YMMV / Dimension 20

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Vice-Principal Goldenhoard, aka Kalvaxus. While it's doubtless that he manipulated almost everyone in the school in order to set him free and committed a variety of unforgivable crimes in his efforts to do so, the way he interacts with some of the kids- particularly the Bad Kids after their traumatizing first day of school- seems to come off as legitimately sincere, especially since he didn't exactly need to and it wasn't necessary for his plans. This begs the question of whether or not he was a straight-up Manipulative Bastard, or if Arthur Aguefort's efforts to redeem him partially succeeded, causing him to develop a degree of empathy for others but ultimately failing in making a full turn-around.
• Awesome Art: The character art in "Fantasy High: Junior Year" is on another level. Previous iterations of the art had both PCs and NPCs as fairly static, but Cait May, the character and set designer for this season, adds a whole new dimension (no pun intended) to all of the characters, from the Bad Kids to the until-now unseen teachers at Aguefort.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Kristen Applebees from Fantasy High, from the start of Sophomore Year onward. Her chaotic reactions and flighty nature, and seeming unwillingness to take anything seriously, have people divided; some claim that she's their favorite character, while others view her as The Scrappy for the Mood Dissonance she introduces, and how unlikable she could be as a result of her non-sequitur reactions. The Junior Year Campaign has more people in the second camp starting to sympathize with her as she starts to face consequences for this behavior, with YES? dying in-between seasons because of Kristen's lack of devotion to it, Cassandra being massively Depowered, Tracker breaking up with her, and her losing the ability to cast Cleric spells as of Episode 6.
  • Saccharina Frostwhip from A Crown Of Candy. A combination of her abrasive and self-centered personality, being a Replacement Scrappy for Jet, the awkward and sudden manner in which she is revealed to be the previously unmentioned true heir to the throne of Candia, and a very powerful build as a full caster in a low magic setting, all led to an extremely negative initial response, with some fans going so far as to claim she ruined the entire campaign. Opinions have softened some over time, with fans arguing her lack of empathy for the Rocks family is logical as from her perspective they ignored her for her entire life until they needed her help, and that her antagonism adds a needed element of tension to the group dynamic. Still, she remains divisive, though Emily Axford declining to return for The Ravening War and speculation it might have been in response to backlash she received for playing Saccharina has led most to admit the hatred for Saccharina might have been overblown, if not unfounded.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The appearance of the Vulture Dimension happens suddenly, is never explained, and is only mentioned again on the rare occasions when the Bad Kids use the magic items they earned there.
• Breather Episode: "Deep Bleu Sea" comes right in the middle of A Crown of Candy's intense campaign and is a less stressful battle episode compared to the ones that came before. Helped especially by the arrival of Cumulous Rock, Zac's new character after his previous, Lapin, was killed at the end of the previous battle.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Bill Seacaster. Everything about the man - his traditional Pirate garb, his Hair-Trigger Temper, Large Ham tendencies, etc. - scream this trope.
  • Arthur Aguefort. There is no denying that trying to wage war to an entire country by himself is pretty awesome. It's also completely insane.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Liam Wilhelmina’s lack of social skills, obsessive interest in seeds, and difficulty with emotional regulation have led some fans to speculate that he is on the autism spectrum.
  • After Adya Aguefort's debut episodes, fan questions prompted Brennan to realize that he had been unintentionally incorporating autistic-coded traits into his portrayal. This prompted him to research and make a conscious decision to play Adya as neurodivergent, and the season ends with Adya joyfully realizing she is autistic.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gilear Faeth, who's been named the favourite NPC of the cast, part of the technical crew, and many fans, for being a hilariously unlucky everyman with a huge contrast between his low-status life and his high-status voice, as well as constantly being flung in dangerous situations by the Bad Kids.
  • Wally Kugrich, for being a sweet and endearing Manchild with many wholesome interactions with Kugrash.
  • The Junkmother, an NPC who's only appeared in one scene, has been very positively received for her striking visual and sound design, her weird yet endearing mannerisms, her heartbreaking backstory, and the similarities with Sid, two unique Keepers of Souls from Single Specimen Species who feel incredibly lonely, but nonetheless want to bring discarded android lines back by caring for them, as well as their heartwarming interactions.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: By far, the most popular fanfic basis for "A Crown of Candy" is "Lapin Survives", closely followed by (and often paired with) "Peppermint Preston Survives"; "Jet Rocks Survives" sees decent popularity as well.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Arthur Aguefort has lived for hundreds of years, is one of the most powerful and knowledgeable wizards of all time, and is so bonkers that sneaking into Heaven and toppling a god isn't even the craziest thing he's done, yet we know almost nothing of his past, only that he defeated Kalvaxus, had a romantic relationship with a phoenix that created Ayda, and created the Aguefort Academy for Adventurers.
  • The previous lives of Misty Moore/Rowan Berry/Holly Branch are pretty much left vague, with some fangames of the Unsleeping City even including parts of their lives the show never touched on and elaborated on them.
