YMMV / RLYoshi

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Basically everyone gets subjected to this, usually along the lines of "is this how they act in real life?" See Base-Breaking Character below for those examples.
  • Is Rhino generally good at puzzles, but just Wrong Genre Savvy in Ocarina of Time? Or is he honestly bad at them? Templars of Hyrule and the Phoenix Wright games can arguably support the two interpretations respectively. In the former, he supplies quite a few solutions to the puzzles and is genuinely good at solving them; but in the latter, nine times out of ten, he's either Right for the Wrong Reasons, right because he cuts Max off to finish his theories for him, or just not right at all.
    • It could even be interpreted as him being good at the puzzles themselves, but just dense the rest of the time, seeing as how a majority of the problems in Ocarina stem from him just not putting two and two together. His tendency to get the solution correct, but fail the execution and as a result thing he was wrong and start trying other incorrect methods, also supports this.
  • Is Science Pony a character that Max created for the sake of both entertainment or education, or is he a way for Max to make fun of and insult his viewers and avoid the blame by claiming it to "just be a persona"?
  • An in-universe example in Resident Evil 6; due to the voice Max gives Leon S. Kennedy, he and Dan decide Leon is an emo Death Seeker who thinks he can't do anything right, and will angst about his life story nonstop to Helena, who just tunes him out and/or tells him to shut up.
    • They also later characterize Jake as being Too Dumb to Live for no reason except Rule of Funny.
  • In Life Is Strange, rather than seeing Kate as The Woobie due to being bullied and depressed like most players do, Max (the player) considers her to be an annoying Bitch in Sheep's Clothing due to how she treats Max (the in-game character). Max gets an angry reaction from Kate every time he makes a choice, usually one that's supposed to be better for her in the long run, causing Max to consider her selfish for not being patient.
    • He isn't unjustified, either. He declares his contempt for her after she lashes out at Max for taking a picture of David Madsen hassling her^note The alternative is to step in physically; this cuts David's hassling short by only a few seconds, puts Max (the character) at odds with him as well, and results in obtaining no photo for future use, so it's natural Max (the player) would, this being his first playthrough, rewind after seeing both options and choose to take a picture instead, declares the topic dropped, immediately asks Max to return a book to her, and then when Max goes to do so, Kate brings the topic back up to continue chewing Max out. Max (the player) seems to let that slide until he advises Kate not to go to the police without proof, which Kate gets snarky and mad at despite there being pretty good reasons provided. Cue Max giving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech as he walks out, and later ignores her phone call. This all results in him being unable to save her when he tries to be up-front and honest about his reasons for doing what he did.
  • Faendal is The Voiceless, despite his occasional speech in combat and when Max talks to him. A Running Gag is Max saying something along the lines of "What do you think of this, Faendal?", turning to look at him, and standing there staring for several seconds with nobody speaking.
    • As of the eighth episode, he is also apparently Santa Claus, due to the hat Max gave him.
• Arc Fatigue: The original playing of Skyward Sword had been going on for over a year and a half with the ending still far away. Obviously people were getting impatient with waiting for the ending. It didn't surprise many when it was eventually cancelled (though that was due to them losing save data). Fortunately, since its restart, updates have been far more consistent.
  • The Super Vexation Saga had fallen into this as well for some people, since it took forever for new episodes to come out.
  • Some people find Minecraft Party to fall into this, as for every day for a week, the only videos put up every day are episodes of Minecraft Party; once it starts, that's all that goes on the channel until it's done. Anyone not into the series but into Max's other videos is, naturally, going to be annoyed. Fortunately, ever since Max starting to put up two videos every day, and also seemingly not sticking to the week-long rule as of Pallet Town, this died down significantly.
  • Yoshopoly is being implied on social media to eventually have this.
  • This has mostly been averted, since Max uploads videos of all kinds instead of sticking with one game to the very end without uploading anything else (Minecraft Party, as mentioned above, is an exception).
