YMMV / Garry's Mod

• Abridged Arena Array:
  • rp_downtown for the Dark RP gamemode.
  • gm_construct and gm_flatgrass are this for the regular sandbox mode, but they're slightly more justified in that they're the only two official maps that come with the game (not counting ones imported from other games), whereas rp_downtown is a custom map.
  • has_museum is extremely popular in the Hide and Seek game mode, thanks to there being quite a few good spots if you know what you're doing.
• Accidental Innuendo: One of the Steam achievements is called "Ball Eater"^note You get it from eating 1000 of the game's Bouncy Ball items. This may or may not be intentional.
• Broken Base:
  • Jailbreak is one of the more divisive gamemodes, as there are no official rules — this is either a good thing as it enables you to move at your own pace, or it forces you through humiliating games of Simon Says with RDM being the punishment.
  • Whether or not Prop Blocking is cheap and drags things out far longer than it should in most gamemodes or is a legitimate tactic, especially in more combat/survival focused games like Murder. You'll never see someone who will agree with someone else on the server over this. Even if the server in question has Prop Blocking as a bannable offense.
  • RP Servers. Either they're overly restrictive dictatorships ran by "Stop Having Fun" Guys that don't deserve receiving so much attention compared to other gamemodes, or they're hilarious improv servers with great creativity and the only thing keeping Gmod remotely alive these days. You're very unlikely to find anyone who likes both.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: As mentioned under Memetic Mutation below, Male_07 is a quite popular player model for the appealing design and the role it plays in numerous screenshots and fan works, most notably Half-Life: Full Life Consequences.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Within the game itself, believe it or not! With the vast majority of gamemodes, it's very likely to find quite a few people who think one gamemode is really underrated while another 'undeservedly' gets most of the spotlight.
  • To a lesser extent, the Garry's Mod community has one with Source Filmmaker's own. Due to the higher quality of Workshop content exclusive to SFM Workshop compared to what Gmod has, it's not uncommon to see people keep requesting Gmod ports of said content to the annoyance of some SFM content creators, to the point that Gmod and its community are viewed with contempt to some degree.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Garry's Mod is this with most of the popular Source games that can be mounted to it, as this allows for the use of textures, models, and maps from other games. Chances are if it's a popular Valve title, there's all sorts of crazy Machinima videos related to it.
  • With the Five Nights at Freddy's community. Both games were very popular in YouTube Let's Plays around 2014 (when the first FNaF game came out), and due to the Source engine's relative accessibility and GMod's use for Machinima, many, many Five Nights at Freddy's-themed addons have released for both it and Source Filmmaker.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In the case of Workshop addons, it would be useless to list any. It's almost as if there's a SWEP competition for the most powerful weapon to ever be made.
  • The physgun will be this in any Sandbox server that allows PvP but does not regulate its use among players. A favorite tool for Griefers, it is nauseatingly easy to One-Hit Kill any player just by spawning heavy props and flinging them at players with a flick of the mouse wheel.
  • Via a console command^notephyscannon_mega_enabled 1, you can use the Supercharged Gravity Gun from the ending of Half-Life 2. It's just as awesome in GMod, and you can use it for as long as you'd like.
  • In various gamemode servers, prop blocking. The act of cramming a small corridor with props that can only be pushed and not picked up. If the sever gives no way for the players to destroy props, the round can quickly devolve into players mashing R or whatever button they have push bound to trying to wiggle the props free while the other players just wait out the round's timer. Due to being overpowered and, putting bluntly, just not fun to deal with, most servers have prop blocking as a bannable offense.
• Good Bad Bugs: Don't have the textures from Counter-Strike Source? You'll be able to see through some walls, and a lot of objects will be replaced by giant "ERROR" messages. This includes several Trouble in Terrorist Town weapons and your knife (but only if you are wielding it from first person, weirdly enough). You will also lag on some more CS-texture-heavy maps, however.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!:
  • RP servers — particularly DarkRP and its many palette swaps — have received this reaction from many players not just due to their sheer popularity and widespread presence, but the fact that the amount of non-RP gamemodes and their overall player counts are far smaller as a result. Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of resentful players who complain that this made the current multiplayer experience too homogenuous and boring, while other newly-introduced, far more interesting gamemodes that are worth playing have become increasingly rare and short-lived.
