So a Montreal high school substitute teacher and his friends decided one day to put a ton of fast food items onto a pizza shell, cover that in cheese and cook it. Then, surprisingly, it got hits. Now, they've turned their gluttony into a weekly series devoted to the most high-calorie and fattening dishes imaginable: Epic Meal Time. The show started in October 2010 and is still ongoing, with new episodes every Tuesday.With the audacity to call themselves an "online cooking show", the first efforts soon expanded into meat sculptures, questionable uses of bacon, "meat glue", bacon and five birds in a pig - and bacon.Their website is at last up and running. They have made an appearance on Jay Leno, where they made a shepherd's pie that was also a car.Their new show, Epic Chef, a Cooking Duel between two contestants who have their meals judged by Harley and two guest judges, premiered in December 2012. New episodes are posted every Friday in addition to the regular Epic Meal Time episodes every Tuesday.In addition to the above, Epic Meal Time's "online cooking show" status is now validated every Saturday with Handle It, an instructional video series using the Epic Meal Time Sellout Kitchen Arsenal. Here, the Epic Meal Time crew teaches you the tricks of their trade with all of the classic character antics of the normal show.Just opened a Characters page. It Needs Wiki Magic Love.
A team of mild-mannered Brits give us "Pathetic Meal Time", a thorough de-hamming (only in the acting sense— in terms of the meal created, they are indeed hamming it up) of EMT's brand.
Ameer "Prince Atari" Atari, who ate the second "Meat Car".
You had to go to That Other Wiki to learn Muscles Glasses' real name: Alex Perrault.
And a Diet Coke - During Harley and Sterling's appearance on The Jay Leno Show, they and Jay make a shepherd's pie together, during which Jay says, "You know what goes good with this? A Diet Coke."
Anyone Can Die - Muscles Glassesnote It was a throwaway joke for an unused intro to "The Double Kill". It was revealed during the first Deleted Scenes video, and rumors took off from there, leading to his "reappearance" on "Maximum Protein Experience".
Harley: "And, uh, we got some glasses...as a little commemoration to, uh, one of our lost members. He is dead now. No joke, he's actually dead."
Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking - Harley, after ordering a Baconator and fries in a Wendy's drive-thru, is told the drink would only be twenty cents more.
"Fast Food Lasagna" features them buying 15 McDonald's Big Macs, a liter of Big Mac Sauce, fifteen Wendy's Baconators, fifteen A&W Teen Burgers (no vegetables!), and four orders of onion rings...and an apple pie...make that four apple pies (Harley gave the apple pies to a mother for her kids).
Ascended Fanboy - Paolo, a student from Queen's University, emailed them asking for advice on how to do his own epic meal. The cast of Epic Meal Time road-tripped to Kingston, Ontario and cooked with him and his crew.
Badass Beard - Harley's grew in during the run of the series.
And it eventually grew to cover most of the lower half of his face. As of "Breakfast Lasagna," he's shaved it off and is letting it grow in again.
Bacon Addiction - Because everything's better with bacon strips. And bacon strips. And bacon strips. And bacon strips. And sometimes, even big, deep-fried slabs of bacon.
Big Badass Wolf - Muscles Glasses' father has a pet wolf...who loves bacon.
As one YouTuber said: "When these guys die, it will be from a heart attack that will take out half a block with them."
Big Guy: They are ALL very tall, but Muscle glasses takes on this roll the most.
Big "NO!" - One of the crew in the background at the end of "The Sloppy Roethlisburger", when Harley accidentally slams and cracks the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Bilingual Bonus - The text on the title card of "Fast Food Sushi"note "ファストフードのお寿司ぶっかけ", which roughly translates to "Fast food no sushi bukkake".
Extra points if you know what bukkake means.
In "Epic Indian Experience", the waiter translates Harley's description of the dishes.
Blatant Lies - In "Bacon Bacon Truck", a girl "swears she's 21" before a group does some prison shots. After Harley (wisely) cards her, she leaves.
