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  • Idiot Hero: Darius Mason pissed him off to no end:
    "Not to dampen your sense of victory, Darius, mate, but why didn't you [fix the terraforming machine] three years ago right after it broke? You DUMB [dopeslap] BALD [dopeslap] TWAT."
    • Sergey Nechayev of Atomic Heart got Yahtzee's goat by not only having no clue as to what was going on, but actively refusing to listen to or accept any explanation for what was going on. As it tuns out, incuriosity is a dealbreaker for Yahtzee.
  • Idiot Plot: Invoked by name when discussing Mortal Kombat X, noting that the plot only works because more than half the fights are based on the characters being too stupid to realize they're not enemies.
  • I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: When Yahtzee first played Demon's Souls, he couldn't handle its monstrous difficulty, only getting 2/3 of the way through his second post-tutorial level before throwing in the towel and declaring it to be hard enough to prevent it being any funinvoked. Later on, after a few abortive attempts, he finally put in a serious effort to get into its Creator-Driven Successor Dark Souls and found himself loving it and the rest of the series wholeheartedly (in his defence, some think you really do have to work very hard to get into games in the Soulslike genre; many others think its quality is evident earlier), although he apparently never went back to give Demons' Souls another proper go (at least, not until the Playstation 5 remaster came out) and he counts the high barrier for entry as a negative for turning away new players and making those who get through smug.
  • I Knew It!: invoked Subverted and Inverted in the case of The Walking Dead: He states after playing two episodes that it will surely end with either the evil military coming, or a few characters going to live on an island. The main characters do start looking for a boat in Episode 4...But it gets stolen in Episode 5. Yahtzee also laughed at the idea of anyone trying to invent a cure, or rebuild humanity. Rebuilding is essentially exactly what the people in Wellington began attempting in Season 2.
  • Impossibly Cool Weapon:
    "All you really need to know is that there is a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning. I wish I could make something like that up. It shoots shurikens and lightning; it could only be more awesome if it had tits and was on fire."
  • I'm Taking Him Home with Me!: In his Yakuza: Dead Souls review Yahtzee says "I just want to take [Akiyama] home and mount him to my kitchen wall so my kids will have an appropriate role model to look at over their Honey Nut Cheerios every morning".
  • Indecisive Parody: One of his biggest problems with Bulletstorm was that its parody seemed to consist mostly of Better than a Bare Bulb.
    • He cites this trope when discussing Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, noting that jokes aside, the game was a pretty complete recreation of a battle-royale shooter experience and surprisingly not that high on comedy, and the developer's continued support of the game suggested that they were at the very least taking the project a lot more seriously than a parody would suggest. He compares it to pranking someone with a joke rubber steak, only for them to keep trying to eat it anyway and being confused as to why they can't, even after being repeatedly told that the steak is not real and it was just a prank, until you eventually just give up and resign yourself to cooking the idiot a real steak just to make them stop complaining.
  • Inferred Holocaust: invoked States that one of these most happened during Call of Duty: Ghosts where America launched a genocide against everyone that isn't a "burly white dude'' noting that the campaign only has three who you don't have to kill, two of whom die, and the people make more of a fuss over their dog dying in the game than the African American's death.
  • Inherently Funny Words: Warfighter (pa ha ha ha). In this case it's not so much that the word is funny in and of itself but rather that it's such a ludicrously silly example of Department of Redundancy Department.
  • Innocent Bigot/Hanlon's Razor: How he viewed the controversy surrounding Resident Evil 5:
    ...one really shouldn't worry about this sort of thing unless there's genuine hatred behind it, and I don't get that impression. Capcom aren't bad people, they're just idiots.
  • Inopportune Voice Cracking: His voice cracks in utter disbelief when he reads out how much Call of Duty Black Ops 4's Digital Deluxe premium edition costs (while still not containing a single player campaign):
    (voice gets noticibly higher) A hundred and thirty bucks the deluxe version costs!
  • Insignificant Anniversary: Yahtzee "celebrates" his 101st video... by reviewing the game he was planning on reviewing anyway.
  • Insistent Terminology: "Jaaaaaaames" Sunderland of Silent Hill 2 fame.
  • Insult to Rocks: In his review of Godzilla, he says the graphics look more at home on the PS2.
    And even THAT is being totally unfair on the PS2!
  • Invincible Hero: He mentioned in his Batman: Arkham Asylum review that Batman's status as this tends to undermine whatever threat the enemies have and whatever horror the game is trying to evoke.
