YMMV / Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Baldi just a psychopathic teacher who is out to kill or trying to help the protagonist by coming after them with a ruler in hand? It's never outright stated he's going to kill you after all and corporal punishment was still going strong in the 90s.
    • And for that matter, is he deliberately setting you up with unsolvable math problems, or does he just not realize/care? The latter could be possible, since, after expunging Null from the game and getting the 21 questions wrong ending, Baldi legitimately gives you some advice regarding math.
    • The fandom's sultry portrayal of Baldi has led to an alternate interpretation that Baldi wants to do more to the player then just spank or kill them. There's even a (not pornographic, but NSFW and very uncomfortable) fully animated fan song, courtesy of DAGames, about it that has over nine million views and counting.
  • Same goes for Principal of the Thing. Whether he knows that putting the protagonist in detention will ultimately get them killed or not, is up for interpretation.
  • There's also Filename2/Null. Whether he's either really a person stuck inside the game or just a character mocking meta games that have people trapped inside games is up to interpretation.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: A lot of people predicted the Kickstarter for the full game would crash and burn, since Baldi's Basics was a game which grew popular very quickly, and was thought to simply be remembered as a passing fad. That's exactly why the creator made the Kickstarter in the first place, since he wanted to know if people actually cared about Baldi or if they simply played it for the meme. The Kickstarter reached its goal a few days before the deadline.
• Awesome Music: Schoolhouse Trouble, the boss theme which plays once you provoke Null into fighting you in the hidden Null mode. It's notable for sounding epic in contrast to the rest of the themes that play throughout the game. It helps that the entire school is glitching on beat to the music.
  • Sometime after the release of Classic Remastered, the song's composer even made a "REQUIEM" version that amps up the intensity the original had.
• Better as a Let's Play: The jump scares, bizarre characters, and surreal and intentionally schlocky nature of the game make videos of players reacting to the latest weird character or mechanic added to the game as they try to avoid their ill-tempered school teacher widely popular.
• Cargo Ship: Believe it or not, Baldi x Ruler is a thing.
• Catharsis Factor: Given how frequently Playtime can result in a game-over, especially for players of the first version, being able to engage in a very literal case of Cutting the Knot — i.e, her skipping rope — with the safety scissors is immeasurably satisfying.
• Crack Pairing: Every single pairing. No exception. Acceptable ones include Baldi/Principal, Playtime/Bully and any combination of Gotta Sweep, Arts & Crafters, and 1st Prize.
• Crossover Ship: It's pretty popular to ship Baldi with other indie horror antagonists, such as William Afton, Bendy, or Monika.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Playtime and the Principal. With Playtime, she forces you to do a game of jump-rope before letting you go, increasing the risk of Baldi killing you or catching up. The Principal is worse, as if he sees you breaking school rules, he instantly gives chase, and doesn't stop until he catches you. When he does, he puts you on detention for a certain amount of time, and this gives Baldi a chance to catch up, or, if the time is still ticking, kill you, especially if you have a 99-second detention. If you have the Principal's Keys, you can escape detention, but if the Principal spots you, he'll put you back into detention.
  • It's a Bully could count as well. He requires you to give an item to him for him to move, but he can block paths to a notebook. He could also steal an item that could be useful. Oh, and the item he steals is completely random. And if you happen to have an empty inventory when you run into him, he simply won't budge, potentially rendering the round Unwinnable if Baldi's coming the other way. All one can do is pray that the Principal of the Thing shows up to send the Bully to detention.
  • Beans and his gum bubble will make one feel what it's like to be on the receiving end of a B-Soda. The gum slows you down immensely, almost making you immobile. It has a janky hitbox, so you can't move to the sides of the hall to dodge it; if you see Beans charging up, even at the end of a hallway, run. What's worse is that Beans appears to spawn more frequently than other enemies. One cathartic factor about this, however, is that if you can successfully dodge the bubble by going into another hall, it may hit Baldi instead, buying you some time. The 0.4 update would add sound affects for Beans chewing and spitting his gum, the gum flying down the hallway, and splatting when it hits something, making it easier to track the gum's trajectory and where it will land.
• Designated Villain: The Principal may be a pain in the ass when you really need to run away from a Sadist Teacher, but he is simply just enforcing the basic school-rules to keep it in order. Not to mention that on rare occasions, he even sends The Bully to detention for, well… bullying, as that is also obviously against the rules. Although it is unknown what he would do if he knew, or if he even is aware of that Baldi, his employee, is about to kill the player.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Baldi is easily one of the most bizarre cases. While it's easy to assume that he's just a Stern Teacher with a Hair-Trigger Temper, quite a few pieces of fanart portray him as outright sultry. This is commonly blamed on the Self-Fanservice people apply on the characters, as well as some players enjoying the feeling of being hit with a ruler…
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gotta Sweep — the awesome Mook Bouncer, and the game's Fountain of Memes.
