YMMV / Unus Annus

• Awesome Moments:
  • Ethan chomping down on his giant waterbug in "We Eat Bugs", despite having been told that eating just the legs would be sufficient. It should be noted that even the dogs wouldn't eat them!
  • Ethan landing a perfect bullseye in "Learning the Ancient Art of Chinese Archery". Not only was this very impressive on its own, but Mark himself has stated that he didn't like how far he took his Jerkass persona beforehand and was incredibly relieved when Ethan showed him up with the shot.
  • Ethan's Beef Wellington in the episode Unus Annus Carves the Roast Beast got the reaction from Ethan that it's "really fucking good!" Josh, the chef that was teaching them agreed that it's very good.
    Josh: Mmm! God damn!
    Ethan: Is that a good "God damn"?
    Josh: That is a good "God damn"! That's got some spice! It tastes like cheesy, but it's not cheesy! It's so good!
  • In We Force James Charles to Run a Military Obstacle Course when going through a United States Marines obstacle course, Ethan did very well, getting a sub-2 minute when going through the full course. He was even keeping pace with Matt, the marine who had done the course many times before, until he failed at the wall and fell behind. He still beat Mark and James after going through again, though Mark was helping James and was much slower.
  • Throughout How to NOT be the Perfect Boyfriend, Mark jokingly gasses up the article he and Ethan are reading, 25 Ways to be a Better Boyfriend, treating the writer as an unquestionable genius at relationships. Once the 23rd piece of advice suggests staying with a relationship even if your significant other slaps or even punches you in the hopes that it'll get better, however, Mark immediately drops the bit and gravely admonishes the article for its terrible advice in full seriousness, even citing an abusive relationship he'd been in when he was younger because of this exact line of thinking.
  • In Mark and Ethan Go on a "Drum Date", the guys attempted to drum along to a peppy song. They're horribly uncoordinated at first... until suddenly inspiration seemed to strike (shown as Dave Grohl zapping Mark), and they synced up to the beat. Ethan even pulled off a couple of well-done fills!
  • The "Goodbye" livestream finale had a near-constant viewership of around 600,000 to 700,000 for most of the show, which is rather remarkable when you consider the time zone differences worldwide; the show began at noon and ended at midnight, Pacific Standard Time. During the final hour of the show - and of the channel's existence - the viewership rapidly ballooned to over 1.5 million.
• Broken Base: There are some differing opinions on Unus Annus that have condensed into two main discussions: whether the channel's message is meaningful or pretentious, and whether the channel’s gimmick is cool or stupid. These two discussions often overlap, creating 4 main mindsets towards Unus Annus:
  • One group says that they are fine with the message but disagree with the gimmick, comparing it to getting rid of all the mementos of a person after they have died, and think that the message would have been achieved in a better way if the channel was merely never touched again.
  • The second group says that they like the gimmick but dislike the message, feeling that while it's good that Unus Annus is something unique in the sea of rather formulaic YouTube content, the message contrasts too heavily with the more absurdist tone of the content (especially with videos where they make a pee sauna or cook with sex toys).
  • The third group says that they dislike both the gimmick and the message, believing that the Unus Annus videos are nothing more than just "Markiplier Makes" videos with a timer slapped onto them, and the decision to delete them means that a whole year's worth of effort that went into the videos was ultimately wasted.
  • Finally, there are people who like both the message and the gimmick, finding its message to be incredibly meaningful and its gimmick as very unique.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • At one point in the Edible Slime video, Mark started jabbing his (pink) slime in a suggestive manner while repeatedly saying, "You close? You close?" Ethan and Amy were horrified.
  • In the melon crushing video, Ethan (for whatever reason) put the watermelon up his shirt. Mark’s first reaction to this was telling Ethan to kill the child.
  • "We Attempt to Make Holy Water" was so openly irreverent about its religious subject matter that it looped back from blasphemous to hilarious.
