History Series / AmericanVandal

* ProppingUpTheirPatsy: Season 1 is a double-subversion of the guilty party defending the innocent, while Season 2 is a zig-zag of the culprit defending their scapegoat:
** Season 1: The story centers around an incident of vandalism, and Dylan is the one expelled for it. Christa is one of Dylan's most outspoken supporters. She starts a campaign on [=GoFundMe=] and sells "Free Dylan" t-shirts to raise funds for his legal defense. She even publicly announces that it was her (though that turns into an IAmSpartacus moment where ''everyone'' says it's them). It's suggested that she could be the vandal, though at other times it's treated like a RedHerring. In the end it's implied that [[spoiler:she ''was'' the true vandal]].
--->'''Peter:''' The Free Dylan t-shirts. The [=GoFundMe=] campaign. Where those protests of passion for Christa, or an attempt to clear her guilty conscience?
** Season 2: Grayson Wentz, a former St. Bernadine student who was expelled over a minor prank, is interviewed early on in season 2. He believes Kevin [=McClain=] is just the school administration's scapegoat for the pranks, and implies that the culprit is an athlete who the school is [[SlaveToPR covering up to save face]]. [[spoiler:Both cases are true. Grayson is the mastermind behind it all, and manipulated both Kevin and star basketball player [=DeMarcus=] Tillman into carrying out individual pranks.]]

* Bathos: Perhaps the main source of comedy. The investigation of these completely juvenile acts are played 100% seriously.

** It's never confirmed one way or another just how much of a BitchInSheepsClothing Ms. Shapiro really is. She may or may not have coerced a student to accuse another student she disliked of cheating. She may or may not have been playing good cop to the vice principal's bad cop to coax someone into giving information about the vandal. [[spoiler:It's not clear whether her mischaracterization of her nail-damaged tire as being "slashed" is a deliberate falsehood or whether she simply assumes Dylan did it]].

* BigBad: The Dick Drawer

* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot:
** [[spoiler:Mackenzie spends the entire season withholding a video that proved Dylan was at her house during the vandalism because it showed evidence of her cheating on him.]]

* CreepyGymCoach: The coach, Mr Rafferty, appears to be extremely genial and popular, but it's hinted at that he's abused his position from time to time; one student believes he "roofied people" and Peter learns that [[spoiler:there's a mention on his file of showing "inappropriate conduct with a student]]. And there's whatever he said to [[spoiler:Christa after knocking her down and injuring her]], but it's never explicitly confirmed how sinister he is.

** After Peter realizes that the spray paint can came from Nana's Party, Sam is the one who notices the splatter. [[spoiler: This leads to strong evidence that Shapiro wasn't the target--and that either Vice Principal Keene, Mr Maeda or Coach Rafferty ''was''. Investigating students with a motive against Coach Rafferty not only leads to the reveal of Mackenzie's cheating--which allows the video footage of Dylan's alibi to be revealed--but begins Peter and Sam's re-investigation of Christa.]]
** During the house party in the final episode of Season 1. When [[spoiler: Ming passes out from drinking, Christa Carlyle anxiously asks if anyone knows CPR. When she claimed her alibi was completing her training for CPR.]] After hearing this he realizes that [[spoiler: she]] lied about the alibi.

* {{Gonk}}: Pat Micklewaite, which is why Peter is so frustrated by him being so popular despite being an apparent loser like he is. Pat gets invited to parties and is on multiple girls' hook-up lists, but Peter is barely acknowledged.
* TheGhost:
** Pat Micklewaite is discussed a number of times in the first season, but he's only seen via his yearbook picture and in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot at a party. Otherwise he is never interviewed, and we never hear him speak.
** Van is only seen in photographs as the object of both Sara and Christa's lust, despite the possibility that [[spoiler:he is the one that drew the dicks.]]

