History YMMV / TheVampireDiaries

* CriticalResearchFailure: "Unpleasantville" features many songs from the 50s, and also "My Boyfriend's Back", which came out in 1962. Though, this may be InUniverse because it could have been the students' fault.

* 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 for books being reissued in 2007, more books being written, and a TV adaptation being greenlit in 2009.

* AdaptationDisplacement: At least on Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}; looking up ''The Vampire Diaries'' over there will bring up the TV show, with a link for the book series at the top of the page. Considering that the books were originally published nearly twenty years before the TV show started airing and had faded into obscurity until they were reissued in 2007, it's not that surprising newer fans would be more familiar with the show.

* RelationshipWritingFumble: Damon is in love with Elena, but some fans are convinced that he and Bonnie are into each other in later seasons. When they are stuck in the prison world, Bonnie and Damon form a deep bond, with Damon routinely making her breakfast and the two coming off like an old married couple, which even Kai calls them out on. Damon also gets annoyed at Kai flirting with Bonnie, which many saw as him being jealous. He also saves Bonnie from Kai, despite knowing that doing so would mean he wouldn't be able to see Elena again for a while, and spends a good portion of the following season trying to reconnect with her like a guy trying to win a girl back. Creator/IanSomerhalder and Creator/KatGraham's close friendship also leads to Damon and Bonnie having far more chemistry than Bonnie does with actual love interest Enzo.

* AbandonShipping: Caroline/Damon had a following and was briefly canon. Then his extreme physical and emotional abuse of her throughout their short-lived "relationship" made this a little awkward, to say the least. The two did eventually come to a truce, but many fans remain angry about the abuse and the fact that Damon never really faced any consequences for it. Needless to say, to still be shipping Caroline/Damon is pretty much unheard of and highly frowned upon.

* 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 Freudian excuses and frequent enough PetTheDog moments for the audience to sympathize with them to some extent.

* RootingForTheEmpire: Some people root for BigBad Klaus and TheDragon Elijah. This is partly because the show runs on Protagonist-CenteredMorality 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 Freudian excuses and frequent enough PetTheDog moments for the audience to sympathize with them to some extent.

* FoeYay:
** Kind of a given, being [[CainAndAbel rivals]], that Stefan and Damon would have some.
*** Elijah and Klaus have some as well, considering their rivalry and relationship almost parallels Stefan and Damon's.
** Damon and Elena have '''[[ShipTease a lot]]''' of it as well. Cranked up to 11 in "Miss Mystic Falls", and then even higher as of "Smells Like Team Spirit" (and season three in general). "Way to a vampire's heart" indeed
** Tyler and Jeremy. Why else would they randomly fight all the time, even after Vicki's out of the picture?
** Damon has FoeYay with everyone in sight.
** Katherine also has FoeYay with everyone, particularly Damon and Stefan.
** Klaus and Caroline may count (albeit completely one-sided). As of Season 4, the "one-sided" part is [[ShipTease debatable]]. [[spoiler:When they had sex and Caroline admitted her feelings ]]in 5x11 the "one-sided" part is no longer true
** Elena and Rebekah downright ooze it in "The Rager"
** Recently Kol and Elena have sparked a fandom.
** Ripper!Stefan and ''everyone''.
** Stefan and Rebekah have just as much as Stefan and Klaus.
** As of season five onwards, Stefan and Enzo.
** Kai and Bonnie.
** Enzo spends most of seasons six and seven with Matt, and seems to go out of his way to antagonize him. They even have a relatively pleasant lunch together in 6x09.
** Sybil's obsession with completely brainwashing Damon to the point of trying to replace Elena in his mind with herself is filled with subtext.
** Klaus probably takes the cake when it comes to having FoeYay with literally everyone. He particularly has a lot with Katherine, Stefan, and Elena.
** Rebekah and Caroline. Rebekah has NoSenseofPersonalSpace with Caroline and a lot of their early interactions come off as the former trying suspiciously hard to get the latter's attention by showing off and trying to make her jealous, though this could just be Rebekah's AlphaBitch streak trying to start girl drama.

