Mikeburnfire

MikeBurnFire is a YouTube Gamer who plays video games. Sometimes he is joined by another dude that plays video games who calls himself Zach Hazard.

About
Inspired by other YouTubers such as AlChestBreach, SovietWomble, ManyATrueNerd, and VideogameDunkey, Mike and Zach began their channel with a Fallout New Vegas video series, which rapidly grew in popularity and became a staple of the channel. A wide variety of other games have been played and reviewed, including games in the Mass Effect and Resident Evil franchises.

The Fallout New Vegas is notable because every episode is painstakingly subtitled by Mike himself, which is why their release is limited to once per week (on Wednesday). Other videos on the channel are not manually subtitled.

Character
Mike tends to avoid vulgarity and profanity in most instances and has a generally laid-back approach to most things, although there are instances where lines are crossed and stronger action needs to be taken.

His counterpart, Zach, is less constrained and more absurd, quicker to pull the trigger on a gun or shoot off at the mouth recklessly. He has a deep wealth of knowledge when it comes to military history, firearm specifications, internet memes, shoebill birds, and Gilmore Girls.

Fallout Series
Mostly taking place within Fallout New Vegas, the Fallout series is the centerpoint of the channel. The game usually follow's Zach's point of view with Mike filling the role of companion. Together they complete both vanilla quests and fan-made mods. Occasionally, Mike tinkers with the modding tools to enhance the experience or to edit in a joke. Companions are swapped in and out, with Hope Lies and Vincent Vincent from the Interesting NPCs mod usually joining them. Many of the running gags for the channel stem from this series.

Zach's insistence on singing, killing, memeing, and quoting TV shows makes it difficult for Mike to stay sane sometimes. Likewise, Zach becomes incredibly agitated watching Mike play games poorly. Additionally, Mike has been known to intentionally agitate Zach by making false claims (EG, Foot fetishism, Gilmore Girls fandom, etc)

Zach primarily uses a shotgun for efficiency and comedic effect, although he switches out to scoped and projectile weapons frequently. Mike typically uses an assault rifle, but often throws dynamite and grenades erratically (sometimes at the enemy!).

The series enjoys a healthy dose of running gags and self-referential humor. For example, two hostile NPCs, both named "Big Dave" were encountered at one point. A few episodes later, two NPCs both named "Bigger Dave" attacked. Eventually (several months later), a gargantuan enemy called "Biggest Dave" besieged the town of Westside and was defeated in spectacular combat.

The NPC Malcolm Holmes has shown a penchant for coming back to life and going hostile to the group (episode 10), creating clones (episode 21) as well as robots (episode 28) to attack the duo.

Episodes
The first two episodes are typically excluded from the episode count due to their lower quality and lack of continuity with the others.

Companions
Due to the numerous amount of vanilla and mod companions, most do not stick around for more than a few episodes. There were a few that have received special treatment so far:


 * Hope Lies: The first companion recruited by the duo, Hope has undergone many changes in appearance over the series, but always retained her positive personality. After dying to radiation poisoning, she returned as a ghoul before being killed by raiders. Her brain was subsequently put into a robot body. When that became tiresome, her brain was transplanted into that of a sexbot.


 * Vincent Vincent: A wandering survivalist by trade, Vincent is an odd character that openly rants about sex, drugs, and guns. His crude mannerisms always catch the duo off-guard, and they are frequently blindsided by his absurd comments. He was also killed by raiders and implanted into a robotic body.


 * Bad Mothafucka: A supermutant that only knows one obscene word, Bad Mothafucka was fast and powerful, one-shotting most enemies that got within melee range. He was a staple of the team until dying pitifully in a wild beast attack. Mike was unable to resurrect him as he did Vincent and Hope. A funeral was held and the team moved on.


 * ARES model Andrea: A pre-war sexbot that was repurposed as a flight instructor, Andrea's personal quest involved recovering a derelict aircraft. After retiring to Novac, her body was disassembled and repurposed for Hope. Her CPU is stored in the radio in Zach's room.

Other Videos
Zach and Mike fill the week playing other videogames, sometimes picking a well-loved game for the other to experience. Mike has persuaded Zach to do a blind playthrough of the Mass Effect series, while Zach encouraged Mike to finish Alien: Isolation. Mike has also shown a hearty love for episodic, narrative-heavy, and strategy games, while Zach is typically in favor of a more action-oriented experience.

Quotes

 * "Here I am! Rock you like a hurricane!" - Zach, when fighting scorpions.
 * "What reputation? As a terrible shot and a poor conversationalist?" - Zach, when told of his reputation.
 * "You see the corn? The corn is very important to the story!" - Zach, at the Boomer mural.
 * "In Heaven, Pa has all his body parts and is not on fire" - Mike, comforting a grieving woman.
 * "You're not invited to any orgies from now on" - Mike, after being told by Zach to "Twist those dirty bags."
 * "Bet you haven't seen a ping-pong ball go THIS far up a mans rectum!" - Mike, when distracting Jeanne May.

Trivia

 * The name "MikeBurnFire" comes from an old email address that Mike used to use. It became his online alias, which became the name of the channel.
 * The original purpose of the channel was for Mike to showcase his digital animations. His 3D modeling movies and fan animations of ManyATrueNerd and Hello Internet are still publicly available.


 * The happy duck icon has almost no relation to the channel, aside from being representative of Mike's positivity and enthusiasm and love of ducks. Conversely, Zach uses a wry shoebill as his avatar on Twitter, as he is fond of that particular species.


 * Fallout Shelter contains an Mikeburnfire Easter Egg. One of the Quests directly references a recurring catchphrase: “Rock you like a hurricane” and is a mission to hunt radscorpions. The first occurrence of this catchphrase was when Zach started singing while hunting Radscorpions in the Fallout New Vegas episode Rock you like a hurricane.
 * That the quest can only be undertaken by 2 dwellers i.e. Mike and Zach further validates the easter egg. As does the fact that the armour reward looks somewhat like the armour Zach was wearing at the time.