Zero Punctuation

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"Releasing videos on YouTube is kind of like throwing a message in a bottle out into a churning sea of messages in bottles: the chance of you getting noticed and someone being sent out to rescue you is punishingly slim. But every once in a blue moon, someone who owns a big boat made of money finds your message and agrees to let you ride on his big boat made of money if you keep making messages for him. Then the two of you go on adventures with a smart mouthed talking dog and travel to the land of the gumdrop king and I've sort of forgotten where I was going with this. Anyway, the point is, if you enjoyed my Darkness and Fable video reviews, you can now enjoy videos very much like them every week at The Escapist." —Ben Croshaw announces Zero Punctuation

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, critic and amateur game developer, decided one day to conduct an experiment. He was faced with a demo of The Darkness he wished to review for his website, but wanted to try something new. So he took Photoshop, Windows Movie Maker, a headset mic and his sense of humour, and turned them into a YouTube video. He then turned to Fable: The Lost Chapters.

Less than a month later, he was hired by The Escapist, an online magazine with a big boat made of money (see the page quote), to release one of these video reviews a week. That explains the origin of Zero Punctuation in the driest possible way, but not the popularity of it; the combination of caustic humour, rapid-fire delivery and visual gags made Zero Punctuation an instant success. The result is quite a polarising, Love It or Hate It series.

Yahtzee has started doing a weekly follow-up column, called "Extra Punctuation", in order to explain his views and opinions on the game of the week in greater detail, and bring up points he could not turn into jokes.

Staring in February 2011, he also did a column called "Extra Consideration" with Bob "Moviebob" Chipman and James Portnow of Extra Credits (though Portnow was replaced by Jim Sterling of Destructoid fame after he left the Escapist). The column petered out by early September, sadly, but its entire run can still be found here.

Previews of the next video were shown on X-Play for a brief period in 2008.

In early November 2023, The Escapist (and its parent organization, Gamurz) fired editor-in-chief Nick Calandra and several other employees, and the entire remaining video team, including Yahtzee, resigned in protest. This essentially ended Zero Punctuation, because while The Escapist owns the ZP intellectual property any attempt to reboot it without Yahtzee simply will not be ZP. The former Escapist employees have started a new channel, Second Wind, where Yahtzee has a successor series to Zero Punctuation called Fully Ramblomatic.

Do not confuse with No Periods, Period or No Punctuation Period.

---

Zero Punctuation is the Trope Namer for:

• Press X to Not Die: Lampshaded in Battlefield 3, when he imagines a monument to himself with this engraved on its pedestal.
  • Press X to Die

Tropes used in Zero Punctuation include:

• Accentuate the Negative: Yahtzee's style, to the point where he'll occasionally rattle off a four-minute list of a game's flaws and then sum up by saying how much he enjoyed it. ("But having now whinged myself inside-out, I have to say that I find S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky weirdly compelling.") Presumably this means there are some positive qualities, but listing them isn't his department and has claimed "people don't like me being nice to a game".
  • He stated in his In Famous review that he views his job as tearing the bad and the mediocre games to shreds so that the rare game that could be called great can shine all the brighter.
  • In his review for Batman: Arkham Asylum Yahtzee says that he's more of a QA man and that anything he doesn't mention in his review is a good part of the game.
  • As he put it in the same review: "You don't call a sewer technician to redecorate your bathroom, and you don't come to me to hear about how a game is good."
  • "In fact, I might go so far as to say that H.A.W.X. has sold me on air combat games. But that's not funny, so let's find more things to rip on."
  • From the Orange Box review: "If I did have to criticise it -- and I do" [Cue Escapist logo holding up a contract.]
  • Portal: "I can't think of any criticism for it" [Cue Escapist logo holding up a contract] and "Absolutely sublime from start to finish and I will jam forks into my eyes if I ever have to use those words to describe anything else, ever again."
  • From the Clive Barker's Jericho review: "I could go on listing the stupid design decisions...so I will."
  • Even going back to his BioShock review: "If my Psychonauts review taught me anything it's that no one likes it when I'm being nice to a game..."
  • Inverted: when he finally got the chance to play Duke Nukem Forever, Yahtzee was actively trying to like it and ignore the faults, but eventually had to relent because he'd been harsh to games for far lesser reasons.
  • Spoofed in his Gears of War 2 review, where he tries as much as he can to hate it, but lists off some of the stuff it does well that prevents him from hating it. It ends with, "There aren't even any quick-time events! Oh, wait, there is one. A little one. I guess that means I have to hate it."
    • Retroactively played straight again; he bashed the entire Gears series with the release of Gears of War 3
• Acceptable Targets: Swindon, George Lucas, and others.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: In-universe (for lack of a better term) example: Yahtzee said during his "review" for Duke Nukem Forever that the cancellation of the game wasn't the end of the world since it had been overshadowed by other franchises, most notably Half Life. However, in his Extra Punctuation article, while reflecting on the plans of bringing it out in 2011, Yahtzee admitted that too many FPS have taken the cover-based combat route and he'd like a return to the basics with one guy facing armies all at once.
• All Men Are Perverts: Despite being an example himself, Yahtzee has expressed dismay at how widespread this trope is in real life, lamenting that all a crappy game has to do to become wildly successful is stick a picture of a busty scantily-clad woman on the cover.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: In-Universe: For a number of games he reviews, his viewpoint tends to cast the protagonist in an extremely negative light.
  • His first instance of this is reviewing Tomb Raider, where he portrays Lara as an irreverent, iconoclastic kleptomaniac.
  • Drake of Uncharted is portrayed as a racist and hypocritical Smug Snake.
  • Rubi of Wet is an unlikeable and murderous bitch.
  • Faith of Mirror's Edge could "easily have been a terrorist" without changing the game much.
  • Rico of Just Cause is an "immortal, physics-defying wizard."
  • He encourages viewers to play Heavy Rain whilst pretending that Agent Jayden is from the future.
    • Also, the Origami Killer is a cheap rip-off of Jigsaw.
  • Vanille of Final Fantasy XIII either has Alzheimer's or is from space.
  • The protagonists of the Pokémon games have chips in their mind and are actually in a Creepy Basement.
  • The protagonist of Fable 3 is shagging his dog.
  • Cole Phelps from L.A. Noire is a robot.
  • Bowser of the Super Mario Bros. games is a charismatic union leader who defies the upper-class bourgeoisies of the Mushroom Kingdom but secretly yearns for their approval.
  • Jack Slate of Dead to Rights is more murderous sociopath than law enforcement agent.
  • Vincent of Catherine is a bumbling idiot whose friends only pretend to like him.
  • Batman revolves around hordes of impressionable, poverty-stricken young people having all their arms and legs broken by an extremely rich businessman.
    • In his pants!
  • Snarky!Hawke from Dragon Age II is Camp Gay.
  • Link from The Legend of Zelda is a pathetic drug addict and Sociopathic Hero who can only function when given an adventure or while absolutely snowblind.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog is a drug addicted paedophile.
  • 50Cent destabilized the Middle East.
  • Lana from AMY is an absolute idiot.
  • Suda 51 was the result of a bizarre cloning experiment.
  • The Fateless one from Kingdoms of Amalur was actually pre-destined by fate to become what they became.
  • Splosionman is a Broken Bird.
  • The protagonist of Red Faction: Guerilla is a Norse god wielding the hammer of Mjolnir.
  • The player character in Sniper Elite V2 is either a hallucinating clock tower sniper a la Charles Whitman, or trapped in a combat simulation.
  • Max Payne is actually actively looking for trouble.
  • Mccall from Call Of Jaurez:The Cartel is over-reacting.
• Analogy Backfire:
  • His reason for suspending judgment on the Kinect. "Pope Urban VIII probably thought he was very clever when he condemned Galileo, but who got the last laugh there? Well, he did when Galileo died alone and in poverty but what I'm saying is I'm basically like the Pope."
  • Then there's this example from his Catherine review:

...men are all directionless tidal waves and women are all dikes built in the path of their raging floods. Blimey, what a badly worded metaphor.

• Apocalypse Wow: states that if No More Heroes was combined with Branston Pickle that the world would end. And it would be AWESOME.
• April Fools:
  • In 2009, the hosts of Unskippable pretended to stage a Hostile Show Takeover and reviewed X-Blades before Yahtzee seized the show back to review Halo Wars. Yahtzee also guest-commentated on Unskippable.
  • In 2010, the usually Motor Mouth Yahtzee recited Ode to Melancholy in a very slow, ponderous manner.
• Arch Enemy:
  • Yahtzee considers Michael Atkinson this.
  • Almost anything that tells him to Press X to Not Die.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: A few blink-and-you'll-miss-it examples.
  • In Batman: Arkham Asylum:

"I could talk about how the combat flows, and how the atmosphere is solid, and how the highlights for me were the Scarecrow sections where Batman's perceptions of reality are skewed in favor of a nightmarish introspective delusional glimpse into the darkest recesses of his soul and how jumping on people is cool."

• • On a signpost in the Witcher review:

SHAME FAILURE IGNOMINY SWINDON

• • The list of things George Lucas will never do: Definitely end popular moneyspinning franchise, refuse a second helping of pancakes, admit failure, survive in vacuum, shave.
  • In his Resistance 3 review, he accuses the game of copying Valve's Half-Life 2. Amongst his accusations are identical mechanics, a straight Expy of the Ravenholm level, and "the scientist has a beard." Because, you know, Gordon Freeman has a beard.
  • From his Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles review: "Umbrella Chronicles is a heavily cut down retread of three of the major Resident Evil games, starring Johnny Bravo, a prostitute, an idiot, a mullet, a 9 year old boy, a brick shit-house, and Carlos."
• Asexuality: Has self-confessed issues with sex and/or kids, so games that rely on either for appeal get marked down severely.
• Audio Erotica: His opinion on Stephen Fry in LittleBigPlanet as well as Rucks in Bastion; he's a fan of famous voices in general, and feels that having them as One Scene Wonders is a waste of potential.
• Author Filibuster: Occasionally, if Yahtzee can't find enough to complain about in the game, he'll engage in one of these.
• Awesomeness Is Volatile: Yahtzee implied this would happen if No More Heroes were combined with Branston Pickle.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: A surprising amount of people write in with requests and then get offended when he rips into the game.
• Be Yourself: Unfortunately, while he does frequently state that the reviews are his subjective opinion and that people should ultimately decide what games they think are good, you'd never be able to tell reading the comments on the Escapist.
• Berserk Button:
  • In the Transformers: War for Cybertron review, the mention of Shia LaBeouf sent him into a barely-restrained seething rage.
  • Nolan North's presence in a game tends to be a sour point for him (especially if he voices the main character). However, he's stated that it's nothing against the man himself, though even cases of Playing Against Type will make him hate the character as long as he knows it's him.
  • Quick Time Events. Enough so that he named a trope for them. (See: Press X to Not Die)
  • He seems to developing one over reboots/sequels that share identical names with their predecessors, such as Wolfenstein, Mortal Kombat, Twisted Metal, and Aliens vs Predator, saying it's needlessly confusing to have two identically titled games in the same series separated by nothing but time, even if that time in some cases is a few decades.
• Bias Steamroller: Occasionally a topic of jokes.
• Big No: The Spore review. Twice. But with a twist.

