Jane's a Car
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Jane, big time. Many fans had latched onto her as The Lost Lenore and written her up as a saintly character in Fan Fiction, so it was an Ass Pull for them to see her as a monstrous villain in this story. Meanwhile, other fans had picked up on Emma talking about Jane as a Type-A Control Freak and Tom's line "She poked at each of my wounds to see what I'd say" in "If I Fail You" to indicate Jane wasn't as nice as she seemed, and thought Jane's Came Back Wrong status was both logical and intriguing Character Development. There's fierce debate over whether the Jane in this story is the real Jane in the first place and, if she is, how deeply her personality differs from Jane when she was alive, and to what extent those changes can be explained as what would happen to anyone in the situation of having their soul bound to an inanimate object and can be sympathized with, if not morally justified.
- For much of the episode, it's an Ambiguous Situation whether Jane's ghost even exists or whether the whole situation has been caused by Tom going into a Heroic BSoD and his own mind refusing to let him move on from Jane because his guilt complex over her death is too powerful. Word of God is that the ending proving that Jane is real was seen as necessary because otherwise the story would be too dark — Nick Lang decided that a version of Tom who was willing to actually try to kill Becky, even in the throes of a nervous breakdown, would be too OOC.
- Awesome Music: The "Jane's a Car" song is far and away the most praised song from the Nightmare Time Season One soundtrack, second only to the Nightmare Time theme itself. Mariah Rose Faith and Angela Giarratana have made a meme of how the song's first line, "Got my foot on the gas!", immediately leads to wanting to actually get in the car and sing the whole rest of the song while Riding into the Sunset.
- Captain Obvious Reveal: The title of the story already spoils the initial reveal, but a minority of fans were still holding out the possibility it meant something more metaphorical.
- Also, The Reveal that Jane's intention is to kill another woman to come back to life by taking her body is something most fans could see coming a mile away, except the ones who, like Tom, were still in denial that this version of Jane isn't at all like the good person they imagined.
- Cargo Ship: Well, yeah. The story's theme song is about playing this notion up as much as possible with, well, a normal car. And when that car turns out to be inhabited by the spirit of Tom's late wife, well...
- While watching this episode the live chat developed a different Cargo Ship (and Crack Ship), jokingly saying the One True Pairing of this episode should be "Tom/Therapy" (or "Tomapy"). Harsher in Hindsight when, later in the story, we find out that Jane's profession in life was psychiatry and she was the closest thing Tom had to a therapist.
- Fanfic Fuel: Teasing the fanbase with Tom's proposal to Kill and Replace Linda Monroe — and then never actually showing Linda in the episode — seems like it's a scenario tailor-made to generate fanfic, as is the general idea of finding other people for Jane to possess besides Becky (including the Crack Fic idea of her succeeding in killing Ethan in the opening scene and then finding herself in his body).
- Hilarious in Hindsight: The Starkid fandom has joked about how this is both the second time Team Starkid has written a love song that's ambiguously to a woman or to a car ("Fancy Machine" from Little White Lie) and the second time they've made Dylan Saunders fall in love with a machine that thinks it's a woman (Mega-Girl and Tootsie from Starship).
- You could even, at a stretch, call this storyline a Call-Back to A Very Potter Sequel, where Umbridge, like Jane, goes on a murderous rampage because she's so deeply hurt that Dylan's character doesn't really think of her as a woman.
- Jerkass Woobie: Jane is possessive and sometimes cruel, and pulls a Kill and Replace on Becky with no remorse — even though this gets Tom, the husband she wanted to reunite with, out of the picture for good. However, there's no denying that having your soul trapped in a car with no one to talk to and nothing to do but mull over your situation for a good year and a half would seriously suck. And even though she takes it way too far, it's easy to sympathize with Jane's hurt when she finds out Tom is dating Becky.