  • Combined with It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Nextbots, particularly 2D Nextbots have been seen as this by some after their boost in popularity in mid-2022. Many see them as low-effort due to code often being recycled from the original Sanic NPC, though some such as Gargin's "Gargitron" NPC have more advanced AI. It's hard to find a page on the game's official Workshop that doesn't have at least one of these on it.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • SCOUT IS DELICIOUS
  • HAAAAAAAAX!!!
  • The Male_07 Master Race. ^Explanation Male_07 is a commonly used player model, as he is seen often in official GMod screenshots and videos such as Half-Life: Full Life Consequences.
  • Suffering from poor frame rates?? Just type "quit smoking" into the dev console to disable laggy particle effects.^ExplanationTyping "quit" in the console causes the session to end instantly. The console also ignores bad commands if there's a good command in there.
  • "Citizens aren't supposed to have guns." ^Explanation This clip from Vinesauce in which Joel attracts a DarkRP admin by having a pistol. His response is equally iconic.
  • Missing textures. ^ExplanationSome addons like maps and models won't work properly if you haven't installed (therefore own) a specific game (usually Counter Strike: Source) in the library, resulting in the iconic large ERROR font replacing the missing content or the legendary pink-and-black checker pattern placeholder texture. Several examples spawned to mock it, and the infamous checker pattern is even one of the official emoticons and trading cards on Steam.
    • "I need to install/forgot to mount Counter-Strike: Source!"^ExplanationA phrase commonly associated with the above meme. Sometimes used in contexts with black-and-pink checker patterns similar to the game's missing textures. CS:S is usually required for a lot of custom maps because back when Garry's Mod actually was a Game Mod, it required CS:S to be installed before it would actually show up in one's Steam library.
  • [Character] Says: STOP MAKING STUPID [x]!! ^ExplanationThe Steam Workshop for Garry's Mod is notorious for being bad, being regularly flooded with lazy mods, saves, and dupes (a big chunk of these being posted by younger fans of the Five Nights at Freddy's horror series) that often appear to outnumber the amount of actual quality content. In January 2021, a disgruntled community member posted an Author Tract speaking against this in the form of a save titled "Luigi says: STOP MAKING STUPID FNAF SAVES!!", with a thumbnail that depicts Luigi holding a sign with the aforementioned text. Various parodies and snowclones of the save soon followed, each featuring a different character in the same pose who wants people to stop uploading content the author doesn't like.
  • Finally, a Grey One!^Explanation A fake achievement apparently awarded when the player spawns in a rare grey Bouncy Ball. Despite not being real (and being impossible to meet the requirements without mods, since bouncy balls never spawn in grey and are immune to the Color tool), lots have joked about finally earning it.
    • Similar jokes about actual hard achievements in the game, such as "Yes, I am the real garry!"^note  Which requires you to be in the same server as the real Garry Newman, which was already previously hard, but has since become even harder as Garry doesn't really open the game anymore.have spawned, with many often considering them to be some of the hardest achievements in gaming.
  • Glue Library/June 3rd^ExplanationOn June 2nd, 2022 (though most noticed it on June 3rd), the creator of various addons such as Glue Library updated the addons to include NSFW Screamer Pranks with shock images including the legendary Goatse when you first pressed the W key. Due to the nature of this, with the addons and uploader quickly banned, it even received coverage from people outside of GMod's regular playerbase, such as SomeOrdinaryGamers. It's often referenced in the form of Black Comedy or Schmuck Bait.
  • The slew of videos disguised as reuploads of old GMod videos by various authors (specifically by gmod9fan reuploads, Classic GM Videos, or gunslingerpro2009). They typically feature footage from older versions of the game, but with something...off (such as ominous black figures standing in the distance, the dark room of gm_construct being supernatural in nature, or ragdolls coming to life). These have become the source of urban horror or mockery by the playerbase, mainly for their ominous and cryptic nature, as well as the similarities to Alternate Reality Games (to the point where they're typically referred to as "GMod ARGs"). They've spawned a lot of parodies using the "X but" format that poke fun of the phenomenon, like this.
