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Web Video / What the Fuck Is Wrong with You?

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/RagingNash_3985.jpg
Please do not provoke the raving jackass.

"Mankind has many defining characteristics, religion, politics, artistic endeavor, sexual deviancy, sexual deviancy disguised as artistic endeavor..."

John "Nash" Bozard hosts What The Fuck Is Wrong With You?, an internet show which focuses on various news stories of human stupidity and general what-the-fuckery. It began as a spin-off of Nash's live internet radio show Radio Dead Air and joined Channel Awesome after 17 episodes.

The show follows a simple formula: the host introduces the episode's topic with a poorly drawn cartoon, then proceeds to lose his mind over the featured news stories and the episode ends with a sketch featuring some of the secondary characters. The live version, What the Fuck is Wrong With You?! Live, is usually cohosted by Nash's longtime friend Tara Deenihan; when she's unavailable, it's others such as Dominic Noble, Luke "Rocked" Spencer, Linkara or Todd in the Shadows.

Following the shutdown of blip.tv, new episodes (as well as a good chunk of the archive) are posted on the YouTube channel for Radio Dead Air, with others archived on his Vimeo channel.

These works provide examples of:

  • Abuse of Return Policy: One segment featured a suspicious customer returning used enemas. In turn, Tara has mentioned incidents at Spencers Gifts in which customers returned products in extremely dubious condition - including sex toys - which her manager would simply put back out on the sales floor.
  • Action Girl: In Dumber Than Curling, a man heckling the 2012 Summer Olympic Men's 100m finals is tackled by Judo bronze medalist Edith Bosch when he starts throwing things.
  • Action Insurance Gag: Frequently whenever property damage to a vehicle or house occurs the hosts speculate on the owner of the vehicle having to report the damage to their insurance agency. You could make a drinking game for each time one of them parodies an insurance commercial.
    Nash: "We are farmers. Bum da bum bum bum bum JESUS CHRIST!"
  • Actually Pretty Funny:
    • In his "Castrovalva" review, he has this reaction to Tegan's line comparing a Zero Room, "a neutral environment, an isolated space cut off from the rest of the universe" to Brisbane. He then asks, "What's a Brisbane?"
    • In "Robot", he genuinely laughed at the Doctor's reasoning that Great Britain could be trusted with nuclear launch codes because "all the rest were foreigners".
    • The motorcycle gag from The TV Movie made him laugh.
    • In general, in the Live WTFIWWY shows, he hates puns made by journalists and reporters in articles, and also frequently dislikes Tara's puns. But when there's one he likes, he'll acknowledge it. That, or he'll laugh his ass off.
    • In the 6/20/16 episode, there's a story about two EMTs who got into a fight, with one leaping into their ambulance and driving off while the other was dragged by the vehicle. There's an eyewitness who saw this, reporting that the EMT being dragged shouted "Help me! Call 911!"; this makes Nash absolutely lose it.
  • Added Alliterative Appeal: Every so often a story comes up that the writer managed to do it.
    Nash: "The bare breasted brouhaha began...."
  • Agent Mulder: Tara frequently comes up with outlandish explanations for the stories, usually with references to a movie or TV show.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: One of Tara's greatest fears; whenever there's a story about people misusing technology, she'll mention how humanity is basically asking for a machine uprising.
  • Aluminum Christmas Trees: In-universe, the Christmas 2012 live episode begins with showing a series of tweets expressing disbelief that reindeer exist.
  • Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Surprisingly frequent stories of adults being far less mature than their kids by doing outrageous things such as getting into eight and twenty man brawls over spilled punch or a child taking too long to decide what prize to get, or assaulting a bus driver and dropping pants at police officers.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: On April Fool's Day 2013, Nash hosted RDA in character as Space Guy.
    • One night required Tara to step in and host the show herself. note  This episode has since been referred to by fans as 'Radio Red Hair'.
    • Space Guy and The Fallen Angel (Tara, as a fallen angel), hosted Halloween 2014, as well. Space Guy's reaction to Hookerween is priceless.
    • In late April 2015, Nash was in Minnesota filming his part in Atop the Fourth Wall: The Movie, so the 4/25 episode was filmed in the hotel room with all the other Channel Awesome guys there, including Linkara, Brad Jones, and MarzGurl.
  • Angrish: Really strange or squicky news stories (or occasionally weird reactions from Tara) cause Nash to lose the power of speech.
    Tara: I can't tell if I've lost your sound, or if you're just apoplectic beyond speech.
    • Argle-fargle-blargle!
      Nash: That's not an issue with the teleprompter; that's the best summation I can make of what actually happened!
      Nash: And in a minute, you'll understand why I couldn't come up with a better segue.
    • [after a chain of flubbed words] "I can say words..."
  • Anvilicious: The social commentary in "The Happiness Patrol" is thumpingly unsubtle:
    Nash: Hmm...what's a good way to illustrate the point? [Thinks for a moment, then gets crushed by a falling caption reading "MESSAGE"] Yeah...that'll do it...
    • It returns during the Doctor's Kirk Summation to beat him repeatedly over the head.
  • Apocalypse How: Class X-4, thanks to Space Guy trying to turn the filter back on.
  • April Fools' Day: Space Guy learns our wacky human ways with Special Guest Linkara.
  • Armor-Piercing Response: In the 1/9/17 show, Nash asks why bank robbers are so bad at what they do. Tara's response is "Because if they were good at things, they wouldn't be robbing banks?" Nash is legitimately stumped at how much that makes sense.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • Artistic Licence – Biology: A live episode had Nash claiming that the Loris was the only poisonous/venomous mammal; in reality, the male platypus is notorious for the highly-venomous (and extremely painful) spurs on his legs, while many shrews have venomous saliva. Admittedly, this instance is due to the fact that Nash wasn't working on a script at the time; in the scripted episode "All Creatures Great And Dumb," he actually brought up the Platypus' poison spurs.
  • Ascended Extra: JesuOtaku, originally a guest, became something of a permanent fixture of Nash's live shows from early-ish 2012 until he moved to the West Coast in mid-2013.
  • Ass Shove:
    • The "Monkeys" episode has it off-screen, but he got a banana shoved up his down-below. He's seen in a later episode needing to sit down gently on a cushion.
    • A recurring topic is people putting various objects in their orifices. "It's not a bag of holding, people!"
    • The best example was a woman high on meth putting a loaded .22 pistol barrel first up her vagina.
      • And the man doing 90 with a .38 Caliber REVOLVER UP HIS ASS.
      • And the guy who ended up in the hospital with an undetonated WORLD WAR II MORTOR up there. He claimed he fell on it.
      • And the woman who was hospitalized from a SHOT GLASS that was, shockingly, put through her urethra into her bladder. And stayed there for four years.
    • The last show of the year traditionally features "That Doesn't Go There," a retrospective of items people have shoved up their various orifices, including their asses. A rectal-spective, if you will.note 
  • Atomic F-Bomb: Nash's reaction to a mother convincing her own daughter that she had terminal cancer as part of a scam during Christmas Goat War is just to yell FUCK at the top of his lungs.
  • Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: During his Let's Play of Wolfenstein: The New Order, Nash is so horrified by the Body Horror of Frau Engel's shattered, bloody face that he blurts out "I don't wanna play anymore!" Then a minute later he's handed the controls of a Mini-Mecha and says "I take it back, I wanna play forever!"
  • Bad Liar: How many of the criminals get caught.
  • Bad to the Bone: When he decides to break the laws of science, the Trope Namer song is played.
  • Batter Up!: In "It's Not A Pocket," a grandmother lays waste to a naked home invader with a baseball bat.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Luke wished for a week without a poop story. He got that. That week instead had a story about exploding tubes of bull semen.
  • Bears Are Bad News: How much worse? A bear takes over Space Guy's ship!
    • Also, the story of a guy who decided to kill a bear to wear its skin.
