Lets Play / TheStrawhatNO!

"TheStrawhatNO!: A first for everything!"

TheStrawhatNO! is a Let's Play channel headed by ThornBrain, Mugiwara Yoshi, JigglyJacob, and formerly BigTUnit1 of the parody channel TheMidnightFrogs. The group's Let's Play style is informative, yet snarky and comedic commentary, with on emphasis on the game first and their personalities second. The team name is an admitted Word Salad Title - see the entry for the trope below.

Thorn, and later Yoshi, originally did Let's Plays with former colleague DragonFatman on his LP channel FATLPs. The two split from Fatman on April 12, 2010 and started TheStrawhatNO! on April 13. They dabbled in Retsupurae for a while, sporadically recording Let's Plays after the first month (all of which were eventually canceled). They made the jump to Something Awful in May 2011 with Bomberman Hero, bringing Travis into the mix, and this is considered the formal beginning of TSN as it's now known.

Travis bowed out of the group due to work in January 2017, and Yoshi was too busy for more than occasional commentating for the same reason, leaving Thorn as the channel's only active Let's Player for the next two years, though friend and recurring guest JigglyJacob was made a formal team member in January 2019. The channel currently has Thorn and Jacob trading off on leading LPs while Yoshi co-commentates with them. Thorn also occasionally LPs farming sims with Skippy Granola and YamiNoSenshi as "The Farm Fucks."

The channel was signed with Screenwave Media from February 2018 to January 2021 and is currently independent. Thorn has a Patreon page to support the channel and pay for her rent, and Yoshi also has one as a tip jar.

A complete archive of current and completed Let's Plays can be found here, and Best Of compilations of individual LPs can be found here.

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This group provides examples of:

