Web Video / Video Games Awesome!

The VGA cast, cosplaying as The Simpsons

"Hello and welcome to Video Games Awesome!!"

Video Games Awesome! is an online show centered around a group of friends who sit on (and behind) a couch and play video games, offering their opinions, cracking jokes, and sometimes just hanging out. It began in June 2009 as a spin-off of Awesome Video Games, as a way for the creative team behind that series to release content and stay visible between updates of AVG. Since then, it has more or less overtaken its show of origin in terms of content and popularity. Currently, the show is hosted by Fraser Agar and Becky Blow; before the show's move to Japan in mid-August 2018, there were also regular co-hosting appearances by Kyle Huinink, Deacon Publicover, and Ben Taylor (who temporarily left the show to attend college but eventually returned). For now, the latter three are expected to only reappear in special reunion episodes.

Much of the show’s appeal stems from its casual and laid-back atmosphere. The show is unscripted and intentionally does not focus on hardcore gaming, instead emphasizing fun above all. Many installments are designed to provide the perspective of gamers approaching a game for the first time; to that end, most of the games played are current at the time of the episode's release (though they have occasionally dabbled in retro gaming with titles like EarthBound and Doom), and usually some or all of the cast has not played the game before, allowing for genuine first impressions and reactions.

Formerly available through Channel Awesome affiliate Blistered Thumbs, videos are now archived on their website and YouTube channel (note that the latter is updated on a more regular basis), and livestreamed on Twitch here.

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This show provides examples of:

A-D

• Abnormal Ammo: They beat a boss in LittleBigPlanet 2 by throwing Deacon's and Becky's characters at it.
• Aborted Arc: Twice with their Let's Play with EarthBound. First was around 2010, and again in 2013 when Becky was in the cast. The version with Becky lasted for 57 parts with the last one being on December 2013 when the gang just got Poo, with no updates since. It's very unlikely the team would contuine the game after the move to Japan in 2018.
• Abusive Parents:
  • While playing Babysitting Mama, due to the game chastising them for "shaking the baby" too often due to touchy Wii controls, the group eventually lapse towards this out of frustration.
  • Fraser was also a pretty crappy parent during the Heavy Rain playthrough.
• Accidental Innuendo: Basically any time restoring PP or running out of PP is mentioned in EarthBound, the group hear "peepee". invoked
• Acquired Poison Immunity: "I read Youtube comments for a living."
• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • "Couple's Catherine Co-op!"
  • In Team Fortress 2, while Ben's team was seriously losing, Fraser claimed that he'd be "feebly and forlornly flogging [his] flaccid phallus" that night.
• Adorable Abomination: Fraser, Becky, and Ben all decide that the Imprisoned is one after seeing its feet. They are not happy to learn how to go about defeating him.
  Fraser: That would be like cutting off a kitty's pads!
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: When they played The Binding of Isaac, they started telling stories about awful things that happened to them as kids. It became a running gag, any time the story involved another boy, to add "And that boy... was Ben/Deacon."
• Aside Glance: During The Last of Us Left Behind, Becky makes use of this trope when she and Fraser discuss a person they knew from their hometown.
  Becky: He's the one who taught me what "69" meant.
  Fraser: Nice. Taught you or told you?
  Becky: (Aside Glance) ...Told me.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Fraser has trouble being distracted too much by Minecraft maps.
  All right, I'm gonna continue with aughts. I'm not gonna get sidetracked. [Less than a minute later] Sorry guys, I got sidetracked. Is aughts yelling at me?
• Bat Deduction:
  • Invoked several times during a playthrough of Batman: Arkham Asylum, as Fraser tries to solve the Riddler's puzzles by way of the Trope Namer:
  Riddler: Don't cut yourself on this sharply observed portrait.
  Fraser: Portraits... the Mona Lisa... Lisa Simpson... FOX Broadcasting... foxes... the fur shop!!
  • They also do it in the Heavy Rain video.
  • And in L.A. Noire.
  Gun shop owner: Said he worked at Hartfield's, jewelery store just up on Broadway.
  Kyle gasps
  Fraser: What's that mean?
  Kyle: The jewelery store...no wait, that's a shoe store. Nothing.
  Fraser: But the jewelery store...pearl earrings...layaway...LC...bank...shoes...woman? Police...
  Kyle: Cops...Police Cops.
  Fraser: Investigation. Murder investigation! The murder was in the jewelery store!
  Kyle: (overlapping) Sea...it happened by the sea...C is for Catwoman!
  • And Phoenix Wright on multiple occasions.
    • The "Turnabout Big Top" case, on the other hand, displeased Fraser specifically because it required such massive leaps of logic.
  • In Episode 3 of The Walking Dead.
  Ben: X...X marks the spot...
  Fraser: Spots are on leopards...Leopards live in zoos...Zoo starts with a Z...Xenophobia! We have a racist on our hands!
• Bellisario's Maxim: From a sign inside the Popsicle Stick Skyscraper in The Simpsons Minecraft map. invoked
  Please no smoking. Also, no pointing out the folly of lighting a wooden building with torches. Thank You
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't mention Canadian Bacon. Don't bring it up. Don't make fun of it. You have been warned.
  • Fraser can get really ticked off when the others move off of the green screen.
  • Fraser hates the TTC, both in Scott Pilgrim and real life.
  • Glitches (see Game-Breaking Bug below). But if the glitch is entertaining and doesn't break the game, they usually give it a pass.
