Why would you want to trust him?! WHY?!
  invoked Hero 2: (completely deadpan) The writer likes him, bro.
  (Beat)
  Hero 1: ...So perhaps we've treated you too harshly. Please, accept my humblest apologies: you are now gang. Are you hurt? Let me help you up.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • In "When you travel through time to stop yourself from making a dumb mistake", Caleb travels through time to stop himself from making an unspecified, but dumb mistake. The thing is, he's travelled from the past to the future, where his future self is missing an arm. Once Future Caleb points this out to Past Caleb, the latter takes a few moments to process his mistake before giving himself a Face Palm. He then compunds his mistake by realizing that he used up all of his fuel because travelling to the future is more expensive than going to the past. When Future Caleb calls him stupid, he suddenly remembers having made the trip from his own perspective and remembers that he made extra fuel in the last 5 years after returning to his time while waiting for this moment. Unfortunately, it's only enough fuel to send Past Caleb back to his own time rather than to the time before his original mistake.
  • In "When you gotta question your own intelligence", at the end, Caleb says to his neighbor that he got the latest Smash game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. When his friend points out that the game hasn't been released yet^note The video was made on March 31. Smash Ultimate came out on December 7., Caleb internally says, "Dammit..." If watched on Youtube, the opening scene of the "game" is shown, and that's when Caleb's friend realizes he's been scammed. He's not happy.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Frequently as the twist.
  • Caleb's girlfriend gets suspicious that a female classmate called him 30 minutes before class in "When you have to rethink your relationship", and when she interprets Caleb's words as him thinking she's crazy she reaches into his McDonald's bag and throws his burger out the window.
  • The pizza delivery guy in "I hate delivery." goes from meekly asking for a slice of pizza to immediately promising to kill Caleb and everyone he holds dear for being turned down.
    Delivery guy: [meekly] I mean- I get it. I'm just a stranger... *starts speaking into phone* [suddenly serious] who has your address. Enjoy your last meal.
  • In "How I fix snoring", Caleb puts a stop to his roommate's obnoxiously loud snoring by beating the living daylights out of him.
  • In "When you actually answer a 'Scam Likely' call", the main character is perfectly willing to instantly teleport to the harassing telemarketer and threaten to kill him unless he stops. Turns out the company is a shadowy cabal that will never stop calling, even if he keeps killing them. All to sell golf magazines.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You:
  • In "How fearless enemy minions are in ANY video game", the protagonist keeps trying to warn the minions not to try and fight him and stand down. None of them listen.
  • In "How EVERY throw away villain acts when the MC needs power scaled", the protagonist keeps warning the duo of villains trying to mug him how bad of an idea it is to attack him and that they're going to die. Then shows them a video of him beating one hundred guys by himself who were trying to murder him, while literally having the blood still on his hands. They don't listen and both die with the minimum amount of effort possible.
• Dropped in the Toilet: Exaggerated in "Dropping anything in the bathroom" where somehow anything Caleb drops will, on its own volition, travel to the bathroom and fall into the toilet, even when he's nowhere near the bathroom. This includes a cellphone which crawls there from the living room, snakes under a closed door, locks the door so Caleb can't stop it, and then finally dunks itself in the toilet.
• Elder Abuse: Punching grandmas is mentioned both in "When you just wanted to help your friend with his diss track" and "It's at the bottom of the bag".
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The robber in If saying "GET BACK HERE" actually worked in tv shows is about to head up the stairs to find stuff to steal... But then notices how clean the carpet on the stairs are, along with the fact that they're damp, meaning they were just recently cleaned. He pauses for a second, then takes his shoes off before walking upstairs.
  • The villain in Heroes when ANY of their allies are under mind control. gets concerned and calls the hero out for immediately jumping to attacking his friend and not him. However, this either turns out to be a Batman Gambit or a Xanatos Gambit on the hero's part as it was at least implied that it was all to get the villain to turn off his mind control to prove him wrong.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • The residents of the house that the robber tries to steal from fail to see him close the closet door that he's hiding in, him dashing behind the front door as they enter the house, and him behind the front door as they close it.
