TheStrawhatNO!

"My friend is dead! Circle strafe!"

TheStrawhatNO! is the Let's Play / Retsupurae channel for ThornBrain and Mugiwara Yoshi, the respective creators of Jetters Abridged and Sgt Frog Abridged; they have also been joined with friend Travis (BigTUnit1) in recent LPs.

The duo originally did Let's Plays on YouTube with former colleague DragonFatman and his LP channel FATLPs. The two split from Fatman on April 12, 2010 and started TheStrawhatNO on April 13. The main duo dabbled in Retsupurae for a while, sporadically recording Let's Plays after the first month (pretty much all of which are now canceled). They made the jump to Something Awful in May 2011 with Bomberman Hero and have been steadily building notoriety through their informative, yet snarky, sarcastic, and mildly insane commentary.

ThornBrain has finished playing through Bomberman Jetters and 007: Agent Under Fire, and all three Something Awful threads are on the Let's Play Archive. Thorn has followed them with The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, and Yoshi has restarted his Let's Play of Pikmin 2.

Let's Plays by the group:

• Pikmin - (Completed)
• Bomberman Hero - (Completed)
• Bomberman Jetters - (Completed)
• 007: Agent Under Fire - (Completed)
• Twilight Princess (Wii) - (In-Progress)
• Pikmin 2 - (In-Progress)

TheStrawhatNO! provides examples of the following tropes:

• Accentuate the Negative: Especially near the end of a Bomberman game.
• Actually Pretty Funny: In Part 4 of Twilight Princess, Travis makes a Toucan Sam reference that is so lame, Yoshi can't help but laugh.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: Laser Rain
  • A Good Name for an Album: "Tower of Laser Spikes", "Helicopter Brain TV"
• Ambiguous Gender: Hanch and Luda, to Travis. He splits the difference with the former and calls him both.
• Anyone Remember Pogs?: Because Travis sure doesn't.
• Berserk Button: Camcorder Let's Plays and child LPers. The two are usually combined, hence these two videos.
• Black Comedy Rape: 90% of what Pibot says (the other 10% involves murdering the elderly and general Non Sequiturs).
• Bond One-Liner: Discussed briefly when commenting on an enemy's aim in Agent Under Fire.

"That's kind of a Bond line, isn't it? 'There's no way I can miss!' 'But you can die.'"

• Brick Joke:
  • Bomberman Hero:
    • Thorn's opinion of the game is occasionally brought up as the LP goes on. He defends it heartily at the beginning, just about hates it when the game is finished.
    • Dragon Road has no dragons, just flying knives. The next time flying knives are encountered, Travis insists that they are dragons.
    • Thorn suggests early in the LP that he and Travis should write lyrics for "Redial". When the song is requested by the Something Awful thread for a montage video near the end of the LP, they do exactly that.
• Brown Note: Just the sound of Thorn's kazoo or Travis' Metal Asshorn^[1] is enough to send the whole trio into hysterics. When Travis brings the latter out at the end of Day 5 in Pikmin 2:

Yoshi: *While still laughing* "That was my favorite moment in the entire fucking Let's Play."

• Cloudcuckoolander: Everyone on the team. They do write Sgt Frog Abridged and Jetters Abridged, after all.
  • Travis. The main reason Thorn invited him to co-commentate Bomberman Hero is because of how quickly he comes up with ridiculous things to say.

"Did you forget how abstract I am?"

• • Note also goes to Madcapoperator, Thorn's friend who guested on a few Majora's Mask parts. He would have stood around waiting for the carpenter to clear the boulder from Milk Road for three literal days, because he used to think video games were magical.

"Hey, I'm Tingle! Wanna see some puppies?"

• Continuity Nod: Something Awful members suggested names for Link and Epona in the Twilight Princess thread. Epona's winning name: Pibot.
• Corpsing: Thorn keeps making Yoshi laugh during Retsupurae Samus Sucks Gaiz, where they mockingly pretend to be child camcorder LPers.
• Crossover: They did three Retsupuraes with RPer Jucaprost, one of which also included ProtagonistRP.
• Creepy Monotone: Preferred method for voicing Pibot. Max's monotone isn't so much creepy as bored with life.
• Cuteness Proximity: The guys whenever they see a dog in Twilight Princess.