** In the Season 1 finale: [[spoiler: Things are looking well for Dylan now that he's been proven innocent and he talks highly about bettering himself but slowly as the episode progresses he becomes less and less happy about his circumstances. Ms. Shapiro apologized for the accusation but stood by how she felt about his treatment to her, The College he thought he had lost for the accusations did not accept him, Mackenzie finally decides to permanently end their relationship and when he finally sees the Documentary everyone has given him support for at the party he realizes that before it went viral nobody even cared about if he did it or not and found him to be a loser for how he already was.]]
* HotForTeacher: Coach Rafferty is crushed on by a few students.

* ImpostorForgotOneDetail: [[spoiler:One of the most important details regarding the crime is that someone tampered with the security footage. Peter discovers that Dylan is utterly HopelessWithTech beyond the regular teen knowledge of how to use a smartphone.]]

** If you look closely throughout the first season at the background footage as well as the many students interviewed, every student shown is [[spoiler: taller, shorter, fatter, thinner or has a very different hairstyle than Dylan. It's why it's believable that Alex Trimboli might have been genuinely mistaken about his identification of Dylan; the only person in the case who could believably pass as Dylan from behind (Van Delorey) isn't a student at Hanover High, and Alex hasn't seen him more than one or twice[[note]]The only time it's confirmed that Van and Alex are in the same place at the same time since Camp Miniwaka is at Nana's Party, where Van was Christa's date. Alex very probably didn't have eleven beers, but contrary to Pete and Sam's opinion he might very well have had more than one[[/note]] in the last six months.]]

** Mrs. Shapiro toes the line between this and SadistTeacher, and it's really dependent on who's testimonies you believe. She ''may'' have pressured a girl into accusing another student of cheating because Shapiro didn't like him. She also ''might'' have told Keene to get rid of off-campus lunches so that when she brought them back she would be seen as the good guy. But she is also very fast to brush Dylan off because of his actions [[spoiler: and lies to help him get expelled ''and'' only gave a half hearted apology to him after his exoneration]], and she begins acting just as cold to Peter and Sam as the documentary goes on.

* CreepyGymCoach: The coach, Mr Rafferty, appears to be extremely genial and popular, but it's hinted at that he's abused his position from time to time; one student believes he "roofied people" and Peter learns that [[spoiler:there's a mention on his file of showing "inappropriate conduct with a student.]] And there's whatever he said to [[spoiler:Christa after knocking her down and injuring her]], but it's never explicitly confirmed how sinister he is.

* FeigningIntelligence: Throughout Season 2, people note that Kevin isn't particularly intelligent; He just says thing he thinks smart people say. There are a number of times where we see him ''trying'' to be smarter than he is. He recalls describing a pop song "an ocular disaster" when he was in 6th grade, which Chloe notes she had to look up and discover that he was using the word wrong. In another scene, he says that [=DeMarcus=]' poem "makes Creator/DrSeuss look like..." but can't come up with the name of a "more serious" poet.

* DumbassHasAPoint: Dylan's older brother says in an interview that he knew Dylan wouldn't work well with Ms. Shapiro as a teacher, and that he told him several times not to take her, all while calling him an idiot. Dylan (who was offscreen just a few feet away the whole time) points out he ''had'' to take a foreign language. His brother just flips him off.

* RightForTheWrongReasons, [[spoiler: Tanner accuses Kevin of committing the Brownout. He turns out to be right, but not for the right reason: Kevin wasn't trying to break up Tanner and Chloe by calling the police -- an act committed by Lou, for a different reason -- but he was cajoled into getting revenge on someone else by going through with the prank.]]

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: "Brownout". One gets the feeling from how it's handled that the main reason it wasn't called the "School Shitting" is that it would belabor the metaphor.

* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: "Hot Janitor", a conventionally attractive custodian at St. Bernadine. His real name isn't even revealed when Peter & Sam interview him.

** As he and Peter review social media footage of The Brownout he believes Kevin's contorted facial expression means he was forcing himself to poop to appear to be a victim. [[spoiler: He's right.]]

* FeigningIntelligence: Throughout Season 2, people note that Kevin isn't that intelligent; He just says thing he thinks smart people say. There are a number of times where we see him ''trying'' to be smarter than he is. He recalls describing a pop song "an ocular disaster" when he was in 6th grade, which Chloe notes she had to look up and discover that he was using the word wrong. In another scene, he says that [=DeMarcus=]' poem "makes Creator/DrSeuss look like..." but can't come up with the name of a "more serious" poet.
* FreezeFrameBonus: In season 2, a shot of Peter's laptop reveals chat logs of recent conversations with not only Sam, but Gabi Granger, Dylan Maxwell, and [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg Alex Trimboli]].