• Archive Panic: He started putting videos up^*: well, let's play videos; before, he did some machinima, but that was all taken down due to Old Shame in October of 2010. While his upload schedule was spotty for a while, he uploaded at least three times a week for a good couple years (barring a month or two with few to no uploads due to him temporarily focusing on the now-dead Boofs channel), and as of late 2014, puts up a new video every single day. Considering his videos are each forty minutes average, that's a lot of catching up for anyone who wants to see everything he's done.
  • On July 12th, 2015, he began uploading two videos a day. Granted, the average time went down to half an hour (with several more videos being between twenty and thirty minutes, and fewer being so close to the hour mark), but this still comes out to roughly an hour of content a day.
• Audience-Alienating Era: A few.
  • For his gaming videos, anything before 2013 was pretty bad due to Early-Installment Weirdness. 2015 is also widely considered a rather bad year, due to Max going through hard times and few people having good attitudes in competitive games, but it wasn't all bad.
  • Very few Cutie Mark Laboratories episodes from late 2014 through the first half of 2015 are considered on par with the rest, and view counts dropped off severely after the "Pinkie Pie is Adopted" video.
  • Pallet Town for Minecraft Party. Plagued by technical difficulties on the editing side, one cheating player (Peter) and one raging player (Dan), on a board lacking many unique gimmicks, and also at the time Max decided to split up the updates more with no announcement? Definitely not a good time, even if the videos themselves are comparatively not bad.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Everyone, usually in the sense of "are they funny or are they annoying/boring?"
  • Max falls into this primarily because of his tendency to call out others on their actions. He's either right and just being a bit hostile about it, or he's being a hypocrite. His admitted stress during 2015 gives him a small excuse, at least, but still.
  • Dan is either a Nice Guy who has moments of annoyance that just happen to be more often than others, or he's a dick who kills the mood when things don't go his way. Lately the former has been more prominent thanks to his angry reactions only popping up when a game outright screws him over (through lag, glitches, or RNG) rather than just him doing bad, and thanks to him showing his skill in the Battletoads race.
  • Rhino is funny and skilled, or unfunny and only wins because he plays a very bland game in contrast to everyone else trying to make things interesting.
    • Fortune Street makes this even worse for him. His tendency to think things over leads to him having very long turns, which tries the patience of the others (mostly Max), and his cautious nature means he doesn't make any high-risk-high-reward contributions. Depending on who you ask, this is how you're meant to play the game, or it's just dull. (Max seems to think the latter, while Dan and Jero think the former.)
  • There's an ongoing debate over who's a better Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Dan has a very story-centric style with plenty of room for fun, but insane difficulty at times; when the players curbstomped his boss, he proceeded to give the boss a second, more powerful fight, which lasted the guys an entire new session. The rest of the time, people love his style for being comedic, integrating what the players do without a problem, and still managing to tell a cohesive and interesting story.
    • Max makes everything up on the spot, resulting in hilarity and/or stuff not making any sense. He doesn't even necessarily stick to the rules, which annoys some people (though he got better about that), and he often has a sparse story with pretty much nothing holding it together as a result of his improvisation. However, the sessions themselves are still quite enjoyable, and he's good at making sure all the players get a chance to shine. He's gotten even better starting with Beyond Boundaries, as he no longer improvises everything from the get-go and puts a lot more focus on the narrative.
    • Rhino is possibly the biggest base breaker; he plans things out in advance, but is also new to being a DM. So he tends to rely on combat for all his obstacles, will railroad the players onto his pre-set path rather frequently, and is sometimes downright unfair just because he's annoyed. It also doesn't help that he's very obviously got it out for Max, due to him having (as Rhino sees it) an overpowered character, and frequently screws him over or targets him in ways the others never have to deal with. However, his sessions are also often the best laid-out, with the combat being fair and challenging, and over time he's gotten better at working in the players' actions to his story and thinking on his feet.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In Ohai, I'm SAWme Guy, the "Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing On Rainbows" bit. Doubles as Mood Whiplash.
  • The highlights video for Resident Evil 5 ends with... TURN DOWN FOR WHAT!
