While Teyvat is full of people who are varying levels of badass or competence, some aren't immune to being subjected to jokes and mockery by fans.
Playable characters
- In general, if you are not available as a rate-up in Wish banners for a very long time (typically over a year), chances are good that fans will make fun of you for being "locked up" in the so-called "Rerun Jail":
- Razor got hit with this treatment as he was the only non-starter 4★ character to not be featured on any rate-up from v2.0 onward. By the time he finally got another rate-up on Ayaka's rerun banner in v2.6, he was absent as a rate-up character for 13 banners, one of the longest of any 4★ characternote . He also sometimes got this treatment for being the only playable male with an Electro Vision from the game's launch until Cyno's debut in v3.1, compared to the sea of females (and tall ones at that).
- Eula fell into loserdom when the fandom took notice that she has gotten notably shafted during some of her best possible opportunities of returning for a rerun after her first rerun during the first half of v2.3, when she is infamous for being the 5★ character with the longest hiatus of not having a rate-up, for a total of 1 year and 6 months by the end of v3.7 in mid-July, longer than Hu Tao's absence. In v3.1 and v3.5, two Mondstadt-themed events were hosted, which fans speculated would be perfect for Eula's return; not only did fans end up being wrong on both accounts, v3.5 saw Mika (a 4★ character who has close ties to her lorewise and is a physical damage buffer for her physical damage playstyle) being Promoted to Playable, and the three rerun slots are all taken by characters who had rate-ups at least once during Eula's long absencenote . Combined with how many other playable characters, including those who debuted after the start of her long absence (ie. Itto, Ayato, Yelan, etc.), have gotten a rerun (sometimes even two reruns) throughout 2022 whereas Eula never got even one in the same yearnote , this resulted in jokes that Eula is frequently denied a chance of people pulling her due to Hoyoverse's machinations, or fans making fun of her when a character who had got rate-ups some time ago during her long absence was chosen to rerun again over her. Eula would finally get her second rerun in v3.8, after 13 patches of waiting, but by that point, every non-standard banner 5★ character in the game except Klee, Albedo, Tartaglia, the Wanderer, Hu Tao, and Baizhu had gotten rate-ups at least twicenote during Eula's absence. With a new banner type (called "Chronicled Wish") introduced in v4.5 to help give other 5★ characters who could not secure a spot in the regular "double banners" a reasonable chance of getting a rate-up, saving Albedo just in time before his hiatus reaches 13 patches, this solidified Eula as the one 5★ character with the longest hiatus of not getting a rerun and will certainly never relinquish this distinction.
- Albedo and Itto, much like Eula before them, have also become the butt of many jokes for the same reasons as her: being held back from having a rerun for over a year while other characters got multiple rate ups during that time, with the two having gone the entirety of 2023 without getting a rate-up. In Albedo's case, some players suspect that his "best-in-slot" weapon (Cinnabar Spindle) being permanently unobtainable for newer players is the reason Hoyo is not considering giving him a rate-up for the time being; being the only 5★ character to not have a signature 5★ weapon as an alternative doesn't help cease the jokes against him. For Itto, some feel that him also being in "Rerun Jail" is amusingly ironic when he got reruns frequently back in 2022 while Hu Tao, Shenhe, and Eula were still waiting over a year for theirs, making it as though Karma caught up and bit him in the Oni butt. Even his EN voice actor, Khoi Dao, joined in on the jokes
, feeling like Albedo's existence within the game felt like an imagination. Both Albedo and Itto were subjected to "It's Albedover/Ittover/Geover" jokes as a result. The two Geo Dudes would finally get their long awaited reruns in v4.5, after 12 (Albedo) and 10 (Itto) patches of waiting but by that point, numerous non-standard banner 5★ character in the game had gotten rate-ups at least twice during their absence. - As the game ventures into the later months of Fontaine's patch cycle, Shenhe starts to become mocked for not having a rerun for over a year again , with her second rerun wait time being just as long as her first one. It is especially noticeable with her as she is the only pre-Sumeru release limited 5★ character who has not gotten their second rerun yet as of v4.6.
