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Reviewer, Entertainer, Coffee Drinkernote 
"My name is Juan Ortiz, but some call me Johnny."

"Insert joke about the Void and Exdeath from Final Fantasy."

SomecallmeJohnny (Juan Ortiz) is a game reviewer on YouTube. He is 1/3 of the trio (originally a duo) known as "The Super Gaming Bros", along with his younger brother Elliot. Originally, Johnny and Elliot teamed up to do reviews under the Super Gaming Brothers name, but when Elliot got older and more preoccupied with school, Johnny took up the reviewing mantle by himself under the name "Johnny Vs. the World". Typically, his reviews are informative but mix in some live action comedy and short animations drawn by himself. He reviews games from well-known franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros. and Metroid, sometimes dedicating a month/marathon to one specific series.

He is also one of the primary members of BrainScratch Commentaries.

While Johnny's reviews became their own thing, the Super Gaming Brothers name lived on and solely became their Let's Play channel, now with Johnny's long time friend Matthew Metelli as the third Super Gaming Brother. Tropes for that channel go to the Super Gaming Bros. page.

Warning! Johnny is known for spoiling the plot of the games he reviews in each of his videos. As such, all spoilers for said games will be left unmarked.


His works provide examples of:

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    A-I 
  • 100% Completion: An often Discussed Trope in games that he plays since on average he prefers doing this over simply beating the game when not pressed for time.
    • With the likes of Super Mario Sunshine and Yoshi's Island. He'll bring up how just playing the games is a positive experience but trying to complete them ends up warping the games into a completely different experience that's not worth it.
    • With the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy he notes that the first two games both had obtuse secrets required for completion but he's ultimately harder on the second game as it has major content locked behind completion while the first game was more for bragging rights.
  • Accentuate the Negative: A thankful aversion for the most part. Johnny will be pretty even-handed with the games he plays, going as far to talk about aspects games will do right. However, it's played straight when it's a game he thoroughly despises. He admits in his re-review of Sonic and the Black Knight that in the past he tended to act like an, in his own words, "edgy bitch lord", to get his point across.
  • Accidentally-Correct Writing: invoked
    • Johnny's reaction to the Slicer in Shantae has him going into a rage, saying that next time, he'll be finding Metroids in Kirby. One mission in Kirby's Dream Land 3 was defeating Metroids, which became a Brick Joke in the review proper.
    • Johnny's struggles on Mt. Itoi from Earthbound Beginnings has him question if that area was even balanced. As it turns out, it wasn't.
  • All Just a Dream: His review of Resident Evil 2 (Remake) where most of it is him stuck in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse and having to fend off his zombified brothers, Mark and Elliot. He wakes up after it looks like he's cornered and meets up with Mark who gives him some coffee before suddenly turning into a zombie and attacking him.
  • Amusing Injuries: John gets a minor wedgie from Elliot in the end of the Super Mario 3D World Review.
  • Anti-Climax: In the Saw: The Video Game review, Johnny and Elliot prepare to fight Tails Doll who was disguised as Jigsaw. Before they even start, Mark comes by and the others tell him to back off. So what does Mark do? He just turns off the television Tails Doll was in.
  • Anything but That!:
  • Anvilicious: Discussed In-Universe.
    • Johnny feels that the Genocide route in Undertale dives too deep into this trope, claiming that the game denies the player of anything fulfilling and beats it over their head that being a dick is wrong. While Johnny did understand that the whole point behind the Genocide route is to show how dark players have to be just to get 100% Completion and see everything, he feels that both the Genocide and the Pacifist routes should have equal gameplay and content and that despite whatever points the game was trying to make, he just wants to play the game as a game rather than being told what he is doing is wrong.
    • Johnny brings up that Spider-Man: Miles Morales is rather unsubtle in its social commentary, but given real-world events and movements that were occurring when the game was released alongside the character and demographic the game is aimed towards, he finds that the messages it was trying to convey did ultimately need to be said.
      Johnny: Sometimes you gotta be loud for people to stop and listen.
  • April Fools' Day:
  • Arc Villain: Tails Doll, the personification of all the bad Sonic games and loves to make people play horrible games and watch them suffer.
  • Arc Words: As Johnny points out, in the Adventure Era 3D Sonic games, the phrase "Long time no see!" pops up frequently.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Johnny is pleading with the Cuccos to spare his life for attacking one of their own, his reasons for doing it in the first place are, in order: Hunger, getting a "Torque", his Uncle dying, the King being burned to the bone, his hair being colored pink, and not wearing any pants.
  • Art Evolution: Johnny's review intros shows a cartoon version of himself standing next to the cover of the game he is reviewing for that episode. Johnny's cartoon self had several exaggerated features typically found in cartoon characters, but as he gotten more practice, the style gradually shifted into a less exaggerated version of himself. His newest style starting with his Sonic Colors re-review shifts back to a somewhat more cartoon-like design that is also more expressive, with the expression on the thumbnail of the video giving a minor indicator on his feelings toward what he's reviewing.
  • Artifact Title:
    • Johnny's "Month of..." video game reviews. While the game series being reviewed does stay intact, the length of them doesn't. As of recent, any collection that takes over a month is now called "[Insert Video Game Series] Marathon". This is lampshaded in the Pokémon Gold and Silver review:
      Ted: It's been more than a month, John. I didn't know this was the Month plus One Week of Pokemon.
      Johnny: Will you shut up? You see, this is why making a Month of RPGs is a bad idea.
    • As Johnny has pointed out twice now, his internet handle, "Somecallmejohnny" should probably be changed to something more like "Mostcallmejohnny" or "Allcallmejohnny."
  • Artificial Gravity: A trope that comes up sometimes when he's reviewing platformers and one that he despises. For him, it makes platforming too disorienting and frustrating for him to deal with.
    Johnny: Look, you know I'm not the biggest fan of this gimmick. I straight up hate anti-gravity shit because I get disoriented easily. And yeah, I know that's the point, but fuck that point. If I'm not having fun, I'm not having fun.
  • Ass Pull: In-Universe. Twice over from Sonic Adventure 2.
    • He found Eggman having a space shuttle in his base to be this. It doesn't make sense to him for a man with a teleporter to the Ark to have a shuttle to it, as it would be a major security risk.
    • Sonic using Chaos Control, which is something he's never once done in his life and only learned about through watching Shadow is another one for him. Johnny even outright calls it this.
  • Audience Participation:
    • Johnny vs. the Subscribers, Round 2, and Hangin' Out.
    • From April 26th to June 14th, 2014, Johnny had his next game to review be chosen by his fans from a pre-set list of 3 to 2 games.
    • In some marathons, he asks the viewers to choose in a Straw-poll what games he may review, with the most-voted game going first.
  • Author Appeal: Hookshots. Johnny absolutely loves the the Hookshot from the Zelda series, and it shows whenever he brings it up. He calls it "that sexy, sexy Hookshot" in his The Wind Waker review, gushes over getting the Clawshot in Twilight Princess, and practically squees when he gets one in A Hat in Time.
  • Avengers Assemble: Johnny does this for BrainScratchComms in the SGB version of the Sonic '06 review.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: While reviewing Super Mario World, he asks the developers to create a Bullet Bill even larger than the Banzai Bills. Cut to Johnny freaking out over the results in New Super Mario Bros. Wii.
  • Berserk Button: Basically, any game that is of very poor quality (or of immense and/or unfair difficulty) is enough to rile up his rage to awe-striking levels:
  • Big Damn Heroes: Elliot in the Sonic R review.
