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YMMVs for the comics:[]

  • Base Breaker: Two main ones, on opposing sides. You either think Wolverine's the most badass and complex creation to come out of comics and Cyclops is a douchebag boring whiner who would be better suited as a villain, or that Wolverine is overhyped, over powered, and a real dick, and Cyclops is mishandled, considerably badass, and one of the most complex characters in the comics. Now, combine that with Running the Asylum, and we get some truly Epic Fail stories and Out-of-Character Moment stories.
  • Broken Base: Fandom is divided into those who think Rogue must be with Gambit and those who think that no matter who they themselves favor, anyone is preferable to Remy as Rogue's love interest.
    • Considering the infamous Trial of Gambit and Rogue's new romantic partner, the feeling from many Gambit fans--some of them, like the previous example, who used to be Remy/Rogue shippers-- is that he deserves anyone but Rogue.
    • Interestingly, Remy/Rogue was something of an OTP as early as his first concepts... but for admittedly squicky reasons: Originally, Gambit was to be a clone created by Mister Sinister (who was supposed to be a 40-year-old mutant trapped in a 12-year-old, never aging body) who was tasked with seducing Rogue (whom Sinister would have developed a stalkeresque crush on) so that Sinister could live the affair vicariously. None of this survived Remy's first appearance.
  • Complete Monster: X-men goes back and forth on this. Magneto and Mystique have both been shown to have redeeming qualities amongst other villains. Mojo isn't sympathetic at all, but his humorous side pushes him more towards Evil Is Funny. Villains who are total scum and deserve nothing more than to be put down like rabid animals include Apocalypse, Cassandra Nova, Cameron Hodge, Dark Beast, Donald Pierce, Fabian Cortez, Selene, Lady Deathstrike, The Marauders, Mister Sinister, the Sentinels, Sabretooth, Sebastian Shaw, the Shadow King, and Reverend Stryker and his Purifiers. Apocalypse, Selene, and the Shadow King, in particular, are portrayed as demonic evil.
    • Don't forget mechanical life form Bastion. When the Nimrod Sentinel Merged with master Mold, it became a humanoid monster that, despite being aparently human on the outside, is actually the most powerful sentinel ever made, and can control lesser sentinels to do his bidding. Now with human level thought, it still decides to kill all mutants, despite now having no reason to do so, considering one of the things that built into it was a heroic sentinel that decided mutants weren't its enemy. But then, it takes almost sadistic glee in torturing mutants to death, both emotional and physical, and has no qualms about doing so to a thirteen year old girl. Then it kills Nightcrawler! Yes! Nightcrawler!
    • Depending on how you look at it, the entire US Government. They've attempted the outright genocide of mutants at least twice (once teaming up with aforementioned Bastion, the second time using death camps clearly inspired by Hitler's), and they also employ guys like Johnston Coffin to run things even unrelated to mutants. Even when they're not being overtly murderous, they almost never help mutants when they need it, as Emma Frost points out during her brutal Mind Rape of Ms. Marvel, which, given the government's actions and the fact that she was trying to recruit the X-Men for said government, seemed completely and utterly justified.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: "To me, my X-Men. Let's finish this." - Cyclops. Astonishing X-Men. Pure and total mancrush material.
  • Die for Our Ship: Every corner of the Emma Frost/Scott Summers/Jean Grey/Logan love square has its shippers and detractors. Same for Rogue/Gambit and just about every relationship here.
  • Dork Age: The Austen and Fraction runs are generally agreed to be this, and there are frequent arguments that the entire period from House of M to ReGenesis (six years, which included the Fraction run) was this, as well.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Wolverine, Psylocke, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat.
    • In recent years, the writers have a tendency to take a shine to a particular X-kid and promote them to the main cast or recurring character status. For Mike Carey, it's Trance. Warren Ellis has Armor. Craig Kyle and Chris Yost have Elixir and Loa. Because she was Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction's pick, Pixie ended up not only on the Uncanny X-Men, but with her own miniseries.
    • Beast. After the original series was cancelled in 1969, the characters tended to make guest appearances, but he was easily the most visible. He had his time in the short-lived Amazing Adventures, later joined The Avengers and then put in some time with The Defenders (with Iceman and Angel) before resuming a regular role in X-books.
