The Spoony Experiment


"You believed the hype. You paid ten bucks to see a movie or fifty to play that game. Now you want revenge, because therapy is for pussies. Welcome to the experiment, where we cure the sickness with snark.
Let the healing begin."

Meet Noah Antwiler, self-described "terrifying result of a generation raised on MTV and films by Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal at the height of their popularity." He started out with text reviews of movies, which for a while were published as "A Gamer's Rant on the Movies" in Knights of the Dinner Table. He was soon inspired by the likes of Armake 21 to make the leap to video reviews about video games, and so created a new identity as The Spoony One, a name borrowed from a certain line in Final Fantasy IV.

He began with The Adventures of Bayou Billy, the quintessential Nintendo Hard title "which probably contributed a great deal to making me the psychological mess I am today," before moving on to the likes of E.T. for the Atari 2600 (a review he made while recovering from having his wisdom teeth removed, setting "some kind of world record for pain").

He is perhaps most famous for his eviscerating reviews of the Final Fantasy series, specifically otherwise-beloved titles such as VIII and X, which earned him a spot at That Guy With The Glasses. Additionally, Spoony garnered attention for his Mystery Science Theater 3000-style Lets Plays of Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh and Ripper (which he slogged through in the dark ages of pre-GameFAQs).

He has since moved into video reviews of movies and TV shows, including completely off the cuff rants against any new releases he didn't like as soon as he gets back from them (the ones about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen are truly something to behold), as well as similarly improv comments on the state of pro wrestling, which often run as long as the actual program he's critiquing.

Check it out here.

In addition to his video and game reviews, Spoony also hosts a number of other video series. He has a spin-off site called Wrestle! Wrestle! that deals with Professional Wrestling, which is updated on a semi-regular basis. He also has the Counter Monkey series, which recounts stories from his Tabletop Game days (all tropes for that series should go on its own page). Spoony also has a Star Wars the Old Republic guild, The Spoony Expendables.

His live stream is here, on which he sporadically plays games like SWAT 4, X-COM, Ultima Underworld and others. He also did an impromptu Q&A with his fans concerning his stance on originality in Nintendo franchises.

Spoony was also the GM of a weekly D&D game with several other TGWTG contributors, which was livestreamed on Sundays; its page is here.

A list of things reviewed by Spoony can be found here.

Tropes used in The Spoony Experiment include:

A-C

"Christopher Walken IS the Blade Runner!"
"Christopher Walken IS the Lawnmower Man!"

  • Adorkable: The guy gave his dog a Twitter account. Enough said.
  • Affably Evil: Doctor Insano.
  • The Ahnold: His take on Conan the Cimmerian, as interpreted by him playing around with a bunch of action figures and statuettes on his bed.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation : His Ultima Retrospective brings together a decent amount of evidence that Lord British is actually an oppressive, self-righteous, totalitarian tyrant. He notes that British establishes a worldwide religion that he forces everyone to worship after he lets the Avatar slaughter innocents and interfere with the space-time continuum to defeat his enemies and unite the country, declares war on civilizations who oppose him even if they aren't actually evil and could perhaps be reasoned with, and takes the exclusion in later games of the varied races that were in the earlier ones (elves, dwarves, bobbits, etc) as evidence that British enacted a genocidal campaign and wiped them all out.
  • And That's Terrible: "Ric Flair just threatened a woman with sexual assault! And I'm pretty sure you can't do that!"
    • Again in Tekken. "I sold my soul to the Devil" "But that's wrong!"
  • And There Was Much Rejoicing: What he and a whole crowd of people did when Tidus decided to sacrifice himself at the end of Final Fantasy X.
  • Angrish: "Do ninfgh... Ninjas!... Kidnapping!... TV!"
  • Apologizes a Lot: In his vlog about Snow White and the Huntsman, Noah says that Kristen Stewart isn't as attractive as this film (or the Twilight series) makes her out to be, apologizing several times for saying so and being visibly displeased with how piggish this makes him look.
  • April Fools' Day:
    • 4/1/09 featured an alternate universe version of Spoony reviewing the original Final Fantasy in a Self-Parody of his own nitpicking, caustic review style, ending with a possible origin story for Dr. Insano.
    • 4/1/10 featured "The Insano Experiment" with "Weird Science" as the theme song and Insano reviewing Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
    • 4/1/11 featured a review done in the style of The Cinema Snob masquerading itself as the second part of the discontinued Deadly Premonition Let's Play.
  • Arrow Cam: Noah hurling a doggie toy at Spuna's head.
  • Artificial Stupidity: The squad in SWAT 4 have a tendency to hit you with flashbangs, which prompts Spoony to yell "YOU FOOL !" They also have a tendency to run in front of Spoony's gun while he's trying to fire, getting themselves or Spoony killed countless times.
  • Artist Disillusionment: Spoony suffers this every so often, thanks to a large group of posters on his website being incredibly rude to anyone that's not Spoony or his brother Miles.
    • It Came From Beyond Midnight, a canceled public access TV show in which Spoony has a small role. He uploaded it in addition to his own content, only for it to increasingly come under fire by his fans for not being fully Spoony-related content because it bloated the front page of his website every time Spoony uploaded a new segment (seven videos per episode). He got mad about it and called out his fans on Twitter, saying his friends are more important than the opinions of the whiners.
    • Fans attacked his then-girlfriend after one appearance.
    • Apparently Linkara and Noah have exchanged stories about the ridiculous Fan Dumb they've encountered whenever they do a cross-over.
    • Film Brain's collaboration with Spoony for the live-action Tekken movie lead to his brief return for the DOA review, where Spoony's fans lay a medieval siege upon Film Brain's home.
    • It doesn't help when Fan's have shown up at his house, in full costume no less, and have had to be removed by the police for refusing to leave. It's implied this has happened at his parents' house as well.
  • As You Know: Spoony is very, VERY displeased with the method of delivering Exposition to new players in Ultima 9, which is accomplished by giving the player dialogue options to just ask about things from the world of Brittania that he should already know. His personal low point is when he asks what a 'paladin' is, when the previous games featured a paladin as his loyal friend who performed a Heroic Sacrifice to die on the Avatar's behalf.
  • A-Team Firing: Tends to happen to Spoony a lot during his SWAT 4 playthrough, much to his annoyance.

Spoony: I don't know what the hell just happened, but I fucked that doorframe up beyond repair!

Spoony: Oh, we're winding up to a big ol' "Nooooooooooooooo!"...
Jake: FUCK!
Spoony: ... That works too, I guess.

    • Invoked in the Highlander: The Last of the MacLeods video to parody the main villain's Narm-heavy Big No.
    • He and the Sage share one together after a buildup hopefully leading to the fairy girl in Garzey's Wing getting ripped apart but then escaping at the last moment.
    • Done over Twitter when he learned that the writer of the Twilight film would be scripting the Highlander Continuity Reboot.
    • We get one in Microcosm when Spoony is unable to finish writing down the continue password before the game resets. The pathos is amplified by music from Requiem for a Dream.
    • Xiaoyu gives one in Tekken: Blood Vengeance.

Spoony: You knew him for a total of five minutes. You're not exactly at the "NOOOOOO!" stage of a relationship.

Spoony: *laughing* Check out the eyebrows, you can hand-glide with those things!

