YMMV / Dragula

• Badass Decay: Abhora in Titans. In his original season, Abhora was seen as a major competitor. However when he returned for Titans, their feelings for HoSo soon began taking a toll on Abhora's performance, not helped by him constantly missing the challenge prompt; it ends up eliminating him twice.
• Base-Breaking Character: Season 4's La Zavaleta is an endless drama machine who, for better or for worse, was responsible for some of the season's most memorable moments. While her detractors contend that her behavior is genuinely toxic and her treatment of some of her competitors (in particular, the fan-favorite Sigourney Beaver) is inexcusable, her fans feel that the drama she creates is entertaining enough to make her a veritable reality TV icon. It doesn't help that her Floor Shows were very varied - she alternated between top and bottom placements in every challenge - and the show alternately humanized her and showed her chaotic side in equal measure, adding even more fuel to the eternal battle between her fans and anti-fans.
• Broken Base:
  • The extreme amount of drama in Season 4, with fights breaking out almost every episode, proved divisive. Some fans found it refreshing in comparison to other reality shows (particularly RuPaul's Drag Race, Dragula's unofficial sister show) that have become more tame over time, and pointed out that this feels more true to real life drag communities, which are often full of big personalities that don't always agree. Others believe that the fighting goes past the point of entertainment into mean-spiritedness, and is just unpleasant to watch, especially given how much of it seems to be rooted in misogynistic treatment of Sigourney. It has also been pointed out that while the drama may be entertaining, the audience reaction to it proves why these types of arguments have become so scarce on reality television in the first place: Merrie was subject to massive amounts of hate online, including receiving death threats. It reached the point where nearly every contestant and even the Boulets themselves had to release statements asking people to stop sending hate to the cast.
  • Titans's drama-heavy nature was also met with controversy. The cast is comprised of some of the most argumentative queens in the franchise, many of whom have overlapping issues. In particular, the "Nightmare Girls" alliance (of Kendra, Koco, and Melissa) tends to be received as either petty mean-girls who lack artistic merit and are only there for drama or an endlessly entertaining power alliance of the greatest iconic-moment-generators in Dragula history, and the Abhora/HoSo/Astrud relationship drama is received as either overly tacky and immature or So Bad, It's Good.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome:
  • For many, the sheer diversity of the Season 3 cast was a breath of fresh air in the world of reality drag competition shows. In addition to the typical drag queens, Dragula Season 3 featured non-binary and AFAB drag artists, including a drag king, highlighting the diversity of the drag scene that other shows (especially Drag Race) outright ignore.
  • After years of fans hoping for Evah Destruction to land a spot on Drag Race to no avail, she finally entered the limelight during Season 3 of Dragula and earned an extra-long spot in the cast reveal trailer to introduce her.
  • For Priscilla Chambers, the fact that she joined the show as a last resort and while still going cold turkey from addiction. Although she struggled through the show, she managed to fight her way to top three and also won the Trash Queen Challenge, which she made clear was deeply personal to her. The way she won the Trash Queen Challenge, by deep-throating the microphone practically-effortlessly during the interview segment of the challenge, is in itself a moment of awesome, especially because she managed to flummox the unflummoxable, resident Cloudcuckoolander Disasterina, simply by just being herself.
  • Landon Cider had auditioned for Drag Race for years, but for years the show had not cast a drag king, let alone an AFAB performer.^note This finally changed in 2021 with Gottmik, an AFAB trans man drag queen, included as part of the Drag Race season 13 cast. And then he wins Dragula and becomes the first cis woman drag king to win any televised drag reality competition.^note Drag king Hugo Grrl won season 1 of New Zealand's House of Drag the year before Dragula season 3, making him the first AFAB and drag king winner of a reality drag competition, as well as the first trans man winner.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Boulets are commonly distinguished by fans as “Big Boulet” (Dracmorda) and “Small Boulet” (Swanthula).
  • The interconnected narrative of Saint's Floor Show characters is often referred to as the Saint Cinematic Universe.
  • Victoria Elizabeth Black has been dubbed Universal Studios by fans due to her skills with prosthetics and living in Orlando.
