YMMV / The Unexpectables

• Abandon Shipping: When Arlo was first introduced, it was popular to ship him with Meryl due to the idea that their early interactions was a case of Belligerent Sexual Tension. This lasted until it was revealed that Arlo was heavily classist, racist, sexist, and treated everyone else around him like a lesser being, at which point people dropped the ship like a rock.
  • Downplayed with Greckles/Solly, which has transition from being one of the more popular ships in the fandom to having it's group of detractors after it's been noticed that Greckles has, over time, been treating Solly less like a friend who suffers from the same issue of not knowing what to do with their life and constantly dealing with their past baggage, and more like a messiah figure, despite Solly's clear discomfort with it. The ship still has its fans; it just now comes with the caveat that Greckles should deal with all his issues first.
• Adorkable:
  • Out of the main party there’s Borky, a huge, loud, but overall friendly orc who loves hanging out with children and is very dedicated to his idea of a cheesery.
  • Solly after she Took a Level in Cheerfulness. She’s still not the most graceful in social situations but her well meaning nature is endearing. It’s most noticeable when she ends up having to lead a mission with the Unexpectables and she responds to Task trying to ask a question like a kindergarten teacher.
• Angst? What Angst?: Kiwi takes the reveal that the man he thought was his best friend actually being an imposter very well.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The spawn of Stillhavity that took over the twin tusks orc clan that Borky has to fight in single combat, had a decent AC and the ability to counterattack whenever Borky missed an attack, and actually does some decent damage...... until Monty remembers that Raunfalt gets advantage against anything related to Stillhavity, and also has the potential to banish it back to its home plane, then it retroactively goes down in 3 hits, with Borky barely getting hurt
  • The personification of Panic's talent despite getting hyped up for multiple sessions, and his arrival also causing every monster in the immediate vicinity to flee, doesn't get to do much before Panic wakes up Omnimaw, which ends up having the entire group teleporting back to the material plain.
  • Darkus, while his army is a threat, when he himself finally fights is put down rather easily with the only difficulty fighting him coming from him using mass suggestion on the majority of the party which incapacitates them for a few turns and the fact Task had to fight him alone during the beginning of the fight. Once the rest of the party join in the fight he's quickly killed.
  • The Kraken that the party encounters in the Water Plane gets dealt with with little issue thanks to the pirate crew the party was traveling with taking out most of it's health before it can do anything of note. It has been noted above game the party essentially got the perfect pirate crew (which was randomly chosen) to help them as they specialized in artillery and siege combat, the perfect thing to fight a Kraken.
  • Taimatsu, the final Primordial Oni, while a decent threat when riding the Phoenix once that's over and Taimatsu fights personally he ends up being a lot easier than the previous couple of Oni thanks to mainly relying on fire magic, which half the party resisted, and unlike the other Oni his magic was able to be counterspelled by Panic on a very consistent basis, taking away a lot of his more dangerous options, and was the first Oni since Kokyu to fail to even knock out a single party member. Compared to Doketsu, he was a walk in the park.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Exactly how much of Borky's antics is due to his legitimate lack of intelligence or him deliberately playing up the Orc stereotype so people will underestimate him?
    • This can also cause the times where he seems to unwittingly insults people to be put in a different light if it's the later. Making it seem like he's using his stupidity as an excuse to throw jabs at his friends and allies.
  • Sergei got hit with this after the truth of his and Euphoria's falling out came to light. Did he lie to Euphoria about drowning Panic/Vergil to spite her, for not telling him the truth about her race, or did he do it due to the belief that Euphoria couldn't be trusted to be a positive influence on their child, and did it out of the misguided belief that he could raise Vergil alone?
  • Did Fleur de Mort actually love Ivan or did they only use him as a pawn to spread their seed?
• Arc Fatigue:
  • The Underdark arc has gotten this reaction after awhile, less because of the arc's actual length, but more so the amount of times the group had to put the main campaign on halt due to either real world issues, or celebrating the show's 100th episode with a beach special, which gave the arc a lot of artificial downtime.
  • The wait on the reveal of Greckles's backstory has worn a lot of fans out. While the rest of the party got the majority of their past life before Alivast out by the first twenty five episodes, it took Greckles over a hundred episodes for him to reveal anymore than the bare minimum of his past to Remy. With Gaijin noting that he only revealed half of his past at that point. Even after the arc focused on him got over with, he and Monty note that they still haven't covered a good chunk of his backstory.
