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Lets Play / StephenPlays

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"My name is Stephen Georg. I play video games."

StephenPlays is a YouTube Let's Play channel in which Stephen and Mallory Georg play video games, begun in late 2010. Stephen also has a separate channel, StephenVlog, where he documents his life with Mal (and, previously, his college roommates), which he had been doing successfully for a year before StephenPlays. He has also been involved with several EarthBound related fan productions such as Fobbies Are Borange, and joins ProtonJon, Tom Fawkes, and The 8-Bit Drummer on the Disc Only Podcast.

His website, which includes a list of Memorable Moments, the LP schedule and frequently asked questions, among other things, can be found here.

Current LPs

Recurring Series

  • First20: Every Friday, Stephen and Mal play the first twenty minutes (or so) of a video game they own.
  • Demo Fridays: On occasional Fridays, Stephen and Mal play a demo of a game on XBL or PSN. Substitutes for First20.
  • GTA Online: Stephen and Friends mess around in Grand Theft Auto Online. Sporadically released on Saturday nights when Stephen and Friends isn't released.
  • Animal Crossing New Horizons: Stephen and Friends visit each island owned by a friend in Animal crossing and mess around.
  • Memorable Moments: Humorous and memorable moments from previous LPs. Posted Monday-Thursday.
  • Mini-Golf Versus: Stephen and Mal play mini-golf at various locations in Myrtle Beach, sometimes with friends.
  • Morning Mario: Stephen plays a viewer-submitted level from Super Mario Maker every weekday morning.
  • Grandpa's Game Garage: Stephen plays viewer-submitted levels from Game Builder Garage.
  • Stephen and Friends: Stephen, Mal, and Friends play various multiplayer games. Sporadically released on Saturday nights when GTA Online isn't released.
  • Extra Life: Every fall, Stephen and Mal host a video game marathon on their Twitch channel with Extra Life to raise money for their local children's hospital. These videos are later uploaded on the YouTube channel.

    Previous LPs 

This series of Let's Plays contains examples of the following tropes:

