Left Behind/YMMV

""For LaHaye & Jenkins, hubris doesn't precede a fall. They regard it, instead, as a sign of godliness.""
 * Alternate Character Interpretation: Let's just say that all characters are subject to this.
 * Angst? What Angst?: You'd think that the complete eradication of all kids under the age of ten would be a bit depressing, but people seem to take it in stride.
 * Non Sequitur Scene: Kirk Cameron's "Way of the Master" listing in the second movie in the series.
 * Complete Monster: It does NOT matter what is your faith (Christian or not) you have to admit that Carpathia killed his own mother!
 * Crowning Moment of Funny: In Book 8, when David vomits on Carpathia. To repeat: David. Vomited. On the Antichrist.
 * Critical Research Failure: The nature and functioning of the UN. Possibly the nature and functioning of humanity, considering the ease with which one world currency and, even worse, one world government and religion are instituted.
 * Not to mention, the often questionable interpretations of the Bible.
 * The plotline about the recruitment of Rayford, a civilian airline employee, as pilot for Air Force One. In case the name of the plane didn't make this clear, The Other Wiki has a list of all previous Air Force One pilots. All were military officers, none below Lieutenant Colonel.
 * How the fact that 'Air Force One' is an Air Force plane, not a civilian one, slips by you is anyone's guess.
 * Why is this important for the authors to know? For one thing, Rayford is a candidate to be hired as the pilot of Air Force One despite being a commercial airline pilot rather than a military pilot. If this came about as a result of Nicolae changing the rules after taking over the world then it might have made sense, but one of Rayford's colleagues at the airline tells Rayford that he has been applying for the same position every time a new president was elected, despite being a civilian and long before Carpathia came along. Also, the President of the United States complains that Nicolae "...weasel[ed] me out of Air Force One...", seeming to forget that he voluntarily gave up this Air Force plane when he agreed to destroy 90% of his military arsenal and donate the remaining 10% to Nicolae's new Global Community.
 * On top of that, Air Force One isn't really a single, specific plane. It's a shorthand for "Air Force plane that the President is currently using or about to use". Strictly speaking, there can no longer be an Air Force One, since the term only makes sense in a strictly American Air Force context.
 * Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Both 'sides' in the series have exactly the same goals and use pretty much the same methods, everything that happens is part of God's plan and, as such, the characters have no free will and nothing they do at any point in the series makes any difference whatsoever, so it's really rather difficult to root for them.
 * Designated Hero: Buck and Rayford. Most of their behaviour goes beyond even the standards of a Sociopathic Hero. One could argue they're supposed to be newly-converted Antiheroes, but this doesn't hold up since they never do anything for anybody.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: The cookies
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: A unique case: Outside of the target audience, any character with a significant fanbase arguably stands out. The sleepy drunk executive from chapter one is described with genuine fondness by the Slacktivist blog, mostly for actually having a sane reaction to the Event.
 * To say nothing of poor Verna Zee, Buck's boss.
 * T. Mark Delanty from books 5/6/7 is also notable for two reasons. One, he called Rayford out on being a total Jerkass and got the man to admit he was wrong (this is a Canon Sue he called out, by the way). Two, he's one of the few people in the books who actually comes off as genuinely good.
 * Jonathan Stonagal, a supporting antagonist who doesn't survive the first book, is surprisingly widely regarded as having had a great deal of wasted potential. It doesn't hurt that in the film adaptation, his character is actually played up something fierce, to the point that he comes off as a serious contender for the "Antichrist" position.
 * Fan Nickname/Running Gag: "Fan" is a misnomer, but readers of the aforementioned blog by Fred Clark have made a running joke on Slacktivist of referring to Carpathia as "Nicky (insert mountain/mountain range name here)"; recently, a new nickname, Chairface Carpathia, seems to have caught on. Buck, the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time, is called the GIRAT. The authors (LaHaye and Jenkins) are often abbreviated to "Ellenjay".
 * "Meta-(character)" is frequently used by the same community used to describe any character who seems to be showing signs of behaving like an actual human being in the actual situation they are currently in. This title often confers a sort of temporary Ensemble Darkhorse status as well.
 * First Installment Wins: The first book is the best-selling and most famous.
 * Ho Yay: Given what branch of Christianity is responsible for this series, we are talking very, very unintentional. The proliferation of names like Steele, Buck, and Plank doesn't help.
 * Idiot Plot: All over the place.
 * Jumping the Shark: While the series wasn't exactly great literature to begin with, Glorious Appearing and Kingdom Come were considered a drop in quality even by many fans of the series.
 * Love It or Hate It
 * Misaimed Fandom: Among non-fans, it's hard not to feel more sympathetic for non-Christian characters (Chloe before her conversion, back when she was tough, independent and questioning), and to dislike the heroes, who come off as rather arrogant.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Nicolae crosses this when he was still a child by conspiring with Viv Ivins to kill his mother.
 * Narm: Quite a bit of it, but Carpathia's speech to the U.N. stands out, considering it's essentially a 4th grader's class report on what the U.N. is, followed by an alphabetical list of the nations that are members.
 * Newer Than They Think: The doctrine of the Rapture as presented in the series really only came into being 2 centuries ago at most.
 * Nightmare Fuel: The description of the final fate of Carpathia and Fortunato after 1,000 years in the Lake of Fire (writhing in torment in fire and brimstone and continuously crying "Jesus is Lord" over and over) with the understanding that they will spend eternity like that, not to mention all the unbelievers who are doomed to join them.
 * And due to their beliefs about the Rapture, the series' intended audience believe they'll be sitting back in Heaven and enjoying the show while all this goes down. Ouch.
 * The very fact many if not most of the people now undergoing eternal torture and suffering were simply misled innocents or those who unknowingly oppose "God's" (or to be more accurate the Author's) wishes, and that EVERYONE who goes to hell does so because it was prophesied that they would. They never had a choice in the matter and they are tortured in hell for simply playing the part God made them play. The very fact the authors thought this scenario was not only just, but deeply desirable is also somewhat disturbing.
 * When Steele had a handshake with Carpathia. You don't want to see the latter's face.
 * Smug Snake: Nicolae is pretty clearly supposed to be seen as a purely evil but still scarily charismatic and competent Magnificent Bastard (not unlike Star Wars' Emperor), but he actually comes off as trying too hard without really knowing what he's doing. (Then again, if someone is charismatic enough to make a recitation of UN trivia riveting, maybe they do deserve to be a Magnificent Bastard...) His subordinates, namely Leon and Peter Matthews, are more deliberate Smug Snakes.
 * To a large extent, the protagonists themselves tend to come across as this. They are seemingly aware of their Canon Sue status and not inclined to doubt it while everyone else sings their praise. They may not speak every smug thought they have, but the reader gets to see a lot of their internal reactions to things. To quote Fred Clark:

""On one side are Irene and Jamie, who are cheerful born-again Real True Christians. On the other side are Chloe and Rayford, who are portrayed by legitimate actors.""
 * So Bad It's Good: Considered this by many people.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Done right, a story set during a Rapture-like event could have been quite potent character-driven Religious Horror, if the plot, the premise, and its implications were well-thought-out and the characters were sympathetic. Unfortunately, none of that is the case.
 * The blog "Right Behind" functions as something of a Fix Fic for this, by taking some of the lingering queries about the world of Left Behind and exploring the implications of the setting to their logical conclusion.
 * Too Dumb to Live: Events occur that would cause Richard Dawkins or other hard-core atheists to spontaneously convert to some form of religion, yet Easy Evangelism is so often averted in the series.
 * Took the Bad Film Seriously: You've got to hand it to Gordon Currie, who played Carpathia in the movies. He might have been a B-List actor in a B-List movie series, but he swung for the fences in every scene, making him perhaps the most engaging actor on the cast and portraying Carpathia as a far more intriguing villain than he ever was in the books.
 * Rayford is remarkably much more human and sympathetic in the movies, reacting reasonably to what is going on as much as the script allows and showing much more genuine loss and regret about his wife and child. Fred Clark sums up:


 * Unfortunate Implications: Some of the more obvious things, such as the Anti Christ being the child of two gay men, is actually a subversion, since those implications were fully intended. However, other things, such as God smiting the unbelievers and torturing them in hell for eternity simply for being ignorant or wanting to support global peace, tends to imply that God Is Evil, which was not the author's intention.
 * Values Dissonance: The books are written with a particular religious demographic in mind as their intended readership. Said demographic has a very particular set of values, which are not necessarily widely shared outside of it.