History YMMV / TheVampireDiaries

* RootingForTheEmpire: Some people root for BigBad Klaus and TheDragon Elijah. This is partly because the show runs on ProtagonistCenteredMorality to the point where the supposedly "good" characters are sometimes little better than the villains, often leaving the audience to simply side with whichever character entertains them the most. Moreover, antagonists such as Klaus and Katherine, despite being genuinely villainous, are given FreudianExcuses and frequent enough PetTheDog moments for the audience to sympathize with them to some extent.

* TookTheBadFilmSeriously: Most of the cast, but especially Creator/NinaDobrev and Creator/PaulWesley. Even people who don't like the show have commented on how good their acting has gotten, especially Dobrev as both Elena and Katherine.

** There is a fandom for Kol Mikaelson and April Young despite the two having never met. Kol also gets this with Anna, but it's at least possible that those two crossed paths considering their ages. It is also popular Fanon that she is from his bloodline or was sired by him, even though this is canonically false.

** Stefan is perhaps the most egregious example of this DawsonCasting-induced common problem with immortal characters in long-running shows: he's supposedly frozen at 17, but [[DawsonCasting his actor was 10 years older than that in Season 1]] and even with the use of makeup and effects to age him down, he is very clearly older than 17. By the later seasons, he visibly has wrinkles and it is a bit laughable that the audience is meant to think he is a teenager.

* QuestionableCasting: The casting of Creator/MiaKirshner as Isobel is strange considering she and Nina Dobrev look nothing alike. Elena looks like more like her adoptive mother than her biological one, though this is justified by the fact that Elena is a doppelgänger, and therefore magically inclined to look the way that she does.

** A lot of people seem to think Pearl and Anna are members of Kol's bloodline despite nothing in the show to support this.

%%* MindGameShip: Katherine tries to have one with Stefan.

* ShipsThatPassInTheNight: There is a fandom for Kol Mikaelson and April Young despite the two having never met. Kol also gets this with Anna, but it's at least possible that those two crossed paths considering their ages. (And Kol may have even turned her)

** In Season 6, Elena's sleeping curse is specifically set up by Kai to instantly kill both Bonnie and Elena if they so much as think about messing with it. Come the finale and Bonnie breaks it, off-screen with no more explanation than "I did it!"

* EvilIsSexy:
** ... and Damon again.
** ''Katherine''. An especially good example since she's played by the same actress as Elena-- but she's still sexier.
** ''Elijah''.
** ''Klaus''. Just ask Stefan.
** ''Rebekah''. Oh God Rebekah...
** ''Kol''. Now relax darling.
** ''Ripper!Stefan''. He also qualifies.
** ''Silas''.
** ''Kai''. He definitely qualifies.

* IronWoobie: Elena, Caroline, Rebekah because of being vampires.

** Katherine has this with every female in sight.

* In Season 6, Elena's sleeping curse is specifically set up by Kai to instantly kill both Bonnie and Elena if they so much as think about messing with it. Come the finale and Bonnie breaks it, off-screen with no more explanation than "I did it!"

* WhatTheHellCastingAgency: The casting of Creator/MiaKirshner as Isobel is strange considering she and Nina Dobrev look nothing alike. Elena looks like more like her adoptive mother than her biological one, though this is justified by the fact that Elena is a doppelgänger, and therefore magically inclined to look the way that she does.

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment:
** Klaus's Bulgarian accent when he first possesses Alaric. It disappears by the next scene that he's in and no one mentions it again.
** Stefan jumped off the roof of the boarding house in the pilot. Yes, it was meant to show his vampire powers, but it just seems random .

* DesignatedHero: The entire Mystic Falls team enters this because of their tendency to cause destruction and suffering to innocent people all the time if it's to help each other, without any concern for the carnage left in their wake. Example: dooming all supernaturals who have died for the past 2000 years to being trapped (possibly forever) on the other side to suffer just because they weren't willing to let Bonnie pass on.

* SeasonalRot: Season 5 is hitting this big time. Katherine's death, the zigzagging plotlines, an overall unlikable Damon, and the show focusing way too much time on the Delena back and forth rather than the actual plot of the season has resulted in plummeting ratings- with 5x21 and 5x22 hitting all time lows for the entire show during season five. Some have gone so far as to say the show's spin-off ''Series/TheOriginals'', which had its first season alongside this one, is now the far superior show. The fanbase is divided over whether or not season 6 is any better, but seasons 7 and 8 are almost universally agreed to be the worst.

* CreatorsPet: Hayley, a character despised by the fans that is being carried over to the spinoff. Surprising though, said spinoff has [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap made her quite a bit more favorable to many of her haters]].

* AngstWhatAngst: Jeremy, after Vicki dies. Justified, since Elena asked Damon to make it so he wouldn't worry about her. However, at this point Jeremy stops angsting about any number of things, stops doing drugs, and becomes a good student. Elena confronts Damon about it. Damon just says he "[[LiteralGenie took away his suffering]]."
** Also all the vampire characters invoke this trope when they "turn off their humanity" as this is what Elena and Caroline did when Elena's brother died and Caroline's mother died because they didn't want to feel the pain of losing their loved one.

** [[OfficialCouple Beremy]] - Bonnie/Jeremy (also known as [[IncrediblyLamePun Boremy]])

** In the TV show, Stefan, who is in a mutually loving, trusting and respectful relationship with Elena, is often vilified in favor of his [[DracoInLeatherPants murdering rapist brother]], Damon. He gets it in the book fandom too, but Damon isn't nearly as bad in the books so it's not quite as mind-boggling. Stefan was even listed as having a MoralEventHorizon for threatening an extremely unpleasant and fan-hated character and telling him to get out of town. It comes off as a rather harsh judgment considering that when the FemmeFatale cut off the same character's fingers, taunted him and then stabbed him it was considered a KickTheSonOfABitch instead. Post-season 2 [[spoiler: the show has been kind of trying to make a point that Stefan isn't the white knight that they sort of built him up as in season 1 and to a degree in season 2. His behavior in season 3 is just downright despicable in his need to get revenge on Klaus, and his holier-than-thou attitude ends up derailing his relationship with Elena]]

* FandomSpecificPlot: The existance of a third usually female Salvatore to go along with Stefan and Damon. Sometimes it's their sister or an otherwise female descendant.

* PopularityPolynomial: The original four books were bestsellers back in the early 1990s, then faded into obscurity over time. After ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' was published in 2005 and gave the ParanormalRomance genre a massive boost in popularity, it resurrected interest in ''The Vampire Diaries'', resulting in the original four books being reissued in 2007, more books being written, and a TV adaptation being greenlit in 2009.