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YMMV / The Amazing Digital Circus

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  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Has its own page.
  • Alternative Joke Interpretation: In "POMNI WAKE UP TIME TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE", Pomni and Caine scroll through a feed of unofficial Digital Circus content hidden from audience view behind a censor mosaic. Whether they're specifically looking at Rule 34 or content farms is unclear, but their horrified reactions are equally applicable to either option.
  • Award Snub: The pilot was nominated for Best TV/Media Character Animation at the Annie Awards, but while it lost to Blue Eye Samurai, the cast and fans were just happy to have at least been nominated in the first place.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The theme song which, befitting of the show, sounds like something straight out of a 1990s computer game.
    • "Your New Home", which plays during Pomni's final Sanity Slippage, manages to mix epicness, despair and horror at the same time.
  • Can't Un-Hear It: Soon after the pilot premiered, many fans noticed that the hook for "Your New Home" sounds quite like the chorus for Weezer's "Buddy Holly", some even making edits exemplifying their uncanny similarity.
  • Crack Pairing: Jax x Bubble swiftly became a completely non-serious meme ship after GlitchX 2023, where Gooseworx, in-character as Bubble, when asked to say something to Jax during the AMA for The Amazing Digital Circus, completely out-of-pocket inquired "can I kiss you?" Michael Kovach responded with "lay it on me" as Jax, to the distress of everyone else in the panel.
  • Crazy Is Cool:
    • Fans were immediately drawn to Caine for this exact reason, as anything he says or does is so unhinged and out-of-left-field that it's hard to not be entertained by him, resulting in Caine becoming a Fountain of Memes.
    • Kinger is similarly beloved for how crazy he is, but in a more low-key fashion, as a lot of his insane ramblings result in rather comedic scenarios that help him stand out amongst the rest of the colorful cast.
  • Creator Worship: Gooseworx has heavily started to grow in popularity with the release of the pilot The Amazing Digital Circus, which has amassed over 100 million views in four weeks and has been praised as the best animated indie pilot since Hazbin Hotel. While she already had a fanbase before for her comedic animations of Newgrounds and previously working on Hazbin herself, the release of TADC has not only increased her following, but also the following for GLITCH Productions on YouTube. She has taken notice of this and resultedly expressed shock and bewilderment on social media.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • When Gangle hesitates Jax's order to chase down the truck the gummy crocodile bandits are using to steal the Candy Canyon's maple syrup, he cuts her off, rhetorically asking if she was supposed to be "submissive and agreeable". At best this is degrading peer-pressuring on Jax's end, and at worst, it's mild sexual harassment due to it obviously being a reference the the slang phrase "submissive and breedable" (which means Exactly What It Says on the Tin). However, the sheer audacity in the statement as well as it coming out of nowhere loops it right back around into being funny.
    • On one hand, Gummigoo's death in episode 2 is pretty depressing as Pomni successfully made a friend out of him and she is clearly distraught when it happens. That being said, the way he is killed, being abruptly exploded into confetti by Caine, can be worthy of a cackle.
  • Discredited Meme: The "My name is Caine, I am your bitch" series of parody videos poking fun at the crude humor of the Hellaverse, specifically Hazbin Hotel, became a source of controversy when fans started using it to take what were arguably pot-shots at Vivienne Medrano. Alex Rochon, Caine's voice actor, refused to dub any lines from it in his video Saying A Lot Of Things As Caine. The original creator of the meme clarified that they did not mean it with malicious intent and that Digital Circus fans shouldn't harass Viv.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Canonically, Jax is nothing less than a pure Jerkass who bullies everyone for his own amusement, and is even confirmed by Word of God to be irredeemable, utterly devoid of heroic qualities, and most deserving to be trapped in the circus out of anyone. However, fans commonly interpreted Jax as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who acts cruel so he doesn't grow too attached to anybody, and that his acts of Accidental Heroism (i.e., knocking Gangle and Kinger into the Gloink nest before jumping into it himself to hide from Kaufmo) were more deliberate than they really were. This started to lessen after "Candy Carrier Chaos", where his antics become a lot more bloodthirsty and ruthless, and he comes across like a sociopath who only cares about causing chaos and abuses the others if they try to stop his "fun", with many people outright reversing their opinions of him and calling a "Jax-ass". It's not universal though, as he does still have plenty of defenders who justify his antics as being his form of stress relief or the result of being trapped in a world where his actions ultimately don't matter, and take note of his brief reaction to the mention of Kaufmo's funeral. It's even been accused that Jax's character was rewritten based on fan reception to him in the pilot, despite Gooseworx debunking it.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Kinger, while billed as one of the leads, still had a relatively small role in the pilot. That didn't stop him from becoming a popular fan favorite, reasons including his simple yet goofy design, his endearingly sweet nature, his potentially intriguing backstory with his missing queen piece counterpart, and his gags generally being seen as some of the funniest in the episode.
