Video Game / Sam & Max: Freelance Police

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A long-awaited sequel to Sam & Max Hit the Road was announced by LucasArts in 2002, but in March of 2004 the project was unceremoniously canceled. Fans were incensed, as were several members of the LucasArts team, who left to found their own game company: Telltale Games. In 2005, Telltale announced they would be working with Steve Purcell to produce an episodic Sam & Max adventure game, and in late 2006, the first episode of Sam & Max: Season One was released. From 2006 to 2010, three seasons have been produced, consisting of the following:

• Sam & Max Save the World
• Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space
• Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

Following the closure of Telltale Games, the rights to the episodic series has been acquired by members of the development team, now Skunkape Games. The first season, Sam & Max Save the World, received a remastered release for PC and the Nintendo Switch in December 2020, with Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space following it in December 2021. The Xbox One received the remasters of Save the World and Beyond Time and Space in 2021, followed by the PlayStation 4 in 2022. The remaster of the third and final season, The Devil's Playhouse, launched on all four platforms in August 2024.

See also Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual!, a 2021 project which may or may not be in the same continuity. It's complicated.

Contains examples of:

• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Bosco's Inconvenience.
  Bosco: Look, all I know is, I keep making up the most ridiculous price I can think of, and you keep payin' it! So I ask you, who's the foo'?
• Aggressive Negotiations: Evoked for laughs as Max, President Evil of the United States, uses his Peacemaker (gun) to ensure successful Peace Summits. In the end, when Hell literally freezes over, Max is awarded the Nobel Prize For Peace!
• Art Evolution: The remastered versions of Save the World and Beyond Time and Space feature slight tweaks to Sam & Max's character designs to bring them more in line with more recent depictions of the characters. Notable among these changes are Sam's longer ears and baggier clothes and making Max's bellybutton more distinct. More striking, however, are the updated lighting and shading- comparing screenshots of both versions is like comparing night and day. It ends up being most noticeable with the true form of Hugh Bliss, who is now bioluminecent and has particles rising off him to emphasise how he's a colony of bacteria.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: The list of items Sam asks Bosco for includes:
  Weasels on a stick, two-handed broadswords, vegetables in the shape of famous naturalists, candy-pink Fatboys, exiled political dissidents, weapons of mass destruction, complimentary fresh garlic, fine leather jackets, gumballs the size of your head, +2 Plate Armor of Limitless Squeezeability, PEZ dispensers with the head of infamous Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, stray tufts of sasquatch hair, hats in the shape of a cow udder, rubber chickens with a pulley in the middle, amulets of protection against greater hypnosis, potatoes in the likeness of Catholic saints, souvenir snowglobes from the Mystery Vortex, Lobstah Fahts-brand cereal, Tagalog rhyming dictionaries (abridged), wiener cozies, Navajo blankets, dual core processors with 512-megabyte cache, chimpanzee-sized diapers, barbecue plankton chips, keychains with a +8 modifier to Dexterity, self-respect, Lembas, bulletproof edible underwear, lords-a-leaping and/or maids-a-milking, inflatable arms capable of being used as replacements for your real arms, passive-aggressive payback disguised as an innocuous customer inquiry, Honey Bunches of Pumice brand cereal, stim-packs and radiation chems, zombie repellent, powdered drink mix, three-day-old rigatoni stuffed with marshmallow peeps in an orange soda reduction with a hint of cilantro, eyeglass repair kits, and chainsaw gasoline.
  • Subverted in the final episode of season 1, where they ask for the hard-to-obtain and stupidest things they've needed to solve puzzles throughout the series thus far... and Bosco has all of them. Except for Hugh Bliss tied up behind the counter.
  • It is heavily implied during Season Two that Sam is doing this specifically to annoy Bosco. Note that the last instance comes when Bosco is trapped in his own personal hell.
    Bosco: Boy, I am standing buck naked on a stage thousands of miles below the surface of the Earth! Does it LOOK like I have anything?!
    Sam: Do you have any chainsaw gasoline?
    Bosco: I really am in hell.
• Asshole Victim: The majority of Sam and Max's victims tend to be this. In "Culture Shock", for example, they specifically raise the money for one of Bosco's inventions by giving a hefty ticket to some rich jerk in a neighborhood known for white-collar crime.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Maimtron 9000 and Giant statue Abraham Lincoln both had their moments ravaging around a city.
