Brain Blaze, formerly Business Blaze, is one of many Youtube channels hosted by Simon Whistler. Beginning as a business-themed trivia channel only slightly less dry than his others, over the first few months the show wades out into a sea of in-jokes and memes. The show's original multiple writers were reduced to one, Danny Salter, and the editor, Samuel Ávila, took on a more active role, splicing memes into the videos, while the topics became less strictly business-focused.
Brain Blaze contains the following tropes... allegedly:
- Artifact Title: Despite having long since strayed away from the topic of business to the point that many videos had nothing to do with business at all, and were simply about whatever subject Simon (or occasionally Danny) felt like making a video on, the series kept the title "Business Blaze" until August of 2021. Simon would frequently lampshade this in his later videos, moreso if the video in question actually was business-related or tangentially so.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: A running gag, with Simon randomly throwing out the name "Peter". Adverts that Straight Up Lied
has Simon criticise his viewers before saying, "Thanks for watching, Peter". He then throws out the name "Greg Jones", pondering both the likelihood of any of his viewers having that name and the idea of anybody named Greg Jones watching that video suddenly jumping up in shock. - Companion Cube: Simon's space heater, ETA (or "Wilson" or "Charles"), which he would talk to as if alive for much of 2020.
- Conspiracy Theorist: The space heater would often be dubbed over with conspiracy theories.
- Cross-Popping Veins: In the intro of "5 Brands that Don't Exist Anymore (And How it All Went Wrong)", Simon has a notably shorter fuse for technical issues, which he blames on a cold. When he yells at his mic cord for the second time in as many minutes, Sam edits a little 💢 over his head as a gag.
- Denser and Wackier: Brain Blaze started off as any other Simon Whistler-run channel. Now, it's undoubtedly not.
- Drugs Are Good: Simon and his love affair with cocaine.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Some early videos on the channel were written by other writers apart from Danny. They also lack the memes and creative editing added by Sam.
- Expansion Pack Past: Danny mentions that he has worked a wide variety of jobs and done an equally varied amount of things in the past in his scripts, to the point that Simon expresses bewilderment at the kind of life he has lived.
- Danny's varied past and his popularity on this channel have gotten to the point that some viewers have frequently requested that Simon cover Danny on Biographics (another of Simon's channels dedicated to biographies of famous people). Simon notes the hilarity in that should he decide to do so, people who frequent Biographics (or any of his other channels) but not Brain Blaze would be thoroughly confused as to who Danny is.
- The Ghost: As he is the scriptwriter, Danny is never seen onscreen. However, the flavor of his scripts and frequent mentions of his backstory has arguably led to him being as much a character on the channel as Simon himself, and much more so than the people who write scripts for Simon's other channels. To a lesser extent, this also applies to Sam, owing to his edits and meme additions to the videos.
- #HashtagForLaughs: #cancelsimon, whenever Simon feels as though he crosses a line somewhere.
- On Second Thought: Towards the end of "Ridiculous Video Games That Actually Existed", discussing the infamous ZX Spectrum port of SQIJ!, Simon compares Jason Creighton's contractual obligations to an unnamed one-time sponsor of the channel who took issue with the "unprofessional" tone of his usual improvised ad read, which he countered by submitting as a "revision" his bare contractual minimum of monotonically reading the ad copy into the camera verbatim. The sponsor opted to keep the original read.
- Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: If Simon makes negative statements about someone or something that have not been proven in a court of law, he tacks on the word "allegedly", "in my opinion", or "allegedly in my opinion" as a sort of fig leaf against defamation claims. If the subject is particularly litigious and/or the claim is particularly dangerous, he might chant "allegedly" several times to make it clear that it's not a statement of confirmed fact.
- Praising Shows You Don't Watch: Towards the end of "Bizarre Times That Ghosts Appeared in Court Cases", Simon praises the Public Domain, because it results in the creation of such things as "a Winnie-the-Pooh murder film, which is fantastic". He then admits he hasn't watched it yet (the movie was over a month away from its scheduled release date at this point) but he just loves the idea, and that's why he loves it when stuff enters the public domain.
- Running Gag:
- Slapping the script.
- Fighting with Siri.
- Rickrolling in the video description.
- Deliberately mispronouncing "Rotherham."
- Simon claiming Danny is locked in his basement.
- The ridiculous density of references to previous videos, which Simon gleefully points out will be flying right over new viewers' heads.
- Simon sarcastically saying something reactionary (usually in response to the subject of the video showing they genuinely believe such things) followed by loudly shouting "Am I right, Peter?"
- Whenever Simon makes a Captain Obvious statement, Sam will cut to Simon's grinning face in front of the "confused math woman" gif (from Senhora do Destino) titled "Learning Stuff with Fact Boy". After the gag had been running for several videos, it started to become a Mad Libs Catch Phrase ("Hair Facts with Bald Boy" after Simon mentions that bald people can still get dandruff, etc).
- In a video-specific example, Simon and Danny take absolute glee in comparing Theranos' Edison Machine to a breadmaker.
- Sir Swears Alot: He gets bleeped but Simon swears alot here compared to his other YouTube channels.
- Subverted Catchphrase: Whenever some negative claim has actually been proven in a court of law, Simon will point out that this time he doesn't have to cover his ass by hedging it as "allegedly".
- Take That!: Quite often, Simon will fire a shot at Raid: Shadow Legends, stating that they constantly ask him for sponsorship deals that he will never accept, and that the game is just terrible. Allegedly.
- #cancelsimon