  • Ephebophiles. Fraser really doesn't like it when characters in the game don't find a grown man dating someone underage disturbing, regional differences in age of consent be damned.
  • Don't tell him he's playing a game wrong. This goes for both the game itself and the audience (unless he's asking for hints).
  • He hates spoilers more than most. The mods will block you if you get anywhere near a spoiler and he complained about The Walking Dead's next episode previews. Justified because his show is built around letting you see his and Becky's initial reactions to games.
  • He hates being pinned in by NPCs
  • Do not call him a sociopath because of the way he chooses to play games.
  • Illogical solutions in games that are supposed to be based on logic really annoy him; this frequently happens in the Ace Attorney series.
  • Games dicking around with whether or not they are downloaded or installed properly so that the player can continue. Given the nature of the show, this is very much justified.
  • The recent playthrough of Batman: Arkham Knight has exposed one for Fraser: not finishing a particularly hard segment of a game the best he possibly can, the first time. His Frage, usually playful and "Eh, no biggie" style, turned dark and loud when he failed several times at a particular AR Challenge. If you wish to look it up, go to Part 17 and go to around eight minutes. And turn your headphones down!
  • Also, Part 43, around 53 minutes 10 seconds, gives another example of this particular Berserk Button being smacked, resulting in yet another ear-shattering tirade.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Fraser's comically wimpy Phoenix Wright voice suddenly loses all wimpiness and suddenly becomes dead serious and scarily angry when Phoenix first learns that Shelly's kidnapped Maya in Justice For All.
• Black Comedy:
  • The team sometimes veer into this. In particular, their playthrough of infamously dark and depressing game Heavy Rain is pretty much nothing but this.
  • Fraser and the chat's pitch for a horror-themed Home Alone remake in Limbo.
• Black Comedy Rape: The VGA crew is the only crew which can make gang rape seem hilarious.
  • The group makes fun of the time a old man asked Ben for a blowjob. Fraser than makes up a story about how Ben came home shaking and held his knees in the shower.
• Black Sheep: Of the Duck family, Lucifeather from Dragon Age: Inquisition is the only one who isn't a ruthless murderer.
• Blatant Lies: BioShock Infinite featured a tit-for-tat after Fraser murdered a pair of friendly NPC's: Becky telling Fraser that the chat was lighting up with positive reinforcement, and Fraser telling her that he aims to please the people in chat.
• Bond One-Liner:
  • After drilling a bad guy in the heart in Heavy Rain, Fraser comes up with a ton of them:
  Fraser: Part two! Drill to the heart! [...] I guess you're the one who got screwed, or, look out for those heart-holes...I hear they're catching! Looks like the diagonosis is...murder! [...] [reading Kshade's comment] This is not a drill...and then make some reference to the painter who made This is not a pipe. [...] C'est n'est pas drill [sic]. [...] I'm a regular René Magritte!
  • Not too long after, when a character's clothing is caught on some caterpillar tracks and crushed:
  Ben: Days without an accident: Zero.
  Fraser: You should be an action hero, Ben.
• Bootstrapped Theme: Ya Burnt by Starship Amazing has become the de-facto theme to the show after it (and the rest of the album, Ya’ll Stop Bloggin’) was played on the show.
• Catchphrase: Fraser's "EM EL GEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Becky has "I never knew!" (said in an innocent sounding voice), which she has been using since childhood. See Running Gag below for more.
• Cliffhanger
  • The Future Minecraft Build was split into two segments, with the first ending on a cliffhanger of the Doctor from Doctor Who escaping in a DeLorean after his TARDIS broke down.
  • The Adventure Build ends on a wall that would take several weeks to break through to save NekoEvangeline.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • The opening to the Bulletstorm video.
  Fraser: Fuuuuuuuuuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck! Dicktits! Fucking dicktits. Son of dick...it's Bulletstorm!
  • When Larry punches Lee in an attempt to have him killed by zombies in The Walking Dead: Episode 1, all three start yelling f-bombs at the game in rage and planning his death. The same happens later when Lilly kills Carley.
• Collective Groan:
  • During the Microsoft Press Conference at E3 2011, the gang find out there is a new Star Wars game...on the Kinect.
  • Several times during the Duke Nukem Forever gameplay, when they think Duke will finally get a chance to go outside and kick some ass, only to be stymied by yet another obstacle. Like this.
  • A number of Fraser's Seussian rhymes are reacted to this way.
  • And a double when playing NBA Jam:
  Fraser: So that was our first regular match, Lakers vs Beastie Boys. Looks like they let the beat...mmmDROP.
  Others: Oooh...(Beat)...oooh...
  Fraser: You can only groan once to a bad joke.
• Cosplay: They usually dress up like characters from the game they play that day, with costumes made by Becky herself. Some examples here.
• Couch Gag: Literally, when the gang enters and exits the screen in a manner befitting the game they're playing. For example, with Harley-Davidson Roadtrip, they "rode" the couch in like a motorcycle.
• Country Matters: They go to town absolutely abusing this during a Deadly Premonition segment. They also briefly discuss how much it offends people living in the U.S. while the Canadians (or at least they) don't care so much.
• Cuteness Proximity:
  • The Kinectimals tiger for Ben ("His name is Skittles!"), and the Let's Play Ballerina outfits for all the guys ("She looks darling!").
  • Gaepora's pet remlit in Skyward Sword was apparently adorable enough that Fraser absolutely refused to attack it when it went feral on them.
• Delayed Reaction:
  • It takes the boys a few seconds to catch on to "Twilightning Round".
