| Character | Gallery | Relationships | Coverage |
| “ |
Greetings and Salutations! I am your Host, MePhone4! |
” |
| —The Crappy Cliff | ||
MePhone4, labeled The Host, is the main host and the protagonist of the Inanimate Insanity series and movie. He is voiced by Mark Katz.
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.
Changes[]
Debut
- His asset is an image of an iPhone4 with a Windows 7 wallpaper[1].
II1 16-II2 9
- He now uses a custom asset.
- He is slightly taller.
- His wallpaper is slightly colored teal.
II2 10-12
- The small black border between his screen, his shine, and his outline has been removed.
- His receiver, his camera, and his home button are now shinier.
II2 13-14
- The small black border between his shine and his outline is back.
- The shine on his home button and receiver have been adjusted.
II2 15-18 (Normal)
- He is slightly lighter in color.
- The pattern on his wallpaper has changed slightly.
- His home button is lighter.
II2 15-18 (Cracked)
- His screen is now cracked due to being punched.
- His asset and wallpaper are darker.
- The rim of his asset is much less thick.
III
- He is now much more cartoony, to fit the rest of the style of Inanimate Insanity Invitational.
- His shine is now blue.
- He now has an additional outline, along with his silver outline, which is now thicker.
- His receiver is now wider.
- He is slightly shorter.
- His silent mode switch has been removed.
- The camera, flashlight, along with the text on his back has been removed, leaving only his Meeple logo.
Personality[]
MePhone4 is generally described as an anxious, insecure, yet competitive and upbeat person. He enjoys his job, as when he's reminded the show can't go on forever, and The Floor comments on how fast the game is going by, he is visibly anxious. He also planned to make a 4th season to continue the show.[2] He enjoys sugary junk food, most notably cookies, and has such a fondness for eating food that he describes himself as a "fat slob." When in good spirits, MePhone4 is very childlike and becomes excited by the drama of the competition.
MePhone4 generally shows little regard for the contestants' well being.[3] Though his negligence plays a role in the various problems on the show, it is worth mentioning that he is biased and appears to like certain contestants less than others, and 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, as he goes to great lengths to avoid confrontation with his past memories of Cobs and Meeple by physically removing them from his system.[4] He even briefly considers removing them a second time[5] shortly after he regains his memories.
Backstory[]
MePhone4 was invented by Steve Cobs, though he differs from any other Meeple products in key ways. He has a "highly-advanced emotion emulator," meaning that he is able to feel emotions strongly like any other object might. 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, which caused a rift in their relationship.
Eventually, he left Meeple, taking MePad with him and hiding him in Gemory Cave before wiping his memories in the form of Gemories. At some point afterwards, MePhone subconsciously created the contestants for the first two seasons of Inanimate Insanity and created the show itself.
Abilities[]
- MeLife (Health Manipulation): 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. He lost this ability in "Objects in Mirror" after the lost shimmer egg was removed from his system.
- Generation of...
- ...inanimate objects: 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".
- ...portals: MePhone4 can also create portals. He is seen creating a portal and teleporting with it in "You Can't Do This Forever".
- ...living objects: In "The Reality of the Situation", it became known that MePhone4 created all the contestants in all three seasons of his show (with the possible exceptions of Bow, Dough, and Bot.)
- Generation of...
Coverage[]
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 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's design is based on the real life iPhone4. However, his design has deviated from this slightly, with the latest and most significant change being within Inanimate Insanity Invitational.
- MePhone4 looks identical to MePhone4S, except the slight difference on the antenna bands on the phone.
- MePhone4 is the first character to speak in the series, not including "The Stupid Trailer".
- MePhone4 is the only character to be revived in the body of another MePhone.
- 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, along with Toilet, stepped in.
- "Truth or Flare", where Taco took over hosting to enact her plan against the contestants, using MePad as leverage.
- 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, MePhone4 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."[6]
- 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. This also implies his birthday is June 24th, the release date of the iPhone 4.
- MePhone4 was assembled in New York, and was designed by Meeple on Inanimate Planet, with his ID codes being Model:AK418 JDJ 6969 FCC ID: INA-NIMATE IC: INSA-NITYOO. All of this is on the back of him below the meeple logo.
- MePhone4 and MePhone4S are so far the only Meeple devices confirmed to be familially related outside of the fact that they were built by the same person.
- This was confirmed in a tweet by Brian Koch in a response to a fan question about whether or not the two were related.
- In "Pesty Besties", MePhone4 claims that the night before the challenge, he passed out eating the Mile High Pies from Best Served Cold. This reveals that, despite being a machine, MePhone4 is able to pass out. It is unknown if other Meeple products can do the same.
- In "Spring on the Breakfast!" during the tie-breaker, MePhone4 explicitly admitted that he is unable to sleep without the shining lights he generated. Yang commented calling him a Nightlight-baby.
- MePhone4 misspelt the word "Sunday" in a tweet on the official Inanimate Insanity Twitter account, and he also has misspelled his own name on Springy's contract in "Spring on the Breakfast!". This has lead some fans to assume he is dyslexic.
- In "A Jury of Your Fears", MePhone4 expresses remorse over a loss in the first two seasons, implying he still remembers his past co-hosts.
- MePhone4 has a 30-pin charging port, which is shown in "Theft and Battery". However, in "A Jury of Your Fears", he was connected to what appeared to be a USB-C or lightning stick.
- He is the direct creator of all of the contestants from Seasons 1-3, besides Bot and possibly Bow and Dough.
- However, he is not considered to be the "father" of them, according to Brian Koch.[7]
- He was one of the only characters remaining at the end of "Through No Choice of Your Own".
- He is revealed to be left handed as of "Through No Choice of Your Own".
- MePhone4's design is similar to MePhone3GS the previous generation MePhone that Steve Cobs created.
- MePhone4's favorite Pixar movie would be Toy Story.[8]
Deaths[]
Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2): Short-Circuited after falling off and into the bottom of the Crappy Cliff.
References[]
- ↑ https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/idoxik/the_windows_7_beta_backgrounds_are_still_good/
- ↑ Revealed in A Jury of Your Fears.
- ↑ Idiotic Island
- ↑ Revealed in Mine Your Own Business.
- ↑ Revealed in Hatching the Plan.
- ↑ https://thetgrodzblog.tumblr.com/post/178703800526/why-did-mephone-did-a-halloween-episode-in-season
- ↑ https://x.com/Thisisntflying/status/1848574301923926394?t=QX4WvX8pN6vQ_JySfijv-g&s=19
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2qd8F-TU0E
Gallery
Click here to view the gallery.