History YMMV / ModernFamily

** In the final episode [[spoiler: when the family are having one of their many big goodbyes, Mitch and Cam mention seeing everyone again at Thanksgiving. Considering this was just before COVID (indeed, the pandemic was in full swing by the time the episode actually aired), that seems unlikely]].

* {{Narm}}:
** The opening tile sequence, largely because it wasn’t reshot on a yearly basis. This is especially apparent with the child actors, as they age significantly over the course of the series - for example, Joe & Lily are still depicted as 3 to 5 years old in the opening titles when the episodes are featuring them as roughly half a decade older.
** There is ''zero'' difference between Cam's usual drama queen antics and his scenes that are supposed to be genuinely dramatic, which can often make it very hard to tell when we're supposed to stop laughing. This was noted to especially hurt his breakdown over getting older in "Leap Day."

* UnconvincinglyPopularCharacter: Alex is smart, talented, pretty, funny, and TheAce at almost everything she does, but there's much focus on how "unpopular" she is at school compared to her sister Haley.

* {{Shipping}}:
** {{Averted}} in the first four seasons, due to the fact that nearly all of the characters in the show were, y'know, ''related'', and that all three couples were long-term and very stable. PlayedStraight from Season 5 onward with Haley and Andy.
** In real life, the whole cast [[ShipperOnDeck all ship Haley and Andy together]] and they said that whenever Adam came on the show, that they were so excited to find out what would happen to Haley and Andy.

** Claire is often treated as less beautiful than Gloria. It's almost always specifically comparing the two though and you can't blame anyone for feeling like they don't stand out compared to Gloria. In other contexts men (and [[LesYay at least one woman]]) are obviously are attracted to Claire.

*** This came a head in the episode "Mother". The episode's Aesop is supposed to be how hard and thankless it is to be a mother, yet [=DeDe=] comes off as a KarmaHoudini for backpacking on Gloria's legitimate grievances and guilt-tripping Claire, who she involves in a RightBehindMe. The problem was that Gloria had a legitimate reason to be angry (Manny and Jay accidentally used her voice for the sound of their monster) and all she did was leave Manny’s script out for Jay to find. However [=DeDe=]'s actions come across as genuine emotional abuse. She also became friends with Cam specifically so she can manipulate Mitchell's decisions.

* HollywoodHomely: [[IAmNotPretty Alex refers to herself as less pretty than Haley]], and is invariably treated as the uglier one of the two. Even the thick glasses and conservative clothing Alex wears aren't going to fool anyone into thinking she's ugly though. This does get subverted [[ShesAllGrownUp later in the series]] as quite a few boys are shown to be interested in her.
** Claire is often treated as less beautiful than Gloria. Granted, you can't blame anyone for feeling like they don't stand out compared to Gloria, made extra weird for Claire personally since it's technically her stepmother. The show also has several points where men (and [[LesYay at least one woman]]) are obviously are attracted to Claire, it's usually specifically in comparison to Gloria that she gets ignored.

* AcceptableEthnicTargets: Colombians get an interesting treatment. On one hand, Gloria is one of the most sympathetic and positively-portrayed characters on the show. On the other, all Colombians know how to spot a fake crime scene and smuggle illegal goods onto an airplane. Gloria lampshades this by saying "Because, in Colombia, we trip over goats and we kill people in the street. Do you know how offensive that is? Like we're Peruvians!"

