Deadmau5



""So am I living a dream? Or enduring a nightmare? I still can't decide... because the last thing I want, or anyone else wants, is to just fade out into obscurity over a period of time and then end up shit on by the people who are near me now. That's why i have "fail" tattooed on the inside of my wrist... has a very profound meaning to me. Well, this is the short of it... another day approaches, and the pressure is more prevalent then it was the other day... I'm trying my best.""

A Canadian Electronic Music producer and icon, deadmau5 (pronounced "dead mouse") is easily one of the most popular electronic artists today. Getting his professional start in 2006 when he released his first full album, Get Scraped, he is best known for the songs "Faxing Berlin", "I Remember", "Ghosts 'n' Stuff", "Sofi Needs a Ladder", and "Raise Your Weapon", as well as for wearing his eponymous mau5head during live performances. His stage name comes from an incident in which he found a dead mouse in his computer while replacing his video card - on the IRC channel he frequented, he became known as "that dead mouse guy" after recounting the incident, and decided to change his username to "deadmau5" as a joke. The name is spelled as it is because of the character limit for IRC character names (you can only fit eight and "deadmouse" is nine), with the "5" as the "s" on the end because it's cool.

Real name Joel Zimmerman, he was born and raised in Niagara Falls, Ontario (though he considers his current city of residence, Toronto, his hometown). As a child, he had a hobby of tearing apart household electronics to figure out how they worked, which carried over to his later fascination with electronic music production - as opposed to solely using plugins and software to make his sounds (which he derisively calls "laptop music"), he uses huge racks of modulation and MIDI devices to produce them. After dropping out of high school, doing many odd jobs over the years (including being contracted for an IT job for two years using only his own self-taught computer programming skills), and starting a design business on the side, all while producing music in his free time as a hobby, he found himself being paid to do music for advertising until he got discovered by DJ Chris Lake. This and the appearance of his first hit as deadmau5, "Faxing Berlin", on Pete Tong's radio show led to him being signed onto Ultra Records, later creating his own label, mau5trap, and thus becoming a hit electronic artist doing music full-time.

While known for his music and his mau5head image, he is also known for being one of the nerdiest musicians to ever exist, being extremely open with his fans, and causing controversy, usually by speaking what is exactly on his mind, PR and sugarcoating be damned. These, combined with his constant cursing, his sense of humor, his personal problems, and the tendency for people to take anything he says out of context, result in a rather interesting individual.

Discography:

 * Get Scraped (2006)
 * Vexillology (2006)
 * Random Album Title (2008)
 * For Lack of a Better Name (2009)
 * 4x4=12 (2010)

Tropes Related to Deadmau5:
""HEY, frickin' douchebag! Hey Ed Hardly, go fuck yourself, you fucking idiot! Take your Jersey Shore and get the fuck out of the door!""
 * Accent On the Wrong Syllable: The lyrics in "Sofi Needs a Ladder" start out with "Let's play MU-si-CAL-chairs, one of my favorite gaaaaames".
 * This trope also applies to him when he's actually speaking. Occasionally he'll pronounce a word oddly, such as "epitome" ("epi-tohm" instead of "ee-pi-toh-mee"). Possibly related to Canada, Eh? below.
 * Added Alliterative Appeal: His nickname for his tour manager is "Pretty Princess" Paul.
 * Adorkable: Any time he dances, this trope seems to take effect.
 * Arc Words: "United We Fail", which is the name of his upcoming graphic novel project. What does it mean, and what significance does it have in the story? We have no idea, and he's not talking.
 * It's also the title of his (entirely unrelated to said novel) tumblr, too, but the significance of that is also unknown.
 * Ascended Meme: The phrase "go to bed", usually used by fans as a response against one of his trolling attempts, was championed by him as a response to any hate Tweets he got about his outburst at Madonna.
 * Gratuitous Foreign Language: After enough times of using the phrase, he asked his fans on Twitter to send him versions of it in different languages. The result was him spamming the phrase to angry Madonnna fans in a variety of different languages.
 * "Breadmau5 - Toast N Stuff" is thought to have been given a massive shout-out in this video, in which he waits for a while for toast to pop out of his battery-powered toaster.
 * Audience Participation Song: "Raise Your Weapon" gets very enthusiastic fan participation at his live shows.
 * Autotune: A rare electronic artist subversion. While he has several songs featuring vocals, the only vocals he's ever autotuned are his own, because he thinks that he can't sing.
 * Even autotuning his own vocals is occasionally subverted: his vocals in "Edit Your Friends" are only autotuned in the last thirty seconds of the song, and only the "Getting Warmer" mix for the unreleased song "Sleeping Beauty Pills" has his vocals autotuned.
 * Berserk Button: Several.
 * DJs, both calling him one and the subject alone. It's actually become more of an amusing Running Gag over time, rather than an outright Berserk Button now, merely being a subject for tamer Take Thats ("'Hi. I want to be a DJ too. Tips?' get disc. hit play. profit!") as opposed to the controversial insults (the "All DJs are cunts" fiasco) earlier in his career. This could either be due to him getting bored with it or because of his general mellowing out over the years.
 * Telling him how to live his life or work his career is a big one. There are fewer ways to piss him off faster than to insinuate that he's "doing it wrong".
 * Marijuana also seems to be a huge one for him (as Rusko learned the hard way), even though his official stance on drugs is that he doesn't care. This may or may not be related to an incident he cited on the Joe Rogen podcast in which he tried it once and his body reacted very badly to it. Of course, it could also be related to the very real and practical fear of being deported back to Canada if he's found with people who use it.
 * And lastly, spraying his gear with champagne. Also cited by deadmau5 himself as "reason #32 for not giving [him a microphone]".

