History YMMV / FreemansMind

** Are we listening to Gordon's InnerMonologue throughout the entire series, or is he actually speaking out loud? On the one hand, the people around him don't usually react to the more outlandish things he says. On the other hand, he mumbles while underwater as if he is trying to talk through his closed mouth, and some scenes in large, open rooms have a distinct echo.
*** Seeing as he has had several DidIJustSayThatOutLoud moments, and there are some instances of others reacting, it's likely that some of it is InnerMonologue and some is him actually talking,—in support of this is episode 1 of Barney's Mind, where Barney hears Gordon yelling "SUCKEEERRRR!"

** The [[https://youtu.be/78jnBlInP2I?list=LL techno music]] in episode 2 is from a DOS game; ''[[VideoGame/OneMustFall One Must Fall: 2097]]'', but is synonymous with Freemans Mind, in part because of how obscure the game is, but also because of how it's used, depicting programmers as bass heads.

* BootstrappedTheme: In each episode's opening, the first few seconds of the track [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3_c9djkr08 Military Precision]] are used as the title theme. Over the years, it's become so iconic to the series, to the point of viewers associating it more with ''Freeman's Mind'' than the actual Half-Life game it comes from. The comments on the video linked above also reflect this.

* CrazyIsCool: Gordon Freeman, full stop. Ross Scott said that he went for a mentally unhinged and quirky characterization because he couldn't see a normal person surviving the events of ''VideoGame/HalfLife''. His more eccentric attributes do indeed save his life a few times. In later episodes, he also gets pretty lax with his personal safety, seeing as how he considers running right past a Bradley through an open killing field while it attempts to hit him with its autocannon to be a completely viable strategy.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: The series as a whole is this in Ross Scott's works. He used to only create ''WebAnimation/CivilProtection'', [[AnimationLeadTime but it took a long time to make new episodes, mostly due to the time it took to animate everything]]. So he created Episode 1 of ''Freeman's Mind'' as essentially a comedy skit/experiment to give his fans some entertainment in between episodes. After he created the second episode during another lull between ''Civil Protection'' episodes, he planned to end it right there, but fans really loved it and demanded more, and now it's one of the most popular machinimas around.

* CrazyIsCool: Gordon. Scott said that he went for a mentally unhinged and quirky characterization because he couldn't see a normal person surviving the events of ''VideoGame/HalfLife''. His more eccentric attributes do indeed save his life a few times. In later episodes, he also gets pretty lax with his personal safety, seeing as how he considers running right past a Bradley through an open killing field while it attempts to hit him with its autocannon to be a completely viable strategy.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: The series as a whole is this in Ross' works. Ross Scott used to only create ''WebAnimation/CivilProtection'', but it took a long time to make new episodes, mostly due to the time it took to animate everything. So he created Episode 1 of ''Freeman's Mind'' as essentially a comedy skit/experiment to give his fans some entertainment in between episodes. After he created the second episode during another lull between ''Civil Protection'' episodes, he planned to end it right there, but fans really loved it and demanded more, and now it's one of the most popular machinimas around.

*** The video also shows a clip of ''Half-Life 2'', three years before the series actually got to it, where Gordon is happy to get the crowbar. In the series proper, Gordon is disappointed that was just given a crowbar instead of something more practical like a gun or map.

* UnexpectedCharacter: Fans were pleasantly surprised when, in Freeman's Mind 2, Episode 7, [[spoiler: Freeman saw [[WebAnimation/CivilProtection Mike and Dave]] run past the sewer grate he was near]], expressing joy that it was Taco Tuesday.

* AlternativeJokeInterpretation: In ''Freeman's Mind 1'' Episode 20, after killing the tentacles with the rocket thruster, Gordon walks into a now-empty room and says this: "Where is Everybody? Not up there... the guard's gone... I think I remember some explosives here...? Now there's just scorch marks... a blood stain... and this is after... firing... that rocket... huh..." Is the joke that he's [[OhCrap slowly piecing together]] the fact that he accidentally killed some friendlies and is starting to feel guilty, or is it that he ''can't'' piece it together [[CluelessDetective even though all the evidence is staring him in the face?]] [[ComedicSociopathy Either]] [[OnlySaneMan one]] would be a pretty big OutOfCharacterMoment.

