YMMV / Tomodachi Life

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• Accidental Innuendo:
  • In Collection and the Japanese Collection: New Life, the gesture a Mii makes when it wants to play an Islander Game with you resembles masturbation.
  • If you tell a Mii that your favorite games are RPGs, they'll describe them as "long and meaty", and that sometimes they cry at the end.
  • These are some of the things that Miis will say when you push them on the Swing:
    • "Push harder!"
    • "Push! Push!"
    • "Go faster!"
    • "Woo-hoo!"
    • "Yeah! Yeah!"
    • "This is the best!"
    • "This is amazing!"
    • "Don't ever stop!"
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Half the fun of Tomodachi Life is to fill the apartment with Miis based on various characters from different franchises and then try to make sense of the relationships that develop from it.
• Awesome Music: Has its own page.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • When Miis ask you to look at a funny face they made, listen to an impression of a random islander, or look inside their head or stomach.
  • Sometimes when you look closely at a Mii, they will have something attached to them and you can remove it. This can range from something mundane like a flower petal on their head to something that's ridiculous like a crab on their sleeve.
  • A Mii meeting another, disguised Mii on the roof of the apartment, who makes a random quip, and sometimes gives the main Mii a piece of paper or photo, before leaving.
  • Leveling up an angry Mii. If you give them something that gives a "[They] liked it" response, you can level up a Mii that's angry with another Mii. No mater how happy the Mii's dialogue may suggest, leveling them up will not help anything. It's even stranger if the Mii is at least Level 20 because they will then thank you for being so nice while performing their personality's angry gesture as the fight music plays in the background.
  • Leveling up a furious Mii. No matter what you give them, they are so mad that they refuse to calm down. This is especially jarring after they level up and give you a coin. The only way to calm down furious Miis is to get a third Mii who is close to one of them to intervene, with a 50% chance they'll refuse to make up.
  • Parents calling you for any reason, unless it's to announce that a new baby was born, or when they're ready to ship their child away.^note Unless your Port's already full, in which case you'll just waste time seeing the parents and their child still smile at the fact their son/daughter cannot leave and has to stick with them for an extra day due to the Miis not being programed to display any other expression than happiness in that scene. Every other time will be when they can't calm down their crying baby,^note Even when the baby was fine a moment prior. when the parents receive a letter from their child,^note Which you cannot skip viewing and even have the Mii that the traveler takes a photo with get forcibly added to the StreetPass Mii Plaza even if they're Gonk or look like a Humanoid Abomination. and when a child returns home briefly to meet their parents.^note Which you also cannot skip, and if you're interacting with only one other Tomodachi Life player, you'll get the same Special Food each time.
  • Some moments from the Nintendo Direct:
    • Mii Iwata singing in a tub. It's never foreshadowed or spoken about again. And you can do the same by giving a bath set to your Miis.
    • There's an oversized Mii Reggie jump scaring Bill up from his dream, which turns out to be a Dream Within a Dream.
• Breather Level: The card switch game is much easier than all of the others. The odds are even that you'll win immediately, and greater than even that you'll win at all, because you always go first.
• Broken Base:
  • The game having no option for same-sex relationships. Some don't like this because they feel Nintendo missed an opportunity to include this option due to the nature of the game. Others point out that such an option was never present even back in the days of Tomodachi Collection, thus they understand why it wasn't included. Nintendo themselves issued a public apology for the lack of same-sex relationships and promised that the next game will be "more inclusive, and better represents all players."
  • The Replay Value of the game. Many get tired of the Fake Interactivity and occasional Welcome to Corneria moments only a week in, while other players think the amount of customization options, the minigames, the Socialization Bonuses, the numerous potential friendship/couple combinations, which get larger the more Miis you have, and the hundreds of collectibles keep things interesting for much longer.
• Crack Ship: Due to the nature of the game, you can have Miis based on characters from different franchises or real life figures marry.
• Catharsis Factor: Considering how stressful the proposal minigame is (see That One Sidequest below), you're sure to breathe an immediate sight of relief when you do finally manage to pull it off, with the following wedding cutscene and honeymoon vacation being the icing on top of the cake.
