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Web Video / Epic Meal Time

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"We make your dreams come true, and then we eat them."

"This is Epic Meal Time: the only cooking show with no rules, no controls, no boundaries, no borders. And it's on every motherf*caw*ing Tuesday. It's been on every motherf*caw*ing Tuesday for the last five years, and it's gonna be on for the next five years. I promise you that. Where we go from here is a choice I leave to you."
— Harley Morenstein, host, in The "Last Episode" of Epic Meal Time.

So a Montreal high school substitute teacher and his friends decided one day to put a ton of fast food items onto a pizza shell, cover that in cheese and cook it. Then, surprisingly, it got hits. Now, they've turned their gluttony into a weekly series devoted to the most high-calorie and fattening dishes imaginable: Epic Meal Time. The show started in October 2010 and is still ongoing, with new episodes every Tuesday.

With the audacity to call themselves an "online cooking show", the first efforts soon expanded into meat sculptures, questionable uses of bacon, "meat glue", bacon and five birds in a pig - and bacon.

Their website is also live. They have made an appearance on Jay Leno, where they made a shepherd's pie that was also a car.

Epic Chef, a Cooking Duel between two contestants who have their meals judged by Harley and two guest judges, premiered in December 2012. New episodes are posted every Friday in addition to the regular Epic Meal Time episodes every Tuesday.

In addition to the above, Epic Meal Time's "online cooking show" status is now validated every Saturday with Handle It, an instructional video series using the Epic Meal Time Sellout Kitchen Arsenal. Here, the Epic Meal Time crew teaches you the tricks of their trade with all of the classic character antics of the normal show.

This series provides examples of:

  • Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: All the time:
    • "Epic Meal Time dessert eDItion."
    • "Bacon STRIPS."
    • "Jack Dagnel's SAUce."
    • "Ahwahtup, McMuhfain, MOUWN-TAIN!"
    • "SAUce BAUss"
  • Affectionate Parody:
  • A.K.A.-47: Lampshaded and averted by FPSRussia:
    FPSRussia: "Okay, this is the MP5K. "K" stands for "Kompact" in German, don't give me bullshit; I know what the gun is."note 
  • The Alcoholic: The guys cook with, and drink, plenty of booze while in the kitchen. Jack Daniels is one of their mainstays, particularly for Harley and Muscles Glasses.
  • Alcohol Hic: In "Breakfast of Booze":
    Harley: "Next time, we eat a cult. ... *hic!*"
  • All There in the Manual: The (nick)names of most of the cast are only seen on their respective Facebook/Twitter pages:
    • Sterling Toth, the cameraman (was with Harley on Leno).
    • Tyler Lemco, who ate the "Meatball Deathstar".
    • David "Cousin Dave" Heuff, who ate the "Epic Eggroll". Tends to eat with utensils.
    • Josh "Epic Mook" Elkin, who tossed the meat salad.
    • Ameer "Prince Atari" Atari, who ate the second "Meat Car".
      • You had to go to That Other Wiki to learn Muscles Glasses' real name: Alex Perrault.
  • Alter-Ego Acting: In almost all appearances outside of the show, Harley seems to have the same attitude, but this video looks like the other appearances were simply his personality notched up to eleven to maintain the on-screen character.
  • Artistic License – Gun Safety: Parodied in one bit despite all the other proper uses: Tyler tries to demonstrate skinning potatoes, but accidentally grabs a grenade instead. Harley immediately stops him.
  • And a Diet Coke: During Harley and Sterling's appearance on The Jay Leno Show, they and Jay make a shepherd's pie together, during which Jay says, "You know what goes good with this? A Diet Coke."
  • Anyone Can Die: Muscles Glassesnote 
    Harley: "And, uh, we got some glasses...as a little commemoration to, uh, one of our lost members. He is dead now. No joke, he's actually dead."
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
    • Harley, after ordering a Baconator and fries in a Wendy's drive-thru, is told the drink would only be twenty cents more.
      "Your drink will be?" "Fresca."
    • "84 Egg Sandwich" (and a blueberry muffin)
    • "Fast Food Lasagna" features them buying 15 McDonald's Big Macs, a liter of Big Mac Sauce, fifteen Wendy's Baconators, fifteen A&W Teen Burgers (no vegetables!), and four orders of onion rings...and an apple pie...make that four apple pies (Harley gave the apple pies to a mother for her kids).
  • Ascended Fanboy: Paolo, a student from Queen's University, emailed them asking for advice on how to do his own epic meal. The cast of Epic Meal Time road-tripped to Kingston, Ontario and cooked with him and his crew.
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • At the start of "Fast Food Meatloaf"
    • Another time, just as Harley and the gang are cornered by zombie vegans, Muscles Glasses comes in and saves the day.
  • Big Eater:
  • Big Guy: They are ALL very tall, but Muscles Glasses fits this trope the best due to his physique.
  • Big "NO!": One of the crew in the background at the end of "The Sloppy Roethlisburger", when Harley slams his bottle of Jack Daniel's on the counter, causing the bottom to break and spill the contents.
  • Bilingual Bonus:
    • The text on the title card of "Fast Food Sushi"note .
    • Extra points if you know what bukkake means.
    • In "Epic Indian Experience", the waiter translates Harley's description of the dishes.
  • Blatant Lies:
    • In "Bacon Bacon Truck", a girl "swears she's 21" before a group does some prison shots. After Harley (wisely) cards her, she leaves.
    • She sneaks back into the huddle after taking off her noticeable red hoodie and letting down her hair. "(caw!)in' smart", indeed.
  • Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: From Candy Taco Night:
    Harley: Epic Meal Time reminding you to keep your teeth clean, stay in school, keep off drugs and murder all your enemies. I murder all my enemies.
  • Breakout Character: Muscles Glasses. As if it wasn't apparent in the videos, he's the only cast member in "WebVideo/EpicMealTime LIVE" to receive his own introduction sequence.
  • Brick Joke: "Candy BBQ" begins with "Call up your dentist! Tell him he's a little bitch!" Roughly eight months later, in "Candy Taco Night", Harley drops the line "Call up your dentist! You probably owe him an apology."