• Berserk Button: Sam has several (including a hidden one when trying to fix the past): Try to harm Max, call him Fat or try to give him pink bellies, for example. You usually are pretty much screwed. Then, in Episode 204 (Chariot of the Dogs), in the 80's, when Sam and Max find their young versions playing the Bluster Blaster, Sam tries to convince either young Sam or young Max to leave the videogame and go play outside. He shows signs of repugnance when looking at them, and is able to comment to Max about "how we were nerdier in the 80's".
  • Max also isn't too fond of losing his partner, either through one of them dying or through others trying to replace him as Sam's best friend. In Episode 205, a demonic tormentor in Hell learns this the hard way when Max violently murders the demon and tears out his kidneys.
• Big "WHAT?!": Sam's reaction to know Brady Culture is happy in hell but first paraphrasing about how his mouth is too parched to do a spit-take.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Sam & Max are Unscrupulous Heroes while the antagonists tend to be card-carrying villains.
• Blatant Lies: Girl Stinky's understanding of history. Which makes it slightly odd that she's aware how nonsensical it is for Abraham Lincoln to be trying to pay his tab in Confederate money. This is subverted if asked about Easter Island, where her absurd claims turn out to be accurate.
• Bound and Gagged: Leonard Steakcharmer must have set some kind of record for this. Sam and Max first tie him up in the third episode of season 1 to interrogate him, then gag him and leave him in their closet as a souvenir of the adventure. He remains there until sometime in season 2, just over a year later in-universe, until he dies and goes to the Sam and Max wing of Hell, where he's damned to more of the same. Sam does get the hint after this and frees Leonard after restoring him to life.
• Brick Joke:
  • Played brilliantly at the end of Season 2 where, first, our heroes find themselves in a very familiar burning hellscape and are immediately saved by their own past selves in a repeat of a scene from a puzzle from 4 episodes before. Then, after the final credits, the Bermuda triangle that collected the volcanic eruption in "Moai Better Blues", 3 episodes before, suddenly appears and destroys the *censored* Poppers, interrupting their We Will Meet Again speech.
  • The best one is the ink ribbon that you find in Jurgen's castle in Episode 203. The player tries desperately to fit it to one of the puzzles of the episode, only to find out in the next one that it's just garbage that's Sam threw through a temporal portal.
    • It's actually a double brick joke, as a line of dialogue in Episode 202 refers to something being as useful as a typewriter ribbon in a haunted castle.
• Broken Aesop: In the Show Within a Show Midtown Cowboys, the other characters hold an intervention for Mr. Featherly but the object of his addiction is used for blatant Product Placement.
• Call-Forward: The remastered version added two new items to Sam & Max's closet in the future seen in "Chariots of the Dogs", items that would only been seen in The Devil's Playhouse; Sameth's skull and the bust of Sammun-Mak.
• Came Back Wrong: The DeSoto after its return from Hell.
• Casual Danger Dialog: A memorable one opens the game "Night of the Raving Dead", when we see the duo trapped inside a deadly contraption, its maw closing in:
  Sam: Well, looks like this is it, little buddy. My whole life is flashing before my eyes. ...I wondered where I'd left my wallet.
  Max: I can't even remember how we got here!
  Sam: Come on, Max. Remember, we were back in the office, just back from Easter Island...
  Max: Wait wait, do the whole thing with the music and all that!
• Catchphrase:
  • Sam: You crack me up little buddy!
  • Bosco: It'll work! Trust me on this, trust me!
  • Hugh Bliss: Hi! I'm Hugh Bliss! (Exaggerated when the entire world is brainwashed into being like him, to the point where Sybil and Bosco say that every time you talk to them.)
  • In-universe and out, The Soda Poppers.
    Specs: You made me mess up!
    Whizzer: Time out for number one!
    Peepers: I can see you!
• Censored for Comedy:
  • When Myra is interviewing the Soda Poppers in "Situation: Comedy", their answers have many words arbitrarily bleeped out, resulting in moments like Specs admitting that he regrets not having *bleep*ed his brother.
  • In "What's New, Beelzebub?", Hugh Bliss works as a *bleep*er. Specifically, he applies Sound Effects Bleeps to any and all profanity. Even innocuous stuff like "doo-doo", "freakin'", "peacock", and the name "Dick". Eventually, his list of swears gets replaced with Satan's grocery list, causing him to start bleeping words like "vanilla" and "soda". And yes, this does cause the Soda Poppers to be referred to as the "*bleep* Poppers" for the rest of the game.
