Trivia / The Online Warrior

• Approval of God:
  • Max's review of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was promoted by Konami's Facebook page.
  • Katsuhiro Harada, current executive producer of the Tekken series, is very fond of Max, getting him early looks at Bandai Namco games and retweeting Max's reaction video for Geese Howard being added to Tekken 7. According to Max, Harada asks for his opinion every time a new character trailer releases for Tekken 7.
  • Sometimes, Max's sincerely over-the-top reactions to game franchises that he loves gets the approval of entire development teams.
    • Devil May Cry 5 director Hideaki Itsuno caught wind of Max's reaction to the game's reveal trailer in 2018 via Dante's voice actor, Reuben Langdon. Itsuno once noted that the video was a great morale booster for the dev team under his wing.
    • In a similar fashion, a handful of higher-ups on Final Fantasy VII Remake's dev team personally thanked Max at E3 2019 for his reaction videos to their game trailers up until that point, giving the rest of the team the motivation to keep going until the game's released.
• Follow the Leader: In his "Decade in Review" series, particularly for 2011, Max cites the Angry Video Game Nerd as the inspiration for the Assist Me series's cinematic flair. He also openly admitted that his "Fighting History" series of videos was his take on an AVGN-style show.
• Old Shame: Reveals plenty of them in the first two episodes of his "Decade in Review" retrospective. He specifically highlights his first ever attempt at video editing way back in 2008 as something he's not particularly proud of.
• Promoted Fanboy: Max was specifically approached by Capcom to create Ultimate Assist Me and Retro Assist Me because employees at Capcom USA were impressed by the series.
  • Max became one of Killer Instinct (2013) when they added Max's voice to Glacius's theme ("We are controlling transmission"), made a Sabrewulf skin based on his dog Benny, and put the words "I'll get you, Max!" on one of Sadira's accessories (calling back to Max's hatred of spiders). He was later contracted by Microsoft Studios and worked on the story development and promotional material for Seasons 2 and 3, to the point that, when he appears at EVO 2023, he's credited for 'Killer Instinct Trailers/Cinematics' instead of his Youtube channel.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • As Max explains here, many episodes of Boss Rage, Assist Me and Fighting History have either gone private or became Missing Episodes. Between Google rolling out a new copyright strike algorithm for YouTube and a "large music conglomerate"^* Max doesn't name them, but it's probably either Warner Music Group or Universal Music Group as they both signed deals with YouTube as recently as 2017 buying out a majority of Max's formerly "safe for YouTube" music collection (and then going to town on the enforcement of their copyrights), "screwed" is putting it lightly.
  • In January 2019 Max got dropped from his creator network; however, this actually ended up being a positive since it lead to his working more directly with YouTube. A change in YT's copyright policy meant that videos with contentious content could be kept online, albeit demonetized, which is something Max had wanted to do all along. As a result, fan-favorite videos like the Asura's Wrath Evil Ryu and Oni Boss Rage (taken down because it contains "Dare" by Stan Bush) were restored to the channel.
  • YouTube seems to have something against Mortal Kombat in general. As Max explains here, upwards of 90% of his MK-related videos from Mortal Kombat 9 onwards (including Mortal Kombat 11) have been age restricted. Within the United States, his home country, it doesn't mean much other than the roadbump of having to log in to watch said videos, but in other countries, it has the same effect as a DMCA takedown, meaning they're not allowed to watch at all. After some uploading experimentation to test the current automated system, Max believes that 11's Gorn is so realistic that automated filters actually mistake his videos as Shock Site material. Ironically, videos that he uploaded featuring exclusively Alien Blood don't get hit by the filter at all. Several of the top commenters have also highlighted the hypocrisy of how Google has a thing against fake gore, but real gore somehow gets a free pass.
  • His "Decade in Review" retrospective reveals that his Wesker vs. Doom Epic Rap Battles of History parody back in 2011 was his first reality check when it came to how litigious YouTube content creators can get. In his words, "we can't just do whatever we want and have fun anymore".