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  • Aluminum Christmas Trees:
    • A lot of humor in the series comes from digging up obscure, ridiculous bits of canon material that have largely been forgotten about yet never actually contradicted by newer material. Fans are often surprised when they check the source material and find that Text-to-Speech did not make up that bit of silliness.
    • The Fab Custodes being based on 1st Edition material about the Adeptus Custodes that was only retconned well after this series began, and likely in part because of this series.
    • There is indeed an Ork Warboss who named himself "Big Green". He's only mentioned in a single line and not elaborated upon, but he is canon. This one is actually lampshaded in-universe, with the character mentioning him giving the book and page number.
    • One special talks about crotalids, enormous crocodilian predators that can, against all logic, somehow travel through the Warp despite being non-daemonic animals with no technology. Made up just for a Steve Irwin parody and poking fun at Magnus's accent? Nope, they're canon.
    • From the Fourth special, Kitten punctures Magnus' mysticism by pointing out the Ouija Board they're using was made by Hasbro corporation. Far future aside, Hasbro does own the Ouija trademark, and has sold Ouija boards before.
    • In the Sixth special, Dorn questions the logic of Altdorf being able to have such dangerous beasts in a zoo despite the tech level being the equivalent of 16th century Germany. The truth is, the Imperial Zoo does in fact have all of those animals kept there, including an imperial dragon that was born and reared there.
    • The Jopall Indentured Squadrons, their ginormous debt contracted from birth and their ridiculous pajama-looking uniforms are just a creation from Alfabusa to go along how greedy and mercantile Jopall rulers are, right? Both the regiments and the pajamas are canon.
  • Audience-Coloring Adaptation: TTS seems to have placed the idea that the Imperium were a mostly benevolent, albeit xenophobic group before the Horus Heresy, and that the Emperor was rather chill with sharing his galaxy with the Xenos even if he was still hostile to there existence. When in canon the pre-HH Imperium was just as genocidal as their modern selves, if not more so.
  • Awesome Ego: While the Emperor does have a few glaring flaws (which Magnus is quick to point out) it's hard to argue with his egoism when he is essentially the (un)living embodiment of human potential. He may not be perfect, but he's a hell of a lot closer to perfection than any other entity of comparable power.
    • Fyodor Karamazov could give the Emperor a run for his money, believing himself to be in the right to the point that, in episode 18, he buys the lie the Emperor feeds him about being a shard of his psyche, which enables him, in episode 26 (part 1) to actually play host to the Emperor's severed compassion. If not for having an ego the size of a planet, Fyodor never would have done either.
  • Can't Un-Hear It: Many fans have begun to hear the series voices in their heads while reading official material. Magnus' accent and Rogal Dorn's blunt seriousness are two notable examples.
  • Catharsis Factor: One of the biggest draws of the show is watching the Emperor finally start sorting out the festering grimdark shitfest that is the canonical Imperium of Man.
    • When Emperor shows how Leman Russ mutilates one of Dark Eldars into Ludicrous Gibs, it's very therapeutic for him, his aide and the audience.
  • Crack Pairing: Custodisi and Whammudes, for some reason, ship The Emperor/Uriah Olathaire due to their interactions in The Last Church before learning said priest has joined Chaos...and even Whammudes still does to an extent.
  • Crazy is Cool: About eighty percent of the cast. Every over-the-top ludicrous feat of badassery in the source material is taken and amplified to a ridiculous degree.
    • The Ultramarines. This series takes their Creator's Pet status from the 5th edition codex and weaponizes it, turning them into Comically Invincible Heroes.
      • Although this is undercut by what seems to be a Faustian bargain in place ensuring their success, that the chapter master Marneus Calgar seems to be aware of and as a result is suffering from a massive case of imposter syndrome.
    • Kaldor Draigo even more so, with extra emphasis on the "crazy". He's downright cartoonish in his pure, undiluted madness, absurd and erratic at every passing moment, and yet this is exactly what makes him so powerful.
    • Sly Marbo takes the already-extreme Memetic Badass reputation of the Imperial Guard and pushes it into unforeseen levels. He can fly through space without a helmet, his only form of communication is a mighty wordless scream, and he beat up Lucius, Ahriman, and Typhus with Good Old Fisticuffs.