• Cerebus Retcon: Sorta, in "Chariots of the Dogs". The Mariachis and Bosco's paranoia are both explained, although the revelation itself is pretty funny.
• Chair Reveal: Used to reveal that the Big Bad of Season 2 were the Soda Poppers; spoofed in the Season 2 DVD extras, with other characters; up to and including Homestar Runner.
  "And so ends our deadly game of cat and mouse! ... and dog... and rabbit... thingy."
• Chekhov's Armoury: Almost every game in Seasons 1 & 2 introduces a variety of items that will become important in a later episode. There are also references to the story arc of Season 2 towards the end of Season 1.
  • Never mind that generally things that are even merely said offhand in earlier episodes often come true in later ones, even if it was a complete fabrication of the characters at the time... For example, Bosco claims in the very first episode that EVERYONE is after him, like the mob and the government and aliens... and he's right on every single count.
  • Inverted in the last episode of Season 1, when Sam finally asks Bosco for things that would have solved every previous puzzle. He had all of them all along! In "Chariots of the Dogs", you get to go behind Bosco's counter, and apparently they were all right behind the damn lotto tickets.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: Not as egregious as with the Monkey Island series, but, Telltale being Telltale, certain puzzle solutions do boomerang on occasion. For example, the knowledge that Bermuda Triangles freeze in place when fed a red octagon is needed again for the very last puzzle of "Moai Better Blues".
• The Chosen Ones: "We appear in so many prophecies that we should start charging royalties!"
• Cluster *Bleep*-Bomb: Timmy Two-Teeth has "terminal Tourette's Syndrome", which results in most of his dialogue being bleeped out. But it turns out Censored for Comedy and the Scunthorpe Problem are in effect with the censorship—all of his bleeped dialogue is an inch deep in the kiddy pool section of profanity at worst. Uncensoring him is needed to continue on, as he reveals Peepers' real name - Dick Peacock.
• Comically Small Bribe
  Sam: Maybe a few...Washingtons will help change your mind?
  Max: Or maybe a few...Lincolns?
• Conspiracy Theorist: Bosco.
  • Properly Paranoid: After Bosco builds a Missile Defense System, it turns out his shop really is being targeted by government ICBMs.
  • The Toy Mafia are also after him, and an alien cult leader set up shop outside his store. It's looking more and more like Bosco isn't as crazy as he appears. Though he isn't that bright.
  • And let's not forget T.H.E.M.
    • And his mother. In fact, she was, inadvertently, the one who caused Bosco to fall under surveillance in the first place.
• Continuity Porn: Over time, Sam and Max's office becomes utterly, utterly littered with memorabilia of their past cases. In the first season of the Telltale games, it's mostly limited to their closet, but after that it just comes spilling out all over the place.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: A lot in the newer games. It seems no one can undergo normal torment when they could instead be interrogated with "yo momma" jokes, subjected to (literally) soul-crushingly boring stories, or put through several magic-trick themed torture devices.
• Couch Gag: Telltale continues the tradition of bogus "based on" jokes in Seasons 2, and later on 3:
  Based on the heretical Apocrypha, "Sam & Max Meet a Guy Who Sucks" ("Night of the Raving Dead")
• Crapsack World: Assuming all the little bits we hear about Max's reign as President are accurate, the country cannot be in a good state. Dakota is at WAR with itself, due to a feud about Mount Rushmore, a war that President Max provoked. His response to the crisis: Provide giant battle robots to all sides and whoever wins, claim the US backed them all along.
• Cue the Flying Pigs: Sam and Max literally freeze Hell over in the Season 2 finale; the rest stems from there. The results include Sam letting Max answer the phone, Max winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and Sybil inviting Max to not only attend her wedding, but officiate it.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Even though a number of characters do die for real over the course of the series, a lot of casualties get better somehow. It helps that Sam and Max live right above the gates of hell and Momma Bosco has an advanced cloning machine. The list of deaths that didn't count: Animatronic Abe Lincoln (his head survived), Santa Claus and one of his elves, Grandpa Stinky, the DeSoto, Bosco, Timmy Two-Teeth, Sam (all brought back from hell), Momma Bosco (lived on as a ghost, later cloned a new body for herself) and Max (replaced by himself from an alternate timeline.) In addition, Brady Culture, Hugh Bliss and Jürgen have found steady employment in hell and seem happy enough.
