YMMV / The Runaway Guys

• Abandon Shipping:
  • During the earlier years of the channel, Tim was often shipped with Lucahjin due to them having good chemistry and a love for toilet humor, but the shipping stopped once Lucah started dating (and later married) Jon.
  • Shipping Emile and Masae was common for a while due to their Vitriolic Best Buds nature, close proximity to each other in real life, and Emile's teasing comments about her being adorable. This mostly stopped when Masae was revealed to be dating BrettUltimus, coupled with Emile eventually revealing he's dating someone who likes him not because he's an internet celebrity. Emile later made several statements against shipping real people in his Splatoon 2 solo Let's Play. The final nail in the coffin came when Masae revealed in early 2024 that her and Emile hadn’t been friends for several years due to her discomfort with his behavior, which cast a lot of their prior interactions in a less cute light for many. A lengthy response by Emile in April 2024 revealed that he and Masae in fact had been dating for ten years starting in 2011, and were even engaged (which was known by their friends but kept private from the public), but the relationship fell apart and ended with a difficult breakup in 2021, with Emile even saying that he no longer wants to be involved with Masae as much as she doesn't want to be involved with him.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • In Golf in Wii Sports, Emile asks whether they can hit each others' balls.
  • During Fortune Street, Emile says that, "Rocking his hand back and forth on the Wiimote gives his hand something to do."
  • In the Great Maze, Jon is playing as Charizard and tells Tim to "follow the angry dragon". Tim and Emile tell him Urban Dictionary's definition of "angry dragon". ^note It involves fellatio.
  • And in Jon's Live Stream of Mario Party 6, Emile asks, "Should we do Daisy on hard?" And during the Treasure Trawlers minigame, he says "And I get... wood." It actually took Jon and Tim a while to realize what Emile said (as in, Jon didn't know until he read it in the comments). Later on, Jon starts laughing, and Emile asks, "Is it about my wood?" But the worst one is when they play Crate and Peril with Daisy as the one player and Emile says, "I'm inside Daisy's heart-shaped box." without knowing the slang for it.
  • During the last round between Tom Fawkes and JonTron in the the Smash Smash Bros for Wii U Invitational Tournament, Tim has this bit of commentary about the music.
    Tim: Makes me want to pick up a guitar and... finger along.
    Tom: *Beat* ...excuse me?
  • In Mario Party 5, Emile plays as Daisy, so this is everywhere. Most notable in Pirate Dream (Part 2):
    Emile: Donkey Kong! Come into my body and become me! I must have you as my playable character again!
    Jon: ..So you want Donkey Kong to come into Daisy's body.
  • End of the Sonic Adventure finale, Emile says to Jon: "I saw you reach down and I thought that's what you were grabbing!" He was referring to Jon's phone.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The final match of the Brawl tournament (Jon vs. SyKhotic/Hunter, with Jon winning) wasn't particularly exciting, as Hunter kept accidentally killing himself.
  • Tim, to Jon, in Fortune Street's Delfino Plaza. They spend much of the board in a tense race for the win, but in the last few turns, Tim's net worth falls dramatically, and the tension vanishes as Jon easily marches toward victory.
  • On the last five turns of Boo's Haunted Bash in Mario Party 4, Tim ends up turning all Red Spaces into Chance Time Spaces. No one lands on any.
  • In Dokapon Kingdom, Jon enters the fight with Overlord Rico and one-rounds him due to the Punisher's secondary effect.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • The video upload schedule introduced with New Super Mario Bros. U drags out series longer, due to Emile reducing video length in exchange for more videos over the course of several days, compared to before when he would upload a series of videos (or one extremely long video) within a single day.
  • Mario Stadium from Fortune Street got backlash for this, as it was uploaded over the course of 8 parts, despite Yoshi's Island (which only had 6 parts) having close to the same total running time.
  • Robbin Hood Ruins from Fortune Street suffered heavily, both from being a long board to begin with and from the Guys playing more slowly and cautiously than necessary. It came out to over 2.5 hours, and was split into 10 parts and uploaded over a span of three weeks, leaving some viewers (and the Guys themselves) sick of it by the end.
  • Super Mario 3D World. Not only did it have more episodes than the average TRG co-op, but only two were uploaded per week instead of the usual three (the third slot was filled by Dokapon Kingdom, another long-runner). As a result, the LP lasted almost five months, agitating some fans who wanted to see something new. It didn't help that replays of levels were left uncut, unlike in previous projects where only important bits were kept in (such as Kirby's Return to Dream Land), and that video lengths were reduced to roughly 15 minutes on average, resulting in some episodes only featuring a single level. And it especially didn't help that the final level was split into three separate videos, which earned Emile criticism.
  • Super Metroid, due to shorter videos and a sporadic upload schedule, not helped by Jon and Tim trying to teach Emile Sequence Breaks and speedrunning tricks, which often results in half a video spent repeatedly attempting a single trick and making very little progress. This got better after the completion of Rayman Legends, as the rest of the series is now uploaded regularly, so while the videos themselves are still uncut and focus on Emile attempting different tricks to learn the game, it feels much faster due to having three videos a week instead of just one.
  • Dokapon Kingdom was a constant victim of this, largely due to story progress constantly being impeded by the three fighting with each other... to progress the story. As a result, a good third of the series leans towards filler‚ albeit enjoyable Filler. The nature of the upload schedule (it was used as filler between the main projects) also meant that the playthough had been going on for four years.
  • Luigi's Mansion. Many commenters felt like it went on far too long for a relatively short game, with several videos consisting mostly of Boo hunting or Tim making no progress due to dying, all left mostly uncut. Not helping is the length of these videos, with only the finale passing the twenty-minute mark.
