Sandbox / Ferot_Dreadnaught's Trope Sandbox

This is where I draft my works and ideas. Editing it is fine as long as you explain the reasons. Feel free to adopt or implement any trope ideas.

For my work on the Trope Pantheons, see here.

Design based off of Ronnie R15's Trope Sandbox.

Blank Work Space

Wick Check for TRS (Random List Item Picker)

Just Eat Gilligan: See Just Eat Gilligan Wick Check (59/50 wicks)

Obvious Crossover Method: See Obvious Crossover Method Wick Check (ATT) (54/54)

Common Crossover: Same issue as Obvious Crossover Method (0/50 wicks)

Non-YMMV (0/50)

YMMV (0/50)

YMMV under non-YMMV (0/50)

ZCE/unclear/other (0/50)

Box Office Bomb: See Box Office Bomb Wick Check (0/50 wicks)

Falsely Advertised Accuracy: Misuse of lacking claims their work is researched/accurate (0/50 wicks)

Claim it was researched/accurate (0/50)

Just news/analysis where accuracy is expected (0/50)

Lack any claims of research/accurate (0/50)

ZCE/unclear/other (0/50)

Easily Condemned: Easily Forgiven reworked as "Easily" too subjective/used as complaints, ES has same issue and redundant with other items (eg. Easily Swayed Population, Ungrateful Towns Folk) (0/50 wicks)

Intentionally wrong for Easily Condemning ()

Unintentionally wrong for Easily Condemning ()

ZCE/other ()

Alliterative Name: Lots of ZCE and seems like People Sit on Chairs. (0/90 wicks)

Has narrative/other significants ()

Acknowledged name oddity in-work ()

ZCE/other ()

Epileptic Trees: Supposed to be such ridiculous off the wall theories there's (seemingly?) no way the work will confirm. Used for any guesses redundant with Wild Mass Guessing. (2/65 wick) (Poison Oak Epileptic Trees not allowed off-page per this)

Correct - explain why outlandish/unrealistic ()

Misuse - just guessing redundant with WMG or Fanon/Fanfic Fuel (2)

1. YMMV.Yume Nikki: There are a lot, due to the fact that there is no plot or characterization at all. Outright states all examples are under its WMG page.
2. YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 9 E 12 The Last Crusade:
   • Does Scootaloo being half-earth pony have something to do with her not being able to fly?
   • Have her parents really been away this entire time, or did they make a few quick visits to Ponyville here and there that we just didn't catch?

Misuse(?) - turned out to be true/correct ()

ZCE/other ()

Continuity Snarl: Being misused as/not worth separating from Series Continuity Error (6/60 wick)

Just Continuity Error (5/60)

1. FanDislikedExplanation.Video Games: Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction revealed that Ratchet was the last Lombax in his home dimension after a Great Offscreen War had most Lombaxs exterminated, with the few survivors taking refuge in an alternate dimension. This game and its sequel A Crack In Time also indicate that Ratchet was destined to bring his species back to their home dimension. Many criticized this reveal as giving Ratchet a destined purpose diminishing his role as The Everyman, and marked the series' controversial shift away from consumerism satire to a Dramedy Space Opera. Furthermore, the idea that Ratchet was the last Lombax around was contradicted by the existence of Angela Cross, a major character in Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, with the series' multiple attempts to address this Continuity Snarl only raising further questions.
2. VideoGame.Doom Eternal:
   • Most of the records and characters in the game say it's happening in 2151... except for Dr. Elena Richardson's logs, which for some reason are all dated 12 years later in 2163. The implication is that the invasion started in 2151 and has been ongoing for twelve years. Clearly, the forces of Hell like to make humans suffer.
   • The Horde mode is implied to be set before the Campaign as Deag Ranak is taunting you throughout the game mode, but you encounter enemies and fight in areas from the DLC and the Doom Hunter is just being made as the Slayer is rampaging throughout the Doom Hunter Base in the campaign.
3. WesternAnimation.My Little Pony Make Your Mark: Make Your Mark and Tell Your Tale share world-building and reference each others' stories and plot developments, but also have some incompatibilities: I've also seen Adaptational tropes applied to it so not sure if it they're supposed to be consistent with each other.
   • Make Your Mark shows Cloudpuff still living with Queen Haven. In Tell Your Tale, the sisters bring him with them to live in Maretime Bay.
   • In Make Your Mark's "Izzy Does It", we learn how Izzy acquired her Unicycling Cart seen in the Tell Your Tale episode "Dumpster Diving", but "Dumpster Diving" is an Interquel to Make Your Mark Chapter 1, which is when Izzy is trying to fix Sunny's lantern and then present it to her as a gift, which precedes "Izzy Does It". Thus it's impossible to reconcile whether Sunny's lamp or Izzy's cart came first.
   • Both series show the main cast arriving in Maretime Bay just in time to witness the Wishing Star pass overhead in Winter Wishday, ostensibly showing the same event from two different perspectives, but some details (beyond just the different art style) don't match up.
   • By the same token, the creation of the Marestream in Tell Your Tale happened before the events of the special, and was a project Izzy and Zipp completed without the help of their friends. In Winter Wishday, they have only finished the crappy prototype and the Hope Lantern transforms it into the Cool Plane in front of everyone.
   • The two dragons Opaline enchants to be her minions in Make Your Mark Chapter 6 are Jade and Lava. In the Tell You Tale episode "Nightmare Nightmarket" she calls her off-screen minions Jade and Charcoal. Lava properly appears in Tell Your Tales "A Dragon Quest" matching his Make Your Mark'' look. It's unclear if Charcoal is meant to be a different dragon that Opaline captured instead of, or in addition to, Lava, if it's a Series Continuity Error, or if Opaline is so self-absorbed that she just doesn't care enough to remember her minions' names. Notes it's interchangeable with error.
   • "Roots of All Evil" has Opaline steal Onyx's cutie mark along with the rest of Bridlewood's, contradicting Tell You Tale showing she stole Onyx's mark prior.
4. Recap.She Ra And The Princesses Of Power S 5 E 01 Horde Prime: Last season Shadow Weaver was against using the Heart of Etheria, now she's insisting they use it. Better fits Depending on the Writer.
5. Film.The Marvels 2023: Towards Secret Invasion. The movie is set after it, but cheerfully disregards or outright contradicts pretty much all of that series' plot points. In particular: There's an established Skrull colony on another planet, making the plot point of "The Skrulls are disenchanted with Fury and Captain Marvel for not finding them another planet to colonize" nonsensical. Fury's wife, who in the series specifically followed him into space in order to help with the peace talks, isn't mentioned or seen on either S.A.B.E.R. or the Skrull colony. G'iah, who has Captain Marvel's powers amongst others, isn't mentioned in the movie and doesn't become entangled with the others. Valkyrie shows up in the movie to take the Skrulls to safety on Earth, even though by the end of the series Earth should no longer have been safe for either Skrulls or Asgardians. The Skrulls in the movie are also characterized the way they were in Captain Marvel, as noble and blameless refugees, disregarding their characterization from the series. Most likely this was caused by schedule changes that couldn't be properly fixed by reshoots, since The Marvels was originally supposed to release before Secret Invasion.

Error between multiple stores ( 3 or more) ()

Error due to separate creative teams ()

Convoluted continuity but not error (1)

1. CondemnedByHistory.Comic Books: And finally, despite ostensibly being a full reboot, the initiative ultimately did not commit to being such, with many comic lines still reliant on prior continuity and backstory, which defeated the purpose of being a jumping-on point. This approach unsurprisingly made continuity even more confusing than ever before, as now hardly anyone (whether readers, writers, or even editors) knew what was or wasn’t canon. It was not helped by the fact that less than one year into the initiative, DC jumped into more convoluted event comics.

ZCE/other

Lost Aesop: See Lost Aesop Wick Check (11/50)

Lightning Bruiser (1/95 wicks)

Correct ()

Missing Durability (1)

• Characters.Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny ZAFT Force (all three entries are misused)

Idiot Ball (1/90)

Correct ()

Missing OOC (1)

• Film.The Tomorrow War (all entries misused)

Anti-Climax: Oft used subjectively or for moments treated as climatic in-work (1/50) (ping yokaipinata)

Intentional anticlimax ()

Unintenional or YMMV (1)

1. YMMV.Call Of Duty Modern Warfare III: Do you honestly think Price gets to kill Shepherd after everything he's done in Modern Warfare II? Well, he did... By killing him without any fanfare or climactic fight (like in the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) in his office, in the ending cutscene. To say the fans are disappointed is a big understatement.

Unclear or ZCE ()

Other ()

Anti-Climax Boss: Non VG exemples complaining and/or redundant w. Anti-Climax, lack player difficulty that separates (9/55)

Unintentional VG (3)

1. YMMV.Paper Mario The Origami King:
   • The final battle. Only the first phase of the final battle is an actual fight, and it involves bosses you've already fought before and know how to handle (save for the Earth Vellumental, who didn't have a weakness in its fight, but it isn't hard to guess what the weakness is via process of elimination), who can be beaten in only two 1,000-Fold Arms attacks. The second phase is a short sumo-wrestling match that isn't very difficult, and the third phase is a puzzle that's only made difficult due to a time limit and intermittent quick-time events. You can't even use any of the items, weapons, accessories, or Toads you've collected throughout the game for the second or third phase, and weapons aren't needed for the first phase, letting down players who put in extra time gathering collectibles and powering up for the final boss.
   • The Ice Vellumental isn't quite as tricky as the two before it. In the first phase, all you have to do is use the Fire Vellumental panel, and then 1000-Fold Arms for huge damage and a stun. The second phase is trickier, as the boss starts to freeze certain panels and charge its unguardable ultimate attack, but it also opens every turn by showing you the correct path to the 1000-Fold Arms panel, so if you have good memory (or abuse the Switch's Capture function), then you can easily solve the puzzle every time.
2. YMMV.Transformers The Game DS: The final two boss fights for Decepticons suffer from Artificial Stupidity that allows the player to trivialize otherwise challenging battles;
   • Megatron's vehicle mode being able to fly allows the player to position themselves over the water. As long as they avoid going out of bounds and cause a game over, they can use this to cause Optimus to run after them into the water and kill himself.
   • The final phase of the Starscream fight allows the player to take cover below the platform he is standing on. Starscream can't attack them while the player stocks up on health.
3. YMMV.Dead Space Remake: The Hive Mind, while much more intimidating then the original, is still only moderately difficult. The added attacks where it spews bombs at you and making certain parts of the arena hazardous with acid make things a little hairy, but are easy to dodge. The tentacle attacks are a little bit harder to avoid but the game gives ample room to maneuver around. The real challenge of the boss are it's addons; it'll periodically summon a horde of slashers, which make it's above attacks actually a challenge to avoid.

