Web Animation / TheOdd1sOut

Sometimes, I feel like the odd one out
Like no one knows what I'm talkin' bout
So, I just go and take a trip to Sooubway

Some things may keep me awake at night
Board games, my awful roommates, and life
So, I'll recline and go online
And with TheOdd1sOut, I'll laugh a million times!

— RobertIDK's TheOdd1sOut Theme Tune

Robert James Rallison (born May 14, 1996), better known online as TheOdd1sOut, is an Arizona-born YouTube animator and webcomic artist who tells his different life experiences, opinions, and other stuff in his videos, similar to other Storytime Animators such as JaidenAnimations and Domics. He has a simple, marshmallow-man artstyle, and is one of the biggest Youtube animators on the site.

James also made his own cartoon called Oddballs, which premiered on Netflix on October 7th, 2022. The trailer for the series can be viewed here, and one of the episodes can be viewed on James' YouTube channel here.

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TheOdd1sOut's videos provide examples of:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: Happens in "My Poetry Teacher" when his poetry teacher tells James that he simply didn't add the end quotes because of a typo. Later lampshaded by himself by adding "PTERODACTYL!" after noticing that what he said turned out alliterative.
  James: Well, frickin', why am I perfectly nitpicking this piece, when the poet purposely put poor punctuation in his poems? PTERODACTYL!
• Aesop Amnesia: In "Buying Clothes" he tells the viewers not to judge someone based on their appearance, but in "Talking to Strangers" he says the exact opposite.
• Air Quotes: His character does this in "A Book I Made as a Kid".
• All Girls Like Ponies: The little girl in "Buying Clothes" is given a pony, but due to her Spoiled Brat nature, she wanted the pink one instead of the one that was given to her.
• Alliterative Title: TheOdd1sOut.
• All Just a Dream: It turns out at the end of "Monsters You Didn't Know Were Under Your Bed" that it was all just part of a hallucination all along of his character that's in a padded cell.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: His mom to a T, he recounted a crowning moment where he was getting out of the car for school and asked his mom to turn down the music since he was very insecure about his reputation. She, seemingly, agreed by turning down the music, but as soon as he opened the car door, she turned the music to full volume. Letting everyone in the vicinity know that they were listening to Christian rock and mortifying him and his sister.
• American Eagle: In "Boy, Were They Wrong!", the first thing that James talks about is Christopher Columbus mistaking America for India. When the word "America" is first said, an eagle head is briefly shown and is heard screeching.
• Angrish: Regularly does this when annoyed.
• Animal Lover: Applies to both James and his sister Faith. For instance, they owned hamsters in the past and they tried to adopt a moth in "Harry the Moth".
• Animated Music Video: The music video for "Life is Fun" is this.
• Animated World Hypotheses: In the video "Buying Clothes", some people reveal that they do see themselves like in the art style. They point out that they never wear clothes, and instead of moving their mouths, they just open them and words come out.
• Animation Bump: The quality of his videos/comics significantly improved over the years.
  • "Reading More Fables (I swear I'm not a furry)" has a small one during the Animesque fox drowning scene because someone else drew it for him.
• Antidisestablishmentarianism: This is one of the on-level spelling words the teacher gives to James's classmates in "My Horibal Speling".
• The Anti-Nihilist: The theme of "Life is Fun", life is chaotic and one of the most depressing aspects of life comes from the things we can't control or predict. However, that shouldn't mean you can't enjoy life or appreciate the things within it. If you're comfortable with the knowledge that life is inherently meaningless and uncontrollable then don't force your beliefs on people who'd rather live in blissful ignorance.
• Art Evolution: His comics originally had human characters with names (Jake, Justin, and Kevin) which lasted about a year or so, but then evolved to his marshmallow-man art style he's known for. Lampshaded here.
• Art Shift: This happens in "Embarrassing Times to get Recognized [MAP]", because different animators collaborated to animate the video. Hence Multi-Animator Project (MAP) in the title.
  • This also happens in his miniseries "Think About That", since it's drawn on paper. Justified because his drawing tablet wasn't working at the time he made said miniseries.
  • The animation briefly shifts to hand-drawn paper stick puppets in "Reading More Fables (I swear I'm not a furry)" when summarizing Aesop's fable "The Crab and the Fox".
  • Also in "Fighting in Mr Beast's $100k Youtuber Battle Royale", the animation shifts to CGI twice.
