YMMV / Rainbow Six Siege

• Abridged Arena Array: Competitive formats have a map pool restricted to the ones considered most balanced for the Bomb gamemode. With the pick-and-ban system extended to maps in the Ranked and Unranked playlist, some are definitely preferred more than others by the general playerbase as well.
  • Coastline is basically two donuts stacked on top of each other. The central courtyard and small size makes it particularly easy for Attackers to get into the building, but long hallways and large rooms give Defenders ample room to maneuver and counter opponents looking in from outside. Its simplicity puts larger emphasis on players' gunskill than complex strategizing.
  • Oregon is a larger map, but still fairly straight-forward. The rework made it more comfortable for both teams with more room to maneuver and plenty of angles to attack from.
  • Clubhouse is remarkably balanced with enough breathing room for both attackers and defenders. The map has fairly distinct "regions" that can individually controlled. There are many straight-forward paths to the site, especially on the second floor, but there is still plenty of cover for the Defenders to contest from.
  • Kafe is a classic map whose rework only made it better. The floorplan is relatively easy to learn with excellent potential for verticality and fighting for control of each floor. However, it is also straightforward enough for horizontal attacks even with less-coordinated teams.
  • Border is small but the deceptively large rooms making firefights interesting. Exterior balconies give Attackers ways to control objectives from the outside while still allowing counterplay by Defenders horizontally and vertically.
  • Bank has been practically unchanged since release, and still has some issues with an extremely exposed second floor and lobby, annoying bulletproof bars, and spawnpeeks. However, it still has enough room for roamers to play around with and there are ways for Attackers to directly enter the building through the basement, giving them more options for unbarricadable access.
  • Consulate is a small, frag-heavy map pretty much unchanged since release with enough room for roamers to strut their stuff and attackers to enter the building. There is also a large amount of vertical potential for flexibility. While the number of windows and spawnpeeks are a little frightening, Attackers on rappel can easily cut sites in half but in turn be contested by many run-outs.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: A few people have speculated that Jäger could be autistic. Noticing how he has displayed traits similar to those on the spectrum. Namely his incredible talent and passion for his chosen field, lack of humility, and inability to read social cues.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Tactical breaching hammers are a thing in real military and police applications, where a designated sledgehammer is used to gain entry to a blocked area by smashing down doors and windows or other such structural weaknesses to create an opening. The in-game demonstration is rather excessive and exaggerated, however, since soft walls will be reduced to splinters in one to two swings, whereas real hammer breaching is much less destructive and only intended to create an opening large enough for the task at hand instead of completely destroying a given barrier.
  • Ceramic inlays are an actual type of armor that has been in existence in several forms for the better part of a century. Their purpose is to shatter upon impact by a high-velocity projectile to deflect and/or reduce its kinetic energy and preventing it from penetrating through the armor layer. The DBNO timer extension as demonstrated in-game is fictional, however.
  • The tech in the ERC-7, called Diminished Reality, does exist in real life. Its in-game depiction is a futuristic advanced version of it.
  • While GSG 9 operators all wearing hoodies, jeans and sneakers is definitely Artistic License – Military, it does have a basis in reality - Spezialeinsatzkommandos (SEK) are a German special response unit of state police that really do have members just put their equipment over plainclothes◊ (off-duty officers do it when suddenly asked to report to a crime scene to save time), and sneakers can legitimately be advantageous over combat boots by the virtues of being much lighter and quieter. Lesion's cargo shorts could also be explained the same way, as some Hong Kong Police units are known to go into combat in cargo shorts when in emergency reaction operations.
  • All open-bolt firearms either in the game on Day 1 or added in prior to Operation Blood Orchid had the ability to have a "round in chamber" like their closed-bolt brethren. As of that operation, all open-bolt guns prior no longer have this ability, and those introduced as of this op and after don't have it in the first place. However, despite being an open-bolt gun, the 6P41 used by Fuse and Finka, is capable of such a feat due to the design of the weapon, and should have been exempt from this change. Due to the 7.62x54mmR cartridge being a rimmed cartridge, the weapon uses a two-stage feed mechanism with a cartridge-gripping claw that pulls the rimmed rounds out of the belt backwards, drops them into the feed way, before pushing them into the chamber when firing. The round in the feed way thus counts as the "+1", as this is the round that is ready to be sent forward into the chamber.
  • It is actually very common for an American Delta like Maverick to be wearing traditional Afghan attire in Afghanistan, as it helps them blend in with the local population.
• Awesome Music:
  • The sadly unused theme A Finishing Action
  • The triumphant theme used for the Invitationals.
  • The driving rock themes used for the 2019 Raleigh Major.
• Broken Base:
  • Operation Health. This is controversial for a number of reasons. One side criticized the delay and cancellation of content in favor of game fixes that should have been present at release. Others defended the choice by as the game really was too buggy and laggy in its then-current state, with the fixes being well-needed regardless of whether they were "late".
  • Spawn peeking. While window peeking is considered dirty but acceptable at times, spawn rushing is extremely controversial and had sparked many debates about whether or not this tactic should be stopped. Critics of spawn rushing consider the tactic to be extremely cheap, breaking the tactical gameplay into a mad shootout, and requiring little to no skill to execute, only the luck for the player to choose the correct spawn to rush and a few lucky headshots. Defenders of spawn rushing consider it to be fine since spawns are mostly designed with good cover, and that the 2-second detection should be enough in most cases for attackers to focus their team's fire on one target.
  • The removal of maps. At the start of the Blood Orchid season, Ubisoft announced that the available maps in Ranked games would be reduced, eliminating a handful of maps to keep the Ranked playlist analogous to the pro league map playlst. This also included eliminating two maps, Favela and Yacht, from Casual games as well. This change was fairly controversial — although a majority of fans dislike Favela and Yacht as maps, some fans disliked removing content from the game as a broad concept while others mourned the loss of maps from the Ranked playlist. Other fans countered that the removed maps were not sufficiently balanced for competitive play.
