YMMV / The Spoony Experiment

The audience and fanbase related tropes for The Spoony Experiment.

The Spoony Experiment provides examples of:

• Adorkable:
  • The guy gave his dog a Twitter account. Enough said.
  • Insano has his moments as well.
    Dr. Insano: I am adorable but alone!
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: It's hard not to feel for Spencer D. Bum during his brutal death.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Spoony One: Jerkass Fan Hater snob? Or Jerkass Woobie struggling with depression? Or both?
  • Dr. Insano's gaydar has caused a number of fans to assume that he's actually gay.
• Arc Fatigue: Spoony was trying to develop a Myth Arc over the course of the reviews. The story seemed to be that the Gate Cleaner and the Ultimate Warrior were working for the Guardian, who was intending to invade and conquer our world, but he abandoned his plans because Sephiroth was going to destroy the world with a meteor, and somehow was harnessing Spoony's hatred of Final Fantasy for his plan. There were also hints that Burton had been reprogrammed for some purpose (implicitly by Sephiroth), Spoony may have been trapped in some Platonic Cave illusion (which may or may not be related to the Burton subplot), and somehow Pumpkinhead may have been involved. Whatever the story was supposed to be, the Kudzu Plot nature of their development, Spoony's sporadic updating schedule, and the fact the story wasn't very good and didn't seem to have a point, meant that a lot of viewers didn't really care either way, and after he moved from Arizona to Illinois he largely abandoned the arc in favor playing up his Running Gags.
• Awesome Music:
  • His opening theme song "Break Me" by The Irresponsibles.
  • Spoony's vocal cover of "A Whole New World" even manages to make Dr. Insano just turn around and walk right out of the room.
  • Syncing the first Anima summon to one of the many epic music bits from Kickassia in part 2 of his Final Fantasy X review.
  • Long Live the Spoony One.
  • Wendy's Training Videos - no really. In particular, Hot Drinks from the Wendy's Training Videos riff. Even Spoony admits that it's probably the catchiest song he's heard in a while.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Deliberately invoked with his rant about the lack of logic in Highlander II: The Quickening, which concludes with "WHY AM I IN A STARFLEET UNIFORM?!"
  • He also likes to take isolated clips from films that seem particularly bizarre and random, such as the Insane Troll Logic scene "How to Battle Communism" from 1900.
  • Pumpkinhead's appearance in the final battle against Black Lantern Spoony. He walks through the door to Ominous Latin Chanting and the fight halts in its tracks, stares grimly at BL Spoony... and peppy music starts playing, to which Pumpkinhead starts dancing. BL Spoony blows him up with an energy blast and the fight resumes.
  • In his Final Fantasy X-2 review, while listening to some in-game music, he remarks "This music is almost as bad as the time I got tricked into going to the Nostalgia Chick's accordion recital". Cut to The Nostalgia Chick playing the accordion while Spoony awkwardly sits on a nearby couch holding a dog.
  • In Tekken: Blood Vengeance, he repeatedly wonders why no-one questions the presence of a super-fast Panda.
  • In his Final Fantasy XIII: Part 2 review there was the sudden appearance of Stereotypically-Drunk Mexican Cyborg Early 90s Otaku Kid who appears at the end of his rant about about the Chocobo Chick while a spanish language translation of Smells Like Teen Spirit blares in the background.
• Bizarro Episode: After having trouble getting The Madness of Roland to run on his computer, Noah simply edited together some brief clips from the game with framing material of the footage killing him.
• Broken Base: Has a very divided fanbase for numerous reasons. Content-wise, many people got mad over him giving unfavorable reviews to works considered classics like Final Fantasy VIII. Outside of that, there are those who are upset about him taking money through Patreon but not putting out any new reviews or Counter Monkey videos. There was a tweet from April talking about how they bring in only around $1000 a month from Patreon (which is nothing to sneeze at) and then another tweet implying that they use the money to buy nerdy merchandise, rather than putting it towards the show and living expenses, angering these former fans further. Spoony now has only has a fraction of the following he once had as a result. He still gains a great deal of sympathy from people over his various physical and mental problems and people who believe he can make content like he used to and will defend him tooth and nail against his detractors.
