YMMV / Murder Drones

• Accidental Aesop: Dispose of your electronic waste properly. Or digital Satan will kill everyone. The whole mess began because Cyn's previous owner didn't dispose of her properly, turning her to a Zombie Drone that made her susceptible to the Absolute Solver.
• Adorkable: N is a very nice robot that has sometimes very cute moments with his friends.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is V really as crazy and bloodthirsty as she lets on? On one hand, in N's flashback, she can be seen laughing like a maniac while slaughtering worker drones. But on the other hand, there's some moments in the story that imply that she may be Obfuscating Stupidity and is smarter than she lets on. And at the end of the flashback, after she finishes off the workers, she suddenly stops laughing and says "and yet...I still feel nothing". Which may imply that she didn't enjoy it as much as she seemed to. Complicated even more by N's dream of the team's former life as Worker Drones where she was an adorable sweetheart who also had feelings for N. Perhaps she is simply broken…
  • Is Uzi's desire to Kill All Humans out of genuinely wanting revenge for how Worker Drones have been treated, general psychopathy, or the result of software corruption?
  • Does Khan really believe that doors are more reliable than fighting back? Or did something happen in the past that caused him not to use any violence despite the obvious Godzilla Threshold? And did he leave his own daughter to die because he's a sociopathic Dirty Coward who acts out of craven self-preservation, or did he do that because of past trauma, or both? Are his attempts in later episodes to make up for his past behavior born out of a genuine Heel Realization or a selfish desire to regain his social status (and fear of being exiled) after Uzi called him out for what he did and the other Worker Drones lost all respect for him? As of late episodes, it turns out that his attempts are a genuine Heel Realization and tries to be a better father for the daughter he never took cared off, trying to redeem himself by assisting her in her crusade against the Solver.
  • Did J know about JCJenson's plan for the Disassembly Drones after the job is done and infected N because he started asking too many questions? Or is she legitimately unaware and actually believed he had been corrupted because he conversed with a worker drone, whom the company had told her were corrupted as well? If she isn't aware, how would she react if she really is not quite dead and finds out N was right all along?
    • On a similar note, is J aware that Tessa is actually dead and that she's following the Absolute Solver, or is she just as much in the dark as everyone else was and thinks she's still working with her old friend?
  • Did the company tell the Disassembly Drones that the Workers are corrupted just so they wouldn't question their jobs, or are the workers actually corrupted and the company is legitimately trying to quarantine something dangerous? We've seen the Absolute Solver infect many worker drones so far. The question is whether it was happening before N and the others got there or if it didn't start until after.
  • Was Cyn calling N "big brother" a sign of genuine affection for him, or simply emotional manipulation?
  • How much does Lizzy know about the Absolute Solver and the danger she is when around Uzi and Doll? Despite acting snobby and preferring to stay in the background, she seems more proactive when the situation calls it. We've seen her cooperating with Doll in 'The Promening' until she changed her mind later on. She brushed off the events of 'Cabin Fever' quite quickly and implied not to share what Uzi did. The fact that she isn't too frightened of Uzi and angry at her for nearly killing her speaks a lot about her nonchalance. She also brought Thad along to investigate the spire in 'Mass Destruction' before Khan met them unexpectedly. This brings a lot of questions to her role, with the possibility that she might have decided to pragmatically work with Uzi and V without question. Given how much she was on her phone more often in 'Mass Destruction' and suddenly willing to fight dirty, it could imply that she had been in contact with Uzi and Khan, taking Uzi's actions to heart.
  • Did Cyn/the Solver actually intend on sparing Tessa at the gala, and only switch to killing her when the girl escaped? Or was it simply the plan to kill her later, sparing her the sight of the massacre in a form of twisted mercy? The ambiguity of her promise, "...and I will not discard you," means it could go either way.