  • The monetization model. Rainbow Six Siege has no less than five different models of monetization, including selling the game, selling season passes for DLC Operators that otherwise takes days of grind to get to unlock (25,000 Renown for one Operator when an average 30 minute game gives 400 renown if you do good), selling in-game cosmetics that use R6 Credits (a premium currency that can be bought with real money), selling content packs of other cosmetics that can't be bought with R6 Credits, and selling randomized cosmetic packs bought with R6 Credits in the case of Outbreak packs. The already complicated and controversial situation is complicated further by things such as alternate game versions, including the infamous Starter Edition, a cheaper version of the game that gave, depending on when in the game's life you bought it, four to six free base game operators at random, but boosted every other base Operator to 12,500 Renown - and, later, during Operation Chimera, being left almost completely in the dust when all the base game Operators were unlocked for standard edition players who didn't already have them all (starter edition only shared all weapon attachments also being made free and still getting random "sales" on how much renown a base-game Operator cost - though they would later remove the Starter edition entirely, upgrading everyone who owned it to the standard edition and getting all its benefits). Even the cosmetic themselves are a mess of pricing with inconsistent Renown vs R6 Credit prices, mildly different cosmetics having giant price differences, and internally inconsistent item rank vs pricing differences. It's a hot mess that creates endless debates and discussions every time it is brought up.
  • There has been some controversy over the character designs for Operators over their realism aspects. Many players (especially old-timers) have voiced their preference for more realistic character models and cosmetics (and sometimes weapons as well), calling out over things that would be impractical, unrealistic, or silly in real life, like Zofia and Ela's sister rivalry bio, Dokkaebi and Ela's yoga pants, and Lion's rather excessively detailed and edgy background. Mozzie is decried by many Australian fans for looking like he comes straight out of Mad Max. The big reasoning to these complaints is the brand name: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, a name that was associated with tactics and realism since its inception. Ubisoft's treatment of the brand name didn't go well with many players.
  • Many players are also disgruntled by the changes in the game's background lore, such as the introduction of the PMC Nighthaven, with several Rainbow team members defecting to them, alongside the reveal that the matches are in-universe competitions. As such, the counter-terrorism aspects of the game, such as older material regarding the White Masks seemed to be thrown out.
  • At the Six Invitational 2020, Year 5 was revealed to only come with six new operators (seven if you include the Tachanka rework) compared to the previous years' eight, along with only map reworks. While some fans appreciated that the developers were focusing more on fixing the game as it is than releasing more broken operators and unpopular maps every three months, others were disappointed with the steadily diminishing amount of new content and feared that Siege is reaching the end of its life cycle.
  • Prior to the Year 5 reveal, fears of diminishing new content were already present due to the reuse of weapons for Nokk and Warden. While Ubisoft justified it with the difficulty of balancing new weapons, data limits and giving overlooked weapons new roles (ex. Smoke's FMG-9 almost always being passed up for the M590 due to the SMG-11 and so it is Nokk's only automatic primary), some fans were not convinced and raised concerns that operators sharing weapons made them harder to balance (such as Castle and Pulse's UMP45) among other accusations of Ubisoft being lazy.
  • The biggest changes to basic mechanics in Y6S2 including changing small bullet holes to be opaque and making dead bodies despawn after a short time. Some players saw them as Ubisoft caving to whiny pro players and compromising the vision of the game for "competitive integrity" yet again (like removing Zofia's Withstand). Others sided with the pros, noting how tiny bullet holes had little options for counterplay and client-sided bodies would end up leading to unfair fights; changes that made the game fairer for everyone would be crucial for the game's longevity.
• Casual-Competitive Conflict: Unlike other competitive shooters like Counter-Strike, there is a profound disconnect between casual and competitive scenes. Higher ranks see tactics and communication rule the meta while lower ranks get by on running and gunning. Those that want to play the game for fun don't care about how professionals play and get upset when Ubisoft balances the game according to feedback from Pro-League, feeling that they are not being listened to and that professionals are a bunch of "Stop Having Fun" Guys crying for the removal of things like Zofia's Withstand. Competitive players counter that games balanced for the top level of play also make it fairer for the casual community, as they have a greater understanding of how the game works and the casuals also get listened to for fun suggestions, such as BOSGACOG.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • If a weapon can accept the ACOG, it will be equipped with the ACOG. It's the only scope with a 2.5x magnification, and that is damn useful in almost all situations.
    • If a weapon doesn't have an ACOG, the highest magnification sight will have to do. If limited to 1.0x sights only, the EOTech holographic or Russian reflex is the preferred choice. The 1.5x scope is a favorite due to its clean reticle and comfortable level of zoom for all ranges.
  • The Muzzle Brake is supposed to only lower the recoil for the first shot by 20%, but when it was added, a bug caused it to apply its recoil reduction for every shot. It was the only thing people used for a while because of this. After the bug was fixed, the muzzle attachment of choice was the flash hider for its vertical recoil reduction and redirection of the muzzle flash.
  • Don't know who to play? Just pick Ash or Jager. Great guns, universally useful gadgets, they are so popular there are players who only play as these two, even after Jager received nerfs.
  • In any given Ranked game, no matter the map, the operator bans will typically be Thatcher, Jackal, Montagne, Ram, Dokkaebi, Clash, Mira, Fenrir, Valkyrie or Echo due to their powerful (or simply irritating) abilities.
• Crossover Ship: Thanks to the Friendly Fandoms situation with Girls' Frontline, fans of both series like to pair the operators with the girl representing a gun they use in the game. The most popular of these are Tachanka and DP-28, Fuze and AK-12 and Jaeger with HK-416, the last of which even got referenced◊ in episode 10 of the animated Healing Chapter shorts.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Bombers in the Terrorist Hunt mode. If they know you're there, they'll beeline for you and suicide-bomb on your face, instantly killing you regardless of condition and situation. If one shoots their bomb devices they can't suicide, but they're relatively quiet compared to the other enemy types so usually the only way to know they're coming is their suit's breathing sound and potentially their gunfire. Speaking of the suit, did we mention that headshots are the only efficient way to kill them because they're otherwise extraordinarily durable against gunfire? A later update eventually removed them from all Terrorist Hunt modes.
  • The point of Shield Operators in multiplayer. Either Montagne will extend his shield and basically be invincible from anything that doesn't explode from the frontal angles of his body, or Blitz will be a good bit easier to hit but instead temporarily blind you on command at closer ranges (which is most of the time considering the maps all take place inside buildings). Even a Recruit Shield Operator, especially a whole team of them, can be a menace. Your odds of stopping them in a remotely head-on fight are slim to none without tossing a nitro cell behind them - and with all the potential methods the attacking team has to come in from different directions, they don't need to kill you either, their team can handle that just fine. An update later added the ability for non-shield operators to stun the shield operator via a quick melee, temporarily lowering their defenses.
