Web Video / RebelTaxi

"It's juice-and-jam time."

"Like Watch Mojo with standards."

— Pan on his own channel

Rebel Taxi is a web series created by Pan Pizza. Started in 2010, the show mainly consists of an animated character version of Pan sitting in said taxi and reviewing various things, mainly having to do with cartoons, Cartoon Network shows and related media, and whatever catches his eye at the time, giving his show a rather diverse roster of content to enjoy.

These often take the format of standard long-form reviews, top 10 lists, recap-style reviews, videos where he reviews multiple pieces of media that share the same theme, Side Mission short-form reviews of shows or movies that recently released, Midnight Society videos where he talks of unusual scary happenings in the animation world, and even very occasionally dedicating whole episodes to pieces of cartoon news.

Pan is known for being one of the most beloved figures in the online cartoon community for his professional reviews, promotion of obscure media and his tendency to make his videos at a high level of quality. His show takes heavy inspiration from Toonami bumpers & reviews, as well as Classic Game Room, with his trademark art style and twisted sense of humor being inspired by Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.

The show itself can be found on YouTube and Mr. Coat And Friends. Pan also has a Tumblr for the show, and a second YouTube account for Let's Plays of video games and the infrequent livestream (which varies from playing video games to watching his own live stream on YouTube while he streams it), which can be found here. He used to have a third channel which archived miscellaneous Comic-Con footage & unused podcast audio, though it has been deleted by YouTube for unknown reasons. His show is also part of Frederator Studios' Channel Frederator Network.

In 2014, Pan started a podcast called the Pizza Party Podcast, an often twisted and extremely bizarre animation-themed podcast that he co-hosts with his friends Nolan & Ken, Jim Gisriel from nockFORCE, and professional animator Izzi Rae. The podcast consists of reports on the latest animation news, discussions of certain animated shows, and answering viewer questions, and also often features guests ranging from Pan's personal friends and freelance artists to industry cartoon creators and professional voice actors.

For a few years, the channel would have a schedule of a review show one week and a podcast the next week. However, due to Pan undergoing extreme burnout in late 2017 and possibly fatal heart palpitations in early 2018, uploads currently have no set schedule date and are usually released randomly.

Recently, starting with the video "OG XBOX: Strange Colorful Games #1", Pan has transitioned his main review topic from animation reviews to video game reviews (while retaining his signature twisted sense of humour), although he still occasionally makes cartoon reviews. Since 2021, episode releases have slowed down significantly due to him putting his main focus on independently creating the pilot of his longtime passion project Loki IRL. The Pizza Party Podcast was put on an indefinite hiatus because of this, until an ephemeral revival of the podcast happened in late 2022 with Daftpina, exclusively on Pan's second channel, though the podcast went completely defunct shortly after.

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Tropes:

