Creator / James Rolfe

Not to be confused with that other guy.

"This game is ass."

— The Angry Video Game Nerd

A film buff born in Philadelphia and raised in New Jersey with directing aspirations, James Duncan Rolfe (born July 10, 1980) remained mostly under the radar until 2006, when he posted a couple of joke reviews he made for his friends a couple years earlier on YouTube, under the name "The Angry Nintendo Nerd". A few years of booming popularity later, he eventually evolved into The Angry Video Game Nerd.

Aside from making Nerd videos, he has a large filmography dating back to 1989 registered on his website Cinemassacre, he has two other shows — Board James and You Know What's Bullshit? — and also established an improv series with a few friends of his called OverAnalyzers.

He also often posts videos to the site with him acting as himself, either performing interviews, documentaries, or movie reviews, most notable of which is Cinemassacre's Monster Madness, an event that he has taken part in every October since 2007 where he reviews one horror film every day of the month, whether it be an old classic or an obscure treasure, often in keeping with some sort of theme (So Bad, It's Good films one year, the entire Godzilla series another).

He is affiliates with both ScrewAttack and Channel Awesome (despite, or perhaps due to, the Nerd's eternal conflict with The Nostalgia Critic).

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Works created by James Rolfe:

• The Angry Video Game Nerd
• Board James
• Cinemassacre's Monster Madness
• Cinemassacre Video
• Curse Of The Cat Lovers Grave
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Game - The Movie
• James & Mike Mondays
• Munky Cheez
• Snix
• You Know Whats Bullshit

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James Rolfe and his work provide examples of:

• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: James tends to emphasize the "re" in "review". According to YKWBS: Word Pronunciations, he does it to be more consistent with other words with the "re" prefix.
• Archive Panic: Invoked; James never watched Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers as a kid, and decided to play catch-up so he wouldn't go in blind to review the reboot film. But he freaked out when he learned how long the series is, and that's not even counting the original Japanese series that it takes footage from. Even limiting himself to just the first season, he had to binge watch sixty episodes.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In his Top 10 Shitty Shatner Movies, he ended the list with Incubus at #1, and talked about how the film was lost until it turned up with France, and ended with this dark sentence...
  "There was a lot of bad luck associated with Incubus and came with the reputation as one of those films with a curse. [Milos Milos] killed his girlfriend and committed suicide. [Ann Atmar] has also committed suicide a few weeks after the film wrapped. [Eloise Hardt's daughter] was kidnapped and murdered. Director Leslie Steven's production company went bankrupt, and his marriage ended in divorce. And William Shatner ended up being in a lot of shitty films."
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Has more than once said he has ADD. It is unclear if he has been clinically diagnosed as having it or if he's just using it as shorthand for saying he is easily distracted. During the Cinemassacre Rental about Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins, he mentioned that he hates watching movies on his computer because he immediately starts clicking around and can't stay focused on the film.
• Author Appeal:
  • Horror movies, especially monster movies.
  • References to shit. Sorry, that was meant to be, references to SHIT!
  • Urban legends and conspiracy theories, especially those regarding supernatural phenomena or extraterrestrial life.
  • Inverted with sports. He has shown a few times how he dislikes sports.
• Badass Boast: From the "Contra Memories" video: "I beat Contra before breakfast."
• Berserk Button:
  • James hates iTunes, and is of the opinion that it gets worse with every release, especially changing the interface and removing options (he elaborates on this during the iTunes episode of YKWBS). He also hates waiting for it to update. He spent a good several minutes during the "James and Mike Mondays" episode Star Fox complaining about it. He admitted the only reason he still bothers with it is because he tried the competition, and somehow, they actually had less features to offer than iTunes, so he feels stuck with it.
  • He's also not a fan of Blu-ray; while he praises the picture quality, he detests the continued practice of unskippable warning screens carried over from DVD, and is less inclined to upgrade his DVD collection than he was from VHS to DVD. He considers streaming to be superior solely for the fact that the movie starts right up.
• Bullet Time: One of his choices for the Top 10 Worst Movie Cliches.
• The Cameo:
  • He appeared in different commercials (one of the earliest being a Budweiser commercial), other online shows, and even independent works (like the Sonic fan film).
  • At one point he even assists in special effects works with other works, like blood work and all.
• Cloud Cuckoolander:
  • Top 10 Movie Moments That Have Nothing To Do With The Scene From Frankenstein Where The Monster Throws The Girl Into The Pond is a whole video of him listing moments from various movies that have nothing to do with the scene from the 1931 Frankenstein (1931) when the Monster throws the girl into a pond.
    (Scene from the movie The Fury where "Pop!" Goes the Human)
    "HOLY SHIT! Well, I'm not thinking of Frankenstein. Are you?"
  • And speaking of Top 10s, he made another one called Top 10 Worst Top 10s, and #1 on the list is Top 10 Times Johnny Depp Says "Then." Dude sure does love his unconventional Top 10 lists.
• Corpsing:
  • Seven words — "Live like a windrammer as you fuck."
  • Anyone watching the episodes of AVGN with Lloyd Kaufman and the Guitar Guy with keen ears and eyes can notice James losing his composure with some of the things they say.
  • And of course, the one part in his review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III where he stressed that the "Help I'm a turtle and I can't get up" gag is not funny, but burst out laughing anyway.
• Crossover: James and his high school friends came up with a proposed crossover of Star Wars and Star Trek called Trek Wars, but they didn't flesh it out very much; the most they came up with was Luke Skywalker and Captain Kirk shaking hands.
  James: That's the best we could come up with; like, "Hey, how ya doin'?" (Mike Matei laughs) That was really stupid.
  Mike: I think you can come up with better at this point.
• Deadpan Snarker: A trademark of his videos, espeically his review videos.
• Deliberate VHS Quality: Used on various projects of his, most notably on Cinemassacre Rental Reviews.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • He has admitted to this being one of his weaknesses while writing. He noted that in the Ninja Gaiden review, he had to use a thesaurus because he had overused the word "impossible" in the original script. The trope has been invoked a couple of episodes before he managed to catch it, such as in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles review:
    "Every time you fall down, you have to walk through the entire stage all over again. All of the enemies come back, so you have to fight everybody all over again."
  • He also has a habit of saying "head decapitation," as if there's any other kind of decapitation.
• The Ditherer: "What Will I Watch? (Netflix browsing)", since he can't make a decision.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In his review of Game of Death, James already finds the 1978 cut of the movie and its attempts to work around the fact they only had 11 minutes of footage of the real Bruce Lee awkward and strange, but he really doesn't mince words describing how disrespectful and tasteless the film is for — as part of the new plot, where Lee's character fakes his own death — using stock footage of Bruce Lee's real funeral.
  James: (freezing on a shot of Lee's open casket) And there he is, acting in death. Wouldn't he be proud? It's a fucking disgrace.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Ryan Schott briefly showed up in the background of James's CED player video in 2010, a full five years before he was actually introduced as member of Cinemassacre and started appearing alongside James and Mike more often.
• Easily-Overheard Conversation: One of his choices for the Top 10 Worst Movie Cliches.
• Engrish: He gets an email filled to the brim with this in Mailbag #3, which introduces the "Live like a windrammer as you fuck" quote.
• Fade to Black: One of his choices for the Top 10 Worst Movie Cliches. He says it's especially bad in modern trailers, as it's annoying when you're trying to find a seat and the theater keeps going pitch black every other second.
• Fan Edit: James made one for Kill Bill vol. 1 & 2; unfortunately, due to copyright, he's not allowed to post it online.
• God Never Said That: His refusal to watch Ghostbusters (2016) had nothing to do with the female cast^*his only mention of the female cast was pointing out how people referred to the movie as "the female Ghostbusters" due to being titled "Ghostbusters" just like the original film, and having little else to differentiate it, and was more due to how it calls itself "Ghostbusters" but doesn't build on the established lore of the franchise, despite having gotten the three surviving original Ghostbusters to appear in the movie. He even outright states that it may end up being a good movie in its own right.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: After his Top 1 Shark Movies, which is basically him praising Jaws and being unable to come up with any other good shark films, he would go crazy over the collection of terrible shark movies he has, leading to the Top 40 Shitty Shark Movies!
  "Shark movies, shark movies, shark movies, SHARK MOVIES, SHARK MOVIES, SHARK MOVIES, AHHHHHHahhhhhhahhhhhh!"
  *crazy laugh* Shark movies. Shark movies!
• Go-Karting with Bowser: James and Mike Mondays. Mike has played enemies of the Nerd such as Jason Voorhees. Another example in the episodes where James plays with Doug Walker, whose Nostalgia Critic persona was the Nerd's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis.
• Gorn: He's known for making really gory short horror movies like The Deader The Better.
• Happily Married: To April, A.K.A. Mrs Nerd.
• Hope Spot: When he decided to play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with various other internet personalities, one player had the idea to duck to avoid taking damage from the bomb. It seemed to have worked, only for it to have been pure coincidence when they attempt it again and take damage anyway.
• Jump Scare: At the end of this video, after talking about how scary the illustrations from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark are, he suddenly shows one of them, amplified so that it covers the whole screen, with a Scare Chord to top.
• Kensington Gore: Many of James's films make use of extremely bright, cheesy blood, likely in honor of the classic B-movies he draws so much inspiration from. He has noted using Kool-aid, ketchup, water with red food coloring, and corn syrup with red food coloring in various commentaries and documentaries.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Had a black cat named Boo who appeared in some AVGN episodes (most famously as "Death Kitty" in the Atari Jaguar episode), plus a white cat named Yeti.
• Let's Play: Sort of. He does the James & Mike Mondays series with his best friend: Mike Matei.
• Madness Mantra: During his Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers marathon...
  "Oh, Go Go Power Rangers... GO GO POWER RANGERS!!! GO GO POWER RANGERS!!!"
• Metal Head: He is a huge fan of heavy metal and hard rock occasionally name checking them in a video. He especially seems to like AC/DC. He very often wears metal band T-shirts when not in character. In Mailbag #3 he is wearing a Led Zeppelin hat and in the You Know What's Bullshit episode on iTunes, his music library consists mostly of hard rock and heavy metal bands. He even started a series podcasts called "Audio Slaughter" with his wife. He talks a great deal about his longtime love for heavy metal, particularly in the episodes on Metallica and Black Sabbath. In his "'Making of An Angry Video Game Nerd Episode" video, he mentions that one time, while editing an exceptionally difficult and time-consuming project, he managed to listen to the entire Iron Maiden discography. He's also mentioned in several videos that he likes the cult British Doom Metal band Witchfinder General, who no doubt received much more attention thanks to this.