  • Almost Fittingly, Greckle's own personal arc, The Elemental Planes arc is the longest arc the series has had yet consisting of a journey across the four elemental planes, along with a fetch quest to acquire the materials needed to make the jump to each plane safely. Taking over 8 months to complete. Even fans of the arc admit to it dragging on a bit.
  • The romance arcs for Panic and Greckles have been criticized for not advancing at all after a certain point thanks to a few unlucky dice rolls for charisma checks stonewalling any progress with their potential. This is especially noticeable after the Elemental Planes arc where after spending multiple sessions and scenes trying to figure out the best way to get with Hellina he's ultimately told to just give her time.... the advice he was already given right before the Elemental Planes arc. Meanwhile Greckle's pursuit of Solly is stated to be on hold until at the very least the UCO invasion is dealt with.
• Archive Panic: The main campaign will be ending at a nice and tidy 200 episodes...each over three hours long. And that's not including one shots, special events, Ravenloft, and Orktober, many of whom are even longer. Have fun!
• Awesome Art: The official art provided by That Art Jack is amazing and brings every person and creature he draws to life.
• Awesome Ego: Panic Grimtongue. An egotistical rockstar who's beloved by the community for his sheer audaciousness and the fact that he can often back his boastings to at least some extent.
• Base-Breaking Character: Greckles is easily the most controversial member of the main cast, with some loving his journey of self discovery, along with his relationship with Solly, while others criticize him for his hypocrisy, inability to actually admit his mistakes, lack of growth compared to the rest of the party, and the fact that much of his angst comes from a backstory that isn't told for over a hundred episodes
  • Tubbs, some thought that he was a wonderful source of humor, while others agreed with Monty that he was a waste of time that Taka ran into the ground.
  • Brorc Bronze-Fang is probably the most controversial NPC character in the whole campaign. Some people appreciate his racial inclusion program and understand that he's under a lot of stress considering all the stuff he has to deal with on a constant basis. Others point to the fact that a lot of his problems are his own fault and that his constantly shady dealings make him lose a lot of sympathy that he might have gotten. The fact that he's typically at odds with at least one member of the party doesn't help.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Everything about the Dog Zone, where the current storyline about Solly's dark past suddenly gets hijacked by a magic pug that turns people into the dogs, and once they deal with it, everyone moves on like it never happened.
• Broken Base: The fans are generally pretty nice to each other, but there are some sticking points:
  • The boat fight against the UOC during the Canary's Perch arc. Some claim it's a case of railroading, that Monty forced the party into an unwinnable situation and then punished them by taking away most of their gear and putting several characters in continued peril. Others contend that the party failed to adequately prepare for aquatic combat, adopted a suboptimal strategy for fighting the Clergy, and that a lot of the result came down to luck of the dice. ^explanation  Comments from Monty and the players point to a lack of clear choices as what caused the battle to go the way it did. Monty did state that she planned for five ways for the guys to get away but the players point out that none of those choices were obvious and by the time it became clear that they couldn't win against the UCO, it was to late for them to think of other options.
  • Continued usage of the Sun Nazi nickname early on in the campaign when referring to the UCO with some people (most notably the Cast and Monty) being against it due to feeling that it's a gross simplification of the problems with the UCO while others point out that with how racist and xenophobic they are that it really is an apt nickname.
  • Borky's sudden departure. Many fans are often deeply confused as to why Taka suddenly left the game so late (it was for business opportunities and sponsorships that more or less required him to focus on VTubing at the cost of almost everything else for a good long while), and the fact that Taka himself didn't deliver the news, more or less disappearing from the game entirely. (Bosco was the one to break the news after he had tracked down Taka to speak with him about it.) Fans mostly accepted that this was going to be something akin to a break right up until it became clear he wasn't coming back, leading to the finale of a game he helped start but ultimately didn't finish. Some fans were fine with this, given that over time Borky had more or less completed his own story arc and found a place to leave the story gracefully with his own happy ending (running his cheesery and defending the northern reaches of Alivast with the Orc Clans), but others were not happy that such a beloved character wasn't given an epilogue entry and had otherwise been Put on a Bus for good.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The main reveals involving Task in the Of Constructs and Dragons arc of him being a reincarnation of Sosorin and the grandchild of Azra Sahar. were figured out long before it was stated in story. The former due to the amount of times Sosorin is brought up when it comes to something related to Task (like when Greckles casted an illusion spell on Task to turn him into a Dragon that Arkgenos immediately recognizes as Sosorin) and multiple visions that only make sense if they were Past-Life Memories. While the latter was guessed the moment Azra showed up due to Task's Grandmother fortune card activating, the fact that Azra had her eggs stolen by the Kobolds of Iron Oath and how alike the two of them were.
