Stranger Things subtitle guy loved “trolling” fans with his descriptions

From “tentacles squelching wetly” to “flesh distending wetly” to “tentacles undulating moistly,” if you watched the new season of Stranger Things with subtitles enabled, chances are you found it even more unsettling. The series features some of the most grotesque subtitles you’ll ever read.

The disgusting, over-descriptive subtitles from season 4 —  especially during scenes with Vecna — have gone viral on social media. The subtitle guy wasn’t holding back on detail. See for yourself:

Meet Jeff T, the man behind the Stranger Things subtitles

It’s about time we gave subtitlers some credit, with Jeff T leading the charge. Speaking to Netflix’s TUDUM, he explained his thought process behind subtitling a scene:

"In the scene where Henry/Vecna/One [Jamie Campbell Bower] is creating the Mind Flayer, I used a tag, “dissonant gibbering.” Dissonant whispers is a spell that bards can use to break apart somebody’s mind [in Dungeons & Dragons]. It’s that sense of madness creeping in at the edges of your awareness. And “gibbering” is a reference to a monster called a gibbering mouther, which is a nightmarish blob of flesh and multiple mouths all wailing and gnashing their teeth. I was like, “Yeah, that sounds like a good moment for a mind breaking in two.”"

Netflix welcomed Jeff’s creative subtitling. Or at least, it didn’t object. “We have complete free rein, as far as I’m aware,” Jeff said. “I don’t think that there was anything that we were told that we couldn’t add.”

There are a couple of times in the season when Jeff maybe gives us a little too much information. Did we really need to know that those tentacles were undulating “moistly”? “Honestly, ‘[tentacles undulating moistly]’. I’ve seen a lot. I will admit I was trolling a little bit with that,” he told Vulture.

So where does Jeff get this catalog of disgusting descriptive words from? That would be YouTube ASMR videos, which he uses to “figure out which words elicit that kind of response in people”. Turns out, the word “moist” is pretty popular.

Stranger Things season 4 is currently streaming on Netflix. If you’re going to watch it for a second time, you might want to turn those subtitles on.

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