History YMMV / ANIMORPHS

*** In book #54, which was published in May 2001 but set [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture in 2002 or thereabouts]], Jake mentions that since the existence of aliens was revealed to the general public there's been a rise in terrorism, particularly religiously motivated terrorism.

* FollowTheLeader: Considering the RecruitTeenagersWithAttitude set-up, the title of the series has the word "Morph" in it, and it started publication in the mid-'90s, it's clear this series was published to appeal to the ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' audience.

** There was one with ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'', as both were in the height of their popularity at the time the books were being published.

* {{Anvilicious}}: The final arc of ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' makes its WarIsHell message very clear, to the point where that {{A|nAesop}}esop was the entire point of the final book. When some readers complained that the ending wasn't "cool" enough, Applegate took them to task by saying that the ''whole point of the books'' was the war isn't something to venerate or find fun--it's something that tears families apart, kills innocents, and destroys lives forever. In it, [[spoiler: Jake had gotten PTSD from his experiences, Rachel was dead, Tobias had shut himself off from the world, and while Marco and Cassie were better off, neither were really happy. What makes this particularly effective is that K.A. Applegate deliberately didn't have a grand, glorious final battle with the Animorphs finally triumphing--Rachel's death was done with a quick blow, the Yeerks surrender and peace is declared through negotiation, and Jake's PTSD results in his choosing to kill nearly ''18,000'' defenseless Yeerks.]]

** [[AxCrazy Esplin 9466 Prime]], better known to the cast as [[BigBad Visser Three]], is the only [[Characters/AnimorphsAndalites Andalite]]-Controller in existence, and is the sole [[Characters/AnimorphsYeerkEmpire Yeerk]] with the power to morph. Cruelly scorning his weaker twin, Esplin 9466 Lesser, and eventually sentencing him to exile to die of agonizing starvation, Esplin begins his career in the Hork-Bajir war where he is responsible for untold war crimes in his attempt to seize an Andalite body. Later claiming Prince Alloran Semitur-Corass as his host, Esplin uses Alloran's knowledge to launch a series of nightmarish attacks, killing countless Andalites and civilians in a wave of conquest and enslavement. Serving under Visser One on Earth, Visser 3 finally ends his rivalry with Prince Elfangor by devouring him alive. Having acquired countless monstrous Morphs through Alloran, the Visser is keen to use them to kill and torture. Forsaking all subtlety to embrace his personal [[{{Sadist}} sadism]] and cruelty, the Visser [[BadBoss slaughters his own subordinates by the shipful]] for any real or imagined [[YouHaveFailedMe failures]], even morphing into a Yeerkbane, one of the few Yeerk natural predators to [[MonstrousCannibalism consume them]] in an ultimate taboo for his species. Behind the infestation and murder of numerous humans, Visser Three eventually arranges the downfall and agonizing execution by starvation of Visser One to [[TheStarscream seize control of her rank]] in order to lead the invasion and institute a fully armed assault to slaughter humanity into submission. Unwilling to be cowed, Esplin will sacrifice untold thousands of his own, planning the complete extinction or enslavement of the Andalites and countless others to satisfy his cruel ego and petty spite toward Elfangor.
** [[GreaterScopeVillain Crayak]] is an alien and member of [[Characters/AnimorphsTheHighestPowers The Highest Powers]] who acts as the series' GodOfEvil. A nearly omnipotent [[TheSocialDarwinist Social Darwinist]], Crayak seeks to create a universe ruled by one species and one species alone. To that end, Crayak engineered the Howlers, a race of psychopathic {{child soldier}}s who think that killing is a game, and used them to gruesomely exterminate countless species, including the pacifistic Pemalites and Graffen's Children. In order to ensure that the Howlers' HiveMind is never contaminated by memories of defeat, Crayak obliterates any Howlers who [[YouHaveFailedMe fail him]]; he also destroys any Howlers who realise that their victims are people too. Not content with having created one of the most feared races in the galaxy, Crayak also lends his godlike might to other vicious species, secretly backing the Yeerks and other would-be {{galactic conqueror}}s; he plans, for example, to have the Yeerks enslave humanity, [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness only to then be wiped out by the Howlers]]. In a series filled with shades of grey, Crayak was as close to pure, unadulterated evil as one was likely to get.

* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The cutscenes in ''Shattered Reality''. It was a [[UsefulNotes/{{Playstation}} PS1]] game and a TroubledProduction and yet its three cinematics managed to look surprisingly good.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Due to its monthly release structure and strict narration format, ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' had its fair share of these.
** From #16 ''The Warning'' is Joe Bob Fenestre, who is best described as what would happen if Bill Gates and Franchise/HannibalLecter had a son. He's a SelfMadeMan who founded his world's equivalent of America Online (which due to being set in the 90s is much more relevant and powerful than AOL is today) and is notable for being one of the earliest antagonists to present the Animorphs with a case of the GreyAndGrayMorality that would ultimately become a running theme in the series. Despite having a very ambiguous ending which fully allowed the possibility of a return, he never appeared again.
** From #38 ''The Arrival'' is Arbat-Elivat-Estoni, the Andalite brother of Alloran-Semitur-Corass (the host body for series BigBad Visser Three). Much like his brother he's a WellIntentionedExtremist, and his story presents some very interesting parallels with those of his brother. Much like Fenestre above, he gets an ambiguous ending which, while much more grim than the above (he's last seen alone, wounded and facing down a horde of Taxxons) technically made his return a possibility. Of course, he never did.
** [[spoiler:David]] might count as well, given that while unlike the above characters he ''does'' make a return (in the appropriately-titled ''The Return'' no less) it's a much less climatic story than fans were hoping for, and is generally regarded as a missed opportunity despite being a ''very'' well-written MindScrew book.
** [[spoiler:Visser One]] is an interesting case in that while she has a very solidly written story, she is still regarded as this because of her very truncated fall and demise. [[spoiler:[[VillainEpisode VISSER]] ends with her being assigned to command a new invasion in the Anati star system, being promised a full pardon from her crimes if she succeeds and death if she fails. Ten books later we are told that she has returned to Earth, having failed and being sentenced to death. We are never told what happened in Anati or why she was brought all the way back to Earth just to be executed, which many fans consider a horribly missed opportunity. Several fanfics titled some variant of "The Anati Chronicles" have even been written just to explain this oversight]].
** The Auxiliary Animorphs. They presented an opportunity to give disabled people a bigger presence in mainstream fiction and let them be the hero without [[ThrowingOffTheDisability needing to be cured]] (morphing can heal acquired disabilities but not lifelong ones). Instead, [[spoiler:they ended up being a RedshirtArmy who [[BuryYourDisabled only lived for a few books]], and even their brief tenure still focused on the six main characters.]] Maybe if they hadn't been introduced so close to the series' end.
** Multiple RightWingMilitiaFanatic groups are mentioned in the epilogue... and that's it.
** [[spoiler:Loren has an incredibly emotional reunion with her son Tobias and gets morphing powers herself during her rescue, and then mostly just sits around for the remaining few books.]]
** Toby Hamee is the Hork-Bajir seer. She's the great granddaughter of Dak and Aldrea, and personality-wise is far closer to Aldrea because she is ''much'' more ruthless than Dak ever became. She was an incredibly effective general, and had more long term plans than any other character. And she showed up about six times throughout the series.
** Rachel's little sister Jordan feels like she could have been better involved in the plot, especially given that she does seem to sense something's up at one point and asks Rachel to trust her.
** Chapman's daughter Melissa starts as Rachel's good friend who then becomes distant due to her confusion at why her father is suddenly so distant from her in turn, but her importance quickly fades, and she even suffers the indignity of her final appearance being in an alternate timeline that's wiped from existence at the start of ''Megamorphs #3''.
** Aftran. Quite a few fans feel Aftran could have been a valuable ally if she’d been given another nothlit form, like a bird of prey, putting her in a Chee, or even if they’d found a way to swap her with Tom’s Yeerk. True, going to feed would’ve been dangerous but it’s not the easiest thing to tell them apart as Cassie showed, and the Chee are known to generate kandrona. Even just making her a bird nothlit would have given Tobias a helper for his aerial observations.
** Many fans were fascinated by the two animals who gain morphing powers in ''The Hidden'' without having the intelligence to do so properly. People would have liked to see one or both of those characters developed across the series, but they only appear in that one book and [[UncertainDoom at least one of them]] dies in it.

