The show's a How It's Made parody about a Know-Nothing Know-It-All snarky Unreliable Narrator who zig-zags between being serious and mercilessly throwing bullshit while talking. Needless to say, this is to be expected.
General.
- In a meta sense, the series' overall formula- the Narrator starting with some historical facts that's (usually) true, then talking formally about the making of the episode's object or material and then showing his true colours down the road- oftenly catches some viewers off guard while thinking that it's actually a real informative show (or even while thinking it's the How It's Made series itself), making for a laugh fest in the comment section about their experiences. The most common type of this comments are about either the viewers themselves falling victims of this, or their scholar teachers and/or familiars (usually their parents), or both. Their reactions differs, raging from joy to, mostly in the latter case, annoyance, but all of them are a sight to behold.
- This is so up the pole, in fact, that not only YouTube tends to mix videos from the REAL How It's Made series with this parody, but even the CNN itself thought that one of THIS series videos (more specifically, the Bread episode) was actually an informative one. Hugbees talks more about the matter.
- Some viewers take other route, however, and goes with a sort of Play-Along Meme about this being either an actual educational series or, in the case of those who work in similar establishments, a 100% accurate representation of their daily basis.
- Everytime the Narrator, while talking in his signature monotonic voice, suddenly raises his voice or outright shouts...only to continue talking like nothing happened.
- Also the times when, in the middle of his formal speech, he suddenly throws an F-Bomb.
- The Narrator also tends to talk about the clearly inanimate objects (or mixtures created from said objects) like they're people.
- The fact that all the Black Humor coming from this series plays during some chill business background music.
- The distinction between filling machines and rinsing machines is very important to the Narrator throughout the series, to the extent that he eventually made an extracurricular video answering viewer emails about which is whichnote . Capping machines though, eh, they can look after themselves.
- There are similar videos to help viewers identify which objects are or are not toysnote , and to distinguish between chocolates, mints, and chocolate mintsnote ; these important facts, however, are not as frequently mentioned in the main series.
Chocolate.
- The first episode of the series already starts good after the intro, showing a cocoa bean bag getting cut open.Narrator: First, an innocent cocoa bean bag is made out as an example to the employees who don't meet their daily quota.
- A conveyor belt then moves the cocoa beans to a cleaning system...a cage filled with starving refugees who lick the beans clean of any dirt and debris.
- Then the beans enter a micronizer that heats and spins them at a constant rotation, separating them from their families.
- Inside a shell-removing machine called a winnower, the beans are read various bedtime stories, which trick them into thinking it's night-time, causing them to remove their shells.
- According to the Narrator, there are two most popular forms of chocolate: hard chocolate...and not-so-hard chocolate.
- The video then shows...some yellow and white liquids...Narrator: Here, you can see the employees dedication to work through their bathroom breaks. This solution is later added to the final product for flavor.
- An employee then activates a grinding machine.Narrator: [...] The constant heat and pressure create a chocolate soup mixture, referred to in the industry as "chocolate soup mixture".
- "The factory extracts some of the cocoa butter from the mixture and immediately pours it in the sewer in a bid of environmental conservation".Narrator: By this time, the Beast has been awoken, and must be fought back by employees with various instruments. Doing this allows the chocolate to pass through mixers and refiners to give it a softer texture, and also prevents the Beast from ushering in a thousand years of darkness.
- The chocolate then becomes powder, and is in a very delicate state, to which any disturbance can ruin the batch.Narrator: The employees are very careful t-
(A gloved hand grabs the powder)
Narrator: What are you doing, Peter?? - "At this stage, potting soil is ground into the chocolate for about six years, allowing the chocolate to return to a liquid state".
- The Narrator then describes the next step in the chocolate-making as the chocolate going into a "big fucking machine", and doesn't even know what it does.
- "The chocolate chips are then jostled ever so slightly to prevent them from falling asleep, creating their rich and stressed-out flavor".
- The chips are then transported to a refrigeration machine, with the thermometer marking on 50°.Narrator: The chocolate chips are cooled until about 50 o'clock.