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: Frequently, Rogue gets forced into keeping her powers despite how mind-numbingly horrible they are.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: A lot of stuff is contested by fans, and let's just leave it there.
  • The John Walker Effect: Believe it or not, the anti-mutant side from X-Men has started to become this trope in recent years, especially since the creation of the Mutant Nation Krakoa. To sum things up, the X-Men use their powers to create a nation only accessible through certain portals, then use the fact that the island produces life-extending drugs to effectively blackmailing the entire world into recognizing them as an independent nation by only giving them to countries who openly recognize them as such, then they set up a process to revive mutants via a convoluted cloning method, declare that they have "conquered death" and start proclaim themselves to be "New Gods", with some even talking about establishing a "Mutant Religion". Then they start propping up the Krakoan portals in every nation on Earth, granting Mutants unilateral access to come and go as they please, while not only exclusively deny Humans any and all access, but also attacking anyone who even attempts to set up a checkpoint around said portals, and any Mutant that does enter and doesn't have an active X-Gene, is either made to leave for the crime of "being human", or made to partake in ritualistic combat where they are brutally murdered for sport in front of a crowd before "resurrected" with their powers restored. After this, some decrees are made, one of which is "Make more Mutants", leading to alot of Orgies, only for most of the resulting children to be effective abandoned at an orphanage because their parents just can't be bothered to take care of them, and one of the other decrees been "Don't kill Humans" cause the cloning process doesn't work on them, but the ruling Mutant council not only acknowledges that this rule is just for show and that they're not even going to bother enforcing it, but Mutants still go on to regularly and openly abuse Humans with their powers, with the Mutant Council also grants asylum and diplomatic immunity to Mutant Criminals including Mass Murderers (Sabretooth) and Genocidal Dictators (Apocalypse), unofficially sponsor radical groups such as X-Men Green who go around murdering Humans for heinous crimes, such as using plastic bags and working on an Oil Field, and if you happen to be one of the few Humans allowed on Krakoa due to having Mutant family members, then you find yourself at constant risk of been murdered by anyone who doesn't like your presence there (i.e. Magneto). And after all that, Mutants then go on to terraform Mars, rename it "Arakko", start welcoming Mutants from other planets to it, and then proclaim it the intergalactic capital of the Sol System, all while continuing to deny Humans access to it and without consulting anyone else. Needless to say, that this result in the creation of an Anti-Mutant Organization called Orchis, which destroys Krakoa and drives most Mutants off-world, and those who remain start fighting back and killing any Orchis Agents they find on sight, even though all they're mostly doing now is just deporting Mutants to "Arakko". So yeah... while noone is supporting or even excusing outright bigotry, it easy to understand just why so many people in the Marvel Universe hate Mutants, and wish to create countermeasures against them, given what massive douchebags they've become.
    • As one person in the Marvel Universe pointed out, Mutants are the only known group of superhumans who can just randomly wake up one day with massive destructive superpowers, thus effectively making them much more of an inherent threat than other types of super-powered individuals. A point that was also highlighted in Ultimate X-Men #41, where a mutant kid wakes up one day only to discover his powers have activated, and said powers are to instantly incinerated any living being within a certain radius of him, and he can't control them, so Wolverine ends up having to kill him and have the whole thing covered up in order to protect what little reputation Mutants have. Poor kid ended up killing 265 people just walking by through town.
    • In Acts of Vengeance, Red Skull ended up pointing out that Magneto's regular killing of Humans and philosophy of "Mutant Superiority" made him not so different from the Nazi's and Hitler himself, in spite of many of Magneto's actions been fueled by his experiences as a Holocaust Survivor, with Magneto going on to kill many more Humans and commit various other atrocities since, all while recruiting large amounts of the Mutant community to his cause, yet despite this the X-Men themselves regularly team-up with him, have allowed him to join their ranks on numerous occasions, and even regularly defend him, thus giving further reason for Humans to distrust Mutants.
