YMMV / Darths & Droids

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • This moment after Jim's unusually skillful roleplaying:
    Jim: That was my best death ever!
    Annie: It was amazing. I've never felt so comfortable letting myself go in character before. I never found anyone I could trust.
    Jim: Trust me.
  • In this strip, Jim suggests that Padmé and Anakin burrow underneath the sand to escape from the arena, an idea which flusters Annie and causes them both to become tongue-tied. The intent of it is that Annie is reluctant to say Jim's idea is crazy, which Jim realizes and apologizes for. Several readers assumed that "burrowing underneath the sand" was an euphemism, and Annie was embarrassed by that implication.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Did Vader blow up the planet to rid the galaxy of the pain of her love? Or is it because Padmé, who was Jim's character, wanted to be really sure that Bibble would get what was coming to him?
  • The DM in thesestrips. Did he really have a "family emergency or whatever"? Or was he frustrated with the group and decide to take a day to cool off?
• Ass Pull: The revelation that Darth Vader is Padmé brought some grumbling from readers, mainly because the original robotization strip turned out to be a carefully Quote Mined version of what actually happened.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: This strip. Padmé "dies" in the desert then we abruptly switch to screencaps of The Princess Bride. (It was an April Fools' Day comic, but without a date posted on the page it's not obvious when reading the comic archives.)
• Bizarro Episode: The crossover campaign with The Muppet Show, starting with Episode 1759 and taking place in the Kamino cloning facilities, somehow manages to be even more weird than the rest of the comic. The weirdness is justified by the GM improvising the entire story without any preparations.
• Cargo Ship: R2-D2 and his beloved dreadnought. Hilariously Pete apparently ships this in-universe. And after his dreadnought is out of the picture, he ships him with the Peace Moon.
• Crazy Is Cool: General Grievous has been reimagined as a Warrior Poet who recites menacing poetry while trying to destroy Obi-Wan.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • The Peace Moon blowing up Naboo results in way more Black Comedy than would be expected.
    "Shore leave to Naboo has been canceled."
  • There's also Darth Vader's treatment of Daine Jir:
    Vader: Kill everyone who knows.
    Jir: Oh my, sir! Even me?
    Vader: (Stares blankly at him for a moment) Yes.
  • General Grievous's death, in which he quotes both Blade Runner and Citizen Kane while he's burning to death from the inside.
  • Anakin killing the young Padawans and Padmé being horrified by it? Tragic. Pete mentioning that the Padawans were 2500 XP each, causing Jim / Padmé to suddenly be impressed with how many times Annie must have leveled up? Hilarious.
  • When Zam's hand is cut off, there's a moment of unintentional and awkward Black Comedy.
    Zam Wessel: Now how am I going to feed my boy?
    Obi-Wan: Oh Anakin, did you pick up her hand before we left the bar? *Beat* Oh. That wasn't related to your last question, by the way.
• Genius Bonus: The fact that the Geonosis factory sequence was added in by Pete acting as a substitute GM is even funnier if one is aware that it wasn't part of the original movie script, but was added during production.
• Growing the Beard: The shift from "this is an amusing little comic" to "this is some seriously impressive writing" very clearly happened during Maul's seven-strip monologue beginning in strip 182, in which Maul explains all the machinations that were going on behind the scenes throughout the campaign, and how the player characters unintentionally screwed everything up by not thinking things through, changing everyone's perceptions of events up to that point.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Running Gag of Jim's characters constantly dying, usually by the end of a campaign. Jim ultimately ends up playing Han Solo by the time the comic gets to the original trilogy... and in The Force Awakens, Han is killed by Kylo Ren.
  • The "Jim always dies" gag also feels eerily prescient of Rogue One and its infamous "Everybody Dies" Ending. This one actually got lampshaded in the comic, by having various characters from Rogue One be the ones that Jim got killed between Episodes III and IV.
  • This strip, where Mace Windu chews out the gang for causing a lot of collateral damage and unintentionally killing a lot of innocent people while crashlanding the Invisible Hand. In the Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode, "Dangerous Debt", the Martez sisters (who live on Coruscant themselves) reveal that their home was destroyed and their parents were killed in a similar accident as a result of Jedi negligence during an action-packed chase, and the sisters are not happy with the Jedi Order for not making reparations for the damage they were partially responsible for.
