Lets Play / Nerd³

The Nerd who? The Nerd³.

Hello, procrastinators!

Nerd³ is a British Let's Play channel on YouTube created by Daniel Hardcastle and run by himself and Wot Fanar, devoted to gaming and reviewing games. It can be found here. Largely inspired as a cross between Hannah Hart's My Drunk Kitchen and TotalBiscuit's WTF Is..., it combines quick editing with strange, unexpected humour and real-time gameplay.

After a hiatus in summer 2017, his videos have been largely very unique takes on his standard formula, ranging from a video entirely devoted to Dan watching VR pornography that's only focused on his face to uploading an entire second "season" of his Planet Coaster series in one day, Netflix-style. Basically, he's doing what he wants, and it's awesome.

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Nerd³ provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: Dan released two episodes of NerdCubed Completes Psychonauts in mid-2013 before axing the Completes series altogether. The Completes series returned a year later with The Simpsons: Hit & Run and would go on to cover many games. But he didn't return to finish Psychonauts until 2020, a full seven years later!
• AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: Evie/Cleverbot pronounces her own name as "Cle-VER-but". Cue Dan bursting into hysterical laughter.
• All Just a Dream: Dan wonders if the events that happen in Amnesia: The Dark Descent are just a dream.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Invoked. Due to some out-of-context lines from Barbie, Dan views her as an international terrorist.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: invoked Dan wonders in his Flight Simulator X video if pilots fly really close around the Golden Gate Bridge for fun. He is completely right, as it turns out.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: DadCubed. Oh, God, DadCubed.
• April Fools' Day:
  • For April 1, 2013, Dan decided to take a new direction and play Happy Wheels with a face cam, not unlike PewDiePie. The video only lasts for about two minutes before showing twenty minutes of YouTube's "An error occurred. Please try again later" message. Mostly meant as a Take That!.
  • For April 1, 2012, Dan also decided to conquer his fears and play Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Unlike the Happy Wheels video, this one is actually a full video of Dan playing "Petz Horsez" 2.
• Arch-Enemy: Ducks, and Brad.
• Artistic License – Religion: In the FTL What Would Jesus Do challenge, perhaps unsurprisingly. One of the most notable examples comes when considering self-defense:
  Dan: It was, it was...if someone slaps your ass cheek, they can also slap your other ass cheek, wasn't it? It was something like that, I got the weird Bible.
• Ascended Extra: Westerado was originally going to be a short on Nerd³'s Three Free Games Friday, but Dan enjoyed it so much that it got its own Nerd³ Permadeath series instead.
  • A similar process happened for Super Hot.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: One of his key personality traits is his complete inability to pay attention to one thing for more than a minute straight. Unless, of course, The Perfectionist within him arises while playing a sandbox game, in which case he'll invert this and pay too much attention.
• Awkward Father-Son Bonding Activity: Awkward isn't really the right word.
• Berserk Button:
  • Being named Brad and being around Dan will not fare well for you, even if you are on the same team as he is.
  • Ducks, ever since one particular incident in a Minecraft Let's Play.
  • A downplayed one now, but he doesn't take very kindly to the objectification of females in videogames. It's one of the main reasons he loathes Catwoman.
  • A downplayed one is when a game doesn't offer invertible controls.
  • A not-quite-as-downplayed one along the same lines is not being allowed to change the field of view.
  • As of TMI Vlog With ''Emma Blackery''!, baths have become a new one.
  • He absolutely despises Microtransactions. He went so far to put "Every single game with microtransactions" at the top of his worst games of 2013 list and made an entire video ranting on the mobile version of Dungeon Keeper for taking it too far. This one is such a berserk button that Ninja Kiwi sent him a special version of Bloons Tower Defense 5 without any microtransactions — it's his only game on his phone.
    • The entire point of his famous "Henderson Challenge" video, where he and a friend compete to see how much progress they can make in GTA V in an hour. One of them uses microtransactions, the other doesn't. In the end, Dan considers both options failure, because if you give in to microtransactions you've resorted to spending real-world money on temporary fictional items, and if you refuse to touch microtransactions then you're essentially working for less than minimum wage.
