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"I'M SO GODDAMN WACKY"
—Raocow
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Raocow is a notable, though somewhat minor, personality in the Let's Play community, known and loved by many for his Non Sequitur commentary and pleasant-yet-amusing voice. He became a YouTube partner on March 17, 2011.
Also artist and co-creator of Artificial Time XS.
Games that Raocow has LP'd:[]
- An Untitled Story
- Blob's Adventure 2
- Bunny Must Die
- cat planet!
- Commander Keen (up to the fourth installment)
- Crazd
- Distorted Travesty
- Facade
- Fantasy Explorer Nitroid
- Karoshi
- Kirby's Dreamland 3
- Mega Man ROCKS!!
- Nezumi Man
- Psycho Waluigi
- Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar
- Rock Man 4 Minus Infinity
- Run Man Race Around the World
- Spelunky
- Super Mario Bros. X
- The Invasion 2
- The Great Empire
- Super Mario World
- Ascetic Super Mario World, where Raocow is not allowed to get any coins or stage points. (Unless if they're absolutely required to go through)
- Super Mario World Hacks: His trademark/specialty.
- An SMWC Production
- A Super Mario Thing
- Hyper V
- Karoshi Mario
- Mario's Challenge from Marisa at the Scarlet Devil Mansion (aka Scarlet Devil Mario) 1 & 2
- Mushroom Kingdom Meltdown (1 + 2)
- Rise to the Challenge
- The Second Reality Project series
- Original
- Reloaded
- Zycloboo's Challenge
- Something
- Super Mario World FreedoMN
- Super Mario Infinity[1]
- The VIP and Wall and Alaska Mix series (aka VIP Mario)
- and a few more....
- Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island Hacks:
- Kamek's Revenge
- New! Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
- Super Mario World 2+
- Super Marisa World
- Swim Ikachan
- VVVVVV
A full list can be found here.
Tropes that apply to Raocow:[]
- AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle: He has a surprisingly large English vocabulary, but often pronounces things strangely, due to English not being his first language.
- He stated that he doesn't mind people correcting his pronunciation, but that sometimes his odd-sounding words are on purpose. In addition, words that have a French origin often confuse him due to his uncertainty of which native pronunciation to use.
- Accidentally Accurate: During one chipmunked segment, he complains about Bowser Jr. and likens the change to replacing Kamek with an old lady.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: An extremely annoying version can be seen in this VIP 4 video in the Temple of Homing level, where the entire second half the level is trying desperately to outrun a homing missile at top speed, including flight (link to video)
- The Sawdust level in Mario Gives Up.
- Always a Bigger Fish: Poochy is basically the unreliable steed to Mario's unreliable steed.
- Amusing Injuries: Raocow accidentally fractured his foot during his VIP 3 playthrough. He makes fun of it.
- And Now for Something Completely Different: Occasionally, his normal silliness gives way to much more educational material, such as his explanation of humans' abilities as endurance hunters. Of course, there are cases where he Did Not Do the Research (or possibly made inaccurate claims on purpose), as when he tried to explain why the sky and ocean are blue. No, Raocow, one is not reflecting off of the other.
- Episode 60 of his An SMWC Production LP abruptly switches to an LP of Santa Mario due to technical difficulties.
- Arc Words: While his stream of consciousness commentary style may seem completely random at first, certain words get referenced semi-regularly. Raocow himself mentioned he notices he uses the word "laundromat" a lot when he tries to think of a random word.
- The Aristocrats: Invoked after completing a rather arduous desert level in A Super Mario Thing.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Every episode of his LP of Craz'd is named after a mental disorder, like Paranoia and Bipolar Disorder. Episode seven is named Lactose Intolerance.
- And again with #22, PEOPLE WHO PREFER DOGS OVER CATS.
- Berserk Button: Oh, mentioning Youtube video errors on his videos' comments page.
- Raocow's fine with being given hints on how to complete things that he misses in his Youtube comments, but gets extremely upset when full solutions are given. His LP of Bunny Must Die was put on hold for over a month because commenters just wouldn't stop telling him to play.
- Seems he's also getting pretty annoyed with people making Portal 2 references every time he says the word "space."
- To be fair, his reaction upon seeing the Vip 5 special world (set in space) for the first time sounded like he was making the reference.
- Bilingual Bonus: Raocow occasionally speaks his native Québécois French, leaving what he's actually saying to whoever else understands the language. Most of the time though, he's just venting his frustrations with the level at hand, incorporating the French cuss words of "merde", "tabarnak" and "simonak".
