| “ | How are you not getting this?! My parents don't care about shit like this! They are NOT! COMING! EVER! | ” |
—"Parents' Day" | ||
Max is a camper at Camp Campbell and the main pro/antagonist of Camp Camp. His deeply cynical attitude about the camp clashes sharply with David's perky demeanor. His initial main goals included escaping the camp and "breaking David's façade".
After Season 1, however, he has changed his focus to creating general mischief for his own amusement.
Appearance
Max is a relatively short kid with a thin build, poofy black hair, bluish-green eyes, and tan skin. He often has bags under his eyes. He wears a contrasting blue hoodie with a yellow Camp Campbell T-shirt underneath, blue jeans, and red shoes with white stripes and black laces.
Personality
Max is a jaded ten-year-old who is extremely pessimistic and seems to despise a wide variety of things, especially Camp Campbell. He is the troublemaker of the camp and enjoys snuffing out the joy of other campers and blackmailing Gwen just for the fun of it. Max himself even stated himself that there's only one camper at Camp Campbell worse than him (Nurf.) Gwen has even referred to Max as "Satan."
True to his pessimistic nature, Max is also much more mature than his fellow campers - to the point of which Camp Counselors David and Gwen ask for his assistance regarding difficult issues.
Due to his maturity, Max refuses to participate in childish activities and doesn't react to scary situations. He's also very intelligent for his age, avoiding the other campers' tricks and crafting his own for his own amusement.
Despite Max's cold disposition, he does have his moments. At the end of "The Order of the Sparrow," Max manages to convince the entire camp to help him create the perfect summer camp just for David.
In "Parent's Day," it's confirmed that Max's parents are in fact negligent. Max's file reveals that his parents failed to select a specific camp for him, suggesting that they didn't care what he was there for, only that he was gone. Max's file only includes his first name and age, implying that his parents didn't even care enough to include his last name or any way to be contacted in case of an emergency. Max shows visible distress when seeing the other camper's parents care for them and even begins tearing up when his neglected status is revealed.
Affiliation
- Main article: Affiliation
Trivia
- Unlike the other campers, Max's parents "didn't care" enough to sign him up for a specific camp, leaving him without a purpose at Camp Campbell. [1]
- The fact that Max's parents just left his papers with only his first name and age written on it, without revealing his last name, contact number, or any other information proves that his parents didn't care for him at all, to the point where if something bad were to happen to Max, the camp would not be able to contact his family about it or take him back.
- Their neglect may also be why he hoped the other campers' parents would fail at supporting their children, insinuating that Max may be jealous of how the other kids' parents care for them and his own don't. He was remorseful that Space Kid's parents couldn't make it to Parents' Day, but went right back to being grumpy when it turned out his uncle was coming instead.
- Max and David are the only characters whose ages have been clearly established. With Max's age (10) being revealed by Gwen in "Gwen Gets a Job", later confirmed in "Parents' Day". And with David's age (24) revealed in his Tinder profile in "Romeo & Juliet II: Love Resurrected".
- Max has repeatedly been shown to have excellent sleuthing skills, much like a detective, and it could be argued that this could be the specific type of camp he should have been signed up for.
- In season 1, he took charge of locating Neil in "Reigny Day", trailed David around and questioned multiple townsfolk about him in "Into Town", and took a "Journey to Spooky Island" to prove the island wasn't haunted and had very thorough and logical explanations for everything.
- In season 3 he made a thorough investigation into Quartermaster's missing hook in "The Fun-Raiser", went searching for the story of Jasper's death (and David's involvement) in "Dial M For Jasper", and thoroughly (and anxiously) collected information on David's odd behavior in "Arrival of the Torso Takers".
- In season 4, the episode "Who Peed the Lake" was practically a full-on police investigation from start to finish, with him even wearing a deerstalker cap and calling himself "Detective Max."
- Max has a habit of stealing and digging through David's personal information and belongings, such as when he asked for David's Social Security Number in exchange for helping him with the behavioral boot camp in the episode "David Gets Hard", using David's credit card in order to pay for his pre-order of 500 cookies from the Flower Scouts in exchange for their help getting David and Bonquisha back together in "Bonjour Bonquisha", or to simply to order himself pizza like in "Parents' Day".
- David is aware of the fact that Max often steals his phone, shown in "Camp Corp." Upon the start of unveiling his plan to get the camp back, he says, "someone get me a cell phone" and David replies, "I'm pretty sure you stole mine." At the end of the same episode, Max's pocket starts ringing, he then takes out David's phone and hands it to him. He didn't make any demands for his phone back, or even scold Max for taking it.
- Oddly, Neil was seen holding David's phone as they drove into the city in "City Survival".
- Max is shown to have a habit of looking up "what do boobies look like" whenever he gets his hands on anything that's connected to the internet, shown in both "Romeo & Juliet II: Love Resurrected" and "Anti-Social Network".