• Discontinuity Nod: Several, inserted as TakeThats to LucasArts.
  • In Season 1, there is a box labeled "03-03-04", the date on which Sam & Max: Freelance Police was canceled, in Sam and Max's office. When examined, Sam only mentions that it was "a particularly gruesome case." In the remastered version of Save the World, this box was updated to add a label reading "09-21-18", the date when most of the staff working at Telltale at the time were let go, effectively marking the end of the original Telltale's existence.
  • Max mentions, when playing a tape made in Episode 2 later in Season 1 that he hates the sound of his voice on tape and that it "never sounds like [him]". Out of all the characters, Max's voice was the one that shifted around the most in the early episodes (even switching voice actors between Episodes 1 and 2), and it was most gratingly over the edge in William Kasten's first performance (which happened to be when said tape was filmed).
• Do Androids Dream?: When Curt restarts, he asks, "Will I dream?"
• Don't Explain the Joke: This is one of the many things Peepers does in Sam's personal hell where Peepers is his partner instead of Max.
• Evil Laugh: Lampshaded, both with Brady Culture and Jurgen, the latter when Sam loses a bet with Max in which he bet Jurgen would not make it. If you keep him going long enough, the Season 1 Big Bad will run out of evil laughter and switch to saying "Evil Laugh", "Evil Chuckle", ...
• Felony Misdemeanor:
  Max: I know you're the source of all evil, but wasting office supply for personal use... That's just wrong!
• A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: Sam and Max acquire massively inflating amounts of money that they casually drop on Bosco for 'inventions' that experience has already shown will be a lame household item. A billion dollars for a snot rag? Sure, here you go! Specifically, you give him money from a driver whose taillight you busted, prize money from a game show, tokens from Ted E. Bear's Mafia-Free Playland And Casino, a government check from the Presidential Discretionary Budget, the online bank account of "Mr. Biv" through money laundering, and Canadian dollars given to you by Sybil in trade for the US.
• Fragile Speedster: Auntie Biotic plays this role during the turn-based battle in "Reality 2.0". Her dexterity score is over 400, but when Sam bonks her once with a blade just one attack point over her defense, that puts an end to her game.
• Funny Background Event: Before the last showdown with Jurgen in Night of the Raving Dead, you're given the option to explore the room as Jurgen adopts a crane stance. If you take too long, he'll lose his balance or pointedly take a look at his wrist.
• Genre Savvy: Hugh Bliss, seeing as his entire operation is based on forcing the spread of unending joy and happiness Max is the closest character to representing a Chosen One to defeat him. Turns out not only did the villain know this in advance, but was waiting for the two to show so he could dispose of Max as fast as he could.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Mr Featherly, actually (in-universe). Germans treat him as the protagonist of his show, Midtown Cowboys, rather than the antagonist, since his existence is one of frustration and suffering. Anything endorsed on the show instantly becomes a top seller in Germany. This proves to be Jurgen's downfall.
  • The boys start a trend all on their own - they toss a brain up into a gargoyle's bowl to distract some zombies. Later, when they can understand them, one of the zombies thanks them for the brain and says getting it was so much fun, now they'll only eat brains American style - somewhere high up where you have to climb to get it.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: Inverted. Sam's personal Hell is undone by being too realistic. It's a perfect recreation of the Office, right down to the hole that was recently blown in the wall by the Maimtron. Sam uses this to communicate with Max, and then tosses him a key card so he can enter.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The camera doesn't show Max pummeling the poor demon who tried to take his place as Sam's partner, though Max states that he ripped out his kidneys.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Timmy Two-Teeth, once the bleeps are removed.
• G-Rated Drug: Played straight with Whizzer and his soda addiction, but averted when Bosco's truth serum turns out to be vodka.
• Gravity Is Only a Theory: Max claims not to believe in the existence of magnetism, insisting it's 'only a theory'.
  Max: "There's just one thing I believe in!" *pulls out his Luger. His Luger is immediately pulled to the strongly magnetic North Pole* "Okay, make that two things."
• The Great Whodini: Sam starts referring to himself as "the Great Samini" after he masters the pull-a-rodent-out-of-a-hat trick in "The Bright Side of the Moon".
