Harry tries to say to the Room of Requirement: "I need to see what Draco Malfoy is doing inside you."
"'Snape!', ejaculated Slughorn" has reached Memetic Mutation status and is arguably one of the most well-known instances of this in popular literature.
Upon returning from Christmas, the Gryffindors find out that the new dormitory password is "abstinence." Abstinence from alcohol specifically, according to Hermione. Over the break, the Fat Lady and her friend Violet drank all the wine in a portrait of drunk monks, and the new password has nothing to do with anything the students may be doing or refusing to do together in private.
Merope dying after her son is born. Harry wonders why she didn't try to stay alive for the sake of her child. Perhaps she came to resent the baby growing in her womb? As a remnant of the man she had loved who rejected her, perhaps she had no plans to raise the child at all since she actively went into an orphanage to give birth. However, it may have been that she wanted to stay alive but was weakened by a combination of pregnancy and despair.
Tom Riddle Sr. is described in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as having a very unsociable personality and being hated by the villagers of Little Hangleton. Given he seems relatively friendly in this book, with his worst "crimes" being simply describing Morfin Gaunt as "deranged" for torturing animals and laughing at Ogden wearing spats and a coat over a striped swimsuit, all relatively normal behavior for his time period where there was less mental health awareness, what if Riddle became more bitter as a result of the horrible experience with Merope? What if the real reason he was so unpleasant to be around was due to the trauma of finding out magic existed after Merope raped him with a Love Potion and told him he had a Child by Rape with her, and not being able to explain what happened to him without being thought insane by the rest of the small community he lived his entire life in? Combined with Tom Riddle both losing his girlfriend and everyone blaming him for "running off" with Merope, it's easy to see him withdrawing from the community and acting hostile to everyone as a way to deal with all the horrible stuff that he was powerless to reveal to anybody.
Why is Voldemort so keen on recruiting Slughorn as a Death Eater? Is he just putting out feelers for powerful wizards, perhaps specifically focusing on Slytherin alumni, or could it be old Tom Riddle still holds some genuine affection for his favourite teacher, whose sage advice inadvertently sped him along this path? Perhaps he wants to get Slughorn under his thumb because he alone knows that Voldemort aimed for Horcruxes?
Broken Base: This is the book in which the Official Couples (Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny) are finally revealed, which naturally threw gasoline on the fire of the fandom shipping wars. There had been an online war between supporters of Harry/Hermione and Ron/Hermione for years, and with the release of this book, one side got to be vindicated. This resulted in an extremely polarized reaction to the book's romantic developments, at least from the section of the fanbase that deeply cared about shipping.
Captain Obvious Reveal: Snape being the Half-Blood Prince surprised nobody. The first clue was Snape getting promoted to Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, which is a dead giveaway that a character is going to be important in a Harry Potter book. The second, more glaring hint was that the HBP was good at potions. The last one is that he knows how to cure Sectumsempra despite it seemingly being an unknown spell made up by a student decades ago.
Mauve Shirt Lavender Brown's reputation among the fandom as an overly frivolous Clingy Jealous Girl who temporarily gets between Ron and Hermione has lessened in the years after the original run as more fans appreciate her occasional true Gryffindor moments and view her behavior around Ron more charitably given how he was engaging on an Operation: Jealousy ploy without telling her how weird her Sickeningly Sweethearts comments could feel.
Nowadays, thanks to greater awareness of the harm done by female-on-male sexual predation, Tom Riddle Sr. is seen as more of a victim as he was tricked into drinking a Love Potion and had zero interest in Merope otherwise. While the book portrays him negatively for abandoning his son, some modern readers feel he wasn't under any obligation to stay with Merope and her Child by Rape, especially as Tom Riddle Sr. didn't even know what magic was, which would have made his experience all the more horrifying and confusing for him.
Common Knowledge: Several readers, including those on This Very Wiki, think that the book and Harry and Dumbledore somehow justify Merope Gaunt's rape of Tom Riddle Sr. via Love Potion. In actuality, the book not only doesn't condone her actions, Harry outright calls any use of love potions as black magic. Harry and Dumbledore do sympathize with Merope's childhood but they never try to justify what she did to Tom.
