Hey kids!
Hey, kids~ Have you ever wanted to watch a YouTube channel that covers various weird facts, historical events, and other weird, wacky things, in a manner that's both hilarious and surprisingly informative? Well, Sam O'Nella Academy has you covered.Sam O'Nella is a YouTube channel made on June 13th, 2016, and makes videos about many different facts of life, from obscure subjects such as "why it sucked to be a pirate," to historical events on "non-water floods," to biographies about very strange people, such as Tarrare, the hungriest man in history. In spite of its intentionally low-quality animation courtesy of MS Paint and more humorous approach, Sam O'Nella still manages to be both entertaining and informative about whatever strange topic he talks about. In other words, he's what happens if GradeAUnderA was part of Overly Sarcastic Productions.
His channel can be found here
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Sam O'Nella provides examples of:
- Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Sam can dance to the beat by rotating his head around his body like a winch and extend it down to his torso to get face-to-face with someone shorter than him. It makes him Ambiguously Human, but the unnaturalness is played as a silly gag rather than horror.
- Added Alliterative Appeal: From "Zhang Zongchang, the Dogmeat General": "...which bolstered his battalions and brought big bonuses to his bloodshed."
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: A short skit near the end of his "Weird Laws from Around the World" video features two Russian prisoners recounting the circumstances of their arrest. It sounds Russian at first, until you realize it's just Sam speaking random Russian words and pretending it's actual dialogue. What's funny is that, gibberish aside, many Russian viewers found Sam's accent to be pretty good for an American. What's even funnier is that the punchline is actually correct Russian.Prisoner A: Suka blyat!
- Art Shift: Used frequently for comedic effect, such as in his Plant Diseases video when giving the key word about how American Chestnut trees were once plentiful in the south of the mid-Atlantic region—the key word being once accompanied with Sam's face suddenly taking up the screen and becoming incredibly detailed.
- Berserk Button:
- One of his older videos was about him ranting about Swiss Miss Instant chocolate, with how he saw that the way the product was designed so obtuse and backward (can't cleanly separate the bags, the box itself, how each bag only works for 6 ounces of water/milk).
- In "Dead Body Hijinks," he also mentions his distaste for a children's book character known as Amelia Bedelia, stating that he "Hates her glassy-eyed face so fucking much."
- In "Plant Diseases", he's scolds the World Wildlife Fund as "populist shills" for caring too much about panda bears to the detriment of other species.
- Black Comedy: Oh, so much. In videos with the names of "Dead Body Hijinks," "Improbable Tales of Survival," "Pre-Industrial Surgeries," and "The Journey of a Beef Cow," you can expect lots of dark, dark humor. Even more innocuous-seeming topics like "Exotic Animals in Ancient Rome" and "Origins of Phrases" can get extremely morbid, what with the topics of human-vs-beast brutality and African wife-beating.
- Blood Knight: In the "Banana Republics" video, Dwight D. Eisenhower loudly shouts "WHEEE!!!" when going off to fight them "Dirty Commies".note
- Call-Back: In the "Timothy Dexter" video, Charles J. Guiteau, Joshua Norton and Michael Malloy are among the people Dexter had statues made of.
- Couch Gag: Every video starts with "Hey, kids" or some variant thereof.
- Discussed Trope: One of his main categories of topics is to effectively discuss various situations or scenarios throughout history.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Sam's "Mass Hysteria" video has a couple:
- "Go play in some dirt you dirty little dirt babies."
- "One nun began meowing (you know... like a cat)."
- Does Not Like Spam: Swiss Miss instant chocolate. So much so that it
became something of a popular meme on the Sam O'Nella subreddit. - Fan Disservice: Parodied in his "Pre-Industrial Surgeries" video, when he decides to segue into the part of the video everybody was waiting for: things going inside people's eyeballs.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: On the doctor's list of ideas in the Tararre video, some of the alleged options include to "tell him to just quit being a fatass," using a throat cork (which is originally designated as working, but then crossed off), and "give up and start a business making IRL vore."
- Fun with Acronyms: When "The Journey of a Beef Cow" reaches the packing plant, Sam remarks, "This is where the magic happens! And by MAGIC, I mean Mechanically Automated Goring Into Commodities."
- Gross-Up Close-Up: Frequently employed along with an art shift for comedic effect.
