YMMV / Mighty No. 9

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • It's become popular to view Dr. White as an Ambiguously Evil Mad Scientist who doesn't really care about his flawed creation RAY. Another interpretation could be that he was already one as Bill Blackwell, and doesn't want to be reminded of it from anything like RAY, his father, or being addressed as Bill.
  • At times, it feels like Bat's encouraging Beck whenever he gets stuck on his way to fight him. Is this Bat being the Blood Knight he's always been and itching for a one-on-one fight, or is that a remnant of his old personality cheering Beck on, much in the same way Brand was communicating his own distress?
• Anti-Climax Boss: Without using the right powers, the final battle with Trinity is full of predictable patterns and drags on for so long that any excitement that could be gained is drained away. It doesn't help that said boss likes to turn invincible for upwards of 45 seconds whenever you do sustained damage to it.^note Players have found that Cryo, Brandish, and Battalion help.
• Awesome Art: The game's official artwork, promotional pieces, and concept art capture the cartoonish artstyle of its spiritual ancestor with a strikingly colorful look that stands on its own.
• Awesome Bosses: RAY's own boss battle in the Vermilion Destroyer DLC stage, especially on Hard/Hyper mode. This fight is not only a fanservice throwback to X and Zero's boss battle in Mega Man X5, RAY herself is fast and vicious, and she keeps players on their toes throughout the fight. The fight gets even more fun when she goes into her desperation mode and starts pulling off more aggressive and sneakier attacks, reminding players there's a reason why they have an Action Shift button to graze through attacks.
• Awesome Music: While you're not likely to notice because the music is abnormally soft compared to the sound effects, the soundtrack is quite memorable. Standout tracks include Avi's News Report and the final battle theme.
• Bile Fascination: Between a disastrous advertising campaign and high expectations from Mega Man fans paired with an extremely troubled production, many people are drawn to this game as point-and-laugh fodder.
• Broken Base:
  • The AcXeleration/dashing mechanics; some find it a faster-paced and nuanced approach of the classic Mega Man formula while adding the sense of speed of the Mega Man X series and enabling a fun aggressive playstyle, while others think it's a tedious mechanic that slows down gameplay thanks to damage sponge enemies with unnecessary risks that lead to frequent deaths and don't like that the aggressive playstyle has no alternative.
  • The game's English dub. Some find it decent, and with certain characters like Aviator, add charm to their character, while others find it bland and at times annoying to the point of switching over to the Japanese voices.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Due to him shifting the blame on Blackwell near-immediately, very few were surprised that Gregory Graham was the cause of the robots going crazy in the first place.
• Critical Backlash: As years pass following the game's release and the emotions surrounding its failure have begun to subside, re-evaluations of Mighty No. 9 have shifted the narrative surrounding the game from "one of the worst games of the decade" to "a fairly middling game marred by terrible publicity". While the public history surrounding the game's Troubled Production, infamous marketing, and high levels of developer overconfidence followed by crashing public disappointment are still pretty hard to disassociate from Mighty No. 9, those who play the game today may find it to just be a mediocre, but otherwise pretty harmless platformer with Mega Man influences on its sleeve, one that probably would've just passed in the night and be nothing more if it released in a different situation. With Inti Creates managing to create a more well-received alternative in their spin-off/crossover series Mighty Gunvolt, Mighty No. 9 is being slightly more remembered for having a few good, fun ideas rather than being an unsalvageable disaster. It also helps that some later players decided to play the game on newer hardware that came out since the game's release; while the Series X was reported to have issues running the game, at least at first, the PS5 has actually been seen to eliminate most of the game's framerate issues.
• Dancing Bear: Some people have only heard of the game because it has the longest credits of anything ever, at nearly four hours.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Call has no luck with the results of her design poll.