Complete Monster: Fenrir Greyback is a savage werewolf who enthusiastically supports Voldemort's regime for the chance to indulge his violent nature. Unlike many other werewolves, Fenrir relishes in turning others—such as Remus Lupin—and ruining their lives. Fenrir especially has a disturbing fondness for attacking children. In addition, Fenrir is a cannibal in both human and wolf form, and expresses a desire to eat Harry in Half-Blood Prince after savagely mauling Bill Weasley and leaving him for dead. Fenrir even states he participates in the attack to get his claws on as many children as he can. In Deathly Hallows, Fenrir serves Voldemort's regime by helping in rounding up the "unclean" wizards or those who will not submit and expresses a desire to eat Hermione after Bellatrix is finished torturing her.
Continuity Lockout: In this book, Rowling dispenses with the — rather tedious — recap chapter that all the previous volumes started with.
Designated Hero: Some of Harry's actions qualify, such as using spells on random targets (including Filch's cat), even if he has no idea what they actually do (as when he unleashes Sectumsempra on Draco). It's likely this could be the Intended Audience Reaction - judging by Harry's Heel Realization after using Sectumsempra. Ginny likewise draws comparisons between the book and Tom Riddle's diary.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Horace Slughorn gained a fanbase just for the fact that the series finally introduced someone from the Slytherin house who's not an all-around Jerkass. Slughorn is everything a cunning Slytherin should be without the need of going the evil wizard route.
Snape rather amusingly is shown mistreating Wormtail when he lives with him, presumably due to still being sore over his role in his bullying as a teen (though also likely due to Wormtail's personality in general), but after the last book, it takes a darker turn when it's revealed that Snape was in love with Lily, and now knows that Wormtail was the one who betrayed her to Voldemort. It likely took all he had not to kill him.
When Professor Sprout vows to keep Hogwarts open even if just one pupil returns next year, Slughorn worries that they won't have any pupils considering the Headmaster was murdered by a colleague. Come Deathly Hallows and, with a few exceptions, every single Hogwarts student returns to Hogwarts for another year of school. However, this is only because Voldemort made attendance mandatory for non-Muggle-borns in an effort to keep the young Wizarding population under his thumb and enforce his regime's Fantastic Racism.
In light of The Revealregarding Snape's true allegiances and Dumbledore's health during the events of The Deathly Hallows, suddenly Dumbledore's last words being "Severus...please..." take on a whole new context that essentially flips everything we know on its head. He wasn't begging Snape to spare him. He was asking Snape to go through with the plan of killing him!
The book has numerous cases of female characters being treated sympathetically for aggressive or abusive behavior towards males, such as Ginny’s physical attack on Zacharias in response to his commentary or Hermione setting her canaries on Ron. The only exception of this being Merope's use of the Love Potion to rape Tom Riddle Sr., which is portrayed as horrifically as it sounds. Given Rowling’s increasingly controversial statements on gender issues, which she has defended by portraying men in general as a threat to women's safety, these moments can come off much worse.
He's Just Hiding: Out of sheer shock at the character's death, many fans speculated endlessly over whether or not Dumbledore had actually survived and had only faked his death. There was an entire website titled "dumbledoreisnotdead.com". Rowling herself stepped in during the years before the final book to publicly state that Dumbledore really was dead, directly mentioning the website while doing so with some regret. Dumbledore still served as a Posthumous Character in the final book, which just as many fans expected would happen anyway.
In the first book, Ron sees in the Mirror of Erised himself as Head Boy and holding the Quidditch Cup. He manages both (almost, as he became a Prefect) in this book. Also a little harsh considering that Ron never attends his last year at Hogwarts, meaning that there's a chance that he could have qualified for Head Boy but still couldn't take the position.
Bellatrix tells her sister Narcissa that if Bella ever had sons, she would gladly give them up in service to the Dark Lord. Bellatrix and Voldemort's daughter Delphi ends up with roughly the same fate.
At the end of the book, Bill Weasley is described as bearing "a distinct resemblance to Mad-Eye Moody" after being attacked by Fenir Greyback. In the Deathly Hallows movie, Domhnall Gleeson, son of Moody's actor Brendan Gleeson, played Bill Weasley.