  • His video on Bluey, is done entirely in the art style of the show, complete with his own Bluey character style-avatar.
• Author Avatar: His marshmallow-man character. Doesn't apply for his comics, though.
• Auto-Tune: Mentioned in the song "Life is Fun". Also, said song has some traces of this.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment:
  • In "Hobbies", when he's saying that doing extra activities not only teaches you important skills, but it also teaches you what your interests are, he then mentions he tried ballet, and then he says now he can say with confidence... that ballet is not for him.
  • "My Thoughts on Gambling" opens with James telling the audience that they should gamble... so that they can learn firsthand how stupid gambling is.
• Balloon Belly: The "trash moth" in "Harry the Moth" has one.
• Bathroom Control: In "Peeing Yourself", James mentions his mean first-grade teacher denying him when he asked to go to the bathroom, resulting in him wetting himself.
• Berserk Button: When his mom flicked him water in the face as a child after washing her hands.
• Big "WHAT?!": He did this when getting hit by a laser out of nowhere and having only ONE live left (and thus making him lose) in a fan-made video game inspired by his "Laser Tag" video.
  • He also does this in "My Thoughts on Roommates".
• Big "YES!": Does one in the video where he reacts to him being reacted on Teens React, when the reactors state they like his videos/style or other similar comments.
• Bilingual Bonus: In the video My Poetry Teacher, while he mentions that Sophomores had to take a class on Latin, the board reads "CDXX illud io ardentia". When translated, it reads "420 blaze that yo".
• Birthday Episode: James often publishes videos (and comics as well when he was active on his Tumblr) on his birthday in his main channel and/or his secondary channel as well.
• Black Bead Eyes
• Black Comedy Pet Death: In the video "Our Hamsters", James talks about his dead hamsters and makes jokes about a hamster's short lifespan and wonders if a dog killing a hamster counts as murder, among other jokes.
• Bland-Name Product: Zoopies (Zupas), Tillll (Tilly's), and Ood Nooy (Old Navy), just to name a few.
• Blank White Eyes: Happens numerous occasions to his character, usually when he starts screaming, panicking, freaking out, or getting angry.
• *Bleep*-dammit!: His characters' mouth is unnecessarily pixeled out (due to the absence of lip-syncing and his mouth can still be seen) when he starts cursing to his mother for laughs in "My Mom's Cruel and Unusual Punishments".
  • Also, we can still deduce what he first cursed before his whole speech was bleeped out.
• Blood Sport: He once described two kids in a high school gym class playing a game of "Bodies," where the objective is to punch the other guy until he can't stand up anymore. The only rule was that you couldn't aim for the head or the face of your opponent, hence the name "Bodies."
• Blush Sticker: His character can get these at times.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: He said MatPat's The Game Theorists sign-off catchphrase "That's just a theory. A Game Theory! Thanks for watching!" before his usual catchphrase in the end of "Getting Recognized part 2".
• Buffy Speak: When describing what a captcha is in "My Random Thoughts (James Edition)":
  James: You know how websites will ask you to type in a bunch of misshapen letters to make sure you're not a robot? That's called a "captcha".
• Burger Fool: James worked at Sooubway for over a year. In the third Sooubway video, James states that he made more money from the first two Sooubway videos, sharing his experiences working at Subway than actually working there. Also, James states that everyone should work at least for six months at either a fast food or retail job at least once in their life so they know what it's like to hold that kind of job.
• The Bus Came Back: His character Jake makes a comeback in his comic "Two Thumbs". Justified since the joke wouldn't make sense with his fingerless marshmallow characters.
• By "No", I Mean "Yes": In Our Hamsters he says "This dog wanted to MURDER THESE ANIMALS. Well, I don't know if MURDER'S the right word. Yeah, MURDER'S the right word."
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: Their eyes can still be visible even though Boyinaband turns off the light in the "Life is Fun" music video.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: James finds a couple of jokes to apply to this trope in his My Random Thoughts (James Edition) video.
• Can't Take Criticism: He is somewhat known for being this.
• Captain Obvious: In "Extracurricular Activities", he says "Everyone is loud. People already know each other. And no one is quiet".
• Catchphrase: "Wear your seatbelt!"
• Censor Suds: Happens to his character when showering in "The Spiders and the Bees".
• Christmas Episode: Same deal as Birthday Episode.
