The Annotated Series

The Annotated Series is a YouTube series that lampoons TV shows and public service announcements, such as Ctrl+Alt+Del: The Animated Series, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3 and Captain N: The Game Master via YouTube's annotation feature.

On October 3, 2009, CurtDogg uploaded an episode of Ctrl+Alt+Del: The Animated Series and included a link to the video's annotation editor, a feature YouTube used to have, in the style of the channel UnoriginalContent which had been going for a few months by this time. It caught on and The Annotated Series was born. Under the name beeupyou he continued to upload the rest of the series then moved onto other video game-related cartoons. However, YouTube eventually discontinued the feature, forcing the move to the shared channel, TheAnnotatXperiment.

In mid-2014 The AnnotatXperiment received two strikes, prompting another move, this time to the now-terminated TheAnnotationStation. Annotation Plus was started as a training ground for potential annotators, but no longer is used due to the Annotators getting bored with it and something that comes up in the next sentence. Another auxiliary channel is/was HammerNationTime, used to host videos that would definitely earn the main channel a strike or two. An offsite annotation editor started being created in early 2017 in response to YouTube ending access to the site's own. However, in September of the same year, TheAnnotationStation was taken down, with three strikes to the Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky riff. In October of 2017, videos from TAS and later TAX that managed to be recorded started to be uploaded on Annotation Archive. Finally, in June of 2018, the channel Annoverse was established, allowing the annotators to post new material once again, but not without one more scare at the end of the year from Youtube axing annotations entirely and CBS taking down the uploads of The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang that they were using.[1]

The Annotated Series is presented in a regular episodic format, usually in the original order of the series in question, with a break in the middle of each season. Each season break, and the end of each season or series, will be marked by an intermission in which they'll annotate something completely unrelated, usually of similar poor quality to the regular series.

A blog documenting moments from all eras of the series can be found here on Tumblr.

Material they've annotated, in chronological order:

On beeupyou's channel:

On The Annotat Xperiment's channel:

Main Series

Intermission Material

On The Annotation Station

Main Series

Intermission Material

On HammerNationTime:

Annotation Plus Exclusives:

  • Selected cutscenes of Dawn of War: Soulstorm
  • An episode of Squirrel and Hedgehog
  • Star Wars: Ewoks
  • "Weird" videos that were scrounged up from Youtube

On Annoverse:

Main Series

Intermission Material

Tropes used in The Annotated Series include:
  • Accentuate the Negative: Kind of the point.
  • Actor Allusion: Every time Long John Baldry's voice shows up in a DiC cartoon, it goes pretty much how you'd expect.
  • Actually Pretty Funny: The typical response when something is genuinely funny rather than amusing.
  • Alliteration: Cheatsy Koopa once says "I'm the Emperor of Eavesdropping!" Every scene he appears in afterwards has at least one annotation with a new alliterative title for him. And every once in a while he seems to be reincarnated into another show briefly.
  • An Asskicking Christmas: The Annotated Panda Fighter. Technically.
  • And Now for Something Completely Different:
    • At the middle and end of each season they'll do intermissions, with works like Bibleman and Bouchedags.
    • MK4 - The Annotated Gold had the distinction of being the first to be focused entirely on video game cutscenes rather than cartoons.
    • Annotated Sex Is The Best! was in fact a Web Original parody, and was voted for by visitors to the channel, much to the Annotators' dismay. It's unknown whether they'll ever leave future material up to public vote.
    • Irrelevant's upcoming project/valentine/salute for the channel Annotated Fan Fiction which was partially introduced by 'Annotated Fan Fiction (Practice)'
  • Angrish: In the early days when anybody could contribute, any moment of particularly horrible quality would result in the screen being filled with derogatory remarks. One would usually need to pause the video in order to see them all.
  • Angst? What Angst?: Lampshaded. A kid known only as Junior is transported to the Mushroom Kingdom by accident and remarks on how he's instantly, effortlessly come to terms with his situation.
  • Apocalypse How: Kevin's[3] destruction of a Football world, interpreted as a class 5, got a lot of comments. And later he was called out for worrying about Faxandu being destroyed by The Evil One but showing no compassion for Football World.

Annotators: Wow only Kevin could manage to turn a game of football into an apocalyptic situation like this./And so the N-Team completely obliterated the grassy world of American Football...World./ Our heroes just killed millions of football players! Even as a nerd I am disgusted!/Kevin, you just quite possibly made the 9/11 of Video Land. And you're going to pop jokes?

