YMMV / Airlocked

• Best Boss Ever:
  • Each of the final trials was truly fun and emotional, but shoutout especially to R5, which called back to R2's cascade of revelations while involving every single character up to that point.
  • R1's last player trial involved unique game mechanics such as The Mole and hinged on the players rigging the vote in their own favour.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Xander: Xandad, various beef-related nicknames
  • The Tiny Car item got the fan nickname "Christine Junior." This eventually became an Ascended Meme.
  • Ardyn: Arby's, Ardad, Aslan, Arby's Lucifer Skylight. All of these eventually appear in game canon.
  • Takumi: Taco, Soft Taco, Taco Tuesday, etc. This occasionally extends to calling his roommate Choromatsu "Churro."
  • Nishitani: "Nasty Crimeboy" and occasionally just "Crimeboy". Also, "crime uncle."
  • Junpei: Jumpy
  • Choromatsu: Green Bean, Bean, Muppet, Churro (to match Takumi's "Taco"), Chorizo
  • Kip's true form without the hardlight on is called "Irkiplier."
  • Cheryl: Pokémom
  • Fukawa, Max C., and Pyrrha are the "Bisexual Crisis Cell."
  • Akira, Marisa, Penny, and Kaiba (Seto) as a quartet: Team AMPS/Team SPAM
  • "Chip" for Church possessed by Kip's PAK.
  • C.E.C.E. gets two spoilery ones: "CECEmina" after the Round 2 intermission and "SISCE" during Round 5.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: As an Overseer, Bolton wears dad sandals with otherwise formal attire and has Goofy Print Underwear.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • After Kurumi stands down with nearly everyone defending Ricky from her implied threat in the first trial, Natsuhi won't give it up, and Kurumi says she's not going to kill Ricky. Yeah, Kurumi, how did that go for you?
  • When warning Nari not to ghost Cece in the end of Round 2, Junpei says, "Cece deserves better than drinking herself to sleep and passing out under the shower every night." In Round 5, Cece is revealed to be the Big Bad in disguise, so she does deserve it, and she really has been driven to drink.
  • In Round 2, when the formal wear turns to goofy yet cute Halloween costumes, Cece as the lion tamer to Kip's lion looks like a role reversal gag. Much later, we learn that it's foreshadowing that Cece is secretly the mastermind.
  • In chapters of School-Live! that came out after Airlocked ended, the main characters race to try to prevent the city from being destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Which spells bad news for the universe where they got kidnapped for a murdergame and chose not to return...
• Hilarious in Hindsight: After endgame, the very next issue of Optimus Prime ended with the shocking reveal that its shape-changing alien Big Bad had also been appearing to the characters, and audience, as two separate villains.
• Love to Hate: While nearly every other antagonist NPC turned out to be Good All Along or had a Heel–Face Turn, Rox Petuu appears to be pure evil and loving it. She's an in-character Hate Sink, and out of character, she's been called one of the most hated Journal Roleplay NPCs of all time, only second to Jason from Tower of Animus. This made it all the more painful that Rox was just an "evil persona" for the conflicted Nina — and also her "good persona," the widely beloved Cece Diver.
• Memetic Badass: Yuuri's composed yet menacing aura has made her this both in- and out-of-universe. She's acknowledged as being the most frightening by far of the Knifeglaive, even if she's the only fully human one without any powers.
  • Ignis Scientia, who doesn't even appear in person until the very final log, is also this due to flashbacks and conversation in Airlocked. The game's Discord has joked that, among all the military leaders, chosen heroes, gods, and more helplessly kidnapped for the Champion Excellence Program, Ignis might have been selected as a Champion and been the only one to have actually escaped Nina's grasp.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The most (adjective) (group of people or things, initially "teenage girls") DWRP has to offer.^ExplanationThis began in the mock trial and continued as a play on game advertisements whenever multiple characters had something in common. Some can be strangely specific, like, "the saddest final bosses turned Team Dads DWRP has to offer."
