Smackdown vs. Raw/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: WWE '13 is ditching the "Road to WrestleMania" mode, and replacing it with Attitude Era mode, which will let the player relive the iconic moments of the Attitude Era.
  • Artistic Licence Geography: The Road to WrestleMania mode in '12 features an Evil Brit Power Stable called the "United Kingdom" consisting of two Englishmen in Wade Barrett and William Regal, a Scotsman in Drew McIntyre and an Irishman in Sheamus. Nobody told the storyline writers that Sheamus is from the Republic of Ireland, which is separate from the UK.
    • Somewhat related, but apparently the UK is only made of England, Scotland and Ireland. This is despite the fact that the roster includes Welshman Mason Ryan.
  • Better Than Canon: The WCW invasion storyline in '12. It helps that WCW actually wins and Nitro replaces Raw. Though WWE does win in the end.
    • The Better Than Utopia story in Sv R 2009 starring John Cena is surprisingly better than some of Cena's storylines on TV.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: During the Outsider storyline in '12, Triple H is talking on the phone to somebody. It turns out to be Kevin Nash, who is then revealed to be right next to him. Trips wonders if he's still got what it takes, and Nash answers by saying he thinks he needs to knock some sense into him. He grabs HHH and hits the jackknife powerbomb on him. HHH gets right back up just a few seconds later and storms out of the room angrily to beat up the first person he finds, rather than, you know, hitting Nash back or something. This is never mentioned afterwards.
  • Crazy Awesome: Create-A-Finsher mode, especially with diving attacks. Inverted corkscrew 900 shooting star hurricanrana? No problem! Add in the lack of weight restrictions on finishers in 2010 and you have the aforementioned move done by a 7'2" superheavyweight.** This can also happen with the DAS mode as some of the created stories are kinda crazy.
  • Critical Research Failure: The Miz' finisher in 2011, "Skull Crushing Finale," is listed as affecting the body! In fact many moves in the game can qualify for this.
  • Ear Worm: I Came To Play!
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: Notable in most of the games' storylines: Eddie Guerrero being placed in a casket in the game released on the same weekend as his death being a heavy one.
    • Happened again the year after with The Undertaker's feud with Chris Benoit during career mode. Taker tells Benoit that if he persists, not even his family will forgive him. Guess who went and killed his family and himself later that year?
  • Game Breaker: Running grapples, especially spears.
    • The Ho Train Attack -where you did a running whole-body smack against the opponent- always knocked him/her down, had almost no wind-up time, and seemed to be completely irreversible by the CPU. Sadly, it hasn't been seen in later installments.
    • In WWE 12 an AI opponent will usually run in for an attack if you keep your distance. It's rather easy to grapple them when they do this.
  • Growing the Beard: WWE 12 had removed the Take That comments from the last two games, cleaned up the controls and commentary and made the matches faster paced with downed opponents not being grounded for five minutes, as well as fixes to the AI.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: 2009 gained a Dueling Games situation with the TNA Impact video game by Midway's San Diego studio. To "welcome" the competition, creative director Cory Ledesma showed a TNA DVD used as a coffee coaster at a press conference. Cue a few years later where THQ buys out the San Diego studio and gets them to produce WWE All Stars with the Impact engine.
  • Mary Sue: Can possibly be done with 2010's create a storyline mode. Santino also seems to treat himself as such in a pre-made story.
  • Most Annoying Sound: From 2010: Here she comes again, like good medicine...
  • Nightmare Fuel: The vs. Undertaker RTWM storyline in 2011. Among other brainwrenching segments, your character participates in several matches against Undertaker's Druids. Sounds easy, right? There's a special arena these matches take place in. No commentary and no crowd noise, just you in the match. Did I mention every member of the crowd is also a Druid?
    • Around this time your match card goes from announcing the matches and giving helpful hints to LOST SOUL VS LOST SOUL VS LOST SOUL VS LOST SOUL
      • It is revealed at the end of the match that this was an actual battle royal taking place on RAW, but The Undertaker was causing you to hallucinate during the match.
      • The Downer Ending that occurs should you fail to beat 'Taker. You first are forced to fight a seemingly hopeless battle against his druids, which is then followed by your character being turned into a druid by 'Taker.