• Accentuate the Negative: Averted. Pan can honestly discuss shows and games he likes and still input jokes and gags.
• Accidental Misnaming: He frequently invokes this, referring to shows and people with various dirty Punny Nicknames.
• All Animation Is Disneyinvoked: He accidentally refers to The Land Before Time as a Disney movie in his "Top 10 Lost Animations" video, even though he previously correctly called it a Don Bluth movie in the same video. He later posted an annotation apologizing for the mistake.
• Animation Age Ghettoinvoked: He is largely against this view, as seen in his When Are You TOO OLD To Be Watching CARTOONS or ANIME? video.
• Art Evolution: Went from a Sketchy Pan standing in a black void, to a detailed Pan sitting in a parked space taxi with a starry background, and that's not even getting into how much Pan's design drastically changed.
  • The game reviews shifted its style around 2020 into a Y2K (Japanese font, transparent, thick 2d outlines) aesthetic.
• Author Appeal: Genndy Tartakovsky, Tara Strong, pointy artstyles, Toonami, ambient music, too many to list really.
  • On the podcast, there are a few things that receive recurring mentions, such as Beast Wars and Spider-Man 2.
  • Of course, his most famous one might be goth girls, and female characters with goth aesthetics, like Raven, Mavis, and Stocking Anarchy, due to him being very open about this preference and having little shame in referencing it; often in humorous fashion. And it's such a memetic one that it's difficult to discuss Rebel Taxi/Pan at length without someone tossing at least one joke about his lust for goth girls into the discussion
  Pan: Siri, what's my name?
  Siri: You're Pan. But since we're friends, I get to call you: "God Damn Oh My God Goth Girls Are So Amazing Like Goddamn Goth Girls Oh My God Oh My God Goff Me The Sign Up I Just Want To Stick My Penis Inside Of Them Like Oh My God".
  Pan: Damn straight, Siri!
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Back when Johnny Test was in its first season and had potential, its fate was uncertain due to Kids' WB! folding. Pan considered it too good to last and wanted it to return, and well...
• Berserk Button:
  • He doesn't take kindly to people calling his characters Manic Pixie Dream Girls.
  • He can't stand not getting footage for his reviews because someone on YouTube puts their logo on them.
  • He doesn't like getting questions asking if he's pansexual. Funnily enough, it turns out Pan is queer.
  • From one of his failed animation pilots videos we know he doesn't take kindly to utterly stereotypical portrayals of Latinos and hypocrisy, especially when they go together.
• Black Comedy: Pan's jokes range from mildly perverted to "short bus orgy" tier.
• The Cameo: ZONE-TAN cameos in his Top 10 WORST ReDESIGNS in Animation.
• Catchphrase:
  • "It's Juice and Jam time!" sometimes altered, originally from Sonic Underground.
  • I await your _____" is almost always featured at the end of the video. Hell, it's even the quote for the page!
  • Pan's OC/little sister CISter, Emily, has "WHAT'S UP FUCKERS" which crosses over with Verbal Tic where she's starts every appearance with it.
  • "Yeeeeeeah-yuuuuuh!" or simply "Yeah!"
  • "" How Dare You""
  • "Clickity-clack down the track, it's another Let's Play"
  • Ken from the podcasts is known for saying:
    • You FUCK!
    • What do you know about waffles shrek?
    • And fuck you
• Celebrity Resemblance: According to Pan himself and people who seen him in real life, he looks like Dib from Invader Zim.
  • People have also claimed that he looks like a younger version of author John Green.
  • Coincidentally, Pan has said he's a pale Mexican before, and so is Dib canonically.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Pan. For starters, every review has him give himself a subtitle under his name (i.e. Once ate his own head, Tsundere Tomato, etc.).
• Comic Trio: Pan considers Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island a negative example of this trope.
  Pan:: Anyone who's annoyed by him suffers, and anyone who takes part in Fred's stupidity makes it out in one piece. You're either with him or against him.
• Cosmic Horror Story: Pan interprets Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island as one. The titular character has explicit Reality Warper powers, which he uses to create the island and its inhabitants, keeping them trapped on the island and subject to torment for his amusement.
• Crossover: With Mr. Coat.
