History YMMV / ThePassage

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The resistance group from The Haven has several interesting members, such as Orson, Gus and Mira and yet all of them except for one are lost during the escape attempt, and that SoleSurvivor is implied to have been DrivenToSuicide afterwards, when it wouldn't have hurt the plot to have at least some of them make it to Texas and the safety of its soldiers, and then separate from the main characters there as they continued their mission.

* JustHereForGodzilla: The movie's status as being SoBadItsGood means many modern viewers just come to watch Creator/MalcolmMcDowell be a LargeHam and mince around like he's in a completely different story from everyone else.

* CriticalResearchFailure: Richards sits at a terminal, playing a digital game of "free cell" (sic), claiming that all the games are beatable. Assuming he's playing the most popular and recognizable digital variant of [=FreeCell=][[labelnote: note]]Windows [=FreeCell=]. The next most common alternative, [[http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/12457/freecell which is for Macs]], uses the same 15-bit random number seed to generate hands, meaning that the game numbers would be identical.[[/labelnote]], hands 11,982; 146,692; 186,216; 455,889; 495,505; 512,118; 517,776; and 781,948 are [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeCell_(Windows)#Unsolvable_combinations objectively unwinnable]], requiring five cells instead of the given four.
** Overlaps with WritersCannotDoMath. In the novel, a fictional twelve-year-old boy in Washington won every hand in under four years, which is said to require a rate eighty-eight games a day. Even if it took him the '''whole''' four years at eighty-eight games a day, that means he still only beat 128,568 hands. The last operating system to offer a version of [=FreeCell=] with fewer than a million games[[labelnote:note]]And it offered 32,000. Not 128,000.[[/labelnote]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000 was made completely obsolete in 2010]], and the novel [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture takes place in 2018]]. Richards also claims to have 91,048 [=FreeCell=] games to yet to beat[[labelnote:note]]Meaning that he's beaten thirty-seven thousand-ish games going by this novel's logic[[/labelnote]]. With that in mind, Richards should be a ''veteran'' at [=FreeCell=], yet he lists a few extremely easy games as difficult[[labelnote:*]]36,592; 14,712; 64,523[[/labelnote]], even though they have multiple solutions and don't even require supermoves to win.

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** TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The resistance group from The Haven has several interesting members, such as Orson, Gus and Mira and yet all of them except for one are lost during the escape attempt, and that SoleSurvivor is implied to have been DrivenToSuicide afterwards, when it wouldn't have hurt the plot to have at least some of them make it to Texas and the safety of its soldiers, and then separate from the main characters there as they continued their mission.
** The conflicted Galen Strauss and his party that pursue the main characters from the colony (including the widowed husband I’d Soo Ramirez and two minor watch members, a middle-aged man and a young girl who’d provided some side to the main characters) could have been a persistent pursuit force with then own subplot, maybe being gradually whittled down and/or finding the others and making an EnemyMine situation, but their all attacked and presumably turned in the chapter that their pursuit is first featured.

TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The resistance group from The Haven has several interesting members, such as Orson, Gus and Mira and yet all of them except for one are lost during the escape attempt, and that SoleSurvivor is implied to have been DrivenToSuicide afterwards, when it wouldn't have hurt the plot to have at least some of them make it to Texas and the safety of its soldiers, and then separate from the main characters there as they continued their mission.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The resistance group from The Haven has several interesting members, such as Orson, Gus and Mira and yet all of them except for one are lost during the escape attempt, and that SoleSurvivor is implied to have been DrivenToSuicide afterwards, when it wouldn't have hurt the plot to have at least some of them make it to Texas and the safety of its soldiers, and then separate from the main characters there as they continued their mission.

