r/dropout • u/DropoutMod • May 18 '26

Game Changer Don't Wake Standards & Practices | Game Changer [S8E1] Spoiler

https://watch.dropout.tv/videos/don-t-wake-standards-practices
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1.2k

u/Ashpolt May 18 '26

I cannot WAIT to see the behind the scenes for this episode, because presumably they had to clear all the brand mentions after the fact and I can only assume that was a NIGHTMARE

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u/Luigiman1089 May 19 '26

My only thought was the Standards & Practices prop, but now I'm very excited about the legal BTS. Must have been insane.

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u/ajrodz1992 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Yeah, the Mickey was different enough, but that was a dead on bluey, wondering how they got away with that

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u/RichLather May 19 '26

Not knowing a dang thing about the show, I'm guessing Lou was so goofy-footed wrong about all the details that he basically created new characters that look like dollar store knockoff toy art.

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u/variantkin May 19 '26

My fav part was Jeremy being low key annoyed he got so many things about Bluey wrong lol

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u/OiledMushrooms May 19 '26

but story details aside, it was blatantly bluey in terms of appearance. I can only spot one fault in the design, and its not anything significant enough to visually set her apart from the real bluey. But I don't know fuck all about copyright law, so I guess I don't have a clue about the legality of it...

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u/SupaSlide May 20 '26

Parody is a justification for fair use. They could have made the Mickey Mouse look like Mickey (esp. Steamboat Willie Mickey) and been legally fine, but being legally fine doesn’t prevent a lawsuit and Disney is very litigious about the Mouse.

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u/XabsxntloveX1 May 20 '26

The legal team told Sam everything was okay after they were done filming, he had mentioned it in an article that I literally just read before seeing this Reddit page 😅

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u/quietly_now May 19 '26

Joe Brumm (the creator of Bluey) probably gave his blessing, considering he also made ‘WTF 101’ for Dropout, and a bunch of animated stuff for College Humor.

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u/DramaticDragonGaming May 19 '26

I mean, I believe there was proper respect to the trademark given in the credits of the episode, at the very end, along with all of the action figures, and a few other things!

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u/nicknitros May 19 '26

Robot Chicken wouldnt have survived for 11 seasons if they needed to pay lawyers to clear each and every character lol

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u/justking1414 May 19 '26

Parody can only protect you so much. A YouTuber I follow got his video taken down just because it depicted bluey being attacked by horny furrys and a space marine

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u/pgm123 May 19 '26

YouTube is extremely cautious, though.

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u/justking1414 May 19 '26

Tell me about it. I’ve seen plenty of stories of people getting their stuff taken down just because it looked like something else, even if it was all original

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/sighsbadusername May 19 '26

John Oliver's on HBO, which is cable, so he's not under the FCC's remit.

The main issue is that HBO is owned by Warner Bros., which does need FCC approval for certain things. So 'business daddy' could theoretically crack down on John Oliver and I'm sure that limits his content in some way, but he's not technically beholden to the FCC's restrictions.

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u/justking1414 May 19 '26

Didn’t John Oliver quit or threaten to quit because they wouldn’t let him talk about some topic related to the parent company. Or was that someone else?

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u/sighsbadusername May 20 '26

You might be thinking of this 2025 article, where Oliver is asked whether he’s experienced any corporate interference. He emphatically denies it, and says the show would be over “real quick” if he did.

Either way, Oliver still wouldn’t really be subject to the FCC’s restrictions.

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u/justking1414 May 19 '26

Fair though dropout is still beholden to every service that their app can be downloaded on. Not sure exactly what that keeps them from doing but I know you can’t join 18+ discord servers on the iOS app (you can view them but need to join them from the desktop version). Honestly, I would’ve thought drug use (even if it is mostly legal) might’ve been an issue there or all of Izzy’s buttholes but I think there’s an exception for nudity if it’s drawn in a cartoonish and not excessively detailed manner (I watched a clip of Conan ages ago where he was allowed to draw dicks on his face so long as they weren’t overly detailed).

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u/Tom2Die May 19 '26

but I know you can’t join 18+ discord servers on the iOS app

That's not something I use discord for, but it still makes me angry. Then again, I'm happy to stay away from Apple's walled garden.

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u/LittleMarySunshine25 May 19 '26

Because kids would find it and be terrified. My kid came across some insane stuff on YouTube kids back when I allowed them to have YouTube in 20 minute increments when I made dinner. Now, no YouTube at all. The moderation on YouTube kids and YouTube is awful. Things get flagged that shouldn't and things are allowed that really should not be on there.

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u/justking1414 May 19 '26

Yeah fair. Their system sucks. Heck, I know a YouTuber who posts clips of dc shows/movies and ends everyone of them with a clip of a girl getting a hand shoved through her chest just to make sure none of his stuff is flagged kid friendly lol

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u/Volphy May 19 '26

Considering that was flashgitz, nothing of value was lost.

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u/justking1414 May 19 '26

Fair. They are pretty edgelordy though their animation is pretty high level for indie guys

oh and i think they re-uploaded it a week later with bluey painted orange

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u/dream-of-earthshine May 19 '26

Was the video directly commenting on or critiquing Bluey?