  • 1st Prize. Despite being added in version 1.3, he's already getting popularity due to being a hug-loving Cyborg that won in a science fair, and his ability to push you around the school. The fact that he can help you escape by the end of the game certainly helps matters.
  • Baldi's family, his wife Susan and son Andrew, have been embraced by the fanbase, despite only appearing in the Badimore comics so far and Word of God from mystman12 saying that even he isn't sure if they are canon to the games.
• Fan Nickname: Null was originally called Filename2 by the fanbase before the release of Classic Remastered.
• Fanon:
  • A lot of people assume that Baldi's bright, red lips are because he's wearing lipstick.
  • It's also pretty popular for people to assume that Playtime is Principal of the Thing's daughter.
  • As is the case with many indie games released in the last few years, it's not uncommon to see Baldi and Co. show up in GoAnimate videos.
  • The Protagonist is usually portrayed by a kid with spiky black hair wearing a green onesie. Such a character model never appeared in the game.
    • For people who have seen and accepted the real model^note a tall gray pole with invisible eyes halfway down its face, this fan appearance is often applied to Andrew Baldimore.
  • Fans generally accepted "Baldimore", Baldi's last name from the original comics, as his canonical last name.
  • Baldi's wife and son are called "Miss Baldi/Baldina" and "Baldi Jr." respectively.
  • The enigmatic Null, with his vague warnings about wanting to destroy the game, is often portrayed as a full on Big Bad in mods and custom maps, to the extent of possibly even being an Omnicidal Maniac. This became Ascended Fanon with NULL Style having him become a full blown boss trying to directly stop you.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Principal/Baldi, also known as Princibaldi.
• Friendly Fandoms: Fans of this game and Doki Doki Literature Club! tend to get along pretty well, since both are horror games masquerading as other games, which also happen to take place in a school. Some even consider Baldi's Basics to be DDLC's Spiritual Successor.
• Funny Moments: Has its own page here.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The game received a cult following and Memetic Mutation within the South Korean internet sphere as it inspired humorous fan arts on Twitter and Let's Plays on YouTube.
• Gotta Ship 'Em All: Shipping is surprisingly very common in the Baldi's Basics Fandom. Considering that none of the characters have much characterization beyond being obstacles for the player to avoid, all of these ships count as a Crack Pairing. One quick Google Search confirms that the fanbase has shipped every combination imaginable, and yes, this includes Null if you're wondering.
• I Knew It!: Before Plus was released, several fans theorized that Null would be killed or the player would have to fight him. Both turned out to be right, just not in Plus.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Many people have expressed their disappointment at the game's rapid increase in popularity and the attention it has gotten from big-name YouTubers like Jacksepticeye, CoryxKenshin, Game Theory, and Markiplier. Some of these people see the game as nothing more than an amusing Game Jam entry and don't believe it needs to be blown out of proportion. Others just don't want the game to fall victim to the side-effects of receiving "mainstream" attention like other popular indie horror games have.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Baldi. That's what you get for threatening to hit people with a ruler. The fact that a later demo, and some later versions, involve Baldi being alone with the player character on a camping trip certainly doesn’t help matters.
  • 1st Prize as well. He's an adult-sounding robot who hugs the player without asking and even proposes to them. Keep in mind that the player is likely still a minor.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Gotta Sweep has become the subject of many memes, all of which have to do with his lines, such as "GOTTA SWEEP SWEEP SWEEP!" and "LOOKS LIKE IT'S SWEEPING TIME!"
  • The Principal has gotten a similar treatment, mainly due to his lines when punishing you, leading to "No x in the halls."
  • Despacit-no. No! Sit down! I don't want memes in my math class!^note During a livestream in which mystman12 tried to beat his own game of Baldi's Basics, he would occasionally slip into character voicing the characters he played in the game. At one point, he is requested to say "despacito" in-character as Baldi, only to make a remark about not wanting memes in his math class.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • The jokes about the game having "lore" are just that, jokes. Despite that, a lot of people still write creepypastas for the game, make up backstories for each character^note because Null said that he was sucked into the game, a lot of people assume that every character was once an ordinary person who got sucked into it, and generally assume that all of the game's "lore" is meant to be taken seriously.