    • It's also worth point out that in the original 1960's X-Men run, Mutants weren't persecuted against and were even publicly praised for their heroics, yet Magneto still formed a Mutant Supremacy Group ala The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and regularly tried to take over the world, thus it's not far-fetched to say that in his efforts to prevent Mutant persecution, he ended up causing Humans to persecute Mutants.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Dear God, the New X-Men Yearbook Special...
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: 1968 saw issue #48 and an encounter with Computo, an artificial intelligence that could create his own cybernetic mooks. They were called Cybertrons - a term put to more extensive use in a different franchise, one that included a Marvel comic.
  • Jerk Sue: In the hands of some writers, Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost, and (of course) Wolverine.
  • Les Yay: Anything by Chris Claremont. Try to deny the subtext between Storm and Yukio, Mirage and Wolfsbane, or Selene with Rachel Summers and Magma.
  • Marty Stu: Wolverine can easily fall here if he's given the wrong writer. One time he regenerated from a few single cells. This is due to his older fans Running the Asylum; chances are, if a writer tries to scale him back, this will be immediately ignored by the next one.
  • Memetic Mutation: Thanks to Comic Book Resources, Beast is a war criminal, Iceman is gay, and Wolverine is Rachel Summers' real father.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Ultimate Wolverine's attempted murder of Scott Summers.
    • Wither, whose purpose seems to be to explore how a villain becomes a villain, probably crossed this with his recent double-murder.
  • My Real Daddy: Despite being created and originally produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the series suffered from low sales and never truly found its voice until Chris Claremont and John Byrne took over in the 1970s.
  • Never Live It Down: Jean doesn't actually come Back From the Dead that much. It only truly happened once (other times were fakeouts or resurrecting instantly, which applies to half the other characters as well). She was known for lots of crazy things happening to her, but it got recently morphed into solely coming back from the dead, when that isn't true. Probably people seeing the word "Phoenix", and not bothering to actually do research.
    • Scott Summers had his squeaky clean image tarnished by his shabby treatment of Madelyne Pryor, although he was called out for it (and even worked to atone for it), and now those Running the Asylum have pretended he just dismissed Madelyne, which wasn't the case; he tried to come back to her more than once, but she had already ran away.
    • Gambit, while he was always an Antihero, actually only betrayed the X-Men once, when he decided to go and join Apocalypse thinking that it could help mutants and that he could retain his personality after becoming a Horseman. He was wrong. When he returned to normal, he returned to the good side as well. Yet people seem to think that he betrayed everyone and their mother more times than you can count.
      • He also covered up his involvement in the massacre of the Morlocks; he was tricked into that and had no idea it would happen, but it's easy to see why he wouldn't exactly be trusted.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Golgotha.
  • The Scrappy: Very few people seem to like Ink. Even fewer like the new Hellfire Club made up of twelve-year-olds.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Wolverine is the poster boy.
    • Emma Frost is now the most prominent woman on the team, over all the others who've been there longer.
  • Strangled by the Red String: Emma Frost and Scott Summers.
    • Storm and Black Panther is another major example.
  • Vindicated by History: The original series was never a top-seller, but sales had declined so much by the end of the 1960s that the book was cancelled. A little bit later, the series (with its original numbering) returned, but only as a reprint title. A number at Marvel did like the book and the characters, but they couldn't figure out how to bring them back until 1975's Giant-Sized X-Men #1. After that was published and received strong response, Marvel has kept the X-Men in regular publication ever since - adding many spin-offs and mini-series to the archive (not to mention many hours of outside, successful media).
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Jean Grey/Phoenix.
  • Wangst: Arguably could be applied to nearly all the characters, and mostly justified.

