Lets Play / RLYoshi

Pictured above: the man himself, with his usual reaction to anything weirder than himself.

What's up, YouTube? This is RLYoshi as usual, bringing you...

RLYoshi, real name Max Allan, is a YouTube Let's Player who first came into the community in October 2010 with his LP of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Since then, his style has changed drastically; originally doing most of his videos solo, he has begun turning his channel into more of a series of collaborations, with very few of his let's plays actually being solo.

He has a distinctive style to his videos depending on the people involved. On his own, the videos are more about the game, with him only offering dry commentary or puns in response to the game, though not without some vulgarity. With one other person, they will usually either be working together or directly competing, and Max will typically be the Red Oni to their Blue Oni with much more focus on banter. With a group of people, you can expect it to be a much more casual game that greatly allows for them to freely chat while playing, and everyone's unique personalities will shine through. So, basically, there's a bit of something for everyone here.

He also has other gaming-related shows and projects. Let's Race has him and a friend play a game at the same time, racing to be the one to complete it first, usually with a variety of rules or unique twists. Minecraft Party is Mario Party meets Minecraft, with Max's own creative ideas and tendencies mixed in. And then there's Minecraft Hardcore, where a group of players work together towards a common goal in Minecraft, but if they die once, they're out completely. There also used to be Mirror and Sol, which had Max and Zero playing Minecraft adventure maps as their pony characters, Winter Solstice and Mirror Image respectively, remaining in character the entire time (mostly). This series was confirmed to be on an indefinite pause when Zero moved and no longer had good enough internet connection to continue.

On August 17th, 2017, Max announced that the channel would, starting at the beginning of 2018, no longer have any schedule or guarantee of consistent uploads as he focused on other aspects of his life; content will still come out, but not at the same consistency it had been at for the last few years.

Spoilers under Let's Race and Minecraft Party will not be hidden, aside from in the stats. Spoilers under Minecraft Hardcore will only be hidden for the current/most recent season.

What's up, YouTube? The tropes are right here, as usual!

