BDG's mom: This is a lot of research into things that really have very little meaning.
Brian David Gilbert, better known by his initials BDG, is an internet content producer who first rose to prominence when he joined Polygon and produced the Unraveled series, where he dug into (and sometimes fabricated) the lore behind some of the most beloved video game franchises, while also slowly going insane. After producing three seasons, BDG left Polygon to create new works. Karen Han often co-writes and -produces his videos.
A full list of BDG's work can be found on his website.
Works with pages on the wiki:
Brian has also appeared in:
- Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake: The Winter King
- Kraken Academy!!: Protagonist
- Starfield: Phil Hill
- Um, Actually: Himself as Fact Checker
Tropes exhibited in BDG's work
- Actual Pacifist: Pumpkin Cowboy, tragically. While the song leaves it ambiguous if Cowboy Cat was accidentally stabbed by his own knife when Pumpkin Cowboy tackled him, or if Pumpkin Cowboy really did kill him in the heat of the moment, the poor gourd is so heartbroken at taking a life — any life — that he weeps beside his fallen enemy, then vanishes into the West, never to be seen again.
- Aerith and Bob: 2winz^2. The members are TBD, AtSign, Juunyur (presumably pronounced "junior"), and Dale.
- Author Appeal:
- A lot of his short form YouTube content centers on interests of his, such as Old Bay Seasoning and especially Jorts. BDG even describes himself as a jorts enthusiast.
- He often uses English academia to explain the topics on Unraveled, even if it barely makes sense.
- If he can work dancing (especially interpretive dancing) into his works, he will, as seen with the dream ballet in Ultimate Pokérap, the dance break in "Shingle Jingle," and of course, Dances Moving!, which centers around dancing and ends with an interpretive freestyle dance number.
- A lot of his short form YouTube content centers on interests of his, such as Old Bay Seasoning and especially Jorts. BDG even describes himself as a jorts enthusiast.
- Band of Relatives: Parodied with 2winz^2 in "Just One Day," a band made of four brothers. One brother, Dale, is only in the band because their mom forced the other brothers to let him join, and the other three brothers sing about how much they wish he was out of the band, despite him being the only one capable of actually managing the band. By the end of the song, they kick Dale out, but all need to rely on their mom to send money.
- Bait-and-Switch: "It's Nesting Season" starts off discussing how the bird who nests outside Brian's window spends a lot of her energy trying to fight her reflection, and seems to be setting up a moral about how you should consider if your anxieties are creating problems for you that aren't actually real. Then BDG says maybe the bird knows something he doesn't, actually, and spends the rest of the song fighting his reflection.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The other three members of 2winz^2 did say they would give up their money, sponsorship deals, etc, if they didn't have to deal with Dale anymore. When they actually get what they want by insulting Dale until he quits, the next couple lines suggest they did in fact lose most of that stuff (as they have to rely on their mother for funding), because Dale was the reason they got it in the first place.
- Bittersweet Ending: "Pumpkin Cowboy" ends with the titular character saving his cattle and the town from Cowboy Cat, but in taking the scoundrel's life (either accidentally or deliberately) he finds that he can no longer live with himself and so rides off into the sunset, leaving only his legend behind.
- Boy Band: "Just One Day" is a parody of boy bands, with four brothers named TBD, AtSign, Juunyur, and Dale singing kitschy love songs while bragging about their wealth. They're not very responsible with their money and blow it on frivolous fashion and luxuries, even though Dale keeps trying to warn them about going broke.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: In "Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97," the dad eventually speaks directly to Jake and tells him to stop watching the tape over and over again because it won't explain anything or bring him peace. At one point he says "Jake? you're not..." and looks confused, which implies that he realizes you, the viewer, are watching him.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Practically every verse of "We Like Watching Birds" lists several normal things the narrators like about bird-watching, like enjoying how cute and clever birds are, and then one not normal thing, like stealing chicken bones out of an Applebee's trashcan to offer to their one-eyed robin god.We like watching birds, which is good because we have no choice!
- Brick Joke: Used often in BDG's work, especially in Unraveled, with one notable personal channel example. In my hair: a comprehensive tutorial, Brian starts to say something, but then leaves it for later. Text slides over the screen saying "HE'LL TALK ABOUT IT LATER" with beautiful singing over top of it. Later, Brian finally says it, and "HE'S TALKING ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW" is sung.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": In "a dream i had the other day", the "normal" kind of hamster is giant and looks just like a raccoon, per the dream universe's logic. (The raccoon-puppet-hamster-thing is also, somehow, BDG and Karen's son.)
- Camp: BDG has extensive experience in musical theatre, so much of his content involves breaking out into impromptu song and strange tangents.
- Christmas Creep: "It's November 8th" has Brian chastise his roommates for playing Christmas music in early November... but he quickly gets sucked into the Christmas spirit himself, ditching his annoyance for colored lights and a tiny Christmas tree.
- Curiosity Killed the Cast: Trying to track down Dorian Smiles in "Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss" gets the main character possessed or assimilated or something by the copy of himself he finds in the woods.