  • An unintended one happened in "Recreating Every Unus Annus Video". When recreating the hypnosis video, Mark asked Siri to call them daddy. Siri responded with, "I don't see a father in your contacts!" Mark responded with a look of horror and a simple "Well... About that!" while laughing. ^note For those who don't get it, Mark's father is dead.
• Dancing Bear: The channel being deleted after existing for exactly one year. Didn't watch it while it was still happening? Sorry, but you'll never get to see it (unless you disobey the creators' wishes and find a reupload of the videos somewhere).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Amy "Peebles" Nelson, the channel's Creative Director, is beloved by the community for being the resident Only Sane Woman and often the only one who can keep Mark and Ethan from accidentally killing themselves. She's also responsible for the vast majority of the channel's bizarre video ideas.
  • Quinn, the cop from the Mark and Ethan Attempt an Escape Room episode. She never broke character, despite Mark and Ethan being dopes and acknowledging it.
    Quinn: My life is in the hands of an idiot!
    Ethan: No-no-no-no-no, two idiots!
  • The first kid Ethan met from the Deep End of Omegle Electric Boogaloo episode. His genuine giddiness to see Ethan and immediately following it up with a rap was incredibly endearing.
  • A VR player named RogueEcho has been received warmly by the fanbase due to his dynamic with both Ethan and Mark in their VR Episode.
  • Some people in the official subreddit took a liking to Ethan's Melon Man personality, along with "Caveman Mark".
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • It's been pointed out that the premise of the channel wasn't really fair to those who didn't even find out about it until the end, but then again some unfortunates have their lives cut short as well.
  • While Mark and Ethan have explicitly spoken against direct reuploads of the videos, they've also said they were okay with compilations of funny moments, hence why so many still exist. After all, even after someone has died, one can still relive certain special moments of their life through things such as recorded video.
• Growing the Beard: Discussed during the "Goodbye" livestream; Mark and Ethan acknowledged that the Covid-19 quarantine period did hamper them, but they both felt that after the isolation period ended, the channel really began to take off and become what they were hoping it would be.
• Harsher in Hindsight: One of the main gimmicks of the channel, and a point of massive contention amongst viewers, was that the contents were going to get completely delisted a year after the channel's creation. Near the end of the channel's lifespan, Nintendo announced that they would employ a similar gimmick into the release of Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario 35 (and later, the Switch release of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light), a decision that sparked both outrage from fans and conversation about content preservation and the legality of piracy over otherwise inaccessible works.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In We Force James Charles to Run a Military Obstacle Course Mark (and to a lesser extent, Ethan) helped James Charles a lot throughout the course.
  • In The Deep End of Omegle: Risky Boogaloo, while trying to find each other randomly on Omegle, Mark and Ethan encountered several people who recognize them. Their interactions are really cute.
    Kid: (The first person Ethan meets) Crankgameplays?
    Ethan: (laughs) Hey, how's it goin'?
    Kid: I love your videos!
  • While the subject of "We Got Pepper-Sprayed" wasn't heartwarming, most of the video was. Mark comforted Ethan beforehand, seeing how scared he was, and let him get water first. The security team that pepper-sprays them was also super friendly and funny while remaining professional.
  • When the channel began, it was a Running Gag that Mark would say "Don't touch me" whenever Ethan would touch him. After Ethan made Mark cry towards the end of the Brutally Honest video, he reached over and rubbed Mark's wrist, telling Mark he loves him, with Mark saying it back as he tried to get himself back together so they could finish the video.
  • During the Last Supper video, Mark expresses genuine enjoyment of the "soup" that Amy made them.
  • Near the end of the 12-hour "Goodbye" livestream, Mark, Ethan, and Amy each laid in the coffin they had custom-made while the others gave truly heartfelt eulogies. They ended up crying and hugging each other, while also snarking that they're getting tears all over their new coffin.
  • In the final moments of the "Goodbye" livestream, Mark, Ethan, and Amy all got around Ethan's laptop as they prepared to press the delete button, and despite the sad tone, the three seemed to be giving the viewers comfort as a simple phrase was said before everything went to black: "See you on the other side."