  • Affectionate Parody: Stephen admitted in his 10-year anniversary video that his Pokémon LeafGreen let's play is a parody of Chuggaaconroy's detailed encyclopedia-like analyses of the various mons and their stats. Emile himself provides the opening narration for the LP's beginning, and makes a guest appearance during the catching of Mewtwo.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: invoked
    • Nana is apparently a heavy drinker who also smokes.
    • Stephen thinks the Pokemon Trainer from Brawl is the worst Pokemon trainer ever, because he can only capture statues and, when their play his Subspace doppelganger, his Charizard jumps off the edge and kills itself in seconds.
    • Crystal from Crystal's Pony Tale captures the other ponies' souls.
    • Farkas/Fartas is a pacifist.
    • Stephen considers Agitha from Twilight Princess to be creepy, insane and living in her own fantasy, though Mal disagrees.
    • In the same game, Stephen and Mal decide that the reason why Link never talks in dialogue boxes is that he's brain-damaged himself from walking into head-first into walls all the time during his adventures, and in reality he's an Intelligible Unintelligible who just says "herp skerp a derp" to people.
    • During 3D World, Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad become Barry (a self-absorbed jerk with issues), Larry (Barry's twin/brother/cousin who's just along for some reason), Pesh and Frog. After they unlock Rosalina, she is renamed Brenda (Barry's ex-wife) and replaces Frog.
    • In Episode 23 of Super Mario 64, Stephen interprets the flying carpet as having a Clingy Jealous Girl personality due to it vanishing once Mario has been away from it for a few seconds.
    • Link from Breath of the Wild is a pushy salesman/cult leader whose only goal in life is to sell everyone a Nintendo Switch, and who otherwise talks only in breathless, impatient monosyllabic responses to questions.
  • Annoying Laugh:
    • Stephen's rendition of Midna's "Eee hee!" Verbal Tic in Twilight Princess. Mal repeatedly tries to stop him reading that part of the text boxes out, but it never sticks.
    • Stephen also gives Saria a constant, nervous one when he voices her in Ocarina of Time.
  • Annoying Video Game Helper: In-Universe, Stephen sometimes thinks this towards Faendal during his more stupider moments and towards Lil' Brekflek when the latter went a little too kill happy, killing one of the Dark Brotherhood targets and killed a guard and a quest giver.
  • Apologetic Attacker: Sometimes does this to enemies that are not just a Red Shirt or a Mook.
  • April Fools' Day: A channel tradition.
  • Artifact Title: First20, a series where Stephen plays through the first 20 minutes of a game to see what he thinks of it doesn't quite live up to its title anymore, as most videos under the playlist last way longer than the allotted time.
  • Author Vocabulary Calendar: Stephen likes the phrase 'solid damage'.
    • When doing songs on stream, Stephen tends to lead in with the phrase "Don't you know..." to give himself time to think of rhymes. Mal occasionally does the same with "Guess what?"
  • Ax-Crazy: Lil' Brekflek.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Stephen comments on how many of the fights Argyl gets into should just be talked out, right before killing everyone.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Faendal may be an idiot sometimes but he can be terrifying as demonstrated when he thanks Argyl for killing Sven, and especially in "Skyrim #181" when he murdered Argyl.
  • Book Ends: He feels this way during the Dark Brotherhood questline which started with him leaving an abandoned shack and was about to end with him fast traveling back to the shack to catch the boat that has his final target, The Emperor.
  • Born Lucky: Mal, sometimes - for instance guessing the safe route across a dangerous floor in Gears of War the first time after not playing the game for years.
    • Stephen decides that 'luck exists' after playing Mario Party against Chuggaaconroy for the first time.
  • Buffy Speak:
    • When playing games with Mal on stream, Stephen refers to all NPCs indiscriminately as "the guy".
    • Almost any replenishable metered item in a game is dubbed "(X) Juice", such as "Climb Juice" for stamina in Breath of the Wild. Stephen claims to have acquired this habit from Alex.
  • Bumbling Sidekick: Faendal tends to make things either silly or difficult for Stephen, sometimes both.
  • Butt-Monkey: Faendal in Skyrim. Carl Sagan the Pidgeotto gets this in Pokémon LeafGreen to some extent too.
  • Call-Back: Whenever Stephen plays as Toon Link in World of Light, he makes sure that the tunic he's wearing is always purple as a reference to his role in The Runaway Guys Four Swords Adventures LP.
  • Captain Obvious: Mal in Brawl. A Running Gag is her non sequiturishly responding to something Stephen says by announcing what character she's playing as or what item she's holding.