  • The chatroom, at best, has a four-second delay, so back-and-forth between the chat and gang tends to get messy.
  • Fraser occasionally takes a second to process the rest of the group's jokes.
    • Pretty much inevitable given that he's trying to play the game, provide commentary (and he's quite the talker) react to Becky and Ben and sneak glances at chat.
• Description Cut: At the start of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Nathan's deal starts to go bad:
  Fraser: They wouldn't have walked into this situation. They have a plan.
  [Nathan grabs a pool cue and attacks the closest man.]
  Fraser: That's the plan!
• Dissimile/Metaphorgotten: Fraser sees a model of a bridge in an office conference room and says it's probably just there as an illustration for the boss's motivational speeches. His attempt at demonstrating this veers off-course when he realizes it doesn't quite make sense, and manages to turn it back around into a functional metaphor that means the exact opposite of what he was originally going to say:
  Fraser (in a mocking tone): "You see, the company is like a bridge. And every person is like a part of that bridge. You take away part of the bridge... well, it mostly stays the same... I been takin' pieces off this bridge all day. Sometimes for toothpicks... sometimes to wedge up a wobbly chair—
  Ben: Bridges are stronger than you think.
  Fraser: You know, we don't need most of you, is what I'm trying to say. Sure, it may make the bridge a little bit weaker, but... we can deal with that."
  Ben: "Long story short, you're all fired."
• Don't Explain the Joke:
  • "Get it? She shit everywhere!" "She just had to leave the room to take a big shit!"
  • "He made a joke about your masculinity."
  • "Join us next week on Crocodile Tears! 'Cause he cries, and the croc."
• Double Entendre: They all use them, but Becky LOVES them.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male:
  • During a Phoenix Wright playthrough, Becky messed up the intro by clicking on the wrong game in the Wii menu and Fraser relentlessly made fun of her for it (for the record, he did apologize, though it was hard to hear through his laughter). She was most displeased. Later, when they came back from a commercial break, Fraser had put on a pair of sunglasses and Becky was smiling.
  Becky: Welcome back to Phoenix Wright!
  Fraser: ...I fell down some stairs.
  Ben: Into a bag of doorknobs.
  • Subverted in one of the LEGO City Undercover episodes where Becky wants to make the exact same joke as above but Fraser refuses, saying that "domestic abuse is not a laughing matter".
• Downer Ending:
  • The Duke Nukem Forever episode. The gradual drop of excitement to outright depression amongst the crew as they progress through the game is heartbreaking.
  • The Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two episode turned out similarly, culminating in a puzzle Fraser nearly gave up on because he had no idea how he was supposed to activate the move he needed to do. After concluding the game must be broken but insisting on trying one last time, and then finally figuring out the move and powering through the puzzle, he declared that the game "has some serious design flaws" and quit in disgust.
  • The McPixel episode. Although they loved the twisted logic of the base game, they got stuck on a user-created level where the "solution" made no sense, even for McPixel. The level had McPixel on a boat with a bomb and a sailor, and the solution was to click on an unremarkable section of the gunwale, which makes McPixel do a handstand, levitate, and fart green fire for twenty seconds. They were pissed, and rightly so.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: "Okay, Link is one step away from being full-on girl."
• Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe. Fraser's reaction during Catherine to the chat trolling him on the time left in the game.

E-Q

• Easy-Mode Mockery: Averted, they always play on the easiest setting and call it 'Super Fraser mode'. Played straight in Mass Effect 3 where Frasher set the game into Hardcore mode partially in response to chat mocking him.
• Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Fraser's voice for Gumshoe.
• Epic Fail: For one of the You Don't Know Jack questions, all four of them chose the wrong answer, but to their surprise, it was the Wrong Answer of the Game, giving them all a huge bonus.
• Extremely Omnisexual:
  • Ben frequently plays this up for laughs. He often makes lewd comments at things such as the potentially underaged characters in Let's Play Ballerina, his cat/girl/boy/whatever "fiancee" Nekoevangeline on Minecraft Awesome, inanimate objects and even his fellow co-host Fraser.
  • Fraser and the others are also guilty of this from time to time, from the corpsefucker joke in Heavy Rain to gangbanging an NPC in Four Swords Adventures.
  • Datura was an especially (and unusually) erotic episode, from Fraser groping a statue of a woman to wanting to slap a pig's ass.
• Far East: The "Frasia" build in Minecraft, mixing ancient and medieval Japan, China and one Korean turtle boat. And a Megazord. Also, the non-build challenge area Shiro Shiro.
• Forced Meme: Fraser hates Yogscast.
• For Inconvenience, Press "1": "Tech Support AWESOME!" has the gang waiting on the line for someone to fix their Internet connection.
• Gag Penis:
  • Just how many giant cocks did their original Minecraft server have?
  • And the first structures built in the second one were giant cocks.
  • In Duke Nukem Forever, Duke is given a chance to draw up a battle strategy on a dry-erase board. Fraser spends five minutes drawing an army of giant cocks attacking the monster. Later, a kid asks for Duke's autograph, so Fraser draws cocks in his book.
  Kyle: I feel that Duke would autograph with a cock.
  • As part of the Minecraft Awesome Anniversary episode, Fraser had all the builders create a field of cocks, with one massive diamond cock to tower over them.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Fraser seems to be a magnet for these.
  • In Harley-Davidson Roadtrip, the game stopped accepting controller input, twice.
  • In Dead Island, he got his truck stuck on a wall, and stepping out of the vehicle killed him, twice.
  • In Amnesia: The Dark Descent, essential puzzle pieces glitched themselves out of existence, twice.
