Web Video / Mark Rober

Mark Rober is an American YouTuber, who previously worked at NASA from 2004 to 2013. He started his YouTube channel on October 20, 2011, where (ten days later) he posted his first video of a a gaping hole torso-view shirt, which gained a million views in a single day. Since then, he's post a variety of content discussing the science behind various topics, and engineering different inventions and devices, including of large toy guns, an automatic bullseye dartboard, flying phone drone, and glitter bomb bait packages.

Like with fellow creator MrBeast, Rober began producing dubs for his videos in other languages around July, 2023

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Tropes pertaining to Mark's videos:

• Awesome, but Impractical: Not every invention Mark makes is a winner in the practicality department. The "World's Largest Lemon Battery" looks impressive with the wall of 1200 lemons that can generate electricity, but it can only generate up to 300 milliamps, which is pretty low by the standards of an average battery; demonstrated in the video with both the lemon battery and a double A battery charging the same motor, the latter showing more efficiency. Further lampshaded when they decided to use it to power a contraption to juice a single lemon to make lemonade.
  Mark: This is the most expensive glass of lemonade you will ever have.
• BFG: The scaled up versions of the Nerf gun and Super Soaker, as seen in the world's LARGEST NERF GUN and World's LARGEST SUPER SOAKER. They're not just simply large versions of said guns, but are also built to be far more capable than the original; the former firing the darts at farther distances with greater launch power, and the latter having the capabilities of tearing through and breaking various objects at close range.
• Bullying a Dragon: When one of his bait package volunteers in the 2.0 video decided to keep the package for themselves instead of using it as intended without returning it, Mark explicitly calls out how bad of an idea this act was in the context of the Glitter Bomb being motivated by a package theft in the first place. Mark then remarks that, in retaliation, he "hypothetically" had his contact info, to which he bought $300 worth of Scientology's starting course in their name, along with sending ten (actually an untold amount) custom post cards of various incriminating contents^note Furry Convention registration, Flat Earth Society application, etc to a bunch of their neighbors.
  Mark: And I'm like: Bro, if you're gonna steal from someone... don't pick the dude who just spent a year and a half of his life avenging the theft of a five dollar Amazon package. If I'm willing to get that petty over something I could easily reorder, what do you think I'm gonna do to the guy who steals the outcome of that year and a half of work?
• Crossover:
  • Captain Disillusion is featured midway through the "Flying Phone Scam Exposed" video to showcase the special effects used in the flying phone video... with his inclusion being a shorter, out-of-context version of his own video where he teaches how to properly put on a mocap suit.
  • By request from How Ridiculous, Mark helped engineer a massive trampoline meant for bouncing large objects, with him directly collaborating with the group to test this new trampoline, with their respective videos featuring their own item drops (a boat with HR's, and a car with Mark's).
• Crazy-Prepared: Courtesy of Mark Rober's engineering philosophy, where he builds systems with redundancy in the event of an oversight or failure. One notable example is the end of his Wiffleball video, where Mark is trying to run from second placing to the homeplate to secure his team's win, with him having to outrun the game-deciding pitch aimed for the catcher-plate. While Mark claimed in narration to have no more tricks up his sleeves after everything he used throughout, the catcher-plate ejecting itself with a blast of 100-psi air to narrowly avoid the pitched ball reveals otherwise.
• Dogs Hate Squirrels: Averted with the dog (dubbed the "world's worst guard dog") featured in two of the Squirrel Maze videos, who doesn't bother antagonizing the squirrels but instead chooses to mark their territory with Mark's Squirrel-weight scale and/or mounted camera before making their leave.
• Glitter Litter: This trope is naturally put to use with the Glitter Bombs, designed to spread glitter all over when opened, as a "relatively harmless" method of taking revenge against and discouraging package thieves.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Unfortunately, some of the glitter bomb packages end up involving innocent bystanders. One was opened inside an Airbnb (rented by scammers as a temporary address), but thankfully, the landlord was on board with the whole scam-baiting operation and got compensated for his trouble.
• Green Aesop: Mark dedicates at least one video a year to environmental causes and/or more sustainable products & solutions.
• Insistent Terminology: For the Rocket Powered Golf Club video, Mark describes six events, which could be summed up as oversights or design flaws, as "Learning Opportunities" (with the onscreen text calling it "total fails").
• Metaphorgotten: In the Liquid Sand Hot Tub video, Mark compares his approach to science to a velociraptor's hunting patterns, complete with the "Clever girl" scene from Jurassic Park being used as the template, with Mark admitting to the analogy falling apart after the velociraptor representing science proceeds to maul Robert Muldoon.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Anyone who steals one of Mark's bait packages gets hit with glitter and fart spray. In contrast, the good samaritans who return them to Mark are rewarded with $400.
• Made of Indestructium: In a video, Mark makes lava and strong acid compete for the title of most destructive substance, along with a "surprise method" for each round's item. One round is a diamond, which proves itself as the one item the trio isn't able to so much as scratch it. It proceeds to shrug off the acid entirely (since carbon is hard to dissolve) and doesn't burn to the lava (since the way diamonds are created makes a lump of human-made adn easily cooling lava redundant by comparison). Mark then reveals his own method: a hammer swing on an anvil. The diamond proceeds to drill a diamond-shaped hole in the anvil's steel instead of shattering.
