Web Animation / Inanimate Insanity

This is Inanimate Insanity.^* From Bottom to Top and Left to Right: Suitcase, Nickel, Lightbulb, MePhone4, Balloon, Cheesy, Box, Tissues, Knife, Paper, Paintbrush, Taco, Pickle, Trophy, Dough, Soap, Apple, Marshmallow, OJ, Yin-Yang, Test Tube, Microphone, Baseball, Bow, Pepper, Salt, Bomb, Fan, MePad, Cherries and Toilet | Not Pictured: Blueberry, Cabby, Candle, Clover, Goo, Lifering, Silver Spoon, Tea Kettle, Bot and Floor

Inanimate Insanity, is an animated series on YouTube created by AnimationEpic (Adam Katz). Its premise is inspired by Battle for Dream Island^note which, in turn, was inspired by Total Drama, which was in turn a parody of reality TV/Survivor - a cast of Animate Inanimate Objects compete in a series of challenges in order to win the grand prize of 1 million dollars, all overseen by a living MePhone4.

The first season (which ran from 1st April 2011 to 8th December 2012) has been completed and ultimately featured 16 contestants. The second season is currently ongoing - 8 members of the old cast return alongside 12 new characters. It also features a slow shift in tone towards drama.

A Spin-Off comic series, known as Inanimate Comics, was released on July 8, 2020. It can be viewed on the official website and Youtube channel for comic dubs.

On September 26, 2020, a Spin-Off animation series named Fan's Fantastic Features was released, following Fan interviewing the eliminated members of Hotel OJ. So far, four episodes have been released and can be viewed here

On April 3, 2021, a third season, Inanimate Insanity Invitational, premiered while Season 2 is still in progress. That's right, two seasons running at once. It concluded on March 3, 2024.

The official playlists for season 1, season 2, season 3 and the full series can be found on AnimationEpic's channel.

