In Aralbad there are two possibly naked chess-playing men in one of the pools, who constantly describe the game in sexual-sounding terms. Like "I'll thrust through with the queen" or "I'll squeeze the bishop. Everyone loves a good bishop-squeeze."
If the player talks to Oscar when he's standing outside in Aralbad and Kate accuses him of being absent minded, he will say he thinks of many things, but he "doesn't think of watersports." There are many random words the writers could have used but they went with that one?
Anvilicious: The first game's plot seems like an attack on American culture. Kate's boss and boyfriend are absolute Jerkass characters who could not care the slightest about the amazing wonders she finds or the fact she's only been gone a couple of days at most. Instead, Kate discovers amazing wonders and broadens her horizons while giving up her materialist ways. So, Tropes Are Not Bad.
Awesome Music: The soundtrack is exceptionally atmospheric, underscoring the not-quite surreal quality of the various places Kate traverses. A special mention goes to Dana's concert at the beginning of Syberia: The World Before.
Designated Villain: Kate's boss is consistently trying to talk her out of pursuing Hans Voralberg and in the second game's cutscenes he's always portrayed as a silhouette in the dark, stuck behind his mean bossy desk. And while he is supposed to be the representation of the consumerist culture Kate's trying to escape from, it's hard to blame him for trying to get her back to New York: not only is she the best lawyer he's got on his crew but also her family is constantly pestering him about her whereabouts (also, while it's never explicitly mentioned, it's clear that should Kate be pronounced missing it's him who'd be held responsible) and the arguments he brings up when he talks to her on the phone (such as her leaving behind her life and friends) all seem pretty legit. For all we know, he might just be genuinely worried about her.
Ending Fatigue: Syberia II. After restoring Hans' mind and Oscar's sacrifice, it looks like all that's left to do is board the ark and reach Syberia. On the way, however, the ark gets stuck on an ice floe full of penguins, where you have a last confrontation with Ivan Bourgoff. Then you get to Syberia for real, where more puzzles await you, and then the game abruptly ends after seeing Hans ride away on the mammoth.
Fridge Brilliance: Oscar the train engineer is painstakingly pedantic when it comes to following the procedure of boarding and proper paperwork, to the point of annoyance. But one can forgive him... his existence is on rails, just like his train is.
Not to mention he railroads you into doing the aforementioned paperwork just when you're ready to leave the level. And (with his refusal to leave the train) into putting in the work to progress in the game.
Fridge Horror: The moment when you realize that Kate killed Borodin by blowing up the obstructing giant automaton, as Borodin isn't seen leaving its control room after he moved it closer to the train. Kate herself seems to overlook this, despite having experienced for herself that exiting the huge figure at ground level is impossible when it's moved from its starting position. The only other exit is to the storage room, which the toppled giant destroys.
Fridge Logic: Given how Hans Voralberg seems to have taken the time to set up everything he needed to get to Syberia some time before Kate showed up, a lot of questions get raised about how perfectly these inventions work and why Hans was still somehow unable to get to Syberia on his own. He was able to get to Syberia for ages but he waited for Anna. Kate, who brought him the news of Anna's death, then became his surrogate big sister.
The Nintendo DS version, which stripped out almost all the audio and turned the game into a particularly frustrating Pixel Hunt.
In the Xbox 360 version, where you control Kate manually, she gets caught on every single wall and object that you try to move her past. Compare this to Grim Fandango, which had special programming to keep the main character from getting stuck on scenery, 16 years prior.
On the other hand, the cell phone version won PC Gamer's "Oh my God it works" award.
Sequelitis: While the 2nd game wasn't as well-received as the first, the 3rd game was met with a disastrously negative reception, with much criticism about a forgettable plot and characters, loads of bugs, and awful voice acting. The fourth game averts this and is at the very least considered a step in the right direction.