""like October? Like get in the cart pig? im kinda making headway on both... at the same time....""
 * Big Eater: Implied by several of his Tweets and Facebook posts. Best part is, the guy is still insanely thin.
 * Blue With Shock: The line variety, in this fan-made image that he posted of him playing Skyrim - trying to fight off a bear with a wooden bowl and a spoon.
 * Book Dumb: "Barely" got through high school (he finished it later after he dropped out), but is incredibly tech-savvy and started his own design business before starting his full-time music career.
 * Book Ends: One of his old songs, "You Need a Ladder", starts and ends with 8-bit Zelda overworld music.
 * "Raise Your Weapon" starts and ends with the same solemn piano chords.
 * Bound and Gagged: In one of the promotional artworks for the Meowingtons Hax Tour. By his cat.
 * Bread Eggs Breaded Eggs: "Get in the October Cart Pig", a combination of the unreleased songs "Get in the Cart, Pig" and "October". Mainly invoked by what he posted on Twitter about it:

""@deadmau5 u can play with your cat in the latest snapshot of minecraft :)""
 * Buffy-Speak: While teasing Skrillex about driving and how short he is: "@skrillex but... like... how do reach the pedally things? :D"
 * Also doubles as Hypocritical Humor, as deadmau5 himself can't drive.
 * Butt Monkey: Skrillex is often the butt of deadmau5's jokes and pranks.
 * The Cameo: Tends to randomly show up at performances of people he's friends with.
 * Has appeared several times at Skrillex's shows, sometimes in his ghost costume from "Ghosts 'n' Stuff". In one instance, he came onstage to help Skrillex smash his Mac.
 * He also has a random cameo in the middle of the tour music video for Skrillex's Rock and Roll (Will Take You to the Mountain).
 * And he shows up at Tommy Lee's shows, too.
 * He has made a cameo at the beginning of a CSI episode, though that's not his gear (he doesn't use turntables).
 * He's also shown up on two episodes of EPICMEALTIME.
 * In Minecraft's main menu splash, one of the possible sayings is "Joel is neat!".
 * And in the 1.2 Minecraft release, three kinds of tamed cats were introduced, one of which looks suspiciously like deadmau5's cat, Professor Meowingtons. This is pretty much confirmed by a Mojang staff member's tweet to deadmau5 about it:

""Yeah, yeah fuckin' eh, ya hoser! Go listen to Guetta, eh!""
 * Appears in DJ Hero 2 as a playable character. Like the CSI example, he uses turntables, but unlike that example, it's more of a case of being required in gameplay as opposed to not doing the research.
 * Canada, Eh?: He's Canadian, and he really does say "Eh". His Canadian accent is much more prominent in his earlier online videos.
 * And true to what the page says, he really does call Macaroni and Cheese "Kraft Dinner" and is obsessed with Tim Hortons coffee. He also pronounces "sorry" as "soarhy", even when his accent is barely there. Some stereotypes are true after all, eh?
 * Also invoked when someone Tweeted to him that he "lost a fan" because he's Canadian, which he responded to with a hilariously stereotypical heavy Canadian accent.

""seriously, i giveth not a fucking single FUCK for slating on madonna for reaching an entirely NEW level of idiocy ... i can appriciate her meteoric career, and all good deeds done, but WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT? That's your big contribution to EDM? Thats your big message to ultra attendies? hipsterspeak for looking for drugs? fuck off you fucking IDIOT. fuck.""
 * Catapult Nightmare: As he comes back to life at the end of the "Ghosts 'n' Stuff" music video.
 * Celebrity Is Overrated: His general idea about his "celebrity" status. See I Just Want to Be Normal and Lonely At the Top below.
 * Chiptune: He first started making music by making chiptune tracks as a teenager. He still uses chiptunes in a few of his songs, such as the unreleased "Meowingtons Enables Hax".
 * Cluster F-Bomb: Often. Demonstrated aptly in this video, which is just a small fraction of the number of times he's dropped it. It even applies to his text posts!
 * A glorious illustration of this trope applying to one of his text posts:

"Twitter Comment: "You should handle situations better!"
 * As of the March 13th 2012 stream, he's actually trying to scale this back a bit, at the request of the mother of a fan who watches his livestreams.
 * Country Matters: Yes, "cunt" is in his repitoire of cuss words. It only shows up when he is absolutely enraged.
 * Curse Cut Short: On the 4/9/2012 livestream:

deadmau5: "Fuck you! You should handle my--" *pauses, smiles at the camera*"

