The Binding of Isaac / YMMV

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Breather Level: Even during the Brutal Bonus Levels, there will occasionally be rooms with only a fly or a pair of helpless grubs, which still recharge your special item and have a chance to drop items. There will also always be some empty rooms, and it's possible to spend quite a long time in the arcade with virtually no chance of death.
- The Computer Savvy challenge is by far the easiest in the game, as you start out with Technology, Technology 2, and Spoon Bender, meaning you fire lasers that curve themselves to hit their targets for you. The only legitimate obstacle in your way will be objects like rocks, but even then, an item that gives spectral tears eliminates this.
- The Demo Man challenge is a breeze as you start out with Dr. Fetus, an Infinity +1 Sword that can make short work of almost every enemy in the game and also grants you infinite explosives to search for tinted rocks or Secret Rooms. The Remote Detonator also allows you to explode your Dr. Fetus bombs whenever you decide, vastly decreasing the chance of you accidentally hitting yourself with your own explosions.
- The Blue Bomber challenge became this in Repentance. Thanks to the buffs to Kamikaze (its explosive radius was increased and its damage was increased from 40 to 185), the item has gone from an item that can kill practically everything up until the Womb (or sometimes even the Depths), to a clean One-Hit Kill on everything in your path (thus allowing you to lure in even the strongest enemies and let the item rip) on top of curb-stomping most bosses, with only the fights with It Lives! and Satan being legitimately challenging. By then, however, you'll probably have accumulated soul hearts or even more items from past boss fights, so it's not like the challenge both bosses present really matters.
- The "Scatman" challenge is surprisingly this to the rest of the blindfolded challenges. You start with the "Oh Crap" transformation as well as Thunder Thighs and E. Coli, meaning it's basically instantaneous healing every time you touch an enemy ^note. The challenge comes from only being able to use Dips and Butt Bombs to kill bosses, but if you're able to acquire enough bombs throughout the challenge, they shouldn't give you much trouble either.
Catharsis Factor: Beating Dogma, especially for people who have grown up in fundamentalist families.
- Beating the Beast also counts when you think about it. Isaac destroys the tainted, deranged fundamentalism that has plagued his family, himself especially, and uses the good parts of it (in this case flight, Holy Mantle, and extra health) to face off against a giant biblical monster and its Four Horsemen. In a way, this emphasizes the point of how religion at its core can be used for good, so long as it's used by those with genuinely heroic intent and actions.
Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: There's thousands upon thousands of mods in the Steam Workshop, ranging from meme sprite swaps to assistance tools that actually tell you what the item you're picking up does to entirely new characters to full-on separate expansions like Antibirth and Abortionbirth. Antibirth was so high-quality and beloved by Afterbirth+ players that it was incorporated into the final official expansion, Repentance. Of course, Isaac is already a very long and difficult game without mods, and Sturgeon's Law definitely applies, so players may have to do some sifting before they find some mods that they both like and are useful.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
- Between Rebirth and Booster Pack 2 of Afterbirth†, angel rooms are almost entirely ignored outside of Mega Satan runs and devil rooms are preferred. Not only did devil rooms have better items on average, they tended to have items more often — angel rooms from Rebirth onward have a chance to not contain an item at all, simply having a few hearts that likely won't help a player good enough at avoiding damage to get angel/devil rooms in the first place. This was changed when Booster Pack 2, while not making items guaranteed as they were in Flash Isaac, made them significantly more likely, and gave them a mechanic where the player was given up to four items and could pick one of them. By Repentance, this was flipped completely: with health being made rarer and several powerful angel items like Revelation added to the pool, most playthroughs encourage going for angel rooms over devil rooms. This was helped by how not entering the first devil room at all guarantees that the next post-boss door that spawns will be an angel one.
- Players would generally go to the Chest over the Dark Room unless they need the completion marks for the latter, as the Chest offers more fun with having four items at only the cost of one key each and room layouts that are not that hard. Repentance tries to balance that by having the red chests in the starting room become devil deals instead, granting four guaranteed Devil Pool items at the cost of health.
- Out of all of the characters, Azazel is almost universally considered the best one for unlocking The Forgotten, mainly because of his flight being useful to dodge Mom's feet and his Brimstone attack is useful in actually defeating the first boss quickly enough to get the chance in the first place.
- In Repentance, crafting multiple Alabaster Boxes quickly became the way to go in Tainted Cain runs; one of its four recipes only requires a Soul Heart and seven pennies, it crafts fully charged despite normally needing 6 Soul Hearts to charge, and upon use it gives you three Soul Hearts and two Angel Room items. This was quickly patched in 4.0.3, so that Tainted Cain had to charge the item like everyone else.
Crosses the Line Twice:
- Literally all of the humor qualifies. The best example is probably the infamous "Yay, cancer!" — a description of a trinket that's literally a tumor and increases the rate of fire past the max.
- The Aprils Fool challenge has you go through the game with several interface screwups such as a broken map and items that are disguised as other items. Coins are golden hearts, red hearts are actually coins, and so on. To top it all off, you'll soon come across The Bloat. And The Bloat, and The Bloat again. That every boss is replaced by this loathed opponent does at least give the annoyances of this challenge a touch of hilarity. The fact that you're basically immortal in this mode thanks to coins being soul/black/gold hearts only adds to it. Unless, of course, the game decides to kill you by giving you a card that turns out to be Suicide King or making you roll Plan C with your spacebar item, in which case you will likely alternate between laughing and cursing out the Random Number God.
- With all the items including wire coat hangars, babies that give you items for money, blood beams, and weaponizing Toilet Humor, this trope is in play alongside It Makes Sense in Context anyone tries to describe a run they have. Example: "I just got a good run and killed The Lamb as the Blue Baby with Brimstone, Cancer, Dark Bum, and The Intruder!"
- Repentance introduces Tainted Lilith, who attacks by ripping her stomach open as her unborn demon fetus lunges out to attack enemies while still attached to Lilith via umbilical cord. Such a method of attack would be considered tasteless and horrifying by many if it weren't for the fact the sound of the fetus hitting an enemy is accompanied by a stock whip sound effect, elevating it from gruesome to downright hilarious.
- Isaac believing his mother is trying to kill him? Tragic. Mother outright weaponizing this via killing Dead Isaacs and chucking their body parts at you? Hilariously tragic.