  • The Bermuda Love Triangle for Hoso, Astrud, and Abhora in Titans due to how much screen time it received.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • That Season 2 gag about bringing Dahli Back from the Dead has aged pretty well, considering they actually return the competition in the second episode of Season 4. In almost the exact same manner as the Season 2 joke implied, no less.
  • The same can be said of Loris, who was subject of a similar gag in Season 1 and also returned for Resurrection.
  • On Resurrection, Victoria Black says that she's not sure how she'd feel about competing against a lot of new contestants on Season 4, saying she'd prefer to go up against a stable of seasoned drag artists and prove she can win there. Come Titans...
• Memetic Mutation: It's a show with drag queens, of course it's going to spawn plenty of these.
  • Why does the Big Boulet not simply eat the small Boulet? ^Explanation  A permutation of the "Why does X, the largest Y, not simply eat the others?" meme (originally from Futurama) referencing the Boulets' Fan Nicknames.
  • Not toniiiiiight!^Explanation During Season 1, Loris stopped in the middle of the zombie brain extermination challenge to give a "No More Holding Back" Speech, awkwardly attempting to rip off her bunny nose so that she could eat the brains, while saying that "I am not fucking going home today! Not... today". This was later misquoted by the other contestants as "I am not going home tonight", with "Not tonight!" becoming a common quote in later seasons.
  • Anything said by Disasterina:
    • "YOU CAN'T FUCKING TOUCH ME BITCH!"
    • "Attention human males, Disasterina is here to extract your ejaculate."
    • "You know the coke, it keeps me thin, and the booze, it gives me a personality."
    • "HE'S MURDERING MY PUSSY!"
    • "My unsolicited advice is shut the fuck up, put the fucking makeup on, go out there and slay, but don't do better than me."
  • "FUCK THE BIG PICTURE, CLINT!"^Explanation Season 3, Episode 4: Maddelynn lands in the bottom, and is told she would have been safe had Dollya not used a twist to protect herself from extermination. She then goes into a meltdown state, yelling at several producers and threatening to quit the show. One producer asks her to think of the big picture, leading to Maddelnn's snappy response which immediately took off online.
  • "You are magic!"^Explanation Season 3, Episode 3: Louisianna attempted to give Yovska some passionate words of encouragement after the latter ended up in an extermination second time in a row. Not only did the attempt completely fail and Yovska got eliminated, a number of people, including the Boulets, later pointed out that her earlier attempts to give a pep talk to Violencia! failed equally badly.
  • "I am THAT bitch!"^Explanation During her interview in Resurrection, Loris said that it is ok to be a bitch so long as you can be "that bitch" and announced that she is "that bitch". The phrase turned into a Running Gag when the other contestants heard about it, with some announcing their intent to claim the title of "that bitch."
    • "She is NOT that bitch!"^Explanation Some contestants reacted this way to Loris' declaration. It was enough of a Running Gag that the producers included a skit with Priscilla Chambers "exposing" Loris as not being that bitch.
  • Jade is in her reputation era.^Explanation After Jade Jolie from Season 5 of Drag Race was announced as part of the Season 4 Dragula cast, fans joked that Jade (who often gets compared to Taylor Swift) was going through the same Darker and Edgier image retool that Taylor did during the release of her album reputation.
  • Just about everything said in the Season 4, Episode 5 cauldron has gotten some level of meme treatment, especially:
    • "This is very John Galliano, that is very 'Turn me on, turn me out'!"^Explanation Zava retorting Jade's claim that her garment looks "cheap" and typing Jade as the sort of queen who might lipsync to Kathy Brown's "Turn Me Out", a stereotypical "showgirl" song, based on her garment. Later became an Ascended Meme when Biqtch Puddin did a tour number of "Turn Me Out" preceded by that audio.
    • "Ooh, fuck you, I can do that too, wow!"^Explanation When Zavaleta Flips The Bird at Jade and she flips two birds right back.
    • Dahli's "The fuck is happening?" and subsequent narration of the whole mess, especially this moment:
    Dahli (in confessional): ...we have HoSo, thinking this is complete bullshit-
    HoSo: It's bullshit! (ding!)
  • "...Gay?" ^Explanation How Zava's Sinister Minister character responds to Saint's mother character tearfully choking out "M-my child, my child is..." in Exorsisters (the obvious answer, of course, being "possessed").