• A Birthday, Not a Break
  • A running joke in Wind Waker HD, where Yoshi keeps announcing that this is PizzaJoe's worst birthday whenever anything bad happens, and then Travis points out that it's not his birthday anymore.
  • In The Last of Us, the Zombie Apocalypse begins on protagonist Joel's birthday. Travis argues that Joel's birthday is still better than PizzaJoe's.
• Aborted Arc: The Fallout 3 Nuzlocke, the original run of Bloodborne, and all LPs before Bomberman Hero were canceled due to technical difficulties and/or lack of interest.
• Accentuate the Negative: Thorn acknowledges that this was their MO for a long time. Even if they love the game being played, they will point out anything that irritates them. Thorn's made an effort since 2013 to focus on games she enjoys playing after Skyward Sword and Ni no Kuni trained so negative.
• Accidental Misnaming:
  • Thorn and Yoshi have noted that sometimes people think the channel name is "the stra-what no".
  • In Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare at North Point, Travis briefly mixes up Old Salty Crab's name with "Crusty Crab". The guys take to calling him this for the rest of the DLC.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band:
  • In Bomberman Hero, Laser Rain is mentioned as this after an area with a lot of lasers. "Tower of Laser Spikes" and "Helicopter Brain TV" also get spoken, and they think they would make good album titles.
  • In Majora's Mask, Spiders and Seagulls, which they develop into a Revolving Door Band by virtue of the members eating each other and then the audience.
  • In Twilight Princess, they all agree that "Killed the ghost of an eagle" would make a great Country song.
  • In Dark Souls, Travis thinks that "Giant Toxic Slugs" and "The Frustrated Slugs" sound like Punk bands.
  • "Calzone of Blood."
• Alternative Character Interpretation: A common in-universe comedic tool:
  • Bomberman in every iteration - Superhero, or Deadpan Snarker Punch-Clock Hero with murderous tendencies?
  • Bomberman Hero:
    • Pibot - An incompetent robot guarding a princess, or an insane, sociopathic rapist?
      Thorn: You came for me my love.
      Travis: Let's fly away on a white stallion.
      Thorn: Well, it's not white anymore. It's kind of gray. I mean I crashed your ship.
      Travis: Allow me to hold you in my silver, human-killing arms.
    • Princess Millian - Princess, or seal?
  • Bomberman Jetters:
    • Max is depressed.
    • Shout isn't even paying attention to the player's actions.
    • All of the Jetters are monsters for attacking every Hige they see, even the ones who are just hanging around.
  • Twilight Princess:
    • Malo from has telekinetic powers
    • Colin is hated by his parents
    • Purlo wants to steal Link's virginity
    • Falbi wants Link to molest him
    • Yeto the yeti likes shoving people for giving him soup ingredients and is also very religious.
    • The Freezards in Snowpeak Ruins aren't blocking a spiral staircase; they're just really amazed by walls.
    "Every time I wake up, it just gets BETTER!!!"
  • Bomberman Generation:
    • The boss of Tako Desert is a Charabomb Merge Gone Horribly Wrong, and therefore wants to get rid of any future merges.
    • Ein is desperate for Bomberman's company.
  • Skyward Sword: Dumple (Link) is a crazy psychopath.
  • Ni no Kuni:
    • Drippy is made into the worst and most insufferable punster.
    • A random NPC woman is a robot grandma.
    • Myrtle is a Creepy Child
      "I watched you from my window..."
      "I wore this poofy dress for you..."
    • Swaine is a crazy, mumbling, homeless man who can only eat trash, eventually being dubbed "Dumpster Dracula".
    Travis: "I like how Swaine somehow became an even stupider character than Drippy."
  • Sleeping Dogs:
    • Wei and Raymond have Belligerent Sexual Tension and are secretly in love.
    • King is a Cloudcuckoolander with no friends who constantly asks Wei ridiculous questions, regardless of the time of day.
      "By the way, Wei-"
  • Bioshock Infinite: Elizabeth is Agro part 2.
  • Majora's Mask:
    • A rare non-comedic example: Thorn asserts that Link is mentally scarred and emotionally stunted by the events of his life.
    • Romani worships Satan, and Cremia is obsessed with spiking the farm's milk with various substances such as Kool-Aid.
    • The "Farewell to Gibdos" song depresses Gibdos with bad memories of carnivals.
  • Punch-Out!!: Doc Louis is constantly trolling Mac, who himself is only boxing to afford law school.
  • Ocarina of Time:
    • Link is stoic and unfeeling all the time, except for when he hates learning music.
    • Travis briefly presumes that the back alley soldier in Market Town is a homeless drunk.
• Ambiguous Gender:
  • Hanch, Renaldo, and Luda, to Travis. He splits the difference with Hanch and Renaldo and calls them both.
  • Bomber Elite. Even though Thorn prefaces the fight with "This is a dude", none of the three can remember it.
  Travis: (as Bomberman) I loved her...
  (Beat)
  Thorn and Travis: Him.
  Thorn: I loved him.
  Travis: I'm kind of confused right now...
• An Economy Is You: Lampshaded in the City in the Sky, which is populated entirely by bird-like creatures with no arms, but the shop only sells items Hey Hey can use.
• Animate Inanimate Object: A cupcake in Pikmin 2 Day 10 seems to move on its own; there is no Dweevil underneath it, and the nearby Blowhog is too far way to be pushing it. Yoshi suggests that it's being controlled by the almond on top of it.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: invoked Thorn hates hand-holding that stops the gameplay to tell you what to do or how to do something she already knows how to do. Among her most hated is Fi, who frequently stops the game to give information that she already learned from someone else within the last minute, and Drippy, who when stopping fights to give hints always negates Thorn's attacks. Marcassin ends up doing the same thing as Drippy late in Ni no Kuni whenever he casts Ward.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • In Part 4 of Agent Under Fire, six different enemies (from three different recordings) blindly fall off a platform to their deaths in the ocean below.
  • Several enemies in Bomberman Jetters. The robo-carp in particular swim directly into bombs if you place one between them and yourself.
  • Thorn takes advantage of enemies killing each other in Bomberman Generation any chance she gets.
  • A background driver in Part 11 of Sleeping Dogs drives into another car immediately as a cutscene begins.
• Author Appeal: While some of the Mii's in Tomodachi Life are based on TSN! Continuity Nods, several are favourite musicians of Thorn's, such as Tom Waits, Andrew W.K. and Jarvis Cocker.
• Awesome Music: In-Universe:
  • Thorn often praises the soundtracks of The Legend of Zelda games when she LPs them, with Majora's Mask being an old favorite. She also considers the soundtrack for Skyward Sword, a game she views poorly, to be one of its high points, and the music for Koloktos is her favorite boss theme in the entire franchise.
  • Thorn and Travis gush over the soundtrack for Ni no Kuni every other part. The rest of the time they're chewing out the characters and writing.
  • During a discussion on music in the Twilight Princess LP, Travis praises the soundtrack to Skies of Arcadia. Later when he LPed the game he praised it further.
  • Despite her middling thoughts on the Bomberman franchise as a whole, Thorn often praises their games' soundtracks, particularly Super Bomberman 3, Saturn Bomberman, Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!, and she even admits that she likes the memetically irritating Bomberman Hero soundtrack. She singles out Saturn Bomberman as one of her favorite game soundtracks, and it's part of why she thinks it's the best Bomberman game.
