Podcast / Cool Kids Table

Left to right: Alan, Shannon, Jake, and Josh. Official art by Shannon Manor.

Jake: We didn't actually plan what to say for this, so I hope you're into people flying by the seat of their pants and just incapable of playing game systems correctly.
Josh: And bad puns!
Alan: Wonderful puns.

— Cool Kids Table promo

Cool Kids Table is an Actual Play podcast from Hey! Jake and Josh and a spin-off of Pokémon World Tour: United. After having so much fun playing a Pokemon tabletop game with their friends Shannon and Alan, the four created an actual-play anthology podcast so they could experiment with other game systems. Anything is on the table, and the rules of the various games are guidelines at best. Systems will be broken if it means the players can have more fun. Most games feature Alan as GM and the other three as players, but there are some instances of others taking the reigns, and some games feature special guests alongside the main cast.

Games Played So Far:

• All I Want for Christmas (episodes 1-2): Using the "All Out of Bubblegum" system. It's Christmas Eve 1996, and the most popular toy is Turboman. Soccer mom Chrissy Nada (Jake), teenager Britney (Shannon), and toy collector Jed Wilson (Josh) fight there way to the toy store in an attempt to get one of the last two available.
• Small Magic (episodes 3-5): Using the translated "Ryuutama" system. Legend tells of the Tenshi and Oni, two precursor races who went to war after a union between the two produced humanity. In the present day, hunter and "shitty teen" Stege (Jake) and grandma for hire Maggie (Shannon) help escort child Prince Janus Kuyo (Josh) to the lost heavenly city of the Tenshi and save the kingdom. Alan plays Ao-ryuu the Azure Ryuujin, this game's variant of a GM.
• Creepy Town (episodes 6-8): Using the "Dead Teenager" system. In the slasher movie Nowhere, Kansas, a group of shitty teens have been hired to work the annual Creepy Town haunted house. Three victims are created and controlled by each Shannon (Ethan, Katie, and Alli), Josh (Spencer, Die, and William), Jake (Stacey, Oliver, and Olivia), and Alan (Frank, Walter, and Veronica). As per the game's rules, the position of Director rotates between each player every scene.
• The Wreck (episode 9): Using the "Ghost Ship Enyo" system, an out-loud Text Adventure. In the year 3100, Captain Lazy Boy (played by Jake, Josh, and Shannon simultaneously) arrives on the wreck of the spaceship Enyo to help test an advanced air-processing device, and instead discovers several restless spirits and a conspiracy from a century-old war. Though the story was not completed, the group deigned to end it early due to the difficulty translating the elements of the game to a podcast medium.
• The Fallen Gods (episodes 11-14, 18-21, 27-30, 39-42, 69-73, 79-82; ongoing): Using Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition. Half-Elven Sorceress Tuatha (Jake), Elven Ranger/Rogue Solvin (Shannon) and Human Eldritch Knight Flint (Josh) are tasked by the goddess Mina to find the lost gods trapped in artifacts in order to release them in the war against Chaos. Has it's own page here.
• Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles (episodes 15-17): Using the Margaret Weiss "Serenity RPG" system, specifically the "Motherlode" pre-made adventure. The crew of the Zelda — engineer Roc Me Amadeus (Shannon), Pilot Mickey Spacelust (Josh), demolitions expert Kimmy Jin (Jake), and ex-Alliance medic Caleb (Shannon's husband and guest David Pinckney) — is hired to salvage a stranded Alliance ship, only to find that it's been lost in highly dangerous territory, and the job is anything but simple.
• Hogwarts: The New Class (episodes 22-25): A Harry Potter-based game using the Savage Worlds system. Jake, Josh, Shannon, and guest Matt Hoadley play themselves as American muggle-borns whose records were destroyed by Death Eaters during the second wizarding war. After being chosen by random chance, they're offered the chance to be turned into eleven-year olds and go through a full seven years of Hogwarts education in order to join the wizarding community proper. Hilarity Ensues.
• Bloody Mooney: A pair of bonus episodes promoting the "Rememorex" system, which was in the process of being kickstarted during the episodes' release. In the 80s teen horror movie Bloody Mooney, average athlete JT (Josh), aloof criminal Jess (Jake), and spoiled princess Keri (Shannon) are stuck in detention when a mysterious crate crashes through the roof of their school. Inside they discover a strange, if not adorable, critter, but things soon take a turn for the worse.
• Homeward Bound 4 (episode 26): The first year anniversary special, which uses the Escape from Triassic Park system. Jake, Josh, and Shannon play as a trio of animals making their way home from the zoo after something goes wrong.
• Sequinox (episodes 31-38, 43, 50-58, 74, 83-Present; ongoing): Using the "Sailor Moon RPG" system. Four teenage girls—Yuki Fuyutama (Alan), Hannah Flowers (Josh), Chel Danielson (Jake), and Syd St. Martin (guest Cassidy Stone)—discover they are magical girls themed after the four seasons and are destined to protect the Earth from invading stars. This time, Shannon GMs. Has its own page here.
• Star War: A Star Wars Story 001—A Lightly Used Hope (Totally Canon, We Mean It) (April Fools 2018): Using the Star Wars: Roleplaying Game system. When a strange transmission is found on the planet Tattooine, Admiral Ackbar releases a trio of Old Republic Jedi (played by Jake, Josh, and Shannon) from Carbonite. However, not everything is as it seems.
• Here We Gooooo! (episodes 44-48, 75-78; ongoing): Using a Super Mario Bros. homebrew developed by Josh, who also GMs. Dario Mario the Plumber (Jake), Princess Crania the Princess (Shannon), and T. Yoshisaur Munchikoopas the 52nd aka Yoshi (Alan) are recruited by Princess Caramel Seltzer of the Soda Pop kingdom to save her and her people from the dread Diet Pirates.
• Dan, Danny, and Daniel (episode 49): The second year anniversary special, which uses the "Three Things in a Trench Coat" system. Three different versions of Danny Devito—Frank Reynolds (Danny, played by Shannon), The Penguin (Daniel, played by Jake), and Mario (Dan, played by Josh)—work together inside a trench coat in order to get into places Danny DeVito is not supposed to be.
• The Chimera Program (episode 59-63): Using Masks: A New Generation system. The Chimera Program is a top secret initiative dedicated to making weapons out of teenagers. And after a mass breakout Projects Golden (Josh as The Janus), Void (Shannon as The Newborn), Papyrus (Guest Sky Ertl as The Beacon), and Wyvern (Jake as The Transformed) have to evade their former handlers while trying to reclaim their memories.
• Smawl Problems (episode 64-67): Using the Diminuitive RPG system. The Dell cousins April (Josh), Sammy (Alan), and Mel (Shannon) visit their Grammy for the summer. When their younger cousin Derek wanders off and they go looking for him, they end up finding a little adventure. DMed by Jake.
• Digimon Advanced!: The third year anniversary special, which uses the Digimon: Digital Adventures system. Fiona (Jake), Sully (Josh), and Toni (Shannon) are transported to the digital world to meet their respective partners Cervimon, Keromon, and Dragomon. Also released on the anniversary of Digimon Adventure's premier.

The podcast has a twitter here, and they also track the hashtag "CKTCast". New episodes are generally released every other Sunday.

This podcast provides examples of:

• Absurd Phobia: The Smawls are terrified of rhododendrons. While Jake does discuss that they're an invasive species and how the Irish government once had to fight them off in the past, there's no reason given for the Smawls' fears.
• Accidental Kiss: In Homeward Bound 4, Jake the Deinonychus tries to bite off Josh the T. rex's muzzle, but when he fails he ends up giving him a little smooch instead.
• Accidental Misnaming: A favourite gag in several settings.
  • In Creepy Town, Will does this constantly. He calls Alli "Kelly" and Walter "Wilbur" immediately after meeting them.
  • In Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles, Mickey constantly calls Todd "Tim".
  • In Here We Gooooo! Since Yoshi caught her letter with his tongue and accidentally wiped off several letters, he refers to Princess Caramel Seltzer as "Cammy Seller".
• Achievements in Ignorance: Happens in Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles. Thanks to Josh's great piloting roll, Mickey is able to dock the shuttle while passed out.
• Acrofatic: Jed from All I Want for Christmas is able to pull off a lot of extreme stunts thanks to multiple successful Badass rolls.
• Acting Unnatural: In Bloody Mooney, when Jess realizes that the unmarked van is following her and JT and tells him to look, he does a sweet dance move to keep it from looking too obvious. It works.
  • The teens from "The Chimera Program" attempt this, though Void makes it difficult. They briefly consider having them whistle, though it would likely create a vacuum. They settle on asking them to forms pockets for their hands.