  • TELETUBBY TOILET BOWL ^Explanation Kendra reading Yovska on her entrance look, an all-white bodysuit with a ring around the head that does, admittedly, kind of look like a teletubby in a toilet bowl. The specificity of the read made it immediately memorable, and has inspired an association between Yovska and toilets/teletubbies among fans as well as a tendency to quote Kendra's reads given any opportunity.
  • "Excuse me, I've performed in New York City and have twirled and swirled, so..." ^Explanation Erika's Lame Comeback to Melissa interrogating her on whether she "knows how to dance" became popular with fans due to its odd phrasing. Fans will often refer to ghouls' performances, particularly Erika's, as "twirling and swirling", and will conversely criticize ghouls as "not twirling or swirling at a New York level".
  • Grandmother Bitch ^Explanation  Kendra's Sci-fi Horror Floorshow featured the rare instance of a monster speaking during the floorshow and not being covered up by music. Kendra's character of a bratty alien is screaming over the phone about going shopping with "Grandmother Bitch's" money in a campy monologue. The absurdity of the name and commitment to the bit made for immediate copypasta material, with a lot of fans wondering about this Grandmother Bitch character. Kendra later revealed that Grandmother Biqtch was based on Biqtch Puddin's alien character in season 2 in a livestream.
  • Here's how Abhora can still win ^Explanation  Abhora was voted out in the first episode, only to be brought back the next unexpectedly. With the rule that anyone who does not participate in a fright feat will be eliminated and the previous contestant will take their place, following Abhora's real elimination fans were quick to point out that Abhora still had a chance of coming back. Given that Melissa later quit the competition, fans assumed that if someone backed out of the fright feat that Melissa wouldn't want to come back and thus give Abhora another chance. No one ever backed out of a fright feat but the joke continued all the way into the finale.
  • ... of Destruction ^Explanation  Season's 3 Showdown of the Two Eves in the Trash Queens episode had Evah make an impassioned case to stay, ending it by saying "I'm Evah Destruction, for fuck's sake!" only to immediately be cut off by "I AM HOLLOW EVE OF DESTRUCTION AND I AM A FUCKING MONSTER". The entirely of the scene has essentially become pinned to Evah anytime she makes a grandstand. It was even acknowledged by Hoso in Titans during the wrestling challenge who followed up Evah with "And I am Hoso Terra Toma of Destruction!"
• Nausea Fuel: Lots of it.
  • Erika drinks her own vomit to avoid extermination, James drinks straight mustard in her filth look, and Biqtch's filth look involves her grinning while eating a clump of hair and chugging a bucket of filthy water which she had just used to mop up the floor.
  • Like Erika, Vander licked her own vomit off the floor. Unlike Erika, it was not part of an extermination but a planned part of her Filth look. Arguably, it was a factor in her winning the Season 1 competition.
  • A number of competitors such as Hollow use piercings, needles, staples and other instruments during their performances. Even when things don't go wrong, it can be difficult to watch. The same applies to the first extermination challenge of Season 2.
  • For her hospital look, Priscilla comes out as a human-cow hybrid mutant, complete with a dead baby cow prop. The judges complement her on the quality of the prosthetic cow... and then Priscilla revealed it was an actual stillborn calf. Cue horrified looks from the Boulets.
• Popular with Furries: Dragula isn't a place where you would expect this trope to pop out, but there were a few instances.
  • Landon Cider's "Sexy Werewolf Daddy" look was popular among furries for understandable reasons. Non-furry fans of the show also joked that Werewolf-Landon was sexy enough to turn them into furries. Landon brought this look to the Boulet Brothers' Halloween Party in 2019 and had several puppy players join him for his performance, gaining some appreciation among furries with whom puppy play has a significant overlap.
  • Evah Destruction is actually a furry. While she didn't directly reference the fandom, she occasionally wore clothes out of drag that referenced - or at least were recognisable by - the furry fandom. Some of her looks, such as the lizardman look from the RPG episode also employed techniques used by fursuit makers. Evah is also quite vocal about the negativity furries face from other subcultures and this has earned her some added fans among the fandom.
