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I don't like this movie,
It doesn't look too friendly,
This bootleg is so fake,
That toy is gonna break.
Phelous, don't let me down,
You need to be around,
Grab that chocolate pizza and leave a like because I want one!
"Oh Phelous" (post-2018 version), Phelous' ending theme by Ze SadPanda...

Phelan Porteous (born September 4, 1983) is a Canadian guy who makes funny videos on the Internet. His claims to fame are his reviews of really bad horror movies and Disneyesque mockbusters, both B-grade and big-budget, and Mortal Komedy, a parody of the Mortal Kombat series. He's also well-known for being a Meta Guy who mocks the hell out of poorly-used tropes, as well as his unique delivery which involves lots of deadpanning with occasional bits of hamminess. He also used to die a lot in his reviews, but that gag's (mostly) been retired.

His main review show used to have no official name (a fact that was lampshaded within the series itself), but it's since been dubbed "Phelous and the Movies" after a seemingly-random title given to the show on IMDB. The show was also referred to as "Phelous Who" for a short time and given an accompanying title sequence, likely because of all the shoutouts to said series present in his videos. The title sequence has since been retired, with the explanation given that he wanted to make better use of the title cards drawn for his episodes. He also has a couple of other video series: Bootleg Zones, which focuses on bootleg and knockoff toys and video games of varying quality (and its spinoff, Miraculous Merchandise Zone, which looks at official products); Halloweenie, a low-budget public access show with an odd skeleton man who looks at Halloween-related items and topics; and episode-by-episode reviews of Mortal Kombat: Conquest, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, and Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation.

On January 12, 2015 Phelan announced that he was leaving Channel Awesome. He had been with the site since December 2008.

On June 19, 2020, Phelous uploaded a video called "Beauty and the Beast (Dingo Pictures). Rather than a review, it is an original animated video, retelling the Beauty and the Beast story while making fun of Dingo Pictures. Since this video is a massive break from Phelous' other videos and has its own self-contained story, please put tropes for that video HERE.

His videos can be viewed here and here. A frequent collaborator with wife Allison Pregler, and the two often appear in each other's videos.


Tropes found in this show:

  • Aborted Arc: The review of Stephen King's Boogey Man, ends with Phelous regenerating into a cat, and one of his dead selves turning into Phelous D1, hinting at a new expansive storyline for the mid-Review sketches. The next review, Jeepers Creepers, starts out with Cat-Phelous turning into a human again via a Deus ex machina, shorty after which he nonchalantly shoots Phelous D1, ending the storyline in less than 3 minutes.
  • Actually Pretty Funny:
    • He notes this in a scene from Day of the Dead 2 where one of the zombified characters monolouges after getting shot, only to be told the others can hear him (It Makes Sense in Context) though he also states that he believes the movie just gave up.
    • Also in House of the Dead with this exchange
      Some Guy: Shoot them!
      Capitan Kirk: Whaddaya think I'm tryin' to do, ya fucking moron?
    • He admits the DVD commentary for House of the Dead: Funny Version is funny, albeit unintentionally.
    • He thought the bratty kids getting blown up in Santa's Slay was pretty funny until they ruined it.
    • In his review of The Boogeyman (1980), a little boy, after sticking his head through a window and shouting "BOOGEYMAN!", is killed pathetically when the window half heartedly closes on his neck. Phelous says that death scene almost makes up for everything else. Almost.
    • Almost any goofy surprised death face seems to cheer him up.
    • In Turtles Forever, he points out that 1987 Raphael's second breaking the fourth wall gag was pretty funny, but by that point was too pissed about the lack of respect with which the 1987 turtles were handled to laugh at it.
    • Admits that in the Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers review that John Strode's death in the theatrical cut (With his head exploding) is stupid, but also funny and was the only change between the two cuts of the film he approved of.
    • He admits that Shredder's line of "Tonight I dine on turtle soup" was amusing to him.
    • He admits that Dave Coulier!Peter Venkman's "Well yeah, actually we did" line from the "Halloween II 1/2" episode was actually funny, and even give props to Dave for not screwing up the line's delivery. He then goes to throw up after saying that.
    • In his review of the GoodTimes Aladdin movie, he admits to being amused by some of the Genie's lines.
    • The Queen in Goodtimes' Snow White calls the stories about her stepdaughter's beauty "exaggerated." In his opinion, this shoutout to Mark Twain is actually pretty funny.
    • He admits that he does like Dingo Pictures movies in his Cat On Boots review, which is half heartwarming and half weird.
    • Admits that the "I have to pee" line from Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman was kinda funny.
  • Adam Westing:
    • Lampshaded at the end of Incubus when he says all the performances were terrible. Except for Tara Reid who did an excellent job playing Tara Reid.
    • Phelous himself. Frequently.
    • During the large crossover review of Southland Tales he seemed to be completely exaggerating his own speech patterns and accent for deliberate effect.
  • Affectionate Parody: Mortal Komedy, of Mortal Kombat.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: In-universe; he's come up with enough theories about the characters in the films he's reviewed that they have their own page.
  • Ambiguously Gay: Selouph, Phelous' allegedly Evil Counterpart who reviews romantic comedies.
  • Animal Reaction Shot: Phelous likes to point out the "stupid surprised animals" he occasionally spots in the films he reviews.
  • Arch-Enemy: Phelous D1, allegedly. Phelous himself seems to keep forgetting he exists.
  • Arc Words: "Real", and all variations there of (such as "really" "real" and "for reals").
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde animated story shows the evil Hyde committing murder, implied rape and dropping discounted silverware into the river, that fiend.
    Phelous: Someone could have really enjoyed that silverware!
  • Artistic License – Biology: Phelous erroneously refers to panthers as a species in Part 2 of his Lion and the King review. In reality, a panther is just a melanistic leopard (or jaguar, but since the movie is presumably set in Africa, the panther characters should be leopards).
  • Author Appeal:
  • Awesome Mc Cool Name:
    • Pops up in his Bootleg Zones reviews of all places, with the Robocop knockoff figure called Robert Cop 2. Phelous gives it a perfect 10/10 overall score based on the name alone. Dinosaur Invincibility is also given a high score because of its ridiculous name and packaging.
    • In his Wrong Turn 2: Dead End review, he refuses to refer to a character named Jake as anything other than the actor's real name: Texas Battle.
    • Another Bootleg Zone toy got a perfect 10 based on its name alone: Motorcycle The Pooh.
    • Invoked with Weedon Scott.
  • Ax-Crazy: Especially in crossovers.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: And occasionally "The Bad Guy is foiled for now, but lives to kill another day;" common themes in the films he reviews, usually responded to with an annoyed groan from Phelan.
  • Berserk Button: He has a whole keyboard of 'em:
    • The plot twist in I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer:
      Phelous: A zombie fisherman. A zombie fisherman. A ZOMBIE FISHERMAN!?
    • Eli Roth and his writing style, particularly his reliance on Jerkass characters and using "gay" as an insult.
    • With Sub-Zero, if you make a fatality joke, he will call you out on it. Make one too many and he will consider killing you, as Phelous proved in his Anacondas 4 review.
    • Michelle from Pulse 2, since she plots to kill her daughter just so her ex-husband can't have custody.
      • From Pulse 3, there's also "THE INTERNET GHOST OF A RECORD PLAYER?!", which is insane enough to rival the zombie fisherman.
      • Reviewing so many bad films named Pulse (whether they're in a series or not) eventually turned the mere word into a berserk button for him.
    • Anytime a bad movie references a better one. Taken to extreme levels in Dead & Deader.