- On a few occasions, he does translate:
Raocow: Hello. How's it going? Rock'n Nonne. That's the name of Sister Act in [Canadian] French, for some reason. |
- In one video, after realizing that he needs to start the level all over, he spends the last 5 minutes performing the commentary in French. A translation video from a fan exists.
- In one video, where he finishes a Castle, he proceeds to read the English text as if it were French.
- Double Entendre: The episode title "La petite Kappa" translates (with some awkward French grammar included) to "The little Kappa", aka Nitori, the main character of the game he was playing. But, seeing how he replaces one word in all the episode titles in Nitroid by "Kappa", one can figure out that the title is actually a reference to the French expression "la petite mort" (little death), which roughly translates to "having an orgasm". Said expression very accurately describes his commentary in that particular episode.
- Black Comedy: Discussed at the end of his playthrough of Mario Gives Up 2. His consensus is that, while the ending (Mario sending Peach into a lava pit, like in the intro of the first game) would have been funny to him if he were younger, it strikes him as disturbing as an adult.
- Blind Idiot Translation: Mocked on VIP: When Oyster offered him multiple translations of the same level title, (common, as the level titles did not, in any way, feature kanji and Oyster had no context) he would take the funniest: "Change Your Ways," for example, became "Dodge the Beefsteak."
- Breathless Non-Sequitur: All the time. Let's just say that if you don't enjoy Non Sequiturs, you won't enjoy raocow. One example from this video:
"That guy is wearing a helmet, but it doesn't protect him from the dangers of mustard. Probably because mustard is something you eat. I've once received a drop of mustard on my head and I don't think I've suffered a lot of brain damage although, I mean, I could be wrong. I've been wrong about a lot of things in the past such as: Yogurt is not a cat, I had to learn that the hard way, and you can not play the piano if your piano is resting precariously on top of the CN Tower." |
- The title of his Youtube channel even says "WARNING: non-sequitur content ahead"
- Brick Joke: Black Plague, the hilarious True Final Boss of Super Mario Infinity, shows up years later as the (rather weak) True Final Boss of A Super Mario Thing.
- While playing Mushroom Kingdom Meltdown, Raocow spends several minutes on a non sequitur about skeleton growth being the cause of bodily aging, to the point where the skeleton will pop out of the flesh. Weeks later, during Nezumi Man, this happens. He mentioned skeletons pushing on skin several times in the LP; it's one of the few jokes that he repeats. If I'm not mistaken, he also makes the reference in his Yoshi's Island hack LP.
- The legendary ending of SMI2 is not the only time he has faced a time bomb.
- During The Great Empire, in episode 10, there's a stage called "Boomerang Bro Bonus". It features a single Hammer Bro, rather than a Boomerang Bro. In episode 11, he calls a Hammer Bro's weapon a boomerang.
- In one episode of Vip 4, Raocow goes off in a tangent about a squid that had too much power. In Super Mario World Freedomn, he runs into a giant Blooper, calls him Ikachan (referencing another LP of his), and then says he shouldn't hold that much power.
- Buffy-Speak: He is fond of referring to everything as a thing with a thing, and enemies as guys ("Hey there, guy").
- Justified, as Raocow is from Quebec, and French in Quebec has many, many words that mean "thing" with different connotations that don't translate well into English.
- He decided on "Mr. Bean Man" as his name of choice for the Meep enemy in the Commander Keen Let's Play.
- Butt Monkey: Yoshi, the green mistake of nature. Except for Yellow Yoshi, whose fart-powers apparently amuse the Cow of Rao.
- Canada, Eh?: Along with Psychedelic Eyeball, one of the two big French-Canadian LPers to have come out of Something Awful.
- Candle Jack: He takes Raocow at the end of this vi
- Canon Dis Continuity: Raocow does not make any mistakes. Any mistakes he makes are either "demos" to show off what happens when you DO fail, or experiments done For Science!. When he does make a mistake, he will call a mulligan.
- "That totally just happened."
- Catch Phrase: "Hey there, everyone, this is Raocow..." "That was a demo." "That's pretty great." (sometimes pronounced "S'pretty great") "Oh boogers." "Chipmunk time!" "Panic panic panic." "Not gonna lie." "Like it was no thing." "Science." "Jesus-hell!" "Good times." "This is Raocow, see you guys."
- "That totally happened." He says this when state-rewinding to avoid a cruel and/or unfair trap.
- His earliest LPs have "I am not feeling this one." and "That was pointful." He even mentions that he hopes the former doesn't become a catch phrase.