Disappointing Last Level:
- Compared to the Halloween Update's Sheol, which tested your skills with the base game's items and had an awesome boss at the end, Wrath of the Lamb's Cathedral, which further tested your skills and had a brutal boss at the end, and a later update's Chest, which essentially starts out with four Item Rooms and contains mostly bosses, Rebirth gives us... the Dark Room, meant to be the demonic counterpart to the Chest. It succeeds in all the wrong ways, with the level starting out with four Red Chests instead of trading four keys for four items and having much more unfair rooms. Its only redeeming counterparts are a great boss fight at the end and the fact that non-Red chests still pay out with items. Afterbirth† had to add a bunch of features and achievements tied to this floor just to give players an incentive to go there. Repentance alleviated this quite a bit by giving a flat damage buff to The Negative, incentivising the player to take it instead of The Polaroid, and making the four red chests in the starting room into four guaranteed devil deals.
- Afterbirth added an optional level named "???" that unlocks one of the last endings once it is cleared for the first time. However, it is just a single room with a few items and then the Optional Boss. And yet it gets a song that lasts for over 2 minutes. Not quite what people expected at release.
- Afterbirth† added what's meant to be the ultimate final stage and boss of the game. It's just assorted random rooms and bosses from every floor in the game. While The Void and its main boss, Delirium, do fit the game's narrative, in terms of gameplay they all still feel very underwhelming compared to The Chest, which gives you a ton of new items and has rooms stacked with bosses.
Evil Is Cool: Dogma's hammy battle theme, intimidating atmosphere, and unique Biblically accurate angel forms made it one of the most popular bosses in the game shortly after Repentance dropped.
Fandom Rivalry: With fellow Roguelike Indie Game, Enter the Gungeon. That said, both fandoms will sometimes admit that there are some things the other game does better than their own.
Fandom-Specific Plot:
- It's extremely common for people to create AUs where all the playable characters are real people who coexist, rather than just being aspects of Isaac. Aging up the characters to teens or young adults to make shipping easier is optional.
- Fanart that shows Cain, Keeper, Bumbo, and/or Bum Friend fighting over a coin.
Fan Nickname:
- As the game doesn't give you the names of normal enemies until the credits (or at all in Rebirth outside Afterbirth+'s Bestiary), players tend to give them these. Anyone who has watched Northernlion enough tends to use "human popcorn", "silkworms", "Conga Line", and "zambies", in place of their real names (Mulligan/Host, Charger/Spitter, Butt Licker, Knight).
- Meatboy Lvl. 5 — That's what some players call the severed body "generated" by The Shears. The reason behind it is because it used to be possible to have it constantly following you by acquiring five Meat Cubes via glitch exploitation.^note
- An even more common one is "Blue Baby" for the unwieldy ???. For the True Final Boss as well as the character. This was ascended as of one of the updates, with his will being signed as "??? (a.k.a. The Blue Baby)" This nickname is so popular that his character card in The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls was introduced as "Blue Baby (aka ???)".^note
- Pooters are known as "Grandfather Flies" because their white abdomens look like beards.
- The Vis and its brethren are known as "vaginas" for obvious reasons.
- "Judgement" for the Beggars (with the "Demon" and "Key" prefixes added when necessary), because they spawn from the Judgement card.
  - Similarly, Blood Donation Machines are referred to as "Temperance Machines" because they spawn from the Temperance card.
- <weapon_name>tammy for Tammy's Head combined with a tear modifier in Rebirth, the most known being Brimtammy.
- The True Final Boss of Rebirth has such an unintentionally ridiculous name that fans decided to make it more ridiculous by calling him Mega Stan.
- Many fans call the Monster Manual "Monster Manuel" instead. This is an interesting case — in the original game, it actually was the Monster Manuel due to a typo. Some fans, due to either not realizing it was fixed in Rebirth or due to finding the typo hilarious, still call it Manuel. Repentance later made it official - there's a random chance for the item to use the Manuel spelling as opposed to the Manual spelling introduced in Rebirth upon picking it up.
- Many players also refer to Mega Maw as "Mega Man", whether they meant to or not.
- Edmund is referred to by more cynical fans as "Steakmund" quite frequently, referring to his furiously defiant stance on the datamined reveal of The Lost and the "No Fun Allowed" impression given to fans by so many highly contested nerfs. In this case, "Steak" refers to Edmund's infamous reference to this mentality in the 2014 Vinesauce interview.
- When Singe was being teased by Edmund on Twitter, he was often referred to as ARG-Kun in the game's Discord server before his final name was revealed.
- My Little Unicorn item is simply referred to as "Unicorn Horn" by most players instead of its actual name.
Friendly Fandoms:
- With virtually any game released by Edmund McMillen (especially since many of said games' characters or assets make cameos in Isaac itself). Notable examples include Gish, The End Is Nigh, Time Fcuk, and of course, Super Meat Boy.
- With Shin Megami Tensei, especially both games have heavy religious themes.
Harsher in Hindsight: All of the Guppy-related items were inspired by a real cat who McMillen owned — "owned" because the real Guppy passed away in August of 2014. Where this trope comes in is that quite a few of these items clearly show that the cat in question is dead... Rebirth's teaser trailer, which features a photorealistic decapitated cat head modeled after Guppy, did nothing to help matters because it came out exactly a year before he died.
High-Tier Scrappy:
- Azazel is often frowned upon for being largely unbalanced compared to the other characters. He starts with three black hearts (but can acquire regular health through powerups), flight, a Fool tarot card, and a short-range Brimstone attack. The range issue is at best minor, and Azazel can clear rooms like nobody's business. With a little skill, Azazel can easily make it all the way to Mom in time for the Boss Rush without any significant powerups. With powerups, he's a murder machine. The only true problems Azazel will have is when he's facing the final bosses, but outside of that, he's easily the best character in the game. He actually got nerfed in Afterbirth to the point opinions on Azazel actually got inverted; at first, his fire rate was lowered, but later his damage output was lowered a bit too much; he later got a damage buff to make him playable again. Repentance also brought another nerf as part of the nerf to Brimstone, as it ticks less times and as such reduces the damage he can deal, but this hasn't stopped him from remaining one of the most powerful characters in the game.
- Before update 1.7.5, Tainted Cain used to be in a similar boat, though for different reasons. Unlike any other character in the game, Tainted Cain cannot pick up items at all — every item that he touches is converted to pickups, and with the Bag of Crafting in hand, you have to craft the items for yourself based on certain recipes, all of which are comprised of pickups. While this sounds amazing and fun on paper (who wouldn't want to craft a Game-Breaker build with something like say, double Brimstone + Sacred Heart?), the process was tedious due to having to look for the right pickups intensively and looking for the right recipes (even despite them all having been documented down on the wiki). However, if you somehow managed to get all the necessary pñickups to craft a Game-Breaker item, this also creates the problem where Tainted Cain could get quite powerful early on, causing runs to end up in a Curb-Stomp Battle in your favor, in a similar vein to, again, Azazel. In some cases, it could also end up in runs feeling either very similar or even the same, depending on what you craft. As mentioned above, though, update 1.7.5 altered the recipes to be seed-based, causing opinions of Tainted Cain to become more mixed and, in some cases, to outright decline.
