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  • Alas, Poor Scrappy: Each of the biggest scrappies of each season get this.
    • Many people felt bad for Matt after Eva started to go after him. The fact that no one seemed to miss him and they even cheered when he died was not very well received, even by Matt-haters who thought he got what was coming to him.
    • DeStorm's final confession is this. Although unlike Matt, the group still mourns DeStorm in their own way and don't cheer after he dies.
    • A lot of people started to pity Teala for not being able to stand up for herself and feeling that the amount of hate she got from her 'friends' was too much and undeserved. Then, there's also the fact that she isn't even mentioned after Rosanna comes back, since no one cares about her fate.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Joey is an unknowing Villain Protagonist, according to Film Theory. This theory, though, is Older Than They Look, as fans have suggested this since Season 2, aka 2 years prior.
    • Season 4 Episode 4: Is the Emperor from Episode 4 a selfish Jerkass, or does he indeed display some degree of somewhat-Confucian appreciation for foreigners?note 
    • The Pirates of Season 4 Episode 8. Colleen and Rosanna received rings that protected them from the challenge. Were they indeed, as the pirates claimed, worthy of being pirates, or Everyone Has Standards (and they Wouldn't Hit a Girl, to a limited extent)?
    • Also applies to many of the guests. Was Glozell someone who became ruthless after feeling threatened by the deaths? Or was she just an unpleasant person from the start? There's enough evidence for both options, due to her commentary stating that she doesn't care about the other guests, but is repulsed by the murders going on around the house.
  • Angst? What Angst?:
    • Contestants are typically more preoccupied with accusing one another of betrayal and saving their own skin than they are with even really caring that people are dying, besides acknowledging that it means the place is dangerous. This gets averted a lot in Season 3, however.
    • Looks to be continuing into Season 4, with Colleen (rightfully!) pointing out that Joey's determination to save the deceased contestants is somewhat marred by the fact that his actions got them all killed in the first place.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The last scene of the Season 3 finale featuring an original soundtrack/song in it called "No One Escapes" by Catherine Keithley, and many fans agree that it was extremely fitting.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Joey. He's the show's protagonist, thus giving him ambiguous Plot Armour, but isn't an NPC, and the fact that he's an active participant but the show does not clearly state whether he is in the danger that the other contestants are in is frustrating for some viewers. He's further divisive in Season 3 where he is trying to come back to life by saving the town of Everlock, which requires his friends to die, essentially throwing them under the bus to save himself.
      • Is he the host? Is just another contestant? The show never really makes it clear what his actual role is, zig-zaging between both at different times.
    • Season 1: Matt Haag and Lele Pons. Whether or not you support them is very much up for debate to most fans — many a Flame War have begun in the YouTube comments because of the feud between their respective supporters. Some just say "I love all my babies, both included" and end with that.
    • Season 2: Opinions on Jesse have varied between admiring him for being a badass and being exasperated by his lust-induced stupidity. DeStorm and Andrea Russett are also disputed due to the characters' moral ambiguity.
    • Season 3: MatPat, at least when it comes to his resurrection. While reception was overall positive, some people felt that someone else (either Jc or Colleen) should have come back, as they weren't able to fight for themselves, or that he shouldn't get to win the season given that he lost his death challenge fairly.
    • Season 3: Nikita, according to this video. It is said that half the fandom likes her, and half the fandom hates her.
    • Season 4:
  • Complete Monster:
    • Season 1: Arthur the butler is a sociopathic Con Man who had made a deal with the Evil in the house after murdering his wife and kidnapping his brother and keeping him in the mansion. He manipulated unstable people into committing crimes and also managed to trapped souls into the house in a state of imprisonment. Arthur hid in plain sight as he had the YouTubers pick themselves off through various means, such as electrocution and poisoning. In the end, Arthur attempts to murder Joey, Eva, and Oli after being exposed.