• Hilarious in Hindsight: During the episode on the Trolley Problem, in response to a problem in which the alternative to letting dozens of people die was getting your dick run over, Mark made a comment of "What kind of fucked-up Saw movie is this?" While not exactly the same scenario, the next Saw movie, Spiral (2021), opened with a similar trap involving someone's body part caught in train tracks.
• Ho Yay: There were a lot of moments that evoked this between Ethan and Mark.
  • The episode where they played 2 Truths and 1 Lie and waxed each other, Ethan stroked Mark's hair with a remark that he's excited to get to know Mark over the next year. Mark reacted with Flat Joy.
    • Mark also acknowledged that Ethan would be the type to go to prom with a guy. It was never verified in the video if he hasn't.
  • The first minute of the episode where they painted nude paintings of each other included this gem:
    Mark: 'Cause the human body is beautiful, in every way, every shape, every form, and I am gonna get every shape, every way, every form of [Ethan's] body. Every bulge...
    Ethan: Great...
    Mark: Every...
    Ethan: Crevice?
    Mark: Crevice. Good word.
  • A commenter summed it up nicely:
    Commenter: This whole channel is like a badly written fanfiction.
  • Bear Trapping 101: An Elegant Knot For An Elegant Beast was full of it, with Ethan mentioning homosexual terms like "Bear" and "Otter", while also tying up Mark, who was playing a bear (the animal).
  • In the sound therapy video, Ethan said that Mark has a "Dumptruck of an ass".
  • "The Koala Challenge: TikTok's Intimate Couple's Trend" had Ethan and Mark literally climbing all over each other. Keep in mind, the Koala Challenge was meant for couples.
  • In "Memento Mori", released on the two-year anniversary of the channel's deletion, Ethan says outright that his friendship with Mark feels almost like being Amicable Exes.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Don't tell Amy!"
  • Mark insisting that he's not a masochist, and merely wants to see how much pain his body can handle.
  • "Oh my fucking god!" A picture of Ethan wearing a pair of baby hands, held against his cheeks in apparent horror. Usually used as a reaction image in response to The Reveal or some other grand revelation.
  • "Me and the boys at 2 AM looking for beans!" (This one came from a CircleToons video that appeared in two Unus Annus episodes.)
  • The Pee Sauna, a widely anticipated video promised as far back as "Beer Sauna: Turning a Portable Sauna into a Portable Hell". Became an Ascended Meme once they got out of quarantine.
    • Mark's Deer in the Headlights reaction when Evan innocently suggested the Pee Sauna was also a popular meme on the subreddit.
  • Mark drinking canned corn in "We Attempted to Create THICC Water" is a pretty popular meme in the fandom, to the point of becoming a Running Gag in later videos.
  • In general, the series was very meme-able, as Mark and Ethan frequently remark. No less than three videos were devoted solely to Meme Acknowledgment.
    Mark: You know "every frame's a painting"? You know, with Unus Annus, every frame's a meme.
  • #StoptheClock and #PushReset began gaining traction towards the end of the channel's life, particularly during the final livestream, mostly from people who were either in denial about the channel ending or simply didn't want it to end. In response, others came up with #RespecttheClock, indicating that people should accept the channel's death. And then a third camp then decided to make a third hashtag called #EattheClock just to screw with everyone else.
  • "Twonus Annus." A common phrase from fans who want the channel return for a second year. Mark and Ethan have emphasized that this won't happen, both for thematic and practical reasons, though Mark has half-joked on Distractible that he might change his mind if he found out that he was dying.
• Special Effect Failure: The ending of "Mark Punishes Ethan" had Mark repeatedly fake-punching Ethan with a stun gun in his fist, with the lighting, camera angle, edited SFX, and Ethan's "reactions" meant to give off the impression that Mark was hitting him for real. However, at one point one of Mark's "punches" clearly showed him missing Ethan's face.
• Squick:
  • Two words: Edible Slime. Mark and Ethan both looked like they wanted to puke when they first put it in their mouths, and they agreed afterward that while it may be edible, it is definitely not food.
