YMMV / Where's Wally?

• Crossover Ship: Wally/Waldo and Carmen Sandiego. There's a certain appeal when they're so different but so good at getting lost. She's a dashing, sophisticated thief with a ruthless streak and he's the sweet-hearted, amiable guy who can keep up with her. It's fun.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While famous worldwide, Wally/Waldo is more iconic in North America, where he's known under the latter name. This may explain why Odlaw is named that way instead of "Yllaw".
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The same year the animated series introduced Odlaw, Nintendo released Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, which introduced Wario. Both villains are evil counterparts of the heroes who wear yellow instead of red, sport pointed mustaches, and their names invert part of their rival's name.
• Memetic Mutation: Wally/Waldo's distinctive look quickly earned him a spot in the pop culture lexicon, with spoofs of his character turning up (among other places) in The Naked Gun film series and on the America's Funniest Home Videos spinoff America's Funniest People.
• Nightmare Retardant: Look up "Where's Waldo?" on the internet and prepare to find "frightening" prank games.
• The Problem with Licensed Games:
  • The dreadful NES game, often cited among the worst video games ever made. Not only are the graphics very tiny and simplistic, but on higher difficulties Waldo takes on bizarre color schemes. For example, it's not uncommon to see a Waldo with dark green skin and a dark brown/dark green striped shirt. And you thought he was hard enough to find in his normal outfit... And then, there's the subway level, where the player has to navigate a subway maze using rotating portions of the tracks, while simultaneously dodging Whitebeard as he randomly teleports around the place; making contact with him is an instant game over 99% of the time, to the point where Vinesauce fans labeled him the "CBT Wizard" in reference to the level's difficulty.
  • The SNES and Sega Genesis game, The Great Waldo Search is better, but still not that great, being one of the shortest games on either system. Every time you make a menu selection, you get to hear the same low pitched "Where's Waldo" voice sample. Every. Damn. Time. And that's before you get to the butchered NES port, which has ugly graphics, wonky controls, and one of the absolute worst soundtracks on any officially-licensed NES game.
• That One Level:
  • The Fantastic Journey has a rare non-video game example (though the book does have its own game adaptation) with the Land of Wallies. You have to find Wally in a world that's filled with them and the only clue you've got is that he's missing a shoe.
  • The authors must really like this idea, as every book after contains a similar level. One of them is a page full of Woofs (if it’s any consolation, you can see more than just his tail this time) and another takes the whole idea up to eleven by having copies of all five characters.

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