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Count Dankula

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Count Dankula (Web Video)
Pictured above: A horrible, evil, racist Nazi.
Count Dankula is the guy holding him.

Mark Meechan, better known as Count Dankula, is a Scottish YouTube personality, comedian, and former UKIP candidate. His most infamous video by far is "M8 Yer Dugs A Nazi," where he teaches his girlfriend's pug, Buddha, to lift his paw to the phrases "Sieg Heil" and "gas the Jews." This got him in trouble with the law, and he had to pay a £800 fine. In September of 2018, he started a new series of videos called Absolute Mad Lads, focusing on Crazy Is Cool historical figures, and occasionally animals and events. He also maintains a second channel where he reacts to current events in UK and international politics from a right-wing libertarian perspective, as well as hosting other content that, in his own words, "isn't good enough for the main channel".


But before we get into the tropes, it is, in fact, your boi, Raid: Shadow Legends!:

  • Achievements in Ignorance: The Mad Lad episode for Iron Mike Malloy describes how Mike, through his constant desire for free drinks and meals at a speak-easy, his nearly indestructible organs and an insane amount of luck, managed to become the downfall of a gang of serial killers who were murdering people for their life-insurance money.
  • Adolf Hitlarious: His most infamous video involved teaching his girlfriend (now ex-wife)'s Pug Buddha to do "the least cute thing he could think of", which was to raise his paw to the command of "Sieg Heil" and respond to the phrase "Gas the Jews", in order to annoy her.
  • Aerith and Bob: When covering Vlad the Impaler:
    • When going over figures in Wallachian history Vlad interacted with:
      Dankula: Can we take a minute to appreciate the first absolutely boring name in this story? Bogdan, Hunyadi, Vlad, Vladislav... Stephen!
    • And then there was a fierce rival and a claimant to the Wallachian throne... Dan!
  • Bad Guy Bar: Deconstructed during the Mad Lads episode for Michael Malloy; the speak easy where the story takes place was actually going under because the regular patrons were scared away from the establishments seedy reputation (even by speak easy standards) and the only people still willing to hang around were criminals who were more than happy to run away from paying their tab.
  • Bathos: Can be seen in certain Mad Lads. Just before the Bjork Stalker pulled the trigger while he Ate His Gun, it cut to Dankula making a pop sound. He also does the pop sound just as Gary Plauché shot Jeffrey Doucet near the airline payphone for kidnapping and abusing his son. The infamous suicide of Budd Dwyer changed into the popping of a wine cork as chianti pours into Dank's glass.
  • Black Comedy Rape: Used most prominently in The Reds Are Coming, where he inflicts it upon the last unfortunate member of his commune who tried to betray him. Also naturally comes up when discussing the harrowing circumstances behind the 1980 New Mexico Prison Riot.
  • Broken Pedestal: Discussed in his "Modern Art is Dumb" video, where Dankula established that the notorious street artist and political activist Banksy has become this to him. Despite previously admiring Banksy's bold anti-establishment views, enough to get a tattoo of the artist's works on his arm, Dankula disparages him in the video, arguing that social changes have now made his art pro-establishment and pretentious.
    Dankula: Banksy used to be anti-establishment, until the establishment adopted his views, so now "technically" he is pro-establishment[...]I know that every time Banksy gets mentioned in a video, I always give him shit, and it's because he is someone that I once massively respected and looked up to. I mean I've got a fuckin' Banksy tattooed on me for fuck's sake.
  • Edutainment Show: His Mad Lad videos are mostly for entertainment, but almost all of the information in them is real.
  • Even the Rats Won't Touch It: Dankula suggests that this is why Amou Haji never got ill for decades, since he was so smelly that even the germs wanted nothing to do with him.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • He may have a few laughs at Dragonlord's expense, but he did state that quite a bit of the real-life trolling (as a result of Dragonlord stupidly giving out his real address) has gone too far. In every video on the subject, he states a disclaimer that he does not endorse the trolling.
    • Upon reading the lyrics to one song GG Allin was involved in, entitled "Expose Yourself to Kids":
      Count Dankula: You all know I am all for freedom of expression, but damn there are things out there that fucking test you!
    • In The Tweet Police, Dank starts off establishing his indifference to text-based harassment before making clear where he draws a line:
      "If you get offended, you get offended. I don't care. If people are saying mean things to you on the internet, I don't care. However, if you actually start getting beaten up, attacked, fired from your job, or arrested just because of who you are, then call me. Then I'm interested, and then I'll have your back."
    • Few topics have disturbed him as much as the sheer brutality surrounding The Ant Hill Kids and their leader Roch Thériault, with the mutilation, botched surgery, and (accidental) murder of a toddler as well as one of the cult leader's wives horrifying him enough to break character. In fact, Dankula even describes Thériault's cruelty as being to such a degree that it can "make Uday Hussein blush", and that without inserting crude humor into his delivery, he likely wouldn't have been able to continue with the topic at all.
      "I'm sorry. I'm very sorry, right? But this is a fucking horrible video, right? And I'm trying to make jokes not to make it easier for you, but to make it easier for me."
    • Adding onto the above, the abuse and/or suffering of children in general tends to greatly disturb him overall. While Dankula spent the majority of his Absolute Mad Lads video on Jonestown poking fun at the ridiculousness of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple, once the mass suicides started happening and the commune's children were the first to go, his tone gradually shifted to that of horror, even more so than in his cover of the Ant Hill Kids.
