MVGLive, also called Out Of Control Live! at one point, is a let's play live series on Mental that is hosted by Mike Riley and stars a number of other cast members. The idea behind the show is that Mike Riley is generally terrible at the games he plays, so much of the comedy is derived from his bad gameplay. Other sources of comedy are the random conversations that the cast have, often having nothing to do with the game being played.
The show began officially in December of 2012 as a short-lived live show on JustinTV before being shelved for a bit. Once Mike got some upgrades to his equipment, he began streaming MVGLive shows again in May of 2013. Initially, he could only do games from early systems (NES, SNES, etc.), but another upgrade to his equipment in 2016 allowed him access to any game up to the Gamecube and PS2 generation of games, as well as giving him the ability to stream a greater number of Steam games.
The show was initially only on Wednesdays for most of its run from 2013-2014. In 2014, Thursdays was briefly made the second day of the week for the show, but that idea was nixed due to the great difficulty in having the time to do a Thursday show regularly. The show remained on Wednesdays only until the show was shelved in favor of Geek Juice Gaming Live in late 2015. Geek Juice Gaming Live lasted all of three months before being canned for good by Mike leaving Geek Juice Media. Following that, he brought back MVGLive on Wednesdays only again for the remainder of 2016. Starting in 2017, the show now airs on Mondays and Wednesdays. In mid-2017, the show also replaced the MentalCast in the Tuesday slot. Also in 2017, the show's name was changed to Out of Control Live! for about nine months. The show returned to its former moniker in December of 2017.
This video series gives examples of the following tropes:
- Aborted Arc: Any series of videos focused on a game that prematurely end due to either poor gameplay on Mike's part, or technical issues.
- Atomic F-Bomb: When he glitched through the floor in Sonic Adventure.
- Any time he clears a particularly difficult section of a game, Mike will exclaim "FUCKING FINALLY."
- Became a Cluster F-Bomb during Sonic Adventure 2 during a section where Sonic was grinding up a rail towards a bumper. Sonic couldn't quite make it several times in a row, causing Mike to get more and more animated, finally ending with screaming at the top of his lungs that he was going to kill Sonic. The cast, of course, nearly died laughing.
- Baseball Episode: The Super Mega Baseball 2 series.
- Big-Breast Pride: Michelle Light once opened a segment by openly opining "Gosh darn it, why do I have to have such voluptuous tits?"
- Big "OMG!": The reaction elicited from Mike the first time he procured both Ludovico Technique and Brimstone together in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.
- Jace and Mike both did one when Jace won both showcases during a playing of the 2008 Wii The Price Is Right.
- Big "WHAT?!": Mike did one while playing Sonic Adventure (a notoriously broken game), during the bumper cars segment. He bashes an enemy to destroy him and free the car up for use. Mike jumps into it, but somehow misses and falls through the floor. Cue the trope. Also counts as a Precision F-Strike, because he actually said "WHAT THE FUCK?!" at the top of his lungs.
- Brick Joke: During a November playing of Quiplash 2
, Michelle Light says out loud that she forgot how to spell a word. Dane jumps in and says "it's C-A-T." A few prompts into the second round, Michelle's answer that she was trying to spell comes up... it's "CAT." Mike and Billy lose their shit. - Butt-Monkey: Adam Snyder to the extreme, following him being kicked off the show. Billy will often do exaggerated impressions of him saying extremely outlandish things.
- Michael Riley himself in a lot of ways, since he's playing the games (usually badly).
- Adam Bednarczyk also, due to the "prison bitch" running joke.
- Canon Discontinuity: Anytime a live show doesn't go up on YouTube or the Mental website. Usually this is due to nobody saying much of anything, making the video kind of boring, but there have been a couple of unreposted videos due to technical issues.
- Catchphrase: Often, Mike or Dane Forgione will say "Dey stick da hand in da anoos!" at literally any opportunity.
- Arin Hanson of the Game Grumps literally gave Dane (and the rest of the cast, by proxy) the go-ahead to run with the joke as hard as they could.
- For the longest time, Mike would quote the "It's been..." from the Barenaked Ladies song "One Week."
