YMMV / The Magnus Archives

• Accidental Innuendo: What does the statement giver for Episode 130 say her statement is about? "A hole. A hole filled with meat."
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Agnes' feelings towards Jack Barnabas. While Eugene is adamant that Agnes didn't feel love towards him, the fact he and others of the cult were unable to comprehend their relationship to begin with and even initially thought she was getting close to him to later bring him torment calls his interpretation into question.
• Arc Fatigue: As Season 5 charted Jon and Martin's journey through the hellscape remains of the UK in order to reach the archives and confront Jonah, several listeners began to grow bored with the slow pace of the story and the monotony that developed in Act 1 (MAG 161 through 176) - the protagonists enter the realm of a Power, Jon does a Statement, occasionally he'll kill an avatar, he and Martin bemoan the fact that they're literally unable to help any of the victims, and they set off again. The first time they actually find another member of the archive team, Basira, is sixteen episodes into the season — right before the first hiatus.
  • Director commentaries reveal that other characters were intended to be brought in earlier to break up the monotony, but due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, getting all the actors in the same room proved too difficult.
• Base-Breaking Character: Daisy Tonner. Many love her for her no-nonsense attitude, Action Girl status, and friendship with Basira, but others hate her for being a Dirty Cop and unrepentant murderer who nearly killed Jon. Her Character Development in Season Four led to another schism, of people who felt that since she'd shown genuine remorse and separated herself from the Hunt, becoming Jon's friend, she was worthy of redemption, while others felt that nothing can fix the sheer amount of damage she did in her time as a police officer. When she was finally Killed Off for Real after succumbing to the Hunt again, the fandom was divided into people who saw it as a tragedy, and people who thought she deserved it.
• Broken Base:
  • The Twist Ending of The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You, implying that the Powers were sent into our universe. Some fans thought it was clever, while others thought it was incredibly cheesy and broke their Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
  • The Powers themselves, as some fans feel they detract from the “monster of the week” format, lessening each individual story’s impact by tying everything to one of eight-or-so entities with specific domains and powers.
  • The characters' discussion leading up to their choices in the ending also sparked a lot of debates between people who believed one of the two options was obviously the correct one, as well as those who thought a definitive answer was impossible or that the characters ignored obvious counterarguments and jumped to unreasonable and self-serving conclusions. According to director commentary, this was entirely expected, as Jonny believes there isn't an easy answer and struggling with it shows you're engaging with the questions asked by the work.
• Catharsis Factor: After learning about all the numerous and terrible things Jonah Magnus did to become immortal (culminating with tricking/forcing Jon into speaking the ritual that ruined the world) the fandom was delighted that when he comes out of his trance in the final episode saying he had a 'wonderful dream', Jon promptly beats him up and stabs him to death while he pleads for mercy and says he doesn't want to die.
• Complete Monster: (by first appearance, after Magnus):
  • Jonah Magnus, aka Elias Bouchard, is the founder and head of the Magnus Institute, having stolen several of his worker's bodies to survive for centuries. Attempting to bring about the end of the world for the Eye in order to rule over the remains as its Avatar, Magnus conducts a ritual which destroys Milbank prison killing hundreds of inmates including his friend. Eventually realizing that the reason the rituals can't work is because the Fears are too interconnected to destroy the world alone, he manipulates Jonathan Sims into making contact with all of the Fears and uses him to bring about the apocalypse forcing him to read the ritual. Along the way, he murders anyone who gets too close to the truth and forces his employees to stay under the belief that if they leave or try to hurt him they will all die horribly, mentally torturing any who still try to rebel. This, along with him showing her father's horrible death to torture her, leads to Melanie King stabbing her own eyes out to escape him. Cruel, smug, and willing to stoop to any depth to preserve his own life and power, Magnus manages to stand out in a setting full of evil gods, monsters, and other Avatars.
  • Mary Keay is a chillingly realistic example of a abuser in a fantastical setting. Committing her first murder at a young age to gain power, she murdered numerous others throughout her life, binding several spirits to her book, making their very existences agony, all to force them to help her. Among them is her long abused husband, Eric, whose corpse Mary mutilated while his spirit was Forced to Watch. Seeing her son Gerard as merely an extension of her legacy, Mary forces him to help her gain power, as well as using him as a guinea pig for her experiments. Refusing to accept her own mortality sometime in 2008, Mary attempts to kill herself in order to bind herself to the book with more power than the others had, making sure to give Eric's page away so Gerard would never see his father again beforehand, continuing to force Gerard to serve her. Despite not working for the Fears, Mary is a frighteningly abusive mother who cares only for her own power, regardless of who she has to hurt and murder to obtain it.
