Dan and Phil GAMES is a collaborative channel between Phil Lester and Dan Howell launched in 2014. It is, as it says, a gaming channel where Dan and Phil play games, both popular and obscure. Popular features include "Dan vs. Phil", where the two compete for a point on the winners' board, and their long-running playthrough of The Sims, which has its own section of tropes below.
The channel entered indefinite hiatus in December 2018... until a video in October 2023 finally confirmed the channel dead with a funeral sketch. A sketch which then went on to announce the channel's return!
Tropes relating to their general gaming videos include:
- Aborted Arc: Dan and Phil only made a couple of episodes playing Dream Daddy, but dropped off after the third episode and never resumed it. This stands out since they enjoyed the game and have played other narrative games to completion on their channel.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Once he calms down slightly, Dan admits that The Impossible Quiz's "twist" of needing all your skips to finish the game is pretty funny.Dan: That's the most I've been fucked with in my entire life.
- Angrish: Occasionally from Dan, including "god frooking poop on a poop fook" after failures in Kinect Sports bowling.
- April Fools' Day: DanAndPhilCRAFTS videos get published on an exclusive channel as a recurring April Fool's Day event. These videos are a fictional narrative that showcases an alternate reality where a stilted, strange Dan and Phil make craft videos which increasingly turn to horrific ritual purposes, and the videos lean more into the horror genre the further they go on. The Crafts Dan and Phil repeatedly mention an exceptionally prolific output of videos which we never see, suggesting April Fool's Day itself could have a lore purpose as something of a gate where the veil thins enough for their videos to cross into our world.
- Artifact Title: The gags for Dan's channel use puns on "danisnotonfire" even though Dan has discarded the name officially.
- Aside Glance:
- In instances when Phil's weirdness or cases of That Came Out Wrong don't provoke an apology from Dan or cause him to berate Phil, Dan tends to look knowingly at the camera, sharing the joke with the audience. After more bizarre or distressing utterances where Dan doesn't see fit to reprimand Phil, he often looks to the camera with confusion, worry, or alarm at whatever Phil has said. This trope is emphasized by these silent reactions being zoomed in on after the editing process.
- In the video where they play Can Your Pet?, Phil gives a few guilty looks to the camera as Dan coos over their cute little baby chick. "Can Your Pet" is a Disguised Horror Story game where you're tricked into killing your pet and making it into canned food. It's very easy to tell who's played the game before and who hasn't.
- Ass Pull: Parodied when playing the Stormy Ascent in the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. Phil drops a Your Mom, and Dan goes against the joke, claiming she has nothing to do with the filming of the video. Phil then says "plot twist: she's behind the camera", and Dan accidentally says "yeah, our mum's been filming all our videos", then realizes the implication and lampshades it.
- Bait-and-Switch: "Goodbye Forever", the first video uploaded to the channel after five years of inactivity, is set up to end the lengthy hiatus state of the channel by confirming its death with a funeral sketch. Then, Dil rises from the casket and it's confirmed the channel is ending the hiatus by at long last returning.
- Berserk Button: Phil's utter incompetence in following instructions while playing Portal 2 co-op mode blindfolded drives Dan into several annoyed rages. Due to this, Dan doesn't even consider playing the second level.
- Black Comedy: Frequently from both, but it even occurs accidentally in the games, such as the times their Sims end up eating fish at the counter where their pet fish is kept in a bowl.
- Bomb Disposal: They've encountered it in Undertale and "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes", but while things get extremely close, they end up successful in both. Subsequent visits to the latter game, however, make it clear that Dan and Phil aren't able to keep up with the higher difficulties.
- Butt-Monkey: Dan has terrible luck playing the Game of Life. It's made funnier by just about everything going right for Phil, who gets to retire early and travel the world while Dan continuously runs into taxes and other obstacles.
- Character as Himself: The credits of "Saying Goodbye Forever" say Dil Howlter played himself, and it shows up on Dil's IMDb page (though it was implied to be KickThePJ wearing the Dil mask from TATINOF).
- Christmas Episode: Every holiday season, they play festive games, and 2016 and 2017 had Gamingmas, which entailed a video every day of December leading up to Christmas. Gamingmas was later revived in 2023.
- Couch Gag: After annotations were discontinued in favor of the weird bubble things YouTube uses now, the descriptions for Dan and Phil's individual channels have been using puns related to their channel names, like "Cupisnotonfire" and "AmazingMug" in the episode where they played Cuphead.