  • In Mass Effect 3, they get stuck in place twice and have to save and reload. The first time, when he's boxed in by a couple of NPCs, they all find it pretty funny. The second time, when they encounter a well-known glitch in the Normandy cockpit that they thought had been patched, they find it less funny, and it prompts Fraser to speak at length about gamer complacency towards glitches and not holding game companies accountable for them.
  • They also get stuck behind two NPCs in Costume Quest: Grubbins On Ice.
  • Skyrim was a particularly bad offender; they had to restart the game more than once because the system froze or they suddenly became unable to move.
  • Of all games, even LittleBigPlanet Karting had one: the game just up and froze in-between races and they had to restart the system.
  • In one level of Sonic Generations, the camera gets stuck in a disorienting position, making it almost impossible to get through.
  • The camera also goes nuts in an episode of The Walking Dead, falling through the world and making progression impossible.
  • In Saints Row: The Third, Fraser and Ben start a co-op playthrough, and only a few minutes in they lose their connection to each other. The result: Fraser's screen freezes, while on Ben's screen the vehicle flies through the air in a straight line until it — and his character — collides with a buliding.
  • During their Borderlands 2 playthrough, Fraser remarked that a separate save he had been playing in his free time became completely corrupted and he had to abandon all the progress he'd made with that character.
• The Ghost: The Doctor (from Doctor Who, frequently just called "Doctor Who" by Fraser) in the Minecraft Future build, who creates diversions for Fraser-as-the Master and only just escapes in his TARDIS through various eras in history. Finally appeared in The Simpsons build.
• Good Bad Bugs: invoked In Dead Island, Fraser somehow got stuck in rage mode for about ten minutes, with all all the experience bonuses that came with it. The downside was that it made the game scream at him for the entire time.
• Grandfather Clause: Fraser still introduces the show as "Video Games Awesome Live", even though they haven't done an episode that wasn't live since early 2011.
• Heroic BSoD: In this GTA V playthrough, Fraser mistakes a Labrador Retriever for a deer and runs it over with a hearty cry of "Venison!". Ten seconds of Oh, Crap! later (complete with Big "OMG!", he pulls out his grenade launcher and fires it at his feet. BOOM.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Fraser had the guys play Scene It: Twilight, thinking the joke would be on them. He then started to regret it.
• Hypocritical Humour:
  • In the Minecraft live build.
  Fraser: So, yeah, you guys may think I'm vengeful and fickle god, but I know the names of all my subordinates. I take time to know each of them. (turns to a Minecraft player) Who the hell are you?!
  • And in Mario Party 2, after Fraser concedes a loss due to his carpel tunnel making him worse at button mashing.
  Fraser: Way to make fun of my impediment, you dyslexic fuck!
• I Can See My House from Here: Right in the first scene of Mass Effect 3, the view outside the window is Vancouver, which gets celebrated with lots of cheers. It immediately gets destroyed by the Reapers less than 3 minutes later. Fraser thinks the big Reaper in front of the window is probably standing right on top of their house.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: "[name of game] is AWESOME!" Even that one time that the game turned out to be so un-awesome that Fraser Rage Quit.
  • Averted in the cases of "Dead Island Co-Op is...Derped" and "Duke Nukem is AWESOME!...but his game is AWFUL!"
  • Averted during Halloween 2015 after Fraser found out that a certain game was more of an Environmental Narrative Game experience rather than the Survival Horror game it had branded itself as. What pushed it over the edge is that the developer charged 10-13$ for only about 90 minutes of game content. Fraser resolved to get a steam refund and called the episode The Park....AWESOME.
  • He did the same with Everybody's Gone to the Rapture which could suggest that this is a separate version of the show's Idiosyncratic Episode Naming.
    • This modified version has since become the standard for all their playthroughs.
• I Know You Know I Know: The group's method of out-trolling Deacon during one of the Buddy Quiz questions in Wii Party.
  Fraser: Oh, man. Now, what's he gonna choose? The one that he knows I'm not going to choose? [...] We've discussed it so much, he's gonna troll and say "seahorse" [as a cooler creature than the blue whale], I think.
  Deacon picks "blue whale" as an answer, which Kyle and Fraser correctly answer.
  Fraser: I knew he'd thought I'd think that, so I went with what he didn't think I'd think.
  Kyle: I went with the opposite of what I didn't think he would think that I did think that I thought I thought that Deacon thought.
• Incredibly Lame Pun:
  • The guys love these.
  • Therefore turning the chat room into a Hurricane of Puns.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: The Xbox One Reveal caused this reaction in Fraser.
• It Makes Sense in Context: The chat loves taking things Fraser says that sound bizarre out of context and repeating them as quotes attributed to "Fraser, 20XX".
• It's a Wonderful Plot: Briefly seen in the Minecraft Christmas build.
• "Knock Knock" Joke: During the Super Mario RPG fanfest. It really didn't go over well with the others.
  Fraser: Received the NokNok Shell.
  Ben: NokNok.
  Deacon: Who's there?
  Ben: Mario. ^note pronounced as Marry-o
  Deacon: Mario who?
  Ben: Mario......won't you Mario me?
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All:
  • You could essentially play a drinking game with how much game trivia the team gets completely wrong - even when they're right in the middle of playing the relevant game.
  • While playing Catherine, Fraser ignored the items tutorial, thought the chat room was lying when they said he could use items, despite an instruction to do so sitting in the bottom right corner of the screen, and then criticized the game for not explaining this feature to him.
