Trivia / PieGuyRulz

• Artist Disillusionment: A.J. would state in the Community Post announcing his retirement from YouTube that he had lost his drive for content creation and the animation industry as a whole. Though a major factor was just growing up and becoming a different person his channel no longer reflected, he also felt harshly about many aspects tangential to his channel. This included the large number of creators in animation who have been exposed as abusive individuals, YouTube doing nothing to deal with the sexual predators on their site, and the increasing toxicity of media discourse souring his interest of expressing opinions online.
• Blooper: At the start of Topic of Discussion #30, just as he's saying his traditional intro line, the lamp next to him turns off and he stops to turn it back on.
• Bury Your Art:
  • The two videos in his "Plot Points" series were deleted from YouTube due to them not reflecting his current opinion, him not being on speaking terms with the person he collaborated with in the video, and them just not being very good videos in his view.
  • His video on fair use. He took the video down the day after he uploaded it because he didn't want his channel to become something that wasn't fun and he felt that he didn't know enough about the topic and wanted to avoid spreading misinformation.
  • In June 2020, Pieguy uploaded a video criticizing Netflix for removing various episodes for racial insensitivity following the resurgence of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. This video would be removed a few days later as A.J. decided he wasn’t equipped to deal with such a sensitive topic.
  • RE-CAST episodes 6 and 26 were removed in 2021 after the guest of those two videos, Cosmodore, admitted to grooming a minor.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: There's a big one in the Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy IV review in his Season 3 video, where he misattributes the Wumbo line to SpongeBob instead of Patrick.
• Creator Backlash:
  • His early videos. It's evident in his Rant Retrospectives that he is very critical of his past-self.
  Ow. Ow, that hurt.
  — Pieguy, after watching his very first rant
  • His Atlantis Squarepantis Sing-A-Long review, as he said he couldn't sing to save his life and the song didn't even work in a Stylistic Suck way.
  • He regrets his review of the episode "Whale of a Birthday" in his SpongeBob Season 4 video. While his opinion on the episode still mostly stands, he felt the way he worded the review with phrases such as "mean-spirited" and "child abuse" fell into traps that a lot of cartoon reviewers were prone to at the time, throwing them around without context as if they're equivalent to explaining the issues with the episode. He especially thought that using the phrase "child abuse" was ridiculous, as if he was equating what Pearl goes through in the episode to what unfortunately happens in Real Life, which was not his intention.
  • A.J. would state in the post announcing his retirement that, in retrospect, he found very few of his videos to be good, criticizing his writing, editing, and his tendency to Accentuate the Negative.
• Creator Breakdown: In June 2020, Pieguy opened up about the one he went through following the "Every Episode of SpongeBob Season 10 Reviewed" video; the combination of getting double-crossed by a close friend, backlash over the SpongeBob Season 10 review itself, switching to exclusively hosting the RE-Cast podcasts, and an overall loss of passion for reviewing and analyzing SpongeBob and Schneider's Bakery shows left Pieguy at a creative dead-end where he was uncertain of what to do with his channel anymore and at times considered just stopping making YouTube videos altogether. On top of that, he lost an entire family section to COVID-19 during the making of a Disney+ video.
• Creator's Apathy: He stated in his June 2020 channel update video that he didn't feel any passion making SpongeBob season reviews anymore, saying the last time he felt that drive was probably around the Season 6 video. He specifically cites the Season 10 video as one that he approached entirely out of obligation and was a slog to produce.
• Colbert Bump:
  • He got a lot of subscribers after his Crossover with The Mysterious Mr. Enter.
  • There was also an increase after he was given a brief Shout-Out in RebelTaxi's Incredible Crew Review.
  • His appearances in some of Nathaniel Bandy's videos definitely didn't hurt his popularity.
  • On the flip side of the coin, the SpongeBob fansite SpongeBuddy Mania received a steady stream of new members from his fanbase throughout the mid-2010s, due to it being regularly referenced in his SpongeBob Season Reviews.^note He would later quietly stop mentioning the site in 2018 due to major controversies arising with its administration.
• The Danza: Averted, since he only goes by his real name (which is A.J.) in his College Confessions series.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • His 6-part 2 Year Anniversary Special and 5 Year Anniversary Rant Retrospectives
  • It is close to impossible to do one of these based on video count, since there are many Missing Episodes. Word of God confirms.
  • His Codename: Kids Next Door Operation: B.I.R.T.H.D.A.Y. R.E.V.I.E.W. video counts as a personal Milestone Celebration, in honor of his 21st Birthday.
