" I think Lemon has been on a downward spiral mentally and now he's lost it completely."
—YouTube channel description
EmperorLemon (currently known as EmpLemon), real name Aaron Lemos (born February 8, 1998 in Gainesville, Florida), is a YouTuber who became famous through making YouTube Poops for all to enjoy. His preferred sources included but were not limited to SpongeBob SquarePants and King of the Hill.
It is to be noted that he left a mildly popular group of the YTP community in 2013 (and in so doing, urged more to do the same) because of said group's announcement span (sometimes new announcements every five seconds, which would in turn cause EmperorLemon's video editing software to crash).
In 2016, Emp entered a self-embraced "downward spiral". Instead of making YTPs, he instead made rants and video essays (edited with a YouTube Poop style) reporting how broken YouTube has become as a website and creative platform. He made his retirement from Youtube Poops permanent in 2020 in the wake of copyright and community guidelines crackdowns making them too much of a liability.
Since 2017, he has been gradually moving away from the "downward spiral" aesthetic and his videos now resembling documentaries more than YTPs (although the literal "downward spiral" does appear now and then). While he has started two new series since the change - YouTube Geographic, where he explores odd incidents in YouTube's history, and Never Ever, where he talks about the historical and cultural impact of certain figures or pieces of media - most of his modern videos tend to be about pretty much anything, though quite a number of them are about Sports such as NASCAR and American Football.
Famous YouTube Poops
- The Krusty Krustacean's Kantankerous Kommercial
- Mr. Krab's Unquenchable Blood Lust (has its own page)
- The UNcredibles
- Hank Hill's Airport Apocalypse
- The SpingeBill Collection
- The Spingebill Collection 2 (A collab video based on the original)
- The Spingebill Collection 2
- InSHREKtion
- Lightning McQueer and the Quest for Tires
- The Frying Nemo Saga (has its own page)
- The Shrekoning
And many more...
This creator's works show examples of...
- Actor Allusion: Both of the The UNcredibles videos have Frozone saying lines from Jules Winnfield (as well as from Neville Flynn in the first one).
- April Fools' Day: Emplemon celebrated this for several years on his channel:
- "InSHREKtion" came out April Fool's 2014. It appeared to be a YTP that was teased at with a Real Trailer, Fake Movie in "Hank Hill's Airport Apocalypse", but upon watching, was the infamous Rickroll tinted green and with images of Shrek...that is, until a minute in, where a skit-based YTP starts.
- In 2015, it was "The Poop of Richard Nixon", which from the thumbnail seems like a Futurama poop. Instead, it's around 13:37 minutes long and is just a black screen before going to credits in the last few seconds - which claim to using "The Ballad of Richard Nixon" by John Denver. The video claims to have a hidden frame that has the release date for Deep Frying Nemo ... except said frame is just 53-18-00-8, or "boobies".
- In 2016, it was a video entitled YouTube Poop: The EXcredibles, seeming like a 3rd Uncredibles video. What follows is every possible "SuS" joke in the movie.
- In 2017, he made a video called "Squilliam Returns Edited: Chad Warden Returns", a poorly-made video based on the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Squilliam Returns" (it referenced "SpongeBob Edited" videos, which were the most popular kind of edit-based videos before YouTube Poop came about).
- In 2018, it was a scathing parody of scathingly negative YouTube critics named "The Problem with the Teletubbies REBOOT Explained and Here's Why [RANT]".
- April Fools' Plot: In "The Spingebill Collection", SpongeBob poisons a fish's drink because of April Fool's. At the end of the episode, said fish is revealed to have survived the poison, and comes back with a literal bang, and attempts to kill SpongeBob with a pistol. It doesn't work, because SpongeBob is made of a spongy material which adsorbs the bullets, and proceeds to eject said bullets from his holes into the body of the fish, killing him.
- Arc Symbol: All together now, DOWNWARD SPIRAL.
- Arc Words:
- "It's Never Ogre."
- "DOWNWARD SPIRAL"
- Artistic License – History: Hank Hill's Airport Apocalypse has a skit called "Unidentified Flying Obstruction", a parody of 1920's movies (even being dated in the 1920's). Part of the story involves the Space Needle...except it didn't exist until 1961.
- Atomic F-Bomb: A literal one gets dropped in "Steve Martin's Wonderful Thanksgiving".
- Big Bad: None other than Emperor Palpatine, whose threat with the Death Star II makes Ackbar summon all the characters of past YTP's for a great battle.
- Bohemian Parody: The song is briefly used to emphasize the giant car pile in "Lightning McQueer and the Quest for Tires".
