Lets Play / HAT Films

From left to right: Trott, Ross and Smith

Hat Films are a trio of British gamers who became part of the Yogscast family in 2013. The trio, also sometimes called the "Sirs" are: djh3max (Ross Hornby), Trottimus (Chris Trott) and alsmiffy (Alex Smith or "Smiffy").

They have had several series on Minecraft and have also played, among other games, Trials, Worms and Grand Theft Auto V. They frequently partner and compete against Sips, Turpster and Lewis Brindley, and have played GTA 5 and Skyblock along with Garry's Mod Murder and Trouble in Terrorist Town among other members of the Yogscast on Sips' channel and the main Yogscast channel.

On top of their Let's Play gaming content, they have worked on official Minecraft trailers for Mojang, and produce an irregularly-updated animated machinima series: Filfy Animals.

They ALSO also do a podcast called HatChat, which can be found on their website, here.

They can be found here.

Trott is a cast member for High Rollers (2016).

In 2019, they started a new series, Greasers, where they're seeking grease so that the Legit Builders don't gib them.

Tropes that pertain to the Sirs:

• The Ace: Trott is more or less the star player for the team whenever they play Rocket League.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: In the standard description for the Forsaken Lands videos, we get "A band of brave British lads".
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Smith's Minecraft avatar has green skin.
• Ascended Fanboys: Ever since Minecraft's Beta 1.7 update, the Hatters have been making official trailers for Mojang.
• Ambiguous Species:
  • No one knows what Smith's Minecraft skin is. Guesses are up to and including a Creeper/Steve offspring, a mutated squid, a humanoid slime, a sentient plant, Kermit the Frog, and a radioactive human.
  • Ross has stated that Smith's character was a normal guy who had a horrible accident with green paint. Smith has also stated that his Minecraft character was once human, but then he 'chose the wrong path'. This is being said about a character with no nose, no mouth, no ears, and, according the two above, apparently eats by putting things into his eyes. So make of that what you will.
• Angrish: There are occasions when the trio get so frustrated that they don't even bother to try and form words properly. One such example with Ross can be found here.
• Appeal to Force: The trio repeatedly attempt to blackmail others this way in Minecraft, most notably in Hat Corp when they blackmail Sjin and Lewis with threats to the farm and when they try to negotiate with the Flux Buddies... while having a cannon pointed at their house and threatening to nuke them. Hat Films being Hat Films, they have a mixed success rate.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • In Sjin's Farm, the trio are this to Sjin and Lewis, routinely trying to extort them.
  • They've filled this role for Kim twice. In Cornerstone, the trio simply opted to bully her and Duncan the most (whenever they weren't annoying Strippin); by contrast, in Hat Corp and Flux Buddies the situation eventually escalated to outright war.
• Artifact Title: The group's channel used to be called HAAT Films since Ross and Trott had 2 other people in their group for a total of 4 lads. Since the two friends moved on in their lives and Smith was introduced, the group became HAT Films. The reason the old name appeared on their YouTube channel is because YouTube didn't allow account holders to change their name, at least until Google's push to join all their online social service together. This now means that the account is listed as 'Hat Films' in display name at least.
• Axe-Crazy:
  • During the Garry's Mod Murder! games, Ross goes berserk whenever he is the murderer, angrily shouting "EAT SHIT!" at other players as he tries to stab them.
  • Whenever the trio play Minecraft, odds are that Smith will be the one behaving erratically and murdering things for no reason.
• Berserk Button:
  • In real life, Ross loves animals, in particular dogs, so real life animal abuse is one for him.
  • Checkpoint Starvation will get them frothing at the mouth in Trials.
• Big Bad:
  • In An Epic Hatventure, the Maker, who curses the three Hatventurers to adventure forever, possibly tying in to Origins.
  • The Sirs themselves take this position in the Yogscast's Minecraft series, antagonising most groups on the server and actively planning to Take Over the World. It eventually escalates to open war with Kim Richards and Duncan Jones.
• Big Bad Ensemble: While considered the overarching threat on the Yogscast Complete Server, the trio are not alone in antagonising the Flux Buddies (who are menaced by Lalnable Hector) or Sjin (who initially is wary of _Zips before Knight of Cerebus Strawfingers returns and kills _Zips).
• Big Eater:
  • Phil and Steve, the Filfy Animals sheep, are Grass Connoisseurs, but never seem to stop 'tasting' just about everything around them at any time.
  • While Smiffy generally doesn't go out of his way to be this, he engages in a burger eating contest with Strippin on the latter's channel. Smiffy wins, Strippin gets slapped with a half-eaten burger.
• Bittersweet Ending: At least from their perspective in Hat Corp. They lose to Kim and Duncan, but manage to inflict a reasonable amount of damage and eventually end up relocating to a new base, planning to start again.
  • Averted in Greasers. Their previous exploits have rendered the Legit Builders insolvent which led to the Legit Builders installing remote bombs in the Hats. They must mine grease for the Legit Builders, or they will be insta-gibbed.
• Black Comedy:
  • In Skylands — when blowing up the Rustic Sky dungeon, the boys joke about there being babies on the dungeon when it explodes.
  • The trio don't go out of their way to do this, but it does come up quite often.
• British Brevity: Averted. See for example their Trials series, which has run for well over a hundred episodes.
• Bullying a Dragon: Done a few times:
  • Their efforts to antagonise Sjin and Lewis backfire both times. The first time ends with one of them being teleported into a crevace and falling to their death. The second time, a herd of Lightning Bruiser captured mobs maul them to death.
  • Smith has a habit of repeatedly trolling the others in Cornerstone and repeatedly gets killed for it. Similarly, Trott tries to blackmail Strippin and is left near death for it.
  • In the final episode of Cornerstone, everyone is given creative privileges. Smith promptly kicks Sjin from the server, at which point Sjin outright bans him.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Trottimus is arguably this in their Trials videos; a lot of their jokes end up focusing on him in a very negative light.
  • Ross is also poked fun at in the same game because he usually never wins.