- "Join me next time, possibly/probably tomorrow..." at the end of his videos.
- "Scary like X (Bananas usually)"
- "Isn't that great? Not really."
- "That's crazy town!"
- In more recent episodes, after particularly nonsensical non-sequiturs he says "What am I even saying here?"
- "That guy, he has opinions."
- He often describes things as "destroying the world" when said action only involves destroying a small object of little significance.
- Before starting levels, he often says, "We're gonna [part of the level name] it up."
- Characterization Marches On: It's really weird hearing Raocow swear a lot in his earlier videos. Though you probably won't hear a Cluster F-Bomb, he still swears a lot more in his earlier LPs. Also, his typical Talkative Loon personality evolved slowly, to the point that he barely even seems eccentric in his early videos.
- Then, of course, something like this happens.
- Cloudcuckoolander/Talkative Loon: raocow's ~Let's Play~s are filled with some of the most bizarre and surreal commentary one would ever hear. It helps that he's a French-Canadian for whom English is a second language, although he's still rather fluent in English.
- He periodically speeds-up random bits of footage to squeeze a video in Youtube's 11-minute (or 15-minute as of July 29, 2010) mark. Sometimes the chipmunked footage is no less intelligible than the real-time.
- Cluster F-Bomb: During his Let's Play of Super Mario Infinity: Mystery of the Magic Wand, he talks about a point in the game where it becomes a series of "'Fuck you' after 'fuck you' after 'fuck you.'"
- Convection, Schmonvection: Lampshaded in a YouTube Let's Play of the 2ch VIP2 Super Mario World romhack
- He more specifically addresses this here.
Raocow: This is just barely hair-singing me, because you know, lava, normally, like, at this proximity, Demo would be something like evaporated by now, but I mean we're talking about reverse-gravity lava, which has COMPLETELY different physical implications. |
- Cute Kitten: (Let's Play of cat planet!)
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Invoked in his Kouhai 2 Let's Play, when he notes that playing Super Marisa World's squirrely controls has made it hard to go back to Super Mario World.
- Department of Redundancy Department: His "cat planet cat planet planet cat cat planet" LP of Cat Planet.
- "Hey there, tap-tap the tap-tap," in his Super Mario World 2+ LP. Which later becomes "Tap-Tap the Tap-Tap the Tap-Tap the Tap-Tap".
- One video title from Mario Gives Up, taking place in a cloudy world, was titled "cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud".
- In the same video, "literally and I mean that in the literal sense"
- Repo Man. Repo Repo Repo Repo Repo Man. Repo Man. Repo Repo Repo Repo Man. Repo Man.
- It's boss time Mister Guy!
- All the time during CRAZ'D, in fact.
- "Right, macey mace mace the mace mace?"
- Dethroning Moment of Suck: New! Super Mario World 2 Level 2-E is the one of the few levels he's outright insulted, and by his own admission, the least fun he's ever had playing a mod. Just clearing through it left him drained mentally and emotionally, and by the end, he was downright angry at the creator.
- Dissimile: All the time. Just one example:
Raocow [While playing TSRPR]: "A castle without forest is like a dalmatian without a tongue. It has a lot of trouble eating." |
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Invoked repeatedly throughout Kirby's Dreamland 3 when a helper character attaches themselves to Kirby.
- Early Installment Weirdness: His first LP, The Second Reality Project, is downright lifeless. He improves dramatically after that.
- Eloquent in My Native Tongue
- Eskimos Aren't Real: Exaggerated; he often claims that a thing isn't real because he just encountered it in the game.
- Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: Turn them on and enjoy the insanity.
- Evil Is Hammy: He noticeably enjoyed playing an Evil Overlord in Psycho Waluigi.
- Excuse Me While I Multitask: Aubverted - Raocow has issues doing two things at once (not including talking). Cue him playing "Multitask" and failing repeatedly.
- Failed a Spot Check: Happens fairly regularly, justified most of the time as him rambling and not noticing the flying fish that's about to land on him. And then sometimes he fails to spot the difference between foreground water (which Mario can swim in) and background water (which Mario cannot). In any case, he'll just shrug (or laugh) it off.
- Fair Weather Mentor: Raocow arguably falls into this when he is teaching fellow troper AOD to play Super Mario World for the first time.
- Fake Difficulty: He sees the wind sections in Hyper V as these.
- Fan Nickname: He's come up with a whole mess of them:
- Charging Chuck plays football, but we all know his name is really Charlie.