YMMVs for the animated series:[]

  • Acceptable Targets: Graydon Creed and the Friends of Humanity
  • Complete Monster: A few examples stand out, even for a kids' show, including Mr. Sinister, Apocalypse, Fabian Cortez, Omega Red, Sauron, and D'Ken.
    • The two most shining examples of human Complete Monsters are Cameron Hodge (helping the Phalanx assimilate the entire universe to "purify" it) and Graydon Creed (trying to kill his own family because they are mutants).
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Beast. Eric Lewald states that the writers basically considered him a guest character in Season 1, which is why he was largely sidelined. Fans and writers alike took to the character, leading to his increased prominence for the remainder of the series.
    • Morph was in the first episodes entirely for the purpose of being killed off so the writers could show how serious the series would be. However, his unexpected popularity led to him being revived in the second season.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Mystique, so very much.
  • Foe Yay: In the final episode of the series, Magneto, upon hearing that he may be the only one able to save the dying Xavier, abandons the army he had gathered and goes to save his archenemy. It is, of course, possible that they're just really good friends, but...
Cquote1

  Jean Grey: "How much do you love Charles Xavier?"

Cquote2
    • The number of these moments between Magneto and Xavier is somewhat Hilarious in Hindsight seeing as several years on, openly gay actor Ian McKellen was cast as Magneto in the live-action films.
  • Genius Bonus: In "The Cure", the revelation that the scientist "Dr. Adler" is actually a disguised Mystique should come as no surprise to fans of the comics--he's named in honor of Mystique's lover, Irene Adler (AKA Destiny), who never actually appeared in the TV show.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: In "The Phalanx Covenant" two-parter: While taking over the Earth, the Phalanx intend to assimilate mutant powers to further their goals. Beast shudders at the thought of (essentially) one being having every mutant power on Earth. Flash forward a decade later to the New Avengers arc, "The Collective"...
  • Ho Yay Wolverine noticeably takes Morph's death harder than anyone else (after being perfectly willing to risk his own life to try and save him), and later makes sure to avenge him. When Morph comes Back From the Dead Wolverine quite emotional (for him), and is far more determined than anyone else to bring him back home, even chasing him to South America before reluctantly accepting that he needed time alone. He was also quite happy to have him back in "Courage" and volunteers the two of them for a mission together as soon as one comes up. For his part, Morph "dies" trying to save him and specifically calls out to him when he calls for help in "Reunion". At one point he also, while declaring he'll kill all the X-Men, thinks of killing Wolverine and suddenly snaps back to his "good" personality.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Erik, so very much.
  • Large Ham: Close to everyone.
    • Storm will MEET YOU AT THE MONORAIL!
      • Or her first any scene showing her powers.
    • Also the Blob: "OH BOY! TUTTI FRUTTI!"
    • Also, Bishop: "ASSASSINS!" * commercial break* "FOR THE FUTURE!!!"
    • Wolverine's snarling delivery of even the silliest of lines.
    • Any time Graydon Creed or Sabretooth have a Freak-Out. Justified by them having the same VA, and by Sabretooth being Graydons' dad.
    • "I AM APOCALYPSE! LOOK UPON THE FUTURE...AND TREMBLE!"*
    • Cortez and Magneto in "Asylum" results in Ham-to-Ham Combat, and it is glorious: "DESTROY THE FLAT-SCAN HUMANS!"
    • Magneto is excellent at being hammy. Watch "Sanctuary," parts 1 & 2, and "Graduation Day" for some prize bacon examples.
    • THE NAME IS LADY DEATHSTRIKE! Yes Yuriko...we know who you are
  • Magnificent Bastard: Apocalypse is behind pretty much EVERYTHING.
  • Memetic Mutation: "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!"
    • "I am as far beyond mutants as they are are beyond you!"
    • "The wild man of Borneo." <shifty eyes> "See you around."
    • "Mmm, turkey!"
    • PREVIOUSLY, ON X-MEN.
    • "JEEEEEEEEEEAN!"
  • Memetic Sex God: All of the main female characters, and even a few of the side female characters also. Plus Gambit and Wolverine.
  • Narm Charm: The cheesy voice acting often serves as one of the major draws for the show. Storm in particular is celebrated for being an over-the-top Mistress of Pork.
  • Never Live It Down: Angel/Archangel's appearances entirely revolved around Apocalypse's turning him into a Horseman, and his vengeful streak afterward, apart from the very last example when he abandoned his obsession with revenge just in time for Apocalypse to try to remake time and space into his own image.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Proteus' Mind Rape of Wolverine.
    • What the Dark Phoenix did to Mastermind after she came out of his Brainwashing.
    • The Shadow King.
    • That...thing that was imprisoned in a Shi'ar starship that crashed on Earth. It eats souls.
    • Everything about Bishop's Bad Future. The worst part about it? No matter how many times Bishop (and later Shard) travel to the past and set right what went wrong, nothing changes. Plus, that time era's Forge has Wolverine's bare skeleton suspended in a tube.
    • A montage was put together of what would happen if Phoenix/Dark Phoenix were allowed to run amok. The results were fire covering the entire Earth. Sleep tight kiddies.
  • Periphery Demographic: Despite running as a Saturday Morning kids show, the material did not shy away from the darker content of the comics and thus continued to appeal to older comics fans as well.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: While the first three seasons tried to focus on the characters fairly evenly, seasons 4 and 5 seemed to focus less and less on anyone who wasn't called Wolverine, except Rogue, Xavier and Beast. At the other end of the spectrum, Gambit appears in far fewer episodes in Seasons 4 and 5.
  • Tear Jerker: So, so many.
    • The Bad Future montage stands out as it depicts something fans aren't used to: the X-Men losing. Bishop narrates events from his perspective of the 1990's forward to his time (2050's), in which Senator Kelly is assassinated, the Mutant Registration Act passes and Sentinels are deployed to "enforce" the Act. Then the Sentinels decide they could take over, and smash into the White House. The scenes of Bishop's future show captured X-Men being herded into concentration-style camps and end with a cemetery of dead X-Men. Probably the most evocative image was the close-up of Jubilee's grave, which is the last to be shown, and reveals that she, the youngest member of the team, would be the first to die...if they don't stop Senator Kelly's assassination in the first place.
  • Trapped by Mountain Lions: Professor X and Magneto being stranded in the Savage Land during the entire second season. Fortunately, it rarely took up more than a minute or two per episode.
  • The Woobie: The whole cast has their moments:
    • Nightcrawler after the events of "Bloodlines".
    • Morph, during his second-season subplot and any of his later guest appearances.

