| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ivealsobeenjoel.jpg]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:We ask the important questions.]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ->''"Because seriously, who deals with super weapon sanitation and imperial employee agreements?"'' |
| 5 | |
| 6 | ''[[http://www.sanspantsradio.com/plumbing-the-death-star/ Plumbing the Death Star]]'' is a Podcast run by the [[UsefulNotes/{{Melbourne}} Melbourne]]-based Sanspants Radio network. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | Each episode is based on a different question regarding FridgeLogic in a particular film, comic book, video game, or any other piece of popular media, whether it be Music/{{Beyonce}}'s "Single Ladies" or ''Series/TheMuppets2015''. Based around RuleOfFunny more than anything else, the show has never taken itself seriously, so expect the cast to take the most ludicrous tangent possible away from the topic of the episode. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | The show is hosted by the affable and silly Jackson Baly, editor-in-house Joel Zammit, and the loud and aptly named Joel Duscher, who have taken the not-so-elegant name "The Plumbing Boys." The Boys frequently make use of guest stars to add some variety, most frequently the ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' expert and the nerdiest of the bunch, Adam, Sanspants regular Zoe Bilotta, ''Franchise/DuckTales''-podcaster Michael Williams, and others. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | The podcast also has two sub-series: ''Plumbing the Death Eaters'', which exclusively deals with ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' and is largely just a part of the larger podcast, and ''Plumbing the Death Star Presents Movie Maintenance'', which eventually branched off into its own show with a rotating cast. It also gave rise to a podcast dignifying recurring guest Adam, known as ''Podcast/DNDIsForNerds''. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | The podcast can be found [[http://www.sanspantsradio.com/plumbing-the-death-star/ here]], alongside a Website/YouTube channel called "[[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbN8u4XzYwXQ-hLn-wgo3Jw Sanspants Cinemascope]]." |
| 15 | ---- |
| 16 | !!'''''Plumbing the Death Star'' contains examples of:''' |
| 17 | * AbusiveParents: Of all the humanoid ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' characters, Wario is deemed the worst to be a parent, in part because he would join his child's bullies if he found out his kid did anything vaguely intellectual. |
| 18 | * AllStarCast: [[invoked]] In "Exploiting Television Tropes for Financial and Personal Gain," the hypothetical {{Special Guest}}s for Michael Williams's "life" include Creator/BradPitt, Music/LilWayne, and UsefulNotes/BillClinton. Oh, and they're all related to him, apparently. |
| 19 | * AndZoidberg: When describing ComicBook/TheAvengers, Zammit intentionally mentions the two weakest of them last to point out how out of place they are among a group of superhumans. |
| 20 | -->''"As I said so many episodes ago, the Avengers is like strong guy, strong guy, strong guy, ''very'' strong guy, bow and arrow, guns."'' |
| 21 | * AlienNonInterferenceClause: In "How Dare Wizards?!", Michael Shanks shares that he thinks ''Franchise/HarryPotter'''s wizards separated from {{Muggle}}s because they wanted to wait for Muggle societies to become more advanced. He compared it to the idea of the Prime Directive from ''Franchise/StarTrek''. |
| 22 | * AlmightyIdiot: [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Sauron, the Dark Lord of Middle Earth]], is portrayed as senile in "Are There Better Ways to Invade Middle Earth?", having become so broken and delusional without his Ring of Power that even Saruman can't talk him into an actual strategy. Instead, the darkest force in Middle-Earth is reduced to simply screaming about throwing armies straight at his enemies. |
| 23 | -->''"OOOOORCS!"'' |
| 24 | * AlternateHistory: Jackson is adamant that evidence from ''Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory'' (like the poverty of Charlie's town, Wonka's incredible technology, and the whiteness of the contest winners) all prove that the Roal Dahl film is set after a Nazi victory of UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo which Wonka contributed to as a Nazi scientist. |
| 25 | %%** Jackson points out how few people were actually tried in the Salem Witch Trials in a ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' episode, only for Zammit to point out that may now be true in the ''Harry Potter'' universe. The only reason his point doesn't stand is that Adam mentions an in-universe textbook which says few wizards died in the trials. |
| 26 | * ArbitraryWeaponRange: Not caring much for his biblical omnipotence[[note]]stopping storms with a word, healing people from miles away, sustaining the entirety of existence by His will as God etc.[[/note]], Jesus can only perform miracles in a range of twenty feet around him, if "A Christmas Heist" can be trusted. |
| 27 | * AuthorAppeal: Everyone on the show has a topic they like discussing: |
| 28 | ** Jackson always loves to find occasion to rant about FantasticRacism and why fantastical characters should be [[MugglePower eliminated for being threats to non-fantastical people]]. It doesn't matter whether the episode is about ''Franchise/StarWars'', ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', ''ComicBook/XMen'', or ''Franchise/HarryPotter'', he'll find a way to bring it up. |
| 29 | ** Zammit loves heist movies and the formulas that go into them, which is why he enjoys plotting out "A Christmas Heist" so much and didn't love ''Film/RogueOne'''s more war movie-esque elements. |
| 30 | ** Duscher really just likes any excuse to get mad at one of his co-hosts, whether it's about the validity of ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' or Monica's statistical ranking as the best of the ''Series/{{Friends}}''. |
| 31 | * BadSanta: |
| 32 | ** The Plumbing Boys conclude in "Which Fictional Character Would Make a Better Santa Claus?" that Professor Xavier would eventually brainwash kids to want their parents to donate to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngster for Christmas. This has the result of making the kids legitimately happy in their messed up heads, but eventually they would look back and be sincerely disturbed by their strange childhood obsession. |
| 33 | ** Near the end of the Christmas episode, Jackson and the Joels begin to suggest incredibly violent potential Santas including the ''Film/{{Predator}}'', the Xenomorph from ''Film/{{Alien}}'', the planet-eating ComicBook/{{Galactus}}, a serial killer called ComicBook/ThePunisher, and the demonic ComicBook/GhostRider. |
| 34 | %%* BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: "Professor Charles Xavier's Crazy Summer Adventure" sees Loki of ''Film/TheAvengers2012'' and Professor Xavier of ''ComicBook/XMen'' battling in the mind of Hawkeye of ''The Avengers (2012)'' to undo each others brainwashing, which goes back and forth until Hawkeye dies from the mental stress of it all. |
| 35 | * {{Beat}}: Jackson stuns his co-hosts into a silent confusion by casually insinuating that guy-on-goose sex[[note]]they were talking about [[Myth/ClassicalMythology the god Zeus]] violating doctoral ethics by sleeping with his hypothetical patients[[/note]] is perfectly fine in "Which Fictional Doctor Would Make the Best GP?". Zammit almost stutters a response, but then rolls his head, twitches a little, and puts his head into his hands as the silence is filled by the crowd's laughter, all while Duscher stares at Jackson in awe. |
| 36 | * BenevolentPrecursors: "Why is the Matrix so Poorly Programmed?" ends with the realization that the robot overlords who enslaved man must work hard to understand humans and maintain the comfortable world they inhabit in ''Film/TheMatrix''. After all, they could just keep them in a coma, but they instead dedicate 100% of their time to giving humanity a collective dreamworld where they can live in peace. |
| 37 | * BestialityIsDepraved: Jackson somehow ends up defending the idea of sex with sentient animals in "Which Fictional Doctor Would Make the Best GP?". Specifically, he casually mentions there's nothing wrong with a man having sex with a swan so long as the swan was originally a person. His co-hosts, Zammit and Duscher, are too stunned to respond with a complete sentence before resorting to just asking for some type of justification. Jackson reasons that as long as its consensual, its fine, but Zammit ends the discussion by asking the audience to applaud if they agree with Jackson. The silence is deafening... until two people applaud and cause the everyone around them to stare at them in disgust. |
| 38 | -->'''Jackson''': Are you telling me if I mind jumped into a swan and then made sweet love to someone, that wouldn't be okay? |
| 39 | -->'''Zammit''': *nods head* That's not okay. |
| 40 | -->'''Duscher''': That's textbook not okay, that's like '''rule one!''' |
| 41 | ** Sadly, he doesn't get any slack from the others even when he's at least talking about the ''anthropomorphic'' animals of ''WesternAnimation/{{Zootopia}}''. Yet, strangely enough, when discussing [[Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit life in Toontown]], all three of them are in agreement that [[WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse Minnie Mouse]] and [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Lola Bunny]] are very hot. |
| 42 | * BondOneLiner: Every time he catches a criminal, Duscher's version of Batman from "Which Comic Book Hero Would Make the Best Horror Movie Villain?" makes sure to say "GOT 'EM!" as deeply as he can. |
| 43 | * BookDumb: Generally self-professed by all three, and sometimes demonstrated. In "How Would Spider-Man Deal with Being in the Middle Ages?", their first task was to determine when exactly the Middle Ages were, and their first guess was ''[[UsefulNotes/AncientEgypt thousands]]'' of years off. |
| 44 | * BoomerangBigot: Jackson connects the dots between their Professor X being a homophobe and the ''ComicBook/XMen'' being used as a metaphor for homosexuals to deduce Professor X must be using his telepathy to repress his own homosexuality. |
| 45 | * BorrowedCatchphrase: In "Which Comic Book Hero Would Make the Best Horror Movie Villain," Duscher establishes "GOT 'EM!" as a catchphrase for Batman. A few minutes later, Zammit goes through a scenario where [[ComicBook/XMen Professor X]] is wiping his student's memories, and Zammit finishes the bit by imitating the Professor's voice and whispering a quiet, "Got 'em." |
| 46 | * {{Brainwashed}}: The cast of ''Plumbing the Death Star'' frequently portray ''ComicBook/XMen'''s Professor Xavier as an unapologetic villain who uses his {{Telepathy}} to make his students to whatever he wants. Whenever they describe his abuse of power, they make sure to accompany it with beeping sounds, showing he's treating people just like a computer program. |
| 47 | * BreakoutCharacter: Professor Xavier is probably the character brought up most on the show after Zammit and Jackson imitated his voice once and fell in love with it. |
| 48 | * BrilliantButLazy: Duscher portrays himself as a clever B-student who just didn't care in "Which One of the Plumbing Boys Would Make a Better Boy Who Lived and Why is it Joel Duscher?". |
| 49 | -->'''Zammit''': That type of shit? Like, "Just imagine what you could do if you tried, you have so much potential!" |
| 50 | -->'''Duscher''': Yeah, and I'd be like, "Yeah, but imagine how much less Gamecube I would play." |
| 51 | * BrokeTheRatingScale: |
| 52 | ** One episode ranks the original ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros64'' cast's stepfathering ability on a scale of ten. Things start off pretty bad when the two VideoGame/{{Pokemon}} both get zeroes for being wild animals, but things get even worse with Donkey Kong, a wild ape who can't talk, and worse, comes with ''in-laws''. He gets a negative ten out of ten. |
| 53 | ** When rating "The Pros and Cons of Dating Monsters," Zammit is so taken aback by the sheer travesty of a boyfriend the Mummy would be that he tries to give it a negative ten out of ten. Duscher and Jackson talk him down to a negative one, arguing that a negative ten would have to be something worse than endless torture. |
| 54 | * BuffySpeak: |
| 55 | ** Professor Xavier's {{Telepathy}} is referred to as his "boop-boop-boop powers" because someone always accompanies discussion of his powers with computer-like noises. |
| 56 | ** The cast stops "If You Were a James Bond Villain What Would Your Scheme Be?" to make sure everyone knows that "sinkholing" is not an actual word and that anyone who uses it will be laughed at. |