    Batman is always the least interesting character in anything he's in.
  • Isometric Projection: He's not a fan of it, primarily because of the inevitable Depth Perplexion.
  • I Thought It Meant:
    Yahtzee: I speak of one of the most notorious disappointments in the entire history of First-Person Shooters.
    Random guy: Jesus Christ, Yahtzee. How many videos are you gonna do on Duke Nukem Forever?
    Yahtzee: No, you twat! The other one!
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks!: invoked Too many examples to count; one recurring gripe he has with games is finding a Game-Breaker (or at least, something too Boring, but Practical to the point of overshadowing everything else) then trivializing the game and/or its upgrade system with it, such as in Dark Souls 3.
    • Discussed more critically with Vampyr, where he claims the game being easy undermined its dramatic thrust - the idea was that killing your close friends will make you more powerful, but he found that the game was never difficult enough that he felt like he needed to do so, which caused the main moral quandary of the game to fall flat (to the point that Reid's vampiric status almost felt like an Informed Ability).
  • It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Also brings this up with games like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bayonetta. invoked
    • He went into a bit more depth on the subject in his review of The Surge, where he defined "the Tropic of Fuckabout", which he described as "the point where high difficulty stops being a stimulating challenge and becomes merely fucking me about". In this case, the point that made him Rage Quit the entire game was when he managed to push through the third boss' hideous Camera Screw issues and nearly had it beaten after countless failed attempts, only to glitch through the floor and fall to his death.
      No. That's too much. That's gone right over the Tropic of Fuckabout on a jet-ski full of dicks. I'm done.
  • It's Personal: During the Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor review (which lasted a minute before moving onto something else) Yahtzee admits he picked it for no other reason than the box blurb saying "the Kinect had finally found its hardcore game" and "I interpreted that as a challenge":
    Caption: "The Kinect finally has its hardcore game"note 
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Joked about. invoked
    One should always support the independents, at least until they start making money, the soulless sellout fucks.
    • Admittedly, averted by his Gears of War 2 review, in which he admits that things are often mainstream because they're good. (Or because Will Smith is in it.)
  • It's Short, So It Sucks!: invoked Inverted with Portal
    OK, it's only two to three hours long, but that's a good length for it, it means that it doesn't outstay its welcome
  • It's the Principle of the Thing: Yahtzee often rates games that aren't necessarily that bad higher (or lower, depending on your point of view) on his worst games of the year list than games that are mechanically less-playable but also less offensive to him. He clarified this in 2014 when he declared Thief (2014) his worst game of the year, ahead of hot messes such as Sonic Boom and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 licensed game, because it upset him much more with how it defiled one of his favourite series, and on several occasions his pick for worst of the year is a big-name game that many other people liked, such as multiple Call of Duty games and, perhaps most controversially, The Last of Us 2.
    Yahtzee: The worst game needn’t necessarily be the most objectively badly-made or frustrating one, but the game with the worst intentions.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:invoked He tends to be particularly critical of sequels that don't add much or differ from what the original was. Examples including BioShock 2, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and, to a smaller point, Left 4 Dead 2.
    • Frequently brings this up with Call of Duty. For the record, he actually thought that the original Modern Warfare was a good game, he only hates the games that came after it. As of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, he's lumped that in with the FIFA Soccer and Madden NFL series as a yearly sequel that doesn't actually alter much.
    • One of his overarching criticisms of Nintendo’s franchises falls under this. With The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Yahtzee states that by finally playing on it, it only soured his opinion more on Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. He also raged against New Super Mario Bros. Wii for this, claiming it had no right to exist when the past games it ostensibly copied from were better.
    • Yahtzee specifically refused to include Dark Souls III into his Top 5 games of 2016 for this reason, despite actually enjoying the game. Similarly, neither Battlefield nor Call Of Duty have been included in any of his top 5s because it was "getting too obvious".
    • Subverted, however, with certain sequels that he considers to basically be the first game again but better, and which consequently make the first game completely obsolete and redundant, such as Left 4 Dead 2, Hand of Fate 2 and We Love Katamari. In fact, in his review of the remaster of Katamari Damacy, he pointed out that the original game had never been released in the West the first time around, but its superior sequel had, which meant that rereleasing the original at this point was asking people to play a worse version of a game they could have played years ago.
  • It's Up to You: He notes that early missions in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky have a tendency to solve themselves, which is a good attempt to avert this, but a bit bizarre to play.