  • Any three-speed operator. Fast, quiet, and often toting fantastic weapons, they can suddenly appear on flanks or barge straight into the objective. They may be fragile, but their speed makes them hard to hit and allows them to reach unexpected positions quickly. As a result, several operators were nerfed to be two-speed.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The SMG-11 with an ACOG was nicknamed Sniper Machine Gun-11 or "pocket sniper" due to the high firing rate and the 2.5x zoom provided by the ACOG scope. They make the gun a headshotting beast, turning the submachine gun into a burst-firing sniper rifle. The nickname has fallen out of present favor, due to Ubisoft removing the SMG-11's ability to mount the ACOG.
  • Fuze's Cluster Charges are called pucks because as anyone who has been killed by one knows from seeing the killcam, they really are shaped exactly like hockey pucks.
    • An alternate name for the the cluster charge is "balls", and the act of using it is called "balling". This presumably has something to do with the "punt" sound it makes when it fires, which sounds like a ball bouncing.
  • "Wallbang" refers to shooting players through walls or suddenly making a hole in a wall with a gun to then shoot players through. This is basically guaranteed to happen at least once in any given round of a multiplayer match.
    • "Killhole/murderhole" instead refers to shooting a hole in a wall to wait for players to come by and then shoot at them through it. Even more probable, since it doesn't take much of one's ammo to get a new vantage point in destructible walls and anyone with a shotgun can make a big one by accident, let alone when they intend to.
  • Tachanka's has been given varying nicknames such "Lord Chanka" or simply "the Lord".
  • For the various playstyles:
    • "Roamer" refers to a defender that moves away from the objective to other locations to hopefully ambush attacking players as they enter or be in position to flank them as they try to close in on the objective.
    • "Anchor" refers to defenders that stay on the objective as the last line of defense and provide intel through cams. Either they are too slow and loud to effectively flank or have utility that is best used on site.
    • "Lurker" refers to defenders that play close to site to quickly respond but provide a buffer similar to roamers.
    • "Hard Breach" refers to attackers whose primary purpose is to open reinforced walls. They are often also the ones carrying the defuser.
    • "Flank Watch" refers to attackers that protect the push from flanks, either through utility or physically putting themselves there.
    • "Entry" are attackers who are first in the building to quickly seize territory and flank when needed.
    • "Rats" are players on both teams that hide in corners and don't do much otherwise, waiting for the perfect opportunity to ambush.
  • "Spook bitch" for Caveira.
  • Montagne is commonly called "Monty" due to there being no consensus on whether or not his name should be read as the literal English pronunciation "Mon-tag-ney" or the original French pronunciation "Mohn-tahn-yeh".
  • "Nerfbeard" for Blackbeard, due to amount of times that his rifle shields have been nerfed.
  • "Power Rangers" for a team of Recruits, sometimes called the "Power Rangers Challenge" when done as a Self-Imposed Challenge.
  • "Sweaters", "T-shirts", or "Dinner Plates" for Rook's armor plates.
  • "Mom" for Dokkaebi, because her Logic Bomb ability reminds people of one's mother calling at the worst possible time.
  • In general many primary gadgets in the game are simply called by what the respective operator's name is. A good example is the Exothermic Charge, where nine out of ten players simply call them "Thermite Charges". Doubly so for Ela's grzmot mines being called "Ela mines" due to the difficulty of pronunciation. Inverted by Lesion's gu mines being more often called by its actual name since it's easier to pronounce quickly than Lesion's name.
  • Some maps also have nicknames in the community. Bartlett U will forever be known among French-speaking players as Branlette U (Branlette meaning masturbation).
  • "Lardex" for Rook, due to his larger frame compared to other operators.
    • "Buzz Lightyear" for his elite skin.
  • "Johnny Sin" for Pulse, due to his resemblance to the famous pornstar of the same name.
    • The same is applied to Blitz's elite.
  • "Shield Team Six" for any time an attacking team selects only shield operators for a match.
  • "Wub-Wubs" for Melusi's Banshees.
  • The preexisting CCTV cameras are referred to as "defaults." Not to be confused with common plant spots also referred to as "default," such as behind the Billiards bomb on Coastline.
  • "Sam Cams" for Zero's (aka Sam Fisher) ARGUS cameras.
  • "Pokeballs" for impact grenades. Getting a kill with them is often thought of as capturing the victim.
  • Smoke is sometimes called "Smonk".
    • Smoke's Doktor's Curse headgear with a jiggleboned lamprey mouth is often referred to as "SUCC".
• Game-Breaker:
  • Shield users used to be able to perform a trick with their shields - by rapidly switching between "gun down, shield up, head covered" mode and "aiming down sights, shield down, head uncovered" mode, they can achieve near-perfect accuracy with their pistols while being near-invulnerable. This is because guns used to have perfect ADS accuracy as soon as the ADS animation starts, and by rapidly switching in and out of ADS, shield users can basically get the ADS animation stuck to the first .1 seconds of it so that their shield isn't lowered that much (in third person it looks they're shaking their shields in front of their face at ridiculously high speeds), protecting their heads and giving them perfect accuracy.
  • Even more broken however, was the FBI SWAT Recruit, who can use shields but still retains the FBI SWAT's 2 speed, making them way faster than all other shield-users in the game, who are at 1 speed. Combine the two and you get an operator that rushes around the map with a shield and a 20-round pistol in hand (where each of the 20 bullets can perform a 1-headshot-kill), practically invulnerable from the front and has perfect accuracy at most ranges. Thankfully, both this and the above have been fixed.
  • Blackbeard, at release, definitely had this in spades. He originally had only one rifle shield... except that said shield had 800 health. Least to say, he was nerfed into the ground, and unfortunately, has become the opposite of this trope, with him having two rifle shields, and each having a pitiful 50 points of health.
  • Ela. Where to begin with how OP she was when Operation Blood Orchid came out? Alright, lets list what she has going for her... 3 speed? Check. Extremely powerful gadget? Check. Two absolutely god-tier primaries, one with the mag capacity of an LMG and the fire rate of a Vector, and the other being a semi auto shotgun with a fast reload speed? CHECK. Impact nades? Check. Until later nerfs, Ela was LITERALLY the most picked operator in Siege, having over a 90% pick rate
  • Lion when he was first released. Primary that kicks like a freight train, has a massive mag capacity, and can equip an ACOG? Yep. Also, his gadget made it so that during the duration of the EE-One-D scan, anyone who moved at all would be highlighted in red for the remainder of the scan, basically turning them into the world's easiest target. Of course, his gadget has now been nerfed, but it's still a powerful tool nonetheless.