"Short answer: no. Long answer: nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo."

• Bilingual Bonus: When Yahtzee "quotes" a ZP fan extolling Siren Blood Curse to him, said fan starts spouting off about Yahtzee's love of Japanese horror, eventually devolving into random Japanese words: "Watashi wa baka gaijin," which roughly translates to "I'm a stupid foreigner."
• Biting the Hand Humor: "I made this chart to see how many people visit The Escapist on days besides Wednesday..."
• Bland-Name Product: In order to avoid mentioning any real gaming webcomics in his review of the genre, he used Benny Barcade and Bontrol Bolt Belete as names instead. This was a Shout-Out to Monty Python's Flying Circus, with its National Bocialist Party and their boncentration bamps.
• Book Ends: Before reviewing Fable II, Yahtzee notes that all he needs to do now is review The Darkness a second time then be "sucked into a grown woman's vagina" and his life will have been more-or-less symmetrical. (Sadly, he failed to bring this joke back up while reviewing the sequel to The Darkness.)
  • The review of Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands (which totally wasn't made to cash in on a movie) starts with a Take That against Roger Ebert's (then-recent) remark that video games couldn't be art. He then ignores it for the rest of the review until the very end when he yells at Ebert again.
• Brain Bleach: In-universe example—it's a favorite reaction by Croshaw.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick/Freudian Slippery Slope: The end of the Anniversary edition of Tomb Raider.
• Brick Joke:
  • The No More Heroes review opens with the Stranglers song of the same name. However, the song's abruptly cut off: "No, no, that's a bit too obvious." This isn't mentioned throughout the entire review. Finally, in the credits, the songs used in the video are listed as normal, except that "No More Heroes" has been thoroughly scribbled out.
  • Another one consisted of a spoiler warning in mid-episode, where Yahtzee told spoiler-sensitive viewers to plug their ears and wait for the credits. The credits mini-comic consisted of a series of famous spoilers from other works. ( It was his sled, Keyser Soze = Kevin Spacey, etc.)
  • The sausage-slicing machine in the Killzone 3 review.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Standard procedure for Penumbra and Amnesia the Dark Descent.
• Broken Record: "You couldn't get away with releasing a buggy game in the cartridge and cassette days; you'd be trampled under the company Brontosaurus. But I'll tell you the worst part- worst part- worst part- worst part- *system error* ...and whistled for a baboon!
• B-Roll Rebus: Nearly all of the visuals that aren't meant to represent gameplay. His Wikiquote entry even Pot Holes some of them for lack of images.
• Buffy-Speak: His metaphors descend into this while reviewing LittleBigPlanet. Lampshaded in the same review -- it was very hot that week and he couldn't think of anything better.
• Butt Monkey: Yahtzee's avatar gets hurt in a variety of ways throughout his reviews.
• Call Back: As far as the eye can see.
  • "Senor Koquonfaes and Gareth Gobelcoque are cousins by marriage."
    • It turns out that Gareth is a long-forgotten comrade of Titty Shepard.
  • Plot summary for Dead to Rights:

"Bang! Punch! Bang! Punch! Bang! Punch! Woof!"

• • And for Dead Island:

"Grr! Kick! Grr! Kick! Grr! Kick! Splat!"

• • The phrase "triple-cunted hooker" makes a number of appearances.
  • In the Hard Reset review, Yahtzee compares the game to Painkiller by dint of the fact that many who worked on the former were also among the crew of the latter. While praising Painkiller' for its array of creative death distribution implements, the avatar onscreen wields a shotgun that has tits and is on fire -- precisely the phrasing Yahtzee used in his review of Painkiller.
  • In the Super Mario Bros Wii review the credits state that Yahtzee only has two friends. Later in the NieR review we find out that this was referring to the imp and the extremely bored looking man respectively, hence why they are the only recurring characters in his videos.
  • The "paddling pool full of disembodied breasts" analogy in the Saints Row 2 review returns in an exaggerated form in the Saints Row the Third review.
  • In his The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings review, he refers to Geralt as "Gerald", which continues a Running Gag that began in his review of the first game.
  • In Dead to Rights Retribution he imagines that Jack Slate worships "some mad ocelot god only he can see". Years later, in Max Payne 3, another tortured ex-cop murder spree game, the head of an ocelot appears on screen when Yahtzee says the phrase "the face of God".
• Cargo Ship: In-universe example: In his Red Faction Guerrilla review, Yahtzee admitted he pretty much proposed to Saints Row 2 in his review of it -- complete with picture of him and the game in bride and groom attire, respectively.
  • In his Silent Hill 2 retro review, he lampshades his fondness for "dropping to my knees and wrapping my lips around old titles from time to time," and another review shows him humping the Silent Hill 2 box art.
  • He made a similar comment about the Prince of Persia series, saying "If I suck that particular dick any harder, it's going to drop off."
  • The Yahtzee/Silent Hill 2 Cargo Ship returns in his review of Silent Hill: Downpour, when he and the game are shown wearing a bridal veil and groom's tuxedo respectively, and he admits that "Yes, maybe I will marry Silent Hill 2, shut up!"
• Caustic Critic: The YKTTW for Caustic Critic was named "Parent Genre of Zero Punctuation"
• Chaotic Neutral: Yahtzee claims to be this alignment in his Spider-Man: Web of Shadows review and encourages his fans to argue on the forum as to whether he is or not.
• Chew Bubblegum: A zombie Duke Nukem says "Time to kick ass and chew brains" in the Bad Company review.
• Clip Show: The Holiday 2010 episode, after Yahtzee mocks the viewer for showing up when they should know that he gets that week off.
• Cluster F-Bomb: At least once per episode. Lampshaded in his review of Wet, where he claims the protagonist Rubi considers swearing to be wit, yelling out "That's my thing!"
• The Coconut Effect: Discussed in his Extra Punctuation column on Boss Battles.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: Referred to by the exact name during his Overlord 2 review.
• Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch:
  • He has accused the Zelda series of all its entries being the same game. However, he has also shown he actually hasn't played the series that thoroughly. By the time the show started, he only had played two games (The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, which he claims to like) and yet, he made that accusation right from his first Zelda review (Phantom Hourglass). In other words, he only knew 3 out of 14 games. He also admited in his review of the Nintendo 3DS version of Ocarina of Time that he barely played the original game, and in his Skyward Sword review, he shows those five are the only games in the series he has played and finished. That means he still only knows one third of the series. See It's the Same, Now It Sucks below.
  • The fact that he always includes Majoras Mask, of all games, inside the "all Zelda games are the same game" statement (via background images), makes it even clearer. If people complain about something in that game is, precisely, They Changed It, Now It Sucks. Zelda II the Adventure of Link and The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures, two games that severely change the Zelda formula, have appeared that way too at some point.
• Complaining About Things You Haven't Paid For: In this Extra Punctuation blog, Yahtzee announces that there will not be an update next week, and informs anyone who has a problem with this, "Now, you only have a right to complain about this if you are actually paying money to watch and read this stuff. And even then, only because someone appears to be pulling a fast one on you."
• Continuity Nod: In the Mass Effect 2 review, Yahtzee's Shepard dons hot pink armor in memory of Gareth Gobulcoque, his character from Tabula Rasa.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Apparently whoever designed the inventory system for Resident Evil 5 should be sent to a special Hell where he has to pack shopping for old ladies...or just punched in the stomach.
  • Also says that any developer that holds back stuff for DLC should have their hands cut off, and then put back on after paying 1200 Microsoft points.
• Cosmic Deadline: Yahtzee has accused several games of falling prey to this, including Dark Void, Splatterhouse, and of course Fahrenheit (2005 video game) aka "Baron von Teapot's Fucking Ludicrous Adventures."
• Country Matters: Good grief.
  • To elaborate: Yahtzee is British and Australian and likes to swear a lot, so the word "cunt" tends to pop up a lot in his reviews, sometimes in a rather casual context.
• Creator Thumbprint: Platformers and games that don't use bloom and brown gritty graphics earn a somewhat higher note in his book.
  • "Survival Horror is what I call a pet genre. A pet I keep in a tool shed and feed with broken glass."
  • Saints Row 2 is one of the few games that pleased him, resulting in a review that sounded like, in his own words, "an overlong wedding proposal" due to the fact that it entertainingly combines Rule of Fun and Video Game Cruelty Potential whereas Grand Theft Auto IV went for Real Is Brown and Darker and Edgier. See also Just Cause 2.
  • He also has a great love for anything that does things differently like Portal and No More Heroes; he complimented Mirror's Edge for trying something new even after tearing the actual gameplay apart, and Assassin's Creed got praise for being original even though it was let down by highly repetitive gameplay. Similarly, he praised Dark Void for being an ambitious failure, and as such, better than "committee-designed sludge". He also liked Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, despite hating Silent Hill spinoffs and saying that the monsters and chase scenes weren't scary and the psych test gimmicks weren't enough, for trying something new. He raves about Shadow of the Colossus for creating, naming and codifying the Colossus Climb, and Ico got a love note from him for making him care about a Cute Mute Love Interest.
  • He also has a taste for Scenery Porn.
  • Cats seem to pop up a lot in his reviews (which sort of makes sense, as do dogs. In fact, he said that one of his three wishes would be a puppy.
  • A warped sense of humor is also a big plus for him, as in Psychonauts, the Monkey Island series and the aforementioned Portal.
  • Good writing impresses him as well; the Mass Effect series has led him to give BioWare a dirt-cheap offer of his soul.

"When the bottom falls out of the game criticism market and I have to start prostituting myself to developers, BioWare will be one of my first ports of call, because there are few enough developers in the world who treat writing as an integral part of the game rather than an optional set of colorful tassels to put on the handlebars."