  • Big Word Shout: PUUUMPKIIINHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!!!
    • BEEETRAAAYAAALLLLLLLL!!!
  • Big Yes: Spoony and Sage have not one but three of these in a row in the Garzey's Wing review when it looks like the fairy girl will finally die painfully after annoying them for the whole review.
    • And again in the Final Fantasy X finale when he learns that after beating Yu Yevon Tidus will disappear, complete with stock footage of crowds erupting into excited applause and celebration.
  • Black Comedy Rape: Spooning With Spoony.
  • Non Sequitur Episode: After having trouble getting The Madness of Roland to run on his computer, Noah simply edited together some brief clips from the game with framing material of the footage killing him.
  • Blind Idiot Translation: SWAT 4, Mission 10: "Moviefilm For Make Training Of Police And Laughing Time"
  • Book Ends: At the beginning of the first video of his Final Fantasy VIII review, Spoony comments on how as bad as he said the game was, Final Fantasy X was worse. Guess what his last message at the end of the final episode is.
    • His Final Fantasy X review begins with the original Spoony (Who died at the end of his Final Fantasy VIII review) returning to take the show back from his clone, essentially book ending the period between the two reviews with the death & return of the real Spoony.
      • The final part of his FFX review featured the original/Black Lantern Spoony trying to take the show back again, providing book ends for the review; and culminated with the merging of the original & his clone, providing a book end to the era of the Spoony Clone. It also featured several call backs to the final part of his FFVIII reviews—in the commentary he referenced RedLetterMedia's clip of George Lucas pretentiously claiming that events in the Star Wars prequels "rhyme" with those in the originals.
  • Borrowed Catchphrase:
  • Breaking the Reviewer's Wall: Has happened a few times. One of the most over-the-top examples would be the conclusion of his Final Fantasy VIII review, where Dr. Insano hires Squall to kill Spoony.
  • Brick Joke: The first part of his Final Fantasy X review features the original Spoony returning to take his show back from his clone, before promptly killing himself and being resurrected as a Black Lantern when told of the subject of the latest review. The third part of the review features Black Lantern Spoony raising Tidus with a Black Lantern Ring, with the intent of using him to take back the show from the clone.
    • An even further one: in the Partymania review the (alternate) Dr. Insano's origin is that he was one of the Schlumper brothers who was scorned by the unnamed female protagonist and went on to become evil. In the Warrior #2-3 review Dr. Linksano references bringing glory to the Schlumper name, implying that he is the other Schlumper brother. And given that his universe was conquered by Lord Vyce right before Linksano jumped universes, alternate!Insano is probably not doing very well.
    • Again during the first part of his Final Fantasy X review, Dr. Insano walked in asking if anybody had seen Neutro. It was later revealed that Linkara had stolen Neutro from Dr. Insano in his Power Rangers Zeo Comic review.
    • In Dr. Insano's review of The Dungeonmaster, Dr. Insano forces Bennett the Sage to provide footages for Final Fantasy X-2 at gunpoint, during The Stinger of the latter's review finale, a bald and aging Bennett almost finishes the game while Insano seemingly forgets (and doesn't care) about him.
  • Broke the Rating Scale: Spoony finally decided to do away with the Ass Counter in Dead or Alive. Holly Valance and Sarah Carter cause it to EXPLODE.
  • Brother-Sister Incest: The vibe Spoony got from the Marky Mark Make My Video. It doesn't help that the actors in question happen to resemble him and his sister.
  • Bruce Lee Clone: His subject when reviewing the movie The Clones of Bruce Lee.
  • Bury Your Gays: He was particularly incensed by this in Phantasmagoria as it resulted in the death of the only character he actually didn't want to see die horribly.
  • Buxom Is Better: He certainly seems to think so. This trips him up in his Beastmaster and Final Fantasy X reviews and he laments that the actress cast as the female lead in King of Fighters was not buxom like the video game character (though that's only one of a list of things they got wrong about her that he complains about.)
  • Call Back: The Insano Experiment.
    • For his "Lords of Magick" review, he says, "Yeah! Let's contact the devil!" and holds up a magic lamp, referring back to his Final Fantasy VIII' review which had Satan in a lamp.
    • His Breaking Dawn review, they talk about David Cronenberg doing the Vampire C-Section and talk about how Twilight is a bodice-ripper Harlequin Romance novel, both are things he talked about when previously reviewing Twilight movies.
  • The Cameo: After Diamanda Hagan remarks in her review how much an actor in Apocalypse looks like Spoony, there are cameos by Spoony, Dr. Insano and a Spoony clone, Christian Spoony.
  • Camera Abuse: His dog Oreo has a real knack for dealing glancing blows to his tripod.
  • Captain Ersatz: Dr. Insano is apparently based on Warren Ellis' comic book character Doktor Sleepless. Burton the Robot and Spencer D. Bum both definitely qualify.
  • Catch Phrase:
    • Dr. Insano - "With SCIENCE, of course!!"
    • "Phantasmagoria!" He later stated this as his favorite word.
    • "I HEARD that, Curtis!"
    • "Wolverines!" as a Battle Cry is often used.
    • "I am never getting over this!"
    • "You Fool!!!!!" when his teammates screw up a flashbang and end up blinding him in SWAT 4.
    • When reviewing a foreign or incredibly obscure movie, "... unless you know some especially deranged Hong Kong bootleggers. And I do."
    • Spoony has a new one for his show Wrestle! Wrestle! - "Future endeavors". The WWE uses it as a polite euphemism for "he's been fired"; Spoony uses it to mean "The company's going to screw you up the ass, quit while you still have your dignity".
    • "How do you fuck that up!?"
    • The Ultima retrospective has given us "I'm the goddamn Avatar!"
    • "Betrayal!" Started with X-Com but has now carried over to Ultima IX - So much so that it's the signal for the revitalized plot hole counter. (and we're apparently going to hear it A LOT in this review.)
    • Spank material.
  • Celebrity Impersonator: As mentioned under Captain Ersatz, Noah's costume "characters" are all to some degree impersonations of other people's intellectual property. And he does it quite well.
  • Character Blog: Father Antos from Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress has a Tweeter account.
  • Chekhov's Gag: If you thought Spoony only introduced the Gunblade for his Final Fantasy VIII reviews, think again. He's using it again for more gags in his review of Mazes and Monsters.
    • Also in his Ultima I review. We can only hope it will appear more.
    • Again in the end of the Highlander: The Source review
    • He even loads it before using it in the FFX finale.
    • And it comes out again in his King of Fighters review. He declares it's "too Final Fantasy" for the situation though, and puts it aside.
  • Chekhov's Gun: In the second part of the FFX review, there's a throwaway gag where Dr. Insano bursts into Spoony's room to ask if anyone has seen Neutro, which he'd left parked out back while Spoony is singing "A Whole New World". Later, in Linkara's review of Zeo Rangers #1, Linkara fights a giant Mechakara by using Neutro as a zord, which he claim he took from Dr. Insano when the doctor left it "parked behind Spoony's house"
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Inverted in Warrior #4. The secret to ending the multiverse rift is to stop caring about the insane ramblings of the comic, for they mean absolutely nothing and thus are not worth thinking about.
  • Cliff Hanger: His Final Fantasy VIII review ends on one, with Dr Insano sending Squall after Spoony, leading to Spoony being mortally wounded as Burton initiates a self-destruct sequence which kills Squall & reduces Spoony to a lump of protoplasm; with The Stinger revealing that Linkara has found the lump & intends to bring Spoony back.
  • Cloning Blues: Inverted, as the clone Spoony is able to pick up right where his predecessor left off. The original is killed, resurrected as a Black Lantern, then briefly brought back to normal before being killed and turned into a Black Lantern again.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: His Ultimate Warrior persona is this in spades and ironically very accurate to the real-life Warrior's rambling and odd promos.

"YOU'LL NEED AN ENERGON CUBE THE SIZE OF WYOMING TO DEFEAT MY AUTOBOTS HOAK HOGAN!!"
"BUTTONS! BUTTONS! WHO'S GOT THE BUTTONS?!"
"IF YOU WANNA BE MY LOVER, YOU GOTTA GET WITH MY FRIENDS!! MAKE IT LAST FOREVER, BECAUSE FRIENDSHIP NEVER ENDS, HOAK HOGAN!!"

Spoony: A lute? A fucking lute?! I run over, bust my fucking ass to save his only daughter from an evil fucking knight, fighting fucking skeletons and spending my own fucking money on swords and shit, and the best he can do is give me a fucking guitar?!

    • Also during the end of his Deadliest Warrior follow-up.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: After being driven to madness by the inanity of TNA in what would become the first "Wrestle! Wrestle!" vlog, he suggests that he should force the people watching the vlog to watch TNA.
  • Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Lampshaded in that he's never actually played Final Fantasy IX, beyond maybe two hours, but avoided it solely because he hated the art style, and hadn't been paying any attention to the first two hours, since he wrote Zidane off as an "androgynous-whiny-pansy-ass character". He also admitted that "it was likely that [he] was being fiercely unfair" to Final Fantasy IX on judging it by its art style, especially when the game was specifically targeted at fans of the NES and Super Nintendo-era Final Fantasy games like him, but he just couldn't get over it.
    • He elaborated in his Q&A at MAGfest, and admitted his reasons for avoiding it were entirely childish, and he really can't stand the art style so much that he simply can't make himself keep playing.
  • Completely Missing the Point: Played for Laughs During his Ultima IX review, he pretty much is oblivious to the fact that the Avatar asks questions he should know specifically to prevent Continuity Lock Out, without even pointing out that they did this a different way in past games.
  • Contemptible Cover: Seeing the Wing Commander DVD cover causes some 30 seconds of Spoony screaming at high pitch.
  • Collectible Card Game: Spoony appears in the MSF High Collectible card game.
    • A deck designed to counterpoint his, besides the Linkara deck, is this one.
  • Cool Versus Awesome: Spoony enjoys the last ten minutes of the show Deadliest Warrior for this reason, where the anachronistic warriors actually square off; but condemns most of the rest of the show on general research issues such as ignoring much of the circumstances of how various warriors would fight; a pirate, for example, wouldn't just be walking around, he'd be with 50 other pirates, on a pirate ship, and there's no way you'd ever be fighting just one Spartan.
    • The rivalry that Spoony's alter ego Dr. Insano has with Linkara arguably falls into this category as well. Linkara has magical weapons (and cheat codes), Insano has mad science, and both are entertaining as hell.
    • His parody of Deadliest Warrior, Deadliest Character does the same as the TV show, but with fictional characters, namely the Megazord and later, the Dragonzord versus Mechagodzilla.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: Dr. Insano figured out a way to obtain game footage of Final Fantasy X-2 without having to play the game. He forces Bennett the Sage to play for him at gunpoint.
  • Cosmic Retcon: Linkara punching the wall, a la Superboy-Prime, caused Dr. Insano to become a man (according to Linkara, anyway).
  • Covers Always Lie: A Defied Trope. He screams in horror looking at the cover for Wing Commander: The Movie and explains thus: "You know that old saying, you can't judge a book by its cover? Well fuck you! That's books, not movies!"
    • In regards to Final Fantasy IX, he thinks Zidane fits in the stereotypical mold of a whiny, depressive Final Fantasy hero based solely on the cover art. He does admit that it's "massively unfair", but says that he just can't get over his dislike for the game's art style.
  • Media Research Failure: His one-shot Deadliest Character video regarding the Showa era (1974) Mechagodzilla. While he's describing the character, shots of Kiryu are used several times. Yes, Kiryu is an incarnation of Mechagodzilla, technically. But, it's not the same monster since the Showa Mechagodzilla is a giant robot built by aliens to take over the earth and Kiryu is a cyborg version of the original 1954 Godzilla.
    • Likewise, at one point in the video, guest-speaker Linkara points out that Mechagodzilla has failed to defeat Godzilla. In reality, Godzilla was unable to beat the Showa Mechagodzilla on his own and required both the help of King Caesar and humanity to defeat.
    • Given the nature of the show he's parodying, this might be intentional.
  • Creator Breakdown: July 2009 was not an easy month for him. His equipment was fucking up, his site was fucking up, and on top of that he was in the process of moving out of his parents' house. All this while trying to film the final Final Fantasy VIII video. Fortunately, it all worked out well in the end.
    • Parodied in his review of Mazes and Monsters, after a line about the need to go to MIT as soon as possible strikes too close to home.
    • 2011 as a whole was also not kind to Spoony, as in addition to his health problems, he and his girlfriend (who was also in charge of a large portion of the technical stuff on the site) split up, and he did some soul-searching after PAX East got him questioning his capability as a journalist (citing his fanboying during an interview regarding Portal 2 as proof that he couldn't be objective). And even after PAX, Spoony was dealing with depression and issues with sleeping, making it hard for him to do videos other than V-logs and Counter Monkeys. His V-log of Breaking Dawn Part 1, while funny, was pretty much the low point of the year, where he had actually resorted to drinking and needed Linkara and Jew Wario to get through the V-log.
    • Luckily, 2012 seems to be going much better so far.
  • Crossover:
    • He and Linkara have done so many of these that's it become integral to how both their shows operate. Dr. Insano was introduced in a throw-away parody segment of Atop the Fourth Wall.
    • Thanks in part to Spoony's Raw and TNA iMPACT! reviews, he made a video directly referencing Botchamania and its creator Maffew.
    • Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Not to mention his participation in the Anniversary brawl of That Guy With The Glasses.
    • Crisis Crossover: The face to face battle between Linkara and Dr. Insano is a direct reference to Crisis on Infinite Earths, with the comic Warrior # 1 being so irredeemably awful that Dr. Insano's discovery of it rips a hole in Hypertime. As the review progresses, it shifts between several different universes where, among others, Linkara and Insano's actors are switched, both are stuffed animals, Spoony is a Roman emperor, and the two are played by Marzgurl, That Chick with the Goggles, Coldguy, and the Nostalgia Critic. The scene ends in a Crowning Moment of Awesome as Angry Joe, Benzaie, Marz Gurl, and That Chick with the Goggles beat the tar out of Dr. Insano to the tune of Rick Derringer's Real American (i.e. Hulk Hogan's theme).
      • Gets turned up to 11 in the Warrior 2 and 3 review, where dozens of Doctor Insanos from throughout the multiverse find themselves in an Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Their non-insano counterparts show up at the end and beat the tar out of all of them.
    • He reviewed Highlander Endgame together with Pat the NES Punk.
    • Spoony and Film Brain reviewed the Tekken live-action movie together.
    • Spoony and Bennett the Sage have made an annual tradition of reviewing bad anime.
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Has this to say for the VA who voices the Ferario in Garzey's Wing:

I swear to god, if I ever meet that women...demon-harpy...THING that voiced that fucking pixie, I WILL DUNK HER HEAD IN A BUCKET OF LYE!!


