Psychonauts/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Tim Schafer says he's ready to make a sequel. All he needs is a publisher.
  • Anticlimax Boss: The final boss of the game. You get big, beat it up until you run out of juice, you turn invisible, and then you wait to regain enough energy to turn big again. Even if your invisibility doesn't last long enough, as long as you turn it off and on before it runs out, you're still safe.
  • Cargo Ship: Admiral Cruller and his canoe.
  • Catharsis Factor: Ah, Lungfishopolis, how we love thee...
  • Crack Pairing: Linda/Mr. Pokeylope. If you get 100% completion, it's canon.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Removing someone's brain? Horrible. Inducing them to sneeze out their brain? Hilarious.
  • Demonic Spiders: The Tragedy variations of the stage actors are some of the trickiest monsters to fight in the game, mainly due to how all three variations appear at once from the first time one changes the mood lighting of the stage.
    • The Flower children spin like saws along, and are effectively invincible for that time until they briefly stop.
    • Hell hounds breath fire at you (which of course makes Raz run around almost uncontrollably when lit) and can turn to face Raz while they attack.
    • Harpies fire shots at you while suspended in the air, and can push you back with a screech if you manage to get close
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • Loboto, bizarrely.
    • Whitehead. It's the accent, it seems. He's rather physically ugly.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Fangirls loooove Sasha Nein. There is more fanart of him than any other character in the game.
    • Alternatively, D'Artagan (sic): a character cut from the final game, who nonetheless appears in lots of fanart, occasionally shipped with the hero Raz.
    • If you look, you can find a following for just about every student in the camp.
    • Of the other adults, Ford Cruller especially gets a lot of the fans' love. His Cloudcuckoolander attitude and tragic backstory make him adorable. Being a old man who's obsessed with bacon makes him hilarious. He's got something for everyone.
    • And Milla Vodello, naturally.
    • Fred has quite the fan following too.
    • Edgar is practically something of a mascot for a number of the game's fanartists, though not necessarily as a subject... in general, the asylum inmates are rather well-loved in the fandom.
    • Loboto's role in the game's plot is bigger than in the game itself, but still, he's... pretty damn unforgettable.
    • Boyd Cooper's level is one of the most popular ones in the game, and with his simultaneously disturbed/disturbing and amusing character, he does look to be the most liked out of the Thorney Towers residents.
  • Fanon: Loboto being Bobby's father, due to the similarities in their appearance and personality.
  • Foe Yay: In the eyes of yaoi fangirls, Bobby Zilch with Razputin.
  • Genius Bonus: The Waterloo World level's background music is composed of the lesser known portions of the 1812 Overture.
  • Goddamn Bats: The exploding rats in the asylum are quite possibly the most annoying creatures in the game.
  • Memetic Mutation: Pretty much every line, but the gems given to us by The Milkman Conspiracy deserve special mention.
  • Most Annoying Sound:
    • No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. ... Curse you, Sasha's Shooting Gallery.
    • Also, "I'm not getting anything. I guess there must not be any deep arrowheads around here.", "I'm not getting anything", etc.
    • This hat box needs a hat box tag.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: The Nightmare fights. Originally, they were going to be a running subplot in the game, but got dropped somewhere in development. The two that are fought are merely a leftover.
  • Porting Disaster: The PS2 port features numerous sound glitches and framerate issues and is probably going to crash at least once per playthrough, especially in the minds of the Lungfish or Gloria.
    • The Mac port is also really bad, with numerous sound glitches and occasional screen-blurring. Thankfully, Double Fine have a dedicated team working on patching the Mac and Linux ports, and most of the issues have been ironed out.
      • Still, as of 2016, the Steam Mac version is the inferior one.
  • The Producer Thinks of Everything: During Sasha Nein's training, he tells you to defeat 1000 censors in order to receive the Marksmanship Badge. To generate these censors, there is a lever with output levels to monitor in what frequency they appear with a gauge indicating from "1" to "SKULL". The game only progresses if you, being Raz, gets impatient and turns the switch to the "Skull" setting. If you go about killing 100 Censors without turning the switch up, the Censors stop spawning until you increase the level which eventually leads to you summoning the boss of the level.
    • Throughout the game, Raz receives a multitude of items that can be held in hand prompting the use button to show it off to people. Usually, when used on the correct person it evokes the plot-based reaction. EVERY single person in the game has a unique reaction to EVERY item you receive. Complete with voice acting!
      • Just to emphasize this further: when you just play through the game normally, you'll have Mr. Pokeylope in your inventory for about 10 seconds. Yet, every single person way back in the camp has a unique reaction to that item.
      • Just like with the items, every person has a reaction to targetable PSI abilities like PSI Blasts and Pyrokinesis!
  • Strangled by the Red String: Unless you watch all the cutscenes where they interact, (some being trigger-cutscenes) you'd be very confused at how fast Raz and Lili hook up.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song:
    • Raz's "Badge Get" musical sting sounds very much like "Gotta Fly Now".
    • The track "The Censors Unleashed" contains a few bars from the beginning of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik".
  • Tastes Like Diabetes: Clem and Crystal, bizarrely subverted with their suicidal tendencies.
  • That One Level: Meat Circus, infamous for its difficulty, and one of the most prime examples of the Scrappy Level ever. It combines Timed Missions, Escort Missions, a Timed Jumping puzzle where the boss is trying to knock you off with attacks from offscreen, and virtually the same boss fight three times. Good luck.
