YMMV / Poppy Playtime

• Adorkable:
  • Poppy herself, especially when she says (in an incredibly cute and chipper voice) "As soon as ya git on up here!"
  • Kissy Missy, who just smiles silently at you before flopping her right arm onto the lever, at which point it flops right back off. After a few seconds, she tries again and pulls the lever successfully. She gives you one last look over her shoulder and ambles off. Awwwww.
• Complete Monster: Dr. Harley Sawyer, also known as the Doctor, is a disgruntled Playtime Co. employee who founded the Bigger Bodies Initiative in order to avoid paying any of the workers. Taking advantage of Elliot Ludwig's care for orphans, including an on-site orphanage, Harley spearheads mass experiments and torture of hundreds of orphaned children, transforming them into living and psychotic toys, who are then abused and drugged to keep them obedient. With that, Doctor Sawyer endangers his employees with the experiments, and silences them when they get too close to the truth. Completely remorseless over any of his actions, the Doctor is the true monster of the story, and easily the worst one.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • Huggy Wuggy, the Sesame Street-esque, 9-foot tall living plushie that acts as the Arc Villain throughout chapter 1. His design manages to turn from dopey to creepy in a second with its Nested Mouths, Slasher Smile and those Black Eyes of Evil. Add to that that he's implied to be actually intelligent and is a Super-Persistent Predator with a terrifying Jump Scare, and you've got an amazing and memorable horror-game villain.
  • Poppy Playtime, the namesake of the game. A doll that just oozes Uncanny Valley and uncertain intent whenever she appears.
  • Mommy Long Legs, the Arc Villain of chapter two. She's a big, creepy stretch-toy resembling a spider who's gone through some major Sanity Slippage due to the years of isolation underneath the factory, turning her from the caring mother figure she once was to a Psychopathic Womanchild who won't hesitate to maul the player if they break her rules.
  • The Prototype, the game's Big Bad, whose metal hand with its long spindly fingers is the only part we’ve seen of him thus far, yet he's easily the most intelligent and dangerous specimen of them all, able to create his very own laser pointer and take out security cameras. He also displays an understanding of human psychology in his ability to manipulate others, shown by his almost successful attempt at a Fakeout Escape. Not to mention the unsettling way in which his hand appears at the end of chapter two can leave chills down your spine…
  • CatNap, the Prototype's loyal Dragon and the Arc Villain of Chapter 3. A genuinely terrifying and cunning predator whose arrival kickstarts an already scary game's shift into outright nightmarish territory, CatNap continuously stalks the player from the shadows throughout the Playcare, triggers some memorably haunting sequences whenever the protagonist inevitably gets a whiff of his Red Smoke gas, and eventually faces the player in a Five Nights at Freddy's-style showdown.
• Creepy Cute:
  • Huggy Wuggy, despite all his creepiness, is still a fluffy blue sock-puppet toy with a goofy smile. At least until his chase scene, where he becomes pure nightmare fuel.
  • The appearance of a Huggy Wuggy-shaped silhouette will terrify anyone who's played through Chapter 1. However, it turns out to be Kissy Missy, who simply helps the player, smiles and then leaves.
  • Poppy Playtime herself, being a childlike 60s doll that appearance wise can best be described as Circus Baby meets Chucky.
  • Mommy Long Legs is also kind of cute when she's not being threatening or trying to murder you.
    • According to Word of God, this was actually invoked as this video explains. Mommy's first design was too cute to be scary, whilst her second design was too creepy to believably be a toy Playtime Co. would sell to children. Her final design is cute enough that the players can understand why her toy would appeal to kids, but creepy enough for the player to find her scary and threatening.
  • The Smiling Critters can be seen as this, if you're willing to look past their wide smiling mouths and the black voids where their eyes should be. (The cartoon alleviates the last point by making the eyes black with white irises.)
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • It shouldn't be funny that the GrabPack is strong enough to decapitate a person. In fact, that's nightmarish. But the demonstration video shows an employee using the pack on another coworker's head, and holding it like a trophy as the headless body falls to the floor in a sea of blood. The caption says that using it this way can cause serious injuries, and you can't help but chuckle.
  • Huggy's Disney Villain Death has this. Yes, you finally got the bastard and sent him falling to his doom. Sure, the blood is nightmarish. Then he keeps banging into practically every pipe and railing on the way down. It gets to the point of an Overly Long Gag if you keep looking down.