D-F

"Oooooh! I just kicked Q in the joy department! That can't be smart! ... Let's do it again!"

  • Different in Every Episode: Spoony does most of his reviews just sitting in his green chair where you can see posters hanging on the walls in the corner directly behind him. In almost every review he does, he changes those posters to reflect something relevant to the review itself, usually a movie poster or wallscroll of the movie or game he's reviewing. If it's anything Highlander related, it'll usually be a poster of that movie. Anything Japanese game related, expect to see wallscrolls of the game or of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie.
  • Disposable Sex Worker: During The Lords of Magick, the Big Bad sorcerer tempts one of the protagonist to do a Face Heel Turn by telling him to go after whores, one of whom he then kills. This prompts Spoony to call his lawyer, complaining that this proves he shouldn't have taken the insanity plea when he told the court that a wizard made him kill those hookers.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: In his Final Fantasy X review, he rants at one point about how Rikku is nothing more than a fanservice character and is only 15, until a picture of a cosplayer dressed as Rikku appears on-screen.
  • Disturbed Doves: A flock of doves precedes Spoony busting out the SPAS-12.
  • Division By Zero: In his Highlander II the Quickening review, the following sentence, from the back of the movie's VHS tape box, causes a "divide by zero" error:

"Packed with action and visual effects, HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING is the smartest sci-fi thriller since BLADE RUNNER."

  • Doing It for the Art: What else can you say about someone who is actually risking death to make free videos?
    • About the only people who come close, are those who purposely died doing movies, or manga...and they got paid!
  • Double Vision:
    • Playing both himself and Gordon Ramsay in his Hells Kitchen: The Game review.
    • In the Final Fantasy VIII Finale with him and Dr. Insano.
    • Upgraded to Triple Vision in "Clones of Bruce Lee" with Spoony, Dr. Insano and Spencer D. Bum.
  • Don't Explain the Joke: In his Phantasmagoria2 playthrough he said that if Curtis put on a straightjacket it would become a bi-curious jacket because he's bi-curious.
  • Drinking Game: He made one for Tekken: Blood Vengeance: take a shot every time something happens that doesn't make sense unless you've played the games, and take two shots every time something happens that makes less sense if you've played the games, like Sumo wrestler Ganryu randomly being a gym teacher.
    • Immediately after announcing this, though, he subverts it when the film opening with a schoolgirl riding a giant panda at Super Speed causes him to chug the entire bottle.
  • Drop-In Character:
    • Dr. Insano and Spencer D. Bum.
  • Dude, Not Funny:
    • As a Running Gag, whenever he makes a really dark joke or reference, the camera cuts to Stock Footage of a crowd booing at a rally.

Darkest sketch! Darkest sketch! Darkest sketch!

    • During the third part of the Final Fantasy X, he pulls this on the game itself, when Wakka compares the destruction of Home to "happy festival fireworks". He even calls it the most insensitive thing he's ever heard been uttered in any form of fiction.
    • In the commentary for the review of Highlander the Source, he claims that he'll never again make a joke about suicide, as one of his fans killed himself shortly after sending him an email about it.
  • DVD Commentary: Does commentaries for many videos, including for Kickassia.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Spoony's original video intro began with him screaming in horror at Yuna singing in the opening of Final Fantasy X-2, which occured in his review of Final Fantasy VIII. It was four years before he actually reviewed the game and talked about the scene in question.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: Spoony's early reviews lack an intro or theme song, and are credited to "Fanwankery Films", a name he seems to have abandoned.
    • The earliest ones were also ad-libbed. He didn't begin writing scripts until around the reviews of Robin Hood and The Thing. This resulted in the jokes being much more polished, and is frequently credited as the period his show started Growing the Beard.
  • Enemy Mine: Played for laughs in his LP of Deadly Premonition. One of the puzzles requires him to carry a fuse box with him.
  • The European Carry All: From the Final Fantasy VIII finale,

Insano: "It's called the Time Compressor! It condenses Time as the world perceives it into an incredibly condensed period!"
Spoony: "Wow, a time compressor, it...kind of looks like an Xbox DVD Remote..."
Insano: "IT'S A TIME COMPRESSOR!"

Insano: I may be evil, but at least I'm not full of crap!

  • Even the Rats Won't Touch It: Apparently a pizza from Peter Piper's Pizza is so lacking in nutrition that even bugs avoid it as evidenced by a pizza left sitting for a month and a half that remained completely untouched.
  • Precious Puppies: He has one now.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You:
    • "The floor is everywhere!"
    • The grass is even worse.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Insano.
  • Evil Laugh: Dr. Insano is of course fond of them; he criticises Mad Scientist villain Dr. Nye in "Clones of Bruce Lee" for using one after the end of every sentence.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "My God people, what is it about the name 'Dr. Insano' that eludes you people?"
    • Spoony is shocked to learn that when Samurai Zombie Nation says it stars "head of the samurai Namakubi" it isn't kidding. You literally play as a disembodied head.
    • Also, his explanation of the power "Death Field" in the "Gamma World Unboxing" Vlog:

Spoony: Basically what it was was you emitted a field of death.

"I'm just coming off a migraine, it feels like a - it just feels like...someone's taking a hot needle and boring it into my EYES!"

Wakka: "Hey, look. Don't get so down. BOOM! hahuhu Like happy festival fireworks, ya!?"
Spoony: "...Happy... Festival... Fireworks!? That could be the STUPIDEST, MOST INSENSITIVE, IDIOT THING any character has ever said in ANY WORK OF FICTION! That's like trying to cheer people up after Hurricane Katrina.... by saying it's a giant happy waterpark!"

    • And when Yuna in Final Fantasy X-2 shoots down Nooj's plan to defeat Shuyin [5] in favor of love, Spoony face palms, then it cuts to several other people and groups of people facepalming as well.
  • Fan Disservice: During The Beastmaster review, upon seeing a sorceress teleport out of her clothes as the camera pans up her body:

Spoony: Say, alright! Hey dude, throw something else at her, maybe she'll teleport out of her underewear too-- [sees her hideously deformed face] Oh my God! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?! Ah, look it's a melted John Madden! Joan Rivers! It's the lady from The Goonies!

Dragonstrike narrator: "Sounds like a couple of stupid orcs."
Spoony: "Now that's just racist.

Doctor Linksano: Doctor Insano didn't go far enough. He only subjected you to one issue of Warrior. I'm going to subject you to two!
Spoony: You insane fiend! I'm not gonna read that shit again!
Doctor Linksano: Well, I suppose we can get the same results by watching TNA Impact...
Spoony: Aaah! All right, I'll read it!

    • He makes several deadpan remarks about how death would be a welcome relief to watching yet another bad anime with Sage, after Sage breaks into his house and stalks then teleports into his room.
  • Faux Horrific: Like seeing the cast of the Wing Commander movie.

"Loot the supermarket! Stockpile all the weapons and instant mash potatoes you can find! The end times are here!"

  • Filler: In mid-October 2010, while Spoony was under the weather due to an unspecified heart condition, he asked Scarlett to bump some of his "Greatest Hits" to the front page until he got back on his feet. However, only one video (his review of The Thing) actually got this treatment before he came back.
    • The Counter Monkey episodes seem like this as well, seeing as they were put out during a period when Spoony didn't feel the creative juices flowing, and was dealing with health issues yet again, at least they kept us entertained.
  • Flat What:

The Avatar: The Codex of Ultimate Wisdom?
Spoony: What.
The Avatar: The Codex of Ultimate Wisdom?
Spoony: What.
The Avatar: The Codex of Ultimate Wisdom?
Spoony: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

  • Foil: Noah's brother Miles, who's considerably calmer than his brother.
  • Follow the Leader: Subverted in real life. He had intended to start a Mystery Science Theater 3000 style show (which explains his blue robot pal Burton) but couldn't get it together with his friends so he started this show with the AV equipment he'd already bought. He does eventually get to live out his original dream with his own Rifftrax offerings.
  • Foreshadowing: He ended his review of Strike Commando with the claim he was going to find an "American Reb Brown movie, made by Americans...in America!" Two months later he reviewed the two Captain America movies, the second of which ended with an appearance from The Gatekeither.
    • His Clones of Bruce Lee review ended with the Spoony Bum inviting Noah and Dr. Insano to play boardgames with him. Among the stack of games he holds up is Nightmare, which Spoony reviewed for Halloween a few months later.
    • He's doing it in his dogs twitter now.
    • Spoony as Lord British: "My second biggest fear is eating a loaf of bread laced with rat poison... but that seems unlikely to pass."
  • For the Evulz: Bella Swan's motivation, according to Noah.
  • Forced Meme: We'll need a lot more hemp before we're through.
  • Freudian Slip: In this tweet.
  • Freudian Slippery Slope: Goes into one when Lulu and her "female advantages" are introduced in FFX

Tits jugs Lulu--I mean, it's just Lulu...

