If there's one place on the internet where Sturgeon's Law is in full effect, it's YouTube: In an age where just about anyone can create content and post it for others to see, the YouTube community can serve as a prime example of quantity over quality. This naturally extends to the Let's Play community as well, with new videos posted left and right filled with asinine commentary or played on release date, MacGyver-like technical solutions such as filming a TV screen on a camcorder, barely edited material with minutes upon minutes of Filler, and worst of all, barely any quality control to sort out the good videos from the bad ones. One should take it as a rite of passage to view at least one video game walkthrough narrated by a squeaky-voiced white college student who imagines himself to be the next Bob Saget, and may the Lord help you if they try and sing along to the game's background music.

This is where Retsupurae comes in: an experiment hosted by Something Awful regulars Michael "Slowbeef" Sawyer and "Diabetus" (with recurring guest appearances by Proteus, Dave_o, and Psychedelic Eyeball, among others) where the two find the worst of the YouTube community (usually Let's Plays, but sometimes extending to webcam videos, game reviews, and television shows) and then mock the living shit out of them, though they do tend to mock LPers that are just sorta weird. As such, Retsupurae has become widely appreciated for putting terrible Let's Players back in their place, though some haters still persist—mostly the very same Let's Players mocked by them in their videos, or said Let's Players' fans.

They have also expanded their range to include Flash submissions to Newgrounds (also known as 'Retsufrash') and amateur videos, as well as longplays (a.k.a. 'Wrongpuraes'), riffing on the game itself rather than the person playing it. This dates back to the pre-Retsu days, when slowbeef would commentate on the ridiculous plot or some such of a game a fellow LP'er played (i.e. Psychedelic Eyeball's LP of Prince of Persia 2).

Their videos can be found on YouTube as well as Viddler, and the team also has an offshoot feature on the Something Awful front page named Webcam Ward. At the end of Tower of Horrible Voices while joking about the future of Retsupurae the following was said:

The crew has made a number of said Livestreams, many of which can be found here. The first was left unrecorded since it was merely meant to be a test, but a fan has recovered said test Livestream and uploaded it to Youtube.

Aside from Slowbeef and Diabetus' videos, many others have tried their hand at Retsupurae in light of their success, especially other Something Awful regulars such as Chip Cheezum and General Ironicus, whose videos can be found on the former's YouTube channel. There's also a fair amount of overlap between accounts, and it's not uncommon to see slowbeef guest-commentate on Chip's channel, for instance. There's also several smaller Retsupuraers that have sprung up, such as LesBeardly, foreverpandering, LargeMentalBlock, and TheStrawhatNO!.