    • Season 2: The Gingerbread Woman is a seemingly kind lady before revealing herself to be a depraved cannibal. Having turned children into her famous meat pies for years, the Gingerbread Woman trapped two children into her oven, planning on cooking them alive. Angered over thinking her surrogate son, Sampson, betrayed her, she cuts off his hand and threatens Joey's group, forcing two of them to play a game, with the loser having to become part of her meat pies, or under the threat of both dying anyway.
    • Season 3: The Killer Clown Leader is the demented leader of a posse of serial killing clowns who terrorized the town of Everlock for years. The worst out of the Carnival Master's guardians, the Leader organizes a mass slaughter of many citizens, starting with Mortimer's mother, Mayor Janet, and kidnaps Joey and his group of friends. Showing utter glee in having the Carnival Master burn down the town at sunrise, the Leader attempts to disembowel the entire group to death, and during the first death/elimination challenge, shows complete glee of brutally gutting Jc in her last moments.
    • Season 4: The Collector is the hostess of the Museum of The Dead. Once a human queen, the Collector became mad with power and wished to break the circle of life and rule as a time goddess. Kidnapping dozens of people across time, the Collector places them in display, with several of them slowly losing their minds through their enslavement, and she manages to transform an innocent Society Against Evil member into becoming a Gorgon to transform other people into stone against her will. Trapping all the deceased YouTubers in her exhibit, most of which their souls placed in a jar to which she taunts, the Collector raises the previous enemies of the YouTubers and attempts to kill Joey, Betman, and Colleen in order to condemn them to Hell.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: MatPat deciding to EAT POPCORN while watching the death challenge in Season 3 Episode 9. It's as petty as it is hilarious. And then he gets up to get more in the middle of the challenge.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Season 1: Vincent has gained quite a bit of popularity in the fandom, probably because he was a bit of a Woobie. Tim's mysterious wallet that he keeps losing is also a source of hilarity for many.
      • On a darker note, Calvin the Sadist and Serial Killer made quite the impression on the fandom in the opening Flashback, but sadly never appeared in the episode that his actions were the catalyst for.
    • Season 2: Sampson and Vera. Jetpack Girl and Riley. Tana's lollipop. People also ship the leaders of the Dark Army (Arlyn) and the Confederates (Cash).
    • Season 3: Darling Blueberry and Blanche. Sally Slaughter is also quite popular with the fandom. Benjamin and Cindy are also loved by the fandom, likely because of their sympathetic backstories and status as an Official Couple, revealed in Episode 12.
    • The Cursed God has become a major character in fandom-based folklore and stories, even though we barely know anything about him from canon.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple:
    • Oddly enough, some fans enjoy shipping the cast members with each other, even if pretty much all of them have lives outside of the series and are in relationships, or even have children.
    • Some believe that Rorik/Jezebel from Season 4 Episode 8 is too problematic (considering how they sword-fought due to conflicting allegiances and stuff, and he proposed to her in an hour and she accepted, this is rather understandable) and prefer Alex/Jezebel instead.
  • Growing the Beard: Season 3 is, according to the producers in Episode 11, the season when the show 'grew up', as the setting drastically went upward in scale, from a Mansion to an entire town. Many fans also agree that Season 3 is the best season, to the point that many fanfics have Season 3 YouTubers as a focus as opposed to other seasons.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • The intros to every season actually give clues to what happens to the cast members. However, it is only after the whole season has aired that it can all be put together. There were some viewers able to guess the deaths of a few characters from the Season 2 intro prior to the end.
    • The fact that the YouTubers were essentially Dressing to Die unknowingly at the beginning of every season, and double if they look glamorous, like Lauren.
    • In Season 2 Episode 1, Andrea Russett tells Liza and Alex, "Avoid uh- dark... dark doorways. I'm seeing bad…" In Episode 5, Liza dies behind a door, though in a brightly-lit room, and in Episode 9, Alex dies in the Dark Dimension. The kicker of all this? Andrea's role is the Mystic.