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This show provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: This is hinted at in "Theft and Battery", where Cobs shows off his parents' garage on display, which he literally ripped out of their house. He then mentions that he doesn't talk to them anymore.
• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • The place characters are sent to after being eliminated in Season 1 is called Idiotic Island.
  • The title of the show itself, "Inanimate Insanity".
  • Season three brings back the alliterative appeal for the new elimination area, Indefinite Island.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Like the show it was based on, the characters are named after the objects they are.
• Ahem: OJ does this in Balloon's flashback in "Rain on Your Charade" to alert Balloon to the fact that he's standing in the doorway to Hotel OJ and can see and hear the latter pacing around rehearsing what he's going to say to OJ.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": There are some characters who have names that are similar to the kind of objects they are, like a tissue box named Tissues, an ear of corn named Steve Cobs, a chunk of cheese named Cheesy, a file cabinet named Cabby, etc.
• All There in the Manual: The official website reveals a lot of things and facts about the characters that are not mentioned in the series proper.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: The challenge of "Journey Through Memory Lane", the two-part final episode of Season 1, just like Season 1 of BFDI's. It consists of jumping off of the Crappy Cliff and into the water, putting lemons into a basket, knocking a prop off the opponent, throwing themselves across the gorge by slingshot, stacking golf balls, going through an obstacle course, collecting candy and putting it into a basket, and so on.
• Ambiguously Gay: Balloon has the word "bae" written under OJ's name on his notesheet, and he blushes when admitting that in spite of acting like a bratty Jerkass in Season 1, he genuinely enjoyed OJ's presence.
• Animate Inanimate Object: The entire cast are animate objects, like food and tools.
• Anthropomorphic Food: Several characters. ^note Apple, Blueberry, Cheesy, Cherries, Chives, Dough, Frank, Kumquat, Marshmallow, OJ, Salt, Pepper, Pickle, Steve Cobs, Taco, and the Spoiled Lemon band.
• Argument of Contradictions: MePhone4 and MePhone4S do this in "The Tile Divide", arguing over whether the non-eliminated contestants should get lollipops or chainsaws as prizes. They eventually decide to just give them one of each.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In "Hatching the Plan":
  Taco: See? This is why you listen to me, Mic. Delectable, isn't it? Finally, a taste of recognition. Finally, I can finally—
  Microphone: Is that what you said to Pickle?
• Art Evolution: The animation, character designs and backgrounds have all steadily improved in quality through the series. Which leads to...
• Art Shift: While Pickle ponders whether he should vote for OJ or Paper to be eliminated in "The Penultimate Poll", the artstyle changes to one looking like pencil drawings on paper as he goes through the reasons why each of them deserves to be eliminated.
• Ascended Extra: Fan and Cheesy in Season 2. Both appear in "One-Shot Wonder", with Fan expressing his excitement when MePhone reveals that the viewers are allowed to vote (and stealing Chinese takeout from OJ) and Cheesy advertising a (former) Minecraft server.
• Ascended Meme: "Test Tube Tango" was a meme originating in the II Discord before spreading to Twitter, where an out-of-context moment from the trailer of "Hatching the Plan" where Test Tube is seen wrapping her arm around Microphone was interpreted as leading into a tango song number. While this didn't happen, it did lead to a song of the same name on Volume 4 of the official soundtrack.
• Audience Participation: Like Battle for Dream Island before it, viewers are allowed to choose which contestant they want to eliminate. From "Mazed and Confused" on, elimination is switched to contestant voting, while viewers get to vote on the next episode's challenge. Later, in "Mine Your Own Business", voting is dropped altogether for Season 2. It's initially brought back in Season 3 through immunity voting (voting for whom you want safe), but thanks to Yin-Yang getting immunity constantly, it was dropped again in "Home Is Where the Heart Is".
• Back to the Early Installment: In "Alternate Reality Show", Lightbulb accidentally sends herself and Test Tube back to the events of the show's first episode using the latter's time machine. While there, she unthinkingly interferes with the episode's challenge, causing Salt and Pepper to be made team captains instead of herself and Balloon and creating an alternate timeline where they completely take over the show.
• Bait-and-Switch: In "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 1)", Paper seemingly starts to scream when Paintbrush mentions Idiotic Island, making it appear as if his evil split personality is returning. Then it turns out that he just needed to sneeze.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: In "Theft and Battery", Steve Cobs overhears Soap's angry reaction to Nickel saying that she's getting a big head and thinks that she's saying that he has a big head. He angrily says that he can't believe that she said that and walks up to her with his hands raised, as if he's about to get violent, before revealing that he considers that a compliment and appreciates it.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Everyone breathes on Mars in "Marsh on Mars", with no spacesuit.
• Bear Hug: When Apple finds out that both she and Marshmallow are safe from elimination in "Let Er' R.I.P.", she gives Marshmallow one while gushing over "how much they have in common". Marshmallow chokingly asks her to stop strangling her.
• Berate and Switch: After the chaotic events of "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)", Adam calls MePhone4 and seemingly chews him out for letting things get completely out of control. MePhone4 resigns himself to not getting to host Season 2, only for Adam to reveal that the "mass hysteria" made their ratings hit an all-time high and that he's begging MePhone4 to host the next season.
• Big Ball of Violence:
  • Taco being attacked by the feral Bow in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)" takes the form of a dark grey version of this trope.
  • Yin and Yang get into one with each other following their elimination in "Let Er' R.I.P.", bouncing around the area until the ball finally goes into the Rejection Portal.
• Big "NO!":
  • Taco yells this when OJ starts to overtake her in their race for the finish line in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)".
  • When Hotel OJ gets destroyed by MePhone4's plane in "Breaking the Ice", Salt happily tells OJ that they can fix up the hotel together, then drags him inside while he yells this.
  • Knife lets out one in "Let Er R.I.P", when Bow forcefully drags him out of Purgatory Mansion after she destroys his Dora doll in front of him.
  • Soap does this in "Rain on Your Charade" after Microphone throws her cleaning supplies off a cliff, before pulling herself together and thanking her, recognising that she needed it.
  • In "Hatching the Plan", Fan accidentally causes Trophy's big jar of Cacao Nibs to shatter, making him scream "NOOOOOOO!".
• Bittersweet Ending: The last minutes of "Alternate Reality Show" have Paintbrush apologizing to Lightbulb for saying that they shouldn't work together and revealing their gender to her, which she accepts wholeheartedly. Paintbrush is then eliminated, so Lightbulb gives them Baxter as a reminder of her as the two part ways.
• Blank White Eyes:
  • Toilet gets these in "Marsh on Mars" when he finds out that the new assistant MePhone4 lavished praise upon is actually MePad, not him.
  • Toilet gets another instance in "Rain on Your Charade" when he shows MePhone4 the cards he worked hard to make to present the results of the elimination ceremony, only for the unimpressed MePhone4 to casually blow them away.
  • He gets a blink-and-you-miss-it instance of this from shock in "Kick the Bucket" when MePhone4 tells him to "zip it" after repeatedly turning down Toilet's attempts to get his attention.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: "The Penultimate Poll" has a multiple-person variant. When the contestants speculate on what the safety prizes for the elimination are, OJ guesses that it's cookies, Paper guesses kebabs, Taco (naturally) guesses sour cream, and Pickle guesses socks. MePhone4 then reveals that the prizes are sour sock cream and cookie kebabs. Without the cookies, because he's a fat slob and he ate them.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Poor Paper goes insane being trapped on Idiotic Island and develops a split personality because of it, with the split personality being Evil Paper, a murderous and dangerous personality that is brought up when Idiotic Island is mentioned. Paper is forced to eventually fight it off and wins. However, it is revealed by his voice actor that Paper is still haunted by memories of Evil Paper and because of that, he internally suffers while trying to live life as normal.
  • Several characters remaining on the show by "Rain on Your Charade" have been negatively affected by the show's sadistic nature in some form.
    • Baseball: Begins to have his doubts as a leader as his alliance begins to fall apart and he fails to stop an argument between Nickel and Suitcase during the maze challenge. When Suitcase destroys the alliance entirely by voting Nickel off the show, he falls into a slump and becomes much grouchier, wishing he could have done more to keep the alliance together.
    • Suitcase: Nickel forces her to steal a battery, which results in an unlucky run-in with Mecintosh, and what he tells her causes her to slowly lose faith in her alliance. The encounter also causes her to start Hearing Voices, complete with disturbing hallucinations.
    • Balloon: Struggles to make amends with the previous contestants, and as he grows closer with Suitcase, Nickel ostracizes him from the alliance and constantly badmouths him, thus making his self-esteem problems worse.
    • Microphone: Becomes frustrated by her lack of voice on her team and tendency to mess up challenges, and Soap, her first real friend, is eliminated just as they find an accord. Starting to lose sight of herself, she ends up resorting to working with Taco to cheat her way through the game. She eventually realizes her mistake when she accidentally murders Test Tube and Fan, and quits the show due to how toxic the game has become at this point.
    • Lightbulb: While not as negatively affected as her peers, she begins to feel separated from the others and wants everyone to be just like her — carefree and fun-loving.
    • Fan: Grows increasingly frustrated and stressed out by the numerous changes to the show and wishes that everything was simple again.
    • Marshmallow: Develops trust issues after she believes that Apple was using their friendship to get farther into the game, and begins to have problems with "what's real", growing hatred for the show because of its toxic nature in the way it destroys relationships and mentally breaks the contestants.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In "Let 'Er R.I.P.", Bow possesses Paintbrush's hair and causes them to fly. Lightbulb assumes that the reason they're doing this is because they bribed the animator.
• Broken Tears: Played for laughs in "Mazed and Confused", where Fan starts crying hysterically while in a Troubled Fetal Position after laughing hysterically when he finds out that the episode won't have an elimination.
• Briefcase Full of Money: The prize money of the first season is heavily implied to be in a silver briefcase shown near the finale. It's subverted when the case ends up falling into the Crappy Cliff's water, presumed to be lost; MePhone reveals that the money was actually in the bank, specifically remarking how stupid it would be to carry around a million dollars in a suitcase.
• Call-Back: The Santa storyline in the Christmas challenge gets brought up again in the second season, as Marshmallow realizes that it was why Apple started hating her.
• Cast of Snowflakes: With the exception of Pepper and Salt, no two characters look alike.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: When Toilet, envious of how MePhone4 likes MePad better than him, cuts the ropes on the hot air balloon he, MePad, and the Bright Lights are in so they start plummeting towards the ground in "Theft and Battery", MePad's response is to calmly state, while falling, "Toilet, you are leading us to imminent death. I must ask why." The fact that he soon afterwards reveals that he can teleport them all to safety at any point may have something to do with it.
