YMMV / Poptropica

Applying to the gameplay

• Annoying Video Game Helper: In 2016, Poptropica added Monkey Wrench Island, which was designed to teach new players how to play the game. On paper that sounds fine, but there were two major problems; one, playing the island was mandatory when creating a new account, and two, this island was released long after the height of Poptropica's popularity had passed. So, in other words, a large portion of people signing in were people who grew up playing Poptropica, and therefore already knew how the game works. Yeah, it's kind of annoying having it be mandated that, before you play any of the islands you actually want to play, you have to complete an island that teaches you how to jump when you already know how to jump because you've been playing this game since you were five...
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Timmy Failure Island and Mystery of the Map Island both end with a relatively easy chase scene where you avoid slow obstacles.
  • The final virus on Virus Hunter Island is more of a "Get Back Here!" Boss than anything. It barely attacks you.
  • There's no way to lose the final battle against the Mega Fighting Bot on Mocktropica. All you have to do is click on it repeatedly. It moves slowly and doesn't take that many hits to defeat.
  • The confrontation with Zeus in Greek Sea Odyssey is a strong example of this. The previous two times you had a battle with him, you had at least the power of Poseidon's trident working with you as you and Zeus shoot at each other, like a true battle. In Odyssey, however, the final confrontation with Zeus only involves... climbing up to the throne room while he rolls lightning orbs down at you, Donkey Kong style. As soon as you get to the top, there is no battle, Zeus just gives up. Yes, Zeus may be physically weaker than he was in his previous appearances but there could have been something besides the Donkey Kong bit, especially for the purpose of signing off a villain who had left an impact on more than one island.
• Audience-Alienating Era: February 2016 onwards, after the release of Monkey Wrench Island. Poptropica went dormant for three years in favor of focusing on the Worlds follow-up. Worlds ended up being ignored by both devs and fans due to its underwhelming gameplay and strange physics that made it not as good as Poptropica. Next, Poptropica began adding pointless cosmetic features and minigames — the art style is noticeably different and doesn't mesh well with the game's established style. Starting in 2021, they started publishing new islands, and they're very short and generic.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Spy Island is enjoyed by fans for taking place entirely at night, giving it a cool aesthetic. Freeing trapped spies, infiltrating varied bases, and getting cool gadgets to use, it's one of the earliest islands but really demonstrated the game's potential.
  • Counterfeit Island. It's full of Genius Bonuses, the Black Widow is a well-developed and liked villain, and the idea of catching a museum thief is very intense. Additionally, it spawned the Balloon Boy Running Gag.
  • Great Pumpkin Island is the most accurate adaptation of the sponsored islands, and it is great. It has a lot of creative minigames, and the Schulz-based art looks amazing. It includes the most iconic lines and scenes of the special.
  • Mythology Island is one of the most grand-scale adventures in the game. Beautifully detailed art, memorable characters, difficult-yet-fair puzzles...
• Broken Base: Poptropica Worlds, the Unity follow-up. While Poptropica did need something to sustain itself since Adobe Flash was getting old at that point, whether or not Worlds was any good remains a debate among fans. It only had three full islands, including a remake of 24 Carrot, and a mini-island. They're very light on story. Either Worlds had potential and could have continued, similarly to how Poptropica had its first islands more basic and simple, or it never would have worked.
• Disappointing Last Level:
  • For about three years, the final Poptropica island was Monkey Wrench Island, an incredibly easy and short tutorial level. Many players found it to be a disappointment after the quite awesome Escape from Pelican Rock Island, which has you planning and pulling off a prison escape to prove your innocence.
  • In 2019, a sequel to Reality TV Island was released. It only has three minigames compared to the 14 of the original island, and is effortlessly easy. This turned out to be the final island until the promise of more coming in 2021.
• Good Bad Bugs: Jade Scarab Island was totally broken on release, in a good way. The hit detection on a lot of obstacles just doesn't exist, allowing you to simply walk past them. This happens with the rock wall in the tomb — you're supposed to solve a puzzle and look for an excavator, but you don't actually need to. In the next room, you're meant to solve a puzzle to reach the room with the Jade Scarab... except you can go through the door the puzzle opens, even when it's closed. Immediately after that, the trigger for the escape sequence is obvious and can be entered without even taking the fake treasure. It lets you skip major parts of the island and still get the medallion anyways.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!:
  • Poptropica Adventures on the DS has only three islands and the game can be completed in around 45 minutes. Most of the gameplay time comes from Fake Longevity, forcing you to play the same boring minigames over and over to get to certain areas.