    • Call Design "E◊" almost won the voting contest with only a few votes percentage below Design F. The fans who supported her love her so much that they even made up a Fan Nickname for her ("Echo") and organized a campaign to include her into the game, even though she is not going to be Call herself but a different character, called "The Echo Chamber Campaign." Intl Creates acknowledged this by making Call E one of four different versions of Call in Mighty Gunvolt Burst that you can use.^note The other three are her canonical appearance, as well as designs A◊, and H◊ from the contest.
    • Though she couldn't make it past the first voting round, Design "D" also received much attention from fans, as she was designed by Inafune himself. The fact that she looks pretty similar to Doctor Wily but as a Roll-ish Robot Girl (mainly due to the "wings hair" that both characters sport) contributes to this. More than that, a fan campaign to get her into the game as a villain, titled "The Call D-pository", popularized the idea of depicting her in villainous roles similar to Dr. Wily in fan works or even as Doctor Wily's assistant, similar to Roll's role towards Doctor Light in Crossover fan works with the Mega Man franchise. Comcept took note of this, as her design is used for Trinity, the final boss.
  • The apple robot from the Mighty Boss update. There are people clamoring for it to be a boss in the game, or at least DLC.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Some have taken to referring to Beck himself as "The New Bomber", in lieu of a title given to his spiritual predecessor.
  • Due to similarities in design, his partner Call is designated as "Not!Roll" by both fans and detractors.
    • The same could be said to other characters who have a strong resemblance to a Mega Man character, especially the ones who have not yet received official names. For example, Call's motorbike dog is called by fans as "Not!Rush".
  • Call E has been dubbed "Echo" by fans wishing for the design to appear in the game in some capacity. The design would eventually be used Mighty Gunvolt Burst as one of Call's alternate outfits.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Cryo's weapon, which fires ice balls that travel in a short arc. It uses a minimal amount of weapon energy for decent damage, but more importantly, it freezes enemies. Frozen enemies are the same as stunned enemies in that they can be absorbed by dashing into them, but freezing enemies increases the time you have to dash into them while still getting 100% Absorption Rate. Essentially, freezing enemies lets you keep combos going on for far longer without needing to act as quickly. Since absorbing enemies replenishes weapon energy, you can keep using it for the entire stage, making the other weapons obsolete. Note that it's also available very early in the game.
  • Brand's weapon, a sword, can reflect projectiles. However, it works a little too well, as it can actually nullify damage from things that can't be reflected, and as long as you don't use the charged attack, you can use it indefinitely. This can render otherwise powerful attacks completely useless, including first phase Trinity's Yellow Devil-esque barrage.
  • Bat's weapon is a powerful explosive that fires straight forward. The first button press fires and second detonates. The blast radius is huge and deals very heavy damage, and its weapon energy is surprisingly low. This is the de facto stage clearing weapon because it works against everything, and requires no effort to aim other than having a little care with your detonation timing. This lets you steamroll enemies as soon as you see them, most are ready to absorb after one or two fires, and due to Xel absorption replenishing weapon energy you should never ever run out.
  • The air dash can allow you to skip entire platforming sections... when it's not propelling you into obstacles.
  • Ray's version of Countershade's weapon turns her invisible and invincible to enemies while the button is held. The downside is that you can't attack and its energy regen is insanely slow... but Ray can still dash, which still has the hurtbox attached to it and is still invincible to Collision Damage. Pair this up with the fact that killing enemies restores weapon energy, and Ray trivializes levels while being mostly invincible, so long as there are enemies to kill.