  • ASCII Art: Extremely common in the early days before YouTube began to keep arbitrarily changing the annotation editor and breaking them.
  • Author Appeal: With so many they certainly show off many, many (many!) different loves. If there's a nod to giant robots or Getter Robo it probably came from Irrelevant.
  • Author Tract: They will pop up but they will be polite and have them last a mere second. So if anyone wants to see them they will go pack and hit the pause button.
    • Armor Of Light invoked a lot of these.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Irrelevant wanted to see the Nutshack get annotated for months. Then it was, and all hell broke loose.
    • And then Irrelevant took it further by uploading Beauty and Warrior.
  • Behind the Black: Many a speech bubble represents a character speaking from off-screen.
  • Berserk Button: The slightest allusion, be it accidental or not, to any would-be scrappy character from another series causes at least one person to speak of ways to murder them.
    • Each annotator has something that sets them off. Everyone being in on the plan except for Megaman in the Captain N season 1 finale pissed off a lot of people. Irrelevant gets really pissed when two people are supposed to be good friends and it is strictly told and not shown in episode 5 of the Mortal Kombat cartoon.
  • Non Sequitur Episode: Many of the intermissions come and go.
  • Bond One-Liner: Particularly cheesy ones would be repeated. These tend to become a Never Live It Down moment.

Sonya: "Haha! Shocking!"

  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Whenever a character looks towards the camera and pauses, this is invoked. Many of the characters' speech bubbles address the show's content from an unusually Genre Savvy standpoint too. Basically everyone can be Deadpool if the Annotators will it.

"What do you think, viewers at home?"

  • Breaking the Reviewer's Wall: ASCII boots stomping on SMB3's Kootie Pie whenever she had a tantrum on the floor, and a Blink And You Miss It Moment where Mega Man is hit by a projectile made out of annotations causing him to blink from the damage.
  • British Accents: The singer of the surf music bonus videos in Captain N season 1 meanders between being very stereotypically British and having a thick northern accent.
  • Broken Record: Volume 3 of The Surf Music Could Have Been A Lot Worse made fun of the infamous CD skip at an ill-fated Milli Vanilli concert. The hidden video at the end does more of the same.
    • "...song is for- song is for- song is for-"
  • Call Back: Lots. Watching any most recent episode by these guys will likely be full of references to past series they've annotated, though they try to keep it accessible to first-time viewers.
  • Cameo: Speech bubbles from characters from previous works show up, usually without a name but instead color-coded, making them almost an In-Joke. Character allusions not from works they've annotated have included as Slowbeef of Retsupurae and Electrical Beast.
  • Caustic Critic: If they can think of a better way you could've done something, they won't tell you nicely. Also see the Sophisticated As Hell entry below.
  • Censor Bar: This appears any time something appears suggestive. In Captain N they frequently appear over Duke the dog's anus, which at least one person apparently finds offensive. And one person was annoyed it was getting covered, this was hopefully sarcasm.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: If the show they're annotating turns particularly low in quality, dark or just plain offensive, people will stop making jokes and instead offer serious critical analysis on why the scene is bad.
  • Child-Hater: If an episode has a guest child character, or involves the characters being turned into children, they won't much care for it.
    • The closest exception was Julio (Hoolio?) from Captain N. He was mocked (like everything else) for selling newspapers he knew that caused zombies. But many were touched that he would let his grades go to hell to secretly make money for his family after his dad, "Reggie", lost his job. And even with the Unfortunate Implications the annotators agreed that Julio's inability to read was genuinely topical.
  • Christmas Special: Christmas Comes To Pac-Land.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
    • Mocked. In particular, the final episode with Ryu and Ken in it had an Annotator have Ken say that he was "borrowing" Blanka's technique since Blanka's not on the show anymore. Also see the Left Hanging entry below.
    • Many of the intermissions; while some of them have established timeless running gags like the Dr. Rabbit cartoons, others have been forgotten entirely. In some cases this is subverted and a Brick Joke or two will be dropped referencing such latter cases, only for it to fade back into obscurity. And even then, such forgotten intermissions tend to only get referenced during other intermissions if they are to even be mentioned at all.

Polaris: Quit the daydreamin' Pancada, you know I feel about you-u!