• Adults Are Useless: In Creepy Town, the teachers supervising the kids setting up the haunted house are incredibly ineffectual, especially considering the dangerous weapons (such as real axes and a flamethrower) that they let the kids utilize.
  • Keri's mom in Bloody Mooney gets eaten by Mooney, the government agents both die fighting it, and her butler pisses himself in fear. The teens are able to save the day by forcing it into a van and away from the light of the moon to de-transform it.
• Afraid of Blood: Mickey from Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles is so scared of blood that as soon as the crew gets onto the Alliance ship covered in blood and guts after the reaver attack he passes out.
• All Animals Are Dogs: In Hogwarts: The New Class, Jake asks for a pet pygmy gryphon, which he describes as basically a dog. He names it Jomps.
  • In Homeward Bound 4, Jake the Deinonychus plays this up in order to get sympathy from the human tourists.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Jessica and Keri in Bloody Mooney have mutual undisclosed crushes on each other, but of course neither of them know because they run in different circles.
• Alpha Bitch: Katie Anderson in Creepy Town is designed to be a mean girl, and her compulsion is exploiting weaknesses in others.
  • Keri is one initially in Bloody Mooney, though the events of the film help her mellow out.
• Alternate History: Dan, Danny, and Daniel takes place in a world where Danny DeVito plays Mario in a Super Mario Bros. (1993) sequel called 2-per Mario Bros.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Invoked during Bloody Mooney. When the teacher in detention threatens to hit the students with a paddle, Jessica shoots back that she can't because it's 1986. Alan, through the teacher, points out that striking students was actually still allowed until the nineties.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: In Hogwarts: The New Class, Josh's cat Geno is blue.
• Ambiguously Gay: In Creepy Town, Alan suggests that Veronica's jealousy of Stacey and Ethan might come from an unconscious crush on Stacey rather than Ethan. However, she dies before anything can come from it.
• Angrish: Stege from Small Magicdissolves into this when Maggie points out he could've easily killed the cockatrice himself instead of her doing it.
• Animal Motifs: In Small Magic, the royal family is connected to birds. They tend to listen to them and those assisting them.
• Anyone Can Die: In Creepy Town. Who survives each scene and who doesn't is dependent on the luck of the draw, which means at any moment a victim could meet their fate, no matter how much their player likes them.
• Apologetic Attacker: Occurs in the backstory to Small Magic. After being forced to wipe out most of the Oni and send the rest into a deep slumber, the Tenshi wept over their former friends and allies.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: In Smawl Problems, Mel mocks Sammy for theorizing that the train is powered by invisible people by repeatedly insisting magic isn't real. Keep in mind, just a few minutes ago the two of them were shrunk down to inch-height by falling through a magic tree stump.
• Arboreal Abode: One pops up in Small Magic. The town where Janus's castle is located is built atop the roots of a giant tree, and the tree itself has been transformed into the royal palace.
• Armored Closet Gay: In Creepy Town. The toughest jocks in town, Ethan and Frank, are revealed to be secret boyfriends just before Frank's death.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: When the party gets to the bottling factory in Here We Gooooo!, one floor is where the soda is carbonated by boiling it. Though Josh does state that this is for the sake of the level design and knows that it's not how it works in real life.
• Artistic License – Engineering: The kids' computer teacher in Digimon Advanced! tries to teach the kids that computers can take on minds of their own if used long enough. Fiona has serious doubts about this but writes it down just to look busy.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: Comes up in Homeward Bound 4. Josh and Alan both call out the fact that the Josh the T. rex can't see objects and people moving quickly as being long disproven by now. They also bring up the feathered dinosaurs and decide that Jake the Deinonychus and Shannon the Dilophosaurus have them, but Josh the T. rex does not.
• Ascended Fanboy: In-unierse during Hogwarts: The New Class. Jake, Matt, and Shannon especially are all fans of Harry Potter (though that doesn't stop them from pointing out the inconsistencies and poor-logic of the world) who get to go through Hogwarts. Shannon is especially excited to get officially sorted into Ravenclaw. Subverted with Josh who, though he has read some books and seen some movies, is not as familiar with it as the other three kids.
• As Himself: Jake, Josh, Shannon, and Matt all play fictionalized versions of themselves, aged down and as muggle-borns, in Hogwarts: The New Class.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!:
  • Yoshi from Here We Gooooo! has trouble focusing on things, and is chasing butterflies absentmindedly when we first meet him.
  • From Smawl Problems. In the middle of a serious discussion about the dangers of the cat and other animals to the Smawls and Bigs who became Smawls, and how Derek could be dead, April runs to keep playing the video game she was before and even pressures Sammy into joining her. Bodkin and Mel are a little shocked at how easily they got distracted from the situation at hand.
• Attention Whore: A few of the teens in Creepy Town. Spencer's compulsion is looking cool, and Veronica's is just attention in general.
• Awesome Mc Cool Name: Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles has this as the reasoning behind Josh and Shannon's characters, Mickey Spacelust and Roc Me Amadeus.
• Badass Adorable: Ne-on in Star War is an Ewok Jedi whose chest is covered in battle scars.
• Bait-and-Switch: A lot of the first episode of Smawl Problems implies that the central plot will be the Dell cousins investigating their grandma's haunted house, rather than all the kids being shrunk down.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: Parodied in Star War when Ackbar tells the Jedi that the prophecy about bringing about balance in the force clearly meant wipe out all the Sith so that only the light remains.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Though Janus from Small Magic can fight with a polearm, he prefers using his fists.
• Basilisk and Cockatrice: In Small Magic the party run afoul of a cockatrice after accidentally hunting and eating some of her chicks.
• BBC Quarry: The Small Magic party passes through one during their journey. Alan claims to see a group of colourful people fighting a monster before Josh vetoes that.
• BFS: In Creepy Town, Walter insists on adding a claymore to the hillbilly torture shack room, regardless of how incongruous that is.
• Big Fancy Castle:
  • In Small Magic, the castle that the Koyo royal family lives in is made out a giant tree, magically formed into a castle.
  • In Here We Gooooo!, Princess Caramel Seltzer's palace is made out of giant soda bottles.
• Big Red Devil: The monster in Creepy Town takes this form to drag Frank into the fog and kill him.
• Bigger on the Inside: Hermione still has her clutch of holding from book seven in Hogwarts: The New Class. Josh asks if he can make one using the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fannypack he had as a child. Matt asks if he can do the same spell on a police box.
• Black Comedy: A few instances pop up in The Wreck.
  • Joy Hibler doesn't know how she died. Josh tries to hold out the rope they got the room before and ask her if that's how.
  • After several items are deemed too big to put in the inventory (including a ghost), Lazy Boy ends up with a rope and a stool.
  Josh: You know, just in case things get too crazy.
• Bland-Name Product: Several of them pop in "The Chimera Program", such as Bullseye (Target) and Chef Cook 'em Up (Chef Boyardee).
  • Jake declares Smawl Problems to be a no-brands run, leading to some of these. They change Dunkin Donuts to Dunkies, including Badonk-sized coffees and coffee with sprinkles and stuff called "Junk in the Dunk".
    • Grammy has an old Superplex Entertainment System in her games room, with Jake rattling off the iterations of the system (Superplex Plus, Tiger Superplex, Dragon Superplex, and the handheld Plexkid).
    • As for board games she has Big Business (Monopoly), Mix'ems (Scrabble), Live It (The Game of Life), and Oops! (Sorry!).
• Blood Knight: Kimmy from Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles likes killing people. She finds it a fun activity.
  • The three unfrozen Jedi in Star War are far less peaceful than Ackbar expected. Gol even says that it's a good thing he found them instead of other Jedi, since the ones who died during the Empire's take-over must have been incredibly weak to be defeated by clones.
• Bottle Episode: The first episode of Hogwarts: The New Class takes place entirely in a single room, where the four players complain about how bad and convoluted the plan is.
• Brick Joke: In Bloody Mooney, Jake tries to get Alan to let Jess have a passive music bonus because it can calm her down, suggesting Scandal's "The Warrior" as a song that'll get her pumped up in a fight. Alan denies it. In the second episode, Jake pulls out an email from the creators that justifies his initial attempt, and immediately has Jess start playing "The Warrior".
• Building Swing: A variant in All I Want for Christmas—Chrissy swings across traffic using a rope hanging from a float in the Christmas Eve parade.
• Call a Human a "Meatbag": In The Wreck, ALAN slips a "meatbag" into one of their speeches, with Lazy Boy only barely noticing.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": In Homeward Bound 4. Since they're animals and don't understand human things, tasers and guns are referred to as "shock-sticks" and "bang-sticks".
• Calling Your Attacks: Digimon Advanced! has this naturally, with all the attacks having an echo filter over them.