• Angst? What Angst?: A motif throughout the series is that the Worker Drones seem to display zero angst onscreen about their friends and family having been killed by the Disassembly Drones. Potentially justified as whenever Workers are in active danger, as seen in The Pilot and Episode 3’s Prom massacre, as well as parts of Cabin Fever, they are very clearly afraid and have realistic reactions to others dying around them. Meanwhile, they seem to brush off the deaths of their friends, families and fellow Drones with zero angst when talking about it in past-tense, as if it’s simply a normal conversation topic. This universal callousness has been criticized by some as a major turn-off of the series, though not to Too Bleak, Stopped Caring levels. Uzi and Doll are the only ones who shows clear emotions towards the deaths of their loved ones well after they’ve passed, and coincidently, are both afflicted with the Absolute Solver.
• Base-Breaking Character: N. Despite his Nice Guy tendencies, some fans don’t like him due to the fact he was a participant of the genocide of multiple Drones while other people say that its all fine since he apologized, with another group of people saying that him apologizing doesn’t fix all the death he has caused.
• Broken Base: The comedy elements in the series. While some fans enjoy the jokes and funny moments, others feel like some of the jokes are forced in and ruin dramatic moments such as the scene where J fights a possessed V with an elated Lord Frumplebucket cheering them on, distracting viewers from the fight.
• Cargo Ship: Khan/Doors. It's one of the fandom's oldest joke pairings.
• Catharsis Factor: As horrific as Uzi slaughtering most of her classmates in "Cabin Fever" was, the reminder that they never cared about her and kept forgetting who she was makes it hard to mourn them and brings in that morbid satisfaction.
• Creepy Cute: All of the Disassembly Drones fit here, although Cyn is the biggest example.
• Crossover Ship: It’s common among Murder Drones fans to ship V with V1 from ULTRAKILL, maybe because they both are psychotic robots that hunger for the blood of their enemies and because they both have names that start with V.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Rebecca, despite making the minimum appearance and shortly dying in episode 4, the fandom has decided to give a lot of attention to her, sometimes even making fanart and fanfics where she survives her encounter with corrupted Uzi.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • In "Cabin Fever" Uzi finds a document for some Drone's disassembly. What many have noticed is the Serial Number follows the same pattern as N and the other DDs' armbands do. This has some to theorize the possible existence of a "Serial Designation-S" and their possible importance.
  • Tessa is quickly turning into a magnet for these theories. Various camps want to explain her odd behavior as her actually being on the Solver's side, willingly or not. Some of the more outlandish claims include her being Cyn or the Solver itself. As it turns out, these outlandish claims of her being Cyn in disguise turned out to be true.
  • The teaser for episode 7 and episode 8 has theories rife with this. Some fans saw the underground cathedral and, at a complete loss of what to expect, could only say that it's there so that Uzi and N could "get married".
• Evil Is Cool:
  • The Disassembly Drones. They might be killing with glee (at least in V’s case) innocent Worker Drones who all they ever wanted was to live in peace. But it is a big, fat lie to deny their sick-as-hell design and their abilities which includes flight, an impressive arsenal and the fact that they can become into Body Horror versions of themselves in case they might get destroyed and if its the wishes of the Absolute Solver.
  • Doll is The Rival and Evil Counterpart of Uzi. A Russian-talking Worker Drone with the abilities of the Solver, giving her ability to control matter and physics, each time she appears, she steals the scene.
  • The Absolute Solver is this in a Creepy Awesome way. A sentient program of seemingly unlimited power, it is essentially a god-like editor program that can manipulate the very physics of the universe and can infect Zombie Drones to do its bidding. With unclear goals, the Solver has proved to be a incredibly cunning monster who has manipulated the whole series before it began, being the one behind the destruction of Earth and Copper-9 and the creation of the Murder Drones.
• Fan Nickname: The green cockroach Uzi encounters in Episode 4 has been nicknamed “WhatsApp Bug” by the Murder Drones subreddit.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: "Swap AU", which involves Uzi and N swapping places. Usually also swaps out J and V for Khan and Thad respectively, but may instead swap them out for Lizzy and/or Doll.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With Helluva Boss. While initially friendly towards each other, many former Helluva Boss fans gravitated towards Murder Drones as Helluva grew more and more divisive. Murder Drones fans prefer this show's tone, pacing, and characters, while Helluva Boss fans consider Murder Drones either too boring or too bleak and joyless to enjoy. At least one animator named MORØ took notice of this and decided to make a fanmade crossover between the two shows.