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: The World's Spiciest Burger (Valentines Day 2018). He came up with a bite-for-bite challenge (they made two). Prince Atari can't handle more than two or three. Harley managed to finish all of his, but at a price; at one point it shows his eyes sullen and sunken, and parts of his face have turned purple from the spice.
  • Bucket Helmet : One person wears one in "Air, Sea and Landsagna".
  • Call-Back:
    • "Maximum Mac and Cheese" featured macaroni and cheese variants of no less than five previous dishes.
    • "Meat Cthulhu" not only brought back deadmau5, but the episode used the song "Cthulhu Sleeps", one of two songs previously used in "Cheesy Grilled Cheese Tower".
    • To mark their one-year anniversary, the guys bought over 150 White Castle hamburgers and used it as pizza toppings to create a "Fast Food Pizza Cake", just like their first meal "Fast Food Pizza", except bigger and using new cooking tricks they learned over the year, such as deep-frying and bacon weaves.
    • The Turbaconepicentipede. Just like the TurBaconEpic, except ten of them...sewn anus to mouth.
    • "WE GETTIN' DRUNK OFF CEREAL!"
    • "Rest in Pizza," the 2014 Halloween episode, features the guys cooking miniature versions of 10 of their earliest meals.
    • "Candy Taco Night" heralds the creation of a candy burrito with "el gigante!", exactly how it was used in "Tequila Taco Night".
    • "Tex-Mex Indian" mentions the line "Call up your plumber. Tell him he's a little bitch." in another reference to "Candy BBQ."
  • Cargo Ship: Harley is more than a bit fascinated by the cinnamon roll that serves as the bun on the cinnaburger supreme; to quote: invoked
    I'm genuinely aroused right now over this cinnamon roll. I wanna roleplay with it. I wanna do things in public with it. I wanna be in it, and I want it to be in me.
  • Catchphrase:
    • "What'you know about x?!"
    • "Next time, we eat x".
    • "Next level x maneuver/technique!"
    • "(caw!)ing SMART!"
    • "Ah, what up, x?!"
      • "Haters" and variants usually gets injected at random intervals.
    • "Drip-drop drippin'!"
      • "Drippin' that [X]!"
    • "You wanna (caw!) this or what?!"
    • "Fingering/Fisting those chicks [eggs]."
    • "...and then you put it in the oven, and then you win!"
    • "YouTube money!"
    • More recently: "Epic Meal Time online cooking show every Tuesday!" (said by Harley to start each episode, once the gang is in the kitchen).
    • "Gosh, we used to be so polite, but the bacon made us crazy!"
    • "Mother maple tree tit syrup!"
    • From Handle It, "Remember, you don't need to know (caw!) about cooking, to know how to cook. You just need to know how to X."
    • ...and bacon strings, and bacon strips, and bacon strips, and bacon strips.
  • Chainsaw Good:
    • Harley uses one in "Meatball Deathstar":
      Harley: EVERY TUESDAY: EPIC MEAL TIME! Comin' at you with a chainsaw and a big pile o'meat! If you ain't down with that...THEN YOU AIN'T DOWN WITH COOKING!!!
    • Another one is used in "Meat Shield" against a dummy dressed in bacon, pot roast, pepperoni and ribs.
  • Chewing the Scenery: 100% chewy monologue. SPREAD THAT SAUUUUZZE!
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Arguably, Tyler; Prince Atari has shades of this, too, depending on the episode.
  • The Comically Serious: Cousin Dave, who uses utensils to eat as calm and composed as possible, while the rest of the guys just gorge themselves with the food.
  • Cool Shades:
    • Harley in "Fast Food Pizza" and Muscles Glasses afterward.
    • The chefs and the waiter in "Epic Indian Experience".
  • Cordon Bleugh Chef
  • Crossover:
    • With Freddie "freddiew" Wong in "Epic VFX Time" and "West Coast Burger Pile" (alongside Corridor Digital).
    • With DJ/producer deadmau5 in "Cheesy Grilled Cheese Tower" and "Meat Cthulhu".
    • With synthpop singer/songwriter Lights in "Fast Food Meatloaf".
    • With FPSRussia in "Russian Meal Time", "Meat Shield", and "Meat Ice Cream Party (Russian Meal Time Part 2)." (He also has a non-speaking role in "Crispy Tauntaun")
    • With professional skateboarder Tony Hawk in "Fast Food Pizza Cake".
    • With the Smosh duo in "Super Pastry Cake".
    • No fewer than six Youtube celebrities in "Turbaconepicentipede", both recurring and newcomers.
    • With the Kids React cast in "Happy Meal Time".
    • With Gabriel Iglesias in "Fast Food Fluffy Cake."
    • With Chris Hardwick (The Nerdist Channel) in "Crispy Tauntaun."