    • Either this or Hilarious in Hindsight (the latter if you keep telling yourself "it's just a show"); in the finale of Season 3, they have to lure a "grieving mother" zombie into the Maiden of Madness that had previously been used to kill Colleen. Colleen was actually pregnant at the time the episodes came out (though not during filming), making that two mothers the iron maiden has killed.
    • Daniel Preda revealed in an interview which YouTubers were troublemakers on set. While there were already many rumours about Gabbie being hard to work with, Daniel revealed just HOW bad she got. Lele being the biggest one from the original cast was no surprise to many people. She was 'a bit of a diva' both when the cameras where on and off.
      • Continuing from the above, every moment concerning Gabbie Hanna is this. Every cast and crew member (no exceptions) have called her out on her rude and selfish behaviour and found her difficult to work with. Gabbie's interactions with Tana are especially this, as they come across as Vitriolic Best Buds, but Gabbie constantly bullied Tana, even moreso on Season 4. Tana tried to quit the show multiple times due to Gabbie's bullying, but in the show and most fan works, they come across as extremely close friends.
  • He's Just Hiding:
    • A weird one considering it's just a show and no one actually dies, but you can find a fair amount of people in denial about Liza's "death" in Season Two.
    • Season 3: Due to the presence of something called the Lazarus Box and yet to be seen scenes from the trailer, not many people believe MatPat is dead.
      • Though it seems from the ending of Episode 6 that they are going to pull a Back from the Dead style thing. They did.
  • Ho Yay: Vera the Lesbian Vampire was almost definitely flirting with Andrea Russett during the ball scene in Season 2 Episode 2. She even looked glum when Andrea Russett won (King) Dorian's favour for the evening and was led away from her!
  • I Knew It!: Many fans correctly guessed the following from watching the trailers for each season:
    • Season 1: That Lele would die via electrocution.
      • Not from the trailer, but still, many assumed that the staff were evil, and lo and behold, they were proven correct in Episodes 9-10.
    • Season 3:MatPat's resurrection would happen.
    • Also in Season 3: that Colleen would die at via some variation of the Iron Maiden.
      • Some fans also guessed correctly that Nikita and MatPat would both be survivors, given the zombies chasing them in one section of the trailer.
      • Also in Season 3: that the helpers, Mortimer and Calliope, would die.
    • A lot of fans speculated that Season 4 would be an All-Stars Season, given how the Season 3 finale ended. This was later confirmed by Joey when he released a teaser trailer for Season 4.
      • The Season 4 trailer also had people guessing that Colleen would be revived. They were right.
  • It Was His Sled:
    • Overall, all the deaths.
    • Season 1: The reveal that the Staff of the mansion are The Mole and the Big Bad Ensemble of the season.
    • Season 2: Joey's Too Dumb to Live moment at the end of Episode 10, as well as his death and revival.
    • Season 3: Mortimer falling prey to The Corruptor and him subsequently becoming Brainwashed and Crazy, and MatPat's resurrection.
    • Season 4: Rosanna marries the Emperor.note  Also, Colleen's revival.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Joey. He was a Jerk with a Heart of Gold with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, but who can blame him? The poor guy's friends die over and over again (and even killed some himself), and when he tried to make things right, it turned into another round of the death games that he was trying to atone for. And that's not counting the whole captured-by-vampires incident back at the start of Season 2. Who knows what happened back then. Did we also mention the Evil that latched onto him after he took the deed in Season 1?
    • Matt, definitely. Whilst his action in the buildup of the challenge definitely made him a Dirty Coward, and his actions afterwards are not sympathetic, the guy was horrified by the fact that he had murdered Sierra, especially when he could've(and according to Word of God would've) sacrificed himself. His obvious Survivor's Guilt and the fact that he received No Sympathy from his peers makes him somewhat pitiable. Similarly Justine, who was being a Jerkass towards Andrea, suffers from a breakdown when she finds out that they have to bury someone alive, and everyone is distrusting her.
