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Desert Bus for Hope - TV Tropes

  • ️Sat Jun 29 2013

Desert Bus for Hope (Web Video)

In 2007, Victoria sketch comedy group LoadingReadyRun organized a gaming marathon for the benefit of Child's Play, a charity helping children's hospitals. The game used; Desert Bus, a bus-driving "verisimulator" that has the player drive from Tucson to Las Vegas (and back). This takes about 8 real-life hours. A one-way trip scores a point. The game cannot be paused. Going off the road or stopping results in the motor overheating and a tow truck dragging your bus back to the starting point in real time.

And the bus veers slightly to the right so that the player can't just use something to automatically hold the driving button down.

To spare their sanity, LoadingReadyRun organized the fundraiser so that each consecutive hour "cost" 7% more than the previous hour, starting at US $1 for the first hour. So for them to continue playing after 5 hours, for example, $5.75 (or 1+1.07+1.15+1.21+1.31) would have needed to be donated by that time through the desertbus.org website. The first time around, they hoped for $5,000 in donations. They got $22,805. The total has climbed almost every year:

  • 2013's Desert Bus 7 raised ... a little more. $523,348, to be exact. Enough to buy almost 6 and a half days of solid busing.
  • 2014's Desert Bus 8 raised $635,415, breaking the $2,000,000 mark for lifetime donations.
  • 2015's Desert Bus 9 raised $676,883, shattering the $3,000,000 lifetime donation mark.
  • Desert Bus 10 raised $695,343.
  • Desert Bus 2017, for the first time ever, raised less than the year before: $650,215.
  • Desert Bus 2018 continued the drive's upward trend with $730,100 raised.
  • Desert Bus 2019 surpassed the record once again, raising $864,415 and reaching the $6,000,000 lifetime total.
  • Desert Bus 2020, despite being held remotely due to ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, was the first to break the 1 million total - raising $1,052,902note  and bringing the lifetime total to over $7,000,000.
  • Desert Bus 2021 broke the 1 million mark during the stream, and totalled $1,223,108 after merch sales were added.
  • Desert Bus 2022 again broke the 1 million total and then some, though slightly less than the year before: $1,138,003 after merch.
  • Desert Bus 2023 breached the $10,000,000 lifetime donation mark, and ended with $1,193,560 after merch. It was also the first run held in Moonbase Mk VI and the first since 2019 where all shifts were physically present.note 
  • Desert Bus 2024 passed $11,000,000 lifetime donations, and in the last half hour before cut-off saw a surge of donations that not only broke the record for most donations, but also reached 168 hours bussed - for the first time ever, reaching an entire Desert Week with an on-stream total of $1,252,569.69note . To this day it's the longest and most successful campaign.

But the real key to the success of Desert Bus For Hope is not the schadenfreude resulting from donating to a good cause to make gamers suffer, it's because they stream their experience live and have a dedicated IRC channel, which allows viewers to interact with the on-duty driver and attending hangers on. Plus, for enough money, fans can issue "challenges" to the team. This has led to all sorts of memorable shenanigans.

Tropes:

  • Affectionate Parody: On DB2024, Graham hosted Wet Ones, a parody of Hot Ones (with a logo that mashes up that series' logo with that of Wet Ones wet wipes). While he still interviewed a fellow Night Watch entertainer each night, instead of dipping chicken wings in increasingly hot sauces, he and the guest would dip chicken nuggets in increasingly bizarre "wets". Said wets included pea whet, Tang, pina colada mix, "thickened creamy product", and the sauteed shrimp sauce.
  • All Bikers are Hells Angels: Jacob invokes this trope when narrating how he learned to drink whiskey.
  • Always Someone Better: Desert Kris for (More) Hope - which claims to be a more successful one-man spin-off of Desert Bus for Hope, with Kris Straub as The Ace.
  • And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Parodied in DB2024 with Engineering's various "The More You know" overlays they could cue at a moment's notice. They feature a jingle and the Desert Bus logo flying across the screen with assorted captions like "Knowledge Get", "Teh Mroe Yuo Knwo", "The More You NO!", "For Legal Reasons That Was A Joke", and "AAAAAAAAH!"
  • Ascended Meme: The Desert Bus For Hope meme "Play Minecraft, Watch Top Gear, Get Pig" is now a possible intro text in Minecraft, thanks to an expensive auction by a generous Notch.
  • Audience Participation Song: During a group singing of Intergalactic, the Desert Bus Chat sang the chorus.

    Graham: "We'll do the chorus," thank you chat room.
    Jer: Yes, chat room, you must sing along.