• Downer Ending: Despite not being a narrative work, "Top 10 WORST Ugliest Creepiest Mascots" ends with Pan recounting the real-life story of how the Noid drove a mentally ill man by the same name to suicide.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Looking back at his videos, there's a significant evolution throughout the series. From a sketchy drawing of Pan just talking about whatever cartoon he wants to talk about to an actual setting, gags, and occasional music videos and animated skits.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Pan started editing his video titles to include "RebelTaxi LOVES [show here]" or "RebelTaxi HATES [show here]" to avoid confusing people.
• Fan Boy:
  • The few real-life shots of Pan's room are shown to be full of merchandise from all sorts of cartoons and cons. He's also prone to talking about his favorite animators, like Craig McCracken and Genndy Tartakovsky.
  • He's stated many times over that, while Cartoon Network has made some bad decisions in the past (like the infamous Network Decay the network temporarily suffered from in the late 00s), he greatly prefers CN over Nickelodeon. His reasoning is because CN is more willing to experiment and treats most of their classic shows with respect, while Nickelodeon relies way too much on SpongeBob SquarePants reruns to keep up its viewership of young children.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Pan avoids letting his real life face be seen by fans, and any other details outside of his voice and cartoon self.
  • It's to the point where even while recording the podcast, he's presented as a silhouette in a red closet.
  • Though it may have been leaked in this tweet.
  • He eventually revealed his face in the 100th podcast.
• Humanity Ensues: Word of God states that Pan is a humanized Umbreon. Other times he's been described as a humanoid pizza and said his hat is a skinned Umbreon.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • The beginning of his My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic review had him state that he would never watch a show meant for little girls, then flashing back to his Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi review. When reviewing The Powerpuff Girls, he talks about no grown man wanting to admit their love for girls' shows, while hugging Derpy Hooves. In his Toonami Retrospective, he expresses distain for people wearing Naruto headbands anywhere, asserting that people should care more about what they are wearing... while he himself is in a Pinkie Pie T-shirt.
  • Parodied in his Johnny Test rant, where, after railing on everything he hates about the show, concludes that, once his own terrible animation will be finished, he'll never be allowed to complain about it again.
• Informed Attribute: In real life, Pan is Mexican and Ken from the podcast is Black. Justified as that they're represented by cartoon drawings.
  • Though in Pan's case, this is a form of Reality Is Unrealistic, since he doesn't look archetypically Latino in real life, and there are many Mexicans that can pass off as white.
• Just Here for Godzilla: In-Universe, Pan made Yakuza Kiwami 2 his first Yakuza game purely because it has a playable version of the first Virtual-ON, demonstrating this trope by skipping through all the cutscenes at the beginning of the game and also speeding through the first few fights until he reaches the in-game Club Sega building.
• Lost Episode:
  • Midnight Society started as a sub series about these episodes.
  • Real Life example is the lost audio from his Dan Vs. review where he reviewed G.I. Joe: Renegades, as well as the first part of the Pizza Party Podcast's 13th episode.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase: I'd like to X his/her Y.
• Most Writers Are Male: He picked up some flack for his "Top 10 Lovable Jerks" episode when all of the female characters were lumped together as "Tsunderes," while all the other choices were male.
• Mondegreen Gag: A recurring gag throughout the show. In the Tony Hawk's Boom Boom Savage review, Pan is shocked after a female character who slaps one of the main leads appears to say "I can use my dick next time".
  Pan: WHOOOOOOA there, either you need to enunciate, or this movie got real progressive real fast. Good on you if it's the latter!
• MST: On July 3, 2018, the Pizza Party Podcast uploaded a special episode where they do this to Freddy Got Fingered.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Pan remembers rumors about Ted Turner cancelling Aqua Teen Hunger Force should "Boston" ever be leaked. Upon discovering that the show has been cancelled, and that the episode had a sudden surge of interest after his "Top 10 Lost Animations" video, he doesn't take it very well...
  Pan: Oh look, I left the stove on in the car, I'll be back.
• Nightmare Fuelinvoked: His "Creepy Disturbing Cartoon Moments" videos.