• Crosses the Line Twice: A flashback about how a relationship is broken up, ending with the dumpee sitting alone on the beach? Surprisingly sad. The turning point of the relationship deteriorating by not paying attention to a pun joke? A bit funny but still sad. Relooking at the memory where the dumpee repeatedly tries and fails to gain their ex's attention through pun jokes? Pretty hilarious. ^Also... There is another version of the memory where the two sweethearts can't stop saying how much they love each other so, so, so, so much, which is equally ridiculous.
• Fan Nickname: Derrick of GameXplain dubbed the North American version's shopkeeper Plank, though he later found out that Plank looks more like a block of wood than a plank. Others call him Blockhead.
• Genius Bonus: One of the things that can be on a Mii's mind is the formula for e^x's summation form, which is much more advanced mathematics than what the target audience would be expected to have seen.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The amusement park occasionally opens up Tomodachi Quest, a short RPG minigame with the Miis as the protagonists. Years later, Nintendo would release Miitopia, an RPG featuring Miis.
  • The original DS game featured a news report of a Mii making an announcement that "There is a space alien Among Us humans!".
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: A common complaint about the game, with the Fake Interactivity and Welcome to Corneria moments becoming noticeable fast.
• Junk Rare: The packet of tissues has maybe a 1 in 8 chance of appearing when you receive an item from a traveler.^note Which can vary in rarity depending on how often you StreetPass, how long your departing traveler queue is, and whether others have travelers available at all. It is worth just as much as the similar treasures, box of tissues and toilet paper, which are both used as a Consolation Prize.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Oh yeah. After the game's European and American Nintendo Directs, many elements from both directs went viral quickly. Here's a portion of them:
  • The big lipped alligator moments.
  • All hail the Virtual Boy!^explanationA group of Miis circle a giant Virtual Boy and praise it like a god.
  • All hail the cracker! ^ExplanationAn image of several Miis circling and worshiping a giant cracker. The image is often used in response to posts fangirling over white celebrities (e.g., One Direction), as "cracker" is a insulting term for a white person.
  • Mii Iwata playing with a cat instead of doing something more important.
  • What?!^explanationThe face of Mii Bill flies into space and falls back.
    • No way!^explanationFrom one of the American version's commercials, where the same thing happens to Mii Shaq's face.
  • This is MY bear! MINE!^explanationMii Bill gets into a tug-of-war over a bear with Mii Reggie.
  • Tomodachi, Tomodachi, Tomodachi...^explanationMii Reggie says this as the camera zooms in close to his face.
  • You're so cold-blooded, Iwata! It's like talking to a dinosaur!^explanationFrom a scene of Mii Iwata and Mii Reggie fighting; some have seen this as based on a real conversation as they felt Iwata relied too much on old values.
  • Wait up, cornflakes!^explanationThe "Hunger" dream, which has Miis chasing a food item attached to a string. Demonstrated in an American commercial with this line.
  • One dream in particular appears to be a rising meme now that the game is out:
  "And how are things in your country?"
  "Same as always, darling."
  "Ha ha ha! Wonderful!"
  • my dikk is too small.
• Misblamed: Fans thought a patch in the Japanese version fixed a glitch that had an unintentional Gay Option for Miis, causing them to complain about it being "fixed" due to it being Truth in Television. What actually happened was Nintendo was fixing a data transfer issue that rendered the game unplayable when transferring Mii characters from the Japan-only Nintendo DS installment to the 3DS one. The "gay marriages" are due to people creating Miis that look male and assigning them female, and vice versa.
• Moe: Easygoing Miis' sweet, innocent nature can be very endearing.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The music that plays when you feed a Mii their super all-time favorite food, as well as the accompanying sounds,^note Rocket taking off, the Mii exclaiming "Yuuuuummmmm!" as they fly into space. especially when it happens for the first time.
  • When two Miis make up after a fight: "I'm sorry too," followed up by the violin fanfare. Or better, the music box version, as that means they made up after a more violent fight.
  • "It went like a dream!"^note The fanfare when a Mii's romantic confession is reciprocated, which also is a heartwarming moment.
