Knightmare / YMMV - TV Tropes

Badass Decay: Hordriss. When first introduced, he's a dangerous character with an agenda of his own; not as powerful as either Big Bad, but definitely a force to be reckoned with. By the last couple of series, he routinely falls for every simple trick that Lord Fear or Lissard use on him and is only still on deck because of dungeoneers showing up in the nick of time to save him.
Broken Base:
- There's a pretty sharp fan divide over whether the Series 1-3 (and 8) format of entirely hand-drawn and computer animated dungeons or the Series 4-7 format of live-action dungeons with only a few specially-created rooms is the better one, though plenty of fans like both. Similarly, there are those who prefer the evil dungeon residents of Series 1-4 over the more standard-issue "Good vs. Evil" conflict from Series 5-8.
- One surprisingly contentious loss is the second team in Series 5. Many fans felt that their attempt to pass off a goblin horn as a magic horn was such an audaciously clever move that the producers should have given them a free pass despite not having the correct item to pay off Skarkill. Other fans, however, have pointed out that it'd make no logical sense in-universe for Skarkill not to know a goblin horn when he sees one given his occupation as a goblin master, and that the team was twice given hints (once early in Level 1, and then again about midway through Level 2) that they'd need gold in order to bribe someone.
Growing the Beard:
- Series 3, despite its extreme difficulty — which saw none of the teams emerge victorious, with the much shorter Series 1 being the only other time this happened — is near-universally regarded as the show's peak, thanks to featuring some of the most interesting puzzles and challenges in the show's run, its impressive computer animations which gave a sense of life that was lacking from the largely static backgrounds in Series 1 and 2, and some of the show's more fondly-remembered characters, including introducing Hordriss.
- Series 6 is considered to be the best of the latter "Eye Shield" seasons, with the production team finally managing to get the integration of the live action footage and backgrounds just right, the battle between the Powers that Be and the Opposition finally coming into focus, Lord Fear becoming a much more proactive antagonist, and the tense ending to the season with Fear unleashing a red dragon to destroy Castle Knightmare.
Ho Yay: Between Treguard and Pickle.
Nightmare Fuel:
- The life force meter. It took the form of a knight's helmeted head for the first 5 seasons. As the Dungeoneer gradually lost health, pieces of the knight's helmet broke off and flew away. Okay, not so bad. But then when the helmet was completely gone, the skin of the knight's head began peeling away to reveal a skull underneath, as the face goes through a series of suitably shocked and horrified expressions until it no longer has lips to emote with. And after that, the skull itself cracked and fell apart, the remaining chunk of it flying towards the camera to leave just the eyes which then rolled out of the screen one by one. BONG! "Ooh, nasty."
- If you happen to be arachnophobic, Ariadne, Queen of All Arachnids will keep you awake for days. It's a standard tarantula obviously chroma-keyed in (you can even see an outline surrounding it), but knowing this (especially as said tarantula is massively scaled up) will not help you at all.
- One team failed to pick up a magical object that would protect them from Medusa's stare. Not only did the dungeoneer get turned to stone, the entire team got turned to stone as well! And Treguard seemed really happy about it!
Nintendo Hard: The series generally only produced one, maybe two winners per series. The difficulty reached its zenith in Series 3, where any mistake at all in Levels 2 and 3 would get the dungeoneer killed in the next chamber or two, resulting in no-one winning that year. Series 1 also didn't have any winners, though that was more due to it being much shorter than any other series of the show, and likely due to contestants simply not knowing what to expect from the dungeon.
- In total, 69 teams took on the dungeon, of whom 55 failed, 8 won and 6 had their quests cut short by the end of a series. Discounting the quests cut short, that's a success rate of just over one in eight. Nintendo Hard indeed.
Padding: The Eye Shield sequences weren't actually being controlled by the dungeoneer or their advisors at all; they were pre-recorded on location and then played back in the studio, with the advisors told to pretend they were guiding the dungeoneer. The sequences therefore had no actual purpose to the game, other than providing some footage to link locations.
Production-Related Period Piece: One episode, partway through, displays a caption "Another name for Hordriss?" This was a clue for a competition running on CITV at the time.
Replacement Scrappy: The Weeping Doors from Series 4 are seen as this to the various Wall Monsters from Series 1-3, thanks to their one-note personalities, and their constant sobbing ending up being more irritating than anything else.
The Scrappy:
- Gundrada the Swordmistress from Series 4. Quite a fun character and helpful to the teams but her ridiculous (and very annoying) voice earned her plenty of hate from the viewers.
- Ah Wok the merchant from Series 6, due to being a stereotypical Yellow Face character who was outdated even by 1992 standards, and somewhat redundant considering that the established (albeit less trustworthy) merchant character of Julius Scaramonger still featured in that season. Even the show's creators seemed to realise that the character was a misfire, and had his actor play the much more warmly-received part of Rothberry the apothecary in Series 7.
- Snapper-Jack from Series 8, mostly due to the poor execution of the character, which makes him look less like a man with a dragon-like creature in place of his arm, and more like a really bad ventriloquist act.
Seasonal Rot:
- Series 4-7 are generally regarded as a step down from, at the very least, Series 3, though opinions tend to differ on exactly how much. In particular, Series 4 is seen as a clunky transitional series where the production team were still clearly getting to grips with the live-action backgrounds, while Series 5 hadn't quite worked out what to do with the newly-introduced Lord Fear. Series 6 and 7 are seen as a step-up, though the latter has been criticised by some for a lack of variety, which saw half of the teams meet their demise on Play Your Cards Right.
- Series 8 is even more divisive, as some fans appreciated the return to the format of Series 3, though many felt that it was poorly executed and suffered from decisions such as allowing the last two teams to skip straight from Level 1 to Level 3, several of the new characters (most blatantly Snapper-Jack) being misfires, and the Series 7 version of Level 3 being recycled as Level 2.
Spiritual Licensee: Though an official American adaptation never got off the ground (see the Trivia tab), two shows did kinda follow in its footsteps: Nick Arcade, which mixed the game-playing action of Starcade with a bonus round like this show; and Masters of the Maze, where there was more CGI and physical props, less chroma key, and more of an educational bent.
That One Level:
- The Corridor of Blades claimed more dungeoneers than any other trap in the show.
- The Causeways. Sure, you would need to know the combination to get past, but then the thing would start falling apart to place false pressure upon you.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While generally quite well-liked overall, Series 4-7 have a fair few detractors who dislike that it did away with the more claustrophobic and imaginative areas of Series 1-3, and swapped it for areas largely shot on location, with the hand-drawn or computer-generated areas being saved until Level 3, which about two-thirds of the dungeoneers would never reach. On the flip-side, there are also plenty who disliked it when Series 8 did the opposite; it's probably one of, if not the most divisive issue in fandom.

YMMV / Knightmare

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