• • In his review for the second game he spends almost the whole review talking about the changes in gameplay, then mentions casually how the writing and characters have gotten better, but because it's BioWare they don't get any points for it.
  • Considering his positive mentions of Serious Sam and his love of Painkiller, along with his positive review of Dead Rising 2, Yahtzee also seems to like games that pit the player against large hordes and give them the freedom to just go wild.
  • He also seems to have a thing for Nazis. And before anyone takes that the wrong way, he likes killing them in awesome and amusing ways.
  • He mentioned a particular fondness for Shaun of the Assassin's Creed series, partly because he reminds him of himself and partly because he often insults Desmond Miles.
  • He has fondness for games that actively embrace Video Game Cruelty Potential and particularly creative ways of The Joys of Torturing Mooks.
  • He has a thing for large open environments with interesting ways to traverse the world, such as Le Parkour or flight.
• Credits Gag: The text next to his name at the end. Also, the opening and closing credits each had a clip from a song whose name and/or content was a pun on the content of the review. For example, Haze, about drug-fueled mercenary super-soldiers, used Afroman's "Because I Got High". This stopped after he got big enough that he had to worry about the RIAA.
  • Music used interestingly in his No More Heroes review, as mentioned above for Brick Joke.
  • Also, the credits themselves have a little minicomic going on, acted out by the little figures he uses in the reviews. The one for Spore had a flying saucer alien abducting Batman, who then beat it up and stole the flying saucer. Additionally, there is generally a caption referring to something earlier in the video.
• Cross Player: Yahtzee becomes one for Age of Conan.
• Crossover: With the Mystery Science Theater 3000-esque series Unskippable. Yahtzee appeared in their Star Ocean: The Last Hope riff and Graham Stark of Unskippable appeared in the first section of the Halo Wars review to review X-Blades before running out of things to say and getting kicked out by Yahtzee.
  • A throwaway gag, mere seconds into the aforementioned Halo Wars review, poked fun at Eternal Sonata, which was Unskippable's premiere episode.
  • Furthermore, in the review of both Left 4 Dead 2 and New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the Credit Sequence features a short mix-type Crossover of the two reviewed games.
• Crying Indian: The Fallout 3 featured a deer crying over the landscape being littered with rubble.
• Curse Cut Short: He spends the entirety of his 50 Cent reviews carefully wording his criticisms so that nothing can be misconstrued as racist, then ends with:

"Not that they'd know anything about work, the lazy nig-" [END CREDITS]

• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Wonders aloud if Deus Ex Human Revolution's ending is intentionally bad, so players will purchase the DLC. "Anyone who pulls that shit deserves to have their hands cut off. And sold back to them for 500 Microsoft Points."
• Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: This trope, and the infrequency with which it is played straight, is discussed in his Mafia II review.
• Dancing Mook Stinger: One ad shown after the credits is an Imp groovin' to his iPod.
• Dare to Be Badass: Well, at least "dare to be different", in his Super Mario Galaxy 2 review. In spite of his bashing of it he does admit in the end it is fun and if people want to play the same games he can't really do anything to stop them, but he does request that those people go out and do one thing they never have before.
• Darker and Edgier: Once a simple story, "the new Bionic Commando has taken the dark and edgy route", illustrated with said commando slashing his wrist and singing "CRAAAWLING IIIIN MY SKIIIN".
• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: In-universe example: A big irk for Yahtzee is games where protagonists are just as (if not more) unlikable than the antagonist, citing Wet, Kane and Lynch: Dog Days and the God of War sequels as major examples.
• Deadpan Snarker: Of course.
  • However, most Deadpan Snarkers in games tend to annoy him, notably Nathan Drake of Uncharted and the Snarky dialogue options of Dragon Age II.
• Death Seeker: More of a Suicide as Comedy but noticeable in this line for Batman: Arkham City.

"If you are like me: handsome, successful, and secretly longing for death."

• Deep-Immersion Gaming
• Department of Redundancy Department: "So you've looked at Penny Arcade seen the massive amount of money, prestige, and money those guys get for nine panels a week, and decided you want in on that." The visuals go a step further: when he says "money", "prestige", and "money" again, ever-increasing piles of cash and swanky clothes appear on the two people meant to represent Gabe and Tycho...and even after he goes on to abandon the verbal redundancy and finish the sentence, another layer of largesse is added.
  • Speaking of repetition, there is Dead Space, which is repetitive.
  • And Clive Barker's Clive Barker's Jericho by Clive Barker.
  • Don't forget Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. by Tom Clancy.
  • And Brew-tal Legend, a game about Jack Black playing Jack Black starring Jack Black made with a guy who looks like Jack Black.
  • From Darksiders, describing the first few games he will review starting in 2010: "God of War ripoff, God Of War ripoff, God Of War ripoff, and God of War... well, God of War."
  • "Have I mentioned that I've written a novel that you can preorder from Amazon and Amazon.co.uk? Well, I've written a novel that you can preorder from Amazon and Amazon.co.uk."
  • "Fallout: New Vegas is really just an expansion pack for Fallout 3, and I said everything I need to say about Fallout 3 in my Fallout 3 review of Fallout 3."
• Designated Hero: In-Universe: in his Extra Punctuation article of Uncharted: Among Thieves, Yahtzee portrays Nathan Drake as one, accusing him of massive Moral Dissonance.
  • The ZP review of Mirror's Edge also suggests this: we only have the plot's say-so that the police chasing you are the bad guys, and as far as we know, the packages could be bombs to blow up someone's grandma.
• Dethroning Moment of Suck: It's rare that he experiences any of these, but there have been specific moments in a few games (such as a boss too poorly-coded to be defeatable or a bad AI forcing him to restart a level he was just about to clear) that made him give up on a game outright.
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Discussed in his Alpha Protocol review. He also devoted a column to discussing games that have done it well, singling out Metal Gear Solid for particular praise.
• Did Not Do the Research: More than a few times has Yahtzee made jokes and jabs at something, only for it to be just plain wrong. But Yahtzee sometimes has just a week to play the game and make each review, so this can sometimes be unavoidable for him. Yahtzee has acknowledged his mistakes... sometimes.
• Didn't See That Coming: At the end of his Prototype vs. Infamous review he declared both games to be equally good and couldn't decide which one was better. So he jokingly suggested the two developers (Radical Entertainment and Sucker Punch Productions respectively) to send him a picture of the opposing main character wearing a bra, and whoever made the better one would win. They went with it. At the end it was narrow, but Sucker Punch Productions and Infamous won.
• Discretion Shot: The statement that a premise has been "stretched wider than a catamite's rectum" is accompanied by a black screen with the text "IMAGE VERY CENSORED".
  • The captions in censor boxes are a Running Gag:

"Think of something wholesome." "OH DEAR GOD" "Look it up" "Thanks Deviant ART!" "NEIN!" "BELIEVE IN CHRIST" "THE BABY IS FINE THE BABY IS OKAY" (after someone was juggling several objects including a baby and a chainsaw, then drops them all.)

• • Conversely, he decided to show a fairly, uh, graphic rendition of a certain controversial strip from a certain webcomic which shall remain unnamed followed immediately by the caption THIS IS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER DONE AND I HATE MYSELF FOR DOING IT.
• Disposable Vagrant: Yahtzee keeps a spare vagrant chained in his basement—in case he needs to review a co-op game.
• Dissimile
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Apparently he hates being called Ben by people on the internet. In one podcast, Yug and Matt of Australian Gamer (his best buds) stated that they don't even call him that in real life. Matt says everyone except his parents calls him Yahtzee.
• Does Not Like Women: A Non Sequitur toward the end of the The Sims 3 review, brought on by minor Creator Breakdown over his girlfriend.
  • After Rebecca Mayes' love/hate song that called him out on this he claimed he does hate women but only because he hates everyone.
  • From the Credits Gag for the Catherine review: "I'm not a mysoginist, I only hate the bitchy ones".
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Subverted/Lampshaded in the video where Yahtzee takes a tour of Washington D.C. He makes a few mentions that certain buildings or monuments remind him of something, but goes on to mention something mundane and non-sexual. He then double subverts it while looking at the Washington Monument:

Yahtzee: It's really long and tall, has those trees at the bottom from this angle. Kinda like, uh...a big cock and balls.

• Doomy Dooms of Doom: In his Medal of Honor: Airborne review, he refers to the German flak tower as a "doom fortress".
• Eagle Land: In his reviews, Yahtzee portrays Americans as Flavor #2, and covered all aspects of that flavor in the span of two reviews (Medal of Honor: Airborne and Call of Duty 4). He's had a long history of this view, though, as seen in his writings on Fully Ramblomatic.
• Eastern European Animation: Yahtzee claims to have grown up watching Russian cartoons ala Worker and Parasite rather than Transformers, which he states is the reason that he has no particular nostalgia for the series.
• Ending Fatigue: Discussed in his review of A Shadows Tale (NOT Lost in Shadow!)
• Ensemble Darkhorse: In-universe example: In his review of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, he notes that he's always preferred Luigi to Mario, since he at the least isn't Peach's personal gopher. He also wonders why Tails gets so much more hate than Sonic despite the fact that he's basically Sonic with flight.
• Escalating Punchline
• Even Evil Has Standards: While Yahtzee isn't too keen on kids, he mentioned in this article that he was disturbed by a comment on his Modern Warfare 3 review by someone expressing a desire for the Big Bad to torture children "Holocaust style". As an "ironic statement".

Er... thanks for your input, Mr. Poster Man, but I wasn't talking it down for not being extreme enough. Or 'ironic' enough. I doubt emptying an entire lorry full of toddlers into the woodchipper would have improved my opinion any.