• Condemned by History: Spoony was considered one of the top tiers in the "Angry Reviewer" style of content creators, and was unquestionably one of the most well known internet content creators for his time. He first caught the internet's attention with his reviews for games in popular franchises like Final Fantasy and Ultima during the late 2000s. But after joining Channel Awesome in 2008, he became one of the site's most popular critics thanks to his psychotic personality, frequent crossover videos, and his wide range of review topics, including board games and tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. However, he also faced backlash for his reliance on nitpicking and tendency to insult fans of works in his videos, frequently seen arguing with anyone who disagreed with his views. His bad attitude got him in trouble with Channel Awesome in 2012 after joking about raping JesuOtaku (who hadn't come out as transgender at the time), which led Noah to resign from the site shortly afterwards due to a backlash. From there, Spoony's worsening physical and mental health led him to clash with his most loyal fans over the handling of his opinions and content direction, along with his increasingly frequent hiatuses. With his admission to having no plans for a Spoony Experiment movie after crowdfunding for one in 2014, what little goodwill Noah still had left vanished. Spoony's former fans now see his critiques as shallow and hateful towards their subjects, and his molasses-slow update schedule means he's remained in obscurity. As such, it's highly unlikely that he'll ever achieve the same level of success ever again. With even his earlier work being forgotten, Spoony's rise and fall is now seen as a cautionary tale of a man with promise whose worst enemy was himself.
• Creator's Pet: It Came From Beyond Midnight. Although he could be seen as having other motivations for hosting the show.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Many times. Some more notable occurrences:
  • "You're rooting for a romance between Squall, and Seifer's leftovers; Seifer's sloppy seconds. I'm going to ruin this romance for you. I want you to think about this every time you see Rinoa: Seifer's balls were slapping against that poon nightly. Oh yeah, she was swallowing the man-aise, gargling the chowder! And you know what, she loved it! Enjoy your love story!" All accompanied by images from a FF8 hentai doujin.
  • "Spooning with Spoony".
  • The Sequel crosses it another three times, easy. And those three times are named Doug, Joe and Bennett...
  • FF 8 review part 4. "Afternoon Delight" and Saving Private Ryan have never made more sense together.
  • Making a joke about Bruce Lee's son's death in his Clones of Bruce Lee review.
  • The Warrior comic has this the Warrior raping Santa.
  • Mission 15 of Swat 4 with its constant jokes about Russia's anti-gay policies manages to be so ridiculous that it actually makes a pretty good point about how stupid those laws are. Especially when Reynolds and Girard get caught in a compromising position, are forced to go to New Jersey to get gay married and register at Bed Bath & Beyond.
  • "Zelda Scott" from the GameCrazy training video, whose white-bread demeanor combined with her constant "hood slang" crosses and recrosses the line so many times that any chance of being offended is eradicated by just how incredulous she is.
• Designated Hero: Spoony is an implied rapist, has stated to have killed people for sexual pleasure, and expresses his desire to kill people that liked Final Fantasy X.
• Designated Villain:
  • Tidus in the Final Fantasy X review. While he went after Spoony for trashing his game, you can't really blame him since not only did Spoony victim blame him for the abuse he suffered from Jecht, but he also threatened to murder fans of his game.
  • Snow from the Final Fantasy XIII review (the one Spoony fights anyway). While granted, Snow has the personality of a Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up, but unlike Squall and Tidus, he's not going after Spoony for a negative review of his game. Rather, Snow has been tricked by unseen forces into believing that Spoony is trying to destroy the world, so as far as he knows, Spoony is dangerous lunatic, a belief that Spoony reinforces by shooting first, then by lying to Snow to get a dirty hit in. Even worse, Spoony learns Snow is being tricked and believes he's doing the right thing and he still mercilessly cuts Snow's throat. If you add in the fact that Spoony actual is causing the apocalypse (albeit unknowingly), Snow comes off as something of a Hero Antagonist.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Dr. Insano, of course! Don't you know anything about science?
  • Giant Dizzy Gillespie, too. Spoony had to explain to his fans that he had had to stop using him because the figure was fragile and had been slightly damaged from the action figures scenes.
  • Within her short time on the site, Oreo became ridiculously popular for the V-logs.
