Web Video / JonTron

JonTron. (Audible Gleam)

Influences:

• The Angry Video Game Nerd, The Spoony Experiment

Jonathan Aryan Jafari (born March 24, 1990) is JonTron, a video game critic on Polaris. Using a cheerful, energetic style and plenty of cutaway gags and visual puns, he talks about a variety of topics.

He was a founding member of Game Grumps (as "Not-So-Grump") but left in 2013 to focus on his own endeavours, and along with PeanutButterGamer, he is one of the co-founders of the resurrected Normal Boots website.

His channel started out covering mostly obscure and often awful games. His sidekick was a green cheek conure named Jacques, who talked in a vaguely robotic voice, had glowing red eyes, and offered stoic commentary to contrast Jon's boundless energy. Crucially, he avoided games exhaustively covered by other reviewers (with a few exceptions from the NES era), focusing rather on early polygonal titles from "gaming's adolescence"; in a sense, Jon could be considered a newer generation of Internet critic.

In his earlier videos, he was rather serene, criticizing games with little to no anger or emotion, but became considerably more outgoing and energetic as the series went on (with Unfazed Everyman moments to lead the reviews along). It wasn't until towards the end of the first season when Jon began to develop this style and also started becoming notably more popular, with his reactions making for heavy Memetic Mutation.

The lengthy hiatuses between uploads, mostly caused by his involvement in Game Grumps, became the center of a Running Joke among fans, but to his credit, Jon maintained a steady upload schedule in 2014 before putting the show back on hiatus in 2015 to make way for a nine-episode miniseries named StarCade, an extensive look at nearly every Star Wars game ever made with a notably bigger budget aided by a partnership.

Shortly after the miniseries' conclusion (around mid-2016), JonTron notably diversified its content, branching out from games to lampooning bad movies and miscellaneous topics from workout videos to American history.

On April 22nd, 2019, Jon uploaded the first episode of a new animated series, titled JonTron's Happy Hour. It's a show in the form of a podcast, featuring Jon himself, Sergei Torres, Andrew Reynoso, and Mike Shayne. It is paired with animation with an artstyle reminiscent of The Ricky Gervais Show.

Jon was also inducted into Channel Awesome, specifically the gaming-centered Blistered Thumbs, and once had a second channel JonTronLoL, where he casted League of Legends games with all his characteristic energy.

It's also worth noting that with the sixth StarCade episode, a fan started a since-defunct channel called GreenBoys that takes Surreal Humor to new highs. Although this channel has no actual relation to Jon, it was inspired by a gag in the episode.

Not to be confused with ProtonJon.

Episodes

Following his pilot episode in late summer 2010, his videos are informally divided into four seasons - Season 1 (fall 2010 to early 2013), Season 2 (fall 2013 to winter 2014), Season 3 (early 2015 to winter 2016, including his StarCade miniseries), and Season 4 (summer 2017 to present).

Season 1

1. Daikatana
2. Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness
3. Joe & Mac
4. DinoCity BRO!!!
5. Mighty Maxed Out
6. Stairfax Temperatures
7. Monster Bash
8. Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis
9. Home Improvement
10. Monster Party
11. Bubsy Collection
12. Charlie's Angels
13. Star Wars Kinect
14. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts
15. Jurassic Park: The Lost Potential
16. Birdemic
17. King's Quest V
18. Nightshade Part 1: The Claws of Sutekh^note Or, as Jon called it personally, Nightshade: The Claws of HEUGH
19. Space Ace

Season 2

1. Hercules Games
2. Goosebumps
3. Home Alone Games
4. Bootleg Pokémon Games
5. Foodfight!
6. Conan the Barbarian (1982)
7. Takeshi's Challenge
8. California Games
9. Titenic
10. Japanese Shoot 'em Ups
11. Anti-Drug Games
12. Clock Tower
13. Are You Afraid of the Dark?
14. Plug and Play Consoles
15. Zoo Race

JonTron's StarCade (Miniseries)

1. Atari Games^note (Star Wars: The Arcade Game, The Empire Strikes Back, Return Of The Jedi: Death Star Battle, Ewok Adventure, and Jedi Arena.)
2. X-Wing^note (The original game and its Updated Re-release.)
3. Star Wars Chess
4. Nintendo Star Wars
5. The Phantom Menace Games
6. Yoda Stories
7. Star Wars Plug and Play
8. Everything Else!
9. The Star Wars Holiday Special

Season 3

1. Barbie Games
2. Titanic: The Legend Goes On
3. Food Games: Part 1^note (Whopper Chase, Chex Quest, Cap'n Crunch's Crunchling Adventure, Yoshinoya, McKids, Mick & Mack: Global Gladiators, McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure, and Donald's Magical World.)
4. Food Games: Part 2^note (Yo! Noid, Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool, Kool-Aid Man, The California Raisins: The Grape Escape, Pepsi Invaders, Pepsiman)
5. A Talking Cat!?!
6. The Skateboard Kid
7. Disney Bootlegs
8. Dark Dungeons
9. Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf
10. Love Is Like Drugs - ft. Schmoyoho
11. The Weird World of PSAs
12. Christmas with the Kranks
13. Cool as Ice

Season 4

1. Waterproofing My Life With FLEX TAPE
2. Turducken Chef
3. Weird Workout Videos
4. VR Troopers
5. Flex Tape II: The Flexening
6. Soulja Boy Makes A Video Game Console
7. Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Skull Vodka
8. Workplace Safety
9. Dr Ho: License to Practice
10. JONNY NEW ENGLISH
11. BUYING DUMB THINGS ONLINE
12. JT FITNESS: Sweatin' it out with OJ
13. Regis Philbin's Epic Workout
14. THE HEAD TO HEAD GAME JAM
15. Architecture Tier List
16. Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop
17. REAL GHOSTS
18. Racing a NASCAR Driver
19. The REAL Story of the Pilgrims
20. Virtual Reality Mukbang (Sort Of)
21. Surviving Edged Weapons

Season 5

1. Gwyneth Paltrow's: The Goop Lab
2. Kid Nation
3. Jimmy Tells All (Kid Nation Exclusive)
4. Boating Made (TOO) Easy!
5. Steven Seagal: Certified Tough Guy
6. Old People Got Weird Products
7. THE FATHER OF JUICING
8. Simplifying Corporate Logos
9. REAL LIFE EXORCISM: A Documentary
10. Watching the Most Disliked Videos
11. KFC CONSPIRACIES: Down the Chicken Hole
12. Destroying my INTERNAL ORGANS with SHINING ROCKS^note formerly titled "EXTREMELY Alternative Medicine"
13. You Will Literally Not Recover from Watching this Video
14. Pro Gamer Compounds
15. Culture. (w/ Internet Historian)
16. The A.I. Episode (ChatGPT Takes Over the World)
17. The Most Shameless Dating Shows
18. The Most Cursed Dating Shows
19. Reading Unhinged Reviews on Google Maps (Magic Short Bus) (w/ Donavan)
20. Sri Sri: Ranker of the Universe
21. Titanic II

---

Tropes:

Tropes A-M

• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • Jon is somehow able to play Minecraft on Super Nintendo by putting in a Metal Gear Solid 3 box and taping a GameCube controller to the controller slot. Eventually lampshaded near the start of his video on the Bubsy series.
    Jon (trying to appease Jacques): Jon, that doesn't go there, you silly bitch!
  • He's also seen playing games after putting them into the console sideways, upside down, missing the console entirely, submerging both the console and cartridge in water, and on one occasion putting the console on the cartridge (fitting it into the slot after a moment).
  • Jon's grasp on computing technology is sketchy, too; rather than consult a FAQ for King's Quest, he coded the entire GameFAQs site from scratch.
  • Jon is also able to watch episodes of Goosebumps by inserting the novels of each episode into several different consoles.
  • In a more realistic sense, Jon manages to advance further into Takeshi's Challenge when the microphone on the second controller picks up his screaming.
  • He's able to access the Pro Games Player's original games after he throws the controller on the ground in frustration, because it jostles the cart full of NES ports out.
  • In "Food Games", the operator on the other end of the phone tells Jon to "use the brick" on the horse that's in his house for his Thanksgiving meal. Instead of bludgeoning the horse with the brick, Jon cuts the brick and serves it on a plate to the horse.
  • How does Jon watch the VHS of the Star Wars Holiday Special? By putting it on a record player. And then breaking the cassette with the needle.
  • In the Dino City Review: "Dishwasher? No. Dishwasher? NO! Dishwasher... OH MY GOD HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID THE SMBS!"
• Acting Unnatural: Jon makes fun of the main character of "My Hairiest Adventure" for using this trope, complete with humming.
• Aerith and Bob: He jokingly accuses Herc's Adventures of this, considering the three characters in the game are Herc, Atlanta, and Jason. "One's a...city in Georgia, THE OTHER'S A REGULAR NAME!"
• All Just a Dream:
  • Everything that happened after Jon fell unconscious in the Home Alone review was simply a hallucination. He then goes on to state that that made the whole review pointless.
  • Grimbo from the end of Food Games, part 1. Probably. Maybe not, as of Part 2.
• All-Natural Snake Oil: The products featured in Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop are all of questionable medical value and are all advertised through their use of natural ingredients. This culminates in Jon going to the Goop pop-up in New York, dressing like a 19th century Snake Oil Salesman and begin hawking his own products.
• Ambiguously Bi:
  • He enjoys adding a Mr. Fanservice to his videos if he can, as seen in The JonTron Challenge.
  • In his A Talking Cat!?! he implies that he thinks that both Girl on Girl Is Hot and Guy on Guy Is Hot. Though, he adds a small "oooh noooo" to the latter. What that means is up to you to decide.
• Ambiguously Gay: Aquaman might be trying to tell us something with those tights. Like that he likes tights.
• Ambiguously Human: Grimbo, who is either a severely emaciated human, a Gollum-like former human, or some kind of goblin-like thrall.
• And I Must Scream: All of the bootleg creatures from Disney Bootlegs seem to live in permanent agony (as one'd expect when you make a Shoddy Knockoff Product of a living creature).
  Bootleg!Jacques: You will never know my suffering, forever trapped inside this robotic husk.
  Great Bootleg: No one can stop the pain. Please, can you stop the pain?
  • Jon learns that being completely impervious via liberal use of Flex Tape can be a bad thing.
  Jon, one with the Flex Tape:THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO PLAY GOD!
• Angrish: Expect him to fall into this when something particularly stupid happens in a game/movie he's reviewing.
  "What is this?! AND WHY IS IT IN MY STAR FOX GAME-NO! NO, I'VE HAD IT! AHHHHH I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! IF ONE MORE FUCKING WOOLLY MAMMOTH ASKS ME TO PICK UP TWO DOUBLE EGGS TEGPABLUGHUGJZQJFLSPLUH"
• Animal Motifs: Birds, he's owned at least four and once appeared in a crossover video with Commander Holly and her pigeons. Additionally, he takes a shining to a Conan game when it gives him an "Avian Ally", and spends much of his Star Fox Adventures review lamenting the absence of Falco, who happens to be his favorite Super Smash Bros. Brawl character.
• Anti-Love Song: Belting out an off-key rendition of "I Will Always Love You" to mourn Banjo-Kazooie.
  "AND IIIIII-HOLY SHIT! WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU- ICANTBELIEVEYOUDIDTHISTOMEGODDAMNITHOWCOULDYOUDOTHISTOME!
• Anticlimax:
  • Parodying the "Video game comes to life and tries to kill the reviewer" trope. Jon's copy of Monster Bash turns out to be haunted, and Jon immediately kills it by having Jacques shoot it with eye lasers, ending the fight in less than 10 seconds.
  • Also the "Trapped in a video game" trope: A few seconds after getting sucked into Joe & Mac, he reappears in his bedroom, totally unfazed. "I just left."
• Arc Welding: The finale of Starcade effectively ties the series pretty strongly both to his Star Wars Kinect video and to Game Grumps, with Arin-Vader's whole motivation being to play games with Jon again after he departed from Grumps exactly two and a half years prior (with the last game they played together being, fittingly enough, Super Star Wars.)
• Arc Words: God has come to reap the sinners. Apocalyptic warnings about God punishing mankind show up frequently, most recently in both "Christmas with the Kranks", "Flex Tape", and "VR Troopers."
  Jon: (sobbing while completely covered in Flex Tape) THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO PLAY GOD!
  • The past handful of episodes have also gone out of their way to mention milk that has gone bad.
  • Another one from his Skateboard Kid episode: "Sometimes the thing you're looking for is staring you right in the face."
• As the Good Book Says...:
  • Used for Hypocritical Humor in How to get REVENGE. When Linda Blair quotes "Vengeance is mine" from the Bible, Jon follows up:
  Jon: Oh, are we playing "Use the Bible to justify what I want to do right now"? I freaking love this game. Leviticus 27:4, "The price of a woman between 20 and 60 years of age shall be 30 shekels". (Beat) Oh come on, I don't buy that, there's gotta be some depreciation along the way.
  • Later, when Linda asks for a way to get revenge on a man by targeting his whole family, Jon shows he didn't forget about the intro.
  Jon: Yeah, you know, just like it says in this old book I used to spearhead this whole operation: "The son shall not suffer the sins of the father"^note Ezekiel 18:20. (Double checks the book before closing it.) I didn't see that.
• Asbestos-Free Cereal: In "Bubsy Collection", JonTron points out that having 1-ups in a game is not a selling point after the box art for Bubsy 3D claimed it was.
  Jontron: Okay, hold the phone! Having 1-Ups in your game is not a selling point! Let alone a bullet on the back of the box! You can just tell they were really stretching to say even one good thing about this game.
• Ascended Extra: Jon's crew initially shows up as extras or unnamed background characters in his sketches. Eventually, they begin appearing more often within the videos, have their names revealed, and take on major roles more often than working as the crew. Sergio Torres in particular was mostly just referenced behind the camera at first before later episodes essentially establish him as Jon's Lancer.
• Ascended Fanboy:
  • JonTron loves the Continue? series, even going as far as to give them the Colbert Bump, so it can be pretty noticeable that he was excited to crossover with them in a special, though not to a The Knights Who Say "Squee!" level.
  • Jon was a big fan of Egoraptor as a teenager before he actually met him. Resulting in some adorable moments of Squee on Game Grumps.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: According to Jon's "10 Games That Deserve Sequels" video, Tim Schafer's reward for creating Psychonauts is to ascend to Valhalla in a chariot.
• Aside Glance: Jon pulls an iconic one in the Nightshade video after the game tells him the following when he tries using his crowbar:
  Congratulations! You've just won the "Jef and Paul Award for Excellence in Shopping Centers".
  Actually, the crowbar snaps in two.
  • Jacques actually pulls one which was obviously unprompted in the Legacy Of Darkness review. While Jon is screaming in terror at the Final Boss, Jacques turns his head in a way that it looks like he's staring directly at the camera.
• As the Good Book Says...: During the chaos befalling the satanic cult in Dark Dungeons, Jon says "John is clocking in at a whopping 3:19!" John 3:19 states "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil", which applies to the D&D corruption in the film.
• Author Appeal: Jon's a big fan of Billy Joel, thus explaining the apparently inexplicable framed picture of him he has on the first variation of the set of the show.
• Author Tract: Played for laughs in "Regis Philbin's Epic Workout", where a skit about Jon becoming more arrogant as he gets fitter is suddenly interuppted by a character launching into a Non Sequitur about climate change (at which point Jon walks back in after he was supposed to have left the scene just to agree with him.)
• Awesome, but Impractical: When Jontron discovers that there is a combo list In Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis, he notes that they are pointless because he was able to beat every enemy by just mashing the A button.
• Badass Boast: In the intro to his cover of "Firework", he speculates that it was taken down from Soundcloud because Katy Perry's record label was "most likely fearing reasonably that Katy would lose sales to my superior version."
• Berserk Button:
  • Others include games that fall heavily into "invokedThey Changed It, Now It Sucks!" (such as Star Fox Adventures, which deviated greatly from the gameplay of the earlier titles in the Star Fox franchise, and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, which replaced the platforming elements with vehicle-based gameplay) and finding inexplicably weird things in games (such as all the crazy bosses in Monster Party and the Bafomdad in the aforementioned Star Fox title).
  • He doesn't seem to enjoy his sleep habits being criticized, as his Magfest 2014 quote in the Funny Moments page can attest, as well as this quote from the Pokémon Bootlegs video:
  "Yeah, I think I'm gonna quit here, this game's starting to judge my lifestyle, I don't need that! I made it past age 18, I pay my bills, I pay my taxes, I'll sleep whenever the fuck I want, fuck you."
  • For whatever reason (something that has never been explained at all) Jon absolutely despises goblins, and has reacted with violent disgust and anger both times the topic of goblins has come up in his videos thus far. No word yet on whether Grimbo qualifies as a goblin.
• Big Applesauce: Lives in NY and has progressively played up his vague Brooklyn accent for comedic effect.
• Big Beautiful Man: As explained in the 2015 Q&A video:
  Reallemonninja: Why are you so hot?
  Jon: Well, the fat keeps in the temperature and doesn't let out the cold, so i-it's sweaty.
• Big Eater:
  • In California Games:
  Jon: Oh my god, summer's almost here! But I haven't lost my winter weight.. [Glances at a bikini] Hegh.. I can't look... Jacques, what am I gonna do to lose all this weight?!
  Jacques: Stop inventing and eating things like Cheesecake Pizza.
  Jon: Oh that was in the past, Cheesecake Pizza's in the past! I suppose I should bring up your shortcomings as well? [Eats a piece of cheesecake with a pizza slice in top]
  • Subverted in Food Games Part 1, when he attempts to take part in The Noid's eating contest, only to fail after taking just two bites.
• Big Fun: This guy is infectious.
• Big "NO!":
  • Jon has one when he's forced to play through Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts.
  • He also has this moment during his Foodfight! review, after the TV cord plugs itself back in.
• Big "OMG!":
  • Jon's reaction to the dance minigame in Star Wars Kinect, in a perfect homage to Troll 2.
  • His reaction to reading the text in Dino City that states that "Timmy entered the TV world when he touched his Dad's 'science device'".
  • His reaction to Simba hanging himself in one of the Game Over screens of Lion King 5 in "Disney Bootlegs". It's even autotuned into "Circle of Life", no less.
• Big "SHUT UP!": In "Hercules Games", Jon responds in this manner to an offscreen friend asking if he's gonna be alright after suffering a stomachache from eating a gyro.
  • At the very end of "Stairfax Temperatures", Jon responds in this manner to Jacques's squawking.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • Had a penchant for doing this on Game Grumps.
  • Fox digging up the Bafomdad. (Be sure to wear earplugs.)
  • After he reads the "then they fused together" line from Monster Party.
  • After he discovers that in Space Ace, the protagonist moans and groans after doing simple jumps.
  • After he sees Darth Vader turning into a scorpion in the Famicom Star Wars game. Mixed with Voice of the Legion, no less.
  • The first cutscene from Pepsiman prompts four of these in increasing volume.
  Jon: Well now we're getting into some deep shit, I don't know if I'm ready for that also WHAT, WHAT, WHAT, WHAAAAAAT!''
• Bizarro Universe: If Nintendo were organized according to Bubsy's rules, Goombas would be the archvillain of the entire Mario franchise.
  Bizarro Miyamoto: Uhhh, da goombas, the first enemy you see in the game? Well, dat's it. ...Main villain.
• Blatant Lies: "Updates every Friday". Perhaps this is why he's stopped saying it.
  • The goop company and their various "wellness products" come with truck loads of complete bullshit, the very first product Jon introduces is Psychic Vampire repellent which lists in its ingredients as selenite, pyrite, tigers eye, amethyst, lapis lazuli, ruby and copper, love…lu…love?
• Black Comedy Burst:
  • Jon imagines that Moemon was made by a pedophile in a Torture Cellar.
  • From Malkovich's Gaming Game Show: sending the contestants out on stage to the applause of a cheering audience.......at gunpoint and with hoods over their heads. All of them are heavily implied to have been kidnapped, and it's implied that one of them had his wife and daughter kidnapped as well.
  • In the "anti-drug games" episode, Jon says that his dad doesn't wear pants similar to Wally Bear's father. We then see an urn tipping over and spilling its contents, with Jon saying "Dad!" in a very realistic and saddened manner.
  • The ending of the Hercules episode, where Jon just flat-out gives up and puts himself to rest using Advil and alcohol.
  • Starcade has a clip where C-3PO informs Jon that the apples he's eating are actually the fully sentient inhabitants of the Apple Planet. Cut to Jon with blood trickling out of his mouth and ominous music as he thinks to himself, "Oh, that's why they were screamin'...."
  • In his Christmas with the Kranks review, there's one point where Jon randomly slits his wrist.
• *Bleep*-dammit!: The quick time event video starts with him announcing a new series called "Sh!t That F*cks Games Up". In the caption it's censored correctly, but when Jon says it out loud, every word except "shit" and "fucks" is censored.
  • In "Boating Made (TOO) Easy!" he asks if he can say the word "fuck," and then asks if he could say a phrase that was completely censored except for the word "cunt."
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The translated version of Clock Tower, Titenic, and the Plug and Play games are all explicitly this.
  Jennifer: [looks at a window] It's a swimming pool.
  Jon: Actually, that's a window!
• Blood from the Mouth:
  • When he learns that Conker isn't actually getting a new game, he starts laughing and clapping and suddenly starts spitting up blood.
  • At the start of the eighth episode of Starcade, when Jon learns the green apples he's eating are sentient, there is a close-up of his face with his mouth covered in the blood of the apples.
  "That's why they were screamin'..."
• Bloody Hilarious: The ending of "Turducken Chef."
  • The ending of "Surviving Edged Weapons" as well. Without going into details, let's just say that Santa's arrival has rarely been so messy.
