YMMV / Monster Prom

• Adorkable:
  • Cal is overly formal and a bit awkward at times, but his niceness more than makes up for it.
  • Zoe is an adorable Eldritch Abomination who will go into Squee mode whenever she sees something she likes.
  • Oz certainly qualifies with his nervous but cautiously optimistic mannerisms. It's only ramped up more in the third installment where we get introspection on him as well as conversations showing he's trying to overcome his shyness.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • There is an item called the Shitter that can be found in mystery gifts. It is a figurine depicting a medieval peasant popping a squat and its description says that it is actually a religious item. This is not just a poop joke from the creators, this is a depiction of a Caganer, a traditional part of a nativity scene in Catalan Culture. This starts an event chain where Damien and Liam attempt to figure out why this has become a tradition. The ending for this event chain even has Damien beating up a Christmas Log, a similarly scatological real Christmas tradition from Catalan culture.
  • One event has the player suggest that Damien should make a tortured evil goat his infernal steed. Damian agrees and says he will use a Judas goat who led hundreds of his brethren to their deaths via sniper fire in the Galapagos. Judas goats are a real thing and they were heavily used in the extermination of goats from the Galapagos. He even throws in a "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer and tells the reader to check it out.
• Awesome Ego: Vera is very proud of her looks and schemes, and there is no way to deny she has the right to do so. Not only is she a downright Gorgeous Gorgon, her plans tend to be deviously precise and she more often than not comes out on top. Even the credits narration will say that she succeeds at anything she tries.
• Awesome Music:
  • The fun and experimental songs from Messer Chup's album "The Incredible Crocotiger" are the soundtrack. All songs matching perfectly with the weirdly amusing and odd tone of the game itself.
  • The Closing Credits theme, Mike Krol's "Fifteen Minutes", something that may sound familiar to Steven Universe fans. It's still an awesome indie rock track.
  • The "Prank Masterz Anthem" is a quirky and entertaining in character rap performed by Arin Hanson (voice of Scott) and Sarah Anne Williams (voice of Polly) which plays as a sort of Soundtrack Dissonance to images of the suffering and even deaths of the other characters thanks to Z'Gord being summoned in the credits of the Arcane Book ending. It dips into Mood Whiplash when Scott asks where all their friends are at the end of the song.
  • From the sequel, "Champions of Red Wine" by The New Pornographers serves as the song for the new ending credits sequence. The fact that the sequence itself is also beautifully animated also adds to its charm.
  • "Tomoni Ikou" from the end of Dahlia's Genie Flask route in Monster Camp. It's an honest to god original anime ending theme, and it perfectly fits the secret ending and Dahlia's Hot-Blooded personality.
• Cliché Storm: For all effects, the game uses the most basic cliches of high school scenario (delinquent, football player, princess, etc...) however, Tropes Are Tools. The game has given an interesting modernization to the cliches, such as jokes with hipsters and dick pics, and the obvious new spin of the characters being monsters.
• Creepy Cute: Zoe's Cute Monster Girl form is a girl with hair made out of tentacles, black eyes and eyes spread through her body, with even one of her arms being a tentacle. However, she is such a sweet girl that even with these elements, she is absolutely adorable.
• Crosses the Line Twice: A great amount of the franchise's humour thrives on this trope.
  • In one outing, you can kidnap a man's daughter... so he will pay for you and others' drinks. It's even more hilarious when you call him for ransom and he makes Liam Neeson's speech from Taken.
    • The other option in that scenario is to roofie him... for the entire week. "Nobody asks why you have that many sedatives."
  • Vera loves Blood Diamonds; Damien affirms that the pain of the laborers is what makes them sparkly.
  • Basically everything that Damien does within the game.
  • Most of the things that you can buy from the shop end up becoming this. One example is a corpse, which you can then attempt to convince others that you aren't lugging around a corpse for no reason, but because it's a hat. Things continue to spiral from there.
  • The Halloween 2018 update includes a new event item, the arcane book. Just... everything about it but especially the ending. To put it simply, the destruction of our entire plane of reality comes about as a result of the ultimate prank, played by a druggie ghost and an idiot werewolf (Polly and Scott). They (and Z'gord) dub themselves the "Prank Masterz (with a Z!)" because there can never be another prank to top this (in multiple ways). This is told to us through an upbeat rap song... played over a montage of the game's cast fighting for their lives and/or dying in the face of Z'gord.