• Goddamned Boss: Mighty No. 2, Cryo. Her primary function is to freeze Beck, which doesn't actually hurt that much. However, what does hurt is the follow-up, an icy spike ball that Cryo creates around herself before jumping above and crushing the helpless Beck. She's fairly easy to tell, but her arcing ice shots can be deceiving, and she swaps her "water propulsion" tell for an icethrower that freezes on contact when she Turns Red. Needless to say, players unfamiliar with her tactics are liable to lose life after life against her.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: On April 1st, 2014, The Mega Man Network website made a joke about an animated Mighty No. 9 show. Fast forward three months later... That said, the show was later cancelled.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Despite the game's massive support when it was first announced, there was a vocal minority that thought that the game's biggest selling point, that it was very similar to Mega Man in its gameplay, its premise and its characters, made it unoriginal and gimmicky. This opinion gained more popularity after the game's disastrous launch.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Ray's DLC ended up being the only reason to play the game for some people. Notably, it ends up undoing or otherwise repairing a lot of contentious or scrappy mechanics; Xel absorption is now automatic with her default moves, the game's promotion of a fast and aggressive playstyle fits better with the character who uses melee attacks by default, Mighty Number assists stop appearing, mid-level and mid-boss radio chatter is silenced, and her higher damage makes dealing with hardier enemies faster.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • FOUR MILLION DOLLARS^ExplanationMost commonly from the game's detractors, when speaking of the game's overall quality. Never mind that the game's engine had to be able to fit the 900K budget that was the actual backing goal for the core game, as everything after was purely for the heaps and heaps of stretch goals being met. Additionally, some of the backers have said this too — expressing surprise that the game was released in what is perceived to be an Obvious Beta after several delays and with the 900k goal.
  • From the Masterclass trailer:
    • "And make the bad guys cry like an anime fan on prom night!"^ExplanationAn infamous line from the Masterclass trailer. Considering there is a large overlap between anime fans and video game fans (let alone Mega Man fans), it didn't go over well. The line has since seen many snowclones, such as "Make the bad guys cry like the Mighty No. 9 devs on launch night!"
    • Do you like awesome things that are awesome?^ExplanationAnother line from the trailer at the start.
    • The Pizza Explosion.^Explanation A nickname for the extremely cheap explosion effects around the 0:50 mark in the same trailer. Naturally, this was heavily mocked.
    • Dashing^ExplanationThe Masterclass trailer put a lot of emphasis on the Video Game Dashing.
    • "Keiji Inafune is about to make you his bitch."^ExplanationAs a response to the infamous "Anime Fans on Prom Night" line, people have compared that to another infamous tagline to a game from an previously acclaimed director that was hyped upon its announcement but then fell victim to Schedule Slip, backlash from questionable marketing decisions, and poor reception upon release.
  • Mediocre No. 5.6^ExplanationThe number comes from IGN's review of the the game, which feels that the game is merely So Okay, It's Average after all this time and money led to the game receiving this derogatory name on the internet.
    • Similarly, Giant No. 2, or similar variants thereof, because you know...
  • "It's better than nothing."^Explanation A phrase said by Ben Judd but incorrectly attributed to Inafune (Judd was his translator), which was given during a livestream of the game meant to drum up hype about the quality of the game and its ports.
  • "He's a businessman. Not a creator."^ExplanationA response from Hideki Kamiya about Keiji Inafune, tweeted in September 2012 (Mighty No. 9's Kickstarter launched in August 2013) that corrected a fan about Inafune's career, that he was never the guy leading the projects he works on, only being a producer at most. Kamiya later clarified that he saw him as a good businessman for what he achieved at Capcom◊. However, when this tweet was dug up again out of context as the problems with Mighty No. 9 grew, it became a favorite statement to repeat among critics of both the game and Inafune, with many assuming the tweet was Kamiya taking a jab towards Inafune. One of the backers of the game (Number 5040) even named himself "Kamiya was right" to be put in the credits of the game, just to spite him.
  • "PEW PEW PEW!"^ExplanationCryosphere's habit of Saying Sound Effects Out Loud, which coupled with her annoying, high-pitched voice easily makes this annoying, especially since she shoots frequently enough to cut herself off with her own voice lines. The fact that she is a Goddamned Boss means that you'll probably be hearing this a lot.