  • While Force Feeding Candy Cat may seem cruel at first. There is something just so absurdly hilarious about a Big Eater not wanting to eat even though eating is essentially their whole gimmick. However, it stops being funny the moment she lets out a distorted groan.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Even before she debuted in Chapter 2, countless videos featured Kissy Missy as a character often portrayed as a girlfriend for Huggy. When she finally appeared in person, the adorable way she fumbles to open the gate just made the fans find her precious. Suffice to say, many hope she won't die in Chapter 4.
  • Baby Long Legs and Daddy Long Legs only appear in a poster in Chapter 2 and later as a skin in Project: Playtime, but are still popular thanks to their association with Mommy. It also helps that they feature regularly in Fazbear and Friends (ZAMination).
  • Since the release of Chapter 3, the Smiling Critters have garnered a fandom of their own right; despite the fact that only DogDay and CatNap appear in person, with the former being a One-Scene Wonder (that's likely the reason why they're the most popular Critters among them all). As if to make this status even clear, it's not about the random mobs that pester you in-game, but the cartoon versions found in the short cartoon and various drawings and cut-outs. Fans take the intended wholesome vibe they're supposed to represent and run with it.
• Epileptic Trees: It’s been often speculated that the enigmatic protagonist is the unnamed Head of Security at Playtime Co. who was mentioned in some reports. Many fans pointed out how unlike the other higher ups such as Harley Sawyer, Leith Pierre and Elliot Ludwig, The Head Of Security is never given a proper name or gender, nor any lines or anything about them, making it possible that they are the player.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Huggy Wuggy, thanks to being a terrifyingly Super-Persistent Predator who comes unnervingly close to killing the protagonist.
  • Mommy Long Legs, courtesy of Elsie Lovelock's sweetly unnerving performance and the fact that her first scene effectively sets the tone for what to expect from her chapter.
  • CatNap is the Prototype's Dragon who kills and tortures numerous toys in his name, but there's definitely something badass about how terrifying he is.
  • The Prototype himself: The widely feared Big Bad who has an unknown endgame and orchestrated the Hour of Joy while still not completely heartless. Despite the fact we've only seen his hand so far, fans already love him and imagine what his full body could look like.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: Following Chapter 3, an AU idea that has begun propping up is the protagonist saving DogDay and taking him along with them and Poppy, mostly out of desire to give him some form of happiness after everything CatNap put him through.
• Fandom VIP: Sheeprampage. The artist commissioned to make the Smiling Critters made an extra one for him, titled "Sweet Sheep" and is scented with sage.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Five Nights at Freddy's due to the similar premise of things made to entertain children suddenly coming to life and seemingly going on a killing spree. Many FnaF fans have compared Poppy Playtime rather favorably to the former. It helps that both FnaF's animatronics and PP's toys were originally human children. The similarities increased with both franchises featuring a gas as a plot point (respectively in Tales from the Pizzaplex and Chapter 3).
  • Also with Bendy and the Ink Machine, again because of the similar premises of a Featureless Protagonist formerly working in the child entertainment industry turning to their old workplace at the behest of a former colleague and finding that things have gone… a bit downhill during their absence.
    • After the release of Bendy and the Dark Revival, however, a Fandom Rivalry between the BATIM fandom and the PP one seems to have developed, with people calling PP a rip-off of BATIM getting worse.
  • With Garten of Banban due to the games being similar and also having similar criticisms. ZAMination (an animation studio that is a subsidiary of Mob Entertainment, the studio that created Poppy Playtime) defended both Garten of Banban and Poppy Playtime taking influence from other games (Banban from Poppy, and Poppy from Bendy), while the Euphoric Bros posted a meme defending criticisms of both their game and Poppy Playtime (in addition to Rainbow Friends). Several high-profile creators that made Poppy Playtime fake gameplay, songs, and fan animations and such have also made Garten of Banban content.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The release of Chapter 2 came with a few major exploits that can be combined to beat it in only a few minutes:
    • Firstly, spamming the red hand in a specific way causes the game to think you managed to get the green hand. Normally, this wouldn't matter, as Mommy Long Legs would still steal it near the beginning of the chapter, but...
    • Secondly, when reaching the door where the red hand gets stolen, firing the hands in a specific way causes Mommy Long Legs to miss her grab on the right hand, but the game continues as it normally does, opening the door with the player still having both hands on the Grab-Pack. If they have the green hand, they can open the door to the train and brute-force the code (as the pictures and color are not randomized, leaving only the 10 possible number combinations that the game can generate) to get the ending.