• Everything's Better with Plushies: The Escapist is now selling Imp plushies.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Referred to by name in his Lego Indiana Jones review.
• Fail O'Suckyname: Not Yahtzee himself, but he has a fondness with abusing the naming system whenever one exists. Examples include Twattycake, Fuckme, Fagballs, and Titty.
• Fake Difficulty: Part of the reason he despises motion controls. As he put it, "Motion controls are a system wherein a game can fail you for something that completely wasn't your fault."
• "Faux To" Guide: Concerning the creation of Gaming Webcomics.
• Five-Man Band: Notes the main parts of the cast of recent Final Fantasy games, giving them names similar to the Spice Girls.
• Flame War: Happens in the comments section on the majority of the games Yahtzee reviews between people who agree with him and people who don't.
• Flat What: A visual example is used by his Author Avatar in his Condemned 2 review, when he describes the unusual means by which you defeat the final boss: shouting at it.
• Forgets to Eat: Mentioned in his Call of Duty 4 review.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: His review of 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand flashes a picture of Yahtzee with the words NOT RACIST several times.
• Freudian Excuse/Start of Darkness: His Red Faction Guerrilla review pins all his negativity on bad experiences playing the original Red Faction when he was younger.
• Freudian Slip: His Bayonetta review is full of these.
• Freudian Trio: With Bob Chipman and James Portnow. Yahtzee is the Id, Bob is the Superego and James is the Ego
• Fridge Brilliance: In-universe examples are sometimes denoted with the expression "HOLY SHIT I JUST GOT THAT".
• From Clones to Genre: Mentioned in his review of Mercenaries 2.
  • The series itself has started to become one of these. At first it was a simple case of Follow the Leader as imitators sprang up on YouTube, but now that three series on the Escapist itself have followed suit, two of which are not review shows, it's safe to say this is a legit genre now.
• Funny Background Event: In his Super Paper Mario review, he shows the Dictionary.com definition of "game", with another tab open titled "Super Huge Tits".
• Gay Option: In his Dragon Age II review he mentioned having hooked up with Anders, more or less because Snarky!Hawke annoyed him and came off as gay to him anyway, though he later detailed that roleplaying played a major part of it and ultimately did develop a genuine fondness for Anders, even forgiving him for blowing up the Chantry and naming his Tepig after him.
• Genre Savvy: Seeing an enemy with a bull's head in Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, he correctly anticipates it to be a Bullfight Boss. He also claims "powers of clairvoyance" that mean he predict how the opening Cutscene of Singularity will play out.
  • He is also aware of tropes, and knows that Tropes Are Not Bad. He may or may not be aware of this site, but at the very least he understands the principles of this wiki.
  • He referenced it on his Twitter, so he at least knows of its existance.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: His Tabula Rasa character, Gareth Gobulcoque, was so named to test the game's name filter. It passed.
• Giant Spider: These show up in the visuals occasionally. Usually they represent something being either unexpected, very difficult, or both.
  • Arachnophobic prospective viewers should take warning that they're usually taken from photos of actual tarantulas.
• GIFT: Yahtzee actually cites the original formula then alters it by subtracting 'Anonymity' and 'Audience'. Or in other words, Normal Person = Total Fuckwad.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck: Whenever he swears in the narration, the animation will replace it with something far more innocuous.
  • Sometimes inverted—he'll say something (relatively) tactful in the narration, and the animation will unleash what he REALLY thinks.
  • For instance, in his Assassin's Creed review, he remarks; "This video review was created by a not particularly multi-cultural person, but who really loves religious extremists a big huggy bunch," where the text displayed reads "...not particularly multi-cultural person who invites religious extremists to suck out his farts and die."
  • On the flip side in his Halo Wars review when the units he runs out of time for the mission he was on (And thus the units he was escorting magically disappear when they were right at his front door) he cries out "Bull! Fucking! Shit!" which is displayed on screen by "What arbitrary silliness."
• Grammar Nazi: In his "Mailbag Showdown" video, while reading out some of the more obnoxious examples of hate mail he received, he corrected them onscreen in the manner of a primary school teacher, coupled with letter grades, giant question marks and "SEE ME" at the bottom. Also, his "Split Stroke Second Colon Velocity" review.
• Gratuitous German: Yahtzee apparently studied German and it frequently comes up in series.
• Half the Man He Used To Be: Shows up in the Demon's Souls review to show that a character loses half its health when dead.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Yahtzee plays with this trope on several occasions, most notably his Guitar Hero III review, where he very specifically lists several homosexual acts (and one heterosexual act) which he is most certainly not doing. And at the end:

"On the whole though it's just not as good as tonguing another man's balls. [Both figures stop playing and stare at the Fourth Wall] I mean... as it used to be. [Beat] I'm not gay."

• • Also seems to link back a few times to Does Not Like Women; he'll make a joke about not being able to get laid, comfort himself with the excuse that women are terrible anyway, and then cap off the joke with "But I'm still not gay." Perhaps the gentleman doth protest too much?
  • He also admitted that he grew to be more attached to Anders than he intended.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks: In-Universe, Yahtzee derides people like this and those who complain that his review ruined their enjoyment of the game, stating that if a person's opinion of a game ruins someone's fun, then maybe they weren't having as much fun as they first thought they were.
  • By this point, complaining about his reviews is often considered pointless.
• Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut: He specifically pronounces the extraneous umlaut in Brütal Legend.
• Hello, Insert Name Here: Yahtzee loves to abuse this whenever possible, with such examples as "Titty Shepard" to "Fagballs", "Fuck Me", "Twattycakes" or "Gareth Gobulcoque".
  • Tried "Tiddles" in Deus Ex but was slapped down by the game's system of using "JC Denton" as a "codename.

"The moment you put in your own name it goes "Wrong! Your name is JC Denton.""

• Hilarious in Hindsight: In-universe example: Very minor, but his quip about how playing as a Big Daddy in BioShock 2 is like a sequel to Half Life where you play as a Gun Turret is much funnier now that one of Portal 2's co-operative play characters is a robot created from a modified Gun Turret.
  • His sarcastic Duke Nukem Forever "review" was voted the #1 fan-favorite... just before the game was Uncancelled at PAX 2010.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Yahtzee states in Prototype 2 that despite the fact the game developers tried to focus more on the fact that Heller is more sympathetic than Mercer, they are still both controlled by a player who would still slaughter everyone for fun.
• Hurricane of Euphemisms: Yahtzee makes a concerted effort to get through his review of Tomb Raider Anniversary without referencing a certain part of the female anatomy. He almost makes it.

"Bosoms, melons, milk factories, busts, funbags, knockers, ballistics, boobies, jugs, nipples, jubblies, stonking great tits!"

• Hypocrisy Nod: Yahtzee has noted his use of Hypocritical Humor more than once in his reviews.
  • The one time it wasn't used as a joke, in Zack and Wiki, he acknowledged his complaints about lousy adventure games that involved carrying around a ton of items to use in one spot.
• Hypocritical Humor:

"Fans are clingy complaining dipshits who will never ever be grateful for any concession you make. The moment you shut out their shrill, tremulous voices the happier you will be for it. Incidentally, why not buy a Zero Punctuation t-shirt?"

• • For a while before the 100th Episode special, The Escapist used this little stinger at the end of all Zero Punctuation shorts to, guess what, advertise Zero Punctuation-related merchandise.
  • In his Duke Nukem Forever review he rants about how people should be sacked for not doing their jobs, and the picture shows him being dragged out of his office with a sign saying "job: review games that actually exist"
  • In his Minecraft review, he calls out Americans for being uninformed about current events in countries outside the US, only to turn around and say he wasn't aware of the flooding in his own city because he doesn't keep up with current events.
  • End Credits for his Left 4 Dead review: "There is a special circle in Hell 4 people who replace numbers for letters".
  • He accuses the protagonist of Fable 3 of bestiality due to the weird way he interacts with his dog, when in his review of Fable 2 he complains that if the game was truly open-ended he should be able to marry any NPC he wants, including his dog.
  • On Rayman: "Honestly, who can like a character whose hands and feet have no visible connection to their torso?"
  • Mafia II's ending seems to come too soon:

"The game just sort of cuts out halfway through resolving everyth-[END CREDITS]

• I Love Nuclear Power:

"Ess-Tee-Ay-Ell-Kay-Ee-Ar: Clear Sky is set in the area surrounding an alternative post-disaster Chernobyl, where presumably the station ran on fairy dust before the meltdown and released a cloud of magic instead of boring old radiation..."

• Impossibly Cool Weapon:

"All you really need to know is that there is a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning. I wish I could make something like that up. It shoots shurikens and lightning! It could only possibly more awesome if it had tits and was on fire!"

• Incredibly Lame Pun: On occasion, not just of the visual variety:

"You only get to see like one second of bare arse anyway so it's hardly going to make your mass erect" ... immediately followed in the credits with: "Yeah, this whole review was leading up to that horrible pun at the end."

• • In the Red Faction: Guerilla review, he says in the end that game could have went pretty well if it really was based off sneaky guerilla warfare, as opposed to its focus on smashing stuff "... which is less guerilla and more chimpanzee." Followed by the credits gag "Spent ten years thinking up that last pun."
  • "...Balder's Gait." (Too Human)
  • "Fallout 3, that is!"
  • The Just Cause 2 review starts by lampshading this to allow him to make "Why? Just 'cause!" jokes "ironically".
  • "Bits of it were so boring that I almost had a NieR-death experience! Boosh!"
  • "I don't see Alice: Madness Returns making mad returns, meheh myeh.
  • In his review of Monster Hunter Tri "You play an adventurer-type showing up at the prerequisite village of immobile retards in a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth to try to be a hunter of monsters. A Monster Hunter Try, if you will."
  • Not to mention his credits pun in Alien vs. Predator: "Alias vs Editor".
  • "You want a review score? How about FOUR, as in FOUR-K YOU!"
  • In the credits of Star Wars: The Old Republic: "I'm so force sensitive I clean my swimming pool with midichlorine."
  • In Sniper Elite V2 he calls it at one point Sniper Elite Wee Poo, then chuckles at it.
• Innocent Bigot: How he viewed the controversy surrounding Resident Evil 5:

...one really shouldn't worry about this sort of thing unless there's genuine hatred behind it, and I don't get that impression. Capcom aren't bad people, they're just idiots.

• Insistent Terminology: "Jaaaaaaames" Sunderland of Silent Hill 2 fame.
  • Also, "Call of Hwa-rez!".
    • Also from that review, there's William Wee'um.
  • And Brew-tal Legend.
  • "Demon's-S-S-S-Souls!" Actually, Yahtzee seems to have become rather fond of these as of late...
  • "Ess-Tee-Ay-Ell-Kay-Ee-Ar: Clear Sky".
  • "Mumorpuger"
  • "Kingdoms of Uhrrpadurr"
  • "Blue Poo Atonement"
  • "Split Stroke Second Colon Velocity"
  • "Let's hope it's not Dead to Rights: Retarded! That would be Dead to Rights: Regrettable."
  • He also refers to Bastion as Sebastian.
• Irony: Now at the bottom of every Zero Punctuation video there are ads linking you to various online retailers prompting you to buy the game that Yahtzee just finished eviscerating due to scripts and other coding used on the site to bring up ads on whatever product keywords are on the web page.
• It Was His Sled: Lampshaded; before pointing out the flaws of Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 's plot, he says to stop paying attention until the "generic rock music" of the credits if you want to avoid spoilers. In the credits his avatar and a single imp hand out a series of this type of spoilers (they even start with THAT sled).
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks: Joked about.

One should always support the independents, at least until they start making money, the soulless sellout fucks.