- Once the chips are cooled, the conveyor belt puts them in a container, colliding with the chips that were previously cooled...or, as the Narrator put it:Narrator: The chocolate chips are then given a brief experience of typical Californian traffic.
- Once the chips are cooled, the conveyor belt puts them in a container, colliding with the chips that were previously cooled...or, as the Narrator put it:
- "The chocolate chips are again jostled, this time just to piss them off".
Skateboards.
- Huggbees makes it clear in the description:
- The video starts fairly normal, with the Narrator speaking about the wood sheets for the skateboards. And then...Narrator: The sheets are put through industrial rollers to make sure there is no leftover wood juice left in them. This could make the skater sick if they choose to drink it.
- Workers then stack 35 of the sheets together and place them in a hydraulic press lock to prevent would-be thieving employees from stealing the wood and selling it on the Black Market.
- "The press applies 44 tons of pressure, causing the sheets to reach peak arousal, as evidenced by the substance coming out of the sides".
- "It's time to prepare the skateboards for consumption"note .
- The decks are aerated in order to prevent spoilage and then the employees contour each deck individually, by running each deck against a cutting blade until they have the final shape...or, at least, that last part is what the original How It's Made episode says.Narrator: [The skateboards] are given a practice run by an employeenote .
- "The skateboards are then massaged by a licensed masseuse. A tense and tight board tends to crack easier than a relaxed one".
Bacon.
- The description of the video?
- Just like the Chocolate episode, this episode already has a good after-the-intro start, and the intro itself is only about 10 seconds long.Narrator: It all starts with a load of skin dog carcasses. Most factories elect to use dogs because it's cheaper than pork, and customers can rarely taste the difference.
- "The meat is placed skin-side down on a conveyor belt to ensure the employees judge it only by the content of its character".
- The meat is then transported to a cheese-rolling machine, which pelts it with slices of Kraft Singles.Narrator: This process is rough on the meat, so it's not uncommon for some afterbirth to be evacuated by the product. This afterbirth travels down a separate conveyor belt, where it will then be used in cosmetics.
- Meanwhile, the meat pieces are sent to employees to begin the brining process, giving the bacon its signature fishy taste.Narrator: You thought I was kidding about the brining, didn't you? Well the next actual step...is brining.
- "Then, the brining is mixed with red food coloring to give the bacon its signature red taste".
- "Then, a local sweatshop worker earns his $2.00 an hour salary by putting hooks into the meat and then hanging them on a rack".Narrator: Then, it's into the drench cabinet for a bath in what remains of the employees who rally for better working conditions.
- The bacon is then transferred to a "show floor", where customers can choose which slab they want to wear for the coming fall season.
- Then, in order to firm up the meat and unlock its hidden flavors, the bacon is stored for the next ten to a hundred years.
- "Then, the bacon is shown the might of the German army, by being run over by a Panzerkampfwagen IV medium tank".
- To relieve stress, the factory crew often plays a game of Jenga with the slabs of meat.
- The next shots then shows 2 workers wrapping up the slabs and then one translading them with a forklift truck.Narrator: This game is a particularly close one, so they're wrapping it up for later. As you can see, the crew really loves Jenga.
- The next shots then shows 2 workers wrapping up the slabs and then one translading them with a forklift truck.
- The meat is then loaded into chutes, where two very strong men Behind the Black jostle them back and forth with all their might.Narrator: They do this because meat is a good source of protein. The meat hates this, and falls apart under the stress into the strips we've come to know and love.
Paper.
- The year the video was made was 2018, but since the footage of the actual video the series uses to make the Gag Dubs is much older (much like most of the other episodes), not even the maximum quality of the video itself, which is a whopping 1080p60, can gloss over the footage. What does make this stand out from other episodes is the description:"Video quality is the highest you'll ever see in 2001".
- After the intro, the video shows a bunch of paper stuff (duh), including a document.Narrator: Handmade paper is a distinctive choice for a variety of uses, such as this document declaring paper to be obsolete in the digital age.
- The process begins with individual strips of used bed sheets, which are often left unwashed "to preserve a rustic feel".Narrator: In the product, workers place the strips on a conveyor, which leads them to a machine that haphazardly chops them up however it feels like, sometimes not even cutting them at all.
