Web Video / Very Important People

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Very Important People is a comedy series hosted on streaming service Dropout. Each episode, a comedian is dressed in elaborate costumes, makeup, and prosthetics to make them look nothing like themselves. Once they're shown the final look, they have to quickly figure out a character and give a completely improvised interview with host Vic Michaelis.

The show is a Spiritual Successor to "Hello My Name Is...", an early CollegeHumor show where Josh Ruben would be dressed in a variety of strange outfits and be asked to give an interview with Pat Cassels.

A list of guests featured on the show (in order of appearance):

Very Important People contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Stepgrandmother, in this case, but Nana physically and verbally abuses Vic throughout the interview, and very much confirms that she treated them the same way, if not worse, when they were a child as well.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Augbert tells Vic that they're funny and should be a comedian. Vic, who's a comedian in real life and currently playing a role in a comedy show, flatly responds that they wouldn't know where to start.
  • When using Vic's therapy dice, Ollie botches a roll on purpose and cries "you can't argue with the dice!" while glancing at the camera. Brennan, the series' most frequent DM, quickly breaks character to give Jacob a "nicely done" gesture behind Vic's back.
• Adults Dressed as Children: To play the infant twins Archimedes and Ollie, Brennan Lee Mulligan and Jacob Wysocki, respectively, are given dental prosthetics resembling baby teeth, dressed in onesies and have pacifiers slung around their necks.
• Affably Evil: A lot of the guests.
  • Professor Avery Goodman is a full on cartoon supervillian complete with plans to take over the world, but he's very friendly and one of the most co-operative guests to Vic (barring his mind controlling them).
  • Martha Tops and Lucian Azathoth are your standard cheesy-but-sincere youth pastors who happily talk about how much they help their congregation with their faith. Except they're servants of the Dark One who seek to call him forth to destroy the world.
  • Leighanna-Jean Gruthers is one of the nicest guests in the entire series, and genuinely considers Vic her friend. She's also an unrepentant murderer.
  • Tommy Shriggly is a friendly mental health advocate, but never shows any real remorse for killing his entire platoon for drinking all the regular Coca Cola in the canteen.
• Alas, Poor Yorick: After the skull of Sara is brought to them, Marionette and Zonton tearfully eulogize to her skull.
• All Just a Dream: Augbert is an entity in Vic's dreams trying to warn them about the future. The interview ends with them waking up to an alarm clock on set and seeing a small pile of rocks in front of them.
• Amicable Exes: Greg and Charlotte Excitement take this to the extreme, with their divorce actually dramatically increasing their sex life. Vic outright questions why they even bothered divorcing in the first place.
• Amusing Injuries: During his interview, Zinnia accidentally breaks a coffee mug with his foot and starts losing chlorophyll. He passes out facedown in a matter of seconds, but immediately revives when Vic waters him.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Pig #2 is taken completely aback by Vic asking them how buying candy and bubble bath constitutes an artist date. ^note  For those unfamiliar, The Artist's Way is a self-help book by Julia Cameron about unblocking creativity. One of the key principles outlined in the book, which the Pig's manifesto/diary just acknowledged them having started, is the "artist date" a weekly activity necessarily undertaken alone that is intended to spark creativity and inspiration. That the Pig can't articulate why candy and/or bubble bath inspires them ("feeding their inner child") indicates that they haven't thought it through very well, or have taken the artist date to be simply treating themselves.
• Artistic License – Law: Princess Emily's former bandmates probably wouldn't be imprisoned for life for animal smuggling. Granted, we have no idea what country they're actually from, so maybe smuggling laws are just very intense there.
• Artistic License – Military: Tommy Shriggly was dishonorably discharged for killing his entire platoon, but as he reveals near the end his branch was the Coast Guard, which does not have platoons in its organizational structure.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Marionette Conqui and Zonton de la Doll are apparently French, but mostly just seem to speak vaguely French sounding gibberish. When Vic actually responds to them in French, they're taken aback, and the most coherent non-English sentence either can manage is in Spanish.