Hilarious in Hindsight: About a year after Antibirth released its "two characters in one" package of Jacob and Esau, The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth†'s final official update included its own "two characters in one" package in the form of The Forgotten and The Soul. The major difference is that Jacob and Esau requires controlling both characters simultaneously and both differ from the rest of the cast primarily in terms of stats, while The Forgotten and The Soul function more like a Tag Team and have individual quirks that make them much more different from other characters even beyond the "two in one" aspect. Doubly funny when Antibirth became part of the base game with the Repentance expansion!
Hype Backlash: Considering that The Wrath of the Lamb expansion available for the original version of Isaac was absolutely enormous and dirt cheap, many fans thought that Afterbirth, the first expansion for the remake, would be comparable to WOTL. It is nowhere near that size, which many fans have felt ripped off by. While many praise new additions like the genuinely interesting (if somewhat buggy) character Lilith, the fantastic and fun Greed Mode, and many of the new items being very fun to toy around with (and boasting even more tasty synergies to fool around with), there are a staggering amount of issues^note that have left a good portion of the fanbase extremely upset and disappointed.
I Knew It!: The game taking place in Isaac's imagination, right down to it being a result of suffocating in the chest was old news among fans long before the final ending actually revealed it.
It Was His Sled: Let's just say that anything in the game that can be considered a spoiler tends to fall into this territory very quickly. The existence of ??? and The Lost, for instance, tend to barely even be treated as spoilers by the community.
Jerkass Woobie: As it turns out, Issac’s Mom is this. While her trying to kill Isaac is a figment of his imagination, she is still a very abusive woman who, depending on how seriously we are meant to take the between floor transitions along with the definite abuse implications in some of the items and her Ascent dialogue, treated Isaac very poorly. However the revelation of her once happy marriage falling apart and descent into religious fundamentalism, along with her walking in on Isaac drawing her as a hideous monster, makes it difficult not to feel bad for her. This isn’t even getting into her own son committing suicide.
Love to Hate: The Bloat is this. The Subreddit dedicated to him (r/FUCKBLOAT) is the clearest example of how much people hate him, though this same infamy has, ironically, attracted people to join in on the hate for fun despite not hating the boss himself. Such popularity probably helped, as in Afterbirth†, The Bloat stars as the Recurring Boss of his own challenge, "Aprils' Fool", and Four Souls has three cards with his name on them^note. Now real, as there is a Warp Zone card quite literally named "FUCK BLOAT" that spawns a Bloat and damages the players to the left and right of you.
Low-Tier Letdown:
- The Lost. And how! He can fly, but he's a One-Hit-Point Wonder and doesn't even start with any items besides one measly coin. He can make unlimited devil deals as his lack of health means he doesn't have to pay for them, but this is largely mitigated, again, by the fact he dies in one hit. The fact that one of his item unlocks requires you to beat every final boss on Hard mode certainly does not help matters either. Fortunately, in Afterbirth, he was significantly buffed, as he was given spectral tears and the D4 and Holy Mantle are unlockable starting items for him (though the D4 isn't something you should rely on in the first place). Repentance added back some of his difficulty as Holy Mantle was nerfed to only give half as many invincibility frames as before, meaning that you'll die instantly to any damage source that does multiple ticks unless you can move away in less than half a second^note. However, it also replaced his D4 with the Eternal D6 as his starting item, meaning he has access to the same kind of rerolls as Isaac has, but less reliably (which ties in to his status as one of the game's joke characters).
- Jacob and Esau's "double character" element is widely disliked, as it boils down to keeping track of two hitboxes in levels designed for one. As several of the bosses (especially late game ones) indulge in Bullet Hell, the problem with this becomes greater as the run goes on. Because they get the same number of items as the other "single" characters, it also means that each of them will end up being half as weak as an average run with anybody else (or one of them is almost entirely ignored in favor of the other, an even worse strategy since the death of one of them kills them both), and will not have as many synergies that come with taking several items. Each of them can take an item in areas that offer a choice between two or more, but the setup can fail if executed poorly, and unless the player goes through the far more difficult alternate path or happens to buy There's Options and More Options in the shop, there are not that many opportunities to give both brothers an item. They also have no starting items, trinkets, or anything that could help them in the beginning, except for Esau having a single soul heart to protect their devil deal chance. As with pre-Repentance Keeper, Jacob and Esau are considered to be a character/two characters with several downsides but not much to make up for their difficulty, not even their character unlocks despite many of them being very powerful. The game is virtually unwinnable as them without both brothers getting an insanely OP build due to dodging being virtually impossible.
- Tainted Jacob. Unlike his regular counterpart, Tainted Jacob is played without Esau. However, after 30 seconds or so have passed on a floor, Dark Esau spawns and starts attacking Jacob. This doesn't look so bad, until Esau touches Jacob. When this happens, Jacob turns into his soul, similar to what happens in the Mirror World in Downpour/Dross II. However, there are some core differences: first, Tainted Jacob's soul doesn't have Holy Mantle, so he will die on any hit (unless he already holds Holy Mantle, or has a similar effect); second, while this looks like playing Tainted Lost, Jacob doesn't have the passive "Better Items" and can still find health upgrades... which are useless, unlike in the Mirror World, as any life obtained while playing as Tainted Jacob's Soul will not carry over; third, Dark Esau will still roam around trying to kill Jacob (killing him in one hit, of course). This is basically like playing The Lost from Rebirth with spectral tears. To add insult to injury, on consoles the transformation from Tainted Jacob to his Soul doesn't have any invulnerability frames and has a tendency to slightly offset the position of the player, with an incredibly high risk of sending the Soul into another enemy, killing him on the spot. Now, maybe you are thinking "Well, let's kill Dark Esau so there are no more problems!", right? Well, on consoles, you can do that! The catch is, it will trigger an explosion that will kill everything in the room, and still turn Jacob into his soul. So you can basically either play Rebirth's Lost with an angry guy trying to kill you constantly, or play Rebirth's Lost. If all that wasn't enough, damaging obstacles like spiked rocks and red poop drain Dark Esau's health ridiculously quickly, and his Artificial Stupidity means he will probably get stuck on one and die unless you actively take measures to prevent it. The only plus side is that, just like any version of The Lost, Devil Deal's items are free to take. Considering the absurd difficulty of some rooms when trying to evade Esau, this isn't really that good. Players actually find it easier to play Tainted Lost because of the few plus sides that character has. Once again, the difficulty is incredibly high and the game doesn't give you anything to make it easier. A number of players find it less painful to remove Dark Esau using one of several Good Bad Bugs^note, since without the constant threat of a One-Hit Kill, Tainted Jacob merely becomes average at worst. This stopped being an option on PC, as of the 1.7.5 patch, as Dark Esau is invulnerable to your tears and bombs (however, he does block enemy projectiles), but at least you cannot be touched by him while you have any form of temporary invincibility, he can shred through boss armor, and when you are turned into The Lost, you have a somewhat longer amount of invincibility frames. Oh, and his Birthright effect? It spawns a second Dark Esau.