• Censored Title: The original teaser for the series was renamed from "The Crappy Trailer" to "The Stupid Trailer".
• Cheated Angle: Normally, the characters don't face frontwards.
• Chekhov's Gag: In Season 1, "Crappy Anniversary", features a gag where the Cloudcuckoolander Taco suddenly speaks in an eloquent and elaborate exploration regarding her trajectory off of her cliff. Given the reveal that she was Obfuscating Stupidity, this gag has a surprising amount of meaning.
• Cliffhanger: "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 1)" ends with the elimination area about to crash onto OJ and Taco.
• Color-Coded Characters: In Season 2, most of the contestants are associated with a certain color. The more prominent examples are:
  • Baseball and Fan: Red
  • Nickel: Dull green
  • Suitcase and Paintbrush: Brown
  • Balloon: Light red
  • Knife: Navy
  • Microphone: Purple
  • Soap: Pink
  • Lightbulb: Yellow
  • Test Tube: Bright green
  • Marshmallow: White or teal
  • Tissues: Teal and green
• Comically Missing the Point: In "Theft and Battery", the sick MePhone4 prepares to reveal what the challenge of the episode is when he glitches out, rendering the name of the challenge unintelligible. Lightbulb, Cloudcuckoolander that she is, thinks that the garbled noise he makes is the name of the challenge.
• Copycat Mockery: When Balloon is unimpressed by Steve Cobs's new Meeple Watch in "Theft and Battery", Cobs, offended, repeats Balloon's question of "Is that just a watch?" while imitating the latter's falsetto voice and doing a "blah blah" gesture with his hand.
• Curse Cut Short: At the end of the opening scene of "One-Shot Wonder", it is assumed that Nickel is about to call Knife some sort of swear.
• Cutting the Knot: During the final challenge in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)", Tyler Bungard tasks Taco with answering a riddle before passing. Said contestant just kicks him aside and proceeds with the challenge.
• Darker and Edgier: The later episodes of Season 2 become much darker and more story-oriented, with a major plot point being MePhone4's abusive history with Steve Cobs.
• Death Is Cheap: Contestants are able to come back to life thanks to MePhone4... provided that they don't die either before he can set them up in his MeLife app or die while he's dead. The process isn't shown until the beginning of Season 2, though (as lampshaded by Fan).
• Delayed Safety Feature: MePhone4's intro in "Breaking the Ice" has him jumping out of a plane with a parachute, only for his dramatic entrance to be ruined when the parachute doesn't deploy until he lands hard on the ground.
• Description Cut: While Fan and Lightbulb are making little progress navigating the titular maze in "Mazed and Confused", Fan says to himself that he hopes that Test Tube is doing better. Cut to Test Tube struggling to dodge various Ray Guns zapping at her.
• Destination Defenestration: A non-lethal version happens multiple times in "Let Er R.I.P", where the ghost of Bow agrees to help Marshmallow win the challenge by getting the other contestants out of Purgatory Mansion. In the case of Knife, Microphone, Paintbrush (as well as Lightbulb riding on Paintbrush's back), Apple, Baseball, and Nickel, she does this by tossing them out of the window through various methods. Cheesy, Fan, and Suitcase on the other hand end up tossing themselves out the window. Marshmallow later ends up falling victim to this herself, after she gets stuck on Soap's vacuum cleaner and the latter puts it in reverse and blows Marshmallow out the window.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • When Knife comments on Baseball's "fatness" in "Breaking the Ice", Baseball responds by furiously punting him with all his strength into the frozen water. Trophy also does the same, but Baseball is cut off before he can do anything.
  • In "Theft and Battery", Steve Cobs reacts to Balloon being unimpressed by his Meeple Watch invention, pointing out that he can just tell time on a normal wristwatch and considering being able to call someone with the watch dumb, by using a MeMurder app to, well, murder him.
• Does Not Like Spam: The Bright Lights (excluding Lightbulb) don't like oatmeal raisin cookies, as seen in "Marsh on Mars". Tissues believes that they're the cause of global warming.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • The end of "Mine Your Own Business" sees Fan and Test Tube arguing over custody of their alien egg before the former gets sent to the Rejection Portal. This, combined with the Ship Tease the two had throughout the show, makes the scene look like a divorcing couple fighting over their children.
  • The Shimmers' situation of child kidnapping and land destruction caused by Meeple brings European colonialism to mind.
• Don't Ask: In the season recap at the start of "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 1)", the recapper says this when mentioning that the teams were named "Epic" and "Chicken Leg", and then again when bringing up how "Pickle and Taco defeated the roasted Marshmallow".
• Don't Try This at Home: The intro to "The Crappy Cliff" features this disclaimer, parodying the one used throughout Total Drama.
• Double Entendre: "Just give all the balls to me."
• Dramedy: Develops into this in the second season, as opposed to the first season where it was Denser and Wackier and also much simpler like in the show it was based on.
• Downer Ending: "Mine You Own Business" has Fan be eliminated and getting into a heated argument with Test Tube over custody of their egg. Fan then tearfully confesses that he doesn't want the egg to hatch so the creature inside can stay safe. Fan is then pushed through the Rejection Portal and MePhone4 fires Toilet over paranoia that he is working for Cobs, leaving MePad sorrowful. The episode ends with Fan expressing his thoughts through his blog that he has to trust Test Tube even if he disagrees with her.
• Dramatic Spotlight: "Theft and Battery" has two instances of this:
  • One of these shines down on MePhone4 and the camera zooms in on him when he dramatically announces that he's caught Tissues' "condishawn".
  • When the Grand Slams first meet Steve Cobs, he has one of these shining down on him to emphasise his importance as the creator of Meeple.
• Dramatic Thunder: In "The Tile Divide", MePhone4S's return is punctuated by lightning striking in the background as he laughs maniacally. The effect is lost since the only character present, Paper, has no idea who MePhone4S is due to not having been present for his first appearance.
• Dungeon Bypass: Subverted in "Mazed and Confused". Lightbulb tries to fly through the titular maze with Fan, but MePhone4 counts it as cheating and promptly teleports them back.
• Dysfunction Junction:
  • The Grand Slams. Knife (less so later on), Nickel, and Trophy are unpleasant assholes, Cheesy is The Friend Nobody Likes who bothers everyone with jokes, Suitcase is a pushover stuck in the Trauma Conga Line, Balloon is struggling to make amends with the other players, Microphone can't control her volume and just wants to be acknowledged by her teammates, Soap suffers from OCD and tries to get over it in later episodes, and Baseball struggles to keep his team and alliance together, something he laments about in "Mazed and Confused".
  • The Bright Lights aren't exempt from this trope either. Lightbulb, despite her team leader position and bright ideas, would rather goof around as opposed to focusing on challenges; Cherries try to get attention by making people happy, but aren't recognized; Test Tube is socially awkward and can be a nervous wreck at times; Paintbrush has an extremely violent temper and takes the game too seriously; Tissues has a sickness that renders him useless to the team; Yin-Yang's two personalities are at constant war with each other; Fan's obsession with the show contributes to his slacking off; and then there's Marshmallow's dilemma with Apple and Bow.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • According to Bomb in the second episode, Taco only spoke French and a few other words. This is never mentioned again, and Taco never speaks French throughout the entire show. Later episodes reveal that she is, in fact, capable of coherent speech, and she's actually an Evil Brit.
  • Pickle was armless in “The Stupid Trailer.” He also had a bit of a Western drawl, but it ends up disappearing in the second episode.
  • There was a lot of Toilet Humor in early season 1. This is justified since the creators were in their early years of high school at the time.
  • In the first episode, MePhone is voiced by Christian Potenza. From the second episode on, he’s voiced by Mark Katz, Adam’s father.
  • Lightbulb was initially male, hence why MePhone refers to her with he/him pronouns in "The Arena of Death". She would eventually be changed into a girl in order to aid in the gender imbalance among the contestants.
• Easily-Overheard Conversation: Trophy eavesdropping on Knife talking to his Dora Doll aloud in "Marsh on Mars", which prompts him to take a picture of it and blackmail him with it to make him his servant.
• Eliminated from the Race: The challenge of "Mine Your Own Business" is to find gems in a cave. The one contestant who does not find a gem is automatically eliminated without any voting. This is how Fan is eliminated.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Invoked and observed. Taco acted like a stupid, quirky buffoon because she knew that the audience would love her for it, thus granting her nigh-immunity from elimination straight to the finale. Later on, in Inanimate Insanity Invitational, Yin-Yang kept getting the fan immunity vote, which prompted MePhone to shut down the fan immunity entirely since it had gotten predictable and boring. This is also why Yin-Yang is targeted by Blueberry after he rejoins, since the jury vote determines the winner, making Yin-Yang win near-automatically if he does get to the finale.
• Everyone Meets Everyone: It is assumed that everyone just met as the show first started, other than Salt and Pepper.
• Evil Laugh:
  • In "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 1)", Taco just gives a distorted evil laugh in response to OJ wishing her good luck before the final challenge.
  • On the flipside, in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)", Taco herself is the recipient of this from the feral Bow when the latter attacks the former at the finish line.
• Facepalm:
  • In "The Penultimate Poll", OJ points out that Pickle actually injured his right eye in "Aquatic Conflict", not his left one, meaning that he's had his eyepatch on the wrong eye the entire time. When Pickle takes off his eyepatch, revealing that both eyes are now fine, OJ slaps his forehead in response to Pickle's stupidity.
  • When Paintbrush suggests that Test Tube could build the Bright Lights' rocket in "Marsh on Mars", Lightbulb dismisses the idea that she'd be good at science just because she's a test tube as prejudiced. When Paintbrush's judgment is proven correct, Lightbulb just admits that they were right "this time", causing Paintbrush to slap their forehead.
• Fantastic Racism: Unlike its sister show, this trope is downplayed. Although none of the armless objects are actively hurt for being armless, they are teased for it in "Breaking the Ice".
• Fascinating Eyebrow: Mecintosh makes this expression in "Theft and Battery" as he tells Suitcase while she's stealing a MePhone4 battery for her alliance that they only care about her as long as there's something she can give them.
• Fastball Special: In order to throw the Bright Lights' hot air balloon off course in "Theft and Battery", Soap elects to throw Toilet at it, to her teammates' outrage.
• Filler: Discussed in "Rain on Your Charade". When MePhone4 says that they're going to keep things low-key in that episode since the events of the previous two episodes threw him off schedule. Fan takes this to mean that the episode is going to be filler, and MePhone4 doesn't help his case by denying this repeatedly (one time speaking way slower than he needs to for no apparent reason other than to take more time) and making up a story on the spot about Marshmallow losing her (non-existent) bottlecap collection. While Marshmallow, Lightbulb, and Paintbrush look for said bottlecaps, the words "NOT FILLER" flash on the screen in big, red letters.
  