  • Simcoe the Magician from the Skullduggery review became pretty popular with just one appearance, due to how hilariously bizarre and unsettling he is. Pulling Oreo out of a hat didn't hurt either.
• Everyone Is Satan in Hell: Spends a good chunk of the Mazes and Monsters review decrying this, eventually leading to this question:
  "How joyless and paranoid is your life if you're afraid of children and adults armed with funny-shaped dice who still play with dolls?"
• Evil Is Cool: Invoked by him in his review of The King of Fighters movie where he states the films only redeeming quality was casting Ray Park as Rugal, as the role did give the chance to show of his skills in martial arts and stunt work, as well as seemingly having a good time hamming it up.
• Fan Nickname: Thanks to Yuna being played by Spoony in drag at the end of his Final Fantasy X-2 review, many fans have taken to calling her "Spuna".
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Despite being one of his best-remembered reviews, his Ultima IX review is in retrospect seen by many as the starting point for everything wrong with his post-TGWTG/Channel Awesome videos. The entire first episode is essentially taken up with Spoony pointing out continuity errors with earlier Ultima games — which, aside from its contradicting the ending of Ultima VIII, along with the infamous "What's a paladin?" moment, aren't really that big of a deal all things considered — and the "BETRAYAL! meter" wears out its welcome very quickly (something Spoony even admits at the start of the second episode, whereupon he drops the gag). The remaining episodes, while a little less nitpicky, see Spoony ramp up his anger and bitterness towards the game to the point where it becomes genuinely uncomfortable to watch, especially when it comes to his Heroic BSoD after Sir Dupre's resurrection. In general, the review gets by thanks to the game's storyline being so legitimately bad that Spoony still gets a lot of laughs poking fun at its problems, as well as the review ending with a nice Reality Subtext moment where he vows to carry on as a reviewer even in the face of his personal troubles, but it's not hard to spot it as where things began to slide.
  • To a lesser degree, his review of The Ring: Terror's Realm. Like Ultima IX, it's such a bad game — and in this case, So Bad, It's Good — that most of Spoony's gags land perfectly, and it also serves as the starting point for a number of his more fondly-remembered Running Gags. However, the "dalad jelly" gag, while getting an impressive amount of leverage from what was clearly a typo that the game's developers missed, foreshadows a habit of his future reviews getting sidetracked by him stopping to endlessly nitpick pretty minor things.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Apparently Spoony is big in Finland.
• Growing the Beard: Most fans point to the review of The Thing (2002) video game as the point where Spoony started hitting his stride and established his trademark humor and running gags. He himself agrees, mostly since that review marked the point where he started writing actual scripts rather than just talking off-the-cuff about the games he was reviewing.
• Ham and Cheese: Dr. Insano and Noah's portrayal of wrestlers.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Watching Spoony describe how he anticipates Breaking Dawn and all the ludicrous plot points, clearly gleeful at the idea of reaping the result. And then watch his actual VLog of the movie, set a year later, when he practically broke down and resorted to drown his sorrow because of the awfulness of what he saw.
  • Seeing JewWario trying to cheer Spoony up during this can make this hard to watch because no one apparently could do the same before JW's suicide.
  • The "Spooning with Spoony" videos are much darker when you consider the immense fallout stemming from a joke on his Twitter.
  • A lot of videos that feature Spoony going berserk can be hard to watch after knowing that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. (Especially since there were comments of people familiar with such things recommending Spoony to get evaluated, before Spoony shut down the comments) Not to mention that many of Spoony's older videos feature running gags suggesting that he is mentally unbalanced, requiring frequent psychiatric care and doses of "anti-crazy pills." (The latter became even worse since Spoony would routinely skip his meds)
  • Anything involving Spoony and Lord Kat and their Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic, after Jason told Noah to go shoot himself during a livestream.
  • The joke about Hulk Hogan's reckless driving in Santa with Muscles became this in 2019 when Noah got in a car crash.
  • Learning about his heart condition and that he has been forced to quit drinking caffeine because it, as Spoony so eloquently put it, "Can make his heart explode". It makes it rather cringe-worthy when you go into an archive-binge and realize just how often he drinks from a can of soda during his reviews.