- Kaveh is also made fun of for not being a rate-up on any banner for over a year, with his only rate-up by the time of v4.6 being his debut banners in v3.6, which is about a year ago. Some players like to joke that he's getting locked in Mihoyo's basement as retribution for malicious players going into other peoples worlds and use his hacked Elemental Skill to delete game assets.
- Amber; her combat effectiveness is generally agreed to be incredibly low, with most players only keeping her in their parties for quick access to Pyro abilities during exploration and puzzle-solving. This has led to jokes comparing her to Aqua or an HM Slave. Her utility also led to memes and fan nicknames calling her a "Torch" or a "Lighter". Not helping at all was the release of Yoimiya, another Pyro archer and a 5★ at that, on August 10, 2021, which is Amber's birthday.
- Mona and Zhongli are often depicted and joked as the poorest characters in the lore of Genshin Impact. The former spends most of her money on things astrology-related, but barely spares them for anything else, making her constantly poor and hungry, which is exacerbated by her refusal as a matter of pride to simply use astrology to earn money. The latter has no concept of budgeting and often forgets his own wallet. The two of them are often the target of ridicule when they're drawn alongside some of the richest in-game characters such as Diluc (a wealthy wine businessman) and Childe (who traveled to Liyue to be in charge of funding for the city's finances). Zhongli actually being Rex Lapis Morax, he used to be able to simply produce all the Mora he needed on a whim. After taking the guise of a mortal working for the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, he just sends his unpaid bills to his "boss" Hu Tao to manage on his behalf. Given she has suspicions of his true identity, her reluctant agreement to do so comes off as enabling.
- Diluc was once seen as an example of a High-Tier Scrappy during the launch days due to how much higher his damage was compared to the other options at the time. Nowadays, he's seen as a good example of how bad power creeping units are, as he's now seen as outperformed by other frontline DPS characters, even the 4★ Yanfei.
- Keqing got hit with this when her featured banner ran from February 17 to March 2, 2021. The mere concept of a rate-up banner for a non-limited character already turned some people away, but with both a Content Leak and an Interface Spoiler making it clear that the highly anticipated Hu Tao will be on the next banner after hers, memes immediately began circulating about how nobody pulled for her.
- For a long time, Xinyan was notorious for how Out of Focus she was, especially when compared to the rest of the playable cast. Until the latter half of 2.1, she didn't appear in any in-game quest, hangout or otherwise, she got no exposure in web events, and she was only mentioned by a very small handful of NPCs and other playable characters in their voice lines. The fact that she isn't particularly powerful in combat didn't help her case. Players frequently only half-jokingly suggested that miHoYo had forgotten she existed. Thankfully for her, this reputation started to die down after not only appearing in the Moonchase Festival event but being a central character in 2.2's Labyrinth Warriors event, one of the main characters of 2.8's Summertime Odyssey, and getting a bit of focus in 3.2's The Exquisite Night Chimes.
- The reputation of Kokomi took a big hit early on when it was announced that she's the only unit in the game who had negative base Crit Rate (on release, a grand -100%), significantly reducing her potential as a Hydro DPS. Things got worse when the Inazuma quest showed that she can barely control her own soldiers, let alone actually win a war, despite other characters hyping her up as a brilliant strategist. Her character teaser doubled down on this further by showing her at a strategy meeting proclaiming that the goal is to hit the enemy hard while sustaining minimum casualties, as if that's meant to be an impressively cunning, unexpected plan. She debuted to lukewarm response due to her uneven kit, which seemed to have very limited synergy with other characters. Due to these factors, she received a very harsh reception from most of the fanbase. While her reputation got much better over timenote , it took another (albeit more humorous) dip after the v4.2 livestream with the reveal that Furina can Walk on Water with her Elemental Skill (which has a much shorter cooldown than its duration) while Kokomi has to rely on her Elemental Burst (that has a hefty 70 energy cost) to do so, leading to "It's Kokover!" memes.