    • The man takes his gaming pretty seriously. He ranted at length about the Resident Evil Film Series and Silent Hill films (particularly Dahlia Gillespie's portrayal as a sympathetic character in the first Silent Hill film, and Jill Valentine's demotion to sidekick in the Resident Evil films), and he was mildly irked by the inaccuracies about video games in Stay Alive (2006). He likewise was livid when Barry Burton, one of his favorite characters from Resident Evil got killed in Retribution.
    Phelous: This movie's a farce! A fucking farce! Fuck this movie to fucking sandwich Hell!
    • His review of A Serbian Film is quite possibly his angriest review yet, taking particular umbrage at that film's Gorn and attempts at Crossing the Line Twice.
    • It's not as bad as some of the other buttons, but Phelous dislikes horror movie teenagers/college students/cops/killers who are obsessed with drinking and partying; oftentimes wishing that they'd get killed already.
      • The partying cop from the Cabin Fever series earns an especially large chunk of his disdain when he reviews those movies.
    • He hates reality shows, judging by his Wrong Turn 2: Dead End and ''Halloween: Resurrection" reviews.
    • Most horror movie remakes; mostly ones that remove subtle atmospheric horror.
    • The director of The Curse of Michael Myers claiming Donald Pleasence's Dr. Loomis boring and cutting large portions of his final performance.
    • Inconsistency between movies and their sequels tends to anger him as well (Ulli Lommel's The Boogeyman (1980) trilogy being a prime example of this).
    • "Lock-you-inside" locks may still exist in modern times, but they're rarer and they mostly only exist in horror movies to act as an inconvenience to anyone trying to get out of the house. He hates them. (Though they're actually still very common in places like the UK and Europe, causing confusion to viewers from those countries.)
    • Contrived reasons to disable cell phones in horror movies, such as the signal mysteriously vanishing in the vicinity of slashers or monsters.
    • He often gets annoyed by large amounts of jump scares in movies. However, in his review of Jacob's Ladder, he did point out a Jump Scare done right; a surprise shot that's been built up and has relevance to the movie's theme.
    • For very understandable reasons attempts to play rape for laughs, especially in tasteless movies such as Jack Frost or Thankskilling, is one of his biggest Berserk Buttons.
    • He seems to have a very low tolerance for singing; any attempt at a musical number is often met with an emphatic "No", before being skipped over or only reluctantly shown.
    • The version of Peter Venkman on The Real Ghostbusters voiced by Dave Coulier.
    • The very concept of Heel–Face Brainwashing deeply disgusts him. He was already critical of Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time and Golden Films' Rudolph, but he absolutely explodes in rage when the "heroes" of those movies do this to the villains.
    • Adaptations that blatantly bastardize and/or disrespect the source material. His review of Golden Films' The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of his angriest reviews ever because of this.
    • Phelous is really annoyed by making fat characters Big Eaters as a joke, finding the joke tired and cliche.
    • When going over his collection of Ghostbusters releases, he shows great agitation when Winston and thus Ernie Hudson is excluded from official adverting.
    • Additionally, he hates when the first two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies use the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III designs of the turtles on their home video releases.
    • He hated the cloning aspect of the Resident Evil Film Series. So much so, he admits he got mad when the Netflix show pulled its own clone twist.
  • Better than a Bare Bulb: In his case, it's part and parcel of being a Meta Guy.
  • Big "NO!":
    • Parodied during the ending of the Skinned Deep episode, when it turns out that the end credits of the movie play while the Final Girl screams "NOOOOOOOOO!" over and over again throughout the whole thing.
    Phelous: NOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOoooo way I'm doing that.
    • Played straight when he realizes Eli Roth wrote and directed Hostel Part II, unlike the second Cabin Fever.
    • Does a slow motion one during his review of Resident Evil: Retribution when the film version of Barry Burton, one of his favorite characters in the RE games, ends up getting killed. Parodied later when Luther get killed later on.
    Phelous: (In slow motion) Luther...(Regular speed) Who fucking cares.
  • Bigger on the Inside: Phelous lives in what looks like a tiny shed on the outside, but on the inside, it's pretty big.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Since some of his reviews are of terrible foreign horror movies, he runs into this on occasion. He gets particularly confused for Nightmare City, an Italian zombie movie.
  • Bloody Hilarious: How he treats most of the movies' death scenes, by speeding them up and adding cartoony sound effects.
  • Breakout Character: It's probably safe to say that Phelous never anticipated how much both he and his fans would come to love his interpretation of Beauty's father from the GoodTimes Entertainment version of Beauty and the Beast. "Old Man" now has constant cameos in other reviews, fan art, gifs and memes, and even his own spinoff series in "Old Man Reads Creepypastas."
    • Phelous satirizes this trope once in a while. For example, in his review of Spider-Man episode "The A-B-C's of D-O-O-M", Phelous dedicates his entire time discussing and propping up the character Goron, a one-off Canon Foreigner villain. In-universe, Spider-Man and Dr. Doom are well acquainted with him and the threat he poses. In reality, there was very little backstory about Goron and he's quickly forgotten after his defeat.
  • Brick Joke:
    • During his review of Cry_Wolf, Phelous makes a prank call to the police. This leads to a cop shooting a fellow skit artist at the end of the review and then arresting Phelous.
    • Also, he shouldn't have crossed that line when he mentioned Doug to The Nostalgia Critic.
    • In his Jeepers Creepers review, Phelous D1 claims part of his plan involved turning the show into one that reviews Romantic Comedies. At the start of the Amityville Horror review, another evil counterpart Phelous, "Selouph", claims he reviews romantic comedies, before getting shot by Phelous.
  • Broken Record:
    • The scene in Case 39 where Lily repeats "Why, Emily?" over and over again causes him to scream "Shut up! SHUT UP!" and then dub her as saying "Silent Hill!" over and over again.
    • Enrico in the Resident Hazard machinima, who keeps saying "Yeah?" over and over again.
  • Broke the Rating Scale:
    • A Serbian Film does this for Phelous much like it did for Brad Jones. He states he'd watch any of the other movies he's reviewed repeatedly, even Five Across the Eyes, instead of A Serbian Film.
    • The Midnight Meat Train received 7.2 out of a 3½.
    • Jeepers Creepers got a -3/10, solely due to the sky having poor continuity.
    • While he has given 0/10 scores in the sub-sections of the Bootleg Zone reviews, there have been only four toys that have gotten an overall rating of 0/10: Rock N Dancer (for failing to perform any movement), the Nickelodeon Ninja Turtles Bootlegs (for looking exactly the same as the official toyline at first glance, despite being vastly inferior products), the Super Ninja TMNT bootlegs (for reusing an already bad mold that's been shown several times on the show, as well as being unbelievably cheap and breakable), and the Funny Toilet Guy (for being an unfunny toy based around Toilet Humor that didn't even work properly).
    • The Rock N Dancer doll was creepy, unoriginal and did not work. Its only use was the box it came in being loved by Lupa's cat Ash as a bed, so it got a rating of cat bed out of 10.
    • One set of Turtles knockoffs he reviewed was so bad that instead of getting a 0/10 in the overall, it ended up getting a "1"/10...with the "1" being the finger.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Phelous mocks Micheal Myers in the Wrong Turn 2: Dead End review.
  • But Thou Must!: Parodied in his Fear Dot Com video, even using the exact phrase.
  • Butt-Monkey:
    • Bat Hero gets no respect, not from Phelous, his enemies or his girlfriend Steffi Love, who puts him in an embarrassing dress.
    • The Rock N Dancer got even worse, ending with him being destroyed.
    • Baltard from Galaxy Warriors is constantly ridiculed, from his name to his Paper-Thin Disguise. Anubi especially makes fun of him.
