YMMV / Jeff the Killer

Examples for the official 2015 remake go here.

The original story and its remakes:

• Angst? What Angst?: While Jeff's parents are described as sad and disappointed when his brother Liu gets arrested, they seem to get over it surprisingly quick. For the rest of the story, they mostly act concerned in regards to how it affects Jeff and otherwise treat the situation nonchalantly. Even if one were to interpret them as unloving parents, it still doesn't make sense that they don't at least appear worried about how this could hurt their reputation, especially since the story continuously establishes they care about that. They are even comfortable enough to attend a party just a few days after Liu's arrest without any fear over the possibility of having to address this to their new neighbors.
• Broken Base:
  • Many consider this one of the worst creepypastas out there, but it still has a fairly sizeable fanbase who regard it as a classic. The fact that it started the irritating trend of "young person goes through ridiculous amounts of bizarre angst, snaps and kills people, possibly becomes unkillable pseudo-demon for no real reason" stories that drown out original, creative creepypastas does not help soothe the conflict.
  • However, there are some to find the story okay at best, mainly thanks to The Midnight Society's readings of it, especially from Mr. Creepy Pasta, who has stated the pasta is close to an 80s horror film.
• Complete Monster: In Mr. Betty Krueger's audio dramas, Zalgo is an Eldritch Abomination who wants to be freed from his prison so he can turn Earth into a nightmarish world of eternal suffering. In House Of Jeff The Killer, he revived Jeff, and ordered him to kill three thousand people for him so that their bodies could be sacrificed to him. In Blood Of Jeff The Killer, he is revealed to have corrupted children and turned them into killers for his army, and to have allowed Jeff to torment Jane in her nightmares. After being revived, he drains Dr. Englund's life force and raises an army of zombies to slaughter the world. During this, he taunts Jane and Toby about their pasts and the deaths of their family members. Even in a world filled with killers, rapists, and man-eating monsters, Zalgo manages to stand out.
• Condemned by History: Initially, Jeff the Killer was one of the most popular creepypastas ever written for a while, inspiring loads of imitators, spin-offs, and sequels. However, most of the imitators were downright terrible, being Strictly Formula stories of young people being put through ludicrous amounts of trauma, suffering some kind of Body Horror, and turning into supernatural serial killers. The deluge of low-quality knock-offs eventually led people to look at the original story with a more critical eye, and it became ridiculed for its Narm-heavy story that relied on every character behaving in wildly unrealistic ways. These days, if asked about "Jeff the Killer", most Internet denizens will greet it with either a snort of derision or a short lecture about the garbage it inspired in its wake. Since the late 2010s and especially the early 2020s, interest in the creepypasta has started again, but solely due to efforts to find the origin of the infamous image associated with it; a common refrain among many is that the image and its mysterious origin are way more interesting than the story itself.
• Contested Sequel: Some inversion with later pastas at least, such as "Jeff the Killer: Part 2" and "Jeff the Killer: Part 3 (Jeff is Back)". Debated however with "Jeff the Killer V.S. Jane the Killer"; while some admit the grand scale of the story is impressive, some find Jane's backstory to be a bit weak, as well as the lack of background story for her and her "powers to shape shift". The readings by Mr. Creepy Pasta did help the story, however.
• Crossover Ship: Jeff the Killer fans love to pair Jeff with other creepypasta characters, from Jeff The Killer/Clockwork to even Jeff the Killer/Slenderman.
• Dancing Bear: For many, the mysterious origin of the disturbing "GO TO SLEEP" image associated with the pasta (which likely predates the first iteration of the pasta by at least 3 years) is way more interesting and actually scary than the creepypasta itself. While interest in the image's origins have increased since the late 2010s and early 2020s, this has not extended to the story itself.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Elements of the fandom love portraying Jeff as some kind of misunderstood hero or Comedic Sociopath (the latter best shown in the web comic Pastamonsters).
• The Inverse Law of Fandom Levity: Narminess aside, the story is meant to be a genuinely terrifying, serious, and tragic tale about a young boy who succumbs to sociopathy and becomes a dreaded Serial Killer. The fandom however, treats it like a high school teen dramedy and Coming of Age Story where the titular Jeff is a misunderstood soft boy.
• Memetic Mutation: "I'm going to Jeff the Kill you!" "Oh no! He's going to Jeff the Kill me!"^ExplanationA deliberately awkward-sounding reframing of the pasta that interprets the title character's entire name as a verb.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • When Jeff butchers his own parents, and most likely his brother.
  • Randy, Keith and Troy cross it by attempting to beat Jeff to death at a party, and threatening to shoot anyone who tries to interfere.
• Narm: There's a great deal of snark regarding just how over the top Jeff's origins are, and how hard it is to take the unrealistic writing seriously.
  • Randy's dialogue in general ("well, well, well, looks like we've got some new meat.", "I don't go for even, I go for winning." etc) can come off as cheesy and over the top. Of course, it can veer into Narm Charm.
  • The fact that the bullies, who are around Jeff's age, carry weapons with them. Knives aren't too far-fetched, but guns?
    • Or the fact that nobody is capable of breaking up a fight between children. Granted, they had guns, but the violence should never have escalated that quickly in the first place.