  • Clip Show: In a rather interesting take on the format, Street Fighter ended with a music video showcasing the series' craziest moments. There are similar plans for Zelda and Captain N too.
  • Collective Groan: Pretty common with one of the biggest being for the Red-Blue episode of Mario Bros, The Nutshack returning, Little Panda Fighter and the first Dingo Pictures production.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience:
    • The speech bubbles, most of the time anyway.
    • Most of the Annotators' notes too, making them somewhat identifiable as to who posted what.
    • It isn't perfect but thus far... Avirosb: green background with white letter. Irrelevant: started with weird combos then settled on black-white (sticks to the right) with Captain N. ReloadXPsiPlays: blue/cyan (lower right). MrGuyPwnsYou: Started light blue, now light purple (tends towards the top). ZetsubouSensei005: transparent/black (top left). HurpDurpManGuy: Started out with multiple colors, finally settled with indigo/violet.
  • Comically Missing the Point: During the titular song and dance number of Tricky People, a lot of sympathy was shown for the man asking for help finding his lost puppy, and when offered free cash by a potential child molester, all they had to say to it was "Well hey, free cash."
  • Companion Cube: Random black specks on the screen in the Super Mario Bros. 3 cartoon came to be known as Doug the Bug.
  • Couch Gag: At first it was changing the words on the mode select screen in the Ctrl+Alt+Del opening, after which it was all about changing the title of absolutely everything, as well as the name of the writer, if credited.
  • Crazy Enough to Work: The reason the word "experiment" appears in the name reflects this. Nobody was certain that sharing an account and having multiple people log in and annotate simultaneously would actually work.
  • Credits Gag: Once per series, the end credits of the show will be displayed for everyone to annotate. In Ctrl+Alt+Del: The Annotated Series, the credits were left in every time so they could lampoon the episode-specific credits gags. But more recently they do it twice per season, once at the start and once at the season finale.
  • Crisis Crossover: Of a cosmic religious sense. Pastor Daniel from the Super Kids was able to not only annoy his very own God with his constant rambling but also much of the major Greek Gods demanded he shut up, the Siddhartha Gautama was disgusted, Allah wished for some of those misguided kamikaze extremists to kill him, Odin was ready to puncture his last eye, Ra suffered trauma, Raiden lamented making Daniel a guardian of the Earthrealm and Xenu found the ending ridiculous.
  • Curb Stomp Battle: Luigi vs. Koopa's army. Hell Koopa himself who just blows up when he is surrounded by kids. The first part was actually pretty awesome.
  • Dead Baby Comedy: A bit of it, though any literal cases of this are usually lampooning Ctrl+Alt+Del's miscarriage arc. It's become less common in later episodes.
  • Deadpan Snarker
  • Delayed Reaction: Ethan's Everquest, or was it WoW, character sets Lucas's on fire. The first two times Lucas just stands there in silence as his entire body is consumed by flames. Cue the annotators being amused that the third time it happens Lucas reacts more reasonably instead of keeping it a running gag.

Oh? Third time's the charm apparently.

Is it too much to ask for a Disney Villain Death?
Okay good I was about to ask why he forgot he could do that.

Y'see the joke is: Yoshi eats everything.

