YMMV / Apex Legends

Tropes with their own pages:

---

• Abandon Shipping:
  • Rampart/Bangalore lived a brief life of popularity after Rampart's short showed that the two of them were good friends. The popularity lasted only a couple of days, however, after Rampart's bio came out and revealed that she was 17 years younger than Bangalore.
  • Rampart/Mirage, after a season 9 comic revealed that the two of them viewed each other as siblings — although some fans still misinterpret their quips to each other as innuendo.
  • Newcastle/Horizon spawned as a result of their dancing together in the Season 13 trailer, but died almost as soon as it came as it was then revealed that Newcastle has a wife soon after.
• Abridged Arena Array: A common player mentality, especially in public games, is to drop to or visit specific points of interest just to pick a fight there, even though it sacrifices having a potentially stronger positional advantage in the long run. Sometimes this means dropping to a location teeming with enemies, sometimes it means jumping out of the dropship as soon as possible without formulating a plan with allies.
  • Whenever a match started in King's Canyon, one could expect at least half of the squads to drop at Skull Town if the dropship started on that side of the map. If it started on the opposite side, that number drops to maybe one fourth, with the remainder shifting to Artillery or Airbase. Dropping virtually anywhere else vastly increased players' odds of success if racking up kills isn't a priority. Respawn destroyed Skulltown in Season 5 to force players to play anywhere else; when it was brought back as Relic in Season 14 to address map size complaints, they learned their lesson and made it significantly smaller, making the location much less hospitable to full-lobby free-for-alls.
  • In World's Edge, Capitol City (and its successors, Fragment East and West) is exceedingly popular, with its large size supporting exceptionally large teamfights and its positioning almost right in the center of the map meaning anyone who wants to drop there won't need to wait long whatsoever, guaranteeing a significant number of players land in the area. After that, most squads tend to drop at Train Yard or Mirage Voyage.
  • Olympus is a little less egregious in this regard, but one can typically expect most players to drop into Estates or Gardens, typically depending on whichever location is closer to the start of the dropship's path. Fight Night is another popular drop location primarily for its boxing ring.
  • Storm Point is also not as bad; Antenna and Barometer are the only consistently popular drop locations, with Storm Catcher, Checkpoint, and The Mill being runners-up.
  • Despite not having a typical dropship deployment, early in their lifetime the Arenas maps had a default half of the map that players tend to go to first, even if it would be more tactically sound to secure the other half of the map due to the ring — especially when it comes to the first round of the match. On Party Crasher, it's the Mirage Voyage, while on Phase Runner it's the area between the titular phase gates.
  • On the other hand, certain locations see little to no activity, usually because nobody else drops there, even if there's good loot to be found. Big Maude, Lava City, Phase Driver, Elysium, and Lightning Rod are all examples of these areas.
• Adorkable:
  • Wattson falls into this due to how she's a cute, polite young woman who is prone to making electricity-themed puns, and is generally very excitable.
  • Pathfinder is made endearing by the fact he's a happy and cheerful robot, and can be silly at times when stating the obvious.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Mirage gets a minor one in Season 6. One of his lines toward Rampart is “Lucky you’re smart because you’re not...” The corresponding line has her calling him pretty but not smart. Which begs the question: did Mirage stop himself because he didn’t want to insult a woman, or did he stop himself because he nearly called Rampart pretty?
  • Does Lifeline actually care about Octane, or does she simply view him as her burden to bear?
    • Season 9 comics show that they consider themselves found family, but the Season 12 quests indicate that she views him as deadweight and that he NEEDS her to survive. Does this make her altruistic and self-sacrificing, or selfish and toxic?
    • Notably, her argument that he needs her to survive echoes Stories from the Outlands: Family Business, where Cherisse Che coerces Ajay in the intro to stay with her family because she believes Lifeline can't fend for herself. More evidence of Generation Xerox, or are they Not So Similar?