Intentional VG ()

Unintentional non-VG (4)

1. YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 2 E 2 The Return Of Harmony Part 2: Despite his actions, Discord is defeated very easily without putting up much of a fight. This doesn't make it any less satisfying though. '''Misuse as it notes it was satisfying, and was climatically one-sided.
2. YMMV.Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3: Despite being depicted as seriously threatening earlier in the film, the High Evolutionary is very quickly overwhelmed by the Guardians when they tag-team him in the final confrontation. But that only makes it all the more satisfying, plus fitting of his character as a weak, pathetic man egomaniac desperately trying to be a God. '''Misuse as it notes it was satisfying, and was climatically one-sided.
3. YMMV.Mobile Suit Gundam AGE:
   • For all the Defurse looked intimidatingly like a Big Zam Expy, Flit destroyed it rather easily.
   • Asemu's final fight against Zeheart and the Gundam Legilis lasted for all of 50 seconds. Those who'd had high hopes for the climactic showdown were quite disappointed. This is, fortunately, remedied in the Memory of Eden movie, giving the two a battle appropriate to the climax of their respective character arcs. Both were supposed to be climactic. Latter may have been intended as climactically one sided but notes it didn't work so had to be fixed.
4. YMMV.Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny: The Strike Freedom and the Infinity Justice barely receive damage in the final battle against the Legend and the Destiny, the machines who are supposed to be the last physical threat of the series. Instead, the big climax is presented when Kira confronts Durandal with a gun. They avoided damage, but it was intended to be long/have to work hard enough to be climatic.

Intentional non-VG (1/55)

1. YMMV.Hazbin Hotel: Adam death in the season 1 finale was this to some people. Many fans of the series were originally interested by his role has being the leader of the exorcists and expected his death to be in the hand of someone just has powerful has him like Lucifer, but that interest is suddendly destroyed by his death being in the hand of Nifty which had left some fans disappointed. Played for Laughs. Also deleted shortly after being added because the battle before was climatic.

Unclear/other (1)

1. YMMV.Hazbin Hotel Lucifers Folly: The Strigoi Mafia get taken down in a manner of seconds in their original demise in the original version of the "Kidnapped" plot. Averted in the remake version done on Lucifer's Folly, where they get to put up an actual fight before Rimmon fights our heroes.
   • Parodied with El Chachal in ¡Asquerosos Animales! , who upon returning is swiftly executed by Tamor. Both Cazador and Vaggie are extremely disappointed. Even worse, the Los Pollos Locos cartel just simply dies off without him! First is complaining such it was fixed. Second seems intentional anticlimax veering to complaining in the past part.

Recycled Script: Debate over what counts as reuse/if trope worthy. (0/50)

Same writers (current def.) ()

Same network/publisher ()

unconnected works ()

ZCE/other ()

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Blank Workspace

YMMV.Mass Effect 2: Remove folders per https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?parent_id=112897&type=att