  • Overcooked! outstayed its welcome for many viewers once the Guys started to experience the relatively low ceiling for Stars required to unlock levels, resulting in multiple episodes spent in earlier levels and even forcing some videos to consist entirely of attempting to 3-star a single stage they had already spent a large amount of time with. This combined with the short videos and the upload schedule means a not insignificant amount of viewers were tired of it before episode 15. Didn't help that after completing the main story, they continued the project by going through the game's DLC and versus mode. Some fans have even started to joke that the channel's become a cooking channel.
  • Some commenters have expressed frustration with 100% Orange Juice! lasting so long. Though this case is quite justified, since the Guys couldn't record in person through 2020-21 due to the pandemic, and there wasn't much else they could do but play games like OJ that have online play, some have questioned why they don't add a bit more online game variety to break up the monotony of just playing OJ non-stop. Alleviated when they did start playing another game in late December 2021.
  • Viewers began to feel this way towards Banjo-Kazooie, though, ironically, due to a lack of uploads. The collab was hyped to high heavens during TRG Colosseum 2022, with a sneak peek of the first episode being shown on-stream. However, much of the hype ended up petering out once the schedule was unveiled, where instead of having three videos a week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday were instead relegated to uploads of TRG Colosseum VODs, while the episodes of Banjo-Kazooie proper were shoehorned into the weekend slots, only having two new episodes per week back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday. This resulted in many viewers growing tired with the wait for new episodes, often not paying the Colosseum VODs any mind, and not having anything TRG-related to look forward to on weekdays.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Daisy officially being Emile's player character as of Mario Party 5 (since Donkey Kong is no longer available as a playable character). Some people love the fact Emile is playing her due to all the Accidental Innuendo that occurred regarding the character, and think it'll be a great fit for more humor. Others feel like she's already turning into a Forced Meme and there really isn't much for Emile to work with using her, and greatly prefer the idea of him switching to Toad, who they feel has much more opportunity for funny moments since Emile is rather infamous for his spot-on Toad impressions. Daisy also gets some hate from those who consider her responsible for Chugga failing to win a board in 5 and 6.
  • 100% Orange Juice!: In Beginner Town (Winter), Jon switched his character to Sora (Military), who was reskinned to look like his stream mascot RosaJon. While the character has been met with positive reception by people who think the mod is cute and/or sexy, some people have complained that the mod is inherently fetishistic and is better kept exclusively to Jon's streams and out of TRG. In Fungus Cave, Jon switched the skin back to his normal self (but is still playing as Military Sora), saying that he thought it was a bit too much.
• Broken Base:
  • One sprouted up between Team Jon (and Josh) vs. Team Emile during NSMB Wii. It's more lighthearted than some examples, since Jon trying to kill Emile was Played for Laughs by both Jon and Emile.
  • Episode 10 of LittleBigPlanet. One side thought it was their funniest episode yet, while another found it extremely boring, and a third found it outright racist. The entire episode was designed as a Take That! and parody of the more bizarre criticisms the playthrough had received (including having a female guest despite the name being "The Runaway Guys", the accents used and the tendency of the group to be very loud), but this does fall flat for some people.
  • Jon's continuous winning streak in Mario Party 4 caused quite a few people to quit watching the LP; the other half seemed to think he deserved it after the train wreck of bad luck Mario Party 3 brought him. It showed up again when the streak continued in Mario Party 5, but is a bit more forgivable to some because his bad luck is still in play - even becoming The Chew Toy for Toy Dream - and he lost the first two boards so it was known he could not get a clean sweep. With the winning streak continuing in Mario Party 6 the arguments have not stopped, only now both sides have upped the rhetoric. Those who hate the winning streak want Jon to actually throw the game and those who don't care think the other side is being childish and point out that the wins in 6 are much closer than those in the previous games and that Mario Party is luck based; also once again, Jon getting a clean sweep became impossible. A third group has also developed; they think the bad luck Jon has means his wins are earned.
  • On a similar note, Emile's victory in Bowser's Gnarly Party, thus preventing Jon from doing a clean sweep. Audience reactions varied from Emile fans celebrating his victory, to Jon fans accepting that Emile won and enraged Jon fanboys claiming that he cheated the victory from Jon. There are also a few who think Emile went overboard in his attempts to stop the winning streak.
  • And speaking of Mario Party, there's Mario Party 3. A lot of people find it to be one of their weakest playthroughs, with even the guys themselves considering it an Old Shame, but it also has its share of fans, particularly those of NCS due to him winning the majority of the boards and getting A Day in the Limelight, with one fan list even including it in the top LPs they've done.
  • In the Dokapon Kingdom videos, fans either view Emile becoming a Darkling as an interesting game changer or a frustrating thing that makes the videos hard to watch; it doesn't help that one of the first things he did was remove Tim's rare shield. There's also those who feel he isn't taking full advantage of the class to really change up the game and is just wasting it.
    • Oddly enough, the second time Tim becomes a Darkling is an even bigger waste of time, as he fails to take several towns that he could have taken in favor of landing on empty spaces and doing nothing. However, he also didn't deprive anyone of rare equipment, so that may explain the lack of vitriol. (The first time Tim becomes a Darkling, he uses Global Assault, resetting the game to a neutral state.)
  • The Rayman Origins LP. Some say it's an overall good LP, and a nice break from the usual Mario games. Others say it's the worst series the Guys have ever done, with lackluster and unmemorable commentary. Others still remain mostly indifferent.
  • Fortune Street, or more specifically, the Guys' way of playing. They play the game as if it is Monopoly, which is not the most effective way of winning. Some think this is a detriment to the series (especially in Robbin Hood Ruins, which took so long precisely because of this play style), others don't care or think the complaints are coming from "Stop Having Fun" Guys.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures spawned a lot; it's easily the most divisive project the guys have done.
