Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh/YMMV

""MY ASS!""
 * Alternate Character Interpretation:
 * Although is excessively creepy, he did succesfully save Curtis from  at the asylum. Then again, he was responsible for
 * Bob Arnold, according to Don Berg, the actor who played him. While he appears to be a know-it-all jerk, he's actually incredibly insecure and jealous of Curtis's seemingly perfect life, and may even harbor latent homosexual feelings for Curtis, which he hides by being a dick.
 * Big Lipped Alligator Moment:
 * The line dancing gangstas passing by when Curtis first visits the S&M club.
 * Trevor's story about his grandma, the rabbit and the potato.
 * Let's be honest. A lot of email jokes in real life can be qualified as this trope.
 * Complete Monster:
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: Curtis manages to pull off two of these at the very end of the game. The first was  The second was
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Trevor Barnes - Wiseass, computer hacker, born potato-related story-teller: What's not to love? Compared to the other characters including Curtis who are varying shades of incompetent Jerkasses, Trever is a great guy with a working brain. In fact, when Something Awful did an LP on the game, the goons actually contacted the actor himself for an interview.
 * Family Unfriendly Aesop: If you think you're going crazy, the last thing you should do is to go to a mental hospital!
 * Could also be a Space Whale Aesop, because
 * Fridge Logic: You know what, the game is full of instances of this trope. You can find a nice list containing some of them right here.
 * Let's try this one:  This should demonstrate a number of the numerous instances of Fridge Logic in this game. Whoever wrote the script should have consulted with a professional analyzer of storylines.
 * Here's another one:
 * Of all the people killed in the game.
 * High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Despite its excessive amounts of Narm, the game still delivers a few honestly scary moments. Ironically for a game/film with such slick-looking gore effects, the game is at its best when it does subtle atmospheric horror.
 * Well, that's the problem with this game. It tries too hard to be scary, and simply comes off as disgusting most of the time. Disgusting and scary are entirely different concepts. Why, this troper could think of ways to make the game scarier.
 * One example of this is in the asylum. One patient is an old woman who keeps calling Curtis a freak and claims that she saw him and knows what he did. She actually bites her wrists, causing some bleeding, and holds her hands up high, saying a prayer to God. Curtis shows an appropriate demonstration of Squick towards that. That alone was nasty, but here comes another interesting detail. There are indications that the Hecatomb may have been acting through her (and maybe some other people there), as part of an attempt to drive Curtis insane. That scene certainly contained this trope.
 * Narm:
 * Maybe it's just the way emails are written in excessively excited punctuation, but the supposedly disturbing emails Curtis receives come off as kind of overblown and ridiculous. One of them tells Curtis that with practice, he could be the next Ed Gein or Jack the Ripper, "who knows, maybe even a Hitler or a Stalin!"
 * After Bob dies, it's possible to call his cubicle. If you do, Curtis will hear his voice calling him a murderer and hang up...and then the phone starts ringing. If you pick it up, it's Bob again telling Curtis "Don't hang up on me!" It's meant to be creepy but sounds more like a joke than anything, and it's made funnier by the fact that music playing over the phone is a tinny 1992-quality midi version of what COULD be scary, but really really isn't.
 * Detective Powell comes off this way, hilariously overreacting to Curtis being a little out-of-sorts when being questioned while Bob's blood and guts are splattered all over the wall in plain view of Curtis, and harassing him to the point of stalking just to yell at him.
 * Nightmare Retardant: Many of the scenes that were intended to be scary or disturbing just come off as incredibly goofy. For example, there's a scene where Curtis finds himself trapped in an insane asylum, tied up in a straitjacket...and it would be really creepy if not for the mental patient right next to Curtis, muttering lines like 'Disco dance! Disco dance!' and 'Everybody in the pool!'.
 * The same thing happens with the reoccurring monster hands popping out - They could be scary, but they look like cheap dollar store versions of Goosebumps props.
 * Paranoia Fuel: Okay, imagine this.  Have fun falling asleep tonight!
 * Player Punch:
 * Rooting for The Empire: Okay, let's be frank here.
 * The Scrappy: Even among the parade of unlikable and/or uninteresting characters that is Phantasmagoria 2, Detective Powell stands out. Some of the stuff she does when it comes to Curtis Craig is so stupid that it would make any real cop vomit.
 * Player Punch:
 * Rooting for The Empire: Okay, let's be frank here.
 * The Scrappy: Even among the parade of unlikable and/or uninteresting characters that is Phantasmagoria 2, Detective Powell stands out. Some of the stuff she does when it comes to Curtis Craig is so stupid that it would make any real cop vomit.


 * Spoony was quite disappointed upon realizing that she's one of the very few characters who survives.
 * So Bad Its Good: The acting approaches this level at many points.
 * That One Puzzle: The final puzzle of the game, especially considering what passed for a "puzzle" up until that point.
 * What an Idiot: A large number of characters in this game fall under this category, and some of them go into Too Dumb to Live territory. Curtis Craig is the worst offender. He tries to act like a private investigator, but he clearly has no concept of how to be one. He never tries to record or make notes of the various things he witnesses. He finds evidence, but he fails to show it to the police or the media. His idea of investigating boils down to wandering into areas blindly. He makes all the wrong moves with the police and other individuals. He is very lucky to even be alive by the end of the game. If only the horror genre would feature characters who behave intelligently and have some common sense.