YMMV / Oddity Archive

• Accidental Nightmare Fuel: Interestingly, the otherwise straightly Nightmare Fuelish "Emergency Broadcast Salute" contains an example of this. Originally during the credits, a jingle version of an EBS test from the 70's played right to The Stinger. However, at some point during either the latter half of 2014 or the first week of 2015, the jingle was cut partway through the credits, with just a faint static sound in its place. An annotation then pops up explaining that The Orchard made a "non-negotiable" copyright claim, forcing the jingle to be truncated. It's actually quite unsettling, especially if you're not expecting it. Averted with the credits for the 2016 re-edit — Ben's Acid Rain Remix of the jingle is probably meant as straight Nightmare Fuel.
• Archive Panic: 200+ episodes as of 2021 and still going.
• Awesome Music: The polka version of "Survivalism" in "Local TV Special".
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Ben's feed in "Public Domain VHS Distributors" is suddenly taken over at one point by an... insane man (fellow reviewer Geno Cuddy) who rambles on about UAV Corporation. After Geno gives him back his signal, Ben has this to say:
  Ben: That. Never. Happened. Got it? It never happened.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Ben feels many PSAs do this unintentionally.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The "Record Ripoffs" series of episodes are arguably the most popular.
• Friendly Fandoms: With other YouTubers who cover old gadgets, such as Techmoan, VWestlife, and Technology Connections.
• Growing the Beard: "Episode 3 - TV Sign-Offs" shows the beginning of Ben's current, relatively laid-back personality (as opposed to his previous irate, Nostalgia Critic-esque style). Ben acknowledges this in his commentary for the episode, saying that he was in too much pain from the car accident to really do the "angry" persona.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "The Death of Analog TV" is a (faux-)Series Fauxnale for Archive, where Ben laments that his show has been cancelled through the meddling of the "higher-ups" in the YouTube geek community. It's meant as a joke, but it becomes a lot less funny when one considers that the Season Four premiere, "Microbroadcasting", was taken down a few days after being posted to YouTube.
  • Ben's mean-spirited parody of Britney Spears' earlier work mentioned in the episodes on his music career could be seen as this due to the re-evaluation Spears' work received after the #FreeBritney movement's rise.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When Ben sees the first seconds of Donny Osmond's "Soldier of Love" video, he yells "Hey, this isn't the New Kids on the Block!" New Kids on the Block themselves would undergo a Darker and Edgier direction 5 years after Donny did.
  • La-Z-Boy's 1996 instructional video about Stranger Danger (featured in the "Child Safety Videos" episode) has a vignette about a girl getting the courage to tell her family that her Creepy Uncle molests her. A YouTube commentator pointed out that this vignette has weird parallels with The Room: the girl's name is Lisa, her friends tell her how dangerous it is to keep secrets, the uncle has a slight resemblance to Greg Sestero, and it's peppered with poor line delivery. The commenter praised Ben for not resorting to cliches and doing a Room joke. Ben put a like symbol on the comment.
• Memetic Mutation: Mentioning Code Lyoko in the comments.^note For whatever reason, videos related to Code Lyoko appear in the related videos section on YouTube uploads of almost all Oddity Archive episodes. Ben, not knowing the show, is baffled by this.
• Pandering to the Base: Invoked in "Episode 76 - Philips CD-I (Compact Disc Interactive)" as part of a greater rant about misogyny in a video game (and the oddities in general). Ben talks about how one of the CD-I's adult games, "Strip Poker Live", was hugely slanted against female players and in favor of male players. Ben then went on to talk about how, after "three grueling hours" of playing an incredibly difficult game of poker, he managed to find something that "objectifies men". He ends his rant and segues into the play-through by saying, "Ladies, this one's for you."
• Squick: Ben's interpretation of the Screen Gems logo.
  Ben: This is like the Rorschach test of logos; everybody has a different interpretation. To me, this logo looks like rapidly congealing cartoon blood on a solid protein background. (makes a loud slurping sound as the logo animates)
  • The description of Staff Sargent Barry Sadler being hit by a "feces-covered Punji stick" and while the "foot in nail" scene from Home Alone plays.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Somehow, the record riff in "Christmas Special 2014" turns into this, as Ben desperately tells Santa about how he and his (fictional) wife fear for their (equally fictional) daughter and for their lives following said daughter's Face–Heel Turn, all while trying to placate the daughter's violent streak.
  • "The Death of Analog TV". Ben has been informed that the higher powers in the geek community have gotten Oddity Archive canceled. Because of this, Ben decides to cover the titular topic. He then ends with his own Archive final sign off before the credits roll. The screen then goes to static, and a final Stinger of the KLAK-13 station ID card plays. ^note Ben has confirmed on Twitter and Facebook that Archive is not really ending. This information doesn't keep the episode from being incredibly tearjerking.
  • "An Overly Nostalgic Halloween (Or, For Want of a Pail)". Ben spends the last few minutes explaining nostalgia...and then realizing that in doing so, he's made himself redundant and begins fading away. Ignoring the impossibility of such a thing, it's a little sad to watch him fade out of existance all because he was reminsicing about his old McDonald's trick or treat pail....
• The Woobie: Ben. Did you read that first part of the main page?
  • It's especially notable during part of "Local TV Vol. 2 (Kiddie Show Hosts)", when Ben does a Fred Rogers-esque bit about the word "seatbelt". It can be... difficult to watch if you're aware of what happened.
    Ben: "Can you say 'seatbelts'? ... Sure, I thought ya could. Mr. Seatbelt is there to keep you from getting up, because we wouldn't want any accidents, now would we? Accidents are bad."