    • Also, Masked Kane from the same game. How is it that, in game's past—featuring the alternate skin—his moutpiece never moves with his mouth (As it is in Real Life) but here it does? It's especially bad when the screen freezes post-match...
  • Ruined FOREVER: The ability to download and upload creations is great, there's just one problem: IT. DOES. NOT. WORK. THE. GAME. WILL. NOT. GO. ONLINE.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The "New" Grapple system introduced in 2011 which no longer uses a modifier for strong or weak grapples, instead weaks grapples will occur only on non dazed opponents whereas strong grapples can only be performed on dazed opponents.
  • Seasonal Rot: Many people feel that the franchise has gone downhill after SvR 06.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks Much raging happens once the fanbase figures out which features have been dumbed down or removed completely.
  • They Just Didn't Care: Every year, when it comes to attires. For example, the haphazard way that someone will be missing a signature piece of entrance attire whilst other people (Who don't wear anything to the ring) will be wearing their merch.
    • Taken further with Shawn Michaels & Triple H in 2011 - Shawn's primaryonly costume (on the disc) is his D-X gear, whilst Triple H has his singles gear, civillian clothes & an injured attire but not his D-X gear.
    • Before 2011 was released, Tommy Dreamer and Carlito were removed from the game due to being released, while Layla and Chris Masters were taken out to be downloadable. Despite this, in Road to WrestleMania you can find their names on match cards quite often even though this would be a very easy fix. Further, one of the moves in the Create a Finisher mode still has Dreamer's name in it.
    • 2010 has commentary on wrestlers not even in the game.
    • Create an entrance movie for your wrestler. We'll wait until the game crashes when trying to play it.
    • The first DLC pack for 2011 - The main draw of the pack is Wade Barrett, David Otunga & Justin Gabriel; yet they have a generic NXT entrance video instead of the Nexus entrance video, the pack doesn't include the correct version of the Nexus theme, they aren't anounced as The Nexus when they enter as a group, the developers couldn't be bothered to give Gabriel his own entrance (He uses Charlie Haas's from 2009) & it took so long to come out that when it was finally released, Wade Barrett & Justin Gabriel are no longer part of the Nexus anyway. There is also no commentary acknowledging Otunga, and every now and then it ever refers to him as David Hart Smith. The pack also included Lex Luger in his All-American Face persona, also lacking his correct theme for that gimmick.
    • In Sv R 2008, the career mode is horrible: You are given a choice at several points, but no matter which one you pick, it will go with the scripted one, ie: You will always be forced to choose Kenny Dykstra as a tag partner at one point, even after he screws you by not showing up the first time (He doesn't show up the second time either), you MUST surrender the title after Shane and Stephanie McMahon threaten you with even worse situations than they put you through so far, thus making it impossible (barring rare occasions where it correctly worked) to compete for the world title at Wrestlemania. Having no true choice in the storylines (which was one of the things that made the series so enjoyable before this game) pissed off a HUGE amount of fans.
    • Good luck trying to get the Community Creations page in WWE '12 (basically, where all created arenas, wrestlers, and logos are shared online) to work without crashing on you.
  • Unfortunate Implications: You can't have Divas against Superstars at all. No female VS male matches. That may be a case of the company wanting to avoid any Unfortunate Implications involved in Diva-on-Superstar match ups. This wouldn't be so bad if defeating a Super Heavyweight with a Diva wasn't listed as one of the awards in the career mode! Not to mention the Double Standard.
    • The fact that Divas don't bleed when blood is turned on has been a Wallbanger for many Smackdown games since they started using blood, which becomes funny when you remember that Acclaim's god awful wrestling related games allowed you to make the women wrestlers bleed Unfortunate Implications aside it's still stupid.
      • Also Divas can't pick up steps in SvR 2011. Even if you have a 7' tall Hot Amazon, when you try to pick up steps, they will drop them immediately.
      • These carry over from the previous games. Up until the first Smackdown vs Raw (previous games were titled Smackdown! and had a tag line) you could have a male or female, or select their gender as unknown. This led to divas playing through season mode, including getting into a lesbian romance. The first Smackdown vs Raw proper removed this. The following year divas could not compete in most of the match types, with this gradually being resolved in each update.
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