• Angst? What Angst?: Shepard DIED and yet seemingly takes it all in stride over the course of Mass Effect 2, casually joking that he/she “got better” to virtually anyone who brings this up. Its possible Shepard believed that he/she thought he/she was only severely wounded and that the line “only mostly dead” was the truth, but in Mass Effect 3 when you invade the Cerberus base, you find some data logs about the Lazarus project where it is put to rest once and for all that Shepard was DEAD. Full stop, deader than a door nail, DEAD. Shep reveals that he/she has actually been having an existential crisis, wondering if he/she is just a clone or an advanced VI that only thinks it’s Shepard. Made worse when you realize that the Citadel DLC has to happen before this moment to be canon and Shepard literally has to fight his/her clone.
• Anti-Climax Boss
  • The Final Boss, The Human Reaper Larva is fairly easy though it's somewhat of a relief considering all the crap you went through to get to it.
  • At the end of Grunt's loyalty mission, killing Uvenk and his minions is quite easy compared to killing or surviving against a Thresher Maw.
• Ass Pull: While the Reaper IFF uploads on the Normandy, Shepard and his team leave the ship to go..........somewhere? This moment happens to exist just to set up the rest of the Normandy crew getting kidnapped by the Collectors.
• Best Level Ever: The famous and much-touted "Suicide Mission" of Mass Effect 2. Considering it is essentially what the entire game is building up to, it better be worth it, and by god is it intense. From the initial run through the Omega-4 Relay to the furious assault upon the Collector Base itself, with all the firefights and interesting gimmicks being thrown at you, having you on the edge of your seat the entire time because you are on pins and needles about whether all your decisions throughout the game were enough to have your team make it through — and make no mistake, if you didn't do enough, they will die. And then the final boss comes. It's a monstrous (thankfully not even close to being finished) construct that turns out to be a human Reaper, built out of, and feeding off of, all the human colonies that were abducted. Shepard then proceeds to Punch Out Cthulhu for the second time in their career. And even after all of that, if you didn't do things right, Shepard themself will die! It's rare for a game to spend its entirety building up to one intense mission, but it all paid off in the end. Unless, you know, you lost your favorite party members.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Ask about Mordin's singing career. Although it is completely in character for Mordin.
• Broken Base: The Lazarus Project has been a hotly debated topic since the release and continues to be controversial up until today. While one half thinks of it as a great start for the game, properly introducing Cerberus, its vast resources and the lengths they are willing to go to succeed, the other half of the fandom thinks of it as stretching the Willing Suspension of Disbelief too much, especially considering that Shepard didn't just die, but was spaced, suffocated and then their body re-entered the atmosphere of a planet.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Archangel, scourge of Omega's underworld, turns out to be Garrus. Nobody who'd previously played the first game didn't see this coming.
  • The being called 'Harbinger' who regularly possesses Collectors to fight Shephard turns out to be a Reaper, which is...entirely obvious from the moment you first encounter it, from the voice, the Boss Banter it has, and the fact that you already know the Collectors work for the Reapers.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • The Reave power is considered by many to be the best bonus talent in the second game, period. There is thereby no point in using any of the others.
  • The DLC weapons outclass all of the ingame weapons or are on par with the Infinity +1 Sword weapon of choice found halfway in the game. There is no reason to even pick up any of the other weapons like the Tempest and Vindicator when you already have the Locust and Mattock for example.
• Complete Monster: Ronald Taylor is Jacob Taylor's father and cares only about himself. Serving as Acting Captain when his ship crashed on a remote planet, Ronald discovered the food on the planet caused neural decay in whoever ate it. Restricting the ship's rations to him and his officers before killing them, Ronald exiled all the men so that he could keep all the women as his own personal harem for years. Ronald eventually activated the distress beacon only to save himself after the men became dangerous, and when confronted on what he's done, Ronald only came up with excuses on why he wasn't to blame.
• Crack Pairing: Jack x Miranda presumably interprets their dislike of each other (and possible Love Triangle with male Shepard) as Belligerent Sexual Tension.
  • Lampshaded in the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3, where Shepard can propose that they hook up. Both immediately ask for another drink.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Some of the Renegade interrupts are hilarious in their sheer audacity.
  Random Mercenary: (After Shepard has been interrogating him) I've got nothing more to say to you. If you-
  (Shepard shoves him out of the window behind him)
  Shepard: How about "goodbye"?
  Jack: Damn, I should be taking lessons from you.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Rocket troopers. Their attacks will frequently stun you and knock you out of cover, allowing other enemies to fill you with lead. Worse, their rockets can curve around or even ignore cover in some circumstances.
  • Scions. Their shockwave attack can instantly deplete your shields and prolong your regeneration, it can hit you even if you are behind cover, and it has very long range. On top of all that, Scions can take a lot of damage before going down. Scions are the reason that the Reaper IFF mission has become That One Level for many players.
  • The various Pyros also qualify, as the flamethrower mechanics and the game's lack of Mercy Invincibility means that if they get close to Shepard and score a hit, Shepard will likely end up trapped in the hit animation as the Pyro roasts them to death. Not that it takes them long to do that in any event, as their flamethrowers can cause a lot of damage. The only saving grace is that Pyros only have a basic health bar (except, of course, on Insanity), although even then they can take more punishment than most mooks. Thankfully, a skilled Soldier or Infiltrator can snipe the gas tanks on their backs to make them explode.
  • The Engineers that Eclipse, the Shadow Broker and The Project deploy. They are shielded, spam combat drones to flush you out of cover, then nail you with incinerate attacks. And like good Engineers, they prefer to stick to cover.
  • On Insanity, by far the most dangerous enemies are the basic mooks with assault rifles. The Elite Mooks tend to use shotguns and burst-fire rifles while their lower-ranked minions fire on fully automatic; normally this is balanced out by the elites having better accuracy and higher damage per shot, but when every enemy can hit 100% of the time anyway, the grunts' DPS really begins to tell. This is quite noticeable on Korlus and Tuchanka; sections full of nothing but krogan berserkers are a cakewalk because their low ROF means they can't insta-kill you or suppress you. The minute a single vorcha walks on to the scene, on the other hand? Your shield is stripped in about a second and you're forced to hug the nearest thick stone wall. Simply shooting you with an assault rifle is so disproportionately effective on Insanity that enemies who stop to do practically anything else (like an engineer who throws an easily-dodgeable fireball) are less of a pain.
  • Harbinger, appropriately creates this through Demonic Possession. While he can only possess a single mook at a time, killing one will merely cause Harbinger to possess another on the field.
• Even Better Sequel: This is considered amongst the fandom to be The Empire Strikes Back of the Mass Effect trilogy. It even ends the same way, with Shepard looking out at the galaxy and the cliffhanger that the Reapers are now very close. The pack Lair of the Shadow Broker can be seen as this for the previous DLC packs, which makes it an Even Better Expansion to an Even Better Sequel.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Space Hamster has been dubbed "Boo" by the fanbase, since it was obviously included as a Shout-Out.
  • The game that gave birth to Garrus being called Space Batman.
  • SuZe was Jack's nickname before people knew it was "Jack". Short for "Subject Zero". It's fallen out of use now, probably because hardly anyone in the game calls her "Subject Zero." For good reason.
  • There are some who call The Illusive Man... TIM.
  • The Virmire Survivor for Kaidan/Ashley, which is typically used by fans to refer to the role the surviving one of the two plays in 2 or 3, unless talking about a specific one.
• Fair for Its Day: While the portrayal of David's autism isn't perfect, it's surprisingly well-done for a story made in 2010, and it accurately portrays how sensory overload can lead to panic and meltdowns.
• Game-Breaker: See here.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The ship that Morinth left Illium on is the Demeter. In Greek mythology, Demeter was an extremely powerful goddess who lost her daughter Persephone to the underworld and walked the earth endlessly searching for her. Sounds a bit like a certain justicar... which makes this a literal Mythology Gag. For bonus points, the Demeter was also the name of the ship the Count traveled on in Dracula.
  • Does the name of Jacob's father's ship (the Hugo Gernsbeck) sound familiar to you? If you're a sci-fi buff, it should. Hugo Gernsbeck is generally considered the father of modern science fiction and founder of the Amazing Stories magazine. It's who the Hugo Award is named after. Although considering that the ship named after him is populated in the game by a bunch of self-centered jackasses who routinely perform Mind Rape on their crew, it's not the best tribute they could have given the father of modern science fiction...
  • One of Legion's random comments when hacking geth rocket turrets during their loyalty mission is "Executing sudo command." "Sudo," short for "superuser do," is Linux syntax that allows an admin to give other users temporary admin privileges. "Geth do not use windows" indeed...
  • Another thing from the Legion loyalty mission, you are told that the Geth virus affects the AI decision making process by changing the result of one calculation to be out by a very small amount. In real artificial neural networks, each artificial neuron has an activation threshold. If all its inputs add up to be equal to or greater than the threshold, the artificial neuron will fire, otherwise it won't. A small error in the sum can influence whether a given neuron will fire or not when it normally should, and if it fires in error it will have a knock-on effect on all the downstream neurons. If geth use artificial neural networks of the sort understood by current computer science then a small maths error is a plausible way of getting a geth to reach a different conclusion than it normally would.
  • This remark from Shepard when commiserating with the tech store clerk on the Citadel for a discount:
    Shepard: "You wouldn't believe how often I hear 'Why is the ship turning around? We're only halfway there!'"
  • Jack's dossier in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC includes a poem she penned under the pseudonym Jacqueline Nought. One of the lines goes, "This is not a place of honor/No esteemed dead are buried here". This is a reference to a warning to be posted on top of a nuclear waste disposal facility to dissuade future societies from breaking the seal and exposing themselves to radiation.
  • The weapons you find on the Collector ship are a Krogan shotgun, a Geth sniper rifle and the Revenant machine gun. How did the Collectors get those items? Recall that Krogan and Geth formed the bulk of Sovereign's minions in the first game, so most likely they were the source of these weapons' blueprints. The Revenant's presence however acts as both a Continuity Nod and as a Foreshadowing. Who do you see using this weapon? Blue Suns and the Shadow Broker himself. The blue Suns were who Liara had to initially fight while getting Shepard's body in Redemption and Lair of the Shadow Broker ultimately reveals that the broker was also doing the bidding of the Collectors. So it is perfectly plausible that these guys passed on the Revenant's blueprint to the Collectors.
• Genius Programming: Mass Effect 2 runs much more smoothly on the same PC configuration compared to the previous game, despite having better graphics.
• Goddamn Bats: Husks, on any difficulty. They don't use guns, they just run up to you and start whacking you. Mowing them down before they can get to you can be hard because they move ridiculously fast. They also tend to swarm you while you're focused on trying to shoot down something else. They have a few Weaksauce Weaknesses (biotics, being set on fire, being frozen^note They get taken down in two shots from the freezing heavy weapon even on Insanity, being shot in the legs), but these tend to not be particularly useful if you're facing ten at once. Excepting Soldiers with a Revenant machinegun and Adrenaline Rush.
  • Or a single Adept or Vanguard (or Jack, which is really the same thing) with a well-leveled Shockwave. At that point, the difficulty shifts from "shoot them before they rip you to shreds" to "get them to line up for maximum awesome points."
  • On Insanity, Harbinger is this. When you die incredibly quickly to generic mooks, Harbinger's pitiful damage, slow rate of fire, and knockback of his attacks are not remotely threatening in comparison to everything around him. The knockback leaving Shepard exposed to enemy fire is generally the worst he can do, meaning he's more a nuisance not worth chipping at until he's the only one left than a target to fight.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Hitting melee halfway between the Claymore's reload animation causes it to auto-complete, and you can fire instantly with it. The Claymore is the single-shot uber-tier shotgun, and this trick turns it into a semi-automatic.
    • This trick actually works on any non-heavy weapon in the game... even the Widow. The key is hitting the melee button once the ejected thermal clip is visible.
  • There was also a button trick that allowed a character as early as level 6 to max out every ability. This was removed by a patch on May 17, 2010.
  • The save file transfer doesn't properly import your handling of Conrad Verner. It defaults to the Renegade response, which has you "shoving a gun" in his face and inadvertently making him go "hardcore". There are hex fixes that allow one to see the ''ME1'' Paragon Flagged start.
  • If certain conditions are met while Charging as a Vanguard, Shepard's shield will shoot through the roof, going from between 150-325 to somewhere close to 4000. It only lasts for a single mission but you could essentially go through the rest of it meleeing things to death; and yes, charging would indeed refill it to max.
  • There's a sound glitch (triggered by certain biotic powers, like Pull) that can result in dead/incapacitated enemies screaming nonstop due to a looping voice file. This is particularly amusing/appropriate (and, apparently, easier to trigger) in Arrival, because of the indoctrinated troops you fight on the asteroid (quite fitting despite being unintentional).
  • Every weapon's firing rate slows down tremendously during Adrenaline Rush... except the DLC Mattock.
  • Could also be a little of Guide Dang It!. On Aria's side quest with the Eclipse cache, standing in just the right place and firing the ML-77 missile launcher allows you to complete the quest with no crates destroyed. The bug - the missile homes in on anything classified as hostile and when one of them hits the mech while fired just outside of the area that triggers the crate destruction, that mech will walk towards you without activating the other mechs. This allows you to essentially bait all the mechs into attacking you one by one, allowing you to ambush them. You can do this to only one mech at a time and must ensure that your squadmates don't blunder into the area that triggers crate destruction.
  • In the Legendary Edition the limit on credits that could be brought forward from the first game was accidentally removed, making it possible to buy all available the store upgrades right at the start of the game, and turning the early missions into a complete joke. This naturally got patched out pretty quickly.
• Growing the Beard: While Mass Effect was well-loved for its story and universe, 2 fully/further fleshed out the setting, races, and characters and developed the moral grayness/complexity, all of which solidified it's popularity with fans. Whereas the first games gameplay was seen as a slog and it's weakest aspect, 2 streamlined it into a fast-paced and engaging experience that, while some criticized as overly dumbing down the RPG aspect, set the foundation for Mass Effect 3 to improve upon and fix those flaws such its multiplayer mode, at first derided as a cash-in mechanic, became enjoyed unironically.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Shepard initially baulks at Tali wanting to suppress evidence of her father's experiments on live geth. Tali says that revealing it would mean that her father would be held up as an example of a monster as a cautionary tale. You find Tali's dad dead and may even comfort her over it. Then you get to Project Overlord and see an even worse experiment performed on live geth. Feel like suppressing that evidence now?
  • So you convinced that asari on Illium to get back together with her krogan boyfriend, hopefully to get married and have kids and live happily ever after, right? Well, at least until Mass Effect 3, where you find out Charr died on a mission and Ereba will now be left to raise their daughter alone. So much for Good Feels Good...
  • Shepard talking to Jacob may mention that he could always use "spare parts". In the Citadel DLC for 3, the clone who was made to supply "spare parts" for Shepard comes back to bite him in the ass.
  • At the end of Overlord, Gavin Archer tries to justify what he's done on the grounds it could "spare a million mothers mourning a million sons." Mass Effect: Andromeda has a character in a sidequest who was part of Overlord before she wisely managed to GTFO... because they tried to plug her son into the geth before David, and it's left her with a deep fear of AI of all kinds. Care to repeat that line, Dr. Archer?
  • The Horizon mission summary has Cerberus using front corporations to funnel aid and supplies to the colony. Come Mass Effect 3, Cerberus is behind Sanctuary, a refuge advertised as the only place safe from the Reapers, on Horizon. It is really a labratory studying huskification and indoctrination using the refugees as test subjects. Guess they were just setting up their atrocity factory under the guise of aid.
  • Omega is infected by an airborne plague, it has entire areas in lockdown, the plague spreads across species and seemingly resists attempts at containing it, with symptoms like respiratory damage that can easily be confused for something else until its too late. What few clinics are available are unable to help everyone. At the time of release, a dreadful prospect. At the time of the Updated Re-release... It hits very close to home no matter where you are from...
  • During his mini mission, Joker wonders if he's dooming the galaxy by hooking up EDI. At one point, he mutters, "...now I have to spend all day computing pi because Joker plugged in the Overlord." Then comes the Overlord DLC...
  • A YouTube user made a video that depicted the series ending like Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was meant to be a joke, but it turned out to be prophetic when the third installment came out and the fans' reaction towards the endings being similar to Evangelion's 16 years earlier.
  • One of Jack's lines is "If I die, I'm haunting you, Shepard," a typical Badass Boast that shows her Hidden Depths that she believes in that sort of thing. In Mass Effect 3, those who have died haunt Shepard.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jack comes across like a sociopathic loner who can't connect with people and she can't fathom why Shepard (particularly the Paragon version) is the way he/she is. Courtenay Taylor would later voice the female vault dweller in Fallout 4, who is basically an everyman version of Shepard.
  • During Kasumi's loyalty mission, she mentions that part of the cover story she put together for Shepard was an article on them in Badass Weekly. This reference was part of the reason the author of Badass of the Week wrote an article for Shepard after completing the trilogy. In a way, Kasumi did get that article on Shepard written.
  Badass of the Week Writer: [about the video clip where Kasumi mentions the article] Scroll ahead to 0:20 to witness what is either a cruel coincidence or the single greatest moment of my writing career.
  • After his loyalty mission is done, Grunt expresses his desire to rip out Uvenk's spine as a trophy. Five years later, his voice actor would go on to play Sub-Zero, who is infamous for doing that very thing.
  • Jacob Taylor with his shirt off
  • This game features a Phantom Thief named Kasumi who's not available in the vanilla version of the game. For extra points, Legion shares a voice with the aforementioned game's Starter Villain.
