YMMV / Dave and Bambi: Golden Apple Edition

• Adorkable:
  • Bandu is the first being in the 3D realm that is friendly towards Boyfriend, almost always has a goofy smile plastered on his face, has an unusual-yet-charming obsession with his phones, and badly wants his big brother Expunged to like him.
  • Bendu acts even wackier than the rest of the Bambis, stands out with his Playful Cat Smile and sombrero, and loves his keyboard so much his vocals are cut from him saying "Look at my keyboard!".
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Much of the known lore in Golden Apple is based on contextual clues and hypothesis, leading to quite a bit of this.
  • How much does Expunged care about his brother? It apparently created Brobogonal in an attempt to cheer Bandu up when he was feeling sad, but he also sucks him up during his Hostile Show Takeover in "Applecore", considers him to be annoying, and later created the twisted Butchatrix in his image with ambiguous malicious intent.
  • In "Algebra", is Dave being a dick by yelling at his peers for joining in the song, or is he rightfully drilling into them for interrupting his attempts at a calm, easy-going song?
  • Paloose Man chases after Boyfriend and locks him in jail for rapping in "Ferocious", but he also raps himself during the chase. Is this an unconscious case of Hypocritical Humor, is he intentionally looking for a BS reason to lock up Boyfriend, or is he specifically referring to Boyfriend's beeping style of rap (as his section has actual lyrics)?
  • Due to the extremely small amount of information that was given on Dale after his debut in the mod, interpretations of what he is like vary wildly. While many people see him being just as insane as he looks (which was later proven to be true), there are a good number of fans that instead portray him with the Face of a Thug, whether it be for humor or wholesomeness.
• Awesome Art: A number of the characters in the mod have special 2D art created for them that appears in OST videos, and most of these look rather impressive and give the characters more life. Especially of note is RECOVERED_PROJECT's third phase, which manages to make Recovered Project's final form look surprisingly imposing.
• Crack Ship: Invoked in the secret song "Dave x Bambi Shipping Cute", which ships two shitpost characters with Incompatible Orientation as the joke.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: "Algebra" has a couple from its large cast of opponents.
  • Garrett is very popular due to his fantastic vocals and the catchiness of his section. He ended up being so popular, in fact, that his song, "Theft", was the first to be revealed online, even before Dave's.
  • Diamond Man is another favorite among the fanbase, with his section of the song being so different from the rest and praised as surprisingly catchy for how it invokes Stylistic Suck. He even got his own song "Too Shiny".
  • Outside of the "Algebra" gang, Brobgonal is highly popular among shitposters for how silly he looks combined with the downright hilarious levels of his status as a Politically Incorrect Bratty Half-Pint. All of this despite him not even being in the mod yet.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Before the revelation of its name, Recovered Project was usually referred to as either RECOVERED_PROJECT or Forgotten Dave.
  • The purple-hatted Bambis that fly around in the background of "Applecore" during Bambi's part, despite being officially referred to as Bambi Minions, are sometimes called Expunged Minions or Bembos, though these are disliked by the creators themselves.
• Fridge Brilliance: Bandu faces towards the camera for most of "Sugar Rush". This makes sense with the knowledge that in-universe, he's filming a YouTube video with Boyfriend and Girlfriend, which also puts into context his usual Word-Salad Humor.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Butchatrix is an artificial being that looks like a monstrous version of Bandu's true form, but is batshit insane and is just as evil as Expunged is out of his own free will. Moreover, Butch's form is also his choice, while Bandu has a noted dislike of his true form. This implies Expunged hates Bandu so much that it decided to create a version of him that would willingly go along with all of its whims - in other words, it's built a better brother out of what is almost certainly spite.
  • The opponent seen in "Ticking" seems to be stuck in a rather depressing situation when what little is known about it is put into context. Word of God states that it only exists for as long as the song lasts before immediately disappearing afterwards, and the fact that it looks nervous throughout the entire song implies it's fully aware of this fate. It doesn't even have a canon name, as it will never live long enough to have one.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • According to Word of God, there was once a time where Expunged saw that Bandu was feeling lonely and decided to learn how to create life in order to give him a friend. Although the result of this was Brobgonal, it's still an incredibly kind gesture from a being that normally despises its little brother.
  • "Sugar Rush" is stated by Word of God to be Bandu filming a video with Boyfriend and Girlfriend after finding the candies he uses during the song. They're clearly having a good time together, so Bandu doesn't even need his brother to have friends - he's already got two who just showed up one day.