* HollywoodHomely: [[IAmNotPretty Alex refers to herself as less pretty than Haley]], and is invariably treated as the uglier one of the two. She's really not any uglier than her sister. And then the [[ShesAllGrownUp actress hit puberty...]]
** Claire is often treated as less beautiful than Gloria. Have they even seen how ''incredibly'' stunning Julie is?
* InformedWrongness: In "Fight or Flight," Manny is being bullied at his cooking class by a guy who punched him in the groin hard enough to make him drop to the floor in pain. Jay teaches him to throw a punch so he can defend himself. The next time he goes to class, the bully comes up behind him and menacingly says, "Hey Delgado, you want a piece of this?" Manny turns and punches him in the face, after which it is revealed that the guy was offering him a piece of apple crumble as a way of apologizing for his earlier behavior, and that he was acting out because his parents were divorcing. Manny is horrified at what he did, and even Jay tries to eschew responsibility when he finds out what was going on, but it's pretty hard to sympathize with the bully. He says he felt bad about "teasing" Manny, but that's not what happened; he ''assaulted'' Manny in a pretty humiliating fashion. Maybe Manny shouldn't have been quite so fast to throw a punch, but the other boy was certainly old enough to know that violence has consequences.

** Alex was meant to come across as the [[OnlySaneMan Only Sane Woman]] in her family whose academic achievement isn't appreciated. However, her dismissive treatment of anyone who isn't as intelligent as she is (that many, many times crosses into [[BullyingTheDisabled ableism]] with regards to [[AmbiguousDisorder Luke]] and [[RichBitch elitism]] with her belief that people are only worthy of respect if they have a college degree) makes it very hard to sympathise with her. The fact that she continues to behave in this manner well into her twenties and never faces consequences for it does not help.

*** This came a head in the episode "Mother". The episode's Aesop is supposed to be how hard and thankless it is to be a mother, yet [=DeDe=] comes off as a KarmaHoudini for backpacking on Gloria's legitimate grievances and guilt-tripping Claire, who she involves in a RightBehindMe. The problem was that Gloria had a legitimate reason to be angry (Manny and Jay accidentally used her voice for the sound of their monster) and all she did was leave Manny’s script out for Jay to find. However [=DeDe=]’s actions come across as genuine emotional abuse. She also became friends with Cam specifically so she can manipulate Mitchell's decisions.

* IdiotPlot: "Three Turkeys" is entirely dependent on everyone in the family apparently not having a sense of smell, making them unable to tell a freshly cooked turkey is nearby, nor a sense of hearing, since they couldn't hear Jay and Gloria (in high heels!) dashing up and down the stairs dragging around a pair of rolling suitcases.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: The show has a lot of fans who are younger children, when it's not actually for them. It doesn't help that a few of the actors would later have roles in Disney projects such as ''WesternAnimation/SofiaTheFirst'' and ''WesternAnimation/FindingDory''. While the show is relatively tame compared to most network sitcoms and there are a few kid-friendly episodes, it's certainly not ''Seires/FullHouse'', either. There is even a line of dolls from the show that is stated as being for ages 3 and up, though they are clearly meant to be collectors' items for adults.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: The show has a lot of fans who are younger children, when it's not actually for them. It doesn't help that a few of the actors would later have roles in Disney projects such as Sofia the First and Finding Dory. While the show is relatively tame compared to most network sitcoms and there are a few kid-friendly episodes, it's certainly not Full House, either. There is even a line of dolls from the show that is stated as being for ages 3 and up, though they are clearly meant to be collectors' items for adults.

* SeasonalRot: Fans believe that the show declined in season 7, when Joe became a speaking character who became a typical verbose sitcom kid rather than an interesting child character like his predecessors, when the original child characters became older, and the show became more and more reliant on farcical stories as opposed to slower-paced, more realistic ones, guest stars, and location episodes. Season 11, the final season, which [[FranchiseZombie wasn't supposed to happen]] was a particular example of this because instead of focusing on Haley's life as a new mother and Phil and Claire's new role as grandparents, it focused more on Manny's love life with the universally hated [[TheScrappy Sherry]] and featured widely disliked plots such as Claire leaving her family business.

