YMMV / Elliot Goes To School

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Brandon’s sudden character change in Camping. Did he do it because he knew that his jokes and quirks were growing stale and decided to change into a more serious and grounded person, for better or worse, or did he do it ironically just for shits and giggles like usual? Although he states unprompted near the end of the episode that it's from playing Alan Wake too much.
    • Doesn't stop him from going back to his old self though.
  • When Jimbo calls out Elmer in "Camping" and shoo him out for fooling around in the dire times, it raises a question whether the group sees him as a real friend or not. Of course Jimbo retracted his statement back later.
• Awesome Music: As with most of Kitty's content, the series features a collection of rock bands that Kitty himself enjoyed.
  • The first episode features A Day to Remember's "NJ Legion Iced Tea" and "You Had Me At Hello", along with Consumed's "Heavy Metal Winner", Bring Me the Horizon's "The Comedown", Ima Robot's "Dynomite", Escape the Fate's "The Flood", and The Bouncing Souls' "Gasoline."
  • The second episode features A Day To Remember's "Right Where You Want Me To Be", Whole Wheat Bread's "Police Song", Escape the Fate's "Situations", Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek", Maroon 5's "Sunday Morning" (from the band's early days before their more pop-oriented work), and The Used's "All That I've Got."
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Some fans felt that the Dan and Chris skit from Camping is this. They don't seem to contribute to the plot much and it’s never brought up again.
  • In fact, most of the Dan and Chris segments have nothing to do with the plot other than being an intermission inbetween skits. Doesn't stop them from being genuinely funny, however.
  • The first minutes of Camping certainly qualifies. We don't know why Roman Bellic rang the doorbell before Mr. Higglesworth comes in, and it’s never brought up again.
• Broken Base: Kitty's opinion of furries. His constant maiming of the fandom in his works, despite being more Self-Deprecation jokes than malicious ones. It didn't stop him from receiving backlash from multiple members of the furry fandom.
  • He was previously involved in the community during his early teenage years, but decided to leave during his mid-teens because he thought it was "just not for [him]". He also stated that he prefers the portrayal of the animals to be more cartoon-ish (akin to 90s World of Funny Animals Cartoon-ish).
  • This has since died down by the time 2015 kicks in, and pretty much vanished by the time of his death.
• Catharsis Factor: After an entire episode of antagonizing and annoying Elliot and the teachers and just being a genuine nuisance and facing little repercussions (Mr. Higglesworth even rewarding him) Brandon is the first one to do the rope climb in the gymnasium and winds up falling off from the top and getting a failing grade. The last we see of Brandon in the first episode is him being loaded into an ambulance.
  • For those who’ve had to deal with douchebags like them, it must be very satisfying that Dan and Chris never get out clean when they try to harass the group. When they harass Brandon with slang he doesn’t even understand they get left behind as the bus leaves without them, when they try to beat up Brandon in another episode Brandon defeats them by blowing on Dan and sending them outside the school just to get hit by a plane. Downplayed a bit since they still think they got “some legit footage.” And when they harass the group while they’re searching for their camp site and Elmer winds up handing them some money, Brandon (instantly in his undies for some reason) plants some C4 on the road and they blow up when they ride their bicycles into it.
  • To top it all off, Mr. Higglesworth after constantly abusing his students and getting away with it for the entire series, Folding Chair makes one last appearance and yells at him while slapping him. He doesn’t even have a clever counter this time, he just sinks back into his camp, clearly defeated.
• Crazy Is Cool: Believe it or not, Mr. Higglesworth is pretty much this.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Mr. Higglesworth is the embodiment of this trope. Many jokes and quips that would otherwise be offensive are so overdone that they just wind up being hysterical.
  • Emo kid overdosing in Pep Rallies.
  • The attendance scene from Field Trips.
  • The fact that Ms. Person, a heavily physically handicapped woman who not only needs a chair to get around, but a text-to-speech program just to speak is the local Butt-Monkey among the faculty characters is this, given that the abuse she goes through is so over the top it's downright hilarious, such as her getting punched so hard by Brandon that she rockets across the school into moving traffic is one of the most notable examples.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Elmer J. Fapp is a big example. He only has a few lines that you can count on your fingers in his debut. Yet many liked his antics and he eventually became the part of the main cast line.
  • Mr. Higglesworth is a druggie, rude, sadistic, and insane man who shouldn’t even remotely qualify to be a teacher and spends almost the entirety of his screen time abusing and harassing his class. Despite this he’s one of the most popular characters among the cast.
  • It's not hard to see why many liked Elliot's Grandmama on her only appearance in Camping.
• Growing the Beard: As the series went on, Kitty's skills in Machinima creation grew exponentially, with each episode feeling more distinct and more polished. Special mention goes to "Pep Rallies", where the editing is a lot tighter, the voice acting is more expressive, the comedy is more well placed, and introducing two more characters for the main cast line. And achieved within only 67 days!
  • Field Trips onwards, he starts to incorporate simple animations as replacements for the spaces used by records of flinging ragdolls. The technique is to take screenshot of characters doing certain poses while constantly changing the pose to follow a set of movement, where it will be rearranged into much smoother animation in the video editing software. The process is pretty difficult and can be time consuming, but it proved to be worth the effort since it gave Kitty a better control over scenes and less relying on ragdoll flinging action. This trick carried well into some of his last Gmod videos, most prominently Team Fabulous 2 and Mass Defect.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Elliot's speech at the end of the first episode, where he speculates where he would be ten years into the future. Collin would pass away of cancer nearly 6 years later.
  • On Google+, Kitty made a post on January 12th, 2015 that started with, "Oh dear, haven't uploaded anything in months! Guess that means the 'ol cat DIED." Around two weeks later...
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Bill Clint's clown make-up from "Camping" looks suspiciously similar to Arthur Fleck's Joker makeup from the 2019 film.
• One-Scene Wonder: More like One Skit Wonder , but many liked Crabcore Kid's skit during Mondays.
• Tear Jerker: Kitty was only 15 years old when he first started the series and its clear that it was was pretty much just his younger self and his friends just having a laugh with themselves. It hurts to watch now knowing Collin's passing in 2015, specially the first episode where Elliot monologues about his future ten years from now, he did not even live past 5 years.
• The Scrappy: The Gym Teacher isn't particularly well liked. Unlike Mr. Higglesworth, his character consists of "ordering the students like an army general" and not much else.
• The Woobie: Some of the teachers, most notably Mr. Cool and Ms. Person can be seen as this.
  • Ms. Person is pretty much the biggest woobie in this show. She has her voicebox broken so she has to resort to using a text-to-speech program, and is seems to be more disabled than just her broken voicebox (She seems to be permanently tied to her wheelchair, with the exception of that one time in Camping), and is constantly bullied and thrown around by Brandon. Not to mention that she is one of the only teachers who actually teaches the students in her class, and is the only teacher with a sense of responsibility, as seen during the field trip.