EarthBound/YMMV


 * Alternative Character Interpretation: Orange Kid is presented as having a Small Name, Big Ego and being kind of a dick to Apple Kid. Later on in the game, though, he talks about Apple Kid having borrowed a book on Overcoming Shyness and how he wanted it when Apple Kid was done with it. Orange Kid may just be socially maladjusted rather than a spiteful Jerkass, especially since he's a good deal more polite to Ness.
 * A lot is also applied to Pokey and Giygas. We can't list them all, but you can probably think of a few off the top of your head if you're familiar with EarthBound.
 * Awesome Music: The game has a superb soundtrack and picking just one depends on your mood at the time. Whether the touching melody of the sound stone, the awesome battle music, or the groovy tunes of the Runaway Five, EarthBound's music is very high quality.
 * Cult Classic: Is it ever.
 * To the point where it is granted Immunity to Criticism.
 * Demonic Spiders: Most notably, the trees on the way to Peaceful Rest Valley. You see, when you defeat these things, they explode. Now, later in the game, they'll explode on one character, and the characters next to him will receive smaller damage. But here, Ness gets it all. And explosions HURT, usually doing enough damage to kill Ness in this early part of the game. Fortunately for Ness (and the player), he is a Determinator (see Main tab).
 * The Care Free Bombs near the entrance to the Sea of Eden. They only have around 500 HP, which is on the low end of average at this point in the game, but they have solid defenses and no exploitable weaknesses, meaning that nothing short of a Bag of Dragonite or a lucky strike with PSI Rockin Omega is going to get rid of them quickly. Now here's the fun part: they do NOTHING but chuck Bombs and Super Bombs at you every turn. These are defense-ignoring, 100% accurate, splash damage-inflicting attacks that regularly do north of 300 damage. Did I mention that you meet these little bastards in an area of the game where you're down to just Ness and your meat-shield buddy Flying Man (who's not going to live to see the end of the next round if you meet one)? One is bad news. Two is a game over waiting to happen.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: Milky Well. Full stop.
 * Ear Worm: Hell, any of them! But just try to get the Onett theme out of your head.
 * This especially. Click at your own risk.
 * This theme just the first 55 seconds, don't deny it.
 * Twoson's theme is pretty catchy too.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse:
 * This series is the Ensemble Darkhorse of Nintendo games.
 * Also, compare Tony's relevance to the plot to his appearance in fan art and fan fiction.
 * Fobbies are probably the most popular enemies.
 * Epileptic Trees: The long running Giygas/Fetus/Abortion "theory", albeit with a single grain of truth involved. Just to clarify, the final battle takes place between Mother, where Giygas was a full-grown alien, and the start of EarthBound.
 * To further elaborate, the theory revolves around the background image in the later phases of the Giygas fight looking like a child in its mother's womb. The "YOU WERE SENT BACK IN TIME TO ABORT A FETUS" element was introduced later.
 * The fact that the machine Giygas was locked in looked eerily like a woman's cervix didn't help matters. Granted, said machine was surrounded by tubes/intestines/brain-looking stuff, which is not actually what the inside of a vagina looks like.
 * Fandom Rivalry:
 * Enjoys a mild one with MOTHER 3, mostly in terms of which one is the better game.
 * A larger and more volatile one is present with the Undertale fandom, due to the latter game having been brought up in nearly all EarthBound-related discussions since its release (as Undertale takes heavy inspiration from EarthBound and re-uses numerous gameplay elements and soundbytes). Many EarthBound fans have gotten sick of hearing about Undertale everywhere they go, to the point where some forums and comments sections will outright ban people for merely bringing the game up. Of course, this kind of behavior towards Undertale fans isn't unusual among other circles online (as the fandom has garnered a reputation for shoehorning the game into nearly anything, regardless of how relevant it is), but because of how great of an influence it was on Undertale, EarthBounds fandom is where this backlash is most prominent. It got even worse when Game Theorys infamous "Sans is Ness" video came into the picture, as several types of fanworks featuring Ness since then have started getting comments referencing Sans, which only leads to more annoyance for EarthBound fans, especially for those sick of Sans in particular being shoehorned into everything and/or hate MatPat and his videos.
 * First Installment Wins: Averted; despite being the second game in the trilogy, EarthBound is by far the most well-known thanks to being the only one to get an American release. (It's also rather standalone enough that people didn't know about MOTHER)
 * Forced Level Grinding: A little, mostly just to get Ness and Paula's levels up early in game.
