YMMV / Puppet History

• Awesome Moments:
  • While Shane's own puppet-crafting work is anything but shabby, with the Professor and the first three seasons' musical guests all boasting charming, fun designs, he started enlisting the help of Madison Girifalco as the series puppet-maker to direct more focus onto other aspects of making the show at the start of Season 4, and whoa does it become apparent over the season and the next that the decision allowed for taking things over the top. Girifalco's work on the three-headed Asmodeus is just one highlight, and each of Season 5's puppets (the immortal tiger in particular) are significantly more intricate and detailed than those of the previous seasons.
  • Ryan's battle against the fake Professor for the Genie's Lamp in the Season 5 finale is quite a spectacle, with surprisingly good choreography from Ryan as one could imagine what a fight with a killer doll would look like. Also Ryan throwing out the fake Professor out of a window is the icing on the cake as it is awesome both in and of itself, and as a Call-Back to the "Defenestrations of Prague" episode.
• Awesome Music: All of the musical numbers in Puppet History are hilarious and catchy, covering a variety of musical genres. Stand-outs include the Diamonds' song from "Stealing the World's Most Expensive Necklace", God's song in "The Dancing Plague", the Beast of Gevaudan's song, Asmodeus's song in "The Demonic Possessions of Loudun", the fake Professor's Villain Song, and The Professor and the Meteor's duet in "The Dreadful Demise of The Dinosaurs".
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • The crux of about half the musical numbers is Shane turning brutal historical tragedies into jaunty puppet show songs. Highlights include the HMHS Britannic's propellor singing about the dozens of evacuees that were accidentally sucked into it, and God admitting to making people dance until they died along with all the other horrible things people experienced in Medieval France. The crowning jewel of the bunch came in the very first episode where the singer was none other than the Grim Reaper singing about how much he misses The Black Death because of his constant stream of work earning him a fat overtime check.
  • The Musashi episode runs hard on this since Miyamoto Musashi was winning duels to the death by intentionally pissing off his opponents in an almost non-chalant way, like by intentionally showing up late to a time that he picked.
  • The Donner Party episode is a grim affair, as one might expect. Both Ryan and guest Joyce are often left in stunned silence to exactly how bad it gets. And then they immediately follow their shock with such line as:
    The Professor: I think specifically, if you look back in their journals, it does say verbatim "Yummy yummy yummy in my tummy, let me eat Antoine."
  • Ryan's line in the Ching Shih episode, after the Professor reveals her second husband was her adoptive son.
    Ryan: She wanted to spank his bottom as a child and as an adult.
    [Joyce loses it.]
  • "The Great Molasses Flood" goes from hilarious to horrifying and back again so many times it's dizzying, and the song turns it up to eleven. Horse finally gets his musical number, which starts out upbeat, only for him to die horribly in the molasses flood. He's greeted by God, who once again admits that he caused the flood for a laugh, and the song transitions into God trying to convince Horse to embrace the afterlife, and then to Horse singing about how he hopes his wife and other loved ones died too so they can be together.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Of the guests, Kate Peterman is the most popular, thanks to her sweetness, energy, and getting along very well with the all of the show's antics. She's so popular that she's been on the show multiple times, debuting in "Stealing The World's Most Expensive Necklace" and reappearing Once a Season (with the notable exception of Season 5) since.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Randy Newman-esque coin that sings in "Isaac Newton's Nemesis" has been dubbed "Randy Newmint".
  • As The Professor has no official name, fans have dubbed him "Professor McNasty" after Jermaine guessed that was his real name in "The Dancing Plague" episode. This name receives a Fandom Nod in the video announcing the Professor Plushie, as the name "C. McNasty" can be seen chiseled into his gravestone.
  • The Tumblr fandom has dubbed The Professor's holographic replacement "The Substitute" based off of one of his lines in "The Bloody Life of England's Fastest Surgeon".
• Fanon:
  • The Professor didn't mention any hint of sexuality in season one, but somehow became Watcher's queer icon anyway. Outside of the show the network's official twitter account and Shane himself approve of the idea. "The Disastrous 1904 Olympic Marathon" shows that he's gender non-conforming as he's perfectly willing to cross-dress and uses it as a form of expression.