- Country Matters: Dan calls Phil this word in the last part of The Impossible Quiz, after Phil accidentally nudges Dan's hand and costs them a life. They censor it, but Dan still comments that everyone will know what word he used anyway.Dan: *beat* YOU FUCKING C***.Phil: I'm sorry!!
- Cringe Comedy: Their April Fool's- exclusive parody offshoot channel, DanAndPhilCRAFTS, features very spacey, awkward, and personality-devoid versions of Dan and Phil making craft videos to this effect, with plenty of weird old-fashioned values being taught. But then there's the creepy stuff on top of that, turning surreal cringe into horror.
- Deadpan Snarker: Dan, often at Phil's expense. Though Phil can give as good as he gets.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The early DanAndPhilGAMES videos from 2014, such as Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, are structured more like serious game reviews. In addition, many of the quirks and gags that would become a key feature of the channel are not present.
- Epic Fail: Their attempt at playing Yandere Simulator goes spectacularly awry, even by Dan and Phil's standards. As one comment put it, "I expected them to fuck it up, but they actually managed to fuck up the fuck up."
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Phil averts this more here, although it's still mild compared to Dan's language (which is -usually- censored like in Phil's videos).
- Halloween Episode: "Spooky Week", where they play horror games every day for the week leading up to Halloween.
- Hope Spot: In their Spooky Week livestream of Friday the 13th: The Game. The first round they play, someone calls the police and they manage to survive long enough to not only evade Jason twice, but make it to the camp exit. Unfortunately, Jason is already waiting for them.
- Instant Expert: Dan tends to pick up new games very quickly, and often wins at them in cases where Phil has played before.
- I Think You Broke Him: Phil comments that he may have broken Dan after he sends him into a particularly long bout of Stunned Silence in their fourth time playing "The Impossible Quiz."
- Line-of-Sight Name: Dan and Phil name the Fallen Child in Undertale Toto, because Dan was wearing a Totoro shirt. They realize the Wizard of Oz connotations too late, to say nothing about the character who receives the name.
- Mad Libs Catch Phrase: Phil starts videos welcoming the audience with, "Hello, Dan and Phil Games [plural relevant object]"note since the channel's first Christmas season introduced the trend.
- Network Decay: Upon returning in 2023, Dan and Phil suggested the channel would no longer just be for gaming, and broadened/shifted the content to become the space for any dedicated videos of the two as a full duo, such as their baking content, behind-the-scenes footage of projects, and reactions and retrospectives of things they did together—"collab" features which would have usually been posted to one or the other's channels previously.
- Never Say That Again: Dan to Phil, frequently, since Phil seems to be a treasure trove of
Accidental Innuendos. - Once per Episode:
- After the first video, Golf With Your Friends had a pretty reliable streak of crashing well into the game, forcing them to recreate their stroke totals in a new game, so they took this as a once-an-episode occurrence when starting their fifth episode. This time, the game works perfectly.
- Every Gamingmas, one of the episodes is devoted to the virtual version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, due to said game being a Christmas tradition in the Lester household, yet one that Phil has never seen won during his childhood or the channel's own attempts.
- Parallel Universe: DanAndPhilCRAFTS, with installments published on April Fool's Day, is strongly implied to be a window into one, with awkward, creepy alternate versions of Dan and Phil and a developing horror aesthetic that increases with each entry. The Crafts Dan and Phil have mentioned that their videos total in the thousands, but evidently very few have crossed over to be viewed in the real world...a number for which viewers might be very grateful.
- Product Placement: They've occasionally worn or shown off their Dan and Phil clothes and other assorted merch on this channel for sales pitches, intentionally playing up the advertisement until it gets too stupid to continue.
- Rage Quit: Dan does this at the end of Bean Boozled BETRAYAL
because he ate a jelly bean that tasted like skunk spray. - Running Gag: Enough for its own page.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Dan. Repeatedly, either due to being scared during horror games, or due to pure anger and frustration, often at a stupid mistake on Phil's part. They've mentioned that their neighbors and headphone users probably hate Dan for this reason.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- Dan shuts off the lights, storms out of the room, and slams the door behind him when he finds out you need all your skips in order to win The Impossible Quiz, leaving Phil behind, only to burst back in a few seconds later so he can rant at the game.
- When Dan ends up eating a skunk spray Bean Boozled bean at the end of their second time playing "Higher or Lower?", he spits out the bean and just leaves the room due to the hideously unpleasant taste.
