YMMV / Behind the Bastards

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Sometimes a guest will start a joke about whatever is going on in the episode only for Robert to remark that the circumstances the guest just made up as a joke is actually what happened. An example would be the guests from The Dollop joking that Henry Kissinger's wiretaps with the FBI on the various members of the Nixon Administration included himself ("I don’t trust me as far as I can throw myself") only for Robert to chime in to note that actually, yes, Henry Kissinger requested that he himself be included in those in the White House that were wiretapped by the FBI to the astonishment of the guests.
  • In the second Reinhard Heydrich episode, Evans mentions that some listeners wrote in to say they were shocked to find out that the knife missile mentioned in his Running Gag about Raytheon is an actual thing. Specifically, it's the R9X anti-personnel guided missile. (The missile is actually made by Lockheed Martin but they have a boring name)
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Robert gets to choose who makes the list, and has included negative takes on people who others would argue accidentally caused a bad situation because they didn't think things through, rather than because of malicious intentions. His episode about Ron Jones and The Third Wave experiment is a good example of this. His response is that the results should have been obvious to them at the time, and you shouldn't get sympathy if other people get hurt by your stupidity.
• Broken Base:
  • Fans on Robert inserting his hard-line socialist/anarchist politics into the show frequently. Some are annoyed by it and consider it to be the show too editorialized and often leads to him getting off the topic of the episode, while others either agree with him, don't care or argue that the show will be innately political and isn't intended to be objective.
  • The episodes on Bobby Fischer are controversial due to persistent (and uncharacteristic) punching down on Fischer's childhood of poverty and isolation and dismissal of his possible autism and paranoid schizophrenia as convenient excuses for his paranoia, arrogance, and bigotry.
  • Sophie's role on the show has been expanded from a background presence to something closer to a co-host over time, largely at Robert's urging. Some listeners find her contributions hilarious and enjoy her Only Sane Man dynamic with Robert and the guests; others think she detracts from the overall vibe.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The two part episodes on the Reagan Administration's handling (or rather, lack of handling) of the AIDS crisis suffers from this. Robert and guest Iffy are both stunned by a body count that accrued over the eight years of Reagan's administration, numbers dwarfed by the death toll of COVID19 in just a few months.
  • The "BLEEP child hunting island" gag became this for the hosts when they started getting a number of very disturbing emails from listeners convinced it wasn't a joke, leading to its eventual retirement.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In Part 2 of the Harry Hoxsey episode, Robert makes multiple jabs at the Mike Bloomberg Presidential campaign who has been purchasing automated ads on the show. The episode ended up being released the day after Bloomberg dropped out of the race.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The bagels. ^note  When Robert gets really mad during the show, he'll often throw stale bagels across the room, to the point that fans of the series reference it every time the series is brought up online
  • Machetes ^note  One bit that happens in Robert's show is for him to either mention the usage of machetes or being gifted a machete. Usually if a real machete is involved in the bit, he would often use it for inappropriate tasks, such as using it as a baseball bat against thrown bagels.
  • Raytheon and their R9X "Knife Missile" ^note  A very common advertisement segue that Robert use is to reference the Raytheon company and their (actually Lockheed Martin’s) R9X missile.
  • selling out for a Bearcat ^note  Robert has stated that he will sell his soul to defense contractors for his own personal Bearcat, a type of MRAP used by the US military and SWAT teams. He has also expressed a desire to drive around shooting out the window with an AK-47 after starting his cult.
  • Hunting children on the private island owned by BLEEEP ^note  Robert's taken to claiming that online food-box vendor (and frequent advertiser on Youtube and podcasts in general) Blue Apron owns a private island on which the mega-rich can hunt children for sport. Sophie bleeps out the company's name, but not the rest of the joke.

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