YMMV / THE MONUMENT MYTHOS

• Alternative Character Interpretation: With how vague the series is about many things, this is to be expected.
  • President Dean. Is he an evil Humanoid Abomination that used his supernatural charm in order to take control of America, leading to its current nearly dystopian situation? Or is he simply a man with super human charm that genuinely sought to make America better? ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE implies he was a Well-Intentioned Extremist at worst, given the ADA's apocalyptic bent.
  • The ADA. Militant activists that seek to reveal the lies of the US government and stop the TFMDs, or dangerous terrorists that seek to spread chaos and destruction? Also, were they the ones that started the air raid attack, or was it a False Flag Operation? ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE has removed most of the ambiguity. The kidnapping and mass misinformation campaign they committed would have put them firmly in the evil side, but then they essentially brought upon the destruction of their universe.
  • Does Freedom wear the skin of her victims in order to be more human, or just out of pure sadism? Or both?
  • Is the US government a callous and cruel organization willingly sacrificing millions of people to monsters hidden under monuments, or is it doing what it has to to contain said monsters and prevent even greater loss of life? ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE suggests the latter, and indicates that a large amount of evidence as to the former was fabricated by the ADA. The US government is shown to be much more villainous in the Nixonverse though, with their brainwashing of The Last Son, nuking the entirety of Alaska just because the Last Son had his own fortress there, conducting a "Sweep And Redeem" of Vietnam and possible killing of an innocent Lunarian just to retrieve their eye makes their villainy much less ambiguous in the setting.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: James Dean's painting in ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE, "Road To Happiness", seems to be a picture repurposed for the series, as its surreal, eerie tone and prominence of what appear to be Special Trees fits the enigmatic former president. However, the picture was actually painted by the real James Dean in 1954.
• Awesome Music:
  • Clinton's Decision by AJCW, the main theme for SUEZCANALCRAB.
  • ROCKEFELLERREVELATION's main theme, an edited version of Paul Whiteman's ''How deep is the Ocean?'' recontextualized to fit the Mythos.
  • While Jacob Mlinko hasn't provided the series with as many songs as AJCW, his music still stands up on it's own and can come off as iconic.
    • Mister Manticore's Theme, the very first song in the channel and the Mythos canon.
    • His cover of Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus certainly classifies, not only being simultaneously melancholic but also catchy.
  • TONIGHT, a downright haunting remix of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" which plays during THE MONUMENT MONSTER over the footage of President Pattinson starting a nuclear war, establishing the song as the leitmotif of Modern Day as a whole.
    Forever's gonna start tonight...
• Bizarro Episode: SUEZCANALCRAB, where the behaviour of everyone involved is described in an almost slapstick manner (people slipping constantly on the fluids released by the Crab, American citizens mounting an invasion of Egypt via passenger jet to loot the Ever Given, the creation of a literal cargo cult around the Ever Given, and so on)
• Broken Base:
  • Is the Nixonverse's more surreal nature compared to previous seasons part of its charm? Or is it just plain confusing?
  • Is the "Horned Serpent" seen in THE ED DWIGHT PARADOX a grief-stricken Last Son turned into a monster? Or is it the D-Day Knight, having turned into a new form? The debate about it in the subreddit got so bad to the point that Alex himself had to confirm it was the Crescent King in a Q&A.
• Contested Sequel:
  • While the first two seasons and the subsequent Nixonverse were all well-received, Season 3 was met with a significantly more divisive reaction. Some episodes like MUSKMARS were widely praised, and some plot points (particularly giving the souls inside Freedom, the Angel, and Everett a well-deserved rest) were overall very well-received. However, the decision to shift to a parallel universe - which removed any real stakes for the plot and entailed the retcon of most significant plot points of the previous seasons- was much more controversial, as were the apparent changes to critical plot points (such as President Dean's personality and the nature of the Horned Serpent). Some fans liked the more overt Cosmic Horror elements introduced by the season, while others felt that they strayed too far from what made the previous seasons special. It didn't help that the new lore additions of the season often directly contradicted the established story, in some cases with no explanation for the change. The general consensus- if one can be said to exist- is that the season as a whole is generally considered a step down from its predecessors, if for no other reason than Season 2 being a very Tough Act to Follow.