• Cassandra Truth: Nobody in Creepy Town believes Oliver at first when he appears panicking that Ethan is dead. For that matter, nobody believes Frank when he claims the devil possessed his chainsaw to kill Ethan.
• Celestial Body: Void from The Chimera Program is a person-shaped black hole, though eventually the group becomes able to see stars inside of their being.
• Chainsaw Good: In Creepy Town, the torture cabin has a chainsaw in it that the killer activates to kill Ethan.
• Chandelier Swing: Jed pulls one off in the second episode of All I Want for Christmas.
• Chekhov's Gun: Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles has this, or rather, Chekovs missiles. Kimmi outfitted the shuttle with them just in case. Subverted in that they don't advance the plot, Kimmi just fires them to destroy the ships at the end and because she really wanted to fire them.
  • In Smawl Problems, Mel was insistent on getting the bulkhead to the basement open as much as she could in the first episode. She only cracks it a little bit, but when they're little and need to get back in from the outside it's just big enough to fit.
• Chekhov's Armory: One part of the "Dead Teenager" game used for Creepy Town is to create "elements" in the earlier acts that can come into play later in the game, though several of them don't go anywhere.
  • Spencer sets up a heavy table in the haunted house but accidentally loosens the bolts instead of tightening them.
  • Katie breaks some glass props because she doesn't care about what she's doing.
  • Spencer pours some actual acid in the prop beakers to make it look cool. Stacey uses it to fight back the image of a reanimated Ethan.
  • The torture room gets equipped with a chainsaw, ladder, rusty tools, and a hidden Claymore. The monster activates the chainsaw to bisect Ethan opening night. Later on the meathook swings into the back of Katie's head.
  • The spooky forest room has roots that are easy to trip over, fog, and motion-sensing fake spiders. Oliver and Veronica set up a real axe in a stump there as well. Die trips over the roots, gets lost in the fog, and is smashed in the face with an axe-wielding psycho.
  • Olivia pours a bottle of fake blood all over the floor of the space hell room. She also paints an occult symbol there that ends up devouring her.
  • Die installs a flamethrower in her room, with an intensity knob that she leaves on the highest setting. This also prompts Frank to bring in a fire extinguisher.
  • There's a set of stairs in the house that don't actually lead anywhere.
  • The zombie room has baseball bats and a fire axe in it. The monster kills Die with the axe installed in the spooky forest room.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: Janus in Small Magic is destined to find a way to keep the Oni asleep and the world at peace. Maggie and Stege are called upon to protect him during his Journey.
• Christmas Episode: All I Want for Christmas. It's in the title.
• Classified Information: In The Chimera Program, Void's file is almost entirely blacked out.
• Clock Tower: Halcyon City has plenty of them in The Chimera Program for no reason other than aesthetic.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Roc from Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles is a little odd, such as when he spends most of his time changing his wardrobe to different ridiculous outfits, hanging his hat on the head of one of Todd's mercenaries to keep it out of the way, and wearing two pairs of sunglasses at once.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The Ryutama system used in Small Magic asks that each character have a hero colour. Stege is brown, Maggie is green, and Janus is blue.
  • Along with character class, colour is the other part of the Splat in Josh's "Super Mario RPG' system and determines the Status Effects that a character can do in . Red is fire (burn), green is lightning (shrink), pink is love (sleep), yellow is sand (dizzy), purple is shadow (fear), light blue is ice (freeze), and regular blue is star (silence). For Here We Gooooo! itself, Dario is yellow, Yoshi is green, and Crania is purple.
• Commercial Break Cliffhanger: Since they're playing as if Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles is an actual Firefly revival series, they cut to commercial right after Todd's Tempting Fate moment below.
• Compelling Voice: Bellerophon from "The Chimera Program" can influence other members of the program, though it's not perfect. Golden can resist because he hasn't been cycled enough, whereas Void can resist because the weakness was cycled out of their system. Papyrus can also resist it by making himself and his brain flat.
• Contrived Coincidence: In Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles, Roc just so happens to have a circuit board in his kimono pocket just like the one that needs to be replaced in the bridge.
• Cool Helmet: Bellerophon in "The Chimera Program" wears one that boosts his power and also controls him to work against the other projects.
• Cool Train: The Smawls from Smawl Problems built a train out of debris they cobbled together over the years that runs between the Bantam lands in the woods and the Trifle lands in the house.
• Costume-Test Montage: A weird variant happens in Small Magic. While looking for a cart to help Shirley the sheep carry the party's items, they get a "carting" montage.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: In The Wreck, Lazy Boy finds a message written in blood on the walls of the ship that reads "OUR DEATHS WERE IN VAIN".
• Covered in Scars: In Star War, Ne-on's chest is shaved and scarred, but his arms, legs, and head are still fluffy.
• Crazy Enough to Work: in Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles, Mickey's plan to slingshot the Reaver ship into the Hands of Blue ship and beat them to the Zelda is dubbed "just stupid enough for Firefly".
• Creepy Doll: A few are set up in the The Shining room in Creepy Town. A giant one that looks like Die appears and kills Stacey near the end.
• Creepy Monotone: November from The Chimera Program never speaks with inflection, even when joking with people.
• Cross Player: There are plenty of characters whose genders don't match their players. Most commonly Jake, who normally plays as a girl, and Shannon, who normally plays as a guy.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Creepy Town is a slasher movie, so naturally some of these occur.
  • Ethan is bisected by a chainsaw.
  • Spencer drowns in the floor.
  • Walter and Veronica get pulled into the wall.
  • Frank is dragged into the fog by the Devil.
  • Stacey is drowned by a giant Creepy Doll that looks like Dianne.
  • Will is torn in half by the monster in the form of Ethan.
• Cruel Cheerleader: In Creepy Town, Stacy Quartermain is the head cheerleader. She's slightly nicer than Katie, but she'll happily throw insults at people she doesn't like.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: In Hogwarts: The New Class, Jake's pet gryphon Jomps is always screeching, much to everyone's chagrin except (sometimes) Jake's.
• Cute Kitten: In Hogwarts: The New Class, Josh adopts a stray kitten in Diagon Alley that he names Geno. It ends up inhabiting his robes most of the time.
• Damsel out of Distress: Keri from Bloody Mooney is secretly a good fighter, and also a high-school gossip.
• Dance Battler: JT utilizes his active dance skill to very good effect while fighting Mooney in episode 2 of Bloody Mooney.
• Demonic Possession: Appears to be the source of the monster in Creepy Town. Frank specifically says that the Devil is the cause behind everything.
• Delayed Reaction: From Bloody Mooney. It takes Shannon, and by extension Keri, a few minutes to understand a joke JT made about her. Once she does get it, she smacks him again.
• Delinquents: Jessica from Bloody Mooney is a teenage crook.
• Developing Doomed Characters: The premise of the "Dead Teenager" game used for Creepy Town is to make characters (who in the game rules are specifically called "victims") that we care about a little bit before they're killed by the villain.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Toni's partner Digimon from Digimon Advanced! is Dragomon, who looks like a draconic velociraptor with horns, a beak, and no wings. His champion form Wyrmmon leans more towards the dragon side, taking the form of a large armoured wyvern with robotic arms.
• Direct Line to the Author: In Hogwarts: The New Class, almost everything from Harry Potter is real, and JK Rowling is a squib who wrote dramatizations of Harry's adventures. McGonagall was the one who recommended Maggie Smith to play her in the films. More importantly, the players are all muggle-borns whose records were lost and never got to develop their powers.
• Dishing Out Dirt:
  • Dario from Here We Gooooo! is yellow, which gives him power over sand.
  • Grain from The Chimera Program can control sand.
• Disproportionate Retribution: JT from Bloody Mooney was sent to detention for swearing at Keri and then getting punched by her. Though it's possible that, since it was an altercation between a guy and a girl, he was automatically assumed to be at fault regardless.
• Distressed Dude: In Here We Gooooo!, the last hero of the Soda Pop Kingdom gets captured while trying to free the Grape Escape factory, and the party has to free him. When they ask Princess Caramel Seltzer about him, she admits that she's aware of him and that he's actually not that great.
• Double Entendre: In Creepy Town, Ethan explains that they could set up a bed in the exorcism room to shake mechanically. Stacey suggests that the two of them could make it shake themselves. Ethan doesn't get it.
• Dumb Jock: Frank Stone from Creepy Town. In his first appearance he confuses forceps for a scalpel. He admits that he was just hired to lift heavy stuff. He also hesitates when Stacey asks if anyone is a ghost, and the others accept the possibility that he doesn't know.
  • Ethan falls under this as well, though he's not quite as dumb and also nicer than Frank.