- After being considered the best character in the game before update 1.7.5 rolled in, Tainted Cain has become this. Unlike any other character in the game, Tainted Cain cannot pick up items at all — every item that he touches is converted to pickups, and with the Bag of Crafting in hand, you have to craft the items for yourself based on seed-based recipes, all of which are comprised of pickups. Since every seed is completely randomized, the items' recipes will constantly change so, with the exception of a few items, there is no static recipe. The one thing that is constant is that, depending on the pickups you keep in the bag is the quality of the item you will receive, which also works against the player's favor; using common pickups can lead to various low-quality items, but sacrificing rare pickups to create the high-quality items can lead to the run becoming harder if the item you receive is egregious and you needed the pickup (e.g. you sacrificed a soul heart you could've potentially used for health to craft Bum Friend). As a result of the confusion and frustration all of this creates, people don't necessarily have a favorable opinion on Tainted Cain.
- Tainted Eden. All of Tainted Eden's stats, items, trinkets, and pills/cards get rerolled whenever they take damage. This turns the game into a complete Luck-Based Mission, as you're entirely dependent on RNG to give you good items every reroll. Since Repentance reworked item rerolls, none of the major benefits of rerolling yourself from earlier installments are present — Tainted Eden cannot get permanent transformations, permanent extra lives, and rerolling in to health ups will not heal them. T. Eden's red hearts will also disappear when the items that gave them get rerolled, so you can sometimes go from full health to one heart in just one hit. Or alternatively, you could end up with lots of items that give you empty red heart containers and lose all your soul hearts. The only plus side is that items reroll into other items from the same pool, so if you have a lot of devil or angel items, you're likely to reroll into something powerful. And with red hearts being so temporary, you might think it's a good opportunity to take lots of devil deals. But doing that comes with the big risk of rolling into Dead Cat, which will delete all but one of your heart containers and also not give you any extra lives, as they'll all just disappear when you next get hit. Overall, the only "strategy" to Tainted Eden is to pray to the Random Number God that the next reroll doesn't screw you and avoid any damage at all costs, except for self-damage.
- TAINTED LOST. Losing the regular Lost's Holy Mantle in exchange for better items seems like a good way to make up for the challenge of playing as a true One-Hit-Point Wonder character, especially since you start out with a Holy Card and have a higher chance of finding more. In practice, however, while there's certainly less of a chance you'll see a quality 0 or 1 item, they can still crop up annoyingly often, and it's possible to go through several floors before you can find another Holy Card to make up for the one you used. It doesn't help that almost every item that would be truly useful for Tainted Lost, like the actual Holy Mantle or any item that grants extra lives outside of Birthright, is hardcoded not to spawn naturally if you're playing as him^note. Tainted Lost's Greedier Mode unlock is considered one of the hardest in the game for one important reason: cards are only available by picking up certain items or in shops (and not even in every shop), meaning there's a very good chance the Holy Card you start with will be the only one you see for the entire run. Two hits maximum against relentless hordes of Demonic Spiders and awful bosses (and if that weren't enough, the way Greedier Mode works makes it entirely possible that you'll get telefragged and waste the shield on a trash mob). Good luck.
Memetic Badass:
- Before Rebirth, Abel. It's a mirrored familiar with the power of basic familiars, which tends to be meager at best. Doesn't stop people from considering "such a good item". It got a resurgence in Repentance after it was buffed.
- Bob's Brain (an item that is a bomb that can be shot towards enemies, whether or not you want it to), best item in the game!
- Nothing stands between Bumbo and his coin. Not even Hush.
- The Glowing Hour Glass has gained a reputation as being the solution to literally everything (as it practically undoes any mistake you made in the last room), especially when it comes to several Game Breaking Good Bad Bugs that Glowing Hourglass is responsible for.
- Sissy Longlegs has become one thanks to Sinvicta, who became famous for his incredibly long win streak with Eden in Afterbirth†. Since Sinvicta tends to have good runs with Sissy Longlegs on tow, fans have caught on and declare any run with Sissy is bound to be blessed.
- Blood Puppy from Repentance, a bloody little slug creature that sports a Playful Cat Smile... which it drops after enough kills and starts to target you as well, and the more it kills, the meaner and stronger it gets. It's gained a sizable fanbase as a result.
- Psy Fly, also from Repentance, for being a familiar that completely turns any Bullet Hell boss fight into a complete joke. To the point patch notes for an update in November 2021 had to write "it was still an amazing item" after it was slightly nerfed.
- On the bosses' side, there's The Bloat. While this game certainly doesn't skimp on the brutally difficult bosses, almost none of them (not even most of the Final Bosses) have obtained the same reputation for destroying runs as The Bloat has.
- The Duke of Flies, despite being a Goddamned Boss at worst, is treated as unfairly hard thanks to a popular Reddit post claiming that he is the hardest boss in every version because of his ability to fly and create flies that also fly.
Moe: Isaac himself, especially in the Afterbirth cutscenes. This makes his fate all the more heartwrenching.
- To a lesser extent, some of the characters like Eve, Lilith, and Lazarus, being versions of Isaac.
Moral Event Horizon: Isaac's mom crosses it at the start of the game when she tries to murder her own son.
Most Wonderful Sound:
- The high-pitched cue when you pick up a dime.
- The jingle that plays when finding a Secret Room in either version. The Rebirth one is notable enough that it plays when selecting Rebirth on the New 3DS menu.