  • Call-Back:
  • The Cameo:
    • Has a short one in the Apocalypse 4: Judgment review by Diamanda Hagan.
    • Or whenever anyone on Channel Awesome references anything 'meta' during a review.
    • Many reviewers appear in his show in return (specially in Croc and House of Wax (2005)).
  • Camera Abuse:
    • Finding out that Incubus was originally called Pulse drives him over the edge and he attacks the camera, flipping it over before composing himself.
    • Parodied again in his review of Quarantine (2008) (specifically the part where a guy kills a zombie by smashing the lens into its face). Phelous' camera breaks and we get a title card with the words "One new camera later..."
  • Canada, Eh?: Well, in the sense that he is Canadian, but his review persona doesn't fit much in the way of Canadian stereotypes.
    • Mortal Komedy takes place in "Oatworld". That's Canadian enough.
    • To Canadians, the fact that he's a Maritimer (from Nova Scotia, to be exact) explains... some things, at least. Comparing his sense of humour to fellow Bluenoser Kate Beaton's is an interesting exercise.
    • The Animal Soccer World review includes a reference to 'house hippos', the stars of a beloved Canadian PSA about critical TV viewing.
  • Captain Obvious:
    • Captain Explainy Pants in his "Aladdin" (not that Aladdin) review.
    • ...And in the Child's Play 3 review.
  • Cerebus Retcon: The "Jacob's Ladder" review, appropriately enough does this with Phelous' heart attack near the end of the "Mac and Me" review and the Running Gag of Phelous dying.
  • Character Blog: The 3rd Phelous has a Twitter.
  • Character Catchphrase:
    • "Fair enough..."
    • "What the garbage is this/that shit?!"
    • "...aaaand he/she dies!" In response to a character being killed off with little fanfare.
    • An extremely forced "X?! What are you doing here?!" at the beginning of a crossover.
      • Also for cameos by famous actors in the movies he reviews.
    • "They're/He/She is the best!" any time a group or individual claimed to be experts in their field faces trouble they're unprepared for.
    • "Ain't that real fuckin' cute?" whenever a sentimental and cutesy moment appears.
      • "Cute" and "real fucking cute" also appear when a movie tries (and fails) to be clever.
    • With Allison, said very quickly in the "stupid dog" voice (as opposed to the "mean cat" voice used for Ash), "It's not weird!" whenever a less-intelligent character's quirks are revealed.
    • X person/thing "is completely useless now. HEEEEEEEEEEEEE" as "Old Man" from Good Times's 1992 animated adaptation of Beauty and the Beast.
  • Cluster F-Bomb:
    • In the Satan Claus review, Phelous turns the captain's exclamation of "Fuck! Fuck shit fuck!" into his catchphrase.
    • In the opening to his review of Mortal Komedy he screams profanity, until he realises he has to turn into his old self.
  • Continuity Snarl: Yeah, even Phelous doesn't know what's going on at this point. Then again, he doesn't really care.
  • Conspicuously Light Patch: Mocked in his review of Good Times' Cinderella:
    I think I'll move those three less-detailed bricks that obviously aren't part of the background...
  • Crack is Cheaper:invoked
    • The Galaxy Warriors on Bootleg Zones due to how many sublines, spinoffs, variants and bootlegs the figures have. He often refers to them as the "Galaxy Black Hole" or "Galaxy-Hole" when discussing them.
    • It gets to the point where Phelous finds that Turtles Fighters, another bootleg line, uses accessories from a line of Galaxy Warrior bootlegs, making them technically part of the Galaxy-Hole.
    • At one point, Phelous explains that even the bootlegs and spinoffs have bootlegs and spinoffs, and that this goes at least 5 levels deep. Crack is cheaper, indeed.
  • Creepy Child:
    • One of his major problems with Case 39 is that Lily is supposed to fit this trope, but comes off more as just an annoying brat.
    • He also made fun of the "ghost babby" in the remake of The Amityville Horror (2005).
  • Crying Wolf: Does this in the Cry_Wolf review
  • Cute Kitten: After the seventh Boogeyman movie, Phelous regenerated into his cat Tiniqua. He followed up with a review of Meow Mix and a "cameo" from his other cat Kisa. Phelous D1 later gets turned into the same cat.
  • Dancing Bear: In-universe, believes that The Human Centipede is is, saying that anyone curious about the premise might as well just look at a screenshot of the completed Human Centipede.
  • Dead All Along: Phelous often dies at the end of his reviews. Sometimes he reveals that he's not going to die because "I'm already dead!" *Evil Laugh*
    • His "Jacob's Ladder" review cements this even further with a Cerebus Retcon: he died while reviewing "Mac and Me" and the last five years of reviews were his spirit holding on to the last few minutes of his life while refusing to move on.
      • Look again at the intro to his Seventh Moon review. He's looking in the mirror, saying "The face in the mirror, it wasn't me!" with a terrorized expression on his face. He's foreshadowing how in the Jacob's Ladder review, he will see his true dead self in the mirror at the end, but is still unable to accept it yet.
      • Ultimately subverted in his Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time review which takes place right after his "Jacob's Ladder" review. At the beginning of the review, he is lying on the floor supposedly dead, but then gets up right afterwards to start talking about the film.
  • Deadpan Snarker: He started off extremely deadpan, almost lifeless really, but over time he's become much livelier and more extreme. He's still a huge snarker though.
  • Death Glare: He sports a rather unsettling one in the beginning of the 'Five Across the Eyes' indie film, indicating his utter disgust for the film.
  • Death is Cheap: No matter how messily he dies at the end of an episode, he'll be back next time as if nothing happened.
  • Defied Trope: Starting with the "New Phelous", Phelous openly avoided the Death is Cheap Running Gag, culminating in him getting shot with a rifle in the Resident Evil: Afterlife review and having to go to the hospital.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: Pointed out by Phelous with the URL of Fear Dot Com's titular website, feardotcom.com.
  • Designated Hero:
    • In Phelan's view, the main characters of Prom Night 3. The guy covers up the villain's crimes due to being in lust with her and the girl insists on standing by him despite ample evidence he's been murdering people and cheating on her. This is one of the few episodes he shows himself to be okay with an ending where the bad guy wins, as it allows the villain to deliver just desserts to these two.
    • In the second story of the Rumpelstiltskin "Brittanicca's Tales Around the World" video, Phelous describes King/Saint Olaf as a designated hero. He's the one who goes to the troll to build his church, offers him the sun, the moon, and his own immortal soul to do the job, and then spends the entire time the troll is building the church plotting to kill him so as to not pay what he freely offered to the troll for the work. He regularly brings up the fact that he's doing his actions to have a church built and that Olaf is a Saint.
    • His opinion of Paige and Aladdin in Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time, due to them making Henry VIII into an overweight, murderous glutton, turning the kind pirate Blondebeard into the cruel Blackbeard, and killing the pharaoh, and none of these actions being portrayed as bad.
    • During his Next Mutation retrospective, he points out constantly how poorly written, both character-wise and intelligence-wise, the Turtles and Splinter are. And sees them as one of, if not the, worst incarnations of the franchise. Even beating out the 1987 Turtles' portrayal in Turtles Forever.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Has a brief one watching Jack Frost 2 when a character calling himself "Captain Fun" shows up.
  • Developing Doomed Characters: A major Pet-Peeve Trope of his; expect at least a minor rant about it during every movie it comes up in.
    • Special mentions: Cabin Fever, where he explains that by making the jerk such a jerk, you've got everyone just wondering when and how that character will die and not about the rest of the cast or what is going on. The Party Cop gets frequent call backs as well, as do "teenagers who just want to party!"