Travis: "Aww...Pet him with your mouth."

• • Up to Eleven with Jaggle's dog in Part 7.
    • And then immediately subverted:

Thorn: "Let's cook him!" *Carries dog over to fireplace*
Travis: "Yeah!"

• Deadpan Snarker: Also everyone on the team. The game characters become this by proxy.
• Deus Sex Machina: As Agent Under Fire has shown us, having access codes will get you laid. And getting laid will warp you out of a prison cell.
• Epic Fail: The ending of Bomberman Hero not only has such low graphical quality that the other Bomber characters are just jumping statues, but there are so many of them that the framerate drops.
• Fan Nickname: Thorn let the Something Awful thread suggest names for Link and Epona in Twilight Princess. The trio decided on Hey Hey and Pibot, respectively.
• Filk Song: In the final bonus video for Bomberman Hero, Travis and Thorn parody the game's resident catchy tune, "Redial", by singing increasingly dark lyrics over it about the various jokes and Running Gags they established throughout the Let's Play.
• Let's Play
• Light Is Not Good: When Light Spirit Faron appears in Twilight Princess {Part 4, uncut version}, the trio play him as a "squirrelpion" demon who wants to destroy the world. Luckily he's too lazy to do anything.

Yoshi: "So you gonna do something? No?"
Travis (As Faron): "I'm comfy!"

• Man of a Thousand Voices: Travis likes giving various enemies and characters voices, few of which actually sound alike.
• Mind Screw: Baruda's first appearance was this for Travis.

"What the fuck?!"

• MST: Their Let's Plays involve mockery just as much as their Retsupuraes. The jokes and remarks Travis makes in particular are very Mystery Science Theater 3000-ish.
• Punch Clock Hero: Bomberman is played as this during the Bomberman Hero Let's Play.
• Purple Is Powerful: Essentially the point of the entire Pikmin 2 LP: Purple Pikmin destroy everything.
• Recursive Reality: In the uncut version of Part 4 of Twilight Princess, the trio joke about this happening with Malo and Coro:
  • For Malo, if you look into his hair, you see a black hole that reveals Hey Hey looking into Malo's head.
  • For Coro, if he reaches into his afro, he pulls out his bird Trill. Then Trill reaches into his afro and pulls out Coro.

Travis: "Until they both go, "Wait a minute!", and they both reach into their afros at the same time, and then they explode."

• Refuge in Audacity: Travis and Yoshi joking about Hawk-abortions in Part 2 of Twilight Princess.
  • "Redial Redial'd", or anything having to do with Pibot for that matter.
• Retsupurae
• Running Gag:
  • Bomberman Hero:
    • Pibot saying increasingly ridiculous One Liners and Non Sequiturs. Develops to the point where Pibot becomes a Memetic Molester who delights in the suffering of others.

"I found your destruction of the elderly hilarious."

• • • Everything in the galaxy is frustrated.

"GEODUDE IS FRUSTRATED!!!"

• • • The constant use of the song "Redial", which quickly gets on the commentators' nerves. Thorn and Travis even write lyrics for it in one of the final videos.
    • "Realtor" also gets mocked frequently for sounding like a "gargling lizard".
    • "Bomber CHANGE!"
  • Bomberman Jetters:
    • The ridiculous voice acting. Max, Birdy and Gangu are favorite mockery targets.
    • Shout's ridiculously useless or repetitive advice.
    • The Jetters, rather than being an intergalactic police force who wish to bring peace, are a bunch of jerks who are doing this mission, not to save Planet Bomber, but to punish the Hige Hige Bandits for having fun.
  • Agent Under Fire:
    • Every characters' constant smug expression.
    • Bond Moves being handed out left and right, often for mandatory actions.
  • The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess:
    • Malo being the reality warping Telekinesis Baby.
    • Wolf Link constantly getting hit in his broken legs.
    • Colin actually being a great weapons builder, but nobody gives him any respect, especially his parents.

