Line #31 YMMV/DarkReign


1	!! From the game
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3	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Much of the soundtrack, especially the Freedom Guard [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLMnO8u9ozw mission track]].
4	* DisappointingLastLevel: The final level is much harder than anything in the campaigns, mostly because it forces you to fight a war on two fronts.
5	* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: The sounds of heavy turrets firing, whether it be the distinctive booms of the Heavy Rail Tower or the indescribable sound of the Neutron Accelerator.
6	* ThatOneLevel: Level 5 in the first game, no matter whose side you were on. For the Freedom Guard, it was a [[HopelessBossFight Hopeless Level]] where you have to collect 30,000 credits while holding off wave after wave of devastating Imperium tanks. For the Imperium, you have to destroy the Freedom Guard base, while making sure the [[MacGuffin Water Extraction Compound]], [[SarcasmMode sensibly]] located inside the Freedom Guard base, wasn't destroyed. Aside from being an infuriating mission on its own, it also signifies a major upswing in difficulty for the rest of the game.
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8	!!From the Comic Book
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10	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: The American public's unfettered trust in Osborn. Was it an inevitable, if unfortunate, end result of the prior Skrull invasion and a severe lack of communication between them and the superhero community, or are they nothing more than [[UngratefulBastard ungrateful]] [[TooDumbToLive sheep]] who don't deserve the protection of the real heroes?
11	* ArcFatigue: ''Every'' comic in 2009 was related to this storyline in some fashion.
12	* CompleteMonster: [[ForTheEvulz Zodiac]] is a [[CardCarryingVillain knowingly evil lover of chaos and wickedness]] who makes it his life's mission to cause as much random destruction in life as possible. Appearing in ''Dark Reign: Zodiac'', Zodiac tortures over a hundred people to death to send a message to ComicBook/NormanOsborn, then viciously beats the [[Characters/FantasticFourTheFantasticFour Human Torch]] to near death before bombing the hospital he is transported to, killing almost everyone inside. Later unleashing a giant robot onto a city that kills hundreds more, Zodiac uses the chaos to pull off even more murderous schemes. Decorating his hideout in severed heads and manipulating his partners into servitude even while he endangers their lives with zero concern, Zodiac ends up using the teen supervillain gang the Young Masters to declare war on the old guard of supervillains, leading to terrorist attacks across the world--notably [[Characters/MarvelComicsDoctorDoom Latveria]]--that end countless lives. Believing himself to be a harbinger of a new, better evil to plague the world, Zodiac plans to change the entire game of heroes and villains, downright gleeful over the lives that will be lost.
13	* FanNickname: Lyra is called ''Thulkdra'' which was lampshaded when they put this nickname on one of her mini's variant covers. Molecule Man's team (despite being a [[spoiler: RedHerring]]) is called "The League Of Ultimate Evil [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg And Enchantress]]". Bullseye in Hawkeye's costume is called "Bullhawk". Daken earned himself the name Trollverine.
14	* LikeYouWouldReallyDoIt: Let's face it, no matter how Matt Fraction tried to draw out the drama, ''nobody'' reading the ComicBook/IronMan comic actually believed that the whole long-term suicide concept would end in death, even those who hadn't seen the future solicits for the book. Because of this trope, the video message in issue twenty ended up re-igniting some backlash over ComicBook/IronMan's characterization, as many readers saw Tony's noting that his life was in the others' hands as viciously manipulative, since he knew heroic nature would keep them from just letting him die, while others saw it as a ''very'' badly handled attempt at contrition.
15	* MoralEventHorizon: Sentry (or maybe [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Void]], or even both)'s crossed it by [[spoiler:killing Ares]].
16	* NightmareFuel: Sentry/The Void in ''Siege''. [[spoiler:Not only his newly revealed secrets are damn scary, but also the way he kills Ares by tearing him apart, without a single word or any emotion can make you scream like hell]].
17	** In ''Dark Wolverine'', Bob has one scary scene, when Daken provokes Venom to fight with him. Sentry out of the blue says "stop" and ''everybody'' in the room ceases to move and looks at him scared.
18	** ''Siege'' #3: [[spoiler:Sentry vs Asgard, more literal than expected. Also, the final page, with the scorpion/void/storm/HELL-thing! ]]
19	** Daken's battle with ComicBook/ThePunisher would practically be grounds for a MookHorrorShow if shown through Frank's eyes (and, y'know, if Frank wasn't too psychotic to feel fear). He shrugs off every last bullet and grenade that Frank throws at him, then messily shreds him into pieces -- and he does this because he wants to, he could have killed the Punisher a lot quicker if he'd wanted to.
20	* OnlyTheAuthorCanSaveThemNow: With this arc, the Marvel universe was placed in such an uncertain and almost utterly hopeless spot that more than a fair number of readers were left with this sentiment.
21	* RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap:
22	** Daken was TheScrappy to some, but this era garners him some actual fans.
23	** ComicBook/IronMan was rescued for many people who didn't like him after ''ComicBook/CivilWar2006'', when he deleted the entire superhero database except himself from Norman's systems.
24	* {{Squick}}: There are a lot of icky match-ups (Goblin/Menace, most of Daken's relationships...), but the big one right now is Hank/Jocasta. Readers who know anything about Jocasta's background tend to gag profusely whenever they do anything romantic towards each other, and the creepiness has been pointed out more than once by other characters as well.
25	* TooBleakStoppedCaring: Coming off the heels of two stories[[note]]''ComicBook/CivilWar2006'' and ''ComicBook/SecretInvasion''[[/note]] which already saw the heroes face heavy losses, ''Dark Reign'' can best be described as "proverbial rock bottom incarnate". Osborn almost always seems to be one step ahead of his opposers, who themselves are much too divided to do anything to effectively challenge him, the public's trust in Osborn and the Dark Avengers reaches unprecedented levels of HorribleJudgeOfCharacter, and the above-mentioned ArcFatigue can make the whole thing such a slog that many readers were left wishing that the real heroes would bury whatever hatchets they had and do ''something'' already. Things fortunately began to look up with Steve Rogers' resurrection, and ''Siege'' definitively put an end to this before it could escalate further.
26	* UnexpectedCharacter: No one saw Nate Grey, who'd last been seen 8 years ago, to return.
27	* TheUntwist: After all the guessing about which new or forgotten character would turn out to be Norman's "secret weapon" against the Cabal, it turned out to be [[spoiler:the Sentry/Void]], which many readers had dismissed as too lazy or obvious.
28	* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic - In the last issue of "Siege", [[spoiler:Loki uses the power of the Norn Stones to power up the heroes. So, the god of imagination decides to favour the heroes over the mindless engine of destruction. [[ComicBook/HeroicAge2010 Hmmm]].]]
29	** [[spoiler:The Sentry and the Void. Sentry is supposed to be the "ultimate hero" while the Void is the "ultimate villain". Dark Reign began with the Sentry joining with the villains, the fall of the ultimate hero, and it ended with the Void's death, the defeat of the ultimate villain.]]

Context YMMV / DarkReign