• Bob Ross Rib: In "THE JONTRON CHALLENGE!", the second challenge pitched to Jon was to do a parody of Bob Ross. He ends up painting a stick figure peeing blood before instantaneously creating a (clearly photoshoped) depiction of a muscular Bob Ross in a snowy-landscape.
• Bond One-Liner: In "Clock Tower", after Jon defeats the Scissorman using ham.
  Jon: Looks like you're out to lunch.
• Book Ends: The Starcade series finale sees Jon and Arin in their first video together since the finale of their Super Star Wars playthrough on Game Grumps, exactly two and a half years prior.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Jon listing off Sega's mascots in "Japanese Shoot 'em Ups": Alex Kidd, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Billy the Sex Offender.
  Jon: What, did- did you forget about that guy? Well, I didn't. I'll never forget, Sega.
• Breathless Non Sequitur: Done twice. Once during "The Weird World of PSAs", where Jon suddenly concludes his parody of Michael Jordan's McDonald's PSA with "reopen that 9/11 investigation," and again in "Regis Philbin's Epic Workout" where a skit suddenly concludes with an Author Tract about climate change.
• Brick Joke:
  • At the beginning of his DinoCity review, there's a montage of him trying to put the cartridge into various game systems and electronic devices, including a dishwasher. This returns later when Jon begins raging and throws the cartridge back into the dishwasher.
  Jon: Okay, yeah, that's fine. Nothingwrongthere-Idontseeanythingwrongthere dishwasher? YES.
  • At the beginning of his Clock Tower review, he talks about all the classic Halloween monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Skeletons with guns... maybe not that last one. At the end of the review, a skeleton emerges from behind a door and starts firing a gun wildly.
  • Another one from "Clock Tower": Jon mentions that people don't visit his house anymore due to his Vincent van Ghoul painting. In fact, it's been several years, and the last person to visit was the Scissorman he just killed.
  • And a THIRD from the same episode: at one point, Jon discovers and picks up ham in the game, cutting away to hold up a slice in real life with a "this'll kill him." At the end of the episode, he kills a Scissorman with the same piece of ham.
  • A multi-episode one: The last time Rockington was ever acknowledged was way back in the Nuts and Bolts episode, mentioning he had somehow managed to lose a rock. Years later, he shows up again in Starcade's Plug-n-Play episode, as a boss in a game Jon somehow gets by plugging himself into the TV. That rock was really lost.
  • The finale of StarCade references the Clock Tower video, where Jon likened the main antagonist's death in the game (falling off a cliff due to some birds) to Palpatine's death, by having it literally happen to Palpatine courtesy of a reborn Jacques.
  • When Jon is seemingly sucked into his Joe & Mac cartridge, only to reappear in his house a moment later. Jacques asks how he managed to escape, to which Jon responds that he "just left". Turns out the characters from the game can "just leave" too. The episode ends with a dinosaur boss walking into Jon's living room.
  • In the middle of the Workplace Safety episode, someone is shown slipping on a pen, which then crashes into a building and Jon and blows them up. At the end of the video, the same pen returns and hits the drone filming the video, causing it to fly towards Jon's crew.
• Brief Accent Imitation:
  • Invoked in Plug and Play Consoles, when Jon lapses into a strange accent as he describes how the bootlegged "Xmas Gift" recreates an old German tradition. (It doesn't.)
  • The accent returns in Titanic: The Legend Goes On when Jon mourns the death of his innocence by playing a toy trumpet in a mariachi costume.
    Jon: I can still hear the SCREAMS, papa!
  • And again in “Guns of Icarus REAL TUTORIAL” after MaymayMachine tells Jon “Get off the gun!”
  Jon: What I do wrong papa? I don’t who—who you up? I fix. I fix it.
  • When Jon gets his first taste of actual gameplay in The Zoo Race he lets out a distinctly different voice that may have been Irish or British. “Ohh nooo, Harryyyyy!”
• Broken Aesop: Jon finds several in his Goosebumps videos.
  • In Part 1, Jon says that the moral of "Don't Go To Sleep" is "Never question the status quo, even if it isn't right. Because if you do, the Reality Police will find you and kill you no matter what."
  • In Part 2, Jon decides that the moral of "My Hairiest Adventure" is:
    Jon: Moral of the story's really good on this one... It's uh, don't be unlucky, and be a dog. That's a good one!
• Brown Note: A lot of the sounds from the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Gameboy Color game are treated like this. The intro theme is enough to make Jacques go haywire and explode.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: On top of being a game reviewer, Jon also has a pretty epic singing voice. Justified, as he has an education in musical theatre.
• The Bus Came Back: After a remarkable two-year absence, Jacques makes a proper reappearance in 2019's "JACQUES EXPOSED?"^note A short video promoting Jon's new YouTooz figure. Apparently, he's been in retirement these past two years.
  Jon: Oh Jacques! While I've got you, the entire internet has been hounding me with this question for you, and I figured why don't we just do it right here, live on air, and you could just answer everyone's question right here and now. You ready? The question is: are you dead?
  Jacques: ...Inside.
• Butch Lesbian: As the villain of Howling II rips her top off, Jon celebrates it with a group of several men and 2 women.
• Callback:
  • At the end of his Nightshade review, after Jon has had enough of the game, he takes the game cartridge out of the system... which is a 3DO.
  • In his Foodfight! review, he makes the same "OK" sound as he did in his Space Ace review.
  • In his Anti-Drug Games review, when he finds out there was a Nightshade competition thanks to his issue of GamePro: "I AIIIIIIIIN'T gonna take that sitting down."
  • Top 10 Nintendo Overworlds, on Peach's Castle: "I'll never forget you, old friend. (Beat) Castles can't be friends." Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, on Spiral Mountain: "It's good to see you again, old friend. (Beat) Mountains can't be friends."
  • An extremely subtle one in his Nightshade video. After Jon gets fed up with the game, he pulls it out of its console. However, a second before the transition, you can see that he pulled an NES cartridge out of a DVD player.
  • Several in the first part of "Food Games":
  • A couple of Plug 'N Play consoles are visible on the shelf behind him while he's on the phone.
  • Jon's love/hate relationship with Macaulay Culkin from "Home Alone Games" is referenced by the Macaulay Culkin bust that he has on his house.
  • The StarCade finale references the Game Grumps' discussion of the "do it!" joke from Revenge of the Sith.
  • In "Takeshi's Challenge", he professes a disgust and dislike toward goblins out of nowhere. In the "X-Wing" episode of StarCade, he destroys the entire X-Wing operation (already failing miserably) when he finds out that "Goblin-Head Boy" is on the squadron.
  • In "Turducken Chef", the "Guilin theme" from the Lion King bootleg game in his "Disney Bootlegs" video plays when he mentions going to Chinatown. He also references the Flex Tape video by saying "That's a lotta da-midge" before putting his hideously mangled turducken into the oven.
• The Cameo:
  • Makes frequent appearances in Peanut Butter Gamer's show. In PBG's Cursed Mountain review, he appeared in a flashback as an old mountain guru.
  • Also, Egoraptor as Vitalia in Malkovich's Gaming Game Show, and as Darth Vader in Starcade.
  • The Foodfight! episode features Brentalfloss as Mr. Clean.
  • Paul Ritchey from Continue? has made several appearances in some episodes, such as Foodfight! and Conan the Barbarian.
  • Chris "Kirbopher" Niosi makes a vocal cameo in the Goosebumps episodes. This is following Jon's appearance on Niosi's own show, TOME, as the voice of Sniper Wheel.
  • He has appeared at the beginning of The Nostalgia Critic's "Nostalgiaween" episodes in 2014, stabbing him to death in vengeance for Critic reviewing Food Fight so soon after he did.
  • He appears as a guest in an episode of James Rolfe's "James and Mike Mondays" where he plays Bomberman 2 with James Rolfe and Mike Matei. He also appears in a 3-D World Runner episode of the same show.
  • Both Ross and Markiplier appear in the second episode of StarCade.
  • Jon appears in Auto-Tune The News #8: Of Murder And Catfish.
  • He also makes a vocal cameo in, of all places, the beta of A Hat in Time, where he voices a penguin in a snazzy suit. He makes a cameo in the final release, voicing the owl receptionist of the Dead Bird Stuido.
  • Ross and Commander Holly actually cameoed in the Space Ace episode as well when Jon breaks into their house. Holly's grandfather was actually an animator on Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, hence why they had the animation cells.
  • Pink Guy appears as a drummer at the end of The Skateboard Kid review.
  • Phil Swift appears As Himself in Flex Tape II: The Flexening.
• Candid Camera Prank: The second 'Gaming in Public' episode. To prove that people would exaggerate the (alleged) harmfulness of video games, Jon created a bogus petition claiming the Nintendo 3DS caused blindness in children (featuring, among other things, the phrase "Heil Hitler") and asked random passersby to sign it for him. All of them signed without reading... and one of them signed even after having read it. Jon, naturally, crowned him King.
  • Parodied in The Skateboard Kid review. After a scene where some kids run off giggling after giving someone correct directions, Jon does the same thing to a woman looking for a subway station. She then turns to the person holding the camera, asking if they're with him.
• Canon Discontinuity: A few of Jon's earlier videos were deleted, which he alludes to in "Mighty Maxed Out" when the game comes to life and forces him to relive the videos he or the audience didn't like. Jon reacts, in characteristic fashion, by rugby-tackling the game, punching it, and then attacking the cartridge with a power saw. Yeah, Jon really doesn't like those old videos.
• Canon Immigrant: We already knew Jon doesn't truck with this type of character, as shown in Game Grumps (his response to Kimi from Rugrats). Then comes along the PAL Home Alone game with a Distaff Counterpart for Macaulay Culkin, along with a pair of playmates. The plot thickens.
  Jon: Don't you remember these iconic characters from the film? "Kelly"? "Carl"? "Carly"? My — my favorite scene with them was this one:
  (horrific explosions)
• Carpet of Virility: He has one, most noticeable if his shirt is partially unbuttoned. It adds to his Big Beautiful Man appeal among those who are into that.
• Captain Obvious:
  • Jacques at the start of the Birdemic review.
  Jon: Today, we're doing a video about birds!
  Jacques: How dare you say that to me? You know my mother was a bird.
  Jon: Well, yes...yeah. Yeah, I'm...I'm aware.
  • Another one crops up in his Space Ace review.
  Shot of Transformers figurine holding a Space Ace cartridge
  Jon: Oh look, it's SPACE ACE!!! For the Sooper Nintendo!
• Catchphrase:
  • "I quit" whenever he finds something so incredibly stupid he has no other words to describe it.
  • "Am I the only one...?"/"I can't be the only one!"
  • "Oh nooo."
  • "Ech!", which is from Game Grumps and has become permanently immortalized with Jon's persona.
• Chekhov's Gun: Parodied in "Clock Tower". Briefly shown fairly early in the video, Scissorman's one true weakness is ham. This is used at the end of the video, when Jon is attacked by Scissorman himself.
  • There's also the mirror in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In "Clock Tower", Skeletons with Guns are mentioned by Jon in a list of Halloween costumes, but they show up again at the end of the video once Jon has killed Scissorman.
• Clingy Macguffin: Jacques tries to destroy the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts cartridge and Mind Wipe Jon (this kind of thing has worked on games before), but the pieces re-form when Jon tries to play the original Banjo-Kazooie. Jon has to tie the entire game to a rock and toss it into the ocean to get rid of it for good.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Every single episode will have you wondering if Jon is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: His reaction towards Cheasel T. Weasel of Foodfight!
  Oh, sh*bleep*, co-*bleep* *bleep*! Is that a poop rat? Is that a f*bleep*ing poop rat?!
• Cluster F-Bomb: When Malkovich offered to take calls from viewers on Malkovich's Gaming Guilty Pleasures, one caller said, "Fuck fucking fuck."
• Coat Full of Contraband: In the opening animations of some of the episodes, Jon is seen as the dealer of said contraband.
• Cool Chair: Had a scene of this when Jon ends the "Soulja Boy Makes A Video Game Console" video with Jon flying his couch through the ceiling.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • Sonic Team having an epiphany about what Sonic has been missing all these years: "TITS!"
  • Jon's reaction upon noticing an article on Scissorman heading to his house — "But that's impossible. If scissors don't exist, how did someone clip out this article?"
  • In his Jurassic Park: Lost World review, Jon notes the original film's outstanding special effects by showing the audience how good Jeff Goldblum looks.
  • In Dark Dungeons, Jon misinterprets the acronym "RPG".
  Party leader: Are you ready to RPG?
  Jon: (takes out a rocket-propelled grenade) Oh, motherfucker, I was born ready!
• Comical Overreacting: The entirety of "Apples and Breaks" hinges on Jon's meltdown over his DS's screen being broken.
• Corpsing: Nearly invoked a number of times where Jon is on the verge of completely breaking down. Fully invoked in the "Clock Tower" video where Jon throws up candy corn at the Body Horror shown in part of the game and ends up laughing his ass off.
• Credits Gag: At the end of his Nuts & Bolts review, he lists Jon Jafari as playing himself, Jacques, Banjo-Kazooie, the walls, and Trickleham Moose.
• Crossover:
  • Jon is good friends with Ethan Klein of h3h3 productions, and as a result the two have appeared in each other's videos. Ethan appears as the Kool-Aid Man in "Food Games (Part 2)" and plays Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with Jon, and Jon appears in a video on Ethan's channel where the two share a Papa John's pizza.
  • Jon is also friends with George Miller of Filthy Frank, and as a result of this Pink Guy ended up on Jon's channel as the drummer in the band that plays at the end of the "Skateboard Kid" episode. Additionally, Jon appears briefly in the "IT'S JUST A PRANK" episode of Filthy Frank.
• Cultured Bad Ass:
  • Jon has displayed a distinct interest in Greek and Roman history.
  • He apparently speaks excellent Japanese. At the end of Takeshi's Challenge, he writes a letter under candlelight, sealing it with a wax stamp, and mails it, on camera, all while narrating in perfect Japanese.
  • Thanks to Jon's schooling in musical arts, he can really belt out a tune. Just take a look at his State of Affairs video.
• Curse Cut Short: The end of the My Sims review has Jon walk all the way from California to PeanutButterGamer's house in Texas, only to find Jacques there.
  Jon: Jacques, man, how'd you get here? Have you guys...have you guys been doing something...behind my back?
  Jacques: I can teleport, you numbnut.
  Jon and PBG: Oooooooooooohhh.
  Jon: YOU PIECE OF SHI-*roll credits*
• Cutaway Gag
• Cute Machines: Jacques, and C3PO in Starcade.
• Cutting the Knot: During the Game Jam episode, each team had to race their guinea pigs through a maze to determine who could choose options first. Team Gumdrop's guinea pig won, as it got tired of going through the maze and just climbed over the walls straight to the center.
• Cyborg: Jacques appears to be a biological parrot, but Jon did...something to him to make him partially machine. This serves to make Jacques way cooler and funnier than if he was just a regular bird sidekick.
• Dance Party Ending: How Starcade ends, with the entire cast having a good 'ole dancing time to the Kinect Star Wars song "I'm Han Solo".
• Darker and Edgier: While still hilarious, "Disney Bootlegs" is pretty horrific and grim.
• Dawson Casting: In-Universe; Jon calls out Dark Dungeons for the casting of Mistress Frost, who is supposed to be in college but is clearly middle-aged.
• Deadpan Snarker: Jacques, though Jon himself isn't too bad either sometimes.
  Jon: I'm playing a game based off my favorite Greek legend, Heracles! [Displays the video game adaptation of Tarzan]