  • The Professor is often portrayed in fanart as having reptilian features (such as a tail) after his rebirth in Season 5 due to his dino DNA, despite his updated puppet having no such additions.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • On January 10th, 2020 Puppet History released an episode on the Black Death. Only a month and a half after the show was released, most of the world's population were either already in or just entering lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The episode even features conversations about what it would be like if a pandemic happened today.
  • The episode about the Dancing Plague of France specifically states that the plague was made worse because the affected were allowed, and encouraged, to stay outside where the plague would spread instead of staying in doors.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Ryan asking if the Professor will ever have any happy lessons or if they’re all going to be gruesome and depressing in “The Dancing Plague” (1.04) is even funnier after the second season, which contained several Sanity Slippage Songs and the show's scariest episode, "The Grisly Journey of the Donner Party."
• Magnificent Bastard: The Genie is a mysterious figure who gave the Professor the ability to time travel. Realizing that the Professor's travels are inadvertently turning objects into puppets, the Genie began pursuing him through time in order to fix his mistake. When Ryan makes a deal with Satan to win an episode of Puppet History, the Genie uses the opportunity to have the Professor possessed and forces him to give up his time travel abilities before banishing him to the Cretaceous Period. All this while simultaneously luring all the puppets to a party where he removes their sentience, leaving the scene victorious. Returning later, the Genie willingly grants Ryan’s wish to return the Professor before parting with Ryan on good terms.
• Memetic Loser: Ryan's reputation as a loser in the first season appeared to be a byproduct of Ryan often either not correctly guessing the very obscure trivia questions or failing the tie breaker questions and he actually performed rather well. As fan perception of Ryan's performance mutated to where the Professor seemed to not want Ryan to win, this ended up really helping the show when season two had to be done over Zoom, since there was basically no way of getting the trophy to the various contestants at the end of the episode if there was a genuine random element so rigging the show to have Ryan always lose^*Such as Ryan receiving negative points for shenanigans or guests getting bonus points for random things allowed the guests to be guaranteed winners and so they could send the trophy ahead of time. This became so entrenched after two full seasons that when season 4 started airing and returned to an in-person set Ryan was still getting the short end of the stick to the point where the last 5 minutes of the season finale are devoted to Ryan pulling demonic intervention just to score a pity cup.
• Memetic Psychopath: The Professor, due to his intensity and his tendency to argue with his guests (usually Ryan). Many have joked that "Puppet History" is really just a deranged Muppet holding people hostage in his basement so he can force them to learn. Even Ryan's gotten in on it, joking that he expects the Professor to just pull a tiny pistol out of his satchel at any moment.
  • Made (depending on your sense of humor) either Harsher or Hilarious in Hindsight in Season 5, with an actually psychopathic version of the Professor almost killing Ryan.
• More Popular Spin-Off: Ruining History was well-loved, but a common praise of Puppet History (besides the adorableness of the Professor and the great songs) is that it took all the fun from RH and made it even more Rapid-Fire Comedy and streamlined.
• Spiritual Successor: The series itself is this to both of Shane's original projects under Buzzfeed: Ruining History and The Hot Daga. While it has the core premise of Ruining History, pared down to two participants rather than four, its paper cut-out puppet segments and the original song that caps every episode are hallmarks of The Hot Daga.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: The show, alas, doesn't provide much of this, with its abundance of dark humor and coverage of depressing subject matter. But if one's able to put the presence of those elements aside, namely in the repeated recognition that the act comes with very real danger and chance of death and its interlude, the Cloud's song in the episode about Bessie Coleman is a cheerful jangly Billy Joel-esque pop-rock song about how fun and freeing it is to hop on a plane or hot air balloon to visit the sky and leave one's cares away.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: It's a history edutainment show hosted by an adorable puppet professor, accompanied by catchy songs and zany hijinks, but it's not intended for small children. Cursing, innuendoes, and rather graphic descriptions of morbid subject matter abound in several episodes.