* CompleteMonster: [[StateSec SS]] officer [[NaziNobleman Captain von Berkow]] is a devoted Nazi hunting the Basque and his charges. Capturing a French informer, von Berkow [[ColdBloodedTorture savagely tortures]] him before [[{{Fingore}} cutting off his fingers]], cooking them in goulash and, it's implied, forcing him to eat them. Pursuing his targets to a Gypsy village, von Berkow captures and sexually assaults one target before burning the village leader alive and having the Gypsies massacred by his forces once he has the information he desires. Dedicated only to [[AmbitionIsEvil his advancement]] in the Nazi regime, von Berkow even considers those who lack his sadism to be failures, believing only he has the drive to rise higher.

* CompleteMonster: [[StateSec SS]] officer [[NaziNobleman Captain von Berkow]] is a devoted Nazi hunting the Basque and his charges. Capturing a French informer, von Berkow [[ColdBloodedTorture savagely tortures]] him before [[{{Fingore}} cutting off his fingers]], cooking them in goulash and, it's implied, forcing him to eat them. Pursuing his targets to a Gypsy village, von Berkow captures and sexually assaults one target before burning the village leader alive and having the Gypsies massacred by his forces once he has the information he desires. Dedicated only to his advancement in the Nazi regime, von Berkow even considers those who lack his sadism to be failures, believing only he has the drive to rise higher.

* CompleteMonster: [[StateSec SS]] officer [[NaziNobleman Captain von Berkow]] is a devoted Nazi hunting the Basque and his charges. Capturing a French informer, von Berkow [[ColdBloodedTorture savagely tortures]] him before cutting off his fingers, cooking them in goulash and, it's implied, forcing him to eat them. Pursuing his targets to a Gypsy village, von Berkow captures and sexually assaults one target before burning the village leader alive and having the Gypsies massacred by his forces once he has the information he desires. Dedicated only to his advancement in the Nazi regime, von Berkow even considers those who lack his sadism to be failures, believing only he has the drive to rise higher.

* JustHereForGodzilla: The movie's status as being SoBadItsGood means many modern viewers just come to watch Malcolm [=McDowell=] be a LargeHam and mince around like he's in a completely different story from everyone else.

* DroppedABridgeOnHim: [[spoiler: Theo and Mausami]] are killed between the events of The Passage and The Twelve, off-page, despite being certifiably badass in The Passage.

* DroppedABridgeOnHim: [[spoiler: Theo and Mausami]] are killed between the events of The Passage and The Twelve, off-page, despite being certifiably BadAss in The Passage.

* {{Wangst}}: Losing a child is a terrible, horrible thing, and anyone is entitled to a significant amount of angst over it, but characters let it define their lives to an extent that many other tragedies don't even come close. This wouldn't come off as grating if it was an individual issue, but it just occurs too often and undermines the strength of too many (female) characters.

* UnfortunateImplications: Cronin is rather hit-or-miss with reasonable depictions of female characters. Lacey and Lila are stereotypical hysterical women, Alicia Donadio is a bland stereotypical ActionGirl with an uncomfortable amount of CommonMarySueTraits. Mausamuni Jaxon doesn't have much to her character other than finding her husband, and risks her unborn child to do so. Sara is a fairly nuanced character in ''the Passage'', but becomes baby-obsessed and one-dimensional when her daughter comes into play (she's also referred to as strong willed, passionate, and determined but comes off as a slightly passive, careful, go-with-the-flow type who needs to be pushed into action). In comparison, more of the the male characters (Peter, Michael, Hollis, Tifty, Greer all follow this; Wolgast and Theo, for example, don't quite as much) are complex and react to many aspects of post-apocalyptic life instead of single issues (such as dead babies) and remain very conscience driven rather than being single-minded over said single issues. When they have angst over their past, they are defined by many experiences rather than singular events.

* CompleteMonster: Babcock, even before he was a vampire. He killed his own abusive mother and then, after becoming a vampire, forces others to share his dream of killing her ''over and over again''. Although it could be that he's so utterly insane he can't help himself.
** Guilder to a lesser extent. He justifies systematic mass oppression and thus is guiltless about it, and has zero empathy for others. His end-goal is to become a true viral and lose all feeling. It's even underlined by how gross he is--he goes around burping and farting all over the place and vomits on people when pissed. Subtle.