  • Maxwell Rayner, Avatar and chief servant of the Dark—and possibly Edmund Halley—is an arrogant, petty fanatic. Having failed to give the world to his master in 1715, Rayner spent the next 300 years preparing to ensure the Extinguished Sun succeeded, expanding his lifespan by acquiring a series of children whom, upon his old body nearing the end, he would transfer his essence into, killing them. Creating the People's Church of the Divine Host, a massive international cult of Dark worshipers, Rayner directed them to perform countless ritualistic sacrifices to his master. Forcing Robert Montauk's killing spree, Rayner used their deaths to create the Still and Lightless Beast, and was the driving force behind the creation of the space station Daedalus, so that through months of torturous human experimentation he has Manuela Dominguez build him the Dark Sun. Convinced he was on the verge of victory, Rayner had his cult kidnap thousands of victims and subject them to "a week of horrors", sacrificing the victims one by one to empower the Dark Sun, to allow his master to spill out and consume the universe.
  • John Amherst is a slimy, faux polite Avatar of the Corruption, known for his mocking grin, who delights in spreading sickness and decay. Possessing the unique ability to return from death, Amherst, during the Boer War, caused several wounded men to die in agony and is implied to have worsened the disease outbreaks at the concentration camps. Over a century later, taking advantage of the closing of the Ivy Meadows Care Home, Amherst took over, infecting the residents, staff, and the building itself with a horrific disease that caused their bodies to slowly rot and flies to grow inside of them. Returning a final time, arriving in Klanxbüll, Amherst infected the entire town with his worst plague, causing the residents' flesh and muscles to grow progressively looser until they sagged off their bodies, leaving bones and organs exposed, and causing the rotting flesh to fuse to the ground. Not content, Amherst compelled many residents to drag themselves through the town, so he could meld them together to form himself a twisted throne, his victims alive and conscious throughout but unable to do anything but attempt to scream.
  • Season 2: The Not-Them is an ancient creature, the source of Changeling legends, that painfully murders its victims and bends reality so that it might take their place. It alters the memories of those around its victims, save for one unlucky soul who is left to remember. The Not-Them gleefully mentally tortures them to near insanity before moving on or murdering them, which it had done to several interview subjects testifying before the Magnus Institute. Having killed Sasha James and replaced her, the Not-Them proceeds to threaten the same agonizing end to Archivist Jon Sims.
  • Season 3: Nikola Orsinov is a creature of the Stranger created to bring about the end of the world through the Unknowing. Murdering her creator because she found him "boring", Orsinov took over the Circus of the Other, leading them to terrorize entire towns. In preparation for the ritual, Orsinov has her followers abduct and flay potentially hundreds of people, keeping them alive for months, if not years; she personally skins several people, including Tim Stoker's brother. Orsinov is also behind Breekon and Hope delivering the Not-Them, causing the death of Sasha James and the invasion of the Archives. Delaying completing the ritual due to enjoying the sadistic fun too much, which makes even her own followers uncomfortable, Orsinov is a childish sadist who lives only for her own sick pleasure.
  • "Chosen" (Episode 139): Eugene Vanderstock is an unpleasant, smug, thuggish Avatar of the Desolation, who despite his minor role stands out as the worst member of the Cult of the Lightless Flame. A sadist and a serial arsonist even before joining the cult, at only 5 years old, Vanderstock set buildings full of people alight during the Blitz, his fires providing targets for the Nazi bombers. Happily giving up his humanity to become an Avatar, Vanderstock was chosen to provide regular sacrifices for Agnes Montague, picking a nightmarish way to do so. Murdering his way up the corporate ladder at a steel factory, Vanderstock used his new authority to set up a secret "workshop". For decades, Vanderstock would kidnap vulnerable workers, often ones with the highest aspirations, melting their mouths shut. Dragging them to his workshop, he would slowly and agonizingly melt them down, molding special candles out of their liquid fat, which when lit would emit his still conscious victims' screams for several hours before burning to nothing. Vanderstock later admitted he didn't care if Agnes never received the candles due to the sheer enjoyment he got from creating them.
• Continuity Lockout: The series embodies this in its later seasons. Seasons 1 and 2 are, for the most part, episodic, with each episode consisting of a standalone horror story and a few minutes of commentary at the end. But starting with season 3, the show begins to embrace an intricate Myth Arc and focus more on a recurring cast of characters, and by season 4 it's nigh-impossible to know what's going on in any given episode if you haven't listened to all the previous ones. (Each episode still includes a standalone horror story, but it's usually a backdrop to whatever the main characters are doing that episode, and will probably reference characters and events first introduced tens or even hundreds of episodes before.)
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Melanie being brought in for a performance review that has Elias implant knowledge of how her father actually died, reducing her to a sobbing wreck? Horrifying. Elias saying that she can take the rest of the day off because of the state she's in, and actually sounding somewhat concerned? Horrifying, but kind of funny.
  • Elias's commitment to making his service of the Beholding as bureaucratic and managerial as possible is full of this. Sending the archive crew on a half baked scheme to stop the Unknowing, and openly making plans for their replacement if they die in the process? A chilling reminder of how everyone is disposable to him. Following that up by reminding them to save receipts if they want to be reimbursed for their expense in case they do survive? Hilarious.
