Featuring the lovely Suzy and the impeccable Barry!
Suzy: "Old-fashioned games!"
Barry: "And new-fashioned friends!"
Both: "Come on everybody, this is Table Flip!"
Barry: "And new-fashioned friends!"
Both: "Come on everybody, this is Table Flip!"
Table Flip is a spin-off series of Game Grumps that stars Suzy "Mortem3r/Meeperfish" Berhow (wife of Game Grumps co-host Arin "Egoraptor" Hanson) and Barry Kramer (the Grumps' editor and uploader) and ran from 2013 to 2016. The show also had a number of recurring guests that are either Grumps or fellow YouTube personalities (ex: Markiplier, CaptainSparklez). Rather than playing video games, this series focused on tabletop games with a set and costume design that resembles the Victorian era.
There were often large intervals of time between episodes due to production factors. Episodes were released in "seasons" with a different amount of episodes in each season. Due to the show's high-budget and ownership by Polaris rather than the hosts, the show moved in July 2015 to Sling, a United States-only online TV service with a monthly subscription fee, with the promise of being uploaded to the Game Grumps channel two months later. This was met with criticism from fans. In October 2016, the final Table Flip episode was released.
Games played on the show
- Pictionary as Grumptionary, an alteration of the rules with whatever they felt like.
- Meta Game
- Betrayal at House on the Hill
- Cards Against Humanity with or without the "Rando Cardrissian" house rule
- Shadows over Camelot
- King of Tokyo
- Ca$h N Gun$
- One Night Ultimate Werewolf
- Coup
- Dixit
- Poker
- Munchkin
- Slash
- The Game of Things
- Snake Oil
- Survive
- Poo
For the trope about flipping tables, see Flipping the Table.
Tropes found in Table Flip:
- Achievements in Ignorance: Somehow Ross was able to dominate the Poker tournament despite evidently barely knowing how to play the game.Danny: It's like playing against Mr. Magoo!
- Assumed Win: In the second round of One Night Ultimate Werewolf The players kill Shawn, who was the Robber, and then discover that none of the villagers was a Werewolf. They believe that they all win, but "Him" appears at the end and explains that since there were no Werewolves among the villagers, the only way to win is if no one dies.
- Big Bad: There are a couple of different games where one of the players is a traitor and ends up working against the rest of the players.
- Arin in Betrayal at House on the Hill. As a twist, they don't actually learn that they're this until the game moves to its second phase halfway through. In the end, he's defeated by the "good guys": Suzy, Barry, and Mark.
- Markiplier in Shadows Over Camelot. Unlike the above example, he succeeds in sabotaging the rest of the players.
- Black Comedy: There's quite a lot of this throughout the series, such as players "killing" each other; Arin in particular "dies" in numerous episodes he's in. Much of the humor in the Cards Against Humanity episodes also runs on this.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: The third part
of their game of Cards Against Humanity involves a debate early in the video about where it was "MegaHitler" or "MechaHitler".Danny: Is it a giant Hitler or is it a robot Hitler? I need to know!
Arin: It's a giant robot Hitler.- The final episode of Metagame has another example this.
Barry: Thank you Michael, thank you Jordan. Thank you Michael Jordan! - Butt-Monkey:
- Arin dies in or out of the game in half of the episodes. He also loses two tiebreakers, one by being shot by Ross and the other because Suzy guesses the number Danny is thinking of in Dixit.
- To a lesser extent Shaun in Ca$h N Gun$ who is constantly ganged up on throughout the entire episode.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Markiplier during the playthrough of Shadows Over Camelot, before they're revealed to be the traitor. It's amazing how nobody figured that one out!note
- Chekhov's Gun: A literal example. The loaded gun that Him puts on the table was how the tiebreaker is decided in Cards Against Humanity.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Markiplier refuses to help Arin complete the Excalibur quest in Shadows over Camelot after Arin calls him smelly. Of course, it's actually because he is a Traitor.
- Emerging from the Shadows: Used for the Traitor's Speech in Betrayal: they start out as a black figure in a darkened room, the lights gradually coming to reveal more features while they speak.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Betrayal's Fidonkers, represented by a dog-headed cane, barks and growls at the traitor upon their reveal. Fittingly, the Omen triggered when Markiplier finds Fidonkers also starts the Haunt, revealing the Traitor.
- Evil Sounds Deep: When the Traitor in Betrayal reads their opening narration for the Haunt, and during the Traitor's Speech, they use a deep voice.
- Exact Words: In "The Game of Things," "Poop" is used as a response twice in a row, and someone suggests not to use it again. Hence "doo doo" and "Eat the poo poo" being used in the next two rounds.
- Expository Theme Tune: The lyrics of the theme tune at the beginning are "Old-fashioned games / and new-fashioned friends / come on everybody, this is Table Flip!" Board games are indeed a much older-fashioned medium than video games, and their friends are all Internet personalities.
- Face–Heel Turn: A major part of the game in Betrayal At House on the Hill, as suggested by the title. All of the players are "good" in the first phase of the game and do a decent amount of working together; once it moves into the second phase, the traitor is decided via the instructions based on which conditions have been fulfilled, so they learn that they're the traitor at the same time as the other players, and work against them for the rest of the game. The traitor ends up being Arin, who fails to defeat Barry, Suzy, and Markiplier.
- Flipping the Table: Doesn't actually happen within an episode, but it's part of the title, and the Polaris intro and outro has Suzy and Barry doing this.
- Genre Blind: Cards Against Humanity: Danny is the only one who questions what the Chekhov's Gun is for, and everybody else just quietly ignores what he says. The others might or might not already know that whoever grabs the gun first wins a tiebreaker.
