For YMMV tropes related to BTS and their work outside the BU, go here.
For YMMV tropes related to SAVE ME, go here.
For YMMV tropes related to The Notes, go here.
- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Jimin and whatever happened in the Arboretum. His scenes in "I NEED U" show him in a bathtub, he's constantly associated with water, and his reaction to colliding with a fellow dancer in the Highlight Reels and the Notes is to automatically go to the bathroom and scrub his hands clean until they bleed. He freezes up at best and has seizures at worst whenever his Trauma Button is triggered. This has led some fans to wonder if what happened in the Arboretum was an instance of sexual abuse.
- Yoongi's behavior in the series (particularly the Notes) could imply that he suffers a massive case of Survivor's Guilt that he hides from the others.
- Jimin is admitted to a hospital and separated from Hoseok, but we also see the two together in a hospital in the "present" scenes from "RUN", plus Hoseok being diagnosed with Münchausen Syndrome in his "MAMA" teaser short film. Hoseok's narcolepsy in "I NEED U" could therefore be seen as not only a result of addiction, but of a desperate attempt to reunite with Jimin by deliberately overdosing on pills.
- Certain relationships (Namjoon and Taehyung, Jimin and Hoseok, and Yoongi and Jungkook) get noticeably more focus, to the point that they could be Implied Love Interests. See the BU's Ho Yay page.
- Archive Panic: At the very least 6 music videos, 10+ teasers/trailers/short films, 12 different sets of The Notes are necessary to understand the story. SAVE ME and the novel version of The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes, however, are a partial solution to this.
- Awesome Music: Aside from BTS' music featured in the series (which has a page of its own), the Highlight Reel short films feature a beautiful original orchestral soundtrack, composed by Myungsoo Shin. The music heavily contributes to the dream-like atmosphere and emotion of the short films (those strings!), evolving with each part leading to a powerful climax. Its use as a sample also contributed to the huge emotional punch that made "Outro: Tear" so well loved by listeners.
- Die for Our Ship: Surprisingly averted with the girls from the Highlight Reels, at least on Twitter. Even though ships for the In-Universe characters such as Yoongi/Jungkook are pretty popular and the girls appear as companions and possible love interests to the boys while the main group is separated, the general reaction to the girls was quite positive, including fans looking up the actresses and drawing fanart. Shin Ryujin (the girl appearing in Jimin and Hoseok's section in the short films) even got some support from ARMYs in the idol-survival reality show MIXNINE.
- Epileptic Trees: Before the release of SAVE ME and the novel version of The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes, the plot was notorious for being a Mind Screw, relying a lot on symbolism and, due to being largely an Ambiguous Situation, leaving enough space for all kinds of Wild Mass Guessing. Even with The Notes and SAVE ME, the ambiguity that's still left and the way hints have been found in all kinds of extra content (even selfies) gives reason to be paranoid about anything being a clue to the story.
- Are other music videos like "Fire" and "Spring Day" connected? Confusingly, the "Stigma" teaser has a Flashback to a scene in "Danger", so videos and concept images from 2013 and 2014 could also be connected, either retroactively, as something planned all along, or something in between.
- Fan Nickname: Since the series wasn't explicitly given a name until 2018 (which is the very vague "BU"), the story has been referred to by fans as the HYYH story/storyline or the HYYH series, as the story officially started during the "The Most Beautiful Moment in Life" album series; there's also the fact that the Notes are named the HYYH Notes (after the romanization of the original Korean title of The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, "Hwa Yang Yeon Hwa"). After the name "BU" was established, fans have called it the BTS Universe, the Bangtan Universe or simply the BUniverse, but "the HYYH series" still sticks with some fans.
- Funny Moments: In "Prologue", when the boys jump down on the empty pool to gather around Taehyung, there's a Funny Background Event where Jungkook asks Yoongi for help to jump down... only for Yoongi to keep walking, gesturing for the younger to just jump by himself. Jungkook just stares at him dumbfounded for a moment before he jumps down.
- Despite its much darker implications in regards to the story, "Prologue" has some moments of the boys just being their goofy selves, like Jungkook pushing Yoongi while the older is sitting on a skateboard - with the latter screaming -, or the boys playing buck buck with Namjoon suffering the consequences.
- Similarly to "Prologue" (being a Call-Back in many ways), "Euphoria" shows the boys doing the Naruto run, Jungkook messing with Yoongi by poking his face with a plant shaft, the boys pulling funny faces, and so on. The scene in the hospital also features Yoongi's rather goofy run.