  • Similarly, "Metallic" could be considered this as for once, Boyfriend finally has an encounter with an obsessed fan that doesn't go south - in fact, Ringi is technically happiness incarnate, as he's made of serotonin.
• Memetic Molester: Dave but Awesome's right pose, which has him stick out his Overly-Long Tongue, has given him this reputation due to being placed near a Girlfriend with a highly-exaggerated butt.
• Moe:
  • Bambom is an adorable Cheerful Child that loves strawberries, is best friends with the serotonin being Ringi, and has the ability to befriend anything, no matter how horrifying.
  • Bandu's true form in "Origin" is surprisingly cute for how alien it looks.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Bandu brings out his real singing voice during certain sections of "Sugar Rush", and a number of fans have praised the way it sounds when harmonizing with Boyfriend.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "Applecore" greatly emphasizes the kind of power Expunged has in this 3D world, as its appearance is forewarned by an ominous drone before it grows to the size of a Kaiju and swallows up Bambi and Bandu - the latter of whom is not only a confirmed chaos god, but also its own little brother. The fact that it immediately goes, "Moldy be like:" afterwards can act as Nightmare Retardant, but even then its nonsensical rambling could be seen as Word-Salad Horror.
  • Among the many characters in the mod are the Trixes, horrifying Eldritch Abominations created by Expunged once it was skilled enough at making life. Take your pick between Butchatrix◊, Algebratrix◊, and Badtrix◊ - they're all equally horrifying.
    • It's also worth noting that these things are what Expunged considers perfect beings, giving good insight into just how twisted this mod's version of it is.
    • Their implementation in the 1.2 update utilizes their designs well in the song "Deformation", where they all attack Boyfriend one after another. This not only lets us witness the psychotic, animalistic way they move in their poses, but also reveals that these things are humongous.
  • Sart Producer is a humongous robot that breaks into Bandu's house for the "Cycles" cover, is stated to have a kill count in the thousands, and has quite the unpleasant losing icon to boot.
  • Recovered Project is this pretty much weaponized, especially his freakish human-like, but still lacking eyes and a mouth, face during the last part of the song.
  • Another character to add to the pile of proof of Expunged's fucked-up mind is Dale, who draws a perfect line between his creator and the Trixes. His face is locked in a gruesome Slasher Smile, his song takes place in a dark meat locker, and his poses have him contort his body in unnatural and creepy ways, including ripping himself in half.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: One ship that's become strangely popular within the fandom is Expendu, aka Expunged x Bendu. This is despite the fact that not only have the two not interacted once in any known canon, but that Bendu is a rather Flat Character with little known lore compared to Expunged.
• Signature Scene: "Applecore" and "Algebra" are both good contenders for this, with the former being incredibly popular before the full mod's release and the latter being a huge 11-minute Marathon Level that harkens back to Dave's real roots incredibly well.
• That One Attack: "Algebra" has the Diamond Man's section. The rest of the song beforehand was relatively slow for the most part, but not only is this part way faster, as part of Diamond Man's Stylistic Suck, the final turn of this section is hideously overcharted to the point that FCing it is damn near impossible. Even worse, this also comes a good way into a tremendous Marathon Level, so have fun if it ends up beating you.
• That One Level: "Applecore" is the fourth-longest song in the mod at a whopping 5 minutes, and all three parts of it can give a fair bit of difficulty themselves. Bandu, while mostly rather simple to handle, goes significantly faster near the end of his section, and Bambi brings with him a faster tempo, irritating Interface Screw, and a much more frenetic singing pace. This is absolutely nothing compared to the second half, however; Expunged comes in with a Hostile Show Takeover, and with him comes everything that makes "Unfairness" so hellish - boosting the Interface Screw to an absurd degree, removing ghost tapping, and spamming notes at a speed no human being could even think about perfecting. Don't forget, too, that losing to this part means going all the way back to the beginning of this Marathon Level.
• Ugly Cute: While intentionally designed to fit a Mind Screw-y artstyle and invoke the Uncanny Valley, Dingle has been seen as strangely endearing by a decent amount of fans. It gets to the point that a lot of fanon depictions make him more expressive and lively to accentuate this and his surprisingly chipper personality.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Sart Producer has no Tertiary Sexual Characteristics and sings with a deep voice, so it isn't likely one would guess right off the bat that she's female (especially considering she's also a robot).