* AlternativeJokeInterpretation: In Freeman's Mind 1 episode 20, after killing the tentacles with the rocket thruster, Gordon walks into a now-empty room and says this: "Where is Everybody? Not up there... the guard's gone... I think I remember some explosives here...? Now there's just scorch marks... a blood stain... and this is after... firing... that rocket... huh..." Is the joke that he's [[OhCrap slowly piecing together]] the fact that he accidentally killed some friendlies and is starting to feel guilty, or is it that he ''can't'' piece it together [[CluelessDetective even though all the evidence is staring him in the face?]] [[ComedicSociopathy Either]] [[OnlySaneMan one]] would be a pretty big OutOfCharacterMoment.
** Gordon getting gassed by the resistance in Freeman's Mind 2 #15. Are they hitting him with knockout gas like he assumes under [[MadScientist Kleiner's]] orders, or are they spraying him with disinfectants like in canon and he passed out from looking up and inhaling ''disinfectants?''

** While some found the random "backrubs" heard in the background funny, Ross not reusing the line Adrian Shepard throws at Gordon as he jumped into the teleport to Xen was met with some criticism for those hoping that there would be a brief [[ShoutOut crossover]] with Shepard's Mind. Ross' explanation for why he didn't go with the line was that he thought that it would be too predictable if it unfolded exactly as how the fans wanted it to.
** All the DungeonBypass sections added to the maps in ''Half-Life 2''. Some feel they are a natural progression of what we've seen him do in the first game, while others feel they undermine the humour by allowing Freeman to avoid some of the game's more blatant moments of [[ViolationOfCommonSense video game logic]] and the entertaining rants they inevitably cause.

* {{Adorkable}}: From his constant pop culture references to his incredibly awkward interactions with others, Gordon's about as awkwardly cute as an AxCrazy Jerkass can get.

** Gordon seems pretty chill about finding himself in a brutal, socially-decrepit police state instead of Hawaii as he requested. Then again, he was last marooned in an alien dimension with no food, and before that he was a refugee from a globe-spanning military organization willing to shoot him on sight, so it's actually a massive improvement of his circumstances.

* ArcFatigue: You will be glad the game is snipped up into little ten-minute segments where you can stop at, because it can get tedious if you're doing a marathon session.
* AwesomeEgo: Freeman is a narcissist, always has been, and the events of the series that turn him into a OneManArmy only serve to inflate his ego further. He's also ''extremely'' intelligent, and proves it many times over, not only in the field of theoretical physics, which his doctorate is in, but in many other fields as well. He is, as previously mentioned, a OneManArmy who stands up to everything the Xen, HECU, and Combine throw at him and emerges with barely a scratch. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking He's also capable of coming up with new verses to Modern Major-General and singing them without a hitch, on the fly, in the middle of a massive firefight.]] His opinion of himself is proven justified multiple times over.
* BootstrappedTheme: In each episode's opening, the first few seconds of the track [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3_c9djkr08 Military Precision]] are used as the title theme. Over the years, it's become so iconic to the series, to the point of viewers associating it more with ''Freeman's Mind'' than the actual half life game it comes from. The comments on the video linked above also reflect this.

** Episode 27 as to whether people found the pirate-talk funny or not.
** Episode 47 gets hit hard with this. It's during this particular episode that Ross Scott allowed a friend of his to play around with sound effects from other games and such, and implement them into this episode. Such changes being the different gunfire sounds for Freeman's weapons, headcrab voices taken from Half-Life 2, and even much more realistic explosion sounds for tank fire. While some found these sound tweaks to be decent, others found it distracting, and out-of-place, after having watched the series through stock sounds for 46 episodes. Afterwards, Ross chose to just go back to stock sound completely, but episode 47 ends up leaving the new sound-effects intact; now making it seem even more out-of-place if the viewer feels distracted by the one-off sound tweaks.