    • In Crocodile, his favorite character is Princess the dog. Even more so when he thinks she's purposefully inciting the crocodile to go after the kids. Also noting that the jerk of that movie continues being a jerk even when he needs the other two survivors to keep carrying him.
    "So, we are supposed to be rooting for the crocodile, right?"
  • Distaff Counterpart: Sort of. In Hostel 1 & 2 Reviews in 5 Seconds, his sister does the Hostel 2 portion. Making fun of how Hostel 2 is the same thing as the first movie only with female characters.
  • Don't Explain the Joke:
    • Captain Explainy Pants in his "Aladdin" review. He explains the joke, so you don't have to.
    • In a cameo for Croc, the 100th episode special:
    Linkara: No wonder one of us got really popular and the other one died a whole lot and does stupid meta jokes.
    Phelous: But — Linkara — I —
    Linkara: The one who died a lot and does stupid meta jokes is you.
    Phelous: Yes. I got it.
  • Double Entendre: Unavoidable when a movie calls itself The Midnight Meat Train.
    Phelous: I might as well call myself phallus instead of Phelous. Phallus Aboard the Meat Train.
  • Dude, Not Funny!:
    Phelous: Oh yeah, comparing a slut to an unsolved child murder case. That's really funny and classy, you pile of shit!
  • Dull Surprise: Phelous loves to point out actors incapable of emoting. He's usually pretty harsh on Michael Madsen who delivers all the intensity of someone only there to cash in a paycheck.
    • Phelous himself takes "deadpan" so far that he frequently ends up in this territory. It's deliberate, and makes his hammier moments stand out more.
    • Good Times Beauty's bland gasp of surprise has also become a running gag.
  • Establishing Character Moment: The first few seconds of the Mac and Me review showed that Phelous would be more self-aware than other web critics:
    (Title card has Phelous replacing Eric on the film's poster)
    Phelous: What am I looking at? (turns around to look at Mac) Eww, what is that!?
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • Brad Jones couldn't even pretend to be happy that he talked Phelous into watching A Serbian Film, giving up mid-evil laugh to apologize.
    • Phelous' Wabuu, a violent psychopath who gleefully commits cold-blooded murder, is disgusted by the child slave labor and regular beatings of said child slaves in Dingo Pictures Dalmatian 2 to the point of being uncomfortable with being Dingo Pictures' mascot. In the review of the book version of the story, he is also disgusted at his Book design being gleefully in support of said beatings.
  • Everyone Has Standards
    • He expresses a great disdain towards incestuous relationships (i.e. siblings, parents and children, cousins, etc.), whether it's subtext or openly stated in the film.
    • He also gets quite indignant in his review of Dingo Picture's Hunchback of Notre Dame when a pair of nuns say that baby Quasimodo should immediately be burned alive because he's ugly. "And speaking of fire, you two are fucking fired and banned from ever looking at children again!" He rips into them for being horrible people for the rest of the review.
    • In his review of Dingo’s Janis the Little Piglet, he theorizes that Midas Interactive and Phoenix Games invoked this trope in regards to this movie, refusing to port it into the Playstation consoles for Dingo because of the slaughterhouse scene (which contained rather graphic imagery, relatively speaking for Dingo’s no-budget style). However, he (half-jokingly) laughs this off and then suggests that Dingo probably just forgot to sell this movie to them.
  • Evil Counterpart: Several; there's Phelous D1 from the Ghost Ship and Dawn of the Living Dead review, a Phelous version of the villain from Incubus, a Silent Hill-style Nurse Phelous from his review of Silent Hill Homecoming and Case 39, and the romantic comedy reviewer "Selouph".
  • Evil Laugh: Phelous is rather entertained when the 'unlikable teen' in Cabin Fever 2 goes to cut his own arm off.
  • Exact Words: In the Play Through of the "Clue II: Murder In Disguise" V H S Game, when trying to figure out who Phelous' character is, Ed Glaser asks if Phelous' character was dressed in Women's Clothing during a Scene, which Phelous confirms. Ed then incorrectly guesses that Phelous is Professor Plum, with the reasoning being that Plum was wearing Women's clothing in the Scene, but Phelous points out that clue can also apply to the Women characters in the Scene, as well!
  • Expy: Phelous speculates that the Big Bad from Magic Gift of the Snowman is the Cryptkeeper
  • Eye Take:
    • In his review of the Black Christmas (2006) remake, when the killer's mother rapes him (the killer, not Phelous), Phelous sits slack-jawed, eyes open wide in stupefied horror.
    • He has the same reaction when Michael Myers crossdresses in a blue dress and shows some leg. And it's still the best moment of that review.
  • Failure Hero: Bat Hero from Bootleg Zone. He is even sentenced to hang for all the trouble his attempted heroics cause.
  • Fan Disservice: At the end of his Silent Hill: Homecoming video: Phelous in one of the nurse outfits. Complete with short skirt.
  • Follow the Leader: invoked Spoofed at the end of his Thankskilling review with his "extremely original" character, Pester Z. Bum!
  • Forced Transformation: Obscurus Lupa uses a garlic sandwich to turn Phelous D1 into a harmless Cute Kitten.
  • Foreshadowing:
  • Formerly Fat: Phelous used to be quite on the pudgy side, but has slimmed down since then.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: At the very last second of his Amityville Horror review, an image of his face pops up in his window. Which also serves as a Callback to other reviews during the Regen arc last year.
  • From a Single Cell: Parodied in his review of Anaconda 4
  • Frothy Mugs of Water: He talks about the trope-naming incident in his "Dragon Ball Z: Top 15 Funniest Alterations & Censoring" video, pointing out both that it would've made more sense to color Roshi's drink darker brown to imply he was drinking soda, and that changing it blue but not removing the foam makes it look like he's drinking seawater.
  • Gag Dub: The Killdozer!, Amityville: The Evil Escapes and Man's Best Friend review all feature dubbed-in voices for the respective villains. The movies on their own had ridiculous premises, but the voices just make them impossible to take seriously.
  • Gambit Roulette: One of his main complaints with Cry_Wolf was that Dodger had no way of knowing how a number of things of key parts of her plan would work, and simply got very lucky.
  • Genre Savvy: In the Jeepers Creepers review, he brings an abrupt end to the Phelous D1 Saga by shooting his Evil Counterpart. Phelous D1 and Ralph Oancitizen both lampshade this.
  • Genre Shift:
    • Since 2013 and especially since leaving Channel Awesome, Phelous' reviews have shifted away from horror films and more towards god-awful animated Mockbusters like Lion and the King, along with a rise in the Bootleg Zones toy reviews, as well as the highs and lows of various franchises, such as Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
    • While his first review was Mac and Me, over time cemented himself as a Horror Movie reviewer. But while he still reviews the occasional horror movie, nowadays he now mostly reviews bootlegs toys and cheap cash-in animated films.
  • George Lucas Altered Version:
    • He considers his first review of Mac and Me to be his Old Shame due to its poor editing and his poor acting. He has gone back throughout the years to edit it and try to improve the quality. This includes improving the lighting and getting rid of the long pauses after his jokes.
    • After the allegations that Justin Carmichal was a sexual predator came to light, his Pulse 2006 review was reedited to purge Carmichal from it and replace him with Benzaie.
  • Gilligan Cut: In Stay Alive (2006) he refuses to play the Stay Alive game. Cut to him playing it.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: Phelous hold this belief about Raiden and the Elder Gods from Mortal Kombat.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation:
    • Phelous breaks into a fit of insane laughter after it's revealed that the Big Bad of Skinned Deep is a headless bodybuilder wearing nothing but a pair of underwear that says "DYNOMITE!" on the front.