• Clickbait Gag: One of his videos is titled "DO CLICKBAIT TITLES AND THUMBNAILS ACTUALLY WORK?!?!?!", and its thumbnail is nothing but the words "CLICK ME" over a rainbow background. The video itself is simply a 1-second clip of James saying "Yeah, apparently." in response to the video's title.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: This happens in "My Mom's Cruel and Unusual Punishments" when taking advantage that he can "afford enough money to swear":
  James: Swear words cost ya five dollars. That's why I don't swear in videos. But now I can afford it. So... f-(bleep) you, Mom! You piece of-(multiple bleeps)!
• Comically Missing the Point: The doctor in the beginning of "Strangers Trying to Sell You Stuff" advises the children not to accept candy from strangers... because they cause cavities. Justified since it was parodying Too Smart for Strangers.
• Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: His mother does this to James after he sees martial arts in action in "Hobbies".
• Cry Laughing: This has been done various times in his videos.
• Curse Cut Short: Done many times. Notably in the Peeing Yourself video.
  James: My 1st grade teacher was just a humongous bit-*cut* Just a humongous... person.
• Cut Himself Shaving: James once saw a "game" of Bodies in gym class, where two kids beat each other up in the boys' locker room at school, causing one kid to fall, hit his head, and get knocked out. When the coach asks what happened, James and most of his classmates (including the kid who fainted) remark that he just fell and they're not sure why. They almost got away with it until the last kid in line told the coach what actually happened, causing the whole class to get in trouble.
• A Dog Named "Dog": He has a calico cat named "Calico", since he couldn't change his name. He even lampshades it in "Our Cats :3":
  James: We ended up naming the boy cat Spot, the other cat we named Pepper, and the calico… we didn't change her name. We named her Calico. That's like naming a dog Golden Retriever or Chihuahua.
• Disembodied Eyebrows: Same deal as Blush Sticker.
• Don't Ask: He mentions in "My Thoughts on Roommates" that he said this after his roommate caught him mixing Reese's Puffs cereal with crushed Oreos for a video. His 7-Day Vegan Challenge video, to be exact.
• Don't Explain the Joke: He tends to do this, especially when reading his own comics.
• Double Take: Happens to James in where he reacts to him being reacted on Teens React, when he finds out towards the end of the video that a reactor will leave Teens React. Turns out the reactor was simply announcing that he will move to Adults React.
• Dramatic Irony: In the "Our Cats" video, James recounts how, at one point, three strays wound up in their backyard^note "Calico", "Spot", and "Pepper", as they would eventually be called, but his mom refused to let them keep them, as they already had two cats, so she voiced her intention to find them a new home, and that no one was allowed to name them^note as to prevent them from getting attached. She never did, and they wound up naming them.
• Dreaded Kids' Table: James prefers the kids' table so he won't have to get into a political argument at the adults' table.
• Early-Bird Cameo: One of James' friends in "Life is Fun" is a crocodile. Four years later, James all but admitted in the announcement video for his new show Oddballs that this crocodile was a prototype for the character of Max.
• Easter Egg: He points out several easter eggs in his "My Teachers" video here.
• Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: In this video, he mentions that he had this as a child.
  • He mentions this again in "My Horibal Speling".
• Embarrassing Damp Sheets: He mentions in "Peeing Yourself" that he used to wet the bed.
• Episode Tagline: The video "Boy, Were They Wrong!" is about James pointing out historical inaccuracies and noting, "Boy, were they wrong!".
  James: "And yes, I am gonna say that every time."
• Even Evil Has Standards: In one of his old comics, Satan refuses to let Hitler use the ovens for a birthday.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Implied in "My Teachers". The chalkboard next to James's French teacher reads "Learn how to sound Sexy" for a brief moment, with the word "Sexy" being in cursive.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: This excerpt from his video "Think About That episode 1":
  James: So in the meantime, I've created a miniseries called: "Think About That", where I tell you something, and you think about that.
  • "A Book I Made as a Kid" is also an example of this.
  • In fact, most of his video titles are this.
• Extra-Long Episode: "The Movie That Was Too Scary for Baby James" is 23 minutes and 9 seconds long, and was for a time the longest video on his channel.
• Eye Pop: This happens to his character when he freaks out at the fact that MrBeast added Logan Paul in "Fighting in Mr Beast's $100k Youtuber Battle Royale".
• The Face of the Sun: The sun in the music video "Life is Fun" has a face.