• Bait-and-Switch: After being horrified by his whale euthanasia business, Vic asks Hayes what his other ventures are. He mentions having a "chronic farm", which Vic assumes to be a marijuana operation, but it is actually a farm where he euthanizes chronically-ill people.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Vic Michaelis the talk show host has a poor sense of humor and cannot improvise to save their life, becoming stiff and unnatural whenever they attempt either.
• Bad Boss: Aside comments from Vic about the crew indicate that they treat their coworkers like crap. In "Augbert," they casually mention firing multiple people for no other reason than the wrong guest being brought on, which Augbert is taken aback by.
  • Hayes Steele tries to fire multiple crew members, cuts the show's budget, and demands that a lot of the staff's amenities and labor rights be cut back when he buys the company, something Vic is in full support of.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Zeke Aaron McKinley wished to become rocks. He got exactly what he asked for, and it causes him constant pain and friction with his family.
• Beehive Hairdo: Marionette Conqui has an elaborate updo with two birds nesting in it. This is never addressed in the interview.
• Boss Subtitles: Each guest (or pair of guests) gets one. Princess Emily, for example, is billed as "European Popstar".
  • Augbert is briefly listed as "???: From the Woods". Once Vic calms him down enough to give his name, a second nameplate appears reading "Augbert: Dead".
• Callously Casual Cheating: Charlotte Excitement openly cheated on her husband Greg 15 separate times while they were married and continues to flirt with other people after their divorce (while they still have some kind of relationship), including Vic.
• Catapult Nightmare: Augbert's interview begins with him asleep on set. When Vic wakes him up, he launches himself over the back of the chair and starts screaming in terror.
• Catching Up on History: Dan Wesley Sharron asks why one of the PAs is wearing a medical mask, then follows up by asking about the World Trade Center and Bill Cosby. Later Vic gives him a more in-depth update, but they avoid most of the things Dan asked about.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: Vic is so shell-shocked by their interview with Archimedes and Ollie that they steal Ollie's vape and take a deep drag until they're calm enough to sign off.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Several of the guests.
  • Leighanna-Jean killed multiple people, and laughs when admitting it to Vic.
  • Tommy Shriggly is exmilitary and killed all the members of his platoon over a can of Coke.
  • Everything about Hayes Steele, an amoral almost-billionaire who euthanizes whales for fun.
  • Sudzo is a wannabe superhero incapable of feeling empathy who doxxes another superhero because he lost to him in a singing competition.
• Conspiracy Theorist: The conversation with Pig #2 about the tragic loss of their homes and mother takes a sharp left when Pig states "why is the government lying about vaccines" as one of the questions they had in the aftermath of the Big Bad Wolf's attack. From there, Vic's interview draws out that Pig is a doomsday prepper (and shiller) and a Flat-Earther who dove into the world of conspiracy because it felt safer than accepting that sometimes bad things happen for no reason.
• Control Freak: Avery Goodman is all about control: his goal is to rid the world of "uncertainty" (ie. free will) and uses several inventions to override the minds of the people he wishes to have under him, all demonstrated onto Vic. He even claims his personal idea of ultimate power is control.
  • Vic is as well, and is quite easily swayed by Avery's words when recommending they take more control of their studio.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Hayes Steele. His business ventures include private prisons in central Asia, euthanizing whales at SeaWorld, and chemicals that definitely aren't being made into cocaine.
• The Corruptible: Vic's professional veneer inevitably crumbles at the slightest push towards their guests' nonsensical worldviews. They express sexual interest in Dr. Milk, Jasper, and Casper, and Charlotte Excitement they are immediately taken by Dr. Avery Goodman's Totalitarian Utilitarian rhetoric. Hayes Steele immediately pounces on this flaw, pushing Vic from a Bad Boss into the role of one of his servile, indoctrinated "boys"- something Vic almost seems gleeful to accept.
• Covered in Gunge:
  • Vic's face and clothes get coated in protein powder as a result of letting Tommy Shriggly pour a serving directly into their mouth during their interview.
  • During their interview with David Hoyle, Jr., an grub-like creature called a "Midnight Louse" whose body is slick with clear slime, Vic tries to make their guest more comfortable by dumping a bucket of slime on their head to match.
