Tropes with their own pages:
- Alternative Character Interpretation
- Broken Base
- Fan Nickname
- Magnificent Bastard
- Shocking Moments
- The Woobie
- Abandon Shipping: Victim/Agent was the most popular ship for both characters in the early days of Season 3 due to their Villainous Friendship and not really having anyone else to be shipped with. Come Animator vs. Animation 11, where it's revealed Victim is mourning and trying to avenge his dead wife Mitsi, many fans abandoned the ship in favor of the canon, where they're just a close bromance... whenever it's not a One True Threesome scenario, that is.
- Angst? What Angst?:
- The Chosen One spent seven years being besties with the Dark Lord, yet neither have no problem trying to kill the other once their goals don't meet. Similarly, the Chosen One doesn't care at all when the Dark Lord was killed.
- All of Minecraft was destroyed by King Orange, but nobody cares when it's all undone: King Orange is Easily Forgiven and everyone moves with no hints of being in any way affected by The End of the World as We Know It.
- Ass Pull:
- While the ending of AvM Episode 13 is heartwarming, it is rather convenient that the Second Coming ended up right next to the other stick figures despite going via a completely different portal. While we know that all eight of the portals (or at least, the ones the Stick Gang went through) all lead to the same dimension, the fact that TSC's portal lead to almost the same location as where his friends were going to, while not impossible, is still awfully convenient.
- At the end of "The Showdown", the Dark Lord has killed all of the Second Coming's friends and badly wounded him. It looks like he won but then, the Second Coming gets healed and gains superpowers out of nowhere. He proceeds to kill the Dark Lord, destroy his ViraBots, and resurrect his friends. There are no explanations on how and why the Second Coming got powers. The closest we have is Alan saying that "the beat-up awakened something in him".
- While it is an unbelievably awesome and touching scene, King Orange actually giving a crap about Purple to the point of being willing to give up on his revenge plan and sacrifice himself for him comes out of nowhere with zero foreshadowing, after he betrayed Purple and left him to die just a few episodes earlier.
- The circumstances around the Dark Lord's grand return. In short, it happened because a few of his ViraBots weren't destroyed by TSC, and they somehow put his shattered corpse back together. Even ignoring how nothing in "The Showdown" remotely implied TSC missed a few ViraBots, there is zero actual explanation for how the spiders managed to resurrect the Dark Lord. We're just shown a slideshow of a few 'bots crawling next to the Dark Lord's corpse, and then a badly damaged TDL being alarmed of a wanted poster for TCO. For something as important as the Big Bad's grand return, you'd think more thought and exploration would be put into it.
- Awesome Music:
- Note Blocks
of the AvM Shorts. Soon after the episode was released, several people commented saying they wanted the song from it to be uploaded separately. They got their wish.
- The track
that plays in "The Showdown", made by Scott Buckley, is so awesome that it feels like it could be in a theatrical movie. - The music in "Parkour"
has a perfect build-up, with the epicness coming in as time goes on. - The remix of "Pigstep"
that plays throughout "The Ultimate Weapon", which sets the tone for the stick figures' confrontation against King and Purple. - The Warden's village theme
that Second Coming plays to the Warden using a makeshift flute well represents what an ancient village theme would've sounded like as well as invoking some emotion due to said village having been destroyed long ago. It gets a stronger remix as the Warden escapes the cave with Second Coming.- Honorable mention to the Second Coming playing "Pigstep" to explain to the Warden that King needs to be defeated.
- The recurring song that plays throughout "Monster School" isn't half bad, especially during the scenes where the Yellow Team shines. It also helps that it's a remix of the original Monster School theme.
- Pretty much the entirety of "Note Block Universe", but special mention goes to the background music during Purple's backstory.
- The soundtrack for "The King" has two really noticeable moments:
- "Herobrine" and "Red Possession", the two-part song that plays during King Orange's fight against Herobrine, is an extremely climactic and orchestral song that showcases the awesomeness of the fight and how powerful the Ghost of Minecraft is.
- "Purple's Last Stand", a beautiful reprise of "An Emotional Journey" from the previous episode (the song that plays when Purple explains his backstory) that plays during Purple's dying moments and King Orange's Heel Realization.
- The electronic fight theme
in "Animation vs. Geometry" by Avenza was very well recieved for its intensity. - Avenza strikes again
for "Green's Channel!", with a peppy electronic theme for the Stick Gang's video-making escapades that ratchets up the intensity for the fight against the Glitch Entity.
- Note Blocks
- Badass Decay: In "Wanted", the mercenaries were introduced as being so powerful they sent the Chosen One running away in fear and the Second Coming with his pencil could only briefly hold them back. While Agent maintains his badassery in future entres, when faced against Red, Green and Blue in "Hacker", Ballista, Primal and Hazard all completely fumble and fail to be intimidating; Ballista's More Dakka fails to break down a simple door before he's locked inside the janitor closet, Primal is outmatched by Green, distracted by getting some dirt in his eyes and defeated by being kicked off a balcony, while Hazard is outdone by Blue tripping him and crushing him with a stasis pod (though credits where it's due, he arguably put up the best performance of the three). After a performance like that, many fans have found it hard to view them as genuine threats.
- Broken Aesop: The lessons Purple and King Orange learn in "Note Block Universe" and "The King" is that Purple shouldn't be trying to prove himself to anyone, least of all his abusive father, and accept himself for who he is with the support of his friends, and King has to accept that Gold died, nothing can be done about that, and that he should move on cause his grief turned him into an unrecognizable monster. The issue is that "The King" ends with King adopting Purple after realizing he's been subconsciously seeing him like a son due to the similarities between him and Gold, after he treated him arguably even worse than what Navy did. That more or less breaks the impact their aesops had, since not only does Purple gain the father figure he always wanted despite the previous episode showing this goal only caused him to hurt those around him, but King himself also gets a second Gold despite his moral lesson being about having to let Gold go.
- Captain Obvious Reveal:
- Excluding some weirder theories, the majority of the fans immediately - and correctly - guessed that the mysterious grey stick figure from the end of "Wanted" is Victim, as soon as they saw him. Suffice to say, "The Box" and "Victim" directly confirming this only caused surprise in casual viewers who don't interact with the fanbase and haven't paid attention to his office in "Wanted", with anyone else seeing it coming a mile away.
- The thumbnail for AvA 12 featured a ViraBot, and in the episode itself there are a few short moments of a mysterious, four-legged camera spying on Victim and Agent. Given that there really was no other candidate, few were surprised when the Dark Lord appeared in person at the end of the episode.
- Catharsis Factor:
- Watching the Second Coming beat the living shit out of the Dark Lord was incredibly satisfying, given what he has done, especially killing the Fighting Stick Figures.
- While the revelations in "The King" might make it easy to root for the villain, it's still satisfying to see Herobrine hand King Orange's ass to him after several episodes of the king getting his way, at least until the latter gets the upper hand again.
- After The Reveal in "Victim" that the Chosen One seemingly killed Victim's wife Mitsi, rewatching "The Box" and seeing him be punished by Victim with a brutal beatdown can feel satisfying for those who side against him.
- Character Perception Evolution:
- During the early days of the fandom, it wouldn't be hard to find people who sympathize with Alan and his fights against the Chosen One due to the latter's continuous destruction of his PC and all of its programs. However, as the fandom grew larger, more people began sympathizing with the Chosen One and the rest of Alan's creations more, leading to opinions on pre-redemption Alan to sour greatly. Nowadays you'll find very few people defending Alan's actions, with them instead seeing the eventual destruction of his PC thanks to the Chosen One and the Dark Lord as him receiving karma for his cruelty against them. This mindset only became more prevailing after the release of Animator vs. Animation 11 thanks to the horrifying reveal of the several month long torture he put Victim through for seemingly no reason other than his own amusement. Safe to say that if you were still an Alan sympathizer before this episode, you'll probably be singing a very different tune afterward.
- In the early days of the fandom, Victim was often interpreted as a gray ghost/angel who was a friendly figure to the characters, though often still at odds with Alan, and often paired up with other deceased characters like Pink or Gold. When he actually made a proper return in Season 3, this interpretation of the character died out immediately.
- Upon his introduction, the Corn Dog Guy quickly became a fan-favorite character, becoming a Memetic Badass who became subject to many in-jokes within the community. He was so beloved in fact that he scored second place in the official character popularity poll, only being beaten out by the Second Coming. This universal acclaim would soon begin to change however, with many fans coming out to express their annoyance at how drawn out the jokes surrounding the Corn Dog Guy have become, a sentiment which has only grown bigger after the reveal that he ended up winning the second official popularity poll. As a result of this, Corn Dog Guy has gone from a beloved Ensemble Dark Horse character, to a Base-Breaking Character.