  • Catchphrase:
  • Celebrity Resemblance: In Episode 30 of Twilight Princess, Stephen thinks the character Shad looks like Frodo.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • Mal would have won Sonic Generations had she not died at the very beginning of the game. Stephen lampshades this.
    • During Mario Kart 64's Battle Mode, Stephen and Mal both get Triple Green Shells and they fire all three to allow usage of their stocked item. Due to how Double Deck is structured, the shells haphazardly ricochet off the walls, making it difficult to track and they simply try to avoid them and continue beating the pulp out of each other. One of them ends up KO-ing Mal. Heck, the Memorable Moment for this is titled "Chekhov's Green Shell".
  • Cherry Tapping: Likes to do this with Poison Sting as his final move in Pokémon LeafGreen.
  • Colon Cancer: In Episode 7 of Super Mario 3D World, Stephen and Hayley rename the game Super Barry & Larry 3D Cat Land: The Movie: The Game: Based On The Comic: Which Is Also Based On Real Life Events.
  • Comically Missing the Point:
  • Content Warnings:
    "Unlike most content on StephenPlays, the 'Stephen & Friends' series is uncensored and may contain strong language and adult humor. Viewer discretion and all that jazz."
  • Contrived Coincidence: Both Stephen and Mal and The Runaway Guys independently came up with the running joke that Zelda is a throaty-voiced chain smoker (with Stephen's example coming first, but the Guys not being aware of it when they did theirs). This has remarkably confused the crossover fanbase between the two.
  • Cross Player: In Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!, Stephen plays as Dixie, whereas Mal plays as Kiddie.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Faendal has his moments.
  • Curse Cut Short: During Extra Life 2020, Stephen is sleepily losing it while playing Sesame Street: Elmo's A to Zoo Adventure. While trying to spell the word "duck" with acorns, there's this:
    Stephen: Duuuuuck. Diiiiii— oh whoops, no no no. [Dan is heard laughing in the background]
  • Cuteness Proximity:
    • Mal and Stephen spend most of Kirby Super Star gushing over how cute everything is.
    • During their playthrough of Super Mario 3D World's Bowser's Fury mode, Stephen and Mal start gushing over several of the cats found in Lake Lapcat.
    Stephen: Well, congratulations to Nintendo for creating the game of the year.
  • Cutting the Knot: Stephen likes to use skills like Persuade in Bethesda games to force shortcuts through missions by just convincing NPCs to see it his way. He also likes to try to break or cheese his way through shrines in Breath of the Wild and especially Tears of the Kingdom rather than trying to figure out the intended way.
    • On the other hand, this tendency often backfires, especially in Golf With Your Friends where Stephen is obsessed with taking shortcut trick shots that almost invariably end up taking longer and using more shots than if he just tried to do it legitimately.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Guest player Alex in Super Mario 3D World complains when the game mechanics aren't consistent with those in Super Mario 64 (such as not being able to ground-pound Boos). He's finally happy when the Bullies reappear from that game and are killed in the same way.
    • Mal often struggles with complex controls, especially when playing Breath of the Wild because she was simultaneously playing Animal Crossing, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Pikmin 3, all of which have very different control schemes.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Stephen's best friend Alex in his occasional appearances. Stephen himself qualifies at times.
  • Deep South: Stephen is from South Carolina, and an exaggerated Deep South redneck accent is his usual first choice of voice when voicing a random NPC.
    • Alex (from Alabama) also does this. For example, his almost incomprehensibly southern voice acting for a military character in Devil's Third was dubbed "General Boomhauer" by the chat.
  • Didn't Think This Through: In one episode of his Grand Theft Auto V Let's Play, Stephen drives a van that he needs to destroy to the mountains of Los Santos, where he spends a decent amount of time trying to get the van to explode. Once the van does just that, Stephen briefly basks in his success...only to realize that he's now in the middle of nowhere, without a convenient way to get himself back home.
  • Dissimile: In episode 3 of Brawl, Stephen tells Mal that Rayquaza is "A Pokemans, like Mewtwo, but he's a dragon, and not like Mewtwo at all".
  • Eldritch Abomination: Peggy, the bizarre creature made in Amazing Island during the 2018 Extra Life stream, who will supposedly awaken in 2033 and is now blamed for all streaming technical issues.