  • "Share on Facebook" buttons in games really ticks him off, as witnessed in the lengthy rant during his Bridge Constructor video.
  • Poor disclosure of brand deals is another surefire way to get him angry.
  • Everything regarding Sonic the Hedgehog (2006); he absolutely hates this game, despite him normally being a Sonic fan.
• Big Eater: Dan, as pointed out early in his first Cook, Serve, Delicious! video.
• Big "NO!": Dan does this in his Red Dead Redemption video when the train he was riding on kills his horse, which, as he pointed out only a few minutes prior, he had kept alive through the entire game until that point.
  • He also does this in his Worms video when his worm "Kennith Kennithso" gets shot off of a shovel and killed with a Slow-Motion Fall, followed by that same enemy worm shooting Sasha off a ledge in the same manner to her death. He does, however, win the match.
    • See also: Numerous occasions in his Let's Play of Sonic 06, with the point he discovers he has to go through the trials section with Silver earning a particularly throaty one before cutting to his outro.
• Black Comedy: When collabing with Jay on grounds of Make-A-Wish, Jays's two victorious bouts against cancer were fair game, including the final bit of the video "I did what cancer couldn't!".
• Blatant Lies: Dan makes blatant lies so often that it has become one of his catchphrases.
  • During the "Space Racists" challenge for FTL: Faster Than Light, he claims he got the ship's name by hitting random letters. The spaceship's name? The USS UKIP.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The ending to "Nerd³ Plays... Gang Beasts".
  You see from this ending, you don't know who won. Sort of.
• Book Dumb: Downplayed. Dan is genuinely knowledgeable about certain topics (predominantly physics), but otherwise, he's a self-admitted college dropout and he's actually completely clueless about what he's doing during his Let's Plays most of the time.
• Break the Cutie: When he started Simpsons Hit and Run he spoke positively of the game and of the Simpsons itself, but when he reached the infamous last mission, after multiple tries in the last episode of the series, and last video before the reboot, he reaches the final checkpoint, and then the time ran out, just as he was a few seconds away from completing the mission. His reaction sums it all up.
  Dan: (very close to mic) I HATE THIS GAME.
• British Humour: Well, he is British, and an entertainer, so naturally, most of his humor revolves around being incredibly vulgar and making jokes that border on offensive.
• Buffy Speak: When he doesn't know the technical terms for something, he applies this... a lot, and almost entirely on instinct.
• Butt-Monkey: Not the luckiest guy in the world, but that doesn't stop him from making it comical.
• Call-Back: In "Nerd³ Plays... F1 2020", at the beginning of the episode, he calls the Jeff communicating with him as his team manager "a flying shark". While this seems random at first, it's a reference to his RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 series where he encountered a bugged shark floating in the air, calling him "Jeff".
• Captain Obvious: Cleverbot
  Cleverbot: Chinese is Asian.
  Dan: I'm not even debating that.
• Cartridges in Flight: Parodied in the first Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades video; Dan fires two shots from a Barrett M82, and then uses the gun itself like a baseball bat to "fire" the casings.
  Dan: People who like guns are crying right now!
• Cats Are Mean: Demon Kitty from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
• Character Catchphrase:
  "Hello, procrastinators!", at least until the 2015 channel reboot. (This hasn't stopped the phrase coming up in the comments.)
  (Dan makes obviously false statement) "True story."
  "Lovely jubbly!"
  "Are you ready for this jelly?" and variants.
  "Don't you hate it when [an unusual and extremely game-specific situation]."
  "Nailed it!"
  "We can [action] him/her, we have the technology!"
  "He was a [questionable description of game character he just killed] and now he's dead."
  "Murderize!"
  "Let's get rid of [valuable item]. [Valuable item] is rubbish!"
  [Improvises something bizarre or says a word wrong] "Well done, brain/Thank you for that, brain."
  "Goodbye, procrastinators." and/or "Ta-ra."