  • Big "NO!"!:
    • Johnny's reaction to the Metroid: Other M delay. This turns out to be ironic in hindsight, considering how much he dislikes the game when he reviews it.
    • Our protagonist; only briefly phased by a demonic monstrosity from hell sent by the Demon Video Game Overlords gives him the big scary speech with fire surrounding him, but when he flips that N64 cartridge over, his screams of despair carry over five city blocks.
  • Blatant Lies: At the start of the Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location review, he states that there will be no jump scares. Come the end of the review...
    Johnny: It's good to see them change things up while still retaining the same sense of dread, emptiness, and jump scares-
    cue Ennard's Jump Scare
    Elliot: *Screams Like a Little Girl* I thought you said there were gonna be no jump scares, you dick!
    • This was foreshadowed by Johnny swearing with his left hand raised, as opposed to his right hand as shown in previous FNAF reviews. In addition, he doesn't say "Trust me." like he did in his past FNAF videos.
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: Lampshaded by Johnny in the Ghost 'N Goblins & Super Ghouls N' Ghosts review with the Tails Doll capturing him, but it's justified because the Tails Doll doesn't actually want to kill him.
  • Book Ends: The Sonic the Hedgehog Marathon began with the song It Doesn't Matter (Sonic's theme in Sonic Adventure), and it ended playing the same song.
  • Born Lucky:
    • In the review of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, Johnny somehow stuns an enemy in a small corridor and clipped through a Hammer Bros. hammer.
    • Lampshaded in his Pokémon Generation 2 review. He easily defeats Whitney's Miltank (infamous for being That One Boss) and Morty's Gengar.
    • In his Sonic '06 review, he considers himself lucky that he never encountered the numerous glitches that others did when they played the game, aside from sticking on walls.
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In his Super Smash Bros. series review:
    Familiar single-player modes return and new ones arise to help you score prizes, money, prize money, and trophies.
  • Brick Joke:
    • The Sonic Figurine appears in Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II when Johnny had no clue how to end the review, a few episodes later the figurine falls near a box, which leads to the Pokemon Training Card Game review.
    • After commenting (and then demonstrating) that the Unknown Item pickup jingle from Metroid: Zero Mission would be great for increasing the drama in any situation, it's then used in the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 review, in the Super Mario Bros. review, and at the reveal of his Pokemon Trading Cards.
  • Broke the Rating Scale:
    • Johnny gives Superman 64 a -64 out of 10 after he realizes it's his review and he can do whatever he wants.
    • From the Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing review:
      We're not going to give it a score, it doesn't deserve one.
    • Sonic Genesis didn't receive a score, but the absence of one wasn't even noted in the review.
  • The Bus Came Back: After several years, the Tails Doll finally returned in the Johnny vs. Sonic Spinoffs video, planning to move in with Johnny.
  • Call-Back:
    • In the description of his Braid review, he gives the page quote from its page, and then adds: "...Okay, bye." This is a reference to his Metroid review.
    • His Sonic Mania review contained some references to his past Sonic reviews, such as mentioning the Knuckles Twins (one's a beatnik, one's a rastafarian) from Sonic 3CD & Knuckles & Knuckles as well as the FLICKY ARMY OF DEATH from Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
  • Call-Forward: During his Bastion review, while arguing with the narrator, he shows footage from Dust, his next indie review.
  • The Cameo: Jirard the Completionist, SlimKirby, Chuggaaconroy, Matt from Tails' Channel and gillythekid in Johnny vs. The Sonic Advance Trilogy.
  • Caustic Critic: Averted. Unlike his inspirations (The Angry Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic), Johnny is generally patient, laid-back, and open-minded when it comes to the games he reviews. He only really ever enters this territory when a game pushes a Berserk Button of his either too hard or too often.
  • Christmas Episode:
    • The Batman: Arkham Origins & Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate review, though that only translates to Johnny wearing the Santa hat and beard with his Batman mask worn on top of them. Not to mention it came out one day after Christmas of 2013. And the only real reason it was a Christmas Episode was because of timing and the fact that Origins took place on Christmas Eve.
    • There's also the review of Merry Gear Solid (a Christmas-themed Metal Gear fan game) that came out Christmas Eve of 2015. Johnny reviewed it because of how appropriate it was considering it was Christmas season, and he was in the middle of the Metal Gear Marathon.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Johnny swears so much in his review of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels that inserts censor bleeps in his special censor mode. Due to the sheer difficulty of the game, Johnny swearing up a storm is justified.
    • When he talks about the Special Stages in Sonic Heroes, he just can't contain his inner AVGN.
    • His review of The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures also uses this, but this time it's done partially to be In the Style of the Nerd.
    • Thanks to the level design and frustrating controls of Sonic Advance 3, he goes full AVGN again and Ant Dude has to turn on Censored Mode till he cools off.
    • He ended up going an another swear-laden rant from fear after seeing the return of the Poison Mushroom in Super Mario Maker 2. Gilly activated Censored Mode until he cooled down... then promptly broke it, so now Johnny's cursing is permanently censored. However, Johnny had the remote fixed at the beginning of Team Sonic Racing, so now his swearing is no longer censored.
  • Continuity Nod:
  • Continuity Lockout: There's a small plot that started from the very first review Johnny uploaded, Sonic 06, with a possessed Sonic hat, that carried on over all the way to 2010... and the origins of this possessed Sonic hat are forever lost, as Johnny has since removed that video.
  • Continuity Snarl: Something he tends to lampshade is whenever there's a retcon or story change.
    • Brings up how Batman's awareness of Hugo Strange in Arkham Asylum via the character bios is completely removed in Arkham City since it's treated like their first-ever encounter.
    • This especially comes up when it comes to Sonic.
      • In Sonic Rivals, Eggman Nega being from Silver's future instead of Blaze's dimension.
        Johnny: You could at least pretend to give a shit about the continuity guys.
      • In Sonic Forces where Classic Sonic is changed to now be from another dimension instead of from the past.
        Johnny: What is coherency in this franchise?
  • Cool Uncle: Most of the series Johnny grew up with and loved was introduced by his uncle. Johnny even thanks his uncle by reviewing the classic Castlevania games. His uncle even helped Johnny with his reviews of Sonic the Hedgehog CD and Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales by loaning him highly-valuable hardware like the JVC X-Eye and the Atari Jaguar CD.
    • Uncle Greg would later go on to feature in some of the Super Gaming Bros. playthroughs, proving himself every bit as cool as Johnny made him sound and becoming an Ensemble Dark Horse in his own right!
  • Cosmic Plaything: In his Final Fantasy IV review, he lampshades that with how much shit gets thrown the main party's way at every corner, it's almost like whatever god is running the universe has it out for them.
    Johnny: Makes you wonder what kind of cosmic force really has it out for Cecil and friends. It's something shitty around every corner, I mean Christ!
  • Crossover: With Hellfire Commentaries to do Sonic Labyrinth.
  • Cue the Sun: When the Tails Doll traps Johnny in Ghost 'N Goblins & Super Ghouls N' Ghosts review, the room he's in is lighted with a dark blue. When the Tails Doll departs, the room becomes lighted with natural sunlight.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:
    • Not a definite example, but when Johnny and Elliot fought the Sonic hat, the battle seemed to be suspiciously dominated by Johnny, and it only got more extreme when Elliot entered and they then literally stomped on him right in the middle of his Badass Boast.
    • And when they fight the Sonic Hat again, now revealed to be the Tails Doll, he could only scratch them in comparison to their quadruple 9 attacks.
