Tobuscus

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Audience, wha-? What are you doing at my TV Tropes page, Audience?

Toby Joe Turner, aka Tobuscus, is a YouTube personality known for his comedy, songwriting, and acting abilities. His work includes original songs and comedy shorts, "Literal Trailers" of video games and films, song and commercial parodies, and a comedy clip series called, "Cute Win Fail". He owns a vlog known as "Lazy Vlog", and a gaming channel, Toby Games, also known as "Toby Sucks at Gaming".

Despite having his major presence on YouTube, Toby is no stranger to acting, appearing in 2008 in the TV series Stranger Things and the 2010 indie comedy New Low. In 2012, he broke into mainstream TV as the primary live actor in Cartoon Network's production of The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange. In the same year, he also played a role in the indie slasher flick Smiley.

To watch his Tobuscus videos go here, for his Lazy Vlog go here and for his gaming channel go here. His website is here.

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Tropes associated with Tobuscus and his videos:

• Achilles Heel: His only weakness is bullets; he's allergic to them.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Toby's name. Also, he claims to be allergic to alliteration... Aaaatchooo!
• A God Am I: He frequently yells, "I am a God!" after accomplishing odd or mundane tasks in his gaming videos, such as, in Minecraft, eating rotten flesh without getting sick.
• Armor Is Useless: Parodied in his Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Literal Trailer.

Hopefully those guards have good armor / No they don't, maybe they do / They don't.

• Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny:
  • Toby claims to have ADD, although like many of his claims, this is unreliable.
  • Celebrated by the original song, "There's a Floppy Disk on the Floor", in which his mother apparently shares this trait.
  • Multiple times per episode in his Lazy Vlogs, with several ("Ooh, an airplane," "Ooh, flowers," and "Shhh!") approaching Catch Phrases.
  • In his gaming episodes, he has an incredible ability to get distracted and lose track of what he's supposed to be doing. In sandbox games like Minecraft, this is fine, but it tends to frustrate (or alternatively, amuse) viewers of the more story-driven games to no end, especially when he doesn't pay attention to mission objectives.
• Badass Baritone: During his playthrough of Duke Nukem Forever, Toby imitates Duke's deep voice with uncanny precision. Of course, Toby himself is anything but a badass, but his mimicry of one is hilarious. He can be seen practicing the Duke Nukem voice in earlier vlogs, long before the game was released.
• Better to Die Than Be Killed: During his Amnesia playthrough, he jumps off a cliff rather than die at the hands of a monster, and invokes this as his justification.
• Blatant Lies: Much of what he claims in his Lazy Vlogs is either obviously untrue or questionable. In this vlog, he goes meta by lying about his lying "tell".
• Blessed with Suck: In one Cute Win Fail vid, Toby imagines a superhero whose power is getting struck by lightning.
• Butt Monkey: Steven. Gabuscus also gets regularly abused by Toby, mainly over his Embarrassing Nickname.
• Call Back:
  • In his Assassin's Creed Revelations Literal Trailer, at the end, he reuses two lines from the previous one ("Nod at the bird and PEOPLE DIE / Everywhere PEOPLE DIE.") in an Ironic Echo fashion.
  • Toby's alliteration allergy returns.
  • "Grandpa Buscus" faints when he sees a black Tobuscus shirt, as Toby warned when he first introduced them.
• Catch Phrase: Has several noticeable catch phrases which are:
  • "Audience, wha-!? What are you doing in [place the camera is], Audience?"
  • "Bless your face. If you sneezed during this video, bless you. Peace off/Toby out/Joey out. Boop!"
  • "Intro/Mid-tro/Outro of darkness, then redness, then whiteness!"
  • "Da Da Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Subscribe"
  • "oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god"
  • "HOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOT"
  • "Im gonna die im gonna die im gonna die"
  • "I'm Dead. I'm Dead. I'm Dead. I'm Dead."
  • For his gaming videos: "Hello once again Audience."
  • "Knock Knock Moe'Suckra!"
  • "Well, clearly..."
  • "Whatchu got?"
  • "Ooooh! Gimme Gimme."
  • "God dang it!"
  • "Sponsor!"
  • Referring to various people as "girl," usually when the one in question is NOT a girl (his male dog and the audience are the usual targets) and while imitating Leon Phelps, The Ladies Man.
    • "Girrrl. Or guy. Or both. Or Other."
  • "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW!"
  • Whenever he plays an Ubisoft game, he literals the logo flash. When he interviewed an Ubisoft employee, it went meta.
    • "Stargate, Ubisoft, Sparkle!"
  • (usually singing it, sometimes not) Suck it! Suck it, suck it suck it!
  • AGH! No! Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.
  • From the Animated Adventures, "ARGH! I'm boooored!"
• Celebrity Resemblance:
  • Toby mentions a few times that he's been told he looks like David Tennant, apparently because of his messy hair and sideburns.
  • Toby has mentioned that his friend Gabe aka Gabuscus, has sometimes been mistaken as Taylor Lautner.
• Cloudcuckoolander
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: Elevating bad guys, wide shot bad guys.
• Comedic Sociopathy: In "Safety Torch", Toby invades an innocent kid's house, wakes him up in the middle of the night, scares him to death by telling him monsters are out to get him, offers him torches to keep the monsters away, gives him water to put out the resulting fires, and finally charges him $500 for those "services". And in case there was any doubt as to whether this is deliberate extortion or not, the Frankenstinian monster he brings with him says "Sup Toby" in an easy-to-miss speech bubble.