""hello mother...Thanks for the many years of patience, love...AND CHEAP RENT! Your estranged mau5y son...Joel Zimmerman.""
 * Deadpan Snarker: Not always deadpan, but very snarky at ALL hours.
 * Development Hell: "United We Fail", his upcoming graphic novel project, is currently in this, if not outright on hold at the moment. He cited Executive Meddling "making it not fun" as why.
 * Early Bird Cameo: The opening synth line for "Cthulhu Dreams" first appeared in the 2010 video "my cat hates my fans".
 * Early Album Weirdness: Get Scraped is entirely different from the rest of his albums, consisting of songs spanning far more genres and sounds than his later ones. Vexillology, the next album released, also sounds different from his modern sound, though it at least has a consistent one. It isn't until Random Album Title that he finally establishes his signature sound and feel.
 * Electronic Music: Of course. His music actually spans several sub-genres of EDM, mainly because he prefers not to stick with one style and just dabbles in whatever he feels like doing at the time.
 * Drum & Bass: Some of his really old stuff (mainly made before he was deadmau5). A major example of this is the original 2001 edit of "Aural Psynapse", which has far more emphasis on percussion than the final 2011 version. "Edit Your Friends" leans towards this, too.
 * Dubstep: A few officially released songs, such as "Raise Your Weapon" and "One Trick Pony", with several experimental demos up on his SoundCloud.
 * House: Easily the subgenre he's most prolific in, as well as the one he's best known for. Includes Electro House, Progressive House, and Tech House, and contains FAR too many songs to list here; a few well-known examples are "Faxing Berlin", "Ghosts 'n' Stuff", and "Strobe".
 * He has a demo on his SoundCloud titled "today, im french", which is his one and only outright foray into French House music. The unreleased song "Swinged" is also really European-House-ish, if not outright French House.
 * Minimal: A few, though not officially listed. Examples include "Complications", "The Reward is Cheese", and "Limit Break", with "Cthulhu Sleeps" leaning more towards this genre (but listed officially as Electro House).
 * Techno: A few, but mostly obscure. Some examples are "Subvert", "Full Bloom", and "Secondary Complications".
 * Trance: While no songs are officially listed in this genre, several of his songs have "trance-y" overtones, such as "I Remember", "HR8938 Cephei", and "Faxing Berlin".
 * Even Scrawny Miscreants Love Their Mamas: He's still really close to his mom. He has referred to her as "awesome", pays her to keep an eye on his place while he's gone, and often talks to her on the phone. The red spiral staircase in his loft that can be seen in some of his older livestream footage was painted by her, and she makes awesome paintings of him. In one case, you can see it framed in his renovated living room.

""I pass out from over exhaustion in DC. YES 2 month long tours of playing shows back to fucking back MIGHT ACTUALLY DO THAT TO A HUMAN. dear media, get off my case and move on.""
 * In the Joe Rogen podcast the night before the 2012 Grammys, he told the hosts that if any of them starts smoking weed in the studio, he'll be in the bathroom, shaking, waiting for the cops to show up...or his mom.
 * He once said on Twitter that he gets his "telling it like it is" from his mother (after a mention about how his mom said that fellow DJ Kaskade's haircut sucked).
 * Exact Words: Often, likely related to Literal Minded and Pungeon Master below.
 * When asked by a fan to take a picture of a pixel with his new camera lens during a livestream, he decides to take a picture of the word "pixel" instead.
 * "How's United We Fail going?" "It's not going anywhere!"
 * The video Musical Chairs.
 * Executive Meddling: "Ghosts 'n' Stuff" was originally titled "Ghosts 'n' Shit", but his higher-ups wouldn't let him release the song with that title.
 * In the January 11 2012 stream, he called up his manager and asked to release "Maths", then stating that it would come out later that week. "Maths" came out a month later, and deadmau5 has confirmed that it's because of this trope.
 * United We Fail was put on hold in part because of this trope: he was sick of the suits and businesspeople getting involved in the project and making it "not fun".
 * The Faceless: Surprisingly averted for someone rather known for wearing a mask while performing. He rarely does interviews wearing the helmet, he never wears it during his livestreams, and he doesn't even wear it during his entire performance unless it's a really short one, because he gets too hot inside the head.
 * However, he stated in an interview on Last Call with Carson Daly that he briefly toyed with the idea of always being The Faceless, but decided against it after realizing that, no matter how hard he tried, people would eventually see his face.
 * Fading Into the Next Song: From For Lack of a Better Name, "FML" fades into "Moar Ghosts 'n' Stuff".
 * And from 4x4=12, "Raise Your Weapon" fades into "One Trick Pony", though this is not present in the version of the song released as a single.
 * Fan Nickname: "Deer Bus" for "Professional Griefers". Before the official title was revealed, the fandom gave the song that name after someone mentioned that the hard-hitting bassline sounded like "a deer getting hit by a bus".
 * "Professional Griefers" also has the nickname "Into the Nether" among Minecraft fans, thanks to the song's association with MineCon in that fandom.
 * Fan Service: Entirely unintentional on his part, but the entire series of livestreams where he's moving cables and plugging in equipment had him bending over a lot, which naturally led to a massive flood of fangirls...admiring him. He's stated before that he finds the female fanbase's obsession with his butt a little unnerving.
 * First-Name Basis: Prefers being referred to by his first name (Joel), both in real life and on the internet.
 * Freeze Frame Bonus: In the Vegas residency video, each of the job applications getting stamped with "Fail!" have different, and totally hilarious, things filled in for them.
 * In the music video for "I Remember", there are a bunch of little references to deadmau5 sprinkled throughout - such as the car the protagonists use having mau5-themed license plate numbers.
 * Fun With Acronyms: One of his songs released under his BSOD alias is..."BSOD". The alias actually stands for "Blue Screen of Death", while the song title means "Better Sounding On Drugs" (which is constantly said throughout the song).
 * There's also his song Seeya Next Tuesday, which could also be spelled as C U Next Tuesday.
 * On his way back from MineCon, he Tweeted "DELTA - Don't Expect Luggage To Arrive", after the aforementioned airline apparently lost his luggage.
 * Also, the album Random Album Title.
 * In an interview with Rhapsody, deadmau5 said that he and his friend Steve Duda had come up with an alternate acronym for SOFI: "Some Other Fucking Idiot".
 * A Good Name For A House Song: "Faxing Berlin" was apparently coined in an AIM conversation.
 * Griefer: Refers to himself as such. Also has an unreleased song titled "Professional Griefers".
 * Hates Being Touched: Explicitly stated as the reason why he doesn't like getting photos taken.
 * Hearts Are Health: His nearly memetic tattoo on his left arm, which is four pixellated hearts (but are only filled in to two-and-a-half). It's a Zelda reference, though new fans often mistake it as a Minecraft one; he got the tattoo before Minecraft existed.
 * Heroic RROD: In July 2010, he collapsed on stage while performing at the 9:30 Club, caused by performing shows every day and a bad diet. This resulted in his hospitalization and the cancellation of the rest of the shows on that tour. It's still a sore spot for him.