  • Entertainingly Wrong: Stephen has a habit of guessing how game mechanics will work (e.g. when things reset) and declaring "Almost certainly (it'll work like this)". He is almost invariably wrong.
  • Epic Fail: The entirety of his attempt to catch Mewtwo.
  • Escalating Punchline:
    • Stephen keeps increasing the number of successive years that Kirby Star Allies is his 'game of the year' whenever something he likes happens in-game. The joke makes a comeback for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is apparently Game of the Year six years in a row despite only having been out for three at the time Stephen said it.
    • Another example in Breath of the Wild (in earlier episodes) is Stephen's description of how short Link is getting more and more exaggerated every time.
  • Evolving Title Screen: When Stephen and Mal obtain the Master Sword in Breath of the Wild, the opening changes from Link standing on the cliff in his old clothes to Link wearing the Champion's gear, unsheathing the Master Sword.
  • First Installment Wins: invoked Stephen is like this about the Pokémon franchise - not only about recent games he hasn't played, but he also remembers very little about Generations II and III despite having played them at the time, yet conversely knows almost everything about Gen I.
  • Flat "What":
    • In Skyrim, when Ulfric Stormcloak says he can't accept the title of High King.
    • Also in Skyrim, when Astrid tells him he is going to kill the bride of a wedding.
  • Foreign Cuss Word: Stephen occasionally uses 'Wanker' to round out his family-friendly cussing (well, family-friendly unless the viewer is British...)
  • Forgetful Jones: Both Stephen and Mal, but especially the former have a habit of forgetting even the most important, obvious and frequently used skills/information mere seconds after being told about it onscreen. Let's just say "Grandpa" is a pretty warranted nickname for Stephen...
  • Forgot About His Powers:
    • During his Skyrim let's play, Stephen almost never uses his Beast Form during the events of the LP, in spite of never trying to get rid of it after completing the Companions quest.
    • A Running Gag in Stephen & Mal's streams of Breath of the Wild is that both of them forget the Cryonis ability exists and Mal also tends to forget she can run.
  • Forgotten Fallen Friend: Stephen and Mal don't particularly care for Elfilin and generally disregard his kidnapping. The joke culminates in the ending, where they pretend to forget his name.
  • Full-Name Ultimatum:
    • When Mal trolls him, Stephen will occasionally use her maiden name in this way.
    Stephen: MALLORY WEIR!
    • Mal then does it to Stephen in return in Battle Block Theater when he keeps accidentally blowing them both up with grenades.
  • Funny Background Event: In audio form from Skryim #157. "You need to leave".
  • Gentle Giant: Stephen is a generally nice, down to earth guy. He's also 6'6".
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Rarely ever swears. Unless you count "piss" as a swear.
    • An aversion in Shadow of the Colossus: he gets very frustrated with Celosia, and after a grueling battle releases a tirade of (bleeped out) swears on the poor creature. At the end here.
    • Completely averted in The Last of Us: when reading the different document artifacts he finds in the world, he reads out the swears as well. Justified, as censoring them in a game like The Last of Us would be rather pointless.
  • Happily Married: Stephen and Mal.
  • Harmless Villain: Starting with his island in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons videos, Thomas's ingame villain persona, Wet Bone, who attacks by sprinkling water from a watering can on his victims.
  • Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Stephen sometimes gives his characters silly names in one-off let's plays.
    • The protagonist of Endless Ocean is given the bizarre name Fargothix. That name becomes a running gag in other videos. When they play Harvest Moon for Extra Life, the protagonist is named Fargothix, his farm Farmgothix, and his dog Fardogthix. When playing MLB Power Pros, Stephen decides Fargothix's last name is "Ismyname".
    • In Extra Life 2021, he names his character in Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus "Human??" because of his unsettling appearance akin to an alien trying to disguise itself as a human.
    • His character in The Dog Island is named SuperRuffDoggoPupper.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Stephen is over a foot taller than Mal.
  • Humiliation Conga: Mario Kart #16: MKWii Shell Cup, period paragraph, beginning to end. "I smoked Mal in practice" declarations in the beginning turn into Mal dusting Stephen in every single track, beating him with a perfect 60 to his 39, a 21 point lead. There is not a track in the video where Stephen does not leave utterly humiliated... only to go on to the next track and brag about how set he is.
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • Faendal kills Argyl for killing an NPC but after a reload goes and kills the exact same NPC.
