Crainer is one of the three villainous protagonists of the black comedy/political drama Minecraft Roleplay series, Squid Island, the fifth major entry in the Robust Troll Series. He is played by the YouTuber MrCrainer, being a fictionalized version of him. He plays Minecraft in the series with his two friends, Slogo and Jelly, often trolling them or getting trolled by them.
His Evil Ranking[]
His Villainous Deeds[]
General[]
- Despite being the nicest and most "innocent" of his three friends, Crainer still does lots of villainous things and has a fair number of nasty qualities, such as hypocrisy, fanaticism, dishonour, immaturity, pettiness, and asininity.
- While he did start off as a scapegoat due to receiving a lot of disproportionate abuse, especially from Slogo, he eventually becomes crueler and crueler throughout the series, to the point where the punishments he receives are no longer disproportionate.
- He consistently engaged in mischievous and annoying behaviour in group episodes, such as pushing his friends off of ledges or setting fire to their properties.
- He is quite a hypocrite (though not as much as Slogo). For example, he claims to love all animals, but not only shows little to no empathy for the animals Slogo's torturing to death, but had no problems killing three of Jelly's innocent pets to punish him for killing just one of his pets. He also forgets / ignores the Grove's motto of "Crazy, not evil".
- Although he created a tree sanctuary due to his love for nature, he was willing to chop down the top layer of it just so his billboard would have a better view.
- He also says he would prefer to leave pets out of his beefs with others, but this is completely hypocritical because he was the first one to drag a pet into a beef (what he did with Beenny).
- He often shows fanatic behaviour, putting Slogo on a pedestal and doing anything he says, something which Jelly repeatedly calls him out on. To make this even worse, he continues being subservient to Slogo even when he treats him like dirt.
- In general, Crainer prefers to ally with Slogo despite his repeated antisocial behaviours, rather than with Jelly, who despite all his flaws, is a lesser evil compared to Slogo.
- While he seems to be honourable at the beginning of the series, such as forgiving Jelly after winning their beef, he loses this redeeming quality as the series goes on. The first time he showcases that he's a sore loser is when he loses his second beef with Jelly, and then traps his pet in a lava tower out of petty spite.
- While he oftentimes does stupid and careless things (for example, he does a troll on Slogo that ends up hurting him more, signed a contract with him that was completely in favour of Slogo and was generally incompetent as a leader), he is still capable of causing a lot of damage if given the right tools.
- While he showed loyalty to the King Glowey lineage at first, he eventually betrayed King Glowey III by calling him an imposter and renaming him "King Dumb Dumb", thus subverting his previous loyalties too.
- This is despite Slogo repeatedly reminding him that their narrative is that King Glowey III is a confused animal being abused by Jelly.
- He worships and seeks freedom to do as he pleases, which is why he is often at odds with the laws in Squid Island. In fact, he sometimes shows a hidden bloodthirsty nature, such as being eager to insult and mock Jelly during the Revolutionary Era.
- He is sometimes a Karma Houdini who escapes punishment for his crimes, such as the infamous Destruction of Squid Island.
- He used clickbait in his video titles occasionally, such as making it look like he won the second gladiator match between him and Jelly even though he lost.
- He occasionally sexually harasses Jelly, for example by pretending to kiss him, although this is not particularly taken seriously by either him or Jelly, showing that it's just a joke.
- Although he cared about nature in Season 1, he seems to have abandoned this care by the time of Season 2, instead focusing on piracy as being his "theme".
- Similarly, while he said that "villagers are people too", he overall cares about them extremely superficially, and has no real problem allowing them to be mistreated.
- Throughout Squid Island Season 2, he acts very antagonistically, annoying both Jelly and Slogo, and then excusing his actions while claiming that he's just doing what a pirate would do.
- While he says he's got pyromaniac tendencies in his system, he clearly doesn't have moral agency issues and is just sadistically trigger-happy at the thought of setting fires.
Season One[]
Foundational Era[]
- Prior to the beginning of the show, he abandoned Jelly and Slogo, and was eventually forced to ask for their forgiveness before he could join up with them again.