  • In Monster Camp, the player can join an adventuring party as a Dominatrix, and they end up defeating the boss by zapping his nipples with electricity. (Apparently, he's weak to electric damage.) Afterwards even the love interests are shocked at how sexual it was, with Dahlia proudly announcing new material for her 'spank bank.'
  • Monster Roadtrip has countless examples. After trying to join a cult, one of them states that too many people only apply to get in on the blood orgies without taking the ceremonial significance into account. Another admits they just thought everyone liked to have sex with goats. To which he is corrected that only he, "Brother Goat Fucker Ismael", enjoys it.
  • Polly and Scott suggesting they prank a motel by calling in a bomb threat? Not funny. The player character spending 20 minutes explaining why calling in a bomb threat is not okay? Funny. Polly stating that she now regrets the last four fake bomb threats she and Scott called in? Hilarious.
  • When you select the Cheap Motel location, one of your options is "The room with only one bed". This is chuckle worthy on it's own, but when you choose it the Narrator concisely calls you out.
  Narrator: You horny fuck.
  • The Wealthy Mansion location has an event where you must escape from an eccentric old man who is obsessed with Splash Kaboom. Just before leaving, you'll run into an already mutilated experiment of his made to look just like Splash who warns; "You guys gotta go...fast!"
• Difficulty Spike: Gameplay-wise, Vera is the hardest date to take to prom. In addition to having some of the hardest stat checks, she has three stats that need to be raised high enough as opposed to two stats.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Shopkeeper Cat Girl has her fair share of fans for her attitude, looks and funny lines. Some even wish she was a possible secret romantic option and is shipped with other characters. And lucky for them, she is a Secret Character that can be taken to Prom.
  • The Slayer is also rather popular among fans, with many hoping she would eventually become an option in future content. Their wish came true; she's a secret romanceable option in the Second Term DLC, and main romance option in the sequel.
  • Zoe has proven quite popular, due to how sweet she is and her Creepy Cute personality. It helps that she's now one of the game's major love interests and a downloadable playable character in Monster Camp and Monster Roadtrip.
  • Juan, the Small Magical Latino Cat, was depicted in fanart regularly before he appeared in Monster Camp as the new shopkeeper who peddles drinks that can change the course of the game. It may have been the popularity that contributed to him becoming a downloadable playable character in Monster Roadtrip.
  • Before Monster Camp even came out, fans fell in love with Moss Man's design, and even more so once the promotional gossip trailers came out, each narrated by him. Replies to the tweets posting those videos are dominated by people asking for him to be romanceable beyond any commentary on the characters he's meant to be announcing.
  • In the Joy path in Monster Camp, an FBI agent known as "Detective McBooty" can be introduced to get her Fleetwood Mac T-shirt from Axarax. After insisting on conducting their own investigation despite Joy knowing who has the shirt, she threatens Axarax with arrest. The character has no artwork, but is hilarious enough to have gained something of a following.
  • Kale already stood out in the ending's class photo for his design leading many to want to know more about him. His popularity only skyrocketed when he was revealed to be aro/ace, friends with Polly, and for having a chill personality. He even reappears in Monster Roadtrip where we get more backstory for him. Speaking of which...
  • For Monster Roadtrip we have Jacqueline who was adored by players the very moment she popped up onscreen. Likely due to having one of the cutest designs in the franchise along with a sweet personality and some pretty hilarious story events.
  • Mamimi the Oni girl is one of the earliest examples of this as she had no official artwork and only existed to give the player an energy drink offscreen. This led to a good amount of fanart trying to depict what she would look like until she was given an official design◊ and finally appeared onscreen during one of the backroutes for the Hype destination of Monster Roadtrip.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • A lot of people assumed that the playable character's color name was their canon last name, and their given name was the standard name. As it turns out, the official Twitter has since confirmed that they have official last names, with the exception of Oz, whose name is a mononym.