  • The protagonist in When the hero is just as smart as the villain somehow fails to notice that the villain was never in the same room, and that he'd been on FaceTime all along. Fortunately, the villain was FaceTiming from his house... where the hero already was.
• Felony Misdemeanor: A video on his Instagram account has a man arrested simply for singing off-key.
• Fever Dream Episode: Caleb goes through one during "Your whole funny bone" after he hits his funny bone. It culminates with Caleb attaining enlightenment, letting go of his burdens and spontaneously learning to levitate.
  Caleb's roommate: Yo, your arm is on the ground!
  Caleb: ...That arm was holding me back.
• Foreshadowing: In If you learned how to quick save the robber, while beating up either the main character or his friend, notes if there was two of them, he probably wouldn't stand a chance. Guess what happens when both properly go to fight him together?
• Gambit Pileup: The entire point of "When the hero is just as smart as villain" skit is to showcase this.
• Gender Bender: In "When you get too serious playing basketball.", Caleb crosses Desmond so hard that the latter falls victim to this. When Caleb tries to change him back, he ends up changing his skin color.
• Get Out!: How the interviewer in the super human interviews reacts to candidates who piss him off:
  • In the first one he says it to the two candidates who can summon spiders and centipedes, respectively, and the time loop guy.
  • In the second one he says it to the guy who thinks he can read his own mind, the guy who can control "the element of surprise", the guy who can put clothes on by touching them... and the time loop guy.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: A meta example. Starting with "When you actually answer a 'Scam Likely' call", because of a recent eye surgery, Caleb has stopped wearing glasses in his videos.
• Hammerspace: The bag in Its at the bottom of the bag has clothes, a knife, a baseball bat, a folding chair, and a villain who punches grandmas. And, ostensibly, a charger.
• Haplessly Hiding: One video pokes fun at airline baggage handlers for their physical abuse of baggage, specifically with one character hiding themselves in luggage only to get beat up by a handler while still inside, unbeknownst to the handler.
• Heavy Sleeper: In "People that have a million alarms set", Caleb's roommate constantly goes back to sleep after turning off several different alarms. Fed up with this, Caleb hires a hitman to kick him every time he does it again.
  Hitman: Now that I have your attention, I want you to listen. The world hates people that let alarms go on and on all day long without any regard for anyone else. That's what I'm here for: for people just like you. So, from here on out, if an alarm doesn't wake you up in the first 8 seconds of it ringing, I'm going to kick you. If an alarm does wake you up in the first 8 seconds, and you turn it off so that you can wake up to a different alarm, I'm going to kick you. If you have more than two alarms that work for the exact same purpose, I'm going to kick you. And if you dare ever hit Snooze on an alarm, I'm not going to kick you: I'll do far, far worse than kick you.
  • Judging from Caleb's dialogue, this isn't the first time he's made that phone call.
• Heel–Face Turn: In "When you decide to turn your life around for the better", a juvenile criminal has a Heel Realization and confides in his teacher that he needs a degree to have an actual future. Subverted when the kid reveals he's there to commit another robbery at gunpoint, in order to "get" a degree by force.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Played straight and invoked on a meta level in "Maining ANYBODY in Smash", where Caleb argues at the top of his lungs, with himself, about how Richter and Simon are or are not variants of the same character (after talking trash about playing one but not the other).
  • In Friends can't take anything serious, Jasper gets pissed when his friends not taking him seriously, not sending the police to deal with a dangerous burglar, and says that they're adults now. Thirty seconds later, he rises to the bait of his friends saying he has "no balls" and immediately tries to handle the burglar himself, which predictably fails.
• I Know You Know I Know: Parodied in "When the hero is just as smart as the villain", where the hero and villain engage in an ever-escalating series of things done "because they expected it," such as swapping a key with a banana, implanting the key into a banana while planting a replica in its place, and stealing the replica key so the villain can plant the real one in its place.
• I Meant to Do That: In "The first person to make cheese", Azul says this after accidentally creating cheese when he was supposed to deliver milk. When the king (who threatened to kill him if his milk wasn't up to its reputation) tastes the cheese, Azul begins to apologize and beg for his life, until the king declares that he actually loves the cheese, upon which a visibly relieved Azul starts screaming that he did it on purpose in celebration.
