Angst Aversion: Compared to visual novels with a lighter tone, Echo's tendency towards Bittersweet Ending and Did Not Get The Guy can turn off those expecting a more typically romance-centered VN experience; especially so for TJ's route, which outright ends with the reveal that Chase was the one who killed Sydney years ago, and subsequently not only murders Flynn under the same circumstances due to the manipulations of a mysterious outside entity but gets away with it before driving off into the sunset with TJ agreeing to help him report it as justified self-defence and what little remaining camaraderie their friendship group had left now completely shattered.
Draco in Leather Pants: Many people unironically want Leo and Chase to get back together. While he is a very tragic character, many people are all too willing to ignore Leo's toxic traits because he is a handsome wolf.
"Sam" for the voice that Chase hears inside of his head at certain points, and who is implied to be the one that the player is really making choices for, due to a common fan-theory that the person that the voice is a "simulation" of (as described by the voice itself) is Samuel, the protagonist of the Prequel visual novel The Smoke Room.
Chase Hunter's full name is often shortened to "Chunter" by fans.
Fanon: Mr. Bronson's first name is almost universally headcanoned as Chip due to a minor otter character being called Dale.
Ultimately Chase realizes how toxic Leo is and goes to be with Kudzu. Most fans still prefer to ship the otter and wolf anyway; it's actually extremely rare to find the official endgame in fanart.
Sydney/TJ is also very popular, by default an AU given the former's death as a child. Game writer Mc Skinny has expressed distaste for this ship, but it is generally praised by fans due to Sydney's tragedy and canonical desire to make amends with TJ (plus Demonic Possession being to blame for his bullying).
Harsher in Hindsight: Pretty much anything involving Sydney's death becomes this after the end of TJ's route, where it's revealed that Chase himself was the one responsible; not to mention how some of the more negative things we hear about him come across after the scenes in Flynn's route that show flashbacks of Sydney's terrible home life from his perspective.
Another example involving Sydney is the fact that Chase's internal monologue during a flashback near the end of TJ's route cites his belief that Sydney killed his own father deliberately as part of the reason for killing Sydney to protect TJ from him. Except that, as it turns out in Flynn's route, while Sydney was present at the scene where his father was killed, it was because he was trying to stop him from shooting himself and at most pulled the trigger by accident in the resulting struggle, meaning that Chase's interpretation of events was completely off.
Going outside just the one character, much of the relationship between Leo and Chase is bad enough in its specific route, but can be interpreted as a little more grey when cluttered up with the hysteria going on, as well as them being so young originally. Add to that some of the context of the other character routes and their original problems get cemented further, and you can easily start to doubt that Chase even really wanted to rekindle things at the start of the story. Add Route 65's veiled storyline with Leo thinking the Chase caught him in the middle of a recorded hookup, only to do his damnedest to cover it up, as well as his thinly veiled lie that he saw Chase's advert while looking for LAWN MOWERS when he was clearly doing the same exact things, right as he's looking to start a relationship really just puts a dark cloud over everything.
Launcher of a Thousand Ships: In a combination of pity at his canon fate ( as well as a muscular illusion showing an hypothetical adult version of him), Sydney gets shipped with almost everyone in fandom.
Memetic Mutation: Most of these examples are restricted to furry discord communities, occasionally bleeding into twitter.
Leo's foot fetishnote In the bad ending of his route Chase loses his legs, Leo carrying him to his house deluded that he can patch it up, when Chase bleeds to death. A combination of Leo's overall obsession with Chase + seeing nothing wrong with that has somehow metastasize into him having a fetish for his "chula"'s feet.
Mpregnote One of the writers, Mc Skinny, has am mpgreg fetish. This has lead to numerous pictures of Chase and other characters having pregnancy tests.
Rose Quartz is the real villain.note One of the possibilities for the Echo Entity is that the mines' quartz deposits reflect dark energy. It was only too easy to blame this on Rose Quartz, though it quickly became a Discredited Meme to the point the creators had to clarify it wasn't Rose Quartz after all and shut down the conversation. Mentioning this is now grounds for banning in the Discord server.
Red flags.note Discussions about Leo and whether or not he's capable of maintaining a healthy relationship with anyone will often end up with someone mentioning all the "red flags" he gives off throughout the novel. Some of the reasonings being legit concerns while others being more of a joke (ex: Feeding your date a TV dinner is a red flag). Fans also joke that Leo's mostly red fur makes him a red flag himself.
Squick: The gruesome noise used whenever a character breaks their ankle (which happens fairly often), along with the reveal late into the best end for Carl's route that Chase almost drank from a cup filled with urine while still under the hallucination.
The Woobie: The entire cast has Woobie points in some way, but special mention goes to TJ for being considered something a Woobie in-universe by the others (except for Flynn, who resents the special treatment he gets and its role in preventing him from learning the truth about what happened to Sydney).