  Jacques: I'm glad to see nothing has changed around here.
• Delicious Daydream: In "Food Games", Jon claims that the McDonald's games are absolutely not going to make him crave a "delicious McDonald's hamburger, which has the perfect blend of crispy lettuce, meaty tomatoes, a patty sizzled to perfection, and all topped off with one perfectly crunchy pickle"... and then immediately eats a burger.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: Parodied; Jon is seemingly sucked into his Joe & Mac cartridge, only to reappear in his house a moment later. Jacques asks how he managed to escape.
  Jon: I just left.
• Demoted to Extra: Jacques, who is appearing a lot less often in Jon's videos since he returned from Game Grumps. Originally, he starred as Jon's sidekick and often reviewed the games along with Jon. Since 2013, he is either completely absent from some episodes or only makes brief cameos. This has been explained as Jon avoiding making the gag with him too overused and the fact that as Jacques is a bird, he rarely stays still enough for Jon to properly do skits with him for more than a few seconds at a time.
• Deranged Animation: The "Jontron Winter's Tale" video. The animation was even done by Psychicpebbles, no less.
• Despair Event Horizon: Jon definitely crosses it during his meltdown in "CONKER IS BACK GUYS". Afterwards, we see him looking solemnly into the city and saying "All is lost."
• Deus ex Machina: invoked Done intentionally at the end of StarCade — Emperor Palpatine is ultimately disposed by Vader gluing Jacques' head back onto his body and throwing him, causing him to transform into a man in a bird suit and throw Palpatine off the railing.
• Didn't Think This Through: Jon decided to review Space Ace, apparently without checking to see if his arcade cabinet was still working.
  • In his video on Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Jacques tried to wipe Jon's memory in hopes of preventing him from reviewing the game. Not only did this not work, but it put them both in danger when Jon blew him up and unleashed the game from its case.
• Discriminate and Switch: Jon noting the lack of mermaids in Aquaman; there's nothing in the city but shirtless mermen.
  "Maybe Aquaman was trying to tell us somethin' about himself by wearin' those tights. ...Like, that he likes tights."
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • When the QA guy is about to give his thoughts on Sonic Free Riders, one of the Sonic Team developers bludgeons him to death with a flashlight.
  Narrator: But did you really expect anything more from the people who made Shadow the Hedgehog? Like, really.
  • Lampshaded when the main character of "Don't Go to Sleep" is put on trial by the Reality Police. When asked what he did, he's shown a flashback of him saying that he hates reality.
  15 LIFE SENTENCES! 7 LETHAL INJECTIONS! 10 DECADES OF FAMILIAL SHAMING!
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Jon seeing the pendulum of a grandfather clock in "Titenic" (yes, that is spelled correctly, as Jon so angrily notes), thinks that it may have a "very well endowed man inside" with heavy emphasis on "well endowed".
  • Jon seems to enjoy double hacking a bit too much. Jacques even says that he's basically about to climax, or reach "hack capacity".
• Dramatic Unmask: The Starcade finale ends with Jon unmasking Darth Vader, only to discover that he's none other than his old pal Arin.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Jon at the end of the Hercules episode, overdosing with a combo of pills and alcohol.
  "Dear Kids: Please don't kill yourselves and then sue me."
  "POOP"
  • When Jon encounters the singing Mexican mice in Titanic: The Legend Goes On, it cuts to him with a small pistol trying to off himself through the head, but failing.
  "(click) Come on baby, I just want out. (reloads) (click)"
  • Jon hangs himself after seeing Simba, Timon, and Pumbaa graphically committing suicide in the Game Over screens of a Lion King bootleg.
  • When Jon "becomes one with the Flex Tape" in the video reviewing said infomercials, he realizes he has just made himself indestructible and wishes for any way to end his existence.
• Drugs Are Bad: Parodied in "Anti-Drug Games" and "The Weird World of PSAs" (which centers around anti-drug PSAs), where Jon analyzes just how blurred the message can get.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Jon calls someone on the infamous Garfield phone in "Food Games" a couple months before it becomes a joke in itself in "A Talking Cat?"
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The earliest episodes had little of the style he eventually grew into and became popular with, instead approaching games more seriously and more in the style of his predecessors. He also lacked his Large Ham persona that he'd grow to obtain, staying extremely calm and stern.
  • In the early days, Jon had more of a variety of videos and included more sketch-based videos (such as Malkovich's Gaming Guilty Pleasure or his Top 10/6 lists).
• "El Niño" Is Spanish for "The Niño": In Bootleg Pokemon Games:
  Jon: ["Pokemon Diamond"] is in fact a Japanese cell-phone-based RPG called "Keitai Denjū Telefang"... Okay, now get this: it means: Mobile Phone Beast... Telefang. Goddammit, that was the word I wanted to know most!
• Eskimos Aren't Real:
  • JonTron, after playing Clock Tower, assures himself that the Scissorman is all make-believe because there's no such thing as scissors.
  • During his review of Zoo Race, he points out that pirates and Ancient Egyptians were from different times and that one of them might not have existed at all. Whether he was talking about the former or the latter is unknown.
• Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: In Stairfax Temperatures, Jon subtitles a part of his Sanity Slippage Song near the end.
  Jon: Where is Falco, he was so awesome [indecipherable] now he's just a dick and that's why they removed him...
  Subtitles: Where is Falco/He was so awesome and is essystem of gvoermyna all sincsisd/That's why they removed him
  • Jon's song is a parody of "A Waltz for Eva and Che" from Evita, and he reverts to the actual lyrics ("system of government") momentarily while struggling to come up with a line.
• Everyone Has Standards: While Jon's typical humor is still very much present during his Kid Nation review, he makes no attempts to hide his contempt for the show’s very premise.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Jon tries to reassure himself that Stairfax Temperatures will improve. Can't judge a book by its cover! Unless it's Stuff On My Cat.
  "Cause, that... you're pretty much gettin', y'know, the whole experience right there."
• Excuse Plot: What gets Jon to talk about fear-mongering and eventually the Dark Dungeons movie? A satanic cult that is never mentioned or shown again.
• Exit, Pursued By Mr. Clean: How Paul Ritchey makes his exit in the Foodfight review, after escaping from the DVD of the movie.
• Expospeak Gag: Let us partake in some Dino City, brother.
• The Faceless: Scissorman when he appears in Jon's house in the Clock Tower video. The camera takes a first person perspective from Scissorman's view, which changes only when he's been destroyed... by ham.
• Fat Comic Relief: Jon himself can be the titular version of this during his Cloudcuckoolander tendencies most likely from his 2012 videos, to his 2016 to current reviews and his recent videos showing this in him.
• Faux Horrific: When trying to play Final Fantasy XIII, it turned out that "The game's playing itself, Jon. The game's playing itself, Jon!"
• Film Noir: Parodied in the Framing Device for his Foodfight review, complete with Private Eye Monologue.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • The Starcade finale plays a brief snippet of the Game Grumps theme before Darth Vader is unmasked as Egoraptor.
  • In Flex Tape Part II: The Flexening, being hit on the head by a bust of Prometheus sends Jon to Phil Swift's flexworld. Those who are familiar with Greek mythology would know that Prometheus was punished by the gods for giving mankind a powerful invention.
• Food Porn: Unsurprisingly, this shows up in "Food Games":
  Jon: I mean, it's not as if this game would make me want to order a delicious McDonald's hamburger which has the perfect blend of crispy lettuce, meaty tomatoes, a patty sizzled to perfection and all topped off with one perfectly crunch pickle... *Beat, followed by crunching noises* That's ridiculous. I'm two steps ahead of you, McDonald's, alright? Your mind games aren't gonna work on me!
  • Then there's the moment where he pulls a lever and is showered with Cap'n Crunch in slow motion as sexy jazz music plays.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The end of the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts video referenced the ending of Birdemic, which he reviewed right after.
  • In the ending to his Star Fox Adventures video, he threw the disk into space. The very end showed that it was on a crash-course for Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, which he reviewed later.
  • In the beginning of his Clock Tower review, Jon urges Halloween to bring on Draculas, Frankensteins, and "skeletons with a gun in their hands" before dismissing that as not "a thing." In the end, a skeleton wielding an automatic pistol breaks out of Jon's closet.
• Four-Point Scale:
  • Invoked and Played for Laughs. Jon devised a meaningless ratings system wherein it's actually impossible for a game to receive bad marks (in its own way a dig at Video Game Journalists and their reviews), no matter how much he bashed it in his review. Sonic Colors and Donkey Kong Country Returns received an "A/5" and a "Six Golden Bananas+/Shigeru Miyamoto" respectively; even though Jon spent the whole video mocking them (though it's pretty clear he enjoyed both). Nimbus, described as "A game you will maybe forget", got a B/5.
  • Regardless, many YouTube fans seem to think that he hates DKCR because of the things he said in his review. A simple comment search would reveal that he'd seriously give the game a 9/10.
• Framing Device: Done in several videos, namely Foodfight, Titanic: The Legend Goes On, and Dark Dungeons, among a couple others. The one in Dark Dungeons is notable for being set up at the beginning and then never referred to ever again.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the second part of his Are You Afraid of the Dark? special, when JonTron mocks a child clearly reading from his script, he looks down at his own script. The script actually has the last few seconds of dialogue on it and the next couple lines for that scene.
  • At the beginning of the "Charlie's Angels" review, look closely at the trophy that Jon places on the table. It's an actual award that he won back when he was in high school theater; as seen on the engraving, it's a "Best Supporting Actor" award for his performance in Chicago (according to a Q&A at MAGFest, he played Amos Hart).
  • At the beginning of the "Disney Bootlegs", Bootleg Jacques delivers a cease and desist from Disney. Subverted in that other than the Disney style letters, it looks like a fairly accurate cease and desist.
  • The disk that sends Nuts and Bolts to Jon is Starfox Adventures!
• Funny Background Event: During Final Hallway XIII, when Jon starts panicking as he realizes the gravity of his situation, Jacques is chewing on his ear.
  • As of "Anti-Drug Games", Jon has a wall covered in Beatles portraits behind him...swapping out Ringo Starr for a different absurd or humorous image every time, such as ALF in "Anti Drug Games" and a jack o'lantern in "Clock Tower".
• Funny Foreigner:
  • Malkovich.
  • Also, the clerk from the Foodfight! review, who claims to have owned the film for "one million year(s)".
• Fun with Subtitles: A major component of his humor. Jon's subtitles will often change and move hyperactively according to his speaking tone, and he frequently subtitles the unintelligible.
• Gainax Ending: Several episodes have ended in bizarre and hilariously confusing ways, including Jon shooting himself into the Sun, being visited by a demonic Slippy Toad, and launching into a cover of Katy Perry's "Firework". And of course, the ending of his Flex Tape review, where he has apparently taped himself up and become a being so perfect at sealing out water he can't bear to live with himself anymore.
  "Jon doesn't know how to end videos."
• Genius Ditz: Despite his frenetic and slightly spastic persona, Jon has a very good understanding of game theory and will sometimes take a moment to explain exactly why a particularly bad fault is so fatal. For instance, his comments on being able to ignore the complex combo system in Aquaman and win reliably by mashing the A button leads to an explanation of "Dominant Strategy", and the blatant Breaking the Fourth Wall in Bubsy 3D prompts him to elaborate on Willing Suspension of Disbelief and how such forced self-reference damages it. Since he tends to slow down when explaining these concepts to allow the audience to comprehend what he's saying, he usually lampshades them by shrieking GAME THEORY TIME!! and/or splicing in a The More You Know-type clip.
• Geniuses Have Multiple PhDs: Parodied and subverted in "Dr Ho: License to Practice". When he sees Dr. Ho working on a patient on the ad with his degrees displays on the back wall, he does a spoof where he shows off all of his framed degrees, the number of them growing more and more absurd until he runs out of wallspace and they are put on display on the floor and ceiling. After accidentally stepping on one, he admits that he bought them all on eBay.
• Genre Shift: Jon has slowly moved away from video game reviews over time in favor of just reviewing whatever he feels like, from movies, TV shows, infomercials and even weird internet videos. His last actual video game-centric video that wasn't an ad was the Disney Bootlegs video back in mid-2016, and by the end of 2018 he ditched his video game-focused intro and sprite art title cards.
• Garnishing the Story: Invoked, as he reviews several crappy games with dinosaurs, and even lampshades their prevalence in his Home Improvement video, saying he hadn't even noticed it until fans pointed it out to him. He ranks dinosaurs alongside spiders and skeletons as video game enemies that are often thrown in with the least amount of sense and originality according to plot, especially in the 16-bit era.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot:
  • Jon is quick to note some particular moments of Les Yay between Marcie and Debbie in Dark Dungeons, primarily a scene in which Debbie asks Marcie how much fun they could have spending a day alone in their dorm room, as well as another where Debbie compliments Marcie's hands. However, Jon is less attracted to this second example.
  Debbie: I think your hands are perfect for spell-casting. So delicate and small...
  Jon: Ewww.
  • Played straight and mixed with Guy on Guy Is Hot in his A Talking Cat!?! review.
• Glasses Pull: Done in the Plug & Play Games video... warranted enough for him to get a pair of glasses just for that moment, as he doesn't normally wear them.
• A God Am I: His Christmas with the Kranks review ended with Jon interviewing a man on the streets of New York who went on an outlandish rant about churches that included the statement that he is Allah.
• Go Mad from the Revelation:
  • Reading 3 to 4 YouTube comments caused this to (briefly) happen to him.
  • In the Stairfax Temperatures review, his reaction to the Bafomdad.
  • His reaction video to the Conker reveal for Project Spark.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: In Howling II: My Sister is a Werewolf, Jon sees someone react quite minimally to getting a bottle thrown at their head, and decides to replicate it by having several real bottles thrown at his head. Jon maintains a similarly dull reaction but briefly notes how much the bottles actually hurt.
• Groin Attack:
  • In the "Atari Games" episode of StarCade, Darth Vader tries to force choke Jon, but... er... misses his target and instead seizes another vulnerable part of Jon's body.
  Jon: (gasp) That's not my throat.
  • In the "Star Wars Chess" episode, Jon curbstomps "Chewbacca" at chess just by being a cheating bastard, and "Chewie" responds by... eating Jon's dick. Yep, we hear pants unzipping and a LOT of crunching.
  • During his review of Christmas with the Kranks, he throws the disc off-screen, and hits his friend Sergio "straight in the dick"