    • VULKAN. He cannot be killed, he loves everything, and he is the only person in the history of the setting, if not Games Workshop material in general, to fight using The Power of Friendship.
    • The Emperor himself. He is a petty, angry manchild who plans, by and large, come off as utterly illogical and nonsensical. Then he actually pulls of his schemes which thus far, have succeeded at improving the Imperium.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Leman Russ talking to some Sisters of Battle. It's about literally bloodthristy daemons of Khorne going after Sisters of Battle on their period.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: The series' interpretation of some of the characters have become rather well-loved by fans of TTS and it's source material.
    • Rogal Dorn for being incredibly blunt and Literal-Minded, helping him become a Fountain of Memes.
    • Also, Custodisi has been starting to gain a significant amount of popularity for being the one to openly call out the Emperor for being an asshole during the events of The Last Church.
    • Astropath Sassafras from the Bro Trip 40,000 episodes. She barely has one or two lines, but she was so beloved the second episode goes out of the way to show she survived the ship crash, which many of the comments were thankful for.
  • Fountain of Memes:
    • The Fabulous Custodes have so many memorable lines that any Youtube video about the Custodes and the Pillar Men will have someone quote one of their many lines.
    • Rogal Dorn is a walking and talking meme generator, and his voice actor has the oblivious deadpan spot on, to the point that almost everything he says gets repeated as a meme.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • The series, for its lengthy name, is often called "Emperor Text-To-Speech", "Text-To-Speech", "Emperor TTS", or "TTS".
    • Pillar-stodes for the Fabulous Custodes. Also Fabstodes.
  • Fanon: Thanks to Text to Speech Device many fan artists now draw Rogal Dorn with a mustache.
  • Gateway Series: Despite its humorous nature, the series does a good job of explaining the lore and factions of the 40k universe.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • In episode 12, The Emperor's joke about Lion El'Jonson making a gay-bar might at first just be part of his crude humor. But then you look up the fact that Lionel Johnson, the Dark Angels Primarch's namesake, was openly homosexual. Not to mention the Dark Angels headquarters, The Rock, was named after a gay-bar near the Game Workshop HQ.
    • Also, the binary codes that the Custodes Captain-General gives the Emperor shows different spoilers for things to come, such as Mar- I mean Papa Smurf having captured Magnus The Red and Cypher planning something on Mars.
    • Both of the Children's Card Game episodes are funnier the more you know about the real game. Every move is either breaking the rules or using banned cards.
    • In the third episode of Bro Trip 40,000, Lance Cashpants's Epic War-Ter Pack provides three dunks of water measuring 'merely' two percent salinity. One percent is already highly saline and cannot be used for most crops and livestock.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • In Episode 17, The Emperor makes an offhand comment about how he never liked his Uncle Ragnar. In the Horus Heresy novel Master of Mankind, we find out that he killed his uncle in revenge for murdering his father.
    • Magnus's not-unfounded claims that the Emperor was a really shitty father and the Emperor himself showing a lot of dickiness but also geniune love for the Primarchs become this as Horus Heresy has progressed, with the writers at the Black Library having it that the Emperor never truly cared for the Primarchs at all (loyalist and traitor included), viewing them as nothing more than powerful but ultimately expendable tools to further the ambitions of Humanity's survival and ascendancy.
    • Pretty much everything regarding the characterization of the Primarchs has become this thanks to the Horus Heresy books. For example, in TTS, Rogal Dorn describes Perturabo as a petulant manchild who clung to grudges for an absurd amount of time, but the books depict the Iron Warrior as someone who was forced to live in the shadow of someone who callously judged him inferior, and surrounded by brothers who never bothered to learn who he was or what he wanted to do. Granted, the novels also make it clear that Perturabo never made himself known to others and never asked to be a builder, so Rogal may have had a point.
    • Kitten's comment in one third season episode about how his mother was a tube inside Mount Everest is a little less funny if you've played Horizon Zero Dawn.