- Common Knowledge:
- After "The Showdown" came out, many fans said that the Second Coming's newly acquired powers are the same as the Chosen One's, even though their only similar powers are super strength and a differently animated Eye Beam while none of their other powers are shared.
- When "The King" first came out, it was a common misconception that King Orange was trying to rescue his still-living son Gold. In reality, Gold died, King Orange knew it, and he was just trying to avenge him, which became more commonly accepted to be the case as time went on.
- Many people claim that the Animator is "special" for being able to create digital life, and speculate as to why. Except, he isn't. As early as AvA 2, programmer021 knowing about stick figures and the danger of naming one "The Chosen One" implies that living stick figures have been created in the past, and that there have been several instances of past "Chosen Ones". The idea of Alan being the only one to make living sticks is more explicitly shot down in 3, which has a page dedicated to stick slavery and animators abusing their creations, meaning he's far from the only one to do so.
- For whatever reason, it's a surprisingly common assumption that AvA and AvM are two different timelines. Not only is nothing supporting this either in-universe or on a meta level, but it's repeatedly been contradicted (The Minecraft icon is absent from the taskbar during AvA Season 2, Purple cameos in AvA 11, and "Cherry Blossoms" has Purple walk past a wanted poster for the Chosen One).
- It's also a common belief that the Dark Lord is as vile as he is because of his "Destroy the Chosen One" programming, making him a victim of Alan and his mistreatment of his creations. Even ignoring how he was programmed to destroy TCO specifically, not anything he comes across, mobs in Minecraft have been shown disobeying their programming all the time (Skeletons being friendly; pigs becoming aggressive), meaning a character's programming has no influence on their mind and the Dark Lord should have been in full control when he was destroying civilizations worth of digital life. This was actually brought up when DJ Welch and Alan Becker were discussing the results of the second popularity poll, DJ half-jokingly claiming the Dark Lord won't hate the Chosen One anymore when they reunite in Season 3 because TCO has now been renamed into "NO ONE" and thus TDL is no longer programmed to destroy him. Alan then seemingly confirmed that the Dark Lord's programming affects how he thinks of the Chosen One specifically, but did not say that it influences his aggressive and evil personality in general. He then also pointed out it doesn't even make sense since why were the two friends in the first place, causing the two to laugh it off once DJ told Alan to stop putting plot holes in his own story.
- Many people assume that the Stick Gang are young children, but Word of God states that they don't have definitive ages and that Alan himself views them as closer to young adults than anything.
- Complete Monster:
- The Dark Lord was created by the Animator with the intent of stopping The Chosen One's attack on his computer, but instead turned against his creator and teamed up with his target to destroy the animator's computer, killing every sapient program in it. Upon escaping into the Internet, the Dark Lord would terrorize and slaughter the citizens of various websites, before creating an army of Computer Viruses with the intentions of destroying as many computers as he could for no particular reason, uncaring of how many programs would die because of it. When the newly-redeemed Chosen One and other stick figures try to stop him, the Dark Lord tries to kill his years-long friend, temporarily kills the Fighting Stick Figures, and brutally injures the Second Coming. Wanting nothing more than to cause as much destruction as possible, the Dark Lord proves himself to be the most ruthless villain of the series.
- "Lucky Blocks" & "Lucky Block Staff": The Orb is the eldritch entity that controls the Lucky Dimension, seeking to spread chaos wherever it goes. Given a chance to escape its temple by Yellow, the Orb possesses his body before trying to either kill the Stick Gang or possess them with replicas of itself, all while killing any allies they spawn; once possessed, the vessel's soul is thrown into a mental prison, Forced to Watch as its body attacks its friends. Returning years later by hijacking the Lucky Block Staff, the Orb sends dozens of minions to die in an attempt to kill the Stick Gang, before trying to trap them in bedrock cages for eternity, showing for a second time that it's a heartless entity that takes pride in its actions.
- Continuity Lock-Out: Alan Becker doesn't want this trope to happen, hence there are rarely any direct crossovers between AvA and AvM besides some minor Continuity Cameos. It's because of this that TSC didn't use his Super Mode against King Orange in AvM S3, and why Yellow won't use the command staff in AvA S3. That said, while this has been successfully avoided for AvA and AvM, it did happen with Animation vs. League of Legends, which many fans skipped assuming it to be a disconnected one-off episode, but it actually continues Purple's plot from AvM Season 1, and without watching it, Purple being on good terms with the Stick Gang at the start of AvM Season 3 makes no sense.
- Crosses the Line Twice:
- The Second Coming accidentally killing Green in "PvP"? Sad and tragic. The Second Coming and Blue killing Green again when he pops out of his coffin, mistaking him for a zombie? Hilarious!
- One in "The Showdown": It's the Darkest Hour, the Fighting Stick Figures are dead, the Animator is locked out, the Chosen One is too tired to fight, the Second Coming is suffering from Body Horror and the Dark Lord is ready to start his invasion of the Internet... but the Twitch chat keeps spamming F's to pay respects.
- In "Bob Is Always There", the reveal that Green had Bob Buried Alive underneath the desktop, only to show a montage of Bob sitting down there for months to years while old-timey music plays, is so horrifying that it loops around to being hilarious in the worst way possible.
- In "Piggie Love", Red's pig breeds with his new wife right in front of the audience at their wedding with the only thing shown being the stick figures' horrified reactions.
- The sheer jackassery Green pulls off in the Influencer Arc is offensive and incredibly mean-spirited — such as spitefully editing Red out of his videos to get the attention, or dumping the Stick Gang into lava — but is also so mean-spirited it's actually hilarious.
- Cry for the Devil:
- The Dark Lord, despite being an unrepentant monster in canon who seemingly wanted to destroy the internet For the Evulz, was sympathized with by many fans due to his backstory of being created to destroy the Chosen One and subsequently left to die by his creator. Add on the fact that he seemed to be genuinely excited at showing the Chosen One his ViraBot plans before their falling out and you have yourself a character who, despite how unmistakably evil he is, has managed to gain quite a large audience of sympathizers who wish he was brought back so he can redeem himself and become part of the Stick Gang.
- King Orange is a ruthless Omnicidal Maniac who abused and discarded his minions, but it's very hard to not feel bad for him once you see his backstory and realize he's a traumatized father lashing out at the world for having to watch his own son die.
- Designated Hero: Despite him technically being the antagonist of the episode, you are clearly supposed to side with the Silverfish in "Note Block Concert", with his antics being played for comedy and karma towards Green for being selfish. This is despite the fact the Silverfish had interrupted Green's concert after it already begun, making Green completely justified in not wanting it to botch it, publicly humiliated and nearly killed him in front of an audience of hundreds; worse, it was apparently so amazing that it got the Stick Gang to ditch Green's plans in favor of tagging along to the Silverfish's antics, and it crushing Green under a giant silverfish statue while getting all the applause and love of the crowd was meant to be seen as a good ending. The episode tries so hard to make you side with the Silverfish it's essentially wordless Character Shilling, but all it did was make a large portion of the fanbase hate the episode for needlessly torturing Green, turning the Stick Gang into unsympathetic assholes and letting the Silverfish get away scott-free.
- Draco in Leather Pants:
- The Dark Lord has been hit with a massive wave of DILP treatment ever since the fandom started blowing up. Despite being a rather straight-forward case of The Irredeemable Exception in canon, a one-dimensional Omnicidal Maniac with no care for anyone, many fans interpret him in a more positive light. If you've been in the fandom long enough, you should probably be familiar with these portrayals of the Dark Lord:
- That he did genuinely see the Chosen One as a friend (in some cases more) and their big fight in Season 2 was A Tragedy of Impulsiveness rather than him genuinely throwing away his only friend to pursue more destruction, that the ViraBot plan was an attempt to impress him, and that if he survived "The Showdown", he'd regret what he's done and miss TCO. Nothing supports this concept in canon, where the Dark Lord simply attacks the Chosen One shortly after their disagreement. In fact, the Dark Lord's wristband makes him immune to TCO's laser eyes, TCO's body language in AvA 11 implies he stopped being comfortable around TDL ever since his Heel Realization (which was in 2011, just a few weeks to a little over a month since they first met), and "Beta" briefly shows what appears to be TDL guiltripping TCO into letting him blow up his build (looking away/down on the floor sad and dejected, causing TCO to give in and let him destroy it); all of this leans into the idea that the Dark Lord and the Chosen One were never all that close, their fallout beginning shortly after they met, with TDL being a toxic friend who ignored what TCO wanted in favor of his own goals of senseless carnage and even prepared a weapon just in case he has to take care of him.