- The sheets are then collected in a garbage can, ready for the next step called "squeezing it gently".
- The trash is then thrown into a water tub called a Hollander, which grinds the material into a paste using a large roll weighing several tons.Narrator: By this point, workers are unable to stop the roller's crushing force and have to jam the machinery by frantically throwing as much trash into the Hollander as they can. If the machinery still refuses to halt, an intern is brought in to manually assist with the process, since none of them have proper health insurance.
- This practice is sometimes leaked to local news outlets, so interns are also in charge of destroying any paper trails leading to the incident.
- Rum is also added to the mixture, to turn the paste into pulp...and to make sure it's too inebriated to incriminate anything.
- A hand of one of the workers then grabs some of the pulp to show to the camera in the next shot.
- "Next, tiny scraps of paper are added to the pulp to remind the pulp what it's supposed to eventually become".
- The Narrator then says that whatever of the paste isn't used in paper production will be sent to NASA to use as astronaut food...only to then say that the stuff looks "oddly delicious" to him.
- "By this point, the paper is wet, cold, tired and cranky, so it is rolled onto a hot towel".
- The next shot shows another pulp.
- More paper sheets are petted.Narrator: This process is repeated roughly 10,000 times.
- ...only to then being put all together into a hydraulic press.Narrator: Here, the paper is interrogated about government conspiracies. The pressure of all its well-guarded secrets possibly being exposed cause it to sweat out its excess moisture. Paper are all notorious liars.
- ...only to then being put all together into a hydraulic press.
- "The paper is then retrieved by a big dumb nerd, who traipse them over a row of circular rocks, proving the paper's dominance. The factory is careful to never introduce any scissors into this environment".
Hot Dogs.
- Apparently, according to the description, all the info. for the script took a long amount of research."All true facts I looked up on Wikipedia".
- For each individual hot dog to be made, a mix of pork, beef and 2040 chickens is required.
- The cuts of meat they start with, called trimmings, come from animals that are too sick to be housed in typical meat production plantsnote .
- "The trimmings are pushed through grated metal plates, simultaneously grinding the meat and producing strings for high-quality mops".
- "Other regurgitated foods are collected and added to the ground meat, followed by food starch, salt and mustard scooped up from the factory floor".
- "Ground-up pieces of Mars rock are also added to the mixture to give the hotdogs a flavor that's out of this world".
- The entire mixture is then rolled and water is added to prevent it from hardening into concrete.
- Corn syrup is also added to the mixture.Narrator: Because all food products in America are legally required to be at least 10% sugar.
- Even more water is added.Narrator: The addition of yet even more water helps dilute the product into a flavorless paste, which is regrettably pureed into a fine emulsion.
- The next shot then shows a worker named Paula.Narrator: Long rolls of plastic wrap are loaded into the stuffing machine. It pumps the meat in, twisting it every 5 and ¼ inches, which is exactly what Paula here wishes her husband would do more of in the bedroom.
- "It takes just 35 seconds to make a chain of a whopping 10...hot dogs...".
- The hot dogs are then linked together and loaded into another machine, ordering them by color.
- The chain of hot dogs are then drenched in pig sweat, to enhance their flavornote .
- "Hot out of the oven, the hotdogs are drenched in chilled pig sweat, this time to cool them down for packaging".
- After all the pig sweat bathing.Narrator: The black stripes on the hotdogs disappear for no reason, and a small child in disguise as a factory worker plays with his food.
- "No matter how humanely or efficiently this process is done, vegans will still complain about it".
Popcorn.
- You know things are gonna be good when the intro starts good already.Narrator: We don't know exactly when popcorn first exploded onto the snack scene, but it was likely thousands of years ago. Popcorn grains dating back nearly 56 hundred years have been discovered in New Mexico. And down through the ages, this unique grain just keeps popping up.
- "Nothing says typical American family like a single man eating some popcorn with orange juice sitting way too close to his television".
- "Popcorn is one of 6 types of corn, and one of 11 types of pop".