  • James started his own hard rock band called "Rex Viper" with some of his friends, complete with him on rhythm guitar!
• Mondegreen Gag: Invoked: In the second part of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) retrospective, he plays various clips and thinks the characters are swearing.
• My Car Hates Me: One of his choices for the Top 10 Worst Movie Cliches (specifically, when the car doesn't start).
• Nerd Glasses: Possibly the king of this trope.
• Older Than He Looks: He still looks to be in his twenties when he's actually in his forties. It really shows in the Mega Man episode of AVGN, when the Nerd goes back in time and meets his earlier incarnations (which are first shown through Stock Footage, then played by himself). He hardly looked different than his decade-earlier videos, save for the hairline.
• Orbital Shot: One of his choices for the Top 10 Worst Movie Cliches.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: His satirical "Top 10 Worst Top 10s" list is all this, getting excited about some of the most mundane things in cinema, like top 10 foreground bushes, top 10 dogs in the background, top 10 times where "a person's hat falls off and you can see inside the hat".
• Pet-Peeve Trope: James briefly goes over these in his "Top 10 Worst Movie Clichés" video
  • 10: Dramatic Slip
  • 9: My Car Hates Me
  • 8: Orbital Shot
  • 7: Easily-Overheard Conversation
  • 6: "The Classroom Bell," that is, when the school bell rings right in the middle of the teacher's lecture.
    James: "Why are these teachers so unorganized? As soon as the bell rings, everybody goes running."
  • 5: Parodying The Matrix (via use of the Bullet Time trope).
  • 4: Cat Scares in horror movies, usually whenever there's a lot of suspense buildup. Especially when it ends up being something walking up to them.
    James: "Is that how you greet somebody? By sneaking up on them and grabbing their shoulder? ...Is that the only way you can get their attention? How about a simple hello?"
  • 3: A combination record needle scratch with sudden soundtrack stop in movie trailers.
    James: "Like the jokes are so stupid they need the music to help accentuate them."
  • 2: Excessive use of Fade to Black in trailers. This really ires him when they do this while playing in theatres, forcing him to play a game of red light, green light while trying to find a seat as the room goes from bright to dark.
  • 1: Bond Villain Stupidity/Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?
• Playing Against Type: Known for the directing variant with making gory horror movies and gross out comedies. However, he made a short psychological mystery film called "The Jersey Odysseys: Legend of the Blue Hole" which doesn't include any gore or gross out stuff.
• Political Overcorrectness: Parodied. As the Bullshit Man, he mentioned that people complained about having to say "Happy Holidays" out of respect for other beliefs when they insist on saying "Merry Christmas." So he coined a new term called HAPPY SHUT THE FUCK UP! and has proceeded to use this in some of his Christmas specials, including the AVGN Winter Games, and even as himself at the end of his TMNT Christmas review.
• The Prankster: Once pranked his New Year's Eve party on 1999 by shutting off the circuit breakers at midnight so it looked like Y2K actually happened as people feared. His sister didn't fall for it and just got upset with him.
• Pun: His "Top 15 Movies Where People FUCKING Burn to Death" is full of fire-based puns, such as "That really burns me up", "Don't get too hot to trot", "You gotta strike while the iron is hot", "Uh-oh, this chick is TOAST!", "NOW we're cookin' with gas", "It's one hell of a hot mess!" Not only that, but the video uses samples from a bunch of songs that have the word "fire" or "burn" in them.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Usually Blue to Mike's Red. Even while they're acting, Mike's hyperactive characters make even the nerd look reserved.
• Road Trip Episode:
  • An entire series of them in the form of the "Cinemassacre Movie Location Tours", where James travels to different parts of the States to seek out real life locations used in famous films. Such locations include the mall from Dawn Of The Dead, the town of Phoenixville as seen in The Blob (1958), and several Ghostbusters landmarks in New York City.
  • Visiting the Last Blockbuster Video has James and his Rental Reviews pals Justin and Kiernan traveling from Portland to Bend to visit the "Last Blockbuster on Earth".
• Self-Deprecation:
  • In the video where Inspector Gadget explains how to use Cinemassacre:
    Gadget: I wonder when the fuck there will be a new Board James!
  • In the tenth anniversary video of "You Can Just Walk Over It?", James made fun of his repetitive writing in that AVGN episode.