  • At the end of his "Lords Of Magick" review, Spoony bursts into his room dressed as "Macho Man" Randy Savage, who was promptly blown up by landmines that Spoony had planted just inside the door. Less than a week later, Randy Savage died after suffering a heart attack while driving and crashed his car.
  • Any of the (surprisingly numerous) Suicide as Comedy moments counts, as one of Spoony's fans sent him a "goodbye" email before committing suicide, which has inspired Noah not to make this kind of joke anymore. His friend JewWario committed suicide in 2014, likely cementing this policy for good.
  • In his interview with Doug Walker on Shut Up and Talk, Noah talked about how it bothered him that society often labeled suicide as cowardly. His attitudes have certainly changed since his review of Captain America (1979) in which The Nostalgia Critic hanged himself and Spoony chided him saying that it was "the coward's way out".
  • The widespread Memetic Mutation of "What's a paladin?" after Part 4 came out and Spoony told us just how deeply the series is part of his fondest childhood memories, in turn making us think just how much that line, and the entire game, really must piss him off.
  • This exchange in the Nightmare (aka Atmosfear) review, which almost seems prophetic of the huge backlash against Spoony that started in 2012, following the Twitter incident from that spring and his leaving Channel Awesome.
  The Gatekeeper: Everybody must pity you?
  Spoony: No, actually, as far as Internet critics go I think I'm pretty popular, I think... everyone seems to love the—the robot, and the reviews, and the website—
  The Gatekeeper: They won't soon. They'll hate you like I do.
  • This speech from The Guardian at the end of the Ultima 9 review. Granted, it came at a time where Spoony's reputation had already taken several hits due the controversies surrounding him, but neither Spoony nor anyone else could have predicted how accurate it would turn out in light of his worsening mental health and his audience's growing frutration at his lack of out put:
  The Guardian: Then take your science weapon! Destroy the Black Gate! Destroy your only means of escape from the lie of your existence! Run from your destiny! Sit here and talk to your (pause) "people", until they too abandon you. Then when you're alone, you will never be able to escape yourself. How much longer, I wonder, until you'll finally be able to see the bars of your own cage. (cut to a clip of Spoony in an insane asylum in a straitjacket screaming)
  Spoony: Come on, I wasn't being serious when I said that-
  The Guardian: No, then stay here; embrace madness.
  • Several of Spoony's reviews make jokes about Spoony having serious mental problems, and he's shown downing the contents of a bottle marked "Crazy Pills" like they were Tic-Tacs at one point. Since Noah has been diagnosed as bipolar in Real Life, these jokes are a little uncomfortable.
  • In his Let's Play of X Com Enemy Unknown (found on his Twitch account), he named the characters after other Channel Awesome personalities. On one particularly disastrous mission, MarzGurl's character panicked and hit JewWario with Friendly Fire, prompting Spoony to exclaim "My God, woman! Don't shoot Justin!" This was, of course, a year before Justin committed suicide.
  • The review of The Beastmaster had Spoony joking that Rip Torn's career would be "endless Men in Black sequels". After the review came out, Torn was arrested for DUI, which resulted in his being written out of Men in Black 3 via Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome.
  • He took Justin Carmical's death pretty hard. God can only imagine how hard it was for him to find out about Justin getting exposed as a sexual predator.
  • The "Betrayal!" clip was one of several Channel Awesome convention antics that hurt anyone associated with the site's relations with games journalism for a good while. Lord Kat directly blames it for him having interview offers rescinded despite no longer being a member for years by that point, and it's believed this was the tipping point in their friendship going rotten.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!:
  • Back when Noah did written reviews for magazines, he was one of the few critics to give The Phantom Menace a negative review and received hate mail for it.
  • His Final Fantasy VIII review is his most well known for triggering this.
  • He also has his vlogs, where he will openly criticize games and movies that he didn't like. Of particular note is a one-off Threatdown he did where he attacked The Legend of Zelda series as unchanging games that are given too much hype. He openly admitted that the games are well made, but there was still backlash to behold.
  • Spoony's Anime reviewer, Dean the Adequate, also got his share of hate when he released negative reviews of Lucky Star and bashed the Transformers sacred cow that is Beast Wars in a franchise retrospective.
