"In our world, much has been explained. But that's only what's on the surface. Within the shadows of our knowledge exists another world, a darker world - one that is home to the unbelievable, the unthinkable, the unexplainable. It's here we feed our darkest curiosities. Anything is possible in this world, a world so seriously strange."
Seriously Strange is an online horror series created and hosted by Rob Gavagan (formerly Rob Dyke), revolving around him telling stories of the deathly, mentally unstable, and all-around unsettling. Sporting a deep, mesmerizing voice and a penchant for a good Kubrick Stare, Rob recounts a string of happenings all under one topic, more often than not having to do with death. He doesn't sugarcoat anything on the show (besides, perhaps, blurring out extremely disturbing images), nor do the show's artists, who can make some pretty horrifically detailed drawings.
The series and its subseries are:
- Seriously Strange, the original series.
- Twisted Tens, which consists of top 10 list videos.
- Caught on Camera, which consists of horrifying or bizarre events that were caught on film.
- Truth or Tale?, which consists of five creepy stories either real or fictional.
- Question Everything, which consists of videos that provide potentially view-changing facts about taboo or popular topics like cannibalism, the end of the world and aliens.
- Into the Dark, narrating true scary stories posted on social media.
- Anatomy of Murder (formerly Serial Killer Files), which depicts the life of crime of a certain killer.
The original show and its spinoffs can be viewed here
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Seriously Strange contains the following tropes:
- Acquitted Too Late: His Top 10 on wrongful executions.
- Agony of the Feet: Foot binding, from the "deadliest fashion trends" video. Not only does Rob thoroughly describe the process of it, but we are shown many a picture (especially a close-up) of the method in action as well as its result.
- Alliterative Title: Seriously Strange.
- Artistic License – History:
- "10 Most Terrible Deaths in History", the fifth episode of Twisted Tens, repeats the oft-repeated, yet completely unsubstantiated assertion that Hisashi Ouchi was kept alive against his will for the sake of medical experimentation, when in reality he was kept alive only because his family held powers of attorney, and believed the doctors could save him no matter how obvious it was that his death was inevitable. The segment on the incident also shows the image of a burn victim often claimed to be Ouchi; this too has been repeatedly disproven, as the patient in the image is missing their left lower leg and has their arms suspended over a bed in an ordinary hospital ward; amputation was not used during Ouchi's treatment, and he was placed on a special tilting bed in an attempt to stimulate blood flow, and a radiation ward, to eliminate the risk of infection, as his immune system had been destroyed.
- "Serial Killer Files 26", featuring Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski, repeats the myth that he was some sort of legendary assassin responsible for over 200 deaths. This has been disproved by law enforcement and mob experts, who noted that Kuklinksi's claims were fanciful tales made after he was already serving a life sentence, and he can barely qualify as a serial killer as most of his confirmed victims were small time drug dealers and members of his own gang.
- Bears Are Bad News: In "10 Horrifying Videos You'll Never See" he tells the story of Timothy Treadwell. Timothy had a strong fondness towards wild bears and showed no fear towards the bears, such as refusing to set up security measures despite constant warnings from the park staff and presumably by his girlfriend who had a phobia of bears. Timothy naively and stubbornly believed that he had a special bond with the animals despite being told otherwise, he also lied by insisting that he was actually protecting them from poachers. Eventually Timothy was brutally mauled to death by a bear who dragged him away as his girlfriend tried to save him, she was soon killed as well by the same bear.
- Body Horror: The 'Human Doll' segment from the now-deleted Deep Web episode. Granted, it was just another poorly-written Reddit fanfiction, but having your limbs and teeth removed, then having hooks drilled into your stumps sounds horrible.
- Catchphrase:
- "You may not believe it, but anything is possible in a world so Seriously Strange."
- "Let's open the Serial Killer Files."
- Captain Ersatz: Rob looks very similar to Jonathan Frakes, especially when Frakes hosted Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction.
- His latest series Truth or Tale is essentially an homage to Beyond Belief.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Has a whole episode dedicated to the most brutal torture methods.
- Content Warnings: Each episode starts with a disclaimer cautioning the viewer of the
Nightmare Fuel and Nausea Fuel-inducing content in the video. - Creator Breakdown: In-Universe; from the "Horrific Experiments" video. The tragic death of Harry Harlow's wife and his subsequent depression drove him to conduct pointless and increasingly cruel experiments on lab monkeys, with gruesome results.
- Crossover: Rob's made Seriously Strange episodes co-hosted by other 'creepy content' youtubers.
- Darker and Edgier: Over the course of the series. The first episode was a 4-minute video about people who died from video games, but the episodes to come delved into torture methods, diseases, cannibals, stalkers, and more.
- Deadly Doctor: The "Angels of Death" episode details several.
- Death of a Child: The Collinwood School fire. Rob describes, and Joopis illustrates, how the young children in the dangerously unsafe school building were either trampled underfoot, suffocated from the smoke, or were scorched alive in the blaze. And the adults outside were forced to hear their screams.
- Dirty Cop: The "Evil Cops" episode details several of these, as follows:
- Antoinette Frank. She was hired primarily because the New Orleans Police Department was understaffed and that hiring her for her skin color would ease racism that plagued the city, despite her being caught lying on her application and failing two psychiatric evaluations. She got into a relationship with a known drug dealer and abused her authority as a cop to commit crimes with him, up to and including robbing people by pulling them over, breaking into a restaurant where she happened to work also as a security guard, murdered a fellow officer after crippling him, and murdered two other employees simply because they had no idea where the money they were after was.