- He and Jelly burned a baby villager alive in Episode 4, although this seems to have been Early-Installment-Weirdness.
- He submerged Jelly's pyramid entirely with sand, though this was payback for Jelly stealing his gift to Slogo, so it's justified.
Regal Era[]
- In a rather shocking moment, he and Slogo (who Crainer had contracted to help him) completely ransacked and destroyed Jelly's pyramid and built a castle for Crainer in its place. These events severely impacted Jelly, causing him to almost cry and be traumatised. This was also completely unprovoked, as Crainer and Jelly had settled all their beef beforehand.
- He even sarcastically told Jelly that he could have his terrible underwater house instead, even though Crainer had had to move out of the house specifically because it wasn't on Squid Island.
- The destruction of his pyramid would traumatise Jelly, almost causing him to cry, and making him have a miserable time in the next episode, making him want to leave the series.
- This troll would also have overarching effects on the rest of the series, as it brought about the concept of laws to prevent trolls from being too severe, and Jelly was implied to favour laws so much (and possibly be a dictator) because it would prevent such a thing from happening to him again.
Legal Era[]
- Upon becoming Mayor, he burns down the King Glowey statue that Jelly spent a long time making because it was "ugly" (to be fair to Crainer, it actually was kind of ugly).
- He makes Law 3, which forces Jelly to move out of his floating Squid Island house, and back to the Island. However, this was payback for Jelly's Law 2, which had forced Crainer to demolish some of his house.
Broken Era[]
- He fills Slogo's observatory with water and fish as a payback for his sadistic trolls, although this was so ineffectual that it barely even counts as a crime.
- He helped in murdering one of the villagers who escaped the slums built by Jelly in Squid City, although on his orders.
- After discovering that Slogo has created New Squid Island, he moves in while bringing an inordinate amount of livestock with him, which end up flooding the entire island. He ostensibly did this to help the island, but really as a prank on Slogo.
- Despite seeing proof that Slogo is a remorseless tyrant who has destroyed his items and claimed his property as his own, Crainer still served as Slogo's enforcer and murdered Jelly on his behalf several times. Even after Slogo killed his pet dogs in cold blood, Crainer still wasn't entirely convinced that he shouldn't be subservient to him.
District Era[]
- He killed King Glowey II with an axe by accident, though he did show remorse for doing this.
- He burned down Jelly's forest after he blew up some of his property in revenge for the above-mentioned incident, even though it was both Jelly and Slogo who had done it together. This was justified, although he should also have held a grudge against Slogo instead of only Jelly.
- He was extremely mischievous while the trio were trying to build a marketplace, causing problems throughout the episode, which culminated in him blowing up Jelly's shop.
- After Jelly won fair-and-square in their second gladiator match, Crainer was sore about losing his land to him, so he trapped Jelly's pet Beenny in his lava tower in order to make him feel panicked. This eventually led to Beenny's death.
- He claims he did this because Jelly was cruel to leave Beenny tied up in the middle of nowhere, but it's very clear he didn't actually care about Beenny's safety, considering that he trapped him in lava as a prank.
- While Crainer did help to try and save Beenny, it's not redeeming because he was laughing at Jelly's suffering the entire time.
- When Beenny died, Crainer was laughing about the situation even more, which is an awful thing to do.
- While being forced to serve fish in his Restaurant No-Fish, even being made to eat the fish himself, and then being sent to prison after rebelling is terrible (considering that Crainer was a carnitarian), Crainer arguably deserved this for being stupid enough to sign a very dubious contract with Slogo, something that Jelly even points out.
- He blew up Slogo's "meat" factory, attacked Jelly's land with fire, water and TNT, and set fire to his Beenny statue to get revenge on him for making him eat Floppy. While this is mostly justified, the fact that he faces no repercussions for his attacks on Squid City ultimately make him a Karma Houdini.