- Redemption fics where TDL comes back, makes up with TCO and befriends the Stick Gang are very common scenarios, whether it's because of AvA Season 2 never happening/ending differently, or him just surviving it.
- Some fans claim that the Dark Lord's lust for destruction is Alan's fault, as he gave him the programming to destroy and it influences his thoughts and actions, making him a victim of his own body and Alan himself. Not only was it shown numerous times that AI can ignore its programming (many hostile mobs stop being hostile and outright befriend the protagonists), but the Dark Lord's mission explicitly states to destroy the Chosen One, not to just spread destruction in general, meaning that the mission Alan gave him should have zero influence over him.
- It's a common request to see the Dark Lord return in Season 3 to rescue the Chosen One from Rocket Corp's clutches, based on the idea he does care for him deep down, which ended up Hilarious in Hindsight once he came back as an antagonist instead. This more sympathetic portrayal of TDL has also developed into bashing on other characters, such as accusing the Chosen One of "betraying" the Dark Lord despite TDL being the one who tried to murder him first.
- Purple and King Orange are complex villains who pull Heel Face Turns, but some fans take it even further than in canon and present them as even more sympathetic then the series itself shows. There have been several cases of fans claiming neither were ever villains, but just misunderstood; this is especially the case for Purple, who never did anything as blatantly heinous on-screen as King launching a vortex at the world.
- Due to his ambiguous nature as a character, Navy is somehow hit with both this and Ron the Death Eater. His more positive interpretations portray him as a father who genuinely tried to help Purple by training him into a warrior, and felt regret after abandoning his family, being portrayed as heartbroken by Pink's death. This portrayal grew more popular following Animator vs. Animation 11, where he makes a brief cameo where he and his family are caught in the middle of the Newgrounds attack, thus causing many to portray him as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who tried to train up Purple so he can protect himself in the future.
- Victim has been thrown into this trope as hard as the Dark Lord following his origins episode. Despite him still being a cold-blooded torturer who views his former employees as cowards for not supporting him and is willing to arrest and interrogate the innocent the Stick Gang on the assumption that they're in cahoots with the Chosen One despite them not knowing what he did, many fans began seeing him as a full-on Hero Antagonist who deserves to win and shouldn't be punished for his actions, ignoring the Gray-and-Grey Morality of the situation.
- You'll find many people trying to justify the Mercenaries or even say they're not evil to begin with. While they are mysterious characters, it often boils down to "they can't be evil if they're Just Following Orders", or "The Chosen One had it coming due to being a terrorist", ignoring how Ballista and Primal are both enjoying their job, and even Agent toys with his targets instead of just immediately pausing them. Additionally, while TCO is an internet terrorist, there is currently zero proof the mercs are hunting after him due to a genuine desire for justice, it being more of an Evil vs. Evil conflict.
- Following the release of "Victim", Agent has been hit by this trope as hard as Victim himself due to them sharing the same backstory and reason for hunting down the Chosen One, and the other mercs have also gotten a boost in this reputation by proxy.
- The Dark Lord has been hit with a massive wave of DILP treatment ever since the fandom started blowing up. Despite being a rather straight-forward case of The Irredeemable Exception in canon, a one-dimensional Omnicidal Maniac with no care for anyone, many fans interpret him in a more positive light. If you've been in the fandom long enough, you should probably be familiar with these portrayals of the Dark Lord:
- Diagnosed by the Audience
- Due to his hyperactivity, impulsiveness, and fixation on particular subjects such as animals, it is not uncommon to see people interpreting Red as having ADHD, this is even Lampshaded by Alan himself in his 30 million subscriber Q&A where he heavily implied Red to have it, making this a possible Ascended Fanon.
- The Chosen One's aloof, almost introverted nature alongside his apparent lack of ability to express himself properly has led some to interpret him as being on the autism spectrum.
- Easily Forgiven: A recurring trope in the series: if a villain ever redeems themself, safely expect it to be a very smooth transition where there are no hard feelings between them and the Stick Gang, regardless of how bad their actions were.
- After Purple left Blue and Green to die, put his village in danger and tried to get revenge on the whole Stick Gang, once the others beat him in a game of League of Legends, they willingly invite him to join for round two purely to sympathizing with his loneliness. When he betrays them for the third time, they all yet again forgive him; Green because he found out about his Freudian Excuse, the others purely because their pet pig decided he's friendly. Mind you, this is after Purple actively helped an Omnicidal Maniac. Even if he later helped them take down King Orange and briefly gave up his life in the process, they really should be thinking twice about befriending Purple by this point (excluding Green, who at least was there for Purple to confess he's making a permanent redemption; the others weren't)note .
- Herobrine haunted Red's body while he was aware of his surroundings and used it to brutally beat up and try to murder the Stick Gang, but when he returns in AvM Season 3, there is no hard feelings and he's portrayed as a hero trying to stop King Orange.
- King Orange might be the most extreme version of this yet. Neither the sticks or any of the Minecraft residents seem to hold much against him after his redemption, seeing fit to see him return home with Purple. The Second Coming even pulls him up from his Pose of Supplication and shakes his hand to show there are no hard feelings. Although Blue and Yellow do briefly express some lingering resent, that's before King Orange decides to revive the Titan Ravagers he deleted and giving his staff to Yellow. Mind you, none of them know about his past and motives, so from their perspective this Dark Lord-level threat just randomly killed himself trying to save the person he was in the middle of killing, and then started apologizing after revival, and they still forgave him.
- Happens to all the Filler Villains of the Animation vs. [x] spin-offs, excluding YouTube. Ethan, despite being racist against sticks, is easily forgiven once he accepts defeat and that TSC is worthy of the champion title. Mario is befriended by TSC inviting him to play original levels made by the Stick Gang. After discovering that Q*bert had a hungry family, Yellow uses his computer to give them a lifetime supply of Pac-Man fruit and everyone, including the arcade characters he brainwashed into serving him, forgave him.
- After everything Green did throughout the Influencer Arc for the sake of internet fame, including dumping his friends into a pool of lava for a prank, the rest of the Stick Gang immediately forgave him in "Burnout" after he saved them and even gave him a Group Hug. While it is true thay Green is their years-long friend, this should've made his sudden turn for the worse hurt even more and harder to forgive rather than the opposite.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Victim, while only appearing in the pilot episode, is loved by the fanbase for being the first stick figure, with many imagining what his return would be like. He officially left this area as of "Wanted", being the Arc Villain of the third season.
- The unnamed stick figure from the Kickstarter campaign video for IV - christened "Kickstarter" by the fanbase - is also surprisingly popular, seemingly because of how strong they are. Many fans wish to see them in the series, despite them being non-canon and dead.
- Pink and Gold - Purple's mom and King Orange's son, respectively - have more or less taken Victim's spot as "one-shot, barely on-screen characters who quickly die but are still beloved by the fans", due to being genuinely nice and meeting tragic ends. Many works portray them sticking around as ghosts, watching over their still-living family while more or less adopting each other the same way King Orange did to Purple.
- The Corn Dog Guy is an irrelevant gag character that only appeared in two less-than-a-minute long shorts, and yet, through the power of memes, he got an entire fanbase and won second place in the popularity poll
, with seven thousand votes, behind only the Second Coming.
- Epileptic Trees:
- While it was largely considered a Captain Obvious Reveal, until "The Box" came out a section of the fanbase tried to argue the mysterious gray-colored stick figure at the end of "Wanted" is not Victim, but the Dark Lord, whose color changed due to being burned and charred by the Second Coming's laser eyes. This theory was officially debunked the next episode and died out.
- Near the beginning of AvA 11, during the scene where the Shepherd and Silly Steven were uploaded onto Newgrounds, one can very briefly see a silver pictogram stick figure, just like Hazard, as the icon for a fan-made music video for Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams". Once fans looked it up on Newgrounds and couldn't find it, some began to speculate that this split-second cameo is actually a teaser for Hazard's backstory; more specifically, that the lyrics of Green Day's song are meant to tie into his Start of Darkness, which will include Hazard waking up in Newgrounds after TCO and TDL's massacre, and finding its destroyed remains following the carnage, realizing something bad happened and feeling the need to avenge the lives lost ("I walk this empty street" / "On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams" / "Where the city sleeps" / "I'm the only one, and I walk alone").
- Despite there being zero current evidence for the character existing in Beckerverse canon, many fans speculate that the mastermind behind the Glitch Entity that killed Gold from Seasons 3 and 5 of AvM is none other than Null, a Minecraft creepypasta often presented as Herobrine's Arch-Enemy and evil(er) counterpart.
- Evil Is Cool: Most villains tend to be too cool (or in some cases too bland) to be hated, but a special mention goes out to these ones:
- The Chosen One is, despite rampaging through Alan's computer and then numerous websites, still extremely awesome due to his powers and stylish fights. He's only been getting more impressive after his Heel–Face Turn.