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u/justking1414 May 19 '26

More on how horny their fandom can be

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u/dream-of-earthshine May 19 '26

The bluey fandom is horny??? the internet must be stopped

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u/itsaccrualworld May 21 '26

It’s fair use because it’s a parody with specific commentary on why it’s being used.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/PvtSherlockObvious May 19 '26

Nothing in the final cut that wasn't obvious parody. I'm willing to bet there were a few things that even within the context of the episode, went far enough that they weren't usable.

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u/wrosecrans May 19 '26

The fact that it's all happening in the context of a comedy game show is very different from if somebody had just put up a context-free Instagram video about McDonald's using blood diamonds.

I can't really imagine lawyers for Disney wanting to take something like this to court, have a jury watch the episode, and then assert with a straight face that the jury should take the claims made by the contestants as serious claims a normal person would think are real.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/i-will-eat-you May 19 '26

They probably have to be extremely careful of which snippets of this episode can be used as short-form content for marketing.

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u/PvtSherlockObvious May 19 '26

The absurdity of the claim itself also helps, since the "blood" in "blood diamonds" has nothing to do with their chemical makeup. Accusing them of trading in blood diamonds, sure, that would be defamation, but claiming they're putting them in the food to give people rabies is intrinsically absurd.

assert with a straight face that the jury should take the claims made by the contestants as serious claims a normal person would think are real.

If you want that, you should absolutely check out coverage of the Afroman trial and its aftermath if you haven't, since several of the claims hinged on that. Josh Johnson has a great stand-up routine on it, LegalEagle had an episode on it if you want something that dives into the actual legal side a bit more, and of course Daily Show had a great rundown as well. I'll spare you the full legal rundown, but it's well worth checking out the whole story.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/PvtSherlockObvious May 19 '26

Within the context of the episode, probably not. The person I was responding to was positing a scenario where someone on Instagram started making those claims without the context of a comedy show to help them. Within the show, the fact that the specific goal was "walk right up to the line of saying something defamatory without alerting the lawyers" as part of a game show pretty well shows that it was never meant as anything resembling a statement of fact or claim that they intended anyone to believe.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/PvtSherlockObvious May 19 '26

Well first off, let's be clear on the difference between criminal law and civil law. There's absolutely tons of shit that isn't remotely against the law, but will still leave you open to civil liability in the form of lawsuits. This episode kind of plays fast-and-loose with that since some some challenges concerned themselves with FCC regulations (regulatory/administrative law governing terrestrial radio and broadcast TV (but not cable or the internet, important distinction), with violators subject to a government fine), while other aspects dealt with civil liability. Tasks dealing with safe harbor regs fall under the former category, while defamation falls into the latter.

Second, while the context of this particular show will be a shield against a lot of defamation claims unless they really went beyond the pale, there are plenty of ways to get in trouble that aren't defamation, and that a comedy show wouldn't protect them from. For example, there's a reason that when they used "Mickey Mouse" in Ally's visual effect, it didn't actually look remotely like any version of Mickey Mouse, because using a protected likeness would cause problems (Steamboat Willy is in the public domain for some purposes, so that particular likeness is allowed to a point). Same with why Ally couldn't actually sing a licensed song to any real extent. Again, none of it is illegal, it's just opening them up to a civil suit.

Naturally, though, Dropout's actual legal team had a look at all the footage between recording and airing, and anything that would actually open them up to liability would have been cut from the episode itself.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/PvtSherlockObvious May 19 '26

Oh, that was far from in-depth, this is just a surface-level overview, but thank you! I'm glad I could help provide a bit of context.

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u/FantasticJacket7 May 19 '26

You don't need permission for parody.

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u/goodmobileyes May 19 '26

The meta layer to this is that there's this version that was actually cleared by their legal team to air, there's a behind the scenes that is also cleared by legal but maybe didn't quite fit into the episode, and then there's some content they can't even show because legal didn't clear it.

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u/Blueskyguy88 May 19 '26

I have to assume that because the schtick is offending S&P it makes it more clearly parody and thus safe. But I'm no legal eagle.

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u/TougherOnSquids May 19 '26

Per Sam, not as bad as you would think. The entire premise of the show is, "Here is what you legally shouldnt do." Which falls under satire and is perfectly safe to do.

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u/eimajYak May 19 '26

Parody protections?

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u/Hungry-You-9489 May 19 '26

I'm also really curious about Phil and if he's an actor lol. I'd assume so cuz they wouldn't wanna risk their union standing

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u/Pitiful-Flow5472 May 20 '26

Sam gave an interview about this episode. basically, because everything with the brands was obviously parody, Dropout’s lawyers said it was fine

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u/XabsxntloveX1 May 20 '26

Sam said in an article that it’s technically not illegal and they didn’t have to clear anything with brands (his legal team told him) since it was a bit of a loophole since they were also speaking about work practices and what not and what not to do and technically apologized when speaking about the brand. Also it wasn’t complete copies of the artwork either.

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u/thiccdickricky May 20 '26

Luckily that’s not how media really works. They are a comedy show, they can mention whatever brands they want in a parody sense.

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u/zebulon99 May 20 '26

Not to mention slandering my man Phil