Slughorn prides himself on his ability to pick students who will go on to future success and achievements. One of his favourite Slug Club members wound up becoming Head of the Goblin Liaison Office. Cursed Child reveals that, in a single year back, he far outdid himself, choosing the future Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (Harry) and the future Minister for Magic (Hermione).
Ho Yay: Harry spends a good portion of the book obsessed with Draco and everything he is doing, which makes him come off like a Stalker with a Crush to many fans. This book is one of the main reasons that Harry/Draco became the most popular ship in the fandom and Harry's obsession is a major reason why.
I Knew It!: Before the release of the book, oddsmakers had Dumbledore as the character most likely to be killed and they were right.
It Was His Sled: Snape kills Dumbledore. This spoiler is so well known, Marvel even used it in an issue of Deadpool.[1]◊
Draco has been a bully and an asshole for years, but by the end of this part of the story he's just a kid who wants out. He's forced to kill the man he looks up to (whether he wants to admit it or not) and then he's forced to run away from his second home as it's being destroyed.
Merope Gaunt. What she did was something wrong, horrible: rape. But none of this erases the fact that she was put through the Trauma Conga Line at the hands of her abusive father and brother for all her life. She is described as a physically ugly woman because of the years of incest that occurred in her family, remained isolated from the rest of the world for most of her life, living only with a cruel brother and a cruel father who probably beat her. Tom Riddle was her only chance to be happy, but unfortunately she chose the worst possible way for that to happen. When he leaves her, Merope gives up her life, selling her last family memories and dying in childbirth. Dumbledore and Harry are the only ones in the world who pity her fate, since even Voldemort despises her for dying.
Tom Riddle Sr. was arrogant and snobby but that's hardly enough to deserve being raped by a woman he didn't even know and for whom he definitely felt no physical or romantic attraction, being blamed by his entire town for the entire debacle due to the masquerade on Magic's existence and then finally murdered by his son years later. It gets even worse when you remember that in the memory Harry saw, Tom had a beautiful girlfriend that he seemed to really love, and the prologue of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, years after Merope's actions, makes it very clear that he was single and an outcast at the time of his death...
Morfin Gaunt. While he is established to be a fairly nasty wizard, who was cruel to his sister and had a prejudice against Muggles, it becomes hard not to feel sorry for him after he loses his father to Azkaban and Voldemort frames him for three of the murders he committed after stealing Morfin's heirloom, with Morfin spending his last days endlessly repeating how his father would kill him for losing his heirloom. Dumbledore himself lampshades it, and Harry also agrees that what happened to him was an injustice.
Misaimed Fandom: Some fans tend to sympathize with Merope too much claiming her using a Love Potion on Tom Riddle was justified; even going so far as to claim Tom Riddle was the bad one, pointing to a few scenes where he's described as a snob, and him leaving a pregnant Merope and never even bothering to find out what happened to his child, never mind the fact that he was mind-controlled and magically raped, and didn't consent to the relationship in the first place. This would not exist if it were Tom who did this to Merope, mind you. They are helped by the fact that both Harry and Dumbledore raise no concerns about Merope's use of the potion, more keen on her abandoning Riddle Jr. to the orphanage and refusing to live for her child's sake. This was actually more widespread when the book came out, but after sexual consent became a hot button issue and society began to recognize the double standard of how men being raped by women were treated, Riddle has garnered more sympathy.
Poor, poor Ginny. There's no evidence that she goes further than kissing with anyone, and with a grand total of two boys before Harry, and yet the bashers are all too happy to label her the "Hogwarts whore". Especially amusing as Ginny has to put up with the same accusations from her brothers in the very same book. She swiftly shuts them up.
Whether or not the books did this with the Harry/Ginny pairing is a major point of debate for fans of the series, but it's at least important to remember that they're still hormonal teenagers, even if they are magical heroes, and that it isn't too unbelievable an occurrence in Real Life. The film tried to give them a more obvious attraction.