  • Trott ends up being this in quite a few games, even Minecraft. After all, when they decided to blow up the From Ashes map no one seemed to have told Trott this...
• Cabin Fever:
  • Near the end of their Skyblock series, the boys get a bit desperate to leave their self described "Prison" but cannot stop playing until an Enderman spawns; they begin to attack each other, talk nonsense, and cry randomly (more so then they usually do of all these things, anyway).
  • The Minecraft Xbox 1.8.2 has strong shades of this trope as well; the Sirs become VERY discouraged once they find the barriers of the map they've spawned on.
• Call-Back:
  • In Skylands, the trio do an episode explaining that the reason they didn't use Alsmiffy vision at the time is because he's hallucinating monsters and fire all the time; at one point in the Sky Block series, Smith randomly asks the others if they saw endless fire like he did. They inform him it's just him.
  • When Ross lost all of his footage for a good chunk of the Skylands series, several episodes were shown from Trott's point of view only as the trio dubbed it Walrus Vision Week/Fortnight with an image of Trott's character wearing goggles. In part 2 of Feed the Beast, when Trott picks up a pair of goggles and wears them, there's a brief cut to the Walrus Vision theme.
  • Another callback to Walrus Vision Week came in FTB episode 57, which was a Smith Cam-only episode because something happened to the footage of the other two Sirs. The titlecard features only Smith out of the three, wearing his Goggles of Revealing and the explanation text at the beginning of the episode says that Smith "doesn't get a jingle because he sucks".
• The Cameo:
  • Simon Lane and Lewis Brindley appear in the Minecon trailer. Not to mention several other Minecraft players and celebrities.
  • Simon and Lewis also appear as creepers in an episode of Filfy Animals.
  • Kitetales voices 'Foxxy the Wolf' in the Filfy Animals Valentine Special.
  • The Sirs themselves cameo in the "Monopoly" skit by Area 11. They get very angry that they aren't allowed to play the top hat, with Ross getting very hammy about the issue. Trott reappears in The Stinger, picking up Kogie.
• Catchphrase:
  • "Good day!", as well as variants on "Buttery biscuit base," and "Wobble, wobble, wobble wobble wobble" which are references to this video.
  • "Dirty!" Said by Ross whenever sexual innuendo comes up.
  • "EAT SHIT!" Again by Ross, during Murder in GMOD.
  • Ross' favorite phrases during Trials Evolution whenever he wins is "YOU CAN GO SUCK A BIG/FAT ONE!" and "GFY!"
    • GFY has become so popular that the trio used it as a promotional coupon in their spreadshirt web site.
  • "JON SNOOOOOOOOOW!"
  • "STUNT LADS", mostly during GTA.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Sorta. During the Calamity mini-game, the Sirs (plus Sips and Rythian) barely lost the game... Because the other team bridged the gap between the two bases, which was literally the first written rule. Once Smith noticed this after the match was over, "Team Shatner" was declared the winners by default (granted, it was a very close match, so it could have gone either way regardless).
• The Chew Toy: Nine times out of ten, if the trio are insulting one another it will be Trott who gets abused, mostly because of Smith.
• Christmas Episode: This time lapse.
• Chromatic Arrangement: Outside of Minecraft, they tend to pick characters that are Colour-Coded Characters. Ross is usually blue, Smith green, and Trott either orange or yellow.
• Cloudcuckoolander: In an extremely rare case, Ross somehow manages to be both this AND the straight man of the group.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • Trott does one at the start of Skylands Episode 8 when he's announcing their plans. He and Ross have a duel of Cluster F Bombs later in the episode.
  • Trials Evolution Episode #58 has an impressive string of bombs from Ross at the 2:50 mark.
  • Ross regularly lets this off when embracing his Axe-Crazy side. "Eat shit" indeed.
• Comedic Sociopathy: A frequent occurence in their video, either targeting Trott or an unfortunate NPC.
• Country Matters: While the trio have relaxed their censorship policy on the whole (in part because they didn't find it as funny as it once was), the word "cunt" is still one that they bleep out, and typically they self-censor when about to say it. Sips doesn't and gets bleeped out from time to time.
• Crooked Contractor: During Skyblock, the Sirs make up a story about a Contractor that keeps raising his prices to insane amounts, or else he'll tar their pets.
• Crossover:
  • While they eventually went on to join the Yogscast, they appeared alongside Strippin in "Strippin Sings" and "The Burger Challenge" before officially becoming members. They also did a livestream with InTheLittleWood and Sparkles*, in which they played Halo 4.
  • They cameo in Area 11's "Monopoly" sketch.
  • CaptainSparklez joined the Sirs for a charity livestream in December 2014. They also interviewed him in Minecon 2011.
  • The trio joined Rooster Teeth for E3 2015 onstage with Ashley Jenkins.
  • Lewis and Simon both appeared in Filfy Animals as creepers, as well as in the Minecon trailer for 2011.
  • Daithi De Nogla appears in the background of one of their vlogs, and vice versa.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Sometimes, the gang can come up with some rather clever things.
  • In Skyblock, they created a cobblestone tower designed to make enemy mobs fall to their death so they can easily farm the loot with limited risk. In Epic Hatventure, Smith, of all people, creates a "diving bell" that allows the group to go deep underwater to recover Trott's stuff.
  • Smiffy is acknowledged as one of the best players of Trouble in Terrorist Town by the others in the Yogs. He also enjoys a fair amount of airsoft and knows a thing or two about explosives.
  • Trott is actually a black-belt in karate.
• Cutting the Knot: In Epic Hatventure, dungeons have one main rule, to prevent the trio from breaking puzzles - no breaking or placing blocks. However, the boys consider situations where it is impossible to progress without doing so as an exception to the rule, such as in the second dungeon where a Creeper blew up the redstone wiring connecting a switch to a door they needed to get past, and so they broke down the door.