  • Peter Lukas is full of this. Him and Martin wandering through the maze-like underground of the Archives and holding a Leitner, unsettling. His cheery reply that the blood on the book is a Leitner too? Crosses it back to funny.
  • In a bonus episode of What the Ghost, Georgie reads an ad for a dating service called SparksFly, which steals its customers' data and uses their browser history, and is heavily implied to be an agent of the Beholding. This is incredibly creepy, and only gets worse the more you think about it, but the fact that the ad openly admits to its datamining, with lines such as "Privacy is just another word for loneliness" and "What the Ghost listeners get a month's membership for free. No need for a code; they already know who you are!", alongside Georgie's increasingly horrified reactions pushes it right back into funny territory.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Jared Hopworth, the Boneturner, got a lot of Evil Is Cool treatment from certain fans and tended to be seen as a more harmless avatar for not wanting to trigger a ritual to change the world (if only because he simply likes the world as it is and not out of any concern for others), especially after an episode revealed that he had started a gym and used it to help willing people get their ideal bodies. What sympathizers might overlook is that, while not willing to aid in a ritual, Jared was still a bully even before he became an avatar, and after becoming one, he spent some time running around taking bones from unwilling victims and eventually led an attack on the Institute. Episode 171 ("The Gardener") almost feels like it was written to address this image of Jared. We see (or rather, hear) him torture several people by twisting their bodies into new, horrific shapes while whistling a jolly tune. He makes a homophobic joke about Jon and Martin, reminding the audience that he is a jerk. And the gym? Jared makes it clear that he only did that because it was easier than going out and grabbing people himself, and he still fed on their fear; while they weren't strictly speaking afraid of him, they were still driven by a fear and disgust of their own bodies and of how horrified others would be if they saw them.
  • Basira isn't a villain, and she isn't as corrupt as Daisy, but a lot of fans tend to overlook that, as Daisy's friend and partner, she is an accomplice to countless crimes, up to and including murder, and that she is just as guilty of abusing her position—and when she resigns from the force, it's not due to a change of heart. Basira is less violent and easier to get along with than Daisy, so more fans are willing to let her actions slide.
• Dry Docked Ship:
  • It's a common piece of Fanon that Peter and Elias were together at one point before the start of the series. A common Fandom-Specific Plot is them having been married and divorced multiple times, often Played for Laughs.
  • Daisy and Basira's relationship is left ambiguous, but it's clear that they've been very close for many years; quite a few fans like to speculate that they were romantically involved while working for Section 31.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Elias Bouchard, particularly at the end of Season Two when his true nature becomes apparent.
  • Gerard Keay due to being one of the nicest people involved with the Powers and his sympathetic backstory.
  • Sasha is well-beloved, making her Kill and Replace by Not-Sasha more heartbreaking.
  • Gertrude Robinson. Not only for her statements but also for single-handedly foiling the Powers rituals and defending humanity before her death.
  • Georgie Barker's cat, The Admiral, for being an adorable cat that even Jon finds cuddly.
  • Despite not even appearing in the flesh, being long dead by the time of Season One, the real Elias Bouchard, nicknamed "OG Elias" by the fandom, is popular in fanworks, mostly thanks to him and his original personality being wildly open to interpretation, and his sympathetic fate.
  • Despite never being heard talking and and being dead years before the show started, Agnes Montague is this due to her sympathetic backstory, her soulbond with Gertrude, her enigmatic background and being a conflicted Anti Anti Christ. Because of this and some Epileptic Trees about her death and conection with Hill Top Road, many fans are hoping to get a statement from her before the podcast ends.
  • Although it only appears in the Season 5 trailer, the "Not-Tea" (so called because it's something that was pretending to be a cup of tea) is an incredibly popular subject for fanart, usually conceptualized as an Ugly Cute monster in (naturally) a teacup. It even has its own merch now.
  • Oliver Banks is well-loved for being an interesting foil to Jon, and being an avatar who isn't really all that evil and is in fact pretty polite. Many fans were pleased he survived the show, and joke that with the events of the finale removing the Entities from the world, they hope he can finally get some sleep.
  • In general, it's quite common for the fandom to take one-time statement givers and elevate them to full-on Avatar status, such as Amy Patel ("Across the Street", MAG 03) being an avatar of the Eye because of her people-watching habit, or Naomi Herne ("Alone", MAG 13) becoming an avatar of the Lonely due to her association with the Lucas family.
  • Joshua Gillespie ("Do Not Open", MAG 2) may take home the trophy as most popular one-shot character, due to being from a very early episode (making him memorable) and extremely practical approach to avoiding the Powers (simply not opening the mysterious coffin). The fandom has declared him the only man in the series with common sense, and a common Fanon is that, after the Fearpocalypse, he is completely unaffected by the goings on.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Elias repeatedly refering to Basira as "Detective" despite her repeatedly insisting that she's not a police detectice led to a number of theories that Basira was being groomed to become an avatar similar to the Archivist. This ultimately turned out not to be true.