- While playing Getting Over It, Dan accidentally pushes the player character off a cliff, resetting the progress made throughout the entire episode. After falling over and angrily gnawing on his slipper, he storms off. Phil has to remind him that they still need to close the episode.
- Screw Yourself: When asked by the "What Would You Do If...?" game what would happen if he was dropped into a separate universe, Dan says if there's another Dan, he'll "fuckin' kill him", which he then adjusts to "fuck and kill him" due to the similar sound of the phrases.
- Security Cling: During Spooky Week 2023, they played Don't Scream, a horror game that's connected to the player's mic and has one simple rule: if you scream, you lose. Since they were desperately trying to keep quiet in the face of several jumpscares, Dan and Phil defaulted to grabbing each other when scared.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Frequently occurs between the two, and they often realize and stop to get back to the games they're playing. This has been acknowledged, with Dan noting that their frequent tangents often rival the amount of time discussing the game.
- Sensory Abuse: Dan's high-pitched screaming has often been acknowledged by them to be a problem for headphone users, to the point where it became something for Dan to work on in 2018. In a particularly bad case (playing the infamous Stormy Ascent), Dan claimed his screaming "necrophiled" the audience's ears; that is, the sensory abuse continued after the eardrums of the viewers had already blown out.
- Sensory Overload: "Christmas Shopper Simulator 2" eventually overwhelms Dan. Not that you can blame him, as the experience included catapulting people through stores, hijacking an escalator to send shoppers flying, an animal sex store, and ballooning patrons.
- Serious Business:
- The Impossible Quiz quickly turns into this, and any mistakes that cost them lives turn into the bane of their existence.
- "Golf With Your Friends" is surprisingly intense and competitive for both Dan and Phil and the audience, despite it being a simple game of virtual mini-golf.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!:
- At the end of the Just Dance Dan vs. Phil competition, Dan gets very smug and in Phil's face about winning, dancing around him and boasting about his superior skill. While Dan is closing his eyes in a victory dance, Phil grabs one of their subscriber-celebration balloons and pops it in Dan's face, startling him out of his gloating.
- After Dan wins in "Hide and Shriek", a competitive game where laying Jump Scare traps and using startle spells is a key mechanic, he starts getting obnoxious as he puts the sticker on his side of the board, saying he's won too many times for the stickers to fit on his side at the size they're in. Phil uses this attitude, and the game's theme as an excuse to startle a preoccupied Dan from behind the board. This just makes Dan even less sympathetic toward Phil's loss.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Dan, as always. He's rarely censored, though earlier videos and some more extreme curses have bleeps. In the third episode of Yasuhati, Dan swears so much that they make the decision to bleep it all, with a disclaimer at the beginning letting people know.
- Sore Loser: They can both fill this role in different ways.
- When Phil demands "all or nothing" rounds in Dan vs. Phil. He's not really such a bad sport in truth... he just likes the bonus of winning. His insistence to have a prize even in non-D.v.P competitions can create this for himself when he's not the winner.
- Dan can get rather upset and stomp his feet when he loses, especially if he feels strongly that his loss was unfair and for reasons out of his control (such as luck in the Game of Life).
- Staring Contest: A staring contest is one of the challenges in the final (2018) Dan vs Phil video. In 2023, they spontaneously have a breath holding contest in the midst of Trombone Champ and, although it's not a staring contest, they do stare at each other and make silly faces.
- Straight Man and Wise Guy: Phil is often the wise guy while Dan is often the straight man but they sometimes switch roles with each other. The best case of this role reversal has to be Dan's reaction to Phil's puzzle-solving in the second Impossible Quiz video.
- Stunned Silence:
- While playing Undertale, this is their response to Flowey's Evil Laugh and speech at the end of the Ruins.
- This, and a combination of inarticulate stammering, is also their response to Asgore destroying the Mercy button.
- When Dil's girlfriend Tabitha is abducted by aliens, completely out of the blue. Dan and Phil sit in silence for a good few seconds. The second time, they're merely exasperated and want the aliens to get on with it and bring her back.
- When Phil makes them lose all their progress on "The Impossible Quiz" by accidentally refreshing the page, all Dan can do is sit there staring at him, jaw dropped, in complete and utter silence for a full minute. Phil babbles on for a few seconds, then gets to trying to get Dan to say something. (Or even just blink.)
- Take a Third Option: In their second round of "Golf With Your Friends", Dan and Phil are competing for a pair of novelty socks, which go to whoever wins. The game ends on a perfect tie, so Dan and Phil each take one of the socks.