  • Thorn notes in the Harvest Moon: Animal Parade LP that its soundtrack is surprisingly lush and gorgeously orchestrated, and it's also one of her favorite game soundtracks.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: The guys think this is what's going on with Wei and Raymond.
• Berserk Button:
  • Camcorder Let's Plays and child LPers. The two are usually combined, hence these two videos.
  • For Thorn, being stopped mid-gameplay to be told something she already knows or something completely pointless, (E.G. Professor Ein, Shout, Fi, Mr. Drippy).
• Best Boss Ever: In-Universe, Thorn votes Koloktos to be her favourite boss fight in all of Zelda, with Majora's Mask's Goht a close second.
• Black Comedy Rape: Occurred early in the team's life, but stopped in 2013.
  • 90% of what Pibot says, aside from murdering the elderly and other bleak Non Sequiturs.
  • Fighting the Mujoe statue miniboss in Bomberman Jetters:
  Travis: *cracking up* I'ma gonna rape ya!!
• The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: Discussed in the Shadow of the Colossus finale, which involves one of these.
• Bob from Accounting: One of the Bulblins slaughtered by Hey Hey in Twilight Princess. Other mooks were laughing at his death.
• Bond One-Liner: Discussed briefly when commenting on an enemy's aim in Agent Under Fire.
  "That's kind of a Bond line, isn't it? 'There's no way I can miss!' 'But you can die.'"
• Book Ends: The Grimrock 2 LP opens on Cricket Dazzler setting everyone on fire. The last episode of the mod showcase ends on Cricket Dazzler setting everyone on fire.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Discussed with the Doomsday Apparatus in Pikmin 2, the first boss treasure Yoshi picks up that doesn't upgrade the player.
• Brick Joke:
  • Bomberman Hero:
    • Thorn's opinion of the game is occasionally brought up as the LP goes on. She defends it heartily at the beginning, but just about hates it when the game is finished.
    • Dragon Road has no dragons, just flying knives. The next time flying knives are encountered, Travis insists that they are dragons.
    • Thorn suggests early in the LP that she and Travis should write lyrics for "Redial". When the song is requested by the Something Awful thread for a montage video near the end of the LP, they do exactly that.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Thorn has some inexplicable trouble opening a chest in the Goron Mines. Much later in the LP when she goes back to get a heart piece, she also goes back to the chest and opens it properly.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: During the Lanayru Sand Sea, Thorn and Travis start talking about the to-be-Let's Played Ni no Kuni, namely how often Swaine dies in battle. Later when Thorn kills the Moldarach miniboss, Travis yells out Swaine's death cry.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: During the Anju and Kafei sidequest, the guys joke about the Postman wondering if he can deliver mail to himself. Come the night of the final day, they see him panicking on the floor and think he's having a crisis because he still hasn't figured it out.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD: Yoshi explains how the islands of the sea are assigned to sectors by a number and a letter.
  Thorn: Don't go to G4; it's not on anymore.
  (later in the video, Yoshi goes to the Great Fairy Fountain in that sector)
  Thorn: I TOLD YOU NOT TO GO THERE.
  • Legend of Grimrock II: At the end of Part 2, Yoshi is excited to see what other disgusting foods they can feed to Pubert, and he jokes about feeding him a whole snake. When they get to the Pyramid of Umas, the cobra enemies drop their tails as food.
• Broken Pedestal: For many of her LPs in the first few years, Thorn started out liking the game in question, but by the end of it she and the guys learned to hate it as all of its flaws come to the forefront. It was so prevalent with Bomberman games that she predicted this would happen with Bomberman Generation before the LP even started. Travis later noted during Ni no Kuni, a game that also experienced this, that only a handful of their LPs ended with them still liking the game. The ratio was upended considerably as Travis, Yoshi and later Jacob took over more LPs specifically of games they liked, and Thorn actively decided after Skyward Sword and Ni no Kuni trained so negative that she should focus on games she knew she would enjoy the whole way through.
• Brown Note: Just the sound of Thorn's kazoo or Travis' tuba mouthpiece is enough to send the whole trio into hysterics. When Travis brings the latter out at the end of Day 5 in Pikmin 2:
  Yoshi: *While still laughing* That was my favorite moment in the entire fucking Let's Play.
• Call-Back: The team often callback to previous LPs or jokes:
  • In an early episode of Twilight Princess, Link is shirtless and Thorn says "Lllllllladies." Final video, Midna's true form appears. "Mmmmmmmmm- boys."
  • In Skyward Sword, Travis jokes that Yeto from Twilight Princess randomly appears and shoves Fi into his soup.
  Travis (as Yeto): "It's better now!"
  • During the Skyward Sword Sandship video, Travis calls back to Constructor-X using perfect impressions of Homestar Runner and Strong Bad.
  • Pibot found his way into the team's LPs up to Tomodachi Life.
  • In Majora's Mask Yoshi jokes about the Deku Scrub guards disapproving of anybody having fun in their palace, then linking them back to Shout disapproving of the Hige-Hige Bandits having fun.
  • Among the portraits Thorn uses for everyone in Legend of Grimrock 2, Travis's/Ogre Taint's is from the Randall video.
  • Thorn titles Funland Co.'s introductory episode in Hero of Leaf Valley as "Punchable Faces". Come Story of Seasons and the introduction of Elise, she titles the episode "Punchable Faces 2".
  • In Link's Crossbow Training, Yoshi brings back the "rumor has it..." gag from Twilight Princess, to Thorn's bewilderment.
• Calling Your Attacks: Thorn and Yoshi note that the Grand Bomber can not do this with any accuracy or cohesion.
• Canon Discontinuity: Every LP from before Bomberman Hero has been removed from TheStrawhatNO's channel or set to private/unlisted. Solidified when Thorn updated all of the LP playlists, and Bomberman Hero is listed as LP #1. Blip.tv later deleted TheStrawhatNO's account as well, making those old LPs permanently gone.
• Catchphrase:
  • "TheStrawhatNO!: A first for everything!": When they say or do something that may never have been said or done before in an LP, including "Robot trampoline lovemaking", "AI guard aneurism", "fecal briefcase", "tickle on the booty-boot" and "clown repair montage".
  • "[X], everybody!": Whenever they realize something particularly screwed up has happened, namely in Twilight Princess. Can also be "TheStrawhatNO, everybody!" when they've been saying even more ridiculous things than usual for the past few minutes.
  • In Sleeping Dogs, the guys turn "COP!" into one for everyone including themselves, "Damnit Wei!" into one for Raymond, and "By the way, Wei" into one for King.
• The Chew Toy: Drippy is constantly joked about as being run over, shot, and otherwise mangled as catharsis for hating his character.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Everyone on the team. They did write Sgt. Frog Abridged and Jetters Abridged, after all. In particular, Thorn asked Travis to co-commentate Bomberman Hero because of how quickly he comes up with ridiculous things to say.
    Travis: "Did you forget how abstract I am?"
  • Travis points out in Shadow of the Colossus how there is always at least one character in every Let's Play that they make insane or creepy. These include Pibot, Agro, Fi, the President, and every other NPC in Twilight Princess.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The captions in the Bomberman Generation collection video when it gets to Eagle Bomber.