• Guns Are Worthless:
  • Most frequently use of Sam's gun is dismissed offhand, though in some episodes it gains some unorthodox Mundane Utility. Those rare times Sam and Max gleefully open fire with violent intent result in not much more than noise and their satisfaction or frustration; the plot and puzzles remain bulletproof.
  • The justifications as to why a problem can't be solved with a gun occasionally border on lampshading. At one point, you're confronted by some guards blocking a doorway. What happens if you try to use your gun on them? "Hey, I'll give you this cool gun if you let me in!"
• Gut Feeling: Sam and Max have never openly disliked a character that hasn't later turned out to be truly evil. This includes Hugh Bliss, The Soda Poppers, and Girl Stinky. Even if a character is intended to be a villain, if Sam and Max seem comfortable or friendly with them, then there's a good chance they'll pull a Heel–Face Turn later on. Oh, let's see if we can drum up a few examples... Satan, Santa Claus, Abraham Lincoln, the Mariachis... Sam seems to be a bit better judge of character, though, since Max was such a Psycho Supporter of Hugh Bliss.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Max has constantly given Sam a hard time, mocking him even back when they were children, but he won't stand for anyone else doing the same. It's apparent that he only teases him because he thinks he's too shy and wants him to come out of his shell, though, and wants to get a reaction from the usually reserved Sam.
• I Am Not Spock: In-universe example with Philo Pennyworth, who Sam and Max refer to by "Mr. Featherly", the character he plays on TV. Subverted in Season 2, where he eventually gives up and legally changes his name to Mr. Featherly just so that he doesn't have to correct them anymore. And to make license contracts with Germany easier.
• Informing the Fourth Wall: Lampshaded and used as a Continuity Nod but not normally said in the game (one might suspect this is because the engine in the Telltale games doesn't actually let you use two items in your inventory together):
  • In "Chariots of the Dogs", it's one of the mumblings that senile future Sam says. Also, when you meet Past Sam, he wanders around looking at items talking to himself saying things like "I can't shoot Future Me!", "That doesn't need to be made radioactive," and "It's the Time Elevator" as if he was under control of a player. Sam even comments on it, asking Max if he's always acting that weird when they are working a case.
  • Jurgen uses this in the rap-off if you fail twice.
• Insistent Terminology: Max finds terms like "bunny" personally offensive, and will always correct them by reminding them that the proper term is lagomorph. Look it up.
• It's All About Me:
  • Brady Culture, which causes his downfall.
  • Max, always.
• Joke Exhaustion: BANAAAAAAAANNNNNNG!
• Layered World: In "Reality 2.0," the Internet is represented as just the real world but like TRON, with people's buildings housing their websites and blogs and such. Wearing the VR goggles lets you walk around in both worlds at once!
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • "In "Abe Lincoln Must Die!", Max kind of bumps into the fourth wall without breaking it, when Bosco is telling them about how the government watches everybody:
  Max: So that's why I always feel an overbearing presence just outside my field of vision watching and judging my every move. [happens to be looking directly at the Fourth Wall]
  Sam: That's me, Max.
  • And again in "Night of the Raving Dead". "New Location Unlocked" indeed.
  • You'll have to shoot better than that to get in the Toy Mafia...not that there's any Toy Mafia here.
• Leitmotif: "The Office". Admittedly it's for a location rather than a character, but otherwise it fits the bill perfectly. It even has low-bittage, space-age, and even Ancient Egyptian remixes, heard in Episodes 105, 204 and 303 respectively. Parts of it sneak into the various themes in Season 3 despite Sam and Max spending nearly all of it unable to get into the Office, and a rearrangement of "The Office" is ultimately the last tune in the game to close out the entire series, possibly implying it's become a Bootstrapped Theme of sorts.
  • You hear it exactly three times in the game - two instrumental versions during the finales of Season 1 and 2, and once during Season 1's credits - but "World of Max" applies specifically to Max.
  • Then there's the smooth remix from Poker Night at the Inventory.
• Lockdown: In the remastered version of Save the World, the windows of the Oval Office drop massive metal shutters as the Soda Poppers declare war.
• Magical Profanity Filter: One department of hell is in charge of censoring everyone's speech. This being a point-and-click adventure game, messing with the list of censored words is a puzzle.
• Malicious Misnaming: A running gag is how Girl Stinky never addresses Sam and Max by their names, but picks a random moniker every time. She remembers their names just fine; it is her way of saying she just doesn't care.

