YMMV / The Coffin of Andy and Leyley

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • There's some debate as to whether Andrew actually does want to have sex with Ashley, or if he's horrified by the very thought. While he says he doesn't want to, his inner monologue and many optional scenes between Andrew and Ashley seem to indicate he's attracted to her. When his mother accuses him of having sex with Ashley, he seems more embarrassed than anything else, and his reaction to the vision of it actually happening is to blush furiously with a hand over his mouth rather than having any sort of disgusted reaction. Even amidst denying his attraction to Ashley, he seems to give the choice to Ashley, letting her affirm that it won't happen or leaving the possibility open. If she says "never say never", the ending scene has the friendliest and strongest bond between the siblings, with Andrew giving Ashley a hug and Ashley showing a surprising amount of empathy towards him. Ashley, for her part, is not embarrassed at all. She seems to see Brother–Sister Incest as the natural conclusion of their relationship and as a way to keep him with her, and it's very possible Andrew recognizes this and wants to avoid it for that reason specifically.
  • Andrew in general has also been a subject of much debate, in particular his apparent lack of guilt or remorse for some of his actions, his willingness to murder Warden Malcom and the Lady from Room 302 and his primary concern being avoiding the consequences of his actions, suggesting that he may have had some psychopathic tendencies from the get-go. However, having to deal with Ashley's manipulations and psychopathy 24/7 and being stuck in a life-or-death situation could have made him more willing to do psychopathic actions for her sake and for survival's sake.
  • Did Andrew really kill the Lady in 302 in self-defense? Or was he lying to appease Ashley? Notably his story doesn't add up with the environmental clues in the room. The nailgun is found nowhere near the Lady's body, Andrew is uninjured, and her body is splayed out on her bed.
  • Is Mrs Graves an Abusive Parent and degenerate who is just as bad, if not slightly less worse than her daughter, or an apathetic, "whatever" sort of parent who simply didn't care and is content at leaving her children to their own devices?
  • Did the Graves parents willingly sell their children to the organ harvesting operation or did they manage to escape somehow and receive a hush-money payment? On the one hand it doesn't make sense for an organ harvesting operation to let two potential sets of organs (and therefore money) leave and pay them for their trouble when it is quite happy killing at least 53 other people for profit. On the other hand, paying the Graves parents to stay quiet seems to be actively against the goals of the operation, especially considering that they are quite willing to send a hitman after the siblings to silence them.
  • Mrs Graves' attempted apology to Andrew in Part 2. Is it a manipulation tactic from a narcissistic parent or a genuine attempt in making amends? On one hand, they did sell their children to be butchered off in a MegaCorp organ harvesting operation for money and bragged about it in a letter, abandoned Ashley because of her sociopathy and left her at Andrew's hands where she is guaranteed to make him suffer. On the other hand, the Graves parents don't seem to mind when they come back despite the situation indicates that they should be furious, and Ashley did try to kill them for money first and foremost. Andrew does accuse her of trying to save her skin in the Burial Route, but he's also not a reliable narrator since he's known for his vicious blame-shifting on several horrible things he willingly helped Ashley do.
  • The Burial Route. Is it a happy outcome for the siblings to officially gain mutual trust with each other, or is it Andrew discarding his humanity for a worse abuser, manipulator and degenerate than his mother ever was?
    • Building off the above, is the "Questionable"/"Love" version of the Burial route the siblings fully throwing away any sort of restraints or social norms to do whatever the hell they like and slipping from merely being bad people to being outright evil? Or is it, in an "Optimistically Nihilistic" interpretation, a twisted form of healing where the two take steps to change their relationship for the better and stop engaging in some of the toxic behaviors that have caused them (and others) so much grief? With this interpretation, both siblings experience growth; Ashley learns to relax her need to control Andrew (as symbolized by her taking the green bunny plushie out of the cage) so he can willingly become everything she's ever wanted, and Andrew accepts that he does actually want to be with Ashley and desires her on multiple levels, leading him to relax, take responsibility for his actions and stop lying to himself.
• Angst Aversion: Considering the uncaring attitude of Andrew, the psychotic nature of Ashley and the overall jerkish/selfish/evil acts of of some of the people the siblings come across, some people are turned off by the Evil vs. Evil nature of the story.
• Awesome Art: If there is one thing that most fans can agree on is that the unique modern Gothic Animesque art style of the game is one of it's biggest highlights, to the point where the art style spawned a lot of "Andrew and Ashley redraws" memes.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is a decently made horror comedy game revolving around a pair of psychotic Villain Protagonists, but the majority of its popularity comes from the heavy Incest Subtext, with Belligerent Sexual Tension of the siblings and Leyley's Big Brother Attraction, alongside noting just how attractive them and their equally monstrous mother are. Episode 2's release didn't help matters in being known as the Villainous Incest game when there's an actual Brother–Sister Incest scene between Andrew and Ashley, although it is a vision.
• Broken Base: As one may expect, the fanbase was rather divided on the notion of the Incest Subtext in the game, with debates being frequent over whether or not it was intentional or should be followed up on. One group finds it gross and off putting even by the game's standards and/or would prefer to see the toxic sibling dynamic explored without an incestuous angle, finding it more interesting. The other group doesn't see any issue with it since it fits with the game's other dark subject matter, and condemns the first group as overly-sensitive Moral Guardians attempting to dictate what topics should and should not be explored in art. Chapter 2 added fuel to the fire with the decision to seemingly have the decision be based on player choice. Some feel this is a good compromise, others see it as doubling down on the incest angle to appease the first camp, while those who are neutral on the topic, or even support it, find it to be a cop out.