    Number one, it's a bear. Number two, it's a bear. Number three, and probably most important... HOLY SHIT, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! IT'S A GODDAMNED BEAR!
    • In a Live WTF from July 2011, "Furry Batmobile", featuring Obscurus Lupa, she and Nash are nearly broken by a story about patrons at a Colorado Burger King feeding fast food to bears in the parking lot. What's more, the title of the episode itself came from a comment by Nash comparing bears to the Tumbler Batmobile.
    • Also, the episode where bears are getting high off of jet fuel barrels.
    • Nash frequently likens bears to furry tanks as a warning for those that mess with them.
    • Nash once stated this verbatim in the live episode "The Bear Masquerade" from August 17, 2015.
  • Berserk Button: Tara has made it known that she hates having her name spelled wrong, especially when it's blatantly obvious how it's supposed to look. If someone does misspells her name online, she will often focus in on and criticize them on her Twitter.
    • Don't wear orange around Tara on St. Patrick's Day.
  • Bestiality Is Depraved: Examples range from the women who died from having sex with a German Shepherd, to the man who argued it was his constitutional right to rape a donkey, to the man who wrote a book about his love affair with a dolphin, and the documentary aptly called Donkey Love, about donkeys and the men who love them. Like that.
    • And the farmer whose security cameras caught two men making pornography with his cows.
      • Or the story on the live episode "Buttmunchausen Syndrome" about a man who had been stalking his ex-wife, only for police to find fish porn on his cell phone.note 
  • Better by a Different Name: Nash insists on referring to the Mogarians in "Terror of the Vervoids" as "Daft-Punkians", and ends up setting part of the episode as a video for "Around the World".
  • Big Damn Heroes: A few stories feature these. The best one was when a group of teenagers ganged up and beat the crap out of a wannabe kidnapper who attempted to abduct two children. For bonus points, the parents had yelled at the teenagers for swearing around their kids.
    Tara (as a teenager) "Learned your fucking lesson didn't ya?"
  • Bill... Bill... Junk... Bill...: From the "Time and the Rani" review:
    Nash: Okay, what have we got here? Awful news, awful news, awful news, awf—how would that even fit in there? Awful news...
  • Blank White Eyes: Humperdink the hippo has a pair of these as his original eyeballs fell off a long time ago.
  • Body Horror: Tara's leg hole. It started off as a spider bite, and then formed into a large black abscess that ended up turned out to be necrotic fat. When it was removed, it ended up making a hole in her leg an inch and a half deep. As some added fun, it also gave her MRSA.
  • Book Ends: From Episode 33 - This Is All YOUR Fault (The Return):
    At the beginning of the "normal" part of the episode
    Nash: Hmm. Well, nobody's here and frankly, I've been so busy that I haven't had any time to research any news stories. So, I guess we'll just call it a da-
    Nash's Computer: You've Got Mail!
    Nash: (Beat) So hey, guess we'll just call it a da-
    Nash's Computer: You G-Got, You G-Got, You G-Got Mail, G-Got Mail, G-Got Mail!
    Nash: ...fuck.
    At the end of the episode
    Nash: I feel FREE! Like, like I'm never going to know stress again!
    (Beat)
    Nash's Computer: You G-Got, You G-Got, You G-Got Mail, G-Got Mail, G-Got Mail!
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Getting a request played on Radio Dead Air.
    • Getting quoted during the WTFIWWY live segment.
      • Having your quoted line used for the WTFIWWY episode title.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: During a reader Q&A segment, Nash answers the question of "Why does Arlo look like Nash?" with "Because Arlo is a character. That I play." This happens shortly after Space Guy, who is also played by Nash, remains in-character to answer the question of "Why does Space Guy look like Nash?"
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: People shoplifting meat by stuffing it down their pants? People stripping naked in public? Classic stories. And then there was the guy who stuffed rib-eye down his pants and stripped naked while fleeing the cops.
  • Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Often used to segue the next story.
  • Brick Joke: A common feature in the introductory cartoons. Ship made of blowjobs and whiskey, anyone?
  • Call-Back:
    • In "Hate the Gamer, Not The Game", Lupa offhandedly references an encounter with Patrick Stewart.
    • One episode of WTFIWWY featured a Florida man getting arrested for practicing dentistry without a license. Much later, there was an article about a woman getting arrested for the same thing, and Nash and Tara realized she was the man's girlfriend.
  • The Cameo:
    • Nash plays Jesus in the Apocalypse 4: Judgment review by Diamanda Hagan.
    • Appears in Linkara's review of The Star Wars, in response to a character named "Senator Nash".
    • Appears in the title card of another of Linkara review, this time strangling a superhero commissioned by the state of Florida to help as a PSA for orange growers.
    • Appears as part of a visual gag during the Nostalgia Critic review of The Adventures of Pluto Nash, alongside a photo of the dwarf planet Pluto. He remarks that its' still a more thought out gag than anything in the film.
  • Captain Obvious: When Nash explains the flaws in someone's reasoning, he often has to state the bleeding obvious.
  • Careful with That Axe: Nash used a very-shouty version of "Crazy" for Episode 35.
  • Car Meets House: A recurring story, occasionally pizza is involved.
    • A May 2011 story describes a man driving a dump truck into an occupied condominium.
  • Carry a Big Stick: The August 8, 2011 episode has the story of a man who attempted to rob a 7-Eleven with a tree branch.
  • Chimney Entry: This is a recurring problem. People will try to get into houses via the chimney and invariably get stuck, often necessitating the help of the local police and fire departments.
  • Comedic Sociopathy: "How to be a Better Criminal" with Tara and any stories of her Hilariously Abusive Childhood.
  • Crossover:
  • Country Matters: When Arlo tries to succeed his show with "Arlo's Pony Paradise," he falls from enlightenment with a cry of "cock-juggling thundercuuu-!"
  • Covered in Gunge: The subject of the title story of "New Goddess Religion" was seen to have fled from his hiding place inside the tank of a porta-john covered in poop and open wounds. Nash jokes about the CDC calling the police department and asking to study him from all the diseases he no doubt contracted.
    • And just a couple months later a drunk driver deliberately soaked himself in human waste.
  • Cozy Voice for Catastrophes: Nash considers Garrison Keilor's voice the equivalent of three beers and a sleeping pill, and considers his voice dangerous to listen to while driving. To the point where he accuses the man's voice (semi-jokingly) of causing traffic accidents.
  • Curse of the Pharaoh: When COVID hit, stories featuring archeological excavations of tombs and burial sites popped up. Nash and Tara's thoughts? "Put it back!"
  • Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Discussed in the commentary of Justice League of America, where Linkara wonders why the Weatherman doesn't patent the weather-controlling technology and make millions in agriculture.
  • Damned by Faint Praise: When a story is prefaced with, "The idea was novel," that doesn't mean the subject was any smarter than the others.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: In "I Need That Lady's Leg," Nash and Tara discuss leaving a building after buying a new car...and searching for your old one in the parking lot out of force of habit.
  • Defiant Strip: Occasionally seems to be the reason for the naked stories.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: "This next one's from Canada, and it's from the Department of Obvious Stupid is Obvious."
  • Depraved Dentist: They keep getting stories of unlicensed dentists. One was the wife of a guy who had been arrested for such doing so... Who was featured on the previous episode.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Stories about this are the show's bread and butter.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Literally.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Subtle case on "Weekend At Bernie's 3;" Nash segues to the "corpse abuse" case with a dissertation on mourning the dead. Tara was completely unaware as to where it was going, but dreading it just the same. She responds by using the story as a springboard to discuss her rather strange proposal for Nash's funeral. Later, during the "what have we learned" segment, she brings up an unrelated story involving public urinals. Nash is completely broken.
    • "It's a Bomb" has a woman who hit her boyfriend with a frying pan because he wouldn't let her borrow a razor.