• Grossout Show: The "Turducken Chef" video, where Jon attempts to cook a turducken. It goes poorly.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Jon takes issue with this trope in his review of Wally Bear and the NO! Gang.
  "Hey, Dad, I know you like to live your life on the free and easy, but do you think you could do away with the whole no pants thing until after I leave?"
  "Hanes! Levi's! Dockers! Take a trip to the Gap, Dad, it's not that hard!"
• Happily Married: Jon is now officially married as of October 23rd, 2019.
• Harsher in Hindsightinvoked: Much of the comedy from "JT FITNESS: Sweatin' it out with OJ" is extracted by just how poorly his workout tape aged in light of OJ's murder trial. Jon can barely get through a few minutes of the tape at a time without connecting it to something very soon to come.
• Haunted Technology: Jon tangles with demonic or possessed games or movies on occasion, usually residing in the particular bad game he's reviewing at the time.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • At the start of his Aquaman review after reading some comments. After the below quote is spoken by Jon, we see him having a small seizure.
  "I..am...am I alive? Am..am I in hell yet? All the things I could've been, all the things I didn't get a chance to say, Jacques! I love you, man! I wish I could've been a better woman to you!"
  • His "Apples and Breaks" short has him in a BSOD from the start due to him accidentally wrecking his Nintendo DS.
  • The ending of "Disney Bootlegs" has Jon suffering one after seeing some of the more... er... offbeat online Frozen games.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Jon has Egoraptor, with whom he created and hosted Game Grumps. He also has PBG, with whom he created the Normal Boots site.
• Hookers and Blow: His interpretation of Sonic Team as an over-the-hill Eurotrash rock band who've long since stopped caring about the music.
  "Welcome to Sonic Team! We make games, I think!"
  (SNORRRT) "What the fuck is a Sonic?!"
  "That's—that's not a Kinect at all! It's just a Monster can I rolled the wrong way."
• Hope Spot:
  • Jon thought that Conker was going to get another sequel and that Rare might finally reclaim its former glory. Then it turned out that Conker was only going to make an appearance in Project Spark. Jon was not happy.
  "All is lost."
  • After Jon unplugs his TV to turn off the Foodfight! movie, he slumps onto his couch for a Beat and says "Sweet release." The plug then flies back into the outlet and the movie continues playing.
• Ho Yay: invoked
  • The Spoony x AVGN photoshop from the Dino City review of the two kissing.
  • Jon also seems to enjoy to an unusual degree the two boys swimming together in "A Talking Cat!?!"
• Hurricane of Puns: After dealing with a bunch of Incredibly Lame Puns from the Bubsy series, Jon finally starts making some of his own.
  Jon: Good one, Bubsy, Hey wanna be a cast member on SatPURRday Night Live!? I know you'll make the MEOWst of it! (I BELIEVE IN YA, BUBSY!)
• Hyperaffixation: "Did Aquaman lose his hand at the Aqua-Mill? Gotta get those Aqua-Union Benefits! Aqua... Aqua-Dental." (falls silent)
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • A Schmuck Bait tunnel in Bubsy dumping Jon right back at the level's start.
  "What? It took me to the beginning of the level. Who cares? I don't care, I don't even- I don't even CARE." (I care immensely.)
  • In his Monster Bash review, Jon picks up his $150 game disk with a Hot Pocket and slams it into his CD tray while disjointedly singing "Don't forget to be careful with your raaaaare gaaaaaaame! C'mon, s'just get in there, we gotta play."
  • When Vitalia reveals herself as a Randor in Malkovich's Gaming Game Show, she begins speaking in a made-up language with the occasional made-up word (namely "Malkovich" and "Quarksia") left in English, despite Jon criticizing this exact thing a mere month earlier in his Star Fox Adventures review. Knowing Jon, this was almost undoubtedly intended.
  • In his review of Food Fight, after realizing that the film is all Product Placement:
  Who would do something like that, that's despicable. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to blow off some steam with my Hot or Not app.
  • The reviews featuring various food-related games by restaurants such as McDonald's has Jon ridiculing said companies for using video games to sell their food...all while he chows down on the pile of Big Macs that suddenly appears on his coffee table.
  • When Jon first pulls out the VHS of the Star Wars holiday special, he says that he should handle it carefully. Cut to him knocking a bunch of beakers over, putting the tape on the record player, and driving the player's needle through the tape.
  • In Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop video, Jon watches one of her product demonstrations where she says the product "is the shit" with the profanity bleeped out. Jon tells Gwyneth not to curse while a loud train passes by his house, Jon abruptly yells at the train to "Shut the fuck up!"
• I Meant to Do That: Sand word-for-word in "Racing a NASCAR Driver", when he attempts to place a lap-time in a go-kart and accidentally drives off the track.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: The Game Boy Castlevania review.
  Jon: Welp, better get out my shot-glass. (slams a massive glass mug on the table) Don't try this at home, kids; you just might end up dead.
  "So that's why they were screaming!"
• Ice-Cream Koan: From Malkovich's Gaming Guilty Pleasures.
  "It is like mother always said: 'A drop in the basket is worth a shepherd's shilling.'"
• Idiot Ball: Jon briefly grabs it when trying to fend off Scissorman in the Clock Tower video where he tries to stop him with some Do Not Cross tape... which Scissorman cuts through with all the ease you can imagine.
  Jon: Oh no, that's all I had!
• In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: In the "Star Wars Chess" episode, Jon notes with one game that the developer's name appears twice as big as the words "Star Wars Chess", leading him to sing a "Total Eclipse of the Heart" cover titled "Total Eclipse of the Brand".
• Incredibly Obvious Bug: In the episode for "Regis Philbin's Epic Workout", the members of Jon's staff deliver him chicken nuggets with a camera hidden inside the bag. Jon quickly discovers the camera (but not before eating a chicken nugget), and when he confronts the team, the lens can be clearly seen sticking out of the bag.
• Inelegant Blubbering: Fox McCloud being stripped of his Arwing and his blaster. What Rare giveth, Rare taketh away.
  [Fox rolling around in cutesy landscape]
  Why would someone do this? Why would someone do this to another person—! ...Are you really human? Are you really human?! (degenerates into sobs)''
• Inherently Funny Words: A main component of Jon's humor.
• Insane Troll Logic: How Jon solves the "Tale of the Phantom Cab" riddle. (The riddle is to find something that is weightless, can be seen by the naked eye, and when put into a barrel will make the barrel lighter.)
  Jon: Halloween, it's gotta be candy, Three Musketeers, lightest candy bar, fuck you.
• Insistent Terminology: Stairfax Temperatures.
• Insubstantial Ingredients: In the Goop episode, Jon lists off the ingredients for their Psychic Vampire Repellent. One of the actual ingredients listed on the bottle is "love"; Jon even holds up the bottle to prove he's not lying.
• In Vino Veritas: Jon's now-unlisted review of Donkey Kong Country Returns, which was apparently made while Jon was drunk, leading to him exhibiting a much more bizarre sense of humor and less controlled dialogue.
• Ironic Echo: Can you feel the sunshine / Does it brighten up your day / Don't you feel that sometimes / YOU JUST SHOULD STOP MAKING GAMES
• It Won't Turn Off: In Foodfight! Jon tries to turn off the movie by pulling the plug. It does so. Then it turns on again after the plug flies back into the socket, resulting in a Big "NO!" from Jon.
• Joisey: Jon adopts this accent often, although he is angry at New Jersey for producing two of the Barbie games he reviews.
• Jump Scare:
  • The memetic "AM I DEAD YET" line from Foodfight! can be this to first listeners, considering it's purposely made to have very intense clipping and as a result be much louder than the audio preceding and following it.
  • The Jurassic Park: Lost World review, Jon shows off the original film's amazing visual effects by showing how great Jeff Goldblum looks before showing a snippet of the disturbing final transformation scene in The Fly (1986), which also starred Goldblum.
• Keet: Jon himself, though lately he's been becoming less like this and more of a "scream a lot while (figuratively, and sometimes literally) bashing the thing being reviewed" reviewer.
• Kick the Dog: Played for laughs in Goosebumps Part 1, where we get to see Jon's bucket list:
  [x] Make fun of a kids show.
  [_] Laugh at the disabled.
• Kindness Button: Older women in general seem to make Jontron gush with joy and kindness, with him blowing a kiss to Nathalie's mom in his Birdemic review, and proclaiming his love for Putt in REAL GHOSTS.
• Klotski: In "Plug-and-Play Consoles", Jon is eager to get Huarongdao, a game he thinks it's about Ancient Chinese warfare. In reality, its "another shitty [Klotski] puzzle game" that requires matching creepy pictures of Chinese generals.
• Large Ham: Jon himself, though not in earlier episodes.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: After coming back from Game Grumps, Jon has reviewed far more films than games. He still does, on occasion, but it's usually a film or series that he reviews. This makes him more like a non-manic depressive Nostalgia Critic than the non-swearing AVGN-like character he started as. Moreover, Jacques appears less and less.
• Laughing Mad: His reaction to the infamous Project Spark Conker tease, complete with coughing up blood. It gets worse gradually, but then devolves into tears.
• Laugh Track: He's used it to lampshade a terrible joke.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: During the Goop Lab episode, one of the segments covered features an older woman taking off her clothes and exposing her vagina. Jon decides to move on to the next segment almost immediately.
• Lethal Chef:
  • The first time he's seen cooking is when he mixes nuts and eggs and tries to roast them on a stovetop. The resulting concoction starts exploding and throwing sparks everywhere before emitting noxious fumes that knock him out for a month.
  • Let's just say you probably don't want Jon cooking a turducken for your Thanksgiving dinner. Especially when it comes to life and attacks you.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: The Foodfight! episode has a subtle case of this when Jon unplugs the TV to turn off the movie, since the film audio that we hear becomes notably pitch shifted down right when Jon unplugs it.
• Literal Metaphor: The concept behind "Love Is Like Drugs" is that any analogy Jon makes will literally come true, all because of a curse from a vengeful fifth-grade math teacher.
• Logic Bomb: Jacques apparently gives himself one during the Stairfax Temperatures episode.
  Jacques: Those who can't teach, preach, and those who preach also teech...
  Jacques' eyes flash red, before he explodes
• Lovely Assistant: In "Malkovich's Gaming Show", he's accompanied by the beautiful Natalia - played by Arin.
• Machine Monotone: Jacques, a Cyborg, always speaks in this. It tends to make everything he says way funnier.
• Major Injury Underreaction: During the final episode of Starcade, Jon and Darth Vader get into a lightsaber fight, where Jon gets disarmed before blocking Vader's next swing by grabbing the weapon, upon which this exchange happens:
  Vader: How can your skin possibly resist the damage from a Sith blade?
  Jon: (Shows a skeleton hand) It can't. (Starts hitting Vader with it)
• Malaproper: Jon does this constantly as part of his character. Sometimes he makes up for it by adding subtitles... which are also full of malapropisms.
• Manchild: Jon himself has an innocent and naive mindset, and frequently portrays himself as irresponsible and immature.
• Memetic Badass: In-Universe; the The Lost World: Jurassic Park review has Jon frequently portraying Jeff Goldblum as this.
• Metaphorgotten:
  • Jon has given us such beautiful similes as claiming that Christopher Belmont "climbs like frickin' The Beach Boys on a hot summer Sunday" and describing a certain enemy in Monster Party as starched white pants "walking around like J. Edgar Hoover on a Tuesday afternoon." To say nothing of his analogy for the resilience of the human spirit in his Stairfax Temperatures review:
  Jon: Here I am, a whole year later, still trucking along like a sack of potatoes on a long open road, wishing he'd stopped for gas at the last rest stop, and then on the Interstate 12, he gets hijacked and murdered by a bunch of Quaker ghosts!
  • That last one is similar to a George Carlin bit about the life (and unlikely death) of one of George's (fictional) uncles.
• Mic Drop: During his panel at SGC 2014 when a viewer asked an unexpected question:
  Viewer: I was wondering, would you ever consider doing a video on product-placement video games, such as Cool Spot, Yo! Noid, Doritos Crash Course... Sneak King...
  Jon: Oh my God... [drops mic] ...It's my next fucking video!
• Missing Episode: The Christmas with the Kranks video of all things got slammed by Youtube's copyright bots and blocked from being viewed.
• Mockumentary: Nearly half of "Flex Tape II: The Flexening" is a making of in the production of the video and the history behind it. In classic Jontron-fashion, it is exaggerated, surreal and absurd.
• Monumental View: Rare Studios is apparently based inside of Big Ben.
• Monster Clown: Hilariously parodied and subverted in his Howling II review. When a creepy clown randomly appears inside his house, Jon visibly relaxes, then pulls out a gun and shoots the clown dead.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The Bootleg Pokémon Games episode ends with... something happening to Jon after he tries to play "Pokémon Black" (no, the other one)^note He mistakenly assumes it also includes that one version of Lavender Town. And then suddenly, after we cut to black:
  Jacques: Boobs.
  • The second half of StarCade's final episode wavers between comedy and drama quite a bit. Most noticeable with the parody of Vader's unmasking — it begins dramatically, then becomes amusing once he and Jon start amicably talking to each other (as well as heartwarming to a degree, since it's a reunion of the original Game Grumps), which then turns serious once he starts coughing and appears to be dying... which then turns silly again after he responds to Jon's desperate cries with "Wassup?"
• The Most Dangerous Video Game:
  • Hilariously invoked and parodied in his Final Fantasy XIII review.
  • Also parodied in his Joe and Mac Retrospective video, when Jon gets sucked into the game...only to immediately exit it a few seconds later with no harm done.
  "I just left."
  • Discussed in Dark Dungeons with how RPGs are seen as Serious Business when Debbie and Marcie first play.
  "When you die in the game, you die in real life! Except you don't, you go home and play some GTA V."
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • For Jon, it's hearing a bunch of skulls fall in Monster Bash. This is then accompanied by an ad for "Mattress Ranch" to hilarious effect. invoked
  "Always like Mozart to me! Always a symphony!"
  • In Hercules, one of the intro themes. The first one, Hercules for the C64.
  *snap* *snap* *snap* That's what I call "MUSIC."
• Mushroom Samba: He goes through one by means of his terrible cooking, which leads him to trip balls and fall unconscious. When he wakes up, a month has passed, and Jacques is dead. Except not.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Many examples.
  • "State of Affairs" effectively makes the act of Jon receiving a hot dog from a vendor look badass, considering it's set against operatic music.
  • Jon's song in "Hercules Games" about his going to get a gyro.
  • Jon's song in "Zoo Race" about the diversity of characters in the game. Notably, the PHARAOH GOAT!
  • Jon's song about Debbie and Marcie's first RPG session in Dark Dungeons.
• Musical Nod:
  • Inverted. The Bubsy review has Jon trying to stick the game box for 3D Dot Game Heroes in an SNES, when a track from the game played at the start of the episode.
  • Played straight at the end of StarCade — when Darth Vader is unmasked as Arin Hanson, the first few notes of the Game Grumps theme can be heard.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Jon has a minor one when he destroys the Mighty Max game because it made him face his Old Shames.