Timmy: I don't have 500 bucks! Toby: Oh, that's fine! I'll bill your parents.

• Cowboy Bebop at His Computer: An interesting subversion in the animated music video for "I Can Swing My Sword" -- the Minecraft recipe for a diamond sword is one stick and two diamonds, but Toby's version has three. Many people pointed out the error, but it's intentional, as the patent he claims to have in the song is specifically for a three-diamond version, making it unique.
• Cute Kitten: The "Cute" clips of "Cute Win Fail" have a high representation of this trope.
• Cuteness Proximity: Toby goes into baby babble whenever Griffin is in the shot. He doesn't know why.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Toby has made this into a Catch Phrase: "Hot hot hot hot hot hot," which pulls double duty as Gibberish of Love.
  • In the first episode of Tobuscus Animated Adventures, Toby is so busy ogling a chick that he fails to notice (or care) that she's a zombie. Hilarity Ensues.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Not Toby, but his pal, Gabe. Because Gabe-uscus sounds a lot like Gay-buscus. Gabe is not amused when Toby calls him this.
• Epic Fail: Celebrated by his "Cute Win Fail" series.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending:
  • The first episode of Tobuscus Animated Adventures subverts this. Gabe and Toby have a good laugh over their predicament, then Toby turns into a zombie and eats Gabe.
  • In the "Tobuscus Canadian Adventures" episode, the duo exchange some nervous laughter similar to the first episode. Then Gabe strangles Toby.
• Everything's Worse with Bears: Especially bears with guns and grenades.
• Evil Laugh: Toby does a great one at the end of "I Can Swing My Sword", but loses some evil cred when Gabuscus interrupts the laugh to wrest the sword from him.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
  • The whole point of his Literal Trailers: taking what is happening in the trailer... and taking it literally. In song.
  • His Lazy Vlog series is a vlog that is extremely lazy, frequently lacking such basic elements as a subject.
  • "Toby Sucks at Gaming," his Let's Play channel.
  • "Nugget in a Biscuit"
• The Ghost: Steven, Toby's mysterious assistant in his videos.
• Gibberish of Love: "Hothothothothothot" counts as this too, sometimes. If you believe the story about Toby trying out for the cheerleader squad, anyway.
• Ho Yay: Spoofed between Toby and Jack of Jack's Films.
• Hulk Speak: From the highlight reel of his F.E.A.R. 3 Let's Play: AARRGH! MOMMA ANGRY. [2]
• Hypercompetent Sidekick:
  • Boone.
  • Toby plays one in the Sundance film New Low.
• Inherently Funny Words: The name Herbert, apparently.
• Insistent Terminology: Toby's friend, Gabe, would like everyone to know that his nickname is pronounced "Gabe-uscus", not "Gay-buscus". Too bad Toby insists on pronouncing it without the pause. Played for Laughs in Tobuscus Animated Adventures when Gabe insists on the pronunciation even as Zombie!Toby is eating him.
• I Want Grandkids: In his spoof of an Axe deodorant commercial, Mombuscus tells Toby 'Now go make me some grandchildren!' According to Toby, she wasn't acting when she said that.
• Jerkass: Toby portrays himself as one in several videos, notably "Tobuscus Animated Adventures" and "Safety Torch".
• Kissing Under the Influence: According to "How to Get Women", Axe Body Spray for Men^TM makes every female anywhere near you attack you constantly.
• Left It In: "Edit that part out, Steven!" "You left it in?" "YOU LEFT IT IN?!"
• Let's Play: His gaming channel, Toby Sucks at Gaming.
• Lighter and Softer: Toby's earlier videos had swearing and a few more dirty jokes, but over the years he's toned them down and made his videos more family friendly. Some fans think this is because his niece Ciara started watching.
• Literal Minded:
  • His "Literal Trailers" series, where he adds Literal Minded lyrics to movie and video game trailers.
  • In his Lazy Vlogs, Toby often interprets fan comments literally, such as when a fan says that they would "die" if he read their letter on the vlog and he then apologies profusely for murdering them.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase/Couch Gag: The intro to every episode of Cute Win Fail has a different running gag per episode. The formula usually goes like this:

How's it going? I'm Toby Turner. [random phrase that starts off the running gag] and this is "Cute Win Fail", the show where videos from three different [items relevant to the running gag] compete to become the most EPIC. [Starts listing the three entries from the previous episode] Your votes have all been [action relevant to the running gag] and the most epic video ever of last week was... [insert winning entry here] Sorry, other two clips. [joke about the loser videos' punishment, also relevant to the running gag] It's time for three new videos to enter the competition for epicosity. Let's watch!

• Male Gaze: His Catch Phrase "Hothothot" counts as an Invoked Trope. The Hot Symphonies ([3] and [4]) are a celebration of the phenomenon.
• Man Child
• Metaphorgotten: He talks so much and so fast that he often loses track not only of where he was going but where he started.

"If you took Gonzo and put him in an arena with a bunch of other animators and gave them all, like, medieval weapons and put like a lion in there, the lion would probably kill them all. But Gonzo is a good animator." [1]

• Mistaken for Racist: A Running Gag in his vlogs and gaming commentaries, usually by noticing that something he's just said came out wrong and either digging himself deeper, backpedaling, or descending down a Freudian Slippery Slope.
• Motor Mouth

"Thewinnerofyesterday'stshirtisannotatedatthebottommiddleofthevideoifyouwantoentertowinatshirt... like and post a comment, girl. Or guy. Or other."

• Must Have Caffeine: Parodied in Eight O'Clock Coffee, and frequently a subject of his Lazy Vlogs, to the point where he no longer bothers to say "Sponsor!" when mentioning Starbucks.
• My Friends and Zoidberg: In his "Trapped in a pistachios ad!" vid, the audience is advised to watch a clip of A-list celebrities, and Snooki, eating pistachios.
• No Sense of Direction: He gets lost constantly in Minecraft and Skyrim, despite having a minimap mod for the former and a compass with quest markers in the latter, mainly because he ignores them most of the time.
• One of Us
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
  • Played for Laughs, especially in his vlogs, as he is capable of imitating a remarkably wide range of accents and voices but not, seemingly, of staying in them for more than a few sentences.
  • In his Assassin's Creed Revelations playthrough, he attempts to imitate Ezio's Italian accent, with mixed success -- at several points he slips into Russian and Transylvanian accents, notices, and gets himself hopelessly confused.
• Overly Long Gag: The opening titles for Assassin's Creed Revelations (here). Notable for being in both the source material and Toby's commentary.

Toby: Ubisoft presents... a game by Ubisoft. And Ubisoft. And also Ubisoft...

• Overly Narrow Superlative: Mombuscus shall forever be known as "The best mom who ever played Bloodforge in the first hour of its release."
• Painting the Fourth Wall:
  • Toby continually refers to elements of his videos that only exist after they've been uploaded to YouTube, such as the annotations. He also pretends that the audience is wherever the camera is and/or is the camera. In one video, he notices that he's being zoomed out to show the YouTube video frame.
  • In Trapped in a Vlog, Toby introduces the audience to his studio. In reality, he makes his filming background as white as possible and then plays with white balance to complete the effect (this is so he doesn't have to bother with a greenscreen). In that video, however, he pretends to be hiding a vast collection of white or near-white objects in the background, and invites the audience to click on each one in order to see a sub-video explaining what it is.
• Parody Commercial: The Tobuscus channel features a lot of these, many of which are sponsored by the companies he's parodying.
• Precious Puppies: Cute Win Fail also has a large volume of cute puppy clips. When babies and puppies get involved, it becomes a kind of Cuteness Event Horizon.
• Product Placement: In an interview, Toby said that one of his objectives in creating the Tobuscus vlogs is to attract advertisers. Much of his work is, in fact, sponsored. He further parodies this by yelling "Sponsor!" whenever any brand name appears in his videos, whether it's actually sponsoring him or not, and in some cases even if it's his own product.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • He created the Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Literal Trailer, which was immensely popular. Ubisoft loved the trailer so much that they personally hired Toby and his crew to do a preview and demo their games at E3 2011, where Toby met the developer team for Assassin's Creed Revelations and learned that they were major Tobuscus fans. Since then, he's been invited to play these trailers at conventions as a featured performer and has written a Literal Trailer for a Revelations TV commercial.
  • His fame has also landed him a voice acting gig for an unspecified game and appearances in several TV commercials (eg. in the APB Reloaded trailer with Seananners), plus a spot on E! News for the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 launch at GameStop.
  • Flash animator Gonzossm made a cartoon of Toby getting shot by a bear with a gun using soundclips from Toby's videos. Since then, he has become the official animator for all Tobuscus cartoons including "Nugget in a Biscuit" and "Tobuscus Animated Adventures!".
  • William from the Fine Brothers' Kids React To series is a major Tobuscus fan. He got to appear in two of Tobuscus videos as a younger Tobuscus and Toby's son. He has been called MiniBuscus.
  • Toby has had several guest spots on The Annoying Orange and has subsequently been hired by Cartoon Network for a live action role in the 2012 TV series.
• Pure Awesomeness: In the Literal trailer for Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, this is apparently how Ezio kills a guard.