  Dan's high-pitched "EEEEEEEEEEEEP!" when passing very close to in-game hazards.
  "You saw nothing!" in his stealth games.
  For DadCubed: "YEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAA! Hello everybody, and welcome to DadCubed! Yeah, the old man from Essex is back again!"
  "This costs real money."^note Used since Air Control for games that aren't worth buying at any price.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Almost always an Accidental Aesop, but whenever Dan cheats in a challenge, competition, or other form of meta-game, he loses anyways, either by chance or because he counts the cheating as losing^note For example, in the 2.5 million subscriber special, he uses GTA Online's micro-transactions to get extra money in order to beat Matt. However, at the end, not only did he fail to make money with the things he bought using those transactions, he counts that money as debt he needs to pay, and notes that the money will only last as long as the servers do. This is an Invoked Trope here, since he did it to prove how bullshit GTA Online is.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Most notably the Dungeon Keeper Mobile review.
  • Also in his Fallout 4 playthrough, as the queen mirelurk rose from the water
    Dan: Oh. My. Shitting pants shit. What the shit pants is this shitting pants pantsy shit pantsiness?
• Cozy Catastrophe: The people in the Tsunami mod sat around and drank coffee while the water was reaching their necks.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Dan goes into Gang Beasts on his own after a few updates, and feels he's so good at the game that he'll make this happen. And indeed it does...with him on the receiving end of many beatings.
• Curse Cut Short: See Tempting Fate.
• Crossover: With Hannah Hart of My Drunk Kitchen, Emma Blackery, InTheLittleWood, Steven Moffat on Dans Vlog channel, and NightHood & Decoy.
  • He also runs a podcast with Many A True Nerd and Mattophobia called the Nerd³ Podcats, and has appeared on the The Co-Optional Podcast on more than one occasion.
  • He's also done a few collabs with Ashens.
• Deadpan Snarker: Daniel again. He frequently does this when making a joke about the matter at hand.
• Death from Above: When playing Grand Theft Auto V Online with Martyn Littlewood of the Yogscast, he flies around in a cargo plane with Martyn riding in the back in a car. Then Dan pulls up and drops Martyn down to Earth. He survives. Three guesses as to what happens next...
  Dan: Incidentally, look up!
• Determinator:
  • Dan must be if he plays Desert Bus for eight hours straight for his 1,000,000 subscriber special.
  • On a wider scale, he is this for his whole Let's Play career, considering that on Feb 12 2024, he updated his channel description to:
    "Thirteen years in. No sign of stopping. New videos every weekend."
• Disproportionate Retribution: Almost everything that Dan does when he is police officer in GTA IV.
• Dream Reality Check: Dan tests if he is dreaming when he finishes off the Metal Gear RAY in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance by slapping himself.
  Dan: *whak* No, I slapped myself in the face and I felt it, so I'm definitely awake...
• Driven to Suicide: Played for Laughs in the first Airport Simulator video. After discovering the dreadfully long wait times between tasks, Dan goes through a montage of the Five Stages of Grief, before supposedly shooting himself at the "acceptance" stage.
• Drives Like Crazy: Driving fast without looking forward is common. TotalBiscuit made a brief note of this in his video Why We Watch.
• Epic Fail: Every time he plays a simulator. Every time.
  Dan: (Before every simulator) I sincerely apologize to anyone that [insert anyone who actually does what the game is simulating].
  • Also Lampshaded in his Microsoft Flight Simulator X video, where he fails all video at one objective: landing the plane.^note It didn't help that he was actually attempting to land a Boeing 747, a famously huge airliner, at London City Airport, which is only designed to accommodate, at most, small regional jets.
    Dan: If you ever get on a plane and the pilot's voice comes over the intercom and it's mine, run. Just jump out of the plane. You have a better chance of survival.
  • And according to Dan, the London 2012 Olympic Games's (the official video game) keyboard controls.^note Though in his Challenges video of winning the Olympics in the game, he said that it works much better if you play with a controller.
