Web Video / Some More News

The News Dude at the News Desk

"Hello, I am a news dude and, news-wise, here is some of it."

-– Tagline of the channel

Here's some news...

In January of 2017 Donald Trump became the president. Of a country. And to combat the barrage of news, Cracked's Cody Johnston and Katy Stoll launched Some News. And all was well. But then, the great Cracked staff layoff of 2017 happened. And the news were no more.

But then, in 2018, Cody and Katy began producing Some More News, a web series on YouTube, legally distinct from the one mentioned above. And the News Dude came back. And all was well again. And fair. And balanced. ™©®

Some More News follows the News Dude, as he attempts to make it through the modern political landscape and offer some commentary on current events. The show mostly produces two kinds of episodes, ones that relate the most important or interesting stories in the recent past and offer some perspective and episodes that do deep dive analyses like "In what ways is the Trump administration similar to a fascist regime?" or which provide full deep dives into various conservative figures such as Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, and Jordan Peterson. (The last of which is not only the most popular video on the channel, but is also almost three hours long.)

The channel is here, and the podcast Even More News can be listened to here. The show's creators also run the political podcast 2020: Worst Year Ever with Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards.

NOTE: The show and its host are unashamedly on the left wing of the political spectrum, so please refrain from complaining or creator bashing.

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Here's some tropes:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: Some episode titles are punched up by utilizing alliteration to catch the eye.
• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • Partially to make criticisms and takedowns seem less personal, Cody tends to try to acknowledge the good/funny things done by some of his targets. For example, in the episode on "cancel culture," he admits that a satirical video by a pro-Trump comedian was actually pretty funny and had a decent point. Less so his jokes where the punchline is "non-white people, amirite?"
  • A Discussed Trope in the episode about Conservative comedy. Cody's opinion is that the political left is easy enough to make fun of that this trope should be coming into play all the time, but it almost never does. Cody even highlights a handful of conservative comedians he finds funny in places other than the US and in times other than when Donald Trump was President, along with examples of people on the left making fun of the left in a funny and smart way.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: CODE-E, a computer made from an Alexa and a Moosebrain, goes increasingly haywire throughout the Simple Solutions episode before Cody is forced to shut it down entirely near the end, where he admits to needing to work out its issues but suggests it’ll be back.
• Ambiguous Situation: Cody admits that he's not sure if Ben Shapiro is a liar or just very, very dumb.
• Ascended Extra: "Cody the Human", the Sesame Street alternate version of Cody from The Movie, would reappear in a central role in the 2020 holiday special where he was given a proper name and personality of his own: Warmbo, the Strawman Political neoliberal Elmo knockoff who seeks to endlessly torment Cody.
• Bad Future: The November, 2020 episode "Our Popcorn Movie Dystopia" featured a Bad Future with an even more unhinged News Dude, set in the dark future of... January 2021. It later turns out it was an alternate dimension all along. The end featured another future which looks pretty bright and nice but where the Boars conquered Earth.
• Bait-and-Switch: Played for Laughs in "Our Popcorn Movie Dystopia," where Cody meets an alternate version of himself with a Hitler moustache. Apparently, in his universe the moustache is associated with Charlie Chaplin instead, causing Cody to ask if Hitler never lived in that reality. Moustache!Cody explains that yes, he did, he just didn't have the moustache. Cody then asks if there is no social stigma around the moustache then, which there is because Charlie Chaplin committed genocide in Canada.
• Beard of Sorrow: The News Dude's state of beardedness is directly proportional to his stress. His "Some Good News?" episode is predicated on a Healing Potion (or possibly time travel) bringing back a younger, more optimistic and beard-less Cody. During "The First Week of 2020" Cody started the piece clean-shaven and eager to take on a new year, only to have the beard grow in during the episode as the news of the first week of 2020 get increasingly dire.
• Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: Most of Cody's insults are (intentionally) terrible or just plain crude.