* {{Narm}}: The series is rather darkly dramatic, but at times characters can be ridiculously prosaic and faux-poetic, not to mentioned obsessed with their children. Wolgast and Sara are both ridiculously possessive about their children, but Cronin presents it as a sanctified, divine instinct when it comes off as over-the-top[[hottip:*:"This precious and beloved being. this holy, miraculous, human person," referring to Sara's daughter, seriously referring to baby Caleb as "Beloved Of God" when religion is a total non-issue in the book and there are no devout characters alive at the time]]. They can also get really oddly sensual, as everyone seems to have an overdeveloped sense of smell and notes them at the most awkward times. The way he writes smells is something typical of authors who overcompensate for their lack of experience in an area (like a blind man describing colors or someone from the tropics writing about snow), which makes it hard to take seriously.

* CompleteMonster: Babcock, even before he was a vampire. He killed his own abusive mother and then, after becoming a vampire, forces others to share his dream of killing her ''over and over again''. Although it could be that he's so utterly insane he can't help himself.

** Case in point- [[spoiler: the story deals with highly immoral government practices involving and including research into the use of a virus to create superhuman soldiers in response to a tense political climate. The results aren't pretty. In the aftermath most of the world is a ruined wasteland and the experimental subjects of said project are loose. They even glow (Glowing Ones) and grow larger and more powerful the older they get, in addition to being functionally immortal (Super Mutants). A major plot point is retrieving a vital piece of equipment to repair the life-support systems of the hero's DoomedHometown (as seen in the first two games). The leads of said hometown are crazy/homicidal/highly unsympathetic (first game). There's a bunch of well-equipped knightly soldiers wandering about killing mutated stuff (Brotherhood of Steel). We have yet to see the Enclave, but that might very well change. The vanished settlements might be a clue in that direction. Fallout Three also has a distinctly familiar feel, with the primary plot moving in a broad circle, both beginning and ending at the site of a 'project' that was heavily featured at several points in the plot.]] Oh, and both take place in the California-Texas-Nebraska area.

* CompleteMonster: Babcock, even before he was a vampire. He killed his own abusive mother and then, after becoming a vampire, forces others to share his dream of killing her ''over and over again''.
** Although it could be that he's so utterly insane he can't help himself.

* SerialNumbersFiledOff: An interesting case. Easily overlooked due to both the timeing and target demographic. Justine Cronin capitalizes on the vampire craze, but had they been called anything else there might have been detractors calling the book a case of [[SerialNumbersFiledOff serial numbers]] to [[spoiler: Fallout]].
** Case in point- [[spoiler: the story deals with highly immoral government practices involveing and includeing research into the use of a virus to create superhuman soliders in response to a tense political climate. The results aren't pretty. In the aftermath most of the world is a ruined wasteland and the experimental subjects of said project are loose. They even glow (Glowing Ones) and grow larger and more powerful the older they get- in addition to being functionaly immortal (Super Mutants). a major plot point is retreiveing a vital pice of equipment to repair the life-support systems of the hero's DoomedHometown (as seen in the first two games). The leads of said hometown are crazy/homocidal/highly unsympathetic (first game). There's a bunch of well-equipped knightly soliders wandering about killing mutated stuff (Brotherhood of Steel). We have yet to see the Enclave, but that might very well change. The dissapeared settlements might be a clue in that direction. Fallout Three also has a destinctly familiar feel, with the primary plot moveing in a broad circle, both beginning and ending at the site of a 'project' that was heavily featured at several points in the plot.]] Oh, and both take feature in the California-Texas-Nebraska area.

* SerialNumbersFiledOff: An interesting case. Easily overlooked due to both the timeing and target demographic. Justine Cronin capitalizes on the vampire craze, but had they been called anything else there might have been detractors calling the book a case of [SerialNumbersFiledOff serial numbers] to [[spoiler: Fallout]].

* CompleteMonster: Babcock, even before he was a vampire. He killed his own abusive mother and then, after becoming a vampire, forces others to share his dream of killing her ''over and over again''.