    Mark: Our lives are no better for having tried this.
    Ethan: They're probably worse.
  • The endoscope video. Thankfully for anyone with a weak stomach, it was deleted with the rest of the channel.
  • Mark and Ethan both excreted large amounts of mucus out their noses after getting pepper-sprayed.
  • Mark's attempt to make blooming onions in "Eating Only Onions for 24 Hours" produced a substance that can best be described as a combination of vomit and oatmeal.
    Mark: (nearly crying) I swear I'm not this bad at cooking, guys!
  • In "We Play the Newlywed Game While Consuming That Which Will Kill the Other", Mark had to eat peanut butter whenever he got a question wrong and was very uncomfortable with the texture. It got so bad that at the end of the video he threw up. Thankfully, it was blurred.
  • Ethan's shower, as seen in "Crushing Watermelons Betwixt Our Mighty Thighs", has mold growing in it. Ethan confessed in "Attempting to Build IKEA Furniture Without Instructions" that it was there when he first moved in and it couldn't be removed.
  • The pee sauna. Mark and Ethan were both very obviously in extreme discomfort once they were actually subjected to it and learn urine doesn't vaporize the same way regular water does^why? All chemical solutions in water raise its boiling point, and presumably the sauna's heater wasn't able to overcome this, with Mark and Ethan retching and gagging constantly during the latter's session. In fact, Ethan was so thoroughly disgusted by the experience that halfway through, it caught Mark's genuine concern, who asked him to use a safeword if he wanted out... and even then, Ethan had to be forcibly removed anyways when it sounded like he was going to vomit. Even Amy was gagging at it!
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: During the lifetime of the channel, bringing up this channel on any forum quickly attracted people who pointed out that archivists would just reupload every video once the channel gets deleted, and treating it as if it robs the videos of any value they might have. Conversely, you also had the opposite camp who warned that Mark and Ethan may well start attacking such archivists with copyright strikes if they decided to enforce their wishes for the videos to stay dead.
• Tear Jerker:
  • In "Helium Therapy", Mark and Ethan talked about their first crushes, followed by their first heartbreaks. Mark recounted how he was unceremoniously dumped by his high school girlfriend in college, while Ethan described his prepubescent crush on another girl who in turn had a crush on another boy. It was all rather melancholy.
    • Later, Mark described his first time. It wasn't good.
      Mark: It was not a fun occasion. I didn't have a good time. When you're a late bloomer, you spend most of your time alone in a dark room with various websites. It turns out that filling my entire adolescence with perverted thoughts from various unsavory sources makes a distorted impression of the act of making love. Let's say I was a late bloomer in more ways than one. I found myself not enjoying the experience at all. After about thirty minutes of dry thrusting, I found myself incapable of completion. The first time I ever had sex, I had to fake my own orgasm, just to get it over with. I wouldn't have—no, I'm done. (he and Ethan burst into laughter)
  • Towards the end of the "Brutally Honest" video, Ethan told Mark how he wouldn't have the goals he has in life had Mark's dedication to working as hard as possible every day not inspired him. This made Mark start to cry and need to actually take a moment to compose himself so the video could continue.
  • An episode that discusses dead/abandoned YouTube channels. Let's face it, we all have a channel we follow and are fond of that have been pretty much abandoned or deleted off Youtube for whatever reason^note a sizable chunk of the subscribers took this time to remember The Gmod Idiot Box in the comments, who has not been updated since 2017, and the feeling when you remember them isn't good. And then of course the inevitable reminder that UA will join them once the countdown hits zero.
  • The final hour of the livestream finale, for anyone who didn't believe or had denial that Mark and Ethan were serious about deleting EVERYTHING once the timer ran out. All the tongue-in-cheek humor about the finality of the whole experience was dropped as they deleted their Instagram, Reddit, etc, until finally, as the countdown reached zero and Mark, Ethan, and Amy deleted the channel together, true to their word. "See you on the other side."

---