  • The jingle that plays in a Mii's apartment when they're feeling happy, along with their happy Catchphrase if you gave them one. The good mood jingle is an especially wonderful sound if a Mii has just doused the flames of two other Miis locked in a tumultuous conflict.
  • "Thanks for being so nice! Please accept this token of my gratitude."^note Spoken by a leveling-up Mii who is at least Level 20, and is followed up by receiving a coin.
  • The sound of a baby Mii cooing happily, rather than crying.
  • The jingle that plays when you obtain an item worth 100 dollars or more as a gift or from a dream, or the Gasp! you hear when obtaining it from the mystery bag.
  • To some, the sound of children laughing happily when you win a game.
  • "I'm sick of fighting. I want to be friends with _____ again."^note Spoken when a Mii who rejected an apology has a change of heart.
  • "My darling/love...will you marry me?" This is then followed by the Mii's sweetheart's accepting the proposal, complete with celebratory romantic music:
    • "Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes!"/"It would be my honor! I'm so happy!
    • "YES! Wow! I thought you'd never ask!"/"OF COURSE I'll marry you! What a happy day!"
    • "I do! I will! Oh my gosh, I'm so happy!"/"Of course! This is the best day ever!"
    • "Oh my gosh! Yes! Of course I will!"/"Marry you! Of course I will! This is so great!"
  • Any theme that involves the Mii in love:
    • Jingly music that sounds like tinkling bells: The Mii has feelings for someone.
    • An intense violin riff with Heartbeat Soundtrack: The Mii wants to propose to their sweetheart.
    • A soft rift consisting of jingles and harp: The Mii is thinking of having a baby.
    • Sad, tragic harp song: The Mii misses their ex-lover and wants to get back together. (Dark Reprise of the "feelings for someone" theme)
• Narm: While the flashbacks of two Miis breaking up can be heartbreaking if they were a real life couple (such as your parents or yourself), if you are lucky enough to get this song playing in the background of the flashback, the exaggerated vocals can turn it from sad to rather funny.
• Narm Charm: Many of the Miis' quotes, songs, and actions are hilariously exaggerated, but then again, that's probably one of the reasons you got the game.
• Nausea Fuel: That extremely unappetizing photo of food items that probably shouldn't go together used for the Ruined Meal. The Moldy Bread, Banana Peel, and Spoiled Milk food items are pretty bad, too. Unsurprisingly, feeding them to your Miis will always result in negative reactions, but even worse, there's no other way to get rid of these items, meaning that unless you decide to utilize Video Game Cruelty Potential those awful foodstuffs will always sit in your food inventory to be looked at any time your masochistic curiousity comes about.
• No Yay:
  • Although you can set Miis' relationship to you, either blocking out or encouraging romance options (depending on what you set them as), you can't set their relationship to each other, so if it doesn't involve your look-alike Mii, parents can hook up with kids, siblings, or cousins with each other, or really old people with young people. And in the Japanese version, it can also happen between kids and adults, but they both have to be adults if they wish to get married. The only saving point is that you can prevent the Miis from getting together by discouraging them from asking each other out or proposing, which will inevitably plunge the asking-out or proposing Mii into Sadness condition. Yes, the game penalizes you for refusing to allow incest pairings.
  • No matter how depressed a Mii can get, chances are that you do not want your look-alike to hook up with Dr. Eggman or similarly highly unattractive characters.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • After the first time you give a Mii their absolute most hated food, you will probably feel on edge each time you feed other Miis a new food item.
  • Once you have your first couple go "Things aren't going so great", every time a married/dating Mii has a Social (Orange) Problem will be this.
  • More than two Social Problems? It could be a huge fight, with the Miis being unable to be calmed down at all. And God help you if it's a married couple that doesn't make up.
• Player Punch:
  • Do you like a particular couple, especially if your look-alike is one half of the couple? Then you won't like hearing this:
    "Things aren't going so great between me and (sweetheart/spouse)..."
    • Even worse in the British translation. The line above seems a little sugarcoated, as if the Mii is attempting to avoid letting the player down. The aforementioned British version doesn't mess around and gets straight to the point.