    • Zooble appears the least out of the main cast so far, even more than Kinger. Even then, they still have a sizeable number of fans due to their colorful design, some fans finding their uncaring and cynical attitude relatable, and their casual interactions with the others.
    • Despite not even showing up, Kaufmo has proven popular to some parts of the fanbase. This is largely from what we know about him going crazy from the idea of an exit, people not laughing at his jokes, and generally being pretty tragic in nature. Because of this, a lot about him is added in for what he might have been like.
    • Of all the unseen former residents of the Circus, the Queen chess piece character (later named Queenie by Word of God) has attracted the most attention from fans thanks to her resemblance to Kinger, leading to a ton of Epileptic Trees about (and subsequent fanart depicting) how they interacted before she presumably Abstracted.
    • The Sun initially didn't have much of a following due to having no lines in the pilot and thus no personality to go off of, but after "POMNI WAKE UP TIME TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE" was released, she ended up becoming a fan-favorite due to her Genki Girl, Cute and Psycho nature and how blunt her lines are.
  • Epileptic Trees: Due to the nature of the show, the crazy theories didn't wait to pop up:
    • The most common interpretation on how the performers got stuck in the game is the one of a virtual reality game Gone Horribly Wrong, as the first thing Pomni tries to escape is to "take this [her] headset off".
    • Another interpretation/theory is that the performers are actually AI brain scans of their human counterparts, who are unaware that their digital selves have some sentience of who they were based on.
    • The fact that Pomni, a jester, (indirectly) replaces Kaufmo, a clown, as well as quick shots of Abstracted performers like a queen piece has made some people think that the circus can only have six performers at a time, each one occupying a specific role (circus character, funny animal, child toy, headgear, tabletop piece and self-made toy/art piece), and that a new performer can only come to replace the one who abstracts.
    • There's speculation that Kinger is actually a developer on the program. He's been in the Circus the longest and towards the end, he explains to Jax how eating in the Circus works from a programming standpoint. His mentioning of an "insect collection" has been interpreted as a garbled desire to fix bugs in code.
    • Many have theorized that the show will feature, of all things, analogues to The Bible beyond Caine being named after the first murderer. People interpret the final dinner scene as an homage to the Last Supper with Pomni, as the one in the center, being the Jesus, something supported by a behind-the-scenes picture of a Pomni model crucified.
    • People have also interpreted the C&A logo briefly seen when Pomni starts to go insane as standing for "Cain(e) and Abel", with said Abel possibly being an AI that Caine, like his namesake, disposed of. Some have connected the fact that Caine's "head" is a set of jaws with some sources saying Cain killed his brother with a weapon made from a donkey's jawbone.
    • Due to Caine's reasoning for deleting/reseting Gummigoo being to prevent him from losing track on who's human and who's an NPC, a theory sprouted that an NPC infiltrated the cast before Pomni's arrival and it could even be one of the current main cast members. The most popular candidate being Jax, which explains his carefree and Jerkass attitude as being the result of him realizing that nothing he does matters, and his refusal in attending Kaufmo's funeral and brief vulnerable look as him being either jealous or not understanding the care that the other human characters have for each other. Other characters suspected of being NPCs include Gangle, due to her personality depending solely on her mask, and Kinger, due to him not abstracting despite having lost his mind a presumably a long time ago.