    • And again in Part 3 of the FFX-2 review when Leblanc offers to help the Gullwings.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the new awesome animated Intro, you can see a few things on the shelves with references to various games and movies he's reviewed, such as "You're In My Spot, Sir," "Unfucking Believable", and "Spooning With Spoony Volume 19".
    • He inserted Wally into the crowd of the concert scene in Final Fantasy X-2.
  • Friend in the Black Market
  • Funetik Aksent: His description of the Nightmare review refers to the "blagoh," or "black hole" in the Gatekeeper's Cockney accent.
  • Funny Background Event: While Spoony himself was busy talking about Tron: Legacy, the wallpapers on his computer desktop kept flipping from one to the next...including, at one point, a wallpaper fashioned after the big romance scene from Final Fantasy X.
    • He acknowledged the FFX wallpaper in an episode of Wrestle! Wrestle!, saying 1) "It's called 'Irony', people! IRONY!", 2) He needed a wallpaper that could fit a dual-monitor setup, and 3) Saying that it's pretty and he's never denied that the art for X and X-2 was pretty.
    • His posters on the walls of his room often have something to do with the movie he's reviewing (such as the Beastmaster posters when he reviewed those movies). For his "Cinema Snob Impersonation" video review of Zombie 5, he had a poster of Caligula, Brad Jones' favorite movie.
    • During Spoony's booze-fueled Vlog of Breaking Dawn Part 1, his dog is running around on the sofa behind him, picking up objects in its mouth, and occasionally trying to drink Spoony's rum.
      • Oreo tends to do this a lot, in both vlogs and reviews. Which is a good thing, since she doesn't ruin takes, she enhances them.
  • Furry Confusion: He brings up the classic case of this during his Kingdom Hearts livestream:

Spoony: Wait...if Goofy's a dog and Pluto's a dog...how come Goofy's sentient and Pluto isn't?

G-I

And his pee like a flower!
If you been travel, he'll be there to fly the bat
Winning saaaaand!

Spoony': "I told you if you are going to live here you have to stop killing people, especially me!"

  • Grand Finale: After spending several years ripping the game to pieces, Spoony brings his Final Fantasy VIII review to a close with Dr.Insano turning on him and attempting a Hostile Show Takeover by sending Squall to kill him. Squall succeeds in mortally wounding him, but then Burton self destructs, killing him, Squall, Spoony, and destroying Spoony's entire house in a fiery explosion. Of course after the credits roll, Linkara recovers what's left of Spoony and states that he will bring him back to life. Which he does. Bonus points for that sequence originally being planned as a possible ending for the whole show given his major camera and website problems at the time. Everything ended up working out, so instead it just acts as a sendoff to the bedroom where he filmed the show until then, as he was finally moving out of his parents' house.
    • Another one may be coming in the Ultima 9 review, especially since he revealed at the end of Ultima 8 that the entire point of the full series retrospective was to set up the review of the final game and just how much it betrayed all the games before it.
  • Guide Dang It: Spoony's main complaint about Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. Mostly because most of the spells require you to, as he put it, learn a new language and that the bosses have exactly one way to beat them. To find both of these out you either A) Learn through trial and error (not recommended unless you have too much sanity) or B) look it up online. Note that despite that he still feels it's a good game.
    • There's also quite a bit of this during Ripper as well.
    • He rants about this in Ultima 2: Revenge of the Enchantress, you have to find certain items in order to progress through the game, but the game itself literally makes no mention that you need these items, what they do in particular, or that one particular ring that is needed to slip through force fields can only be purchased once you have the blessing from some guy, and you have to find some old man living under a tree and have to pay him 500 gold to obtain it. This game was created in 1982, long before anyone had the internet to look things up. How the hell could anyone figure these out?
    • Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge most definitely.
  • Hair of the Dog: In his crossover review of the Garzey's Wing anime with Bennett The Sage, Spoony intentionally kills himself by inducing a stroke 1 minute into the OVA. 30 seconds later he's brought back to life.

Spoony: "WAS THAT SO STUPID THAT IT BROUGHT ME BACK TO LIFE!??"
Sage: "Hair of the dog that bit ya."

  • Hat Shop: One character in Mazes and Monsters is wearing a different hat in every scene of the movie for absolutely no explained reason. Spoony calls this out and decides to do the same for the rest of the review until he eventually runs out.
    • At one point he wears boxer shorts on his head.
  • Ham-to-Ham Combat: Spoontock vs. Angry Joe.
  • Head Desk: Has one during his Final Fantasy X review when Rikku tells Tidus not to say he's from Zanarkand because it upsets people, only for Tidus to tell the Besaid Aurochs he's from Zanarkand FOUR MINUTES LATER.
  • Hello, Insert Name Here:
    • During his review of Final Fantasy VIII he chose to rename Squall into "Emo Git", Rinoa into "A Whore" and her dog into "Anal". The latter two resulted in such dialogue in "A Whore's Limit Break uses Anal" and "Anal Cannon/Reversal", and eventually led into jokes about Rinoa being Seifer's sloppy seconds (with visual aid from a certain doujinshi), though he did admit it was a bit of an unfair label, but far too amusing not to go for.
    • For Final Fantasy X, he renamed Tidus "Meg Ryan" for his haircut.
  • Hell Hotel: The hotel he, Jew Wario and Angry Joe stayed at while going to E3 was hilariously bad, and we got to hear about it. It is probably the only hotel you'll hear about where the air conditioning controls are in an unscrewed, dangling panel hidden behind the TV.
  • He Panned It, Now He Sucks: Spoony is guilty of doing this himself; he yelled at the Riff Trax guys over on twitter for doing a Riff of Highlander. Although it was done jokingly on his part; when he realized that the Rifftrax guys didn't treat it as a pretend feud, but thought he trolled in earnest, he immediately stopped and apologized.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard:

"You FOOL! No, wait... ME FOOL!"

  • Hurricane of Puns: In the Dragon Strike review, after a tree comes to life and attacks the elf. Eventually he apologizes and says he'll stop.
    • In his persona as "Leslie Striker," during his mini-review of Phase IV, a movie about superintelligent ants, he makes just about every ant pun out there.
    • His Twitter is rife with these.
  • Hypocrisy Nod: In his review of Cage 2, Spoony trashes the randomness of the climax, in which the little old FBI agent whips out a rocket launcher and uses it to shoot down the villain's helicopter. He asks "Who writes a story where an old guy just spontaneously whips out a bazooka?!" Instantly we get a still from the Ultima retrospective, showing Spoony as Gandalf with a grenade launcher. "Oh, shut up."
    • In his commentary for The Beastmaster 2, Spoony points out that he made a Portal joke in the review, which came out a week after a vlog where he said Portal jokes were completely played out. He then adds "Haven't you noticed yet that I'm a complete raving lunatic and hypocrite? Because you should."
    • Later on, he lambasted Nintendo for cashing in by re-releasing Ocarina of Time on the 3DS, and then immediately turned tail to gush about the upcoming Snake Eater remake on the same system, calling himself out yet again.
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • "I knew grown men who admitted to openly weeping at the bit where Aeris dies in FFVII. What a bunch of pussies." * Cut to a Flash Back of him in 1994, shedding Manly Tears over the opera scene in Final Fantasy VI*
      • And later on he starts tearing up every time he mentions Aeris' death.
    • "A robot puppet? How lame is that?"
    • When his teammates in Swat 4 throw flashbangs in such a way that it blinds him, he yells "YOU FOOL!" A couple of times, he blinded himself with poorly thrown flashbangs, although he made sure to yell "YOU FOOL!" at himself.
    • Furthermore, he calls everyone who likes "Eyes on Me" a complete pussy, and ends his Final Fantasy VIII review with a music video tribute of the cast set to the song. He says in the creator commentary "I call you all pussies then subject you to the pussy song. So yeah you're all pussies, you know what, I am too".
    • In Part 1 of his Final Fantasy X review, Spoony criticizes the sexualization of underage characters like the 15-year-old Rikku... then starts drooling over a picture of a Rikku cosplayer. Also a two-in-one, since he's critical of cosplayers as well.
    • Almost immediately afterward, he scoffs at the Al Bhed's characteristic spiralled irises. Cue Insano.
    • Also, after going on about how Seymour Guado can't possibly be taken seriously due to his stupid hair and clothes, he becomes quite shaken at Seymour's summoning of Anima at the Blitzball Stadium.

"Praise be to Yevon!"

    • In his review of Dungeonmaster, Doctor Insano becomes angry at the New Powers as the Plot Demands offered by the hero's computer, comparing it to if Doctor Insano himself was able to shoot lightning out of his hand screaming "SCIENCE!" (Which Insano does. Frequently).
  • I Always Wanted to Say That: While reviewing Strike Commando, he points out one scene that is a blatant ripoff of a scene from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. "Can't we get... beyond Thunderdome?" Followed by celebrating his success at working the line into a review.
    • He does it a second time, in his review of The Howling 2. Afterwards, he throws up his arms and goes "WHOO!"
      • He does it for the third time as Dr. Insano towards the end of the Dungeonmaster review.
      • His review of "Cage" brings the count to four, complete with celebratory dance.
  • I Am the Trope: Arises from a hypothetical debate between a Lawful Good player and a trigger-happy pragmatic player.

[gallant voice] "He must face justice!"
[gravely voice] I am justice. (SPLORCH)

  • Implacable Man: Squall who just. Wont. DIE!
  • Incendiary Exponent: FIRE APES ON FIRE.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: A Running Gag in his LPs is that he's forced to slap himself whenever he makes one of these.
    • Happens all the time during the final part of Phantasmagoria 2.
    • When playing Ripper the game has you take a picture of a broken coffee mug. When Spoony calls it a "mug shot", he laughs but notes a second later he just hit himself out of reflex.
    • Insano: "I call it: Squallity Control! * insane laughter* I spent all day thinking up that one!"
    • "The morgue, people were just dying to get in there."
    • Also, from his Terror TRAX PC review:

Distressed Caller: "... He pulled my eyes... out of my head...
Spoony: "Pulled your eyes out? That guys got some optic nerve!"

    • There are several tree-related ones in rapid succession in the Dragon Strike video review:

"I'm okay, its bark is worse than its bite"
"I feel like such a sap"
"Its time we leaf"
"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree"
"We get to him, we get to the root of the problem!"

  • Incoming Ham: The Gatekeeper in Nightmare. When he even begins to speak, a loud thunder sound is played.
  • Indestructible Edible: According to Spoony's story The Toilet Pizza a pizza from Peter Piper's Pizza does not mold or decay instead just hardening into a pizza shaped slab of plastic.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: What Spoony says after a good 40 minute rant on The Slammies.

Spoony: "I'm gonna go drink heavily now. And I may never stop."

    • Happens quite literally in his v-log for the Breaking Dawn film; Noah admits that he doesn't normally drink though he does keep alcohol on hand for guests, but the film was so terrible that he decided to get drunk.
    • During his review of Tekken: Blood Vengeance, he starts a drinking game for any scene where you need to be a Tekken fan to understand what's going on, which is one shot, and two shots if being a Tekken fan makes what's going on more confusing. He says this holding a shot glass and a bottle Captain Morgan. The first scene has Xiaoyu riding Panda to school—and he starts drinking directly from the bottle.
  • Infomercial: In the Final Fantasy VIII review, Dr. Insano has one to advertise his new anti-magic field generator. Gets a Call Back in the Final Fantasy X review where he introduces the newest model...only to trail off as Wakka destroys it with a Blitzball.
  • In the Name of the Moon: In a crossover with Bennett the Sage:

Bennett: "For Lars?"
Spoony: "For Lars.