  • Episode 186, "Quiet", sparked many theories for the identities of the nameless victims featured therein. Common theories include Naomi Hernes and Peter Lukas, despite him dying in the previous season.
• Fanfic Fuel: Tons.
  • Many fics explore the fates of the more popular statement givers, since the follow-ups often leave rather large gaps to be filled in.
  • The life and times of Gertrude Robinson, and her time as Head Archivist.
  • A popular AU is taking pretty much any mildly popular character and asking, "What if they were claimed by this Entity?"
  • Fics covering the two weeks Jon and Martin were in Scotland before the apocalypse are very common, since Jon & Martin got together during that time and the canon completely skips over it.
  • Jonah Magnus' Body Surfing exploits, which leaves decades of uncovered ground.
  • After the finale, what happens to society after the apocalypse is reversed? How do they rebuild from there? How does society fundamentally change? Especially tantalizing as it's made clear everyone fully remembers what happened—and even know who at least some of the Avatars were.
  • And, of course, what happened to Jon and Martin? Did they die? Were they changed somehow? Or did they end up in an alternate universe—and if so, where are they now?
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • Peter Lukas and Elias having been married and divorced multiple times. After the reveal that Elias is a vessel for Jonah Magnus, a common idea is that Peter first met and married the real Elias, and eventually caught on to his replacement. While the multiple marriages is usually Played for Laughs, if this specific element is included, it is nearly always Played for Drama.
  • Time travel fix-it fics are very common. Typically with Jon and/or travelling from the apocalypse back to season 1. Expect reminiscing about seeing the season 1 gang, comments about Jon or Martin being cooler and general attempts to thwart Elias' plans.
  • The Mechanisms being Jon's university band, either with Jon still in the band and trying to hide it from his co-workers or with Jon having been in the band in the past and one of the assistants being a fan but not recognizing Jon.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Some fan choose to refer to the writer/actor as "Jonny Sims" to differentiate between him and the character "Jonathan Sims". The character is also sometimes called "Jon Archivist", referring to his role in the Institute.
  • Michael is regularly called Fuckhands McMike by his fans as reference to his... large hands.
  • The vase from Episode 38 "Lost and Found" is called Homophobic Vase for disappearing with the male statement giver's husband.
• Fanon: The Magnus Archives being a podcast and all, listeners have little to no idea what the characters look like. Nevertheless, a few characters have consistent representations in fan works.
  • Jon is almost invariably portrayed in fan art as having light brown skin, short black hair (often getting longer as the seasons go on), and always wearing glasses and a green sweater, as well as various scars from the times avatars have beaten him up. Visible manifestations of his powers usually include a third eye or a halo of eyes, often bright green.
  • Martin is portrayed as having curly red hair and a short nose, and is generally either tall and skinny or short and round (depending on how the artist interprets "not the smallest guy").
    • Over time, these seem to have combined into a prevailing portrayal that is both tall and heavy-set, contrasting with Jon, who tends to be drawn as short and skinny.
  • Basira is almost always portrayed with a Muslim headcovering of some kind, usually either a Hijab or Al-Amira, despite the fact that there's not any indication that she's actually Muslim beyond her name.
  • Anything Beholding-associated is usually green, often the same green as the show's logo, despite the fact the Beholding iconography is never described in more detail than "an eye".
  • Melanie's usually assumed to dress like a punk or Perky Goth, often with dyed blue hair (in fact, her most common depiction looks so much like Nika from the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury one suspects the character designers may have somehow stumbled across TMA fanart while working on the show). Depictions of Melanie after she quits the Institute invariably include either sunglasses or a bandage around her eyes, as she was forced to take extreme measures.
  • Sasha is often portrayed with cute, round glasses. Michael Shelley is also usually portrayed as bespectacled.
  • Tim is almost always shown wearing a Hawaiian shirt for some reason. No one's 100% sure how it started, but it's easily one of the most universal details in fanart.
    • It's most likely related to his role as the archive's resident rampant bisexual, since Hawaiian shirts are accepted in the LGBT community as being one of the bi wardrobe staples.
  • Georgie is often depicted as Locked into Strangeness as a result of her experience with the End, having either white streaks or completely white hair.
  • Sasha is often depicted as dark skinned or Ambiguously Brown. Not Sasha is usually a fair-skinned blonde in contrast. If Sasha's depicted with glasses, Not Sasha won't have them, & vice versa.
  • Peter Lukas is often depicted with a Seadog Beard in fan works.
  • Jared Hopworth's most common appearance is best described as an answer to the question: "What if Ryan Kure was infested by The Thing?"
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • When the Web Table is delivered to the Magnus Archives, several characters bring up the possibility of destroying it while Jon disagrees with the idea of destroying knowledge. Jon later destroys the table and shows that was the worst thing to do when he accidentally releases the Not Them.