  • As of July 2022, mods that consist of infamous unsettling/ominous pictures (or memes) as nextbot NPCs that relentlessly pursue the player(s) have become rampant.
    • The nextbots have even invaded other games, such as the Roblox game nico's nextbots.
  • In a similar vein to the nextbot clones, there's also a trend for the default map gm_construct to be Recycled with a Gimmick. Some examples include Combine-controlled, inside of gm_flatgrass, at night, and inside of Minecraft.
  • Maxwell The Carryable Cat^ExplanationA photo of a cat that was later turned into a SWEP by ScottRim. Due to the Internet's love of cats, it quickly became popular, with videos featuring the model, and other "carryable X" mods being made for the game.
  • gm_construct drip^ExplanationA puffer jacket by JohnWowCool with an image of gm_construct on it. It's seen mild popularity on TikTok, Reddit, and Twitter, with Pyrocynical even having one.
  • Skibidi Toilet^ExplanationA series of videos made primarily in GMod and Source Filmmaker depicting the heads of various Half-Life 2 characters popping out of toilets and singing a memetic song. It grew extremely popular in mid-2023 (some videos raking in tens of millions of views), inspiring many themed-mods.
  • GMod Realism^ExplanationA slew of videos that attempt to turn the game from a lighthearted sandbox into a realistic and gritty tactical shooter, often pushing the Source Engine to its graphical limits. Often memed due to it moreso being a blanket term for cinematic videos made with the game, rather than an actually realistic experience.
• Once Original, Now Common: Certain mods that were once groundbreaking during their release have seen better days, as they either aged poorly, were replaced by their superior counterpart, or both.
  • The Murderthon 9000 weapons (M9K for short) was one of the most downloaded weapon mods in the Steam Workshop. It's very simple to use and has a large assortment of weaponries to use at the time, all while being almost everywhere in many DarkRP servers. Nowadays, with the more flexible and customizable weaponries such as the eponymous Customizable Weaponry and TFA, M9K is seen as rather old and retro in comparison, though they still have some fans and people who redownloaded it for the old time sake.
  • Similarly, SCars used to be the "king of vehicle addons" because of providing an alternative to the clunky and heavily outdated driving system from the original Half-Life 2 and giving user the ability to customize the vehicle's handling which allows them to perform driving techniques that was impossible in the base game, on top of several features that give SCars some variety over others, like A.I. Driving and a simple lap racing system. As the time goes, people start finding the implementation of SCars to be rather clunky and did not age well ^{examples include}car is very slippery regardless of handling to the point you have easier time trying to drift in the game than driving normally, the camera is just as jittery if not worse, the A.I. drivers are counterintuitive at best and borderline braindead at worse, the racing feature is very limited that you better roleplay it with your friends and the A.I. is not that suitable for it, very cumbersome to use serverside and some more that people would argue whether SCars was worth it or just stick to the regular car addons. Then came the VCMod, an addon that significantly improves the basegame vehicle handling by adding the ability to customize almost every inch of the vehicle to your hearts content while also making sure that the driving experience is just as comfortable if not better than the vanilla system. Most importantly? It's compatible with almost every vehicle addons in the Workshop. It's only downside is that the addon is locked behind a paywall that's quite steep. Years later the Simfphys LUA Vehicles was released on the Steam Workshop, providing almost the same amount of feature of VCMod has to offer while also being free for charge. Both immediately blow SCars out of proportion and now it's seen as outdated in comparison and only pops out because it's nowhere as resource extensive like VCMod and Simfphys and performs better on weaker hardware, or the nostalgia trip to some players who were fond of it.
  • At one time when it came to aircraft mods in Gmod, typically WAC was one of the most popular choices among players especially for vehicles related to either modern day or various franchises. Though WAC largely fell to the wayside when LFS began hitting the scene which quickly became the primary base many creators used going forward and what many servers began to use in part due to being easier for players to learn and handle (with the exception of helicopters which still require some skill to master) as well as allowing the vehicles to be controlled with AI. Nowadays, while WAC still definitely has its fans, it's mainly remembered for its high difficulty curve when trying to use them.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • The map "Paranoia" found on the official GMod site.
