YMMV / BuzzFeed Unsolved

• Awesome Music: The full Soundcloud versions of "Plupple Honeymoon" and "Believe Me Maizey" are genuinely gorgeous, and both songs are telling her she’s better than she thinks she is, the former to the point that she’s literally existing out of love for her wife.
• Broken Base:
  • Big time with the Hot Daga. People either see it as the best part of the Post-Mortem, while others despise it and think of it as a waste of time. Then there's the third camp who have no idea what's happening but appreciate the ridiculous amount of work Shane puts into it.
  • To a lesser extent the seasons themselves. The majority of the fanbase love both, but because they alternate, people complain-wanting Supernatural while True Crime is on and vice versa was enough for Shane to notice in one of the post-mortems.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Ryan and Shane making fun of musician Jesse Shepard dying at the piano in the Villa Montezuma Mansion? Disrespectful. Ryan and Shane laughing hysterically at the idea of him possibly pooping while dying? Hysterical.
  • Ryan saying D.B. Cooper might've just gone "splat" onto the ground and died instantly? Gross. Shane suggesting he was impaled on a pine tree, and giving a very detailed and quite lengthy performance of this scenario? Too funny for words.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Father Thomas, the exorcist, who both the fandom and Shane himself have frequently mentioned even though he only showed up in two episodes. This came to an abrupt end for most people (and the guys themselves) when he supported Kavanaugh.
  • Ryan's younger brother Jake who was an actor for one of their episodes and who showed up for a post Q&A session. Fans have since been asking for him to return.
  • Many found "Bloody Mary" in New Orleans cool, for her spirit knowledge, jolliness and achieving the rare double feat of getting Ryan to be happier/calmer in a scary location and for Shane to admit he does actually want to believe in something other than physics. However, she has more recently received criticism for turning the site of a gruesome domestic murder-suicide from only 2006 into a museum.
  • Maizey, a badass lesbian corn who goes through a lot, is by far the most popular of the Hot Daga, getting a ton of humanized fanart and "I would die for her" comments from the LGBT Fanbase. She wasn't originally a character or had a big part, but Shane listened to the love and gave her the most focus.
  • The camera guys/production crew who have to go with the pair to various creepy locations are commonly hailed as unsung heroes.
  • AJ, the psychic Ryan brought in for "The Haunting of Hannah Williams." A lot of viewers liked how down-to-earth and friendly he seemed, and how he just rolled with Ryan and Shane's usual antics. There are plenty of comments saying that they hope the Ghouligans will team up with him again in the future.
  • Ryan's Split Personality Ricky Goldsworth is very popular among fans, given his terrifying personality in contrast to Ryan's normal personality
  • Reed the guest for the lost souls of the USS Yorktown Q&A has become popular enough thanks to her sense of humour and general niceness to even coin the new term "Reeders" among those originally called "Shitfished". Fans are already begging for her to come back, or even host a show on BUN.
• Epileptic Trees: Has a memetic one in the form of the commonly referenced fan theory that Shane is secretly a demon. Many clip compilations on YouTube are dedicated to demonstrating his allegedly demonic behavior and it's a frequent element of his character in fanfiction.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Rob Dyke. He himself is very vocal about them, especially considering Youtube's policies of supporting a channel similar to him but demonetizing his content. Suffice to say, the fandom rivalry is strong.
  • This appears to be dying down since Rob Dyke realized the demonetization was due to his surname; according to Rob, his subsequent name change to "Rob Gavagan" fixed the monetization problem.
• Fanon: The most common fandom ideas/jokes, Shane being a demon and Ryan having a Split Personality called Ricky, have been accepted and played up by the boys. For Ricky specifically, there are times where he’s not mentioned but Ryan is acting creepy (like lovingly caressing his katana or joking about watching Shane while he sleeps) that fans will take it as a Ricky moment.
• Fountain of Memes:
  • Shane quickly established himself as one due to his hilarious snark and Arbitrary Skepticism.
  • Ryan too, mostly due to his priceless expressions.
• Growing the Beard: The show really started to gain steam during the second season of Supernatural (where the now infamous "Hey there demons" quote was coined) and then started building up a fanbase during the second season of True Crime.