  • [Ad Lib Moaning In Pain] ^ExplanationA script direction for RAY's level that was left in both the demo build and final build of the game. It's since been used in a derogatory fashion. However, the computer versions corrected this oversight.
  • FOUR HOUR WALL OF SHAME^ExplanationThe credits for the game are an absurd four hours long, prompting snarky responses from the detractors. This was caused by the large amount of Kickstarter backers, as well as the game listing "A Generous Backer" hundreds of times instead of condensing it to a single listing.
  • Shigeru Miyamoto once gave the quote "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad". People like to take pictures of Miyamoto with this quote, add a picture from Mighty No. 9, and then make a snarky remark about how Miyamoto isn't always right. (Another joke is to have Miyamoto say the same quote, then look at Mighty No. 9 gameplay and immediately retract his statement.)^note Similar jokes are also made at the expense of Duke Nukem Forever
  • DOGGY^ExplanationCountershade repeatedly calls Beck "doggy". This did not go unnoticed by the fans.
    • ADIOS^ExplanationCountershade throws out this line whenever he teleports after taking damage. He says it a lot.
• Mis-blamed:
  • The controversial Masterclass trailer is actually the fault of Deep Silver rather than Comcept or Inafune.
  • That "Better than nothing" quote? Inafune didn't say it. Ben Judd, a key figure during the Kickstarter with regards to promotion and backer interaction, said it. But since he was also serving as Inafune's translator at the moment, a lot of people incorrectly assumed Inafune said it.
• Misaimed Fandom: After the game was announced, a lot of people were outspoken about how this was a victory against Capcom for supposedly abandoning the Mega Man series, with a great deal of vitriol being leveled towards them alongside all the praise for the new game. Needless to say, Comcept made it very clear that they didn't want to incite such reactions in an update for meeting the first stretch goal. This mentality towards the game weakened when the game's delays and controversies built up, and eventually died completely when the game met with its infamously poor reception at launch, and ironically ended up with the mentality they were opposed to now being used against them when Mega Man 11 came out to positive reception, With former fans now seeing Mega Man 11 as an epic clapback towards Comcept and Inafune for everything that happened in its release cycle.
• More Popular Spin-Off: The Mighty Gunvolt series has been gaining much more praise than it did initially after Mighty No. 9's harsh reception, and its sequel, Mighty Gunvolt Burst, also has been viewed more favorably on release, with some even claiming the game is what Mighty No. 9 should have been.
• Obvious Beta: Although the Wii U version definitely gets the worst of it, all versions of the game are fraught by technical problems, most annoyingly framerate drops and long loading times between deaths in some versions.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: By the time the game was released, about three years after its Kickstarter concluded, the initial hype for it had largely been overtaken by its massive Troubled Production and controversial choices made by the developers (including, but not limited to: the subsequent crowdfunding goals, the three delays [the third of which was followed by more than three months of silence], the decision to run a crowdfunding campaign for another game, Red Ash, before Mighty No. 9 had even been released, and the Masterclass trailer).
• Pandering to the Base: Keiji Inafune has said that he wanted the game to be a joint effort between the fans and the creators, and asked for quite a bit of fan input on certain game mechanics. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, given that he was using this to figure out what his audience wanted from the game. Backers of the project got to vote on Call's final design.
• Porting Disaster: Some console versions suffered from technical issues one way or another, but the Wii U version got the worst end of it. Some players experienced frequent crashes, it had the worst loading times that can take upwards of 30-45 seconds, and has the worst framerate issues out of the console ports. A patch was quickly released to mitigate most of the crashes and cut down on loading times to roughly 20 seconds, however framerate problems still persists.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Beck's inclusion in Mighty Gunvolt Burst may have redeemed him for some due changing his gameplay style to something more similar to classic Mega Man. Call later got her spotlight in Mighty Gunvolt Burst which gave her more freedom as a playable character and growing out of her robotic monotone personality at the end of her campaign that also made her more likeable.