  • Monkey Wrench Island is the second-shortest island in the game (only topped by Snagglemast Island), serving as a tutorial that can be beat in a few minutes. Fans were not happy when it was the first island added in a year, and the game went on a hiatus for quite a while after Monkey Wrench's release in favor of Worlds.
• Sequelitis: No long-time fan finds Reality TV: Wild Safari or Zomberry 2 to be better than the originals.
  • Reality TV: Wild Safari shrinks down the 14 minigames of the original to a measly three. Not helping is that these are all ripped from other islands, meaning it has almost no new content, and there's not even a story.
  • Zomberry 2, which had been teased for around a year before finally releasing, is little more than a repetitive and tedious minigame. It was viewed as an insult to the original Zomberry, often considered to be one of the greatest islands. Not helping is that Zomberry, or any other AS2 islands, haven't been ported to the HTML5 version.
  • The HTML5 port of Mythology Island. It's a watered-down version of the original that doesn't blend well (Herc's Hero Hut is now a small stand on Main Street, and Aphrodite's Hangman-style game is gone).
• Surprise Difficulty: Several islands require precise platforming, puzzles, and timing. Some islands are dependent on knowledge like how to perform a DNA test, what kind of hose is used in a car, chemical formulas, how to light a fire in the wilderness, how to recognize forged art, and the names of various Greek gods.
• That One Boss:
  • Mordred on Astro-Knights. The first segment sees the game undergo an Unexpected Gameplay Change, as you maneuver Merlin the owl to confront Mordred (now the Binary Bard).
  • Zeus from Mythology Island may qualify. Your speed and health are about the same as his; it's that he has much better attacks to choose from. Your only attack is to fire one lightning bolt at a time. Each does little damage. He, meanwhile can either fire lightning bolts in all directions at once (difficult to avoid but does little damage), use a charged attack with energy balls that track you (more avoidable but more damaging— Also, you can't attack him while he's charging), or tackle you (easiest to avoid, but if he manages to hit you you can go down in one shot).
  • The final boss on Red Dragon Island, the titular dragon, is so difficult the developers added an easy mode.
• That One Level:
  • Astro-Knights Island. It's full of difficult bosses and puzzles, has a lot to explore, and is very long. The developers released an official, in-game walkthrough for it because it was the island with the lowest rate of completion.
  • Counterfeit Island has some difficult puzzles involving categorizing genres of art, finding forgeries, and translating a sentence from French to English (you're given a brief word translation dictionary, but it's up to you to put the meanings together to form the sentence). Additionally, one early puzzle involves matching a gargoyle's face to a drawing, and it is very specific.
  • Skullduggery Island is the longest island in the game. Even if you know the optimal areas for buying and selling, it'll still take hours.
  • Steamworks Island has no characters to talk to, besides Sprocket and the humans at the very end. There are nearly no hints as to what you need to do, and the puzzles are incredibly hard, requiring precise timing and searching everywhere you can for keys and tools.
  • On Poptropolis Games Island, the Triple Jump minigame is disliked for its wonky controls. You have to jump three times in a row, but the timing is off and it's easy to slip off the platforms. It can be quite a challenge to get first place.
  • On Reality TV Island, the least liked minigame among fans is probably Water Run. There's a really fast-moving boar that can ram you and cause you to lose all your water, and more water spills out of your jar the faster you move.
  • Cryptids Island has the darts minigame in Scotland, which has finicky controls and opponents who get increasingly harder (the last one will always score a bullseye), plus you have to do it three times to complete the island!
• That One Minigame: Wimpy Wonderland has two that present an enormous roadblock to completion.
  • The Watercress Salad minigame has you to eat a bowl of Watercress Salad while Grandpa Heffley tells a long-winded story. The issue is that clearing the minigame requires clicking the mouse very fast for a sustained period of time. If you're not a fast clicker, you are in for one hell of a time.
  • Playing Twisted Wizards isn't much easier. Even with the cheat to make it easier, it's still a challenging Tower Defense game. The enemies you need to defeat move fast and in large numbers. By the third stage there is very little margin for error.
• That One Puzzle:
  • The card-flipping puzzle at the end of Astro-Knights has kept many from being able to complete the island.
  • Big Nate Island has a stink bomb puzzle that's entirely guesswork. There's an optional item that hints that you'll need a stink bomb, but how you make it is never explained prior.
  • Vampire's Curse Island has the antidote puzzle. You're not told what each ingredient does or how much of it you need to add, so it's a lot of trial and error.
