Everyman HYBRID

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Vince shares some exercise tips with an engaged audience.

What's up, Hybrids?

Alright now, since this is a documentary of our real investigation of our real situation, um, I wanted to put this in here, I wanted to put this in this video and, uh, explain to whoever might be watching this at the end that... that um, I personally think that it's bullshit how we're just sitting here waiting and just beating around the bush about this shit. Clearly this is not just some dickhole messing with us, clearly this is not just some man in a suit. This is something soooo much worse.

A series of Youtube videos based around The Slender Man Mythos. Three guys; Vince, Evan and Jeff set up a fitness and exercise video-blog, in which they discuss the best ways to exercise, the best things to eat and the best ways to defend yourself from anyone who attacks you. Vince and Evan do the talking, Jeff's their camerman. But while they're filming, there seems to be a weird gentleman, a bit on the tall side--and as events escalate, a young Princeton student finds herself swept up into their situation as well...

Anyone new to Everyman HYBRID should use this timeline to guide them through the story, since the full story is spread across two YouTube channels, Two Twitter feeds, Twitpic pictures, some archived live webcats, a blog, a forum, and even a few YouTube posts on unrelated channels. And take a look at the game's wiki, which has useful things like transcripts of the videos.

If you want to do a Archive Binge without any guidance:

Beware! There may be unmarked spoilers for the series below!