• Fake Interactivity: Parodied Dora-style in the end card of "When Will We Tweet EVERYTHING possible: Day 4".
• Fantastic Foxes: He shows his appreciation for foxes from Aesop's Fables. He believes foxes are the wisest characters because of the number of morals they tell others.
• Fingerless Hands
• Flipping the Table: His character (representing James) is seen doing this after losing a board game in "Tabletop Games".
• Foreign Cuss Word: Someone in his Tumblr messages called him a pendejo, but then just slipped it away by saying "Thank you!" once he learned what it meant in his now-unlisted Speed Art + Tumblr Q&A video.
• Fourth Wall Greeting: He greets his imaginary date this way in his unlisted video "Sandwiches".
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: He does this regularly.
  • While talking about a plagiarized essay, the conclusion that got highlighted is just the lyrics to Never Gonna Give You Up. In the same video, one of the classes he passed in during college was "Memeology".
  • The Not-Ricegum character at one point gets a brief thought bubble that gives his own reasons for liking pricy clothing that's actually quite kind and considerate.
• Friend to All Living Things:
  • In his My Random Thoughts (James Edition) video.
    James: I think humans make fun of hairless animals WAY too much.
  • James seems to have a love for hamsters.
  • Also, James refers to rodents (hamsters) as "brodents" in the description of his Our Hamsters video.
  • James is very caring towards his two pet dogs.
• Fun with Acronyms: He, Jaiden from JaidenAnimations, and Adam from SomeThingElseYT play a game based on this.
• Fun with Subtitles: Sometimes the added English subtitles of his videos have funny descriptions for noises, for example. In fact, sometimes the subtitler is actually funny (or cruel) enough to do this.
• Furry Fandom:
  • References them often in his videos, though he's denied being one himself.
  • It's averted in the fact that he calls himself a furry in his My Random Thoughts (James Edition) video. Although it's just James playing this for laughs.
    James: So, I look at this phenomenon and I have a theory. I think we humans find things covered in hair more cute. We're more attracted to things covered in hair. And that's why I'm a furry.
  • In "Growing up Without Cable", he describes a Clifford the Big Red Dog fanfic that crossed over the main show/book with Clifford's Puppy Days, which has an older Clifford and a Puppy Days character reunite and get rather questionable before Clifford starts spreading his legs (with yaoi fanart) and then James ends it there before it can get any weirder.
• Gasp!: He does one for dramatic effect in "My Mom's Cruel and Unusual Punishments" after watching his mom eat an M&M in front of him.
• Girl-Show Ghettoinvoked:
  • Briefly discussed in his "Shows I Found Weird" video where he does admit regretting not watching The Powerpuff Girls (1998) when it was on due to being kind of sexist as a kid, although he did watch Sailor Moon.
  • It’s also revealed in a Super Mario Maker video on his second channel that he was a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic for a brief period of time. Also, this topic comes up in a now-unlisted livestream titled "Watch me work" on said second channel, and he mentions that it was a guilty pleasure he had.
• Good with Numbers: James actually really wanted to be a math teacher, but then Youtube happened.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: In the Behind the Scenes video of "Life is Fun", he messes up a take and says "dang it". Dave immediately comments how odd it is to hear someone say "dang it", especially after working with iDubbbzTV.
• Halloween Episode: Same deal as Christmas Episode.
• Human Shield: James is animated using Jaiden for this purpose at last minute in "Fighting in Mr Beast's $100k Youtuber Battle Royale".
• Hyperventilation Bag: His character uses one when he starts complaining about bees in "The Spiders and the Bees".
• Iconic Outfit: His mom is always depicted in his videos with a lavender apron.
  • Also, he depicts his child self (and childhood, as revealed in the end of these comics) with a shorter version of his character wearing a rainbow propeller hat.
• Incredibly Long Note: He extends the "you" in "All I Want for Christmas Is You" in his video "Christmas Carols".
• Ink-Suit Actor: The customer who asks James his cheese recommendation in "Annoying Customers" resembles JaidenAnimations, who provided her voice.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: Happens in "Buying Clothes" after he says that the brand-name shirt doesn't have any material that can make it that expensive. However, the tag reveals the shirt was made out of 60% unicorn hair and 40% cotton. Obviously, this is played for laughs in the video, but he does have a point.
