YMMV / 1983: Doomsday Stories

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Invoked, especially in the case of some characters. One has to wonder at points whether they've gone insane, which is even lampshaded in-verse. To clarify:
  • Austria: His actions come across as determination, stubbornness, denial, cowardice or desperation if not all at once. He's also shown to have an increasingly difficult time repressing his sliding grip on sanity as grief takes hold, although he does get through it.
  • Prussia: His seemingly unaffected persona might come across as more of a Stepford Smiler, especially with his stubborn insistence that Germany's alive for a while. His rather insistent war against Poland may also suggest that he's not exactly right in the head either.
  • Switzerland: Is he little more than a pragmatic, self-interested Jerkass in love with his adoptive sister? Or a Jerk with a Heart of Gold with a knack for "tough love"? The way he tries to have Austria cope with the post-Doomsday world by deliberately destroying incriminating evidence of his encounters with Hungary could be construed as a bit of both.
  • Russia and America: Are they the depraved masterminds of Doomsday as seen by much of the world? Or are they little more than unwitting victims of circumstance who had no other choice but to see the madness through to the end?
• Fridge Brilliance: Austria's yearning for his old Imperial power may come across as a bit hypocritical, given his position in the Alpine Confederation. Then again, Austria during the (real life) Cold War was in a sense a powerless buffer in the wider standoff between America and the USSR, a site of espionage rather than the Great Power it once was before World War I. Which would also explain why he was absolutely helpless in saving Hungary during Doomsday, regardless of what he might have done...
  • Angelic!Hungary's intervention in the Alpine Expedition's discovery of her own corpse may come across as a bit of Deus ex Machina in what would otherwise be a case of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, despite it being found so close to Sopron. But when what's known about the explorers are put into account, it becomes clear that Austria's confidants neither had the time, manpower or resources to cover every single inch of the Hungarian Wastes (or at least long enough to get anything more substantial). On the other hand, it's also likely that they would have found the remains eventually, and her involvement simply though purposefully accelerated the process.
• Fridge Horror: Anything to do with Doomsday itself and the Alt!1980s in general. If The Day After or Threads are any indication, it's not a walk in the park...
  • Particularly bad when you take the Survivor Nations into account. Most of them were 'born' during the Eighties and at least one was shown to have been ill as a child. It's not stated outright but there's a good chance that it was radiation sickness. Add in the isolation of the newly formed nations and you have a large number of kids whose earliest memories would be of being deathly ill and alone in the world since some of them didn't even see another nation for decades.
  • A lot of the Survivour Nations are implied to have matured abnormally fast by nation standards, from chibi to pre-teen in under thirty years. Doesn't seem like much until you start thinking about why that is, especially when you put into account the aforementioned radiation poisoning and their peoples being forced to survive in less-than-pleasant conditions.
  • Even worse when you account what the last moments of the Old World Nations who died, having implied to have suffered in their last days societal collapse, radiation poisoning and the widespread chaos and bloodshed associated with the breakdown of civilization in large parts of the world. Those who died later on could be described as suffering from at least some of these in a slow burn, coupled with the survivors changing their national/cultural identities. Especially with Hungary, (West) Germany, England and eventually, Austria.
  • The ending of The Last Minutes to Midnight, in which Austria unwillingly gets a front-row seat to Doomsday itself. The readers get a brief look at the mental and physical pain he's only beginning to go through as the nuclear apocalypse unfolds...as well as the despair growing inside, realizing that his own people are dying and that as he later finds out, neither could he save Hungary.
• Iron Woobie: Austria, though by 2009 the facade was on the verge of breaking. Even Poland post-Doomsday qualifies.
• Moral Event Horizon: Arguably Doomsday itself.
  • Subverted in the case of both Russia and America. Their actions may have brought about Doomsday, but it's pretty clear that neither of them wanted it in the first place. It's just that by that point, it was already too late to stop.