X-Men: Evolution/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Many can be seen, just a matter of opinion...
    • The Brotherhood as a whole, Are they Ineffectual villains who do try to be bad but are easily outmatched, or are they missunderstood misfits being targetted by the X-Men.
    • Lance: did he really have a heroic side, or was it just a trick to get Kitty to like him? Hell, can it be both in the end, with Lance starting to do good things just to get Kitty into liking him and then keeping up just because he was in the mood? And if it's either the first or both, just how heroic can he be: sympathetic Anti-Villain, hard-ass Anti-Hero, prospect Nineties Anti-Hero, or something else whatsoever?
    • Scott: was he just trying to be a responsible leader who let his rivalry with Lance get the better of him sometimes, or was he unneedingly hostile to him? We also have his relationships with Jean and and Rogue to consider...
    • Were the New Recruits complete idiots who crossed into Too Dumb to Live, or just inexperienced and excited at the prospect of being mutants that they got ahead of themselves a few times?
      • More specifically, Bobby/Iceman. Did he truly learn his lesson and become a good asset to the X-Men/New Mutants, or were his Too Dumb to Live credential just swept under the rug?
    • Was Spyke an asshole who was Easily Forgiven only for being a newbie and Storm's relative, or just an antihero as well as too young and constrained to do it right?
    • Was Rogue really a sympathetic and lost young girl and in dire need of help, or was she just a self centered whiner who only paid attention to her own problems?
    • Did Mystique really try to help her stepdaughter, or was it just her way of emotionally manipulating her to get more information easier? And what about her and her biological son Kurt...?
  • Accidental Innuendo: Season 2 Episode 1 had these lines by Lance & Kitty:

Kitty: Shouldn't you be Erupting Somewhere?
Lance: Hey Kitty, you wanna see some real shaking?

    • A lot of Lance's dialog comes off as this because of all his rock puns.
  • Base Breaker: Avalanche. Due to Characterization Marches On, he ends up with two distinct versions. One a violent and aggressive villain, the other a nice guy with bad friends, and something in between. Its up to the fans to decide which one they proffer and/or chose to see him as.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: The completely out of nowhere music montage in 'the "Sirens of Bayville" episode.
  • Non Sequitur Scene Episode]]: Said episode, Walk On The Wild Side, counts for some people - it comes off as an Anvilicious "feminism" episode where the writers just wanted to preach about men not gloating about how girls are lucky to get saved by them, coupled with some OOC behaviour (seriously, why would Kitty, Jean or Amara wear those black leather outfits?) Since it's filler, though, people who dislike it tend to simply ignore its presence.
  • Broken Base: The fans can't decide wether or not Iceman was funny or stupid.
    • That's okay, neither could the writers.
  • Characterization Marches On: Avalanche (and to a lesser extent the rest of the Brotherhood) shift in characterization through out the series, changing from possible future murderers into very different people.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Scott. When he sees people in trouble, he does what he can, whether or not its smart or safe, to help them. Xavier actually tells him that this risked revealing mutants to the world because he has to save people.
    • Avalanche, in a strange twist. Avalanche isn't even a good guy, in fact he on several ocasions caused a large amount of trouble and property damage. However, as he developed, he lost the ability to sit back and let people get killed, even if those who were in danger had been unintentionally (And when they realized, they didn't care) framing him and were putting themselves in danger for fun, and would go out of his way to save them.
  • Crazy Awesome: Everything the New Mutants do. They STOLE THE X-JET FOR A JOYRIDE! They BROKE INTO THE DANGER ROOM FOR UNSUPERVISED TRAINING! Hilarity Ensues!
  • Die for Our Ship: Avalanche was bashed by Nightcrawler x Shadowcat fans. Jean was bashed by Cyclops x Rogue fans. Surprisingly, Nightcrawler's canon girlfriend Amanda took much less heat than them...
    • ...Thought still took a lot of heat herself. Like, did you know she was actually repulsed by Kurt's appearence and wanted him to hide it? Neither did we! Either that, or Amanda wanted to flaunt his appearance around too much. However, Piotr/Colossus, who was Kitty's comic book love interest and got some ship teasing at one point, doesn't ever get bashed in the show's fandom, probably because many forget he existed. Thought, Kitty/Piotr fans are just as likely to bash Lance as they are. Kurt himself isn't usually bashed by Lance/Kitty fans, as most just think of him and Kitty as close friends. Some do, however, still hate him, despite not actually being in the way of anything.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: It is very true that the Brotherhood is much more sympathetic than in other continuities, but some of their fans claim they're utter saints bullied by the evil X-Men, and conveniently "forget" that sometimes the boys reach dangerous levels of criminal negligence in their actions. Even some pages of this very Wiki tend to forget that, while yes, they weren't as active as most villains and weren't very competent, they were still criminals who did do a lot to deserve their treatment. Some people avoid this by, instead of down playing their bad points, they instead give them a few levels of Badassary to make them more of a match for the X-Men (Extremely common in 'Season Five' fanfictions).
