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YMMV / Strong Bad Email

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  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • In "i rule" Strong Bad pronounces Mike, UK as "Mike Uck." Say that a little bit faster, and...
    • In "coloring", Strong Bad attempts to color in a page of the Limozeen coloring book with one of the "crayons" he got from Marzipan called "Dermal Discoveries" (a nod to Crayola's real life renaming of the "Flesh" crayon to "Peach"). He then tells the band to "prepare themselves for a dermal discovery". Considering this is addressing a band, it could be intentional. Even more so since the "Dermal Discoveries" crayon was to replace a broken "Skin Flesh" crayon.
  • Archive Panic: If one was to watch every official Strong Bad Email through "parenting" without Easter Eggs, it would take 10 hours and 20 minutes. Add in the Easter Eggs, the bonus emails and the "Not Quite Emails", and the total would be close to 12 hours.
  • Discredited Meme:
    • Strong Bad at first didn't mind receiving emails with "Crapfully yours" or a variant as the signature. It's when he started getting them so often that he finally told fans to stop doing it, and he has since called out people who continue to do so.
    • "invisibility" made fun of a meme where fans kept discovering the same Easter Egg on the old message board by having the Tandy disclose the secret. Ironically enough, the board would be shut down shortly after that email; the header remains as an Easter Egg on another page with a title of "Remember What The Tandy Told You".
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • This entire series was developed due to Strong Bad being the site's resident dark horse at the time.
    • Many emails have spawned characters that rival some of the site's other characters in popularity. Notable ones include:
      • Homsar, who was created simply due to a misspelling of Homestar's name and has both made sporadic appearances since his debut in the second email and ascended to main character status on the non-email side of Homestar Runner.
      • The Teen Girl Squad, as evidenced by their appearances in 15 of their own toons (as well as the three side games from Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, 4 Gregs, and Decomposing Pumpkins).
      • Trogdor, who was popular enough to get his own game on the site, an extended version of his theme song from his debut email "dragon", a major appearance in the last episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, and his own board game.
      • Stinkoman, who managed to get his own game on the site that, appropriately enough, plays similarly to the classic Mega Man series.
      • Eh! Steve!, reflecting his appearance as "Sweet Cuppin' Cakes"' Breakout Character.
    • Onion Bubs is one in-universe, as seen in "original".
  • Genius Bonus: In "4 branches", Homestar correctly recites Coloumb's law after being asked what two plus two is. This is to demonstrate how sometimes Homestar is so stupid that he actually circles around to being smart.
  • Growing the Beard: The show didn't start coming into its own until the late-Tandy/early-Compy era, as that's the time period when it stopped being a straight Fourth-Wall Mail Slot show and starting focusing more on skits that use the emails as a jumping-off point.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • The "David Coppafeel" pun in "senior prom" sounded pretty apt after David Copperfield became accused of sexually assaulting an underage model.
    • The throwaway joke about "oiled-up Bill Cosby" in "winter pool" stopped being funny for similar reasons.
    • Strong Bad losing it and blowing up the movie theater with a bazooka in the sbemail "the movies" is decidedly less funny after the The Dark Knight Rises Aurora massacre.
    • Strong Bad Email 81 features the sender as "Dynomite, Boston, MA". "Dynamite Boston" might sound random, but saying those two words together might be very harsh now.
    • An easter egg in "haircut" has a sleeping Strong Sad exclaim: "Oh, watch out, Julian Sands!", which certainly hits different since the actor's death while hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains.
    • In "specially marked", a cereal is shown named “Gunshots in a Crowded Mall.” This was already an incredibly dark joke when the sbemail was released in 2008 but after so many incidents of public mass shootings in the United States in the 15 years since then, is even more so now.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • In Email 10, released in 2002, Strong Bad gets an email from a vampire named Trevor. Fastforward to the release of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate in 2013, which has Trevor Belmont becoming a vampire himself.
    • The 85th email has an easter egg advertising Strong Mad's grudge match to reclaim The Title from The Tire. The match is described as Revenge, Vengeance, and Vengeful, before finishing with Revengeanceful. 11 years later, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance would release.
    • In Email 143, released in 2006, Strong Bad is talking about the different functions of Pom Pom's cellphone, from buying movie tickets to watching said movie to making his own. Nowadays, smartphones have internet access, Netflix and Hulu, and even 4K video cameras.
    • Email 181, released in 2007, discusses various types of Web Comics; it offers a Take That! at Penny Arcade with a strip where Strong Bad and Strong Sad, after "bricking" a meat loaf, randomly spout off various technical specifications in lieu of a punchline. Fast forward to 2010, and Strong Bad plays poker against Penny Arcade's Tycho in Poker Night at the Inventory, whom he antagonizes more than his other opponents.
    • "Hey, Stinkoman! Everyone says you're the guy, but... I Wanna Be the Guy, too!"
