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  • Anvilicious: With regards to minority rights and gun ownership.
  • Better by a Different Name: This story was much better as the Cadmus Saga.
  • Broken Base: The debate over Registration itself can rage quite strongly among fans.
  • Conflict Ball: Was there any real reason for them to be fighting like that? Just one act people don't agree with, and they are at each others' throats? Even small wars do not work that way. There had to have been some underlying tension that the act finally set off (like many political hot button issues). Considering the directly clashing sections of each side did not have that, it was clear they were fighting just because the writers wanted them to. The Act put a divisive line between them. Specifically, that line was "Cop" and "Criminal". This automatically created the conflict, and the only method superheroes have of resolving conflict is to punch someone or something in the face until it's fixed.
  • Concepts Are Cheap: Which side are you on? It won't matter. We'll just have heroes take sides as though it was picking teams for sports.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: The Expanded Civil War hardcover features a script and behind the scenes comments with Mark Millar. The comments are both illuminating and hilarious at the same time.
  • Designated Hero and Designated Villain: Captain America and Iron Man. Even now, in any given comic, which was which dependent completely on who was writing.
    • In fact, Dr. Strange near the end of the story even mentioned that he couldn't step in because there really WASN'T a clear good and evil team.
    • There was even one Iron Man comic during the Civil War that had the two talk with each other, and neither of them could really decide who was right, because they both had valid points.
  • Dork Age: Marvel would be better off disavowing the whole fiasco.
    • Which finally happened now that Dark Reign is over and the Registration Act has been abolished.
  • Fetish Retardant: Maria Hill looked like some sort of nightmare in the first issue.
    • She looked like some sort of nightmare for her whole behavior during this saga. Is it even certain to fans now whether she can be trusted?
  • Godwin's Law: Take a drink every time someone compares the registration act to Nazi Germany, the USSR, China, the Roman Empire, or any other oppressive/totalitarian regime you can think of and you could potentially be wasted after a single issue of any given tie-in.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The one big player on the pro-Reg side who turned out to be a Skrull is knocked out and impersonated by the half-Skrull, half-Kree Hulkling during the climax.
    • In Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #2, Spider-Man is told by Tony Stark the benefits of unmasking. When Spidey tries to refute, Cap backs up Tony's assertions. What makes this even funnier is that the issue is written by Mark Millar!
    • There is also this.
  • Hype Backlash: New readers seem to go in expecting an intriguing political drama. They're quite disappointed.
  • Idiot Ball: Captain America first and worst, but he was far from the only one.
  • Idiot Plot: A lot of the plot makes more sense if you assume the brains of everyone in the Marvel Universe has been replaced with fish.
    • One of the What Ifs? averted this by having the situation resolved relatively peacefully. With a compromise between the two sides.
  • Logical Fallacies: One of the tie-ins involved Sally Floyd asking if Captain America followed NASCAR, had a My Space page, or watched American Idol. He responds by saying no. Floyd then accuses Captain America of being out-of-touch with modern America and he is stunned into silence. First of all, this carries Unfortunate Implications that American culture consists solely of race cars (mostly popular in just the Southern states), an online community (mostly popular amongst teens), and a TV show (based on a British show). Secondly, no one would be asinine enough to tell a politician that he or she was out of touch with America for not having a My Space page so why would it matter to Captain America? Finally, considering Cap is a Superhero, one would assume that he is too busy saving the world to bother watching American Idol every night.
  • Memetic Mutation: During the initial promotion for the crossover, Marvel released a pair of message board signature images reading either "I'm with Captain America" or "I'm with Iron Man". Within days, fans were creating their own versions by the dozens, and similar images are still being created for both Marvel and DC's Crisis Crossovers as well as things that have nothing to do with comics.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Spider-Man began having doubts about his side when Stark proudly showed him his Negative Zone prison, before outright switching sides after Tony Stark, Reed Richards and Hank Pym CLONE A GOD.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Just think about the fact that Hulkling was vivisected while he was still alive and his organs were rearranging themselves. It might just be this Troper, but I had trouble sleeping after that.
  • Old Shame: Let's just say Marvel doesn't seem to proud of this one.
  • The Scrappy: Miriam Sharpe, Sally Floyd.
    • Iron Man briefly fell into this after the comic. Thankfully, that was fixed a year later.
  • Strawman Has a Point: Is forcing people with powers rivaling (and frequently exceeding) artillery to register with the government really that unreasonable? Depends on who you're asking. Fans continue to debate the subject, with reasonable arguments on both sides of the fence.
    • It doesn't just depend on who you're asking. It also depends on what exactly you mean by "registration", exactly what methods it will be enforced by, and exactly what obligations it places on the superhuman.
    • A What If comic even ran with this as one of the alternative scenarios, showing that there's nothing inherently wrong with registration and, if the right people are in charge, it can actually be a very good thing. The comic even lampshades that Steve does not disagree with the idea of registration, just the government being the ones who administer it.
    • While Sally Floyd's argument is filled to the brim with Logical Fallacies, the root of her argument is sound. If Captain America isn't going to bother to learn about the modern world and keep living in the 1940s, why should he be given a say in how the 21st century operates? Everyone has a right to free speech, but his speech is deliberately uneducated and uninformed dogma about an idealized time that never actually existed and has no practical application to the Marvel Universe. It's hardly unbelievable that she wouldn't be taking him seriously.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Plenty, but perhaps most notably, the inference that Nitro's powers had only been as destructive as they were because of Mutant Growth Hormones given to him by Stark Industries Damage Control boss Walter Declun, who gets summarily executed by Wolverine.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Absolutely everyone. Doesn't matter who the reader thought was making the better arguments, everyone is just too spiteful to care for.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Political?: Didn't help that writers of the tie-ins directly brought politics into their writings.
  • Writer on Board: If you have Mark Millar writing your superhero comic...
  • Writer Revolt: The real civil war was between the writers. And it shows, thanks to some snuck-in lampshades and writer's notes jabbing at the other artists.

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