History YMMV / DeadAheadZombieWarfare

** The Free Hugs zombie is basically this. Completely harmless (has an AI that prevents her from doing anything, hence being the most harmless zombie ever), standing still with an adorably-dumb stare with the 'Free Hugs' sign still sticking to her chest, many a player have expressed their feelings of not wanting to kill her, despite doing so nets you ''50'' Rage points. No wonder she's the mascot of the first ''Dead Ahead'' game. This is reflected in the fact that all units on the field just ignore her. There's a chance she might be caught in the crossfire, though.

* BrokenBase: Who is the better shooter – Sonya or Carlos? This debate arose right after the former's release, and hasn't died down since. Even though it's been established that both are equally viable, with Sonya being preferable when survivability matters more than damage, and Carlos – in inverse cases, people still believe that some aspects of one unit make them overall better than the other.

** The game's fan wiki provides these for units in [=PvE=] setting. Best options for main game are usually extremely versatile, or have a unique attribute that allows them to outshine all other similar units. Modern [=PvP=] is considered to be too polarising and chaotic to provide any meaningful rating for non-meta units. It doesn't helps that team powers play a major role in the mode too.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome:
** Long-time players tend to add Red Barrel to any deck they use, even if a mission they about to play has fire-resistant enemies. Red Barrel blocks enemies, does explosive damage (which can STILL hurt enemies resistant to fire slightly) and burning everything that's vulnerable. It also serves as a bait for nasty Charged Zombies, so it's a good all-round choice.
** Once Policeman Diaz is unlocked there's a very good chance he will be staying in any player's team for the remainder of the main game. Diaz is often considered the best unit for use in the campaign, boasting a high damage shotgun with lots of spread, while also having high health and being the only unit with melee resistance, in a game where zombies primarily rely on such attacks. All for the low unlock price of 1,250 Coins, being a unit you unlock in the early game, and have easy access to throughout the entire game as a whole. This combination of crucial upsides makes him an overly effective unit who is never a bad option for any mission. Therefore, people rarely ever remove him from their decks.

* DifficultySpike: Depending on player's knowledge of the game, their first spike might happen as late as the beginning of Stage 6. In the worst case, every new world serves as one.

** Sort of, since it used to be official. The units used to have backstories, but they were deleted (sans Marine/Rodriguez) and reconned and are all no longer canon, due to copyright problems with making all of them {{Whole Plot Reference}}s. Despite that, though, details from said stories have been remembered, and are still unamonously accepted by the community years later.
*** The most popular one is Redneck and Private Rodriguez being brothers. Since they both fulfill the same role (cheap spammable {{Meat Shield}}s or {{Glass Cannon}}s) they’re often remembered as brothers, and it’s not uncommon to see them together in fan-work. And since Rodriguez is a navy-man and Redneck’s direct upgrade in-game, he’s often depicted as the older brother, if they’re not depicted as twins first.

** In the very first mission of the game, Bill calls out to someone named Joe. It's often theorized that "Joe" is the Mechanic. Since Mechanic is one of the first units you unlock, (he's the first unit bought with coins that becomes available to you) and the first mission takes place at a repair shop named "Joe's Repairs", the Mechanic's name is often presumed to be Joe.

* GameBreaker:
** Desperado skin for Policeman makes it so he skips 75% of his reload animation, only inserting one shell yet being able to fire all four shots. Thanks to this massive advantage, an already powerful unit becomes outright broken since he can rarely ever be caught in a vulnerable state. It also allows Policeman to provide an unending stream of area controlling shots, that also deal hefty damage and become especially strong at point blank. Even despite its lack of a faction, Desperado skin can be considered the best in the game because how much advantage it provides.
** Rogue, when his special ability gave him the possibility of gaining 100% bullet resistance, made him one of the most broken units in the game. This, combined with his immunity to explosions (Courtesy of being a TMF unit) and all-around high stats, meant players quickly abused him to get ''thousands'' of levels in the otherwise difficult Corn Farm event with little effort, since his resistances made him immune to every problematic form of damage present in Corn Farm. Of course, [[{{Obvious Rule Patch}} this got nerfed to 90% just a day after Corn Farm came back into the event rotation.]]

** As already discussed in the above section, Desperado's abnormal reload animation was seen as a massive unitended boon by the community. Even though it seemingly became a feature, veteran players still tend to perceive it as an example of this trope.
** Due to an error, Gambling set's bonus wasn't multiplying its wearer's crit. chance by x1.25, but instead adding a very high flat number to it, causing every attack they land to be critical. In truth, this wasn't worth using on majority of units since their criticals simply weren't that special (or were too slow, and as a result – counterproductive), but the few who could benefit from it were effectively becoming game-breakers. Rogue is one of the better examples: Gambling set's effect was essentially turning him into a true stunlocker.

* UglyCute: While some of the zombies can easily shift into pure BodyHorror territory, most of the more humanoid ones are this, since they basically look like someone splattered green paint on them. This, combined with their big eyes, vacant expressions and the way they gawk at seemingly nothing with their mouths open only served to endear than to horrify.

* ScrappyMechanic: The current unit leveling system is disliked by the community because of how much unneeded grind it introduces. It requires use of special upgrade points, which don't come in big quantities in hourly rewards, have a questionable price tag in the shop, and can only be farmed in supply runs, which means they compete for keys with upgrade items. The worst part is that this all might not've been a problem if the upgrades' conversion rate was more reasonable: right now, spending one UP costs one coin, which isn't a big deal for early levels, but is definitely a problem for ones in double digits, which can require as much as ''11 thousand'' points – if you want to max out your units then you are essentially forced to do heavy grinding for both UP and gold. Fortunately, Mobirate are aware of this system's issues, but they are yet to take any action because of prioritising other parts of future updates.

* FranchiseOriginalSin: Modern day ''Zombie Warfare'' is often criticized by the series' fans for being extremely grindy, with each major update providing new methods of enforcing that. The situation only gets worse when you realize that the game is riddled with bad investment opportunities. It's uncommon to hear people blaming all this on Mobirate being trend chasers, but they tend to forget that the original ''Dead Ahead'' was also full of extreme grind for coins, and most of its arsenal is really subpar, at least in comparison to a few overly efficient weapons.