Zero Punctuation/YMMV

The following are Subjective Tropes relating to Zero Punctuation.

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• Alternative Character Interpretation: Generally divided into people that think he is hilarious and infallible, entertaining but not to be taken seriously, or an unfunny irritatingly pretentious jackass. Or all of the above. Or take his points and criticism as legitimate but bear in mind it's one guy doing little internet cartoons. Or, believe it or not, a few who take him as a reviewer in that sometimes you'll agree with him and sometimes you won't, but at least if you can understand him, then you'll always understand where he's coming from.
  • And on a different note, the theme music as of the Lego Indy review. Crowning Music of Awesome or irritating generic crap?
• Non Sequitur Scene:
  • Boxer shorts with googly eyes in the LittleBigPlanet review. At the very end of the review it then came back as a Ringu-esque Screamer Trailer. Possibly connected to an earlier comment about "[sticking] googly eyes all over your mission hub".
  • The boxers come back in the hundredth Zero Punctuation for a split second.
  • The SimCity Societies review ends early and includes a Team Fortress 2 Heavy/Medic love tragedy told in pictures.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In his BioShock (series) review, Yahtzee noted the polar nature of the morality system, calling it "a choice between Mother Teresa and baby-eating." Pictures of Mother Teresa and a baby with a bite taken out of its head popped up when he mentioned them. When he asked the game developers for a balance between the two, a picture of Mother Teresa eating a baby appeared.
• Creator Worship: About as prevalent as He Panned It, Now He Sucks, as noted below - possibly more so. The first twenty posts on any given review will be something along the lines of "Well I'm sure as hell not going to play the game now that you've panned it, but you're dead on in your criticisms as always!"
  • Much more comical, however, when linked with the fact that the first twenty comments are usually written before the poster could possibly have watched the review because contrary to popular belief he does review some games positively. When he does said positive reviews and the first twenty comments are saying that they will never buy the game now that he has panned it, Hilarity Ensues.
    • Most people who comment before it's possible to have watched it usually end up facing the banhammer.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The theme song's full version being suddenly thrown at you at the end of video 100, anyone?
• Ear Worm: Puuut on a trenchcoat, and fight some conspiracies...
• Fandom / Hatedom: there are plenty of serious critics.
• Fan Dumb / Hate Dumb: See also Misaimed Fandom. A lot of people tend to take Yahtzee's word a tad too seriously as you can see from the comments section of each one of the videos as well as the obligatory discussion thread that follows on The Escapist forums. This naturally leads to a lot of Hate Dumb, too, because Yahtzee himself is prone to being a bit Foe Yay around Halo. If one goes onto the escapist forums, you'll spot all sorts of bandwagon haters and fans quoting his review of a game, some of the worst cases even going so far as to mysteriously trash the game when they were talking about how much they liked it the previous week.
  • In many of the worst of the worst cases, the people trashing the game actually didn't even play it and are saying "Boy I'm glad I didn't get that game!".
  • This behavior has been mocked in the videos themselves a few times.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In his Dark Void review, he says, "You know, it'd be nice to see a game set, say, in an alternative Napoleonic war for once, where Waterloo was fought on the backs of pterodactyls." Replace pterodactyls with dragons, and you've got the Temeraire series.
• Hypocrite / Hypocritical Fandom: Yahtzee admits to doing a lot of stuff he speaks against (And even spoke against in the day) in the Chzo Mythos. It's also not surprising to find Yahtzee fans trashing other fanboys for just mindlessly following the magazines along in telling them what games to enjoy...only to carbon copy Yahtzee's opinion on games and make it their own.
• Internet Backdraft
  • When the fanboys exploded over his Brawl review, he posted an even more insulting video about it where he answered fan mail.
  • In-universe example:This is one of the reasons he's not reviewing StarCraft II, when he's told people repeatedly that he won't review RTS.
• Misaimed Fandom: Yahtzee constantly decries internet fanboys, saying the developers he criticizes are adults who don't need defending. Then the comments to his reviews will be full of mindless ZP fanboys who compliment the review before they could have even watched it and defend Yahtzee from anyone who disagrees with him.
  • Likewise for people who jump to the defense of said developers. Clashes between the two groups are some of the more idiotic and hyperbole-infused arguments you're going to see anywhere.
  • Yahtzee also apparently gets loads of fans begging him to review their favorite game, and then reacting with horror when he gives it a bad review, "apparently lacking any kind of pattern recognition".
  • He regularly tells his fans that they should come up with their own praises since after all, the reviews are just his opinion. Unfortunately, too many people seem to believe in the Reviews Are the Gospel, or rather, Yahtzee's reviews are the gospel.
• Nightmare Fuel: Yahtzee apparently has a long-standing fear of theme park mascots, which he's previously let known in his old blog, that he conquered playing Epic Mickey. This was not helped during a trip to Disneyland, especially with the parade.

The grins. A sea of grins. Staring. Judging.

• Refuge in Audacity / Dude, Not Funny: Very fond of racial/sexual jokes, stereotypes, and other forms of very politically incorrect humor. This can go either way, because of it.
  • His "ridiculous Irish accent" segments in the Monkey Island review are horrendously over-the-top.
  • Returns in full force for his review of The Saboteur with hyperbolically exaggerated stereotypes of several nationalities, especially a stream of Ireland jokes that surely cross the line at least several times.
  • The end to his 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand review.
  • Most of his audacious jokes are pretty funny, but some may be a bit unhappy with his use of "mongoloid," an archaic term that was, at various points in time, a pejorative term for both Autistics and Down's sufferers.
  • He's compared cluttered game design to Asperger's Syndrome more than once. Needless to say, some ZP viewers with Asperger's weren't particularly happy with him trivializing their condition to make a point about a video game.
  • Definitely falls under Dude, Not Funny: Made a wisecrack about 9/11 in his Deus Ex retrospective review two weeks before the 10th Anniversary...
• They Just Didn't Care: In his Brawl review he goes on about how he detests fighting games... and goes ahead to claim Super Smash Bros Brawl is a Button Masher. While other aspects of the review is arguable, this isn't; button mashing in any of the Super Smash Bros games doesn't work. Period.
• Shocking Swerve: After taking many shots at the Nintendo Wii and several of its core franchises (attracting a rabid Hatedom in the process), Yahtzee complains at the end of his Alpha Protocol review that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is delayed in Australia. Heads asploded. (He ended up not liking it that much, and said so, but still thought it was fun.)