Designated Hero: Yuddhisthira. Not only does he gamble away his kingdom, his brothers and their common wife, he also gambles AGAIN, loses *a second time* and is exiled for twelve years. Yet, he is called Dharmaraj or the upholder of dharma. This is justified; see I Gave My Word.
Draco in Leather Pants: Good luck finding an adaptation that acknowledges Karna as the privileged would-be accomplice to rape that he is in canon. Kavita Kane's The Outcast's Queen is an especially infamous example of the trope.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Since the Javanese version contained several changes, some characters that were not that major in the original story get a gigantic boost of popularity in Indonesia:
Ghatotkacha (renamed Gatotkaca) got turned from a normal Gentle Giant who's otherwise not that important to the story into a superhero-esque figure, with local popularity comparable to that of Heracles/Hercules or Superman
Shikhandi, usually one of the lesser known Kauravas (compared to Karna) aside of his 'reincarnation of a Woman Scorned' stitch, had his Gender Flipremoved and became known as Srikandi, most Indonesians revere her as their Ur-Example of mythical Action Girl, to the point that her name became the epithet of 'really remarkable and honorable woman' in Indonesia/Java.
In normal cases of liking the Mahabharata in Indonesia, this is also why it's not that rare to see someone in Indonesia literally having the name Arjuna.
Karna. Abandoned by his mother, fights on the wrong side for the most honorable possible reasons and gets screwed out of his life for lying about his caste. Shoot the Shaggy Dog is Older Than They Think, though he gets honored AFTER dying.
Also, Abhimanyu. A sixteen year old warrior prodigy who dies fighting his father's war, and had to be cornered by several of the greatest Kaurava warriors before kicking the bucket.
Ekalavya. Despite being low-caste, he trains himself as a warrior to rival Arjuna by eavesdropping on Drona's lessons. Then he willingly and dutifully obliges when Drona asks him for his thumb in payment.
Magnificent Bastard: Shakuni, prince of the Gandhara Kingdom, sought revenge for the misdeeds done against the Gandhara dynasty, especially his sister Gandhari, by Bhishma. The Sole Survivor of the conquest, Shakuni blossomed into a clever, shrewd, and patient villain who hatched a variety of schemes to pit the Kauravas and Pandavas against one another. He began by grooming his own nephew Duryodhana from childhood into an obedient pawn, starting with innocuous acts that escalated into convincing him to poison Bheema. When faced with failure, Shakuni simply opts to move onto another plan—one such included inviting his enemies into the House of Wax, hiring help to melt the palace without implicating himself. His most ingenious maneuver came in the legendary dice game against Yuddhisthira where the silver-tongued Shakuni preyed upon Yuddhisthira's gambling addiction and manipulated him into losing his wealth and kingdom. Ultimately instigating the Kurukshetra War as desired, Shakuni continued to use his intellectual talents by putting Shalya under a hospitality debt to grant Duryodhana an excellent commander-in-chief. The epic poem's craftiest and most devious mastermind, Shakuni fulfilled his vengeance even after death.
Guru Drona asking for tribal boy Ekalavya's thumb as a guru dakshina, so that Ekalavya is no longer the best archer and Arjuna could pass the former. It's hard to sympathize with Drona after that, especially when he refuses to teach lower caste boys like Karna.
At Duryodhana's command, an innocent woman is stripped naked and sexually assaulted in public. Only a handful of his allies object to it, and everyone else just watches and jeers. When Yuddhisthira hesitates to fight Anti-Villains like Karna and Bhishma, it is the memory of that which inspires him to do so.
During the Kurukshetra War, it was the ganging up on Abhimanyu when no one could defeat him in single combat. After this event, both sides routinely ignore their own laws and customs of war.
The Kauravas crossed into the horizon when they plotted to trick the Pandavas into sleeping in a vacation house surreptitiously built out of wax, and then setting that wax house ablaze.
Ashvatthama by committing a massacre of the Pandava camp at night, slaughtering nearly everyone as they slept, including the children. Partly in response to this atrocity, he is cursed by Krishna to wander the earth in exile for 3000 years.
The Kaurava side did have quite a few Punch-Clock Villain kings and princes who only fought alongside Duryodhana because of long-standing treaties.
Karna was abandoned by his mother, raised as a low caste charioteer’s son, was taught the arts of battle craft by Parashurama who intentionally wanted to only teach non-Kshatriyas, and had completed his training. And yet, he was cursed to forget all he learned at the most inopportune time because he outed himself by displaying a great deal of bravery and pain resistance that his teacher knew only Kshatriyas were capable of. He is then openly insulted as a “charioteer’s son not worthy of fighting” by the Pandavas, rejected by Draupadi for that same reason even after he’s been bequeathed a kingdom, but he still has a reputation as a steadfastly loyal friend of Duryodhana, who was the only one to look past his low status, as well as a reputation for unconditional generosity. Indra takes advantage of his generosity by asking him to give up his Armor of Invincibility. That said, he did encourage the sexual assault on Draupadi, even calling her a “prostitute”, he took part in the ganging up on Abhimanyu (to save the Kauravas from annihilation in single combat) and he did fire an arrow into the open air in frustration, causing it to strike and kill a helpless sacred cow.
The Pandava brothers, especially Arjuna. Arjuna as a kid wanted to be the best archer, which his guru Drona promised he would become, and he complained when a tribal boy Ekalavya surpassed him. Not to mention that he mocks Karna, a "charioteer's son," for being of a lower caste. They are shocked when they learn that Karna is their brother after the battle, and Arjuna afterward Took a Level in Kindness, but still!
Bhima is a bully to the Kauravas, so much so that they attempted to poison and drown him when they were young. He insulted Karna the hardest for being a charioteer's son, laughed the hardest when Duryodhana fell in a pond and Draupadi insulted both Duryodhana and his father. His murder of Durshasana isso brutal that his own allies got horrified, and he stomps on Duryodhana's head even after he's already defeated himby breaking the rules of a duel. After all of that, he then proceeds to insult Dhritharashtra to the point of him and the rest of the Kuru elders exiling themselves, even after Yuddhishthira has made it a point not to. That said Bhima's romance with Hidimba and being Good Parents to Ghatotkacha does redeem him in the eyes of some readers.
Yuddhisthira is supposed to be The Hero and The Good King but this is seen by many readers as Informed Ability on account of his being The Gambling Addict milquetoast within the story, his Honor Before Reason approach to Dharma, and generally being less than chivalrous to Draupadi as compared to Bhima and Arjuna. He's generally regarded as The Load of the Pandava brothers compared to Bhima, Arjuna, Kunti, Krishna and Draupadi, though scholars generally see him as a tragic figure.
Adaptations
Never Live It Down: Puneet Isaar, the actor playing Duryodhan caused an accident on the set of the Bollywood film Coolie, which almost killed leading man Amitabh Bachchan. He was blacklisted by the industry and hated by fans for a long time.
Padding: The show is plagued with this. People repeat conversations over and over, people fret about the same things time and time again, and people replay past events way too many times. Not to mention, the display of excessive formality of greetings, supplication and blessing eat up more clock. These are all legitimate in the original context of oral transmission, where stock phrases and repetition aid in memorization (or, as needed, improvisation) but shouldn't an adaptation to another medium adapt to the medium?
