Web Video / SMBC Theater

SMBC Theater is an online sketch comedy series. It was created by Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, which is often abbreviated as SMBC, hence this name. It is written by Weiner and James Ashby.

The humour varies from comments on politics to crude sex joke and relationship humour.

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This series contains examples of:

• The Alcoholic: The sketch "Intervention" is about one doing an intervention for his friends for not being more supportive of his drinking habit.

• Blasphemous Boast: From the DVD Commentary. Zach doesn't look like Jesus, Jesus looks like Zach.

• Bestiality Is Depraved:
  • Zach's character from "Inheritance" was married to a gorilla.
  • "Wikileaks", ends with Zach putting peanut butter on his crotch before he goes to the local dog pound.
  • One of the characters in "Slippery Slope" wants to marry his Yorkie.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: Exaggerated in "Prognosis". Jon dreams about getting a disease that makes his penis grow and grow until it kills him and explodes. He's disappointed when it turns out not to be real.
• Black Comedy Rape: One short has Wonder Woman masquerading as a superheroine called "The Sodomizer," who saves people, then ominously asks them to bend over and pick something up for her.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Deconstructed in "Both Sides", a parody of Bill O'Reilly's "No Spin Zone". They introduce sides like "Eyeglasses vs Stabbing Yourself With a Steak Knife" to show that not all points are equally valid.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: In "The Plumber", James is a brilliant and surprisingly inexpensive plumber who unfortunately insists that Zach and Kelly watch while he fixes their plumbing in an incredibly Squicky way.

• Cluster F-Bomb: Their version of Who's on First? centers on each player having obscene names like "I F@#ked Your Mother" on first and "Suck My D*ck" as the pitcher. James gets increasingly offended at the obscenity and insults hurled his way when he just wanted to know who the players were.

• Crazy-Prepared: James intercepted the Ebola Zach sent to James' sister, put it in a jar, labeled it "The Ebola I Intercepted", and kept it on his person in case he got in a ''staring contest'' with Zach, so he could trump Zach's "The Antidote To The Ebola I Mailed Your Sister" move.

IwannabebisexualandimmunetoSTDsandhavenostandards.

• Even Evil Has Standards: Even after he becomes heartless and money-obsessed in "James Gets Rich", James is appalled at the idea of creating a new type of financial derivative.

• Fan Disservice: This trope is fulfilled often and liberally, not the least by James. Examples include him doing a sexy dance on the menu screen of Goes to Hell, dressed up as the devil, complete with red body makeup, whilst not wearing a shirt, and his character in The Plumber.
• Fat Bastard: James often plays characters of this type, with a heavy emphasis on both his awfulness and the Fan Disservice of his body.
• Fox News Liberal: Parodied in Both Sides as JP brings on an actual expert on one side and a random crank on the other, falsely equating the validity and acceptance of their respective positions and generally allowing the crank to run roughshod over the actual expert.

• Hates Everyone Equally: Inverted in "James Gets Rich", where he says that he's become a little bit more racist, but "only towards minorities."
• Hollywood Hacking: In ''Hackers!''. Subverted: they're just pretending to be hackers, and have no idea what they're doing.
• Idle Game: MMO is centered around all of humanity getting addicted to an "MMO" in which the only interface is clicking a button and billions of people dying while clicking rather than take a break for basic sustenance or hygiene. Somewhat noteworthy in that the skit came out two years before Cookie Clicker made clicker-type idle games relatively mainstream, though strictly speaking the game in MMO is not a true idle game as it only has the clicker and not the common idle components.
• Jackass Genie: Subverted in "Genie". The genie tries to give James and Zach's wishes horrible consequences but gets frustrated when they don't seem to care.
• Just Think of the Potential!: Parodied in "The Mancreep", where Zach tries to tempt James to use his bizarre gift for evil.^note If he simulates cunnilingus with his hand, he can make people throw up
  Zach: We're not like the others, Mr Ashby. The normals. They lack the wherewithal to cup their hand like a vulva and go blblblblblblbll.
  James: I... I never thought of it that way.
  Zach: Think of the wealth! The power!
  James: The women!
  Zach: [pause, waggles his head dubiously] Probably no women, I wouldn't—
  James: [nodding] Yeah, right, no, that makes sense. Unreasonable.
• Kind Restraints: In Passive Aggressive Werewolf, a passive aggressive werewolf has his unofficial girlfriend tie him up to avoid harming people, only to get into an argument with her about it.

