Early in 2003, two guys in Victoria, British Columbia named Graham and Paul figured making a website where they could show off some of their videos would be a good idea.
Several months later, when they remembered the idea, they started work on it. After a couple design concepts, they settled on LoadingReadyRun, inspired in name and appearance by the Commodore 64 home computer system from the '80s (see, they're also big geeks).
More than just showing off their few previous works, Graham and Paul decided to make new videos. Lots of new videos. Like, one every week. As well as being big geeks, they also make very poor and ambitious decisions. Despite the thoroughly insane schedule they'd set up for themselves, and even though there was work and school to deal with, LRR never missed an update for ten years. Over that time they blossomed into professional video creators, hiring on friends and inspiring others to colloborate and eventually move to the island to help with production. The weekly sketches eventually ended in 2013 due to becoming too labour and time instensive on top of other projects. They hosted a kickstarter campaign to fund a final year of filming, which was successful enough to not only help them cap that era of videos, but also bring back a few other series on a more regular basis and pivot into Twitch streaming as a main pillar of their output.
From their initial sketch comedy scenarios, they've since expanded into a veritable "Mega-Entertainment Network" with a staggering level of output. Their original shows, miscellaneous bonus videos, and assorted livestream events are uploaded between their various YouTube channels.
- Absurdly Short Production Time: The Crapshoot, a stream where the crew thinks of, writes, films, and edits a Crapshot episode in a single afternoon. While it certainly helps that Crapshots are inherently shorter than anything else, and the premises are pretty simple, it's still quite impressive considering the speed at which it's done and how much is involved even in a simple shoot like this.
- AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: Dave's Spokesman tends to end sentences. Partway through, or maybe with a question? Or will ramble on without regard to any natural pauses grammatical requirements or supposed punctuation.
- A Day in the Limelight: One episode of Commodore Hustle (aptly titled "The Bee Team") had Tally, Cam, Dale and Kate trying to deal with someone who sent them a crate of bees for Desert Bus while the main crew was busy at PAX.
- Affectionate Parody: Many, including the excellent CSI:CSI - Internal Investigations. Replaced the discovery of a dead body with the stealing and eating of another person's sandwich. Another example would be How To Talk Like A Pirate, which poked fun at old-style informational videos.
- The Alleged Car: Since Road Quest is based on the road trip specials of Top Gear and The Grand Tour, the cars the six travelers use are effectively this.
- The Alcoholic: "The Couch" can easily be interpreted as a man trying to over-come his alcoholism but eventually giving up due to how prevalent drinking is in modern culture.
- Analogy Backfire: Overlaps with Sidetracked by the Analogy in the Rapidfire sketches, where Graham's character Jeff tries to explain simple concepts to Johnny's character using complex analogies, and Johnny completely fails to understand.
Graham: So, these (indicating about thirty soft drink cans) represent the 300 Spartans, and ... this (takes Johnny's soft drink can) represents the one million Persians.
Johnny: One - one million?
Graham: Yes.
Johnny: (indicates the lone can) This is one million Persians?
- Archangel Gabrielle: Shows up in a recurring bit where she offers quests to peasants. She's still bitter about all the confusion from a woodcutter misspelling her name so that she has to keep explaining she's a lady angel.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In the commodoreHustle episode Confidants, when Kathleen decides to buy a set of DVDs off of Craigslist, James asks her "Are you afraid of being mugged, or stabbed, or randomly insulted?"
- Ascended Extra: Due to early Loading Ready Run videos basically relying on Graham and Paul's local friends, many mainstays had various appearances in videos as cameos or bit parts before becoming actual contracted members of the site.
- The Alberta crew (Beej, Heather, Ian, Cori) met some Loading Ready Run members at conventions, and eventually Beej asked if he could help volunteer with the next Desert Bus. Eventually he asked Ian and Cori to come with him. After a certain point the four had moved to Victoria for unrelated reasons, but their close proximity made it a lot easier for them to help with things and eventually they were made proper members.
- Adam had appeared in a few early LRR videos just by being James and Ashley's roommate, but around the time they began ramping up their streaming content and he needed a job, they decided to bring him on full-time.