  News Dude: Come on, sheep-people! You-you sheep- you sheeple, you human-, you shoe-, you human-sheep-hybrids, you... Some combination of sheep, and a person, I dunno.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The "Star War News" episode has several of the Cody clones ending their segments by being attacked by blaster fire from stormtroopers off-screen. It ends with the latest Cody clone being assaulted by a band of (off-screen) flying Wamp Rats. With blasters.
• Buffy Speak: A staple of the series, Buffy Speak is part of Cody's delivery style and can also be found in many of the headlines.
• The Cameo: "Our Popcorn Movie Dystopia" featured a lot of these, including Katy Stoll, David Cross and Macaulay Culkin as themselves, and Abigail Thorn, Mara Wilson, Michael Swaim and Culkin as Alternate Universe versions of Cody.
• Captain Ersatz: Warmbo the puppet is basically Elmo (right down to the voice being identical) if he were politically aware enough to support Joe Biden but not aware enough to go beyond mainstream centrist talking points. And also omnipotent.
• Cargo Ship: invoked Discussed and Played for Laughs. The episode about the Border Wall has a Running Gag about Trump having a fetish for/having sex with walls.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Referenced, though it's not an example per se, as the show has always been a comedy show that's critical of current politics.
  News Dude: And we should continue talking about fascism, which is a good idea for a comedy show?
• Character Catchphrase: While the news dude has a few himself, he gets annoyed at Ben Shapiro for constantly using the phrase "Let's say...", seeing it as a way for him to put words in his opponents mouths to make them sound crazy and unreasonable.
• Chewing the Scenery: A frequent source of the show's comedy, especially whenever Boars becomes a subject. Katy is very aware of this, nudging Cody to take the bait and go on a verbal rampage for primo content.
• Cosmic Retcon: In "The Truth About Our Fake Thanksgiving" Warmbo casually mentions being one of a huge family of Warmbos. This freaks out News Dude, since he distinctly remembers building the Warmbo prop out of felt and is now convinced the timeline has been altered.
• Creator Cameo: Katy Stoll, the show's co-writer and producer, made an on-screen appearance in "Star War News", playing a pundit on the Crystal Fox News channel defending Anakin Skywalker's comments on Sand People. She later showed up repeatedly during "Our Popcorn Movie Dystopia".
• Create Your Own Villain: In We Need to Talk about Hungary, Cody points out that Viktor Orban was the beneficiary of a school funded by George Soros. After becoming dictator of Hungary, Orban proceeded to close down and cripple the Hungarian school system and demonize Soros with Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. It's a particularly dark turn as Soros himself was a Holocaust Survivor, who inadvertently aided the rise of another fascist.
• Demonic Dummy: Warmbo the sock puppet from "Back to Normal With Biden's Cabinet", who has a magic wand and torments Cody by transforming him into other Christmas specials characters unless he does nothing but relentlessly cheery good news. In the end he ends up bonding with Cody over the The Star Wars Holiday Special.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The show's overall message with regards to Donald Trump and his place in American politics; while defeating him in the 2020 election was the first step towards restoring some sanity to America (and was successfully pulled off), his successor Joe Biden is also highly problematic and he and the corporate centrism that he represents would easily usher in an even scarier and more dangerous version of Trump in 2024 if left to their own devices.
• Dramatically Missing the Point:
  • The episode on the border wall is devoted to this trope, by cataloguing how a lot of media criticism used against the border wall (like the expense involved, or the ability of people to climb over the prototypes) misses the point that a border wall is a fundamentally flawed concept for halting illegal immigration. The News Dude then compares this to a fictional scenario of having Trump declare he's going to build a mile-high tower of flapjacks to stop dinosaurs from being gay, only to have everyone focus on the fact that you can't stack flapjacks that high.
  • The News Dude also points out that Ben Shapiro cites a study called "What does institutional racism have to do with a traffic jam", acting like it's some kind of ridiculous question and evidence that institutional racism doesn't actually exist. News Dude points out that the title of the study was clearly meant to invoke that kind of feeling in the audience, so that they'd read the study and learn why, but Shapiro didn't read it.
• Enemy Mine: "Vote for Joe Biden (Who Sucks!)" is about Cody explaining why he plans to vote for Biden to defeat Trump, all while still pointing out everything he hates about Biden's record and rhetoric and acknowledging that he'll still be the enemy.