| 57 | ** The title of "Would You Prefer to be Suddenly 30 or 17'd again?" used ''Film/SeventeenAgain2009'' as a verb to describe suddenly becoming young again. The rest of the podcast similarly uses ''Film/ThirteenGoingOnThirty'' and ''Film/{{Big}}'' to describe being suddenly turned into an adult. |
| 58 | * TheBully: Each candidate in "Which Super Smash Bro would Make the Best Step-Dad?" is measured by how they would cope if they found out a stereotypical bully was hassling their kid. By the end of the episode, the bully has to deal with bounty hunters, [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros magical deadbeat Italians]], and actual wild animals who all come down on him with extreme force. After getting eaten and spit back out by the final stepfather, the bully doesn't even want to associate with his victim and just wants to stay away from his terrifying family members. |
| 59 | * TheButlerDidIt: Michael Williams's criticism of theories about the identity of Snoke from ''Film/TheForceAwakens'' is that they mostly involve a minor character secretly being Snoke even if no one in the story has any meaningful relationship to this minor character. This is most explicitly conversed when the idea that Snoke is Vanee, a character from ''Film/RogueOne'' who's only characteristic is being an older villain's butler. |
| 60 | -->''"The most evil, cunning man in the universe... now that we now know he was a butler, how does that make it better?"'' |
| 61 | * ButtMonkey: A whole episode is dedicated to "Why is Hawkeye in the Avengers?", and he's frequently brought up as the worst of the Avengers. They make a point of killing him off in their WhatIf "Would the Avengers be Better off Without the Hulk?", they characterize him as an emotionally-fragile whiner in "Which Avengers Would Make the Best Friend?", and they waste no time "Professor Charles Xavier's Crazy Summer" having Professor Xavier fire Hawkeye just before accidentally destroying his mind and killing him. |
| 62 | -->''"Chances are you think you're better than Hawkeye thinks he is."'' |
| 63 | * CaperCrew: With all of Christmas stolen and put in one of the Grinch's bank vaults, Duscher, Zammit, and Jackson are left to assemble a team of Christmas characters to pull off "A Christmas Heist", with Santa Claus himself backing them. The team they assemble is as follows: |
| 64 | ** ''The Gadget Guy:'' Kevin [=McCallister=] of ''Film/HomeAlone'' fame already has experience using make-shift tech to ruin his enemies from his childhood adventures, but with the funding of Santa Claus, [=McCallister=] is ready to get back into the game. Duscher also has a suggestion in the limo driver from ''Film/DieHard''. Why? Because his car has a phone in it. |
| 65 | --->'''Jackson''': No, Kevin [=McCallister=] is still the clear winner. |
| 66 | --->'''Zammit''': But Jackson, he can drive, and make--a phone call. |
| 67 | ** ''The Conman:'' With enough stealth expertise to sneak into Santa's sack and more passion for the mission than any other operative, Buddy from ''Film/{{Elf}}'' is more than prepared to lie his way into the bank security and get gunned down if it means saving his favorite holiday. |
| 68 | ** ''The Pickpocket:'' [=Malcom McDowell=] from the derivatively named ''Home Alone: Holiday Heist'' uses his genius-level intellect to assist in the actual stealing of Christmas. |
| 69 | ** ''The Burglar:'' Catwoman, having been featured in the Christmas-set ''Film/BatmanReturns'', gets in on the caper and is the one to open the vault containing Christmas in it, although her involvement brings a big problem for the crew: Franchise/{{Batman}}. Still, that downside doesn't make her worse than Duscher's suggestion, the very alcoholic, very diseased Film/BadSanta. |
| 70 | ** ''The Driver:'' In a win for Duscher, the others' suggestions of Literature/ThePolarExpress and Tim Allen prove too chaotic to work into the plan, so the team agrees to bring in the limo driver from ''Die Hard'' as their getaway driver. |
| 71 | ** ''The Muscle:'' ''Film/DieHard'''s John [=McClane=][[note]]fresh off his 2008 run for President[[/note]] serves as the main source of firepower in the heist. He gives Catwoman the time she needs to get into the vault, and knowing him, probably blows the entire building down with C4. |
| 72 | ** ''The Reserve:'' When the heist goes wrong and all seems lost, the three Masterminds have little choice, but to call in their most dangerous pick, the only Christmas character with no sense of morality and no reluctance to take a human life. Worse than that, it has parasitic abilities that allow it to cause "[[DeathOfPersonality ego death]]" by overriding of anyone it touches and controlling them, most often to force its victim to kill him or her self. It has no name, but it did once possess an inanimate object, one with a name befitting a monster with a heart cold as the abyss: [[spoiler:Frosty the Snowman.]] |
| 73 | ** ''The Fall Guy:'' With one role left to fill for the heist, Zammit puts forward ''Bad Santa'' as a fall guy before offering the perfect option: [[UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} the Lord Jesus Christ]]. In addition to being able to distract crowds with His miracles[[note]][[ArbitraryWeaponRange unless they're twenty feet away]][[/note]], the King of Kings would also put any police coming to arrest Him in a moral dilemma. |
| 74 | --->'''Jackson''': They'd be like "Ah, I don't really want to arrest Jesus." |
| 75 | --->'''Duscher''': "Last time this happened, we looked like the '''biggest''' jerks." |
| 76 | * CastFromCalories: This is referred to as the "Joel Duscher Bird Theory;" Duscher answers "Why Isn't [[ComicBook/XMen Nightcrawler]] Fat?" by positing that using mutant powers like Nightcrawler's teleportation would expend energy like flight does for birds. Problem is, other mutants like Cyclops and "the one with the bees" can't turn their powers off, so under this theory those characters should be constantly exhausted and starved. |
| 77 | * CasualTimeTravel: Shanks points out in "How Dare Wizards?!" that if Time-Turners are commercially available in ''Franchise/HarryPotter'', they should be used for everyday purposes. Specifically, he points out Time-Turners could help with venting anger by allowing people to kill whoever they're mad at and to then turn back time to return everything to normal. |
| 78 | * {{Catchphrase}}: Duscher's imitation of Franchise/{{Batman}} in "Which Comic Book Hero Would Make the Best Horror Movie Villain?" gruffly says "GOT 'EM!" to himself [[BondOneliner every time he snatches a criminal]]. |
| 79 | * CatScare: A negative of having Aquaman as a horror movie villain is that any time he popped out of the shadows after a long bit of tension his victim would immediately have a sense of relief after seeing a beautiful blond man in a silly orange outfit. |
| 80 | * CharacterAlignment: [[invoked]] The ambiguity of the character alignment system and its strange loopholes fuel the discussion in "What is a Baby's Alignment?". The episode starts with Zammit, Jackson, and Adam asking when sentience begins and ends with them segregating society by moral status while using magic to MindRape people into the ideal alignment. |
| 81 | * ChildSoldier: "How Many Crimes Does the Film/AgentCodyBanks Program Commit?" points out that Cody Banks is trained more to be a soldier than a legitimate spy, and clearly murders others for the sake of the government, making him a child soldier in all but name. |
| 82 | * ChummyCommies: Zammit suggests the monsters of ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'' would excellently take over for Santa because they could steal whatever presents they needed and give them to the children who need it most; Adam realizes this is basically redistribution of wealth and exclaims that he "knew this was a socialist podcast from the beginning." |
| 83 | -->"''Support my socialist Christmas, Adam."'' |
| 84 | * ClarkKenting: One of the best replacement jobs they can come up for Clark Kent with in "What Kind of Job is Journalism for a Superman?" is acting, since he already has the acting ability to keep the whole world in the dark about his SecretIdentity as Superman. |
| 85 | -->''"He'd be a good actor. Know how I know he'd be a good actor? Because he puts on glasses and does his hair slightly differently and no one thinks he's the same person, so he has to be really good at nuanced performance."'' |
| 86 | * ClickbaitGag: The episode "What Kind of Job is Journalism for a Superman?" concludes that Clark Kent would best be employed at Buzzfeed, because then he could write low-effort articles with obnoxious headlines like "16 Things You Think X-Ray Vision Doesn't Work On That It Totally Does" or "If You Were a Kansas Kid You Would Remember THESE." |
| 87 | -->''"It's sad because you know Superman would never realize that that's not journalism."'' |
| 88 | * CompleteImmortality: Jackson's answer to "What Would Be the Ultimate Crime Causing Power?" is immortality through possession. Essentially, if a supervillain had the power to become the closest person brain upon death, they would be unstoppable. You could hold him for ten minutes or ten decades with everything from cryogenic freezing, satellites, and telepathic blocks, but outside of the annihilation of all sentient life, there's no way to kill him. Still, there's one permanent option to stop him: find someone that's physically completely immortal for him to possess and then lock him up. |
| 89 | * CoincidentalBroadcast: Jackson chooses this in "Exploiting Television Tropes for Financial and Personal Gain?" because he could carry around a pocket TV, wonder aloud whether he could ever find something, and then look at his TV to find an advertisement for some competition where the reward is exactly what he needs. Duscher points out that at that point Jackson would have to actually ''win'' the competition, and even if it was a podcasting competition, there are still plenty of people to beat out Jackson at it. |
| 90 | * CommercializedChristmas: The main objection to letting Ronald [=McDonald=] become Santa Claus is that he'd ruin Christmas by turning it into [=McDonalds's=] Day and only giving children Happy Meals instead of actual presents. |
| 91 | * ConnectedAllAlong: Jackson identifies the "idiot detective", a phenomenon where movie-goers will experience a brief rush of satisfaction upon seeing a previously established character, even if the character has no reason to appear or any connection to the relevant characters. This is the best answer they have for the question "[[QuestioningTitle Why Does Your Snoke Theory Suck?]]", referring to theories that the new ''Star Wars'' villain was an alien rabbit, Darth Vader's butler, or Creator/SamuelLJackson. |
| 92 | * ContinuityNod: Throughout "Which Disney Princess would make the Best Step-Dad?", constant references are made to previous step-dads from the two episodes about ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros''. |
| 93 | * ConversationalTroping: Essentially, the whole podcast is spent discussing scenarios and conventions of popular culture, especially those from the {{Fantasy}} and {{Superhero}} genres. |
| 94 | * CoolHorse: One of the only reasons Link, a mute kleptomaniac with a nagging fairy, gets more than a two out of ten in "Which Super Smash Bro would Make the Best Step-Dad?" is because he has a horse, which means he gets the 1.5 horse multiplier bonus. This same bonus later applies to other characters with cars and dinosaurs. |
| 95 | * CostumeCopycat: Jackson's strategy in "How Would You Take Down the Bat Man?" is to make a Batman costume and menace Gotham, not by committing anything as serious as murder, but by displaying public nudity and just acting strange publicly in order to shame Batman's name. |
| 96 | * CreateYourOwnVillain: "Professor Charles Xavier's Crazy Summer" sees the titular professor humiliate Thor with mind control, leading the Prince of Asgard to return to his home and rally an army to take over Earth. |
| 97 | * CreatorProvincialism: |
| 98 | ** To tie in with ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'', an episode was made about what other wizarding schools besides Hogwarts would be like. What country did the Melbourne-based cast choose to focus on? Australia, of course. |
| 99 | ** If you can't tell from the title what "Would It Really Be Nice if the World Was Cadbury?" is about, don't worry. The guys immediately admit that making an episode about an obscure ad for Cadbury chocolate might alienate their listeners who aren't Australians born in the mid-eighties. |
| 100 | * CrystalDragonJesus: The Hutts immunity to the JediMindTrick make them "like slug atheists," in Jackson's words. |
| 101 | -->'''Duscher''': Not ''like'' slug atheists, that implies there ''are'' slug atheists! |