- He has also shown to be able to sound suave enough for online women to think that they're actually talking to a man their age to the point where he leads them on and breaks their heart, unaware that they're only talking to a ten-year-old.[2]
- Max has a knack for finding people's personal information and often blackmailing them with it. Such examples include threatening to tell David that Gwen is out job hunting in "Gwen Gets a Job", finding David's journal in "Arrival of the Torso Takers", stealing David's phone and actively messaging women without his knowledge in "Romeo & Juliet II: Love Resurrected", and spying on Gwen's date with Graggle in "Something Fishy". And of course, the biggest and best example of his blackmailing skills thus far would be his entire plan and its execution to take back the camp in "Camp Corp."
- While discussing Ered's nickname in "Camp Cool Kidz", Nikki calls Max a "first-part nicknamer", indicating that "Max" is not his full first name.
- Also in "Camp Cool Kidz", Max reveals that his parents left their home country. This reveals that Max's ethnic background is not entirely American. He also claims that "People in sheets got [him] concerned," which is most likely a reference to the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist cult that hates and targets non-Caucasian ethnicities.
- In "The Order of the Sparrow," Max is implied to be of Indian descent after David claims that he is like an Indian chief, which Neil replies with, "Like Max?" He was also offended by David's costume, saying "Wow, that is racist." in response to David's "WOWOWOWOWOWO!" This might be pointing out the fact that people constantly call Native Americans "Indians" by mistake, causing Max to get offended because he is actually Indian, not Native American.
- "Culture Day" confirms that Max is in fact Indian when the campers are tasked to show off their own cultural heritage. While leaning against his booth he said, "Uhh, this is my Hindu culture, represented by a picture of Ghandi, who I'm choosing to say is my cousin." Gwen simply shrugs and says that this is more effort than she expected of him.
- As shown in "Journey to Spooky Island," he is not easily scared, although he is visibly disturbed in some specific instances, such as when he witnesses Quartermaster and his friends taking part in sexual affairs in the dungeon underneath Campbell's Summer Home, or when he was forced to regurgitate a bunch of handkerchiefs connecting to Ered's skateboard, a rabbit and Quartermaster's hook, as well as when Jermy suddenly butts into their huddle in Jermy Fartz.
- It is a reasonable guess that Max has some form of depression, due to his neglectful parents, and the fact that he once stated that he cries himself to sleep in "Into Town".
- In Journey to Spooky Island, Max revealed that he wants to commit suicide saying, "What's scary is how much I want to kill myself right now" in response to David's not-so-spooky story about the dog that got caught in his laundry.
- In the same episode it's shown that he's also aware of what religious repression is when hearing moaning and wailing coming from the darkness around him, implying that he has some kind of personal issue (or issues) that he is repressing.
- He also doesn't believe in the afterlife, cheerfully stating, "When you die, you're faced with eternal nothingness. It's gonna be great."
- In an effort to isolate himself from the world, he 3D-printed a sensory deprivation tank in "Attack of the Nurfs". While not necessarily a sign of depression or suicidal tendencies, he does have a particularly strong desire to isolate himself from the world. When one of the Nurf clones opens the door and drains the water from his tank, Max is left laying on the ground saying, "so this is the feeling that drivers murderers over the edge."
- Max is skilled in knitting, as shown when he was able to knit a cloth dummy of himself in "Escape from Camp Campbell," as well as additional dummies for Neil and Nikki.
- He is also seen to be skilled in knot tying as shown in "Camp Cool Kidz" when David compliments his skills, and in the same breath comments how torn he is that Max used this skill to tie him and Gwen onto the flagpole at the start of the campers' rebellion.
- Before Neil and Nikki, Max apparently had at least one friend in Camp Campbell, Chucky, whom he mentions he misses in "Reigny Day".
- Max and Neil share a tent. This is mentioned in "Reigny Day" when Max says, "Well, more tent for me" after everyone assumed that Neil was dead, and later proven in "Mind Freakers" after he is seen waking up while Neil was eager to find out how Harrison did the trick.
- Max and Neil also share a coffee maker that's propped up on a log.
- Max wears his blue hoodie over his yellow shirt as an act of rebellion. It's stated that he would rather sweat through it all day than show that he's from Camp Campbell.
- Max has a teddy bear named Mr. Honeynuts, who was revealed in "Gwen Gets a Job".
- Max is the only character to have appeared in every episode of the show.
- In "A Camp Camp Christmas, or Whatever," Max, along with Neil and Nikki, sing their first ever song in the series.
- Max is shown to have a sweet tooth, as revealed in "Foreign Exchange Campers", and more prominently shown in "Cameron Campbell the Camp Campbell Camper".
- In "Something Fishy" Max is seen to wear his watch on his right wrist in the boat, making it likely he is left-handed.
- In "Who Peed the Lake", it is revealed that Max is the only character who can't swim, and it's stated that he'd "rather die" than let David find that out, as he would then be forced to take swimming lessons. Space Kid had been given swimming lessons from David earlier in the summer to be able to learn to swim.
- Max was referenced during Michael Jones' verse in the Achievement Hunter Rap Battle.
Gallery
- To see the full gallery, go to Max/Gallery.