• Catharsis Factor: After spending nearly thirty episodes underperforming in combat and generally getting his ass kicked by the other Primordial Oni, seeing Seika finally getting a stroke of luck and being one of the most useful party members in the fight against Taimatsu and the corrupted Phoenix feels great. Especially since he's the one to land the fatal blow on him.
• Crazy Is Cool: The Unexpectables have this reputation In-Universe among some of the Alivast guard. They are unquestionably this after Operation: Dino Drop.
  • Zenrio, any plan involving him sounds completely ridiculous on paper, and his overall personality is rather eccentric, but so far he’s proven to be one of the most effective allies the group has ever had.
  • Gnoll weddings. They involve the newlyweds hacking apart a wooden vampire effigy with battleaxes on the altar, party games involving battleaxes, and just a great many battleaxes in general.
• Creator Worship: The fanbase holds Monty in high regards and often take any criticism about the show or her DM choices very personally.
• Creepy Awesome: Seika's design is rather nonstandard when it comes to Fire Genasi thanks to the fact that his face and Mask are one in the same which leads to some.... less than natural moments but his design is praised for it's uniqueness.
• Death of the Author: A minor example but the fanbase has typically ignored Monty and Bosco's comments that Remy isn't a main character considering how long he's been with the party, and having starred in two one shots.
  • According to Gaijin, Greckles is straight. According to the fans, that's a lie.
• Difficulty Spike: Athtar is much more difficult than the previous enemies the crew has faced, armed with a recharging AOE spell that averages damage in the 30’s, legendary actions and resistances, an outright immunity to fire, and high-level stats. It’s noticeable that despite the fact that his allies were defeated with minimal trouble, he was still able to fight everyone evenly and was the first person since Helga to reduce Borky’s health to 0, with Borky only staying conscious due to his orc feature.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The fanbase has a habit of playing Tiengo as simply a brutal thug with a heart of gold rather than the barely restrained mass murderer he actually is.
  • Mel's charm led to a couple of people to look over the fact that she's a necromancer who was willing to kill the party when they first met. Even after she tries to kill the party her lack of screen time led to people to forget about that, leading to the fact that she horrifically sacrificed her helper Merchant to be a rude wake up call.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The squad of guards serving under Doros for being both memorable and effective.
  • Doros himself went from a throwaway character introduced in episode 5 to one of the most popular npcs in the entire show.
  • Kiwi, the kenku that Greckles befriended while on the pirate ship. His popularity eventually led to Monty adding him as a Sweet Dragon employee.
  • Sonas, an Air Genasi noble that the party befriended only has around three scenes dedicated to her, but her kindness and Ship Tease with Remy has easily made her the most popular character to appear in the Elemental Planes so far.
• Epileptic Trees: The identity of the false voice who's impersonating Orun to control the UCO has been a big subject since their presence was known with people guessing anyone from Orun's main enemy Nouct, Stillhavity (until Monty confirmed out of game that he wasn't), the creature that killed the god that Lys and the other fragments were apart of (due to seemingly wanting to destroy the attic as their end goal) or another fragment of the dead god (due to their familiarity with the attic and how the other fragments work).
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The ending of the Underdark Arc. Yes, Panic finally reunites with his mother, gets over his love issues, and saves music. But in order to do the last one he ended up rousing an insane demon lord from his slumber, who is now free to do what he wants.
• Fandom Rivalry: Has a one sided example with Critical Role with plenty of Unexpectables fans taking their chances to criticize Critical Role compared to the Unexpectables whenever possible.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The United Clergy of Orun are popularly recognized as the "Sun Nazis". Taka even uses the term when he can't remember their proper name at one point.