Retsupurae

    • In the second part of the Lechuza riff, Slowbeef takes special note of the "Thank You" part of the credits, which goes to Lasse Carlsson, Linda Wagnerius, and Bloodbath Gojira Pripps.
  • Captain Obvious: Lots of bad LPers point out things that are blatantly obvious as a substitute for worthwhile commentary. OKAY!
    • Diabetus also had a moment of this in Last Alert. In one cutscene, three characters are mentioned named Red, Blue, and Black. Diabetus' reaction? "Those are colors."
    • From Darkseed:
  • Deadpan Snarker: Diabetus.
    • In "Retsupurae 3000" they manage to snark at the game protagonist being a Deadpan Snarker.
    • General Ironicus tends to be this as well:
    • Probably the most deadpan of the RPers was occasional guest Dave_o. As seen here
    • The black book in the Satanorium playthough is also titled Black Book. Authored by Black Book.
    • Slowbeef occasionally shows symptoms of the dreaded Redundant Acronym Syndrome (RAS), for example "PSN Network" (PlayStation Network network) and "QTE event" (quick time event event).
    • The entire Darkseed 2 rongpurae is redundant in the extreme, with the longplayer going through every dialogue tree in the game every time something happens, even when it's clear that it's pointless (for instance, the longplayers replays the ring toss game several times before getting the item you need to win it) stretching a 2 or 3 hour game into 8 and eventually becoming So Unfunny It's Funny.
    • slowbeef commenting on the Cobra LP:
  • Dull Surprise: Several characters throughout the flashes they've played as well as a few LPers.
  • Ending Fatigue: Invoked: One thing that they frown upon is Let's Players or self-proclaimed reviewers going on well after the video should end.
    • This is particularly notable in Transformers Review? with an elaborate skit based on destroying a Famicom game.
    • nacho where the "content" is done at the three-minute mark, but the player spends seven more minutes goofing around the level just to round out the YouTube time limit.
    • Slowbeef and Diabetus get very, very bored with the Marathon Boss fight with Crystal Boy at the end of Space Adventure Cobra.
  • Failed a Spot Check: Some Let's Plays make it painfully obvious that they were directly uploaded to YouTube without the LPer going over the video first (that or just having extremely low standards).
  • Fat Bastard: HC Bailly is the target of several fat jokes. But BigMastadon really invokes this trope as he torments the Retsupurae gang with his vile eating challenge.
    • This guy, advertising a way to circumvent Wii Fit weight limits, with a skid of soda in the background. Courtesy of Chip and Ironicus.
  • Flat What: In The Mike Weiss Show!:
    • And in the Zelda BS RP...
  • MST: For Let's Plays!
    • Diabetus has also done more traditional MSTing on the Battletoads animated pilot and the Mega Man series' infamous Non Sequitur Scene Episode]] "Curse of the Lion Men" on retsupurae's YouTube channel.
    • Chip and Ironicus in turn have done traditional MSTings of several Newgrounds videos (including part of the Xin series) and the Fanime Elemental Goddess along with their videos on YouTube LPs.
    • Recently slowbeef and Diabetus have branched out to riffing on video games (they're technically not LPs, since they're using someone else's longplay footage instead.) Examples include Last Alert and Star Strike.
      • This came full circle when one of their riffs targeted Shinobi-X; the longplay footage is mostly comprised of cutscenes telling a typical ninja-movie story.
      • It's the same case with Metroid: Other M, the duo riffs the game's "Theater Mode" rather than playing the game itself since the story is what they wanted to focus on.
  • No Ending: A common staple in the featured LPs, where some don't bother to finish their recording proper and end up with them being cut off mid-sentence.
  • Old Shame: Some LPers have expressed regret for their featured LPs:
    • During Let's Freak Out!, Slowbeef remarks that the teenager who made the video will regret it in two years. Not only did the original author, violinbow3, comment on the video that he DID regret it after two years, he and another guy made a video response praising the RP - he says it's his favourite! - and mocking the original video.
    • Queenie Z also apologies often for her infamous Eternal Darkness LP, claiming that she didn't know much about how Let's Plays worked at the time she started it.
    • Ramey Elalei, the author of the flash game Death Trap, has praised the respective RP and agreed that the game deserved this treatment.
    • PizzaTrophy, who did the original Earthbound video, says in his comment that he found out about the Retsupurae a while after deleting his videos, and says that the RP is the only good ten minutes to come out of the hours of videos he uploaded.
    • For the hosts themselves, Slowbeef says that he does feel uncomfortable mocking videos done by younger players (such as the Star FOX one) and that he tries to avoid that now when possible.
    • Slowbeef also edits out a part of the Darkseed 2 longplay where Mike finally wins the ring toss game, because they would never allow it.
    • Several Lets Players have taken down the Lets Plays or outright closed their account after getting mocked by Retsupurae.
  • Parody Retcon: Whenever a new Retsupurae video is uploaded, chances are the original LPer will later state that he was this bad on purpose and that Retsupurae fell for it all!
    • Even more sadly, there has been the occasion where it was actually done on purpose. Let's Play *incomprehensible* was pulled from retsupurae's account because Slowbeef and Diabetus agreed that purposefully being bad for the sake of being retsupurae'd was "pretty fucking gay".
    • Whip0fAlchemy's response video to Chip's RP of Metal Gear Solid the Abridged Snakes which, aside from being childish and hitting on a Double Standard (Little Kuriboh makes fun of other Abridged Series often), accuses Chip of being a pedophile. Later, she edited the video description putting emphasis on the fact that she is an actor and that the whole thing is just a parody of a stereotypical troll and she wasn't mad at all. Riiight...
      • Reading the comments provides further evidence that it was indeed not a parody at first.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: What they speculate how a team-up between Billy MC and Musclebomber would be like, with Musclebomber being the Red Oni and Billy being the Blue one.
    • The main two themselves. Slowbeef is quick to upset and can get passionate when he criticizes someone or something, while Diabetus almost always stays collected, and is noted as being near impossible to anger.
    • Chip and Ironicus could also count; Ironicus is usually calm and deadpan, while Chip tends to be more energetic.
  • Rouge Angles of Satin: Frequently in Newgrounds reviews. To add to the hilarity, the riffers usually pronounce the typos when they read it aloud.
  • Say My Name: C'mon Brandon
    • In a few Billy MC videos, half of the time the guys are saying "BILLY!" in either awe, encouragement, or disappointment.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Two instances. One when they refuse to do a Deceased Crab video, and another when they get halfway through a barely audible Contra III LP before giving up.
    • Chip and Ironicus start on a Minish Cap LP, but when the LPer says his cat is addicted to human sweat just one minute into the video they immediately give up.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Many LPers respond badly to being Retsupuraed, with reactions ranging from angry threats to flagging the videos for copyright infringement.
    • A few of the flash authors on Newgrounds, who respond to any criticism with mocking insults or challenges to make something better.
    • This trope is inverted by SSoHPKC when he said in a Vlog that he enjoys Retsupurae, and saw it as sort of an honor to be Retsu'd.
  • Stylistic Suck: ChipCheezum and General Ironicus' LP of No More Heroes had one video like this, specifically for a Crossover with Retsupurae. It Makes Sense in Context... oh who am I kidding, no it doesn't.
    • Chip and Ironicus have actually done some Retsupuraes of their own, as Filler for their 50 Cent Blood On The Sand LP, including one of a mind-bogglingly incompetent video of Pokémon Yellow that elicits more shock than mocking.
    • One of the videos RP'd by Slowbeef and Diabetus consisted of this as well, where the author made a deliberately awful video just so that they could be retsupuraed (the terrible commentary and clipping audio, contrasted with the fantastic picture quality, is already a big hint). This video was removed from their account, because the pair agreed that having someone make a horrible video just so that they could be retsupuraed is "really gay". (For the curious, it's still available here.)
    • There's also this video, a parody of the video responses calling out Retsupurae for making fun of LPers.
    • Diabetus had also made his own terrible camcorder LP, questioning in the video tags whether one can Retsupurae one self.
    • PsychedelicEyeball, in response to the RP of The Nostalgia Critic, created an LP of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels as the Nostalgic Balls mocking Doug Walker's Angrish and his fans. It can be viewed here.
    • Pin and Kit did a Pokemon Stadium 2 Let's Play in order to parody users like Trooper S 96 and others who do bad camcorder Let's Plays.
  • Take That: From Let's Play *incomprehensible*. "He's still not as bad as ChipCheezum."
    • From Death Trap:

slowbeef: Well what do you expect? It's Death Trap, AKA Saw for idiots! I mean, even more so than usual.
    • During their Earnest Evans video, one of the game's anime cutscenes features a camera angle centered on the corner of a jail cell, and the angles of the floor and walls appear to be way out of whack...or, as Slowbeef puts it:
    • Also during one of the live streams, when Diabetus first shows Slowbeef a blurry Super Mario Galaxy LP:
    • In the Vampire Hunter Ina, video Slowbeef gets a feeling about the overall video once the music comes on.
    • General Ironicus flat out says it in the beginning of Icrangirl's Mega Man 2 LP.
    • Arise 4 begins with the message "I see you are surviving quite well. My next installment will make you want to DIE". He's not kidding.
    • "The LP is terrible... I hope it doesn't last" starts with slowbeef stating that he had only seen 3 seconds of the original video. We then see said three seconds...

Slowbeef and Diabetus

  • Angrish: When a character is somehow locked inside a car during Pursuit, Proteus is reduced to a sputtering wreck:
    • In their Retsupurae of The Nostalgia Critic doing an LP of Bart's Nightmare, they speculate that he even writes in Angrish. In general, they frown upon this being used in LPs due to their dislike of exaggerated commentaries.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Slowbeef and Diabetus are very disturbed by the "Users who liked this video also enjoyed" sidebar for Arrival in Hell 2. Featuring "Meet'N'Fuck Kingdom", "Bowser and Peach Hentai", and the Eddsworld flash "Dental Appointment".
  • Authority Equals Asskicking/Asskicking Equals Authority: Depending on how you look at it, but as slowbeef is the Trope Maker and Trope Codifier of Let's Plays, and Diabetus is a very skilled player (to the extent of being able to beat Battletoads), they both seem to have quite a right to mock the hell out of the lower-end LP's.
  • Big Guy, Little Guy: Speculating on what would happen if MuscleBomber2021 and Billy MC formed a superhero duo.
  • Bold Inflation: Diabetus sometimes uses this to directly contrast with the ridiculousness of the video game.
  • Brooklyn Rage: MuscleBomber2021, whose almost cartoonishly exaggerated accent eventually draws comparisons to Bebop.
  • Brother-Sister Incest: A major plot point of Nocturnal Letters.
  • Brown Note: This video, entitled "Warning: Serious Eye Damage Hazard". It really is headache inducing.
  • Buffy-Speak: In this LP Diabetus gets rather irritated at the player for, amongst other things, using a legit strategy with a weapon and then forgetting about it in the middle of the level:
  • But for Me It Was Tuesday: Another Tuesday in Detroit...
  • But Thou Must!: Happens so many times in Space Adventure Cobra that both slowbeef and Diabetus mention the trope namer word-for-word on separate occasions.
  • Butt Monkey: Tyler, ActionBastardAway's special guest in the video Monster, who spends the entire video rarely speaking, being berated, and being called "a petty douchebag." Diabetus has mentioned Tyler in multiple videos whenever a guest appears in a video for the sole purpose of silently remaining in the background to take the blame for the LPer's own mistakes.
  • Call Back: They've made some references to the Ridley voice in other LP's.
  • Cassandra Truth: In the Metroid: Other M retsupurae, Slowbeef starts foreshadowing that by giving it After a few minutes of this, Diabetus responds with "I think I understand what you're inferring, but I have a hard time believing it."
  • Catch Phrase: Slowbeef's "Oh my lord" and "God almighty" prevalent in earlier videos.
    • "Dead to Rights"
    • In many wrongpuraes, when there is an illogical puzzle, nonsensical plot twist, or something similar, Slowbeef will say something along the lines of "Oh, shut the fuck up!" or "Fuck this game!"
    • Diabetus seems to be fond of "Makes you think, doesn't it?"
    • Diabetus also frequently says "SPRING BREAK!" when pretending to be excited.
    • "THE QUEST OF KINGS!"
  • Censor Box: The "Unregistered Hypercam 2" banner censors some nudity in the Cobra rongpurae.
  • Character Derailment: In-universe, this is one of their many problems with Metroid: Other M.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: As of recently, all of slowbeef's co-commentators have vanished, except Diabetus.
  • Comically Missing the Point: In this video, the trio apparently don't realize that the point of the review is to show off an awful game, similar to The Angry Video Game Nerd. Granted, that doesn't make it any less funny.
