YMMV / InCryptid

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Johrlac are stated to be descended from some kind of wasp, but not only do the females have breasts, they can lactate. There is actually a species of cockroach that produces "milk".
• Canon Fodder:
  • Thomas's time in Australia is mostly left to the audience's imagination.
  • Kevin, Jane, Evelyn, and Ted's stories, and how they met, are still largely a mystery, though the author has mentioned she might one day explore it.
  • We know virtually nothing about Charles and Ada Healy, the children Enid and Alexander left behind with the Covenant.
• Complete Monster: The Price-Healy family and their allies have faced several evil villains in their quest to protect cryptids and humanity alike. Though the worst often prove that Humans Are the Real Monsters:
  • Ghost Roads: Bobby Cross was a movie star known as "Diamond Bobby" who wished to be young and beautiful forever. Through his deal with the crossroads, Bobby drives eternally to outrun mortality, but takes advantage of the deal to empower himself by arranging crashes and accidents, or simply murdering people himself to create ghosts, including heroine Rose Marshall. Bobby then takes their souls to use as fuel for his car, using them up into nothing. Seducing Rose's great grand-niece Bethany, Bobby murders her when she fails against Rose and even convinces a follower to kill herself for him, solely for amusement and spite. A sadistic sociopath, Bobby uses and abuses all around him, dispatching them when they stop being of use, all so he will never have to face his own mortality.
  • Discount Armageddon: "Evil Santa" is an unnamed cult leader who worships the last male dragon, which lives under New York City. Believing that he will be rewarded with riches and power in return for his worship, "Evil Santa" kidnaps dozens of single Cryptid women and has them ritualistically murdered through Virgin Sacrifice. To create his minions to help with this, "Evil Santa" uses the mutative qualities of dragon blood to transform several hapless tourists into the mindless lizard-like "Servitors", a process which thoroughly breaks their minds. Kidnapping heroine Verity Price and her friends, "Evil Santa" intends to sacrifice them as well to gain the glory and riches he desires.
  • Chaos Choreography: Anders Clarke and Clint Goldfein are a contestant and judge respectively in the reality dancing show Dance or Die who, secretly, are the masterminds of a murderous snake cult. The two act as serial killers, butchering every pair of contestants who lose on the show until eight people have been killed. In the climax, the duo reveal their master plan to use the sacrifice to unleash a monstrous snake demon to kill Dance or Die's massive audience and all the other contestants and judges as they watch gleefully, Anders in particularly sneering that his father will die in petty retribution for being ignored by him and Clint gloating he simply wants to become a king among men through the power of the serpent he's summoned.
  • That Ain't Witchcraft: The Crossroads are an Anima Mundi, the spirit of a place. An eldritch parasite, the Crossroads offer people their heart's desire for the roads, but always with a catch, perverting the wishes and destroying the casters or using them as weapons to strike fear and evil into the world. The one responsible for Bobby Cross's murders, the Crossroads also trap the souls of its victims, constantly twisting the gains of others for its own end. Finally, the Crossroads even attempt to drain the life and magic from Earth, heedless of the death toll this will bring through the world.
  • Imaginary Numbers: Ingrid is Sarah Zellaby's biological mother. Seeking a new world for the cuckoos, an invasive predator species, to infest, Ingrid orchestrates the entire plot to turn Sarah into an Apocalypse Maiden and tear a hole between dimensions. Uncaring that this would destroy Earth and fry Sarah's mind, Ingrid plans to use her as a sex doll to breed new super-powerful Johrlac queens. Ingrid also reveals that she had Sarah for the sole purpose of creating a Johrlac queen, and was behind the murder of her foster parents that led to Angela adopting her. She also ordered the murders of the family who lived in the house that the hive randomly chose as a base of operations.