  • The Lazarus project required Cerberus to take the original Shepard, keep what worked, and then rebuild & fix what didn't work without straying too far from the original - a challenge Bioware would also face about a decade after this game's release with the remastering process of Mass Effect Legendary Edition. The developers themselves actually referenced the Lazarus project on the blog post about the remaster's visual changes and additions.
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Niftu Cal, the biotic god. Fear his great biotic wind! Despite not actually appearing in the third game, Niftu Cal being in London and performing a single Volus smackdown of a Reaper has become a popular signature on the BioWare forums.
  • Blasto, the first hanar Spectre, with a girl in every port and a gun in every tentacle. He's one big Shout-Out to Dirty Harry. He was actually created as a memetic badass in the first place on the forums before even appearing.
  • Sir Isaac Newton. THE DEADLIEST SON OF A BITCH IN SPACE!!!
  • Zaeed has a lot of badassey facts about him, that he's slowly being considered as the metaverse's equivalent to Chuck Norris.
• Memetic Bystander: The turian groundskeeper, the Alliance drill instructor who gives the Sir Isaac Newton speech, and the "techno turian" who is seen dancing in Thane's loyalty mission.
• Memetic Mutation: See here.
• Misaimed Fandom: This is the game that created a legion of Cerberus sympathizers (especially PS3 owners who couldn't see any of Cerberus' crimes and horrible experiments in the first Mass Effect), with defenders taking everything the Illusive Man says at face value. To say the least, there were people who wanted to protest the third game when it was revealed that Cerberus were antagonists once more.
• Narm:
  • The increasingly obvious pronoun dodging regarding Jack, which just makes it even more obvious that she's going to be a woman.
  • Everything about the original Normandy's destruction is pretty traumatic and desperate. Well, all except for Joker's downright bizarre tone of voice when announcing that "I CAN STILL SAVE HER!" From that same scene, the fact that Joker is sitting in the cockpit wearing a helmet and his usual service fatigues, despite the CIC being blown apart and exposed to hard vacuum. Yes, the cockpit itself is shielded, but how he managed to survive the walk from his station to an escape pod is never explained, and he looks comical.
  • The Illusive Man's sudden Milking the Giant Cow moment when he first suggests saving the Collector base instead of destroying it, which slightly undercuts the tension in what's meant to be the biggest moral decision in the game.
• Narm Charm: All of the Harbinger's combat lines. They are all extremely over-the-top, cliché Evil Overlord gloating done in an Evil Sounds Deep Large Ham voice, but they do serve to keep the fights with Collectors entertaining.
• One-Scene Wonder: Several of the celebrity-voiced and/or returning characters.
  • Kal'Reegar, the RPG-wielding quarian near the end of Tali's recruitment mission, is voiced by Adam Baldwin. Unless you take the Paragon interrupt and keep him away from the succeeding fight, or kill the Geth Colossus fast enough with his assistance, he definitely fits this trope.
  • "The Council thought that Blasto, the first hanar Spectre, would play by the rules..." Luckily, you can hear this more than once if you wander around on Illium long enough.
  • Niftu Cal. "But then, I began to smell my greatness!"
  • The hapless merc standing near a window during Thane's recruitment mission. "I've got nothing more to say to you—"
  • An unnamed Krogan who you talk to Illium has been dubbed "the most polite Krogan in the universe", for how unfailingly, well, polite he is. Which, if you know anything about how Krogan society operates, speaks volumes about how frighteningly badass this dude must be to be so calm.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • See those cameras in Overlord? They track you. Everywhere. (At least you can shoot them.)
  • The ads on the Citadel, which seem to know EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU, right down to who your Love Interest is.
  • "Nine out of ten Tupari drinkers recommend Tupari to their friends! The last one is on my list."
    • "I know you're weakening. Tupari is on your mind! Give in."
• Player Punch:
  • The destruction of the Normandy. Being reunited with Ashley/Kaidan. Seeing your crew get kidnapped when the Collectors attack the second Normandy. Seeing what happens to the people abducted by the Collectors, especially if it happens to your crew because you didn't get to them in time. Plenty more. Mass Effect 2 likes this trope.
  • A good chunk of the loyalty missions are also this. You have a really messed up squad.
  • Project Overlord may as well be entitled "Player No-Holds-Barred Beatdown" after you reach the end and find out the real reason why David went crazy. Pistol-Whipping the person responsible is the Paragon response.
  • If anyone was actually thinking or hoping they would find all of the abducted colonists from Horizon alive at the end and be able to save them, they were tragically mistaken. The sight of what happens to one trapped in a Collector pod is not an image you'd easily forget.
  • The ending of "Arrival" DLC is an enormous punch in the gut for both player and Shepard. Shepard is forced to destroy a solar system and its 305,000 batarian inhabitants in order to prevent an imminent Reaper invasion. Hackett notes that even though he knows Shepard did the right thing, the Alliance will force them to pay for this and that the batarians will attempt to do the same thing.
• The Scrappy: See here.
• Scrappy Mechanic: See here.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Tali’s recruitment mission on Haestrom gives you an opportunity to impose one during the Colossus battle. The injured Kal’Reegar offers to provide you heavy weapons support with a missile launcher, while you move in close to destroy the Colossus. However, not taking the Paragon interrupt to convince him to just stay down, means there is a hidden timer before the Colossus fires at Kal’Reegar and kills him. Your challenge is now, to fight through all the Geth mooks, get to the Colossus and destroy it fast, before it notices Kal’Reegar.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Sort of. The game isn't really any harder than the first, for the most part. However, the redesigned combat mechanics mean that fighting like you did in the first game is a good way of getting yourself totally slaughtered, even on the easiest difficulty setting. Once you get used to the new mechanics (or if you're coming in fresh without having played the first game), the difficulty rapidly evens out. However, the change in mechanics and the streamlining of the character building process means that you'll never be able to throw yourself into combat without worrying about tactics like you could eventually do in the first game. So it's less about the game getting harder, and more that it doesn't get easier as much.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Kolyat (Thane's son) and Oriana (Miranda's younger sister) are fairly popular for a couple who've never even been on the same planet at the same time.
• Special Effects Failure: Despite being a visually sound game, it does fall into this on a few occasions. Most common are issues with clipping, which, if you tried to list them all, could probably get a whole page all to themselves.
  • The shiny doors on Illium rotate when opening, and the reflections rotate with them.
  • Miranda's physical features sometimes verge on this trope.
  • During the first conversation with Garrus on the Normandy, Shepard is meant to be leaning on a railing, but ends up leaning on thin air.
  • During the meeting with the Council, Udina's eyes notably clip through his character model when he walks in.
  • When you wake Grunt up and he pins Shepard against the wall, his shoulder armor visibly clips through his upper body, and Grunt's upper arms always clip through his armor.
  • Mordin's eyes often clip through his eyelids, and Miranda's neck tends to clip through her collar.
  • Literally every time you go speak to Joker, his chair swivels around to face you...and clips through its own mounting.
  • Because there's twelve party members, and they're largely interchangeable during missions, cutscenes often use the same animations for each character. This works fine for the most part, but can get strange if you have Garrus and/or Grunt in your party—their models are noticeably larger than the rest of the characters', meaning that an animation or pose which works for the other ten characters ends up...not working for Garrus or Grunt. For example, bring Garrus on Tali's loyalty mission—during Tali's trial, check the background. Garrus is sitting in the stands...with his arms clipping through his legs.
  • Bringing Zaeed to Garrus' recruitment mission triggers an extra conversation between him and Tarak. At the end, there's a closeup of Tarak's face—with his head clipping through the camera◊.
  • During character customization the player can select a variety of eye shapes for either Shepard. It's possible to pick eyes for fem Shep which are incapable of fully closing because her eyelids have a fixed size.
  • The Illusive Man's cigarette has been known to move independently of his hand. Presumably he cuts his tobacco with eezo.
  • A long-standing glitch during Garrus' loyalty mission causes the entire back wall of the area it takes place in to not be textured properly. On one hand the trippy effect created by it helps with the overall uneasy atmosphere of the encounter. On the other hand, there's zero doubt that this isn't intentional and it's straight up broken.
• That One Boss:
  • Tela Vasir. If having her use the same Charge power as Vanguards wasn't enough, she can also knock you out of cover with a Shockwave power, and can use a Barrier power to make her even more of a Damage Sponge than she already is. Plus, she can summon Rocket Drones and Shadow Broker Engineers, making her a Flunky Boss.
  • In Arrival, the Object Rho battle if you are going for the Last Stand achievement. Luckily, this one's optional; the game will continue even if you fail.
  • The Praetorian. The potential of being hit by its Death Choir drop attack has every player, regardless of class, desperately scuttling away whenever it drifts too close for comfort. Which is to say, constantly.
  • The geth battleship cannon in Overlord. It fires automatic One Hit Kills. And it has a very wide area of effect.
  • The Shadow Broker, to Adepts. With only Liara to help you, biotic powers are all you have to throw at him, which are all negated by his shields and armor.
• That One Level:
  • Mordin's recruitment level is rather infamous for being Early Game Hell. Being one of the first levels of the game, and the one that the game itself encourages you to do first proves to be rather challenging as you are stacked up against Vorcha with Pyros and long-distance rocket launchers. Being one of the first missions of the game also means your party will likely be limited to just Miranda and Jacob. And while Jacob's Squad Incindeary ammo, in particular, can be incredibly useful for this Armored-Enemy dominated level, if you are not playing with a Max-Leveled imported Shepard, then the chances are you will not be anywhere close to unlocking this skill.
  • Grunt's recruitment mission is also a pain. Literally every other weapon is armed with a homing missile launcher, which can easily stunlock you or knock you out of cover, and there are several times where you have to fight multiple high-level enemies at once, culminating with the final battle, where you're fighting krogan, a YMIR mech, and the boss all at once.
  • The disabled Collector ship can be this, especially the first room. The problem is, you hardly ever get anything other than low cover, which Harbinger excels at knocking you out of, which results in you getting cut apart by Collectors and Scions unless you get back in immediately. It doesn't help that the Illusive Man forces you onto it, and that he's leading you into a trap because you're taking too long.
  • Horizon. If you pick the wrong team or class it may be easier to just begin the game from scratch.
  • Corang in the Firewalker DLC. The only place in the game where you will encounter multiple Geth Colossi, Primes and Destroyers, but you have the Hammerhead to take them on with. Should be fun right? The Hammerhead can't tank like the Mako as it's made of very flimsy armor, and it's true advantages in speed and ability to leap is countered by the fact that the map is set up like a platform game where if you don't time and judge your jumps exactly right, you will end up in an acid bath. And in one section you must get by three rocket turrets who have a nice straight line of sight at you with almost no room to maneuver. And you can't save your progress. Enjoy!
  • Thane's loyalty mission initially doesn't appear to be that hard, then you have to track the target. If you aren't looking directly at the target, you don't update Thane, and you only get one chance. Oh, and if you try to skip through the stockboy scene, you can glitch out and lose the mission that way. You will be restarting endlessly in order to finish the mission correctly.
• That One Sidequest: Aria's side mission to retrieve the crates. It's an incredible amount of effort to go through (three freaking YMIR Mechs!) for the three or four surviving crates. Given how early this mission is given, it's one of the hardest fights in the game.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: There has been something of a anti-Mass Effect 2 sentiment resurging with the Legendary Edition's release as many fans of the first game still resent or downright hate Mass Effect 2 for removing planetary exploration, RPG mechanics and control over Shepard's morality plus the game darker and sexier direction it went which they feel aged the game badly.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • In the first game, it was revealed that Cerberus was behind the Thresher Maws that killed a Sole Survivor Shepard's squad. Shepard works with Cerberus in this game, but is never given a chance to call anyone in Cerberus out for the events on Akuze or the background-specific sidequest from the first game (in which it's revealed that there was another survivor, Corporal Toombs, who was captured and used as a test subject by Cerberus scientists). All you get is a very angry email from Toombs calling Shepard out for working with Cerberus, much like everyone else in the game.
  • A portion of the fan base believe that Shepard’s death at the beginning of the game was wasted potential, as it had little to no ramifications to the overall story and just appeared to be nothing more than marketing hype. Once the game starts proper, nothing really seemed to change with time while everyone in the universe is already aware and unsurprised by Shepard is seemingly back from the dead, including Anderson who immediately sends an email asking you to come visit him once you board the Normandy. Even Shepard does not treat it as a big deal or have any moments where he questions himself. They could have simply said he was in a coma and nothing would change.
  • Squadmate conflicts in general. They got hyped up prior to the game's release as being a result of the squad's Teeth-Clenched Teamwork situation. In the final product, only two of these instances actually pop up in the story; one between Miranda and Jack and the other between Tali and Legion. In these instances, Shepard runs the risk of losing the loyalty of the character they don't side with, but in both cases, the player can squash the conflict right then and there if they have a high enough Paragon or Renegade level. Even failure then, Shepard can still make up with the other character individually. The fact that this was an undercooked feature and that Grunt and Mordin's conflict didn't make the final cut and Jacob's antagonism towards Thane seemed to hint that those two would also have one, left many unsatisfied with the final result.
  • If you chose to enter a relationship with a teammate in the previous game, that subplot is barely advanced during the base game of Mass Effect 2. You get to meet the your loved one, but they won't join your team, and your relationship with them is only addressed in a short exchange, after which it doesn't affect the plot at all. It's almost as if the game wants you to break up with them and enter into a new relationship with one of your new teammates (as having a polyamourous relationship with multiple partners is not possible). If you romanced Liara in the previous game, the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC ameliorates the situation somewhat, as it adds some dramatic relationship moments with her, and at the end you can choose to continue your relationship with her, which leads into a sweet, poignant love scene. But if you romanced one of your human teammates, there's no such content available.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • The companions with the shotgun/pistol combination as a part of their loadout aren't as popular combat wise because, without the Geth Plasma Shotgun in the Firepower Pack, their damage output is simply pathetic compared to squadmates with assault rifles and sniper rifles (as part of all non-GPS shotguns in general being Scrappy Weapons). The GPS somewhat fixes this and makes them actually capable of doing more than picking off the occasional mook with their pistols, but even with this upgrade they still lag behind the AR users.
  • Jacob and Jack take this even further in Insanity mode because they have no means of stripping away defenses. Their powers only work on enemies without shields or heavy armor, which every enemy has on Insanity, so you're better off leaving them in the Normandy for most part. Jacob got it worst as there was a bug in the system that caused Jacob to auto-cast Barrier making him next to useless. Future DLCs helped to repair the damage; giving the player the ability to remove the Barrier ability.
  • Tali is recruited about halfway through the game, has the dreaded shotgun/pistol combo, and one of her powers is useless on levels without geth or mechs, which comprises around 80% of the game. Her Combat Drone is useful as a distraction, especially on Insanity where enemy DPS is insane, but deals next to no damage on its own and takes 30 seconds to recharge. Compared to Jacob and Jack, she at least has the redeeming factor of Shield Drain, which increases her survivability while acting as a slightly weaker Overload. Legion has nigh-identical powers yet can use assault rifles and sniper rifles, which functionally makes him a straight upgrade over her. There's a reason that the third game boosted all her powers and weapon selection and decreased the charge time for her drone by 80%.
  • Miranda, in a rare case of a Bioware party member that can be interpreted as both high and low tier. Having Warp and Overload makes Miranda the only squadmate that can strip all defenses on her own, and her passive tree boosts the health and weapon damage of everyone else. The argument comes down to how favorably or negatively a player views her versatility; Many players swear by Miranda being the best squadmate and use her from beginning to end because she can be slotted onto any team without issue, while those who only see her as a Jack of All Stats argue that by the time you've recruited your full team — and possibly even as early as the Horizon mission, depending on Shepard's own class — everything that Miranda can do, another squadmate can do much better.
• Tough Act to Follow: Not only is ME2 the highest rated game in the franchise, it also strongly contends for the distinction of being atop many publication's lists of great BioWare games and greatest games of the 2010s. In several ways, it was the last game by the company that released to universal acclaim and minimal controversy. Every single game BioWare has released since has been mired in controversy either starting at the time of release (DA2, ME3, ME:A, Anthem) or in retrospect following media reports of mismanagement at the company (DAI). For fans who may be dismayed or disillusioned, ME2 is looked at especially fondly because it is more than just Mass Effect at its peak; it's also BioWare at its peak.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Eyes are very hard to animate well. Samara's eyes look stunning.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • C-Sec has instituted new security and travel rules, including seemingly random no-fly lists and item confiscations, as a knee-jerk reaction to a massive attack. They're so ineffective they label a pair of asari as geth infiltrators and fail to notice the geth in your party. Anyone familiar with post-9/11 airport security in the US will recognize the system and the common criticisms of it.
  • Also, a great deal of the background dialogue in the planet of Illium appears to be an elaborate satire of extreme anarcho-capitalist political beliefs.
  • Purgatory, a prison ship. Involves selling prisoners and the information provided under torture under a veneer of doing good. It's a For Profit Hellhole Prison IN SPACE!.
• The Woobie: David Archer. Born with autism, exploited by his own brother, turned into a machine against his will, and insane from the strain of being in charge of a computer network. This guy's life is just one heartbreak after another. Unfortunately, he's incredibly unstable and dangerous, and become so withdrawn and broken he doesn't realize the harm of his actions. Thankfully, if you save him, he is shown to be doing a lot better during the Grissom Station mission in the third game. He even apologises to Shepard and his squad for his actions.