• Dying Race: In Hogwarts: The New Class, magical people have taken a huge hit to their population during the war against Voldemort. Now they need to bring their numbers back up through complex plans, such as reintroducing American muggle-borns to the community via time-travel.
• The '80s: The "Rememorex" system used for Bloody Mooney is described as the one you use if you want to play Stranger Things, and as such pays a lot of homage to the adventure and horror movies of the eighties just like the show does.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Princess Crania's aesthetic in Here We Gooooo!.
• Emo Teen: Spencer Preston in Creepy Town is a grunge boy who's desperately trying to look cool and edgy.
• Emotion Bomb: In Here We Gooooo!, citizens of the Soda Pop kingdom who get flattened (usually the work of diet pirates) go into a deep melancholy.
• Empty Piles of Clothing: Void from The Chimera Program destroys any organic material they come in contact with. After walking through a squad of soldiers, only their gear remains.
• Enemy Mine: In Bloody Mooney, the kids get the attention of the government agents following them as soon as it becomes clear that Mooney is dangerous.
• Energy Being: Ohm from The Chimera Program is made entirely of energy.
• Epic Flail: Princess Crania wields one in Here We Gooooo!.
• Escaped from the Lab:
  • The crate Mooney was found in in Bloody Mooney seems to have originated from a government lab, with a document inside having snippets of government files implying it was found deep in the Guatemalan jungle, and that something happens to it when it sees the crescent moon.
  • All the main characters from The Chimera Program, along with a few other NPCs, are able to escape from the lab they were experimented on in the first episode.
• Ethical Slut: In Creepy Town, Stacey Quartermain is described as a "slutty cheerleader". Jake clarifies that what he means is that she's in charge of her own sexuality, but in slasher movie terms that translates into "slutty".
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: In Star War, after Kip's stunt with an ion cannon, the Force abandons the Jedi and they all fall to their deaths as the castle crumbles around them. Even the cute sloths, which they tried to save, hurtle to their deaths as well.
• Excited Episode Title!: Here We Gooooo! and Digimon Advanced! are both spelled with an exclamation point at the end.
• Expy:
  • Jed Wilson in All I Want for Christmas is based on Al the Toy Collector from Toy Story 2.
  • In a game based on stereotypes, several of the characters from Creepy Town fall into this. The Kennedy twins are each expies of nineties teen characters; Oliver of Randy from Scream and Olivia of Laney from She's All That (or rather, the parody of her from Not Another Teen Movie). Also, Will is Gordon from Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, who everyone knows.
  • Jake bases his Bloody Mooney character Jessica off of Mac from Paper Girls. Josh bases his on Zack from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
• Eye Scream: Happens in Homeward Bound 4. Josh the T. rex gets shot in the eye by a human, but fortunately it's just a flesh wound to him.
• Failed a Spot Check: Happens in Homeward Bound 4. Josh the T. rex manages to hide in a few trees when the humans come after them, while Shannon the Dilophosaurus and Jake the Deinonychus are stuck out in the open.
• Failure Hero: No one is making successful rolls in Homeward Bound 4. Everyone is really stupefied about why science would engineer such terrible dinosaurs.
• Fauns and Satyrs: Fiona's partner Digimon from Digimon Advanced! is Cervimon, who looks like a faun.
• Final Girl: In Creepy Town, Stacey meets almost of the requirements by the end except that she dies, and does so before Will.
• First-Episode Twist: The First episode of Smawl Problems ends with the Dell cousins being shrunk down to inch-height.
• Floating Continent: The Heavenly City from Small Magic, which was once inhabited by the Tenshi, literally floats in the heavens.
• Forgot I Could Fly: When Crania gets Dizzy in Here We Gooooo!, she fails to remember that she can float down from heights and begins plummeting towards the ground after falling out of a warp straw.
• Fountain of Youth: The four players in Hogwarts: The New Class are de-aged back to eleven so that they can go through Hogwarts and learn magic naturally.
• Flyover Country: Creepy Town takes place in the small town of Nowhere, Kansas.
• Forest Ranger: Stege from Small Magic is a hunter.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Though several of the games feature groups that can be broken down into this, on twitter Jake suggested throwing it out and replacing it with the CKT Scale of Exasperating, Exasperated, Dumb, and Horny. He also parodies his own parody when listing Wyvern as the horny member of The Chimera Program (it's because she has horns).
• Frog Men: Sully's partner Digimon from Digimon Advanced! is Keromon, who looks like a frog on two legs.
• Fur and Loathing: In Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles, Roc starts the game wearing a fur coat, though he later changes into a kimono.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Occurs in Creepy Town. Between all the victims created there are six boys and six girls.
• Generation Xerox: The children of Luigi and Daisy in Here We Gooooo! are Duigi and Dario. Like their father and uncle they are a Big Guy, Little Guy duo, and Dario looks just like Daisy but in a plumber outfit and Luigi's moustache. Not to mention their names are combinations of "D" (from Daisy) and their father/uncle's names.
  • T. Yoshisaur Munchikoopas the 52nd is this in spades, as he's identical to the OG Yoshi (and all other green Yoshis) except for his shoes being blue instead of red.
• Genre Savvy: Some characters are destined to be savvy towards the setting, and sometimes the players themselves become wise to what Alan might be planning when he GMs.
  • Creepy Town has Oliver Kennedy, who of course is based around Randy Meeks from Scream.
  • Since they've all read the books, or are at least familiar with the Potterverse, the players in Hogwarts: The New Class are well aware of all the things that can go wrong with magic and plan accordingly.
  • Martin from "The Chimera Program" knows if he asks too many questions the kid's are gonna run away, but also knows they need somewhere to stay and can tell they're in trouble rather than the cause of it.
• Genre Shift: Episode one of Bloody Mooney is very zany, and episode two starts similarly with JT doing a sweet dance move to distract the government agents. Then Keri finds a blood-covered blanket hanging from the lights in her room, and blood all over Mooney's face. And one of her twin brothers missing. The other twin does show up. However, Keri's mother is not so lucky. From then on it's almost straight 80s horror.
• Geometric Magic: In Creepy Town, Olivia paints an occult symbol in the Space Hell room to spruce up the place. It ends up summoning the monster.
• Ghost Ship: The Wreck obviously has this, since the game system is titled "Ghost Ship Enyo".
• Giant Flyer: Byrb becomes one at the end of Small Magic's first arc thanks to the Tenshi's magic.
• Giant Spider: Well, a regular-sized spider in Smawl Problems that is a much bigger problem for the Dell cousins since they're shrunk down to inch-height. April makes the mistake of slicing through a cobweb, which draws the spider's attention and everyone has to flee for their lives. That being said, when they do come across it the spider only comes up to their waist.
  Mell (while she runs for her life): Huh, not as bad as I thought it would be.
• Girl Posse: Creepy Town has one dubbed The Plastics and consisting of Katie, Stacey, and Veronica (though Stacey is somewhat nicer than the others).
• Go Mad from the Revelation: A maintenance worker who stares into Void too long in "The Chimera Program" ends up losing his mind.
• The Good Kingdom: All the homelands of the heroes in Here We Gooooo! (Soda Pop kingdom, Skull kingdom, Dinosaur Land, and Sarasaland) are good and peaceful nations.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: In Homeward Bound 4, the dinosaurs are genetically engineered to heal quicker. And it is a good thing, because everyone keeps failing their rolls and getting wounded by humans.
• Groin Attack: Multiple times in Homeward Bound 4. Jake the Deinonychus slips when trying to glide off a tree and attack a human, and ends up slamming his cloaca into the branches. Ironically, this was in an attempt to eat the nuts of a guy who had shot him previously. But after however many failures, he finally manages to eat them two-thirds through.
• Guest-Star Party Member: A few games have guests alongside the main four players, like David in Firefly, Matt in Hogwarts, Cassidy in Sequinox, and Sky in The Chimera Program.
• Gun Blade: Kip from Star War wields a lightsaber that can switch to blaster mode.
• The Gunslinger: Keromon's champion from in Digimon Advanced! has an Arm Cannon revolver and a cowboy hat. He's still a frog.
• Half-Identical Twins: Oliver and Olivia Kennedy from Creepy Town.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: In Creepy Town, Ethan gets cut in half with a chainsaw.
• Hailfire Peaks: The Float Islands from Here We Gooooo! have a snowy mountain on one side and a volcano on the other. The actions of the Diet Pirates split them in two.
• Hammerspace: In The Wreck, this is how Lazy Boy is able to carry around a rolling dolly, stepping stool, and five-foot long rod without encumbering himself.
• Hates Baths: Stege from Small Magic has to be tricked and shoved into the bath just to get one started.
• Head Pet: In Small Magic, Stege ends up with one of the Queen's blue jays nesting in his hair. He almost forgets about it. He later names it Byrb.