Tropes used in Everyman HYBRID include:
  • Adults Are Useless: Jeff and Alex's parents must be especially oblivious. Mainly because they're dead.
  • Alien Geometries:
    • A basement in an abandoned house in the woods in the middle of the day leads to below a pier in the middle of the night.
    • "77of76.avi" reveals that the guys were apparently trapped wandering around the woods, no matter what direction they took they ended up at a large tree in the middle of a dead field of grass, a short walk away from the abandoned house. They couldn't reach the house, of course.
    • The basement somehow is connected to the crawlspace of Alex's and Jeff's house. The connection was one way (to the basement), and vanished two days later.
  • Alternate Reality Game: Fan interaction and investigation are much bigger in this story than any of the other Slenderblogs.
  • Always a Bigger Fish/Big Damn Villains: From a Corenthal Report found in one of the Boxes. "Apparently the Reverend didn't know the Man doesn't share."
  • Anachronic Order: The aftermath of "Episode 6: Healthy Eating" is posted before the video showing the event. The rest of the "hidden" videos continue this.
  • Apocalyptic Log: The main videos seem to be going this way. The Ansem Corenthal reports are already there.
  • Ax Crazy: Evan pulls it here, although we don't know for sure if it's canon. What is canon is Evan trying to clobber Slendy with a bat. Which is probably even crazier, though awesome.
  • Badass:
    • Evan. He’s charged at Slenderman with a baseball bat and a knife before. He's also survived a close encounter with the Rake right as it was attacking after whispering its mantra AND thrown The Rake out of a fucking second story window.
    • Jeff tackling that security guard in "Damsel"
  • Badass in a Nice Suit: Slendy, as usual.
  • Batter Up: BONK! (Spoilers for Ashen Waste)
  • Black Eyes of Evil: Sometimes seen on the background of Alex's YouTube page.
  • Blackmail:
    • Rabbit #052 (AKA FullRoundAction) was unable to participate in Trial #6 due to his hometown outlawing protests. However, he also possess the next box to advance the story. He'll only open it if he's let through to Trial #7.
    • It worked. HABIT was thoroughly unamused. Still no word on the box's contents though.
    • The truth? 052 never had the box to begin with. HABIT allowed the other Rabbits to vote on whether he'd remain, and he was voted out 6 to 1 for cheating his way through. The backlash to FRA's actions on Unfiction was so immense that Out-of-game Jeff had to post about it, outraged at their behavior. Jeff actually applauded FRA for making things interesting.
  • Black Screen of Death: One of the effects caused by otherworldly occurrences. It happens a lot in "Alex" and also covers up the majority of what happened during "The Hidden Videos".
  • Blood From the Mouth: Evan near the end of "Ashen Waste." Averted with Vinnie near the end of "The Corenthal Connection": the boys later said it wasn't blood.
  • Blood Lust: Evan is seen licking blood from his hands in May & June.
  • Body Horror: From what we can see in May & June, The Rake seems to be this.
  • Body Snatcher: HABIT claims to be one, in the hijacked blog "Can You See the Words."
  • Breather Episode:
    • A Day in the Life. Nothing happens except for a pleasant hike through the woods, and a brief exploration of an abandoned house... until we see short clips of extra footage spliced into later videos, that start adding a more sinister flavor to the day. Then there's the larger chunk of footage from the thumb-drive found in the episode "Jeff."
    • "In which I assume the role of a 13 year old Myspace girl" should be one, but it's plagued with GUILTYGUILTYGUILTYGUILTYGUILTY video and audio distortions...not to mention that one photo of Jessa being lead into a forest.
    • A Day with Green Feathers, excepting the last minute.
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Evan, during "Ashen Waste"
  • Brown Note: "The Hidden Videos." It becomes clear that the hybrids are really not meant to see them.
  • Car Fu: Attempted in "Ashen Waste". It doesn't work.
  • The Call Knows Where You Live: The girlfriend of one of the characters has gone missing, sparking a road trip in search of her.
  • Cerebus Callback: "A Day In The Life" was a Breather Episode of sorts, until hidden clips in future videos paint a more sinister tone on the whole day.
  • Cerebus Rollercoaster: The first half of the series bounces between lighthearted and dark. The first few episodes are funny and lighthearted, but then a sinister shadow makes an appearance in "Upper Body and Arms", and then the first of the "hidden" videos shows up before "Healthy Eating" sees the Slender Man make his first real appearance...and then they blow off his appearance as a break-in and remain lighthearted...until "Joke's Over".
  • Chekhov's Classroom: Fan speculation has it that the lesson on how to fight off an attacker with a knife is one of these. Like, perhaps Evan himself. Possibly pays off in "Slender Man." Whether or not this is in canon however is another question entirely.
  • Chekhov's Gift/It May Help You on Your Quest: On Christmas Alex gives Jeff an air-horn, much to everyone's bemusement. The next episode, he uses it to scare off an attacker.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Evan in "Damsel."
  • The Corruption: Evan's forearm gets clawed by the Rake in "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back." In every video since, the bandages begin to cover more and more of his arm. In "Noah," the bandages cover from wrist to shoulder. Unknown if this is an infection, psychological compulsion, or just Evan making a fashion statement.
  • Crazy Prepared: Evan keeps an "Emergency Machete" in the trunk of the car.
  • Creepy Child: "Evan's Dream Log."
  • Crossover:
    • In "Cops Checked, No Body" the Rake makes a prominent appearance. It has since been shown to be harassing Jeff's brother Alex.
    • A letter was found indicating a young Vince may have watched Candle Cove, and the group's attempt to watch the videos hidden from them caused them to revert to a child like state, talking to a black video screen about how they wanted to find the hidden treasure...
    • Furthermore, the letter indicates new answers may be found in Centralia.
    • Elsewhere in the Slenderverse, Noah received an envelope with purple duct tape. Its contents included a burned letter not unlike the Corenthal reports mentioning Milo, a burned Polaroid of "Milo, Mary, and Dr. C," a postcard with "Not an Observer" written in vaguely HABIT-like handwriting, and what may be another part of the Centralia note.
    • According to the actor of Noah and many youtubers, Noah also made an unintentional appearance in Rabbit #84's Trial 4 video. Adam Rosner later confirmed this was in character Noah, presumably to simplify things.
    • Evan made an appearance seemingly as himself in the TJA Projects as well when the two main characters get lost in Jersey and ask a tank-enamored Evan for directions.
    • In the recent video "Noah," not only does Noah make an appearence, but so does the current trio of Dark Harvest.
  • Danger Takes a Backseat: Daniel is the HYBRID's fake Slendy.

Vince: Is that Daniel in the backseat of Evan's car, dude?