• The Scrappy:
  • Cryosphere is the least well-liked among the Mighty Numbers, due to her frustrating pattern, repetitive sound clips, and annoying voice. Her habit of constantly making ice-related puns has also drawn comparisons to the way Mr. Freeze was depicted in Batman & Robin. Likewise, her said repetitive sound clips have drawn unfavorable comparisons to Flame Hyenard from Mega Man X7.
  • Call's Machine Monotone, stealth-based gameplay, annoying sounds in gameplay, and having no personality to speak of didn't win her many fans.
  • Aviator has his share of detractors as well, thanks to his attempts at being funny falling flat on their face, having a stage with some tricky platforming, along with having an annoying voice. The fact that he regurgitates old memes does his audience appeal no favors.
  • Dr. Sanda is quite disliked for a similarly annoying voice and that most of his appearances is him overreacting to stuff that happens during the levels; his horrid screaming during Dynatron's level even has her tell him to shut up.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Xel absorption dash, due to the fact the game forces you to use it, or enemies will take much longer to defeat. It's even worse with bosses, who regenerate health if you don't dash into them after taking a chunk of their health.
  • The absorptions in and of themselves are considered by some to be this. Certain enemies being absorbed will give Beck things like faster movement, higher damage, or buster shots passing through multiple enemies, which sounds fine on paper. But it leads to Trial-and-Error Gameplay and a score attack design mentality; if you don't handle enemy groups exactly how the level designers wanted you to, Beck would end up running out his buffs or not even having them at the proper times to begin with, kneecapping his progression through stages. For a successor to Mega Man, where fast play and careful play were usually both valid options even in the faster games like Zero, it came off as far too limiting and stingy, and not very appealing for every fan of the original series.
  • The conversations between White, Sanda, and Call are highly unpopular not only for being unskippable, but for often getting you killed. This is especially the case in Seismic's level, where Call in particular likes to speak up at just the right time for her text box to cover some highly picky jumps. This goes doubly if not triply for boss fights; in which the text and audio will mess up your pattern recognition and concentration. Pyrogen's fight is an extremely bad offender, since his Turns Red gives him a One-Hit KO and the player needs to hear his voice lines to be able to predict what move he's going to do.
  • For some, it's the Mighty Numbers assistance. After you beat a level, the Mighty Number from that one will appear in the stage of the boss who that weapon is weak to and provide help. The problem is that it completely spoils the weakness loop (although many people would have already looked for it online, or even on the official strategy guide), and for those who don't mind that, the assists themselves are pitiful most of the time due to being confined to one-time encounters per stage. Some standout examples are Cryosphere removing some near-useless background enemies, Brandish and Seismic removing some actually useless foreground enemies, and Countershade altering a cutscene slightly.
  • Another divisive change many criticize is the inability to change your weapons from the pause menu like you can in the Mega Man series, and for some, the act of manually cycling through weapons in real-time and require a dedicated button to change to said form irritated many players that couldn't adjust to this system.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • Pyrogen's weapon. Beck can charge up an explosion, with size increasing the longer it charges. The problem lies in that low-charge explosions have a puny range, while high-charged explosions take a long time to build (and Beck has to avoid getting hit, no less). Attempting to hold a full charge for too long causes Beck to be stunned after the explosion. All in all, not a worthwhile weapon to use, as the close-range capabilities have already been filled by Brandish's swords.
  • Countershade's weapon is relatively weak. Beck can fire off a bullet that will home in on enemies if it bounces off a surface. Not a bad idea, but it's damned by the fact that you only get a pitiful three shots before having to wait for your weapon energy to replenish.