** While some found the random "backrubs" heard in the background funny, Ross not reusing the line Adrian Shepard throws at Gordon as he jumped into the teleport to Xen was met with some criticism for those hoping that there would be a brief [[ShoutOut crossover]] with Shepard's Mind. Ross' explanation for why he didn't go with the line was because he thought that it would be too predictable if it unfolded exactly as how the fans wanted it to.
** All the DungeonBypass sections added to the maps in ''Half-Life 2''. Some feel they are a natural progression of what we've seen him do in the first game, while others feel they undermine the humor by allowing Freeman to avoid some of the game's more blatant moments of [[ViolationOfCommonSense video game logic]] and the entertaining rants they inevitably cause.

** Gordon asks a scientist in Episode 61 to teleport him into the nearest city like Los Alamos or Santa Fe. This would put Black Mesa's location somewhere near Los Alamos National Laboratories, Black Mesa's real life inspiration.

** In 2011, ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}}'''s second game gave an internal monologue to the HeroicMime protagonist of a popular sci-fi first person shooter, via the novelization, titled ''Legion''. Like Ross Scott's Gordon Freeman, Peter Watts' Alcatraz is characterized as a wisecracking, sarcastic jackass going through SanitySlippage, with a tendency to make pop culture references, attempt to justify weird in-universe technical details, crack jokes about the stupidity of his bosses, reference shady past events in his life, and occasionally PetTheDog by saving civilians when he's not insulting them. He also [[SmarterThanYouLook shows himself to be knowledgeable and competent underneath it all]]. While the two characters (and the points of the stories) differ massively in other ways, it's still an amusing coincidence.
** At one point, a dying guard tells Freeman that a tram leads to the surface. Freeman muses over it, saying that so far the guard had spoken in annoying half-truths. He follows the tram-track, and it does indeed lead to the surface... [[spoiler:But not out of Black Mesa.]]
** Freeman constantly lamenting his lack of a grappling hook becomes funnier if you've played ''Half-Life: Opposing Force'', where Adrian indeed gets a grappling hook... that's just a Barnacle that was pulled off the ceiling, and that Gordon would probably just pass up anyway. This is even called back in ''[[WebVideo/FreemansMindSpinoffs Shephard's Mind]]'' when that comes into play.
** In ''Freeman's Mind (Across the Universe)'', Gordon says that the only known physics model to deal with Portals makes him two dimensional. Come Portal 2's Perpetual Testing Initiative update, where your player character IS two dimensional.

** In the early episodes, Gordon mocks the scientists for having to write Newton's formula for gravity on the ink boards, arguing that physicists of their caliber ought to be able to recite something that basic in their sleep. The remake, ''VideoGame/BlackMesa'', rectifies this with far more complicated writings.

* JerkassWoobie: Gordon might be insane, and even a pretty big prick with a giant ego, but there are times when you just can't help but feel sorry for the guy. All he wanted was to do his job without getting fired, and instead he got into a giant mess where [[EverythingTryingToKillYou he had to survive against all sorts of monsters, traps, and psychotic soldiers]]. Hearing Gordon gasping in pain and almost pleading for all of it to stop in Episode 17 makes you realize, for all his flaws, he probably didn't deserve all the shit that he went through.