  • Daylight Horror
  • Deadly Prank: The parody of Slender Man seems to be what's attracting him.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Don't Go in The Woods: There is much tree symbolism. After the episode "Joke's Over", the crew has hopefully learned their lesson. In a later episode, The Call proved to be too strong and they went back out in the woods anyway. The results were mixed.
  • Driven to Madness: Several of the characters might be going this way.
    • "Slender Man" (the video, not the man) shows Evan reaching this point, but by "Welcome to the Ark" he's normal again. These two are entries to a horror contest and probably non-canon, but still should be considered part of the overall theme.
    • Evan even more so in "Ryan & the SEVENTRIALSOFHABIT" He's talking to nothing just like in Slender Man, however, it's a lot more vicious and it seems to be coming from another personality. He even goes after Jeff at the end with a giant fucking knife
  • The End of the World as We Know It: "Welcome to the ARK" suggests that this may eventually happen. Although the video appears to be non-canon.
  • Eternal Recurrence / Vicious Cycle: Implied in the Hidden videos, and in some of the supplementary material.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Alex's dog paws at his closet every night.
  • Foreshadowing: Evan's dream lab entry. the events of "Joke's Over." Specifically, his nightmare of following voices into the woods and finding 'bags.'
  • Gallows Humor: In "December & early January," the Damsel rather soberingly says that she doesn't think the Slender Man has any weaknesses to exploit. This prompts Evan to make a crack about how Ramming Always Works provided you attach knives to the front of the car with bats spinning around and Alex doing a handstand on top.
  • Genre Savvy: 'You could always wait in the car; that always ends up well right?', 'Noo, fuck no.'
  • Gilligan Cut: When the Rake is discovered to be lurking in someone's closet, the protagonists briefly consider piling things in front of the door as a barricade. A loud snarling voice starts issuring from the closet, scaring the hell out of all of them. One jump cut later, the door is CHAINED SHUT.
  • A Good Name for a Rock Band:
    • One forum poster questioned why there would be a "Free Drink Refills" sign in a mental ward, leading another to suggest that was the name of the hospital's band. Guess what we learn in the Hospital Fire sound file.
    • How about "Celery and Sulfur" from Centralia?
  • Haunted Technology: Seriously, what is up with the creepy tape Alex has of his mother's voice in 'One step forward, two steps back'? The Slendy-esque distortion and ambience in the background doesn't help make it any less unsettling.
  • Heterosexual Life Partners: The main three, but especially Vince and Evan in A Day in the Life
  • Hidden in Plain Sight:
    • The fake Slendy used by the Everyman HYBRID crew.
    • Later, the same applies to the real one. Big example in "I'm Okay", where he's quite literally on the other side of the grille, and Jeff looks right past him.
    • Some of the videos and edits in the series were not uploaded by the gang, and are somehow invisible to them. They at first think viewers are trolling them about their existence. When they get a fan to send them the collected "hidden" videos it doesn't end well.
  • Historical In-Joke: Apparently the Egyptian revolution was HABIT's doing. He has also implied that he was, or at least possessed, Jack the Ripper as well as Josef Mengele.
  • Idiot Ball: The guys abducting the Damsel from her mental hospital, taping the whole thing, and posting it online. Then she tells them that she was going to be released later that day anyway.
    • Vince in "Not dead yet", oh so much. To clarify: he decides to check Evan's house after Jeff's been missing for a week, being last seen there. Evan is obviously evil by then, but he refuses to take any weapons with him, giving the viewers some bullshit "didn't feel right taking weapons with me" excuse. He also goes to the house at night for some inexplicable reason, and once inside refuses to turn on any lights he comes by. He then freaks out at seeing the bloodied chain and Jeff's shoe, and decides to "get out of there" immediately, which was seemingly the first smart decision he'd had that day. And he almost follows through with it, but then, mere feet away from the door to the outside, he hears some noise in one of the rooms... and of course he charges in, yelling "Evan!" as he does so. Well, at least he uncovered a ton of information the fans had no way of knowing before, like Jeff probably being not that well.
  • Kill'Em All: Has a considerably higher body count than other Slender Man fare. Noted in the description of "Twenty-four months" listing everyone they lost in the last two years.
  • Laughing Mad:
    • Evan in the "Joke's Over" video. When Vincent cuts open the bag of blood and gibs, Evan starts to laugh.
    • Evan, once again, in "Ryan & the SEVENTRIALSOFHABIT"
  • Leitmotif:
    • The Slender Man is represented with the standard audio/video distortion, although this series seems to define it more rigidly than other Slendervlogs; for example, in Marble Hornets and Tribe Twelve, it seems to signal some sort of malevolent presence in general, but watching Everyman HYBRID would imply that the distortions mean that Slendy is definitely there and close by. For example, in one video, He's right behind Vinny, but the video and audio only distort when His face is in the shot.
    • "Who Could Win a Rabbit" by Animal Collective for HABIT.
  • Lighter and Softer: Make no mistake, this is a dark series, but in comparison to J's solo quest to find answers, the HYBRIDs have teamwork and numbers going for them, and there are a few glimpses of hope every now and then, despite their nemesis's interference.
  • Mind Screw:
    • The episode "Jeff". At 0:34, they knock on the door to Jeff's house, while some funny coloured bars start to appear on the screen. Then the door opens, showing Jeff shrouded in darkness, with what seems to be purple tape on his mouth and a second figure shrouded in darkness behind him. Then, a distorted sound plays, the screen goes static-y and the video seems to have gone back to 0:33; they knock again, but Jeff's brother answers this time.
    • The ending of the episode "The Corenthal Connection (Jessie's Back)". It's fair to say that EverymanHYBRID is one of the screwier Slender Man vlogs out there.
    • This and this [dead link]; both are entries to a horror contest, so they're probably not canon, but it doesn't make them less pants-wettingly terrifying.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In "Damsel" the Everyman HYBRID crew breaks Damsel out of the mental ward... on the day she was going to be released. Also counts as an Unwanted Rescue and possibly a Crowning Moment of Funny. Subverted in that As far as anyone working there remembers, she was released days before the rescue, and the guard they fought died in a freak accident before the event as well.
  • No Fourth Wall:
    • The actors actively interact with the viewers, and often leave clues (in the real world) which are designed for the viewer to access and put online themselves.
    • The ninja tweets from our ALLCAPS pal HABIT. They're getting increasingly more directed at us
    • During the meet up on 11/21 they revealed they're aware of everything, including the forums, IG. Think about that for a minute...
    • Taken up to eleven on 1/5. HABIT tweeted that he is aware of certain IRC rooms run by Hybrids, more specifically the Rabbits from the Seven Trials. (Specifically, he is aware of certain people mocking him in these rooms, the wisdom of this course of action notwithstanding.)
  • Nothing Is Scarier:
    • In "Reunion," there's one shot in which you can see Slendy behind Vince while he reads out the poem. He sticks in the background for a while, causing distortion... then the camera leaves Vince and comes back and Slendy's missing. This is one of the more worrying parts of the video.
    • "Not dead yet" is a pretty intense one. Vince goes to Jeff's house - at night, which is never a good idea - armed only with a camera and a flashlight. The entire entry is spent waiting for either an Ax Crazy Evan to pop out or The Rake to attack, but nothing happens. At least, until the very end, when we see Slendy poking his head around a corner.
  • Notice This: In a non-video-game example, purple tape is often used to draw attention to some things.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Evan attacking Slenderman with a bat. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) we don't get to see the fight, it cuts to black for a while then Slendy is gone and Evan is disoriented. Even though it was most definitely a Curb Stomp Battle, the fact that Evan is alive afterwards is incredibly badass. According to Evan's description of the "fight" in the latest ustream there really wasn't much to miss. Slender Man blocked the bat with telekinesis then inflicted some kind of damage on him the same way. Evan apparently also had a fight with the Rake in "Jim Thorpe".
  • Oh Crap:
    • Episode 6: Healthy Eating