* SlowPacedBeginning: The beginning of each book is loaded with the same exposition about the Yeerks and "I can't tell you my last name" and "We can't stay in a morph for more than 2 hours" and "You see, every three days they have to..." and so on. Some fans make it a habit to just skip the first few pages of each one.

* ArcFatigue: A good portion of the books are standalone adventures of the animorphs (This was [[ValuesDissonance fairly standard practice for young-adult series at the time]]) and a few plot developments happen here and there, then [[AsYouKnow get explained in another book]]. As a result, it can feel as if the overall MythArc doesn't really move a whole lot. Then later on, it turns into full on ContinuityLockout.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: Despite many things [[ValuesResonance aging well]], in many ways these books were a product of [[TheNineties their]] [[TurnOfTheMillennium time]]:
** The fact the series even ''had'' a MythArc was uncommon in young adult literature back then. However, despite the presence of a MythArc, it moved [[ArcFatigue very slowly]], was [[SlowPacedBeginning full of the characters restating the series' premise and rules for the first 20 pages]], and has loads of [[{{Filler}} one-shot adventures that are resolved within the span of one book]].
** Much of the series can be described as [[QuirkyWork 90s weirdness]] - "Weird" ''was'' one of the rules of TheNineties.

** Creator/KAApplegate's a good enough writer to usually avoid these, but there's a really glaring one in the David Trilogy. ''The Threat'' ends with the cliffhanger that Tobias has been killed, showing David gloating over a very dead red-tailed hawk. Along comes ''The Solution'' and what happens? Tobias is very much alive, handwaved as just having 'gotten lost' looking for David, and that red-tailed hawk he killed? Just a random red-tailed hawk.

** In book #12, when Cassie morphed Rachel, she complained about the morph being hard to control because Rachel's instincts kept trying to make her do stupid things. As the series progressed, readers started to see some of what those instincts were - [[BloodKnight extreme violence]], recklessness, and so on. It gets even worse once you reach book #54 -[[spoiler: Cassie's best friend is gone, and the closest she'll ever get to having her back is morphing her]].
** In the alternate future Jake visits in #41, the only part of the New York skyline still recognizable is the World Trade Center.
** In book #37, Rachel deliberately crashes an airplane into a skyscraper.
** Also, in book #46, there is discussion of how America is complacent because they have no real enemies. And then Ax threatens to fly a plane over the middle of a town and detonate a nuclear device.
** In book #54, which was published in May 2001 but set [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture in 2002 or thereabouts]], Jake mentions that since the existence of aliens was revealed to the general public there's been a rise in terrorism, particularly religiously motivated terrorism.
** In Megamorphs #2, the Animorphs help rescue a nuclear submarine that has gone down. After they finish, Ax asks what the submarine is for, since he figures it’s too large to be an exploration vessel. Jake explains that it’s part of the navy, which leads to this conversation:
---><What enemy?>\\

** The final arc, which featured a WarIsHell {{A|nAesop}}esop was gut-wrenching, incredibly sad... and came no more than four months before the U.S. entered an actual war.

** An early example of this came in the ninth book, ''The Secret''. The gang fools Visser Three into taking a bath in grape juice to get rid of the smell of skunk. This becomes even more hilarious when it is later revealed that Andalite females are purple.
** More than a decade after the series ended, Applegate wrote another book featuring talking animals, specifically a gorilla and an elephant. Granted, they had no similarities to Marco and Rachel whatsoever, and since it was based of real events, they had to be those animals, but it's still pretty funny.

* DesignatedHero: Rachel in the ''Alternamorph'' {{Gamebook}} ''The Next Passage''. During the adventure on Iskoort, Cassie is shot and killed by a Howler. Rachel blames the narrator for responsibility and demands a promise from him. If he doesn't give it to her, she and the other Animorphs lure him into a trap, making him permanently a housefly. This is supposed to reflect the fate of [[spoiler:David, who became permanently a rat]]. Unlike [[spoiler:the aforementioned David]], however, the narrator never intentionally attacked or betrayed the Animorphs. He's just in the wrong place at the wrong time when Cassie is killed by a Howler. This act of the Animorphs makes them, especially Rachel, very questionable heroes in this moment.