    • The line "You're not DEAD, are you?" from Night of the Living Dead 3D also sends him into hysterics.
      • The end of the Jacob's Ladder review not only justifies his hysterics, but turns it into a very brilliant bit of foreshadowing.
    • His review of Cabin Fever 2 is full of this. Take your pick, his reaction to Party Cop returning, his reaction to Party Cop still being obsessed with partying, or his insane laughter over a scene where the girl cuts off the boy's infected hand with a buzzsaw and torches the wound.
    • From the Pulse 3 review: "The internet ghost of a record player? The internet ghost of a record player! The internet ghost of a record player?! It made me do the overhead spinning scream thing again!!!"
    • Taken to the extreme in Thankskilling when the killer turkey (which is more like a vulture) encounters a couple mid-coitus, kills the man and fucks the girl in the ass. Phelous falls to the ground, laughing or crying, for over a minute, before just staring at the camera in the next few scenes.
    • Also in Man's Best Friend. "DOG RAPE!"
  • Gorn:
    • Since he specializes in horror films, expect this to crop up from time to time in his reviews. Not all of them are for the squeamish. One prime example is Automaton Transfusion where a zombie rips out a fetus from a woman and eats it.
    • In his "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer, he warns the viewer to consider, in light of the scenes he's shown in previous episodes, the fact that this is the first time he's found it necessary to put up a content warning. The film he was reviewing? A Serbian Film.
  • HA HA HA—No: A funky version when he reviewed House of the Dead: Funny Version. The tape rewound for some reason (an attempt at wacky humor?) Phelous starts laughing, then Phelous' laughing is itself reversed and when he starts speaking again he says, "Actually that's not funny at all."
  • Harmless Villain: Phelous D1 sure tries to hurt Phelous, but mostly just ends up getting humiliated.
  • Heh Heh, You Said "X": Naturally starts cracking jokes while reviewing knockoffs of the Breastforce.
  • Henpecked Husband: Bat Hero to Steffi Love.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Mike J in the Anacondas review, when he drinks the same poisoned tea he gave to Phelous.
  • Horrifying the Horror: In his review of Bevanfield Films' adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast", Beauty's alarm clock manages to creep out even Old Bush.
  • Hostile Show Takeover: Phelous gets kicked out of his own 100th episode review by Obscurus Lupa, who finishes the review.
    • Selouph tried to take over Phelous's show twice, but Phelous violently takes it back each time.
  • Humiliation Conga: During the 100th episode, Phelous is mocked by the various Channel Awesome critics providing cameos, culminating in Obscurus Lupa browbeating him into abandoning the review, which she finishes.
  • Humor Dissonance: invoked One Running Gag is him playing a clip of Peter Venkman saying "it wasn't that funny" after people laugh uproariously at a joke that really doesn't deserve such a response.
  • The Hyena:
  • Hype Backlashinvoked: Phelous reviews The Human Centipede in his bathroom - not because he finds the movie disgusting, but because he finds it a piece of shit, largely due to people making it a big deal.
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    Jax: I thought all of Reptile's race were extinct.
    Phelous!Komodai: And I thought all of Jax's race was extinct!
    Phelous!Jax: Man, that's racist!
    Phelous!Komodai: WHAT!? You just said... DAH!
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Most of the title cards have a portmanteau of his name and the movie title, such as "Phinculous" or "Resident Phelous".
  • Idiot Ball: His reviews of Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation's episodes often point out whenever a character is acting like a moron, especially when it's characters who usually aren't like Leonardo, Donatello, and Splinter, and even features a "Biggest Idiot of the Episode" section at the end of each video which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin and explaining why they qualify for the spot. Leonardo ended up taking the series-wide award once the retrospective ended
  • Ignored Epiphany:
    • After making fun of a father who had just found his daughter's corpse in his review of the Stephen King Boogeyman Movie:
    Oh, wow. I've become a monster. Oh well.
    • The very next video after his Jacob's Ladder review where the truth to his situation became impossible to ignore... he just gets right back up and keeps on doing everything he did up to that point.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Overlaps with Go Mad from the Revelation in the Fatal Pulse review, where one of the characters are killed by having their throat sliced open by a record.
    Phelous: Looks like she just got a cut off that sharp new release! (Beat) SLICING HER THROAT WITH A RECORD!!!
  • In Name Only: He starts calling Jackie Earle Haley's Freddy Krueger "Teddy, Brother of the Freddy".
  • Insistent Terminology: After finding out that the titular website in Fear Dot Com is actually "feardotcom.com" he always refers to the movie as Fear Dot Com Dot Com.
  • Jump Cut: In the Aladdin review, his dollar store DVD copy of the movie is full of these due to the poor transfer. It gets unintentionally amusing at some points. Phelous himself also parodies this.
  • Jump Scare: Parodied; it wouldn't scare a five year-old. This also seems to be somewhat of a Pet-Peeve Trope for him, judging by his reviews for Drag Me to Hell and Silent Hill Revelation, the latter of which had one that involved a pop tart.
  • Lampshade Hanging: He hung a lampshade on himself in the Lockjaw review when Film Brain said "What sort of people watch crappy movies?"
  • Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: Parodied. In the Foodfight! review, Brad sees a LaserDisc player and suggests they watch "some sweet Obscure Reference Movie," accompanied by a CD with the name Obscure Reference: The Movie on it.
    Phelous: (mimicking The Cinema Snob) I probably haven't heard of it...
  • Large Ham: When he isn't snarking, he delves deeply into the ham.
  • Laughing Mad: Has a fit of this every time a movie becomes especially ridiculous.
  • Left It In: He's fond of this.
    "Hey, why did I record that? Oh well, there's absolutely no chance that I'll edit it into the final video."
  • Let's Play: Started one for Silent Hill and Resident Evil.
  • Let's See YOU Do Better!: At times, he demonstrates that he can do better special effects than the movies he reviews (case in point, his cheap editing was a damn close match to the "effects" from Birdemic).
    • Linkara stated in a commentary of his Entity arc that Phelous has developed a good amount of skill in video editing, fixing in an hour a video montage effect that had left Linkara stumped for days.
  • Machinima: The "Resident Hazard" videos, which all consist of various lines from the first Resident Evil game spliced together to make the dialogue even more bizarre.
  • Made of Indestructium: Dinosaur Invincibility, it's durable education fun!
  • Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Name drops the trope in his review of Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time. The main characters use their magic lamp to turn a skinny Henry VIII into an overweight tyrant, a nice sailor into the evil Blackbeard and after accidentally killing her father, they turn an overweight Cleopatra thin and beautiful, teaching the moral that beauty is only skin deep.
  • Meaningful Background Event: During the Jacob's Ladder review the objects in the background of his usual set disappear as the world breaks down going into the reveal, mimicking the film being reviewed, with the same ending.
  • Medium Awareness: He likes making fun of "conversational" narratives, such as someone saying "Oh, hello!" to the camera. "Oh, hello! I didn't realize I put the camera near my door and left the camera running and edited it into my video!"
  • Meta Guy:
    • To the point that Linkara punches him for it during their The AirZone Solution video... and then he complains that he wasn't really punched and it didn't hurt. So Linkara promptly hits him for real.
    • The Nostalgia Critic gets irritated by Phelous being overly meta, as shown in the Child's Play reviews.
  • Mockbuster: He reviewed many of them from companies like Golden Films or Dingo Pictures.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: Alien Spider can't decide if he's from outer space or was bitten by a radioactive extraterrestrial arachnid.