* IdiotBall: Peter [[spoiler: messaging the Turd Burglar that he knew he was Grayson ''before'' alerting the police, allowing the latter time to leak all of the compromising photos of his victims before getting arrested. Essentially, Peter completely humiliated and severely damaged the reputations of three students (and one scummy teacher) for the sake of making his documentary more dramatic.]]
** It ''was'' a stupid thing to do, but it's highly likely that [[spoiler: Grayson would have found a way to leak the photos and conversations anyway, even if he had to wait until he was out on bail. Given how hard he worked on his grand evil scheme, he probably would have had all his material backed up on the cloud, and Grayson basically wanted to punish the world, regardless of the consequences. Mere threat of jail wouldn't have stopped him.]]

* KarmaHoudini: Played straight with Perry Coleman. Before the events of the season, he stole school property and then [[ItMakesSenseInContext used it to bully and humiliate another student for months]]. Due to his status as top athlete in his class, he faced no consequences, and is now in UCLA on a basketball scholarship. This blatant immunity that athletes enjoy at St. Bernadine is what throws some suspicion on [=DeMarcus=].
* KickTheDog: [[spoiler:after all are caught for the pranks, Grayson leaks all their texts and pictures anyway, just ForTheEvulz]].

* LeftHanging: There is a question about [[spoiler: if Kevin made himself shit his pants during the Brownout. Just when you think it might be ignored, Peter asks him directly. And the answer was yes, he did.]] We're also not given details about [[spoiler: Jenna Hawthorne]]'s fate after being convicted.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: In Season 2, Peter and Sam [[spoiler:find out the identity of the Turd Burglar (Grayson Wentz) and how he pulled off ''one'' of his crimes: he catfished Jenna Hawthorne until he got risque pictures of her, and then blackmailed her into doing the crime. After finding out who the Turd Burglar is, Peter texts him with his real name instead of ''immediately going to the police'', as Sam and Chloe suggest. Unbeknownst to them, the Burglar had blackmailed more victims to commit his other crimes, and he decided to dump everything he had on his victims before the police came. Had the police been called before Grayson knew he was going down, they could have secured the blackmail material without it leaking.]] No one calls Peter out for this, nor does he even seem to realize he's done anything wrong.

** Then there's the class charity trip to Costa Rica, where after a few hours of helping the poor, they go back to a high end hotel with booze and sex. Even the teachers know it's a massive holiday and there's a lottery for the four chaperone slots on the trip.

** Watch the Season 1 episode "A Limp Alibi" when Peter asks [[spoiler: Mackenzie if there's any proof that puts Dylan at her house during the time in question. It's very quick, but she looks straight at the computer screen, swallows nervously, and makes her face absolutely blank before [[BlatantLies answering negatively]].]]

** Kraz compares Shapiro to [[Series/GameOfThrones Varys]], or, in his words, "the bald guy with no dick."

* SoapBoxSadie: Christa, whose almost entire story arc is devoted to promoting various causes at the school--even if they tend to backfire on her. Played with to some degree, as [[spoiler: she's revealed to actually have been interested in joining football as a kicker, and wasn't just trying to prove a point about gender equality.]]

* WildTeenParty: Season 1 has the party at Rachel Balducci's house, known colloquially as "Nana's Party," which occurred the weekend before the dicks. Everyone was there except for Peter and Sam, and everyone and every''thing'' got trashed. It's also the site of several important events: Brandon's promposal to Gabi, Dylan and Mackenzie's break-up, and Alex supposedly drinking eleven beers.