• Internet Safety Aesop: My Thoughts on Reality Shifting, Scams That Should be Illegal, and My Girlfriend, My Best Friend and the Barfy Beach Date are about respecting the personal lives of content creators, taking everything online with a pinch of salt since they can exploit you, and how reality is more appealing than the internet.
• Iris Out: The music video "Life is Fun" ends this way and it centers on Boyinaband (Dave) rapping the last verse of the song, emphasizing on the fact that he finally Took a Level in Idealism.
• Irony: Despite James's catchphrase being "Wear your seatbelt!", his character doesn't wear one when he gets in the car in the "Life is Fun" music video. According to James, however, he said it's because he forgot to add it.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: For reasons even he can't explain, James once wondered if he'd be able to stand on a hamster cage and let curiosity get the better of him. The result was a broken hamster cage and a serious foot injury that scarred as it healed.
• Lame Comeback: This happened to his sister while trying to come up with a comeback for James to compensate the one he already gave her because she felt bad that his brother had to pay 50 cents for a word that wasn't really meant to offend her.
  James: But sometimes, us kids would just be messin' around with each other, and we didn't really mean the insults, so we would feel bad taking someone else's 50 cents. Like, someone would say:
  Faith: Hey, James, what's 6 + 6?
  And I would say:
  Child James: Uhh... 9, idiot!
  And my mom would hear me and say:
  Mother: James, that's 50 cents!
  And my sister would feel bad, so she would insult me back and say:
  Faith: James, y-y-you're an unpleasant person!
  (Beat)
  Child James: Aw...
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: This conversation on "Buying Clothes":
  Guy #1: Hey man, have you ever noticed that we wear the exact same clothes every day?
  Guy #2: We don't... we don't wear any clothes.
  Guy #1: What if we're both just a cartoon character, and that's why our clothing's the same?
  Guy #2: That's impossible. Cartoon characters' mouths move. We just open our mouths and words start coming out.
• Limited Animation
• Limited Wardrobe: When he used Jake, Justin, and Kevin in his comics. Jake is normally in a blue shirt with a singular purple stripe and black pants, Justin in an orange shirt and blue pants, and finally Kevin in a lime green hoodie and blue pants.
• Ludicrous Gift Request: Conversed in "Christmas Carols" when James mentions that three things that people wanted for Christmas in songs are "my two front teeth", "a hippopotamus", and "you".
• Meaningful Name: James had a hamster named "Killer" because said hamster kept biting them.
  • Initially, when his comics had characters with names, they were "the odd ones out", according to James. Hence the once meaningful name "TheOdd1sOut".
• Mic Drop: A running gag in his video "Reading Fables".
• Mister Seahorse: Played for Laughs in "My Mom's Cruel and Unusual Punishments" when his character appears pregnant when James mentions that pregnancy is something "anyone can do".
  James: Oh, and I guess they also give birth to you and take care of you, but like, pfft, anyone can do that!
• Morning Routine: The music video for "Life is Fun" starts this way. The song only mentions taking a shower and brushing teeth, however.
• Morning Sickness: James had a teacher when he was six who threw up because she was pregnant.
• Multi-Animator Project: James made his "Embarrassing Times to be Recognized" (archived here as it's now deleted) in this format. Contributors include Katzun, JAMIEvstheVOID and Ivan Animated.
• Nature Is Not Nice: James recalls how he and his sister caught a moth, and since neither their mom or teacher wanted to deal with it (which he guesses is because if it dies, then they'd have to teach the kids about death), the teacher instead convince the entire class to let it return to the wild... and then a bird promptly swooped down and ate it. And she had to teach them about death and how nature isn't nice anyway.
• Nice Guy: In a few of his videos such as his Subway stories, he says that he was too nice to not serve customers after closing time.
  • He also mentions in "Wrong Numbers" that he was willing enough to build a sandwich over the phone (and giving it to him personally despite the store being minutes away from closing) for the guy who was calling him.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: James' girlfriend, whom he refers to as GIF, is incredibly weird, but harmless. James spent the "honeymoon phase" of their relationship thinking she was murderous and covering her tracks, when she was really just a Cloudcuckoolander who has bizarre fixations and planning. She comes from a wealthy family, leaving her a stickler for proper table manners, her first impression of James' house is that his collections are something only a psychopath would have, she has an irrational fear of knives, she owns an animal mascot costume in her basement despite not liking sports, and GIF owns eight snakes, with a ninth one dead and in her freezer, which she didn't want James seeing, and hasn't taken out in over a year.