  • It Was His Sled: invoked Lampshaded; before pointing out the flaws of the plot of Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., he says to stop paying attention until the "generic rock music" of the credits if you want to avoid spoilers. In the credits his avatar and a single imp hand out a series of this type of spoilers (they even start with THAT sled).
    • Generally speaking, he'll take care to avoid spoilers if he'll recommend the game, while games that earn his scorn he will gleefully invoke this trope with.
  • Jackass Genie: He has a good time pointing this out in his Twisted Metal (2012) review, pointing out that the characters seem abnormally quick to trust that Calypso will grant their wishes as intended. Demonstrated in the visuals by Sweet Tooth saying "I wish for my popularity to explode," followed by exactly what you'd expect. (Considering one of the characters in the game wished to be on the world's largest runway and was crushed by an airplane seconds later, it's barely an exaggeration.)
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Pretty much the premise of his reviews; he accurately points out problems in games while tearing into the developers who produced them and the consumers who continue to buy and defend them.
  • Jerkass Realization: The release of Duke Nukem Forever and his wanting to like it despite it obviously sucking led to one. Kind of.
    Even as I played, that part of me that takes an almost sexual joy in ruining other people's fun turned upon myself and said, "Yahtzee, you and I both know that you have pushed games off subway train platforms [symbolized by BioShock 2] when they had less problems than this." Oh, God, you're right! There's just no excuse for loading times this long unless you're a fucking removals van!
  • Jet Pack: A rarely-occuring, but noteworthy trope that Yahtzee enjoys quite a lot — Dark Void managed to get into his good graces for having gameplay centered around the use of it, and Firefall was one of his better-reviewed MMOs as it enabled a level of exploration that he felt was lacking in other MMOs.
  • Jingle: First done as an improvised tune during a ''Let's Drown Out..." video, it became the theme for his Gaming History videos.
    ♪ Let's all laugh at an industry ♫
    ♫ That never learns anything, tee hee hee! ♪
  • Joke Exhaustion: At the end of the review of Tomb Raider, Yahtzee had vowed not to make any boob jokes, ends with him rambling on about them at very high speed, getting all the jokes that had been building up out of his system.
  • Jumping the Shark: invoked Lampshaded in the end credits of his LEGO Indy review, the first time the new, original opening and closing song was used, rather than two licensed songs:
    "Now this is all looking a lot more professional, isn't it, although I'm certain some of you pricks are already putting this down as my shark jumping moment."
  • Just One More Level!:
    • Peggle (and other PopCap Games) is described as "the gaming equivalent of premium crack cocaine."
      "I started playing Peggle in the afternoon, and emerged some time later to find the authorities had declared me legally dead."
    • After flooding prevented him from leaving his apartment and thus getting a new game to review:
      First thought: "Oh, cock! All the nearest game retailers are in the CBDnote  because some retarded pile of cartilage on the town planning department thought it'd be a great idea to put thirty EB Games shops within the same ten square yards." Second thought: "Oh, balls! With humanitarian aid selfishly obstructing the delivery services, I won't be seeing any of my imports any time soon, either!" Third thought: "Oh, goody! That means I can go back inside and keep playing Minecraft!"
    • "A good sandbox is one where you can mess about for hours after making the hollow promise to yourself that you'll stop any minute now, and inFAMOUS 2 certainly has that."
      • He also states that [PROTOTYPE 2] is the prince of jumping around time wasting. Claiming that even the mere act of getting around the city is surprisingly addicting.
    • XCOM: Enemy Unknown certainly qualifies:
      Yahtzee: "I was just going to play a bit of the next mission but I ended up playing the whole thing and then the next two"
    • Grand Theft Auto IV despite all the flaws he points out he says the game is very addicting and requires a lot of committed time and he will probably resume playing the game after his review is done.
      • However, Yahtzee seems to have abandoned this opinion since playing Saints Row 2.
        Yahtzee: [I] was spending most of my time in a blurry haze in which I mistook the slightest mental stimulation for actual fun. It wasn't until recently when Saints Row 2 came along that I remembered what a fun sandbox game is and isn't.
  • Kavorka Man: When playing Tomodachi Life, he was baffled to discover that Senor Koquonfaes (a Mii he created that had manipulated the Mii face tools to have a cock for a face) ended up being the most popular Mii around, eventually shacking it up with X from Jam.
  • Kick the Dog: In his Fable review:
    No puppies were harmed in the making of this video, except for one who genuinely deserved it.
  • Kill and Replace: Accused Insomniac Games of murdering Valve and making a skin suit out of it.