  • The Reveal in Episode 160 that the reason all the rituals have failed is because a single Power cannot be brought into the world due its connection to the other powers. This means all the sacrifices to stop the rituals - including Tim and Micheal - were all for nothing. Worse, by trying to prevent rituals like the Unknowing, Jon played into Elias' hands in successfully bringing all the Powers into the world.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • Many fans joked that Tim had just "gone kayaking" instead of dying in the season 3 finale; see Memetic Mutation, below.
  • Many fans refused to believe Peter Lukas actually died in the season 4 finale, and came up with ideas for what they might be doing in season 5. As of the series finale, they haven't come back.
  • Spoofed in a cast roundtable in the middle of season 5, where Jonny asks all the actors to convince him why their character should survive or be resurrected by the end of the series.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming:
  • Peter/Elias is often called LonelyEyes as a play on their respective loyalties.
  • Jon/Martin was nicknamed "the dinghy" in some circles back in the show's early days, based on its relative lack of popularity and the assumption that it was unlikely to ever be canon. For obvious reasons, this moniker has since been retired.
• I Knew It!:
  • A good chunk of the fandom was pretty sure that getting tricked into the eldritch coffin didn't kill Daisy in the season 3 finale, on account of her going full avatar. Confirmed in Episode 128.
  • Since they Never Found the Body, a lot of fans didn't believe that Mikaele Salesa was actually dead despite the claims of episode 141. Their survival is confirmed in Episode 180.
  • Several fans predicted that Elias was actually a vessel for Jonah Magnus long before Episode 158.
  • The theory that the Beholding ritual could only go ahead after Jon got a mark from each Power was widespread before Episode 160 dropped.
  • Though the fandom as a whole was split right up until the reveal, several fans accurately predicted that the tape recorders were aligned with the Web before 196 confirmed it.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Martin is a kind, unsuspecting archival assistant with a penchant for bad poetry and crush on Jon. He gets put through the wringer multiple times, from being trapped in his apartment by Jane Prentiss for weeks, to having his darkest traumas brought up by Elias. He doesn't let any of that stop him, though.
  • Gerard Keay has spent the majority of his life under her mother's thumb, unable to leave due to his knowledge about the powers making having a normal life difficult, even more so after he was nearly convicted for her "murder". But unlike most others forced into this life, when he appears in statements he's often helping others or destroying the Leitners his mother was obsessed with and was assisting Gertrude when she was looking into how to stop The Unknowing before allegedly dying of a brain tumor at a relatively young age. He's more of a Jerkass Woobie by the time Jon meets his spirit since Gertrude binding him to a book made existing painful and he's been used as a "monster manual" by Hunters ever since she left him behind—but honestly, his behavior is considerably less jerkish than it could have been, under the circumstances.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Most incoming fans of the series are already aware of the existence of the Dread Powers and the fact that Jon's an avatar of one of said Powers, despite this being a major twist that isn't explicitly alluded to until the end of season 2.
  • Similarly, the fact that Jonah Magnus is the main villain and uses Jon to start the apocalypse at the end of season 4 is well-known even among people who haven't listened to the podcast - probably because it exploded in popularity on sites like Tumblr and Reddit right after the season 4 finale was released.
• Jerkass Woobie: Several character qualify, but especially members of the Archives staff.
  • Jon Sims is cantankerous and paranoid at times, but he also gets put through the wringer thanks to his position as head archivist, particularly by Season 3 where he's framed for murder, kidnapped and threatened by avatars of the Powers multiple times, and he's put into a coma where he's forced to watch nightmares of statements over and over He gradually becomes more approachable, right as things start getting even worse for him.
  • Melanie and Tim. While they want to leave the Institute, they're unable to, making them more than a little bitter.
  • A lot of the avatars are this, since most of them became avatars via horribly traumatic experiences, and often because they felt like they had no other choice. Even some of the ones that embraced their status are still worthy of a little pity. Julia Montauk was once an innocent child who lost her parents to the Dark and grew up being known as the daughter of a Serial Killer. Trevor Herbert has been homeless most of his life, lost his brother to a vampire, and later loses Julia. Michael was betrayed and sacrificed by someone he thought was his friend. Honestly, so many of the avatars are sympathetic despite their actions, it just makes Hate Sinks like Elias and Simon stand out even more.
• Jossed:
  • An interesting case where He's Just Hiding was in fact proved wrong: Gerard Keay, who shows up in multiple statements, is supposed to have died of brain cancer shortly before the beginning of the series, but many fans weren't buying it. In episode 111, we finally get the answer: Hhis spirit was bound to a Leitner that allows him to persist as The Undead, but he did in fact die.
  • The fanbase widely believed that Martin would become a Web avatar, or have been one the whole time. Many fans were surprised when this did not happen. The creators have said in post-finale Q&As that this was actually the plan early in production, but it became an Aborted Arc with its early foreshadowing becoming Fauxshadowing.