  • Downer Ending: Sort of. There are lots of attempts to shoehorn one in every time it fades to black. Then they get better.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Make a racially or culturally insensitive joke in front of these guys...We dare you.
    • After wanting to do the Nutshack and Beauty and Warrior...Irrelevant402 had an 'oh crap' moment when Dingo Pictures reared its ugly head.
    • Sure they love to make 'come get some candy in my van' cracks but when an actual pedophile is the antagonist in Tricky People there are ZERO people going for a Draco in Leather Pants route and even some just slight cheering for the damn Yellow Dino when he takes matters into his own hands.
    • This one is a shocker: typically they dislike child characters and scrappies. Yet many announced how disgusted they were with the death of the Gold Dragon in the second Dragon's Den episode. Yes this is even after the Gold Dragon's baby form was a palette swap of the dreaded Puff. Pretty much the writer's killed off a 'five minute old' creature with zero thoughts of the implications.
  • "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Happens a lot, especially with captions turning it into King Harkinian's laugh from Link the Faces of Evil.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Played straight most of the time by simple adding "The Annotated Series" at the end of a title, with the notable exception of the Mortal Kombat cartoon (Defenders of the Annotated Realm) and many of the intermissions.
  • Expospeak Gag: In the Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue episode, there's a very long and roundabout description of Mel Blanc rolling in his grave after a certain line from Bugs.
  • Fanfic: Mouse Police: The Annotated Edition included a side story in which Raiden's Defenders of the Realm incarnation, one of the annotators' favourite characters, imprisoned each series' scrappies, forced them to watch it, and broke their wills until they either were trying to kill themselves or became babbling, nervous wrecks.
    • The final glorious list: The three Bouchedag leads died a la Lost Ark. Kootie Pie became comatose. Big Mouth suffered a seizure. Phil gets amnesia and might be heading towards a more fulfilling life while Horatio froths at the mouth. Ethan suffers from despair, Stryker is a nervous wreck and Kid Icarus attempted suicide but it didn't stick.
  • Fan Nickname: "Silly The Willies" for Milli Vanilli. To some degree, "Kid Icky" for Kid Icarus. It's worth noting that these were one-off nicknames used in the shows the characters were in and they just kinda caught on.
  • Five-Man Band:
    • The Hero: CurtDogg (The one who started it all way back.)
    • The Lancer: jmr48080 (Personality wise the opposite of CurtDogg plus really funny.)
    • The Smart Guy: Avirosb (Saves videos and cleans up annotes that hang around a few seconds too long. Makes a good Hero for starting the second generation.)
    • The Big Guy: ReloadPsi (Appears for real in one of the videos and is, well, rather large.)
    • The Chick: Irrelevant402 (Gets the angriest fastest but also is the one who made a list of frequent commentators and started the sucky process of sending single note after note to try to unify people after the annotation system could no longer allow guests. Another duty is he is the one who scans for frequent comment posters who want to join in on the group. When Avirosb is the hero he is his lancer.)
    • The Sixth Ranger: MrGuyPwnsYou, Hamsteere and creatorofGandP. (Get a few more and there can be another band.)
  • Grammar Nazi
  • Heroic BSOD: Sometimes the material is just that bad that some Annotators give up part way, or at the very least are so lost for witty remarks that they instead post annotations expressing their disbelief at the quality.
  • Hot Mom: Julio/Hoolio's mom had Simon asking if she was seeing anyone. Aside from 'Reggie' of course.
  • I Am Legion: Since the axing of the collaborative annotations feature, it's no longer possible to hover over an annotation and see who added it, making it pretty hard to tell who's saying what. This has led to some viewers believe this is a solo project. The annotators don't do very much to make themselves recognizable among one-another either. Among a list of almost fifty annotators, only a few stand out, such as CurtDogg for originating the concept, jmr48080 for being considered one of the funniest annotators during the beeupyou era, Irrelevant402 for always picking horrible intermissions, Avirosb for recording episodes and getting the ball rolling with the TheAnnotatXperiment channel, and ReloadPsi for essentially putting himself in some of the videos.
  • Informed Ability: One of the many things they love to rip on. Especially when the antagonists are so vaguely on the cusp of victory with Armor of Light being one of the most triumphant examples.

Pastor Dan: "Now you all know that we face a very DANGEROUS enemy." Annotator:Perhaps we could take a few minutes to establish WHY (NME)they are so dangerous?