Tropes N-Z

• Name-Tron: JonTron, of course.
• Negative Continuity: The series has no real continuity, and as such, one can start watching at any point with the same experience.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: During Jon's animated Christmas special, he accidentally summons Satan and brings about the apocalypse ... by putting a fancy sweater on a snowman.
  Partially Melted Snowman: You... did... this...
  Jon: Meeeeeeeeerry Christmas, boys'n girls!
• No Ending:
  • Pretty much all the review videos Jon has done either have a Gainax Ending or No Ending at all. And they're all the more hilarious because of it.
  • Lampshaded in the Bubsy trilogy review. "Jon doesn't know how to end videos."
• No Indoor Voice: Hoo boy, when Jon yells does he ever yell.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Jon is frequently accompanied by his parrot Jacques, who seems to be at least partly robotic. He usually provides commentary alongside Jon, and serves as the goal behind the StarCade series.
• Non Sequitur: In his earlier videos these became more apparent. In his newer videos, though, they're really only non-sequitur without the given context. ^note  For example, this. The context is he previously mentioned Anakin Skywalker's bowlcut.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: In his Home Alone video, when cooking nuts in a pan with eggs and pepper, he accidentally ends up producing a hallucinogenic gas that starts affecting him. While swaggering out of the kitchen, he says "You'll miss me when I'm gone" in a slowed-down, deepened voice before transitioning to very deep groaning sounds as he goes to his bedroom.
• Noodle Incident: In "Love Is Like Drugs," Milk Thug asks why Jon doesn't use his Reality Warper powers to change the world. Jon answers saying that putting a rollercoaster in your backyard and teaching the cat French isn't as easy as you would think. A drug dealer tries to stab them before Jon can go into detail with his stories.
• Not Helping Your Case: In "Dark Dungeons", Jon portrays Debbie's professor who tries to get her away from RPGs when he notices her grades going down and claims that she should read The Bible since it has no poisoning, maiming, or killing...only to realize it does.
  "Oh, no. That book does got that in it."
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer:
  • The "(ACTUAL NOISE IT MADE)" disclaimer when JonTron puts the Hercules Commodore 64 cassette in a normal cassette player.
  • When telling the origin of Aphrodite in an aside during his Takeshi's Challenge video.
  • An earlier example happened during his Bubsy series video, where he invokes this trope upon the second time Bubsy dies to Falling Damage during his play of the first game.^note Incidentally, the first time he claims Bubsy dies to falling damage wasn't an example of the mechanic; Bubsy had been struck by an erupting manhole cover just before hitting the ground, but it happened so quickly that Jon didn't notice.
  • In "The Zoo Race", when a train, being driven by his character (a sheep) crashes through a billboard, and explodes into fireworks, text appears at the bottom of the screen reading: "Reminder: Actually Happening".
  • Invoked frequently in Titanic: The Legend Goes On, to emphasize the poor quality of the movie's audio and animation.
  • "I'm not making this shit up" is a phrase often uttered by Jon (or some variation).
    • From his Bootleg Pokémon Games review:
    Jon: "I-I couldn't make this shit up. I couldn't make this shit up if I tr-I'm SAD that I lack the TALENT to make this shit up!!"
  • Said when Jon experiences nausea induced by "Elsa Throat Doctor" in the Disney Bootlegs episode.
• N-Word Privileges: Disobeyed them occasionally on Game Grumps, but has said it once on his own show in "The Weird World of PSAs", although it's censored.
  "'Dis the deadest nigga I've ever seen."
• Old Media Are Evil: Played for Laughs in "Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Skull Vodka" where Jon is haunted by the ghost of Late Night Talk Shows trying to remain relevant and feels compelled to call the Ghostbusters.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: George Lucas and JonTron Visit Jupiter describes Jacques as "America's Number One Robotic Green-Cheeked Conure".
• Pac Man Fever:
  • The whole 'mix-and-match console components' aspect is Played for Laughs regularly whenever Jon tries to put the game in the console. It's not uncommon to see something like Jon trying to stuff a PlayStation 3 game box into an SNES and then tape a Gamecube controller to the controller port. To play Minecraft. Or to tape an RCA cable to the top of an NES, and then stand the cartridge up and try to stick the console on top of it.
  • He even does this when reviewing a TV show (Goosebumps, to be more specific,) sticking the original books into an NES, a Super Nintendo and then a Dreamcast.
• Papa Wolf: Jon becomes very protective of Jimmy in the Kid Nation review, and yells at another kid who keeps poking Jimmy.
• Parrot Pet Position: Jacques spends most of his time onscreen on either one of Jon's shoulders.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Nightshade's obtuse gameplay makes Jon snap and start swearing like a gospel singer.
  "FUCK you! (wags finger) I AAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNN'T HAVIN' THAT SHIT ♪
  • A precision S strike occurs in his Home Improvement review.
  [Playing as Tim Allen from Home Improvement, fighting dinosaurs, with a chainsaw]
  HMMMMMMMMMMMMM. SHIET.
  • "WHAT THE FUCK IS A SONIC!?"
  • When Malkovich offered to take calls from viewers on Malkovich's Gaming Guilty Pleasures, all but one of the callers replied with a simple "Fuck you." The one who didn't asked him a valid question, but followed it with an inquiry about his mother having a penis.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: In "Clock Tower".
  Skeleton with a gun: I've got a bone to pick with you!
• Press X to Not Die: Mentioned in his Titenic review after complaining about how someone thought it would be a good idea to make a game based on such a tragic event, and then bringing up the idea if someone made a game based off of Mount Vesuvius erupting in Pompeii.
  "Quick! Tap A quickly to not DIE AS FAST!"
• Private Eye Monologue: Played for Laughs in his Foodfight review.
• Product Placement:
  • After expressing his anger at Foodfight! being made merely for this purpose, he blows off steam by using the Hot or Not app.
  • In Dark Dungeons:
  Debbie (talking about RPGs): Mike said that..once we start, we won't wanna stop.
  Mistress Frost: That's true of eating, drinking, and...
  Jon: Pringles. Especially the pizza-flavor ones. (eats a chip) Oh, look. Here I go again.
• Psychic Strangle: Done by the man himself, Darth Vader, to Jon in the "Atari Games" episode of StarCade with..undesirable results.
  Jon: That's not my throat.
• Pun:
  • Bubsy? More like DRUGSY! (sniveling laughter)
  • "Oh no, Atlantis is under attack! Oh the hu-manatee!"
• Pun-Based Title: In his Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts review.
  Jon: "Seriously, this ain't funny anymore. This is now called Dram-Tron.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Rockington is promptly lost off-screen after his first appearance. Lampshaded during the Nuts and Bolts video.
  Jon: Ahhhh. What perfection. What a beautiful day wouldn't you say, Rockington? *Cut to a blank shot of the ground* Oh, yeah. I lo—I lost Rockington. I—I LOST A ROCK!
  • More seriously, Jacques has been phased out of Jon's videos, because filming with an unpredictable bird made things much more difficult than they needed to be and likely ruined countless takes that could have been fine otherwise.
• Production Throwback: It's very subtle, but listen carefully to the piano music during the scene where Jon unmasks Darth Vader in the Starcade finale. It's the "Hey I'm Grump! I'm not so Grump!" tune from Jon's former show, Game Grumps. This also counts as some Five-Second Foreshadowing.
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • In his review of Nightshade, after he sees a robber beating up an old lady, he takes the cartridge to his garage and destroys it. Then he flies off on a rocket into the surface of the sun.
  • Jon's discovery of the Bafomdad during his review of Star Fox Adventures also caused him to lose his sanity as well.
• Ragequit:
  • Bubsy had him on the verge of quitting a few times.
  "Uuugghg, geez, I just really don't wanna do this...! But, y'know, contracts and the sort."
  • Aquaman's bald spot also led to this reaction.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: More and more so as the series goes on.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Jon does this to the Kool-Aid Man in "Food Games (Part 2)" after he insists that Jon punch him in the liver.
• Rapid-Fire Typing: Whenever Jon types anything. Used this to research a good Home Alone game, to double hack, and even to program the entire GameFAQs website.
• A Rare Sentence: While struggling against a Scrappy Mechanicinvoked in Takeshi's Challenge:
  Jon: Never in my life have I said "Goddammit, I shot the wind again!" and meant it. And meant that.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Jon is the red, Jacques is the blue.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Jon comments on the very subdued acting of an actor getting hit in the head with a bottle in Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf. Being JonTron, he decided to test this theory by having several bottles actually thrown at his head...whereupon he reacts in a similarly dull, deadpan manner, while admitting that it really did hurt and his numb response is completely genuine.
• Reality Warper: Jon can teleport, materialize objects from thin air, and initiate drug trips just by making bad analogies in "Love Is Like Drugs."
• Reality Warping Is Not a Toy: Jon's ability to make any bad analogy come true in "Love Is Like Drugs" is treated by him like a dark secret, and when Jon and Milk Thug wind up in a drug dealer's basement, it becomes apparent why.
• Replacement Scrappy: invokedIn Jon's opinion, the Tiki Tak Tribe are this, having replaced the Kremlings. He describes the villain of Donkey Kong Country Returns as "a plank of fuckin' wood" at least twice.
• The Reveal: The Starcade finale reveals that Darth Vader is Arin and tells us the motive behind the whole series: Arin put Jon through those six months of hell so he could play games with him for old times' sake.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Jacques is often seen nuzzling or nibbling Jon, especially when Jon is acting emotional. There's also the miniature horse that appears in the beginning of "Food Games (Part 1)".
• Robot Buddy: In-universe, Jacques has stated he is a cyborg at least once. Out of universe though, he's just a parrot made to seem like a robot in editing.
• Rule of Funny: The show practically runs on this, with every random choice (pointer/hand graphics onscreen as opposed to real hand gestures, randomly distorted clips, out-of-control subtitles, spinning camera shots, etc.) being done for the humor of it.
• Running Gag:
  • Jon has incredibly unconventional methods of starting up games.
    • Exaggerated in his Dinocity review, which may have been the first video in which he began this running gag. First he tries the Playstation 3. Then his PC's CD drive. Then the DS. followed by the wireless router. Then the dishwasher...three times. He finally figures out it must be a Super Nintendo game. And then puts it in upside-down...
    • In his review of Goosebumps, he puts a book in an NES. To review a TV show.
    • For Nightshade, he casually tosses the cartridge at the machine, which predictably just bounces off and hits the ground.
    • Running Gag Stumbles: He finally gets it right in "Titenic", putting the game in the Famicom on the first try. Then he puts the whole thing in an aquarium.
  • Jon cracking wise about the developer's logo in the credits.
  "TDK, that's short for They Don't Kare about their reputation. A little known fact."
  "Ubisoft, huh? More like U-Betta-Start-A-New-Company-Soft."
  "Irem. As in, "IRemember them! Oh wait, no I don't."
  "Ah, my favorite publisher: Absolute-LEE copied Sierra's logo!"
  "More like the Commodore Sixty-BORE." *snigger*^note Just kiddin', it was actually pretty revolutionary
  • As of "Anti Drug Games" Jon has had pictures of The Beatles up on the wall behind him... with Ringo Starr swapped out for absurd images or images related to the episode, such as ALF in "Anti Drug Games" and a jack o'lantern in "Clock Tower".
  • The hand/pointer graphics that will frequently be used when he talks over footage, being used for purposes ranging from a Declarative Finger to highlighting certain objects to sarcastic clapping.
  • Jon putting on a full costume to imitate one of the people or characters in his reviews, for just one joke.
  • When things are shown coming at the screen in the media he reacts to, he often makes a Match Cut to show that thing coming out of the screen into his living room.
• Sanity Slippage: His video about Nightshade. Except replace "slippage" with "careening off the edge".
• Sarcasm Failure: Both of the comedic variety.
  • In Jon's Birdemic review, when he sees the cast swinging at bird GIFs with wire hangers:
    JonTron: Well, I hope they're proud of themselves. They've done it. They broke me. I have... no words.
  • During Jon's review of The Zoo Race, he's already having a bit of trouble finding the words to snark at the game's sheer weirdness, but it's one of the characters slowly looming over his desk while a drainage pipe sound effect plays that truly drives him to this.
    JonTron: For the first time in my life I'm... I-I'm fucking speechless. I got nothing.
• Say My Name: In the Starcade finale, after it's been revealed that Vader is Arin, he starts coughing violently as if he's about to die, provoking Jon to start shouting his name. He's ultimately okay, saying that it was just his polio acting up.
• Scenery Porn: His opening.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • The famous "JonTron quits" bit in the "Bubsy" episode after he notes that a character in a cartoon platformer can die from, of all things, falling damage.
  • He also books it as soon as he sees the extremely chaotic first level of Pokemon: Pikachu Edition in "Bootleg Pokemon Games".
  Jon: There's a lot to see in this life...I'm not wasting it here.
  • At the end of The Skateboard Kid, he leaves in disgust in the middle of a song after Pink Guy begs Jon to kill him.
