YMMV / Schaffrillas Productions

• Awesome Music:
  • In "Revenge of the Senate: Episode 3", "Rubberband Man" (then-recently used for the entrance scene for the Guardians of the Galaxy in Avengers: Infinity War) is used during Revenge of the Sith's opening shot of a sun. It blends very well with the action going on.
  • His rendition of "If It's True" at the end of "Why Shrek Forever After is an Underrated Gem".
  • From the 1-hour Tamatoa analysis, his I need it Shiny parody of Holding out for a Hero used in the climax.
  • "Revenge of the Senate: Episode 4" one-ups the previous installment's opening by having Wig Wam's "Do You Wanna Taste It" play over each main character's introduction.
• Bizarro Episode: His 2024 April Fools video, The Tony Soprano Iceberg ^note (WARNING: loud noise, scary!) o_O is one, even compared to his other April Fools videos. It starts out as a parody of iceberg videos, specifically riffing on Schaff's running Tony Soprano gag in the Mario Kart rankings, but as time goes on the facts get more and more disturbing. By the end, Schaff is claiming that Tony Soprano was meant to be in the Book of Revelations, is the avatar of death set to bring about the end of humanity^note November 15th, 2037, and that he himself has been cursed by God to relay this forbidden information to the audience. The video ends with Schaff confirming everything in the video was made up — except Tony Soprano really is the avatar of death.
• Common Knowledge: Because his mascot is Tamatoa and his most popular reviews tend to cover animated works, James is often seen as an animation reviewer akin to The Mysterious Mr. Enter and Saberspark. However, this isn't the case, as his channel covers a wide variety of content beyond animated works, such as live-action works, video games, and musicals, amongst other things.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In his "Why Ralph Breaks the Internet is a Cinematic Disaster" video, when describing how the film killed his enthusiasm for Disney animated films being good, he says "The future of animation is in the hands of Netflix", among others. Netflix Animation would later come under fire for prematurely canceling several shows and laying off many employees.
  • In the same video, when describing how a lot of Disney's creative works were suffering in quality in recent years, one bright spot he points out is that the Marvel Cinematic Universe was still doing pretty good. A few years later, both his and many other fans' opinions on the franchise soured due to poorly received content.
  • At the end of his Illumination ranking, James briefly makes a joke about The Super Mario Bros. Movie being "the end", before clarifying that he's not dying. Kind of bad timing for the joke, considering that merely 2 months later, he'd get into a severe car crash that nearly killed him on top of killing his best friend and his brother.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: Let's just say there's a good reason it has its own page.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The gag in "Sharp Talk" where Angie gives Oscar a pink Pearl becomes this thanks to the later revelation that Pink Diamond's Pearl is actually our Pearl. A twist Schaff himself would go on to criticize.
  • During his "Disney Twist Villains" video, due to his limited knowledge from the Ralph Breaks the Internet trailer, he predicts that Yesss will be the villain. Not only does Yesss turn out to be one of the more supportive characters in the movie, but there's not a twist villain in the movie at all (much to Schaf's delight). The closest the movie has to a proper antagonist is a virus that ends up copying Ralph's insecurities and becoming a literal army of Ralphs.
  • In his Captain Marvel (2019) review, having grown tired of the Arc Fatigue of the Infinity Stones, he hopes that they get annihilated in Avengers: Endgame. Sure enough, the stones are destroyed in Endgame, and are later shown to be So Last Season by the first episode of Loki.
  • In his "Every Mario Kart Wii Course Ranked" video, Schaff claims that DS Yoshi Falls is so unremarkable that Nintendo hasn't made a Yoshi-themed track since. Fast forward to February 2023, and a Nintendo Direct reveals a new Yoshi's Island-themed track is planned to be released as part of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass.
    • In the same video, he mentions that Moonview Highway is very unlikely to make it into the Booster Course Pass due to the abundance of city tracks already included. Then comes the announcement of Wave 5 in July 2023 and the reveal of Moonview Highway being included in the wave.
    • Another Booster Course Pass-related thing that is related to the same video is the statement that "there's no way [Wii Rainbow Road] isn't the very last track in the Booster Course Pass" during the segment on Mario Kart Wii's Rainbow Road. The full reveal of Wave 6 during early November 2023 showed that, yes, James was right — Wii Rainbow Road happens to be the fourth and final course of the Spiny Cup and thus the final course of the entire Booster Course Pass.