    • Is Emile incompetent at the game, or just seems that way compared to Jon?
    • Is Jon the only one paying attention at any point, or does he just blow out of proportion his tendency to find things first while it gets glossed over when anyone else does? And was the infamous "sandstorm incident"^*In a desert level, the guys have to go against the direction the wind is blowing the sand in each screen to proceed through a mazelike area; note that the only clue to this is a cryptic but easy-to-remember sign at the start, and that your brain tends to block out minor constants like the sandstorm blowing to help you focus, meaning it's harder than one would think to notice the sand is blowing in a different direction each screen him noticing something obvious that the others missed, or him noticing something obscure and treating it like it was obvious?
    • Do the guys hate town levels for good reason with them being tedious and annoying fetch quests, or just because they had one instance of it being difficult that was entirely their fault and thus they have a stigma towards them?
    • Is the greed over Force Gems the guys being assholes, or how you're intended to play the game?
    • Should the guys sans Jon be teaming up to stop him from winning the end of each stage for the competitive aspect, or just focus on their own playing for the cooperative aspect? And for that matter, does Jon win each stage because he plays dirty, or because he's genuinely doing well?
    • Should the guys be spending more time trying to work as a team, or is it funnier when they stumble over each other?
    • Was the series in general worth the wait, or disappointing?
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes is possibly even more divisive than the above, due to the Guys' overall lack of competence and teamwork skills, the fact that Jon already LP'd the game before, and that both Jon and Chugga don't particularly like the game (going so far as to call it "joyless and charmless"). Others find the series entertaining and like how Chugga is slowly starting to find more things to like about the game.
  • There was a rather big split in fan opinions over the Pikmin LP. A good amount of fans found the jokes of the collab to be really funny, especially Jon's Captain's Log Running Gag for Olimar that gives him the voice of Zapp Brannigan, but by the end of the collab, mainly due to the constant arguments between Emile and Jon over the latter not enjoying the game by the end, people were starting to not enjoy the collab any longer. Those siding with Emile pointed out how Jon's pet peeve of Camera Screw making him hate the game meant that he wasn't giving the game a fair chance just for one minuscule detail, whereas those siding with Jon pointed out how Emile made a mistake in picking the New Play Control! release of the game, which some believe to be an inferior port of the game.
• Cargo Ship: After the bumper that introduced the latter happened in Colosseum 2022, some fans have begun to ship Emile x the Jon cardboard cut-out thanks to Emile's gushing over it from the bumper.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • In Mario Party's "Grab Bag" minigame:
    Emile: (grabs Jon) RAPED!
    (later)
    Emile: (gets grabbed by Wario) Wario, you just raped out what I raped out of [Jon]!
    (later)
    Emile: (gets grabbed by Jon) Don't rape the monkey!
    Jon: What's with you and rape?
    Emile: I don't know. (beat) It's fun?
    Jon: WHAT?!?
  • During the Bomberman Live tournament, Jon has to explain that killing both yourself and the other players doesn't count as a win. His exact wording? "Genocide along with killing yourself does not work. Genocide itself is okay."
  • NCS' Africa joke in Wii Party's Globe Trot mode (4:30 - 4:40).
  • Jon is unable to buy a new candy in Mario Party 8 due to having the Blowaway candy in use, which has replaced Waluigi's legs with a tornado. Emile, in-character as the shopkeep, yells "We don't sell to amputees!"
  • Emile's story in Overcooked! and Banjo-Kazooie at MAGFest. Him unknowingly letting out the beefiest fart in a little girl's face? Pretty squicky. The fact that the little girl was also in a wheelchair? Cringe Comedy at its finest.
  • Colosseum 2023's intro, which parodies The Addams Family, features Jules and Masae pretending to stuff their pets in their mouths. Frightening on its own, but it would not be out of place in a similar Addams Family parody.
• Ending Fatigue:
  • During Mario Party 3, some fans became restless when Creepy Cavern was extended by a Wacky Watch, adding two more videos than usual. Even worse is that the board's final minigame was the very long and monotonous "The Beat Goes On."
  • Robbin Hood Ruins in Fortune Street took 10 parts and 2 hours and 37 minutes in real time to finally come to an end. This led to a lot finger-pointing at who was responsible for picking the board.
  • Super Mario 3D World became this as a result of the final level, Champion's Road, taking three whole videos to complete. Even before then, things were noticeably starting to drag due to the conclusion to the main game occurring in Part 26, but the additional bonus worlds making up another 15 videos - a little over a third of the entire LP.
  • Tri-Force Heroes is getting similar criticisms for the Den of Trials. Multiple episodes have consisted of little more than failed attempts at the final section, totaling to over 35 minutes of footage with no progress being made, on top of the lengthy endeavor that clearing the Den would be in the first place. Not helping is that the combat is much more repetitive than the sections of prior offender Champion's Road, and the video parts are almost TWICE as long here as those were. There's no term to describe it besides Padding.
  • Chapter 7 of Dokapon, which involves fighting the Final Boss, Overlord Rico. The Luck-Based Mission aspect of even getting to him, much less the difficulty of the fight itself, means that several needless in-game weeks worth of videos are spent doing... absolutely nothing, in a futile attempt at progress. The LP's upload schedule certainly doesn't help, since one video is equivalent to one in-game week, the series updates three times a week, and it's only updated to pad out the space in between main projects, meaning the entirety of Chapter 7 took a very, very, very long time to finish. Jon even complains about this, since all of Chapter 7 took them several real-time hours for them to record, and when Jon finally gets a chance to challenge the boss and end the Chapter, Chugga accidentally picks a fight with Jon due to holding the 2 button on his Wiimote, causing Jon to break into a rage due to Chugga potentially dragging out the Chapter for even more weeks. He doesn't; Jon gives up against Chugga due to being extremely pissed off, which allows Chugga to Kill Steal the boss.