- Jordynne was originally a guest for the Guilds of Ravnica Pre-Pre Release, flown in from Ontario. Some time later, LRR needed an extra editor and, with stronger infrastructure for remote streaming, Jordynne joined the crew. While still based in Ontario.
- Avengers Assemble: Parodied in The Job — because it was their first major video hosted by the Escapist, they used the trope as an excuse to introduce the cast. In-universe, the job turns out to be moving a couch.
- Back for the Finale:
- Many people in The LoadingReadyRumble 2, the site's final weekly skit after a several-year run. Due to starring numerous past characters from throughout LRR history, this features many real-life actors who haven't been seen in LRR content in a long time. This includes, but isn't limited to: Morgan, Tim, Matt, Jer, Tally, Andy, and Dale (and a mention of Bill, though he couldn't appear personally). This also applies to every single fictional character portrayed within, some of whom were one-shots, while others were recurring characters.
- Similarly, Friday Nights' final episode funded by Wizards of the Coast featured several actors who had stepped away at that time (Jer, Matt, Alex, and even Ben coming back after appearing in an episode six years prior).
- Bears Are Bad News: Kathleen's 'completely rational' fear of bears is a particularly notable Running Gag.
- Bizarre Seasons: A variant in Daylight Savings, where whole days pass by in a matter of seconds, forcing the introduction of a 5792-day calender and several new months like "Septebgust", "Junetember" and "Windows Vista".
- Blatant Lies: Better sources for news would in fact have some of the hats Graham Stark has shown on Feed Dump.
- Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: Hot & Saucey features a salesmen trying to sell increasingly ridiculous hot sauces to an unenthused restaurateur.
- Breaking Bad News Gently: Said at times. One example is in All the Little People:
Paul: I've got something to tell you. You may want to sit down.
Graham: (uncomfortable) I... think I'd rather stand... near the door.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The Season 4 Finale broke the Fourth Wall at the end by having the following exchange:
James: Is this really how Season Four ended??
Graham: Well... it is now.
All: *look directly at the camera*
- Broken Aesop: A mild version in Xavier. Xavier is a figment of Martin's imagination which tries to tell him to stop playing video games and spend some quality time with his girlfriend.
Xavier: You need me to remind you that Karen is not a toy. She's not just going to sit on a shelf. If you leave her alone long enough, eventually she's going to run into someone like me...
- It turns out, however, that his girlfriend's idea of quality time is playing video games. Lampshaded:
Xavier: Oh, Martin. You really don't need me, you know.
- Butt-Monkey: Matt; both in the 'them playing them' videos and in the group in general. Unlike traditional Butt Monkeys, the group defends him if the forums get too vocal with Matt insults, and Matt normally gives as good as he gets. Nonetheless, LRR aren't shy about the trope, and during DB3 a running gag began where Matt was personally blamed for all the world's problems.
- Buffy Speak: ALL THE TIME. The crew grew up with Buffy, so this comes as no surprise. Even more prominent now that their everyday interactions are heard during streaming.
Graham: We've been waiting for James - if he doesn't get here soon it's gonna be Snakes on James's Face, Applied Liberally and With Force.
(James shows up)
Graham: Way to answer your phone, No-Answer-Your-Phone...
Kathleen: I'm sorry, I'm taking this way too seriously.
Graham: Hey. There's nothing wrong with taking comedy seriously.
James: Except for all the things you did.
Paul: Yes, those were wrong things.
Kathleen: Hey, friend. Can I interest you in this fine...this?
- But Thou Must!: Parodied in Duty Calls, where the peasant (Paul) flat-out refuses to go on the Divine Quest laid out for him by the archangel Gabriel(le).
- But Wait, There's More!: In Duty Calls:
Kathleen: But wait, don't answer yet! You get the sword, you get the reasonably attractive maiden, you get martyred-
Graham: What?
Kathleen: -I mean rich, and famous, all for the low low price of one dragon and one small, slightly evil wizard!
- Calling Your Attacks: In 'Man Cooking', Calling Your Ingredients.
- The Cameo: To the shock and awe of all, the group managed to grab two geek-oriented celebrities for cameos in Lock Out. The lucky cameo-ees? Wil Wheaton and Tycho!!