  • Dude, Not Funny: In the fourth season, when the Brotherhood play around with a petrified Mystique. Nightcrawler reacts in appropriate horror, given she's his mother.
    • Also, pulling Nightcrawler's tail, as Scott found out.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: The Brotherhood started out as stock villains for the X-Men to battle in the first season, but became incredibly popular. This likely led to their roles as Anti Villains and eventual Heel Face Turn.
    • Iceman, to some.
    • Jubilee was surprisingly quite popular, even got a C2 on Fanfiction.net dedicated to her.
    • Wolfsbane was surprisingly popular for a character who made less than two speaking roles.
    • Multiple was surprisingly popular for a kid member.
    • Gambit and Kurt are the two male characters with the most fanfictions on FF.net. Rogue has the most, but she was easily the main character of the series and was a point of focus in all the plots, so she doesn't really count. Note that most of those fanfictions are In Name Only AU fics.
  • Epileptic Trees: While Ray started out as a Morlock in the comics, the writers never clarified just what his connection with them was in the cartoon, other than he had arguably heard of them, which is how he managed to lead the rest of the New Recruits to hide with them after the X-Men were exposed. And the implications of that connection has made his back story even more ambiguous, even compared to the other Recruits, given that most of them never discussed their backgrounds. Most of the fans tend to write him, in fan fiction, as the child of a broken home who ran away and wound up with the Morlocks before being found by Professor X. They also tend to explain that the Morlocks actually pretended not to know him, since he basically left them they saw it as an act of betrayal and have since shunned him.
    • People on The Other Wiki have made some guesses about Avalanche. Namely, they've guessed he's likely greek, with 'Alvers' being an Americanized coruption of the name 'Alvez', and that his middle name is 'Domonic' to match his name in the comics.
  • Evil Counterpart: Not so much as evil as "Criminal misbehavior Counterpart", but Avalanche to Scott. Both have leadership skills, are tall and, according to the female fanbase, extremely attractive, are easily the second most powerful of their respective team (Behind Jean and Wanda respectfully), have Chronic Hero Syndrome, have an almost Fantastic Racism-like hate towards the aposing team that borders on homocidal anger, and have a Big Brother Mentor like relationship to their friends (Kurt, for Scott; Toad and Pietro, to Lance). Their rivalry makes a lot of sense when you realize that, had Xavier recruited Lance instead of Scott, the teams would of had virtually the same balance.
  • Evil Is Cool: The Brotherhood, though this is more like "misbehaving yet not being super evil is cool".
  • Evil Is Sexy: Mystique, naturally.
  • Fan Dumb: Quite a vicious case of it, by no means are they Avatar: The Last Airbender, but certainly quite bad. Mostly from the shipping side, namely, you can't express any interest in any ship without someone wishing death on you.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Rogue and Cyclops. There was a lot of Ship-to-Ship Combat in the series, but this was by far the less debated pairing compared to what actually became canon (Cyclops and Jean).
    • Nearly all fanfics featuring Toad have him paired with Nightcrawler rather than Wanda.
    • Not to mention Nightcrawler/Shadowcat. It was mostly a side-effect of porting their relationship from the comics to the show.
  • Foe Yay: The show seemed to set up a few of the X-Men and Brotherhood as having counterparts on the other side. Avalanche x Cyclops pretty much wrote itself with their rivalry. The same can be said with Toad x Nightcrawler and Spyke x Quicksilver.
    • Magneto x Xavier! Those to have so much UST between them it isn't funny. There was the suggestive looks, the fact that Magneto protects him at several points in the series and Xavier 's unfailing objections to putting an end to Eric. This can cross to Ho Yay when Magneto does a Heel Face Turn (or in the origin when they were still on the same side)
      • Probably because the focus of the series was on the younger and more attractive cast. The show's younger fanbase probably didn't want to think about two old guys doing it while there are hot teenagers like Cyclops, Avalanche, Nightcrawler, Quicksilver, etc, to ship together.
        • Hey! Evo!Magneto was VERY much a Foxy Grandpa, and Xavier didn't look bad either. Some fangirls like their men Older and Wiser as well as good-looking. (That, and Charles/Magnus has been a Ho Yay favorite for a LONG time already)
  • Growing the Beard: The show has decent to average quality in season 1, near the end of season 2 and the beginning of season 3, the show gets a lot better. It becomes more serious, while still retaining its playful humor, and focuses more on characterization and action (While previous seasons focused on introductions and mostly romance respectfully).