  • Season 4 / Modern Day has so far been even more divisive than Season 3, which was perhaps inevitable given its rather bold choices of giving controversial political figure starring roles and focusing more directly on social issues, particularly gun violence. Some fans absolutely love it for being more cinematic than previous seasons, expanding the scope of the narrative, not being afraid to take a stand on important issues, and focusing on certain elements that have been Out of Focus in previous seasons (including MISTERMANTICORE and Alcatraz). Others are much more critical, complaining that the season is even more meandering in its focus than Season 3 was, that the new directions often serve to muddle rather than expand the narrative, and that the message is often so heavily emphasized it can take viewers out of the experience of the actual narrative. And that's not even getting into the debates about the season's actual messages. Likewise, the already fractured fanbase shrank significantly, causing dismal ratings; by the time the season (and series) had ended, only the premiere episode had even passed 100,000 views – a benchmark that even the most divisive episodes of Season 3 managed to surpass with flying colors.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The very end of ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE falls into this by virtue of sheer Mood Whiplash. The episode as a whole is quite possibly the most intense of the series yet, featuring the deaths of multiple major characters, the culmination of various aspects of the lore, the apparent destruction of the Monument Mythos version of Earth as the Horned Serpent emerges, and the revelation of the connections between this series and Cornerfolklore. So what music plays us out of Season 2? A remix of Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA."
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Libertylurker, despite not appearing in the series all that much since the first episode, is beloved among the fans due to being the first ever TFMD seen and setting the tone of the series well. Because of this, the Libertylurker came back to the narrative in LIBERTYLURKERS as an appendage of The Horned Serpent.
  • Mr. Squirrel, due to memes jokingly saying that he's the mastermind behind the current TFMD crisis. He reappears in FALLENFATHER, having followed Lauren back home.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The two main universes of the series, the one where most events of the series transpire and the one that resembles our own, are nicknamed the Deanverse and the Nixonverse after the the candidate that won the 37th presidential election in their respective universes. This became Ascended Fanon once the next installment started, with the new setting officially called "The Nixonverse." Though it turns out this universe is called that for a very different reason.
  • In his summary and analysis of the Monument Mythos, Wendigoon dubbed the Angel "Avogadro," which is a reference to Avogadro from the Call of Duty: Zombies series. Wendigoon called the Angel that because both characters resemble a walking nervous system.
  • The cover of Party in the USA that plays in the credits of ALCATRAZAPOLCAYPSE is commonly referred to as Party in the UZA.
  • The Horned Serpent's skull which the D-Day Knight briefly wears in his titular episode is commonly called the "Cool Hat" by the official subreddit.
• Funny Moments: Now has its own page.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The Statue of Freedom is said to have the eyes of Thomas Crawford. This is more than likely in reference to the fact that, in real life, Thomas Crawford suffered loss of vision and was eventually diagnosed with eye cancer.
  • DEANDISASTER mentions a "Walt Disney Medical Center." Disney worked as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross during the 1918 Flu Pandemic, so his deciding to stay in healthcare in this timeline really isn't that much of a stretch.
  • The Zones of America. Firstly, the borders of the Zones represent each of America's largest expansions: the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession. Second, the Zone's Capitals are named after Native American places and people: Ahwaste (Alcatraz Zone) was the name given to the San Francisco area by local tribes. Paha Sapa (Rushmore Zone) is the Lakota name for the Black Hills, the mountain range in which Mount Rushmore is carved. The Nacotchtank (Washington Zone) were an Algonquin tribe who lived in the modern Washington D.C. area.
• Heartwarming Moments: The ending of FREEDOMFOREVER. All of the major anomalies in the series (specifically Everett, Freedom and the Angel) receive a genuinely happy ending as they combine and defeat the Martian serpent, saving the Earth in the process. Their souls in turn could finally rest in peace after everything that had happened to them and become the Mister Manticore constellation among the stars.
• He's Just Hiding: So beloved is President Dean by the fandom that even though the apocalyptic events of ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE took place decades after his administration's end, some fans insist he made it out alive and is now exploring the multiverse in search of new worlds to race cars in.
• Improved Second Attempt: Unlike THE HOUSE IN THE OCEAN, where the entire deleted series was restored in a Compilation Movie with only a few scenes that would have been redundant cut, THE TRINITY DESK PROJECT took more judicious edits, adding a new framing device and cutting or altering several scenes from the original series. The result was widely considered an improvement over the original in several ways, including:
  • The introduction of the new framing device and the reorganization of the videos by topic makes it easier to follow the overall story. In particular, The Front Row at NASA, which originally had no real connection to the rest of the series other than the fact that invisible men were later shown to have been involved, is recontextualized as the way in which the US government executed the alternate Leonard Morlin.