  • Insistent Terminology: "The council of shadowy people who sit in poorly-lit rooms who secretly run the world".
  • Ironic Echo: In the mission 12 LP of SWAT 4. The debriefing mentions that Lieutenant Spoony has been placed on medical leave for foot injuries sustained during the mission, an echo of and poke at Spoony injuring himself (Jones fracture in his foot) during the fund drive for That Guy With The Glasses.
    • Black Lantern Spoony also breaks his foot literally kicking Linkara's ass when he presses one of his Berserk Buttons.
  • It Got Worse: At the end of his Power Rangers review, he says Sega CD games couldn't possibly get any worse. The preview for the next review that follows proves him wrong. Big time.
    • The same thing happened after his review of Highlander II the Quickening; despite his claiming it to be the worst sequel (if not the worst movie) of all time. He subsequently found Highlander: Endgame to be arguably worse in certain areas; while the story isn't as bad, the direction and editing might actually be even more incompetent than the second film's. Finally, he declares Highlander: The Source to be vastly, unimaginably worse than The Quickening.
  • It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY": Spoony mocks Dave Thomas' pronunciation of fresh and fashion.

"We have the fray-shest old fay-shioned hamburgers!"

  • It's Personal: Spoony has mentioned several times that he prefers to review games and films that he has a personal connection with - in particular, awful games and films that he still feels burned that he wasted money on.
  • It's the Best Whatever Ever!: After reading the synopsis of Samurai Zombie Nation, declares it to have the "Best. Plot. EVER!"
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks: Noah takes this position with regards to certain long running franchises such as The Legend of Zelda. Whether or not he's right is beyond the scope of this article.
  • I Want My Jetpack: His reaction when Captain Z-Ro shows a man on a hovering platform and calls it "the latest development in powered flight".
    • Spoony also plays with the trope and related ones like It Will Never Catch On: he tends to compare predictions of future technology from works made in the past to how technology actually has moved on. The best examples of this are in Ripper where he mocks the Unusual User Interface of the future internet and compares the character's communication gadget to the iPhone.


J-L

  • Jive Turkey: comments The GameCrazy Training Video has a monopoly on this.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: Spoony's riff of After Last Season was taken down under polite request by the film's producers on the grounds of copyrights infringement. Now it's only available as an iRiff on Riff Trax, which requires a copy of the film itself. To Spoony's credit, he discourages illegal downloads of the film despite fans suggesting otherwise on the comments section of his site, and admitted that he was in the wrong for planning to post a movie in its entirety on his website. This is also a perfect opportunity for Spoony to put money where his mouth is regarding his challenge to TNA's Dixie Carter and see how many of his fans are willing to support him and buy his iRiff of the film instead of just illegally downloading the movie elsewhere.

Spoony: "I won't condone piracy. I simply ask you to support the site if you enjoyed the rifftrax. $1 isn't much to ask for an evening's fun."

  • Killed Off for Real: Spencer D. Bum at the start of the Final Fantasy X review's finale.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: In part 2 of his Final Fantasy X review, the first thing that comes to mind after Sin destroys Kilika village and leaves hundreds dead is to loot the bodies. Spoony figures Tidus wouldn't have a problem with it since he had no problem with stealing someone's potions from the ship just moments earlier.
    • Lampshaded in Phantasmagoria: "What does it say about me as a person that my first instinct is to rifle through her desk for useful objects?"
  • Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: Makes a Betrayal at Krondor reference, and then says "I just made a Betrayal At Krondor reference in Two-Thousand-and fucking-Eleven... I don't get out much..."
  • Large Ham:
  • Lethal Chef: Spoony describes himself in his Hell'sKitchen the game review as this saying that he can't cook anything that requires anything more then a microwave and/or a can opener or he might burn down the whole house although it is unknown if this also applies to him in real life.
  • Licked by the Dog: Happens with Dr. Insano after his attempt to create a world-eating monster out of cyboplasm and his own splooge only produces a fluffy pink Ridiculously Cute Critter.
  • Like a God to Me: Says that Richard Garriot is "a god among nerds".
  • Lord British Postulate: As well as demonstrating the Trope Namer in his Ultima Retrospective, Spoony discusses the trope in his Counter Monkey series when he unwisely gave Darth Vader a cameo in a Star Wars RPG and the adventurers promptly derailed the campaign out of obsession with trying to kill Vader.
  • Love It or Hate It: He describes Final Fantasy VIII as this right off the bat during its review. While some of his fans love it, Spoony... doesn't.
  • Lying Creator: Possibly. He announced the storyline of being banished to the Black Hole by the Gatecleaner if he didn't review a series of VCR board games within a year was being cancelled... only to pick it up again after that year had passed, with the Gatecleaner not being too happy that he failed to review them.
    • Wouldn't be the first time, especially after he repeatedly denied that Spooning With Spoony 2 was never going to happen during the TGWTG charity drive...barely an hour after Spooning With Spoony 2 had been shot.
  • Lyrical Dissonance: The theme song, "Break Me" by The Irresponsibles. While being a rousing piece of Crowning Music of Awesome, it has rather dark lyrics you might notice on first hearing it. Lampshaded by Spoony in a commentary where he said he loved the song but it was "basically implying that I'm a girl who likes to be domestically abused."
    • On the other hand, he is a guy who likes to be abused by bad movies and video games, so it's a bit of an apt metaphor.


M-O

  • Mad Scientist: Dr. Insano. He'll rule the world with science!!! And also winning the 2008 Presidential Election with running mate Fu Manchu.
  • Mad Scientist's Adorable Son: Son of Insano. He hasn't actually betrayed his father but he's so gosh-darned cute and full of love it's hard to think he'd do anything actually evil.
  • Magic Versus Science: Parodied in reference to Final Fantasy VIII Ass Pull "anti-magic field", with a projector for such a thing being sold in a home shopping channel-type segment by Dr. Insano. Without any fuel. A similar gag re-appears in the Final Fantasy X review, with Dr. Insano selling an anti-magic negator...and being completely astounded when it turns out you can take it out with a Blitzball.
  • Maniac Monkeys: The "Rage Monkeys" that Spoony's so obsessed with in Ripper.
  • A Match Made in Stockholm: As noted by Spoony in his written review, Agent 47's "relationship" with Olga Kurylenko's character in the Hitman movie strongly comes across as this. He drives across Russia while she's stuffed in his car trunk with a dead body, constantly threatens to torture and murder her, and drags her out of a restaurant by her hair. She becomes strangely attracted to him, very overtly tries to seduce him several times, and continues to accompany him when she has several opportunities to make a run for it. Being asexual 47 ignores her sexual advances, but does eventually show some degree of protection for her.
  • Mathematician's Answer: Spoony's take on the changes to Yuna between Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2.

Spoony: Quite a long way from the traditional kimono she wore before, and her previous characterization as a kind, demure, religious care-giver with a tragic fate. But is this huge change in outfit and characterization because of the radical cultural shift in Spira because of the exposure of Yevon as a maniacal, genocidal cult run by the undead bent on world domination... or just because japanese perverts want to see some cleavage and her cute ass in boy's shorts? Good question... The answer is "Yes".

  • Memetic Mutation: He uses clips from his infamous ahum, criticism, of the X Com remake as sound effect for his running counter of plot holes in Ultima 9, and it's inconsistency with the previous games. There's so many that we've heard "Betrayal!", "Betrayed me!" and "This game sucks!" more than 90 times in just part 1 of the review.
  • Mid-Review Sketch Show: Spoony tends to include vaguely related comedy skits with his reviews from time to time, the most elaborate of which by far were the "Predaborg" skits filmed by Ed Glaser of Dark Maze Studios, as a comedic pastiche of the film Spoony was reviewing, Robowar. His skits tend to receive a mixed reaction, with some fans being exceedingly upset by how characters like Dr. Insano hog up so much screen time from his reviews, and others asking for more comedy (Chuckles the Jester's appearance in a recent video seems to be directly inspired by the latter group).
  • Mind Screw: The "Madness of Roland" video.
  • Missing White Woman Syndrome: Although she isn't missing, Spoony has a point that Reb Brown in Mercenary Fighters just looks on with a slight hint of disapproval as a dozen African women are lined up and mowed down, but when the Scary Black Man is putting his hands on that one white woman? Oh, now it's on!
  • Monster Clown: Insano-as-Kefka in his Final Fantasy X review.
    • Averted with Chuckles, who claims he's not a clown because "clowns get paid."
  • Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Doctor Insano, natch.
  • Most Annoying Sound: "You're in my way sir."
    • Tidus in general, Tidus' forced laugh more specifically.
  • MSTing: Spoony's weapon of choice. To wit:

Spoony: "When you give someone a lamp with the devil in it you don't go, "Oh, this lamp is a little dangerous". You say, "Here's a lamp AND IT HAS THE DEVIL IN IT!" I mean what kind of weird shit was Headmaster Cid into?"

  • Multiple Choice Past: Is Dr. Insano an incarnation of Spoony trapped in a Stable Time Loop? Is he a high school loser named Alfonse Plumbottom (or Wayne Schlumper?) who had an unrequited crush on Spoony? Was he a woman (or a robot) until Linkara punched a hole in the fabric of the multiverse? Is he an immortal from the planet Zeist? Is Spoony the future incarnation of Insano? Is Insano Spoony's "Mr. Hyde"-style alter ego? Was he all of the above because Linkara punched reality (Linkara only remembering the "transformed Insano" for some reason)? Word of God is that "the origins of Dr. Insano are shrouded in mystery".
    • Noah drops the trope name in the audio commentary for Kickassia. He also remarks that it's kind of impressive that he has fans dedicated enough to try and sort out the various "continuities" of Insano.

Spoony: "There is no continuity, there is only Insano."

  • Murder Is the Best Solution: In his livestream of the DOS game Castles, the game keeps giving him moral choices (such as whether to support an exiled rebel claimant to another throne) with the third option always being "...or HAVE HIM MURDERED!" This rapidly becomes a Running Gag.
  • My Friends and Zoidberg: In one of his Vlogs, Spoony describes the movie 2012 as having "a fantastic cast of really well known actors... and Amanda Peet."
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Likes to lampshade this when he comes across it in media. And of course there's Dr Insano in his second appearance calling the voters idiots for voting for someone called "Dr Insano".
  • Narm: In-Universe.
    • After a while of listening to a middle-aged white woman trying to use gangsta-speak in his MST of the Game Crazy training video, Spoony's reduced to just laughing into the mike.
    • "Tell me... about Disneyland..."
  • Negative Continuity: Don't try to rack your brain over Insano's origins, Spoony's clones and wherever the hell Black Lantern Spoony fits into all of this. Clearly, as a fan of the show, he has the MST3K Mantra in mind.
    • Won't keep us from trying.
    • Spoony himself has said "I find it funny people are trying to figure out the continuity at work in this vid. You know what, there is no continuity, there is only Insano."
  • Nightmare Face: The end of the Madness of Roland review.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:

"Richard Garriot's tabletop Dungeons & Dragons game must have been just about the most glorious thing in human history. This game takes D&D, Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who among many other things, throws them in a blender and hits the puree switch. And my god is it beautiful. This guy is a god of nerds."