    • In his Pokémon Gold and Silver review, he easily defeats Whitney's Miltank and Morty's Gengar, both notorious for being That One Boss. invoked
  • Damned by Faint Praise: For as much as he doesn't like Sonic '06 and especially Shadow the Hedgehog, he considers the fact that you have complete freedom of movement in those games as one of the main things that make them far superior to Sonic and the Secret Rings. He does stress that he doesn't believe that this makes them good games by comparison, just that he considers Secret Rings to be much worse.
  • Damsel Scrappy: Downplayed since he doesn't outright loath her, but he does agree with the common fanon view that Ashley Graham in Resident Evil 4 is an overall step down compared to the series previous action girls due to being the classic Damsel in Distress and adding nothing to the story.invoked
  • Darker and Edgier: His Resident Evil 2 Remake video, while not devoid of comedy, is notably darker than any of his prior reviews. It begins with the world succumbing to a zombie apocalypse, his brothers turning into zombies that he had to kill, and he's completely shaken up by the situation he's in. Even his upbeat intro is completely cut off because he found it inappropriate for the setting.
  • Deconstruction: He discusses this trope at the start of his review of The Stanley Parable in regards to how he feels about games doing this. He states that he's all for it, but above all else, the game must still be fun to play. If it goes through with the deconstruction and ultimately isn't fun to play, he'll feel they were better off making a book.
  • Demonic Spiders: He considers Metroids to be this, even namedropping the trope and giving a Shout-Out to Tv Tropes itself in his Metroid Prime 2: Echoes review.invoked
  • Denial of Diagonal Attack: Being irritated by this in the first two Metroid games, he's absolutely ecstatic when it is inverted in Super Metroid. In fact, he provides the page quote.
    • He's also irritated by it in The Legend of Zelda, feeling that it compounds the already stiff controls and leads to him getting unfairly dogpiled too many times.
    • He finds it rather baffling that Mega Man can't shoot anywhere but directly in front of him without using special weapons.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: In his Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots review, he calls Solid Snake with the PS1 Snakehead camo "Old Old Snake".
  • Difficulty Spike: invoked He got so pissed off at this in the Cave Story review that he provides the page quote.invoked
    Fuck!! I know things should get progressively harder and harder as you move along, but this... (dies) THIS...
  • Discontinuity Nod: The montage comparing the length of Metal Sonic's transformation into Metal Madness to an average load time in Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes itself and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is a reference to his original Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) review (where a similar montage was used to compare the average loading time in that game to loading times in the other games listed above) . The review in question has been taken down to make place for a better, more detailed review, so the reference is lost on new viewers.
  • Double Entendre: An insistence on always using a misspelling of Dr. Wily's name that was featured in the Mega Man game currently being reviewed leads to an...interesting moment in Mega Man 7:
    Johnny: Nathan, I've played 6 Mega Man games at this point, I think I can handle another Willy.
  • Drowning My Sorrows: Johnny has to do this when discussing his very painful memory of 100%-ing Super Mario Sunshine during the entire summer of 2003 only to discover that the prize was A Winner Is You postcard and a Cosmetic Award next to his save file. As such, prepare for Drunk Johnny.
    Oh hey there! Oho man, it looks like you're on fire! S' too bad! Alright, seems you don't feel the need to run into the ocean that's just to your left, I'll put you out! With Yoshi's juices. Good to see you're back buddy! There you go. Putting that fire out. With those guttural, acidic juices. YOSHI JUICE FOR EVERYONE!
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Johnny's style has notably improved between the time he started compared to now, but that's a given considering that time usually improves a person.
    • Reviews posted before April 2011 were mostly made in cooperation with Elliot and were called "SGB Reviews". The now-familiar "Johnny VS" branding appeared in the Super Mario Bros. review.
    • The Story Arc with Tails Doll was given less and less importance as time went by, and as of 2016, seems to have been concluded, though the character returns as of 2021, albeit no longer antagonistic.
    • Johnny's earlier reviews had him way more foul-mouthed and leaning heavily on Accentuating the Negative as well as using gags and skits. This was likely due to being inspired by The Angry Video Game Nerd. Johnny would cut down on these elements and only use them when appropriate.
  • Ending Fatigue: As a general rule in his reviews; once Johnny thinks or utters "When does this end?", he shifts his brain to autopilot and rushes to finish the game to review it, rather than to enjoy it.invoked
    • In Reviews, Mary Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16. He brought his brothers and Matt over to record footage for the game. However, Johnny notes that the game really wears out its welcome fast.
      Johnny:...I couldn't even grant the game that much. This is what we looked like when we started (shows them laughing and having fun), and this is what we looked like when we couldn't take it anymore (shows them bored and tired). From just one board. With the lowest amount of turns selected.
    • This is his biggest problem with Ōkami, as defeating Orochi is just the first third of the game and it just keeps going. As he puts it, the game feels like it ends about three times before it actually ends.
  • Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Discussed In-Universe.
    • Ironic, given how he usually views Kingdom Hearts, but this is how he views Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. While he considers the story to be okay, he hates the gameplay for being extremely dull, limited, and repetitive, to the point where he actually fell asleep recording footage.
    • He largely finds the gameplay of Sonic and the Black Knight to be mediocre, even if it's an improvement over its predecessor, but he does legitimately enjoy the story and soundtrack. He even recommends just watching the cutscenes on YouTube rather than play the game.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: The Tails Doll tells Johnny to just stop Ghosts 'n Goblins after beating the game the first time because the game (specifically some incredibly annoying enemy noises) are too torturous even for him.
  • Evil Laugh: What he did after beating Clement's record. Since then it's becoming a meme of sorts.
  • Evolving Credits: Since going to the Johnny VS. format, an intro has been introduced with a few changes here and there. Starting with the The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker review, he now sports a full intro with him getting ready for the review, and showcasing clips of the game he's reviewing. The theme song is composed by musician Tee Lopes The updated version of the intro - with the slow jazz music rendition of the main theme, and all - is being used starting with Celeste review. In his revisit to Sonic Colors, the theme song has changed to a shorter rock cover.
  • Exact Words: Johnny's comment on the Flying Battery Zone level in Sonic 3 & Knuckles:
    So this is what the inside of an Energizer looks like.
  • Failure Hero: Johnny pokes fun at the main party's status as this in Final Fantasy IV given how many times they come so close to success only for something to fuck it all up for them, or just how much terrible crap happens to them in general. To really drive this home, every time something bad happens to Cecil and co., it's accompanied by J. Jonah Jameson's laugh.
  • Fake Difficulty: Hates it from the traditional angle. If he's losing because he's not in complete control of the events, he'll cry foul.
    • One of the biggest cases of this for him was Ghosts 'n Goblins, as all the control issues, coupled with RNG enemy appearances and needing specific tools to finish the game (coupled with having to do the game twice) practically made it a phobia of his.
    • He also hates the idea of bosses having insanely bullshit attacks or tactics that are only avoidable by repeated dodging. Using his Birth By Sleep review as an example: To him, that's less of a competent boss battle and more of a circus act.
    • Mega Man X6 for him thanks to asinine enemy placement, stage hazards that could only be crossed with specific armor types, frustrating nightmare effects, and the no-win scenarios with High Max made the game a slog to go through without exploiting glitches.
      Johnny: This game cheats, so I cheat back. Fuck it.
  • Fan Boy:
    • It should be clear that Johnny (and to a lesser extent, Elliot) is a fan of Sonic games, though not a gullible, biased one.