Squadmates

Grunt

• Base-Breaking Character: A mild example compared to Jack and Miranda, but some people saw him as the Replacement Scrappy for Wrex, as he is a lot less developed compared to him. Even his Loyalty mission is by far the most shallow one (a simple arena fight). However, he is still very well liked for having a variety of funny lines and being very useful in combat.

Jack

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is she a Jerkass Woobie or simply a Jerkass? Part of that might depend on whether fans play as female (whom Jack is not as horrid with) or male (to whom she is a Fetishized Abuser) Shepard, and how a romance is handled.
  • Jack even lets a female Shepard down lightly if the latter tries to keep talking to her.
• Base-Breaking Character: Whilst possessing her share of fans due to sympathizing with her past and Character Development, many others dislike Jack for her psychopathic and violent tendencies. Often it depends on if one takes her abrasive and sometimes abusive behavior in stride as part of her character and the story being made (and thus find the moments of vulnerability from her all the more rewarding), or if you take it personally (especially as it's not always clear how to get her to warm up to you). The intensity of her emotional turmoil doesn't help.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Take Jack with you on Legion's loyalty mission, and she'll say, "I'd never want to be brainwashed like that. Just kill me instead, please." If you don't go to the Grissom Academy side mission in 3, Shepard will have to kill a Brainwashed and Crazy Jack.
• Jerkass Woobie: As revealed by her loyalty mission, Jack was constantly tortured by Cerberus in order to turn her into the ultimate weapon. When she was a kid, she would be thrown into an arena to fight to the death against wild animals and other biotic kids, in addition to the brutality she had to endure from the scientists and guards.
• Les Yay: With Miranda, at least as far as some fans are concerned. Mocked and Lampshaded in the Citadel DLC where Shepard can "helpfully" suggest that the two get laid, even claiming that all of their supposed sniping surely must indicate hidden feelings.

Jacob Taylor

• Angst? What Angst?: The strongest complaint fans have is that he is "boring." Even after his loyalty mission where Shepard and company find out that Ronald Taylor has forced his crew to eat toxic food, driven off or murdered the males, and kept the women as sex slaves, he merely shrugs it off (and becomes offended if Shepard insists that he should express anything otherwise). This becomes Fridge Brilliance when Shepard gains access to the Shadow Broker's dossiers and finds Jacob was placed on the team because he's a "stabilising element." He's supposed to be this way, and with good reason, considering how screwed up the rest of Shepard's squaddies are.
• Fetish Retardant: Not only is his "But the PRIIIIIIZE" line extremely cheesy, the fact that he says it while looking at Shepard with cold, unfeeling eyes after he's just admitted to sneaking into her cabin adds an unintentional creep factor to the encounter.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In 3, Jacob voices his skepticism when Shepard mentions that they'd eventually like to settle down. Over the course of the game, there is reoccurring implication that Shepard is Resigned to the Call and is slowly becoming a Death Seeker because of it.
• Memetic Molester: Regardless of the heavy risk, Jacob only wants his prize.
• Narm Charm: His romance path is not known for being especially well-written, though it did provide a nice meme, as shown above.
• No Yay: His romance is absolutely despised. Even platonic lines from Shepard will sound uncomfortably flirtatious against him, the whole thing is regarded as flat and uninteresting, and to top it all off, he'll cheat on you no matter what in the next game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: While the idea of a morally complicated former black ops soldier joining a terrorist organization in the name of helping others sounds like an awesome character on paper; Jacob’s black ops past receives minimal exploration, his motives for joining Cerberus is basically just to excuse his presence, and his loyalty mission does nothing to explore either or better flesh Jacob out.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Clearly meant to be a naive every man soldier. The problem is, he shows vitriol towards some squadmates, admittedly for valid reasons, but not others whom he'd also have plenty of reason to do so with. This, by itself, would be a downplayed version of the trope at worst, since he only does this when they're first recruited, and lets it go after that. But come the third game, he cheats on you, should you have romanced him. The racial stereotypes he exudes in that game (and arguably, during his romance), do not help.

Kasumi Goto

• Les Yay: A tiny hint in the intro to her loyalty mission. When commenting on how great female Shepard looks in her Little Black Dress, the camera angle makes it seem that Kasumi is staring straight at her boobs.

Liara T'soni

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Because the story itself never acknowledges the issue, fans heavily debate Liara's reason for not telling the rest of the original squad about the Lazarus Project. On the more sympathetic side, it's argued that Liara was too consumed with guilt and unsure that it would even work to begin with, so she didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. On the unsympathetic side, Liara is accused of purposefully keeping them in the dark so she can get her romantic rivals out of the way without getting her hands dirty, citing her criticism of Kaidan/Ashley for not trusting Shepard despite it being Liara's fault that the Illusive Man's intentional information leaks were their only source of information and that Liara admits to knowing that Tali was in love with Male Shepard back in the first game but never said anything because she didn't want to hurt her own chances with him.