• Deal with the Devil: In "Tackling 1.8: Part 3", Smith claims to have asked 'the fire' where their missing house was, and in exchange for finding it he had promised to burn down the woods.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: The Grand Theft Auto V video "Roller Twister" features Smith, in the last race, deciding that once he was about to hit the finish line, he'd instead go back to the area with the elaborate ramps and troll Trott and Ross. However, even when Trott gets through that part, despite initially panicking to get back to his car, he instead attempted to troll Trott some more with gunfire. Twice. After passing him the second time, Smith realized that he was now suddenly too far away to get to the finish line before Trott could get there, resulting in Trott winning the playlist outright. Whoops.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Ross massacres a village in Episode 23 of "Hat Pack" because he got sick of them Speaking Simlish.
• Don't Explain the Joke: Trott LOVES to do this.
• Double Entendre: Watch any Hat Films video. Any. It will be laden with double entendres, including ones which make no sense courtesy of Smith and his raunchy voice.
• Drives Like Crazy: HAT Films and game vehicles don't mix well.
• Dude, Not Funny!:
  • Discussed in episode 36 of Hat Chat for the "Funny News" section, when Ross mentions that most of the news that they've found is more "morbid" than it is amusing. He gives the example of a grandmother accidentally poisoning her family with twenty-five year-old cocoa.
  • In episode 38 of Hat Chat, Trott's "Funny News" for that week turns out to be (spoilers because it's gross) a man capturing, and repeatedly sexually assaulting, an alligator because it tried to kill him, as Trott had only read the headline and not the rest of the article. Everyone is appropriately horrified, including Trott who sounds regretful.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In two senses:
  • The first six or so videos (plus a few tie-ins on a now defunct second channel) did not focus on gaming at all, and Smith was entirely absent. Instead, there were initially four members of Hat Films (very quickly reduced to three) that did sketch comedies, such as "Director Trott". This ended in August 2010 after the "Frape Away" video did not do as well as Ross hoped.
  • When the gaming videos did start, the technology the Sirs used was a little more outdated and only focused on Ross' viewpoint for the most part; any time that Trott messed up his footage would be used with "fail cam" plastered on the screen. Smith would also be absent for the odd video because of real life concerns. Nowadays, all three viewpoints are used equally. The trio were also considerably shier, whereas now they are all quite boisterous.
• Entendre Failure:
  • In an early Left 4 Dead playthrough, Ross makes a joke that Rochelle was going to have a 'good time' with him after the campaign. A clearly distracted Smith responds back "Yeah, she's going to have the highest kill points, it's really depressing."
  • Typically, any bad innuendos will be lampshaded only for someone, typically Ross, to say "no, I don't know what you mean".
• Epic Fail:
  • In the first two episodes of "SkyBlock-Take One", the Sirs, in a very short period of time, turn their lava into Obsidian, destroy their single water source, flatten their only plentiful block, dirt, into a non-recyclable bridge, and make it impossible for their only renewable resourse, saplings, to grow. To say that a restart was necessary is an understatement.
  • In their Skyblock series with Sips, the four of them manage to break their cobblestone generator in five minutes, forcing a restart.
• Everyone Has Standards: Trott and Smith are both disturbed when Ross wipes out an entire village for the crime of Speaking Simlish in Hat Pack.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • In Feed The Beast #50, Ross is looking for redstone in the quarry containers... And he completely misses the redstone container, despite it being practically right in his face. Trott mocks him for it in the video editing no less than three times. One has to wonder if he showed Ross the video after he finished it just to rub it in his face.
  • He's still not done with him — episode 51 has two more examples, and a comment about the 'redstone incident' in Ep. 50 was highlighted as "Best Comment" in Ep. 51.
  • It's starting to become a Running Gag. During the Minecraft Wool Race 2, Trott was asking if anyone had the torches he dropped. Ross claims he didn't have them... Even though they were right in his selection bar. "Oh, Ross..."
  • It was a bit of a Running Gag in their Epic Hatventure series. The creators of the adventure map hid treasure chests around the map, covering them with blocks of clay. The sirs, being preoccupied with reaching and solving puzzles, would frequently miss clay blocks, to the amusement or frustration of many commenters.
  • And now Smith is getting into the act unintentionally in Feed The Beast by absentmindedly using his knowledge fragments on his research, which Trott is also happy to mock in the editing. Smith admits his screwup in a later episodes, where he appears to be yelling, insulting the other two, and lighting their things on fire.
• Freudian Trio: They take turns playing each role, but the most common seems to be:
  • Ross: Id. Emotional, Yells a lot ("IT'S NOT MEEE!" "EAT SHIT!" and "GFY!!" Are some of his most famous catchphrases)
  • Trott: Superego/Ego. Usually logical but often prone to crying. Yells noticeably less and more quietly than the other two.
  • Smith: Ego/Superego. While not prone to playing the only sane man, Smith has his moments of logic.
• Friendly Enemy: During the Yogscast "Crown Conquest" games, Smith gets caught on his own by BebopVox and Variede, arguably their main rivals in the games, who he quickly truces with; it is made clear that this 'truce' means he's not allowed to wander off, must give them any items he finds, and they immediately try to kill him when they find an entertaining way to do so. This backfires on his captors when Ross and Trott save him and kill them.
• For the Evulz: Smith burns the trio's house down in the Minecraft Xbox playthrough for no reason.
• Funny Background Event:
  • In Skylands episode 29, while Trott is fighting a spider with a golden record, Ross gets blown up and killed after teleporting from the spawn. Twice.
  • Feed The Beast episode #31. Trottimus and Ross are discussing the new Enderchest and how to store all the excess material it's gathering. At the start of their chat, there's a black cat just meandering around the quarry, and it eventually wanders off. Not a minute later, it's running back while being chased by a giant scorpion. They get near the quarry, and the scorpion just falls in. Both Sirs don't even notice.
• Gag Censor: During their Feed The Beast series, certain short statements (from obscene content to Game of Thrones spoilers) are censored out this way. The screen goes grayscale, the sound is replaced by a very sped up version of the beginning of their Pixelmon parody tune, and there's a pink caption expressing the video editor's feelings. An example from episode 48.