    • August 8, 2011's episode features a business owner attacking an employee with an axe for allegedly stealing quarters.
  • D.I.Y. Disaster: "Do It (To) Yourself."
  • Do-It-Yourself Plumbing Project/Doom It Yourself: Somehow, at one Arby's restaurant, if the kitchen sink is on, a jet of steam shoots up from the urinal. Yes, someone got burned while using it. By the time Nash got a hold of the story, it had happened before.
  • Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Regardless of how cute and cuddly he seems.
    Nash: Aren't you a cute little Elder god and destroyer of worlds? Yes you are. Yes you are. Yes you- Uh-oh...
  • Don't Sneak Up on Me Like That!: Tara's arm was bitten by Simba, a skittish cat at the pet center in which she volunteers.
  • Donut Mess with a Cop: Discussed in "Hard Packed Snow", when a story comes up about cops chasing a man who stole a donut truck.
  • Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: During his 2011 Valentines day special, he covered a story about a guy who got his crotch purposely torched by his girlfriend. Nash starts mocking the guy in question, and proclaims that he probably deserved it anyway..
  • Do Wrong, Right: When stories about Stupid Crooks crop up, Tara tends to go on "How to be a Better Criminal" rants.
  • Drama Queen: Expect at least Once an Episode for someone to attack someone or go on a rampage over some minor slight or inconvenience.
  • Drinking Game: In the RDA chat, the common reaction to stories that come from Florida is to take a shot.
    • On the rare occasion that there isn't a story out of Florida for the week, the reaction is to down the bottle.
    • When someone asks when WTFIWWY is going to start, take a drink. This is even referenced to in the official Radio Dead Air FAQ.
    • The full rules for the drinking game the RDA regulars have can be found here. Nobody's died yet!
  • Drives Like Crazy: Vehicular stupidity is a recurring segment.
    • The rare wheelchair variant comes up in the episode "Open With The Handy". Nash recounts a story about going to a convention, and seeing Anne McCaffrey driving her wheelchair at max speed down the hallway, sending congoers flying out of her way. She also ran over Nash when they sat down to lunch.
    Nash: [as McCaffrey] I wrote Dragonriders of Pern, bitcheeeeees!
  • Duct Tape for Everything: Averted. As Nash said in one story, "Duct tape is not a paternal tool!" IIRC the story involved a parent duct-taping a kid to his chair.
    • And then played straight with Tara telling a story about how someone she knew had to duct tape their kids' diaper on him, as he kept taking it off otherwise.
  • invokedDude, Not Funny!:
    • During a live show, they covered a story where gun sales were going up because people were allegedly preparing for a zombie attack. Tara compares it to NORAD tracking Santa Claus and Nash throws out there might be children watching.
      Nash: Right at this moment, there's one person who's watching this with their eight-year-old child in the background, which they shouldn't be...
      Tara: Nobody should be watching this with children anywhere near.
      Nash: ...and that child just looked up and said, "Mommy, what does she mean, Santa's not real?"
      Tara: Don't do that to me. I have nieces and nephews. Don't do that to me- don't hang that on me. I will lose sleep over that shit.
    • Just after the January 28th WTFIWWY Live, Nash remarked that apparently someone thought it would be funny to launch a DDOS attack on him...while he and his friends were mourning Jew Wario's death. He takes some solace in the fact that whomever did it probably had to spend money to do so, and all they did in the end was make him update his security.
  • Due to the Dead: A lot of stories involve people not following this trope. Once someone was selling an antique coffin.... with the former owner still in it.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Before becoming a permanent co-host on the live WTFIWWY show, Tara appeared in recorded episode #5 as Sally in the "Beauty and the Modern Woman" 50's PSA parody.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The first four years of Radio Dead Air were broadcast with Nash in-character as his Camarilla character from his World of Darkness campaign. As Nash recounts on the TGWTG forum, the combination of White Wolf resetting the whole of World of Darkness and RDA getting big-time interviews in 2004 led him to drop the character and do the show as himself early the next year.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Nash theorises that the Dark Lord Cthulhu is the product of a man and a dead squid. OH GOD MY MIND!
  • Epic Fail: Regarding "Invasion of the Dinosaurs":
    Nash: Imagine, if you will, attempting to shoot the broad side of a barn and not only missing, but somehow managing to set your own balls on fire in process...
  • Equal-Opportunity Offender: If someone does something stupid enough to get covered on this show, they're fair game.
  • Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: When Arlo describes his family's Christmas traditions.
    • About half-way through Arlo's description, the subtitles change to crying emoticons.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • Discussed on a couple occasions, usually when somebody goes to jail for mistreating or hurting a child. Tara, whose mother worked as a parole officer for many years, pointed out that in general, prisoners do not tolerate people who harm kids in any way.
    • One car thief realized that a child was in the back seat of the stolen car. He returned, scolded the mother for leaving their kid unattended in a car, then drove off.
  • Everyone Has Standards: While WTFIWWY is known for covering crazy, funny or stupid news stories for the fun of it, Nash has made it clear that there are limits to what topics will be covered on the show. Namely, anything involving death, sexual assault, child abuse or serious maiming are absolutely off the table, since those topics aren’t ever funny in real life.
  • Everybody Lives: Nash & Tara try to make sure that they cover stories where no one is killed or even seriously injured as a result of what happens in said Story. The two rarely break this rule, if at all.
  • Face Doodling: Stick Boy does that to a drunken Nash.
  • Face Palm: Nash often does this in response to the rampant stupidity.
    "NOT ENOUGH FACEPALM!"
  • Failed a Spot Check: The only way to explain numerous examples of these stories. On both the perpetrators and bystanders.
  • Fan Disservice: On January 19th, 2015, Nash played the official music video for Big Data's "Dangerous (Feat. Joywave)". The video featured hot young women in exercise clothing making out with each other...after violently headbutting homeless and elderly people, and still covered in gore. He promptly announced that he would never show the video on the stream again.
  • Flat "What": Nash's reaction to some of the tamer stories. Also, he reacted to Arlo's first appearance with a flat "the fuck".
    • Occurred in the 10/31/11 episode when Tara reveals she has hippos in costumes.
    • In the 2/11/12 episode, Tara could only respond to a story of a bank robber who wussed out when a teller didn't understand his demand of "give me what is 20s and 50s" with not one, but two utterances of "...what?".
    • Upon hearing that one of the characters in Dr. Who and the Daleks was actually named Doctor Who instead of the original name (The Doctor), he let out one of these.
  • Flipping the Table: Nash does this during his Castrovalva review.
  • Frying Pan of Doom:
    • "It's a Bomb" features a woman arrested for assaulting her boyfriend with a frying pan.
  • Funny Background Event:
    • While JesuOtaku was a regular fixture on the show, he could be seen goofing around in all manner of strange ways. Notably, he really emotionally lipsynced to the WTFIWWY theme music every time it came up.
    • After one of Tara's moves, her nephew's kitten Bridget began upstaging the show by acting all kitten-like behind Tara.
    • Miracle, Tara's old deaf kitty would occasionally meow extremely loudly.
    • Nash's cat Grady has progressed from being camera-shy to being Bridget's replacement in the background insanity role.
  • Funny Conception Story: One episode has Nash point out to Tara how a lot of their friends just so happen to have kids whose birthdays fall nine months after Vampire: The Masquerade conventions. Tara follows up this train of thought by claiming that most of the kids were probably conceived in-character.
  • Full-Frontal Assault: "Naked Rampage" is a recurring theme on the show.
    • One man left his bed naked to confront the thief who'd broken into his place. Said thief muttered an apology and jumped out the window. The power of naked can be used for good, people!
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: "What, you never sat in the shower and made train noises?"
    • From his review of Terror of the Vervoids, we get Zodan the Unbounceable.
