MePhone4

MePhone4, labeled The Host, is a major character of Inanimate Insanity, Inanimate Insanity II and Inanimate Insanity Invitational. He is voiced by Mark Katz.

Personality
As the host of Inanimate Insanity, MePhone4's primary goal is to make his show as entertaining as possible, for himself and the viewers. He is dedicated to good showmanship and raising the stakes of the game, often in favor of producing the most exciting competition possible. This often means the contestants get the short end of the stick, as MePhone4 comes up with challenges that range from mundane to relatively normal to disgusting to extremely dangerous.

MePhone 4 was invented by Steve Cobs, though he differs from other Meeple products in key ways. He has "highly-advanced emotion emulator," meaning that he is able to feel emotions strongly. When in good spirits, MePhone4 is very childlike and becomes excited by the drama of the competition. He enjoys sugary junk food, most notably cookies, and has such a fondness for eating food that he describes himself as a "fat slob." He enjoys celebrating various holidays and anniversaries within the show (for example, by starting Season 2 exactly two years after the first episode of Season 1 aired). His love of competition and showmanship stems from watching reality TV back at Meeple Headquarters, which he enjoyed instead of doing tasks assigned to him by Cobs, causing a rift in their relationship.

Although he does seem to enjoy celebrating contestants' victories in challenge and offering them rewards at elimination, MePhone4 generally shows little regard for the contestants' well-being. This is exemplified by the fact that he locks the eliminated contestants in a cage in Season 1, causing several contestants severe duress) and in a closet in OJ's hotel in Season 2. Though his negligence plays a role in the various problems on the show, it is worth mentioning that he is bias and appears to like certain contestants less than others. He generally judges contests fairly, but tends to make shrewd comments belying this bias during eliminations. The most material effect this has on the show was when he locked Bow in a box in part because she personally annoyed him. This caused her to go insane, which among other things led to Taco losing and Bow's death. It is also evident in the way he negatively treats Toilet, his assistant, whom he looks at as an unhelpful menace with little regard to his emotional well-being.

MePhone4 has a very "out of sight, out of mind" mentality and sweeps his problems under the rug, whether it pertains to the competition or to his past, as he would much rather forget his problems instead of dealing with them head-on. This mentality also affects how MePhone4 deals with his past endeavors. He goes to great lengths to avoid confrontation with his past memories of Cobs and Meeple by physically removing them from his system within a flashback in "Mine Your Own Business", and considers removing them a second time in "Hatching the Plan" shortly after he regains his memories.

Appearance
MePhone4 is a black rectangular phone with a silver casing surrounding his sides. On one side, he has two volume buttons and a ringer switch, and on his top is a power button. He has a large screen on his front which has a glowing blue wallpaper. He has two cameras, one on his front and back, as well as a receiver above his screen, and a home button below it. On his back is a large Meeple logo.

Abilities

 * MeLife: MePhone4 can bring back any dead contestant (if he wants to) by simply clicking on a picture of them. However, it can only be performed if he has received a notification telling him to recover them.
 * Object Generation: Using an app, MePhone4 can make any object appear, such as a tree. He used this to create the challenges for "Mazed and Confused", "Kick the Bucket", and "Alternate Reality Show". However, if he is glitched enough, this can occur accidentally alongside recovery, as seen in "Hatching the Plan".

Coverage
Click here to view the coverage of MePhone4.

Voices
In "The Crappy Cliff", MePhone4 is played by Christian Potenza, who is best known for his role as Chris McLean in Total Drama Island. However, after a change in voice actors, MePhone4's is voiced by Mark Katz in "A Lemony Lesson" and onward.

The voice change was given an official canon explanation in "Crappy Anniversary", it's revealed that a MeTunes update changed his voice after the first episode. MePhone can sometimes, with difficulty or major updates, switch back to his original voice

Trivia

 * MePhone4 is the first character to speak in the series, not including "The Stupid Trailer".
 * MePhone4's design is based off the real life iPhone4.
 * However, over time MePhone4's design has slightly differed from an iPhone4, with the most significant change within Inanimate Insanity Invitational.
 * MePhone4 has hosted every episode of the series, except:
 * "4Seeing The Future", where he was shot and killed by a gun and replaced by MePhone4S for a brief amount of time.
 * "Everything's A-OJ", where he was arrested and imprisoned and Judge Gavel let OJ be the new host.
 * "Theft and Battery", where he malfunctioned, rendering him unconscious, leading to MePad taking over hosting for most of the episode.
 * "Mine Your Own Business", where he was shut down for the majority of the episode and MePad again stepped in.
 * MePhone4 and his original voice actor's other character, Chris McLean, are sometimes noted for their similarity, because they are both blue-colored hosts who care more about their reality shows than about their contestants' well-being.
 * MePhone4 is in the thumbnail of the first episode of every season. He additionally will hold up fingers depending on what season it is.
 * According to a Behind The Scenes video with Justin Chapman, an early unused idea was for MePhone4 to have a different voice in every episode, but this was dropped.
 * The only character other than himself who has eaten his cookies is OJ, who has said they taste awful.
 * Besides his enthusiasm for reality TV, MePhone 4 has been shown to be very excited about holidays.
 * MePhone4 has occasionally celebrated holidays on the incorrect date, such as when he celebrates Halloween several months late in "Let Er' R.I.P.". Taylor Grodin has justified this by stating "his internal clock might be a bit off."
 * He hates Paintbrush's tree in The Snowdown because it shows "commercialism" instead of what he deems to be the Christmas spirit.
 * It is possible that he hates commercialism because of Meeple's business practices, his reason being that they put out new products as much as possible so more people buy their merchandise; this leads to inventions such as MePhone4 being rendered obsolete.
 * MePhone4 is revealed to be one year old in "4Seeing The Future", though it is not clear how old he was before removing his memories, nor how much time has passed since then.