""Squirrels Squirrels Squirrels! Who's that squirrel? Squirrels Gone Wild?""
 * Hidden Depths: For someone who describes himself as a "loudmouthed, opinionated idiot", he has several moments where he displays amazing amounts of insight and intelligence. Case in point.
 * He loves kids, and says that they're his favorite fans.
 * According to his post about musical collaborations and such, he likes to read short stories (since he doesn't have enough time to read full-fledged novels). Given the subject matter of songs such as "Cthulhu Sleeps" and "The Veldt", he seems to enjoy reading Cosmic Horror and depressing sci-fi.
 * Hostile Show Takeover: Invoked in the promotional materials for the Meowingtons Hax tour, which involve the titular cat wearing a broken mau5head and tying up the real deadmau5.
 * Hurricane of Puns: During the 2011 Montreal livestream, he broke into a series of squirrel puns.

""whether im globally conceived to be, or not, i don't aspire to be a role model, and i dont aspire to be a leader, prophet or all around advocate of anything other than "the silly shit i get up to when im in my element" which, ironicly enough, just so happens to be making music.""
 * I Always Wanted to Say That: Directly after tweeting about how his "tweet level" is over 9000: "Seriously, I've been waiting 4 years to tweet that."
 * I Just Want to Be Normal: His general, very vocal sentiment about his fame. He has stated many, many times that just wants to be someone who writes and performs music for his own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of others, and that being famous is entirely overrated and that he doesn't care for it. He doesn't like to be looked up to or constantly praised, and says that he'll never get used to being a "celebrity".

"YouTube Comment: "I love Joel. Women are trying to talk to him and he's happily ignoring them for a hacked children's toy﻿ that makes noises.""
 * This even applies to things like awards (which you'd only likely know about from looking on Wikipedia because he never talks about them)...on the Christmas 2011 stream, he stated that he doesn't really care about the Grammys all that much because he "doesn't need a plastic statue to validate that I make music".
 * Idiosyncratic Cover Art: All of his album and single covers have some kind of mau5head on them. Vexillology is the only aversion, and even then the art still has a dead mouse on it.
 * Ignore the Fanservice: Surrounded by scantily-clad women wearing mau5heads? He looks like he'd rather be somewhere else. Though SOFI hugging him might not help matters.
 * A pretty amusing example is when someone handed him a circuit-bent Speak and Spell and he just played with it while ignoring the girls trying to talk to him.

""Dude, I know they're listening to me, that's the sad part. And they...blast my shit like they want me to hear it. And I don't get it...why they do that. It's so annoying.""
 * Image Boards: Goes on (and is well-liked by) /b/, but has a mutual hatred of /mu/. He says that he doesn't post, though, only preferring to lurk.
 * Insistent Terminology: Hates being called a DJ, as "there is no jockeying of discs going on".
 * Technically, he is a producer since he makes his own music, but DJs his own stuff at his live shows.
 * Irony: A house producer complaining about how obnoxiously loud his neighbors are.
 * For extra irony, they even play his own music.

""You know what? Never, ever, ever tell me I can't talk to my son.""
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: There are several songs that are on his SoundCloud and My Space accounts that haven't been officially released or even available for download. These not only include rather...odd songs, but earlier versions of existing songs (such as "Old Ghosts" - see What Could Have Been below), remixes of existing songs, and live edits.
 * Large Ham: He normally already has a little of this in his personality (and it really comes out when he's drunk), but he brings it Up to Eleven when he's performing or on camera. For example.
 * "Suicide a la mau5" is a totally hamtastic example.
 * "deadlob5ter" is three minutes of prime ham.
 * Lethal Chef: In one of his really, really old videos, he managed to screw up making an omelette (it somehow resulted in scrambled eggs). In the 2011 Christmas Eve stream, reheating soup in a pot was considered a huge success for him ("This soup was made with magnets!"), and his caption for a picture of his newly-renovated kitchen was "the kitchen, where cooking will likely never get done". He can apparently make Kraft Dinner, though.
 * He somehow successfully cooked lasagna one night, but it still looks a little off.
 * Line of Sight Tattoo: The origin of the scissors tattoo on his left arm. He was hanging out with Tommy Lee and arbitrarily decided to get a tattoo, but didn't know what to get until he saw some packaging with the scissors-and-dotted-line symbol on it.
 * Literal Minded: Very much so. One such instance is when he saw the album cover for Lady Gaga's Born This Way: "I'd hate to give birth to that motorcycle-thing, that's big." See also: Exact Words above.
 * Likewise, he has stated that when told not to curse, he literally thinks of it as not cursing someone, as in hexes and such.
 * Also, he has a literal flying fuck.
 * Lonely At the Top: Has an entire blog post about being unable to have a "normal" romantic relationship because of his career. This trope is also pretty much heavily implied often with his anecdotes and streams, such as during the Valentines Day 2012 ("Guess I'll be spending Valentine's Day alone.") and Christmas Eve 2011 ("Why aren't you with your family?" "I am with my family, I'm with you guys. I'm by myself in my empty-ass house.") streams, not to mention several other times where he's ranted about being treated differently by others because of his fame (such as his rant about shopping, brought on by a Facebook comment).
 * He's also mentioned struggling with depression and anxiety over the past year and is still reluctant about saying that he's "happy" when asked by fans ("...I'm getting there, but I wouldn't consider myself fucking blissfully happy! In my house, all by myself, looking for a Coke!")
 * The blog post "Falling Up" (where the page quote is taken from) also has shades of this.
 * Lyrical Dissonance: The Veldt
 * Mama Bear: His mother.

