the spoony experiment tv tropes

• Show Spoilers
• Night Vision
• Sticky Header
• Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/TheSpoonyExperiment

The Spoony Experiment » YMMV

The audience and fanbase related tropes for The Spoony Experiment .

The Spoony Experiment provides examples of:

• The guy gave his dog a Twitter account, where Oreo posts many cute and/or innocent observations about the strange goings-on around her master's house.
• Insano has his moments as well. Dr. Insano: I am adorable but alone!
• Alas, Poor Scrappy : It's hard not to feel for Spencer D. Bum during his brutal death, since he literally gets his heart ripped out.
• Spoony One: Jerkass Fan Hater snob? Or Jerkass Woobie struggling with depression? Or both?
• Dr. Insano's gaydar has caused a number of fans to assume that he's actually gay .
• Arc Fatigue : Spoony was trying to develop a Myth Arc over the course of the reviews. The story seemed to be that the Gate Cleaner and the Ultimate Warrior were working for the Guardian, who was intending to invade and conquer our world, but he abandoned his plans because Sephiroth was going to destroy the world with a meteor, and somehow was harnessing Spoony's hatred of Final Fantasy for his plan. There were also hints that Burton had been reprogrammed for some purpose (implicitly by Sephiroth), Spoony may have been trapped in some Platonic Cave illusion (which may or may not be related to the Burton subplot), and somehow Pumpkinhead may have been involved. Whatever the story was supposed to be, the Kudzu Plot nature of their development, Spoony's sporadic updating schedule, and the fact the story wasn't very good and didn't seem to have a point, meant that a lot of viewers didn't really care either way, and after he moved from Arizona to Illinois he largely abandoned the arc in favor playing up his Running Gags .
• Spoony's vocal cover of "A Whole New World" even manages to make Dr. Insano just turn around and walk right out of the room.
• Syncing the first Anima summon to one of the many epic music bits from Kickassia in part 2 of his Final Fantasy X review.
• Invoked with his rant about the lack of logic in Highlander II: The Quickening , which concludes with "WHY AM I IN A STARFLEET UNIFORM?!" with Spoony wearing just that, in which he was suddenly shown in a Starfleet uniform despite wearing normal clothes at every other point in the review.
• He also likes to take isolated clips from films that seem particularly bizarre and random, such as the Insane Troll Logic scene "How to Battle Communism" from 1900 .
• Pumpkinhead's appearance in the final battle against Black Lantern Spoony. He walks through the door to Ominous Latin Chanting and the fight halts in its tracks, stares grimly at BL Spoony... and peppy music starts playing, to which Pumpkinhead starts dancing. BL Spoony blows him up with an energy blast and the fight resumes.
• In his Final Fantasy X-2 review, while listening to some in-game music, he remarks "This music is almost as bad as the time I got tricked into going to the Nostalgia Chick's accordion recital". Cut to The Nostalgia Chick playing the accordion while Spoony awkwardly sits on a nearby couch holding a dog.
• In Tekken: Blood Vengeance , he repeatedly wonders why no-one questions the presence of a super-fast Panda.
• In his Final Fantasy XIII: Part 2 review there was the sudden appearance of Stereotypically-Drunk Mexican Cyborg Early 90s Otaku Kid who appears at the end of his rant about about the Chocobo Chick while a spanish language translation of Smells Like Teen Spirit blares in the background.
• Bizarro 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.
• Broken Base : Has a very divided fanbase for numerous reasons. Content-wise, many people got mad over him giving unfavorable reviews to works considered classics like Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy X . Outside of that, there are those who are upset about him taking money through Patreon but not putting out any new reviews or Counter Monkey videos. There was a tweet from April talking about how they bring in only around $1000 a month from Patreon (which is nothing to sneeze at) and then another tweet implying that they use the money to buy nerdy merchandise, rather than putting it towards the show and living expenses, angering these former fans further. Spoony now has only has a fraction of the following he once had as a result. He still gains a great deal of sympathy from people over his various physical and mental problems and people who believe he can make content like he used to and will defend him tooth and nail against his detractors.
• Condemned by History : Spoony was one of the top "angry reviewer" content creators for his time, catching the internet's attention with his reviews for Final Fantasy and Ultima during the late 2000s. After joining Channel Awesome in 2008, he became one of the site's most popular critics thanks to his psychotic personality , frequent crossover videos, and his wide range of review topics, including board games and tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons . However, he also faced backlash for his reliance on nitpicking and tendency to insult fans of works in his videos, frequently seen arguing with anyone who disagreed with him. His bad attitude got him in trouble with Channel Awesome in 2012 after joking about raping JesuOtaku , which led Noah to resign from the site. From there, Spoony's worsening physical and mental health led him to clash with his fans over the handling of his opinions and content direction, along with his increasingly frequent hiatuses . With his admission to having no plans for a Spoony Experiment movie after his Patreon reached the requisite amount in 2014, what little goodwill Noah still had left vanished. Modern audiences now often see his critiques as shallow and hateful, and his molasses-slow update schedule means he's remained in obscurity since leaving Channel Awesome. Spoony's rise and fall is now seen as a cautionary tale of a content creator being his own worst enemy , and it's highly unlikely that he'll achieve the same level of success ever again.
• Creator's Pet : It Came From Beyond Midnight . Although he could be seen as having other motivations for hosting the show.
• "You're rooting for a romance between Squall, and Seifer's leftovers; Seifer's sloppy seconds. I'm going to ruin this romance for you. I want you to think about this every time you see Rinoa: Seifer's balls were slapping against that poon nightly. Oh yeah, she was swallowing the man-aise, gargling the chowder! And you know what, she loved it! Enjoy your love story! " All accompanied by images from a FF8 hentai doujin.