    • Similarly, in this video they make fun of how slowly and poorly the LPer is playing the game, failing to realize that it's the entire point. As seen in pretty much all of his other videos, kazztawdal really doesn't make a serious go at any of the games that he plays, preferring instead to makes jokes and have fun with how bad the game is and how poorly he/the game is performing. YMMV as to how enjoyable this makes his videos. However, making fun of a video that's not meant to be a serious LP isn't as funny as making fun of an LP that attempts to be serious and fails in spectacular fashion.
    • The British humor of ElectricalBeast initially went over their heads, and they thought he was trying to be serious.
  • Continuity Nod: When Slowbeef finally took the time to play Metroid Prime 2 and got to the Quadraxis boss, the very first thing to spring to his mind was SNES9X.
    • During one part of their Dead to Rights: Retribution Let's Play, they talk about the critical reviews that the game received.
    • In his Let's Play of the NES version of The Immortal, Slowbeef said "WHOOPS!" loudly when he kept fucking up a spell.
    • In some Retsufrashes of horror-themed Flash games, Diabetus refers back to the infamous John McCain face from Arise 2.
    • Lampshaded here.
    • Subverted eventually, in a video where Slowbeef and Diabetus guest-commentated on Vicas' playthrough of Super Mario 64 with his feet, on Tick Tock Clock, and specifically pointed out how they got through all of it without any Electrical Beast jokes.
    • A minute into the first Darkseed 2 rongpurae video, Diabetus mentions that the only thing he knew about the game is that there was a head explosion at some point.[1] He also suggests that the painkillers prescribed to Mike Dawson are Shinobix.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: While it's present in their commentary, they do NOT like it when it's used as a crutch for a lack of humor. Lampshaded at one point:
  • Deep South: Diabetus gets some stick for being from the South. Especially here
    • He has since come to embrace the stereotype for the sake of comedy at times.
  • Dumb Muscle: Their interpretation of MuscleBomber2021, based primarily on his voice.
  • Easy Mode Mockery: Played with. Both Slowbeef and Diabetus have said that they'd rather watch a competently done Let's Play on an "easy" difficulty than one at "normal" or "hard" difficulty where the LPer spends most of their time getting killed. That being said, they won't hesitate to mock an LPer who chooses the easiest setting of a game that's regarded as being pretty easy to begin with.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: In-universe, just about every minor NPC in Cobra: Space Adventures. But especially Rock Knight.
    • In King's Quest VI, Jollo, hands down. They even spend the last seven minutes of this video quoting Dr. House in his voice.
    • Made all the more amazing by the fact that
  • Exact Time to Failure: Slowbeef on Arise 3: You know what I really hate? When you're at the doctor's office and he says 'You have exactly ten minutes to live.'
  • Fail O'Suckyname: Hammerbolt Joe and Crystal Boy, from the Space Adventure Cobra longplay.
  • Fake Nationality: Despite their heavy criticism of Death Trap, they had to admit that the creator/voice actor succeeded in one aspect. They would have never guessed that he was Australian.
  • Fan Disservice: The general reaction to seeing Luke McCabe at the end of the Crime Wave RP
  • Fanon Discontinuity: The In-Universe treatment of Mike Dawson winning at ring toss.
    • In one of the Cobra videos, their reaction to :
  • Fan Service: Utilized shamelessly in the Space Adventure Cobra Sega CD game longplay. Then again, if you're familiar with the manga, this is to be expected.
    • A rather blatant display of such in the Crime Wave RP, where McCabe's crime computer displays an animated model of the president's beautiful daughter nude (but cropped), whereas the male villains are only displayed as a few static photos, fully clothed.
  • Feather Fingers: Cedric from KQ 5, who takes it a step further and has a feather ARM, and at one point the duo thinks it looks like he's flexing.
  • Filler: Remember, kids, having long videos is not the same thing as having lots of content. Particularly evident in nacho, where the host is already done three minutes in, but stays in the level for seven more minutes, doing absolutely nothing so he can fill up the YouTube time limit. With this in mind, it's no surprise that he's spent over a year LPing Banjo-Tooie.
  • Five-Man Band: Comments on this vid turn the usual suspects into one of these
  • Flying Car: Diabetus sometimes mentions "flying cars" when he's trying to refer to a "futuristic era"...like 2002.
  • Four Point Scale: Slowbeef said this about YouTube videos during part 2 of the Eternal Darkness retsupurae.