• Les Yay: In addition to her canonical relationship with Georgie Barker, Melanie King has a lot of subtext going on:
  • Melanie and Basira grow very close during their shared time as forced archival assistants at the Institute. In addition to going out for drinks together, Melanie is more comfortable talking to her than Tim or Martin, to the point where she's the first person she talks to after her "performance review". Then there's of course the six month gap where they were together in the Archives with no-one else, which leaves much to the imagination. Finally, Melanie takes Basira's plot with Jon to forcibly remove the ghost bullet very hard.
  • While they share no screentime whatsoever, Melanie and Sasha has enough subtext that a determined shipper could read into it; After Melanie's second statement, she asks where Sasha is, wanting to say goodbye before leaving, which seems remarkably close for someone she's only met once. It's also revealed that Melanie is the only one who remembers the real Sasha, something not even Sasha's closest friends and family could.
• Love to Hate: Elias Bouchard /Jonah Magnus.
• Magnificent Bastard: Annabelle Cane is an avatar of the The Web. After her avatarhood, Annabelle proceeds to observe the Magnus Institute from a distance. She takes advantage of the nature of the Eye to communicate with Jon, leaving her statement somewhere she knows he is investigating that he won't be able to resist reading it. In her statement, she reassures Jon she hasn't been directly controlling him, and shares her backstory, while admitting that she could be making it all up. In Season 5, after the Powers emerge into the world, Annabelle hides in a pocket dimension protected from the Change, leaving vague messages for Jon and Martin and trusting their curiosity to lead them to her. Annabelle is genuinely friendly with Jon and Martin when they arrive, but it's made very clear that this could be another layer of manipulation, and that she only meets them face-to-face in an arena where Jon is powerless. After stealing the pocket dimension's protection and Mercy Killing the other inhabitant at his request, Annabelle lures Martin to her with a promise of an end to the apocalypse, trusting Jon to work out where she's taking him and to follow. Without ever using her powers or even directly lying, Annabelle gets them into a position to undo the apocalypse, achieving the Web's goals.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Joshua Gillsepie, despite only appearing in a single episode, is treated by the fanbase as a genius, and is one of the most beloved one-shot statement givers due to his admittedly very sensible and clever handling of the coffin.
  • Similarly, the statement-giver from Episode 100 who leaves The Spiral because he's late to dinner.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Good Cows."
  • Going kayaking.^note A common joke after the Season 3 finale was that Tim didn't die, they just left on an extended kayaking trip. It's now a fandom euphemism for any character getting killed off. After the Grand Finale, fans have begun insisting that Tim, Sasha, Jon, and Martin are all on a mandatory employee retreat Elias came up with, and they're all having a grand old time camping, playing games, and, of course, doing lots and lots of kayaking.
  • "Dig"
  • "The Magnus Archives is a podcast..."^note The copyright info read at the end of every episode by (usually) Jonathan Sims, in his dramatic storyteller voice
    • "FUCK, YEAH, DUDE, IT SURE IS!"
    • After the finale, "The Magnus Archives was a podcast," often accompanied by crying.
  • Jared, 19^note The already established meme of "Jared, 19" who "never fucking learned how to read" crossed over with the Magnus Archives when the fandom caught wind of the fact that Jared Hopworth gets his rather gruesome powers after reading a book.
  • "Hello, Jon. Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading, so I thought it best not to announce myself."^note The fandom's own version of a Rickroll, typically copy pasted into long text posts.
  • "Keep thotting it up in Heaven, king. Hope you enjoy your kayaking trip."^note One fan on TikTok has been making songs about the characters, with the lyrics coming from people's comments on the Wiki. The song about Tim Stoker begins with the above line, as the song was written after his death, and most of commenters were in mourning. "Keep thotting it up in Heaven" in general has spread to other fandoms, as well.
    • "I miss him so much... Ohhhh my God... press F for respects..."
    • This in turn has led to the joke that the song is Martin reading Tim's eulogy at his funeral... often with the added joke that Tim wrote it himself and put it in his will.
  • "Jurgen Leitner? Stupid motherfucking idiot Jurgen Leitner God damn fool book collecting dust eating rat old bastard shithead idiot Avatar of the Whore, biggest clown in the circus laughed out of town cowboy motherfucking JURGEN LEITNER?"^note A popular thread had a first-time listener posting their reactions in real time, and during the first two seasons, they got very fed up with Jurgen Leitner and his library, leading to an absolutely legendary rant that has become a staple of the fandom, especially after a popular dramatic reading was made.
    • Statement of Gerard Keay...^note Unsurprisingly, after the introduction of Gerard and his quest to hunt down Leitner's books, most have agreed that the aforementioned rant was written by him, or that the poster was taken over by his spirit. It's practically mandatory for anyone cosplaying Gerard on TikTok to make a video using audio of the dramatic reading in-character.
    • Additionally, one edit of Gertrude's tape in Ep. 161 has the Leitner Rant play instead.