  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Invoked with Alex's Evangelion-inspired intro in Desert Bus 2017: Some Japanese text is briefly shown that reads "Watashiwa shimasen wakaru Nihongo", which are words that literally mean "I," "don't," "understand," and "Japanese" but don't form a grammatically correct Japanese sentence: Exactly what one would expect from someone who doesn't understand Japanese.
    • Also a favourite recurring challenge is getting people to read things (usually Magic: The Gathering cards from the "Rosewattastone" Twitter account) that have been auto-translated through multiple languages and back to English, which often results in these kinds of translation.
  • Butt-Monkey: Kroze is rapidly taking this position on the team during Desert Bus 5.
    • Matt is scapegoated for every crash.
  • Cat Girl: In DB3, Tally and Kathleen were dressed as some. Although most of the crew had a turn with those cat ears...
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each of the six-hour shifts codified in Desert Bus 9 have a colour scheme applied to their banner, graphics, and background lighting to help differentiate who's in control.
    • Dawn Guard (6 AM to 12 PM) is yellow.
    • Alpha Flight (12 PM to 6 PM) is red.
    • Night Watch (6 PM to 12 AM) is dark blue.
    • Zeta Shift (12 AM to 6 AM) is purple.
    • Omega Shift covers the final few hours of the stream and has a predominantly black colour scheme in it's graphics, though it's also associated with light blue due to it's banner having the colour of the game's sky.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: The Desert Bus itself, obviously, but also...
    • In DB2, donations were made to make Matt see Twilight. He had to see it four times in total. The next year, he pledged to see New Moon as many times as possible during a day if the donation total rose to 100K. He had to see it six times in all.
    • For Desert Bus 5, Matt insisted that he would only go and see Breaking Dawn if Desert Bus For Hope could reach $500,000 lifetime donations (which required about $57,000 that year) within 36 hours of the marathon starting. If they did it within 24 hours (James's shift), James would have to go and see it with him. The donations almost made it within the 24-hour mark, and James agreed to see it anyway.
  • Couch Gag: Occasionally each shift will have a theme for their intros each year that changes slightly with every day.
    • In DB2024, Night Watch recreated the opening of The Simpsons. In addition to the traditional couch gag and something being written on a white board, it also had Graham reading a different book for each.
    • After their traditional intro music on the first day of DB2024, Zeta Shift changed it up by mashing up various other songs with "Y'all Ready For This".
  • Creepy Cute: Ian was in charge of making the new RDP button for DB2024, and he created The Orb: a near-perfect black sphere with a single large red button that was constantly pulsing light from within. Everyone who experienced it flipped back and forth between fear, delight, affection, and devotion to the orb over the course of the week.
  • Creepy Doll: The one and only. Was literally called "Creepy Doll" until he was renamed "Harry."
  • Crowd Song:
    • The Final Busdown that closes out each run since Desert Bus 3, where everyone present sings "The Final Countdown" by Europe. DB1 didn't have a song, and DB2 ended with "The Wheels on the Bus".
    • The Full Song Random Dance Party usually becomes this, unless it hits early enough during Dawn Guard that there aren't as many people, or during the pandemic where they couldn't bring more than a few people into the staging area at the same time.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Literally, with the only entity ever able to accomplish such a feat: the Creepy Doll
  • Down to the Last Play: Donating with one hour left on the clock, which happened during Desert Bus 5 so that the team had to bus for a whole extra hour, giving them time to wrap things up. After a few runs the team's opted to limit this because they need the final hour for thank yous, and from DB 2017 onward the clock was locked with one hour to go as a result (not that the chat was anywhere near getting another hour anyway). Of course, this has just led to occasional attempts at rallying donations before the one-hour cutoff instead, and sometimes that's what's needed to get passed the previous year's mark.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: The crew try to keep things PG-13 in case younger viewers tune in to the stream, so they endeavour to replace any curse word with "Bus".
  • Hidden Depths: Paul Saunders, cutscene snarker, website designer, comedy writer, and consummate geek...with the voice of an angel. #TeamPaulSexual, indeed.
  • Hot Drink Cure: During DB2018, Jacob told a story about a trip to Ireland during which he was in extreme pain from an abscessed tooth and an old lady gave him a hot toddy that pretty much anaesthetised him.
  • Incoming Ham: After a long day of streaming, one can't be blamed for feeling a little tired by the time midnight rolls around...and then Zeta Shift begins with Beej (or another entertainer) bursting in while "Let's get ready to rumble!" starts blasting from the speakers.
  • In Memoriam: This was also Played for Laughs in DB2024 when Night Watch was naming their Beyblade stadium. Earlier that night Graham had joked about Victoria's Save-On Foods Memorial Stadium, pointing out that Save-On Foods is not dead so it's not actually being memorialized. As such, the winner of the naming rights dubbed it The Matt "Cat Enthusiast" Wiggins Memorial Stadium.
  • Insistent Terminology:
    • Graham did not crash. Solid Snake crashed.
    • X didn't crash the bus, Matt crashed the bus.
    • Carrie didn't crash the bus, Tubert/Long Frog crashed the bus.
  • It Will Never Catch On: The crew initially suspected the stream to be a fun stunt for a good cause that would last over the weekend. The fact that it was titled The First Annual Desert Bus For Hope was meant to be a joke! But they ended up driving for four and a half days, which ran into some logistical difficulties when most of them ended up having to leave for work or school on Monday. After that, they knew they had to do it again the following year and make sure they planned it out so that people could stick around longer.
  • Laugh Themselves Sick: Graham and Kate when presented with QWOP. Also Alex, when Graham starts talking about ASS: The Musical.
    • This happens often enough that whenever someone collapses in a fit of laughter, they're said to have "died" (as in, died laughing).
  • Marathon Level: The whole event.
  • Manly Tears: The ending of De5ert Bus. Graham just couldn't hold it in and most of the cast went with him. Except for James cause he's a dick.
  • Medal of Dishonor: When anyone on the team does something wrong, they are presented with a 'Shame Ticket', issued by Ash or Serge, detailing their crime. A shame ticket could say anything from "I crashed the bus" to "Johnny Doorslammer" to "I broke the other arm off the lobster" to "I can't keep my skin intact" to "I wrote an unauthorized shame ticket" to "I know what I did" to "I've gone mad with shame power".
  • Mood Whiplash
    • After a story about a little girl being diagnosed with lymphoma:
    • A previously-scheduled prize giveaway ended in the middle of the impromptu "Cam and Kathleen Give Healthful Advice" hour, which was filled with much serious Q&A regarding fashion and diet:

    Graham: This is fascinating... and educational... But I need to give someone Magic cards.

    • Lampshaded by Kathleen during DB 2017, after a profound and emotional discussion about the value of the work done by Child's Play and DBFH was followed abruptly by a dance party.

    Kathleen: Ah, Desert Bus. Come for the wacky shenanigans, stay for the emotional whiplash.
    Alex: Well, the bus has no seatbelts.

    • Can also easily happen when pushing the Random Dance Party button to celebrate something, only to get hit with a song that doesn't quite fit - or a troll.
  • Motor Mouth: Graham earned this title after managing to sing "Hardware Store" by "Weird Al" Yankovic almost perfectly. He had to take two breaths.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: Turning one of the worst video games (even if it's a deconstruction on how full scale realism wouldn't make for a good game) into a charity-driven (and a highly profitable one, to boot!) event.
  • Music Video: Tucson or Bust, courtesy of Andy Cownden
  • Non Sequitur: The "Hamfather" sketch in DB19, where a waiter would suddenly show up with a slab of ham and serve some to everyone present while music from The Godfather played in the background. This repeated several times with slight variations—once with live musicians!—but no one ever acted like it was unusual, and once the ham-serving ended they went straight back to what they were doing as if nothing happened. No one on-set even acknowledged the existence of this bit until after the last "episode," when they explained the whole concept.
  • Noodle Incident: The semi-spontaneous "Gangnam Hell" sketch apparently drew some complaints for being legitimately disturbing, so it has become this, with the bus crew no longer willing to even explain what it was (though it can still be found on Youtube).
  • Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: The first one was The First Annual Desert Bus for Hope, pretty simple (albeit no one expected there would be a second). After that things got a little silly.
  • Once an Episode: Some shifts have bits and segments that they've established to do every day of their shift.
    • Dawn Guard kicks off their shifts with Coffee Pong tournaments between various members present. Starting in 2022 they also began the Dawn Guard Fashion Festnote  where they show off an article of clothing they wore that day they enjoy.
    • Alpha Flight warms up with Japanese calisthenics videos.
    • Zeta Shift begins their shift by rotating the cushions on the couch.
  • Once a Season: Some gags were popular enough once established that they're brought back at least once a year.
    • Beginning in Desert Bus 9, each year has at least one duo do a reading of They're Made Out of Meat.
    • The Full Song Random Dance Party: The Random Dance Party was established in Desert Bus 10, consisting of a very long playlist that would play a 30-second snippet of a song whenever a button was pushed. But one song in the playlist was the full song, so one of the unsung goals of the run is to also hit the RDP button enough to reach it.
  • Overly Long Gag: Wheeler's Horse Joke in 2019. It took him several tries to get through it all, it took up about thirty minutes spread across several hours, and the puncline was why the long face?
  • Rocks Fall Everybody Dies: In Desert Bus 4, the crew ran a Pathfinder game involving Lava Bears. At one stage, they activated a trap and lava fell from the ceiling. Almost total party kill. This suits this trope particularly well, because what is lava? Molten rocks.
  • Running Gag: Oh, so many.
  • The Scapegoat: Matt is responsible for all technical faults, and even managed to crash the bus while asleep at home during DB5. And several others during DB6.
  • Serial Escalation: The donations just keep going up and up and up, to the point where a single auction in Desert Bus 4 went for $4300... just short of the goal for DB1!
    • And it was taken even further in DB5 with a sheet of uncut foil rare Magic cards from Innistrad going for 10,000 dollars (bought by Notch).
    • Notch returned in DB7 by bidding $10,000 again... for a packet of silica gel. (And a scarf, which everyone insisted was just to keep the silica gel safe.)
