Web Video / The Try Guys

The Try Guys is a comedy web video series originally conceived by BuzzFeed that is hosted by Zach Kornfeld, Eugene Lee Yang, and Keith Habersberger. They are multi-hyphenate personalities who write, produce, direct, shoot and act in their own series.

By far, their most popular/well-known video is "The Try Guys Try Labor Pain Simulation," the fourth part in a five-part miniseries they did for Mother's Day back in 2015—the video itself has garnered for than thirty million views on YouTube.

In June 2018, the Try Guys left Buzzfeed, starting their own company and finally have their own channel on YouTube. In videos explaining why they left Buzzfeed, the guys noted that they'll continue making the same kind of videos that they were making when they were still at Buzzfeed—however, with having their own company, they have more creative control over the videos they're making and also have the freedom to do all the stuff they wanted to do but were unable to do when they were still at Buzzfeed.

Also, now that they're finally independent from Buzzfeed and have their own YouTube-channel, the guys will be uploading videos more frequently/consistently (every Wednesday and Saturday of each week).

One of the big projects the guys started working on since becoming independent was their own book, called "The Hidden Power of F*cking Up," which was published by HarperCollins and went on sale June 18, 2019.

On September 27th, 2022, it was announced Ned Fulmer was no longer part of the Try Guys following an investigation into an affair with an employee.

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Try Guys Try Tropes:

• Academic Athlete: Ned's a graduate of Yale University (where he was a chemistry major) and, of the four Try Guys, is the most passionate about sports.
• The Ace: In many of the videos that the Try Guys do, Eugene typically ends up doing the best—although it should be noted that "best" doesn't always mean "good." In fact, as seen in quite a few of their videos (particularly in the "Without a Recipe" series), "best" can actually mean "the least horrible."
• Affectionate Parody: CollegeHumor's "Give It a Whirl F*ckers," which got a Call-Back in "Is Grant Keith From Buzzfeed?".
• Animal Motifs: As a whole, the guys are represented by a triceratops (with a "y" in lieu of an "i"), but each of the individual guys are represented by an animal that's unique to them —
  • Keith's represented by a giraffe.
  • Ned's represented by a rooster.
  • Zach's represented by a turtle.
  • Eugene's represented by a tiger.
• Anime Hair: Eugene's hair defies gravity in an almost otherworldly way. Lampshaded by Zach in "Try Guys Watch Anime for The First Time."
• Amusing Injuries:
  • Eugene is on the receiving end of Groin Attacks by accident when wearing edible panties. He has his crotch bitten and smacked by the elastic of the product. He also hits his head on the back rest of a bed in the same video.
  • Keith gets hit in the chin by a boob weight.
  • Ned face plants due to wearing high heels.
• A Rare Sentence: And often too! They make sense in context.
  • Zach: "Am I The Clitoris?"
  • Keith: "Ned, are you drinking your Baby?"
  • Eugene: "I am talking boobs"
• Ass Shove: For Science! They got their prostates checked, along with their testicles to check for Prostate and Testicular Cancer.
• Attention Whore: How the rest of the Try Guys see Keith.
• Baldness Angst: Experienced when wearing professional make up to turn the guys bald.
  • Studied in more detail when Zach, after years of losing his hair and feeling bad about it, had a hair transplant procedure.
• Berserk Button: Zach hates it whenever his name is misspelled (particularly his last name, "Kornfeld," if it's spelled as "Cornfield").
  • Ned's got a few of these: digs at anything related to his homestate of Florida (particularly the Jacksonville Jaguars or Jacksonville in general) and science (he was a chemistry major in college), and anything involving his wife, Ariel.
• Best Served Cold: In "The Try Guys Prank Each Other", Ned's entire goal is to get revenge on the other three Try Guys, since he had been the victim of so many pranks from them in past videos. This ultimately backfires on him because they had anticipated this, so they had his car towed to the LA-offices for Buzzfeed, covered it in Post-It notes and put a giant snake in the front seat, and even hired a mariachi band to play music.