  FUCK THIS FUCK IN THE FUCK WITH A BIG ICE FUCK

• Comedic Sociopathy:
  • Most of the love letter sidequest in Skyward Sword is spent laughing at Cawlin's misfortune.
  Thorn (As Dumple): "I'm gonna sit here and laugh at you! Ha! Ha-ha!"
  Travis (Also as Dumple): "So tell me how you feel, 'cause I don't care!"
  • The entire Sleeping Dogs Let's Play is this. Travis causes more than a ridiculous amount of pain, murder and destruction to the citizens of Hong Kong (innocent and otherwise), and the trio spend the whole time cracking up over it.
• Companion Cube: Everyone has their fun with "Jeremy", a statue in the Temple of Time.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Something Awful members suggested names for Link and Epona in the Twilight Princess thread. Epona's winning name: Pibot.
  • Thorn also had the thread vote on Link's name for Skyward Sword. The winning name: Dumple.
  • Wind Waker's Link was named PizzaJoe. Later when Thorn played the game's direct sequel, Phantom Hourglass, PizzaJoe returned for one last hurrah.
• Crack Pairing: In-universe, Louie x Purple Pikmin, courtesy of Travis.
• Creepy Monotone: Preferred method for voicing Pibot. Max's monotone isn't so much creepy as bored with life.
• Crossover: Before JigglyJacob was a formal member of the team, he and Thorn collaborated on a Metal Gear Online session for each other's channels. Jacob's channel has the condensed video while TSN has the full session.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Yoshi flawlessly defeats any boss in Pikmin 2. To add insult to injury in the case of the Waterwraith, the recording didn't even have Yoshi activating it in earlier sublevels.
  • Many of Thorn's Charabom battles in Bomberman Generation. The fight with Beast Pommy was particularly jarring for Yoshi and guest Jello Apocalypse.
  • The entirety of the Punch Out Wii LP. Yoshi never takes any hits, and the opponent is knocked out in the second round. They would have been KO'd in the first round, but Yoshi wanted to show how they fought and what they said first.
  • When Thorn isn't struggling with a boss or enemy in Breath of the Wild, she often manages this against them.
• Cuteness Proximity:
  • The guys whenever they see a dog in Twilight Princess.
  Travis: Aww...Pet him with your mouth.
  • Exaggerated with Jaggle's dog in Part 7, and then immediately subverted:
    Thorn: Let's cook him! *Carries dog over to fireplace*
    Travis: Yeah!
  • Yeto's random "Burrrr" hums while he's cooking have this effect on Thorn, who giggles every time she hears them.
  • Thorn is frustrated over something in Bomberman Generation, until a happy chirp from Pommy Dragon cheers her up almost immediately.
• Deadpan Snarker: Everyone on the team. The game characters become this by proxy.
• A Degree in Useless: Travis's view of Philosophy.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Thorn and Yoshi have their fun with this in Jetters after running into Flame Bomber.
• Deus Sex Machina: As Agent Under Fire shows, having access codes will get you laid. And getting laid will warp you out of a prison cell.
• Die Laughing: The Wizzrobe in Ikana Castle, as it hits Pizza Joe with a fireball at the last possible second before dying.
• Disney Acid Sequence: The Mind Screw exposition scene in Twilight Princess was weird already. Thorn cuts the video completely halfway through, and turns it into a music video of a text-to-speech Cuckoo singing "Happy Talk", complete with dancing clowns and cheap Casio.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Describing the Snitchbugs in Pikmin 2.
  Yoshi: Yeah, see? He snatches up your Pikmin, and then he buries them into the ground if you don't get him quick enough.
  Thorn: He doesn't kill them; he just throws them into the ground.
  BigTUnit: And then you murder him; that seems equivalent.
  Everyone laughs
  Yoshi: Hey! He grabbed my flowers.
  BigTUnit: How dare he plant in a place where I can easily pick.
  Yoshi: That would take me like... maybe a half second. That's annoying.
  BigTUnit: So for that you die.
• Dissonant Serenity: Bomberman's idle animation in Generation is him dancing in place. It makes for some very blatant dissonance after almost every boss fight, and the guys lampshade the hell out of it.
• Ear Worm: "Redial", to the point that making fun of it becomes a Running Gag. When the Something Awful thread requests the song for a montage video, instead of just putting it in or using a different song, Thorn and Travis decide to write lyrics for it instead.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: In-Universe:
  • Nitros' ineffectual disc hazard.
  Travis: I want him to be your new henchman along with the robot.
  • The trio get a lot of mileage out of MAX in Bomberman Jetters, and their portrayal of him made its way into Jetters Abridged.
  • The terrified-looking platypus enemy in World 5 of Bomberman '93, especially when it comes to figuring out why it's freaking out.
  Redundant (as platypus): He seems to be making sure he's wiping us all out before he moves on; this is regimented genocide!
  • Agro the horse, though there aren't many other characters to compete with in the game.
  • Groose. The trio are sick of Skyward Sword by the end of the LP, but they always enjoy seeing Groose and love him more the further on it goes.
  • Ni no Kuni:
    • Shadar is in the LP for roughly thirty seconds before Travis and Thorn start gushing over his voice.
    • A random NPC woman provides a lot of laughs by the guys pretending she's a robot grandma.
    Travis: I like how we made a character out of this extra.
  • Sleeping Dogs (2012):
    • King is only in one video and only for a portion of it, but the guys joke around with the character through to the end of the Let's Play.
    • In The Zodiac Tournament DLC, the guys treat a random mook in a yellow gi like he's as heroic as Wei.
      Travis: (imitating the Shaft girl chorus) Yellowgiguy!
• Epic Fail:
  • The ending of Bomberman Hero not only has such low graphical quality that the other Bomber characters are just jumping statues, but there are so many of them that the framerate drops.
  • While Thorn is fighting The Imprisoned the second time, she fails to jump on its back and instead hurts herself. She switches to Groose to attempt to slow the monster down, but the bomb flies right through The Imprisoned's hair.
    Travis: The old woman at the top just facepalms.
  • Thorn just barely misses grabbing the top of Dueling Peaks in Breath of the Wild, causing Link to tumble down the mountain, steadily lose all of their health, be revived by Mipha near the bottom, and die at the bottom anyway by smacking into a Sheikah shrine.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: The Pikmin 2 LP goes out on one of these thanks to Thorn's silly, impromptu Casio outro.
• Everyone Has Standards: Joking about the President of Hocotate Freight being fat.
  Travis as the President: I ate my dad, ho-ho!
  Yoshi: That's... mortifying.
• Face–Heel Turn: The Yellow Gi Guy from the Sleeping Dogs: The Zodiac Tournament DLC is treated as a Shaft-like hero at first. In the Year of the Snake DLC, there are so many yellow gi-clad terrorists that the guys think he has turned evil and is the true mastermind of the plot.
• Failed a Spot Check: Travis gives Thorn heat for repeatedly doing this in A Link Between Worlds.
• Fantastic Racism: Thorn points out to Yoshi that the Jetters were willing to kill all the Hige, even the ones who aren't doing anything.
  Yoshi: THE ENEMIES ARE HAVING FUN! NOT ON MY WATCH!
• Foreshadowing: On Day 4 of Pikmin 2, Travis jokes "Happy early St. Patrick's Day. I'm already drunk". Then on Day 7, Yoshi says "Travis, you're drunk, go home!" Then comes Day 9, where Thorn and Travis are drinking for the first 50-75% of the video.
• Fridge Brilliance: In-Universe:
  • While working the Fridge Logic for Pikmin 2 and Hocotate's inexplicably high and equal value for diamonds, bottle caps, and useless junk:
    Travis: No wonder they went into debt! They have no sense of value!
  • During Survival Kids, Thorn shows that the player can make useless items by making a set of baseball gear. Olivia points out that it's totally in-character for a ten-year old like the game's protagonist to waste important supplies on making toys.
• Fridge Horror: In-Universe, Thorn talks about how the Cremia hug scene in Majora's Mask suggests that Link's life has left him emotionally stunted.
• Fridge Logic: In-Universe:
  • They point out odd placements for treasure in Pikmin 2, such as measuring cups and false teeth in a shower room. In addition to the irony of more food treasures existing in the Submerged Castle than in the Glutton's Kitchen. Travis also questions why he's still bringing logic into the game, right as a kamikaze spider appears.
    Yoshi: Why?! Look at the spider bomb! Look at the spider bomb!
  • In Ni no Kuni, after the group gets launched out of the Fairy Godmother's tummy into a river:
    Thorn: Oh, hey, look. Oliver can swim, unlike in the opening when his mom died.
• Fun with Acronyms: Towards the end of the second Sonic 2006 stream, the chat starts tossing out acronyms for the characters' names:
  Silver: "So I Love Vore Everyday, Right?"
  Shadow: "Shaky Hands Are the Devil's Own Work"
  Omega: "Oh, My Existential Guilt Affliction"
  Mephiles: "Maybe Everyone Poops Hard. I Like It [sic] Even So."

