YMMV / danisnotonfire

• Cargo Ship: Dan/Maltesers, Played for Laughs. He really does like his chocolate candy balls, though. Dan has since expressed that he'd rather not have this joke be associated with his identity or content.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Several;
  • When Dan and Louise prank-call their friends, one of the calls is to Louise's husband on the pretense that Louise took home several kittens. After the prank, Louise jokes "I hope this doesn't end our marriage". Not too long afterwards, they separated.
  • Dan's allusions and jokes about having a rough time in school become very uncomfortable after you watch "Basically I'm Gay," in which he reveals the bullying was way, way more serious than he initially let on, and even genuinely dangerous and extremely bad for his mental health a lot of the time — to the point where he attempted to take his own life.
  • To an extent, the entire Phandom shipping culture, which was fun or just obnoxious depending on who you asked, after Dan's coming-out discussion video reveals that the constant speculation and digging since he went online made him feel just as threatened as he did growing up around homophobes, and that for a time, it pushed him further into the closet.
  • In his "Internet Support Group" videos, a fan wrote in about the time she found her uncle on Grindr with her friends, she didn't identify her uncle to her friends and she didn't know that he was LGBT. Daniel's response was to tell her to keep it a secret from her friends, don't investigate his profile and question whether or not she should talk to her uncle about it. This parallels one of the sources of Dan's bullying since he was very open about his sexuality online, causing his school bullies to eventually discover the information and torture him.
  • Dan's content partnered with YouTube after posting "Basically I'm Gay" takes on a more sad or sour note after "Why I Quit YouTube" revealed said content had to be made due to conditions YouTube imposed on him to earn production on an unconventional series through them...a series which got rejected a second time, even after he met their demands and made content through their terms, and would never be viable through YouTube after the announcement that their production program would shut down.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In his "Internet Support Group" videos, a fan wrote in about her questions involving her sexuality. Daniel replied by saying she shouldn't rush to identify herself and how she'll know when she's ready.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • His coming out video received overwhelming support from his friends and family. His grandmother's response was especially comforting since she was a Christian, and he was terrified of being rejected by her because of it.
  • Dan's connection with Phil. They are inseparable and Phil was the first person who made Dan feel genuinely safe and comfortable to be himself.
• Ho Yay: Many fans will be able to tell you exactly how every interaction between Dan and Phil is a sign that the two are together. They're aware of this and seem to enjoy pushing the issue to mess with said fans.
• Memetic Molester: Manesh, a creeper who wouldn't leave Dan and Phil alone while they were trolling people on a dating app. Once they accidentally send him their address, Dan guesses that he'll show up at the door wearing a trench coat.
• Memetic Mutation: Whenever Dan and Phil get jumpscared in a game, more often than not it's Dan's reaction instead of the scare itself that startles people.
  • More noticable when they play Five Nights at Freddy's together.
  • He's done multiple year-end retrospectives of the most interesting examples involving him: one in 2015, one in 2016, one in 2017, one in 2018, and one in 2022.
• Mis-blamed: In "THE PANIC ALARM", Dan tells the tale of how he was working at a store cleaning the underside of a desk when he saw a Big Red Button and, not knowing what it was, pushed it out of curiosity and ended up getting the store slapped with a £15'000 fine after his boss had to cancel the SWAT team coming over, as the aforementioned button was the store's panic alarm. Dan described it as "real serious business, actual money and 'Oh shit, the POLICE are involved serious business" and says it was his fault. In actuality, he is 100% wrong in regards to it being his fault; yes, he shouldn't have pushed the button if he didn't know what it did, but it was entirely the store's responsibility to tell him about it and what it was and thusly, had he known about it, the button would have never been pressed outside of the occasions of an actual robbery or, since the button was uncovered, being pushed accidentally.
• Tear Jerker: "Basically I'm Gay", where Daniel goes into detail of how serious his bullying and self-loathing actually became, his internalised homophobia, and how terrified he was of coming out both in school and thanks to the internet's shipping culture.
• The Woobie:
  • Dan himself. Especially whenever the infamous Quarter-Life Crisis comes up. It's hard to not want to give him a hug.
  • To a lesser and far more comical extent, "Becky."