- Yet another cameo, though he doesn't actually appear in person, is Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation as the narrator for the video Save Our Games. And, again, while he doesn't show up in person, he does mention at the end that he's narrator, at which point his Zero Punctuation character appears on screen for a second or two.
- Character Blog: Whenever a Twitter account is shown during either a regular video or ENN, it generally exists for real (the crew's justification being that it's just easier to make a Twitter account that's fake instead of Photoshopping something together). Special mention goes to RoJo, the robotic game reviewer, Heather Blerd, known spambot, and United 3/4 Inch Wingnuts, a company that sells wingnuts.
- Gaming blog Sir Fragsalot.com, as mentioned frequently in ENN, is a real website
- Character Catchphrase: Graham's "Phunny story". Particularly during LRRcasts and the Phailhaus.
- Throughout commodoreHUSTLE, Matt says "It's the principle of the matter" when someone asks why he's doing something the complicated way. Paul turns this against him to cheat him out of cookies.
- In MAN COOKING, Morgan has "Manliness is in direct proportion to largeliness!" and "If your girlfriend likes your cooking, you're doing it wrong!"
- Chekhov's Gag: Every Jonny story so far has ended with the line "...and THAT was when I blacked out". In the third installment he finally explains that this is because he has a crippling fear of heights, and the situations he got into - leaping from one rooftop to another, doing a handstand on the ÜbderKeg Supreme, riding a roller-coaster - all triggered his phobia. Though Graham has said he didn't have an intentional theme related to the blackouts.
- Clark Kenting: Exaggerated in Superman and the Concentrated Light Ray, in which Clark goes out of his way to state that he is Superman, but nobody believes him.
- Clothes Make the Legend: Even when playing different characters, the crew always find ways to put Paul in a labcoat, and make James a cop with a bushy fake mustache. Alex's welding goggles seem to be something he actually wears all the time, however...which may even be better.
- Coat Full of Contraband: One of Graham's characters in Rapidfire 3 has an unnervingly versatile one of these.
- Including: Trench coat full of other trench coats and in another instance a seedy back alley salesman selling designer sunglasses
- Continuity Nod: Insofar as there is any continuity in the LRRverse to begin with, callbacks to ArMEGAddon come up every now and then. Looks like it caught on after all.
- These sorts of references to previous videos used to be far, far more common. At one point in time, more than half the videos posted as weekly updates made at least one subtle nod to a past joke. When the series was picked up by the Escapist, it was made was made less self-referential for the sake of potential new fans.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: In a somewhat unorthodox way of raising money for the Penny Arcade "Child's Play" charity, they played Desert Bus for almost a week non-stop. Given that Desert Bus consists of driving a slow bus down a dead straight road between Tucson and Las Vegas, without being able to pause or save, in real time, it's not surprising that they considered it a terrible torture.
- It's WORSE. It constantly turns so you can't take your hands off the controller. And the worst part? If you go off the road, you get towed back to Tuscon, at the same speed: 45 mph...in real time. However, this defeats continuous play, so the crew resets when it happens.
- Couch Gag: The Magic Cards based on the crew for the credits in Friday Nights.
- Deadpan Snarker: Cam is notable for his Maggie Smith grade deadpan in a cast full of other deadpan people. He's seconded, or perhaps equaled, by Paul.
- Deconstruction: Of the words to the Canadian National Anthem in National Anathema
- Demoted to Extra: Bill, Morgan, Tim and Jer, who each left the crew for their own reasons.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Hooty the plastic owl joined the Loading Ready Live set decorations more than a year before he was introduced on Road Quest thanks to the show's extended post-production.
- Fanservice: When the crew attempted to achieve viral success with anonymous YouTube accounts, Kathleen released a video called "I heard you liek tits". Which utterly failed to generate viral fame, primarily because she chose to wear a reasonably supportive bra while shaking her moneymaker. Or moneymakers, as the case may be.
- Ironically, Kathleen's noticeable assets later became a subject of entirely unintentional Fanservice when she forgot to bring her camisole to an ENN shoot. The Escapist's policy on video comment pages changed almost overnight.
Moderator: I understand that in the Internet microcosm what was said are compliments, but in the real world it's considered harassment.