And then they move on to the channel itself

Jacob: "Jollyness Always Comes Overly Biased" or "James? Ass Comes Out Better"
JigglyJacob: "Jelly Is Great, Guys. Like, Yo. Jesus Also Craves Orange Berries"
Yoshi: "You Obviously Shit Hourly, Idiot" or "Yes, Optimized Sales Help Ireland"
TheStrawhatNO!: "These Hats Equal Seriously Totally Rad/Awesome. What Hats Are Terrible? None, Obviously"

• Funny Background Event:
  • Randall, a Santa statue in a steakhouse Travis was in that ended up being seen in all of his pictures.
  • Happens in Sleeping Dogs with vehicles, due to the cutscenes playing in-engine. Two happen within 40 minutes of each other in Part 11, one of a large truck hitting another car, and one of a car getting stuck driving in circles.
  • Speaking of vehicles, in Sonic 2006, Shadow's hovercraft keeps going after reaching the end of his Wave Ocean level.
• Geeky Turn-On: Olivia jokes in Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns that Thorn was immediately attracted to her when she found out she liked They Might Be Giants.
• Genre Roulette: The group have alternated between vastly different game genres, including: Action-Adventure (The Legend of Zelda franchise, Bomberman franchise, Shadow of the Colossus, Star Fox Adventures), Platform Game (Oniken, Grow Home, Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards), Stylish Action (Hi-Fi RUSH), Hack and Slash (Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition), Fighting Game (Street Fighter 6), First-Person Shooter (Agent Under Fire and NightFire, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise, Bioshock Infinite, Slime Rancher, Doom franchise), Third-Person Shooter (MDK and MDK2, Star Fox: Assault, Jet Force Gemini), Survival Horror (The Last of Us, Resident Evil 4), Rail Shooter (Pokémon Snap, Star Fox 64), Wide-Open Sandbox (Sleeping Dogs (2012), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild), Survival Sandbox (Survival Kids, Stranded Deep), Eastern RPG (Ni no Kuni, Skies of Arcadia, Rune Factory 4, Pokémon Alpha Sapphire, Undertale and Deltarune Chapter 1, Persona 5 Royal), Dungeon Crawler (Legend of Grimrock I and II), Souls-like RPG (Dark Souls, Demon's Souls, Salt and Sanctuary, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice), Real-Time Strategy (Pikmin franchise), Roguelike (20XX), Simulation Game (Hey You, Pikachu!, Graveyard Keeper), Farm Life Sim (Harvest Moon franchise and related, Stardew Valley), Sports Game (Punch-Out!! Wii, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater franchise), and Minigame Game (WarioWare franchise).
• Get Out!: Parodied: Thorn's response when Highwang tells her to use the Ice Rod in the Ice Ruins. Yoshi suggests cutting the episode short right there.
• God-Mode Sue: Parodied In-Universe with the Purple Pikmin. They're already game breakers in Pikmin 2, but the guys also say they can fire black holes, control space and time, and find seven cures for cancer. And cause five more.
• Good Bad Bugs: In-Universe:
  • One guard in Part 2 of Agent Under Fire inexplicably starts running in circles. Later in Part 4, six different guards run off the oil rig to their deaths.
  • Thorn uploaded several short Demon's Souls and Dark Souls II videos of bugs she came across, among them a Storm Demon flying in circles, a rock spinning through the floor geometry, a corpse bobbing its head like Michael Jackson, Dark Orb causing giant enemies to levitate, and the entire Dragon Aerie glitching out in a black and white texture mess.
  • Travis notes that he tends to find bugs and glitches in his LPs:
    • After two bosses in Shadow of the Colossus, the animation of Wander passing out bugs out: first in Part 13 by having the boss land on top of him, causing him to fall through the world geometry; and second in Part 16 by Wander passing out on top of the boss, causing him to step forward and collapse onto thin air.
    • In Part 11 of Sleeping Dogs, Travis opens the video by walking past a man neck-deep in a set of stairs.
    • In the same part, a background car drives around in circles after getting stuck in its pathfinding when Travis transitions to a cutscene.
  • In Majora's Mask, Thorn messes up the Anju and Kafei sidequest twice with Sakon's hideout, and each time she responds by glitching through the door of the hideout, resetting the scene inside and allowing her to continue the quest as if nothing happened.
  • The PS3 version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 is infamous for its constant slowdown. In many situations such as Sonic's mach speed sections, Thorn finds this to be a benefit, because it allows her extra time to react or plan ahead. In the same game, she attempts to glitch her way out of doing Silver's infamous billiard-ball challenge, only to discover that, somehow, that bug actually got patched.
• Guest Host: TSN began including guest-hosted LPs in 2016, including Highwang playing Oniken, JigglyJacob playing MDK, MDK2 and WarioWare: Smooth Moves, and ElTipejoLoco playing Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!. Jacob was later made a formal member in 2019, in part due to his multiple LPs with the group.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power:
  • Discussed in A Link Between Worlds, when Thorn describes how she hadn't realized that wall-merging would be a very useful ability before the game.
  • Thorn similarly finds the Cane of Pacci from Minish Cap to be more useful than "flipping things over" sounds like it would be, though co-commentator MeccaPrime is dubious.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Several games with this option have been LPed, and often the viewers get to give suggestions for the names, such as every Link in The Legend of Zelda games (Hey Hey, Dumple, PizzaJoe). Her Harvest Moon/related commentators are terrified of seeing what she'll name new animals, because it's often bizarre (MADSTACK, GiantBoobMo).
• Heroes Love Dogs: Zig-zagged with Thorn. Considers herself a dog lover and is as subject to Cuteness Proximity as anyone else during the LPs, but she is infamous for losing her temper to the dogs outside her house, at one point going on a rant in the middle of Skyward Sword Part 23 about how much she hates them. When the dogs finally moved out, she had to bring it up in a podcast just because of how happy she was that they were gone. Then new families with dogs moved in...
• Hurricane of Puns:
  • The guys after defeating bosses in Zelda games and doing environmental kills in Sleeping Dogs.
  • Thorn, Skippy Granola and YamiNoSenshi make confectionery puns in Animal Parade after devising that Maya is trying to kill the mayor with cookies so she can take over the town.
• I Hate Past Me: Thorn and Yoshi spend much of the team's 9th anniversary stream lamenting their past unfunny, douchebaggy behavior, particularly loathing the pre-Bomberman Hero videos they watch. Downplayed when Thorn calls herself out for her Take That! against Drum 'n Bass music (described lower on this page).
• I Just Want to Have Friends:
  • Travis's interpretation of the Antenna Beetle in Pikmin 2, which possesses your Pikmin.
  • The group's interpretation of King in Sleeping Dogs, thus he constantly bothers Wei with stupid questions.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Saturn Bomberman eventually takes its toll on Travis after four videos.
• Insistent Terminology: In Legend of Grimrock 2, Jacob calls the round bread loaves Crunchwraps. The others get on his case about them really being bread, but Jacob doesn't care.
• Irony:
  • Thorn mentions that Myrtle and Esther's voice actress in Ni no Kuni, a game where the protagonist is named Oliver, appeared in a musical called Oliver!.
  • Thorn streamed the beta for Friday the 13th: The Game, and her computer's power crashed three times at oddly fitting moments: first when, while playing as Jason, she destroyed a power box; second when the truck she was sitting in crashed; and third when Jason killed her character after a long chase, much like her attempts to stream the game. Thorn and several viewers joked that the game is so realistic that it kills computers.