- The narrator calling out the name of any pill or card used, especially if it's one with a beneficial effect. The really nice voice courtesy of Matthias Bossi doesn't hurt. Slides into Funny with the Horse Pills from Repentance, where the announcer suddenly becomes really loud and hammy.
- The angelic choir when you pick up a Soul Heart, or the triumphant note of picking up an Eternal Heart.
- The combination of "pinball bonus"-like sounds when you use a pill with a positive effect.
- The sound of an Angel or Devil Room opening up after a boss kill. Unless you have to fight Krampus, that is.
- The fifth Booster Pack brought along a number of nice new sounds, such as a demonic choir when you pick up a Black Heart, a bone-rattling clack when you pick up a Bone Heart, a humorous little crunch when Chub and her variants eat a bomb, and so on. Perhaps the best one is the fizz and crackle when you pick up a Gold Bomb.
- The gulp sound of getting a free half-heart when the healing effect of Vampiric Bite, Placenta, or Isaac's Fork occurs.
- The short jingle followed by a deep sound of a lock clicking that plays after getting a Gold Key or using Dad's Key.
- Collecting a gold heart plays a pleasant metallic clink noise.
- Repentance changed the sounds of picking up coins back to how they sounded in the original Flash game. Picking up nickels and dimes has never sounded so satisfying.
- Combined with a wonderful sight, the chipping away at The Beast as it gradually starts to crumble at the end of a long grueling run, signifying the triumphant end.
  - Heck, the noise of any final boss dying can be amazing to hear.

N-Z

Narm:
- The True Final Boss of Rebirth is undeniably awesome in every way… except for his name. His name is Mega Satan, which, while intended to make him more awesome, can lead to this instead.
- A small moment in regards to the Beast. In its intro cutscene, it looks very menacing at first glance as it rises from the depths… but look at its eyes as it does. It looks profoundly derpy, with it not even looking at Isaac, making it seem like it's not paying attention. Of course, this doesn't apply in the fight proper since it actually focuses on Isaac, but it's still an inappropriately chuckle-worthy moment.
Narm Charm: Living in the Light, Dogma's theme, has a pair of preachers in the song's background yelling their lungs out about Christianity, with some moments where they go full Careful with That Axe mode^note. Even if it can seem hilarious, it's so well-executed and representative of the negative effects that religion and fundamentalism can have on a person.
Obvious Beta:
- Wrath of the Lamb was glitchy as hell on release. Even the patches created further bugs temporarily; version 1.15 prevented several players from unlocking Challenge 10 or Ending 12.
- The original game was admitted to be very buggy on release, due to its complexity and the difficulties of working with Flash.
One-Scene Wonder: The penultimate boss of Repentance, Dogma, only features in one relatively short boss fight, but has received staggering popularity among the game's fans, helped in no small part by its spectacular design and symbolism. Living In The Light, the chaotic theme for Dogma, quickly became one of, if not THE most popular tracks in the game.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
- Samson in Rebirth, following his transition from the original game. He was originally despised for having low health and because his starting item, Bloody Lust, lasted only one room. Rebirth greatly increased his health and changed his Bloody Lust ability which, while drastically affecting his playstyle, is not only easier to achieve, but also lasts the entire floor.
- The Lost in Afterbirth. Originally a One-Hit-Point Wonder whose only special ability was flying, the expansion greatly buffed him three times. He now starts with the D4, spectral tears, and the Holy Mantle (though the latter item must be unlocked first), which makes the game significantly less frustrating for those playing as him. Another patch made his unlock process significantly easier to accomplish, which no longer makes it a Guide Dang It! affair. While Repentance nerfed Holy Mantle, which by proxy also affected him, it also made his Holy Mantle an innate ability unable to be rerolled and allows him to always start with the Eternal D6, no matter if unlocked or not.
- The Keeper in Repentance. Before, in Afterbirth/Afterbirth†, Keeper used to have a maximum of two Coin Hearts and the only way to increase that amount was through a very impractical item^note. Now, after defeating Hush, Keeper will start with three Coin Hearts, making the game much more enjoyable (and improving the achievement for beating a boss as hard as Hush from "Keeper now holds... a penny!" to "Keeper now has more health and a penny!"). Moreover, Keeper can now pay Devil Deals with coins rather than health, so Angel Rooms are no longer the only viable way to play the character. Additionally, Keeper is now completely immune to Devil Deal/Angel Room chance loss upon receiving damage. Finally, his starting Speed was increased from 0.85 to 0.9, which, while small, can make surviving fast shooting enemies much easier.
- Big Horn was just as contested as the other new bosses in Afterbirth† for a variety of reasons: his attack patterns were unfair (primarily because he could summon Little Horn on top of his already massive coverage), he had obnoxious damage resistance, and his spritework was below standard for the game due to being stiff, lacking in shading, and overall feeling out of place. His fight issues were mostly fixed in patches, but Repentance really boosted him by redoing his spritesets to be more consistent and Ugly Cute, removing the Little Horn summon in exchange for a related attack, and incorporating him into other parts of the game (he's the One-Hit Kill effect for the very useful Little Horn item, and drags Tainted Esau away once he takes enough damage), making him much more tolerable and endearing.
- Holy Water was regarded as one of the worst items and a symbol of the ineffectiveness of Angel Rooms. It was a familiar that did not activate until you took damage, and all it did was create creep and didn't respawn until entering a new room. In Repentance, Holy Water is instead turned into a Bob's Brain type weapon that's thrown, spawns creep when it hits an enemy, and also petrifies enemies that walk into it, forcing enemies to take the full brunt of the damage. It's now a boss-shredder and one of the better items in the angel pool.
- Notched Axe in the Flash version was a one-room charge item that just broke a single rock. It was reworked in Rebirth to a 3-charge item that you held above your head and could use to break as many rocks and secret room entrances as you wanted in the current room, but it was still underwhelming overall. Repentance overhauled it entirely; now it's held as a melee weapon like The Forgotten's bone club, but with the ability to use it to break rocks and secret room entrances as well, and its charge meter instead functions as a Minecraft-like durability meter that can sustain 64 hits a floor and recharges each floor. It was also moved from item rooms to shops, so you can safely ignore it if you don't need it. While Notched Axe still isn't the best item in the game, Repentance earned it a much warmer reception with its upgrades to usefulness and flavourful design.
- Glass Cannon was a decent activated item at the launch of Afterbirth that was instantly demoted to a dud pickup for anyone except the Lost when patched to remove temporary hearts as well as red hearts when used; the above-average benefit of a single powerful piercing tear every four seconds wasn't worth constantly being one mistake from a loss. Repentance kept the tear the same, but dropped the health cost and gave it a unique breaking mechanic where it shatters if you get hit, making you take double damage for the current room and then needing to recharge it over several rooms to repair it. While it still has obvious disadvantages, it now has a unique balance of risk and reward that doesn't punish mistakes as harshly.
