YMMV / Little Nightmares

• Abandon Shipping:
  • Despite the two rarely meeting in canon, Six/Runaway Kid was a popular ship until the reveal about Runaway Kid being the Nome that she ate despite being offered a sausage by him.
  • Players who spent much of Little Nightmares II thinking that Six and Mono might make a cute and badass couple were quick to change their minds after the finale when Six lets Mono fall as the two make their escape from the crumbling signal tower, condemning him to a Fate Worse than Death.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • In the third chapter of "Secrets of the Maw", the Runaway Kid sees the Lady gazing into her reflection in a mirror without her mask (with the Lady's back at the camera), revealing her reflected face to be old and hideous. But is her face really that way? Or is she actually pretty but cursed to always see her own reflection as an ugly crone? The latter is supported by the fact that if one looks more closely, one would notice that the outline of her actual face doesn't seem to fit the one suggested by the mirror. The comics further fuel this, presenting a scenario where children were able to change their appearances by touching funhouse mirrors, with their old appearances left behind in the mirror. Did the Lady do this as well to look beautiful?
  • A more hilarious one; in an interview with Tarsier Studios, when asked why the Runaway Kid is one of the only children with a shackle on their leg, they suggested that maybe he's wearing it for fashion reasons.
  • What about the Janitor? Sure, he is responsible for sending the children to the twin chefs for preparation, but he is the only enemy whose capture animation doesn't involve immediately killing you. He also checks on the kids while they are sleeping in the prison. Does he genuinely hold malice towards children, or is he simply following orders?
• Anti-Climax Boss: The Lady, The Dreaded, shadowy owner of the Maw, is defeated by the player holding a mirror up to her enough times.
• Anvilicious: The game has an extremely obvious theme about human gluttony, particularly adult gluttony, which is most obvious in the Maw's guests. They're so fat and greedy that they're like living political cartoons.
• Breather Level:
  • The Guest Area, considering that the level before it (the Kitchen) was a stealth marathon with very few checkpoints whereas this area features almost no stealth at all, instead requiring you to outrun and out-platform your adversaries.
  • The Hideaway is this for Secrets of the Maw. In contrast to the Depths, (widely considered to be one of the hardest levels of the whole game), the Hideaway is less dangerous, introducing no new monsters with only the Janitor appearing as a threat and not even hunting you down that actively. The tone is also more lighthearted, with its theme of Team Spirit, plentiful hugging of Nomes, and at times almost playful soundtrack.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Some people found the twist that some of the Nomes are children transformed by The Lady from the last DLC chapter to be this, as it was already heavily hinted at in the second chapter. Though to be fair, that twist did resolve the debate of what caused those children to turn into Nomes, by revealing that the Lady is personally responsible for it.
• Complete Monster (includes Secrets of the Maw DLC): The Lady is the wicked sorceress in charge of the Maw. Obsessed with her vanity and control over her domain, the Lady has children captured and brought to The Maw where she would feed them to her guests; if the Lady finds any children trying to escape, she would transform them into Nomes and have them perform slave labor throughout the Maw. The Lady has already subjected many children to this fate, including DLC protagonist the Runaway Kid, and attempts to use her dark magic on heroine Six.
• Demonic Spiders: The Shadow Children in the Residence chapter of the DLC can get pretty frustrating. They're only defeated by shining the flashlight on them long enough, making the best strategy to walk backward to keep them at a distance. Unfortunately, if you're not already far away from them, they can charge at you, which is fast enough that only running speed can dodge it, and if you're trying to back away from them, you can't be at that speed. When they come in larger groups, particularly in the room where they come in endless phases to distract the player from a slowly-resetting door opening mechanism, they can get very challenging, especially because they're not guaranteed to spawn in a set pattern of locations.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Lady's Quarters is a very short chapter, with the Lady, despite being the Big Bad of the game being killed very quickly. Many feel that there is little build-up to this.