• Heavy Sleeper: Kip from Star War managed to sleep through being frozen in carbonite. And being unfrozen in carbonite.
• Here We Go Again!: After the teens in Bloody Mooney are successful in containing Mooney in the government van to stop its rampage, everything seems fine. Then the police they called arrive and try to open the van, leading the story to end as the three teens shout at them to stop.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Shannon dips into this during the rules explanation in Homeward Bound 4.
  Alan: You can reduce your Panic by 1 for each human you kill.
  Shannon: I relate a lot to that.
• Hidden Depths: Each character in Bloody Mooney has a hidden talent. JT is a good dancer, Jessica is a skilled cook, and Keri is great at fighting.
• Hollywood Hacking: In All I Want for Christmas, Chrissy is able to hack a jet ski with a nail file because it's the 90s and anything can be hacked.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The events of Creepy Town begin in the week before Halloween, with all the murder occurring Halloween night.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Yoshi from Here We Gooooo! doesn't know how to use his lighting powers, and accidentally attacks Dario on his first try.
• Hulking Out: In Bloody Mooney, there's a note in Mooney's crate that warns to never let it see the light of the crescent moon. When it does it becomes a hulking beast, and also gains the ability to shapeshift.
• Humanoid Abomination: Void from The Chimera Program is a black hole who only becomes person shaped after they see people. They don’t have angles, and when people look at them they look the same for every angle. When first found by the others, they didn’t even know they existed. And any organic material that they come into contact with is annihilated.
• I Call It "Vera": Maggie from Small Magic has an axe named "Golden Girl"
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The episode titles for Hogwarts: The New Class are taken from relevant quotes from the episode itself.
• Idle Rich: Dario from Here We Gooooo! is incredibly bored at home, and is simply passing the time jumping on Goombas when Princess Caramel Seltzer's letter appears.
• Improbable Weapon User: Yoshi from Here We Gooooo!wields a shell, though this isn't very improbably in the context of the Mario universe.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: The Dell cousins get shrunk to inch height in Smawl Problems and have to find a way to return to normal size.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: In Here We Gooooo!, all Bubs look alike, which confuses Dario for a bit. One of the Bubs even points out that it's similar to the Toads in the Mushroom Kingdom.
• Inherently Funny Words: In Homeward Bound 4. Thanks to Jake the Deinonychus' continued failures and landing on his groin, the word "cloaca" is said enough that Shannon suggests making a drinking game.
• Instant Chucks: Ne-on from Star War wields a pair of lightsaber nun-chucks, which Josh calls light-chucks. Any problems that would arise from them are cancelled out with Ne-on's force abilities.
• Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy: In "The Chimera Program", Bellerophon is revealed to have had severe surgeries on their throat such as a tracheotomy and other procedures to remove their voice.
• Intoxication Ensues:
  • In Small Magic, Stege gets too much off a whiff of "Oni liquorice" and ends up with a massive hangover the next morning.
  • Crania from Here We Gooooo! touches a Fizzy and gets Dizzy in episode 3, which Shannon describes as her walking around like a drunk girl.
• Ironic Fear: Dianne from Creepy Town is a goth girl who loves the occult, but she's afraid of creepy dolls and that fear trumps her compulsion. Even more ironically, the monster manifests a creepy doll version of her to kill Stacey.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: The group from "The Chimera Program" opt not to stay with Martin even though he's so nice because they're afraid he could become collateral between them and Advent Corp.
• Kayfabe: In The Wreck, Alan tries to not break character as the AI ALAN through the entire story. He actually succeeds almost entirely.
• Killed Offscreen: In Creepy Town, Alli gets trapped in the hotel room and nobody sees how she dies, only hearing a creepy music box get louder and then stop followed by Alli's blood dripping from under the door.
• Killer Rabbit: Stege from Small Magic claims that a squirrel he encounters attacked him, but in reality he just tried to avoid stepping on it and tripped over his own feet.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: In The Chimera Program. November, aka Forget-Me-Not, from cannot be remembered by most people when they’re not looking at her. The main characters have some resistance to this, with the exception of Golden.
• Laser-Guided Karma: At the end of All I Want for Christmas, Jed the toy collector is forced to give up all his toys as punishment for causing chaos in an attempt to get a Turboman toy.
• Left Hanging: Despite not completing the story, the group decides that The Wreck isn't feasible for the podcast because it doesn't have much room for roleplaying or much leeway anywhere. Though they initially suggested they could come back to it, by the time they're referencing it in Sequinox it's clear that they're not very keen on spending any more time with it.
• Legend Fades to Myth: The backstory of Small Magic. The war between the Oni and Tenshi that sprang from the creation of humanity happens centuries ago, by the time the game begins most people believe it's just a story.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: In ''Creepy Town’’, the night of the killing starts with the cast split into several different rooms in the haunted house, and as things go on continue to split up. Somewhat justified because everything's happening really quickly and they're all scared teenagers.
• Level Ate: The entire Soda Pop Kingdom is an example in Here We Gooooo!. There are soda pop falls, the palace is made of pop bottles, Lakitus float on groups of fizz bubbles instead of clouds, and the various worlds within the kingdom are themed after various kinds of soda and fizzy drinks. Vanilla Cream Mountain is a good example, as the entire environment is a big ice cream cone.
• Lilliputians: The Smawls from Smawl Problems, who look mostly human except for their slightly upturned noses and inch-height. They have multiple tribes, like the Bantams that live in the forest and the Trifles that live by the house. There are also Scotias by the lake, but they're only mentioned and not seen.
• Lipstick-and-Load Montage: JT from Bloody Mooney gets one where he gets dressed in his clothes for visiting Keri's house, including a shot of him popping his collar. Josh compares it to a Megazord sequence.
• Little Miss Badass: Wyvern from The Chimera Program is a little fourteen-year-old Latina girl who, when she gets emotional, turns into an enormous dragon-like creature.
• Locked Door: Lazy Boy encounters three notorious ones over the course of The Wreck: the linen closet, the cabinet, and the locker. All three are immune to stepping stools, stuffed pigs, and having water poured on them.
• Lovable Jock: Ethan Wright from Creepy Town. He's not too bright, but he's polite to everyone he interacts with. Shannon liked him enough that she brought him back for Sequinox.
  • JT from Bloody Mooney is an average jock (his claim to fame is a single catch in middle school, though it was a pretty good one). As such he's nicer than others. He also gets bullied by Keri.
• Love Triangle: In Creepy Town, Veronica and Stacey are both attracted to Ethan, though he's not aware of either, and Veronica is very jealous of Stacey for seemingly having the edge.
• Loyal Animal Companion: A favourite trope amongst most games. If it makes sense to give someone a pet, they're going to get a pet.
  • Everyone has one in Small Magic. Stege has his horse Soda Pop, as well as one of the Queen's blue jays that he names Byrb (though Stege isn't fond of the latter at first). Maggie has Shirley the sheep. Janus has Adam the frog.
  • In Hogwarts: The New Class, everyone gets a pet. Jake has a pygmy gryphon names Jomps, Shannon has a snake named Sekhmet, and Josh has a kitten named Geno. Matt plans on taking artificing classes to to build his own pet, but the first arc doesn't progress far enough for him to create one.
• The Marvelous Deer: In Digimon Advanced!, Cervimon's champion stage Naramon is a large armoured deer with branch-like antlers.
• Meaningful Background Event: In Bloody Mooney, the camera is said to focus on two government agents behind Jess and JT as they walk home from detention at the end of episode one.
• Medieval Stasis: Hogwarts: The New Class shows that the wizarding world is still deep in this, to the point where not even McGonagall knows what pens or phones are.
• Medium Awareness: In addition to knowing that they're going through a Harry Potter world, the main four children in Hogwarts: The New Class also know that they're main characters. Matt in particular has Knowledge of Narrative Structure and can determine where the story is going.
• Milestone Celebration: They do a one-shot to celebration their anniversary each year. The third one also fell on the anniversary of Digimon Adventure's premier.
• Missing Child: Near the end of episode one of Smawl Problems, 8-year-old cousin Derek goes missing and the others realize that, since he wanted to go swimming, he may have gone to the lake. Though Mel and April don't treat it very seriously, April and Janey have palpable concern about a small child lost in the woods and potentially coming to harm.
• Missing Episode: There is no episode 68. They decided to skip it in order to have a new arc of The Fallen Gods air on April Fool's Day and begin on episode 69. Nice.
• Monster Is a Mommy: Occurs at the end of Small Magic Part 2. After hunting some furkeys (fantasy turkeys), the party discovers they were actually infant Cockatrices. And their mother is nearby.