- Tranquil Fury: Contrary to the usual, while playing Bread & Fred, Dan doesn't explode but is rather quietly upset (at least, quiet by his standards). Since they weren't aware of the game's Anti-Frustration Features, they kept having to start over.
- Verbal Backspace: Due to the channel usually maintaining a cleaner tone than Dan's separate content, he will occasionally pull a Precision F-Strike and then go back, saying he meant to say a milder equivalent. (For example: "FUCK!....I mean, "flip".) Occasionally defied when he's annoyed enough at the game, where, after cursing, he'll say something along the lines of "-I mean...no; that's exactly what I mean."
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Dan really takes it out on Phil for his frequent moments of odd logic or gullibility, to the point where the two of them have had to remind the audience that it's all competitive joking banter and that they really are friends.
- Vocal Dissonance: Discussed by Phil, who comments that if he'd known Flowey would turn out to be such a pivtoal (and evil) character, he probably wouldn't have given him a Texan accent.
- Was It Really Worth It?: Dan asks this nearly word-for-word when they finally beat the Impossible Quiz. Phil thinks it was, Dan is unconvinced. They have similar reactions to completing the Stormy Ascent level.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: As on his main channel, Dan says, "Are you fucking kidding me?!" a lot in response to out-there, difficult, or just plain annoying events. He screams it when he finds out you need all your skips to finish The Impossible Quiz.
Tropes relating to their Sims playthrough include:
- Aborted Arc: Their Sim Dil's hobbies, multiple times, and his job in the culinary field, being replaced with laboratory work. This is finally averted when he becomes a master mixologist after retiring.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: The thirty-seventh video has Dan and Phil play as the Pancakes family for awhile, mainly because they feel bad about destroying their bed in the previous episode and want to buy them a new one. (And also because they want them to have a baby so Dab can have a playmate.)
- Babies Ever After: Dan and Phil make the Pancakeses Woo-Hoo to test out their new bed and possibly rekindle the romance, and it gets Eliza pregnant.
- Bizarro Episode: Done deliberately with Episode 57, which takes place in an "alternate timeline" (i.e., a stripped-down save of the game so they can go wild with the supernatural Halloween features without it having to impact the comparatively more normal series in the future.) Because of this, Dalien is just a human (no DLC for aliens in this save), the Howlter men are prone to not wearing clothes, and Dil becomes a vampire and turns Tabitha before they both die in the sun to end the episode. And none of it really happened.
- Brick Joke: The first two times Tabitha is seen, she's fishing in the creek, and the second is when she first meets Dil. Several episodes later, upon her moving in and Dan and Phil gaining control of her, they discover that she's apparently such an avid fisher that she's reached level 4 skill.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Dil and Tabitha have some very odd quirks, which Dan and Phil discuss, saying they're meant for each other.
- Composite Character: Dil Howlter, who was designed as if he inherited physical traits from the two of them.
- Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: Phil does this to himself when Dil and Tabitha WooHoo for the first time.
- Cuteness Overload: Dan and Phil in response to the Howlter family puppy. Phil goes Squee, but Dan feigns violent disgust at the intense adorableness.
- Dissonant Serenity: Phil is incredulous when Dan is relatively calm (and amused) when there's a fire in Dil's house. Then he explains that fires can actually kill Sims. Then Dan freaks out.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Of a sort. In the early episodes of the series, it's easy to recognize Sims who become relevant figures in Dil's life later on, like Eliza and Bob Pancakes and Tabitha Casper.
- Fountain of Youth: Upon returning to The Sims in 2023, Dan and Phil agreed that they had aged Dil and Tabitha too quickly the last time they'd played as they were approaching what they thought would be the conclusion, thus they decided to age them back down.
- Good Parents: Dan and Phil themselves take on this role toward their Sims, and Dil and Tabitha, while not always organized, care for their kids and make an extra effort via Dan and Phil to make their alien son feel welcome and represented on Earth.
- Happily Married: Dil and Tabitha.
- Helicopter Parents: Dan and Phil basically micromanage Dil's life — but given how klutzy Dil is, this is probably for the best. Phil, in particular, seemed determined to fix Dil up with somebody in the earlier Sims playthroughs, almost to the point of a Running Gag. The other topic of Dil's life is his hobbies, which constantly get changed when things need to be sold for money.
- Identical Stranger: During the playthrough, Dan and Phil have come across several Dil look-alikes.
- I Kiss Your Hand: Dab tries this with Evan. He gets rejected. This is soon overcome however, with a later attempt succeeding.