  • Murder Drones fans have also grown concerned that their show will be forgotten among GLITCH Productions' work in favor of the massive popularity that The Amazing Digital Circus, the studio's succeeding series, has attained.
• Friendly Fandoms: A lot of Murder Drones watchers are also fans of ULTRAKILL, maybe because both works present robots that drink for the blood of their enemies to sustain themselves.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The series has a seriously devoted fanbase in Russia, judging by the Google Images result, along with the many Russian comments you'll see on social media and YouTube. Incidentally, the response towards Doll being a Russian speaker (voiced by bilingual American actress Emma Breezy) has been more mixed: some have criticized her accent for being too thick, and would have preferred she be voiced a native speaker; others don't mind at all, and applaud the effort.
• Harsher in Hindsight: V sadistically slaughtering a family in the pilot is played for Black Comedy. It isn't until episode 2 implies and episode 3 explicitly shows that one of her killings made Doll the cold mass-murderer she is today. And unlike other things in the show, Doll's presence and backstory is mostly played not for laughs.
• He's Just Hiding: Following the end of episode 6, fans have been coming up with various explanations for why V could still be alive. This isn't especially far-fetched, given what happened to J. The same thing is going with Doll despite Cyn eating her AS core onscreen.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The show acquired a huge fanbase in Russia since Episode 1. Come Episode 2, it was revealed that Doll (a then-presumed background extra) would be speaking entirely in Russian.
  • A multi-universal fanfic from WebNovel named "ZERO GLITCH" had somehow predicted a part of Episode 7 where Uzi knows the truth on how Copper 9-B imploded and where she learned of it: a small computer nook inside of a chapel hidden underground. Even the author had to point that coincidence out.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: N x Uzi is sometimes referred to as BiscuitBites and J x V is called OilRose.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: A frequent complaint is that with only 8 episodes, the pacing is very fast and often leaves people confused with the show not taking time to delve more into the plot and its history, leaving a lot of things unanswered and undeveloped at the moment. Another thing that's not helping is the episodes' runtime which is only around 20 minutes.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Tessa's rich, snotty Abusive Parents, whose worst crimes (that we know of) are horribly abusing their daughter and treating their sentient Worker Drones staff including their daughter's dear ones like objects they can break on a whim, are much more hateable than the outright psychopathic Absolute Solver; whose crimes include facilitating genocide, gleefully slaughtering or mutating or possessing everything within its reach, and causing the literal destruction of Earth with the implication that it intends to keep doing this, but it has a quirky, morbidly charming, Laughably Evil personality and antics to go with it.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: N has been shipped with countless characters throughout the fandom, notably Uzi, V, Tessa and Rebecca.
• Les Yay: At one point, Lizzy has a change of heart in Doll and her's plan to kill V and shouts, "On second thought, you're way hotter than Doll!" despite there being no context for her to say that.
• Magnificent Bastard: Doll is a Russian-speaking worker drone and one of the most intelligent enemies faced by the main cast. Desiring to avenge the deaths of her parents at V's hands, Doll uses the Absolute Solver powers she inherited to kill of all possible prom queen candidates, planning to both feast on their oil to keep the Solver at bay and lure V to prom to kill her. Barely foiled by Uzi, N, and V, Doll strikes a deal with Tessa and J to get them the Keybug and go to the Cabin Fever Labs so as to cure the Solver, before betraying them and managing to escape when it becomes obvious Tessa wants to kill her. Doll then plays dead to get Tessa and V attacked by Sentinels, seemingly vanquishing the later. Only stopped by Tessa revealing herself to be the Absolute Solver and attacking her, Doll uses the last of her strength to get to Uzi and tell her to keep fighting.
• Memetic Badass: Post-Character Development from a Dirty Coward, Khan has been touted by the fandom as an unstoppable berserker for fearlessly leading the fight to J and the Solver. People joke that this is who he was before Nori died, and this Khan has returned.