    • The Emperor's comment that talking to the Tyranid Hive Mind is like "Talking to a herd of hungry sheep; unsatisfying and it makes you look like an idiot" is this after the horror that ensues when Detective Bruce Norring makes accidental psychic contact with it, that is now the page-image for this show's Nightmare Fuel page. Seems the Emperor forgot that, as the most powerful human psychic, his experience would be rather different from the average human's.
    • The third Bro Trip episode was written before the COVID-19 pandemic. Alfabusa had to put up a disclaimer stating that any resemblances were "purely and ominously coincidental".
    • The Emperor's portrayal of being quite grumpy and insulting towards his sons, especially his constant demands for Guilliman to get his life support turned off, yet still loving them despite it all, has taken on a much darker tint after revelations from the recent Dark Imperium storyline. Guilliman, to his great pain, learns that the Emperor never saw him and his brothers as sons, merely as ultimately expendable tools to be used to save the Human race and ensure its dominance in the galaxy. note 
    • Though this could be a case of Unreliable Narrator. Lately the Black Library has shown that everything the Emperor says is filtered through the expectations and biases of the recipient. This is why Ra Endymion of the Custodes hears the Emperor call the Primarch as numbers, despite the fact that the Emperor had given each of the Primarchs names before they were stolen away from him. These names being different from the ones they use and could actually be utilized as True Name against the Daemon Primarchs.
    • Given Guilliman's continuing quest to reform the twisted monstrosity that is the Imperium in the 42nd Millennium is extremely similar to TTS Emperor's, one can almost look at the new 40k Canon as a deconstruction of this very series given how utterly soul crushing and thankless such a task is even for a superhuman demi-god.
    • One of the bigger subplots in the background of the series is Abaddon gathering the Champions of Chaos to lead a Dark Crusade on Cadia becomes this in the canon story Cadia Falls where he actually manages to succeed, causing the planet to become overrun by daemons and then destroyed via Exterminatus.
    • Russ and the Inquisition drunkenly pranking daemons is hilarious... right up until the army of extremely pissed off daemons catches up and kills almost all of them in a Curb-Stomp Battle.
    • In Episode 18 the Emperor mentions offhand that the events of The Last Church are his reference point for "sublime schadenfreude". Then much later in the second podcast the story is examined, and in-universe Dorn and the Caretakers are so disgusted at him going considerably out of his way to bully a harmless old man that they spend several minutes explaining exactly why they thought it made him an asshole (actually calling him an asshole to his face).
    • The entire comedy match between Cegorach and Magnus became this after Games Workshop announced their zero tolerance policy regarding fan animations. Especially the Harlequin at the end who announced the match is cancelled, telling the audience to stop laughing. "This will not age well" indeed...
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Earlier in the series Emperor says that he'll make someone throw a match at the Fab Custodes to show them the folly of not wearing armour and being all oiled up. In the Aprils Fools episode he finally gets his wish by the hands of Fucking Horus himself.
    • In episode 1, The Emperor says "Come to papa" to the Centurion - said Centurion later turns out to be Rogal Dorn, one of The Emperor's actual "sons".
    • Despite the Emperor absolutely detesting Roboute Guilliman and wanting his life support cut off, in the Gathering Storm event of 40k canon, Guilliman finally awakens and has the exact same horrified and furious reaction to the bottomless cruelty and stupidity of the 41st millennium Imperium as the text-to-speech Emperor did. Well, with less uses of the word "Fuck" but still.
      Why do I still live? What more do you want from me? I gave everything I had to you, to them. Look what they have made of our dream. This bloated, rotten carcass of an empire is driven not by reason and hope, but by fear, hate and ignorance. Better that we had all burned in the fire of Horus's ambition than lived to see this.
    • Compounded by the time of Dark Imperium where Canon Roboute is literally doing everything the TTS Emperor has been ordering/suggesting right down to writing a book on how to fix the Imperium and dressing up his attempts to reform the Imperium in religious justifications despite his utter contempt for the Imperial Cult.
    • The Emperor's desire to cut Guilliman's life support becomes hilarious in light of Guilliman's revival, where Yvraine literally cuts the Primarch's life support so that Ynnead can revive him.