  • Fandom Rivalry: With fans of the Hellaverse, specifically Hazbin Hotel, as Digital Circus amassed massive attention in less than a week. Despite Gooseworx and VivziePop being friends, as well as Goose composing the background music and designing some of the characters for Hazbin while Viv is an open fan of ''Digital Circus'', the rivalry between their respective shows' fanbases began when the Digital Circus pilot diverted a lot of attention away from of promotional material of Hazbin's incoming Amazon Prime premiere, meaning a certain subsection of Hazbin viewers see Digital Circus as a threat to their show's success. Not helping is how the Digital Circus pilot also managed to beat the Hazbin Hotel pilot in terms of view count in the span of a few weeks.note 
  • Fandom-Specific Plot:
    • Role Swap AU fanart between Pomni and Caine is very common with fans, with Caine usually being turned into a carnival barker rather than a jester. This includes Pomni being portrayed as more confident and happier than she is in canon, with Caine being meek and shy alongside this. The rest of the cast more or less still keep their personalities, but have new or updated designs in this.
    • The gang somehow managing to truly escape the circus and trying to find each other to reconnect and the consequences of readjusting back to real life after being trapped for so Iong is a growing popular idea.
    • The Freakshow AU, a darker version of the series focusing more on horror and gore, is gearing to be very popular with fans. This particular AU has the main cast more ruthless and hopeless towards each other than in canon, especially Caine and a part of Gangle.
    • After the second episode, a slew of fanworks were made where Gummigoo isn't killed and is allowed to join the circus crew, both out of desire to give Pomni something good in her life and to explore the dynamics he could have with the circus crew.
    • Another post-episode 2 AU that has gained prominence is one where Pomni stays in the candy world with Gummigoo and joins his bandit gang.
  • Fanfic Fuel:
    • The Hallway scene introduces a bunch of rooms for characters that are nowhere else to be seen and were seemingly Abstracted a long time ago due to their crossed out pictures, the most notable example being a Queen chess piece counterpart of Kinger.
    • Kinger is said to have been in the Circus the longest. While all the performers' backstories are open to multiple theories, Kinger's invites the most speculations. How long has he been there exactly? How much does he know about the circus? How many humans has he outlasted?
    • What was Kaufmo like before he Abstracted? For that matter, what kind of voice/accent would he have had he appeared in the show in-person?
  • Fan Nickname:
    • "Queener" (before her real name was confirmed to be Queenie) for the Queen-piece character resembling Kinger, who is implied to have abstracted.
    • Despite Caine immediately dismissing his initial suggestion of "XDDCC" for Pomni's new name as "terrible", it has somewhat stuck among the fans who jokingly refer to her as such on occasion (even Lizzie Freeman, Pomni's voice actress, does it).
    • Before Princess Loolilalu had her name officially revealed, fans were quick to nickname her Baroness Von Bon Bon (for her appearance) and Candy Wife (for waifu designation).
  • Fanon:
    • It is often assumed that the performers' real names include the first letter of their circus selves, i.e. Pomni being Polina/Penny/anything starting with a P, Jax's real name starting with J, and so on. With the exception of Ragatha, who's almost always referred to as Agatha.
    • Similar to the above, their human forms are also speculated as having some similarities to base the digital personas they have in the game, such as Ragatha having red hair and a missing eye, and Zooble being non-binary/genderfluid and having prosthetic limbs as an analogy to them not knowing their gender and being able to pull apart their limbs respectively.
    • Zooble's human self usually has them with dyed hair of some sort.note 
    • Kinger's human self is almost always depicted as having a beard.
    • Pomni (and sometimes Kinger) having autism is one headcanon that's slowly growing in the fandom.
    • Speaking of Kinger, him and Queenie are portrayed as a couple in virtually every fanwork, with both possibly being transported into the circus together, and Queenie's subsequent abstraction causing Kinger to lose his mind even more.
    • If Caine is ever portrayed as human, he's usually referred to as having red or reddish-brown hair.