• FF VIII review part 4. "Afternoon Delight" and Saving Private Ryan have never made more sense together.
• Making a joke about Bruce Lee's son's death in his Clones of Bruce Lee review.
• The Warrior comic has this the Warrior raping Santa.
• Mission 15 of Swat 4 with its constant jokes about Russia's anti-gay policies manages to be so ridiculous that it actually makes a pretty good point about how stupid those laws are. Especially when Reynolds and Girard get caught in a compromising position, are forced to go to New Jersey to get gay married and register at Bed Bath & Beyond.
• "Zelda Scott" from the GameCrazy training video, whose white-bread demeanor combined with her constant "hood slang" crosses and recrosses the line so many times that any chance of being offended is eradicated by just how incredulous she is.
• Designated Hero : Spoony is an implied rapist, has stated to have killed people for sexual pleasure, and expresses his desire to kill people that liked Final Fantasy X .
• Tidus in the Final Fantasy X review. While he went after Spoony for trashing his game, you can't really blame him since not only did Spoony victim blame him for the abuse he suffered from Jecht, but he also threatened to murder fans of his game.
• Snow from the Final Fantasy XIII review (the one Spoony fights anyway). While granted, Snow has the personality of a Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up , but unlike Squall and Tidus, he's not going after Spoony for a negative review of his game. Rather, Snow has been tricked by unseen forces into believing that Spoony is trying to destroy the world, so as far as he knows, Spoony is dangerous lunatic, a belief that Spoony reinforces by shooting first, then by lying to Snow to get a dirty hit in. Even worse, Spoony learns Snow is being tricked and believes he's doing the right thing and he still mercilessly cuts Snow's throat. If you add in the fact that Spoony actual is causing the apocalypse (albeit unknowingly) , Snow comes off as something of a Hero Antagonist .
• Dr. Insano, of course! Don't you know anything about science?
• Giant Dizzy Gillespie, too. Spoony had to explain to his fans that he had had to stop using him because the figure was fragile and had been slightly damaged from the action figures scenes.
• Within her short time on the site, Oreo became ridiculously popular for the V-logs.
• Simcoe the Magician from the Skullduggery review became pretty popular with just one appearance, due to how hilariously bizarre and unsettling he is. Pulling Oreo out of a hat didn't hurt either.
• Everyone Is Satan in Hell : Spends a good chunk of the Mazes and Monsters review decrying this attitude towards the Satanic Panic over Dungeons & Dragons , since Mazes and Monsters leans in the direction of a young man undergoing Sanity Slippage related to an Expy of D&D . It eventually leads to Spoony asking "How joyless and paranoid is your life if you're afraid of children and adults armed with funny-shaped dice who still play with dolls?"
• Evil Is Cool : Invoked by him in his review of The King of Fighters movie where he states the films only redeeming quality was casting Ray Park as Rugal , as the role did give the chance to show of his skills in martial arts and stunt work, as well as seemingly having a good time hamming it up.
• Fan Nickname : Thanks to Yuna being played by Spoony in drag at the end of his Final Fantasy X-2 review, many fans have taken to calling her " Spuna ".
• Spoony's Ultima IX review is seen in retrospect as the starting point for Spoony's post-Channel Awesome fall from grace. The first episode is little more than Spoony pointing out continuity errors with earlier Ultima games — aside from contradicting the ending of Ultima VIII , along with the "What's a paladin?" moment where the Avatar forgets about Sir Dupre's Heroic Sacrifice , the things Spoony points out aren't a big deal. The "BETRAYAL! meter" wears out its welcome very quickly, something Spoony admits at the start of the second episode, whereupon he drops the gag. The remaining episodes, while less nitpicky, see Spoony ramp up his anger towards Ultima IX to the point it becomes hard to watch. Spoony's Heroic BSoD after Dupre's resurrection sees Spoony reminisce about his childhood and why Ultima is so important to him. But it culminates in Spoony literally throwing his Ultima games against the wall and yelling that "it was all a complete fucking waste of time" since Ultima IX was so bad, which is uncomfortable to sit through. In general, the review gets a pass because Ultima IX is a legitimately bad game, so Spoony still gets a lot of laughs poking fun at its problems, as well as the review ending with a Reality Subtext moment where he vows to carry on in the face of his personal troubles. But it's not hard to spot the Ultima IX review as where things really began to slide.
• His review of The Ring: Terror's Realm . Like Ultima IX , it's done for a legitimately bad game, most of Spoony's gags land perfectly, and it also serves as the starting point for a number of his more fondly-remembered Running Gags . However, the "dalad jelly" gag gets way too much focus over what was just a typo, which foreshadows a habit of his future reviews where Spoony gets sidetracked by endlessly nitpick minor things.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff : Apparently Spoony is big in Finland.
• Growing the Beard : Most fans point to the review of The Thing (2002) video game as the point where Spoony started hitting his stride and established his trademark humor and running gags. He himself agrees, mostly since that review marked the point where he started writing actual scripts rather than just talking off-the-cuff about the games he was reviewing.
• Ham and Cheese : Dr. Insano and Noah's portrayal of wrestlers.
• Watching Spoony describe how he anticipates Breaking Dawn and all the ludicrous plot points, clearly gleeful at the idea of reaping the result. And then watch his actual VLog of the movie, set a year later, when he practically broke down and resorted to drown his sorrow because of the awfulness of what he saw.
• Seeing JewWario trying to cheer Spoony up during this can make this hard to watch because no one apparently could do the same before JW's suicide.
• The " Spooning with Spoony " videos are much darker when you consider the immense fallout stemming from a joke on his Twitter.