  • Also the shippers. And, for whatever reason, the Baldi fangirls. The Baldi’s Basics fandom has somewhat gained the reputation of the Five Nights at Freddy's fandom, with a lot of children who see the game in... unusual ways and seemingly forget it’s a horror game.
• Misaimed Merchandising: Baldi toys exist, presumably aimed at young kids, despite the whole game being a Subverted Kids' Show.
• Moe: Many times Playtime is this. She's oddly endearing compared to the rest of the characters. Though her bad habit of making you play jump rope with her will make you get caught by Baldi more often than not.
• Narm Charm: Some of the voices can come off as this. This is all based on opinion, but Gotta Sweep's voice is reminiscent of Max Gilardi's Fluttershy as seen in the PONY.MOV series, which in turn is a Fat Albert parody. Baldi himself sounds like a cross between Squidward and some of the silly voices Mr. Regular has been known to do, and Null's Suddenly Shouting voice sounds less demonic and unearthly and more like someone trying to sing death metal.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • The Stylistic Suck Retraux Edutainment Game aesthetic lends itself to this. It's a little hard to be nervous or scared or anything beyond weirded out when everything looks like shit and/or it's giving you a nostalgia trip of the kind of crap games you found on cereal boxes.
  • In Baldi's Basics Plus, all sound is muted in the Library. This can be terrifying for the player as they'll have no way of hearing where Baldi is, made worse by the room's labyrinthine layout, but if Baldi does catch the player there, mercifully, the jumpscare sound is muted too.
• Paranoia Fuel: This game is made for this. You probably wouldn't like to enter in a school at night anymore.
  "I HEAR EVERY DOOR YOU OPEN"
• Realism-Induced Horror: It's generally agreed among fans that one of the scariest things about the game is the anxiety and Paranoia Fuel that comes from having a teacher get furious at you and chase you down simply for failing to solve a math problem you don't understand. This has led to multiple fan theories, such as this, suggesting that the protagonist is a child in the real world, possibly with a disability of some kind, and they're imagining themselves being chased by an Evil Teacher in an Edutainment Game world either as a result of general anxiety from school, or possibly from traumatic experiences with an actual abusive teacher.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Detentions. While some of the rules you need to follow do make sense, you have to not follow them in order to beat the game, I.E. you need to run to move through the school faster, faculty rooms have useful items to collect, and using the BSoda can give you distance between you and Baldi. When you're in detention, you have a time-limit on how long you are in it, and the time builds up for each subsequent detention ranging from a mere 15 seconds to 99 seconds. Plus, unless you use the phone or the tape (the tape player for which is usually inside the Principal's Office), or use WD-NoSquee on the door to the Principal's Office, getting in detention counts as a door opening, so there's a big chance that Baldi will come in, kill you, and end your run, especially when he's moving faster, during higher-timed detentions, or if he's close to the office when you do get detention. Baldi's Basics Plus lessened this a bit by having the Principal's Office location be randomly generated rather than only in the center of the building, which gives Baldi more time to head towards it, and decreased the duration by which the detention times increase from 15 second intervals to 5 second intervals, a change that carried over to Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered. This is because the original 15 second intervals are now one of the difficulty changes provided in the Hard Mode Fun Setting, grouping it within a more difficult gameplay round.
  • The jump rope minigame with Playtime. When she catches you, you have to jump 5 times, but if you mess up, you have to start over, but the biggest reason on why this is annoying is because if Baldi is close, this can lead to you dying. Thankfully, you can avoid this by using the Safety Scissors. Playtime being able to reward at most 25 You Thought Points in Baldi's Basics Plus for completing her jump rope minigame without messing up has lessened this issue as it means the player now has an incentive to play with her (as these points are used in Johnny's Store to buy valuable items). Plus and Classic Remastered would tweak this further by allowing the player to move while they are jumping, preventing them from being completely helpless.
  • Arts and Crafters' mechanic of teleporting you to the starting point. Despite him being active only after you got 7/7 notebooks, this can ruin any good run, due to him also teleporting Baldi to the starting point as well, which means, unless you have a BSoda to use on him, You Are Already Dead. Fortunately, Arts and Crafters can only do it once per run. This also happens in the older version of the camping minigame, where wandering too far out past the sign triggers his spawn and causes him to teleport you to the burnt out campfire where Baldi is. The mechanic was frequently updated in later demos as well as Baldi's Basics Plus. The player will often have less or more notebooks to collect^note 4 on the first floor, though random seeds with 1, 2, or 3 notebooks have been reported, the usual 7 on the second floor, and 9 on the third floor, his teleportation also takes much longer to take effect, showing him swirling around the player as he prepares to teleport them, and he only teleports the player to a random part of the building this time, and it produced a sound at the source of the teleportation to draw over Baldi. This can temporarily get the player way out of range from Baldi, and even can rarely put the player inside the Mystery Room (which Baldi can't enter), but he can teleport the player into faculty rooms, which can thus make the player at risk of Principal of the Thing. This was patched to remove the teleportation area making noise, which gave the player more time to get away since now Baldi would lose them. Ultimately, it would be patched for a final time by now teleporting the player near one of the elevators in the building, and teleporting Baldi as well once again like in Classic, putting the player between Baldi and the elevator. This version was used for Classic Remastered as well.