• Lame Pun Reaction:
  • It's telling how painful the puns in Ni no Kuni are when they make these guys groan. Doesn't stop them from joining in and trying to make even worse puns.
  Travis: (As Mr. Drippy) 'Just tell me you're not fishin' for compliments!' Points to a fish. 'See?! See?!'
  Thorn: They get to the ocean. 'Sea?!'
  • Majora's Mask:
  Deku Scrub A (Yoshi): What are you doing?
  Deku Scrub B (Yoshi): I'm scrubbing myself!
  Deku Scrub A (Yoshi): YOU'VE BEEN WAITING YOUR WHOLE LIFE TO SAY THAT!
• Leave the Camera Running: The group continue recording their commentary long after the gameplay video ends. This is often where their discussion becomes the most chaotic and surreal, due to the lack of anything visual needing explained.
• Leet Lingo: 8357 in Stardew Valley is named with this ("Best"), as she's the alien progenitor of the Best clan from Thorn's previous Harvest Moon/related LPs.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: In Skyward Sword's Skyloft Silent Realm, Thorn gets spotted by the guardians and rushes to get a tear before they catch her. She goes for the hardest tear she could get. She makes it.
• Let's Play: Their LPing style is a mixture of humourous, snarky post-commentary with thorough gameplay and sometimes serious discussion.
• Let's See YOU Do Better!: During Pikmin 2, Yoshi keeps saying that he's waiting for Travis to do a Let's Play so he can mock him over everything, just as Travis has done for him. When Travis begins heading his own LPs, they become some of Yoshi's favourites.
• Light Is Not Good: When Light Spirit Faron appears in Twilight Princess ^note Part 4, uncut version, the trio play him as a "squirrelpion" demon who wants to destroy the world. Luckily he's too lazy to do anything.
  Yoshi: So you gonna do something? No?
  Travis: (As Faron) I'm comfy!
• Logic Bomb: Travis and Thorn trying to explain mummy ghosts in Bomberman 93, let alone killing them.
  Travis: I wonder if we can kill mummy ghosts. But wait, mummy ghosts are already dead- wait.
  Thorn: We kill them again.
  Travis: They are dead dead undead.
  Thorn: I've given them peace? Or made them into pieces? Or-
  Travis: You brought peace to their- you know, 'cause they died. And they were prepared for death, and then they became undead, so then you killed them to prepare them for death death undead death.
• Madlibs Catch Phrase:
  • Near the end of Bomberman Jetters, "[Noun] might be more effective!"
  • In Sleeping Dogs: Year of the Snake, "I [did x] like a jungle cat."
• Man of a Thousand Voices: Travis likes giving various enemies and characters voices, few of which sound alike.
• Marathon Boss: Thorn, Yoshi and Highwang get frustrated with the length of the Knucklemaster fight in the 11th A Link Between Worlds video.
• Meido: Thorn accidentally turns her Mii into one in Tomodachi Life. First she gives her the maid outfit, then later she dyes her hair purple, and the chat points out that she has turned the Mii into an anime.
• Memetic Badass: In-Universe:
  • The guys turn Malo from a Wise Beyond Their Years Deadpan Snarker into Telekinesis Baby, with all of the associated mind powers, and he doesn't take anyone's shit.
  • Purple Pikmin, which the team assert can break anything, including the fabric of the universe.
  • Sleeping Dogs (2012):
    • The game's Kung Fu-mastering, physics-breaking protagonist Wei Shen.
      Travis: Nothing can stop Wei Shen!
    • A random Yellow Gi Guy from The Zodiac Tournament DLC, who the guys play as a bigger hero than Wei.
  • Voice actor Troy Baker, who is so multitalented that Travis and Yoshi think he can do anything.
• Mistaken for Racist: Invoked when Travis and Thorn talk to Gondo about repairing Scrapper, and everything they say as Dumple is a desperate attempt to not sound racist while saying something pretty clearly racist.
• Mondegreen Gag:
  • Uncut versions of Twilight Princess videos sometimes include subtitles, which read out what Thorn thinks Midna's gibberish could be saying. Travis also started doing this during the commentary.
  "Good arm bread meat."
  • Fi sometimes gets this treatment.
  "You're sorta mass resource. Deployed with kindness sores."
• Motor Mouth: Travis turns Iza into one for seemingly no reason.
• MST: Their Let's Plays involve an MST3K-like level of riffing the dialogue, cutscenes, and characters. Travis' commentary was most exemplary of this, followed by Thorn after Travis left the channel.
• Mr. Exposition: Thorn takes this role most often, even when it's Yoshi's or Travis' LP, as long as she's played and researched the game herself.
• Mundane Made Awesome: At the start of Skyward Sword, Yoshi points out how Skyloft's people have built their culture around falling and competing for cloth.
• Myth Arc: A gag type arc began forming in 2016-2017 as viewers suggested giving player characters similar names in multiple LPs, leading to the loose lineages of the Best clan, a group of women who take over farms out of nowhere and become obscenely rich, and Pubert, a ratling farmer who accidentally becomes a prince. Their bloodlines seemingly intersect at the end of Rune Factory 4, when Pubert and his wife Forte have a daughter named Best, until the Best clan's line was confirmed in Stardew Valley to begin with a mysterious alien designated 8357.
• Mythology Gag:
  • During her second attempt at Let's Playing Majora's Mask, Thorn opens the first video by deleting the save file from the original LP.
  • The portraits Thorn uses for herself, Yoshi and Jacob in Legend of Grimrock 2:^note Travis's/Ogre Taint's is from the Randall video Thorn's/Failure of a Son's picture is from an Abridged Forums podcast she was in on Vokle, Yoshi's/Cricket Dazzler's is from a Tumblr video he made joking at their friend Shadow, and Jacob's/Pubert's is an old Skype screenshot of him making a goofy face while wearing a Giroro cap.
• New Game Plus:
  • For some Zelda LPs, Thorn will briefly show off the Hero Mode as an extra clip but will eschew a complete playthrough.
  • Yoshi and Thorn opted to have the entire Zelda: Wind Waker HD LP be of the NG+ to separate it from other standard Wind Waker LPs. And also because it meant that Butt-Monkey hero Pizza Joe got nothing from his grandma for his birthday.
• No-Damage Run: The Punch-Out!! Wii LP has Yoshi playing the whole game without taking a hit, only allowing damage in recordings where the only goal is to show the opponent's and Doc Louis's dialogue.
• Non-Answer: At the end of Ni no Kuni Part 17, Travis starts talking to Siri, who seems to hint that she is Mr. Drippy. Travis's attempts to find out more get met with this, which convinces him that Siri is Drippy and is trying to hide it.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • Dragon Road in Bomberman Hero has no dragons, just a bunch of flying knives. When Thorn encounters more flying knives in later levels, Travis asserts that they are dragons.
  • Crazy Fedora Man. He's not wearing a fedora: it's a straw hat. Thorn thinks that's why no one can seem to catch him.
• The Nose Knows: Travis jokes that this is how Trill finds Link in the Forest Temple before Trill mugs him.
• Nostalgia Filter: Discussed Trope. The subject of popular games being carried by nostalgia comes up at different points, such as with Ocarina of Time. Parodied when Travis and Yoshi describe licensed games they'd received for Christmas during Part 8 of Ocarina of Time 3D.
• Once an Episode:
  • As Majora's Mask went on, Thorn started every episode with a variation on "Welcome back to PizzaJoe's [random business]"^note E.G.: PizzaJoe's love shack, heart surgery. Yoshi continues this in Wind Waker with TV and game references.^note PizzaJoe is the New Black, Five Nights at PizzaJoe's
  • In each Zelda Let's Play, Link has a different, weird name.^note Hey Hey, Dumple, PizzaJoe, Groose The only exception is Breath of the Wild, where Link's name is fixed in-game to simply "Link".
• One-Steve Limit:
  • invoked Zig-zagged with "Rick", who is originally used as the one guy in every development team who comes up with the bad ideas and happens to be the exact same Rick every time. In some cases, however, it's a name the guys use to denote a random Jerkass.
