The YMMV tropes in Code: Total Drama Reality are:
- Abandon Shipping: Sorry Gwen/Duncan fans but they break up in this story. It's because during an attack Gwen found out the Duncan only dated her to get back at Courtney.
- Ass Pull: Seraphim is practically Ass Pull: The Character:
- When the Nephilim arc starts, every time the heroes get backed into a corner, Seraphim pops in out of nowhere to save them. He even calls himself a Deus ex Machina.
- XANA fatally wounds him to the point he should die in seconds, and leaves him at the bottom of Sector 5? Nope, somehow Seraphim hangs on for minutes afterwards, climbs all the way back up to the top, sneak attacks XANA, and then hangs around long enough to pull a Heroic Sacrifice. All this without any explanation for how he did this.
- Speaking of, that Heroic Sacrifice? Psyche! He somehow survived that and popped up 70+ chapters later with absolutely no foreshadowing.
- Instead of the heroes finding XANA's hidden sectors and cores themselves, guess who does it off-screen and manages to leave digital dead-drops of info that somehow XANA doesn't find? Yep, Seraphim again.
- Draco in Leather Pants: Definitely not the worst case for the character (and his personality is left intact), but Alejandro is given quite the Freudian Excuse here.
- Elimination Houdini: Lindsay twice, thanks to Chris's usual way of handling the show and a return to the past. Though in this case, given that Lindsay was the only Team Victory member who wasn't a Lyoko Warrior, it turns out to be a good thing.
- Fan-Preferred Couple: The author does ship Courtney and Duncan in the story, but as shown in Lord Maximus's previous story Don't you Care Anymore
, he is being careful in untangling the red string that bound Gwen and Duncan, is well-aware of the issues of the Duncney relationship and doesn't jump to anything too soon... which is more than what could be said for how the three are usually handled in fanfics. - Heartwarming Moments: Several examples, such as Gwen and Trent coming to terms with each other, Duncan properly apologizing to Courtney to cheer her up when she came to Lyoko for the first time, followed by Alejandro offering Heather a second chance.
- Aelita taking the Lyoko gang to a carnival before the climactic battle with XANA.
- Iron Woobie: Aelita may have lost all of her friends and her father's sacrifice has amounted to nothing, but that's not going to stop her from finishing XANA once and for all.
- Squick:
- Do you want to know why Courtney's afraid of green jelly?
- Also the time when Gwen was infected with XANA's virus. The results were... decidedly unpleasant.
- Blade's true form.
- Tear Jerker: Alejandro's backstory; Duncan's counts as well. There's also how Franz Hopper's Heroic Sacrifice turned out to be fruitless and how Aelita's friends were taken away from her.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Several times a point is made about how the AI characters are treated as subhuman and that contributes to their villainy; Shadow was the William AI who was ditched by the heroes the moment he stopped being useful and joined XANA for revenge, Cyrus ruefully reflects on What Measure Is a Non-Human? during his death scene, and part of XANA's Start of Darkness involved his father referring to him as "it" and trying to kill him while he was a child. Meanwhile, Robby treats Seraphim like an actual son and wants to see him brought to the real world, while Aelita was treated as human when the Lyoko warriors thought she was an AI. There's a lot of opportunity for reflection (especially on Aelita's part) about the humanity of their enemies and the original Lyoko Warriors hypocrisy...but none of it ever happens, and the humanizing moments for the enemy A.I.s is brushed aside in favor of maintaining Black-and-White Morality.
- Speaking of XANA, a big deal is made about his ties to Aelita; he constantly calls her 'sister', refers to her parents as his, and is even mentioned to have played with and protected her when she was a child. He is, in effect, Aelita's big brother and only living family. Given her slowly-recovering memory and how she actually visits the Hermitage, there's plenty of potential to show photos or flashbacks of their previous relationship instead of relying on hearsay. Or, given their Cain and Abel situation, introduce one or both having conflicted feelings/thoughts on fighting their sibling. ...But that's never realized and they pretty much continue to hold one-dimensional hate for each other.
- Several times, the Lyoko Warriors worry about what they'll do when the non-Warriors are eliminated from Total Drama Reality, forcing them to start sending away their own ranks. This seems like it's Foreshadowing, but it never comes to fruition as the final battle arrives before they have to make that choice.
- The Woobie: The "Deal With the Devil" arc is when the story goes deeper into Darker and Edgier territory, where XANA makes almost every contestant go through their worst memories in a simulation bubble. Alejandro, Duncan, Courtney, and Sierra are given some particularly heavy material.