- Black Comedy: Happens in a lot of poops, including the infamous 9-11 joke in one of his first poops.
- Blatant Lies: In The Krusty Krustacean's Kantankerous Kommercial, at one point, a voice says it's four o clock in the morning, while a time card clearly displays 3:28 AM.
- Brick Joke:
- Lightning McQueer has a trailer taking off into space. In one of the endings, the same trailer can be seen in the sky, flying along with Ric Flair.
- In Hank Hill's Airport Apocalypse, Peggy says that she's been making her brown betty every year from 1976 until 1796. These are the dates listed in Bobby's tombstone.
- Chekhov's Gag: As revealed in his State Of The YouTube podcast, the reason the Simpsons are green is (because Viacom will have more trouble finding it, and so far, it's worked perfectly.)
- Cluster F-Bomb: Takes Steve Martin's rant in Planes, Trains and Automobiles up to eleven in "Steve Martin's Wonderful Thanksgiving"
- Continuity Porn: "Admiral Ackbar's Traptastic Sextravaganza (Episode 3)" in which Ackbar travels through all of the source material that Lemon has previously pooped in order to recruit their characters to help him fight the Death Star II.
- Despair Event Horizon: Some people have interpreted the Downward Spiral meme as this for Emp. In "The History of the Downward Spiral", he admits this may have been true for a time.
- Downer Ending: Hank Hill's Airport Apocalypse. Right of the bat, considering the canon episode it's unlikely that they'll make it to Montana. But then Hank, Peggy, and Bobby end up trapped on The Magic Schoolbus, along with everyone from the airport who boarded it.
- Fan Vid: Made one setting SpongeBob SquarePants to THAT part of "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Hardware Store". And yes, there is a clip for every single item.
- Gainax Ending: Quite common in EmperorLemon's YTPs (and YTPs in general), but one that sticks out is Lightning McQueen's ending in Lightning McQueer and the Quest for Tires: He tries to turn back time to prevent Captain Falcon from sneaking up on him and winning, but all this does is cause a time paradox because he wouldn't have had a reason to turn back time if he had won in the first place.
- Gamebooks: 'The Krusty Krustacean's Kantankerous Kommercial'' has a bit where you can choose what song SpongeBob will sing. Your options are
"What is Love", "Chocolate Rain" (which will be interrupted by the chocolate fish), "No Worries" (actually just Lemon doing a bad beatbox) and "Dropping Around in a Fancy Car" - Genre Shift: He went from exclusively making YouTube Poops in high school to rants and video essays in college, before settling on video essays entirely post graduation. He removed most of his early videos from his channel after a Newbie Boom brought him hundreds of thousands of new subscribers once his video essays became more popular, largely because he didn't want new users to be confused by the sudden shift in content, besides the fact that he had become rather infamous in the YTP community for using "safe"(read: popular) media as the source.
- Growing with the Audience: Specifically identified as a reason for SpongeBob's enormous lasting appeal, where SpongeBob's childlike innocence and relentless idealism appeal to viewers as kids, while Squidward's cynicism and morose outlook strongly resonate with jaded adult viewers. Lemon goes on to suggest that the clash between their differing worldviews is what makes some of the series' greatest and most iconic episodes so good.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Documents the Viacom vs. YouTube lawsuit and that this was the reason Viacom ultimately lost; they put up their own footage on YouTube disguised as pirated videos in a guerrilla marketing campaign that made it so they could never tell what videos were actual stolen footage and which were put up by Viacom, giving YouTube the perfect excuse for being unable to deal with the copyright infringers.
- In Memoriam: Parodied in Lightning McQueer and the Quest for Tires, which is dedicated to Lemon's wallet, which he lost at Disney World.
- Madness Mantra: "DOWNWARD SPIRAL, DOWNWARD SPIRAL, DOWNWARD SPIRAL...."
- Massively Multiplayer Crossover: Admiral Ackbar's Traptastic Sextravaganza, especially Episode 3.
- Milestone Celebration: "Admiral Ackbar's Traptastic Sextravaganza (Episode 3)" made to celebrate reaching 100,000 subscribers.
- Mockumentary: "History of the Downward Spiral" is both a serious discussion of why the Downward Spiral became a signature feature of the channel, and a parody of it.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Cookie Monster's speech in "InSHREKtion".
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: In Lightning McQueer and the Quest for Tires, John Madden crashes through the wall and a loud static sound starts playing. Lemon states that he didn't edit the audio; that's actually what the intro to the original Madden game sounds like.