- While being traumatised by having been tricked into eating his own pet fish is truly terrible, sympathy for Crainer is limited because he indirectly caused and then laughed at Beenny's death, which caused the retribution from Jelly in the first place.
Industrial Era[]
- He dumped garbage into a lake (where lots of fish were) and then pretended to clean it up as if he was very concerned about it.
- He petitioned President Slogo to let him have his land back under the pretense that he would build his company on it, even though Jelly had claimed it completely fair-and-square. He then "bought" the land "legally" from Jelly for only a piece of steak and humiliated him in the process.
- After earning the land back, Crainer completely neglected to build anything useful for his company on it and just built his new house on it instead (that he named his 'headquarters' in a paltry attempt to make it look useful), which infuriated Slogo when he found out. This also shows he never took his promise to Slogo seriously.
Shattered Era[]
- Although he was severely punished by President Slogo and Jelly (by being executed with anvils and having his items taken), under the pretense of forgetting to say his pledge (the real reason was to punish him for his recent actions) he ultimately deserved the punishment for stealing Jelly's land previously.
- He pranked Slogo by scattering the product that he had ordered from his company (boats) all over his land instead of placing it in chests.
- Even worse, he scammed Slogo because he had only made 300 boats instead of 1000 and didn't even bother to count them up.
- In order to win the third presidential election, Crainer bribed Slogo to endorse his presidential campaign, promising to let him have Bork Island back with no consequences, which is blatantly unethical.
- He punished Jelly for blowing up the vault by placing him in Slogo's prison. While Jelly did deserve punishment for blowing up the vault, Crainer didn't acknowledge how cruel and sadistic Slogo's designed punishment for Jelly was, and neither did he acknowledge that Jelly had some good points about Slogo's previous selfish behaviour.
- He ordered Jelly to rename his company Jelly Inc. to Beeny Co. so that it would match the names of the other companies of the island, despite Jelly Inc. sounding much better than Beenny Co.
- To get his revenge on Slogo, Crainer created the concept of the Citizen of the Week, appointed Jelly as it, and spent the entire episode praising him to make Slogo feel bad. He then collaborated with Jelly to create a law that would endanger Slogo's company Bork Co. Although the law seemed benevolent at first, it was not done with good intentions behind it, rather to get revenge on Slogo. He also assigned Slogo a task to build a Crainer statue on top of Bork Co Headquarters, almost a perfect mirror for when Slogo assigned a similar selfish task to Jelly.
- That said, this was all pretty justified as Slogo really had gone without consequences for too long.
- Crainer, despite being the President, abandoned Squid Island because he was tired of all the laws and wanted freedom. He even nominated Jelly to be the next President instead of letting him be elected, which ended up causing a constitutional crisis.
- This wasn't an accident either, as Crainer confirmed that he deliberately did this because he knew it would cause chaos.
Revolutionary Era[]
- He believed Slogo instantly when he wrote to him about his conspiracy theory about Jelly being a manipulator who planned to take over Squid Island all along. He even wrote a letter apologising to Slogo for "having been tricked" by Jelly. This is another example of how Crainer refuses to use his own judgement and common sense, instead relying on somebody as unreliable as Slogo to think for him.
- While Crainer did find Jelly's changes to Squid Island to be proof of his dictatorship, he still didn't think over about how it made no sense that Jelly had been manipulating him to become dictator, even though appointing Jelly as President was a decision he took spontaneously and completely of his own will.
- Both he and Slogo refused to understand that although Jelly was impersonating King Glowey III, he wasn't doing it to grab power, but because he genuinely believed it was the best thing for Squid Island. Not to mention that both of them refused to compromise with Jelly even though he was being very reasonable, calling him a dictator even though he was trying to hold new elections.
- He accidentally shot and killed King Henward with an arrow, at which point him and Slogo decided to reveal that they never believed in King Henward being the real monarch of Squid Island, and it was all just a excuse for them to enforce the anarchistic philosophy of the Cult of Henward. This means that Crainer was lying to his audience about King Henward that entire time.