She sneaks back into the huddle after taking off her noticeable red hoodie and letting down her hair. "(caw!)in' smart", indeed.
Harley: Epic Meal Time reminding you to keep your teeth clean, stay in school, keep off drugs and murder all your enemies. I murder all my enemies.
Breakout Character - Muscles Glasses. As if it wasn't apparent in the videos, he's the only cast member in "WebVideo/EpicMealTime LIVE" to receive his own introduction sequence.
"Meat Cthulhu" not only brought back deadmau5, but the episode used the song "Cthulhu Sleeps", one of two songs previously used in "Cheesy Grilled Cheese Tower".
To mark their one-year anniversary, the guys bought over 150 White Castle hamburgers and used it as pizza toppings to create a "Fast Food Pizza Cake", just like their first meal "Fast Food Pizza", except bigger and using new cooking tricks they learned over the year, such as deep-frying and bacon weaves.
More recently: "Epic Meal Time online cooking show every Tuesday!" (said by Harley to start each episode, once the gang is in the kitchen).
"Gosh, we used to be so polite, but the bacon made us crazy!"
"Mother maple tree tit syrup!"
Chainsaw Good - Harley uses one in "Meatball Deathstar":
Harley: EVERY TUESDAY: EPIC MEAL TIME! Comin' at you with a chainsaw and a big pile o'meat! If you ain't down with that...THEN YOU AIN'T DOWN WITH COOKING!!!
Another one is used in "Meat Shield" against a dummy dressed in bacon, pot roast, pepperoni and ribs.
Chuck Cunningham Syndrome - The two girls who were recurring characters on the show (beginning with "Massive Meat Log") haven't appeared in the videos anymore. "Fast Food Meatloaf" even had different girls play the roles that would normally be filled by them.
And then one of them (later revealed to be named Sarah, who has her own Twitter page) returned in the "Angry French Onion Soup" episode. This was also one of Muscles Glasses's last episodes.
Cloudcuckoolander - Arguably, Tyler; Prince Atari has shades of this, too, depending on the episode.
The Comically Serious - Cousin Dave, who uses utensils to eat as calm and composed as possible, while the rest of the guys just gorge themselves with the food.
Harley: "When I say "Muscles", you say "Glasses! MUSCLES!!" Crowd: "GLASSES!!!" Harley: "MUSCLES!!!" Crowd: "GLASSES!!!"
Cultured Badass - Yes, Harley may spend most of his time hamming up new dinners in every possible sense of the word, but he also knows, on a scientific level, exactly why he does what he does with food, and exactly why that makes it taste better: humans are programmed by evolution to like fatty foods.
From "Puzzle Of The Lambs":
"Cerberus, the tri-head that guards the underworld."
Drugs Are Bad - In "Sausage Fest", while making eggs, Harley states they're "Crackin' eggs like we crack smoke." He then suggests "Smoke crack?", but immediately answers "No, that's bad."
Early Installment Weirdness - "Fast Food Pizza" sees Harley not nearly as hammy (or rehearsed); it's just him and Muscles Glasses (who doesn't even keep his signature shades on most of the time and actually talked) eating a pizza loaded with hamburgers, chicken wings, fries, etc.
Combined with Spaghetti Kiss in "Tequila Taco Night", where two girls share a strip of bacon.
Taken Up to Eleven in "Maximum Mac and Cheese" with no fewer than sixteen young attractive women participating in a massive banquet of over-the-top macaroni dishes.
Played for laughs in the second deleted scenes video, where Harley strokes and kisses the Sloppy Roethlisburger.
Everything's Deader with Zombies/Zombie Apocalypse - Whichever trope "Zombie Meal Time" falls under depends on how you look at it: within the context of the episode, it appears to be the latter full-blown. However, when taking this episode in the context of the whole series, it's merely an example of the former.
Fanservice - You like to watch girls eating? Youdonow. Straight female vorehounds? This is your mecca.
The Hero - Harley, who invented and hosts the show.
The Lancer - Sterling, who, although is seen rarely in episodes, is not just the cameraman, but the video editor.