  • The Super Mario 64 race at the end of the second day of the 2018 charity marathon became this as a result of people constantly donating to have Masae & Jules reset their consoles. While the donations were understandably to help balance out the race (as Masae, despite being significantly less experienced at speedrunning than Jules, only had to do a 16-star race compared to Jules's 70-star one), it's generally agreed that the repeated resetting— which became particularly excessive on Masae's end during her attempts at clearing Bowser in the Fire Sea— ended up padding out the race for far longer than necessary, to the point where the reset incentive was outright removed after both contestants reached Bowser in the Sky.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • JoshJepson. Many were sad to see him gone after NSMB Wii, and the Guys eventually brought him back as a guest player for NSMB U. A few fans consider him the honorary fourth guy, and he even appears in some of the TRG fanart with the other three guys. (Sadly, he doesn't return for Super Mario 3D World.)
  • Wario, for his line from the first two Mario Party games: "So ein mist!" It's gotten to the point where he's referenced in every project even if he isn't in it.
  • Waluigi; his popularity from the Fortune Street videos, mainly for Jon's hilarious impersonation of him, sounding Mexican and his made-up backstory of wanting to run a successful bridal boutique, was why Jon decided to play as him in Mario Party 3 and onwards.
  • Special guests in general are pretty well-liked, especially Jon Paula during the Mario Power Tennis tournament, due to being the most vocal of the guests and providing some pretty funny lines.
  • Fortune Street as a whole. When the Guys posted the first video, they showed concern over whether or not it would go over well, and expected it to be a divisive one-off. Fans adored it, and it has become traditional between-series filler, especially as a way to see off a special guest (Lucahjin, JoshJepson, and Super Jeenius all played games with the Guys before going).
  • "Old Man" in Sonic Adventure. While playing the game the guys became fixated on a mannequin of an old man in front of a restaurant in the Station Square section and have attempted to carry him around every where they go. The fans have quickly taken to him and he's starting to become a favorite.
  • StephenPlays is also very popular with fans. It helps that he's good friends with Emile and isn't nearly as loud and obnoxious. Plus Mal's Deadpan Snarker comments made while playing was what made some interested in checking his channel out.
  • Daisy became instantly popular for being shipped with Emile. Her popularity surged during Jon's livestream of Mario Party 6 after Emile made one too many innuendos about her. She was then chosen to be Emile's playable character in Mario Party 5, just because of that livestream. Unfortunately, her popularity has started to decline as of Mario Party 6 for reasons listed below, to the point that Emile ended up switching to Toad for future games.
  • Hans the Arms Dealer. The guys and fans consider him very quotable and always look forward to seeing him and hearing his declarations of "havin' a sale".
  • During the TRG Colosseum, a table lamp that appeared in Day 1 became part of the spotlight. It started when one of the incentives during The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Randomizer toggles whether the lamp is on or off, and viewers were quick to declare it as its own character. Viewers noticed its absence in Day 2, so a milestone incentive was in place where if the goal is reached, a private investigator is tasked to seek the whereabouts of the lamp.
• Franchise Original Sin: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past became one of the most contentious series the Guys have ever done, and most of its common sources of complaint can be traced back to the first in the "Emile plays a classic game blind" series: Super Metroid. Namely, Chugga's failure to notice things, Jon and Tim encouraging him to use Sequence Breaking and advance techniques on his first-time playthrough and large portions of videos consisting of aimless wandering. These issues were a lot less noticeable in Super Metroid and Super Mario Bros 3 as those were much shorter games. Link to the Past, however, is a far longer series, and unlike with Super Metroid, Emile is being encouraged to get 100% completion. LttP is also much less friendly to Sequence Breaking than Super Metroid is; doing things out of order greatly increases the difficulty of the game, as Emile learned the hard way.
• Growing the Beard: The Thrown Controllers panel at PAX East 2013 noticeably improved from the previous panels. The technical problems were minimal, and an official video of the panel was made by The Game Station, with professional equipment, multiple cameras, and decent editing.
• Ham and Cheese: Jon is fully aware that nearly nobody likes Big the Cat's sections in Sonic Adventure, so what does he do to compensate? ...Turn Big into a Memetic Psychopath, screw around the hub worlds and levels as much as possible, and perform the craziest glitches imaginable. The results speak for themselves.
  Emile: I'm kinda just- I'm kinda wanting to give Jon his own controller for this playthrough?
  Jon: If you want! I am more than willing to play all of Big's stages! (snickers)
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • All the death threats Jon and Josh gave to Emile are not fun to think back on after he got seriously ill and could have died. Jon even slightly mentions it on a stream expressing regret. Further not helping matters is, as Jon once revealed on a stream, he very nearly did try to strangle Emile.
  • In episode 36 of Sonic Adventure, Emile lampshades the fact that the guys are discussing Seaman on the day of narrator Leonard Nimoy's death (note that all TRG episodes are recorded months in advance). The day before the video was uploaded, Emile announced that his cat Teddy passed away. It doesn't help that the discussion was occurring in one of Big the Cat's levels.
  • In the very next episode, Jon tells the viewers to buy Big's new audiobook; amid the various places he lists where it's available is David Bowie's mind. Bowie had passed away almost a month before the episode was uploaded.
  • Discussed in episode 39 of Link To The Past, where Jon brings up how often real world events keep occurring between their recordings and upload dates, giving specific examples involving Smash Mouth (trending on Twitter on the upload date due to a celebrity feud) and Montgomery Gentry (one of whom died before the video mentioning them was uploaded).
