His departure from YTPs (especially his Pixar-based ones) and his reactions to those who insist that he continue making them. On one hand, you have people who respect his wishes to move on to something different, find his responses to his fanbase justified and feel that his review videos are good. On the other, you have people who feel that the quality of his videos since then are on adownward spiral regardless of Lemon's pleads to move on. No middle ground whatsoever.
His rant about Behind The Meme as well, mainly due to those who agree in regards to BTM's flawed explanations and dry points about memes versus those who find it annoying he's conforming to the "NORMIES" mentality and taking memes as a whole way too seriously. He did however rectify that in his video following Behind The Meme's controversial video series on suicidal depression.
His decision to criticize YouTuber James A. Williams and even making an April Fools' Day video making fun of his videos actually led to a Fandom Rivalry between his and James' fans. Some fans of both thought his criticism began to cross into borderline encouraging cyberbullying of James for just having opinions on preschool television shows.
Crosses the Line Twice: Nothing is sacred to this man. He will joke about anything: racism, politics, 9/11, Nazis, ANYTHING!
In the comments of his contribution to the We Are Number One meme, he mentions that Stefan Karl, the actor who plays Robbie Rotten, has cancer; he includes a link to Karl's GoFundMe campaign (created to cover treatment costs) and encourages fans to support the actor and his family. Becomes a Tear Jerker after Stefan's eventual death though.
While a very critical and blunt video, the videos on fallen YouTuber Leafy Is Here is this: He makes it clear that while he doesn't agree with Leafy's videos and does justify Leafy's debated decision from changing to Minecraft videos towards Commentary (although poorly) videos, Emperor makes it clear he pities Leafy being (in his theory) a victim of YouTube's terrible corrupt system that led to his decline.
His video defending Behind The Meme after his infamous Snuff Film style suicide videos. For a long time, Emp hated what he did, and even called the whole thing being fake. But rather than taking the opportunity to rub salt in the wound, he looks back and characterizes the guy as less of a lazy opportunist who wanted money and attention and more of a kindhearted but clueless person who honestly didn't know any better. He talks for the rest of the video telling his fans and fellow memers not to hate the man he seemingly hated for so long, and to just let the guy recover from all he's gone through.
The constant complaints and rants about the YTP Community become this when in his "FRYING COMMENTS" video, he goes into depth about why he became so jaded with it: The big name YouTube Poop content creators would endlessly attack him over apparently garnering a huge reputation and "selling out". In fact, the infamous "DOWNWARD SPIRAL" meme came from a popular YTPs critic who began to snark about Emp's content once he began to do more serious content.
Hilarious in Hindsight: This short video satirizing the Nintendo fanbase depicts Nintendo introducing a Waluigi amiibo (and bringing about world peace in the process). In June 2016, Nintendo did indeed announce a Waluigi amiibo alongside other Mario-series amiibos.
Misaimed Fandom: He's constantly snarked at by detractors and critics for appearing to have been hating on Behind the Meme due to his video discussing the former's channel and "meme culture" (alongside the infamous "NORMIES" rant) despite the fact Lemon himself eventually said he doesn't hate BTM and later came to his defense following the infamous "suicide" videos.
The amount of detail and research he did in Leafy Was Here video, arguably his biggest video to date. From analyzing Leafy's past to even pin-pointing a plausible theory that Youtube itself is the reason Leafy ended up losing a huge amount of views and revenue as a pre-cursor to their infamously hated "demonitization" system (and arguably what prompted his departure from the site) is something to behold.
His critique on how Ian really wasn't the big factor in Leafy's (and by an extent, a huge amount of channels he criticized) downfall is surprisingly believable as well, considering the statistics he uses.
The DOWNWARD SPIRAL lines are arguably something fans will not let go. Although it is mediated by the fact he himself embraces the meme.
Thanks to his video discussing it, Lemon is forever mocked and criticized for being too passionate about memes and is often ripped a new one for "hating" Behind the Meme when he later made it clear he doesn't.
The Talladega documentary brought to light some of the most unspeakable atrocities American colonizers carried out in the name of "manifest destiny", with the belief that it was God's will for the white settlers to conquer America from sea to shining sea at the cost of genocidal massacres and forced resettlement. Not to mention the state of Alabama playing a key role in the Civil Rights Movement and the unfortunate racism which sadly continue to this day.
Seasonal Rot: Some people think that his quality took a "downward spiral" after he finished making the Pixar Poops, stating a lack of effort in his newer poops and only using outdated/disliked memes, Sensory Abuse and being offensive for the sake of being offensive for humor. There's also a select few that think he's gone into this during his Frying Nemo series (most notably Pan Frying Nemo). His reaction to this criticism? Instead of trying to revert to a more "idealized" way of making YouTube Poops, he embraced the downward spiral, trying to see how deep the toilet hole goes.
The FRYING COMMENTS video, where not only does Emp admits his behavior of ranting and complaining about the YouTube Poop community was because they denounced him for being popular and "selling out" but admitting sometimes he wanted to quit due to feeling he couldn't keep up anymore with how everyone viewed him. The DOWNWARD SPIRAL meme was because from someone coldly throwing shade at him, making the infamous meme less of a "Emperor Lemon's ranting and seeking attention" and more "Emperor Lemon isgenuinelydistressed". In fact, it is easy to interpret that Emp also made this video as one giant Broken Pedestal/"Reason You Suck" Speech towards the community in general. At the end of the video, he announced his formal retirement from making YTPs.
The somber tone of There Will Never Be Another Driver Like Dale Earnhardt, explaining how Earnhardt's tragic passing eventually caused NASCAR to double on security so much that it affected its ratings, due to making the sport so safety-like and making it super predictable. Even those who don't like NASCAR can't help but feel bad for this incident.
, he mentions that Stefan Karl, the actor who plays Robbie Rotten, has cancer; he includes a link to Karl's GoFundMe campaign (created to cover treatment costs) and encourages fans to support the actor and his family. Becomes a Tear Jerker after Stefan's eventual death though.