    • And given how Octane has indeed been contributing to his father's plans to varying degrees of willingness due to his Abusive Parents situation, is she justified in her frustration or should she have been gentler to him? Lifeline is in a similar boat given her own family, so she's either living proof that Octane can improve himself, or being supremely insensitive for her actions.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Those redundant doors adjacent to open passageways in the long buildings at World's Edge aren't just a silly architectural mishap outside of gameplay functionality. This kind of architectural style is used to prevent fire from spreading; a shutter can be closed to make the open passage inaccessible to fire, while the door still exists to let people through. As World's Edge is a partial Lethal Lava Land, this makes sense.
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • Loba is controversial among Latino fans, especially Brazilians, for embodying several stereotypes with references to Carnival and football in her banners and being a Spicy Latina.
  • Valkyrie was intended to avoid the polite Japanese woman stereotype and her personality is an gender-inversion of the masculine pilot, which didn't endear her to Japanese fans who criticized her at launch for 'not being Japanese enough'. A factor in making her ethnicity seem like an afterthought is that Valkyrie is of mixed race and doesn't borrow so heavily from Japanese culture, despite her Japanese half being more emphasized by writers and in-game material adjacent to her.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Teammates that spam pings, especially when they're downed and are pointing out an enemy. Sometimes, they're just trying to help and want to point out where to expect moving enemies, which can be very useful; other times, the spam-pings and repeated voicelines become irritating distractions while trying to focus on other things. That said though, dead teammates who spam ping their deathbox will rarely not be annoying, since multiple rapid deathbox pings are unnecessary and it often communicates that the dead player is impatient and can't stand to wait.
• Anti-Metagame Character:
  • While the game isn't really designed in the same Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors mentality that other Hero Shooters aim for, it's difficult to say that Mad Maggie was intended to be something besides a counter to the competitively-prominent Gibraltar, for her passive letting her erratically peek in and out of Gibraltar's dome better than he can do himself and her tactical piercing it. With her low pick rate across the board though, it's also difficult to say if she really succeeded in this role in her launch state; her Ultimate's buff to destroy the Dome has definitely made her far better at doing this.
  • Catalyst was brought in to hinder the dominance of scan-based Recon legends such as Bloodhound and Seer. Her ultimate blocks all scans from the other side of it, her passive makes pushing through doorways she welds a futile effort, and her spike traps take more firepower to destroy compared to Wattson's fences or Caustic's gas traps, ensuring that it takes a coordinated effort to push into a room under Catalyst's control. Conversely, her inability to do anything about enemies that have the high-ground against her makes mobility-based Recon legends like Vantage and Pathfinder more appealing.
• Awesome Art: The game has some cool animations that really bring the Legends to life while likely rarely being seen by the players. Some of the secret Heirloom inspect animations might come to mind first to most, but not as prominently viewed are basic weaponless animations, with some standouts being Horizon's floaty skipping and Ash's "come at me" walk cycle.
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack, composed by Stephen Barton, has some excellent tunes.
  • The main theme is subtle, yet intense, perfect to set the mood just before you prepare to fight for glory.
  • The character select theme, "Choose Your Legend" starts off sparse, but builds as each player selects their Legend, as if growing in anticipation as your team comes together.
  • "You Are The Jumpmaster", snippets of which compose several different parts. The first part plays when the champions are shown, giving an appropriate gravity to the team who are perceived to be the biggest threat in the match. The second part plays as everyone flies over the arena and your team make the jump, acting as the climax of the prologue to the big battle. It's practically guaranteed to get you pumped for the match ahead.
  • "Lifeline", which features as part of Stories from the Outlands: Family Business, is a ridiculously catchy rock song about Lifeline.
  • The Celebration music pack from season 16 gives the original themes an orchestral makeover, adding a sense of drama and reverence to them.
• Badass Decay: Caustic, who once held the spotlight as the game's only villainous character, is harder to see as much of a villain for his relationship with Wattson and more purer villain characters with fewer redeeming qualities being introduced.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Valkyrie, due to her characterization. While some fans appreciate her ties to Titanfall 2 as Viper's daughter, others feel like Respawn didn't do enough with it with many pointing to her lack of interactions with Ash until Season 13. The real reasons Valkyrie is so divisive, however, are her relationship with Loba and her general demeanor, with some finding her ego more annoying than endearing, while others feel like she's been reduced to a Satellite Love Interest for Loba, tying into the aforementioned complaints about how her connection to the Apex Predators is underutilized.