- Dead Sparks: "Don't Tell Your WIFE About This Game!" deconstructs the implication of the titular mobile game ad: the player needs to turn to erotic mobile games because he hasn't tried to have a sexual relationship with his wife in two years. They don't even really talk much anymore, so he'll do anything to distract himself so he doesn't have to suck it up and break up with her.Because when you said I do, you didn’t do it with enough follow through
And though the match has been made the text that’s displayed Says you’re still in the queue
And you will find any explanation to keep your mind from the truth
[...]And the build that you’ve built together is falling apart
And you want to go back to a previous save, but you’re too proud to restart - The Diss Track: 2winz^2's song Just One Day starts out like any other Boy Band song but quickly pivots into the other three complaining about how much of a loser their fourth member Dale is.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- The brief shots of various bird species in "we like watching birds" are accompanied by facts about that bird's species, which get progressively more comical. The shots also assign bird names to things that aren't even birds, like a turtle and a statue of a pig. Apparently an American goldfinch lent Brian his truck to help him move one time, and Brian really hates a Canada goose named Sebastian.
- In "that feeling when you bite into a pickle and it's a little squishier than you expected," the book Karen's reading changes every time the shot cuts between her and Brian.
- In "Don't Tell Your WIFE About This Game!", a brief glimpse at the phone at the end has a shot that says the game could be downloaded from the cloud, meaning the player had already downloaded the game in the past.
- Full-Name Basis: Almost always refers to himself by full name or his initials, and others have followed suit.
- Hereditary Hairstyle: It's lampshaded (and invoked) in the "Siblings" video that Brian and Laura have very similar hairstyles. When Patrick joins in the "sibling dance," his short hair gets replaced with a wig that's similar to his siblings' hair.
- I Can't Hear You: In "Just One Day," Dale tries to record a verse warning his brothers to stop wasting their money, but TBD drowns him out with a blender.
- Imposed Handicap Training: In order to be like Rock Lee, he wore ankle weights in middle school. This is what has led to his excellent jumping ability.
- Improbable Antidote: In "shingle jingle," his doctor says the cure for shingles is to burn sage, avoid the number six, run under a bridge holding a cat, and tie a leek to his affected area. And take pills and sleep, of course.
- Ink Blot Test: "Beautiful Mind" has BDG playing a psychiatrist and giving Tom Cardy an inkblot test, to which he gives absurd, abstract answers. Then they switch roles and it turns out that Brian also sees the same things.
- Interface Spoiler: Lampshaded in his "Hair tutorial", where by the time he's finished showing how he styles his shoulder-length hair, it's only halfway through the video. He signs off and lets the outro screen roll for a few seconds... before pointing out there are still many more minutes left in the video and so much left for him to do.
- Killer Robot: One of the songs in the AAAH!BBA album is performed by a murder robot.
- Large Ham: In most of Brian's works, he gets very enthusiastic, turning any situation into a theatrical revue or a reason for a mental breakdown. Many Unraveled videos in particular devolve into him screaming about the complexity of the subject.
- Mood Whiplash: His application to Polygon uses this, starting off with a typical "beginning editor" opening and slightly poor mic quality as he introduces himself... before immediately streamlining into an upbeat, jumpy song with much better mic quality as he shows off his skills with editing and his comedic skill.
- Not Blood Siblings: Subtly skewered in the AAAH!BBA cover of "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" as sung by Dr. Frankenstein, which opens with Frankenstein writing to "my dearest sister slash wife". note
- Nothing Is Scarier: We never do learn the significance of the masked, hooded figure that appears at various points of "Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97", though most viewers theorize that it symbolizes the father's looming mortality, be it symbolic of his specific cause of death or simply a Grim Reaper-like figure.
- Not So Above It All: The "Siblings" video depicts Brian and Laura's older brother Patrick as much more busy and serious-minded than his younger siblings. When they beg him to join them in their "sibling dance," he turns them down, explaining how stressed out he is at work... then turns around wearing a wacky wig and joins them in the dance anyway.
- Obliquely Obfuscated Occupation: Played for Drama in "Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss." Brian's character doesn't know what the spreadsheets he works on are for and doesn't even know who his boss "Dorian Smiles" really is; he simply repeats how he's making $20K every month by being his own boss and how great it is. He gets tired of not knowing and attempts to find out. This goes poorly for him.
- Only Sane Man:
- Dale is the only member of 2winz^2 who's concerned about the band's financial issues and tries to keep them from going broke by making frivolous purchases. Unfortunately, the rest of the band doesn't listen and just rags on him for being a buzzkill, and he gives up on them when TBD drowns out his cautionary verse with a blender.
- When 2winz^2 performs background vocals on AAAH!BBA, Dale is the only one to question the wisdom of allying with a Killer Robot to make an ABBA cover song. His objections are again completely ignored.
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: In "that feeling when you bite into a pickle and it's a little squishier than you expected," Brian can't find the right word to describe the titular feeling, so he invents the word "zjierbness" for the occasion. Karen soon picks it up.
- Pirate Song: One of the songs on the AAAH!BBA album is a sea shanty cover of "SOS" performed by Captain Hook.