| 102 | * {{Cuckold}}: When Hawkeye comes up in "Which Avengers Would Make the Best Friends?", the main advantage the Plumbing Boys can see to having him as a friend is that he'd be away enough that they could have an affair with Hawkeye's wife. |
| 103 | * CutLexLuthorACheck: |
| 104 | ** In "Is the Death Star a Good Weapon?", Zammit posts that that for the expense of one murder-beam from the Death Star, the tyrannical Galactic Empire could instead buy gift baskets to boost the morale of the government employees while they loom over the cowering citizenry. |
| 105 | ** "Why Doesn't ComicBook/{{Superman}} Get a Job"? is built on the point that if a man had SuperStrength, SuperSpeed, and {{Flight}}, wouldn't he find a job using those skills rather than writing about Wall Street in a single bound? |
| 106 | ** Willy Wonka comes under fire in "Does Wonka Know How to Run a Business?" for not using his amazing technology to help the world, though they reason this is because he's a manchild who took over the company at a young age and possibly a Nazi scientist. |
| 107 | * DeadlyGame: The guys jump off the slippery slope in "What Would You Use The Film/{{Suicide Squad|2016}} For?" and decide to just throw them in ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' to fight to the death with one victor. The more Squad members you kill, the more you get off your sentence if you win, but there's no equipment given except boots, putting guntotters like Deadshot at a disadvantage. Meanwhile, Captain Boomerang would enter the arena feeling natural in his Australian thong and win the Hunger Games while Deadshot is distracted by the Captain's ridiculous getup. |
| 108 | -->''"Poor Riddler."'' |
| 109 | * DeathActivatedSuperpower: Jackson's answer to "What Would be the Ultimate Crime Causing Power?" is the ability to take over the consciousness of the nearest sentient being upon death, which Jackson intends to exploit by killing himself, becoming a bird, crashing into the White House, and becoming the President. Sure, the President isn't great at robbing banks or petty crime, but being President is the ultimate power when it comes to ''war'' crimes. |
| 110 | * DecapitationPresentation: Johnny Cage entered the ''Franchise/MortalKombat'' tournament to prove his own stunts; Johnny Cage's signature move is to punch someone's head off. Using these two facts, it's assumed that he likely has a photo of him raising his enemy's head out for all to see on his Instagram. |
| 111 | * DecapitationRequired: The guest from "How Effective is the Suicide Squad?" suggests ComicBook/{{Superman}} could be killed by decapitation, which confuses Jackson since, as he puts it, he didn't know Superman was a vampire. Zammit and Jackson then list off other vampiric qualities Superman has, like only being able to come in if you invite him to sucking the blood of the innocent to having to... count any panties dropped on the floor? They go farther and farther on the tangent until they read from ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', realize decapitation wouldn't kill Superman, and decide to move on from Vlad Kent. |
| 112 | -->''"'Oh, creatures of the night, what beautiful music they make, I have to save Metropolis!' Superman!"'' |
| 113 | * DefeatByModesty: The cast reasons that Johnny Cage, an actor, could manage to defeat Goro, the four-armed demon monster from ''Franchise/MortalKombat'', by removing Goro's loincloth and embarrassing him. |
| 114 | * DeusSexMachina: Much to his co-host's horror, Zammit's answer to "What Would Your Ultimate Crime Fighting Super Power Be?" is the ability to relieve one's self and then live the potential life of one of one's sperm before dying and returning to the moment of relief. Jackson and Duscher are disgusted, not only by how weird the power itself is, but by how strange it would be to live the life of your children, only to die, and then raise the child whose life you lived. Jackson attempts to move on with his less disgusting power, but Duscher is too disgusted by Zammit's suggestion to discuss anything else. Zammit gets either a negative four hundred or a ten out of ten for that one. |
| 115 | * DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: "Why is Johnny Cage in Franchise/MortalKombat?" wrestles with how in the world Hollywood actor Johnny Cage could conceivably fight an undead ninja, a soul-sucking sorcerer, and a thunder god with only his stuntwork and charm. |
| 116 | * DisappearedDad: When going through "Which Super Smash Bro would Make the Best Step-Dad?", the wife and step-child in question are characterized and discussed, but no mention is given to what happened to the original husband. |
| 117 | * DiscoveringYourOwnDeadBody: One of the possible answers to "What is the Worst Thing You Could Find in the Ocean?" Even worse would be discovering a loved one's body while they're also there with you alive. |
| 118 | * DisguisedInDrag: Inspired by the example of ''WesternAnimation/BugsBunny'' but going one step further, Zammit's idea of how to [[WesternAnimation/WileECoyoteAndTheRoadRunner catch the Road Runner]] is to dress up as a sexy female Road Runner, seduce the bird, then murder him when they head somewhere private. |
| 119 | * TheDogWasTheMastermind: The man who killed M and sunk [=MI6=] into the ground in Duscher's Bond classic, ''Sinkhole'', was [=MI6=]'s janitor, out for revenge after Q failed to give him the proper equipment to clean the place up. |
| 120 | * TheDon: According to the second ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' episode, Donkey Kong is unknowingly a mob boss, who goes into a rage upon hearing about anyone in his debt and violently extorts Wario, forcing Wario to give up on being a stepfather. |
| 121 | * DrJerk: When ranking how good of a GP VideoGame/DrMario would be, Jackson shows how bad his beside manner would be by cheerfully yelling "Guess-a what? You got cancer!" in an Italian accent. Duscher retorts that it sure would be better than Dr. Wario, who would just curse the patient out and laugh at them as soon as they learned about their cancer diagnosis, but Jackson points out Mario would probably invite Wario and all the other ''Mario'' characters to compete over the diagnosis for new game, ''Super Mario Medical Diagnosis''. |
| 122 | -->''"Hey, guess what's gonna happen in three to six weeks? Your wife, she's single now eh-eh!"'' |
| 123 | * DrivenToSuicide: |
| 124 | ** Michael Williams plan to defeat James Bond is to cyberbully him and bombard him with spam until his life is a living Hell, forcing him to suicide. |
| 125 | ** By the end of "What Would Your Ultimate Crime Fighting Super Power Be?", Duscher is so disgusted by Zammit's "cum baby powers" and Jackson's bacterial HiveMind that he decides the best super power to have in this world would be hanging himself, to stop himself from committing crimes. |
| 126 | * EasyAmnesia: Thanks to memory wiping from ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'', Jackson figures that showing ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' would just cause mass hysteria for non-magical folk who would suddenly remember all the terrible magic that wizards tried to hide. |
| 127 | * EatsBabies: In the episode "Which One of the Plumbing Boys Would Best Be Consumed by the Symbiote?" Duscher argues that if you have to eat a human being, the best option is to eat newborns, a conviction Jackson agrees with. Zammit tries to argue against them, but he gets quickly exhausted arguing with people who insist killing babies is swell. |
| 128 | -->'''Duscher''': What's the difference between eating a cow and eating a newborn? |
| 129 | -->'''Zammit''': So much, so much! |
| 130 | -->'''Jackson''': No, I'm with ya! |
| 131 | -->'''Zammit''': Aw, Jesus. [...] Why is it that I'm arguing "Let's not eat babies" and I'm the minority here? |
| 132 | * EmotionBomb: Mr. Sunday Movies flips the monkey from ''Film/{{Outbreak}}'' so his [[HatePlague dehumanizing virus]] now instead spreads love, happiness, and tolerance throughout the entire world, a power shared by the Facehugger from ''Film/{{Alien}}''. The episode, by the way, is "When Bad Guys Do Good." |
| 133 | * EpilepticTrees: |
| 134 | ** InUniverse; Duscher tries to pitch "How Does Dating Work in Beyoncé's Single Ladies?" by asking why "he" needs to "put a ring on it" in this universe, only for his two co-hosts to answer his question and leave him with nothing to say five minutes into the episode. This leaves the cast with another twenty minutes of the episode to fill, so they end up fumbling into an absurd theory about how Beyonce is a ComicBook/GreenLantern talking about the madness Hal Jordan suffered in ''[[ComicBook/ZeroHourCrisisInTime Zero Hour.]]'' |
| 135 | ** Wild theories are the subject of "Why Does Your Snoke Theory Suck?", where real theories about the identity of the villain from ''Film/TheForceAwakens'' are discussed and rated. The best theory is that the villain is another villain mentioned once in passing from a film ten years ago and the worst one is that he is literally a bag of snakes. In the end, they come to the agreement that no theory about Snoke is good. |
| 136 | * EverybodyDiesEnding: In the final judgement of "How Effective is the Film/{{Suicide Squad|2016}}?", Zammit presents a scenario where the nine-man squad[[note]]Deadshot, Harley Quinn, El Diablo, Killer Croc, Rick Flagg, the Enchantress, Slipknot, Captain Boomerang, and Katana[[/note]] is lined up on the White House lawn facing an evil ComicBook/{{Superman}} on the opposite side. He reckons Superman's opening salvo of laser vision would immediately decapitate six members of the team, leaving Superman to fly like a speeding bullet at and through Harley Quinn, blow out the flames of El Diablo and calmly squash the Enchantress's head like a grape before moving on to kill the President. |
| 137 | -->''"So I think without a doubt, the Suicide Squad is uh... useless."'' |
| 138 | * EveryoneIsASuper: Adam excitedly decides that the best way to make sure {{Muggle}}s and wizards can find peace is "forced interbreeding," so that everyone will eventually get magical powers in their family line. |
| 139 | -->''"Like, if you take away forced, I'm with ya."'' |
| 140 | * EvolutionaryLevels: When discussing "How Did the Hutts Rise to Power?", Jackson mentions that they may have been a more monstrous and athletic species before years of wealth and luxury devolved them into the immobile, slug creatures that grace the ''Star Wars'' universe today. |
| 141 | * EvilTwin: Duscher gets out of the negative consequences of living through a TwistedChristmas once Adam points out that if he's living in a soap opera world, he could just have all his enemies go after his secret evil twin. |
| 142 | * ExistentialHorror: In "What is the Worst Thing You Could Find in the Ocean?", one suggestion is "your own dead body", because finding a corpse identical to yourself would make you question everything about your own identity. |
| 143 | * ExploitedTrope: The episode "Exploiting Television Tropes for Financial and Personal Gain?" is all about how the Duscher, Zammit, Jackson, and their two guests would abuse the conventions of television to make their lives easier. Jackson chooses to exploit CoincidentalBroadcast, Duscher chooses Soapland Christmas (since merged with TwistedChristmas), Adam chooses TreasureMap, and Michael Williams chooses SpecialGuest. |
| 144 | * ExposedToTheElements: Having survived naked in the Himalayas all his life, the Abominable Snowman would have no trouble replacing Santa and relocating to his facility in the North Pole. |
| 145 | * ExpositionBeam: One suggestion for how Professor X of ''ComicBook/XMen'' would update someone who missed the past fifty years is quite blunt; Xavier would immediately upload all fifty years of history into the person's mind in a single moment and wheel off while leaving the updated person to cry blood from the information overload. |
| 146 | * FakeInteractivity: In "Why Does Your Snoke Theory Suck?" Steele Saunders prepares the audience for his Snoke theory by telling them to grab a drink, talk to their family, and take a seat before listening to him; after maybe a half a second pause, Saunders continues, with Zammit and Jackson complimenting the listener on how quickly they managed to get everything done. |
| 147 | * FakeMemories: One of Professor Xavier's methods of replacing Santa Claus is to telepathically induce memories of a present into the minds of every good child on earth and then adding another memory of losing it a few days after Christmas. This causes problems when kids begin trying to compare notes with friends, who notice they all lost presents at the same time. |