  • Spoony suffered another wave of backlash for completely savaging the Deadliest Warrior video game of all things. Spike responded with a Dear Negative Reader letter, which prompted a follow-up where Noah responded to the complaints against his review. It's apparently gotten bad enough that he started having to mass-ban trolls from the message board.
  • His negative review of The Expendables has gotten plenty of detractors, not just from his fans at the comments section, but from his fellow TGWTG contributors as well.
  • His bashing (to say the least) of Metroid: Other M on Twitter attracted even more negative attention to himself.
  • His TRON: Legacy review wasn't free from this either.
  • Spoony gets quite a bit of this from his consistent bashing of Nintendo and its products. His coverage of the company during E3 2011 comes to mind.
  • Happened again when he posted his dislike of The Cabin in the Woods on Twitter, and the backlash got rapidly out of hand.
  • He declared that he found BioShock Infinite to be just kind of okay overall. Two guesses how fans responded to that one.
  • His review of Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds came under fire for coming across as shockingly poorly-researched and half-hearted compared to the rest of his Ultima retrospective, with some feeling it to cross the line into outright misrepresenting the game. Spoony himself later admitted that he had to resort to heavily exaggerating the game's Sequel Difficulty Spike and Early Game Hell, as most of the other comments he could have made about the game were essentially just re-treads of what he'd said about the first one.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Spoony's infamous gag about wanting to kill people that liked Final Fantasy X becomes this when he got temporarily banned from Twitter for tweeting death threats.
  • In the ''Clones Of Bruce Lee" review, Dr. Insano mocks Dr. Nye for trying to take over the world with what basically amounted to a weedkiller. Then in the second honorable mention for the grass wars, Dr. Insano declares war on the US - with killer grass.
  • Spoony annoying the Critic by making him say/type "I like to wear women's clothing" is made even funnier when he says in the Captain America review that he made him dress up like a dirty ballerina in Spooning With Spoony 2.
  • In the Pumpkinhead crossover video with LordKaT, they equate the "dancing Pumpkinhead" ending of the game with the developers giving you the finger. Some time later we learn of an alternate ending...where Pumpkinhead literally gives the player the finger.
  • He starts episode 6 of his SWAT 4 review gushing about how cool an auto shotgun is. This comes back to bite him later in the same review.
  • Remember when Spoony called Uwe Boll a "cinematic Hitler" in his Alone in the Dark (2005) review with The Nostalgia Critic and Linkara? Guess who Uwe Boll is playing in Blubberella.
  • During his Q&A session at the 2010 ScrewAttack Gaming Convention, the subject of cosplay comes up. "No, I don't dress as Yuna."
  • Spoony's released the second part of his review of Ultima IX, the much-loathed conclusion to the Ultima franchise, in July 2012. Only a few days later, Bioware announced they were reviving the franchise with an upcoming live Beta for Ultima Forever.
  • Spoony's Terminator entry in his ''Reasons I shouldn't write screenplays'' series, in which John Connor has been dead for years, his death being covered up by the resistance high command and political decoys used to both trick Skynet into thinking he's still alive and boosting the morale of the resistance soldiers, begins with him emphasizing that these examples are terrible ideas that no sane writer would implement. Fast forward a few years, and it has been revealed that the original ending for Terminator Salvation involved Conner getting fatally wounded in the final confrontation and Marcus Wright having his appearance surgically altered to take his place, the Resistance being none-the-wiser due to only the central command being familiar with his appearance.
  • Spoony's gag where he parodies the Nightmare commercial by drawing a card and acting all excited with the card reading "You have resurrected Crystal Pepsi!" becomes even funnier due to the fact that in summer 2016, they really did bring back Crystal Pepsi for a while.
  • In his review of Final Fantasy XIII, Spoony devolves into a rant about how poor the game's attempts at Worldbuilding and storytelling are to the point where he compares it cave paintings of cavemen hunting bison, even remarking that that would make a better video game plot. Years later, Ubisoft would come out with Far Cry Primal, a AAA game where you play a caveman hunting animals for survival.
• Ho Yay: Lampshaded between an alternate Insano and Linkara (parodying The Room (2003)). "You are giving the slash fic-ers material!" And between Linkara and regular Spoony, Spoony and Nostalgia Critic, and occasionally Spoony and Insano (depending on which origin story you're using).