• A lot of videos that feature Spoony going berserk can be hard to watch after knowing that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. (Especially since there were comments of people familiar with such things recommending Spoony to get evaluated, before Spoony shut down the comments) Not to mention that many of Spoony's older videos feature running gags suggesting that he is mentally unbalanced, requiring frequent psychiatric care and doses of "anti-crazy pills." (The latter became even worse since Spoony would routinely skip his meds)
• Anything involving Spoony and Lord Kat and their Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic, after Jason told Noah to go shoot himself during a livestream.
• The joke about Hulk Hogan 's reckless driving in Santa with Muscles became this in 2019 when Noah got in a car crash.
• Learning about his heart condition and that he has been forced to quit drinking caffeine because it, as Spoony so eloquently put it, "can make his heart explode". It makes it rather cringe-worthy when you go into an archive-binge and realize just how often he drinks from a can of soda during his reviews.
• At the end of his "Lords Of Magick" review, Spoony bursts into his room dressed as "Macho Man" Randy Savage , who was promptly blown up by landmines that Spoony had planted just inside the door. Less than a week later, Randy Savage died after suffering a heart attack while driving and crashed his car.
• Any of the (surprisingly numerous) Suicide as Comedy moments counts, as one of Spoony's fans sent him a "goodbye" email before committing suicide, which has inspired Noah not to make this kind of joke anymore. His friend JewWario committed suicide in 2014, likely cementing this policy for good.
• In his interview with Doug Walker on Shut Up and Talk , Noah talked about how it bothered him that society often labeled suicide as cowardly. His attitudes have certainly changed since his review of Captain America (1979) in which The Nostalgia Critic hanged himself and Spoony chided him saying that it was "the coward's way out".
• The widespread Memetic Mutation of "What's a paladin?" after Part 4 came out and Spoony told us just how deeply the series is part of his fondest childhood memories, in turn making us think just how much that line, and the entire game, really must piss him off.
• This exchange in the Nightmare (aka Atmosfear ) review, which almost seems prophetic of the huge backlash against Spoony that started in 2012, following the Twitter incident from that spring and his leaving Channel Awesome. The Gatekeeper: Everybody must pity you? Spoony: No, actually, as far as Internet critics go I think I'm pretty popular, I think... everyone seems to love the—the robot, and the reviews, and the website— The Gatekeeper: They won't soon. They'll hate you like I do.
• This speech from The Guardian at the end of the Ultima 9 review. Granted, it came at a time where Spoony's reputation had already taken several hits due the controversies surrounding him, but neither Spoony nor anyone else could have predicted how accurate it would turn out in light of his worsening mental health and his audience's growing frutration at his lack of out put: The Guardian: Then take your science weapon! Destroy the Black Gate! Destroy your only means of escape from the lie of your existence! Run from your destiny! Sit here and talk to your (pause) "people", until they too abandon you. Then when you're alone, you will never be able to escape yourself. How much longer, I wonder, until you'll finally be able to see the bars of your own cage. (cut to a clip of Spoony in an insane asylum in a straitjacket screaming) Spoony: Come on, I wasn't being serious when I said that- The Guardian: No, then stay here; embrace madness.
• Several of Spoony's reviews make jokes about Spoony having serious mental problems, and he's shown downing the contents of a bottle marked "Crazy Pills" like they were Tic-Tacs at one point. Since Noah has been diagnosed as bipolar in Real Life , these jokes are a little uncomfortable.
• In his Let's Play of X Com Enemy Unknown (found on his Twitch account), he named the characters after other Channel Awesome personalities. On one particularly disastrous mission, MarzGurl 's character panicked and hit JewWario with Friendly Fire , prompting Spoony to exclaim "My God, woman! Don't shoot Justin!" This was, of course, a year before Justin committed suicide.
• The review of The Beastmaster had Spoony joking that Rip Torn 's career would be "endless Men in Black sequels". After the review came out, Torn was arrested for DUI, which resulted in his being written out of Men in Black 3 via Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome .
• He took Justin Carmical's death pretty hard. God can only imagine how hard it was for him to find out about Justin getting exposed as a sexual predator.
• The "Betrayal!" clip was one of several Channel Awesome convention antics that hurt anyone associated with the site's relations with games journalism for a good while. Lord Kat directly blames it for him having interview offers rescinded despite no longer being a member for years by that point, and it's believed this was the tipping point in their friendship going rotten.
• Spoony's infamous gag about wanting to kill people that liked Final Fantasy X becomes this when he got temporarily banned from Twitter for tweeting death threats.
• In the ''Clones Of Bruce Lee" review, Dr. Insano mocks Dr. Nye for trying to take over the world with what basically amounted to a weedkiller. Then in the second honorable mention for the grass wars, Dr. Insano declares war on the US - with killer grass.
• Spoony annoying the Critic by making him say/type "I like to wear women's clothing" is made even funnier when he says in the Captain America review that he made him dress up like a dirty ballerina in Spooning With Spoony 2.
• He starts episode 6 of his SWAT 4 review gushing about how cool an auto shotgun is. This comes back to bite him later in the same review.
• Spoony's released the second part of his review of Ultima IX , the much-loathed conclusion to the Ultima franchise, in July 2012. Only a few days later, Bioware announced they were reviving the franchise with an upcoming live Beta for Ultima Forever .
• Spoony's gag where he parodies the Nightmare commercial by drawing a card and acting all excited with the card reading "You have resurrected Crystal Pepsi!" becomes even funnier due to the fact that in summer 2016, they really did bring back Crystal Pepsi for a while.