Let's Plays

• Achievements in Ignorance: Max beats Dan in the first game of Battle Chess without actually realizing he's setting up a checkmate.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: In-universe; discussed between Max and Schuyler in Ocarina of Time, with this trope name even being used as the episode's title.
• A Day in the Limelight: The second Surgeon Simulator 2013 filler LP has Peter playing, with Max only watching.
  • Peter is Player 1 in the Halo 4 co-op campaign let's play, with Max only being Player 2. The fact that Peter seems to be much better at the game than Max also adds to this.
  • In the "Let's Playtest" for a Minecraft adventure map Max made, Tim and Rhino play it, while Max mutes his microphone and watches, only speaking occasionally through text or coming in to fix a problem with the map.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Frequent and almost always lampshaded.
• Aerith and Bob: In the "For Frytorch" campaign of Courage is Magic, there are four cities (exact spelling unknown): Frytorch, Desannica, Retija, and Windy Oceanview.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: The whole point of "Let's Drink" - Max and Dan play a drinking game during a game of Worms Revolution to see how stupid they get. Subverted when Max's only idiocy comes in the form of impaired speech, and Dan manages to still win a majority of the games with skill.
• All Periods Are PMS: One episode of Twilight Princess is titled "Potentially Masochistic Stubbornness" in reference to the long time Max spends on a single puzzle to try and get a Piece of Heart. In the same video, he fights Blizzeta (the boss of Snowpeak Ruins, who is an innocent woman that gets transformed into an evil ice-controlling beast by a piece of the Mirror of Twilight). The description of the video basically says that if anyone wants a joke about the boss, turn the title into an acronym.
• Ascended Extra: Zero was just a co-commentator for Battletoads before becoming one of Max's most frequent guests.
  • Tim, Jero, and Spark were just a few of many Cards Against Humanity participants before appearing more often later on.
  • Enigma actually first appeared in the very first video on Cards Against Humanity (back when Max still called some things "Filler LPs"), as just one of many participants. He was the only one to continue appearing.
• Aside Glance: Frequently, whenever he has a facecam.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Everyone suffers from this in one way or another.
  • A good specific example in HuniePop: when a girl sends Max a text with an image of them doing something sexual or flirtatious, Max will make a quick remark on it (often just "Oh wow" or something to that effect) before taking several seconds to point out something irrelevant within the picture (such as questioning how Kyanna was able to take a picture of herself doing push-ups).
• Bait-and-Switch: At the start of Fortune Street, while picking characters, Max moves his cursor over Yoshi and remarks how, due to his channel name, there's no way he could not pick Slime!
• Berserk Button: Go ahead. Comment on one of Max's gaming videos asking when the next episode of Cutie Mark Laboratories is coming out. We'll wait.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Whenever someone other than Max makes fun of the channel or its content. Usually it's Tim doing this.
• Boring, but Practical: Max's strategy in Board Game Online is as follows: 1) Choose the Assassin class; 2) Assassinate someone in front of him, incapacitating them and giving him a small lead; and 3) Using his Sprint for maximum distance right away, and proceeding to use it again whenever the cooldown is done. This gives him an early lead in every single game if he doesn't switch up his class choice.
  • Rhino lives and breathes this trope. Whenever he plays, his strategy basically amounts to doing nothing out of the ordinary or exciting unless it has a guaranteed chance of boosting his score, and otherwise keeping it simple and straightforward, taking no risks unless he has no other choice.
• Brand X: Occasionally Max will deliberately avoid talking about whatever he's eating or drinking. Averted whenever he talks about Five Alive.
• Butt-Monkey: Everyone at different points, though Max and Peter are the most consistent - usually due to each other.
  • Tim, Jero, Enigma, and even Rhino get the brunt of it when in groups. Often along with Yank the Dog's Chain.
  • Zero actually becomes this in Fibbage when Dan manages to keep getting points from him.
• Call-Back: Constant references are made to previous let's plays in the later ones. As of late 2014, you can expect people to reference previous videos they were in a fair amount. And even ones they weren't in.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Max uses this to his advantage in Dead By Daylight, making idle chitchat with Dan (the killer) to tip off Rhino and Jero that he's nearby without tipping Dan off that they're coming to help him.
• Catchphrase: Pretty much everyone has at least one; see the characters page for examples.
  • While it was originally Max's, other people have taken to saying "What's up, YouTube? This is [name] as usual...", particularly Rhino and Dan.
• Characterization Marches On: Max and Peter were quite different in Ocarina of Time. Max was more hyper and often tried too hard to make jokes (in his defense, he was literally only twelve to thirteen years old at the time), while Peter was moderately normal and just went along with what Max did. Thousand-Year Door was the first to see Max become much more sane, and when Peter appeared in Skyward Sword, we saw that he had changed too.
  • Also a case of possibly Hilarious in Hindsight; in Ocarina of Time, mainly during the Ice Cavern, Schuyler was making loads of references to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and Max didn't get them. Come Skyward Sword, and Max is making these references all the time, mainly to annoy Peter, and is very blunt about being a brony himself.
  • Enigma went from "the quiet one" to "the snarky, often unlucky one".
  • The channel itself went from having only one let's play at a time, with swear words censored, to having tons of series' running at once and everyone cursing like crazy.
• Chekhov's Gun: In Ocarina of Time, Max gets the Nayru's Love item despite believing it to be pretty much useless. He later uses it when battling Twinrova and ends up winning because of it.
  • The broken glass in Surgeon Simulator 2013. Max uses it a little bit at first, but in his final (and successful) playthrough, he completes the entire operation with nothing but it.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Marioman 2233 went against Max in some Mario Strikers Charged matches for filler, then appeared in Battletoads up to Volkmire's Inferno. After that, he stopped appearing, and Battletoads even went on a hiatus until Max could find a new co-commentator.
  • Other people such as Fury, Chaz, and Alec also suffered this. Sometimes this gets subverted, like with Schuyler and Mobius.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Peter. Also Max, to a lesser extent, though this shows more when he's with Zero or Schuyler.
  • Spark, Jero, Jerry, and sometimes Rhino.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: A lot of people have at least one color to represent them. We have, so far:
  • Max as blue
  • Dan as pink (yellow or orange when pink is not available)
  • Rhino as green
  • Tim as yellow
  • Jero as gray or purple
  • Zero as purple
  • Peter as orange
  • Brice as light blue
  • Enigma as red
  • Jerry as magenta
  • Silver as white or light gray
• Comic Trio: From the most common trios:
  • Max, Rhino, and Jero - Max is the foolish planner, Jero is the follower, Rhino is the Only Sane Man.
  • Max, Zero, and Rhino - Zero is the planner (somewhat more competent than most examples), Max is the follower, Rhino is the sane one.
  • Max, Dan, and Rhino - Max is the planner, Dan is the follower, and again, Rhino is the sane one.
• Content Warnings: As of partway through Skyward Sword. They've stopped now, since Max has decided that people probably know to expect it.
  • He has one at the beginning of his Cards Against Humanity playing (the actual let's play, not the single filler one). Justified, given how that game is known for being rather inappropriate.
  • HuniePop has acquired one after a few parts, warning that there is sexual content "that is mostly censored, but not fully". Again, justified.
• Continuity Reboot: In a manner of speaking. If a let's play ends up cut short, but there's enough demand to continue it (or Max just liked the game enough), he'll restart it some years down the line. Examples include Left 4 Dead 2, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Resident Evil 6.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Max is a major oddball and Large Ham, but he's also done a lot of stuff that many a gamer can't claim. He beat the Undertale genocide run final boss, can practically beat Fallout 3 with his eyes closed, and he's proven himself even better at puzzle games than Rhino. Not to mention the whole "expert Minecraft builder" thing.
• The Ditz: So many people, but especially Max, Peter, and Spark.
• The Dreaded: Typically Rhino in anything competitive, due to his general good gaming skill and being Born Lucky.
  • Max in Dokapon Kingdom thanks to good stat distribution and acquiring next-level weaponry far earlier than Rhino or Tim.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Ocarina of Time, as well as the first few parts of Thousand Year Door, had pretty bad audio quality due to Max not owning a proper microphone at the time. Ocarina of Time also had no set schedule, and so episode updates were random and unpredictable.
  • Ocarina of Time, as well as early parts of Skyward Sword, also had censor bleeps for any swear words. These were later removed, and now Max just puts Content Warnings at the start of videos that need them.
  • For a while, Max only did one or two games at a time, and called other games he did during them "filler". This eventually changed to a Game Grumps style of just playing whatever games he wants to and uploading a wide variety of them.
• Epic Fail: There's way too many of these to count. Just look at the funny moments page, because almost all of those moments qualify as this.
• Everyone Knows Morse: Downplayed. Max knows Morse code for no clear reason, though he has admitted he's rusty. (He apparently learned it at camp and never practiced since then.)
• Face Palm: Frequently.
  • He facepalms three times in a row in Welcome to Ponyville when Granny Smith is shipping him with Applejack.
• Fake Guest Star: Tim and Jero were this for a time when it was pretty clear they were becoming channel staples.
• Five-Man Band:
  • The setup can change depending on the group in the video. However, individually, everyone fits the following roles:
    • The Hero: Max, as the head of the channel and the one who's typically leading the group.
    • The Lancer: Dan, with a more laid-back contrast to Max's hyperactivity. Also a Hypercompetent Sidekick.
    • The Smart Guy: Tim, as the (usually) calm and thoughtful one who is quick to strategize and notice flaws.
    • The Big Guy: Jero, as the loud and boisterous one who can steamroll the others when he wants to. Also a Token Evil Teammate.
    • The Heart: Rhino, who seems to have the highest moral standards and is often the most down-to-earth of the group.
    • Sixth Ranger: Anyone else who shows up, particularly Zero and Peter.
  • A very different setup is prominent in GTA Online:
    • The Hero: Rhino, having the most knowledge and experience.
    • The Lancer: Jero, being more hyperactive than Rhino but similarly experienced.
    • The Smart Guy: Max, as he's very strategic and cautious while also their designated hacker.
    • The Big Guy: Rhino again, on account of being the only one to wear body armor during the heists (until the final one) and being the best at killing enemies.
    • The Heart: Dan, on a technical level, as while he doesn't calm down the others, he does find...other ways to settle arguments, and is the most lighthearted during tense situations.
• Flat "What": Max does these a lot.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • From the most frequent players: Max and Dan are sanguine, Jero and Spark are choleric, Tim and Enigma are melancholic, Rhino and Zero are phlegmatic.
  • Four-person teams typically have this dynamic in some way, at least by comparison to the others.
• Freudian Trio: It depends on the people, obviously, but the most common trios are as follows:
  • Max, Zero, and Peter are The Kirk, The Spock, and The McCoy respectively.
  • Max, Rhino, and Enigma are The Kirk, The Spock, and The McCoy respectively.
  • Tim, Rhino, and Jero are The Kirk, The Spock, and The McCoy respectively.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Max gets treated this way in videos, particularly by Zero, Rhino, Jero, and Tim, all of whom frequently get annoyed or snarky with his actions. Of course, it's all in good fun, and they're all good friends regardless.
  • Spark is referred to this often, but as a joke.
• Genre Savvy: Rhino, Zero, Dan, and Max, in that order.
• Heads, Tails, Edge: In Borderlands 2, Max decides to flip a coin to determine whether to hand a quest in to Sir Hammerlock or Claptrap, as they give different rewards. He tells Jero to call it, and Jero says "heads is Hammerlock". Max flips...
  Max: Okay, which one is "lost the coin"?
• Hostile Show Takeover: In Skyward Sword, Peter once started a recording episode off playing while Max was out of the room and tried to keep the controls when Max returned.
  • Rhino sometimes seems to attempt this by stealing Max's intro.
• Humiliation Conga: Peter suffers this in Wii Party, particularly in Battle Mode and Globe Trot. Especially Globe Trot.
  • In one episode of Courage is Magic, during a trip to the library, everyone but Rhino succeeds their rolls and get useful books. He fails and gets a coloring book, made even worse when he fails another roll and isn't able to color inside the lines. Played for Laughs.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Jokes are made about this at times, though subverted when it's Max making them, as he doesn't drink^exceptionsThe Let's Drink was his first time drinking, and they had a failed second recording later on. Aside from that, the only time Max has consumed alcohol was when he was tasting wine for the first time.
• In Medias Res: Some intro jokes have this premise.
• In-Series Nickname: Over time, the guys have given names to the Quiplash player avatars:
  • The yellow box with two cowlicks is the Chicken Box.
  • The red rectangle is the Monolith.
  • The green lime shape is...well, the Lime.
  • The cyan cube is the Ice Cube or Ice Box.
  • The purple one-eyed square is the Cyclops.
  • The pink rock-like shape is the Cancer Awareness Rock.
  • The orange upside-down triangle with a cowlick is the Dorito.
  • The blue potato-like shape, due to its somewhat creepy-looking smile, is the Sexagon.
• Insistent Terminology: Max insists that Resident Evil 5 takes place in Canada through use of Insane Troll Logic.
  • A lesser example: Dan opens Fallout 3 episodes five and six by saying the game is actually Fallout: New Vegas.
• The Insomniac: Max. He has sometimes played games while running on little to no sleep.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In Life Is Strange, when dealing with Kate, Max chooses practical and long-term solutions to problems: he takes a picture of David hassling her for future evidence rather than stepping in, he tells her not to go to the police until she gets more evidence, and he tries to be honest about the situation when confronting her on the rooftop. But every time, Kate reacts negatively, getting mad at Max (the in-game character) rather than accepting the reasoning. Max (the player) eventually gives a harsh "The Reason You Suck" Speech that makes him come off as a dick if you're a fan of Kate, but he isn't wrong - Kate is being ungrateful, bitchy, and unreasonable while all he's trying to do is keep her safe, prepare for the future, avoid getting himself in trouble alongside her, and be honest, yet all she cares about is getting things fixed now and the writers seem to use her depression as an excuse to allow her to be mean at times.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Pretty much everyone from time to time, some more often than others. Some like Dan, Tim, Enigma, and Jerry are never really jerks, though.
• Joke and Receive: Max jokes near the beginning of Digital: A Love Story that the people he talks to can't be human, because they're too polite to be a human being on the Internet. As it turns out, most of the people he was referring to are actually AIs and not real people.
• Large Ham: Half the people in the videos. Spark, Peter, Jero, Max, and Dan are the top five, in that order.
• Leeroy Jenkins: This is yelled fairly often, and possibly done even more. Died out in later videos.
• Let's Play: No, really?
• Madness Mantra: "B BUTTON B BUTTON B BUTTON!"
  • For Peter during Globe Trot in Wii Party: "I need more coins I need more coins I need more coins..."
• Mathematician's Answer: A Running Gag is Dan responding to any multiple choice question with "Yes".
  • A somewhat memorable moment from early videos: in his second "What the Hell?" Moments video for Left 4 Dead 2, Max briefly insists that the gun he has isn't a shotgun, because it fires faster than a shotgun should. Schuyler responds that it is a shotgun.
  Schuyler: What do you think this gun is then? What would you call it?
  Max: A gun!
  Schuyler: What class?
  (Beat)
  Max: Math class!
  Schuyler: You are terrible at this game!
• Motor Mouth: Max can talk damn fast when he wants. Zero and Peter can as well.
• No Indoor Voice: See Large Ham above.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently, Max and Dan attempted to do a let's play of You Don't Know Jack for the Xbox 360. They recorded every single episode, amassing over twenty hours of footage... and then decided to call it off and delete everything. The only reasons they give are Dan saying that if the episodes had been released, "people would hate [him]", and Max says that it was a combination of being stressed and not having good commentary. They also seem to react rather negatively to mentions of the game from then on.
• Non Sequitur: Peter lets these off all the time. Usually they involve pineapples, the color purple, or both.
• No Sense of Direction: Max's navigational skills leave a lot to be desired. For reference, he can - and frequently does - get lost in Megaton; a compact and well-labeled town, and the one most players visit more often than anywhere else, in Max's favorite game that he's played through over a dozen times.
  • Zero suffers from this occasionally. In BattleBlock Theater, he leads Max to an obvious dead end while trying to get back to the right side of the map. And in the Templars of Hyrule map in Mirror and Sol, he somehow goes about thirty seconds not realizing Max is directing him to go down a staircase literally right in front of his face, instead climbing up one right beside it or down one behind him.
• Not So Stoic: Rhino can be made to devolve into laughter or shocked stuttering by some things, particularly by game glitches or someone else screwing up.
• N-Word Privileges: In Skyward Sword, Max claims he's allowed to make fun of Canadian stereotypes because he's Canadian. Peter doesn't like this.
  • He embraces this a lot more later on, with much less negative reaction.
• Only Sane Man: Zero or Schuyler when they're around. Max when they aren't.
  • When both Zero and Schuyler appear together for the first time in Left 4 Dead 2, we're treated to a double dose of their snarkiness and sanity compared to Max and Alec. Though Schuyler is arguably more sane.
  • Tim, Rhino, and Zero are in the running for the role of most sane. Dan barely lags behind, followed by Enigma and Max. Nobody else is even on the board.
• Orphaned Series: It's practically a Running Gag now for him to start a let's play and only get one recording session (usually anywhere from one to three episodes) in, then never touch or speak of it again. He has made an effort to avoid this lately.
• Precision F-Strike: Max normally just lets swears fly, but he rarely resorts to just a single "Fuck". Oddly enough, this usually means he's angrier than when he goes with long strings of combined vulgar terms instead.
• Pungeon Master: Max.
  • He and Schuyler end up in a pun war throughout Ocarina of Time. Schuyler wins.
  • Tim's not bad at it either.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Too many common pairings to list. Out of all the frequent guests, from most red to most blue, the list goes: Jero, Max, Jerry, Silver, Peter, Dan, Rhino, and Tim.
• Rule of Cool: For a while in Skyward Sword, back when Max still cared about censoring swears, he used short dubstep clips as makeshift censor bleeps.
• Running Gag: Quite a few, usually specific to each let's play. Listing them all would take up the majority of this page. For ones that are spread out throughout the entire channel:
  • Joking about how a video won't come out for an absurd length of time, due to recording so far in advance.
  • Ever since Max decided to call himself $Winkly$ in the Wind Waker HD playthrough, Rhino has been trying to reference it, but keeps saying Winkly$Winkly instead (pronounced "Winkly dollar sign Winkly" instead of "dollar sign Winkly dollar sign").
  • Also starting from Wind Waker HD: Max's weakness is apparently crossing bridges. Especially, but not specifically, in Zelda games.
  • Waluigi. His appearance is met with joy (even when Jero's not around), and characters with crazy mustaches or wearing purple are declared to be Waluigi. Waluigi himself is even sometimes called Jero, or vice versa.
  • Max hitting a GG button (a red button that yells "GG!"), occasionally when something good happens, usually when someone else does something stupid.
  • Rhino getting phone calls in the middle of an episode.
  • References to John Cena, often by replacing part of his name with that of someone or something else.
  • Max forgetting to start the stopwatch at the start of an episode.
  • If someone is known for playing as one character in one playthrough, they may be referred to as that character in other games. This includes Max being a Slime (from Fortune Street), Dan being a skeleton, Tim being Deadpool (their Minecraft skins), Rhino being Reyn (from Xenoblade Chronicles), and Jero being Kreig (from Borderlands 2).
• Sdrawkcab Name: In Skyward Sword (the original playthrough), Max and Peter decide to name the knight who saves Link when he falls off a cliff "Ihsoylr", which is backwards for RLYoshi, because he wears a blue tunic and Max's preferred video game persona is Link wearing a blue tunic.
• Sequence Breaking: Max sometimes likes to try this for the fun of it, even if obviously nothing will come of it.
  • Max and Zero (but mostly Max) both do this a lot when they get their dart blasters in BattleBlock Theater, using the darts as platforms against walls. Max does this far more frequently with his slime bubbles to get a third jump by bouncing off of them.
• Shout-Out: Too many to list.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Everyone at some point or another. It seems to be contagious; Dan started off avoiding swearing whenever possible, sometimes vocally censoring himself, but over time evolved into using words like "shit" whenever applicable.
• Spell My Name With An S: Even Текст: Текст 98 is guilty of spelling the username as "R.L. Yoshi", when Max has stated it is meant to be written as all one word with no punctuation or spaces.
  • Similarly, his last name is Allan, not Allen.
• That One Level: In-universe. Max considers stealth levels to be his weakness.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Out of the six most consistent channel members (Max, Rhino, Dan, Peter, Tim, and Jero), there's comparatively little focus on the duos of Peter and Dan, and Peter and Tim; they will appear together, but usually in largely multiplayer things. Noticeably, every other possible duo has large amounts of interaction, sometimes to the point of having whole videos or playthroughs featuring just them.
• Theme Naming: In Card Hunter, Rhino, Tim, and Max's names for their characters are (respectively) Theas, Pys, and Qeis. Which are all pronounced (respectively) the same as "this", "piss", and "kiss".
• The Stoic: Schuyler in the older days. In the newer days, Rhino, Tim, and even sometimes Max (only when solo, though). Enigma almost qualifies for this, but he's just quiet rather than emotionless.
• Those Two Guys: Zero and Max get like this when they take on the roles of Mirror and Sol respectively while playing Minecraft adventure maps.
  • In the 2014 Christmas special, this role is passed between Tim and Jero, Tim and Rhino, and Max and Jero, depending on the current focus.
• Too Awesome to Use: Max's opinion of Stimpaks in Fallout 3, apparently. They heal a lot of HP with no radiation, but Max will just stockpile them and eat hefty amounts of food instead. Stimpaks are only ever a last resort. This is apparently a contributing factor to how, in offscreen playthroughs, he has no trouble acquiring hundreds of the damn things.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Max seems to have a thing for pizza, as shown when Peter brings up in one Skyward Sword episode how they always eat pizza for lunch whenever he comes over to record.
  • He and Peter also like to drink a fruit juice called Five Alive. Max states that it apparently acts like coffee to him and gives him energy, while Peter just seems to like the taste.
  • Max's favorite foods, or at least ones he eats a lot, has often changed; it includes peanut butter cups, regular peanut butter, cheese crackers, and toast.
  • Rhino has a Trademark Favorite Drink in the form of milk.
• Troll: Literally everyone has had their moments.
• Two Gamers on a Couch: When it's just Max and Peter, this trope applies rather well, though the couch is substituted with either chairs or a bed since they record in Max's bedroom.
  • Can arguably be applied to any other duo, but it's up in the air since they play online from different locations.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Basically everyone is like this with everyone.
• Vocal Dissonance: Max and Peter like to play with this in Skyward Sword. Peter gives a Goron a very high-pitched voice, Max gives Fi a voice that sounds like GLaDOS, etc.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Sometimes, often just covered up with a quick cut or Future Max explaining what the viewers missed.
• Working Through the Cold: Max's short LP of My Little Investigations was done while he was sick.
  • Zero was also sleep-deprived for his co-commentating in Battletoads.
  • Max is often sleep-deprived while working.
• Why Won't You Die?: In Dokapon Kingdom, Tim, as the Darkling, has great difficulty killing Max. First, Max avoids him, then uses a Vanish so he can't be fought for several turns. Then, when Tim finally does manage to fight Max, it's Max who goes first, so he uses his Escape ability to get away from the fight without losing anything. The next time, Tim goes first and deals a killing blow...only for Max to have a Deathblock item, so he avoids death and Escapes again. Tim's (and for that matter, Rhino's) frustration with Max's failure to die during his reign as Darkling escalates quite a bit over the two-week period.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Peter was working hard to win Globe Trot in Wii Party, but lost when one of the computers bought the souvenir he was about to get. He wasn't happy about this.

