YMMV / Nuclear Throne

• Awesome Music: The entire soundtrack is memorable.
  • The Scrapyard B-Theme, Secret Entrance, is a mournful, spaghetti-western-style piece that will bring tears to your eyes.
  • The main theme, a haunting introduction to the game's world you can hear just by opening the title screen.
  • Crystalized Fear, appropriately enough for the theme of the Crystal Caves area, rocks. The song slowly ramps up towards the 40-second mark, then fully unleashes.
  • The final boss theme, aptly named "Nuclear Throne", a remix of the main theme that has a great sense of finality to it.
  • Kings and Queens of Wasteland, which plays during post-victory credits. Also doubles as an exceptional Tear Jerker.
  • The Oasis theme, Under Water, guest starring Danny B. of The Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy fame.
  • Machine God, the Technomancer's boss theme, is a techno remix of the main theme, standing in stark contrast to the spaghetti western theme most other tracks have.
  • The One They Left Behind, Lil' Hunter's theme, sounds frantic and, in parts, like something straight out of a horror game, fitting his manic personality and tragic backstory.
• Breather Level: Compared to That One Boss before it and the Palace after it, the Labs can be this to you. With a weapon like the Splinter Gun or a Crossbow with Homing Bolts, it's easy to gain some sort of Catharsis Factor by killing Freaks en masse.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Getting the Crown of Blood is a must have for dailies and weeklies. While it makes the game more dangerous, it also lets you farm up your score moreso than if you played normally.
• Demonic Spiders: Honestly, given the nature of this game, it would be faster to just list the few enemies that aren't Demonic Spiders. A few notable examples, though:
  • The scorpions encountered in the Drylands, the first area of the game you spawn in. They not only attack in a shotgun-like, room-clearing sprays of bullets that sail across the map, but there almost always seems to be two in any given area, making approaching them incredibly dangerous. If that wasn't enough, there's a golden variant that shoots even MORE projectiles at once on top of exploding when it dies. They've thankfully been nerfed. However, they still deal a good chunk of damage on contact.
  • The assassins encountered in the Sewers and the Scrapyard. They start out by feigning death for a while, then run at you extremely fast in an erratic fashion and, once within melee range, take off a gigantic chunk of your health by swinging their pipe. In addition their melee swing reflects projectiles just like the player's, so if you shoot when they attack you'll get your projectiles reflected back in your face in combination with the Assassin's damage, often guaranteeing your own death. If you see one enter the screen charging towards you, you usually only have a second to react before you're dead. It doesn't help that you're usually busy picking off the resident Goddamned Bats when it shows up.
  • The Sniper robots in the Scrapyard can be nerve-wracking to deal with, primarily because their line of sight is not limited by range — if you can draw a straight line to your character, they can and will line up a shot, they will typically be sitting behind a decent-sized horde of crows and bandits, and even managing to get close isn't guaranteed to work, since they explode on death.
  • I.D.P.D. Shielders are the bane of existence of anyone playing as Rogue, players badass enough to loop, or an unlucky fool who just opened a proto statue or I.D.P.D. chest. Not only do they possess firepower equivalent to Big Bandit, but they can withstand a metric ton of punishment and shield themselves just like Crystal when you're in the middle of whaling on them. The only saving grace to fighting them is that certain weapons can go through the shield. Better hang on to those explosive rounds... and maybe that shovel, too.
  • The Snowbots, common enemies from the Frozen City, can easily be dispatched from a distance, but up close their Charge Attack can take a player by surprise or reach them before they have time to reload. Their most devastating attack, however, is picking up a car and throwing it at you, which they can do from any distance as long as you're in their direct line of sight.
  • Few enemies are feared to the extent of the Dog Guardians, encountered in the Palace. They have almost twice as much health as Big Bandit, deal 6 damage on contact, and can lunge at the player. What really causes them to be so feared is that if they charge at you, they will deal contact damage as they pass through you and then deal damage again when they land, meaning they'll instantly kill just about everyone. And as if that wasn't bad enough, they're immune to knockback during their lunge, meaning they can't be stunlocked like other charging enemies.
  • All of the Elite I.D.P.D. are fearsome:
    • The ones that people are generally the most afraid of are the Elite I.D.P.D. Grunts. They're incredibly fast, hard-to-hit, and are surprisingly tanky. That's also all packaged in with a gun that's on par with a standard I.D.P.D. Shielder's in terms of fire rate and a missile that can very easily catch you off guard, and possibly even kill you provided you don't have one of the two the mutations to withstand a hit from one.