    • Destorm has a brief moment where he decides to Face Death with Dignity rather then go out screaming.
    • Jesse is left behind by his friends and turns into a sobbing wreck before suffering a horrifying and gruesome death.
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Colin is a Sociopathic Soldier who is obsessed with his treasure, but aside from being a selfish jerkass, he isn't exactly evil. His selfishness and douchebag behaviour are enough to make him one of the fandom's most hated characters. Meanwhile, the Sorceress, the main villain of the second season, is beloved for her entertaining performance and nice outfit.
  • Love to Hate: DeStorm and the sorceress from season two. DeStorm is a Card-Carrying Jerkass who likes the Troll other guests, thus making him unpredictable and entertaining.
  • Memetic Badass: Calliope and Alison, for being highly competent Helper NPCs. Alex used to be one, since he won almost every challenge he went into, but has since become a Memetic Loser for doing the exact opposite in Season 4.
  • Memetic Loser:
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Overall, various quotes across the seasons. Case in point:
      GloZell: I rebuke you, Satan!
    • Season 1: Eva's stunned expression during the Episode 4 voting procedure.
    • Season 2: Tyler's shooketh facial expressions.
    • Season 3:
      • The face of the Killer Clown Leader, on Discord. It began on 7 June 2019 with a single picture and escalated within a month. It was declared a meme 11 days later, and a joking cult a month afterward.
      • It's been confirmed that the actress who played the Killer Clown Leader "Killer Kerrie", Alejandra Cejudo, was made aware of both the meme and the fanon name and the response was positive.
      • Rosanna running from Benjamin in the dark.
    • Multi-Season: Tim's Wallet. Mentioned twice throughout the course of Season 1, then triumphantly returns to a Call-Back in Season 4.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • Several of the deaths are extremely brutal and painful.
    • The second teaser for Season 4 that features the revealed All-Stars. It features Joey walking through a dark, open space with a torch... only for Joey to soon realize that Alex, Rosanna, Justine, Colleen, DeStorm, Gabbie, Tana, and Tim are all trapped in glass boxes, making them appear like exhibitions at a museum. The creepy factor is upped a bit when you realize that they're displayed in clothes that they didn't initially die in.
  • OT3: Several pairings have been formed in fanon, but the most popular (and one of the few canon ones) is Team Boy Scouts, consisting of MatPat, Rosanna and Safiya
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: DeStorm was the most hated character in the show for being the only guest to betray the group as well as his arrogant behaviour. Come Season 4, and he's a lot more helpful and delivers several funny moments in his commentary. Many fans felt sorry for his Heroic Sacrifice and wanted Alex to lose instead of DeStorm. It helps that his arch-nemesis Alex comes of as less of a team player and more of a smug jerk this time around, at least in the earlier episodes.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Monster actor Alex Ward, who plays the Devourer in S2 and The Man With No Name in S3, may now be recognisable to some as Jasper from LA By Night.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Matt is often portrayed as a coward and Jerkass from the start as opposed to taking a few levels as the show progresses.
  • The Scrappy: While all of them still have some fans, each season has a few guests that aren't very popular, mostly because of their lack of contribution or rudeness towards other guests. DeStorm in Season 2 for betraying the group and being an arrogant Jerkass, Matt from S1 for becoming The Load and a Jerkass in Episode 7, Roi in Season 3 for his lack of usefulness and Sierra in Season 1 for contributing very little to the plot or show despite appearing in 6 episodes (even lampshaded by the group at the beginning of Episode 6). But the biggest example is Teala, for being the biggest load the series has had so far. Interestingly, Matt Haag, Destorm and Teala were also The Scrappy in-universe, while Roi and Sierra were also unpopular with the group when they died.
    • DeStorm has been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap by becoming a lot more helpful and having some funny moments. One could also argue he was a Love to Hate character, since he clearly wasn't supposed to be likeable to begin with.
    • Teala and Roi have been given some more fleshed out personalities in Fan Works which turned them into fan favourites.
