Pandemic/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Crap Saccharine World: If a country shuts everything down when the disease starts to spread, it can become this near the end, when human population everywhere else is obliterated and is teeming with disease. The country might have saved itself from the disease, but it can't go anywhere, and there's nothing else in the world.
    • This will become a major problem because nations have become dependent on the global economy for their way of life. A country that has survived a disease that destroyed everyone else will now have to suddenly transition into growing their own food, manufacturing their goods, and extracting fuel and raw materials all within their borders with no imports and exports. Good luck with that.
  • Crosses the Line Twice
  • Fridge Horror: Sometimes, the game can have countries do things at the most horrific time. For example, burning bodies when there's a couple hundred people left in the country. burning them, or cooking them?
  • Game Breaker: Actually, mimicking the flu symptoms minus everything dangerous means that your disease will spread everywhere, including to Madagascar early on, giving you plenty of points to spend on fun things like heart failure. Giving your disease moisture I and heat I also helps a lot with infecting Madagascar.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Every once in a while, countries will be hit by natural disasters and other issues, some of which have happened in Real Life (such as 'New Zealand gets hit by earthquake').
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Madagascar SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING after the "zombie incident" in Florida where a man got high on bath salts and tried to eat a homeless man's face.
  • Memetic Badass: Thanks to this game, Madagascar will always be remembered as the sole area in the world that no epidemic can touch.
  • Memetic Mutation: SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Imagine a disease like the ones you craft here occurring in real life. Sweet dreams! Seeing the world going to shit in the game and imagining that happening in Real Life also counts.
  • Paranoia Fuel: Just reading some of the symptoms can make you start to believe you may have contracted your own (fictional) disease.
  • That One Island: Madagascar.
    • Western Europe was the original Pandemic's Madagascar. It had no airports or water sources. If you didn't hit is quickly, it would become the last bastion of civilization. Even worse, starting in Central Europe doesn't even assure you'll get it.
  • The Scrappy: Madagascar
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Although it's by no means bad, the original game pales in comparison to the second
  • The Woobie: Even some of the most sadistic disease-makers can feel sorry for the one ship that hopelessly sails around the world, looking for a non-existent open port.