  • In his "Every Mario Kart Character Ranked" video, he had Funky Kong as his #1 and Peachette at the very bottom. Wave 6 brings both of them back, meaning both his favorite character and his least favorite were added to the game in the same pack.
  • In his video about the announcement of the upcoming 2025 live action remake of Moana, he says that if the Moana fandom took a vote on what they would want as a continuation of the Moana franchise, they'd rather want Moana 2 instead of a live-action remake, with Schaff additionally stating that a sequel would be a better idea than a live-action remake. Come February 2024, a teaser trailer for Moana 2 would be released.
  • After all the effort he went through to find out if various Pokémon could eat pizza in Pokémon Café Mix for his video determining which playable characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate have canonically eaten pizza, not long after, The Indigo Disk DLC Expansion in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet would be released, and allow any Pokémon in that game to eat a pizza. And because the list of available Pokémon happened to include every playable Pokémon in Smash Ultimate, this effectively meant his efforts were wasted.
  • His comedic plea in his Pixar Ranking video for Pixar to not make anymore Toy Story movies in the end of his entry about Toy Story 4, considering a Toy Story 5 would later be announced to be in the making.
• I Knew It!: Many people were expecting for his Illumination ranking to start from the best movies to the worst movies instead of the usual opposite due to how obvious it would be what the best movie is.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Why X is a Cinematic Disaster/Subversive Masterpiece^ExplanationWhenever fans of Schaffrillas talk about a work, especially an animated movie, that is either widely disliked or unexpectedly beloved, someone will often refer to it in style of a Schaffrillas video title, most commonly calling it either "a Cinematic Disaster" like the many videos he has already made with that title, or "a Subversive Masterpiece" like the title of his video about Megamind.
  • "We're going back in time to the first Thanksgiving to get turkeys off the menu"^ExplanationA Running Gag in his video about Free Birds. He'd say the line in full any chance he gets to refer to the film. The video and gag ended up providing the movie with more exposure along with plenty of memes related to the line.
  • "That was his mistake!"^ExplanationA line from Big Hero 6 spoken by Professor Callaghan when Hiro calls him out on letting Tadashi pull a Senseless Sacrifice. The line is turned into a Running Gag in Schaffrillas' "Why Disney's Twist Villains Don't Work" video and called back to in later videos, and many of his viewers meme about it as well, to the point that it's now one of the movie's most famous lines.
  • "You tell Arthur Read that he'll never eat lunch in this town again."^ExplanationA Running Gag from his YTP days of using a clip from Matt Damon's guest appearance on Arthur.
  • "Holy shit X that's a helicopter!"^ExplanationFrom the "Every Disney Direct-to-DVD Sequel Ranked" video where an in-joke meme shared between James and his editor.
  • If Schaffrillas Productions Ranked [blank].^ExplanationSome people have began making videos ostensibly "predicting" future Schaffrillas ranking videos by recreating the transition slides used in his ranking videos (but with a picture of the subject added for clarity). The actual point of this is to replicate the Five-Second Foreshadowing jokes used in the slides (comparable to "[blank] portrayed by SpongeBob" or "[blank] described by Michael Rosen" videos, but with varied audio clips).
  • SHOOT THEM WITH THE DEHYDRATION GUN!^Explanation Courtesy of his critical review of Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate, Schaffrillas' anger at Megamind not just shooting the Doom Syndicate with the Dehydration Gun has been making the rounds on Twitter, becoming comparable to the "Squidward's House" or the "Bat Credit Card" rant, with many people turning it into a copypasta towards other incidents of Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? or Forgot About His Powers.
• Nightmare Fuel: "YTP: Revenge of the Senate: Episode 4" makes the "Marcy forcibly gets the Core's consciousness transferred into her" scene even more horrifying. Ahsoka is the one who suffers this fate, and instead of the Core, it's actually a combination of every preserved Sith in history. It's just jarring to watch a mask similar to Darth Vader's being lowered onto Ahsoka's face and hear her resulting screams, as she unwillingly becomes the very evil she fought against.
• Older Than They Think: In his "Every Disney Direct-to-DVD Sequel Ranked," James, his editor, and his fans came up with the meme/in-joke where a random helicopter shows in any shot of direct-to-video Disney sequel. Little did they know that Jacques Demy already made a similar gag in his musical film adaptation of Donkey Skin where the helicopter shows up with the incestuous king and the Lilac Fairy at the near end of the movie. Even funnier considering James is talking about the Christmas-themed midquel to Beauty and the Beast and Jean Marais, the actor who played the Beast in Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946), played the king in Demy's Donkey Skin.