• Big Eater:
  • Keith's often seen eating or talking about food (especially if it's fried chicken). He now has a sub-series called "Eat The Menu" that features him eating one of each menu item from a chosen restaurant. So far, McDonald's, Taco Bell, KFC, Burger King, Panda Express, Olive Garden, Arby's, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, and Shake Shack have all been featured, with more episodes on the way.
  • Averted when he's not doing taste tests or Eat The Menu videos. During 2019, Keith started watching his food intake more, even going vegan for a time, because he was concerned about his weight and overall health; he talks about it occasionally on the channel and extensively in the Try Guys' book.
  • Special mention to YB and Alex (nicknamed "The Food Babies"), two Try Guys production crew members who had to clear out Keith's leftovers.
• Big Fun: Jared Popkin often comes across as this when he shows up in videos, as he's a big guy who's very fun-loving and often laughing.
• Big Little Brother: Keith's the tallest of the Try Guys (at 6'3") and is also the youngest of three sons—but from what we've seen of Keith's two older brothers, Keith's shown to be considerably taller than both of them.
• Body Sushi: Done with the guys and an experienced participant.
• Breakout Character: Starting in 2022, JonnyCakes went from a Without a Recipe judge to regular appearances, eventually getting his own videos. He even appeared with Zach to try skydiving, a video which, according to Zach, Keith and Eugene always refused to do.
• The Bus Came Back: "We Made a 5-Star Pizza Restaurant in Our Office" features the surprise return of Jamie, the Rank Kid.
• Butt-Monkey: Ned, in the end of "The Try Guys Prank Each Other". See Best Served Cold above.
• Call-Back: The Try Guys break into Ned's house as Santa Claus in one episode to leave him a present, which turns out to be an avocado. Guess what Ned gives birth to after he simulates his wife's labor 2-3 years later?
  • In the episode Keith Eats $500 of Gourmet Cheese, Keith eats a cheese called Snowdonia Ruby Mist, which Keith thinks is a great name for an epic fantasy series. That ends up being the name of the world in the Try Guy's DnD campaign.
  • A very unintentional example: in the video where the guys made dumplings without a recipe, Zach adds pineapple to his dumpling filling and leaves it overnight, finding the next day that the enzymes in the pineapple have essentially rotted the meat. Keith repeats a similar mistake in the mac and cheese episode, trying to make an al pastor-style mac and cheese with pineapple juice, which is left overnight before cooking and produces a disaster so bad that Rosanna vomits after eating it. Commentors on the video were quick to point out that Keith's dish had met exactly the same fate as Zach's had two seasons earlier.
  • "The Try Guys Get Their Bones Cracked," Miles claims he's "like a Wolverine" because he has titanium in his left shoulder joint (presumably from a surgery). Three years later, Miles dressed up as Wolverine for the themed costuming in "Keith Eats Everything At Outback Steakhouse."
  • At the end of “The Try Guys Try Archery,” Zach jokingly tries changing their sign-off to “So that’s how we gave it a try!” while doing a swinging fist-pump move. At the end of “Surprising Mythical Josh with 100 Lb Cake Weights,” Jonny Cakes and Josh from Mythical Kitchen do the same thing while claiming the Guys end every video by saying, “At least we gave it a try!”
  • In "Surprising Keith with Soup-Flavored Macarons," Jonny Cakes points out the Sponge Daddy-brand sponge in the Try Guys' office kitchen and says they should replace it with a Sponge Mommy. In "Find The Hidden Cake: Mouths Only feat. THE BOYZ," Jonny once again points out that sponge should have been replaced and has in fact already replaced it with a hyper-realistic cake.
• The Cameo: American Ninja Warrior hosts Matt Iseman and Akbar Gbaja-Biamila provide commentary during the videos "Try Guys Test a Drunk Obstacle Course," "Try Guys Test a High Obstacle Course," and a bonus video for the Second Try channel.
  Matt: Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us! I’m Matt Iseman.
  Akbar: And I’m Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, and I can’t believe we actually agreed to be here today, but here we are.
• Catchphrase
  • Ned: "My wife...", "My favorite color is red because it rhymes with Ned!", "Does this make my butt look good?"
  • Eugene (as the Rank King): "I'm right, you're wrong, shut up!"