• Implausible Deniability: In "When you REALLY need to sell that house," the seller constantly tries to deny that the house is haunted even after hearing the demonic voice twice, seeing a dead person on the ground and his spirit break-dancing, and seeing words written in blood that the dead guy loved to dance. The seller's denials get increasingly half-hearted as the video goes on and he eventually gives up at the end.
• Improbable Weapon User: In "Overpowered protagonists make no sense," the protagonist is so powerful he can casually kill people with a roll of duct tape, a paper towel, drops of water, and the air around them.
• In the Hood: Many of his villains.
• Involuntary Smile of Incapacitation: In the video "When Your Soul Gets Punched out of Your Body", a character taunts someone offscreen, which results in him getting punched so hard that his body crumples to the ground with a serene smile upon his face.
• Killing Intent: Downplayed in "How EVERY throw away villain acts when the MC needs power scaled". After warning the two thugs threatening him that it's a horrible idea to do so, he finaly just looks at one of them with 'intention to harm.' The guy promptly explodes.
• Killed Off for Real: Invoked in "When the writers REALLY want to write off a character."
• Knee-capping: In "When your knees weak", Caleb's knees are ridiculously, hilariously prone to snapping by just existing: from simply walking down some steps, to being pushed, to being hit by a fly, it doesn't take much to have Caleb on the ground whimpering in pain.
• Know When to Fold 'Em:
  • In "Why do Sekiro's enemies even fight him?", a guard decides to simply walk away after his bullets are parried twice by Sekiro.
  • In "What the villain SHOULD do when the hero is WAY FASTER", when faced with a hero who can Flash Step, a robber decides to not only give back the money he stole, but also give up his shoes (which he bought with stolen money) and wait for the police to arrest him, preferring to finish his day with some of his dignity intact rather than look pathetic while pointlessly trying to run away.
    Hero: ...So you're for real trying to go to jail? Willingly, right now-
    Robber: I WILL HANDCUFF MYSELF.
• Living Is More than Surviving: In "In a Zombie apocalypse...", Caleb tries to recruit a friend to help survive the zombie apocalypse. Unfortunately, faced with the prospect of trading a life of modern comforts for a life of day-to-day survival, his friend decides he would rather just lie down and wait for death. He becomes far more enthusiastic when Caleb sheepishly admits that he just thought it would be cool to fight zombies, telling Caleb he should've just led with that in the first place.
• Major Injury Underreaction: "Ayo, the pizza here!" Caleb proceeds to seemingly break his ankle, then falls down the stairs, but only says "My ears burn!" despite visibly being injured several times during the fall.
• Meaningful Name: "CalebCity", which refers to the fact that all the characters in most of his videos are all played by himself.
• Mook Chivalry: "How fearless enemy minions are in ANY video game" starts off with two Mooks, one of which gets attacked immediately and screams "DON'T JUST STAND THERE!" at the second one, who does just that.
• Musical Episode: Caleb breaks into song in "When you have to rethink your relationship" after his girlfriend throws his burger out the car.
  She threw the burger out my car
  I didn't think that she would go so far
  She didn't even let me take a bite
  I want to punch this girl with all my might
  She threw the burger out my car
  I didn't think that she could go so far
  I thought that she was only getting mad
  I didn't think that she'd reach in the bag
  Oh, oh my heart, baby
  She threw the burger out my car, baby
  (Caleb starts crying)
  "My burger! Oh, my burger! YO, CUT THE MUSIC, MY BURGER!!"
• Nintendo Hard: In-Universe. Caleb has some skits that invoke this trope one way or another:
  • "When the game you're playing is way too hard." The extremely fragile protagonist repeatedly dies after stepping on a small rock, getting killed by a death stare from a chicken, and drinking water too fast.
  • "Games that have ANY type of ledges in them" The protagonist manages to die from falling off a two-foot high ledge, jumping off the same ledge, stepping onto a ledge, and simply being idle next to the ledge. That last one causes Caleb to rage quit.
