Bwaaang

Well, the Wil Wheaton Project is only three episodes old, and they’ve already ripped off Cracked.com.

Episode three included a bit about the overuse of the “Bwaaang” sound effect, which seemed pretty familiar to me. Turns out that’s because it had been done before, as part of Cracked’s “5 Bizarrely Specific Ways Every Movie Trailer Looks the Same“. The bit was just over halfway through “Project”, and the corresponding section of the Cracked video starts at 5:00, referring to the Bwaaang sound as “explosiondrums” and “drumsplosions”.

The segment is linked from the Project home page, but I’m told it’s currently unavailable. This may well be because I’m not in the USA, and the clip hasn’t been ported to Youtube (yet) so you may be forced to take my word for it.

Anyhow, this can’t be considered a good thing. To be pulling 5-month-old content from Cracked this early in the game doesn’t bode well. I don’t expect this kind of show to be sidesplittingly hilarious in anything more than very brief bursts, but plagiarism’s a pretty solid buzz kill.