• • Admittedly, averted by his Gears of War 2 review, in which he admits that things are often mainstream because they're good (Or because Will Smith is in it).
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks: In-universe, he tends to be particularly critic of sequels that don't add much or differ from what the original was. Examples including BioShock 2, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Left 4 Dead 2 to a smaller point.
  • Pretty much his opinion on anything Nintendo if it's not a joke about casual gaming.
  • Yahtzee frequently accuses the Mario and Zelda series of churning out near-identical sequels, even though fans are lucky to get two games per console. Particularly noticeable in his The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword review, when he describes the series as 'essentially releasing the same game with graphical changes and gameplay tweaks' while the games shown include Oddball in the Series The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask.
• It's Up to You: He notes that early missions in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky have a tendency to solve themselves, which is a good attempt to avert this, but a bit bizarre to play.
• Jumped the Shark: Lampshaded in the end credits of his LEGO Indy review, the first time the new, original opening and closing song was used, rather than two licensed songs:

"Now this is all looking a lot more professional, isn't it, although I'm certain some of you pricks are already putting this down as my shark jumping moment."

• Just One More Level: Peggle (and other Pop Cap Games) are described as "the gaming equivalent of premium crack cocaine."

"I started playing Peggle in the afternoon, and emerged some time later to find the authorities had declared me legally dead."

• • [After flooding prevented him from leaving his apartment and thus getting a new game to review:] "My third thought was, 'Oh, goody! That means I can go back inside and keep playing Minecraft!"
  • "A good sandbox is one where you can mess about for hours after making the hollow promise to yourself that you'll stop any minute now, and In Famous 2 certainly has that."
    • He also states that Prototype 2 is the prince of jumping around time wasting. Claiming that even the mere act of getting around the city is surprisingly addicting.
• Kick the Dog: In his Fable review:

No puppies were harmed in the making of this video, except for one who genuinely deserved it.

• Kill and Replace: Accused Insomniac Games of murdering Valve and making a skin suit out of it.
• Lampshade Hanging: The end tag on the Guitar Hero III review, regarding the art style.

"Did no-one else think it was weird for the character in image 110 to wearing a sling when he only has free-floating circular hands?"

• • The entire opening of Just Cause 2 was one giant, lovingly crafted Lampshade about the Incredibly Lame Pun that the name Just Cause offers—in the format "Why X?" "Just Cause!". He then subverts it—see Rule of Three, below.
• Land Down Under: Yahtzee was born in Britain but moved to Australia, and often makes jokes about it.
• The Last of These Is Not Like the Others: Deus Ex: Human Revolution has breathtaking visuals, the impish appeal of stealth, rewarding exploration, but most importantly, you can pick up every vending machine in the building and pack them in the office of your least favorite co-worker.
  • "...Catherine, a Japanese game centrally about the difficulties of relationships, such as unexpected pregnancy, the impetus of commitment, and being chased up an infinite staircase by a giant, monstrous girlfriend trying to eat you with her butt. Did I mention it's Japanese?"
• Leave the Plot Threads Hanging: In-universe example in the review of Condemned 2.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: The crossdressing contest between Cole and Alex.
  • Same could be said regarding RTS games. After his experience with Halo Wars, Yathzee has apparently decided to never touch the genre again.
  • Explained further in "On RTS", in which he explains he's not good at RTS and he doesn't like the impersonal disconnect one gets between story characters and units and the player.
• Limited Social Circle: "I asked everyone I know and neither of them had heard of it either." (NieR)
• Marth Debuted in Smash Bros: He never even heard of Marth before playing Brawl, and based on his other reviews, shouting "Fire Emblem" loud enough near him will cause his brain to explode.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Has teamed up with Moviebob and James Portnow to form Extra Consideration, a panel in which all three discuss the state of the gaming scene.
  • Jim Sterling of the Jimquisition has now joined the panel.
• The Mean Brit: Though currently living in Australia.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: Debatable. Some who claim to have met Yahtzee IRL have report that he is capable of being quite unpleasant towards others. The same persons have however also noted that this characteristic is reasonably outweighed by the fact that he is also fairly shy and quiet. He claims he's only a jackass when provoked... which is often.
  • Tycho at Penny Arcade speculates that Yahtzee is quiet in person in order to save up all his hate and rage to bellow it out really quickly in his weekly reviews.
• Meat Moss: He calls it "jam" in Amnesia the Dark Descent.

"Oh pissing BLIMEY there's JAM coming out of the walls!."

• Men Don't Cry: Parodied in his In Famous 2 review.

"I'm not to proud to admit that I was welling up at In Famous 2's good ending, a little bit. Well, not much at all really. It most more like stoically nodding my head while doing squat-thrusts and grunting."

• Mercy Kill: What he says must be done with Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Metaphorgotten: Frequently.

"It's like wrestling an excitable dog in a paddling pool full of disembodied breasts. *Beat* Don't think too much about that simile, I certainly didn't."

• • Especially when it's a hot summer day and his AC isn't working. "Really good like...something...good that's...made out of chocolate..."
  • This Extra Punctuation takes the metaphor of "Too Many Cooks spoil the broth" and keeps stretching it until he reckons "I think this is already the best metaphor I've ever written."
• Milestone Celebration: Spoofed with his 100th episode, where he decides to review... exactly the same game he would've reviewed otherwise (Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood).
• More Dakka: His review of Spore shows the civilization stage as imps strafing other imps cities from the air, with the caption "Dakka Dakka" under the war planes.
• Motor Mouth: "Zero Punctuation" comes from how he has a tendency to ramble on and on so quickly that his speech has almost no pauses, and thus there is zero punctuation. More or less.
  • He has said he edits out the pauses, but definitely does not speed up his voice.
• Mugging the Monster: In his Fallout: New Vegas review, he mentions that it occured to him that it might be a good idea to stop stealing things. After getting attacked by bandits and taking their stuff, he mentions it is not stealing because they attacked him, which makes it his by the international law of "Go Fuck Yourselves."
• Mundane Made Awesome: When talking about the wet clothing feature in Uncharted, he talks a bit too much about it, considering it means absolutely nothing in terms of plot or gameplay. He realizes this, of course, stating at the end of his praise "Well, I think its interesting!".
• Mythology Gag: During his Final Fantasy XIII review, Yahtzee separates each hour he played the game with a brief break showing a black screen with the unit of time and then which unit he's on (Hour 1, Hour 2, Hour 3, etc.). He used a similar mechanism with three of the games in the Chzo Mythos.
• Nerdgasm: Has made a few references to getting erections at really good games.
• Nerds Are Virgins: Has made quite a few jokes about that.
• Newly Popular Updating: Expect any game he reviews to have a new quote entry at the top of its page by the end of the day, appropriate or otherwise.
• Nice Hat: "Yahtzee is a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder." The hat originally appeared in his own games, The Chzo Mythos, worn by the character of Trilby. The hat itself is known as a Trilby hat, and it tends to get him more attention than he really wants.
• Nightmare Fuel: In-Universe example: The Kinectimals' box art is "the most terrifying thing I've seen all year. It looks like what would happen if John Wayne Gacy went to Disneyland."
• Nightmare Retardant: In-Universe, He states that Alice: Madness Returns made Creepy Dolls not creepy just by the fact that the game uses it constantly to the point where players just get used to it.
• Nintendo Hard: Yahtzee prides himself on as having been playing video games since early childhood and frequently recalls how hard they were back then. He routinely mocks prospective critics who complain about the difficulty level in games these days. That said, games with ridiculously impossible sequences, he blasts with both barrels.
  • Yes, we're looking at you, Demon's Souls.
  • However he did enjoy I Wanna Be the Guy, though he states that no person, unless it's for charity should ever try Impossible difficulty.
• No Fourth Wall: Technically doesn't qualify as there's no suspension of disbelief, but a review still pushed back the boundaries when Yahtzee addressed the viewer as "Adrian", and noted that while that's not particularly likely to be any given viewer's name, "it was worth it to freak out all the Adrians in the world."

"If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that all these games are sequels. And if you haven't... * claps twice* OI!" "Stop watching my reviews, Dad!"

• • The Super Mario Galaxy 2 review has the distinction of genuinely breaking the fourth wall, as Yahtzee suggest pausing the video, while his avatar points to the pause button on the video player.

"I shouldn't have to talk about the core gameplay, I consider that an insult to you and me. My review of Mario Galaxy 1 hasn't gone anywhere, why not pause this video, pour yourself a glass of wine and go and enjoy that. I'll just wait here slapping myself in the face until you return. * cut to black, slapping sounds and Yahtzee groaning, then cut back, Yahtzee now with a bruised face* Finished? Right, well, Mario Galaxy 2 is more of that."

• "No. Just... No" Reaction: How the review of The Conduit began.
• Noodle Implements: The STALKER review: ...and whistled for a baboon.
• Noodle Incident: The end of the Fallout: New Vegas video says "I hope the war in Las Vegas destroyed that ice machine I threw up in".
  • "Now I've never invaded Europe, except for that one time..."
  • "I know I can't speak for everyone, at least not until the device is completed, but..."
• Not Himself: Wait, what's this? Resistance 3 has no regenerating health? A sum of weapons greater than 2? No chest-high walls? "..erm.....Sony?.......Are you feeling all right?"
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Describing the ending of Condemned 2, and says "I wish I was fucking kidding!"
  • And revealing the final boss of Kayne and Lynch 2: Dog Days
  • In his review of Epic Mickey, he brings up a Mickey Mouse comic where he tries to kill himself after Minnie breaks up with him.
• Not So Different: The Witcher 2 review makes this observation of console & PC gamers. You both suck equally!
• Old Shame: Yahtzee has admitted at least twice he used to watch Pokemon when he was a kid. While some people might not consider this shameful, he certainly does.
• One of These Is Not Like the Others: In his Batman: Arkham Asylum review: "I could go on about how the combat flows, or how the atmosphere is solid, and how the highlights for me were the Scarecrow sections where Batman's perceptions of reality are skewed in favour of a nightmarish and delusional glimpse into the darkest recesses of Batman's soul, and how jumping on people is cool...
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Happens a fair deal with his ridiculous Irish accent in the Tales of Monkey Island episode.
  • Also the Far Cry 2 episode, where he switches back and forth from his normal English accent and a horrible South African accent.
• Orphaned Punchline: "...and whistled for a baboon!"
• Overly Long Gag: See Big No.
• Parrot Exposition: A parody of Metal Gear Solid's famous tendency for this:

Otacon: Metal Gear Snake: Metal Gear? Otacon: Metal Gear! Snake: Bugger me!