- LGBT Fanbase: Starkid's always had a big one of these, who found a few reasons to get very excited about this story — the return of the non-binary (in fanon) police officer Doug, and the reveal that Jane Perkins may have been Ambiguously Bi. (Of course, the version of Jane we get to know here ends up falling on the Depraved Bisexual end of things, but that still leaves room for a nicer-but-still-bi version of Jane in the past before she Came Back Wrong.)
- Memetic Mutation: The cast was very quick to try to make the "Jane's a Car" song go viral out of context, with Mariah Rose Faith uploading a jokey Cobra Kai-inspired '80s karate workout video set to the song on Tiktok.
- Many fans have been playing the song over a scene of them looking or acting inappropriately lustful with their car; cast member Curt Mega notably did this and dedicated the video to his Real Life wife Kim Whalen, who then made a response video titled "Jane driving Becky driving Jane" showing an animation of her face as Possessed!Becky driving the Mustang.
- A Running Gag when discussing this episode is calling it a sequel to or adaptation of the infamous 2012 episode of TLC's My Strange Addiction titled "Dating My Car"
, about a romantic relationship between an Arkansas man named Nathaniel and his Chevy Monte Carlo named Chase.
- Never Live It Down: It's unlikely fans will let Tom live down the infamous "love scene" any time soon.
- Refrain from Assuming: There was a lot of confusion over the title of this story's Theme Tune. The original script does in fact give it the most obvious possible title, "She Lets Me Drive" (after the first line of the chorus), but Mariah Rose Faith and Angela Giarratana both said they couldn't think of it as anything other than the first line of the song, "Got My Foot on the Gas!". Eventually the soundtrack version followed the other story Theme Tunes and named it after the story itself, "Jane's a Car", which means if you listen to the song out of context it's a confusing Non-Appearing Title (one which directly explains the metaphor behind most Car Songs).
- Signature Scene: All of the conversation about Episode Three of Nightmare Time — possibly about Season One as a whole, when talking about spoilers to be kept from newbies — was dominated by discussion of that scene between Tom and Jane, to the point where a post-S1 Q&A given by Nick Lang was dominated by Nick giving his artistic justification for why this scene was included. The "controversy" over this scene may have led to it being drastically shortened for the final YouTube release, which provoked a minor backlash from fans who felt the hubbub over the scene had been mistaken as genuine offense rather than Memetic Mutation based on it being disturbing and memorable in a good way.
- Squick: Tom and Jane "having sex" after Jane's been turned into a car is a very intentional invocation of this, although the sheer outsized reaction the fanbase had to it may have led Nick Lang to tone it down in the final, edited version posted on YouTube.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The editing-down of that scene was greeted this way by many fans, who felt that the original, uncomfortable, Overly Long Gag version of this scene was one of the best scenes in the show and that toning it down to appease offended fans (many of whom were just memeing and not genuinely offended) was an unnecessary overreaction.
- The Woobie: His wife's ghost may be a Jerkass Woobie, but Tom himself is absolutely a pure Woobie through and through in this story, especially since during the first half's Hope Spot he's made tremendous progress on shedding the Jerkass traits he had back in Black Friday. The relentless Trauma Conga Line he goes through in the second half, putting him in an impossible moral dilemma and watching him tear himself apart over it until he's a completely broken man, is extremely hard to take for fans who were invested in his story — and makes Jane extremely hard to forgive, whatever Freudian Excuses — natural or supernatural — she may have for her actions.
- Becky, too — she's already been through so much, and now she's had a second Love Interest turn violent on her and assault her in the Witchwood. (And, even worse, the ending reveals that the assault was successful and she died, her last thoughts being about how her original One True Love betrayed her.)
The Witch in the Web
- Abandon Shipping: A tongue-in-cheek meme popped up in the fandom that as soon as it was clarified the Lords in Black (and their Good Counterpart Webby) are "siblings", the growing "Wiggly/Blinky" ship was instantly sunk, because the Starkid fandom is very against Incest Yay Shipping. (Never mind that the Lords in Black are cosmic entities and Eldritch Abominations where it's not even clear what it means for them to be siblings or, for that matter, what it would mean for them to be romantically involved or to have sex.)
