Poker Night At the Inventory/YMMV

• Alternative Character Interpretation / Fanon: You play as someone who never talks, in a First Person Perspective in a game with video game characters (Or ones related to video games). It is that hard of a stretch?
  • Eh?
    • Can't be Chell. Max refers to the player as a he.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced: the premise of a crossover involving Tycho Brahe, Strong Bad, The Heavy and Max is basically asking for this trope.
• Ascended Meme: Of sorts. Winslow gained a reputation of being a Memetic Badass and now he's the only character other than the main four to be voiced and the only Monkey Island character to appear.

Heavy Weapons Guy: I can fire Sasha for twelve seconds with this bet.

• • An odd claim, as the bets of all five players don't add up to 400,000 dollars. Not even close.
• Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: People were complaining that it would suck just because it was a card game. But as you know, card games are Serious Business.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: For example.
  • The music from the trailer is a minute and half of funky smooth jazz.
  • The music also has a porn groove to it, intentional or not.
• Did Not Do the Research: Many players complained on the Steam forums about the wrong people apparently winning hands even though their cards were worse. This was blamed on a bug, but most of these cases were really the result of an unclear explanation of the concept of side pots and how they relate to who wins.
  
  This was fixed in a recent update. Now when side pots are present it goes over who wins each pot explicitly.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Fangirls seem to interpret the rivalry between Strong Bad and Tycho as this. Search "Poker Night Inventory" on Fanfiction.net and you'll see.
  • There's possibly one-sided Ho Yay from Tycho towards Max, since he goes into very inappropriate detail asking if Max had sex with a human woman, and tells Max his sexual fantasies about giraffes, visibly disappointed when Max is squicked. This is probably less to do with an interest in Max in particular and more to do with Tycho's... animal-related interests.
• Gateway Series: Many fans of Team Fortress 2 who hadn't played a Telltale game ended up picking up Sam & Max as a result.
  • Many people who hadn't heard of Penny Arcade (or at least hadn't read it) got into it thanks to this game. (Look up any Poker Night video on YouTube, it's impossible to find a video that doesn't have a comment asking who Tycho is)
• Good Bad Bugs: Using the right mouse button to skip character dialogue can lead to some humorous happenings, from Strong Bad's mouth disappearing, to the Heavy sitting back with his hand on his lap and an all-too-satisfied smile on his face, to Max outright swearing.

Max: Next time I'll rethink my strategy of bitches. ^[1]

• Harsher in Hindsight: When Team Fortress 2 went Free-To-Play, Tycho claimed he hated the game. Well, there goes ever seeing a Penny Arcade cameo in a sequel, unless he changes his mind...
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Or perhaps, more heartwarming in hindsight:

Tycho: So this Doctor...he a friend of yours?

Heavy (firmly): Yes.

• • Later, in Meet The Medic, Medic refers to Heavy as his friend, with genuine fondness in his voice. In fact, a lot of Meet The Medic could potentially be a Call Back to Poker Night- Heavy's fondness for Russian Humor, birds...
• Nightmare Fuel: Max is the source of two of these. First, his zombie exclamation of "Cheeeeeck!", and secondly, the "Max and Crossbones" table. (A hint for the latter one: The Devil's Playhouse Episode 1 Cliff Hanger.)
• The Scrappy: Tycho is this, big time. Even the Penny Arcade fans hated him in this game. However, he is very well-liked amongst the female players though, especially with that sexy voice of his.
• Ship Sinking: "Sascha is my only love" and Telltale's view (as stated at the recent PAX panel) of Sascha and Natascha as Heavy's girlfriends, while the gun that the Iron Curtain replaced was supposed to be "the stripper he meets in Vegas". Ambiguous, considering a) the game's canon status is hazy, and b) he mentions Doktor four times in the span of a short game.
• Spiritual Successor: To Telltale Texas Hold 'Em.
• Tainted by the Preview: "Oh, sweet! Strong Bad, Max, Tycho and the Heavy are going to be tearing it up-- wait, what do you mean it's going to be a card game?!"
• Tear Jerker: Heavy Weapons Guy's sparrow story.
  • Heavy's references to being sent to a work camp if he fails. Harsher in Hindsight after Meet The Director, which revealed he actually spent time in one as a child in 1941. He was only able to leave with his mother and sisters by killing all the guards and setting the place on fire.
  • If you win the Iron Curtain in the middle of a game, Heavy murmurs "Goodbye, my love" and hugs her gently before leaving the table, dejected. Happily, you can give her back to him in Team Fortress 2.
• That One Achievement: Good luck getting that straight flush or four of a kind.
• What Could Have Been: Instead of the Iron Curtain, Heavy was supposed to have a huge gold gun. Valve hated it. This would have also counted under Ascended Meme when the Golden Machine Gun is taken into consideration.

1. ↑ The actual line is "bet every time my bellybutton itches."