  James: You had... a dead... snake... next... to the BAGEL BITES?!
• No Body Left Behind: What's Inside is represented "dying" (he actually got out of the game) like this in "Fighting in Mr Beast's $100k Youtuber Battle Royale".
• No-Neck Chump
• The Noun and the Noun: "The Spiders and the Bees".
• Non-Indicative Name: After he stopped using Jake, Justin, and Kevin in his comics.
• Not What It Looks Like: He says this after someone caught him in a fountain reaching for a coin in "Embarrassing Times to get Recognized".
• Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!: One video depicts James reading the first (known) fanfic of him, featuring a Stalker with a Crush (our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen!) that calls him "senpai".
• Open-Minded Parent: Although James bent over backwards trying to impress them, GIF's parents are indeed supportive of their relationship, with the first thing that he and GIF's father bonded over being the fact that they own the same pair of socks.
• Overly Long Gag: In his riddle video in his second channel, he then comments he doesn't know how to end the video without being awkward, as he doesn't have a catchphrase for his second channel. He then starts saying ways he could end the video for an overly long time until someone tells him to stop.
• Pædo Hunt: When James found out that the phrase for when the sun is still out when it's raining is "The Devil is beating his wife and marrying his daughter" in France, good lord, he was not happy!
• Parody: His secondary channel TheOdd2sOut parodies other Youtubers.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: James briefly wears a blue shirt and his sister is in a pink one in his video “My Poetry Teacher.”
• Porky Pig Pronunciation: This happens to him when trying to say "dakimakura" in his anime body pillow review video. He then decides to just refer to them as "anime body pillows" for the sake of the video.
• Potty Emergency: In "Peeing Yourself", James mentions being a kid and having to pee in class, and he also mentions having to poop at college (although thankfully that last one didn't cause an accident like the first one did).
• Potty Failure: One video is about times James has wet his pants as a kid.
• Precision F-Strike: The mother in the introductory scene of "Tabletop Games" tells her daughter Sally to "shut the fuck up". This from a Youtube series where swearing is rarely heard. James even admits he doesn't swear in his videos in "My Mom's Cruel and Unusual Punishments".
• Pride: While James is certainly not arrogant or narcissistic, he has admitted that being a Youtuber has given him a confidence boost. Not an unhealthy amount, just more than when he was in high school...
• Propeller Hat of Whimsy: Whenever James draws himself as a kid, the kid will usually be wearing a propeller hat.
• Pubescent Braces: The 15-year old James in "My Mom's Cruel and Unusual Punishments" is depicted wearing braces. However, it is unknown if James wore braces at this age, in that case this trope would be justified.
• Pun With Pi: In "Why Pi is Awesome", James says that the main reason pi is awesome is its name— it's a number that allows people to make silly puns due to sounding like "pie".
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: His character does this briefly in "My Cats :3" in order to convince his mother to keep the three extra cats.
• Racial Face Blindness: In "Touring Tourgether", James talks about how some people in Chicago mistook Emirichu (who's Korean American) for Jaiden (who's of mixed German and Japanese descent).
• Real Person Shipping: There's quite a bit of it between between James and JaidenAnimations, probably due to their similar styles and the fact they both live in Arizona. Both James and Jaiden are well aware of this, and sometimes tease their fans about it, even once Holding Hands as part of a charity drive.
  • On the other hand, when he reveals that he now has a girlfriend, James takes the time to stress that she's not Jaiden and that he finds the idea of Real Person Shipping to be kind of creepy.
• Recycled Animation: Discussed in "The Truth About Making Cartoons". Using some similar animations of Mowgli and Christopher Robin as an example, James defends this practice by saying that animation takes time and money, especially in the pre-digital era, so recycling more minor animations is okay (as long as it's from the same studio) if it means more time and money can be used on more major animations, like an epic fight scene. Additionally, a exterior nighttime city skyline background from "Conspiracy Theories and Crazy People" is reused, due to the artist spending 7 hours making that background when it only appeared in 4 seconds of that video, and James wants to make sure her work is appreciated.
• Rhymes on a Dime: His character starts speaking in rhyme (but then stopped doing it) in "Monsters You Didn't Know Were Under Your Bed".
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Floof, James's recently-adopted dog.
• Rimshot: His character performs one in "Hobbies".