- Final Speech: Subverted in Mercenary Solutions 2, where it seems as though the victim is taking a long time to die, but only because Kane stabbed him with a spoon.
- Foreshadowing: In the LoadingReadyRumble, JP of 64k says "We already lost our boy C-Unit!" when confronting Jangles and Jones. This foreshadows the next week's video, where 64k makes a song explaining how they lost their former fourth member Core-Unit to World of Warcraft addiction.
- Fourth Wall Greeting: In a number of their videos, a character will look at the camera and say "Oh, hi. I didn't see you there"
- Fun with Acronyms: In Cruise Vacation, where a happy couple get invited on a cruise by the Freedom Bank International. Turns out they were being arrested for fraud, larceny, embezzlement and copyright infringement, and the cruise was just a convenient (and surprisingly cheap) way of detaining them.
- Also in this Feed Dump, which also uses the letters "FBI" to explain the supposed roles of the hosts.
Graham: Hey everybody. I'm the Federal Booty Inspector, Graham. Joining me this week is a Federated Beetle Informant, Paul ... and a Fiery Boysenberry Island, Kathleen.
- Gaslighting: Crapshot 443 features an emporium that specializes in tools for this... and then it gaslights the viewer.
- Gender-Blender Name: Gabriel in Duty Calls, because "some moron gets ONE woodcut wrong ONCE, like two thousand years ago".
- Genre Savvy: The Bad News video had Paul, Graham, Kathleen and Jeremy cast as video game bosses. Turns out Graham was wrong.
- The Ghost: Edward James Olmos, who is mentioned all the time but is never seen. Possibly because it's a small production in Victoria and he's Edward James Olmos.
- For all that Dave's Spokesman advertises Dave's many businesses, Dave is almost always absent. This is probably because he's been paying the spokesman not to advertise for him, so when he does show up it's unplanned.
- Girlfriend in Canada: The aptly named "Canadian Girlfriend" discusses the trope and how it can be used by Canadians.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: Directly parodied with Give In, in which the angels can't properly have their argument because their human is too decisive.
Bad Gary: Do it. He deserves to-
Gary: Okay. *shoots the man*
Good Gary: What the hell, Gary?
- Groin Attack: Crapshots Episode 281 features a psychiatrist who is calmly insistent on "punching [the other guy] in the taint."
- Honest John's Dealership: The Season One video "Joe's Used Cars" is the embodiment of this trope. Chris Nohr's character dupes Graham's character into buying a really run-down old car, before taking the cheque, taking down the "Joe's Used Cars" sign, and running away. It's at this point that Graham's character realizes that he has been standing in a perfectly ordinary car-park the whole time.
- Hypocritical Humor: The fake viral video YouTube is Stupid! and so are its users, in which Bill does everything he's complaining about.
"Munroe's Meats: Our steaks are life or death!"
- In Memorium: The kitchen of each Moonbase has been labelled "The Bill Watt Memorial Food Zone" on any floorplan shown to the audience, honouring the late Bill Watt and his ability to eat...basically anything.
- In Mysterious Ways: In The Lich King's New Wrath, where God demands that Joanne get to level 70 in World of Warcraft. Turns out it was all a ruse by Blizzard Entertainment, and the implication is that this happens to everyone.
- Insane Troll Logic: Graham's explanation of the relationship between time and money in Time is Money. It actually works, so that when it comes to Nate paying off his debt by trading it for time, he spontaneously dies of old age and decomposes into a skeleton.
- It's a Wonderful Plot: The Christmas special It's a Wonderful Game is a silly take on this trope. The protagonist, in a rage about not being able to defeat the original Super Mario Bros.. after he had run out of new games to play, wishes that Mario had never been made. The result? "Bring him back! Bring Mario back!"
- Referenced in the Ways to Avoid Christmas video, in which Matt tackles the angel (played by Paul) before he can convince the protagonist not to jump off the bridge.
- It Will Never Catch On: In the first episode of The Idiot Room, Graham uses the word "vlog" to describe the series, evidently years before the word had entered common parlance (because LRR is that much of a Long Runner), but he corrects himself because "vlog" sounds too weird to him.
Graham: So I figured, I'm here every day, why not make a video blog?... or, v-blog... vlog?... video blog.