- The Raiden Shogun has been the butt of a fair number of jokes:
- Fans of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance like to unfavorably compare Genshin Impact's Raiden to the cyborg ninja who can slice Metal Gear Ray in half. Oddly enough, the fact that Raiden used to be the Replacement Scrappy to Solid Snake tends to be forgotten about. To a lesser extent, this also applies to Mortal Kombat fans and their Raiden, though his name is pronounced differently.
- The Shogun has also received jabs for her work or rather her lack thereof as Archon, given how poorly Inazuma has been doing under her watch. While her peers are not without their own flaws, most of the problems their nations face come from outside factors, and on the whole they've each managed to do good work to solve them. Compare this to how basically all of Inazuma's present day issues seem to tie back to the Shogun's decision-making in some way or another, both directly and indirectly.
- Even without anyone else to compare Genshin's Raiden to, her (or rather, Ei's) inability to cook is also a frequent source of (playful or not) mockery, especially among players of Honkai Impact 3rd due to the fact that Raiden's counterpart Mei is a Supreme Chef.
- But no other character has suffered from this status as much as Yoimiya has.
- Her infamy stems primarily from all of her banner runs being poorly timed, leading to many players to joke that she's that one 5★ that nobody ever pulls for: on debut, she was sandwiched between Ayakanote and the Raiden Shogunnote , which only signified trouble; but most notably, Sayu, a 4★ unit, received high acclaim on realease, was ran during her banner, with people even joking she was the real 5★ instead of Yoimiya. When her first rerun came in v2.8, it was just after the long-awaited rerun of Kazuha (a.k.a. one of the most powerful units in the game as well as a fan-favorite, who had A Day in the Limelight that same update) and her rerun being right before the release of Sumeru and the Dendro element as well as the rerun of Zhongli (another fan-favorite and a strong support unit). The worst part, however, came in v3.2, where she was reran alongside Nahida, who not only is the Dendro Archon, but had received a drastic boost with the reveal of her awful backstory, being seen as The Woobie by many. And to make it worse, Yae Miko and Tartaglia would come afterwards (the former of which even got buffed by Dendro). v3.7 did throw Yoimiya a bone with a second story questnote , but she still got a little bit of ridicule for being reran alongside fan-favorite Yae Miko, game-breaking Alhaitham, and Kazuha (who's both). Finally, her status came roaring back with a vengeance during v4.3, where she was placed after Ayaka again along with the anticipated Navia, and shared a banner phase with Raiden and right before v4.4, which saw the release of Unexpected Character in Xianyun, a.k.a Cloud Retainer.
- Disregarding her unfortunate banner timings, in terms of gameplay she was initially seen as a waste of a 5★; despite her insane damage, she relies on infusing her normal attacks through her Skill to deal damage and her Burst, a large source of her damage, has an infamous tendency to whiff. Fortunately, time would be kind to her with the release of other units that improved on her flexibility; however, the release of none other than Arlecchino in v4.6 has served as a final nail in the coffin for Yoimiya, being a unit that also relies on normal attacks but suffers from no auto-aim issues due to being a polearm, which has led many people to argue the Knave has power crept both her and Hu Tao.
- Although Aloy remains a well-respected figure in her series of origin, her Genshin incarnation is a different, unfortunate case. For starters, despite being the game's first Guest Fighter, she was revealed to more surprise than fanfare, especially compared to the other playable characters added in v2.1. Additionally, her kit is very lackluster, and since she's a Cryo archer, she has to compete with Ganyu and Diona, both of which outperform her in almost every way. Finally, she's the only playable character without any constellations, making her feel out of place compared to every other character in the game. miHoYo also seems inclined for players to forget about Aloy's appearance in Genshin; not only is she the only character who didn't receive birthday art after her playable release (though she still gets birthday mail in-game, and was), but she's also the only playable character who doesn't appear in any form of story content whatsoever (especially since she's not acknowledged as an Outlander despite coming from another world), the only 5★ who doesn't have a unique cutscene for her Character Demo (Aloy's Demo is styled similarly to that of 4★ characters), and is the only character whom you cannot give food to during the "Spices From The West" event. As a result of all of the above, most Genshin fans tend to forget that Aloy was even added to the game at all.