    • The Inspectors are no slouches either. They have insanely strong Telekinesis, making it difficult to land a shot on them. They've also traded their Slugger for an energy sword that is guaranteed to kill you in one shot if you don't have Rhino Skin or Strong Spirit active. They're essentially assassins with Telekinesis, only with more health. They also like to hide in groups of other I.D.P.D. until you get close and then start charging. Thankfully, they don't seem to move as quickly as Assassins, so you at least have more time to react.
    • Just like their previous iterations, the Elite Shielders have ridiculously high firepower and can take a lot of fire. They've traded their regular gun for a plasma minigun that is very likely to kill in one shot. Not only that, but now, when the Shielders activate their shield, they teleport! If one of these guys shows up, you're not going to have an easy time, especially with the other I.D.P.D. swarming the area.
• Difficulty Spike: The Scrapyard. The area is the first to include stage hazards that are difficult to avoid (exploding cars and flame-launchers), is replete with both Goddamn Bats (Crows) and Demonic Spiders (those goddamn Assassins and Snipers), and the boss of the stage, Big Dog, spams out Bullet Hell and explodes as a Kaizo Trap; both tropes which become themes for all bosses after him.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Yung Venuz is definitely one of the more liked characters, based on the amounts of fanart and discussion about him. It helps that he had a mildly popular game before this.
  • Yung Cuz is also loved, by association and for being adorable, which is amazing considering that he's an NPC that only appears during YV's Ultras. When it comes to game mods, Yung Cuz is one of the first candidates for playable characters.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Calling Yung Venuz a "knockoff Bill Cipher" despite him being created before Bill.
• Game-Breaker:
  • At one point, turning into Skeleton and choosing his Redemption Ultra allowed him to keep almost every mutation in the game, save for a few ones which didn't carry over from the initial transformation.
  • Certain weapons, when combined with complimentary mutations (like the energy screwdriver with Laser Brain and Long Arms), can become insanely powerful. Said screwdriver synergy has such high DPS that (in addition to destroying most projectiles) it can carve through the game's toughest enemies as though they were butter. That's not even getting into how such combinations can mesh with the mutant's special abilities…
  • Thanks to their respective telekinetic and throwing abilities, Eyes and Chicken can bring extra weapons through portals. If you're patient and take care to bring every weapon you can through the levels, you'll amass a hoard of weapons for every ammunition type, ensuring that you'll always have a backup weapon to use whenever you run out of a specific ammo type.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Rats of the Sewers. They are simple melee enemies which just run into you for 2 damage, but they are slighter beefier than a Bandit, making low-tier weapons like Revolvers and Screwdrivers less reliable, and are so common that they typically cover most if not all corridors of the map. Their AI isn't predictable either, for they can choose to either rush you or run away from you at a moment's notice. Fortunately, they have a couple hard counters; Plant's snare stops them dead in their tracks, and the Gamma Guts mutation renders them completely harmless by killing them on contact without damaging you.
  • Ravens, the common grunts of the Scrapyard. Basically a beefed up version of the Bandit, with more health, greater firepower, and the added ability to fly, giving them free license to swarm around you or flee from combat as they see fit. It's not at all uncommon to end up slowly killing them one by one in the starting cul de sac before having a clear shot at the Sniper pinning you in there.
  • The Guardians in the Palace aren't too dangerous individually, but they tend to come in massive groups, where they usually end up filling the map with shots. Oh, and they spawn in the same area as Dog Guardians.
  • Maggots may be the weakest enemy, and aren't a threat even in groups, but that doesn't make them any less annoying. Due to their small size, they're really hard to notice when preoccupied with stronger enemies, during which they can sneak up on you and take away 1 of your HP.
• Good Bad Bugs: In the Desert levels, there is a very small chance for Big Bandit to spawn slightly further inside the walls, causing the game to forcibly destroy his object. This leads to an unintentionally hilarious method of ending the level if he dies this way right after being summoned using the Oasis shortcut method.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Rebel has been a historically difficult character to balance, as her Cast from Hit Points playstyle was too punishing for too little reward. At least one highly active forum thread was dedicated to discussing ways to "fix" her. After many tweaks to cost of spawning allies, and her passive ability, it seems that she has finally been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap after receiving a new passive ability that heals her partially after entering a portal. Still, some play her exclusively for that passive ability, ignoring the Cast from Hit Points active.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • A few of the loading screen tips, including;
    • Fish can roll.
