According to screenwriter Sean Paul Murphy
, the ad was originally made as part of the Ad Follies, a segment of an awards show for Baltimore marketing companies that lightly poked fun at the industry. During editing of the segment at WBFF Channel 45 with long-time WBFF employee Jimmy Uhrin, Jimmy asked Sean if he had ever heard a parody radio commercial called "Big Bill Hell's", created by some unknown local Baltimore marketers after a recording session for a real commercial (this one, in all likelihood). Upon hearing it, Sean insisted that it had to be part of the Ad Follies, and the video for it was hurriedly edited together using stock footage. Only two copies were made as it was made without the permission of the original radio commercial's creators, but somehow the backup copy left at WBFF escaped and was eventually leaked to YouTube in 2006, where it would ascend to memetic levels.
Read its Know Your Meme page here.
Watch it here.
This advert provides the following tropes:
- Abusive Advertising: Pretty much the golden standard for this, parody or not. Practically every single line is some degree of offensive to the viewer.
- The Alleged Car: One of the first lines in the commercial is an admission that their cars are total pieces of shit that are prone to breaking down.
- Ass Shove: If you find a better deal than theirs, then you should shove it up your ugly ass. You heard them right, shove it up your ugly ass!
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
- "Bring your trade! Bring your title! Bring your wife! We'll fuck her!"
- “Don’t wait! Don’t delay! Don’t fuck with us or we’ll rip your nuts off!”
- Card-Carrying Jerkass: The advertiser openly admits that their business is run by scummy people, stating that they are home to "the meanest sons of bitches in the state of Maryland. GUARANTEED!"
- Cluster F-Bomb: Big Bill’s is the only dealer that tells you to fuck off! HURRY UP, ASSHOLE!
- Establishing Character Moment: "FUCK YOU, BALTIMORE!"
- Freudian Threat: Don't fuck with them, or else they'll rip your nuts off!
- Honest John's Dealership: A Card-Carrying Jerkass version of this trope. They proudly admit that they are going to wring every possible cent out of you for a car that barely works, because they think you're such a stupid motherfucker, you'll still fall for their bullshit. Guaranteed! Oh, and try to screw them over in any way and they'll fucking kill you, or so they say at least.
- Impossible Task: The goal of Challenge Pissing is to piss six feet into the air, straight up, without getting wet. Anyone who succeeds doesn't have to pay a down payment. Also, the event ends the minute after you write them a check. (And it better not bounce, or you're a DEAD motherfucker!)
- Incoming Ham: "FUCK YOOOOU, BALTIMORE!" And he doesn't get any less hammy from there.
- Insane Proprietor: Whoever Big Bill Hell actually is, one thing is for certain that, with all his insult slinging, physical threats, and offers to perform coitus with your wife, he is not of sound mind.
- Jerkass: Big Bill Hell is an open scam artist who insults his customers, screws their wives, and threatens said customers with violence.
- Kick the Dog: It's heavily implied that, if they get a check that bounces, they will get the cops involved.Voice A: This event ends the minute after you write us a check!
Voice B: (over footage of a cop pulling someone over) And it better not bounce, or you're a dead mother fucker!
Voice A: Go to Hell!
Voice B: Big Bill Hell's Cars! - Large Ham: The announcer is very loud and excited.
- Moral Myopia: While they proudly brag about ripping off their customers by selling them lemons, they threaten to kill anyone who tries to rip them off with a bad check.
- Motor Mouth: The entire ad is under a minute long. Pauses have been completely removed, to the point that the narrator's sentences actually overlap each other.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Frankly, anyone willing to make a deal with (Big) Bill Hell is likely a "stupid motherfucker" indeed.
- Our Product Sucks: The announcers proudly proclaim that their cars are complete lemons, and you'd have to be a complete schmuck to buy a car from them. Which you are, so you will. Yes, even after being told this. That's just how much of a schmuck they think you are.
- Overly Narrow Superlative: The announcer proudly proclaims that Big Bill Hell's is "the only dealer that tells you to fuck off!"
- Parody Commercial:
- It's a used car commercial where the announcers blatantly yell profane insults at the audience. It's clearly not to be taken seriously.
- It's also, more specifically, a parody of the kind of hyperactive, in-your-face advertisements car dealerships absolutely loved to bombard local broadcast television with during the Reagan, Bush I, and early Clinton years in the United States; this type eventually fell out of favor for being overdone and comparatively easy to ignore, and also for being fairly bad at pushing specific models of cars (which manufacturers increasingly wished to do), and then the decentralized nature of the Internet made such ads completely irrelevant for that medium, sealing their fate. The parody's likely immediate inspiration is a pretty representative example of the type from the time period.
- Place Worse Than Death: Outright advertised as the rudest, most inconvenient car dealership in Baltimore, and makes no further effort to make themselves look any better. In an advertisement that begins with the phrase "Fuck You Baltimore!", you know it's not going to be pleasant.
- Pun: One of the announcers tells the viewer to "Go to hell!", as a pun on Hell and the car dealership, Big Bill Hell's.
- Refuge in Audacity: The commercial is meant to be as mean-spirited and vulgar as possible.
- Ridiculously Loud Commercial: The advertisers really love to shout.
- R-Rated Opening: The very first words spoken (and shown on-screen) are "Fuck you, Baltimore!"
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: The advertisers use quite a lot of vulgar language.
- Standard Snippet: The background music is "Deadlines" by Network Music, one of two Network tracks (the other one is "High Combustion") that showed up in practically every used-car dealership's ads in the 1980s.
- Stock Footage: Of 1988-1991 General Motors cars, of the type expressly made for local dealers to splice into their ads. (Ironically, the ad BBH is most directly parodying was for a dealership that focused on Chrysler-Dodge.)
- Take That, Audience!: It starts by telling the entire city of Baltimore to go fuck themselves, and spirals out of control from there.
- Viewers Are Morons: "It's our belief that you're such a stupid motherfucker, you'll fall for this bullshit! Guaranteed!" And given that the dealer's name, you probably are.
