Lets Play / mikeburnfire

Mike on the left and Zach on the right. Anne and Legion Mike not pictured. Top to bottom: New Vegas, Fallout 4, Skyrim.

Zach and Mike explore the Mojave together, saving lives and killing jerks. But mostly screwing around.

—the description of the playlist of the New Vegas series

Mike BurnFire and Zach Hazard's main claim to fame are their let's plays, hosted on Mike's channel.

Some series, New Vegas-based ones in particular, involve an occasional diversion from the plots of their respective games, a unique narrative (constrained mostly to milestone episodes, but still) and an Evil Counterpart from an alternate universe.

The playlists grouped by game:

• New Vegas (including all mod playthroughs and Legion Mike spinoffs)
• Fallout 4
• Skyrim

For the spin-off where the two just tell stories with the backdrop of an in-game campfire, see Campfire Stories.

I don't care about your tropes, just shut up and die quietly:

• Abled in the Adaptation: Downplayed - Christine Royce in Dead Money remains mute, but uses a voice synthesizer as opposed to communicating using gestures (well, the descriptions of gestures) she was using in canon.
• Accidental Aiming Skills: When doing the quests from the second Hype mod, Zach manages to accidentally shoot a grenade out of one of the assassin's hand, blowing them up.
• Acoustic License: At one point in the FNV series, gunfire halts to allow Niner to start saying one of his idle lines.
• Admiring the Abomination: Zach in prone to squeeing at dangerous animals and/or robots. For instance, in episode 38 of the NV series, he exclaims at how cute and adorable the terrifying Legion Demon is, despite then describing it as an actual Bahamut-style demon. This doesn't stop him from wanting it as a companion, though.
• Alternate Universe:
  • Mike has created a second playthrough for New Vegas in which he is a sadistic frumentarius, Zach is a gun repairman stuck in the second worst military base on Earth, the Mojave Outpost, and Aurelius of Phoenix is reskinned to look like Zach (and is also voiced by him). In-universe, it's treated as an alternative universe to the mainline FNV playthrough, and Legion Mike ends up transported from that universe into the main one.
  • A one-shot video starred the Enclave versions of Zach and Mike guarding the door on the Archimedes II satellite.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Mike and Zach are very easily distracted from whatever they're supposed to be doing in Fallout: New Vegas, especially whenever they reminisce about their time in the military or find a new gun.
• Author Appeal: Guns - both FNV and F4 playthroughs come with dozens of guns modded in, and Zach doesn't miss an opportunity to ramble at length on whatever they find. In particular Zach has expressed fondness for rare, unique or unusual guns, like the Borchardt C93 or the Sjorgen Inertial shotgun - as long as the gun in question actually exists IRL in a functional state.
• Backwards-Firing Gun: The "Useless Weapon" mod for New Vegas adds such a weapon. In Episode 166, Mike convinces Alice McLafferty that it's a gun he had nicked from the Gun Runners, and she kills herself using it.
• Battle Trophy: When bounty hunting, Zach will take fingers or heads from his kills as proof of the kill. Sometimes he takes skulls as trophies for his skull collection.
• Berserk Button:
  • Zach has a lot of gripes about guns, but one intense enough to qualify for this trope is Pancor Jackhammer's exaggerated presence in video games (including the modded version of New Vegas he's playing). In short, it's a terrible gun that only has one real prototype made by an amateur^note There were actually three functioning prototypes made, but two were destroyed during durability testing, yet every game insists on putting it in their arsenals because it looks allegedly cool. Naturally, Mike has to pick one up and espouse its merits every time he sees one.
    • Guns Do Not Work That Way related issues are another annoyance for Zach, as his expertise in small-arms repair means he is well versed in how firearms are supposed to function. In Zach's Gun Rants Part 4, he called the base Fallout 4 Assault Rifle "hot trash" and angrily broke down every design element that wouldn't work in real life.
  • Do not replace Zach's weapons with kitbashed versions of them. When Mike joked that he "upgraded" Zach's Grenade Rifle like so, Zach went ballistic and emptied his shotgun, then his assault rifle, into him.
  Zach: (as he blasts Mike with a shotgun) YOU TOOK MY GRENADE LAUNCHER AND YOU RUINED IT! YOU TURNED IT INTO A MONSTER!
• Better with Non-Human Company: Zach has No Social Skills, but regularly gushes about animals he encounters in his travels - and in New Vegas, he took the Animal Friend perk, which stops the wildlife from attacking him.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Zach and Mike are a pair of bickering, easily-distracted weirdos, but also a nigh-unstoppable pair of killing machines with a time machine.