  • Oh yeah, remember when the FBI Recruit with the shield moved at 2 speed? Yeah, when Operation Chimera was on the Technical Test Server, due to a bug, Blitz was able to run at the speed of a 2-speed operator with his shield out. Combined with his ability to remain protected by his shield while sprinting, and Blitz suddenly became a tyrannical reaper of death until the bug was fixed.
  • The Ember Rise seasonal uniform is a drab mix of green and brown that is extremely effective at breaking up an operator's silhouette, especially against noisy brown backgrounds like brick. If a player dies to someone wearing it, it will probably be the only thing they will be capable of talking about. It is so advantageous that Pro League teams forced their players to buy it and ultimately lead to the decision to ban all player model cosmetics, aside from those promoting Pro League, from competitive play.
  • Ping 2.0 allows players, even those without mics, to identify players by pinging their gadgets and provide precise, real-time callouts without their opponents even knowing. At least both sides have access to this new fount of information.
  • Above all communication. A team that talks and pings can rapidly update each other on enemy positions, utility, and their own actions, allowing them to swiftly clear rooms, devise strategies, and attack from multiple angles simultaneously, massively increasing their chance of victory.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The game is quite popular in China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, judging from the amount of fan-arts made for the game and the size of the APAC Pro League scene. The latter is particularly notable since first-person shooters were not traditionally popular in Japan when the game first launched.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • A bug in the End of Round Replay can sometimes cause characters' knees and legs to bend backwards in the wrong direction, taking on a digitigrade stance, leaving viewers with the rather disturbing image of their operators strutting about like heavily armed and armored ostriches. Commonly nicknamed "Raptor legs", a patch that indicated that the bug was fixed was met with some sadness and mourning.
  • The winning team's players are usually supposed to be shown all standing together alive as their last operator chosen for the end of the round, but a bug sometimes brings them there while forgetting to bring them back to life if they were killed in the last round, leading to corpses lying around that are adorning the victory screen.
  • Overlapping with Game-Breaking Bug, sometimes an operator will have their weapons out on their screen, but on others' screen they are instead holding their gadget like they're preparing to deploy it or sticking out of their body. This is mostly a funny bug where you'll see things like Bandit shooting people with a razor wire, Smoke shooting people with his gas canisters, or Frost moving around with a Welcome Mat on her face, or heavens forbid, a deployed wall reinforcement. This becomes less funny when the bug makes the aforementioned wall reinforcement or a deployable shield appear, because they're still functional in this state. Dramatically increased exploitation of this bug with deployable shields eventually led to deployable shields being disabled for use in-game while Ubisoft attempted to resolve it.
  • A somewhat rare but extremely bizarre glitch flattens Operators into 2D. This is presumed to be caused by the anti-clipping game mechanic of flattening body parts when they clip into walls, and the game somehow interprets that the entire body had just clipped into a wall despite being out in the open, causing them to be flattened.
  • Fuze's cluster charges bounce in such random and unpredictable ways it is almost impossible to tell if its designed to be so, the result of unlucky RNG, or the result of a glitch. There are many examples of weird trajectories hitting people in unexpected locations. This unpredictability eventually led to the developers making it so that the cluster charge will always have a fixed spread.
  • Placing a deployable shield the correct way in front of the slot machines on the Yacht map allowed for players to jump through the wall when they vault over it.
  • Following an update in 2019, a texture bug cropped up that caused Caveira's face to occasionally melt.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • There is a level where the team raids a compound of Right-Wing Militia Fanatic group in Oregon. While it was inspired by the 1993 Waco siege in Texas, one month after the game released, an actual militia group took over a federal building in rural Oregon.
  • The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 meant that the Spetsnaz crew, comprising of Glaz, Fuze, Kapkan, and Tachanka, joining a NATO-backed Team Rainbow would become downright impossible (especially as the Spetsnaz are a special forces branch of the Russian military, which are under the authority of Vladimir Putin).
• High-Tier Scrappy
  • Shields absolutely dominated the game in the beta. They made the user nigh invincible and can only be circumvented with grenades or explosions, and only from the sides or back. As such, the shield users were hated, especially Montagne, who has a full-body shield. The full release fixed this by greatly reducing their hip-fire accuracy whenever they have the shield equipped, going back to normal accuracy if its just the pistol, and further reducing it while the shield is taking fire (making them shooting at the enemy while not aiming down their sights, which renders them far more vulnerable, unlikely to work and make the difficulty of killing them from the front more of a Mutual Disadvantage). The explosive resistance was soon added to rebalance their low pick rate.
  • At release, Blackbeard was an absolute beast. He can peek windows and corners with ease and without fear of retaliation, since the only exposed part is fully covered by an 800 health shield, allowing Blackbeard players to establish full control over entire rooms and hallways from a window with little fear of retaliation. Inevitably, his Shield's Health was nerfed from 800 to 150, and again to 80, with an additional shield added for compensation. Further nerfs brought it down to 60, 50, and finally 20, making his gadget all but useless.
  • In the alpha, Pulse was hated by the community because his heartbeat sensor was practically a legal wallhack, and combined with the wall penetration and (the then-present) hit markers meant that it was very painful to play against him. During the beta, Pulse was nerfed and hit markers were removed, greatly reducing his effectiveness. Further changes have seen his time to change to his weapons increased and scanner range reduced, but his ability to gather intel through walls for free along with nitro cells still makes him a powerful pick.
  • Ela was, for six months, the single most picked Operator in the history of Rainbow Six Siege, with a report saying that over some 80% of the games had picked her. She was so strong that Ubisoft said that when the next season's new Operators came in, her pick rates didn't even dip. She was the epitome of the 3 speed no-brain no-aim meta. Her ridiculous strength specifically comes from her Scorpion with a 50-round magazine, guaranteeing a win at short range. Add her versatile mines and exclusive pistol sight, and people started to complain that Ela is a Creator's Pet. The proliferation of pistol sights, nerfs to her weapon and gadget have since made her less potent of a roamer.
  • Lion became infamous in the Pro League shortly after his launch, achieving an almost 100% pick rate. While merely annoying in lower level games, his gadget turned out to be devastating when timed correctly with high-level coordination.
  • Grenade catchers such as Jager, Wamai and to an extent Aruni are considered essential for any defending line-up, given how much attacker utility comes in the form of grenades and throwables (smoke grenades, frags, flashes, breaching rounds, etc.). While their effectiveness has been reduced after Operation: Neon Dawn, their ability to deny utility remains extremely important.