** It's never confirmed one way or another just how much of a BitchInSheepsClothing Ms. Shapiro really is. She may or may not have coerced a student to accuse another student she disliked of cheating. She may or may not have been playing good cop to the vice principal's bad cop to coax someone into giving information about the vandal. [[spoiler:She ''does'' lie about her car tire being slashed when she actually ran over a nail, but Peter himself offers the theory that she truly does think Dylan is guilty (having had him as a horrible student for years) and that she lies because she thinks she's doing good by ridding the school of a troublemaker.]]

** Mackenzie is also this for Dylan, he won't hear a bad word about her.

-->'''Dylan:''' I’m not, like, book smart or fucking street smart or whatever, but, like I’m not dumb.

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Dylan's crew, the Wayback Boys, go way back.

* FemmeFatale: [[spoiler:Mackenzie is completely willing to have Dylan expelled and arrested while withholding evidence that proves him innocent. She only presents the evidence to save her own skin when Peter starts building a case against her.]]

* InstantHumiliationJustAddYouTube: A rare example where humiliation isn't the key attraction of the viral video, but many people are deeply embarrassed by it. Sara is humiliated to have her sexual history exposed to the world, and Mr. Kraz is immediately regretful of the things he said on camera.

* InMediasRes: The in-universe documentary ''American Vandal'' starts well after the actual vandalism incident, to the point where Dylan has already had the hearing with the school board, been expelled and escorted off the school property. Early episodes are also edited and released before the end of the season, so that assumptions and opinions made in early episodes don't always pan out by the end.

* InstantHumiliationJustAddYouTube: Deconstructed realistically. After the show goes viral, a lot of the footage starts having serious consequences for everyone. The documentary as a whole puts a lot of people's personal lives out in the open, and not everyone is happy with Peter about that.
** Sara Pearson feels utterly humiliated by the digging they do into her sexual history while trying to establish if Alex Trimboli is a credible witness.
** Mr. Kraz is fired for, among other things, stating that one of his underage students is hot on-camera and accusing Rafferty of drugging women.
** Mr. Janson and his daughter are harassed by fans of the show for not giving up the answering machine tape. In turn, she contacts Peter and [[spoiler: destroys the tape in front of his face to make it clear how cruel the situation has become.]]

* JerkassHasAPoint: The Hanover High teachers' hard-line behavior about the vandalism is {{Justified}}. Not only is there considerable humiliation for all the teachers -- how long did they have to drive around in those cars until their mechanic had a free slot, or the insurance company paid up for a loan car? The property damage was estimated to be ''$100,000'', for 27 cars. That averages out to about $3,700 per car. Given that teacher's salaries are notoriously low, car paint colors can be tricky and expensive to match, and that insurance companies are notorious for dragging their feet about paying out or even denying claims on flimsy excuses (like 'vandalism is not covered by your policy'), the teachers might very well have lost up to a month's salary paying to get their cars fixed.

* JerkAssHasAPoint: The Hanover High teachers' hard-line behavior about the vandalism is {{Justified}}. Not only is there considerable humiliation for all the teachers -- how long did they have to drive around in those cars until their mechanic had a free slot, or the insurance company paid up for a loan car? The property damage was estimated to be ''$100,000'', for 27 cars. That averages out to about $3,700 per car. Given that teacher's salaries are notoriously low, car paint colors can be tricky and expensive to match, and that insurance companies are notorious for dragging their feet about paying out or even denying claims on flimsy excuses (like 'vandalism is not covered by your policy'), the teachers might very well have lost up to a month's salary paying to get their cars fixed.

** The entire series is one about the duty of responsibility and mindfulness of consequences when making documentaries, ''especially'' true crime documentaries. After the documentary goes viral in-universe, fans bombard the Jansen family with demands to release the "Keifer Sutherland tape" to the point of harassment and likely harassed the students and faculty they believed were the real culprit as well. Peter ends up being alienated by several of his peers for destroying several students reputations and even gets one of the teachers fired when he recklessly adds deeper secrets and private conversations to the documentary were very loosely and circumstantially tied to the events of the crime at best. Sam on the other hand allows his blatant dislike of one of the students to actively attack his character and accuse him of various wrongdoings including the actual crime at one point. While they get better in the second season their general inexperience still leads to [[spoiler:them warning the true criminal that they figured out their identity, leading to him releasing every bit of extremely comprimising dirt he managed to gather over the year to the public]].