  • Intentionally invoked from time to time, when Fraser confidently describes things incorrectly, such as combining the plots of several movies. This is done mostly to troll the chat and Ben.
  • Sometimes, the chat. With so many people in chat, it's inevitable that some people will believe incorrect information about a game.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Chinderella from the Dragon Age: Origins play through.
• Larynx Dissonance: Fraser decided to give 8-year old girl Pearl Fey a baritone.
  • And then for Trials and Tribulations, Fraser gives Desiree DeLite a gravelly tough-guy voice, likely to complement Becky's girly voice for Ron. It actually manages to make Ron/Dessie's relationship appear even more disturbing.
• Leave No Witnesses: Fraser claims to do this in one of his Red Dead Redemption rampages.
• Left Hanging:
  • The Future Minecraft build doesn't really resolve the Doctor/Master story.
  • Mellisbaker's trip back to the land of the living in the Sky Build sort of just stopped in Skyloft.
• Lost in Translation: During their play though of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All, Fraser notes that how the adjective "uppity" is often used in reference for the very effeminate magician they're trying to defend, and how it was likely used in place of a term that would be considered rather offensive and homophobic in the west.
• Love It or Hate It: Fraser notes Heavy Rain as this. The gang fall clearly into the "love it" side. invoked
• Macro Zone: The "Benormous" build in Minecraft, featuring a room with a couch and TV, and a giant-sized garden.
• Manly Tears: Shed by Fraser at the end of The Walking Dead when Lee dies.
• Man of a Thousand Voices: Fraser can do a wide variety of voices, best exemplified in the Ace Attorney playthroughs.
• Mathematician's Answer:
  Fraser: 'Is inflammable unable to be put on fire or resistant to fire?'
  Ben: 'Uhm... yes?'
• Mega Crossover: While a few pop cultural references appeared in prior Minecraft builds, the future-themed one has a continuing story arc of the Master from Doctor Who (portrayed by Fraser) chasing the Doctor, and ending up in a soundstage filled with a multiple-franchise space battle centred on Star Trek's Borg. Later, Fraser discovers Tomorrowland, an unmanned Gundam, Invader Zim's house, Cogswell Cogs from The Jetsons, The Matrix, 2015 Hill Valley from Back to the Future Part II, Planet Zebes from Metroid, New New York from Futurama and others.
• Metaphorgotten: While playing Mass Effect 3, complaining about the lack of romance (specifically, sex scenes) with Liara:
  Fraser: The whole point of having the cow at home is that you get the milk for free whenever you want...unless it has mastitis, and then you have to disinfect it, and probably disinfect the suction thing that gets the milk, what do they call that?
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: While Ben plays Limbo poorly, Fraser states that his middle name should be "Reckless Abandon". Fraser later uses the phrase to describe himself.
• Missing Steps Plan:
  • On a mission board in the Minecraft Frasia Build.
  Avenge Drift's Parents
  Rank:?????
  Reward:Profit
  • Mellisbaker's sign in the Eden Temple section of Frasia.
  Step 1: Build Temple
  Step 2: Show Live
  Step 3: ????
  Step 4: Profit
  • And near an "interactive" giant Lazuli ore block in the Benormous build.
  Get that pick [sign points towards chest]
  1. Hit button
  2. ????
  3. Profit!
  • Used as part of a riddle in the adventure map build. Apparently question marks is actually what comes before profit.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The endgame of The Walking Dead Episode 2 when the team finds Mark with both his legs cut off the mood goes from the usual VGA show to a more intense show.
  • Happens again in Episode 5 when after barely escaping an infested street, the team immediately becomes much more sombre and quiet than usual as Lee finally passes away, with Fraser even fighting tears.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Fraser's reaction to running over a dog in Grand Theft Auto V after mistaking it for a deer, after which he promptly blows himself up with a grenade launcher.
• No Fourth Wall: The team (especially Becky) constantly deliver lines directly to the camera/audience. Particularly lampshaded in episodes where they have to sort out settings on Xbox Kinetic games and thus have to show the (usually invisible due to greenscreen) studio on screen through the Kinetic's camera, causing Ben (or the chat) to cry out "No, the fourth wall!".
• No Hugging, No Kissing: Fraser and Becky refuse to kiss on camera, saying "we're not that kind of people", although Becky isn't above hugging and flirting with Fraser. The rule was finally broken on the New Year's Minecraft episode, where Becky and Fraser give each other a customary midnight kiss only for Becky to obscure it from the camera with her hand at the last second.
• No Sympathy: Fraser towards Acro in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All, to the point where he calls out the chat for being more swayed by Acro's Freudian Excuse by angrily telling them that it doesn't matter because Acro still tried to kill a little girl.
• Non-Indicative Name/Odd Name Out: The five Minecraft builds, named after each of the team, were called "Frasia", "Beckyni Bottom", "Benormous", "Deactor Seuss" and "Kyle".
• Noodle Incident:
  • Occasionally one of the gang might reference some past event without going into detail. Fraser apparently once shat on a train.
  • During the LEGO City Undercover playthrough Becky wore a fake muscle costume to dress up as Rex Fury, which led to this exchange.
  Becky (replying to The Chat) : Totally, I went topless on a show.
  Fraser: Yeah, this is Becky's first topless show.
  Ben: No nipples...
  Fraser: Bet you didn't know she was this ripped underneath — And, yeah. Not since that bacon accident.
  Ben: Let's not talk about that.
  Becky: I was hoping nobody brought it up.