Slowbeef: If you get one and a half stars on the fuckin' internet, that's like being at the Special Olympics and having them tell you, "you have to leave".
    • They've also noted on several Retsufrash videos (most notably in the Trapped series) that games on Newgrounds will often get a very high score (if not a perfect 10) even if the people giving the ratings have a lot of complaints about the game, had nothing good to say about the game, completely hate it or never even finished the game.
    • One of the insults slowbeef hurls at Space Adventure Cobra is that IGN would probably give it a 6.
  • Fridge Horror: In-universe; halfway through the final episode of Webcam Ward, Diabetus realizes Chris-chan's not wearing a shirt. It's much, much worse than it sounds.
  • Friend to Bugs: Graham from King's Quest V can talk to ants and helps the colony, and Slowbeef points out the use of this trope.
  • GIS Syndrome: Pointed out in the Lechuza RP. In the respective Something Awful thread, the goons went out of their way to find almost every single image asset used in the game from across the internet, using Google Image Search.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck: Lechuza's protagonist at one point shouts "Holy schmuck!", much to the amusement of Diabetus and Slowbeef.
    • The standard sci-fi "Blast!" curse was used in Space Adventure Cobra. Not long after saying "Holy shit!". This inconsistency was not lost on Diabetus.
  • Grand Finale: The Webcam Ward ended on October 30, 2010 with a short riff on the True Final Boss of the Internet himself, Chris-chan.
  • Gratuitous German: A toy shop owner in King's Quest V uses a stereotypical German accent and a few, incredibly butchered, German words. slowbeef seems to have some basic knowledge of the German language, as he sounds in pain after hearing the butchered pronounciations.
  • Guide Dang It: Pointed out in the Trapped series of Flash games.
  • Guilty Pleasures: The Apocalypse video is no doubt this for slowbeef and Diabetus. Despite all the Incredibly Lame Puns, barely paying any attention to the longplay, and slowbeef actually apologizing in the video tags, they both genuinely have a lot of fun firing pop culture reference after pop culture reference.
  • Hell Is That Noise: In-Universe, the voice of Blazedragon132 is this for slowbeef, PsychedelicEyeball, and cherrydoom.
    • Mario, Party of One? has some strange noises coming from the background of the Let's Player's video. Slowbeef and Diabetus think it sounds like dishes.
    • The overly loud, almost unsettlingly cheery town music, and to a lesser extent the calmer remix used in shops, from King's Quest V has this effect on them.
    • LP Mario 64... very slowly have them worried for the computer the LP was played on due to the fact that it sounded like it was just roaring to keep up with the emulator.
  • Hentai: After playing through Arrival In Hell II, the guys check the "Users who liked this also enjoyed" list to find several examples of these.
    • The most prevalent being "Meet N' Fuck Kingdom", which managed to show up in the list for three RP subjects (Hug Me To The Skies, Arrival In Hell II and Metroid Elements).
      • Which actually doesn't mean much; the "Users who liked this also enjoyed" list on Newgrounds tends to make tenuous connections at best.
      • And Chip Cheezum announced he's doing a Let's Play of it here. Though he could be joking...
  • Hiccup Hijinks: Diabetus gets the hiccups around the second half of the Dark Seed longplay RP. Some YouTube comments were all too eager to share their remedies, such as ingesting a spoonful of peanut butter. Of course, slowbeef lampshades it a few times.
  • Hidden Depths: When slowbeef and Diabetus attended The Runaway Guys' panel at PAX 2012, which was a video game "game show" hosted by Proton Jon, the capture software kept crashing in full view to the audience, causing a lot of awkwardness on Jon's part. Of course, slowbeef recorded it all on camera and MSTed the entire debacle with Diabetus for all to see on YouTube. However, despite such, slowbeef adds at the very end of the video that he felt sorry for him as he considers Jon to be one of the nicest LPers he knows and told him he felt the panel to be a success despite the technical difficulties.
  • Hilariously Abusive Childhood: They theorize SergmanX has an abusive father who forces him to make Let's Plays. They also have similar theories about BillyMC.
  • Hurricane of Puns: Slowbeef and Diabetus come up with alternate titles for the abysmal Western-themed Amiga CDTV game The Town With No Name after watching its longplay, which include examples such as Town With No Game, 3:10 to You Made This Piece of Shit, El Terriblo, The Bad, the Bad and the Bad, Broke Game Mountain, and ultimately, True Shit.
  • Hypocrite: Watch Slowbeef's LP of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and count how often he does things that he complains about the most as a part of Retsupurae.
    • In Space Adventure Cobra, the main character's internal monologue calls Crystal Boy a chicken-shit due to his apparent tendency to shoot when your back is turned. Immediately after this text appears, the longplayer selects "Flee" from the dialogue tree, prompting Slowbeef to ask who the chicken-shit was here.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun / A Worldwide Punomenon: Let's Play IMDB was chock full of lame Bruce Willis puns. Eventually they just end up using random movie/TV show titles.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: From the end of the second part of "That's so Kaizo":
  • I Need to Go Iron My Dog: At the end of "Mario, Party of One?", when talking about nice comments they should leave Joshey164, this exchange happens:
    • In the "True Shit" Wrongpurae, when Diabetus comes up with the alternate title "Billy MC the Kid" for the "game", Slowbeef immediately goes into Sincerity Mode and claims that Billy (or anyone else for that matter) could have made a better game.
      • He has a similar comment after mentioning someone calling Mike Dawson a "grown up Billy MC".
  • Intentional Engrish for Funny: Their website.
  • Ironic Echo: One of the many ways the duo riffs on the LPer.
    • In Super Bummerman 2, musclebomber2021 pronounces 'throw' as 'fow', 'bomb' as 'bub', 'enemy' as 'amy', and numerous others. The Retsupurae duo have a field day with him.
    • Slowbeef catches himself on almost mispronouncing H. R. Giger's name ("gee-ger") as 'geiger' in the Darkseed wrongpurae, which Diabetus is quick to comment on:
    • He does so a few more times in the DarkSeed 2 wrongpurae, though he again corrects himself every time, this time without any jokes from Diabetus. He also refers to Mario a few times throughout it, sometimes as "Mary-O" and sometimes normally.
    • The Eternal Darkness RP, Queenie Z pronounces the subtitle "Sanity's Re-KWEE-um, placing heavy emphasis on the second syllable.
  • Jabba Table Manners: BigMastadon's self-imposed challenge to eat 40 pizza rolls.
    • And of course...
  • Lost Forever: The video of them making fun of a furry that got an account temporarily banned. It was apparently worth the ban.