Miranda Lawson

• Base-Breaking Character: Quite possibly one of the biggest examples in the entire trilogy. Most fans either love Miranda or absolutely loathe her. Its hard to find a fan who has a neutral opinion of her.
  • Some find her hot and think she has a legitimate reason to be sexualized (being something of a Femme Fatale character), while others find her blatant status as Fanservice (complete with many a shot of her ass) annoying. A third camp pointed out that those who bemoan Miranda's Ms. Fanservice status neglect or ignore Thane's Mr. Fanservice status - Bioware outright said ''every aspect of Thane'' was deliberately developed to be fanservice for women.
  • Some feel a great deal of sympathy for her and think her backstory and emotional struggles make her complex and interesting, while others think she's whiny and arrogant.
  • Some who don't like her for her initial loyalty to Cerberus, while others love that Miranda possesses such strong opinions and point out that Miranda's entire character arc revolves around realizing that her previous views of Cerberus were wrong and the result of years of calculated manipulation by the Illusive Man.
• Jerkass Woobie: She's tortured over the manner in which she was "created", had to spend her early childhood having to live up to her father's crazy high expectations, (and it's also heavily implied that he murdered Miranda's older "siblings" for not meeting said expectations) and worst of all, is incapable of conceiving a child, something she desperately wants (as the Shadow Broker files on her clearly show). Needless to say, when one takes all that into consideration, its easy to see why she can be so cold and nasty sometimes. It also makes it unsurprising that either Paragon or Renegade dialogue choices acknowledging her flagellation over not having a single good aspect of hers to take credit for can start a romance with her. Paragon Shepard will compliment her service record, and more pointedly, her body; Renegade Shepard will try to push her buttons further until she claims Shepard himself as an example of her "damned good work".
• Les Yay: With Jack, at least as far as some fans are concerned. Mocked and Lampshaded in the Citadel DLC where Shepard can "helpfully" suggest that the two get laid, even claiming that all of their supposed sniping surely must indicate hidden feelings.
• Ron the Death Eater: Miranda gets this badly from some fans, who are unable to understand that in spite of her being a part of Cerberus she is not in fact a heartless sociopath who would commit genocide if the Illusive Man told her to.
• Strawman Has a Point: "Typical Alliance attitude. So focused on hating Cerberus you're completely blind to the real threat." She makes other fair arguments to, namely how the Council SHOULD have listened to Shepard a long time ago and also being qualified to lead the fire-team during the Suicide Mission both times despite Jack (or Garrus)'s objections. Plus Miranda is unaware that the Illusive Man is strategically leaking information to encourage the exact attitude she's criticizing.
• Wangst: The main reason she's reviled by certain fans is the accusation that she fits this. It's not that she doesn't have a reason to be upset, it's because as far as many are concerned she drones on and on about how much it hurts her to be perfect and how her father was emotionally distant, whereas every other character besides Jack has bigger or equal problems that they don't complain about. The fact that she says that she was always given what she wanted and grew up in wealth has not helped matters, though she also makes a point of mentioning that there was always a catch to getting what she wanted. Still, if you play the "Lair of the Shadow Broker" DLC and read the file on her it turns out that Miranda's pain goes deeper than she lets on. She wants to be a mother but cannot conceive, and even worse, it's implied that this is just one of many ways her father has tried to control her. It's also relevant to Miranda's character that using expensive gifts and privileges "with a catch" to control and emotionally abuse others while treating them like whiny, privileged assholes for complaining is an extremely common and devastatingly effective tactic even in real life.

Mordin Solus

• Harsher in Hindsight: Sang "Major General's Song". Played for comedy. Then Mass Effect 3 came. Not so funny in replays.
• Too Cool to Live: Survival during final assault unlikely. Escort assignment recommended.

Samara

• Iron Woobie: As expected from a Asari warrior almost a millenium old.
• Ron the Death Eater: A lot of Morinth sympathizers blame Samara for Morinth's addictions.

Thane Krios

• Stoic Woobie: For most of the game, he will not angst about his condition. He breaks down during the romance scene however.
• Too Cool to Live: He is likely to die in the suicide mission.

Zaeed Massani

• Cargo Ship: This video ships Zaeed with his rifle, Jessie.
• Moral Event Horizon: Letting the refinery and everyone inside burn to make sure he kills Vido. It's a bit more debatable in the Paragon resolution though, since for all his wanting to kill Vido, he does help Shepard save the refinery workers if Shepard decides to save them, and Shepard can still get his loyalty with a high enough Paragon score. And finally, he is shown to be better in 3, restricting his brutality to Cerberus, who definitely deserve it.

Secret Characters *SPOILERS*

Legion

• Crack Pairing: It and Admiral Xen get shipped a lot, likely because she calls it a "marvelous machine"

Morinth

• Draco in Leather Pants: Some of the fanbase consider her actions to be completely the fault of her genetics, which are in turn Samara's fault, and thus Samara's the monster for hunting down a serial murderer. As awful as her early life may have been, she's spent the subsequent four hundred years developing an addiction to burning out the brains of innocent victims, and there's no reason to believe she'll stop, as she get's a thrill out of it.
  • In the third game (provided she survived in 2), she sends a series of emails to her sisters showing that she still cares about them and just wants them to be happy, but the emails were intercepted and her sisters never got to read them. It could also be just another example of her being a Manipulative Bitch.
• Memetic Molester: Given what she does on-screen, it's quite self-explaining.

NPCs

Quarian Admirals

• Crack Pairing: Admiral Xen and Legion get shipped a lot, likely because of Xen calling Legion a "marvelous machine".
• Fanon: Based on the above Crack Pairing, a popular fan interpretation of Admiral Xen is that she's a Robosexual.
• Moral Event Horizon: Possibly Rael'Zorah experimenting on hacking geth, an act that Zaal'Koris doesn't see as any different from torturing living beings, with the presumed end goal of hacking all the geth into forced obedience.

The Illusive Man

• Draco in Leather Pants: While not completely wrong all the time and also doing some genuinely good things for Shepard, the Illusive Man is still a ruthless Knight Templar and the leader of an amoral terrorist organization, and yet inevitably some people focus far more on the former than the latter. The next game reveals that he invoked this by intentionally filling the Normdandy with Cerberus's least objectionable members.

Veetor'Nara

• The Woobie: Poor, poor, poor Veetor. Much like Tali, he is a young and naive Quarian who is still developing as an individual. Already he has a history of panicking when in large crowds, prompting him to spend his pilgrimage on a small human colony. He has to witness said-colony come under attack by "monsters" and "swarms", abducting the many humans Veetor likely made friends with. By the time you find him, he's a broken shell of his former self, paranoid beyond rational capacity. And it gets much, much worse if you turn him over to Cerberus.

Kal'Reegar

• Ensemble Dark Horse: To the degree that some fans wanted him back in ME3 as a squadmate. Most people wanted him as a squadmate as early as in ME2 after seeing him for the first time in one of the pre-release trailers. Of course, being voiced by Adam Baldwin doesn't hurt.

Kelly Chambers

• Annoying Video Game Helper: Yes Kelly, we get it, we can check our private messages ourselves without you repeating the same line over and over again!
• Base-Breaking Character: Yet another polarizing character, due to her "psychological assessments" being generic with no real insight, her apologist attitude, and her memetic status as a complete slut. On the other end of the spectrum, some people like her sweetness and her status as Cerberus' Token Good Teammate
• Player Punch: Remember when you told her you'd get everyone through the mission alive? If you didn't go through the Omega 4 Relay quickly enough after the Collectors invaded the Normandy, you get to watch her disintegrated alive and screaming.

Aria T'Loak

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Memetic Precision F-Strike. Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Worthy Opponent to one of the most popular characters in the fandom (probably). Her popularity far overshadows her screen time.
• Epileptic Trees: There are more than a few involving her, one being that she's acquainted with Wrex, which is heavily hinted at, yet never explicitly stated, in-game.

Warlord Okeer

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A krogan scientist would have been an interesting addition to the team. Sadly, he dies shortly after being introduced and Shepard settles for Grunt instead.

Urz

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Quite a few players have expressed the desire to take Urz back to the Normandy with them after watching him follow Shepard adoringly around Tuchanka.
• Ugly Cute: Just look at that face◊. Good varren.

Matriarch Aethyta

• Ensemble Dark Horse: She's at least as popular as some of Shepard's squad thanks to her combination of being a Cool Old Lady and Deadpan Snarker.
• Epileptic Trees: Some believe she's Liara's father. Yep, father, with asari being one sex and all. The game itself seems to heavily imply this, as one of the videos Shepard can watch in the Shadow Broker's archives is footage of Aethyta sitting at home alone, drinking, and staring at a holograph of (what is almost undeniably) Liara. Confirmed in Mass Effect 3.
• One-Scene Wonder: She only appears in Conrad Verner's sidequest and has a single unchanging set of dialogue options afterward, but that was enough to make her beloved by fans for being a Cool Old Lady that's Seen It All.

Harbinger

• Awesome Ego: Just like Sovereign in the first game, he's a monumentally arrogant being who hands out Badass Boasts like candy and the fans love him for it.
• Base-Breaking Character: Some fans see him as a Replacement Scrappy to Sovereign^note On the basis that Sovereign was a cold, stoic, intimidating presence of pure power, while Harbinger's constant, repetitive hamming is pretty annoying and not scary. while other see him as a superior villain.^note The main argument being that Sovereign was a dull, boring villain with barely-explained motives and no personality traits besides arrogance, while Harbinger is not only entertaining and highly quotable, but also provides context and meaning to the Reaper's actions and intentions, which were glossed over with the "You wouldn't understand" brush in the first game.
• Crack Ship: It's mostly a joke, but Harbinger/Shepard, drawing upon such lines as "I KNOW YOU FEEL THIS," is oddly popular.
• Fountain of Memes: Nearly every one of his lines have been subject to Memetic Mutation.
• Love to Hate: Full of Badass Boasts, while proclaiming to be humanity's salvation through destruction. Plenty to love, plenty to hate.
• Memetic Molester: His memetic taunts towards Shepard make him this. See his line on Crack Ship entry.

Gavin Archer

• Moral Event Horizon: Forcing his brother to take part in Project Overlord. That said he is shown to have defected from Cerberus in 3 and has also come to seriously regret what he did. Unfortunately for him, he's a case of Reformed, but Rejected in 3.