• Everyone Has Standards: Warmbo is about to burst into Cody's show as usual, until Cody says he's talking about Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein. Warmbo wisely decides to leave him alone.
• Evil Counterpart: Cody calls Matt Walsh the evil version of him.
• Evil Only Has to Win Once: Zig-zagged in We Need to Talk About Hungary. Cody points out that Viktor Orban and his Fidesz Party had been in and out of power several times prior to his most recent ascension to dictator of Hungary. However, due to some incredible blunders by the leaders of Hungary's Socialist Party, Orban was able to seize uncontested control of the Executive Branch and proceed to corrupt the rest of the government to functionally lock all opposition out of power, after which he demonized opposition newspapers into shutting down and started spreading anti-Semitic, Anti-refugee, and Anti-LGBT propaganda unopposed.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: This show will cover the news. But only some of it. And after Some News was left for dead by Cracked, the revival of Some News was... Some More News.
• Extra-Long Episode: Most Some More News episodes are around 15-25 minutes long, but every so often one ends up breaking the half-an-hour mark and running closer to 40-50 minutes. The longest episode so far, "Our Popcorn Movie Dystopia", was 135 minutes long. Longer episodes have gotten more common ever since the 2020 US election, culminating in a mammoth 175 minute episod examining, deconstructing, and critiquing Jordan Peterson. Cody even repeatedly warns viewers, "Don't check the time code."
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Cody hates boars. He thinks they're animals, invading America and planning to take over the nation from its rightful inhabitants, and makes up wild conspiracy theories about their capabilities and intentions.
  • During "Star War News" Cody makes sure to point out that Anakin Skywalker's hatred of sand is just a thinly veiled euphemism for his hatred of Sandpeople.
• Fantastic Slurs: In Star War News, Cody plays audio proving that princess Leia used the N-word^note (nerfherder).
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: At the end of "All of 2024's Hottest Conspiracy Theories," Cody begins talking about how we should try to reach out and talk to the people in our own lives who believe in conspiracy theories "at least, for as long as we can stand doing that." He's immediately interrupted by Warmbo - who has spent the entire episode buying into nonsensical conspiracy theories - biting him on the arm after watching an advert (that Katy made) saying Cody lies and that Warmbo should maim him. This pushes Cody to his Rage Breaking Point and he yells at Warmbo to Get Out!, pushing Warmbo to run away.
• Flowery Insults: In a segment called "Petty Joke Junction," Cody makes petty, but increasingly elaborate jokes at a public figure.
• Foreign Queasine: Warmbo apparently considers spiders and batteries to be acceptable Thanksgiving foods.
• Full-Boar Action: Cody certainly thinks so, having devoted multiple episodes to the horrors of radioactive, teleporting nazi boars trying to pull a Kill and Replace on humanity in what is absolutely not a metaphor for anti-immigration hysteria seen on certain other news sites.
• Godwin's Law: Discussed in the series on fascism, which strictly speaking would be considered an example itself, as the show doesn't pull its punches on the fact that Trump has some unnerving parallels to fascists who yes, include the Nazis.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Cody admits that he probably never gets to confront Ben Shapiro about his ideas because they prefer to keep their band practices politics-free.
• Healing Potion: In one episode, Cody drinks one which shaves his beard, changes his shirt and makes him report good news. The episode's punchline reveals it's Ketamine (The Stinger reveals it was actually Coca-Cola).
• Heroic Bystander: Cody thinks the "Good guy with guns"-argument against gun regulations is a very messed up version of this; Gun owners dream of being the hero who pulls out a gun and takes down a violent criminal with a single, well-placed shot. This, Cody argues, more often than not leads to a Power Fantasy where they pull out their guns in an attempt to do just that in wildly inappropriate situations, such as shooting at shoplifters or mistaking innocents civilians or even security guards for criminals.
• History Repeats: The point of the segment "This Week in History," comparing some news to some history.