  • The poem from OTHEROPPENHEIMER was cut out, removing the implication that the Croatoan was a Size Shifting time-displaced clone of Oppenheimer whose invisibility made him immune to the laws of physics, which was considered by quite a few to be a needlessly complicated explanation that raised a lot more questions than it answered. Instead, the Croatoan is implied by context to be an inhabitant of Roanoke Colony who was turned invisible and un-aging by the natural nuclear reactor, which also conveniently answers the question of why Roanoke was involved in the series at all. As for the nuclear test conducted by Oppenheimer, it's now recontextualized as the experiment which allowed the first successful destruction of a Special Tree, tying back to a plot point introduced all the way back in Season 2.
  • The pacing of the series is generally improved, with some scenes such as the montage of test items in Footage of Transparent Cat being sped up to make for a more brisk delivery, while the framing device from Maya provides some time for the viewer to breathe.
  • In the section corresponding to The Other Oppenheimer, the quote about a "natural nuclear reactor" now features a stronger echo effect and decays into distorted noise over the course of the clip, creating a rather creepy buildup effect. In contrast, the original episode simply repeated the phrase over and over with no alteration other than gradually decreasing the volume, which- memeworthy as it was- made the scene somewhat harder to take seriously.
• Magnificent Bastard: President Dean is the 37th president of the United States, and despite not having particularly long ads or speeches, easily gains the trust of the American people, beating Nixon in a Landslide Election and then manages to convince him to race cars at the end of his inauguration, right after a quick bongo session. Those who strongly oppose him are sent to Special Trees to be swapped with their Alternate Universe counterparts or killed by a Psycho for Hire. Dean is able to manipulate his enemies and convince his friends as long as it benefits his goal, but isn't anywhere near being against lighthearted fun or doing good, like when he attempted to heal an entire nation that was deformed after an attack by said strong opposition.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Appropriately enough considering how personally active he was during his presidency, James Dean gets this treatment. Most commonly with YouTube commenters stating that whatever threat a given TFMD poses can be neutralized by Dean "taking it out racecar driving."
  • Mister Squirrel, a squirrel Lauren Arnoldson found in her trip to the Grand Canyon, has become subject of various memes accusing him of being the true mastermind behind every event in the Mythos. What is the reason for this? Well, Lauren did say he was "Horny" once.
• Memetic Loser: Luna, despite being responsible for the Lunarian invasion of Earth, is regarded as a loser among the fans due to her only two appearances having her suffer some misfortunte. In the case of her titular episode, it's getting shot by Ed Dwight, and in THE ED DWIGHT PARADOX it's being "checkmated" by the Knight.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The Caps Lock titles of the videos have been sometimes parodied by the fans, with CHICAGOSUNROOF being just one example.
  • I'm surprised. ^Explanation President Dean's reaction to George Washington being found alive and well after becoming frozen in the Delaware river.
  • Mister Rockefeller was surprised! ^Explanation ROCKEFELLERTREETRAGEDY has Virginia narrate the events leading up to the tragedy, including how he obtained the titular Special Tree. One scene in particular shows Rockefeller attempting to cut down the Tree using various methods, only for all of them to fail miserably. Virginia remarks on how surprised Rockefeller was, always using the same phrasing and drawing.
  • Cope, Buddy!^Explanation In the official MM server, after the premiere of ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE, a user ranted on how they thought the episode was lackluster and how it didn't meet up with their standards. Mister Manticore simply responded with the phrase "Cope, Buddy!" causing its mutation into a meme in the server.
  • Lunarian language ^{Explanation (SPOILERS)} The broken english in THE D-DAY KNIGHT RETURNS and D-DAY KNIGHTFALL quickly became memetic in the official subreddit, not helped by similar misspellings being used by ironic memes. The misspelled name of Alice Avenue, "Alis Avinew," even became a popular nickname for her.
  • It's Knightin'/Checkmatin' time! ^{Explanation (SPOILERS)}  In THE ED DWIGHT PARADOX, The D-Day Knight pulls an "Alcatraz Checkmate" on the Lunarians, effectively consuming all of them. Many viewers compared this to the meme of Morbius "Morbin'" all over his enemies.
