Sam & Max: Freelance Police/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adaptation Displacement: The relatively child-friendly games and cartoons are much better known than the original (darker) comics.
    • The Telltale Games (especially the latter half of Season 2 and most of Season 3, particularly the finale) tend to get pretty dark.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Since the violence was toned down in the cartoon, Max ended up becoming more of a good-natured Cloudcuckoolander than the violence-crazed private eye that we know and love.
    • That said, he's still pretty detached from what we traditionally consider "reality", even when he's allowed to be violent. And, conversely, just because the violence was "toned down" doesn't mean he's a fluffy ball of cuddles, either.
      • To quote Max in the cartoon: "The simulated 3D carnage makes me tingle like a prom queen!".
      • And he still sneaks in lines like this:

Max: What, no concealable weaponry, road flares, or black capsules? What if we get captured!?
Sam: Ha ha! You kill me, little buddy!
Max: (quietly) Only if we're taken alive, Sam.

Sam: Well...
Max: Let's not do that again.

  • Broken Base: The voices, since each series has a different set.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: A whole lot of the jokes, but think about this: Sam and Max have an entire wing of hell dedicated to them, and filled with all the people they've sent there, intentionally or accidentally.
  • Designated Hero: They fight genuine villains and tackle critical situations but they're still a violent, sociopathic rabbity-thing and a more laid-back, slightly less sociopathic dog in a suit.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: Season 3. Maybe timing is everything, but it comes 10 minutes too late for a Gainax Ending and 1 minute too soon for a complete Downer Ending.
    • Not to everyone; remember the final puzzle in the game was attempting to clone Max. That wouldn't have brought him back either, just a very similar clone. Sam isn't that picky.
  • Fridge Horror: The Narrator is the manifestation of Max's superego, meaning that he's simply the personification of a part of his subconscious. After the reveal that he was season three's Big Bad, Sam demands to know what his goals are, and he explains that all he wants to do is to "let it all end." This implies that Max has suicidal tendencies.
    • When you realize this, it makes you wonder what, exactly, happened to Max to make him like this. He's obviously unstable, it's been implied several times that his childhood was a traumatic one, he suffers from night terrors, he's been to therapy in the past...maybe he's more messed up then we thought at first.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: In the comic book, when Max wonders what it's like to die, Sam murders Max, played for comedy. Then come Season 3, Max is killed, not played for comedy.
    • Episode 305 creates just creates a lot of these in general.
    • The parallels between "Fools Die On Friday" of the animated series and the 9/11 attacks are so eerie that when Gametap streamed the series, this was the only episode that wasn't made available.
  • Germans Love Mr. Featherly: The doddering, senile, frumpy landlord of Sam & Max's characters in Midtown Cowboys is the last word in cool to the hip undead scenesters in Stuttgart.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In the animated series episode They Came From Down There, Mack Salmon tries to take Max's brain to make him a slave, it fails. Fast forward to The Devil's Playhouse episode 3, They Stole Max's Brain!, and we see the frightening effect of what could have happened if Mack had succeeded.
    • In one episode, Sam and Max take in a little boy with uncontrolled psychic powers, who was being used by the military as a superweapon, and Hilarity Ensues. His powers are disturbingly similar to the more seriously handled ones gained by Max in The Devil's Playhouse, and it's not helped by the fact that the duo use him while crimefighting as a psychic weapon.
    • In The Final Episode, Sam and Max try to recall how they met The Geek. Max recalls being a Pharaoh. In The Devil's Playhouse, Max's body gets possessed by the Pharaoh Sammun-Mak who dresses almost exactly the same way Max remembered being dressed as the flashback - and the season establishes that Max is a multidimensional Hive Mind, adding in a great recipe for Fan Wank.
    • The loading screen animation is basically Max's head, on fire. This becomes much less funny after the climax of "The City That Dares Not Sleep", in which Max's head catches fire from psychic overexertion shortly before he explodes. It's unclear though if that was the Maimtrons or Max.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The animated series, Santa Claus appears in his typical, jolly role, but when he was included in the games, he was very noticeably less jolly.
    • In one episode, there's an evil dummy from an old TV Show, granted it's the evil half, but, in The Devils Playhouse: Beyond the Alley of the Dolls', the main antagonist of the episode is an evil Ventriloquist's dummy called Charlie Ho-Tep.
    • Max: "Glad to know my skull is threaded for easy access!" So that explains Max's Severed Head...
  • Ho Yay: The ever-inseparable Sam and Max have had quite a few instances of this, in particular Max who "doesn't like girls". He prefers violence.
    • And, true to the fact that all Ho Yay is where you find it, Max is always surprised to be told this.
    • Telltale pokes fun at this sometimes, like when Sybil Pandemik ran a dating service and told Sam his soulmate was Max, as well as a few possible jokes you can get using the wedding cake and engagement ring on Max, with Sam thinking over proposing to Max in his head, before giving his characteristic "Nah".
      • Although, in Sybil's position, wouldn't you do everything you could to keep either of them from breeding?
    • Besides, Sam thinking over proposing to Max, and being told that they are soulmates, most of the Ho Yay in the series is subtile, although there is one pretty blatant instance. There's a boxing ball on the coatrack. Sam says he bought it because he hoped it would make Max hit him less. Max says this is the way he shows affection. It quickly turns into a very Ho Yay conversation; Sam asks Max if he could stop showing so much affection before 6 AM, and Max says he could never stop loving Sam.
    • In The Glazed McGuffin Affair, when Sam slaps a hysterical Max to calm him down, he responds by saying "Hit me again. I like it!" This would be a weird thing to say, even for Max, but if he actually sees violence as a form of affection, then he might just like that Sam's being "affectionate" with him.
    • In one episode, Sam and Max raise a baby alligator like a couple. If it means anything, Sam is a frequent crossdresser.
    • In Little Bigfoot, Max was in Sam's pants. It almost makes a little bit more sense in context, but not much.
    • They even have a "break-up" mini-episode in there.
    • And to top it all off:

"You know, at moments like these, Sam and I have a special way of showing how we feel about one another"

    • Also the duo's aversion to the opposite sex. The ships practically write themselves to the point where I'm not even sure that this qualifies as Heterosexual Life Partners anymore.
  • Like You Would Really Do It: The consequences of psychic power use was foreshadowed clearly throughout The Devils Playhouse, but who would've believed that there wouldn't be a last-minute save or sudden wacky solution or Deus Ex Machina? You get a grim 10-minute closing sequence to ruminate on that.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • "Sleep... SLEEP..." Er, no thank you, I think I'll stay awake all night... for the next four months...
    • Towards the end of season 3, Max transforms from a cute little bunny, to a Godzilla sized Cthulhu bunny.
    • When Max develops psychic powers and uses them to teleport in Season 3, everyone gets to see just a taste of what goes on in his mind.

Sam: Note to self: When traveling through Max's brain, keep your eyes shut.

Max: One exciting and highly expensive chase scene later!

  • Tear Jerker: Max's presumed death at the end of Season 3. Even if he didn't die, it would still be impossible for him to return to Sam. Luckily, his past self is still there to fill the gap of his present self. He even waves goodbye to Sam before teleporting away for the last time.
  • Too Good to Last: The Canadians gave the animated series a Gemini Award, their equivalent to the Emmy Award, for Best Animated Program or Series. Fans of the series generally like it in spite of the changes. It still got canceled.[1]
  • What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: The comic books. Colorful and cheerily illustrated funny animals on the cover, squeaky clean enough to pass the most stringent Moral Guardians...but openly incites any minors that will no doubt get their hands on it.
  • The Woobie: I dare you to tell me that you didn't feel horribly guilty for everything that's happened to him by the end of 305.
    • First of all, he's forced to electrocute himself by his own best friend - you can actually hear him screaming in pain while it's happening. Second, the electrocution leaves him with severe brain damage, which means he loses most of his memory and is made even more simple than before - so he's left doing nothing but happily grinning and mumbling for the rest of the episode, even as Sam struggles to restore it. Third...and this is the real Tear Jerker...at the very end, his head really does catch fire, and when the last Maimtron hits, you realize he's actually on the verge of genuinely exploding, just as he's been warned about from the very beginning. Again, you can hear him crying out in pain; the absolutely heartbreaking expression on his face makes it clear that he's suddenly realized what's happening. The very last you see of him is a small wave goodbye to Sam before he teleports off to spare the city.
  1. ↑ If you want to be specific, in fact the Series was never Cancelled: Fox Kids didn't order a second season after the first one ended its production
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