  • Seismic's weapon is a charge attack where Beck turns into a bulldozer and then goes straight forward. It suffers from the same issue as Pyrogen in terms of being a close-range weapon that has a much nicer alternative in Brandish. Speaking of whom, it is also his weakness, which really exposes its unwieldiness when used against a melee boss that's way more agile. It does have some added effects, such as a slight speed boost and immunity to mines while active, but most players never even notice, and even those advantages are pretty minor when you can get a much bigger speed boost by just spamming dashes.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: This is essentially a Mega Man game without any of the characters and lore from that series, including even the general designs of the mooks.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general opinion of the game review-wise. While it's a functional game at times with some good ideas, in the end, it just tries and fails to ride on Mega Man's fame, with the graphics and story getting a lot of criticism. Considering that the game was made on four million dollars and was hyped up immensely only to turn out to be a bit of a buggy mess, backers are not happy.
• Special Effect Failure: The memetically infamous pizza explosion,◊ even in a still shot, looks almost comically out of date. This sadly turned out to be good compared to the explosions in the finished game, which can be best described as "someone crumbled up orange paper".
• Spiritual Successor: To the classic Mega Man games, sharing similar cartoony artstyle, music, and gameplay.
• Strawman Has a Point: Countershade, while infected, wants to overthrow humanity so robots can have equal rights. While this is presented as wrong, the humans use robots for gladiator fights and slaves despite the robots being sentient. As such, several players agreed with him.
• Tainted by the Preview: With the already existing criticism of the game's graphics, the trailers do it no favors. Taken further with the cheesy, cringeworthy, simply out-of-touch narration which just screams Narm, tries too hard to unironically be a throwback to the 90s, and the "make the bad guys cry like an anime fan on prom night" joke that's seen as outright insulting fans (of Mega Man or otherwise), backers, and newcomers alike. The trailer has been nearly universally disliked to the point that Inti Creates' CEO criticized Deep Silver for the trailer.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Cryo is considered very annoying due to her voice and the annoyance of "Pew pew pew!", as well as her endless slew of ice puns that don't disappear when you've beaten her; plus, her being the boss of the annoying water/ice level doesn't help. If you go to the military base with her, when she appears to help you in the background at one point, Dr. White chimes in:
  Dr. White: (annoyed) Cryo, I've told you... (pleasantly surprised) Ah, never mind! You'll serve as an adequate distraction!
  Shade: Maybe if you spent more time fighting, and less on your lame puns...
• Tear Jerker: The subpage is here.
• That One Boss:
  • Pyrogen is this alongside his level mentioned below, especially considering he's the very first in the list of eight that many players are likely to face first. Until one gets a hang of his animation and sound cues (for those playing with Japanese voices, two of the sound cues are extremely similar), it almost seems like his attacks are completely random, and like any boss, a direct hit will hurt. One of his attacks leaves a trail of fire in his wake that is hard to dash over, and another releases an explosion with some severe Hitbox Dissonance. Halfway through his health bar, he temporarily covers himself with blue flames — which makes his attacks even stronger, and if he happens to rush into and grab the player, he hugs Beck and releases an instant kill explosion.
  • Trinity, the Final Boss due to the fact that they're essentially a Marathon Boss. The fight brings to mind the Yellow Devil and its successors, but with no weaknesses to exploit, attacks that are excessively drawn out that almost seem like they're just to waste your time, and limited vulnerability on the boss itself. Your only saving grace is if, after dying, Patch gives you a free recovery item to use mid-battle — otherwise, it's one hell of a slog.
• That One Level:
  • The Capitol Building (Mighty No. 8/Countershade's Level) is the definition of a "Goddamned Level." It features Beck chasing after Shade in a stage that features annoying enemy placement, backtracking and, worst of all, One-Hit Kill traps, all while avoiding Shade's constant, ricocheting (and sometimes homing) shots that limit your mobility in a game that is all about keeping a fast pace. And if you die before the second part, you have to do it all over again from the start (which goes so well with the aforementioned deadly traps).