  • At the end of the Christmas with the Kranks review, Jon and his cameraman beat a hasty retreat after his interview segment is hijacked by a crazy man ranting about churches and claiming he is Allah.
  Jon: Let's get the fuck outta here right now.
• The Scottish Trope: His mouth burns when he says Florida.
• Self-Deprecation: The man definitely has a sense of humor about himself.
  • When Jon says that he doesn't want to stop playing games and making his show, Jacques notes "That hasn't stopped you before."
  • A brief gag in "Food Games" has a magazine that rated Jon as "#1 Ugliest Man in the Privacy of His Own House."
• Sensory Abuse: See Jump Scare and Brown Note above.
• Serious Business: Some of the fatal obstacles in Bubsy are less than plausible.
  "No, you'e right, I forgot. Gumball machines are the cause of 200K deaths per year, it's... it's serious."^note -Guy who got blue gumball
• Shout-Out:
  • His avatar (see above) shows him wearing the yellow shorts, blue backpack, and shark's-tooth necklace of a certain anthropomorphic bear.
  • Jon inserts a suspiciously high number of old YTMND fads, including Shoop Da Woop, space Walken, and a frequent usage of "Ghost Love Score" (a.k.a. the "Epic Maneuver" song).
  • In his review of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jon shows that he has prison numbers on his arm. These numbers are 24601.
  • In his "Top 10 Overworlds" video, the Hyrule Field footage is clearly taken from NintendoCapriSun, a fellow Game Station member.
  • In the intro to his Clock Tower review, he walks past a gravestone that reads 'Here Lies PBG'.
  • Occasionally drops in references to Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!.
  • In the Starcade series, the No Celebrities Were Harmed version of George Lucas is The Faceless, usually either filmed from behind or has his head cut off by the camera, much like the No Celebrities Were Harmed version of George Steinbrenner on Seinfeld.
  • In his X-Wing review, Markiplier (cameoing as one of Jon's wingmen) accidentally follows Miss Frizzle into Arnold's body and helps her fight off a case of strep throat.
  • In "Plug and Play Games", he holds up what seems to be a plastic original Falchion. Fire Emblem is referenced again in a Starcade episode with a brief conversation on the screen in the style of the GBA titles.
  • The title card for "Japanese Shoot 'Em Ups" has Jon and his two parrots flying over the Hoenn region.
  • In his "Turducken Chef" video, Jon directly compares a particularly horrifying piece of chicken carcass to the Chestburster, remarking, "Surprisingly enough, this is not a Ridley Scott film."
  • In "Flex Tape II: The Flexening", during the premiere of his film, Jon quietly notices, "I may have gone too far in a few places." Both the line and the shot composition reference George Lucas in "The Beginning", a documentary about the making of The Phantom Menace.
    • From the same video, the shot of Jon staring transfixed into the glowing toolbox at the indescribably beautiful Flex Seal product inside is a reference to the famous shot where Vincent Vega sees whatever the hell was inside the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.
  • Possibly unintentional, but the intro animation for "A Talking Cat!?!" has the titular cat calling Jon a "humon", similar to Keenan in the English dub of Digimon Data Squad.
• Show Within a Show: Malkovich's Gaming Guilty Pleasures
• Shown Their Work: In the "Crystal Skull Vodka" episode, Jon claims that Dan Aykroyd is worth more than his weight in diamonds - and does the math to prove it.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Invoked by Jon using fists, then powertools on his game when it was mouthing off.
• Smash Cut:
  • In Takeshi's Challenge, when he finds out he's in his in-game home after seeing the main character's wife punching him.
  Jon: Welp, this explains quite a bi-
  • From California Games: Jon's reaction to the "Let's drop in a grommet" line.
  Jon: Aw, grommet. I-I used to say it all the time back in Cali. You couldn't stop me saying this word! Grommet this! Grommet that! THE FUCK does grommet mea- ^note Grommet is any surfer below the age of 16.
  • After the Snake commercial in Anti-Drug Games.
  Jon: WHAT! (Beat) WHAT THE FUC-
  • After Jacques self-destructs in Stairfax Temperatures.
  Jon: Oh, no! Oh, NO! HE DEAD-
• Spoiler Cover: Addressed in his Goosebumps Part 1 video, where a book called Why I'm Afraid of Bees clearly shows the protagonist's head on the body of a bee.
  Jon: "Why I'm afraid of bees." Well, it's obvious, innit? Shows it right on the cover.
• So Bad, It's Good:invoked
  • His opinion of Kinect Star Wars, where he claims that the game is pretty terrible, but it has enough charm and creativity that it's enjoyable in its own weird way.
  • Jon pins the Pokémon hack Moemon as unnecessary and creepy, being a version with the Pokémon sprites replaced with little girls. One quick browse through the comments section shows a pretty large amount of people who now feel the desire to play said hack.
  • His general opinion of "Zoo Race". It's so bad that Jon outright states that the driving factor for him playing the game is to see what the hell the rest of the game has for levels.
• Socially Awkward Hero: During his video with Rosanna Pansino in 2012. He has grown a lot as a person since then.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • In Jon's video on Far Cry Primal, the theme song for The Price Is Right is used frequently for comedic effect due to the mood juxtaposition, such as in a scene of the main character Takkar and his companion being brutally attacked by a sabertooth tiger.
  • In the Bootleg Disney Games video, the scene with The Great Bootleg messily and painfully vomiting a game for Jon to play is accompanied by a heartfelt piano tune.
• So Unfunny, It's Funny:
  • Jon will occasionally lampshade a terrible joke.
  Jacques: Jon, can I play too?
  Jon: Oh Jacques, you can't play! You don't have hands! *Rim Shots are repeated over and over until they turn into a drum solo*
  • Or another fantastic example from his Nightshade video:
  Jon: (Trying to pick up a crowbar) A don't do it, and B don't do it, so what do it? This controller only got twoit... dem buttons... *beat, followed by incredibly sped-up Super Mario 3D Land music with the subtitle 'THAT WAS A JOKE, thx 4 COMIN'*
  • Another example from his Hercules video:
  Jon: Hercules does what Nintendercules! *Car crashes*
  • Another example from his Mighty Max video:
  Jon: I enjoy playing this game. I guess you could say I'm Mighty Maxed out on the fun this game has to offer! *Clip of someone's head smashing into a table, accompanied by a sound of bowling pins falling over*
• Space Whale Aesop:
  • Claims that the Aesop behind "My Hairiest Adventure" is "Don't be unlucky and be a dog."
  • With "Don't Go to Sleep!", it's "Never think or else the secret police might catch you and kill you no matter what."
• Special Edition Title:
  • For Halloween and Christmas specials, his intro and theme song will be modified accordingly.
  • The intro of the infamous "Apples and Breaks" short distorts heavily midway through before abruptly cutting off (to reflect Jon's state of mind in the short proper).
• Spinning Newspaper: In reaction to Bubsy having damage dealt by falling too far without gliding.
  JONTRON QUITS
  "Falling damage in a platformer? There are some things no man should have to see. Nice tits btw" says a melancholy JonTron
• Squick: invoked Jon's opinion of the DressUpMe Frozen flash games. This section of Disney Bootlegs starts off rather innocently, but slowly gets weirder as it goes on. By the time Jon reaches "Elsa Throat Doctor", he's had enough, and is at the point of being about to actually throw up.
• Stock Scream: Jon lets out four consecutive Wilhelms when he tries out the 'scan M-Tag' function on Star Wars Kinect, which produces a screen which appears to be the Kinect centering a crosshair on him.
• The Stoner: Sonic Team is portrayed in Jon's Sonic R review as a bunch of nonsensical cocaine-sniffers who barely know what the hell they're doing, which must've influenced the outcome of the game.
  • He also ends the anti-drugs PSA games review totally high on weed, his entire place filled with pot smoke.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • Anytime Jon sings badly. According to Game Grumps, Jon's trained in musical theater, and when he sings properly he's actually pretty good.
  • His periodic "Review?" videos, which involve him making nonsensical segues, making completely false or just out-there statements, and speaking in a slurred, half-drunk sounding voice.
  • The Mighty Max review, in which the haunted cartridge is held up by a clearly visible string taped to it and a broomstick that falls into view when he pulls the cartridge down. He's got good enough editing skills to do it better if he wanted to, so it must be assumed this was intentional.
  • "VR Troopers" has some truly hideous green-screen and 90s graphic effects, to match with the extremely dated visuals of the show in question.
• Sudden Musical Ending: The Dino City review ends with Jon singing "Firework".
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment:
  • The Dino City review ends with a lengthy scene of Jon singing "Firework" out of nowhere. And then suddenly...
    DEATH COMES TO US ALL!
  • The last scene of the "Bootleg Pokémon Games" ends in a fairly creepy way.
  • In part 2 of his Goosebumps review, Jon mimics Larry's not-so-innocent humming (while shaving his hands) and turns it into full-on Nightmare Fuel.
  "Can't a guy get SOME PRIVACY? (stabbing noises) Hmm hmm hmm, HMM HMM HMM!"
• Surreal Humor: Over time, his videos have borrowed more from the YouTube Poop school of humor, with caption humor, shouting, garbled audio clips, and sheer randomness that has no context within the videos themselves.
• Synthetic Voice Actor: Jacques is voiced by David, a text-to-speech voice created by VoiceForge.
• Take That!:
  • In his review of Sonic Colors (even though he ultimately gave the game a score of "A/5"), he mentions that a crucial matter in determining whether or not the game will be good is that the Wii may not have enough Blast Processing to run it. For those without context, "Blast Processing" is a somewhat meaningless marketing term invented by Sega in the early nineties to promote the Sega Genesis and Sonic the Hedgehog, claiming technical superiority over the Super Nintendo ^note  For those who are really curious, it stood for a somewhat obscure programming trick that made the Genesis being able to map whole levels with enemies/sprites without the need for the screen to scroll to update the layout. Jon takes cracks at Sonic Team regularly, but seemingly all in good fun.
  • Home Improvement begins "with you standing around like a idiot watching Tim Allen use what he read in a book was "humor." (cue grunt)
  • The entire Final Hallway XIII sketch. Jon expresses his dislike of the game by means of an epic parody of The Most Dangerous Video Game trope. It really is worth seeing for yourself.
  • In Jon Tron and George Lucas Visit Jupiter he mercilessly (and hilariously) ridicules the idea of going back to previous, finished works and editing them digitally, the way George Lucas does to the Star Wars original trilogy.
  • In "Are You Afraid of the Dark Pt. 1" Jon rips on Kanye West by asking how he keeps winning awards. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • In "Plug and Play Consoles", when Jontron is talking about cheap, badly made "bottom of the bin" video games, it shows an image of a bargain bin from Wal-Mart....stacked high with copies of Max Payne 3.
  • The deliveryman's ending monologue in Food Games: Part 2 is a clear dig at Moral Guardians who blame video games for all the world's ills.
  • In "Food Games: Part 2" he theorizes that Yo-Noid! 's depiction of New York City takes place after the apocalypse due to an abundance of vegetation, then seigues into believing that it's what the world would look like if Donald Trump became the president of the United States after noticing a building reminiscent of Trump Tower.
  • In the Starcade series finale, he knocks over a jar containing Donald Trump's hairpiece with a VHS.
  • The Weird World of PSAs takes a shot against the typical, overused "Mario drugs himself with mushrooms" jokes.
  • Jon doesn't seem very fond of the whole "evil video game/movie disc or console" plot. When the cartride comes to life and tries to attack him in his "Monster Bash" review, he simply has Jacques destroy it with his Eye Beams, ending the fight in seconds, and when he gets sucked into the world of Joe and Mac, he immediately returns not ten seconds later, commenting that he just left.
  • The opening of "Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Skull Vodka" has when he's trying to call the Ghostbusters, but the only available is Dan Aykroyd.
  Jon: No, I can't call Dan, I can't! There's gotta be some other Ghostbusters I can call, right? (goes wide-eyed) On second thought, Dan'll do.
  • Architecture Tier List named examples of modern architecture, which Jon either put in a low tier (eg the "Jenga Tower", which as someone who lives in Manhattan he considers it an eyesore, or the Scottish Parliament Building which he likens to the results of someone fucking around in Garry's Mod and ranks between F and G) or not even bother placing it on the list (eg during the "quick fire round", Jon looked at the Museum of Pop Culture and just shot it away from the list).
  Jon: Every modern apartment building: You fools were too blind to see—
  Jon: Every modern office building: —that soon we would be left with nothing but ashes...
  • Architecture Tier List also takes a non-architecture related shot at the government of Dubai by referring to the Burj Khalifa as what they create "when they're not creating financial disasters for their investors."
• Tantrum Throwing: Nightshade concludes with Jon hurling the cartridge against his garage wall, hitting it with a Mjolnir (which broke), and then holding the broken handle like a mic while singing into it. And then he flies into the sun.
• The Teaser: Unlike most episodes, "Hercules Games" begins with a clip of Jon playing a game and talking with Jacques. This could be due to the fact that it was the first video after a prolonged hiatus.
• Tempting Fate:
  • During a ranked game of League of Legends.
  Jon: I don't think anyone is going to need my Wish.

