YMMV / Defunctland

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: E.P.C.O.T. was not that crazy of an idea at the time as it sounds. During the 60s and 70s there were many attempts at creating cities of the future. At first they were places were the middle class could live and thrive. But as time progressed most middle class people moved out of the cities - or to other parts of the country. Look at Brasilia in Brazil and Vällingby in Stockholm, Sweden. They are two cities, or communities, that do not differ that much in appearance and had similar aims as E.P.C.O.T.; To be modern, self-sustained communities for the future. While the aim is admirable you will find that nobody ever goes to visit Vällingby or Brasilia (except diplomats in the latter case). The cities are drab, boring and uncultured. There is no room for freedom of expression or deviation from the norm. As well, while it wasn't to the same scale as Walt's plan, the company would eventually build a planned community near Disney World, named Celebration, though unlike E.P.C.O.T. they always planned to divest most of its control over the town, which they have done (though they still own a lot of real estate in the town, and own the telecoms and energy companies that provide utilities to the town).
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Michael Eisner gets some of this in the Hong Kong Disneyland episode. Rather than the series' usual jabs at how Eisner ran the company, he's presented as a man who does have good, creative ideas and desperately wants to keep Disney from going under during the rocky 2000's, despite everybody else in the company wanting him out.
  • "The Downfall of Wonderland Sydney" is set around the perspective of Maniac, a gigantic crocodile housed in Wonderland Sydney's reptile house. In his time in captivity, the beast was able to witness the downfall of the park first hand. Kevin ponders that, had Maniac any greater awareness of the situation, maybe even the homicidal reptile who killed several fellow crocs in his enclosure might take issue with the corporate indifference that killed the park.
  • "Walt Disney's City of the Future: E.P.C.O.T." explores a bit of this at the end, which lines up well with the narrative of Season 3 as a whole. Kevin speculates that E.P.C.O.T., and indeed much of what Walt did at Disney as a whole, might not have been so much about leaving a legacy as trying to recreate the sense of family and community he had as a child in Marceline, Missouri, but never being able to obtain it due to his own values clashing with others.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Animator's Retreat", the song that plays during the intro and the credits of "The Craziest Party Walt Disney Ever Threw ^note Written by Kevin himself and Samir Valle, and performed by Samir and Brian Magnan
  • The intro music to the DefunctTV episodes on Jim Henson, combining the themes of Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and Fraggle Rock, all with a pop/rock remix (ending with a soft rock cover of the ending to the Muppet Show theme).
  • The Disaster Transport theme song.
  • "A Last Look Back" by Alex Lasarenko, the song that is played in "Disney Channel's Theme: A History Mystery" during the reveal that Kevin featured Alex's music as the background music for the entire video, even before he was revealed to be the author of the Disney Channel theme.
• Bizarro Episode: The Handwich starts off on an atypical but seemingly jejune topic (a discontinued food item from a Disney theme park), then turns into a cooking show in which Kevin tries to make said food item himself, and then in the end goes in a disturbingly bizarre direction.
• Broken Base: The snarky captions. Some found them to add several funny jokes and liked the added snark, while others found them annoying and distracting. Apparently Kevin agreed with the latter group, as they were dropped after season one ended.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Kevin regularly showcases relevant advertisements and broadcasts surrounding the attractions he talks about, which can take a turn for the audacious when they feature seriously inexplicable Values Dissonance. Reports of Disneyland Tokyo as seen in "The Failure of Euro Disneyland" and the episode on "The History of Disney's Scariest Attraction, Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour" tend to be magnets for this.
    Kevin: That casual racism is scarier than any jumpscare I could come up with.
  • The "euthanization" of Topsy the elephant in The History of Coney Island is subject to several jokes.
  • His Coney Island video also drops a particularly brutal own on infamous New York public official Robert Moses.
    Kevin: Moses had a complicated relationship with the lower classes, which is to say that he did not like them very much but definitely could not say that out loud.
  • In The History of Freedomland U.S.A., Kevin goes over the history of the Great Chicago Fire and the widely-accepted (but false) story that it was started by Irish immigrant Mrs. O'Leary and her cow. He adds that Mrs. O'Leary died heartbroken by the false accusation, and the cow "died likely oblivious."
  • Much about the Action Park episode can fall into this, but the introduction of "Part 5: Death" with a funeral dirge particularly stands out. (Though Kevin does make sure to emphasize the deaths that occurred were serious and tragic.)
    Kevin: So on any given day, you could have an overcrowded water park filled with drunk teenagers that couldn't swim, riding shoddily-built attractions supervised by teenagers that may or may not be able to communicate with them. It is no wonder what happened next.
  • In his video on Beverly Park Kiddieland, Kevin notes that after graduating college in 1934, Los Angeles native David Bradley was expected to follow his father into the investments business. In typically dry fashion, Kevin then drops this gem:
    Kevin: But as previously mentioned, it was 1934, so Bradley was keeping his options open.