• Pet Peeve Trope:
  • Doorstopper: He tends to rag on games that are heavy on dialogue and cutscenes, like Mass Effect and especially Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
  • Karma Meter: He argues that usually "you need to be all the way good or all the way evil to unlock the best toys" which eliminates choice and forces an evil player to do some really ridiculous things to maintain their evilness. He also argues that such meters are "just forcing us to play the game twice to see all the content."
  • Real Is Brown
  • Regenerating Health: He prefers health meters and medkits.
  • Stealth-Based Mission: He likes the stealth genre, but a "forced stealth section" in the middle of a non-stealth game is one of his pet peeves.
  • Take Cover: One of his main beefs with current-generation FPSs.
  • Updated Rerelease
  • Waggle: One of his key issues with Nintendo consoles, because how shoehorned-in it seems.
• Pet the Dog: In an Extra Punctuation, although he couldn't sympathize with gamers who cried at Aerith's death in FFVII, he said that the emotions they felt were real and no one could call them fake or wrong.
• Portmanteau

"Essflawcondodgeckindesimudstorliketersockity."

• Prepare to Die: Used as a Credits Gag.
• Press X to Not Die: Named it, see Running Gag.
  • Since Batman: Arkham Asylum had none of these, Yahtzee instead used "Press X to KICK ASS."
  • H.A.W.X.: "Press X To Make The World Safe For Democracy."
  • Silent Hill Origins: "Press X to Nurby Durby Durr" (This particular "Press X" gag is repeated in other videos)
  • Grand Theft Auto IV: "Press X to exaggerate financial standings" (In reference to the game's over-reliance on realism -- "What next, the Write-a-letter-to-your-mum mini game?")
    • The hilarious thing is, at one point you do have the option of having Niko write an email to his mother.
  • 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand: "The prerequisite quick-time experiences..." [caption: "Press X To Brutalise This Poor Fellow"] "... are thankfully not mandatory." Or Don't, Whatever's Cool.
  • Mass Effect 2: "Press X To Not Care" ("You can't just spend the whole game knocking back Singapore Slings on a beach all day")
• The Problem with Licensed Games: In-Universe Oddly averted. One of Yahtzee's favorite games is the licensed tie-in for Spider-Man 2.
  • He actually explains a couple of the reasons why licensed games tend to do poorly while reviewing Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, released to promote the Sands of Time movie, citing that most of them put too much focus on the story or license (as opposed to gameplay) or get rushed enough to where notable issues don't get fixed (both of which, he says, are evidently the case with the 2010 Prince of Persia games). He still finds the game enjoyable despite having the look and feel of a licensed game.
• Product Placement: Branston Pickles or GAME TRADERS ROBINA.
• Promoted Fanboy: A college kid by the name of Daniel Floyd created a video heavily inspired by Yahtzee's show. A few months later, he was hired by The Escapist and started a show called Extra Credits.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Darius Mason triumphs by using his magic flashlight the fix Mars' weather inside of five minutes. ..Erm.
• Queer People Are Funny: Quite a lot. His Army of Two review even opened with him discussing his own over-reliance on gay jokes and how he'd been trying to cut down on them but the game he was reviewing that week was just such an obvious target for them.
• Raging Stiffie: Mentions the trope by name when describing his nostalgic feelings for Silent Hill 2.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: One of its defining features, helped by Yahtzee's Motor Mouth and the blink-and-you-miss-it speed at which many visual gags flash by.
• A Rare Sentence: Wanna hear something crazy? "Titty-fuck labrador swimming up The Nile." ..Oh yeah, and he liked Driver San Francisco.
  • "But once I'd mentally adjusted for Batman's underpants..." And the screen reads "I bet no one's ever said this before."
• Real Is Brown: A particular dislike of Yahtzee's. Mentioned quite a few times, like in the GTA 4 review.
• Real Men Wear Pink: He mentions dressing up his Tabula Rasa avatar in and Shepherd from Mass Effect 2 in bright pink.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Web Comics review becomes progressively more and more vindictive towards Ctrl+Alt+Del, to the point of becoming blatant.
  • The start of his Braid review is one of these directed at the ignorant Gears of War-buying crowd.
• Rebus Bubble: According to Yahtzee, the formula for the cutest thing ever is sum of teddy bear and Powerpuff Girl divided by Pikachu equals Sackboy.
• Record Needle Scratch: In the No More Heroes review, as previously mentioned.
• Refuge in Audacity: Lampshaded in-universe:

If the developers [of Heavenly Sword] thought I would consider buying the full game just to find out what "twing-twang" is then mission fucking accomplished I suppose, but I'm going to be very disappointed if it doesn't turn out to be a cutesy euphemism for lesbian cunnilingus, yeah I went there.

• Ret-Gone: The final product of Duke Nukem Forever was apparently such a transcendental work of awesomeness that it collapsed reality and ended up being cancelled before completion in the new timeline. Now the new version will likely fail to live up to the "original".
• Rhyming List: In the Resident Evil: Revelations review, he mentions that in Metroid Prime, scans would result in "The name of the monster, a hint on how to kill it, and its favorite song from David Bowie's Hunky Dory album":

Fish McTarse Blast his arse Life on Mars

• • Also appears in the review of Medal of Honor: Airborne, where every subsequent use of "fucking bastard" is replaced with a visual rhyme, like so:

Fucking bastard Flocking bustard Sock in mustard

• Ridiculous Future Sequelisation: Yahtzee invokes it in his Peggle review:

Yahtzee: "Once your budget hits seven digits you're supposed to make Gun Battle Slap Fight Thirty-Seven for the Playstation Twelve...!

• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Imp.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Mentioned in his Driver: San Francisco review by name.
• The Roleplayer: Yahtzee states that he does roleplay when playing RPGs because it's the entire point of the genre.
• Rule 34: "I checked and yep, there's already erotic fanart of the ff13 characters."
  • Also, his character from his Age of Conan review got hit, which he even acknowledged in a later review.
• Rule of Three: Subverted in the Just Cause 2 review. Why? Fucked If I Know!
• Running Gag: Press X to Not Die: Guaranteed to show up in a review of a game with quick time events.
  • Also the caption "Oh no everyone can see my bum," first appearing in his review of Mercenaries 2, where Soul Calibur's Ivy bent over and had the caption above her. Then a box did it in the same review. Then a few reviews later, a male figure did it. Eventually lampshaded when a figure bends over with the caption "Oh no everyone can etc."
    • And in Velvet Assassin a "German" soldier is bent over saying the above caption. In German.
    • And in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood a cowboy imp says it in a Western accent while bending over on top of a piano.
    • A different Lampshade was hung in his Heavy Rain review when the female lead said "Oh no everyone can see my Call Back".
    • The real Duke Nukem Forever review had Duke saying, "Oh good everyone can see my bum."
    • Makes a comeback in the "Assassin's Creed Revelations" review, where one of the many prostitutes Ezio has recruited in the past makes a statement concerning "bums and the seeing thereof."
  • Nose-picking is mentioned frequently when talking about mundane actions on the part of either the player or NPCs.
  • Yahtzee references making a Super Villain sandbox game called "Mankind Has Yet To Recognize My Genius, The Game" at least twice.
  • Also, the image of that red-haired guy. For those who don't know, he's one of Thomas Ruff's "Expressionless Faces" found in one of Yahtzee's Google Image searches. This guy is apparently what Yahtzee sees the huddled, unwashed masses look like.
    • According to his IAM on Reddit, "He just makes me laugh. I've seen Ruff's other expressionless faces and all of them have some hint of emotion, like surprise or a little smile, but Mr. Expressionless has nothing. He's hollow. Dead in the eyes. And that's why I love him."
  • The, erhem, prostitute with triple the normal number of a certain orifice seems to be one, too.
  • Every time Hitler makes an appearance he's accompanied with a caption saying ACH.
  • "People always say to me: Yahtzee, you (description indicating manliness...)"
    • Lampshaded at one point with "Yahtzee, you ordinary person!"
    • And subverted in his Sims 3 review: "Yahtzee, you inappropriate menstruation joke".
  • Ending sentences (and reviews) with: "...not gay!"
    • As an example, regarding multiplayer Modern Warfare 2: "...lying in long grass watching each other's backs, not gay."
    • Subverted with Driver: San Francisco, which he adores. "So I guess I am gay!"
  • In his review of Driver: San Francisco, SERVE AND PROTECT is used sarcastically on the cop protagonist's ability to possess drivers to crash into one another.
  • Rattling off a list of numbered sequels and turning it into a football score, i.e., (Half Life 2, Silent Hill 2, Thief 2, Spider-Man 2, (Arsenal: 3)). (A generic British joke, possibly first coined by Spike Milligan in William McGonagall Meets George Gershwin.)
  • Within the Dead to Rights: Retribution Dead to Rights: review, the Dead To Rights: recurring joke of Yahtzee Dead To Rights: replacing every RE- word with the game's title, but the RE- word in place of Retribution. Likewise a similar gag was done for Red Dead Redemption's Word Salad Title.

[Dead To Rights: Retribution] isn't technically a sequel since the plot starts out the same as the first game, so perhaps a better name would've been Dead To Rights: Remake. Or perhaps Dead To Rights: Revisionism. Let's just hope it doesn't end up Dead To Rights: Retarded. That would be Dead To Rights: Regrettable.