• In his review of Final Fantasy XIII , Spoony devolves into a rant about how poor the game's attempts at Worldbuilding and storytelling are to the point where he compares it cave paintings of cavemen hunting bison, even remarking that that would make a better video game plot. Years later, Ubisoft would come out with Far Cry Primal , a AAA game where you play a caveman hunting animals for survival.
• Ho Yay : Lampshaded between an alternate Insano and Linkara (parodying The Room (2003) ). "You are giving the slash fic-ers material!" And between Linkara and regular Spoony, Spoony and Nostalgia Critic, and occasionally Spoony and Insano (depending on which origin story you're using ).
• Hype Backlash : Given how his worse fans have a habit of hyping him as some sort of god who no reviewer can compete with , it can mean that some people end up disappointed when they watch his show and his style of criticism. As his popularity faded and the internet reviewing landscape evolved, this only became more pronounced.
• Just Here for Godzilla : For the second of his Black Hole of Board Games reviews, Spoony left the choice of which game to review up to a fan vote. The chosen game, the VCR Wrestlemania Game, turned out to be quite uninteresting and wasn't easy for Spoony to make a video about. However, if the comments on the video are to be believed, the folks who voted for the game weren't so much interested in the game itself, but were instead hoping that Spoony would dress up as his wrestler parody personas for the review. He apparently noticed this, as they got their wish, as no less than four wrestler personas appeared in the review. In-universe, he guesses that the fans were hoping for some hammy acting by wrestlers in the video.
• Love to Hate : He sums up on the things that he likes about the Cage films is the despicably evil main villain Mr. Tagaki.
• Memetic Badass : Reb Brown , whom Spoony devotes several months to, as well as examining several Reb Brown movies. Spoony considers Brown's movie catalogue to be So Bad, It's Good , and that Brown was enough of a Large Ham in the roles he played to make them enjoyable watches. Spoony ultimately is empathetic towards Reb Brown as a person, and laments that Brown could have been a bigger star if he'd just gotten a few more breaks. However, in each review, Reb Brown is portrayed as a One-Man Army the likes of which 80's action stars were known to be.
• Memetic Molester : "Spooning With Spoony".
• " You're in my way, sir. "
• "YOU FOOL!"
• Sending someone to the "blagole". note  Thanks to how the Gatekeeper pronounces "black hole" in the "Nightmare" VHS board game.
• Thanks to Spoony, nearly any discussion of the Ultimate Warrior will eventually bring up "YOU'LL NEED AN ENERGON CUBE THE SIZE OF WYOMING TO DEFEAT MY AUTOBOTS, HOAK HOGAN!"
• " I like it in my ass ."
• "You okay, Lady?"
• He ended up introducing a villain, the Black Knight from one of the Ultima games, who had his legion of troll minions intentionally spreading this particular meme just to screw with him.
• Don't tell me how to drive! note  A variation that became quite popular among Spoony's detractors after his infamous car crash.
• "Take your time, Boss!"
• "We can't, the press!"
• Though the Ferris Bueller's Day Off review came out on April Fool's and was hosted by Dr. Insano (meaning it was most likely not to be taken seriously), many people came out of the woodwork agreeing with Insano's Alternate Character Interpretation of Ferris as an irresponsible and manipulative jerk. (But this interpretation predates the review.)
• A straighter form of this comes from reactions to his text articles 'Why I Should Never Write Screenplays', in which he proposes ideas for franchises such as Terminator and ER that would be spectacularly awful if ever actually filmed. Some fans said they liked the ideas and thought they'd be cool. Spoony had to remind them that they're BAD ideas in the start of his Terminator idea. And in his outlining a final season of E.R. where the Zombie Apocalypse occurs, he starts off by saying this idea would be a Jump the Shark moment for the series to stave off further misunderstandings.
• Also, the whole point of the 'Dr. Insano becoming President' sketch was to show that people who vote for supervillains such as Lex Luthor or Final Fantasy's Edea for public office are stupid for voting for those villains, and that the world would be screwed if said villains actually made it into office. Doesn't stop a few fans from saying 'Insano for President' because he's upfront about the fact that he's pure evil . "Because he's honest."
• Mis-blamed : According to Noah's commentaries, people blamed him for the Spooning With Spoony series, when really Lindsay came up with the first one and Doug was eager to do a second.
• Nausea Fuel : Spoony's detailed description of his case of food poisoning in the beginning of his Game Over: Control-Alt-Death review can be viewed as such—but it's offset by how hilariously over-the-top he goes with it, and how it leads up to the punchline.
• Network Decay : Hit this in 2015, when he produced far fewer reviews and Counter Monkey videos and far more "Live Wire" Let's Play streams on YouTube and Vlogs. This trend continued into 2016, and 2017 saw nothing at all aside from a review of The Last Jedi a few days before the end of the year. Most fans consider the Experiment "finished."
• His reference to Masato Tanaka as "one of the great lucha guys".
• People (especially Trolls ) love bringing up the X-Com "BETRAYAL!" moment.
• The time Spoony said he wanted to kill people that liked Final Fantasy X quickly became infamous.
• "What's a paladin?". Not by his own fault, but purely by how much the concept of a paladin comes up during Counter Monkey.
• Overshadowed by Controversy : Noah was invited to become a member of Channel Awesome, where he became a frequent contributor and helped boost the website's popularity in its early days . While most producers stuck to a single subject or theme, Spoony stood out by being willing to discuss a wide number of topics, including Dungeons & Dragons , movies, video games, and professional wrestling. However, starting in 2011, Creator Breakdown hit — Noah's productivity decreased to the point he would go months without posting a new video, in part because of personal problems and health issues. He faced flak for bad behavior on-line (including a rapey tweet to JesuOtaku in the midst of him leaving Channel Awesome), broken promises about Patreon goals (leaving many to accuse him of freeloading), and got a reputation as abrasive person both on and off-camera, particularly to his own fans. Over the years, Spoony's health, productivity, and personal relationships continued to decline. Spoony's fanbase has all but deserted him, and his internet presence is almost non-existent, whereas his other former Channel Awesome contributors still regularly produce content. Spoony is largely seen these days as a cautionary tale to other content creators of what fame can do to a person who can't handle it, how creators can burn themselves out, and how the goodwill of a fanbase must not be taken for granted.