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own page.
• Moe:
  • Pre-conversion J, V and N look absolutely adorable. In particular, N’s kindness, child-like demeanor, and tragic life only serve to make him even more endearing.
  • Young Tessa despite being rendered only as a black silhouette with glowing spots for eyes just screams for headpats.
• One True Threesome: As is the case with many cases of fans not wanting to deal with Ship-to-Ship Combat, the V/N/Uzi throuple quickly sprouted up, due to both N and V's canonical backstory having them have feelings for one another, N and Uzi's canonical feelings in the present, and V slowly becoming a Defrosting Ice Queen towards Uzi as of Episode 6.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • Nuzi for N and Uzi.
  • NV for N and V.
  • Vizzy for V and Lizzy.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: There was a three-way fight between fans of N/V, N/Uzi, and Thad/Uzi up until the release of episode 3, which featured copious amounts of Ship Tease for N/Uzi while the remaining two ships either had poor interaction this episode (N/V) or had none (Thad/Uzi), leaving N/Uzi to win out as the fan's preferred ship. N/Uzi would continue on to completely dominate the shipping meta as it became more present in canon, especially after the premier of "Dead End" in which Uzi and N's developing romantic bond is finally addressed in universe.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • In the Pilot, Thad's arm clips through his chair's arm rest while talking about how everyone knows Khan's daughter.
  • The pompom on Uzi's hat in several scenes in episode 2 clips through another character. It clips through N when he pulls her to his side when she and V are bickering, and later through Khan when she and him hug.
  • A Sentinel clips through a chair while climbing on a wall in Episode 6.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • In spite of the lack of promotional material they get, Thad and Lizzy can't help but feel like being thrown in the background given that they've become fan-favorites in their own rights and have interesting personalities and designs. Thad's dynamic and relationship with Uzi wasn’t completely established and even though Lizzy has a major role in "The Promening", her relationships with Uzi, V and Doll weren't fully explored. Even though it could be due to Uzi not wanting to get them in trouble and seemingly on good terms with them, it would be interesting to see the two share their individual perspectives and help the main trio. Though with the main cast now exploring Cabin Fever Labs, their involvement likely would have been limited either way.
    • Fortunately, they'd get a more prominent role in "Mass Destruction" where they catch J doing suspicious things and decide to try to confront her.
  • Similarly, many agree Khan Doorman should have more screentime as his appearances following the halfway point of Season 1 gradually decreased. It could be argued that he chooses to let Uzi go independently, but it feels like Khan's own character arc should still be developed further. Not to mention how he would think about N and V supporting the Worker Drones.
    • Similarly to Thad and Lizzy, in "Mass Destruction" he would decide to finally take action once he recognizes the signs that his wife's crazy theories about the world ending were correct and he helps Thad and Lizzy by giving them the railgun he rebuilt based on Uzi's blueprints.
  • Also the other DDs which more than a few people were hoping to see. It could've been interesting to have Uzi, N and V come into contact with other Disassembler teams, some of which are implied to have been fellow servants of the Elliots. Instead many of them seem to have been killed offscreen and remain unnamed. With the potential for a 2nd season still on the table however, this may be rectified in the future.
  • Alice and Beau offer an interesting idea into the workings of the lab, being the only 'feral' drones and seemingly quite knowledgeable on how everything works, and Beau is even Affably Evil instead of a true monster. Instead, they're both killed off in their debut episode with little being revealed about their knowledge and backstories as of now.
  • Tessa actually being alive and working for JcJenson could've brought a lot of drama and angst to our characters. N would have to deal with the fact that his saviour, someone who loved robots as if they were family, is working for the same company that turned them all into monsters and unleashed them on a planet full of innocent Workers with the idea of having them die off. Not to mention Tessa's own angst with working for the company who turned her friends into monsters and JcJenson planning on leaving them to die.
  • Also the other Worker Drone colonies. In the Pilot, background information reveal that there are at least 9 Outposts with Khan having built the door for 9 himself. It would be interesting to see how other Worker colonies would deal with the alliance between Outpost 3 (Uzi's colony) and the local DD squad with some probably having allied themselves with other DD squads and others trying to take out the 'traitors'.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Unfortunately, due to the 8-episode format of the first season and how short the episodes are, a lot of this happens.