  • Episode 8 of their run of Nintendo Land's Pikmin Adventure starts out with the group singing that they are in the future, the year's 2020, and it's bright. This video was recorded in 2019, and it is extremely clear that they had no idea of just how bad things were going to get within the next twelve months.
  • Game 15 of Wheel of Fortune opens with a movie-like narration from Jon before he starts coughing. Emile and Tim joke that the plot of the narration was about a virus.
  • Jon's increased anger and bad luck in Mario Party 3 and New Super Luigi U can be more painful when you realize that they were recorded right after his girlfriend of many years broke up with him. The 10th anniversary stream reveals this was also the same recording session where Emile had horrible food poisoning, he calls that trip "cursed".
  • In the 2019 Colosseum, a joke about Josh being blamed for everything that went wrong became a Running Gag that the chat and donators started getting in on. Checking his Twitter the day after revealed that this was actually getting to him pretty badly, and it swiftly stopped being funny. These jokes (and similar ones making Josh a Butt-Monkey of the Colosseum crew) also soured further in September 2020, when Josh was admitted into the ER for mental health reasons.
  • During the Tangled Cords segment of the 2019 Colosseum, Tom and Jon — in response to the idea of Colosseum being a day longer every year, which Jon was very much against — joke that eventually there would be a year that Jon just isn't a part of. The pandemic soon ensured that Jon (and many others) were unable to get together for the next three Colosseums, and in 2022 after lots of stress building up, Jon admitted he had been considering quitting the Colosseum in the following years because of everything being too much to handle. Less harshly but still bizarrely, this was followed by the 2023 Colosseum, in which Jon showed up... and Emile and Tim couldn't.
  • At the end of Mario Party 8, Jon asked if they would be going onto 9 or be taking a detour. Emile admitted he wasn't exactly sure at the time. There ended up being a huge detour in their Mario Party playthroughs thanks to the pandemic, with their Mario Party DS LP being delayed for three years.
  • The involvement of Jirard in the TRG Colosseum events, with him helping out behind the scenes and guest starring for some of them before becoming a main part of the 2023 event, quickly became this later that same year; it turned out his own charity organization had been sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for years without putting it toward any cause, all while lying about it, leading to accusations of fraud and scamming. (For anyone concerned, Colosseum is run by separate people and is completely unrelated to Jirard's own issues besides him making guest appearances).
  • In one episode of Wheel of Fortune, Chugga makes a Youtuber Apology Parody regarding his poor performance in the game. In January 2024, Chugga had to do a more severe apology after Lady Emily accused him of sexual harassment.
  • In episode 2 of New Super Mario Bros. Wii Jon responds to Emile's parody of the theme song to The Jetsons (more specifically, placing Tim in the role of Josh's wife) with, "You need so much mental help, it's not even funny." In January 2024, Emile would be admitted into rehab after numerous incidents of him committing sexual harassment in the past were uncovered.
  • Chugga's tendency to tease MasaeAnela during her appearances as a guest, to say nothing of their collaborations on each other's channels, took on a sadder light when Masae revealed on Twitter in January 2024 that the two haven't been friends for several years on account of Emile's inability to maintain personal boundaries, making the guys' collab of Super Mario 3D World and her guest appearances on Fortune Street particularly hard to watch nowadays.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Jon revealed during the 10th Anniversary stream that he and Lucah were in fact dating during the Little Big Planet 2 LP, they just hadn't told the others yet. Now go back and watch their interactions knowing this.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Has its own page.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!:
  • Many fans feel that Dokapon Kingdom should have lasted longer. Notably, however, the guys did this intentionally, since they were partially testing the waters to see if the fans were interested in them playing the (much, much longer) full game. They have since returned to the game to play Story Mode. However, because of the nature of Dokapon and the sheer length of Story Mode, the full game's playthrough ended up wrapping around to the exact opposite of this reaction.
  • Shorter playthroughs tend to be less memorable, though not necessarily worse. Castle Crashers and WarioWare Inc.: Mega Party Game$ in particular don't have nearly as much to them as other playthroughs on the channel.
• Memetic Badass: Carver is treated like this during Fortune Street (Mt. Magmageddon), even having Chuck Norris Facts-style claims like he makes toast just by glaring at bread. He also reminds fans of Jorgen Von Strangle because of Emile's scrambling the fairies reference.
• Memetic Loser: Wario and Daisy both share this status for much of the fandom. Though both characters have had their days in the sun (Wario was the player character for the guys for both "Minigame Island" and "Minigame Coaster" for the first two Mario Party games and won a bonus board in Mario Party 4 while Daisy's AI ended up winning the Mario Party 6 board the guys played during a livestream), both characters' failures have overshadowed everything else. Wario's AI was infamous for his Artificial Stupidity, especially his legendary awful performance in Mario Party 3.
  • Daisy meanwhile had some infamy for her own cases of Artificial Stupidity during Mario Party 4, but skyrocketed into this territory when she became Chugga's player character and he was unable to win a single board in either Mario Party 5 or Mario Party 6 while playing as her, which was then cemented when he not only began winning boards again after switching to Toad for Mario Party 7, but ended up tying for board wins and technically winning the project in a stat-based tiebreaker. The complete 180 in luck is lampshaded by Jon in the bonus videos.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Wario's "SO EIN MIST!" clip (which is commonly misheard as "D'OH I MISSED" by many, especially Emile) from his VA in the N64 Mario Party titles.
  • Bowser Communism.^ExplanationThe nickname for "Bowser Revolution", which averages out everyone's coin count as evenly as possible. Many who play the Mario Party series have used this meme in reference to the Revolution.
  • Many people cannot forget Emile's infamous "Meet JoshJepson" intro to NSMBW's second episode.
  • Cyber Steve.
  • Sexy Bowser.^ExplanationBowser is occasionally seen in this pose in Mario Party 3, which the Guys waste no time pointing out.
