For individual games and the Land and Ware subseries in general.
- Audience-Alienating Era: The 2010s marked a low point in the popularity of the series. Following the critically-acclaimed but commercially underwhelming Wario Land: Shake It! in 2008, Wario stopped getting new platforming adventures, and WarioWare saw a steep downturn in popularity with the back-to-back failures of WarioWare: Snapped! (which was criticized for being an obvious Tech-Demo Game for the DSi camera and not working much at all), WarioWare: D.I.Y (which was critically-acclaimed but sold horribly and was more divisive among fans due to its focus on user-generated content on a platform that made content sharing inconvenient at best), and Game & Wario, which was an even bigger sales failure than D.I.Y and whose decision to eschew the fast-paced microgames that had been the series trademark for long-form minigames proved to be controversial. Fortunately, 2018's WarioWare Gold proved to be a modest success in the series' native Japan and was warmly received by critics and fans alike for returning to the series' roots as well as upgrading the presentation with full voice acting and containing lots of features. And in 2021, WarioWare: Get it Together was announced at E3 for the Nintendo Switch, confirming that WarioWare is here to stay. The platformer branch of the series still lays dormant, however.
- Awesome Ego: Wario is incredibly prideful and egotistical, which is a major part as to why many love him so much, especially since he is able to back up that ego very well by being a genuinely cool badass in his games.
- Common Knowledge: Wario's signature Foe-Tossing Charge is called the Shoulder Bash. Except no, it isn't. Wario's move actually doesn't have a consistent name, as it has been given several names over the years (Dash Attack, Wario Attack, Body Slam, etc). Even then though, the move has never been referred to as the "Shoulder Bash" in any official capacity. Rather, it's a Fan Nickname for the move that originated from the Super Smash Bros. fandom to distinguish it from the "Dash Attack" move category in said series, which happened to catch on.
- Fan Nickname: While Wario's signature Foe-Tossing Charge has had many official names given to it over the years, one of them is not "Shoulder Bash". Despite this, it’s the one most used by fans and even non-fans to refer to the move.
- Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Go on, try and suggest that Wario is nothing but a "funny fart man" to the fandom. The results will not be pretty. While Wario has become known for his use of Toilet Humor, thanks in part to the Super Smash Bros. series exaggerating this aspect, it is not the only thing that defines him and there is much more to him than that. He also doesn't actively engage in bathroom humor much in his games proper, with much of it being limited to supplementary materials and seemingly well known elements of his character such as the Wario Waft not even being present in his games.note
- Friendly Fandoms:
- The Wario fandom is on very good terms with the Puyo Puyo fandom and it's surprisingly very easy to find fans of both franchises. Likely due to both being niche and weird franchises with a large and quirky cast of characters.
- Unsurprisingly, due to them being spin-offs of the Mario franchise, Wario fans have a good relationship with Donkey Kong fans. There is a slight Fandom Rivalry however, due to many Wario fans being disgruntled with the larger representation DK and his universe gets in the Mario games compared to Wario's.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: One of the biggest criticisms against Nintendo's handling of Wario is the unexplored potential of any and all characters associated with him:
- In the context of the larger Mario franchise, many fans consider Wario's cast as a whole to be largely wasted and severely underutilized, as despite the Wario series having a large cast of characters spanning across both the platformers and WarioWare, with many being major fan favorites, the Mario spin-offs barely acknowledge any of them with even cameos or minor references being rare (the only major exception being Dr. Mario 64, which has characters from Wario Land 3 involved in the game's plot). This is in stark contrast to how both fellow Mario sister series Donkey Kong and Yoshi's Island semi-regularly have their casts cross over with Mario's in spin-offs. Instead, the only character related to Wario that shows up in Mario spin-offs is Waluigi, a character created specifically for the Mario spin-offs who can easily be considered a wasted character himself, given that the spin-offs are his only appearances.
- Wario's own dedicated games aren't much better, as despite the platformers and Ware sharing a main character, the two branches feel like separate universes. Main characters from the platformers such as Captain Syrup and Rudy the Clown never show up in Ware, and none of Wario's employees from Ware show up in the platformers. Thus far, the sole character to have crossed over between the two branches is Cractus, a boss from Wario Land 4 appearing as a minor antagonist in WarioWare: Move It!. Oh, and Waluigi, the guy next to Wario in every Mario spin-off? Not a single Wario game acknowledges him (with the sole exception of his amiibo having a drawing in Wario's amiibo Sketch in WarioWare Gold, which isn't that noteworthy given that most first party amiibo have drawings when scanned).