- The Dark Lord is a complete Ax-Crazy Omnicidal Maniac, but due to his awesome fight scenes and interesting powers, he has a large fanbase that loves him. His grand return in AvA 12 shows him as a charismatic, Faux Affably Evil figure that's a lot of fun to watch even when doing something as simple as talking to his new ally.
- King Orange is another Omnicidal Maniac, but he's such a good, powerful, threatening and successful villain that you'll spend most of Season 3 admiring him. His tragedy did nothing but help, to the point some fans admit to Rooting for the Empire.
- The Witch, despite being a one shot character, is incredibly awesome due to her badass fighting skills down to her sword fighting as well as her potion arsenal.
- The Orb evolved into this status in "Lucky Block Staff", being one of the most unique and powerful antagonists in the series with its One-Winged Angel form.
- Victim is a cruel torturer with a master plan at revenge, but also a genius Badass Normal with a massive amount of influence and technology at his disposal, meaning he's still a rather cool threat rather than a hateable one. After the Wham Episode that was Animator vs. Animation 11, many view him as an outright Hero Antagonist.
- Agent and the Mercenaries are four, badass fighters who have quickly become popular in the fanbase thanks to their Non-Standard Character Design. This was actually the Intended Audience Reaction with Agent, the group's leader, as confirmed by Alan Becker.DJ: (laughs) The guy with the glasses.Alan: (laughs back) Yeah! He-he looks- he's supposed to look cool, okay?
- Fan-Preferred Couple:
- A platonic example, though it's worth to note there are also romantic takes on their relationships: While Green and the Second Coming are officially considered the closest to each other, many fans (especially on Tumblr) prefer to see Red as TSC's Best Friend due to the events of "Lush Caves" and their Straight Man and Wise Guy dynamic, with Green instead being the closest to Purple.
- Victim/Agent continued to have some people shipping it even after Victim was revealed to have a canon Love Interest in the form of Mitsi.
- Fanfic Fuel:
- Anything that is either installed on or connected to Alan's computer has an entire world inside of it with unique inhabitants, rules and challenges. It's practically like Wreck-It Ralph, when one imagines what the personalities of the different programs or the Player Character of the games are and how the stick figures interact with them.
- Alternatively, the items the stick figures may find in the games are actually capable of changing their abilities, as shown in "Animation vs League of Legends" and "Animation vs. Super Mario Bros.". Anything that the stickfigures haven't touched yet is worthy of speculation. Imagine the stick figures wearing masks that turn them into different Hyrule races, for example.
- While "Villagers" already confirmed the presence of stick figures on computers apart from Alan's, "Lush Caves" implies that stick figures can travel to computers that don't have pre-existing stick figures on them, and Minecraft works as a method of travel between them. Imagine if the stick figures went on a Multiplayer server or Realms world and visited some of the (probably very confused) players.
- Fandom-Specific Plot:
- The idea of one of the Stick Gang members turning evil is quite popular. Following the massive humiliation he suffered in "Note Block Concert", which was the peak of his Butt-Monkey tendencies, Green has more or less became the most popular subject for these stories, snapping after believing his friends don't care about his suffering. Him becoming an asshole in the Influencer Arc, however temporarily, has also caused this concept to grow more popular.
- Even the fics where he doesn't turn evil have Green cut ties with the Stick Gang following "Note Block Concert". This often involves bashing on the sticks for siding with the silverfish and Green moving in to live with Purple and King. His and Purple's relationship evolving into romance is optional, but sometimes happens.
- Due to his popularity in the fanbase, it's common to make what-if concepts where the Dark Lord somehow returns following "The Showdown", whether it's for revenge or to make up and apologize to the Chosen One for his actions. The former is officially canon as of "Hacker".
- The idea of one of the Stick Gang members turning evil is quite popular. Following the massive humiliation he suffered in "Note Block Concert", which was the peak of his Butt-Monkey tendencies, Green has more or less became the most popular subject for these stories, snapping after believing his friends don't care about his suffering. Him becoming an asshole in the Influencer Arc, however temporarily, has also caused this concept to grow more popular.
- Foe Yay Shipping: ChoDark, the ship between the Chosen One and the Dark Lord, is one of the most popular ships in the fandom despite the fact that the two are very much enemies in canon. This tends to be due to the fact that they had been close friends — hell, each other's only friends — before the Chosen One ended up pulling a Heel–Face Turn, leading the two to be at odds with each other. Many fan works often depict a tragic romance between the two where they have feelings for each other, but can never express it due to the Dark Lord's presumed death and their conflicting morals, and even more fan works depict the Dark Lord redeeming and getting together with the Chosen One. Could end up falling into Squick assuming you believe that they are brothers.
- Friendly Fandoms:
- A lot of fans also enjoy other animations and series based off of Newgrounds, especially after characters from other Newgrounds animations started making cameos.
- The fanbase tends to be on good terms with fans of The Amazing Digital Circus, and there's a decent amount of overlap between the two.
- Genius Bonus: The entire Animation vs. Education subseries is one for anyone who is studying or has studied the subjects the videos are based about. Give or take a few unpleasant memories.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The series has a decently-sized international audience, due to the lack of any sort of dialogue bypassing language barriers. This was more or less exploited by the creator, Alan, as he wanted people around the world to enjoy the series without being forced to know English. There are episodes which feature text dialogue, but this isn't used often and is often limited to one or two scenes when it does get used.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- In the second and third installments, the Chosen One fights and kills numerous desktop aps. In the years after, half of those have been officially shut down, this "killing them off" in real life and making their deaths completely permanent in-universe. AIM and Microsoft Movie Maker were discontinued in 2017, Yahoo! Messenger in 2018, Skype in 2025, Internet Explorer was replaced by Microsoft Edge in 2015, but worst of all, Orbit was revealed to be malware in 2013.
- For those who were agreeing with the Take That! against the annoying ads in Animation vs. YouTube, at least the stick figures and their adversary only had to deal with one skippable ad every few videos. The video has become a product of its time solely due to this, since viewers now have to deal with back-to-back ads (with some reporting getting up to eight unskippable ads in a row) and ads with blatantly explicit content.
- Once we learn about Purple's abandonment issues in "Note Block Universe", him taking it so personally when Green and Blue start handing out materials to his villagers takes on a more tragic meaning.
- "The Flashback" reveals that TCO and TDL escaped Alan's computer at the end of III and rampaged across the internet, with Newgrounds being among the websites attacked. Five real-life years later, it is revealed in "Victim" that said attack on Newgrounds happened to also be responsible for killing Mitsi as TCO killed her with a fireball, resulting in the titular character spiraling into villainy which caused the events of Season 3.
- He's Just Hiding:
- It's a popular belief in the fanbase that the Dark Lord survived at the end of "The Showdown". It's mainly because of him being so powerful many fans doubt that could've been enough to finish him off, Alan's Shrug of God towards this question, the other hollow-heads (The Chosen One, the Second Coming) resisting outright deletion and thus creating the concept that they're completely unkillable, and quite frankly being way too popular in the fanbase for fans to accept that he might be gone. It doesn't help that if you look closely, the Second Coming's laser eyes didn't stop at the mountain, leading fans to think that the Dark Lord was blasted far behind the mountain, and didn't die in the explosion.
- As of Animator vs. Animation 12, he is officially back in all his glory.
- Despite Word of God explicitly confirming his fate, some fans believe Gold survived the Minecraft simulation crashing. This belief blew up in popularity following the release of "Hardcore Manhunt", where it seems like the Glitch Entity that took his life has returned, causing a huge part of the fandom to speculate that Gold will return in some fashion; either as a hero trying to stop it, a Brainwashed and Crazy vessel, or perhaps its controller.
- It's been a common prediction by the fanbase that the Second Coming will use his superpowers - which control the Green Life Particles and have been shown to resurrect the dead - to bring back Mitsi from the dead, thus allowing Victim to have a Heel–Face Turn and move on.
- It's a popular belief in the fanbase that the Dark Lord survived at the end of "The Showdown". It's mainly because of him being so powerful many fans doubt that could've been enough to finish him off, Alan's Shrug of God towards this question, the other hollow-heads (The Chosen One, the Second Coming) resisting outright deletion and thus creating the concept that they're completely unkillable, and quite frankly being way too popular in the fanbase for fans to accept that he might be gone. It doesn't help that if you look closely, the Second Coming's laser eyes didn't stop at the mountain, leading fans to think that the Dark Lord was blasted far behind the mountain, and didn't die in the explosion.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In "Potions", a pig accidentally gains superpowers after drinking every single potion possible and becomes a terrifying fighter. Come Super Smash Bros. Ultimate following the inclusion of Minecraft, you can get a Mii Costume of a Minecraft Pig for the Mii Brawler who fights in a very similar manner.