""its a fuckin stupid song. really it is... not sure what i was fucking thinking back then.""
 * Mondegreen: In the "deadmau5 - o2 wireless festival intro" video, some of the lyrics are Mondegreened to mau5-related ones.
 * Mood Whiplash: "Careless" is a complete mastery of this trope. When the piano originally comes in, it sounds mournful, before a break happens and it proceeds to sound hopeful for the rest of the song. Each set of vocal verses start out sounding like it's about a guy loving someone regardless of their flaws before going into lines that reveal that it's actually about him being too apathetic to break up with them or even care about said person.
 * Must Have Nicotine: A good way to tell during livestreams if he's stressed out or depressed is to watch how many cigarettes he smokes in a given time period. The worse his emotional state (even if he doesn't outwardly show it), the more he'll smoke.
 * Name's the Same: Joel Zimmerman is also the name of his agent.
 * Naughty Tentacles: Has some on his Cthulhu tattoo sleeve on his right arm.
 * Nerds Are Sexy: He has legions of female fans professing their love to him on Facebook and Tumblr, porn stars and models who gladly talk to (and flirt with!) him on Twitter, and an ex-girlfriend who's a Playboy model. He qualifies.
 * Nice Hat: The giant helmets he wears, called "mau5head"s. He has several of them, including an LED one that serves as an Expressive Mask.
 * The baseball caps he always wears could qualify, too.
 * No Indoor Voice: When he's absolutely drunk.
 * No Pronunciation Guide: Is it "dead mouse" or "dead mau five"? While the former is often considered the "right" way to say it by fans (since that was the original intent of the name), the man himself doesn't care how you pronounce it, and has even said it as "dead mau five" a few times.
 * Nothing Is Scarier: His biggest fear is "being alone".
 * Off the Wagon: Fell off hard at the end of 2011. His house renovation, lack of a studio (but majorly itching to work on music), break-up with his girlfriend of a year, and his struggle with his depression, combined with no touring to keep his mind off of things, led to him taking up smoking again, as well as far more mentions of him getting really drunk after his unhooked performances at the beginning of 2012. It looks like he's doing better now, though.
 * Old Shame: The really old and obscure song "Hey Baby" is this for him.

""YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!""
 * Judging by his distinct lack of responses to the other songs in that series, it's safe to say that all of the songs he did with Mellefresh, not just "Hey Baby", is this for him.
 * Older Than He Looks: This guy is 31. It's been said that he can pass for 18 when he shaves.
 * One-Note Cook: His mother, apparently. He said that she can only make really good shepherd's pie with the rest of what she makes being "shit". It would certainly explain his own Lethal Chef tendencies...
 * One of Us: Where do we even start?
 * He is a huge video game geek. Games that he apparently plays include Bayonetta, Counter Strike, Final Fantasy (IV and X), Katamari Damacy, Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, Quake, Resident Evil, Skyrim, Spore, Super Metroid, Team Fortress 2, and Uncharted. Of those, his favorite games are Final Fantasy X, Minecraft, Zelda (especially The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time), and Uncharted. His video game geekiness is so well-known that he was the house DJ for the 2011 VGAs, which also happens to be the same event where he unveiled his awesome video-game themed mau5head.
 * The tattoos on his left arm include Zelda hearts, a Creeper face, a Boo, and Shigeru Miyamoto's signature. He also has a Space Invader on his neck, which was made rather famous by the music video for "Ghosts 'n' Stuff".
 * He also has a replica Master Sword and Hylian Shield, and is now collecting video game weapon props, one of which being the chainsaw from Lollipop Chainsaw. Also has a Creeper hat, several Minecraft t-shirts that he occasionally wears, and two replica Creepers in his living room.
 * His love for Minecraft is so legendary that he performed at MineCon for free and is friends with Notch, the game's creator. And as previously mentioned in The Cameo, he has his own line in the game's main menu splash. He also runs his own multiplayer server, mau5ville.
 * He's also quoted and mentioned Final Fantasy X many times on Twitter. "Yuna may pass.... Guardians may pass..... SOFI NOT PASS!!"
 * His Sundays apparently involve making Castlevania midis ("Waste of time? I think not."), and "You Need a Ladder" is a very blatant Zelda reference.
 * Wore an awesome Portal shirt when he performed at the Juno Awards.
 * Want more proof? The early December 2011 livestream in Los Angeles is a three-hour-long shining example of this.
 * Constantly references memes, both on the internet and in real life. Often overlaps with Trolling.