- The popcorn plants are bred to enhance color, taste, and how easily they get stuck in your gums.
- The video then shows a bunch of silos.Narrator: These giant silos have nothing to do with popcorn. Please close your eyes until they are no longer visible.
- Inside the factory, oscillating screens sift out broken glass accidentally left in the popcorn during harvest.Narrator: No need to worry, the machines have a 98% accuracy ratio.
- The popcorn will sometimes harden into rocks during production as a defense mechanism. These are later discarded or used in animal feed.
- The factory then divides the corn we all know and love in one side...and another type of popcorn in the other, suspiciously similar to the rock-like materials seen before.Narrator: At this junction, the system funnels American popcorn in one direction, and Canadian popcorn in another. As you can see, Canadian popcorn is just the worst thing ever.
- The popcorn is watched over by Bill and then moved to the gravity table, causing the popcorn to levitate.
- In the next process, half of the kernels are immediately discarded...for basically no reason.
- During this same process, the popcorn is reassured to let everything go before going to a final screening.
- "Bill is always watching...".
- "...as the popcorn is divided politically".
- Some words before the ending.Narrator: The next time you need a delicious snack to liven up your parties, consider a bowl of uncooked popcorn...you disgusting animal.
Tequila.
- The description, once again, presents us its wise words."For authenticity, I drank a bottle of tequila before recording this".
- After the intro, the first shots shows a big castle.Narrator: Tequila is to Mexico as corruption is to China. Tequila is only made in this part of the world near ancient Spanish castles, such as this one.
- There are lots of Spanish-speaking jokes in the video, as probably expected. In the case of the words spoken by the Narrator himself, well... Fun with Foreign Languages ensues.Narrator: For centuries, workers called "grandes borrachos"note have harvested the agave plant for tequila.
- "Even today, it's harvested entirely by hand, because Mexico has yet to enter the Industrial Age".
- According to the Narrator, the core of the agave plant is called "el culo"note .
- "The blades used in this process are honed to a razor-sharp edge, which comes in handy as the workers haphazardly slam them into the plants like pissed-off orangutangs".
- Apparently, agave also serves a dual purpose in telescope-making.Narrator: Here, a worker demonstrates this in the field, as he spies for nearby pirate crews that may try to steal the tequila.
- Then, some local cowboys, fresh from their campaign of pirate-slaughter, cut the agave into quarters for cooking.
- The agave pieces are transferred to a brick oven to be cooked for 79 hours. Half of the batch is then sold off to Bridgestone as off-road tires.
- "The baked agave fiber is completely fucking destroyed, and then the leftover refuse is built into a summoning circle, to honor an ancient Aztechian curse".
- In the circle, a giant stone wheel called "tu madre gorda"note crushes the agave to extract its nectar.
- In the next process, which is the fermentation areanote , the Narrator just outright gives up.Narrator: I would tell you what this area is for, but I don't speak Spanish.note
- From this point onwards, the Narrator doesn't know what the hell is happening anymore (yes, really). We now see a place full of enormous barrels and a guy passes by and smells the liquids inside.Narrator: Why is he smelling that? I don't...I don't think that guy even works here.
- In the next area, the sign reads "Área de Destilación"note .Narrator: Ok, come on now, you're just teasing me.
- From this point onwards, the Narrator doesn't know what the hell is happening anymore (yes, really). We now see a place full of enormous barrels and a guy passes by and smells the liquids inside.
- The Narrator finally continues to explain the process, starting with the aforementioned distillation process, by guessing, nonetheless.Narrator: God, I hope that's right...
- "An employee slips some government-mandated anthrax into the batch".
- Points for the Narrator's Inopportune Voice Cracking when he says "batch".
- "The tequila is aged in oak casks and then inspected by a 1970s time traveler".
Eggs.
- Huggbees says in the description that this episode is:"One of my favorites, even though I hate eggs".
- The intro:Narrator: The color of the shell is determined by the breed of hen, but there's no pecking order when it comes to shell color. White or brown, all eggs are the same inside.
- "The action begins in the Hen Prison, where chickens begin laying eggs when they're 19 days old".