• • In a similar fashion, Yahtzee took Red Dead Redemption and complained that the game is neither red nor dead. He then went to call the game throughout the review by several alternate names, namely Brown Alive Redemption, Blue Poo Atonement, Green Spleen Submarine, and then Purple Monkey Dishwasher.
  • Similar to the Red Dead Redemption example above, Yahtzee kept changing the title of Alice: Madness Returns for things like Return of the Madness, Return of the Jedi, Return of Jafar and Batman Returns.
  • A character bending over and asking to be, er, taken advantage of will always be saying "In mah butt".
  • THRRRP.
  • WURRGH
  • Pulling out his "Like God of War but" stamp.
  • "Hungry Hungry Hippos" seems to becoming one of these as well.
  • His evident dislike of Glasgow.
  • He uses the term "Eating all the pies" to mean taking up space at least twice, which is another British reference (specifically, football).
  • Bland names being attributed to the Crackdown Naming Committee.
  • Floating Hallucinations commanding people to "KILL THE WHORES"
• Sand in My Eyes: "I'm not too proud to admit that I was welling up a bit at In Famous 2's good ending. ..A lil' bit. ..Well, not much at all really. It was more like just stoically nodding my head while doing some pelvic thrusts and grunting."
• Sarcasm Mode: The entire Duke Nukem Forever review. Let's start from the fact that he's reviewing a game that (at the time) was canceled and work from there. The part that qualifies this as this trope is the bit at the end where he points out there is no actual game, as the lawyers told him to do.
• Schrödinger's Cat: In his "Console Rundown", he compares his Xbox360 to a Schrodinger's Console, constantly swinging between a broken and unbroken state.
• Screamer Trailer: The ending of the LittleBigPlanet review, as an obvious homage to J-horror movies such as The Ring and The Grudge.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: What he believed the plan to DC Universe to be, claiming if there were enough crazies in the world the Aliens would just go away rather than get involved.
• Self-Deprecation: While his Zero Punctuation persona is obviously an arrogant Caustic Critic, Yahtzee is known for making blunt, humourous digs at himself from time to time, such as acknowledging the nerdiness inherent in reviewing video games for a living and mocking his own abilities in the practice of social and sexual intercourse (or lack thereof).
  • On Modern Warfare 2: "The single-player mode is as short as fuck, and let me tell you, when I'm around fucks are legendarily short." [The animation shows two pairs of eyes in the darkness, with the speech "Sorry."]
  • "As a highly respected and successful game critic--SHUT UP I AM!"
    • "I played Final Fantasy XIII because I am an unbiased critic--SHUT UP I AM!"
  • A Freeze-Frame Bonus example from the Silent Hill Origins review. It shows all the different Invader Zim fanfiction writer pictures, and the one with the lowest bar is his picture.
  • Discussed during one review in which he says that one of the targets that Americans like to hate on the most is ... 'Other Americans'.
  • "A Nerd, after all, is someone who obsesses over something, like the cultural impact of gaming, or people who criticise same in silly internet videos."
• Sequelphobic: Yahtzee is not inherently against the idea of sequels, but he's extremely critical of most due to their alleged lack of innovation. Franchises that go in new directions are preferred, and several of his liked games (Half Life 2, Silent Hill 2, Thief 2, Spider-Man 2, (Arsenal: 3)) are all sequels.
  • In the Extra Punctuation entry for his 'Splosion Man/Tales of Monkey Island review, he stated his belief that a sequel should be done by people who played the first game and didn't like it, rather than fans of the first game. He reasons that the former would change it and evolve it (at the expense of fans of the original), as opposed to fans who would only advance the parts of the game they liked (which could include unimportant/bad mechanics or strictly throwaway gags).

"I do have a guilty enjoyment for Alone in the Dark and Mirror's Edge. They’re wracked with issues, but I find games that try to do something new and fall apart far more compelling than the merely mediocre games that don’t have an original thought in their heads."

• Serial Numbers Filed Off: Has accused many games of being this, most notably BioShock to System Shock 2, and Dantes Inferno to God of War.
• Shoehorned First Letter: "BFE stands for Before First Encounter - not, as I had first believed, Big Fucking Egun..."
• Shout-Out: Lots. For example, the first ship seen in the Dead Space review is the Pyro-GX from Descent.
  • Some of them are subtle; for instance, the PC in Red Steel 2, who wears a bright red cowboy hat and trenchcoat is greeted by "Are you that vampire guy?"
  • He has referenced Back to The Future several times, usually when talking about Time Travel.
  • Almost all instances mentioning time travel have a picture of the TARDIS, as well.
  • Yahtzee is a fan of Eddie Izzard, phrases like "small yappy dog", "running, jumping, climbing" and "buttocks for a hat" have all been used in Izzard's sketches. Confirmed on one of the podcasts for Australian Gamer, when Matt calls him out on saying that everyone in Britain has a country manor.
  • One of the dungeons in NieR takes the form of a text adventure game, illustrated with "This dungeon has been replaced by a series of twisty text screens, all alike."
  • He's recycled one or two of Seanbaby's jokes, but they may be more flat ripoffs than shout outs because the ones Yahtzee borrowed aren't particularly well-known.
  • The plot of Singularity has "more holes than Blackburn, Lancashire".
  • At the end of his The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass review, he suggest for the next game that Nintendo get rid of the princess, change the hero to a dog, change the setting to feudal Japan, and replace the weapons with magic spells cast with a paintbrush.
  • Describing Travis Touchdown as a massive nerd, he's shown lusting over Haruhi.
  • In Thief the Dark Project, one of the badly done guard sprites goes DRR DRR DRR.
  • Any time he mentions the words Battle Royale, he shows a picture of one of his characters suffering a common death in the work, exploding collars.
  • The ending credits comic for his Killzone 3 review features one of the Helghast going for a haircut only to have the imp barber slash at his neck with his hair-cutting tools.
  • A blink and you'll miss it reference to the Pixies is in the Yakuza 4 review, where a car is shown playing "Here Comes Your Man".
  • To the Kaiser Chiefs, his Wet review introduces the heroine Rubi like this: rubirubirubiRUBI !
  • The Duke Nukem Forever review (the real one, not the parody one) gives us ALBATROSS'D!
  • Yahtzee comments in the Catherine review that anime protagonists all tend to be "angsty and ineffectual, and given to wanking off over unconscious women".
  • "Singularity rips off the cutesy, '50's style ads from BioShock, which BioShock ripped off from Fallout. It's like a magnificent Human Centipede stretching back through gaming history."
  • In one of his Extra Punctuation articles he offhandedly refers to a generic supervillain minion as "Longshoreman X." A reference to Dead to Rights and almost certainly Slowbeef's Let's Play of the game.
  • Even the very first video for the Escapist features a reference to Halfbrick Studios, an independent game developer based in Brisbane.
  • In the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning review, one of the monsters "borrowed from European folklore" is a Moomin.
  • Says Calypso could only more obviously be Satan "if he had horns and was idly chewing on Judas Iscariot."
  • When reviewing "Risen 2: Dark Waters", he mentions that the combat system "can kiss [his] black spot".
• Sincerest Form of Flattery: In his Resistance 3 review, Yahtzee grows more and more suspicious of the game's marked (if well-executed) similarities to Half-Life 2, culminating in accusing them of murder and dismemberment because the scientist Deuteragonist has the same style of beard as Gordon Freeman.
• Situational Sexuality: Yahtzee's utter adoration of Stephen Fry's voice in the LittleBigPlanet review. Perfectly understandable, really.
  • He starts his review of Brutal Legend by professing his adoration for Tim Schafer, including stating that if he had a doomsday machine he'd reduce the entire population of the world to himself, Tim Schafer, and one woman if she promised to wear a Tim Schafer mask.
• So Bad Its Horrible: In-universe, this is his opinion of Sonic Unleashed. He even uses the same line graph as Xkcd.
• Something Completely Different: The Duke Nukem Forever review, which of course was all made up, as well as the Wolfenstein review which was, except for the introduction, entirely in limerick form, including the tag-ending text.
  • His trip to Washington D.C.
  • His "Faux To" Guide on webcomics and the "Post-Brawl Mailbag Showdown" might count as well, particularly the former.
• Sophisticated As Hell: Many examples over the years.

"Contrary to the claims made in the previous video, I have not, in actuality, fucked your mum because, damn, that shit is nasty, yo."

• • "[Fairly serious analysis]...and I can't think of a joke for that sentence, so here's a picture of a dog in a hat."
  • In describing Heavy Rain: "The zenith is a hauntingly visceral and fucking hard to watch scene in which..."
• Spiritual Licensee: A lot of comparisons are drawn between L.A. Confidential and L.A. Noire.
  • He referred to Painkiller as "The unofficial Doom 3".
• Spoof Aesop: The lesson of Catherine seems to be "men are all directionless tidal waves, and women are all dikes built in the path of their raging floods."

"...Blimey, what a badly-worded metaphor."

• Starbucks Skin Scale: A But Not Too Black character is dismissed as "dipped in tea".
• Stealth Insult: His Modern Warfare review features "Killing in the Name Of" by Rage Against the Machine playing over the end credits, which becomes hilarious when you consider that he has spent most of the review telling people who suggest things to him to get fucked. He doesn't play the song long enough for the joke to become apparent, but anyone who's listened to it knows that towards the end the singer just keeps repeating "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" over and over again.
• Story to Gameplay Ratio: Yahtzee's a bit hard to pin down on this one, but the important things are that the amount of story must fit the game and that Story and Gameplay Segregation must not intrude. Silent Hill 2 is his definitive example of getting the balance right.
• Storybook Opening: Red Faction Guerrilla.
• Stout Strength: An odd example, he refers to any large muscular character as fat even if they have an impossibly fit and overmuscled build.
• Sturgeon's Law: Applied frequently, with an even more negative twist: "Everything is shit until proven otherwise", a.k.a. "the Guantanamo Bay approach".

"Experience has taught me that while declaring a game shitty because of the first few hours is perfectly valid and completely professional, you should never assume that a good game will stay good."

• • He handily applies this trope to user-made content as well, during the LittleBigPlanet review.

"I feel there's a fundamental difference of philosophy between me and the developers of LittleBigPlanet: they believe every single person is an extra-special god-child with a bud of creativity aching to burst out into a single perfect flower; and I believe every single person is a tosser, and any flowers that pop up are going to be buried under garbage, fiery penises and countless reproductions of levels from Super Mario Bros."

• Subliminal Seduction: In his 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand review, this Image Macro quickly pops up several times during the video.
• Suicide as Comedy: Pretty much a Running Gag where he will try to kill himself.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: See Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today? (not gay.)
  • In the review for Batman: Arkham City, Bruce Wayne is represented with a man wearing a t-shirt saying "Not Batman".
• Take That: Various games—not just whatever he's reviewing. He's made recurring insults against Halo, its fans, Nintendo's fondness for its own franchises, Americans, Gamespot after the Kane and Lynch debacle, and Japanese RPGs. Not to mention two of his videos, which were extended Take Thats aimed at, respectively, bad gaming Web Comics in general (and one in particular), and Duke Nukem Forever (dedicated to insulting 3D Realms, their investors, and the fans disappointed by the game's demise).
  • There's another Take That directed at Ctrl+Alt+Del in his Mass Effect review.
  • Yahtzee's review of Wii Sports Resort was a Take That to the fans who stop watching his videos because he pans the Nintendo Wii. He later lampshades the Internet Backdraft that will inevitably occur by bidding his Wii-owning fans a fond farewell. Yahtzee has a longstanding animus toward all things Wii (and some other things about Nintendo), and while he has praised a small handful of Wii games, he gladly indulges in that animus.
  • An absolutely huge on at the start of his Borderlands review: tearing into people that demand he review a certain game, despite his highly critical approach, only to then be shocked and complain when he criticises it.
  • He also makes constant Take That's to Australian censorship laws, Australian region release dates and people behind them.
  • His Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands review starts with one against Roger Ebert... which he then revisits and SLAMS IN THE VIEWER'S FACE at the end of the review.