- Implausible Deniability: Dan tries to deny the fact that Dil is pregnant for as long as possible, saying that Dil must have a tummy ache because of something he ate instead, even though the moodlet's icon is a pacifier.
- Interface Spoiler: Episode 41 of the Sims 4 starts with Dan explaining that there is a small chance that male Sims will be impregnated if they're abducted by aliens. He finds this important to mention due to Dil having been abducted at the end of the last episode, but he and Phil say it probably won't happen. The name of this episode is "DIL GETS PREGNANT".
- Jump Scare: The yellow balloon that pops in "DIL'S FIRST BIRTHDAY" .
- The Klutz: One of Dil's most prominent traits. Dan and Phil really regret choosing it, since it nearly gets him killed multiple times.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places:
- Dil and Tabitha have WooHooed in a a spa sauna and a telescope control room in a city park at Dan and Phil's discretion. They add an amusement-park haunted ride to their repertoire upon moving to Copperdale...before even building a house to reside in.
- While on their honeymoon in the Sims version of Japan, Dab and Evan WooHoo in the public onsen. Not only that, but the animation is more graphic than usual, landing DanAndPhilGAMES its second ever demonetisation.
- Mister Seahorse: Dil becomes pregnant after getting abducted by aliens.
- Noodle Incident: Phil at one point mentions the oven incident of 2012, but refuses to go into detail, though from context, it sounds like a lethal overheating-based fire.
- Once per Episode: Since upgrading the Sim Ray, Dan and Phil began doing a "Transformation of the Day", using its transformative ability on one household object each time.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted with Erica Pendleton and Erika Pancakes, Eliza's clone. Unless you count the spelling of their names, of course.
- Paranoia Fuel: Invoked and lampshaded in the honeymoon episode of The Sims. As a throwaway joke, Dan proposes the idea that Tabitha is actually an alien replacement who was dropped down after the abduction.
- Parental Sexuality Squick: Inverted. Dan and Phil both feel a bit weird watching their Sim make out with his girlfriend for this reason, and, to them, watching their Sims WooHoo is unbearably awkward.
- Retcon: The first post-hiatus episode of The Sims 4 reverses Dil and Tabitha's aging-up to elders, prefaced with a skit claiming aliens did it as a reward for Dalien's rearing, since Dan and Phil regretted the choice and it had been done when the series was left at a potential finale point.
- Romance Ensues: Invoked successfully by Dan and Phil for Dab and Evan in episode 51 when the two Sims are sent to the jungle away from their parents (especially Eliza). This trip indeed serves its purpose, creating a Romance bar between Dab and Evan.
- Scare Chord: Used whenever Eliza Pancakes shows up to stalk Dil.
- Serious Business: Dil's whole life is this to Dan and Phil, and they play the game straight rather than messing around with it and enjoying Video Game Cruelty Potential.
- Shipper on Deck:
- At the beginning of the playthrough, Dan and Phil (especially Phil) for almost any female Sim Dil speaks to. Except Erica. When Dil actually gets with Tabitha, Dan and Phil are 100% in favor of it, and get very enthusiastic about every development in their relationship, and take strides to push them along.
- This is repeated again when Dab starts to show interest in Evan, and Dan and Phil are all for it, opting to persevere past an embarrassing stumble between the teens and eventually starting them on a romance.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Erica Pendleton in The Sims was set up to be Dil's girlfriend, but her inherently evil personality (yes, really) and a public fight turned the two into bitter enemies. This is exaggerated when she refuses to attend Dil's wedding, but then shows up anyway, possibly out of spite.
- Stalker with a Crush: Eliza Pancakes appears this way, as she shows up at Dil's house several times after rejecting a relationship with him due to her marriage. Then, two of Dil's friends ask him on dates right before he's about to get married. And Eliza even tries to get into Dil's house while Tabitha is in labor. Though Dan and Phil interpret it as romantic, these could be explained as inappropriately clingy friend things, as neither were romantically involved with Dil before.
- Squee: Dan and Phil's usual reactions to young Dab, Evan and even Dalien. Dil getting a dog takes such a reaction to another level.
- Tempting Fate: In "The Howlter Family Christmas," they comment on how well everything's going and how nice Dil's life is now, with his wife, baby, huge house, and successful career. Immediately lampshaded by Dan, who adds, "...Until something explodes." Nothing explodes, but Tabitha does get abducted by aliens (again) a minute later.
- Theme Naming: All of the Sims they name are based on a combination of their creators'/parents' names. In Nuki the dog's case, it's a combination of their former hamsters'.
