YMMV / Inside Out 2

• Ho Yay: In the first film Riley was already a frequent target for Trans Audience Interpretations due to the mixed genders of her emotions, but the sequel's trailers sparked even more fans interpreting her as queer due to the reveal of the story centering around Riley trying awkwardly to get closer to Val, a girl she admires. However, when it was subsequently confirmed that Val is actually 18 compared to Riley having just turned 13, quite a few fans fans instantly stopped shipping them just as quickly as they had started.
• Improved Second Attempt: While only time will tell whether the new emotions end up being well-received overall, their design has been widely praised before the movie's release as fixing one of the major criticisms about the first movie: the fact that the male-presenting emotions (Fear and Anger) were allowed to have wacky and cartoonish designs, whereas the female-presenting ones (Joy, Sadness, and Disgust) were all essentially Pixar's normal models for female characters with tweaked proportions and fantastical skin tones. The three new female-presenting emotions introduced in this film- Anxiety, Envy, and Ennui- all have much more stylized designs more in line with Fear and Anger, coming across as more unique in their appearance, while Embarrassment, the sole male among the new emotions, looks the most humanoid out of all of them, helping to create more of an equal balance between the male and female emotions as a result.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Pointing out Anxiety's resemblance to orange Muppets like Animal, Beaker, and Pepe. It also includes jokingly suggesting she's the child of one of them. Comparing her to The Noise or his Sugary Spire counterpart Pizzelle has also become popular.
  • The new trailer revealing that Anxiety will play an antagonistic role has caused a lot of people to joke that Anxiety has been the archvillain in their lives too.
• Moe:
  • Many viewers who were initially skeptical about the new emotions took a quick liking to Anxiety upon her debut in the first trailer, citing her adorably chaotic and Muppet-like appearance, especially with how it contrasted with Joy, Sadness, and Disgust's more humanoid appearances, and her sheer relatability as the living embodiment of social anxiety and awkwardness.
  • Envy is tiny, peppy, and has huge sparkly eyes, making her quite endearing to the audience as well. Envy is also seen admiring other people's qualities instead of resenting them like it's usually portrayed, which is another big plus.
  • Embarrassment is what happens when Gentle Giant meets Shrinking Violet and is absolutely precious as a result. His introduction has him awkwardly trying to greet Joy, only to duck down onto the floor and hide himself in shame when his attempt at a fist-bump falls flat. Like Anxiety, he's already well-liked due to his relatability and his apparent Ship Tease with Sadness, as this would make them the first canon emotion ship in the series.
• Squick: The Super Bowl trailer shows Riley putting in a mouth guard to protect her braces during the hockey game, but then Disgust notices it's someone else's and has her spit it out.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • An immediate talking point brought up from the first trailer was worry that the new emotions feel redundant to the existing emotions. Anxiety is pretty much in the same vein as Fear, while Embarrassment seems similar to Disgust (made notable in that Riley feeling embarrassed of her bad first impression at the school was handled by Disgust in the first movie), while Ennui apparently being a feeling of emptiness was the main conflict of the first movie, where Riley eventually shut down and stopped feeling her emotions entirely until Sadness finally intervened.
  • A lot of fans also are worried that the existence of other emotions could cause a Continuity Snarl with the first movie given we are shown what the emotions in other people's heads are and they are always the same five core emotions in everyone's heads (minus of a certain bus driver which has 5 Angers of different colours). That being said, the second trailer assuaged people's worries by going into the mind of Riley's mother, which still only has the core five emotions from the first film, suggesting that the film intends to address the apparent discrepancy.
• Trailer Joke Decay: Just about every trailer has the "You can't just bottle us up!" Gilligan Cut and/or Fear having Riley put in her mouth guard before Disgust has her spit it out due to being someone else's.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Despite having a feminine voice, some have mistakenly referred to Anxiety as either male or non-binary. This is likely a result of her appearance, which is exaggeratedly cartoonish like Anger and Fear (if not even more so) instead of looking like Joy, Sadness, and Disgust and also completely void of Tertiary Sexual Characteristics.
  • Likewise, many people assumed Ennui was male due to the limited glimpses of her design on posters before she was properly established as female in the second trailer.

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