Minecraft Hardcore

General

• Action Survivor: Everyone. They have their strengths and weaknesses, but that mostly just falls into their knowledge as opposed to their skills.
• Anyone Can Die: Plot Armor doesn't exist here. No matter how crucial to the channel, any of the participants can die at any time. Even Max.
• Ascended Fanboy + Audience Participation: Endorb (starting season 2) and Zaarek (starting season 3) are both fans brought on to participate.
• Back from the Dead: People who die in one season can still return in future ones.
• Dwindling Party: Since dying takes you out of the series entirely, the number of people in the group decreases at very sudden moments.
• Killed Off for Real: Naturally. See under the individual season headers for a list of their deaths.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Jero and Tim tend to not back down from a fight and don't see the problem with going into dangerous situations on their own.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: When heading off to different tasks, they switch into calls for their groups. The first season specifically had an exploration team, a mining team, and a home team, but now it's just whenever they're going far away or it's early on and they want to prevent talking over each other.
• Offscreen Inertia: Played with and enforced. When the group splits up into teams, and uses separate voice chats, the perspective will sometimes switch between the teams. When it does, we see one team continuing from whatever we last saw them doing (so the viewers don't miss anything that happened on their end during the events we just saw from the other team's perspective). So while the characters are doing what we last saw them doing, that's because for them, no time has passed since we last saw them.
• Put on a Bus: Silver and Dan appear in season 1, but not season 2. Jero and Jerry appear in the first two seasons but not the third.
  • The Bus Came Back: Dan, after being absent in season 2, returns in season 3 and for everything afterwards. Similarly, Jero, after being absent after season 2, returns in season 4.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": When someone dies, the survivors host a funeral for them, burying them with a sign and item in a frame befitting them and/or how they died, and everyone gives a eulogy that generally consists of poking fun at their death.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: When the whole group splits up to do different tasks, we get to see the events that transpired for each group over the same period of time. Ironically, this technically results in more waiting for the viewers, as this means the same timeframe gets split into multiple episodes to account for each group.

Season 1

• Advertised Extra: Dan doesn't even make it all the way through the first episode, but is featured just as prominently in the trailer and intro as anyone else. Justified, since anything else would be a spoiler.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Downplayed with Peter and Max's deaths, as they continue to hang around and silently watch the group. Peter leaves after his funeral and Max stays around pretty much the whole time, occasionally snarking in chat (and leading Jero to pretend to be an 'amateur clairvoyant' to communicate with him).
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: When Dan goes outside in the first episode, he's swiftly followed by Max, Tim, and Silver to save him. When Dan dies, Tim and Silver instantly turn to run back inside, soon followed by Max.
• Back for the Finale: Max very briefly returns (in voice only) in the final episode to give the Sequel Hook for the second season.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Ender Dragon is eventually vanquished...after the group of eight has been cut down to only two, with Rhino and Jero as the only survivors.
• Breather Episode: Episode 9, "Boofs Comedy Night". Max, Silver, and Jero head off to explore, seek shelter during the night in Helm's Deep, and pass the time by telling hilariously bad jokes. Considering both the previous and following episodes had someone Killed Off for Real, this was a necessary break.
  • Any early episode that focuses on Rhino and Jerry at the home, since they just build up the farm and maybe dispatch a zombie or two. Subverted with episode 10, since that's the episode where Peter dies.
  • Pretty much every episode from when Rhino, Jero, and Jerry get back home after finding a nether fortress, to when they leave to search for the End Portal. They spend the time preparing themselves for the trip and grinding Ender Pearls, and the only real danger is a few mobs that they dispose of easily.
• Character Death:
  • Dan was shot by a skeleton when he went outside at night.
  • Tim was killed by an Enderman he punched.
  • Peter was blown up by a Creeper when he wandered away from Rhino and Jerry.
  • Max was also blown up by a Creeper while mining with Rhino.
  • Silver was knocked off a tower in the Nether by a Ghast and fell to his death.
  • Jerry was knocked into the air by the Ender Dragon and died from the landing.
• Chekhov's Gun: In a bad way. Max points out to Rhino and Silver that, to make mining easier, they can place torches in their off hand and keep their pickaxe equipped, and Max does this while mining. The off hand is where one normally holds a shield. If Max had a shield in his hand instead of torches later on, he could have protected himself from the Creeper that killed him.
• Cliffhanger: Episode 17 ends suddenly with a Creeper dropping in on Max and Rhino, and the end card has an explosion sound over it. The next episode reveals that Max got blown up...by an entirely different Creeper that wasn't seen. The one we did see exploded harmlessly against Rhino's shield.
• Didn't Think This Through: Tim decides to punch an Enderman, without armor or weapons. It doesn't exactly end well.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The trio we see for the last major portion of the series. Rhino's the fighter, usually having the most upgraded weaponry and being the front man in a battle. Jerry's the mage, brewing potions for the group to use and not doing much fighting himself. Jero's the thief, being the most mobile and fighting with a bow from a range.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Max tells Jero and Silver not to split up, because as soon as they split up, one of them will die. In the middle of his sentence, Peter's death message appears after he had split off from Rhino and Jerry.
• Four Is Death: Obviously everyone that's died, well, dies. But the fourth one to die is Max, the one who runs the channel and series, which was a surprising twist for many and even had some people wonder if this would make the series end prematurely (remind you of a certain other hardcore series?).
• It's All My Fault: Jerry has a minor moment of blaming himself for Silver's death, since Silver had built himself an unstable tower upwards to get glowstone for Jerry's potions on request, and that was the tower he got knocked off of.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: As Word of God revealed, this was the driving cause behind Dan's death. He was having severe lag issues, which would make him The Load during more dangerous tasks such as mining. So he went outside, deciding to go down in a faux fight, getting himself killed early to prevent himself from causing the others trouble (and it was more dramatic than just dropping out anticlimactically).
• Jump Scare: Deaths are accompanied by a dramatic booming sound. Peter's death is no different, but since he was Killed Offscreen, you just see Rhino and Jerry casually walking along to peaceful music, then suddenly, boom.
  • The Scare Chord that plays when a Creeper walks in front of Max right at the end of episode 17.
• Killed Offscreen: Peter's footage was lost, and he was blown up by a Creeper while separated from everyone else, making the death message the only indication of what happened.
  • Sort of with Dan, as his death wasn't directly shown, but he was right next to the others and they saw the skeleton shoot him.
• Never Found the Body: More like Never Found the Death Point; the group never finds where Peter died, and everything he had on him is lost. Jerry's death is similar, as Rhino and Jero never find where he died, but since it was during the final battle it's not as big a deal. Unlike most cases in fiction, in neither case does this mean the dead person comes back.
• Non-Action Guy: Rhino and Jerry. They stay at home on the farm for the first sixteen episodes, only ever leaving it to gather animals or plants from a short distance away. Eventually subverted with Rhino from episode 17 onward, as he begins venturing out into the mines. Later subverted with Jerry as well when he starts helping get Ender Pearls, though mostly by necessity.
• Noodle Incident: Peter's death is completely offscreen; all we know is a Creeper killed him. Subverted when Peter commented on the videos explaining that he fell into a water pool with a Creeper and didn't have time to get out, and his shield wasn't enough.
• Oh, Crap!: Max's reaction to seeing Dan walked outside at night. Everyone else has similar reactions a moment later.
  • Max also has this reaction in the third episode when his mining uncovers a silverfish.
  • Rhino has a hilarious one when he sees a Creeper; he dumps a bucket of water for some reason, runs down the path, and starts sealing himself in cobblestone and yelling at Max to go in with him. Max just shoots the Creeper.
  • Silver's last words as he realizes he's falling to his death: "Oh god, no!"
• Running Gag: Rhino putting pressure plates inside the house in front of the doors^*so the doors will close automatically when people enter and prevent monsters from getting in and Max removing said pressure plates^*due to finding them unnecessary and annoying.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Dan's death in the first episode pretty much nails the "hardcore" part into your skull if you hadn't gotten it yet.
• Sequel Hook: After Rhino and Jero build Jerry's grave, place down the dragon egg, and say their last goodbyes, Max reappears by voice to proclaim "Alright, who's ready for season two?" A second season had also been confirmed as happening by Max in comments since the very beginning.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Tim, essentially the group's Plucky Comic Relief, is the second to die.
• Skewed Priorities: When monsters are swarming the house and Dan's gotten killed, what's Jerry doing? Hanging out outside by the back door, setting up a pathway to make a farm. Naturally, Peter yells at him to get back inside.
• Sole Survivor: Two: Rhino and Jero.
• Take Up My Sword: Inverted. Rhino swipes Max's diamond sword after he dies, and declares himself the new leader, using the sword (jokingly) as the reason why he should be the leader. The others complain at first, but over time it starts working out.
• Taking the Bullet: Almost literally, though non-lethally. During a mining trip, when Max and Jero are at low health, Peter jumps between Jero and a skeleton, taking an arrow headed right for Jero. Had the arrow hit, Jero would've been killed, since he was at half a heart.
• Took a Level in Badass: Rhino spends the first sixteen episodes at home on the farm, his only fights being a couple zombies floating in the water. He eventually goes mining, and panics over a Creeper to a hilarious extent. Next episode, he's got his courage back and is mining with Max and Silver effortlessly, being cautious but knowing how to deal with problems. And within the following episodes, he becomes the group's leader and strategist.
• Wham Line: Every death message, of course. Especially for the members of the group unaware of what's going on - Peter's and Max's come to mind.
  • This exchange.
  Max: Dan, why are you outside?
  (Beat)
  Dan: (to the monsters) Come fight me!
  • "Watch out! Creeper...!" says Rhino, a half-second before the moment mentioned under Cliffhanger above.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Max doesn't say anything, but with how he just turns and looks at Rhino, this is obviously his reaction to Rhino freaking out over a Creeper to the extent that he did (see Oh, Crap! above), while Max just calmly shoots the Creeper with his bow.