  • Some fans were disappointed by "Home" as it was promised to be a lore-heavy episode where in the actual episode, we only got a small amount of lore and even some parts of the lore showed are dubious as the memories shown were altered.
  • In "Dead End" J and N barely get any interactions together with J being sent to guard the drop pod. Fans were expecting N to get a Crowning Moment of Awesome of calling out J for everything that she did to him but it seems that moment won't happen this season.
  • After Episode 2, fans were expecting that Uzi and N wouldn't reconcile immediately and would have to slowly regain each other's trust. Disappointingly, this was glossed over in Episode 3 where Uzi isn't afraid of what is inside N. Somewhat justified as without N Uzi’s life quickly returned to monotony, loneliness, and her not being taken seriously anymore, so she was likely happy to have him back even with the possible danger.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The animation goes mostly Black Comedy way for the initial four episodes. Then N and V's Dark and Troubled Past is revealed. Uzi has more and more trouble fighting her Solver corruption. Earth was destroyed by Absolute Solver. V is seemingly left for dead. Doll is Killed Off for Real. Tessa is revealed to be Dead All Along. Uzi's mother is thrown into the fleshy Bottomless Pit and Uzi herself is dragged there shortly after, barely managing to save N. The final scene shows Uzi floating in the outer space and seeing that Copper 9 has apparently met the same end as Earth making all her efforts pointless. By this time, it's nigh-impossible to care what happens next.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The animation is very impressive and smooth, and the drones visor faces makes it fun to look at them changing expressions. The combat sequences are no slouch either, looking very slick. This heavily contrasts against Glitch Productions' last series, which had an art style reminiscent of A Hat in Time.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Until he talks, N can be mistaken for female upon first glance. He's wearing a German military coat, but since Disassembly Drones' limbs are also white like every drone's face and hands, and he's not given any decoration on his legs, it can be mistaken for a dress especially since the pilot takes place in a dimly lit setting.
• The Woobie:
  • Uzi's parents are either assumed dead (Nori) or neglectful (Khan). Khan even publicly dismisses her as a failure, and only shows her approval when she shows interest in his work. It's implied that his neglect is the reason why she acts out in class, and thus has no friends. He completely throws out any ounce of goodwill they had when he leaves her to die when N is about to kill her. Despite his betrayal, she still saves him and the rest of the colony during V and J's attack. Her first real friend is a "Murder Drone" who tried to kill her. She's then Blessed with Suck by the absoluteSolver ability, which gives the user Mind over Matter abilities while making them hunger for oil. She then lost control, killing and devouring several of her fellow students, which she clearly has no control over and even vomits while eating the intestines of one of them out of disgust for what she did. Yeah, poor girl can barely catch a break.
  • While the true scope of N's backstory is yet to be revealed, he certainly applies. He used to serve humans who treated him as though he was Just a Machine (aside from seemingly Tessa) and seemingly used to be a Worker himself. He was then turned into a Disassembly "Murder" Drone, had his mind scrambled, and sent off to kill Workers with two of the other Workers he used to work with. Said mind scrambling apparently ruined a budding relationship he had with V, who treats him coldly now. J had always treated him poorly before and after this, and even tells him she would kill him if she could. Meeting Uzi is the first break he's had in a while, and he still nearly killed her at first before quickly considering her a friend because she treats him better than V and J do. However, it's almost short-lived as they both find out what other functions aboluteSolver does in a Disassembler's body, Uzi becoming fearful of him but eventually overcoming this. He is regularly hurt in some fashion, even letting himself be completely bisected to protect Uzi because he could take the hit and she couldn't. All this, and he is still a literal killing machine designed to kill and drink the oil of his best friend and her kind.
• Woolseyism: In English, all of Doll's lines are done in Russian, making her stand out from all the English-speaking drones. In Russian, of course, the inverse happens, with Doll being the sole English speaker.

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