  • The Rocks Sisters are pretty much legends, with interesting lives and contrasting ideals between them, and pretty much all of them have left a remarkable mark on Candia and even Calorum. Yet, as they're Posthumous Characters, we know few about their actual lives.
  • Crossing over What Could Have Been territory, the unseen backup characters of the cast during A Crown Of Candy all have extremely interesting concepts, but as the show turned out, we haven't been able to see them develop and interact with the rest of the cast.
• Fridge Horror: Discussed in an episode of Adventuring Party after Episode 9 of The Seven, in which Penny is confirmed to have literally died, and is subsequently replaced by an alternate Penny from another timeline. The other players remark on how dark that is, even though the Penny that replaces her has the same memories as the original Penny, just with a less ruthless streak and more open to sticking by her friends.
• Friendly Fandoms: Because of frequent overlap and cast crossover with most other popular Actual Play shows, it shares fans with Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, and Not Another D&D Podcast. Especially close with Worlds Beyond Number not only for featuring Brennan Lee Mulligan and Lou Wilson, but frequent guests Aabria Iyengar and Erika Ishii.
• Genius Bonus: In The Unsleeping City season 2, Null's name is derived from the Latin phrase "Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo"; the quote comes from The Aeneid, and means "No day shall erase you from the memory of time." It's not addressed in-universe, but this quote is also displayed in the 9/11 Memorial in New York, and its erasure by Null is symbolic of the entity's attempts to do just that.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In The Unsleeping City, late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is among the ghosts in the Hall of Heroes, despite her apparition saying that she's 'still alive'. Ginsberg died less than a year after the season ended— the same day that Episode 3 got uploaded to Youtube, even.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Neverafter features Puss in Boots as one of the main protagonists as well as The Big Bad Wolf depicted as Death itself. No less than three months later comes Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
  • After the reveal of The Ravening War cast, many were disappointed that Emily Axford wouldn't be playing as many had looked forward to seeing Emily play at Matt's table. Just a week after The Ravening War began, back on Matt's regular Critical Role livestream, who should show up as a guest player but Emily Axford herself, who would also be a player for Critical Role's Tears of the Kingdom oneshot.
• Ho Yay:
  • Fabian is completely distraught when Riz disappears, repeating to himself over and over that he's fine, and even trying to emulate him during the investigation. This is coupled with Riz's complete adoration of Fabian, whom he watches over after a particularly tough fight and sacrifices very important information to Kalina in order to save Fabian's life. Not to mention how it looks when Fabian turns down new crush Mazey after she comes onto him because (he invited her to his house to protect her, but it looks really suspect when he can only stutter about) "The Ball" telling him to. "Why is it when you think of me [your crush], you always bring up The Ball" indeed!
  • Ragh and Gorgug get really close as members of the Owlbears, with Gorgug even kissing Ragh after he's distraught by Dayne's death. As a bonus point, Ragh has discovered after talks with Jawbone and the Bad Kids and lots of introspection that he used to react violently towards people because he didn't know how to process his emotions, like protectiveness over Daybreak or Dayne, including his repressed homosexuality. Now, who do we see Ragh target for no reason related to Dayne or Daybreak?
  • Leiland is obviously jealous of Maggie's relationship with his boss, and is fully smitten in the middle of combat by Markus finally removing his mask and revealing he's sexy.
  • Sofia and the Angel of The Waters' first interaction starts with them complimenting each other's appearance, and the rest of their conversations are similarly laced with flirtatious compliments. Sofia walks away from their first talk seemingly smitten and dazed.
  • At first, Pete finds Ricky kind of annoying, but later seems to be entranced by the levels of masculinity that he displays in such a positive manner. He spends a lot of time admiring Ricky during the latter's most macho moments, and is interested in working out with him, which is of course due to the gender envy he feels for him, but can be read as homoeroticism.
  • Sundry Sidney, a multipurpose gynoid, frequently demonstrates arousal despite being an artificial construct in response to Margaret Encino, whether from her taking over as an actually competent owner of the ship - "Fresh matcha, Ms. Margaret?" - or in response to getting slapped and kissed by her in rapid succession after expressing doubts about whether her creator would judge her for the choices she's made.
    • The above slap-kiss incident leads to a scenario where the female/nonbinary crew members of The Wurst, Princeps Zortch and Dr Castor get drawn into a protracted cycle of slapping and kissing each other; Gunnie pleads in vain for them to stop and to "not normalise that behaviour" - Sid instantly slaps and kisses him in response.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: K.P. Hob/Delloso De la Rue is also named "Battlemaster of Ceremonies", a portmanteau of one version of Delloso's title (Master of Ceremonies) and Hob's subclass (Battlemaster).
• Improved Second Attempt: Mentopolis is Dimension 20's second try at a murder mystery, after Mice & Murder, and reception to it has been much warmer; the players all seem far more comfortable in their characters, none of them are The Load, and the hack of the "Kids on Bikes" system used in the series is much simpler and much better-suited for mystery-solving than Fifth Edition was.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Riz gets a lot of this due to his small, easily bullied nature and Murph's terrible dice rolls. In-universe, he's actually a reasonably respected member of the Bad Kids - there are many places he singlehandedly discovers a huge clue, and was the one responsible for dealing the killing blow to Goldenhoard/Kalvaxus, but it's hard to deny his status as this when his absence at the live show causes the rest of the party to turn on themselves and spend the show ragging on Adaine.