• Lie Detector: Followed by a "Reframing Detector" and a "Changing the Subject Detector." They're meant to circumvent first-date stupidity, supposedly.
• The Magic Poker Equation: The ''World Poker Championships starts with a Full House, and a Royal Flush. This is followed by the fictitious Royal Ace House, before switching games to Uno and Checkmate, then a few Nobel Prizes. Briefly subverted, as Dominion Over the Earth and Dominion Over the Universe are outranked by the Nobel Big Penis Prize. The round ends with someone shooting hellfire from his eyes melting the souls of the other contestants.

• Mermaid Problem: Discussed at the end of "The Ugly Duckling" in a retelling of The Little Mermaid.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: J.P. and Zach in "Great Idea".
• Naked People Are Funny: James frequently appears naked on the show, and it's played for laughs. Bonus points in that he's the fattest character in the cast.

• Only Sane Man:
  • In King James, only one guy realizes that a guy who pulls a sword out of a rock is not a good candidate for king and that magic and dragons aren't real and that includes James himself.
  • The gay son in "Orientation" is this, due to his parents not getting how homosexuality works and that there's no gay gold.
• Poison Chalice Switcheroo: The Wife in "Divorce Negotiation" trades a diamond for the antidote he thinks she put in her husband's wine. She then trades the car for the antidote to the poison he thought was the antidote to the poison in his wine. She then trades their house for the antidote to the poison he thought was the antidote to the poison he thought was the antidote to the poison in his wine. She then trades custody for the antidote to the poison he thought was the antidote to the poison he thought was the antidote to the poison he thought was the antidote to the poison in his wine. Not wanting custody, he goes happily goes along with the last one.
• Poor Man's Porn: In the "loneliness done extremely wrong" section of "Pick Up Lines", the newly single man beats it to Ms Pacman.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Most of James' characters are deranged lunatics whose mental age seems well behind their physical age, be it a callous jerkass who manages to horrify the Jackass Genie granting wishes, a 30 year old man who has stayed in high school for the last sixteen years and turns in bullshit assignments like a science fair project on his summer masturbation habits to avoid the responsibilities of adult life, a president who solves pairs of problems by combining them into one bigger problem, or a different president who handles every social issue, be it drugs, logic, Belgium, the war he just declared on Belgium, or his own incompetence by declaring war on it.
• The Reveal: "That's right! Your incestuous murder-child was Hitler AND Stalin!"
• Rhymes on a Dime: James in ''Health Consultant''. It's fatal.

• Spin-Off: James Ashby and Marque Franklin-Williams started a comedy-cooking series called Hand to Mouth that focuses on extremely cheap recipes.

• Summon Bigger Fish: James solves the apocalyptically-addictive clicker game in MMO by finding something even more addictive than video games to break away from the game and shut it down: crack cocaine. By the end of the video, it seems that humanity at large has replaced addiction to MMO with crack.
• Take That Me: The main writers (and executive producers) are James and Zach, yet their characters are usually them as themselves, playing them up as horrible, lazy unsympathetic people.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Combined with Sophisticated as Hell in Problem Solved. When newly elected U.S. President James Ashby is annoyed that his adviser keeps objecting to his ridiculous and irresponsible policy decisions, he says: "I'm sorry? Did you win a plurality of the Electoral College, bitch?"

• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: They're fond of using these in their videos. James, for example, often plays very unsympathetic roles.
• Upper-Class Twit: Batman has no concept of money or living without a butler in "Bat Academy".

• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: In "The Mancreep", James discovers that his uncanny ability to simulate cunnilingus with his tongue and the palm of his hand causes everyone else to have these. He decides to use it to fight crime.

• You Killed My Father: Parodied in "Worst Haunting Ever".
  Dad: You must avenge me on my kiiiiiilllllllleeeeeeeeers...
  Son: You weren't killed. You drank twelve beers a day for 30 years. You died of cirrhosis.

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