* CamWhore: [[spoiler:Mackenzie not only runs a successful Twitch channel, but exposes herself on there, although whether money is involved in these transactions is not really clear.]]

* HundredPercentAdorationRating: Ming Zhang, a foreign exchange student notorious in the school for just being a NiceGuy in general. When discussing the alibis for the members of the news team (who had access to the security footage), Ming is ruled out as a suspect simply because "Dude, it's Ming."

* AmbiguousSituation

* LeftItIn: In Season 1, Peter's sole devotion to telling the truth means he leaves in plenty of damning clips of people, including those close to him, even after they ''beg'' him to cut it out. Peter's InUniverse decision to release episodes before having completed the investigation and documentary means Peter and Sam unknowingly leave in red herrings and events that aren't relevant to the eventual truth of the matter but still have an impact on the rest of their documentary.

** [[spoiler: It's probably not a coincidence that Christa's last name, '''Carlyle''', has both the word ''car'' in it[[note]] the dicks were drawn on the faculty's vehicles [[/note]], but also a word that sounds like ''lie.''[[note]] something that Christa is definitely guilty of doing, regardless of whether she really planned the dick drawings [[/note]] ]]

* [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed No Colleges Were Harmed]]: Mackenzie has an acceptance letter from a college that's only referred to as "Boulder." This is presumably a reference to the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, but the show is very careful to never say that and only calls it "Boulder."

* RewatchBonus: Watch the Season 1 episode "A Limp Alibi" when Peter asks [[spoiler: Mackenzie if there's any proof that puts Dylan at her house during the time in question. It's very quick, but she looks straight at the computer screen, swallows nervously, and makes her face absolutely blank before [[BlatantLies answering negatively]].]]

* SadisticTeacher: [[spoiler:Coach Rafferty is this to Christa, at the very least, putting her in a tackle drill when she tried out for the position of kicker on the football team in retaliation for a walkout. This may have been her motivation to draw the dicks.]]

** Even worse, [[spoiler:Mackenzie spends the entire season withholding a video that proved Dylan was at her house during the vandalism because it showed evidence of her cheating on him.]]

** Alex Trimboli says that the dick drawer was wearing a hoodie. If the vandal had simply ''worn the hood up'' for extra protection, while the scandal and issues with lunch would have played out the same way, Dylan's ordeal (and probably the documentary) wouldn't have happened.

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Dylan thinks the prank itself is funny, he's just pissed that he was blamed for it.

* RealityEnsues:
** When Peter decides that both he and Sam need to investigate each other, Sam isn't very serious with Peter, while Peter takes a serious shot at Sam, making a case against him that he has a stalker-ish crush on Gabi with a motive for doing the dick drawings being an effort to shut down the Prom to prevent Gabi going with her boyfriend Brandon, who Sam immensely dislikes. Unsurprisingly, Peter exposing Sam's crush on Gabi and how much he hates her boyfriend results in Sam getting angry and quitting the documentary.
** After the show goes viral InUniverse, a lot of the footage starts having serious consequences for everyone. The documentary as a whole puts a lot of people's personal lives out in the open, and not everyone is happy with Peter about that.
*** Sara Pearson feels utterly humiliated by the digging they do into her sexual history while trying to establish if Alex Trimboli is a credible witness.
*** Mr. Kraz is fired for, among other things, stating that one of his underage students is hot on-camera and accusing Rafferty of drugging women.
*** Mr. Janson and his daughter are harassed by fans of the show for not giving up the answering machine tape. In turn, she contacts Peter and [[spoiler: destroys the tape in front of his face to make it clear how cruel the situation has become.]]
*** When Sam shows Gabi [[spoiler: evidence that Brandon has cheated on her with Sara]] and makes a joke about it, she's not endeared to him. She's pissed that he would take such an awful situation and try using it for humour.
*** But when Sam and Gabi make up at the prom after-party, the camera pans past [[spoiler: Brandon and his date... who isn't Gabi. She dumped his ass!]]

** Peter's is, humorously, Alex Tromboli, who he hates without good justification.