• Reviews Are the Gospel: Like with many other reviewers, a lot of his fans treat his opinions as facts and view them as final and the "correct" ones. Ironically, James himself is opposed to this mentality, as he has repeatedly implored his viewers not to mindlessly parrot his opinions and wondered why anyone would ever treat his views on works as Gospel. Some notable examples include:
  • His review of Ralph Breaks the Internet, where, among other things, he felt that the story was a "cinematic disaster" overall, that Ralph and Vanellope's character arcs were a mess and made the both of them look bad, and viewed the "Oh My Disney" sequence to be more of a cynical advertisement than a fun love-letter to Disney's filmography. While these were already common criticisms of the film among its detractors beforehand, Schaff expressing them for better or worse caused the movie's reputation to go down the toilet and become regarded as one of the Disney Animated Canon's worst entries overnight.
  • Shrek Forever After was, for quite some time, viewed as a thoroughly So Okay, It's Average film responsible for sending the franchise back to the swamp, with the best thing most people could say about it being that it was better than Shrek the Third (a low bar to clear). Then Schaff reviewed it and had almost nothing but good things to say about it, viewing it as an emotionally satisfying capper to the series that expands on themes introduced in the first two movies in a way that Third largely did not. Public opinion warmed up to Forever After not long after, and it's viewed as, if not on the level of the first two Shrek movies, then at least enjoyable in its own right. James himself has admitted that he never saw many people praising the film beforehand but more positive appraisals popped up after his review.
• Tear Jerker:
  • His tribute video to Stephen Hillenburg, also crosses with Heartwarming Moments.
  • In his comparison of how The Last Jedi and Avengers: Infinity War subverted expectations, he describes how the latter did it better by virtue of having the movie subvert expectations on Vision's fate: everyone going in expected him to die given how he had the Mind Stone in his head, but the movie gives the opportunity to safely remove it from his head by going to Shuri in Wakanda. However, the Battle of Wakanda escalates to the point Vision is forced to take part, and Thanos becomes too powerful to stop before he even gets to Earth anyway, and thus Vision does die after a Hope Spot the entire film he'd pull through. To portray this, footage of Vision joining the battle and both of his deaths despite Wanda's great trauma is played to "Rewrite the Stars" from The Greatest Showman, hammering in how Vision couldn't escape his fate.
    "And when we go outside, you're gonna wake up and see that it's hopeless after all..."
  • His review video covering season 3 of The Owl House begins and ends with him mourning the death of Flapjack in "Thanks to Them", dropping the humorous tone entirely and talking about the loss and how hard it must have been for Hunter to lose his best friend. The longer he keeps talking though, the clearer it becomes that he's using Flapjack as a stand-in for his brother Patrick, who was tragically killed in a car accident a couple of months before the video's release. At the very end, when he mentions Patrick by name, he reveals that the video was posted on what would have been Patrick's 23rd birthday and tearfully asks the audience to wish him a happy birthday.
  • In his Whisper of the Heart review, James talks about artistic burnout and fears of inadequacy, with details taken from his personal experience. Any artists in the audience will likely identify with much of what he says.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Much like fellow YTPer-turned-video-essayist YouTuber EmperorLemon, fans who got into his channel from his YouTube Poops felt alienated by his channel's change in focus to video essays and movie reviews, especially since it resulted in the Sharkslayer plotline being Cut Short. Ultimately, he would create a second channel for anything that wasn't a review video, including his YTPs.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some felt Glomgold and his adopted baby shark should have had a bigger impact on the "Sharkslayer" plot, instead of being anticlimactically killed off by Oscar in "Spingebill Awakens a Very Steamed Clam".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: While the climactic resolution of the Sharkslayer plot was well-received in the million subscriber special, several fans lamented that due to Schaf's switch in focus to movie commentaries, the plot had not really been touched for years and felt a bit like a rushed solution.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Schaffrillas could be mistaken as a channel aimed at kids due to his most popular reviews covering family-friendly animated works. However, James frequently swears in his videos (although he censors f-bombs with dolphin noises), makes sex references, and talks about topics that children don't understand.

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