Samurai Shodown/YMMV


 * Alas, Poor Villain: Amakusa, Zankuro and Gaoh's deaths (complete with speeches). Especially Amakusa's death.
 * Broken Base: Samurai Shodown 5 Special's Darker and Edgier nature by showing some very gory and graphic fatalities like Mortal Kombat and Eternal Champions. An incredibly cool idea that is stylish and it fits with the series' mostly serious nature well? Or is it a rather repulsive idea that never suited the series to begin with (and those who feel the latter are especially repulsed by the fact that the cute child characters in the game can cause and be on the receiving end of these fatalities)?
 * Complete Monster: Literally Kusaregedo. He was once an average, "kind" old man (with cannibalistic tendencies) that got transformed into an unholy creature after his death. He goes on to stalk a little girl (Rimururu) after picking up on her scent in hopes of devouring her, but runs into his daughter, Hakana, instead, who pleads with him. He feeds on her in the end. His current whereabouts are unknown.
 * Crack Pairing: Galford-Nakoruru has enough hints and teases... but their Bust forms? Or Bust Galford X Rera? Sometimes, yeah.
 * Crazy Awesome: Basara.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: Asura. Almost literally.
 * Epileptic Trees:.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse:
 * Tachibana Ukyo, a Badass swordsman afflicted with tuberculosis, was intended for death early on in the series. However, due to popularity among fans, he was not killed off and has appeared throughout the series. Most of the latter Samurai Shodown game stories are always set in a timeline where they can always include Ukyo.
 * Nakoruru, a nature-protecting priestess, whose popularity grew to the levels of national idol in Japan and other asian countries . Out of Samurai Shodown fanart found on the net, around 70-80% is dedicated to Nakoruru; and in Japan big companies compete over releasing Nakoruru dolls.
 * Cham Cham is also quite popular for someone who only appears in three games (and in one of them, she was a Playstation-exclusive character). She even has her own pachinko game!
 * Iroha seems to be another case; despite a single appearance in the series, she was popular enough to be included into many dating sims and mobile phone games, and to gain a very own spin-off game. Also, internet was flooded with Hentai images of Iroha next day after her appearance, and that flood havent stopped yet.
 * Evil Is Sexy: Most of Shiki's attacks and motions are seductive-looking, which was done on purpose. Han-In to nari shi Shiki takes this even closer to Kamasutra levels, with some of her moves imitating sexual intercourse. From male characters, Hanmen no Asura and Suija/Suija.Sogetsu are the subjects of this trope.
 * Symbols and sculpted imagery at the walls of Gandara's stage depict scenes from Kamasutra. In the next game these can be seen at distant wall in Han-In to nari shi Shiki's underground cave stage.
 * Fashion Victim Villain: Amakusa, especially in the first game.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Not surprisingly, the French fans love Charlotte.
 * Jerkass Woobie: Genjuro, Yaci and probably Haito.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Suija.
 * Memetic Mutation: VICTOLY!
 * Amakusa's "Then DIE, you crazy funster!"
 * Moe: Nakoruru and her sister Rimururu. Nakoruru is actually considered one of Japan's most prominent Moe Moe characters...
 * Also Cham Cham, Minto, Rinka and Suzuhime.
 * Male example: Shizumaru. God, is that kid Moe
 * Most Annoying Sound: Chample. Chances are, if you play as Mina, you WILL want her to put Chample to sleep before your eardrums explode.
 * Never Live It Down: The fourth game, an outstanding fighter in its own right, is rarely remembered as anything else than "the one that goes VICTOLY!"
 * Although it has been declared that Rera is deep down a good girl (though just kinda extreme), people never forget that she used to be an 'Evil Nakoruru', so some fics often portray her as an outright evil bitch.
 * Nightmare Fuel: Many, if not all of the characters' fatalities in 5 Special. Some particularly unsettling ones include...
 * Hanzo: Breaks both of your arms, then piledrives you headfirst into the ground, crushing your skull and by extension your brain. And there are diagrams that show you exactly what bones he breaks. O U C H.
 * Nakoruru: Stands over you and hesitantly stabs you in the heart. Seeing that sweet little girl kill someone alone is just... horrible.
 * Galford: Orders his dog to tear you limb from limb. Normally this would be tame, but Poppy is a ninja dog so she ends you slashing you completely in half.