• Harsher in Hindsight: When Natalie Wood was a child, a fortuneteller had told her she was going to die by drowning. And when Wood was twelve and filming a movie, an accident caused her to fall off a bridge and into the water, resulting in her fear of water and drowning. Sadly, years later, this was how Wood was found dead, drowned near the Catalina Island.
  • A meta example is in the "Poison Pill Murders" they make a joke about having to be in quarantine. Cut to three years later in 2020...
• Heartwarming Moments: Enough for its own page.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In one of the earliest Supernatural episodes, an expert in exorcisms named Father Thomas is consulted. He recommends that the duo do nothing to antagonize or make contact with the spirits of the house's they're investigating, something that's taken very seriously at the time. Over the course of three seasons, they then proceed to completely ignore that advice.
  • Both the boys have been in Buzzfeed for a while, and it's a given that Unsolved fans would search for earlier videos. And so. Shane in real-life haunted houses? Nerves of Steel. Shane playing a VR horror game? Scared shitless.
  • Cool too, but how Shane went from slightly anxious “not wanting to push anything” (but you still shouldn’t trust the government) in “Phoenix Lights“ PM, to season six of True Crime with both “all rich people are murderers” and essentially doing a big shrug emoji when Rory Kessinger tried to shoot a cop.
  • Obvious logic that he doesn’t believe so he knows it’s fine aside, there is something funny about how in BF-SPN Shane will taunt every ghost, but listen to him in Here’s What You Do and he’s the most non-confrontational one there.
  • In "The Strange Deaths Of The 9 Hikers Of Dyatlov Pass," Brent believes there's some credence to the theory of a Soviet test missile, referencing the fireworks scene in the climax of Mulan. Ryan proceeds to chastize him for basing his theory off evidence he got from a Disney animated movie. Years later, scientists believed they've solved the mystery about as conclusively as they likely ever will as being the result of an avalanche... thanks to being able to recreate the event using the snow generation software originally developed to animate the Disney movie Frozen (2013). Maybe Disney movies aren't the worse source of inspiration?
• Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of fans have become introduced to the show because one of episodes covered by the duo involved a case or phenomenon that they were interested in.
  • A lot of fans now watch Buzzfeed videos besides Unsolved only for Shane and Ryan, something that they make clear in YouTube comments.
• LGBT Fanbase: They’ve got a huge gay following, especially lesbians, which they’re both delighted about and Maizey the corn lesbian is appreciated by people not even into the Hot Daga.
• Memetic Badass: Shane has become one of these, mostly for his utter disdain and lack of respect for various ghosts and demons that the duo supposedly face up against, which has garnered him a Badass Normal reputation. It's even joked that said ghosts and demons scarcely make themselves known because they've heard of and are scared of Shane.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Hey there demons. It's me, ya boi"^Explanation During the Bob Mackey episode, Ryan and Shane each take turns standing in the demon hole. Shane, being a skeptic and unafraid of the situation, speaks the now iconic line.
  • “Hey ghouls! The boys are here!" ^Explanation Another line said by Shane while on their way to the sanatorium.
  • (wheeze) ^ExplanationAppears so frequently during text segments that it's become one of their trademarks.
  • "Don't try it, demon!"^Explanation During the Goatman's bridge episode, Ryan brings a holy water gun, he says this as he draws his weapon, showing that a demon can't hurt him. Now used as a reaction image.
  • Proof that Shane is a demon!^Explanation Based on a popular fandom headcanon that Shane is only masquerading as a skeptic to cover up his true identity as a demon.
  • "Father Thomas would be ashamed," and many, many variants on the same sentiment.^ExplanationBased on the advice given by Father Thomas the exorcist, for dealing with demons and spirits... and how much the guys ignore that advice. Some more than others, Shane.
  • Supernaturally oblivious Shane.^ExplanationJoking that Shane is such an Agent Scully, nothing would convince him the supernatural is real.
    Ryan: (begins levitating with his head spinning 360 degrees)
    Shane: People just do that sometimes.
  • People often use the phrase "It was just the wind" or other variations as Shane's explanation for fictional situations where Ryan is being possessed.
  • "Any time you have to say, 'It's not incest, technically,' that's not great, Ryan." ^ExplanationA line Shane says in the episode about the boy in the box has become a popular way to make fun of the Not Blood Siblings trope.