• Creepy Doll: Steffi Pops, who's angry with Vic for not playing with her anymore.
• Cruel Twist Ending: Jukebox's episode. It turns out the alien invasion he's warning about can be easily thwarted, and he and Vic seem like they will actually be good friends...until he dies, leaving Vic devastated.
• Cuteness Proximity: Ally Beardsley portrays Pig #2 as having an obsessive phobia of dogs ever since watching a relatively small and adorable one kill their mother on accident. Therefore, once Vic brings a real dog on set, it is very evidently Ally, rather than Pig #2, who immediately takes a shine to the dog and cuddles up to it for the rest of the interview.
• Damned by Faint Praise: The interview with Stop begins with Vic trying to improve their relationship with some crew members by giving them each a compliment. The first ones they come up with are "you move things on this set" and "you are an editor."
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • One of Tommy Shriggly's comrades-in-arms took the last Coke at the canteen, so he killed every single member in his platoon, one by one, in the dead of night, and it took a favor from his uncle to allow Tommy to be simply dishonorably discharged instead of charged with murder.
  • Hearing that Vic was refused a job by MSNBC, Zonton de la Doll threatens the entire network with death by guillotine.
• Dominatrix: Ta'Tania Jackson, who looks like a beautiful fairy but works as a domme.
• Dramatic Irony: When Paul Robalino is getting his "Y2K" makeover, he comments that he's getting "lunch lady vibes" when a headpiece is being put on him. The audience can see that it's actually a spikey wig.
• Eat That: Vic occasionally gets roped into consuming odd things that shouldn't be ingested by their guests.
  • Princess Emily convinces them to take a handful of unlabeled pills, including ecstasy.
  • Vic agrees to let Tommy Shriggly pour dry protein powder into their mouth, which they clearly regret doing. They still go back for seconds.
  • Nana ruins Vic's coffee, then threatens them into drinking it. They're so terrified that they drink the entire cup.
  • Augbert offers Vic some chips that he had put into his cup of coffee. They briefly consider it to be fairly acceptable because the coffee is all gone, but quickly realize that the chips are still extremely soggy.
  • Claude McCaw forces Vic to play the game "Which Drink is Poisoned", where Vic takes turns drinking possibly poisoned drinks.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Nana may be an abusive and selfish monster, but she does genuinely cry when she learns that her ex-husband, Vic's grandfather, has passed away.
• Expecting Someone Taller: The Big Bad Wolf is actually just a small sausage dog.
• Faux Affably Evil: Professor Avery Goodman appears first as an approachable and kindly professor, but it's soon revealed to be a facade hiding a Totalitarian Utilitarian Mad Scientist.
• Freak Out: Zeke throws a tantrum and destroys a prop after he realizes his classmates saw him poop out a rock, though he immediately apologizes to Vic afterwards.
• Fun with Subtitles: At least in the YouTube short version of Spencer's introduction, they start talking in gibberish. The subtitles initially transliterate it accurately, before switching to saying "(Indecipherable)", as though it's somehow different.
• Future Slang: Jukebox explains that the phrase "Fuck you!" has become a greeting by the year 4055. He does admit it has gotten him beaten up a lot in 2024.
• Gruesome Grandparent: Nana, and how. She seems to draw the line at misgendering Vic, but anything else- from beating them to emotionally manipulating them to ruining their food to leaving them home alone for four days in their backstory- is gleeful fair game.
• Higher-Tech Species: Subverted. Denzel keeps talking about concepts that would go over the head of humans due to being too advanced, only for Vic to let him know that what he's talking about is very much understood here on Earth.
• Hollywood Satanism: Martha and Lucian are Hollywood Satanist youth pastors.
• Immoral Journalist: Vic originally unfroze Dan Wesley Sharron three years ago, but refroze him so they could get a good interview once they got a TV show. When he gets upset at the end of the interview, they have him refrozen again to try again in a couple years.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Subverted. Denzel supposedly has access to things like advanced invisibility cloaking, but the picture Vic shows reveals he's just got a blanket thrown over himself Bedsheet Ghost style.
