Chris Ray Gun, also known by his real name of Chris Maldonado, is a YouTube comedian, political commentator, and singer/song-writer.
His videos are mostly known for their political commentary, in which he discusses and pokes fun at recent news stories or political-leaning internet content, such as feminist YouTube videos. However, he also has a variety of other content, including music (both original songs and parodies of existing songs), non-political comedy videos, and gaming content.
The channel has a few main series, in addition to the occasional break in the pattern:
- "Glasses Off", in which he discusses things from a more serious, out-of-character standpoint.
- "Ray Gun Recap", where he covers a bunch of recent events and gives his thoughts on them.
- "Weird Wide Web", covering silly internet content, both political and non-political.
Other recurring content includes his "Social Justice the Musical" videos, where he parodies songs to talk about political issues, and his Q&A videos, often involving one of his friends.
His friends are perhaps the most notable recurring theme with this videos; much of the humor revolves around him speaking to his demonic llama-plushie Paul, or bothering his roommates and capturing their reactions on-camera. He is also a frequent collaborator with other popular YouTubers in the same niche as him, with those YouTubers often getting to cameo as the voice of Paul.
The channel can be found here.
He also has a podcast channel, The Snark Tank, for more joke-y content and gaming videos.
Tropes found on the channel:
- Adorable Abomination: Whatever the hell Paul is, it's implied to be demonic in nature, and his different voices are said to be the multiple human souls he has consumed.
- Berserk Button: Articles saying that people should drink cockroach milk ... he hates this for obvious reasons.
- Articles saying that people should eat bugs ... again he hates this for obvious reasons.
- Black Comedy: It's everywhere. Nearly every joke is a dark one, making fun of things like insane politics, suicide, impending nuclear war...
- Book Ends: "Zarna Joshi Vs. The World" begins with Chris time-traveling in from off-screen, and ends with him constructing a time machine and going back to the start of the video.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Mocked.You know what's a really good idea? Putting "crass jokes" and "innuendos" next to "rape" and "murder" on a list of similar things. That's just...oh, makes you sound brilliant. You know, my to-do-list for tomorrow actually follows a very similar structure. You know, I gotta get some milk and eggs, gotta call my internet provider, gotta pay my phone bill, I gotta break into a nursery and set all the minority newborns ablaze, and to top it all off, I got to fill up my car! All equally mundane things to do.
- Deadpan Snarker: Chris is very sarcastic, making fun of his video's subject, his roommates, politics, himself, all with a very snarky tone. His guest-stars, such as his father and his roommate Tom Sweeney, are also very prone to sarcasm.
- Death by Music Video: "Ain't No Rest For The Triggered", Chris's character ends up going to jail, escaping jail, and being chased off a cliff. The last moment of the song is him dying in the desert.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Chris fired Paul for attacking him physically... so Paul infiltrated North Korea, tricked the Koreans and the Americans into having even worse relations, inspiring the Koreans to launch a nuke, aiming directly at Chris's new apartment.
- Easy Amnesia: His "Zarna Joshi Vs. The World" video starts with a chair-roll that causes him to hit his head and forget what he was doing. He rewatches the video on his computer, talks about it, and then tries to do the chair-roll again... which makes him hit his head again.
- Grievous Bottley Harm:
- Exaggerated in "Putting Down the Watchdog"; Chris smashes four bottles over his head to the tune of Boom Clap by Charli XCX when his frustration and confusion with the Racism Watchdog reaches its peak.
- Subverted in "Algorythm"; Chris tries to smash a bottle in his face, but it refuses to break, so he gets frustrated and just smashes it on the floor.
- In "THE END OF THE WORLD!", Chris gets annoyed by a woman on the phone, so he knocks her out by smashing a beer-bottle over her head.
- Laughing Mad: In "Advertiser Friendly", he struggles to keep a cheerful facade while discussing insane or frustrating news articles. Once he stumbles upon "White Supremacist in NYC Sword Killing Charged with Murder as Terrorism", he cracks, and starts distressfully laughing while carrying a sword around, which at some points sounds more like crying than laughing.
- Living Toys: Paul is just a small stuffed llama... that talks, moves, and has evil, demonic powers. Despite that he's alive, Chris claimed to not really consider him sentient.
- The Mirror Shows Your True Self: The "personality" variant shows up in "Punch a Nazi"; the music video's protagonist looks in the mirror and sees themselves dressed as an SS Officer, who claims to be them, "but more honest."
- Mood Whiplash: In the "Advertiser Friendly" recap video, he parodies YouTube's "advertiser friendly" policies by starting the video off in a colorful, crayon-drawn world where everything is happy, and he and Paul are talking cheerfully about the subject of the video. It then switches to the complete opposite when Chris gives his real thoughts on the subject, with him ranting in front of a darker, more crudely drawn background. The video proceeds to swap back and forth between the two styles and tones.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Inverted - Chris occasionally states a fact, and then reassures his viewers that he is making it up.Fun fact, by the way: the only reason that the chicken has not gone extinct is because they're so delicious, that we breed them at a very high rate to ensure that we don't run out of them. I don't know if that's true. But it feels true.
- Parody: Many of his songs, both full-length and within-episodes, are political-based parodies of pre-existing songs. Funnily enough, he discovered in "Cringe with Chris" that his first attempt at this was back in 2009, where he made a parody of "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" known as "Pretty Fly for a Fat Guy".
- Political Overcorrectness: The "Social Justice the Musical" videos all focus on people getting very offended and angry over minor slights, with the songs serving as criticism of the concept. Though he makes references of real-events, things are exaggerated and fictionalized for the sake of parody.
- Running Gag: Several.
- Chris likes to open his videos with a chair-roll up to his desk, each one different.
- Footage of him bothering or arguing with his roommates, often based on the video's subject matter.
- Paul the Llama interrupting the show, being disrespected by Chris, or showing off some weird, demonic traits and powers.
- Jokes about suicide.
- Particularly strange arguments or moments will be responded to with a silent, baffled, "WHY".
- Shout-Out: "Algorythm" contains the line "Case dismissed, bring in the dancing lobsters."
- Self-Deprecation: There's a lot of jokes made at Chris's expense, such as him being a "less funny IDubbbz", or his struggle to release videos in a timely manner.
- Stable Time Loop: Parodied - "Zarna Joshi Vs. The World" breaks several rules of time travel by having Chris construct a time machine after he has already time-travelled back to the start of the video. This makes Chris infinite years old, and means he is locked in an closed loop of time-travel and amnesia.
- Sudden Soundtrack Stop: In "NO MEMES ALLOWED!", there's some quirky, upbeat music playing as he begins to describe the concept of memes... which then cuts off completely when he launches into claiming that memes are "kinda like, ehh... Kurt Cobain".
- Suicide as Comedy: He makes quite a few jokes about killing himself, ranging from wearing a shirt that says "Kill Me", to his "1000 subscriber special" culminating a huge Bleach-drinking gag, in which he wandered around LA drinking from a Bleach bottle. note