• Humiliation Conga: The episode "The Perverse Incentives of The Healthcare Industry" is framed around the showdy running out of money due to an impending lawsuit and Katy selling off parts of the show to stay afloat, using the teleprompter to make Cody read out the sales on-air. She starts out putting Cody's shoes and front door for sale, and things only get more and more humiliating from there.
• Hurricane of Puns: During the Star War News episode, pretty much every current American political topic is given a Star Wars renaming. Highlights include "Midichlor for All" and "Gerrymandalorian".
• Hypocrisy Nod: Much of "Ted Cruz Sure Is A Weird Little Online Freak" involves News Dude pointing out the many bizarre, aggressive habits of Ted Cruz on twitter and how the senator spends way too much time online... but at several points, News Dude is forced to acknowledge that he's also online too much and that the entire video might be pointless.
• I Am a Monster: Cody’s reaction to his shaved beard.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: At the end of "Joe Biden, Primary Donald Trump As A Republican", Cody the News Dude once again states that Joe Biden is closer to Republicans than to Democrats, and part of his evidence is "all these women and girls [Biden] touched inappropriately" — then he promptly apologizes for it being a cheap shot, but says we all could probably use one right now. So he grabs a shot of whisky and downs it, Visual Metaphor-style.
• Insane Troll Logic: He often complains about Ben Shapiro using this, such as the time he claimed that letting more children question their gender will lead to higher child suicide rates, since trans people have a high suicide rate. Apparently Ben thinks that trans people commit suicide because they're trans, instead of because they get relentlessly bullied because of their gender.
• In-Series Nickname: Cody likes to title the show "Cody's Showdy".
• Kent Brockman News: An intentional case, Played for Laughs. Most of the subjects of the Showdy would be perfectly at home as a subject of a similar late-night long-form news program, but the News Dude's antics definitively would not be.
• Kid-Appeal Character: Warmbo is a parody of this. Not only does he have an annoying childish voice, but he also repeatedly tries to have the show dumbed down in the name of positive "holiday cheer" which is really a veil for his blind fervent support of Joe Biden. Made even more absurd (and hilarious) by Warmbo's Eldritch Abomination tendencies and the reveal that he's actually an old man who looks and sounds like a child.
• Lampshade Hanging: A major source of humor, mostly playing of the fact that it's pre-scripted or the relatively low-budget setup of the show.
• Mean Boss: Katy is this in several episodes:
  • In "Orange Man Indeed Bad: 100 Years Of Trump", she tries to convince News Dude to eat a hundred eggs on camera, even going as far as to impersonate his grandmother on a call.
  • In "Our Fake Thanksgiving", she sends News Dude a battery casserole because the show gets "great engagement any time [News Dude] debase[s] [themselves]". And she does not take "no" for an answer.
    Katy: [Warmbo’s] gonna be your pallbearer if you don’t start horking acid tubes, news boy!
• Media Scaremongering: While generally averted, when it comes to boars Cody makes their danger succinctly clear. It’s Played for Laughs. Or is it?
  Some More News on Twitter: Everyone is concerned about the feral hogs today. We tried to warn you.
• Metaphorgotten: In "Defining 'Defund the Police'", Cody describes a hypothetical scenario where the watcher is actually a big fan of the police, then ends the hypothetical by suggesting that the watcher use their magnetism power to fight crime because they were actually Magneto the whole time.
• Moral Myopia: Cody calls out Israel for explaining away civilian casualties of their attacks by accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields. Shoot the Hostage doesn't make you much more ethical than the guy who took a hostage in the first place.
  • One of the major points of "Hunter Biden: All the President's Son," is that when it comes to Hunter Biden (the son of Democratic President Joe Biden), Republicans have gone out of their way for years to try and dig up evidence of corruption, even though a lot of what they turn up is unreliable at best, and Hunter's own legal status seems to be no worse than those of most powerful politician's families - that is, still bad, but nowhere near the much more egregious and credible allegations of corruption levied against former-President Trump and his family, which Republicans are all-too-happy to ignore.
• The Movie: "Our Popcorn Movie Dystopia", a two-hour Extra-Long Episode, also known as "Some More News: The Movie".