  • After defeating the Kunemon in Digimon Advanced!, one of them shouts "wait until momma gets here!" Sure enough, a large Kuwagamon shows up shortly after.
• Motor Mouth: The Grape Escape Shop Clerk in Here We Gooooo! is a very fast talker on account of he just got un-flattened and is riding a large sugar high.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Mooney, the titular monkey-creature in Bloody Mooney, has six-arms.
• Mundane Utility: In Hogwarts: The New Class, wizards use magic to accomplish all sorts of daily tasks, like washing dishes, doing laundry, and making luggage lighter. The kids all think these are great, though, since they grew up as muggles and have always had to do these themselves without magic.
• My Nayme Is: Jake's character in Small Magic is Stege, short for Stegen, because according to Jake all good fantasy names are just one letter off from regular names.
• Mysterious Protector: The hooded figure who helped the Here We Gooooo! party when they first arrived at the Soda Pop Kingdom, and claims to be the last hero of the Soda Pop Kingdom.
• Mysterious Waif: November from The Chimera Program. She releases everyone at the facility for the escape, but only Papyrus and Wyvern are able to remember her after she leaves their line of sight. She also gets a hold of everyone's file during the breakout.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: Comes with the territory of All I Want for Christmas since the system, "All Out of Bubblegum", requires players to roll high if they're trying to be awesome and low if they're trying to be mundane. The standout moment would be when Chrissy tries to deck a motorcyclist and steal his bike while shouting "It's Turbo Time!", Jake biffs the roll, and she ends up just bruising her elbow on his helmet.
• Never Mess with Granny: Maggie from Small Magic is essentially a "grandma for hire", as she wanders the countryside helping young folks, cooking meals for the needy, and being generally kind to all. She can also decapitate a cockatrice in a single strike using her battle axe.
• Never Say "Die": In All I Want for Christmas. Since the game is themed as a family-friendly Christmas film, Alan says the characters can't say "kill" or "die".
• Nightmare Fetishist: Walter from Creepy Town scares Will by threatening to impale his head on a meat hook, revving a chainsaw at him, and eagerly splattering fake blood all over one of the haunted house rooms. All because Will though a claymore didn't fit in the hillbilly torture shack.
  • Die also qualifies, gleefully cutting open a fake corpse to make it look more realistic and getting excited when Olivia starts painting a satanic mural in fake blood. Then she installs for a flamethrower.
  • Sammy in Smawl Problems is fascinated with spiders and actively seeks them out while the others are playing.
• No Full Name Given: Caleb from Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles has no last name given.
• Non-Indicative Title: The second anniversary episode is only called "Homeward Bound 4", and the description is intentionally left innocuous, so it's a bit of a loop when the episode begins with the Jurassic Park theme and Alan announces that everyone is playing a dinosaur.
• Noodle Incident: In Dan, Danny, and Daniel, Arnold Schwarzenegger chastises Danny for trying and failing to kill him before.
• No Ontological Inertia: Once the Here We Gooooo! party destroys the Aspartame Crystal and restores the Sugar Crystal at the Grape Escape factory, they get rid of the diet symptoms and restore the surrounding area to it's former beauty.
• The Nose Knows: Stege from Small Magic has, as Jake describes, "wolf Link" smelling.
• No Social Skills:
  • Stege from Small Magic lives almost exclusively in the woods and rarely interacts with other people, which contributes to him being a shitty teen. His clothes are tattered, he's very blunt to other people, he hates being bathed, and he tends to eat with his hands.
  • Yoshi from Here We Gooooo! comes off this way since he was raised surrounded only by Yoshis. His grandpa the OG Yoshi told him many stories of the secrets in Peaches Castle, leading Yoshi to believe all castles were like that and begin randomly slamming his tongue into windows in Princess Caramel Seltzer's palace.
• Oblivious to Love: Ethan in Creepy Town may not be as dumb as Frank, but he's completely unaware of Veronica and Stacey trying to flirt with him.
• Odd Name Out: Todd's henchmen in Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles are named Ace and King, because he had to keep the theme going. The crew complains that if he really wanted the theme to stick then he should've called himself "Jack".
• Off with His Head!: In Small Magic, this is how Maggie defeats the cockatrice.
  • In Bloody Mooney, Mooney tears the head of one of the government agents clean off.
• Oh, Crap!: In Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles. As soon as Mickey gets the coordinates to the stranded Alliance ship, he realizes they lead right into Reaver territory and immediately reports it to Caleb and Roc.
• Oh, My Gods!: In Hogwarts: The New Class, McGonagall mutters "by all the gods in all the heavens" under her breath at the childrens' antics, which makes Shannon wonder if wizards even have gods.
• One-Steve Limit: Played with in Here We Gooooo! when it comes to the Yoshi. Alan's character has an Overly Long Name, so they call him Yoshi for short. But to keep things from getting confusing when Yoshi is introduced in a kingdom full of Yoshis, they refer to Mario's Yoshi as the "OG Yoshi".
• Only Sane Man: Caleb the medic from Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles is the only member of the Zelda's crew who isn't weird (Roc), bloodthirsty (Kimmy), or just plain thirsty (Mickey).
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: The four main kids in Hogwarts: The New Class start talking about how lame Voldemort is in front of Felicia, only for her to tell them that her father was killed by Voldemort, followed by her tearfully running away.
• Our Fairies Are Different: in Hogwarts: The New Class, Shannon befriends a dust nymph (also referred to as a dust bunny) and names it Usagi.
• Our Gryphons Are Different: In Hogwarts: The New Class, Jake gets a pygmy gryphon, which has the boy of a house cat and the head and wings of a red-tail falcon.
• Overly Long Name: Here We Gooooo! has T. Yoshisaur Munchikoopas the 52nd.
• Paper People: Papyrus from The Chimera Program can turn himself completely flat and fold himself into a variety of shapes.
• Parasol of Pain: Dario from Here We Gooooo! wields a parasol that he grabbed from his mom as he left to go on his adventure.
• Pardon My Klingon: The Bubs from Here We Gooooo! say “fizzing” instead of swearing.
• Period Piece: Some games lend themselves better to different time periods, and some the gang set in the past for un.
  • All I Want for Christmas is set in 1996.
  • Creepy Town takes place in 2003.
• Perky Goth: Creepy Town has Dianne "Di" Harris, who enjoys all manner of dark and occult things, and gets very giddy when she sees them.
• Pet Monstrosity: The trio in Bloody Mooney realize that Mooney is this when they discover Keri's mother torn aport and Mooney eating her corpse.
• Playful Hacker: Roc in Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles is the engineer, and is also good with computers. Shannon regularly makes good rolls to access computer systems with him.
• Playing Against Type: At the start of Small Magic, Jake says that he normally plays girls in RPGs, so it's out of character for him to play a guy like he is here (as Stege). So far the only male characters he's made are Stege, Oliver (alongside which he also made Stacey and Olivia), Kip, and Dario.
• Podcast Fantasy Casting: Chrissy Nada in All I Want for Christmas is Lori Laughlin as Aunt Becky from Full House. And her husband Mike is played by John Stamos.
  • All the player characters in Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles are played by actual actors.
    • Mickey Spacelust is Russell Brand.
    • Kimmy Jin is played by Taiwanese actress Shu Qi.
    • Roc Me Amadeus is played by Noel Fielding.
    • Caleb is played by Sean Maher. Somehow.
• Pokémon Speak: Since animals don't speak human or vice-versa in Homeward Bound 4, the players can only hear them say "human human human!" The only exception is the little girl who finds Jake the Deinonychus cute.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Seen in Smawl Problems. Sammy is nice and kind and positive, her twin sister Mel is grim and goth and gloomy.
• Power Fist: Gol in Star War wields brass knuckles with small lightsabers coming out of them.
• Precursors: In the backstory to Small Magic, the Tenshi and the Oni are this for humanity. When a Tenshi and an Oni had a child together (the first human), it led to a war that wiped out most of them, forcing the Tenshi to put the Oni in a deep sleep and flee the world.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: Princess Crania from Here We Gooooo! is an Elegant Gothic Lolita wielding an Epic Flail.
• Princesses Rule: In Here We Gooooo!, Princess Caramel Seltzer is the ruler of the Soda Pop Kingdom. It's unknown if Princess Crania is in the same boat, though there is no mention of her parents back in the Skull Kingdom either.
• Product Placement: There are copious shots of Jessica's Sony Walkman throughout the movie Bloody Mooney—or there would be, if this was a movie and not an audio podcast.
• Psychic Powers: Naturally occurs in Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles. Kimmi has some kind of psychic ability, as demonstrated when she senses the Reavers approaching, and later feels Ace and King get killed by them.