  • Pug-A-Pillar is on a predetermined path, as it turns out. So long as you hide in the corner directly across from him at the start of the chase and don't move while the lights are on, he'll pass right by you and despite always looking at you, he'll continue on forward regardless. This leaves you free to more or less explore the room at your leisure, so long as you stay still when the lights are on.
  • Miss Delight's chase features a gate with three blocks in front of the second door you need to pass through. If the blocks are pulled over in front of the doorway, she will get stuck attempting to chase the player, allowing them to finish the hardest portions of the puzzle without her presence until the final chase sequence.
• Growing the Beard: While the game is popular, there were many criticisms over the game after the second chapter, with many having views of it being too kiddy-ish and having thinking it was too much of a carbon copy to other popular mascot horror games. However, after chapter 3's release, the game's view has been changed considerably for the better, being praised for its heightened horror elements and going full Cerebus Syndrome.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Chapter 2 sees Mommy Long Legs, who's based on Betty Spaghetty, trying to take advantage of the main characters while opposing a little doll-like girl with large hair named Poppy. Velvet, the Big Bad of Trolls Band Together, is also based on Betty Spaghetty and plans to drain the main characters while opposing a little girl with large hair named Poppy.
• I Am Not Shazam: Due to Huggy Wuggy being so prominent on the promo material, quite a lot of first-time viewers thought the name "Poppy Playtime" referred to him, this despite the fact the two are separate toys and Huggy dies at the end of the first chapter.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: There have been numerous complaints that the first chapter is too short for its price tag, especially since the planned release model for future chapters — with the devs stating they will be releasing them as DLC, rather than updates — seems to suggest that this price tag is not meant to be for the game as a whole. That said, the first chapter was eventually made free, which either softened the blow or made it worse depending on who you ask.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Mommy Long Legs is a sadistic bully, but she was once a child named Marie Payne who received nightmares from CatNap's gas and was likely turned into a toy shortly after despite having a parental figure named Ms. Harper who cared for her. Mommy was stated to be friendly with the children and other toys, and it's not until after being isolated in the abandoned factory she became much crueler.
  • CatNap is an utter monster who's fanatically devoted to the Prototype and murders any toy that resists his control, but his backstory makes it hard not to feel at least a little sorry for him. He was originally Theodore Grambell, an orphan at Playtime Co. who befriended the Prototype, was horrifically electrocuted when he tried to help him escape, and then turned into a toy experiment to save his life. He lived in this toy body for at least four years and was forced to live in a cell by Leith Pierre.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Many fans compare Huggy Wuggy to a Sour Patch Kid.
  • BUGGY WUGGY^note Many of the fans on YouTube like to post videos of the game's bugs and glitches, almost all of them involving Huggy Wuggy.
  • Free Hugs footage^note Many YouTube videos and news articles that feature footage of Huggy tend to feature a shot of Huggy walking down the hallway from the TryHardNinja song "Free Hugs".
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Harley Sawyer crosses it by creating the Bigger Bodies Initiative, which involved experimenting on and killing employees, orphaned children, and infants to transform them into Living Toys just to avoid paying the workers.
  • The Prototype crosses it by orchestrating the "Hour of Joy" where the sentient toys massacred every employee of Playtime Co. they could find, regardless of how guilty they were (and given how even a high-ranking member like Stella was Locked Out of the Loop, most weren't). Poppy describes it as senseless slaughter and states that the Prototype must die for what they've done.
  • Despite initially coming across as a Fair-Play Villain, the moment it becomes clear that Mommy Long-Legs is a psychopathic Sore Loser is when she murders Bunzo Bunny and the Mini-Huggies for failing to kill the player, and then deliberately rigs the third game to be Unwinnable by Design, forcing the player to cheat and giving her a reason to try and kill them.
  • CatNap crosses it when he tortured and killed all his fellow bigger body Smiling Critters for being "heretics" that resisted the control of the Prototype. In particular, he showed immense cruelty to DogDay by cutting him in half, and leave him hanging in a cell for his minions to feast on for an unspecified amount of time.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Throughout the first chapter, Huggy Wuggy is actually following you just about the entire time; you can spot him watching you from a distance or slinking around a doorway, though it's easy to miss him too. The reaction from a lot of players noticing this for the first time is generally along the lines of "How long has he been there!?"
  • There's also the fact that when the Prototype collects Mommy Long-Leg's remains, it does so literally 2 seconds after her death, reaching its claw through a boarded-up door. It's hard to decide if you lured Mommy to the right place at the right time, or if the Prototype was constantly following the player/Mommy the whole time.