    • In the first Mario Kart race between Stephen and Mal, Stephen tells Mal not to get too cocky because it's only the first lap of the first race. Almost immediately after, and debatably through the entire LP, Stephen ends up getting insanely cocky, usually just before a humiliating fall.
  • Improv: Stephen is known for being able to improvise songs about what's happening in a game on the spot, sometimes set to the game's music but more often based on the tune of a randomly chosen real song (or even one he makes up on the spur of the moment).
    • On Breakfast Stream and Friday night gaming streams, a viewer donating 5000 bits with a topic will force Stephen to improvise a song on the spot (with the accompanying music changing every few months).
  • In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: In this clip, Alex does an Affectionate Parody of Stephen that is a mix of this, Department of Redundancy Department and Small Name, Big Ego:
    Alex: [as Stephen] Welcome back to StephenVlogs, this is StephenVlogs, my name's Stephen Georg, we are playing video games, I play video games, my name's Stephen Georg, I'm StephenVlogs.
  • Inherently Funny Words: Stephen appears to think this about the word 'bunion', which crops up in a number of unexpected places.
  • I Never Said It Was Poison: At one point during Pokémon LeafGreen #40, Stephen predicts a viewer's comment: "Stephen, are you drunk?" Keep in mind, previous loopy speaking aside, Stephen never even implied he was drunk prior to that.
  • In-Series Nickname:
    • Stephen refers to the Blackglasses item in Pokémon LeafGreen as the "hater shades". He also refers to Pokedollars, the in-game currency, as "P-moneyz".
    • He has several for different Mooks in Brawl: Auroros are "Birds of Paradise", Bucculus are "Nipple Suckers" and Shellpods are "Paracrosses".
    • He refers to Ness and Lucas as "The Mother Brothers".
    • Mal also has a tendency to use malapropism nicknames for characters, like 'Marro' for Mario, 'Kirbs' for Kirby, and 'Donkles, Diddles, Dixxles and Crankles' for the Kong family (these ones partly inspired by names Stephen's parents came up with while trying to name Smash Bros characters in a challenge).
    • Elfilin is referred to as "Elf-illin'" or "Illin' Elf".
    • Kirby is Kirbo, and Kirby's Mouthful Mode code form is Conebo.
  • Insistent Terminology:
    • Towards the end of LittleBigPlanet 2, both Mal and Stephen start to refer to the game as "Mallory's Dress Simulator".
    • In Resident Evil 5 they both refer to the non-zombie enemies as "new friends!"
    • Mal refers to the Kremlings in the Donkey Kong Country series as "friends!"
    • In Super C the enemy mooks end up being dubbed "Green Power Rangers".
    • In Super Mario 3D World, largely at the instigation of guests Alex and Hayley, the player characters Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad get dubbed Barry, Larry, Pesh and Frog respectively. Stephen also refers to the game as 'Cat World', even outside the LP, to the point where he gets momentarily confused in the Morning Mario series on being reminded that's not its actual title.
  • Lower-Deck Episode: The "And Friends" episode of Stephen & Friends is played entirely without Stephen, because Stephen was unavailable around that time (Stephen suspects it was because he was dead tired and asleep). Stephen eventually reacted to it since he wasn't able to see the footage until then.
  • Madness Mantra:
    • "Bait...rock...ball. Bait...rock...ball" in Pokémon LeafGreen's Safari Zone.
    • "Gimme something good, gimme something good, gimme something good!" when Stephen hits an item box in Mario Kart and is waiting for the roulette to settle on an item.
  • MST: Tends to do this over cutscenes.
  • Named After Somebody Famous: Mal and Stephen's cats (respectively) Kepler and Sagan, named after astronomers Johannes Kepler and Carl Sagan.
  • Name McAdjective: At the end of episode 7 of Resident Evil 5, Mal claims to be "Helpy McHelperton".
  • Never Say "Die": Spoofed in Pikmin 4, in which Stephen and Mal insist no Pikmin has ever died, and instead they go on vacation, to the retirement home, on the farm upstate, under the sea.
  • N-Word Privileges: Stephen can refer to argonians as lizards, but no one else can.
  • Non-Human Sidekick: Well more like a sidekick that is not one of the selectable races, but Lil' Brekflek is like this. The game even refers to him as a pet.
  • No Sense of Direction:
    • Mal - according to Stephen at least. But only in games, not in Real Life.
    • Stephen also claims her sister Karley is even worse, despite being an astrophysicist.
    • In more recent years, the joke has been reversed, with Stephen typically getting lost more often than Mal (but usually related to his poor short-term memory).