• Punny Name: In The Chimera Program, Golden's ability is silence.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: In Hogwarts: The New Class, Jake tries to convince McGonagall to buy him a pygmy gryphon by giving these to her, stating that he was adorable at eleven.
• Quicksand Sucks: Pops up in Creepy Town, sort-of. Spencer's fear is drowning, and the monster ends up pulling him into the floor like it was water.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Or wield pink, rather. In Star War, Kip's lightsaber blade is offensively pink.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: JT from Bloody Mooney did a great catch in middle school football exactly once, and now everyone expects him to be able to catch anything.
• Repetitive Name: Sullivan “Sully” Sullivan from Digimon Advanced!.
• Ribcage Ridge: The Skull Kingdom from Here We Gooooo! is primarily this, though a Dark Is Not Evil variant.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: One of the classes in Here We Gooooo! is Princess, so this is built into the system. In the campaign itself has Princess Crania and Prince Dario Mario (who is technically a Plumber class, but still royalty because of his parents) helping save the Soda Pop Kingdom.
• Royalty Superpower: From Small Magic. In addition to giving him a destiny to save the kingdom, Janus royal heritage also gives him access to "big magic" (as opposed to most people's "small magic").
  • In Josh's Super Mario RPG system he homebrewed for Here We Gooooo!, one of the classes is Princess. Like Peach, they have the natural ability to float.
• Running Gag: Each arc has there own, though people getting banned for violating the "no crossovers" rule is common amongst them all. There's also Alan accidentally or purposefully putting the party in a U-shaped room, one of the more infamous parts of "The Wreck".
  • In All I Want for Christmas, Chrissy drives a Ford Taurus Station Wagon, New From Ford, TM.
  • In Small Magic, Janus falling over and crying. Also trying to find a use for his oddly-specific "create a cubic meter of dead leaves" spell.
  • Creepy Town has Alan getting blamed for the character's deaths since his own characters keep escaping. There are many accusations, especially in the final act, of him rigging the game and being the true villain.
  • In The Wreck:
    • Calling the starboard "starburst" and the bow "Bow Wow", and attempting to quote Lil' Bow Wow lyrics.
    • Josh saving, pouring the watering canteen on basically anything he can to see if anything happens, and reloading when nothing does.
    • Trying to open many locked doors with anything in their inventory, which ranges from the logical metal rods to the less-so stepping stool or stuffed pig. Notably the linen closet, which seems to be immune to any item or attack they throw at it.
  • Here We Gooooo! has Dario and Crania getting disgusted by Yoshi on account of him using his tongue for everything, from breaking windows to cleaning soda off of himself. On the flip side, Yoshi seems oblivious to this and continues to offer them rides or assist them by grabbing them with his tongue.
  • Dan, Danny, and Daniel has Danny spitting egg-salad sandwich in people's faces over the course of nearly the entire game.
  • April in Smawl Problems repeatedly does not understand locks or latches of any kind.
• Salt Solution: People can use salt to repel Oni in the world of Small Magic.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Most of the cast of Creepy Town, of course. Jake even refers to the first victim likely to die as a "lamb to the slaughter".
• Scaled Up: Wyvern from The Chimera Program, as per her codename, can become an enormous draconic creature. She doesn't manifest fire or wings at this stage, however.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: In Creepy Town, Oliver's scream matches Veronica's.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: After the trio in Bloody Mooney finds Mooney slaughtering and devouring Keri's mother, they immediately decide to get everyone out of the house and burn it down.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: In the backstory to Small Magic, The Oni were sealed away in a deep slumber after they went to war with the Tenshi.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Kip, Gol, and Ne-on from Star War are Knights of the Old Republic who were frozen in carbonite until defrosted by Admiral Ackbar.
• Secret Test of Character: Partway through their journey, the Small Magic party comes across a father and his ill daughter in the middle of the woods and help cure the daughter with some of their supplies. They later find out the house where the family supposedly live does not exist, and eventually that the two were testing the group to see if they were willing to extend kindness to strangers.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: The "All Out of Bubblegum" system used in All I Want for Christmas suggests players track their bubblegum stat using actual pieces of bubblegum, and that they eat them when they lose one. Josh challenges himself to not spit out any pieces of gum during the game, and by the end claims that his jaw is breaking.
  • In The Wreck, Alan sets one for himself to not break character in response to the other three's antics.
• Sequel Hook: The first arc of Small Magic ends with the party reaching a windmill and finding a statue holding the spirit of…an oni? A tenshi? The spirit praises the kindness they've demonstrated and enlarges Byrb, allowing them all to fly to the Heavenly City.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: A variant in Hogwarts: The New Class. The Hogwarts staff are trying to give American muggle-born witches and wizards whose records were destroyed by Voldemort a chance to relearn magic through Hogwarts, and upon graduation will be re-aged and sent back in time to when they were originally taken to resume their lives but with the benefit of magic.
• Sexy Whatever Outfit: In Creepy Town, Veronica dresses as a sexy vampire on Halloween. Stacey is wearing Britney Spears' schoolgirl outfit from "…Baby One More Time", which later gets retconned to that plus a sexy Frankenstein costume. In a male example, Ethan dresses as a sexy shirtless doctor.
• Shirtless Scene: When Frank and Ethan in Creepy Town dress up for the torture cabin room they aren't wearing shirts, with Frank as the torturer and Ethan as a sexy doctor. Walter tries this, but people complained because he was too pale and glowed in the blacklight.
• Shout-Out: Plenty pop up amongst this group.
  • In All I Want for Christmas, Chrissy Nada is named after the main character from They Live! John Nada, which makes sense since the system used ("All Out of Bubblegum") is inspired by the same film.
  • Janus in Small Magic has a pet from named Adam. Later on Alan claims that they see a group of "five brightly-dressed people fighting monsters" on their journey, but they make him walk it back because "no crossovers".
  • In Creepy Town, some of the rooms in the haunted house are references to other horror films.
    • The torture shack is similar to Saw or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
    • Shannon calls the spooky forest room the Evil Dead room.
    • The Hell Planet room is a shout-out to Event Horizon.
    • There's a hotel hallway with Creepy Dolls that references The Shining.
    • A room with references to The Exorcist and Film/Poltergeist.
  • The Wreck:
    • When Lazy Boy fails to turn off a dripping sink, Shannon suggests whispering to the sink. ALAN states that it does not recognize Parseltongue.
    • Shannon wants Lazy Boy to make a bone necklace from one of the skeletons they find, but Jake vetoes it because they're not a Reaver.
  • In Hogwarts: The New Class, Shannon befriends a dust nymph. It's also referred to as a dust bunny, and so she names it Usagi.
  • The five base character classes of the "Rememorex" system used for Bloody Mooney are The Brain, The Athlete, The Princess, The Basket-Case, and The Criminal. Also, Jessica's reaction to the crate.
  Jessica: Oh wow, an empty box. I can't wait to tell my friends. They don't have a box this empty.
  • In Homeward Bound 4 (which itself is a shout-out to that very film franchise): after Alan describes one of the humans in Homeward Bound 4 as wearing a pith helmet and safari clothes, Jake calls him Van Pelt for the rest of the episode.
  • When the Here We Gooooo! party buys spooky weapons at Seedless City, Yoshi buys a "Ghost In The" shell.
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: Several characters.
  • Oliver Kennedy from Creepy Town is named after Jaime Kennedy, the actor who played Randy Meeks in Scream.
  • Janus from Small Magic is named after the character from Chrono Trigger.
  • Josh's cat Geno from Hogwarts: The New Class is named after the character from Super Mario RPG.
• Sign Off Catch Phrase: "This has been the cool kids table, and you can sit with us!"
• Skeleton Motif: Here We Gooooo! has Princess Crania and the skull kingdom, naturally.
• Skewed Priorities: In Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles. When the group sees A shuttle piloted the Hands of Blue headed towards their ship while they're still on the refuelled, Mickey and Roc are more concerned with their coats and hats than their lives.
• Sky Island: Here We Gooooo! has the Float Islands, naturally. They've been split even more by the invasion of the giant pirates.
• Slasher Movie: This is the concept of the "Dead Teenager" game used in Creepy Town. The movie they make is called Nowhere, Kansas.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Vanilla Cream Mountain in Here We Gooooo!. Moving too quickly makes the party's feet slip out from under them.
• Small Town Boredom: The setting for Creepy Town is the town of Nowhere, Kansas, which is this in spades. The school motto is "Going Nowhere Fast".
• Snakes Are Sinister: Averted with Shannon's pet in Hogwarts: The New Class, a piebald ball python named Sekhmet who cuddles up to her chest as soon as she purchases her.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • The background music for Creepy Town rotates between various different Halloween-themed songs, which can lead to such instances as the Ghostbusters theme playing while people are horrifically murdered. The cake goes to when the last group of survivors stumble into the spooky forest room where "Believe" by Cher is playing on loop.
