YMMV / Misfits

• Adorkable: In the first two seasons, Simon is a shy and awkward loner who still manages to be likeable, especially after his Character Development. He grows out of it in season 3, as he is not really a dork anymore.
• Anti-Climax Boss: In the Christmas special the man known as "Jesus" might be the most powerful foe the gang have faced. How is he defeated? He uses his psychic powers to pull a cabinet too hard and hits himself in the head. Hoist by His Own Petard. But hey, the gang still won.
  • Similarly, Brian. Curtis's lactose intolerance doesn't even come into play, and he just resets the whole episode to attack him before any of them were even famous.
• Awesome Music: Pretty much Once an Episode given the soundtrack in the show, which includes The Chemical Brothers, LCD Soundsystem and Echo & the Bunnymen. "Stick to Yr Guns" by The Cribs, "Paradise Circus" by Massive Attack, "Delicate" by Damien Rice, and "Laser Beam" by Low all also got huge boosts in popularity after being featured.I
• Base-Breaking Character: The new gang are these. Some find them enjoyable characters of their own right while others consider them to all be a Replacement Scrappy to the original gang.
• Broken Base: After the original cast sold their powers and especially after the complete cast overhaul the entire fanbase was completely split as to whether the show was still good or not. There's also other debate over whether the show was worth watching as early as after Nathan left, or if there was anything better than the first season.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Greg, the Drill Sergeant Nasty probation worker singing "The Power of Love".
• Complete Monster: Series 2 Episode 6: Brian, also known as Monsieur Grand Fromage or the "Milk Guy", was once a simple teaboy working in a cafe until the storm hit, where he gained the power of "lactokinesis". When he gets ignored in favour of other storm-affected individuals with more impressive powers, including the titular Misfits themselves, Brian goes on a murder spree to show how off how powerful he really is. First choking his girlfriend to death with the dairy product she ate earlier before doing the same to his talent agent and a woman with healing powers, he drowns Kelly with milk before kidnapping Alisha and killing both her and Nikki when Nikki accidentally teleports into the room he was hloding Alisha hostage in. When Nathan goes to confront Brian, he wraps the mozzarella Nathan had on his pizza around his central cortex to render him vegetative before resorting to stabbing Curtis when the latter reveals himself to be lactose intolerant.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • In the first episode, Alisha suggests the probation work might be on crystal meth, because her friend tried it and went so insane she nearly had sex with her brother — "and he's really ugly."
  • Nathan stomping on Marnie's afterbirth thinking it was an alien baby who needed to be killed.
    "It's the afterbirth, you dickhead!"
  • And while we're at it, just about everything that comes out of Nathan's mouth besides Carbon Dioxide.
  • "There's your sperm. So that's awkward."
  • Simon's premonition of Rudy holding his own dick that fell off before a lady stepped on it.
  • Rudy's fear of cheerleaders, thanks to being a kid when he saw his dad fuck his mom while she was dressed a cheerleader.
• Deus ex Machina: Superhoodie shows up a lot to save the characters at the last minute. Justified in that he's actually Simon from the future making sure history happens as it's supposed to, which raises its own chicken-and-egg problem.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Downplayed. Nathan isn't a villain, but he's still a pretty horrible person most of the time, but due to his looks and charisma he remains the most popular character on the show.
  • While a more heroic example than most, many fans forget just how creepy and perverted Simon is before his Character Development. He watches Kelly and Alisha change while he's invisible, eagerly tells Nathan that he should have filmed Alisha masturbating and is very close to putting his hand up a barely conscious Kelly's skirt and only stops because she starts to stir. The fact that his first thought is to feel up the seemingly unconscious girl alone on the steps outside of a club says a lot, especially when he then leaves her without thinking to summon help.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Though he becomes more of a straight Jerkass later, Shaun was surprisingly popular for being a Deadpan Snarker who gets by via plainly ignoring the Misfits' shenanigans because he can't be bothered to deal with them — but won't let them get arrested, either.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In 2.5, when asked why he bothers to try and rescue Simon from danger, Nathan replies: "The little bastard gets under your skin, doesn't he?". A couple of years later, Iwan Rheon, the actor playing Simon, joined the cast of Game of Thrones as Ramsay Snow, Lord Bolton's Ax-Crazy bastard son who enjoys flaying people alive.
  • In an episode of Series 1, Nathan pretends to be Bono from U2, but no one else gets it^note His clue? "I'm an annoying cunt.". Robert Sheehan later appeared in the movie Killing Bono.