- Golden Snitch: Subverted in Cards Against Humanity. Everybody tries to go all in to make sure the one in lead can't win unless he does the same. Danny in particular notes that it makes the entire game a total farce. Subverted because betting an extra card means that the better has to submit another answer, and the criteria is using three cards to make a haiku.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: During the game Betrayal At House on the Hill, Markiplier claims they want to join the Traitor's side, then that they were just trying to lure them off guard right before enagaging them in combat. Then tries to laugh that off when Arin rolls high.
- Hilarious Outtakes: Downplayed in that there's only one, but during The Reveal of Betrayal At House on the Hill, there's one moment during the traitor's speech where everyone—the traitor themself as well as the rest of the cast and crew—ends up
Corpsing, which is kept in the episode. - Irony: Cory Spazkid, a very talented artist and animator, is terrible at Pictionary partially because he tries to make his pictures TOO detailed in the limited time given, and because he allegedly may have been drunk out of his mind during the episode.
- Large Ham: When playing certain roles in games that involve role playing, several of the guest stars ham it up considerably, often combining this trope with Evil Is Hammy:
- The Traitor, Arin, during Betrayal.
- Michael of Belated Media hams it up considerably as the mayor of Chocolatetown in the Meta Game episode.
- Again, the Traitor (Mark) during Shadows Over Camelot.
- Laughing Mad: Arin does this after he wins Round 3 of One Night Ultimate Werewolf as the sole Werewolf.
- Literal-Minded: How the show's Victorian theme came about. When Suzy originally pitched the idea of Table Flip to Arin, she floated the idea of rotating guests on the show, likening it to Victorian dinner parties where people had to bring guests over each night in order to spark new conversations. When Arin pitched it to Polaris, he expressed that Table Flip would have a Victorian party theme. Although Polaris ordering 19th-century props and attire for the crew surprised Suzy and Barry, they liked it more than the vanilla tabletop show originally planned and ran with it.
- Mirthless Laughter: When the Traitor laughs evilly during the third episode of Betrayal, the rest of the table laughs anxiously.
- The Mole: Markiplier is dealt a Traitor card in Shadows over Camelot and spends the entire game trying to sabotage the other players. And he succeeds.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: How the tiebreaker in 'Cards Against Humanity' is decided; Ross and Arin tie for the win, and when the rest of the players are discussing how the tie should be broken, they both go for the gun that "Him" left on the table. Ross gets there first and kills Arin, securing the win for himself.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In and out of universe for Michael of Belated Media. In universe it was PTSD from the Chocolate wars. Out-of-universe, he was criticized for taking his character too seriously in the Polaris comment section. He posted a comment apologizing for it and saying that he stuck to it so strongly because he was REALLY nervous.
- Only Sane Man: Danny is the only one to ask who 'Him' is when the others call him in during Cards Against Humanity, and is also the only one to care about the tiebreaker gun.
- Rattling Off Legal: Parodied in the ad for the shirt. Your shirt won't go get you Taco Bell at 4 in the morning, don't even bother asking.
- Refuge in Audacity: In the very first three episodes of the series, they play Cards Against Humanity, an extremely raunchy game with humor that's full of Black Comedy, lewd jokes, and
crossing the line twice. - Running Gag:
- Not knowing what exact year the show's non-specific Victorian aesthetic is from.
- The name of Barry's dog-headed cane changing every episode.
- Danny being the Meta Guy who notices weird things or inconsistencies the others intentionally miss.
- Shout-Out: In the first episode, instead of dressing up in old-timey clothing, Ross is dressed up as the Tenth Doctor. Except the Tenth Doctor Does Not Like Guns and Ross uses a gun at the end.note
- Sole Survivor: Only one player survives to the end of Bang!. It's the Sheriff.
- Special Guest: Once per Episode. Aside from Arin, Dan and Ross, they include: Markiplier, CaptainSparklez, Belated Media, Stamper, Spazkid, ProJared, The Completionist, Mega64, Criken2, and Ashly Burch.
- Take a Third Option: One in the final moments of Bang!. The Sheriff has two people remaining, both on one HP. One is an Outlaw, the other is a Deputy, but he doesn't know which is which. He can choose to shoot one of them on his turn. The Sheriff instead opts to play an 'Indians' card, that deals 1 damage to every other player unless they discard a 'Bang!' card. Neither of the other two players has one, so they both die, leaving the Sheriff as the Sole Survivor.
- Tempting Fate: At the start of the Poker tournament, Barry responds to Danny's wishes of good luck with "Luck has nothing to do with it." Cue Ross clearing everyone out before finally losing to Danny, thanks to nothing but sheer dumb luck.
- Team Pet: Fidonkers, Barry's cane with a dog head at the top, serves as this to all the players during Betrayal at House on the Hill, though he technically becomes Mark's dog in the came.
- That Came Out Wrong: The Traitor's Speech for Betrayal at House on the Hill has one line where this happens. The traitor is the leader of a group of cannibals who plan to feast on the other players and a few additional victims, and when revealing this, they say, "I can just taste that beautiful man-meat now." They mean this literally (as in, the meat of humans), but "man-meat" is also a slang term for "penis", so, unsurprisingly, this results in the entire cast and crew immediately Corpsing.
- Toilet Humor: In the "The Game of Things" episode, where "Poop" is suggested as an answer for two different questions, followed by "Doo doo" and "Eat the poo poo".
- Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket: Parodied for the shirt ad. Without the shirt, Suzy can't flip a table, and Barry can't even sit down.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: Accidentally done by Suzy in their "King Of Tokyo" video, after she failed to catch the extra die.