- In Blue's New Superpower, one of the gags of Blue scattering dollar bills to grow trees out of has them driving over the ocean. Two years after TeamTrees, the next fundraiser ended up being TeamSeas, with the goal of cleaning plastic out of the ocean.
- "The Warden" has the Second Coming calm down the Warden by playing it a familiar song. In The Secrets Of Minecraft: How We're Making The Warden
, the Narrator manages to stop the Warden from attacking him by playing a song on his guitar.- Once the Warden was officially released, players discovered that it cannot be tamed- but it can be distracted by noise-generating redstone machines, including a jukebox playing a music disk.
- In the AvG Reaction video for "The Piglin War", DJ wonders out loud if Blue sprinkles Nether wart in his friends' food when he cooks for them, which Alan doesn't answer. In the Denouement of "The King", Blue does sprinkle Nether Wart on the feast he makes for his friends, but the portions his friends pick up don't have any Nether Wart on them, implying he only sprinkled it on his helping and the answer to DJ's question is no. The answer is confirmed to be No in "The Chef", as when Blue is making ramen for his friends, Nether Wart is nowhere to be seen.
- In "The Roller Coaster", the titular coaster ends with the minecarts arching through rings of fire to land next to Yellow... or at least that was the idea. Instead, the minecarts obey the Minecraft laws of physics and just drop off the edge. 6 years and 7 months later, Snapshot 24w33a made it so that minecarts actually do keep their diagonal momentum as they leave a diagonal slope, meaning Yellow's plan could've worked.
- "The Roller Coaster" and its follow up, "Cave Spider Roller Coaster", both feature an underground that is significantly bigger than that of vanilla Minecraft, making the titular rides impossible to recreate without mods. Both shorts also came out before Mojang announced the 1.17/1.18 Caves and Cliffs update, which massively increased the height of the vanilla Overworld, bringing the Sticks' adventures somewhat more in compliance with reality.
- The "My Ghast Friend" short features Yellow bonding with a Ghast. Another instance of a friendly Ghast appears in "Lucky Block Staff" where a giant Ghast is spawned as a platform and can make a happy face. Minecraft LIVE on March 2025 revealed a friendly variant of Ghast called the "Happy Ghast," which can be raised by hydrating a Dried Ghast block with water, eventually turning it into a Ghastling that eventually grows into a Happy Ghast after given enough time (which can be sped up by feeding it snowballs). You're also able to ride a Happy Ghast by equipping it with a harness, another similarity with the AvM series where the sticks have ridden Ghasts before.
- Almost immediately after the release of "Hacker", Alan's twitter account got hacked. This wasn't unnoticed by the fanbase, who quickly made memes and drawings about Victim/H4CK3R and the Dark Lord being responsible for the attack to mess with Alan shortly after the two team up at the end of the episode.
- I Knew It!:
- After the end of "The Virus" showed that the Chosen One survived, many fans correctly guessed that the Dark Lord is also alive.
- Several details about Victim's origin story were predicted before Animator vs. Animation 11 came out. This includes him having a bigger reason for hating the Animator besides AvA 1 (which was also correctly predicted to be a kill-and-resurrect loop after a comment Alan made in the reaction video for AvA Season 1note ), there being a in-universe reason for his change of color, Agent being a close employee rather than a hired gun, him being affected by TCO and TDL's internet rampage and having a personal grudge against the former, and that the Mitsi character seen in a teaser for AvA 11 would be his love interest (guessed purely on the fact she was a female character presumably important to Victim's story).
- Many fans correctly guessed that the Dark Lord would return eventually following "The Showdown".
- Informed Wrongness: Green is seen by the narrative as deserving of his punishment in "Note Block Concert", because he selfishly refused to let the Silverfish join the titular concert, kicked it away as it was leaving, and was pissed at his friends for enjoying themselves instead of following his script for classical music, even after it was shown the audience preferred the silverfish's music. However, the Silverfish asked to join the concert after it had already begun, meaning there was no spot for it, it was leaving at a snail's pace seemingly to intentionally anger Green, and Green is more than justified at being angry at his friends for siding with the guy that's humiliating him. Not to mention, it probably took a lot of time for Green to set up the whole concert, hire dozens of villagers and invite hundreds of mobs, both strangers and personal friends, just for it to all be ruined as he's made a fool in front of them all. Even if you could argue he deserved some punishment for being rude to the Silverfish, the punishment can be easily seen as far too extreme.
- It's the Same, So It Sucks:
- While Victim's backstory is mostly put in high regard, he has faced some criticism that he's just being a copy of King Orange: Both are Badass Normals who rely on self-made technology to get revenge on someone/something they believe is responsible for the death of their loved one, who were shown to be fully good people before their Freudian Excuse send them tumbling off the edge.
- Animation vs. Coding has received criticism for its plot being just a less exciting version of Animation vs. Math. A stick figure (TSC for vs. Math, Yellow for vs. Coding) wakes up in a mysterious, pitch-black dimension where they educate themselves on the titular subject, but accidentally anger the dog-like Filler Villain who just wants to be left in piece (Euler's Identity for vs. Math, the Laptop for vs. Coding), causing the two to engage in battle. After the villain is almost killed (TSC almost killing Euler in battle; the Laptop nuking itself in a tantrum), the protagonist saves their life and the two make amends. What's worse is that, as described beforehand, it's a less exciting version; TSC actively fought back against Euler and got numerous cool moments to show off, but Yellow, who's already Out of Focus, spends the whole episode running away and does little to nothing to fight back.
- Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Major villains such as the Dark Lord and King Orange, and even the minor ones like the Witch and the Orb, are found to be way more likeable because of their awesome soundtracks and great skills, achieving amazing things larger than life. Other characters, on the other hand, are just too despicable to admire:
- The students of Monster School are complete assholes to Red as they make it a living hell for him, from sabotaging Red in Herobrine's classes, pretending to help him, disregarding Red despite being helpful to them, and making fun of him for failing. Though he did gain the respect of Skellington, Endie, and Spider, everyone else worked together to focus more on beating up Red for hindering them rather than finishing the final test. Doesn't help that Herobrine did not do anything to reprimand them.note
- Navy a good contender for the most hated character in the series, due to his abusive treatment of his son as a parent since he only cared about training him to be a good fighter, almost hit his wife for protecting their own child, and left his family which left his now ex-wife to die from an illness. Not only was it realistic, but also sad and rage-inducing due to Purple being a very likeable and sympathetic character.
- The fans that don't like Bob hate him for this very reason: despite being a mere asshole, his bullying of Green is deemed extremely hate-inducing, and it didn't help that TSC did not even notice and scolded Green for retaliating against Bob. This eventually led to Green burying him under the taskbar.
- Similarly to Bob, detractors of the Silverfish will dislike him for publicly making a fool out of Green for a minor reason while getting away with it due to being presented as "the good guy" in the situation.
- Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of academic scholars became intrigued in Alan Becker's YouTube channel not by the story arcs or the video game content, which is what most of Alan's channel comprises of, but by the Animation vs. Education series which features a combination of visual effects and educational content.
- Karmic Overkill:
- While Green being the Butt-Monkey is generally liked by the audience, there's a portion of the fanbase that really disliked the Bob episodes, as they believe the humililation is going too far and is just unfunny, especially with how the Second Coming completely ignored Bob's bullying in the first Bob short, resulting in Green being treated as the aggressor. This especially picked up after "Note Block Concert", as many fans thought being humiliated in front of hundreds and having your concert ruined while your friends do nothing to help is just too much, especially since Green isn't even a bad person and at worst just arrogant.
- On the opposite end of the spectrum, some believe Green's punishment to Bob - throwing him into a pit where he's trapped for years on end - was way to harsh of a punishment for who was more or less a simple bully, especially with how worse villains - such as the Dark Lord or the Witch - got far less severe ends, this part of the fanbase claiming it made Green Unintentionally Unsympathetic.
- Like You Would Really Do It: No way in hell any member of the Stick Gang dies. They always get saved last second or revived.
- Love to Hate:
- The Dark Lord is a sheer badass who is also a Ax-Crazy Omnicidal Maniac who offed the Fighting Stick Figures temporarily. Whenever he's not given Draco in Leather Pants treatment, many fans just enjoy his vileness.
- King Orange is an Omnicidal Maniac capable of Reality Warper abilities and is a Bad Boss who ditched Purple once he has the Game Icon, but is still a complete badass who's fight with the Second Coming in "The Ultimate Weapon" is one of the best moments in the series. Oh, and he can tank multiple hits from the Warden. With every appearance of his, he got more fans. He offically leaves this area once his Tragic Backstory was revealed in "The King".
