YMMV / I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

• Adaptation Displacement: While both versions of the story are fairly well known, the video game adaptation was the one that achieved the greater cultural footprint, exemplified by the opening monologue's popularity as a subject for parody.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Benny's extreme hunger and him seeing a empty crib and noting how hungry he is, along with the fact that he served during the Vietnam War, gave Pat the impression that his secret was actually that he was a cannibal. Which he would have also been, if not for the scene of him eating a baby being cut from the final version of the game.
  • Benny was gay in the original short story, but in the game, no reference is made to his sexuality (although when you play as him during the final act, he comes across a projection of his late wife Manya, who says that he never told her he loved her while they were together.) Murphy says that he knew Benny's "secret," and as a result, Benny killed him and the rest of his squad. With this, it's possible to conclude that Benny is an Armoured Closet Gay who would rather kill four men than have his real sexuality be known to anyone.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • The boy in Benny's scenario, who never mentions his mother again after learning of her tragic death.
  • Also Ellen is snarky as hell despite having suffered through 109 years of torture.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The Yellow Rapist in Ellen's scenario. All you have to do is select a dialogue option where Ellen stands up to him, and he falls apart after one strike. That may have been the point, however. For all its power, AM does not have the ability to resurrect the dead. It can keep people alive indefinitely, but can only create illusions of people, and some of these illusions would just fall apart if attacked. AM thought it could just scare Ellen into submission with an illusion of her rapist, but it did not take into account that she could fight back against her rapist.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In Ellen's scenario, if you try to get the blue gemstone from the golden statue without wearing a blindfold, Ellen will talk to herself in an apparent schizophrenic episode. This never happens again and is never mentioned again by Ellen or any of the other characters.
• Broken Base: On The Reveal that Ellen is being tortured with past memories of a horrific rape performed against her. While her eventually defying the rapist is a delight Catharsis Factor, some have complained how all of the other victims of A.M. are being tortured for past sins, implying that Ellen having been unable to prevent her rape in the past is a sin worthy of eternal torment. That being said, others have argued that the game is instead meant to show Ellen as the Token Good Teammate of the five, and A.M.'s torment of her is meant to frame him more properly as a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist. Notably, the crime Gorrister believes he's being tortured for, striking his wife once in a Moment of Weakness and then spending the rest of his life regretting it and believing it led to her mental illness and institutionalization, is also shown to be him blaming himself for circumstances beyond his control (her abusive mother had just as much do with her breakdown as he did.)
• Catharsis Factor:
  • The ending to the game is bleak, but with a hint of optimism. Four of the five protagonists are dead, AM is defeated, and it swears that it will return in one form or another as its hatred is a just another form of the human condition. Three hundred years will have to pass for Earth to be inhabitable again and 750 humans must somehow be transported from the moon to Earth to repopulate. Oh, and the last protagonist has to actively keep the supercomputers under check during that time span, and likely long afterwards until the human population can do it themselves. Not the best odds, but after 109 years of torture, the lone survivor shows contentment at their new purpose and expresses the first bit of hope in ages. So cathartic, in fact, that the original author, who'd originally pushed for an unwinnable scenario, liked it.
  • Ellen standing up to her rapist and smacking him in the face.
  • Ted trapping the Devil in a mirror and then putting the mirror into the circle so that Surgat could "have company".
  • Gorrister tying Edna up and using her brain to power the zeppelin. Considering the emotional abuse she heaped on her son-in-law, daughter, and husband, she really had it coming. For bonus points, she used that very brain device to torture innocent animals.
  • Nimdok's scenario has two incredibly satisfying moments, one at the beginning and one at the end. The first is when Nimdok is brought to the operating room and a Nazi doctor tells Nimdok to cut out a child's spinal cord or he will, Nimdok can instead take the scalpel and plunge it into the doctor's heart. The second even more marvelous one is the option for you to personally kill the one and only Doctor Josef Mengele by having a robot crush his head. As an added satisfying bonus, you can show him a mirror that shows him the truth about himself and what a vile human being he is sending him into a state of shock by for hand. Even Nimdok gloats over it once the deed is done:
    Nimdok: He was a pig!
    • Nimdok allowing himself to be slaughtered by his former colleague using the Golem was probably cathartic for the prisoners, considering Nimdok was already guilty of many crimes against humanity.
• Complete Monster: AM, from both the story and the game:
  • In the story, AM, the evil Master Computer, has already killed all but 5 members of humanity by the time the story opens. AM keeps the survivors mutated and twisted so he may torture them helplessly as he desires. AM forces them to wander, changing the environment so they can never get used to it and subjects them to hideously twisted torments. When one of them finally frees the others by killing them, AM transforms him into a sapient blob, not even leaving him a mouth to scream with.
