YMMV / Plumbers Don't Wear Ties

• Accidental Nightmare Fuel: The Extreme Closeup of John's mother that appears at the end of his dream, and Amy's color-inverted picture.
• Adaptation Displacement: The game was originally released on PC, but due to its obscurity, most people are only familiar with the more widely-released 3DO port.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Do John and Jane actually fall in love in the "Hollywood ending"? Or is their decision to get married a combination of mere attraction and the desire to get their respective parents off their backs?
• Awesome Music: Some noteworthy ones are the title screen music, "Wild Heart" ^note the 3DO version's chase scene music and the 3DO version's credits music, the latter of which is gloriously '90s.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The narrators. Even more specifically, their battle.
  • If that still isn't enough, Jane in an S&M outfit who's trying to "satisfy" Thresher.
  • The infamous photo of Harry Armis (the male narrator) in the chicken mask while he chastises you. Might we add, a photo that is upside-down — as if the developers didn't think the chicken mask was already a random enough detail. The fact that the viewer was already exposed to random pictures of race cars and pandas at the beginning of the game and yet the picture still managed to be bizarre anyways is really saying something.
  • The PC version inserts many random, bizarre drawings related to computers at various points (as well as the clown portrait from the United Pixtures logo). Those are all removed in the 3DO version.
• Bile Fascination: Most who have actually heard of it usually tune in to see just how bizarre and unwatchable it really is. So much so that the game was rereleased on modern platforms.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Harry Armis is far from the only video game character to wear a chicken mask.
  • An innocent female young adult interviewing for a job at a MegaCorp and her would-be boss wants to have sex and perform S&M with her? Doesn't that sound familiar?
  • An Interactive, Lemony Narrator who berates you for choosing the wrong option, and gets upstaged by a female narrator at one point.
• Hollywood Homely: Amy. Despite not being seen by John as his type, she doesn't appear to be the kind of woman who would have trouble finding a suitor.
• Mainstream Obscurity: Despite its notoriety, very few people have actually played this game. The only console to get a version of the game was the relatively unsuccessful 3DO, while the original PC version was made in very small numbers.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "TAKE YOUR DAMN CLOTHES OFF!" has been thrown around a bit here and there.
  • "This is why westerners don't make Visual Novels" ^ExplanationBeing one of the few visual novels from the west and one of the earliest too, its terrible reputation and quality is sometimes jokingly stated as the reason as to why most VNs come from the east.
• Narm Charm: John says "I don't want you for a night. I want you for a lifetime.", a clichéd but nevertheless somewhat heartwarming line.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Similarly to games such as Drake of the 99 Dragons, the game’s infamy led to a rerelease on modern platforms being announced at E3 2021 courtesy of Limited Run Games.
• Padding: Why, yes, we do want to watch our heroes go about their daily lives in one long, over-photoshopped slideshow. Also, the actors apparently get distracted easily. The chase scene quickly turns into a slideshow of the actors having fun around Los Angeles tourist traps. The fact that Jane is wearing only a bra and skirt is the only indication that this has anything to do with the plot at all. In fact, The Angry Video Game Nerd's review had snippets of this montage that would have qualified...and he noted that this was after he shortened it up for the sake of giving viewers an idea of what the game was about.
• Quirky Work: Has all the makings of one, from the wacky filters to the scenes with the narrators (especially Harry Armis' chicken mask).
• Retroactive Recognition: Jeanne Basone appeared in a number of adult videos. Prior to this game, she was a wrestler for GLOW.
• The Scrappy: Considering how much they dump on the player whenever you make a bad choice, odds are you'll be hating both narrators by the time all is said and done.
• So Bad, It's Good: While the clunky experience means you're a lot better off watching someone else play it instead, there's a lot of enjoyment you can get from making fun of the terrible dialogue, nonsensical editing, and embarrassingly poor story.
• Special Effect Failure: As an FMV game relegated to being merely a slideshow, it was bound to suffer horribly from this. The mess of unnecessary filters and cheap Photoshops serve to make it that much less watchable.
• Squick: If you accept Thresher's "indecent proposal", you are greeted with the image of Jane riding him while in his boxers with a crop and whip.
• Strangled by the Red String: Even if the primary focus is on the two people you are trying to hook up (or not), there's surprisingly little development in their relationship. They meet at a parking lot, John later tries to save her from Thresher for no apparent reason, then he goes into an emotional speech on how much he wants her for a lifetime, and at the end, they are discussing marriage. That's all. Perhaps it's building more on the fact that they're pressured by their parents to marry rather than truly loving each other?
• Values Dissonance:
  • John's mother expressing fear when inquiring if John is gay and then expressing relief when he replies in the negative probably wouldn't stand in today's society.
  • Needless to say, you would not be able to get away with a premise that involves a woman being coerced into performing sexual acts by her would-be boss being Played for Laughs in a post-#MeToo world.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Harry Armis' incredibly tacky purple suit and random hats in every shot definitely fall under this. The chicken mask, however, is easily the most infamous instance of it in-game.

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