  • Narm: In-universe, one of his running gags involves placing subtitles over particularly narm-tastic lines.
    • He says that Case 39 would be pretty unremarkable without all the unintentional comedy.
  • Nausea Fuel: Subverted in-universe in his A Serbian Film review, where he states the film isn't WORTHY of his puke.
  • Negative Continuity: While the show theoretically has continuity, almost every story arc will usually just abruptly end and never be brought up again. Particularly notable at the end of Jacob's Ladder and the start of Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time.
  • Never Say "Die": Lampshaded in his review of Beauty and the Beast (Golden 1999) when the climax of the film has an angry mob exclaiming “get the Beast.”
    Phelous: (pretending to be from the perspective of the mob) Yeah, that’s right, we’ll get him. We wouldn’t want to kill him. Save that for the hardcore Disney version.
  • No Name Given: His review show has no official name. This fact is Lampshaded occasionally, especially after IMDB listed it as "Phelous & The Movies" for no clear reason.
  • No Sense of Personal Space: When he's interacting with the Critic in anniversaries, it's safe to say that at some point he'll get up in his face and stay there for a while, either out of anger or just trying to freak him out.
  • "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer:
    • He points out that he did not edit a snake making sounds akin to those of a Predator.
    • Also assured the audience that the casting in the second Boogeyman movie was not him making a joke.
    • In his review of Man's Best Friend, Phelous points out that he's not joking when he claims that the dog killed a thief and cut the boyfriend's brake lines. When the film reveals that Max's pee is acidic, Phelous says that scenes from the movie resemble the silly jokes he would be making during the review, not the actual content.
    • In the Cricket on the Hearth review, Phelous has to stress that the sea captain really did shoot and kill the crow and the hit-animals after they brought him the cricket; it wasn't him joking about the characters dying.
  • Not Me This Time: In the review of Ali Baba & the Gold Raiders, the Cinema Snob assumes the movie's abrupt non-ending is just Phelous doing one of his fake-out ending jokes. But then Phelous explains that the movie really does end like that.
  • The Nth Doctor: Parodied in the "Funny Games Again" video, where Phelous gets shot and regenerates into a new form in the style of the Tenth Doctor. It was an April Fools joke, reset in the next video. Additionally, it's a parody of Replacement Scrappy, since New Phelous says he hates everything Phelous regularly does and isn't going to do it any more.
  • Offering Another in Your Stead: Plays this for laughs as a Running Gag when it comes to Old Man from Beauty and the Beast (Golden 1992). Due to how bad Old Man was at protecting Beauty from the Beast, Phelous's interpretation was that he was trying to get her to die for him so that he could get the treasure, driving home the point with Phelous's joke dialogue and the Old Man wearing a "Beauty Can Die In My Place" shirt. Old Man will also get into discussions with other "Beauty Fathers" from other Beauty and the Beast adaptations, where he attempts to encourage many of them to also abandon their daughters to the Beast.
  • Once an Episode: Him dying in some way reminiscent of the movie he's currently reviewing, to the point where he's quite ambivalent towards his immanent demise.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Mocked in his Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines review; several of the American characters (including the Big Bad) are clearly played by actors from the UK.
  • Our Hero Is Dead: Happens so much it becomes a running gag.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: He's reviewed dozens of zombie movies, but the zombies in Nightmare City take the cake as far as being nebulously-defined. They run around like humans and kill other humans with guns, knives and whatever they've got available, yet despite being intelligent, they never speak. They do consume human flesh and blood, but seemingly as an afterthought. Some of them have more caked oatmeal on their faces than others; some seem almost normal. How new zombies are made is unexplained, and whether or not headshots are needed to kill them differs from scene to scene.
  • Overly Narrow Superlative:
  • Overreacting Airport Security: Phelous is particularly baffled by the complete lack of this in Crocodile 2: Death Swamp, as the bad guys manage to sneak on a suitcase full of stolen money, handguns, and cigars. What makes it worse is that the movie is set in 2002 when airport security was at its peak and they hid the handguns in their socks.
  • Papa Wolf: In his review of the Dingo Pictures adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he flies into a rage when two nuns suggest that Quasimodo should be thrown into a fire, since they assume he's demonic just because he's ugly.
    Phelous: And speaking of fire, you two should be fired and barred from working with children ever again!
  • Portmanteau:
    • "Phelous" is a combination of his real name, Phelan Porteous.
    • The title for each review is similarly a portmanteau of "Phelous" and the title of the movie, such as "Phinculous" for "Incubus."
  • The Quiet One: Noah Antwiler describes him as a man of few words in his commentary for Kickassia.
  • Random Events Plot: His impression of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
  • Rapid-Fire Comedy: On occasion, he will jump from one riff parody skit to another with only one or two seconds in between.
  • A Rare Sentence: Given the kind of content he reviews, this is pretty much inevitable.
    Snowden: Princess Electra's magical kingdom is the only place left where Charlatan's yucky yuck hasn't taken over
    Phelous: I am watching something where they just used the term "yucky yuck"! Ha ha! *sigh* Where did my life go wrong?
    • In his review of The Adventures of Young Moby-Dick:
    Phelous: Well, now Moby-Dick has apparently swam into the ruins of Atlantis during his musical number. There's a sentence I never thought I'd say.
  • Red Shirt: He often wears one. It came in handy for the Pulse reviews, since ghosts hate red in those.
  • Replacement Scrappyinvoked: Hates "with a passion" the Dave Coulier voiced Peter Venkman, to the point that his younger self mentally edited Coulier out of episodes he liked.
  • Resurrective Immortality:
    • Phelous dies in all kinds of comical ways, but always comes back to life. In a crossover with The Angry Joe Show, he gets killed and resurrected multiple times in a few minutes.
    • Phelous figures that Ian Stone keeps coming back because he has "crown piece of the cloud" lives.
  • Revealing Continuity Lapse: In the review for Jacob's Ladder, Phelous experiences some oddities. His attempts to get into his review room first lead him to a creepy hand-print covered shed instead, only to fix itself on the third attempt. After the review, he suddenly realizes the room is empty and that he can't remember the names of any other reviewer. This is because his other reviews were all a Dying Dream that's finally caught up to him.
  • Review Ironic Echo: Quite a few of these in this look at the infamous "Big Green Dub"; more specifically, the dub's version of Dragon Ball Z: The World's Strongest. For example:
    Gohan: If I tell mom about Big Green, she's not going to like it.
    Phelous: Who would like being told about Big Green?
  • Rooting for the Empire:invoked In his reviews of Crocodile (2000) and Crocodile 2: Death Swamp, he ended up cheering for the titular killer crocodiles.
  • Running Gag: Where do we begin?
  • Sarcasm Mode: When doesn't he sound completely sarcastic?
    • His "Top Ten Moments of the 8th Doctor" video, consisting entirely of random moments of The Enemy Within.
    • How he reacts to one of the deaths in the Child's Play 3 review.
  • Say My Name: "ENRICOOOOOOOOOO!"
    Enrico: ...yeah?
  • The Scrappy: invoked Sometimes, Phelous will run into a character he especially dislikes, and when he does, he'll make his disdain known.
    • He strongly dislikes Vink from the Golden Films adaptation of The Little Mermaid, since his dialogue consists largely of whining and complaining.
    • Phelous has nothing but disdain for Oogtar due to his general uselessness and Totally Radical speech, constantly wishing death upon the cave brat.
  • Self-Deprecating Humor: A usual part of his style. Pushed up to eleven when he reviews his own Mortal Komedy.
  • Self-Inflicted Hell: He died while filming his original Mac and Me review which never made it on the internet. The following five years of weirdness is just Phelous refusing to accept his death so he can move on.
