About

Montage Parodies (or "MLG Montages") are a series of remix videos parodying the "video game montage" subgenre on YouTube, which is characterized by quick-paced edits and looped footage, as well as heavy use of loud dubstep music and squeaker sounds in the background. While this style of editing initially rose to popularity through highlight reels of impressive gameplay released by e-sport teams in the Major Gaming League, it quickly became known as a cliche as amateur gamers began creating their own, usually with in-game footage of unremarkable quality.

Origin

As early as September 2010, YouTubers were uploading montages containing footage from first-person shooter games like Call of Duty (shown below, left). On March 10th, 2011^[5], YouTuber Jamal Nigrumz (also known as jmcxs) uploaded the earliest known montage parody video featuring clips from the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (shown below, right).

Common Tropes

Images that are often featured in montage parodies include those mocking the Doritosgate controversy, the Dancing Snoop Dogg GIF and the default "Sample Text" captions from the Sony Vegas video editing software. Additionally, references to the first-person shooter trick shot 360 no scope, the phrase "420 blaze it" and the Illuminati secret society are often included in the videos.

Music / Sound Sample Usage

Montages are often uses loud musics from dubstep and trap genres and various music remixes, mashups or comedy tracks. Sometimes sourcing those samples from the sound sharing site Soundcloud, these samples are mostly being referred as Soundclown.
Ironic conspiracy theory parts of the videos are usually including the X-files or Inception themes on the background. They can also be remixed with the Air Horn blasts. As well as the Sad Violin usage to parody drama.
There is also largely usage of the hitmarker sound and trigger from the Call Of Duty series.

Spread

On October 18th, 2011, YouTuber souqil released a montage featuring footage from the game Woodcutter Simulator 2011 (shown below, left). On December 23rd, YouTuber motdef uploaded a montage parody for the game Train Simulator inspired by souqil's video (shown below, right).^[6] In the first three years, the videos gained over 310,000 and 2.47 million views respectively.

On May 18th, 2012, the /r/montageparodies^[7] subreddit was launched for users to share notable montage parody videos. On May 31st, YouTuber xX420KuShxX uploaded a montage featuring shaky Flash browser game footage (shown below, left). On December 14th, 2013, YouTuber QwertySkill uploaded a montage parody containing clips of a woman demonstrating how to properly flip a pancake (shown below, right).

Notable Examples

The most popular, and well know people on YouTube for making montage parodies are mostly associated with the /r/montageparodies subreddit, such as Snipars ,Fapplet, Ancientreality, Senpai Kush, NFKRZ and Vagabonds.

Search Interest

External references