"SEE, ROGER EBERT, THAT'S WHAT IT FEELS LIKE!"

• • "Or, if you would prefer something bland and unchallenging, then how about eating a dick?"
  • At the end of the Halo: Reach review (which he actually said could stand up on its own as a single-player experience, though not to the level of classics), he mentions that your enjoyment of it is dependent on your disposable income:

"If you willingly parted money for the Playstation Move, feel free to go nuts, because you probably already have done."

• • "Will [Symphony of the Night] be one of those old classics that still hold up from a fresh modern perspective -- like Super Mario World and Patrick Stewart -- or will it be like one of those embarrassing older relatives that survive on nostalgia and self-effacement, like Myst or William Shatner?"
  • "...Manchester United, nil."
  • L.A. Noire's director asks a Motion Capture actor to "look like you're lying". His Speech Bubble is a picture of Tony Blair.
  • Comparing Driver: San Francisco's Body Surfing antics to those of Quantum Leap. Cue Tanner donning a Scott Bakula mask, along with the caption "I RUINED STAR TREK".
  • His review of Dead Island is absolutely full of it, declaring that he will make a zombie apocalypse game where your party will struggle to survive against an avalanche of zombie apocalypse games, titled Enough With The Fucking Zombies Already, and that gamers couldn't handle it if the world ended in any other way.
  • "So much of triple-A gaming these days is endless sequels, ripoffs, and wank."
• Take That, Audience!: Constant, constant, constant. There is very rarely a video or an Extra Punctuation column where he doesn't insult the viewers and/or himself.
  • Commenting in the Dead Island review, notes that while the average gamer acts as if they would take a zombie apocalypse as an opportunity to shine, they would be more likely to talk suicide pacts if the internet went down for more than a week.
• Take That, Scrappy!: In-Universe, he ends his Final Fantasy XIII review with him doing horrible things to Vanille.
• Talks Like a Simile: For humorous effect, given the nature of the similes. As an example, one of them involved the voice acting in a game being comparable to being raped in the ear by a man wearing a sandpaper condom. Though technically it wasn't him who said it, it was his roommate. And "Not in those exact words, of course."
  • Matt maintains he actually described it as like driving a corkscrew into his ears.

"I wonder if the Geneva Convention covers torturing metaphors?"

• Tank Goodness: In Halo Wars.

"There's no reason to build any troops, really. Tanks do not move any slower, they just take longer to build and, well, they're fucking tanks!"

• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The female imps have red bows on their heads.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Yahtzee seems quite fond of making jokes about his masculinity, stating that it's one of the reasons why he cares little for the RTS Genre. The subtitle for his Fully Ramblomatic site is "The website for REAL MEN".
  • Regarding the miserably scowling hero of Darksiders:

"If I threw a seven-foot demon into the air and cut it in half with one swing... I'd be like, fucking hell! Did anyone see that? I'm squirting machismo out of my nipples here! I am a monster truck that walks like a man!"

• • He even claims the opposite in regards to playing JRPGs for any length of time beyond five hours. Like he did with The World Ends With You.

"...Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go play an FPS before my body finishes absorbing my testicles."

• • He does however have a poor opinion of games that use this trope unironically.
• The Theme Park Version: Most people who claim to share Yahtzee's views exactly have patently never watched a single review and simply parrot over-exaggerated versions of his particularly caustic reviews as though that were his entire opinion on the entire genre.
• This Loser Is You: Yahtzee's hatred for this trope is made plain in his Transformers: War for Cybertron review, where he derides Shia LeBeouf's various characters in ways like, "Indiana Jones is over thirty? No one can relate to that!"

"Not to dampen your sense of victory, Darius, mate, but why didn't you do that three years ago right after it broke? You DUMB Dope Slap] BALD [dopeslap] TWAT.

• Tickle Torture: The way he illustrates the mentioned the initial torture sesions of Black Ops.
• To Make a Long Story Short: In his review of Spore and whether it's as good as The Sims.

Short answer: No. Long Answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

• Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup: He brings this up frequently about the large-name corporations running the big-budget titles, and even brings up how such lack of discipline ruined Dead Space 2.
  • He takes this metaphor to extraordinary lengths in Extra Punctuation.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Branston Pickle, which is typically used as a metaphor for "so unique you have to try it".
  • Cadbury's Creme Eggs and chip sandwiches show up infrequently.
  • In one episode he considered combining the two to make a Cadbury's Branston Pickle Egg. Then cut to credits. Then he came back with a report on how it went (not very well).
  • He also mentions Cornettos several times in his earlier reviews.
• Troll: Yahtzee once reflects that he's seen as a "professional troll," which he imagines as a hulking creature lurking under a bridge, handing out business cards.
• Troperiffic: Many of the entrance quotes of the Trope pages are from him.
• Twain's Observation on Originality: Numerous reviews allude to this concept. His running metaphor about Branston Pickle (to describe something so original and distinctive that it must be appreciated in spite of its flaws) more or less amounts to this trope.
• Twenty Bear Asses: One of his reasons for hating MMORPGs is because most quests are variants of this. A sight gag from his Red Dead Redemption video is him running from a cougar holding a pile of otter noses while the caption "7/8 OTTER NOSES" floats over him.
• The Unintelligible: The Imp, during his extremely short lived Hostile Show Takeover.
• Unpleasable Fanbase: Lampshaded in-universe. "Fans are clingy, complaining dipshits who will never ever be grateful for any concession you make. Incidentally, why not buy a Zero Punctuation t-shirt?"
• Unreliable Narrator: A quick one where Yahtzee shows on a chart ranking games by violence, which claims that Barbie Horseback Racing is slightly more violent that the war game Resistance Fall of Man 3.
• Verbal Backspace: Running Gag in Bayonetta review.
  • Also, from his Army of Two review, when he starts slipping into gay jokes again though he was trying to cut down on them: "No! Bad Yahtzee!"
• Victory Cake: A few times but most recently in the God of War III review:

The actual challenge of the fight is basically 'Go here, then here, then Quick Time Event then win. Then cake.'

• Video Game Caring Potential: Usually, Yahtzee is a cruel, heartless bastard, but every once in a while even he admits to liking the characters that he plays or the NPCs he gets saddled with.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Why Yahtzee loves Saints Row 2.
  • Also, from his review of SimCity Societies:

"It seems when you place most people in the position of a god and give them responsibility over many tiny lesser beings, then their attitude towards them is usually less about beloved children and more about target practice."

• • In his "Best of 2010" video, his favorite game of the year was Just Cause 2, because "any criticism I might have given it is drowned out by the terrified scream of an enemy soldier with one leg tied to a Harrier jet."
  • He dedicated a point during his In Famous vs. Prototype match to which game gave the players a better oppurtunity to be a colossal dick. If you can't tell which one won that round, it was the one that let you eat people.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: In Yahtzee's review of Deathspank, how many people got that he picked the town name of Northampton for a visual gag about a mystical place because it's very close to the real life English town of Daventry?
• Visual Pun: Many of the B-Roll Rebus visuals. He even Lampshaded it when he came up with an exceptionally lame one with a large caption reading "VISUAL PUN".
  • Then subverted in one review, where the word "incongruous" was met with a screen of text just saying "A word I can't fucking illustrate."
  • Deathspank is illustrated with The Grim Reaper giving Yahtzee's Author Avatar a spanking.
  • In Mafia II, "fast whores" is illustrated by a female imp zooming across the screen going "NEEEOOOW".
  • When he says "Give me some credit" (about assuming the everyday details of the character's life), an imp offers him a credit card.
  • All the way back at his Peggle review, you have the images on the pegs: busts of Simon Pegg.
• What Is This Thing You Call Love?: By his own admission, he doesn't believe in it, even stating that "true love" is indistinguishable from brain damage.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Rebecca Mayes' love song to him, calling him out on the lowest-common-denominator parts of his humour then asking him out for a drink...and threatening to stab him with a screwdriver.
• Whoring: Yahtzee both hates the very existence of and abuses the hell out of moves that can be used for extreme versions of this, including but not limited to a parry that automatically stuns the opponent, a tentacle attack with way too long a reach, tossing his helpless AI opponent around like a ragdoll, and the "fuck you" button.
• X Days Since...: Parodied in the Army of Two review as "X Hours Since the Last Gay Joke".
• X Meets Y: His analysis of Minecraft.

Christ, this is like Zelda meets There Will Be Blood!"

• Yaoi Fangirl: One of these makes a brief cameo in the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots review when Yahtzee points out that Snake and Otacon's relationship is a goldmine of Ho Yay.
• You Bastard: Yahtzee actually suggests this exact trope as an alternate name for Monster Hunter Tri when his first suggestion (he got as far as Hunter/Gatherer Of Innocent Young Dinosaurs Pathetically Mewling Their Last As The Memory Of Their Mother's Warmth Drifts Away To Be Replaced By The Unforgiving Coldness Of... before giving up) didn't really work.
• You Fail Biology Forever: In the Shadow of the Colossus review, Yahtzee says that the female character is the player's girlfriend because she is the only thing with an X chromosome. This is incorrect—males have X chromosomes too, females just have 2.
• You Keep Using That Word: During the Mailbag Showdown, after a reader told him, "There wasn't really much of a review here. From a purely objective standpoint, Super Smash Brothers Brawl is actually quite a superb game, as you can tell from reading reviews":

Yahtzee: I think you should look up the word "objective", because I don't think it means what you think it means. It's worth remembering that all reviews are subjective personal opinions and if you personally enjoy the game, then they shouldn't really get to you. Unless of course there's a despicable little niggling doubt in the back of your mind, that maybe you're not having as much fun as you've convinced yourself you're having, which doesn't go away no matter how many times you try to slap it down with the wet flannel of weak excuses...

• • Lampshaded by Yahtzee himself in one column, where he mentions that he's caught himself using certain words so many times that he's had to step back and wonder what the hell he's actually talking about. Helpfully, he put together a handy little glossary of some of his favorites.
• You Killed My Father: Used as a Credits Gag.
• You Make Me Sic: He employs this during the "Mailbag Showdown" video by correcting the emails in red as he reads them.
• Your Mom: She turns up a lot in Zero Punctuation, and Yahtzee usually either hits on her or tries to have sex with her.
  • Or in one case as shown in his Bionic Commando review, kicking some ass.