YMMV / ALF

• Awesome Music:
  • The rock video ALF recorded for Lynn.
  • The second opening theme is very uplifting.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • The made-for-TV movie, to some. Even if it does make up for a much darker end to the series.
  • Ditto for the aforementioned series finale which was just supposed to be a season finale, but cancellation then left the show with a horribly bleak end.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • ALF is particularly popular in Germany, being one of the few 80's Dom Coms on public television that are easily accessible for children, as well as sporting a great dub. The series was so popular in Germany that the made for TV movie was even released to German movie theaters.
  • Ditto in Mexico.
  • It's one of the most popular shows of all time in Ukraine.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The exchange between Alf and Jake in "Shake, Rattle and Roll" where Alf explains all the ways Jake could die in his own home and tells him that he loves him in case he doesn't see him again becomes unintentionally disturbing when one realizes that Jake never appears again after that scene.
  • Willie Tanner not only acted as a conscience for Alf but also as a disciplinarian, having to lay down the law or even punish Alf when he went too far (which was frequently). Willie's actor Max Wright ended up getting in trouble with the law in the years after the series ended; he was arrested for drunk driving in 2000 and again in 2003.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A Running Gag in "On the Road Again" has two hunters saying "Look it up!". Which refers to looking at books, which they don't have in their cabin. But nowadays saying "Look it up!" would mean looking for information on the internet, which nearly everyone does.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The series had a video game released for the Sega Master System in 1989. The plot of the game is that ALF is trying to repair his spaceship so he can head to Mars. What would otherwise be a short adventure game (20 minutes at most) can take well over an hour due to Fake Difficulty through convoluted controls, bad programming, and Goddamned Bats which become Demonic Spiders due to ALF being able to take only one hit. The game consists almost entirely of Trial-and-Error Gameplay, both by design and by mistake, as it features a lot of unfair traps, including shop items that make you too poor to buy the items you'll actually need and one, the ALF book, which restarts the game after triggering an Info Dump that ends by informing the player of such, the only time that it is so much as hinted at.^note In-game, at least. The game's instruction manual subtly hints at this by telling you the ALF Book "Tells an interesting story that will really take you back to the beginning!" The Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed this game as part of his "The Twelve Days of Shitsmas" marathon.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • The actress who played Raquel Ochmonek, Liz Sheridan, would end up becoming more well known for her role on Seinfeld as Helen Seinfeld, Jerry's mother.
  • Dexter Moyers from the movie Project ALF was played by Miguel Ferrer.
  • Steve Pepoon wrote 14 episodes before co-creating The Wild Thornberrys. Two other co-creators of that show, David Silverman and Stephen Sustarsic, wrote six episodes of ALF.
  • Victor Fresco wrote 11 episodes before going on to create and executive produce Andy Richter Controls the Universe and Better Off Ted.
  • Al Jean and Mike Reiss wrote five episodes. Both went on to create and executive produce Teen Angel and The Critic. Jean and Reiss were also major creative forces on the earlier seasons of The Simpsons.
    • Following the cancellation of ALF, Alf Clausen would join The Simpsons during production of its second season, remaining its in-house incidental / song composer for over 25 years.
  • Donald Todd wrote four episodes well before making a name for himself as co-creator and executive producer of Samantha Who?.
  • Kevin Abbott wrote an episode. Years later, he developed and executive produced the show Malibu Country.
  • The military General who's after ALF in the series finale is Richard Fancy, who later will play Mr. Lippman on Seinfeld.
  • One of the puppeteers who worked on ALF, Lisa Buckley, would go on to play Betty Lou on Sesame Street during the 1990s'.
• Ugly Cute: Our furry protagonist and his fellow Melmacians themselves...a bunch of furry, fuzzy, wisecracking anteater-ish little people with big animal feet, round butts, cute nubby tails, Ferengi-ears and warty croissant-shaped muzzle-noses.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Due to the Melmakian proclivity for eating cats not aging well with the internet's reverence for them, along with ALF's self-destructive attitude/behavior and occasional tone-deaf jokes, Willy comes off as a much more sympathetic character by present day standards.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The show repeatedly discusses how ALF can't contribute financially to the Tanner household because he's in hiding. There weren't many opportunities to work from home in the 1980s the show is set in, but in the modern era ALF could have conceivably done anything from a podcast to a YouTube video game channel to being a Patreon-based writer or artist without ever revealing his face.
  • Ironically, one of these scenarios is actually presented at least once in the series, in one of the episodes of the first season ALF becomes a guest script writer for the soap opera "One World to Hope For", to which it's seen he continues to write for by the end of the episode after the paycheck came in.
• Wangst: Lynn in the Season 2 episode "Varsity Drag". When she finds out that Willie and Kate can't afford to send her away to the college she wants; Lynn becomes very bratty and pouty. Fortunately, by the episode's end (after ALF reveals that he got a paper route to pay for Lynn's schooling) she realizes what a brat she's being and snaps out of it.

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