    • Bretman, Matt and Sierra are Base-Breaking Characters, thanks to having a loyal fan base that supports them.
  • Special Effects Failure:
    • In Season 1, when Joey, Oli and Eva have finished the final ritual, a green screen can be seen behind them.
    • The gingerbread woman "chopping off the hand" of her assistant in Episode 5 of Season 2. They attempt to hide it with shaky camera movements and body blocking, but you can see on her first chop that she completely misses his hand, and after the fact his fingers are still intact, just reddened as though they had been squeezed too hard.
    • More like "prop failure", but in Season 2 Episode 7, the guns used to shoot the targets for one puzzle are very clearly painted Nerf blasters with some steampunk additions. The main clue for this is that they're loaded with orange-tipped foam darts, something easily visible, though it's covered somewhat in editing by added muzzle flashes.
    • The dinosaurs in Season 4 look a tad fake from some angles.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: One could say the voting system itself is a simple Luck-Based Mission where even if you have at least one vote, you still could be voted into a death challenge due to bad luck....
    • The "betrayal" challenges in Seasons 1 and 2, in which those voted in for will decide which among the "safe" players will die, could be seen as an unfair Ass Pull to keep Joey in the game, seeing he was voted in those tasks both times. Plus, it gave no time for GloZell and Tana to plead their case or say goodbye.
    • The final task in Season 2 Episode 2 where two voted-in women compete in a challenge in which the winner will decide which of two randomly captured male guests will be killed, can be seen as unfair to Jesse seeing how he was nominated and killed without a true vote.
  • Shocking Elimination: MANY.
    • Lele's death in Season 1, Episode 9 is considered one, especially since she'd survived at least two death challenges in the Season up until that point. Please note that this particular one should also be taken literally.
    • Jesse, Liza, Gabbie and Alex's deaths in Season 2, Episodes 3, 5, 7 and 9 respectively are also considered this, but ESPECIALLY Liza and Alex's deaths out of them all, given how Liza had been doing particularly fine up until her death challenge and how Alex had survived THREE death challenges (going against DeStorm, Gabbie, and then being one of the fastest three people in the gauntlet) until finally dying in the fourth one against Andrea.
    • Jc's death in Season 3, Episode 2 is considered this, given how useful he'd been in helping solve a puzzle in Episode 2 that unlocked a box containing one of the parts needed to cleanse the first artifact, and was simply unlucky to be put into the challenge because MatPat voted for him.
    • MatPat's death in Season 3, Episode 5 was also this and a Tear Jerker.
    • Safiya's death in Season 3,Episode 7 was DEFINITELY this. This is because the twist in this episode was that whoever won the challenge (in this case, Nikita) resulted in the death of the person who initially voted them in (Safiya).
    • Justine's death in Season 4, Episode 2 counts as this In-Universe, mainly because many of the other guests thought she would win against Tana in the death challenge. They were wrong.
    • DeStorm's death in Season 4, Episode 4 was this as well, because he deliberately broke the rules and sacrificed his life for Alex in memory of Lauren's previous death in Season 2. This is the first time a guest deliberately chose to lose a challenge, especially since it wasn't even one of those "choose yourself or choose your friend" situations like in Season 3 Episode 9 or Season 1 Episode 6.
  • Signature Scene: The ending of episode 3 from the first season, in which Justine gets buried alive is easily the most recognizable moment from the show. It was easily the darkest moment of the season, which itself was Darker and Edgier then the rest of the seasons, and shows everyone acting very realistically without any Narm or Special Effects Failure. Justine has been given praise for her performance, with the Tears of Fear being the cherry on top.
    • Similarly, season three has Colleen’s death in episode six, which was very similar to the previous example, but once again, the acting really sells the scene and made it the most memorable part of the season.
  • Spiritual Successor: To Whodunnit? (2013), as it's also a Closed Circle-style murder mystery hosted by a grey-haired man (albeit considerably younger). However, Escape the Night is less focused on solving murders and more on solving Room Escape Game puzzles.
