I Told You About Stairs

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About

"I Told You About Stairs" is a catchphrase from the webcomic series "Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff" written and drawn by MS Paint Adventures creator Andrew Hussie. The comic has become an in-joke within the Homestuck fandom and has been the subject of numerous parody videos and fan arts.

Origin

On July 3rd, 2009, Andrew Hussie uploaded the first Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comic to the MS Paint Adventures^[5] website. In the comic, the bearded character Sweet Bro falls down a flight of stairs while carrying a stack of video games. During the course of his fall, Hella Jeff responds "I warned you about stairs bro! I told you dog!"

Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff

“Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff” is a webcomic featured on comic artist Andrew Hussie's website “MS Paint Adventures”.^[1] The series was presented as if it were poorly drawn by the Homestuck character Dave Strider, 13 year-old hipster who writes the comic out of irony. On the website TV Tropes^[4], it has been listed as an example of "Stylistic Suck", a trope in which the drawing and writing style of a fictional character is intentionally bad for comic relief.

On March 17th, 2009, a thread titled "Higher Technology" was submitted to the Penny Arcade^[2] forums. In the thread, user the_Willard posted a concept art drawing (shown left) of early attempts at making his own webcomic. The following day, Andrew Hussie replied to the thread^[3] with his own version of the_Willard's comic titled "Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff" (shown right).

Spread

On April 14th, 2010, an Urban Dictionary^[10] definition for "Sweet Bro" was submitted by user Captain Lhurgoyf, which referenced the stairs comic. On August 6th, the author of the webcomic Sidequest Story^[6] VickyBit uploaded a flash game to her personal website^[7], featuring a ragdoll model of Sweet Bro that could be thrown down a never-ending flight of stairs.

On June 3rd, 2011, YouTuber Miskadamixxa uploaded a video titled "Told You About Stairs Bro", which featured a cosplayer dressed as Sweet Bro falling down a flight of stairs at the MegaCon 2011 convention.

On February 13th, 2012, Redditor Draggycakes submitted a post to the /r/homestuck^[11] subreddit titled “I warned you about those stairs bro”, which included an animated GIF of a soccer player falling down a flight of stairs with Sweet Bro’s head pasted over his head (shown below, left). On April 2nd, a drawing game was created on the site Drawception^[12] titled “I told you about stairs, bro” (shown right). As of May 18th, 2012, a Facebook^[9] page for “I warned you about stairs bro” has received over 275 likes.

Notable Examples

Parody Comics

This comic has inspired many fan arts and parodies. As of May 18th, 2012, there are over 400 search results for the keywords "about stairs bro" on the art sharing website DeviantArt.