    • The C&A logo is interpreted as a sinister company that made the game and headsets that trapped everyone. Pomni and the others are sometimes depicted as employees that worked for said company.
    • Adding to the above, the company is also described as being founded by two brothers, one of which is Caine himself, and his alleged brother Able. How the two's relationship is portrayed ranges from both having a violent straight-up rivalry that ends in tragedy, to them actually getting along and running the Circus together.
  • Foe Yay Shipping: Due to his status as The Friend Nobody Likes, any ship with Jax (except arguably Kinger and Caine) counts. Special mention goes to Bunnydoll and Funnybunny for being the most popular.
  • Fountain of Memes: Caine, ever the wacky AI that he is, has inevitably become this due to his sporadic nature and his quotability.
  • Friendly Fandoms:
    • The show gained some traction with fans of ENA, due to both shows being 90s point-and-click adventure-styled webseries set in digital realms and packed with Surreal Humor and Surreal Horror. Some fans have even drawn ENA and Pomni together as friends; it helps that they share a voice actress and quite a few traits (like short bobbed hair, a tendency to Stress Vomit, and generally showing traits of mental instability, i.e. Pomni being a Nervous Wreck and ENA being a Mood-Swinger).
    • The show is likewise starting to get some overlap with the Pizza Tower fandom, due to the latter also starring a protagonist whose typical emotional disposition ranges from "anxious dread" to "apocalyptic panic attack", and whom is also bedeviled by floating hellions of dubious morality. Also helping matters is that both are heavily inspired by cartoons and other media from The '90s. There's even a Shout-Out to the game's posing taunts in the second episode!
    • The show also got a minor one with Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, mostly by having fanart of the latter characters Ruby and Chelsea being portrayed as Pomni and Ragatha respectively.
    • Seeing as they were made by the same company, It's no surprise that the series ended up getting one with Murder Drones.
    • The series has gotten positive attention from fans of The Good Place, as both series feature a group of humans Trapped in Another World (both worlds even featuring a Magical Profanity Filter), all with their own personal problems, and who have to work together to find a way out of their predicament.
    • Fans of the series tend to get along very well with fans of Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, due to Gooseworx being a big fan of the film, to the point of creating Expies of Raggedy Ann and the Greedy in the form of Ragatha and the Fudge.
    • A unique example of crossover with a specific part of a fandom, specifically Vocaloid, many fans of TADC also came to become fans of the viral music video Mesmerizer by producer 32ki, released only a few days before episode 2, focusing on a pair of girls (portrayed via Hatsune Miku and Kasane Teto) who end up drawn into a nightmarish state of hypnosis in the aftermath of attempting to use it to escape reality, largely due to the extremely similar visual styles between the video and the series, being extremely colorful, vibrant, and eccentric while having disturbing glitchy visuals and themes of losing oneself. It was especially popular among fans of Ragatha/Pomni, mostly because of an already prominent Yuri Fangirl following regarding the video combined with how Teto's terrified expressions, subliminal messages, and calls for help strongly reminded viewers of Pomni.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
    • After the pilot first dropped, the series began to receive a large influx of Japanese fan art, mainly owing to the characters' vibrant designs and eccentric personalities. The show even got its own pop-up shop in Japan.
    • The show is very popular in Mexico, as several bootleg performances featuring the characters have popped up in the country since the pilot's conception.
  • Gotta Ship 'Em All: Due to the lack of canon relationships, and Goose claiming that there's not and never was going to be romance in the show, but also encouraged shipping as long as they were courteous to conflicting ships, many of the characters have been shipped with either each other or self-inserts.