  • "When your game pays way too much attention to detail" The game begins to become more detailed and complicated as Caleb plays. He even says this quote before that happens:
    Caleb: See, that's why I like this game, it's detailed!
  • "Games where the Npcs have priority over everything.": Caleb ends up in a fight with an enemy, and an NPC runs up to Caleb and interrupts him...while the enemy is still attacking him. Caleb was unable to exit out of the dialogue in time and gets killed by the enemy.
  • invoked "Games that have TRASH camera controls.": Caleb ends up having a hard time moving around in the game due to the glitching camera. He eventually ends up losing a fight because he couldn't move or attack, and eventually declares the game an Obvious Beta because of this.
• No Time to Explain: Parodied in "Being a side character while the smart characters figure everything out". A detective is brought to a crime scene to see if he can find new evidence, but he spends all the time internally monologuing while performing a Sherlock Scan, which drives his partner crazy as the detective simply mentions that something is wrong but won't explain what it is and completely ignores him (even as he savagely trashes the crime scene in frustration). Eventually the detective works out that they janitor is the murderer, but rather than explain his reasoning he simply says that there's no time to explain and that they have to catch him now.
  "YOU'VE HAD THIS WHOLE TIME TO EXPLAIN! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!"
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: In Friends can't take anything serious, Jasper is goaded into fighting the burglar breaking into his house by his friends working at the police, who simply tell him "no balls" after he asks them to do their job and send help.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: In "If the 'Forgot your password' thing was a person", Caleb runs into one, who is standing in as a website's login system. After Caleb repeatedly inputs the wrong password, the system suggests that he request a password change; when Caleb attempts to change his password to one of his previous attempts, however, the system breaks into hysterical laughter and informs him that the new password can't be the same as the last. A stumped Caleb tries to put the same password in order to log in, but is once more told that the password is incorrect. Caleb then changes the password to a simpler, different password, and attempts to use it after it is successfully changed, but...
  System: Password was incorrect and you have been locked out of your account for 60 days for suspicious activity.
  Caleb: I'M WHAAAAAAT?! FIX MY— AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGH!!!!!!
• Obviously Evil: In "What they SHOULD do in anime.", the villain asks for powerful stones at the store. While the storekeeper goes and gets them from the back, the villain internally monologues to himself while bearing a Nightmare Face about how he'll finally rule the world. The storekeeper comes back mid-monologue and realizes that he's a villain, so he refuses to hand over the stones.
• Oh, Crap!: Caleb freaks out upon learning that his opponent in "Catch These Hands", who has just caught both of his fists in a Punch Catch, has a THIRD hand when he goes for a knee to the groin.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: DayQuil and NyQuil (His full name).
• Parrying Bullets:
  • In "If you learned how to deflect in real life", Caleb's roommate deflects a plastic bottle thrown at him. When he denies having done this, Caleb throws a folding chair at him, which, much to Caleb's misfortune, he also deflects right onto his knee.
  • In "Why do Sekiro's enemies even fight him?", when a guard shoots him with a rifle, Sekiro easily parries the bullet. Convinced he must've missed, the guard shoots him again, to no avail. The guard then calmly puts his gun against the wall and walks away, wishing Sekiro a good day before he leaves. Notably, he's the only guard Sekiro doesn't kill.
• Plot Armor: Invoked in several videos such as "When the writer of a show only focuses on progressing the plot" and "When you realize you're going up against the main character".
• Reincarnate in Another World: "Eps.1 of EVERY isekai." has Caleb attempt to defy this by staying at home. He then gets hit by a truck that somehow got into his house.
• Running Gag: Whatever the subject of the video is, you can probably bet that it'll result in the characters questioning reality from how absurd their situation is.
• Save Scumming: In "If you learned how to quick save in real life." Caleb quicksaves while his house is getting robbed, sends his friend to fight the robber then reloads to learn what he has equipped before rushing him with a Katana. He turns out to be extremely powerful and both of them have to take the thief on. Then they have to take him on again when teaming up results in overkill (after Caleb teaches his friend how to quicksave, of course).