  • Waluigi's Bridal Boutique.^ExplanationIn Fortune Street, out of curiosity, Jon (playing as Waluigi) examines the board to see what his most expensive property is: a Bridal Boutique. He does a bit about it in his Waluigi voice, and fanart quickly came in by the wave.
  • "YEAH COFFEE!"^ExplanationThe Stinger of Little Big Planet had Jon spam the Coffee sticker on the ground until it was just a big brown circle of stickers.
  • There's a lot of fanart of Jon as a Time Lord due to his numerous Doctor Who references in the Wii Party "Spin-Off" videos.
  • Calibrary Cuff Paula Deen from Wheel of Fortune part 2.^ExplanationThe first of Emile's many bad guesses, kicking off the Running Gag of absurdly bad answers. It usually wasn't a matter of if, but when he'll answer poorly.
  • "I thought Chugga/Emile was still sick." ^note During the release of the Rayman Origins LP, Emile came down with a near-fatal respiratory disease that put his then-current solo project on hold for several months. However, since Origins videos were still being uploaded, fans continually asked whether Emile was still sick, despite being told MULTIPLE times (and it having been established as being this way since the beginning) that the TRG videos are recorded months in advance. It reached the point where other fans started making fun of it — and then people thought those fans were being serious like the others.
  • Waluigi's "YOU'RE LOUSY" taunt in Mario Party 6, which seems to be on its way to becoming the new "SO EIN MIST / D'OH I MISSED".
  • The lamp. ^ExplanationDuring TRG's Colosseum stream in May 2018, the Twitch chat became fascinated with a lamp sitting on a table, which eventually led to it being integrated within the stream itself.
  • "FOOOOLS!" ^ExplanationLORD DONA'TOR's catchphrase, coinciding with the lamp's rise to memedom.
• Most Wonderful Sound: "So ein mist!" (Or, as it's more commonly known, "D'OH I MISSED!")
• Nausea Fuel:
  • What was originally meant to be a nearly unachievable donation incentive in Colosseum 2021, Jack giving Jules a swirlie live on camera.
  • During one of Emile's Colosseum 2021 bumpers, he (futilely) attempts to make cookies without a recipe at Masae's behest, knowing that he's never cooked anything worthwhile to save his ass. The end result is... something that looks like it could give salmonella. It gets even worse when Emile and Masae actually eat the monstrosity, saying it tastes like omelettes.
• Never Live It Down:
  • "Don't eat the mushroom," "Move faster Pokey", Steve the red Pikmin, and (briefly) the green rupee scream. If they've said something memetic or that they now regret, it will be made fun of at some point.
  • Calibrary Cuff Paula Deen. ^noteEmile was doing a bonus puzzle and attempted to solve the puzzle. The correct answer was "Celebrity Chef Paula Deen."
  • The Metropolitan Mutant of Ark. ^noteHappened during another round; the actual answer was "The Metropolitan Museum of Art". The kicker? The part Emile got right was "The Metropolitan", and he didn't even know what "Metropolitan" meant.
  • Emile skipped a minigame explanation in Mario Party 3 exactly once, by accident, and apologized for it almost immediately when Jon lost the minigame in question because he was unfamiliar with it. The way some people go about it, you'd think that he skipped every single explanation in a deliberate attempt to screw Jon over.
  • During Jon's May 18, 2014 stream on Twitch, the Guys played a round of Mario Party 6 and selected Daisy as the CPU player. After a That Came Out Wrong line ("Should we do Daisy on Hard?"), the jokes, shipping, and drawings started popping up immediately. And then Emile decided to make a "heart-shaped box" comment without knowing what it's slang for...
    • The idea of Emile not getting innuendoes was, for a time, prominent... but sometime after or during 2015, it more or less stopped. Now at most he makes an Accidental Innuendo before immediately lampshading it, or more commonly, makes deliberate innuendoes and Heh Heh, You Said "X" comments while generally understanding when everyone else does them, with the exception being if it's simply a word he's never heard before. Yet whenever he makes said remarks, expect the comments to blow up with the assumption he has no idea what he meant, even if his laughter or lampshading makes it obvious that he did. Nine times out of ten this will involve referencing the time Lucahjin gave him a sexual education book and telling him to go read it.
  • Emile's absolutely abysmal performance in Part 1 of Sonic Adventure will never be forgotten. For some fans, it's done enough damage to name him as the worst player of the trio—a title previously given to Tim.
    • Emile's terrible performance in Part 1 of Super Mario Bros. 3 which saw him get killed 5 times total, including twice on World 1-1, hasn't helped with this. It got to the point where several comments on the video compared it to how well Elliot of the Super Gaming Bros. fared when he played the same game.
  • For a lot of people, Daisy being unable to win a single board in Mario Party 5 or 6 while Emile was playing as her. Him switching to Toad for Mario Party 7 could be seen as an attempt to quell this. Sure enough, just the second board in and he's finally started winning again.
  • Emile's notorious luck seemed to come to an end some time after Mario Party 3, with Mario Party 5 & 6 screwing him over him most of the time. However, many people still say that he has good luck and chastise him for not winning a single board, saying that he lost despite his luck, even though he mostly lost due to random board events. Similarly, Jon's bad luck has become a sort of Running Gag, despite Mario Party 5 & 6 favouring him much more than Emile.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Kirby's Return to Dream Land has a Running Gag of Emile giving Magolor a very silly high-pitched voice that many viewers (and Jon) found utterly ridiculous. However, the voice Emile gives Magolor after his Face–Heel Turn actually turns out to be legitimately terrifying, with Jon himself being startled by it. Though that's a bit offset by the other Guys' reactions, including Tim's (and, soon enough, Emile's) uncontrollable laughter and Jon's unamused pleas for him to just stop. The fact that the voice would simply be described by viewers as "Sinister Elmo" also takes away some of the scariness factor.