  • "Ceaseless watcher, turn your gaze upon this wretched thing" has spread to corners of Tumblr who don't know where the phrase originated.
  • "The Magnus Archives is a workplace comedy!"^note This is both used to lampshade the number of funny moments and memes that have originated from this horror-tragedy, and as a form of desperate denial, as fans half-jokingly try to insist that everything will work out just fine and all their favorite characters are still alive.
  • Kermit Elias^note After a discussion about who would be cast in a Muppet adapation of TMA, the hilarity of Kermit the Frog playing Elias spread like wildfire, with lots of fanart, edits, and cosplays, often to take the piss out of genuinely scary moments from canon. Note that this started during the final part of the final season, making this meme, essentially, a bizarre coping mechanism as the fandom braced themselves for everything hitting the fan in the finale.
    • On that note, Fozzie Bear Peter. This one even got a nod from Alasdair Stuart, who found it hilarious. He also confirmed that Jonathan Sims (the real one) is aware of Kermit Elias, leading to a Mass "Oh, Crap!" from the fandom.
  • "The Fine Print" by The Stupendium has caught on as Elias and the Institute's unofficial theme song, despite it being written as a Filk Song for The Outer Worlds and thus completely unrelated to TMA. To be fair, the lyrics do fit quite well...
    Perhaps you have simply forgot what you signed.
    Oh, honestly! Did you not read the colony policy
    that defines you as company property?
    That wavers your say and autonomy?
    The conglomerate's got you in lock and key!
    We put the "dollar" back into "idolatry."
    If you're upset, you can rent an apology.
    We are a family forged and bureaucracy.
    No "I" in "team," but there's "con" in "economy"...
  • What's the K stand for?^note Martin's full name is Martin K. Blackwood, but what the K stands wasn't revealed until Episode 164 (in which it turned out that Martin doesn't even have a middle name and the initial doesn't mean anything), leading to fan speculation — usually something ridiculous.
    • Martin Knife Blackwood^note Most of Martin's fans who don't want to see him continue to get kicked around have jokingly demanded "Give Martin a knife!", especially after Ben Meredith read fan-submitted quotes in his Elias voice, one of which was Elias bemoaning his long and painful Karmic Death, because "Martin—Martin—has just stabbed me with a knife!" The meme became pure Black Comedy after the finale, where Martin is forced to kill Jon... with a knife. Some have even joked that the K stands for Killed-His-Boyfriend.
  • "BPM," short for Brutal Pipe Murder, has become incredibly common fan lingo. Usually but not always referring to Leitner's death at the end of Season Two.
  • #cursedtmacosplays^note The show has an active fandom on TikTok, especially among cosplayers. The main cast are popular choices, of course, as are other important figures like Gerry, Michael, Agnes, etc. But as time went on, cosplays for more and more minor characters started getting attention, up to and including statement givers who only had a single appearance… and then the Serial Escalation went further, with people beginning to use the #cursedtmacosplay tag for cosplays of inanimate objects, such as the Homophobic Vase, Jon's tape recorder, the key Joshua Gillespie froze into a block of ice, the Web lighter, the coffin Daisy was buried in, and more. All very tongue-in-cheek, with the cosplayers basically competing to see how ridiculous they could get. Given that this meme surfaced after the finale, it's probably another weird coping mechanism for the fandom.
  • Outside of the fandom itself, Nikola's dialogue in "We All Ignore the Pit" has become the framework for a somewhat popular TikTok challenge (lots of spooky clown/ringmaster makeup) and has drawn some people into the podcast at large.
  • "Let's gouge our eyes out and make out!"^note In regards to episode 154, Bloody Mary, where Jon finds out how to quit the Institute.
  • The Archivist is the Eye's special boy!^note In regards to the celebrity-like treatment Jon receives after the Eye takes over the world.
  • "I want. Another. Divorce."^note In regards to the Fandom-Specific Plot of Peter and Elias being married and divorced multiple times over. Any fic using this plot is practically mandated to have this phrase, usually said by Elias. Ben Meredith even said it in his Elias voice during a livestream!
• Narm: While Jonah Magnus's death was unquestionably cathartic, the 15 solid seconds of dramatic bloody gurgling starts to cross the line from "horrible death rattle" to "bad school play".
  • Some statements have a bad habit of describing the obvious death or destruction of people or objects, and then ending with 'I never saw them again.' Yeah, obviously. Fortunately it mostly gets dropped after the first season.
• Obvious Crossover Method:
  • "Character Y from Fandom X has an encounter with one of the Entities and gives a statement" is a very popular crossover fic format.
  • "[Character or scary thing from other fandom] is an agent of this Entity" also gets a lot of mileage.