* MemeticMutation: See you in seven years... [[note]]Ever since Ross Scott started up episodes for ''Half-Life 2'', jokes among the viewers that they will be waiting for the ending after it took seven years to complete the first series have been abundant. It really picked up when the second ''Half-Life 2'' episode was released since many were still questioning if the first episode was an April Fools prank.[[/note]]

* DiagnosedByTheAudience: The episode descriptions call Gordon a "neurotic individual", which... may be putting it mildly. Judging from his frequent delusions and antipathy towards others, he most likely has paranoid schizophrenia and some form of antisocial personality disorder at the very least, compounded by his [[FunctionalAddict many drug addictions]] and all the trauma he's accumulated throughout the Black Mesa Incident.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: The series as a whole is this in Ross' works. Ross Scott used to only create ''Machinima/CivilProtection'', but it took a long time to make new episodes, mostly due to the time it took to animate everything. So he created Episode 1 of ''Machinima/FreemansMind'' as essentially a comedy skit/experiment to give his fans some entertainment in between episodes. After he created the second episode during another lull between ''Civil Protection'' episodes, he planned to end it right there, but fans really loved it and demanded more, and now it's one of the most popular machinimas around.

** Freeman constantly lamenting his lack of a grappling hook becomes funnier if you've played ''Half-Life: Opposing Force'', where Adrian indeed gets a grappling hook... that's just a Barnacle that was pulled off the ceiling, and that Gordon would probably just pass up anyway. This is even called back in ''[[Machinima/FreemansMindSpinoffs Shephard's Mind]]'' when that comes into play.

* UnexpectedCharacter: Fans were pleasantly surprised when, in Freeman's Mind 2, Episode 7, [[spoiler: Freeman saw [[Machinima/CivilProtection Mike and Dave]] run past the sewer grate he was near]], expressing joy that it was Taco Tuesday.

* BootstrappedTheme: In each episode's opening, the first few seconds of the track [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3_c9djkr08 Military Precision]] are used as the title theme. Over the years, it's become so iconic to the series, to the point of viewers associating it more with ''Freeman's Mind'' than the actual half life game it comes from.

*** The video also shows a clip of ''Half-Life 2'', six years before the series actually got to it, where Gordon is happy to get the crowbar. In the series proper, Gordon is disappointed that was just given a crowbar instead of something more practical like a gun or map.

** Are we listening to Gordon's InnerMonologue throughout the entire series, or is he actually speaking out loud? On the one hand, the people around him don't usually react to the more outlandish things he says. On the other hand, he mumbles while underwater as if he is trying to talk through his closed mouth.

** Episode 27 as to whether people found the pirate-talk to be funny or not.

** The Lambda Core's detour into Half-Life: Uplink; a nice trip down memory lane, or needless {{Padding}}? Part of the reason for the controversy was because of the multi-month hiatus between episodes 57 and 58. People were hyped to see how Ross would go about the Portal maze...only to realize that they were going to have to wait a little longer.

** All the added DungeonBypass sections added to the maps in Half Life 2. Some feel they are a natural progression of what we've seen him do in the first game, while others feel like it undermines the humor by allowing Freeman to avoid some of the game's more blatant moments of [[ViolationOfCommonSense video game logic]] and the entertaining rants they inevitably cause.
* CantUnHearIt:
** Ross Scott's voice for Gordon is so iconic to so many people who have watched the series, that they can't hear it any other way. Several fans have even said that if a VideoGame/HalfLife movie were ever to be made where Gordon talks, Ross should voice him.

* AngstWhatAngst: Gordon seems pretty chill about finding himself in a brutal, socially-decrepit police state instead of Hawaii as he requested. Then again, he was last marooned in an alien dimension with no food, and before that he was a refugee from a globe-spanning military organization willing to shoot him on sight, so it's actually a massive improvement of his circumstances.

** In each episode's opening, the first few seconds of the track [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3_c9djkr08 'Military Precision']] are used as the title theme. Over the years, it's become so iconic to the series, to the point of viewers associating it more with ''Freeman's Mind'' than the actual half life game it comes from.

* CrazyAwesome: Gordon. Scott said that he went for a mentally unhinged and quirky characterization because he couldn't see a normal person surviving the events of ''VideoGame/HalfLife''. His more eccentric attributes do indeed save his life a few times. In later episodes, he also gets pretty lax with his personal safety, seeing as how he considers running right past a Bradley through an open killing field while it attempts to hit him with its autocannon to be a completely viable strategy.