• Missing Episode: His website has mostly become one. The main page at least has been archived nine times between 2009 and 2013 thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, but everything else has been lost. ^note  January 26, 2010 seems to be the capture that preserved it the best, visually speaking.
  • Which includes a good number of videos that were exclusive to the website.
    • Most of The Movie for Animal Crossing Wild World Abridged was on the site. For a while Part 1 remained, available through his since-unused Vimeo account, though as of 2023 the video has also been taken down.
  • Word of God says here that a lot of his videos have been taken off of YouTube by himself as well.
    • Building off of this, entire series are completely gone. Remember The Game Boy? Or Piecast? Or Pokemon: The Next Generation? How 'bout The Three Brothers? Or his comic book reviews?
  • His first batch of Twitch livestreams weren't recorded, but starting with his Truth or Square Livestream, they were uploaded onto his Pieguy Plays channel.
  • Also, his SpongeBob updates were deleted shortly after the latest review comes out. He stated in a Twitter post that he does that to "clean up" his channel.
  • The remains of his Blip.tv account can be found here. It shows several videos that aren't available anymore, like a '90s Are All That Post-Show video, a Portal 2 Let's Play, his Rugrats Retrospective, and a video about E3 2011.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content:
  • The character descriptions at the end of the SpongeBob Movie Review, courtesy of the SpongeBuddy Mania Forums.
  • He would do something similar in his Spongey Bits episode on "Have You Seen This Snail?", with users leaving positive reviews of the episode as a counterpoint to PieGuy's lukewarm feelings on it.
• Quietly Cancelled: The final episodes of Bottom of the Bakery and Every Episode of Adventure Time Reviewed both ended on a note that there were more videos to come, but neither show would receive any installments in 2022. Furthermore, A.J. wouldn’t upload any videos or host any streams past April 2022, with A.J. later going dark on all Social Media platforms by August of that year. It would take until the release of a community post in March 2023 to confirm A.J. had retired from making content online.
• Saved from Development Hell: The Bottom of the Bakery videos on the Seddie arc slowly stalled, no doubt in part due to Dan Schnider's departure from Nick resulting in less than pleasant rumors about him, but also due to the giant shift to RE-Cast on Pieguy's channel. The arc was eventually completed with two installments in 2021, three years after its fate was uncertain.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: His "Wigstruck" rant for Spongey Bits was recorded several times, but he was never satisfied with it until it finally came out 2 years later.
• Throw It In!: In his analysis of Season 4 vs Season 5, he tries to say the name of the Season 1 episode "Naughty Nautical Neighbors". He flubs it, and decides to leave it in, with the slide from his review of said episode turning around until he gets it right.
• What Could Have Been:
  • At one point Pieguy planned to remaster his reviews of Spongebob Seasons 1-3 (and presumably the first movie) to add in the Piecons and bring its visuals up to the standards set in the Season 4 review. He also had plans to cover the top 10 best and worst episodes of the entire series. With the discontinuation of the Spongebob review series and his later retirement, it's safe to say these plans have been scrapped.
  • When Pieguy was struggling to make his Season 11 review of Spongebob, he toyed with the idea of doing a full re-review (as in a completely new script and rankings) for Season 1. In the process of rewatching Season 1 however, Pieguy came to the conclusion he no longer found any episode of Spongebob to be funny or engaging after watching the show so many times. This resulted in him scrapping the re-review of the first season and all seasonal reviews after the 10th season.
  • Pieguy has stated on Twitter the Season 11 review of Spongebob would've either used Larry or Pearl as the character theme. Presumably whichever character he didn't pick would've made up Season 12's theming.
  • His WVlog on the Fine Bros. React World incident may have been a "very sarcastic sketch" instead. He held a poll on Twitter to decide which one he would do, but it was very much split down the middle. He ultimately decided to do the WVlog after realizing that his acting skills weren't good enough for a sketch. He compensated by having the video be filled to the brim with snark, though.
  • Prior to his retirement Pieguy alluded to a number of episodes to be covered on Bottom of the Bakery and Bizzaro Bakery, such as the infamous iCarly episode "iSell Penny Tees" having a review on the former show.
  • "Every Episode of Teen Titans (2003) reviewed" was supposed to cover all five seasons of the show (and presumably the Finale Movie Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo), but due to low viewership and the aforementioned Creator Breakdown only Season 1 was ever reviewed.
  • Likewise, Pieguy planned to review every season of Adventure Time and its follow-up mini-series Adventure Time: Distant Lands. Ultimately, he only reviewed the first two seasons prior to his retirement.

---