    • No worries, it's right here. Judge by yourself.
    • The events of their livestream test late in March 2010 were never recorded since Slowbeef either forgot or didn't bother to have them archived. Thankfully, a YouTube user by the name of dainegai saved the livestream retsupuraes on his channel.
    • The RP of UltraJMan may not be completely lost, but is at least hard to find.
  • Loads and Loads of Loading: thehof's LP of Half-Life: Blue Shift consists of nothing but this and blindingly bright graphics, probably due to the fact that he's playing this on the never officially released (i.e. hacked) Dreamcast version.
  • Manipulative Editing: In their Retsupurae of Dark Seed 2, Slowbeef edits out the main character finally winning at the ring toss carnival game, replacing it with a clip of one of his earlier failures. He claimed Mike Dawson would never win under their watch.
  • Mathematician's Answer: In the Darkseed 2 longplay:
    • They themselves have one of these moments, when they mishear Electrical Beast's introduction as "The Giant of Let's Plays" rather than "The Jolteon of Let's Plays."
    • In A Public Service Announcement For Let's Players, one of the lines Slowbeef says, "Second he was going to towel himself- Please Stop Lets Playing I Wanna Be The Guy." The word "towel" is frequently misheard, misread and miswritten as "tell" thanks to some unfortunate comedic timing of the situation. He's actually reading the first chapter of American Gods, at the point where Shadow considers taking a bath and toweling himself off.
  • Memetic Badass: In a parody of such, JacobMC, the fictional brother of Billy MC is said by Slowbeef and Diabetus to not only have a Harvard degree, but is also able to finish Ninja Gaiden Black with his eyes closed AND actually register his hypercam.
    • Rock Knight from the RP of Cobra's Space Adventures, who barely shows up in the game at all, but is the Batman of the game universe in terms of skill according to Slowbeef and Diabetus.
  • Morton's Fork:
  • Motor Mouth: Aside from Memetic Badass Cornshaq, Slowbeef himself becomes one during his playthrough of the timed Arise 3, much to the confusion of Diabetus - and the viewers. To be fair, he had exactly 10 minutes to cure a letal virus.
    • Proteus4994 also did his version of this in a response to the Cornshaq video.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Brittany Cole in the Crime Wave wrongpurae. The blatant fanservice is repeatedly mocked by the duo, who interpret it as a sleazy porn flick going on throughout the game.
  • Never Live It Down: An early scene in Space Adventure Cobra gives the player the option to look at the female lead's feet. Retsupurae's In-Universe characterization of Cobra immediately became that of an obsessive foot fetishist who may or may not actually care what the feet are connected to.
    • Of course, it didn't help that Cobra described them as "A work of art".
  • Nightmare Face: Used in conjunction with jump scares in several 'horror' Flash games. The effect is...less than convincing.
    • Generally averted in the Lechuza RP, which the pair summed up as essentially being Arise without the pop-scare JPGs. But ironically, the title screen may unintentionally startle some viewers (Like it did to Diabetus. Twice.) as it depicts the protagonist of the game wearing a wide-eyed expression, pouting fish-lips, covered with dirt and wearing slovenly clothes.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: Mike Dawson, after he makes some... suggestive comments about the Dark World women.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero features a ninja riding a fire-breathing dinosaur. It's not nearly as cool as it sounds.
  • Non-Indicative Name: From Gebet Kriege!:
  • No Indoor Voice: Shmorky, another one of their fellow goons who has guested on some early RPs.
  • Noodle Incident: In The Unfair Retsupurae, Diabetus mentions taking a "violent shit" that somehow resulted in several deaths.
  • Not So Stoic: Diabetus is known for being one of the calmest of slowbeef's co-commentators. When he breaks, something has gone very wrong. For example, when trevassing a boring mirror maze for the umpteenth time:
  • Oedipus Complex: Slowbeef and Diabetus point this out during their "A Son's Revenge" Retsuflash
  • Oh Crap: During the RP The Marios, this is the trio's general reaction when the creator of the bad LP in question, LuwiigiMaster, disses Retsupurae during his LP. Diabetus later comments that he should pre-screen LPs before bringing the gang over to riff them. If one reads the comments, the guy apparently was trying to purposely make a So Bad It's Good video just to get RPed.
    • Made even more hilarious due to their depiction of said LPer as part of The Mafia.
  • Older Than They Sound: Noted in ZoopSoul's LP of Mega Man 9, Diabetus asked if this guy is older than 14 only for Proteus to tell him, "He's like 35".
  • Once Per Episode: If doing a Gaming in The Clinton Years Retsupurae, Diabetus says a Double Entendre joke related to the game George Wood is reviewing in his best Bill Clinton impersonation. It gets to the point where Slowbeef is completely astounded by how many Clinton jokes he can come up with, considering the subject matter:
  • Out-of-Character Moment: Dave_O, far and away the calmest of the commentators, actually getting angry during QueenieZ's videos.
  • Overly Long Gag: The beginning of Pursuit, where slowbeef and Proteus get stuck in Dialla's apartment for several minutes.
  • Pet the Dog: Their interactions with BillyMC.
    • After RPing Joshie164, slowbeef encouraged his fans to give the original video several likes as it only had one dislike. Three days after the RP, the original video had 1,940 likes, and many very enthusiastic comments.
      • When one of Joshie's friends complained about RP mocking him, the commenters started asking him why he wasn't playing with Joshie. He said they all had lives.
  • Plagiarism: This Final Fantasy X LP takes almost every line from The Spoony One's review of the game. It doesn't even try to hide it.
  • Poe's Law: The guys have a little trouble with this sometimes. For instance, in The Marios they mistake a troll for an actual moron. They decide to start pre-screening videos beforehand after realizing they'd been fooled. In Amnesia: The Dork's Descent, Diabetus and Slowbeef argue about whether or not the LPer's hysterical terror is staged - Diabetus is positive that it is, while Slowbeef merely hopes so. The fact that the LPer in question, Jenomorph, favorited the video just hours after it was uploaded may support that theory.
    • They also occasionally have trouble accepting that Flights of Fantasy was a "legitimate" video game show, as opposed to a very elaborate parody.
  • Power Trio: Slowbeef, Diabetus and Proteus, most commonly.
    • Slowbeef, Diabetus and Dave_O is also quite common.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Done narmtastically in the Psycho Killer RP, uttered by the killer right before he attacks the protagonist at a payphone.