  • Series Fauxnale: His review of Jacob's Ladder caused a lot of fans to believe it was Phelan's last review. With The Reveal that Phelous died before finishing his first review and the entire series was his Dying Dream, it seemed like a natural stopping point. After Phelous was finally able to move on, there wasn't a new review from him for several months until he reviewed Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time. Said review opened with Phelous's dead body simply getting back up and acting like nothing had happened.
  • Shared Universe: As a former Channel Awesome reviewer, and because of his numerous cameos and crossovers, he's part of the Reviewaverse.
  • Shoddy Knockoff Product:
    • Has started a show called Bootleg Zones, where he reviews bootleg toys and products.
    • Downplayed by the second episode, where it is clear that the show extends to reviewing bootleg products that are of decent quality almost matching (or in some aspects succeeding) the originals. Part of the rating system used for the reviews is how well they fare as a substitute for the originals and their overall quality.
    • Even Bootleg Collectors Have Standards: When reviewing a set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles knockoffs based on the Nickelodeon series, he prefaces the video by warning that they're an inferior product passing as the original, compares them unfavorably with the NECA bootlegs (which also passed themselves off as the original toys, but had quality comparable with those figures), and gives them the second 0/10 on the show.
    • The title card for the Bootleg Zone mentions "with the Phaylus!" Yes, the shoddy knockoff product segment has a shoddy knockoff host.
    • Averted in one episode where Phelous reviews a 3rd Party Krang figure, which he feels is an excellent figure with only a few minor flaws. He also acknowledges that while the figure isn't a bootleg per se, it is still an unlicensed figure and thus falls within his purview.
  • Shout-Out: Here.
  • Shower of Angst: He does this in his review of A Serbian Film after the infamous newborn porn scene:
    "Yes, I know! This has been done before, but seriously—why would you put that in your movie?! WHY WOULD ANYONE WRITE THAT?!?!?!"
  • Shown Their Work:
    • The Foodfight! review he did with Allison and Brad is incredibly well researched, going into detail about the dropped sponsors and production troubles the film encountered, talking about everything from changed character models to the less commonly-known aspects of the film's development, such as the fact that the film was approximately 60% done when it was stolen.
    • To his shock, the Dingo Pictures version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame has this. Although it deviates wildly from the story at points, it's also the only version where Quasimodo is deaf, Frollo is the archdeacon of Notre Dame, and Quasimodo kills Frollo at the climax.
    • He also mentions some accurate facts about Greek mythology in his review on Goodtimes' version of Hercules, namely Zeus cheating on Hera frequently, Hera driving Hercules insane that he kills Megara and their kids, and Hercules's true Greek name being Heracles as his more well-known name is actually Roman.
    • In his various reviews of Anastasia knock-offs, he mentions a lot of historical facts about the Romanov family and the revolution, usually to point out where the movie took artistic liberties. Similar to the Dingo Pictures example above, the Golden Films version has the most actually-accurate detailsnote , such as the young Grand Duchesses volunteering in army hospitals, showing the revolution as something that gradually built up as opposed to a sudden attack, the Romanovs being under house arrest and moving locations instead of being executed immediately, and he also points out a possible reference to the fact that the women had sewn jewelry into their clothes that initially deflected the bullets.
  • Slow Clap: During his House of Wax (2005) review. When Paris Hilton's character gets killed with a metal bar through the head, The Nostalgia Chick starts one of these. Every cameo reviewer who had so far popped in to let him know how unoriginal and dull his 100th episode had been so far start clapping as well, resulting in a massive outpour of joy that Paris Hilton is dead.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: One of his often used gags is adding silly music to gory, (melo)dramatic and scary scenes.
    • In his review of Ghost Ship, he complains because the film itself plays inappropriate music, rendering this gag unnecessary.
      • Also complains that Man's Best Friend has a soundtrack that at times sounds like a Beethoven sequel instead of a killer dog movie.
    • In his review of Santa's Slay (wherein Goldberg played a killer Santa Claus), he had a habit of inserting Goldberg's WCW theme into scenes of Killer Santa (even dubbing in chants of "San-Ta! San-Ta!"). Until the movie starts playing a "royalty-free" version of the song...
      "Oh, apparently I didn't even need to put his theme in there. The movie's gonna do it for me now!"
    • In the Halloween II review, Phelous points out he didn't need to play unfitting music over Laurie's death to make it funny, the film already plays Love Hurts over it.
    • If he's reviewing a movie created by GoodTimes Entertainment, expect him to comment on how ill-fitting the Public Domain background music is during various scenes.
  • Space Whale Aesop: In his FeardotCom review, he states: "If you smoke... a little girl with powers will kill you."
  • Special Effects Failure: invoked
    • Phelous' own effects are actually pretty good for a lone guy doing them on his own. He'll often mock those of the movie, though:
    • An entirely needless special effects failure occurred throughout much of Pulse 2, where actors were green-screened into scenes that they didn't even need to be, such as in front of houses and such. Phelous mocks this by screening himself in front of his own normal background (it's actually good enough that you might not have noticed unless he pointed it out, complete with his image doing a 180).
    • Actually calls out Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation's use of Your Costume Needs Work in "Turtles' Night Out" by commenting how pointing out how bad the Turtles look is pointless when the costumes for them already look bad from a real-life perspective.
  • Spit Take: Lampshaded when he does one in the Jamie, the Little Pig review:
    That sure was lucky that I started drinking for absolutely no reason out of this out-of-season mug right before that happened.
  • Spoonerism: "Buckfuttality"
  • Stable Time Loop:
    • Triangle is a movie about a woman trapped in a series of time loops who becomes her own worst enemy and is Driven to Madness, so his review mirrors this by having a second Phelous popping around trying to stop himself from finishing the Triangle review.
    • After he reviewed Dingo Pictures' Aladdin, Phelous wished, he'd never saw this film. But after he thought about it, he came to the conclusion that this wish would lead to a time loop and so he's asking Genie!Wabuu for something else: Wishes which are "sooooo stuuuuuupid."
  • Staying Alive: His returns to life lack a consistent explanation, and what reasons are given frequently make as much sense as the movies he reviews.
  • Stylistic Suck:
    • Used to parody genuine suck in the movies he reviews, such as the second part of Birdemic where his poorly-integrated bird stock footage is a pretty close match to the movie itself.
    • For his BloodRayne II: Deliverance review, he rides off into the sunset... hitting the wall and pulling down his own greenscreen.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In the Resident Evil: Afterlife, Phelous' friend shoots him with a real shotgun. Instead of dying humorously like in his older reviews, he just goes to the hospital.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: "Anyway I suddenly think this was a great story. An Angel totally didn't bend my will or anything." (his An Angel for Christmas review's credits, parodying the villain's rushed Heel–Face Turn'').
  • Sympathy for the Devil: Defied in Silent Hill and Pulse 2, where he becomes increasingly infuriated with the film's insistence that Christabella and Michelle are meant to be sympathetic characters, pointing out that the former condemned Alessa to burn alive simply for being born out of wedlock, while the latter was a neglectful mother who planned to murder her own daughter, simply to spite her husband for gaining sole custody.
  • Take That!: He makes a few subtle ones towards his fellow reviewers, lampooning ideas such as cameos and continuity in the reviews.
    • Probably more of an Affectionate Parody, especially because his reviews seem to have some sort of continuity and do feature cameos often.
    • On the less affectionate side of things, he's made a few subtle and not-so-subtle digs at The Irate Gamer's cereal reviews, culminating in kitty!Phelous' Meow Mix video.