    • With Assassin's Creed III in "Meat America."
    • With the League of STEAM in "Steampunk Meal Time."
    • With Jamie Oliver in "Fish and Chips Filet."
    • With Kevin Smith in "The Burly Beaver Sandwich."
    • With Stan Lee in "Fastfood Scarecrow."
    • With Arnold Schwarzenegger in "The Steak & Egger Sandwich" and "Kaiserschwarzenegger Protein Tank."
    • With Jay Leno in "The Pouter Toolbox."
    • With the Trailer Park Boys (and Randy) in "The Trailer Park Sandwich".
    • With Seth Rogen and James Franco in "Korean BBQ Lasagna."
    • With the fathers of Harley, Cousin Dave, and Epic Mook in "Daddy Meal Time."
    • With Cutthroat Kitchen: Epic Mook (billed under his real name) appeared in the November 2015 "Superstar Sabotage" charity tournament. He went out in the first round, but won $2,500 for his charity, Autism Speaks.
      • He has also served as a regular judge on Cooks vs. Cons, another Food Network competition show.
    • With Series/Chopped: Prince Atari (also billed under his real name) appeared on an October 2016 episode that featured stars of online cooking shows. He was eliminated in the Appetizer round.
  • Crowd Song: In "EpicMealTime LIVE":
    Harley: "When I say "Muscles", you say "Glasses! MUSCLES!!"
    Crowd: "GLASSES!!!"
    Harley: "MUSCLES!!!"
    Crowd: "GLASSES!!!"
  • Cultured Badass:
    • Yes, Harley may spend most of his time hamming up new dinners in every possible sense of the word, but he also knows, on a scientific level, exactly why he does what he does with food, and exactly why that makes it taste better: humans are programmed by evolution to like fatty foods.
    • From "Puzzle Of The Lambs":
      "Cerberus, the tri-head that guards the underworld."
  • Double Entendre:
    • In "Tequila Taco Night":
      Harley: "Taco night is when we lay some beef in a pink taco...drip some guacamole...make her sour cream..."
    • Also in "Candy BBQ":
      Harley: "...we're gonna give your sweet tooth a sexual root canal."
    • From "Sausage Fest":
      Harley: "Canucks love their Kraft Mac & Cheese...and bacon, and igloos, and maple and beavers. (Snicker) Maple beavers..."
    • At The Stinger for "Bacon Tree":
      Harley: "Next time, we eat a cat burglar...or a pussy thief."
    • Played straight at first in "Meatzza", but then subverted at the last second:
      Harley: "SA-OOOSAGES! Some are big, some are small. All of them are nice and juicy...not to sound gay or anything..."
  • Drugs Are Bad: In "Sausage Fest", while making eggs, Harley states they're "Crackin' eggs like we crack smoke." He then suggests "Smoke crack?", but immediately answers "No, that's bad."
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • "Fast Food Pizza" sees Harley not nearly as hammy (or rehearsed); it's just him and Muscles Glasses (who doesn't even keep his signature shades on most of the time and actually talked) eating a pizza loaded with hamburgers, chicken wings, fries, etc.
    • Lampshaded in "Candy Poutine" with a Call-Back to the "Angry French Canadian" (which had poutine):
      Harley: "Gosh, we used to be so damn polite. But the bacon made us crazy!! And by crazy, I mean smart!!"
    • Even moreso in the Triple Baconator Video, made three years prior to the series, showing a skinny!Harley eating a triple Baconator, somewhat politely set to The Terminator theme.
  • Erotic Eating:
  • Even Evil Has Standards: In "The Ostrich Nest", Harley gives a saddened, gloomy expression due to the elephant birds of Madagascar being extinct.
  • Everyone Is Armed: Played with: Muscles Glasses makes mashed potatoes while holding a submachine gun.
  • Everything's Deader with Zombies/Zombie Apocalypse - Whichever trope "Zombie Meal Time" falls under depends on how you look at it: within the context of the episode, it appears to be the latter full-blown. However, when taking this episode in the context of the whole series, it's merely an example of the former.
  • Extreme Omnivore: Though it's only limited to the "next time, we eat x" stinger at the end of each episode, where x usually isn't an edible object (see "The Sloppy Roethliesberger"'s "next time, we eat Cabbage Patch Kids", or sometimes even physically exist ("Tex-Mex Indian"'s "next time, we eat thug life").
  • Failed a Spot Check: In "Fast Food Dim Sum," the guys don't even notice that Harely dyed his hair and beard blonde.
  • Fanservice: You like to watch girls eating? You do now. Straight female vorehounds? This is your mecca.