  Of course, out of universe, it's very much not an example, as the final scene of the episode has Taco offering her secret help to Microphone, which ends up being a major plot thread of the season going forward.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: The contestants finish MePhone4's catchphrase for him this way in "The Penultimate Poll".
  MePhone4: The prizes are sour sock cream and cookie kebabs! Without the cookies, 'cause...
  OJ: You're a...
  Paper: ...fat slob...
  Taco: ...so...
  Pickle: ...you ate them.
  MePhone4: Wow! How'd you know?
  OJ: Lucky guess.
• Fireball Eyeballs: At the start of "Rain on Your Charade", Suitcase confides to Baseball that when she was stealing the MePhone4 battery for her team in the previous episode, she felt like someone was going to jump out to yell at her. She then herself starts shouting what she imagines the person would say, and when she gets to "Let death be your punishment!", she gets so worked up that little flames appear inside her eyes.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: In "Mazed and Confused", Suitcase gets hit by a flamethrower that looks more like a Ray Gun in design (to match the Freeze Ray and Lightning Gun that zap Nickel and Baseball) after Balloon accidentally sets off an alarm in the challenge's maze and MePhone4 activates a variety of weaponry. She survives none the worse for wear, other than being left singed and temporarily on fire.
• Flashback Effects: When Balloon has a flashback in "Rain on Your Charade" about a conversation he had with OJ at Hotel OJ, the scene transitions into and out of the flashback with a fade to white accompanied by a swooshing sound effect.
• Foreshadowing: Taco suddenly speaking coherently in "Aquatic Conflict", then quickly going back. It's a heavy hint towards her Obfuscating Stupidity. Her ability to do complex math off the top of her head in "Crappy Anniversary" is another hint.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • During Pickle's Art Shifted rundown of the reasons to vote off OJ and Paper in "The Penultimate Poll", the drawing of Paper briefly changes to one of him as Stevie Griffin holding a raygun and saying "Obey me".
  • The newspaper Lightbulb is reading during the elimination in "Let Er' R.I.P." has a new funny headline every time the shot is close enough for it to be visible. For example, when MePhone4 throws a pumpkin at her, a shot that only lasts a few moments, the headline is, "READERS OF NEWSPAPERS ARE FOUND TO HAVE EXTREMELY FAST REFLEXES."
  • "Theft and Battery":
    • "The Big Book of Politically Correct Humor for Three-Year-Olds" that Cheesy consults has several negative reviews on the back, as well as an "about" section for author Naught Fahnee:
      "The recently single and well-renowned politically correct author is back again! He enjoys long walks in the park and fast food chains. He's been accused of various crimes, but he didn't do it, seriously. Promise. Raised in the literal sphere of innocence, Naught Fahnee has been shielding himself from the harsh jokes of modern society."
    • When MePad tells the contestants about MeCloud, he displays a rather concerning ad on his screen for a few moments.
      "We'll fix up your Meeple devices for an abysmal price! That's right! Remember that one time when you dropped your MePhone? Well, it's gonna cost you a whole decade's worth of money! Just a scratch? Doesn't matter! We'll still bill you with an unnecessarily high amount of money! Yay! Money! Money money money money money! Whoops, look like I got a bit too carried away there. Anyways, bring your broken, bent or soy sauce and rice covered devices to us, and we'll fix it! Just remember! Your wallet is the one really paying! Also, we totally don't look through your files. Take my word for it."
    • Another MePad moment occurs in the form of the warning message that pops up on his screen when Soap throws Toilet at the Bright Lights' balloon to keep them from catching up with the Grand Slams:
      "Warning - Incoming Toilet due to Soap's devious scheme to throw us off course."
  • When OJ grabs Balloon's apology note sheet to read it during the latter's flashback in "Rain on Your Charade", the sheet is visible to the audience for a second, containing things such as various crossed-out prospective greetings and nicknames for OJ.
  • When Fan complains in "Kick the Bucket" that the tie in the previous episode broke the pattern he thought the show had in every way possible, one shot has him hold a paper with a rather lengthy fan theory written on it to illustrate his point, which is gone the next time the camera cuts to him.
    Fan Theory #1082 — Each team must win twice in a row in order to split the focus equally amongst the contestants. There are more subtle ways of doing this, but those would require genuine creativity. If anything occurs to somehow disrupt this monotonous pattern, well, basically, barriers will fall from alignment, a hole will be forged in the depths of time, pasts will become exposed, and otherworldly forces will reign, among other things, probably.
• Freeze Ray: In "Mazed and Confused", Balloon accidentally leads Nickel, Baseball, and Suitcase into a booby-trapped section of MePhone4's maze, setting off several Ray Guns that zap the latter three. Nickel gets zapped by one of these, temporarily freezing him solid and still leaving ice stuck on him after getting smashed into a wall breaks him out.
  