  • The pasta in general for some seems to Narm Charm for some, such as Mr. Creepy Pasta, who has felt the pasta (especially described with Part 2) to be "like an 80s horror film". This is usually for people to Take the Third Option.
  • The initial version hosted by the Creepypasta Wiki, said by the member who submitted it to be the original written from memory, used the word "knifed" instead of "stabbed" consistently, including by the police. Jeff, who is a teenager, also refers to his parents as "mommy" and "daddy" and speaks in a very childish way even before being injured. The original had already been hosted on creepypasta.com for quite some time before, and the writer admitted to have taken some liberties with it.
• Nightmare Fuel: The original picture◊ upon which the whole Creepypasta was based on is startling and hard to shake, and for awhile in 2009 were popular with now-defunct Screamers. The fact that no one really knows the origin of it makes it even scarier, although recent efforts have helped to shed some light on it.
  • For some, the alternate version◊ of the image, discovered in 2018, might be even creepier than its more famous counterpart, as the more realistic eyes and mouth give it an Uncanny Valley feel that may be even more unsettling than its cartoonishly scary alt.
  • The "green-eyed Jeff" image, rumored as being as a third alt of the image or even the original, unedited version, might be the most terrifying version yet, with its visible nostrils and bright green eyes. Thankfully, it is now thought to be a hoax, and is either a hypothetical reconstruction of the original image, or just an edit made of it to scare people.
• Nightmare Retardant: Just think on how absurdly difficult it would be for a person with no eyelids to get through life, and it becomes almost laughable to imagine Jeff doing... anything really.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The infamously edgy creepypasta version of this story (the one that refers to Jeff as a kid who becomes a serial killer) originated in 2011, but the actual first reference to "Jeff", combined with the disturbing "GO TO SLEEP" image, was on a Newgrounds thread in 2008 as part of a story-writing exercise, where a user posted the image, referring to it as "Jeff", gave a few facts, and prompted others to add more to the story.
  • The "GO TO SLEEP" image itself originated on the Japanese Internet, and is thought to have circled as a screamer image since at least 2005, at least 3 years before finding success on the Western Internet. In fact, an earlier iteration◊ of the image was eventually found in 2018. According to some Japanese sources, the image itself originated as an edit of a video where a middle-aged woman got close to the camera, causing her face to appear white, but this has not yet been confirmed, and the original source remains lost.
• Padding: Jeff's dispute with his parents on what to wear to the party feels like this. So much focus is put on how Jeff's parents are overdressed for a child's birthday party and try to push for him to dress similarly that a Genre Savvy reader would expect this to lead to something (such as the party being a red herring) but it goes nowhere and could easily be cut out of the story without affecting it.
• Recurring Fanon Character: Jeff the Hugger is the Happypasta parody version of Jeff the Killer, similar to Splendorman. He is Jeff the Killer’s cousin who loves giving hugs and spreading joy. He has rainbow eyes and a pet named Frown Cat, a parody of Smile Dog.
• Sacred Cow: Due to the massive fandom, insulting the story or anything related to Jeff will likely elicit hostile reaction its fans (especially from fangirls). This died off in later years due to the story being a popular target for riffing, its fans growing out of the intended audience that took it seriously, and newer readers just finding it cliche or funny.
• Self-Fanservice: Simply go to DeviantArt or Google and see just how many people draw Jeff as a Bishōnen. In many cases the Glasgow Grin is not very detailed, often consisting of only 2 line scas on each cheek or it looks rather like he simply has an unnaturally large smile and that he simply wears black eye shadow in emo fashion rather than missing his eyelids. He is also often drawn with a muscular build, something never mentioned in the original story, though he did have superhuman strength. This is a huge level of Squick when you realize in the original story Jeff was thirteen years old.. To be fair, he seems older in mentioned fanart so he could very likely be. Also, a good chunk if not all of this fanart was made by teenagers who would be around his age.
• Song Association: Marilyn Manson's version of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" is often associated with Jeff the Killer due to the acoustic cover "Sweet Dreams are made of screams" by Warlocktheripper, popularised further by Myuu's piano cover. Many creepypasta reading videos of Jeff-related stories often feature the signature melody, making it a recurring theme for that character.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Jeff's mother, who decides that the best course of action when she sees him cutting his mouth is to get her husband to shoot him.
  • Jeff himself. He's meant to be seen as a Tragic Villain who snapped after the trauma he went through. However, many people think he loses the "tragic" angle when he murders his family, implied to include his brother Liu. While killing his mother could be seen as a twisted form of self defense given that she told her husband to get the gun and kill Jeff and he just caught her saying this, his father did not agree to her request or even have a chance to before Jeff killed them both, and barring some minor negligence, he really had nothing to do with his son's suffering. The fact that he is hinted at the end to have killed Liu as well especially makes people abandon sympathy for him considering the fact that Liu took the blame for attacking Randy and company and went to juvie for him.

---