- (Stupid) Horse for Yoshi. Likewise, calls ponies dinosaurs.
- Bartholomew the bird in An Untitled Story
- "Flying Condom Man" for the Gustys in Yoshis Island.
- "Darwin" for the hang-gliders in Runman, "Stalker" for the Hugabugs.
- Bob, the piranha plant fuzzys from Super Marisa World.
- Marvin for the Banzai Bills in Rob-Omb's Quest.
- He was also a fan of calling Rumia "Bootleg Yoshi".
- In his short video of Spelunky during Random Week, he called the snakes "Optimus Prime".
- "Fishing Fish Guy" for Fishin' Boo.
- "Disco" for a rainbow Koopa shell.
- "Maverick Thwomp" for any Thwomp that moves sideways instead of up and down.
- "Spaceman Joe" for Galaxy Man from Mega Man 9.
- "Farts" for the Yellow Horse's ability.
- "Statue Man" for the Golden Bowser Statue.
- "The Elf" for Link from The Legend of Zelda.
- In his LP of SMW Freedomn he calls the Scuttle Bugs "Gerbils".
- "Neckbeard" for Fuzzies.
- "Catoboo" for the fireballs in Yoshi's Island that have :3 faces.
- The platforms that fall after a set amount of time are "Math".
- "Duck" for Mechakoopas.
- "Boo Laser", "Boo Carousel", "Boo Cloud", and "Boo Ceiling" for various ghost house enemies.
- "Beardo" for Birdo.
- "Missile Mike" or "Mack Bill" for the homing Bullet Bills.
- He calls these enemies Cheetahmen Hammer Bros for their laughable walking animation.
- The brown Munchers from Super Mario Bros 3 are "Potatoes", while the four-legged Koopa Troopas from the same game are "Chickens".
- "Flesh God" for the Tulips from Yoshi's Island.
- The protagonist for Distorted Travesty is apparently "Allen"[2], originating from Allen Walker, whose sprite Jerry uses.
- "Dino-Rhino-Lino-Bino" (in any order, plus whatever else rhymes with "Dino" he feels like adding) for Dino-Rhinos.
- Fauxlosophic Narration: The "story" in the Rise to the Challenge hack.
- His explanation of Samus Aran's backstory during his play of the Super Metroid Legacy hack...
"We don't even care about the story, it starts with the same thing. It's about a guy who, y'know, goes to the bathroom and he ends up in an alternate dimension where he's a lady in a space suit." |
- Flat What: During the discussions surrounding ASMT, this was Raocow's reaction to Rule 34 of his character being made.
- For Science!: His justification for exploring an area, finding it leads to death, then rewinding.
- Foreign Cuss Word: In one particularly frustrating level, Raocow says "merde" and "tabarnac". Also qualifies as a Precision F-Strike since he rarely swears in his commentary.
- Often times, he'll say "simonak" as well.
- He often exclaims "Voyons!", meaning roughly "Oh come on!"
- Funny Character Boring Actor: Raocow has admitted that while he's doing his videos he's incredibly, well, weird, he has difficulty maintaining that state of mind all the time.
- Gag Sub: Youtube's Auto Captions are CONFUSED by Raocow's speech.
- To be fair, Youtube's Auto Captions would even be confused by perfect Oxford English.
- Genki Guy: Pretty much the only time he runs out of energy to commentate is when a level is really hard.
- Game Mod: Raocow plays many Super Mario World mods, which have been a mainstay of his LP ensemble since he began. The members of Raocow's community have also designed a mod for him to play titled A Super Mario Thing, complete with tons of Shout Outs to Raocow's many Catch Phrases.
- He's also made his own Kaizo-level romhack appropriately titled What The Hell?
- Genre Savvy: Raocow is very genre savvy when it comes to platform games. He can sniff out a secret exit with almost no hint of its existence, and he even figures out puzzle levels, the bane of most platformers, without too much difficulty, mostly because he's Seen It All by now.
- Gentle Giant: In his "tagged" video, he says he's 6'5". Both in and out of character, he seems like a friendly, easygoing guy.
- Guide Dang It: This Game Maker game provides very little instruction of any kind. Conequently, Raocow has a little trouble figuring it out.
- Good Bad Bugs: In Super Mario Infinity, he likes the glitched "Course clear" screen that reads "Course cleior."
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Some of the difficult levels in ASMT were of Raocow's own design.
- I Meant to Do That: "That was a demo."