  • As a cyborg from the 41st century, Jukebox has a lot of strange gadgets implemented into his body, including jet boots, which he admits are useless.
• Identity Amnesia: Dan Wesley Sharron was just taken out of ice, and doesn't remember much about who he is.
• Improv: The entire interview is completely improvised. Neither the guests nor Vic have any script to go off of and the guests don't even know what characters they're playing until it's time to film, having to invent their characters once their costumes are complete.
• Incoming Ham: Tommy Shriggly interrupts the show's normal format to introduce himself via pump-up music and dancing.
• Inconsistent Spelling: The credits spell Hayes Steele's name as "Haze Steale". Nowhere else in the episode does so.
• Innocently Insensitive: Leighanna-Jean Gruthers spends basically her entire interview constantly insulting Vic, but there doesn't seem to be any real malice behind it, and at the end of the interview happily agrees to go drinking with them.
• Insufficiently Advanced Alien: Beyond space travel, Denzel's species seems to barely be on par with humanity technologically and culturally. In some cases, they're even behind Earth, apparently believing stop signs are an advanced concept and not referencing stoplights.
• Insurance Fraud: Implied with Pig #2's father. He was a home insurance salesman who also worked in construction, building both of the little pigs' homes (out of shoddy material) which were eventually destroyed. He then collected millions and left his children behind despite their mother having recently been lethally stepped on.
• Jackass Genie: Inverted by the genie Zeke came across. The wishes only backfired was because Zeke was such a terrible wisher, with the genie never attempting any Loophole Abuse or Exact Words, even trying to warn Zeke against his final ridiculous wish to become rocks.
• Just a Stupid Accent: Exaggerated. Zonton de la Doll and Marionette Conqui literally have just a stupid accent. When Vic tries actually communicating to them in French, it becomes clear they don't actually speak the language as they try to reply in broken Spanish.
• Knight of Cerebus: Nana. Vic's usual calm, collected routine is quickly reduced to begging Nana to just cooperate long enough to do the interview, and much of the comedy goes out the window as Nana berates them for perceived slights. Vic has recovered by the beginning of the next episode.
• Literal Metaphor: Invoked by Augbert, when explaining dream logic: everything that occurs within a dream exists as a metaphor for those who are having the dream, but for those living within the dream it all still exists in the same literal form it's presented as. Thus the suitcase full of rocks Augbert has may be a metaphor for things in Vic's life that they need to be taking more seriously, but to Augbert it's still a (very important) bag of rocks. Further, the $20,000 dollars Vic's crew owe Augbert are literal inside and outside of the dream.
• Literal-Minded: Marionette Conqui and Zonton de la Doll don't have much of a concept of metaphors, so they panic when Vic mentions a media storm that set the media on fire.
• Lost in Character: Kepl has had his puppet Dr. Milk become wildly more popular and successful then him, and now seems to think of him as a different person who's stealing his life (and Vic).
• Loves My Alter Ego: Vic has no interest in Kepl, but they're quite interested in his puppet Dr. Milk.
• Made of Plasticine: Pig #2's mom died after merely being stepped on by a wolf twice. This could make sense depending on the size of the wolf, but the revelation that it was actually a wiener dog makes it baffling.
• Mind-Control Device: Dr. Avery Goodman tries out several mind-control machines on Vic.
• Mind Screw: "Augbert", the final episode of season 1. The only thing set in stone about the episode is that Augbert isn't real, is an entity in Vic's dreams, and needs to be paid $20,000 for his appearance. Even that is ambiguous.
• Mood Whiplash: Happens frequently with guests, but in "Augbert" this happens almost constantly, owing to a combination of Augbert flip flopping between being casual, philosophical and completely divorced from reality. This is helped by the fact much of the episode runs on dream logic.
  Vic: It's. Just. Rocks! Augbert.
  Augbert: The reason you're unhappy in your life is because it's always "just rocks." This couldn't exist without a thousand thousand years of the most beautiful turning of things that need not have happened but did. And if YOU CAN'T LOVE THIS ROCK, THEN YOU'RE NEVER GONNA LOVE YOURSELF!
