YMMV / CarnEvil

• Alternative Character Interpretation: No, not the residents of CarnEvil or Betty. The player character. Are they an idiot for putting the token into the gravestone again and starting the whole thing over, or are they a Blood Knight who wants at least one more round with the haunted carnival? Alternatively, recall that the legend says CarnEvil can only appear at night on full moons and that it is clearly daytime when they put it back in. Could they be putting the token back in to ensure it can never rise again?
• Awesome Music: Most of the music, but the "Big Bunyan Ride" jingle is catchy as hell.
• Awesome: Video Game Levels: Those who believe Evil Is Cool will love the intro to the Haunted House level. After Umlaut finishes his pre-level rhyme, you get a great shot of the house's dark and creepy exterior. As Umlaut does his whooping Evil Laugh, lightning flashes with some immensely satisfying Dramatic Thunder. And the Ominous Pipe Organ music starts up too. You only get a brief second before the game starts thrusting enemies at you (while Umlaut continues laughing), but it's all still deliciously creepy.
• Common Knowledge: It is often incorrectly believed that the first player is named Jacob and the 2nd player is named Lisa. These names are not anywhere in canon, they're simply the product of a Wikipedia editor making things up.
• Complete Monster: Professor Ludwig von Tökkentäkker is the leader of the titular CarnEvil, a carnival filled with monsters. When the unnamed Player Character summons his carnival, Tökkentäkker greets him and forces him and another girl named Betty to fight through the carnival's three main attractions. After the player survives the main attractions, Tökkentäkker greets him at the big top, and orders an army of surgeon clowns to cut out his brain and place it into the body of a gorilla. When the player successfully kills them, Tökkentäkker traps him in a cage and brings him to his airship. There, he and his army of skeletons try to kill the Player and Betty. The website reveals more of Tökkentäkker's crimes, such as his manipulation, lobotomization, and mutilation of two circus performers; and his desire to Take Over the World with an army of giant freaks.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The fast-paced gameplay, cartoony (if garishly so) art-style, and catchy (if stealthily creepy) songs can do wonders to combat the worst of the Nightmare Fuel the rest of the game has in spades. The fact the game seems to be an Affectionate Parody of lovably So Bad, It's Good Slasher Films (up to a head-slappingly stupid "The End... Or Is It?" ending where our hero apparently had so much fun barely escaping CarnEvil the first time that he goes for a second round!!!) only adds to the demented fun.
• Cult Classic: The game is quite fondly regarded among those who've played it for its blend of over-the-top wackiness and gruesome imagery, and was Midway's top-selling lightgun game. Despite this, for some reason^note at the moment it seems that the legal rights to the game are a mess, which is probably a big factor it was never given any kind of home console ports, restricting its fanbase to those willing to either emulate it through M.A.M.E. or track down an actual arcade cabinet.
• Damsel Scrappy: Betty. She constantly gets in the way when you are trying to shoot.
• Fanfic Fuel: You'd be surprised how many fanfics there are about characters from other works of fiction causing the carnival to rise up from the ground.
  • For that matter, what exactly Tokkentakker did prior to his original death is a good topic to make a fanfic about.
• Fanon: Even though both players are male (if there was ever a second player at all), fans tend to call the protagonist Jacob, and the player 2 character Lisa. The official website never named them, and no names are given in the manual either. It appears they came about because someone added the fake names to the Wikipedia page in July 2007, and the fandom ran with them. (The editor didn't even call Lisa player 2; they gave the name to the innocent bystander, whose canon name is Betty.) In fan art, Jacob is typically depicted wearing a red jacket, green t-shirt, and blue jeans, while carrying a flashlight (which is close to how the protagonist appears in the VERY brief times we see him). Lisa is usually wearing a blue crop-top jacket, jeans, and a purple-and-white hat.
• Goddamned Bats: Played obnoxiously straight. Also featured in the same vein as bats are maggots, spiders, floaty bug things, and literal spider monkeys.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Just before you fight Junior, Umlaut taunts you with "Don't wake the baby!" Years later, that phrase would become associated with Markiplier, becoming a catchphrase of his while playing another horror game.
  • One of the dolls in Junior's pen has a face that looks almost exactly like the Lenny face.
• Ho Yay: Dr. Klot seems particularly interested in the Protagonist.
  Dr. Klot: "Boy, what a fine specimen!"
• Nausea Fuel: The Freak Show level: Big Bearded lady eaten by maggots followed by a vat full of those same maggots followed by zombies getting ground up into a meal for a giant Frankenstein baby.
• Nightmare Fuel: This game breathes and lives this trope to the nth degree. That said, many people seem to have a fond memory of Junior, the boss of the Freak Show level.
• Older Than They Think: The baby boss became memorable, but Zombies Ate My Neighbors beat the game to the punch by 5 years by having a giant baby as a level boss (albeit not undead).
• Overshadowed by Controversy: CarnEvil is considered a classic of the Rail Shooter genre and as such is able to stand on its own merits among fans of the genre, but otherwise the game is best known for one of its bosses being a twenty-foot-tall undead baby, which caused the game to be banned from numerous arcades the nation over despite the developers including an optional switch to turn the boss into a teddy bear, knowing that players could feel uncomfortable shooting an undead baby. Outside of fans of Rail Shooter games, good luck finding somebody who knows CarnEvil as anything more than "that game where you fight a giant zombie baby".
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The first few inmates you fight in the "Breakfast Bowl" segment of the "Freak Show" level have a unique death animation where they fall off the conveyor belts, but due to the camera angle they end up falling through them instead. In the same level, Rodz sometimes has Tort's voice.
  • In the "Haunted House" level, the zombie arms coming out of the hallway aren't properly synched up with the prerendered background, with one of them being so misaligned it's blocked by the wall entirely. The annoying thing is that it can still hit you.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • One of the Attract Mode reels uses a song almost-but-not-quite identical to the Rob Zombie song "Superbeast".
  • The Freak Show's main theme is very similar to the opening theme from the horror-comedy classic Beetlejuice.
• That One Boss: Evil Marie, with a hard-to-hit weak point (it's the slash mark around her neck) which the game hardly gives you any time at all to draw a bead on as she slashes mercilessly at you.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Despite him being ridiculed in-game as a "kiss-ass", Umlaut seems to be the most popular character with the fandom, receiving more fanart than anyone else. It helps that Umlaut is the mascot of the game, has a cool design and voice (not to mention amazing Evil Laughs), and has a great sense of Black Comedy.
• The Woobie: Chester and Lester Turvey, who were turned into the "Flapjack" man.

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