    • You know how the series keep taking Custodes characters out of the Imperial Palace? Well, as of January 2018, there's a full Codex for the Custodes and lore reasons for them to be out in the galaxy at large.
    • In the first podcast discussion of one of the books mistakenly referring to a Space Marine officer as a Lieutenant leads to the characters speculating what the equivalent rank would even be, with the guess being either a Captain or something under a Captain. Come 8th edition and Primaris Marines actually have a Lieutenant rank, and it's effectively a lower grade of Captain.
    • Meeting the Felinids has become this due to the Internet's collective reaction to the Cats trailer.
    • Marneus Calgar telling Ciaphas Cain that they're not much different by being fakes becomes this since the Marvel Comics series about Calgar's past revealed he's not the real Marneus Calgar but his childhood friend who took his friend's name in honor for the real Calgar sacrificing his life to save him and ensure Calgar's noble name survive. Through this could considered to be Heartwarming in Hindsight too.
    • The Emperor blowing up at Dorn for disrespecting his "mother" (the tube he was grown in) after it was revealed that the Primarchs do have a genetic mother, Erda, who the Emperor was fond of enough to not seek vengeance on for stealing the Primarchs away.
    • Special 7, where the gang plays Stellaris, sees the Emperor run a feudal kingdom where his vassals specialize into fixed roles. Stellaris would later come out with the Overlord expansion, which overhauls vassal mechanics to create this exact dynamic between the overlord and their followers — there's even a specific vassal class, the "Bulwark", who fills the exact hyper-defensive role Rogal Dorn occupied in Big E's faction.
    • The very last Short, released in August of 2021, about the Squats being back? Well, they actually are.
    • In special number 4, Magnus admits to playing Red/Blue in Magic: The Gathering. Cue the 40k crossover decks being released, and guess what his card is?
    • In short number 4, Decius refers to the Deceiver as "straight up an idiot". Then episode 30 reveals that the Deceiver's plan of making a powerful warrior by fusing Kaldor Draigo and a Shard of the C'Tan God: The Outsider went horribly awry to the point he had to throw Draigo into the warp forever, shows that Decius wasn't too far off.
    • The Dark Eldar's plan here of torturing the Star Child (a fragment of the Emperor's soul) in order to sustain their entire race forever is actually remarkably close to the actual plan of the Dark Eldar in the 40k book The Dark City published in 2022, namely, obtaining enough genetic material of the emperor to make a clone they could put on a mini-Golden Throne to power Commoragh.
    • If we count Jaghatai Khan's brief cameo in episode 29, every loyalist Primarch who survived the Heresy has returned at the time of the hiatus except Roboute Guilliman and the Lion, the two who actually would return in the canonical 40k universe.
    • The Emperor's account of the sacrifice of Ollanius Pius (he really was a Guardman, but a Space Marine and Custodes also sacrificed themselves to avoid being upstaged by a mortal human) becomes this with the release of the final novel of the Siege of Terra, which reveals that this was roughly how things played out in canon (Ollanius was a Guardsman but also a perpetual, and he was guarded by the Custodian Caecaltus Dusk while desperately begging the Emperor to wake up.
    • The Emperor playing Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker became downright prophetic when The End and the Death: Volume III has, among an array of other battles across dimensions, the Emperor and Horus duelling with decks of cards.
  • Ho Yay:
    Kitten: My only desire is to serve you, my lord!
    The Emperor: That can easily be skewed in all the wrong ways. It's a good thing that shitty fanfic writers aren't anywhere near here.
    • Although, there is a point in that the Emperor is very reliant on Kitten. Magnus' comment that Kitten is "practically the Emperor's wife" isn't too far off in some regards.
      • In a non-canon short, the Emperor fiddles with his speech settings, and has Ho Yay with himself, as Emperor had left Emperor for Empress.
    • The Pillar-stodes or Fabstodes absolutely drip of this. With their love for the Emperor (and probably each other) and basically running around the Imperial Palace almost naked.
    Whamuudes: Probably while we were all oiling our abs...
    Custodisi: You...you mean each other's abs? [titillating chuckling]
    Whamuudes: AH-huuuu... that too.