| 148 | * {{Fanboy}}: In "Why is Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat?", a cyborg supercriminal from the game is made into such a fan of Johnny Cage that he's willing to throw a life-or-death fighting tournament for an autograph. |
| 149 | * {{Fanfare}}: When discussing Link's capabilities as a stepfather, the conversation shifts to whether Link's stepchild would know he's having sex because of the bombastic "Victory!" and "ItemGet" fanfares that play whenever something goes well for Link. |
| 150 | * FantasticRacism: |
| 151 | ** The first episode topic discussed on the show the lack of any alien forces in the Galactic Empires ranks from ''Film/ANewHope'' to ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi''. Jackson excuses it by pointing to the costs of making a uniform for everyone and the need to keep a brand going, but the whole branding argument falls apart when Zammit points out that the Empire blow up planets without consulting their PR department. It also falls away when they realize that the Rebellion is just as lacking in aliens, and that even when they have an alien admiral in ''Return of the Jedi'', he is only allowed to serve on a ship full of personnel of the same species, implying some sort of segregation. |
| 152 | ** The topic of species-ism is revisited in the sixth episode, where Jackson posits another theory: Darth Vader's mother was not just a slave, but a sex slave for her alien master. Without an actual father figure, this leaves Vader to put together that his father was his gross, goblin-headed alien master, creating a hatred for aliens that lead Vader to carry out an ethnic cleansing of his Galactic Empire that left only humans to serve in it and the Rebellion. |
| 153 | --->'''Duscher''': You are arguing that the Imperial army is only racist because the head of it (well, the second-in-charge behind Emperor Palpatine), Darth Vader, believes his mum was raped by an alien, he was conceived, and now he hates all aliens to the point where he has murdered a lot of them? |
| 154 | --->'''Jackson''': Yup. |
| 155 | ** Playing on this is part of guest star Gabe's suggestion for how Sauron could have won the war in ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings''. Instead of relying on wave after wave of Orcs, Sauron could have easily played on the hatred the elves, dwarves, humans and hobbits have with each other to sow discord and tear down the other kingdoms before coming to claim what's left over. |
| 156 | * FantasyKitchenSink: A problem with the afterlife of ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' is the presence of fictional sea gods, Davy Jones of Nautical Mythology, the Greek Poseidon, and the Christian Holy Grail which all present completely different ideas of what the afterlife is. |
| 157 | -->''"There are very few mentions of a kraken in Literature/TheBible."'' |
| 158 | * AFoolAndHisNewMoneyAreSoonParted: One of the last two tropes mentioned in "Exploiting Television Tropes for Financial and Personal Gain" is the tendency for characters to strike oil in their backyard, find money on the bus, or find some other crazy method to get rich instantly. However, they conclude that if they followed the trope completely, they'd have to lose the money since these type of scenarios tend to involve a form of FriendOrIdolDecision where they either must return the money to its rightful owner or keep it, wherein the character always chooses to return it out of moral obligation. |
| 159 | * ForTheEvulz: Michael Williams hypothetical Bond villain ruins 007's life with leaks of personal information, denial-of-service attacks, and cyberbullying tactics for one reason, encapsulated in his pithy, but devious MotiveRant: |
| 160 | -->'''James Bond''': Why, why in the world did you do this? |
| 161 | -->'''Cyberbully''': [[spoiler:For the lolz.]] |
| 162 | * ForWantOfANail: |
| 163 | ** According to "Why is the Death Star Spherical?", putting a friendlier management on the Death Star and renaming it the "the Peacemaker" would make the Stormtroopers more open about the Death Star's structural problems; this would allow the Empire to cover up the exhaust port, allowing them to destroy Alderaan, the Rebellion, and Luke while derailing the entire ''Franchise/StarWars'' saga. |
| 164 | ** The point of "What if Hagrid was 5 Years Too Late?" is obviously how things in ''Harry Potter'' would change if Hagrid was late, but there's a problem: late for what? Depending on what he's late for, the world of ''Harry Potter'' ends up with the Chosen One growing up either a feral snake king, a goth fan of terrible 90's music, or dead by dragon breath at age fourteen. |
| 165 | * FreakyFridayFlip: |
| 166 | ** When discussing ''Film/{{Freaky Friday|1976}}'', they assume that in any situation in which people disagree in that universe, they must have a body switch. This initially makes it a candidate in their minds as one of the best fictional universes, as people can switch bodies with others so long as they agree to disagree and each refuse to learn a moral. However, the Boys quickly realize the FridgeHorror of this idea since it means people may start to use this to have children solely to have people to swap bodies with before death. |
| 167 | ** Professor X uses his telepathic powers to switch bodies with Dumbledore in "What if Professor X Ran Hogwarts? (Live!)", allowing Professor X to manage Hogwarts for the seven years Harry attends the school. Dumbledore is too busy learning to be a cripple to do anything useful until the very end of those seven years. |
| 168 | * FriendOrIdolDecision: The reason it's decided that AFoolAndHisNewMoneyAreSoonParted is too difficult to exploit is that if you randomly find money on a bus in fiction, the choice to return the money is always presented and characters '''always''' return it. |
| 169 | * FullCircleRevolution: A morbid take on this, yet still PlayedForLaughs, occurs in "Which Would be the Worst Animal to Planet of the Apes?" Tapeworms are made sapient {{puppeteer parasite}}s and turn humans into {{meat puppet}}s--but then the need to keep their hosts healthy and breeding for as long as possible means that human society is merely replaced by an identical society of intelligent tapeworms controlling human bodies who are just as miserable as humans were. |
| 170 | * GeniusLoci: Inspired by [[ComicBook/DoomPatrol Danny the Street]], Zammit's power in "What Would your Ultimate Crimefighting Superpower Be? (Again)" is to become a ''mobile'' cube of sentient location moving about to control things within his radius to stop crime occurring there. Unfortunately, it's suggested that he has to ''manually'' control everything, including the breathing of every living being, leading to mass death when he forgets. |
| 171 | * GenocideDilemma: The cast did an episode on the InUniverse CharacterAlignment of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', only to end up arguing about whether it's okay to commit genocide on populations of objectively evil people. Zammit and Adam both think the genocide itself is evil, but Jackson decides (in a ''Dungeons and Dragons'' world) he would go with a genocide and then commit suicide once he's the only evil person left. |
| 172 | * GenreRefugee: The Plumbing Boys switch the discussion in "Which 80s Horror Villain Would Make the Best Boyfriend?" from Michael Myers of ''Film/Halloween1978'' (emphasis on "1978") to Creator/MikeMyers and Creator/DanaCarvey, who end up being placed second and third as boyfriends. |
| 173 | * GirlfriendInCanada: The one problem with dating [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy Kruegar]] is that everyone would assume you're just making him up to puff your ego, since he only exists in the dreamworld. Zammit is very put off by this, not wanting to be "that guy." |
| 174 | * GladYouThoughtOfIt: "Why Isn't Nightcrawler Fat?" ends up becoming a discussion of Professor X, where the Plumbing Boys become convinced he's using {{Telepathy}} to increase the food budget by implanting the thought to increase it in the mind of the rest of his staff. |
| 175 | * {{Glamour}}: Zammit and Jackson conclude that Professor X, considering he doesn't walk and uses his {{Telepathy}} for everything, must be simply implanting an image of a healthy version of himself into others, while in reality he is morbidly obese and unkempt. |
| 176 | * TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin: |
| 177 | ** When Jackson proposes exploiting CoincidentalBroadcast in "Exploiting Television Tropes for Financial and Personal Gain," the others point out that he isn't exploited the trope that the protagonist always wins, so Jackson would end up losing any singing and soup-making competitions he had entered. On the flip side, this helps out Adam, who's exploit of the TreasureMap trope makes him the bad guy to the [[KidHero kid heroes]] who inevitably will hunt the treasure; with no storytelling convention to help them, Adam's adult fists easily give him the advantage over his infantile adversaries. |
| 178 | ** Shanks denies that {{Muggles}} have to worry about the dark wizards of ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' taking over because, historically, the good guys will win. He has trouble naming the concept, and calls it "PlotArmor." |
| 179 | * AGoodNameForARockBand: When talking about the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' witch who faked death in the Salem Witch Trials for fun, the episode's guest (Shanks) calls her "masochistic sex witch hanging around Salem" and decides to name his next rock band that after everyone else laughs at his naming. |
| 180 | * GrandTheftMe: The Boys hypothesize that if every disagreement in the ''Freaky Friday'' universe resulted in people switching bodies, people would come to abuse this by having children and forcing them to perform a body switch, allowing immortality for anyone willing to having children with sole purpose of letting them die. (Coincidentally, this is also the exact plot of an Creator/HPLovecraft short story, "[[spoiler:The Thing on the Doorstep]]".) |
| 181 | * GroinAttack: A tangent about ComicBook/AntMan in "Professor Charles Xavier's Crazy Summer" delves into Ant-Man's ability to use his size-shifting abilities to blow up the gonads of any of his enemies. |
| 182 | ** In "Which Would Be the Worst Classic Board Game to be Trapped in ''Film/{{Jumanji}}''-Style?", the actual game of TabletopGame/HungryHungryHippos isn't so bad; you just have to ride the now real hippos and eat the balls that came with the game in real life. However, Jackson decides to misinterpret "balls" as "testicles", and winds up massacring a shopping mall with his hippo. (He also becomes convinced that Music/CelineDion is now a testicle-eating cannibal.) |
| 183 | * HalfDressedCartoonAnimal: Justified in "Why Does Donkey Kong Wear a Tie?", where they figure Donkey Kong refuses to wear anything besides a tie because of some mental issues. Once the similarly pants-less Diddy Kong is brought up, they brush him off and don't explain his outfit. |
| 184 | * HalfHumanHybrid: The reason Aquaman is proposed in "Which Comic Book Hero Would Make the Best Horror Movie Villain?" is that his origin as the child of an affair between a nonhuman sea creature and a fisherman raised in a lighthouse make him sound like some sort of alien monster. |
| 185 | * HandWave: An explanation is given for how Johnny Cage could defeat every original ''Franchise/MortalKombat'' fighter in "Why is Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat?" until they reach Scorpion, an undead ninja with no moral code. The closest they could come with is that Scorpion could impale Cage with a spear in the shoulder and pull him towards himself, only for Cage to raise his fist and decapitate Scorpion, though this scenario ends with Johnny Cage bleeding to death soon after this. The Plumbing Boys decide to ignore Cage's death so they can match him up with the three remaining fighters. |
| 186 | * HarsherInHindsight: [[invoked]] Jackson points out the problem with having a lot of [[SpecialGuest Celebrity Guest Stars]] as relatives: it means that a lot of your relatives turn out to be pedophiles. |
| 187 | * HatePlague: Duscher's "ultimate crime causing power" is riot vision, the ability to make anyone he makes eye contact with enter into a violent frenzy for twenty-four hours. Not the best for robbing banks, but if you want to see the Pope, the President, or Greenpeace clock some guys, it's for you. |
| 188 | * HarmfulToMinors: A big point of discussion in the two ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' episodes is how each character would manage to conceal their sexual activities from their stepchild. The worst violation of this is Wario, who would go so far as to take his step-child to a strip club as a birthday present, and then tell the stepmother. |
| 189 | * HeartIsAnAwesomePower: |