  • After Tim makes a John Cena joke in Quiplash, Future Max sticks in the infamous clip of him several times throughout the rest of the episode, always randomly.
  • In one of Max's vlogs, the only content provided for one of the days is footage of himself wearing sunglasses, holding a roll of wrapping paper, and with a hammer in his mouth, while lights flash and dubstep plays. No explanation is given, though he does reference it later in the video by muttering about how he might put a hammer in his mouth again.
• Broken Base: The majority of his let's play videos having guests. Does this make it more entertaining, or kind of ruin it being "his channel" when practically every video has other people in it?
  • There's a major broken base about him doing gaming videos and Cutie Mark Laboratories. Tons of people say he should only do the latter, without realizing he's been doing gaming videos for far longer, while others will say it's good to have a variety of content and they enjoy watching both.
    • It doesn't help that, despite Max's constant insistence to the contrary, people seem to believe that Max spending time on let's plays actually delays Cutie Mark Laboratories videos. Max has said many times that the let's plays, with few exceptions, take comparatively little time to do and he makes sure to work on Cutie Mark Laboratories whenever he has ideas and motivation.
    • It reached the point where Max has canceled Cutie Mark Laboratories on and off and eventually just settled on trying to make one every month, but basically just doing them when he can.
  • A lot of Cutie Mark Laboratories episodes have caused this from just the topic. Examples include whether or not Rainbow Dash is a lesbian; Pinkie Pie being adopted; and Twilight Sparkle being killed and reincarnated. He has sound evidence for a lot of these, but people often take them too seriously and look for flaws, either real or imagined, to prove him wrong.
  • He caused a pretty big one in the beginning of his video on whether or not Rainbow Dash was autistic. First, he apologized in advance in case anyone with autism found the video offensive, then implied that people without autism weren't allowed to get offended by it. It's likely he meant that people without autism shouldn't feel personally attacked by anything, since they don't have autism, but there were a lot of people responding that they had friends or family with autism and so they should be allowed to get offended too.
  • The ending of the Pokémon Showdown Tournament: Zero, who has one loss, beats Squill, who had none. Zero is declared the winner, when by normal double elimination rules, they'd be fighting again - and with how close the battle was and how Squill beat Zero previously, it's very possible Squill could have won. However, this isn't as bad as most examples, since they mentioned really not wanting to record another battle due to how long it took to actually get together everyone involved for the finale. At worst, some people are just passive-aggressively congratulating Zero for his "partial victory".
• Crosses the Line Twice: A fair amount of Tim's jokes.
  • Max, while playing Lucioball and getting on fire (as in, scoring enough points he's "on fire" figuratively), remarks "Bring me to Louisiana!" during a massive flood in the area.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Check the characters page. Obviously excluding Max, all the main eight people there were this, hence their being promoted to more frequent appearances.
  • Enigma's sister, Wren. She's barely a teenager and is a big enough Large Ham to give the others a run for their money. When she disappears from the channel for intervals, people eventually start clamoring for her return.
  • Squillistipated from the Pokémon Showdown Tournament for having the perfect sense of dry humor to fit on the channel, along with being extremely skilled and intelligent without being an Insufferable Genius.
  • Greg and Josh from the vlog Max recorded during Peter's birthday.
  • Endorb from the second season of Minecraft Hardcore is liked for averting most people's expectations of bringing a viewer onto the channel; he's not annoying or rambling, nor does he stay quiet and contribute nothing. His sense of humor fits right in, and everyone there seems to like him.
• Fan Nickname: "Rhutho" for Rhino's memetic Ruth voice (from the Heart's Medicine games).
  • "Courier Salt" for Dan's angrier moments. "Dan the Man" for his awesome moments.
• Friendly Fandoms: With the PBG Hardcore fandom, specifically regarding (of course) this channel's own Hardcore series. Fans of both often compare the two positively due to their similar editing styles and traditions, regarding RLYoshi's group as being more relaxed compared to PBG's being more off-the-wall.