• Paranoia Fuel : The "I heard that , Curtis" running gag is this Played for Laughs .
• The Problem with Licensed Games : Frequently encounters this.
• There was a considerable fan backlash against the Spencer D. Bum character in his Dirty Harry review. Spoony has acknowledged and Lampshaded this in subsequent reviews, and even joked about killing him off. He finally went through with it in the preview video for the Final Fantasy X finale, where Black Lantern Spoony tears out Spencer's heart.
• Strawman Has a Point : His April Fools review of Ferris Bueller's Day Off as Doctor Insano. He stated in the commentary for that video that this was intentional.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks! : Referenced when Chuckles the Fucking Jester comments that Spoony's Ultima retrospective isn't enough like his Final Fantasy reviews.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic : Both Tidus and Snow in their respective fights with Spoony (see Designated Villain ).
• Viewer Gender Confusion : Kiros of Final Fantasy VIII , to the point Spoony portrays himself on a mock quiz show. Spoony eventually guesses that Kiros is a guy due to the lack of porn of the character on the Internet , and is vindicated by getting the answer right.
• Vindicated by History : Wrestle Wrestle and Counter Monkey were often criticized by Spoony's fanbase when they were released. Many of Spoony's viewers weren't fans of pro-wrestling or tabletop RPGs (which were and to some extent still are, rather niche interests) and they saw these two side series as taking away from time that he could have spent working on his main reviews. In recent years vlogs, podcasts, and edited reviews on wrestling and TTRPGs have exploded in popularity. With some of said reviewers having cited Spoony as being a partial inspiration on the content they produce. It also helps that they can be seen as early examples of the "video essay" format that would by and in large displaced the Angry Reviewer as a way of commenting on media by the late 2010's.
• Insano stumbled into this territory at the end of the Street Fighter 2010 review. "NOBODY LOVES ME!"
• Spoony himself becomes a pretty huge woobie for the duration of his Atari 2600 E.T. review. Not only is he playing one of the worst games ever made, but he's doped up on painkillers and spitting blood while doing it. (The video was made shortly after multiple surgeries to remove his wisdom teeth.)
• In his review of Breaking Dawn , this is his opinion on Charlie Swan for having a conniving sociopath like Bella for a daughter and for being utterly powerless throughout the films.
• X-Pac Heat : After the Twitter breakdown.

Important Links

• Action Adventure
• Commercials
• Crime & Punishment
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• Animation (Western)
• Music And Sound Effects
• Print Media
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters As Device
• Narrative Devices
• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Derivative Works
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Fate And Prophecy
• Image Fixer
• New Articles
• Edit Reasons
• Isolated Pages
• Images List
• Recent Videos
• Crowner Activity
• Un-typed Pages
• Recent Page Type Changes
• Trope Entry
• Character Sheet
• Playing With
• Creating New Redirects
• Cross Wicking
• Tips for Editing
• Text Formatting Rules
• Handling Spoilers
• Administrivia
• Trope Repair Shop
• Image Pickin'

Advertisement:

• Create account
• The Spoony Experiment

• Headscratchers
• Heartwarming
• Spoony One List
• Tear Jerker

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 . [ dead link ]

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 .

• The Deadly Premonition LP was apparently discontinued as well. This was lampshaded during 2011's April Fools as he uploaded a video titled "Let's Play Deadly Premonition - part 2" almost one year after the first part was posted, and the still shot that appears before playing the video WAS of a previously unseen part of the game, complete with text that looks like the kind of captions Spoony frequently includes in his videos. Turned out the video was actually a Cinema Snob parody and a review of an obscure bad movie. And no, that movie had nothing in common with Deadly Premonition.
• The Deadliest Character was nixed after its first episode because it took far too much time and effort to produce and the original animator couldn't do another episode, though he hasn't ruled out a possible Live Action fight. Now fans will never know who would win in a fight The Daleks or The Borg
• In his vlog for The Avengers , Noah says that he thinks people misjudge him as overly negative because when he says "This movie was okay, I just didn't care for it personally", it gets misinterpreted as "This movie was shit". The specific example he gives is Captain America: The First Avenger , saying that he always thought Captain America (comics) was a bit two-dimensional but the movie was well-made and it's just his own hang-up that kept him from enjoying it more.
• In his vlog for Snow White and the Huntsman , Noah says that Kristen Stewart isn't a very good actress and is not nearly as hot as the film makes her out to be , but he says that he's not trying to hate on her just to jump on the Twilight Hatedom , and Apologizes a Lot , remarking that he really does want to like her but she just annoys him.
• Acting for Two : Spoony occasionally shares the screen with other characters played by himself, including Dr. Insano, Chef Ramsay, Squall Leonhart , Fu Manchu , Spencer D. Bum, the Ultimate Spoony , Cap'n Smiling Jack D'Arcy , the Gate Cleaner , Hulk Spogan , Terl , "Spoonette", Spoontock! of the Klingon Empire , Chuckles the Fucking Jester , Tidus , The Avatar , Yuna , and Sephiroth .