  • Jackal is an extremely oppressive Attacker that can gather intel for free and can ping Defenders' positions anywhere on the map if they so much as set a toe outside the objective, along with having extremely good weapons, smokes, and a secondary shotgun. Good luck roaming if he's available. Ubisoft has tried nerfing him by limiting his tracking ability in accordance with the "age" of the footprints he scans (e.g., the more time has elapsed between the moment the footprints were left and the moment of scanning, the less time the "prey" will be tracked for), but most teams in Ranked are still content to just ban him rather than having to deal with him anyway.
  • Clash is a Defender with a full-body shield that can shock and slow enemies. While incredibly annoying to deal with, she is easy to guardbreak ... the only issue is whether Clash or any of her teammates are going to allow you to get close enough to do that. Like a good Montagne, a good Clash can be hard to kill, except she can also damage you while remaining fully protected.
  • Valkyrie has three fully rotatable cameras that can be thrown anywhere, even outside, and their small size makes them hard to spot without IQ. While her weapons are nothing to write home about, she can gather an incredible amount of intel.
  • Echo can do one thing no other Defender can do: interrupt the planting of the defuser. Having two invisible, movable cameras that also stun attackers made him a habitual ban in ranked and unranked until his drones' invisibility was removed, placing greater emphasis on game knowledge and skill to conceal and use them when needed.
  • Melusi is a 3-speed defender with good weapons and explosives. She also has three pieces of set-and-forget, bulletproof utility that is extremely annoying to deal with and can shut down pushes by themselves. As such, she was persistently banned in Ranked before she was nerfed to 2-speed and her gadget was made vulnerable to bullets, albeit only when open and active.
  • Thatcher, even after his nerf, is still extremely easy to use and powerful. Most players, even those starting on Attack, ban him as there is practically no way to counter him.
  • Glaz was once very situational until he got his thermal sight, highlighting enemies bright yellow and allowing him to see through smoke, turning him from a sniper into one of the best entry fraggers on attack. Nerfs to his weapons and scope (he has to stand still for the filter to work) have since put him back into a situational pick.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Zodia's Beryl M762 is fitted with a Hera Arms CQR stock. At the time of her release, this stock was not compatible with AK-type rifles, though Hera Arms has since begun producing an AK-compatible version of the stock.
• Ho Yay:
  • Quite a few fans ship Caveira with Twitch, based on a line from the crossover event in Ghost Recon Wildlands which implied that the two are in a relationship, although their dialogue can also be interpreted as that between close friends.
  • Thatcher and Thermite, shortened to Thatchy and Thermy, are either this or Heterosexual Life-Partners due to their strong synergy in getting through reinforced walls early in the game's life, when they were the only operators capable of doing so.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • The Spetsnaz weren't popular picks in most cases, with one notable exception, but one of the four was notoriously lacking in versatility. Tachanka was notorious amongst the Siege community for having the least useful gadget in comparison to everyone else. His original deployable LMG makes anyone who uses it a stationary target against anyone who's aware of their surroundings. Ballistic shields to protect his head weren't enough to counter the inherent problems with standing still. His complete rework with an incendiary grenade launcher made him a more viable area denial operator, but it and his weapons are still pretty lackluster compared to Smoke or Maestro.
  • Kapkan places lethal traps on doorways and windows. Extremely obvious traps with bright red lasers. Kapkan then received a buff where it made the EDDs more difficult to spot, and can be placed almost anywhere on the doors and windows, but that wasn't enough. Now, his traps are no longer instant kills, but do a significant amount of damage to attackers. This was the trade-off for his laser tripwires being made invisible and his speed being increased, both solutions that had been long requested by fans. His pick rate does not seem to have gone very far up, though.
  • Montagne was once the least popular choice for a Shield Operator on the Attacking Side due to his Extendable Shield not being incredibly effective after nerfing Shields to be unable to take Nitro Cells anymore. While his Shield is definitely creative, it was lacking in usefulness. He became far more viable once the shields were rebuffed for explosives. This time, frontal damage will be acknowledged, while blasts from the back will kill any Shield Operator as usual. It can be safe to say that Montagne had raised himself back to a more comfortable middle-tier, though his more passive playstyle is still unattractive for most.
  • Blitz definitely took over Montagne's place of infamy, as whatever Game-Breaking Bug that occurred to him after some of the game's patches made him liable to be headshot through his shield, magnified by his need to get in enemies' faces to use his ability and therefore unable to actually use his shield to any degree of reliability. Changes to allow him to sprint with his shield up and dropping armor for speed still haven't solved the inherent issues with shields and the fact that the Blitz player sacrificed having an actual weapon and utility.
• Memetic Badass: The sheer amount of "Please Buff Tachanka" demands had caused the hypothesized post-rework Tachanka to be seen as some sort of messianic entity by the community. People also tend to pretend that the current Memetic Loser Tachanka is already the strongest Operator in the game. He is commonly referred to as "Lord Chanka" (and hailed with the emoticon {-}7, resembling his MASKA-1Sch helmet with a saluting left arm). After his rework in Shadow Legacy, Tachanka finally ditched his stationary LMG in favor of using it as a primary weapon and an incendiary grenade launcher as his gadget, finally adding some viability. However, in an interesting bit of irony, Tachanka's pick rate doesn't seem to have risen significantly — it's still fairly rare to see him getting any actual play. This is in contrast with Fuze and Twitch, who became noticeably more popular after they were buffed. It seeped into another game, For Honor, when Ubisoft patched in "Lord_Chanka" as a possible name for bots.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Tachanka. Yes, both. His gadget was very lackluster, and there were a lot of people making pot shots at his lack of usefulness. Some essentially sum up what everyone wanted: "Please Buff Tachanka". He was eventually reworked by Ubisoft amid heavy fanfare, replacing his stationary turret with a primary LMG and an incendiary grenade launcher.
  • Blackbeard became one after the Red Crow Mid-Season Reinforcement, in which his rifle shields suffered their second nerf. The massive drop resulted in many jokes about "RIP Blackbeard"^note The nerfs did not actually result in him becoming useless, by the way, as he is still a very common pick in tournament games., and with just how often his shields have been nerfed (from one 800-health shield to two 150-health ones, then 80, then 60, then 50 all the way down to a measly 20 by Y6S1, making them no more durable than just putting plastic wrap around his face), he has been bestowed the nickname "Nerfbeard". It has been joked that Ubisoft should just remove him from the roster entirely at this point seeing as his gimmick is now useless and his weapons are weak.