• Big Damn Heroes: Just when Zach's clone army and the Malcolm Clones seemed to be evenly matched during the assault on NCRCF, all of Zach's companions got released to assist in the fighting.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Zach does this a lot, especially with Hope.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Mike's prone to playing the "boke" role to Zach's "tsukkomi", especially when guns are involved.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Legion Mike borrows mainline Zach's "Shut up, Hope" at one point.
• Bounty Hunter: Mike and Zach become this several times throughout the series, most notably in the New Vegas Bounties mod series.
• Brain Uploading: Over the course of the FNV series, Hope ends up transferred into a robot body, Rex ends up receiving Bad Mothafucka's brain, and Mike has a failsafe to transfer a copy of his consciousness into a Protectron, which triggers after Marko Booth kills him.
• Brick Joke: Early on, an abnormally tall enemy named Big Dave appears, followed a few episodes later by his taller brother, Bigger Dave. Many, many episodes later, the "big problem" the duo gets sent to solve in North Vegas turns out to be an assault on the plaza by kaiju-sized Biggest Dave.
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • As far as the Fallout let's plays' narrative goes, Zach explicitly declared at the end of their playthrough of New California that none of its events are canon, incredibly disappointed with the twist that the Star Player/Courier is a clone of the Vault Dweller (the protagonist of the first Fallout) with mutation-boosted healing factor.
  • Done quite quickly with the Fallout 4 - Cannibal House episode. Zach and Mike weren't shy about expressing their dislike of it within a few days of posting it, and subsequently removed it from being an officially-numbered part of the series. This is due mainly to them being annoyed with the mod's content, finding the puzzles disappointing and becoming disgusted by the fact the mod is very heavily inspired by the acts of real life rapist and serial killer Albert Fish.
• Carnival of Killers: Mike and Zach are constantly being attacked by assassins, whether it be the Organ Harvesters, Legion Assassins, or Mr. K's goons.
• Casual Time Travel: Mike frequently employs the use of a time machine to redo certain events. The time machine often breaks, resulting in some actions being permanent.
• Casual Danger Dialogue:
  • Mike and Zach will frequently joke around and talk about random things while in combat. In one Campfire Stories episode, Mike even walks off screen to shoot at a nearby enemy while Zach is still talking, unfazed.
  • Zach recalls a time in Iraq where he was in a porta-potty while the base was being bombarded. He immediately left said porta-potty and jumped into an armored car. The sergeant inside looked at his undone pants and simply asked him: "Had to shit, huh?".
• Chaotic Stupid: As the series goes on, this is how Mike starts to play Resident Evil 5, rushing every enemy he sees, firing explosive weapons at point blank range and using the trading system^note  which allows player 1 to trade with player 2, but not vice versa to clutter Zach's inventory with guns the latter can't use and deprive himself of useful equipment on purpose.
• Chest of Medals: Discussed: Zach points out how all of the Boomers have way too many medals on their uniforms, often in strange places on the outfit.
• Clipboard of Authority: Zach mentions how he could get away with being anywhere as long as he walked around with a clipboard.
• Color-Coded Speech:
  • Across all subtitled series, the subtitles of the players get consistent colours: all iterations of Mike get white subtitles with a red outline, all iterations of Zach (including Legion Mike's Aurelius of Phoenix) get white subtitles with a blue outline, and all iterations of Anne (including the teddy bear in the second New California playthrough) get light-green subtitles with a dark-green outline.
  • NPCs (or Mike and Zach speaking as the NPCs) get dirty yellow subtitles in New Vegas, green in Fallout 4, and white with a black outline in Skyrim.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In Episode 119, Zach and Mike try to extract information from the Centurion Silus through various means, including reading excerpts from the Twilight books, reading boring legalese, reading the transcripts of The Room (2003), and badly mimicking bagpipe music. None of them work.
• Cowboy Cop: Both Garrus and Terrence are this in the Mass Effect run, leading to the rare bad cop/bad cop interrogation technique.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: When Art expresses his attraction to Cass in the No No Bad special episode, Specialist Zach responds by pulling out a pistol and aiming it at him while demanding that he leave her alone.
• Cutaway Gag: When Mike remarks that he ate his sister once, he starts a flashback revisiting his Fallout 3 playthrough where, indeed, he ate his sister's corpse.
• The Cynic: In contrast to Mike, Zach thinks little of the world and everyone in it.