 * Friendly Fandoms: While, noted above, EarthBound and Undertale have a bit of a rivalry, parts of these fandoms actually get along quite well.
 * "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: It's not uncommon for Ness to become homesick and miss turns during battle. The only way to cure that is to speak to his mother. Good thing this doesn't happen to Lucas in MOTHER 3.
 * Game Breaker:
 * The Rock Candy + Sugar Packet trick, which involves exploiting a glitch, often dubbed "The Rock Candy glitch". You do it by using a food item at the bottom of the inventory with a condiment. The condiment gets used, but the item doesn't, which effectively means that by keeping a consumable item at the bottom of the inventory, you can use consumables over and over without them ever running out so long as you have a condiment. As the name of the glitch suggests, this glitch is most often exploited with Rock Candies, which raise a random stat permanently, and by several extra points when combined with a sugar packet. (Ab)Using this leads to characters with erroneously higher stats than they normally would have. If Fridge Brilliance sets in, getting kids hyped up on sugar would totally add a new level of depth to the game.
 * Multi Bottle Rockets. As a payoff for their immense power, they were intended to be too expensive to buy in large amounts, but by the time you can buy them, this is simply not the case. Jeff can kill almost any boss in a single hit with them, and they are even more powerful than the Bag of Dragonite, of which there are only 6. They are even stronger when combined with the Rabbit's Foot, as their strength is relative to Jeff's speed.
 * Goddamn Bats:
 * Those trees those trees those trees... those suicidal, exploding trees...
 * Any mushroom enemy that inflicts Mushroomization. Which is nearly all of them.
 * Earlier on: Goddamn crows!
 * And later on: Goddamned thieving Octobots! No, I wasn't going to use that Rock Candy, don't mind me. What makes this worse is YOU DON'T GET THE ITEMS BACK.
 * The Slimy Little Piles in Belch's Factory can immobilize a character for one turn, summon more of themselves, or inflict crying on the entire party, which severely reduces the accuracy of regular attacks. While crying does wear off after battle, curing it in the middle of battle is a waste of resources because they can just cause it again. They attack so rarely that they aren't much of a threat by themselves, but they often show up around enemies that do attack more frequently, making them an annoying enemy that makes other enemies more dangerous.
 * Very far into the game, the Nuclear Reactor Robots. These things can fully heal themselves every turn, and explode when they are defeated, dealing huge amounts of damage. Couple that with some other enemies in the same area.
 * Good Bad Bugs: The Rock Candy Glitch. Basically if you put a sugar packet together with a Rock Candy in your inventory, you'll get a 2 stat increase instead of 1 stat increase which is very useful for the stats that get upgraded, especially with Vitality or IQ, as it can raise your HP or PP significantly. But, when you use a Sugar Packet to consume the Rock Candy, a glitch occurs where only the Sugar Packet gets consumed, the Rock Candy will still stay in your inventory as long as you keep using a Sugar Packet to eat it. So basically, you can give everyone ridiculous amounts of HP and PP with this glitch per level up, making uses of higher level PSI techniques and their ridiculous costs (specifically, Ness's PK Rockin') a lot more neglible and spammable. The stuff you can do with this is crazy, like you can effectively remove Paula's weakness as a Squishy Wizard and give her HP comparable to Ness if you want. And if you're diligent and lucky enough, you could even do stuff like make Ness as fast or faster than the rest of his party. You can even get your HP meter to go up into the Thousands, though, doing this will glitch out the HP Meter a bit, as the game never intended for someone's HP to go past 999 in vanilla game, so if you take damage while your HP is this high, the damage will be instant and immediately drop your HP to the amount of HP you'd have after you took damage, instead of rolling down.
 * This was taken out in the MOTHER 1+2 release, but remained for the VC release due to the VC using the SNES version of the game.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight:
 * At the end of the game, you can go back to Onett and read the newspaper. Among other things, an article in the paper says "Police Captain finishes EarthBound, asks, "Where's the sequel?". Well... about that...
 * Shigesato Itoi confirmed in an interview that Tony is gay. With the release of the Grand Theft Auto game 15 years after EarthBound's Japan release, this is kind of awkward, considering the title of the GTA game.
 * Ho Yay: Between Jeff and Tony. It's mostly one-sided on the latter's part, as he was confirmed to be gay by the creator.