• Continuity Lockout: Seanan McGuire has stated that she tries as much as she can to make each book able to tell a self-contained story, but several of the books will make no sense if you haven't read the previous ones. Antimony's books form a Plot Arc, and the Sarah books (which are essentially a Multi-Part Episode) rely on you knowing the events of Midnight Blue-Light Special, though they do have a few This Is My Story moments. Angel of the Overpass, which is set in the same universe, is entirely driven by the aftermath of That Ain't Witchcraft. You could read it without having read That Ain't Witchcraft, but it would basically amount to saying the Crossroads was Killed Offscreen. And the plot of Angel of the Overpass is relevant to Rose's new status when she appears in Backpacking Through Bedlam. Regarding the short stories, whether free on her website, published in anthologies, or Patreon-exclusive, it's not necessary to read them to understand the plot of the novels, but it definitely enhances the experience.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Mark is very popular with the fans, despite only appearing in two books so far.
  • Greg the Giant Spider only appears in one book, but he's adored by nearly everyone in the fandom as a "very good boy".
• Evil Is Cool: A decent number of villains are able to achieve this by virtue of being badass but special mention goes to:
  • Cooper, from Pocket Apocalypse, due to being Affably Evil, The Chessmaster as well as being an Awesome Aussie werewolf and putting up a pretty good fight against Alex.
  • Leo Cunningham, from Magic for Nothing of the Covenant of St. George because of his intelligence and bravery as well as being one of the more nobler antagonists.
  • The Lowry Cabal, from Tricks for Free, for being a gang of evil sorcerers with a cool range of abilities and powers that prove them formidable opponents.
• Genius Bonus: Antimony is a pretty weird name, and most people think of the element (if they know of it at all). It makes sense once you realize the primary application of antimony in real life is fireproofing. What can Antimony Price do, again?
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • From Pocket Apocalypse, Alex's concerns about lycanthropy becoming a pandemic if left to spread uncontrollably in Australia are much darker after the COVID-19 Pandemic, since the description of what would happen is pretty similar (aside from the COVID pandemic not starting in Australia and not turning people into rampaging werewolves).
  • In "The Lay of the Land", Mary jokes that Thomas is "doomed" and should "just accept [his] fate now". We later find out that Mary brokered the deal between Thomas and the Crossroads.
• Jerkass Woobie: Jonathan Healy, while he could be rude sometimes, was overall a friendly person who loved the cryptid world and would do anything to protect it. That changed with Fran's murder by unknown enemies. He blamed the cryptid world for her death, and the only reason he didn't take Alice to live somewhere far away was the risk of the Covenant finding them. When Thomas moves to town, Jonathan is immediately hostile, both because he's Covenant (though all but defected like Jonathan's parents did) and because he's an overprotective dad to Alice. In one of their many arguments, Thomas points out that he's only referred to Alice by name once in the conversation, the rest of the time defining her by her relationship to him ("my daughter"). He's retreated into himself in the decade since Fran's death, and built up a version of Alice in his mind that's nothing like she really is. Ironically, just as he seems to have finally accepted Alice's Action Girl tendencies and decided if he can't stop her, he can at least make sure she's not facing monsters alone, he dies.
• Moral Event Horizon: Gwendolyn Brandt was introduced as a Fantastic Racist Knight Templar, but this was no different from most other Covenant members. Thomas and the Healys even save her life from Alkabyiftiris slime, and hope she's gone for good when she leaves soon after. Her return has her unambiguously cross the MEH, by releasing a dangerous monster whose venom liquefies the victim's flesh, which kills six people (including Enid Healy, who helped save her life before) before it can be destroyed (two of them children, and one of those children used as bait to ensure the Healys would investigate). When Mary Dunlavy confronts her about it she blames the victims for living too close to the woods She gets a Karmic Death when Mary unleashes the monster's ghost on her.
• Nightmare Fuel: Apraxis wasps are Wicked Wasps the size of birds that can give an extremely painful Cruel and Unusual Death with their stings, but that's not the worst thing about them. They lay eggs in their victims, living or dead, which emerge in a matter of days as adult wasps. These parasitoids absorb the memories and mind of their victims, meaning you could be facing a swarm of deadly insects that are talking to you in the voice of a loved one.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Cuckoos, aka Johrlac, are paranoia fuel incarnate. Physically attractive, totally sociopathic mind controllers whose powers allow them to seamlessly, within seconds, write themselves into your life as though they'd always been there, and use that instant trust to destroy you completely. Bogeymen and Madhura have known about Cuckoos for a lot longer than humanity, and developed defenses against them. A mere eight cuckoos were enough to wipe out a whole generation of members of the Thirty-Six Society in Australia and took five years to eliminate. Dangerous enough that Alexander Healy broke his radio silence with the Covenant to warn them of the cuckoos' existence. In Imaginary Numbers we see what happens when hundreds of them gather in one place. It's not good.