  • Idiosyncratic Ship Naming:
    • Jax x Pomni is FunnyBunny
    • Gangle x Kinger is RoyalRibbon
    • Jax x Gangle is Ribbun
    • Ragatha x Pomni is ButtonBlossom or Jesterdoll
    • Jax x Zooble is Abstrabbit
    • Ragatha x Jax is Bunnydoll
    • Kinger x Queenie is RoyallyChess
    • Caine x the Moon is BlueTooth
    • Zooble x Gangle is Abstragedy
    • Caine x Pomni is Showtime
    • Caine x Kinger is Kingleader or RoyalTeeth
    • Pomni x Gangle is called Scaredlylovers or Jesteribbon
    • Ragatha x Gangle is called Ragaribbons
    • Ragatha x Princess Loolilalu is DollyLolly or LollyDolly
    • Pomni x Gummigoo is FunnyGummy
  • The Inverse Law of Fandom Levity: While the show has the aesthetic of a Zany Cartoon and has plenty of slapstick and comedy, it's at the end of the day a very disturbing existential Psychological Horror story about individuals trapped in a digital world as they slowly start questioning their predicament. Thus, making the genre a somewhat equal amount of a Horror Comedy. But you wouldn't know that from a lot of fandom as they almost always have two different portrayals of how the show is instead of the mixing of the original genres and tones.
    • One part of the fandom leaves out the existential horror out in favor of treating it like a purely wacky Slice of Life comedy about the characters just hanging around. The darkest material you'll get from this side of the fandom is fairly lighthearted Black Comedy and sappy melodrama.
    • Another part of the fandom focuses solely on the horror aspect and the potential lore, ignoring all the comedic and more lighthearted elements of the series in favor of portraying it as a straight-up horror/drama story with even some elements of an ARG or analog horror mixed in through some AUs. Any humor you'll find from this side of the fandom is very bleak dry humor akin to the Chernobyl miniseries.
  • Jerkass Dissonance: Most people would rather burn their house to the ground than be roommates with any real life person who even slightly resembles Jax. He's snarky, gratuitously destructive, apathetic to the pain of others, except when he actively, gleefully contributes to it and so far has no real redeeming quality... yet he became many people's favorite character in the Pilot because him being a complete asshole was very funny, his charismatic vocal performance courtesy of Michael Kovach helping.
  • Les Yay:
    • Fans took notice of the relationship between Pomni and Ragatha, with the latter being the closest thing the former has to a Best Friend, and the fact that they briefly flash a Cat Smile to each other. There's also the fact that Ragatha worried about Pomni's wellbeing several times during "Candy Carrier Chaos" which many shippers took as signs of a crush.
    • There's also the brief interaction between Ragatha and Princess Loolilalu, where Ragatha complements the look of the Candy Canyon Kingdom, causing the princess to giggle and proclaims that she likes her already.
  • Love to Hate: After the second episode released, some people's opinions of Jax reversed, with many calling him a "Jax-ass." This has only caused many fans to love him more for being an unapologetic asshole.
  • Memetic Badass:
    • Due to gaining one hundred million views in the span of 30 days, managing to somehow surpass the huge views of the Hazbin Hotel pilot, the pilot to Digital Circus has been held up and referred to as one of the greatest and most powerful pilots in any piece of media, with many fans even saying it made 10 "Pomnillion views" à la Morbius because it gained so many views, a new word had to be invented.
    • Kinger, due to how long he has lasted within the Circus without going Abstracted like so many before him, has been given this treatment as well, sometimes even depicting him as a Gigachad.
  • Memetic Psychopath: Caine is definitely not normal by any means, but expect to see many fanworks blowing his eccentricity up further with him doing things like robbing banks or blowing stuff up with the same energetic attitude. With the release of Episode 2, it became popular to make his deletion of Gummigoo incredibly over-the-top in nature compared to canon, possibly having him go on mass deletion sprees of assorted characters.
  • Moe:
    • Pomni easily fits the criteria, what with her innocence, small size, big eyes and endearing helplessness.
    • Gangle is very adorable for what's essentially a Floating Mask with ribbons for a body. It mostly comes down to her meek, squeaky voice and cute expressions.
    • Kinger, due to his eccentric personality and neuroticism, perhaps due to being stuck in the Digital Circus the longest. Despite having a few screws loose, Kinger is a kind and friendly guy at heart.
    • Ragatha comes across as this as well what with her nice and friendly personality and her cute ragdoll appearance.
