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Daniel James Johnson, a.k.a. Danger Dolan, is an Australian YouTuber who specializes in trivia countdown videos narrated by animated characters. Beginning in 2014 with an avatar that was essentially a mix of Dolan Duck and a scowling rage face, Dolan's countdown videos became increasingly popular to the point where Johnson started a production company (Danger Dolan Pty Ltd
) and hired several other voiceover artists to narrate the videos. By late 2015, with the other narrators taking on the bulk of the work on the main channel so Johnson could focus on animation and comedy, the channel was renamed Planet Dolan, and Dolan's character evolved into a white humanoid being somewhat reminiscent of the Pillsbury Doughboy, but still wearing the original Donald Duck hat (or an off-model version thereof).
There are several channels in the Planet Dolan stable. The original channel, Planet Dolan, focuses on countdown lists, with a tendency to favor real-life absurdity. There's a gaming channel and a (dormant) movie channel, and then there's Super Planet Dolan, a more family-friendly animation channel which features Q&As with Dolan and his most frequent collaborator Shima Luan, as well as comedy music videos.
Dolan's cast:
- Shima Luan: An American VO artist and Dolan's main collaborator on Super Planet Dolan. She's represented by a pink cat in a dress, and her character's paw-print appears in the opening titles for Planet Dolan videos. On her personal channel, she does live sketching and the occasional Let's Play, usually with Hellbent.
- Dolan's Mysterious Brother (DMB): Played by Johnson's real life brother. Onscreen, DMB looks similar to Dolan, but he's flesh-colored, has yellow eyes with a full beard and mustache rather than the hat. They also have very similar voices, although DMB doesn't slur as much as Dolan himself. His real name is Zaragamba.
- Hellbent: An American VO artist and Let's Play producer. His avatar is a red-skinned demon with horns and a pointy tale in a leather biker jacket.
- Melissa Morgan: The only PD contributor who uses her IRL name. She's a Canadian artist and copywriter, and her avatar is a purple humanoid bird.
- Pringle the One: A Youtuber and Viner who does anime reviews on his personal channel. His avatar is an orange blocky alien.
- Nixxiom: a machinima artist and World of Warcraft streamer who started doing voiceovers for the channel in May 2016. His avatar is a night-elf death knight.
- Doopie Do Over: An animator and voice over artist who does animations on her personal channel. Her avatar is the only one that is outright human, as it is basically an anime styled version of her real self.
Planet Dolan provides examples of:
- Alternate Catchphrase Inflection:
- When Dolan says, "Have a good one," he shouts it very quickly. In "Hickory Dickory Dock", he says it slowly, but then quickly again.
- One of Dolan's catchphrases is "I'm Danger Dolan and today I'll be your narrator!" said with a rolled "R", but in one video, he can't roll the "R" due to laryngitis.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: In "Annoying Habits" (in True Stories), Pandora is the narrator of the video.
- Art Shift: The series has several different artists (such as SweetCommando, GhostToast, Spinalpalm and Jameshark) who work on the videos, each with varying art styles from cartoony to animesque.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In Hardcore Humpty Dumpty
- Based on a True Story: One of their more recent series involves them taking user submitted stories from their sub-reddit and having them reenact the stories via illustrations. Although each episode used to have one actual true story from the presenter in question. Nowadays, they are 100% Reddit stories, and the voice actor stories were made into separate videos. The reason they did this, stated by Dolan himself, was to avoid confusion since some people were confusing the characters' portrayals, such as Doopie, in the Reddit stories with their actual portrayals. Though sometimes, they still do personal stories from the presenter at the end, but it is nowhere near as common as from 2016-2018.
- Berserk Button: Do NOT take Hellbent's cigarettes away from him, he will snap you in half. Literally, as Dolan found out in the episode "Why Isn't There Mouse-Flavoured Cat Food".
- Bizarre Beverage Use: In the Dark Parody of "I'm a Little Teapot", the tea is somehow hot enough to burn through pipes, so it's used as a weapon in the army.
- Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: The relationship between Shima and Dolan on SPD.
- Carnivore Confusion: When asked what the first fast food restaurant was, Dolan's answer was "Ladybot's Bird Frying Emporium", which was not taken well by co-host Melissa. Nixxiom didn't help.Melissa: Argh, stop eating that right now!
Nixxiom: [holding a bucket of fried birds] But it tastes so good. - Cartoon Creature: Dolan and Zaragamba are clearly the same species of humanoid something or other. Exactly what species, no one knows.
- Cloudcuckoolander:
- Dolan is here to blow your mind with truth. Unfortunately, his answers on SPD Q&As are so outlandish that his co-host usually has to correct him.
- Mirror Shima, in a more Ax-Crazy kind of way.
- Creator Cameo: Dolan's real life self, Daniel James Johnson, appears in animated form in the "What if Every Tree In the World Disappeared?" video on the Super Planet Dolan channel, asking when Shima's coming back because he's tired of his brother not putting up with his silliness. Melissa's real life self also has a brief cameo in the "What Would Happen If There Were No Air For 5 Seconds?" video.
- Cool Old Lady: Cooki's grandmother was a really good cook. even Hellbent lampshaded this.Hellbent: "huh... your grandma sounds like a cool lady."Cooki: "i love her..."
- Cringe Comedy:
- Melissa volunteered to do the "truths" in one SPD episode, but turned out to be pretty bad at it. Much of the humor from Melissa comes from her struggling to think up "truths," as well as forcing split jokes after she successfully pulled one off.
- A good chunk of the Dolan True Stories fall under this, such as "WALKING IN ON SOMEBODY NAKED" and "EMBARRASSING THINGS WE DID AS KIDS".