• Hype Backlash: Given how his worse fans have a habit of hyping him as some sort of god who no reviewer can compete with, it can mean that some people end up disappointed when they watch his show. As his popularity faded, this only became more pronounced.
• Just Here for Godzilla: For the second of his Black Hole of Board Games reviews, Spoony left the choice of which game to review up to a fan vote. The chosen game, the VCR Wrestlemania Game, turned out to be quite uninteresting and wasn't easy for Spoony to make a video about. However, if the comments on the video are to be believed, the folks who voted for the game weren't so much interested in the game itself, but were instead hoping that Spoony would dress up as his wrestler parody personas for the review. He apparently noticed this, as they got their wish, as no less than four wrestler personas appeared in the review. In-universe, he guesses that the fans were hoping for some hammy acting by wrestlers in the video.
• Love to Hate: He sums up on the things that he likes about the Cage films is the despicably evil main villain Mr. Tagaki.
• Memetic Badass: Reb Brown.
• Memetic Molester: "Spooning With Spoony".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "You're in my way, sir."
  • "YOU FOOL!"
  • "BETRAYAL!!!"
  • Sending someone to the "blagole".^note Thanks to how the Gatekeeper pronounces "black hole" in the "Nightmare" VHS board game.
  • Thanks to Spoony, nearly any discussion of the Ultimate Warrior will eventually bring up "YOU'LL NEED AN ENERGON CUBE THE SIZE OF WYOMING TO DEFEAT MY AUTOBOTS, HOAK HOGAN!"
  • "I like it in my ass."
  • "You okay, Lady?"
  • Spoony hates everything- a common comment on his videos post-2013 after a slew of vlogs and videos which were negative. This even extends to vlogs where he says he likes something- namely, his review of Pacific Rim opened with him saying he liked it, before savaging it.
    • He ended up introducing a villain, the Black Knight from one of the Ultima games, who had his legion of troll minions intentionally spreading this particular meme just to screw with him.
  • "I heard that, Curtis!"
  • "Don't tell me how to play!"
    • Don't tell me how to drive! ^note  A variation that became quite popular among Spoony's detractors after his infamous car crash.
  • "Take your time, Boss!"
  • "We can't, the press!"
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Though the Ferris Bueller's Day Off review came out on April Fool's and was hosted by Dr. Insano (meaning it was most likely not to be taken seriously), many people came out of the woodwork agreeing with Insano's Alternate Character Interpretation of Ferris as an irresponsible and manipulative jerk. (But this interpretation predates the review.)
  • A straighter form of this comes from reactions to his text articles 'Why I Should Never Write Screenplays', in which he proposes ideas for franchises such as Terminator and ER that would be spectacularly awful if ever actually filmed. Some fans said they liked the ideas and thought they'd be cool. Spoony had to remind them that they're BAD ideas in the start of his Terminator idea. And in his outlining a final season of E.R. where the Zombie Apocalypse occurs, he starts off by saying this idea would be a Jump the Shark moment for the series to stave off further misunderstandings.
  • Also, the whole point of the 'Dr. Insano becoming President' sketch was to show that people who vote for supervillains such as Lex Luthor or Final Fantasy's Edea for public office are stupid for voting for those villains, and that the world would be screwed if said villains actually made it into office. Doesn't stop a few fans from saying 'Insano for President' because he's upfront about the fact that he's pure evil.
    "Because he's honest."
  • His video of the group's trip to "The Urkel House" after the Brawl was mistaken for a pilgrimage by obsessed fans of the show, rather than an impulsive stop during their tour of Chicago.
  Spoony: "I have to object to how silly and nerdy the whole thing makes us look. As if we were sad and dorky enough to make a pilgrimage all the way to Chicago just to seek out the Urkel House. We were there to film an imaginary battle between Super Mecha Death Christ and Donkey Kong Jesus on a Puff of Smoke. The Urkel House was purely incidental!"
• Mis-blamed: According to Noah's commentaries, people blamed him for the Spooning With Spoony series, when really Lindsay came up with the first one and Doug was eager to do a second.
• Nausea Fuel: Spoony's detailed description of his case of food poisoning in the beginning of his Game Over: Control-Alt-Death review can be viewed as such—but it's offset by how hilariously over-the-top he goes with it, and how it leads up to the punchline.