• Child Hater: Eugene's a very downplayed example of this—he considers himself to be the least fatherly of the Try Guys and has openly claimed that he "prefer[s] dogs over babies." However, in many of the videos that feature the Try Guys interacting with kids, Eugene's shown to be very good with them. Also, in one of the lie detector videos they made, it's revealed that Eugene does want to have kids of his own someday.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: According to their current intro —
  • Keith is blue.
  • Zach is green.
  • Ned is pink/red.
  • Eugene is purple.
• Comically Missing the Point: During the "Try Guys React to College Kids React to the Try Guys" video, Eugene immediately loses interest in actually reacting to what's in front of him, choosing instead to focus on the then-upcoming movie Pokémon Detective Pikachu, for the majority of the video.
• Divine Race Lift: Kwesi as Jesus in “Try Guys Try Every Costume From Spirit Halloween.” Unfortunately, the color of the wig and beard included in the kit match Kwesi’s skin tone, making his face look like a featureless blob.
  Kwesi: I’m Jesus, and... I’m hair.
• Don't Try This at Home: Certain videos, such as simulated surviving at sea and kidnapping scenarios, have this warning due to the inherent danger of the situations presented.
• Eagleland: After a season of the devious Evil Eugene, "Without a Recipe" introduced us to "Good Eugene", who took this trope to satiric lengths, basing his dishes off of such All-American themes as Christianity, bombs, and fracking. However, when Eugene's initial plan for his Illusion Cake episode falls through, Evil Eugene returns.
• Evil Counterpart: Season 4 of "Without a Recipe" introduces "Evil Eugene", Eugene's nefarious alter ego who uses off-putting ingredients in his cooking to try and torture the judges. Despite this, he ends up winning two of the four episodes, including the finale.
• Exact Words: Invoked in one of the "Without a Recipe" episodes, where Jamie, one of the judges, says he doesn't want to eat Keith's dish because he's worried he'll get salmonella.
  Keith: "You'll never get salmonella...because it's salmonella."
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The titles of their videos and the name of the group are very self-explanatory—in a video explaining how the Try Guys met and started their group, when it got to the point where they had to come up with a group-name, either Keith or Zach said something along the lines of, "Well, we're guys that try stuff? Why don't we just call ourselves the Try Guys?" Eugene initially felt that "Try Guys" was a dumb name but compared to some of the other potential groups they had come up, they ultimately decided that "Try Guys" was the best name.
• Fatal Flaw: The first season of "Without A Recipe" revealed some consistent baking and cooking flaws for each of the guys, which they (sometimes) tried to address in later episodes:
  • Ned was the most experienced baker but usually played it safe, going for recipes he knew and avoiding bold flavors. He tended to do best when the other Try Guys failed in their execution. Season Two sees him start experimenting with wilder ideas, like Cajun-inspired dumplings and his "Pizza Clock".
  • By contrast, Eugene often had very creative ideas with interesting flavors, but sabotaged himself by drowning them in booze and spices. He would also make major technical mistakes, such as adding way too many eggs to his birthday cake and overmixing it for a catastrophically long amount of time, partly out of being a Troll (or "Asian of Chaos", as he puts it). When he can get the taste and texture of his dishes to match his vision, he usually wins.
  • Keith made the same flavor every single round, got extremely defensive to the slightest criticism, and went on vein-popping rants at the judges whenever he lost. In general, he got too fixated on a certain food item and tried to unsuccessfully force it into the challenge (like a bowl of cereal for the birthday cake episode, or, in Season 3, a grilled cheese and tomato soup for macarons). He has also admitted to not liking dessert, which may be partly why he tends toward savory items even when making things like cookies. "Daddy's Favorite" does finally win the cheesecake episode at the end of the second season.
  • Zach was too easily distracted and would add way too many candies and snacks to his creations without getting them to mesh. His ice cream, for example, contained Oreos, peanut butter, and mint. He also ignored the advice the other Guys tried to give him. Averted starting in the second season, when he finally tries to learn from his mistakes and nets his first "official" win in the brownie competition.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Ned: Choleric. Confidently competitive with Hot-Blooded tendencies.
  • Eugene: Phlegmatic. Typically the most dry, direct, and serious-minded of the gang.
  • Zach: Melancholic. While he's a playful guy with a sunny demeanor, he's also the most openly sensitive and tenderhearted of the group and grapples with insecurities and other personal struggles he's not afraid to be vulnerable about.