- Memetic Badass:
- Corn Dog Guy, for whatever reason, was deemed the World's Strongest Man capable of killing any character in the series while massively holding back. Given the possibility he survived TCO and TDL's rampage off-screen, this might be Ascended Fanon to some degreee.
- Those more fond of Bob tend to see him as this, him being able to beat up everyone.
- Memetic Loser:
- Following "The Box", a certain portion of the fanbase started mocking Victim due to cheating during his fight with the Chosen One, portraying him as an extremely weak loser who needs to be boosted by the Box and/or given support by Agent to stand a fighting chance.
- With the Chosen One's Humiliation Conga Line getting worse with every episode of Season 3, fans have started joking about the real life Alan Becker despising him. TCO has also been called "weak", "stupid" and "Potential Man" for having an intense amount of superpowers at his disposal, yet barely ever using most of them, allowing opponents to get the upper hand over him.
- Yellow entered this situation after he got the staff. Despite the immense power he wields and even Becker himself stating he's very dangerous, Yellow... never actually does anything impressive with the staff. In fact, he's the most Out of Focus member of the Stick Gang, and in Animation vs. Coding he spends the episode running away for his life. He's kidnapped by Agent in "The Box", causing many fans to think he's going to have a bigger role in the Rocket Corp story arc, only for "Hacker" to have Agent scan his memories and then leave him in the Box, putting him out of the episode. The sheer lack of love Yellow's been getting has not went unnoticed by neither the fans or even the AB crew, with Alan claiming he's planning to give Yellow more to do in the future. Once Season 5 started, Yellow got a brief montage of showing off with the staff... before it's quickly destroyed by the Corruption, meaning the years worth of potential feats and accomplishments ultimately ammounted to nothing.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Stickman anime.Explanation
- Technoblade.Explanation
- Yo, where can I get that anti-virus?Explanation
- Fanon Victim vs. Canon VictimExplanation (major spoilers!)
- The Chosen One getting whipped. Explanation (major spoilers!)
- The Green Villain Arc is real!!Explanation
- Groomer Green / I Worked For Green: He's A Fraud Explanation
- Eat the grass, Green. Explanation
- "I miss my wife, Chosen. I miss her a lot." Explanation (major spoilers!)
- Alan the Misogynist / All Women Die Explanation (major spoilers!)
- NO ONE cares about you Explanation (major spoilers!)
- Mis-blamed: Alan Becker received some shade from people who didn't enjoy "Note Block Concert", even though he admitted he did basically nothing besides approving the idea, with the whole story and action being directed by team member Skim.
- Misaimed Fandom:
- A lot of fans feel like "Note Block Concert" is a pointless "Torturing Green" episode for the sake of tormenting him, when it was meant to be giving him karma for his arrogant behavior, especially with how he kicked the Silverfish when it was already leaving, although this was after it had forced itself onto the piano despite being turned down, and it was purposefully leaving at a snail's pace.
- After the release of "Victim", a large portion of the fanbase declared that the titular character, Agent and the Mercenaries are all the true good guys who deserve their victory, while the Animator and the Chosen One are the true villains who should die or otherwise be punished for their actions. While it's an easy assumption to make off this episode alone, many fans are forgetting the Central Theme of the season is that nothing is like what it seems, and you need to see the full picture, meaning it's too early to make decisions with four episodes still left; just one episode ago, Victim looked like a sadistic torturer. It's worth to note that King Orange's story arc already showed how Becker views "revenge arcs", meaning it's unlikely that Victim will be seen as the good guy for chasing vengeance for over a decade; especially since he's still the antagonist you're supposed to side against.
- Moe: The stickmen are surprisingly adorable with faces in the aptly named "Faces"
. Special mention to Red joyfully realizing his cat features, including a Playful Cat Smile. - Moral Event Horizon:
- The Dark Lord crossed it when he started a massive massacre across the Internet, claiming countless lives in his sadism. His actions resulted in the death of Victim's lover, Mitsi.
- The Killer Bunny crossed it somewhere before "TNT Land" by murdering and eating fellow rabbits even to the point of rigging the entire land with TNT to prevent The Second Coming from escaping.
- The Corruption, assuming it's sentient enough to be called actively malicious and evil, crossed it when it killed Gold, beginning King Orange's villainy and almost destroying Minecraft as a result.
- More Popular Spin-Off: AvM as a whole dominated the host channel in later years, to the extent that many newer viewers have no idea it was a originally a spin-off for AvA and if they did, it would be ignored because it doesn't have Minecraft content.
- Narm: Alan actually managed to avoid this while producing "Bedwars". The original skin Sarlok_ had (a blue fuzzy creature) felt too cute to be a proper antagonist, so it was replaced with the more serious one belonging to the user Player4.
- Narm Charm:
- Despite the deep story and intense moments the series can have, it's still ultimately about stick figures, with over half the series being about them inside Minecraft, with numerous cameos from internet fads and trends. This does not weaken the enjoyment of the series in any way, and can in fact improve it due to how ridiculuous things can get.
- Some of the methods Alan used to torture Victim - throwing him down the stairs, running him over with a truck or blowing him up with fireworks - lean into Black Comedy territory. However, the scene is so serious you're likely to miss it, and on a in-universe level it shows how indifferent Alan was to Victim's suffering if he started using cartoonish methods to torment him just so he could get some entertainment out of it.
- No Permanence, No Stakes: The fact Status Quo Is God and few villains actually leave any permanent marks onto the series makes it a bit hard to actually feel threatened by the antagonists and worried for the heroes. Not only is the Stick Gang always going to come out alive, not even the supporting cast seems to be in any danger; the AvM Season 3 finale "The King" makes sure to resurrect just about every single character in the season, including tertiary ones that had zero impact on the story such as the Witch, the gang's pet pig or even King's Piglin Brutes. What makes this worse is that the Alan Becker channel is running several different series — all of which take place in the same timeline, with the same cast of characters — at the same time, meaning that seeing ALANSPC, the Stick Gang and Animator alive and well in the Actual Shorts or AvM Shorts Season 4 effectively proves none of Rocket Corp's schemes in Season 3 of the main series will actually succeed and there is nothing to be worried about. Speaking of, the Dark Lord coming Back from the Dead and the series seemingly setting up the stage for Mitsi's resurrection in "Hacker" can give you the feeling that no one — not even the main villains or posthumous flashback characters — is actually in mortal danger at any point in time. This sentiment only continued when AvM Season 5 came out, as despite it seemingly putting the heroes in the mortal danger of Permadeath, just a week later an Actual Short came out showing the Stick Gang and Purple alive and well; meaning that unless this short is a prequel, all but one member (King) of the main cast is guaranteed to come out okay. The Corruption's return has also caused wild speculation that Gold will return, which has only added fuel to the "Alan can't kill off characters" fire.
- Older Than They Think:
- The AvM Shorts have attracted many new young viewers who don't know about the original Animator vs. Animation videos that came out years before these short episodes. As a result, those fans were confused when seeing Season 2 of the main series.
- In An Actual Short - New Wallpaper
, many people were surprised to see that Alan is a father when his daughter called him; but it's not the first time Alan has featured his young child before, as shown in this video
when he was developing his video, Animation vs. YouTube. - The Second Coming was not the first protagonist that's an orange stick figure and a skilled fighter Alan Becker made. A few months before the first ever Animator vs. Animation installment, Alan published Pink Army on Newgrounds which featured an unnamed non-hollowed orange stick figure fighting armies of pink stick figures.
- Animation vs. Pokémon for all its popularity of millions of views, was not the first video created by Alan Becker that was Pokémon related. A couple of years ago before that, Alan made a video that recorded himself witnessing a Slowpoke crossing a remote road.
- What was the first video game that was shown in the Animator vs. Animation franchise? If your guess is Minecraft due to Animation vs. Minecraft's huge surge in popularity alongside having a popular spin off series, then you'd be wrong. That honor goes to Microsoft's Solitaire and Minesweeper in Animator vs. Animation 3. Not only that, there're also brief appearances of a lot of other video games alongside the Minecraft mobile app from Animator vs. Animation 4 which include Flappy Bird, Doodle Jump, Candy Crush, 2048, Flow Free, Piano Titles, and Dots.
- One True Pairing: Many fans were on board with Victim/Mitsi as soon as the latter showed up in a teaser picture, and even moreso when Animator vs. Animation 11 came out on account of her design, her role in helping him heal, and her benevolent attitude. It helps that this is pretty much the first canonical couple in the series that's shown to be healthy, and a lot of care was put into Victim's story.
