Metal Slug/YMMV
- Accidental Innuendo: Some games introduce the option to tone down the Gorn or force on the option for Western markets, by replacing the blood with what's supposed to be sweat. Dirty-minded players may mistake it for a fluid best left unmentioned here.
- Awesome Art: The amount of detail in the sprites is unprecedented.
- Breather Boss: Big John in Metal Slug 4.
- Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Players going for a one-coin run often repeatedly enter and exit of a Slug to take advantage of the invincibly frames given during such actions.
- Crowning Music of Awesome: In spades.
- Demonic Spiders: The zombie clones in the final level of Metal Slug 3. They take significantly more damage to kill than the regular clones and the blood vomit attack that was helpful to you when you were able to use it is a nightmare for you to dodge when they use it.
- Dork Age: The Noise Factory era (who developed 4, 5 and Advance) is the point where opinions were widely split, specifically regarding the games' level design, mechanics, and the reuse of assets from previous games.
- Ending Fatigue: Metal Slug 3. Mission 5 (of 5) goes on for an insanely long time, and in fact takes up half of the game. It could've been split up into several missions to lessen this trope.
- Fan-Preferred Couple: Due to the setup of the captured characters and their rescuers in Metal Slug 3 and Metal Slug 6, Marco/Fio and Tarma/Eri are mainly the "go to" couples (although any combination of the four are supported).
- Fountain of Memes: The announcer, as seen below.
- Allen O'Neal also counts.
- Freud Was Right: Take a look at where the Slug Gigant's gun is located at. For added bonus, its shots come out rapidly in a gravity-determined arc, making it look like its pissing.
- Good Bad Bugs:
- The AES version of Metal Slug 5 had an un-dummied, incredibly easy-to-access debug menu which allowed to play any part of any stage on demand, plus a bunch of test areas full of free weapons, vehicles, unused stuff and a sprite/animation viewer.
- Super Cancelling skips the cool-down animations. This is mostly used in Tool-Assisted Speedruns to increase the number of shots per second. However, Leona can use her Moon Slasher multiple times quickly by holding Up and the Special Button and alternating the shoot and grenade buttons. Use this against bosses and you're golden.
- Growing the Beard: While the first game is still considered fun, it's the second game where the franchise really grew its legs and incorporated many of the Super Sentai-esque hallmarks of the series with the introduction of female player characters like Fio and Eri, more insane weapons and vehicles to use, transformations, and both supernatural and extraterrestrial enemies.
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Some of the concept art for unused concepts are terrifying.
- Admit it, you jumped a little upon first seeing the character select screen for Metal Slug 2 & 3.
- Memetic Mutation:
- RAWKET LAWNCHAIR!
- SHAWTGUHN!
- HEVEE MASHEEEN GUHN!
- MISHOWN COMEPLEET *ending theme*
- Moe:
- The amount of blood spilled, flesh torn and bones crushed is usually proportional to the cuteness of your mech.
- There's also Fio, the series' resident Moe character.
- Replacement Scrappy: Trevor and Nadia, as they replaced series' regulars Tarma and Eri in Metal Slug 4.
- Scrappy Mechanic: Metal Slug 5 introduced a Mega Man-like slide move. Though it was useful at times, the problem with it was that it was activated by holding down and pressing jump. So most of the time when you wanted to jump and shoot downwards (a common tactic to shoot things underneath you), you would slide instead, and probably die, or at least waste time. Thankfully, it was taken out of future installments.
- This is more of a case of Damn You, Muscle Memory!, as once mastered, the slide is an absolute blessing.
- That One Boss: The bosses of stages 3 and 4 of Metal Slug 6 are MUCH more durable and nasty than the first two bosses were. Both take ridiculous amounts of punishment and have nigh-unavoidable attacks. Expect to use a lot of credits.
- Holy fark, the robot. First: You're moving to your right, constantly, which means it feels awkward reaching around and shooting at the robot, NOT TO MENTION THE CONTROLS AUTOMATICALLY FACE YOU TO THE RIGHT IF YOU TRY TO JUMP TO THE RIGHT TO DODGE SOMETHING. This means it WILL take forever to kill it. Secondly: IT KEEPS ATTACKING, ALMOST NON-STOP. And all of them are constant, even with the obvious pattern, so you'll be killed repeatedly.
- The "vulcan fix" skill is very useful here (hold down the shooting button to keep shooting in a fixed direction). Also, don't even try to take your time in defeating it, or it WILL GET PISSED and keep swinging his electrified arms reducing the safe zone to a ridiculous minimum!
- Holy fark, the robot. First: You're moving to your right, constantly, which means it feels awkward reaching around and shooting at the robot, NOT TO MENTION THE CONTROLS AUTOMATICALLY FACE YOU TO THE RIGHT IF YOU TRY TO JUMP TO THE RIGHT TO DODGE SOMETHING. This means it WILL take forever to kill it. Secondly: IT KEEPS ATTACKING, ALMOST NON-STOP. And all of them are constant, even with the obvious pattern, so you'll be killed repeatedly.
- Ugly Cute: The Mars People. They're adorable, in a weird sorta way.