    Dan (After failing at the triple jump): The problem with this jump, my friend, is that this game was made by a GIBBON!!!
  • Pretty much the entirety of DadCubed's first video on his own channel (on Kerbal Space Program), in which he fails spectacularly at staying in the air. Of special note, however, is that one of his launches ended with nothing happening except the command pod decoupling on the launch pad, causing Dan to audibly break up laughing in the background.
• Evil Genius: Kennith Kennithson.
• Exact Words: Dan's reason for playing the aforementioned London 2012 game with a keyboard instead of a controller. The controller was simply "recommended", so to Dan, that meant he didn't need it.
• Fan Community Nickname: "Procrastinators".
• Fat Bastard: The single striped badgers in Shelter.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Nicknames MACE from Intrusion2 "Carl", since it resembles the name of a puppy, and, "I'll never fear someone called Carl. True story."
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: "Vote Kitty President" from Grand Theft Auto IV.
• The Gadfly: His usual form of humor, which is making fun of someone or something just because he can and it's in his first instinct.
• Gamebooks: His 100,000 subscriber special.
• Genius Slob: Kennith Kennithson, the Evil Genius started to dig through the garbage to find things.
• Gilligan Cut: Early on in his first solo Gang Beasts video, he goes in with great confidence.
  Dan: There is a downside to playing this game - it's that I've got too good at it now, so this is going to be sort of a bit of a merciless domination. Don't expect this to be one of those videos where a black screen with the word 'Attempt' comes up every few minutes, because I won't be having a lot of goes with this. I'm probably going to do this the first time. Seriously, it's going to be easy- ATTEMPT 1
• Graceful Loser: Dan's not very experienced at many things, naturally, so when he does fall completely short in a competition, especially against players/AI who take the competition seriously, he doesn't seem to mind it.
• Grand Finale: After uploading for ten years, and fully transitioning into a vlogging channel from 2018 onward, DadCubed announced his retirement from YouTube in his final weekly vlog in December 2023.
• Groin Attack: He ends up having his character land on his crotch at least three times in his Skate 3 video. He shares the male pain when he isn't killing himself laughing.
  Dan:"Karate kick! (Lands with a ledge between his legs) Oooohohoooohhhhhh...my sausage-sandwich!"
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Dan often plays around with these features for the sake of a joke. For example:
  • The name of his first player character in Hard Time? "EYES!¬".
  • His Car Mechanic Simulator 2014 video has him click on a new save file labelled "Empty" by default. He then names it "Empty".
  • His video on the patched version of Simcity had him name his city "Wank", just so that the main menu would have an option that said, "Resume Wank".
• Inner Monologue: Used throughout his video on I Get This Call Every Day.
• It Makes Sense in Context: The entirety of "Nerd Cubed Out of Context" is to catalogue these moments.
• Jerkass Gods: Parodied whenever Dan plays a game where he can control the universe, though the most obvious example is Universe Sandbox.
  Dan: Again, this is why I'm not God.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Parodied Trope. As a mockery of the pedantic game reviewer type, Dan's online persona is to be frequently snarky, foul-mouthed, blunt, and quite prone to Comedic Sociopathy regarding the games he plays. He also likes to mess with NPCs and mechanics just for the fun of it. In spite of this, he does admire parts of a game he genuinely finds impressive and is overall not intentionally trying to damage anyone's reputation as he does this, since he acts the way he does for his own amusement.
• Jump Cut: Dans main style of humor inspired by Hannah Hart.
• Jumping the Shark: Literally. Dan opens his Skate 3 video by trying to jump a massive fake shark. He fails, and ends up Crushing the Australian.
• Jump Scare: At the end of Dan's Amnesia: The Dark Descent video.
  • Half-way through episode 25 of his Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) playthrough.
    Silver: Everything is so great here, isn't it? The sky is gorgeous, and everyone's happy!
    Dan: (way too close to the microphone) I'M NOT!
  • Episode 10 of his Cities: Skylines Completes series had one near the end when he lampshaded the fact that many people have probably fallen asleep watching him put down trees on his farms and belts out a quick, loud "WAKE UP!".