• Actor Allusion : A common gag. For example, when Christopher Lee appears in a film he will reference his roles as Dracula and Saruman, and his Cage review has constant references to Lou Ferrigno's most famous role as The Incredible Hulk .
• Actor IS the Title Character : Spoony is fond of invoking this trope, for example during his Ripper LP:
• 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.
• Also presents Bella Swan as a needy, manipulative sociopath who has no regard for the lives she ruins in pursuing her own desires, and Ferris Bueller as a Manipulative Bastard who enjoys toying with others.
• 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.
• 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.
• "You're in my way, sir!"
• 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.
• Also parodied extensively in his Robowar review, in response to the plethora of scenes the soldiers are just randomly firing into the greenery like crazy. Cue Spoony firing dual AK-47's into the camera, as Sean Fausz and Angry Joe join in as well.
• He's admitted defeat to this disorder and attempted to hire an editor to get projects out on rails.
• Attractive Bent Gender : At least one comment on the third part Final Fantasy X-2 expressed this sentiment about Spoony in Yuna drag .
• Author Appeal : Besides the more expectable things like his liking for Babylon 5 , Spoony is a fan of Professional Wrestling and often slips references to it into his reviews - culminating with the appearances of the Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan HOAK HOGAN HOAKOGAN!
• Awesome but Impractical : "Giant Dizzy Gillespie" was a fan favourite, but Spoony had to stop featuring the statuette due to its fragility and it becoming slightly damaged during filming.
• Awesomeness Is Volatile : A warning to some parts of Yor, the Hunter from the Future .
• Badass Labcoat : Dr. Insano.
• Bag of Spilling : In his Ultima VII, Part 2 review, he mentions how he hates it when this trope just is, but he does like it when there's a decent explanation behind it. In that game, you start off with all the goodies from the previous installment as A Taste of Power , and then lose them all to a "teleport storm" later.
• The Beautiful Elite : After traveling to Washington DC to protest an internet censorship law, Spoony claimed that Capitol Hill's female population is entirely like this, even the police.
• Be Careful What You Wish For : Insano ending his Dungeonmaster review shouting "Where's my Dungeons & Dragons movie? "
• The biggest, reddest one being "What's a Paladin?"
• Beware the Nice Ones : His reaction to "X-Com" being turned into a First person shooter actually appeared to scare Angry Joe .
• Bias Steamroller : Has been known to drive one...a lot . He's fully aware of when he's doing it, too.
• At the end of Final Fantasy X-2 , and it's Final Fantasy VII Sephiroth . And apparentally, he's a fan.
• Big No : Invoked and subverted in Ripper when Catherine collapses:
• 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 .
• Big Ol' Eyebrows : In Tekken the Motion Picture , Spoony began mocking Kazuya's and Heihachi's huge eyebrows as his own eyebrows progressively grew bigger before he peeled them off.
• BEEETRAAAYAAALLLLLLLL!!!
• 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"
• 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.
• He borrows it again in his Ultima Underworld 2 review, but follows it up with a knee to the groin instead of a punch.
• There's also his use of The Nostalgia Critic 's gag of having M. Bison appear on screen yelling "OF COURSE!"
• He's also used the Nostalgia Critic's "I WAS FROZEN TODAY!"
• He also borrowed the "PWNED!" from Fat Mann Judgeth once.
• Later, in the commentary for the finale of Final Fantasy X (which featured call-backs to the finale for Final Fantasy VIII he references the RedLetterMedia clip of George Lucas pretentiously claiming that events in the Star Wars prequels 'rhyme' with those in the originals.
• 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.
• 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.)
• 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.
• 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 .
• 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.
• Happened again with the Final Fantasy X review, this time with the original Spoony (Now a Black Lantern ) trying to take the show back from the Spoony that Linkara cloned , and the clone having Linkara beam both him & the clone onto the Enterprise at the same time, merging them into one being; The Stinger reveals that whilst this plan worked, Linkara lost Spoony when he teleported him/them .
• 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.
• Cluster F-Bomb :
• 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.
• 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 .
• A deck designed to counterpoint his, besides the Linkara deck, is this one .
• 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).
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Kickassia . All the way.
• And Suburban Knights .
• 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 .
• Some of Spoony's fans were not happy about this.
• 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 :
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check : Insano says Paul in The Dungeonmaster should patent his inventions "and make a zillion dollars!"
• Damned By Faint Praise : "For all his many faults, Bruno Mattei does Nazi porn well. Sometimes."
• Dan Browned : Noah and his brother, Miles, like many others, got hit with this hard while watching Deadliest Warrior . Noah does enjoy the fight scenes, though.
• Dark Reprise : After the events of Kickassia , he started using a much darker and heavier version of his opening theme. It didn't last too long, though.
• In Doctor Insano's Ferris Buellers Day Off review, he's shocked at the prospect of going to Chicago and not visiting the "Urkel House".
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? :
• 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:
• About the only people who come close, are those who purposely died doing movies, or manga...and they got paid!
• 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.
• 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 .
• Dr. Insano and Spencer D. Bum.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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,
• Dr. Insano can't stand Ferris Bueller's lack of work ethic, his spoiled, self-centered nature, and his complete lack of goals beyond his own personal amusement.
• 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.
• "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.
• 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:
• Explosive Instrumentation : The swishy French tailor from Beastmaster 2 puts out such a stereotypically gay vibe that it causes Dr. Insano's 'gaydar' to short-circuit and explode.
• Exposition : Spoony is not amused by Ultima 9's method: Having the Avatar ask everything he should really know from the previous games .
• Extremely Overdue Library Book : It's heavily implied that Spoony didn't returned the The Lords of Magick VHS after borrowing it from the library twenty years ago.
• And his description of Karen Jarret's voice.