    • Even with the many unsavory people featured in his Absolute Mad Lads videos, Ken McElroy was such an awful person that not only was the video talking about him not a Mad Lads video, but he even stops the video at one point to lampshade how he refuses to make it a Mad Lads video.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: His Mad Lads on Bob Ross wasn't because Dank considered him mad (in either sense of the word). He just really respected Bob Ross and found his life story interesting as well. He had an accompanying Bob Ross Rib for the episode.
  • Gag Censor: His video "How To Get Paid For Farting" includes images of Japanese woodblock paintings featuring a variety of figures using their fartillery on each other. The NSFW bits are covered up with YouTube's sign for a demonetized video.
  • Gag Penis: Frequently refers to his as a "Pringles can". He also had to admit that Rasputin also had a "Pringles can".
    Count Dankula: [...] I'm gonna show 'em what fascism really looks like, and fascism looks like a Pringles tube with veins. (Beat) What? You think after everything I've put Sue through, she's still with me for my good looks and personality?
  • Gallows Humor: Employed in numerous videos that involve disturbing, violent, and/or depressing topics.
    • In his video on the Ant Kill Kids, he makes several jokes throughout despite the extremely grisly subject matter, stating that he wouldn't be able to get through the topic otherwise.
    • When talking about the 2022 Paria diving incident, he likewise makes a few comedic quips and justifies it close to the end by stating that the video needed some levity at that point.
  • It's All About Me: The September 28th, 2020 Absolute Mad Lad was someone Dank described as, "intelligent, funny, handsome, fantastic in bed; just an absolute godlike chad specimen of a man". Himself.
  • Maniac Monkeys: His video on the Gonbe Chimpanzee War focuses on the brutal behaviour of the apes involved.
  • N-Word Privileges: Not the n-word itself, but a variant has been discussed by Dank, who at more than one occasion stated that he is descended from Irish Catholic migrants. While talking about The General being born as one of fifteen children:
    Count Dankula: Catholics, man. I'm allowed to make that joke! I'm allowed to make that joke! I can say Fenian, I can say Taignote , those are our words!
  • Rasputinian Death: "Iron Mike" Malloy (under a malicious life insurance scheme) survived a heroic amount of punishment, oblivious to the danger from his speakeasy "friends" trying to kill him:
  • Running Gag:
    • Buddha occasionally reappears in his later videos whenever he mentions the Nazis.
    • In the Mad Lads episode on Bob Ross, he keeps getting fibers from his wig (or "pubes") stuck in various things.
    • The episode on Uday Hussein keeps using the phrase "This angered Uday severely", due to his Hair-Trigger Temper.
    • Throughout the April Fools' Day video chronicling the fictional "Fenno-Korean Hyper War", he continuously brings up Yakub as a reoccurring figure... and adds "peace be upon him" each time the latter's name is mentioned, accompanied with increasingly exaggerated edits.
    • "In the business, we call this foreshadowing".
    • "Yes, really."
  • A Rare Sentence: Due to the insane lives and antics of his video's subjects, quite a few of Count Dankula's videos result in these being spoken. Almost always accompanied by a reminder that these are indeed official parts of recorded human history.
    Count Dankula: Here are some words I never thought I would say together: The Yakuza pornstar kamikaze pilot!
    Count Dankula: If you were to tell me with a straight face that the first ever recorded submarine kill was achieved by a cursed pirate ship conscripted by the Army - not the Navy, the fucking Army - in the American Civil War on the side of the Confederates, then I would seriously implore you to contemplate additional psychiatric screenings. But no, the fact that everything that I just said in that utterly absurd sentence is actually true... just, just kind of fucks with me.
    Count Dankula: Then there was Jeppe; Tycho's very close friend who was also his - and yes, I'm being completely fucking serious - psychic dwarf jester that lived under his desk.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
    • While some unsavory characters were covered under Absolute Mad Lads, Count Dankula has genuine disgust for Uday Hussein's actions in comparison, that he had one directed at him:
      Count Dankula: Uday was just a straight up piece of shit! There was nothing funny, there was nothing absurd, the man just actively went out of his way to try and be the most evil on Earth [...] He was a pathetic piece of shit, right? He doesn't deserve the title of Mad Lad at all! The only reason he is in Mad Lads is that he serves as an of example of why governments should always be held accountable by the people! Uday Hussein, I award you no points, and I'm glad you're fucking dead!
    • He absolutely has little to no sympathy when ripping into Jon Venables, the second killer of James Bulger, calling him a "pedophile child killer" and refused to label him a "Mad Lad", instead dedicating the episode on focusing on how insane the UK government is at censoring images of Venables (and by an extent, Robert Thompson, the other killernote ) and protecting their identities.
  • Silly Simian: Dank did an Absolute Mad Lads on Ken Allen, an Orangutan who lived in the San Diego Zoo, because he found the antics funny enough to do an entire episode on him.
  • Success Through Insanity: Some Absolute Mad Lads come across as this. For example, Mad Jack Churchill had an entire episode based upon his unusual, yet successful endeavors during World War II, managing to defeat German troops more often than not with little more than a bow and arrow, a sabre and a set of bagpipes.
  • Theme Tune: Tailed Feature's metal cover of Slagsmålsklubben's Show Me Your Pizza.
  • Violent Glaswegian: Scottish and quite unrestrained in his humor and speech. At the beginning of the Xu Xiaodong video, he even claims the Scots invented fighting and that it's one of their national pastimes.
    Count Dankula: Fighting. Yes, fighting. One of the very many things that we, the Scots, invented. A cultural belief and national pastime. Families here have fought for generations: I will fight with you, as my father fought with your father, as my grandfather fought with your grandfather, going all the way back to 1321, because one of your ancestors stole a cow from us.
    ...I don't care if it's been 700 years. Give us our cow back.

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