    • Steroids could do push-ups forever.
    • Crystal can handle this.
  • On a meta level, the fanbase has come up with their own memes:
    • "YOU CAN'T NERF A GOD."^note Said whenever a streaming NT player manages to totally wreck the later loops without dying.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The chime that plays when you ultra mutate.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Some of the loading screen messages are pretty creepy.
  "There used to be trees here."
  "It's not fair, it's not right"
  "The future brings death"
  "I SEE YOU"^note Only appears when carrying a Cursed Weapon
  • Chicken's ability to survive decapitation when you really think about it, since you can still control her headless body until it finally gives out from blood loss. All you can do is hope there's a health pickup nearby and spray frantically as you pray for a health kit.
    • Not to mention Chicken being in that condition. What the hell is she feeling during all of this? Even worse yet, how the hell can Chicken survive being decapitated in the first place?
    • Truth in Television: Rarely, chickens have been able to survive without their head for months, in what one must imagine is a living hell. Though Chicken herself downplays this with her only being able to survive for several seconds.
    • The horrible gurgling noises she makes while headless. It's more easily heard when you pause the game, which also treats the player to an enlarged sprite of Chicken without a head.
  • The Nuclear Throne's true nature. At first, it just appears as a trap set up to trick the mutants, but Throne II ups the ante by a lot, as the throne grows tentacles, which reveals the possibility that the Throne might be an Eldritch Abomination. What part does it play for itself in all of this? What was its past like?
    • Even worse, as you damage Throne II, you can hear it screaming. Can it think?
  • The Labs. Easily one of the creepiest areas of the game, this stage can really throw players off by unpredictable waves of enemies from offscreen, some of which can explode and kill you immediately.
    • The nature of the Lab's enemies is extremely unnerving. The Freaks resemble twisted hybrids of some of the playable mutants; enjoy being blown up by a suicidal cross between Plant and Melting. What exactly they are and how they were created is a mystery, but whatever the answer is, it can't be good.
  • The Cursed Crystal Caves, with its creepy distorted music and enemies that glitch around or duplicate upon being killed. Even worse is that the crystal enemies shriek like other random enemies in the games upon being killed.
  • Skeleton, an alternate form of Melting achieved by dying inside a Necromancer's resurrection circle, can be this. The tone of Skeleton's lines and his Ultra mutations seem to imply he remembers being Melting, but harbors a newer, sinister outlook now that he doesn't feel pain anymore... Along with a few other things. The loading screen tips for his Ultra mutations also seem to indicate that he's legitimately torn on whether a life of agony with brief moments of peace is better or worse than feeling almost nothing at all.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Having to destroy four generators during The Throne boss fight, which is required to enter a loop as of update 91, while previously simply defeating the boss would result in looping. Most complaints are directed not at the mere presence of the generators (although a fair share of players would like to see them completely gone), but at their high HP (making an already Damage-Sponge Boss battle even harder from an ammunition standpoint) and the fact that the boss may easily force the player to retreat past the generators, making it impossible to destroy them.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Coming back to camp after the Palace, only to find it overrun with the IDPD and all of the other player characters dead on the ground. Because the others didn't join you and collect weapons or level up, they had to fight off the IDPD with just their starting weapons and abilities. Though it might just be that you fell into an Alternate Universe where the IDPD found the camp, rather than go back to the one you started at... the game gets a little confusing by that point.
  • The song playing during the credits. A slow piece which mourns the hyper-violent life mutants are forced to live because it's the only thing they can do to survive a cruel and uncaring world. Kind of puts the game in a different perspective...
  • Destroying the TV when you meet Yung Cuz. Why would you do that? He just wanted to play his game, and now he's crying...
• That One Achievement: Aside from the achievements associated with the sidequests below:
  • Unstoppable: This achievement requires you to reach Level Ultra as Skeleton. Not only is merely getting to play as Skeleton obscure enough, but getting him to live long enough to reach Level Ultra is a challenge in itself. A mere 0.2 percent of players have this.
  • Impossible!: The name is very apt, as it requires Chicken to sit on the Nuclear Throne... while headless. This means that you have to willingly let her die and beat the final boss within an incredibly narrow time frame. 0.5% of players have this. Of course, you could just have Chicken walk into the Throne while it's exploding, but that only works if you don't have Boiling Veins.