    • The Sun oddly enough. She has big cute eyes, a nice cute smile, and a high pitched energetic voice. Though she is also a bit of the Cute and Psycho type if her threat to Caine is any indication.
  • One-Scene Wonder: The Moon amounts to little more than a talking piece of scenery for a throwaway gag, but her one scene of flirting with Caine inspired so much fan art that even Gooseworx herself acknowledged it.
  • One True Threesome: Ragatha/Pomni/Jax quickly became popular with fans after the pilot, probably since they spend a fair amount of time together early on (at least before Jax abandons the girls to get away from Kaufmo) and have amusing chemistry.
  • Popular with Furries: Gummigoo instantly became popular with scalies, who began drawing him as a Bara.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: While most ships in the series are Idiosyncratic Ship Naming, there are also some portmanteaus.
    • Jax and Ragatha are called Jagatha or Ragathax.
    • Pomni and Ragatha are RagaPom.
    • Gangle/Zooble is called "Google".
  • Quirky Work: The show is a psychedelic Black Comedy set in the titular digital circus world full of awkwardly designed characters, bright colors, a Dysfunction Junction cast of whom we currently don't know the true identities of, and likely won't anytime soon as they all have Identity Amnesia so use nicknames that fit their avatars as a substitute for their real names.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Before the pilot was released, Gooseworx described Caine as an Obliviously Evil character who is earnest yet horribly misguided in his efforts to understand the humans who stumble into the digital world, and has no power to help them in any meaningful way. However, his generally shifty nature has led some fans to interpret him as a secretly malicious figure who deliberately keeps people trapped there for some sinister purpose. This characterization of Caine is tellingly quite similar to AM. After the ending of "Candy Carrier Chaos", where Caine ends up killing Gummigoo so he won't lose track of who's a player and who's an NPC, fan portrayals of Caine that demonize him ended up growing exponentially because of this act.
  • Self-Fanservice:
    • Pomni is a cute harlequin character with cartoonish proportions, but that hasn't stopped many artists from drawing her like a Sexy Jester, most of the time with a petite silhouette. Also, while her canon self only has two small and two big locks of hair around her Happy Harlequin Hat (and some go with it by drawing her bald, often for Rule of Funny), fan depictions tend to draw her with a head full of hair below it, a bob haircut being the most current interpretation. The fact that she's physically stuck with her harlequin attire is purposely ignored too.
    • While Ragatha already stands out for being the most human-looking character in the main cast, she tends to be drawn with more noticeable curves in fanart compared to the show.
    • Gangle is a bunch of floating ribbons made into a vaguely humanoid shape, with theater masks for a face. This hasn't stopped people from drawing her with a curvy body, with her ribbons either wrapped around one that doesn't exist in the show, or bundled into one. The stranger examples will have them floating around, like in the show, but coiled into a curvy shape.
    • Despite being a Crescent moon with a face, the Moon is sometimes represented with a human body by those who exaggerate her crush on Caine into Yandere tendencies.
    • Gummigoo is often drawn with either a chiseled muscular build or a dad bod. Even though in his canon design he is quite thin and also being a gummy candy his body is smooth, lacking any kind of muscle definition.
  • Ship Mates:
    • Ragatha/Pomni shippers are often also fans of Gangle/Zooble.
    • Jax/Ragatha fans are usually also Caine/Pomni fans.
  • Ships That Pass in the Night: Some of the ships that sprung up after the pilot include ones that had little to no interaction, such as Caine/Kinger for being two hilariously eccentric characters who are the most accustomed to the circus, albeit in radically different ways, but who only spoke once, or Pomni/Gangle, two Mood Swingers who share the bad luck of being Cosmic Playthings of their surroundings, but who didn't interact for now.
  • Signature Scene: The ending scene at the dinner is perhaps the pilot's most iconic moment, as the camera zooms in on Pomni's face, a triumphant yet creepy reprise of the main theme playing as she slowly cracks an unsettling smile, her sanity slipping as she finally comes to terms with her new reality, and setting the tone for the rest of the series... and Pomni's life, too.
