EastEnders/YMMV
- Author's Saving Throw: Danny Mitchell coming to find his long-lost Dad (Archie) in 2010, anyone?.
- Complete Monster: "Nasty Nick" Cotton, who shows up every few years to remind us that he's a completely irredeemable scumbag who'd quite cheerfully sell his own mother if he felt it would benefit him (and he's tried to off her twice, to boot).
- Trevor, a cowardly domestic abuser who beat, humiliated and insulted Little Mo and once shoved her face in a plate of food has to top Nick Cotton in this department.
- Then Archie Mitchell came along and stole his crown. He started off as a Magnificent Bastard until he raped Stacey Branning shortly before his demise and perhaps started Bradley on his and then there was the fact....oh....he RAPED RONNIE, HIS OWN DAUGHTER, WHILE SHE WAS THIRTEEN! Add this to Archie's attempt to MURDER his own granddaughter, which in light of the above raises certain suspicions about Danielle's paternity or Archie may have thought it was the case, his bankrupting of his family on Christmas Eve and seizing the Vic, caused a pregnant Ronnie to miscarry the day before, manipulated Sam and Billy into assisting him, used Janinie's own inner spark of good to use and humiliate her (throwing her out of the Vic in the middle of the night in a Santa suit) on Christmas Day, blackmailing Ian and threatened to demolish the Queen Vic to "tear the Heart out of the Community" (and Peggy). Yep. Complete Monster has definitely earned its place on Archie's business card.
- Little Dotty Cotton definitely takes after her dad in this department.
- No hatred for James Wilmott-Brown?
- Yusef Khan.
- Yusef at the very least genuinely loved his daughter, this one redeeming aspect was ultimately used against him by Zainab after being driven to the edge by every other vile aspect of him.
- Trevor, a cowardly domestic abuser who beat, humiliated and insulted Little Mo and once shoved her face in a plate of food has to top Nick Cotton in this department.
- Dork Age: Between roughly 2002 and 2005, when the show was produced by Louise Berridge and then her very short-lived successor, Kathleen Hutchinson. Despite a rebound in recent years, the show has never quite regained the reputation it had earned during the 90s, and remains something of a whipping boy for TV critics.
- It's come into its own, somewhat... Diederick Santer has been praised for his work as producer. Basically it seems to have been getting a lot better since the beginning of the 'Lost Mitchell' storyline.
- That's what most fans seem to think. But look at just about any TV recent critic's column and you'll see them still eagerly bashing away at the show, claiming that it isn't fit to lick the boots of Coronation Street (or even Emmerdale, depending on the critic) and that it's long overdue for cancellation. The audience numbers disagree with them, and the show is generally at or near the top of the weekly rankings, but the Berridge/Hutchinson era seems to have permanently damaged the show's reputation.
- It's come into its own, somewhat... Diederick Santer has been praised for his work as producer. Basically it seems to have been getting a lot better since the beginning of the 'Lost Mitchell' storyline.
- Internet Backdraft: For weeks Many fans were bemoaning the upcoming Eastenders: E20 Spin-Off and complained that it was turning Eastenders into Hollyoaks/Skins. However, now that the first episode has come out, some are now saying it's not so bad.
- Magnificent Bastard: Dirty Den is probably the best in the history of the show. A sharp-dressed Deadpan Snarker and Casanova who faked his own death to escape an organisation of vicious gangsters then came back years later. Outwitted Phil Mitchell and landed him in prison and then there was this scene: "Merry Christmas, Ange!" He could be thought of as the Lionel Luthor of Walford with his own Lex Luthor in the form of his son, Dennis Rickman. Manipulative and borderline sociopathic though he is, Den still has lines he won't cross is fiercely protective of his family and occasionally even looks out for members of the community.
- In the end however, Den's outgambited by his Magnificent Bitch of a wife, Chrissie Watts.
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Stella Crawford.
- The Scrappy: Darren Miller, Billy Mitchell, Zainab Masood and the entire Ferreira family.
- So Bad It's Good
- Squick: The reaction from many during the Baby Switch storyline. It was so poorly received the producers were forced to wrap it up early despite the fact that compared to some previous storylines on Eastenders, it was pretty tame.
- The Wesley: Stacey fucking Slater.
- The Woobie: Nearly everyone has had their time in the Woobie spotlight, including the likes of Lofty Holloway, Arthur Fowler, but most notably poor, poor Little Mo. Dot is probably a very close second.
- Syed Masood. A Muslim man who tried to repress the fact that he was gay, who started a secret on-off relationship with Christian under the nose of his girlfriend and his family. He ended up getting blackmailed by someone in the neighborhood, who was eventually revealed to be Christian's niece. His homophobic mother forced him into abandoning Christian and marrying his fiancée Amira just to save face in their community. Of course, he ended up going back to the boyfriend and trying to carry on with the affair and was eventually discovered by Amira, upsetting her to the point of Woobification herself in the process, leaving him with the guilt of that on his shoulders. With a husband who turned out to be gay, she would be considered damaged goods and her father would consider her his lifelong slave. He lost everything after this: his family disowned him and then started to fall apart, yelling about how he'd brought shame on them; he split up with Christian, only to later see him brutally injured after being beaten up by Amira's Father; he lost the respect of his entire community... and it was just relentless. He kept trying to explain to his parents, but to no avail. After several weeks of being treated like nothing more than the root of everyone's problems the isolation got so bad that he attempted suicide. He survived, but when he woke up in hospital the first thing he heard was his Mother telling him that his sexuality was a disease and that he'd be better off dead. The very next week, he found a special therapist who claimed he can find a cure for being gay.