- Justin Volpe. While trying to break up a confrontation, he was sucker punched by someone. He pinned the blame on an immigrant and arrested him. He and several other cops beat and tortured the man in increasingly violent and brutal ways while locking him up in a holding cell. he gloated about "taking a man down" and insisted the victim's injuries were from extreme sex. No one bought it and he was arrested and sentenced to 30 years behind bars.
- Jon Burge. He had a tendency to torture people to gather information and deeply hated criminals. He and his fellows would hound and beat people, shoot their pets, and even force them to play Russian Roulette. While investigating the murder of two cops, he viciously tortured the suspects. His methods often caused false confessions and got many innocent people sent to prison, and his victims were over 200 people. He was arrested, but most of the charges were dropped. He was still charged with different crimes, though...
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Videos were shorter and Rob didn't take the stories he recited as seriously, adding occasional tinges of comedy. As the content grew more gruesome and grim, Rob changed his persona to fit it.
- He also made his videos against a strange almost-glowing wall as opposed to the room of ominous artifacts and paintings that he's in nowadays.
- Exact Words: While closing up a discussion on R. Budd Dwyer, who committed suicide at a press conference."Reporters there were expecting an announcement of resignation. Well, technically, that's exactly what they got."
- Eye Scream:
- In the disease episode, Rob mentions people being driven insane to the point of gouging their own eyes out. This is accompanied by a very graphic and detailed picture of someone doing just that.
- His video on insane asylums starts with him freely describing the process of a prefrontal lobotomy, which is seemingly depicted in the video thumbnail.process
- In the disease episode, Rob mentions people being driven insane to the point of gouging their own eyes out. This is accompanied by a
- Facial Horror: Dorothy Distelhurst from the abduction episode, whose body was found with her face severely burned and scarred by acid, as one particular ransom note had promised (more specifically, it said that her eyes would be burned out if the Distelhurst family didn't pay $175,000).
- For Doom the Bell Tolls: Each segue to a new topic in the video features an ominous sting of a clock bell.
- Groin Attack: A grim example; in the torture episode, we learn of the Tucker telephone torture method, in which electric shocks are administered to the genitals. His valentines day special episode has a horrific number of penile attacks (i.e., stabbing, biting and burning).
- Heroic Sacrifice: One of the students in the Collinwood School fire rushed back into the building to save his brother. Neither survived.
- Kryptonite Factor: The episode focusing on deadly plants, wolfsbane in particular.
- Lighter and Softer:
- Whilst still focussing on the weird and creepy factor, the episode on the strangest things found in deep seas is a serious Mood Whiplash from gruesome deaths and bizarre medical advancements, describing in detail the misadventures of a scientist who supposedly discovered emeralds in the ocean, and a bizarre rock formation thought by one scientist to be a flooded city.
- The curious tale of the death of Joao Maria de Souza, 45 from a cow who jumped through his roof is so bizarre, it might just turn out funny. The guy himself died laughing and joking before going into surgery, where he died due to surgical errors, so the cow itself wasn't what actually killed him.
- The episode 'Animals That Got Arrested' is effectively comedy, arguably made funnier by the fact that Rob doesn't drop his serious persona that he uses in the other episodes.
- Whilst still focussing on the weird and creepy factor, the episode on the strangest things found in deep seas
- Kids Are Cruel:
- A very dark example in the case of James Bulger. Rob shows a surveillance picture of Bulger being guided by a 10-year old boy, which turned out to be the last picture of Bulger as he was tortured and killed by both the boy in the picture and another 10-year old.
- Also the equally infamous cases of Eric Smith and Mary Bell.
- Knee Capping: The tiger bench torture method, in which you are tied to a pole and your legs strapped down, with one brick being placed underneath your legs one at a time until either the straps holding your legs broke or your knees snapped.
- Mean Character, Nice Actor: Just compare Rob on Seriously Strange to him on his other series on the same channel, Why Would You Put That On the Internet?.
- Odd Friendship: Newcomers to his channel can be surprised by how he and Matthew Santoro are friends because they appear to be opposites due to their style of contents, Matthew's is lighthearted whereas Rob's is serious. There is no denying that the two are close friends, with the best example being when Rob supported Matthew when he was in an abusive relationship with Nicole Arbour. Rob spoke about the event on DramaAlert and spoke with Tranquil Fury despite the host responding with inappropriate behavior.
- Pixellation: Applied very loosely in the Jeffrey Dahmer and "3 Bizarre Crime Scenes" videos, since Rob's pixellation obscures the worst of the crime scene photos but leaves certain smaller, but by no means less gory, details visible.
- Room Full of Crazy: The basis of white torture, which involves a victim being put in a room of complete white and even being fed white rice on a white plate. They quickly succumb to optical and aural hallucinations.
- Seven Deadly Sins: Episode 55 is framed around the classic sins, detailing seven different murder/homicide cases.
- Stuff Blowing Up: His recount of the story of the Byford Dolphin Accident in his Worst Deaths episode. Stuff definitely did blow up, but not in the way you'd expect...
- The S.S. Imo definitely qualifies for this trope, given the massive level of destruction its explosion unleashed.
- Signing-Off Catchphrase:
- "Anything is possible in a world so seriously strange."
- "Case CLOSED."