- I Think You Broke Him: Often times when a level is extremely difficult or annoying, Raocow would either go crazy or silent. This leads to comments accusing the creator(s) for "breaking Raocow".
- Probably the best example of this is this level. The highest rated comment on this video is "Raocow broke."
- Ice Cream Koan: Raocow would sometimes say seemingly political or controversial sounding phrases in his [{Lets Play}}s that might just actually be meaningful and insightful. But if you think of it for a while, you will realize that it's just a plain Non Sequitur.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every LP has its own pattern to episode names.
- In VVVVVV, every episode name was six of a certain character in a row.
- In Hyper V, every one uses roman numerals, either appended to the end or somewhere in the middle. (At least, up to a point. After that, he starts using negative numbers.)
- In The Second Reality Project 2, every episode name was "(something in level) Action".
- In Bunny Must Die, every episode was called "Bunny Must (verb)". This did not get carried over to Chelsea and the Seven Devils.
- A few videos are titled "Chelsea and the *something relevant to the video*", but this is quickly abandoned. Later, he lampshades this trope in one of the video descriptions.
Raocow: I have placed myself in a sticky situation where from now on every series needs its own naming gimmick. |
- In An SMWC Production, every episode went by "that/those (thing(s) that is/are the subject of the video)". Except for "Tempestuous XXIX", which references Hyper V's naming scheme.
- In Scarlet Devil Mario 2, every episode consists of a color followed by an animal , followed a random noun that in some way will relate to the content of the video.
- In the Super Mario Bros X game The Invasion 2, every episode is titled with a trope name from This Very Wiki. Lampshaded with the title of episode 9: Idiosyncratic Episode Naming.
- Unusual Chapter Numbers: In his series of games from One More Level, the episodes are numbered in hexadecimal.
- In Mega Man Rocks, every episode is titled using a different language.
- In The Great Empire, another SMBX game, the episodes are titled with a culinary item that somehow relates to the levels covered.
- In Crazd, episodes are titled with mental disorders, which is fitting once you realize the main character is named Loon.
- In Fantasy Explorer Nitroid, all episodes are old sayings with "kappa" replacing a word.
- FreedoMN titles are in the format of "phrase, similar phrase"
- In Mario Gives Up 2, all of the video titles are quotes from the video at or around the 4 minute mark.
- In S Mario, titles follow the "Adjective-Noun" scheme.
- In The Second Reality Project Reloaded, each episode has an Excited Episode Title ("Sing!", "Iggy Koopa!", "Dig!", etc.).
- In New! Yoshi's Island, each episode follows Excited Episode Title format. It also might be a reference to the hack title itself.
- The Commander Keen videos are all "vs (something)."
- For Distorted Travesty, all videos are titled in IPA.
- All the Karoshi videos have names that meticulously explains the respective game's title. This gets a Call Back in one of the Distorted Travesty video descriptions.
- Inherently Funny Words: According to Raocow, "laundromat". Also "parsimony", "clement".
- Instant Web Hit: It's usually commented that any video uploaded by Raocow, or having Raocow as one of its tags gets 3,000 to 4,000 views by the end of the day. This includes demos, silly cuts, audiosurf songs, or whatever.
- Jump Cut: Often used to get him back to where he was before dying, or to remove several failed attempts to get to a place. Often paired with him jump-cutting mid-sentence.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Very much so.
- During his LP of Clarence's Big Chance, Raocow outright refused to bring harm to any of the cats in the game, despite them actually hurting you if they made contact. When he accidentally defeated one of them once, and proclaimed "That never happened."
- Exemplified in this brief, simple, but very moving tribute to his cat who passed away. If you listen closely, you can hear him stifling tears in the background.
- Large Ham: "I FOUND A HEART!"
- And "JUMP HEIGHT! UPGRADED!!!!'"
- Later, he found another kind of heart.
- And earlier than that: "The power of [color] Switch...YOU HAVE!!
- WHO DARES TO TRY TO STOP THE TIME BOMMMMMMMB?
- Larynx Dissonance: While voicing many female characters ingame, he usually has a varying level of result, but his voice for Marisa Kirisame is just bizarre....
- Law of Conservation of Detail: Due to the way he cuts his videos, you know that if a reattempt of a level is shown at normal speed, he will succeed during that attempt, or at least something interesting is going to happen.
- Lethal Joke Character: Any enemy that was meant to be point fodder in the original Super Mario World gave Raocow lots of trouble during his ascetic run.[3] One enemy in particular - the suicidal koopa of Vanilla Dome 3 - gave Raocow lots of strife as he tried to avoid it. This koopa' lack of self-preservation instinct seems to be unintentional though - it behaves more reasonable in the GBA version.