    • In the 7/04/11 Live WTFIWWY, Nash realized he'll never run out of material and has excellent job security. This isn't a good thing.
    • In the New Years' Episode ("And Never Brought To Mind"), he encounters a story so mind-numblingly nonsensical, he can only come to one conclusion:
    Nash: You know what that means! [Picks up a Mallet] I've finally got my insanity plea! Look out, neighbours! [Proceeds to smash things off-camera while cheerfully singing 'Working On The Railroad']
    • Nash and Tara came to this conclusion about a man who racked up nine serious felonies over the course of an 11 hour period. And at one point he was crying histarically, and another dressed up as a female hotel maid. While the man was waiting for his next Greyhound bus.
    Tara: How bad was that fucking bus ride?
  • Genre Blindness: Some people to reality. Usually due to stupidity and/or drugs.
  • Genre Savvy: Tara says that in Florida you should always be expecting some naked guy to show up.
  • Girl on Girl Is Hot: Tara mentions she has no experience with pleasuring a woman or masturbating in a Wal-Mart. Nash immediately states that she just disappointed fanfiction writers the world over.
  • A Good Name for a Rock Band:
    • In the Live What The Fuck Is Wrong With You? of 06/21/11, after reading the headline Man allegedly wounded by two 'booty call ninjas', Tara says that she will create a white girl rap group called Booty Call Ninjas.
    • From WTFIWWY Live - Right Turn, Clyde - 5/7/12: 'Anthrax vagina attack, which is a great punk band name, by the way.'
    • After hearing a story about a woman with an unusual hiding place for a pistol, Tara wants to start an all-girl punk band called "Fully Automatic Vaginas".
    • April 13th, 2015 gives us "Bedazzled Fucksaw", after a discussion about apparently taking the blade off a saw and attaching a dildo to it.
    • In a similar vein, the March 3, 2014 WTFIWWY Live gave us "Meth Mango", which Nash said sounded like the name of a nightclub.
    • October 13th 2014's discussions about the origin of Tara's leg hole led to Nash declaring "Necrotic Fat" to be a good name for a Screamo band.
    • August 3rd, 2015 gave us "Badger Rehab", after a story about a badger stealing and drinking a bottle of beer.
  • Groin Attack:
    • The final two stories of "Tainted Love" both involve something bad happening to a man's equipment. You have been warned.
    • In "Land Of The Rising DUMB", a rabid Domo-kun the internet sent after Nash for badmouthing Japan chomped on Nash's man area and the only way JesuOtaku could get it off was by kicking said area.
    • Zodan the Unbouncable and an electric shock. Ouch.
    • The fate of the narrator of the 1950s beauty film in Episode 5 "I'm Too Sexy For My Brain."
    • From "Don't Mess with the Amish," a man was forced to walk naked through town with a brick tied to his penis after kidnapping and forcibly marrying a minor.
    • At least one story featured a man accidentally shooting off his own penis.
  • Growing the Beard: Nash considers Episode 4 of What The Fuck Is Wrong With You? to be when he locked the show's formula and everything started to gel together. invoked
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy: To break twenty-eight inmates out of prison, a woman arrived with bondage gear, soon drugging, seducing, and handcuffing the trio of prison guards.
  • Guest Host: After Nash is assaulted by monkeys in one episode, Space Guy takes his place in the next episode while he recovers off-screen.
    • On live WTF, a guest co-host does the show whenever Tara is unavailable. Previous guest hosts include Oancitizen, Obscurus Lupa, Derek The Bard, JewWario, Todd in the Shadows, Luke, and Nash's producer, Mike Gearman. Doug Walker has co-hosted the show with Tara and Nash on one occasion, as did Linkara. JesuOtaku appeared for 3-host Live WTFs whenever the show was broadcast from his old house, and intermittently since he moved to South Carolina.
    • There was a time when Tara hosted the live show (not WTFIWWY) when Nash had to pick up JO from the airport. That night the show was known as "Radio Red Hair" and inspired fans to encourage Tara to begin her own show, the results of which are pending. (as of 2013)
  • Guy on Guy Is Hot/Yaoi Fangirl: In the episode "Don't Hold Your Breath," Tara tries to convince Nash that Disney needs to buy the rights back for the X-Men Film Series franchise, just so The Avengers 2 can have a scene where Hugh Jackman and Chris Evans wrestle scantily-clad in a kiddie pool full of pudding. In the event that she gets a life-threatening illness, she wants to start a Twitter campaign so it will happen. Nash does not approve of this.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: invoked Nash is fully aware that his crossover review of Doctor Strange featuring Jew Wario may stray into this territory, particularly the parts where Jew Wario wakes up in the hospital after being in a coma. Twice. When he posted the video (two months after Justin's suicide), Nash prefaced it with a message to his fans, explaining why he felt the video was important to share with everyone.
  • Head Desk: During 'This Is All Your Fault (The Return!)', Nash goes out to his garden shed, busts out some power tools, and builds a section of wall just so he can bash his head against it in protest of the stupid.
  • Helpless with Laughter: Nash is well-known for extended bouts of laughter, especially when it comes to Tara's antics.
    • In "The Mystery Pooper," they're covering a story in which an unknown man spent the last ten years crapping in the holes of a golf course, whereupon Tara happens to mention that her backyard borders a golf course and that the idea to take a dump on it never occurred to her. A few moments later, Tara's husband Dan sneaks into view with a roll of toilet paper in hand; Nash cracks up and goes on laughing for forty seconds.
    • A rare non-Nash example occurs in "The Whizzinator" episode, in which a man attempted to use a fake penis to pass a urine test; Linkara, Nash's co-host for the day, is rather nonplussed by the whole story... up until Nash wonders aloud if the fake penis was supposed to be a hands-free device operated via the clapper. Linkara breaks down in a fit of wheezing giggles that leaves him almost sobbing into his hands.
      Linkara: I think you broke me.
    • In "Adieu, Black Friday," a news story from Bavaria mentions a giant phallic monument being unexpectedly stolen from an alpine hiking trail. Tara remarks "maybe it just got cold out," and Nash loses it, leaving the show held up for the next thirty seconds.
  • Hey, That's My Line!: Nash's reaction when Tara "steals" his "I have never been so drunk" line in the 6/4/12 Live episode.
    • One of his prerecorded episodes also features a story that uses the phrase "From the 'we-couldn't-make-this-up-if-we-tried' department..." Nash reacts appropriately.
  • Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Tara, though it was mostly self-inflected. She and her sister got drunk at six because her parents left out a bottle of champagne. She burned off her fingertips by playing with an old lamp, also at six. She bit off her lip by falling down some stairs at age three. She got her head stuck in an iron fence at Disney World at age seven. Spent years of having to deal with people sing to her "all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth" after knocking her teeth out at the same time time as biting her lip off. Her mother had to rotate Emergency Rooms for fear of being considered abusive.
  • Human Mail: An episode shows why you don't try this in real life when a Chinese man tried to mail himself to his girlfriend and ended up getting lost in the mail for three hours and ended up suffocating. The channel points out he forgot step one, cut a hole in a box.
  • Hypocritical Humor: In the "Love & Monsters" Review:
    Nash: This is our framing device for the show — a v-log. Some guy sitting in front of a camera, telling the Internet about the Doctor. Who could possibly think this was interesting, or compelling, or I'm suddenly talking about myself, aren't I?
  • I Call It "Vera": Nash owns a custom Stratocaster he built himself, named Laura.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The live sessions later posted to YouTube are named after a strange phrase uttered during the course of the episode.
  • Idiot Ball: A good portion of Florida carries this. Nash says that you have to be Genre Savvy about that fact.
    Nash (As firefighter): "Why shouldn't we keep the firetruck keys in the firetruck? Only an idiot... Oh right. Florida."
  • I Like My X Like I Like My Y: From the episode "Nimrods are Forever":
    Nash: You know, I like my Irishmen like I like my coffee. Covered in beeeeees!