  • Greckles gets saddled with "fail bird" when he has runs of bad luck.
  • Therapy Noodle for Lys.
  • The incomplete form of Insdroc is commonly called Ghidorah due to being a three headed dragon.
• Fanon: Due to Season three's long length, a lot of people (including This Very Wiki) have separated it into two segments around Panic's arc, (whether before or after varies) to make an unofficial season four before the show eventually made an actual season four.
• Franchise Original Sin: The main criticism that comes from the Elemental Planes arc is that despite being billed as Greckle's personal arc. It ultimately has very little to do with him. Both of the previous arcs had their focus split between the more personal quest and a more general goal ^note Panic's arc is just as motivated by the party trying to find the last of Solly's Angels as it is finding Panic's mother, and Task's arc had focus split between Borky's orc recruitment mission, and finally meeting the Silver Kobolds with Task's nemesis, Darkus, being a looming threat the thing is that the previous arcs had decent stretches of time where the characters past was put on full focus. Compared to that though Greckles had only a few scenes in the final plane and otherwise treated him no more importantly then the other party members, leaving the arc to focus more on Seika in the long run.
• Fridge Brilliance: Brorc’s jealousy over Greckles and Solly’s closeness makes a lot more sense when you remember that due to Alivastian laws, Solly is the only other person in the country that he can marry, meaning that he’s going to be very wary of people she’s close to.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The word "panic" comes from the Greek god Pan, who had a fondness for sneaking up on people and scaring them. Said god's horns and cloven feet are part of the inspiration for the traditional depiction of demons, on which tieflings are also based. Panic's choice of that name is very apropos.
  • Helena's stage name is "Glossolalia", which refers to speaking in tongues, a practice exercised by some religious groups.
• Growing the Beard: The ending of Orun's Folly is typically agreed to be the point where the show began to hit it's stride with the party getting some much needed character development, the introduction of Lys, and the beginning of the Myth Arc involving the shattered god, and leads to the events where Remy is introduced.
• Harsher in Hindsight: After the Elemental Planes arc there's a moment where the party reflects that due to everybody wanting to pursue differing interests the party is going to split up sooner rather then later, but reassure each other that they're going to stay together until they fight of the UCO. Not long afterwards, Taka ended up leaving the campaign to pursue his own interests that the Unexpectables would conflict with.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the first episode, Greckles chews the party out after they had much more trouble with a group of muggers than they should have, and criticizes the groups skill. Later on Greckles ended up with the reputation of being the least effective member of the entire party, to the point that his signature weapon ended up getting renamed to the useless acid dagger of stab, after a multitude of failures trying to use it.
  • Doros is a silent gray skinned man, who has a habit of walking towards a person menacingly, if they've incurred his wrath. This is long before Monty knew about Mr. X, a character that she would practically fall in love with.
• He Really Can Act: Gaijin's roleplaying ability as Greckles is typically seen as passible but nothing noteworthy. But his performance as Greckles grieving over Seika's death was praised for showcasing a side of Greckles never seen before.
• Ho Yay: Frequently Played for Laughs between Panic and Borky. For a while, there was a running joke among fan artists that they would have kids due to careless use of a wishing orb.
  • While in Tracadia, Greckles also joined in with flirting with Panic.
  • Remy and Greckles also have plenty of this going on with the two of them probably being the closet of the main group and almost always confide their personal issues with each other, and they flirted quite a bit when Remy first appeared.
• I Knew It!:
  • After learning about the Eye Tyrant, the guardian of the Undersun, a lot of fans assumed it was a Beholder. Which got proven right a few episodes later.
  • Plenty of people guessed that Euphoria Grimtongue was actually a decent person, and did love Panic, due to the fact that, with how much Panic's character arc revolved around him trying to figure out if she'd loved him, her turning out to not care for him may have ended up derailing his entire character arc.
  • Task being the reincarnation of Sosorin has been a common theory years before it got confirmed.
  • Ever since Master Kai was mentioned a lot of people questioned the idea that he is Greckles's father due to it not matching up with his flashback from Lys. Sure enough when we finally meet him, he confirms that he was only a friend of Greckles's family.
  • Greckles's God Fragment giving him wings was a very common guess.