 * Jubei: Slices you a bunch, then your left and right sides are split into 4 parts. Only your legs remain while the sides with halves of your head and arms vanish.
 * Shizumaru: An image of Zankuro appears, and he slashes at it and faints. The Zankuro image slashes out a HUGE fireball that splits the enemy in half. And poor Shizumaru then wakes up and starts crying in shock.
 * Basara: Drags you into a shadow portal and does...something horrible that isn't seen, then he tosses your head out of the portal as it closes. Basically he cuts away every part of your body that isn't your head while you are fully aware. Beyond nightmarish.
 * Mina: Skewers you with a bunch of arrows, then fires off an exploding arrow that blows away the entire upper half of your torso. Then she looks shocked, throws her weapons and turns away in horror.
 * Yunfei: Plucks your soul out of your body and slashes it in half.
 * Kusaregedo: Eats you alive and vomits up your skull.
 * Rasetsumaru: Impales you with his hand and pulls out your heart a la Kano, then takes it a step further by crushing it and drinking the flowing blood.
 * Enja: Grabs you and violently chokes you while burning you to ashes.
 * Suija: Uses psychic powers to lift you off screen, then implodes you with a loud "CRUNCH!" as it rains blood (or semen/vomit if white/green blood is enabled) down upon him.
 * Gaoh: Turns into Demon Gaoh with full armor, impales you on his horn, then explodes you on the horn.
 * Mizuki: Uses voodoo magic to slash you with her nails, then explodes your head with her priestess staff.
 * The characters reactions are horrific, too, and often mixed with Tear Jerker. Shizumaru (A demon-possessed boy who fights with an umbrella) means to just knock out a foe, but the demon inside him SPLITS THE FOE IN TWO instead, reducing the boy to tears. Mina (The archer girl) throws down her bow and arrows in horror after a fatality. Nakoruru (The "Cute" girl with the hawk pet) hesitating for several seconds before realizing she has no choice but to finish the opponent.
 * Other example of this trope are the battle with Ambrosia (who is basically a huge mess of flesh, which has Mizuki's body impaled on top of it as sacrifice)in Samurai Shodown RPG; and the recipe how to create a Gandara which can be found on official Asura Zanmaden site.
 * And then there's the aforementioned Kusaregedo too. Hell, just... just look at him.
 * Non Sequitur Scene: Gaira's whole purpose in the fifth game: run around like an idiot, then gets his hair shaven. He's bald in the sixth game, but that's a dream match.
 * Sequelitis: The first Samurai Shodown was a huge success, even in the United States (where it won Electronic Gaming Monthly's Game of the Year award in 1994), while Samurai Shodown II performed just as well as the first one. However, Samurai Shodown III made too many changes to the game mechanics that alienated fans of the first two games, while reducing the character roster to only 12, replacing half of the roster in the process. While SNK addressed many of the complaints fans had with the third game in Samurai Shodown IV, the franchise never truly managed to attain the same popularity it had with the first two games.
 * The Scrappy: Needless to say, Sankuro is amongst one of the most reviled characters in the series. Good luck trying to find fans of him.
 * So Bad It's Good: There are characters with uber annoying looks/laugh (Genan, Minto, Tashonmao, Kusaregedo, etc), that have certain popularity and are selected by players quite often - with (often successful) aim to get on opponent's nerves.
 * That One Mid-Boss: Sankuro.
 * Toy Ship: Shizumaru and Rimururu, appeared in same game, appeared in a slew of artworks together, and the rest was done by millions of asian fan artists.
 * Viewer Gender Confusion: Amakusa Shiro Tokisada. The soft face, big hair, and long nails don't make it easier; The anime of the game went as far as to make him an actual female. Shizumaru also falls into this trope. And Yumeji - intentionally. S/he has a gender-neutral manner of speaking, was exiled from the dojo (although initially was to inherit it) due to an ambiguous bodily ailment or weakness (possible interpretation: being a woman); also Yumeji's seiyuu has a long history of voicing similarly non-gender-specific characters.
 * What Could Have Been: Sugoroku was originally supposed to be a pirate character, explaining the otherwise out of place pirate stage in Tenka. This was scrapped due to the fact that all of the preproduction designs strongly resembled Cervantes, and the design team couldn't think of something more creative before deadlines.
 * The Woobie: Shizumaru, Jushiro and Mina are shining examples of this trope. Specially Mina,