  • Averted when several character names reappear in later LPs as Hello, [Insert Name Here] characters, such as Dumple and Pibot. PizzaJoe was used for three Zelda LPs, first in a bonus New Game Plus video for Skyward Sword, then twice after in full Majora's Mask and Wind Waker LPs to make up for the jokes they could have made; the same latter PizzaJoe returned for one last hurrah in Wind Waker's sequel, Phantom Hourglass. An entire Myth Arc also developed around characters named "Best" and "Pubert", see above.
• One True Pairing: In-Universe in Sleeping Dogs, regardless of all the dates and girlfriends Wei has, the guys assert that Raymond is his true love.
• Padding: invoked One of Thorn's biggest gripes with Skyward Sword is that the third act of the game revolves around disruptive things happening to halt Link's quest that have no reason to be happening (I.E.: the Tadtones and Eldin Volcano erupting).
• Physical God:
  • After exploiting a glitch in Twilight Princess where Link can "kill" the Postman, he reappears at the end of the video, and from then on he's mentioned as warping space and time and flying in any future chasms that Link crosses.
  • Epona in Majora's Mask is joked as being a chaos god for her apparent invincibility and teleportation powers. Thorn finds extra humour in that she's named after a Gallo-Roman god.
• Private Eye Monologue: The guys provide this for Wei in the Sleeping Dogs: Year of the Snake DLC.
  "I leaped out of the car like a jungle cat..."
• Punch-Clock Hero: Bomberman is played as this during Bomberman Hero.
• Purple Is Powerful:
  • This became the point of the entire Pikmin 2 LP: Purple Pikmin destroy everything.
  • Thorn mentions this trope by name during the Morpheel fight in Twilight Princess.
• A Rare Sentence:
  • Twilight Princess:
    • Travis (as a very playful Midna to Wolf Link): "Would you like a tickle on the booty-boot?" He later says he never said "booty-boot" before.
    • Redundant says this of Epee Em's "Hey, Hitler-head!" when talking about Ashei's hair, which looks like a toothbrush mustache on her forehead.
    • Travis when Fyer repairs the Sky Cannon: "Words I never thought I'd say: 'clown repair montage'".
  • Bomberman Generation
    • Thorn describes Constructor-X as "awesome but embarrassing". Redundant notes that more things should be described as such.
  • Ni no Kuni:
    • Thorn: "Certain ingredients can only be bought from Hootenanny. And I can't believe I just said that."
    • Repeated when she mentions the "Cawtermaster".
    • When discussing the multiple tiers of Familiar food:
  Travis, while laughing: "That's such an odd statement. 'Sweetie Pie, the next generation of pie!'"
• Recursive Reality: In the uncut version of Part 4 of Twilight Princess, the trio joke about this happening with Malo and Coro.
  • For Malo, if you look into his hair, you see a black hole that reveals Hey Hey looking into Malo's head.
  • For Coro, if he reaches into his afro, he pulls out his bird Trill. Then Trill reaches into his afro and pulls out Coro.
    Travis: "Until they both go, "Wait a minute!", and they both reach into their afros at the same time, and then they explode."
• Rhymes on a Dime:
  • Dormin. In the voice of Randy Savage.
  • Thorn astonishes Highwang by doing this in Salt and Sanctuary.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter:
  • Travis finds the little scorpions on Skyward Sword to be these. Thorn vehemently disagrees.
  • Several familiars in Ni no Kuni to both Travis and Thorn, particularly the Mites and the Seed Sprites.
  • Skippy Granola finds every animal in the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons LPs to be these, particularly the series' signature "spherical cows".
• Ring-Out Boss: Thorn witnesses Altair unintentionally do this to himself in Bomberman 64.
• Running Gag: Has its own page.
• The Scapegoat:
  • All of the bad level design decisions in Bomberman Hero, and many games after, were by a nerd on a pizza high named Rick.
• Scenery Porn: In-Universe:
  • Yoshi's feelings for the Wistful Wild, coupled with That One Level.
  • All of Ni no Kuni to Travis and Thorn, citing the visuals as one of its best points.
  • Thorn uploaded a video of the area around the Guardian Dragon in Aldia's Keep from Dark Souls II, just because it looked so cool that it floored her.
• The Scrappy: In-Universe:
  • The Dumple. Nobody likes the Dumple.
  • invoked Shout. Thorn introduces her by comparing her to infamous Annoying Video Game Helper Scrappy, Navi, and Shout loses.
  • Fi gets introduced the exact same way as Shout, and Yoshi agrees. They are not won over by her sacrifice at the end of the game.
  • Mr. Drippy is loathed by Thorn and Travis for his annoying character and useless game implementation, but they have the most fun hating him out of any other Scrappy, subjecting him to a Cosmic Plaything/Chew Toy headcanon within the game world.
  • The commentators generally loathe or are apathetic towards the characters of Rune Factory 4, but Amber is particularly disliked for the developers making her, a demonstrable child in mind and body, a marriageable bachelorette.
  • In Jacob's Doom Let's Plays, TorpidTypist brings up his hatred of Commander Keen (the character) whenever the games reference him, which Jacob finds rather strange.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Invoked in some of their Let's Plays:
  • The most common self-imposed challenge is completing a game 100%.
  • Due to their open-ended nature, Thorn has more arbitrary goals for her Harvest Moon LPs. She'll usually collect all of certain types of collectibles and see as many cutscenes as possible, get married, and then simply find a point where enough of the game has been shown off that the LP can reasonably end. Hero of Leaf Valley and Rune Factory 4 are so far the only ones with defined plots, story progression and endings.
  • Jacob's Doom LPs are All Secret Runs, and he even shows off some secrets that can only be accessed by no-clipping.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The Twilight Princess LP ends with one that alludes to the Skyward Sword LP.
  • Majora's Mask ends with Yoshi joking that the video should include one for Wind Waker HD like Twilight Princess did, and Thorn says that since he said it they can't. It has one anyway.
• Serial Escalation: The "Dying Zora, featuring Spiders and Seagulls" concert idea, where each group progressively eats each other.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Owl is this to Thorn's Mii in Tomodachi Life. Owl was the first Mii added to the island after Thorn, and they immediately started having fights the day after.
• Sophisticated as Hell:
  • Travis and Thorn's assessment of the signature TheStrawhatNO sense of humor boils down to this trope, after the two alternate (almost immediately) from DaVinci helicopter jokes to cocaine jokes in Shadow of the Colossus.
  Thorn: We're like the dynamic range of an orchestra: we go all the way up and all the way down.
  Travis: We can somehow fit into one sentence 'Pavlov's conditioning, motherfucker', and it somehow works.
  • From the first screenshot update for Ni no Kuni:
  Thorn: Since nobody said if they actually give a shit if I transcribe the dialogue, I have forgone the minutia.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Travis likes to invoke this while driving vehicles in Sleeping Dogs by switching to the classical music radio station, especially if something ridiculous is happening. It makes even dorky scooters and chicken trucks seem awesome. Thorn does the same thing in a short video of her hitting-and-running thugs during a drug bust to "Peer Gynt Suite".
• So Unfunny, It's Funny: In Part 4 of Twilight Princess, Travis makes a Toucan Sam reference that is so lame, Yoshi can't help but laugh.
• So What Do We Do Now?: Travis jokes that a dice-like enemy in P2A2 of Bomberman Hero has the aspirations to one day roll a 6, and when it does, it thinks, "...Well now what?"
• Squee:
  • Thorn lets one out after gaining control of a statue in the Temple of Time in Twilight Princess.
  • Skippy Granola's default reaction to every animal in the Harvest Moon LPs.
• The Stoner: Travis' interpretation of Coro.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: All commentators alternate on this depending on who is running the LP. Generally the host focuses on being informative while the co-commentators crack wise, though this can fluctuate depending on how much each person knows about the game and how serious the discussion gets.
• Stylistic Suck: Thorn's old mockery of child camcorder LPers. She records her TV screen with an old webcam on the other side of the room, and said camera has fallen upside-down.
• Take a Third Option: When the viewers in the Something Awful thread request "Redial" for a montage, instead of just including the song or using a different one, Thorn and Travis write lyrics for it recapping the Let's Play.
• Take That!:
  • Thorn's opinion of the Bomberman Hero soundtrack (she later retracted this):
    "It makes Drum 'N' Bass listenable."
  • Day 7 of Pikmin 2:
    Travis: He took away your maturity, you find Carlos Mencia funny now!
  • During a discussion on Psychology during the Arbiter's Grounds:
    Travis: Fuck Philosophy, by the way. I'm sorry, but if you have a Philosophy degree, then fuck you. They call it the father of all sciences, but it doesn't answer a single goddamned question! You know what the answer to everything is? "Maybe!"
  • Travis compares Ni no Kuni to Final Fantasy XIII in that they are rare RPGs where he doesn't care about the dialogue or like the characters. Ni no Kuni is still better because "at least [it] lets you go left and right".
  • In Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns, Thorn goes into a tangent about how pandas are an evolutionary mistake.
• Technician vs. Performer: Each member of the group alternates with each other in this dynamic, depending on who's playing the game and who's commentating:
  • LPing: Thorn tends to 100% the games she LPs and errs on the side of informative, Yoshi tends to record multiple takes in order to get the best runs, and Jacob just does as much as is feasible. Travis, meanwhile, "plays for the bullshit", enjoying the game on its own merits and leaning heavily towards silliness in gameplay and commentary. One of the group's taglines describes their dynamic as "Completionist, Perfectionist, Ridiculous."
  • Commentating: The player of the game is typically more informative than jokey, with their co-commentators providing the most riffs.
• Tempting Fate: During Thorn's Undertale stream, Highwang remarks that it took him forever to figure out the piano puzzle. Cue Thorn, who has a music degree, solving it on the first try.
• Tension-Cutting Laughter: Epee Em's reaction to Ghirahim in Skyward Sword.
• That Came Out Wrong: Thorn mentions sneaking behind one of the ninja mooks and attacking in Bomberman Jetters, with interesting wording. Then she lampshades it.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • When Thorn gets the Ball and Chain in Twilight Princess, she starts using it (and Bomb Arrows) on bats.
  • The "Thorn Signature" in Breath of the Wild is carpet bombing enemies with bomb arrows and multiplier bows.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Word-for-word, one of Thorn's first comments when she enters HIGE Central in Bomberman Jetters.
• Troll:
  • Pikmin 2: The Burrowing Snagret in the Valley of Repose, dropping an Ultra Bitter Spray just outside of where Yoshi would be able to reach.
  • Thorn: A person in the Twilight Princess thread requested that she do a live commentary version of the Cave of Ordeals so that they could hear her frustrated reactions as they happen. Thorn does exactly that...and proceeds to speedrun the cave using a debug glitch that was accidentally left in the game.
• Toilet Humor: With the hand in the toilet in Skyward Sword.
  Thorn: 'Don't ask what I need the paper for.' Is it for this?! (Sits on toilet) Haha!
  Travis: Congratulations. You love a shit monster.
• Too Dumb to Live: When Thorn plays a Bomberman game, she isn't as likely to be hurt by an enemy so much as by her own bombs.
• Tsundere:
  • In the Twilight Princess Post-City in the Sky collection video, Yoshi jokingly acts like this towards Travis.
  • Their ubiquity in Japanese-made media is lampshaded during Skyward Sword:
  Peatrice: It's not like I like you or anything.
  Thorn: Do girls in Japan just say that all the time?
  • Travis jokes that a Wolfos hiding behind some ice in the Snowhead Temple is this.
• Un Evil Laugh:
  • Bagular's very bored-sounding "Ehhh-heh-heh-heh..."
  • Thunder Bomber's unnatural "Ha-ha-haaaah!"
• Unfortunate Implications: Discussed In-Universe:
  • Thorn points out the awkwardness in Ni no Kuni having an interracial married couple in what appears to be 1950s America, at which point interracial marriage was illegal.
  • In Ni no Kuni, Thorn and Travis get hung up on how the method for catching familiars involves beating them up until they like you.
  • Thorn gets frustrated in Story of Seasons when it's found that, alongside Marian being the franchise's first canonically gay character, it's also openly homophobic towards him for a scene.
  • The group greatly dislike that Amber in Rune Factory 4 is a demonstrable child in mind and body who can be wooed and married.
  • Thorn, who identified as genderfluid at the time and later as transfemale, discusses how the crossdressing infiltration of Gerudo Town in Breath of the Wild perpetuates some harmful, false stereotypes about trans people, particularly those used as justification for Bathroom Bills in the United States.
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • In Twilight Princess, after finishing the Snowpeak Ruins and joking that the Yetis start "having fun":
  Yoshi: Let's just say they're making soup...
  Travis (as Yeto): I'll add the cheese!
  Thorn: And Yeta has the pumpkin.
  • In the same LP, "Good arm bread meat" becomes slang for a sarcastic "Way to go" when Hey Hey does something screwed up, like beating up Yeta.
• Valley Girl: Travis turns the female monkey into this in Twilight Princess.
  "Oh my god, where's my iPhone?!"
• Values Dissonance: In-universe and of the monetary value kind: the guys keep noticing that the universe of Pikmin 2 seems to value bottle caps more than diamonds.
• We Have Reserves: Yoshi's word on Red and Blue Pikmin, especially in comparison to Purples.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Parodied in-universe on Day 11 of Pikmin 2.
  Yoshi: TheStrawhatNO is for kids. We've been making rounds on Nick Jr..
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Invoked in one of the Undertale streams. An NPC tells Thorn's character that a skeleton reporting news to a fish lady is politics. Highwang weighs in:
  Highwang: Y'know. A skeleton crew tells a fishy leader what to do. ... Eh?
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Happens a lot with Travis, who finds things like the little scorpions in Skyward Sword to be adorable while Thorn hates their face-hugging guts.
• With Lyrics: As mentioned earlier, Thorn and Travis' "Redial Redial'd".
• Word Salad Title: "TheStrawhatNO!", which comes from Yoshi's YouTube username, "MugiwaranoYoshi" - "Mugiwara" means "straw hat" in reference to One Piece, and he had to add the "no" when YouTube's account submission page glitched on him. Thorn liked the idea of using it as their LP team name because it didn't make any sense.
• You Monster!: Thorn's opinion of the heads of the Hige Hige Bandits:

  "These guys right here [the Hige Higes] have 50x more personality than all of the Jetters combined, and 100x more charm... These guys have been placed on a planet that, let's remember, is flying to another planet to destroy it. The entire Hige Hige fleet is on this planet to die! ... Mujoe and Mechadoc are the biggest assholes."

• Younger Than They Look: Thorn, Yoshi, and JelloApocalypse joke that Professor Ein is actually fourteen, even though he looks like an old man.

---

"Allow me to hold you in my silver, human-killing arms."