• Just One More Level!: Goes for one more attempt at beating MACE in Intrusion2...and then falls off the platform immediately.
• Large Ham: While Dan isn't hammy in the sense of being loud (sometimes), he is hammy in the sense that his every line of commentary is something incredibly over-the-top said in the most absurd possible way.
• Leave the Camera Running: At the end of his video on Tokyo School Life, he storms off in disgust when the game implies that he groped a teenage girl. The scene is left on the screen for the better part of two minutes before the outro kicks in.
• Like Father, Like Son: Inverted; Dan's dad, Steve, began to show up on the channel in "Father and Son-Days" videos. Apparently, he really enjoyed the experience, because he eventually got his own YouTube channel, DadCubed.
• Mad Doctor: Dan in Surgeon Simulator 2013. He will tear every organ out of the body even when it isn't in the way, use a hammer to destroy ribs and skulls, and at the end of his Surgeon Simulator in Space video even tried to achieve the quickest kill using what he called a tomahawk.
  • And DadCubed. Especially after he finds the laser.
    • When Dan accepts a challenge to do a blind brain surgery and has DadCubed as his assistant. Eventually after getting frustrated, DadCubed decides to just kill the patient.
      DadCubed: Okay. Back towards us. Down. Grab! *Dan grabs the drill* Lift up, lift up, perfect!
      Dan: What've I got?
      DadCubed: Umm...you've got the hammer. Now right. Forward. Forward. There! Yes, yes! Now left! *The drill stabs the patient in the side of the head, killing him* Perfect! Right in the ear hole!
      Dan: What've I done?
      DadCubed: You've killed him. He's gone now.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase: Every video's description ends with "All other music is in game music. It makes me want to [something related to the game played]."
  • As of the 2015 reboot, this was replaced with "A game about [something related to the game played]."
• Manchild: With his immature jokes, constant Comedic Sociopathy, his excitement over everything, and his general incompetence, Dan is more like an excitable child in the body of a grown man. He's also rather obsessed with LEGO toys, but for the simplicity of the brand than the mechanisms that can be done with LEGO bricks like more sophisticated LEGO-focused channels.
• Mood Whiplash: The opening of "Nerd³ is in Hospital": it starts with the sound of medical equipment and a black screen before fading in the hospital room of a young bald man. Then Dan pops up from behind the hospital bed and yells "I'm fine!" complete with confetti.
• Most Wonderful Sound: In-universe, Dan seems to consider the sound of a fuel truck exploding in his Sniper Elite 4 video this.
• Mundane Made Awesome: On multiple occasions in his video on Cook, Serve, Delicious, he get's particularly anxious when the game asks him to "FLUSH THE TOILET!".
• Musicalis Interruptus: The in-game music for Nyan Cat: Lost in Space is simply Nyan Cat's theme. Three seconds into Dan's video for that game, he mutes it.
  Dan: NOPE! No, I won't have that on my channel.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: He occasionally mimics Jeremy Clarkson and his Character Catchphrases just because he can.
• No Indoor Voice: Mocked in the April Fools' Day video for Happy Wheels when a reading a description typed entirely with Caps Lock on.
  Daniel: FEEL FREE TO RATE FIVE AND SAVE ALL YOUR CRE-AY-TIVE REPLAYS, said this person.
• Official Couple: With Mr. Rebecca. As of 2016, they're even married!
• Orion Drive: Essentially what Dan attempts to build in his "The Big Bang" challenge in Kerbal Space Program. He only succeeds at launching the capsule about a mile into the sky at most, while blowing up half the space center in the process.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • His yell of "WHOOOOOAAAAA" as he uses a fire extinguisher in Airport Firefighter Simulator lasts for quite a while.
  • He got into an argument with Cleverbot repeatedly alternating between "No, I don't" and "Yes you do". According to the ensuing caption, it took over 26 minutes.
  • The Training Montage from his first solo Gang Beasts video.