- Madness Mantra: CATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCATPLANETCAT!
- Major-General Song: A fan-made one.
- Meaningless Lives: Double Subverted. In VIP5, he dies a ridiculous amount and still has plenty of lives. Then, in the level THE GREED, he loses almost all of them... and immediately goes grinding.
- Milkman Conspiracy
Raocow: [while playing An Untitled Story] You can't destroy the Milkman!......don't tell that to Kiwis, cause it might get infected. INFECTED WITH THE TRUTH! |
- Mind Screw: THE PURPLE HORSE!
- Musical Episode: He routinely sings his commentary to the tune of the level music.
- My Future Self and Me: Sort of: in some of his Hyper V videos, he's been adding post-commentary in the sections where his live self (or Livecow as he calls him) gets quiet from frustration. This sometimes leads to him talking over himself, and he's even told his past self to shut up at points, making his videos even more surreal than they already are.
- He calls his future self "Post Production Raocow" or simply PPR. Especially amusing is when he tries to cheer up his past self with "Oh, cheer up, raocow, it's almost done." We also get more or less live translations of him talking French.
- In one of his videos, as his past self was playing (and repeatedly dying) through a level he was having trouble with, PPR began to softly sing Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence.[4]
- Nightmare Retardant/Laughing Mad:
- "No. Just... No" Reaction: After realizing that he hadn't 100-percented the revised New! Super Mario 2 Yoshi's Island level 2-E, which featured a near level-long, life-or-death !-switch run, was loaded with obstacles and allowed absolutely no room for error:
No. |
- Oh Crap: while Let's Playing VVVVVV, Raocow sees the entirety of "Doing Things The Hard Way". And then it sinks in just why it's considered the single most difficult token to get. Also leads to the fastest fast-forward to date.
- His reaction to the cat boss in Bunny Must Die.
- You can hear the exact moment Raocow suffers a Mood Whiplash in this video.
- Orphaned Punchline: A lot of his quotes can seem like this, but they're usually non-sequiturs. This actually happens occasionally when he stops fastforwarding midsentence.
raocow: ...and I am not a time-ologist, unfortunately. |
- Also occasionally happens due to jump cuts.
raocow: ...twenty-five days to write non-stop. |
- Overly Long Gag: The ending to the 25th video in his A Super Mario World Central Production LP in which he repeats a fake laugh for nearly a full minute. The laugh even appears at the start of the next video.
- Overused Running Gag: Lampshaded here when raocow goes farming lives off a bullet bill cannon for at least the 6th time.
raocow: Yeah, this part has stopped being funny by now. |
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: Raocow actually drops the trope naming word here.
- Pet Peeve Trope: Again, invoked.
- He is not a fan of bridge-building segments. In one video he says that the only videogame task he dislikes as much as bridge-building is taking care of a pony, "because, seriously, if I'm going to take care of an equine, it might as well be a full-grown horse".
- He's not too fond of stair-making, either.
- He also seems to strongly dislike elevator sections.
- He also does not like puzzles that consist of "find item here, backtrack to previous place, get new item, backtrack again" and so on.
- He dislikes levels with wind that blows you backward.
- Platform Hell: Raocow has played through some of them. The Kouhai series are a good example.
- This one level has the gimmick of killing you if you score any points. Everything in Super Mario World gives you points, including coins. Raocow's reaction is in the link.
- His own romhack, What the Hell, also falls under this a good deal, especially since most of the enemies are invincible.
- Player Tic: He always jumps through the Yoshis Island goal rings backwards.
- Precision F-Strike: Oh, it happened. Occurs during a rather frustrating tower of boss fights in Bunny Must Die. One of the rare occurrences of the F-word a) being uttered, and b) being clear enough to not miss.
- Rage Quit: This infamous video (Of an episode of him playing "Cave of Elements"). Only level in that game where he got extremely frustrated playing through.
- WARNING: If you REALLY want something depressing, just go to 17:52 (And it goes downhill from there). Not a pretty sight. And the ending's quite miserable too. At least in the next episode he's quite cheerful compared to frustrated. He even says that it's one of the only few levels that he has ever ragequitted.
- It is mentioned that he did it with Acid Labs Inc. from Mario Gives Up 2. He just straight up deleted the footage and just played the level all over again.