Season 2

• A Friend in Need: Tim wanders off on his own and ends up chased by zombies far from home and gets lost, while it's dark and raining out. Max promptly drops everything and runs out to find him, putting himself in equal danger, managing to keep the two of them safe and come up with the idea to dig into the side of the mountain and seal themselves in to stay safe.
• Arc Symbol: Swords. Besides their obvious important combat use, Max enchants a diamond sword with Looting III, making it their best bet at getting wither skulls and fulfilling their goal, and the first three deaths involved a sword (Endorb is depicted dropping his sword as he burns alive, and Rhino and Tim are killed by a zombie pigman and wither skeleton respectively, both of which wield swords). Diamond swords are also the group's very first use of the important diamonds.
• Art Evolution:
  • The first season's thumbnails, like the rest of the videos on the channel, took shots from the episode itself. This time, the thumbnails (besides the first episode's) are custom creations in Mine-imator that represent and dramatize what happened in the episode.
  • Rather than simply a sound effect, when someone dies, we're suddenly treated to a representation of their death, such as Endorb being set on fire or Rhino stabbed through the stomach by a Zombie Pigman, making it that much more dramatic and sudden.
• Ascended Fanboy: Endorb, a viewer, comes in as the seventh player due to Dan and Silver not being able to make it.
• The Atoner: Seems to be the reason for Max going to the Nether alone. After all three-man ventures had resulted in a death, including all three members of the original Nether squad dying, his Survivor Guilt mentioned below, and Jero in the previous episode coldly calling him "the worthless leader who couldn't keep his friend alive", he reasons that just one person going in would be able to watch over themselves easier than trying to keep track of three people, and gears himself up before heading inside, clearly not having high expectations of his survival.
• Audience Participation: A survey was run looking for a viewer to join in this season, with Endorb being chosen.
• Bait-and-Switch: Played for Drama. After Tim's death, we are led to believe someone will die by falling into lava in the Nether, and with Max venturing into the Nether on his own, this makes him a likely candidate- not to mention entering the Nether alone is extremely dangerous in and of itself. The next death ends up being Peter, to a Creeper in the overworld.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Tim spends most of the third Nether trip complaining about how he can't find any wither skeletons (though Max and Peter do). He finally finds one, while on his own, and it kills him.
• Big "NO!": Jero lets one out when Peter dies. It's even given an echo effect in editing. He lets out another one when Max dies.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Wither is killed, but only Jero and Jerry are alive. They've lost both their leaders, with Max having been killed almost singlehandedly by Jero accidentally.
• Cliffhanger:
  • In the end of episode 5, Peter is off exploring at nighttime to find spiders, commenting how he feels fairly confident with his sword and armor... suddenly cut to him staring up at a skeleton, with low health, quietly declaring "Oh fuck." Cue end of video (with the iconic booming sound that typically accompanies a player's death). While Peter does certainly get himself in trouble over the next couple episodes, he doesn't die in them.
  • Episode 13 ends with a voice clip of Jero screaming "What the fuck happened?!" before we're suddenly treated to a split-second image of a death message: "was slain by Zombie Pigman". The name is obscured, but this confirmed that someone in the next episode was about to die... and it ended up being Rhino.
  • Episode 21's cliffhanger is within the episode itself rather than a sudden foreshadowing; it ends with Max, Tim, and Peter all on the run from zombie pigmen, the latter in particular danger. Next episode shows that, after some time, the pigmen no longer become a problem - but then the group gets separated and Tim is killed by a wither skeleton.
  • Episode 23: After the group reconvenes after another failed Nether trip where Tim died, we see someone^*later revealed to be Max, but it's not specifically shown at the time, and voice clips from all people still alive are played to make it ambiguous venturing through the Nether and getting knocked into a pool of lava. And this is accompanied by a Wham Line of Peter's: "He's going to hell [the Nether] on his own." This eventually comes to pass with Max as the one who falls in, but he survives.
• Character Death:
  • Endorb was killed by a swarm of Blazes in the Nether Fortress.
  • Rhino was killed by a Zombie Pigman he accidentally aggro'd in the same fortress.
  • Tim withered away after being attacked by a wither skeleton in - once again - the same fortress.
  • Peter was blown up by a Creeper while exploring a mineshaft in the overworld.
  • Max was killed by the Wither during the final boss fight, after being weakened by a stray arrow from Jero's bow.
• Continuity Nod: The first season's events have affected the group a bit.
  • Numerous references are made to how people died in the first season. In particular, Peter is a lot more paranoid of Creepers.
  • In the first season, Max was the de facto leader until his death, then Rhino took over. This time around, Rhino acts as the leader right out the gate.
    • And on a related note, just like last season, the group's current leader (Max in season one, Rhino this time) dies and someone else (Rhino in season one, Max this time) takes up the mantle while delivering their eulogy.
  • Once again, Max and Rhino are at odds over putting pressure plates in front of the house doors.
  • An unintentional one: once again, we don't get to see the footage of the third person who dies. Poor Tim...
  • Another unintentional one: Peter dies to a Creeper, just like in the first season.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Max is a risk-taking goofball who at one point walked outside the house and immediately forgot why he went outside. He also survived several hours farming Wither skulls in the Nether entirely on his own, when previously they had lost three people doing the same task with two others there as backup.
• Deconstruction: Of the group splitting up for various tasks, which was prevalent and had no negative consequences in the first season; because of it happening here, the home team never knows the exact circumstances behind the deaths of those in the Nether, leading to hostility between Jero (who blames Max for Tim's death) and Max (who knows there was nothing he could have done).
• Epic Fail:
  • Made more epic because of the dramatic nature of what happened right before it: Max goes into the Nether by himself, complete with everyone coming by to wish him good luck. Max proceeds to get lost in the Nether (despite having been to the fortress twice so he should know the way), and when he finally gets there and starts setting up his emergency exit portal, he doesn't have enough obsidian and has to awkwardly come back to the overworld, grab some more, and then leave again.
  • Jero has one too: while fighting the Wither, he keeps using his bow, even when the boss is below half health - at which point it's immune to arrows.
• Funny Background Event: Episode 19 briefly features an edited-in silhouette of Divine Beast Vah Medoh flying across the sky while Jero's looking around outside.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Peter dies breaking a cave spider spawner, preventing the creatures from swarming them and possibly killing Jero or Jerry, especially since Jerry had been reduced to half a heart by a Creeper moments before.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Rhino dies to the Zombie Pigman he got a skeleton to shoot at so it'd kill the skeleton, not knowing this would make the pigman aggressive to players as well.
• Hypocrite: Jero can be seen as this in one recurring instance. He keeps getting mad at the Nether exploration team, specifically Max, for people dying in the Nether, but refuses to go in himself to try and prevent such a thing from happening.
• Laser-Guided Karma: With a bit of Revenge by Proxy thrown in by chance. After Jero harshly criticizes Max over Tim's death, which Max was present for but had no chance of preventing, Jero later on watches Peter die - in a situation that Jero was present for but had no chance of preventing.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: After Rhino's death, Max goes from a goofy and snarky follower to a thoughtful strategist. After Tim's death, he moves from that even further to farming all the Wither skulls solo and planning their strategies for taking down the Wither.
• Letting the Air out of the Band:
  • A variation; the ambient music fades out to silence for a good few seconds right after Peter shoots a zombie pigman. It is quickly replaced by tense music more befitting the dangerous situation.
  • A more straight version happens when, after the remaining survivors give a dramatic speech at the grave site as they prepare to go fight the Wither, the fitting music continues playing as they walk away. Then cue this trope when Max jumps off the cliff, losing a small amount of health, with a deadpan "Ow".
• Never Split the Party: Max tries to cement this with himself, Peter, and Tim while in the Nether, but they frequently get separated anyway, because Max and Peter think the others are following them and Tim just tends to wander. This directly results in Tim's death.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • More than any other death, the group is incredibly shocked at Rhino dying, due to him being one of two Sole Survivors the previous season, as well as their leader this time around.
  • Max, Tim, and Peter when the latter accidentally shoots a zombie pigman. Notably they express this reaction in different ways; Max gets angry at Peter, Tim panics, and Peter just calmly says to run.
  • This is Tim's reaction when he finds a wither skeleton, while on his own.
  • Peter, Jero, and Jerry react this way when a Creeper blows up on the latter, putting him at half a heart and very nearly killing him in one fell swoop.
• Sequel Hook: After the final scene fades out, we hear the sound of an Elder Guardian.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Jerry's job was to make a farm area, so the players would have a sustainable food source. He instead prioritizes making a lavish bedroom, which also indirectly results in the others not being able to sleep to skip the night for a while.
  • Peter takes some time away from the action to instead wire up a secret room with a shower, and uses gold and diamond blocks as part of the decoration. This serves no purpose beyond amusement (though in his defense, by the time he reveals it right after Rhino's death, said amusement is greatly appreciated by the group).
• Survivor Guilt: Max gets this badly. He blames himself for Endorb's death since he let Endorb go to the Nether instead of going himself like he planned, then both Rhino and Tim died while Max was there - and in Tim's case, under Max's leadership. Jero's reaction doesn't help.
• Take Up My Sword: In a direct reflection of the previous season's incident, Max declares his intent to lead the group in Rhino's place after the latter dies.
• Tempting Fate: Twice in a row in episode 21:
  • First, when Peter is taking shots at a Blaze, Max tells him not to shoot a nearby zombie pigman. Peter remarks how he won't. He then hits said pigman almost instantly.
  • Second, after the above, Peter tries to calm Max and Tim by saying zombie pigmen don't have too big an aggro range and they shouldn't be aggressive anymore, pointing out how one particular pigman is cool with him... except said pigman then proceeds to start attacking him, with a friend, and nearly kills Peter.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Jero manages to give one to Max in just one line: "There's the worthless leader who couldn't keep his friend alive."
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • The whole crew! In the first season, their progress was very slow, and they didn't even enter the Nether until the eighteenth episode and half the team was dead. This time, it took until the tenth episode for their first casualty, after they had already made a successful trip into the Nether, found the fortress, and were farming Blazes.
  • In an odd example of a location doing so (and in a villainous way), the Nether. In the first season, while Silver died shortly after entering, the trek throughout the place was mostly safe; nobody else died in there, and rarely did any of them ever get put into actual danger of dying. This time, Endorb died while Blaze farming, and Rhino and Tim died while exploring the fortress, both of which were practically treated as mundane tasks in the first season. And Peter at one point startled a horde of zombie pigmen, nearly resulting in his own death, whereas last season they were never attacked once.
  • The biggest example is Jerry. During the final boss fight against the Wither, he's the one who does all the damage in the boss's second form and kills it, because Max died and Jero kept using his bow without realizing the Wither was now immune to arrows.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Compared to the first season, this season's trailer shows a fair bit of progress: Rhino, Tim, and Jerry are seen with full sets of iron armor (and whoever we see through the perspective of seems to have it too); they have a large and elaborate bedroom presumably built by Jerry; an extensive farm and enchanting/brewing area are visible; and diamond tools are frequently seen in hotbars.