  • Alot of people guessed that the truth of Ginter's Folly was that Brorc killed Ivan
  • The main villain behind the UCO being an evil god fragment was a common guess after it was revealed that whatever the UCO speaker was talking to wasn't Orun at the end of the Feywild arc we are properly informed of The End, a god fragment and the source of the black ichor associated with dying gods.
• Jerkass Woobie: Task, especially early on, was an aggressive asshole who frequently insulted anyone who slighted him and at one point even tried to kill Solly for her holding secrets, and he's clearly still dealing with the fact that his entire clan was wiped out, and holding on to what little remnants of his family that he had, which were all destroyed by the end of the Solly arc.
  • Remy, who lost his father in a war, constantly has to fight against the racial bias that's in Alivast, and at one point was captured and tortured by the United Clergy of Orun. All of these experiences flared up his more negative qualities as he became a lot more egotistical and confrontational. Insulting those who don't share the same views of pride, picking fights with people that are way out of his league and calling someone who decided to die on their own terms rather than be killed by Raunfault a coward. All this reaches it's peak when he ended up harshly insulting the Earth Genasi for their inability to master the arcane arts after they were victims of a near genocide.
  • Pilchard is a violent belligerent drunk who makes it quite clear that he wants nothing to do with what Solar told him. This is due to still feeling the immense guilt of ruining the life of both Solly and her mother, along with seeing his religion and nation descend to a xenophobic dictatorship firsthand.
  • Azra Sahar is as bad as early Task if not worst when it comes to her behavior, she has also lived a full life of betrayal, slavery, losing her children, and becoming insane until she became the hero she is today.
• LGBT Fanbase: The show has a strong LGBT following thanks to a good chunk of the cast, PC's and Guest Star's included, being gay or bisexual.
• Memetic Badass: Fan art constantly shows Tai Borpington bare chested with large muscles, acting far tougher than his canon appearance.
  • The crab from the Northlander arc that held onto the knife like it was the end of the world got such a fearsome reputation that came back as CRABBIUS THE MIGHTY! Who apparently has connections with everyone who lives in the ocean.
  • A more meta example, but Monty herself due to a running joke that she fights bears. This originally stemmed from a story she told about scaring a bear out of her backyard when she was a kid.
• Memetic Loser: Poor Greckles. a combination of multiple combat encounters that have him preform dismally, uselessness in his signature weapon, and the fact that for all the talks about his backstory, none of it has actually mattered in over a hundred episodes have led to a lot of mockery from the fandom. Many watchers refer to him as "fail bird" as a result.
  • Remy also ended up falling into this due to a rather unimpressive fighting style stopping him from having any stand out moments in combat, and his dismal rolls during role playing sessions, which at one point led to Monty flat out stating that he sucked. Not helping is the fact that Remy has a bad habit of pissing of people who are a lot stronger than he is. Leading him to get beaten to a pulp.
  • Ith eventually transitioned to this thanks to his ability that he gave Panic being considered absolutely useless compared to the other god fragments.
  • It didn't take long for Seika's mediocre performance to have fans label him as probably the least effective PC for fights. By the time he got knocked out three times in quick succession in the fight against Kosui, everyone has turn to either making fun of his less then stellar outings or flat out pitying him. Being the first player character to die from a combat encounter only adds to it, though him later being one of the main contributors of the fight against Taimatsu did lessen it a bit.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The [X] is Tiengo, roll initiative. ^explanation  At one point the party incurred the wrath of Tiengo and after realizing that he has access to a hat of disguise made them constantly worry about a random NPC turning out to be him in disguise. This was Monty's joking response to those suspicions that the fanbase has latched on to well after the party's beef with Tiengo has been settled.
  • Greckles has backstory? ^explanation  Due to the fact that the Eastern Isles are a very isolated place Greckles's backstory has remained unimportant and unmentioned for a long time despite Gaijin's complaints about it. Taking well more than a hundred episodes for anymore than the bare minimum to be explained compared to the rest of the party who've had most of their backstory laid out by the mid twenties. This has led to a lot of mockery at Greckles's expense with the most common joke being that he simply doesn't have a backstory.
  • All birds are gay. ^explanation A playful nod to the number of named kenku in the show that are or are eventually revealed to be LGBT
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The United Clergy of Orun was never exactly well known for it's moral decision making, but it’s revealed that they already crossed it with the massacre of the Flumphs that Solly was protecting, not only were the Flumphs completely harmless, but they were actively wanting to learn more about Orun and the surface, showing that the Clergy only wants those of the underground races wiped off the face of the earth.