• Dark Horse Victory: Last time the Legion Mike's universe was glimpsed, the guy in charge of the main force controlling the Mojave was Specialist Zach.
• Death Notification: In Episode 110, Mike and Zach deliver news of Gunner Cooper's death to Mary Cooper, his wife.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: When talking about the American 180 (aka New Vegas' .22 Silenced SMG), Zach mentions that it's surprisingly effective against body armor, because while one .22 LR bullet won't do much damage, 180 bullets at 20 bullets a second fired at roughly the same spot thanks to minuscule recoil will make short work of whatever's in the way.
• Demonic Possession: While fighting off War Trash, Zach channeled the spirit of Chef Boyardee and started attacking them with a chainsaw.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Zach has a bad tendency to cripple Mike with excessive firepower for annoying him. One particular moment has Zach explaining that you need a specialized hammer forge (AKA: drop forge) to repair the rifling on a weapon and Mike continues to sass him by suggesting that a nearby stove could be used as a hammer forge, Zach just responds by blasting him with his China Lake launcher at point-blank.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Early New Vegas episodes had the Courier's name given as "Hunter" before switching to "Zach". It was a leftover from an earlier iteration of the let's play called Hunting with Hunter with Zach playing the titular character.
  • The first episode of the Skyrim playthrough had some mods installed that made the game too goofy for Zach's tastes - there was a Pikachu wandering around Riverwood, modern firearms were available in the forge, and the dragon was replaced with Randy Savage. The silliness was toned down from episode 2 onwards.
• Ear Worm: When trying to think of a theme song for giant spider enemies, Mike accidentally starts singing the Freakazoid! theme, and then they both admit to being unable to think of any other song than that one.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Much to Zach's irritation, most of the military worships groups like the Airborne Rangers and basically wants to be like them, even if they're in a support unit with zero prospects of ever being elites.
  • Subverted between the Zach and Mike themselves. They often acknowledge and joke about the fact that, despite Mike being a Marine (with all of the panache carried with it), he's far less knowledgeable about firearms and combat than Zach, who served in the Army.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Legion Mike is about as morally upstanding as the rest of his faction, but even he finds himself bothered by Legate Lanius, to the point of having him killed and taking over the Legion leadership.
  • Aurelius of Phoenix gives the Weathers family double rations because he took pity of them after learning about Mike talking Frank Weathers into killing himself.
• Even the Subtitler Is Stumped:
  • In New Vegas Christmas Special, Humphrey's...unique dialect and enunciation leads to some Funetik Aksent Fun with Subtitles, but at one point Mike just gives up and renders one sentence as a series of question marks.
  • Ditto Lyle from the Working on the Chain Gang mob, with Mike giving up on subtitling mid-line. To his credit, the in-game subtitles didn't even bother with that.
• Everyone Has Standards: Zach and Mike in-universe are a pair of murderhobos that usually target bigger assholes (and out-of-universe, aren't averse to "roleplaying" as murderhobos) but every once in a while they stumble upon something that even they consider crossing a line. Examples include time-travelling to undo the events of the War Trash mod in New Vegas (which had murdering most of Freeside as one of the objectives), or Zach flat-out refusing to read some of the notes left behind in Fallout 4 - Cannibal House (and Mike blurring pieces of them out in post) as they are blatant references to the horrific acts of real-life serial killer Albert Fish. Additionally, while they do have the Killable Children mod installed on their New Vegas playthrough, Zach became genuinely angry during the Russell mod when it looked like one of the tribals speared a baby to death.
• Evil Costume Switch: Legion Mike wears a vest with the Ceasar Legion's bull painted on the back, to contrast with his main counterpart's NCR vest, a black leather armor instead of a grey shirt, and Sinister Shades instead of a beret.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: An offhand comment about Glocks leads Zach to go on a long, long monologue about the history of law enforcement pistol calibers in America, particularly comparing 9mm to .40 Smith & Wesson. After about six minutes, Mike interjects:
  Mike: Where are you going with this information? What's the overall point you're trying to make here?
  Zach: (Long Pause) Man... I dunno. I-I lost for the forest for the trees there.
• Fetishes Are Weird: Mike accusing Zach of having a foot fetish is one of the running gags. Zach either vehemently denies that or, in later episodes, rolls with it.
• Foil: Legion Mike deliberately contrasts with mainline Mike in several ways:
  • Mike's loyal to the NCR for the most part, while Legion Mike is a loyal frumentarius.
