Polygon’s BDG on Bowser’s Military Hierarchy

I don’t even remember what kind of rabbit hole led me to finding Polygon. I followed many other YouTube channels that talked about video games, but moreso about their game mechanics and gameplay. When I found Polygon, I thought it was just another one of these channels. In terms of “overthinking” video games, I had only known about The Game Theorists. Maybe it was through the YouTube algorithm that I found this video and, more importantly, was introduced to Brian David Gilbert.

Brian David Gilbert or BDG, to use Dungeons & Dragons terminology, is the most CHAOTIC theorist I’ve watched. He has this show, Unraveled, on Polygon’s channel where he “unravels” video game lore. But what’s unique about his show is he doesn’t talk about what’s already there, hidden in the game’s lore. Instead he chooses to connect video games to real life logic. Some of the episodes for Unraveled he’s done include ranking the bosses in Dark Souls according to how good of a boss they’d actually be in a real life corporation, ranking the characters in Mortal Combat according to how good of a cuddler they would be, calling out the stages of Super Smash Brothers Ultimate for violating Occupational Safety and Health Administration building standards, and wondering which Castlevania monsters are the sexiest. To be honest, most of these sound like they’re coming from a person who is connecting “facts” on a board with red string like this meme:

BDG in the writing room, probably.

But watching these videos, BDG puts in a lot of thought into the claims he makes. He makes generalizations about characters’ internal lives and provides reasoning as to why some character or thing doesn’t fit his criteria. It’s best to describe BDG’s style with the video that started it all for me:

Please watch it yourself first. Words cannot do it justice without context.

In this video, BDG attempts to categorize the big bad of the Super Mario games Bowser’s troops into a military hierarchy. His inspiration comes from the real life laws of the Geneva Convention, which state that in order for Bowser to keep his armed conflict “above board” he has to have a command structure. BDG does this by using the Super Mario Encyclopedia for its list of enemies and using the United States military hierarchy as a model. He goes through each rank from bottom to top, providing reasons as to why each enemy epitomizes each rank. After categorizing each of the enemies, BDG comes to the shocking realization that one enemy in particular, the Koopa Troopa, doesn’t act like a soldier in a military hierarchy but acts more like a civilian instead. He then switches his focus to listing off the breaches in the Geneva Convention that the “so-called hero” Mario has committed and comes to the conclusion that Mario is the war criminal.

Ever since I found BDG and Unraveled whenever I just need to smile or need some noise in the background, I put on one of the episodes. Even now, as I’m writing this video response, I rewatched this video to not only be able to summarize it above but also because it’s just so fun to watch.

What makes Unraveled so interesting is how you can see BDG’s personality in every aspect of the video. He not only helps write and performs the script, but he also does (to my knowledge) the editing as well. Throughout the video, you can see the little messages he sprinkles throughout that add a little more humor to an already funny video. Also, for me personally, his chaotic style of humor is so much like mine that I find myself thinking about some of the stuff he has said in his videos, like my current favorite quote down below:

He also isn’t afraid to ask the really HARD-HITTING, INQUISITIVE questions:

Another aspect of Unraveled that I like is that BDG always finds a way to include his co-workers in his videos. For the particular episode I was talking about before, he included his co-workers at the end of the video in a song dedicated to the fallen Goomba troops who lost their lives due to the struggle between Bowser and Mario. Although not always as involved in all the other videos, he usually includes those who are helping him film the video in the form of responses to some of his rhetorical questions, statements, and requests for feedback.

To sum it all up, the reason why BDG and Unraveled is so interesting to me is that not only does it dive deeper into video games, but does so in an unconventional way. Past the gameplay and game mechanics and even past the game lore and the deeper messages that I try to look for, BDG finds associations that people normally wouldn’t make. This is what makes him so unique and I’m thankful that I found the video about Bowser’s military hierarchy. I can only hope someday that I can make content that is not only as entertaining but also just as thought-provoking as Unraveled.

oh,,,okay thanks Brian