• Scare Chord: Usually accompanying a Wham Line.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: In "When you realize you're going up against the main character", upon being cut with a golf club, the protagonist's opponent simply throws him his sword and leaves.
• Scrub: invoked Parodied in "Maining ANYBODY in Smash" where one Smash player regards everyone who mains a different character than him as horrible dangers to society. The thing is, it's not just him (with the exception of The Stinger), in this universe, this is all official information from Nintendo.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: A villain who punches grandmas was trapped in a man's bag before being released by another man looking for a charger.
• Shared Universe: All characters in his various skits exist in the same world. Caleb also appears in videos with King Vader and RDCworld1, the latter who all appear in "When you get too serious playing basketball."
• Smarter Than You Look: When the hero and villain in When the hero is just as smart as villain. starts to reveal how deep their crazy plans against each other went, the "Legendary Thief" remarks that his adversary is smarter than he looks. The detective (who is, as usual, just Caleb with a different outfit and personality) mutters as a side note that that doesn't really work here.
• Smash Cut: Done at the end of "Overpowered Villains (again)".
• Speaking Simlish: Whenever a character gets hit in the face, they say some short gibberish that's meant to be reminiscent of a pain sound.
  • In "Putting your glasses down for 5 SECONDS", Caleb gets hit with this while not wearing his glasses: not only can he not see a thing, for some reason he's also unable to hear speech as anything other than Simlish.
    Roommate: Apartipridact.
    Caleb: What?
    Roommate: Apartipridact scavern?
    Caleb: What are you ta—
    Roommate: Ravern did scavern! Kishmirga!
• Spoof Aesop: "Whenever a scientist makes a scientific breakthrough." has this in the description:
  As a matter of fact, just don't tell anybody any idea you have.
• Staircase Tumble: In one of his earlier vines, Caleb hears that his pizza is coming ("Ayo, the pizza here!") but then trips on his ankles and falls off rolling on the stairs. He has no problems on the body harms, except that his ears burn.
• Start of Darkness: The first plant to become a venus fly trap
• Stupid Crooks:
  • The eponymous drug dealer in "If they let a drug dealer into a musical." openly deals while singing and dancing loudly that he's a drug dealer. Unsurprisingly, he gets immediately arrested mid-song.
  • The teenaged criminal in "When you decide to turn your life around." seems to think you can "get" a valid degree (as in the piece of paper) without actually studying and graduating. So he tries robbing his teacher for one. Who knows him. And putting on a face-concealing mask after he showed up maskless.
• Suddenly Shouting: Usually to indicate exaggeration, often accompanied by a Scare Chord, and always starting with a Wham Line.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: In "How fearless minions are in ANY video game." It eventually culminates in a minion challenging the hero in spite of the fact that he was told, to his face, that the hero had killed 100 other minions and the boss as well.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Sometimes comes up in his videos, and occasionally played with:
  • "If they let a drug dealer into a musical." See Wrong Genre Savvy below.
  • "People that think the manager can change everything." Stores can't accept a returning item if you paid with cash instead of card and you lost the receipt, which the manager and district manager try to say to the customer. Then he tells them to get the president. Not the president of the company, mind you, the president of the United States. The district manager, exasperated, tells the customer that it's extremely difficult to even contact the president. Doesn't stop them from calling him a few seconds later, though. When THAT doesn't work either, the customer demands to speak to the United Nations, but the district manager has had enough at that point.
  • The Evil Overlord in "Villains that always kill their subordinates" resorts to killing his minions whenever they do anything wrong. Rather than having the subordinates leave or attempt to fight the villain due to the bad treatment, it instead backfires because he literally runs out of allies to send to fight, with the one killed at the beginning of the video being the very last one. Even the maintenance staff weren't immune from being killed, leaving Patrick wondering how the lights are still on if he kept killing people for months. The overlord failed to realize that nothing, not even minions, is infinite.