• Network Decay: Hit this in 2015, when he produced far fewer reviews and Counter Monkey videos and far more "Live Wire" Let's Play streams on YouTube and Vlogs. This trend continued into 2016, and 2017 saw nothing at all aside from a review of The Last Jedi a few days before the end of the year. Most fans consider the Experiment "finished."
• Never Live It Down:
  • His reference to Masato Tanaka as "one of the great lucha guys".
  • People (especially Trolls) love bringing up the X-Com "BETRAYAL!" moment.
  • The time Spoony said he wanted to kill people that liked Final Fantasy X quickly became infamous.
  • "What's a paladin?". Not by his own fault, but purely by how much the concept of a paladin comes up during Counter Monkey.
  • His infamous livestream of Alien: Isolation.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Noah was once a very popular and respected internet personality. He was invited to become a member of Channel Awesome, where he became a frequent contributor and helped boost its popularity in its early days. While most producers stuck to a single subject or theme, Noah stood out by being willing to discuss a wide number of topics, including Dungeons & Dragons, movies, video games, and professional wrestling. However, starting in 2011 Creator Breakdown hit in a massive way — Noah's productivity decreased to the point he would go months without posting, in part because of personal problems and health issues, and he faced flak for bad behavior on-line (including a rapey tweet to JesuOtaku in the midst of him leaving Channel Awesome), broken promises about Patreon goals (leaving many to accuse him of freeloading and not producing the content he promised), and got a (not-inaccurate) reputation as a caustic and abrasive person both on and off-camera, particularly to his own fans. Over the years his health, productivity, and personal relationships continued to decline, and these days Noah's fanbase has all but deserted him and his internet presence is almost non-existent, in comparison to his fellow former Channel Awesome contributors who still regularly produce content for active fanbases. As quoted by Fredrik Knudsen, nowadays, Noah is largely seen as a cautionary tale to other content creators of what fame can do to a person who can't handle it and how creators can burn themselves out, as well as how the goodwill of the viewership must not be taken for granted if someone chooses to linger in the online space.
• Paranoia Fuel: The "I heard that, Curtis" running gag is this Played for Laughs.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Frequently encounters this.
• The Scrappy:
  • There was a considerable fan backlash against the Spencer D. Bum character in his Dirty Harry review. Spoony has acknowledged and Lampshaded this in subsequent reviews, and even joked about killing him off. He finally went through with it in the preview video for the Final Fantasy X finale, where Black Lantern Spoony tears out Spencer's heart.
• Strawman Has a Point: His April Fools review of Ferris Bueller's Day Off as Doctor Insano. He stated in the commentary for that video that this was intentional.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Referenced when Chuckles the Fucking Jester comments that Spoony's Ultima retrospective isn't enough like his Final Fantasy reviews.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Both Tidus and Snow in their respective fights with Spoony (see Designated Villain).
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Kiros of Final Fantasy VIII.
• Vindicated by History: Wrestle Wrestle and Counter Monkey were often criticized by Spoony's fanbase when they were released. Many of Spoony's viewers weren't fans of pro-wrestling or tabletop RPGs (which were, and to some extent still are, rather niche interests) and they saw these two side series as taking away from time that he could have spent working on his main reviews. In recent years vlogs, podcasts, and edited reviews on wrestling and TTRPGs have exploded in popularity. With some of said reviewers having cited Spoony as being a partial inspiration on the content they produce. It also helps that they can be seen as early examples of the "video essay" format that would by and in large displace Caustic Critics as a way of commenting on media.
• The Woobie:
  • Insano stumbled into this territory at the end of the Street Fighter 2010 review. "NOBODY LOVES ME!"
  • Spoony himself becomes a pretty huge woobie for the duration of his Atari 2600 E.T. review. Not only is he playing one of the worst games ever made, but he's doped up on painkillers and spitting blood while doing it. (The video was made shortly after multiple surgeries to remove his wisdom teeth.)
  • In his review of Breaking Dawn, this is his opinion on Charlie Swan for having a conniving sociopath like Bella for a daughter and for being utterly powerless throughout the films.
• X-Pac Heat: After the Twitter breakdown.

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