"YouTube Comment: "I love that Joel is so much like his fans and he can relate. He doesn't even seem like a celeb to me, he's like a friend that happens to make awesome house music that alot of people listen to.""
 * Rumor has it he's a a brony.
 * At the least an argument could be made for him being a Fluttershy fan.
 * He explictly stated in the Valentine's Day 2012 stream that he is, indeed, a Vocaloid fan.
 * As a whole, he doesn't just fulfill the "major nerd" part of this trope, but the literal meaning of it, being a pretty normal guy who is close to his fans. He watches his Twitter like a hawk, answers questions, reads and keeps all of his fanmail, does livestreams in his home, and makes silly videos (some of which involve his beloved cat). Several comments on YouTube reprints of his livestreams are along the lines of "he seems more like a friend than a celeb".

""... but to be fair, you know those nightmares you have about being in front of thousands of people with no pants on? yeah, i had to give it a go n see what thats all about.""
 * Oral Fixation Fixation: The only possible reason why this photo exists.
 * Out of Genre Experience: So you go into "Raise Your Weapon" thinking that it's yet another standard deadmau5 electro house song...and then the drop happens.
 * One unreleased song on his SoundCloud, "Sleeping Beauty Pills", is a...rock song? With him doing vocals?
 * "Failbait" is a hip-hop song featuring Cypress Hill.
 * Perpetual Frowner: The number of photos of him frowning, stoic, or making some silly face far outnumber the few photos you can find of him outright, genuinely smiling.
 * Averted in his videos and in live streams, in which he actually smiles a bit more often.
 * Pungeon Master: He absolutely loves puns. The examples seen in Exact Words and Literal Minded above are only a small fraction of the number of puns he's made.
 * Refuge in Audacity: He came on stage in a live performance in Montreal without any pants on.

""ahhh! Full Fail! dude! save the cash! learn on the internets!""
 * Renaissance Man: On top of making awesome electronica music, he skateboards (badly), snowboards, jet-skis, plays video games, does web design and web programming, computer programming, 3D modeling and animation, Flash animation, plays the piano and is learning the guitar, and photography. The best part? Nearly all of that is self-taught, and he encourages his fans to do the same.

""What do you think of all the porn of you with skrillex. haha"
 * He's not only a pianist, but a classically trained pianist. He said on the Joe Rogen podcast that his parents enrolled him in "piano boot camp" since "I was, like, three".
 * Right-Hand-Cat: Professor Meowingtons is his cat, who shows up in several of his official YouTube videos and is the namesake of his Meowingtons Hax tour. He also has three songs about him: "Meowingtons Enables Hax", "Have You Seen My Cat?", and "Professor Meowingtons". He also brings Meowingtons on livestreams, often at the (very vocal) requests of his fans.
 * Rule 34: There is indeed porn of him. With Skrillex. He's rather chill about it.

"…well now the world knows what you think about it. go outside or somethin for a while dude.""

""...hahaha despite the 2 minor hiccups, we had so much fun! i'll be back you guys! ♥ night night! im off to Durban tomorrow! :)""
 * There's also a decent amount with him and Daft Punk.
 * Running Gag: "Skrillex is Not Even Funny", after it was coined in a U Stream session.
 * Meowingtons being fat is another one.
 * He started another one involving his new songs on SoundCloud: ever since "Cthulhu Dreams", nearly every new song's genre has been listed on the site as "[item]-step", such as "Elderstep" for "Cthulhu Dreams", "Pigstep" for "Get in the October Cart, Pig", "Catstep" for "Professor Meowingtons", "StephenSpeilbergstep" for "Closer", and "Octoberstep" for "November Second".
 * Sampling: Generally only does this at live shows (such as sampling Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger" in a live performance of "Professional Griefers"), but has a rare instance of sampling at the beginning of "Moar Ghosts 'n' Stuff". Another song, "To Play Us Out", samples the memetically infamous Bill O'Reilly rant, which the song title derives its name from.
 * One of his really old songs, "Intelstat", not only sounds like something from Ghost in The Shell, but has vocals sampled from a song in the first movie.
 * A work-in-progress song that he posted on SoundCloud, "Closer", uses the the five tones from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
 * His own music is prone to being sampled by other artists - famous incidents include the Black Eyed Peas's sampling of "You And I" in "The Time", Alexis Jordan sampling "Brazil (2nd Edit)" in "Happiness", and Nick Cannon's very blatant sampling of "I Remember".
 * Say It With Hearts: Often while posting to his fandom. Likes to use emoticons in everyday online speech, too.

""did i seriously tweet a pic of me and @musclesglasses shirtless on a couch in ottawa... fuck... i did. FUCK. lol #backpeddle""
 * Schedule Slip: His new studio and house renovation was originally supposed to be done in December 2011. The end-date for the studio was moved to February 2012, and then again to March 2012. Consequently, the official release of "Professional Griefers" and his next album have also been pushed back.
 * As seen in Executive Meddling above, "Maths" was originally supposed to be released mid-January 2012, before finally coming out mid-February 2012.
 * Self Deprecating Humor: Often. He really enjoys making fun of himself.
 * This video about his 2012 residency in Las Vegas has him failing miserably at any job that isn't performing his music.
 * In this signed picture, he wrote "total idiot!" above himself.
 * In the video Mr. Happy, the video momentarily stops with the word "Idiot" next to him.
 * On his interview on The Last Call With Carson Daly, he referred to himself as a "loudmouthed, opinionated idiot".
 * Shirtless Scene: This picture of him drunk with Muscles Glasses.

