History YMMV / PlagueInc

*** Many Mega-Brutal strategies favor Necrosis, since it allows the deceased to act as a transmission vector, allowing you to start killing much sooner than you normally would (the usual strategy of "Stay under the radar until everyone's infected, then hit the kill switch" tends to fail in Mega-Brutal due to random check-ups exposing your disease, prompting accelerated cure research, so time is of the essence). The tree that leads to it--Rash, Sweating, Skin Lesions--also gives a decent amount of Severity and Infectivity.

*** A good second-pick is Russia - plenty of people to infect before it becomes noticeable, gives some useful cold resistance, and they're one of the few ports that reliably visit Greenland.

*** The genes to keep costs from increasing (Sympto, Patho and Trans-Stasis) is often favored. Sympto-Stasis is often preferred since there's a ton of symptoms to choose and is needed to infect and kill people. Combining these genes with the aforementioned Genetic Mimic helps to counter the drawback on making the plague easier to cure.

** The Water, Air and Extreme Bioaerosol transmissions are pretty much the only ones anyone ever evolve barring strange situations or plagues that don't really have them, partly because they boost international transmission (land border transmission more or less happens on its own), the Blood transmissions aren't worth it, and the Zoonotic set is too expensive.

* HilariousInHindsight: Just one year after the game was banned in China, a [=YouTuber=] named [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKEzqCvqYXv7ea548x07KPQ "Twatical"]] posted an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66nOvmQWR7w mock video]] about Chinese president UsefulNotes/XiJinping playing the game.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids: A game about wiping out the human race with all sorts of horrific plagues and viruses got a mere ''EveryoneTenAndUpRating''. This might be because we never actually ''see'' the gory consequences of giving the population Necrosis and Total Organ Failure.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMWcUPQQ4DQ Flatten The Curve]], the theme for playing Cure Mode in ''Evolved''. It fits incredibly well as an opposing theme, with a mix of somber heroism and frantic desperation that emphasizes your struggle to contain ThePlague before it's too late.

Heartwarming/PlagueInc

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments:
** [[EsotericHappyEnding Brainwashing the world aside]], the fact that the Neurax Worm wants to help humanity in the "Santa's Little Helper" scenario by bringing joy and happiness back into the world still counts for something. [[EvenEvilHasStandards Even mind-controlling parasites think banning the world from fun is a little too much]].
** The fact that, by the time it's over, [[TheApocalypseBringsOutTheBestInPeople every country that's able to comes together to work on the cure to save humanity]].
** One of the possible outcomes in the Simian Flu scenario is that you end the game [[HappyEnding with both humans and intelligent apes coexisting together]]. To do that, you must not let apes attack humans, devolve any serious and lethal symptoms (so that people won't turn on the apes) and leave humanity alone while they work on a cure. Some of the optional things you can do is to evolve Neuro-Enhancement 1 and 2 to speed up cure research and evolve stealth traits so that humans won't kill the apes in the process. In a way, you made the disease actually benefit both apes and humans instead of hurting them. It still counts as a loss once the cure is complete, but it earns you "The Future is Bright" achievement.
** The Ultimate Board Game Scenario is a breather. You are tasked to make your own board game and make it a success. For once, you are not killing people in a plague, but rather make a smash hit board game and unleash your creativity. Best of all, you will always get three biohazards if you succeed in the scenario.
*** If you don’t know what you’re doing, however, the board game scenario may be [[ThatOneLevel one of the most difficult scenarios in the entire game]].
** Ndemic Creations [[https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/news/175-plague-inc-gives-a-quarter-of-a-million-dollars-to-fight-covid-19 announced]] that on top of donating a quarter of a million dollars for [=COVID-19=] research, they are making a new game mode that allows players to save the world from a deadly outbreak, aiming to release it right after the vaccine is made. It's oddly a sweet thought that you now have the option to be on humanity's side. The mode was eventually released on mobile devices in November, and will stay free until the situation with [=COVID-19=] stabilizes.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: With some diseases, you have to wonder: is everything you make naturally occurring? Or was it engineered? Some players have a tendency to have a headcanon in which the virus they made was made by a country as a form of population control GoneHorriblyRight.

** The Water, Air and Extreme Bioaerosol transmissions are pretty much the only ones anyone ever evolves barring strange situations or plagues that don't really have them, partly because they boost international transmission (land border transmission more or less happens on its own), the Blood transmissions aren't worth it, and the Zoonotic set is too expensive.

*** In responce to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ndemic Games released a "Cure Mode" DLC where you play as an organization trying to stop the plague. Lockdowns are indeed at your disposal, but they come with an increased risk of Non-Compliance where people will just decide to ignore that plan and go about their life, and this costs you Authority. If your Authority drops to zero, you lose, presumably because there's no-one to stop the plague from destroying humanity now, all because people didn't want to listen and do what was right.

* HilariousInHindsight: Just one year after the game was banned in China, an YouTuber named [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKEzqCvqYXv7ea548x07KPQ "Twatical"]] posted an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66nOvmQWR7w mock video]] about Chinese president UsefulNotes/XiJinping playing the game.

** Scenarios giving you too much trouble? All hail the Neurax Worm. It laughs in the faces of most Scenarios due to the Trojan Plane mechanics bypassing travel restrictions, giving an instant win condition or at worst a significant one symptom advantage (Transcendence), giving out insane amounts of DNA, and infection rate. And the disease traits activated before a game (particularly the one which allows symptoms to not increase in cost) only make it easier to win. Even on ''[[HarderThanHard Mega-Brutal]]'', it's at worst a minor challenge if you play your cards right.

