Once upon a time, back when the Internet as we know it was still in diapers, a madman named Eric Fensler took 25 old public service announcements from the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon and turned them into subversive comedy genius. Needless to say, they went memetic.
All of them can be viewed on this
YouTube channel. Alternatively, Jose the Bronx Rican created and released a DVD "remaster" by hand-editing the original PSA's (from their own DVD release) and adding Fensler's audio. In any case, they really have to be seen to be believed.
OH SHIT!:
- Adaptational Nationality: Recondo speaks with a thick Australian accent, when he speaks coherently at all, that is.
- Ascended Meme: For April Fools' Day 2022, action figure manufacturer Super7 made officially licensed figurines of Roadblock and Mutt with their accessories used in their PSAs. Even the bio cards on the back are full of nonsense taken straight from the videos!
- Berserk Button:Kid: Hey, aren't you Buzz Lightyear?
Other Kid: -whispering- I love your movie.
Deep Six: MMMDMHMBBMMMM- Do not tell the Australian that you would rather be playing video games than hide-and-seek. He will lock your friend in a refrigerator and make you go back to class.
- Camp Gay: Mr. Lafitte, who made Susie some sandwiches and adores the boys' different colored hats.
- Cluster F-Bomb:
- Creative Closing Credits: Some of the spoofs change the G.I. Joe jingle a bit.
- Curse Cut Short: SHIIIIIIIIIIII-
- Digital Piracy Is Evil: Stop all the donwloadin!
- From the Mouths of Babes: The kids in these shorts cuss like sailors at times.
- Gag Dub: The whole gist of the series.
- Glorified Sperm Donor: "I believe I knew your mother, son."
- Gratuitous Foreign Language:
- PSA #23 seems to be made entirely out of a basic Japanese tape. Also, GEE WARA TASHI FU SUKURUUUUUU.
- "Nice catch, blanco niño note , but too bad your ass got saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacked".
- PSA #23
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: "Give him the stick...DON'T GIVE HIM THE STICK!"
- Jive Turkey: "It's just ee freezy steps: just flip it, stick it, and see-ya-latah-bye!"
- London Gangster: Snow Job tries to comes off as one of these in "Ice", talking in an aggressive Cockney accent. Doubles as a
Cluster F-Bomb.Snow Job: Hey, what the fuck are you kids doin' on my fuckin' lawn? And don't look at me when I'm fuckin' talking to you. Get that kid off my ice, you little wankers. A'right, give 'im the stick - DON'T GIVE 'IM THE STICK! - Manipulative Editing: Fensler was able to take a kid passing out and turn it into a break dance.
- Mildly crosses over with Overly Long Gag when Spirit tries to put out a fire on a child's jacket- a little too hard.
- Another clip was reversed so it looked like a kid being forced into a refrigerator. In the original, the kid got trapped in the refrigerator and was rescued.
- Mildly crosses over with Overly Long Gag when Spirit tries to put out a fire on a child's jacket- a little too hard
- Macho Camp: Mr. LaFitte from Episode 22 is a muscular, mustachioed man with a leather peaked cap, who speaks in a very effeminate manner and has a Cuteness Proximity moment upon seeing his daughter's playmates.Look at all your different colored hats!
- Mind Screw: About half of them, from a man claiming to be a computer trying to convince a random kid to stop downloading things, to a soldier standing at the side of a kids soccer field repeating international news stories while ignoring the world around him, to a Joe appearing outside a house to sing reggae at a pair of kids (and one of the kids deciding to join him).
- Mouth Flaps: Made fun of in the very first one.
- Overly Long Gag: One, two, ............ three: uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
- And then "GI Jooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..."
- Sampling: The speech that gets used for all of Spirit's dialogue? That's from Audio Fidelity Records' "Bible Reading in Cherokee." The same clip was also sampled at the end of "Strawberry" by Butthole Surfers, and in "Brocket 99."
- Shout-Out:
- PSA #12 to Sega Rally Championship's infamous Game Over screen.
- #14 has Wild Bill singing Arlo Guthrie's "The Motorcycle Song":
I just wanna ride my MOOOOOOooooooooootorcicle!! -
- Skewed Priorities:
- Snow Job's first impulse when seeing a group of children trying to save their friend who fell onto a frozen pond is to berate them for trespassing.
- A camper's reaction to Spirit saving his friend whose sleeve had caught fire? Ask if Spirit had stolen anything from their tents.
- So Unfunny, It's Funny: "Soccer news" dubs news broadcast-esque readings of unrelated tragedies for the Joe's dialogue note .
- Spoof Aesop: PSA #17: If you play hooky, you'll be forced into a fridge by a stereotypical Australian man while he gibbers incomprehensibly.
- Standard Snippet: The Joe's dialogue in "Soccer News" is the second segue from the album "Exodus" by the New Power Generation - and that same audio also appears in "Daily News" by Chamillionaire, the episode "Ballad of the Fallen Angels" from Cowboy Bebop, the Spin Doctors' song "What Time is it", in the track "Gift" in Shenmue II, in Megadeth's song "The Scorpion", and in Jonathan Coulton's Shop Vac.
- The Unintelligible - Deep Six, due to his Buzz Lightyear-esque head dome.
- Also the firefighters in #6
- The Australian man's dialogue in 17 rapidly turns into gibberish, though he talks normally at the beginning.
- Also the firefighters in #6
- Would Hurt a Child: Children are hurt quite often, and it's always hysterical.
- A kid is tackled by a soldier for getting tackled after catching a football.
- A kid falls off a cliff.
- A kid is shoved into a fridge. One of those old ones that locks.
- Two kids are vaporized by a masked intruder during a house fire.
- G.I. Jooooooeeeee!
Endorsed by National Fenslerfilm Council