- The final level of Marisa & Alice was so unforgiving that it caused Raocow to give up on the game entirely, going so far as to dump the game folder into his Recycle Bin and and empty it on camera.
- In the extremely unfair hack "S. Mario" ("S" as in "sadistic"), Raocow has had to "Rage Quit" a couple of times. Although one of the levels wasn't implied, he showed a video of one of his "scrapped takes" and it actually isn't too bad.
- Particularly unfair levels get the "OH NO the game just crashed!" treatment:
- This level "crashed" because of a Kaizo Trap finishing up a level of Platform Hell.
- This one "crashed" when there was a puzzle involving a key and Trial and Error Gameplay.
- Recycled in Space: His reaction to the Space Tanks (BONUS 4) level in Mario Gives Up.
- Rule of Funny: According to the commentary in this video, he usually went into chipmunk time only if he didn't think the commentary was interesting enough to warrant splitting into two videos. With YouTube no longer having a time limit, he still chipmunks just because it's one of his trademarks, and has even lampshaded it at least once.
- Sanity Slippage: Inverted. When especially difficult levels start to grind away at him, Raocow's Breathless Non Sequiturs begin to dry up and he sounds increasingly... normal. Can be rather unnerving when compared to his usual demeanor.
- An example: After (impressively) managing to clear more than half of Vip 4 without using savestates, Absurd Athletics completely breaks him, and his usual wacky commentary is replaced with depressed, angry ranting. He even remarks that he's been rendered incapable of saying that "purple monkey cheese shit you guys like." Needless to say, this is the level that made him give up his "no savestate" rule for the rest of Vip 4's playthrough. This is referenced when he reaches the sequel level in Vip 5... which he DOES eventually manage to clear savestateless.
- Heroic BSOD: Raocow has one after re-encountering the aforementioned sequel level in Vip 5.
- Played straight in the bonus world of Fantasy Explorer Nitroid.
- Raocow + Touch Fuzzy,Get Dizzy....
- An example: After (impressively) managing to clear more than half of Vip 4 without using savestates, Absurd Athletics completely breaks him, and his usual wacky commentary is replaced with depressed, angry ranting. He even remarks that he's been rendered incapable of saying that "purple monkey cheese shit you guys like." Needless to say, this is the level that made him give up his "no savestate" rule for the rest of Vip 4's playthrough. This is referenced when he reaches the sequel level in Vip 5... which he DOES eventually manage to clear savestateless.
- Save Scumming: Averted in later videos, but played straight in most of Raocow's earlier videos. For hard hacks like the VIP series, Kouhai, and others, he would use save states all the time, but he later stopped doing that except for the occasional science moment, unless the levels were really unfair.
- The Scrappy: This is Raocow's opinion of Yoshi the stupid freakin' horse.
- Scrappy Mechanic: In-Universe: Raocow really does not like wind or homing Bullet Bills.
- Self-Deprecation: Raocow often informs us that he's "playing super-badly, just to be different."
- "Oh no, I'm a stupid! You know, to be different from my usual being an idiot."
- Throughout 2010, Raocow became aware that he had a habit of dying right before the end goal and made a point of mentioning this. Repeatedly.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: His ascetic run (no coins nor points unless absolutely necessary) of the original Super Mario World.
- Sensory Abuse: This ironically bad hack in the 2010 vanilla contest had horribly corrupted music, which he commented on repeatedly.
- Serious Business: Raocow has repeatedly said that he thinks most Let's Players ignore the "let's" part of the aspect. Among other things, this means he insists on keeping the comments open even when people are spamming him with help.
- Shaped Like Itself: ...So basically, playing a video game is like playing a video game.
- "This level is a desert. You can tell because it's a desert!"
- "Welcome to the Forest of Depth. It's a very deep forest."
- Shout-Out: All the time. A notable example is in his Scarlet Devil Mario 2 LP, where when describing how red the Red Switch Palace was, he randomly said Ren and Stimpy.
- "Oh hey, let's make a Proton Jon reference here."
- He's made repeated mentions of how you cannot X long death.
- Signature Laugh: His distinct "UAH HA HA HAHAHA"
- Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Trailer: Ultimately subverted, when he's eventually forced to admit that Yoshi is, in fact, in SMBX.
- Slash Fic: Raocow's forums even have its own thread for it. He's stated that he's not even gonna go near it.
- Soul Jar: In one level, Mario can't let anything touch a skull shaped object, otherwise he gets killed.
Raocow: Freaking hell, Mario, why did you have a horcrux placed in such an unusual place? |
- Spoonerism: He is prone to saying "Darshgorn it!".