• Catharsis Factor: The siblings killing off the Wardens is downright celebratory, given how awful they are. While the duo has done and will do many horrible things, most of then were done out of survival, meanwhile the Wardens knowingly starve the residents of their apartment to death by locking them in the building and harvest their organs under the orders of a beverage corporation monopoly. It's impossible to feel sorry for them given everything that happens.
• Common Knowledge: The game attracted controversy for being the "Incest Game", despite any Brother–Sister Incest being entirely subtext in Chapter 1 and being entirely dependent on players' choice in Chapter 2 (with the game even warning you that you are making "questionable" decisions), with most endings not containing any blatant incest.
• Cry for the Devil: Ashley is an unrepentant sociopath with a yandere obsession with Andrew who goes out of her way to be as horrible as possible against his childhood friends who try to be nice with him, accidentally killed one and uses her death to keep Andrew under her control and orchestrates horrible proxy-kills against both Asshole Victims and innocents alike, but it's not hard to feel bad for her nearly starving to death due to the quarantine and lack of food packages at the beginning of the game, especially with how cruel the wardens are to her and Andy. The wardens don't view their treatment of Ashley as karma since they don't know her true nature so to them, she's just another person in the apartments they're eventually gonna harvest organs from. One optional flashback would also reveal that Ashley was severely neglected as a child, her mother giving up on raising her and making Andrew take care of her instead. The only person who ever cared about her was her brother, showcased when nobody else wanted to celebrate her birthdays. Not even her parents. Although this all goes down the drain when she sacrifices her parents to demons and kills them for the sake of money and power despite the fact that when the siblings go visit them for the last time, they were just indifferent towards her at best.
• Incest Yay Shipping: Even though their relationship is portrayed as unhealthy within the game itself, some fans pair Andrew and Ashley together and encourage the former’s reluctant incestuous attraction towards the latter, whether ironically as a joke or otherwise.
• Love to Hate: Ashley might be an extremely vile Serial Killer who took advantage of an Accidental Murder as a kid, cannibalizes her victims and gloats about it, kills innocents (including her parents) alongside genuine Asshole Victims, and is a horribly abusive and toxic sibling towards Andrew, but her sarcastic sense of humor and cute appearance makes her a highly entertaining Villain Protagonist, despite being so shockingly evil that the demon she summoned outright takes a liking to her because of how evil she is.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Redrawing other fictional siblings in the style of Andrew and Ashley (dubbed Andrew and Ashley redraws) has become some sort of trend among the fanbase, especially if Incest Yay Shipping is on play, which includes but not limited to Ben and Gwen, Dipper and Mabel, Elsa and Anna, Ephraim and Eirika, or even outright Brother–Sister Incest like Kyosuke and Kirino and some.
  • Just like with NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD and the Milk duology, the "I can fix her" meme is often used on Ashley because she is a troubled young woman with someone or something trying to barely put her in check in a psychological horror game. That said, unlike Ame-Chan or Milk who are just mentally not well, Ashley is a deranged Serial Killer, criminal and manipulator, so it gets the other variation "You can't fix her" as well.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ashley crossed it in the second half of Episode 2 when she sacrificed her parent's soul to a demon, killed them, then ate their flesh and messily disposed their remains. What makes this really the point of no return, is that while the Grave's parents are Abusive Parents and degenerates, they didn't mind even if they escaped their plan to sell their children to be butchered by a MegaCorp for money and they might be remorseful of their actions depending on how you see it. On the other hand, it's very clear that revenge wasn't the main thing in Ashley's mind there and she mostly wanted to kill her parents for their money and sacrifice their souls for the demon's power. In the Decay Route, Andrew himself also treats Ashley's parricide as the line where he officially snaps and turns on her, and her gloating of cannibalizing her victims in front of him doesn't help matters at all.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Upon the release of Episode 2, the scene where Ashley has a vision of herself and Andrew in bed after what's implied to be incestuous sex didn't leave anyone indifferent. A lot of people criticized the game on social media for its content, and a few even went on to wish ill on the author and outright dox them. Naturally, this only managed to draw more eyes to the game and increase its popularity and sales, with some buyers outright saying they bought the game despite not being interested just to send a message to the Internet Jerks.
• Realism-Induced Horror: For all the edgy Cluster F-Bomb filled writing and dialogue, the scenes of demonic possession, the almost cartoonishly Crapsack World, and the infamous "funny incest scene", one thing that many players have claimed to be the most disturbing thing about the game is Ashley's and Andrew's relationship being a disturbingly accurate portrayal of a real life toxic, abusive and codependent relationship. With Ashley frequently threatening Andrew, isolating him from his friends, gaslighting him, and even occasionally treating him "nicely", all to convince him to stay with her and continue going along with her violent shenanigans. All of which are real tactics actual abusers use in real life to keep their victims with them. And unlike everything else in the game being played for Black Comedy, these scenes are often played seriously, further adding to their horror.
• Signature Scene: Easily the most infamous scene in the game so far is Ashley's vision of her and Andrew engaging in Brother–Sister Incest in Episode 2. It is just one of a few possible endings the player can get, but it is the most talked about route after the second episode's release and got the game quite a bit of controversy.
• The Woobie: The two girls Ashley tried to get rid of (and Andrew had feelings with) when she was young were one of the very few completely and genuinely kind and caring people we see in the game itself, but they go through literal torture just because the sheer lengths of depravity Ashley will go to separate them from her brother that she very likely lusts for. The first one was accidentally killed off in a cruel prank orchestrated by Leyley while knowing none the better and was taken advantage of to keep Andy under her wraps, while Ashley drove the other one to depression by flooding her with hundreds of death threat letters and threatening voicemails, to the point that she slit her wrists in what was implied to be a failed suicide attempt.

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