- Aquarius and Aries were long considered to be the most underwhelming Zodiac items, the former for the low damage dealt by its creep and the latter for requiring you to run into enemies to trigger its effect in a game where most enemies deal contact damage. Both received substantial buffs in Repentance, with Aquarius now scaling to match Isaac's damage stat and synergising with tear effects, and Aries making Isaac immune to contact damage if he's moving quickly enough. Both items have seen an increase in popularity as a result, especially the latter.
- Broken Modem was an item most players avoided in Afterbirth† as it would randomly cause enemy projectiles to lag in midair, making the game's more complex bullet patterns unpredictable and harder to dodge. Repentance modified it to erase the bullets it affected instead, making it far stronger and less annoying to use, and when combined with its other powerful effects like freezing enemies in place and duplicating room clear rewards, it's now widely seen as a must-take item whenever it shows up.
- The 1.7.5 Repentance patch delivered Tainted Jacob and Tainted Lazarus some well-deserved buffs. For Jacob, Dark Esau is no longer killable (which prevents him from killing you and forcing you to become The Lost), blocks enemy bullets for you, tries to keep his distance before his charge instead of constantly approaching you and pierces boss armor, allowing him to become a killing machine against pretty much everything. While he still embodies Rocket-Tag Gameplay, Tainted Jacob is much easier to play, and one could even potentially consider Dark Esau a form of Difficult, but Awesome if you can work around his pursuit. Even better, if Dark Esau does turn you into The Lost, you can still collect hearts for the next floor, meaning it isn't even a total downside. Tainted Lazarus was meanwhile buffed by making it so that each item room contains two items, one for his Flipped form and one for his Unflipped form. In fact, any room with items in it can be flipped to reveal a second item, and the game even generously shows a faded outline of the second item behind the first so you know exactly what you're getting. This makes it much easier to amass two builds of relatively equal strength and fixes pretty much every issue people had with him, to the point where some are claiming he's now one of the most fun characters in the game.
- The 1.8 patch brought a lot more respect to Lazarus and Blue Baby. While they weren’t hated, they were largely considered to be extremely boring compared to other choices. Now, however:
  - Whenever Lazarus dies with his extra life, he loses one heart container but gets a permanent damage upgrade. As it happens, that extra life now regenerates at the start of every floor now. A result is that now Lazarus players are actively encouraged to be more reckless, allowing him to do stuff like take Devil Deals with a bonus damage up on top of that with little risk.
  - Blue Baby starts out with the innate effect of creating blue flies out of poop and combined with his innate poop item, it gives him an extra offensive edge that he lacked. Furthermore, Devil Deals now cost less, making taking those deals less risky.
Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
- Sacrifice Rooms are a special room type with a set of spikes in the center that you can pay health to for a chance at rewards. The problem was that the payout — originally just a chance at regular chests — was way too low for something that demanded so much health, especially since it takes from rarer Soul Hearts before common Red Hearts. As much, they were the least popular new room type added in Wrath of the Lamb. The Afterbirth expansion reworked the reward system for them, and paying them will now give you high-quality rewards like Angel items and free Soul Hearts at guaranteed payment tiers. It's still a very expensive room to use, but the reward is at least worth it now.
- Angel Rooms are an alternative to Devil rooms first added in Wrath of the Lamb which in theory provide powerful items without having to pay health. The problem was twofold; first, Angel Rooms cannot spawn until you've skipped a Devil Deal at least once. That means you have to give up the huge power boost Devil Rooms can provide going into the third floor to maybe get an Angel Room next floor. The other, and more pressing, issue is that Angel Rooms were frequently awful. There were multiple rooms that had no items, and even then many items in the room's item pool are defense-focused rather than offense-focused, with some of them ranging from underwhelming to useless^notee.g. Holy Water. There are standout great items^noteSacred Heart especially comes to mind, but it simply wasn't worth the risk. Rebirth and its expansions made this even worse; Rebirth made it so it locks Mega Satan (at the time the True Final Boss) behind Angel rooms (which may never appear if you were unlucky), and while all three expansions tried to rectify some of the problems by introducing some powerful items to the pool, they also introduced notorious Scrappy Weapons^note. Repentance gave a huge fix to Angel Rooms: changing or removing most of the no item layouts, massively buffing nearly every bad item in the pool (with Holy Water, Breath of Life and Glyph of Balance standing out more than most) adding tons of good/powerful items to the pool (be it old ones like Blood of the Martyr or new ones like Revelation), and making an Angel Room guaranteed on the next Angel/Devil Room spawn after you skip a Devil Room.
Self-Fanservice: Some fans have a habit of portraying the playable characters as adults without the Super-Deformed art style, often just keeping two traits about them: Their starting accessories/hair styles, and the fact that they're naked.
- This happens most often to Eve. It might have something to do with her starting item...
- Magdalene herself also gets on this. Perhaps due to the nature of her build (and maybe also because she shares the name of Isaac's Mom), Maggy is occasionally portrayed as a Big Beautiful Woman.
- Lilith also tends to get this treatment in fanart. Given her long red hair and gameplay schtick, it's probably not surprising.
- More bizarrely, there's a moderately popular depiction of Delirium as a Slime Girl.
- The Siren has been drawn as an adult, curvy Cute Monster Girl with the giant teeth of her Spirit of the Night-inspired look downplayed. In-game she is as androgynous as the playable characters and looks similar to the Dark One, and there is no clear indication that she is older than most of the other humanoid enemies that are alternate Isaacs.
Sequel Difficulty Spike:
- Zig-zagged in Rebirth. The game added a lot of new content while updating older items from the original, which makes things both more difficult and easier thanks to the new items but larger item pool. The shop got a major revamp with a lot of very useful items to potentially buy. However, the main bosses are a straight example, all of them (barring Mom) having been given new moves and Bullet Hell abilities which make the fights harder than they were in the original game.
- Afterbirth added new features to the level design such as cramped rooms and trap rooms. Multiple bosses at cramped rooms don't mix well. And certain trap rooms only give you a split second to react before a bomb explodes in your face. There are also trapped treasure rooms which might require you to use a bomb to reach the item.