- Anytime Mike ends a game out of frustration, the rest of the call will immediately say "rage quit!"
- Continuity Lockout: There are a lot of running jokes and such that persist throughout the episodes. Fortunately, this is partially subverted as a lot of running jokes that were prevalent early on are no longer made, which makes it less likely that the viewer will be lost.
- Happens in-universe, too, whenever anyone on the call who isn't regularly on the show partakes in a game of Quiplash 2 using custom prompts.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Once it gets to be fairly late in the evening, the entire cast can become this, usually referred to as "stream of conciousness" by Mike and others.
- There have been a few occasions where lack of sleep have caused Mike to be really out there during entire shows.
- Crossover: With Tiffany Starr. They did a one-shot of a terrible Gamejolt game called TotalMaze: Survival.
- Cuteness Proximity: Anytime Cat Lencione shows up on the cast, expect the coarse language to be toned back a bit, as well as several comments about how adorable she is.
- Determinator: Inverted, as if a game gets far too frustrating for Mike, he'll either end the night there (if it's late enough), or he'll Rage Quit.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: During the first year of the show, due to how CPU intensive using Skype was, he went solo on most of his streams.
- Epic Fail: Literally the whole premise of the show, because Mike tends to be bad at games.
- Fan Disservice: Mike once played a hacked version of Punch-Out!! which removed the clothes of the boxers. Prompt mixed reactions from the rest of the cast.
- Adam Snyder once joined the call while naked in the bathtub. This caused Jeremy Garcia to angrily leave the call in disgust.
- Failed a Spot Check: Often, Mike will miss things in video games because, as someone who is managing a video game, a stream, a Discord call and constantly filling dead space, he will not pay very close attention. This will often lead to the rest of the call (usually Mark Gledhill) to look up a walkthrough. Of course, Mike will immediately lampshade how stupid he was for missing obvious things.
- Literally the entire playthrough of Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force inverts this. Mike, being a lifelong fan of first-person shooter games, actually demonstrates adept knowledge of first-person shooter mechanics and puzzle-solving to actually get through the entire time with no help from cheats or anyone else helping him for almost the whole thing. The little help he DID receive was mostly just Mark and chat member Steven pointing out little things that Mike missed that he immediately picked up on. Even more impressive, after dying once to the final boss, on his second try, he beats him and the game. Even more impressive: he'd never played the game before playing it on the show, so he made it through the entire game without help, cheats or FAQs and beat it in about 12 hours total.
- Funny Background Event: During a playthrough of The Binding of Isaac, some really loud water is heard running on Adam Snyder's end. When asked why, Adam replied that he had "stepped in cat shit."
- Mark Gledhill has a tendency to reply to his parents when they call to him from upstairs.
- During the 2018 Super Mario World playthrough, Dane Forgione remarked that he knew Michael Riley "when he was 17 and I was negative-36." Mike noted that because of this he used to "yell really loud at his dad's balls." Cue Dane's father walking by at that exact moment, turning to Dane and mouthing "What the fuck did he just say?" The call, of course, finds this incredibly hilarious.4
- Gag Echo: Occurs at the end of the Super Mario Odyssey playthrough. The screen displays "Thanks for playing!" so Mike, jokingly and as Mario, says "Thank you so much for-a playing my game!" Not even one second later, Mario in-game says the EXACT SAME THING. This causes Dane to have to leave the room.
- Gratuitous German: Mike prides himself on being able to correctly pronounce "Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien" (the Department of Media Harmful to Young Persons in Germany). This was even verified by a German fan of the show.
- The playthrough of Wolfenstein II is pretty much this as well. Mike even sang "Du Hast" by Rammstein in a perfect Till Lindemann impression, which he can only do when he's hoarse.
- Gushing About Shows You Like: In-universe.
- Mike is an unabashed fan of the Doom series and The Binding of Isaac.
- Jeremy Garcia has been known to talk at length about movies he loves, including David Cronenberg films and anything released in the Criterion Collection.
- Mike, Dane and Billy have made no secret about the fact that they're fans of Game Grumps.