Guard says, "Stop!" / Just kill him with your awesome.

• Rage Quit: While playing the Justine expansion pack of Amnesia the Dark Descent. Justine quits to the desktop every time the player dies, something Toby found out the hard way. After the third try ended in failure, he gave up, telling the Audience, "You play it!"
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: His Shih Tzu, Griffin, who appears in many of his Lazy Vlogs and other videos.
• Running Gag: Many, all (most? some?) of which are presumably made up for Rule of Funny.
  • Being allergic to alliteration.
  • Being unable/unwilling to read.
  • Being unable to use tools or do anything stereotypically manly.
  • Peeing uncontrollably whenever he gets excited or scared.
  • The hilarious abuse heaped on Steven, which wouldn't be as funny if Steven actually existed.
  • "Reading books" as an Unusual Euphemism for drinking alcohol -- as in, he read a lot of books last night and now his head hurts.
  • Constantly improvising parody songs during his gaming sessions. Naturally, these often become some of the favorite highlights among fans.
  • His original Minecraft world is corrupted in such a way that it crashes frequently in a certain spot. Toby periodically revisits this world out of nostalgia and it always, always crashes, leaving him screaming in fury.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: In his gaming videos, nearly always after proclaiming himself to be fearless moments before.
• Self-Backing Vocalist: He used to do all his own instrumental parts as well, but has recently begun contracting these out.
• Ship Tease: With iJustine in 2011, and OlgaKay in 2012. Given his efforts to remain "family friendly", we may never know the truth.
• Shoehorned First Letter: A Running Gag in his LazyVlogs is trying to make the color of shirt he's wearing alliterate with the day of the week, resulting in such gems as "Thpurple Thursday".
• Simpleton Voice: A deliberate affectation for many of his vlogs and Let's Plays. It might go all the way into Obfuscating Stupidity, except that he's doing it purely for laughs.
• Stay in the Kitchen:
  • Toby takes on a stereotypically condescending attitude in character during his Skyrim Let's Play.
  • Toby's character in Tobuscus vs. Olga Kay utters the immortal line, "Oh good, you're in the kitchen. I would love a sandwich." She then beats him down and utters the Bond One-Liner, "Make your own sandwich."
• Stealth Pun: Toby vlogs from a trailer. So he's in a "literal trailer". For bonus recursion, someone remarked that he should make a Literal Trailer about his literal trailer.
• Talking to Himself: Toby voices most of the roles in his animated videos. He also hilariously voices all the characters in his playthrough of The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, since the game itself doesn't have voice acting.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Chicken nuggets and biscuits. Together. He wrote a song about them.

Then dip the mashed potato covered chicken nugget biscuit in the barbecue sauce. MMMMMMM YUM YUM GIMME AH!

• • He also loves Thai food, and has had to pause Let's Plays on more than one occasion due to the arrival of the delivery guy.
• Unusual Euphemism: "God diggety doodle", "What the doodle", "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD", and his signature "God dangit!"

"Grandbuscus": Steven! If you fade me out I swear to doodle I'll pee on your house!

• Unreliable Narrator: If you believed everything he says in his Lazy Vlogs, you'd be... well, very confused. This does, however, leave us with the problem of figuring out exactly which of those things are true and which are not.
• Verbal Tic: He affects a lisp when talking about things like flowers, birds, or airplanes.
• Vlog Series: His Lazy Vlog channel.
• With Lyrics: His literal trailers.

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