  • Flat "What": The usual response from fast-food outlets from whom they order in bulk in the drive-thru. There's no way that listening to their confusion wouldn't be the best bit of doing Epic Meal Time.
  • Food Porn:
    • But not the kind of soft, loving and tender porn you're used to. No, this is the manly, bacon-filled, made-of-meat food porn...for you perverts out there.
    • Note that one of the men is a trained chef. Think about that for a while.
    • In "Ultimate Pizza Sandwich", Epic Mook takes it a bit too seriously, and suggests he's going to use a freshly-microwaved pizza pocket in place of a Fleshlight.
  • Friend to All Children:
    • Harley, who draws the line at dead baby jokes and gives apple pie to kids.
    • Just as an FYI, the man used to be a middle school social studies teacher.
  • Fun with Homophones: One episode ends with Harley saying they'll eat a tire/attire, only specifying the other won't be eaten.
  • Funny Background Event: During Peanut Butter and Jelly Archetype, there's a sequence where Harley shows all of the food they've made for the episode, complete with calories counters. While he's doing this, Muscles Glasses is standing right next to him, eating from a jar of Nutella in his pocket with a mixing spoon.
  • Giant Food: Every now and then they make a huge version of something, usually a burger. Then there's the Mega Oreo.
  • Gingerbread House:
  • A God Am I: Invoked in "Puzzle of the Lambs", where they play God and make a "culinary abomination".
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Lampshaded in "Maximum Mac and Cheese":
    Harley: "For all you flub-sucking dark-gargling Tom Henry mother-father short-stains. This is a family restaurant."
  • Gross-Out Show: Some people may be disgusted by what they serve up. Viewers beware.
  • Hilarious Outtakes: Five collections of outtakes have been released so far, but one scene was included as a stinger:
    Harley: Changin' the game!
    (Harley slaps down a bottle of Jack Daniels...which is accompanied by a crack.)
    Off-camera voice: (as booze starts leaking) OHHH!
    (Harley picks up the bottle, just as the bottom of the bottle falls out.)
    Harley: Oh (caw!)...
    Off-camera voice: NOOOOO!
  • Hitler Ate Sugar: "You know who else didn't like too much bacon? Hitler. And you don't want to be Hitler, do you? No. He's got stupid hair."
  • Hypocritical Humor: Harley calls the audience perverts for wanting to watch a girl eat the "Massive Meat Log" — then the reverse angle shows him and all of his friends doing the exact same thing.
  • Idea Bulb: "Breakfast Pizza" starts with Harley getting out a frozen pizza for breakfast, then seeing a more traditional plate of breakfast food on the kitchen island. He compares them, then a bulb appears and illuminates over his head. Tyler promptly notices and lampshades it. The scene provides the trope's page quote.
    Tyler: Harley? What the (caw) is that?
  • I Have Many Names: Taken further in "Candy Sushi":
    Harley: "And we got these custom sauces, 'cause I'm the 'Doctor of Dressing', aka the 'Pharaoh of Flavour', aka the 'Minister of Mixture', aka the 'Connoisseur of Condiments', aka the 'Don of the Drippin', aka the 'Jeff Goldblum of the Internet', aka... [dramatic zoom on the sauces] ...the Sauce Boss.
  • I Like My X Like I Like My Y: Harley likes his cheddar like he likes his women; old and oily. He laters corrects his statement, saying he likes them hot and wrapped in bacon.
  • Improvised Clothes: A bacon bikini in the "Gentleman's Episode".
  • Insistent Terminology: How Harley justifies the Product Placement during the meals: "We didn't sell out—they bought in."
  • Insult Backfire: Their official website links to a lambasting from PETA in their About section, indicating they may be proud of having pissed them off.
  • Jabba Table Manners: Usually when they eat their creations, they tear off chunks with their bare hands and wolf it down with crumbs falling right off the food.
  • Known Only by Their Nickname: Alex "Muscles Glasses" Perrault
  • Large Ham: Harley's one and he proceeds to cook truckloads.
  • Malaproper: Harley opens with one in "Tequila Taco Night":
    Harley: "I've been sippin' on that green and smokin' that liquor all day."
  • Long List: In the Pizza Plane episode, Harley goes into a long list of all the pizza related episodes they've done over the years.
  • Male Gaze: There's a lot of cleavage in "The Black Legend".
  • Masochist's Meal:
    • As tasty as a lot of these dishes look, consider their high fat content and calorie counts.