- Mike has also made no secret about being a fan of Northernlion and newLEGACYinc.
- The Hyena: Michael Riley, natch. If something really funny happens, he'll pause the game, drop his controller and cackle loudly while doubled over.
- In-Series Nickname: During Super Mega Baseball 2, Mike had several nicknames for the cast of the show, who was inserted into the game via creation tools. Billy was "The Beast," due to his tendency to hit doubles and homers, Chelsea was "The Shark," Dane was "Dangerous Dane," "Magnificent" Mike Riley, Ashley "Driller Killer" Miller, "Aussie" Adam Bednarczyk (naturally), and "Mean" Mark Gledhill.
- Land Down Under: Adam Bednarczyk is basically this in walking upright human form.
- Long Runner: He played The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth for two months straight, resulting in over 120 segments of that game alone, making it the longest-running series on a single game in show history.
- Most of the Jackbox games are also this, due to consistently returning to them because of the fact that Mike can play them with the rest of the cast. In fact, Quiplash 2 alone has produced 41 videos and Trivia Murder Party has 32 videos.
- MST: Invoked by everyone on the call except Mike, as Mike is actually playing the game. The rest of the call riff on the game itself and, subsequently and inevitably, Mike's gameplay.
- Official Couple: Played with. In an early playing of ''Drawful, Mike starts a Running Joke involving Michelle Light and Jeremy Garcia being a cute couple.
- Another running joke saw Michelle and Michael once be "internet married," followed by an "internet divorce" resulting in Michelle getting half of the MentalCast.
- Since Michelle has a boyfriend as of 2018, this running joke has been dropped.
- Oh, Crap!: Mike plays The Binding of Isaac mod Antibirth for about ninety minutes... before realizing he's muted on stream.
- Note that everyone else could be heard, but due to the way Mike sets up audio for the MentalCast, he had his normal mic set to mute on his broadcaster.
- Reference Overdosed: A lot of the comedy in the show comes from referencing other television shows, movies, video games and even other web series. Game Grumps is referenced a lot due to Mike, Dane and Billy Carter being fans of the show. Mike will also commonly reference Northernlion, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye and even newLEGACYinc.
- During Super Mega Baseball 2, whenever Mike hits a homerun, he would do an overblown impression of Blue Jays announcer Buck Martinez.
- Running Gag: Mike doing an impression of Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz lead to a recurring joke. Of course, this joke was plucked from Game Grumps.
- Adam Bednarczyk and his prison bitches.
- Michelle and Jeremy being a couple counts.
- The robot voice Mike does, which started during the Sonic Adventure playthrough, quickly became a running joke.
- Anytime something inappropriate is said, Mark Gledhill will invariably sigh, which he played straight initially, but eventually started playing for laughs.
- Mark Gledhill's exclamation that he "is the goddamn card czar!"
- "Dey stick da hand in da anoos!"
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Pretty much every episode ever. One of the focal points of the show is that the crew talks about pretty much everything, except the gameplay, although they have been known to buckle down and actually comment on what's happening should something weird or funny be taking place.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Dane Forgione is very well known on the show for getting up and actually leaving the room if something super-unbelievable happens on the show. He even ended up having a Twitch emoji created based on it.
- Take That Me / Self-Deprecation: Mike, whenever he's playing poorly, will often say he's a terrible gamer out loud. A few times, he's even asked why anyone watches the show, since he's terrible at video games. Usually leads to the rest of the cast telling him he's too hard on himself.
- Tempting Fate: During the second episode of The Price is Right (the 2008 Wii game), Jace D. Ace ends up getting his Contestants Row bid right on the nose. The cast jokes that Jace's Jokerdy! luck was bleeding into this game (a reference to the MentalCast). Jace, indeed, spins the Showcase Showdown wheel for a total of $1. Mike off-handedly says "watch Jace win both showcases". He, in fact, does just that not even five minutes later, coming within $40 of his estimate. Cue reactions from the call.
- Becomes a Threat Backfire for Dane Forgione, who said that if Jace won both showcases, he'd get naked on the next Skype call.