• Mundane Utility: The aforementioned magic potion, whose main effect was to remove Cody's beard.
• Noodle Implements: This strange exchange at the start of "Who to Blame for the Capitol Riots (Non-Trump Edition)"
  News Dude: Yeah, it was like four feet long at that point so I just licked up what I could and got out of there.
  Warmbo: Did you get your pants?
  News Dude: Well, we still had the lockpicking kit so (notices audience, then nervously laughs) Damn! Warmbo, I gotta do an episode, so I'll, um, I'll have to call you back.
• Older Than They Look: Warmbo is 67, he just does the voice because he knows everyone hates it. Joe Biden is seen far more favorably among the elderly than among younger people such as Cody's demographic.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: During a segment of "The Truth About Our Fake Thanksgiving," the image of a statistic Cody mentions appears onscreen as "69 percent," but Cody, who is no stranger to LOL, 69, instead calls it "nearly-70 percent." The reason for this? He's talking about Native American Boarding schools/Residential schools; that is, schools into which Native American children were placed after being taken from their parents so that the government could "civilize" them. These are schools that have been in the news recently for the discovery of many mass graves filled with those same Native American children, and the "nearly-70 percent" statistic refers to the number of students in one school who died of disease due to neglect. Needless to say, he didn't feel like making a joke out of something so horrible.
• Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: As mentioned above, Some More News is legally distinct from Some News.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Zig-Zagged in "Covid Is Over! We Did it!". News Dude realises that he's been watching clips from an alternate reality because the "clean-shaven, longer-haired" version of him appearing in the clip takes a sip of Diet Dr Pepper, a drink which News Dude finds disgusting. Only thing is, that was actually Katy (albeit one from an alternate reality); News Dude was just so high on cough syrup that he didn't notice.
• Overly Long Gag: Warmbo's Christmas song consists of a couple of lines followed by incessant "ho ho ho"ing to the point that it outstays its welcome.
• Pandering to the Base: Acknowledged In-Universe and Played for Laughs. After having the News Dude be (semi) clean shaven during an episode episode in August, the team quickly announced on Twitter that they’d caved and the beard would be back next episode.
• Parody Episode:
  • The "Star War News" episode, which is Some More News... In the Star Wars universe.
  • His "Existential Horror Of Living in the Marvel Universe", doing the same thing for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: News Dude prefers the word "lekfast" to "brunch", having used it in "Vote! (For Joe Biden (Who Sucks!))" and again in "The Trump Variants"
• Pompous Political Pundit: Cody certainly has the Large Ham part nailed.
• Pronoun Trouble: Cody points out a particularly weird example where Ben Shapiro referred to a trans woman by her correct pronouns, only to do a Verbal Backspace and say the wrong pronouns instead. In other words, despite Ben Shapiro acting like he's concerned about trans suicide rates, he went out of his way to use the pronouns that would upset a trans woman.
• Pun: Often used in titles. For example, their playlist on videos about fascism is titled "Life in the Fash Lane".
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: To Highlight. When Something Is Really Wrong. Or Action. Should be Taken.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending:
  • At the end of the Palestine-Israel conflict episode, the News dude points out that, while the conflict is far from over and that Israel is still not getting enough pushback as it deserves, the fact that people and politicians are starting to more openly criticize Israel's extremely aggressive expansion efforts and mistreatments of Palestinians is a hopeful note that the area's future may not be too bleak. And he won 20 dollars out of it because his editor bet him he couldn't end an episode on a hopeful note.
  • A similar ending occurs in "Texas v Women, Drones v Children, Maher v a Dress: News of Justice", where Cody notes that, while all of the problems he described in the episode are far from over, several polls note that (barring drone warfare) all of those problems are getting a considerable pushback from the American people, meaning that all of those issues might one day be resolved.
  • "The GOP Simply Wants To Abolish Public Education", is spent detailing at length the myriad problems with both the public education system in the USA and how conservative focus on those problems amounts to keeping children from learning about the existence of LGBT+ people and that the Native American genocide, slavery, and, in Cody's words, "the fucking Holocaust" were fundamentally bad things or that they ever happened. At the end, Cody points out that, rather than what conservatives believe (that children are incurious goldfish whose fragile minds will shatter if ever confronted with the idea that America ever did anything wrong), children are actually pretty smart - at least, smarter than conservatives give them credit for - and are actively pushing back against the whitewashed narratives that many politicians and parent's rights groups want them to be taught.