• It's a work , of course. He also seems to be feuding with Maffew of Botchamania .
• Face Palm : He covers his whole face in shame with both hands after hearing Wakka tell Rikku not to be too disheartened about seeing her home city get destroyed in his Final Fantasy X review.
• 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:
• Fantastic Racism :
• Fate Worse Than Death :
• 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.
• And when reviewing the film Game Over: Control-Alt-Death , the line of the computer being capable of making Gary Coleman president sent Spoony and the rest of the TGWTG cast into a total panic.
• Flat What :
• 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.
• 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.
• You're in my way, sir.
• Deadly grass .
• Freudian Slip : In this tweet.
• Freudian Slippery Slope : Goes into one when Lulu and her "female advantages" are introduced in FFX
• And again in Part 3 of the FFX-2 review when Leblanc offers to help the Gullwings.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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:
• Gag Nose : Noah is known to make fun of his nose, including referring to it as a "Jew Nose" when he sees the shadow it casts during one commentary with Bennett.
• Gag Sub : The onscreen lyrics to the music which plays during Dar 's " Seeking for Revenge Montage " (also serves as a Call Back to Yor The Hunter From The Future ):
• Gaydar : Dr. Insano has one in the Beastmaster 2 review. The Camp Gay store clerk is so flaming that it overloads. He never actually explains why he would need one.
• Gender Bender : The Gatekeither takes Spoony's wiener and turns him into a Valley Girl for the Party Mania review. This also applies to Linkara and Benzaie. (The review takes place on Earth-982 , which apparently is a Bizarro Universe when it comes to gender.)
• He also decided to install antipersonnel mines in front of the door to his room because the villain du jour, usually of some game, keeps bursting in... for some reason.
• He and Linkara learn the hard way that Kristanna Loken is actually very perceptive when it comes to interviewers trying to humiliate her for her role in Bloodrayne.
• The Ghost : Dr. Insano's nurse.
• Giftedly Bad : Spoony presents actor Reb Brown and director Bruno Mattei as examples of this. Also Uwe Boll to some extent, but only in his movie commentaries rather than the movies themselves.
• A God Am I : Terl claims godhood due to his amazing ability to instinctively know how high above sea level any location is, without help.
• Go-Karting with Bowser : Spoony allows Dr. Insano to join him in reviewing The Clones of Bruce Lee , despite the fact that Insano hired Squall to kill him in the previous episode . They even live together now.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 :
• 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.
• 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.
• 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".
• Three-to-one: He cosplayed as Tidus during the last part of his Final Fantasy X review.
• 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.
• 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).
• 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.
• Implacable Man : Squall who just. Wont. DIE!
• Incendiary Exponent : FIRE APES ON FIRE.
• 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:
• There are several tree-related ones in rapid succession in the Dragon Strike video review:
• 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.
• 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 :
• Insistent Terminology : " The council of shadowy people who sit in poorly-lit rooms who secretly run the world ".
• Black Lantern Spoony also breaks his foot literally kicking Linkara's ass when he presses one of his Berserk Buttons.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Killed Off for Real : Spencer D. Bum at the start of the Final Fantasy X review's finale.
• 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..."
• Ultimate Spoony, Dr. Insano, and, most of all, Spoontok of the Klingon Empire.
• "While you were still learning to SPELL YOUR NAME..."
• Spoony as himself in Kickassia . He's in good company, though .
• The GATEKEEPER will send your soul to the BLAGOH, MAGGOT!
• He taps into the hamminess of the Dragonstrike narrator when he reads the Pumpkinhead manual.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 .
• 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).
• The items on Spoony's bookshelf moving and changing around during Game Over: Control-Alt-Death .
• 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!
• Averted with Chuckles, who claims he's not a clown because "clowns get paid."
• Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate : Doctor Insano, natch.
• Tidus in general, Tidus' forced laugh more specifically.
• MSTing : Spoony's weapon of choice. To wit:
• 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.
• 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".
• 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..."
• 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.
• About Ultima I :
• 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":
• 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 :
• Off-the-Shelf FX : The "Time Compressor" looks an awful lot like an X-Box remote control. Dr. Insano insists it's not one!
• Oh Crap : In the end of Final Fantasy X-2 review, Sephiroth appears to actually save from death at Yuna's hands. Spoony freaks out thinking he would be the next but it turns out that he likes his show and let him alive. For the time being.
• One Steve Limit : "Okay, any team with two Jeffs on it I automatically write off as a complete joke."
• Overly Long Gag : The entire 8 minute or so part 2 of the Final Fantasy VIII is Squall drawing 2 spells, to underline how maddening the game can be .
• 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:
• Overused Copycat Character : "An elf with two swords. Who's surprised?"
• 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 .
• 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 .
• 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.
• "You hear that, world? I love my pink, freakish, orb-shaped son!"
• The Power of Rock : Yunalesca 's " Mega Death " which caused the party to be "Rocked to Death".
• Pragmatic Adaptation : Spoony says that, in his opinion, the live action Tekken movie was this because it ditched the more outlandish elements of the Tekken series like the robots and Devil Gene and just focused on the fighting.
• President Evil : Parodies the concept with President Dr. Insano following the lampshading of its occurence on Final Fantasy VII.
• Prisons Are Gymnasiums : Says that would fill in a plot hole in Snow White and the Huntsman , and says seeing Snow White pumping iron would have been awesome to see.
• Private Eye Monologue : Spoofed in the Phantasmagoria 2 review when Curtis finds Therese sitting on his couch after she broke into his apartment.
• Product Placement : When Linkara brought Spoony back to life, he hardcoded the urge to shill for his book into Spoony's DNA.
• And now Oreo as of the new credits, complete with launcher!