    • The Lion and the King review has him commenting that the poor animation quality probably is going to kill him before the end of the review. He then clarifies that he isn't going back to the worn-out They Killed Kenny Again gag, that one is for To Boldly Flee to use.
    • In the Child's Play reviews, when he crossed over with the Nostalgia Critic, he denies that the "soul transferring" gag carried over between the reviews of each of said films.
    • In the Foodfight! crossover review, Phelous calls Brad Jones "Snex Bradtective".
      Brad Jones: (sarcastic laugh) Call me that again, I'll make a bigger example of you than I did to Doug when he wrote that "Bradigan" line.
      Phelous: What did you do to him?
      Brad Jones: Ohhh, I made him re-watch the pilot to Demo Reel.
    • His review of Ginger Dead Man 3 starts with him saying that the film is so bad, he can only think of one word vile enough to describe the film: Seltzerberg!
    • invokedHis review of his first review (Mac and Me) is not only a massive Take That to himself, but also to the Nostalgia Critic Reloaded reviews; he sarcastically mentions at the beginning that he'll pretend not to remember himself reviewing the film, and refer to his older self as the "Phelous Cricket" (much like the Nostalgia Critic referred to his older self as the "Nostalgia Cricket" after not recognizing himself).
    • When reviewing the Golden Films version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he shows a scene where the comic relief bats say things that aren't jokes and laugh. He asks, "What the fuck is this, The Big Bang Theory?"
    • In his review of "Nice Cats", he takes a shot at Twitter for disciplining users over minor things.
    • When reviewing "Perseus" by Dingo Pictures, he insults Perseus by calling him an "RNG", a shot at the trend of using "NPC" as an insult.
    • In his review of The Christmas Light, he mocks the "Baby, It's Cold Outside" controversy by jokingly banning the movie's version of Santa Claus.
  • Take That Me: His review of his own series Mortal Komedy.
    Sub-Zero: You know this is your show, right?
    Phelous: FUUUUUUUUUUUU--
  • They Killed Kenny Again:
    • An old Running Gag centred around Phelous dying in the end segment of each episode in some manner related to the film he was reviewing, only be resurrected in the next episode or in some cases even in the very same one. As time went on, Phelous started using this gag less and less frequently, and nowadays he has completely stopped using it.
    • Played for Drama in his review for Jacob's Ladder, It turns out that he's been dead since his review of Mac and Me and he was holding on to the last few minutes of his life ever since. He then exits his house and into heaven. In his review for Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time, we cut back to his dead body, only for him to jump up as if he was never dead.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: When he goes over the backstory of Hilary Swank's character from The Reaping and realizes its Fridge Logicnote , he exasperatedly facepalms while sarcastically stating "I can see there's gonna be a lot of sense in this movie".
  • Trivially Obvious: At the end of his ThanksKilling review, he asks Pester Z. Bum what he thought of the movie. Pester responds by saying "it is a movie I've seen in my life".
    Phelous: Well, can't argue with that.
  • True Art Is Angsty:invoked Played for Laughs - he expresses hope to see a more accurate adaptation of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame where "everybody's miserable and then they die."
  • A Twinkle in the Sky: Happens to Old Man in Phelous' review of the GoodTimes Aladdin after the Genie blasts him into the distance before he can complete his catchphrase.
  • Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Phelous bemoans that the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special features the She-Ra character Perfuma, but leaves out Stinkor, possibly the greatest matchup of that entire series.
  • Un-Installment: The Terror at Blood Fart Lake crossover with Lupa.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: invoked
    • Pretty much sums up his thoughts on Goldilocks from the Bevanfield adaptation of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
    • How he feels about the Fenchelchen segment of the Tangled Up video, because the witch who had put her in the tower also freely taught her a wide array of powerful magics. Fenchelchen repays her by killing her via burning her alive while escaping. After it's revealed that Fenchelchen could have left at any time she wanted while the witch was gone by simply turning into a bird and flying away.
  • Unperson: Following allegations in 2018 regarding JewWario, Phelous edited out his cameo in his Pulse 2006 review.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Phelous will sometimes completely ignore some flagrant weird moments in the movies he is reviewing, or treat them as barely inconsequential, possibly because making a joke about it would be too obvious or they have already been covered many times by other reviewers. For example, he completely disregards the infamous moment in Dingo Pictures's Pocahontas where the titular character screams a Big "NO!" in undubbed German and a shooter gaining a third arm, and he barely comments on Wabuu's getting drunk on alcohol in a family-oriented cartoon, even though he has become his Ensemble Dark Horse.
  • We Hardly Knew Ye: Pester Z. Bum.
  • Wham Line:
    • The definite moment things start going to shit in the Jacob's Ladder review? When Phelous calls upon Phelan for a cameo.
    Phelan: You're sure about this, right? You know what this means...
    Phelous: Yeah, that I'll be talking to myself with different letters at the end of my name
    Phelan: Don't! We've come too far for you to try and block it now! Besides, it's all been falling apart (pulls out the tennis ball from "Deadly Friend" review) since this.
    • And while the proceeding conversation is one big Wham Line-laden monolouge, the last lines are the capper.
      Phelan: The [Mac and Me] review was the last thing I did. Fresh in my mind. I held on to it, envisioned my life if it went along that path. Look at your shirt.
      Phelous: (does so) "Red Matter"... It's black now...
      Phelan: ...it always was.
      Phelous: But that heart attack was so fake!
      Phelan: That was my memory of it. The video never got made, Phelan.
  • Wham Shot: In the ending bit of the Jacob's Ladder review, when we cut back to Phelous, the wall behind him has become bare.
  • What Have I Become? : Phelous in his Stephen King's The Boogeyman review after he realizes he's laughing at a jumpscare of a dead son to his father. For a whole second.
  • Who's on First?: Phelous's friend has to clarify that he didn't send Phelous an actual chain letter, he sent him a movie called Chain Letter. Phelous wishes he didn't.
  • Who Writes This Crap?!:
    • From the Troll 2 review: "This movie's camp value is...over 9000? Who writes this crap? Oh right, I do"
    • In his review of Santa's Slay, he repeatedly comments on disliking a scene, only for it to cut to a similar scene from in Mortal Komedy.
    • In his House of the Dead 2 review, he starts the review by reviewing his own reviews, pointing out the inconsistencies in his apparent resurrections and why he would even try to review, considering he's only likely to die at the end.
  • With Lyrics:
  • World of Weirdness: Regardless of how much he mocks it, the Reviewaverse is weird and thus his show can get weird.
  • You Get What You Pay For: Phelous reviews an Aladdin discount ripoff that has a 1$ price tag as part of the cover art. He got it as part of a 3-for-a-dollar deal and choose this one to blame for costing 34 cents as opposed to 33 for the other two. He repeatedly enrages that he paid too much because of the horrible animation and multiple gratuitous jump cuts.
  • You Keep Using That Word:
    • Linkara calls Phelous out on his continual use of the word 'meta' when he points out the conventions of his own reviews, complete with him reading a dictionary definition of the word.
    • Ironically, Linkara himself is the one who reminds Phelous that his being in crossovers with everyone else on TGWTG means that the entire Channel Awesome world should be in his imagination, making him Tommy Westphelous.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!:
    • "Hostel Part II is the same thing as Hostel, but with women as the main characters. The End!" * Cut to credits* * Cut back to Phelous* "Yes, I don't know why I ever bother with that, it never works."
    • It has become a Running Gag of his.


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Chester A. Bum Spoofs

In what would later be called the "Reviewerverse", various parodies of Chester A. Bum exist.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (16 votes)

Example of:

Main / CaptainErsatz

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