  • Won't be the last time Robert Sheehan plays a character in a superhero show who can see ghosts. A lot of Nathan's lines, such as calling adopted kids nutjobs and walking around wearing the wedding dress, become a lot funnier after The Umbrella Academy was released. It gets even better when Season 3 reveals his Umbrella Academy character is immortal as well.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In the first episode, Kelly saves the day by kicking the shit out of their probation worker, specifically kicking his head in. Kelly would later be written out of the series when her actress, Lauren Socha, was arrested and convicted for a racially-motivated aggravated assault, made worse by the fact their probation worker was a Person of Colour (and was only a danger because his "power", but was otherwise an innocent victim of the Mass Empowering Event). In Kelly's case it wasn't racially motivated, but it's hard not to squirm at the visual of her beating up a black man knowing what her actress would go on to do.
• Ho Yay:
  • Nathan and Simon. It starts off as Nathan essentially sexually harassing Simon for shock value, but as their friendship develops, Nathan's teasing seems to evolve into genuine affection. And then there's the episode in which Nathan is mind-controlled into falling genuinely in love with Simon, much to the latter's bemusement, since Nathan's attentions go from obnoxious to sweet and gentle. By the time community service ends and Nathan playfully swats Simon's ass on the way out, Simon actually grins.
  • Season 3 brings us Rudy and his other self, what with the wrestling and talk of fucking himself. The Season 5 premiere lampshades this, with Rudy Too's attempts to get Rudy One to join a superpower support group sounding like an effort to make him join couples therapy.
  • Abbey meets a girl at the bar, Laura, who's smell she recognises, making it one of her few memories. She sniffs her a few times, jokes about fucking her with a strap-on, then tells her she's the best smelling person ever.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Nathan's power might have been a big season one spoiler, but it caught on so quickly as a Tumblr meme that it's now common knowledge even among those who have never watched the show.
  • The identity of Superhoodie isn't exactly a secret either.
• Jerkass Woobie: Nathan, whose jerkassery is largely balanced out by the fact that the writers simply adore placing him in unpleasant situations (though he often has it coming). Essentially, the universe hates him so we don't have to.
• Memetic Mutation: Nathan is basically a Fountain of Memes.
  • SAVE ME BARRY!
  • "I'm immortal!"
  • Monkey slut.
  • "Melon fucker!"
• Narm:
  • Super Hoodie does a big badass jump from the top of a building and throws... a bag of peanuts. Granted they do save the day later but it's still an incredibly silly moment.
  • When after Simon dies in Alisha's arms, the latter briefly sounds like she has constipation .
• Replacement Scrappy: Rudy to some fans. Somewhat inevitable given Nathan's popularity.
  • Depending on your perspective, the entire second crew can come off like this: aside from Rudy borrowing a lot from Nathan, Finn and Jess are clearly intended to fill the gap left by Simon and Alisha, while Abby was pretty obviously written in to replace Kelly. Alex somewhat gets away with it by being introduced before Curtis leaves the series and having less in common with the character he takes over from, but he's the exception. However, they all eventually grow away from the originals and become rounded characters in their own right, and mostly did gain their share of fans by the end of the series.
• Retroactive Recognition: While it's less of a surprise to British audiences, quite a few of the stars are now well known for their work on US TV shows, as well as a few UK TV shows that are equally big in the US, such as Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Downton Abbey. For an American viewer getting directed towards their earlier work on Misfits, watching the show can lead to quite a few cases of this trope:
  • Simon is Ramsay Snow!
  • Nathan's mum is Catelyn Stark!
  • Gary is Pyp!
  • Nikki is Raina and Tulip!
  • Rudy is Cassidy!
  • Jess is Rebecca Pine!
  • Marnie is Clea!
  • Abby is The Abominable Bride!
  • Lily is Jenny (the one from the Paternoster Gang.) Not the Doctor's daughter!
  • Rachel is Lady Sybil!
  • Lola's ex is Nick Cutler!
  • The first probation worker is Aaron's dad in Chewing Gum!
  • The girl who seduces Curtis/Melissa is Abigail in Lovesick!
  • Nathan is Klaus Hargreaves!
  • Helen is Meera Reed!
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • Nathan and Marnie. It's nigh impossible to believe that the extremely selfish, baby-hating Nathan who is only interested in women for sex would fall completely in love with the pregnant, homeless Marnie within minutes of talking with her, let alone decide to support her financially (while also homeless) and raise the baby as his own all in the course of a single episode.
  • Happens with Alisha and Future!Simon. Their relationship is developed over the course of two episodes, Alisha only falls in love with him or even tries to connect with him in the first place is because he tells her she will, and because he's the only person that can touch her.