- After the release of her kit, Dehya was touted by the fans as the worst 5★ character released up to that point due to her being a tanking character with severely limited offensive capabilities in a game where such characters aren't all that useful. Her demonstrations show her struggling to deal damage to a Hydro Slime despite being a Pyro character proccing Vaporize, making her a severe butt of jokes among the community. The fact that she's in the general pool rather than being a limited-time character has people speculating that the devs knew her lack of value as a unit. Her reputation has become a little bit better over time, most notably as she's the best character to explore Dragonspine withnote , but her infamy still exists.
- Furina, the Hydro Archon, is immediately humiliated by the Traveler in her first appearance and proceeds to further embarrass herself over the course of the first part of Fontaine's Archon quest by falsely accusing Lyney of murder and being proven wrong in public court. Her own people consider her a "mascot" and are aghast at the thought of her actually dispensing justice despite her being the God of Justice, believing her to be unable to perform justice-related tasks. When v4.1's trailer featured audio of her begging for her life, fans began to meme her as a pathetic Loser Deity similar to Aqua from KonoSuba. Some fans also like to joke the more compentent Neuvillette being the real Hydro Archon instead of Furina. This has even come up in-universe: Arlecchino views Furina's begging for her life as evidence that she may not be the actual Hydro Archon, and even notes Neuvillette as a possible candidate for the real deal — and since he's the reborn Hydro Sovereign, she's not too far off the mark. Even though her loser status softened up significantly once fans learned more about Furina's circumstances (the need to endure 500 years of acting as the Hydro Archon to prevent the Prophecy from happening, and her haughty attitude turning out to be a mask to hide her sorrow), her playable character lore takes a few more potshots at her: after obtaining her Hydro Vision, she attempts to take revenge on a Local Legend and loses badly, then floods her apartment block while experimenting with her Vision. This continues in Version 4.4's flagship event story, which features her becoming frightened after Hu Tao tells her a spooky story, leading to her begging Navia and Clorinde to take her back to Fontaine with them. And this is taken further in 4.6, where rather than having a banner re-run as expected for an Archon like her, she instead gets her spot usurped by Baizhu, of all people, who already had a rerun in her debut banner at 4.2.
- Throughout the Fontaine storyline, Childe/Tartaglia gets jokes made at his expense due to the numerous misfortunes that happened to him while in the nation of Justice. He was put on trial for allegedly having something to do with the serial disappearances of Fontainian women — though the true culprit, Marcel (or rather, Vacher) is found out and absolves Childe of any association with the crime, the Oratrice still hands him out a guilty verdict, much to his dismay. Displeased, he activates his Delusion to fight off the Gardemeks attempting to detain him and tries to activate his Foul Legacy transformation, but gets curb-stomped in a single blow by Neuvillette before he can cause more damage, resulting in him being apprehended and sent to the Fortress of Meropide. Upon escaping, he encounters the All-Devouring Narwhal in the Primordial Sea and engaged in battle with it for 45 days (in his Foul Legacy transformation no less), which leaves him utterly drained and passed out as a result. And as icing on the cake, his former master Skirk found him and chucked him like some small toy into a portal. When all is said and done, Childe is said to have gone back home to Sneznaya to rest up and recover, as a result of the injuries he sustained during the Archon Quest.
- 4.5's lead up was not kind to Chiori despite having her share of devout fans who like her sassy deadpan personality. On top of concerns that she would fall victim to the x.5 cursenote , she had very little hype as a result of players only getting to see her in-game for a mere two patches prior to her playable debut in 4.5note , especially regarding the circumstances surrounding her release: she is being released in a barren patch with few changes, is being ran alongside Itto (a solid claymore-wielding Geo character who hasn't had a rerun since 2022), being ran right before Game Breakers Neuvillette and Kazuha, and the long-awaited Arlecchino's drip marketing is revealed two days before her run. Thus, it has become a joke that everyone forgot about her besides the hardcore Geo fans.