  • Mirage. While undoubtedly a fan favorite, as time goes on and he gets more and more screentime in trailers that are important for setting up lore that he ends up having no involvement in, some fans have grown tired of his constant hogging of the limited lore drops that the playerbase receives. The decision to include him in Season 13's quest despite having no previous involvement in this seasons-long storyline earned some backlash from fans tired of his non-serious personality and lack of a true character motive.
  • While there's love for Wattson for her much-needed autistic representation, her cute mannerisms like her love of Nessie and puns are either make her more likeable or stick badly out in Apex's slightly-edgy sci-fi aesthetic. But the most contested part of her writing is when she manipulated and guilt-tripped Crypto into revealing his identity to her, a potentially fatal mistake, but nobody has called her out on it; either this adds an interesting wrinkle to her character in that she's more manipulative than she knows and only Caustic has ever acknowledged, or it gives off the impression that the writers think Wattson is incapable of doing wrong for how cute she is. Further complicating matters is how other characters are written in relation to her:
    • Caustic went from a full-on Mad Scientist to a mellower but still psychopathic one due to Wattson believing he is good, and the fact that the writers wrote them to have a father-daughter relationship after fanon portrayed them that way. Is it fine for him to gain a redeeming quality, given that revealing parental relationships don't necessarily undo how dangerous a character can be (Valkyrie's dad comes to mind), or does this development unsatisfiably erase what made Caustic such a menacingly appealing character?
    • Crypto went from a paranoid, coolly judgmental outcast with dry wit and many hacking-related puns up his sleeve to someone much more awkward, incapable of making puns (since that's Wattson's gimmick), and put trust in Wattson with his secret identity and the fact that he is on the run from the Syndicate, despite them being her benefactors in the past and him not knowing so much about her. Either it makes no sense for his character and current situation, or it's nice to see him learn to truly trust the people that the Apex Games forces him to trust and that the awkwardness has basis in established lore.^note The short Forever Family has Mila Alexander Lampshade that Tae Joon has No Social Skills, when he doesn't respond to her questions due to being focused on his hacker logo's artistry.
  • Mad Maggie has a devoted fanbase who love her for being hilariously bloodthirsty and eager to fight, being one of the few characters to openly stand up to the Syndicate, and bringing Maori representation to Apex (and video games in general). She also has quite a devoted hatedom who find her personality and lines to be obnoxious, with some Fuse fans even going as far as to call her an abuser for her sabotage of the games purely because her friend joined them and she couldn't accept what it stood for.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Almost all conversations, memes, and fanart about Loba are more focused on looks instead of her backstory or gameplay.
• Cargo Ship: The various Robot Buddies together — those being Lifeline's D.O.C., Crypto's surveillance drone Hack, and Horizon's Newtie.
• Casual-Competitive Conflict: A recurring balance issue is the metagame disparity between public matches and ranked matches. Most notably, Defensive Legends are unpopular in public matches due to their less-entertaining slower playstyle, yet they are overpowered in ranked play because they have very strong teamplay and excel at the late stages of the game, which ranked stresses high emphasis on. Subsequently, changes that may seem inconsequential in casual play may permanently wreck the competitive meta.
• Character Rerailment: After spending most of his time after his debut as a minor Butt-Monkey whose vendetta against Loba bordered on Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain territory, Seasons 18 and 19 did a lot to renew Revenant's credibility as a serious threat, first by gaining a new body with new upgrades, finally convincing Loba to just kill him already, and then once he takes his head from Duardo, backstabbing both him and the Legends by taking control of the Revenant army and brutally murdering Apex's resident Big Bad for the past two seasons.