- Dark Parody:
- The parody of "I'm a Little Teapot" involves the teapot producing corrosive water that injures a dog and kills another teapot.
- The parody of "Hickory Dickory Dock" involves scary things like Krakens and green goo.
- Deadpan Snarker: Let's be honest, EVERYONE is snarky (Hellbent especially), with the one exception maybe being Melissa. She even has trouble coming up with a witty retort when Hellbent calls her a "nerd" once.
- Dude, Not Funny!: In one of the videos, Dolan said that "cancer" actually meant a "dancer" who did the can-can. Then, he started to dance and sing the can-can theme while Shima looked at him in shock, causing him to shamefully admit it wasn't funny.
- Feather Fingers: Melissa is often shown manipulating objects with the feathers at the tips of her wings.
- Formula-Breaking Episode:
- One video starts off normally, but someways in Mirror Universe versions of Dolan and Shima take over, who have inverted roles. (Mirror!Shima is a Ax-Crazy, Mirror!Dolan is extremely sophisticated).
- Anytime a character asides from Pringle or Dolan do the "Truth" Bits: Hellbent acts like a pain in the ass and Melissa seems to try way too hard to make up something crazy.
- The episode What If Every Human Disappeared Overnight? features Dolan actually reading the questions and answers for once, while Hellbent does the "Truth" parts.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Happens to Dolan in the episode "Why Isn't There Mouse Flavored Cat Food", when he makes the mistake of taking Hellbent's cigarettes, which results in Hellbent literally cutting Dolan in half.
- Hollywood Genetics: Dolan, Zaragamba and Ramona are siblings in real life and are treated as such (except for the True Stories episode "Weird Things Our Partners Do," where Zaragamba and Ramona casted as a romantic couple that is about to have sex and even then, Dolan apologized for that in the middle of the episode ). That said, Dolan and Zaragamba are portrayed as weird, simplistic and pale cartoon creatures, while Ramona is a red demon who is more similar to Hellbent than either of her brothers.
- Ignorant About Fire: One video reveals that Sharkie used to be afraid of birthday candles as a boy, because he naively touched one when he was three.
- Innocent Awkward Question: In one "True Stories" video, a boy accidentally gets an ad for dildos on his cell phone on the way to the store. When he gets to the store, he asks the shopkeeper, "What's a dildo?", but he just says, "Your mom will know". So, the boy goes home and repeats the question to his mother, but she just says, "You'll know when you're older", so he Googles it.
- Kick the Dog: Hellbent almost literally does this in one episode, but Melissa stops him at the last moment.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Very briefly deconstructed with Dolan when he gives an answer to "Can you inflate a balloon underwater?" He answers "yes", which Shima confirms. This makes Dolan happy enough to immediately run to his diary and leave an entry about how happy he is to have the much-smarter Shima's approval about something (and implying all the random crap he's been making up is his way of begging for attention).
- Large Ham: Dolan (especially in his SPD character), but Hellbent can hold his own in the slinging of pork.
- Limited Animation: Although SPD's trying to raise the bar.
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Melissa can be this, and when she isn't, Nixxiom is usually picking up the slack.
- Not So Above It All: Shima sometimes does cat-like habits, like chewing on wires. Melissa also acts like a bird, she sleeps in trees and eats worms. Melissa even mentions that she and Shima like to eat mice.
- Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!: One fan wrote a very weird "
DoopieXMelissa" fanfic. Finding it hilarious, Planet Dolan did a recital of it. - Red Oni, Blue Oni: Narrators actually saying the correct answers (usually Shima or Melissa) vs. Dolan, Pringle, or whoever is saying surreal, ridiculous crap.
- Sign Off Catch Phrase: For Danger Dolan, particularly his earlier videos: "That's it for this countdown and haveagoodone!"
- Tail Slap: Dolan's comments on tails get him this from Hellbent, Shima and Melissa.
- The Unintelligible: Gooby doesn't talk, and just makes various unintelligible sounds. In one Q&A video, she communicates by drawing pictures and having her sister, Sacred Snewpee act as a Translator Buddy, or at least they try.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Melissa vomits in the toilet in relation to the topic of cats bring dead things to their owners here.
- Was Once a Man: According to Dolan, Melissa used to be a human until she caught a rare disease that turned her into a bird. Further videos have continued this idea, with Melissa herself talking about growing a tail.
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?:
- Pipeattack, a voice artist who did three videos and never came back. Admittedly, he wasn't very popular, so there was never a massive demand for his return. According to an official Q&A held by members of the PD crew, Pipeattack simply stopped contacting Dolan and never replied to any emails sent his way, meaning no one is really certain why he suddenly stopped when he did, though it appears Dolan and co. hold no ill will towards Pipeattack.
- Discussed regarding Shima. After Shima had not appeared in a video in two months in the summer of 2016, the PD crew answered during the same Q&A as the above example that they're not certain what's going on to cause Shima to be absent for longer than anticipated, but they did reassure fans that Shima is safe based on what communications they did have with her prior to her sudden silence. It is still unknown what exactly happened that led her to leave the internet. The fanbase (and the gang as well) would come to agree that Shima's disappearance was more or less her stepping away from the fame she received due to her heavy anxiety.
- Women Are Wiser: Most of the true answers in the Super Planet Dolan are provided by the female V Os, with the few exceptions being Dolan's Mysterious Older Brother/Zaragamba, boogie2988, and Nixxiom. Whom respectively was only in one episode, was a special guest star, or was forced to sub for Melissa with a pre-written script.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Nixxiom in the Super Planet Dolan videos seems to be under the impression that his experience in World of Warcraft applies to real life, even claiming that he's responsible for several creation myths such as the sun being a demon he imprisoned with the answer to the "What the sun is made out of?" question being "Pure Evil!".