Season 3

• Heroic Sacrifice: Max dies in episode 9 by rushing forward and destroying a Blaze spawner that had himself, Peter, and Dan pinned and marked for death.

Super Vexation Saga (reboot)

• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Since the games are now selected by Max or Peter individually to challenge the other, this is the goal for one of them each time.
  • Max starts the series off by facing Peter, who is well-versed in Sonic games (while Max is average at best), in Sonic 06. Peter wins.

Let's Race

Races thus far:

• Sonic the Hedgehog (2006): Max VS Dan; cancelled, Dan unofficially wins
• Pokémon Zeta & Omicron: Max VS Rhino; cancelled, Rhino unofficially wins
• Portal 2: Max VS Rhino; Max wins
• Aperture Tag: Max VS Rhino; Max wins
• Battletoads: Max, Dan, Rhino, and Jero four-player race; Dan takes first, Max takes second, Rhino takes third, Jero takes fourth
• Super Mario 64 100% Completion: Max VS Rhino; cancelled, Rhino wins^*according to Word of God, he did win the race, it's just not being uploaded
• Donkey Kong 64: Participants unknown; upcoming

Sonic the Hedgehog (2006):

• Aborted Arc: Confirmed to be cancelled after an extremely long hiatus since Dan's capture card stopped working.
• Audience Participation: Well, sort of; in every episode, Max and Dan ask a trivia question about a video game, and the audience must submit their answer to Max within a time limit. The first person to submit it correctly gets three points, while everyone else to submit correctly gets one; the amount of points people have at the end of the race determines special prizes they will get.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In the end of Sonic's Story, Dan beats the final level just as Max finishes the second-to-last level.
• MST: Max more or less does this when reading dialogue aloud by inserting his own comments into it, often pretending to be the character speaking.
  Max: (as Alberto Robert) Put on the shoes and go through the rings! If I've made the shoes correctly, you'll make it on time! If not, you're going to die.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Like always, Max is red to Dan's blue.
• Red Shirt: Dan remarks how pretty much every character in the opening cutscene is this.
  Dan: And there's the old man. Who will also serve no purpose, other than to die within this cutscene!
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Max pulls a 10-Minute Retirement when Dan beats Radical Train with only one death, that death being before the Super Speed section.
• Tempting Fate: Come on, with all that talk about Max catching up at Radical Train, did you really expect it to slow down Dan at all?
• This Is Gonna Suck: Given the game they're playing, Max and Dan both have this reaction at the start of the race.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Due to Dan's Roxio screwing up, throughout Shadow's Story, his footage appears glitchy and even is completely cut out for the first couple episodes and a lot of the final one.

Pokémon Zeta & Omicron:

• Aborted Arc: Got cancelled due to the majority of the footage being lost.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Basically the whole series is Rhino giving one to Max.
• Here We Go Again!: The first episode we see is the start of their third attempt to record this race. They are appropriately annoyed and exhausted, skipping through plot points they have already seen twice and more or less ignoring the game at first.
• Irony: Despite green being Rhino's color, Rhino plays Zeta, which is purple. Max plays Omicron, which is green.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Max is red, Rhino is blue.
• Serial Escalation: A quick, downplayed example in episode 2 when Max is trying to catch a Riolu. The Riolu's health is low, so he throws a Pokeball, which fails. He then throws a Premier Ball^*although their catch rate is the same as a regular Pokeball, a Great Ball, and finally a Dusk Ball^*since they're in a cave, the catch rate is 3.5, as opposed to the Great Ball's 1.5. The last one finally catches it.
• Shout-Out: To Achievement Hunter. Max names his Magby starter "Gavin" due to the real life equivalent's Pyromaniac tendencies.
  • And he names his Abra "ITS NO USE" [sic] after Sonic the Hedgehog 2006.

Portal 2

• Foreshadowing: Max says at the very end of the race that, next time, there will be "less portals, but not less Portal". This foreshadows their next race: Aperture Tag.
• Idiot Ball: Max picks this up whenever he's in the lead by actually helping Rhino through the puzzles. No wonder he kept falling behind, though he did win in the end.
• Irony: Third let's race started, but the first one completed.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Right before defeating Wheatley:
  Max, aiming his portal gun at the moon: Hey Wheatley, do you like bananas? Well you're going to go bananas ON THE MOOOOOOOOOOON! (shoots the moon and wins)
• Yank the Dog's Chain: After being behind for the first two parts, Rhino has finally managed to catch up to Max, and due to some confusion with a couple puzzles on the latter's behalf, surpasses him... then Max begins his slow comeback, before rocketing into first place by easily noticing a couple puzzle solutions that Rhino completely misses. He takes the lead back in the very same episode he had lost it in.
  • And then Max falls behind without either of them realizing it, because Rhino sped through a part that confused Max.
  • And then despite having a substantial lead, Rhino pisses it away when he keeps dying in a puzzle that Max completes no problem.

Aperture Tag

• The Ace: Max blazes through the tests no problem while Rhino struggles along, in a sort of role reversal from the usual formula.
• Ending Fatigue: In-universe example. After the end of chapter three, Max constantly gripes about how that should have been the ending due to the climactic-feeling challenge, and it's clear that the ending being pushed further away is taking its toll on him. Rhino seems somewhat less affected.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Rhino especially seems to have difficulty remembering he has gel, not portals, and keeps missing solutions.
• Dungeon Bypass: One puzzle requires setting up blue gel in the right spots, then bouncing off of a high platform into a portal, shooting gel at the right time to remove a storage cube from a button so the portal switches locations, and bounce through the new portal to the exit. Max does this properly, while Rhino (eventually) just takes the cube to the ledge the exit door is on, stands on it, and uses the blue gel to bounce himself up to the exit normally.
• Foreshadowing: This race was hinted at in the end of Portal 2; see Foreshadowing under that entry above.
• Officially Shortened Title: Subverted. The video titles, thumbnails, and in-game commentary always refer to the game as Aperture Tag, rather than its full name, Aperture Tag: The Paint Gun Testing Initiative.
• Took a Level in Badass: Max, compared to Portal 2, is doing much better; he easily identifies puzzle solutions, and the only time he falls behind is when they're far into the game and he's suffering from Ending Fatigue. And even then, he stays mostly neck-and-neck with Rhino and pulls ahead at the end.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Rhino is having a much worse go of it this time around, needing to rely on Max's help and the occasional Dungeon Bypass to just complete the tests in the first place. Possibly justified; see Damn You, Muscle Memory!.

Battletoads

• 100% Completion: They disallow warps, which basically leads to this trope, as the warps can let you skip levels.
• The Ace: Dan. He gives himself a nearly twenty-minute penalty, has to restart the game halfway through, and goes to beat the entire arcade version of the game before fighting the final boss. He still beats the game before anyone else even beats the tenth level (of twelve; or thirteen if the final boss is its own level).
  • Rhino also takes this role back for the first half after losing his previous two races, holding a firm lead until Dan blazes past him. Max takes it for the second half of the race when he catches up to Rhino and passes him during Terra Tubes, nigh-effortlessly completing the "underwater wheels" section that Rhino (and many, many players) constantly struggles with and rages at.
• Anti-Climax: Downplayed and subjective. They originally planned to go until two people beat the game or six hours were up, whichever came first. They decided to call it a couple hours early, after Max beat the second-to-last level. Would have been even worse if they just gave up before he beat the level, considering he was stuck on it for so long and nobody made any progress otherwise in the last episode and a half.
• Big "NO!": Max, Rhino, and Jero all go for this as reactions to deaths near the end of an area. A big one is Max's reaction to a shark killing him right at the end of a difficult part of Terra Tubes, or his reaction to reaching the bomb in Rat Race only for the rat to hit it before he can.
• Broke the Rating Scale: At the end of the sixth part, in the credits, Dan is listed as being on level "17/12" because he stopped playing the regular game and started playing the arcade version.
• Butt-Monkey: Jero is constantly in last after falling behind on Turbo Tunnel, with many jokes made at his expense. They even end up breaking the "no warps" rule just to give him a chance.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Dan starts playing the wrong game (Battletoads Arcade rather than Battletoads), albeit deliberately, and yet is still almost caught up to the others by the end of the first part, later blazing past everyone else for an easy win. He even says at the start that he is "very good" at the game.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: By the time Dan beats the game, nobody else is even past the third-to-last level. This is bearing in mind he gave himself a ton of handicaps, accidentally or just for fun.
• Death Seeker: Played for Laughs when Jero remarks late in the race how the game is "making [him] beg for the sweet release of death".
• The Drag-Along: Jero is the least enthusiastic about being in the race.
• Driven to Suicide: In Karnath's Lair, Jero will often deliberately jump into spikes to kill himself if he misses or falls off a snake and lands safely, rather than waiting for the snake to come back.
• Epic Fail: Dan accidentally runs into a warp, and due to the no warps rule, he has to reset to his last save. Except he never made a save, so he has to start the whole game over again. Of course, this isn't a big problem for him, but still.
• Foregone Conclusion: Dan's win. The fact that his handicap barely impeded him and he still almost caught up to everyone at the end of the first part made it pretty clear he was going to obliterate.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Dan is phlegmatic, remaining constantly happy and upbeat (mostly due to winning so easily) and never really being fazed.
  • Max is sanguine, his frustration with the game only coming in bursts and he mostly stays in a good mood, albeit a hammy one.
  • Jero is choleric, his mood swinging back and forth as the game goes on between cheerful joking and anger so thick you could cut it with a knife.
  • Rhino is melancholic, staying silent and moody for the latter half of the race aside from the occasional outburst.
• Funny Background Event: Depending on if you're looking at their screen or not, some things might show up in your peripheral vision:
  • In general, one person being stuck on one part for a while may lead to their crashes and deaths counting as this.
  • In one part of fireball dodging in Volkmire's Inferno, Max just puts his plane at the bottom of the screen and casually moves up a bit if a fireball is coming at him. He at no point mentions he is doing this and easily beats that portion.
  • Dan playing the wrong game at the start. Later on, while he announces he's doing it, him actually playing through Battletoads Arcade.
• Handicapped Badass: Dan starts with a twenty-minute penalty, has to restart the game halfway through, and beats the entire arcade version before beating the final boss, and still wins with nobody else close to him.
• Irony: Jero is the first one to beat the first level, and Dan is in last place at the end of the first episode. Now check how the race ends for the two of them.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase: Max likes declaring himself or something else to be "The X-est of X-es". Such as "the turboest of turbos" after beating Turbo Tunnel.
• Mind Screw: Max mostly takes the game's insanity in stride, but "the ice cube jump" as seen here reduces him to sputtering and obscenities.
• Nintendo Hard: Battletoads is infamous for this, and everyone faces one aspect or another of this throughout their playing. Their reactions vary.
• Not Me This Time: When Jero yells at Max for coming up with the race, Max - with increasing levels of frustration - has to keep pointing out that it was Dan's idea.
• Not So Stoic: Ever wanted to see Rhino actually rage and scream rather than remaining calm and jovial like he normally is? This is the race for you.
• Running Gag: A few:
  • During the first episode, Dan dropping unnoticed clues that he's playing the wrong game.
  • While on Turbo Tunnel, Max or Jero somehow hitting the wall behind a warp, but not the warp.
  • People dying when a checkpoint or the end of the level is within sight, and reacting accordingly.
  • Max's "toad dance".
  • Dan getting increasingly handicapped, accidentally or willingly.
  • Rhino never remembering to duck underneath the robots that shoot electricity, making them a pain in the ass for him as one hit practically guarantees death.
  • Jero yelling at Max for coming up with the race, and Max retorting that it was Dan's idea.
  • Max reaching the bottom of a Rat Race section, only for the rat to still hit the bomb before him due to him missing the bomb or not hitting it hard enough.
• Suddenly Shouting: Jero will sometimes be conversing normally, before suddenly screaming as something bad happens. Perfect example:
  Jero: (singing calmly) Lonely... I am so- (hits a wall and dies; top-of-lungs shrieking) DAMMIT!
• Tempting Fate: Max does a "toad dance" (flicking the control stick back and forth so Rash looks like he's spazzing out) and it makes him fall off a moving platform to his death.
• Wham Line: Not for the viewers, but for everyone in the race (sans Dan), this bit as they begin to suspect something's up with him:
  Max: Dan, what are you doing?
  Dan: I'm playing the game!
  Max: Are you playing the wrong game?!
  Dan: (trying not to laugh) What are you talking about? This is Battletoads!
  Rhino: He's playing the other version!^*Battletoads Arcade, rather than just Battletoads
  (Beat)
  Dan: And I'm having a good time!
  • Earlier on, he tried with a couple others: "I must be playing the wrong game, because I'm fighting a bull"^*Jero asked if the bull was gray, Dan answered in the affirmative, thus causing them to confuse the miniboss Dan was fighting with a mook in the first level of Battletoads and "This doesn't look like a crater at all, it looks like a winter wonderland"^*Rhino was trying to hear Jero speak, and thus just told Dan to shut up, ignoring him, both of which went unfulfilled due to the reasons stated within the notes.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: You could make a drinking game out of how often Jero (or Max or Rhino, to some extent) dies when the checkpoint is in sight.