  • In Mario Party 3, Emile's slowed-down laughter during the "That was total bullshit!" replay sounds downright demented.
• Play-Along Meme: The fact that Lord Dona'tor is (usually) played by Tom Fawkes is obvious to all, to the point where his creation as a character just came from Tom casually wearing a hooded bathrobe that people started joking about. However, both fans and participants of Colosseum will always act as though they have no idea who Lord Dona'tor really is, complete with fans often accusing other people of being him. Outside of Colo, Tom and others will generally drop this to simplify talking about Colo events, though there's still plenty of people who will stick by the joke.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Jon does this to Big the Cat in the eyes of some in Sonic Adventure.
• The Scrappy: Daisy is fast approaching this status, with many fans feeling all the "do her on hard" jokes have been run into the ground, combined with being Emile's new character just for the memes and Emile losing every board he's played as her. She's also considered a Replacement Scrappy to Toad for some, who was going to be Emile's new character in Mario Party 5 and on. This most likely was part of the reason why Emile ends up switching to Toad for Mario Party 7.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • For Thrown Controllers, the Tricky Question was one of the more annoying categories. Despite the name, rather than being somewhere between Easy and Brutal, the questions leaned heavily toward the latter side, but with no fanfare and were usually just anticlimactic ways of eliminating people. Jon ended up replacing them with Multiple Choice questions, presumably because of this.
    • Also from Thrown Controllers, Jon has a tendency to include obscure and/or terrible games in the video game challenges, such as Kart Fighter^*A Chinese bootleg that was basically a Street Fighter ripoff using the cast of Super Mario Kart or Sanrio World Smashball^*A Hello Kitty game that's basically ping-pong with minor fighting game mechanics, which can lead to the contestants just resorting to panicked Button Mashing. That said, if nothing else, the results are generally enjoyable for the audience, provided no technical difficulties arise.
• Seasonal Rot: The channel had a bad drop near the end of 2013. Castle Crashers was a decent, if short, playthrough, but it was followed with Mario Party 3, which had many divisive moments. After that was, out of nowhere, WarioWare Inc.: Mega Party Game$; it had a decent reception, but felt more like filler despite being labeled as a main project, and it had barely anything memorable in it. Then came the Bomberman Live Battlefest tournament, which had similar problems and was similarly out of nowhere, and to date is among the least viewed content on the channel, let alone just the tournaments. New Super Luigi U was the final part of this, as while it is fondly remembered by fans, it is infamous for having the most frustrated Jon yet and felt like a slight letdown by being the first New Super Mario game without a fourth player. Afterwards, Mario Party 4 pulled the channel the rest of the way out of the slump after Luigi U already helped.
• Shipping: In addition to Protonconroy. Several pairs have spawned due to jokes, or the guys shipping them In-Universe.
  • In Mario Party 2, we have Emile and Jon ship each other with other characters, like Emile with Jynx and Jon with Wario.
  • NCS with himself in Subspace Emissary.
  • Bowser and Waluigi in Mario Party 3. Mainly because Jon as Waluigi kept getting the Bowser space.
  • Emile with Daisy, after a few innuendos about her during Jon's Mario Party 6 stream.
• Spoiled by the Format: Their 100% Orange Juice! videos got hit hard with this when the video uploader was giving away how many parts there were to each match (Ex: labeling the two videos for one match as "Part 1 of 2" and "Part 2 of 2"). It wasn't noticeable at first, but by the time TRG's Co-Op match on Lagoon Flight came around, it was incredibly obvious by "Part 3 of 3" that they were not going to come anywhere close to killing the Boss before the player side loses since the Boss still had almost all of its health at the end of "Part 2 of 3." It got even worse when they decided to do a Co-Op rematch, and it was labeled as just two parts instead of three, which pretty much confirmed right away that they ended up doing worse. Granted, someone on the TRG team must have noticed this problem as all the 100% Orange Juice! videos were changed to only be labeled "Part 1," "Part 2," and so on without given away how long the match goes for. However, it's still notable within the comments of the Co-Op rematch's first part that they know the game only goes for two Parts before the title was changed.
  • A similar example happens at the end of part 2 of Santa's Workshop CO, which ends on a Cliffhanger where Jon is the only one alive, has 1 HP, and is staring down a deadly boss fight. The fact that there was an entire full-length video afterward kind of gives away that he'd survive that one.
• Squick: In Episode 41 of Dokapon Kingdom, Emile mentions that when he was 14 years old, a dragonfly flew right into his eye and stung his eyeball.