    • Kairos must really, really despise Skarbrand, because his lying head was outright making love confessions towards the big guy. With such lines as: "I'm glad we have each other" and "I love you Skarbrand."
    • And then there's Custodisi's crush for Magnus, when the emperor orders him to go find Kitten and Magnus he states he's interested in slapping his ass and then referring to him as "Hot Stuff".
    But first I must fiercely slap dat red-hot ass for my hand is fiercely cravin' some daemon misbehavin' [Aroused Chuckle]
    • Magnus's adventuring proposition to Kitten can quite easily be interpreted as the other sort of proposition, considering the word choice and lack of personal space involved. Add that to the fact that he's been known to teleport Kitten by wrapping his wings around the Custodes, and his remark that the amount of non-naked Custodes outside of the throne room is 'disappointing', and you have a Fan-Preferred Couple. Hunter: the Parenting, the series made by Alfabusa after TTS went on an indefinite hiatus, drops the subtext and has Magnus and Kitten's Suspiciously Similar Substitutes as a couple.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Yes, the Emperor is definitely not a nice guy. But, given everything he has had to put up with for the past ten thousand years and his present state, along with him discovering how far the Imperium has decayed after all the work he put in to creating it... it's hard not to feel at-least a little sorry for him. He also seems to genuinely care about those around him, even if most of the time he's insulting them.
    • To a lesser extent, Magnus. He's an egotistical Insufferable Genius, and he outright lies to Kitten about the Emperor not wanting him back as his caretaker and is quick to berate him when he's angry, not unlike his father. But consider that not only does he have to put up with everything he did in canon, but also realizes he had been used and manipulated by Tzeentch, but also has to put up with being constantly berated by the Emperor. Is it any wonder he wants to knock the Emperor's ego down a peg?
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • The lines said by all of the Fabulous Custodes.
      • My Glorious Overlord!
      • My Oiled Abs quiver at your voice!
      • ...[Aroused Snickering]...
    • DIGGANOBZ! (in response to anything Wulfen-related.)
    • "SUCK IT LEMAN YOU FURRY FUCK!"
    • Episode 20 already has some lines getting popular with Youtube commenters.
      • You thought it was [adorable little thing], but it was I, ROGAL DORN!
      • REPENT, MOTHER***ER!
      • VULKAN LIVES!
    • Fans have begun referring to the Emperor as the "Man-Emperor of mankind" as opposed to the usual "God Emperor of man kind"
    • Pretty much everything Rogal Dorn says. The man is a bloody Fountain of Memes.
    I hope our cuddling sessions aren't rescheduled because of this.
    I am fortifying this position.
    Father, may I still sit in your lap?
    I am the best treehouse architect in the galaxy. I accept the challenge.
    Serf! I need supplies and twelve hundred labourers.
    Father, are you familiar with the expression "you are what you eat", seeing as you are behaving like an ever-growing pile of screaming psychic children?
    Once upon a time... I was me.
    Yey. Bike.
    I personally think it is a lemon. A lemon is a mighty fruit. My favourite.
    Fecal matter does not have mental capacity. You do not require fortifications against it.
    I am "Adorable."
    There is no such sauce product.
    • Commenters' habit of saying "I'm fortifying this position!" and adding rows and rows of ▪
    • Rogal's oft-repeated deadpan "No" is a meme unto itself.
    • Make the Imperium great again!
      • #MagnusDidNothingWrong
    • The "Heresy Scene" (AKA "The Imperium Of Man In A Nutshell") from Episode 19, which was reshared so often (and uncredited) that Alfabusa had to create a standalone video for.
    • Just about everything that Corvus Corax says.
      • "The box doesn't judge. It just hates."
    • Thanks to the podcasts, Choas has become rather common as a nickname for chaos, to the point some can't help but read choas involuntarily when reading the actual word. The meme has even spread in-universe, where, despite the vox-hailer's censor blowing out, the podcast crew continue saying "choas" as do first time participants Magnus and Decius, who would have no reason to.
    • Everything about Santodes. Pretty much every line of his is memetic, not the least because he's voiced by Takahata101, who voiced the Abridged Nappa and Guru.
