YMMV / The Rock-afire Explosion

• Audience-Alienating Era: The showtapes produced by ShowBiz themselves in the mid-1980s without any input from Creative Engineering are riddled with off-sounding voices, an overly-positive feel compared to the sometimes adult and cynical feel of the CEI tapes, and lame puns, with "Time Machine / Hits 1" (the first of those showtapes) considered the nadir. The final Rock-afire Explosion showtape for ShowBiz, “The Rolfe & Earle (sic) Show” (which was played during Concept Unification), is widely considered one of the worst Rock-afire showtapes for the aforementioned problems plus mixing up Rolfe and Earl’s characterizations^note Rolfe, who is normally a clueless, greedy jerk, is somehow more of a Deadpan Snarker who drops several clues as to who their replacement is, while Earl, normally the witty puppet who manipulates Rolfe, is depicted as pathetic and clueless., as well as misspelling Earl’s name with an “E” at the end.
• Awesome Music: Almost all of their song covers, as well as original songs. In particular, one song that played during birthday parties, "Sal's Birthday", is a touching song that perfectly shows Billy Bob's kindhearted nature.
• Cult Classic: Has become this since the end of ShowBiz Pizza Place. Despite only playing in a handful of locations worldwide, the band has maintained a loyal following, especially in the 2010s, thanks to the popularity of Five Nights at Freddy's.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Rolfe and Earl, who were originally going to be part of a rotation of traveling characters and weren't included in the New Rock-afire Explosion, have a loyal following for their witty banter.
  • Looney Bird seemed to eclipse Billy Bob in prominence in the 1990s, to the point where Fechter’s short-lived post-ShowBiz restaurant franchise was named after him.
  • Dook LaRue, the drummer. Despite his lesser prominence compared to other band members, his Cloudcuckoolander personality and singing voice have gained him fans.
  • Uncle Klunk pre-Executive Meddling has some fans, thanks to his hilarious performance from Jeff Howell and memorable lines such as "Don't smoke Crayolas".
• Fandom Rivalry: With Chuck E. Cheese, especially due to Concept Unification.
  • Friendly Fandoms: Though there are many who like both characters.
• Growing the Beard: The "Tribute to Abbey Road" showtape from 1982 is considered this, with Rick Bailey making his debut (albeit as the Moon rather than Beach Bear) and Shalisa Sloan in her first outing as Mitzi.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The "Save the Colander" showtape from 1983 and Christmastime showtape from 1986 become more bittersweet knowing that Creative Engineering has been decimated to just Fechter in the years since, and several people ^note such as Burt Wilson, the voice of Fatz and a songwriter, and Jeff Howell, a backup singer and the voice of Klunk have cut ties with him for different reasons.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The Christmas 1986 showtape, done without permission from ShowBiz, has the band sit around talking about what the spirit of Christmas means to them. At the end, they thank the managers of the locations, and remind the audience that they intend to stay together forever. Can also become Harsher in Hindsight knowing what happened in the years since.
  • The song "Oh Dawn" from the Fall 1984 showtape, features Billy Bob singing about parental love to a newborn baby. The song was dedicated to Alyssa Dawn, Aaron Fechter's daughter who was just born during the tapes production. Actual audio of Alyssa's cooing and crying is used throughout the song. She later became the off-stage announcer for the Cyberstar tape "Kids Show" in 1988.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Mitzi's quip in the 1982 New Year's Eve showtape about getting a bad joke from Chuck E. Cheese became this after ShowBiz Pizza bought out Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre just two years later (but also Harsher in Hindsight given the whole Concept Unification process).
  • The Cyberstar segment "From Bach to Rock" underscores Fatz and Billy Bob's introduction with the "Toreador March". Many years later, it would become the leitmotif for a certain animatronic bear.
  • At one point, the band covered The Romantics’ “Talking in Your Sleep”, which is the main song that Freddy and his friends play during “performance” mode.
• Ho Yay: For some reason, there have been a lot of cases of fans shipping Dook and Beach Bear together. Not helping is that Dook's Mijjin outfit has him wearing a hat that happens to have the colors of the bisexual pride flag.