    * Beat*
    Worst. Segue. Ever.
  • I'm a Humanitarian:
    Hello, and welcome to "Cooking for Lunatics"! Today, we are going to be making ze baby back ribs with ze actual baby!
  • Impossibly-Compact Folding: "New Goddess Religion" describes a man between 6'5" and 6'8"note  who somehow managed to squeeze himself into the tank of a porta-john. Even Nash expresses amazement he was able to fit inside the tank.
    • "It's a Bomb" tops this with a story, complete with photo, of a man whose girlfriend tried to smuggle him out of prison in a suitcase.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun:
    • He tries a few for the villain's death in "The Happiness Patrol", then excuses himself with "I've been drinking".
    • From his first episode, on a story about mysteriously appearing sex toys:
      "'It's a real mystery; we have no idea where they came from,' Miss Bates said." Is there a Master Bates? *Beat* Eh, f**k you. You were thinking the same thing!
    • Sometimes the featured articles have their fair share of puns, especially when they are about something really stupid, and Nash always comments on that.
  • Insistent Terminology: Nash never calls True Blood by either the show's title, or by the book's title (The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries). It's always The Louisiana Crazy-Time Vampire Lesbian Titty Show.
  • Insult Backfire: He's very resistant to garden variety internet trolling.
    Nash: After reviewing "Daleks in Manhattan" last week a lot of folks commented that it wasn't that bad, or they really liked it, or I was nickpicking or my face is stupid. All of these are valid points, but...
  • Interactive Narrator: Sometimes Nash in the introductory cartoons.
  • The Internet Is for Cats: Lampshaded after Tara first manages to get her nephew's cat on screen. It would become something of a running gag in later episodes.
    Nash: You know, we're a ridiculous species because all it takes is to put a kitty cat on the internet and we lose our fucking minds.
  • The Internet Is for Porn: Repeatedly Discussed. Every so often there is a story about someone watching porn in a public place. Another is that they say this trope word for word when someone acts out their fetishes in public.
    Nash: "Just watch porn! They will bring the porn to you!"
    Tara: " There are like a thousand Upskirt porn sites out there now. You don't have to make your own upskirt porn!"
  • I Think You Broke Him: Or rather, "I think I broke him":
    Tara: I did it! I rendered [Nash] speechless! I've been working so hard.
  • Karmic Death: In "It's a Bomb," (7/11/11), a woman molests a dog and promptly dies of an allergic reaction.
  • Kick the Dog: Literally joked about in the 11/14/11 Live WTFIWWY: in response to Tara talking about how Ambien could make people do crazy things and not remember them the next day, Nash claimed he could use the same excuse to get away with punting his neighbor's chihuahua over a building.
  • Kids Driving Cars:
    • "It's Not A Pocket" sees a drunk man arrested for having his eight-year-old son drive his whole family from Mississippi to Dallas, Texas.note 
  • Leitmotif:
    • Douchequakes are always accompanied by Gunther's Ding Dong Song.
    • Arlo's appearances are always accompanied by a banjo riff.
    • Later appearances of the "time to do the math" gag are accompanied by the Chicken Dance song.
  • Let's Play: Nash does playthroughs of games on stream sometimes. However, these are done on an alternate Twitch channel (Nash0762) because part of his original streaming deal with Twitch said that he couldn't archive the RDA episodes due to all the licensed music.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Nash always seems to wear a black t-shirt in every episode. For the non-live episode, he throws on a blue jacket.
  • Long Runner: What The Fuck is Wrong with You? has been going since 2010, and Nash's Radio Dead Air internet radio show (from which WTFIWWY spun off from) has been going since 2000; he's only missed a handful of broadcasts due to illness or weather in all that time.
  • Lovecraft Lite: Quite subverted.
  • MacGyvering: In the Episode "Aim for the Head" Nash says this.
    Nash: "You can make a bong out of anything. Ah look at this cute puppy. I'll make a bong out of it. Hi Grandma! I'll make a bong out of it."
    • Averted by Tara when talking about a guy who was huffing Lysol in attempt to get high at a drug treatment center.
    Tara: "Don't MacGyver your high. Nothing good will come from it. At best you'll just MacGruber your high."
    • One German man made a fuel-air bomb out of an air-mattress and a bottle of Fix-A-Flat.... By Accident! note 
  • Made of Iron: Every so often a story comes out where the person should be dead and walks away with minor injuries
  • Maniac Monkeys: The monkeys not only decide to take over the world, but they beat up Nash and shove a banana in ... um, an orifice other than his mouth.
  • Mathematician's Answer: In the episode, "Land of the Rising DUMB."
    JesuOtaku: Do you mean "innovative" or "going to make me sad?"
    Nash: *Beat* Yes.
    • And from the live show episode "Drunk Monkey Taunting":
    Tara: (regarding a hippo plushie that makes fart noises when squeezed) Is this better or worse than Disembodied Orgasm Hippo?
    Nash: (immediately) Yes.
  • Megaton Punch: One man wound up giving one to a bear that broke into his and his girlfriend's tent while they were sleeping.
  • Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: At least a couple of stories have been about people who accidentally causes what happened in the story. And not through negligence or stupidity. One German man destroyed every window in his rental house and damaged nearby houses. By repairing an air mattress.
  • Mirror Universe: In episode 30 it is revealed that a Mirror Universe exists. A pink Stickboy (or Stickman) and Mirror Nash live in a mansion. Subverted; as it turns out, 'our' Nash is the evil one; Mirror Nash had just completed a multi-episode special on Ghandi and refers to his Stickboy as "Stickman" because it's more dignified. Double subverted; our Nash shows Mirror Nash how being an ass sometimes can be both entertaining and therapeutic. This leads Mirror Nash to crack up into hysterics over his Stickboy being pink and deciding not to warn our Nash of an impending disaster, just because.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • The discussion of Miracle's lymphoma diagnosis in "Ding Dong, It's My Ding-Dong" was interrupted by Grady's Funny Background Event antics.
    • "The Hamburger" has Tara interrupted from her story of seeing Puppetry of the Penis in LA by Dottie, and then resuming the story after holding the cat to the camera briefly. Nash immediately lampshades this when Dottie is put down.
  • Mushroom Samba: Nash tries (in-universe) bath salts. It doesn't seem to be working... until his friend next to him apparently turns into a werewolf and shouts I AM THE DEVIL I AM THE DEVIL!.
    • One case with a guy doing Synthetic Marijuana wound up believing that he was dreaming reality.
  • Naked Nutter: One of the most common news stories featured on the show involves someone appearing naked or half-naked in public and doing something spectacularly irrational. Sometimes, alcohol, drugs or mental illness will be involved, but more often than not, no explanation for the nudity will emerge at all - much to Nash and Tara's exasperation. For good measure, this often segues into the classic "Naked Rampage."
  • Naked People Are Funny: A recurring theme.
    • Also frequently subverted depending on the story when the crazy naked just gets too crazy.
  • Nerds Are Virgins:
    • When correcting the Fifth Doctor using the term "Brontosaurus" in "Time Flight", Nash then says "Yes, I've had sex. Shut up!"
    • From The Incredible Hulk Returns, after Nash has just finished explaining the backstory of Thor:
    Film Brain: Nash, don't take this the wrong way, but have you ever touched a boob before?
    Nash: Would punching you in the face count?
    Film Brain: ...touche.
  • Never Mess with Granny: A pair attempting to rob a group of grannies at a bingo game were met with force and a flipped table.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Many of the subjects make it way too easy for the police to find them. Common examples are calling 911 to report getting ripped off in a drug deal and taunting police via social media.
  • The Nicknamer: Nash often uses names like "Jackass McNutFuck" in lieu of the stupid person's actual name.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Invoked in Cop Vs. Squirrel, when hearing about the death scream of a squirrel, Brian Heinz (AKA The Last Angry Geek) comments about how that's the sort of thing that would haunt you until the day you die.