  • "Villains with TRASH reasons on why they're evil." Regal steals from banks that are run by murderers, because the same murders killed his parents in front of him, as well as putting his city into poverty. Louis, on the other hand, murders people simply because he was made fun of in middle school. Regal understandably calls him out on this. Anybody would be horrified to hear about someone becoming evil for such a petty reason. Well, except for the police officer, who gets Louis to stand down easily by saying that he's sorry about their pasts. Louis then apologizes to the officer, who accepts it, much to Regal's shock. Mind you, the officer had a stronger reaction to Regal's backstory, especially the part where the higher-ups at the banks canceled his preorders.
  • In "What they SHOULD do in anime.", the villain asks for powerful stones at the store. While the storekeeper goes and gets them from the back, the villain internally monologues to himself while bearing a Nightmare Face about how he'll finally rule the world. The storekeeper comes back, takes one good look at the villain's face and realizes that he's evil, so the shopkeeper refuses to hand over the stones.
  • "How anime Senseis teach ANYONE that isn’t the main character." shows what happens when you inflict Training from Hell on a regular human with no Plot Armor. The result? With just one move, the student is either dead or comatose. Cue the sensei freaking out when he can't wake him up and the situation goes From Bad to Worse when Master Avocado calls him after the fact and tells him to go easy on the student.
  • "How fearless minions are in ANY video game." The MC/protagonist/player character begins to get exhausted with the enemies when they keep trying to fight him.
  • "Heroes when ANY of their allies are under mind control." As the villain points out, repeatedly punching someone who's under mind control in the face is not going to snap them out of it. To prove his point, he snaps his fingers to free the ally from his mind control. Then it's revealed that the punching was part of the heroes' plan all along to bait the villain to free the ally.
  • "When you ACTUALLY answer a 'Scam Likely' call." Simply dealing with one telemarketer is not going to stop the scam calls.
  • "In a Zombie apocalypse..." See Living Is More than Surviving above.
  • "How some shows try to make the VILLAIN the friend." See Defeat Means Friendship above.
• Surreal Horror: Depicts taking off his glasses as being addressed with gibberish, seeing objects sitting somewhere besides down, and a disconcerting encounter with a floating banana (a man wearing a yellow shirt).
• Too Dumb to Live: Quite a few of Caleb's videos feature characters like this:
  • This trope is kinda parodied in "When the Writers REALLY Wanna Write Off a Character" where despite all logic, the guy with the protagonist wants to die a senseless sacrifice. They can easily escape through a nearby door that leads to outside, they have a friend waiting outside in a 4-door car, and the zombies literally say they can't get in through the locked door. Yet, the guy with the protagonist decides to go out anyway and fight a horde of zombies as "distraction". Not even a minute later, he can be heard screaming.
  • The "brilliant" scientist in "The Time Viewer" builds a device that allows him to communicate with anyone from the future, which he uses to talk with himself and he gets warned that the device is gonna explode (right before the device explodes and kills his future self). However he assumes it's nothing more than a joke, and just laughs it off.... And then the device explodes and kills him.
  • As mentioned in Suicidal Overconfidence, the minions in "How Fearless Minions are in ANY Game" qualify as this, as they keep trying to fight the main character despite the clear signs that they stand no chance against him. Bonus point for the last guy who STILL tried to fight him after he defeated the boss.
  • In "Friends can't take anything serious," Jasper is this. Despite being rightfully pissed off at his friends over at the police for not dispatching officers to deal with an ongoing break-in, he stops whispering and speaks loudly enough for the burglar in the next room to hear him. Then he rises to them baiting him with "no balls" and tries to confront the burglar, with predictable results.
• Trainee from Hell: How the main character "develops" in 90% of shows. has the protagonist reach their instructor's level in less than 10 minutes. The instructor in question then tests the protagonist by ordering them to get one hit in with a Killing Intent. He gets hit hard enough to be knocked out before he has the chance to brace himself.