  • Mel crossed it with her attempted murder of everyone who lives at the Sweet Dragon, due to them not joining her in a heist. This ends up with the party vowing to kill her the next time they meet.
• Narm: When the party confronts Taimatsu at the climax of Greckles's personal arc. The previously unseen villain makes his fight with Greckles personal by revealing that he killed Tomegi, one of Greckles's old friends from the Eastern Isles and sets off Greckles's fortune card in what was an effort to make the final battle personal... which is brought down quite a bit by the fact that the audience has never heard of the guy before and the fact that this is what Greckles's ominous fortune card of the fallen warrior alluded to made more people take a sigh of relief than anything else because it didn't affect a pre-established character.
• Paranoia Fuel: The Yugoloth arc. At first it seems that it's a simple case of hunting down three powerful demons that are hiding in Alivast. It soon becomes clear that the Yugoloths are very well connected, constantly sending assassins after the party, and are known to invade secure places like the high district and the Romansion. Then after killing one of them the leader reveals that it knows the personal info of most of the party and Sweet Dragon employees including Willow's true identity and that a good chunk of the lower and middle district guards (including Doros and Stendin.)) have been replaced by demons and have managed to turn the temple of Amun into desecrated ground. Meaning that if they wanted to they could cripple the city at any moment.
  • Kokyū is a shadow demon that's flat out impossible to detect with magic, and is introduced to the party by him murdering one of their potential allies and disappearing to god knows where. The next session is spent with the party silently hoping that he doesn't just decided to attack the group while they're more focused on stealth.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Task was easily the most disliked member of the party early on, due to his multitude of dickish moments early on, and generally not being as fun as the other three PCs. But after his visions with LYS, he slowly became a lot nicer to others, joined in on the insanity more and more often, and is now viewed in a much more favorable light.
• The Scrappy: It's very hard to find fans of Azra Sahar, due to generally being a complete dick to everyone not named Solly, along with her massive sense of entitlement. Her treatment of Task being heavily criticized due to Azra holding a grudge over the fact that Task's ancestors left her clan to be enslaved..... despite the fact that Task wasn't even born when that happened, and every other member of that clan was already killed off, with her beating Task to near death with the pommel of her blade, even when it was he who offered a round of fisticuffs to help release the tension the two have being the last straw to many.
• Self-Fanservice: Euphoria Grimtongue looks like a haggard, middle aged women, wears a modest brown robe, and has a second mouth growing out of her neck. But, most likely due to being the mother of Panic, she's typically depicted looking half of her age, and looking a lot more curvaceous than the official art suggests.
  • It's also not that hard to find fanart of Hellina that downplays how severe her burn scares are.
• Shipping: The main 4 all have a number of characters that the fans want them to get together with;
  • Early on Task showed an obvious romantic interest in Mel, though this was shot thanks to her attempt to kill the group. He's had some intimate interactions with the mute griffin rider, Winter, who he hopes to ask out the next time they meet. There's also some who pairs him up with the Silver King's daughter Zotira, due to Task's uncharacteristically cordialness with her, and the fact that she's effectively Tarusk's mother. After the Constructs and Dragons arc he officially ends up with Winter.
  • Borky is often paired with Limealicious's Lily due to their close friendship, Borky constantly calling her "adorable," and her sending him frequent letters (penned by Limealicious herself). He's also paired with Tai Borpington on account of Borky frequently calling him "beautiful", and the close companionship they share while working at the Sweet Dragon. Later on, Borky shows an obvious crush on Starlight the Drow singer, who does seem to grow a liking to him, after the sky pirate incident. Though now he's confessed to have a crush on Scarbles.
  • Panic is most commonly shipped with Hellina, due to their heartwarming interactions, as Panic helps her gain a normal life, to help make up for scarring her when she was with the Orun Clergy. With episode 99 confirming that their relationship is a loving one, but doesn't elaborate on which type. There's also those who pair him up with Rivi due to their Kissing Under the Influence incident. He's also occasionally paired up with Zeus do to their good natured friends with benefits relationship. Currently Panic has been confirmed to be in love with Hellina but that’s an Anchored Ship after he confesses to her no less than twice, and she’s having a hard time processing it.