  • The mancala games on Nabooti Island and Mocktropica have an AI that's incredibly difficult to beat. Mocktropica's version even has ladybugs that may fly away and affect your score.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • At the end of Twisted Thicket Island, you get an amulet that gives you the powers of flight, super speed, and super strength, which you can switch between instantly. This is only used for the final boss battle, and then the island is over. While you do get to use the amulet more in the bonus quest, this is locked behind membership.
  • On Counterfeit Island, you need to find the curator of the museum. She's on Early Poptropica Island, and when you visit her over there, you get a key that's added to your Counterfeit Island inventory. This is the only instance of one island requiring you to visit a different one, or an event being triggered on an island that changes another. Considering the nonlinear format in which the islands can be completed, this could have led to an interesting interconnected world, but is the only such instance of this happening in the game.
  • The Mighty Action Force Card Game on PoptropiCon. The minigame is incredibly fun as an Affectionate Parody of collectible card games, complete with unique abilities and cool card art. It's introduced in episode 2, and you play it three times, before it's sidelined in episode 3 as an optional minigame.

Applying to the story, non-gameplay elements

• Alternate Character Interpretation: The fanbase is rife with this, jumping off from the little supplementary material is given about the major characters. Each fan has their own different take on the characters, as well as the setting.
  • The release of Super Villain Island fed more fuel to this concerning Poptropica's villains, many interpreting their dreams the player visits as clues to their motivations and backstories.

• Angst? What Angst?: Happens quite a lot due to the fast-paced nature of the islands.
  • The kidnapped children of 24 Carrot Island happily move on to help rebuild their hometown after Dr. Hare is defeated, despite being brainwashed for who knows how long.
  • In Shrink Ray Island, C.J. still remains focused on escaping from and defeating Mr. Silva although she was kidnapped by him, her own science teacher.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • To some fans, Ned Noodlehead is a funny, harmless character. To others, he is an absolute ire because he gained all the credit for taking down the five supervillains of Super Power Island, although it was all the player character's work and he only dealt the finishing blow to Betty Jetty. It's Played for Laughs, but so many fans were left infuriated by this ending they heaped the blame onto Ned.
  • Dr. Hare, although an enduring popular villain, is also derided because of his over-soaring popularity. He has been promoted to a Series Mascot to replace Shark Boy to dodge lawsuit (see Screwed by the Lawyers), and either fans love his recurring appearances or they roll their eyes at it, thinking the other villains beside Dr. Hare deserve more limelight.
    • His Mocktropica joke counterpart Dr. Beev counts too. After becoming a Breakout Character^note by Dr. Beev being placed in the 24 Carrot Island Common Room for a limited time, fans either found the character hilarious and worthwhile (as the fandom exploded with Dr. Beev fanart following the incident), or is a sign that the creators are running out of ideas to the point they resort to old gags to humor the audience.
  • Octavian of Mystery of the Map Island is either a suave, awesome villain or is on the weaker side of the scale.
• Bizarro Episode: Mocktropica, the island where the fourth wall doesn't exist anymore and all the inconvenient glitches are intentional. You're tasked to recruit the actual creators of Poptropica back to developing the game because original HQ has been taken over by shameless pandering developers. Said new developers are revealed to be the creators of rival site MegaFightingBots.com are purposefully trying to run the game to the ground. And they reveal themselves in an Animesque Voltron-style Combining Mecha formation sequence. This is also one of the buggiest sound-updated islands, what a wonder why.
• Broken Base:
  • Wimpy Boardwalk Island. Fans enjoy it for being an Even Better Sequel to Wimpy Wonderland that takes more inspiration from its source material and includes carnival games. Detractors criticize the full-color art for being too simplistic, and find the island boring and not inventive enough.
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Island. Is it a creative, engaging, relatively nonlinear retelling of the classic story, or is it too short with Schizophrenic Difficulty?
  • The character designs in Poptropica Worlds are more detailed than in Poptropica. Is this a good move towards modernizing and allowing for more customization, or is it uncanny and ruins an iconic aspect of the game?
  • Escape from Pelican Rock Island. Either you like the general plot progression and the prison's memorable characters, or it's too repetitive because you have to go through multiple pointless periods if you miss anything the first time.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Zeus being evil. Every appearance showed him as a threatening force, and you can easily read beforehand that the text attached to the sacred items is about ruling all of Poptropica.
• Cry for the Devil: Ringmaster Raven is an extremely popular villain because of his tragic backstory, which has fans arguably sympathizing with him more than the actual good guys of Monster Carnival.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The villains, no matter how remorseless they can be or heinous their crimes are, will often fall under this.