  An ally has been slain.
  • Jon's TV woes in the Foodfight! review. His remote doesn't have any batteries, so he has to unplug the TV, and it does. He sits back on the couch and says "Sweet release." The plug then flies back into the outlet and the movie continues playing, eliciting a Big "NO!" from Jon.
  Jon (Laughing): Are you kidding me?! You make me look like a jackass?!
• Theme Music Power-Up: In the "Takeshi's Challenge" episode, Jon decides to think like a businessman by dressing up as one, while an epic remix of his theme song plays in the background.
  Jon: This isn't most people. This is JonTron.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: He despises Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts for being such a massive Genre Shift from the original, but keeping things that he feels don't fit the new direction.invoked
  • He also doesn't like how it mocks its roots, poking fun at the collect-a-thon aspects of the first two games.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: After looking at a title screen for the Game Boy Barbie game, he does this while mimicking Barbie's face.
  Jon: GET READY TO PLAY BARBIE, BITCHEESS!!
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • The beginning of his Star Wars Kinect review sets this.
  Jon: The game we have waited for all these years has arrived. The one to give us what we all needed so direly. Star Wars Kinect.
  (Beat)
  Jacques: I don't have a good feeling about this.
  Jon: Nope! Me either. Well, lets just put it in and see what happens when I push the go button.
  • He used this trope once more after getting hit by a bomb in the first screen of Nightshade:
  Jon: .....dis gon' be a good game....
  • Monster Party and its tempura shrimp walking across the title screen with the rest of the monsters:
  Jon: Oh... this is gonna be one of those days, isn't it...
  • A more generalized version would be "Ooooh noooo."
  • From California Games:
  Jon: After trying the skating game and falling on the first three seconds ...I have a feeling this is foreshadowing.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Discussed in part 1 of the AYAOTD special. He considers this trope to be the one boundary that the show wouldn't cross when it came to its young characters.
• Title Drop: In the first episode of StarCade.
  Jon: Seriously? That's what you're gonna call it? (scoff) You'd be better off calling it something stupid, (looks directly into the camera) like StarCade. (Beat) (cue intro)
• Tranquil Fury: He has a tendency to keep a calm, upbeat appearance when something pisses him off. This is best exemplified in reaction to◊ the violence against the old lady in Nightshade.
• Trash the Set: Multiple episodes show him destroying bad games or even consoles. Presumably, he either has spares or dislikes the game enough to not want a copy.
• Top Ten List: Though he sometimes does six when he can't think of ten.
• Unexplained Recovery: In the Star Fox Adventures episode, Jacques dies in a fiery, bloody explosion. A few minutes later, he's back to normal, as if nothing had happened.
  Jon (casually): Oh hey, Jacques. I thought you died.
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • "Oh, Lucille Ball."
  • (at Tim Allen's drill weapon) "Whoa, whoa, I don't remember ordering any jalapeños on THIS pizza!"
  • Jon reaffirming his mission in the Star Fox Adventures video.
    "I'm here to shed light on the betrayed heart of every man, women and child that have been brushed under the rug like last week's sawdust!"
  • "As high as Madonna's tits!", and "As hard as gravy train tits!"
  • "This bear's got the moves of Muhammad Ali...and the butt of Bea Arthur."
  • The final entry in Game Grumps's Donkey Kong Country 2 series. It got a little passionate.
    "GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER MAN! SIGOURNEY FUCKIN' WEAVER!!" (*kicks open door and leaves*)
  • There's only one thing to communicate his frustration with Space Ace...a Mariachi Band. (blasts heavy metal) THAT'S NOT MARIACHI!
  • Jon throws out several in the "Conan" episode when he sees an in-game woman with quite the rack, only to bluntly subvert it.
  "Oh, good morning, madam. You are looking full and robust today. You are blossoming like the most beautiful flower in all of Cimmeria. Oh yeah, one more thing - your tits are fucking fantastic."
  • "This guy's gonna go around openin' with lines like 'Please don't pick on me' and then immediately jump on me like Bruce Willis in the midst of a bathroom emergency?"
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Malkovich apparently enjoys throwing the baby penguins off the cliff in Super Mario 64.
• Visual Pun: Usually in the form of images superimposed over the footage.
• Vocal Evolution: He's very well known for his loud, snarky New York accent, but in his earlier videos, the accent isn't nearly as prominent, and he speaks with a subtler, more informative tone.
• Voice of the Legion:
  • In part 2 of the Goosebumps video: "Can't a guy get some PRIVACY? Hmm hmm hmm, HMM HMM HMM!"
  • In episode 4 of Starcade after Jon sees Darth Vader turn into a scorpion in the Famicom game.
  "Excuse me, whaaaaaat?"
• Vomit Discretion Shot:
  • A Running Gag throughout "Stairfax Temperatures".
    • Peppy's new character model causes him to retch in a bucket.
    • So does Fox's Item Get!. As it happens, Fox picked up a furry critter, but the model looked like a severed head.
  • Nightshade's puns causes him to retch offscreen.
  "Oh, great. The grate's stuck. Cool! What a great grate! My great-great grandfather had a grate that was... greater tha-" (*vomits*)
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
  • Parodied in the Clock Tower review. He actually vomits candy corn, but starts Corpsing as the last of the candy leaves his mouth, reducing him and the cameraman to hysterical laughter.
  • In "CONKER IS TOTALLY BACK GUYS", he has a meltdown that starts with maniacal laughter and clapping, and then escalates to him spontaneously spitting up blood (although it's quite obviously Kool-Aid).
• The Great Bootleg vomits out a game with a cry of "Barf! Barf! Barf! Dying! Dying! No-one can stop the pain!"
• Waiting Skeleton: This joke is used in Starcade Episode 3, when Jon has to play through the incredibly slow Star Wars Chess game.
• Welcome to Corneria: In the Nightshade video.

  Nightshade's hard to impress. You take him to a history museum and you're like "Look at that giant bronze horse from the early BCE times." and he's like "Eh. Nothing unusual here." You take him to the Future History Museum and you're like "Look at that giant hologram horse from the distant CE times and he's like "Nightshade can't do that."

• Wham Line:
  • From "CONKER IS TOTALLY BACK GUYS".
  Conker: I couldn't resist.
  Jon: I mean - I've been right here.
  Conker: Almost 10 years without a new game.
  Jon: I've been waiting for you to come home, baby.
  Conker: Guess we'll have to make our own!
  • From the finale of StarCade, Vader drops a line that gives a huge hint to who he is: "You're a friend. An old friend."
    • Then Jon pulls off Vader's mask and drives it home for anyone that didn't get the first hint: "Arin?!"
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Arin (Egoraptor) plays Malkovich's soft-spoken female assistant Vitalia on Malkovich's Gaming Game Show, dressed in a red dress and heels. Many comments talked about how genuinely pretty Arin looked nonetheless.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?:
  • Jon decides that he wants to play the twelve games of Hercules to become immortal, like how Hercules did his twelve trials. The ninth game makes him decide against it and kill himself. Again.
  I don't really wanna become immortal that much anyways, it's too much hard work. You gotta keep watching people going in and out of the White House for the rest of time. No thanks, Samuel.
  • As mentioned above, Jon regrets his Flex Tape overuse.
• Win Back the Crowd: invoked Jon believes Sega achieved this with Sonic Colors.
  Jon: Sonic Colors is a game where Sega decided not to fuck up this time.
• Wink "Ding!": Jon lets one out at the end of his suiting-up montage in Takeshi's Challenge.
• A Winner Is You: At the end of his review of Takeshi's Challenge, he gets to the end of the cave where the treasure lies, antipating greatness... And then, all that appears is Beat Takeshi's face and the word "Amazing" on a black screen.
• World Gone Mad: While there are enough Straight Men to offset things, it is pretty clear that the world is just as weird as Jon.
• Worse Than It Sounds: In-Universe, he describes Takeshi's Challenge as a game where you quit your job, divorce your wife and go treasure hunting...
  "Ten outta ten. Ten outta ten. Hundred outta hundred. Best game. BEST GAME."
• Would Hurt a Child: When Malkovich plays the part in Mario 64 where the player must reunite a baby penguin with its mother, he returns the nearest penguin to the adult, and then, when she says the baby isn't hers, he promptly drops the baby off the cliff. When he locates the real baby, he rejoices over the fact that the mother and son can be reunited and "have a wonderful future"....before dropping it off the cliff as well.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Downplayed: when being told by Darth Vader about how impressed he is for capturing Han and Chewie, Jon clarifies that he only did it because "they have no paper trail".
• Yank the Dog's Chain: "CONKER IS TOTALLY BACK GUYS". You sort of feel bad for Jon.

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What the FUCK is a Sonic?!

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