    • Also in "Maximum Mac and Cheese" and "Sausage Fest".
  • Mathematician's Answer: In "Meat Building 101", Paolo asks Tyler what kind of meat they used to build the Slaughterhouse. Tyler stumbles over his answer, but essentially tells him, "All of the meat."
  • Moose and Maple Syrup:
    • Muscles Glasses' dad is a lumberjack for crying out loud.
    • Mistaken Nationality: More than a few first time viewers assume the cast are American. No guesses as to why.
  • Mundane Made Awesome:
    • They do for meat what Light Yagami did for potato chips.
    • In Discount Meal Time, Muscles Glasses gets into a rap battle. Instead of his own counter rap...he just gives him the finger and everyone loses their minds like he just gave the biggest diss ever!
  • Ms. Fanservice:
    • The girl from "Massive Meat Log":
      Harley: "We all know that no one wants to see a douchebag eat a corn-dog, so we brought a little girl in for all you perverts!"
    • They use another girl for "Fast Food Sushi"; they both come back for "The Black Legend".
    • They, plus a horde of other hot girls, appear in "Maximum Mac and Cheese", "Drunken Mess" and "Sausage Fest".
    • "Fast Food Meatloaf" starts off with the boys "rescuing" a trio of Ms Fanservices (including Lights) from some "hamburglers".
  • Neck Lift: Muscles Glasses to two thieving thugs in "Fast Food Meatloaf".
  • Noble Wolf: Muscles Glasses' father has a pet wolf...who loves bacon. Beacon is a pleasure that crosses species boundaries.
  • Non Sequitur
    • "SUSHI! FAST FOOD! SEX!"
    • "WE 'BOUT TO GET DRUNK OFF PANCAKES!!!"
    • "We're about to die for this. What'you know about dyin'?"
    • "What up, meat sauce?"
  • Not the Intended Use: In "$1000 for French Toast," they make one piece of French toast and serve it on an Apple iPad Pro instead of a plate.
  • Nutritional Nightmare: They live off this trope, routinely cooking gigantic dishes with tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands of calories and thousands of grams of fat. Expect to see a lot of bacon in their meals.
  • Object Ceiling Cling: In the "Mac Burgers" Handle It video Epic Mook throws a handful of macaroni onto the ceiling in a variation on the "if your pasta sticks to the wall it's ready" cooking trope.
  • Once per Episode:
    • "Next time, we eat x!" where x is something outlandish or impossible to eat.
    • Subverted in "The Slaughterhouse": "Next time, we eat dessert!" Sure enough, the following week was "The Black Legend": two girls eating a gigantic crepe.
    • Also subverted in "Epic H'our D'oeuvres":
      "Next time we eat bacon. Mweheheh."
    • Yet another subversion for "Sausage Fest":
      "Next time, we eat ice cream." (Cue all the girls cheering)
    • In "12 Gauge Hot Dog", Harley says "Next time, we eat blood!" and in the next video, "Zombie Meal Time", Muscles Glasses takes a shot of Jack Daniels and blood.
    • Averted in the first video, which ends with Muscles Glasses (sans glasses) raising his arms in the air triumphantly after eating.
    • At the end of French Fry Salad:
      "Next time, we eat sellouts. Next time, we eat while selling out. (Beat) Netflix.com/bacon."
    • Subverted in "Candy Sushi":
      "Next time, we eat. We have to, or we'll die."
  • Out of Focus: Muscles Glasses drops out of sight for several episodes (March-May 2012). Harley and the gang mention him in passing, and he is briefly seen hitchhiking along a back road. They offer up a sacrifice to prepare for his return ("Fastfood Sacrifice"), then cook him a bacon-stuffed cheeseburger after he shows up and helps them defeat a gang of vegan zombies ("Zombie Vegan Attack!"/"Boss Bacon Burger").
  • Pet the Dog: Harley and his crew are vulgar, crude, and gluttonous but they and their fellow YouTube celebrities helped people out in the Soup Kitchen
  • Pistol-Whipping: Harley, Muscles Glasses and FPSRussia take turns tenderizing meat, the latter using a Desert Eagle to do it.
  • Precision F-Strike: In "Spam Fries Four Loko", Cousin Dave shouts one out when someone tells him there's an automatic can opener after he finishes opening a couple of canned goods with a manual can opener.
  • Product Placement: For Hormel Black Label bacon. All the time. At least they're honest about it.
  • A Rare Sentence: During Epic Christmas Carol:
    Harley: "Ain’t no surprises here, we throw in more bacon, but we don’t wanna compromise the whole integrity of this rice crispy snowman. Now that’s a sentence I can guarantee no other human being has said except for me just now."