Morgan James: ...Hang up... forever.
slowbeef: ...Seriously? Shut the fuck up.

  • Reference Overdosed: The guys try to take this trope to the absolute limit in their RP of Apocalypse dropping Bruce Willis movie references (since he starred in the game) for around 20 minutes until they give up and start referencing pretty much anything from pop culture by that point.
  • Romantic Comedy: Slowbeef theorizes, at the end of Super Bummerman 2, why musclebomber keeps saying "amy" instead of "enemy".
  • Running Gag: When making fun of adventure games, announcing an abrupt end to character interaction with variations of "ok bye!"
    • When a character opens their mouth ridiculously wide, Diabetus starts holding a note as if he were an opera star.
    • The Ridley voice, which becomes the voice of almost any reptilian enemy.
    • Diabetus often lampshades the seeming inability of video game characters to speak at a distance. Even when they're standing only a few feet from each other.
  • Ruthless Modern Pirates: In this vid. According to slowbeef: "He's like the only pirate you would never ever wanna be in your life."
    • "Shiver me timbers, alriiiiight, hawhawhawww!"
  • Sanity Slippage: The Nostalgia Critic retsupurae. Listening to them, it's obvious they're suffering.
    • Some videos incite giggling fits in the commentors at points later in the video. Earnest Evans is the greatest example of this, since the game simply becomes exponentially ridiculous as time goes on.
  • Sarcasm Failure: "I am sure that someone wants me to come up with something witty to say to this guy, but he is just faaaaat."
  • Scenery Porn: In SnakemanMN Wants to Be the Guy, Slowbeef and Dave_O begin to marvel at the amazing detail of the background of I Want to Be the Guy when SnakemanMN pauses the game for two minutes to answer his phone.
  • Scotireland: Diabetus and Slowbeef have no idea whether the LPer in this video is Scottish or Irish, so they split the difference.
    • Near the end of the Nocturnal Letters Retsuflash, Diabetus comes to the conclusion that the titular game was made in the South due to its terrible graphics and Brother-Sister Incest subplot.
    • Proteus also mocked Slowbeef for basically being responsible for most of these:
  • Separate Scene Storytelling: Slowbeef and Diabetus play with this trope by acting as if the video game narrator for King's Quest V is really reading a book to his grandson. The "grandson" who the duo names Billy, then proceeds to ask questions to his grandfather about the oddness of the story.
  • Sincerity Mode: The pair chose to apologize to Rijno, Billy MC, and even Chris Bores upon watching The Nostalgia Critic attempt a Let's Play. They repeatedly said that they weren't kidding.
  • Space X: In Retsupurae 3000, everything is Cyber-X...because it's The Future.
  • Spin-Off: Webcam Ward, a video series on Something Awful with Slowbeef and Khad (Diabetus took Khad's place from When Fur is Rubbed the Wrong Way on) commentating on various other Youtube videos.
  • Stalker with a Crush: This picture sums their opinion up
  • Stealth Pun: In this vid, Diabetus suggests that instead of hanging out with Solar Man and getting blazed, he and Slowbeef should simply chill, man. Just chill, man. .
    • Another, less subtle one shows up in the "Let's Rock Out" video with Diabetus commenting "I wonder how long he had to Muse over the song choice before he felt ready." The LP was of Knights of Cydonia, a song by the band.
  • Stock Scream: Refund uses a Wilhelm. Unfortunately, the guys don't notice it.
  • Take a Third Option: Demonstrated in this exchange
    • In Let's Point at Super Metroid: "I propose this video cannot get worse from this moment. Seriously." It Got Worse.
    • During the Escape RP:
    • During the Arise 4 RF, slowbeef mentions the how easy it is to accidentally click off a window during the game's awful combat sections, while he's fighting one of the enemies. No points for guessing what he dows almost immediately afterwards.
    • Watching theater mode of Metroid: Other M, Diabetus laments that Grappling Beam isn't authorized in a moment where Samus could really use it. Then Adam calls in-game, authorizing Grappling Beam, which Diabetus didn't know would happen.
    • When King Graham has to fight a Yeti in the wrongpurae of King's Quest V, Diabetus suggests throwing a pie at the yeti. King Graham did just that.
  • The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Invoked. In Worst Retsupurae Ever, Slowbeef remarks on the laziness of the Pokemon animators, saying "They won't care, they already spent their 100 yen!" Later the guys are joking about Kabuto:
    • The "That's So Kaizo!" videos gave us this gem:
    • in the Huzzah! video.
    • As the longplay of the Jurassic Park arcade game draws to a close, slowbeef realizes he's been referring to the triceratops as a stegosaurus for the entire game, and suspects everyone will leave comments to correct him. They did.
  • This Is for Emphasis, Bitch: In the animation Refund, the character screams in a monotone "BITCH, GET THE FUCK OFF ME. DIE, BITCH, DIE. GO TO HELL, YOU LITTLE BITCH, DIE." Later in the video, it provoked the following discussion.
    • They also did it before that.
    • From the Zelda video: "I like to throw in curses every so often, bitch."
  • Title Drop: In their Trapped Retsuflash:
    • Later, during the third game of the series they throw in forced title drops to all three games in the series—Trapped, Pursuit and Escape—in immediate succession.
    • It was also done during their Arise 2 retsufrash: "Once more... I'm arising to kill whoever did this to me."
    • Averted in the Satanorium Retsufrash, which causes Slowbeef to repeatedly mispronounce 'sanatorium'.
    • Done again in Death Trap: "Your goal is to get out of this house. the only thing stopping you are numerous Death Traps."
  • Too Soon: In "The LP is terrible... I hope it doesn't last," the duo has this reaction (with Diabetus saying the trope name) to the LPer making a Michael Jackson joke in a video recorded only about a year after his death.
    • Retsupurae itself did this: the week following the event in question:
  • Troll: "The Marios", which they discover that the LP was intentionally made to be horrible. The total derailment of their commentary is hilarious.
    • There was another Troll video RP at one point. It was an absolutely atrocious Mario 64 LP by "SuperCrazyHealthBar", but this time, when Slowbeef and Diabetus realized that he made it intentionally bad to be RP'd, they immediately privitized and cut all ties to it. It's a shame too, since it was a pretty good riffing. (Reuploaded here)
      • Mostly likely taken down because, while the aforementioned "The Marios" was cleverly done and entertaining to watch on its own, the Mario 64 LP went on for over thirty videos, all of which were nigh-impossible to watch due to the horrific screechy audio.
  • Troperiffic: How slowbeef and Diabetus describe Jimmy from Darkseed 2, very nearly right down to the name:
    • Upon watching the intro movie to Evil Zone, they deduce that the game will feature just about every Anime Trope possible. Their hypothesis turns out to be more or less accurate.
  • The Unfavorite: Billy MC whose older brother, JacobMC, is much more liked by his parents. To the point where Billy's Christmas present is two McDonald's French Fries that a hobo rubbed on his armpits. And the dog ate one. "You got JacobMC an Xbox 360!" "Well he's much better at Mario than you, and he's a Harvard graduate."
    • Conveniently enough, there is a jacobmc channel on Youtube which contains a few regular videos. Nevertheless, every comment section of his videos and profile is filled with avid Billy MC supporters yelling their abuse at the inactive Jacob.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: Space Adventure Cobra suddenly becomes a dungeon crawler about an hour from the end.
  • Unfortunate Implications: In-Universe. They basically have a field day with Metroid: Other M's many, many sexist implications. They're also quite disturbed at the blatant Freudian symbolism.
  • Unfortunate Names: Diabetus' real name is apparently John Assfucker.
  • Unusual Euphemism: Whatever it is musclebomber2021 means by "triple fudge packers", that's a strange thing to call them.