  • Greckles most heavily with Solly, based on the sacrifices they make and the emotions they confide in each other. Them sealing promises by exchanging feathers is particularly heartwarming. Later on he also ended up getting paired with Remy, after they spent a few episodes flirting with each other, and while it gets toned down when Remy reappears, it's clear that they're still very close.
  • For an NPC example there's Solly who's commonly shipped with Greckles as noted in his section. She's also put together with Brorc due to being her main support after she ends up in Alivast custody. And there's a small but dedicated following of people who pair her up with Quarion do to the idea that he's by far the most emotionally mature bachelor that Solly's close to. So far all signs pointed to Greckles and Solly becoming a thing with her trying to ask him out at the victory festivals, but after he rolled to low on a charisma check for that any ship involving her became a Anchored Ship as she decided to focus on the upcoming war with the UCO
• Ship Mates: Expect those who ship Greckles/Remy to also ship Brorc/Solly and vice versa.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Greckles/Solly and Brorc/Solly fans do not get along at all with both sides having a habit of pointing out the flaws of one pairing while ignoring the flaws of the other side. The fact that Greckles and Brorc's relationship in canon is very turbulent doesn't help at all.
  • Monty herself purposefully set the Greckles/Solly and Quarion/Solly shippers against each other upon the end of the Elemental Plane arc.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Despite being the most built up and personal of the four planes, the Fire Plane segment of the Elemental Planes arc lasted around two and a half sessions, including the final battle and post victory scenes. This lead to some fans thinking that it was rushed with the land and locals underdeveloped and the implications of an Oni subjugating a plane's god unexplored.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The first arc is rather mundane compared to the latter arcs in the series, the interconnected lore has yet to have been built up, and the cast is clearly still trying to fit into their roles, though once the construct murder mystery begins, the series more wacky elements become more apparent, and the characters flow much more naturally.
  • The beginning of they Feywild arc is agreed to be rather dull as the first few episodes are dedicated to a long enemy gauntlet against Fleur with very little to spice things up as the most interesting part of the encounter (Fleur finally meeting Taylor) happening offscreen. Once the party gets past Fleur and enter the Feywild proper, then it picks up.
• Strangled by the Red String: Audrey’s feelings for Gruul come out of left field, with the two of them having only a few known interactions over the course of at most a week and a half before she decides to sleep with him and live with his tribe, something she scoffed at only a few days before.
  • Task's feelings for Winter come in very quickly and very persistently after sharing only one moment of bonding with each other. It's to the point that, after not seeing her for nearly a year, Task still plans on marrying her. Though comments from Zito indicated that Task's attraction to her is supposed to be unnatural.
• That One Boss: Doketsu as stated by Monty herself was a bitch to fight. Featuring a mind control spell that can target two people at once with an AC so high that the cast could barely succeed on the save, a physical attack that averaged damage in the 40-50 range, and being able to use his legendary actions to zip across the battlefield and tie down some opponents in a web that imposes disadvantages on wisdom saves. He was so much of a problem that Monty flat out apologized for having the party fight him. It's not much of a surprise that the first main-series combat death happened here.
• That One Level: Tracadia is this in universe. Most of the fights were designed to take advantage of the party's weaknesses (lack of a true healer, weak constitution, and not many effective AoE spells) along with nearly no breaks between fighting, and the second half being an escort mission that makes it so that if a vampire so much as touched the artifact they were guarding, all light spells and artifacts would be useless. By the end of it, the group unanimously decided to never visit the place again.
  • Later, after getting annoyed by the group complaining about Tracadia, Monty decided to make the group go to the Underdark with the intention of making it bad enough that they wouldn't complain about Tracadia again, and it shows, with the enemies encountered heavily overpowering and outnumbering the group, (Including an encounter with a Drow militia led by a sorcerer that had 8th level spells.) on multiple occasions, the only positive is that compared to Tracadia is that they don't have to worry about a strict time table and can rest whenever they find a safe place. Then they end up going into the Realm of Discord, where they couldn't take a long rest and nearly every creature in the realm could inflict them with the homebrewed status condition of resonance, without getting a chance to do a saving throw.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Abacus Fleetfinger, the party's first employer and boss for a good chunk of the campaign effectively disappears form the story after the party ends up getting the Sweet Dragon, and only makes a few small cameos until Monty decided to just have her give the position of the party's employer to Solly.