Lupin and Tonks. Harry sees Tonks upset several times and thinks it's over Sirius dying, and that maybe she was even in love with him. Then the climax reveals that Tonks is deeply in love with and wants to marry Lupin. They proceed to do so despite having no interaction on camera before this (although eagle eyed readers will notice that they tend to work together a lot in Order of the Phoenix). As the books are primarily written from Harry's perspective, it's somewhat understandable that plenty of major events can happen off-camera simply because Harry can't be present for every single storyline. At the same time, the reader can still feel left out as the key parts of the Romance Arc never actually happen in front of them either.
Take That, Scrappy!: Dumbledore coldly confronting the Dursleys for all the abuse they put Harry through over the years, and telling them that the best thing they ever did for their nephew was to guarantee that he didn't become the horrifically Spoiled Brat their son was.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: Lavender is meant to come across as a Clingy Jealous Girl, but you can't help but feel a little sorry for her. Ron only gets with her to make Hermione jealous, and she only behaves so nauseatingly romantic towards him because he never tells her he doesn't like being treated that way.
Ginny physically assaulting Zacharias by ramming him with her broom because she didn’t like his commentary, leaving him “feebly stirring” comes off as a startling attack but is not called out at all by the narrative, with Harry seeming to approve of it.
Hermione during her feud with Ron. While what Ron did may have been a low blow, Hermione reacts to it with complete immaturity by assaulting Ron with bloodthirsty canaries. Her inability to take the high road was only Hand Waved. Made worse when one considers how it's clear Hermione had to have been practicing that spell for a while based on the paragraph before she releases the canaries:
The corridor outside seemed to be deserted. “Hermione?” He found her in the first unlocked classroom he tried. She was sitting on the teacher’s desk, alone except for a small ring of twittering yellow birds circling her head, which she had clearly just conjured out of midair. Harry could not help admiring her spellwork at a time like this.
When Harry jumps through the wall of fire to pursue Bellatrix, Lupin is the first of the adults to run forward. Is he concerned for Harry's safety, or is he going after the woman who killed his best friend? Probably both.
When Draco kills the bird in his failed experiment with the Vanishing Cabinet, does he cry because he killed it? Or because he fears what will happen to him if the Cabinet continues to fail? Or both?
Dumbledore tries to dissuade Draco from killing him by mentioning he "knew a boy that made all the wrong choices" and pleads for Draco to not do the same. Who is this boy Dumbledore is referring to? Tom Riddle?Grindlewald?Credence?Snape?Himself? All of the above?
Minor one but Hermione's crying after Ron kisses Lavender. Some found it Narm, while others had a She Really Can Act reaction towards Emma Watson.
Lavender being played by a white actress was another one, mostly since she'd been entirely in the background with no lines in the previous films. Some felt it was pointless to change her back to white, while others felt it was more in line with the book — when Ron and Lavender are making out, Harry mentions that it's hard to tell whose hands were whose, implying Lavender to be white, but as this detail isn't exactly plot-important it sort of just loops back to the question of whether this was a pointful change.
The Burrow burning scene. Some invoke They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, while others argue that it's necessary for the narrative.
Common Knowledge: Many fans believe the film's focus on teen romance was an effort to copy the success of the Twilight series. The problem with that theory is that, due to the delayed release date, the Half-Blood Prince movie was actually written and filmed before the first Twilight film had even come out. And while the Twilight books did exist before that, Twilight didn't really become a significant cultural force until after the release of the first movie, which was something of a Sleeper Hit.
Designated Hero: Hermione, due to the film cutting out much of Cormac and Ron's nastiness. She messes up a student's chance on the Quidditch team over a few insults and physically attacks Ron out of jealousy.
Designated Villain: Cormac. He may be a jerk, but he suffers through a lot of Disproportionate Retribution, like having his Quidditch try-out rigged or having a month of detention for accidentally vomiting on Snape. Though, in the book, he's even worse, Hermione is called out on rigging his tryouts by Harry, and the match against Hufflepuff proves that the team is much better off with Ron as Keeper.
The film hijinks involving Ron and Lavender lose luster in retrospect as Lavender gets a surprising, startling, and horrifying Death by Adaptation in the last film, which Word of God later stated to be canon.