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: He uses the phrase, "delicate flambambos of chocolate" in his Cook, Serve, Delicious! video, possibly as a hurried corruption of the word, "flambé". Well done, brain.
• Professional Slacker: In-Universe, whenever he plays a game where you actually simulate a real-life job, expect him to avoid the responsibilities that come with it by any means necessary.
• Rage Quit: Dan throws his controller after failing the last mission of The Simpsons Hit & Run, something he has spent the best part of two episodes making over a dozen attempts at, by crashing right next to the last objective. This particular Nerd Completes series will likely remain technically incomplete due to how frustrating this particular section was.
  • A year later, Dan came back to it in a challenge to complete it. Time ran out right as he finished.
• Rapid-Fire "No!" / Serial Escalation: Gets into a contest of alternating between a large number of "no"s and "yes"s while playing with Cleverbot.
• Recycled Title: This confuses him when he tries to play SimCity (a video that mostly amounted to a rant about always-online DRM):
  Daniel: Hello procrastinators, and welcome to SimCity! This is the ultimate city building...sand...box...balls! I put the wrong footage up! Why do modern games all have the same name as old games!? I don't understand, I do apologize, hang on... (switches to Micropolis)
• Refuge in Audacity: Most of Dan's jokes are borderline offensive (politically and socially) or even selfish at worst, and yet he somehow makes it comedic and his audience laughs along with him because he's so over-the-top with it.
• Remember the New Guy?: Parodied in the Tertiary Heist when Dan brings up Jon to his dad, who has no clue who Jon is. Dan then proceeds to treat Jon as a regular collaborator of the channel. At this moment, we get a brief flashback cut to Dan tearing the wings off of the glider in Aerofly FS, where Jon has been overdubbed talking to the crashing Dan.
• Revisiting the Roots: In Dan's 2024 reboot, he returns the "Hello, procrastinators!" intro sequence and replays games that he played during 2011 to 2015.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Dan does this to every town he can find in Red Dead Redemption after his horse is killed.
• Running Gag:
  • "All music is in-game music. It makes me want to [do something related to the game in question]."
  • Dan often tells Blatant Lies throughout all his videos followed up by him claiming they're true and factual.
  • In the 2012 Olympics challenge Let's Play, there are numerous occasions where Dan yells at the audience to stand up for the national anthem.
    Dan: "STAND UP, YOU BASTARDS!!!"
  • "Defence Baby", a pack of toilet rolls with a picture of a baby on it in the Gone Home video.
  • In his video for Robot Wars Extreme Destruction, the cow head on Dan's robot gets knocked off every single fight, much to his annoyance.
  • "Have you preordered this game yet?!" after he demonstrates cool things you can do in the tech demo of Next Car Game.
  • All of the Airport Simulator videos contain various moments in which Dan acts as the airport's PA operator.
    "Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, the Rapture appears to be happening. We expect there to be delays of up to twenty minutes."
  • Each multiplayer heist in Grand Theft Auto V has Dan kill off his fellow players after the heist's conclusion.
• Sanity Slippage: As he fails more and more in the more difficult missions of The Simpsons Hit & Run, his composure visibly begins to break apart more and more. This came to a head in part 19, where at the end of him failing the infamous "Set to Kill" mission for the umpteenth time, he lets out an ear-piercing scream that only lasts for a couple of seconds, but is enough to make someone jump.
  Video Description: I'm not sorry for the ending.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Near the end of the Pizza Delivery challenge video in Spider-Man 2, he decides to check how many of them there are. After seeing that he's only three quarters of the way through, he gives up then and there.
  "How many are there? Tell me, Google, tell me... Err... How man— how many? How many? There we go, right... TWENTY?! *drops controller* No."
  • And again in the Tokyo School Life video, which ends with his character crashing into a schoolgirl - and all but outright stating he groped her boobs.
  • In response to lack of monetization and general YouTube communication issues. To preserve his mental health, he planned on taking around a month off of YouTube.
• Self-Deprecation: In Surgeon Simulator 2013:
  Daniel: Ok, you may feel a small prick...hitting you with a very large hammer.