- Ho Yay: Has its own page.
- Memetic Mutation: HYYH lives forever. Explanation
- A bit of a running joke had been made prior to SAVE ME and the Notes novel of how what Namjoon goes through in the videos appears to be far less life-threatening than the others to Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking levels. This applies to both "I NEED U" (literally Arson, Murder, and Dropping a Cigarette) and the "Highlight Reels"
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- A bit of a running joke had been made prior to SAVE ME and the Notes novel of how what Namjoon goes through in the videos appears to be far less life-threatening than the others to Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking levels. This applies to both "I NEED U" (literally Arson, Murder, and Dropping a Cigarette) and the "Highlight Reels"
- The Producer Thinks of Everything: While the story and characters are inspired by BTS' music and the members themselves, Foreshadowing for events and revelations in the story has been found in 4-year-old installments of the series, pre-2015 albums (which may or may not be Arc Welding), and even commercials and selfies. Fans have learned to become suspicious of anything to the point of paranoia.
- SAVE ME, published in 2019, makes Call Backs to concert VCRs from 2015, down to repeating the same shots, with an identical classroom as their hide-out and an appearance of the same Sadist Teacher. These VCRs also show the boys finding something important behind the walls of the classroom, something that becomes a plot point only revealed through one of the Notes from LOVE YOURSELF: Answer, released in August 2018.
- It also ended on April 11th, both a significant date for the story and a day before the release of the EP MAP OF THE SOUL: PERSONA.
- SAVE ME, published in 2019, makes Call Backs to concert VCRs from 2015, down to repeating the same shots, with an identical classroom as their hide-out and an appearance of the same Sadist Teacher. These VCRs also show the boys finding something important behind the walls of the classroom, something that becomes a plot point only revealed through one of the Notes from LOVE YOURSELF: Answer, released in August 2018.
- Visual Effects of Awesome: The rise in budget over BTS's career can truly be appreciated in the BU, where the videos become bigger, grander, yet still retaining the emotional core of the story due to great cinematography and art direction, going from the cheaply produced "I Need U" to "Blood, Sweat and Tears" and "Fake Love".
- The WINGS teasers were filmed entirely in sets, adding to the surreal atmosphere. The quickly changing sets (especially in "Begin"), the mirrors breaking in "Reflection", and Hoseok's Mushroom Samba in "Mama" are simple, yet effective.
- The "Blood, Sweat and Tears" video features huge beautiful sets, Jungkook floating in midair, and Yoongi's gigantic floating-pipe organ. CGI is only used at the very end, with the explosion of the Piéta statue, and Jin's cheek starting to break like marble.
- The "WINGS Tour Trailer" continues the surreal tone, with simpler yet still very beautiful sets, the members floating in midair, Seokjin starting to break like a statue, and Taehyung growing wings.
- While the Highlight Reels largely take place in a realistic setting, the first part, especially the first scene, manages (due to camerawork and color correction, though the music also plays a part) to look absolutely dreamlike. Then there's the shot of the city lights at night at the beginning of the third part, which features a gorgeous use of low shutter speed mixed with post-production effects.
- "Fake Love" has a LOT of incredible scenes, such as the floor behind Jungkook collapsing as he runs, the room where Suga is in blows up, Jimin stays at an indoor place surrounded by waterfalls... all of them are not CGI. They are all real scenes created by the company.
- The Woobie: All of them are this in their own way.
- Nothing ever seems to go right for Seokjin. Prior to the events of the story, he lived with an incredibly strict and emotionally stunted father who cared more about the family prestige over anything else, even forcing an under-10 Seokjin to allow his classmate to be taken away by suspicious men. He finds true happiness in his friendship with the boys, but, after being threatened by the school authorities, accidentally causes Yoongi to be expelled, an event he feels horribly guilty for, and he's sent back to study in the US. He comes back 2 years later, only to find 2 of his friends are dead (and he could have prevented at least one of those deaths), another is in jail, another is in the hospital, and another is being arrested for murder. Desperate to go back to those days of happiness, he is then stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop with the mission of saving his friends, being sent back to the day of his return from the US whenever he fails, and thus forced to relive these events over and over for a huge amount of time. Even when he falls in love with a girl and goes on a date with her, trying to prove to himself that he is a good person after all by making her happy, she gets killed by a car, right in front of him. In "Fake Love", he tries desperately to protect a Smeraldo flower from incoming destruction, but the flower turns into ash.