- One True Threesome: Those unwilling to let go of Victim/Agent while seeking to still acknowledge the canon pairing of Victim/Mitsi will often just make it a polyamorous relationship between the three.
- Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: Officially, there's no romance in the story aside from Navy/Pink and Victim/Mitsi, with everyone being Just Friends. Despite this, a good part of the fandom ships numerous characters together due to their dynamics. Some of the most popular ships include TSC/Green, TSC/Red, Blue/Yellow, Green/Purple, TCO/TDL and Victim/Agent, with Blue/Yellow specifically being seen as borderline canon by many. "Burnout" also has Green state that TSC is "the one who really opened up our world", and while that's true in a very literal way, it's also hard to take as something just platonic.
- Play-Along Meme:
- Since the "Influencer Arc" is about how Green Took a Level in Jerkass after he started a YouTube channel, fans treat Green like a real life YouTuber who's starting to engage in unethical behavior, calling him out for mistreating his friends, urging him to fix his mistakes, and other comments people typically make during YouTube drama.
- The AvM Short "Bedwars" had multiple players and real life streamers being confused or intrigued by the sudden appearance of the Stick Gang in Minecraft. Fans played along by treating the stick figures like they are unusual player skins, or accusing them of being hackers due to all the tactics they pull off that are impossible for normal players to do in Minecraft.
- Recurring Fanon Character:
- The Deserved One, a gray hollow-headed stick figure created by Alannote that possesses superpowers like TCO and TDL. In his canon lore, he was made by Alan after TDL rebelled against him, but ended up joining him and TCO as a Token Good Teammate.
- The Keeper, made by the same guy as the Deserved One, is a tall and purple Humanoid Abomination accidentally created by the Dark Lord. Many fans enjoy the character due to being a genuine menace and far Darker and Edgier than anything in canon.
- In the shipping area of the fandom, Jacob is an Enderman created specifically for the purpose of being paired with King Orange, seemingly purely because King and Endermen are the same height and the only Enderman with a personality in canon is too young for the king.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: In III, Clippy. The usually irritating animated paperclip assistant from Microsoft Office manages to give The Chosen One a good fight.
- Ron the Death Eater:
- Fans who give Draco in Leather Pants treatment to the Dark Lord sometimes demonize the Chosen One into having "betrayed" his friend. This is despite the fact TCO tried to talk down TDL from his choice, and merely threw him down on the floor while TDL hurled a fireball at him and tried to end his life, making it clear who was the aggressor here. There also claims that TCO was a bad friend who caused TDL to become Ax-Crazy and did nothing to stop him. Not only does nothing support the idea that website rampages were TCO's idea, but we already see in "The Flashback" what TDL would have done if TCO resisted. While TCO is obviously still a bad person who was an enabler via inaction, TDL's actions are his own and we can't pin anything he did onto the Chosen One. As of Animator vs. Animation 11, the Chosen One gained an even bigger hatedom after he seemingly killed Victim's lover Mitsi, with some fans wanting him dead and believing he deserved the torture he got from Victim.
- A lot of fans tend to give more attention to Alan's mistreatment of his creations and play it up as a far worse thing than canon implies for the sake of making the sticks into bigger woobies. When Season 3 showed Alan really did torment Victim far more seriously than anyone thought, with it being played for nightmare fuel, he gained a hatedom similar to the one TCO had, many viewing him as a villain who would deserve whatever Victim's endgoal is.
- Navy is both this and Draco in Leather Pants due to his ambiguous characterization. The more negative portrayals show him as a full-on abuser who treated Purple much worse than shown on-screen, often extending it to Pink (which does have some support in canon, as he did briefly raise his hand on her). In the worst cases, he is brought back as a fully villainous character and major antagonist.
- Those who really hate the Silverfish often make it even worse than he already is in canon, taking away the fact he's supposed to be a Karmic Trickster to make him a full-on jackass who humiliated Green out of his own arrogance.
- Rooting for the Empire:
- Alan and DJ discuss this in the reaction video for "The King", with them admitting that, from the point of view of someone who's going in blind with no context of previous episodes, King Orange would look like the hero due to his Freudian Excuse.
- Many fans started rooting for Victim after the release of Animator vs. Animation 11. Virtually everyone sympathizes with his immensely tragic past, which isn't surprising; but some view the Chosen One's Heel–Face Turn to be insufficient to truly atone for all he's done with the Dark Lord, especially the former's apparent killing of Mitsi. Even if the Chosen One's contributions to the campaign of destruction were dwarfed by that of the Dark Lord, he still enabled an awful lot of it, after all.
- Sacred Cow: The series is praised for its storytelling and especially its amazing animation, with criticism being rarely found and many people saying the series is flawless. It slightly started leaving this area in the 2020s as more people started giving constructive criticism about certain details - specifically the series' writing - but the vast majority of people still hold Animator vs. Animation in very high regard.
- Ships That Pass in the Night:
- In an attempt to give Purple a complete and happy family, there is a number of fanfics where King Orange meets Pink - something that never happened in canon due to her dying a long time ago - through whatever means the author came up with, and them falling in love.
- For whatever reason, King/Agent has a noticeable fanbase on places like Tumblr.
- Sophomore Slump:
- Out of the original trilogy, many could say AvA 2 is the weakest. AvA 1 is not only a solid and fun introduction to the series that was very unique and original when it first came out, it gains points purely for nostalgia. Meanwhile, AvA 3 is longer than the first two episodes combined, contains several fight scenes and introduces memorable characters (from mainstays like the Dark Lord to one-offs like Clippit), and has a shocking ending that changed the status quo forever and set up pretty much the rest of the series. By comparison, besides introducing the Chosen One, 2 doesn't actually do all that much. Tellingly, it has far less views on YouTube than its predecessor or successor.
- Season 2 is widely agreed to be the weakest part of the AvM series. Season 1 has far more memorable Slice of Life episodes (like "Potions", "PvP" and especially "Note Blocks") that it follows through with the series' first proper story arc, featuring Breakout Character Purple and an action-packed season finale that became not only Alan's most viewed video, but the most viewed Minecraft video on all of YouTube. Meanwhile, Season 3 pretty much speaks for itself with no elaboration needed. Even after that, Season 4 showed itself to be a far more superior filler season due to its episodes being more memorable despite being Slice of Life just like Season 2's.
- Special Effect Failure:
- When it comes to something/someone (like a character) superimposed over a screenshot, it looks fine... unless it's zoomed in, then the pixellated-like quality of the image is more obvious.
- In "The End", when the Ender Dragon and its baby return back to the End, one can notice the baby's tail "stuck" in the portal.
- Spiritual Successor:
- The post-Soft Reboot series relies a lot more on sentient digital beings exploring a Cyberspace world derived from modern-day pop culture fixtures such as popular videogames (Minecraft, League of Legends). Some viewers might be subtly reminded of Wreck-It Ralph by this, which released 3 years before the first AvM. Likewise, later entries in AvA might feel reminiscent of Ralph Breaks the Internet, for similarly exploring Internet websites as a digital cyberspace.
- Animation vs. Addiction is often considered to be one to Nuggets, another short, wordless animation that similarly shows a metaphor for addiction with the environment changing the further the video goes. The main difference is that Animation vs. Addiction also shows help in the form of a concerned friend, and that, even though it is difficult, one can heal from the addiction, so it is sometimes said to be the "good ending" to Nuggets.
- Spoiled by the Format:
- As part of the Influencer Arc, all of Green's videos started being uploaded onto his YouTube channel following the first episode, which is later shown off in the second episode, giving context of what's really going on behind the scenes, particularly how they contribute to Green's Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure with the gang. Green continues to upload videos after the second episode which show how he's coping with his isolation before he finally uploads a video announcing that he's taking a break after realizing how far he's fallen. On October 11, 2024, the Green Stick Figure channel uploaded all of the rejected clips that Green had thrown into the Recycle Bin. Notably, none of the videos have proper titles except for the blooper reel and the original version of the superhero video, which may imply that the videos were uploaded in a hurry. Thus, the format completely spoiled the third and final episode.
- A recurring issue is just how often the series spoils big twists with episode titles or thumbnails. King Orange was meant to be a big twist villain in "Parkour", but later thumbnails (hell, even the thumbnail for the AVG reaction video) have him front-and-center; this also applies to other plot twists in AvM Season 3, such as King creating evil clones of the Stick Gang's allies. Most egregiously, Victim being the new Arc Villain of AvA Season 3 was meant to be a huge twist, but is underselled when the third episode is casually called "Victim". Another particularly irritating example is "Hacker" spoiling the Dark Lord's return by showing a ViraBot on the thumbnail.
