Creator's Pet: Hurk as a character seems to exist as the biggest connection point of the games as a recurring character, but the playerbase has gradually grown more and more sick of him as the years go by. His appearance in the Mars DLC for 5 is usually called the tipping point for when people began to utterly hate him.
Willis Huntley also counts to a lesser extent in that he fulfills a similar role to Hurk in appearing Once an Episode, tying the games together, while subsequently becoming more Flanderized to the point where some fans groan at his recurrence.
For short range, it's syringes that allow one to tag enemies through walls. Auto-tag everyone, distract an enemy with rocks, and takedown them when they investigate. Primal nerfed this by having no auto-tag, while 5 made it a lot more resource-heavy and reduced the range enemies can hear rocks from.
For long range, it's any silenced sniper-rifle, preferably one with armor-piercing bullets. Throw in the abovementioned auto-tag and you're set. Nerfed in 5 by making elite enemy headgear inpenetrable even with AP bullets, but New Dawn then reversed this.
Or the various rocket launchers, which generally one-hit kill anything in the game. Taken even further by the special ammo available in some versions, which will fly up into the sky before splitting into a half-dozen cluster munitions or firebombs, that are capable of plastering an entire outpost in deadly fire in 1 or 2 shots.
Evil Is Cool: In contrast to the first two (numbered) games, where they promoted The Hero in the covers, from the third (numbered) game to beyond, the developers went out of their way to make the villains this if featuring the Big Bad in the cover instead of the game's protagonist is any indication, not to mentioned the villains' charismatic performances by their actors in the games themselves.
Homegrown Hero: A staple of the series, as almost every protagonist is an American citizen abroad, regardless of where the game takes place.
Averted in Primal, which takes place long before America (or any other modern country) was founded, and in 5, which features an American citizen in America.
Also averted in the 6th game, which features a local guerilla who is fighting to overthrow their island's dictatorship, as the main character.
The second game allows the player to choose from one of many protagonists of various different nationalities.
Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The Far Cry franchise is known for its iconic and beloved villains. Among the most popular are Vaas Montenegro, a drug and human trafficking modern day pirate; Pagan Min, the brutal dictator of Kyrat who casually commits human rights abuses; and Joseph Seed, the charismatic leader of the Eden's Gate cult hellbent on converting everyone in Hope County to their cause in preparation of The Collapse. Meanwhile, Agent Willis Huntley is one of the least liked characters in the series due to his Jerkass tendencies, jingoism, and dislike of foreign cultures. While he's generally tolerated in Far Cry 3 for helping Jason on his journey and being useful in fighting back against Hoyt Volker, in Far Cry 4 he's openly rude and racist to Ajay and tricks him into killing CIA agents stationed in Kyrat, and then shoves him out of the plane to be captured by Yuma Lau's men. In Far Cry 5 he makes the Deputy recover an embarrassing VHS tape but otherwise doesn't really help the resistance in fighting back against Eden's Gate at all.
Tough Act to Follow: Far Cry 3 is seen as one of the best in the franchise, while 4 and 5 are criticised for feeling like a retread of 3 and are regarded as a pair of overshadowed sequels despite their own merits. Vaas Montenegro, in particular, is widely regarded as one of the best antagonists in the entire franchise, with Pagan Min and Joseph Seed often being unfairly compared to Vaas for not being as good as him or for being too similar to him (charismatic psychopaths who have fun being the villain while mocking the protagonist).
Vanilla Protagonist: The series is well known for having memorable villains at the expense of personality for the protagonist, with Blood Dragon being the notable exception and 3 potentially scraping by. 2 and 5 outright have the main character as a Heroic Mime, with the former allowing a choice from a list of twelve mercenaries, and the latter going with Character Customization. 6, on the other hand, gives Dani Rojas a distinct personality.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Jack Carver disguises himself as one of the mercs to get into their compound. Come Far Cry 3, Jason Brody uses this exact same tactic to get into Hoyt's compound.
"Food guy" Emillio for being an unfunny comic relief.
The tourists looking for whales, as they are another case of annoying comic relief.
WHAT ABOUT THE WHALES, GEORGE?
Strangled by the Red String: The main characters share a bed and have sex on their first night together, while barely knowing each other.
Video Game Movies Suck: The staple for Uwe Boll video game movies, and the gaming studios became dead-set on never letting it happen to another one of their games again after this attempt. The video game movies Boll has directed since 2008 are sequels to the earlier films.
Plot Tumor: The Detective Cordon’s investigation of Heather’s death. It’s not badly written per se, but it goes on for too long, with little progress or significant character development. The eventual revelation that Lee was partly complicit in her death and was responsible for covering it up just doesn’t elicit much emotion.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Will Grayson. His superior makes a very good point that his obsession with Mitchell Roberts is destructive and the methods he used to gather evidence were deeply unethical. Sadly, once Roberts escapes, he is treated as being right all along in his methods and he never gets confronted by either Christine Fell or someone else.