  • Without thinking, Jim gets Palpatine's name wrong as "Puppeteen" the moment they meet and more than once after that. Over time, Palpatine and Anakin's roles become reversed as driving force of villainy and confused puppet.
  • In one episode, Sally (who roleplays Jar Jar and has tired of playing) declares she wishes for Jar Jar to jump under a bus. Later, Ahmed Best (who played Jar Jar in the prequels) revealed he nearly killed himself over backlash towards the character.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In this strip, Jim is admonished about even thinking about wearing Amidala's dresses, just in case they had good armor class. Now Jim is playing Amidala.
  • Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor features a Show Within a Show biopic that bears a downright scary resemblance to Darths & Droids, like claiming Palpatine was good guy manipulated by Vader or that Vader was not actually Anakin Skywalker.
  • In a few Phantom Menace strips, Qui-Gon is obsessed with "casting Summon Bigger Fish". In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Jar Jar does just that in one episode.
    • This carries over into Star Wars Rebels when, in the series finale, the hero summons a gigantic pod of space whales to help deal with Thrawn. Technically not fish, but definitely in the spirit of the trope.
  • Darth Vader's assuming of the name "Vader" (Dutch for "father") becomes this following strip 1152 following the reveal that Darth Vader is Padmé, Luke and Leia's mother. Knowing Annie, this could very well have been intentional.
  • And here I didn't think you had any balls becomes this once you know that Vader is Padmé, so, of course, she physically doesn't. And, of course, Annie knows it...
  • The rant about Darth Maul's character arc and how he was meant to be a really important recurring character. At the time, it was making fun of how Maul, despite his great popularity, only appeared in one movie. Then, years later, Star Wars: The Clone Wars wound up bringing Maul back and he would indeed go on to be one of the most important and recurring villains in the Expanded Universe before finally getting a second movie appearance in Solo.
  • Similarly, the rant about Zam Wesell not taking advantage of her shapeshifting becomes this after the The Clone Wars episode "Holocron Heist", which featured another member of Zam's species doing just that. Granted, they still had a point about it not being used often, but it was used that time.
  • The Darth Vader reveal and the gag of Jim's characters always dying became a little funnier after The Force Awakens included both Captain Phasma (another woman in masculine armor) and the death of Han Solo, Jim's current character. To make this even more funny, Han Solo died at the hands of Kylo Ren... who idolized Darth Vader... who in this universe was Padmé, Jim's second character.
  • Morgan-Mar also went on record to state that The Force Awakens had managed to copy one of the future plot points they were planning for Return of the Jedi (which was only just finishing the escape from Jabba at the time), though he won't be revealing what that plot is until the actual Force Awakens adaptation.
  • Ever since all the way back in Episode I, Jim has been mishearing/mispronouncing "Jedi" as "Cheddar." Then at Star Wars Celebration 2016, the planet Jedha was unveiled, sounding even more like cheddar cheese.
  • Jim wanted Padmé to inherit his laser sword when he took over her character. As it turned out, she did eventually get her own laser sword, when she became Darth Vader...
  • The Time Skip campaign described in Return of the Jedi involved theme park robots having Turned Against Their Masters. The players were referring to Jurassic Park, but then the TV version of Westworld starts up and has that exact premise.
  • Sally's focus on droid rights when playing C-3PO becomes this after Solo where L3-37 is constantly talking about the same.
  • In the first A New Hope strip Pete says that they would have got away with the plans scott-free in the (unshown) previous session if a Star Destroyer hadn't appeared out of nowhere right in their path. Come Rogue One and that's now canonically exactly what happened.
  • Pete claims here, during the Episode IV arc, to have been aboard the Peace Moon for its first test-firing. At the time, this was a weasel for how he could have programmed back doors in the computers, and the GM went along with it. The Rogue One adaptation retcons that Pete wasn't at the first test, but the second time it fired, he was near enough that he was able to wirelessly hack the computer after all.
  • In 2013, two years after the Revenge of The Sith campaign wrapped up, The Making of The Return of The Jedi came out. There is a transcript of a story session where George Lucas mentions how he envisioned episode III playing out. Specifically Anakin had already fallen to the Dark Side (possibly offscreen between episodes II and III) but was working undercover with Palpatine to undermine the Republic and destroy the Jedi. This is pretty much how Annie plays Anakin in the Revenge of The Sith campaign, though she takes it up to eleven and even Palpatine is nothing more than a pawn in her scheme.