  • Mike gathers companions left and right while Legion Mike prefers to work on his own, or assisted by slaves.
  • Mike and Zach tend to go for open combat while Legion Mike prefers subterfuge, stealth, and setting his enemies against one another.
  • For the most part, Mike plays the Wise Guy to Zach's Straight Man, while Legion Mike plays straight man to Aurelius of Phoenix' wise guy.
  • On a meta level, mainline FNV series is done from Zach's POV, while Legion Mike's series is done from Mike's POV
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The test card shown when Zach uses the time machine after Mike's death at the end of NVB III misses the red stripe.
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • When put on the spot to explain what FAMAS stands for,^note Fusil d'Assaut de la Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Étienne, "Assault Rifle from the Saint-Étienne Weapon Factory" Zach gives up and names it "Fun And Me Ass Shoot".
  • Later on, Zach renames his MP9^note Maschinenpistole, German word for "submachine gun" to "Machinenen Pew 8" [sic].
• Fun with Subtitles: While the subtitles are typically faithful to what's being spoken aloud, occasionally Mike will have some fun slipping gags into them such as changing size for certain inflections like Dr. Disaster saying "pUSsy". Other times, like when Zach headshots Mike for being annoying, the subtitle might shudder and tilt when the dialogue is interrupted.
• The Gadfly:
  • Drinking game: take a shot every time Mike says something incorrect or asinine about guns to annoy Zach.
    Mike: Maybe this stove could function as a hammer forge.
  • Zach admitted in episode 197 of New Vegas Multiplayer that he exaggerates his dislike of the 1911 to annoy people considering it the greatest thing since sliced bread.
    Mike: You've called [the Colt 1911] the most unreliable gun you've ever used.
    Zach: I like joking about that.
    Mike: It's not really that unreliable?
    Zach: No, they work just fine. I just like giving 1911 owners a bunch of shit because MUH TWO WORLD WARS and 45 ACP, 'CAUSE THEY DON'T MAKE A 46.
• Game Mod:
  • The New Vegas playthrough alone includes multiple mods from The Someguy Series, several mods by americanwierdo, and Honest Hearts Reborn.
  • The guys eventually get put into a mod themselves as NPC companions. There's a standard NCR-aligned Zach and Mike duo, and an Evil Mike companion mod from his Legion playthrough. The Evil Mike mod also features an extremely irate repair NPC at the Mojave Outpost named Specialist Zach, who is forced to digitally relive every godawful Fort Polk experience the real Zach has ever had. Lastly, Park Ranger Zach is at one of the abandoned ranger towers in Honest Hearts.
  • Mike ended up making his own mod, introducing a bunch of new NPCs and adding a few new quests.
• Gun Nut: In real life, Zach was a small arms repairman in the US Army, and he ends up commenting on most unusual weapons that he encounters in New Vegas or FO4. Most of his ramblings about guns were collected into compilations called Zach's Gun Rants.
  • Tellingly, the first of the compilations mentioned above begins with Zach saying "I'm gonna go on a short gun rant". There are six such compilations as of December 2023, with the shortest (part 6) being 35 minutes and the longest (part 4) being 82.
• Halloween Episode: Episodes 68 to 71 of the Fallout 4 series were posted around October 2022, and have everyone dressed up in costumes and some additional spooky content modded in.
• Hand Cannon: Zach hates these, mentioning the Desert Eagle in .50AE and magnum revolvers in particular.
• Hand Wave:
  • The in-universe explanation for Save Scumming is "time travel".
  • In an attempt to gain allies in the mainline universe, Legion Mike offered to help the Powder Militia faction from Working On The Chain Gang. When it became apparent the leadership are interested in peaceful cooperation with the NCR and dislike Legion as much as most other people, Legion Mike's continued cooperation with them is handwaved by namedropping the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Episode 201 of the FNV series has Zach present a barely coherent "script" in which he saves defenseless settlers from "ass ghoul" Malcolm Holmes and hooks up with ...not Cass, but Mike - in a bromantic (?) way.
• I Call It "Vera":
  • After Mike claims to have "upgraded" Zach's grenade launcher into a kitbashed monstrosity, Zach's anguished cries reveal that he had named it "Betsy".
  • Fallout 4 allows you to give custom names to weapons, and so Zach's arsenal in that game gets names ranging from clever ("Operation Nimrod" for a silenced MP5, referencing how the news coverage of it allowed the SMG to enter popular culture) to silly ("fun and me ass shoot" for a FAMAS).