Tela Vasir

• Best Boss Ever: Vasir is an asari Spectre. An asari Spectre Vanguard. Especially awesome if your Shepard is also a Vanguard. If so, biotic jousting can ensue
• Draco in Leather Pants: The reason she works for the Shadow Broker is similar to why Shepard works for Cerberus. She has no choice, because the Council gives SPECTREs squat. The Commander would be going nowhere fast without the intelligence and funds Cerberus provide, funds that always match or better what credits you can scrounge. She has much less to work with.
  • While her situation is understandable, she takes way more enjoyment in what she does than she needs to. She has a worryingly sadistic grin when threatening her hostage, her troops shot down civilians who were wounded, and she killed a lot of security guards at the hotel, even though she could have gotten them on her side by pointing out she was a Spectre. Her racism against purebloods also makes her motivation for targeting Liara very suspect.
    • Though a lot of this loses weight when you compare this to how Renegade Shepard acts. Tela Vasir herself lampshades this. Of course, given that Renegade Shepard also gets the Draco in Leather Pants treatment, perhaps it's not surprising.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: For such a short amount of screen-time, she's quite a popular character. Possibly due to an awesome boss fight, her being a total badass, and a remarkable Shut Up, Kirk! speech.

Kaidan/Ashley

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Were they ungrateful and overly paranoid about Shepard, or was their reaction a natural one to their former commander (and possible lover) coming back into their life after two years of being dead as part of a terrorist organization? The former cause some who didn't have a problem with them in the first game to hate them with a passion while those who thought of the latter, even to those that hate them in the first game, felt that they were unfairly spat on in favor of the love interests in this game and Liara.
• Fourth Wall Myopia: Many players don't seem to notice that nearly all of the information that may have convinced them that Shepard is still trustworthy was actively withheld from them, or that the information they did have was intentionally leaked by the Illusive Man, who has openly been trying to isolate Shepard from non-Cerberus resources.
• Informed Wrongness: If you're playing a Renegade Shepard (especially one who shows contempt for the Alliance and the Council and prefers Cerberus) then they are kind of right to say that you've betrayed the Alliance and thrown your lot in with a terrorist organization versus a Paragon or Neutral Shepard's doing it only because it's necessary; even then Shepard never actually gives any proof of that.

Ronald Taylor

• Moral Event Horizon: After being stranded on Aeia, he killed most of his male crew, exiled the rest and used the fruit of the planet and it's mental degradation properties to keep the females as slaves, with Jacob even referring to them as his Harem. That's bad enough, but then there's him knowing about the distress signal the entire time, but never telling anyone or activating it until he finally wanted to leave.

Councilor Sparatus

• Never Live It Down: Sparatus becomes a crucial ally to Shepard and the Alliance early in 3, and winds up being the only councilor who doesn't make Shepard's job harder in a very substantiatal way. Doesn't change the fact that he'll never get away from the infamy.

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• AccidentalAesop.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, move to Sandbox.Alternate Aesop Interpretation My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic

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• Of The Night
• Traitor
• Bob Squad
  • Shared setting with Advance Wars 4 - Black Hole's Fall

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And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

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• Unintentionally Unintelligent: Something was presented as smart or smart or justifiable, but audiences find it stupid for different reasons than intended.

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• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Harry's rant about McGonagall transforming into a small cat was meant to show his scientific genius by pointing out the numerous ways it should have been physically impossible. But while he's right about it violating conservation of energy, which strangely didn't bother him when the levitation did it, but the other details suggest the author knows the terms but not the underlying concepts (you actually can have unitarity without the Hamiltonian or conservation of energy and none of that has anything much to do with FTL signaling) and he focuses on the relatively minor quantum effects instead of the reality-shattering and much more obvious implications in thermodynamics.

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• How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World intended for Grimmel the Grisly to be a strategic genius who's always a step ahead of everyone else. But most of his accomplishments come from other characters making mistakes that he has no control or knowledge of.
  • Drago's warlords kick off the plot by hiring Grimmel to capture Toothless alive. Even though he holds them in clear contempt, openly states that he is a dragon killer, and is famously responsible for the almost complete extinction of the Night Fury species, they still decide to trust him with this task, and he promptly betrays them the moment he finally has Toothless in his grasp.
  • During their first confrontation, Grimmel heavily implies that Hiccup's idea for peaceful co-existance with dragons could easily spread, which would spell disaster for people like himself who make a profit off capturing and killing them. Instead of actually trying to convince other cultures and people of his progressive ideals ^note If the TV series is canon, he was already able to do this with the Outcasts, Berserkers and Defenders Of The Wing, Hiccup and Toothless go out of their way to ensure that no one else can ever take them up.
  • When Valka returns from her scout mission to report on the enemy fleet, Hiccup decides to lead the riders to hostile territory to capture Grimmel, despite not knowing the place or if Grimmel is actually there. The mission ends in failure and also results in Ruffnut being captured. The riders don't even notice that Ruffnut is missing until after they've already returned to New Berk, including her brother Tuffnut, even though the two of them share the same dragon.
  • Ruffnut, when captured, casually lets it slip that the Berkians have relocated to a new island, and doesn't question Grimmel when he suddenly decides to let her go. She doesn't even look back to see if she's being followed, and ends up inadvertently leading Grimmel and the warlords to New Berk, resulting in the capture of Toothless and the other dragons.
  • Hiccup and Toothless learn early on that Grimmel's weapons of choice are his Instant Sedation darts. Upon seeing the Light Fury hit by one, Toothless' strategy is to run up and stand there slowly charging a plasma blast inches away from Grimmel, getting himself easily shot in the process.

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• The Outer Limits (1995): Despite what the opening and closing narration of "Trial By Fire" says, the aliens are the ones at fault for making stupid decisions at every turn. Their opening move is to throw something, possible a gift, at tremendous speed at the Earth with no warning or explanation. Their initial video message is in English so they seem to have been observing Earth for long enough to understand the language and chose it out of the multiple languages, possibly as it is the language used by the powerful nations. This implies that they have knowledge of Earth culture too, singling out America as the people to contact. But they botch the message by speaking underwater so it is incomprehensible, not even covering their bases with subtitles in case they mispronounced some words. Once Humanity has responded with a message of peace and a request for the aliens to stay in orbit, a message the aliens must have understood as they speak English, they ignore this and land on the planet anyway, effectively trespassing after being warned not to. the missiles Russia and the US fire at them are dealt with apparent ease but the aliens, seemingly have taken no damage of casualties from this, retaliate anyway with missiles of their own at the two nations, possible resulting in civilian casualties. All this from a species that came for friendship. If they were an advanced race they would not have made bad decisions at every turn and then acted as the injured party, but maybe they were just stupid and touchy, unlikely for such an advanced species. And the closing narrative then tries to imply that Humans are the ones at fault!

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• Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: Eraqus and Terra were meant to be Tragic Heroes, Eraqus for his friendship with Xehanort blinding him to how evil he'd become and Terra for his insecurities and Eraqus's vouching for Xehanort causing him to fall for his manipulations. But due to how Obviously Evil Xehanort looked and acted, including well-established signs of darkness corruption, to be point his once not being evil was Informed Kindness, many saw their trusting him as Too Dumb to Live as opposed to tragic.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2006): Mephiles The Dark is meant to be The Chessmaster for manipulating Silver and Blaze into killing Sonic by stating his would cause the Bad Future, withholding his death would be the cause, and their taking the Obviously Evil Mephiles's word at face excused by Blaze stating Sliver was naïve and "she agreed to save the world at any price". But Blaze also never questioned Mephiles despite this and Silver was smart enough to question if it's justifiable to kill someone for the greater good but not if the sketchy person helping them for unknown reason was trustworthy. And after that plan fails Mephiles easily kills Sonic himself and just warps the Chaos Emeralds to him, meaning all their planning was unnecessary convolution to begin with.

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• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place" has the Mane Six try to find try to find the ancient hero Rockhoof a new career only to be stymied by his Fish out of Temporal Water status. But they give up at every minor or unrelated setback rather than try again, and suggest jobs that are at odds with Rockhoof personality and skillset and fail to consider any his defining trait, Super-Strength, would be useful for. Additionally, the plot begins in the first place because Rockhoof isn't welcome at his old village, which is now an archeological dig site — Professor Fossil just sees Rockhoof as a nuisance and doesn't seem to realize that the pony who actually lived in the ancient village she's excavating may have a lot of helpful information to contribute, chalking it up to the fact that they need the full context for archeological digs.

[[/folder]]

• Fan-Preferred Endpoint: Fans would rather ignore the series after this work. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=15902941540A34344400&page=129#3212

Fan-Preferred Endpoint

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• While far from universal, there's fans of Codename: Kids Next Door who chose to consider Operation: Z.E.R.O. the series finale, feeling it's of a higher quality and a more conclusive ending than what Season 6 and Operation I.N.T.E.R.V.I.E.W.S provided.

• Not-So-Easily Forgiven: Easily Forgiven is so prevalent that anything else is surprising.

Not-So-Easily Forgiven

Laconic

Wrongdoings in fiction tend to be Easily Forgiven. Maybe they're the kind of people who'd want to Turn the Other Cheek. Maybe it wouldn't be very heroic or wise to hold grudges against potential allies. Or maybe the writers didn't want to put time or effort into a more involved process thats's not central to the story.

Whatever the reason, it's common enough that one not being easily forgiving is a surprise.

Often done as Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, showing it's unrealistic to expect one to instantly forgiven of wrongdoing, especially before they show they deserve it. Maybe they try to forgive but have second thoughts or are so quick to distrust it's shown to be less than sincere. Maybe they exploited or squandered forgiveness before or done what's consider unforgivable. Maybe they only set their animosity aside out of necessity.

If the Not-So-Easily Forgiven in question are genuinely reformed and repentant, they're liable to be Reformed, but Rejected. They'll be tolerated at best until they work to redeem themselves, do some act that proves their decency, or otherwise prove they deserve forgiveness.

If applied after the fact to those who were Easily Forgiven, it may be a Cerebus Retcon or Ascended Fridge Horror. If to those audiences felt didn't deserve the forgiveness they got, it's an Author's Saving Throw. A Fix Fic may be the result if this is a primary focus of the work.

If a character has crossed the Moral Event Horizon or the target of an Accusation Fic/Hate Fic, audiences don't expect them to be easily forgiven so this trope only applies if there is an in-universe attempt or expectation that gets subverted. Likewise, it's unlikely to apply to Villains, darker Anti-Heroes, or any characters that aren't expected to offer sincere, if any, forgiveness (without ulterior motive).

No Sympathy for Grudgeholders is when their refusal to forgive is treated as a flaw. Compare Forgiven, but Not Forgotten and Last-Second Chance when forgiveness is offer but with significant scrutiny. Also compare Cartesian Karma, Cruel Mercy, Karma Houdini Warranty and Heel Face Door slam, which may overlap with this trope.

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• Soarin had Easily Forgiven his teammates for attempting to replace him in "Rainbow Falls". But in My Little Pony: Friends Forever, he flubs a show causing him to fear being replaced made him realized he still had resentment over it. This gets resolved when when Rainbow Dash get Soarn's teammate Spitfire to show up and properly apologies for it.
• In Sweet Tooth, Jepperd DOES come back to rescue Gus after he'd abandoned him to Abbot, but Gus is understandably upset and refuses to forgive him until Jepperd risks his life to save Gus from a bear.