• Gone Horribly Right: In their Hatpack series, Ross tried to fill a moat he had dug around their walls with a Floodgate block. When the block seemed to stop working after they moved it to flood another section of the moat, Trott discovered that it was indeed still going, only it was filling the area inside their walls first.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • invoked In Skylands, Ross falls down a hole and finds himself face-to-face with a Creeper... who doesn't explode. The others throw some blocks to Ross and he quickly builds his way out of the hole, during which the Creeper continues to just look around at the Hatters without exploding or even starting its timer. They name it Fred the Passive Creeper.
  • Near the end of the Skylands playthrough, Ross and Smith spot an Enchantment Table floating in mid-air, out of the blue, much to their bewilderment, since Skylands was made long before that particular block was implemented in Minecraft.
• Griefer: Smith usually griefs Ross and Trott for shits and giggles, which sometimes results in one or both of them getting revenge on Smith. On the trio's public server, if any of the three guys make an appearance, players tend to run away or hide since the trio are known for gleefully messing around with the public using their admin powers. However, most of the players tend to not mind as they know it's all in good fun.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Episode 52 of Trials has Trott debunking the fan theory that he's gay. This is followed by Smith and Ross admitting they've considered this theory as well, adding in that they'd be fine with it if he was.
• Guyliner: Trott has added this to his look as of 2020.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Turns out that Smiffy is not only into bluegrass music, he was actually in a band that played it. He's also written some tracks such as this one, "Warden", which is surprisingly thoughtful and sad. On top of that, his day job was in marketing before making videos became his full time job.
  • Subverted during Garry's Mod on Sips' channel when Trott starts spouting a surprising amount of German. It turns out that he was just looking the words up on his phone. Smiffy mocks the idea of Trott suddenly being fluent.
  • It turns out that when they want to, Ross and Trott can actually direct a serious and dark piece.
• Hurricane of Puns: Episode 31 of Skylands has a hurricane of "leaf" puns.
• Hostile Weather:
  • Here, the boys are attacked by an angry lightning storm during their Skyblock playthrough.
  • In episode 16 of An Epic Hatventure, while it's easy to tell this same insane storm has returned, it's not an issue since the boys are inside a dungeon almost the entire time.
• Hypocritical Humour: During "FIFA-CHU", the others begin to quieten down after a brief burst of shouting. Ross gives us this gem:
  Ross: Stop yelling, stop yelling. STOP FUCKIN' YELLIN'!
• Idiot Hero: During an early Skyblock episode, Ross drops a dirt block, and doesn't think twice about leaping to catch it...following it straight into the void, with all of his items still on him. Including another dirt block.
• If I Can't Have You…: In one Skylands episode, Smith kills a wolf that Ross just tamed, claiming that he had already fed the wolf a bone and then Ross swooped in and stole it with a second bone.
• Implausible Deniability: Ross is not very good at denying he's a traitor in TTT.
• Improbable Cover: In the second episode of their "Race for the wool" match against Lewis Brindley, Duncan Jones, Sips and Sjin, Ross finds himself pinned by arrow fire and decides to wall himself off with blocks of TNT.
• Improbable Weapon Users: The guys tend to become these often during the Skylands videos, especially in the dungeons.
• In-Series Nickname: The trio refer to Duncan and Kim as "the Fuck Buddies", a pun on their series "Flux Buddies". They also call Kim "Quim", something she's made clear only they are allowed to say.
• Intrepid Reporter: Very much averted in Hat Pack. Ross' journalist 'friend' Colin doesn't so much as leave the bath to go to the office.
• Invisible to Normals: In Skylands, the mysterious Red Man is this to the trio. But despite this, they don't seem to notice his presence, even when he's standing right in front of them, or they have photographic evidence that he exists. Played down slightly in Origins: A Beginning (follows the end of Skylands), where he makes himself known to them in some form.
• It Makes Sense in Context: "Sad For Good" makes a lot more sense if you've seen Feed the Beast #79 (here), in which Smith murders Eric the ostrich. When Lewis and Duncan saw the music video for the first time, they clearly didn't understand what was happening.
• Jump Scare: When the boys encounter their first Ghast in From Ashes: They're climbing a monster-free mountain, in daylight, when they come across a mysterious spinning object^note (a spawner), which they puzzle over for a moment. Then a Ghast spawns right in front of the camera.
• Karma Houdini: Played with. At the end of Hat Corp, the Sirs cash in on their insurance from Duncan and Kim destroying their base, move to an even better one and plan to take over the world again. Granted, they were humiliated beforehand.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • In the Forsaken Lands episode 12, Trott attempts this on some skeletons. It backfires.
  • Skylands episode 17 could be alternately titled "Everybody Gets Killed With Fire, Including The Protagonists, Several Times."
  • Smiffy immediately tests out his new Fire Wand in Feed the Beast 22 on every mob he can find, including the other Sirs.
• Large Ham:
  • Whenever Ross tries to read the Overseer's messages in Epic Hatventure, he does it in an epic, deep voice.
  • Let's face it, all three of the guys are massive hams.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Smith's attempts at setting things on fire sometimes do result in him getting set on fire as well. This is especially evident when he finally gets his hands on a flint and Epic Hatventure and try to set a forest on fire... He sets himself on fire as well.
  • Episode 6 on "From Ashes" shows Alsmiffy attacking a pair of Iron Golems just to be a jerk. They make very short work of him.
  • Episode 45 of Hat Corp has them nuking Kim and Duncan during a parley for the return of the stuff that Duncan dropped when they killed him. Kim and Duncan not only avoided the nuke, but the shockwave from the nuke set off a rejuvenation missile in their silo, resetting the chunk back to the start.^note Of course, in between episodes, they cheated and rolled back the damage.
  • Their efforts to annoy Kim and Duncan ultimately backfire badly. While they ultimately do destroy the Flux Buddies base with Rejuvenation Missiles, their own base is almost totally destroyed. Granted, they end up moving away to an even better one.
• The Last Thing You Ever See: Smith made this faux-threat to Trottimus in a later Trials episode. Made good on this specific threat on two different occasions; once in a Halo playthrough, and another time in a Vlog update.