• Iconic Outfit: The main characters end up gravitating towards specific outfits:
  • New Vegas series:
    • Zach: A duster worn over combat armor and khaki pants.
    • Mike: A vest with NCR's symbol on the back and a red beret worn over a gray shirt and cargo pants.
    • Legion Mike: A vest with Legion's symbol on the back over leather armor and tinted glasses.
  • Fallout 4 series:
    • Zach: Blue Vault 111 suit with bit of armor worn over it; down the line it was replaced with a modded-in trenchcoat-over-combat-armor combo similar to his NV outfit.
    • Mike: Red Vault 101 suit with assorted Legendary armor bits. Later episodes added a red beret.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Zach, sometimes.
  Zach I'm not insane, I know I'm not insane. Somebody had a Glock 18, I just need to find the corpse that had it.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Zach brings this up when it comes to full-auto battle rifles chambered in .308 (and presumably other full-auto battle rifles) since the recoil would throw your aim well above the target after the first round in a burst. The intention was to have them stabilized on a bipod but, in typical U.S. Marine wisdom, everyone tried to shoot them from the shoulder.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: Legion Mike's universe's Aurelius of Phoenix looks and sounds like (a) Zach. After he dies, the ending slides for the No No Bad playthrough reveal him to be Specialist Zach's long-lost twin.
• Insane Troll Logic: According to Zach, a former US Army Small Arms repairman, the US Army considers Bushmaster chainguns mounted on Bradley IFVs and howitzers to be small arms. Though they don't consider miniguns to be small arms: those are aircraft weapons systems, even if they are mounted on something other than an aircraft (though some special forces members asked if he could fix one. He tried, but couldn't).
• Interservice Rivalry: Occassionally Mike (a retired Marine) and Zach (a former US Army small arms specialist) take joking swipes about each other's branches.
• Javelin Thrower: Frumentarius Mike's weapon of choice.
• Killed Off for Real: Bad Mothafucka gets killed by spined hellhounds, and Mike doesn't use his time machine to resurrect him.
• Kinda Busy Here: During a stakeout of the medical tent at Forlorn Hope in Episode 107, Zach's Pip-Boy begins to ring as a telemarketer calls him.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Zig-zagged and generally portrayed positively with Zach. He jokes that he has "approximate knowledge of everything", and while there are some topics he is legitimately very knowledgeable about, he will also fully acknowledge when he is talking out of his ass.
• Late to the Punchline: It takes Zach until the end of New Vegas Christmas Special to realize that "Grinchenhauzen" is a pun on The Grinch.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Subverted. When Zimmer challenges Zach to a katana duel, Zach gladly allows his companions - who still have guns - to shoot Zimmer to death.
• Like a God to Me: More than once, Zach invoked John Moses Browning's name in place of God when firearms were involved.
• LOL, 69:
  • When Zach rants about a revolver chambered in .45-70 Gov't and says that anything smaller than that caliber would be better, Mike suggests a gun chambered in .45-69.
  • Mike refers to the PB pistol (labelled "PB-6P9" in game) as "Peanut Butter Sixty-Nine".
  • One of the reasons why Fallout 4 - Cannibal House was demoted from episode 69 to an unnumbered one was, quote:
    [E]pisode "69" should be a fun one, which the next one is! :)
  • In an attempt to make one of the modded in Fallout 4 companions stand out, Mike put her in a bright red jumpsuit with Vault 69's branding.
• Manipulative Editing: The "multiplayer" in their Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 series is achieved by modding in one of them as a companion or an NPC. It's also used in other ways, to deviate from the canon events or cover both branches of a quest, like with Veronica's decision whether to stay with the Brotherhood or split.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: The NV quest "Flags of our Foul-Ups" involves invoking the trope on an underperforming squad of NCR troopers. Mike and Zach did the quest the Boring, but Practical way, while Legion Mike drugged the squad and made them fight to the death.
• Mood Whiplash: The funeral speech in Frontier - first, Zach makes an inappropriate Product Placement joke about "sex couches", then, after a test card, he delivers a somber and bitter speech about how war is hell and the dead in front of him died for nothing.
• Morality Chain: It's not stated outright, but within the New Vegas continuity Mike and Zach are this to one another — Legion Mike's universe shows that both Mike and Zach would be far, far worse without each other's influence.