  • The Oil Platform is full of oily floors that make getting good footing difficult with fast enemies charging you at the same time. One section requires no jumping at all and falling off of the moving platforms drops you into one of those oil-soaked areas... which is set on fire almost immediately. Getting back out can be difficult due to the ledge grab not always working on moving platforms, and the reason you can't jump while riding them is an insta-kill spike ceiling the entire way though followed by a Kaizo Trap-like exploding barrel that can knock you into said spikes. This is followed by a section where Beck has to avoid falling silos and raining fireballs while running over dropping platforms and jumping over wide gaps that require air dashing onto narrow "safe" spots — safe as in "won't drop," because the fireballs will keep dropping. All followed by a difficult-to-dodge boss in a room with flaming walls. It's much easier if you've already got his weakness, but brutal if it's the first stage you try (which, considering it's the first stage listed, is likely the case).
  • The Robot Factory with its myriad of instant death traps. One particularly devious one has multiple layers of instant death spikes, making the player use Aviator's ability to slow their descent and move to the safe hole, wrangling with momentum from dashing; if your game has slow framerate, this section will kill you a lot. There are also multiple Hold the Line areas where you have to kill waves of enemies with the other Mighty Numbers, and one problematic encounter has them fighting in the background and creating a ton of visual noise, while the tiny, difficult-to-see Pico Police^note The bug-like enemies that Sanda screams at during Dynatron's level drop down and attack you.
• Uncertain Audience: A decent part of why this game flopped is that it just had no clue what it wanted to cater to. So it was a retro throw-back game to the Mega Man series, evidenced by the One-Hit Kill environment hazards and Video-Game Lives, while also trying to evolve that formula into something modern, which can be seen in mechanics like the Mighty Numbers assistance in the levels as well as the Xel absorption capabilities. The new additions in the game would be a hard sell for anyone who learned about Mighty No. 9 expecting it would be the traditional Mega Man-like the kickstarter campaign implied it would be, while non-Mega Man fans might find the appeals to nostalgia unfair in the gameplay.
• Unfortunate Character Design: Beck's pelvic design makes it look like he's wearing a metal-plated thong on top of his short shorts.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Dr. White. At the end of the game, he comes to the prison where Dr. Blackwell is currently staying. Dr. Blackwell is in prison because years ago, he committed an act of terrorism to prevent Trinity from causing the plot of the game from happening years earlier, without a Beck to purify her. Rather than apologize for creating a robot as unpredictable and dangerous as Trinity, and leaving her in the hands of the dangerously irresponsible Gregory Graham, he coldly lectures the old man who spent years in prison when he saved everyone from White's colossal screw-up, and dismisses the old man's concerns. Made worse because Dr. Blackwell is his father. So, unless this characterization is deliberate, he's far less sympathetic than he has any right to be.
• Unnecessary Makeover: Trinity's initial true form looks a little weird and unfitting among the other cast members, but that's not a bad thing; it helps her stand out and be unique, striking a nice in-between of Cryosphere and Dynatron's robot traits. Then she gets refitted into the more generic Ridiculously Human Robot Girl, a niche that Call already filled — and with a rejected Call design, natch.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • It came as quite a shock when the developers clarified that Mighty No. 2 was female, as many thought No. 3 was the only female boss due to No. 8's design ending up as male.
  • RAY's trailer did her no favors either. Concept art shows breasts on her figure, though hints to her gender on her form itself include the curve of her hip and her boots being high-heeled. It does not help that her design resembles Zero^note Which may have been intentional; her name is similar to rei, the Japanese word for "zero"., who was infamous in the fanbase for being mistaken as a girl.
• Win Back the Crowd: Mighty Gunvolt Burst came out with glowing praise, being a much less Nintendo Hard game with none of Beck's constant dashing, due to the levels being made to be able to be completed by everyone. It also had a Call DLC pack which references three other popular designs for Call, in alternate costumes she can find, and doesn't lock her to That One Level, instead giving her a parallel campaign. It then included a RAY DLC pack where you can cure her of her Xel decay issues in gameplay.

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