  • Also from his Simpsons: Hit And Run video:
    Dan: "We have to put up with morons spouting shit. Speaking of, hello!"
  • And from his Plague Inc. Evolved video, he chooses to start off his virus in the UK "'cause fuck those guys".
  • Dan doesn't collect trash, he only makes it.
• Sensory Abuse: After failing Set to Kill in The Simpsons Hit & Run for the umpteenth time, he lets out a loud scream which only lasts a couple of seconds before the video cuts to the outro.
• Sequel Episode: "Nerd³ Challenges! 3 Day Baby - The Sims" acts as a sequel to "Nerd³'s Month of... The Sims 3", by having an older Kennith Kennithson return to do more evil.
• Ship Sinking: From Nerd³ and Emma Blackery do Reddit!:
  Reddit Question: Did you find out if you're BFGF?
  Dan: If we're....(to Emma) should we tell them?
  (Dan turns to camera)
  Dan: Internet: We're dating...
  (Dan and Emma turn to kiss each other, then stop and turn back)
  Both: Other people. Twats....
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: When civilized, he doesn't particularly swear. Due to his Hair-Trigger Temper, however, it's easy to provoke him into expelling a tirade of curses and the occasional Cluster F-Bomb if he's particularly enraged.
• So Bad, It's Good:
  • Dan's in-universe reaction to Fast and Furious: Showdown's lack of a physics engine and ugly textures and backgrounds. Because of that, he considers it a better game.
  • He got a good bit of fun out of the silly physics engine in Farming Simulator 2011 and 2013 (and their counterpart, Ski Region Simulator), while largely not caring about the rest of the gameplay. Naturally, he found himself displeased upon playing the 2015 iteration and discovering that the vehicle collision physics had been removed.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Dan's first comment on the demise of his short-lived computer in December 2012.
  Dan: In the immortal words of William Shakespeare... Bollocks.
• Speaks in Shout-Outs: Most of his jokes are a case of Comedic Sociopathy, but the other half is constantly making references to things.
• Starbucks Skin Scale: Referenced in Airport Simulator, as a Take That! to airport security tending to select darker-skinned people for "random searches".
• Sunk Cost Fallacy: The reason for the existence of "Nerd³ Completes... Sonic '06". He predicted that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice would end with the title duo teaming up to fight Lex Luthor and would play the game to completion if he was wrong, and he was right, but since he prepared himself to be wrong and play it to completion, he had to play it to completion anyway.
• Take That!:
  • In his Microsoft Flight Simulator X video, upon attempting a loop in an Airbus A321 and crashing into the Palace of Westminster:
    Dan: Whoops, I killed the Tories!
    Video text accompanied by applause: And nothing of value was lost.
  • Also in part 21 of his Nerd Completes: Bully Let's Play to homophobes. Jimmy needs health, but there's no girls around to kiss. So he ends up kissing a guy, resulting in "THIS GAY KISS!"
    Dan: Before we begin, I do have some serious news to discuss. I received a record number of complaints about a video. Nearly a hundred people complained about the last episode of Bully, as it featured THIS GAY KISS! *shows footage of the kiss* Now, a lot of people wanted me to edit out THIS GAY KISS! *shows footage of the kiss* from that episode, but unfortunately, I don't keep raw video files, so THIS GAY KISS! *shows footage of kiss* is going to be there forever. They've also asked me if I would kindly (I say they asked me kindly. They didn't. They shouted.), they asked me kindly if I would not show things like THIS GAY KISS! *shows footage of the kiss* in any future or current videos. Well, I've decided...Jimmy is now bi. Deal with it! *shows footage of kiss* Right, that's people dragged into the 21st century and the comments section annihilated...
  • Also the entirety of "Nerd³ Plays...Day One: Garry's Incident"
  • In his video of the London 2012 Olympics game, he doesn't have many positive things to say about the Olympics themselves, referring to them as "a massive sports day that rolls into town every four years and bankrupts a country."
