YMMV / Polandball

• Adaptation Displacement:
  • While the Polandball webcomic series is well known and has a large fandom, many people forget that it started as an internet meme, coming from a successful 2009 campaign by image board users to take over drawball◊, in which said website is also forgotten despite getting national media attension and is only bought up when Polandball's origins are mentioned.
  • The YouTube section of the community is the most active section of the community, with some Polandball animators getting thosands of views and subscribers. This has led to a lot of people (younger members of the community especially) not even knowing it started as a webcomic.
• Awesome Ego: America sometimes, especially when he decides to "manifest my destiny".
  • France has his moments, such as in this gem.◊
  Europe is mine to redraw
  As there can be only one Emperor
  Under the sun of Austerlitz.
• Broken Base: There are many disagreements within the fandom itself as to how to portray the countryballs, the biggest divide being the rift between Facebook and Reddit. The latter generally produces high-quality comics but has very strict rules and moderation, which many people feel infringes on the creative quality and freedom of the content creators. The former does not follow such rules and admins of respective countryball pages have their guidelines for content, and therefore the quality of content may vary (except when Israel is involved). Facebook users generally see Reddit users as snobbish due to insisting on strict accordance with their rules outside of Reddit, and Reddit users generally look down on Facebook users for poor and non-humorous content.
  • There has been quite a few flame wars even within the Facebook community itself. There have been cases of people starting their pages due to having vastly different views and opinions from the admins. There also have been cases of people using Polandball as a platform to air their political views, incidents where certain pages have been doxxed by ultra-nationalists, and frequent purges by the Facebook authorities themselves for any content that seemed slightly offensive, especially anti-Semitic (earning it the name "Faceblock")
    • The fact that admins of Facebook Polandball seem to be divided between National Communists and Traditionalists with the few moderates getting the brunt from both sides doesn't help tone down the flame wars either.
    • Clashing between countries that are real-life enemies is pretty common on Facebook, to the point where their communities will mass report each other getting the pages taken down, or "Zucced" (slang term named for Mark Zuckerberg).
  • A simple, surreal comic about Russia disguising himself as a pizza◊ caused quite a split, with many fans loving it and drawing variations on the same theme, while others considered it utterly stupid and a Forced Meme.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Genocide, Terrorism, Racism and other serious things are often successfully Played for Laughs.
  • International Remove Kebab Contest◊ is a good example. Serbia shows how to "remove kebab" (i.e. commit ethnic cleansing of Turkish Muslims), by... eviscerating a stuffed sack version of Bosnia with an accordion, then playing the accordion (still stuck through Bosnia) and singing an over-the-top racist creed of memetic status. In the words of NATO: "10/10, would bomb again."
• Defictionalization: You can now make countryball plushies by using this tutorial◊.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Balkans get a considerable amount of spotlight for a region that's generally ignored by the rest of the world.
  • Ditto with Southeast Asian countries. Comics starring them are about as common as ones that star European countries.
  • The Scandinavian countries are another popular area, along with Central America.
  • The Jewish Autonomous Oblast is far more popular than most Russian regions, probably due to his eye-catching design: cubical (because Jewish) and with a rainbow flag that often leads to gay jokes.
  • Suriname. Mostly due to the Sheriff Suriname series.
  • Mauritania, mostly due to his nearly memetic perpetual, jubilant smile. Like Suriname, he also gets his own comic series.
  • Palau due to how Kawaii it is often portrayed as.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Hetalia: Axis Powers, both of which have a somewhat similar premise but are derided by many Polandball fans for sugarcoating the countries and certain aspects of history (and the less said of the two series' boatloads of Ho Yay, the better). Fans of APH in turn call Polandball fans unimaginative and accuse them of having unsavory politics.
• Fan Nickname: Singapore is sometimes referred to as Tringapore.
  • Kazakhstan is occasionally referred to as Kazakhbrick.
  • Israel is sometimes referred to as Israelcube or more rarely, Zionbox.
  • Reichtangle is sometimes referred to as the Tangle.
• Friendly Fandoms: There's a lot of overlap between Polandball fans and Scandinavia and the World viewers. Several of SATW's formats have been done in Polandball format, and there's a healthy exchange of memes.
• Genius Bonus: If you suck at remembering flags, you'll have trouble finding the comics funny. Consider then that many also include references to history, geography, politics, languages, dialects, slang, religions, movies, literature...
  • On Reddit, the creator of a comic will usually leave an explanation (always starting with "Context: ...") in the comments. You don't have to know about 13th-century battles or the relationship between Hungary and the Ukraine, but you'd best be willing to learn.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The Polandball community is very active in Latin America (Brazil especially), Japan and Russia.
• Ho Yay:
  • Between Vietnam and Philippines in this comic, in an Enemy Mine sort of way.
  • Occurs between India and China in this comic◊ due to their similar situation.
  • Sweden visits Thailand at the end of the multiparter comic The Autonomous Region Of Åland - "A Romantic Tragedy", presumably with romantic intention.
  • Between Israel and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast◊. The colours of the latter contribute a bit more to this, as well as Israel's smooch.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The phrase, usually representing national pride, "[Country X] STRONK!" and referring to Muslim and Middle Eastern countries as "kebabs" comes from some rather obscure Eastern European memes given international life by Polandball.
  • Polandball itself is a meme, coming from the successful 2009 campaign by Polish image board users to take over drawball.◊
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
• Self-Fanservice: Countryhumans, a branch of Polandball which gives the balls a human body (or even humanize them) and makes them more susceptible to fanservice thus.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: Despite how silly some of the comics are, you can learn a bit about world history and politics from reading them.
  • The Polandball wiki has a much more streamlined (and more to the point) list of countries' international relations than, say Wikipedia.
• Values Dissonance: The users and comics on Facebook Polandball are highly prone to unironic ultranationalism, while Reddit Polandball users tend to mock and parody such tendencies. Poe's Law indeed.
• The Woobie: Many nations have been this. It has its own page.