  • Soon after the first game's launch, the game's creator said that there were canon couples, but he didn't plan on revealing them unless Monster Prom got some sort of serialization, which would demand it. It was a common theory that the canon couples were the four couples that had exclusive polaroids during the game's initial release (Polly/Oz, Brian/Liam, Vicky/Vera, and Amira/Scott). The creator would later clarify that this was not the case and the polaroids were not a confirmation of canonicity, so much that later updates added polaroids to every couple in the game.
• Fanfic Fuel: The Monster School setting made it blatantly easy for fans to create their own Original Characters, which became a bit of a trend among fanartists soon after the game's release.
• Fanon:
  • Because of the main characters having two standard names, one of their colors and one of actual name, it's been assumed that the actual name is their first name and the color name is their last name (making those four characters Oz Yellow, Amira Red, Brian Green and Vicky Blue). This however has since been Jossed by the Monster Prom's twitter, who said they all have last names, except Oz, whose name is a mononym, while Vicky's last name is actually Schmidt, Amira's is really Rashid, and Brian's is Yu.
  • The four main characters are usually believed to be close friends, more often than not, they're seem as Childhood Friends, though there are also some that see the four of them as Friends with Benefits, specially considering the player is invariably a Lovable Sex Maniac. This is partially confirmed through official merchandise, which provides details of the group's relationships.
  • Due to having No Mouth, some people like to portray Oz using sign language to communicate. Other show him using telepathy. In counterpart, some people actually believe he does have a mouth, but it's hidden or closed most of the time, in this case, his mouth is usually large and monstrous, with a varied amount of rows of sharp teeth and sometimes gooey. Also, due to Oz's nature as a very eldritch being, he is sometimes believed to have a Superpowered Evil Side or Power Incontinence, being an extremely powerful monster capable of great acts of destruction, and when this mode is activated, he has Glowing Eyes of Doom.
  • A meta example: Since the creator stated that canon couples exist, though he has no intention to reveal it, a common belief is that the canon couples are the four ones that received exclusive ending polaroids in the game's first launch: Oz/Polly, Vera/Vicky, Brian/Liam and Amira/Scott.
    • However, it has been confirmed that the four Polaroids are not proof of canon couples.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Ambiguously. According to Word of God, there are canon pairings, but he doesn't intend to disclose which ones are unless there is some sort of serialization for the story that requires for there to be canon couples.
  • For all effects, though, Oz/Damien is arguably the most popular ship overall while it's believed that Oz/Polly is the canon ship. Brian/Damien is also a popular ship, with a great deal of fanart depicting them, likely due to the Yaoi designs.
  • Vicky/Scott is also significantly popular with a great deal of fanart featuring the two. It was even one of the winning pairings during the official "Ship Happens" contest.
  • With the release of Second Term, Oz/Zoe has started to gather a sizable following as well, helped by the fact that they're both Adorkable Eldritch beings who are already confirmed by Polaroid lore to be close friends at the very least.
  • Out of pairings not involving the player characters, Damien/Liam is a popular ship, not at all hurt by the fact that the demo version of the YAOI route ended with the two of them getting together rather with the player. Vera/Scott also has a notable following, helped by their Odd Friendship getting some extra attention in the latter's holiday route.
  • An official poll called Damien/Brian the number one ship in the fandom. A second poll puts Oz/Damien in the first place, followed by Zoe/Oz in second and Damien/Brian in the third place. It's also worth noting that Oz/Damien is also the pairing with the largest amount of fanfiction dedicated to them in Archive of Our Own.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Dream Daddy: both are light-hearted, comedic, LGBT+ friendly visual novels, featuring input from the Game Grumps and a bunch of their regular collaborators.
  • There's also an overlap with the Max Gentlemen Sexy Business! fandom, for similar reasons.
  • Thanks to Steam's "Long Story Short" bundle, fans of VA-11 HALL-A, Homestuck and Coffee Talk soon came into the fandom, with them prompting others to try their games and make crossovers out of it.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Damien's last name is a reference to Anton LaVey, who created The Church of Satan and a version of Satanism.
    • In keeping with the Dahlia and Damien rivalry, Dahlia's last name in turn is a reference to Michael Aquino, a high-ranking member of the original Church of Satan, who later left and founded the Temple of Set with other dissatisfied ex-Satanists.