The Big Guy - Muscles Glasses and Epic Mook, who does most of the cooking.
The Smart Guy - Tyler, who does the fat and calorie counter (although his on-screen character is as dumb as a post), and Cousin Dave, who eats like a gentleman.
Flat "What." - The usual response from fast-food outlets from whom they order in bulk in the drive-thru. There's no way that listening to their confusion wouldn't be the best bit of doing Epic Meal Time.
Food Porn - But not the kind of soft, loving and tender porn you're used to. No, this is the manly, bacon-filled, made-of-meat food porn...for you perverts out there.
Note that one of the men is a trained chef. Think about that for a while.
In "Ultimate Pizza Sandwich", Epic Mook takes it a bit too seriously, and suggests he's going to use a freshly-microwaved pizza pocket in place of a Fleshlight.
Friend To All Children - Harley, who draws the line at dead baby jokes and gives apple pie to kids.
Just as an FYI, the man used to be a middle school. Social Studies teacher.
Funny Background Event - During Peanut Butter and Jelly Archetype, there's a sequence where Harley shows all of the food they've made for the episode, complete with calories counters. While he's doing this, Muscles Glasses is standing right next to him, eating from a jar of Nutella in his pocket with a mixing spoon.
Genre Savvy - In "84 Egg Sandwich", Harley goes and orders close to 100 breakfast sandwiches from McDonald's. The employee manning the drive-thru station (correctly) guesses it's for an Epic Meal Time project.
One of the drive-thru clerks does the same thing in "Fast Food Lasagna".
Godwin's Law / Hitler Ate Sugar - "You know who else didn't like too much bacon? Hitler. And you don't want to be Hitler, do you? No. He's got stupid hair."
FPSRussia: "Okay, this is the MP5K. "K" stands for "Kompact" in German, don't give me bullshit: I know what the gun is." (Actually stands for Kurz, or 'Short' in German)
Everyone Is Armed - Played with: Muscles Glasses makes mashed potatoes while holding a submachine gun.
Pistol Whipping - Harley, Muscles Glasses and FPSRussia take turns tenderizing meat, the latter using a Desert Eagle to do it.
Spent Shells Shower - Sort of: FPSRussia dribbles bullets out of his mouth at the end.
Swiss Army Gun - Harley uses a rifle + bayonet as a skewer for around half a dozen hamburgers.
Stuffed In The Fridge - The guys take it to a literal meaning by stuffing Jamie Oliver in the fridge so they can feed him the Fish and Chips Filet.
Trigger Happy - Invoked by FPSRussia during the shooting range segment against users of this trope. Harley starts to turn guilty when a Desert Eagle wounds up in his hand, but slightly subverted when he asks FPSRussia if it's alright to pull the trigger after the latter inspects the gun first.
Harley: Changin' the game! (Harley slaps down a bottle of Jack Daniels...which is accompanied by a crack.) Off-camera voice: (as booze starts leaking)OHHH! (Harley picks up the bottle, just as the bottom of the bottle falls out.) Harley: Oh (caw!)... Off-camera voice: NOOOOO!
Hot Blooded - The beginning of "Candy Pizza" confirms Harley as this.
Hypocritical Humour - Harley calls the audience perverts for wanting to watch a girl eat the "Massive Meat Log" — then the reverse angle shows him and all of his friends doing the exact same thing.
Insult Backfire - Their official website links to a lambasting from PETA in their About section, indicating they may be proud of having pissed them off.
It Is Pronounced Tro PAY - In "Candy Poutine", Cousin Dave corrects Harley's mixing-up of 'ganache' and Grenache brand caramel. When Harley does it again, saying "carmel" and Dave corrects him, he drops a Precision F-Strike on Dave.
Malaproper - Harley opens with one in "Tequila Taco Night":
Harley: "I've been sippin' on that green and smokin' that liquor all day."
Male Gaze - There's a lot of cleavage in "The Black Legend".
Also in "Maximum Mac and Cheese" and "Sausage Fest".