- Yoongi has an obsession with fire due to his mother dying in a fire he survived. He develops an unlikely friendship and Commonality Connection with Jungkook, but defending him from a violent teacher after the teacher finds them skipping class together gets Yoongi expelled from school. By the time the main plot starts, he's implied to have been kicked out of home by his Fantasy-Forbidding Father and moves from cheap motel to cheap motel to spend the night, becoming The Alcoholic, never shown to have any contacts except Jungkook days prior to April 11th, becoming Driven to Suicide and (in the original series of events) succeeding. He seems to have developed Survivor's Guilt as a result of the incident with his mother, being immensely scared of getting others or himself hurt by having them rely on him; he avoids other people so he won't have to, but Jungkook gets hurt anyway.
- When he was seven, Hoseok was abandoned by his mother in an amusement park, with her disappearing after telling him to close his eyes and count to ten. He was traumatized to the point that, a few years later, he fainted after being asked to count to ten in front of the class. Even in the present, he fears being abandoned. He has narcolepsy, which is revealed later in The Notes to be fake, a physical response to not being able to accept that his mother will never come back. He develops a friendship with Jimin, spending a lot of time together, but after Jimin suffers a seizure, Jimin is taken to the hospital and Hoseok is told by Jimin's mother to let other take care of Jimin, with Hoseok never seeing Jimin again until 2 years later.
- Namjoon's family lives in poverty, and he has issues of self-doubt. He becomes a reliable big brother figure for Taehyung and the younger members, but Namjoon himself doubts his ability to act as such. His failure at helping Taehyung leaves him feeling extremely guilty. In The Notes, it's revealed he's been getting odd jobs since he was a preteen to help his family, which is poor and can't be maintained by their sick father. During the 2-year period between the group's separation, having dropped out of school little time afterwards, he moved with his family to a small village, working under poor and dangerous conditions on food delivery, in a place where all coworkers were heavily competitive. One of his coworkers, who he secretly nicknames "Taehyung", is just as desperate as him to take the worst jobs - and after "Taehyung" takes on a job immediately after Namjoon, Namjoon accidentally becomes indirectly responsible for "Taehyung"'s death. By the time the main plot starts, he lives alone in a trailer and works a low-paying job in a gas station - and gets sent to juvenile prison for snapping and attacking a client who kept insulting and humiliating him for being poor.
- Jimin is an ill boy with a controlling, emotionally abusive mother, and has a trauma regarding some sort of incident that happened to him as a kid in the Arboretum. His frequent seizures caused by his trauma have seriously affected his life: he's been often admitted into hospitals, meaning that he had to transfer schools many times and was unable to make friends until he met Hoseok. After he has a seizure while in company of Hoseok, he's taken to the hospital and loses contact with Hoseok and the rest. It's later revealed that he's been forced to live in the hospital for 2 years since, with no friends and unable to do anything other than pace around inside the building, all because his parents didn't want to take care of him anymore - when confronted, his mother victimizes herself and blames him for not being able to get better. Jimin's mental illness had only worsened in the meantime before April 11th, and he had to face it all alone.
- Taehyung lives in a run down apartment with his father, who's often drunk and physically abuses him and his older sister, with a mother who silently left one night and never coming back for her children. His friends have noticed bruises on him several times, but he avoids talking about it by acting happy and goofy, often spending his time alone on the streets even late into the night. After the 2-year Time Skip, he snaps and ends up killing his father while defending his sister. As the time loops progress, he gets increasing horribly vivid dreams of events of past or current loops, which greatly distress him. Even after he's prevented from killing his father, he hides suicidal thoughts due to his desires to kill his father, his guilt over them, and his fear that his father's violence runs through his veins.
- Jungkook is a young, wide-eyed boy whom Namjoon describes as "a young kid who never received affection". He was abandoned by his father (who claimed that the world became too much to bear), left with his mother who has become cold and uncaring since, and he's mistreated and/or ignored by his stepfather and stepbrother. He's implied to be severely depressed with a tendency to Self-Harm and has the rest of the group as his Only Friends (of which he secretly thinks of as family), with the classroom they all shared being the only constant element in his life. He blames himself for the incident that got Yoongi expelled, as it happened because Yoongi tried to defend him, and is the most affected by the group's falling out. In April 11th (after he reunited with Yoongi for the first time in 2 years), he's in a state where he's hit the Despair Event Horizon, with his best and at the moment only friend having become The Alcoholic and kicking him out. Jungkook thinks no one would miss him if he died, wanders alone at night, purposefully gets into a fight with strangers, and is Driven to Suicide.