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• Mulan has the eponymous heroine disguised herself a male to join the army, where woman are legally banned, in the place of her ailing father and becomes a valuable, respected and trusted member, Despite citing this when her gender is ousted, that she spent all this time lying to them and betraying their laws and traditions destroys all the goodwill she had with them, who only let her off because they owe her, until her actions in the ending.

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• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has Grant Ward, who clearly expects an apology, an assurance that he wasn't faking his camaraderie with Fitz, and an earnest declaration of love for Skye to be enough to get him back in everybody's good graces. For some reason, the rest of the team are unable to move past the whole "secretly a member of a Nazi terror group, murdered dozens of people, tried to murder Fitz and Simmons, and left Fitz with long-term brain damage" thing, and instead of welcoming him back they try repeatedly to kill him. Long after his death, Daisy and Simmons encounter a heroic simulation of him in a virtual reality world, and are barely able to contain their loathing, much to his confusion.

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• One of the main themes of Bojack Horseman is that no matter how sorry you are for whatever heinous act you've committed, it always takes a LOT more than an apology to earn forgiveness from the one you wronged. Also, sometimes forgiveness never happens because the person you're apologizing to has every single right to reject your apology. For example, Herb (who's dying from rectal cancer) refuses to forgive BoJack for not standing up for him when the former was outed as gay and subsequently blacklisted during the 1990s, because Bojack abandoned him when he needed him the most, and he knows Bojack is mostly trying to make himself feel better instead of being genuinely remorseful.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Season 5 finale has Ahsoka Tano framed for a terrorist bombing and, in the face of public and political pressure, the Jedi Council expel her from the Order and hand them to a Kangaroo Court that's already decided on the death penalty. Once she's revealed innocent she welcomed back to the Order, everythings normal again... "I'm sorry, Master, but I'm not coming back." Her trust in the Jedi Order is so irreconcilably damaged she promptly walks out. This also result in Anakin, the only one who defended her, to begin to develop the distrust he displayed with the Order come Revenge of the Sith.
• Star Wars Rebels: Despite the reveal that Agent Kallus is now on their side (even serving as a Fulcrum agent), the rebels are not willing to forgive him because he's had several Kick the Dog moments in the first 2 seasons and the tie-in comics that are quite deplorable (such as framing the Ghost crew for an assassination and orchestrating a Poison and Cure Gambit). Later episodes seem to indicate that Zeb still trusts him (mainly because an Enemy Mine situation between him and Kallus was what led to the now-ex-imperial having a change of heart) and Sabine is open to a friendship between the two of them, but it takes until "Zero Hour" for the rebels to fully accept that Kallus has become a far better man than he used to be.
• Steven Universe usually plays Easily Forgiven straight. These are the exemptions.
  • In a short story arc during season two, which ends with Garnet unable to forgive Pearl for her manipulation and betrayal of trust, but willing to move past the incident in order to maintain their friendship.
  • In "The New Lars", when Steven uses his newfound power to enter and control Lars, and uses this as a way to "fix" Lars. At the end, Steven attempts to apologize to Lars for what he did complete with an apology card, only for Lars to understandably rip it up.

Real Life

• Monochromatic Mirror: Mirrors in fiction are show as being a single color and only reflect what's plot relevant.

Monochromatic Mirror

Laconic

In Real Life, mirrors are the color of whatever they are reflecting at the given moment, showing the relected background in perfect detail. In fiction, this is extra work to draw or animate, the Lazy Artist often depicst them as a single color, usualy a shade of silver. They only reflect what's important to the story at the given moment, like reflecting charaters but somehow not the background, or the backround only if something worth showing is there.

This may be expalinable by being a Magic Mirror. In live-actotion and written works, which don't have to bother with drawing or animating, this trope is only in effect if it signifies something surreal or fantastical.

Compare Missing Reflection, when it's caused by properires of what should be reflected. Contrast Mirror Monster and The Mirror Shows Your True Self, when mirrors show more than what's being reflected.

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• Campbellian/Campbell's Dragon: The original definition of The Dragon to be split per TRS.

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• Captain Qwark from Ratchet & Clank (2002). Ratchet starts out as an Anti-Hero who's impartial to the greater conflict agains the Blarg, then after being betrayed by Captain Qwark becomes outright dismissive of everyone, helping only as a means to taking revenge. Ratchet reneges a bit upon learning the Blarg plan to destroy a planet, but it's after he defeats Quark then sees the destruction wrought because he prioritized revenge over stopping it he realizes how selfish he was and developed into a straight up hero.

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• Character Regression: When one faces a stumble or setback in their Character Development.

Character Regression

Feldt Grace: Ever since Setsuna became an Innovator, it's like he’s gone back to the way he use to be when we first met, when he didn’t open his heart up to anything, or anyone.
Sumeragi Lee Noriega : He's just struggling to come to terms with his reformation, and his new abilities, he’s overly conscious about how different he’s become from the rest of us.

— Gundam 00: A Wakening of the Trailblazer

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• Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon: Lillie is afraid of touching Pokémon due to an incident so traumatic she doesn't remember. After managing to overcome it, an encounter with Silvally, which was involved in the incident, makes her repressed memories return. This causes her to lapse back until she fully remembers it saved her in said incident, letting her overcome her fear again. She still lapses into fear of the specific Pokémon that caused it, for good reason.

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• In Jak II: Renegade, Jak Took a Level in Jerkass due to two years of torture, becoming an Anti-Hero who didn't give a damn about anything save revenge and his True Companions in that order. By the end, he's mellowed out enough that he goes out of his way to save Haven City, who ultimately thank him by scapegoating and banishing him to die at the start of Jak 3: Wastelander. Between Jak becoming pissed off again and how little it got him, once his companions plead that he save the City, he angrily proclaims "They can rot for all I care" and "I'm through saving the world". He recovers once he learns said banishment was part of a greater conspiracy.
• Samus Aran Metroid: Other M was still reeling from the death of the baby metroid and the falling out with Adam Malkovitch in her backstory. For those reasons Samus, who has become stoic, resolved, and independent after the latter, is prone to breakdowns, self-doubting, and put herself under Adam's authority to redeem herself to him. However, due to Samus never showing she started like this before (outside a manga that few have seen and it retconned heavily) or why none of the other traumatic things she's experienced in the series caused such, it came off as straight OOC.

Visual Novels

Web Animation

Webcomic

Web Original

Western Animation

Real Life

• Lawful Wannabe: A character wants to be Lawful, but are unable to live up to it.

Lawful Wannabe

Laconic

Related is Lawful Pushover, when they're unable to stay lawful when others challenge their authority. Compare Batman Grabs a Gun, when characters make a one-off exception to their code of conduct. Contrast Lawful Stupid and Honor Before Reason, when their unable to stop being lawful even when it's a liability.

See also Heroic Wannabe and Redemption Failure, for when a character tries to be good but fails, and Frequently-Broken Unbreakable Vow.

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Comic Strips

Fan Works

• Lopoddity's Pandoraverse: Pandora tried to suppress her chaotic nature and follow her mother Twilight Sparkle's example and become a princess thinking it would stop ponies from viewing her as a freak. But her inability to suppress her chaos magic and ponies lack of apparition for her efforts caused it to spectacularly fall apart. She's since embraced her chaotic nature and is happier for it, but her regret over disappointing her mother by failing to be lawful remains a persistent part of their character.

As the of Discord, Pandora inherited his powers and nature as a God of Chaos and was feared and ostracized for it.

Film — Animation

Film — Live-Action

Folk Lore

Literature

Live-Action TV

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Myths & Religion

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Theater

Video Games

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Webcomic

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Western Animation

Real Life

• Everyone But the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Inversion of Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending.

Everyone But the Leads Get a Happy Ending

And because of you, we found Halo, unlocked its secrets, shattered our enemy's resolve. Our victory - your victory - was so close... I wish you could have lived to see it.

— Catherine Halsey: Halo: Reach

Descripion

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Anime & Manga

Comedy

Comic Books

Comic Strips

Fan Works

Film — Animation

Film — Live-Action

Folk Lore

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Myths & Religion

Pro Wrestling

Theater

Video Games

Visual Novels

Web Animation

Webcomic

Web Original

Western Animation

• Non-Ambidextoros Sprite
• Hate-and-Switch: A deliberate subversion of The Scrappy or Hate Sink by staring them unlikable only to surprise us with likable/sympathetic traits.

• Utopia Is Impossible

Anime & Manga

• The World of Mana from Cross Ange was created to be a utopia thanks to Mana eliminating the need for want, conflict, and inequality. But this complacent existence left its inhabitance unprepared to deal with the Norma, who couldn't use and physically broke Mana, and they reacted with hatred and violence. Embryo, the creator of the World, took advantage of this by instilling the idea that Norma were monsters responsible for all the worlds wrongs, providing an outlet for their anger and putting the Norma to use fighting the DRAGONs invading the World and were harvested to fuel Mana, stabilizing things and enabling peace. Then the Norma rebelled against this oppression and ally with the pre-Mana humans Embryo wiped out to make way for his utopia. Also, the DRAGONs leader was kidnapped to be the source of Mana, leading them to eventually launch a full-scale war against humans, then ally with the Norma. When the World of Mana proves unable to deal with this to Embryo's satisfaction, he deems it a failure and attempts to wipe out the World and start over, not for the first time.

Literature

• Deconstructed in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. Omelas is a utopia, but the narrator realized audiences would refuse to believe it because of this trope so they reveal spoiler:it requires the mental torture of a child, which may not even be necessary, to the tone of "There you go, a horrible flaw in the system! Are you happy now?!"

• Humans Are Unruly:
• Titanium is Superior: Anything with titanium is portrayed as better than not.
• Superpowerful Sniper: Sniper rifles do higher damage per bullet than normal guns, ballistic justification optional.
• Peacemaker Name: Weapon or combatants with "peace" in their name.
• Ice-sickle: Ice is used as a melee weapon to slash, stab or bludgeon.
• Heroic Hostage-Tacking: The good guys pull a hostage situation on the villains. Really.
• Flashbacks Show Trustworthiness: If expositions is provided alongside a flashback, it shows that audiences should take it at face.
• Angelic Archer: The bow and arrow is the weapon of choice for the angelic or divine.
• Plants Are Earth Magic: When Dishing Out Dirt and Green Thumb overlap
• Indiana Jones Clone: LEGO Adventurers, Daring Do, Whip Kirby, Indiana Joe, this page has more examples, subtrope of Adventurer Archaeologist (which also has examples) (Note from Drope: Consider the name "Indiana Clones")

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