- He, together with Slogo, flooded Squid City and the walls of Squid Island with water, and let King Glowey III out of his cage. They then wrote a message to Jelly inviting him to join them even after what they had just done.
- Slogo and Crainer were trying to put Jelly in a dilemma here. Jelly had (according to them) been pretending that King Glowey had sapience and could pass on new laws and rules, when he was actually just seizing power through him. So even if King Glowey died because of their attack, it would've been "his own choice".
- Not to mention that, unlike Slogo, Crainer seemed to fully intend and want King Glowey to die, given that he titled his group video with Slogo as "Killing King Glowey in Our Minecraft World!"
- While he had his favourite pet HUMPy killed by Jelly and was then mocked by him saying that he must've never loved him, this doesn't make him a scapegoat, as he was intending to kill King Glowey and then say that it was his own choice. So having his favourite pet killed and also told it was his own choice is, in a way, poetic justice, even if it was a bit disproportionate.
- After learning of Slogo's Secret Grove, Crainer joined the Secret Grove too, kidnapping King Glowey and disrespectfully renaming him "King Dumb Dumb".
- Upon receiving TNT from Slogo under the pretense that he will blow up the walls around Squid Island, Crainer instead places it completely around the entire island and sets it off, killing off many important characters, such as HUMPy Too, GOAT, and three of Jelly's pets as well as destroying the entire island.
- Crainer even acknowledges that the animals are innocent, but decided to kill them anyway as revenge for HUMPy's death.
- While Crainer claims that he is bringing everything back to its roots, he never kills his own or Slogo's remaining pets, which should have been necessary if everything really was going to be touched equally.
Season Two[]
Reconstructional Era[]
- After destroying everything on Squid Island, Crainer delusionally claims that he has brought about the revolution by doing this.
- Despite loving his pets, Anton, Banton, Bonk and Tonk, Crainer abandons them on the destroyed Squid Island without even bothering to say goodbye.
- He behaved cruelly to turtles by saying he wants to make turtle helmets out of their skin, stomp on their babies or even throwing plastic straws in the ocean to make them uncomfortable. Even though Jelly was threatening his pet first, Crainer was still going too far by saying this.
Economic Era[]
- When Jelly asked for his and Slogo's help in gathering wood for his island, Crainer burnt some of it down to be annoying. While Jelly was being inconsiderate by asking his friends to help him without giving anything in return, it doesn't justify Crainer's actions.
- He says that he's going to get better diamond armour than Jelly's just to spite him.
- He cheekily implies that he took some of Slogo's old diorite and Jelly's jungle logs to complete his pirate watchtower, without asking.
- In the group video where him and Slogo were supposed to be helping Jelly out by helping him make his sanctuary for endangered animals, Crainer instead spent much of the time being a nuisance by trying to set the forest on fire even as Jelly begged him not to. This is even worse because he should have been helping if he really cared about nature.
- After receiving a lot of Flints-and-Steel from Slogo, Crainer proceeded to say that "it was the most beautiful thing he'd seen in his life".
- After Jelly's newborn pet Sniffer started molesting Slogo, Crainer showed no concern and merely laughed about it.
- After being contracted by Slogo to make Jelly feel unsafe in his own land, Crainer did a troll on him where he vandalised Jelly's island with lots of pirate flags (he stated his goal was to place so many flags that Jelly would still randomly find some in the corners of his base), TNT mines (which were deliberately made threatening to see but easy to avoid) and a couple of trapped chests (that actually had no trap connected to them at all). He even blew up some of the land himself on accident, and then on purpose.
- He claims to Slogo to be a treasure hunter, looter, raider and scammer-extraordinaire.
- He also claims to have killed many captains in his day, including Captain Blackbeard, and to have taken their wives and made them his, which has some rather disturbing implications.
- However, all of this is implied to just be fibbing.
- He also claims to have killed many captains in his day, including Captain Blackbeard, and to have taken their wives and made them his, which has some rather disturbing implications.
- He works together with Slogo to bring a Raid to an innocent village so they can 'save' it, killing many villagers indirectly in the process.