- It's got better for Syed since then. He stood up for himself, left his family and got back together with Christian but is still disowned as far as his parents are concerned, (though as he once pointed out to his father, they're doing a perfectly good job creating hell for themselves without him, so maybe that's not such a bad thing).
- Not Ronnie?! Raped repeatedly as a child, her family not knowing. Then Ronnie has her baby, and probably fearing its parentage, her father makes her give her up for adoption. Then, she finally escapes, and spends the next couple of decades clearing up after her sister, Roxy. Then they move into Albert Square, and, whilst still sorting out Roxy's life, Ronnie gets a man, Jack. Jack then has an affair with Roxy, and is the father of Roxy's baby. Ronnie's boyfriend is the father of her niece. Nice. Then, on her birthday, she meets up with her father, Archie, again, by accident, who tells her her daughter died. Except she didn't, and then the next few months are spent split between being isolated from the rest of the Mitchells (due to Archie worming his way into their hearts) and persuading Danielle (a Woobie-extraordinaire in her own right) who unbeknownst to Danielle is her long-lost daughter to abort her own grandchild, despite knowing that it would probably be a mistake. Eventually, she decides to forgive Archie, except behind the scenes, Archie knows who Danielle is, and is torturing her psychologically, and even tries to kill her. Eventually, Danielle comes clean at Archie's wedding, only to be cast out by Ronnie herself. Of course, when Ronnie finds out the truth and chases after her, Danielle gets run over and is killed instantly. Naturally, Ronnie's a bit disappointed, and insult is added to injury when Danielle's best mate and adopted father both reject and blame her. She desperately tries to have another baby, but is caught by Jack putting holes in their condoms and he leaves, and then she hooks up with her childhood sweetheart and they seem to be cooking along fine, until it turns out he's had a vasectomy anyway. Eventually, she does get pregnant (by a reformed criminal who is killed in an unrelated plot a little bit later), but, having been pushed against the bar by her father, loses her foetus. Now, her cousin, Sam, is on the run from the law, and Ronnie offers to put up the bail. When Archie loses the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the Mitchells, he persuades Sam to do a runner, so Ronnie loses almost all of her money. Through some plans later, Archie gets his hands on The Queen Vic: the Mitchells, and Ronnie's, home. Soon after, he is killed, and she's prime suspect. In the new year, it's revealed to Ronnie's family that Archie raped her as a child: except the only one that believes her is her estranged mother, who knew all along, and only left because she felt jealous of Ronnie, getting all of Archie's attention. Meanwhile, Jack has an affair with Sam, and she has a child by him. On the plus side, Ronnie's FINALLY pregnant by Jack, just in time for the best Christmas Walford has ever had.
- Aaaaaaand barely a day or so after she has the baby it stops breathing and dies, pushing Ronnie past the Despair Event Horizon to the point where she ends up stealing Kat's newborn child.
- Though originally very boisterous and kind of unsympathetic, Jay Brown grew into a very nice young man..... it was just unfortunate that with that change in personality came a majority of his tragedy.
- The way Johnny Carter was outed to his family wasn't nice, and then a few days later he was outed to the entire community by his aunt. It helps the the actor seems to be very talented at doing puppy dog eyes.
- Syed Masood. A Muslim man who tried to repress the fact that he was gay, who started a secret on-off relationship with Christian under the nose of his girlfriend and his family. He ended up getting blackmailed by someone in the neighborhood, who was eventually revealed to be Christian's niece. His homophobic mother forced him into abandoning Christian and marrying his fiancée Amira just to save face in their community. Of course, he ended up going back to the boyfriend and trying to carry on with the affair and was eventually discovered by Amira, upsetting her to the point of Woobification herself in the process, leaving him with the guilt of that on his shoulders. With a husband who turned out to be gay, she would be considered damaged goods and her father would consider her his lifelong slave. He lost everything after this: his family disowned him and then started to fall apart, yelling about how he'd brought shame on them; he split up with Christian, only to later see him brutally injured after being beaten up by Amira's Father; he lost the respect of his entire community... and it was just relentless. He kept trying to explain to his parents, but to no avail. After several weeks of being treated like nothing more than the root of everyone's problems the isolation got so bad that he attempted suicide. He survived, but when he woke up in hospital the first thing he heard was his Mother telling him that his sexuality was a disease and that he'd be better off dead. The very next week, he found a special therapist who claimed he can find a cure for being gay.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Janine Butcher, Stella Crawford, Sean Slater, May Wright and Phil Mitchell.
- As was seen coming a mile off, Ben Mitchell finally snapped from years of abuse from Phil.