    • Johnny's a big fan of the Metroid series. Viewers can tell in his AM2R review that he's been going through some "Metroid withdrawal" and is very giddy when playing.
    • Besides Metroid, he's also a major fan of the Metroidvania genre in general, as he loves the feeling of exploring the unknown, having several ways to reach your destination that don't immediately connect with each other, and getting stronger along the way because of said exploration. This has led to many of his fans recommending different Metroidvania games for him to try out.
    • Eliot is shown in the Naruto: Clash of Ninja review to be a big Naruto fan, helping out for the review since Johnny lacks any knowledge on the series.
    • Johnny is also a big fan of PlatinumGames thanks to their high-octane Stylish Action games. He's bought multiple copies of their games both for reviewing the differences between versions and to show his support for them.
  • Fan Disservice: Matt doing the truffle shuffle in the Too Many Games 2014 announcement video.
  • Fanservice: He states that this trope is why he's still a Kingdom Hearts fan even after he mentally checked out of the series when it came to the story. He just loves seeing Final Fantasy and Disney characters fight together on-screen. He also acknowledges that this is a rather shallow reason to be a fan, but it's ultimately one he can't help.
  • Fate Worse than Death: At least implied. Johnny, after seeing that he has to do yet another complex, difficult, and annoying puzzle while playing Saw: The Video Game, he declares that he's not going to play the game anymore, either forgetting that he will die as a result in his frustration, or just not caring anymore.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • The Johnny vs. Pokemon Training Card Game episode wasn't a review, rather as a talk about Johnny, Elliot, Matt, and Ryan's experience with it, and also it has a small How-To-Play guide to the game.
  • His Playstation retrospective as it doesn't cover a certain game, but more of a personal reflection as it was the console that defined his late childhood. Its sequel episode, the Playstation 2 retrospective, follows the same format.
  • The Donators Marathon brings us many licensed games.
  • Sonic Free Riders during the Sonic Racing review doesn't get a full depth review like its predecessors. Instead, Johnny shows some behind the scenes footage to show the viewers how difficult it was to do basic shit like jumping and navigating the menus!
  • His Balan Wonderworld video didn't fall under the usual Johnny Vs. format. Instead opted for unscripted "Podcast-like" style where him and his friend, Russ, casually talk about the game. This was due to Johnny being in the process of moving, thus have very limited equipment to work with. Also, he expected the video to be just about 5 minutes long if it was a scripted Johnny Vs. video.
  • His Yugioh retrospective was a personal reflection of his experience with the trading card game while off handling mentioning the tie in video games and the anime.
  • Four Lines, All Waiting: Johnny's Kingdom Hearts marathon has been interrupted at various points by reviews of Knuckles Chaotix, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Sonic Mania, Metroid: Samus Returns and Jump On-Demand Gaming.
  • Four-Point Scale: Subverted. Scores below 4 are considered terrible since he judges on a scale of 1-to-10. It's averted after his Sonic Generations review, as he dropped the scoring system completely, deciding to let the review speak for itself.
  • Franchise Original Sin: invoked
    • In Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, he finds the fact that a ten-year-old is stopping Cipher undermines them as villains. He states that this has been a thing with the franchise since day 1, but in past games, stopping the villains was just something the protagonist happened to do while trying to "catch 'em all" or become a Pokemon master, while in Gale of Darkness, it's expected of the main character and that just makes him question why the military or police can't handle it.
    • When reviewing Resident Evil 2, he points out the sheer amount of ammunition and weapons present, coupled with having more action movie-esque cutscenes, makes this the entry where the series began to slowly gravitate towards being action-based rather than Resident Evil 4, where it's usually considered to have started being action-oriented.
  • Freeze-Frame Introduction: Whenever a guest reviewer shows up for the first time, they get the same freeze-frame that is used in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
    • Antdude got two in the Sonic Advance review since his first one was rather awkward looking.
    Johnny: Everybody gets one!
  • Good Bad Bugs: Johnny found a lot of enjoyment from abusing the glitches in Mega Man X6, though he does stress that it's because it's fun to break the game and that the only way he can enjoy it is by outright cheating at it.invoked
    Johnny: That ain't an accolade, for the record: that's just me being a stubborn dumbass.
  • Gravity Screw: Because of how things like inverted gravity and such messes with his control, he's not a fan of when games do this, though it should be noted that he is a fan of Super Mario Galaxy despite this.
  • Growing the Beard: In-Universe. In terms of his experiencing franchises that have grown the beard, there's his video of the Shantae series. He didn't hate the first two games but felt that they didn't have enough good stuff in them to fully recommend them. With Pirate's Curse, he felt that this was the first beginning to a good game in the series.
  • Guide Dang It!: As his The Legend of Zelda and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest reviews show, he does not like it when the guide is practically needed to have fun in the game. He doesn't hate it, he just doesn't think a game that has a ton of it can be enjoyed very much without the guide. He frequently refers to these as "Guide Games".
  • Halloween Episode: Three of them: their Left 4 Dead, Superman 64 (both for Halloween 2009), and Saw: The Video Game (for Halloween 2010) reviews.
  • Heroic BSoD: Brought on by the Ghosts 'n Goblins theme in his Mega Man 7 review.
  • Heroic Mime: While Johnny doesn't mind this trope, he does feel that the writing comes off as awkward and forced when other characters interact with the silent main character as if they were speaking all along. He also doesn't like it when the silent character doesn't react or show emotion to what's happening or to what people are telling them. An example of this is his reviews for the Mother series where he feels he can't relate to the main characters since they don't talk much or react to anything, but was able to get on board with Mother 3 where Lucas expresses his distress over having to fight his Brainwashed and Crazy brother Claus.
  • Hilarious Outtakes: The end of the Saw: The Video Game review hosts a gag reel of John and Elliot Corpsing, and some reviews have a humorously flubbed line as The Stinger.
  • Hub Level: He really hates these, especially in Sonic games, as they feel like Fake Longevity to him. He's criticized Sonic '06's hubs for being spacious and dull (and being to blame for his dislike of hub worlds in the first place), and Sonic Advance 3's hubs for being in a 2D Sonic game of all things when they just aren't needed. That said, he doesn't mind the hubs in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Unleashed thanks to being small, confined, and easy to navigate.
  • Iconic Outfit: Johnny's hat and gray hoodie sweatshirt. He eventually ditched the look, but it was his most iconic clothing for most of his career. Despite ditching the look, he still wears his hat for all his reviews.
  • I Lied: In his Five Nights at Freddy's reviews, Johnny swears using his right hand that there will not be any jump scares in the video. This is true except for his review of Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location where he jump scares the viewers twice. If you pay attention to his solemn swear at the start of that video, however, you'll see he uses his left hand.
  • In Name Only:
    • He acknowledges that given how divorced Resident Evil 4 is from the main series in the formula, tone, and story, it would practically be this to the series if not for the presence of Leon as the main character. He finds the game to be so much fun that he really can't bring himself to care about this as an issue.
    • What he considers Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric to be.
      Johnny: It's not a Sonic game, it's a game with Sonic characters.
  • It Amused Me: In his review of Pokémon Gold and Silver, Johnny goes out of his way to knock out all the legendary Pokemon just to piss off Ted and Ryan.
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks!: invoked
    • Downplayed. While Johnny doesn't hate a game when it's incredibly easy (if anything, he considers it a good way to introduce newcomers to a series), he does feel that it diminishes his enjoyment due to lack of challenge. A good example is in the Kingdom Hearts series (specifically Birth By Sleep and Kingdom Hearts III), where there are so many ways to snap the games' difficulty in half that he has to pick the hardest difficulty to get any challenge out of it, and sometimes he can't even do that.