• Obviously Evil: Invoked in the playthrough of Walking Dead Episode 2. They immediately guess the diary farmers are going to be evil...and they're right.
• Off the Rails: Several parts of the Minecraft adventure builds, but especially the one based on Monkey Island.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Despite his foggy memories of prior playthroughs of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney while playing the game on VGA, Fraser instantly realises that Manfred van Karma means business just from his name being uttered.
  • Likewise, the group was left unspoiled for Groose's Dynamic Entry in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, only told that there was going to be a very interesting cutscene coming up. Fraser's reaction was not unlike Link's.
    Fraser: ... What? A cinematic instead of going all the way down... What the-HOLY SHIT!
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Neither Fraser nor the server mods will forget Ben killing the wolf Ruddadog in Minecraft.
• Only Six Faces: Discussed in Dead Island.
  Fraser: He has a face tattoo so that you'll remember him.
  Ben: So that he won't look the same as everybody else?
  [...]
  Fraser: The Japanese use different-coloured hair, Americans use face tattoos.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: As the chat was quick to point out, the guys all stop their usual witty commentary and stay completely silent when watching a trailer for The Dark Knight Rises.
• Pet the Dog: Fraser still feels bad for 'Duck' from The Walking Dead despite all the vitriol he directed at him during the playthrough.
• Phrase Catcher: "That's our Frash-Frash!" Fraser tends to have his own lines repeated back at him by the chat as well.
• Pokémon Speak: In the final part of Four Swords Adventures, Fraser and Deacon started saying "Farshar" and "Steeeeve" like Pokémon.
• Pun: In the Minecraft Christmas build, there was a penis, but also a large chicken in the ice sculpture contest. The latter was disqualified because they "already had a giant cock".
• Quote Mine: The chat loves doing this with things the group says, particularly those snippets that sound horrible out of context.

R-Y

• Rage Quit: Fraser is not the most competent of players, but generally refuses to let a game get the better of him, even if it means asking the chat for help. But after dealing with one frustrating design flaw after another in Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, he finally decided it wasn't worth continuing.
• Read the Freaking Manual/Failed a Spot Check:
  • Fraser will often skip, ignore, or misinterpret the game's instructions, onscreen or otherwise - the official stance is that they don't want to bog the episode down with them going through tutorials or reading manuals, but more often than not this results in Fraser and company asking the chat to walk them through the game. For example, in Catherine, he thought the chat room was lying when they said he could create a block, even though the command to do so was highly visible in the corner of the screen.
  • In Uncharted 2, the old man sends Nathan and a guide to find the remain of his expedition:
  Fraser: Are we going to hunt a bear?
  • Fraser talked over the "Dis or Dat" instructions in You Don't Know Jack, and burned the rest of the round asking the others what he was supposed to do.
  • They skipped a tutorial for Chick Chick Boom and were thus mystified by Corncobman.
  • After the instructions for crouching in Dead Island flashed on and off, Fraser claimed that the game hadn't told him how to do it.
  • And in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the elevator code is mentioned (and displayed in captions) twice, but Ben and Fraser don't notice it.
  • In Dead Rising 2: Off The Record, Fraser keeps making waypoints on the map, but puts them at the wrong place and then complains about being lead the wrong way. At the beginning he also completely ignores the icon indicating where he is on the map and thinks the waypoint that he made himself to know where to go is his current location.
  • During Batman: Arkham City, Fraser kept asking the chat for ways to defeat Mr. Freeze, when at any time he could have hit a button to get the full list of ways from the Batcomputer.
• Retirony: The cactus trap Professor Frink built for Deacon in The Simpsons build was said to have happened both on his birthday and one day before his retirement.
• Rhyming with Itself: During their God of War: Ascension play through...
  Frasher: Things that are gold, shimmy, and... gold.
• Running Gag:
  • "Unsubbing." Fraser thinks it's hilarious when people go out of their way to announce that they're unsubscribing (usually because of too many/not enough Minecraft episodes), so they and their viewers like to come up with other vapid reasons for unsubscribing, usually in the format of "Not enough X, unsubbing".
  • Mr./Mrs. X is Y. Started when Fraser started trolling one of his mods called mrchrismad, frequently calling him Mr. Chrisismad; ever since, the live chat applies this to anger or any other emotion any of the cast is feeling.
  • Whenever Fraser changes a game's difficulty to Easy to play on, the chat room praises him in some variation, that he "Passed the game's stage on Hard Mode." In fact whenever Fraser changes the difficulty to Easy Mode, he and the Chat Room declare the game is on Super Fraser Mode, the hardest difficulty imaginable.
  • "...First try!"
  • "We just beat the dragon!", an Awesome Video Games reference, and "We did it! We saved him!", apparently a Wet Hot American Summer reference.
  • "It takes a real special kind of jerk/asshole..."
  • The guys joke about Ben's dyslexia a lot. It also seems to be an inside joke among them that Ben is a pedophile.
  • "You dyslexic fuck."
  • "I never knew!" This one is from Becky, said an innocent tone of voice usually when she messes something up. This has been a running gag for her since her childhood.
  • "Did you hear the rumor?", a line from Catherine's highly repetitive dialogue.
  • "...you cock."
  • "She's already dead!" And quoting The Simpsons in general.
  • "...and that X was Ben's father." On one occasion, this shifted to Ben saying "and that boy was me".
  • "Because she's a woman!"
  • X is/isn't a good Y pilot.
  • TAS Batman 1992-1995. Do not touch the display!
  • "And on my birthday!"
  • Fraser's trollface.