  • Not the Intended Use: In Assassin's Creed, the Gentle Push was rarely ever used to navigate through a crowd and instead was used on random citizens. He even lampshaded it.
  • Old School Introductory Rap: A minor Running Gag by Alex in the "Barry & Larry: Rappers" episode of Super Mario 3D World.
    Alex: My name is Barry and I'm here to say, I love rappin' in the usual way...
  • One Head Taller: Stephen and Mal. Mal is 5'5", and Stephen is 6'6".
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted in the Endless Ocean: Blue World First20, in which Stephen names the dolphin "Nancy" because there's already a human character in the game called Nancy, producing deliberately confusing and funny dialogue.
  • Opening Narration: "Hello everyone, and welcome back to more Stephen Plays [video game]. My name is Stephen Georg, I play video games, and today it's [video game]."
  • Our Goblins Are Different: Lil' Brekflek, one of Stephen's sidekicks in Skyrim.
  • Painting the Fourth Wall: Since Dan started editing some of Stephen's videos, live Stephen will sometimes instruct future Dan to edit in various things. On one occasion in Stephen & Friends live Dan even told future Dan to stop drinking so much chocolate milk (cut to future Dan at his computer looking disappointed).
  • Papa Wolf: Stephen and Mal don't have kids in real life, but Stephen in particular is very protective of kids in games. The Walking Dead is a good example of this, with Clementine in the first two seasons and Gabe in A New Frontier.
    Stephen: When you put a gun to a kid's head, and you start threatening that kid? That's when we have a problem.
  • Parody Commercial: Starting in 2021, Stephen implements gag advertising blurbs for Tiny Eddie (a Little Debbie knockoff he made up) in Twitch streams. When a viewer drops bits and mentions Tiny Eddie, a randomly generated pitch plays for a made-up snack item. The pitches range from normal-sounding to those only suitable for the adventurous.
  • Perfectly Cromulent Word:
    • "Agreeance" in episode 24 of Pokémon LeafGreen.
    • "Arenarea" from Episode 11 of Twilight Princess.
  • Permanently Missable Content:
    • Mehrune's Razor. Subverted in the dream sequence near the end of the Skyrim LP.
    • The Skull of Corruption.
  • Popcultural Osmosis Failure: Happens periodically to Stephen due to his lack of familiarity with Star Wars and Harry Potter. A particular Running Gag in "Broken Picturephone", in which Stephen always refers to Hagrid simply as "Harry Potter's Big Friend" when he comes up.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: In-Universe. In episode 4 of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the game combines their names into "SMALN" while they're both riding in a minecart, and Stephen decides it's their new couple name.
  • Precision F-Strike: Because these moments are exceptionally rare, on account of Stephen and Mal not being very prominent swearers, whenever Stephen or Mal do drop an F or S-bomb, it's pretty jarring. Thankfully, most of the curses are censored (with the exceptions of any Stephen & Friends series, or if either of them are reading dialogue in a game).
  • A Rare Sentence: From the Garfield Kart videos: "You can lasagna out of a diamond. Um, that is a phrase that I just said with my human mouth, but it does work."
  • Robo Speak:
    • Both Stephen and especially Mal represent R.O.B. talking like this in Brawl.
    Mal: I. AM. ROB.
    • Mal accused Stephen himself of this at one point due to the way he pronounces "human being."
  • Running Gag: Several, but usually specific to a particular LP.
    • First20 running over twenty minutes... often by a lot. This is lampshaded in the comments.
    • "This reminds me of Ocarina of Time..." in Twilight Princess.
    • "Gentle Push" in Assassin's Creed.
    • In LittleBigPlanet2, when asked at the end of the level "Did you like it?", Stephen replies, "I LIKED IT" in a deep, throaty Cookie Monster-like voice.
    • Stephen's fake crying after something doesn't go his way.
    • In their SSB4 LP, Mal has developed the habit of countering whatever Stephen says at the end of an episode with murdering him.
    • Stephen supplying an NPC with a weird voice and, after Mal's incredulous silence, replying, "That's his voice."
      • Also applies to when he makes weird sounds for items: "That's the sound it makes."
    • Stephen mentioning going to Arby's in the middle of cutscenes in Resident Evil 5.
      • Referring to Walmart the same way during Brawl cutscenes.
    • Mal happily pointing out every single bee throughout the Donkey Kong Country games.
    • Stephen's breakdowns during Mal's episodes of Pikmin.
    • Every time Stephen has to solve a puzzle without Mal's help, expect hilarious and often disastrous results.
    • They spend the entirety of Brawl arguing over how to pronounce "feyesh."
    • invokedThroughout Minecraft, Stephen makes fun of Mal falling into the lava once and losing all of her items, including a stack of 64 iron.