• Non Sequitur: During Mark's mostly redacted explanation behind how to create Devil's Toothpaste, one of the discernible phrases heard in the middle of the beeps is Oprah Winfrey.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Discussed by Mark in regards to the ladder climb in the Carnival Scam video. It's categorized as nearly impossible to beat due to its design effectively making it an unstable tightrope, but having the knowledge and muscle-memory from climbing practice makes it more skill-based, meaning a player could theoretically win multiple times and clear out the carnival game prize pool. But because of that, it's also the one carnival game with the listed rule "One win per player, per month."
• Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: While "discussing" the ingredients needed for Devil's Toothpaste^note This after showing how explosively dangerous the chemical reaction is in comparison to Elephant's Toothpaste, Mark's narration audio gets redacted with a "*AUDIO REDACTED BY MARK'S LAWYER" listed over the footage of a flask exploding from the chemical reaction.
• Resourceful Rodent: The Squirrel Maze videos are a showcase of the squirrels using their physical and mental limits to clear whatever obstacle developed by Mark and his friend John. The series even started off with Mark's attempt at bird-watching getting interupted by the squirrels constantly and successfully pillaging the "squirrel-proof" bird feeders. Even the device showcased at the end of the first video, intended to give the squirrels daily rations of walnuts in their favor, didn't last against some impatient customers.
• Sand Is Water: The titular Liquid Sand Hot Tub takes the fundamentals of fluidized beds, which uses of air flowing into a container of sand in just the right way to make it behave like water, and repurposes it into a hot tub.
• Schmuck Bait: The glitter bomb bait packages. While at a cursory glance the boxes appear unsuspecting, the various Home Alone references littering the packaging would've been a dead give-away if the porch pirates took the time to examine the package after snatching it. The 2.0's text even notes how blatantly obvious the disguised product is faked and warning what type of retribution the thief will endure for their efforts.
• Serial Escalation: The Glitter Bomb videos started off as vengeance against porch pirates, with it at most initially being distributed among Mark's close friends. The second video would have the devices distributed to applicants across the country, to later videos eventually having it used to intercept scam calls and car break-ins.
• Shout-Out:
  • With the Glitter Bomb video taking inspiration from Home Alone, it naturally features some direct references to it:
    • In the form of some Schmuck Baits, 1.0 features a fake mail address from Kevin McCallister - complete with the same house address the movie was filmed in - to be delivered to Harry and Marv on Wet Bandit Street, and 2.0 onwards has the package littered with modified quotes from the film(s).
    • Upon activating, the contraption would give off a stock voice-clip before and/or after the glitter was spread; 2.0 using Kevin's "Hello" followed by the "Keep the change, ya' filthy animal!" line from the Angels with Filthy Souls fictional movie, and 3.0 using the sequel movie's "Merry Christmas, ya' filthy animal!".
  • The Squirrel Maze videos feature obstacles referencing various shows and movies, either wholesale or in specific obstacles.
    • The 1.0 maze is named after Ninja Warrior, with the "quad-steps of great elevation" taken straight from the same obstacle in the series.
    • A majority of the 2.0 obstacle is themed after Mission: Impossible (1996), with the casino at the beginning, the helicopter that acts as a moving platform, a room based on the "Mission: Impossible" Cable Drop, and a Laser Hallway for the squirrels to harness "their inner Catherine Zeta-Jones."
  • The Office (US)
    • While deconstructing the fake Flying Phone video, he demonstrates how the fans drown out the phone audio by playing an episode sample at full volume.
    • One victim of the tech support scams is represented by pictures of Phyllis from the show.
  • Rober is fond of the Plants vs. Zombies soundtrack ''Rooftop as he likes to use it in multiple videos.
• Signature Headgear: Mark often sports a baseball cap, sometimes worn backwards. The Flying Phone video has a Jump Cut with Mark flipping his hat before getting into the physics of the fake drone.
• Snarky Inanimate Object: Chopstix the robotic piano in the respective video, who in the beginning portion talks back at Mark with "You assume I watch your videos?". Played With in regards to how they're ability to speak, since (as Mark discusses) the viewers hearing words out of the piano is just the brain filling in the blanks with the frequency played combined with the onscreen text.
• Special Guest: Macaulay Culkin appears in Glitter Bomb 2.0 to help Mark improve the design, portrays a caricatured robber stealing the bomb, and gets to sample Mark's improved fart spray.
• Spoof Aesop: The "World's Largest Lemon Battery" video gives this take on the classic "When life gives you lemons" aesop:
  "When life gives you twelve-hundred lemons, make lemonade... then force kids to drink it to power your regenerative zipline."
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: While trying to make an assembly for the world's highest egg drop, Mark's team was having trouble getting the rocket to fly close to their planned landing site, so he called up former NASA colleague Adam Steltzner for advice. Steltzner immediately pointed out that the team was effectively trying to create a guided missile, and therefore anyone who could help them solve the problem is also legally banned from doing so. Mark and the team opted to re-imagine their entire design instead.
• Tempting Fate: Twice in the "This Ball is Impossible to Hit" video, with Mark narrating that he intends for his first bat swing in Wiffleball to be his moment, and his second bat swing being the point where things were gonna change, both times were cut off mid-sentence by Mark striking out.
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: While not necessarily owned by Mark, he dubbed one of the squirrels partaking in his Squirrel Maze video "Phat Gus", due to their larger than average weight plus appetite that's described as slovenly. More than halfway into the video, a close examination of Gus reveals that he's actually a she - and pregnant at that - leaving Mark to pivot his name of the squirrel to "Phantastic Gus" and rephrase slovenly to "healthy appetite". Said name was later reverted back to Phat Gus by the next video after he got full consent.

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