  • For his FTL: Faster Than Light "Space Racists" challenge, Dan names his ship the "USS UKIP", by hitting random keys on the keyboard.
  • In his lets play of Arkham Origins, we get this gem:
  Dan: Do you think we'd respect the police more if they wore capes and stopped shooting unarmed black men?
  • From Tearaway Unfolded:
    NPC: "Are you one of them? A spirit of darkness?"
    Dan: "No, I'm not a Republican."
  • In his review of HuniePop, when Kyu tells Dan to say something hardcore, he says "I voted Romney."
  • In his Bonelab review, a swinging noose appears in front of him: "Oh look, it's the Tories economic plan".
• Take That, Audience!: His former introduction before the 2015 reboot is essentially him calling out his viewers for being procrastinators, in the sense that they're watching him instead of doing something productive.
  "Hello, procrastinators!"
• Talkative Loon: Usually whenever he isn't explaining the game he is playing, he goes on and on with barely any breaks, even during the longer, slower pace, Completes videos.
• Tempting Fate: "Pfft...tanks can't hit shi-" *explosion*
  • Dan starts off his first solo Gang Beasts video claiming that he's gotten better at the game. So did the enemies, apparently. Not even a Training Montage helps him.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • Repeatedly happens as the Liero video goes on.
  • In episode 2 of Let's Play Buildy Thing, Dan blows up a large portion of the house he had built in the first episode just to kill a spider.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: Specifically painkillers, in the case of his Peggle Nights video, resulting in him rambling nonsensically for most of the video trying to get through his unfortunate illness. He even admits this in-universe.
• Too Dumb to Live: In his Flan's Mod video, he accidentally shoots the wing off his own plane. What does he do to attempt to survive? Shoot the other wing off so that the plane balances.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Surprisingly, Dan's humor wasn't as vulgar or sociopathic as it was when he started, as he seemed to veer more into basic sarcasm and was much more likely to show his appreciation in a game. Modern Dan, on the other hand, takes being vulgar and sociopathic to great extremes, and it comes up entirely on instinct.
• Title Scream: Dan does this when he announces that he's playing FTL: Faster Than Light with the SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE RACIST! challenge in mind.
• Training Montage: He indulges in a lengthy one in an attempt to get better at Gang Beasts. It doesn't work.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Dan repeatedly gets creeped out by the unsettlingly-calm expression on Evie's face. And then she starts winking.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: In competitive multiplayer games, Dan will lie and cheat as much as he can, and then gloat if he wins and have shouting fits if he loses.
• Villain Protagonist: Kennith Kennithson from Dan's The Sims 3 lets play.
• Wham Line: In "Nerd³ is in Hospital" near the beginning, for those who hadn't put the pieces together.
  Daniel: I'm fine!
  Jay: I'm not.
• World Gone Mad: When he challenges himself to survive Grand Theft Auto IV's Carmageddon mod, he very much believes that Liberty City has turned into one of these. And for good reason.
• Worst Aid: Pretty much guaranteed whenever Dan plays Surgeon Simulator 2013.
  Daniel: Stop struggling! I know I've taken your lungs out, just let me do what I'm doing! I'm a doctor, I know this thing.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In Gone Home he knew all the horror tropes to avoid. In spite of the game's emphasis on Nothing Is Scarier, this would have been useful if Gone Home actually was a horror game.
• Your Mom: In Airport Simulator 2015, when he attempted to ram an airplane from behind using a tiny Follow-Me car.
  Dan: I'm coming in the back! I'm like your mum in her job!
  • And then when he bounces off of the airplane's tires:
    Dan: Oop, I bounced! I'm like one of your mum's checks!
  • One of his vlogs made a very nerdy "your mom" joke:
    Question: What's your favourite element?
    Dan: Your-mum-ium.
  • In his Sonic the Hedgehog-playthrough, after getting increasingly more frustrated by the Crisis City Mach-speed section.
    Sonic: That tornado's carrying a car!
    Dan: Yeah, well so is your mum, oh wait she's just a fat bitch.

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For now, I just want to say... You are welcome here.