  • Chapter 3 does this a lot with CatNap. He's always just out of reach, disappearing when one gets too close. And there are several sequences while using the gas mask where the smoke can seem to form his shape. During the final boss battle, there are ghostly images of CatNap which can be dispelled using the flare gun.
• Popular with Furries: The designs of the Smiling Critters (especially CatNap and DogDay's) practically exploded in attention from the furry fandom due to being, well, much more animalistic and (usually) much less freaky-looking than the likes of Huggy Wuggy and Mommy Long-Legs.
• Signature Scene:
  • The vent chase in chapter 1, full stop. The stress of being in essentially a very narrow labyrinth while being chased by a bloodthirsty Huggy Wuggy is easily the highlight of a long, quiet chapter.
  • Mommy Long Legs' introductory scene in Chapter 2, which effectively establishes her character, sets the tone for what's to come, and makes it abundantly clear that she's going to be a very different beast from Huggy.
  • Chapter 3 has the encounter with DogDay, which has been praised not only for being extremely disturbing, but also for the large amounts of Foreshadowing and Rewatch Bonus scattered throughout the game (and its promotional material) that lead up to it. Even people who've disliked the series for limiting the horror factor in favor of marketable characters have praised the scene, due to it suggesting the following titles will also put more focus on the horror.
• Spiritual Successor: To Five Nights at Freddy's, Bendy and the Ink Machine, and Alien: Isolation.
  • Bendy featured the protagonist exploring an abandoned workplace where they find out the boss was up to weird supernatural shenanigans. In Poppy Playtime, the player character presses on despite the obvious danger while Henry tries to leave as soon as he sees the Ink Bendy.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's had Subverted Kids' Show robot versions of beloved children toys that come out at night. The difference in Poppy Playtime is that they may not have been so-beloved and serve as the security detail for the factory. Meanwhile in FNAF, players joked that there was no need for a security guard with how dangerous the bots are. The fact both antagonists were originally human children only adds to the similarities.
  • Alien Isolation was involved in an 80s-like scenario similar to the 80s horror aesthetic vibes in Poppy Playtime. Another similarity is that when both the experiments and Xenomorph in both games were let loose and wrecked havoc throughout the facility. Only difference is that Alien Isolation had numerous survivors killing each other, while in Poppy Playtime the protagonist is the only one there and everyone is most likely dead.
• Stress-Relieving Gameplay:
  • Dropping a crate onto Huggy Wuggy and watching him fall over the catwalk while screaming in terror.
  • After spending all of Chapter 2 being a sadistic bully, watching Mommy Long Legs get agonizingly Ground by Gears is quite satisfying.
  • Smashing Miss Delight via Tae Kwon Door is immensely satisfying.
  • After stalking the player in Chapter 3 and causing hallucinations, using the Green Hand to overload CatNap with electricity frying him out before his untimely death is satisfying to watch.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Game On" in Chapter 2 is a distorted looping old ballroom tune very similar to the songs in Stage 1 of The Caretaker's unsettling dementia-themed project Everywhere at the end of time, particularly track A1- "It's just a burning memory". That song had been used in the game's files previously, with "Game On" being a new song created to invoke it.
• That One Boss: The battle with CatNap at the climax of Chapter 3 can be pretty aggravating to get through. Rather than having a chase sequence like Huggy and Mommy before him, CatNap forces you to Hold the Line for 3 minutes while a generator charges up. Meanwhile, CatNap will attack you from five different entrances and create fake CatNaps to confuse you into letting him approach. Fending him off requires you to block his path with steam, which gets more and more difficult as more and more batteries otherwise needed to activate those have to be placed into the generator. This isn't too bad at first, but CatNap gets faster and faster as the fight goes on. Unfortunately, your movement and the hand switching speeds are not exactly designed with this in mind, likely leading to a lot of frustrating deaths. Once the generator is finally charged, you need to absorb the electricity and shoot CatNap within a second of him appearing, which is not hinted at beforehand.
• That One Level:
  • The Statues game in Chapter 2 was a source of trouble for many players on their first attempt. The grace period on when you need to stop moving when the lights turn on is very tight, and portions of the obstacle course rely on some fairly-precise platforming and GrabPack use. The ending to the game, in which you discover that the obstacle course is in a Dead-End Room and you must use the GrabPack to grapple your way into an observation room to escape, was also easily missed by many players due to seemingly poor signposting, causing them to try moving over the rubble to no avail and either get killed or witness PJ Pug-A-Pillar glitch out. The last point was at least addressed in an update, with a bright flashing light being added around the grabbable surface to make it a lot easier to spot.