  • "This... was a natural nuclear reactor." / Natural nuclear reactor moment. ^Explanation To the surprise of pretty much everyone, one of the final episodes of Modern Day- and the second-to-last episode of the series as a whole- was THE TRINITY DESK PROJECT, a re-edited Compilation Movie making the now-deleted series of the same name canon to the Mythos. This immediately brought with it a resurgence in that series' most popular meme, based on the constant repetition of the phrase in one of the original episodes (although in the re-edited version the scene has been altered to fade the audio out faster).
• Moment of Awesome: THE ED DWIGHT PARADOX features the Queen of the Lunarians trying to convince the D-Day Knight into working with her as part of a prophecy. In response, the Knight screws destiny by proceeding to annihilate the Queen and restoring human language in only nine months.
• Narm Charm: The D-Day Knight constantly mispelling everything he says may seem silly at first but it's rather terrifying since it's because the Lunarians basically replaced the English language with theirs and he has to relearn it again.
• Nightmare Retardant: While the series is indeed scary, some part of it may just seem too silly to actually be scary. For instance, the Suez Canal Crab appears less like a horrifying monster and more like a ship that grew legs.
  Commenter on the video: The Ever Given, seeing the Americans' willingness to use nuclear force, has decided to walk.
• Realism-Induced Horror: While the overall series focuses on fantastic, supernatural horrors living among us, some of the horror elements are nevertheless caused by more realistic, human causes. In particular, SUEZCANALCRAB's focus on the very avoidably human tragedies caused by its emergence and DEBATEDEMON's focus on the (very real) issue of gun violence in the United States put the emphasis on the human element instead of the anomalies taking center stage.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Lauren's tribute to her father in the aptly-named FALLENFATHER is quite saddening, with Lauren saying that she hopes he's in a happy place. It's even worse with the Reality Subtext that it's based on Alex's grief at his father's untimely death. It quickly veers into Nightmare Fuel territory once a Canyon Crown starts following her.
  • Everything about Virginia Arnoldson, as seen below, but the end of WASHINGTONWONDERLAND takes the cake. Lobotomized, alone and unable to speak, she spends the last days of her life making crude children's style drawings of her family and friends, showing just how much of her life was robbed from her for reasons she could never begin to understand... if for any reason at all.
  • While THE SEA OF THE LAST SON is mostly nightmarish, the Last Son's anguished cry of "NO" when he's abducted is pretty heartbreaking. This is made worse by the fact that he's trying to atone for his sins (which he did while brainwashed) and going into voluntary exile after decimating Vietnam, only to fall straight into becoming the Lunarians' king.
  • The Last Son's backstory. His parents were neglectful to him to the point that he had to drive himself to school and his classmates are said to have not treated him any better. Despite this, he grew up wanting to help people before himself.
  • It's heavily implied that the Knight's grief at Alice's death and the realization that her statue does not contain her "soul" is what turns him into the black blob at the end of the video. Made even worse if you believe that Alice was the Knight's love interest long ago.
  • Minor compared to the rest of the episode, but the Last Son's inhuman howls in THE ED DWIGHT PARADOX are said by Molly to be him crying because of his grief. She then says that he won't stop crying, and that he does not want to live.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: One of the reasons for Season 3's divisive nature. While the series has always left quite a few details to the imagination (either for Nothing Is Scarier purposes or to inspire fan creativity), Season 3 in particular almost seemed to change its entire direction every couple episodes, with the unfortunate effect that almost none of the more interesting plot points featured actually got followed up on. Examples of dropped points which many fans wish had been elaborated on include the Washington Wanderer, the significance of the creation myth from MONUMENTMYTHOLOGY, the nature of the Martian Serpent and the significance of its role in the lore beyond being the overall threat of the season finale, the broader consequences of Montgomery Clift replacing James Dean as President, how exactly the copy of Cthonaut A became a Physical God, and what exactly was going on in CLIFTCHAOS (especially since the latter had quite a few context clues hinting at a loose connection to THE AMERICAN ANATOMY, in the same vein as how The House in the Ocean was ultimately welded into the Nixonverse).
• Unexpected Character: More like "Unexpected Episode." When Alex began teasing an episode on July 4th, 2022 via posts on his community tab, using pictures of what appeared to be the surface of the ocean, most people assumed that it was either hinting at something related to sea creatures (such as the debut of a Nixonverse equivalent to Aquaman) or that the images were actually altered images of the lunar surface. Pretty much no one predicted that it would be the Canon Welding return of The House in the Ocean, an older series which Alex notoriously deleted without warning and vowed never to reupload for personal reasons.