      "I want to break up with (Special Someone/Spouse)"
  • When a married couple breaks up, their house is removed, and the two Miis show up in each other's Relationships pages as "Ex-Spouse" to remind you that they are no longer together. This is double if it was your Mii, and quadruple if your Mii was married to your real life significant other's Mii or someone you have a crush on.
  • "I'm sorry about what happened." "I'm still not over it."
• Quirky Work: The whole game has weirdness as a feature, especially the dream sequences.
• Recurring Fanon Character: Two Faced is a popular Mii that originated from the game’s playthrough by Vinny from Vinesauce. She is designed to look like she has two faces, as her eyes and mouth look like three eyes shared between the faces, two eyebrows look like the noses, and wrinkles look like mouths. She is treated as an antagonist in the series due to not wanting to date Vinny's Mii.
• Scrappy Mechanic: To the point that it has its own page.
• Sequel Displacement: Collection was never released outside Japan.
• So Okay, It's Average: In the end, the game does have some questionable design choices being a spiced-up virtual pet game with Miis where their intelligence is rather lacking and having to deal with the presence of the dreaded breakup/divorce procedures, lots of Big Lipped Alligator Moments^note which some claim actually work to the game's benefit, and fighting against the game's Random Number God^note To avoid it from successfully ending friendships and marriages through fights, but after all that, there is still a lot of fun to be had with the overall experience with things like the sheer experimenting potential of the concert hall. The game's sense of humor is also very riveting if you like surrealism.
• Spiritual Licensee: Some have said it's a Moonbase Alpha game made for the 3DS, thanks to the use of Synthetic Voice Actors.
• Squick:
  • Any type of "negative" food, which include Ruined Meal, Moldy Bread, Spoiled Milk, and Banana Peel. Even some legit foods like the Squid-ink Spaghetti and Raw Oyster can come across this way, and unlike the trash foods they can be a Mii's all-time or super all-time favorite.
  • A Mii randomly asking you to look inside their stomach.
  • It's completely possible for a Mii to show romantic interest in another Mii that they are related to and discouraging them automatically puts them into the sadness state.^note The only familiar relationships the game recognizes are parent-child and siblings. Anything beyond that, such as grandparents, aunt/uncle, and cousins, are not recognized by the game as family, and are thus fair game for romantic hook-ups. Even worse, it's actually possible for a Mii to interrupt another Mii's profession of love for their own family member and attempt to attract them instead, which awfully enough, is up to luck whether that particular Mii accepts their incestuous offer or not. The only fail safe in this situation is that if the Mii chooses one of the suitors that interrupts afterward, they'll ask you if it's okay for them to get together, which you can say no to, without even the penalty of making them sad. But still, the fact that they can offer and accept these offers in the first place is pretty off-putting.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The heavy metal song from the Concert Hall resembles both Metallica's "Master of Puppets" and Judas Priest's "Painkiller", to the point where SiIvaGunner created a mashup of the three songs.
• Tainted by the Preview: After Nintendo introduced a style that appealed to older fans during the game's initial reveal, they then pulled a Mood Whiplash with the ads and made a blatant move to appeal to the younger audiences, showing children playing the game and the general weirdness toned down drastically from the Nintendo Direct presentation. Needless to say, a lot of older fans who got hooked during the initial reveal turned away from the game.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The proposal minigame in Life. A couple has come this far in their love life, and this is how the success of one's proposal is decided: you have help the Mii propose by touching "NOW!" on the screen at the exact moment the sweetheart is thinking about the proposing Mii. You must do this four times, and you can only screw up thrice. What makes this especially frustrating is that, even if you do time it right, unless their personalities perfectly click, the game will still find a way to screw you and your dream couple over.^note Unless you cheat the system by pressing the Home button when you see they're thinking of their loved one, resume the game and immediately start holding the stylus on the heart to prevent the game from changing it to something else. But even then there's a small chance that as you resume and the heart is pressed, the image of the target Mii may suddenly slip into something else at the last second. Furthermore, it locks Miis out of asking you for anything else until you agree to help them propose, so even if you don't want them to get married, you'll have to take a few minutes out of your day to sabotage the proposal.