Travis (as the Ordon Sword's description): "Made by the best swordsman in the village: Colin. But we don't tell him that."

• • • Monkey dancin' in the house!
    • Whenever Thorn does something acrobatic, Travis shouts out "America!"
    • The uncut version of several parts begin with a text-to-speech man talking about his chicken, Dennis, over footage of player-controlled Cuccos. They are based on an old, two-part series of surreal videos by Thorn that he'd wanted to continue in some form. Some Cucco clips might also be song lyrics, such as The Beach Boys' "Hang On To Your Ego" and Captain Sensible's version of "Happy Talk".
  • Pikmin 2:
    • How will the Purple Pikmin break the game this week?
  • Other:
    • People just keep LP'ing Pokémon Black and White before release date.
• Sarcasm Mode: Two different ways at once in Day 3 of Pikmin 2:

Yoshi: "Going smoothly in the White Flower Garden. The name should give off what we're going to encounter. Obviously."
[[[Beat]]]
Travis: "Puppies."
Thorn: "Chinese people."
Yoshi: "Yes! You guys were right."
Travis: "Lockjaw."

Thorn: "Abbott and Costello!"

• Self-Imposed Challenge: Most games are completed 100%. The Bomberman Hero LP also had the Minimum-Point Speed Run.
• Shout-Out: In Planet 4, Area 3 of Bomberman Hero, Travis and Thorn reference The Shining and Planet of the Apes.
  • Thorn and Travis are both music buffs and have sang/namechecked Nick Cave, The Proclaimers, and Motorhead during various LPs.
  • Link drinks milk in Twilight Princess. "Milk was a bad choice."
• So What Do We Do Now?: Travis jokes that a dice-like enemy in P2A2 of Bomberman Hero has the aspirations to one day roll a 6, and when it does, it thinks, "...Well now what?"
• The Stoner: Coro
• Straight Man and Wise Guy / Red Oni, Blue Oni: Yoshi and Thorn, depending on who is running the LP. Travis qualifies as a Red Oni when paired with Thorn, Green Oni when with both.
• Stylistic Suck: This older mockery of child camcorder LPers.
• Take a Third Option: When the viewers in the Something Awful thread request "Redial" for a montage, instead of just including the song or using a different one, Thorn and Travis write lyrics for it recapping the Let's Play.
• Take That: Thorn's opinion of the Bomberman Hero soundtrack:

"It makes Drum 'N' Bass listenable."

• The Nose Knows: Travis jokes that this is how Trill finds Link in the Forest Temple before Trill mugs him.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Word-for-word, one of Thorn's first comments when they enter HIGE Central in Bomberman Jetters.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Thorn gushes over Dr Pepper in Day 3 of Pikmin 2.
• Too Dumb to Live: When Thorn plays a Bomberman game, he isn't as likely to be hurt by an enemy so much as by his own bombs.
  • Several enemies in Bomberman Jetters. The robo-carp in particular swim directly into bombs if you place one between them and yourself.
  • Thorn replayed one level of Agent Under Fire multiple times just to watch all the guards blindly run around and jump off the platform to their deaths.
• Un Evil Laugh: Bagular's very bored-sounding "Ehhh-heh-heh-heh..."
  • Thunder Bomber's very odd-sounding "Ha-ha-haaaah!"
• Valley Girl: Travis turns the female monkey into this in Twilight Princess.

"Oh my god, where's my iPhone?!

• With Lyrics: As mentioned earlier, Thorn and Travis' "Redial Redial'd ^{[dead link]} ".
• You Monster!: Thorn's opinion of the heads of the Hige Hige Bandits:

"These guys right here (the Hige Higes) have 50x more personality than all of the Jetters combined, and 100x more charm... These guys have been placed on a planet that, let's remember, is flying to another planet to destroy it. The entire Hige Hige fleet is on this planet to die! ... Mujoe and Mechadoc are the biggest assholes."

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"Allow me to hold you in my silver, human-killing arms."

1. ↑ (tuba mouthpiece)