  Max: Barnaby and Jug-Jug?! ...you're not even trying with the names anymore, are you?

  • If you use psychic ventriloquism on her in Episode 304, Max tries to imitate her, but acknowledges that it's harder to come up with those names than it looks.
• Metaphorgotten: Sam manages to jumble a couple of common phrases in the first minute of "Culture Shock":
  Sam: Patience is a sharp razor to swallow.
• Morality Chain: Ironically, Max is one of these to Sam.
• Ninja Prop: Beyond Time And Space reveals in its final episode that the bleeping out of swear words that's been happening throughout the season (and a few times in Save the World) is happening in-universe in hell's FCC department. It then plays an important role later on - the duo need to figure out the name of one of the game's villains, but they can't hear it because it keeps getting bleeped out - so Sam replaces hell's list of swear words with a grocery list. Doing so also reveals that the game's Hollywood Tourette's character was speaking in much milder language than the game initially implied, and that their health started to improve after the constant ringing in their ear stopped.
• No Name Given: The WARP Director.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Happens to the Soda Poppers in "Culture Shock".
• Noodle Incident: Almost everything in each game. Whenever Sam clicks on an item the player frequently gets a dialog about some weird or ghastly incident involving it, usually due to Max. A perfect example in Episode 103 is Sybils standing fan. Sam says Max almost lost a finger in one of these. Max says "yeah but it wasn't my finger". Almost none of these little stories is ever explained or referenced a second time.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Another Trope Namer, this one from "The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball". Sybil is worried that the Toy Mafia are planning to assassinate her, and she knows Sam and Max are the only two she can trust... problem is, they're the ones the Mafia sent to off her. Max then states how Sybil should go into 'guilt-slinging' as a career.
• Offscreen Teleportation: The director in "Situation: Comedy" who's already in every studio Sam and Max enter, even if they've just come through the only door from the last place they saw her.
• Overly Long Gag: Max's Comical Overreacting when he's pretending to die during the climax of "The Mole, The Mob and The Meatball". Hammered in by the villain of the story attempting to speak several times only to get interrupted by the fact that Max isn't even finished. It ends with the villain admitting that he was just about to tell Sam to shoot Max again.
• Overused Running Gag: Spelled out visually in this gag.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: "Hey, guys! It's me, Bosco!"—who was disguised as someone from France, England, Russia, a half-elf and EVEN HIS OWN MOTHER in the 1st season alone.
• Perpetual Poverty: Strangely enough, Sam and Max have absolutely no problem at all getting as much money as they need; but for some reason, they prefer to live in obvious poverty, despite Max actually being the President. This might not be a huge issue for them, though, as they never bother to pay bills or rent.
• Point of No Return: Every episode, with the exception of "Abe Lincoln Must Die", has a point where you're cut off from any further exploration and are locked into the final sequence of the game. While there's usually no indication of when this is about to happen (though as a rule, if you're entering the area you've spent most of the episode trying to get into, it's probably this) and it sometimes happens rather abruptly, the general lack of sidequests or unwinnable situations and the short length of each episode means it isn't too much of an issue.
• Poor Communication Kills: Bosco's paranoia ultimately stems from his mother's grudge against a mysterious store-vandal — who happens to be Bosco himself that used the time traveling elevator belonging to T.H.E.M and traveled to that time. This silly misunderstanding costs the son his sanity and the mother her life.
• The Power of Friendship: Sam's personal hell is a world without Max (and where Peepers is his sidekick).
  Sam: Sorry Satan. Your demon impostor was no match for the true power of friendship and cooperation.
  Max: Plus, I ripped out his kidneys.
• President Evil: Max, if not outright evil, is at best a sociopathic Chief Executive completely unconcerned with human life, his term marked by giant robot uprisings and a three-way civil war in the Dakotas. Following his inauguration, Max Impeachment Weekly becomes a regular publication (which Max looks forward to each week).
• Randomized Title Screen: Title sequences end with the duo making some kind of gesture (high-five, "right back atcha", etc.) In the season finale, the sequence ends with Max pointing upward and the car flies to the moon. Then the following seasons use the couch gag from the comics.
• Red Herring: It's practically Girl Stinky's reason for existing.