• Game-Breaker: In Minecraft Party, there are several, but they get toned down over time thanks to Obvious Rule Patch:
  • The Ender Pearl when on the Pinwheel, due to it being very easy to just toss it and land on whatever space you want with few limits, and you still get to move afterwards. A bit less effective in Vault 14 due to there being several walls and corridors. Even more so afterwards, as Max has made it so the Ender Pearl counts as your turn and you can't buy packed ice if you land on the space with the pearl.
  • The diamond helmets were this in the first board. Acquiring one meant that you wouldn't lose any money next time money would be taken from you, and buying them only cost five gold. They were severely nerfed afterwards.
  • The name tag has the potential to be this; using it allows you to force Max, the host, to play a game for you, but you still get the reward if he wins. Since Max built all the minigames and a fair amount of them involve some sort of thinking or puzzle solving, they could easily be used for quick wins...but the players don't use them much, and when they do, they're never on games Max actually has an advantage in (excluding when Tim used it for Confusion Corridor).
• Harsher in Hindsight: Any interaction between Max and Spark prior to their 2016-2017 falling out and the latter being dropped from the channel.
• He Really Can Act: Max has scored some voice acting roles, and does a pretty good job recording audiobooks.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During his playthrough of Digital: A Love Story - which, it should be noted, is a blind playthrough - Max comments near the beginning how there's no way the people he's talking to in the game can be human, because they're too polite and humans on the Internet are never polite. They aren't human. They're A.I.s.
  • Max played Fallout 3 for the first time on his channel. He had no clue how to do it, Schuyler needed to guide him, and they only got four episodes in before the series got dropped. A couple years later and he says Fallout 3 is his favorite game.
  • The Minecraft Party board, Vault 14, was released only three weeks before Bethesda made the official announcement for Fallout 4.
  • Back in the Mirror and Sol playing of Galacticraft, Mirror (Zero) told Sol (Max) to kill Creepers with his royal guard training, and Sol snarks that he was never trained to defuse a bomb. Almost two years later and Max has to defuse a bomb. Several ones, in fact. And apparently still lacks training, seeing as how Rhino, Tim, and Dan have to give him instructions.
  • Max and Rhino's playing of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess wrapped up exactly two weeks before the Nintendo Direct announcing the HD remake of the same game. Especially hilarious because the finale was recorded several months prior.
  • Most if not all of the Grand Theft Auto V Online stuff was filmed before an update to the game that made green juice restore your health. Max's weird love of the drink before then is suddenly a lot more justified.
  • Also in GTA Online Max creates an alter ego superhero named Canadaman. LoadingReadyRun created their own superhero named Canadaman just over ten years prior.
  • Max has noted Junkrat to be his favorite Overwatch hero to play as, and Max also has a show where he takes on the role of a scientist. The Halloween special for Overwatch in 2016 focused on Dr. Jamison Junkenstein, who was Junkrat as a Mad Scientist.
    • Max had also, shortly before the update went public, changed his profile picture on social media sites to a drawing of himself as Junkrat as a hasty Halloween-themed icon by claiming he was going as Junkrat for Halloween. Suddenly Junkrat became very Halloween-oriented with the update.
  • In Minecraft Hardcore season 2, the group managed to kill the Wither on their first try, a task that the PBG Hardcore crew had failed at twice, something fans of both series' took note of. Only a couple months later, the latter group took on the Wither a third time, and finally succeeded.
    • Alongside that, both series' had their resident "smart guy" die early on, and had someone die during the final fight with the Wither, drawing further parallels.
• Ho Yay: An unsurprising amount given the amount of people on the channel and how almost all of them are male:
  • Max and Peter get a lot of moments of this, due to Peter having No Sense of Personal Space and he and Max usually recording while on Max's bed.
  • Max and Zero, when in character as Mirror and Sol, invoke this on many occasions through their commentary.
    • The City of Love map ended with Mirror seeming like he was about to tell Sol he loved him, only to say he hated him instead.
    • Ironically, the 2015 Valentine's Day Special had no shipping between the two at all.
  • Max and Dan get similar moments due to their commentary as well, particularly when taken out of context; Dan telling Max "I actually sort of like you" after asking him not to slit his own throat, which Max jokingly threatened to do if Dan beat Radical Train first try is a good example.