  • To a lesser extent, a number of the more physically powerful Cryptids. Sure, Istas is kind and sociable, but she can also turn into a giant bear-wolf monster capable of casually ripping a human's arm off.
  • Humans are this for Cryptids. A Waheela might be a danger, but a relatively straightforward one. Humans are devious and sturdy, with a worldwide range and a lot of cunning. Cryptids' best defense against humanity is to pretend not to exist.
• Rainbow Lens: Being a sorcerer can be read as a queer allegory. Seanan McGuire definitely doesn't need a queer allegory when she has actual queer characters, but with Antimony and James it seems like she might have written it that way subconsciously, especially since James is gay and Annie is Ambiguously Bi. (And with James, his father's hatred of magic is mixed in with the actual homophobia). At the beginning of her story, Annie is hiding her magic from her family, worried of how they'll react. When she goes undercover, she has to hide it for her very survival. She finally reveals her secret to Sam, once she decides she can trust him. As she continues her coming-of-age journey, she reveals it to other close friends (Fern and Cylia) but has to give up her magic to save her and Sam's lives. Then with James, she's finally met another person like her, and they help each other figure out how to fully actualize themselves (break James's curse/get Annie's powers back from the Crossroads). Annie returns home fully "out" now that she realizes that her family will accept her no matter what.
  • In the case of Thomas, who as far as we know is straight, he describes the onset of his magical powers as linked to puberty, which is also around the time many people discover their sexuality.
• The Scrappy: A large percentage of the fandom vehemently hates Shelby's family (especially her father) for their Fantastic Racism and unwarranted, overly intense hostility towards Alex.
• Ugly Cute: Wilbur, the baby hodag Alice keeps in her dorm room, is described as a squat, scaly creature with a froglike face, an alligator tail, and spikes along his back. He's also adorable, and she treats him like a pet, even though she knows he needs to return to the wild.
• The Woobie: Sarah and Artie, who not coincidentally have romantic feelings for each other.
  • Sarah is one of only two non-sociopathic members of her species, who strives to use her telepathy for good, but is forced to modify the memories of a Covenant strike team to save her cousin, which turns her into a Broken Bird who takes five years to recover, during which time she saw barely anyone other than her family (and said cousin that she saved didn't even call or write). In Imaginary Numbers, her first book as the main POV character, she's finally heading home when she's abducted by other Johrlac (her species), who induce an Evolution Power-Up that turns her into an Unstable Powered Woman, with the end goal of using her as an Apocalypse Maiden to tear a hole in reality so their species can leave Earth, destroying it in the process. This would also have the side effect of frying her brain, though apparently her body would still be alive enough that Ingrid, the leader of this conspiracy (who happens to be Sarah's biological mother), planned to use her as a sex doll for breeding new, super-powerful Johrlac queens. Yeah. And after she manages to thwart the Johrlac plot, she and her cousins (including Artie, the one she loves (and finally had a Big Damn Kiss with before she was abducted)) are Trapped in Another World, and she accidentally deleted their memories of her.
  • Artie is an incubus, which actually sucks, since his pheromones mean that anyone not related to him that's at all attracted to men will immediately want to have sex with him. He just wants to be left alone, but has to be a Hikikomori because he's So Beautiful, It's a Curse. Sarah, not being related to him but also not a mammal, so immune to his pheromones, is probably the only person he could have a relationship with, and both of them Cannot Spit It Out (until Imaginary Numbers, but then at the end of that book Sarah deletes his memories of her).
  • At the end of Calculated Risks, Artie's mind is accidentally wiped when Sarah is trying to bring everyone back to Earth, making him an Empty Shell. She reconstructs his personality from the memories of everyone who knew him, but subsequent books imply that he Came Back Wrong, and Sarah seems to be staying away from him and most of the rest of the family.