- And while he does say that it's kind of messed up that they're doing this, he still goes through with it anyway.
- He set up a treasure hunt for Slogo and Jelly, while trolling Jelly by giving him only mud bricks as his treasure. While Jelly had stolen his diamond armour, he had done it to get revenge on Crainer for his pirate troll, but Crainer talked about Jelly as if he had declared war on him unprovoked.
- Similarly, the treasure hunt he created for Slogo, although genuine, went through the extremely dangerous territory of the Nether, with some parts forcing you to parkour over a sea of lava.
- He says that he never would have robbed the Squid Bank, because "pirates have standards, and morals", but this is probably due to his working relationship with Slogo and not out of actual standards.
- When the IP was leaked, he decided to drown himself in honour for his sunken ship, but it wasn't played for any sympathy, rather comedy.
Why Doesn't He Stand Out?[]
- While he easily passes the baseline for causing the Destruction of Squid Island, he still slightly fails in Heinous Standards to Slogo. Slogo is simply a much more consistent evildoer throughout the story, as Crainer simply doesn't use his resources to their full extent most of the time, due to his brawn-over-brains approach (While Slogo does have more resources than Crainer, Crainer still fails the Heinous Standards even if we take resources into account).
- While Crainer's action of blowing up all of Squid Island is the most heinous accomplishment in the entire series, Crainer had very high resources at the time in the form of a very large amount of TNT (provided to him by Slogo). Slogo, on the other hand, caused the New Squid Island Uprising, which was arguably nearly as bad, while having had basically no resources at the time in comparison to Crainer.
- He shows care for a lot of people and animals.
- He is still friends with Jelly and Slogo, even if his relationship with Jelly is toxic and relationship with Slogo is fanatical. He shows care for Jelly on occasions, like apologising to him and gifting him diamonds, and is shown to be good friends with Slogo in the Revolutionary Era.
- He showed love and care for all his pets, like Anton, Banton, Floppy, HUMPy, Bonk, Tonk and Polly.
- He was clearly saddened by the death of his dogs and was overjoyed when Slogo resurrected them.
- He showed a lot of care for Floppy, building him his own large channel to swim in, and the death of Floppy made him swear vengeance on Jelly and Slogo.
- He also showed sympathy for the fish Slogo had captured for his "meat" factory, setting them all free into his channel and declaring it to be a sanctuary for them. It's possible he indirectly killed them during the Destruction of Squid Island, although he maybe thought the water would keep them safe.
- He loved riding around on HUMPy, requested Jelly to build a beautiful stable for him, showed sorrow after his death and chose to kill Jelly's pets after Jelly killed him as revenge.
- He also loved Polly and spent time building new and stylish cages for her. He was clearly heartbroken about her death.
- There are many moments in the series where he is treated with sympathy by the narrative.
- At the beginning of the series, he wants to reconnect with Jelly and Slogo, but is unsure if Slogo forgives him.
- He is badly psychologically abused by Slogo after being framed by him, to the point of starting to cry.
- He has his pet dogs killed in front of him, even if he kind of deserved it for being so fanatical.
- Even if he did deserve it to some extent, most still felt sorry for him when he was fed his own pet fish.
- He had his beautiful HUMPy statue ruined just because President Slogo was being a stickler for the rules.
- He was ready to admit that he wasn't quite ready for the responsibility of being President.
- His frustration with the overabundance of rules on Squid Island is treated with sympathy.
- The death of his pet HUMPy is also a sad moment, even if he did invite retribution from Jelly by trying to kill King Glowey III.
- He is Affably Evil, being jovial almost all of the time, even when doing villainous things. This is not a façade either, as the few times he loses his affability are when he becomes particularly dangerous or malicious.
- He shows remorse for a few of his crimes.
- He was apologetic to Jelly and Slogo after he abandoned them.
- He apologised to Jelly after the Sandcastle Incident, admitting it was in poor taste, and making it up to Jelly by giving him diamonds.
- He was clearly sorry for accidentally killing King Glowey II.