  • Baldi's Super-Senses. Despite it being a unique way of chasing you, every time you open a door, you can expect Baldi to be outside the room you enter, thus increasing your chance of dying and losing the run, especially when he's faster. He's also attracted to detentions, so when you do get detention, there's a big chance that Baldi will come to the Principal's Office, and then possibly kill you, unless you somehow get him out of the way with a BSoda or have his Least Favorite Tape to use before he gets there (the Principal's Office has a tape player for the tape to be used in).
  • In the old version of the camping demo, the slow movement while you're carrying a lot of sticks. Justified in that the heavy weight of them is slowing you down, but this increases the chance of the fire going out, It's a Bully sneaking up to take all the sticks, and Baldi chasing you down and inevitably killing you (unless you're lucky), especially when Cloudy Copter is around. A mechanic in which the player can drop all their sticks was implemented so the player could lighten their load in the event they got too heavy.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • In the games, the characters are all grotesque and weird, some looking like bizarre MS Paint doodles made by preschoolers. For example, Playtime's eyes are just weird scribbles, Principal doesn't even appear to have eyes or a nose, Bully's face is distorted, etc. However, in fanart, the adults such as Baldi and Principal tend to appear much more attractive, while the children like Playtime and Bully appear as cuter and more innocent-looking than they are in the games.
  • Gotta Sweep deserves special mention here. Most humanizations have portray him as a normal human, but with green skin and white hair. Since he's supposed to be a broom, some may give him a mohawk. Also, nearly all humanizations of him are Bishōnen, which clashes hard with his deep, almost raspy voice.
  • Mrs. Pomp, despite only being a grotesque head in a shoe, has fanart portraying her as a fully humanoid Hot Teacher.
  • Chalkles, despite really just being a chalk face on a board, so vague that it could be anything from a young child to an old man with a mustache. Due to it's childlike laughter, many tend to portray it as a cute child. Arguably, Beans is the only new character who doesn't get hit with this.
• Shocking Moments: The boss fight against Filename2/NULL in Classic Remastered's Glitch Mode is a big highlight of the entire game, mostly for just how unexpected it is.
• Stuck in Their Shadow: While all of characters have their iconic and funny moments, Arts and Crafters seems to get the short end of the stick. With his lack of quotes, him being only a major factor during the endgame, and his ability to screw up a good run; its not surprising he's the one glossed over most of the time.
• That One Sidequest: Getting the Secret Ending requires you to fail all 21 questions and leave the school. Getting out after failing 6 questions is a nightmarish task in its own right, but you have to bring Baldi to his absolute limit and still escape.
• Ugly Cute:
  • Baldi himself can be this, at least at the beginning of the game. His awkward voice and love for math can be very endearing for some players, despite the fact that he's the antagonist of a horror game.
  • Playtime also counts. Despite being very crudely drawn, some people think she's adorable, mainly because of her personality. Her official mini figurine portrays her as more conventionally cute, her scribble eyes are downplayed to the point of looking like Black Bead Eyes, and her nose is much smaller.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: A popular interpretation of the game is that it’s in the imagination of a disabled child who has problems with school, and in their mind it’s a lot worse than it actually is, which is why after defeating Null, Baldi actually helps the player in some of the endings - Null is the physical manifestation of their anxiety about school.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The game opens with a message clarifying that despite imitating an old Edutainment Game in style, this is indeed a horror game. The message warns readers not to let their kids play it "unless, of course, they enjoy horror games". It helps that starting with Baldi's Basics Plus, a creepy music track (originally played for the game's Copy Protection screen) overlays this warning now.
• The Woobie: While it is very convenient that you can get Playtime to leave you alone by cutting her jump rope, some players end up feeling sorry for her as a result, the way she (rather bluntly) states that you made her sad. Although she can be very annoying as an enemy, she doesn't seem to be malicious at all, she just wants to play with you.

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