• Limey Goes to Hollywood: This is parodied In-Universe with the Stunt Lads, who supposedly work in the USA but are British just like the Sirs in real life and get paid in pound sterling. This causes an issue since they get paid in dollars but then have to convert their profits after paying for various things such as taxes and their medical bills.
• Limited Wardrobe: Smiffy is very rarely seen without a red t-shirt. He even acknowledges this practice, himself, on a certain Reddit post, although he has been making efforts to change this.
• Mad Bomber:
  • If something is exploding, chances are good that it's Smith's doing. He's even shown holding a stick of dynamite in the Skylands intro, and 'explodes' out of a box in his camera switch animation in an Epic Hatventure.
    • And now he's going for the big one in Feed The Beast - he's trying to craft a nuke, without the other two knowing.
  • Smiffy is a big fan of jihad bombs in Trouble in Terrorist Town, often using them to his advantage.
• Mercy Kill: In episode 17 of Skylands, Trott catches fire for the umpteenth time and Ross gets tired of watching him bumble around screaming, so he finally just beats him to death with a torch.
• Million to One Chance:
  • In Day-Z, Trott gets completely incapacitated by a door because of a glitch. This causes Trott to become scared of doors for several episodes. The odds of the same glitch happening again would be low, but several episodes later, another door incapacitates Trott for a second time!
  • This happens for a third time later in the series, and is considered so typical for Trott that the camera doesn't even switch over to his POV for the viewers to see it.
  Alsmiffy: Trott, mate, what is it with you and doors?
• Minor Injury Overreaction:
  • Which is caused by the dissonance between virtual-world injury and real-world injury: In Skylands, the lads spend a lot of time falling off cliffs and screaming their heads off. Then at one point Smith screams yet again, and when the others ask if he died again, he replies, "No but I just jammed my knee into my desk!"
  • Trott also gets his moment of this where he screams and when Ross and Smith assumed Trott fell out of the world again, Trott (off mic) says he fell out of his chair. Ross quickly makes fun of him for it.
• Mood Whiplash: At the end of Hat Corp, the trio discover their brand new base, which has them in awe... only for the mood to promptly be killed by a turret shooting Smith as he wasn't whitelisted.
• Most Definitely Not a Villain: Hat Films would like to remind you that the Hand of Truth is definitely not a cult in any way, shape or form, despite it being erected in a courthouse and the numerous deathtraps used for executions.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Smith and Ross like to make up events and false history about Trott; has developed into a series of jokes called "Trott Trivia" which has inspired a website and two separate Twitter accounts to store such Trivia in.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • In episode 12 of their Minecraft Xbox series, Smith sets the house on fire in the beginning of the episode. Realizing he has genuinely upset Trottimus, who rage quits, he spends the rest of the episode desperately trying to stop the fire and save at least some of the house.
  • At the beginning of An Epic Hatventure, he states that he has looked at previous videos and decided to perform '30% less trolling', although he is still adamant that 'Trott needs to have his whole day ruined at least once a day'.
• No Indoor Voice: From time to time the trio yell loud enough that they can be heard in other rooms. In a Tekkit PVP match on Sjin's channel, Smith can be heard screaming from across the office after the other team kill him with throwing knives.
• No Mouth: Smith's Minecraft avatar.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Their reaction to Rise and Repeat, a not-safe-for-work game in which the player has to scrub a man in a shower in... increasingly intimate ways. Trott in particular is extremely uncomfortable.
• No Sense of Direction: Sometimes, all three of these guys. Especially evident in Episode 7 of Epic Hatventure where the whole group ends up spending most of the episode going around in a circle.
• Not Me This Time:
  • In one of the later Sky Block episodes, some items go missing from the chest, and Trott and Ross immediately accuse Smith of stealing them. They are so convinced of his guilt that when he insists he doesn't have them, they actually kill him and are stunned to not find them in his dropped inventory. Turns out they just missed them among all the junk in the chest.
  • In Minecraft 1.8.2 XBLA #5, Ross accidentally places lava inside their (partially wooden) house, setting it on fire. Trott immediately shifts the blame to Smith, due to his habit of burning down their houses.
  Alsmiffy: It wasn't me! It wasn't me!
  • 1.8.2 XBLA Episode #14 is made of this trope.
  • In at least one episode of Murder Ross tells the actual murderer to eat shit in the vain hopes of keeping them away. Sips assumes that Ross is actually the murderer because of his catchphrase, despite Ross having given a death scream.
  • In at least one episode of Cornerstone, Sjin kills Smith for stealing when he actually wasn't responsible.
• No OSHA Compliance:
  • Whenever the guys are retrieving lava, it's almost certain that one of them will burn to death due to sheer negligence. Even if retrieving lava isn't something they're aiming to do, one of them is likely to die.
  • The "Stunt Lads" in Grand Theft Auto V have this issue. While they are fairly quick to rush into danger, they point out to their superior that they don't have the money to pull off more dangerous stunts without any cash or way to pay their medical bills.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Smith likes to play with this trope. How high his intelligence level is seems to depend entirely on how much he feels like trolling the other two.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • In Skylands, whenever a certain Mascot Mook appears, the boys all start screaming "CREEEEEPEEEEEEER!"
  • Eventually in Feed The Beast, Smith finally gets bored and decides to craft a nuke, without the others knowing. The reaction is from Trott via the editing.
• One-Steve Limit: Subverted; all of Trottimus's tamed wolves are named some variation of "Ralph".
• Only Sane Man: Ross and Trott take turns in this role.
• Oop North: Ross and Smith repeatedly speak in this accent for no reason, and it's one of the few accents they can consistently keep up.
• Out of Focus: Trott's pet dragon/ostrich hybrid, Eric, in the "Feed the Beast" series has been barely used after Trott fully customized him. This is mainly due to Trott using a jetpack to get around. Smith eventually murders him.
• Paparazzi: This is Colin the journalist's supposed job, since he works for a 'shitty tabloid'.
• Pet-Peeve Trope: The trio hate custom tracks in Trials Evolution that abuse Checkpoint Starvation. The group gives tracks that have lack of checkpoints the "Fuck You Buddy Award".