  In the next scene, another ray gun of the same type zaps at Test Tube several times, though unlike Nickel, she manages to avoid being hit (though she does nearly drop the egg Fan entrusted her in the process).
• Funny Background Event:
  • Frequently. In various scenes, a character that is onscreen that isn't currently speaking will briefly have a very crazy face.
  • When the Bright Lights are falling towards their demise after Toilet cuts the ropes on their hot air balloon in "Theft and Battery" and he and MePad are holding a conversation about Toilet's envy of the former, the other contestants can be seen in the background doing things like Lightbulb drinking a cup of tea and Fan updating his blog.
• Gasp!: Microphone does one in "Mazed and Confused" when Balloon brings up her gain button, giving her the idea to use it to communicate with Taco from afar so the latter can help her navigate the titular maze.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man:
  • In "Inanimate Smackdown", OJ accidentally triggers Evil Paper by asking Paper if he had his problem before he went to Idiotic Island. Evil Paper prepares to smash him with a chair, but before he can do so, OJ slaps him, bringing normal Paper back.
  • When Soap prepares to throw her cleaning supplies off a cliff to overcome her Neat Freak tendencies in "Rain on Your Charade", she starts getting cold feet at the last second and begins a reprise of "Keep on Cleaning" from "Everything's A-OJ". One line into the song, Microphone slaps her, yells at her to pull herself together, and throws the supplies off herself.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger:
  • In "Theft and Battery", Microphone points at Cheesy angrily when she loses her temper from his constant mocking of her.
  • Microphone does this again in "Rain on Your Charade" when she meets Taco in Perilous Forest and angrily asks her what she's doing there.
  • Knife points at Balloon for emphasis in "Kick the Bucket" when he tells him to stop just talking about proving himself and actually do it.
• Glad I Thought of It: When MePhone4, Toilet, and MePad are brainstorming challenge ideas at the start of "Mazed and Confused", Toilet suggests that MePhone4 should take another look at their whiteboard and that "maybe the idea is right in front of [him]". MePhone4 tries to do so for a few moments, then decides that it isn't working. As Toilet and MePad discuss something else, MePhone4 looks again and realises that the first letters of the ideas in blue sharpie spell out "MAZE", giving him his challenge idea.
  MePhone4: Hey, wait! What if the idea's been right in front of me all along?

  Toilet tries to point out that he just said that, but MePhone4 ignores him in favour of generating a maze for the challenge.