  • Inner Monologue: Sometimes inserted when a character is just standing there saying nothing.
  • Insistent Terminology: Don't call it a monster, call it a "kaibutsu."
  • It Got Worse: Captain N, the show not the character, grew on the team what with having a number of ensemble darkhorses. While the quality of animation and writing slipped in season 2 both had their highs and lows. Then season 3 rolled in a everyone began shitting hoops at the poor quality.
  • It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY":
    • Bye son!
    • YESH!
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: Avirosb has been recording the annotated episodes in case anything causes their work to be lost.
  • Left Hanging: Street Fighter, in which every unresolved plot thread was listed during the final scene.
  • Leitmotif: If DiC Entertainment replaces a licensed song with the "surf music" these people jump all over it, especially after it played for about ten seconds in the first episode of Captain N following a long absence.
  • Lull Destruction: Expect any scene without dialogue to be filled with speech bubbles.
  • Made of Explodium: The Kootie Pie tolerance meter exploded about five seconds after she began to sing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
  • Mondegreen: Usually deliberate. Anything sounding more like profanity than it actually is makes for a common target. It became especially common during Captain N as they often had no idea what Mother Brain was saying otherwise.
    • Also from Captain N, "Havin' a Log!" from the Season Two song "Havin' a Ball". Became a minor running gag brought up whenever logs are involved.
  • Men Are Generic, Women Are Special: Often when The Smurfette Principle rears its head the female character will complain about not being allowed to be wacky or not allowed to be wrong like the men or having to be subjected to a Girls' Night Out Episode just to get focus.
  • Misblamed: Yes, Irrelevant was the that whined for Nutshack and Beauty and Warrior when intermissions were nearing. He certainly wasn't the one to uploaded them with the only thing he put up was 'Annotated Fan Fiction.' Considering their horrible quality he is far from innocent of course.
  • Mistaken for Masturbating: Played with big time when King Hippo reached into his pants for pieces of paper, and when he briefly appeared to be doing it while looking at one of them.
  • Mood Whiplash: Pointed out repeatedly for Tricky People, which involved both a singing yellow dinosaur, and uncomfortable scenes of implied child molestation.
  • Morality Pet: Sometimes they, the annotators, serve as morality pets to one another to keep everyone in line and each one is disgusted by child molestors or horrible ethnic sterotypes. Irrelevant tends to try to befriend all religions, and non-ones, and mocks extremists in general.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: In text form.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Sometimes Irrelevant thinks he goes a little too far...sometimes. And admitted it was he who played up Gameboy as the worst thing ever. Going off memories of hating Game Boy as a kid and being okay with Icarus and Megaman.
  • Mythology Gag: Given that just about every Captain N episode gets some element of the games wrong, correcting remarks will flare up all over the place.
  • Necessarily Evil: Why Irrelevant402 likes pushing for Bile Fascination every once in a while. Sometimes it is good to rage on something horrible and it helps appreciate the So Bad It's Good stuff.
  • Never Live It Down: See Bond One-Liner above. In addition:
    • In one episode of Captain N, Kevin said "time for a power move!" only to fall flat on his ass. This has been referenced several times when someone stumbles during a fight scene. Whenever Kevin is hailed as a great hero someone brings up that the 'hero' is too terrified to clean his room.
    • On a meta level, Irrelevant will always be remembered for The Nutshack and Beauty And Warrior.
  • Never Say "Die": Repeatedly mocked.

Character: Destroy them!
Annotation: But don't kill them!