  • Ho Yay: Yaoi fans were particularly interested in what Avalanche and Quicksilver did with their free time together living in the Brotherhood Boarding House.
    • Not to mention Nightcrawler and Cyclops. And Wolverine and Captain America (comics) in the season 2 episode about Operation Rebirth.
      • Re: Nightcrawler and Cyclops. In the "Evan with a camera" episode, Evan says, "Scott's pretty stiff, but Kurt usually takes care of that." Can't make this up.
        • Let's not forget the scene where, after the mansion is destroyed and characters have to share rooms, Scott and Kurt emerge from their bedroom with Scott being covered in Kurt's fur.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: It's a bit ironic that Noel Fisher would voice Toad, a mutant resembling a frog-human hybrid, considering that one of his earlier roles was Troy McGinty, who was deathly afraid of a human-frog hybrid children's show character named MacGoogles.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The Brotherhood, probably the reason they're so popular. Also probably the reason the Acolytes were introduced, to show real villainy. Each B-hooder has their levels, but probably the most inefectual and sympathetic is Toad.
  • Jerkass Dissonance: The entire Brotherhood get this. No one cares that Pietro stole and abused his friendship with Evan just for the sake of it, Evan's just a douche for not liking him! It doesn't matter that Avalanche purposely wrecked two training sessions, Scott should trust him! The others get this as well, but Lance could start a riot or destroy a school and possibly killing hundreds of people aged 14–17 and no one would notice-Wait! Lance did do that! Pietro could derail a train and leave it derailed and allow the whole town to be blown up-Wait! He did do that!
    • Conversly, Brotherhood fans (or just some fans in general) will never let anything Scott do go without it being seen as somehow evidense that he's a 'jerk'. You know the scene in the first episode where he pulls a confused face when shaking Kurt's hand when he notices the fuzzy fur and two finger thing? Yeah, some fans claim that he's a jerk because he was disgusted at Kurt's appearence and use that as evidense. Not to mention any time he tries to act responsibilly, from telling Kurt to stop playing around concerning his powers to his quite justifiable distrust in the Brotherhood. Because he's a little black and white when it comes to the whole 'hero' thing, that makes him a jerk. How bad was it? A while ago on this very Wiki he was in the Animated Series page for Jerkass, without actually giving any reason other than a rant about how he's always a jerk in every version of the X-Men and why he's the reason not to join the X-Men, while characters who are much more deserving of such were left out until the very end. Naturally, this was removed, but it still says something that they would leave out things like Pietro derailing a train, Mystique abusing Rogue's mental health, and Duncan Mathews multiple attempted assaults just to bash a guy for not having a sense of humour and being a little boy scoutish.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Mystique. She was a Manipulative Bitch throughout the entire series, but by the time she realizes the err of her ways in the finale, and begs forgiveness from her children Nightcrawler and Rogue, they've completely lost faith in her, and don't want anything to do with her.
  • Les Yay: The entire "Bayville Sirens" montage in Walk on the Wild Side. Especially the part where Jean and Magma are grinding on each other.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Magneto. For this troper, the clincher was erasing his daughter's memory rather than accepting the damage his own actions caused.
    • It wasn't so much that he erased it; he had Mastermind change it, simply so she would stop ruining all his plans and trying to to kill him.
    • But the fact that, in doing so, he ended up in a win win situation for EVERYONE probably makes him one. Toad can now spend time with Wanda, Pietro no longer has to fear her, Wanda's childhood trauma is gone, and he's free to do whatever he wants without the single most powerful mutant known at the time trying to kill him.
  • Memetic Mutation: I WILL CRUSH YOU LIKE A CAANN!!
  • Memetic Sex God: Chicks dig the fuzzy blue elf.
    • Gambit gets this as well. He's currently the most popular male character for this reason (and because he's Rogue's comic book love interest and flirted a little with her).
  • Moral Event Horizon: Duncan Matthews and his pals went from Jerk Jocks, to physically assaulting Scott unprovokedly after he was outted as a mutant, to post-graduation attempted mutant murder with mining machinery. That last one got them sentenced to life in prison. Duh.
    • There was also the soft-drink manufacturer who unknowingly laced his drink with mutant poison. You can tell he's genuinely surprised... then Mood Whiplash kicks in and he figures he can make a lot of money off the discovery.
