The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police/YMMV

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The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police

  • Adaptation Displacement: The relatively child-friendly games and cartoons are much better known than the original (darker) comics.
  • 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.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: How about a song and dance on how war is Good For You?
    • The music for the final battle with Hugh Bliss at the very end of Season 1.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Fans on the Telltale forums love Papierwaite, and Jurgen is also quite popular. Also Sal, who is rather friendly and lovable for a giant cockroach.
    • Also the C.O.P.S.
  • 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.
  • Fetish Fuel: Although the series doesn't really have any actual examples, according to Max in "The Penal Zone", we wouldn't believe how many fetishes there are that involve him and Sam.
  • Genius Bonus/Viewers Are Geniuses:
    • The opening for episode 305 is an obvious homage to "Space 1999". Well, if you've seen it before... and the majority of the Sam & Max target audience probably hasn't.
    • Right before she attempts to assassinate Sammun-Mak, Nefertiti cries "Sic semper tyrannis, junior!". "Sic semper tyrannis" is Latin, and can be translated to "Thus always to tyrants". It's a phrase typically attributed to Marcus Junius Brutus, the most prominent figure in the assassination of Julius Caesar.
  • Ho Yay: According to Sybil's (rather flawed) dating computer analysis, Sam and Max are the perfect match for each other.
    • In "Moai Better Blues", you see the following conversation when you examine the punching bag.

Sam: I got this punching bag so that Max would stop hitting me. So far, it hasn't worked.
Max: But violence is how I show affection!
Sam: Then could you stop loving me before 6AM?
Max: No way! I could never stop loving you, Sam!

    • See the Show Some Leg example on the main page.
    • The Bachelor party in "What's New, Beelzebub?". For once, the duo's reaction mirrored the player's exactly.
    • Also, from "What's New, Beelzebub?", Sam's comment about Sexy Demon Peepers:

Sam: I hate to admit it, but Peepers is kinda sexy.
Max: If you're into small guys with annoying voices, I guess.

    • A Crowning Moment of Ho Yay: Harry Moleman frisking Sam in "Bright Side of the Moon".
    • In "The Penal Zone", if Max is with you when you pick up the ring, he will confuse the situation for a proposal.

Max: Sam, this is all so sudden. I don't know what to say.

    • If you use the Ring with Max outside Mamma Bosco's Lab, you get a whole cutscene, parodying DeBeers Commercials, in which Sam thinks about actually giving the ring to Max, but eventually discards this with a 'nah'.
      • The mere fact that Sam actually seems to seriously consider it says it all.
    • Max apparently has a habit of coming up with creepy disaster scenarios that end with him eating Sam to survive. Sam is annoyed by this, so Max tells him to just "stop looking so damn tasty."
    • Also a Crowning Moment of Funny: "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls" has a potential future for Sam as a reenactment of the death scene from Romeo and Juliet. Max is Juliet.

Sam: And thus, with a kiss, I die! (dies)
Max: Hey, guess what! I wasn't really dead! (sees Sam's body) Ooh... awkward...

    • The Spores all represent a fragment of Max's personality. One of them really seems to have No Sense of Personal Space.
      • "Do you find the heat... alarming, Sam?"
    • As for other characters, there's the way Skun-ka'pe and Papierwaite's relationship is discussed. While their brief cooperation itself doesn't merit raising of eyebrows, everyone involved refers to the end of said cooperation as "dumping", and the two even disagree on which one of them did the dumping.
  • Memetic Mutation: BANANG!!!
  • Moral Event Horizon: From Season 2's finale:

Max: Well if that doesn't get us into hell, nothing will.

    • Since it's about destroying a building with several people in it, including a dying child (whom Sam and Max will make sure gets to Hell), in order to raise a killer robot... That also counts as Crossing the Line Twice.
    • At first, it was pretty hard to take Hugh Bliss seriously as a villain... at least until he separated Max's bliss by severing his hand, tearing out his stomach, and ripping off his tail.
      • Particularly when he finally really snaps and screams "DIE, BUNNY" before attacking Max, who'd been one of his biggest fans until right then. This is one of the only times in the games where Sam doesn't hesitate to shoot a villain.
    • Damning Santa Claus's soul to Hell, although they did bring him back.
      • The episode where they bring him back actually reveals that there's a whole wing of Hell devoted to people who Sam and Max have, either directly or indirectly, had a hand in the death of; even relatively blameless victims get sent here, so Sam and Max's involvement is the only relevant factor.
  • Porting Disaster: The frame-rates of the Season 1 and Season 2 ports to the Wii will suddenly drop down to the teens, or single digits, on the drop of a hat. Certain sequences are almost literal slide-shows. Additionally, the controls where not adjusted to compensate for the fact that you're using a Wiimote, not a mouse. Mix in poor Wiimote detection, the frame-rate, and you've got yourself a point-and-click adventure which is both difficult and a literal pain to play.
  • The Scrappy: The Soda Poppers. Recognized in canon as the Scrappies when they turn out to be not only a central part of Sam's personal hell, but the very final bosses who, it turns out, had been controlling Satan and been the secret rulers of hell all along. Ironically, it was recently revealed that Telltale actually thought that the Soda Poppers were popular and, by making them the Big Bad, they were making the game Darker and Edgier.
    • Harry Moleman is becoming a scrappy of his own right. Also, in episode 303, Sammun-Mak became a Replacement Scrappy.
  • Special Effect Failure: In "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls", the cutscene which plays when the duo first take the tunnel to BoscoTech has Sam lighting the way with a match, held in his right hand. While the light on the character models reflects this, their shadows are projected as though the light is coming from the left of Max, creating the physics-bending image of Sam holding the light that's casting his shadow up next to his shadow.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Some fans' reactions to the announcement that the upcoming Season 3 will replace the Point-and-Click interface with a controller-friendly one, similar to Wallace and Gromit. Never mind that this is for the console games only.
    • Also, the complaint that Max's Future Vision makes the puzzles too easy.
      • Not to mention the complaints about Bill Farmer and Nick Jameson not voicing Sam and Max (Telltale tried to get them to voice said characters, but they couldn't).
  • Ugly Cute:
    • Sam Jr. in episode 305.
    • Sal might also count, if only because he's so gosh-darn lovable despite being a six-foot tall cockroach.
    • Dr. Norrington.
    • The way Giant Max smiles when he remembers the various places Sam leads him pushes him into this, as well.
  • What Do You Mean It's 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.

Sam & Max Hit the Road

  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The puzzle with the Bigfoot hair and Frog Rock leads to the sky suddenly going dark. Then a mole man driving a flying saucer appears, spouts alien gibberish about the characters Doug and Shuv-ool, takes the bigfoot hair and moleman powder aboard, then disappears, with the stars forming the words "Go To Bumpusville" in his wake, pointing you towards the next location.
  • Ho Yay: In the dress-up Mini Game, possible costumes for the guys include wedding clothes (Sam as the groom and Max as the bride).
    • If you attempt to ride the Tunnel of Love while Max is trapped in the tank, Sam will refuse, saying it 'wouldn't be romantic without Max'.
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