By the nature of the series, all spoilers except those relating to the series' backstory in the "Eyes and Ears" continuity are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Having a large fandom spanning multiple social media platforms and overlapping with several of the largest MCYT sub-fandoms, many recurring fan interpretations of canon are bound to pop up.
Note: Unless otherwise specified, all tropes pertain to the characters, not the content creators that play them.
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General and Worldbuilding
- A popular fandom design for all characters is for their eye colours to match the number of lives they have remaining, i.e. Green Lives (3 lives) with green eyes, Yellow Lives (2 lives) with amber eyes, and Red Lives (1 life) with red eyes, even if the content creators' Minecraft skins do not correspond to the convention.
- In Last Life and Limited Life, Boogeymen are sometimes depicted with red eyes to emphasize their 'cursed' status of being forced to kill; one notable depiction of this is in the animatic Curses. Alternatively, they are depicted with purple eyes to symbolize that the Watchers, who are usually associated with the colour, are the ones behind the Boogeyman curse.
- Double Life:
- Soulbound pairs are sometimes interpreted to not just feel each other's pain, but any sensation in general, like heat and cold. Some fans even extend the 'pain' part to emotional pain and not just physical pain, mainly for angsty reasons.
- The most common depiction for the soul-binding is a literal Red String of Fate connecting the soulmates, possibly influenced by the logo of the series.
- Fan interpretation on how each player's life-timer manifests in-universe in Limited Life may vary from physical clocks and watches, to an Explosive Leash that detonates or poisons the player when their life-time runs out, etc.
Multiple characters
- The winners of the seasons sharing Cosmic Motifs. While they are a highly common interpretation in the fandom and show up in many fan-works, they are a coincidence in canon. The interpretation goes that:
- By general consensus, Grian is the Sun, via Meaningful Name, as his IGN roughly means "the Sun" in Irish; Scott is the Stars, for being a Starborne on the Origins SMP; and Pearl is the Moon, due to her IGN.
- After Martyn's victory in Season 4, fans have held various polls to decide on which motif would suit him best, with two interpretations being the most popular:
- Mars: It rhymes with 'stars' and his real-life name is derived from the Roman god Mars.
- Comet/meteor: Because he's "always falling" and unpredictable, is a traveller and a harbinger of disaster and destruction, and has a tendency to crash into people's worlds and go out in a blaze of glory. It is also a nod to a meteor crashing into Martyn's base in the Evolution SMP, the lore prequel to the Life series in the "Eyes and Ears" continuity.
- Scar is either Earth or Eclipse — depending on who you ask — chosen due to Scar's dynamics with others, though there have been jokes about making his motif the Death Star.
- Cleo is shaping up to be Pluto, as Real Life was incredibly short compared to the main seasons much like Pluto is a very small celestial body, and has ongoing debate about whether it "counts" as a planet in the same way Real Life may or may not be a proper season. Pluto is also the Roman counterpart of Hades, the Greek god of the dead and the underworld, which fits Cleo to a tee.
- Some fan designs incorporate a tie into the outfits of the T.I.E.S. alliance in Limited Life — excluding Skizz, who already wears one on his default Minecraft skin.
Character-specific
- A common fan interpretation of the gray part of Etho's headbandnote is that it contains a heart design. Depending on the artist, the headband's heart will change colors to signal which life he is on. This may stem from the common Color-Coded Eyes fanon design not having the same effect on Etho, as his skin is heterochromatic and already has one red eye.
- Jimmy:
- Some parts of the fandom draw Jimmy with golden yellow canary wings and sometimes other bird features due to being considered a Canary in a Coal Mine for being the first to permanently die in the first four seasons. Even without the bird features, it's often treated as his Animal Motif; this symbolism has become Ascended Fanon as of Limited Life and is acknowledged by some of the creators within their social circle.
- His final death in 3rd Life, being shot by Skizz while trying to flee the Desert's bunker, is often depicted with him being shot in the eye or the throat. In Empires SMP Season 1 fics, where 3rd Life is canonically a past life, this is sometimes cited as the reason Jimmy almost always wears his Codfather head — either to hide this or because his breathing was impacted (in the latter interpretation).
- It is common consensus among the Ranchers dynamic fans (and especially the shippers) that Jimmy's Bad Boy leather jacket in Limited Life is borrowed from Tango. Three guesses why.
- Even though she doesn't appear in all of Scar's Minecraft skins for the series, Jellie the cat is frequently depicted to be at his side regardless of season.
- In Last Life, Scott ends up being killed using the "/kill" command after his victory in-game. Due to the revelation of the Watchers being behind the Life games and holding a grudge against Scott for defying the Boogeyman curse, as well as the 4-way battle royale ending at night, this final death is popularly depicted as him being struck down by a Bolt of Divine Retribution.
- Skizz is sometimes depicted with an angelic motif, often a Winged Humanoid with a halo. This is usually attributed to him being generally a Nice Guy and The Heart of his alliances, and to draw contrast between him and Impulse (as in "Imp and Skizz").
Events
- Limited Life: On Day 3, Grian is AFK for the episode due to being ill in real life. In the Traffic Life universe, this is usually translated as him either going unconscious after being kidnapped for Watcher business, or having an episode-long nap. Martyn's "Eyes and Ears" lore adopts a similar reason to the former.
- In an attempt to fit the Real Life SMP into the Life series canon, especially in the context of the "Eyes and Ears" continuity and adjacent fanon, the most common explanation on Tumblr is that the players, and likely the Watchers as well, were intoxicated/drunk during the season and when the latter came up with the idea for it. This is likely to explain how Minecraft VR impairs the players' movements, then translating it to what they consider to be the closest in-universe plausible cause of this.
Eyes and Ears continuity — Unmarked Spoilers
For popular headcanons stemming from fan interpretations of the Evolution SMP, see its YMMV page.
- A common fan interpretation is that most of the players do not remember the events of past seasons or their backstories, or only have fuzzy memories at best. The main exceptions tend to be the winners of each season, along with Watcher- or Listener-aligned players — including Jimmy, who worked as a Listener acolyte in the Evolution SMP. While the theory has been jossed by cc!Martyn, who has said that everyone remembers the events of past seasons but not the emotional connections formed during it, some fans still prefer to go with the amnesia interpretation, often for storytelling purposes.
- During his more unhinged, murderous moments, Grian is sometimes depicted with purple eyes or even flashes of his "true Watcher form" from losing control and letting his "normal player" guise slip.