- Repentance reworked Hard Mode so that soul hearts are rarer and shops are much more likely to be of smaller variants, even when fully upgraded. In any difficulty, items that were single-handed run-savers — or even run-carriers — back in Afterbirth† and earlier have been nerfed, in particular most sources of soul/black hearts have either had their given health toned down or removed. The alternate path pulls no punches and requires fast thinking to avoid getting hit. Edmund himself even invoked this by saying the reworked Hard Mode would be difficult even to seasoned veterans and suggested that they learn the game all over again.
Signature Scene: The banner for the Flash version, with Isaac lying in the light of the trapdoor above, surrounded by bosses.
Suspiciously Similar Song: The song for Downpour, "River of Despair", sounds very similar to the Dungeon theme for the original Legend of Zelda.
That One Attack:
- Brimstone beams are this for the game as a whole. They have no travel time, cross the entire room, pass through all forms of cover, and linger for a couple of seconds. Fighting multiple enemies with Brimstone attacks in a room generally means you run out of room to dodge very quickly.
  - The Bloat's brimstone attack gets a special mention, which once again, has no tell and hits almost instantaneously. And he'll use it without fail if you get in range while he's not using another attack.
  - The Adversary's Brimstone attack is even worse than that of The Bloat. It's telegraphed by a unique roar, which is pretty quiet, plus the beam actively curves to hit you. While it is possible to dodge by getting close and circling the boss, this attack becomes a terror when two Adversaries are in a single room and the one in the other corner unleashes the beam.
  - Of course, when you have Brimstone, your own beams have the same advantages as the boss ones, and items like the Head of Krampus, Tammy's Head, and especially Mega Blast can deal a lot of damage with their beams. Tammy's Head is stronger with Brimstone than the Head of Krampus because it shoots in all directions instead of the cardinal directions and recharges after a single room. This is all if you can get the items in the first place (Azazel at least benefits more from Tammy's head).
- Mom's hand during the Mom boss battle, not to be confused with the Mom's Hand monster in Rebirth. It comes out to swat you if you hang around the doors too much, and is near-instantaneous. It's avoidable, but you probably won't manage to do it on purpose. Playing as The Lost? Game over.
- Mega Fatty, an otherwise easy to dodge if spongy boss, has one really annoying attack. He can, with almost no warning, leap from his current position to where you're standing in less than a second, which is practically undodgeable if you're standing still.
- Hush's Continuum attack, where his bullets wrap around the screen. Several factors make this attack more difficult to avoid than it sounds on paper. First, the bullets move faster the longer they stay in the air, and by the time they finish their wrap around will be moving extremely fast. Second, he sprays the bullets in an expanding cone, so they become a large wall when they return from the other side. Third, the bullets wobble as they travel, making predicting their patterns and finding a safe spot difficult. Fourth, he can suddenly switch directions and unleash a new bullet spray before the old one is done, overlapping them and making dodging nearly impossible. Finally, even if you do manage to figure out where the safe spots are, the boss can fire from any number of positions, forcing you to figure out the new safe spot on the fly. Repentance made it even harder to figure out where the safe spots are and where to dodge to.
- The Stain's Bullet Hell attack which sends blood drops flying across the boss arena, leaving little room to dodge them.
- Gurdy Jr.'s Dash Attack, and to a lesser extent Dingle and Dangle's, as the attacks are very fast, send the enemies flying across the room, and will almost always hit you if you're not quick and alert enough. Gurdy's Jr.'s is especially brutal, as it's untelegraphed and much harder to dodge. She does it every time she sends a circle of bullets, the dash lasts a long time, and it sends her bouncing off the walls in unpredictable directions, making it not unlikely for you to get hit a bunch of times during a boss battle with her. She also does it repeatedly when near death. Dingle and Dangle's are at least telegraphed and have an easier dodge pattern to follow, but can also be just as annoying if you have poor speed or don't react immediately.
- The Horny Boys have a attack when they use Hornfel's brimstone laser bombs and teleport three times in quick succession. You don't get much warning to when they are doing it and they are fast to boot.
- Dogma has an attack where it will spin around very quickly for a long period of time with wings coming out of it, and spraying feathers outward upon hitting a wall. You do get a tell but the issue is that Dogma is fast when doing this. Not helping is that it's not easy to hit Dogma while it's doing this. Oh and it tends to spam the attack a lot.
That One Level:
- The Cellar can be a much harder starting point than The Basement, usually involving harder enemies and rooms with a borderline fetish for spider enemies. In addition, these levels can frequently stick you with facing either The Widow or The Haunt as your first boss battle of the run.
- The Flooded Caves, where Chargers have a higher chance to be replaced with their slightly tankier, diagonal shot-shooting cousins known as Drowned Chargers. Many of the "drowned" enemies spawn them as well, including the level's Mulligan variety, which can quickly fill the room with enemies that can overwhelm the player character in a run with low DPS by that point. The infamous "single line of ground over a pit with five Boom Flies" room can still appear, and the flies have a chance to be replaced with Drowned Boom Flies, who have a cardinal retaliation shot and spawn, yet again, Drowned Chargers. Not miraculously getting flight by Chapter 2 could easily mean a death sentence. To rub salt in the wound, one Super Secret Room variety that is almost completely useless^note is the one with the Flooded Caves skin. Booster Pack 4 of Afterbirth† made it even worse with the addition of a unique type of worm enemy that fires high-arcing shots that "predict" where the player character tries to run to.
- Necropolis. Not only is it home to quite a few Demonic Spiders (such as Hangars and Masks + Hearts) and numerous spike traps, but it also holds some very annoying or difficult bosses, like The Bloat and The Mask of Infamy. Fortunately, the latter only applies for Necropolis 1, as Necropolis 2 always has Mom as the floor's boss. There's still the risk of them spawning in Boss Challenge rooms, though.
- The Dark Room, when compared to fellow Brutal Bonus Level The Chest. While the four initial chests in the latter all contain items, the ones in the former are red chests with the usual fare, meaning that there is no guarantee of getting anything that helps you survive the level. Additionally, the Dark Room tends to contain more dangerous enemies and bosses than The Chest, including the likes of multiple Fallens or Mask of Infamy.
- Ashpit in Repentance, the alternate floor to the Mines. It not only features a harder version of Demonic Spiders burrowing Pins that will shoot tears as they emerge from the ground, it also features tanky fiery-Death's Heads that will erupt in flames when near you, indestructible ghosts that move in wavy patterns accross the screen in many rooms (including some Challenge Rooms waves!), ghosts that will remain invisible and rush at you when you are not facing them as well as teleporting away upon taking hits, it also features one of the worst boss pool of the entire game, with almost all its bosses qualifying as That One Boss. It speaks miles when this specific floor has been slowly but surely making its way towards being one of the most hated floors in the game, outclassing both Dross and Gehenna in that regard.