  • Miss Delight's chase level in Chapter 3 is another source of trouble. Once you turn on the generator, the titular teacher comes out and chases you around. She only stops moving if you're looking directly at her. There's a lot of green electrical triangle hand symbols located on each side and they don't seem to be activated, so you have to go all the way out while still being on a wild goose chase with the insane teacher woman and get your green hand on your GrabPack 2.0 full of electricity and go all the way into the room to find which one opens the right door. Also, there's no checkpoints. Poor Dawko had to learn that the hard way.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: It's not uncommon for Bendy and the Ink Machine fans to accuse this game of being a rip-off of BATIM. The Featureless Protagonist in this game often compared to the one in Bendy and Huggy Wuggy to Bendy himself, and this occasionally rears its head with other characters being similar (Mommy Long Legs to Twisted Alice, CatNap to Sammy Lawrence, and Jacksepticeye cameoing in both).
• Ugly Cute:
  • Despite the whole "trying to violently maul you"-thing, Huggy Wuggy is kind of cute. You can definitely see how he became Playtime Co.'s best-selling toy.
  • PJ Pug-A-Pillar also qualifies. He is part pug after all!
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Multiple players have praised Huggy Wuggy's horrifyingly smooth and detailed animation as he chases you through the vents. Helping is that it opens up with him casually crouching under the archway to the main "Make A Friend" area and stalking the player around the room until he either corners you (SCREEE!) or the player realizes they have to get into the vents.
  • The animation and effects for the trailers really make them look and sound like they were filmed all the way back in the 1960s. One of the most understated visual effects here can be observed in the Mommy Long Legs commercial: The scenes of the live-action kids playing with the toy were made using a 3D-printed static prop, while the Stop Motion scenes and moments where the toy's limbs are being stretched were done in CG. The switching between the two methods are so seamless that nobody noticed until an animator revealed the effect on Twitter.
  • Mommy Long Legs' animation rivals Huggy's in how creepily well-made and spider-like it is. Especially when she shifts into her One-Winged Angel mode and hunts the player down.
  • Chapter 3 improved the animations, particularly Kissy Missy's smooth movements in cradling Poppy.
  • The Smiling Critters short is already impressive for pulling off the look and feel of an 80s/90s kids' cartoon, but special mention goes to the Red Smoke-induced scene at the end, with CraftyCorn, Bobby BearHug, and DogDay's parts being given an Animation Bump to make their movements more fluid, which helps to sell how something has gone horribly wrong in this supposedly innocent show.
• The Woobie:
  • The Bunzo Bunny that appeared in Bunzo's Eggstravaganza comic (who's different than the one that appeared in Chapter 2) was one of the living toys in Playtime Co who decided to go on an egg hunt. They used a grab-pack to grab an egg, which accidentally broke it exposing a bird fetus. Desperately trying to get help, the fell down a hole where they hopelessly remained for over 15 days despite crying for help, only being able to draw pictures of how they go there. Mob Entertainment ends this showing a 3d model of Bunzo's decrepit corpse.
  • Thomas Clarke (or Experiment 1199) was a 55 year old employee of Playtime Co who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. According to the narrator he agreed to become a Bron the Dinosaur Toy to prolong his life, however the procedure caused his mental abilities to worsen and he lost much of his memory. He was placed in a bin with other toys who senselessly attacked and gravely injured him. He was last seen in solitary confinement, his tiny body looking dejected.
  • Poppy herself. She knows the truth of what happened in the depths of the factory and is clearly broken up about it all. Originally in an earlier version of the game, she even blamed herself for the atrocities that happened behind Playtime Co.'s walls.
  • The Bigger Bodies Initiative's Smiling Critters, sans CatNap. Unlike the other toys, they attempted to resist the Prototype's control, and it's unclear whether or not they even participated in The Hour of Joy. For their trouble, CatNap fed most of them to the mini-Smiling Critters (who have a size measured in inches, so they eat a little at a time). By the time the Protagonist arrives, DogDay is the only one left, and he's chained up, torn in half, and still alive. Then of course, the mini Smiling Critters climb inside him and puppet his body. From the sounds, it looks like after he was unable to catch the protagonist, the mini Critters ate him from the inside out.

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