• Glass-Shattering Sound: In "Marsh on Mars", Apple claims that Marshmallow's high-pitched voice could shatter glass. Marshmallow then proceeds to prove her point when her offended "Hey!" shatters Test Tube.
• Glitch Episode: "Theft and Battery" has MePhone4 glitch and eventually short out because of being affected by the condishawn, so the contestants have to go to Meeple to get a replacement battery.
• "Good Luck" Gesture: Microphone has her fingers crossed during the elimination in "Kick the Bucket", hoping that her psyching out of Balloon to get him eliminated is successful.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress:
  • When Cheesy tries to punch the ghost of Bow in "Let Er' R.I.P." after she says that his joke wasn't funny, he ends up jumping right through her since she's incorporeal and crashes through a window. After going through the window, he hangs in the air for a few moments, blinks audibly, and then falls screaming to the ground.
  • When Toilet uses Knife to cut the ropes on the Bright Lights' hot air balloon in "Theft and Battery", the basket still remains suspended in the air for a few moments before plummeting towards the ground.
• Huddle Shot:
  • When Soap wakes up from the panic attack caused by Toilet spitting on her in "Theft and Battery", she sees her teammates looking down at her in this fashion.
  • The beginning of the discussion Nickel pulls Baseball and Suitcase into in "Kick the Bucket" regarding his wish to essentially freeze Balloon out from their alliance is filmed from this perspective.
• Hyperventilation Bag: When Fan finds out in "Kick the Bucket" that Marshmallow will be disqualified if she does not return from her unannounced absence by the next episode, he freaks out due to it being yet another unexpected irregularity in the game, declaring that "[his] perfect world is crumbling around [him]" and starting to breathe into a paper bag, which quickly pops.
• Hypocritical Humor: After Trophy throws a dodgeball at his teammate Cheesy for making an innuendo at him in "Breaking the Ice", Knife yells at him for betraying their team, and then proceeds to throw a dodgeball at Trophy himself.
• Idea Bulb: Marshmallow gets one of these, accompanied by an Idea Ding, when she gets the idea to sic the feral Bow on MePhone5 in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)". Not entirely unsurprisingly, it's Lightbulb's character model with the limbs and face removed.
• I'll Kill You!:
  • When MePhone4 lets the eliminated contestants out after their long imprisonment on Idiotic Island in "The Penultimate Poll", Knife grabs him while yelling this. Lightbulb and Bomb restrain him before he can make good on his threat.
  • Soap states "I'm. Gonna. Kill him." about Toilet in a Tranquil Fury after he leaves to get a new battery for MePhone4 following her getting spat in the face by his toilet water and thrown out of her team's hot air balloon when it crashes into the MeCloud in "Theft and Battery".
• Immediate Self-Contradiction:
  • In "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 1)", Baseball agrees with Paper that Idiotic Island isn't so bad and starts making a heartwarming speech about how the contestants have learned from each other over the course of the competition. Then MePhone4 comes along and asks who wants to leave the island. Baseball promptly kicks Nickel out of the way and yells at MePhone4 to let him out.
  • As the contestants prepare to enter Purgatory Mansion in "Let Er' R.I.P.", Soap tells her teammates that she feels like she's finally getting over her Neat Freak tendencies. Then Baseball opens the door, revealing a large cobweb, and Soap immediately screams and runs to clean it up.
• Immoral Reality Show: The contest is notorious for its crude, traumatizing, and friendship-destroying nature, which leads to a ton of negative reception from the contestants themselves. A major example of the negative reception is Marshmallow leaving the show to stay with Bow at Purgatory Mansion. Eliminated contestants are sent off to be stuck on Idiotic Island in Season 1, and into the rejection portal in Season 2. The latter is revealed to lead to a small closet somewhere in OJ's hotel, which makes things worse once Tissues is eliminated, sickening everyone in there by sneezing on them. Fortunately, a court order perpetrated by OJ changes the portal's destination to designated rooms in the hotel after MePhone4's 1-day jail sentence. Season 3 isn't much better, as eliminated contestants are hit hard enough by the Fist Thingy to fly an unknown distance over the ocean and land hard on a spooky island where they are doomed to stay if they don't get on a rowboat to go back to Hotel OJ. Luckily, Blueberry and Fan enjoy being hit by the Fist Thingy (even if they scream while flying through the air), so not as bad as before, but still not much better either.
• Impairment Shot: As Lightbulb is dragging a passed-out Fan towards the finish line of the titular maze in "Mazed and Confused", he wakes up and asks how they got there, as last he knew, they were hopelessly lost. As Lightbulb responds that three heads are better than one, we cut to Fan's perspective as he sees triple and Lightbulb's voice echoes, making it look and sound like there are three of her.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Cheesy is the master at this. He even slaps his knee after he makes the pun.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: When Balloon gets picked to compete in Season 2 in "Breaking the Ice", Salt points out that nobody likes him, which he claims isn't true. At that moment Toilet returns with the "wires" MePhone4 wanted him to fetch and, upon seeing Balloon, immediately bursts out, "Oh my gosh, Balloon, nobody likes you!"
• Instant Wristwatch:
  • When Steve Cobs proudly states that his new Meeple Watch can tell time in "Theft and Battery", the unimpressed Balloon points out that his regular watch can do that too, brandishing a wristwatch he wasn't wearing in the last shot he was in.
  • Balloon does this again in "Rain on Your Charade" when the tension for whether or not he'll be eliminated goes on for a bit too long and he looks at a watch, getting impatient.
• I Resemble That Remark!:
  • In "Marsh on Mars", Apple calls the Cherries' impression of Marshmallow inaccurate, since their voice didn't shatter glass. The offended Marshmallow yells "Hey!" in response, shattering Test Tube.
  • When Cheesy makes a crack about Microphone's tendency to accidentally raise her own volume in "Let Er' R.I.P.", she yells "I'm not that loud!" loudly enough for it to echo through Purgatory Mansion.
• Ironic Name: Team Epic isn't very epic. The team has a 3-loss streak, with four members being eliminated by the sixth challenge.
• It's Probably Nothing: In "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 1)", Nickel notices that the box Bow was trapped in has a large hole in the side. After a dramatic zoom-in on the box, he promptly goes "Eh", and walks off.
• It Tastes Like Feet: OJ finally gets to taste one of MePhone4's cookies for winning in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)". They taste like crap.
• Jumping Out of a Cake: When MePhone4 reveals that the elimination in "Kick the Bucket" is a double elimination, Toilet jumps out of a huge cake with "DOUBLE ELIMINATION" written on it that the contestants and the audience somehow failed to notice before that moment. Apparently, he somehow built the cake around himself.
  Toilet: Yay! You're both gettin' the boot!
• Lame Pun Reaction: When MePhone4 says that the maze challenge in "Mazed and Confused" is going to be "a-maze-ing", the contestants all glare at him, and Knife boos him.
• Lampshade Hanging: Balloon only speaks in archive audio for the latter half of the first season. He continues to in the beginning of "Breaking the Ice", but as soon as he joins the competition, he starts saying new lines:
  Balloon: Now that I've joined the season, I figured I might as well start saying actual stuff again!
• Larynx Dissonance: A few female characters are voiced by men who don't make too much of an effort to sound female.
• Laughing Mad: When MePhone4 reveals in "Mazed and Confused" that the episode won't have an elimination, Fan doesn't take it well and starts laughing hysterically in the background while Knife and Suitcase are talking, followed by Broken Tears in a Troubled Fetal Position.
• Laugh Track: Parodied in "Kick the Bucket". When MePhone4 invokes the "'her loss' clause" in response to Marshmallow not showing up for the episode's challenge, an audience laughs and claps, even though the show neither uses a laugh track out of universe nor is filmed in front of an audience in universe. It's then revealed to have been an in-universe sound effect MePad played using an app.
• Left the Background Music On: While a conversation between Marshmallow and Paintbrush is in progress in "Mazed and Confused", a piano is heard in the background. Paintbrush suddenly wonders where it's coming from, and going through a hedge they find out that Lightbulb was playing the background piano on a synthesiser.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: In "Mazed and Confused", Nickel suggests the Grand Slams use this strategy to traverse the maze the challenge centers around, with him and Baseball taking all rights, Suitcase taking all lefts, and Microphone, Balloon, and Knife... just doing whatever they feel like. Microphone tries to point out that there's no point to this since every member of the team has to get through the maze for them to win, but everyone else leaves off-screen before she can even finish her sentence.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: When MePhone4 pulls out a party popper to celebrate the eliminated contestant of "Theft and Battery" getting the most elimination votes ever, it's accompanied by a trumpet fanfare that peters out as the sick MePhone4 then collapses.
• Lightning Gun: Baseball is zapped by one, electrocuting him and leaving him charred, in "Mazed and Confused" when Balloon unknowingly leads him, Nickel, and Suitcase into a trapped corridor in the titular maze, causing the latter three to get hit by various Ray Guns followed by a cannonball.
• Live-Action Adaptation: The four Inanimate Battle videos, featuring live-action versions of the contestants competing in a battle (or competitions, in the third episode). Hilarity Ensues in all.
• Made of Iron: Downplayed. The characters go through a whopping helping handful of abuse, including getting punched by the Fist Thingy so hard they fly through the air and land hard on the ground, falling off ladders, and being hit by falling ladders, and they always get up unharmed. However, they do have their limits, as Lightbulb, OJ, and Test Tube shatter frequently, Fan gets destroyed with his paper getting ripped, and Marshmallow gets roasted by being thrown into fires or being lit on fire.
• Meaningful Background Event: When Knife warns Microphone that her alliance with Taco may not be equal, Microphone claims otherwise but is symbolically contradicted as Taco kidnaps MePad in the background.
  Microphone: I have a voice. [Taco mutes MePad] No one's shutting me down. [Taco shuts down MePad] I'm not being dragged around. [Taco drags MePad away]
• Medium Awareness: When Paintbrush protests that the challenge in "Kick the Bucket" can't start since Marshmallow isn't there, to prove their point they gesture towards the empty square where she's supposed to be in the multi-split screen showing all the contestants.
• Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness: In "Alternate Reality Show", Test Tube and Lightbulb find themselves in the first episode of the series, where Test Tube calls everyone back then "lifeless and static", with Bomb falling over with a clang.
  Lightbulb: I don't think we're all there yet.
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: When MePhone4 explains the challenge in "Breaking the Ice" and states that "[a]ll pushing, shoving, kicking, and horseplay is especially allowed", Trophy claims that "horseplay" is his middle name. Tissues replies that that's an odd middle name.
• Mind-Control Eyes: When Bow's ghost possesses Baseball in "Let Er' R.I.P.", his eyes briefly turn white.
• Mirthless Laughter: When MePad informs Marshmallow that she's about to leave the show's parameters while she's sneaking out to Purgatory Mansion at the beginning of "Kick the Bucket", she chuckles nervously and tells him that parameters only exist in our minds before unsuccessfully trying to leg it. She does it again in the next scene, when she encounters Dough in Purgatory Mansion and laughs awkwardly when trying to explain to him that she was looking for Bow, not him.
• Mistaken for Transformed: In "Marsh on Mars", Marshmallow gets sent to Mars and the teams are tasked with bringing her back, with the Grand Slams arriving first and taking her on their rocket back home. When the Bright Lights arrive after them, they spot an alien egg and assume, for no good reason, that Marshmallow has turned into an egg. They bring the egg back in hopes of somehow "turning her back", only to find out that the other team already got her.
• Mixed Metaphor: When Paintbrush complains about how dark Purgatory Mansion is in "Let Er' R.I.P.", Lightbulb tells them that she'll take care of it since she's "the sharpest bulb in the shed", mixing together "the sharpest knife in the drawer" and "the brightest bulb in the shed".
• Mood Whiplash:
  • "Rain On Your Charade" features a flashback where Balloon attempts but ultimately fumbles apologizing to OJ for his behavior in Season 1, and OJ misunderstands his desire to make amends, leaves him outside in the rain, and slams the door in his face. Flash forward to the present, and Balloon breaks down in tears, worrying that nobody cares that he wants to atone, but Suitcase tells him that she cares and that he just has to believe in what he says if he wants to make a sincere apology to the previous contestants. And then the upbeat intro plays.
  • In "Mazed and Confused", Balloon accidentally leads Baseball's alliance into a dangerous portion of the titular maze. Nickel gets annoyed with him and tries to convince Suitcase to leave him behind. Suitcase refuses and the two get into an argument as Baseball fails to calm them down. Balloon and Suitcase leave after the former tries to prove a point to Nickel, and Baseball gets mad at him. The scene that follows immediately after is Test Tube being her usual dorky self and talking to Fan's egg.
  • "Afterlife in the Limelight" from "Kick the Bucket" could be called "Mood Whiplash: The Song". It starts with Bow singing about how much fun the contestants get to have on the show, complete with a montage of the Bright Lights being dorks, and how she doesn't "feel alive" without the game. Cue the piano music slowing down and Marshmallow singing about how the game tears apart relationships and emotional states as the montage shifts into a more dramatic one, prominently featuring the Grand Slams.
• Musicalis Interruptus: When Soap starts having second thoughts about throwing away her cleaning supplies in "Rain on Your Charade", she begins to sing a reprise of "Keep on Cleaning" from "Everything's A-OJ". She only gets through the first line before Microphone slaps her and yells at her to pull it together.
• Non-Gameplay Elimination: Some contestants quit of their own accord, while others are pulled out due to circumstances out of their control.
  • In "Alternate Reality Show", Marshmallow runs away to Purgatory Mansion and gets disqualified after being gone for too long.
  • In "Hatching the Plan", Microphone voluntarily withdraws during the elimination segment.
• Nothing Personal: Baseball says these words twice in the second season in the context of contestant voting.
  • After Nickel treats Suitcase overly harshly, Baseball tells her that his behavior is nothing personal to make her feel better. He later asks if that conversation meant nothing when Suitcase votes for Nickel, subjecting him to a double elimination. She points out that it has never been personal since she and Nickel were hardly friends.
  • Baseball tells this to Test Tube after she is eliminated and he admits to voting for her. He says that it was a hard decision, but she was the biggest threat in the competition.
• Oblivious to Her Own Description: After Bow in her feral state prevents Taco from winning the final challenge in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)", the latter complains that it was the fault of "that demented pink headgear" that her plan failed.
  Bow: Yeah. Whoever that is, shame on them.
  Taco: It's you, you dolt!
• Offering a Hand: After Apple and Marshmallow realize in "Marsh on Mars" that the reason they hated each other was a misunderstanding on Apple's part, Marshmallow offers a truce and holds out her hand, which Apple accepts. Unfortunately, the moment is interrupted when the Cherries' revenge for Apple and Marshmallow ruining their act earlier sends Marshmallow flying to Mars.
• Offhand Backhand:
  • When MePhone4 throws a pumpkin at Lightbulb during the elimination of "Let Er' R.I.P.", she punches it to pieces without looking up from the newspaper she's reading.
  • After MePhone4 comes up with an idea for what the viewers are going to do instead of voting for a contestant to be eliminated after the challenge ends in a tie in "Mazed and Confused", Fan runs up to him, still freaking out over the fact that there won't be an elimination, and hysterically asks what they're going to do. MePhone4 punches him out without looking at him or dropping his smile.
• Orphaned Punchline: When the contestants are exploring Purgatory Mansion in "Let Er' R.I.P.", the episode cuts to Cheesy and Microphone just as Cheesy finishes telling Microphone one of his jokes.
  Cheesy: So then I said, "That's not my wife, that's a vampire!"