  • On one of the cafeteria events, you will be described as having the artistic subtlety of Marina Abramovic. A woman definitely not known for subtlety.
  • Miranda shares her last name with Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the wealthiest men in history, fitting last name for a princess.
• Gotta Ship 'Em All: There's very little limitations to ship, helped by the fact that both the creator enjoys the ships and that the game itself is designed to create and explore romantic and other types of relationships between a vast cast where Everyone Is Bi.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The polaroid of Faith desperately trying to heal a mortally-wounded Hope in the "PRANK MASTERZ" ending was already depressing, but The Reveal in the Second Term DLC that she's the fourth Hope and the three previous ones also died trying to save the world makes it even worse.
  • Liam de Lioncourt, a 400+ year old vampire who is able to be romanced by the vaguely high-school aged player characters, being voiced by Youtuber Cryaotic became a lot more uncomfortable after he admitted to dating and grooming underaged fans online. Similarly, Oz is said to have been born before the Zodiac was even conceived and was also voiced by Cryaotic before his replacement.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: On The Co-Optional Podcast, Jesse Cox (the game's producer) came up with a concept for a video game based on a road trip called "Passengr." With the release of Monster Roadtrip, Passengr has basically become a reality.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Now with a Google Spreadsheet
  • Make that two!
• It Was His Sled: The existence of Secret Characters was meant to be a surprise, but once people started finding them out, it was hard to not know. This is downplayed however, in the sense that people tend to keep secrets about who they are and how to get them.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The series (almost) exclusively treats heinous crimes like mass murder and imperialistic conquest as funny. If it takes any character's negative behavior seriously, it's likely to be behavior that is antagonistic and offensive, but not outside of the scope of mundane interactions, such as Leonard's sexism and transphobia.
• Last Lousy Point: The game keeps track of every Secret End, Event, and Outcome the player sees, and awards achievements for 100%. For Secret Ends, there are four that are randomly initiated by the present introduced in the Gift update (which can only be picked by one player, once per run), with the last one unable to even appear until the other twelve options randomly spawn across multiple other runs. Outcomes are the worst to collect, though, because they involve seeing the success and failure text of every single choice in the game; a three-part event chain (like most secret ending paths, including the aforementioned completely random present ones) will thus need to be encountered at least eight times (failing the first event two different ways, succeeding six times but failing the second event two different ways, then succeeding four times and succeeding and failing two different ways).
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Damien is shipped with everyone, including all four of the main Player Characters and the vast majority of the other love interests too, as well as some secondary characters just for good measure. It's probably quicker to list the major characters he's not regularly shipped with. (For example: there doesn't seem to be a lot of shippers for him and Vera, though that presumably only stands out because of how frequently and visibly he is shipped with Oz, Brian, Vicky, Amira, Liam, Scott, Polly, Miranda, The Coven, The Slayer...)
  • Among the main characters, Oz got the largest amount of ships, both with the romantic options, the Secret Character and even the other playable characters. Damien, Brian, Scott, Polly, Zoe, and Dahlia are among his favored ships.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • Unsurprisingly. The game contains a Everyone Is Bi cast of colorful and interesting characters and quickly gained love of LGBT fans.
  • It's a well known fact that Scott has attracted bara and furry fans. This is even mentioned by BeautifulGlitch during the voting for his design that the dispute seemed to boil down to Bara fans vs furry fans, and he believes that the bearded design appeals to both.
  • In the Second Term DLC, Z'Gord the eldritch god's becoming Zoe the regular highschool student is filled with allusions to the problems of transgender people, such as her issues with being called Z'Gord by her still-loyal cultists. It helps that she's voiced by a non binary person.
• Love to Hate: The Interdimensional Space Prince is constantly trying to "romance" monsters into marrying him, often targeting whoever the player is going for at the time. But the antics he invokes during his courting are so hilariously over the top that it's hard not to laugh at his failures.
• Memetic Mutation: Good Boy. ^note  Scott often refers to himself as a good boy in the game, which, added with the fact that he is the nicest character in the game, many people actually started calling him a good boy too
  • MIRAAANDAAA! ^note  Jake from the Youtube channel Short One Gaming was rejected by Miranda during his first run of the game, causing him to improv a song in despair. The song and the way he sings her name is often referenced when talking about Miranda or being rejected.