    • Played straight with Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. While being easy to pick up and play is the entire point, Johnny finds that it's just as easy to put down due to being borderline brain dead since everything can be beaten just by pushing the basic attack button with no strategy to anything.
  • It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Usually, it takes a lot for Johnny to consider a game this. The few times he does though...invoked
    • Ghosts 'n Goblins is perhaps the biggest example of this in his entire channel's run. The constantly respawning enemies, the ridiculously stiff and unresponsive controls, the marathon levels that were the final two stages, the needing the Shield to beat the game, and having to play the entire game twice made Johnny absolutely loath the game.
    • Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. While he acknowledges that he's the minority, it doesn't stop him from hating the game for its borderline unfair difficulty. To really drive this home, this is also the review where he introduced his "Censored Mode", given how much the game's high difficulty pissed him off and ramped up his swearing.
    • This is also a major reason why he considers Mega Man & Bass to be the low point of the classic series, as he finds the game too unfairly hard, especially as Mega Man given how much the level design comes across as built more for Bass and his abilities, for its own good.
  • It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: At the end of his Braid review, Johnny decided that he would let the viewers decided the next indie game. The game that had the most liked comment would be the winner. It worked as well as you'd think.
    K-W 
  • Killed Off for Real: Big Rigs (both the CD and data) and Tails Doll, not quite...
  • Knockback: He absolutely hates this. If there is Knockback in a highly difficult game (such as Castlevania or Zelda II: The Adventure of Link), he will complain about it.
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: In the Ghost 'N Goblins & Super Ghouls N' Ghosts review, The Tails Doll decides that it seems inevitable that he'll fail to kill Johnny (even admitting the reason for that may be that he's just not very good), so after escaping from his TV, he's decided to depart from Johnny's life...but not without making him suffer some, hoping for another Heroic BSoD. He later makes good on his word to return and make Johnny suffer one more time.
  • Lampshade Hanging: I'M FIGHTING A POSSESSED SONIC HAT!
  • Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: During his Sonic Labyrinth review, Johnny compares the nerfed and unable-to-jump Sonic to Mr. Big... before admitting nobody would get that reference.
  • Large Ham:
    • BREAKDANCING EGGMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!
    • The montage of motion controls in his Metroid Prime 3: Corruption review:
      "PRESS THOSE KEYCODES! SHOOT THOSE TARGETS! TWIST THAT PANEL! CALIBRATE THAT PANEL! SHOOT THE SPECIFIC ENEMY! RIP OFF THAT PANEL! AGAIN! AGAIN! AGAIN!...AGAIN! PUMP THAT SUM'BITCH UP!"
    • His Super Smash Bros. Retrospective video has some moments where Johnny hams it up. One of these moments has him say "YOU WILL REMEMBER THE SUBSPACE EMISSARY, DAMN IT! LOVE IT AS IT LOVED YOU!"
    • At the very beginning of the Too Many Games 2015 panel, after it was mentioned that there was no PA system in the Expo Lounge (the panel had to move there last-minute due to high turnout), Johnny shouts "LOOK HOW LOUD I HAVE TO YELL!"
    • The motion control montage in his review of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
      "TWIST THAT BOSS KEY! GUIDE THIS BEETLE! SKETCH THAT BACON! TURN THIS DIAL! MAKE THE EYEBALLS DIZZY! STRIKE THE SPECIFIC GEMSTONE! RIP OFF THAT ARM-! AGAIN! AGAIN! AGAIN! SLICE HORIZONTALLY! SLICE VERTICALLY! AND THRUST!... THRUST! THRUST!"
  • Laugh Track: Used for the very end of the Cory in the House review, as well as the beginning of the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 & 3 review.
  • Left Hanging: Who did win the Pokemon Battle between Johnny and Ted? I guess we'll probably find out... never.
  • Leitmotif: Many Johnny vs. episodes end with the track "In The Groove" by S0lv0.
  • Lighter and Softer: Discussed regarding Sonic in his Team Sonic Racing video. He personally prefers that the series stay in a lighthearted state, as it's where he feels Sonic works best. While he acknowledges that there's a lot of dislike towards this direction, he considers the whimsical style to be more in line with what he likes from the series than the darker style of Sonic Adventure 2 or Sonic '06.
  • Long List: Ted's list of his favorite Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal music, in which Johnny promptly cuts Ted off.
  • Lovecraft Lite: The Tails Doll is this at the end of the day. He's presented as a powerful Eldritch Abomination that embodies terrible Sonic games, but he can easily be defeated by turning a tv off, gets frustrated by bad game design as much as Johnny does, and after failing to break Johnny for the last time, calls it quits and disappears to parts unknown. By the time he returns in Johnny vs. Sonic Spinoffs, he's reduced to having to live with his former nemesis due to hard times.
  • Magnetic Hero: He lampshades how Big Boss can easily make enemies into allies. He considers his "magical eye-patch" to be the reason why.
  • Makes Sense In Context: Why did the Sonic hat seem to consider Sonic R the worst Sonic game? It's bad, but not atrocious...oh. He was born from it.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Ted takes advantage of the fact that Johnny was so exhausted from doing a marathon of RPGs that he'd agree to anything to get Ted to leave, including a Kirby marathon.
  • Marathon Level: Or rather, a Marathon Episode. Early episodes lasted about six to fifteen minutes at best; however, several of Johnny's reviews can get extremely long (he has to cover everything about the game as possible).
    • The second review of Sonic '06 lasted 50 minutes. It held the title of his longest review for nine years.
    • His review of Resident Evil 4 is his third longest clocking in at 49 minutes long.
    • Played with regarding his Balan Wonderworld review. While it clocks in at 56 minutes, the review wasn't scripted and just had Johnny and Russ give their thoughts as they came along, making its length far less noteworthy in hindsight.
    • His Final Fantasy IV review is his fourth longest review, being just over 48 minutes long.
    • It wasn't until Final Fantasy VI when the record for longest review was broken, with it clocking in at over one hour and seven minutes. Seventeen minutes longer than the previous record holder, Sonic '06.
  • Mind Screw: While Johnny does believe that video games can be True Art, he doesn't like it when games have stories that leave everything vague and open to interpretation since that usually makes the story feel incoherent and overly pretentious to him; though he does acknowledge that it can work sometimes. He criticized Braid's story for doing this and praised Celeste's story for not doing this when it easily could have, while acknowledging that Celeste does leave a few things vague too (namely the reason Madeline was climbing the mountain, though he does offer his own perspective on that). note 
  • Motor Mouth:
    • He often speaks fast for very long game synopsis'. The best example was explaining the plot for the first Metal Gear Ac!d game.
    • Johnny also spoke very fast during the end of his Sonic Mania review.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: You sure love eating pizza and drinking soda, don't you? But it does get a tad plain, doesn't it? Don't you wish that the No More Heroes theme would play whenever you did it? Well, Johnny's got you covered!
  • Must Have Caffeine: Part of his motif. He's usually always seen with a cup of coffee in his later reviews. So much so that it was used as a banner on his website, YouTube channel, and Twitter page. He's seen getting a cup in his intros (with the second even putting more emphasis on it) and even the image of the second intro has him holding a cup. Heck, he's holding one on the image of this very page if that wasn't a big enough clue for you and part of his slogan.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: During his review of 8-bit Sonic 2, he felt this way upon finding out the implication that Tails possibly died in the bad ending.