 * Hype Backlash: It's so beloved in most circles that many players experiencing it for the first time now are left with a "is this it?" experience, as several of the games' mechanics have not aged well and the earliest parts of the game are easily the dullest.
 * It's Easy, So It Sucks: Averted. EarthBound is almost as easy as Chrono Trigger, but the game is so bizarre and fun that hardly anyone complains.
 * It Was His Sled: Owing primarily to Memetic Mutation among other factors, Giygas's appearance and the inability to grasp the true form thereof - something hardly even hinted at until one actually reaches the final battle - are probably far more well-known than any other aspect of the game aside from Ness.
 * Memetic Molester: A molestee in this case, Giygas.
 * Also, Lier X. Agerate, at least, that's the vibe he gives off when he asks Ness to follow him deep into his basement, alone.
 * Memetic Mutation: "You Cannot Grasp the True Form" of this meme! Though many have tried...
 * Giygas himself. Whenever there's a scary Mind Screw on the internet, Giygas is usually mentioned.
 * Nightmare Retardant: The Cave of Winter, Giygas theme, and Cave of the Past songs get so used in .exe Creepypasta games that most people just find their overusage to be more annoying and boring than scary.
 * The Scrappy: The Photography Man, to some. He'll interrupt the game, sometimes next to enemies, to force you though about 60 seconds of "dialogue", dialogue that never changes after the second time he appears.
 * Scrappy Mechanic:
 * "Homesickness" can be an inconvenience at certain parts of the game. There's no way of telling when Ness will get it, and if the symptoms pop up during a major battle, you're probably screwed. At least with other pain-in-the-butt status ailments like Mushroomization or Diamondization an experienced player can know what to expect and how to avoid it, but with this? No chance. The only thing good about the homesickness mechanic is that it adds a layer to Ness's characterization.
 * Mushroomization is a status ailment that can't be cured without walking back to town. Since it can cause party members to randomly target each other instead of the enemy (with often lethal results), you can't ignore it. But the main feature of the ailment is an Interface Screw that makes walking around annoyingly difficult, so that trudge back to the hospital can leave you with all your hair pulled out.
 * Scrappy Level: The Third Sanctuary is one, mostly thanks to a large number of mushroom enemies that attack before the party can move and that are hard to take out in one shot with fire attacks at the normal level you encounter them. And you don't even get to sell the mushrooms for $50 at the nearest hospital.
 * Sequel Displacement: Despite being the second game in the trilogy, EarthBound is by far the most well-known thanks to being the only one to get an American release (it's also rather standalone enough that the International audience generally don't know it's the second game in a series, between MOTHER and MOTHER 3).
 * Signature Scene:
 * Mainly because it stands out so much from the rest of the game, the final battle with Giygas is the most well-known part by those that have not played EarthBound. For those who have played through it, the method used to defeat Giygas doubles down on this scene.
 * Toy Ship: Ness and Paula; Tony and Jeff; Poo and...all the ladies of Dalaam, really.
 * Viewer Gender Confusion: Believe it or not... Giygas. Giygas is referred to as "he" throughout the game, but an addition to being an alien, an NPC even remarks that they can't be sure of "his" gender because no one has ever seen "him". Adding to the confusion, the work of a certain Japanese fan has begun a proliferation or fan art featuring Giygas as female.
 * Vindicated by History: In 1995, EarthBound had poor sales and received mixed reviews from critics in North America. Today, it's regarded as one of the greatest RPGs for the SNES and one of the best games of the 1990s.
 * Watch It for the Meme: Many gamers, especially in countries without an official release, first heard about this game from Super Smash Bros., but what made some of them curious to play it was the infamous Giygas battle which became hot on the Internet.
 * Woolseyism: If the US translation has something good, it's the incredibly awesome enemy names.
 * Barring the Bowdlerisation, this game had a really good localization. For example, the fan favourite enemy New Age Retro Hippie, often cited for his quirkiness and hilarious name, was originally just 'Carefree Man' in Japanese. Most localization edits (both for the good and for the bad) are covered in depth here. At least one change makes sense, since instead of "Cafe", the JAP version had "Bar"s. Kids aren't allowed in Bars in America, you know, (Well, maybe a Bar and Grille...)
 * One of the cultists in the Happy Happy Village was shivering in fear ("buru buru", which sounds a lot like their chant) in the Japanese version. In the localization, he's trying to whistle instead ("blew blew").