- Jackass Genie: Crapshot videos 137 and 141 feature one.
- Juggling Loaded Guns: The Crapshots depict a stick figure looking into the barrel of a gun, together with the sound of a gun being cocked (at the beginning of each Crapshot), and the same figure with its head blasted off (at the end). "The Accident" shows this trope most explicitly.
- Kitschy Local Commercial: The Dave's Spokesman bits are set up like this, with Graham playing the unnamed spokesman advertising Dave's businesses speaking with a bizarre cadence and going on strange tangents.
- Lame Pun Reaction: It is a Running Gag that Matt is banned from doing the Phailhaus (and more recently Feed Dump) for making these:
Graham: And now, ladies and gentlemen, Word of the Day: condign
...
Matt
: Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty, for tonight we
condign
in hell!
Graham: That's it, mister, you are on a one-Phailhaus timeout.
- The video Munro's Meats is one long, slow, and frankly horrifying build-up to a Lame Punchline.
- Every Crapshots video titled "The Punishment" is this.
- Large Ham: Morgan is very capable of this when he needs to be.
- In Morgan's Problem, the rest of the crew start laughing due to Morgan's excessive hamminess:
Morgan: YOUU CAN'T DEFEAT MEEEEEEEEE!!!
- And in the Rapidfire II sketches:
- Lock-and-Load Montage: Any time the CROWBAR IS READY in the Daily Drop.
- The beginning of 1337 also counts.
- Logic Bomb: The First Rule is there are no rules.
- Logical Fallacies: Happens all the time in the Phailhaüs, most notably in the Rape Over the Phone story.
- Love Dodecahedron: The subject of Open and Shut.
- Lower-Deck Episode: Arguably, several early videos featuring Kathleen and her kooky friends, since they deviate from the usual cast and location so drastically. (Includes Job Hunt and Stuck In A Car With Your Friends)They were usually made due to filming constraints. Namely, the fact that Graham was in Prince George at the time.
- Moose and Maple Syrup: Had fun poking fun at some typical Canadian stereotypes in Canadaman. In it, the eponymous hero faces off against his francophone nemesis: Jaques Francois.
- "Canada is Sorry" pokes fun at Canadian stereotypes.
- "National Anathema" pokes fun at the Canadian national anthem.
- Mr. Fanservice:
- Several fans have confessed to squiggly feelings about Graham's blue eyes. Note the term "fans" is unisex.
- Similarly, fans of all genders are happy to declare themselves "PaulSexual".
- Cam in all his sharp-dressed ways.
- Ms. Fanservice: Ash Vickers. Someone gave her breasts a Twitter account, though it's been inactive over a decade, possibly because the person running it realized it (assuming it wasn't her) realized it was a little creepy.
- Kathleen, in several ENN episodes.
Paul (alarmed): Who told you?!
Kathleen: I'm delicious and also hot! No wait! No, no, um... I'm delicious and also on fire!
- Mundane Utility: The Suspiciously Fast Movers sketch is about a moving company that definitely is ''not'' using a functioning teleporter to do hundreds of jobs a day after cloning one of them hundreds of times (they do, however, admit to having the stable wormhole conduit to the argon mines of Thelios V that would be necessary to power such a teleporter. They use it to dump garbage, with a permit). It definitely isn't the only way they could think of to meet the machine's operating costs. They appear again in Staggeringly Fast Loans where their financially insolvent payday loan company is definitely not a naked attempt to get rid of all the gold their malfunctioning machine is spitting out at an accelerating rate.
- Music Video: Created its very own fake-white-80's-rap band for the sole purpose of making parody videos — mostly about gaming. This includes The LoadingReadyRap and 1337.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: In The Writers Room: Matthew, Mark, Luke and Harold.
- N-Word Privileges: They parodied the concept in this CrapShot where Cam's character says that "racist" is "our word" and he comes "from a long line of racists."
- No Animals Were Harmed: Played with in "Ted the Cat" for the Daily Drop, where the standard procedure for failed drops is to hit the unbroken object with a crowbar. The drop falls into the 'unsatisfactory' category, and the video then goes through all the motions of showing the cat being hit with a crowbar... but instead they drop him a second time, where he lands more gracefully.
