* BaseBreakingCharacter: Fans are divided over whether Reaver (voiced by Creator/StephenFry) is a hilarious and awesome character or if he seriously needs to finally get some comeuppance for his bad deeds, particularly for making ''VideoGame/FableII'''s PlayerCharacter [[spoiler: give away his youth (if the player chooses to be good) and killing Barnum]].
%% * BrokenBase: The GenreShift undertaken by the series after ''Fable III''
* CompleteMonster: [[YMMV/FableI Jack of Blades]] & [[YMMV/FableIII The Crawler]]. See those pages for details.
* ContestedSequel: The original is generally the most well liked game of the series; the sequels tend to be very divisive for [[CuttingOffTheBranches cutting off just about every possible branch]]. Both have received a lot of flak for [[NoCanonForTheWicked canonically making the Hero of Oakvale]] LawfulGood. The Hero of Bowerstone was made canonically male and also LawfulGood by the third game, and novels continuing the story after the end of the third game also made the Hero of Brightwall canonically male ''and'' LawfulGood once again, which alienated more than a few fans who preferred playing as a woman and/or a not entirely good aligned Hero.[[invoked]]
* DesignatedHero: Played with in ''Fable II''. Since you're TheChosenOne, pretty much all of your "moral lapses" are forgiven, simply because it would be far worse to punish you and put you off your destiny. Same with ''III'', [[spoiler: if you are not the ruler of Albion when darkness incarnate hits, everyone loses.]]
* FirstInstallmentWins: The first game is generally considered the best one in the series, as although the second game is generally considered a better "game" to play, it began walking away from the premise of the series, while the first game, for its flaws, feels like a game where you shape a character and the world through your actions.
* FridgeBrilliance: Some people have made a fuss about [[DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist death just being a slap on the wrist]] in ''Fable II'' and ''Fable III'', but the sheer brilliance of it is that no matter how powerful you are, you're not guaranteed a happy ending, ''especially'' in ''Fable III''. In other words, death is not important - your decisions ''are''. You're a ''Hero''.
* GameBreaker:
** In the first game shop prices are based on supply and demand. If they have a lot of a certain item, they'll sell that item for less and pay more. If they have few, they'll sell for more and pay less. It is trivially easy to break this system and start gaining hundreds and eventually thousands of gold per interaction as soon as you enter Bowerstone for the first time. 1 gold to buy a carrot. 3 gold from selling it. A profit of 2 gold is nothing, but if you're sell 100 of them? That's 200 gold profit for literally no work. Buy up the other stuff as well and it'll go even faster. 7 gold to buy meat, 12 gold for selling. 5 gold profit. Once you get enough start in on selling gemstones and you'll have officially stopped having to care about your money problems. Bonus points, because every interaction in which you make a profit gains you a small amount of skill experience.
** Spam some of the Will powers and the enemies won't even ''touch'' you. {{Lampshaded}} when some bandits shout out remarks along the lines of "How the Hell are we supposed to fight against that?" as you're frying them from the inside out.
** Plug in a second controller in ''Fable II''. Start co-op mode without a gamer profile or using an existing save to load an equivalent power henchman. Discard the henchman's abilities, and then leave co-op mode. All that free xp you just gained from discarding the henchman's skills is now yours. Rinse and repeat, as the henchman gets more powerful each time!
** Being a landlord in ''Fable II'' makes your ascendency to insane riches laughably easy. Within a few hours a player can afford to buy all the property in the game and becomes so ridiculously wealthy that any money made through adventuring is effectively redundant. [[spoiler: In ''Fable III'' this is still the case, and in fact the only way to achieve the GoldenEnding (all "Good" choices as a monarch, maximum army strength) is to become a land baron]].
*** Because this gold was earned in real time, players could exploit the system by adjusting the time settings on their consoles to instantly give them as much gold as they wanted. This only worked in ''Fable II'', however.
* MoralEventHorizon:
** Lucien's [[TheDragon Dragon]], The Commandant forces you to thank him for brutally torturing you, to kill [[spoiler: your only friend in the spire]] and probably does many other horrific things in between the time skips.
** If Lucien didn't cross it by killing your sister in the prologue or building the Spire, he crossed a line with many players near the end of the game when he [[spoiler:kills your family off-screen (should you have one) and, even worse, shoots your '''dog''' right in front of you.]]
** Each game makes a point to avert it for the Hero; you can do countless horrible deeds in each game and make everyone fear you, but you can also become a good person again very easily. However, [[spoiler:putting on Jack of Blades's Mask in The Lost Chapters ''will'' permanently lock your karma meter to pure evil]].
* NarmCharm:
** Every last person in Albion have either British or Irish accents and they're very stereotypically exaggerated. Justifiable, though, since Albion IS based on England and the games were made by a British company.
** Once you get past its underwhelming nature, the simplicity and absurdity of the KarmaMeter becomes a lot of the game's humor. One review noted that the game gave you less bad karma for sacrificing someone to an evil god than for ''divorcing your wife.'' The fact that it's linked to changes in the character model means that becoming a multiple-divorcee in this universe will give you red eyes and devil horns.
* OvershadowedByControversy: The series is still remembered fondly by some, but generally is known less for the games, but instead for Peter Molyneux, and his infamous "lying" habit to drum up hype for the series.
* NightmareFuel: [[NightmareFuel/{{Fable}} The series has had its share.]]