Super Mario 64:

• 100% Completion: Their goal is to collect all 120 Stars before defeating the final Bowser.
• Aborted Arc: Despite being fully recorded, confirmed to be canceled after a long hiatus due to Max hating how the commentary turned out. (It was apparently far worse than that explanation makes it sound.)
• Berserk Button: Rhino gets annoyed when Max uses Hypno Ray on him just as he was about to finish a tedious hundred-coin mission. He gets very pissed when Max attempts to repeat this later with Banned (though Max takes it back).
  • Later, when Max fails the Lethal Lava Land hundred-coin mission with one coin left to get, he isn't openly angry, but does need to request a pause so he can just let it sink in what happened.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Max uses Hypno Ray on Rhino early on, causing him to have to redo the hundred coin mission of Bob-Omb Battlefield (one of the more tedious ones). Many episodes later, Max dies repeatedly while attempting Lethal Lava Land's hundred coin mission, including an instance where he had ninety-nine coins and was jumping for the last one.
• Shown Their Work: The icon for the Deja Vu lifeline, of a circular arrow being broken and shifted, is actually one of many symbols for real life deja vu. It's one of the more common ones, too, at least for people who are even aware deja vu has representative symbols.
• Troll: The four lifelines they have access to essentially serve this role, as they force the other player to waste time:
  • Deja Vu forces the other player to go complete a level they've already completed (the person using the lifeline chooses the world, the person being affected chooses the Star they collect).
  • Banned prevents the other player from entering a world of the lifeline user's choice for twenty minutes.
  • Hypno Ray forces the other player to kill themselves immediately, undoing all their progress in the current level.
  • Down Payment means the other player has to collect fifty coins before they can collect a Star in whatever world they're in.

Donkey Kong 64

• 100% Completion: Possibly; not yet confirmed, but considering how getting this is what the game's infamous for, it's very likely.

Minecraft Party

Boards thus far:

• The Pinwheel with Zero, Jero, Tim, and Rhino ^descriptionA colorful wheel with various branching paths and no real gimmick. However, approaching the middle will force you to ride a minecart in a circle, stop it randomly, and continue in whatever direction the minecart points you. ^resultsTim takes first; Jero takes second; Rhino takes third; Zero takes fourth
• Vault 14 with Tim, Enigma, Rhino, and Jerry ^descriptionA series of corridors in a Vault that make navigation difficult. There are three rooms known as the Zombie, Skeleton, and Wither Skeleton rooms, with numerous mob spaces pertaining the name, along with tons of gold, diamond, or emerald spaces respectively. When one room is open, the other two are closed; players can choose the room that is open by going to the Overseer's Office. The boss of the board is the Overseer, who chases the player around a maze and must be attacked three times from behind before he kills the player. ^resultsRhino takes first; Enigma takes second; Tim takes third; Jerry takes fourth; Enigma defeats the boss
• Towers of Torment with Tim, Spark, Rhino, and Dan ^descriptionTwo towers, one "good" and one "evil", that are identical aside from outward appearance. Each tower has five floors, plus the roof, and players can pay to go up floors automatically (five gold per floor), but can't go directly to the roof. Upon reaching the roof, the player has the option to buy Packed Ice, but the ice is only real at one tower. After they choose whether or not to try and buy ice, the player goes back to start and gets to continue moving toward whichever tower they want. The boss of the board is King Porkbelly and the Udder Lady, the monarchs of the towers, now giant and corrupted by the power of the Packed Ice. The player must climb up to the top while avoiding monsters, acquire TNT and redstone from a chest, and blow up their crown. They only have to do this to one of the rulers, but they can do it to both. ^resultsDan takes first; Tim takes second; Rhino takes third; Spark takes fourth; Rhino defeats the boss (with help from Dan) ^noteRhino is treated as being in second, but he and Tim were tied for Packed Ice and Tim had more gold; Rhino got to go against the boss second because Tim left early.
• Strife Clouds with Enigma, Rhino, Tim, and Dan; Enigma and Tim on the red team, Rhino and Dan on the blue team ^descriptionA two-against-two board that takes place on a series of clouds with many connecting paths; falling off the clouds to the ground below causes you to be sent back to the start and lose any remaining spaces you have in your roll. Players have individual money and items, but they share Packed Ice. They can also exchange items and money if one of them is at a red-and-blue corner "exchange point". The Packed Ice goes back to appearing on random spaces on the board again. The "boss battle" is the winning team members fighting one another, while the losing team breaks out the ground from underneath them to try and drop them to their death, with the winner being whoever survives. ^resultsRhino and Dan win, Enigma and Tim lose; Rhino defeats the boss challenge
• Pallet Town with Peter, Tim, Dan, and Rhino ^descriptionA recreation of Pallet Town from the Pokémon games; players can enter Red's house, the rival (named Douche)'s house, or Oak's lab to get free Packed Ice by walking to the end. Other than that, the board returns to a rather basic layout with no gimmicks. The boss is a Pokémon battle against Max, where he and the player choose a type represented by different Minecraft weaponry and have a battle in a Pokémon-themed arena. ^resultsRhino takes first; Peter takes second; Tim takes third; Dan takes fourth; Tim defeats the boss
• Gargantuan Chest with Tim, Jero, Silver, and Rhino ^descriptionA large chest filled with various large items, with the spaces going around the chest and on top of the items that players have to climb. ^resultsNot yet available.

Tropes:

• Alliterative Name: The third board, Towers of Torment. As well as a couple minigames, like Confusion Corridor and Dress to Depress.
• Ambiguously Evil: Max himself. He's a fair host, but he's also the one who runs Minigames For Max, which have him played up as an evil overlord demanding simple amusement (the first one opens with Max declaring "I DEMAND SACRIFICE!") and a disproportionate punishment for losing.
  • The "evil" tower in Towers of Torment. It's built out of nether brick rather than stone brick, has demonic-looking claws coming out of the ground leading up to it, and the interior is decorated with colors on the red end of the spectrum, making it all certainly look evil...however, there seems to be no difference between the two towers besides appearance, meaning there are no known traps or negative spaces within.
• Anti-Frustration Features: These are often the result of an Obvious Rule Patch, such as limiting Ender Pearls or adjusting the dice.
• Boss Battle:
  • Vault 14 ends with one against the Overseer (Max). The Overseer chases the player through a maze, but will easily lose track of them, and they must run up behind the Overseer and hit him a single time. After they do this three times, they win; however, the Overseer can attack as he pleases, and if he kills the player, they lose.
  • Towers of Torment also have one: King Porkbelly and the Udder Lady, now gigantic. The player must climb up them through minor parkour, avoiding monsters, and plant TNT in their crowns.
  • Strife Clouds has a variation, where rather than fighting a boss, the members of the winning team fight each other in a straight-up battle.
  • Pallet Town has the winner fight Max in a Pokémon battle, where they choose a type (specifically, one of the original fifteen types - no Steel, Dark, or Fairy) to determine items they get in a general battle to the death.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Enigma appears in Strife Clouds after a one board absence since Vault 14.
  • Jero appears in Gargantuan Chest, the sixth board, after his last appearance being in the very first one.
• Chandler's Law: Basically any time somebody lands on an emerald space, it causes an uncommon event that breaks up the mostly repetitive gameplay.
  • The Boss Battle at the end of each board (after the Pinwheel) serves as this, in a way. The usually laid-back results after a climactic last few turns is interrupted by some sort of Wham Line, then teleportation to a boss arena with the rules hastily explained as the player is thrust into the action.
  • The Slaughterry is a fight to the death before the last five turns, around the point in the game where the action is at its lowest; too late for them to still have the adrenaline rush from the first several turns, too early for them to be making last-minute moves to impact the results.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In Towers of Torment, Dan gets a compass when Spark wins a 2v2 minigame for them. He later uses the compass to turn around and go towards a different tower...shortly before it was revealed that the ice at the top of the tower he was previously heading towards was fake.
  • If a player wins a board, they get a small advantage in the next board, qualifying for this:
    • Tim, who won the Pinwheel, got to choose which room in Vault 14 was open first.
    • Rhino, who won Vault 14, got to choose which tower in Towers of Torment had the real Packed Ice first.
    • Dan, who won Towers of Torment, got to choose his team member in Strife Clouds, meaning the two people he didn't pick make up the other team by default.
    • Dan and Rhino, who won Strife Clouds, each got some additional gold at the start of Pallet Town and were allowed to use one item without losing the item from their inventory. Max lampshaded the somewhat anticlimactic reward this time around and justified it by explaining that Pallet Town was too basic a board to come up with a better themed reward.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: So far, every board has had Tim and Rhino, but the other two players have usually been different every time, though they haven't necessarily never played before:
  • The Pinwheel had Jero and Zero.
  • Vault 14 had Enigma and Jerry.
  • Towers of Torment had Dan and Spark.
  • Strife Clouds subverts this; Dan is carried over from the previous board, and Enigma returns from Vault 14.
  • Pallet Town had Dan return from the previous two boards, but now Peter also shows up for the first time.
  • Gargantuan Chest had Jero return from the very first board, and Silver appears for the first time.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Minigames For Max ends with Max taking away all of a player's items (or just one item), half their money, or one of their ice (in the first board, it was all of their money and items). Even though the tasks are usually mundane, such as trying to make lots of mushroom stew or dyeing clothes for him. (They also end with Max killing the player, but this doesn't affect the actual game.)
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: When Dan is getting frustrated in Pallet Town, he vehemently rejects any attempts by anyone to help him.
• Down to the Last Play: Strife Clouds. Before the Bonus Ice, Dan and Rhino are leading by two ice. Max asks everyone to vote on whether the Bonus Ice should be given to the team that has the player with the highest score in each category, or if he should combine each team's scores between their members to get the result^*For example, for Option A, if Dan won six minigames and Rhino won five, their score would be six; for Option B, their score would be eleven. They decide to go with Option B. Tim and Enigma win the first two Bonus Ice and tie it up, but based on the scores, would have won them regardless. The final Bonus Ice goes to Dan and Rhino...but if they had gone with Option A, it would have gone to Tim and Enigma. The entire board essentially came down to an indirect vote.
  • A slightly lesser example in Pallet Town, where the winner is ultimately decided by the Bonus Ice, specifically the Minigame Ice.
• Epic Fail: In between Pallet Town sessions, Max forgot the turn order. So for the next few episodes, he had Dan and Rhino confused, thus resulting in Dan having significantly less Packed Ice and moving last. While it got sorted out eventually, it seemed nobody was pleased about this.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The participants of each game so far fit these roles, at least comparatively.
  • In The Pinwheel: Tim is phlegmatic, Rhino is sanguine, Jero is choleric, Zero is melancholic.
  • In Vault 14: Tim is phlegmatic, Rhino is sanguine, Jerry is choleric, Enigma is melancholic.
  • In Towers of Torment: Rhino is phlegmatic, Spark is sanguine, Dan is choleric, Tim is melancholic.
  • In Strife Clouds: Tim is phlegmatic, Dan is sanguine, Rhino is choleric, Enigma is melancholic.
  • In Pallet Town: Tim is phlegmatic, Rhino is sanguine, Peter is choleric, Dan is melancholic. In the first couple episodes, though, the roles of Tim and Dan were reversed.
• Foreshadowing: In Pallet Town, Peter's name font is the same that's used for the title of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. At the end of the board, when it's his turn to fight the boss, he summons a dragon - an Ender Dragon, specifically.
• Humiliation Conga: Dan suffers one throughout Pallet Town. Frequently losing minigames and missing out on Packed Ice, rolling super low rolls, and even having Tim place a cactus at the exit to the house they're in when nobody else has a reason to enter. His eventual giving up is actually pretty justified, if over-the-top.
• Obvious Beta: The first board had a lot of problems and unbalanced minigames. Future boards have had downplayed versions of this problem, but Max has clarified the videos are currently for the sake of Beta Testing the game anyway.
• Obvious Rule Patch: The first board has a few of these, such as Max making it so you can't buy stuff with the diamond helmets. The second board reveals that a lot of these happened in between, with several items being nerfed (for example, diamond helmets went from "don't lose any money next time you'd lose some" to "next time you'd have money stolen from you by another player, only lose half").
  • In the first two boards, Ender Pearls were often used to travel extra long distances since you could still roll after using one, and it wasn't too hard to throw and land directly on a Packed Ice space to buy it. As of Towers of Torment, using a pearl counts as your turn, and it's explicitly stated that using it to land on a Packed Ice space doesn't let you buy it.
  • The large boards of Vault 14, Towers of Torment, and Strife Clouds had a noticeable problem with people being unable to move very far in the twenty-turn limit, as they could only move anywhere from one to nine spaces unless they used boots or an ender pearl. In Pallet Town, the dice system is changed to the more common way of rolling two dice with one to six each (increasing the chance of high rolls) and having boots allow you to take two turns instead of simply doubling your roll.
• Oh, Crap!: Everyone's reaction in Strife Clouds when Rhino becomes the Ravager. Yes, even his teammate Dan's.
  Dan: (to a skeleton) My trusted lieutenant... SAVE ME FROM THE RAVAGER!
  • They generally have this reaction when someone is obviously in the lead, or when Ice Melting comes up, or when it's time for the Slaughterry.
• Once an Episode: It's apparently tradition now for the last minigame of each board to be "Fight Amongst the Flames", which is essentially a fight to the death in a battlefield with fire in the middle and lava on the edge. It's also apparently a tradition for someone to use a name tag on this game to make Max play it for them.
  • Also, the second-to-last episode of every board always ends up being about an hour long, even though each episode is just supposed to consist of three turns (except the first episode, which is the board introduction and first two turns).
• Out-of-Character Moment: "Moment" referring to an entire series. Spark, normally a loud Large Ham, is calmer and quieter in this game. He's still a Cloud Cuckoo Lander who messes around with others, but volume-wise, he's much more toned down.
• Purposely Overpowered: The Ravager. It activates when someone lands on a single random iron space, and for five turns, they get many benefits: double money whenever it's earned, the ability to use any item regardless of if they actually have it, they can't be stolen from, they send back to start anyone they land on the same space as, and they can pay money to cause events such as stealing ice or sending people back to start right away. In turn, however, they can't purchase anything, Packed Ice included. Justified, as once again, the chance of landing on the right space to cause it is very low (as in, it was implemented as early as Vault 14 and didn't get activated until Strife Clouds), and nobody even knows which space it is ahead of time.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: In Strife Clouds, the teams are Tim and Enigma, and Dan and Rhino, each being (comparatively) red and blue respectively. However, ironically, Tim and Enigma - the red team - are the blue oni, while Dan and Rhino - the blue team - are the red oni.
• Retool: The game's basic rules stay the same, but starting in Gargantuan Chest, various things have been majorly changed. This includes, but isn't limited to, only needing to pass mob spaces to use them rather than land on them, and completely replacing one of the items. It also had several rules they previously kept forgetting and changing (like how much gold a gold space gets you) ironed out and set in stone.
• Running Gag: Rhino always ends up going last or second to last. In Strife Clouds, Dan outright forfeits his own spot as second in the turn lineup to give it to Rhino, his teammate, who would have been going last.
  • Throughout Gargantuan Chest, because so many parts of the board are high in the air, people end up jumping off the edge or being punched off, resulting in a lot of deaths.
• Sore Loser: This aspect of Dan shines horribly in Pallet Town. About halfway through the game, he gives up entirely, no longer even playing half the games and muting his microphone, leaving the game as soon as a winner is declared.
• Spanner in the Works: The first entry under Chekhov's Gun above is potentially what led Dan to his victory. And Spark was the one who caused it.
• Switching P.O.V.: This show has the camera switch between players based on whose turn it is (though it will sometimes go to someone else temporarily if they're doing something interesting), with Max's own perspective in the corner. During minigames, it shows everyone's screen at once in corners, Max's in the middle.
  • Averted in Towers of Torment. Due to both Dan and Spark losing their footage, it just constantly shows Max, Tim, and Rhino's screens simultaneously; when Tim has to stop his recording, it's down to just two, though a little bit into the final episode Dan's footage kicks in.
  • Also averted in the second part of Pallet Town; due to an editing issue, Max had to just leave the video in "minigame view" (i.e. everyone's screens visible all the time).
• Voice of the Legion: Max has it when Minigames For Max first shows up, and he declares "I! DEMAND! SACRIFICE!"
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Invoked. One of the Minigames For Max is called "Golem Problem" (formerly "Oink Oink Yoink"). Each player gets a selection of enchanted diamond swords, and they each attack an iron golem with a single hit, with the other players unaware of what they're using to attack with. Whoever kills the golem loses the minigame.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: This has happened to various people, including Zero and Rhino in The Pinwheel, Jerry in Vault 14, and Spark and Rhino in Towers of Torment. It was also consistently happening to Dan throughout Pallet Town.

Mirror and Sol

• A Day in the Limelight: Mirror and Cypress more or less take over for most of the dungeons in Templars of Hyrule, but in the Shadow Temple, due to Sol being the one with the Lens of Truth, he takes the spotlight for a while.
• All Just a Dream: According to the official timeline, Galacticraft was a dream Sol had. This is apparently just to Hand Wave it never being continued, though it also helps explain the Swapped Roles.
• All There in the Manual: An official timeline has been released, with brief explanations for why the two are in the various situations they are.
• Bad "Bad Acting": When they have to read dialogue sent via command blocks.
• Brick Joke: In City of Love, the 2014 Valentine's Day special, the two apparently just escaped a kingdom of robots. In The Facility, from July of 2015, Sol opens up by mentioning that they were apparently captured by robots. The official timeline also puts this map directly before City of Love.
• Butt-Monkey: Both of them, because of each other - Sol is frequently attacked and insulted by Mirror, while Mirror is dragged into ridiculous situations apparently because of Sol. Sol is often the bigger one, though.
  • In "City of Love", Mirror's status as this is magnified; he gets arrested more than once trying to rob a bank, and ends up having David fall in love with him after going to the trouble of gathering things for a love potion for him. Then, he gets Amy to fall in love with him, only to learn that she's a Crazy Cat Lady with extra emphasis on "crazy" (and has a face on top of her head). Then, his repeated attempts to flirt with Robotica fail due to choosing the wrong dialogue options.
  • Sol's status as a Butt-Monkey in "City of Love" is, while there, not nearly as prominent; he gets arrested for robbing the bank as well, and the first girl he gets to fall in love with him - the bartender - ends up glitching and preventing him from continuing with her. That aside, he actually has a much better time than Mirror; he successfully robs the bank on his second attempt, and in the end, gets married and allows the two to leave the city...after he fakes his death.
  • Deconstructed for Sol in Templars of Hyrule as he gets increasingly ticked off at being ignored or insulted.
• Ditzy Genius: Sol. He's actually pretty good at solving puzzles when he actually tries and isn't ignored (which typically happens if both Mirror and Cypress are around). He's even made the Triforce of Wisdom in Templars of Hyrule.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Mirror has one at times. At others he just shrugs off pretty much everything.
  • Sol adopted one in There Is No Learning Curve and the first couple episodes of Templars of Hyrule, due to the addition of Cypress leading to him being ignored or interrupted, but this seems to have gotten better.
• Hand Wave: Oh so much.
  • When lag or glitches occur, it's blamed on Sol being on dry ice.
  • Cheating through teleportation commands is explained as them using teleport magic, as they are unicorns.
  • The official timeline explains how they get into their various situations.
  • Templars of Hyrule is a map that only works in 1.8 and onward, while the Mine Little Pony mod only works in 1.7 maps. So Mirror, Sol, and Cypress have their skins, but walk on two legs. They briefly say at the start that they had to train to walk on their hind legs for the mission. Starting partway through episode 4, they've begun using a different Mine Little Pony mod that works in 1.8, so they go back to normal with brief acknowledgement that walking on their hind legs was tiring.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: They speak the way ponies do, such as "anypony" instead of "anybody", and "Celestia" or "Luna" instead of "God".
• Grand Finale: "Templars of Hyrule" can be seen as this, albeit unintentionally; it was easily the longest map they took on, as well as one of the higher-quality ones, and ended up being the last one they did before they were unable to continue the series.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: In-universe, this is their opinion of Black House.
• Last-Name Basis: Winter Solstice is referred to as Sol, a shortening of his last name, almost exclusively. Justified as he's a royal guard captain, and going by last names is standard practice in the real world military.
• Noodle Incident: "City of Love" starts with the two complaining about having just escaped a kingdom of robots. Gets context later; see Brick Joke above.
  • No reason for Cypress changing his name from Arcane is ever given. Same with, much earlier, Sol changing his name from Pop Filter.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In a rare actual case of "out of character", Max completely breaks character in "Forever Alone" to mention he accidentally turned off his computer monitor. He does it a couple more times to point out how the map has nothing to do with Valentine's Day besides the "weird story".
• Orphaned Series: As confirmed on Tumblr, due to Zero moving to Puerto Rico and no longer having stable enough internet to connect to Max, he has indefinitely departed from the channel and the cancellation of this series is a side effect.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: What makes their interactions so dynamic is how they are opposites in almost every way, Sol being red and Mirror being blue. And if one of them has a moment where they start acting the other way, the other one switches as well, preventing this dynamic from changing.
  • When Cypress (formerly Arcane) shows up, he becomes blue to both of their reds, comparatively. (Previously, his arrival would cause Sol to become more of a blue in gameplay and a red in attitude, but from episode 4 of Templars this has changed.)
• Sequence Breaking: If they get tired of a puzzle, or they know how to solve it but it requires too much timing, or it's just programmed wrong, they'll break/place blocks to make it to the exit rather than spend forever on it.
  • Accidental example: In "Mysterious Library", they get to the top floor of the library, the floor blows up, and they fall down to the basement. After some stumbling, they make it back up to the top, confused about what happened...and are suddenly teleported to the end.
• Stuff Blowing Up: When they hit the end of a map, or just get annoyed with it, they'll often go into creative mode and spawn a ton of TNT to destroy it.
• Swapped Roles: In Galacticraft, Sol becomes the smart one while Mirror becomes the one who just runs around doing what he's told to do.
• Vitriolic Best Buds