  • Keith: Sanguine. An entertainer all the way; outgoing, silly, and nearly always quick with anything from a Pun to an impromptu musical number.
• Full-Frontal Assault: In “The Try Guys Try the Ancient Olympics,” all four of them compete in various traditional Olympic games while completely naked—and this includes wrestling.
• Funny Background Event:
  • In "The Try Guys Bake Cakes Without a Recipe," judges Roy and Jonny awkwardly try to come up with something nice to say about Eugene's "cake" (which was horrifically overmixed, contained way too many eggs, and came out looking like flesh)...while third judge Rosanna audibly retches in the background, unable to eat it.
  • In "The Try Guys Make Ice Cream Cake Without a Recipe," there's a quick shot of Ned getting ingredients from the shelf, while Keith walks around behind him wearing an empty Wonder Bread bag as a hat.
  • At the very start of "Find the Hidden Cake: Mouths Only feat. THE BOYZ," Jonny Cakes has pasted his own picture over Ned's face in a collage of the original four Try Guys hanging by the door behind Zach.
• Gag Censor: The "Everything Is Fine" season of Without a Recipe have Ned covered up by various CG animals and objects, including a literal "elephant in the room" that trumpets to cover him talking.
• Gargle Blaster: The Try Guys Try The World's Grossest Alcohols. They actually enjoyed a few of them!
• Happy Dance: Keith has a specific one he does when he wins the pie and cheesecake episodes of Without a Recipe.
• Happily Married:
  • Ned's consistent mentioning of his wife Ariel (who has been part of several couple/domestic life-related videos with her husband) is pretty much a running gag between the guys.
  • And ever since his wedding, Keith is happy to mention his wife Becky on occasion as well. Just not as much as Ned mentions his wife.
• High Heel Hurt: Examined when the four of them attempt to wear high heels in various styles and heights while out on the town without tapping out in the form of "flatting-out," where they trade their heels for flats. The shoes range from Zach's three-inch heel ankle boots to Eugene's ridiculous six-inch dagger pumps. While they like the way the shoes look, all four of them admit that their feet hurt terribly once they walk in them for any length of time and they're difficult to move and keep their balance in. Ned even accidentally faceplants when his heels get stuck on the rung of a barstool. By the end of the evening, all four of them opt to flat-out; even the ones who forgot to bring flats would rather walk home barefoot than struggle in the shoes.
• Honorary Uncle: The other guys quickly became this to Ned and Ariel's sons, Wesley and Finley, to the point of where they're referred to as Uncle Keith, Uncle Zach, and Uncle Eugene.
• Hot-Blooded: Ned. In any video where the Try Guys are competing with or fighting each other, Ned is clearly the most passionate about it. Especially when the person he is competing with is Eugene.
• I Have Your Wife: In "The Try Guys Try Distracted Driving", Ned's wife Ariel is locked in a cage in order to distract Ned. This, of course, works, as Ned drives off the course to save her, causing him to lose the competition.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: Invoked. Lots of their videos explore femininity and womanhood, such as "The Try Guys Get Photoshopped as Women", "The Try Guys Wear Heels for a Night", and the Motherhood series they did for Mother's Day in 2015.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Due to Eugene's adversity to being around children, he keeps calling Ned and Ariel's child "It" instead of "He/him". He at least apologizes for his gaffes.
• Joke Item: When trying not to die in the woods alone, each of the guys got identical backpacks, save for a useless item unique to each pack. Zack MacGyvered his useless item (Stickers) as a form of tape. Eugene and Ned used theirs as the Team Pet.
• Lethal Chef: A popular series they make is called "Without a Recipe," where they make certain food ideas without having a recipe to help them. The first video they did for that series was making bread, and the judges in that particular video make it extremely clear that none of the bread the guys made was that good, with Eugene's bread being considered "the least horrible." However, the judges make it even clearer that the buckwheat "bread" that Zach made was easily one of the worst things that any of them had ever tasted (if not the worst thing they'd ever tasted). Seriously, the stuff that Zach made was pretty weird: aside from using buckwheat flour instead of regular bread flour, his "bread" included things like Nutella, chocolate-covered pretzels, Fruity Pebbles-cereal and even gummy bears.