• Squick:
  • In 3.6 Rudy drops his ice cream upon discovering while urinating what his one night stand did to his nether regions. More specifically, his dock was gonna call of thanks to a superpowered STD.
  • Sarah turning Mark inside out. And this is just after the poor guy stopped being a tortoise, too!
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Brian, the "Milk Guy." Many hoped for what was essentially the season finale and the end of their community service and, as it would turn out, the last time the cast all had their original powers, and one of the last times they were all together to make a serious discussion of fame and give the cast a chance to all use their powers as a team to defeat an apparently unstoppable bad guy. Instead, the morals don't really matter because Curtis resets everything, and Brian easily kills everybody except Curtis. Overall, there's not a single time all the original cast is able to use their powers together, and few times that the cast even uses their powers to defeat the Villain of the Week rather than rely on a Deus ex Machina or simply luck.
  • Even ignoring how Robert Sheehan left the show, forcing the writers to get rid of Nathan, many feel than series 3 made a big mistake in making the gang end up on community service again. After series 2 made a big deal about how their community service was almost over and the Christmas special showed the gang trying to adapt to living normal lives, many feel it was a missed opportunity to not continue that and do new things with the show.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Everybody's life sucks from start to finish but it definitely falls into it when, by midway through Series 4, all five originals have departed the series, four of them for unhappy reasons - three die and one ends up in prison, leaving only one to enjoy anything close to a happy life.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Many of the villains can be perceived as this. Most of them were always down on their luck Butt Monkeys before they got their powers, such as Brian the "Milk Guy". He led an incredibly mundane life, then his powers made him famous, then when other people with better powers came along everyone started to ignore him again. Then again, Howard Overman did state in an interview that he tried to avoid creating wholly "good" or "evil" characters, and tried to give all of the antagonists at least some logical motives for the way they behaved. So most of them were probably intended to be somewhat sympathetic.
  • Simon was originally written as a villain but this was scrapped when the writers realized that viewers liked him.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Sally on paper has reasons for her behaviour. She is worried about Tony (they were together) and she suspects something is going on. However the way she goes about finding this out takes away a lot of sympathy from her. Namely manipulating Simon - read: an emotionally vulnerable teenager with a crush on her - and borderline seducing him for information. And she also physically attacks him when he discovers the truth.
  • All the original cast in the Christmas special. The show goes to great pains to insist that their powers bring them nothing but problems, making them eager to sell them off for a relatively small sum. While it makes sense that Alisha would want to get rid of her millstone power, you have characters like Curtis whose power has only ever been useful (outside of having to repeatedly break up with his girlfriend) and it's agonizing that nobody else seemed to bother to either train to get control over their powers (Nikki) or even just brainstorm ways to make them useful (Kelly), outside of Simon. Sure, the previous episode had An Aesop about not exploiting powers to get famous, but there are still myriad other ways to use them productively that should be obvious to a group of troublemakers. At least the new cast figures out how to use their powers.
    • It's especially egregious in Curtis's case, since Nikki dies in that episode and he seemingly forgets about her in Season Three and now he has the new power to turn into a girl. Then his time travel power is lost because Seth put it into his pet iguana, which died, therefore nobody can use it ever again.
  • Finn's constant pouting and sulking that Jess won't have sex with him falls into this, especially since he comes across Entitled to Have You and acts like merely wanting Jess is enough to have her when he offers absolutely nothing as a boyfriend and she's made it clear multiple times she isn't interested. At least in Rudy's case he just flirts with all women, but Finn constantly snarks and insults any boy Jess likes as if he has a claim on her already.
• The Woobie:
  • Painfully shy and lonely Simon endured years of bullying prior to the show, and still doesn't get off lightly mostly due to his and Nathan's personality clash.
  • Rudy's literal split personality has this in the introverted one, who admits that Rudy tried to kill himself after he lost his virginity to Alisha and she treated him badly. Later on, his womanizing ways stop and he genuinely falls in love with a sweet, innocent girl who dies.
  • Curtis loses his athletic career, his girlfriend dies, he gets himself pregnant, his next girlfriend uses him and tries to kill him, then finally he becomes a zombie and shoots himself to save the rest from infection.
  • Sarah, the girl Alex has sex with after they both take ecstasy at a party and she ends up with all the powers Alex fucked out of other people (after getting rid of her first, very inconvenient one). He even tearfully says as he prepares to kill her that none of this was her fault and she didn't deserve to die.

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