| 190 | ** Madrox the Multiple Man has the power to make exact copies of himself and absorb them for their knowledge; "Is Madrox just the worst for the MU?" makes the case that he could potentially take over every job in the world economy, learn every possible skill, become everyone's significant other, and become the dominant species on Earth by himself solely through his one superpower. |
| 191 | ** Whenever a generic spell needs to be brought up in "How Dare Wizards?!", the Plumbing Boys always go with a spell they made up that turns water into flowers. They start off making jokes about how pointless it is, but they eventually figure out that this spell could be used to escape waterboarding and empty the oceans in the style of [[Literature/CatsCradle Ice-9]]. |
| 192 | * HeavenAbove: In their Let's Play of ''VideoGame/UltimateChickenHorse'', Duscher abuses the ability to have his character looks upwards to make his cute chicken man look to the sky as if he were pleading to God while talking about how he wants to be spared from a violent death. |
| 193 | * HeelFaceTurn: "When Bad Guys Goes Good" is a discussion of what movie villains would be like if completely inverted. So now the four sharks from the ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' movies are a group of savvy crimefighters trying to bring peace to the Middle East with [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey Hal 9000]] as MissionControl. |
| 194 | * HeroicBuild: One of the key reasons "Why Isn't Nightcrawler Fat" exists is that there are no conventionally fat members of the ComicBook/XMen even if most of them have powers with no relation to physical exertion. |
| 195 | * HeteronormativeCrusader: The podcast's increasingly villainous interpretation of Professor Xavier is quick to judge homosexuals and uses his mind control as a form of conversion therapy. |
| 196 | -->''"We don't have a 'Don't ask, don't tell,' policy here, we just have a 'Don't,' policy."'' |
| 197 | * HeWhoFightsMonsters: The cast in "What Alignment is a Baby?" tries to think of a way to create a good society in the world of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', where people can be objectively evil thanks to InUniverse CharacterAlignment. Adam keeps his hands clean of any extreme matters and Zammit proposes simply kicking Evil people out of villages, but Jackson immediately goes over the line by committing genocide on any Evil or Neutral aligned villagers. Zammit tries to weasel out of the morality issue, but Jackson just accepts the fact that he'd be Evil by doing it and agrees to kill himself after his purge of the village, leaving the Good people to question the origin of their society. |
| 198 | * HiveMind: Professor Charles Xavier of ''ComicBook/XMen'' gets voted as the most horrific superhero because he takes control of the minds of all of his students regularly as part of his lessons. Any telepath who would come to his school would quickly find the entire class staring at them as one entity, as Xavier asks the telepath to allow him to take control. This would also allow him to force students into battle, prevent them from leaving, and erase memories of any of Xavier's wrongdoings. |
| 199 | ** Jackson's Ultimate Crime Fighting superpower turns out to be his becoming a swarm of sapient bacteria and infecting everyone on earth as part of a hive mind, his mind control forcing them to be law-abiding. This gets compared to ''VideoGame/TheLastOfUs''. |
| 200 | -->'''Duscher''': Why is it in every hypothetical you just...commit some form of mass genocidal mass-- |
| 201 | -->'''Jackson''': It's not a genocide this time! |
| 202 | -->'''Zammit''': It's a post-apocalyptic Earth! |
| 203 | -->'''Jackson''': Everyone's just a bit me! |
| 204 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: Jackson's scheme from "If You Were a James Bond Villain What Would Your Scheme Be?" ends with his villain happily bragging about his evil plan on his Mars colony, not knowing that Bond has used his own bombs to send the Moon hurdling not towards Earth, but straight towards the villain's Mars base. This happens to be the last scene of ''[[Film/{{Moonraker}} Marsraker]]''. |
| 205 | * HumansThroughAlienEyes: Jackson reasons that the answer to "Why Is The Matrix Programmed So Poorly?" is that the robots have such a failed understanding of humans that any attempt to program a world better than the nineties is beyond them. Initial attempts to make a utopia for humans just end up being a world of endless grass because the robots can't distinguish between a human's ideal world and a cow's. |
| 206 | * HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: One of the suggestions in "How Would You Use The Suicide Squad?" is to execute them by putting them in the wild, giving them some sort of handicap, and allowing eager citizens and big game hunters to hunt them to death. James compares it to ''Literature/TheMostDangerousGame'', although the whole thing falls apart when magical members like Enchantress and El Diablo come up. They conclude that the best member of the Suicide Squad to hunt would obviously be [[Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor]], despite not being a member of the team, because he's more annoying than any of them. |
| 207 | -->'''James''': What about [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway Slipknot]]? |
| 208 | -->'''Duscher''': Slipknot just kills himself. |
| 209 | * TheIlluminati: Jackson sees the use of [[LaserGuidedAmnesia mind wiping]] and [[{{Masquerade}} mass secrecy]] as evidence the wizarding governments of ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' are just like the Illuminati, controlling the world in secret. |
| 210 | * IKnowMortalKombat: Fittingly, the ''Franchise/MortalKombat'' episode is based around how Johnny Cage's experience with fight ''scenes'' don't translate to experience with actual fights, leaving the Plumbing Boys to figure out how he could defeat actual warriors. |
| 211 | * ImmuneToDrugs: Realizing that a HealingFactor prevents any type of drug from taking effect, Wolverine's cigar smoking takes over the conversation for a bit of "Why Isn't Nightcrawler Fat?". |
| 212 | * InfoDump: After listening to an excessive debate about the afterlife of ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'', Michael Williams vocalizes his hope that the [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanDeadMenTellNoTales 2017 film]] starts with a forty-minute speech directly to the audience explaining the afterlife and discrediting all the theories in the episode. |
| 213 | * InsistentTerminology: Despite only being referred to as such in one scene in seven movies, Duscher and Jackson refuse to call the main characters from ''Film/TheFastAndTheFurious'' anything besides La Familia and refuse to describe it with anything less than pure excitement. |
| 214 | * InstantAllegianceArtifact: The "Alignment" spell from ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' becomes the center of a plan by Jackson to create a village full of Good people by either forcing people to accept the spell and turn into good people or be shot in the head. Zammit and Adam [[GenocideDilemma aren't sure whether they like this plan]]. |
| 215 | * InsaneTrollLogic: Sometimes their ideas spiral into this. It also tends to downspiral into ''worse'' logic after they have to patch up any flaws in their argument after the boys pick it apart. |
| 216 | * InterestingSituationDuel: "How Would You Kill Father Christmas?" eventually considers a hypothetical duel between two ordinary Plumbing Boys and an enraged, club-wielding caveman SantaClaus on a houseboat in the Pacific Ocean, which they think sounds amazing. |
| 217 | * IronicEcho: Adam points out one of Zammit's suggestions in "Which Fictional Character Would Make a Better Santa Claus?" involves redistribution of wealth and says "I knew this was a socialist podcast;" moments later, Adam suggests using Ronald [=McDonald=] and the millions of [=McDonalds=] to take over for Santa and his elves, at which point Zammit complains that this is capitalizing Christmas and says "I knew this was a capitalist podcast." |
| 218 | * JobStealingRobot: |
| 219 | ** A fantastic variation. One of the problems with Elsa's ice cream business in "Who's the Best Disney Business Princess?" is that it would create zero jobs, since she can create ice golems to do any labor she needs without paying them a single dime. |
| 220 | ** A fantastic variation in "How Dare Wizards?!", where Adam points out that introducing magic into the human world would simply leave wizards and dragons to take over jobs while {{Muggle}}s are left unemployed. |
| 221 | * JokerImmunity: It comes up in "How Would You Use The Film/{{Suicide Squad|2016}}?" that Batman, as he appears in the film, should have no [[RoguesGallery recurring enemies like the Joker]] because this Batman is okay with killing criminals. |
| 222 | * JustLikeRobinHood: Two examples from "Which Comic Book Hero Would Make the Best Horror Movie Villain?" |
| 223 | ** Among many, many attempts Professor Xavier makes to take over the mantle of Santa Claus, one of them is to brainwash the rich so that they pay for the gifts of all the children in the world. |
| 224 | ** The monsters from ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'' could use their access to any door to rob whatever gifts children would want. Adam then [[DefiedTrope denies]] this would be charitable by saying "it's less Robin Hood than just hood." |
| 225 | * KillerRabbit: [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Krypto the Super Dog]] may be a cute white puppy, but as "Which Comic Book Hero Would Make the Best Horror Movie Villain?" spins it, he's also an invincible, lightning-fast alien monster with the strength of a locomotive and no capacity. If anyone upset him, there'd be no way to calm him down before the amoral hound ripped out their jugular. There's a reason he gets voted the third most horrifying hero ahead of the likes of ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}. |
| 226 | * KillTheGod: If "Why Did God Make Bruce Almighty?" is anything to go by, Morgan Freeman's character in ''Film/BruceAlmighty'' isn't actually God, but someone who was temporarily given God's power (like Bruce) and used it to kill and replace God. This is how the Boys justify the more questionable action of Freeman's character in the film. |
| 227 | %%* TheKrampus: |
| 228 | %%** In Ronald [=McDonald's=] version of Christmas, the Hamburglar takes over for Krampus and kidnaps the bad kids. |
| 229 | * LackOfEmpathy: In "A Christmas Heist", one of the Christmas characters they consider to be "[[TheBigGuy The Muscle]]" for the heist seems promising due to their ability to possess others, until they realize just how depraved someone would have to be to control the body of another man and make them kill their own friends. They decide its best to shelve the idea, until later in the episode when they realize their team is unable to take the bank without asking for back-up, forcing them to bring their original Muscle in to slaughter some guards. Its lack of morality is to the point that when Duscher wants to betray the group to claim heist's prize for himself, he thinks its best to have the original Muscle possess him so that he won't feel any guilt while the Muscle murders everyone else on the team. It's a little gruesome and serious for a comedy podcast, but that's only if you don't know who this murderer's name: [[spoiler:Frosty the Snowman]]. |
| 230 | * LampshadeHanging: In "If You Were a James Bond Villain What Would Your Scheme Be?", Jackson hopes that someone in Duscher's Bond film points out how convenient it is that a man named Stinkhole just happened to have an evil plan themed around sinkholes. |
| 231 | * LandDownunder: Jackson calls this "Hollywood Australia" in "How Effective is the Suicide Squad?" and that it is made exclusively out of dirty shanty towns, the Outback, and Sydney. Since the Franchise/DCExtendedUniverse is probably following this version of Australia, Captain Boomerang's feat of robbing all the banks in that country is much more feasible, since he really only had to rob the ones in Sydney. |
| 232 | -->''"He steals money and steals from the indigenous culture. So, uh, well done, Boomerang, you're the worst."'' |
| 233 | * LaserGuidedAmnesia: "How Dare Wizards?!" starts off as a condemnation of the wizards from ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'' for wiping away days of memory from all of New York City without any sort of consent or oversight, before it goes on to discuss ''Harry Potter'' as a whole. |
| 234 | %%** Zammit's "ultimate crime causing power" is to be forgotten by anyone who looks away from one's self. |