- The Traveler (though most of the time Aether, owing both to Lumine's higher popularity as a character and the former's higher usage rate) is also subject to being made fun of for a few reasons:
- In the story, they have always been skittering the line due to a combination of Cut Scene Incompetence, or a case of Forgot About His Powers and sometimes inconsistent power scaling just so the story can play out. It doesn't help that despite coming so far into the story, the Traveler has yet to accomplish any real feats by themselves other than defeating Childe and Signora, which took place very early on. And then proceeds to fail at accomplishing anything by themselves repeatedly, often having to rely on an incredibly powerful outside source of power to super charge them, or someone else doing most of the work before they step in and finish the job, yet despite this, the story constantly tries to paint the Traveler as an incredibly powerful being, despite having to be hard carried by outside sources or a very large number of people's help and they still receive all the credit in the end as if they did everything by themselves. Not helped is Paimon constantly bragging about how great the Traveler was, despite them constantly needing a lot of help to accomplish anything of note. However, during the events of 4.6, they have fully cemented their status. Out of all the Fatui Harbingers they faced, it's the Knave who not only defeat the Traveler in a Curb-Stomp Battle, but also scared the heck out of them, effectively giving them The Worf Effect. The fact that they didn't even used all their elemental powers during the battle further adding insult to injury to a supposedly main character.
- They are also sometimes used as the Genshin representative in jokes relating to Honkai: Star Rail, where they are depicted sad or jealous when Star Rail (represented by the Trailblazer) get QoL improvements and free rewards.
Individual NPCs
- The fandom is not kind to Paimon. The Running Gag in the game about her being emergency food, plus her general lack of intelligence, has caused her to be subjected to a lot of ridicule.
- The first time players meet Timmie, he gives them hell for scaring the pigeons, the only company he has while waiting for his father. So any time there's a new character released, they take out a "test run" on his pigeons. Not only that, miHoYo keeps tabs of how many pigeons have been killed since launch. Though this status has mitigated a bit since v3.7, where Timmie became a bit of a Memetic Badass after being crowned the Champion of Mondstadt's Genuis Invokation TCG Grand Prix.
- To some fans, Rana gets ridiculed, particularly in regards to the ending of the Aranyaka, where she gets a Vision. Instead of a proper cutscene showing a Vision materializing, the game uses a black background with white text, and volia, a Vision appears on her hip with little to no fanfare or epic music, which many fans find underwhelming. Not helping her case is when the Wanderer and Furina (two characters that are meant to be playable from their design alone, unlike Rana) get a Vision in their respective stories, it is depicted with a proper cutscene and fitting music, with proper hype from fans for their newfound power. Additionally, Mihoyo seems to take potshots against fans wanting Rana to become Promoted to Playable in spite of being a generic NPC, so in version 3.7, Rana gets regulated as a Companion Support Card in TCG (which consists of only generic NPCs and Paimon), killing off any chance of her becoming playable.
Character Groups
- Compared to the Knights of Favonius and the Tenryou Commission, the Millelith are derided by fans as being nowhere near as cool as their counterparts at best, and laughably incompetent at worst. Not only do they not have a single playable character to their name unlike the other police/military factions, their only role in the Liyue arc is to hunt down the Traveler based on flimsy evidence and get beaten up in short order, at one point trespassing on Adepti grounds in order to attack them. The Traveler can even lampshade it in Tartaglia’s Story Quest, taking a leaf out of Master Diluc’s disdain of the Knights of Favonius. This has been somewhat mitigated with time, given their involvement in holding off the threats from the Chasm and their role in Where the Heart Finds Rest.
- A rare case of an element being a loser instead of characters, but the Geo element has gotten mockery for being the one element around since the launch of the game who has not gotten any new characters for over a yearnote . It really says a lot when Dendro, an element that had no playable characters prior to v3.0, upstaged Geo in terms of number of playable members within the span of 9 updates, having gotten a total of 8 characters (not including the Traveler) compared to Geo's 7 members. With the announcement of v4.0, this meant that Geo went the entirety of the Sumeru series of patches without getting a single new character. It wasn't until Navia's playable announcement for v4.3 that Geo would finally get another member since Yun Jin, which effectively took them more than a year and half to do so. Though things seem to be escalating back for Geo with the release of Chiori for v4.5, the latter has ironically also gotten this status as well (see above).
