The House of the Dead (series)/YMMV

The games

 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: Playing House Of The Dead 2 for the first time and
 * G's ending in The House of the Dead 4:
 * Crowning Moment of Funny ("Can I drive?" "NO!" "Can I have a lollipop?" "...Yes.")
 * HOTD 2's voice acting in general.
 * And the revised endings created for TOTD.
 * G's face when
 * MISSING REEL! (Sorry for the inconvenience)
 * One character talks tough to a zombie and kicks him. Then the zombie sits up and throws up on him.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: The Magician and Emperor's boss themes.
 * And in HOTD: Overkill, Jasper and Brutus's Boss theme (they share one).
 * Don't forget Mother!
 * Demonic Spiders: There's bound to be at least one or two per game. The Hermit and The Lovers are literal examples (though they're bosses, so they don't really count). Also notable is the Puker from Overkill, which can often damage you no matter how quickly you shoot them.
 * More specifically, if they are killed by anything other than a head-shot, they explode. If they are too close to you when they do so, you will take heavy damage. Ironically, if you let them grab you, it's easier to shake them off before they damage you -- which is fatal to them without doing anything to you. The problem is shaking them off while other mutants move in...
 * The last boss spawns them, and they break your view - you can't shake them off, and you have to give them about five seconds of sustained fire to make sure they're dead for sure. Most of the time, they'll be stunned, then resume barreling towards you.
 * The riot shield-equipped mutants to some extent.
 * Taken Up to Eleven on the PS 3 exclusive Hardcore Mode where you're required to kill only with headshots. It's not that bad, until you face these guys where not only do you need to get rid of their shield, you still need to take out their helmets. And you've also got a swarm of other zombies getting pot shots on you.
 * Family Unfriendly Aesop: "Remember, there's no such thing as a second chance". Also a Broken Aesop since this is said after Judgment's second chance.
 * Goddamned Bats: Every. Single. Game. In addition, HOTD 2 manages to add the even-more-annoying kamikaze zombie owls alongside energetic, knife-handed midgets.
 * Overkill adds in exploding zombies mutants, that, if you don't nail with a headshot, will damage you immediately. The last boss spawns them endlessly.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: Play the game normally till you reach "Carny" and Washington will say something to Varla about him and Agent Gwendolyn that they are going to check out the place. In the PS 3 version, after clearing "Classic Mode" (you can only use the default gun and nothing else), you get  Isaac's favorite guns.
 * Large Ham: EVERYBODY, with the possible exception of G, in Overkill.
 * But then, keeping in line with the "B-Movie" presentation of Overkill, the joke is that he's a poor 'actor'.
 * Memetic Mutation: Sega and Namco shooter translations seem to feature a running joke of having hostages shout "don't come!" They've been doing it for years, bless them.
 * The infamous "Suffer like G did?" line in HOTD 2. It would have been imposing if the creature hadn't presented it as a question.
 * And didn't have such a high voice.
 * Most Annoying Sound: "RELOAD! Shoot outside the screen!"
 * The grunts and groans when a character is injured ("AGH!") also count.
 * Narm - "The original sin that man is resphaansible to... To protect the loyfe coycle! I have maaaig a creacher to rule over maaahn kiiine! This is tha faynl bawdl! Shoe yourself! Our new ruler, the Empurr!" followed by the camera pointing at a wall.
 * In fact, anything anyone says in House of the Dead 2 (and there's plenty of examples in the other games as well). There's enough to fill their own page. How could anyone do that?
 * Nightmare Fuel: For a game to be a first-person shooter with zombies, this is inevitable.
 * Especially for the zombies and bosses in the fourth game.
 * Especially Justice. To elaborate, one of Justice's attacks involve grabbing you, and you have to shake the SMG fast in order to break free of his grasp or he will lick you For Massive Damage. The lovely close-up of his face, especially with that tongue... *shudder*
 * The arcade version of Zombie Sophie from the first can be really terrifying.
 * And in the second and fourth games,
 * One of The Fool's attacks consists of him shaking up the cage and raining his meal, which is horribly mutilated corpses, down upon you. Most of which will damage you if you don't shoot them out of the way.
 * So Bad Its Good (The voice acting and translation, particularly in the first and especially the second game. "Don't come! Don't come!" "Suffer like G did?")
 * G's bloodstains!
 * Done intentionally for such purposes in OVERKILL.
 * And, of course... HM HM HM HM HM. PEE-PLE-OFF-ZE-AY-EM-ASS. AI-EMM GOLDMEN!
 * Squick - Fat zombies that can have holes punched in them, incest in Overkill, open beating hearts... there's frequently stuff one shouldn't dwell upon. Some of the water zombies in House of the Dead 2 look like they could be Tarman's clone, and Tarman is rather Squicky to a lot of people.
 * Then there's more of Overkill, where we have macabre, disgusting bosses like the freaks in the Carnival, the Lobber, and Mother itself. It doesn't help that when she spawns mooks from her... erhm... womb, it looks like she's defecating.
 * That One Attack: Ask anyone who has endured through The Fool's final attacks.
 * One of The Star's attacks is basically a Bullet Hell attack, shooting six to eighteen energy blades at you. Playing 2-player mode? Get ready see up to 'twenty-four' of the bloody fucking things on the screen AT ONCE. Oh, and his Tornado Spin too. Pray your gun's sensors doesn't fuck up.
 * That One Boss: Magician, Wheel Of Fate, The Fool, The Emperor, The Star, The World, the list goes on and on, really...
 * It should be noted that in HOTD 3, each bullet a boss takes will empty more of its yellow Break Meter every time it succeeds in attacking you; a boss has its maximum "stamina" level at the start of the fight. The Fool's stamina is initially -just barely - low enough to where it is possible to halt it the first time if every shot is accurate, done as fast as possible, and you begin with a fully loaded shotgun. As such, The Fool ends more games (or causes more continues) than even the final boss. Fixed in the console versions, though.
 * They Just Didn't Care: Sega's downloading service has a bit of a typo for HOTD 2, saying it's rated EC (Early Childhood).
 * They Just Didn't Care: Sega's downloading service has a bit of a typo for HOTD 2, saying it's rated EC (Early Childhood).

The films

 * Special Effects Failure: Some shots of the protagonists shooting at zombies in the first film were from the original game, with an "Insert Coin" message blinking on the screen!
 * They Just Didn't Care: Nowhere does it become more apparent than in the "Funny Version" of the first film, where we see endless scenes of everyone involved in the production screwing around.
 * Video Game Movies Suck: First film has the dishonor of being the first game series Uwe Boll got to butcher.
 * With a plot involving teenagers going to a rave, in-game footage used as part of the movie, and only a brief cameo of the games' characters at the end, let's just say that movie never existed. Though, it's just bad enough to be great riff material.
 * What an Idiot: The second film, despite being slightly better, isn't without its faults. Who keeps something important, like, say, a vital cure sample, on the back of their belt? Where it can easily get ripped off?
 * Better one. Why only take one sample in the first place? Especially since the place is going to get bombed soon enough.