** Damon and Elijah. So much FoeYay [[IncrediblyLamePun it hurts]].

** [[FoeYay Bamon]] - Bonnie/Damon

** [[FoeYay Klaroline]] - Klaus/Caroline

** [[FoeYay Katholine or Fierce]] - Katherine/Caroline
** [[FoeYay Kathlena, Katlena, Kelena]] - Katherine/Elena

** Both Salvatore brothers fall into this, but [[TheScrappy Elena]], the centre of the triangle, probably gets more hate than both of them.

* TheScrappy:
** Truth be told, everybody on TVD is TheScrappy at one point or another to a decent portion of TVD's fan base.
** Matt Donovan, the team human who rarely contributes to the plot, yet keeps receiving disproportionate amounts of screen time.
** Bonnie is one for a big segment of the fandom, due to her very judgmental nature and questionable methods, although she has some fans as well.
** Season 1 Caroline for her RomanticPlotTumor with Matt.
** Emily, Bonnie's ancestor who has all of Bonnie's annoying traits and none of her likable ones.
** Esther, an annoying hypocritical villain who's no better than her children and also a terrible mother.
** With Season 4, Elena definitely qualifies. The fanbase has all but completely turned on her when she helped kill Kol and, for all purposes, committed a mass vampire genocide. The way she broke things off with Stefan and got with Damon certainly didn't help (even if she was sired to him).
** Damon in parts of season four and almost all of season five. Many fans turned sour against Damon and found him to be extremely unlikable, especially after he became the main love interest for Elena. Some fans say that Damon became boring and dull since he became Elena's boyfriend. There's also the fact that he treated his brother Stefan poorly, especially regarding the whole Elena situation. Also, the fact that he did not look for Stefan over the summer or months that he was missing and did not seem to show too much concern over Stefan suffering from PTSD. Add onto the fact that after "Elena" had broken up with him, Damon resorted to killing Aaron, a friend of Elena's and resorting to hurting or torturing Elena's loved ones to get back at Elena, primarily Jeremy.
** Wes Maxfield, who is basically John Gilbert with none of his charm. It doesn't help that by all rights almost any of the main characters should be able to take him down with ease, yet the writers keep contriving situations so they won't.
** The Travelers of Season 5 are an entire scrappy species, especially since it was retconned that Katherine was one of them (which is when people really started hating her).
** Enzo has become this as of season 6. Enzo was originally a relatively well-liked and well-received character in season 5, so much that he even ended up being upgraded to a series regular for season 6. However, since Enzo has made it his mission to make Stefan's (a generally well-liked character and one of the main characters) life a living Hell, most of the fandom find him completely annoying and useless and are wishing for him to be killed off.

* MindGameShip: Katherine tries to have one with Stefan.

** April and Rebekah, to the point where Rebekah calls April "my sweet" and "darling"
** In Miss Mystic Falls since Matt couldn't get off [[LesYay Caroline decided to bring Bonnie to practice dancing with her.]]
** I was basically waiting for Damon and Enzo to share a passionate kiss since they found each other again. Even though he spent much of the second half of S6 with Matt, everything he was doing for Stefan's comeuppance on Damon's behalf.
** Katherine has LesYay with every female in sight.
** [[LesYay Lexi and Elena]].

* LoveToHate: Klaus and John.

** Damon and Elena. By a lot. If you go by fanfiction.net results alone, it's a ratio of about 9.5 to 1. Although as of season four onwards and especially season five, their popularity has dwindled somewhat due to the [[ShippingBedDeath relationship becoming stale]].
** Stefan and Katherine (although this is mainly the Damon/Elena shippers wanting to get Stefan out of the way).
** Stefan and Caroline thanks to their ShipTease in early seasons, although there's a healthy fandom for their [[PlatonicLifePartners platonic friendship.]] When they actually get together in later seasons, their relationship becomes...[[BrokenBase controversial with fans]], to say the least.
** Stefan and Klaus was very popular amongst the fandom during season three. Some fans actually wanted Stefan to leave Mystic Falls and be with Klaus in New Orleans. Though by the end of the season, it was quickly overshadowed by Klaus/Caroline..
** Klaus/Caroline is still the most popular Caroline ship.
** Anna/Jeremy is still more popular than Bonnie/Jeremy despite the fact that Anna is dead. It was so popular it got revisited in Season 3.
** As of season six, Damon/Bonnie (a.k.a. Bamon) has become a fan favorite amongst the audience and a very popular ship. There are many fans and viewers wishing that Damon and Bonnie will become romantically involved. Hell, even some Delena fans have jumped ship and are hopping on the Bamon ship. Quite a few notice that there is strong and undeniable chemistry between Creator/IanSomerhalder and Creator/KatGraham (probably because Ian and Kat are extremely close offscreen) as well as between their characters. Numerous fans are coming out and openly shipping Bamon and even the media seems to be crazy about the potential couple or pairing.