  • The Rant in this strip mentions the dangers of jumping to lightspeed, especially when the ship is aimed at something... Come The Last Jedi, this precise scenario happens with the Resistance's Raddus against the First Order's Supremacy. For the record, the strip was written on November 24, 2017, three weeks before that film was released.
  • In the body text of strip 543, the Irregulars observe that many of the hijinks that dungeon-crawling adventurers get up to are quite stressful and that Game Masters should try making players roll for all sorts of stress-induced trauma, before concluding that this sounds like a bad idea. Fast forward four years and Darkest Dungeon is released, featuring this exact mechanic as the core of its gameplay, and is met with great acclaim from players.
  • While discussing the GM's use of accents to quickly distinguish NPCs from each other in The Rant, it's suggested that voice actor Billy West would make a good GM. The idea of voice actors playing tabletop games later achieved great popularity with Critical Role.
  • In strip 1312, released three years before The Rise of Skywalker, thousands of transcended Jedi hitch a ride on Luke's X-Wing from Dagobah.
  • In strip 1757, the gang decides Wedge must have taken Yoda's Force ghost to Kamino to clone him a new body. Well, Baby Yoda, anyone?
  • Speaking of The Mandalorian, a major recurring plot point/joke in Darths & Droids is normal people gaining Force powers through Midichlorian transfusions. Season 2 of Mandalorians reveals, Moff Gideon is attempting to actually do that exact thing in canon... except all his test subjects so far have died from organ failure due to their bodies rejecting the Midichlorian-infused blood.
  • Also speaking of the Mandalorian, in strip 16 we are introduced to Tuna Booze Oil, a drink brewed in isolated fishing communities, presumably made from fish. Come episode 4 of the Mandalorian we are introduced to an isolated fishing community where they brew Spotchka, a blue drink brewed from their local fish.
  • The alternate universe strip about Futurama mentions that in that strip's universe, ReBoot ends up getting an unpopular revival. One has to wonder if it was predicting The Guardian Code.
  • Annie/Princess wonders in #1513 what might happen as far as Force powers for any offspring she and Han might have. Fast-forward to The Force Awakens arc, where Rey, rather than Kylo Ren is revealed as Han's child, presumably with Leia.
  • Back in 2012, when Darths And Droids began Episode IV, the Irregulars characterized Owen and Beru Lars as gun-toting doomsday preppers. Ten years later, the finale of Obi-Wan Kenobi revealed Beru at least was a gun-toting prepper, having stashed several rifles in case the Empire came for them and Kenobi couldn't help.
  • The battle on Hoth has an AT-AT pilot complaining that the controls were built for someone with four arms. Five years later, Solo gave us a pilot with four arms.
  • In Episode VI, Leia complains that "we really want to be on the Peace Moon, not this forest moon." Then, Episode VII retcons the Forest Moon as the real Peace Moon. So, she was actually there all along...
• Ho Yay: Officially, Darth Maul and Jango Fett are just close friends and partners, but the way Jango gushes about and obsesses over Maul sometimes veers into this.
• I Knew It!:
  • The WMG that Jim plays Padmé when Qui-Gon dies.
  • Naboo is Mustafar. That is, there is no Mustafar, but Naboo takes its visuals.
  • Naboo is also Alderaan. That is, it's Naboo, not Alderaan, that's destroyed by the Death Star/Peace Moon in Episode IV. That being said, Jango mentions that there is a real Alderaan elsewhere in the galaxy.
  • Pete's job involves a suit and tie, speeches, and "lying bastard[s] with silver tongue[s]". Yep, R2-D2 is an Evil Lawyer Joke.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Jango Fett is reimagined as a rather sad man desperately trying to avenge the death of his best friend, Darth Maul. Given that Maul only died because of the party's incompetence, it's hard not to feel for Jango, even if he takes his vengeance way too far.
  • Kylo Ren. Between Anakin maiming him as a kid and Greedo murdering his father to steal his identity, he's just one more victim of the party's foolishness.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Invoked. DMM encourages readers to spread "Jar Jar, you're a genius," across the net. As noted, the comic provided the very first instance of that sentence on the entire interweb.
