Ben Drowned/YMMV

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• Alternative Character Interpretation: Numerous examples, including bentruth.rtf, a fan-created Perspective Flip of thetruth.rtf, depicts BEN as a lonely, mostly neutral entity that alternately helps or teases Jad, while Jad is presented as a crazy, paranoid kid who reads too much into everything.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced: The reaction to the announcement that there will be a game, among other things.
• Broken Base: king kong.wmv is either the funniest thing the fan base has ever seen, or has completely destroyed the immersion of the ARG.
• Cliché Storm: Of "haunted video game" stories. The difference between "haunted Super Mario 64" and "haunted Majora's Mask"? Jadusable actually has a game to back it up.
• Complete Monster: The Eldritch Abomination controlling the cartridge.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Every song that was used for the website, especially the third one.
  • Also, "Hey I'm BEN".
  • A few people have deemed that Jibbs' "King Kong" is to Ben Drowned what "Gimme 20 Dollars" is to Slender Man.
• Epileptic Trees: Some people think that Ben is really not the bad guy, and that he is trying to help us so no one else suffers the same fate he did.
• Fountain of Memes: The whole ARG. There's a reason the creator has (jokingly) apologized for ruining all future discussion about Majora's Mask.
• Hell Is That Noise: Quite a few. The glitch noises, the ReDead screams, and of course, the backwards Song of Healing.
• Magnificent Bastard: BEN, because at this point there is no way to know exactly who we can trust because of his influence.
  • A bit of a meta-example would be the author himself for having the sheer genius to orchestrate this entire thing by himself.
• Memetic Mutation: You shouldn't have done that...
  • You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?
  • Respond to BEN horror with ANDBHUH
  • Type "Ben", "The counter resets.", "Majora's Mask", "You shouldn't have done that.", or "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" into Cleverbot. Go on, try it.
  • BEN can only be defeated by pie.
  • BEN just wants his table linens and pie.
  • SWAGGGGG
• Nightmare Retardant: king kong.wmv is flat out hilarious. Then again, it's an April Fools' Day joke.
• Narm
  • The first time you realize that, because of the video resolution and such, the "footage" was actually created from a rom might sour your Willing Suspension of Disbelief a bit. You'll get over it quickly, though, and then there is no one to protect you anymore.
  • The Ryukaki arc suffers from this due to him narrating his videos to questionable effect.
  • During the original video (Day Four.wmv)The moments when Link is being attacked with the fire attack had me laughing. Especially when he's about to finish the Song of Time and is instantly killed.
• Paranoia Fuel: Word of God says Ben has leaked out onto the internet by now.
  • The latest announcement, which declares that you will be notified when the game restarts, whether you have internet access or not. This was followed up when anyone who had donated (and therefore indirectly "submitted" their street address) received a typed, somewhat threatening letter in the mail accompanied by a suspiciously apropos newspaper clipping.
    • Which led to a different kind of Paranoia Fuel, combined with Fridge Horror, that the reason we haven't heard from the Author in so long might be because a recipient somewhere didn't realize it was part of the ARG and called the police, who traced it back to Jad and (at best) ordered a cease-and-desist...as the person who proposed the theory said, "The situation is hypothetical, but not implausible." It was deemed highly unlikely, but still sparked a small-scale scare. (Now try saying that ten times fast.)
  • Earlier on in the story, there was a cult known as the "Moon Children" that worshiped the moon and believed in the "moon apocalypse theory" (that the moon, like in the game, would crush all of Earth), and on the website there was a place where you would put in your name and phone number to "become one of them." People who'd done this had begun reporting calls from a blocked number. It would be a song that would morph into the Elegy of Emptiness or music from the site. Another was the reversed song of healing followed by a voice saying "You shouldn't have done that." Imagine this, but not knowing what the creator of the story was REALLY doing (notifying people that the "game" had started back up), and you'd be really, really in for a treat.
• Player Punch: When the ARG started back up, the players desperately tried to figure out how to save Kayd Hendricks/Ryukaki. In his last video message, he lets the players know that they were so close to figuring things out, but they were ultimately unable to save him.
• Shipping: Ahem. It's G-rated, don't worry.
• "Stop Having Fun!" Guys: Almost every Alternate Reality Game gets guys like this, but this one seems to be full of them: Guys with no concept of immersion who love to scream "This isn't real and you're all morons for falling for it!" at everyone, and respond to any explanations of "Yes, we know it's not real. It's a game and we're playing along." with "Well then you're even bigger morons than I thought! How can you enjoy it if you know it's not real?"
  • On the flipside, there are also people who take the game so seriously, anything that breaks the immersion is instantly deemed an offense. The biggest example thus far is king kong.wmv, an April Fools' Day joke vid posted on Jadusable's account. Cries of ruination resounded amongst the comments section (though they generally were in a very vocal minority.
• That One Cipher: The first cipher of File 59, which currently remains unsolved.
  • Word of God says we're not supposed to get into the unknown stuff yet (the unsolved ciphers and the still locked files) as the keys to those things will be provided in the upcoming interactive game. We're still welcome to try, but he doubts we'll be able to pull it off without the clues from the game.
• Uncanny Valley: That's most likely why Ben/Statue!Link creeps Jadusable out so much.