    • The last fight totally makes up for the rest of the stage, though.
    • Five years after the game's release on Steam, a patch was made available that made the Meat Circus easier.
    • Also, the upper levels of the asylum. They're dark, have some tricky jumps, and are home to some really annoying enemies.
    • And The Race section of Milla's mind, although that level's only conditionally Scrappy. Running the race is fun, but going through to collect all the figments is awful; it takes over twenty minutes to go over all the routes thoroughly, most of the figments blend into the track around them, and when you finally reach the end and realize that you're still missing a few you won't be blamed for wanting to throw your controller at the screen.
    • There will come a moment where you'll eventually have to begin grinding for the expensive cobweb duster, either by killing enemies for about an hour, or by doing the immensely annoying Dowsing Rod minigame where you have to nearly break your keyboard in half as you tap like crazy to rip out another arrowhead from the ground. It's even worse if you waited until the Duster was needed, as you'll have to attempt to find arrowheads in a dark camp full of psychic animals, meaning you don't even get the benefit of hunting for deep arrowhead deposits.
    • Gloria's Theater can be a pain to get through because of all the intentionally awful acting which plays for each set and mood, the path to progress being rather obtuse on the first playthrough, and just generally not being as entertaining or creative as the levels that come before or after. The second part also features some egregious video game sins like tricky platforming on tight catwalks with lots of enemies, and, worst of all, Camera Screw.
  • Toy Ship: Raz and Lili, Elton and Milka, Nils and J.T. with Elka... Raz himself said it best, really.

Raz: Is making out all anyone ever thinks about around here?

  • Ugly Cute: About half the characters in this game are sort of adorable, Shegor in particular.
    • Linda is pretty cute once she's not being mind controlled. What a magical lady...
  • Viewer Gender Confusion:
    • Quentin has a fairly androgynous design and prepubescent voice but is a boy.
    • Franke has long hair; however, her style is very 60's/70's, so she could easily pass for a long haired boy.
    • Bonita. Is she a woman that sounds like a man, or a man that looks like a woman?
      • This applies to one of the Flower Girls too. They are all referred to as female, but one has a male voice and plays male parts in the plays.
    • This is apparently one of the reasons D'artagen, the original protagonist, was scrapped in favor of Raz: his hat made him look too much like a girl.
  • Vindicated by History: Critics loved it, but it wasn't until years after its release that it started selling well.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: The game has a cartoony art design with only a few Avoid the Dreaded G Rating moments. However, Peoples' fears and nightmares in this game can be downright unnerving. It features a lot of people with childhood trauma, animals burnt alive, spirits of children who died in fire, a pre-teen girl shooting a rifle and, when cornered, throwing herself out of a window and then blowing herself up to kill her enemies and... well... Meat Circus.
  • The Woobie: Take your pick, folks:
    • Sasha Nein: lost his mother when he was just a baby; his only encounter with her comes from his telepathic readings of his father's mind, which were... erm, colored in the way you might expect a man's thoughts about his wife to be. Also, borderline emotionless. Does he just need a little wub to heal?
      • Either that or lots of Brain Bleach.
      • Sasha's father can qualify too: lost a wife he dearly loved and drove his only child away, probably without ever realizing how. The heartbroken look on the poor man's face through the whole reel just makes you want to hug him.
    • Milla Vodello: used to take care of children... until they all died horribly in a fire. Still has little bits of that nightmare locked up in her mind. While she seems to be all better now, many fans seem to think she's still haunted and deeply troubled by her past. Even if she's coped, it's still pretty darn tragic...
    • Ford Cruller is a particularly tragic example: all the different roles he plays in the camp, from cook to forest ranger to janitor, are multiple personalities caused by psychic damage inflicted on him by an evil psychic. The fact that Ford is the most adorable, nice, caring adult in the entire game makes it downright heartbreaking.
    • Dogen Boole: small, runty, picked on by the other kids at camp, terrified of everything, barely able to control his own psychic powers, the first to lose his brain to Dr. Loboto, and even those who are generally his friends (Raz and Lili) still take occasional pot shots at his expense. While some are annoyed by him, others find him somewhat sad.
    • Gloria: while the rest of the inmates have somewhat goofy histories, Gloria's is genuinely sad: she spent much of her childhood at a Boarding School of Horrors, dreaming of the day her parents would arrive and take her home. While she shot to stardom, she abruptly crashed when she found out that her mother had committed suicide. Sure, she acts funny, but she is clearly deeply troubled.
      • Even more upsetting when you consider the events of the "Tragedy" plays are likely meant to represent her actual life: her mother committed suicide because she never got a letter back from Gloria while she was in the Boarding School... because the letters she was sending never got sent by her agent.
    • Sheegor: Dr. Loboto's beleaguered assistant, she lives in fear of him and what he might do to her pet turtle, Mr. Pokeylope. He abuses her constantly, and she has a childlike mind. When you use Clairvoyance on her, she sees Raz as an angel, come to save her from her torment.
    • Raz: a temporary case maybe. When he starts to talk to Ford about how he thinks his Dad hated him and tried to distract him from his powers and/or kill him with endless training, it's hard not to feel sorry for him. This is temporary though because by the end of the game, we find out it was all a misunderstanding/misinterpretation. He's still cursed though.
    • Every kid seems to be a woobie to some degree, judging from Raz's speech and how they react to it.
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