  • Zach didn't fair much better in the follow up episode when baking holiday pies. While this time the others did better and at least made passable desserts, Zach's Pecan Pie was barely edible, looked more like burnt sludge and, according to the list of ingredients he used, contained a cup of salt.
• Literal Metaphor: During the Fanfiction episode, a nervous Fanfic!Keith is described as looking like "a cat that was drenched in the Arctic Ocean." The real Keith then proceeds to act out how that would actually look, making an extremely goofy wide-eyed expression. Said expression is then carried over into the fanfic being acted out. Eugene dryly comments how he's super attracted to Keith's look.
• The Makeover: The Guys have had a few:
  • "The Try Guys Get Style Makeovers", wherein they meet with a professional stylist who makes them look how they'd ideally want to.
  • "The Try Guys Get Makeovers from High School Girls," where four teenaged fans dress them in clothes they think would look good.
  • "The Try Guys Get Makeovers from Little Girls," in which the four of them are matched with girls 6-9 years old and proceed to wear the suggestions, no matter how bizarre.
• Never Gets Drunk: Downplayed, but Eugene (who's an experienced drinker) seems to have a rather high alcohol tolerance.
  • In a video where the Guys tested their alcohol tolerance by drinking more alcohol through a party and taking breathalyzer tests, Eugene appeared to be nearly unaffected even once he hit the legal limit, while the other three were slurring and getting giggly even before hitting the limit. He even woke up with no signs of a hangover.
  • In a vlog where he and a female coworker/friend of his from Buzzfeed (named Kelsey) sampled the most iconic drinks from each of the fifty states, all but four of the drinks (due to those four states having very strict drinking laws, they got water instead) they tried were alcoholic. Eugene still maintained coherence after sampling 46 alcoholic drinks, two of which were moonshine (which is basically pure alcohol).
• Nightmare Fetishist: It's mentioned in a few videos that Zach and Eugene are really into horror-related things such as horror films/monster movies and scaring/pranking people, and they both love Halloween (especially Zach).
  Zach:I am marrying Halloween because that, Halloween is the greatest holiday. I will hear no argument to the contrary. (Eugene nods approvingly)
• Non-Standard Game Over: When driving while distracted, Ned's wife was "kidnapped." This caused him to drive off the course to "rescue" his wife. This causes him to lose the entire competition
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Appears twice in "Sexy Alcohol Taste Test."
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Ned appears to be boisterous and jump into things without thinking, but he tends to exaggerate these traits for comedic effect. Proving his actual intelligence, he went to Yale and got a degree in chemistry.
  Ned: I pretend to be dumb a lot of the time, and it's a very smart choice.
• Obligatory Joke: The Try Guys Try Pottery has a slew of jokes involving the pottery scene from Ghost. The woman who ran the pottery shop they were at (called "Still Life Ceramics") explained that she and the rest of her staff actually encourage Ghost jokes and references
• Of Corset Hurts: Ned, Keith and Eugene wear corsets for three days in one video ^note Zach didn't participate in the video because he was visiting relatives in New York at the time. Seen here.
• Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!: In The Try Guys Reenact Fanfiction they read and act out fanfiction that was written about them. Ned's the most disturbed, but he kind of gets into it as they read a few.
• Once an Episode: Nearly every episode of "Without a Recipe" features at least one shot of Eugene pouring alcohol into his creation from a great height.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • During the dune buggy episode, the man teaching them to drive is also named Zack. Zach the Try Guy tries to give the other one a nickname, but since their guide is older and therefore has been a Zack longer, the other Try Guys make Zach use his middle name, Andrew, instead. This quickly turns into "Sandy Andy."
  • Averted in several other videos, such as with the guest baker Zack in the baking bread episode, and the male sex symbol video, which has two other Zacks.
• Only Six Faces: They note in their two-year anniversary video that when commenters on their early, proto-"Try Guys" videos didn't exactly know them on a first-name basis, the guys were mostly distinguished as "The Asian One" (Eugene), "Tall Guy with Glasses" (Keith), "Short Guy with Glasses"/"Tiny Nerd" (Zach) and... "A White Guy” (Ned).