  • When people became aware of how bad Blitz is, he was viewed as a sad failure of an Operator without even Tachanka's Memetic Badass status of So Bad, It's Good. Many became sympathetic of his status and shouted #BuffBlitz in threads about him to raise awareness of his current situation. Thankfully, Blitz was given a sizable buff in early 2018, uplifting him from this status.
  • Warden. His overall weapons and gadget being underwhelming have made him one of the weaker operators in the roster.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Please Buff Tachanka. For reasons stated above.
  • Claiming Frost is Buck and vice-versa, after a clearly-rage-blinded player posted a video to the rainbow6 subreddit complaining that Frost respawned right after they killed her to kill them in return while on the attacking team (which should be impossible), when what they actually did was failed to realize that they killed a friendly Buck. The video has since been made private by the also clearly-embarrassed player.
  • Many distinctive lines from the Operators. The most popular ones are:
    • Thermite's "A really big fuckin' hole comin' right up" as he uses his Exothermic Charges.
    • Smoke calling his gas grenades "bewties" and his question of "what's in the canister?" from his video.
    • Thatcher's "Fookin' laser sights" line from his video.
    • Jager saying "you can stop worrying about grenades now" when deploying his ADS.
    • Glaz's "Details" in his Operator video, commonly used out of context and only sometimes with the "what an artist and sniper have in common" quote before it.
  • Bandit is known as a drug dealer and junkie by rainbow6 subreddit users, thanks to this video. They were a frequently referenced and parodied subject, even coining the phrase "Bandit posting".
  • Rook Mine.^ExplanationThere was once a reddit post of a player teamkilling his team's Rook, the Rook asking the player for the reason they did so, and they responded with "Rook Mine". It went memetic.
  • Thermite's Elite skin◊, a set of historical FBI combat gear, is for some reason endlessly equated to that of a Nazi German soldier.
  • Fuze is endlessly associated with hostage deaths due to the wildly-unpredictable nature of his cluster charges.
  • Calling IQ "THICC".
  • Claiming that Ash has no hitbox.^ExplanationAsh is considered memetically difficult to hit, due to her high speed and smaller body size.
  • Using "Operation Health" in conjunction with bugs to mock the idea of Operation Health and Ubisoft's buggy games.
  • "FBI, OPEN UP!"^ExplanationFeaturing a person walking into a room, sitting down, and opening a device to watch a video (normally anime, something sexual, or a sexual anime scene) before that line is said. No time to respond is given before the walls explode and a mob of people enter, spraying their guns in random directions.
  • "Nanomachines, son!"^{Explanation (spoilers for MGR:R)}Finka's ability has led to a lot of comparisons to Senator Armstrong's infamous line.
  • "Who can? Kapkan!"^ExplanationThe rallying cry of Kapkan players. Expect this to be said whenever Kapkan gets picked.
  • Warden acts like James Bond^ExplanationDue to his reveal trailer being styled after a James Bond opening sequence, and him fighting in a suit with high-tech gadgets, many players have jokingly referred to him as either James Bond, or depict him as acting like he's James Bond.
  • Oryx acts like the Kool-Aid Man^ExplanationDue to his "gadget" being his ability to run through walls, many players have jokingly referred to him as the Jordanian equivalent of the Kool-Aid Man
  • Jäger's ACOG ^ExplanationJäger used to be infamous for being a three-speed Defender with an assault rifle and a magnfied optic, making him popular with spawnpeekers. When his ACOG was removed in Operation Blood Orchid, it became a common theme◊ in fanart. Come Extraction, the meme saw a bit of resurgence, as Jäger's 416C still couldn't get its ACOG back.
  • #BOSGACOG ^ExplanationA joke campaign started by content creator BikiniBodhi to add the ACOG to the BOSG.12.2, a doubled-barreled slug shotgun with a reputation as little more than a sign you weren't taking the game seriously. However, Ubisoft listened and added it into the game.
  • "DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BOARD THE HELICOPTER!" ^ExplanationOn Border, a PA delivers various announcements from speakers that could be heard all over the map and is generally regarded as annoying. This phrase in particular was especially memetic for Suddenly Shouting.
  • As Jackal's gadget allows him to see and scan Defenders' footsteps, it's often joked that he has a foot fetish.
  • "Just stand still" ^Explanation Lion's initial introduction was incredibly impactful on the meta. In order to remain undetected during his scan, Defenders have to stand still for several seconds. This "counter" was roundly mocked as disingenuous if the attacking team already has a fix on their positions through droning, Jackal, and/or Dokkaebi and is rushing with a Blitz.
  • Siege timing ^ExplanationThe omnipresent phenomenon that if you have been holding an angle for any amount of time, someone will peek that angle the exact moment you look away.
  • Rattle me bones! ^ExplanationJager's "Dead Baron" set turning him into a skeleton often elicits this response when seen, courtesy of Russianbadger.
  • Fuze elbowdropping the hostage ^ExplanationA piece of fanart that became an object-labeling meme for something dominating something else.
  • From the eSports scene:
    • Fabian drinking Red Bull ^ExplanationAn image of professional player Fabian drinking Red Bull through the side of his mouth quickly became meme fodder, with G2 eSports (his team at that time) leaning into it as well.
    • 4444 ^ExplanationIn October 2017, French player Shaiiko was banned from playing professionally for a year and a half after a Moss anti-cheat check revealed a suspiciously rapid pressing of the 4 key, potentially a macro. Shaiiko never admitted fault and when he returned to professional play, '4444' would commonly be spammed whenever he was playing.
    • Canadian white stairs ^ExplanationRefers to an infamous incident where Canadian, then playing for Evil Geniuses, made a mistake that ultimately lead to his team losing the 2019 Pro League finals to Team Empire when they were just one round away from winning the whole thing.
    • "I'm old as shit! With the worst gun in the game!" ^Explanation At the 2020 Invitational group stages versus Team SoloMid, Canadian, now playing for Spacestation Gaming, clutched a 1v2 using the UMP45, a slow-firing submachine gun, against Merc and Beaulo, both veritable one-man armies. His post-victory rant was loud enough to be picked up by the casters' mics a room over and quickly went viral. He was only 23.
    • G2 saving strats ^Explanation The Penta-then-G2 lineup was considered pretty much unstoppable, dominating Pro League, the Majors, and Invitationals. However, after the 2019 Invitational, the team began having more lackluster performance in regular Pro League. Fans insisted they were concealing strategies for big events they already qualified for, only for G2 to be eliminated in the group of 8 at the 2020 Invitational. The replacement of Fabian and Cryn for CTZN and Virtue have not inspired confidence in fans, but they still performed well in Pro League since.