Vince: Wait, Evan, second story dude.
Evan: The f-?

    • Moments before, "Where's Daniel?" See Danger Takes a Backseat above.
    • "Joke's Over", when they hear the roar.
    • "Alex", when the Rake growls after Evan says nothing's there
  • Only Sane Man: Vince is portrayed as this at first, with Jeff running off and Evan being... Evan. Later, Evan points out that he's the only one who realizes that they're dealing with the real Slendy, not some fake.
  • Painting the Fourth Wall: The participants in the unsigned Twitter conversations can be determined by the fact that one TYPES IN ALL CAPS and the other uses perfect grammar. (ALL CAPS is HABIT; proper capitalization is believed to be Slender himself)
  • Police Are Useless: Apparently, the cops provided zero help in looking for Jess.
  • The Power of Friendship: The HYBRID team credits this as well as their fanbase for keeping them sane throughout all this crap.
  • Precision F-Strike: "What the fuck was that?" Said after a particularly Mind Screwey moment in "The Corenthal Connection"
  • Psychic Nosebleed: Inflicted on the whole party when subjected to what may have been an episode of Candle Cove.
  • Real After All
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: "Damsel" has been the shark-jumper for a handful of viewers based on how the mental institution is obviously a school instead of a hospital and Jeff's ability to tackle a security guard unhindered. In fact, many mental institutions look exactly like what we see in the film, some are actually built into schools, and many security guards aren't well trained, if at all, to defend themselves up close. Regardless of training, self-defense also doesn't tend to work well when the attacker charges full-speed before being spotted.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the "Slender man" video, Evan has rather eerie red eye when he's talking to apparently nobody as well as when he attacks Vince.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Rake and the Slender Man respectively come across as this. Compared to Slendy's more drawn out and subtle M.O., the Rake so far seems to prefer taking out people fairly quickly with physical harm over chipping away at sanity, and its presence apparently doesn't ruin audiovisual fidelity. It does cause Black Screens of Death though. This describes HABIT and Slender Man even better, made even more apparent by the tweets between the two. HABIT is openly Ax Crazy, where as the Slender Man comes off as quite reserved.
  • Right Behind Me: In the earlier videos, the fake Slendy is so close as to make it funny; once he's standing on the other side of a telephone pole they're leaning against. Later, the real one does it as well. It's not as funny.]]
  • Room Full of Crazy: In "Sleep Deprivation," someone managed to cover a back room with scribbled-on pictures and purple duct tape in a ten-minute interval while no one was in there.
  • Rule of Scary: Lampshaded when they open the store locker in 'The Corenthal Connection' and find a kid's rocking horse in the corner. Everyone points out that it has no reason to be there other than looking creepy.
  • Rule 34/Creator Reactions: Evan describes being the subject of Slash Fic as both flattering and disturbing.
  • Running Gag:
    • There's a running joke amongst the fandom that Unfiction Forumer Doc Jowles is actually Jeff in disguise. He isn't. Probably.
    • Every video has several comments impatiently asking when they're going to start doing exercise videos again. One would assume they're jokes, but with Youtube comments you can't be too sure.
  • Sanity Slippage:
    • Inevitably, all of the crew are losing their grip at various speeds and in subtly different ways. However, see Angst? What Angst?. Most apparent in "A Day with Green Feathers" (as well as pretty much every tweet after "Alex"), it seems as though the crew has become desensitized to Tall Dark and Faceless; even Evan seems stable as long as Slenderman isn't standing right there.
    • In Ryan & the SEVENTRIALSOFHABIT, Evan appears to still be sliding down the slippery slope of madness as some spliced in clips show what appear to be Evan talking to himself and saying some pretty disturbing shit while brandishing his knife before Jeff interrupts him.
    • Now Alex seems to have gone this way, ever since his parents have died. In 'One Step Forward, Two Steps Back', when Jeff suggests Alex comes to the library with the crew, Alex says he'll 'go ask mom' for permission. He comes back with a tape player which has a very creepy recording of his mother's voice. After the Rake kills his dog, he begins pretending a sock puppet is his dead dog. Even Vinnie tells Jeff this is well beyond the grieving process and something is definitely wrong with Alex.
  • Shirtless Scene: Evan is pretty much in the whole OUTSIDE HELP video shirtless, just with bandages.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Like a few other works in the Mythos, this series contains one to House of Leaves in the form of a copy of the book, found in Jeff's room and containing a couple of cryptic clues to his whereabouts. The same book also appears in the background of Vinnie's opening narrations.