• Training from Hell: Deconstructed in "How anime Senseis teach ANYONE that isn’t the main character." which kicks off training with a Flash Step, a hard shot to the stomach, a lesson about never letting their guard down, and then the rest is gradually realizing that the student "that doesn't have plot armor" seems to no longer be responsive. That's kind of what happens when you inflict Training from Hell on a regular human…
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Caleb in "I hate the doctor's office", finds out that the girl that he was married to for ten years and tried to make a baby with was actually a dude. He does not take this well.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: In-Universe. "Getting caught in a stealth game." has the player character sneaking around and knocking out any witnesses who see him. Near the end of the skit, he encounters a baby, who starts crying. Panicking, he quickly knocks them out. That's what causes the mission to end in failure.
  Mission Control: DID YOU HIT A BABY?! WHY THE F*** WOULD YOU DO THAT?!
• Villainous Valor: Deconstructed. When the hero keeps encountering minions, one after the other, constantly challenging him despite seeing their bodies on the floor, he becomes increasingly exasperated from their fearless sacrifices when he effortlessly beats them up. It gets to the point where at least one more minion throws down despite the hero having defeated 201 enemies, including his boss!
  Hero: after he beats up the first guy: Alright, you next?
  Mook 2: What you mean, I'm next?
  Hero: I mean, you 'bout to get what he got.
  Mook 2: No, I'm not! YOU 'BOUT TO GET WHAT HE GOT! PUT YO- *gets wrecked immediately*
• Villains Want Mercy: After completely losing all of his momentum when he realizes he's bleeding on the inside, in "If people in anime actually took their bleeding serious.", the villain is downright baffled the hero expects him to keep fighting and asks if he can please call an ambulance.
• We Need a Distraction: During "Super human interview", one of the applicants has the power to make cats fight each other. When questioned how this could be of any practical use, he responds that it would serve as the perfect distraction during a battle. He then demonstrates his power in order to prove his point.
  Interviewer: Yo, whose cats are those?
  Applicant: The question is, who's gonna win?
• Wham Line: Frequently, one line changes the entire nature of the entire skit, accompanied by a subtle Scare Chord. A notable example occur in When you find out you're friends with the wrong person
  Guy 1: She's always calling to check if every. single, little bill is paid. Like bro, I haven' missed not one she has no reason to keep checking.
  Guy 2: Yeah she tripping bro, you know what I do? I-I hit my girl (Scare Chord) I just hit her.
  Guy 1: [Shaken] You mean like int-intimately—
  Guy 2: Nah I be STRIKIN- I be hitting her like she a STRANGER bro.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
  • In the first superhuman interview video, the interviewer tells the spider-powered and centipede-powered applicants to Get Out!.
    Interviewer: Hey. If you could just... go ahead and describe your power?
    Candidate: I can summon spiders that—
    Interviewer: Get the hell out! GET OUT! GET OUUUUT!!!
  • The Stinger to "If insects had to introduce themselves", where the interviewer asks if there was supposed to be a spider at the meeting, which prompts a Rapid-Fire "No!" from the other bugs.
• With Lyrics: In “If they let a drug dealer into a musical,” the titular character’s song is to the tune of Kokiri Forest.
  “Come along, run along, hurry all, because the cops are coming.”
• Would Hurt a Child: The near-end of "Getting caught in a stealth game." has Caleb fold a baby. The mission immediately ends in failure, and the mission control calls him out on this.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: The drug dealer in "If they let a drug dealer into a musical." seems to think that he's in a musical production and that "hiding" by cars from cops will work because it's a part of the song. Unfortunately for him, the cops do not abide by musical theater rules and immediately tackle him down and arrest him mid-song.
• You Have Failed Me: Parodied and deconstructed in "Villains that always kill their subordinates", where this tactic quickly sees the Evil Overlord run out of staff.
  Patrick: You been doing this for months! Anybody that does anything even considered slightly wrong, you just kill 'em! How is this effective?!
• You're Insane!: In "Villains with TRASH reasons on why they're evil," Regal is extremely shocked when he finds out Louis' horrible excuse to kill people.
  Regal: Oh you're- YOU'RE OUT OF YOUR MIND!
  Bill: Look, both of you, I'm sorry about your past, alright?-
  Regal: Man, f-ck your apologies right now! HE'S PSYCHOTIC!

---

*crack* OH, NIGGA!! GAAAHHH!! Agh, my ears burn!