  • In Situation: Comedy, you can bake something using a range of disgusting ingredients, but none of them matter, as all that's important is you make a cake, cover it with ketchup with Bosco's condiment dispenser, then feed it to Whizzer.
  • You can pick up an ink ribbon in Jurgen's castle in Night of the Raving Dead, but it doesn't do anything - its revealed in Chariot of the Dogs that it was just garbage Sam threw into the time stream.
  • The president's (evidently rather lewd) letter in Chariots of the Dogs is involved in two Red Herrings:
    • One, it's addressed to a "Maxine". By talking to Little Sam, you learn that girls like to dress Little Max up in their dolls' clothes, which sounds like useful information in the context. You also have access to time travel during the episode. Nothing comes of this setup - it's a remnant of an earlier version of the puzzle that involved getting Max Disguised in Drag so that his younger self would be attracted to him. ^note Steve Purcell apparently gave a Thousand-Yard Stare hearing about this plan, which is part of the reason it was scrapped - though he did still approve of it.
    • Two, you use it to finally make Superball spit so you can collect his DNA sample, only to find out it wasn't his DNA you needed.
• Replacement Goldfish: At least one interaction with Mr. Spatula's water cooler refers to him as being literally this trope.
• Rule of Three: All over the place, most notably when it is lampshaded in "Moai Better Blues".
• Running Gag:
  • The fake "based on" references in the title cards carried over from the comics.
  • To Bosco: "Do you have any...* insert random, nonsensical item here* ?"
    • "Nope."
  • "We killed your dog! =D"
  • "Superball!" *Whinny*
• Script Swap: With game show questions in Episode 102, cue cards in 104, and a list of swear words (replaced with a grocery list written on the same stationery) in 205.
• Self-Deprecation: Max had no idea vampires were so fruity. Now, three guesses who voiced Jurgen.
  • Examining the Drum in the office in Chariots of the Dogs will have Sam remark "Remember Easter Island? Yeah, me either." This would be innocuous, if not for the fans of the series receiving Moai Better Blues (the episode the Drum originated from) less warmly than the critics.
• Shoot Your Mate: Played more or less straight in The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball, when Sam is ordered to shoot Max to test whether or not he's been hypnotized. In "Situation: Comedy", Max is supposed to pretend to shoot Sam as part of a television audition, but being Max he just pulls out a real gun and fires (luckily, Sam's hat has been made bulletproof).
• Show Some Leg: Horrifyingly enough, done by Max as a distraction in the Season 2 finale:
  Sam: Max, distract Hugh Bliss for me!
  Max: Oh dear, I seem to be completely naked. I hope I don't have to bend over provocatively and—
  Sam: That's enough, Max.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Every chapter of season 1 involves Sam and Max dealing with a bigger mind-control conspiracy than the previous, starting off with brain-washing some washed-up TV actors, then moving up to gangsters, the Presidency, and even reality itself. The final chapter winds up with Hugh Bliss enacting his ultimate plan to remove all free will on Earth.
• Stable Time Loop: Three of these in Season 2: One is Jimmy Two-Teeth's boxing glove and the disappearance of his wife in Episode 201, which turn out to be part of one big time-travel shenanigan, the second is the uncorked wine bottle, which enables Sam to eventually reach the part of the game where he uncorks it in the past, and the third is the remote-egg trade in Episodes 204 and 205. Meanwhile, Past Sam and Past Max explicitly are not part of a stable time loop, which is referenced again in 305.
• Status Quo Is God: Averted in the Telltale games... every crazy thing that happens has lasting consequences, particularly anything involving Max's presidency and unilateral "giant battle robot-based" legislation.
  • Still, despite being Max the president he continues to live in their same building; this is Handwaved when he mentions that he had the Oval Office moved from the White House to Sam & Max's office.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: When trying to crack the code on Bosco's laser grid keypad, Max suggests that Sam should make the display read "BOOBIES" for a lark. It turns out that the code actually is 5318008, much to Sam's chagrin.
• Suck E. Cheese's: Ted E. Bear's Mafia-Free Playland and Casino
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Characters are frequently killed off, even if they were introduced in much earlier episodes.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Lampshaded and then hand-waved in "Moai Better Blues"; apparently Sam, learning from a near-death experience (probably the Cleansing Bath from the Season 1 finale), has modified his tie into an aqualung, while Max is amphibious.
• The Three Trials: Happens often enough in the Telltale Games adventures that the duo catch on and start lampshading it.
