- Complete Monster: The Hive Mind of bacteria—credited only as "The Monster"—is an abomination with a god complex and a desire to assimilate as many humans as possible. Escaping from Scott's Manor and slaughtering several scientists along the way, the Monster takes the opportunity to dispose of the police department of Fawn Circle to leave the entire town utterly defenseless. Manifesting itself as groups of snowmen, the Monster begins brutally murdering random people, defleshing their corpses and replacing them with crude replicas under its control, eventually massacring the City Hall and mimicking a weatherman on live TV in an attempt to lure even more people to their demise.
- Fanfic Fuel: The Galaxy Detective series mentioned in Segments 2 and 4 has made a few viewers wonder what it's all about and wanting to explore more of this.
- Unlike the Channel 83 videographer and Sid's employee, we never see Carl Denby be attacked or killed by the snow bacteria. Plenty of opportunities to tell his tale of survival, and the reasons why he never contacted authorities.
- He's Just Hiding: Many fans refuse to believe that Carl Denby died in the penultimate episode, theorizing ways he could have survived the snow monster's attack.
- Narm: Many found Deputy Blair's declaration of "LOOK AT HIS ARMS! THEY'RE MADE OF SNOW!" to be rather silly, something Lewis himself couldn't help but agree with.
This is most likely why the line was removed from the Compilation movie.- The signal hijacking by the scientists in the first segment is so visibly modern-looking, despite any attempts to make it look like VHS quality footage, that a lot of watchers are initially turned off, and have to be convinced by others or themselves to give the movie another chance.
- Narm Charm: The snowman with Denby's face in the second-to-last segment looks noticeably dodgy in how it's presented... but that only serves to benefit how disturbing the encounter was. Especially when it proceeds to open its mouth to kill Denby, the unnaturalness of it making the creature look even more wrong.
- Play-Along Meme: Many commenters on the Medicine Lake Campground infomercial jokingly act as if it's a real place they've been to and that The Monster's edits to the ad were already part of the experience, offering their two cents on the Embrace cabin and saying that searching for Stephen Millbanks is one of their favorite wintertime activities.
- Special Effects Failure: The signal hijacking in the first episode is so modern looking despite the distortions that most watchers are often taken out of the otherwise-genuine experience of 1980s TV. To a smaller extent, the audio throughout the series is a little cleaner than one would expect of what's supposed to be damaged recording. Also, in some of the filmed segments, the audio continues despite the video cutting. One that Lewis himself has addressed is how some of the dubbing for the City Council meetings don't always match the video footage of the people talking.
- Suspiciously Similar Song: The ending credits play over a royalty-free acoustic guitar instrumental called "Midwinter". It's absolutely gorgeous, but clearly takes more than a little inspiration from Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home".
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/WinterOf83
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