YMMVs for the film series:[]

  • Alas, Poor Villain: Lady Deathstrike in X-2, who was only being mind-controlled. Even the look on Wolverine's face shows he regrets that he had to do it.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Beast's in the third film? Cool. What's that? He's being played by Kelsey Grammer? Thank you, God.
  • Complete Monster: Stryker. Possibly his son Jason too, assuming Stryker's account of him driving his mother to suicide is accurate. Shaw in First Class is, if anything, worse.
    • Victor Creed in X-Men Origins also counts, which is very unsurprising given he is the man who would be Sabretooth.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Liev Schreiber's Victor Creed has caught the eye of the fangirls.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Par for the course when Nightcrawler is involved.
    • Beast, as played by Kelsey Grammer, was almost guaranteed to be this.
  • Fan Nickname - DINO (Deadpool in name only). He's also referred to as "Dudepeel", Cesspool, "Barakapool" and probably others.
    • "Fassbending" for Magneto's powers.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Logan/Rogue is much more popular than Logan/Jean. The shippers Took a Third Option indeed
  • Fridge Horror: Think all the normal humans turned out fine because Cerebro was turned off before it could kill them all in X2? Then think of what happened to all those people who were piloting aircraft, performing surgery, etc. during that time.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Magneto asks Wolverine "You think it's all about you, don't you?". Who's on the cover of the first four movies?
    • Back when Magneto and Professor X meet again for the first time in the first movie, Erik says "I can feel you in here" while invoking the Pstandard Psychic Pstance that Charles isn't even known for using... until First Class.
      • Similarly, Erik playing with a bullet he's pushing into some poor shmuck's head...
    • Beast throwing down the mutant cure in disgust in X-3, in regards to his experience with another serum in First Class. And the odd pairing of Azazel and Riptide as Co-Dragons, considering the Ship Tease between the similarly-powered Nightcrawler and Storm in X-2.
    • The first movie is widely considered as Hugh Jackman and James Marsden's Star Making Roles - but what's interesting is that Hugh was already an established star of stage and screen musicals, while James would find newfound fame in musical roles after X-Men.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Magneto and Mystique, given their backstories.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Stryker's plan to wipe out all mutants on the planet qualifies. For that matter, Magneto crosses the line when he is trusted with stopping this by the X-Men and does....by reversing it to wipe out all humans on the planet, leaving his old friend Xavier to die in the process.
    • In First Class, Shaw killing Erik's mother to get him to unlock his mutant potential. It really colors his efforts to put mutants in charge in a very different light when you consider that he is willing to torment other mutants in order to achieve that end.
  • Narm: The entire exchange between Mystique and the prison truck guard in X3 is tooth-grindingly Narmy.
Cquote1

 Guard: Oh, Mr. President...shut up!

Mystique (disguised as a Creepy Child): Why are you doing this?! Let me down! I'll be a good girl! Please!

Guard: Keep it up and I'll spray you in the face, bitch.

Cquote2

YMMVs for the arcade game:[]

  • Ham and Cheese: While the dialog is cheesy, the actors seem to be hamming it up, especially since the remake required all voices to be re-recorded, so the new actors had to be made aware of what they were doing and be told that the cheesy dialog was kept on purpose.
  • I Liked It Better When It Sucked: It was announced that the dialog would be re-recorded and the cheesy lines would be removed and replaced with more natural dialog. As it was, the dialog had to be re-recorded anyway due to legal issues with the original voices, but upon hearing the fans' complaints, the company making the port decided to keep all the cheese on purpose so the game would avert this.
  • Memetic Mutation: In addition to "Welcome to DIE!" and the myriad other dialogue voices by our favourite "Master of Magnet", there's Colossus's shouting when using his Mutant Power (usually transcribed along the lines of "OoooooooOAAAAARGH!"). The latter is a favorite in the video game convention MAGFest, to the point that shouting it at nearly any time will usually be answered with others answering OoooooooOAAAAARGH! themselves.
    • "NOTHING moves the Blob!"
    • "The White Queen welcomes you...TO DIE!!"
  • Narm Charm
  • So Bad It's Good: The cutscenes and dialog, and possibly the simple gameplay. According to IGN's video review: "Sometimes something is so terrible that it's fantastic, and that's more or less the case here."
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