  • The Nicknamer: Tends to give nicknames to characters with hard-to-pronounce names, such as Pachacamac or Sahasrahla.
  • "No. Just… No" Reaction: During his review of Final Fantasy VI, Johnny had this reaction upon finding out that Locke kept Rachel's corpse perserved in the hopes of finding a way to revive her.
  • Non-Indicative Name: Johnny considers Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater to have this since the titular walking mech isn't in the game and Naked Snake (aka Big Boss) is the main character, not Solid Snake.
  • Older Than They Look: Lampshaded. When Johnny sees an image of Kirby and Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai at the age of 23, he's baffled that he looks younger in present time than he did then.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: Used to increase Johnny's horror at the walking-towards-you version of the Hammer Bros. in Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels Review.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Despite his real name being Juan Oritz, literally everyone always calls him Johnny. He even lampshades that he should probably change his internet name to reflect that.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Usually, when reviewing a game, Johnny does what he calls an "establishing shot;" i.e. showing his copy of the game going into the console before starting up the review (if it's a digital game, he'll either skip it or show the game is selected in the menu of the console it's stored in.). When it came time to review Sonic and the Secret Rings, he instead let the game fall onto the floor. In the review, he states that he considers it worse than Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Shadow the Hedgehog. Good control in a video game is of the utmost importance to him.
    • Super Mario Sunshine also has this happen, Johnny confronts the game over how it scarred him with it offering a canteen instead of a Versus Title Intro.
    • Balan Wonderworld is a particular doozy, considering the title of the video: "Balan Wonderworld...Well, We Tried."
  • Open Mouth, Insert Foot: He starts off his Haunted Castle & Castlevania Chronicles review video by saying that at one point, Derrick of GameXplain was marathoning the entire Castlevania franchise and Johnny challenged him to play the former arcade game, not expecting him to actually do it since for the longest time, it was only available via emulation before getting a PS4 re-release. So Derrick beat the game and challenged Johnny to review it on his channel. Johnny agrees to do it with a smug look on his face, and then he gets hit once and loses a giant chunk of his health.
    Johnny: Alright, what do we got here, zombies? Well, I whipped plenty of those in my day. Oh my God, my health! Beat Shi-
  • Out of Focus: Subverted. Even though Elliot left the group for the main channel, he still appears as a cameo or for a special occasion, and of course the LP channel. The Big Rigs review even lampshades this by slapping the words "Super Gaming Brothers Forever" at the end.
  • Overly Long Gag: A major criticism he had for Sonic Colors in his re-review for the game is that a lot of the jokes just don't know when to stop and they lose their comedic value by overstaying their welcome.
    Johnny: There's the setup for a good joke, the joke is delivered but then it just keeps going and going and I'm like "You had something at the start but you lost me because you didn't know when to stop".
  • Playing Against Type: Lampshaded In-Universe in his Psychonauts review. He found it both shocking and refreshing with Richard Steven Horvitz playing Raz as calm and collected in stark contrast to his usual chaotic Large Ham roles.
  • Play the Game, Skip the Story: invoked
    • How he feels about Bayonetta and it's sequel. He finds that the stories in both games don't really explain much to the player and don't make much sense, but the gameplay is so over-the-top and addictive for him that he can't really bring himself to care. With the third game, however, he finds it's become a detriment, as the underbaked narrative makes it hard to care about the characters he's playing as, and it doesn't help that he found parts of the gameplay, including Viola's playstyle and Infernal Summons, to be irritating.
    • He discusses this in the Metal Gear retrospective. He criticizes this mindset, even stating in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty that the games as a whole need to be judged by both story and gameplay because both are intrinsic to the franchise (as well as the high cutscene-to-gameplay ratio). However, he does feel this way about Metal Gear Solid V. He compliments gameplay, game design, and sheer variety of content with it, but criticizes the story both in the fact that many parts are unfinished and the parts that were don't add anything to the mythos due to the main character not being Big Boss.
    • He also feels this way about the Kingdom Hearts series, saying how he stopped caring about the story after the second game, but loves the gameplay enough to go back to playing them.
    • In his review of Megaman X 4, he considers the story to be one of the worst in the series, but greatly enjoys the gameplay.
    • In his re-review of Metroid: Other M in 2021, he makes it clear that he really hates the game's story, but he finds the gameplay to be perfectly functional and even fun enough to enjoy.
  • Rage Breaking Point:
    • Attempting to dissect Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)'s plothole-ridden story-line has caused him to lose his cool.
    • Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg's problems with the egg getting stuck, having to wait for one to respawn, and the game essentially flipping him a massive middle finger has him snap, then cool down by cooking eggs.
  • Rage Quit:
    • Jokingly done so during Ryan's experience with the Pokemon Training Card Game, Johnny throws the table when playing and starts to beat Matt.
    • Played straight for the Saw: The Video Game review, Johnny gets sick of being cheaply killed and trying to solve multiple timed puzzles (some who have extremely short time limits).
    • Also played straight for Ecco the Dolphin when he died trying to finish off the final boss.
  • A Rare Sentence: After Ted tricks Johnny into agreeing to a month of Kirby, John calls him a "slimy ass cheek".
    Ryan: That's... a unique insult.
  • Redundant Parody: He considers The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures to be this to old-school NES games, feeling that while its extreme difficulty is trying to mock and parody those games on how cruel and unfair they can be, the game played it up so much that it was pretty much exactly like an old-school NES game, just as cruel and unfair as they can be.
  • The Reveal:
    • Matt, who for some viewers, they thought Matt was someone totally different.
    • Elliot with hair in the second Big Rigs review.
  • Rule of Three:
    • Three games were given a 10 out of 10 in 2010.
    • This from his Resident Evil 4 review when talking about Ramon Salazar.
      Johnny: And you can't get me to hate Ramon Salazar. Look at him. Look at him. Look at him.
  • Running Gag:
    • Whenever he mentions the iconic Screw Attack power-up of Metroid fame, a cool voice with a slight echo says: "Screw Attack!" It ultimately came to an end at the hands of Johnny's NES Zapper in his Prime 3 review and confirmed dead (again) in his Federation Force video.
    • Every time Metroids appeared in his Month of Metr- (cue scary music) AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! OH GOD NO! NOT THEM!! NOT THE ORIGINAL METROIDS!!!!!! THEY TAKE 5 MISSILES AND THE ICE BEAM!!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!
    • After commenting (and then demonstrating) that the Unknown Item pickup jingle from Metroid: Zero Mission would be great for increasing the drama in any situation, it's then used in the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 review, in the Super Mario Bros. review, at the reveal of his Pokémon Trading Cards, and in the Mega Man 9 and 10 review.
    • In the Mega Man Marathon, whenever one of the games misspells or mispronounces Dr. Wily's name, Johnny pronounces Wily's name in that manner for the rest of the review.
    • After Johnny used the official subtitle for the Master Sword in his A Link to the Past review ("the blade of evil's bane") it gets a more silly and/or more immediate subtitle with every future appearance, e.g. "the blade that fucking matters," or "the blade that tips 20%."
    • "There's always a room for a Bob". Johnny names characters like this whenever the games he's reviewing have a contemporary setting. He one-ups it by calling his Reshiram "Bob".
    • Every time Johnny pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here, whether he's getting jumpscared by Unagi or running off to get his copy of Metroid Dread, his chair will be seen spinning in circles with nobody sitting on it.
    • Whenever the topic of Metroid Dread or it’s reveal comes up, expect him to play the clip of his reaction to said reveal.