• Platform Hell:
  • In Epic Hatventure, the very first dungeon is basically a set of these, in two parts. The first part is a timed platforming segment to get to the other side of a chasm (with the platforms only extending outwards for a short amount of time), and the second segment is of jumping onto platforms over lava. Hilarity Ensues. The first part required one and roughly a quarter episodes to get through. The other half ended up in two episodes because Ross and Trott had to go back over to grab the stuff they left behind in a chest... Which then they lost half off thanks to Trott mis-timing a jump.
  • It returns in the Forgotten City's mansion, in the Royal Study. Two questions are hidden behind jumping puzzles. Trott dies again.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon utilizes this with gleeful abandon, resulting in plenty of deaths. There is once again a lava pit, and the final challenge involves jumping puzzles on floating islands outside the very top of the tower. Cue many, many deaths due to gravity.
• Power Trio: The three play games together and kick ass together. There are also only three of them.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Ross is very fond of shouting "EAT SHIT!" repeatedly in Garry's Mod, often when he's about to kill someone or playing Murder.
• Pyromaniac: Smith has a habit of burning things down in general, formerly identifying as the chief arsonist of the group on Twitter.
  • To start with, there's this and soon after this.
  • In episode 17 of Skylands:
  Trottimus: All right guys, is there anything we can do to improve our situation?
  Alsmiffy: Set everything on fire.
  • And of course, about 30 seconds later, guess what happens. And they're in a huge dungeon that's mostly made of wood.
  • The first thing Smith does when they arrive in the Ascension Woods is to set it on fire.
  Alsmiffy: It's the Ascension Burnt now!
  • Smith tries to set the first forest he sees on fire once he gets the flint and tinder in Epic Hatventure. Not only does it seem to fail, he also sets himself on fire in the process. And then he proceeds to start plenty of fires in the Forgotten City's mansion, though they never get around to spreading anywhere because Trott and Ross are putting them out.
  • Let's not even go into the Xbox Minecraft plays. All in all, their home gets burned down no less then three times.
  • In Feed the Beast, the minute Smith announces that he created a Wand of Fire, both Trott and Ross share a Oh, Crap! moment.
    • And then he silently decides to craft a nuke, knowing the other two would immediately stop him if they figured out what he was going to craft.
  • There is now a song called "Pure Incineration" written by the trio. Most of it is sung by Smiffy. Go figure.
  • Thanks to the Block 'n' Load challenge, Smiffy now has the somewhat terrifying distinction of being this in real life. He set fire to a large amount of cardboard boxes, requiring the fire brigade to come and put out the rapidly-spreading flames. This may have been scripted, however.
• Out-of-Character Moment:
  • In one race in Trials Evolution, there was a photo finish moment between Smith and Trott with Trott winning by just an inch after he passed Smith. Smith winds up screaming in rage for his loss and you can hear him slamming something in the background. This is in comparison to Smith being usually very calm no matter how many times he failed in the other games.
  • In Episode 9 of their 1.8.2 Minecraft Xbox series, Trottimus seems to suffer from some weird sort of...fit. Noteworthy in that both Smith and Ross point out how unusual he is acting.
• Put on a Bus: Trott retires Colin the annoying journalist in Hat Pack because he finds him that annoying.
• Rage Quit:
  • Done in a humorous way to end From Ashes. Rather than just ditching the series, the trio decide to do it with style by blowing up the entire map after being heavily frustrated with the map's level design.
  • Thus far in "Old Fashion Bashin'", they have quit LEGO Star Wars II (where they couldn't understand what to do) and Action Man- Mission Xtreme (which they thought was repetitive and irritating to play).
• Real Life Writes the Plot: At one point Ross lost a bunch of his Skylands footage, so the next few episodes became "Walrus-Vision Week/Fortnight."
• Running Gag:
  • In Skylands, there's the death counter and the end-of-episode tally to see who had the fewest deaths. Many of their other series after that continue this trend.
  • Their advertisements for non-existent musical recordings that are only available in really obscure or out-dated formats.
  • Trottimus being a male walrus who nevertheless has milk-producing teats, and his other odd walrus-related attributes.
  • And of course, Smith's love of setting things on fire and/or blowing them up, to the point where any time something is on fire, the others immediately assume it was Smith's doing.
  • Don't ever tell Ross to do things.
  • STUNT LADS and advertising for MONSTER COCKS brand of fried chicken in G.T.A. V.
  • "Hat Corp: What's Yours is Ours!"
  • Ross has a habit of screaming "EAT SHIT" or "IT'S NOT ME!" in Garry's Mod.
  • "Crazy pills" has become one for Stunt Lads.
  • Smith calling Trott "Trout".
  • "SALMON BOY!" or any variation thereupon.
• Screams Like a Little Girl:
  • Trottimus gives these high-pitched bloodcurdling screams whenever he falls off a cliff in Skylands. Which is frequently.
  • Smith and Ross also get in a few good ear-splitting screams when falling into the abyss of Skylands.
  • Ross does this several times in DayZ and their 'Crown Conquest' videos.
• Self-Deprecation: The trio's poor skills in gaming is often a Running Gag in their videos.
• Sharp-Dressed Man:
  • What Ross and Smith appear to be in Minecraft. Trott wears a lab coat instead.
  • For their Old Fashioned Bashin episode in which the trio play GoldenEye (1997), Ross dresses up in a tuxedo.
• Shmuck Bait: In one episode of Skylands, the boys start encouraging their viewers to stick their laptops in the microwave in order to enable the "Night Vision" mod.
• Shoot the Dog:
  • Friendly wolves generally do not survive very long - a few episodes at most. The most common cause seems to be Smith.
  • In Feed The Beast: Episode 3, Smith sets Trottimus Jr, Trott's pet bunny, on fire.
  • And now Trott's beloved ostrich, Eric, has fallen victim to this as well. Again, it was Smith's doing.
  • In Hat Corp, Smiffy murders their captive dryad Crystal, on the grounds that they were useless.