  • Nostalgia Filter: Averted hard, as many of the series are based on late 80s/early 90s video games, especially Captain N, and they will be loathe to admit any of said games are done justice. There have been many derogatory remarks about the use of late 80s/early 90s fashion and lingo as well, and how they don't allow their shows to age well.
  • Not Bad: At least one commentator complimented Ganon teleporting to his throne, and even more so when he teleported to stand sideways on the wall.
    • Occasionally, one or two commentators will also compliment the plot in general for being (relatively) well-thought-out and interesting.
  • Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: Eggplant Wizard and King Hippo... just make them an official couple already!
  • Oh Crap: The somewhat unexpected appearance of parts 2-4 of The Nutshack, and later The Little Panda Fighter.
  • Once an Episode: Certain shows get this treatment. "X sez/says", as a tribute to Sonic Says, has appeared in Mortal Kombat animated whenever a character has a moral to teach.
  • One of Us: Sometimes, the people will point out a trope, though they won't always link it.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Eggplant Wizard and his peach dancers. Mike only got one episode and has earned some fanon backstory!
  • Pac-Man Fever: Mercilessly lampshaded at times, especially considering 99% of these cases are in cartoons based on games, something you'd expect to get it right!
  • Playing Pictionary: X-Box 360 games in VHS cases in Ctrl+Alt+Del, pizza wheels being carried by the evil army in Captain N, just to name a few.
  • Pyrrhic Victory: Because Irrelevant didn't know how to upload he clamored/Whined for Beauty and Warrior to be annotated... and he finally got it!.. Only problem was what came before it was Mouse Police. A film that made less sense, had poorer animation, was dubbed awfully and helped make Beauty and Warrior shrink to So Okay It Is Average during the same weekend intermission!
  • Quip to Black: A few of these are inserted, and they come complete with sunglasses made out of black box annotations. YEEEEAAAAHHHHHHH!!!
  • Retirony: When CurtDogg was uploading Street Fighter: The Annotated Series as beeupyou, the collaborative annotation feature was discontinued with only two episodes to go.
  • Red Oni,Blue Oni: Just about any pair up, Irrelevant believes in being aggressive and striking at as many works as possible while Avirosb prefers to focus on riffing when intermissions occur.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: The surf music lyrics throughout season 1 of Captain N don't usually rhyme until the chorus.
  • Running Gag:
    • One of the very earliest, mainly applying to CAD, was WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS
    • In Street Fighter, "Bathe in Ice Cream". At some point was discredited.
    • "laugh_track .wav not found", among other wav related gags.
      • Similar gags also apply with images, usually with the ".gif" extension.
    • Making a crack about Lilah's miscarriage sometimes pops up.
      • Claiming that everything was made by "Blind Ferret Entertainment."
      • CAD jokes are common in general.
    • If a series has a noticeable catch phrase, a counter will appear every time.
      • If a character has a particularly memorable line, it will be made a catch phrase.
      • "PRECISELY!" From Ratatoing became this shortly after it was uploaded, but it was used less and less frequently.
    • Street Fighter's use of the same music over and over spurred a "YESSSH!" every time a certain music cue played.
    • The audience booing and throwing rotten food as the curtain came down in the Super Mario 3 cartoon.
      • There was a callback to this during Mortal Kombat while the characters were exploring an empty theatre.
    • The purportedly unlikable Simon Belmont of Captain N often has bad things happen to him for comic relief. When he doesn't deserve them, some variation of "Haha, that'll teach you to (innocent or helpful action)!" will appear.
    • Every time a character looks stoned (i.e. with droopy eyelids), someone would say "420 smoke weed erryday".
    • Since Captain N, whenever a pop culture reference is made, the word "Topical" would appear.
    • URLs to various tropes on this very website.
    • "The joke is Yoshi eats everything" every time Yoshi eats something in Super Mario World.
    • "I fell for hours!" (from Super Mario World) whenever someone is falling for a long time, especially after a Commercial Break Cliffhanger. It's also occasionally subverted with very short falls, where instead an annotation will be made along the lines of "I fell for-- oh, never mind."
    • Duke, the dog from Captain N, quoting the Duke Nukem games.
    • Whenever a mummy appears or someone gets wrapped up like one: "WHERE'S MY SON?!" (From an episode of Super Mario Bros. 3.) Heck when the setting is just a desert she can be heard off screen.
    • Any time a character appears to twitch due to jumpy animation causes a comment to the effect of "I'm having a seizure".
    • "I am pleased by this turn of events" when a character has a happy or content expression in circumstances where it looks out of place and they really should be showing at least some concern.
    • "Paused" or "Loading" annotations when the flow of events is disrupted by slow character responses or other lack of onscreen activity.
    • Most episodes end with a male character being made to ask "I still get laid tonight, right?"
    • "Are We There Yet?" "How many times are you going to ask that, missy?" These two often appear in tandem during any traveling scene, and come from an episode of Super Mario Bros. 3. The second question also sometimes appears as a response to the gag in the previous bullet.
    • When a full moon appears in a shot, it will often be given a face to resemble the moon from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, with an accompanying caption like "Dawn of the Final Day, 24 Hours Remain".
    • Kootie Pie in the Mario 3 cartoon. As soon as she got noisy, a Kootie Pie tolerance meter would appear. It wouldn't take long to max out.
    • THE UNBREAKABLE ANNOTATION. Which always ends up broken.
      • Finally does its job successfully, surviving Kevin's Zapper in the Captain N Season 3 Intro.
    • "I am the <Title> of <Alliterating Action Or Adjective>!" Most notably used whenever Cheatsy was in a scene (due to his infamous "Emperor of Eavesdropping" line), having fallen off significantly upon moving to other series but sometimes it will make a come back for an episode.
    • HORSE CUM! (whenever something liquidy shows up; most typically "water" that seems surprisingly white)
    • But quite possibly the grandest, most continuing, most unabated, most returning, most tantalizingly reoccurring, must unstoppable, most-(AW SHADDUP! We'll never get started!) dynamic juggernaut of all running gags is the PULL. MY. FINGER. one whenever someone points.
    • PHYSICS
    • "Weapon Dickery" counts for when someone engages in Weapon Twirling or other flourishes with their weapon. Variants have included "key dickery" and "horse dickery".
    • "Hoops" in the context of a bad pun/bad writing in general, after Captain N S3E2.
  • Say My Name: A monster rising from the bayou in an early Captain N episode shouted "Captain N!" in a manner similar to Strong Bad singing Trogdor. Cue suggested alternate lyrics.
  • Schedule Slip: As of The Legend Of Zelda they've gone from one episode every few days to every Friday due to the reduced amount of contributors. Sometimes this slips to Saturday as well.
  • Screwed by the Network: The fateful day when YouTube discontinued collaborative annotations. Beeupyou's channel now serves as an archive of past works, with the shared channel being how they now do things, but it took about a month to get it set up while everyone campaigned in vain for the collaborative annotations feature to be reinstated. Also, every time YouTube makes changes to the annotation editor, it's not uncommon to see the Annotators criticise these in the channel comments.
  • Self-Deprecation: They all tend to make fun of themselves from time to time, at the least, for having no lives.
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: See the Spoiler entry below.
  • Shameless Self Promotion: Just about all the material they annotate comes across as this.
    • Somewhat played with in Annotated Daydream which was uploaded because one of the annotators wanted to see them make fun of his old band that had broken up.
  • Shown Their Work:
    • People will sometimes throw in actual production tidbits into their annotations.
    • "X does not work that way!"
    • During Captain N: Videolympics, Kevin is made to suggest "Swimming gala?" when Mother Brain issues her challenge. The letter "N" on a letterman jacket signifies being on the school swimming team.
      • Naturally they were delighted when the show revealed he really WAS on the swimming team.
  • Shout-Out: The giant centipede... mantis... thing in the Captain N episodes set in Hyrule refers to itself as Cornholio in both appearances.
  • Sincerity Mode: Surprisingly common when you take into account all their Not Bad, Cerebus Syndrome, Shown Their Work and Dude, Not Funny moments, and so on.
  • So Bad Its Horrible: The most mutual agreement for this would be "Bouchedags" and even more so The Nutshack. The latter had an Oh Crap moment from most of the Annotators when the rest of Episode one was uploaded.
  • Sophisticated As Hell: Sometimes there are actual well thought out notes on pacing problems and inconsistent characterization with some swear words thrown in.
  • Spared by the Adaptation: Ironically subverted by having one of their favourite characters, Cheatsy Koopa, run into some kind of death portal in his final scene. Given that they annotated Super Mario 3 AFTER doing Super Mario World, the original canon had him going on to make many appearances in the next series.
  • Spoiler: "GAME BOY IS COMING"
    • If a plot point is brought up it will be highlighted.
  • Spoof Aesop: The moral of Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue is apparently "take drugs and all your favorite cartoon characters will show up to talk to you."
  • Standard Pre-Ass-Kicking Snippet: The surf music.
  • Status Quo Is God: Mocked a lot since they're not big fan of episodic non-arc based series. Though when there are continuity nods or signs of character development the praise is heaped on.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Many new series and intermissions will have the main characters' names in the opening credits replaced by the names of characters from the CAD cartoon.
  • Take That: Admit it, of the shows these guys annotate, even when you were a child you thought they were a bit rubbish.
  • Team Dad: beeupyou and Avirosb for the Annotators.
  • Tempting Fate: THE UNBREAKABLE ANNOTATION
  • The Fifties: Mocked in Captain N S2E4.