  • Running Gagged: In his review of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Johnny finally shoots the odd disembodied voice who keeps saying "Screw Attack!", with the NES Zapper. And in the event the now-dead voice got any ideas to show up in his Federation Force review, Johnny mentions the Screw Attack and almost immediately the video cuts to him on his futon very seriously stating that he "shot that asshole dead."
  • Scrappy Mechanic: In-Universe.
    • Johnny despises the fact Mario can't just lose what is essentially a mini-game; he has to die from it.
    • As revealed in Johnny's review of Sonic Adventure 2, he absolutely despises grading rubrics in video games.
  • Screen Crunch: This is one of Johnny's pet peeves when it comes to handheld ports of console games, with two of the biggest offenses being Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis and Mega Man and Bass (two Gameboy Advance titles that were ported from the Sega Genesis and Super Famicom respectively).
  • Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Goes with Broke the Rating Scale. Johnny declares Superman 64 so terrible that he gives it a -64/10.
  • Self-Deprecation:
    • In the Cory in the House review, Johnny questions if he runs in the same awkward animation as the titular character, calling himself "quite the heavy fuck".
    • In his Sonic Rush Adventure review he asks who would name their henchmen Johnny because, as he puts it, "that's an asshole's name."
  • Serial Escalation: His Sonic 06 review. It's almost an hour-long, which is more than double the usual time of even his longest reviews, with a close second being his Resident Evil 4 review, clocking in at roughly 49 minutes. His Final Fantasy IV review comes close, being over 48 minutes long. as of January 30th, 2022, the beast has finally been slain with his Final Fantasy VI review, being just over an hour and 7 minutes long.
  • Series Continuity Error: During the Super Mario Maker 2 review, Gillythekid accidentally breaks Johnny's Censored Mode remote control and subsequently vanishes from existence, with Johnny mentioning he is still trapped in another dimension in his round 2 review of Shovel Knight. Gilly suddenly reappears ten months later during the Sonic the Hedgehog 2, mentioning he escaped Purgatory simply because Johnny was reviewing the game. However between the two, there was a Kirby's Dream Land review, where Gilly simply appears like nothing happened as one of Johnny's friends pressuring him to do a Kirby marathon.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Johnny was seen drinking beer from a suspiciously green bottle while waiting for the night to change to day in his Castlevania II: Simon's Quest review. He then subverts it by stating that it isn't Rolling Rock. Appropriate, as in the same review, he mentions that he was inspired by the Nerd.
    • Several to the Pokemon Anime in his Month of Pokemon. It's lampshaded twice; the first was by Johnny, the second was by Ted.
    • In the Metroid Prime review, Johnny begins the story synopsis with: "While travelling in the reaches of space..." Pretty subtle.
    • In the Castlevania II: Simon's Quest review, when he's talking about possessing parts of Dracula's body, he pronounces “possess” as “prossess,” a nod to the fact that that's how the game spells the word (only) when acquiring a part of Dracula's body.
    • The 2013 April Fools video is titled "Johnny Vs. The Meaning of Life," with Johnny's cartoon likeness standing side-by-side with the letter 42.
    • In the Superman 64 review, he mentions that a certain someone pronounces the developer's name of ''Superman 64'' (Ti-Tus) as "Tit-us."
    • Fans of BrainScratch Commentaries and Johnny's LP channel will get a couple of bonuses when watching the Ocarina of Time review. In it, he references his "Leaf Technology" joke in the BSC commentary of the game when he barely made the deadline for the side quest for the best sword in the game, and when Johnny is saying the Light Sage's name, Rauru, he pronounces it as "Rar-u" calling back to his Zelda II LP.
    • In the Johnny Vs. reviews, every time a new person appears in his review, the video does a freeze-frame of the person with their name or a title appearing on the bottom. With the odd exception of Ryan from BrainScratch Commentaries.
    • In any reviews with Ryan, they end with the instrumental version of 'We Are' from One Piece and they do a quick back and forth similar to how next episode previews go for the series.
    • Johnny will occasionally make references to Dragon Ball outside his reviews of Dragon Ball games, like offhandedly saying the reason for Tails being able to fly much longer but at the cost of not being able to touch the ground in Tails' Skypatrol was due to training at 1000x gravity and asking Goku to give him his energy while holding his hands up and desperately trying to get the motion controls to work in his Sonic Riders review.
    • He said the slogan, as part of EarthBound's infamously failed gross-out based marketing, "This game stinks" sounded like a one-sentence review by Jay Sherman.
  • Signing-Off Catchphrase:
    Johnny: Thank you for watching, have a fantastic night, and take care.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World. Johnny's really not fond of these. Specifically, the Frictionless Ice trope usually goes hand-in-hand with it due to how difficult it is to control himself in the game.
  • So Okay, It's Average: Of all the games Johnny reviewed, he considers Sonic Lost World, Crash Bash, and Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal to be this. As he finds that none of them have anything outstanding about them, but they don't have any problems that make them outright unplayable.invoked
  • Sound-Effect Bleep: He usually plays this for comedic purposes, but it's in full effect nowadays even in a non-comedic sense due to YouTube's demonetization laws in regards to excess profanity. However, it gives in-universe reasoning as Gilly the Kid shorted out the Censored Mode controls. Johnny is able to repair the Censored Mode control at the beginning of his Team Sonic Racing review.
  • Special Guest:
  • Squee: His reaction to a certain E3 2021 reveal.
    Johnny (upon seeing the logo): METROID DREAD!!!
  • Squick: He invokes this in his Sons of Liberty review by having Raiden repeatedly do flips naked (he refers to them as "taint flips") to make his viewers wince.invoked
    Johnny: I'm doing it to make you wince, and I'm not sorry.
  • Status Quo Is God: Johnny's Censored Mode remote control is broken during his Super Mario Maker 2 review by Gilly the Kid. This might have been used to justify John swearing less and using bleeping on a permanent basis due to YouTube's policies. However, Johnny later ended up going back on that decision and, a few episodes later, his Team Sonic Racing review starts with him repairing the remote and disabling Censored Mode.
  • Stock Footage: A minor one, Johnny uses the same loading screens footage from his Sonic '06 multiplayer Lets Play to compare the Metal Sonic transformation scene from Sonic Heroes.
  • Story Arc: One involving a strange Sonic hat that warps the mind of whoever wears it to commit horrible misdeeds, such as... playing Sonic R. He returned for revenge in the Sonic R review revealing himself as the Tails Doll. He returned again in the Saw review disguised as Jigsaw - only to be trapped in the TV.
  • Sudden Name Change: After Elliot left the group, the series name changed from SGB Reviews to Johnny vs. [Insert Game Here]. The older reviews kept the SGB Review name.
  • Suddenly Shouting: invoked He does this when he's about to review the original Super Mario Bros. 2 (AKA SMB: The Lost Levels) in explaining why the original game never left Japan:
    "When the game was ready for international release, Nintendo of America ultimately cancelled the idea of this game coming to America as well as Europe. And why is that? BECAUSE THE GAME WAS DEVELOPED BY SATAN HIMSELF!! I mean, holy (beep)! If there was an award for most obnoxious Difficulty Spike in a sequel, THIS GAME WOULD WIN THE AWARD THREE YEARS IN A ROW! The wind, the obstacles, the level design! Oh, the level design! IT ALL SCREAMS HELL!!"
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: He considers Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back to be this (though given it came after the notorious Bubsy 3D, that's not saying much).invoked
  • Sword of Plot Advancement: In his Ocarina of Time review, he refers to the Master Sword as "the blade that gets shit done".