    James: But the craziest thing about this is, it's really a shortcut now, because if you can jump up there, you don't have to worry about every time you fall down, you have to walk through the room all over again. So every time you fall down, you have to fight everybody all over again. You gotta do it all over again. All over again.
• Sequel Number Snarl: One of his biggest pet peeves when it comes to movies. He's brought it up not only in certain AVGN episodes but in non-AVGN movie reviews. His contention is that when you make a lot of sequels, it's even more necessary to number them all so newcomers to the series won't be confused about the order.
• Shout-Out: James has said that he quotes the film American Movie on a regular basis, and has put countless quotes in the Angry Video Game Nerd episodes. In a documentary about the making of the special effects in Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, after filming a failed attempt to have Death Mwauthzyx punch through a pane of glass, he spontaneously says:
  James: I'm sorry I tried to put your hand through this, man!
• Shown Their Work: Invoked in his comparison of Dracula's film adaptations with the book. He dissects each movie (at least the ones that are straight adaptations, anyway, which reduces the field to 12 films) in search of the book's plot points and character translations. In the end, Count Dracula (1977) and Bram Stoker's Dracula were the closest ones he found (the former winning out by a tiny margin), even with the creative liberties each work took (such as, the former making Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris a Composite Character, and the latter explicitly connecting Dracula to Vlad the Impaler).
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Surprisingly averted in most of his films (exceptions include "Kill for Thrill" and obviously "Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie"). The most you'll here is the occasional "hell" or "shit".
• So Bad, It's Good: Invoked; there are quite a few films that he readily admits are terrible but loves because of it. Just one example: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
• Spit Take: He does an absolutely epic one when he realises that the IndieGoGo donations for the movie have just hit 100k. He even does it in slow-motion, no less!
• Stop Motion: James is a big fan of this practice.
• Stopped Numbering Sequels: One of his biggest pet peeves, claiming it creates needless confusion since, if anything, making a lot of sequels means that numbers are more necessary to tell the movies apart.
• Tempting Fate: In his Top 1 Shark Movies, he said that there were some good ones. The only movie he can think of is Jaws, which he pretty much talks about for almost the entire video. See Go Mad from the Revelation above for more.
• Vulgar Humor:
  • He's known for doing this in AVGN, such as the Nerd defecating on the games (and Bugs Bunny).
  • Also the characteristic of the Bullshit Man, Shit Pickle, and the Nerdy Turd.
• What Could Have Been:
  • James intended the Angry Nintendo Nerd to be a trilogy series of videos he only made for his friends. Then YouTube entered his life! As one of the podcasts reveals, James was highly reluctant to make another AVGN video outside of original trilogy, and it took some persuasion from Mike to convince him that it's an idea worth trying.
  • James apparently intended the Angry Video Game Nerd to have a spin off series called the Angry Movie Nerd, where he would cover bad movies, beginning with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. Despite being one of his most memorable videos, ranting about movie sequels in an earlier episode, and even implying to talk about the Friday the 13th movies in the game review, this spin off never happened. Instead, he's only done movie reviews as himself since.
  • He, at some early point, planned on doing an AVGN episode focusing on the Super Mario Bros. movie (or he planned on it being an entry for the abandoned Angry Movie Nerd series). However, after Nostalgia Critic reviewed it, he felt he couldn't really add much to it with his own review so he held off. He eventually reviewed the film as himself for the film's 20th anniversary.
  • Invoked in his video on why he would not watch Ghostbusters (2016) over the decision to make the movie a complete Continuity Reboot, particularly as they were able to get many members of the original cast to appear in the movie... but just as random characters rather than reprising their original roles.
• Who's on First?: Utilized in the "What's the Movie?" video.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: His #1 pick for the Top 10 Worst Movie Cliches.
  Tuco: When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk.
• Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Is a big fan of this practice, and is concerned that modern audiences feel the need to nitpick anything that isn't 100% logical.
  James: The Indiana Jones movies are all entitled to some dumb moments. They recapture the spirit of the old adventure serials that came out during the Great Depression and World War II. Audiences were looking to escape the real world and forget their troubles. And that's what movies are all about: Entertainment. But today, audiences are far more critical, have less imagination, and aren't as willing to suspend their disbelief. And that is the death of cinema.

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