YMMV / The Year Without a Santa Claus

• Accidental Innuendo:
  Jangle: What's the problem, officer?
  Officer: What's the problem? I'll tell you what the problem is! Driving a — riding a — Ehh, what do you call that thing anyway?
  Jingle: That's Vixen.
  Officer: Riding a Vixen the wrong way on a one-way street!
• Adaptation Displacement: Not many people are aware of the original poem that the special is based on (and the fact that the Miser Brothers weren't in the original poem).
  • Boris Karloff's 1968 recording of the poem can be surreal for people who are used to the special to listen to, not least because of Karloff's association with another perennial Christmas special.
• Angst? What Angst?: In-Universe Example: Jingle and Jangle comment on how the kids of Southtown are distinctly cool about Santa taking a holiday because they have stopped believing in Santa Claus.
• Anticlimax Boss: Mother Nature is hyped up to be a dangerous, hot-headed woman, whom even her vicious children fear. The main characters are nervous but bravely go to confront her... only to have a charming friendly lunch with her and have all of their problems peacefully solved without any hesitation from Mother Nature.
  • Although we definitely get the feeling she CAN be scary if she wants to be —she's able to frighten her sons into obedience, at least. (With lightning.)
• Awesome Music: The Miser brothers's songs. They're too much!
• Common Knowledge: Heat Miser does not rhyme "degrees" with "degrees." According to the song's sheet music, the correct line is "I'd rather have it 80, 90, 100's a breeze!" However the actor didn't enunciate clearly enough, leading to many viewers mishearing the line, to the point that even the DVD subtitles got it wrong. This became widespread enough that later versions flat-out changed the line.
• Contested Sequel: A Miser Brothers Christmas has a rather divisive reception. Some consider it a travesty and some find it to be a worthy follow-up to the original special.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Miser brothers, which led to them getting their own special several decades later.
  • The same goes for the live-action version, but only for Michael McKean's Snow Miser, as he seems to be the only one in the whole thing having fun.
• Fanon: Fans have noted that in their respective songs, the Miser bros only care for temperatures under 40 and above 60 degrees respectively, which leaves a twenty-degree range No Man's Land. Some have suggested that this range is governed by their third brother, The North Wind, but others have invented yet a fourth brother, Rain Miser, who controls the weather at and near the Equator, brings Grey Christmases, and turns objects soggy and damp with a touch.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Snow Miser's reluctance to let Heat Miser make it sunny in the North Pole has become much more reasonable due to research into global warming, which ironically has caused winters in the south to become colder.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The warm southern American town called Southtown, USA later ended up sharing its name with another warm southern American town called Southtown, USA, this one being the hometown of one Terry Bogard and his brother Andy.
• Just Here for Godzilla: After seeing it the first time, the real reason you'll see it again is because of the Miser brothers. Mostly because of those SONGS.
• Memetic Mutation: Because of the Miser Brothers' songs' simple lyrical structure, it's easy to create parodies that fit different characters. Just find four descriptive "Mr. [blank]"s, what they're the Miser of, the effect of their touch, what they never want to see, and what they'd rather see instead of that. One notable example is this parody with lyrics about Among Us and this one featuring Spamton G. Spamton. As often happens with memes, the twin characters and their songs are much more well known than the original special.
• Nightmare Fuel: There's something mildly ominous about the Miser Bros. the first time you see them. They're seen dimly-lit in a field of storm-clouds which can make their normally-goofy appearances kind of off-putting, but that's just the beginning; They're described by Mrs. Claus as incredibly powerful rulers over the heat and cold, and by Santa as the type of people of who would literally straight-up murder Jingle and Jangle Bells just for the fun of it. And sure enough, they're at their worst when we first see them in action. Once the elf duo fly in between them on Vixen, Heat Miser makes good on his word and doesn't hesitate to shoot the two elves out of the sky, resulting in them perilously falling to their near-deaths before being saved by the aforementioned reindeer, which is terrifying in and of itself due to the danger of the situation and the forebodingly stormy weather that accompanies it. Although Heat Miser doesn't particularly like the Clauses as shown later on, it's surprising that he would resort to this low. And with the way he contemptuously describes the elves as "goody-goody," he could even be seen as an outright villain. Even Snow Miser, who is supposedly on good terms with the Clauses, ultimately doesn't lift a finger to try and stop his brother from murdering Jingle and Jangle, although he does laugh at Heat's failure to do so...But to some, it may seem like he's laughing at the elves' falling, which can make it even creepier. This is a stark contrast with their appearance later on as bumbling comic reliefs with catchy musical numbers, and definitely a big contrast to their actively heroic appearance in A Miser Bros.'s Christmas. Fortunately, the Miser Bros. never act this antagonistic again afterwards, but it's still certainly odd to see Jingle and Jangle encounter the two again later on and not even mention the incident from earlier.
• Signature Scene: The Miser Brothers and those SONGS. To the point where people can recognize them and know their songs by heart while having little to no knowledge of the source material.

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