- Overly Long Gag:
- His Futurama poop gives us this:Woman: We attach brain slugs onto the brain slugs attached to brain slugs on the brain slugs.
Fry: (covered in Brain Slugs) Sure, you say that now. - ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!! I HAVE H-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-D IT WITH THESE MUCKY FRYING EXAMPLES ON THIS MUCKY FRYING PAGE!!!
- "Inshrektion" plays a full minute of the trope-naming video for Rickroll. In other words, literally a fourth of the video is devoted to the Rickrolling.
- His Futurama poop
- Paper-Thin Disguise: He has attempted to dodge Viacom's trigger-happy copyright takedown system when it comes to clips from The Simpsons by...tinting the footage green. So far, it's worked flawlessly.
- Parody Commercial: Done in one video where he spoofs Big Bill Hell's.
- Please Subscribe to Our Channel: Inverted; he frequently asks subscribers who dislike his newer content to unsubscribe, since he probably isn't going to make the content they subscribed to the channel for anymore, and he wants his subscriber count to remotely represent his average view count.
- Quantity vs. Quality: Complains about how YouTube presently, through its search/recommendation algorithms, automated copyright bots, and monetization system, favors channels which make lots of low-quality content, while penalizing channels which make smaller amounts of high-quality content.
- Running Gag:
- He often has Strobe Lights, Bill O' Reilly's infamous outtake video, and Admiral Ackbar make appearances in his videoes.
- In his later videos: "Downward Spiral, Downward Spiral, Downward Spiral."
- In "Admiral Ackbar's Traptastic Sextravaganza (Episode 3)" Ackbar recruits every character he comes across by reciting the opening of "Help!"
- Along with the above-mentioned Overly Long Gag, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH includes numerous other running gags. (Such as "What a maneuver!" and various famous Samuel L. Jackson moments.)
- COULD YOU UNSUBSCRIBE?
- Shout-Out:
- Also sprach Zarathustra:
- When SpongeBob launches two patties into space in "The Krusty Krustacean's Kantankerous Kommercial".
- During The King's ending in "Lightning McQueer and the Quest for Tires", representing the fact he's supposed to be Ric Flair.
- "NWO | YTP", of course, takes heavy inspiration from the New World Order.
- His 2016 April Fools video, "YouTube Poop: The EXcredibles", is based on an actual Easter Egg on The Incredibles' DVD release, which showed a montage of every door, button and explosion in the movie.
- Also sprach Zarathustra:
- Take That!:
- In "The SpingeBill Collection", we see some fish in a theater preparing to watch a movie. All of a sudden, the THX Vanity Plate appears, as well as the annoyingly loud sound effect that goes along with it. It is so loud that one fish is bleeding out of his ears.
- The same video features a take that to season 6.
- Expect to hear a couple of Xbox One jabs in a variety of his poops, starting with The Krusty Krustacean's Kantankerous Kommercial.
- For April Fool's 2018, he made a parody of the "rant" videos of YouTuber James A Williams, specifically the video The Problems of the Bob the Builder Reboot, titled The Problems With The Teletubbies REBOOT Explained, And Here's Why.
- After switching from YTPs to analysis videos, a couple examples of this would pop up, most notably towards BehindTheMeme and Matt Watson. Notably for the latter, the first video on him, Operation Red Herring, would condemn Watson for interfering with the revenue streams of countless innocent YouTubers under false pretenses, but would be quite tame compared to its follow-up, Further Down the Wormhole.
- In "The SpingeBill Collection", we see some fish in a theater preparing to watch a movie. All of a sudden, the THX Vanity Plate appears, as well as the annoyingly loud sound effect that goes along with it. It is so loud that one fish is
- Take That, Audience!:
- In "The UNCredibles", 9/11 is mentioned to make the people who got offended at the joke in one his earlier poops even madder. Technically a form of Troll, though.
- In 2016, he made two announcement videos against the fans who wanted new Pixar poops.
- ENOUGH IS ENOUGH includes several more potshots against fans who (despite the aforementioned videos) still beg him to make more Pixar poops.
- Unreliable Narrator: Namedropped in Operation Red Herring, when describing Matt Watson's duplicitous behavior used in orchestrating the #YouTubeWakeUp controversy.
- Viewers Are Morons: Subscribes to the "Normie vs. Outsider" theory of viewership, where the vast majority of viewers have similar interests and critical capacities, and that the most popular YouTube channels exploit this by making large amounts of unsaturated content to rake in loads of money. He finds this especially true since the vast majority of YouTube watchers are also children.
