About

"That's Just a Theory, A Game Theory" is a catchphrase uttered by Matthew "MatPat" Patrick at the end of his Game Theory YouTube series videos. Fans of the series use the phrase to parody and joke about the videos.

Origin

On April 25th, 2011, the Game Theorists published their second video, "Game Theory: Super Mario, Pipe Dreams." At the end of the video, the narrator says, "But that's just a theory, a game theory. Thanks for watching!" This is the first usage of the phrase. Within 10 years, the video received more than 2.6 million views.

Spread

The Game Theorists continued to use the phrase in subsequent videos. For example, two months later, they included the phrase at the end of the video "Game Theory: Batman: Arkham Asylum, Diagnosing Arkham," which received more than 2.8 million views in less than 10 years (shown below, left).

In the years that followed, fans of the series began using the phrase to highlight theories of their own, both ironic and sincere. On May 9th, 2015, for example, Twitter^[1] user @AlwaysNintendo tweeted the phrase with a diagram comparing the video games Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy and Splatoon (shown below, right).

On May 29th, 2018, Urban Dictionary ^[2] user Hobox defined the phrase as "but that's just a theory…A Game Theory! Thanks for watching" (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References