YMMV / StephenVlog

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• Archive Panic: The vlog's been running nonstop since November 24, 2009, with at least one new video released for every day that has gone by since then. Stephen eventually stopped numbering episodes specifically because of this trope, noting how daunting the day count was becoming to new viewers.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Stephen notes in "Pizza's Great! Pizza's Awesome!" that the appearance of pizza in a vlog often heralds isolated weirdness, "and I think that should continue".
• Ensemble Dark Horse: While many of the recurring regulars are popular with the viewers, special mention goes to the insane level of positive chat reaction at the start of The Runaway Guys Colosseum 2019 when the viewers discover that Dan is there this year as well as Stephen and Mal.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Not to a character, but when attempting to Archive Binge all the vlogs, from Day 0 to whatever is current (over three thousand as of now, not counting bonuses), people refer to it almost exclusively as "the journey". Less frequent is "the Stephen journey".
  • Some parts of the vlog are generally named after the setting or major events by fans, like volumes or seasons. Time in college is "college/dorm vlogs", the time from his proposal to his marriage is "wedding vlogs", a series of vlogs where he meets up with another YouTuber is "meeting [X] vlogs", etc. These seem to apply even if the setting or event isn't current with most of the videos.
  • Multiple vlogs being released in a day is referred to as a "vlogalanche."
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In I Could've Gone For Magnetism, Masae gets Sagan to take a few "selfies" on her phone. This was only a month before he passed away, so those selfies were sadly the last pictures she got to take of him.
  • During the same trip (January 2020), Stephen, Mal, Masae and Chugga play the board game Pandemic (and narrowly fail to stop the in-game outbreak), only weeks before a real pandemic broke out across the world.
  • On the August 13th, 2020, Breakfast Stream, Stephen and Mal spent time talking about their extended family. Shortly after the stream had finished, Stephen had received a text from his mom sadly informing him that his uncle had passed away.
  • When Stephen revealed that he has had episodes of Transient Global Amnesia, a few people expressed their concern that the "Grandpa" jokes related to Stephen's memory issues weren't funny anymore. However, this was subverted when, in the TGA Follow-up Vlog, Stephen said that his TGA episodes are not related to his bad memory, even though it sounds at first like they should be.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A lot of things Stephen says in his "Day 0" vlog are now very funny to look back at:
    • He remarks that he isn't going to "commit for an entire year", referencing how he doubts he'll keep this up for long. He remains consistent to the point thet the ten year anniversary brought attention to that part of the vlog.
    • He remarks how he's going to try to keep the vlogs short, because he doubts anyone "wants to see [him] for ten minutes". Vlogs got longer over time, ten minutes now being a decent length for them, and some vlogs are even over 20 minutes. Not to mention his StephenPlays videos are typically 20-30 minutes on average.
    • He says that the main problem he sees with the daily vlog is actually getting around to filming something every day. To this day, he's managed, with few (if any) hiccups.
    • He says that his series "Ninten Speaks" will likely be the meat of what he produces. Nowadays, his priority and focus in terms of videos has moved on to being the vlog itself, in addition to Stephen Plays.
  • A viewer commented on a video that they'd make a video "Hey, we're in Japan!" Three years later he was right!
  • In Recording with The Runaway Guys, Stephen remarks that Emile's oversized Pikachu plush reminds him of the giant (Japan-exclusive) Mr. Saturn plushies, with Emile expressing his disappointment in said plushies being too expensive and hard to find. Cut to Entire EarthBound Collection three years later, where we see that Emile's new collection includes the coveted Mr. Saturn toys, plus the giant plushie! Finally, at Christmas 2020 Mal is able to gift one of the giant plushies to Stephen.