  • In Bloodkeep, Leiland gets this. He's a powerful Warlock and arguably Zaul'Nazh's right-hand man, but his years-long inability to retrieve the crown from the halflings, plus his spending the entire fight at the volcano locked in combat with a single halfling with a frying pan while the rest of the party wiped out the remaining forces of good, set a precedent that was hard to break. Matt's terrible dice rolls don't help.
• Memetic Psychopath: Brennan himself, due to his combat encounters being tough, his obvious joy when he plays the villains, and him feeding into the joke from time to time. It's ramped up to eleven during A Crown Of Candy, a high-lethality, borderline unfair campaign where he's outwardly disappointed when players (especially Amethar) survive. In reality, he always roots for his players to win, loves their characters so much that he had trouble picking his favourite for each player, and dislikes being cruel to either of them. In an episode of Adventuring Party, Brennan went so far as to say he feels terrible when things are going bad for the PCs.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Tony Simos was always a Knight Templar and Manipulative Bastard, but he remained Ambiguously Evil for a good portion of the show. However, by the end of the series, he has definitely crossed it, rejecting his chance to save his one true love, Heather Simos, to continue his fanatical crusade against the dreaming, which will hurt an enourmous amount of people who reside in-between the Dreaming and Waking worlds, and even some who don't. The fact that he kidnaps Esther and tries to kill the Dream Team only adds to it.
  • Angwyn Abernant crosses this after trying to kill his own daughter Aelwyn and then trying to magically lobotomise Adaine. Adaine unceremoniously and well-deservedly kills him on the spot for this.
• One True Threesome: Queen Saccharina, her servant Gooey, and Theobald, which was encouraged by the cast in an Adventuring Party to explain the chemistry Gooey had with both of them.
• The Producer Thinks of Everything: Several of the instructors that we get to know in "Fantasy High: Junior Year" originally had their names appear on the staff roster at Aguefort during the "Family in Flames" episode in the original Fantasy High campaign.
• Realism-Induced Horror: Coach Daybreak is a religious fanatic and a bigot who wants the world to end, and draws strong parallels to real life evangelical groups. Not only that, but he frequently has an easily manipulated student over to his house for drinks, and grooms him to do his dirty work.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Season 1, Episode 2 of Fantasy High ends with not one, but two party members dying. Then Principal Aguefort gives an ominous speech, and uses a handgun to resurrect them by committing a murder-suicide.
  • Episode 3 of Neverafter ends with the first Total Party Kill in Dimension 20 history.
  • The teaser trailer for Season 16 reveal firstly that Matthew Mercer will be GMing the season. The first proper trailer reveals that it's called the Ravening War and is a prequel to Crown of Candy, a setting that most of the D20 cast has expressed reluctance in returning to due to the Troubled Production.
• Signature Scene: Brennan eating a feather without any warning quickly became one for "A Court of Fey and Flowers".
• So Okay, It's Average: Mice and Murder is a bit rough compared to other seasons; as it's a murder mystery, Brennan intentionally obfuscates information from the Sylvan Sleuths depending on what they roll, which led to distrust among the party both in-character and out, culminating in Rekha legitimately thinking that Sylvester was involved with the murders. Shooting this during the COVID-19 Pandemic didn't help matters, nor does the fact that, for some of the players, it was their first time ever playing D&D. While it did Grow the Beard by the end (some Mood Dissonance in the final fight aside) and there have been people asking for Raph, Sam and Katie to return, it's not as fondly remembered as, say, A Court of Fey and Flowers.
• Spiritual Successor: The Ravening War, GM'd by Matt Mercer, could be seen as this to the Calamity campaign of Critical Role: Exandria Unlimited, which Brennan GM'd. Both campaigns feature guest GMs from other shows crafting a campaign based on an established catastrophic historic event within either GM's respective campaign settings, with Foregone Conclusions aplenty and tragic character arcs to boot.
• Squick:
  • The Running Gag of Fig trying to get romantically involved with older people by pretending to be one of their co-workers is funny at first, and then you remember that she's still a minor and it just gets weird.
  • The final few episodes of Mice & Murder can be hard to sit through if you can't stomach scatological humor.
• Throw It In!: The name "Goldenrod" for Vice Principal Goldenhoard was originally just a Malaproper but it ended becoming the character's nickname.
• Too Cool to Live: In Fantasy High Season 1, Bill Seacaster, the most fearsome pirate to ever live, dies after fighting off the forces of Kalvaxis. Of course the afterlife is just another part of life in Spire, and plundering the circles of Hell in a ship made out of Kalvaxus only makes him even cooler.
  • Lapin Cadbury.
• Ugly Cute: Little Miss Muffet is a gigantic human/spider monster, but she's also just a lonely preteen girl.