    • How does Strong Bad define "technology"? "The word 'technology' means 'magic'."note 
      • There's also Strong Bad putting beans on a cake for The Poopsmith. In case he wanted Strong Bad to put beans on it. note 
    • 172 (More Armies) features Strong Bad recruiting for his band of shady missionaries - er, mercenaries - while wearing an eyepatch, a fake mustache, and a "robotic hand". Years later, there was a game whose main character was a bearded man with an eyepatch and a robotic hand who recruits for a band of mercenaries and like Strong Bad, ultimately turns out to have been faking that identity.
    • In Email 107, in order to honor the "heritage" on The Cheat's fake I.D., they play mining games. Scandinavian mining games, to be precise.
    • Email 108 has a scene where Homestar mentions a website that ends in ".egg", and Coach Z asking if he's sure it wasn't the standard ".com" or ".org". Fast forward to 2011, and ICANN allowed for URL suffixes to be more customizable. So one could buy a domain, and have it end in ".egg" if they so wanted to.
    • Email 115 has Stinkoman say "Looky here, a Power Crunch!". There's now a brand of protein bar called Power Crunch.
    • Email 193 has Strong Bad talk about how much he loves "triple-R rated movies" and his unsuccessful attempts to see one in the theater. In 2022, an Indian film literally titled RRR was released to widespread success and acclaim. It only got a PG-13 rating though, so no breakfast gore.
    • An Easter Egg in Email 92 has Senor Cardgage tell Strong Bad he will "exobably not" see him again. Ironically, Senor Cardgage has more appearances than any other Homestar character that isn't part of its main cast.
  • Ho Yay:
    • In "fan club", Strong Sad's fanfic has Strong Bad giving Homestar a deep-tissue massage. Strong Bad is horrified; Homestar? Not so much.
      Homestar: Oh, this gon' be good!
    • In "do-over", Strong Bad imagines Homestar falling for him while the two are trying to serenade Ali and her sister.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "And frankly, I'm worried."explanation 
    • "How do you type with boxing gloves on?"explanation 
    • "DELETED!" and variants, like "BALEETED!"explanation 
    • "Eating One Battery"/"Eating Five Batteries" Explanation 
    • Strong Bad's candy being brown is not also a reason because it's chocolate, but possibly because Strong Bad went in it. explanation 
  • More Popular Spin Off: Strong Bad Email is easily the most popular part of Homestar Runner despite technically being an offshoot project, to the point that the show makes up the majority of the site's content. Case in point: the emails' DVD series is titled strong_bad_email.exe. The DVDs for the rest of the site? Everything Else.
  • Nausea Fuel: The worst thing of Strong Bad's "Bottom 10 List"? Cleaning up vomit from his keyboard, which happens right after Homestar Runner shows him his bottom (not his "Bottom 10".)
  • Never Live It Down:
    • Strong Bad saying "Holy crap" or just "crap" in the earliest cartoons, to the point where fans sent him emails signed "Crapfully yours" or a variant. He has received so many of such emails that, by the time of the "3 Wishes" email, where he receives yet another email with a "crap"-themed closing, he chides the viewers for it at the end...
    "It's not required that you sign your email 'Crapfully yours' or 'With a bunch of crap' or 'Crap in the times', 'Crap is so great', 'Everything is crap', 'My middle name is Crapperson'. You know, you can just put 'Sincerely', or 'Yours truly' is another good one. Come on, guys, I'll still read 'em."
    • Since then, he has taken to express contempt for such email closings, either groaning/sighing or, more likely, substituting his own closing for them. For example, when he receives an email signed "Crapfully yours", he instead says, "Totally not getting old". He once received an email signed "Crudfully", but he is not fooled: he objects to the censorship, but remarks that he still would have ridiculed the email sender even if it was signed "crapfully" anyway.
  • Take That, Scrappy!: The Compé, being much more modern than the rest of Strong Bad's tech, was ridiculed as being an out of character choice for him. Eventually, it was compressed by the dust built up by a five year hiatus into a new model of the Lappy, the Lappier. Somehow. Unlike his mourning for his previous computers (particularly the Compy), Strong Bad isn't torn up about the loss of the Compé at all, describing the Lappier as "an even better computer" and the transformation as "like coal to a diamond".
  • Tear Jerker:
    • The Decemberween Email page has the somber holiday version of the "Everybody, Everybody" theme playing on a loop.
    • The Paper seen dying after so long shocked and startled fans, going into a deep, probing (made-up) montage.
    • The death of the Compy 386 also fits this rather well.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: The bonus e-mail "comic book movie" was released in 2008 and primarily mocks common comic book movie clichés of the mid-2000s, especially the X-Men Film Series (Movie Superheroes Wear Black, they don't wear masks, poorly-done CGI, and so on). Also in 2008, Iron Man was released, which began the Marvel Cinematic Universe and completely changed the landscape of comic book movies; the series is especially known for its comic-accurate costumes (bright, colorful, masks included and not entirely leather) and focus given to perfecting the visual effects. Even so, while Strong Bad's lampooning of the subject is outdated from a post-MCU point of view, many of his complaints still hold true for its imitators.

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