  • "The GOP Sure Hates Queer People" dives into how conservatives in America have been launching multiple attempts to repress and sometimes directly persecute LGBTQ people. Recent efforts to demonize transgender people and even extend the slur of "groomer" to teachers educating students about sexuality are covered in depth, and the truly worrying amount of real political muscle behind such hateful rhetoric. However, Cody notes the same scare tactics were used to describe gay people... and black people before that... and even woman's suffrage before that. And they lost every single one of those fights. Because American society on the whole is proving to be inherently progressive, and as it evolves, becomes more inclusive. More than that, they know this, which is why the language of such attempted laws and bills is incredibly vague and nebulous, specifically to avoid being (correctly) called out as bigoted. Why?
  "They don't care if the laws don't make sense, or can be easily defeated in courts. What matters is keeping that ball in the air for as long as possible, delay this obvious progress in hopes that they can keep their own superiority intact. They're just prolonging their own existence at the expense of others - like vampires! Or, more commonly known, Balem Abrasax, from the hit film Jupiter Ascending!"
  • "We Need To Talk About Hungary," talks about how Hungary's Prime Minister Victor Orban turned their political system into an illiberal democracy that has effectively made him Dictator-For-Life, and how Orban has both directly and indirectly influenced Republican politicians in America with the methods he has used to suppress democracy in his home country. Cody explains, however, that just as attempts to destroy democracies can bleed between different countries, so too can attempts to strengthen them, citing the Scottish government's passing of a law that made period products free in 2020 directly influencing a California State law that did the same thing for schools in 2022. The reverse has also been true, with Roe v. Wade in America having influenced Ireland to make abortion available in 2018.
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Averted, though all pauses and Double Takes are scripted.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Unleashes a particularly furious one after a long video deconstructing and critiquing the ideology of Ben Shapiro, specifically his dismissal of systemic racism in America.
  News Dude: Addressing racial inequality is entirely incompatible with Ben's ideology. *beat* So why don't you just FUCKING SAY THAT, MAN?! Instead of lying about whether or not it's "possible" to achieve racial equality through investments in black communities, just say... say you're not actually interested in doing that! Just be honest, Ben, and admit that you don't actually care about achieving racial equality. Stop pretending. We see through you, Ben. We see through your lies, we see through you deceptions, and fallacies, and equivocations. Just say it! Stop cosplaying as a figure that gives a FUCK about equality! You don't! Your lies are obvious and easily debunked, so just admit it!
• Reed Richards Is Useless:
  • Cody points out in the extra long "Our Popcorn Movie Dystopia" episode that superheroes like the Avengers generally have not only advanced tech, but also immense wealth that could easily be used to solve a lot of societal issues, but is only used to look cool and punch aliens, causing civilian casualties in the process. The few times these issues are called out, like the Sokovian Accords or Bruce Wayne calling out Superman for being exempt from consequences, it's never really solved, just shoved to the background in time for some new threat that needs punching to show up.
  • One of the Overarching themes of his Marvel Parody Episode.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: The "Is Hollywood Actually Woke?" centers on the Right's complaint that Hollywood (and entertainment in general) is "woke" and points out that the complainers are technically right: there is a greater push for diversity in casting and themes explored in entertainment compared to films in the 90's and 2000's. But that "push" isn't part of some grand conspiracy to silence conservative speech, rather than the simple consequence of society developing those values over the years, and corporate entertainment following that trend to keep making money off the population. Nevermind that this "wokeness" is extremely tepid: movies still paint the US army in an undeservingly glorifying light, the actual corporate executives themselves are still overwhelmingly white men, and movies still refuse to show the deeper problems of society, preferring to simply paint the bad parts of it as simply the fault of bad actors.
• Running Gag:
  • Cody doing a double take at the fact that Donald Trump became the president. Of a country.