  • In “The Try Guys Make the Ultimate Holiday Calendar,” they have the members of Ladylike pose as them for March (which is International Women’s Month). Freddie poses as Eugene while Kristin, Jen and Devin pose as Ned, Zach and Keith, respectively—Zach's instructions for Kristin, Jen and Devin (who all look and act very differently from each other) are "to be completely indistinguishable from one another."
• Pretty Boy: Eugene's widely considered to be the most physically attractive of the Try Guys (even by the other Try Guys). In the videos that focus on the Try Guys trying on different clothes/outfits (even if it's women's clothes), Eugene usually ends up looking the best—it's lampshaded in some of their videos, like the one where the guys try on wedding dresses:
  Zach: Eugene's gonna look prettier than any of us. Let's just get it over with.
  • Also, in "Should the Try Guys Get Plastic Surgery?", Dr. Jason B. Diamond (the plastic surgeon they worked with for the video) claimed that he felt there was nothing with Eugene's physical appearance—the most he would do was a minor alteration to Eugene's nose and some minor sculpting along his jawline. When the guys were shown the "after" photos for the before/after-comparison^note The "after" photos were pictures of their faces Photoshopped to reflect the surgeon's suggestions for procedures., the changes were so barely noticeable that Eugene thought there was no after-photo until told otherwise.
• Running Gag: “X is the name of my dick” with X being something related to their current costume in “Try Guys Try Every Costume From Spirit Halloween.”
• Safe Word:
  • In the video where the guys do labor-pain simulation for the Motherhood-series, the guys use "epidural" as their safe word for when they can't take anymore pain.
  • Eugene uses "faster" in the video where the guys are wearing edible lingerie and Eugene's having someone eat it off of him.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • In The Try Guys Test Sleep-Deprived Driving, it's basically what happened to Ned at 3:13am where him without Wes for the entire night awake has taken a toll on him, where he changes a diaper of a chick doll (only for the diaper to be too big for it) and tucking it to sleep. Exaggerated where the video suddenly goes into a Mushroom Samba sequence at ?:??am.
  • Played for laughs in Try Guys Try The Ghost Pepper Challenge. The guys are all struggling to deliver a speech for the graduates of 2020 after eating a ghost pepper. In the process: Keith is rapidly speaking and panicking, Zach accidentally break the podium then continues the speech while holding the detached board, Ned is constantly screaming in rage and pain and then spraying whipped cream into his mouth, and Eugene starts to sound like Kermit the Frog as well as making terrible decisions of swallowing the pepper and rubbing his eyes.
    • Exaggerated when Ned and Eugene decide to eat one more ghost pepper.
    Ned: PERSEVERANCE!!!
• Screaming Birth: All four guys are screaming in pain in part-4 of the Motherhood-series—as mentioned above, it's currently their most-watched video with more than thirty million views. After the ordeal is over, the guys have a much greater respect and appreciation for women who go through this (especially their moms).
  • Ned ends up going through this a second time after he and the other Try Guys start their own company and get their own channel on YouTube—during the Parenthood-series, the second-to-last video they did was recreate when Ariel went into labor with her and Ned's son, Wesley (all fourteen hours of it). Keith, Zach and Eugene took turns on giving Ned the shocks to mimic/simulate labor pains.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Downplayed, as all four of them have their own sensitive and manly sides, but Keith and Zach are typically the gentler and more sensitive guys while Ned and Eugene are the more aggressive/assertive manly men.
• Serial Escalation: Lampshaded by Keith in "The Try Guys Race Dog Sleds," where after a day of training on completely different terrain and equipment, the Guys are racing dog sleds on a glacier.
  Keith: This is crazy! Whatever happened to us just trying on ladies' underwear?!
• Shameless Fanservice Guy:
  • The guys get naked (or at least strip down to their underwear) in a lot of their videos, especially the ones they made when they were still at Buzzfeed)—sexy costumes, lingerie, (nude) modeling and stripping have all been subjects of various videos.
  • After Zach does an impression of how Keith takes his shirt off during shoots during a talent show, one of their co-workers at Buzzfeed noted she was "disturbed" by how much they get naked around each other for them to know so much about how the others get undressed.