  • Back in the early days, in The Drawing Board, Max and Chaz had many a moment. Justified due to them being a couple at one point.
  • At the start of Castle Crashers, Max calls Enigma hot. Because he's playing the orange/yellow knight.
• Hype Backlash: Downplayed with Max's opinion of Undertale, specifically the genocide run. Rather than having gotten attached to the characters and feeling awful about killing them, after two runs of Rhino and Jero (and eventually Tim) trying to make it emotional for him, he indulges in his enjoyment of destroying everybody.
  • This is also pretty much exactly why Max doesn't like Steven Universe or Destiny, and is implied to be (at least partially) why Rhino doesn't like Overwatch.
• Memetic Badass:
  • "Rhutho", the combination of Rhino and Heart's Medicine's Ruth. Canonically Ruth is a kind (if snarky) woman; Rhino ad-libs dialogue for her that makes her potentially insane, performing experiments that may or may not involve robots, and has a guinea pig that breaks the laws of space and time.
  • Gourmando, an NPC from Rhino's "Reassembly" Dungeons & Dragons campaign. His out-of-nowhere name compared to the standard ones of other Non Player Characters caught the group off guard in a hilarious way, and they took it from there, with Fiora (Max's character) constantly seeking Gourmando's approval.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Max ended up elevating Part Time Job to a minor status of this.
  • Saying "alicorn" in the comments of the first Cutie Mark Laboratories episode, because after saying earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns were the three main pony races, Max quickly said that "anyone who says 'alicorn' in the comments gets a party cannon shoved up their plothole".
  • Mannequin in a Wheelchair ^Explanation From Fibbage, one question had everyone put in single-word simple lies, such as "Rabbit" and "Statue", except for "Mannequin in a Wheelchair", which nobody picked. Everyone had a hilariously incredulous reaction to it being the true answer, and it's made returns ever since as a Call-Back.
  • Welcoming and Efficient ^Explanation Also from Fibbage, a question basically boiled down to "...a post office that is _______", and one lie was Welcoming and Efficient. It turned out to be a lie put in by the game itself.
    • Sometimes the above two are mixed to form "Welcoming and Efficient Wheelchair Mannequin".
  • ARE YOU ALRIGHT?!^Explanation In the first part of Resident Evil 6, Max entertains himself by melee attacking an NPC, just as Leon says "Are you alright?", causing both Dan and Max to decide that yelling "Are you alright?!" is a war cry.
  • Equestria doesn't have buses.^Explanation In one episode of Cutie Mark Laboratories, Max made use of the figure of speech "throwing them under the bus", and added small onscreen text lampshading how Equestria doesn't actually have buses.
  • What is honesty?^Explanation In the 2015 April Fool's episode of Cutie Mark Laboratories, Max briefly put some onscreen text saying "what is honesty?", and later "maybe honesty is a lie in and of itself". The first of those was quickly flashed onscreen in the next actual episode, and said out loud (albeit in a mumble) by Max in another one.
  • "GIRL NOBODY GIVE A FUUUUUUCK!"^Explanation In one of the late episodes of Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel, Bravo yells this at Fiona, saying the first few words very fast before stretching the last one out in a way that makes Max and Dan crack up laughing, and they add it to their stash of catchphrases. Also a slight case of Beam Me Up, Scotty!, as the original line was "GIRL DON'T NOBODY GIVE A FUCK!"
  • The idea of Malo being a dark demon lord with a deep voice, but still a child, has picked up steam now thanks to Rhino. While the idea of giving Malo a very deep voice isn't new, going one step further with it like they did definitely is.
  • "Courier Salt"^Explanation Dan's famous "salt rant", about he is angry, not salty (and hilariously trailing into how salt is something you put on your food to make it taste better, while putting Dan on your food will not do the same), was highlighted with the name "Courier Salt". This name is now used both to refer to said rant, and as a nickname for Dan when he starts getting angry.