| 235 | * LongestPregnancyEver: "What if Hagrid Was Five Years Too Late?" at one point applies the question to Hagrid's birth, meaning Hagrid stays in his mother's womb for five years after she was supposed to go into labor. As a giantess, she's cool with it. |
| 236 | * LoopholeAbuse: In "Which One of the Plumbing Boys Would Make a Better Dumbledore and Why is it Joel Zammit?", Zammit!Dumbledore learns of a curse that prevents any Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher from teaching for more than a year. How does he undo this Dark Magic of old? He re-names the class. |
| 237 | * MadLibsCatchphrase: Every episode opens with, "Welcome to ''Plumbing the Death Star'', where we ask the important questions like [episode title]," where the episode title is the question the episode sets out to answer. |
| 238 | * MagicalClown: Ronald [=McDonald=] gets some points in "Which Fictional Character Would Make a Better Santa Claus?" for being sort of a magician, but they point out that most of magic is fabricated by the corporation he works for, who would commercialize the holiday and ruin the Christmas magic Santa Claus represented. |
| 239 | * {{Magitek}}: Zammit argues the {{Masquerade}} in ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' is bad because wizards and muggles could be working together to make, in his words, "A MEGA-NUKE" by combining magic and science. |
| 240 | -->'''Jackson''': No, a nuke with a dragon in it! |
| 241 | -->'''Zammit''': With '''three dragons'''! |
| 242 | * MakeAWish: |
| 243 | ** The second half of "What are the Ramifications of ''Film/LiarLiar''?" is a discussion of how the wishing in the film works, how Creator/JimCarrey's character would abuse his son's wishes, and how eventually the Jim Carrey would need to sacrifice his life or the son's to stop him from devastating reality with his wishes. |
| 244 | ** Jackson initially tries to exploit the wishing in ''Film/{{Ted}}'' to make an army, but decides instead to use the variant in ''Film/LiarLiar''. Specifically, he decides to get a factory full of kids, have them each blow out a candle, and make them all wish for Jackson to get diamonds. The group very quickly realize this would be a horrible idea, since eventually some kid would wish Jackson's head would explode. |
| 245 | * MakingASpectacleOfYourself: In order to differentiate himself from the other three sharks, the shark from ''Film/Jaws3D'' would wear 3D glasses. This would also emphasize his wackier and funny personality relative to the other members of the crime-fighting ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' gang Zammit lines out in "When Bad Guys Do Good." |
| 246 | * ManOfSteelWomanOfKleenex: |
| 247 | ** In "Which Superhero is the Best Lover?", Duscher argues ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk would make a great lover and gets laughed off by the rest of the cast when they realize that coitus with Hulk would definitely end with him accidentally ripping you to shreds from sheer strength. |
| 248 | ** The topic in "Why Doesn't Rogue Use Protection?" is Rogue's inability to have sex due to her mutant powers, though the discussion veers into the problems most of the mutant population and the ComicBook/FantasticFour must have. They conclude that Tony Stark and Reed Richards, with their ridiculous intellect, could simply make de-powering collars or full-body suits to prevent superpowers from interfering with coitus. |
| 249 | * {{Masquerade}}: "How Dare Wizards?!" is a long session of outrage from Jackson over the fact that the wizards in ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' cover up magical disasters and handle them on their own without telling {{Muggle}}s anything, leaving them in the dark on life-threatening matters. Jackson is so insulted by this he proposes nuking the wizards, which ultimately convinces the others that the wizards may have a point in hiding away. |
| 250 | * MentalTimeTravel: Exaggerated? PlayedWith? Unbuilt? Zammit's answer to "What Would Your Ultimate Crime Fighting Super Power Be?" is difficult to categorize, as it supposes that every time Zammit... ''relieves himself'', he would then live the potential life one of his sperm could have lived, only to die, and return to the moment he relieved himself, where he could use the knowledge of his potential life to solve crimes that hadn't happened yet. This unorthodox method of crimefighting has the side effect of allowing Zammit to live thousands of years into the future, assuming each potential life can use the same power, and warn of the great calamities that would threaten humanity. The again, it's not like beat cop Zammit could do much to stop an asteroid hitting the Earth, and even knowing about future serial killers wouldn't help much since he couldn't very well arrest them ''before'' they commit a crime, so all Zammit managed to accomplish was disgust his co-hosts in one of the podcast's most off-the-rails episodes. |
| 251 | * MirrorsReflectEverything: Based off his signature sunglasses, Johnny Cage's ability to survive the ''Franchise/MortalKombat'' tournament is justified with his ability to reflect ice beams and lightning with his eyewear. Zammit has none of it and points out that neither of those things remotely work that way, forcing the others to explain Johnny's victories through even more contrived means. |
| 252 | * MiseryBuildsCharacter: In "Which Comic Book City Would Be the Worst to Live In?", much to their surprise, they come to the conclusion that living in [[ComicBook/{{Batman}} Gotham City]] would ultimately produce a better average person in general than living in [[ComicBook/{{Superman}} Metropolis]] thanks to this trope. Since Gotham is full of danger and crime, and they [[HeroWithBadPublicity don't know if they can trust Batman]], the non-criminal citizens become more aware and community-minded just to stay alive. Meanwhile, Metropolis citizens (believing they're under basically divine protection) protected by the Man of Steel eventually come to expect Superman to save them from every little problem. They wind up becoming a bunch of {{entitled bastard}}s who might even go into danger intentionally just to see if Superman will save them and blame him for problems he didn't cause. (For evidence, they point out [[ComicBook/SupermanGrounded that time a woman blamed Superman for her husband's cancer]].) |
| 253 | * MonsterModesty: Taken to its logical extreme in "Why is Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat?" while trying to reason how stunt actor Johnny Cage could defeat a four-armed monster that wears only a loincloth. Duscher realizes that if the monster wears a loincloth, it must feel shame, so if Cage can manage to rip off its loincloth, the monster will run off in shame and give Cage the victory by default. |
| 254 | * MonumentalDamage: |
| 255 | ** In "Would the Avengers be Better off Without the Hulk?", Jackson believes that if Thor was in charge of getting rid of the nuke from ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'' he would try to return it to the Pentagon and blow up all of Washington D.C. |
| 256 | ** Duscher's proposal in "If You Were a James Bond Villain What Would Your Scheme Be?" involves an attempt to use bombs to make sinkholes engulf all of London's major monuments, ending with James Bond fighting villains on the hands of Big Ben as it sinks into the ground. |
| 257 | * MrsRobinson: Lily, the mother in question in "Which Super Smash Bro would Make the Best Step-Dad?", ends up marrying a [[VideoGame/EarthBound1994 ten-year old]] and [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime a seventeen year old]] within the same year, severely confusing her only child. |
| 258 | * MuggleBornOfMages: Jackson's ideal ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' world is one where everyone is bred to have magical blood so EveryoneIsASuper, but Shanks tears this down when he points out the existence of Squibs, people with magical ancestry who can't perform magic. |
| 259 | * MugglePower: Jackson is a big proponent of genocide for [[ComicBook/XMen Mutants]], [[Franchise/HarryPotter Wizards]], and basically anything more powerful than a normal human. He explicitly denies any comparison to the real racism when Adam calls him a Nazi for it in "How Dare Wizards?!", since normal minorities don't have the powers on the scale of nuclear weaponry. |
| 260 | -->''"Minorities are not like 'Guess what? I can mind wipe you, torture you, mind wipe you again, make you shit your pants on purpose, mind wipe you, and then kill you,' they're just like 'We're existing.' It's very reasonable to kill all wizards!"'' |
| 261 | * MundaneUtility: |
| 262 | ** The question in "Why Isn't Nightcrawler Fat?" centers around the idea that if Nightcrawler and the other ''ComicBook/XMen'' have these fantastic powers of flight, levitation, and teleportation, why not just use them and forgo walking? |
| 263 | ** Zammit decides the best use of the Film/{{Suicide Squad|2016}} is to rent out the members for menial labor suited to their skills, like having Captain Boomerang cut grass with his boomerangs or sending Killer Croc to swim through pipes to clean the plumbing. |
| 264 | * TheNewRockAndRoll: Inverted in "When Bad Guys Do Good," since if the preacher from ''Film/{{Footloose}}'' was a good guy, he'd be sharing the power of dance with his whole town. In fact, his whole town would be a loving, musical community preaching through song from the USA to the battlefields of the Middle East. |
| 265 | * NoEndorHolocaust: A frequent topic of discussion, like in "Why Did God Make Bruce Almighty," where they conclude that Jim Carrey's character from that ''Bruce Almighty'' is as evil as Hitler for erasing stars to make his night more romantic. He may have erased entire planetary civilizations on a whim. |
| 266 | * NominalHero: Ever since "Is Xavier a Jerk?", the Plumbing Boys have consistently portrayed Professor Xavier of the ComicBook/XMen while playing up his manipulative and callous side, despite his role as a BigGood in the comics proper. |
| 267 | * NoodleIncident: Jackson casually mentions a time he fell out a window as a child and went to the GP in a live show, with no audience reaction to this new fact. Duscher stops the show to point out that the only reason no one reacted to that is that it is exactly what you would expect from [[CloudCuckoolander Jackson]]. |
| 268 | * NoSuchThingAsWizardJesus: In the ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' episode "How Dare Wizards?!", Michael Shanks pitches the idea that all the holy texts of the world were created by wizards to test how {{Muggle}}s would react to a higher power to gauge whether they would treat wizards like people. After seeing humans worship gods, the wizards decided to isolate themselves from Muggles to avoid the eventual creation of the Church of Albus Dumbledore. |
| 269 | -->''"Walk on water? Motherfucker can walk through fire."'' |
| 270 | * OddlyNamedSequel2ElectricBoogaloo: |
| 271 | ** Three sequels are envisioned in the ''Film/LiarLiar'' episode, finishing off with ''Liar Liar Four: Quantum Boogaloo''. |
| 272 | ** It's proposed in "Would the Avengers be Better off Without the Hulk?" that ''Film/ThorTheDarkWorld'' should have really been named ''Thor 2: ANOTHER'', based on a gag from the first ''Thor'' film. |
| 273 | * OffingTheOffspring: The natural conclusion of ''Film/LiarLiar'' is that the father of the film must try to kill his son at some point to stop him from doing something horrible with just a single wish on a birthday cake. |
| 274 | * OffscreenAfterlife: The lack of a clear afterlife in the ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' universe becomes the center of discussion in "How Does the After Life Work in ''Pirates of the Caribbean''?". |
| 275 | * OffTheRails: Any time they imagine putting themselves into a canon scenario, such as [[Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory touring Willy Wonka's factory]], they immediately derail the plot, usually by their own stupidity. |
| 276 | * OmniscientHero: If Jim Carey's character from ''Film/LiarLiar'' can't lie, can't he predict the future just by having someone ask him what will happen tomorrow? This concept is the focus of the first half of "What Are the Ramifications of Liar Liar?". |
| 277 | * OneSteveLimit: AvertedTrope; of three main cast members, two have the first name "Joel," so they are distinguished by their last names, Duscher and Zammit. This is given a LampshadeHanging at the end of every podcast with the two. |
| 278 | -->'''Duscher''': On that note, I've been Joel. |
| 279 | -->'''Jackson''': I've been Jackson. |
| 280 | -->'''Zammit''': And I've also been Joel. |
| 281 | * OutOfGenreExperience: Although the show almost always involves some form of pop culture, an occasional episode will be chosen that's more general, such as "What Are the Implications of [[XCalledTheyWantTheirYBack the 80s Calling and Wanting Their Shirt Back]]?" (because a guest chose it) or "What is the Worst Thing You Could Find in the Ocean?" (because it's a very strange and open-ended question). |