  • "Heat of the Moment" is playing in Bloody Mooney when the trio search Keri's house and find the half-eaten corpse of Keri's mother, and continues during the fight.
• Space "X": In Star War, Kip wears space pants, a space cowboy hat, and a jacket made from spleather (space leather).
• Spanner in the Works: Hogwarts: The New Class is built on this. The plan was to bring four American muggle-borns to Hogwarts and teach them magic in order to expand the wizarding community. Unfortunately, the four picked were four Genre Savvy cloud-cuckoolanders who ignore almost all advice given to them and go out of their way to poke holes in every rule of wizarding society, causing McGonagall to quickly grow exasperated.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Hogwarts: The New Class reveals that while Fred and Tonks were killed in Rowling's books, they are alive and well in the real world.
• Spoiled By The Medium: Jake initially titles Smawl Problems as "Fingers Crossing" in order to hide the system from the others. However any listeners know the true title and that the system is The Diminutive RPG.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Kimmi from Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles has an affinity for explosives, and the rest of the crew has to regularly discourage her from using them to solve all her problems.
• Super-Power Meltdown: In episode three of "The Chimera Program", stress plus the number of sounds that Golden's absorbed cause him to break down and unleash them all at once.
• Super-Soldier: All the children involved in The Chimera Program were experimented on by Advent Corp to create super-human weapons. Considering they were meant to be sold to the highest bidder, it clearly wasn't voluntary.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Even when the show did horror back in Creepy Town, it was mostly played for laughs. In Bloody Mooney, Alan spares no detail when describing the half-eaten corpse of Keri's mother, and Mooney happily jumping over to eat more of her.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Once Creepy Town gets to the murder stage, players draw cards from the terror deck to guide the scene. If they draw the Joker, the victim dies, and this could easily happen within the first few draws. Like what happened when Jake was drawing for Olivia.
  Jake: Olivia starts walking towards the symbol...*Beat* And she dies.
  *Cue laughter from everyone else*
• Sustained Misunderstanding: In Creepy Town, Veronica suggests making fake dead bodies by stuffing garbage bags full of leaves. Oliver takes this as her killing people and stuffing their bodies in bags. He's just messing with her, though.
  • Also occurs in Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles. While negotiating a better price for the salvage mission that Todd is hiring them for, the crew get confused as to what they're asking for. The starting offer is 5000 credits and 10% of whatever the Zelda's crew finds; Kimmy tries to up it to 40% and Caleb to just 6000 credits, Mickey confuses the two and thinks they're only getting 40 credits, and Roc thinks it's 25% of 5000 credits. Caleb just rolls with it in the hopes that they stop before negotiations deteriorate.
• Taken for Granite: The cockatrice that appears in Small Magic has this power, and after its defeated its severed head turns into marble, which Stege eagerly grabs so that he can sell it later.
• Take That!: In Hogwarts: The New Class, Alan makes sure to declare that the students boarding the Hogwarts Express are an extremely diverse crowd, a clear knock against Rowlings tendency for characters to only be white or a few tokens. There's also an earlier dig at her when Jake mentions the infamous "one Jewish student at Hogwarts" statement she made.
• Tastes Like Purple: In Here We Gooooo!, after spilling several crates of Diet Grape Escape soda at the bottling factory, Yoshi says that the room now smells like sadness.
• Team Mom: Maggie from Small Magic, self-described Grandmother for Hire, easily falls into this role. She demands they take a break from travelling as soon as she notices that the boys are hungry.
• Tempting Fate: In Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles, as soon as Todd says that "nothing will go wrong" when they fly into the Reaver territory, the lights go out and the screens start flashing.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In Star War, Kip opts to fire at Palpatine with his gun set to ion cannon mode, which Alan points out is designed for attacking starships. He manages to destroy him, and most of the castle he was in, and anything past that for a few miles.
• Time Skip: The first round of Creepy Town takes place a week before Halloween as the victims set up the Creepy Town haunted house, and the next one is the night before Halloween while they do a dry run.
  • The four children in Hogwarts: The New Class are taken to Hogwarts in the spring, but spend a montage in the summer learning about the wizarding world so that they're not out of their depth when they start classes in the fall.
• Title Drop: Near the end of Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles. After Kimmi finds the stash of high-quality fuel rods, she declares that they've found "the Motherlode", which also happens to be the name of the pre-made story being played.
• Token Good Teammate: In Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles, Caleb is the only member of the Zelda's crew who's not an outright criminal, and is generally opposed to throwing people into space when he doesn't like them.
• Too Dumb to Live: Katie from Creepy Town thinks that the first several murders are fake and that she's being pranked, so she gets fed up with everything that's happening and tries to walk out of the room backwards while ranting at the others…directly into a meat hook.
• Totem Pole Trench: The entire point of the game "Three Things in a Trenchcoat" is that the players are each a person in the trench coat trying to sneak into something. In “Dan, Danny, and Daniel”, the three players are each different versions of Danny Devito.
• Translation Convention: Yoshi from Here We Gooooo! only speaks Yoshi, but because Dario and Crania have royal educations they understand what he's saying.
• The Un-Favourite: Jake quickly becomes this for McGonagall in Hogwarts: The New Class for doing the most stupid antics during their Diagon Alley trip.
• Unwanted Rescue: Dario hates the idea of being touched by Yoshi's tongue in Here We Gooooo!. So when he falls down a ravine and Yoshi tries to save him with said tongue, Dario tries to dodge it.
• Van in Black: One of these shows up on Jess and JT's street the morning after they find Mooney in Bloody Mooney episode two.
• Video-Game Lives: Naturally occurs in Here We Gooooo! Dying repeatedly will lose you whatever power-up is active, and once you're out you start losing coins.
• Vine Swing: The party in Here We Gooooo! needs to succeed at one to get across a pit. Dario goes first and critically fails.
• Vocal Dissonance: In "The Chimera Program", Bellerophon is clearly a child like the other projects but has an extremely deep voice. Until his helmet is removed.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Void from The Chimera Program can reshape their body however they want, including becoming larger.
• Walking the Earth: After her kids grew up and moved away, Maggie from Small Magic realized there was nothing to do where she was, so she began wandering the countryside to help, cook for, and care for others she comes across. As Shannon describes she's essentially a grandma for hire.
• Was Once a Man: All of the teens in The Chimera Program were once normal humans until the experiments.
• Waxing Lyrical: A common occurrence across all games.
  • In Hogwarts: The New Class:
    • Episode three gets its title from Jake singing "Let's get it sorted!" to the tune of "Let's Get It Started" by The Black Eyed Peas.
    • Episode four has several Wu-Tang Clan lyrics dropped casually by the kids.
• Welcome to Corneria: Most characters in The Wreck only say one thing, but they tend to be long speeches. When Oran Hibley is asked to repeat a specific part of his speech he instead starts the whole thing over, leading Josh to respond "Mash A! Mash A!"
• "What Do They Fear?" Episode: The monster in Creepy Town often takes the forms of the characters' worst fears, such as Spencer drowning, Katie seeing a giant spider, and Veronica seeing the hall on fire.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: When Josh the T. rex eats a guy, Alan immediately announces that it's time to establish her backstory, like how she'd been married for four years and had a child. Shannon adds that she was a day away from retirement.
• Whole-Plot Reference: All I Want for Christmas is a riff on the plot of Jingle All the Way. Jake claims that the two stories actually take place at the same time, just in different cities.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Shannon has this reaction in The Wreck when they find a cubby belonging to Ellie Spoon.
• Windmill Scenery: The world of Small Magic features plenty of windmills at Jake's request. Initially it's stated they have no purpose, but later in the first episode the Queen states they are connected to what keeps the Oni locked away.
• Would Hurt a Child: The guards in The Chimera Program, despite being ordered to "subdue and contain" the escaping child experiments, are shooting to kill.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • In Creepy Town, Walter shows up to the haunted house dressed as a fantasy wizard.
  • Mickey and Roc are zany, gaudily-dressed men who don't take things very seriously. However, they're characters for Firefly: The Zelda Chronicles and as such are stuck in that 'verse's in the dramatic Space Western setting. Jake describes them as having walked out of a David Bowie music video.
• Yellow Snow: In Here We Gooooo!, Yoshi spots a yellow crystal inside an ice cavern and starts licking it. Dario is shocked that he immediately decided it was candy and not, like, just rocks. Crania is more concerned about this trope.
• You Are Who You Eat: In Bloody Mooney, Mooney briefly assumes the form of Keri's mother while chasing the trio. Fortunately this doesn't phase the teens while fighting it.

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"This has been the Cool Kids Table, and you can sit with us!"