• My Nayme Is: Zach's name, more specifically the fact it's spelled with an H, is occasionally treated as unusual by Mike.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Two in succession in the first episode of the Fallout 4 series: Mike ends up wearing a red jumpsuit with Vault 101's number on it, alluding to his solo Fallout 3 playthrough, and Zach complains that he's more used to his Pip-Boy being "like, a tablet thing", referencing the modded Pip-Boy he was using in New Vegas.
  • Mike has an armor stand with his NCR outfit in his room in their Fallout 4 base.
  • The pilot episode of Skyrim has Zach ask someone about their opinion on the Legion and the NCR before he catches himself.
• Nerdy Nasalness: Commander Shepard's voice is authoritative and deep, while Terrence Shepard's voice is slimy and creepy.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the No No Bad series, when Specialist Zach tries to fix Art's Pip-Boy, he ends up accidentally making it more broken than it was before.
• Nicknaming the Enemy: During their playthrough of Honest Hearts Reborn, Zach takes a liking to the nickname of "redskirts" for Legion soldiers.
• No One Should Survive That!: Thanks to some unfortunate clipping, Benny survives a mini-nuke fired at him by Zach, to the latter's disbelief.
• No Social Skills: Zach consistenly emphasises how bad with people he is. Notably, while they're not above altering their stats to ridiculous levels and otherwise cheating, his Speech skill in New Vegas remains laughably low and he regularly fails skill checks related to it.
  Zach: I know more about how an AR-15 works than I know about interpersonal relationships.
• Obviously Evil: Black vest with a Legion bull on it worn over black leather armor, Sinister Shades, dialogue that barely hides his contempt towards the NCR... Legion Mike is about as subtle as Tiberius Rancor.
• Opposing Combat Philosophies: Mike and Zach usually charge into combat head-on alongside whatever companion(s) they picked up on their way, while Legion Mike prefers a stealthy approach and letting his enemies weaken themselves while he stays on the sideline if possible.
• Out-of-Character Moment: By the time of the final battle of the NCR Exiles campaign, Mike explicitly breaks character (as the cheerful optimist to Zach's tired cynicism).
  Mike: Climactic battle of The Frontier, go! [...] Whee- I... I can't even pretend to be caring about it, I'm sorry. I'm supposed to be the positive one, but it's exhausting.
  Mike: (singsong) I'm normally trying to find the best side of everything, but I hate everything about this battle.
• Pet-Peeve Trope:
  • Zach dislikes defined backstories in role-playing games, especially sprung on protagonists that were blank slates before that; the Burn Hazard episode on Fallout games had him decry New Vegas' Lonesome Road for that reason, their Fallout 4 playthrough notably omits all the canon backstory of the Sole Survivor (and if the NPCs bring it up, he reacts like they mistook him for someone else), and the Fallout: New California playthrough was deemed non-canon as far as the let's plays' lore goes after the reveals at the end.
  • Generally, Mike and Zach are both annoyed by mods that shoehorn in unnecessary romance options or awkward flirting.
• Psycho Serum: One of the New Vegas mod quests adds a drug called Hype. Stat-wise, it boosts Agility to 10 while tanking Intelligence, and it's introduced by way of an Ax-Crazy NPC high on it. When Zach takes it, the screen gets a red tint and he quickly devolves from complaining about being a bit thirsty to shooting one of the Goodsprings settlers in order to drink his blood.
  Zach: YOU LOOK LIKE YOU'VE GOT A LOT OF WATER IN YOU AND BY "WATER" I MEAN "BLOOD" GIVE ME ALL OF YOUR BLOOD (cue shotgun shell to settler's skull)
• Pyrrhic Victory: The ending of the Legion Mike playthrough sees Ceasar's Legion triumphant... but Ceasar died after Mike botches the attempt to remove the tumor from his brain, leading to Legate Lanius' ascent to power. Mike ends up killing him and taking power for himself, but finds himself mourning the loss of his freedom. And then he gets transported to the mainline universe, where Legion gets their asses kicked by mainline Zach and Mike.
• Quantity vs. Quality: How Zach describes the British Sten SMG versus their counterparts in World War II, it was made out of stamped steel so it could be quickly manufactured to arm soldiers in the British Army and hazards a guess that the American Thompson was about ten times as expensive to make over the Sten. Accuracy from manufacturing faults wasn't a concern as it was, of course, a Submachine Gun.
• Recurring Element: Mike's character (Legion Mike notwithstanding) will end up wearing a red hat of some sort: a beret in New Vegas, DUST and Fallout 4, a red baseball cap in New California, and a wizard's hat in Skyrim.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Despite the colour-coding, Mike's blue and Zach's red: the former's calm and upbeat, while the latter's cynical, prone to ranting at the drop of a hat and willing to shoot people for annoying him.