  • Good Riddance: Requires you to get a Golden Disc Gun or Golden Nuke Launcher. The problem with this achievement is that nobody can agree on the actual method to get them. 0.3% of players have it, so it's certainly possible, yet still incredibly obscure. Supposedly, they show up in the weapon drop rules when you reach 7-3 on Hard Mode with the Crown of Guns, which is difficult in itself.
• That One Boss:
  • Lil' Hunter has a long history as one of the most frustrating bosses in the game despite getting reworked several times. He spawns after a short delay upon entering the map, meaning the player has very little time to prepare for the fight. He fights using hit-and-run tactics, trying to land on the player with his jetpack, shooting bouncing bullets and calling in I.D.P.D before flying away and repositioning. If you're far away, he can burst-fire lines of bullets that are hard to dodge and deal a lot of damage, and when he dies, he starts flying around randomly before exploding, potentially taking the player with him. This is the most recent iteration of Lil' Hunter and by far the most merciful.
    • Like Big Dog below, the game's level generation can also make Lil' Hunter harder than he needs to be, as an unlucky spawn can prevent the player from clearing the immediate area before he spawns, forcing the player to deal with any enemies nearby, Lil' Hunter himself, and the IDPD he spawns.
  • The I.D.P.D Captain is completely optional, but she is one of the most complicated fights in the game with Bullet Hell action rivaling the likes of Touhou Project and a ramming attack that deals an insanely high amount of damage. She is also fiendishly hard to reach, as the I.D.P.D. Headquarters is tricky to get to in the first place and is filled with almost nothing but Demonic Spiders.
  • Big Dog is sometimes cited as this, but not because of itself, rather the level where the Boss Battle takes place. Since Big Dog is, well, so big, the generated map must be much more open than other levels, with much wider passages to allow Dog to move around. This may sometimes result in one, completely open field, where all the level's enemies immediately gang up on you the moment you spawn. Also, friendly fire just passes through Big Dog, which means that if there are enemies left behind it, they can shoot you freely, and you can't hurt them. This has led to jokes that Big Dog is an enemy guarding the real boss of the Scrapyard: two snipers pelting you from the other side of the map.
  • Ballmum/Mom for players good enough to loop, to the point where some players would rather fight The Captain than her. Her toxic shot covers a wide area and heals her when she gets hit by it. It's not uncommon to be stuck because she can heal herself faster than you can deal damage to her. Not only that, but she constantly spawns Ballguys, that are very likely to turn into Toxic Ballguys due to Mom's poison shots. Typically the best strategy for her is to mash the fire button with a high-power weapon and hope you can deal damage quickly enough. Thankfully, Mom's projectiles can be blocked with melee weapons.
  • Hostile Horror is an optional fight provoked only by skipping two Radiation Canisters in a row, but it's very possible to trigger it by accident, and you're in for a rough time if you do. It's a textbook definition of Glass Cannon, having only 60 HP (for reference, Big Bandit has 100) but capable of firing a radiation beam which can carve through all of your HP in less than a second. And like Lil' Hunter, you are prone to fighting it alongside a cluster of normal enemies, but it's even worse in that regard because it spawns as soon as you enter the level, giving you absolutely no chance to clear an area of enemies in preparation.
• That One Sidequest:
  • If you want to unlock Melting's alternate skin, you need to beat The Throne without having taken either the Rhino Skin or Strong Spirit mutations. It wouldn't be so bad, but you also need to do it as Melting, essentially meaning you need to go through the entire game without getting hit once.
  • Unlocking Rogue's B-skin requires you to beat the I.D.P.D Captain while playing as her. Rogue is already a difficult character to play with from the start thanks to the fact that her passive causes I.D.P.D to spawn every level, but looping with her so you can go to one of the hardest areas in the game and fight one of the hardest bosses? That's another story entirely.
  • Chicken's B-skin is unlocked by reaching the Sewers as her... on Hard Mode. Even before taking the mode on, you have to do the excruciating task of looping twice to even unlock it. As for actually working toward her B-skin, Hard Mode automatically starts characters out on a loop, but with the weapon pools at the beginning of the game.
• The Woobie:
  • Melting. He is always tired, and if his loading screen blurbs are anything to go by, lives every day of his life in agonizing pain. Poor little guy.
  • Heck, the same could be said for the main mutants in general with "Kings and Queens of Wasteland," they're only trying to survive...