  Microphone is unimpressed, both due to the usual low quality of his jokes and being distracted by her mounting self-esteem issues.

• Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: After Suitcase steals a MePhone4 battery for her alliance in "Theft and Battery" and proclaims her innocence in a Suspiciously Specific Denial fashion, she starts sweating as everybody stares at her, weirded out by her statement. It only gets heavier when the action causes an alarm to go off and she's seemingly pointed out as the culprit.
• Piano Drop:
  • Knife drops one on Paper to eliminate him in "A Lemony Lesson".
  • Paper himself uses one to defeat Evil Paper within his mind in "Inanimate Smackdown".
• Piss-Take Rap: Lightbulb does this in "Let Er' R.I.P.", as a response to Paintbrush sarcastically asking her if she's planning to send them to the Calm Down Corner again. But at least she has a baseball cap while she's at it.
  Lightbulb: I mean, it wouldn't be that bright to get real uptight, we're in a creepy crazy mansion, and fans got a lotta fright! Word!
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Paintbrush, ecstatic that the Bright Lights have finally won a challenge through their own skills in "Kick the Bucket", pulls Test Tube and Fan into a big hug while declaring that they love them. Lightbulb does the same... towards the crab she found and has adopted as a pet.
• Please, I Will Do Anything!: In "Mars on Marsh", Knife tells Trophy this as the latter goes off to show the other contestants a picture he took of Knife playing with his Dora doll, leading to Knife agreeing to do everything Trophy says for the rest of the competition in exchange for him not showing anyone the photo.
• Plucky Comic Relief: The Bright Lights, most notably Lightbulb and Fan. They're mostly unaffected by the show's Cerebus Syndrome (except for Marshmallow) up until the merge in "Alternate Reality Show".
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • Two instances in "Breaking the Ice":
    • Salt decides to take a break from exercising to get a cookie. Baseball, who was just vomited on by Lightbulb after she ate too many cookies, tells her, "Don't. You. Dare."
    • During the challenge, Knife attempts to push Baseball off the ice, but fails due to his "fatness". Baseball takes a deep breath, and then yells "I'm! Not! Fat!" before kicking Knife off.
  • When Balloon volunteers to go to Mars to save Marshmallow in "Marsh on Mars", Baseball responds thusly:
    Baseball: So you can hack our rocket? No. Way.
  • "Let Er' R.I.P.":
    • When Bow offers to help Marshmallow scare the other contestants, Marshmallow questions why she would do that when Marshmallow is the one who got her killed. Bow, who is very fond of the tail she has in her ghost form, gets into Marshmallow's face and replies, "I. Have. A tail."
    • When Marshmallow overhears Apple gloating over how she was only pretending to be friends with her to get farther into the game, Marshmallow confronts her with a "You! Big! Jerk!"
    • After Bow possesses Baseball and makes him chase Nickel out a window and the now-freed Baseball asks what just happened, Nickel says "Oh. My. Gosh." before gushing about how Baseball actually managed to scare him.
  • In "Theft and Battery", Soap gets toilet water spat in her face by Toilet, nearly giving her a Neat Freak-induced panic attack, and then right afterwards gets thrown out of the Grand Slams' hot air balloon when it crashes into MeCloud, getting a floor tile stuck to her face. After Toilet rushes off ahead, yelling about how they need to get a new battery for MePhone4, she tranquilly says:
    Soap: I'm. Gonna. Kill him.
  • Paintbrush finishes their furious chewing out of Fan in "Mazed and Confused" by yelling, "I! Hate! You!"
• Punny Name: The author of the poorly reviewed joke book that Cheesy consults to make his jokes less hurtful in "Theft and Battery" is named Naught Fahnee.
• Readings Blew Up the Scale: This happens in the Anniversary T-Shirt Contest announcement video, when the lab explodes due to the computers not being able to handle the high number of views that the videos are getting.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Microphone gives one to Cheesy after he calls her a monstrosity in "Theft and Battery".
    Microphone: What do you even know about me, huh?! You just waltz in here, saying these offensive things! Is that the person you wanna be, Cheesy? A person that makes everyone upset?! That's the monstrosity.
  • Suitcase gives an excellent and very well deserved one to Nickel in "Kick the Bucket" after she votes him out 5 to 1.
    Suitcase: I just can't forgive the way you've been treating Balloon, game aside! And it's not just about him. You act like you're trying to protect me, but you try to send me away every chance you get! [...] What we had before? We don't... really even... talk! It's never been anything personal, a-at all! And to me, that's not what an alliance... is! [...] [regarding Balloon voting for himself] Looks like it. I mean, it's easy to read how everyone would vote, so he decided to be a good friend instead by pitying the blame on himself! And this is what a true ally looks like! But I'm not gonna let him fight my battles for me! I voted for you, Nickel, because you've never been a true ally to me!
• Record Needle Scratch:
  • This, along with a Sudden Soundtrack Stop, happens in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)" when MePhone4 reveals that the supposed Briefcase Full of Money containing the million dollar prize, which was lost earlier, was actually empty and that the money is safe and sound in a bank.
  • In "Breaking the Ice", MePhone4 tries to make a dramatic entrance by parachuting out of a plane, only for the triumphant music to get cut off by this when his parachute fails to deploy before he hits the ground.
  • In Balloon's flashback in "Rain on Your Charade", OJ decides to have a talk with Balloon and escorts him into Hotel OJ, where the other hotel guests are having a party. When they see the universally-reviled Balloon, the music gets cut off by one of these, followed by the guests leaving in disgust.
• Repetitive Audio Glitch: In "Theft and Battery", the glitching caused by MePhone4 catching Tissues' "condishawn" causes him to do this several times. The first one occurring right as he says that he's probably fine, no less.
• Rule of Three: When MePhone4 uses a slot machine to decide which Season 1 characters will join the show for Season 2, Lightbulb says "It has to land on me!" during the first two spins, only for it to land on Paintbrush and Nickel instead. She starts to say it during the third spin too, before being interrupted by Balloon slapping her. Then the slot machine finally lands on her.
• Running Gag:
  • MePhone4 constantly interrupting Paintbrush whenever they have a question.
  • Fan updating his blog at inopportune times.
  • Cheesy slapping his knee after a bad pun.
  • Paintbrush getting angry with their bristles catching on fire.
  • Tissues sneezing on someone at random.
  • People discussing Paintbrush's gender, though this eventually gets phased out.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: After Nickel says that he's planning on scalping the tickets the non-eliminated contestants in "Rain on Your Charade" get on the internet, MePhone4 replies that he "won't be scalping jacksquat" if he's eliminated. Knife, unintimidated, says "Gasp." sarcastically.
• The Scream: Microphone, after Taco leaps out from behind the bushes in "Rain on Your Charade". Everyone else hears it from a distance, but don't really bother.
• Scary Jack-in-the-Box: In "Let Er' R.I.P.", Marshmallow hides from Apple in a room in Purgatory Mansion containing a jack-in-the-box. It begins to play by itself as Marshmallow watches it worriedly. When it finishes playing, Bow's ghost pops out of it and roars at Marshmallow, scaring her so badly that she falls paralyzed to the floor.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Taco, after MePhone5 gets knocked off the cliff in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)".
  • Marshmallow eventually grows tired of the competition since she believes that it destroys morality, emotional states, and friendships, so she leaves the show to live with Bow in Purgatory Mansion.
  • Even though she wins the challenge in "Hatching the Plan", Microphone voluntarily quits the competition during the elimination, as she has severed ties with Taco and is frustrated with how the show has broken everyone.
• Security Cling: When Bomb gets scared by MePhone4's airplane in "Breaking the Ice", he jumps into OJ's arms in fright.
• Series Continuity Error: A justified example occurs in "Mine Your Own Business". MePhone4, in his flashbacks, has his voice from after the MeTunes update, instead of being voiced by Christian Potenza. The reason why this is justified is that the creators wanted the flashbacks to be taken seriously.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Subverted in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)" — after Taco steals the suitcase containing the prize money and drops it into the Crappy Cliff, MePhone4 confirms that it was a decoy. The real prize was in the bank.
• Ship Tease: Fan and Test Tube have a lot of chemistry together and care for each other and even hatch and nurture an egg for several months, acting like parents.
• Shout-Out:
  • Rainbow Dash barely appears behind a cloud in "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 1)".
  • MePhone4S is a Captain Ersatz of The Terminator. Likewise, MePhone5 has elements of the T-1000.
  • MePhone4S's hand speaks using a sound clip of the Mine Turtle saying, "Hello!"
  • "Aquatic Conflict" has SpongeBob's pineapple house in an underwater scene.
  • "The Penultimate Poll":
    • When Pickle is wondering whether he should vote off OJ or Paper, his thoughts are illustrated as pencil drawings, and him noting that OJ is a huge complainer is illustrated by a picture of OJ telling Staci from Total Drama: Revenge of the Island to shut up.
    • In the same scene, a drawing of Paper inexplicably turns into a paper version of Stewie from Family Guy for a moment.
  • In "Let 'Er R.I.P.", Soap hoovers up Bow's ghost using a back-mounted vacuum cleaner that resembles the Poltergust 3000 from Luigi's Mansion.
  • Dipper's hat from Gravity Falls can be seen on the hat stand OJ grabs an umbrella from to give to Balloon in the latter's flashback in "Rain on Your Charade".
• Shown Their Work: Meeple surprisingly has a lot of research put into it involving Apple, such as Steve Cobs's garage and the remark about him being a video game designer.
• Single Tear: Balloon gets one of these several times in "Rain on Your Charade": First in his flashback to his conversation with OJ when he confides to the latter that he wants to make up for his terrible behaviour towards his teammates after everything they went through together; then after OJ tells him to try to make friends with the new contestants instead and forces him out of the hotel, saying sadly after OJ slams the door in his face that he doesn't want to do that; and finally in the present day when he tells Suitcase that nobody cares about his attempts to apologise.
• Skewed Priorities: In "Let Er' R.I.P.", Soap is more concerned by how dirty Purgatory Mansion is than the fact that she may have just (re-)killed Bow's ghost by sucking her into her portable vacuum cleaner.
• Slasher Smile: Taco pulls one of these in "Kick the Bucket", complete with suddenly sharp teeth, when she pulls out the taser she intends to use to paralyse Balloon so he'll fail his part in the challenge and be targetted for elimination.
• Speak in Unison: "Mazed and Confused" has a rather mundane example when both Suitcase and Balloon exclaim "Yay! We made it!" at the same time when they reach the goal of the titular maze, though it does serve to emphasise their growing friendship.
• Spiteful Spit: Toilet angrily spits toilet water at Soap after he flies back into the Grand Slams' hot air balloon following her throwing him out of it in "Theft and Battery". Her being a Neat Freak, this nearly causes a panic attack before she manages to calm herself down.
• Split Screen: "Kick the Bucket" has a split shot of Test Tube and Balloon (divided by a lightning bolt for extra dramatic effect) as they both throw the final ball their respective teams need to hit a target to win the episode's challenge. Test Tube hits the target while Balloon misses, meaning that the Bright Lights win the challenge.
• Spoonerism: When MePhone4 starts the maze challenge in "Mazed and Confused", he tells the contestants, "On your set, get marked, go!" instead of "on your marks, get set", possibly due to being too excited.
• Squeaky Eyes: After Cheesy accidentally hurls himself out a window in "Let Er' R.I.P.", he blinks twice with the classic xylophone sound effect before gravity does its work.
• Staggered Zoom: This is used to zoom in on Toilet's face in "Theft and Battery" when he enviously tells MePad that he always gets to help MePhone4 and that Toilet wants his chance to do so.
• The Stinger:
  • After the credits of "Breaking the Ice", Paper is shown standing on a ladder outside Hotel OJ, happily declaring that all of the windows that were broken when MePhone4's plane crashed into the hotel have been repaired. Then one of the dodgeballs from the episode's second challenge breaks the window, to his disappointment.
  • "Let Er' R.I.P." has one where Bow's ghost manages to free herself from the vacuum cleaner she was sucked into earlier, and then encounters Dough's ghost and asks who he is.
  • "Theft and Battery" has one of a broken MeBook and Steve Cobs in Meeple Care, with the latter noting that no one has been in there for quite some time. When the MeBook asks how long exactly, Steve Cobs is unable to give him an answer due to his Meeple Watch having been broken earlier in the episode.
  • "Kick the Bucket" has Lightbulb sitting on the bridge, deciding to name the crab she caught earlier "Baxter". Baxter then pinches her finger and jumps back into the lake, to her distress.
• Stock Scream: When multiple contestants are blown off the ice by Microphone's scream in "Breaking the Ice", the Wilhelm Scream can be heard.
• Stylistic Suck: The Enanimat Ensanity spinoff, featuring Ms-Paint style "animation", terrible voices, and non-sensical plots.
• Suddenly Shouting:
  • Paintbrush does this twice in "Theft and Battery":
    • First to Fan, out of frustration over the latter's indifference towards the challenges and the fact that his prediction of who would win last episode's challenge was proven correct.
      Paintbrush: [sarcastically] I mean, we're gonna win either way, you know, JUST BECAUSE YOUR THEORY SAID SO!
    • The second instance is when the Bright Lights, Toilet, and MePad are falling towards their deaths and the latter two choose that moment to have a heartfelt conversation.
      Paintbrush: Hey, guys, hate to break the touching moment, but... WE'RE GONNA DIE!
  • Fan himself does this when MePhone4 reveals that there won't be an elimination in "Mazed and Confused", silently muttering, "Oh my gosh..." to himself before yelling, "No elimination?!"
• Super Window Jump:
  • "Let Er' R.I.P." has three accidental examples while the contestants are exploring Purgatory Mansion, all of them caused by the ghost of Bow:
    • When she tells Cheesy that his joke wasn't funny, he gets angry and winds up to punch her. However, since she's incorporeal, he instead ends up throwing himself through her and the window behind her.
    • When she reveals herself to Fan and Test Tube and pops Balloon in front of Suitcase, respectively, Fan and Suitcase get so scared that they run away and throw themselves out the window in a panic.
  • When Toilet offers to trim the "big, ugly plant" (actually the hedge maze the episode's challenge centers around) he saw in MePhone4's backyard in "Mazed and Confused" and MePhone4 distractedly allows it, Toilet makes his exit from the radio tower the two are in by jumping through one of the tower's glass walls.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • Balloon writes "Balloon dident doo this" next to the rude graffiti he makes of OJ in "Breaking the Ice".
  • "Theft and Battery":
    • The Freeze-Frame Bonus ad for MeCloud that's displayed on MePad's screen for a few moments in "Theft and Battery" ends with the assurance that "we totally don't look through your files. Take my word for it."
    • After Suitcase steals a battery meant for Me Phone 4, she ends up unintentionally incriminating herself.
      Suitcase: I just wanted to let all know that I didn't steal anything. Nope.
• Take a Third Option: Paintbrush's gender is discussed several times throughout the show, with everyone wondering if Paintbrush is a boy or a girl. Turns out, Paintbrush is neither, they are non-binary. The reason why Paintbrush never brings it up is because they are embarrassed by this fact and they don't know if anyone knows that there is a "C": None of the above. Lightbulb is the first one to find out and accept it, and the other characters casually referring to Paintbrush as "they" in Season 3 implies that they became more open about it afterwards.
• Take My Hand!: MePhone4S says this to MePhone4 during the cliffhanger ending of "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 1)". The hand adds, "Not so hard!". Funnily enough, the usual resolution for this cliché is subverted, as the MePhones merely fall onto the ground afterward, no parachute or anything.
• Take That!:
  • A dubiously sincere one occurs in "A Lemony Lesson", where Nickel degrades Knife for slacking off and watching Desperate Housewives: "That show is terrible!"
  • In "Double Digit Desert", Baseball is given a copy of Twilight when he fails to rejoin the game and pleads for a different book. He does not like it.
  • Dough was created as a spoof of the Glee episode "Big Brother" (where a character's older brother debuts).
  • "Theft and Battery" is primarily made of jabs at Apple — specifically, the (then-new) iPhone6's tendency to bend, the redundancy of the Apple Watch, and the company's tendency to release excessive amounts of new products.
• Talking Is a Free Action: In "Theft and Battery", Toilet, MePad, and the Bright Lights falling to their deaths gives the former two ample time to have a heartfelt conversation about Toilet's envy of MePad.
• Talk to the Fist: After Knife rejects Trophy's offer of an alliance in "Breaking the Ice", Trophy responds that they'll settle things like men in that case. Knife promptly punches him off the ice before Trophy can finish elaborating.
• Tempting Fate: Played with in "Let Er' R.I.P.". Marshmallow gets annoyed by Apple hugging her tight so she won't get hurt while they're exploring Purgatory Mansion and tells her that nothing bad will happen if she lets her go. Apple does so and Marshmallow lands safely on the ground, saying, "See?" Then a giant spiked ball falls from the ceiling and separates them. However, given that Marshmallow wanted to get away from Apple's clinginess, this is actually a good thing for her, and she takes the opportunity to run away.
• This Is a Competition: Though it's a hard decision for Baseball, he votes for Test Tube to be eliminated because she's brilliant, which means that she's a huge threat to his game.
• Toilet Humor:
  • Happens in "The Crappy Cliff" when the contestants have to jump off a cliff over elephant feces. The goal is to land in the water and avoid the feces.
  • MePhone4 does it again in "A Lemony Lesson":
    MePhone4: Speaking of elimination, and I don't mean my bowel movements...
• Tongue Trauma: In "The Tile Divide", Taco gets her tongue ripped off after it gets stuck on some spikes and the platform those spikes are on flips over.
• Tranquil Fury: In "Theft and Battery", Soap calmly states that "I'm. Gonna. Kill him." about Toilet after she gets spat in the face by his toilet water and thrown out of her team's hot air balloon onto the hard floor of MeCloud in quick succession, and his only concern is getting a new battery for MePhone4.
• Troubled Fetal Position: Played for laughs in "Mazed and Confused", in which Fan freaks out upon finding out that the episode won't have an elimination and starts laughing madly before rocking back and forth in this position while sobbing.
• Twitchy Eye: MePhone4's eye twitches in annoyance at Toilet's usual volume and antics in "Kick the Bucket" as the latter loudly and cheerfully calls the episode's double elimination a "festive evening" and asks the former if he liked the cake he made.
• Two Words: I Can't Count: Apple does this when deciding to vote out Marshmallow in "Inanimate Smackdown". To her "credit", she corrects herself... sort of:
  Apple: Two words: Marsh. Mallow. Wait a minute, that's four. My apologies.
• Unexplained Recovery: Lampshaded in "Double Digit Desert". Bomb returns after exploding earlier in the challenge, and OJ asks how he came back. Bomb starts to stutter out a response, but after a moment OJ decides to forget it.
• Universal Group Reaction: "Theft and Battery":
  • Done two times in the same scene. When MePad explains that MePhone4 needs a new battery from MeCloud, the contestants, having never heard of MeCloud, all give a confused "Huh?" Shortly thereafter, to get the contestants to help him get the battery, MePad claims that it's a challenge and that anyone who does not participate will be eliminated, causing the contestants to all gasp in horror.
  • The Grand Slams have another moment later, when they all gasp in horror when Soap decides to solve the issue of the Bright Lights being right behind them by throwing Toilet at them.
• [Verb] This!: When Pickle and Knife are playing video games together in "Breaking the Ice", Pickle reminds Knife that he needs to shoot the enemies in the game, not just jump on them. Knife replies "Shoot this!" and kills Pickle's character.
• Voted Off the Island: The standard method of elimination. The votes were originally obtained by Audience Participation, but during several first season episodes and from "Kick the Bucket" onwards, the contestants vote each other off. During the third season, the only control the audience has is deciding who gets immunity during each episode.
• Watching the Sunset: Suitcase finds Balloon doing this at the beginning of "Rain on Your Charade" and joins him. He reveals to her that he made a failed attempt at apologising to OJ about his jerkish actions during Season 1, and she advises him that no one is going to believe a rehearsed excuse like the one he tried to make, and that it needs to be something he himself believes that comes from the heart.
• Wham Episode:
  • "Rain On Your Charade" is the episode kickstarting the show's Cerebus Syndrome. The icing on the cake, however, is when Taco, whose whereabouts were unknown up until that point, returns out of nowhere near the end of the episode.
  • "Hatching The Plan" is a big one for Season 2. Fan finally knows where his egg came from and it returns home, Microphone avoids Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and eliminates herself, and the final four are revealed.
  • "Best Served Cold" isn’t as whammy as the previous other two, but it still definitely has it’s points. The teams end up being rearranged, the biggest threat in the game at that point, Cabby, gets eliminated, and The Stinger reveals that Bow isn’t actually Bow, but rather a robot created in her image.
• Wham Line:
  • "Kick the Bucket" has three of them:

    Bow: Maybe... you're the one that's lying! Maybe Kumquat wasn't such a good friend to you! Maybe she didn't deserve to have your friendship, and maybe I made her say all those things just so you'd see that it's true!

    • The ending scenes have two in succession: After Balloon is voted out 5 to 1, he tries to run away, but not before Suitcase drops this bombshell:
      Suitcase: Nickel, I voted for you tonight.
    • And then, after Suitcase tells Nickel off for being a Jerkass to Balloon, Nickel responds with his own rebuke:
      MePhone4: Y'see, uhhh, y'know how I said I'd make up for it next time? Well, it's a double elimination!
  • In "Best Served Cold", when Candle reveals why she seemed disturbed when reading Bow’s aura:

    Candle: Goo... she has no aura...

• Wham Shot: Toilet getting apprehended by MePhoneX in "Hatching the Plan".
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Soap throws Toilet at the Bright Lights' hot air balloon in "Theft and Battery" to push them back, resulting in Toilet (seemingly) falling to his death, Baseball yells at her for it, asking her what she was thinking using a person as ammo.
• Wheel o' Feet: Fan gets these for a few moments when he gets scared by the ghost of Bow and runs away in "Let Er' R.I.P.".
• "Will Return" Caption: The end of the credits of "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)" has "Thanks for watching! We'll be back." written on the trophy passed around by the characters, which is then followed by a Stinger of Apple asking what "two" means and winking at the audience, indicating that Season 2 is in the making.
• Wingding Eyes:
  • In "The Penultimate Poll", Salt gets heart eyes when she tells Pepper that she and OJ may be more than friends.
  • When the sick MePhone4 glitches so badly that he shuts down in "Theft and Battery", his eyes turn into red X's before he shuts down.
  • "Mazed and Confused":
    • Suitcase gets literal stars in her eyes from excitement when Nickel sarcastically suggests they make Balloon team captain and she, as the only person who trusts him, thinks it's a great idea.
    • Fan gets heart eyes as he gushes over how the lyrics to Spoiled Lemon's "A Party" are pure poetry.
  • After Test Tube gets thrown into the lake in "Kick the Bucket", she gets spiral eyes when she gets woozy from the liquid inside her diluting into the water.
• Wink "Ding!": This is used when Apple winks at the camera after asking what "two" means at the end of "Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2)".
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Nickel gives Baseball a speech to this effect in "Mazed and Confused" when the latter doubts his leadership skills following his inability to stop an argument between Nickel and Suitcase about whether or not to trust Balloon.
  Nickel: Look, a good team leader puts the team ahead of himself. You're doing just that. It's something most of us aren't even capable of, and no one can ask for any more than that.
  Baseball: ...Wow. Thanks, man.
  Nickel: Alright, look. You can thank me when we actually get out of here and find the exit, so... quit the waterworks, quit the pity party, let's go.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When Toilet inexplicably flies back into the Grand Slams' hot air balloon after Soap throws him out of it in "Theft and Battery", Baseball's only response is a flat, "You've gotta be kidding me..."
• You Monster!: In "Let Er' R.I.P.", Marshmallow calls Soap a monster after the latter "kills" Bow's ghost by accidentally sucking her up in her hand-held vacuum cleaner.

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