• Running Gag: Their long-running video series contain many of these:
  • "Were dinosaurs a pre-War thing, or a pre-pre-War thing?"
  • Zach sure does love his mac and cheese- I MUST KILL THE GOVERNOR.
  • During their Frostpunk playthrough, one of their randomly generated characters rolled up the name Dick Good. Dick Good is now a long-term member of the cast, and Dick Good has appeared in both their Pikmin playthrough, as a Pikmin, and in Mike's Legion playthrough of New Vegas, where Dick Good is Aurelius of Phoenix's secretary. Dick Good.
  • Steven Randall loves fingers.
  • SHUT UP HOPE!
    • For Fallout 4, SHUT UP DARLENE!
  • After past companions started piling up in Novac, Mike started describing it as "the town of beloved yet neglected companions".
  • Zach shooting Mike or one of their companions (usually Hope) whenever they start saying things that annoy him.
  • Mike being annoyed by how many different types of bullets there are in real life.
  • The recurring Bond One-Liner of "I don't care about your sexual preference, just shut up and die quietly", or variants.
  • Zach snarling his name out (or just snarling in place of it) whenever it comes up in dialogue options.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: When Legion Mike has sex with Vanessa, her moans are accompanied by Mike proclaiming "SEX NOISE! SEX NOISE!" out loud.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Mike and Zach frequently branch off into random stories about their time in the military or life afterwards while playing something else, compiled as either "Campfire Stories" videos or "Random Military Stories" videos.
• Shout-Out:
  • A few kills Zach got with the L96A1 (aka the Arctic Warfare sniper rifle) are accompanied with a CSGO-eqsue kill notification in the corner.
  • The episode covering the Frontier mission where the Wolfpack attempts to recover a captured and crucified Zach is called "Saving Private Hazard".
  • Later on in the Frontier playthrough, when they are all going to space, Zach and Mike end up imitating one of the Portal 2 cores.
  • In episode 315 of the New Vegas series, Zach paraphrases Dan Mendel.
    I don't care who the NCR sends, I'm not paying taxes!
  • When getting his hands on a golf club in episode 323 of the NV series, Zach ends up poorly recreating a scene from BioShock.
  • In the first episode of the Fallout 4 series, Zach blurts out that bayonets don't serve any purpose, then backpedals, saying the Death Korps of Krieg will come after him if they hear that. Later on, he's seen using a laser rifle named "Cadian Flashlight".
  • In episode 54 of the Skyrim series, Zach does a faux-Strong Bad Email Couch Gag after being told a key to a cell is in a strongbox.
  Duh-guh-tuh-tuh, answerin' the email, Strong Box.
• Signature Headgear: Mike's default outfit includes a red NCR beret, signifying his (loose) allegiance to the NCR.
• Sinister Shades: Legion Mike is... well, a Legion member and his default apparel includes a pair of sunglasses.
• Something We Forgot: In Episode 91 of the New Vegas series, Zach does this several times after completing one quest and thinking that he's done before remembering the imminent danger to some other location.
• Spoiler Cover: Spoiler Youtube thumbnail, but the principle remains: before the thumbnails were updated to use commissioned art instead of posing in-game characters, episode 311 of the New Vegas playthrough, the last NVB III one, didn't have Mike on the thumbnail.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Both of 'em are fond of explosives — Zach's secondary weapon of choice is a pump-action grenade launcher and Mike likes thrown explosives like dynamite sticks and grenades.
• Survival Mantra: When Terrence Shepard accidentally invites Liara into his quarters, Zach starts repeating "TALITALITALITALI".
• Superweapon Suspense Subversion: In the No No Bad series, Legion Mike launches a nuke at the NCR at the end of Lonesome Road. Aurelius of Phoenix then points out that nukes have a shelf life, and thus no damage occurred.
• Take That!:
  • When Zach talks about the Beretta and how it's a very common police-issued sidearm in the U.S., he starts by excessively firing at a small foe, yelling "STOP RESISTING!" and "GUN, GUN!". It's made funnier by how many times he unintentionally misses.
  • During a certain mission in The Frontier, Zach and Mike end up assigned to a team in which one of the members is a ghoul that's explicitly included for his immunity to radiation. They proceed to claim that once the situation comes up, he'll just declare it "not his destiny", a jab at Fallout 3's ending.
    Zach: Until the DLC comes out and then he'll go "Oh yeah, I should totally go in there. Why am I making you do it?"