- "Hardcore Manhunt" puts the world of Minecraft into Hardcore Mode, seemingly putting our favorite characters in the danger of actually being Killed Off for Real. Just a week later, an Actual Short came out showing the Stick Gang and Purple alive and well, casually hanging out together; unless this short is a prequel, this seemingly confirms the main six are going to come out alive, and thus only King is in any danger of dying.
- Squick: The Stick Gang doing typical beach things on a beach that's more trash than sand, seemingly only mildly inconvenienced by it, in Animation vs Trash. Special mention to Red and Green playing catch in polluted water. Doubly so when they start selling snow cones to the generic grey stick figures and we see that children were brought to such a beach.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- Yellow's new Magic Staff following "The King" has had a wide variety of interesting things to do; the limitless potential of the Command Block that made Yellow all-powerful, or whatever he could do with other blocks. Alan even hyped up Yellow as being "very dangerous" with the staff in the reaction video for "Ultimate Minecart Race". The staff's potential is explored in "Lucky Block Staff", where numerous blocks are placed onto it... but it's not a Yellow episode, with him being a supporting protagonist despite it being his weapon and him being the Orb's original vessel back in Season 2, with Red instead being the episode's main stick figure. Besides that? Yellow never actually gets to use the staff in any meaningful way, with "Note Block Concert" briefly bringing it back to be used by Green and a one-shot character, meaning he's once again cheated out of what is supposed to be his signature weapon. Despite the vast hype and potential Yellow had with the Command Block Staff, it ended up completely squandered as Season 5 began with a brief montage of Yellow using it to make the gang's life easier as a final send-off before it's permanently destroyed by the Corruption in the very first episode, meaning he'll never get to showcase his power against a proper threat.
Alan Becker: "Well, I remember you (DJ Welch) said like, Yellow is one of your least favorites because he's too powerful with that staff... and now he doesn't have the staff!"- Many fans want the Dark Lord to appear again due to feeling he was wasted in AvA Season 2 due to its "Spectacle first, story second" theme. Compared to pretty much every other story-relevant stick figure - especially his successors King Orange and Victim - the Dark Lord is an incredibly Flat Character with no real depth, being just a Generic Doomsday Villain with no real motive or backstory besides For the Evulz, his friendship with the Chosen One immediately thrown away and seemingly dying too soon for any improvement. Fans yearn for his return in Season 3 so the story could expand on his character, broken friendship with the Chosen One, backstory of being abandoned by the Animator, and possibly even give him a Heel–Face Turn. Those fans had their wishes granted in "Hacker", where the Dark Lord returns with a much more lively, Psychopathic Manchild-slash-Faux Affably Evil personality.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Animation vs. Arcade Games features a fictional emulator named "Classic Arcade Game Emulator". This would have been the perfect opportunity to use MAME instead, an actual well-known emulator that specializes in arcade games, as all applications up to this point have been based in reality.
- Animator vs. Animation Season 2 - specifically "The Showdown" - is praised in the fanbase as one of the, if not the best entry in the series due to its amazing visuals, fights and ending... though note that "story" isn't listed here. Indeed, S2 doesn't have a big storyline compared to its successors, AvM Season 3 and AvA Season 3, with the huge majority of the screentime being focused on the fights, to the point one could see the whole "The Internet is in threat of destruction" premise as an Excuse Plot to see the Chosen One and the Dark Lord battle eachother. Some fans we could see more character-focused moments to explore TCO and TDL's broken friendship, or for the Second Coming to realize he shares creators with the two.
- Ugly Cute: The piglin child looks just as monstrous as the other piglins, but his youthful spirit and friendship with Blue is adorable.
- Unexpected Character:
- The Chosen One appears, apropos of nothing, at the end of "The Virus" considering his disappearance at the end of AvA 3.
- Who would've thought Alan would do a Monster School episode?
- While some did speculate it would happen, most fans were still surprised by Victim making his grand return in "Wanted".
- Unintentional Period Piece:
- Animator vs. Animation can more or less be traced year by year, given that the entire concept is a stickman rampaging across a guy's computer and desktop, with programs coming and going as a real-life tech-savvy person would adopt and get rid of them. For instance, the third short is a cavalcade of all things from the late XP era, from bundled games like Solitaire and Minesweeper, to Clippy, to AOL Instant Messenger, to Firefox being the big dog while Chrome was just taking off. The 2014 AvA IV has an operating system that looks like Windows 7, Chrome as the main browser, and Facebook and an iPhone as significant plot elements.
- Animation vs. YouTube uses a lot of viral videos that were popular at the time it was made, as well as showing annotations still being a thing. The preview clip also used an older site layout, though the full animation uses a newer one since that changed while the animation was still in production.
- Unintentionally Sympathetic:
- Green can easily turn into this with all his Butt-Monkey suffering, even if the audience is supposed to find it funny. This is especially the case for the Bob episodes, where it's taken to another level, and "Note Block Concert", which genuinely made fans think of a Green Villain Arc.
- "Superhero video" from the Influencer Arc is treated as just another Villain of the Week who's quickly and ruthlessly killed off by the Stick Gang, despite the fact that it's aggression is far from a single For the Evulz; not only was it discarded due to the Stick Gang's own mistakes while creating it, but its body language makes it clear it didn't mean no harm and only fought back due to a misunderstanding on the heroes' part. Despite the conflict being similar to Euler's Identity from vs. Math, unlike Euler, the video file gets no apology or redemption, but is instead deleted. This turned out to be intentional after all, as the later video "Burnout" portrays the video as a Tragic Monster who wants to be uploaded like any other video, which it gets at the end of the episode.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
- King Orange after his backstory in the AvM Season 3 finale, fittingly named "The King". While most people did sympathize with his actions and what he's had to go through, others feel like that his backstory is too last-second with no buildup to properly empathize with him. Some argue that if King really wanted proper revenge, he should've went after the developers who accidentally caused Gold's death rather than a non-sentient video game and its innocent citizens. It certainly doesn't help that his redemption comes from a sudden love for Purple that wasn't foreshadowed and came out of nowhere, and that he's forgiven almost immediately and doesn't face any consequences for his actions. If anything, he actually was borderline rewarded for his villainous actions by finding a new family in Purple. This makes it hard for some fans to like King Orange and root for his eventual redemption due to coming across as a Karma Houdini.
- The Silverfish, while being a genius, sneaky trickster who runs loops around Green, is still disliked by some fans due to humiliating Green for little to no reason. The fact you're supposed to side with him does nothing to help matters.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: Officially, every stick figure except Pink and Mitsi is considered a guy, but fans were free to headcanon however they want as the characters' gender was irrelevant and the very few characters explicitly referred to with he/him pronouns are in blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments. This reached an apex with "Note Block Universe", which depicts a stick figure couple with a child; this seemingly establishes a binary gender for stick figures, but while the colors and behavior might lead one to assume Pink Girl, Blue Boy is in effect, there's really no 100% clear indication which one is which—the colors could just as easily be because Pink and Blue mix to make Purple rather than an indicator of gender. Eventually, it would be confirmed by Word of God that the pink figure is a girl while the blue one is a male, but the fans are still free to headcanon their genders however they want.
- More specifically, Purple and Primal are specifically the most often interpreted as female. This is because purple is stereotypically a feminine color (and Purple's body language in "More Faces" is also fairly feminine), while Primal has very noticeable hips unlike other characters.
- Visual Effects of Awesome:
- The animation gets better in each installment, but special mention goes to vs. Minecraft—According to the BTS, adding the diamond armor to every character required hiring additional help (it would have taken an additional month or two otherwise), and in the scene when the Creeper blows up and launches around 100 arrows that were stuck to the dirt blocks surrounding it, he took the time to animate the trajectory and landing of each individual arrow rather than taking the easy way out and copy-and-pasting the animation paths.
- The artwork and animation for "The Showdown" is absolutely stunning—many of the commenters on YouTube were blown away by the results.
- Just take a look at what "The Ultimate Weapon" does with its fight scenes!
- The special effects generated by the staff when holding a gold block or a Netherite block are rather satisfying to look at.
- The sequence of Purple explaining why he sided with King Orange and betrayed the Stick Gang is nothing short of breathtaking.
- The visuals of the Nether slowly collapsing during The King are as incredible as they are terrifying.
- Not only does the animation in "Wanted" look so much more incredible than even "The Showdown", sporting incredible cinematography and dynamic animation, but we also get a unique taste of various different art styles through the Mercenaries, with special mention going to "Primal" and Ballista - the cave drawing and pixel one, respectively - having a totally different art style unlike that of the rest of the series, and the Second Coming creating various fluidly animated animals to attack with.
- The visuals in Animation vs. Physics are some of the most beautiful the series has to offer.