Mayor Of Tetris: Well I'll be a son of a cube! You're round faced!
Annotation: Hmm you're different from us. Are we going to have to chase you out like those Muslims, queers and blacks?

Mayor: We haven't had any round faces for hundreds of years!
Annotations: And we're going to keep it that way!/ We can start a lynch mob, just like the old days!/ Because we killed them all!

  • The Unintelligible: During season 2 of Captain N, it seems to get harder to understand Mother Brain.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Every series and intermission starts out like this.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: Whenever their least favorite character in a series does something redeeming.
  • Time for Plan B: After many ignored attempts to convince YouTube to restore collaborative annotations, the shared channel was set up.
  • Took a Level in Badass: People sure liked the Luigi from Ice Capades that took on Koopa's army all by himself... with a bazooka-rifle.
  • Un Paused: Less common now, but stray frames and sounds from previous episodes or cut credit rolls left in by editing errors prior to upload would be subject to at least one joke.

"Uk!"

Kid Icarus: "Who-icus?"
Julio: "No, HOO-LI-O."

B^U

  1. ↑ TV Tropes page for The Annotated Series
  2. ↑ Irrelevant402 testing the waters for a pet project where he wants to write a fan fiction, claiming to be a Crisis Crossover and then having it read over by Microsoft Sam. This is merely him reading the first two pages before deciding on the Sam approach. Claims he wants it for an early/late anniversary gift/a valentine towards the experiment in general
  3. ↑ yes Kid Icarus helped but he might have been shooting a net arrow so what was the point of zapping a football.
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