* FunnyAneurysmMoment: The fourth-season episode "Arrested" has a brief scene almost near the end when Haley returns to her room after being expelled from college six weeks into her freshman year. Alex sweetly tells her how happy she is that Haley's home again, a SugarWiki/{{Heartwarming Moment|s}} that doesn't last as they almost immediately start feuding again. Within a week of that episode airing, it was disclosed that Ariel Winter, who plays Alex, had been removed from her mother's custody due to emotional and physical abuse and was now living with... her own older sister.
** The very next episode, "Mistery Date," had a scene where Alex, after washing out of a Brain Bowl-type event unusually early, accuses her mother of trying to live through her. Again, a little hard to watch given what was really going on in the actress's life.
** Sarah's (then) real life boyfriend Matt Prokip played a guy trying to compete with Dylan to become Haley's new boyfriend (at the insistence of Claire) in the Disneyland episode. In September 2014 it was later revealed that Sarah and Matt broke up and that Sarah had filed a restraining order against Matt due to an extremely abusive relationship. Sarah had also asked Creator/JulieBowen to intervene and provide protection and shelter to her due to the abusive circumstances of the relationship.
** The jokes about Gloria's accent and inability to find the right words in English get less funny after her [[EloquentInMyNativeTongue "do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?"]] speech.

* AcceptableTargets:
** Colombians get an interesting treatment. On one hand, Gloria is one of the most sympathetic and positively-portrayed characters on the show. On the other, all Colombians know how to spot a fake crime scene and smuggle illegal goods onto an airplane. Gloria lampshades this by saying "Because, in Colombia, we trip over goats and we kill people in the street. Do you know how offensive that is? Like we're Peruvians!"
** Subverted in a later episode where Gloria admits that she exaggerates a lot of the time for entertainment.

* SpotlightStealingSquad: Due to Adam Devine's performance, Andy steals every scene he's in and is one of the most acclaimed recurring characters in recent history. His rare ability to have chemistry with the ''entire'' cast and his three-dimensional portrayal has many asking him to become a main character.

* TheScrappy:
** Haley was this in the earlier seasons, due to being a BrainlessBeauty and a BrattyTeenageDaughter with little else going for her. This quickly faded as the later seasons deconstructed these tropes and allowed Haley to grow and mature into a better person.
** Manny became disliked in later seasons, as his character's personality went from being cute and funny as a child, to coming off as creepy, annoying, and unrealistic as he became older. It doesn't help that his actor's delivery often leaves a lot to be desired.
** Alex is also hated for her elitist intellectual snobbery and for the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, she doesn't have much to show for her intelligence outside of academic achievement. But unlike Haley, she undergoes little to no CharacterDevelopment and rarely, if ever, suffers consequences for her actions.
** Dylan was somewhat liked when first introduced, but after his shtick of him being literally the dumbest person on the show, that includes Haley and Luke, became his only character trait, got old fast. Even worse is that Haley ended up with him as her husband and the father of her children, which ultimately felt like it was undoing her entire series worth of character development, believing she had just reverted to the shallow, dimwitted, immature teen she was in the beginning of the series. This is especially a swat in the face of the beloved and well developed love story between her and fan favorite Andy, whom many still agree she should have ended up with all along.
** Andy himself. His 'aw shucks' attitude and somewhat inflated view of himself and his relationship with his girlfriend Beth (who really isn't that into him which causes a lot of the relationship drama for him and Haley). In a sitcom with a fairly realistic cast, he feels like he's from another show.
** The Lafontaines (the Dunphys' obnoxious redneck neighbors) were massively disliked due to their constant raunchy humor that didn't mesh too well with the series' tone, and so were written out after only four episodes.
** Joe Pritchett wasn't exactly embraced by fans as he got older, mostly because of his CuteButCacophonic voice, and because his humorous moments often fall flat in contrast to his other family members.

** The gay Cameron played by a straight actor sometimes has him called this. The same occurs with the heavily accented Gloria.

* ActorInspiredElement:
** In several episodes Cameron dresses up as his clown alter-ego 'Fizbo'; Eric Stonestreet wanted to be a clown as a child and created Fizbo himself, even performing at birthday parties by the time he was 11.
** Julie Bowen was pregnant during the pilot, hiding it by holding a hamper in front of her belly during most of the episode. In the seventh episode of season 11 Claire sees Gloria walking with a hamper and asks immediately if she is hiding a pregnancy.