  *Beat*
  Augbert: Doctor Gloria Staynord is a Shadow Monster.
• Mouthy Kid: Zeke Aaron McKinley has a lot of opinions that catch Vic off guard.
• Mushroom Samba: Princess Emily's interview ends with the handful of unlabeled pills she offered to Vic kicking in all at once.
• Musical Episode:
  • David Hoyle Jr.'s episode. The actor Paul F. Tompkins launches into several impromptu songs given accompaniment, turning it into this.
  • The following season, Lil Huffy spends most of his episode performing freestyle rap.
• Negative Continuity: Regardless of what happens to Vic at the end of an episode, be it being mind controlled by a cyborg dictator, forced to escape to a non-extradition country, or quitting the show in a fury, they would always return by the next episode with no mention of the previous one's events.
  • Averted for a few select plot threads; for instance, Vic's flagging marriage in season 2 due to mutual unfaithfulness has progressed to a full divorce by season 3.
• Non-Specifically Foreign: Princess Emily is from "right in the heart of the smack of the dab" of Europe. Vic's attempts to figure out what that means in more specific terms go nowhere.
  • Boris Tarshkokan is from Lafufu and has an eastern European accent that makes him sound like a Dracula parody.
• No-Respect Guy: Kepl is constantly disrespected by everyone, including Dr. Milk, his own puppet, and Vic themself.
• Not So Above It All:
  • The revelation that Tommy Shriggly took $100,000 in investments and turned it into $16,000 is enough to make Vic break into laughter, and the show briefly cuts to a "Please Stand By" screen while they recover.invoked
    Vic: Tommy, you invested a hundred thousand—*laughs*—Tommy, you invested a hundred—*guffaws*—
  • Similarly, Pig #2 declaring that the Big Bad Wolf stepped on their mother causes both Vic and Ally to break into laughter. Twice!
  • Steffi Pops visibly terrifies them, especially when Steffi cranks up her Creepy Doll shenanigans.
  • Vic doesn't even try to be respectful of Stop's hard-right political views once they start coming to light, openly saying that Stop is a bad person whose art cannot be separated from the artist.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Mother Hot Dog dropping dead prompts this reaction from Vic.
• Old Soldier: Jukebox is a cyborg warrior who, in his own words, has fought a thousand wars over a millenia.
• Once per Episode: The last question Vic always asks the guest at the end of the rapid fire round is "What is the meaning of life?"
• Only Sane Man: Vic often comes off as this, since their role as the host is to calmly continue the interview, no matter what the guests say or do.
• Our Genies Are Different: Zeke's genie was a tiny creature with red skin and an Irish accent, was somewhat passive-aggressive about the fact that he had to grant wishes rather than be given them, and hung himself in front of Zeke rather than magically disappear once all three were granted. Still, he averted any Jackass Genie or Literal Genie tropes, and Zeke is only unhappy with being rocks because he didn't consider what it would be like to live that way.
• Piss-Take Rap: When Vic has dragon rapper Lil Huffy on their show, they try to emulate his freestyle rapping with bars of their own. Vic quickly demonstrates they have poor improv skills and no sense of rhythm.
• Politically Correct Villain: Despite being a completely despicable grandmother and person, Nana does still have enough respect for Vic to use their correct pronouns. Most of the villainous characters would refer to Vic by their pronouns.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Played for Laughs. Vic keeps making jokes about pigs to Pig #2's face, which Pig #2 is visibly uncomfortable with... when they're not openly peddling right-wing conspiracy theories.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Hayes Steele denies Vic the dignity of being correctly gendered, at first referring to them as "little lady" before finally settling on "son"- the latter of which Vic quickly accepts.
• Punny Name: Dr. Avery Goodman ("A very good man"). Doubles as an Ironic Name, as Goodman is a supervillain.
  • Children's entertainer and Plant Person Zinnia's legal name is Chris N. Themum ("chrysanthemum").
• Rags to Riches: Hayes Steele won $1 million on a reality TV show, made some intelligent (if immoral) investments, and turned it into almost $1 billion over the course of 15 years or so.