  • No Dead Body Poops: Subverted in the Ultima 6 review, where as revenge for Lord British being asleep and not waking up even when Spoony/The Avatar is dying from poison and needs healing, Spoony decides that as payback he'll die on Lord British's throne so that he'll wake up and find it covered in his voided bowels.
  • No Ending: The Dirty Harry game would simply cut to a password screen upon completion of a level. Spoony would reproduce this shortly after in the review itself, abruptly cutting to black just as Spoony would about to tell what would happen in the second level. Plus, there was the exact same song as with certain more infamous instance of this trope playing in the background.
  • No Ontological Inertia: Lampshaded in Grass Battle winner #1, "Norwegian Grass":

Fabian: You have to get to the source, the big grass monster. If you kill the source, all the grass will die. Haven't you seen The Faculty?
Protagonist: Of course. Isn't it a bit illogical?
Fabian: Ehm, no. It should work, I think.

  • Nostalgia Filter: Whenever Spoony talks about Fallout 3, BioShock (series), or the upcoming remake of X-COM, he clearly prefers the originals. It can quickly go into Your Mileage May Vary territory if you're not of the same gaming generation of him, or if you are and don't have a strongly positive opinion of the originals.
    • He is often aware of this though, but it caused him an unpleasant surprise when his general enjoyment of Fallout 3 (barring the endgame) made him go back and try the previous games, only to discover he just can't enjoy them like he used to.
  • Note to Self:: Insano's reaction to the nurses turning on the mad scientist in Clones of Bruce Lee:

Dr.Insano: "Note to self: have my nurse destroyed."

  • kick* You got a potion! *kick* You got a potion! *kick* You got a potion! *kick* You got a potion!
    • From his Cage review, in a conversation between Lou Ferrigno's character and two guys trying to get him to fight in a cage match:

"But I like to wrestle!" *happy reaction shots* "But I don't like fighting." *disappointed reaction shots* "But I like to wrestle!" *happy reaction shots* "But I don't like fighting" *disappointed reaction shots*

  • Overused Copycat Character: "An elf with two swords. Who's surprised?"
  • Our Hero Is Dead: ...but not if Linkara has anything to say about it.
    • As he'd ended his Final Fantasy VIII review in this way just in case he couldn't make any new reviews - something which seemed entirely possible at the time - this trope was almost an example of The Hero Dies.
  • Out of Focus: Burton the Robot. Still listed in the opening credits, still part of the title card, and still sitting in the background next to Spoony, but when was the last time he ever actually did anything?
    • Ultima VI: "Burton! Death ray! Now!" And he delivered.
    • Mostly justified because, although Burton was created to be a sort of Mystery Science Theater 3000 style puppet, the 'bot is still horribly fragile and difficult to work with, making it not worth the effort to integrate into Spoony's videos in any real capacity.
    • More recent videos have not just given more of a role to Burton but are suggesting something BIG and diabolical involving the Robot Buddy is coming...
  • Outrun the Fireball: The ending of the Final Fantasy VIII review, which is just Rule of Cool. Subverted given that the fireball outran him and annihilated him down to the lump of protoplasm Linkara found after the time lapse.
  • Overly-Long Scream: You try not spending the entire scene doing this after finding yourself in a Spooning with Spoony video with Bennett the Sage.
  • Overused Running Gag: Spoony has said he wants to avoid overusing Dr Insano to prevent him becoming one (though the character still seems pretty popular despite his frequent appearances) and also because doing the voice hurts his throat. However, he always manages to make these claims he's going to use Dr Insano less right before a review where Insano has a huge role, like the Ferris Bueller's Day Off review. One wonders if he's doing it on purpose.
    • One might also consider the "beyond Thunderdome" jokes to be this, especially since the entire point of the original joke was that you don't get to use the joke very often
    • Spoony has stated that many of his fans feel that his use of the fuse box counter, or counters in general, is this, however he continues to do it because it's a joke that he personally enjoys and he doesn't feel he got as much use out of it as he initially thought despite fan reactions toward the contrary.


P-R

Dr.Insano: "You actually voted for a guy named "Dr.Insano"! What the hell is wrong with you people?!?"

"The readings are into the GIGAQUEER RANGE!!" *Gaydar explodes*

    • The DOE movie exploding the Ass Counter.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot:
    • The entire reason for Final Fantasy VIII's Grand Finale was that Noah was moving out of his parents' house and replacing his camera and didn't want to change things without explanation.
    • As well as the plot of the Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge review. The original plot was to have him forced to play it by the Gatekeeper/Cleaner/Beekeeper in the blagoh. But after weeks of frustration decided to make the plot about all the trouble he had with it.
    • Similarly, he was unable to get The Madness of Roland to run on his computer, so instead edited together a bunch of the video files extracted from the game to form a trippy series of visuals reminiscent of The Ring.
    • He's also made a few broken foot jokes ever since he broke his.
    • He wrote in a sketch in his Skullduggery video to explain the appearance of his dog. She's appeared in the background of nearly all his videos since (and sometimes before).
    • Referenced in his Kickassia commentary as well. Not concerning his role for a change, but Lord Kat's role had to be shortened severely due to injuries.
    • More recently, Spoony tweeted that he might have to retire the Chuckles character because Oreo got into his costume closet and tore up the outfit (and the rubber chicken).
  • Reality Subtext: In his review of "Ultima Underworld 2," he snarls at a Headless invading the review at the end of the skit, "Don't you fucking test me, you headless hairball, not after the month I've had." This was shortly after his Creator Breakdown in 2011.
    • Also in the finale of Final Fantasy X, Dr Insano says the line "What were you expecting? The Ghost Busters?!". This line makes a lot more sense when you know that Spoony originally planned on having a huge finale with the Ghost Busters making an appearance. However, he couldn't get them to come, as they only really do charity events. This and the fact that he planned such a huge finale to begin with (instead of just focusing on reviewing the game) were fuel for his Creator Breakdown.
  • Real Song Theme Tune: "Break Me" by The Irresponsibles.
    • On the rare occasions that Dr. Insano does a review by himself, the theme tune changes to "Weird Science" by Oingo Boingo.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
    • Spoony's 'An Appeal For Manners' blog post explains to his fans how his fellow reviewers hate when he posts their videos on his site because a number of the comment posters on the site (as opposed to actual fans who like the show and support and encourage Spoony) tend to be jerkish trolls, which also prompted him to take down his acceptance speech video for winning a category in the Mashable Open Web Awards.
    • In his infamous Final Fantasy VIII review:
    • And again for Kickassia.
  • Record Needle Scratch: After playing porn music to acompany Quistis in his first Final Fantasy VIII video, the camera will continue to cut to Spoony becoming more and more interested in Quistis until he is seen with a jar of lotion in his hand, and he sees the camera is on. Cue the scratch.
  • Reference Overdosed: Especially his Phantasmagoria2 Let's Play, where much of the humour comes from the way he crams in a reference to a film/game/internet meme in practically every sentence.
  • Refuge in Audacity: "Spooning with Spoony" is so offensive and disgusting, it warps all the way back around to hilarious and awesome. According to Spoony's commentary, the original was going to be worse. Spooning With Spoony II carried on the trend.
  • Rewind, Replay, Repeat:

The avatar: What's a paladin?
Spoony: Again.
The avatar: What's a paladin?
Spoony: Again!

  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Son of Insano. "Riki-tee!"
  • Robot Buddy: Burton, a Mystery Science Theater-style puppet, made of a dust bin and a handheld vacuum cleaner, who spends most of his time sitting behind Noah's chair and looking on silently. He is apparently triggered to self-destruct if Spoony is gravely injured or dies.
    • Also has voice operated functions, such as DEATH RAY, which Spoony used on Chuckles the jester as he was threatening him to shove a DVD up his ass. However, Spoony still had to manually turn Burton's head towards its target.
    • He created Burton because he originally wanted to do his own Mystery Science Theater 3000 style show.
  • Ruined FOREVER: In his review of Metroid: Other M, Spoony devotes a decent length of time to thoroughly explain why he thinks the series has suffered permanent damage thanks to the game's characterization of Samus.
    • Likewise, his review of Highlander the Source explains the many ways this movie pissed on the grave of the franchise dug and buried by everything following the original film.
    • And in his review of Final Fantasy X-2, he notes the minigame where you're supposed to give LeBlanc a massage, to which she responds with audio that could easily be dubbed over any porn scene, as the point where Final Fantasy died.
    • And it also covers his view of Ultima 9. During the review of that game Spoony keeps a Betrayal! counter for every plot hole. It's up to 93 by the end of part 1 of the review.
  • Rule of Funny:
    • From the commentary on the final Final Fantasy VIII video, about Dr. Insano's appearances: "It's kind of cute how people are trying to come up with some kind of continuity for all this. There's no continuity, there's only Insano."
    • Linkara's commentary on the Warrior review notes a scene where Linkara gets a look at Dr. Insano without his goggles, which spawned all kinds of speculation due to him now knowing Insano was Spoony. He tells them all to not take it so seriously.
    • Him turning back to normal after Insano's defeat.

Spoony: "I got better".

Spoony: I think I stopped playing that series after I got Beyond Thunderdome. OH! OH, I DID IT AGAIN! I CANNOT. BE. STOPPED!

    • "The Whatever-est Thing Ever Filmed", a faux warning card that shows up in his reviews of Reb Brown films preceding scenes. These include "The Most Awesome Thing" (Yor, the Hunter from the Future using a rigor mortis-stiffened pterodactyl thing to hang glide into a cave and kick a purple caveman in the head); "The Funniest Thing" (Reb's character from Strike Commando in a Narm-tastic scene where he's tearfully talking about Disneyland to a dying child); and "The Manliest Thing" (Reb in Mercenary Fighters taking over a machine gun and using it to single-handedly kill a dozen enemies).
    • "Ooooooo, NASTY." Whenever someone gets killed of gorily, Spoony cuts to a clip from Knightmare.
    • Being attacked by a Final Fantasy character at the end of his multi-part reviews of each game.
    • Any time Deron McBee shows up in something he reviews (surprisingly many!), Spoony will be sure to include a video of a nasty bump he suffered as Malibu on American Gladiators.
    • In his review of Ripper, repeatedly stating his belief that "Marion" is breeding killer attack monkeys in the sewers.
    • In the Ultima series "No, not that Time Lord.

