History YMMV / TheStanleyParable

* AccidentalAesop: It’s important to follow instructions and not to deviate. Every ending where Stanley dies is directly caused by him disobeying the Narrator.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: ''The Stanley Parable'' was designed to be a commentary of how choice was implemented in video games up to 2011, namely that they were still essentially {{railroading}} the player despite promising freedom. While gaming had not evolved enough for this message to be irrelevant for the 2013 ''HD Remix'', the same could not be said for the ''Ultra Deluxe'' version in 2022. By this time, it was commonplace for developers to acknowledge players' awareness of railroading, and as a result games promising freedom tend to be {{Wide Open Sandbox}}es to better live up to the hype, with some games taking a more retrospective view of choice, such as ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' and ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium''.

** How aware is the Narrator of the other endings and the looping nature of the game?

*** The ''Confusion'' ending shows ''[[NothingIsScarier something'']] dictating the route that both the Narrator and Stanley are taking down to the letter, thwarting multiple resets on the Narrator's end, and manages to forcibly reboot the entire thing as soon as you both quit going along with it. The ''Museum'' ending brings up the Curator of the game's development museum, who is introduced via ''her narration'' of the Narrator's own actions, and shows herself as fully capable of stopping the game outright when she likes and bringing Stanley into her domain. (However, she does not seem any more capable of truly ''changing'' things than the the Narrator does, being forced to plead with the player themself to stop the game where she cannot.) And finally, the Epilogue to the ''Skip-Button'' ending fully introduces [[spoiler: the Settings Person,]] who proves capable of modifying endings and gameplay elements that even the Narrator cannot, leaving the Narrator terrified when he discovers evidence of their interference via the repaired achievement machine.

*** The ''Confusion'' ending shows ''something'' dictating the route that both the Narrator and Stanley are taking, and manages to forcibly reset the game as soon as he stops going along with it.

** OH, DID U GET THE BROOM CLOSET ENDING? THEB ROOM CLOSET ENDING WAS MY FAVRITE!1 XD [[labelnote:Explanation]]If you spend enough time loitering in the broom closet, the Narrator asks if you're holding out for another ending, and says there isn't one. He then snarks that you're probably stupid enough to think waiting in the closet is the ending, and you'll go on the internet afterwards and say "OH, DID U GET THE BROOM CLOSET ENDING? THEB ROOM CLOSET ENDING WAS MY FAVRITE!1 XD" He doesn't say "XD" out loud, or any of the [[MyNaymeIs intentional misspellings]] though, those just appear in the [[FunWithSubtitles subtitles.]][[/labelnote]]

** Stanley, this fern will be very important later in the story. Make sure you study it closely, and remember it carefully. You won't want to miss anything. [[labelnote:Explanation]][[spoiler: It won't be.]][[/labelnote]]
** Before he had even began to realize it, Stanley started to narrate in the style of the game.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: The "Inferno Bucket" museum piece in ''Ultra Deluxe'', and the concept of warring for control over a bucket, might seem like pure fiction, but it derives its inspiration from the real-life War of the Bucket.

* GameBreakingBug: A rare but frequent bug involves a lot of the video cut-scenes, where they won't play at all (visuals or sound) and can soft-lock your game by not clearing up the screen. Currently there is no fix for this.
* SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct: The entire game [[spoiler: well, most of it]] is carried solely by Kevan Brighting's voice work. He manages to switch from condescending manipulation to warm and comforting depending on the route you take. But where he really manages to shine is during [[spoiler: the Zending, where the Narrator hits the [[DespairEventHorizon Despair Event Horizon]] as Stanley tries to kill himself over and over again, and the Real Person Ending, where you can hear the desperation in his voice as he begs Stanley to make a choice.]]

* MoralEventHorizon: The Narrator is at his most villainous in three instances where he definitely crossed the line:
** One instance where he crosses it is the [[spoiler:Apartment ending, where he railroads Stanley into a nightmarishly depressing, psychologically abusive power trip. It ''starts'' with him tempting Stanley with the chance to see his loving wife, only to tell him that he ''has'' no wife, and that ''nobody loves him'', and then it just keeps getting worse from there.]]
** Another moment is when Stanley attempts to turn on the power for the Mind Control Facility, only for the narrator to decide to trigger a nuclear explosion instead, repeatedly taunting Stanley as if there is a solution, even extending the duration just to taunt you even further. He outright admits he’s being sadistic near the end.
** Finally, a less cited example is during the Video Games ending where, at the end, he deliberately abandons Stanley and leaves him to wander around a dark and gloomy world for no discernible reason other than to remind Stanley that is powerless to do anything without him, even though there was no indication he had those feelings during the ending. Tellingly, in the Ultra Deluxe version, when this moment plays out, Stanley can instead abandon the Narrator by accident rather than it being intentional.

* EsotericHappyEnding: The Freedom ending can be seen as a [[IntendedAudienceReaction proposital]] example of this. Despite the ending title and Stanley getting free in the story, you can only get this ending by [[{{Irony}} following all of The Narrator's orders]]. The last line from The Narrator is "Stanley was happy", but considering how unreliable he is, this is probably what he want Stanley to feel for his story, not how he is actually feeling. Moreover, there's also the fact that, like all the other endings, [[ClosedCircle it takes you right back to beginning of the game]].

* EsotericHappyEnding: The Freedom ending can be seen as an [[InvokedTrope proposital]] example of this. Despite the ending title and Stanley getting free in the story, you can only get this ending by [[{{Irony}} following all of The Narrator's orders]]. The last line from The Narrator is "Stanley was happy", but considering how unreliable he is, this is probably what he want Stanley to feel for his story, not how he is actually feeling. Moreover, there's also the fact that, like all the other endings, [[ClosedCircle it takes you right back to beginning of the game]].

* SpiritualSuccessor: To ''Film/StrangerThanFiction'', another work of media about a generic office worker that ends up at odds against an omniscient narrator, with themes of choice and fate.

* ThatOneAchievement: The HD version goes to town on parodying this. The top three "impossible" achievements require you to spend an entire Tuesday playing the game, to ''not'' play the game for five years, and the final one is completely impossible to get. [[spoiler:The first two can be acquired by adjusting your computer's date and time settings, the third seems to be handed out at random, if [=YouTube=] evidence is to be believed[[note]]...or you can use [[http://www.themutegamer.com/guide/the-stanley-parable/unachievable-achievement/ this guide]] to cheat your way to it[[/note]]]].

** Finally, a less cited example is during the Video Games ending where, at the end, he deliberately abandons Stanley and leaves him to wander around a dark and gloomy world for no discernible reason other than to remind the player that Stanley is powerless to do anything without him, even though there was no indication he had those feelings during the ending. Tellingly, in the Ultra Deluxe version, when this moment plays out, Stanley instead abandons the Narrator by accident rather than it being intentional.

** The only officially named endings are the [[spoiler:Freedom Ending, Countdown Ending, Apartment Ending and Zending (during the museum) and the Confusion Ending, Broom Closet Ending and Whiteboard Ending (at some point while playing them)]]. [[https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1703340?updates=true&emclan=103582791471112348&emgid=3206010024857902341 The patch notes]] for ''Ultra Deluxe'' gives names/descriptors for certain endings. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ut7pcb/comment/i98cksv/ Additionally, some of the endings only have internal, dev names.]] This leaves every other ending in the game with a fan-created name, with some of them even receiving multiple names.