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis! : When talking about Metroid: Other M , Spoony remarks that Samus never. Shuts. The Fuck. Up. Ever .
• The Purge : "And people like this game ! Ladies and gentlemen, I implore you; Find these people. Kill them. They're, like.. voters. Kill them all!
• A briefer example comes at the start of the Tekken: Blood Vengeance , where he says that he's taken heat for liking the live action Tekken and defends his opinion.
• Readings Blew Up the Scale
• The DOE movie exploding the Ass Counter.
• 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).
• 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 .
• On the rare occasions that Dr. Insano does a review by himself, the theme tune changes to "Weird Science" by Oingo Boingo.
• 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 :
• Ridiculously Cute Critter : Son of Insano. "Riki-tee!"
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• This might be a result of an abandoned idea Doug mentioned where Spoony would play peacemaker (like Ask That Guy did in the Brawl), only to snatch the Commissar Cap and reveal that it's still Insano, just disguised as Spoony.
• Rule 34 : It exists, and Noah knows about it. He both makes fun and caters to the fans, just like the rest of the site.
• Related to the Fusebox Count, there was the Ass Count that ran through his Final Fantasy X review. The counter broke during one particularly gratuitous ass-shot in the Dead or Alive film review.
• The counter gag was resurrected in the Ultima 9 review.
• "I heard that, Curtis." To the extent that the quote appears on a t-shirt that Spoony will occasionally wear on-camera.
• PHANTASMAGORIA!
• " We will need a lot more hemp before we're through. "
• "You ever get the feeling of deja vu? Probably nothing."
• After getting hit by a flash grenade by allies in SWAT 4'* "YOU FOOL!"
• "You're in my way, sir."
• " Live the good life in the off-world colonies! "
• More Ripper : "Now all we have to do is-" *change disc screen comes up for umpteenth time* "D'OH!"
• Black Lantern Spoony keeps getting killed.
• Evil science labs producing Rage Monkeys .
• "[I play this game on hard difficulty] because I'm hardcore and that's how I roll! "
• Earlier in Final Fantasy VIII he did the same with the Gunblade, and even at one point said it was even stupider than Wakka's Blitzball .
• Fitting in references to and clips of the David Lynch version of Dune every time he reviews something that involves a desert. Though admittedly in the case of Final Fantasy X the game was blatantly referencing Dune itself.
• He's somehow managed to take Crow and Servo's " Beyond Thunderdome " Incredibly Lame Pun and turn it into a running gag.
• "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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• He takes his Professional Wrestling very seriously and is the quintessential IWC Elitist Smark
• Sexophone : In Spooning With Spoony.
• 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.
• Repeated in E3 2011.
• 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?! "
• 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 .
• 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.
• 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 .
• 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.
• 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).
• And it is AWESOME.
• 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.
• 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.
• His whole Ultimate Warrior parody character, which is mostly a spoof of the man's spastic incoherency.
• In his Let's Play of " Deadly Premonition ," he makes several jokes about how the game compares to Heavy Rain . This is probably a meta-reference to Benzaie's Let's Play of the latter game.
• His It Came From Beyond Midnight persona of Leslie Striker is a thinly veiled outright stated Take That towards WWE Color Commentator, Matt Striker.
• In his Deadliest Character sketch, the ending where the Green Ranger and the Dragonzord come out of nowhere to help out was confirmed by Noah in his later commentary to be intended as a Take That at Deadliest Warrior , specifically at their less-than-sound conclusions.
• The review of Mercenary Fighter , a dumb and cheesy 80s action flick, gives him the opportuniy to skewer Avatar by gushing about how brilliant the former's plot is and saying nobody in a million years could come up with a story like that ...while Burton holds the DVD for Avatar in the background.
• In his Phantasmagoria 2 LP: "Doctor, I think I need help. I got a Dane Cook CD... and god help me, it was funny!"
• In the Final Fantasy VIII review he delivered one against the Dark Avengers :
• Talkative Loon : Spoony's eerily accurate impression of the Ultimate Warrior.
• 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.
• He's the man!
• Until this . Motherfucker suplexed A TRAIN.
• Another Reb Brown clip from Mercenary Fighters allegedly tops them all:
• 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.
• On his Final Fantasy X-2 review, he comments on Yuna's ability to blind people by dancing:
• 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.
• 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.
• 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"
• Everything about Party Mania.
• 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.
• 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:
• 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 .
• No Indoor Voice : The Pope.
• 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 .
• 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.
• Foreshadowing ?
• When Terl claims godhood due to his amazing ability to inherently know how high above sea level any location in the world sits, Spoony is in enraptured awe of this skill.
• 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.
• 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:
• 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 :
• When She Smiles : Considers Natalie Portman this in his Thor review .
• 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 :
• Written-In Infirmity : He was drugged up on painkillers when filming the ET review, turning it into an homage to Apocalypse Now .
• X Meets Y : He called The Lords of Magick The Lord of the Rings meets The Room and The Beastmaster meets Birdemic
• Your Costume Needs Work : In this video he mentions that he has been mistaken for a Doctor Insano cosplayer . By someone from his own forum, no less.
• You Shall Not Pass : Edited himself in the The Lord of the Rings scene as part of a sketch for his review of Ultima .
• 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 .
• ↑ 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"
• ↑ 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
• ↑ 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
• ↑ 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
• ↑ Which is to force Shuyin into his body , which he'll then blow up taking Shuyin with him
• ↑ Cue another guest appearance by Benzaie.

• Pages with Broken Links
• The New Tens
• Other Sites
• Video Review Show
• That Guy With The Glasses
• Web Original
• Let's Players
• Toggle limited content width