    • Stephen comparing every four-legged Colossus to Venusaur.
    • With Fallout 4: "[moans] Ribcage."
    • In Limbo and Inside, Stephen has decided that left is the Burger King direction, and right is the McDonalds direction.
      Stephen: [panicking] Oh my god, head to Burger King now! GO TO BURGER KING NOW!
    • In Morning Mario and occasionally other series, after a harrowing bit of platforming or button mashing, Stephen declares 'Palms are sweaty' and then Dan edits in Eminem popping up and rhyming "Mom spaghetti!"
    • Also in Morning Mario, in videos released on Wednesday Stephen will sometimes refer to it as "Hump Day", and Dan edits in a gif of a camel saying "Whoo whoop!"
    • Forgetting the Cryonis ability (or not realizing they can use it in a certain situation) in Breath of the Wild.
    • Also in Breath of the Wild, Stephen sings "Dust in the Wind" (or a variation of the song) whenever the monk at the end of the shrines fade away into dust.
    • A third in Breath of the Wild: every time Link recovers a memory, Stephen cheerfully ruins the poignant cutscene by adding his own version of Link's internal monologue, in which all the memories are about where his favourite fast food restaurants stood 100 years earlier.
    • "You Know ;)" as a response in Jackbox games.
    • Super Mario Galaxy: Whenever a character mentions Star Bits, Stephen supplies a raspberry sound in place of the word. When the game gives both motion control or button input alternatives for the same action, he also reads out the dialogue box while ignoring the reference to motion controls as though it doesn't exist.
    • A rare one present across multiple games: starting with Extra Life gameplay of Paper Mario, Stephen voices Bowser in his impression of Mitch Hedberg's voice.
    • Characters having a fixation with Yu-Gi-Oh! becomes this in A Way Out.
    • Quoting the song "It Takes Two" during It Takes Two.
    • "World's Greatest Dad" from Pokémon Let's Go!.
    • Mal responds to irrelevant or excessive exposition from a game with a flat "Interesting. Good to know." This originated from one of the "Fiasco" tabletop streams.
    • Since they moved to Raleigh in 2022, Xenogears superfan Hayley constantly claims that the next thing Stephen will play will be Xenogears.
    • An unintentional one in Tears of the Kingdom is that Mal consistently always gets the shrines which take your equipment and give a combat challenge (which she hates) while Stephen nearly always gets the physics puzzle shrines he struggles with - when both would be much happier with the other.
  • Shaped Like Itself:
    • At the end of Episode 14 of Brawl:
    Stephen: Be sure to join us next time when we go into Subspace, and things get...
    Mal: Subspacey?
    Stephen: ...Subspacey. Yeah.
    • In a Halo 3 match including both JoshJepson and Pcull44444, Stephen explains who Pcull is because his Xbox name is different. Another player asks "Then who's JoshJepson?" and Stephen explains "JoshJepson is JoshJepson".
    • At the beginning of episode 49 of Twilight Princess:
      Mal: Do you see on the map, the buildings? You see they're square, like buildings?
      Stephen: [sarcastically] You see the building-shaped things?
  • Shout-Out:
  • Sibling Team: Mal and her sister Karley form one against Stephen in one of the Brawl videos. They do it again for Sister Segadventure, though not to fight against Stephen.
  • Simpleton Voice: Stephen does one for "Ollie" the statue in Twilight Princess` Temple of Time.
  • Space Trucker: In Starfield, Stephen's character C. B. McCoy was designed by him around this archetype.
  • Speak of the Devil: ProtonJon has a tendency to suddenly appear in Stephen and Mal's Twitch chat on Friday night streams whenever his name is mentioned, provoking Paranoia Fuel which has led Stephen to accuse Chaz of bugging his house on Jon's behalf. (Jon also does this on MasaeAnela's streams).
  • Spoonerism: Stephen refers to Triangle Strategy as "Strangle Tragedy".
  • Springtime for Hitler: Stephen and Mal did a 6-hour video of doing a jigsaw puzzle in real time as an April Fool's joke, because obviously nobody would stick around to watch the whole thing... except fans loved it and demanded more, with a baffled Stephen later describing it as 'one of the most requested series' and doing a (somewhat different) follow-up.
  • Strange Minds Think Alike: In Episode 23 of Super Mario 64, Stephen and Mal both making the same Aladdin reference at the same time.
    Stephen: You're my soulmate.
    Mal: I know.
  • The Nicknamer:
  • Technical Pacifist: Stephen sometimes acts like this in Skyrim especially during the Dark Brotherhood questline, such as having Lil' Brekflek murder his targets, untill Brekflek went of a murderous rampage, causing Stephen to kill the rest of the targets himself, which even after that he still tries to get him to attack him first so that he kills them "in self defense".
  • Third-Person Person:
    • Stephen when playing as "Cold Kitty" in episode 9 of Battle Block Theater.
    • Mal does the same when playing as Gooey in Kirby Star Allies.
  • Too Awesome to Use:
    • Debatable whether it's this or Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!, but in Pikmin 2 Stephen and Mal collect dozens of potions and never use any of them, often talking about how they really need to start using them and then immediately starting a fight against a boss without ever using them. This only gets subverted near the end of the LP.
    • This shows up again in Pikmin 3, with Stephen using more potions by accident than he does on purpose; he yells at himself when he realises they narrowly failed to beat the final boss in one in-game day because he never used any of the eighteen(!) potions he had spent the whole game gathering.
  • Troll: In some instances, Mal.
  • Trigger-Happy: Mal in Halo 2. When confronted with a new problem, be it ship, scarab, vehicle or stage event, her first reaction is usually to shoot at it.
    Stephen: [upon seeing the scarab destroy a tank] So, uh Mal, guess what we gotta do?
    Mal: ROCKET LAUNCHER?
    Stephen: ...no.
  • The Un-Favourite: Stephen loves Donkey Kong Country, but hates playing as Donkey Kong in it (as opposed to Diddy Kong) and repeatedly complains about how inferior a player character he considers him to be.
    • Yunobo in Tears of the Kingdom. Neither Mal nor (especially) Stephen remember him being in the previous game or can remember his name; Mal calls him 'Daruk' while Stephen varies between 'Yajirobe', 'Darien', 'Alfredo', 'The Guy', 'Big Man', 'Gerald', 'Big Bill' and more.
  • The Unpronounceable: In a Super Mario RPG stream, Stephen's Twitch chat discover that he has trouble pronouncing the word "thermodynamics", and promptly donate to make him repeatedly sing about it. Hilarity eventually ensues.
    • After Stephen does manage to train himself to say it, the chat keep looking for other words and phrases he has trouble with. Even Tiny Eddie joins in with "Super Bowl Oil Pies". Others include "Raw Whole Bird" (an item from Zelda) and Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
  • Unusual Euphemism: "Cave Activities" is treated as one in Pikmin 4 and, later, Tears of the Kingdom.
  • Verbal Tic:
    • Mal's distinctive "Uh-huh" when Stephen's asking her questions about a game.
    • Stephen's trademark "GYUH!" laugh.
  • Vocal Dissonance:
    • Stephen gives the baby-faced child Malo a deep voice in Twilight Princess.
    • Princess Zelda has a deep raspy smoker voice and Impa has a very high and feminine voice.
    • Stephen reads all of Bowser's dialogue with an impression of Mitch Hedburg.
  • Waxing Lyrical:
    • In the finale of Sonic Generations, Mal does this with Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire".
    • Stephen briefly does it with "The Christmas Song" in Episode 29 of Twilight Princess: "I know it's been said many times, many ways..."
    • And again in Assassin's Creed part 3, with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."
  • What the Hell Is That Accent?: During Extra Life 2020, Stephen gives a Busy Scissors customer named Isaac Inks a very strange accent.
    Stephen: [Normal voice] Isaac Inks, where are you from? [as Isaac] Try and guess! 'Cause I don't know!
  • Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Fargothix, protagonist of the Endless Ocean First20 videos.
  • With Lyrics: Stephen and Mal sing a duet to the Rainbow Road music in the Special Cup of Mario Kart Double Dash.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Stephen sometimes tries to apply the logic of the Animated Adaptation of Pokémon to the game (albeit usually in a joking way).
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: Happens constantly to Stephen in Mario Kart every time he tries to catch up to Mal's lead in the number of cup wins.

 
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I Took a Few Liberties

In this TRG Colosseum sketch based on a dream Stephen had, Stephen asks Tom to record an episode of Morning Mario for him, only for the video to be a snowboarding lesson that has nothing to do with Super Mario Maker. When asking Tom about it, he insists to Stephen that he, "took a few liberties," until he's left screaming the phrase over and over again.

Example of:
Madness Mantra

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I Took a Few Liberties

In this TRG Colosseum sketch based on a dream Stephen had, Stephen asks Tom to record an episode of Morning Mario for him, only for the video to be a snowboarding lesson that has nothing to do with Super Mario Maker. When asking Tom about it, he insists to Stephen that he, "took a few liberties," until he's left screaming the phrase over and over again.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (9 votes)

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Main / MadnessMantra

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