    • While exploring a burned down building in "Reunion" Vince asks if Jeff found evidence in "this suspiciously Silent Hill-looking room." Silent Hill receives a second shout-out in "Centralia." The graffiti on the ground contains lyrics from Silent Hill 3's theme song.
    • In addition, there's a rather Slendy-like mannequin/doll behind Vincent in some of the opening narrations; it looks remarkably like the doll in Marble Hornets.
    • Since that was there since the beginning, one would assume that is somehow tied to their Slender Man series. You know, the one they were trying to make before the real Slender Man showed up.
    • Jeff's brother is clearly playing the song The Poet and the Muse from the game Alan Wake when the characters first explore his room. While not too similar, Everyman HYBRID and Alan Wake both deal with daytime horror, eldritch abominations, and eponymous everymen who fight them, not to mention that in both, a major character is held captive by the eldritch abominations.
    • The twitter feed is shared by all three protagonists, who sign off each tweet with the first letter of their names to show who wrote each one. This means that Jeff's are signed as "J," and he was even on the road at the time, like J at the end of Marble Hornets season 1. As if this wasn't blatant enough, Jeff's brother's name is Alex.
    • Jeff's slideshow set to the Death Cab for Cutie song "I'll Follow You into the Dark" has the song cutting and distorting at seemingly random places. The last line is warped into "I'll follow you into the ark."
    • And then Evan's follow-up of Jeff's slide show looks like a sendup of the usual wacky video-responses usually posted on You Tube.
    • When Evan goes after Vince with his knife in "Slender man," the mute video suddenly erupts with sound in the form of a siren that sounds like the one from Silent Hill.
    • In One step forward, two steps back, the boys are playing Scrabble and Evan plays the word "Wifin". An action that costs $20 dollars for doing it in the club.
    • In Episode 4, Evan holds up a Creepy Doll that looks like the ones from the House in Marble Hornets, which he claims a little girl gave to him. (They later admit that this was part of their "Fake Slendy" hoax at the beginning of the series.)
  • Slender Man Mythos: A really popular one.
  • Smash Cut: In "Alex," after Evan investigates the room. Cut to the three of them after they've finished barricading the thing in there. Also doubles as a Gilligan Cut; there's a little humor in it after the scare is over.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: Twenty-four months has a montage of past events with up-beat swing music playing over it. Since the lyrics of the song say "the best is yet to come", it is slightly ominous though.
  • Split Personality: Evan shows signs of this in "Ryan & the SEVENTRIALSOFHABIT"
  • Spiritual Successor: Sometime called the "heir" of Marble Hornets.
  • Status Quo Is God: Much to the cast's disappointment but ultimately not to their surprise, "December & early january" establishes that Damsel does not have any reveals about Slender Man for them, and she, in fact, didn't know anything more than they do.
  • Stealth Parody: It started as one of the Slender Man Mythos, particularly Marble Hornets, with a very fake Slendy standing in very obvious places. Subverted In-Universe with Episode #6: Healthy Eating. See Wham! Episode.
  • Stylistic Suck: The advice in the fitness/exercise segments is either incredibly common knowledge or just not great.
  • Suddenly Voiced:
    • While in text and not an audible voice, via one half of an unsigned twitter conversation Everyman HYBRID has managed to give The Slender Man dialog without sacrificing any creepiness. He's the non-allcaps one. (the allcaps are by HABIT) Indeed, it's not how strange he types, but how normally he types. You can read the conversation here.
    • There has been quite a bit of speculation saying that the normally-typed tweets aren't from the big man himself (and even then, since he's never been given a voice before, it's unlikely that it was Slendy in the first place), but rather from Doctor Corenthal. He does refer to the HYBRI Ds as his "children," after all.
  • Thousand-Yard Stare: Some of the footage hidden from the gang is recorded through the eyes of creatures which are said to have this expression by Candleverse!Jeff.
  • Time Travel:
    • Several instances, most visibly in "The Corenthal Connection."
    • In some of the supplementary material, we discover this somehow happened in "Damsel."
    • See also the Wild Mass Guessing and Epileptic Trees of this game for other possible/unverified instances.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Jeff in "Damsel."
  • Troubled Fetal Position: Evan at :22 in "...."
  • Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: During the 11/26 Ustream Jeff mentions that you'll waste hours here when it's mentioned in a question.
  • Unreliable Narrator: What HALLOWEEN HANGOVER reveals about the gang
  • Wham! Episode:
  • Wham! Line:
    • In "Damsel:"