• Running Gag:
  • For whatever reason, contrasting viewpoints are often animated as being spoken by sock puppets on James' hands.
  • James denying that he's a furry.
• Say My Name: He mentions in "Getting Recognized part 2" that a Zupas employee got this reaction after recognizing him.
• Self-Deprecation: He calls his Boy Scout videos "dumb" in his video "Hobbies".
• Shout-Out: He has done various:
  • In "Movies I Thought Were Weird", he reviews the Charlotte's Web sequel and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
  • In "Strangers Trying to Sell You Stuff", one of the doors he´s about to knock is Boo's door from Monsters, Inc. and another one is from Bowser's.
  • In "The Movie That Was Too Scary For Baby James", said movie is The Dark Crystal. He also mentions Jurassic Park.
  • James made two fan-made Garfield comics as a child. He wonders if one of them contains a shout-out to The Incredibles or if it's just a coincidence.
  • In "My Poetry Teacher", James jokingly says he and his sister had to go to prep school due to "having powers". In this cutaway, James is dressed as Wolverine and his sister is dressed as Jubilee.
  • In "Wrong Numbers", James recalls how two women called him asking for someone named Vance. Turns out he misheard and they were looking for someone named Lance. Tired of them calling him back despite clarifying that they got the wrong number, he was considering to call back and tell them he found Lance — Lance McClain. Only that he decided not to do it and continued sleeping.
  • In "My Thoughts on Roommates", James awakens to his anime roommate watching the Magic Knight Rayearth opening song.
  • In "Our Cats :3", James jokes about how they've had about as many cats as he's had hamsters. He demonstrates this with drawings of Long Cat, Nyan Cat, Bongo Cat, and Nick Nocturne.
  • In "Talking to Strangers," one shot has him walking up to someone like DIO confronting Jotaro.
  • "The Truth About Making Cartoons" has James scrolling through a fake Instagram feed with ads for a band called My Chemical Fallout at the Disco and a show called Average British Bake-On.
• Shutting Up Now: He does this in "Christmas Contemplations" after singing his made-up song (obviously To the Tune of... the original song), "Prancer, The Normal-Nosed Reindeer".
  James: Well, enough about you going down in history, Rudolph! I'm gonna make my own song about... Prancer! Do-do-do/Prancer, the... normal-nosed reindeer/Had a very... normal nose/And if you ever saw it/You would even say "Yep, that's a nose!"/All of the other reindeer/Respectedhimformeetingtheexpectationsofwhatanormalreindeershouldbelike/They always let little Prancer/Play on his reindeer bike! Okay, I'll stop.
• Soap Punishment: He mentions in "My Mom's Cruel and Unusual Punishments" that his mother often threatened him to do this if they swore. So one day he said a naughty word and his mom threatened him, as always. James told her that he didn't care and that soap tastes good. So his mom accepted and offered him to take a bite off a soap bar. He does, and regrets it.
• So Unfunny, It's Funny: He considers a joke in a comic about his pet hamster's loud behavior at night to be "not that funny", although, to some people, it might actually BE that funny.
• Split-Screen Phone Call: This happens occasionally in "Wrong Numbers", and some of his comics as well.
• Sprouting Ears: Jake gets cat ears and a tail in a panel for some reason in this comic.
• Squish the Cheeks: Boyinaband does this to James in "Fighting in Mr Beast's $100k Youtuber Battle Royale".
• Sudden Anatomy: Despite his characters are usually drawn without noses, they occasionally have them for brief moments when the situation asks for it.
• Sudden Eye Color: His character gets blue Animesque eyes for a brief moment in "Fighting in Mr Beast's $100k Youtuber Battle Royale".
• Suddenly Shouting: He does this in "Reading More Fables (I swear I'm not a furry)" when explaining the moral of "The Crab and the Fox".
  James: And the moral is: "Be content with your lot". Don't move, don't travel, don't try and live in a better location because a fox might EAT YOU! JUST LIVE IN A STUDIO APARTMENT AND DEAL WITH IT!!
• Take That!: His "Buying Clothes” video has... a lot of stabs towards Ricegum, to say the least. Though as he admits, he doesn't mention him by name; he just makes fun of him through a cartoony avatar of him multiple times. Also, the main focus is on repeated flexing on people through his expensive clothes.
  • In "Growing up Without Cable", he flat out calls Caillou a demon, rants about his parents being spineless, and in general hates the show.