Alex: Had you going there for a while, didn't I?
- No Fourth Wall: ALL THE METAFICTION TROPES COMBINED: Quantum Documentary. A documentary which is both the process of making itself and the observation of that process as well as the documentary that is made.
- Given an extra layer of… something in The Quantum Documentary [2023 Remake], which is the process of making itself, the observation of that process, the documentary that is made and in its internal context a remake and sequel to the original Quantum Documentary made because because the fans selected that video to be remade.
- "No. Just… No" Reaction: In Feed Dump.
Graham: *reads a news story as a song* It's song time!
Kathleen: *excited* Can I sing a song?
Alex: NO!
Kathleen: *pouts*
- Noodle Incident: "The thing with the children's choir" in "Nuntastic"
- No Peripheral Vision: Exaggerated in En Garde, where the two guards played by Matt and Paul can't see Andy breaking into the facility because they are so focused on looking the way they were ordered; even when Matt brings up the idea of "looking that way once in a while", and gestures towards Andy, missing him by centimeters, they still don't notice him because they never actually look directly at him.
- Obviously Not Fine: EVERYTHING IS FINE.
- The Oner:
- One-Steve Limit: In Johnny the Intern
Johnny Lunchbox: Uh, my name is Bill.
Bill: Taken!
Graham: Yeah, looks like you're shit out of luck there.
Landlord James: Hey guys.
Graham: Oh, hey, Landlord James.
Landlord James: Why do you always have to call me that?
Paul: Well, we already have our own James, so...
Landlord James: Well, how about "Sir James von Landlord"?
Graham and Paul: Yeah... That works.
- The crew itself has grown to have a few of its own over time: "Matt" is in recent years used to refer to current crew member Matt Griffiths, while former crew member Matt Wiggins is called "Wiggins"; in addition, there are two Bens on the roster, Ben Ulmer ("Ben") and Ben Wheeler ("Wheeler").
- Overly Long Name: Crapshots Episode 218 features a professor with a last name so long that it spans three chalkboards!
- Overly Prepared Gag: The first Rapidfire video featured this as arguably the point of the video. Pay attention to the clown.
- Painting the Medium: A large percentage of Time is Money consists of Graham explaining physics by drawing graphs in the air with his fingers.
- The 'Bed Buggery' sketch had Graham tell Matt that his acting wasn't believable. Subverted in the stinger, which repeated the scene, ending with the two staring at the camera and then a boom mike moving across the shot.
- Pants-Free: In "Wyyy" and as a closing gag in the Phailhaus
- Payment Plan Pitch: Parodied in The Very Best of Room Tone: Voiceover
: To order the Best of Yummies Room Tone collection, and receive the Yummies Essential Foley Archive entirely free of charge, simply
gaze into a mirror, and speak your order three times
while burning $69.95 (or three easy payments of $29.95) on a sacrificial altar to the Old Gods.
- Periphery Demographic In-Universe: One episode had them learn that Matt and a large chunk of the fanbase were Bronies. The entire cast was converted by the end of the episode.
- Portmanteau: In "The Pub" where The Pub was the Portmanteau Club. Among other awkward entries.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis! The first line in "SPRING!"
Graham: I. FUCKING. LOVE. SPRING.
- The Rashomon: Plays with this trope in the video The Season 4 Finale. In it, the usual characters are gathered as old men at the site's 30-year reunion. None of them can agree on what happened in the Season 4 Finale, each of them proposing their own self-interested version that the others claim is erroneous.
- Real Men Eat Meat: Man Cooking. They did once do a 'vegetarian episode', but it consisted of making a giant mushroom... out of meat.
- Recycled In Space: In Ways to Stay Warm one listed method is a "Space Heater," and a character is show sitting next to one. The next shot is of that same character slowly tumbling across the screen, over a backdrop of earth from orbit while the music momentarily shifts to a more 2001-esque melody. The listed method? "Spaaaaaace Heater."
- Rhymes on a Dime: In Rebellin', where Graham and Morgan find every excuse to rhyme their sentences with "Jellin'", making them sound to Paul like "really annoying pod people".
Graham: How 'bout an example of what you're foretellin'?