    • Pretty much any of the weekly highlights, to various extents. Particular examples include "I Am A Goomba", "JULIAN?!", and "You're On Your Own!".
  • Rhino's jazzy GTA Online car horn.
  • "I AM SNEAKING!"^Explanation Whenever someone badly fails a stealth check in Dungeons & Dragons, they are said to stomp around while yelling this, as opposed to simply being noticed.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Lots of people's laughter. Particularly Dan, Rhino, and - the few times he does - Schuyler.
  • Rhino's voice takes on a pleasant tone when he goes out of his usual monotone speech.
  • Max's voice does the same in the exact opposite way - when he speaks quietly, or at least calmly, it's very captivating. This is best shown in his solo playthroughs, especially when he reads in-game dialogue.
  • The sound effect in the first two boards of Minecraft Party when a person's turn begins.
  • The Cutie Mark Laboratories intro theme.
  • In Fortune Street, the sound of someone buying out someone else's shop ends up becoming this, due to it usually signifying that things are about to change.
  • For those who don't get tired of it the way the other guys do, Rhino's GTA Online jazzy car horn.
• Paranoia Fuel: Enforced in Minecraft Hardcore; according to a comment, Max is not above editing around someone's death message popping up when the team splits up, meaning viewers can watch one team's actions without realizing someone on the other team died in the middle until it switches perspectives. So you'll have no idea if everyone on the team you're not watching is still alive...
  • As a specific example, in the first season when Max, Jero, and Silver went exploring, Max (in editing) cut off their perspective mere seconds before Peter's death message appeared.
• Rooting for the Empire: Being on Max's side in competitive stuff can sometimes feel like this. He's a troll through and through, he often prioritizes messing the game up over actually winning, and the few times he does try to win (and does so successfully), he plays it up like he's a bad guy achieving world conquest. Given a nod when Max and Dan play "Minecraft Chess"; whenever Max takes the lead, sinister and dramatic music plays, whereas when Dan takes the lead, the music becomes either casual or heroic. In the last few turns before Dan wins, the music even sounds much like a final boss battle.
  • Rhino is practically treated as a villain (simply due to how often he wins) and still has tons of supporters.
  • Jero, the Token Evil Teammate, has his fair share of supporters as well.
• So Bad, It's Good: In the first board of RLYoshi's Minecraft Party, all of the one-versus-three minigames are unbalanced in some way (except for "A Weighty Opinion") - "Boat Busters" has a small space for the fragile boats, "Place Yer Bets" invokes Yank the Dog's Chain as a core mechanic, "Put You In The Hole" is messed up by the glitch of some block placements being cancelled by Rhino running into them, and "When One Door Closes" gives the team of three too big an advantage by just needing to separate and take specific halls - but this actually makes it funnier. "Boat Busters" in particular, when Zero and Tim break their boats against the side of the tub before the game even starts, and Tim is the only one whose boat Rhino actually has to snipe.
  • "Put You In The Hole" is probably the most unbalanced besides the above, but seeing Rhino run around making chicken noises and the other three scream at him is worth it.
  • All the games were tweaked to be made more fair, as seen in Vault 14. Except Boat Busters, which was still broken despite Max's attempts to fix it. He eventually scrapped it entirely.
  • The drawings in Drawful run on this, as is the case for the game in general.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Max gets this way in Superfight, something he fully admits to; having done debate in real life, he brings all his usual strategies and nitpicking to a table where the other players just go for the fun basics, resulting in him not letting up on his arguments and chasing points down until his opponent can no longer counter him. He ends up having to impose time limits to keep himself in check.
  • He also sometimes gets this way in Dungeons & Dragons as a player, though rather than doing it due to prioritizing winning over having fun, he does it due to just not finding the DM's choices to be fun even when the other players are enjoying it. This is especially notable in the third session of "Reassembly", where he is clearly annoyed because Rhino makes all the dungeon's obstacles revolve around combat, rather than any traps or puzzles. Until Max steps right into a trap near the end.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: While most of Max's editing is just for his let's plays and thus rather simple, he shows his skill in the field whenever he steps outside of that.

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