S-T

  • Sarcasm Failure: The 8-6-10 Wrestle! Wrestle! V-log. The serious kind.
    • Even earlier, the 7-30-10 Wrestle! Wrestle! has him outright admitting that TNA portraying Eric Young as "comedically" brain-damaged has him too pissed off to be funny.
    • Almost the entirety of his review of Highlander: The Source. At one point he says that all he needs to do is show a clip from the movie and then show his increasingly appalled reaction shot, as the film's stupidity speaks for itself.
  • Sanity Slippage: It takes quite a bit before he can finish and articulate a complete setence after the Avatar inquires what the 'Codex of Ultimate Wisdom' is in Ultima 9.

Spoony: AAAAAHHHHHHHHH! The avatar has to ask what the fucking Codex.. No! No, it's, this... Do I even have to explain in how many ways.. I can't, I can't explain... It's the thesis of the whole... I can't, this is what I'm dealing with... This is like the Pope asking what the fucking Bible is!

  • Sarcasm Mode: This one should be pretty self explanatory.
  • Satan: In his review of Final Fantasy VIII, he ends up getting a lamp that has "TEH DEVIL" inside. Spoony is awesome enough to blind, beat and tame The Devil, though, so all is good.
  • Schedule Slip: Several things that Spoony may announce at some point may take quite a while to actually get done, for various reasons; most prominently, of course, that Spoony is working entirely on his own.
    • Lampshaded in Film Brain's review of Hudson Hawk in early October 2010. Spoony complains that he was going to review the film & game, and Film Brain admits he did see the list that mentioned this... When it was posted 9 months earlier.
    • Wrestle! Wrestle! started out providing weekly recaps of Raw and Impact, and even added Sean Fausz to cover the workload. Since mid-November 2010, however, recaps have been sporadic, and the site sometimes goes more than a month without updates.
    • At the start of February 2011, Spoony announced a list of films & games he was going to review, intended to cover to the end of April. He was actually making decent progress through the list, until Real Life Writes the Plot kicked in.
  • Screaming At Squick
  • Screw Yourself: Spoony complimenting Spuna as "the sexiest woman I have ever seen."
  • Secret Test of Character: In the Final Fantasy VIII finale, Spoony proclaims that being able to sit through Eyes On Me in its entirety proves that the viewer is a pussy, and then proceeds to use the song in its entirety in the end credits.
  • Self-Deprecation:
    • In the Final Fantasy VIII finale, he talks about how making you sit through the "Pussy Song", but then talks about spending a week matching it to the Final Fantasy VIII ending credits, and says that makes him a bigger pussy then the watcher.
    • "You may not think having a cold is that debilitating, but you don't have a nose as big as mine!"
    • "Who do you think is going to pick up this game, anyway... Other than retards who review games on the internet?!"
  • Series Fauxnale: Spoony's Final Fantasy VIII finale, which he made not only to finish his Final Fantasy VIII series for good, but also to serve as his own grand finale because he was unsure if he would be able to make any more videos for a while. When Linkara caught wind of this, he made an extra skit for the finale to serve as a Sequel Hook, where he recovers some of Spoony's genetic material with the intention of bringing him back to life... leading directly into the Clones Of Bruce Lee video, where Linkara creates a clone of Spoony.
  • Serious Business: He thinks Twilight is the worst cultural phenomenom of the last decade.
  • Sexophone: In Spooning With Spoony.
  • Shirtless Scene:
    • Spoony, while being completely intoxicated on pain killers, drenched in sweat, and oozing just a little blood, does some sort of dance sequence in his underwear after reviewing the ET video game.
    • He also goes shirtless for a moment in the game reviewing convention panel with Angry Joe and Birdman.
  • Shouting Shooter: When you give Gandalf an assault rifle.
  • Sincerity Mode: In his 2011 v-log for the new "X-Com" game, he mentions the time during the last E3 where he shouted "BETRAYAL!" and assures us that he was not playing a character. This video has Spoony almost chillingly quiet, yet nonetheless brimming with repressed rage that his most favorite strategy game of all time has not received an update, but an In Name Only first-person shooter.
  • Skyward Scream: His scream of "BETRAYAL!" in E3 over the reboot of "X-Com".
    • Repeated in E3 2011.
  • So Bad It's Crazy Awesome:
    • His review of "Yor, the Hunter from the Future" sums the movie up as this.
    • He later clarifies this in his "Robowar" review as "Things don't have to be good to be awesome!"
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: During Part 2 of his Final Fantasy X review, he played "Ignition Remix" by R. Kelly during Yuna's sending ceremony. Because, he said, "Naturally I feel the urge to profane this most holy and solemn ritual with completely inappropriate music."
  • Space Does Not Work That Way: "Orbital wobble?!"
  • Spit Take: Turning into a Running Gag.
    • Upon hearing that AJ in Mazes and Monsters wants to kill himself.
    • When he hears that Yuna from Final Fantasy X seriously wants to marry the transparently evil Seymour.
    • In The Beastmaster 2 when he makes a joke about seeing one of the Sliders coming the other way through the portal to a parallel Earth... only to actually see Kari Wuhrer from Sliders go through it.
    • In Lords of Magick when a wizard lists off his abilities as being finding lost friends, exorcising ghosts, curing the plague, turning frogs into toads and restoring maidenheads.

Spoony: [spits] Oh man, I gotta stop drinking water during these clips.

  • Stab the Salad: Sephiroth popping in to say, ".......Love your work."
  • Stable Time Loop: Dr. Insano is created through Spoony's desire to go back in time to erase the Final Fantasy franchise from existence. To do so, he creates his own time loop where instead of studying science for decades he sends a future version of himself back in time to give him all the knowledge he needs.
  • Start of Darkness:
    • We belatedly learn (one of) Dr. Insano's origins in his review of the original Final Fantasy: the result of a time paradox just like the game's.
    • In the Party Mania review Insano is actually Wayne Schlumper, a teenage scientist who was rejected by a female version of Spoony. Distraught and driven to insanity over the fact she didn't go out with him and his brother, wasting his scientific efforts on a pair of carefully created dancing shoes and hair-gel, he became insane with grief and hinted he would create his own woman. In the commentary, Spoony points out that this is simply the Insano of the alternate dimension the review takes place in.
  • Stealth Parody: Part 10 of the Final Fantasy VIII review is dedicated solely to "trashing" the original Final Fantasy and in doing so takes a bunch of potshots at himself and his caustic reviewing habits. It was so deadpan serious and over the top that Noah had to post a notice on the video that he was joking and he actually likes the game. Apparently few people noticed it was posted on April 1, 2009.
  • Stealth Pun: During his Skullduggery review, while cosplaying as Simcoe The Magician, he conjures a dog from a pair of oreos. The dog was featured prominently in some of Spoony's videos before hand, and went by the name Oreo.
  • The Stoner: Though it's probably a joke, this tweet is interesting.
    • For a given value, it might actually have been true. He was sick at the time and might have taken some pain meds, thus "high."
  • Stock Footage: Has several bits he uses, most notably footage of a crowd booing at a political rally which he cuts to whenever he does a really dark joke.
  • Strange Minds Think Alike: Both he and Maffew of Botchamania feel that the only thing John Cena sells is merchandise.
    • ScrewAttack debuted a video series, DEATH BATTLE, a few days after Spoony unveiled Deadliest Character at the 2010 TGWTG Donation Drive, with a similar concept to Deadliest Character. In his commentary for Deadliest Character, Spoony mentions ScrewAttack's video & notes that whilst it's suspicious that their series debuted after his & was clearly put together quicker & with less effort than Deadliest Character, he's going to put it down to this trope for the time being, rather than Follow the Leader.
  • Stupid Sexy Flanders: He expressed this same sentiment in the first part of the Final Fantasy X review in regards to a Rikku cosplayer (which wasn't about gender so much as Hypocritical Humor in regards to her Stripperiffic costume).

"Stupid sexy cosplayers."

  • Stupid Statement Dance Mix Well, not a dance mix, but someone online took his BETRAYAL shout of X-COM First-Person Shooter and turned it into a metal song.
  • Stylistic Suck: According to Noah's commentary, the Dragonzord's sudden appearance in Deadliest Character was done to imitate Deadliest Warrior's habit of having a previously unmentioned factor come in out of nowhere and decide the fight, often in contradiction of the research team's earlier conclusions.
  • Suckiness Is Painful: This is the point of his "Experience Bij" segments. "Bij" being some Klingon thing where they test manliness by determining how much utter suffering they can go through. In this particular case, Spoony shows off videos that are intensely annoying.
    • He's actually stated in several TNA reviews that he thinks Impact is so bad that it causes him actual physical pain. He even gives a small demonstration where watching the Knockouts proceeds to give him a headache.
  • Take That:
    • His whole Ultimate Warrior parody character, which is mostly a spoof of the man's spastic incoherency.

Ultimate Spoony: "I HEAR IT'S AMAZING WHEN THE FAMOUS PURPLE STUFFED WORM IN FLAP JAW SPACE WITH A TUNING FORK DOES A RAW BLINK ON HARA-KIRI ROCK, HOAK HOGAN! I NEED SCISSORS! SIXTY-OOOOOOOONNNNNEEEE!"

"What, I can't see him take a shower? Minus two stars! I must see every single part of his daily morning routine!"

"Makes just as much sense as putting the Green Goblin as the head of SHIELD" *Beat* "Oh wait!"

  • Talkative Loon: Spoony's eerily accurate impression of the Ultimate Warrior.

Ultimate Spoony: At Wrestlemania, Hoak Hogan, you will feel the full force of my destrucity! And you had better be foked, Hoak Hogan, because I am going to foke myself this Sunday on exactly one thing, Hoak Hogan: the WWF World Heavyweight Championship! You won't be able to click your heels three times and escape my Matrix, Hoak Hogan! You have less chance than two fighters against a Star Destroyer! The only way to stop the power of the Warrior is to take off and nuke the site from orbit, Hoak Hogan! SKRONK!!!