  • "Fool." from Asura's Wrath.
  • "Big ups!"
  • Confusing Star Wars with Star Trek.
    Fraser: (after a long tangent about Jar Jar Binks) Star Trek Episode I: The Search for Spock.
  • "Er, um, uh...you know the rest." (with liberally applied fake Australian accent)
  • "I have... Really bad diarrhea!"
  • "Oh, and that's a bad miss."
  • Becky and Ben telegraphing obvious solutions to hacking puzzles in Mass Effect 2.
  That one and that one. And those two...
  • "I'm gonna use my best confidence!!"
  • "Just leave."
  • Fraser picking up and tossing aside whatever physics object was impeding his progress, saying "Get the hell outta here!" For a while he used to add "Ever see a guy say goodbye to a [object] before?"
  • Somehow they managed to find enough opportunities to quote "And I thought they smelled bad... on the outside!" (said in a wacky, mock one-liner tone) to qualify as a running gag.
  • "Who are you calling a dummy, dummy?" (A reference to Goosebumps: the Game)
  • "As is tradition..."
  • To Fraser, almost anything sinister "looks like a kitty".
  • "Check, Please!," either an invocation of the trope or perhaps a reference to a specific episode of Adventure Time.
  • The series of "Duck" characters. When the game allows face customization, Fraser will try to give the character big lips that stick way out (as bill-like as possible), a sloping brow with no eyebrows and small ears in addition to whatever funny physical features he can manage. Started with Space Duck for Mass Effect. According to show canon, these characters are all somehow related.
    • Subverted when Fraser found the customization of Dragon Age II lacking, particularly in the lips department. So he created Egg Hawke, the adopted member of the Duck family. In that she just showed up on the Duck estate one day and started working there.
  • "We're about... to find... out!" said in a really hammy voice.
  • When they encounter an enemy that appears to be suffering (such as the ones in The Binding of Isaac that are full of flies and constantly coughing up live flies), one of them usually says that Fraser is doing them a favor killing them and adds "It's not a good life."
• Scandalgate: In Sideway New York Fraser referred to his rap (used earlier in a Minecraft build) containing the word "niggaz" as being subject to Goldteethgate.
• Scenery Gorn:
  • The remains of the Minecraft Giant World after the giant Creeper explosion.
  • Fraser putting TNT and lava in the troll part of the Minecraft server's first anniversary build.
• Scenery Porn: Every Minecraft build. Taken further by the "artistic" pull-away at the end of the first anniversary of the original server.
• Serial Escalation: They started off doing ten-minute segments weekly, which soon bloomed into multi-hour live shows daily. For the Skyrim release, they were live for nine hours straight.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The narrative of the Future build in Minecraft.
• Shout-Out:
  • The builders on their Minecraft servers make a lot of popular culture references. One build was based specifically on the works of Dr. Seuss.
  • The gang quotes The Simpsons so much, their April Fools joke revolved around them being sued by FOX for infringement.
  • Fraser also noted that they made two unrelated Aladdin references within the same hour playing DmC: Devil May Cry.
• Sophisticated as Hell: According to Ben, "It's really awesome when really intelligent people swear. Especially when they're in the middle of saying something very intelligent."
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Done with words. Early on, any swears would be removed from an episode in post and either blanked or replaced with inoffensive words from elsewhere in the episode (this was heavily and repeatedly lampshaded whenever it happened). This practice eventually fell by the wayside, especially as more and more of their shows were done live and they started doing M-rated games.
• Spit Take: After a long string of dick jokes, Fraser couldn't hold his water in.
• Sublime Rhyme: Their Dr. Seuss build in Minecraft has the gang saying a lot of Dr. Seuss like rhymes, mostly from Fraser, with mixed results
  Fraser: What is this? My Minecraft just crashed.
  Beat
  What the frig rhymes with crashed?!
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: One of the users (actually Cameralady) in the boys-only Team Fortress 2 video was called "Camera Man [Totally Not A Girl]".
• Take That!:
  • While watching an impromptu stage performance in Minecraft.
  Fraser: Oh, this is the most disorganised show I've ever seen. [mock shrugging] What is this, Spider-Man on Broadway?
  • From the Mass Effect 2 playthrough after an anticipated sex scene being just a cut away. ^contextThe first game's sex scene with Liara showed more, but after conservative media, including Fox News complained...
  Ben: "FUCK YOU, FOX NEWS!
• Take That, Audience!: Fraser notes that Mallow from Super Mario RPG's snivelling sounds just like the chat.
• Team Pet:
  • The Babysitting Mama doll started to get used as a fill-in for absent party members, and now routinely gets included in videos, and gets it own costumes when the others dress up. They've since named it Hank.
  • Becky's Sackboy plushie has begun to make appearances as well.
  • Both have since been replaced with their own original mascot, the Turbo Buddy.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Whenever the gang play multiplayer games.
• That's What She Said: One of their favorite go-to gags.
• Toilet Humor:
  • Fraser really loves how Learning With The Poo Yoos has red bubbles that fart and a "fart button". Fraser and Becky sign out the episode with handfarts.
  • The gang are also amused when the blow-up boxer in Rhythm Heaven Fever makes fart noises when inflated improperly.
  • In the "Turnabout Goodbyes" case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Fraser starts accompanying his Grossberg speech with fart noises.
• Tradesnark™: Fraser got a lot of amusement out of finding the symbol selection in the name entry for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, choosing Hank™ as Link's name for the game.
• Trivially Obvious: Becky sums up the Kinect avatar chat as "something to do".
