Grim Fandango/YMMV

• Alternate Character Interpretation: In the end, Manny receives a Number Nine ticket. He says it's a "retirement present". Aside from his ticket not being in the briefcase of genuine Double N tickets he finds late in the game (with Meche's and Salvadore's), this is the only indication beyond his general character that he didn't deserve one in the first place. So, was Manny's 'damnation' to the Department of Death just, or was he another innocent lost soul?
• Complete Monster: Hector LeMans apparently while alive, and he didn't get any nicer when he died, since he keeps a huge garden of flowers, including a greenhouse, grown from the remains of those he subjected to a Fate Worse Than Death in his rise to power. That the place is beautiful and well-tended somehow makes it more horrifying.
• Crazy Awesome: Glottis, a gigantic bright orange demon with tiny wiggly ears obsessed with engines and SPEEEEEED. Point him at anything that goes with the right tools, and he'll make magic (and vrooming noises). He's also an excellent pianist! Looks very sharp in a tux, as well. Just don't let him near the VIP area in the casino. Or coffin shooters.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: "Ninth Heaven".
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Oh, many. The game has a huge cast of characters and none of them are stock characters. One of the more memorable ones is Chowchilla Charlie, who is part Peter Lorre.

Manny: I think slot machines attract an undesirable element.
Charlie: Oh, we're all undesirable, Manny...
Manny: Yeah, but your credit's no good to boot.

• Genius Bonus: The title itself. Sending somebody "to dance the grim fandango" is to send them to be hung until dead (with the 'dance' being the jerking movements the body makes as its owner expires).
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks: While the news of an HD re-release in 2015 was warmly received, some fans were disappointed that the game wasn't completely re-made from scratch, and instead just upscaled all the pre-rendered elements from the original 1998 release. That said, the new version still updates most of the player models, adds a lighting system, replaces the original Resident Evil-style controls with a point-and-click interface, and includes a fully orchestrated soundtrack.
  • Also, it was pointed that many files from the original games were lost and making them from scratch was hard, especially the pre-rendered backgrounds that they probably lost the original 3D models and couldn't pre-render them again, and changing the game from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 would need several changes, since the game used fixed cameras, and it was argued that Grim Fandango was a commercial failure in its original release, and they couldn't spend much on the re-relase since it could suffer the same fate.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: On the other hand, some faithful Grim Fandango fans were annoyed by the removal of some sound cues (especially with Bruno's scenes), the unnecessary 360 pan around Olivia as she reads the "Grim Fandango" poem (which showed that she was never meant to be seen from some angles), and the end credits music was changed.
• Signature Scene: The Year Two sequence. Manny dressed in the white Casablanca-esque tuxedo tends to be the most recognizable image from the game.
• Strangled by the Red String: Manny brings Meche to the Land of the Dead and briefly talks with her about her life. He's then suddenly so in love with her that he spends the next three years looking for her, ignoring any other women that interested in him.
• Ugly Cute: Glottis may be a big, clunky, razor-toothed demon, but man if his personality doesn't more than make up for it.
• Uncanny Valley: The demented collage that is the World of the Living is a seemingly intentional example.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Bibi, one of the two children working for Domino in Year 3, is a girl. Good luck figuring this out on your own though; her name doesn't lend itself either way, she has no hair or Tertiary Sexual Characteristics to speak of, her voice could easily pass as that of a pre-pubescent boy, her personality and clothes aren't much different from her brother, Pugsy's, and there is no dialogue that refers to her as "she". Spanish speakers, on the other hand, would know that Bibi is short for "Bibiana", a popular girl's name.