  • "No. Just… No" Reaction: The Live show on July 7, 2021 featured an animation by MeatCanyon that featured Winnie the Pooh eating the other inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood. Both Nash and chat was mortified and after the video was done, Nash announced that he would never play anything from MeatCanyon again.
  • No Ending: The Live show for Oct. 21, 2019 was Cut Short before the usual outro because there was an Internet outage that night, which lasted until after RDA's scheduled end time. This was kept in the YouTube upload the following week as a Smash to Black.
  • Noodle Incident: The time Nash tried to steal the Olympic torch. He tells the story once in a blue moon and it keeps being brought up by Tara, but there's many, particularly those who started watching RDA after Nash joined TGWTG, who are completely clued out by the references. Tara also occasionally jokes about these herself, making a reference to an incident vaguely related to the current story before remarking "those records are sealed".
  • No OSHA Compliance: The story that gives "It's a Bomb" its title. A school in Uganda had improvised a bell by using an unexploded bomb that they would "ring" by pounding it with a rock.
  • Nothing but Skulls: In his Let's Play of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Nash stole every skull (human or troll) he could find and threw them into a giant pile in his homestead's cellar. Every once in a while, he would Fus Ro Dah the pile because It Amused Him. And then when he played Skyrim Special Edition, he did it again.
  • "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Once an Episode:
    Nash: Hey, kids. I'm Nash, and I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.
    Nash: You have no idea how much I wish I was kidding.
    • He personally assures the audience that yes, in his quest to find the top Classic Doctors from Doctor Who, he received two single-spaced pages describing how the top Classic Doctor was Doctor Quinn. He gives this person the "Not Sure If Serious" Award.
  • Not So Above It All: Nash has tried to steal the Olympic torch before. Also has been so drunk that he screamed, repeatedly, that he was Jesus Christ outside of a con.
  • Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: Tara takes this stance when talking about various weird fetishes, but emphasizes that unless previously specified, nobody else will want to see it.
  • N-Word Privileges: When discussing a story about a guy knocking over a one-legged man, it turned to superheroes being above that, unless they were handicapped themselves, like Oracle or Daredevil, and then Tara noted that this was the comic book equivalent of when it's okay to say the N word.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Godzilla fighting the Dragonzord in 'Land of the Rising Dumb.'
  • Off the Rails: When JO became a semi-permanent part of the live show, he and Tara had a tendency to take the stories into very, very strange places, while Nash could do nothing but sit and watch.
  • Oh, My Gods!: "By the unwashed balls of Odin, man!"
  • Old Shame: invoked The first-ever episode ("Nothing is Hawt in the Walmart").
    Nash: To say it was "amateurish" is to be insulting to amateurs.
  • Older Than They Look: Nash and Tara were born in 1976 and 1977, respectively.
  • Only in Florida: Almost on a Once an Episode basis. One of the earlier installments, "The Wang of America," was made up entirely of Florida stories.
    • Reaches new heights in the live show for 7/8/13, Junk in the Junk: Florida manages to accidentally ban all computers, smartphones and other similar devices while trying to stop internet gambling.
      • And if you get really broad with the definition, it also bans brains too as it is also a series of devices (neurons) that can be used in a game of chance.
  • Only Sane Man: For the rest of the world. Tara, JesuOtaku, and Film Brain occasionally act as one for Nash. And on the live show, Nash became the Only Sane Man to JesuOtaku and Tara's wild-eyed tangents.
  • Opening Narration: For the live show: "Each week, Kathryn and the Radio Dead Air audience go out on the World Wide Interwebs, find all sorts of horrible stuff, and bring it back here for a little segment we like to call "What the Fuck is Wrong with You?", AND..."
    • For the recorded version: "Hey, kids. I'm Nash and I couldn't make this shit up if I tried."
  • Overly Long Gag: Nash decided to turn off Joel & the bots from incessant singing during a forklift hijack story.
  • Outside-Context Problem: Most of the people who star in the stories come straight out of nowhere and assault/harass/pester random passersby with no warning whatsoever.
    • A good example is when a woman came home to find a naked man, covered in blood, eating all of her raw chicken. The woman ran out of the house to call the cops.
  • Pants-Positive Safety: Discussed and deconstructed on the August 8, 2011 episode, when a man tucking his girlfriend's pistol into his waistband accidentally shoots his penis off.
  • Papa Wolf: In one 2011 story, a naked and intoxicated man drove into an apartment occupied by a father and his seven-year-old child, whereupon the father proceeded to beat the driver with a hammer.
  • Point And Laugh: Nash does this to Tara when she realizes that one story occurred in her hometown.
  • Pungeon Master: Nash HATES journalists like this, and in one episode wished death onto one of them. He's explained it as being what he sees as bad journalism, as the writers are there to inform, not to make jokes. Puns are not needed and should not be allowed into the stories.
    • They will make exceptions for puns that are clever or if was a once-in-a-lifetime chance of making it.
  • The Quisling: Played for Laughs in Nash's Let's Play of Wolfenstein: The New Order, where his reaction to the Nazi Humongous Mecha is "Um...so does anyone know the words to 'Deutschland Uber Alles'?"
  • A Rare Sentence: Nash has to say these a lot. Examples include "Puppies do not make good ordnance!" and "While you can debate the right or wrong of the police seizing his penis..."
    • Usually followed by "I can't believe I had to say that!"
    • From "The Happiness Patrol":
      "Meanwhile, Helen A uses the slot machine to execute Mister Grumpypants. Yes, I actually had to say those words. I'm sad, too." "The Doctor and Harmonica Man escape into the candy pipes; Dear God, how insane do I sound right now?" (These weren't even the only times he had to invoke this.)
      • Most of the review of that episode fits under that trope.
    • Also: "You are not discreet when your pants are full of chicken!"
    • "After you've got their money, you don't need to have 'em trim your pubic hair! [...] I can't believe I had to say that sentence out loud."
    • From "To Kill a Toilet":
      Nash: Tara, I want you to stop real fast: Did you ever in your life think the words "stuffing your tits full of cocaine" would need to be said?
      Tara: ... No.
      Nash: And yet, here we are. We've come to this point.
    • "No, it's not a gun, it's a prop for my toy monkey." Nash immediately declares this one of the best sentences in the English language.
    • "A man's dog was thrown out of a restaurant for being gay. I just said that, didn't I?"
    • "When I was a small child, I never imagined that I would assemble those words together, in that particular order, don't put the alligator in your pants!!!"
  • Readings Blew Up the Scale: His "Nerd Rage Meter" blew up twice when reviewing The Doctor Who TV movie.
  • Real Song Theme Tune/Soundtrack Dissonance: The theme song is "Crazy," by Patsy Cline.
    • The Musical Chair uses "My Guitar" by Jump, Little Children.
    • The song in the opening video for the Monday Radio Dead Air broadcast is "In Rock 8-Bit" by Bodenständig 2000. The end theme for RDA is the closing theme for Red Dwarf.
    • The intro to Here There Be Dragons is an 8-bit rendition of Nightwish's "Over The Hills and Far Away."
  • Reference Overdosed: If you took a shot for every time he made a pop culture reference in the scripted WTFIWWY episodes, you would die.
  • Refuge in Audacity: From the live show, the man who went on a 9-hour crime spree in Nashville totaling 11 individual felonies that included mugging a Canadian couple while he was crying and apologizing. Tara was driven to ask WHAT over and over while Nash couldn't help but admire the sheer gall of what looked like a Grand Theft Auto rampage.
    • This was later to be outdone when one man managed to commit ten felonies in a space of just twenty-one minutes.
  • Reset Button: Nash attempted to invoke this when he was told that monkeys and apes were uprising by Space Guy. It worked in the sense that the rebellion was over by the next episode, but that didn't save Nash from a very painful hospital visit, during which Space Guy presented the video.