• The Woobie:
  • Virginia Arnoldson. You can't help be feel bad for the fact she suffered much after being left by her alternate parents and being thrown into a harsh orphanage, then losing her friends, then finding out her alternate parents split up, one dying and the other being a sad hermit. Then she had a kid but lost it when it was exchanged for her to go back to her world. For a cherry on top: When she returns, she has been gone for years, with her family and everyone she knew being dead.
  • Her husband, Leonard W. Morlin, hardly fares any better. He falls in love with Virginia and has a son with her, who later disappears when Virginia returns to her own dimension. His wife is later lobotomized, which leads to her death. He becomes the director of an unspecified U.S. agency dedicated to combatting the TFMDs, but his solutions to the otherwordly threat only backfire on him and leave him quite jaded on the subject. Leonard is at some point kidnapped by the ADA and forced to legitimize bogus anomalies through fake scripts produced by the terrorist group. Upon finding out that he had been unknowingly cloned by Alcatraz, he sets himself on fire to put himself out of his misery. And it seems that Alternate Universe versions of him don't fare much better, given that his Modern Day incarnation spent years living with survivors' guilt after being exposed to an anomalous film that caused adverse effects in every other member of his class and was ultimately forced to flee to another universe to escape a nuclear war... only to end up being captured by the new US government and placed into the Front Row at NASA.
  • The Air Force One Angel was once a group of loyal US soldiers who were sacrificed to fire an untested energy weapon. They reformed into a single entity and decided to get revenge upon their former master, President Rockefeller, and were left to wander until they found a new group to help, which happened to be the ADA. After causing massive collateral damage and realizing the group's true motivation, they killed their handlers and left a simple message to the world: stop using powered beings as weapons. The US government ignored this warning and sent Freedom, another powerful entity, after them. The Angel, simply trying to defend itself, ended up inadvertently causing the end of the world.
  • Freedom herself is also quite the Woobie, although a much darker example. Formerly an artist commissioned by the US government to create a symbol of American Exceptionalism, Thomas Crawford was driven mad while working on his project and ended up cutting himself to pieces to imbue his statue with life, and eventually he took his own daughter with him. Following a battle, this new creation skinned a number of people to "finish" herself and give herself "freedom" as enslaved architect Phillip Reed believed, but said architect was forced to skin her alive because the US wanted a symbol of freedom far more than they wanted this statue to be free. After a century frozen in place, she was broken free of her pedestal during a riot, but lacked any more control now than she did at her creation. She spent the rest of her existence an imprisoned executioner for the government, until she was finally unleashed against the Angel.
  • The Last Son Of Alcatraz was a Superman-like being who used his otherworldly powers to intervene in the Korean War, wherein he lessened U.S. casualties and saved thousands of lives. Previously a normal teenager with a Dark and Troubled Past, a chance encounter led to him gaining superpowers which he chose to use for good. Unfortunately, his Wild Card nature and the United States' desire to use him as a superweapon led to his home in Alaska being nuked with the Last Son himself losing an eye before being captured. Brainwashed into becoming a weapon of war, he committed unspeakable atrocities during the Vietnam War under the guise of "Jesus Christ." Upon coming to his senses and regaining sentience, he realized the gravity of his actions and vowed to never use his powers for destruction ever again. Turning into a replica of his childhood home in the sea, he lived a peaceful existence before being abducted yet again by the Lunarians and unwillingly turned into their king. "The Crescent King" would later be used by the Lunarians to wage war against the United States. When the Lunarians were defeated and utterly destroyed, "The Crescent King", having lost two entire worlds and peoples that admired him even as they turned him into a weapon, turned into a bipedal monster seemingly aware of his fate that wouldn't stop crying. Unwilling to live, yet unable to die, grief turned him into a monster.
  • Richard Nixon, also known as The Moon God, was formerly James Dean's best friend and closest confidant. Surviving the Great Division, he came to the Nixonverse and settled on the Moon. Fearing that humanity may not accept him, he sent three "extensions" of himself to Earth in an effort to "test" humanity. All of three of his extensions would end up going insane thanks to Human intervention, with one of them even killing Dean's Alternate Self. Convincing himself that the humans of the Nixonverse will never be kind, he isolates himself on the Moon and adopts a more cynical viewpoint of the world. Unwilling to directly confront a new version of the Horned Serpent and bring about the end of the Nixonverse like Freedom and the Angel did, Nixon is forced to render the whole Nixonverse as fiction to spare it the cruel fate his own universe suffered.

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