  • One vlog from Colosseum 2018 has Stephen and Josh discussing the "lore" behind the event's Companion Cube, the Lamp. A few years later, Stephen himself would expand on said lore with two short films about the Lamp.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "My Appendix" becomes a huge example five minutes when Stephen suddenly develops immense abdominal pain (later revealed to be a burst appendix, hence the title), and films his mad dash to the hospital during said pain. Just seeing Stephen in that much agony, to the point where it's difficult for him to even talk, is terrifying, especially if you've also had appendicitis in the past.
  • The agonizing trip back to Myrtle Beach in "It Took Us Nine Hours to Get Home". After staying over at Emile's house during the midst of Hurricane Florence, Stephen, his parents, and Mal must embark on a hazardous nine hour car ride back home, which is made incredibly difficult due to the ongoing storm. The footage captured from Stephen's car, which shows just how scary and dangerous the weather was, is so uncomfortable and quiet that it leaves you feeling anxious and scared for their safety. They fortunately make it home safe and sound, but are otherwise left visibly shaken from what may have been one of their scariest drives yet.
  • The Lamp, a bumper that Stephen made for The Runaway Guys Colosseum Direct (which he describes as "more like a short"). For context, the Lamp is a Companion Cube character from Colosseum that's usually portrayed as being sentient. The short manages to play it up not for laughs, but for horror. The story is as follows: Stephen attempts to go to sleep for the night, but finds that the Lamp is mysteriously turning on by itself. After going back and forth a few times to turn it off manually, he eventually opts to pull its plug. To his shock, it still manages to turn itself on, but this time, the color of its light is a harsh, bloody red...
  • The Lamp II (which was filmed for Colosseum 2021) continues the story with Stephen desperately trying to get rid of the Lamp, only for it to constantly reappear in his house, as if he never even touched it. At the end, Stephen attempts to destroy it once and for all with a baseball bat, but as he's about to deal the killing blow, the Lamp glows red and takes control of his body, forcing him to drop the bat and grab himself by the throat. The film ends with one final shot of the Lamp, with Stephen apparently choking himself to death in the background. Yikes.
• Retroactive Recognition: A young, pre-Undertale Toby Fox appeared sporadically in Stephen's early vlogs; the two were big fans of the Mother series and had met through the fan site starmen.net. He also tagged along on the group's first visit to Japan (which took place a few months after the game's release).
• Shocking Moments: The first five minutes of "My Appendix" are the usual type of StephenVlog content... only to then Smash Cut to late at night, with Stephen (in pain) being driven to the hospital.
• Tear Jerker:
  • When Stephen was asked what his "biggest regret" was, he said that it was that his maternal grandfather never got to meet Mal.
  • After coming home from the aforementioned hurricane trip, Mal gets so overwhelmed by anxiety that she breaks into tears on camera. It's incredibly painful and heartbreaking to see her in such a bad state, and given the awful nine hour drive that they had to endure, it's not hard to see why she would get upset.
  • The entirety of "Mal Resigned", where Stephen reveals that Mal left her job as a high school art teacher due to the incredibly harsh and disrespectful students that she had to deal with. (See below for more details.)
  • On February 20th, 2020, Stephen announced that Sagan had passed away due to cancer. The video that has both Stephen and Mal cuddling with him moments before he's put to sleep is very hard to watch, with both of them actively weeping as they say goodbye to him.
  • In a few vlogs following Sagan's passing, Stephen talks about how melancholic it feels to see Kepler without his brother, and it was especially hard to see him slowly realize that Sagan was never gonna come back home.
  • Several commenters, on the vlog days that were unreleased from 2018, react to Sagan appearing with sadness and say that they miss him.
  • Mal's experiences of dealing with endometriosis, as detailed in the "Mal Has Endometriosis" vlog.
• The Woobie: Mal became this in hindsight when one vlog revealed she had been going through great stress at her high school art class teaching job, with some kids ignoring, insulting, and even threatening her and the school staff not doing anything about it to the point where she would come home crying. She eventually resigned after only working there for a few years, because it was just that bad. Luckily, Stephen, her friends, and of course the viewers have been there to support her.

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