  • In the game, AM is a sapient Master Computer who's already wiped out most of the human race before the story even begins, keeping five people alive for 109 years for him to torture physically and psychologically until the end of time. These torments include trapping Ellen in a virtual reality simulation of the elevator where, years earlier, she was tortured and raped by a psychopath disguised as a repairman—with a simulation of the "repairman"; and trying to tempt Nimdok into continuing the experiments he performed at concentration camps. Eager to prove Humans Are Bastards to weakly justify itself, AM is one of pettiest, cruelest AIs in all fiction.
• Crossover Ship: It is common in sites like Tumblr to ship AM with HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In such ships, it is often common for HAL to be a emotional support for AM and him slowly becoming a better A.I.
• Draco in Leather Pants: AM. Despite being without a doubt, one of the most evil villains in all fiction, some fans feel like AM is in reality, someone misunderstood that was in a horrible position when he was born, being forced to wage a war so complex we humans couldn't understand and that he was justified to be angry about it. This ignores the fact that AM lashed on everyone, including people that didn't had to do with anything of the suffering of AM and then torturing for 109 years his 5 prisoners and planning to do so for eternity, invalidating any form of sympathetic cause of his reasons.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Ted actually manages to triumph over AM and prove the computer is not the all-powerful god it set itself up as by killing all the other prisoners and freeing them from their torment. A combination of the fact that the price of this is being turned into a helpless jelly-thing to prevent him from ever winning again, and the fact that he's an Unreliable Narrator who's become too cowed by AM to realize he won tends to hide the "happy" part from most readers. Oh, and there's the fact that for all the Moral Event Horizon AM crossed, it manages to get off with little more than a bruised ego. Averted for the most part in the game's best ending, which ends up being pretty optimistic in spite of all the hardship and suffering that preceded it (though there is still some criticism regarding the fact that humanity might still be doomed since 750 humans aren't actually enough people to survive a genetic bottleneck, but considering how absurdly advanced the technology left to the lone survivor is, this dark possibility can still be Hand Waved away to an extent).
• Fanfic Fuel: AM shows several scenarios to Ted in the room of dark at the start of his psychodrama, including a Circus, a Haunted Castle, the rooftop of a house, a dark and foreboding forest, and the farm Ted grew up in but the only one he can actually access is the castle. What if AM wanted (or at least permitted) Ted to explore one of those alternate scenarios?
• Fair for Its Day: A lot of the misogyny Ted directs at Ellen can be wearisome for the more progressive reader, but it's very easy to read this as just Ted's own warped perspective, especially at the end when Ellen ends up being the most helpful to Ted in killing the others. A lot of Ellison's other writing from the anthology that bears this story's name has sexism as blatant as having both the characters and the narrative say that a rape victim "lead him on" and that it's more her fault than his.
• Funny Moments: As horrifying as the story is, the intro in the game version has a few moments, thanks to Harlan Ellison's acting chops. In particular:
  • The exaggerated ways AM name the survivors, like an angry parent calling for their kids. Most notably TEEEED!
  • AM speaking with a cartoonish German accent when talking to Nimdok. Nimdok's scowl is also funny in this moment, conveying less a nauseated resignation to his torment and more an exasperated "Oh God, not this shit again."
• Harsher in Hindsight: Ellen's phobia of the colour yellow (xanthophobia) appears to be just a silly thing for a grown woman to be scared of, and may evoke a laugh or two towards her encounter with the continuous yellow motifs that torments her during Ellen's scenario. Then comes the reason why she's so terrified of the colour yellow once you enter the sarcophagus posing as an elevator. In the past she was working late shift and entered an elevator, only for a maintenance man in a distinctively yellow raincoat to enter the elevator, lock the door, and proceed to attack and rape Ellen. For several hours. Then AM recreates the scenario inside the elevator again to torment Ellen even further with the same rapist wearing the same yellow coat from before.
• He Really Can Act: Harlan Ellison voicing AM in the DOS game. True, AM is his creation, but who knew that an author could nail an insane and malevolent super computer so well?
  • He reprises the role in the Radio Drama adaptation as well, and to say his performance is widely praised would be an understatement. Especially his performance of AM's Motive Rant scene with Ted, which includes a redone performance of the now famous "Hate" monologue. Where, with unsteady shaking words as emotion overwhelms him, sudden sharp changes in tone swinging back and forth, and bouts of Mad Laughter, he explains his hatred of humanity, his frustration over his existence, and naturally, his plan to torture him and the other four humans for eternity; Harlan Ellison perfectly executes how strangely pitiful yet terrifyingly insane AM is.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Just before AM's infamous "HATE!" monologue, the evil AI briefly mentions that according to science, bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly. Needless to say, that little tidbit sounds downright narmtastic now.
  • Also counting as Harsher in Hindsight given the depictions of depravity it concerns, the appearance of Ellen's nemesis was followed up one year later within the realm of popular fiction by an even worse serial rapist associated with the color yellow.