    • DB9 was the first year in which every single live auction topped $1,000.
    • Aside from donations, some gags have seen their levels of commitment increase each day from the shifts. DB2024 had the letter-exchange between Alpha and Zeta, started when Alpha was challenged to write and hide a secret message for Zeta in Wingdings. Zeta quickly responds in kind using Webdings, and the exchange continued into Phyrexian, Semaphore Flags, ASL, and a combination Matoran, D'Ni, and Futhark runes carved into a clay tablet.
  • Sequel Hook: Desert Bus 6 ended with Graham stating "Desert Bus will return with Desert Bus 007: [Subtitle to be determined]"
  • Sharp-Dressed Man: In a room full of people wearing t-shirts and jeans who possibly hadn't changed their clothes since the day before it was rather noticeable when Cameron Lauder would repeatedly show up in at least a button-down and slacks during Desert Bus 5.
    • Reached its logical conclusion in Desert Bus 6 with everyone dressed their dapperest during Cam's shift and a lengthy segment given by him on men's fashion.
  • Something Something Leonard Bernstein: mumblemumblemumblemumble AAAAAAAAAAAAFRICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
  • The Stinger: Several Desert Buses For Hope (Deserts Bus For Hope?) have had a brief bit after the official end of the stream, providing a final gag or a Sequel Hook or both. The DB10 one - in which James's "lickability" Running Gag was finally made complete - was actually uploaded to Youtube under the title of "Stinger", which has since seemed to become the standard procedure.
  • Team Pet: Roscoe P. Jangles IV, Jer's pet (stuffed) duck.
  • Tempting Fate:
    • In Desert Bus 4, the crew were challenged to hail Cthulhu ten hours in. They did. The bus promptly crashed.
    • Alex was challenged to herp a derp, he complied. When asked to derp a herp, he replied that he'd need a lot of plastic tubing. Said tubing was immediately produced.
    • In Desert Bus 6, Cam put down a challenge to the chat: if the donation total hit $100,000 during his driving shift, he would eat a spoonful of mayonnaise, the food he hates most in the world. Two custom N7 leather jackets were being auctioned for over $14,000 total. By 5 PM Moonbase time, Cam was eating mayo.
  • Unaccustomed as I Am to Public Speaking...: Alex prefaced his speech at the end of Desert Bus 10 (the one linked to under Manly Tears, above) by saying he was "not much of a wordsmith." The rest of the room calls him out on this after the speech. He says it's a result of Imposter Syndrome.
  • Videogame Cruelty Potential: Penny Arcade's posts promoting Desert Bus For Hope quickly turned to the theme of "Dance, monkey, dance!" They even promised to match the donation total (up to a chosen threshold) as part of "Operation Infinite Bus".

    Tycho: It is our objective to make these people drive until driving that Goddamned bus is the only life they can remember. We will match all donations to Desert Bus For Hope, starting now, until we reach a cap of ten thousand dollars... Think of it like a buff for your donations, an augmentation for your generosity. Also, think of it as creating a prison, a prison made of money, from which these young men may never escape.

  • Unusual Euphemism: Since it's for the children, cursing is replaced by variants on "bus" or "balls." (Graham in particular often says "What the balls?")
  • When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Once the shift system was established, Zeta Shift quickly began heralding it's beginning with the speakers loudly blasting "The Jock Jam". This soon led to Night Watch playing up the dread of midnight approaching, since as soon as the clock hits twelve Zeta will come roaring in.
  • You Keep Using That Word: During DB2024, one of the various banners Engineering could prompt was one reading "That's Heresy!" Emily would often challenge them on it because it was almost never dropped after someone said something heretical (which she would know, since she has a theology degree). It took Dan Olson starting a discussion with her about the Nicean Council for her to accept a proper use of the word.