• Troll:
  • Pretty much all of Fraser's Minecraft builders are this, trolling Fraser with green couches, green "crouch rooms" and the occasional green comfy chair.
  • During Arkham Asylum, Fraser started trolling Ben by saying, "And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!" in out-of-context situations. Then they both started trolling Becky by saying it every few minutes. Then Becky trolled everyone by calling it a Star Trek quote.
  • Fraser trolled the others with an edited version of the Just Dance 2 trailer, which showed the same clip of terrible dancing over and over. He also set them up to play a "mystery game", which turned out to be Scene It: Twilight.
  • Fraser did the same thing with a trailer for Dance Star Party the following year.
  • Santa Claus trolled the Minecraft Christmas build at the end by griefing all the buildings.
  • When they did the "Meet the Pyro" show and Fraser revealed what the trailer's Sugar Bowl-y-ness, the expressions of everyone else was slack-jawed disbelief. Becky wrote in the comments that it took her a long time to believe it was the real trailer, since she's so used to him being a troll.
• Two Gamers on a Couch: ...and between one and three behind it.
• Underwater City: The "Beckyni Bottom" build in Minecraft, with a few Underwater Bases connected to it.
• Unwanted Assistance: The Chat occasionally got this reaction from Fraser which lead to the Snarf and Derp system; when this escalated to the point that spoilers were common in the chat, Fraser made the chat for paid members (or Turbos) only during the livestream.
  • Ironically, the very first show with a Turbo-only chat featured one of the more infamous moments of chat misinformation: while trying to escape a burning apartment in Heavy Rain, the chat told him he was going the wrong way; when he found out he had actually been going the right way after all, he really lost it.
  • The SNARF and Derp system has now been stopped because of this very reason. Chat now only gives SNARFs when asked, although chat members are still perfectly free to guess about things in the game they don't know and play along with the crew.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • The guys are put off by the brutal carnage Kirby unleashes during Kirby's Epic Yarn, especially in light of the fact that the "enemies" don't attack him, can't even hurt him, and are just going about their business when you run across them.
  • They (especially Fraser) got really pissed off at Kratos during the God of War III playthrough because of his tendency to massacre innocent people, especially women, often in cruel ways. Fraser even said that Kratos impaling himself was the best thing he'd ever done.
  • In Red Dead Redemption, with the "Diplomatic Immunity" cheat.
  • Also in Skyrim when Fraser spent over half of the show running around slaughtering non-player characters.
  • The first two episodes of the Assassin's Creed playthrough are full of this. Despite spending the entire rest of the show stumbling into random people for kicks, Fraser kills anyone who approaches him, gets in his way, or runs into him, including beggars and insane people.Even when he knows that it just causes hordes of guards to chase after him.
  • A less harsh example, but Fraser also makes a point of punching every pedestrian he sees in Grand Theft Auto V. It actually throws him off guard when he does it during a mission and the NPC he's paired with actually calls him out on it.
• Vocal Dissonance: Turns up now and then in the Ace Attorney videos. Most prevalent are giving Pearl Fey, a tiny little girl, a baritone, giving Regina, an innocent circus girl, a deep Russian voice, and making Desiree DeLite sound suspiciously like Dr. Girlfriend.
• Wiki Walk: One of Fraser's explanations for the chronic delays on Show and Trailers is that he will start doing research on a particular topic, read someone's blog about it, read other articles written by the author to understand his background and other opinions, and before he knows it he's reading up on Wikipedia about "Montezuma and the Mayans".
• The Wild West: The Old West Minecraft build.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Fraser's French-Italian-Spanish-Russian-Badly burned Albanian accent used for Maya Fey.
  The Chatroom: I want to say that's racist, but I don't know who it's racist to!
• Worst. Whatever. Ever!:
  • Fraser's slow getaway in Red Dead Redemption.
  Fraser: Worst. Getaway. Ever.
  • And his Minecart ride in Old Port on the Minecraft server.
  Fraser: Worst. Ride. Ever.
• X Days Since:
  • Minecraft
    • The Creeper Testing Ground in the Minecraft Beckyni Bottom build had 0 Days without injuries.
    • In the Frasia build, a shrine to "Super Quiet Creepers" had a "0 Days since last explosion" sign.
    • The Mine all Mine Offices and bunkrooms in the adventure map build proudly declares a massive two days without an accident.
  • In Heavy Rain, Ben uses this as a Bond One-Liner when a bad guy's loose clothing is caught on some caterpillar tracks.
  Days without an accident: zero.
• You Fool!: Fraser uses this speech pattern a lot while imitating the cast of Asura's Wrath.
  Fraser: FOOL! You cannot hurt me with my sword! That only makes me stronger!
• You Just Told Me: During a session of Rhythm Heaven Fever, Ben often was a lot better at the games than Fraser, and the chat frequently cheered on Ben or a member of the gang that wasn't even present whenever Fraser did do well.
  Fraser: (reading the chat) Fraser "Ben is better than me in every way" 2012
  Becky: Well, you said it.
  Fraser: Must've been drunk.
  Becky: No, you just said it, just now.
  Fraser: I did? Wow...oh fuck.
• You Say Tomato: The group's pronunciation of "Dr. Seuss" (like "Dr. Zeuss") was immediately called out by the entire chatroom.
• Your Mom: When they encounter that one mopey guy who sits on the steps on Windfall Island, his request for a pictograph of something perfectly round and pale is met the response "OK, where's your mom?" Half the humor is in how immediately and deadpan Fraser delivers the retort.

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