• Never Live It Down: There are still a lot of jokes of Damien hating on bananas due to one event where he screams and gets mad at a banana. This gets a reference in an Second Term event in which Calculester gets Damien and Scott attempting to explain the monster condition to him using an orange, with one of the former's comments getting him blurting out that, if nothing else, being an orange is better than being a "stupid banana". ^note  orange you glad he didn't say banana
• OT3: Foursome, in this case, Oz/Vicky/Brian/Amira are often shipped together. The confirmation that they are actually close friends helped greatly this group, which is supported by the Fanon that the four are a Polyamorous group of Friends with Benefits.
• Popular with Furries: The Cat Girl Valerie and the werewolf Scott both got plenty of furry fans. Scott even has them in-universe. In Scott's case he also brought in plenty of Bara fans for being the most muscular guy in the cast.
• The Scrappy: Violet is widely reviled by players for her toxic, both literally and figuratively, relationship with Tate. Although it's Played for Laughs, both the characters and fanbase find her genuinely aggravating for bragging about controlling Tate with her spores and feeding off his nutrients while shaming any single monster who has the misfortune of crossing their path. Some players even want Tate to be a romanceable option just so they can free him from her it's that bad.
  • Camp Counselor Flodge hasn't exactly been a hit with fans. In a franchise centered around hooking up with hot monsters, an unromanceable middle aged reptile with an Uncanny Valley design isn't what most are here for. And unlike the charmingly ditzy Coach or the hilariously out of touch Miss Weaving, his entire shtick is being a chameleon who is bad at disguises which is comparatively unfunny to the antics the rest of the cast gets up to.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: The player characters have a very unclear relation in-game and only interact in a multiplayer game, during special events, however, ships between them aren't uncommon, with Oz/Brian having a particularly solid fanbase. Supplementary material that's come out since the game's launch confirms that all of the player characters are close friends - with Fanon typically going on to further depict the four as, at worst, Friendly Rivals with regards to pursuing their most popular classmates, and, at best, a casual ménage à quatre. Guess when your central quartet are a bunch of Bisexual Lovable Sex Maniac, they would likely gravitate towards each other, at least for consistant quickies.
• Squick: One of the items sold being a used tampon. It's a key piece of the BLOOD ending, but Valerie reacts with disgust to your purchase and some players do (understandably) find that disgusting. At least it's in a baggy, one supposes.
• Surprise Difficulty: Getting a prom date can be rather difficult. You need to get a positive outcome in events with your chosen love interest, which you learn through trial and error. Your stats need to be at a bare minimum just to get a date to accept, and each love interest has other stats that need to be high enough. That's not even getting into the secret endings, which require for you to act correctly in a string of events that can be started at any time. Vera has been found to be a particularly hard date to get - your stats in Charm, Smarts, and Money all need to be high to date her, and needing to save Money limits your ability to buy helpful stat-raising items from the shop.
• Tear Jerker: Can be found here.
• Unpopular Popular Character: The Coven are treated as annoyances by the other students, but are very popular with the fans. This gradually led to them receiving secret routes that portrayed them increasingly sympathetically, until eventually Joy was Promoted to Love Interest in Monster Camp.
  • The Slayer had a very similar trajectory to Joy, being a hit with fans from the very start and eventually becoming a fully-fledged love interest in the sequel. (Unlike the Coven, her peers' dislike of her during Monster Prom is based less on her being bossy and superior, and more on her trying to kill them constantly — arguably a little more justified.)
• Viewer Species Confusion:
  • A lot of people debate on exactly what sort of monster Oz is. Some people say he is an Eldritch Abomination, a Humanoid Abomination, a Living Shadow or something else. Word of God however has stated that while Oz started off without a clear concept behind it, it was later decided he was the Anthropomorphic Personification of Fear itself, the little ghostly beings that sprout for him are phobias.
  • Players unfamiliar with Islamic mythology are occasionally confused by Amira, referring to her uncertainly as a fire elemental rather than a djinni or an ifrit. Lampshaded and Played for Laughs in the dating profile for her that was released as part of her surname reveal event, where her bio reads somewhat wearily: "For the last time, I'm not DJ-ing, I'm a Djinn!"

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