YMMV / The Boys: Diabolical

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Does "the Narrator" in episode 2 actually have the power of narration, or is he just saying things out loud to himself and has deluded himself into thinking he's narrating the whole universe? The specific events he describes are all things he's present to witness (the nurse wheeling his chair away, his "visit" to his parents), and the character introductions could just be him describing his fellow supes for fun.
• Bizarro Episode: Even though Denser and Wackier is in effect to almost the whole series, Episode 5 takes the crown. It's about a girl that ingests Compound-V, which in turn transforms her own poop into a living, sentient, anthropomorphic being who she quickly becomes friends with. It ends with them fighting The Deep in the sewers after the girl finds out that she got the power to control poop. Yeah... All of that in a cute Animesque art style.
• Catharsis Factor: Considering how selfish, greedy, terrible and sometimes even downright evil the parents of the supe kids are (particularly Boobie Face's mom), it's incredibly satisfying to see them get their diabolically bloody comeuppance, all at the hands of the very children they abandoned.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Considering it's The Boys, it's expected.
  • Ironcast in episode 3 is a special brand of messed up. The man actually drinks the blood of dead kids recreationally. According to Butcher, he can actually taste the despair. If that weren’t enough, it also gets him aroused.
  • Superbrain getting his head cut in half by Laser Baby and we get to see a good look at his bisected brain? As expected in this series. Superbrain partially both dead and just fruitlessly trying to fix himself by shoving the top half of his massive brain into the severed scalp? Not only something different but darkly hilarious.
  • The entirety of "An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents", from the hilariously terrible superpowers some of the teens get (having boobs where your eyeballs should be, ejaculating ranch dressing, simply being a puddle of water colored like the Mexican flag, etc.), to the insanely gory and creative ways the parents are picked off, to the song choice ("Only Wanna Be With You" by Hootie & the Blowfish) that couldn't have been more out-of-place for the massacre ensuing onscreen.
• Jerkass Woobie: Homelander, already considered a Tragic Villain in the main series, is made even more pitiable when it's revealed in his Origins Episode that he once did genuinely want to be a hero who helped people. Unfortunately, Vought's sterile and loveless upbringing that kept him away from the outside world rears its ugly head on his first mission. Not only is it revealed that it left permanent mental scars, but it also left him woefully unprepared to deal with threats in a non-destructive manner, leading to him making mistake after mistake that causes the very people he's trying to rescue to turn on him. It's honestly hard to watch him snap from the pressure and become the Psychopathic Manchild he is now.
• Magnificent Bastard ("I'm Your Pusher"): Taking place in the comic's universe, William "Billy" Butcher is the same charmingly devilish schemer. Looking to kill the depraved supes Ironcast and Great Wide Wonder, Butcher tracks down their drug dealer O.D. and blackmails him into giving information on Wonder's drug of choice, having him spike said drug in order to make Wonder become too high to think clearly. Butcher watches from afar as the drugged-out Wonder flies right through Ironcast, killing both supes in one fell swoop, to Butcher's pleasure.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The simple and brutal way Homelander kills the parent-killing Supes, just by rending them all apart with his laser vision. It shows in one moment just how out of their league they are when facing the strongest of the Seven. The freakiest thing is the nonchalant way he does it, without even changing his neutral expression.
  • Great Wide Wonder murdered two college students while attempting to have sky sex with them. If that wasn't bad enough, he apparently didn't stop when they croaked.
  • The deaths of Ironclad and Great Wide Wonder, while fully deserved where no less horrifying. The latter flies so hard into the former that Wonder shatters his arm upon impact before bursting a hole through Ironclad and then smashing hard into a wall. As Wonder sinks into the ocean, his intestine can be seen hanging out of his corpse, all while he still has a drugged up smile on his face. Ironclad meanwhile only has a few minutes to suffer the pain of having a Torso with a View before the size of the hole and his own weight causes the top half of his torso to collapse on the lower half. It has to be seen to be believed.
  • Sun-Hee's cancer tumor takes on a life of its own once John injects her with Compound V. It becomes a monstrous tentacled horror that devours every living thing in its path once it tears its way out.
  • Homelander's childhood and the painful and horrifying experiments Vought subjected him to. It's surprising he didn't lose his mind until recently, and it's one of the main reasons he turned out as messed up as he did.
• Squick:
  • Compound V can give you strange and frankly gross powers like bringing you own feces to life and ejaculating ranch dressing when you masturbate as easily as it can give you conventional powers like flight or laser vision.
  • Ironcast apparently drinks the blood of children who have died from terminal illnesses, if that wasn't bad this apparently turns him on. That is wrong in so many ways.
    Butcher: Says he can taste the despair… also says it’s the only thing that raises the flag these days!
• Tear Jerker:
  • The entirety of “John and Sun-Hee” is absolutely serious dramatic and heartfelt but the ending where Sun-Hee sacrifices herself to kill the mutated cancer. Is definitely where the waterworks will flow.
  • The brief but extremely disturbing flashbacks to his childhood that Homelander has throughout "One Plus One Equals Two". In particular, him getting his hand shoved in a superheated oven while he sobs.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The eco-terrorists in episode 8 are somewhat portrayed as victims when Homelander brutalizes them. While they are right that Homelander is a terrible person (or, at least, will end up becoming one in the future), they brought in real automatic weapons filled with ammo which they also fired at him with, in a room full of hostages and without knowing he was bulletproof. Because of this, them claiming that they weren’t gonna harm anyone can come across as disingenuous. Not helping is that Homelander was genuine in his attempt at saving people and that his first kill was not only unintentional, but was also the result of one of them picking up the gun and pointing it at the hostage in the first place.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: It can take until the character is called "she" for people to realize Sky in "BFFs" is a girl.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: While the other shorts have more obvious plots and styles geared towards adults, the look and tone of "Laser Baby's Day Out" initially appears no different from its Animaniacs-inspired direction. However, its second half dramatically shifts into Black Comedy gore.
• The Woobie: Most episodes show the negative effect the existence of superpowers has on the world and its people. Vought International has left MANY victims in its wake.
  • The people whose parents agreed to have them injected with Compound V and then abandoned them when they developed shitty powers all really need a hug. It says something that you really cheer them on when they deliver violent deaths to their folks.
  • Boyd. The guy clearly suffers from self-esteem issues and ends up dying thanks to Vought's faulty Envision cream.
  • Groundhawk. The guy has hammers for hands, which really makes everyday life difficult and was implied to have really strained his childhood, is accused of being a pedophile, and when he agrees to help Maya with fixing her parents' marriage, he gets the snot beaten out of him.