  • Spoiled by the Format: If you've watched the previous seasons, it's easy to pick up that there is always one male and one female survivor (not including Joey, who will always at least make it to the final episode). This means that when Rosanna dies three episodes from the end, Nikita becomes a guaranteed survivor by merit of being the only remaining girl. Sorry, Manny.
    • Season 4, episode 7 ends on a cliffhanger, as Joey is about to decide which of his friends to bring back to life. However, when episode 8 was released, the thumbnail immediately spoiled that he chose Colleen.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Alison being a vampire has next to no impact on the plot after the first episode of Season 2. Any implications of this (such as needing blood or reacting to the bloody deaths of several of the Youtubers) are never explored.
    • She also is shown to have magic, but only uses it once and no one ever talks about it.
    • Speaking of vampires, the fact that Joey was captured by vampires and the impacts that it left on him seemed to be entirely ignored, and even in the two vampire-relevant episodes, it was barely mentioned. Sadly, even the fandom has forgotten this kind-of Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, choosing to make Wild Mass Guessing at his true allegiance and Chronic Backstabbing Disorder instead. To this day, barely anyone appears to acknowledge that it happened in the first place.
  • Too Cool to Live:
    • Calliope, the only helper to actually attack the lieutenants and even the Big Bad, plus a member of the Society Against Evil, gets killed in Episode 9.
    • Many felt like this for Lele, Liza, Gabbie, Alex, MatPat, Safiya, and Colleen, as they were really or even the most useful characters, were entertaining, and with the latter being the only character to stand up against Joey and confront him for his faults.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic/Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Matt and the rest of the group in episode 7, respectively. While we're clearly not supposed to feel bad for Matt when he dies, since he killed Sierra, gave up and acted like a Jerkass for the entire episode, but the fact remains that Matt never intended to kill Sierra and clearly feels massive guilt for what he'd done. Then there's the group cheering when he dies, which many felt was too far. What makes the whole situation even worse is that in the next episode, Eva goes through the EXACT SAME THING as Matt (giving up and losing all hope), and everyone forgives her.
    • To be fair, though, Matt was directly responsible for Sierra's death while Eva played no part in Timothy's death, which was technically suicide.
  • The Woobie: Technically, everyone qualifies (watching people — friends — die, dying themselves, getting betrayed/conspired against, getting captured and held against their will, even killing their own friends directly…), doubly so for the All Stars… but the highlights are:
    • Colleen. She watches a friend get pummeled to death, finds out another friend's dark secret and think of him as a liar, said friend led the charge of pushing her into an Iron Maiden (and NO ONE objected vocally). One season later, she wakes up in a museum as an exhibit broken out, finds SAID friend that betrayed her to be there to "save" her and the crew, has to go through the process she had been through last time AGAIN, got on the wrong end of a Combat Pragmatist (who was also one of the ones who betrayed her, to boot) and got killed AGAIN because of a SABOTAGE; and got held hostage by a hostile Pirate Girl the moment she got Back from the Dead. Damn.
    • Goodness gracious, poor Mortimer. Out of all the Helpers throughout the seasons (all of them have died with only one surviving so far, and it's not him), he arguably had the worst of it happen to him. First he watches his mother, Mayor Janet, get murdered in front of his eyes along with many of Everlock's citizens because of killer clowns, then he gets mind-controlled by the Carnival Master during that same night, eventually causing him to betray the remaining survivors after retrieving all the artifacts. Season 3, Episode 9 had him held captive for the bulk of the episode by Lucy, the Carnival Master's daughter, resulting in being both sexually assaulted and tortured during the time, only for him to die at the end of the episode after the Carnival Master snaps his neck. Then he shows up in the Museum in Season 4, locked up in the Collector's fire pit cage for "bad behaviour" until the guests show up and he joins them as a Helper again... only for the Gorgon to turn him to stone in Episode 6.

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