  • The final season confirms that alternate universes are a thing, and the finale has the Entities being forced into another universe—and it is possible, assuming they didn't die, that Jon and Martin went with them. Cue loads of speculation about what other fictional world Jon and Martin may have been spat out in, and how that world would cope with the Entities. Night Vale, Hatchetfield, and Gravity Falls have all been touted as possibilities—though, of course, you could also make a case that they ended up in our world.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • Peter and Elias have never actually talked to each other "on-screen" until 158, anyway, but given their similarities (both Affably Evil and extremely powerful) and the possibilities for hilarious personality clashes (Elias seems more serious, while Peter is faux-cheerful), plus the fact they apparently have an alliance going on, it's a fairly popular ship.
  • To a lesser extent Gerard and Micheal are a surprisingly popular pair for a guy who's allegedly been dead for years before the series started and an active but inhuman Wild Card. Whether it's due to both being popular characters on their own that are both currently out of the picture with the whole "being dead" thing and the latter replaced by Helen, the irony of putting a contrary monster with someone who knows how the powers it serves works, or their shared past traumas with Gertrude specifically can vary. Sometimes presented as having them know each other from when Micheal was still Gertrude's assistant, considering Gerard's father fondly remembers working with Shelley when his ghost asked Gertrude to take care of Gerard, who she hadn't met yet, that's very unlikely to have been the case.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • John Amherst has no spoken lines, never appears long enough for any prolonged interactions with others, and does not reappear in any of the Corruption's domains after the Change, leaving that Power doomed to be Out of Focus for the show's entire post-Season One run. In Episode 184 ("Like Ants"), featuring one of the Corruption-controlled domains, Jon tells Martin that Amherst basically shriveled up and died after a few years of not being able to feed on anyone's fear, cementing this status for Amherst.
  • In a Q&A, Jonathan Sims was asked if he considered any of the characters in the series to be examples of this trope, and he stated that he felt that there were two he wished he could have done more with; Occult Detective Adelard Dekker & Dark Messiah Agnes Montague. With Dekker, he says that he felt that he didn't really have the best grasp on his character until he was writing statement where Dekker dies, and he came to think of Adelard as the closest thing to a true hero in the entire series. With Agnes, he notes that his intention with her was always that of writing a chosen one who we don't get to hear from, only to see from others - as Alex put it, the "Messiah in absentia", but notes that he felt that didn't land as well as he had hoped, and that ultimately we probably should have heard from her directly.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: None of the avatars encountered by Jon in Act I of Season 5 put up a fight. For that matter, neither do the domains themselves. Jon can see his way through the Dark's domain despite it being antithetical to the Eye, and can also see his way around the Vast too, despite there easily being an opportunity to inhibit his powers due to trying to See too much at once. Simon flees the scene before the possible consequences of Jon over-extending his powers can be explored, and Jared's case is particularly noticeable. As he had one of Jon's ribs inside of him, there was easily room to try and conceive of backlash produced by trying to turn the Ceaseless Watcher on him. The writers seem to have caught onto this, like with Amherst, and played with it when it came to Daisy and Helen's domain.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • The Pig from Episode 103. While it's a monster, its fondness for the statement giver ends up making the statement giver's solution feel cruel to some.
  • Jared got much the same Evil Is Cool treatment as, say, Jude Perry—but as his third appearances portrayed him as a cheerful jock who ran his own gym to help people get their ideal bodies, this dampened a lot of his fright factor and drew lots of fans to the possibility of a relatively harmless avatar. Trans fans were for this reason particularly sad to see him offed by Jon, and even more shocked to realize a wisecrack from him was supposed to be a homophobic one.
• The Woobie:
  • Martin is put through the wringer. He was abandoned by his dad and his mother loathed him, despite him making every effort to be a good son and care for her, because he looked like his deadbeat father. Now that she's in an assisted living facility, she refuses to see or even speak to him. He's in love with Jon, who for the first two seasons treats him like crap, and all his friends die or go crazy. Or go crazy and then die. And that's before Peter gets his hooks into him.
  • Poor, poor Michael Shelley. Betrayed by a woman he cared for and trusted wholeheartedly, devoured and changed by the Distortion and twisted beyond the point of no return, but still just enough of himself to be angry about what happened to him. Made worse by the fact that Gertrude's reasons for the betrayal, while necessary from her perspective and somewhat understandable given that she thought the alternative was The End of the World as We Know It, turned out to be wrong. The ritual to bring the Spiral into ascension never would've worked anyway, so Michael was sacrificed for nothing. In spite of what he became, it's difficult not to shed a tear for the sweet and innocent person he was. And when his current form gets too emotional about it, he's unceremoniously wiped out and replaced.
  • A good chunk of the statement givers are this, since the vast majority of them are ordinary, decent people who had the bad luck to stumble across an agent of an Eldritch Abomination. Some of them manage to get away and go on to live normal lives, but are still traumatized from their experiences, while many others aren't that lucky.
  • Jack Barnabas in particular will break your heart, for reasons connected to his Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds girlfriend. He had a brief romantic relationship with Agnes Montague and they genuinely liked each other, but then she left with the cult after accidentally melting his face. He just wanted a kiss...