  • Vladimir, one of the PC's from the Remy and the Merks specials, has a personal vendetta against the Dragon Cult due to his husband being one of his kidnapping victims. When the party prepares to deal with the Dragon Cult Remy makes a not to inform him about their plans. Seems like a perfect set up to get him to join the party as a guest star right? Ultimately nothing comes up of it and Vlad doesn't have any scenes in the entire arc, even when his husband becomes a side character later on.
    • Given that Alfred was undergoing medical issues that caused him to be hospitalized at the time, it simply wasn't possible.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Greckles's backstory is rather infamous for how little is done with it despite the obvious effort that Gaijin put in making it. With his quest to find his lost lover Yukiko going absolutely nowhere after acquiring her wind fan, his homeland of the Eastern Isles going unexplored, and nothing else to tie his past to the campaign's story compared to Task and Panic's past. Even the arc that's centered around him ultimately has nothing to do with his past as it's instead about a multiplanar adventure to stop Onis from conquering the Elemental Planes, with the only connecting points about his past being the Oni's armies spilling out onto the Eastern Isle nd the lord of the fire plane being a friend of his father which ultimately reveals more about Greckle's father than it does himself.
  • Part of the problem is that Greckles as a character's default reaction to any sort of internal conflict regarding his family is to largely distance himself from other characters, and the very few times he openly pines for his homeland or laments his exile is either during a discussion with an NPC or during a festival contest where everyone else was preoccupied. Gaijin is right that the other characters never asked about it, but Greckles was never put in a position to being open about it to anybody other than Remy or Seika, and by then it was almost too late.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Multiclassing was first introduced at the end of Episode 101 where characters that have done their personal arcs can take levels into lore appropriate subclasses. However, due to them only becoming available when the party was nearing the mid level range, none of the group has multiclass so far after four arcs of it being an option.
• Unexpected Character: Jerry the Flumph, a gag character Zito made up on the spot while witnessing Solly's past, ended up getting canonized by Monty almost 70 episodes later, when the group finds him in the Underdark Gauntlet to the surprise of many, including Zito himself.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Ozzy the wizard who the party meets and ends up falling for Panic hard during the first arc in the campaign. The story treats Panic not turning down Ozzy earlier as one of his biggest mistakes that he made that even now he should be trying to atone for. The issue some have with that is that Panic never intentionally meant to lead Ozzy on as the latter only fell for him because he got a nat 20 on a charisma check to protect Borky and he was almost obsessed with his crush on Panic until he met Panic in person after Orun's Folly where Panic let him down gently after realizing that he's too emotionally compromised to be in any relationship. This leads Ozzy to be bitter at Panic and refusing to even see him over a year afterwards. While most people agree that Panic could of dealt with the situation better. They find Ozzy's reaction to be a severe overreaction.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Tubbs the fat pigeon is seen with abject disgust by the npcs, is Monty's most hated creation, and out of the five main players, is only liked by Taka, doesn’t stop him from becoming a fan favorite.
  • Rusty the Kobold is hated by everyone in their village to the point that The only reason he's recruited to the fight with the Dragon Cult is the hopes that he will die in battle but the fanbase has had a soft spot for him since day one, mostly due to his crusty old man jabbering.
• The Woobie: Solly was stolen from her mother the moment she was born due to her Aasimar features, only to be raised by the United Clergy of Orun, a group of fanatics that thought of her as a freak, and branded her when she displeased them. To make things worse, her Celestial father Solar treated her less as a person and more as a puppet, demanding her to do what she says every time she dreams. Even when she finally runs away from the clergy she ends up catching the attention of Stillhavity, who emotionally manipulates her to make a deal with him so that he can drain Orun's power. There's a reason that everyone who knows of her past is so protective of her.
  • Nearly every cleric that works for the United Clergy of Orun could fall under this. After spending their early lives living in peace, they are suddenly thrown into the front lines of war with no proper training, and are treated as completely disposable by their higher ups. To make matters worst, they are forced to be married to their partner Paladin most of whom are known to treat their clerics like crap at best. It says something that Hellina considers getting her faced horribly scared, and left for dead in enemy territory one of the best things to happen to her in the long run.