""It's cool. Our prawny friends can come to the show too. Afterparty at District 9 ;)"
 * Shout Out: Many of them.
 * The song title "Limit Break".
 * The song itself has sound effects from the 8-bit Mario titles.
 * The song titles "Professional Griefers" and "Get in the Cart, Pig" are both Minecraft in-jokes.
 * "Sofi Needs a Ladder" is a retooling of one of his unreleased songs "You Need a Ladder", which references the idea that having a ladder would solve most of the puzzles in the 3D Zelda titles.
 * Speaking of which, "You Need a Ladder" starts with the 8-bit Zelda overworld theme.
 * The animations for his live shows reference Pac-Man, Minecraft, Super Mario World, and Mega Man. Past ones have also referenced the original The Legend of Zelda.
 * The concept art for his upcoming graphic novel is often full of them, but this image of his tank takes the cake. For one, it's very clearly a souped-up Tachikoma. Others have noted similarities to Starcraft and Tank Girl.
 * In earlier shows, the LED Mau5head would occasionally have the face of a Cylon.
 * The video "The Unveiling" turns out being a Shout Out to.
 * Upon arriving in Johannesburg for his latest tour, he Tweeted a bunch of District 9 references.

"FREE CAT FOOD AT H2O TONIGHT!""

""Congrats to @skrillex for the best remix grammy :) can't say I'm not proud!"
 * One of his upcoming songs is titled "The Veldt", and has lyrics that explicitly reference the story.
 * Signature Song: Either "Ghosts 'n' Stuff" or "Moar Ghosts 'n' Stuff". The former is used in the vast, vast majority of his cameos and promotions, to the point that fans tend to complain in video comments now about how overused it is, while the latter is a sequel/prequel song that he often mixes with the former at his live shows.
 * "Professional Griefers" is also starting to look like this, even though it's not out yet. Deadmau5 refers to himself as a "professional griefer", and the song is easily one of his most anticipated upcoming releases and set performances.
 * Sitcom Arch Nemesis: David Guetta. See Canada, Eh? above and Take That below.
 * Sir Swearsalot: ALL of the time. It's brought Up to Eleven when he gets angry or enthusiastic.
 * Sophisticated As Hell: His constant cussing combined with his large vocabulary often results in this. It's taken Up to Eleven when he's talking equipment and computers, because in those cases his cursing is mixed with tech jargon, resulting in gems such as "fucking modular oscillation".
 * So Proud of You: To Skrillex for getting five Grammy nominations.
 * And to the same person for winning three of those, even beating deadmau5 himself for all of them.

"Another epic win for @skrillex ! Cleaning house :)"

"And @skrillex cleans out the mau5. ;) I wouldn't let anyone else do it. Oh well, I got a rad gift bag! :)""

""If you could punch a political figure in the face, who would it be?"
 * Stage Names: Deadmau5, with his real name being Joel Zimmerman, as previously stated.
 * Take That: His first ever hit, a collaboration with Steve Duda under the BSOD alias titled "This Is The Hook", is a Take That against how formulaic house music is.
 * Issuing Take Thats on David Guetta is practically a Running Gag (though it's less animosity towards the guy himself and more towards his style of producing - "He's like a human-fucking-mashup!"). One such example of this case is in the Canada, Eh? trope above, though there are many, many other examples of this.

"david guetta.""

""He's running a cracked version of Silent. What, DJing doesn't pay enough for you to buy a two-hundred-dollar plugin?""
 * Avicii is starting to become the next David Guetta in terms of Take Thats being a Running Gag now, too. Nearly every 2012 livestream so far has had at least one Take That towards him.

""Wait wait wait...hang on. This isn't Rebecca Black...this is actually worse." *pained laugh*
 * During the March 26 2012 livestream, he joked that he has likely issued some kind of Take That against everyone at this point (a small list of people so far includes Avicii, Justin Bieber, Ed Hardy, Lady Gaga, David Guetta, Neon Hitch, Madonna, Pauly D, Snooki, Britney Spears, and Tiesto).
 * After posting a demo of "Sunspot" on his SoundCloud, he later posted "Sunspot (da eXXXXXXtreme drop mix)", a 15-second dubstep version demo lampooning all of the recent dubstep trends "of the past year", including seemingly-random effects and sampling, like the style found in Skrillex's work.
 * While talking about Boxx, the company that made the laptop he was using at the time: "It's like Alienware, but it doesn't suck."
 * A particularly glorious example is when he trashed the entirety of the So Bad Its Horrible internet song "Hot Problems" during a livestream, which also crossed heavily into Disproportionate Retribution and Crosses the Line Twice.

"I am extremely looking forward to social collapse."

"...I am going to use the one on the left's skull as a FUCKING SOUP BOWL!""