• Escapist Character: The player character is of ambiguous origin and is likely a kid, is usually accepted into most societies they visit, and is always successful in beating even the so-called powerful masterminds and even a god. However, what makes it worthwhile are the tough-but-entertaining challenges the player has to solve to complete the island missions.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The ending to Monster Carnival is infamous for this. The player hypnotizes Ringmaster Raven into believing he's a chicken. The carnival leaves the town, presenting him as their new act: "The Chicken Man". While Ringmaster Raven did questionable things, the justification of this punishment is skewed, considering what made him go evil in the first place was him being bullied and chased out of town for his birdlike appearance. And the worst part? The setting of the island was the same town that frowned down upon him, and nobody realized this and/or showed remorse.
  • The creators attempt to rectify the ending in its remake by writing out Ringmaster Raven’s hypnosis and having him sent to Super Villain Island instead.
• Evil Is Cool: Rumpelstiltskin’s Poptropican form from Fairy Tale Island might as well be the game acknowledging the Self-Fanservice surrounding their villains.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: A plethora of the Poptropica fanworks focus on fanmade backstories to some islands and its characters.
• Fan Nickname: Some fans have dubbed Black Widow's former henchman “Brown Recluse”.
• Gainax Ending: An infamous example in Nabooti Island. The player gathers all the Nabooti Jewels and aligns them on the totem, the totem suddenly reveals itself as sentient, and then it takes off to return to its home planet. What. Makes matters worse that the island is an extremely loose adaptation of the Choose Your Own Adventure book and up until this point the story was an action-adventure with zero indicators of science fiction, supplying little-to-no context for this twist.
• Genius Bonus:
  • On Red Dragon, the haiku master Basho has a banana plant next to his hut. The real Basho took that name from his favorite banana plant.
  • S.O.S. Island is a Whole-Plot Reference to Moby-Dick. Likewise, Survival Island turns out to be one to The Most Dangerous Game.
• Growing the Beard: Astro-Knights Island demonstrated what Poptropica was truly capable of, being the longest island yet by a large amount, having many distinct locations, four boss fights, and memorable characters. It's widely regarded as one of the best islands in the game. It was followed with another fan-favorite, Counterfeit Island, known for its Genius Bonuses, engaging story, and fun gameplay.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Super Villain Island was released in Fall 2012, and its final battle saw the player character fighting against Zeus, who had caused a disastrous thunderstorm throughout Poptropica, in New York City. The season would later see Hurricane Sandy devastating the North American East Coast.
  • In August 2012, Lunar Colony Island was released to Poptropica members. Later that same month, Neil Armstrong passed away.
  • To some, Mocktropica Island becomes this in the 2020s, in light of the death of Adobe Flash and Poptropica as a game struggling to simultaneously pump out new content and import back the old islands, all while reusing old characters as fanservice and adding new, padding features not unlike the island’s main antagonists. The game may not be under new management, but it would be lying to say it’s still in the same shape it was before.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The plot of Super Villain Island involves entering the dreams of villains with an object located within that will invoke a Heel–Face Turn once it’s taken out. Now describing it, doesn’t it sound like an appropriate job for the Phantom Thieves of Hearts?
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The Poptropica villains tend to be the more popular characters, no matter how reprehensible or annoying they could be. However jerk characters who are harmless otherwise, take Christopher from Vampire’s Curse Island for example, tend to be more hated and slandered. Though that doesn’t exempt the villains who are jerks, such as Honest Gabe.
• It Was His Sled: Because a good number of the popular characters are tied to plot twists,
  • Spy: Director D is behind the kidnappings, he was part of B.A.D. the entire time.
  • Astro-Knights: Mordred is alive and kidnapped the princess, he is the Binary Bard.
  • Counterfeit: The inspector is the true thief the Black Widow, the strange man is her ex-partner.
  • Mythology: Zeus was using the player to take over Poptropica.
    • Also, Dr. Jupiter is Zeus, the real antagonist of Super Villain Island.
  • Monster Carnival: Ringmaster Raven is behind all the mysterious events.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Detractors of Ned Noodlehead will never drop him being given all the credit for saving Super Power Island, although he gives his medallion to the player character.
  • Dr. Hare is not fond of dreaming of ants taking him into their anthill and holding him hostage deep down. Everyone ran with him being afraid of ants because of this.
  • Because Zeus was a twist villain in three islands, usually when something goes wrong in Poptropica fanworks expect Zeus to be pinned as the culprit.
  • Katya and Christopher will never live down their awkwardly-animated Hollywood Kiss at the end of Vampire's Curse Island.
    You: Sheesh.
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
• One True Pairing: Amelia/Red Baroness is near-universally popular in the fanbase, helped by the two being former friends. It’s very unlikely to see either character shipped with someone else.