Miscellaneous

Vlogs:

• Artistic License – Geography: On his way to Pax South 2016, Max films out the window of the plane he's in. He's clearly leaving Chicago and heading over the water back to Canada, rather than to San Antonio. This is most likely a case of just using stuff he filmed days later in the wrong spot.
• Cute Kitten / Precious Puppy: Max's pets (as of writing this: four dogs and four cats) tend to show up whenever he leaves his room, and sometimes when he doesn't. Some of them fit these labels more than others.
• Economy Cast: Max is the only recurring person on the vlogs for obvious reasons, and very rarely do other people show up and willingly go along with it - so far, only people from the channel (Peter, Jero, Spark, and Blake), Peter's friends Greg and Josh, and a couple one-scene convention attendees have done so. Obviously other people show up as well, but because Max makes an effort to keep his camera hidden to avoid weird looks, they're usually not aware they're being filmed.
• Epic Fail: While in a pizza place, Max (secretly) films the workers passing the time by tossing a paper ball at a trash can in crazy ways, missing every time. Eventually, one of them picks it up and tries to lightly toss it in from one or two feet away, and still misses.
• Foreshadowing: While preparing to leave for Pax South, Max has the list of videos he needs to finish on his whiteboard, and it clearly mentions Sonic Boom and Gauntlet, neither of which were out when the vlog was released.
• Funny Background Event: Starting from the second week, he has a whiteboard hanging on his wall that will have random things written or drawn on it. Rarely does he actually focus on it, so you'd have to pay attention behind him when he's standing in front of it.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase: Every vlog is titled with the week number, followed by "The X Days", where X is an event or description that accurately sums up a major part of the vlog. For example, "The After Midnight Days" is the episode where Max constantly records the vlog segments after midnight (and technically on the next day), and "The Kitten Days" has one day have a rather long section of him walking around filming his cats playing.
• Running Gag: Several.
  • Him recording the vlog at the end of the day (often around 10 at night), just summing up the day before going to bed. This happens on a lot of days. "The After Midnight Days" takes this up a notch, where every single day was recorded after 2 AM the next day.
  • The changing whiteboard drawings in the background.
• Trash of the Titans: His room doesn't seem that clean, but it's downplayed. The table in the middle of his room, the area behind his computer monitor, and the floor around his gaming systems are all very cluttered, while the rest of his room is decently neat.

Super Vexation Saga (original):

• Artifact Title: Despite having "vexation" in its name, the series has become less about raging and more about competing.
  • Averted for the aborted second season, as the series is now apparently tailored to deliberately annoy the two players, with the games being chosen explicitly for the sake of frustration instead of just being the "Mario VS Sonic" theme from before.
• Batman Gambit: Possibly unintentional, but in Super Mario Bros. 2, when there's one life left and Max just died, Peter lets Max keep playing rather than taking control back. Because of this, when Max dies again and they stop, in the final score Max ends up with two more deaths than Peter, rather than them being tied, thus contributing to Peter's victory. Had Max given control back to Peter, or accomplished a bit before dying, then Max might have won.
• Cross Player: In Super Mario Bros. 2, Peter seems to enjoy playing as Peach, while Max alternates characters.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Sonic & Knuckles in the Super Vexation Saga was this with Max as the victor, winning in all but two factors - levels cleared and deaths, the former of which was a tie.
  • And a similar one in Super Mario Bros. 3, with Max winning in literally every category except deaths, where he lost by only one - and it was justified, as Peter stopped playing after getting two Game Overs, but Max played until he got three.
  • I Am Bread. Max finishes on his first try, and while he didn't get a very good score, he still finished. Peter went through his three tries in a fraction of the time Max spent on his single one and ended up pulling a Rage Quit.
• Down to the Last Play: Because of Max making a comeback, he and Peter end up tied after completing all the games on the list, forcing them into a tiebreaker. In said tiebreaker, there's another instance of this, as Max and Peter both end up with one less point than is required to win, making one final round be the deciding factor. Max wins, but then they decide to make it best of three. Peter wins the next round, and then Max wins the final round; neither were quite as tense as the first.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Super Mario Bros. was run differently in than the rest of the series; for example, they didn't stop until Peter Rage Quit, as opposed to future playthroughs where they stop after two Game Overs (after a certain point has been passed).
• Epic Fail: In Sonic 3D Blast, Peter's attempts at jumping onto a moving platform in one section. This drags on constantly to the point of reaching Overly Long Gag - he either misses, overshoots, or just phases through the platform. Max constantly has to take control over from him just to get him onto the platform. This ends up being the reason Peter loses that game and Max ties it up.
• Home Field Advantage: Max is typically better at the Super Mario Bros. games, as he's played those games (and platformers in general) a lot. Peter, on the other hand, is often better at the Sonic the Hedgehog games for similar reasons - especially since Max has never played any of the Sonic games planned for the series. Subverted as of late, with Max dominating the Sonic games as well after Peter gained an early lead.
  • Becomes a sort of Chekhov's Gun: Max beats Peter in the finale, Mario Bros., and proclaims that "Mario games are [his] turf!"
• Hostile Show Takeover: Downplayed; when Super Mario Bros. 2 begins, Peter is using Max as a footstool and ordering him to do things due to Peter being in the lead, but after a minute Max takes over again.
• Jump Scare: Downplayed and unintentional. Near the end of I Am Bread, Peter knocks a light over. Max jumping up to grab it is rather sudden and can take people off guard, especially if they didn't notice Peter hit the light.
• Overly Long Gag: Peter's inability to jump onto a moving platform in Sonic 3D Blast - see Epic Fail above.
• Rage Quit: Peter in Super Mario Bros. for the Super Vexation Saga.
  • And Peter again in Super Mario Bros. 3.
  • Max, for once, in Sonic 3D Blast, but by that point, it was an instant mutual agreement since neither of them really wanted to keep going.
  • I Am Bread: Peter gives up... even though he had already exhausted his three tries and lost anyway.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Peter and Max respectively.
• Rules of the Internet: Max and Peter try to create their own Rule of the Internet in part 3 of Super Mario Bros. 3 of the Super Vexation Saga. They end up deciding that their rule is "If two characters appear together, there will be shipping between them", which...is a rule that pretty much already exists as Rule 303.
  • In the video, Max decides the rule will be Rule 14...except he discovers during editing that there already is a Rule 14 ("Do not argue with trolls - it means that they win."), so he changes it to Rule 256...except that already exists too ("For every curse word, there is a town with that name. No exceptions.")
• Running Gag:
  • During the Sonic the Hedgehog games, Max keeps on instinctively jumping when he reaches a loop, rather than continuing to run.
  • The bed Max and Peter are on causing them trouble in Super Mario Bros. 3, mostly from Peter constantly getting stuck in the crack between the bed and the wall.
• Took a Level in Badass: After falling behind early on, Max starts pulling ahead in later episodes, and then wins the whole thing.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Max and Peter show this off the most in this series.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: In Super Mario Bros. 3, the mic gets temporarily unplugged. This doesn't stop them from continuing to play, and in editing, Max just uses the video camera's audio instead of the higher-quality mic audio.
  • In Sonic 3D Blast, the video camera shuts off due to low battery at one point, which neither Max nor Peter notice. Again, this doesn't stop them, even when they do notice, since the game and audio were still being recorded.
  • In Sonic Spinball and The Lost Levels and the true finale, the game audio wasn't recorded properly, so they use the game audio that was picked up by the camera, resulting in slightly lower quality game audio.

Pokémon Showdown Tournament:

Final Stats:

• Tied for 6th: Spark (lost to Max and Tim) and Enigma (lost to Jero and Rhino)
• Tied for 5th: Max (beat Spark, lost to Squill, lost to Tim) and Jero (beat Enigma, lost to Zero, lost to Rhino)
• 4th: Tim (lost to Squill, beat Spark, beat Max, lost to Rhino)
• 3rd: Rhino (lost to Zero, beat Enigma, beat Jero, beat Tim, lost to Zero)
• 2nd: Squill (beat Tim, beat Max, beat Zero, lost to Zero)
• Winner: Zero (beat Rhino, beat Jero, lost to Squill, beat Rhino, beat Squill)

Tropes:

• The Ace: Zero, Rhino, and Squillistipated.
  • Everyone actually had a good shot; while those three had raw skill, we also had Spark (who had won an actual tournament), Enigma, Tim (both of whom had beaten Max offscreen), Max (who had practice and logical thinking to make good strategies), and Jero (a Wild Card with a well put-together team).
• Chekhov's Gun: While Squillistipated is fighting Tim, he uses an Electric-type attack on Tim's Dragonite, apparently forgetting that Dragonite is also part Dragon-type. Later, during his final match against Zero, he makes the same mistake.
• Deadpan Snarker: Squill is just as big of one as anyone else.
• Lethal Joke Character: Usual Butt Monkeys Jero, Tim, and Max actually put up a good fight: Jero sends Enigma to the losers bracket and actually puts up a fight against Rhino. Tim makes it to 4th by beating Spark and Max. And Max actually does pretty good against Squill, who was otherwise almost untouchable.
• Running Gag: When Rhino sends out Bayou the Swampert (pronounced "by you"), Max almost always remarks "I will Bayou a drink".
• Special Guest: Squillistipated, the host of Who Wants to be a Gilionaire, competes in the tournament alongside seven channel regulars.
• Tournament Arc

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WHOOSH

Bom-bom

Tikatika

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