YMMV / Mr. Mercedes

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: As unlikeable and horrible a person Deborah Ann Hartsfield was, some of her circumstances in the past are understandable, but having to die by ingesting poison and suffocating from its effects could still make the reader feel a pang of sympathy for her.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Holly has proven, over time, to be one of the most popular characters in King's entire mythos, especially among neurodivergent fans who personally relate to her. Even King himself isn't immune, having admitted that she was meant to be a bit part but ended up stealing his heart.
• Expy: Probably unintentionally, Holly is (minus telekinetic powers) very much like Carrie might have turned out, had she lived. She's even the right age.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • This novel has become a lot harder to read in light of the ongoing epidemic of vehicular terrorism that has sprung up in the wake of its publication. On a less gruesome, but equally tragic note, Anton Yelchin's death in a freak motor accident also comes across as uniquely bizarre when one considers that he was originally slated to play Brady in the miniseries adaptation, with Yelchin's death forcing the showrunners to recast the role to Harry Treadaway.
  • A similar thing to Brady's mass murder happened in January 2024 in Szczecin, Poland, where a man drove his car into a crowd gathered on a town square. No one was killed, but over 20 people were seriously injured.
  • The climax of the book, which involves Brady planning to commit a suicide bombing in a pop concert filled with kids, becomes much more uncomfortable to read following the Manchester Arena Bombing.
• Moral Event Horizon: Brady crosses this right from the beginning when he steals Olivia Trelawney's Mercedes and kills several people with it.
  • Arguably, he reaches this MUCH earlier when he pushes his brain-damaged brother down the stairs, with his mother's approval.
  • Deborah Ann Hartsfield, Brady's mother, crossed it in the reader's eyes when, years before, she kicked her brain-damaged son's firetruck down some stairs, nodded to Brady to kick his brother down the stairs, too, and she then proceeded to suffocate her son with a pillow, when he survived the fall.
• Paranoia Fuel
  • The idea of someone being able to steal your PKE signal with a device and then run off with your car, as noted in the novel, can be a definite example.
  • The idea of being at a concert one is looking forward to, where someone with a bomb on them is in close proximity. The bomber is planning to let it go off at the pinnacle of the concert and nobody in the area is any the wiser. That fun concert? Could blow up into a literal hellhole at any second.
  • The idea that you could be standing in a crowd on a street on any random day and some psycho decides to run you down with his car For the Evulz.
• Squick: Brady's relationship with his mother.
• Tear Jerker: In the show, Bill Hodges has his daughter sent to prison in an effort to straighten her out. As he's watching her board the prison bus he's saying 'Don't cry' is he talking to himself or to her.
• The Woobie: If there's one consensus among the King fandom, it's this: everyone would give anxious, neurotic, emotionally abused Holly a hug if they could (and if Holly herself wasn't skittish about being touched).

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