- Lame Pun Reaction: Does this to himself, upon any pun he makes.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Shiva-Gautama-Christ-Chan (the one true god).
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: The English names of the Yule Lads sound so incredibly silly that Sam had to clarify that he's not making any of them up.
- Overly Pre-Prepared Gag: Downplayed. He spends the entirety of his video on Daniel Dancer setting up for the "are we human" joke at the end, but the video is not too long and is entertaining enough in the meantime.
- Only Six Faces: Sam reuses most of his character designs in his videos. Generally, though, his own avatar is unique, as are the protagonists of the stories he retells, such as Timothy Dexter or Tarrare.
- Resurrective Immortality: Sam's avatar may have this. Through the series, he's uppercut a clone of himself (Origins of Phrases), smashed his head against a brick wall (South Sudan), suffered heatstroke in the desert (Tales of Survival), and had his head torn in half by Koko the gorilla (True Stories About Chimps).
- Rhymes on a Dime:
- "Swiss Miss, instant piss!"
- From "The Tale of Michael Malloy": "I say we deploy a ploy to destroy that unemployed Malloy."
- Sensory Abuse: Another common humor tactic to accentuate various lines.
- Shout-Out:
- In "Scandalous Popes of the Middle Ages," when Sam is describing the Banquet of Chestnuts, he briefly mentions the women at the banquet "scrambling [after the chestnuts] frantically like the cook at Denny's when I held him at gunpoint," an allusion to one of the most infamous scenes from Falling Down.
- In "The Presidential Assassination Nobody Talks," when Charles Guiteau shouts President Garfield's name in anger, it switches to a scene of Garfield saying that he feels like something odd just happened.
- Signing-Off Catchphrase:
- "Anyway, that's all for today. 'Til next time, I'm Sam O'Nella, and thank you for watching!"
- He'll occasionally mix things up and change the second half of the phrase, however (i.e., "...watch you for thanking," "I'm still scared of Swine Flu," "I'm a fella with rubella," etc.).
- Sluggish Sloths: Discussed in the video on Animal Weaknesses, where Sam compares the life of the creature to that of the average college student (something of Self-Deprecation on his part, as he was a college student when he made the video).
- Spoof Aesop:
- Sometimes ends his videos this way, such as at the end of his explanation of the "Great Emu War":So, the lesson here, kids, is that, if you wanna commit mass murder, don't crowdfund; crowdsource.
- Subverted at the end of the video about Tarrare, when Sam tries to do one of these but can't begin to imagine anything.So, moral of the story here is that— No, you know what? Not even I can find anything resembling a moral here. Not all stories have a point to them. Sometimes they're just sad and disgusting from beginning to end. ...And now a word from our sponsor!
- Sometimes ends his videos this way, such as at the end of his explanation of the "Great Emu War":
- Suddenly Shouting: Eisenhower's reaction to hearing the word "commie" is a little more... zealous than expected.
- Stylistic Suck: Downplayed. While not necessarily bad, Sam's art is intentionally lumpy and MS-paint like.
- Take That!:
- On at least several occasions, he's made jokes at the expense of the mere concept of vore.
- Among his list of why bending things makes things better in his reason why bendy straws are good, he lists that bending rules gets you a nomination, with a picture of Hillary Clinton on there.
- In his video on the "Banana Republics," the CEO of one of the companies states that "politics and business are essentially the same thing," at which point an image of Donald Trump can be faintly seen in the background.
- In his video on "Plant Diseases," when depicting a peasant having a severe trip after eating some ergot-contaminated bread, he claims he can hear Satan's voice, and that he's telling him to invest in Apple.
- That Came Out Wrong: Quite a few times, in fact. Near the end of the first "Dead Body Hijinks" episode, there's this gem:Sam: [...]And just as you wouldn't want some dirty carnies jackin' your stiff-Phrasing!
- Verbal Backspace: In the video "Plant Diseases", Sam introduces the Chestnut Blight as something that affects the elderly.Sam: Wait, no, that's shingles.
- Unfortunate Names: In "Plant Diseases", when talking about the parasitic plant, broomrape, Sam muses on human illnesses getting names like that.Doctor: I'm sorry Sam, but, you have urethra cactus.
Sam (narrating): I would just end it right there! Doesn't even matter what the actual symptoms are.
Until next time, I'm Sam O'Nella, and thank you for watching.