Mathematician's Answer - In "Meat Building 101", Paolo asks Tyler what kind of meat they used to build the Slaughterhouse. Tyler stumbles over his answer, but essentially tells him, "All of the meat."
Harley: "Some say we're the spawns of evil, meat-demon cyborgs. Well, we're not: we've got mother(caw!)ing moms...that are the spawns of evil, meat-demon cyborgs!"
Neck Lift - Muscles Glasses to two thieving thugs in "Fast Food Meatloaf".
Subverted in "The Slaughterhouse": "Next time, we eat dessert!" Sure enough, the following week was "The Black Legend": two girls eating a gigantic crepe.
"Next time, we eat ice cream." (Cue all the girls cheering)
In "12 Gauge Hot Dog", Harley says "Next time, we eat blood!" and in the next video, "Zombie Meal Time", Muscles Glasses takes a shot of Jack Daniels and blood.
Averted in the first video, which ends with Muscles Glasses (sans glasses) raising his arms in the air triumphantly after eating.
At the end of French Fry Salad:
"Next time, we eat sell outs. Next time, we eat while selling out... Netflix.com/bacon."
Subverted in "Candy Sushi":
"Next time, we eat. We have to, or we'll die."
The Other Darrin - Played with: in "Maximum Protein Experience", Muscles Glasses is replaced with someone having a similar body build and trademark sunglasses. When Epic Mook notices Muscles Glasses working out at the gym where they're filming at, Harley tells the extra they don't need him anymore.
Played with again in "Epic Stockyard Burger": Harley's absent to do the video intro, so Tyler fills in for him...until Harley walks out from the store and tells Tyler to go out, buy lunch and do his proper job.
In "Meat Mummy", Muscles Glasses wears a costume that turns him into... a random black guy. The rest of the guys (sans Harvey/"Beard Lightyear" and Cousin Dave as "Tony Hawk") wind up dressing up as Muscles Glasses.
Out of Focus: Muscles Glasses drops out of sight for several episodes (March-May 2012). Harley and the gang mention him in passing, and he is briefly seen hitchhiking along a back road. They offer up a sacrifice to prepare for his return ("Fastfood Sacrifice"), then cook him a bacon-stuffed cheeseburger after he shows up and helps them defeat a gang of vegan zombies ("Zombie Vegan Attack!"/"Boss Bacon Burger").
Pet the Dog - Harley and his crew are vulgar, crude, and gluttonous but they and their fellow YouTube celebrities helped people out in the Soup Kitchen
Precision F-Strike - In "Spam Fries Four Loko", Cousin Dave shouts one out when someone tells him there's an automatic can opener after he finishes opening a couple of canned goods with a manual can opener.
Harley: "Ain’t no surprises here, we throw in more bacon, but we don’t wanna compromise the whole integrity of this rice crispy snowman. Now that’s a sentence I can guarantee no other human being has said except for me just now."
Subverted for Fanservice instead in "Massive Meat Log".
Invoked in "Sugar Shack" by Muscles Glasses' lumberjack father.
Totally averted with "Candy BBQ" and "Candy Poutine".
Harley: "Well I guess you can say that this is the "no-meat" episode...but don't you (caw!)ing say it."
Recut - The Director's Cut of "Zombie Meal Time", one of the most controversial episodes gets a brand new opening, the cooking narration absent in the original, new scenes of the guys talking while in makeup and is streamlined from 7.5 minutes to 4 minutes.
Red Baron - In "Fast Food Sushi", Harley dubs himself the "Sauce Boss".
Harley: "And we got these custom sauces, 'cause I'm the 'Doctor of Dressing', aka the 'Pharaoh of Flavour', aka the 'Minister of Mixture', aka the 'Connoisseur of Condiments', aka the 'Don of the Drippin', aka the 'Jeff Goldblum of the Internet', aka... [dramatic zoom on the sauces] ...the Sauce Boss.