• Non-Indicative Name: The name "Rebel Taxi" seems mostly to refer to Pan's color scheme and not much else.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: In-Universe. He gave a fairly positive review of the Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion XL, as well as the Adventure Time game and thought the Regular Show game was pretty good. He also gave credit to Rugrats: The Search for Reptar as fun for fans of the show. Hell, in his Crazy Taxi review, he admitted to liking the much-maligned The Simpsons: Road Rage for combining Crazy Taxi gameplay with The Simpsons humor.
  • He's outright stated one of his favorite games of all time is The Simpsons Hit & Run, and has expressed hopes that, it as well as Road Rage (among other licensed games), gets remade.
• Nostalgia Filter:
  • He devotes a whole video rant to debunking the arguments of "90s Kids". In particular he pointed out how hypocritical some people can be regarding the longevity of certain cartoons (like how these people keep wishing The Powerpuff Girls and other "90s cartoons" were still around, while these same people also complain that SpongeBob, a cartoon that also started in the 90s, needed to end years ago), saying that if most of the older cartoons were still on TV then fans would just be complaining about Seasonal Rot.
  • Also discussed in his Guilty Pleasures video, where he says that things you loved as a kid aren't as good as you thought. For example, he talks about loving the soundtrack from Pokémon: The First Movie as a kid, which his older cousin hated. Nowadays, his opinion is quite different.
  Pan: That soundtrack was terrible, oh my god!
• Once an Episode:
  • The ending caption under the taxi at the end of the videos, most of the time being some variation of "I await your ____", usually relating to the episode.
  • Midway through his regular episodes, he'll interrupt the show with a "we'll be right back," and then show off fanart and announcements before returning to the video. This is him emulating commercial breaks.
• Overly Long Gag: His description of "poser" goth/emo girls from the 2000s. Or as he calls them...
  "...teen girl who just got off watching Foamy The Squirrel on Newgrounds.com while signing a "Bring Back Invader Zim" petition wearing a Jack Skellington hoodie and Happy Tree Friends tube socks purchased from Hot Topic during an Emily the Strange buy 1 get 1 50 percent-off sale where she discovered Serenity Rose from Slave Labor Graphics Comics while her overbearing but loving father restricts her from going to the My Chemical Romance/Limp Bizkit concert with a 5-years-older-than-her boyfriend that constantly IM’s unsourced Stolen Pon and Zi comic art over 56K Modem American Online trial discs on Myspace.com with a top 8 consisting of Tim Burton, Jack Sparrow, Eminem, Jesus Christ and whatever angsty band is the hit new thing on Disney Adventures Magazine and spends all day filling out "What Kingdom Hearts Character Are You?" quizzes only to complain she didn’t get Rikku and is unable to watch the 2003 MTV Music Awards because her deadbeat older brother is always hogging the living room TV playing Tony Hawk's Underground on his Halo edition Transparent green Xbox using a 3rd party Mad Kats air flow controller with a busted analog stick constantly leaning to the right making antisemitic remarks on how Eric stole his wicked McTwist over the helicopter in Hawaii footage."
• Overly Narrow Superlative: Who really wants to be good at Superman 64?
• Perverse Sexual Lust: "GOOOOOOTH GIIIIIIIIIRLS!!"
  • Used to (jokingly) express this for Derpy Hooves, but for some reason suddenly started hating the character (again jokingly).
  • Raven, as several other Tara Strong characters.
  Pan: I wanna get cold and hard on Raven's soft warm insides!
  • Has been known to dry hump posters of his "waifus" on occasion.
• Podcast: The Pizza Party Podcast, which usually consists of a motley crew of Pan and some of his Skype contacts discussing cartoons.
• Political Overcorrectness: In the "NIGHTMARE Before CHRISTMAS 2? Review", when Pan first says "The Nightmare Before Christmas", he is told that what he said was "unexceptable". He is then forced to call the movie "The Nightmare Before Holidays".
• Potty Failure: Used in "Top 10 WORST Animated REBOOTS REVIVALS" on the introduction of Xiaolin Showdown:
  Pan: Xiaolin Showdown was my shit. (fart sound) Oh no, and there was my shit! Whoops! (voice lowers into a depressed tone) Oh, no. (squishing sound) This is a mess.
• Precision F-Strike: In his "Top 10 Worst Cartoon Network Moments" video, Pan remarks that the decision to make CN Real in 2009 was "more fucking retarded than an orgy in a shortbus."
