History YMMV / RainbowSix

* InferredHolocaust: By the end of the ''Vegas'' duology, an entire Rainbow team was killed, and at least several hundred civilians, police and military alike are murdered, blown up, gassed and so forth. If this happened in real life, it would be the single most horrific terrorist attack in human history, and ''especially'' with a chemical weapon utilized in the process, never mind the damage to the Las Vegas strip that would live on in infamy. In the [[CrapsackWorld old Clancyverse]], this is effectively a drop in the bucket, and ''Vegas 2'' ends on the triumphant note of the mastermind being killed rather than dwelling on what he'd caused, or on the fact that [[spoiler:Bishop trying to cover for Gabriel's screw-ups [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom caused this to happen in the first place]].]]

** The late game of ''Vegas 2'' ends up rife with this every time [[spoiler:Gabriel]] is given a spotlight. Villains in Tom Clancy works having psychos among them is nothing new; [[spoiler:Gabriel]] by comparison is a PsychopathicManchild that causes one of the worst terrorist attacks in history solely because [[spoiler:he was the team screw-up at Rainbow and [[NeverMyFault blames everyone else for his failures]] that denied him a promotion.]] Any moment the character takes the screen at this point, he's ''always'' a crazy, whiny nut job that is hard to take seriously by sounding like an angry teenager bitching at their parent than any sort of actual terrorist. Many people cite [[spoiler:Gabriel]] as ''the'' moment the IP effectively JumpedTheShark into ridiculousness.

** Male Bishop in ''Vegas 2'' sounds fairly normal for his character, and is genuinely distraught with events like [[spoiler:failing to stop the first chemical bomb]]. Female Bishop sounds more passively annoyed the entire game, taking some of the more emotional or shocked lines and coming off as a mix of SeenItAll and unrelenting KnightInSourArmor by comparison. Special highlight is to calling off the comms for Neville's ColdBloodedTorture; the male Bishop comes off as disturbed by listening to it, while the female Bishop comes off as having a bit of an attitude about it not being cut sooner.

* {{Narm}}: The badass theme song aside, ''Lockdown'' on consoles decided to actually put gratuitous metal music in combination with CG cutscenes that are rather cheesy, creating a MoodWhiplash of some pretty horrifying terrorist operations being excessively rife with trying way too hard to be DarkerAndEdgier yet filled with awkward attempts at humor and slow-motion explosions.

** Terrorist Hunt mode tries to save on memory in several games by not spawning all the terrorists in from the get-go. This sounds fine enough until you turn a corner and run headfirst into enemies that had no idea you were there despite a loud gunfight a room over, or are trying to secure a chokepoint only for an enemy to come in from behind -- even in rare one-way paths that can't be flanked -- because the game just decided spawning a terrorist or several in the worst possible positions. ''This'' is what will end most runs for players.

* ContestedSequel: Probably one of the most infamous cases in the Tom Clancy lineup. While the early games in the series are held as masterpieces of the tactical shooter sub-genre, ''Rainbow Six 3'' on the {{Platform/Xbox}} was a critical darling at the time despite streamlining the gameplay significantly for console players, and this led to ''Lockdown'' being designed from the ground up as a linear corridor shooter where you just tell squadmates to open or breach doors and take cover. Every game since then has been held in some kind of contempt or another as the series dove right off into the deep end of being more "tacticool" military shooters of an elite squad taking on small armies singlehandedly, even with quick deaths still around every corner, while newer fans that came in on these later games tend to prefer this versus the rather TrialAndErrorGameplay nature of the first titles in the series. And then ''VideoGame/RainbowSixSiege'' split everyone up in its own right and ''Patriot'' was cancelled, leaving the only modern avenue of ''Rainbow Six'' entirely to a multiplayer-focused tactical hero shooter title.

* ContestedSequel: Probably one of the most infamous cases in the Tom Clancy lineup. While the early games in the series are held as masterpieces of the tactical shooter sub-genre, ''Rainbow Six 3'' on the Platform/Xbox was a critical darling at the time despite streamlining the gameplay significantly for console players, and this led to ''Lockdown'' being designed from the ground up as a linear corridor shooter where you just tell squadmates to open or breach doors and take cover. Every game since then has been held in some kind of contempt or another as the series dove right off into the deep end of being more "tacticool" military shooters of an elite squad taking on small armies singlehandedly, even with quick deaths still around every corner, while newer fans that came in on these later games tend to prefer this versus the rather TrialAndErrorGameplay nature of the first titles in the series. And then ''VideoGame/RainbowSixSiege'' split everyone up in its own right and ''Patriot'' was cancelled, leaving the only modern avenue of ''Rainbow Six'' entirely to a multiplayer-focused tactical hero shooter title.

* ValuesDissonance: With today's world being completely aware about climate change and environmental degradation, and their active attempts to fix it through environmentally friendly means (such as solar panels, wind turbines, and energy/hybrid vehicles) -- Tom Clancy's anti-environmentalist views, which on full display here, becomes a grim reminder on how there are folks who either pretend that climate change doesn't exist or don't care about the damage done on the environment (especially with how the characters, who aren't environmentalists, being downright unsympathetic towards environmental groups and ''never seem'' to ever bother listening to their side).

* ValuesDissonance: With today's world being completely aware about climate change and environmental degradation, and their active attempts to fix it through environmentally friendly means (such as solar panels, wind turbines, and energy/hybrid vehicles) -- Tom Clancy's anti-environmentalist views, which on full display here, becomes a grim reminder on how there are folks who doesn't care about the damage done on the environment (especially with how he'll ''never'' portray a single environmentalist in a sympathetic light).

* ScrappyMechanic: For some reason, the ''Vegas'' games don't have subtitles, which is very frustrating because the large bulk of the plot is delivered via exposition during gameplay-including in a heavy gunfight, and most characters either speak with thick accents or communicate through radio.

* WTHCastingAgency: As of 2018, it has been announced that Creator/MichaelBJordan has been cast as John Clark in ''Rainbow Six'' film adaptation, which has caused an uproar among fans, since John Clark is established as a white man in both the book and the game while Jordan is black. Fans have pointed that this not only goes against the original source material, but doesn't make sense in the context of the other books since Clark's physical appearance played a critical role in undercover operations in sensitive countries like Russia. Another point of criticism is that Jordan is simply too young for the role, being 31 at the time of the casting announcement while Clark is well into his 50s when he forms Rainbow.

** And, of course, the ''VideoGame/SWAT'' series, though few people realize this because the [[VideoGame/SWAT3 noticeably more popular third game]] in that series switched to ''Rainbow Six''-like first-person gameplay to [[FollowTheLeader follow its lead]].

** And, of course, the ''VideoGame/PoliceQuestSWAT'' series, though few people realize this because the [[VideoGame/SWAT3 noticeably more popular third game]] in that series switched to ''Rainbow Six''-like first-person gameplay to [[FollowTheLeader follow its lead]].