- Spoof Aesop: Way too many.
- Here.
- Stalker with a Crush: Raocow's fans can be creepy at times.
"It's logical that you don't know how to operate an elevator, after all your house doesn't have one. It has stairs, where your can dropped something that day, didn't he, Mr. Samuel Tanguay? Is your can green? I hope it's green, since it's your favorite color, isn't it, Mr. Samuel Tanguay?" |
- Not to mention the official raod thread.
- Stealth Pun: In Mario Gives Up part 4...
"Oh, there's drills there, you don't want to get drilled to death... It's almost as bad as being bored to death, you could say." |
- Stupid Statement Dance Mix: This catchy, hypnotic, and well done remix of some of Something Awful Let's Player Raocow's stream of conscious commentary while playing a Mario game.
- There's more where that came from
- And of course there's also a red zone remix.
- Okay, now Raocow's just begging for these to be done.
- GenericCAW seems to be fond of Raocow remixes in general. The link leads to his Youtube profile. Sixteen of his twenty seven remixes (hosted on Youtube at least) are Raocow remixes.
- U. N. Owen was a Cat Planet
- It's gotten to a point where he already makes them on purpose: The Food Song, from Skull Man's theme.
- Another remixer joins the fray!
- Sturgeon's Law: Mentioned by name in this video, mentioning that most Newgrounds games are utterly terrible. Taken Up to Eleven when he says that the good is only a small percent of a small percent, rather than the usual ten percent.
- Stylistic Suck: His... "webcomic", Exupéry, adventures of.
- Surprisingly Good English: English is Raocow's second language and he's noted to speak English pretty much only for his Let's Plays, yet he verbosity is surprisingly diverse. Given, he flubs words occasionally but on the whole it's quite good.
- In a YT comment, he stated that his father being in the military caused him to move around a lot; he apparently mostly went to French-speaking schools, but spoke English in the neighborhoods he lived in. He says this is probably why his accent isn't really all that "French Canadian"-ish.
- Surreal Humour: His trademark.
- Talkative Loon: His other trademark.
- Tempting Fate: "Well, let's just hope I never die ever agai- WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?"
- This Is Gonna Suck: Raocow's reaction upon reading the name of this level
- Say hi to DK For me... oh, THAT kind of donkey kong
- Throw The Stupid Horse A Bone: Raocow has insulted Yoshi many, many times (see The Scrappy above), including calling him a "green miscreant" and "an insult to all creation". In this video, after Yoshi looks like he's going to fall off a ledge, then doesn't, allowing Raocow to get back on him, he says:
"Thanks for not plunging in that hole there Yoshi. I appreciate it. I-I usually I don't appreciate you enough, perhaps, some people would argue." |
- Troll: After constantly being pestered for not beating the key boss in Mario Gives Up, he finally uploads this.
- Under Crank: Chipmunk mode. He's even done two videos entirely in chipmunk mode.
- Inverted in one video where a YouTube glitch causes the audio to go into half-speed before slowly cranking back up to normal, albeit about 2 seconds out of sync. Then back into chipmunk time. It's like YouTube found the one way to make Raocow more surreal.
- The Unpronounceable: One of the many Super Mario World hacks he played was titled :P :P :P. When he had to refer to the game's title, he usually either said "P P P" or blew three raspberries.
- Unusual Euphemism:
- "Go eat a ham."
- He uses "Pumpernickels!" as a swear word occasionally.
- Verbal Tic: Try listening to see how many times Raocow says "It's pretty great".
- Vocal Evolution: His voice was a lot softer, calmer and more thickly-accented at first. As he refined his Talkative Loon nature, he also developed a "wackier" tone of voice to match, while becoming more fluent in English. Even his out-of-character videos sound nothing like he did on his first LP.
- What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?: Mercilessly parodied on multiple occasions.
- Who Dares?: to try to stop the time bomb?
- Why Did It Have To Be Bones?: Raocow admits to being afraid of bones in one video.
- You No Take Candle: Intentionally mangles English; he's more or less fluent in both English and French. With that said, on occasion some of his structures sound odd, but he'll often comment on how bizarre they sound immediately.
- Zen Survivor: PPR (Post-Production Raocow).
- ↑ WHO DARES TO TRY TO STOP THE TIME BOMMMMMMB?!
- ↑ real name Jerry
- ↑ The point of an ascetic run is to avoid scoring points or collecting coins at all.
- ↑ Though, if his video tags are anything to go by, then this was a deliberate action on his part