Leo Vader is a YouTube channel dedicated to pop culture analysis, especially the worldbuilding implications of fictional media. The pop-culture artifacts that Leo Vader chooses to focus on are almost never tentpole blockbusters, though, nor are they high-brow arthouse films or So Bad, It's Good stinkers. Instead, Leo investigates forgettable nothing-movies like In Time or Downsizing. These sillier videos are interspersed with more personal works about Leo’s life.
Leo’s style is much looser than most video essayists, with a shorter average runtime and a stronger emphasis on jokes than his contemporaries. His videos also tend to be very introspective, including dives into Leo’s own fears and insecurities.
Unusually for a video essay channel, it has a framing device: Leo’s house is constantly teleporting through space randomly, with Leo taken along for the ride. Having long since given up on finding a way home, Leo Vader passes the time by watching TV and making videos.
Tropes found in this work include:
- Analysis Channel: Albeit a rather goofy one.
- Baldness Angst: Explored in addressing the allegations (that I am bald)
, where Leo angsts over both his insecurity over his baldness and his insecurity about that insecurity, because he figures he shouldn't let other people control how he feels about himself. - Christmas Episode: Leo's Completely Optional Christmas Special, where Leo exchanges gifts with his alien friends and gets into an obligatory holiday argument.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: In “Could Downsized Matt Damon defeat Ant-Man?”, Leo tries to make a case for Matt Damon defeating Ant-Man and descends into grief as he realizes how comically outmatched Matt Damon is.
- Drugs Are Bad: Leo goes in detail about his experience with cannabis in “On Weed”, exploring both the negative effects and positive sides of drug use.
- Fish out of Water: The premise of "Ranking movies where Brendan Frasier emerges from the past" is the fact Brendan Frasier starred in three movies with this same basic premise (Encino Man, George of the Jungle, and Blast from the Past).
- Five Stages of Grief: “Could Downsized Matt Damon defeat Ant-Man?” is structured into five parts, each one corresponding to a different stage of grief as Leo realizes how bad the video’s premise is.
- Hypothetical Fight Debate: In “Could Downsized Matt Damon defeat Ant-Man?” and "Cereal Mascot (power level) Tier List".
- Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: "Why are kids obsessed with horror?" is about, well, why kids are obsessed with horror and whether or not it's healthy for them to watch. Leo comes out on the side that it's generally fine.
- Little Green Men: Bart, Leo's alien puppet buddy.
- Muppet: Bart and PK Sullivan are both portrayed by stylized felt puppets. Unusually for puppetry, their lines are improvised by their actors and then the puppets are brought in later to be synced to the audio.
- Nerds Are Virgins: Parodied in Breaking Down My Most Iconic Characters:“Dinkus is definitely a nerd, very into, like, books and video games, so… not sexually viable.”
- Niche Network: Internet variant. In addressing the allegations (that I am bald), Leo fears that shaving his head completely bald will lead to him becoming a "niche creator". He then briefly has an Imagine Spot where he hosts a balding-focused media analysis channel called "Balding Ideas".
- Pig Man: PK Sullivan, Leo's other puppet buddy.
- Rage Quit: In “Gamer Rage”, Leo investigates why gamer ragequit videos are so addictive to watch and why rage-quitting is such a common response to losing.
- The Stoner: Apparently a species-wide trait of the Gorbulonians.