Dumbledore's "Oh, to be young and to feel love's keen sting" line in the infirmary upon Lavender hearing a bedridden, unconscious Ron call out to Hermione. In the backstory provided by Rowling, Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald, who left the country after a fight Grindelwald had with Dumbledore's brother led to the death of their sister. It was also Dumbledore who had to put an end to Grindelwald's reign of terror. It doesn't help that Snape is present at the same time, given his love for Lily.
Harry's behaviour under the effects of Felix Felicis were often compared by fans and commentators to intoxication from alcohol or other drugs, which became a lot less funny when Daniel Radcliffe admitted to having an drinking problem that resulted in him being drunk for the entire production of one of the Harry Potter films.
This film is the point where Michael Gambon is acknowledged to finally set aside his angry take on Dumbledore for a Truer to the Text portrayal. It helps that by this point Dumbledore in the books has gotten grumpier because he's running out of time and Harry isn't always as devoted to the task at hand as Dumbledore demands.
Tom Felton was viewed as rather weak beforehand - mainly due to Malfoy's status as a Jerk Jock who says a few mean things per film. Now with a full arc and chance to show his talents, he was met with lots of praise.
Bonnie Wright too, though this was more to do with her being Out of Focus in the other films. She won many people over with Ginny's expanded screen time.
Helena Bonham Carter was pregnant during filming of the movie. Come Cursed Child, it's revealed that her character, Bellatrix, is the mother of Voldemort's child, and in fact would have been pregnant around this exact point of the timeline. In retrospect, they didn't even need to bother with a Hide Your Pregnancy, as it turns out!
Lavender writing "R+L" on a foggy train window is hilarious to fans of another fantasy series where this love equation appears. One would think that Lavender spoiling this is the real reason Hermione glares when she sees it...
The person who plays a teenage Tom Riddle is none other than Frank Dillane, who became well-known for playing Nick Clark in Fear the Walking Dead, six years later.
The eleven-year-old Tom Riddle is played by Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, who would later be known for his starring role in the After series.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The half-blood prince's true identity isn't really speculated upon in the film, nor does Harry seem overly attached to their potions book. It comes off as much more of a Plot Device, allowing Harry to brew his way into Slughorn's good graces (a bit moot in the first place, since it was obvious Slughorn would try to "collect" him either way), and to add a new spell to his repertoire; Harry is then happy to get rid of the book entirely. The result is the Wham Line losing a lot of its oomph, pretty much amounting to, "Shock, horror - it was me, I... annotated that book you used in potions class."
Cormac McLaggen, because he comes across as somewhat arrogant, but not too bad (well, until Hermione says he has more tentacles than a tentacula), but Hermione treats him like a pig long before she knows that. Not helped by the Deathly Hallows movies, in which he joins the DA and survives the Battle of Hogwarts.
Young Tom Riddle. The film made a big error by changing "I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me" to "I can make bad things happen to people who are mean to me". While we're obviously supposed to take both as sinister, it's hard to blame someone for wanting to punish people who have been "mean to him". It also has him look like he's almost in tears when Dumbledore first comes in, which Tom Riddle is supposed to be incapable of. Curiously, the scene also latterly inverts this, as in the book, when Dumbledore sets fire to Riddle's wardrobe, the latter looks enraged, which Harry notes is perfectly reasonable, but in the film, he looks excited.
WTH, Costuming Department?: Narcissa's choice of hairstyle in the movie was met with scratched heads. She's blonde in the books but the film chooses to give her half black hair and half blonde. Cue a few comments about her having 'skunk hair'. It may have been done to show that she was born to the Black family (all of whom have black hair), but married into the Malfoy family (all of whom have blonde hair).
YMMV tropes present in the video game:
Porting Disaster: While the PSP version of Order of the Phoenix was the entire console game squeezed into a UMD (impressive, given the technical restraints), this game's PSP version is nothing more than a port of the DS game; practically no effort was made in taking advantage of the system's hardware.
The Problem with Licensed Games: The game was considered mediocre and only a slight improvement over Order of the Phoenix (if only for removing the fetch quests), which was found particularly underwhelming as once Warner postponed the movie EA had an extra year to punch things up.
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