    James: All you need to know about Caillou is that I hate him.
  • Zigzagged in "The Movie That Was Too Scary For Baby James". He calls The Dark Crystal garbage...but likes the art.
• Talk About the Weather: He mentions in "Starting Conversations" that this is one of 3 good conversation starters he knows.
• Technical Euphemism: In "Peeing Yourself", when James recalls an incident where he wet his pants at school, he admits, "I did... micturate myself".
• Teeth Flying: A tooth falls out to his character's Sorry playmate after being punched in "Tabletop Games".
• Title Drop: Done in the end of "Think About That episode 1".
• Toilet Humour:
  • One video is about wetting himself.
  • One of his "Academy Anecdotes" is about a boy peeing at a urinal with his pants down.
• That Came Out Wrong: After recording his take in which he says "Ahhh! Such a beautiful day, uh! The sun is shining in a beautiful way, uh!" in the Behind the Scenes video of "Life is Fun", he then asks Dave if it sounds too sexual.
• Tradesnark™: He adds in a trademark after he says "It's All About The Balance" a second time in "Hobbies".
• Top Ten List: "Top 10 Things That Keep Me Awake at Night".
• Truth in Television:
  • James points out in his My Random Thoughts (James Edition) video how we as humans often dislike hairless animals and view them as ugly while preferring fluffy animals. Think about it, do you hear people gushing over fluffy kittens or hairless kittens more often?
    James: ''[petting a hairless animal] We think that all hairless animals are ugly. Just go to Google Images and type in "Hairless animal" and you'll probably think the animals you see there are ugly as well... but we all seem to forget that... we're hairless animals too. If anything, other animals should think that WE'RE ugly.
  • James also points out that he's come to realize that the internet loves drama and cute animals in the beginning of his Our Hamsters video. Honestly, he couldn't be more right about those things.
• Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: He mentions this happened to him in "Starting Conversations" after an elevator temporarily broke down.
• The Unintelligible: The first of the two women attempting to call Lance in "Wrong Numbers". Despite his best efforts, James couldn't make sense of anything she was saying, and the one thing he thought he understood - the name of the person she was looking for - he'd misheard as Vance.
• Vegetarian for a Day: He decided to do the "7 Day Vegan Challenge" (which he decides to rename it as "7 Day Vegan Challenge Baby, solves all yo' problems"), and, according to what he wrote on Day #1 on his log on the challenge, he suffered from this, which is something pretty expected to happen when doing a challenge like this (if you're not used to this kind of lifestyle).
• Visible Sigh: In "Our Cats :3", his character (representing him) is seen sighing like this after accepting not to keep the three extra cats.
• Visual Pun: His videos often have these.
• Volumetric Mouth: His character gets one when laughing loudly in "Top 10 Things That Keep Me Awake at Night".
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
  • While talking about a plagiarized essay,
  • In "My Horibal Speling", T.J. is illustrated throwing up on a horse.
  • In "My Mom's Cruel and Unusual Punishments", his character (representing James) is seen puking into a toilet after biting into a soap bar.
• Wallet Moths: In his video "Job Interviews", a moth flies out a wallet when he mentions a minimum wage job won't help afford a college.
• We All Die Someday: He says this towards the end of his video "Reading More Fables (I swear I'm not a furry)" when telling the viewers that defending furries is not a big deal:
  James: I know I'm gonna get some dislikes for defending furries, but just, chill out, guys. It's not a big deal. We're all gonna die one day anyway.
• What the Heck Is an Aglet?: In "Buying Clothes", he recounts a period when he wore trendy shoes and was told he wasn't supposed to tie the laces, so he walked around with the loose laces tucked inside, leading him to constantly step on the sharp aglets. Cue the definition of "aglets" briefly popping up on screen.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: In "The Spiders and the Bees", his character does this when he stares at the bee flying by.
  • This also happens briefly to Boyinaband in the music video "Life is Fun" when reminding James of the exploitation of the natives, and when telling him bald eagles aren't bald.
  • Also happens frequently in "Fighting in Mr Beast's $100k Youtuber Battle Royale".
• White Void Room: Mostly takes place in one, as revealed in a shot of "Chaperoning 7th Graders".
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: His family had a cat named Azula, thinking it was female. However, while James was playing with the cat, he saw the cat´s "male parts" and was renamed "Baby Cat" later on.

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Thanks for reading, and wear your seatbelt!

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