  • For anyone looking to obtain treasures, Tomodachi Quest can be this. It's overall a Luck-Based Mission since the Miis you get to use are randomized and if an enemy focuses too much on a single character and your party misses too much, you can end up losing a character or having them drop to next to no HP before you even make it to the boss. The bosses also take so much damage it's not even funny. Finally, only certain classes can heal using Mana that's unreplenishable and if a party member dies, they're out for the rest of the game.
  • The Catch minigame that the islanders sometimes play with you. You have to catch an item that they drop, and trying to catch it is much easier said than done since the items vary in size and need to be near the dead center of the hand or they'll bounce off or fall through. The Miis will either ramble on, making you lose focus, fake a countdown to when they're going to drop the item, drop the item immediately, giving you no time to prepare, or will pretend to drop the item only to reveal that it's attached to a string. And you only get two chances. Also, on some of the most difficult to catch items, you're actually better off financially if you forfeit.
  • Shadow and Zoom Quizzes, two minigames also hosted by islanders that are rather brutal in some cases thanks to a few quirks:
    • In the former, especially when trying to guess food, most of the food is placed on a plate or dish, said plate or dish being included in the shadow. If the food or treasure the Mii is requesting is circular and you are given two or three options that would link to a circular object, it will ultimately boil down to luck. The double quizzes are even harder because in addition to the above issues, occasionally the shape of the smaller item will be completely obscured by the larger item.
    • The latter isn't as harsh as Shadow Quizzes, but there can be some instances where the food or treasure is zoomed in in a spot that makes it difficult, if not impossible to identify the zoomed-in food or treasure properly, especially with items that are zoomed in entirely on negative space (e.g., pearl necklace) or an opaque container (e.g., hot chocolate). There's also the case of two items being significantly similar to one another in concept (e.g., a pebble and a truffle).
  • Vs. Match. The islanders' memory is near-perfect in this game. Once they know where the matching tiles are, they will almost always make the pair right away. Even worse, they seem to have an uncanny knack for pulling matches completely out of their ass.^note That is, they frequently match tiles they haven't even seen yet. You have to be at the top of your game or hope that they don't uncover multiple pairs at once.
  • Rocking a crying baby. Even if you find the proper rhythm, the motions still might not register correctly, and you could end up trying to calm them down for a long time. The game only responds to upwards/downwards movements with the bottom half of the system. Not helping matters is that one of the parents will actually complain if you rock the baby too hard during the attempt to find the proper rhythm.
  • The football/wrestling minigame seems to be randomly biased toward either you or the Mii: Either you leisurely tap the screen for less than 10 seconds and get the Mii's figure pushed out of the ring with next to no effort, or waste 30 seconds furiously mashing the screen with your stylus as the figures circle the ring constantly, only for your figure to tip over right when you're about to push the Mii's figure out of the ring.^NoteThis minigame becomes much easier by using two fingers instead of a stylus on the hand in the center of the touchscreen.
  • The minigame where you have to help a Mii sneeze is incredibly frustrating because there is no single technique that works consistently. Sometimes you have brush the nose with broad strokes, and sometimes you have to tickle intensely in one spot. Sometimes you have to tickle lightly and then speed up, and sometimes you have to slide the stylus like a madman the entire time. Sometimes you have to stop when they tilt their head back and go "Ah-", and other times, that's your cue to start tickling more intensely.
  • Mii Facts becomes borderline a guessing game if you have lots of Miis on your island.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The Miis created based on a photo and their realistically sized eyes which look strange and creepy against the large head/small body Miis.
• Watch It for the Meme: Many are sold on this game just because of the memes.
• Woolseyism:
  • In the Nintendo Direct, the hilarious scene of a life-size Mii Reggie Jump Scaring Bill up from his dream, making him let out a Wilhelm Scream, and then Reggie doing an Evil Laugh was not in the Japanese or European versions of the Direct.
  • The Rap Battle wasn't in the original Japanese version, so it is all this.

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