YMMV / Poker Night at the Inventory

• Alternative Character Interpretation: You play as someone who never talks, in a First Person Perspective in a game with video game characters (Or ones related to video games), and who is explicitly identified several times as a man. It is that hard of a stretch?
• Ascended Meme: Of sorts. Winslow gained a reputation of being a Memetic Badass and now he's the only character other than the main four to be voiced and the only Monkey Island character to appear.
• Awesome Music: For example.
  • The music from the trailer is a minute and half of funky smooth jazz.
  • The music also has a porn groove to it, intentional or not.
  • And how can we forget the music from the teaser that started it all?
• Base-Breaking Character: Tycho. Some players find his arrogance and smug personality annoying, while others find it entertaining. That said, very well-liked amongst the female players though, especially with that sexy voice of his.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Heavy's Engineer Story.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: The very concept of the Poker Night series has inspired many concepts about all sorts of characters from different franchises crossing over to play poker.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Fangirls seem to interpret the rivalry between Strong Bad and Tycho as this. Search "Poker Night Inventory" on Fanfiction.net or "strong bad tycho" on DeviantArt and you'll see.
  • There's possibly one-sided Ho Yay from Tycho towards Max, since he goes into very inappropriate detail asking if Max had sex with a human woman, and tells Max his sexual fantasies about giraffes, visibly disappointed when Max is squicked. This is probably less to do with an interest in Max in particular and more to do with Tycho's... animal-related interests.
• Gateway Series: Many fans of Team Fortress 2 who hadn't played a Telltale game ended up picking up Sam & Max or Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People as a result.
  • Same thing with Homestar Runner fans to try Team Fortress 2 or Sam & Max.
  • Many people who hadn't heard of Penny Arcade (or at least hadn't read it) got into it thanks to this game. (Look up any Poker Night video on YouTube, it's impossible to find a video that doesn't have a comment asking who Tycho is)
• Good Bad Bugs: Using the right mouse button to skip character dialogue can lead to some humorous happenings, from Strong Bad's mouth disappearing, to the Heavy sitting back with his hand on his lap and an all-too-satisfied smile on his face, to Max outright swearing.
  Max: Next time I'll rethink my strategy of bitches. ^note The actual line is "bet every time my bellybutton itches."
• Harsher in Hindsight: When Team Fortress 2 went Free-To-Play, Tycho claimed he hated the game. Poker Night 2 ended up having no Penny Arcade representation, not even a cameo.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Or perhaps, more heartwarming in hindsight:
  Tycho: So this Doctor... he a friend of yours?
  Heavy: (firmly) Yes.
  • Later, in "Meet The Medic", Medic refers to Heavy as his friend, with genuine fondness in his voice. In fact, a lot of "Meet The Medic" could potentially be a Call-Back to Poker Night - Heavy's fondness for Russian Humor, birds...
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Game Central Station in the Disney film Wreck-It Ralph seems to be an expansion of the "World between worlds where video game characters go when you're not playing them" idea. Although the film‘s long Development Hell makes it debatable who came up with the idea first. Coincidentally, Heavy and Ralph later got together in the PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed.
  • In Poker Night, Strong Bad claims the next "Snake Boxer" game will have snakes with fists. Fast-forward to The Aquabats! Super Show!, where Matt Chapman (Strong Bad's VA, and a writer for the show), plays Carl, a blatant Expy of Strong Bad who keeps a giant cobra man with arms as a sideshow attraction.
  • Strong Bad making fun of how much Sonic the Hedgehog sucks in front of Heavy, who later cameoed (along with Spy and Pyro) in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed on the PC.
  • Strong Bad thinks Max is a Pokémon. The fire-type starter from Pokémon Sword and Shield, Scorbunny, has been compared to Max several times.
• Quirky Work: Take four characters no one would ever expect to see in a crossover. Now do just that. Now make it a poker game. This is what you get.
• The Scrappy: Winslow is this in particular to players who fold their hands a lot, especially when he announces the blinds when they couldn't care less.
• Tainted by the Preview: "Oh, sweet! Strong Bad, Max, Tycho and the Heavy are going to be tearing it up— wait, what do you mean it's going to be a card game?!"
• That One Achievement: While the game is already luck-based to a degree, the achievements for winning with a straight flush or four of a kind are the worst due to the statistical improbabilities involved.
• That One Boss: Tycho is overall the hardest person to bust out due to his very conservative strategy of folding or calling only low bets and blinds with all except the best of hands, and his ability to get into the player's mind in doing so in part due to the fact that it's both not impossible for him to bluff and that his AI will take increasingly more risks as the game goes on, making it unclear whether he's just trying to scare you or is about to destroy you with a killer hand.

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