YMMV / The Borgias

• Fan Nickname:
  • Ursula is commonly known as "Squidward" within the fandom.
  • Rodrigo is often referred to — with great affection — as "Papa Pope."
• Fetish Retardant: Juan and Sancia's chemistry exploding into sexual passion? Hot! Juan and Sancia's chemistry exploding into sexual passion against the table where Sancia's father has seated a bunch of dead, mummified bodies? OH, GOD, NO, MAKE IT STOP.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of the Dukes that Lucrezia visits in season three has a pet dog called Little Sebastian.
  • If that isn't funny enough, now that François Arnaud and Ana Ularu have since participated on another project, and the poster has Arnaud looking like he has been in a faux crucifixion, this unintentionally brings up the fact that during the time of the Borgias, Cesare's face became the new face for Jesus on the orders of Rodrigo.
    • Even funnier considering that Manfred Barnardo and Mistress West were a married couple. Fly, fanfiction writers. FLY!
    • Oh, and you know Machiavelli. Apparantly, he's the Beast Forever in Emerald City. So, Charlotte D'Albret once fought against Machiavelli.
  • Rodrigo Borgia was played by Jeremy Irons. A few years after the series had prematurely ended, he would portray Templar Dr. Alan Rikkin in the Assassin's Creed (2016), which is a spinoff installment of a franchise that had the Borgias as Templars and major antagonists in the second and third games respectively.
• Hollywood Homely: We're told Calvino di Pallivinci pales in comparison to his brother in looks.
• Ho Yay: Micheletto and Cesare. With themes of Too Kinky to Torture in that whipping scene, no less. Oh my. Comes perilously close to becoming canon (in a one-sided sort of way, at least) in the series finale, when Micheletto gives Cesare's face a phantom caress as he sleeps.
  • Micheletto and della Rovere, with even further torture.
  • Cesare and Machiavelli.
  • Cesare and Djem in "The Moor", with Djem calling Cesare's name as he's dying and clutching him tightly.
  • Lucrezia and Giulia when the latter teaches the former how to kiss.
• Incest Yay Shipping: The majority of Internet fans ship Cesare and Lucrezia. To be fair, so does history, which latched onto the rumor of her being in relationship with both her older brothers and her father (who is the assumed father of her known child).
• Memetic Mutation: Ursula is referred to as Squidward on LiveJournal and Tumblr so often, in many cases her real name isn't even brought up and the fans still know who's being discussed.
  • Any meme associated with trolling already and then put in conjunction with Juan. Hell, his nickname is "Juantroll".
    • It's become very popular on Tumblr to compare the Borgia family to the Bluths from Arrested Development- particularly Cesare to Michael and Juan to GOB.
  • Jokes involving Assassin's Creed are also extremely popular (especially regarding Micheletto being a member of the Assassin Brotherhood).
• Moral Event Horizon
  • Cesare's candidates: He ordered the murder of an innocent bystander in order to save his father's political career. Building a relationship with Ursula completely around lies, then killing her husband. The ruthless torture of French soldiers, and lastly, the murder of Giovanni Sforza, though we hardly mourn for either. Finally, murdering his brother Juan may have been necessary given his increasingly dangerous behaviour, but the fact that he carries it out with no remorse or emotion apart from vengeance shows the Protagonist Journey to Villain is finally complete.
  • Juan's Curb-Stomp Battle with Theo, which only occurs because Juan's an idiot who believes in gossip and can't control his temper.
    • His murder of Paolo is perhaps a better example of this. Lucrezia certainly thinks this.
    • Also: raping an innocent girl on the night of his murder, and almost certainly infecting her with syphilis.
  • The French army crossed it when they massacred Lucca. After they agreed to surrender.
    • As an extension of this, despite his foolish inability to realize exactly how brutally the French would act, instigating the French invasion of his homeland can be considered Cardinal della Rovere's.
  • When Ludovico Sforza had his nephew poisoned right in front of Ascanio, all the while saying that he will gladly welcome French arms with open arms of his own.
• Narm: While Rodrigo's impromptu burial of his dead son in the garden wasn't necessarily a bad concept, the protracted length of the scene increasingly draws attention to the implausibility that no one noticed what was going on, the physical awkwardness of an older actor in a robe attempting the action, and the unfortunate similarity to how one would dispose of a deceased pet.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Considering the time period and subject matter, The Borgias might as well easily insert the Auditores from Assassin's Creed into the story.
• The Scrappy: Ursula is pretty well despised by the fandom partly due to the lack of development in her relationship with Cesare, but mostly due to her Mary Sue qualities that make her appear flawlessly perfect.
• Squick: The various torture scenes, most of the gore is actually offscreen but that's bad enough.
  • Gioffre's wedding night. He's a kid of thirteen (and looks younger) who's about to have sex with a grown woman, he may look happy about it but that doesn't mean the audience is.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The murder of Paolo is more or less resolved in logical but very undramatic fashion in the first fifteen minutes of the episode following. Lucrezia remembers Paolo did not read or write and couldn't sign his name, much less leave a suicide note; she knows of only three people who even possibly knew about them and two of them, if not in favor, were at least accepting; and the third reacted violently to even the possiblity. She mentions Juan to Rodrigo, who confronts him with Cesare and their mother, and Juan admits it, because he's proud of "defending her honor".
  • While it's mostly for the sake of being allowed on television, cutting out the incest within the Borgia family does remove a rather important dimension of their dynamic as well. As of season 3 episode 3, Cesare and Lucrezia's Incest Subtext has now moved up to actual sex.

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