    • When does Beaulo play? ^ExplanationBeaulo was already a popular R6 streamer before signing on to TSM. Whenever Pro League is streaming, expect this phrase to be spammed ironically and unironically, even when North America isn't playing. The phrase became a Twitch chat command and was even picked up by the Washington Post.
    • !claimcharm ^Explanation Weapon charms are often offered as a reward for watching eSports events on Twitch. Despite them only being given out based on watch time, viewers often spam this in chat in a vain attempt at getting them.
    • Joystick: Russian Cyborg ^Explanation Joystick, a Russian player for Team Empire, was noted for his incredible fragging power, quickly shooting Team Empire to the top of EU Pro League and rivalling G2, eventually winning the Six Major 2019 in Raleigh. His performance inspired comparisons to a super soldier built specifically to play eSports.
    • Pojoman's banana ^Explanation TSM player Pojoman's mid-match snack at the 2020 Invitational was a banana he took a rather large bite out of.
    • "When's the next digest?" ^ExplanationPojoman also edits together videos of various Pro-League plays and blunders, but since undergone a Schedule Slip with the latest video being from the 2020 Invitational. Interviewers, casters, and even other players have taken to asking Pojo when the next video is coming out, always to the reply "when it's ready."
• Narm:
  • Smoke's voice during his combat mode will definitely make you either laugh or cringe.
  • When IQ activates her gadget, sometimes she will say "R.E.D. Scanning. If it runs on batteries, I'll see it." When she activates her gadget in a firefight, sometimes she will say the exact same quote except shouting on the top of her lungs with her German accent. Keep in mind that this is one of the longest quotes in the game, so imagine hearing 7 whole seconds of shouting with an awkward pause in the middle.
  • Echo's speech whenever he activates his Yokai drone has become a joke material on rainbow6 subreddit.
  • Castle's extremely loud screams whenever he takes damage (even from the 1 damage of a shock drone) are particularly cheesy.
  • Players have had a hard time taking Ace seriously as he refuses to wear his balaclava correctly, revealing his lower face. It looks more like he's wearing a gimp mask.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Outbreak limited event. The entire thing is basically a Zombie Apocalypse in the Clancyverse, which means the entire thing is played dead fucking serious. The fact that the Zombies themselves look like a mix between Left 4 Dead and Dead Space doesn't help either.
  • The Doktor's Curse event for Halloween 2019 is this, bar none. In the vein of an old horror movie, Doc is a mad scientist who's performed insane experiments on six operators. Bandit and Lesion are both zombies, the former having been reanimated by electricity and the latter having a vial of radioactive material sticking out of his head. Ela is basically a patchwork golem in the vein of Frankenstein's monster, with skin missing in several places, most noticeably her face. Kapkan is a skeletal reaper with glowing eyes. Frost has become the unholy lovechild of Darth Maul and Mileena, with More Teeth than the Osmond Family. And Smoke is what can only be described as a humanoid lamprey.
  • In-game, thinking a room is safe, only to overlook an opponent hiding in a corner and them instantly killing you. Or getting off your cameras to see an enemy right in your face and instantly killing you. Or someone to have been watching you the whole time on a hidden camera or sensor, setting off a prepped nitro cell/one-tapping you through a wall and instantly killing you. The sheer amount of Jump Scare and Paranoia Fuel definitely makes the "Psychological Horror" tag on Steam well-deserved.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Due to the absurd decision to turn Rainbow into an in-universe airsoft tournament, very few are willing to take the story of the game seriously. In the old lore, the PvP mode was supposed to represent Team Rainbow training with each other to prepare themselves for terrorist threats like the White Mask. In the current lore, the PvP mode is canonically a sport where Rainbow operators compete against each other for people's entertainment.
• Retroactive Recognition: Patricia Summersett, the voice of Ash, voices Zelda in Breath of the Wild.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Related to the client-side destruction bugs mentioned above in Game-Breaking Bug: Smoke's gas grenades, as well as regular smoke grenades, are also rendered client-side, and they are much less consistent between clients compared to the occasional bugs related to destruction. This can lead to teeth-gnashing frustration when you throw a smoke grenade to disguise your path, get shot, then see yourself clear as day on the killcam.
  • On some daytime maps, the lighting effects made windows a pain to use. To wit, a player looking outside from the inside can only see blinding whiteness, while a player looking inside from the outside can only see blurry darkness. Thankfully, there had been some attempts to tone down the lighting effects.
  • The matchmaking system, pre-Operation Health, was universally considered one of the most broken aspects of the game due to just how slow it could get (curious players in unfortunate situations reported searching for over an hour without getting a game). It had gotten so bad that Ubisoft had it as a top-priority problem to be fixed - and fixed it was, with Operation Health's upgrade to one-step matchmaking.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The SASG-12, the Spetsnaz' semi-automatic, magazine-fed shotgun, was rather lacklustre in comparison to other semi-autos. Thankfully, a couple of buffs made the shotgun more viable by making the fire rate twice as fast and increasing its mid-range and long-range damage to be on par with other semi-automatics.
  • Buck's assault rifle, the C8-SFW, while not completely bad by any means, is notorious for its strong vertical recoil, easily one of the highest in the game, not helped by the fact that Buck's gadget precludes the use of a foregrip. As little as three automatic shots can result in the aim flying way off the original position. It has been said that if one can use the C8 with an ACOG and still control it, one can control all weapons in the game with ease.
  • Machine guns were not favorites to their slow reload, ADS speed, and often middling fire rate, barring operators who had them as their only viable weapon. However, that changed when Zofia's rifle got nerfed and people discovered that being able to just hose down entire rooms more than made up for their weaknesses, ushering in an "LMG meta" that favored spraying and praying.
  • The GONNE-6 was immediately seen as weak. It is a single shot, secondary Hand Cannon with explosive rounds... that do minimal damage in a rather small blast radius and its bullet can still be intercepted by Jager's ADS or Wamai's magnets. While players can see the benefit of extra utility removal for Attackers centered around it like Iana or never having any in the first place like Lion, some Attackers lost secondary weapons they needed to be usable like Dokkaebi's C75, or worse, lost frag grenades like Finka and the aforementioned Dokkaebi for an inferior replacement.