• Time Travel: "Chariots of the Dogs" in spades.
• Title Drop: The earliest is Episode 4 of the first season:
  • Later on in the same episode, Sybil spray paints this over her store window.
  Max: I'm the president of the U.S! Let's go bomb someone into oblivion.
  Sam: Not just anyone, Max... Abe Lincoln must die!
  • Done by Max in What's New, Beelzebub?
  • Sam also title drops What's New, Beelzebub?, although he does it a whole season later when meeting Satan again.
• Totally Not a Criminal Front: Ted E. Bear's Mafia-Free Playland And Casino.
  Theme song: "No mafia here (What mafia? Please!) We're mafia free (No mafia here) (No mafia mugs) Just doin' business legitimately!"
• Trouser Space: During a brief body swap in "Night of the Raving Dead", Sam's first comment (in Max's body) was "So that's where you keep your gun!", which implies Max has the gun somewhere on his person, raising this as a possibility.
• True Companions: Sam and Max form one just between the two of them. They will do anything for each other; they live and work together, they're utterly inseparable, and they will always protect each other.
• Unconventional Food Order: Sam and Max love placing bizarre orders at Meesta Pizza and Stinky's Diner, just to Troll the staff. Both restaurants are oddly nonplussed ("He [Meesta Pizza] said toppings are extra, and they're all out of entrails"), while Stinky's exact response varies depending on the game. In Beyond Time and Space, Girl Stinky relays the orders to offscreen cook Sal in humorous Hash House Lingo, but in The Devil's Playhouse, she blows them off completely.

• Unexplained Recovery/Disney Death: In episode 101, Max drops Jimmy out the window to his (presumed) death. He later re-appears in their office unharmed. However, despite being able to survive falling out a window, Jimmy thinks he can attempt suicide by jumping off their office building (from about the same height, slightly less in fact) in 201 (though he claims he was bluffing when Sam and Max reunite him with his wife).
• Very Special Episode: Sam and Max are supposed to film one of those for Midtown Cowboys in "Night of the Raving Dead", but it turns out to be an excuse for Product Placement.
• Viewers Are Morons: Spoofed. The otherwise ordinary-looking apartment set on Midtown Cowboys has a potted cactus in front of the window to remind viewers that the main characters (who are, naturally, the apartment's tenants) are "cowboys."
• Villain Decay:
  • Whilst he's far from being a heavyweight villain, in Harry Moleman's first appearance he's still the Big Bad of that episode, and has managed to take over the Toy Mafia. In his next appearance he's still vaguely annoying, as he will attempt to stop you from getting an item you need, in addition to working for Hugh Bliss. But from then on, Harry Moleman more or less becomes the series' Butt-Monkey.
  • Jurgen is in a similar boat, In his first appearance he's a loser but a dangerous loser who manages to beat Sam & Max in a fight and kill them and it took them possessing Jurgen's Monster to beat him. Every appearance since has made him even more of a joke.
  • In general, this happens to all of the villains when they reappear in later episodes, going from a threat to an annoyance at best.
• Visual Pun: Several. One of the better ones is the slot machine in the casino that is a literal one-armed bandit. And that's not just decorative; it outright steals your money!
• Welcome to Corneria: Though it usually takes a couple of clicks on someone for this to happen. It is totally worth it to hear what the people say.
  • Cuddly Bear from The Mole, the Mob and the Meatball parodies this trope as his only response to just about any dialogue tree choice is "Wanna play cards?" You need to read his mind to find out he's capable of thinking something other than that.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: Sam's response to Max getting his bliss separated.
  • Players' reactions to Max in this state varied. Some found him annoying and unfunny, while others giggled like a maniac at blissed-out Max.
    Max: We can plant a tree! Or teach a child to read! Or teach a tree to read! Yaaaaaaay!
    Max: Can we read to the blind, Sam? Can we?
    Max: I don't need my earthly stomach any more, Sam. I'm on Hugh Bliss's cleansing fast of water, lemon, and sunshine!
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Comedic Sociopathy is the hammer. Almost every solution requires that someone, usually a blameless bystander, will be hurt, terrorized, humiliated or inconvenienced.
• Yandere: Max, to an extent. He will tear your goddam kidneys out rather than let you spend time with Sam in his stead.
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: Justified in that Sam has done more innocent things than guessing Bosco's keycode and has gotten a concussion for it.