Crash Course (web video)

The test will gauge whether you're an informed, engaged, productive citizen of the world....The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of decisions which when taken together, make your life yours. And everything-everything- will be on it.
—John Green, "The Agricultural Revolution"

Crash Course is a YouTube channel hosted by the Vlog Brothers Hank and John Green, their attempt to bring Edutainment Show content to web video. The two set off to give comprehensive 'courses' in subjects that they're knowledgeable about, with more staff and professional production than the video blogs that they're primarily known for. Filled with tons of information, constant jokes, funny animations and drawings its a great way to pass the time, but hopefully learn a little, too.

Currently, John is teaching world history with co-writing help from his actual high school history teacher. Hank is giving lectures on biology. The channel can be found here, and each of the two courses updates with a new lesson each week.

Tropes used in Crash Course (web video) include:
  • Always Male: Historical figures being called "The Great". John seems pretty disgusted by this fact.
  • Blatant Lies: The term "DFTBA" was apparently coined by Queen Elizabeth I.
    • Egyptian men wear make-up inspired by 80's metal bands.
  • Catch Phrase: John has "Best wishes!" and "As they say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome!"
  • Don't Try This At Home

‎"...if you were to, like, blenderize a live sea sponge and then leave the sponge smoothie to settle overnight, you'd wake up the next morning to find the surviving cells had found each other and were reforming themselves into a sea sponge again. Try doing THAT with any other animal, actually NO DO NOT TRY DOING THAT WITH ANY OTHER ANIMAL"

  • Edutainment Show: The whole point.
  • Extended Analogy: Invoked. When explaining about nutrients and essential biomolecules, Hank uses the analogy of a sandwich. Turns out, while it's theoretically sound and has everything you need, said sandwich tastes horrible.
  • Just for Pun: Almost every episode contains one or two. Occasionally develops into a hurricane and they are nearly always incredibly lame.
  • The Ghost: Stan, the camera man who is oft-referred to, but never seen. John assures us that he is real.
  • My Future Self and Me: Teenage!John (aka Mefromthepast) is somehow one of Present!John's students. The latter is mostly irritated by the former's shortsightedness and stupid comments.
  • Running Gag: "Unless you are the Mongols." from the History videos.
    • Actively set up as such in the first video:

"By the way, over the next forty weeks you will frequently hear generalisations followed by 'Unless you are the Mongols'."

  • Shout-Out: In one video, Hank mentions himself and his brother discussing who their favourite Doctor Who is (Tom Baker and David Tennant respectively) which immediately caused fans to point out the character's name is actually the Doctor.
    • In another video, John says that, just like Voldemort's soul, he's gonna break the video into eight parts.
    • A sticker on John's laptop reads "This machine kills fascists".
    • "Fighting over such things, like whether the proverbial cake is a lie rarely accomplishes anything."
    • In Decolonization and Nationalism Triumphant: Crash Course World History #40, we can safely assume "a land war in asia" was a reference to The Princess Bride
    • In the episode The Amazing Life and Strange Death of Captain Cook

      today we're going to talk about the life and astonishing death of Captain James Hook. Who's death by a crocodile ch- what? James Cook? There's no crocodiles?

  • Take That: Kim Kardashian and The Situation get dissed on throughout the Alexander the Great episode. This seems to come out of John's scorn for shallow, self-centered people (the opposite of nerdfighters, who value intelligence and work to make the world better) rather than any sense of rivalry or jealousy, however.
    • "This video may be watched in some glorious future when Kim Kardashian and The Situation have mercifully disappeared from public life...Kim Kardashian is a professional famous person who initially rose to notoriety by scoodlypooping with someone named Ray Jay, and Mike "The Situation" I-Forgot-His-Last-Name is a professional stupid person with big muscles...The Situation is really good at picking up girls (of a certain type), and Kim Kardashian is good at...Stan, what is Kim Kardashian good at?"
  • Stealth Pun: In the Christianity Episode, right after John talks about circumcision it shows Abraham's family and a man cutting what turns out to be a log.
  • Unusual Euphemism: "Scoodilypooping" has nothing to do with poop and everything to do with scoodling. The term comes from John and Hank's grandmother.
  • Viewers Are Geniuses: Although they're obviously teaching the stuff (so the audience therefore doesn't know it), they still assume that you're all very smart and can handle university level information. The fact the YouTube videos can be paused and rewatched at will means they go pretty fast, with the knowledge that their students can review if they feel lost.
  • Written by the Winners: A lot of history to some extent, actually, according to CCWH.
    This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.