• Shout-Out:
  • When the boys keep catching fire in the wooden Skylands dungeon, they keep singing "The Lord is my shepherd." This has come up a few times since.
  • Skylands Episode 2 has a shout-out to Monsters, Inc..
  • Their Skylands episodes also contain frequent impersonations of and references to Gollum/Sméagol and Andy Serkis.
  • During "Prison Break", Trott and Sips break out a rendition of "Run to the Hills".
  • There are repeated shout-outs to Jon Snow of Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire fame.
  • In "Swamp Monster", Smith asks the guys if they remember a particular satire show that used to be on TV. Ross asks if he means Spitting Image, or "that one with the puppets".
  • The trio have given a shout out to The Cynical Brit a few times ^note they haven't referred to him as TB, just as "The Cynical Brit".
  • When devising a "theme song" for the Hand of Truth, Trott starts singing along to the tune of the Imperial March.
  • In their mod showcase, "Pure Incineration" is a clear shout-out to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, specifically "Pure Imagination".
• Sir Swears-a-Lot:
  • In Trials #7, it's been stated that it's Ross' swearing that needs to be bleeped the most.
  • It gets even worse/funnier during An Epic Hatventure when he starts inserting swearing that isn't in the actual text into the Overseer's messages just because he can.
  Ross: ... Your friend, the Over-(bleep)ing-seer.
  • Ross is quite a fan of telling people to "eat shit", to the point that there is now a compilation.
  • While Ross is very profane, Smith certainly isn't lacking in the profanity department either, frequently calling Trott a prick.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Used on and off, partly for comic effect. Watch out for Cluster bleep bombs.
  Smiff: Trott, you're a (bleep)!
  Trott, to audience: If you don't know what he said, on urbandictionary, type in (bleep)!
• Stalker with a Crush: It's possible this is why EnderStalker keeps following Ross around. He seems to want Ross to notice his stalking, and during the Filfy Animals Christmas Special, went to pains to deliver a Christmas present to him.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: invoked Mentioned twofold in an episode of Skyblock. The crew did take notice at everyone that kept screaming at them for not using bone meal on a mushroom and other crops, to which they replied that they record in bulk so everything is done in advance plus they feel they have more fun just playing as is no matter how much they screw up.
• Straw Feminist: Trott has a habit of picking the female characters or, even when male, adopting female characteristics (Walrus teats), so he occasionally falls into talking like this. Most notable in DayZ, where for a moment he seems genuinely gleeful that his female character wasn't designed with typical video-game objectifying sexiness.
• Stuff Blowing Up:
  • After clearing a dungeon in the Skylands, they load it with TNT and detonate it.
  • From Ashes has the trio end the series in the exact same way, but for the entire map.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In Feed The Beast, eventually, Smith decides that he can't hold in his destructive tendencies anymore and decides to craft a nuke, casually asking how to make the requisite materials for it. Considering the type of materials he's asking for, Trott and Ross immediately get suspicious, and Smith's response to "what are you building" is "nooooothing." Cue snarking on Trott's part via editing, showing what he was actually intending to craft.
• Take That!:
  • invoked Whenever the trio plays a custom track in Trials Evolution that has bullshit moments (bad camera angles, unforgiving checkpoints, etc.), they "reward" the creator of the track with the "Fuck U Buddy Award" (or FUBA for short), complete with a trophy graphic in front of an explosion. There has been at least one occasion where the trio takes back the award after seeing that they were wrong for using it, which is followed by the FUBA trophy animation playing in reverse. One track ticked off the trio so bad that they gave the FUBA award five times just for that track alone. And then there's the track where they went completely overboard with the awards.
  • Week 16 of Cornerstone had the trio go into a fairly serious and downright brutal verbal rant about Katie Hopkins and her disgusting behaviour.
  • "FIFA-CHU! ULTIMATE PACK OPENING!!!" is undoubtedly a mockery of FIFA Soccer pack openings and overacting for what is simply opening a pack of cards. It also takes moments to mock Call of Duty MLG-style montages, with annoying air horn sounds, repeated loud gunshot sounds and effects which have kids screaming down microphones.
  • Ross's dislike of Doctor Who has come up a few times.
  • In the GTA episode "Swamp Monster", Smith gets a few digs in at Nigel Farage and the United Kingdom Independence Party.
  • Smith has mentioned that he utterly hates Gotham a few times.
• Take That, Audience!:
  • When playing Prop Hunt with the rest of the Yogscast, they and InTheLittleWood joke that Martyn has replaced Sips forever, in response to the fans just "assuming" that was the case and sending hate mail.
  • In response to fans getting angry at them for letting Turps join them for some videos, they calmly, but firmly, shot down some of the complaints, arguing that fans wanted the series to be too formulaic, and that Turps was their friend.
  • Trott's "nerd voice" frequently mocks people that take some franchises too seriously and correct people for making jokes.
• Team-Up Series: Of a sort. Since joining the Yogscast, the Sirs have been participating in competitions that involve at least one of the Yogscast temporally joining their ranks to even the numbers. During the Wool Races, it was Simon Lane, and during the Calamity mini-game, it was Sips and Rythian, causing the resulting team to be dubbed "Team Shatner".
• Tele-Frag: This is how captive dryad Chastity dies in Hat Corp. although how precisely it happened remains unclear.
• That One Player:
  • Trottimus is the only Sir who plays Trials when they're not filming. It seriously shows. He has a tendency to mess up his turns hilariously in their Worms series, though — so much so that when he has either of the other Sirs at his mercy, they start praying for him to make a 'Chris Trott error'.
  • Smith and Ross accuse him of practising for Rocket League, although he denies this.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • The original "HAAT Films" team consisted of two 'A's, whom were college peers of Ross and Trottimus, neither of whom were Alsmiffy. While one of the old 'A's, Nathan Asheman, is still occasionally seen and is regarded fondly when mentioned by the three, the second 'A' has never been referred to by name, and is confessed to be the one who inspired the personality behind the 'Chris Director Trott' videos. They did eventually admit that they reconciled offscreen.
