YMMV / Bo Burnham

• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • His stage persona is deliberately played up to be a terrible, narcissistic person who sings about things like Helen Keller being the perfect woman, falling in love with an old woman and then her three-year-old granddaughter, giving head to Satan, a young boy named Adolf with all of the mannerisms of Adolf Hitler, and a barbeque hosted by the Ku Klux Klan. But it's okay, because it's hilarious. And satirical.
  • "Kill Yourself" from Make Happy milks the Black Comedy and Refuge in Audacity of its subject matter for all its worth. By the end, he's just coming up with more and more outlandish suicide methods.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Left Brain and Right Brain, from their eponymous skit/song. Especially Right Brain.
  • Socko from “How the World Works”.
• Epic Riff: The piano riffs of "Art is Dead" and "Oh Bo".
  • The piano riff of "Art is Dead" has gained some fame by itself, and people were quick to note when Bo began playing it in "Playing Piano Gets You Laid", a video collab with CollegeHumor.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The more you know about biblical stuff, the funnier and/or more meaningful "Rant" is.
• Growing the Beard: Started around the time of Words Words Words. He's openly expressed embarrassment and dislike of much of his work prior to that period, which was more based around shock value for the sake of shock value rather than making a satirical point. This was paired with Bo's politics getting increasingly progressive as he aged, with that being reflected in his work and the punching-down being lessened with every special (such as the Take That! at privileged people on "Straight White Man" from Make Happy).
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Can't Handle This" was explicitly a parody of Kanye West's autotuned rants that also showed Bo's deteriorating mental state and growing anxiety. Later in 2016, Kanye himself had a breakdown on stage and was hospitalized, making for an odd case of life imitating art imitating art.
  • Speaking of "Can't Handle This" and its frank talk about Bo's mental struggles, it also hits a lot harder after 2021's Inside, where Bo goes considerably further into detail about how badly he's been struggling. Going back to that song post-Inside makes it seem like Foreshadowing, and it was already very dark as is.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "Welcome to YouTube," he says that "most of the best YouTubers are either Asian or they're gay, so there's an untapped YouTube celebrity and his name is George Takei." While he's not so much specifically a YouTube celebrity, since the song's debut, Takei has gained a huge internet following.
  • In "Ironic," a List Song of ironic scenarios, he says, "I can't grow a beard; that one's not ironic, that one's just sad." In light of the release of his special Inside, which shows Bo having done just that, mentions of the quote and how (delightfully) poorly it ended up aging among fans were inevitable.
• Jerkass Woobie: His whole stage persona is this. His sense of humor is beyond messed-up, and straight into vile territory. He acts abrasive and misanthropic. Yet as each special goes by, his poor mental health becomes more and more of a focus, and his Sad Clown nature becomes more apparent.
• Memetic Mutation: There are quite a few videos of characters staring into the camera set to "Prolonged eye contact! (Prolonged eye contact!)"
• Moe: Bo himself qualifies sometimes, especially when he plays up the woobieness. Also Right Brain from "Left Brain, Right Brain", who's basically the living embodiment of Bo's Adorkableness.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • When Bo's left and right brains are separated in "Left Brain, Right Brain", there is a collage of eerie sound effects, flashing lights, and Bo on his knees in great pain.
  • "Repeat Stuff":
    • The video's Satanic imagery, while used with tongue firmly in cheek, is still quite extreme. At first, it becomes sporadically included throughout the video, but near and at the end it just pulls out all the stops. Bo, playing a generic pop star, breaks into a house to meet a young female fan, takes her pillow and proceeds to smothers her, and rips out her heart and eats it.
    • Not quite as bad, but it's pretty disturbing how he sits on the little girl's bed and stares at her until she wakes up.
• Signature Song: Several songs have served this function at different stages in his career.
  • "My Whole Family..." was the song that propelled Bo to his first bit of stardom.
  • "Oh Bo" was seemingly this for a while, considering the unanimous approval and participation it got at live performances.
  • Post-Inside, any pick from a number of songs that went considerably viral — "Bezos I", "Welcome to the Internet", or "All Eyes on Me" (which was the individual frontrunner when the special was being submitted for award consideration).
• Squick:
  • The last few lines of "Sunday School":
    I'm gay for Jesus
    Fill me with Your grace
    Pour Your love all over me
    But please aim away from my face
  • The "Repeat Stuff" video where Bo eats a young girl's heart right out of her chest.

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