  • "Adventure Thru Inner Space" never misses a chance to rag on Monsanto, the notoriously unsafe chemical manufacturers responsible for the infamous Agent Orange chemical weapon - and the attraction's sponsor. The most memorable example: playing the Sherman Brothers' upbeat ditty "Miracles from Molecules" that played in the attraction over newsreel footage of Agent Orange being blasted over Vietnamese forests during the Vietnam War. This particular bit arguably crosses the line a third time from disturbing to funny back to disturbing when the cheerful music slowly fades out and is eventually completely overpowered by the ominous rhythm of hundreds of marching soldiers.
    Kevin: [Monsanto] quickly reassured customers that they had nothing to be afraid of, before it was revealed they had created something that customers absolutely should be afraid of.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • A lot of fans of The Pop Arena's Nick Knacks, as well as host Greg Stevens, also happen to be fans of Defunctland, likely because of their similar topics of discussing the history of nostalgic things.
  • Similarly, fans of Disney Dan get along well with Defunctland's fans due to Kevin and Dan's occasional crossover collaborations.
  • Fans of the musical theater channel Wait in the Wings were surprised and delighted to discover Defunctland as one of the channel's top patrons on Patreon.
• Growing the Beard: Midway through the first season, Kevin dropped the voice filter and started speaking with his normal tone of voice. This not so coincidentally resulted in his presentation gaining a more confident delivery style, dropping the occasional snarky asides in favor of showing related ads to the ride he's discussing, combining to deliver the professional documentary approach that solidified his Signature Style. This was fully cemented when the somewhat superfluous Framing Device was mostly dropped after the end of season 1.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Season 3 of Defunctland has a large focus on Walt Disney and his desperation to make sure his legacy wasn't just being known as "Uncle Walt" for his animation career. It seems that theme was taken to heart come "Disney Channel's Theme: A History Mystery", where Perjurer admits legacy building and how one gets remembered was one of the core themes of the video—and that he made absolutely sure that Alexander Lasarenko's legacy wasn't just the Disney Channel mnemonic by pointing to his discography and his former coworkers' opinions of him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the first episode, on the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, he makes light of how dissonant an Alien ride at Disney would be. Thanks to the purchase of Fox, Disney now owns the franchise.
  • A 2020 episode of the Disney Channel show The Owl House has a confirmed sapphic couple dance battling the Monster of the Week together. This means, after 35 years, Disney finally allowed homosexual fast dancing.
  • "The Disney Channel Theme: A History Mystery" came out within a few weeks of H.Bomberguy's "ROBLOX_OOF.mp3", which also centered around crediting a relatively unknown audio personnel with an iconic sound. Fans of both channels found the timing very interesting, especially given the latter video was taking the opposite approach (calling out a creator for stealing credit from the guy who really did the work), and ended with a plea to get the right credits before the people who did the work pass away unrecognized—exactly what happened with Alexander Lasarenko.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "A powerful rat named Charles Entertainment Cheese".^ExplanationIn the Club Disney episode, this is what Kevin uses to introduce us to Chuck E. Cheese, who brought out Discovery Zone. Onscreen, Chuck E. is initially presented as a Mickey Mouse silhouette before transitioning into his true appearance.
  • Homosexual Fast Dancing. ^ExplanationFrom the episode that looks back on Disneyland's Videopolis area, specifically the term Disney used in regards to their rule forbidding same-sex dancing. The phrase mutated fast into a meme by the viewers just from the words alone.
  • "It's the 90s, and that lil bitch Michael Eisner is up to his fuckshit again." ^ExplanationAn audio file posted to Tumblr, summarizing the channel's opinion of Eisner with an excellent Kevin impression.
    • "The Cum Slide was a massive success, but there was just one problem: they were running out of cum." ^ExplanationAnother tweet parodying Defunctland's usual formula, which went viral after a voiced version was posted by the same impressionist.
  • "A California-themed theme park in the already California-themed California."^ExplanationKevin's phrasing of one of the major issues with Disney's California Adventure is frequently brought up whenever the park is mentioned on the Internet.
  • "Shapeland is actually Animal Kingdom."^ExplanationThe Reveal that the Shapeland analogy from the FastPass video was in reality data taken from an actual day at Animal Kingdom is often considered one of the most memorable parts of the episode.
  • "It is revealed that Sebastian has the feather because he is a liar." ^Explanation A line from the Dumbo's Circus episode describing one of the episodes reviewed for it. This line was commonly quoted in the comments section for that video.
  • Wiggles Lore ^Explanation A recurring phrase in the Dreamworld Wiggles video, which many viewers tended to mention in the comments for it.
• Nausea Fuel: The "Garfield's Nightmare" episode eventually shows some stories of the ride being used as a Tunnel of Love. With thankfully censored detail. Although the more disgusting one actually tells about the ride being used for an "aerial dump", which is exactly what it sounds like.
• Unexpected Character: There's a decent portion of people in the comment section of "The Curse of Sesame Street" who were genuinely shocked to see Michael Eisner be a key figure in the history of The Muppet Show.

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