 * Tattooed Crook: Subverted in that, while he looks the part with the many, many tattoos he has, the most trouble he ever seems to get into is silly stuff like accidentally breaking some glass doors while riding on a flight case and jumping into a pool from a balcony.
 * Technology Porn: Since he's a musical gear-head, this happens often. A few examples are the videos "Modular Mouse", "mau5trap recordings", and "i normally do this on sundays".
 * A non-musical-equipment example is in the video "Pretty Princess Paul", in which the camera lovingly pans over the Ducati he bought for his tour manager.
 * There's a verbal example in the Valentine's Day 2012 stream where he's gushing about the awesome new features and specs of the LED Mau5head 2.0.
 * This Means War: Used word-for-word as the title for a Facebook post about...a snowball fight.
 * Totally Radical: Actually uses "rad" and "gnarly" in everyday conversation, but makes it sound cool anyway.
 * Trademark Favorite Food: His love for Coca-Cola is very well-known. It's to the point that he's stated that he turned down a six-figure deal from Pepsi because he drinks Coke.
 * Trolling: His signature brand of humor. Examples include posting on Facebook that his agent has been fired during a venue mishap (without actually firing the guy), and Tweeting that he supposedly lost his demo Playstation Vita in a cab a day or so after he got it from Sony just to see how much trouble he would (theoretically) get into. Not to mention all the times he has fed the trolls on Twitter and Facebook just for sheer lulz.
 * And as if you had any doubt left, he went to the 2012 Grammys wearing a shirt that had Skrillex's real phone number on it with "u mad bro?" underneath.
 * Even his management is in on it, though - one instance was when his manager texted him about how the Shigeru Miyamoto who signed his arm was just a stand in...while he was getting said signature tattooed into his arm. Hilarity ensued.
 * Trope Name: Random Album Title
 * Also, "Some Chords", which starts with...some chords. The trope is also arguably invoked with For Lack of a Better Name, the album released after Random Album Title, as well as the song "Lack of a Better Name", the title track of the aforementioned album.
 * "Ghosts 'n' Stuff" is also an odd minor example pertaining only to the song's music video. The song's video pretty much perfectly matches the song title, as it consists of a ghost doing random stuff.
 * He's already started joking about naming his next album IDK (I Don't Know) or IDFK (I Don't Fucking Know), after being asked about what he's going to name it by a fan on Twitter.
 * His Dubstep demos on SoundCloud have creative titles such as "Dub5tepthingie2".
 * Troubled but Cute: He has problems, and has no qualms about posting about them online when he gets really depressed. As for the "cute" part, see Nerds Are Sexy above.
 * Unsound Effect: Anytime a notification sound on his computer plays during one of his livestreams, he always follows it up with a verbal "DING!".
 * Visual Pun: The video My Cat Hates My Fans.
 * Vitriolic Best Buds: Type 2 with Skrillex. The "vitrolic" part is mostly one-sided, though, as deadmau5 generally makes fun of Skrillex far more than Skrillex makes fun of him.
 * Wasted Song: Is practically a Running Gag with him. He has TONS of unfinished or just plain unreleased projects in various computers and drives at home and items up on his SoundCloud, either because he simply forgot about them, got bored working on them, or thinks they are too flawed, which is a shame, because a decent amount of said songs are actually quite good. For instance, "Swinged" was mentioned in a later livestream as "too busy", and he hasn't really worked on it since he first posted it.
 * "Meowingtons Enables Hax", "Sleeping Beauty Pills", and various Minecraft-related projects have yet to have been released or have had new versions posted.
 * "To Play Us Out" is never going to get an official release because of licensing issues.
 * What Could Have Been: Feast your ears on an old track from 2004 that later became "Ghosts 'n' Stuff" after "at least 10" revisions.
 * "October" was a song originally written for what later became "Raise Your Weapon"'s vocal track. It was later scrapped so that he could do something different with it (namely, a dubstep track instead of his "usual" electro or prog house). Unfortunately, this means that "October" will never get an official release.
 * "Aural Psynapse" is actually a re-edit of a song that he made in 2001 under his old Halcyon441 name, also titled "Aural Psynapse". Not only are the synth lines similar, but the background effects used in the song (which are especially obvious right at the beginning) later showed up in "Strobe" and "HR8938 Cephei".
 * Speaking of "Strobe", the song is actually two previously existing songs put together, one of which being "Then We Stood Still".
 * "Brazil" was originally much more chill and meditative. It's completely unrecognizable from "Brazil (2nd Edit)."
 * It was mentioned in a livestream that he had actually received several vocal submissions for "Maths", but decided to keep the song as an instrumental.
 * He said on the Joe Rogen podcast that he was one of the artists considered for doing the soundtrack to Tron Legacy before Daft Punk was chosen, and added that had he been chosen and he knew that Daft Punk was being considered, he would've handed it off to them anyway.
 * He stated that he'd gladly remaster the tracks on Get Scraped in his new studio...but he can't, because he doesn't have the source files for them anymore.
 * Word Salad Lyrics: The lyrics for "Professional Griefers" are this, no matter how they are heard when he streams it.
 * Writers Cannot Do Math: 4x4=12, in what is a rare example of a musician failing at math. The album name is an in-joke stemming from a live-stream incident in which he was describing his setup and said "four times four, which is twelve". After his fans poked fun at him for it, he decided to name his next album after the incident. Also lampshaded in "Maths", where the only vocal line is a faint voice saying "four PLUS four PLUS four is twelve" at a few points in the song.
 * While the equation makes no sense in base 10, it does make sense in base 14.
 * Xtreme Kool Letterz/Letters 2 Numbers: Deadmau5. Justified in that it was originally going to be spelled correctly but couldn't fit the character limit for an IRC username.