• Star Trek Movie Curse: Both Jon and NCS seem to have this issue performance wise in the Mario Party games. Jon has much better luck playing the even-numbered games, winning the majority of the boards in both Mario Party 2 and 4, while the odd-numbered games give him terrible luck, often losing coins, stars, the chances to get stars, and minigames, and his wins are fewer. Jon even brings this up when the three start playing Mario Party 5. NCS meanwhile has it the other way around: his luck is horrible during the even numbered games, winning no boards in the 2nd or 4th games, while he fares better on the odd-numbered titles. He managed to get a surprising win in Wario's Battle Canyon for Mario Party 1, end up the majority winner for Mario Party 3, and win a board before either Emile or Jon during Mario Party 5. As of Mario Party 5, the curse for Jon may be broken. While he does get bad luck throughout the playthrough (e.g. getting low rolls, getting sent back to the left section of the board in Future Dream by landing on the rockets) he managed to win five boards in a row, which means he won the majority of the boards in Mario Party 5. It's now been theorized that the GameCube works out for him. Likewise, Tim is the one who ends Jon's winning streak in Mario Party 6 by winning Snowflake Lake, allowing him his first board win for an even-numbered Mario Party game, and then follows it up by winning Castaway Bay, suggesting that the curse may be broken for both of them now.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: A Vocal Minority of the fandom likes to get this way during any game with a competitive aspect (usually Mario Party games, but also crops up in Four Swords Adventures or some early cooperative games where stat tracking was done). They go on about how people should be targeting whoever's in first place, how they should be thinking about their turns a lot more and making more strategic decisions, or even just that so-and-so player is terrible or stupid for not playing how they'd play... despite the fact that none of the guys take any semblance of competition seriously and are just there to have fun, and in cases of cooperative games with a slight competitive aspect, said competitive aspect is usually ignored. For extra hilarity, these people never seem to comprehend that the videos are prerecorded long in advance and their "tips" are worthless as a result.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel:
  • The Rayman Legends LP, as compared to the Origins one. As mentioned above, Origins is either considered one of the most boring LPs the Guys have done or merely So Okay, It's Average. Legends was considered a very entertaining run and Tom Fawkes is one of their most popular guests in a long time due to being both hilarious and skilled at the game.
  • Their Mario Party 6 LP to the Mario Party 5 one. 5's LP is agreed by many, including the Guys themselves, to have been relatively boring, with Jon going on a huge, uncontested winning streak and very few memorable moments. 6, on the other hand, had many hilarious moments, and while Jon still won a majority of the boards, most of the boards were much closer affairs, with everyone having a chance to win at some point. There were even a few dramatic clutch victories like E Gadd's Garage. Fittingly, Emile considers Mario Party 6 to be this towards 5.
• Wangst:
  • Jon is probably the most susceptible to this; examples include in New Super Mario Bros. Wii where he fails to give Emile a game over and again for him and Josh as they fail to bring down Emile in Mario Stadium in Fortune Street, both complaining about his ludicrous luck. And then there's Mario Party 3: whilst the game did screw him over a lot (see The Woobie below), he did excessively whine about how Mario Party "hates him", despite having good fortune in previous Mario Party games. This eventually looped around to being Justified, since he revealed in a livestream that his long-time girlfriend dumped him right before Mario Party 3 started, causing him to take his frustration out on the game.
    • His Wangst comes back with a vengeance in Snowflake Lake in Mario Party 6. At the end he misses the timing of a dice roll and becomes very stroppy about him being wrong, knowing that he'd lost the board. Bear in mind this came after winning eight boards in a row and was his fault entirely.
  • Emile also has his wangsty moments. Most notable is in The Observatory in Fortune Street. Apparently because he kept doing badly despite playing the game regularly, while both NCS and Lucah were novices but kept doing better than him. Meanwhile, in the final video for Koopa's Seaside Soirée in Mario Party 4, he literally spends almost the entirety of the video complaining about Tim taking the coin lead from him and ensuring Jon's victory. He doesn't even make any of his usual jokes or references, just going on about "freaking Jon" the whole time. Granted, losing sucks, but it is a competition.
    Emile: (half hamming) My own commentary partners are sabotaging me!
    Jon: It's almost like it's a competition!
  • Josh in both New Super Mario Bros. games when he complains about his lack of lives and overall failures.
• The Woobie:
  • Tim in general with his overall crummy luck. Most notable was in Pirate Land in Mario Party 2, when a star appeared just in front of him. This star would get him out of last place, especially since he had over 100 coins and had two turns to move to the star 5 spaces ahead of him — he didn't make it. In addition, Mario Party 4 just kept screwing him over. With Jon getting lucky, including two hidden stars on one board and a ridiculous number of Boos, Tim is just ridiculously unlucky. Another board had him poised to win only for some last-second bad luck in the very last turn to screw him over. To make matters worse, a comment on part 6 of the Rayman Origins LP has someone noticing that Tim seems to be getting bubblized very frequently and at easily avoidable times, at which point Tim reveals that for about six months prior to the video's release, he's been suffering from Sleep Apnea, causing him to black out randomly if he doesn't get around 10 or so hours of sleep. Since he almost never complains about his misfortunes, though, he qualifies as a Stoic Woobie.
  • Jon in Mario Party 3. Mario Party has screwed him over before, but NEVER that badly. It gets to the point where you legitimately feel sorry for him. And it gets worse in Super Luigi U with his constant rage, though he anticipates it being construed as Wangst. It was revealed in Jon's streams that at the time, he had broken up with his girlfriend around the time of Mario Party 3's recording, which explains a lot.
    • Mario Party DS managed to be even worse for him in terms of luck. Virtually every board either yanks seemingly-certain victory away from him in the final turns or gives him one rare unlucky event after another in close succession, and the series ends up being Jon's first shut-out in all their playthroughs. This, combined with the fact that one board made Jon so upset he lost his voice, has made many viewers genuinely feel bad for him.
  • Emile in Wheel of Fortune. Since he's not that good at word puzzles, the constant bad guesses he makes leading to him getting repeatedly humiliated eventually makes it pretty easy to feel bad for him.
    • Taken up to eleven in Jon's May 2016 livestream of Mario Party 10 where just about nothing went his way. He got so frustrated and upset that #HugsForChuggs and variations thereof started flying around Twitch chat because the game was just that cruel to him.^note  He lost Bowser Party.... playing as Bowser, in the mode designed to be near unloseable for the player playing as him.
  • Emile once again in Mario Party 6, as the game continues to screw him over and it becomes clear that once again he won't win a single board. He becomes increasingly quiet and subdued every board, sometimes not saying a word for minutes at a time, which is in stark contrast to his usual Large Ham self. Even though he never complains, you can clearly tell he's not enjoying the game any more, and is simply waiting for it to be over.

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