  • The SMG-12 is commonly regarded as borderline-unusable. Sure, it has a massive magazine and the fastest fire rate in the game, but being integrally suppressed means no muzzle attachments to control the incredibly strong and incredibly random recoil even with the vertical grip.
  • Marksman rifles are not appealing in a game where the average engagement range is less than 10 meters and one-shot headshots are king, favoring faster-firing automatics. While they possess a unique 3.0x scope, high damage and good soft destruction capabilities, most players don't find them that usable and tend to avoid them if they can. Kali's CSRX-300 especially gets the short straw, being her only primary and a slow-firing bolt-action with high zoom levels at that. Bank, Chalet, Plane, Clubhouse and Coastline are among the only maps wherein they have much utility, as a few sites do have some spots which are open to long-distance sniping.
  • The UMP45 is Memetic for being the "worst gun in the game" due to its low fire rate and smaller magazine. While there are slower-firing guns on the Defenders' side, such as Frost's 9mm C1 and Cav's M12, they do more damage to compensate. Castle and Pulse struggle to win head-on firefights.
  • Shotguns are not popular on Attack, as they work best at close-range where most of the target is exposed. Problem is, Attackers are commonly the victim in these situations as they have to fight their way through entrances against Defenders in cover wielding close-range weapons ... like shotguns.
• Self-Fanservice: In spite of wearing a fully-realistic bulletproof vest, most of her head being covered by her helmet and balaclava aside from her eyes and bangs of hair, IQ's tight jeans have led to fans regarding her as Rainbow Six: Siege's epitome of desirability Ms. Fanservice, with fanart probably heightening it at least a bit. It probably helps that people usually agree the faces of the female operators that are actually shown are kinda off, though this was fixed after the developers updated the facial rigging of all operators' models in a patch.
• That One Level:
  • The Article 5 variant of Bartlett U., which is covered in a thick layer of poisonous fog. Couple it with obscured vision and the Bombers, it's incredibly frustrating to trek through the entire building only to be blown up by a room of C4.
  • Old Favela on all modes is a defense nightmare. The high destructibility and relatively cramped nature of the map makes it comparable to a magician's coffin ready to be impaled with swords. God forbid if you end up in the "3F Packaging Room", the absolute worst place to defend, only connected to the rest of the building by a staircase and three sides are completely destructible and exposed to Attackers on neighboring rooftops.
  • The PvP version of Bartlett U. is considered by many to be very poorly designed, and shows why the map is co-op only in the first place. The entrances are too limited (there is only one doorway), there are too many windows for flank shots, and the hallways are way too large, making it easy for Defenders to get easy picks on isolated attackers. When the map was removed from multiplayer playlists entirely, nobody was sad about it. It is currently only accessible in custom games.
  • Outback is a Defender-sided nightmare where there is only one destructible exterior wall, forcing the Attackers to enter through windows and doors into "buffer" rooms with little cover. No one was sad when it was removed from ranked either.
  • Fortress is generally regarded as having no coherent flow to it, with the hallways between each room being very maze-like. This makes it difficult to tell where each room is relative to another, leaving Attackers and Defenders hopelessly lost. More firefights are due to people bumbling into each other than having an actual strategy. No one was upset when it was taken out of Ranked.
  • Hereford at launch was way too small to provide the necessary breathing room for defenders and only had one interior staircase connecting the floors. The rework however, took a complete 180 and made the map too large, adding buffer rooms and stairs and removing entrances. Attackers now struggled to get into the building and even then, its sheer size made it impossible to attack through other than the most direct route. The third floor sites are especially hard to attack, being giant open rooms filled with chest-high cover for defenders to hide behind while doors and windows are completely exposed. And finally there is the new dark, dreary aesthetic of an old brick building in the rain compared to the brighter, cleaner, concrete kill-house of the original. Most players preferred the old Hereford because at least it was fun.
  • Tower took the concept of Attackers having to rappel to get into the building and ran with it, creating a roamer's paradise. As it is practically all indoors, Attackers have no way of moving around to different parts of the building without having to go through a massive amount of rooms all potentially concealing roamers. It too was removed from Ranked rotation and no one shed tears for it.
  • Plane is a casual-only map which has never been reworked, reflecting Siege's original design philosophy and how radically the game has changed around it. The inherently slender design of an airplane means that pushing through the map is one-dimensional, with each firefight occurring over either a very long distance or in close corners. Vertical play is almost non-existent, and getting into the plane itself is a serious challenge, as the huge open tarmac leaves attackers sitting ducks for spawn-killers. Plane is simply too small for how Siege is now played, and it will likely never be reworked due to the inherent design of an airplane.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some crossover cosmetics from other franchises are often given out to operators without considering the connections between the two characters. For instance, both Gridlock and Rhea Ripley are brunette Australians noted for their large, muscular stature, so it's natural that Gridlock would receive her crossover skin right? Instead, the Rhea Ripley skin was given to Ash, a red-haired, Israeli-American operator who is rather petite in comparison.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some Outbreak concepts suggested that the scenario would talk about Patient Zero more, but nothing ever came out of it. When Extraction finally came out years later, it shifted focus to a nation-wide Chimeran invasion instead, with the character being relegated to a bit part during the Truth and Consequences chapter, his body having been fully consumed by the parasite during the interim.
• Unexpected Character: Few people were expecting Sam Fisher to show up, as not only is he the first Operator from an existing Ubisoft franchise to join the roster, the last Splinter Cell game was released seven years prior, and the franchise appeared to be dead.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion:
  • A common problem among the game's non-French-speaking players is that they have difficulty pronouncing Montagne's name. "Mon-tag-ne", "Mon-tag" and "Mon-taine" are particularly common, for those who don't just skirt the issue and call him "Monty". For the record, it's more like "Mon-tan-yah" or "Mon-tan-ye".
  • Jægerkorpset's callsign is supposed to be pronounced as "Nuhk", with the "uh/ø" being slightly drawn-out. While the official guide video released with Phantom Sight does provide a proper pronunciation guide, the game itself does not, leading to many players mispronouncing her name as "knock".
  • Kaid's callsign is supposed to be pronounced as "Kai-ed". The game doesn't exactly do a good job of telling players this.
• Vindicated by History: Siege went from only getting three unanimously positive reviews on launch to being one of the largest sleeper hits of 2016 to the point where it and The Division were credited in helping Ubisoft increase their profits during Summer 2016. Today, it regularly makes Steam’s top ten when it comes to current player count. It definitely helped that Ubisoft continued to support the game despite its rocky launch.