  • Try to not feel paranoid when you got the Horror SNPC flashing every so often and can kill you quickly if you miss him. Bonus points if you've spawned multiple horrors.
  • The ghost of RP_Downtown. There is no ghost, as many investigations debunked it, but the notion of a ghost of the (allegedly) dead creator alone will give you creeps.
  • Play a game of Murder and you will be hit by this, particularly when the murderer blends in among trolls pretending to be the real thing.
  • Load any map in single player, and see yourself being the only one, drowning in the droning ambience only broken by your constant footsteps and your gunshots as if something is expecting you there. There's no knowing whether that corner you were about to investigate have something to hide, or nothing at all. It's no wonder why many players felt uncomfortable loading a map in single player alone without doing something in return to break the silence.
  • Certain liminal spaces (such as The Backrooms for example) were designed to invoke the uncomfortable feeling in mind similar to the feeling of loading a fresh map in singleplayer aforementioned above. Several of these locations were faithfully recreated in Gmod as an addon that will invoke that same feeling in every corner that's so effective you'd be hardpressed to traverse the map without noclipping.
  • Regarding the liminal space above, one such map is gm_liminal_hotel, a recreation of an image of a real life hotel in London that's as uncomfortable to look as you would expect. It has a slew of easter eggs upon playing the record player, like several black figure sightings. They do you no harm, but they'll make you uncomfortable.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The fact that you had to own and downloaded the optional Source games (i.e. Counter Strike Source, Half-Life 2 and it's episodic sequels, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead etc.) so some addons can work properly (especially maps) really rub players the wrong way, especially if the items from that needed game is comparatively minuscule (like the pine tree model from Episode 2 or some of the map textures for some Roleplay or TTT maps from CSS. It's even moreso for Counter Strike Source, whose development cycle virtually stopped by the time Global Offensive rolls in, giving you little reason to play it over Global Offensive, whose content cannot be used on Garry's Mod due to engine incompatibility. There are ways to circumvent this, like downloading an addon that's basically the necessary component for that game minus the maps and others and they're generally smaller in size than having to download the game, but updates can screw them off as it sometimes refuses to register the addon proper.
  • Many of the Source engine's limitations, such as the limited map size and cap on custom entities have been seen as this, even if they have been raised compared to other games. Due to Garry's Mod being a Wide-Open Sandbox, it's probably the Source game that runs into these problems the most.
  • The loading times when you have a lot of mods installed definitely qualify as this. It can take several minutes to load into a server.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: The Melon Bomber game mode is Bomberman by another name.
• Signature Scene: More of a signature map, but gm_construct is well remembered due to its sandbox-friendly design, being one of the only maps to come with GMod, and therefore a map just about every player has played on. It's also well known for the unintentionally creepy dark room.
  • Ragdolls flailing into the floor/wall/invisible physics objects is quite iconic, due to the hilarity and its use in several popular Machinimas.
• So Bad, It's Good: While the game itself is considered to be well made, this is often intentionally invoked in Machinima. Expect ragdolls often moving their limbs extremely fast, hyper-exaggerated facial expressions, breaking the game's physics engine, and other touches (such as the narration in Half-Life: Full Life Consequences) to come into play.
• Special Effect Failure: On gm_construct, the buildings in the skybox lack any visible roofs, because they were recycled from Half-Life 2 (where they were intended to only be seen from the bottom). While on the ground, this isn't a big deal, but because the map has so much vertical space, it is very noticeable (even from the tops of the buildings in the map!)
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Whether it's a case of RDM in a Let's Play or someone making a funny vehicle that doesn't work, a part of the GMod fandom will immediately ignore the fun part and start shouting about how someone's doing it wrong. The same thing also happens if you spam enemies like Barnacles or Hunter Choppers in Sandbox servers, which is considered a bannable offense.
• Tear Jerker:
  • An Ode to Garry's Mod takes a real and somewhat dark spin on the game.