- Psychological Horror: A recurring theme in Brian's work, both Played for Drama and Played for Laughs.
- Russian Reversal: The last lyric of "we like watching birds" is "We like watching birds, and the birds like watching you too!"
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Dale quits the band in the middle of recording because none of the other band members are listening to his concerns about their growing debt.
- Sex Sells: "Don't Tell Your WIFE About This Game!" parodies mobile game ads that use attractive women to lure in customers, with Brian dressing as the attractive women. It ends up unexpectedly Played for Drama as the prospective customer is in a dead-end Sexless Marriage and using the game to distract himself from his relationship woes.
- Shown Their Work: Although his work is often comedic, especially in Unraveled, it constitutes a large amount of work and often draws from his background in musical theatre and education in creative writing when discussing such varied topics as global mythology, literary constructions, and his knowledge of feet.note Or taking an entire year to read every single Halo novel so he can give book reports on each one.
- Sick Episode: "shingle jingle" is about Brian's experience having shingles.
- Single Stanza Song: RGSS consists entirely of repetitions of the phrase "roasted garlic summer sausage."
- Stepford Suburbia: The setting of "Welcome to the Neighborhood!" The homeowner's association imposes strange, overly-arbitrary guidelines on the neighborhood, somehow possess intimate knowledge of the POV character's lifestyle (including the thread count of their bedsheets), and takes the liberty of canceling their news subscription (presumably due to its grim contents). And when the POV character kills their neighbor, an identical "new" neighbor appears the next morning, somehow cloned through the strange bathtub setup outlined in the HOA pamphlet.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: "Beautiful Mind" is about how Brian and Tom Cardy somehow can see the exact same complex, impossible things in an Ink Blot Test as each other, to the point where they simultaneously call out one blot as "a lawyer and a barber barter baubles underwater and the lawyer and the barber disagree on the fee".
- Stylistic Suck: His video cover letter for Polygon begins with an amateur-looking Windows Movie Maker intro card and segues into a low-frame-rate video filmed with his webcam... then it's subverted when he leaps into his musical number and shows his actual prowess in editing and performance.
- Suddenly Shouting: BDG can go from a relatively mellow educational tone to bombastic shouting in a matter of seconds to ham it up for comedic effect. Especially pronounced in the Sonic Unraveled episode as he becomes increasingly obsessed with the Cult he's forming around Sonic the Hedgehog.
- Surreal Horror: Several of BDG's videos on his personal channel note start out as regular videos, but slowly devolve into bizarre situations that would make anyone reasonably unsettled. On top of that, these videos are often drenched in metaphors and symbolism. They're collected in a playlist appropriately titled bdg's scaries.
- Surreal Humor: His short-form comedy often begins as a seemingly normal video, then devolves into strange niche circumstances that don't make much sense, often with strange flashy effects. For example, his "It's time to get good at darts" video goes from Brian practicing darts during quarantine to a creepy sequence with old-timey footage and a robotic voice declaring that by the year 2053, every construct of the world will revolve around darts. He establishes his sense of humor in his video cover letter for Polygon by duplicating himself to create a "twin" and then quickly editing him out."When my twin and I make videos, here's the basic gist: I would edit in Premiere, and he would not exist!"
- Tempting Fate: In the AAAH!BBA Frankenstein song, the doctor declares that he can think of absolutely no consequences his plan to make a person might have. Five seconds later...The Creature: Why have you created me? Just to suffer? Aaaargh!
- Tyrannical Homeowners' Association: The video "Welcome to the Neighborhood" features an HOA that imposes strict rules about door color, garage condition and garbage. They also police what shows you watch, cancel the main character's news subscriptions (giving them the "HOA News" in its place), and even seem to know the thread count on the main character's sheets (having rules about that as well). It's heavily implied that they're a cult.
- The Un-Smile: After spending the entire video of "Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss" having a neutral expression save for a brief moment of concerned laughter at the absurdity of the situation, Brian spends the last 30 seconds of the video smiling at the camera after an implied Kill and Replace by Dorian Smiles. Eventually he repeats "Why don't you join me?" several times, but his lips stop mouthing the words as his smile grows wider.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Played for Laughs in "the rollerblader's world is limitless". He talks about how since he's taken up rollerblading, he can do anything and go anywhere, only to crash onto some grass and immediately become helpless.
- Wham Line: A comedic bit in the "Just One Day" video. The song up to this point has been a typical Boy Band love song about some girl, but then TBD suddenly starts singing about how he dislikes his co-member Dale. Then the rest of the song shifts to making fun of Dale.TBD: I got money and fame and fancy clothes, I got a cat food sponsor deal
But I'd give it all up... if I could have just one day...just one day... I'd give it up for one day without Dale! - Wipe That Smile Off Your Face: When Brian finally meets Dorian Smiles toward the end of "Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss," the latter is revealed to be a replicant of Brian who covers his mouth upon seeing him, and Brian follows suit. When Dorian pulls his hands away, he flashes a smile at Brian, who is missing his mouth when he reacts in horror. The next time we see Brian, it's greatly implied to be Dorian Smiles given he is constantly smiling, leaving the real Brian with an Uncertain Doom.