  • "I've connected the two dots" "You didn't connect shit" "I've connected them"
  • "Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way" "No I want my fucking gold"
  • "All hail The Watcher" ^explanation a line from The Watcher's letter, referencing accidents that could be blamed on them. Shane and Ryan ran with it and used the line to blame The Watcher for minor inconveniences. The phrase gained usage when Ryan and Shane left BuzzFeed to form Watcher
  • "All rich people are murderers"
  • “sexy in a rat way”. A comment on Shane’s older Buzzfeed videos (what do your birthday say about you) that gets repeated on a ton of Unsolved/Watcher videos and even made it into a roast mortem.
  • "I did meet some of the most insufferable people. But, they also met me."
• More Popular Replacement: Shane ends up being this when he takes up the role of Agent Scully from Brent, as most viewers find his chemistry with Ryan much more entertaining and memorable, especially with how far he takes the role of skeptic.
• Nightmare Fuel: Enough to warrant its own page.
• Older Than They Think: Many people watching the Sports Controversies series don't seem to realise that they are reuploads of an originally facebook exclusive show.
• Signature Line: "Hey there, demons, it's me... ya boi." Even people who have never seen Unsolved quote it.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Shane's show "Puppet History" (over on Watcher) to both the apparently writer's blocked Hot Daga and Ruining History, combining the songs and animation style of the former and the "history facts told by your excited teacher" feel of the latter.
  • Are You Scared? is closer to the main show, sharing the True Crime format of Ryan reading Shane a creepy story while the two of them make jokes.
  • The upcoming Watcher series "Ghost Files" is another ghost-hunting show starring Ryan and Shane.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The Tragic Murder Of JonBenet Ramsey still has humor and nice guys making it more accessible, but is definitely more sad than usual. Ryan makes it clear they're only doing this because so many requests, and Shane has to say to finish it out even while he's getting upset.
  • Although packed with a lot of gallows humour surrounding the very odd methods of investigation and not to mention Shane's very darkly comedic theory of the boy's death (complete with a top notch screaming R2-D2 impression), the case about "The Boy in The Box" is a very bleak one dealing with the murder of a toddler who is still unidentified 64 years later.
    • As of 2023, the boy has now been identified as Joseph Augustus Zarelli.
  • "Believe Me Maizie" and the death of Gene French Fries. So many people said they cried that Shane did an affectionate tease in the next season's Post Mortem, telling them it's just fiction.
  • "The Haunting of Hannah Williams" is heartwrenching as it becomes clear just how terrified and upset Ryan and Shane's co-worker is as the playback of the gathered footage continues, at one point breaking down into Tears of Fear when the hired medium correctly names her deceased father-in-law while discussing a spiritual presence in the home. It gets to the point where Ryan actually seems upset to have gathered any evidence of ghosts in her home at all. The same medium also identifies Ryan's late grandfather, who had passed away shortly before the episode was filmed, and apparently was able to repeat things that Ryan had said to him on his deathbed that he would otherwise have had no way of knowing. Ryan is nearly in tears talking about it.
  • They both sound completely miserable by the end of "The Puzzling Disappearance Of Walter Collins" (with the most likely theory that he was amongst a lot of boys who were kidnapped and killed).
  • The Ken Rex McElroy episode. Not what happened to him, everyone agrees that he deserved to die, but as soon as they get to the fact that he abused minors, the jokes (for good reason) stop for a while. Ryan gives a trigger warning and Shane just sounds very quiet and upset.
  • The Louis Le Prince case is a very tragic one involving the disappearance of the inventor of moving motion pictures who disappeared whilst on a train many years before the boom of the film industry and his name was almost lost to time thanks to over competitors in the field, namely Thomas Edison. The episode did bring a lot of attention to Louis Le Prince that it is reported that several film schools have started to update their text and curriculum to give Le Prince the credit he never received in life.
  • The episode where they deal with Princess Diana's death embodies this to a T. Even the beginning of the episode shows both Ryan and Shane looking miserable as they prepare to go through Diana's history in the royal family, with Ryan making it clear that they're only doing it due to the fact it's a highly requested case. Shane notably lacks any sympathy for Prince Charles after hearing of an incident in which he mocked Diana's weight.

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