  • Astrud Aurelia is also a furry (of the Scalie persuasion) and has a lizard-human hybrid drag aesthetic that, combined with her perpetual Scalie shitposting on social media, has earned her plenty of appreciators from the furry fandom.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: The Love Triangle between Abhora, HoSo, and Astrud on Titans quickly grew tiring to many fans, due to taking up a significant amount of screen time in almost every episode. Even the other contestants complain about the constant drama and how it seems to be the only topic on everyone's mind, and the tension it was causing played a significant factor in Victoria choosing to put Abhora and Astrud in the bottom in Episode 5.
• The Scrappy:
  • Monikkie Shame was subjected to a deluge of fan hate following the revelation that she had made racist comments towards the other show's Soju, and while fan reception has softened slightly as she has made progress toward sobriety and self-betterment, she's still very much lacking in fandom.
  • Oh dear, Merrie Cherry. Her treatment of Sigourney Beaver, which was perceived by many fans as misogynistic, as well as her un-self-aware attitude, lent themselves to very negative fan reception. While Dragula villains tend to have at least a few fans who appreciate them for "making good TV", you'd be hard-pressed to find a genuine Merrie Cherry fan.
• Special Effect Failure: A regular issue the Boulets have with Throb. Throb's performances and looks are strong, but there's often a trick that goes a little wrong in the floor show, whether it's a money gun that doesn't fire or a book full of dust that doesn't show up under ultraviolet light. Despite the strength of their "Terror in the Woods" look, Throb admits in a confessional there are a lot of things they tried that didn't quite go off.
• Tear Jerker: The show can be quite intense of the contestants and and exterminations tend to take an emotional toll. However, the challenges have also served as Catharsis Factor for some of the contestants, allowing them to open up about the hardships they faced.
  • One Season 2 extermination challenge involved the queens being put under a lie detection test. Erika Klash is asked if she believes she can win the competition, and she has to truthfully answer "No".
  • Louisianna, Priscilla, and Maddelynn all had very difficult lives. Priscilla attended the show practically as a last resort and on the heels of going sober, Louisianna faced extremely brutal homophobia in her hometown, and Maddelynn struggles with alcoholism. Their experiences are all explored on the show in great detail, and even when they aren't directly in focus, there are times when they are all visibly struggling to keep it together.
  • After Violencia! bails out on an extermination challenge (being the only contestant so far to do so), Hollow remarks that she will carry the regret of quitting for the rest of her life. At the Last Supper episode, Violencia! does comment that she has regretted about it since the moment. Some behind the scenes clips aired in the same episode make it clear that she was incredibly disappointed at herself.
  • Both Hollow and Yovska practice very unusual types of drag. While Hollow has been able to stand on their own, Yovska makes it clear that she felt lost among a group of performers that she hoped to feel at home with. Her moment of dismay and doubt at the quality of her own art is quite saddening.
  • Saint opening up about the impact Black Lives Matter protests had on her. You can see her choking up as she speaks. The Boulets mentioned that their crew were holding back tears as well.
  • Dahli had a rough Dark and Troubled Past. He was originally a member of Blood on the Dance Floor and was heavily abused emotionally by Dahvie Vanity. The experience left him filled with so much guilt and trauma.
  • Kendra talking about the fire accident she had while performing. She visibly struggles to describe her recollections of the incident and her motivations for using fire in her next floorshow as a way to face her fears.
  • Melissa deciding to leave the competition. After she calls out most of her fellow ghouls for causing so much drama this season and not taking responsibility, she breaks down and as she exits the cauldron, bursts into tears and needs to be calmed down by production.
• Unexpected Character: Many viewers were left surprised when the first contestant from RuPaul's Drag Race to cross over to Dragula was revealed to be Jade Jolie, who was known in Drag Race Season 5 for her cutesy aesthetic and bubbly personality. That being said, Jade's drag has evolved significantly since Drag Race and she's not performing half bad on Dragula Season 4, not to mention that the Boulet Brothers have repeatedly stated that all types of drag are valid and welcome on their show.
• The Woobie: Sigourney Beaver. Oh Sigurney Beaver. She lost her mother shortly before she started filming season 4, had to deal with tons of criticism from the other competitors, specifically Merrie Cherry, and had to go through five exterminations.