  • Cursed ships.^ExplanationNo Round 1 ship had both halves make it out alive, and the only ones where one half made it out almost didn't. The same almost happened with Round 3, with Pyrrha especially having the Cartwright Curse, but Soma and Touko both lived.
  • Airlocked but it keeps getting faster.^ExplanationA play on videos that show an entire regular video sped up more and more. This is a common commentary on characters bonding quickly, bodies dropping sooner and in greater quantities, and other forms of Serial Escalation.
  • Do not fuck the Starscourge.^ExplanationA common reply to comments OOC about someone, usually Church, attempting to seduce Ardyn. Of course, once the Starscourge is no longer a problem...
  • Sad lizard.^ExplanationComments on what Jaycee must be doing right now and how being the survivors' Secret-Keeper weighs on him. Occasionally accompanied by pictures of actual lizards.
  • Pants off for Diego.^{Round 3 spoilers}Diego gets pantsed in 3-1 to prove his guilt.
  • Airlocked keeps becoming real.^ExplanationCelebrity PBs, actors who played the characters in their canons, etc. had a disturbing trend of mentioning or appearing with one another or things relating to Airlocked throughout the game. Examples include Ardyn's voice actor and Church's PB being cast together in Critical Role, Jon Risinger tweeting from a Guy Fieri restaurant close to R3 endgame, and Markiplier hosting a "dating game" segment on a live show some players attended during or right after R2. The coincidences keep piling up, which gets unsettling for a game that's all about fiction being real...
  • SAVE THE BABY ^{Round 5 spoilers}A common cry when PAL shows signs of Fighting from the Inside against P.A.L. 7.0.
• Never Live It Down: If commentary from spectators and people in the games Airlocked CRAU characters went to afterwards is any indication, Yurika isn't known for any of her actual contributions in-game, just for boiling a frozen pizza.
• Player Punch: Chitanda Eru's player intentionally had her very active and endeared her to the other players just to cause this upon killing her off early. From the reactions at the body discovery, it worked.
  • Margulis and McBurn's players admitted to the fact that they pushed more for a close relationship between the characters since their case premise wouldn't work without them trusting each other. It worked better than intended from the reactions and from the fact that the friendship turned into a Ship Tease.
  • In round 3, John offering to teach Oda's son guitar when they make it out, despite the fact that both players knew they were going to be one of the victims and the culprit, respectively, of that week's case, and that Oda's reason for acting on the motive was to bring his children back to life.
  • In choosing characters to app for round 4, players did this deliberately, opting to choose canonmates for previous cast members, especially the survivors.
  • Similarly, for round 5, many players chose regains specifically to upset each other. This was compounded during the Week of Terror, where mods gave characters painful regains from previous rounds, usually their dead friends' but occasionally their own things that didn't make it to their Round 5 regain lists.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Xanlight (Xander/Lightning), Clarianna (Clarith/Arianna), Rickfist (Rick/Doomfist), Lumpto (Lucina/Prompto).
• Recurring Fanon Character: The player-run kink meme tends to use the same stable of original Airlocked! fans alongside the ones who appeared in the game.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • From the creators of murdergame Dangan Roleplay, with elements of later games and all-new material.
  • The story itself heavily borrows elements from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. However, it's played in far less of a Fan Hater way, as in-universe fans are led to believe that the murder show is fictional and the fandom is portrayed lovingly instead of with revulsion.
• Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?: Kurumi from Round 1 gets a lot of this, especially from the in-universe fandom. Sure, Ricky/Kurumi is far from the only ship to have one half kill the other and Ricky's no saint herself, but at least the others agreed to it, whereas Kurumi deceived and betrayed Ricky entirely on purpose. The fact that the two talk things over later and the easy forgiveness that follows is addressed by the other characters, though, keeps it from being as bad as it could have been.