    • Magneto's use of Mastermind to Mind Rape his daughter into loving him might qualify, not to mention threatening Colossus's family to ensure his loyalty.
    • Apocalypse was planning on using his machine to turn the populace into mutants... But even he notes that this may kill much of the human population, due to their bodies not being able to take it. He still was willing to go through it.
    • Pietro's was derailing the train to get more hero points... and then abandoning it when he realized how dangerous it is to try and stop it, therefore leaving the whole town plus Lance and Wanda (his ex-leader/still-friend and twin sister respectively) to their fiery deaths.
  • Needs More Love: Sunspot. Boy does he need it.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • Mesmero's introductory episode was this from the beginning to the end.
    • Apocalypse straddled the line, helped by the fact he wasn't particularly wordy in this continuity.
  • Possession Sympathetic Relationship Sue: Rogue is not a Mary Sue in canon, but fangirls latched onto her so strongly that they often made her look/act in their fanwork like anything but herself, as well as making her Scott's One True Love despite him not even realizing that she had a crush on him. Made even worse by their bashing of Jean, whom they demonized to an horrifying degree because Scott liked her more than the precious Rogue Sue they had in their minds.
    • Kitty is also often used in some stories as a Bella Swan like Step in for the Author and reader's romantic fantasy, either with Kurt as a friend turned boyfriend who's in an unhappy relationship (Forgetting that Kurt and Amanda were seen as very loving), or Avalanche as a loving, perfect, flawless boyfriend (Forgetting that, as heroic as he could be at times, Avalanche had a lot of flaws).
  • Real Women Never Wear Dresses: For "feminist fans", Kitty and Jean were... too girly to be "likeable and relatable". Rogue, and later Wanda, were pretty much the yardstick to measure "womanly strenght" in the series. And yet, there's still fans who call them out (along with X-23) for being 'too whiney'. That's right, having a considerable amount of issues has caused some fans to call them Wangsty.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Spyke, who after living with the Morlocks, became a Badass, mutant-protecting vigilante that can light his spikes on fire.
    • Jubilee is often regarded as the most useless X-Woman to the general public, here however, she's an Ensemble Darkhorse. All they needed to do was get rid of the shorts, give her long hair, and a few funny lines and minimum screen time and BAMB! Instant popularity.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Jut ask the rabid Brotherhood fans what they think of Professor X. Just... do it. And see them foam at their mouths.
    • Also, Lance/Avalance. He does have his shade of jerkiness and specially at the beginning... but considering how some people talk about him, you'd swear he's a Bastard Boyfriend Complete Monster who'd rape and murder Kitty if he could.
    • Hell, lets say EVERYONE gets this from some corner of the fandom. However, the biggest victim is Jean. The nice friendly psychic who was disgusted at the prospect of using her powers for unhonest deeds was utterly defiled in a lot of fanfictions.
    • Adding to that, this trope should be renamed 'Jean Grey Was A Bitch' thanks to how badly she gets this. Unlike Xavier, Lance and others, Jean had no shades of jerkiness, and was easily the friendliest character in the show. While she does act too perfect, in fact a lot of people who didn't like her cite her being too perfect as the reason: she did have her flaws like everyone else (clingy, passive-aggressive, self-centered sometimes, can't be true to herself and others about her crush on Scott, a bit of an Attention Whore), but she was a good person overall. Unlike Lance, however, this isn't motivated mostly by Die For Our Ship, though did happen in regards to entitled Scott/Rogue fans: many people hate her and Scott (who also gets this from some corners of the fandom, but not nearly as badly as Jean) just the same, but most of the fandom hate her for 'being a manipulative bitch and a whore', despite there being zero evidence to this. As much she flirted a little with Scott while with Duncan and showed jealousy when her best friend Taryn showed interest in Scott, but there's no real evidence about her cheating.
      • Some of it was probably carryover from the comics, where some fans take their hatred of the character to literally psychotic levels. Thus Evolution!Jean gets declared evil simply for being Jean Grey.
    • The previously mentioned Jerkass Dissonance of Scott should also be noted. Scott was a bit of a workaholic and didn't have much in the ways of humour, and at times seemed a little hotheaded. The former two were played for laughs while the last was something he shared with a lot of characters. He didn't trust the Brotherhood and Lance in particular, and once told Kurt to stop goofing around. That is, of course, because the Brotherhood often antagonised him, and Kurt's goofing around consisted of him joking about revealing his secret, something that Scott would naturally have an issue with. But, completely ignoring his Big Brother Mentor like relationship with the others, his dedication to Xavier's cause, his various Crowning Moments Of Awesome, and the fact that, he always apologises for anything wrong he actually does, a lot of fans, especially Brotherhood fans but ocasionally others as well if its shipping related, have gone as far as to declare him a hypocrite or have other characters talk about how much they hate him for being a Jerkass in fanfics.
