YMMV / Oglaf

• Alternative Joke Interpretation: Misty Twinkle: is the salesman withdrawing the sale of the horse because he's offended at the client's final answer... or because the client did successfully guess "the thing"?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • "Barber surgeon" was an actual occupation for centuries, though predictably, it was nothing like what Navaan thinks it is.
  • The chess-playing automaton is also real, though it ran on smoke and mirrors (and a short man inside the machine).
  • Those warriors in "Plumes" who wear tall headdresses on their helmets to look bigger? That's generally agreed to be the actual reason behind the plumes on hoplite helmets. (Regrettably, no evidence they ever went the Combat Stiletto route.)
• Crosses the Line Twice: Just about the entire comic, really.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Many, but especially Sithrak, the surprisingly nice God of Evil. Who's not really evil anymore...
• Fan Nickname: "Derpfox" for the talking fox.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The first mention of Sithrak is by Morag the Immortal, but we don't find out much about him. Later we meet some worshippers who believe he tortures everybody forever in the afterlife, whether they were bad or not. Compared to that, immortality seems like a pretty good deal, even if it does hurt.
  • Word of God has confirmed Sithrak is the god of both religions, but that neither gets him entirely right. Sithrak is surprised anyone's still reading his Mad God diatribes, for instance, comparing them to teenage poetry. This would suggest that Morag's beliefs are probably closer to the mark.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The statue of the Goddess of Sex and War in the strip "Appeal to Heaven" is based on a Mesopotamian relief that is sometimes considered to depict Ishtar, who was in fact (among other things) the goddess of sex and war.
  • The comic "Throne of Heaven" presents a potential origin of Sithrak as the God of Jack Chick comics, in the style of said comics, as a critique of those comics.
  • Why is the Rumpelstiltskin parody tilted "Rattleplank"? Because the original German name of the eponymous goblin, Rumpelstilzchen, approximately translates to "little rattle-stilts".
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Back in 2012, the second part of "Naiads" used the idea of "delicious nymph water"^note Extra Fucky! being a beverage that people apparently drink for a punchline. Seven years later, the "gamer girl bath water" meme gave the joke a whole new twist.
• I Am Not Shazam: Ivan the Apprentice is the closest thing the comic has to a main character (even though he hasn't appeared in years) and his name is not Oglaf. Oglaf himself is a minor character that only featured in a few comics.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The lady imitating an owl to seduce Chauncey manages to rotate her head a full 180 degrees. (It works).
  • Eight Legs of Love. A Giant Spider with a vagina for a mouth is molesting Ivan in his sleep. DO. NOT. WANT.
  • The mistress killing her previous apprentice for trying to teach himself magic by casting a fire wand inside of him.
  • The girl who asks a man complimenting her eyes to actually have sex with them. As in, actually sticking his penis into her eye socket. It goes as well as you can imagine.
  • 'Butterflies' has someone being slowly dissolved over eight months in order to transform them into a hot girl. (And he's not even satisfied with the result).
• Protagonist Title Fallacy: Oglaf is simply one of many recurring side characters. If there's a protagonist, it's Ivan, and even he has been absent for over five years.
• Squick: Just about the entire comic, depending on your sexual preferences, with frequent stops in Brain Bleach and Nausea Fuel.
  • In "Jocasta Loves Oedipus", Oedipus gets around the incest prophecy by wearing his dad's preserved penis as a strap-on while having sex with his mom.
  • The eyesocket sex in "Pinkeye". Given the amount of magic and weird creatures in the comic's world, you might think the girl is actually able to regenerate her eye. Well... she doesn't know whether she can.
  • Kronar's tribe is made of extremely manly men only who have mastered Homosexual Reproduction. We see one of them give birth from his ass.
  • In "Écorché", one of the men bathes in lye soap, which burns away his skin. Apparently, this is sexy enough to make everyone get rid of their skin.
  • In "Stork" there's a running gag of everything the sorceress offers being something that gives you a child. When she and the adventurer have sex, a baby is born- from the man's penis. It is as painful and wrong as you would imagine.
• Tear Jerker: It's hard to tell what Sandoval is crying for in this page but he seems genuinely upset that Ivan has been put into a magical coma. It's actually kinda upsetting to read even if the feelings are coming from or being amplified by a drug trip.
• Theiss Titillation Theory: Particularly applies to the Snow Queen's top, which has only one button (with little wrinkle lines showing that it's a bit strained) and shows off Underboobs.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor Snow Queen. Poor Ari, too, come to think of it (he gets his cock frozen solid and snapped off). She does eventually get a happy ending. Ari, not so much.
  • Kronar's "son", though she does turn out to be a badass.
  • That poor little changeling baby. Also Ugly Cute.
  • Ivan gets put through so much hell that one can almost consider his magic sleep a happy ending—if only because it means no one's gonna be bothering him for a while.

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