  • During the Tablecloth Trick Vlog, Eugene walks into the studio late after a dentist appointment to find the other three naked and/or in their underwear, attempting the titular stunt. As he stands there confused, Zach tells him to take his pants off. Eugene thinks about it for a second before just shrugging and complying.
• Shout-Out: In "The Try Guys Get $775 Red Carpet Facials", Zach mentions time travel as he goes into the hyperbaric oxygen capsule (including a mention of not stepping on any plants while he's in the future, and him asking who the president is once he gets out), a clear reference to A Sound of Thunder.
• Sigil Spam: Keith puts his face everywhere in the "Prank War" video, including an Clone Army ^note Which were six actors who Keith casted to be him.
• Sixth Ranger:
  • Miles Bonsignore, the camera operator and producer of the TryPod podcast, is considered by the guys themselves as the unofficial fifth Try Guy.
  • Kwesi James is shaping up to be the Guys’ Sixth Ranger. In April 2021, Eugene announced he was taking a brief hiatus from the Try Guys channel to work on other projects. In his absence, Kwesi appeared in a handful of series, like Without a Recipe and Mystery Dish Challenge. While Eugene returned for the "Extreme Coffee Trivia Challenge," Kwesi competed in Zach's place (for Zach's health). Kwesi even has his own assigned color (yellow) and animal (a koala bear) in said video like the core four.
• Sled Dogs Through the Snow: in "The Try Guys Race Dog Sleds", the guys travel to Alaska and learn how to travel by dogsled, culminating in a timed competition on a glacier.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: All of the guys are left speechless by James, an Australian model they bring in for a spray tan demonstration. While Eugene (the only one in the group who's actually gay) is trying to keep a straight face, the other guys are notably flustered.
• Tempting Fate: When testing Sexy Edible Lingerie, they play "Which White Guy am I Tasting?". When it's Ned's turn, Eugene makes a comment that seals his fate.
  Eugene: Better not be on someone's ass or balls.
• That Came Out Wrong:
  Zach: If I had my friends dress as like, sexy woodland creatures. They'd sing and then come on my arms.

  Zach: That tastes just like Grandma.
  Eugene cracks up.

  Ned: Christmas is coming with your family...

  Eugene: I'm not scared. I'm kind of, like... hard.

• That's What She Said: Said by the acupuncturist after Eugene made the following remark.
  Eugene: The entry was not great, but the current situation's ok.
• Twofer Token Minority: Eugene's the only non-white member (he's Korean-American) and the only non-heterosexual member (he officially came out as gay in June of 2019) of the Try Guys, but his race and sexuality ultimately have nothing to do with his role in the group or the series itself. As the guys have explained in some of their videos (both before and after they left Buzzfeed), they've tried getting more people involved with the stuff they do in videos, but the guys were ultimately the only ones who were willing to actually to do the stuff that they do in videos.
• Trademark Favorite Food: While he doesn't seem all that picky when it comes to his eating habits, Keith's favorite food is established as being fried chicken.
• Unperson: Some videos filmed before Ned was fired were still released between his firing and the information going public, heavily edited to remove him. After the events went public, the November/December 2022 "Without a Recipe" episodes were released with Ned replaced by various CG animals. The only instance he isn't censored, he's visible during judging from the neck down wearing a shirt reading "I Love Bad Ideas".
• Unusual Euphemism: During the Fanfiction-episode, any sexual acts are replaced with sandwich metaphors, displayed on screen by the guys sharing and chowing down on sandwiches.
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • The Try Guys have become very close friends through doing the videos, but sometimes the guys' competitiveness gets the best of them, especially in the case of Ned and Eugene.
  • As noted by Zach in one of their videos: "Any time we do a competition video, [Ned and Eugene] immediately forget that we're filming a video and it becomes all about beating each other up."
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: When surviving being stranded at sea, Keith throws up. The material is blurred, however.
• Wholesome Crossdresser:
  • The whole point of "Try Guys Try Drag," where the guys put on their own drag show and even adopt their own drag queen-personas. Eugene has continued using his persona, Cheyenne Pepper, in other performances and shows.
  • Anytime when they try on women's clothing/costumes, such as "Sexy Lingerie."