  • Take That!: In his Sonic Generations review, when talking about the 30-Second Challenge Leaderboards, he showed the top three for Classic City Escape, with him at the top & ClementJ642 at the bottom, causing him to say: "Ha! Take that Clement!" Clement would beat the record soon after, which led to Johnny beating Clement's new record, complete with a small "The Reason You Suck" Speech before signing off.
  • The Television Talks Back: Elliot in the Metroid Prime 3 review. It could had been justified since it's a webcam chat, but moments later, Elliot throws him the Metroid Prime Hunters game, while still on TV.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: invoked
    • He found it disappointing that Link was completely unexplored in Breath of the Wild, especially since he actually goes by Link and not a player name, signifying that this incarnation of the character has his own personality and identity instead of just being the player's means of interacting with the world around them.
    • Found it really disheartening that Wes, the protagonist of Pokemon Colosseum, wasn't explored at all outside of the intro. Since the intro establishes him as being a former criminal who blows up his boss's base while smiling and stealing his old unit's equipment, Johnny was expecting a more fleshed out and darker take on a Pokemon protagonist. Instead, he ends up being the standard silent protagonist that Pokemon has always had with nothing from the intro explored about him.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot invoked:
    • One of the many problems he has with Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood is that there's barely any attempt to flesh out the surroundings and provide world-building. The only time any world-building is done is in an optional side-quest near the end of the game.
    • A rather persistent problem he has with the Kingdom Hearts series is that all the Disney worlds visited are just abridged retellings of their respective movies with Sora and co. inserted in. He finds it to be both shallow and wasted potential for telling original stories set in those worlds.
    • Something that bothers him about Pokémon Colosseum is that the region of Orre isn't explored well and is just treated as the standard "Stop Team Rocket" story. While he notes that this is practically a staple for the series, it's more disappointing here for him due to Orre being a much darker and amoral region, where stories of Black-and-Grey Morality are ripe for telling.
  • Think of the Children!:
    • Ryan's plea to Johnny and Elliot when they assemble every Genesis Sonic game and peripheral into one.
    • At the start of the Kirby marathon, Caddicarus brings with him his children and tells Johnny that if he doesn't do the marathon, he's letting them down. Johnny caves in and agrees to do the marathon.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: His Shadow the Hedgehog review begins with him lying as if dead on his couch. The next review, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), starts with him preparing coffee, Pepsi and wine to drink throughout the review.
  • Time Travel: He's not very fond of when this trope is used as a plot device. He feels it's a cheap way to retcon any of a game's prior storyline and feels that many writers never adhere to a set of rules when using the trope. He doesn't mind it in cases like Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, where it's less of a plot device and more of an excuse to have a large variety of levels with different themes.
  • Trauma Button: Thanks to Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels, he is terrified of Poison Mushrooms. The sight of one will cause him to start shrieking with fear and devolve into a myriad of cursing.
  • Uncertain Audience: Discussed In-Universe regarding Mega Man: Network Transmission. Because the game awkwardly hodgepodges the classic Mega Man formula and the Tactical RPG Battle Network formula, he finds that the two do not mesh well at all and consequently the game doesn't feel like it would appeal to either crowd.
    Johnny: Who were they trying to appeal here, classic or Battle Network fans? I don't feel this is a well executed compromise.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: invoked
    • In the opening of Resident Evil 3, Jill comes across as this for him. While he does acknowledge that she went through a lot during the events of the first game, her blaming the civilians who didn't rise up against Umbrella (whom they didn't know was evil at all and couldn't do anything to stop them anyway) makes her come across as judgmental and needlessly harsh.
    • This is a major reason why he doesn't like Steve Burnside in Code Veronica. While the game tries to make him a Lovable Rogue with a layer of tragedy when he has to kill his father, his overly cocky attitude combined with him being the cause for a lot of the problems he and Claire go through, in addition to trying to kiss Claire in her sleep, makes him too much of an asshole and creep for him to like. Not even his death could get Johnny to elicit any sympathy for him.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Mark when he sees Tails Doll on the TV.
  • Updated Re-release: These are covered in ROUND 2 series of videos which are glorified Johnny vs. sub-episodes.
  • Versus Title: The Johnny vs. X reviews.
  • Vindicated by History: His "Then and Now" videos (and his later "Round 2" videos) are all about seeing if a game does this over time, either through quality-of-life updates, DLC, or just a change in viewpoint thanks to new experiences. invoked
    • Games like Sonic 4, Sonic Unleashed, and Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood all invert this as they've aged badly in his eyes.
    • When he looks back at Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, he doesn't find them as enjoyable as he did when he was younger or back when he reviewed them in 2008, so these are inversions.
    • Downplayed with Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). He still considers it a bad game, but wasn't as angry about it as he was in the first review and admitted to enjoying some aspects of the gameplay to the point of revisiting this game from time to time (namely Sonic and Blaze's gameplay).
    • Majora's Mask received a major case of this for him. When he first played it, he gave up after an hour and a half and never touched it again. After revisiting it years later, he considers it one of his favorite Zelda games.
    • Super Ghouls and Ghosts became a much better game for him after slogging through the unfair hardness of Ghosts and Goblins.
    • Sonic and the Black Knight was a game that he absolutely loathed when he first played it during his first SGB review for the game. When he re-reviewed it in 2020, while he considers it a mediocre game, he's considerably calmed down and is more appreciative of its positive qualities, such as its story writing (he considered it to be one of the better told Sonic stories in the latter half of the decade it was released in) and control improvements from Sonic and the Secret Rings.
    • Metroid: Other M was a game he was pretty caustic towards, but during his re-review years later, he warmed up to it enough to consider it better than he initially thought and he now considers it "a good game buried under a whole bunch of bullshit."
  • War Is Hell: He occasionally lampshades when a game gets particularly preachy with this trope, such as the Metal Gear games (with him considering The Phantom Pain to be the most blatant Kojima gets with the message). He playfully jabs at this using the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective "War...IS HELL!" clip.
  • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?:
    • Called out by name in the Metroid: Other M and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption reviews for the Galactic Federation secretly creating Metroid breeding programs (and Space Pirate clones, recreating Tourain, and an artificial Mother Brain) and using Aurora Units (basically Mother Brains) for running their military defensive systems, respectfully.
    • He summarizes Bubsy's career by calling out that line, then pointing directly to Bubsy 3D.
  • The Woobie: In-Universe.
    • Johnny seems to have this mindset about Terra in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, as almost any time he brings up Terra's involvement in the story, it sounds like he's expecting Terra to get kicked in the balls with a golf cleat. The story isn't nice to him and Johnny seems to feel bad for him for getting fucked over in each and every way possible.
    • He also seems to view Krystal as this in Star Fox Command. As far as he knew, almost all of Krystal's paths end terribly for the character (She does get one where she marries Fox and her kid leads Star Fox's next generation), earning his pity.
  • The Worf Effect: Discussed. This is something that he states rubbed him the wrong way in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Since the past installments always made a big deal about when Snake had to destroy a single Metal Gear, Raiden being able to take out multiple advanced Metal Gear RAYs at once was something that weakened the Metal Gears as a concept to him.

"Thank you guys for reading, have yourselves a fantastic night, and take care."

 
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Devil May Cry's voice acting

Johnny argues that while the voice acting and dialogue of the first Devil May Cry game is bad, it's still fun to listen to.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (7 votes)

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Main / NarmCharm

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