  • Killed Mid-Sentence: In the review for Never Dead, Yahtzee and his day laborer imps go back in time and stuff the game developers into a hessian sack one by one:
    Yahtzee: "And," says another developer sticking whiteboard markers up his nose, "let's constantly put some monsters around that can instantly game over you if they suck in your disembodied head, but you can avoid it by completing a quick-time even—" [one quick-time event even says onscreen, "Press X to Not D—" before it gets interrupted by Yahtzee] Get in the fuckin' sack!
  • Lampshaded Double Entendre: Shown in the end credits for the Hard Reset review:
    I gave your mum a hard reset last night and it certainly rebooted her operating system if you know what I mean.
  • Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: Yahtzee describes the disembodied voices of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture as like "The Archers meets Quatermass and the Pit. Blimey, no one's going to fucking get that one."
  • Lampshade Hanging: The end tag on the Guitar Hero III review, regarding the art style.
    "Did no-one else think it was weird for the character in image 110 to be wearing a sling when he only has free-floating circular hands?"
    • He made a similar joke in his review of Wolfenstein: Youngblood:
      I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of narrative-based franchises that have been "improved" by making the latest installment co-op focused; I don't have any fingers on my hand 'cos it's a featureless white circle. Kind of surprised it took you this long to notice.
    • The entire opening of Just Cause 2 was one giant, lovingly crafted lampshade about the Pun-Based Title that the name Just Cause offers — in the format "Why X?" "Just Cause!". He then subverts it — see Rule of Three.
  • Land Down Under: Yahtzee was born in Britain but moved to Australia, and often makes jokes about it. Later, he moved again, to America.
  • Last-Second Word Swap
    • When trying to get through his review of Tomb Raider: Anniversary without mentioning Lara's boobs, he almost flubbed it when he was reminiscing about how he'd be playing the original as a teenager and would "back her up into a corner to get the best view of her juicy... thighs."note 
    • Having expressed contempt for how fans of the original Portal had completely ruined the concept of "cake" by overuse of the "The cake is a lie" meme, he had to catch himself during his review of the sequel when describing how in the original "the humor was the icing on the, uh, the French Fancy."
    • He observed that the "hilarious dialogue" in Sunset Overdrive "wouldn't understand timing if you shoved an alarm clock up its... flagpole."
  • Later-Installment Weirdness: Later reviews have Yahtzee speak a little slower than earlier ones, in addition to actual pauses for punctuation.
  • Late Export for You: He complained about this rather frequently while living in Australia, as the country is notorious for having this happen.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again: The cross-dressing contest between Cole and Alex.
    • Same could be said regarding RTS games. After his experience with Halo Wars, Yahtzee has apparently decided to never touch the genre again.
    • Explained further in "On RTS", in which he explains he's not good at RTS and he doesn't like the impersonal disconnect one gets between story characters and units and the player.
  • Limited Social Circle: "I asked everyone I know and neither of them had heard of it either." (NieR)
  • Literal-Minded: At the end of his Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) review:
    Yahtzee: "Seriously, fuck EA."
    Bystander: (literally doing the EA logo from behind) "Way ahead of ya, Yahtz."
    Yahtzee: "Well, fuck them a notch less sensitively, then!"
  • Loners Are Freaks: Discussed in his column on "Hating Multiplayer Creep". It is unsurprisingly a Pet-Peeve Trope of his.
  • Long-Runners: The series first began in 2007 and continued up until 2023 with no sign of stopping, only unexpectedly ending when Executive Meddling resulted in Yahtzee quitting The Escapist (which retained the rights to the name and assets). In one of his streams, Yahtzee said that he thought he would make reviews for a few years until he was successful enough in his other pursuits (such as writing and making games), but producing videos weekly has become easy enough for him that he sees no reason to stop, as he can balance it with his other work easily enough. Sure enough, after ending it was immediately replaced by its Creator-Driven Successor Fully Ramblomatic.
  • Loophole Abuse:
    • Traditionally, Yahtzee's annual Top/Bottom 5 lists only consist of games he's personally reviewed. For 2015, because he hadn't formally reviewed it yet, he shoves in a 10-second review of Undertale at the beginning of the "Top 5 of 2015" video in order to qualify it for the list.
      (Intro plays) " Undertale is a good game." (Outro)
    • Yahtzee points out a loophole in his "no lazy sequels to games he already likes" rule regarding the Top 5 list: it doesn't apply to blatant ripoffs of games he already likes, especially if it's better than what he already likes.invoked

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