And that's just the food. None of them have a censor (though the F-word, S-word and some sexual slurs are (caw!)ed), Muscles Glasses frequently flips the camera off, and then there's the whole Gay Bacon Strips thing, which are really Air Heads Xtremes sweet-sour belts.
The "gay bacon strips" were taken to their logical conclusion in the Candy Pizza episode.
Harley: In the kitchen, no candy missin'! We got gay bacon strips. We got gay sour worms.note gummi worms in the same neon rainbow coloring as "gay bacon strips" We got candy (caw!) rings.note just gummi LifeSavers And we got some candy fruit! Not a big deal. *deep inhale* Smell that? We've got real bacon, too!
Relax-o-Vision - "Fast Food Fondue Mixology" features "Your Weekly Bacon Moment," set to soft music while Harley talks quietly.
Rousing Speech - Most of the video intros; take "84 Egg Sandwich" for example:
Harley: "Oh, you wanna change the game? Well, if you wanna change the game, you gotta stay ahead of it! And how do you do that? You eat a well-balanced brookfast of eggs, bacon, sandwiches and liquor! Rise and shine, you tired-ass mother(caw!)s."
Harley: "If you don't marinate your meat in a Ziploc bag, you think too highly of yourselves."
And again, when Harley (in disguise) appears on an episode ofThe Gentlemen's Rant about Epic Meal Time.
Serial Escalation - It started with a dish that anyone could make, then other culinary mashups. As more episodes rolled in, the dishes involved long and complex preparation methods, vegetables and require an entire dinner table of people to finish.
"And because we're (caw!)ed up, we garnished the whole thing with Baconators!"
"French Fry Week": during the week of October 3, 2011, the guys released one episode per day with french fries as the central ingredient. They ended off the week with a 15-pound poutine.
Lights: "Holy crap, my burgers! How can I ever repay you?" Harley: "I dunno...maybe (caw!)ing share with us, you greedy bitches?"
The Stoic - Aside from "Sugar Shack," Muscles Glasses will get in maybe two lines of dialogue during a couple episodes; most of the time he'll remain quite and/or communicate with strong glares at the camera.
Trademark Favorite Food - Bacon, though Harley has a soft spot for macaroni and cheese. To a slightly lesser extent, Jack Daniels Whiskey.
Troll - Although the guys may band together to create an epic meal, there are certain times when one of them can't help but either insult, snark or outright jinx each other. In "The Ostrich Nest", for example, when Epic Mook starts dicing up some onions:
Cousin Dave: "One of these days, I'm going to witness you lose a finger."
Unusually Uninteresting Sight - Muscles Glasses snapping two thieves' necks isn't given anything more than a simple "Yup, he's doing it again..." from Tyler.
Up to Eleven - Their holiday specials, the "TurBaconEpic Thanksgiving" and "The Slaughterhouse".
"The Sloppy Big Ben Roethlisberger" was so large and beyond sane even Harley began to sputter as he was getting psyched to make it.
The "Turbaconepicentipede" took the "TurBacon Epic Thanksgiving" and multiplied it by ten. They didn't just break the previous calorie count the Roethlisberger had: they destroyed it at more than 800,000 calories.
Verbal Tic - "Sauce" is (nowadays) always pronounced "SA-OOOS"
As "Sausage" is pronounced "SA-OOOSAGE"
"Jack Daniels'" is now "Jack Dagnels"
"Breakfast" as "brookfast".
Very Special Episode: EMT celebrates the Super Bowl each year with a meal named after one of the quarterbacks. They've done "The Sloppy Roethlisberger" (a 50-pound bacon cheeseburger with custom bun; the first single item to break 100,000 calories), "Dirty Manningwich" (a large sloppy joe with clam chowder) and "Flacco Taco" (a gigantic taco). They are 2-for-3 as of SB XLVII in predicting the winner.
Widget Series: Averted. Although plenty strange, its over-the-topness is way more American in inspiration than Canadian.
Yet Another Christmas Carol: "Epic Christmas Carol." The Sauce Boss treats his friends like shit until he is visited by the Ghosts of Bacon, Booze, and Bitches.