• Memetic Mutation: This photo◊ of a young Rich Evans wearing a "Dick the Birthday Boy" t-shirt with a Billy Bob mascot next to him has widely circulated for some time, with Billy Bob being referred to as "the ShowBiz Pizza Bear" and being portrayed as a Memetic Molester.
• Moment of Awesome: The entire CEI version of "The Liberty Show" in July 1986 due to being full of great performances, but special mention goes to the Statue of Liberty animatronic reading "The New Colossus".
• My Real Daddy: With Fechter being Overshadowed by Controversy from the 2010s onward, despite the Rock-afire Explosion being his brainchild, many have considered Burt Wilson (who voiced Fatz and contributed greatly to the character, and wrote many of the original showtapes) and Dave Thomas (who designed the characters and their original masks) as greater contributors to the RAE's success than Fechter.
• Older Than They Think: Many fans associate the "Tune Machine" name with Fatz's organ. However, the name wasn't conceived by Creative Engineering or even ShowBiz; it was first used in a 1983 Pizza Time Theatre showtape, referring to an invention of Madame Oink's that can take the Pizza Time Players anywhere in the music world.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Since the 2010s, Fechter has been caught up in various controversies. Among other things, he (as Earl) used the n-word in a parody of the song "Eve of Destruction" uncensored, made styrofoam bowl masks during the early stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic, stirred up drama with fans and took down the Rock-afire Replay fan project due to fans using it to program adult songs (despite having done the same himself several years prior), etc. Also, he alienated many former co-workers who've refused to work with him ever since, as well as prominent Rock-afire fans such as Damon Breland and David Ferguson (both of whom own private Rock-afire shows themselves), and even ShowBizPizza.com webmaster Travis Schaefer. He also got pissed off when an intentionally jerky Deadpool animatronic joined the Rock-afire for a Deadpool 2 promotion, even going so far as to call out Jim Henson's Creature Shop (the ones responsible for the animatronic in question) as amateurs.
• Retroactive Recognition: The Yogi Bear show was written by Stephen White, future Barney head writer.
• The Scrappy: Uncle Klunk, at least after Executive Meddling caused some changes to his character. While he was quite funny at first (mainly thanks to his voice actor Jeff Howell), the changes resulted in Klunk’s attempts at jokes missing, rather than hitting. His failure was part of the reason why Creative Engineering canceled their planned "2nd Generation" animatronics, as well as a robot version of Paul McCartney.
• Self-Fanservice: Either by making the animatronics look more like standard anthros or having humanized designs be good-looking people.
• Ship Tease: There have been some Mitzi/Dook and Mitzi/Beach Bear moments here and there.
• Tearjerker:
  • The "Crying Skit" from the Spring 1982 showtape, following the "Feelings Skit", in which Billy Bob tearfully apologizes to Looney Bird for yelling at him in the earlier skit. Aaron Fechter's performance for Billy Bob really seals it. At least until Looney Bird reveals that he was teasing with Billy Bob and left their microphones on to humiliate him.
  • Discussed during "Deck The Halls With Advertising", where, after his bandmates go over the monopolization of Christmas, Billy Bob has a deep discussion about how he thinks that’s not how Christmas should be.
  • Many fans also express sadness when they watch the Concept Unification tape, as it goes through the process of converting the stage to have Chuck E. Cheese and his cohorts. It doesn’t help that the narrator seems serenely calm as he instructs the franchisee to destroy all of the props and remove the cosmetics from all the animatronics so as to replace them with the Chuck E. Cheese characters, and a somber-sounding track called "Port of Mystery" by Yanni plays in the background of the first few minutes.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Fatz can come across as this due to his realistic look. One customer who ordered a Rock-afire show for a planned restaurant in Jordan (said customer never received their show and their restaurant never opened) even requested that Fatz be redesigned into a monkey to look friendlier.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: The general consensus with the Mijjin Billy Bob, Mitzi, and Dook, as their outfits are generally considered to be overly tacky and "hip".

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