  • Also, the "Summon Bigger Fish" spell, which gained a good deal of popularity after the Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode "Bombad Jedi". It then went the other way around, with screencaps from "Bombad Jedi" used for "Summon Bigger Fish" here.
    "That Jedi has summoned a monster!"
• Moral Event Horizon: Darth Vader crosses it when he blows up Naboo with the Peace Moon. This is especially so following the later reveal that Darth Vader is not Anakin Skywalker, but Padmé Amidala, meaning that Vader blew up her own homeworld.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The revelation that Anakin is not only pure evil...but always has been.
  • The reveal that Nute Gunray is not only alive... he's managed to turn himself into a purely digital life form, capable of taking over computers and machines, endlessly replicate himself, and that he's still out there. In fact, if he plays his cards right, he's essentially immortal.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Funnily brought up by Han. "Some of my best friends are shapeshifters... as far as I know."
  • The comic openly lampshades the existence of, and then lack of any follow up on, the existence of said shapeshifters in the canon universe.
  • There's a scene on the Invisible Hand where Pete starts asking if he sees any droids from where he's hiding. The non-answers the GM gives him eventually lead to a scene where Pete races into the other characters, screaming about how "I can't see them, they must be right behind me!"
• Periphery Demographic: Thanks to the author writing transcripts for each comic, the series has a notable following for the visually impaired as one of the few accessible web comics. The author himself encouraged this type of response and has made calls for other comics to make them accessible for their benefit.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Jar Jar, who was originally the most hated character in all six movies. So much so that at least one reader actually hoped that the writers could find a way to insert him into the other five movies. At the end of the Revenge of the Sith game Yoda notes that Jar Jar was the only one who wasn't acting like a fool. Though this is kind of weakened by the fact Sally plays both Yoda and Jar Jar.
  • The Irregulars note that they actually checked on the Internet, and the phrase "Jar Jar, you're a genius!" appeared precisely nowhere beforehand. Now it gets several hundred Google hits.
  • This was so well done that when Vader blew up Naboo with the Peace Moon, the forum's first reaction was "Oh my god, he just killed Jar Jar! You Monster!!"
  • Although Jar Jar wasn't inserted into the original trilogy, the Irregulars found a way to include him in Rogue One. They got around the lack of screenshots of him by only his voice appearing through a telecommunication device.
• The Scrappy: As admitted by Word of God and a complete inversion of the character as portrayed in the movies, there is an attempt to invoke this effect upon R2-D2. Whether or not this is successful will be left to the readers.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • An increasing opinion is that the comic began losing its edge starting around the time of the original trilogy. It seems to be divided between those who think the group has lost most of their quirks and follies and become too generic for the kind of chaos known in campaign comics, those who think the comic isn't poking enough fun at the holes in the movies and those who are just upset there are no more insults to the prequel trilogy. The generally-accepted reason is that, unlike the prequels, the original trilogy films are just too good to be easily mocked (or, at the very least, difficult to mock without making the same jokes that everyone else has made).
  • Even those who liked the original trilogy strips may find The Muppet Show arc a bit too filler-y while the comic's writers were waiting for The Rise of Skywalker before writing the strips based on the Sequel Trilogy.
• Tear Jerker: Before the battle of Hoth, Luke's co-pilot Dak tells him about how he met the perfect girl and they intend to retire and settle down on Alderaan. While you'd expect the players to make fun of how obviously this sets him up to die, when his and Luke's speeder crashes, Corey legitimately tries his best to save him, nearly at the cost of his own life, but to no avail.
  Luke/Corey: I'm getting Dak out. C'mon, buddy, you're gonna see Alderaan.
• Win Back the Crowd: Interestingly, after the sequel trilogy began, many fans believe that the series has reclaimed the satirical edge it lost in the original trilogy, now that it has the opportunity to exploit the plot holes of the sequel trilogy, as done with the prequel trilogy. The way the comics connect all the way back to the prequel trilogy where the sequels essentially ignored them, have funny jokes that completely transform the plotlines, and create fun new characters out of existing ones have all contributed to winning it back for many.
• The Woobie: Palpatine of all people. In stark contrast to the real movies, Palpatine here is a friendly, lovable Reasonable Authority Figure who is slowly driven mad and manipulated into terrorizing the galaxy by a man he thought of as a friend.

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