• Rock Monster: Zeke Aaron McKinley, a fourth grader who found a genie and asked to become rocks.
• Running Gag: Vic's main sponsor is "Chompsky's Potato Chips," but in every ad break they manage to avoid actually eating any.
  • Any time Vic takes off their shoes, they'll request to have them blurred.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Tommy Shriggly was about to go to prison after being discharged for Friendly Fire, but since his uncle was in the military, he got out scot-free.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: A few episodes end this way.
  • Zonton de la Doll and Marionette Conqui trek across the Atlantic Ocean and continental US to search for their creator, Sarah, only to find out that Sarah died in 1987, 37 years before the episode aired.
  • David Hoyle, Jr. spends his interview trying to hype himself up to go out during the day, having become convinced that the warnings that he'll burn in the sun are nothing but propaganda. At the end of the episode, he and Vic walk outside together where he promptly bursts into flame.
• Shaped Like Itself: Fourth Witch is the fourth witch of the Wayward Sisters. Her legal name and subtitle are both "Fourth Witch."
• Shout-Out: Some of the "test" personas Lisa Gilroy tries out in season 3 before the interview are send-ups of Harley Quinn, Chappell Roan, and Insane Clown Posse.
• Skewed Priorities: Dan Wesley Sharron accuses Vic and the crew of this, since their priority is getting a good interview with him as opposed to getting him emergency medical attention after being frozen for 38 years.
• Soft Glass: During Greg and Charlotte Excitement's interview, the pair break a pair of balsa wood chairs over Greg's body. The crew react in horror when Greg attempts to break a real boom box over his head.
  • Zinnia accidentally shatters a breakaway cup when resting his feet on a table and passes out from chlorophyll loss. During a rant about the meaning of life, a breakaway vase falls apart with one punch.
• Totalitarian Utilitarian: Avery Goodman's goal is to make his vision of a perfect future where unnecessary things such as arts, keeping in touch with your grandparents, or sentiment in general are deleted, whether the people want to or not.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: The avant-garde artist Stop is a multi-media artist whose pieces include a perspex suitcase with a polaroid picture of said suitcase inside of it, four store bought American flags in a coffee cup and a water spill that vaguely looks like a dragon.
• The Unpronounceable: The show's closed captions transcribe Denzel's birth name as "(vocalizes and ululates)," since it's a completely unspellable series of syllables and random noises. Everyone, up to and including the format of the show, just calls him Denzel for simplicity's sake.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Vic frequently deals with aliens, pop stars and living dolls, and they rarely ever bat an eye. Their only reaction to Denzel's completely unpronounceable birth name is asking if that's spelled how it sounds.
• Villainous Breakdown: A very brief one, but when the topic goes to weekend activities, Professor Avery Goodman drops the avuncular professor facade entirely and starts angrily hissing about how no-one should ever ask him that... before abruptly snapping backing to his Affably Evil demeanor once Vic changes the subject.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: Augbert claims that he fell asleep in his cottage in the woods and woke up on set.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Whenever Vic or their guest break to the extent that they have to reset before continuing, a "PLEASE STAND BY" screen will pop up accompanied by relaxing music.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?:
  • Princess Emily's accent is very vaguely European. Vic can't place the accent and Princess Emily never clarifies where she's from.
  • Boris Tarshkokan is from the fictional nation of Lafufu. His accent isn't from any discernible country and can be most accurately be described as a bad Borat impression.
• Windmill Crusader: Denzel has come to Earth to repopulate humanity. He doesn't seem to grasp that humanity doesn't need repopulating no matter how often Vic points it out, believing that young people are too uninterested in sex for the species to propagate.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • Zonton de la Doll and Marionette Conqui have been wandering the earth looking for their creator, Sarah, and Vic joyfully tells them that they found... their accessories. They note that was crueler than they planned. Later in the interview, they confirm that they did find Sarah...'s skull.
  • Jukebox's episode is very sweet- two lonely souls finding a solid friendship in one another. For a moment, it seems like Vic finally has something going for them... Then the mood gets killed by Jukebox's death.