The Ben Heck Show was a Web Video Series hosted by console modder and ascended pinball fanboy Benjamin Heckendorn, aka Ben Heck. Most episodes of the show take place in Ben's workshop, where he attempts to solve day-to-day problems by building contraptions to do it for him, if he's not showing off his console-modding skills or imparting knowledge on topics revolving around electronics.
The show was released on YouTube from 2010 To 2018 with exclusives on sponsor Element14's website. Non-exclusive episodes can be seen here
. Ben's personal channel includes outtakes and bonus materials meant for the show.
The Ben Heck Show contains the following tropes:
- Aborted Arc:
- Quite a number of multi-part episodes were aborted throughout the show's run (usually when Ben realizes that the project is actually undoable or infeasible). For example, episodes centering around the designing of the America's Most Haunted pinball machine prototype, pretty much only ran until the first half of the design stage of the machinenote , and the "GameBrain" modular console project has also become this.
- Lampshaded in the 2015 Halloween episode, where the "Ghost of Unfinished Projects" appears and haunts the workshop in the prologue.
- Artistic Title: For the final episode, Ben created The Ballet of Pie Face which pokes fun at Bond openings.
- Bad "Bad Acting": The prologue of every episode consists fully of this to get the viewers warmed up. Lampshaded in the opening sequence that shows right after the prologue.Announcer: ... And regrettable acting
- Edutainment Show: Every episode has Ben teaching the viewers how to build or mod something, or imparting knowledge on topics around electronics.
- Halloween Episode: There's one every year. But notably, the 2011 episode "Ghost Hunting with Ben Heck!" served as the Poorly Disguised Pilot for America's Most Haunted.
- Recap Episode: Several episodes with the title "Rewind and Recap" revisit old failed projects to see what went wrong or if it can be improved.
- Unsound Effect: Part 2 of The Roomba Nerf Dart collector arc has Ben and Felix firing Nerf guns in the prologue— with the word "SHOOTING!" flashing on the screen every time a Nerf dart is fired.
- Waxing Lyrical: In the 2015 Halloween episode, Ben quotes word-for-word the ending rap/speech of Michael Jackson's "Thriller".