    Mike: "I was stupid before you downloaded the $5 patch!"
  • Later on, when Blackthorne proclaims the NCR Exiles' victory during an official speech, Zach sees the plot twist coming and alludes to the Mission Accomplished speech.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Averted in the climax of the The Machine and Her playthrough: as Kat's monologuing, Mike is shown running up to her and shooting her with a rocket launcher right as she finishes.
• Telecom Tree: In Episode 100, Mike and Zach gain the support of all their companions in the fight against Malcolm Clones (after they free them from prison).
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Rather than following one of the canon paths for them, which leaves them shafted one way or another, Mike and Zach put Veronica in charge of Gomorrah after Cachino dies in the shootout with Sal and Big Nero.
• Too Kinky to Torture: In episode 221 of the NV series, after he gets gunned down by Zach once again, Mike claims to have developed a fetish for being shot.
• Two-Keyed Lock: After Zach causes excessive mayhem with Esther, a very powerful modified Fat Man, he agrees on such a solution. Later on, in the War Trash Bounties episode, he whips it out, and when Mike protests, he claims he has both keys and fires, killing himself.
  Zach: ...I think it needs four-factor authentication.
• Unexplained Recovery:
  • Esther, a minor villain from The Someguy Series, inexplicably comes back to life after they kill her and her Super Mutant bodyguard. Out of universe, it's because when they had to pick between two exclusive options (killing her or finding out where are the children she sold to Legion are), they took a third option of killing her and deducing the children's whereabouts from vague clues.
  • Mike survives getting arrowed down in the Skyrim intro, with a vague handwave that the arrow didn't hit anything vital.
• Unfriendly Fire: In the New Vegas series, Zach will frequently shoot his companions for annoying him - often even Mike.
• Walking Armory: Zach frequently has a wide array of weapons that he uses, though he tends to prefer shotguns. Mike will often either give Zach new weapons or randomly begin wielding a weapon that Zach has never seen him wield before, such as the Giddy-Up Buttercup melee weapon seen in Episode 158.
• The Watson: Mike usually plays this role to Zach, being able to hold any conversation and ask follow-up questions whenever the latter talks a lot about guns, Warhammer 40k, history, etc.
• Waxing Lyrical:
  • At one point the duo segues into both singing a line from "One Way Or Another".
    Zach: You're coming with us, Mike, one way or the other (starts singing) One way...
    Both: Or the other / I'm gonna find ya / I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha-
    Mike: LET ME GO!
  • Another time, Mike greets Dee Jay, a recurring mod character, with a line from Rihanna's "Pon de Replay".
    Mike: Hey there mister Dee Jay won't you turn the music up?
  • One of the companions' disturbing anecdote about an incident in Reno prompts this exchange:
    Mike: Thank God we've never been there and never will go there!
    Zach: I've been there.
    Mike: Have you?
    Zach: Yeah, I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
    Mike: Ugh...
  • The crucifixion scene from The Frontier has Mike (speaking as the crowd) paraphrasing the last lines of Charlie Daniels' "Crucify Him".
    If you are the Courier, why won't you come on down from that crooooss?
  • Episode 11 of Anne's Skyrim playthrough opens with Mike asking a question "Do you think people in Skyrim believe in..." before hanging up on a word, and Anne continues with "...magic in a young girl's heart?"
• Weapon Specialization: Evil Mike is fond of throwing spears, as befits a Legion member. Zach, as a gun nut, sticks to assorted firearms (with preference for shotguns and grenade launchers). Mike, as the less serious member of the duo, occassionally switches to unorthodox melee weapons.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Both mainline and Legion Mikes wear vests with their factions' symbols on the back.
• Wham Episode: Episode 311 of the FNV series ends with Mike dead, Zach's sanity taking a hit, and a botched attempt to turn back time sending him to the world of Fallout: Dust.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The ending of the last episode covering the Fourville mod is edited this way, showing the fates of a few of the NPCs without Mike or Zach's commentary.
• Who's on First?: In episode 155 of the NV playthrough, the password to one of the terminals is randomized to be "simple". Zach says as much, Mike responds with "Oh, what is it?" and a back and forth occurs, capped off by Mike namedropping the trope as a non-sequitur.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: During the Fallout 4 series Mike keeps assuming that Ada from the Automatron DLC has some sort of hidden agenda, deeming it too convenient that she's the only survivor of the attack that wiped her caravan out. Turns out that as in canon, there's none, they're exactly who they seem.