*** In responce to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ndemic Games released a "Cure Mode" DLC where you play as an organization trying to stop the plague. Lockdowns are indeed at your disposal, but they come with an increased risk of Non-Compliance where people will just decide to ignore that plan and go about their life, and this costs you Authority. If your Authority drops to zero, you lose, presumably because there's no-one to stop the plague from destroying humanity now, all because people didn't want to listen and do what was right. Keep this in mind next time you see someone shopping without a mask on.

** Also from Cure Mode, the Bio Weapon makes the Prion look like the Bacteria on Casual. The Bio Weapon's gimmick is that it gets more infectious and more lethal the more countries it infects, resulting in an exponential growth curve as the plague easily outpaces you. On the higher difficulty settings, it's so fast that a vaccine is pointless; you're better off trying to contain it to a single continent with the "Extreme Measures" ability and letting it die out, and if it starts anywhere but South America or ''maybe'' Africa[[note]]For some reason, [[GuideDangIt Saudi Arabia counts as having a land border with Africa despite being separated by water]], so don't think you can block off Egypt and call it a day.[[/note]], you're better off restarting. Even that is heavily luck-based; not only do you have a ''very'' narrow window of time to get the lockdown rolling, all those deaths with little attempt at slowing the spread is gonna tank your authority hard and fast, and fewer countries infected means fewer resources to counter this.

** The Shadow Plague, in combining elements from the previous three unique plagues, also seems to have adopted the Necroa Virus's above difficulty spike. Vampires are your main vector for spreading the plague. However, they drop like flies when fighting against Templar Forts if not sufficiently upgraded, and it is extremely expensive to create a new one. And once the actual plague starts, WHO labs that work extra-fast on the cure can pop up nearly anywhere, forcing you to get over there before they rush the cure; even if you've wiped out every Templar fortress, they can end you indirectly. This means that keeping your starting vampire alive for most of, if not the entire game, is a must.

** In Cure mode, the Prion is ''rough''. [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Unlike when you're playing it]], it is extremely contagious, typically infecting its entire starting continent before you can even find it, and the many hundreds of thousands that catch it before you can even know where to lockdown [[YouAreAlreadyDead are almost all already dead]]. This means you have very little time to act before people start dropping like flies and global panic ensues. While you do get access to special actions to reduce said panic, you nevertheless have very little margin of action to prevent a game over. [[FromBadToWorse If that wasn't bad enough]], the Prion starts with insanity, slowing down the cure and forcing you to take even more countermeasures against it.

* HarsherInHindsight:

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: ''Plague Inc.'' has a Chinese fanbase, hitting #1 best selling over there in 2014 and with a good number of Custom Scenarios that are Chinese. This became more prevalent [[ColbertBump during the COVID-19 pandemic]]. Well, at least until [[BannedInChina the game got banned there]].

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: ''Plague Inc.'' has a Chinese fanbase, hitting #1 best selling over there in 2014 and a good number of Custom Scenarios are Chinese. This became more prevalent [[ColbertBump during the COVID-19 pandemic]]. Well, at least until [[BannedInChina the game got banned there]].

** Total Organ Failure and Coma tends to be the go-to symptom when it comes time to kill everyone. Total Organ Failure is a very lethal symptom while Coma helps to slow down the cure. Best of all they're both connected to each other in the symptom tree, making it almost impossible to not pick both of them up.

** Ndemic Creations [[https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/news/175-plague-inc-gives-a-quarter-of-a-million-dollars-to-fight-covid-19 announced]] that on top of donating a quarter of a million dollars for [=COVID-19=] research, they are making a new game mode that allows players to save the world from a deadly outbreak, aiming to release it right after the vaccine is made. It's oddly a sweet thought that you now have the option to be on humanity's side.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids: A game about wiping out the human race with all sorts of horrific plagues and viruses got a mere ''EveryoneTenAndUpRating''.

* FunnyAneurysmMoment: Most players choose to stay under the radar until most of the population is infected, as even a single symptom results in almost immediate action. Once the Covid-19 outbreak hit and became public knowledge, some countries, world leaders and even parts of the population ([[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement not naming any names]]) have chosen to downplay or ignore the damage it's causing even as the number of infections and/or deaths keep rising, to the point where the paranoia the game's population shows over a single symptom seems almost ''optimistic''.

** Ndemic Creations [[https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/news/175-plague-inc-gives-a-quarter-of-a-million-dollars-to-fight-covid-19 announced]] that on top of donating a quarter of a million dollars for [=COVID-19=] research, they are making a new game mode that allows players to save the world from a deadly outbreak, aiming to release it right after the vaccine is made. It's oddly a sweet thought that you now have the option to be on humanities side.

** Ndemic Creations [[https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/news/175-plague-inc-gives-a-quarter-of-a-million-dollars-to-fight-covid-19 announced]] that on top of donating a quarter of a million dollars for [=COVID-19=] research, they are making a new game mode that allows players to save the world from a deadly outbreak. It's oddly a sweet thought that you now have the option to be on humanities side.

*** As the COVID-19 crisis has spread worldwide, there's been a seriously spooky parallel between the game and reality. Before, watching notices like a country banning gatherings, shutting down public buildings and services, and locking down borders go by meant your game was progressing. Seeing all of it play out in reality, however, is putting a whole new face on otherwise mundane game mechanics. [[ShownTheirWork It shows how much detail they put into the game on being as realistic as possible.]]