  • Running Gag: Tara's thing with hippos.
    • Sonic attacks being represented by teen pop, be it Katy Perry (in his Doctor Who reviews) or Taylor Swift (in the Trial of the Incredible Hulk review).
    • Gunther's Ding Dong Song causing Douchequakes.
    • While playing Fallout 4, Nash made fun of the game's Take Your Time and Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer nature by asking "Wasn't I supposed to be doing something?" Eventually he decided that the main questline was about the Sole Survivor trying to find...his lost hamster. This caused the chat to refer to the SS's son Shaun as a hamster even after they met him in the flesh, and they declared him "the worst hamster ever" when he turned out to be the head of the Institute.
    • When Luke co-hosts WTFIWWY Live, there's about a fifty percent chance there will be a poop story and a 100% chance the chat, if not the hosts, will mention the frequency of poop stories when Luke is on.
  • Sacred Cow: invoked Nash discussed this when Stefán Karl Stefánsson died in 2018. While he never watched LazyTown, Stefánsson was clearly beloved by the children who grew up watching him, and Nash compared it to when Mr. Hooper passed away on Sesame Street.
    He did cool stuff for kids, and that can't be forgotten. Seemed to be a decent human being...and we're in short supply of those, lately.
  • Safe Word: The chat's safe word during WTFIWWY is "purple shotgun". Tara takes pride in the fact that she's usually the reason they start screaming it, although she and Nash both frequently point out that unlike a traditional safe word it isn't actually going to make them stop.
  • Scannable Man: Not any of the co-hosts or subjects of the stories. No, it was one of Dan's cats growing up. Said cat was a Purina test cat, who spent his early life testing out new blends of cat food. In one ear he had an ID number for administration purposes. In the other was the word cat tattoo'd
  • Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: How his run in a police car seeking stupid crimes to solves comes to an end:
    Radio dispatcher: All units be on the lookout for a car moving erratically at high speed, registered to one Lindsay Lohan.
    Nash: Yeah, I quit.
  • Self-Deprecation: In his commentaries of early episodes of the show, Nash will frequently make fun of how amateur he was back then.
  • Serious Business: Tara, an art major, has this reaction when a woman attacks a Matisse painting at a fine art museum.
  • Sexy Whatever Outfit: Every year for Halloween, Nash and Tara have a "Hooker-ween" special, later renamed "Halloworst", where they look at several stupidest examples of this trope that they could find onlinenote .
  • Share the Male Pain: Lampshaded several times. Also inverted in one Live WTFIWWY, when Nash says "Ladies, brace yourselves" before talking about a woman who hid a knife in her lady parts.
  • Shared Universe: The universe within Nash's scripted shows is the Reviewaverse due to being on Channel Awesome and his numerous cameos and crossovers. He actually played a key part in "To Boldly Flee."
  • Shout-Out: See this page.
  • Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Nash has developed a hatred of Will Greenley, a journalist who periodically writes the news stories Nash reads from and has a distinctive Hurricane of Puns writing style.
  • Slasher Smile: Nash does one every now and then on RDA live. It's scary. He's admitted that it's a way of stalling when he needs a few more seconds to think of what to say next, as well as explaining that it actually goes against a basic rule of radio for the presenter to completely stop talking.
  • Sophisticated as Hell: "Let's get a little professionalism up in this biatch!"
    • Both Nash and Tara regularly switch between speaking very eloquently to peppering their phrases with swear words and then talking like rappers.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: When ever something seems musically off, he'll whip out a remote and "fix it". One example is playing the theme to Inspector Gadget during a ridiculous looking shot of Green Lantern flying in on a propeller construct during his Justice League of America review.
  • Special Effects Failure: In-Universe. In "And Never Brought to Mind", Nash plays a clip of a news report on a bear sighting. They stage a reenactment, featuring... a cardboard cutout of a bear. The reporter actually says "This is what the bear probably looked like... except real."
    Nash: It takes a special kind of stupid to have all the resources of a TV station at your disposal, and yet somehow make my show look like it has the higher budget.
  • Special Guest: Every so often another Channel Awesome reviewer shows up to guest when Tara is unavailable. And sometimes when she is available.
  • Spoof Aesop: Once an Episode to round off the live shows.
    So, what have we learned?
    • Tara takes this idea and runs with it, providing lessons for would-be criminals.
  • Squee: Tara is overjoyed after downloading Neko Atsume.
  • Stimulant Speedtalk: In the "Rainbow Cringe" episode, Nash and Tara cover an incident in which a man was caught smuggling twenty-three pounds of cocaine through an airport via his wheelchair. While reflecting on how stupid the guy must have been to think that TSA personnel wouldn't search his wheelchair, Nash speculates that he must have been on cocaine when he came up with the idea and when he went through the airport - and was probably caught because he was trying too hard to look sober. Nash and Tara then provide their best impression of the perpetrator babbling on about the colour of his wheelchair and sniffing loudly.
  • Strange Minds Think Alike: Tara and JesuOtaku seem to have very similar thought processes about things like cat strip clubs. When JO was something of a semi-permanent co-host, this often resulted in them driving Nash crazy.
    • Also, occasionally, Nash and Tara themselves:
      Nash: You know who wasn't a good, conscientious human being?
      Tara: ...Hitler?
      Nash: Oh my God. You know me!
  • Stuck in a Chimney: This is a recurring problem, where people will try to get into houses via the chimney and invariably get stuck, often necessitating the help of the local police and fire departments.
  • Stupid Crooks: These guys come up so often that "Tara Explains How To Be a Better Criminal" has turned into a Running Gag on the live show.
    • And an upcoming series from Tara.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: In the Valentine's Day episode, the following items explode in his face: a flashlight full of gunpowder, an electrified skull, and a hotdog.
    Nash: Why does everything keep exploding around here!? I'm afarid the next soda I open will usher in Global Thermonuclear war!
    • And in one story a German man accidentally created a miniature fuel-air bomb.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: During "Bizzaro Old Yeller" Nash gives a detailed description about how to snort drugs, before following it up with "Not that I know anything about that."
  • Take That!: A big one to The Nostalgia Critic in the review of The Last Unicorn:
    Nash: You do know “objective” doesn't mean “raving cockmonger”, right?
    Space Guy: It doesn't? Hmm; someone should really tell that Nostalgia Person then...
    Nash: *comes down with a cough and quickly moves on*
  • Take That, Audience!: Especially on the live show, where he repeatedly compares the channel to the "winners."
    • The new nickname as of late is "The Choir Pedantic".
    • The episode "Hummingbird Hell" contains this jab:
    Nash:...Gentlemen, and I'm using the term loosely because you're watching my show...
    • He roundly calls out the idiots who wrote in to his "Top Classic Doctor Who" video and voted for Modern Doctors (at the time, 9, 10, and 11). His only consolation he gives them is "Not telling the internet who you are."
  • Tempting Fate: Several items are introduced this way.
    • And even double-subverted once. He lists something even more ridiculous than the previous story. He looks around expectantly for a long Beat. Then:
      Nash: Ha! Got you, internet! That's too specific even for— *that exact story appears* oh good lord.
    • Also whenever something happens during the graveyard shift.
    Nash: "You know there was some guy at checkout lane 3 wishing for something to happen."
    • He espoused the virtues of weed over meth because nobody ever blew up their house with weed. Come this episode, and somebody did that, specifically trying to extract hemp oil from the marijuana seeds.
    • Multiple episodes after joking there was probably someone out there masturbating with swiss cheese, Nash and Tara run into a story that is precisely that. They realize that they're not just tempting fate anymore, they're causing those stories to happen for real.
    Tara: We've come full circle. We're creating this. We've hit a metaphysical point where we're not just reporting on this suff, we're making it happen.
    Nash: OH GOD, WE'RE PROPHETS.