| 282 | * OverlyLongGag: Episodes begin with a one-sentence joke demeaning Sanspants Radio, the podcast's company, but "What Would Your Ultimate Crime Fighting Super Power Be?" breaks from this pattern for a two-minute long joke about three men and their encounter with a genie. |
| 283 | * ParentalNeglect: "Why haven't we done a Vs Episode LIVE?!" gives Batman orphan points because regardless of whether his parents died, he'd be raised by a nanny, leaving him a metaphorical orphan. |
| 284 | * {{Patricide}}: The natural conclusion of ''Film/LiarLiar'', in the Plumbing Boys' eyes, is that Jim Carey's character will eventually be killed by his reality-warping son after the boy realizes Carey only valued him for his magical wishes. |
| 285 | * ThePeterPrinciple: "Why Isn't Nightcrawler Fat" devolves into a discussion of why the ''ComicBook/XMen'' are made teachers. The most contentious hire among the cast is ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}, who's success with fighting supervillains has no relation to his ability to teach history classes. |
| 286 | * PokeInTheThirdEye: Duscher realizes in the roleplay portion of "Is the Death Star a Good Weapon?" that if any of his characters insult the Emperor, he'd hear it through the Force and kill him from across the galaxy. To allow the episode to continue, Zammit handwaves it away by saying the Emperor had the radio on so loud it clogged the Force. |
| 287 | -->''"It's not a disturbance in the Force, it's just Music/{{Abba}}!"'' |
| 288 | * {{Polyamory}}: Discussed in "Which Super Smash Bro would Make the Best Step-Dad All-Stars Edition." Zammit's second pick for step-dad is the VideoGame/{{Ice Climber}}s, a pair of mountain climbers. Ice Climbers' stable relationship and competency in groups make them perfect as a potential step-dad, since the mother has come off a string of unstable marriages and could use the Climbers' synchronicity. |
| 289 | * PowerCopying: The main advantage to having VideoGame/{{Kirby}} as a stepfather is that he can absorb a mother's abilities and become more of a second mom rather than the twelfth stepfather to one very troubled child. |
| 290 | * PowerPerversionPotential: |
| 291 | ** One of the purposes of "Which Superhero Would Make The Best Lover?" is to discuss how superheroes could use their powers to improve their love life. |
| 292 | ** Duscher points how Professor X's powers wouldn't work on Thor, only for Jackson to respond in his Xavier imitation, "Well let's try. Boop-boop-boop, fist your own asshole. ''[beat]'' Yes, I think we know who's in charge here." All three burst out laughing and can barely continue the episode. |
| 293 | ** A point of this is almost made in "Which Super Smash Bro would Make the Best Step-Dad?" when Yoshi's abnormally long tongue is brought up, but Duscher shuts it down by pointing out it only goes straight, and also that Yoshi's a dinosaur. |
| 294 | ** Shanks concludes in "How Dare Wizards?!" that if ''Franchise/HarryPotter'''s wizards were to come out and integrate with normal society, magical porn would immediately become a thing, and that wizards' [[{{Animorphism}} ability to turn into animals]] would rapidly see some weird results. |
| 295 | * PunchClockVillain: One of the arguments in "Is the Penguin the True Hero of Gotham?" is that the Penguin is more heroic than Batman because he offers a secure job market for the population of Gotham, since half the city's population (by Zammit's estimation) works as a criminal. |
| 296 | * QuestioningTitle: Every episode sets out to answer a question about a work of fiction and that question is almost always the episode title. The few [[AvertedTrope exceptions]] include "A Christmas Heist" and a few of the early episodes before the format was set. |
| 297 | * ARareSentence: |
| 298 | ** Jackson tries to combine the mechanics of the superpowers he and Jackson proposed and comes up with a confused sentence about how a DeathActivatedSuperpower works against someone who controls LaserGuidedAmnesia. |
| 299 | --->'''Jackson''': And you, I'll never remember you to kill myself to become you! |
| 300 | --->'''Zammit''': ... that's a good sentence. |
| 301 | ** Regarding the trains of ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends'', it's remarked on how odd and disturbing this particular remark is: |
| 302 | --->''"I don't know how they come to life, but they do; and I don't know how they die, but they must."'' |
| 303 | * RageBreakingPoint: In "Which Videogame Trope Would You Exploit For Personal Gain or Profit?", the boys eventually reach this point after Jackson keeps insisting that doublejumps could help him rob banks. |
| 304 | * ReedRichardsIsUseless: |
| 305 | ** Whenever Adam is on a ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' episode, he'll try to bring up how stupid it is that no wizard walked into [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust Auschwitz]] and stopped the Nazis with magic. He makes a big stink about it in "How Dare Wizards?!", while also going into how wizards could cure cancer, re-grow limbs, and educate the people of ''Harry Potter'' about the reality of souls and love. Ironically, the end of that episode actually sees Adam ranting ''against'' wizards sharing magic when the tricky subject of love potions comes up, since those would only serve to introduce mind control into normal society. |
| 306 | ** "What Kind of Job is Journalism For Superman?" begins with the boys pointing out what a waste of superpowers it is to put them into print journalism instead of making diamonds, firefighting, or magicianing. Jackson goes so far to suggest he just use his powers to make a profit by prospecting for gold and then investing it in the stock market. |
| 307 | * RefusalOfTheCall: Zammit proposes this as the best way to survive the hostile world of ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'': ignore the destiny of the Dragonborn and go hide on the farm. The rest of the cast are quick to point out that if the Dragonborn doesn't finish his quest, the world is destroyed, putting a damper on Zammit's quiet farm life. |
| 308 | * RememberedTooLate: "What if Hagrid was Five Years Too Late?" assumes Hagrid was late because he remembered what he was supposed to do five years after the fact. The question is flexible enough to be applied to everything Hagrid did in the books: |
| 309 | ** Hagrid forgets to got to Godric's Hollow to pick up Harry, resulting in him being fired by Dumbledore and Harry being raised by wolves in the wild. |
| 310 | ** Hagrid remembers to pick up Harry from the Dursley's five years too late, meaning Harry's abusive parenting by the Dursley's has reduced the Chosen One to a drug-addicted, Muggle-hating {{Grunge}}-lover. |
| 311 | ** Hagrid remembers to tell Harry about the dragon from ''The Goblet of Fire'' five years after the fact, which is problematic since Harry is a cinder by this point. |
| 312 | ** Hagrid remembers to teach his class five years too late, which results in him rambling to an empty classroom about how all his students graduated. |
| 313 | ** Hagrid remembers to be born five years after he was supposed to, meaning he doesn't get to Hogwarts soon enough for Tom Riddle to use him as a scapegoat. Thus, due to Hagrid's fetal forgetfulness, Lord Voldemort is exposed and arrested fifty-six years early. |
| 314 | * ResetButton: After completely failing at roleplaying Dumbledore in "Which One of the Plumbing Boys Would Make a Better Dumbledore and Why is it Joel Zammit?", Zammit abuses ''Franchise/HarryPotter'''s concept of Memory Charms to wipe every the memories of every character in the roleplay to force a fresh start, one where he doesn't kill Harry four books into the series. |
| 315 | * ResurrectiveImmortality: ExploitedTrope in "What are the Ramifications of Liar Liar?", where the hypothetical sequels to ''Film/LiarLiar'' involve the father character's yearly suicides meant to waste his son's birthday wishes on resurrecting the father, rather than using them for anything sinister. |
| 316 | * RippedFromTheHeadlines: Michael Williams, jumping on the trend of Bond villains that deal with issues, decides to make his Bond villain a cyberbully who leaks Bond's Tindr information. He even cites Julian Assange as an inspiration, since he looks like a Bond villain at the least. |
| 317 | * RobotMe: In the WhatIf scenario of "Professor Charles Xavier's Crazy Summer," ComicBook/IronMan creates the evil robot Ultron based off the mind of Charles Xavier, who in this scenario is a Machiavellian homophobe who waged intergalactic war to take power. |
| 318 | * RunningGag: |
| 319 | ** In "What if Professor X Ran Hogwarts?", every single time Professor X kills someone, he tells Hagrid to grab his shovel, implying that the Professor's going to force Hagrid to bury whatever dog, twelve-year old, or demon horde he's murdered today. |
| 320 | ** In episodes where the Plumbing Boys hypothetically run a business, it's noted that they advertise their primary service as "[[WouldHurtAChild Boys killed]]". |
| 321 | * {{Sampling}}: After the advertisements and Duscher's {{Catchphrase}}, each episode opens with a small snippet of a song or theme related to the topic at hand. For example, about five seconds of Creator/Beyonce's "Single Ladies" is used in "How Does Dating Work in Beyoncé's Single Ladies?", while the opening of Music/JohnWilliams's "Hedwig's Theme" is chosen for "Is Harry Potter a Good Wizard." |
| 322 | * SamusIsAGirl: One of the disadvantages of having Samus from Franchise/{{Metroid}} as a step-parent is that her new stepchild would assume the masked mercenary his mother married was a man, before seeing Samus take off ''her'' helmet and shatter the child's view on sexuality. |
| 323 | -->''"If Mom's gay does that mean I'm gay?"'' |
| 324 | %%* {{Scandalgate}}: The Plumbing Boys decide to call their cyberbully James Bond film, ''Cybergate''. |
| 325 | * SecretIdentityVocalShift: In "What Kind of Job is Journalism for a Superman?", Clark Kent's ability to put on a wholly different voice for Superman gives Duscher a less narcissistic reason to suggest the Man of Steel should think of taking up {{Podcast}}ing. |
| 326 | * SelfDeprecation: Whenever the Plumbing Boys imagine themselves as {{original character}}s in established universes, it's generally as weird, incompetent losers who are treated with contempt and disgust at best by the canon characters. |
| 327 | * {{Sequelitis}}: [[invoked]] Even before seeing the first ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'' film, Duscher is adamant that the fourth film will be the worst of the five planned with nothing to back him up but his gut instincts. |
| 328 | * SequelEpisode: The episode "What if Professor X Ran Hogwarts? (Live!)" is intentionally modeled off ""Professor Charles Xavier's Crazy Summer," with Professor X taking over the wizard world this time instead of ''The Avengers''. They even end the episode with Professor X talking about what a crazy winter he's been having. |
| 329 | * SerialSpouse: The premise of "Which Super Smash Bro would Make the Best Step-Dad?" is that a woman named Lily marries all twelve characters from the original ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros64'' within one year. By third video on the subject, she's had nearly twenty-seven spouses, several of which were straight-up animals. |
| 330 | * ShapeshiftingSeducer: The Thing, from [[Film/TheThing1982 John Carpenter's "The Thing"]], ends up winning "Which 80s Horror Villain Would Make the Best Boyfriend?" because it can turn into anyone he kills, meaning he could potentially take the form of America's dad, Creator/TomHanks. |
| 331 | * ShoutOut: |
| 332 | ** Shant explains how TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin in ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' by comparing it to "betting on Sebulba, he always wins," a quote from ''Film/ThePhantomMenace''. He [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] how strange it is to reference something so specific as Jackson passionately puts forward that there just aren't enough good ''Phantom Menace'' references. |
| 333 | ** In "When Bad Guys Go Good," Zammit tries to explain the dynamics of his good-aligned versions of the sharks from ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' by comparing them to the ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' and the ''WesternAnimation/XMenTheAnimatedSeries''. Jackson laughs at how recursive their pop culture references have become. |
| 334 | --->''"We use pop culture references to explain ''older'' pop culture references."'' |