- "The building is well-insulated, ensuring the temperature hovers around a comfortable 120 degrees".
- "Hens that can't lay enough eggs within this period are ground into food mulch, and then fed to the other chickens to promote cost efficiency"note .
- The chickens then drink Gatorade from tubes in their cages to provide them with the electrolytes they need to power through the day.
- The laid eggs then slide onto a conveyor belt, which takes them to a conveyor belt, which takes them to a conveyor belt...
- "Some eggs are covered with hen droppings upon retrieval. These eggs are separated and then shipped to markets to be sold as organic".
- The best eggs end up in supermarket shelves, while the rest are brought to the local recycling center, where they are meshed together into high-quality motor oil.
- A suction machine transfers the eggs out of their holders and slightly nauseates anyone who looks at it for too long.
- Then, a special incubation machine stimulates the embryo inside the egg, causing it to spring to life and ride within its exowomb.
- "During the entire process, the NSA surveils the eggs, in case any of them try to reform ISIS after hatching".
- "Finally, the eggs are placed into cartons and sold as decorations to be painted around Easter time, since eggs serve absolutely no other purpose".
Rubber Bands.
- The pun in the intro, which is the same one from the original How It's Made:Narrator: In the rubber band industry, the possibilities for expansion are numerous.
- "Rubber bands come in handy for a whole bunch of things, whether it's acting as a binding, a snack food or a weapon".
- The natural rubber made from the sap of rubber trees has more elasticity than the synthetic kind.Narrator: ...which doesn't matter because synthetic rubber is cheaper, so will always be used in production.
- A worker pours rubber-processing oil into a kneader machine.Narrator: ...because it's so damn needy.
- "[The worker] adds mustard and sugar for taste, while Kyle in the background looks for his lost surfboard".
- The worker then throws wrapped rubber into the kneader machine, because he forgot to unwrapped it beforehand.
- "The rubber is, of course, naturally elastic, and bounces around like an unruly seven year old".Narrator: This process generates heat, which both softens the rubber and explains why there was a random shirtless man in the previous shot.
- "The rubber is now deppresing to look at, so it's thrown into a smoothing machine until it transforms into a much more optimistic shape. This process is purely done to reduce suicide rates among rubber factory workers".
- The rubber is then rolled into big twisty tubes, entirely undoing the previous rolling processes.
- The Narrator then says that rubber is actually manufactured in reverse, with the rubber being retrofitted back into rubber trees.
- We next see various aluminum poles, which the Narrator says that require a rubber coating before being sent out to distribution, as if their making process require the rubber which is, at the same time, also being processed using those poles.Narrator: This is because the poles are smart and know, when it comes to the market, to always wrap it before they tap it.
- The rubber-wrapped tubes are then loaded into a torpedo bay, both for overnight curing and to protect the factory in case of thieves.
- Workers then peel the rubber off the poles, and then give them a milk bath, according to the Narrator, to infuse them with calcium, since without calcium, the rubber would be too brittle for daily use, as calcium helps build strong bones, implying they're use for consumption.
- The tubes are then fed into a cutting machine. What comes next is just hilarious.Narrator: Looks like one of those aluminum poles from earlier had a pretty good night.
- "With this system, the factory can produce half a million rubber bands per hour, and yet still somehow can't manage to bring my wife back to me".
China.
- The description:I've heard of China before, this is totally accurate.
- In general, the Narrator tends to confuse "china" as a synonym for porcelain, and the country of China, so he tells the process of procelain objects as a video about Chinese culture.
- "China as we know it today was invented in 1949, when communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong officially declared its creation following the Chinese Civil War, as seen in this sketch". The sketch in question is a man drawing a teapot.
- The Narrator treating the making of a negative made of plaster for the china teapot body as a description of Chinese policy.
- We then see three mineral rocks.Narrator: The three current rulers of China are legendary Shaolin warriors: Feldspath, Kaolin and Quartz.
- Then, a piece of their souls is imbued in each bit of Chinese manufacturing.