  • The background image sekai_memories is an empty chair in a dark room with just a guitar and a white cowboy hat, a tribute to the late machinima creator Colin Wyckoff/Kitty0706, who died of leukemia in early 2015.
• That One Achievement: The game has several Steam achievements that qualify:
  • The hardest achievement in the game has to be "Yes, I am the real Garry!" which requires you to play on the same server as the programmer, Garry Newman. This is made near impossible because unless you're friends with him you won't know which server he is on and he rarely plays the game anymore. It's so infamous to the point where it is often listed among the hardest achievements in gaming, alongside Little Rocket Man.
  • The achievements "Half Marathon" and "Marathon" require you to spend an absurd amount of time on the same server and map- four and eight hours (respectively) straight. Assuming your computer can handle the stress of running the game that long, you have to hope that the game and/or server doesn't spontaneously crash on you (which it is very prone to doing) and that the game doesn't just arbitrarily refuse to count your playtime and deny you the achievement (which it is also prone to doing).
  • "Addict" requires one year of combined game time. That's 8,760 hours.
  • "Secret Phrase" requires you to type in a very specific phrase on the chat. Even if you do figure it out, Garry is prone to change the phrase when he updates the game. Luckily, there are plenty of guides that tell you what the phrase is.
  • Those are nothing compared to the Workshop achievements. Hope you made something really good! The worst is "Mega Upload," which requires getting 1,000 thumbs (likes) on a single item.
• That One Level:
  • Owing to Abridged Arena Array, games of Murder or Trouble in Terrorist Town can get rather tiring if played on gm_flatgrass, since some players tend to run as far away as possible and hide.
  • gm_construct in the Hide and Seek game mode, simply because there's next to no places to hide on that map, so any rounds on it become long, drawn out glorified games of tag that take forever to complete. Even worse, because of this, it's a popular map to pick among trolls and griefers as a result.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The menu screen background was changed from the Male_07 model mentioned above putting a traffic cone on the G-Man's head to a more serious shot of him with the Physics Gun over his shoulder and the Tool Gun in the other hand. Some people were not amused. This changed in GMod 13 as they now have various backgrounds that allow you to add or remove any backgrounds that you want.
  • GMod 13 removed the turret tool and many others. They can be easily downloaded via the workshop though.
  • The removal of the toybox in place of the new workshop support. Garry did his best to get players used to it saying that it was not a bad thing. It isn't helped by the fact that downloading larger addons can cause not only the game itself to crash but Steam as well.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The game tends to inadvertantly invoke this trope as you manipulate and pose your favorite Half-Life 2 characters...as flopping, corpselike ragdolls. Bonus Squick is easily achieved if you import the Left 4 Dead models.
  • On the other hand, the things that you can do with the ragdolls that should be creepy thanks to this trope become downright hilarious.
  • The fan made 3D models of the main characters from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic that seem to popular amongst Gmodders and Bronies alike. The characters did not transition from 2D to 3D animation well, looking incredibly creepy; especially the almost human-like faces.
  • Some custom ragdolls can invoke this problem even more due to added flexibility. While the default ragdolls are rigged semi-realistically, many custom ones are rigged in a way that makes them more flexible and more useful for posing. Thing is, said flexibility causes things like necks that don't support the head and thus look broken, limbs that can rotate and bend in unnatural ways, and in extreme cases the entire body moves as if it were just a bunch of individual parts loosely tied together. To say it's unsettling is putting it mildly.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Being a game on the remarkably well-aging Source engine, quite a few maps can look very nice.
  • gm_abstraction, both the original and especially its remake, are very nice ocean-themed maps with plenty of small details such as the waves washing up on the shore. The remake also adds a somewhat hidden area of an incredibly-detailed shipwreck which just looks gorgeous.
  • gm_bigisland is another island map, but it leans more into a tropical feel. It was made with almost entirely custom-made textures and models.
  • RP_NYCity is a condensed version of an Y2K-era New York City. It's extremely detailed; the map includes many iconic landmarks^includingTimes Square in the playable map, the Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and the original World Trade Center in the skybox, and uses its skybox to feel big despite still adhering to Source's mapping limits.