* AdaptationDisplacement: At least on Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}; [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampire_Diaries looking up]] ''The Vampire Diaries'' over there will bring up the TV show, with a link for the book series at the top of the page. Considering that the books were originally published nearly twenty years before the TV show started airing and had faded into obscurity until they were reissued in 2007, it's not that surprising newer fans would be more familiar with the show.

* AdaptationDisplacement: At least on Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}; [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampire_Diaries looking up]] ''The Vampire Diaries'' over there will bring up the TV show, with a link for the book series at the top of the page.

** Caroline. In Fanfiction, she has been paired with Klaus, Stefan, Jeremy, (whose actor she dated in real life), Elena, Katherine, Rebekah, Kol, even complete CrackPairing s like Alaric ([[HilariousInHindsight which briefly became canon]]), Mason, Jenna, and Vicki

** Caroline. In Fanfiction, she has been paired with Stefan, Jeremy, (whose actor she dated in real life), Elena, Katherine, Rebekah, Kol, even complete CrackPairing s like Alaric ([[HilariousInHindsight which briefly became canon]]), Mason, Jenna, and Vicki
** Stefan's biggest ship was with Elena, but it is with Caroline. He is also shipped with other characters, including Katherine, Damon, Bonnie, Klaus, Elijah, Rebekah, etc.
** Bonnie is shipped with everyone on the show, both male and female characters. In terms of male characters, she is shipped with Damon, Stefan, Jeremy, Klaus, Elijah, Kol, Kai, Enzo, Matt etc. She is also shipped with the female characters too such as Elena, Caroline, Katherine.

* MagnificentBastard: [[Characters/TheVampireDiariesSilas Silas]], an ancient Traveler and the first immortal, manipulates Professor Shane into freeing him from his tomb. Desiring to destroy the Other Side so he can [[TogetherInDeath be reunited with his mortal love in death]], Silas tricks Bonnie and Caroline into killing twelve witches to complete the expression triangle, uses his psychic power to [[PlayingSick convince Klaus he is dying]] to force him to find the cure, and tricks Bonnie into thinking he has shown her his true face. Eventually revealing himself to his doppelganger, Stefan, Silas traps Stefan at the bottom of a lake. Silas spends the next three months building his strength before compelling Mystic Falls to find Katherine for him so he can consume the cure from her blood. When Qetsiyah finds a way to suppress his psychic powers, Silas [[FightOffTheKryptonite finds a way to turn them back on]] by temporarily killing Stefan to get information on where the anchor to the Other Side is. Finding out that his love Amara is the anchor, Silas decides to kill her so they can be together in death and returns after death to teach Bonnie and Liv a spell to bring people back from the Other Side as it's being destroyed.

* CompleteMonster: See [[Monster/TheVampireDiaries here]].

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%%Bring Magnificent Bastard examples to this thread before adding any: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=15255322860A44444400&page=1. Check the FAQ first to see what would qualify characters for the trope, and if there has been previous discussion on the work.
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* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: As the series progresses, it gets increasingly dark and gloomy, and characters either die or change for the worse. Thus this creeps in.

*** Although, to be honest, Caroline is far more judgmental and meddles far more often, especially in later seasons. Bonnie was just one of the few characters who had a healthy perspective on both human and supernatural life early 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.

* ActorShipping: Creator/IanSomerhalder and Creator/NinaDobrev. Though it has died down considerably after they broke up- and ''especially'' after some disparaging things Ian said about Delena and Nina's potential return to the show.

* NeverLiveItDown: Bonnie's attitude for the first few episodes of season 2 is one of the reasons that people still hate her character.