- ...not that Gehenna is any better than Ashpit, though; it lives up to its name of "Mausoleum's alternate floor" and then some. Gehenna has many more spike traps and even adds big, spinning morning stars that hurt a lot. Not to mention it not only brings back the enemies from Mausoleum, but it puts its own spin as well, with red-eyed robe spectres that shoot creep trails and summon bone traps instead of homing balls, enemies that move faster if you move around the room, exploding enemies that restore others' health on their death, and goat-like enemies with varied attacks, some of which are larger, sturdier and fire Brimstone beams in a cross pattern (and with others in their group to boot). Finally, whereas Mausoleum has The Heretic as its That One Boss, Siren on the other hand is a fair fight — meanwhile Gehenna equals the ante with The Visage, an upgraded version of Mask of Infamy with more vicious attacks, and also adds The Horny Boys. Whenever you go down to the third floor on the alternate path, you really want it to be Masoleum, and NOT Gehenna.
- The Womb on Greedier Mode. Four waves spawn with less than two seconds of delay per wave. If you aren't overpowered by now or have health to spare, you're dead, no question.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- Given that Repentance promised a global rebalancing of the game, this was expected to happen. Lots of good items were nerfed, including items that used to be (and still are) run-savers or run-carriers, like Brimstone, Tech X, or 20/20. Most items that used to give hearts under certain conditions no longer do (Maw of the Void or Serpent's Kiss tear poison effect, though poison effect through contact with an enemy with Serpent's Kiss still has a chance to spawn a Black Heart on death), or have been nerfed (The Nail now only gives half a Black Heart per use, Abaddon no longer outright gives six Black Hearts but instead two Black Hearts + one Black Heart for every Red Heart removed following payment for the item in a Devil Deal).
- Repentance also changed a few sprites both of items and enemies, and such changes were not always received with joy. For items, it can be quite confusing for veteran players to see what looks like a new item, but turns out to be an old item that simply got resprited (Eden's Soul and Buddy in a Box are two notable examples). Regarding changes to enemies' sprites, reactions range from They are more in line with Flash-era Isaac to They don't mesh at all with the unchanged sprites. Some sprite changes are also criticized for their lack of homogeneity: Vis enemies all got a sprite changes, yet the Sisters Vis boss didn't. Same applies for the Horsemen. They all got their Flash-era sprites back, yet their Ultra versions during The Beast fight are more in line with their Rebirth sprites. While it is understandable that respriting the entire game would have delayed the DLC for a few months, it is less understandable as to why they still decided to change less than a quarter of the sprites and called it a day.
- The changes to Mother (previously known as The Witness in Antibirth) from Repentance have been divisive as well. First, the arena was reduced from a 2x2 room to a 1x2, similar to the Mega Satan boss fight, making the fight seem less impressive. Second, in Antibirth the camera was zoomed out so the entirety of the arena was visible on screen (which made sense as the fight was a bullet hell with tears coming out of the walls), this is no longer the case in Repentance, once again making the fight seem less impressive. But what hurts the most are the drastic changes to the boss behaviour. In Antibirth, The Witness was an extremely hard bullet hell fight, rivaling both Hush and Delirium, with several tear patterns, a Technology like attack that the player had to dodge by hiding behind rocks, a Brimstone rotating attack combined with a spinning bullet hell attack, geometric figures Eye of Belial-like patterns and so on. In Repentance, almost all of these patterns are gone (because of the reduction in room space), and the roster of attacks is much less diverse. Phase 1 basically has four attacks, Phase 2 has four attacks as well, and most of them are not that hard when compared to, say, Hush. For the people coming from Antibirth, this can sadly make Mother an Anti-Climax Boss (though the people that didn't come from it will probably have it harder).
Unexpected Character:
- Fans were confused and intrigued when Edmund announced yet another DLC for the game called Repentance that would be displayed at PAX. Everything seems to be mostly the same, sans one or two new items... then cue the audience excitement when Baby Plum appears as the boss of the first floor, and it's revealed that the DLC will be a full port of Antibirth.
- Very few people expected or even guessed that Repentance would have the Christian broadcasts mentioned in the opening being represented as a boss fight.
- Repentance took this trope up to eleven by adding an alternate variant for each character that plays completely unique, usually having a spin on the idea of the character, effectively doubling the roster of playable characters.
- With the introduction of Warp Zones to the Four Souls card game providing characters and items from other series, there were a few curveballs along with the more popular choices. However, most unexpected of all was the inclusion of things from Tommy Wiseau's The Room (2003).
Unfortunate Character Design: Delirium, being a perpetually melty and pure white Blob Monster is often joked about looking like… semen.
Viewer Gender Confusion: Mask of Infamy, Lust, the entire Gurdy family, and Colostomia are confirmed female by Word of God. The only in-game indicator for any of these is that the largest Gurdy variant is named "Mama Gurdy" (which does not necessarily mean that the others have to be female), and that Lust is pink (even though Super Pride is also pink and is not female as far as anyone knows). Neither Mask of Infamy — who appears as a giant literal mask with a heart, nor Colostomia — whose disgusting appearance provides no indicators of being male or female — have any indicators of being female (though for Mask of Infamy, it starts to make more sense considering she is based on Carmilla from Castlevania).
The Woobie:
- Isaac. Being constantly bullied by children in school, having to go through the death of his pets, having an Anti-Role Model father that left him and his mom after a falling-out with her, his mom being abusive and out to kill Isaac after a voice she mistakes to be God tells her to... what this poor kid goes through, no human should ever go. And yet, he takes it all like a badass. A weeping, naked, terrified, prepubescent badass.
  - If you thought Isaac was a Woobie before, the Downer Ending of Afterbirth† multiplies it tenfold. As it turns out, he is indeed slowly asphyxiating to death within a chest. We are finally given the reason why: he did it to himself. After losing his pets and watching his father walk out on his mother, he demonizes himself and blames everything that happened on him. The entire game is a Dying Dream as he goes insane and slowly suffocates to death.
- Mulligans and Hives are weak, sobbing enemies who do not attack Isaac, and who are slowly being turned into living flies' nests. Or undead, but still suffering, flies' nests. The lowest level Mulligans don't even try to attack you, instead running away when you approach and cowering in the corner. Wrath of the Lamb adds a power up that turns you into one. It's every bit as useful as it is horrifying.

YMMV / The Binding of Isaac

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