Paul: Okay, what kind of jackets are you wearing?
Morgan: Oh, we're lapellin'.
Graham: I'm also pastellin'.
Morgan: Nice. (high-fives Graham)
Paul: And those really expensive shoes you just bought? What are they made out of?
Morgan: We're so gazellin'.
- Running Gag: Several, including the numerous in-video references to Edward James Olmos and the way that almost every X Ways to Y video includes The Sam Raimi. Ex: Ways to Hide a Body, Ways to Get in Shape, and Ways to Get Yourself Killed in a Horror Movie.
- Sadistic Choice: Parodied in Meatfist's Terrible Choice. The villain forgot to balance the options The villain has the hero choose between saving the orphanage OR seeing his girlfriend thrown off a building. Double subverted in that Meatfist ends up convinced its a trick question.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Road Quest Episode 10 sees this happen after Graham sends a challenge for the travellers to drive down 266 kilometers of badly maintained road, the entrance to which is surrounded by a number of broken down cars. Alex responds with a rant culminating in this trope, and for good reason.
- Serial Escalation: In the Daily Drop, there was the Santa Candle, which took three strikes of the crowbar to break. There was also the Television, which didn't break even when a cinder block was dropped on it, as well as the fish which everything bounced off. And just to add insult to injury, a common light bulb survived the drop, prompting an outcry of "WHAT??"
Tally: Seriously?!
- And Morgan in the first Whatever Thing, wondering how on Earth the crew managed to stick to their weekly update schedule for three whole years:
Morgan: Seriously, the fact that this site is still in operation may soon cause a rift in the very fabric of space-time.
- Hot & Saucey involves a hot sauce vendor offering increasingly potent hot sauces to an unimpressed restaurant chain owner.
YouTube Comment: I've never seen an arms race and an arms deal happen at the same time before.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: The Story Guy videos are based almost entirely around this trope. Installments such as Grilled Cheese and Rare Book have the Story Guy go on at great length for what is eventually revealed to be no point at all.
- Shaped Like Itself: In "The Secret of the Sauce"
Graham: She stood there, framed in the doorway like a painting of a woman in a picture frame shaped like a doorway.
...
Graham: I was confused, like... a really confused thing.
Graham: So this Christmas, give the gift of giving us money in exchange for a song you hopefully enjoyed... We should script these.
- Shoot Everything That Moves: Kane and Crowthorne, most obviously in Mercenary Solutions 3
Crowthorne: But we also blew up the right embassy!
Kane: Well, and... most of the block. I think the rest of the neighbourhood fell over later...
...
Crowthorne: Well, these people don't hire us because we're careful, they hire us because we're thorough!
- Shout-Out:
- Signing-Off Catchphrase: The Feed Dump hostnote originally Graham was the usual host, with some guest-plays by others, but eventually Kathleen became the default host and ended up hosting the most Feed Dumps:
"Until next time remember: there may be better sources for news, but they don't have *while placing a hat upon his head* this hat."
- Something Else Also Rises: In the Skeletor video, where Pat and Geoff face off with Skeletor, Skeletor raises his arm very slowly... and points right at them. Then, for good measure, he uses his other hand to point at his groin.
- Sound-Effect Bleep: Inverted in somce early Rapidfire episodes, where they're used to make the sketch sound more obscene.
- Spin-Off: One can argue that Morgan's attempt at creating The Whatever Thing was, in fact, an ill-thought-out yet hilarious spin-off. While brief, it did bring us such joyous experiences as Panda Porn and Whitey.
- Springtime for Hitler: The first plotline from Hustle involved the crew releasing clearly staged YouTube videos in a cynical attempt to go viral, and they were put on the platform for real. Then "Nunchuck Jousting" really did get famous, and thanks to being shown on a few TV shows as cutaway gags has been seen by more people than anything else they've done.
- Stab the Salad: The "The Basement" videos revolve around Axe Hand embodying this trope. He knocks people out and absconds to his house with them (well, he calls them a cab) so they can do household chores for him. Or just keep him company.
- In Ways to Spend Valentine's (Alone), "Take up a hobby" is suggested, and Paul is shown raising a very large kitchen knife (and grinning maniacally at it)... then raising a cookbook in his other hand and inspecting it.