  • Cody showing his latest responses to Ben Shapiro’s tweets.
  • Cody not being at all happy that Joe Biden wants to run for President again.
  • Cody repeatedly addressing people he's grilling and threading to shreds, thanking them for watching the show. Which is a thing they all most definitely did.
  • Cody really loving movies that most people agree are garbage, like The Star Wars Holiday Special and Super Mario Bros. (1993).
  • Katy trying to get Cody to eat things that are obviously not meant to be eaten.
  • In "The Truth About Our Fake Thanksgiving," Cody asking the viewer a rhetorical question, before we cut to Warmbo asking "Are you asking me?"
  • The "Into the Metaverse" episode has Cody desperately try to contact others and get their assistance, but then they reveal they’re busy watching Moonfall.
  • His Jordan Peterson episode has him constantly claim how short the video is. Keep in mind that it's actually five minutes short of clocking three hours.
• Sanity Slippage: 2020 and the COVID-19 outbreak caused the show to lose its studio. This caused the News Dude to become increasingly unhinged over the course of episodes during the year, including bringing on inanimate objects as guests on the show and marrying a face mask with googly eyes.
• Self-Deprecation: "Star War News" was essentially a 42-minute satire of the show itself, by casting Cody as reporting In-Universe news from the Star Wars franchise in his usual tone.
• Sell-Out: Happens briefly during "Totally Not Paid For By Bloomberg," though even throughout this segment, News Dude is barely able to avoid criticizing Michael Bloomberg for his numerous Trump-like qualities and mannerisms, and in the end, cannot help but revert to honest criticisms.
• Shoot the Hostage: While citing the common criticism that Hamas hides in civilian areas, using them as meat shields in the arab-israeli war, Cody notes that this doesn't stop Israel from launching attacks anyway, and how "killing the human shields" doesn't make them much better than the guys who took human shields in the first place.
• Skewed Priorities: While Cody is no fan of the American right-wing's insistence on complaining about the national debt whenever the Democrats spend any money at all, he does find it weird that after the Biden administration approves a bill to spend several billion dollars, the Republicans were apparently too preoccupied with their made-up war against cancel culture to care.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Played for Laughs. Cody seems to be under the impression that people that he criticizes on the show, such as Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro, watch his small webshow.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis:
  • Cody has a bone to pick with Ben Shapiro. He alternates between this and Serious Business when it comes to Ben.
  • Due to having a segment called "Some Good News" since 2017, Cody gained a new arch-nemesis in John Krasinski during 2020 when the latter made a YouTube show of the same name. It got much more critical once Krasinski promptly sold it.
• Strawman Political: Warmbo the puppet (who first appeared in The Movie as "Cody the Human") is a stereotypical "McResistance" liberal who defends Joe Biden and the center-right, neoliberal status quo in the guise of toxic positivity. He's also a literal sockpuppet, and is a deliberately annoying cross between Elmo and the Great Gazoo. This is later deconstructed by Cody, who points out halfway through the episode that Warmbo, although somewhat exaggerated, also represents a significant part of the U.S. electorate who are generally apolitical and only supported Biden during the 2020 primaries and the general election because their deepest desire was for things to return to normal, which Cody concedes is a somewhat understandable desire.
• Strike Episode: The "Unions And Strikes Are Good" episode, which initially features Warmbo replacing Cody before he hijacks the signal, other wacky shenanigans, and Katy briefly regaining control of the show to spread flimsy anti-union propaganda.
• Stylistic Suck: Much of the show's comedy is derived from the news dude's haggard appearance and tendency for overdramatics.
• Tagline: After Fox News relinquished the slogan "Fair and Balanced", Cody claimed the slogan for his showdy.
• Take That!: In the Covid Conspiracies episode, where a Running Gag is that the counterparts in the Bad Future Cody's timeline is named with a V, Gawker is an exception, with the normal Cody being confused and later noting "they are the dark universe version already".
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That:
  News Dude: So what do we do, you ask me, forgetting that this is a prerecorded video.