| 335 | * ShroudedInMyth: One of the metrics by which characters are ranked in "Which Fictional Character Would Make a Better Santa Claus?" is "mysticism," or how discrete and mysterious the new Santa Clauses are. Naturally, this makes the mythical Abominable Snowman a highly appealing choice, while picking Ronald [=McDonald=] is equated with ruining Christmas. |
| 336 | * SpecialGuest: In "Exploiting Television Tropes for Financial and Personal Gain," Michael Williams suggests exploiting the tendency for characters to have relatives played by celebrities who only appear once. He points out having Lil' Wayne as a relative is great because it means you get a wild adventure with him and he can never be an annoying since the studio can only afford one appearance from him. Ultimately, Michael's suggestion is unanimously voted the best trope to exploit. |
| 337 | * SpeedRound: When Duscher and Zammit tie at the end of "Which Super Smash Bro would Make the Best Step-Dad All-Stars Edition," the winner is decided by whoever can come up with the best step-dad in ten seconds and then debate why the other one is terrible. Zammit picks Ganondorf from ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'' and Duscher picks Toon Link from ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker''; Zammit ultimately wins because the mom in question is looking for a man like Ganondorf, not a mute boy like Toon Link. |
| 338 | * SpinOff: The cast pitches many ''Harry Potter'' spin-offs throughout "How Dare Wizard?!", ranging from a ''Film/RogueOne''-esque heist film where wizards fight in UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo to a film about a "masochistic sex witch hanging around Salem." |
| 339 | * StatusQuoIsGod: One of the reasons Duscher can get away with picking Soapland Christmas in "Exploiting Television Tropes for Financial and Personal Gain" is by pointing out because the writers will want to get back to a comfortable status quo by the next season, so they'll just write him out of whatever trouble he finds during his holiday horrors. |
| 340 | * TheStoolPigeon: The Plumbing Boys partially resolve "Why is Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat?" by figuring that Johnny Cage could easily rat out four of the nine fighters to their bosses (who don't want them to kill a celebrity in a death tournament) or their enemies (who kill them for Cage.) |
| 341 | * StudioAudience: When discussing SpecialGuest Stars, Jackson yells "Woo!" and claps in imitation of the loud and long applause celebrities get when they guest star on sitcoms. |
| 342 | * SubbingForSanta: "Which Fictional Character Would Make a Better Santa Claus?" centers around the idea that Santa Claus has died and some fictional character (whether it be Ronald [=McDonald=] or the entirety of the ComicBook/XMen) has taken over the role with none of his powers. |
| 343 | * TakeThat: Jackson describes Creator/LeeArenberg (who plays a recurring comic relief character in ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'') as "little fat goblin lad". This prompts Adam to ask Arenberg to come on the show if he's a listener. |
| 344 | * TalentContest: Rather than approaching versus episodes from the perspective of "Who would win in a fight?", the Plumbing Boys instead focus on a variety of ridiculous competitions of merit, ranging from a soccer match between Madrox the Multiple Man and [[WheelchairAntics Professor X]] and Batman v. Superman in a competition to see who's the best ''orphan''. Superman wins, because like Little Orphan Annie, he has a great singing voice. |
| 345 | * ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: Tends to come up as their general solution to any given problem. Even when that problem would have been solved without overkill. |
| 346 | * TitleDrop: |
| 347 | ** "Professor Charles Xavier's Crazy Summer" is one of the few episodes not to have the central question in the title, so it doesn't get dropped in the opening catchphrase. The title came up naturally throughout the episode as they imagined Xavier explaining his adventure to the ComicBook/XMen and writing it off as just a fun summer, with it ultimately being the last thing they say in the Xavier voice before the three of them sign off for real. |
| 348 | ** Parodied in "How Would You Use The Film/{{Suicide Squad|2016}}?", where apparently ComicBook/{{Deadshot}}'s first action upon being put in a gladiator death match would be to help out the audience and ask "What are we, some kind of [[Film/TheHungerGames Hunger Games]]?". While distracted by his own wit, he would then be murdered by the competition. |
| 349 | * TomTheDarkLord: The villain of Duscher's proposed Film/JamesBond film, ''Sinkhole'', is named Stinkhole. Not only does it rhyme with the title, it reflects the character's dark backstory [[spoiler:as a janitor.]] |
| 350 | * TotemPoleTrench: In "What are the Consequences of Mario Living in New York City?", the panel becomes fascinated with the idea of a bunch of Toads (the small, mushroom headed citizens of ''Franchise/{{Mario}}'' games) stacking on top of each other in a trench coat during their efforts to get employed in New York. |
| 351 | * TragicKeepsake: The answer of "Why Does Donkey Kong Wear a Tie?" is that he keeps it to remember the slavery and torture Mario put his grandfather through in the 1985 ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong'' game. |
| 352 | * TreasureMap: Adam's suggestion in "Exploiting Television Tropes for Financial and Personal Gain" is to use the trope where a person's attic has a treasure map to execute the following plan: hunt down the treasure on the map in your attic, use it to buy more land, get the maps from the houses on his new land, and then keep going until you've accumulated a ludicrous fortune. |
| 353 | * {{Troll}}: Part of Michael Williams's James Bond scheme is to get {{Imageboard|s}}'s trolls to spam James Bond until he hates his life. |
| 354 | * TwistedChristmas: In "Exploiting Television Tropes for Financial and Personal Gain," Duscher chooses to exploit the tendency for soap operas to end their Christmas episodes with horrible disasters by inviting all his enemies to town for Christmas. Once they're there, his enemies will inevitably end up in jail, suffer an unexpected pregnancy, die in a fire at a school dance, or be killed. The others point out that terrible things could happen to Duscher, but he replies that he'll always end up fine because StatusQuoIsGod. |
| 355 | * {{Unperson}}: Professor X's ability to wipe memories culminates in "Mahogany Boy," an ComicBook/XMen who went missing with no trace except a suspicion from his roommate, who tries to ask Professor X about his lost friend to no avail. |
| 356 | * UnspokenPlanGuarantee: In "A Christmas Heist", the three hosts map out how their plan to steal Christmas back from the Grinch could go off without a hitch, but as soon as that's done, they realize any good heist movie has the plan looking great ''before'' the heist, but as soon as it actually starts, everything goes wrong and some of the team dies. With this in mind, the Plumbing Boys revisit their plan with the assumption that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and [[EverybodyDiesEnding everyone from Buddy the Elf to Jesus dies this time around]]. |
| 357 | * ViceCity: The Plumbing Boys are convinced that all jobs available in Franchise/{{Batman}}'s hometown, Gotham City, must either be related to crimes or law enforcement, with nothing else available. They go so far to suggest that instead of a job fair, that schools probably just invite the Joker and Batman's other villains to introduce students to their gangs. |
| 358 | * VocalDissonance: Lines from ''Film/TheGodfather'' sound less dramatic when voiced by Michael Jones—doing his highest pitched [[Franchise/{{Mario}} Toad]] impression. |
| 359 | * WackyFratboyHijinx: In "How Would You Make a Chamber of Secret?", this is essentially what they decide they'd get up to as founders of [[Franchise/HarryPotter Hogwarts]]. Plumbing House wear bedsheet togas, lost their common room in a bet with Gryffindor and have to sleep outside, have permanently negative points in the House Cup, and the founders are ghosts because they bet they could get their heads shrunken and survive. Although they built a Chamber of Secrets, they use it mostly to steal food, breed hideously ugly dogs, and play Platform/Nintendo64. |
| 360 | * WeHaveReserves: Zammit hopes to put the suicide back in ''Film/{{Suicide Squad|2016}}'' in "How Would You Use The Suicide Squad" by sending a squad of fifty or so criminals into intense, low-survival areas that scientists can't explore because of how dangerous they are. The logic is that eventually one criminal will survive and tell us what the areas are like, and if the first fifty die, Batman will just capture some more criminals to send in! |
| 361 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: In order to keep the magic of Santa Claus alive, Professor Charles Xavier brainwashes all the adults in the world to randomly give to whatever child Xavier needs them to. Moreover, Xavier also reads the minds of kids with divorced parents and then uses his telepathy to make the parents get back together until the next Christmas, at which point he lets them split apart again because he needs to focus on a gift for this Christmas. |
| 362 | * WhatIf: A frequent question examined on the show. |
| 363 | ** In "What if Spider-Man Had Stayed a Wrestler?", they conclude that Peter Parker staying in wrestling after the death of Uncle Ben in ''Film/SpiderMan1'' ends with something close to reality. Green Goblin gets shot by the NYPD and Harry doesn't go crazy (although he bears a grudge against cops), Dr. Octopus simply dies in a freak lab accident without committing any crimes, and Sandman defeats Venom and is exonerated, while the wrestling world gets shaken up by powered wrestlers. Essentially, instead of watching Spider-Man movies you'd be watching scripted Man-Spider wrestling matches. |
| 364 | * WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway: "How Effective is the Film/{{Suicide Squad|2016}}?" tests the motivation for forming the Squad, to defeat villains with incredible superpowers, by grading how each individual member would fare against ComicBook/{{Superman}}. Of the nine members, seven get less than a one out of ten, because their incredible powers of [[ImprobableAimingSkills shooting]], boomerangs enthusiasm, sword enthusiasm, acrobatics, climbing, [[{{Muggle}} humanity]], and ordinary cannibalism don't really mean much against an [[LightningBruiser unkillable flying bullet]] that can vaporize you with a glare. |
| 365 | -->'''Zammit''': Now they're all gathered there on the lawn of the White House. There's evil Superman coming down like 'I'm going to kill the President.' They're there in a line; what happens?\ |
| 366 | '''George Dimarelos''': Okay. Firstly, is Superman concerned?\ |
| 367 | '''All''': *cackle wildly* |
| 368 | * WhenYouComingHomeDad: Mario gets a 5/10 as a stepdad largely because he's too busy plumbing, saving princesses, [[VideoGame/MarioKart going go-kart racing]], [[VideoGame/MarioParty holding massive parties]], and [[VideoGame/MarioAndSonicAtTheOlympicGames mastering sports]] to raise a child with love and care. |
| 369 | * WithGreatPowerComesGreatPerks: One of the suggestions in "Who's the Best Disney Business Princess?" is to have Elsa uses her ice magic to run an ice cream shop. She can not only make the ice cream herself, but she can also create ice {{Golem}}s to serve the ice cream without having to give to waste money on wages. |
| 370 | * TheWormThatWalks: Part of Jackson's ultimate crime fighting power involves becoming a sentient colony of bacteria in the shape of a man. It's pointed out just how deep in the UnintentionalUncannyValley that would be. |
| 371 | * WouldHurtAChild: Jackson suggests to Adam in "Exploiting Television Tropes for Financial and Personal Gain" that the best way to exploit the TreasureMap trope is to let a bunch of kids find the treasure and then just punch them while you take the treasure without having to do any of the hard work. |
| 372 | * YouAreFat: Duscher claims he would have self-control and not eat all of the fantastical food if he were to live in the post-apocalyptic nightmare of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', only for Zammit to counter by simply saying "look at you!" |
| 373 | -->'''Duscher''': ... at my peak physical shape, nailing it! |
| 374 | * YoungFutureFamousPeople: Since ''Film/{{Jumanji}}'' featured a young Creator/KirstenDunst, the Plumbing Boys assume they'd be paired up with 90s versions of celebrity actresses and singers for their scenarios in "Which Would be the Worst Classic Board Game to be Trapped in, Jumanji-style?" |
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