Damsel: I would be fucking stoked if they weren't releasing me today.

    • And in "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back"

Alex: It's back.

    • At the end of "Intermission"

Vinny: Alex isn't okay.

  • What Could Have Been: In-universe example. Jeff reveals in "HospitalFire.wav" that while they were planning the series, the guys flirted with using an audio-only podcast format, which was dropped, because a fitness series without video is a bit pointless. This implies that the guys originally planned for nothing but a fitness series and that the fake Slender Man easter eggs were a last-minute-shits-and-giggles addition to the final version of the series they decided on, since there'd be nearly no way for the Slender Man's presence to be demonstrated in pure audio if he wasn't visually introduced first. You've probably guessed by now that there audio distortions on the file.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Evan makes it clear that he disagrees with Jeff sending the police after Damsel; and seriously lets him have it for, due to his obsession with finding Jessa, not noticing that Alex was injured. The Fandom was rather fond of calling Jeff out. To the point they started a twitter hashtag for that sole purpose.
  • When All You Have Is a Hammer: While discussing possible ways to kill Slender Man, the best they can come up with is "bigger car." ..."with knives attached to the front and baseball bats swingin' around."
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: The crew start thinking they're in a Scooby Doo style of story. Then they think they're in a Slasher Movie, and later only a few catch on that they just might be in a Cosmic Horror Story.