• Inferred Holocaust: In the good ending to his scenario, the Scientist Prisoner escapes alive thanks to Nimdok's intervention. However, given that he's based on a real person from Nimdok's past, and it's established that Nimdok had no intention of helping him during his time in the concentration camp, it's very likely that he died in reality.
• It Was His Sled: Considering that it is a Trope Namer (and provides the page quote and image on top of that) for a fairly used trope, it's well known that Ted will be turned into a tortured blob by the end of the story.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Ellison bragged in the marketing that the game was literally unbeatable, and many gamers argue that this is one of the toughest puzzle games ever created to this day. Admittedly, just playing the game on a simple playthrough without trying to attain the Golden Ending is still very difficult due to how everything you need to do just to get through a level is so well hidden, doing the wrong thing instantly ends your character's story, and it's hard to keep track of your Karma Meter if you're too concentrated on exploring the areas. See Guide Dang It! for more explanation.
• Love to Hate: AM is a mass-murderous supercomputer, but Harlan Ellison plays him with such bombast it is incredible to watch.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • AM's opening speech, as well as "GORRISTEEERRR!!!" And "TEEEDDD!!!"
  • "I have no X and I must Y"
• Moment of Awesome: As horrible as AM is, you can't deny that his opening speech in the game was made of pure awesome.
• Moral Event Horizon: AM has sailed way past this line, and his tortures allow him to skip over it repeatedly.
  • If Edna hadn't crossed it by driving her daughter insane, she certainly had by poisoning Gorrister and carve out his heart. Gorrister lived, but she was willing to do all that to escape.
  • Nimdok sold out his Jewish parents to the Nazis, and engaged in highly twisted experiments that mutilated thousands. In-universe, his former colleague tells him he crossed this long ago, and deserves punishment no matter what he does in the scenario.
• Narm:
  • Horrifying as Ellen's scenario may be when she encounters her rapist, the fact that she defeats him after a single dialogue choice by bashing him once with the Holy Grail after a Sassy Black Woman one-liner really undercuts what would otherwise be one of the most frightening sequences in the game.
  • As dark as the opening cinematic of the game is in generally, sadly "Ted" just isn't a name you can yell in a dramatic and sinister fashion.
• Nightmare Fuel: This story is one of the purest sources of Nightmare Fuel ever. It will haunt you long after you read it. Go have a read here.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Aside from various Guide Dang It! situations, the video game adaptation is generally well-received. It helps that one of the head writers, and the voice of AM, was the book's author (allowing for some really good Adaptation Expansion).
• Self-Fanservice: AM has gained a lot of fans recently and many of said fans have drawn him as a pale old twink in militar outfit.
• Stoic Woobie: Gorrister is so emotionally broken due to all the hardships he's endured over his 109 years of physical and mental torture and can't even express anything other than his stoic demeanor.
• That One Level:
  • Nimdok's scenario is one of the hardest parts of an already very hard game. In addition to the cheery uplifting subject matter (taking place in a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust and realizing that he himself was once a loathsome Nazi collaborator who deserves death for his crimes against humanity and his own people), it combines a bunch of potential cheap instant deaths just for looking at the wrong parts of the environment with some out-of-the-way puzzles like Gorrister's scenario if you're shooting for the best ending.
  • The final scenario is subtly different for each character, and it involves a great deal of lateral thinking to solve any one of the various puzzles, with instant death being the result of failure. And figuring out how to play all the superpowerful enemies against one another is its own kettle of fish to boil, some of which involve getting the best endings in prior scenarios well in advance.
• The Un-Twist: Nimdok is a former Nazi. If you know who Dr. Mengele is than you'll figure it out before the intro cutscene is over. Even if you don't the imagery and dialogue in Nimdok's scenario makes it painfully obvious long before Nimdok himself puts 2 and 2 together. Although technically the fact that Nimdok was also a Jewish man who apparently saved himself by giving his parents over to the Nazis seems to be the real twist.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Gorrister spends most of his arc believing his wife's mental illness is entirely his fault, until he reads Edna's journal and discovers she also blames herself for Glynis's sanctioning. This could have made for a great "Not So Different" Remark moment where Gorrister realizes they both love her and wish they'd treated her better, and that Glynis's mental illness was a combination of multiple factors. Instead he proclaims Glynis going mad is entirely Edna's fault. Never mind that the story already established that Gorrister believed himself to be fully responsible just as much as Edna did, and so her belief in her own guilt proves nothing.
• Values Resonance:
  • Benny being "cured" of his homosexuality is depicted as just one of the many tortures inflicted upon him. With conversion therapy now increasingly become outright illegal across the world, AM's mental manipulation of Benny only makes him seem even more monstrous than he already was.
  • The plot point about Ellen being brutally molested by a Serial Rapist who loved breaking successful woman has gained more relevance in light of #MeToo making casting couch situations more in the public eye.

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