Is Mitch becoming a ranked Mortal Kombat Mythologies speed runner the most Dan thing a non-Dan cast member has done?

Dan Ryckert is a unique Giant Bomb cast member for a number of reasons, but one of them is his tendency to do outrageous things like get married in a Taco Bell. He enjoys being weird not only to entertain people but just for the sake of following his own path. Most of the other Giant Bomb cast members have had their foibles and unique interests but have skewed towards the more conventional. They may follow Dan on one of his flights of fancy or adventures, but they don't pursue them in the same way on their own. There are things that of all GB cast members past and present only Dan would do.

I think that becoming a speed runner for an infamously terrible video game immediately after spending an entire video series complaining non-stop about how bad that game is and about being forced to play it is very much in the spirit of Dan. The fact that Mitch did this voluntarily has huge Dan vibes. Of course Dan and Mitch get along very well, so it's maybe not shocking that they're kindred spirits, but it made me wonder whether there are other things that cast members have done where you'd say "it can only be Dan" if you didn't know who did it, but it was, in fact, someone else.

Whether it be having a very strange belief about how the world works or how things should be done (you DON'T cook the egg shells?) or just pursuing some odd practice just because they can, what is the most "Dan" thing that a Giant Bomb cast member has chosen to do of their own volition?

I think the Persona 4 Endurance Run is probably up there. They started it partly as a joke and openly said it might only last a couple weeks (the name came from them wanting to see how much of the game they could endure before giving up). Then they unintentionally got way invested in it and completed the whole game, to the point that both Jeff and Vinny still make references to it from time to time (Jeff referenced the Endurance Run in the last week and still says "get bent" a lot. Vinny mentioned fusing episodes and the Endurance Run a bit ago when talking about viewership of their Cyberpunk playthrough).

The thing that gets tricky with this is that the overlap between Dan's jokes/bits/accidentally getting genuinely way into things he thought he didn't like and Gerstmann's jokes/bits/accidentally getting genuinely way into things he thought he didn't like is pretty big. Gerstmann starting Super Mario Bros. Special as a joke for a stream then committing to finishing the game came to mind for me as a Dan-like thing (much like Dan's Seaman playthrough). Jeff and Dan both being dismissive of anime (Jeff less so compared to Dan. Dan used to be really aggressively dismissive of anime even though everyone else on staff was screaming at him that Metal Gear Solid is basically anime) then getting way into Dragon Ball Z also came to mind as a very Dan thing. The thing that always showed up in those 2014-2016 Bombcasts was that Jeff was in some ways just as weird as Dan, but in a different way.

For other members, I think how Brad viewed computers and technology (or at least used to, he's much less severe about this now) was very Dan-like (well, old Dan from like 5-10 years ago) for a while. His knowledge and views on computers for a long time was very much based in the 90s/early 00s along with boomer takes he read on tech greybeard forums, and he was weirdly dismissive and skeptical of new technology in a way Dan used to be about other things. If you listen to old episodes of the Tech Pod, this tendency would show up a lot and would leave Will flabbergasted at times (for example, Brad would talk as if something was extremely common to do on computers even though nobody else had actually done the thing that way in a decade or more). It seems like Will and others have finally drip-fed Brad newer technologies and ideas that have broken him out of this mindset. As an example, he was extremely stubborn about replacing his pair of 15+ year old CCFL tech monitors because he didn't see why new, bigger monitors would be beneficial (CCFL monitors use significantly more energy compared to modern LED monitors. Brad's monitors were also tiny by standards of even 10 years ago) then when he finally did replace them he had a Dan-like moment of realization how much better the tech has become. Now Brad's way into a bunch of modern tech stuff (home automation/servers and open-source software) mostly just for fun more than anything.

Patrick going out of his way to scare himself playing horror gaoes by himself come to mind.

Would Drew getting his pilot's license count?

@ben_h: I don't think just trying something and getting way into it is very Dan specific, not only because it happened a bunch before Dan joined the site but because it's pretty common. I think what's Dan specific is trying something that you think/know is stupid and then getting way into it. Bonus points if you were absolutely confident you'd hate it.

I do think that avoiding something and remaining willfully ignorant about it only to find out that you like it when you try it fits, so I'll give the DBZ stuff credit there. And Brad's behavior sounds pretty Danish when it comes to tech, so I think that also works.

@chamurai: Intentionally scaring yourself with horror is pretty common and to me doesn't feel super Dan-like because he doesn't seek out unpleasant experiences, just odd ones. It's a different flavor of thing. I also think Drew getting his pilot's license was just pursuing something that he was interested in. The same with Vinny and the radio stuff. What makes Dan unique is that he writes stuff off and THEN gets super into it, and sometimes gets super into stuff that everyone else agrees is bad. So Mitch complaining about a game for hours and THEN subsequently getting super into it to the point where he's the 5th best speedrunner in the world is what fits for me. It's the combination of getting into something niche that everyone else agrees sucks (the game, not speedrunning) AND the complete 180 that does it for me.

@bigsocrates: Ahh, right, I see the difference. Yeah, kinda hard to "Out-Dan" Dan.

So... he cracked the top-five on speedrun.com. AND OF COURSE THAT'S HIS PROFILE PICTURE!

@bigsocrates: I really appreciate how serious you are with these classifications.

Anyway, I love this and cannot get over how stupid it is.

I really hope Dan didn't mess up his hands too much trying to speed run Punch Out!! He certainly did encourage Mikey to try to get a record at this terrible-ass game lol. But Dan's still gotta take the cake for all the Dan things that have been done around here.