  • The Scrappy: Spyke was sometimes dismissed by fans as a Token Minority replacement for the more famous and "edgy" Marrow. Word of God says they didn't have Marrow in mind, some sources claiming they didn't even know about her.
    • Boom-Boom when she first joined The Brotherhood.
      • Boom-Boom overall, really. With a snotty, entitled personality that was thoroughly unpleasant, she nevertheless had a tendency to be Easily Forgiven and often treated like she was a main character whose plot was going somewhere, nicely filling out all the "annoying to the audience" and "treated like a Creator's Pet" aspects of a Scrappy.
    • Iceman, to some, and the New Mutants in general.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: While episodes did alternate between the six leads, Cyclops and Rogue were always center stage for the most important storylines. Toad also got a rather large amount of attention, and even his own (thoroughly obnoxious for some) theme music.
    • Logan avoids this, as opposed to previous versions, as he gets less screen time than usual. However, he does get the most merchandise focus in the show, so...
    • If they don't complain about her with Double Standard reasons, the more sane fans will criticise Tabitha for taking up too much screentime. During the second season, she certainly did appear more than a lot of characters.
  • Strangled by the Red String: The Lance-Kitty Relationship, for some. Your mileage will HEAVILY vary there.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: At the end of an episode where they find out that contact with a new sports drink can harm mutants, the creator of the drink promises Professor X to stop selling the drinks. But when Prof. X leaves, the creator gets out his phone and calls someone to tell them about it, with obvious malicious intent toward mutants. But it never goes anywhere and we never hear about it again. This, along with a few lose plot threads found in the fourth season, could probably be atributed to Marvel deciding to axe the series.
  • Toy Ship: Multiple gets shipped a lot, despite being younger than everyone.
  • Ugly Cute: Nightcrawler and Toad.
  • Wangst: Everyone, but especially Rogue.
  • The Woobie: X-23 in her first appearance, especially when she breaks down in Logan's arms.
    • Kurt and Rogue also have shades of Woobiness at times, as does Wanda.
    • David/Legion, who was first told by his mother that his father Xavier abandoned him, then he moved to a new place where he had no friends, and then was slowly taken over by an alternate personality. An alternate personality that kidnapped and held him hostage in a castle. Then he gets permanently taken over when his dad tries to save him. Poor kid. Because the series was cancelled after Season 4, this becomes a case of The Bad Guy Wins, at least as it stands - there are hints he could've been still saved had the show continued...
    • It's X-Men, its one of the staples of the franchise is that (almost) every named character is a woobie in need of hugs. Scott has dead parents and uncontrollable powers, Jean has a dead friend (Not actually touched upon in the series) and powers that vary from 'too powerful to control' to 'too weak to be useful', Rogue had uncontrolable powers that she has no way of practising to use safely like others, Kurt had the whole 'my momma's evil' thing, Kitty was bullied for being too smart, Logan had no memory and was the victim to expermimentation that he still has PTSD over... And that's just the important characters.
    • Jerkass Woobie: Evan evolved into this. While he was probably the closest in the X-Men to Jerkassery, he developed into a Woobie during Season three after anti-mutant sentiment caused former friends to start bullying him (While they were all suffering, Evan was the only one to be shown repeatedly being picked on for his powers)- while also slowly but steadily losing control of his very visible powers. Eventually, he takes a Mutant harming poison and completely loses the hang of his abilities, so the poor kid moves in with the Morlocks as, despite the X-Men's good intentions, the Morlocks are the only ones who can understand his pain. And worse, its unconfirmed if they stop being poisoned by Power8 or if the effects will ever wear off, and they never mentioned if there was a cure.
      • It's pretty hard to feel sorry for Pietro, what with his jerkassery and all—but then you realize that his sister hates him, his dad pretty much only cares when he needs to use him (and Pietro is painfully aware of it), and none of his friends seem to like him (though a good bit of it comes from his own actions). He's shone living entirely on his own, at 15-16, on two separate occasions in the series. I'ts not quite on the level with the others, but it's worth a little bit of sympathy.
        • The reason a lot of people dislike him is because although he's had it bad, his friends in the Brotherhood might have had it just as bad, yet aren't nearly as aggravatingly egotistical as he is. It doesn't help that his comics counterpart - while still frequently a Jerkass - was shown to possess noble traits nonetheless. Of course, Pietro also has these from time to time, so it might just be chalked up to uneven characterisation with little time for good balance (especially thanks to the series' cancellation.
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