- We then see a worker filling the substance in the vase-shaped negative for the teapot, which the Narrator treats it as a national sport of China called "filling the oddly-shaped bucket".
- The recently-formed body of the teapot is apparently the trophy for first prize hidden inside the lucky winner's bucket.
- The Narrator then treats the making of the teapot's spout as the making of Chinese toilets.Narrator: Toilets in China are very, very tiny, because 95% of Chinese people don't have an anus. The 5% who do are known as "butt-boys".
- "In an emergency, these tiny toilets can often double as public drinking fountains".
- The spout is then cleaned up with a sponge.Narrator: After viewing this footage, please remind me to teach you about sexual education in China.
- Twelve holes are made in the teapot's body, which the Narrator treats it as China's time measurement hole-punch system.Narrator: Right now, it's about twelve o'clock.
- Turns out the holes were prepared in order to put the spout for the liquid to pass.
- Meanwhile, a robot is being created, at least, according to the Narrator.Narrator: Here you can see them bleed, sweat...
(A hydraulic press is approaching slowly to the robot)
Narrator: ...and die.- "If you feel bad for the robot who was just killed and had his face fashioned into a dinner plate... don't. He was a racist".
Solid Tires.
- One shot just shows a tire lying down in a table.Narrator: This tire is dead.
Pre-Packaged Sandwiches.
- Some examples of sandwiches shown in the video are: ham and cheese, tomato, and miscellaneous salad.
- The fresh bread used in the first step to make the sandwiches:
- For the specific sandwich that's being made in the video, a jizz of mayonnaise is required.
- The ham is squished into a slicing coffin.
- When closing up the sandwiches, the employees occasionally give a light spank to the naughtier-looking ones.
- The sandwiches then go to a security checkpoint.Narrator: Here, each sandwich is cut in half and skinned for contraband material that workers may have lost in the product, such as fingernails, wedding rings, fingers, guns and sandwich pornography.
- The Narrator then talks how sandwiches found guilty of smuggling are sent to a sandwich internment camp, where robot arms force the sandwich breads into formation, and any bread slice found to break this formation will be shot with pepper spray to enhance its flavor.
Narrator: If a sandwich is again caught smuggling, they are punished by being smothered in one of the most disgusting substances known to man: egg salad. - After all the "smuggling Overly Long Gag", the bread slices are made sandwiches and...Narrator: Next, a high-frequency blade uses the Power of the Samurai to perfectly slice all the sandwiches in half.
- Then some robotic arms stack the sandwich slices.Narrator: Each robotic arm has layers and layers of caked-on egg salad, dating all the way back to the camps opening in the 1970s.
- "Small bits of the food particles are scraped onto each sandwich as well as replenished, keeping the sandwich bloodline pure".
- The Running Gag of the Narrator pointing out how the workers use their "bare and unwashed hands" to prepare the sandwiches for an added salty flavor.
- One of the workers does an...oddly specific description of why he does this.note
Worcestershire Sauce.
- The Running Gag of the Narrator misnaming the sauce every time it's refered to due to its overcomplicated real name.
Canola Oil.
- The Narrator losing his shit over the choo-choo train.
Swiss Cheese.
- Apparently, cows need to be aroused before they're milked.
- Uncle Gary handles quite a bit of the cheese-making process in his cabin which, according to the Narrator, he bought to get away from his stupid, fat wife.
- Uncle Gary uses a dustpan to remove some of the milk curd from the pot before revealing that he has two dustpans.Narrator: Oh, now he's got two dustpans! Well, fuck off, Uncle Gary, you good-for-nothing showboat.
- One last jab at Uncle Gary's dustpans.Narrator: Uncle Gary, you are so bad at sweeping, it's unreal.
- One last jab at Uncle Gary's dustpans.
- According to the Narrator, Uncle Gary washing his hands is pointless because he'd just spent ages "molesting" the cheese base beforehand.
- Pushing down on the cheese curds is described by cheese makers as a "Swiss Orgasm".
- Even though the two cheese makers are heterosexual, the Narrator is confident that the cheese-makers cinematic universe fanbase will ignore that and write homosexual fanfiction of them.