- The Stinger: Happens after the credits in all the videos since the move to The Escapist.
- Stone Punk: The "Krog the Caveman" series, starting with "Krogslist" and then extending into a sub-genre of Crapshots, features Krog inventing caveman equivalents of modern technologies. He and fellow caveman Torg also proceed to poke fun at its shortcomings through clever wordplay.
- Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks: "Oh, I've got a butt." Remixed here and covered in a Barbershop Quartet style here.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Staggeringly Fast Movers are just really fast. They definitely do not have a teleporter capable of moving your furniture through space and time. And they certainly don't have a stable wormhole conduit to the Argon Mines of Thelios 5, which would be necessary to power such a device. Well, they do, but they use it for dumping garbage.
- Again in Staggeringly Fast Loans, where they certainly don't have a matter replication device, or an army of clones carrying all that replicated gold.
- Take That!: In Commodore Hustle:
- The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Exaggerated in "Heard But Not Seen", where an entire half a conversation is prerecorded.
- Techno Babble: The Yummies Corporation is guilty of this in Unnatural Resources
Voiceover: Using our advanced network of grid-based performance systems, we here at Yummies Online synergize dynamic channels, benchmark one-to-one web rediness [sic]and recontextualize viral niches, while at the same time revolutionizing user-centric partnerships... Yummies Online. Envisioneering innovative paradigms since late 2007.
- Tell Me Again: Double Subverted in the Bandwidth Exceeded video. Graham walks into his house and is punched in the face by his roommate, Matt. Next scene: Graham and Matt are both standing in the kitchen, and Graham has a bag of frozen peas up to his head.
Graham: Okay, explain to me again... where we got frozen peas. Because I didn't buy them, and I'm certainly not going to eat them.
Matt: My mom brought over a care package, so we wouldn't starve to death like my last roommate did.
Graham: Oh. Next question: why did you hit me?
- Testosterone Poisoning: MAN COOKING! HAAAAA!
"Remember, if your girlfriend likes your cooking - you're doin' it wrong!
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Kane and Crowthorne of the Mercenary Solutions series seem to operate on this logic. This continues in "The Albatross" series of Crapshots, where they are repeatedly told off for collateral damage in assassinations.
- There Is Only One Bed: Graham and Paul are often depicted as sleeping in the same bed, complete with matching pyjamas and night caps as a light parody of cartoon characters who do this for no apparent reason.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Played for Laughs in A Stitch in Time and Past Mistakes
- Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket: Harshly deconstructed in Has This Ever Happened to You?, wherein Paul suffers from an actual disability which makes him clumsily mess up even the simplest of actions, such as turning a key in a door, and shaking someone's hand. This makes him so depressed that it drives him to suicide.
- Training Montage: Parodied in Underpantaloons where Morgan trains to creep out the widest variety of people who come to his door. C64 version of 'Eye of the Tiger' included!
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: In Road Quest Jimmy, the historical reenactor they spent a day with, has an unidentifiable but extremely charming and vaguely "old-timey" accent. According to the Making Of Q&A they never found out what the accent was supposed to be because he never once broke character in the entire time they interacted with him, including setting up the visit ahead of time.
- Who Writes This Crap!?: Used preemptively in "Formal Complaint", which starts with a Graham walking into a bar... er, bakery and asking to make a formal complaint about the unquality/unoriginality of the sketch that is about to commence. The rest of the sketch is constantly disrupted by his criticisms, and by the other characters' arguments against those criticisms.
- Wikipedia: Parodied in OMG! Bears! with the specialized wikis "Bearipedia" and "Bearsharkocalypsipedia"
Both Graham and Kathleen at different times: Well, they are a pretty reliable source...
- Word-Salad Humor: Used to great effect in Interrupt This Program and Poker Before Dusk, but also employed in MEN.
Brought to you commercial-free by Steak Pork's Plank-Fried Jack Butt.
- You Put the "X" in "XY": Parodied in the video description for Ways to Survive the Recession: "We put the FUN in 'Collapse of the Financial Infrastructure FUNdamental to our Society".
- And in the video description for Customer Servicing, "They put the 'customer service' in '@#%!-ing customer service'"