- Awesome Music: For people who wanted more dark, serious songs like Black Friday's "What If Tomorrow Comes?" from Jeff Blim, "The Web I Spin for You" topped their rankings of the Nightmare Time Season One soundtrack album.
- Captain Obvious Reveal: Not a single member of the audience was fooled by "Lex" suddenly appearing in Hannah's room when she "wakes up" from her nightmare. Justified in that this is Willabella's desperate last attempt to keep Hannah in "Drowsy Town". And it almost works because Hannah is a scared and traumatized little girl, but Willabella underestimates Hannah's willpower.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Miss Holloway and Duke were introduced in this, the last story of the season, but instantly became beloved by the fandom—both for their endearing dynamic and for being adults who are not useless, and actually help Hannah and Lex.
- Harsher in Hindsight: James Tolbert as the Judge in this story uses the same voice and affect he did for the hilariously memeable "She has the lying tongue of a SNAAAKE" line as the Security Guard in Black Friday. This time, with the more appropriate setting and the greater buildup for it, the act is much less funny and comes off as genuinely menacing and terrifying.
- I Knew It!: The fact that Uncle Wiley used to be Wilbur Cross is quietly confirmed in the end credits, which list him as simply "Wilbur", which almost makes one wonder if it was ever even supposed to be ambiguous.
- Memetic Mutation: A fair number of fans reacted to Webby's wig, revealing dress, dramatic makeup and abstract interpretive dance in "The Web I Spin for You" with "WEBBY'S AN E-GIRL!"
- Narm Charm: Hannah and her emotions are Played Straight and taken very seriously for this whole story; on the flip side, Angela Giarratana takes great pleasure in playing the Witch as the most over-the-top, unrealistic villain possible. Her piercing, nails-on-chalkboard shriek to Webby that Wiggly is "MY KIIIING — YOUR KIIIING, BITCH!" is a Narm Charm highlight.
- She Really Can Act: This time, Kendall Nicole as Hannah has to carry the whole story on her back as the main character, and is pushed to emotional extremes the whole time — she spends almost the whole episode shaking and screaming in terror. It'd be easy to play such a role as one-note goofy Narm, especially as a child actor, but Kendall completely averts this — her emotions all feel very real the whole time and the fans were terrified right along with her. In the original livestream you could see Curt Mega, her Real Life acting teacher, nodding with approval at her climactic final scene where her fear turns into righteous anger and she finally reclaims her power and defeats the Witch.
- Special Effects Failure: A minor one. During Uncle Wiley's return, he briefly offers Hannah an apple before taking a bite himself. The apple blends into the greenscreen, resulting in a shot of Joey Richter seemingly taking a bite out of thin air.
- Unexpected Character:
- When various voices are whispering to Hannah, Jon Matteson manages to outright Jump Scare us by whipping out a Wiggly doll, holding it very close to the camera, and breathing, "We just keep running into each other, don't we, Hannah?" It's Wiggly's only appearance in Nightmare Time to date but it leaves a hell of an impression.
- Shortly thereafter, Lauren Lopez's portion of the Three-Girl Creature steps aside to reveal Uncle Wiley. Joey Richter managed to covertly shave his mustache and style his hair sometime after his appearance as Dan Reynolds earlier in the story to make Wiley's appearance sufficiently shocking.
- The fact that Webby has a human form ("sometimes she's a girl") was revealed early on in this story, as pretty heavy Foreshadowing that she'd be appearing in the climax, but Mariah Rose Faith in her white wig as Webby was still a Wham Shot that took many viewers by surprise, as was getting a surprise treat of the Solemn Ending Theme being a whole song from Webby's POV.