Narrator: Alexander pulls out his "Magic Map".
Diabetus: Yeah, that's a euphemism if I've ever heard one.
slowbeef: Every time he says that, I'm expecting something horrible!

    • Diabetus really likes to say "Battletoads", by the way - he does it several times completely unprompted during both his Battletoads LPs and his MST of the Battletoads pilot.
    • Both Slowbeef and Diabetus became fond of the phrase "Dead to Rights" in the months following Slowbeef's LP of DTR:R.
    • During the Darkseed 2 rongpurae, Slowbeef has a tendency to tell Mike Dawson to "shut the fuck up" during long conversation trees and then "get the fuck out of here" when he's finished with one.
    • [sitcom style] "Classic X!"
    • slowbeef's tics:
  • Violation of Common Sense: In Arrival in Hell, slowbeef and Diabetus have to kill a demon - by attacking it with a deodorant flamethrower.
    • They also have trouble with the main character's accent in Arrival in Hell. They eventually conclude that he's Australian.
    • Most viewers' reaction to PsychadelicEyeball's accent.[2]
    • Their reaction to Mrs. Ramirez in the Rongpurae of DarkSeed 2. They eventually narrow it down form "European Mish-Mash" to "Vaguely Irish/Swedish", but have definitely ruled out any sort of Hispanic accent.
  • Why Did it Have to Be Spiders?: Diabetus, it seems. During a conversation in King's Quest VI with a talking spider, he comments:

Chip and Ironicus

  1. ↑ "every slowbeef LP has a head explosion"
  2. ↑ He's French Canadian, if you're wondering.
  3. ↑ The LPer starts thinking that Eggman kidnapped Cream's mother to be a sexual object
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