  • Real Men Eat Meat
    • Subverted for Fanservice instead in "Massive Meat Log".
    • Invoked in "Sugar Shack" by Muscles Glasses' lumberjack father.
    • Totally averted with "Candy BBQ" and "Candy Poutine".
      Harley: "Well I guess you can say that this is the "no-meat" episode...but don't you (caw!)ing say it."
  • Recut: The Director's Cut of "Zombie Meal Time", one of the most controversial episodes gets a brand new opening, the cooking narration absent in the original, new scenes of the guys talking while in makeup and is streamlined from 7.5 minutes to 4 minutes.
  • Red Baron:
    • In "Fast Food Sushi", Harley dubs himself the "Sauce Boss".
    • And in Fast Food Shepherds' Pie, he refers to himself as the "Shepherd of Grease/Greece."
  • Refuge in Audacity
    • All of them, really, but it doesn't get much more audacious than putting five birds into a pig. Then they crank it up and ten times more.
    • The "gay bacon strips" were taken to their logical conclusion in the Candy Pizza episode.
      Harley: Whaddup, playa? In the kitchen, no candy missin'! We got gay bacon strips. We got gay sour worms.note  We got candy (caw!) rings.note  And we got some candy fruit! Not a big deal. *deep inhale* Smell that? We've got real bacon, too! And we candied it!
  • Relax-o-Vision: "Fast Food Fondue Mixology" features "Your Weekly Bacon Moment," set to soft music while Harley talks quietly.
  • Reset Button: Happens during "Dirt Pie." Harley and the gang show up neatly dressed in golf shirts and khakis and cook a vegetarian dish of rice and soy-based meat substitutes. When he throws the whole thing in the trash, they revert to their normal slovenly selves and proceed to cook and eat a massive "Meat Block." The reset is lampshaded with a second title card.
  • Rousing Speech: Most of the video intros; take "84 Egg Sandwich" for example:
    Harley: "Oh, you wanna change the game? Well, if you wanna change the game, you gotta stay ahead of it! And how do you do that? You eat a well-balanced brookfast of eggs, bacon, sandwiches and liquor! Rise and shine, you tired-ass mother(caw!)s."
  • Self-Deprecation:
    • Invoked in "Tequila Taco Night":
      Harley: "If you don't marinate your meat in a Ziploc bag, you think too highly of yourselves."
    • And again, when Harley (in disguise) appears on an episode of The Gentlemen's Rant about Epic Meal Time.
  • Serial Escalation:
    • It started with a dish that anyone could make, then other culinary mashups. As more episodes rolled in, the dishes involved long and complex preparation methods, vegetables and require an entire dinner table of people to finish.
    • Then they broke the 100,000 calorie barrier.
      • "And because we're (caw!)ed up, we garnished the whole thing with Baconators!"
    • "French Fry Week": during the week of October 3, 2011, the guys released one episode per day with french fries as the central ingredient. They ended off the week with a 15-pound poutine.
    • "Turbaconepicentipede": the "TurBacon Epic Thanksgiving" times ten, for a grand total of 802,420 calories.
    • "The Million Calorie Lasagna" finally eclipses the one million calorie marker. So dense and heavy that it takes 5 guys to carry it to the standing oven.
  • Serious Business: The one time they don't drink alcohol is "Maximum Protein Experience", which is (vaguely) themed on staying in shape, and filmed in a gym. Doesn't stop them from hamming it up, and using lots of bacon strips and bacon strips and bacon strips...
  • Shout-Out:
  • Sound-Effect Bleep:
    • Nearly every curse word is censored via a crow's call. At least one instance of the word "vegetables" was censored, too.
    • If you listen carefully in certain episodes, they do forget to edit out some curse words.
    • Averted in the first half of "EpicMealTime LIVE".
    • Their episode with the Trailer Park Boys has the EMT crew still bleeped while Julian, Ricky, Bubbles and Randy are uncensored.
    • Spent Shells Shower: Sort of. FPSRussia dribbles bullets out of his mouth at the end.
  • Standard Hero Reward: Parodied in "Fast Food Meatloaf":
    Lights: "Holy crap, my burgers! How can I ever repay you?"
    Harley: "I dunno...maybe (caw!)ing share with us, you greedy bitches?"
  • Super Not-Drowning Skills: Tyler at the beginning of "New Years Hangover Cure"
  • Swiss-Army Gun: Harley uses a rifle + bayonet as a skewer for around half a dozen hamburgers.