  • Spiritual Successor:
    • The overall premise is essentially "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" in Cyberspace. The scenario is comically absurd yet terrifyingly inexplicable, how the characters got here is a mystery, none of them can even remember their names, they have no need for eat or sleep (and so will subsist indefinitely), and by the time the protagonist appears, everyone else has already given up on escape.
    • Design and antics wise, it can also be this to Popee the Performer especially since both of them are on a circus, albeit TADC is more kid friendly on a western perspective.
    • The plot also has shades of Balan Wonderworld as they are both about powerful overly zealous showman-like deities who take their guests on all kinds of crazy adventures.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Trans Audience Interpretation:
    • Several viewers have commented on how Pomni's reaction to her new environment, specifically the scene where she first sees herself in a full-body mirror, could draw parallels with a transgender individual who feels trapped in their own skin and unempathetic society, desperately searching for an escape and being forced to feign joviality in their situation despite their internal dysphoria. Others have interpreted the mirror scene more positively, as though she was taken by her new appearance after transitioning into a new body. Gooseworx — who is herself a trans woman — hasn't stated whether or not the allegory is intentional, though she has clarified that Pomni's reaction to her new body is not meant to be positive.
    • Due to their gender identity officially being canonically left as an Ambiguous Gender for the foreseeable future, many fans interpret Zooble as identifying as non-binary or genderfluid in the human world, only to completely forget about anything involving gender, even their biological one, once they got transported. Whether Zooble would be out with it or still closeted and questioning themselves (before getting trapped) depends on the fanworks. The fact that they have a female voice actor is what makes many fans also add Zooble originally as AFAB before figuring themselves out.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: Jax is very much The Friend Nobody Likes in-universe for very good reasons, but he is probably one of the most beloved characters in the fandom.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Like Murder Drones, this series shows how GLITCH Productions have progressed in animation. The titular Digital Circus has vibrant colors, the animations are extremely fluid, and the cartoonish effects work pretty well in 3D. It's especially impressive when you consider the slight Medium Blending in the various characters' animations (Ragatha's mouth being pasted on her face, Gangle and Kinger having Floating Limbs, etc.).
  • The Woobie: All the humans (sans Jax) count as this, but some in particular stand out:
    • Pomni. Poor, poor Pomni. She's trapped in a simulation where she and five other people she just met are tortured for all of eternity, with practically no hope of escape or the release of death. In the pilot alone, she's a Nervous Wreck who is freaking out at everything around her, and she undergoes a major Sanity Slippage as she tries to find a way out. In the end, the poor girl can only muster an unnerving smile as it sets in that she's not getting out anytime soon.
    • Gangle is constantly shoved around by Jax and is almost always crying and mourning her comedy mask being broken.
    • Ragatha is the kindest of the group who tries her best to help Pomni get comfortable with her new life, but her efforts end up completely failing. First, Jax gleefully rubs the direness of the situation in Pomni's face, for his own amusement. Then, Ragatha confesses that the futility of escape can drive one to madness, and this is subsequently demonstrated when both Pomni and Ragatha find Kaufmo has been abstracted because of this. Kaufmo then attacks Ragatha, leaving her in a painfully glitching state, and Pomni abandons her in fear. Although Pomni returns to her and agrees to find Caine, she abandons Ragatha again when she discovers a (fake) exit. Then Kaufmo is sent to the cellar, still abstracted. Pomni abandoning her in fear for the vain hope of an exit both stings of betrayal and also highlights that Ragatha has completely failed to help Pomni get used to her new home. There really is no bright side to the whole ordeal. By the end, she can only stand beside Pomni looking away silently. Being Good Sucks in the Amazing Digital Circus.
    • Gummigoo is a NPC bandit created by Caine with the backstory of having an ailing mother, who only stole syrup to help her. He later gets trapped in a Debug Room and has an existential crisis after realizing he's a video game character with fake memories, who doesn't even have a mother. After Pomni convinces him that his life isn't meaningless and that he can have a life in the Circus with them he agrees and heads back to the circus with her, only for Caine to blow him up for being an NPC.
  • Woolseyism: Has its own page.

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