• Periphery Demographic: It’s a browser game targeted towards kids, but old fans who grew up with the game in the late 2000s/early 2010s find themselves coming back to it.
• Sadly Mythtaken: In Greek Sea Oddysey Athena calls Zeus her "brother", even though it's well-known she is his daughter.
• Self-Fanservice: You'd be hardpressed to find a Poptropica fan who doesn't have a crush on one of the villains, despite their simple stick-figure designs. It’s also to the fault of the fanart.
  • Ringmaster Raven and the Binary Bard become bishōnens while still retaining their “uncanny” features, bird wings and beak-like nose and half-machine face respectively.
  • Dr. Hare alternates Depending on the Artist. Sometimes he’s drawn like the former two, other times he’s a Big Beautiful Man, and on rare occasion he’s a scientist Hunk. Some artists have him tower over some characters (excluding added height by his rabbit suit ears), other artists depict him on the shorter side. But although he’s described to be “cute” only when he’s in deep sleep, every fan unanimously agrees he’s the “cute one” of the villains.
  • Captain Crawfish, Director D and Myron Van Buren become Silver Foxes, often accompanied with a muscular build. El Mustachio Grande and Octavian are often subjected to this as well, the latter being the Token Adult of the Poptropica book series contributing to his case.
  • The Black Widow often times becomes a curvy shortstack Ms. Fanservice, sometimes with an Impossible Hourglass Figure (Get it? Get it?) She's also drawn as a short Big Beautiful Woman.
  • Of course, Zeus and the Olympians are drawn as the chiseled gods and goddesses they are often depicted as (although the only thing indicating this in the game is their large size).
• Slow-Paced Beginning: A flaw of the episodic islands is that the first episode is usually just setting up or getting to the action. The first episode of Mission Atlantis is merely taking pictures of sea creatures and doesn't involve Atlantis, Arabian Nights' opening is finding the thieves' hideout, and PoptropiCon episode 1 is simply trying to get into the convention. Survival Island's first two episodes are lighting a fire and catching a fish, the plot picks up in the third when you have to get a radio signal. You only get to see the antagonist, Myron van Buren, in episodes 4 and 5, over halfway through the island.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: As far as shipping the villains goes, Dr. Hare/Binary Bard is one of the most popular pairings in spite of their lack of interactions in actual island stories, as both are mad scientists and are frequently depicted together.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Super Villain Island was promoted promising the return of four beloved villains and hinted a coalition between them. In the island proper, they’re all in a sleeping state and the player only fights two of the four (Black Widow and Binary Bard). And it turns out, the real villain is Zeus of Mythology Island, and the final battle is more-or-less a simplified version of said island's own. Also, Captain Crawfish didn't even speak at all throughout this island. Super Villain is still a beloved island, however, the four villains come off as heavily underutilized.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Greek Sea Odyssey was created to close out the trilogy of islands where Zeus is the main villain. The sequel that came before, Super Villain, was met with mostly positive response, but Odyssey was not received as warmly. Although there is a saving grace in the portrayal of various mythological heroes and the concept of a Death of the Old Gods story, the island was ruined by its very lackluster finale (see: Anti-Climax Boss) and knowledgeable players were put off by the inaccuracy of Athena calling Zeus her brother rather than her father. All these factors led to Odyssey not being viewed as fondly as its predecessors.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The models of television and reality TV game shows being treated as the most popular thing to watch in RealityTV Island makes it clear it was produced in late 2000s.
  • CJ’s chunky desktop computer and use of leetspeak in Shrink Ray Island had already fallen slightly out of style in the early 2010s, but it feels more and more outdated the longer time goes on.
  • Back Lot parodying two films that came out in 2012 (The Hobbit and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) now dates the island into what year it takes place in.
  • Vampire's Curse Island lampoons the Twilight craze of the early 2010s. The island features movie theaters, goth kids, and references to romance novels from the modern-day… in 2012.
• Unpopular Popular Character: The villains are the diabolical, card-carrying typical masterminds and they're also the most popular characters in the fanbase. Special mention goes to Mordred/the Binary Bard of Astro-Knights Island, although infamously a challenging boss the character still enjoys many fans.
• The Woobie: In Monster Carnival, poor, poor Ringmaster Raven... he was first of all abandoned by the carnival that passed through town, then just as he felt he found a new home, he was framed for an arson crime he didn't commit. As a result, the townspeople despised him and kicked him out of town without him being able to prove himself innocent. Now, he runs his own carnival... and he's using it to bring vengeance upon those townspeople.

Applying to the graphic novel series

• Fanfic Fuel: The reveal of the Nexus and the Protectors have spawned theories about them to connect to the main game’s continuity.

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