- He also apologised for burning Jelly's forest and gave him more diamonds. Arguably, he didn't even need to do that, as Jelly was equally in the wrong during that situation.
- He was horrified when he remembered that he forgot to say the pledge or give Slogo a gift during his solo episode.
- He apologised to his audience for forgetting to give himself a tax as President and promised to take his presidential duties more seriously. He even donated 25 diamonds to the vault to make up for it.
- He apologised to Slogo for "having been tricked" by Jelly and making him a dictator. While he was completely in the wrong about Jelly being one, his apology seemed to be genuine.
- He says it's messed up to bring the Raid to an innocent village, though he does it anyway.
- He has lots of comedic moments that make it difficult to treat him seriously, such as being treated as a punching bag by Jelly and Slogo during some group episodes, his obsession with boats and crafting tables of all things, and constantly making childish jokes.
- He does actual heroic things on some occasions, making him On & Off. These include gifting his friends diamonds on multiple occasions to bring back the peace, teaming up with Jelly against Slogo on New Squid Island and during his second presidency, permitting Jelly to have his land extension back and building sanctuaries for fish and trees. This would probably make him Inconsistently Admirable due to Squid Island's low admirable standards.
- He has some moral standards and lines he won't cross.
- He never became a dictator like Slogo or Jelly. He calls both of them out for this and even points this out to the audience as a reason they should elect him.
- While he was fanatically obeying Slogo on New Squid Island, he draws the line once he was told to kill his own pet dogs.
- He is disgusted with Slogo when he reveals he killed the King and finally stops obeying him.
- He was slightly uncomfortable with Slogo's rampant torture and murder of animals in his factory, and eventually him and Jelly protested against him for it.
- When Jelly suggests that him and Crainer should kill Bork to get revenge on Slogo, Crainer shuts the idea down due to finding it distasteful.
- He is disgusted with Jelly's "fetishes" of enjoying watching bees pollinate flowers, turtles lay eggs, and animals breed.
- He is appalled to learn what Slogo did with Timmy, saying that it's a whole new evil to mess with children.
- While his care for nature has been subverted by the time of Season 2, his care for fish in particular is still completely genuine, as he refuses to eat fish meat because of it.
- He has some insecurities that are played sympathetically by the narrative, for example his friends repeatedly mocking the Community Mine he made.
- He has several Pet-the-Dog moments in the series.
- He tips Jelly green dye in gratitude for the beautiful HUMPy statue he made. He also tries to hide the fact that Jelly's land extension is illegal from Slogo out of gratitude.
- He leaves a message on Jelly's land saying that he hopes he's okay and wants to see him back (this was when Jelly was in prison).
- He also tips Slogo in diamonds out of gratitude for the fantastic pirate flag he made.
- He is often a bit too incompetent and gullible to take seriously, such as getting hoodwinked by Slogo through the "meat" factory contract. This is a minor prevention, however, as he still can still cause a lot of damage when he gets serious.
- Unlike Slogo, he is a genuine extremist, as he truly believed that having so many laws made Squid Island a boring and depressing place to live in. This is why he wanted to go back to the old days with no laws. This is a very minor prevention, however, as he shows himself to be a fanatical terrorist who doesn't mind burning everything down to start over.
- He does show a small amount of honour when he chooses to go down with his sunken ship as a captain (even though the ship had already sunken beforehand).
Trivia[]
- Crainer is a very rare example of a Villainous Benchmark who does the most heinous action in the entire franchise, but still fails the Heinous Standards because of having had very high resources at the time, while others (namely Slogo) managed to use lesser resources to a better extent than him. This technically makes him a complete opposite to Van Zant, who coined the Van Zant Syndrome, where a villain fails the high Heinous Standards to other villains despite having very low resources.
- Crainer makes a statement in Episode 77 that "this is the second time I've eaten my own pet because of you guys!" which implies that the events of PigTown are canon to Squid Island. If this is confirmed true, it would make Crainer even worse and probably upgrade him to Inconsistently Heinous.