  • The inflation episode has Cody forced to watch an VHS recording that is somehow able to respond to Cody's questions in real time. This gets Lampshaded constantly throughout the episode.
• Think of the Children!: The topic of discussion in "Anti-Trans Bills and the Bigoted History of 'What About the Children.'" Specifically, how concern for children is often used as a cloak by bigots to enact their policies, from painting suffragettes as abandoning their children a century ago ("taking some time, from a day, to go vote.") to the modern-day bills that require children to be DNA tested and have their genitals inspected if they want to play sports, in the name of protecting trans children "from themselves."
  News Dude: Clearly, the people who want to find out what's inside the children's pants will be on the right side of history.
• This Just In!: Sometimes used to transition from one topic to another, then immediately lampshaded that there’s no way there could be Breaking News since this is, well, a weekly web-show.
• Trade Snark: The show is Fair And Balanced ™©®.
• Trope Namer Invoked and Played for Laughs when Cody, as a parody of Ben Shapiro, claims that Racism didn't exist until the birth of John Cornelius Racism, the first racist person, in the early 1900s.
• Trumplica:
  • Discussed in The Movie, where Cody discusses how many films in The '80s and The '90s depicted Evil Overlord villains modeled after Donald Trump, foreshadowing the horror of his presidency.
  • Played straight with Emperor Palpatine in "Star War News", who is depicted as a parody of Trump in addition to the Trumpian qualities that he already had (inspired by similar authoritarian figures such as Richard Nixon).
• Verbal Backspace: Cody does this a lot, but also calls out Ben Shapiro on a rather egregious example, when he referred to a transwoman by the correct pronouns, only to go back and correct himself to the pronouns that would specifically upset her.
• War Is Hell: The entire point of the "War Is Bad" episode, which condemns Putin's invasion of Ukraine while also illustrating the disturbing willingness of some to escalate the conflict and not think of the consequences.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Cody donned a Stars-and-Stripes scarf for the "How To Cover These Police Riots" episode.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The main point of "Millennials, Boomers, and the Maybe Unnecessary Generation War;" Millennials didn't ruin the economy as many Baby Boomers like to accuse them of, as they were simply too young to have had any effect on it. Likewise, Boomers are not responsible for the increasingly poor state of the job market and the climate disaster we are currently going through, though many of them do agree with the policies that have had these negative effects. Rather, true responsiblity for these issues lies with a small minority of Boomer politicians and rich people who held - and still hold - outsized influence, and have lied repeatedly to the general public so as to make it incredibly difficult to actually do anything about them.
• Who's Laughing Now?: Following the spread of feral hog memes on twitter in July 2019, Some More News made a third video on the existential problem of teleporting radioactive boar which played this trope up for all it was worth, with the News Dude hamming it up about being The Cassandra about the issue and even saying the trope name out verbatim. Generally Played for Laughs.
• Who Writes This Crap?!:
  • Uttered by Cody during the 100th-episode celebration, which apparently called for him to consume one hundred raw eggs.
  • During the Star Wars Parody Episode, he briefly breaks character over the calling of a place “Glexico” in a forced in-universe parallel to Trump.
• Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide": All the Terrible Arguments Used to Justify Genocide is a video about the various excuses Right Wing apologists use to whitewash the 2023 invasion of the Gaza Strip and what exactly they're doing there, such as accusing Hamas of using human shields when attacking human shields makes you the bad guy, or how Israel's insistence that they just want to free the hostages rings hollow when they use highly destructive bombings that could easily kill the hostages, and in some cases, have actually shot hostages themselves.
• You Keep Using That Word: The 2021 "Why is Critical Race Theory?" is partially devoted to a segment on how some people who criticize the concept can't seem to define it and instead use it as a catch-all term for 'bad things involving racism', including a quote from CRT's first critic more-or-less admitting they're creating a Personal Dictionary term out of it to 'freeze the brand'.
• Your Mom: Used by the News Dude at the opening of "The Perverse Incentives of The Healthcare Industry" to a (presumable) debt collector.
  Cody: -yeah, well, your mom needs to repay her debts in full by the end of the month or face substantial legal consequences.

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And that was... the news!