• Epileptic Trees: Many people believed for a while that Six was the daughter of the Lady, a theory that pretty much entirely hinged on a painting in the Lady's quarters that sort of looked like her. This was later Jossed by the developers.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Although the Janitor is only called by his title in official materials, fans have taken to calling him Roger, after the nametag he wears. Alternatively, he's often called Mr. Grabby Hands, popularized by Markiplier
  • The Runaway Kid is often referred to as Seven by fans, as a way of keeping up the Theme Naming with Six.
• Fanon: More than a few fanarts depict Six as having a third eye under her hair. It probably helps that the game itself is chocked full of eye symbolism.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: NintendoLife gave the Switch port a 6/10 mainly because of the load times. While the load times were a common complaint, reviewers never brought down a review score so low because of them, resulting in the review getting some flak.
• I Knew It!:
  • Many fans had theorized that the Nomes could actually be the children, and as of the Runaway kid's story that proves to be true (at least for some of them). Unfortunately, the boy gets turned into the Nome that Six eventually eats.
  • One fan even theorized that Six eats the Runaway kid who was turned into a Nome, because that Nome's helpful behavior was uncharacteristic of the other timid Nomes in the game.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: A common complaint is the game's short length, lasting around 3-5 hours. The DLC possibly was introduced to rectify this, although it was also accused of this somewhat.
• Magnificent Bastard: Six is a child who uses her cunning and ruthlessness to survive the monstrous world she inhabits. Making her first canonical appearance in Very Little Nightmares she allies with an unnamed girl to escape the Nest and helps her defeat The Pretender before taking the girl's yellow coat to remember her when she perishes. Getting captured by the Hunter in II, she manages to escape her prison with Mono’s help before using the Hunter’s shotgun to kill him. The two when then travel to the Pale City where Six would use hers wits to help Mono survive throughout their journey before leaving him in the Single Tower when her window of escape begins to vanish. Eventually brought to The Maw, Six brilliantly outsmarts and defeats her enemies before killing The Lady and gaining her powers which she uses to kill all of the guests before making her escape.
• Moral Event Horizon: Throughout the game, Six is clearly dying of hunger. She is forced at one point to kill a trapped rat for food, having no other choice. However, she later does the same to a Nome. One that was offering her food at the time. This becomes even worse with the revelation that the Nome she ate was the boy you play as in the DLC, transformed by the Lady.
• Nausea Fuel: The food that the Twin Chefs prepare for the Guests actually look pretty good for the most part. The Guests actually eating said food, not so much.
• Spiritual Successor: The game can be seen as a Darker and Edgier version of Spirited Away both are about scrawny little girls who wonder around a Japanese vacation environment and meet all kinds of monsters creatures. This includes a spindly limed worker living down below, a a group of gluttonous over indulging guests, and a wicked witch controlling the whole operation.
• Signature Scene:
  • The climax of The Guest Area remains as one of the game's most memorable moments, as it has Six running from a literal tidal wave of the morbidly obese guests chasing after her, making it one of the most visually intense scenes in the whole game.
  • The shoe pit.
  • The Lady's face reflection in the DLC.
• Squick: The fact that the chefs have two toilets. In the same restroom. Directly against to each other with no walls or doors to separate them.
• That One Level:
  • The Kitchen, a level that largely focuses on stealth with checkpoints that are few and far between. It doesn't make it better that this is one of the longest levels in the whole game.
  • The Depths has become this for some. The level has more emphasis on puzzle-solving than any other level thus far and is also home to the Granny, one of the most aggressive monsters in the whole game. She attempts to push the players off of their platforms and into the water, where she is able to grab you. This made only worse when this is by far, the longest level in the whole game.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: The hunchbacked child in the tie-in comics; some people thought that she was a boy from her appearance, and it's easy to miss the little snippets of narrative that confirm her as a girl or to assume they're not talking about her.

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