  • The Power of Friendship: The (intangible) thing that the guys run off of. Tea Gardner would be very pleased indeed.
  • The Smurfette Principle: The Epic Meal Empire television show adds a girl named Natalie to the cast. Officially her purpose is to track down clients for the guys to make epic meals for, but certain scenes make it fairly obvious that she's only there because Executive Meddling demanded that the main cast include a female.
  • The Stoic:
    • Aside from "Sugar Shack," Muscles Glasses will get in maybe two lines of dialogue during a couple episodes; most of the time he'll remain quite and/or communicate with strong glares at the camera.
    • Well that, or the universal language of the middle finger.
  • Swiss-Army Appendage: Played with in "Russian Meal Time":
    Harley: "Muscles Glasses has a detachable penis, that also happens to be a combat knife."
  • Take That!:
    • "What you doin'? Hatin'? STOP HATIN'!!! BLEND YOUR OWN BACON!!!"
    • "Meat Salad". Seriously, just listen to some of Harley's dialogue in the video:
      "What'you know about health? "Salad"? (caw!) SALAD!!!"
      "Epic Meal Time showing you how to make a real salad! (caw!) your lettuce!"
      "Oh, you didn't know? Carrots are for ugly people!"
    • They gave a very scathing F-U on their Facebook page to the people who were hating on "Drunken Mess".
    • A vegetarian of 4 years was pressured into eating a bacon strip in "Bacon Bacon Truck".
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Bacon, though Harley has a soft spot for macaroni and cheese. To a slightly lesser extent, Jack Daniels Whiskey.
  • Trigger-Happy: Invoked by FPSRussia during the shooting range segment against users of this trope. Harley starts to turn guilty when a Desert Eagle wounds up in his hand, but slightly subverted when he asks FPSRussia if it's alright to pull the trigger after the latter inspects the gun first.
  • Troll:
    • Although the guys may band together to create an epic meal, there are certain times when one of them can't help but either insult, snark or outright jinx each other. In "The Ostrich Nest", for example, when Epic Mook starts dicing up some onions:
      Cousin Dave: "One of these days, I'm going to witness you lose a finger."
      Epic Mook: "Why?"
      Cousin Dave: "It's just going to happen."
      Epic Mook: "I'm very careful with this."
      Cousin Dave: "I know you are...but it'll happen."
      [Beat]
      Epic Mook: "...Don't be a prick."
    • Also, Harley at the Mass Effect 3 launch
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Muscles Glasses snapping two thieves' necks isn't given anything more than a simple "Yup, he's doing it again..." from Tyler.
  • Verbal Tic:
    • "Sauce" is (nowadays) always pronounced "SA-OOOS"
    • As "Sausage" is pronounced "SA-OOOSAGE"
    • "Jack Daniels'" is now "Jack Dagnels"
    • "Breakfast" as "brookfast".
  • Very Special Episode: EMT celebrates the Super Bowl each year with a meal named after one of the quarterbacks. They've done "The Sloppy Roethlisberger" (a 50-pound bacon cheeseburger with custom bun; the first single item to break 100,000 calories), "Dirty Manningwich" (a large sloppy joe with clam chowder) and "Flacco Taco" (a gigantic taco). They are 2-for-3 as of SB XLVII in predicting the winner.
    Harley: Mother(caw!)er, sports!
  • Wham Line: From "Fast Food Pizza Cake":
    Harley: "We'll have a hundred and fifty."
  • Whole Episode Flashback: Throwback Thursday, which now has its own YouTube channel. They air the videos Pop Up Video-style, and garble Muscles Glasses any time he speaks.
  • Yet Another Christmas Carol: "Epic Christmas Carol." The Sauce Boss treats his friends like shit until he is visited by the Ghosts of Bacon, Booze, and Bitches.

Next time, we eat Wikipedia!

 
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Epic Meal Time

Harley Morenstein is the Doctor of Dressing, the Pharaoh of Flavor, the Minister of Mixture, the Connoisseur of Condiments, the Don of the Dripping, the Jeff Goldblum of the Internet, and his personal favorite... the Sauce Boss.

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Breakfast Pizza

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Epic Meal Time

Harley Morenstein is the Doctor of Dressing, the Pharaoh of Flavor, the Minister of Mixture, the Connoisseur of Condiments, the Don of the Dripping, the Jeff Goldblum of the Internet, and his personal favorite... the Sauce Boss.

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Epic Meal Time

Meat Salad

Breakfast Pizza