    • After finishing the review of Highlander and calling a decent movie but nowhere near great:
    Nash: Well, now that I've inspired the ire of the entire internet, is there anything lest I can do to piss people off?
    Cue The Neverending Story promo
    Nash: (With a strained smile) Oh, fuck me.
    • In one episode, an article has a police officer comment, "This should make that stupid video show."
    Nash: We've joked about people doing things to get on this show!
  • Those Wacky Nazis: The show covers things such as Hitler chic in Bangkok as well as Hitler chicken, and the man who went to his son's custody hearing dressed as a Nazi. Said son was named "Adolf Hitler".
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: At the end of the WTFIWWY episode "Begging the Question", Space Guy delivered one of these to the Trousers Cosmic, which also doubled as a Logic Bomb.
  • This Is Gonna Suck:
    • Nash's reaction whenever he reads a story that happens in Florida.
    • Tara joined him in It's Not A Pocket for a story where a female inmate used her vagina as a hiding spot for drugs and drug-related items.
      Nash: Tara, Tara, Tara... it's happened again... and in Florida.
      Tara: OH GOD NO!!!
    • His review of Krull, where right at the start he knows he's in trouble.
      Nash: You know, it's times like this I recall the words of my mother when she told me "You idiot."
    • His reaction when the first scene of "K9 and Company," a children's show, is a group of human-sacrificing devil worshipers.
  • Title Drop: Both played straight and inverted. The phrase "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" is often said during the show. The titles for the live show episodes are taken from a joke made during the recording, usually A Rare Sentence of some kind.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: When JO joins the show, hes the Tomboy to Tara the self-described "Professional Girly Girl". Especially since Tara's day job is selling cosmetics.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • One of the very rare stories to feature a death occurred when a man tried to launch a firework off his head.
    • In The North Korea Hokey Pokey, the subject of the titular story was an American soldier facing some minor charges in South Korea. His plan to escape? Illegally cross the border into North Korea.
    • From recklessly driving motorized vehicles to harassing dangerous wild animals, it's a wonder that some of these stories' subjects were able to walk away.
  • Totally Not a Criminal Front: Tara had a story about how she and her friends stumbled upon one. It was a Chinese Buffet in a basement with no windows. The fish tanks had one sad looking fish. The kitchen door opened and people were obviously gambling in the back, and their waiter just had the shit beat out of him. And no one really spoke English. Tara's group took a table by the corner so they could flip the table and hide behind it in-case of a shootout. So it was obviously a Triad front. However Tara said the food was really good.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Space Guy loves eating Legos.
  • Training Montage: When Nash fears he will become what infuriates him in episode 27, he asks Stickboy for help. He submits Nash to a Training from Hell to curb down his anger to a state of zen serenity. Which Arlo promptly shatters with cute ponies.
  • Translation: "Yes": One of Arlo's lines in "Bad Idea Bonanza", translated as "What he said."
  • Unusual Euphemism:
    • Nash and Tara's euphemisms for genitalia include: 'Junk', 'Nooks and Crannies', 'Fiddly bits', and 'Barbie Places'.
    • Thanks to YouTube demonetizing all videos using the words "coronavirus" and "COVID," Nash and Tara dubbed it "The Human Malware."
  • Viewers Like You: Where some of the stories covered come from, along with the hard (under credited) work of Kathryn. Also played straight when Nash needs to pay for his licences, usually easily raising 600-2000 dollars in an hour. note 
    • Nash even brings this up in an episode of Tuesday Tech Talk recorded with Jason "LordKaT" Pullara:
    My viewers raised the money in a few hours. I have no idea if this is because they really like me, or they really hate the RIAA.
    • Now, Nash does a shout out to Patreon funders that do their own Web Original content just before the WTFiWWY part of Radio Dead Air starts.
  • Visible Boom Mic: Invoked. Nash records his videos at his radio station setup and uses the microphone to record sound. Not only does it establish his role as "the radio guy" on the site (as seen in To Boldly Flee), but it also makes the sound in his videos much clearer.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Tara and Nash mock and antagonize each other constantly, but they very clearly love each other dearly.
  • Waking Non Sequitur: Nash is woken up by Nella in their "The Most WTF Moments of Classic Series History" Crossover:
    Nash: Whu-what? What? What is it? I'll kill you! I'LL KILL YOU ALL! ... Oh, hi, Nella.
    Nella: Yeaaah... I'm going to overlook that...
    • Also, in the "Wonder Woman (2011)" crossover...
    Nash: Is it...no, Mommy, I don't wanna...feed my shoes...watermelon...
  • Waxing Lyrical: Tara quotes Bastille during a story involving a middle-school teacher and a lapdance:
    Nash: Where do we begin?
    Tara: The rubble or our sins?
    Nash: What?
  • We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Any time WTFiWWY or the Doctor Who Classic Reviews push Nash a bit too far. Appears as a pale-blue title card with a hand-drawn chibi-version of Nash and the 'Technical Difficulties' bulletin. Usually, it's also accompanied by an additional message each time:
    "Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up."
    "Don't worry, we're pretty sure he won't find the gun this time."
    • During the live show these are ubiquitous to the point of running gag. Fan art has been made just for it◊, which had become the banner for RDA's Blip channel.
    • "Stop refreshing the page assholes!" given on any night where the live channel experiences issues, most notably during the DRM saga.
  • Weirdness Magnet: Tara, to the point that "related" stories from her past are an item in the drinking game.
    Nash: Whenever you tell childhood stories, it's like Rose from The Golden Girls meets Saw.
  • What Are You in For?: Tara and Nash like doing this for some of the stupider crimes, mostly to point out what stupid crooks can look forward to.
  • What Did I Do Last Night?: A lot of these stories are what the person was doing last night. Also Ambien has been discussed on the show as causing this.
    • Also in-universe. After Nash, Linkara, and Film Brain went drinking, Nash put everyone to bed with aspirin. Problem was that it was actually Ritalin. Cue madness at MAGfest.
  • What Did You Expect When You Named It ____?: According to Nash, the town of Beaverton is just asking for depraved weirdos to flock over there.
  • What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Tara's super power is setting up segues for Nash without even trying. She's complained about it being a crappy power many times.
  • Who Writes This Crap?!: Usually invoked whenever a journalist tries to be a Pungeon Master. Once he finds the name, Nash will usually scold the writer like a child: "You go stand in the corner and think about what you've done!!"
    • He will occasionally give a writer a free pass if the circumstances are so bizarre that the story offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance for a joke that even he wouldn't have been able to pass up.
    • Nash and Tara have been known to poke fun at articles that are obviously padding their word count.
  • Word Salad Title: The headline of one particular story: "Homeowner Clubs Burglar with Pottery, Holds Him at Elephantpoint After he Urinates in Basement, Leaves Beer in Washing Machine." It Makes Sense in Context.
  • World of Weirdness: The universe within Nash's scripted shows, the Reviewaverse. After all, there's an alien and Nash is actually Aeon.
  • Worst Aid: In "It's Not A Pocket," a man attempted to do surgery on his own hernia with a butter knife and a cigarette.
  • Would Hurt a Child: One story featured a man who held up his one-year-old toddler as a meat shield against pepper spray. Nash and Tara are very understandably horrified by this, especially since it wouldn't have worked anyway.
  • X Meets Y:invoked WTFIWWY Live – That'll Do, Pig – 9/9/13, Tara describes the drunken pig rampage as Animal Farm as written by Ernest Hemingway.
  • You Are Too Late: Used in a Shout-Out to Watchmen when the angry alien pants explain their master plan.
  • You Fool!: Arlo shouts this after Nash sets him on fire with the Bill Hicks Experience 2.0
  • Younger Than They Look: A lot of the people in the stories are this, mainly due to drug abuse.
(Cue sad trombone)

Alternative Title(s): Radio Dead Air

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