  • Talking to Himself:
    • Dr. Insano, Chef Ramsay, Spencer D. Bum, the Ultimate Spoony, Cap'n Smiling Jack D'Arcy, the Gate Cleaner, and Hulk Spogan. And thats not counting reading out writen dialogue in games.
    • The '"Clones of Bruce Lee review, where a triple splitscreen allows Spoony to share the couch with Dr. Insano and a Spoony!Bum.
    • A literal case in the finale of his Phantasmagoria Let's Play where he spoofs various scenes from the game.
  • Testosterone Poisoning: Yor the Hunter remains his yardstick for masculinity.
    • He's the man!
    • Until this. Motherfucker suplexed A TRAIN.
    • Another Reb Brown clip from Mercenary Fighters allegedly tops them all:

Disclaimer: Warning. What follows is the manliest thing ever recorded on film. Your balls may drop of in shame at the mere knowledge that you will never in your entire life do something half this manly.

  • Tethercat Principle: In the Final Fantasy X review, Spoony apparently spent the entire two-month-long break between installments hammering the X button to farm potions from an infinitely deep chest. And he has the beard to prove it.
  • That One Level: His playthrough of SWAT 4 has level 11 titled "I Die A Lot". That he does, and even lets you guess in the video how many times he does in fact die. 59. The final level he beats right out of the box.
  • Tempting Fate: Spoony's does this in the Warrior #1 review, believing that Warrior can't be nearly as bad as Dr. Insano says it is, then screams in terror from one look at the cover, and yes the comic really was that horrible.

Yes, she dances so poorly it causes people to go blind. Who could possibly do a dance so horrifying it blinds people?[6]

  • There Was a Door: In Tekken: Blood Vengeance he's particularly exasperated when Jin and Kazuya separately punch out the walls of a room within seconds of each other and throws up his hands. He also wonders how awkward it would've been if either them of them accidentally punched out the wall Heihachi was hiding behind instead.

Anyone else? Anyone else want to punch out a wall, we've got two left!

    • This is followed by Randy Savage's Slim Jim commercial where he does this as well as the Kool-Aid Man.
  • They Just Didn't Care: Noah firmly believes that either the makers of Highlander: The Source either didn't have a clue about the franchise or were deliberately trying to piss off the Highlander fans with it.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In reviewing Game Over: Control-Alt-Death, Spoony points out that Drexel's comments about how Hunter is torn up about the death toll from the military co-opting some of his games as training programs would be a great plot point and character beat... if the movie ever bothered to mention it again.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: When talking about The Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time he uses this trope to describe the reaction of fans of the first movie as soon as they saw the poster for the second and the car on the front. This was also his reaction to the Warrior comics.
  • Threat Backfire: In Ultima VIII, the Guardian gloats about exiling the Avatar to a planet where nobody has heard of him and his exploits saving Britannia. Spoony points out that previous games have demonstrated that no-one in Britannia seems to have heard of him or his exploits either!
  • Too Dumb to Live: In his Knightmare review, one of the contestants had to spell the word shroud backwards. He first spells it D-U-R-H-S (shrud), and after getting a hint to use an O from the host, he confidently comes up with O-S-R-D-H-U.

Spoony: WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SPELL, YOU STUPID PILLOCK?!

  • Too Soon: Invoked by Spoony after he refers to a wrestler being choked out as being "Chris Benoited".
    • Noah felt bad about writing a suicide joke (that was promptly scrapped) after the suicide of one of his fans.
    • At MAG Fest 2011, Noah made a joke about Warrior teaching Hogan's son out of drive. The audience gave a collective "ooooooooooo"
  • Totally Radical:
    • Everything about Party Mania.
    • When he MST's a Game Crazy training video, one of the hosts' flagrant overuse of this sometimes reduces Spoony to hysterical laughter.
      • Said host is a woman in her mid-thirties, maybe early forties, whose delivery is so utterly white. It really is that funny.
  • Trash the Set: The finale of the Final Fantasy VIII series was Spoony's excuse to give his room a proper sendoff - by blowing it up after Burton self-destructs.
  • Troperiffic: For the sheer number of other tropes listed here.


U-Z

  • Uncanny Valley: In-universe, Spoony has expressed distaste for films that rely too heavily on CG characters and effects. In his review of AVATAR, he compared the film to Jackie Chan's movies, stating that watching Jackie Chan and other real actors do the stunts and fight scenes gives weight to the performance that he's never felt watching computer-generated characters like the Na'vi.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Brings up in Mercenary Fighter that despite his supposed moral problems with killing the African villagers, Reb Brown's character doesn't protest a word as several of them are gunned down in cold blood, and instead protests shooting one white reporter.
  • Unobtanium: Dr. Insano's inventions are powered by raritanium ore.
  • Uranus Is Showing: Appears in his review of Ultima II, which is followed by an immediate lampshading:

"I also probed Uranus, which is big and swampy and full of craters, but is otherwise uninteresting. Actually, there's only one town there, called New Jester, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out why. But if I were to guess, I'd say it's where all the jesters of the world were exiled for making endless Uranus jokes."

  • Valley Girl: Gender Bender Spoony and 80's Chick.
  • Verbal Tic: Hulk Hogan (as impersonated by Spoony) is seemingly incapable of not shouting "Brother!" at the end of every sentence. Similarly, Ric Flair yells "WOOOO!" anytime he speaks, though it's not so much a verbal tic as a cry for help.

Ric Flair: I'm wrestling with concussion right now, WOOOO! *slams head onto desk*

"WHO DARES FOLLOW THE POPE AROUND WITH A CAMERA, DADDAY?! THE POPE IS THE POPE AND THE POPE'S CONGREGATION'S ALWAYS BEHIND THE POPE, DADDAY!"

  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: In his livestream of Kingdom Hearts, Spoony seems delighted that the game gives him the opportunity to beat up Final Fantasy characters he hates such as Squall, Tidus and Wakka.
    • Also brings this up in Ultima VII in that despite you supposedly being ultimate force for good, the game lets you kill a lot of people for fun, and is most amused by being able to kill Lord British (who Spoony notes as the series goes on looks like more and more of a bad guy).
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Dr. Insano is a merciless parody (specifically of Edea in Final Fantasy VIII), getting elected president despite making no effort to hide his supervillainy.
  • Villainous Rescue: Spoonyroth runs through Spuna in a sequence reminiscent of Aerith's death in Final Fantasy VII.
  • We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Done twice within two minutes when he realizes the protagonist of Final Fantasy X is a collection of everything he hates. Cue him screaming that he hates him and getting cut off by a picture of Insano-Kefka and the words "HATE HATE HATE" showing up on the screen. Then two seconds later when he screams, "SEND HELP!" in response to Tidus opening his mouth again.
    • Done again in the Ultima 8 review, when he goes nuts after his game character finally makes it across the water form the insanely impossible jumping required only to get blown into the water by an exploding chest. And in this case, Noah took advantage of it to add a mid-show commercial break on the Blip video.
  • Wham! Episode: The Beastmaster 2 review ends with the happy note that Dr. Insanso and his son have to leave in order to stop a dimensional singularity.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?:

Scientology is the one true religion!

    • Which parodies the fact that the Wing Commander movie presents pretty much the same situation, although it's somewhat more practical, if it wasn't for the fact every ship computer can do the same, anyway.
    • At first Spoony thought the floors were the worst enemy in Ultima 3. But then fans alerted him to the fact that you can be attacked by grass outside the Final Dungeon. In response, he set up a contest for fans to make videos of themselves battling the green menace for a chance to win prizes like autographed pictures and T-shirts.
    • In his Let's Play of Phantasmagoria 2, whenever the game dwells on the protagonist's banal mundane affairs for long periods and fails to live up to its horror theme (which is often), Spoony yells "PHANTASMAGORIA! A PUZZLE OF THE FLESH!"
      • A similar joke in Tekken: Blood Vengeance, where he yells the title dramatically in response to the film focusing on the mundane affairs of the two teenage girls.
  • What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Spooning with Spoony. The man himself had this to say in his commentary:

Noah: "You probably think that I'm going to blame this on drugs or alcohol. I probably should. But nope, we were all stone-cold sober when we made this."

    • His E.T. review was a straight-up aversion, but it was justified: the drugs in question were painkillers, which he was taking following surgery to remove his wisdom teeth.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Spoony's reaction to the fact that TNA showed Samoa Joe being kidnapped by ninjas and then promptly forgot that he existed, with not so much as a single reaction, going on a month since the kidnapping. This also happens to be the moment when, after enduring the entire TNA broadcast, he finally snaps:

Spoony: "But he was abducted by ninjas! NINJAS! CALL THE COPS! There are ninjas kidnapping people on TV! THE COPS! Did no one get a license plate? Do ni - NINJAS! KIDNAPPING! TV!"

  • When She Smiles: Considers Natalie Portman this in his Thor review.
  • Who Writes This Crap?: Inverted in his Punkinhead Review, in which Linkara, dressed the Gatekeeper, puts on a mask and exclaims I AM, THE BEEKEEPER. Spoony replies, "Oh my God, I wrote that."
    • He notes in his Ultima 7 review that Chuckles the Jester broke the rules of his word game in his previous appearance. "What asshole wrote his jokes, anyway?"
  • Wild Mass Guessing: He and his brother think that John Cena gets stronger the more merch he sells.
  • Willing Suspension of Disbelief: He says the presence of Xiaoyu's panda in Tekken: Blood Vengeance is so distracting that it completely breaks his suspension of disbelief in every scene it's in, simply because no one explains it. At all.
  • With Lyrics: He uses the tune of "Ode to Joy" for this in his Final Fantasy VIII:

"Quistis, boobies, Quistis, boobies, Squall is getting laid tonight!"

YOU! SHALL NOT! PASS! *starts blasting away at the Balrog with an AK-47 and phaser before finally blowing it away with an M79 grenade launcher*

  • Zeerust: When reviewing games/movies made in the past but set in the future, he will often compare the technology presented there to that which now exists, such as Apple iProducts. Shows up a lot in his Let's Play of Ripper.
  1. ↑ Grudgingly admitting to enjoying the battle system, and praising the high quality of both the soundtrack and cutscenes, even going so far as to call the latter "heartbreakingly beautiful"
  2. ↑ Praising the Thunder Plains concert (aside for some of the clunky lyric translations) for being a beautiful song that Yuna's VA performed well and for having an FMV that managed to get him emotionally invested the Shuyin/Lenne relationship in just three minutes
  3. ↑ Praising the start of the movie for showing the Cullen family's pasts and motivations, making them interesting characters, as well as the fact that the actors turned in better performances than in the previous two parts
  4. ↑ Saying that he actually likes Reb as an actor and feels that he could have been one of the big action stars if only he'd gotten better roles
  5. ↑ Which is to force Shuyin into his body, which he'll then blow up taking Shuyin with him
  6. ↑ Cue another guest appearance by Benzaie.
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