YMMV / Taco-Man

• Accidental Innuendo: "And then a big head comes out and sucks all your balls"
• Crack Ship:
  • Bunny, taking the role of Sara's brother, starts hitting on Taco-Man (disguised as "Dana"). Taco-Man himself questions why a bipedal bunny and a sentient taco would hook up when he played the game in his 75th episode.
  • When Taco-Man finishes the story of A Boy and His Blob, his son questions what happened afterwards. Taco-Man hastily adds that the boy stayed on the Blob's planet, they celebrated with alcohol and decided to get married.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Taco-Man's kid "Kid", is well-liked, since he's just as much of a Deadpan Snarker as his father.
  • Neutral Non-Offense, who was created as a Straw Character. Fans quickly got attached to him (her?) because of his Non-Standard Character Design and his attempts at annoying Taco-Man being seen as adorable.
  • Ms. Mary. Mmm-hmm.
  • The Old Guy from Mad Dog McCree, see below.
  • Mario Paint Taco-Man, originally a one-off gag, but he even got his own small series of animations.
• Fandom Rivalry: With The Angry Video Game Nerd. Fans of the Nerd often accuse Taco-Man for being a ripoff, not knowing that Taco-Man was in production long before the Nerd ever came to be.
  • Taco-Man's interactions with Jill Valentine could also be interpreted that way.
  • Taco-Man and Bubsy having a staring contest.
• Fridge Brilliance: How come video game characters constantly pop up at Taco-Man's home? Well, The Game-Master has Taco-Man sucked into Video Game World. Who says it doesn't work the other way around?
• Friendly Fandoms: Fans of Taco-Man tend to be fans of The Lonely Goomba as well, since the reviewing styles are pretty similar.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Taco-Man having trouble with the first level in The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (which involves turning everything purple not purple) became this when the DVD commentary for Taco-Man Plays Volume 2 revealed that Sam T. is colorblind.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When Taco-Man made a Let's Play of Muppets: Chaos at the Carnival, he puts a Game Grumps reference into the fight with the Grumpasaurus. When the Grumps got their hands on the same game, they were overjoyed.
• Ho Yay:
  • Taco-Man's reaction towards the main character of Altered Beast (1988) bulking up.
  • Taco-Man claiming that getting a handjob from Prostitute Mickey for 2 bucks is actually a pretty good deal.
  • Taco-Man saying "Don't you notice I'm gay by now? Get a clue, woman!" when Sonic reacts towards Amy with apathy in Sonic Generations. While this is more likely a jab at Amy's Clingy Jealous Girl reputation, it could also be interpreted as Taco-Man coming out.
  • At the end of the Silent Hill episode, Taco-Man's therapist is progressively getting more and more naked with each camera shot. Taco-Man doesn't even react to this.
  • At the end of the "Detective Taco" short, Taco-Man and Harold actually get married. Because of a misunderstanding, but they seem happy.
  • When Zelda refuses to kiss Link, saying his breath smells like onions, Taco-Man snarks "I wouldn't kiss him either...". Implying that he would otherwise.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Oho, you missed that one! Try another!"
  • *hits the target* "Nice shooting! Try another one!"
  • Taco-Man's shell is on backwards. ^note  Funny enough, Sam T didn't notice this until it was pointed out to him.
• Moe:
  • Dig Dude. In complete contrast to the character he's an Expy of.
  • Neutral Non-Offense is pretty non-offensive indeed. Chances are high that you find yourself wanting to protect him, rather than being annoyed by him.
• Never Live It Down: Fans are always out to criticize poor Taco-Man for anything his career may share with The Angry Video Game Nerd's. It got to the point where Taco-Man is forced to do Take That!'s directed towards the Nerd on several occasions, such as boasting to him about having a working Jaguar CD and how his Night Trap starring Taco-Man game predated the AVGN's review of the original Night Trap^note which comprised part of a video about the Sega CD peripheral in the Atari 2600 episode.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Shot Lady is already terrifying herself, but the way she's animated here makes her appeareance 20-times worse.
  • Little Grace.
  • The 1-Up Mushroom is a subverted example, he was terrifying at first, but then he was simply laughable.
  • Dennis spazzing out. It was already pretty bad in and of itself, but Taco-Man's editing showed exactly how creepy it is.
  • The feral, zombie-like Awesome Possum. He spends most of the episode growling, then, at the he attacks Taco-Man.
• Schedule Slip: Slowed down greatly since 2017, uploading only 6 episodes from 2018-2020, and one of those is a joke episode with no actual game being played.
• The Scrappy:
  • The Lawyer, who spends most of his screentime with annoying Taco-Man (and the viewers), by forbidding Taco-Man to use copyrighted material for his videos. The fact that he's an Expy of the Blue-Haired Lawyer (who himself is also hated by the viewers) only makes it worse. Though he has occasional Pet the Dog moments.
  • The Angry Viewer from the Plumbers Don't Wear Ties episode. Doesn't help that he's meant to be an Audience Surrogate to all the annoying AVGN fanboys who consistently criticize Taco-Man for "ripping the Nerd off". Similarly to Douchey McNitpick, viewers hated this character, thinking his constant harrassment of Taco-Man is not remotely funny.
• Squick:
  • The Food Doctor constantly trying to bribe people into drinking his milk. Even Taco-Man is disgusted. The fact that the doc somewhat resembles Bill Cosby CERTAINLY doesn't help.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Plenty.
  • Thack Jompson is the main villain of the Game-Master series, he appears in the first two episodes and dissappears completely afterwards, with only Taco-Man and Polygon lampshading how he just vanished without explanation in Episode 5. The portrayal of Jack Thompson as an evil force, bound to destroy video games one by one is actually pretty interesting, or at least more interesting than Ctrl+Alt+Del's take on him.
  • Derek, Blast, Chomp and Virtual Boy are just kind of... there. Blast and Chomp are especially frustrating, since the 3rd and 4th episode had special focus on them.
  • Taco-Man's wife and Ben Burrito have no reason to not appear anymore, at least his kid had some appearances afterwards.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Sam? Why did you think it was a good idea to straight up copy Captain N instead of... fixing its flaws?
  • The references to Metroid, Metal Gear, Tomb Raider, Mega Man and by extension Frogger and Pong could've had potential for some interesting episodes, the latter two especially having potential for some outside-the-box stories, since they don't have an actual narrative.
  • There is also the fact that Taco-Man never encounters any characters that haven't been on Nintendo consoles (with the exception of Wild Woody), so what was the point of him entering Video Game World with a game system that can play any game ever created?
• Ugly Cute: Taco-Man
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Look at that attention to detail! Taco-Man is seen interacting with real life objects multiple times and it all looks pretty convincing. Heck, you can even see Taco-Man's reflection in some shots.
• The Woobie:
  • Taco-Man himself counts, since he's always bothered by the annoying guest of the week, kidnapped and tortured/murdered or abused by Sam.
  • Grandpa/Henry is treated like a slave by his wife. Also Taco-Man, the closest person he has for a friend, can't stand him.
  • Virtual Boy is treated like a waste of space, despite the fact that he's simply trying to do what he's programmed to do, it's not his fault that he's taking tasks too literally or that he isn't of much help in the castle.

---