• Pretend Prejudice: Against fanboys. Though sometimes it's not so pretend.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives a big one at the end of "Top 5 Worst Animation Moments of 2016" to those who didn't see Kubo and the Two Strings, which was a Box Office Bomb despite massive critical acclaim.
• Reference Overdosed: A lot of his comedy has to do with jokes about other cartoons.
• Running Gag:
  • "I'd like to X his Y" from his first top five current cartoons.
  • Repeated use of "The prom is tomorrow!" from Harry Partridge's "American Akira" in his Clone High review.
  • Whenever a character gets punched hard enough, "Boom! (Turn up the Volume)" will start playing immediately.
  • If a franchise Pan's covering got a porn parody by prolific Not Safe for Work web animator ZONE, he will incorporate cropped footage from it into the video.
• Screeching Stop: Pan-Pizza's "That Came Out Wrong" moment during his review of "Nevermore" is met by a car brake sound and shocked stares from the Teen Titans.
• Shared Universe: If this post is to be believed, it's part of the Reviewaverse.
• Shout-Out: He doesn't like giving these to fans for no reason, though often showcases fan art during bumpers in his reviews/retrospectives and on his blog (especially if they're pornographic).
  • invoked In his video about the top 10 Worst Animated Intros, Pan riffs on the intro of The Brothers Flub that Death Grips sold out. And then "1000%!! I USED TO GIVE A FUCK" pop up.
• Shown Their Work: Pan does a lot of looking into whatever he talks about, such as mentioning that Lauren Faust's attempt at pitching Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls is what put her in charge of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
• Small Reference Pools: Pan notices when Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island averts this in its parody of Final Fantasy VII. Considering this was made when writers were still using Super Mario Bros. and Pac-Man as references, Pan considered this incredible for its time, and the sole redeeming factor of this show.
• The Stinger: Episodes of the Pizza Party Podcast typically end with Pan's characters Emily and Stephany Vasquez (both voiced by himself) singing karaoke.
• Take That!:
  • A pretty blatant one towards Benthelooney appears at the beginning of "Rebel Taxi Hates 90s KIDS Rant.", complete with a crudely MS Paint drawn Pan with a breathy voice talking about how much he loves 90's cartoons and kids today "ain't got nothin."
  • He also seems to really have it in for Loonatics Unleashed.
  • He's taken a couple of jabs at Neon Genesis Evangelion's controversial finale, particularly at its incredibly Limited Animation.
  Pan: After all, we are talking about the same studio that blew their budget on Evangelion so hard, they had to finish the final episode using goddamn Crayola markers.
  • His "Top 10 Worst NICKELODEON Moments & Controversies" video has a subtle one towards The Mysterious Mr. Enter:
  Pan: Grow up to become the adult that tells kids they can't watch a certain cartoon because I don't like it? To hell with that!
  • His Cel Damage review has a clear mocking of toy reviewer Mike Mozart, complete with him begging for 'five stars' (based off the old YouTube rating system).
  • In part 4 of the "Top 5 CURRENT Modern Cartoons & Anime" series, he refers to Grand Theft Auto V as "the poor man's Saints Row".
  • In his Top 10 video for worst animated theme songs, after chastizing the German Naruto theme for the "Sakura, the beautiful" line, he then adds a footnote.
    Pan: Women have other qualities besides besides beauty, you superficial asshole.
    Just not Sakura. She sucks.
  • The Pizza Party Podcast contains some recurring targets, including Sonic the Hedgehog and Channel Awesome.
• Tantrum Throwing:
  • He gets pretty upset when he finds out he can't get a review copy of a game.
  • Destroys room after including Quagmire in Top 10 Animated Perverts
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Happens every now and then. For example, at the end of his first part of creepy/disturbing moments of modern cartoons:
  Pan-Pizza: For now, I call this meeting of the Midnight Society closed....bitches.
• Vocal Evolution: Compare his review of The Social Network to his Top 10 Goths.
• Worst. Whatever. Ever!: Pan's "Worst Cartoon Ever (in no particular order)" list, which originated from the Super Duper Sumos review. As the name implies, Pan adds another title to the list whenever he does a negative review of something.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: "Animation Motivation."
• Your Mom: When Pan calls Ringo Starr in his review of The Powerpuff Girls: Dance Pantsed, many of his songs have this in the title.

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"I await your tropes..."

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