  • In Hat Pack, Colin the journalist is the trio's go-to contact in the media, but makes a lot of disturbing comments and doesn't do any work, so the trio treat him with a lot of scorn.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In-universe: When the guys make it to the mountain section of Skylands and actually manage to acquire resources and build a tree-house without constantly dying and losing everything, they joke that they're going to lose subscribers because they're actually playing the game properly for once.
• Time Lapse: The guys make these occasionally. They even have a playlist for them.
• Token Evil Teammate: While "evil" is an overstatement, Smith is by far the one most likely to cause mayhem by griefing his teammates, killing their tamed wolves, setting fires, blowing things up, intentionally jumping off cliffs to his death, etc. He's also generally the one who starts shooting other players other than his teammates in DayZ.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • In the early episodes of Day Z, the trio are quite bad in playing as they attract lots of attention from zombies, get shot by other players, and die quite often from their mistakes. As the series progressed, the trio gotten a lot better since now they conserve their ammo wisely, move with stealth, and they keep an eye on their status. Smith even gets revenge for Ross by killing another player that had shot him.
  • The trio were generally okay at Rocket League to begin with, but within a few episodes Trott becomes their star player. Later, Ross manages to up his game, as does Smith (who had previously done fairly little).
• Troll: Smith to Ross and Trott. Sometimes, it comes back to bite him in the ass.
• Too Dumb to Live: Alsmiffy's golem in the Feed the Beast Minecraft series jumps into a furnace filled with lava because it tried to get an ore that Alsmiffy dropped in there.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • First played straight in Skyblock, where the trio unwittingly screw themselves over by losing one of the resources needed for a cobblestone generator, forcing them to start from scratch again.
  • Subverted in Epic Hatventure where, in the Forgotten City's mansion, in the library, Smith blows up a Creeper, exposing the redstone wiring underneath (and the hidden workings behind the scenes, which the gang joke about), then they activate the switch to the Royal Study, but then they notice that it's not opening the door. Then they realize that the Creeper blew up the redstone wiring responsible for opening the door. So they decide that the "no breaking blocks" rule for this dungeon doesn't count in this instance, and break down the door.
  • In their Skyblock series with Sips, the trio manage to break their cobblestone generator in five minutes, causing Ross to drop an Atomic F-Bomb. They have to restart and pretend it never happened.
• Unreliable Narrator: The Overseer in Epic Hatventure seems to have a tendency to make fun of the trio.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating:
  • In the rare moments where Ross wins a race in Trials Evolution, he becomes incredibly foul mouthed against Trott and Smith in his victory celebration.
  • Ross has made a catch phrase for himself whenever he wins a race, which is usually either "GFY" or "YOU CAN GO SUCK A BIG FAT ONE!"
  • Judging by some of his reactions to killing the other team's people during the Tunnel Vision map (many utilising the f-word more than once per sentence), this trait has started to bleed over into his other competitive gaming...
• Verbal Tic: Go to any episode, count the number of times the three call each other "Mate".
• Villain Protagonist: The trio essentially fill this role in Hat Corp, due to their amoral research and harassment of Sjin, Lewis and the Flux Buddies. Fittingly enough, when the trio show up in other Yogscast Complete Pack series, they are treated as villains.
• Villainous BSoD: In DayZ, after killing another player for no real reason, Smith traps himself and Ross inside of a barn while luring dozens of zombies inside by using an overly loud gun, without much concern for either his or Ross's safety as he rants about being 'too good' at the game and arguing with no one in particular that the murder was justified. He only seems to get over this sort of rambling instability once Trottimus sees Doctor Zombie again on the other side of the map with another vehicle.
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • While it was just plain abuse in the beginning of the series, near the end of the Epic Hatventure playthrough the Overseer likely considers himself this towards the trio. The fact that he is proud of them by the end will do nothing to stop him from hurling insults at them.
  • The Sirs are this to each other. They work together professionally and do appear to be really good friends when push comes to shove, but also trash talk each other while competing. Ross in particular gloats at the others to "GFY" every time he wins at Trials.
  • The Sirs, Lewis Brindley, Turpster and Sips love each other's humour and have a lot of fun together, but can be very profane in their Garry's Mod Prop Hunt, Trouble in Terrorist Town and Murder matches, to say nothing of their SHATblock playthrough.
  • They really do get on well with Strippin and Benji in Cornerstone, but tend to verbally abuse them a lot.
  • Despite bantering relentlessly with Kim Richards and repeatedly pranking one another, the trio and her are great friends.
• Vocal Dissonance: Despite being the shortest of the trio, Trott has the deepest voice out of all of them.
• Waistcoat of Style: Smiffy's current Minecraft skin is designed with this.
• We Used to Be Friends: Smith uses this exact line on Ross in an episode of 1.8.2 Minecraft, when Ross is trying to drown Smith in revenge against a particularly brutal trolling session.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In their Feed the Beast series, the trio tames and names a couple of scorpions only to instantly forget about them. In a later episode, they suddenly remember them and ask each other where they went. Nobody seems to know.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: The Sirs heavily rely on the fact that there is three of them, and tend to do a lot of their game problem solving with this in mind. While this can lead to very effective strategies, such as their use of Zerg Rushing in 'Crown Conquest' and their group coordination in games like Halo, this can also sometimes become a case of Crippling Overspecialization, like in the case where the Cobble Generator in their early episodes of Skyblock, an easily one-manned device for the average Minecraft player, suddenly requires all three of their attentions (one person to pick, one person to dip, and one person on ice duty) to properly maintain.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Smith is utterly terrified of monkeys, and thus finds Planet of the Apes-style content to be a particular horror of his.
• Zerg Rush: This is how they kill Lewis and Simon in the third round of Crown Conquest. Due to their increased team size, it works well for PVP.
• Zonk: Would be UndesirablePrizes if they didn't lampshade it so much; especially in their early Hat Chats, the Sirs typically gave away as prizes for being Top Hatter or Executive Producer whatever games they happened to have around that they had no desire to play anymore, typically because the games weren't that good. Their very first prize, Rayman Raving Rabbids, was described by them as being "Fun...for a couple of hours."

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