    • I CAST FIST!
    • The scene in Episode 28 where Azrael realizes that the Dark Angels' incessant and extreme paranoia is harming their chapter and vows to reform them, and then immediately turns around and orders Asmodai to kill the Fabricator-General of the Adeptus Mechanicus because he was holding a suspicious book has gone memetic, as it's pretty much the a summation of the Dark Angels as a whole.
    • Kitten/Shadowsun: if the Tau are mentioned in a Youtube video, there is a large chance someone will bring up the pairing, at which point someone else will inevitably respond "THIS IS NOT CANON".
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The canon version of Kaldor Draigo is widely disliked for being Matt Ward's self-insert, for screwing up the lore of the Warp and for being an obvious clone of Khal Drogo. ITEHATTSD's version of him, in contrast, is well-liked for being a bonafide senile lunatic who not only gets some hilarious lines but is incredibly badass in spite of his insanity, but because of it.
    • Similarly done with the Ultramarines who were also Matt Ward's Creator's Pet faction.
  • Shocking Moments: The Star Child (i.e. a large part of the Emperor's soul, specifically his Compassion and Humanity) fusing with Fyodor, creating a light so bright that it obliterates the daemonic forces attacking the Gate of Khaine and some Black Legion Chaos Space Marines. The light of his rebirth shines out of the Warp and into material space, shining bright enough to be seen outside the galaxy.
  • Spiritual Adaptation: If "The Grand Inquisitor" story from The Brothers Karamazov was mixed with a dose of Space Opera and turned into a comedy series, it would probably look a lot like this.
  • Squick:
    • "Timothy", the thing that Vect keeps as a personal booze-giver (as in the one that pours it directly into his mouth, being too important to take a cup or drink himself) and that some Homunculus probably gave him as a gift. It looks warped as hell, like someone tried to make E.T. out of an old man through extensive and highly ineffective surgery.
    • The second Voxlog, titled "A Distressing Journey Into The Emperor's Canals"; the canals in question are the sewers where the Golden Throne's machinery empties out. The effluvium down there makes regular old crap seem pleasant going by the incursion Whammudes is tasked with, and his narration on the matter.
    • The board members in "Jopallian Japes", ugly and vaguely-human fat blobs which have been negatively compared to Nurglite daemons.
    • The TTS version of Ferik Jurgen somehow looks even more disgusting than his canon counterpart.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: Magnus in the Board Game special. The others call Magnus a "Bad GM" and accuse him of railroading them. However, the comments are full of sympathy for Magnus, with many pointing out that Magnus never wanted to be the GM in the first place and actually went along with the increasingly ridiculous shenanigans of the party for 90% of the game. Even when they end up facing the Gorger Lord, an opponent that they cannot possibly hope to defeat, Magnus tells them that they have the option to run away and even offers them the opportunity for a fresh start when the campaign has gone completely and utterly off the rails. While he does become a Killer GM, it feels more like he simply boiled over in frustration with the other cast members being bad players (many of the cast fit classic "bad player" archetypes) as opposed to him being a bad GM. Some comments even point out that this neatly mirrors the events that lead him to throw his lot in with Tzeench, trying to do the right thing but eventually pushed over the edge by the actions of others.
  • The Woobie: Boy. Even in paper, the role given to him by the Emperor is sad: Be a glorified mic stand and an example of how utterly ignorant the Imperium's citizens are. In practice, it gets worse: He's constantly nervous of making a bad scene in front of the closest thing he has to a deity, often panics to the point of Stress Vomit, and the Custodes make a point of mocking him at every turn because of how utterly far below them he is with Karstodes in particular seeming to enjoy making threats of violence towards him. His eye is gorged with the shards of a glass cup broken by Helbrecht. Even if the Emperor spares him his actual wrath and offensive language, he's still utterly dismissive otherwise. All of this on top of being just some poor kid from somewhere in the Palace outskirts, who barely has anything to eat as is and whose life is an utter drudge. The one saving grace he has is that Rogal Dorn, a flippin' Primarch, is looking out for him.
    • The Lamenters are a whole Space Marine chapter of them.

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