• Cheese Strategy: To avoid metagames where everyone just roams the map with no regard to long-term strategy or becoming the champion, ranked mode generally values overall match placement with more weight than it does scoring high kill counts. As a result, avoiding any and every kind of confrontation to attempt to extend up squad placement as high as possible is prominent in competitive at all levels, an especially jarring strategy for anyone who watches competitive with the expectation of seeing mechanical skill and fights between players being showcased.
• Common Knowledge:
  • A recurring thing to see veterans do is attempt to punch terrain surfaces to speed their Legend up or reduce the impact of long falls. This mechanic hasn't existed for a while; punching walls and slopes to gain speed was removed starting Season 12, while punching the floor to avoid fall stun was removed before Season 1. At best, this is just a harmless Player Tic, and at worst it'll get people killed while they're both stunned by a fall and unable to shoot due to being locked into an animation.
  • Some players believe that heavy ammo has a special property of slowing down enemy Legends when they get hit by it. Heavy ammo slows enemies down no more than guns of any other ammo type.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Weapons:
    • Skilled players gravitate towards using a Wingman/Peacekeeper weapon combo. The Wingman has powerful damage-per-shot, high accuracy, versatility, fast ADS-ed movement speed, and nary requiring attachments aside from an extended mag to be useful. Meanwhile, the Peacekeeper is considered the go-to for close combat, with its similarly quick ADS speed, its high damage making it a corner-peeking beast, and a charge to improve its accuracy into a sniper shotgun. The one thing blocking more people from using them is that both are Difficult, but Awesome, as the Wingman's sights jump like crazy when ADSed and the Peacekeeper's slow firing rate makes it punishing to miss with. And when the Peacekeeper goes into the Care Package, players still go for a similar kind of loadout with Wingman and EVA-8 or Mastiff.
    • The wider fanbase tends towards light ammo weapons because it's easier to find ammo for them if everyone else uses it, and light ammo weapons cover a wide range of niches without any frills attached. The RE-45 and Alternator are for early-game fights and the G7 Scout for long-range, but the most common loadout is the R-301 and the R-99. Among the assault rifles, the R-301 is insanely versatile: it has the best accuracy, most predictable recoil pattern, and most attachment slots for any assault rifle. The R-99 on the other hand has the second highest no-gimmicks DPS in the game and is surprisingly controllable with a barrel stabilizer. Some may use a light ammo CAR instead of the R-99, which has higher DPS and better bullet efficiency, but harder recoil.
    • On the other hand, if there are any weapons that tend to be avoided, the Bocek and 30-30 Repeater are the weapons most consistently detested by fans. They both have a niche: the Bocek can constantly lay on damage without ever stopping to cool down or reload, the 30-30 can adapt to many situations when fighting long-range, and Shatter Caps makes them both fill a role for close range with a great hipfire spread, but they both have aspects that make them feel awkward to use. For the Bocek, nobody else uses arrows making resupply harder and having to hold the fire button to charge arrows is so far away from every other weapon in the game that it turns players away from it; for the 30-30, its sluggish one-at-a-time reload and lower uncharged damage put people off from wanting to use it.
  • Legends:
    • In public games Pathfinder, Octane, Valkyrie, and Wraith are all consistently popular picks, likely owing to their tactical abilities being self-serving and not as reliant on teammates to use to their full potential. Bloodhound and Lifeline tend to follow in short order, owing to the Boring, but Practical support nature of their abilities.
    • In ranked mode, Caustic and Gibraltar are common for their durability and area denial abilities that let them last into the higher-value later stages, and Horizon's pickrate tends to increase in higher ranked tiers because she's Difficult, but Awesome.
    • Whenever a new Season drops, you can expect to see the new Legend everywhere as people aim to try them for the first time, which can create insane metas, like when it was impossible to not be third-partied when Seer was added or how Vantages everywhere made open spaces extremely oppressive to move through without getting sniped. The only character this hasn't happened to was Mad Maggie, thanks to her unimpressive abilities at launch and also competing with Octane, Wattson, and Valkyrie when they were given for free at the start of Season 12, but thankfully pickrates for new characters tend to die down in the following weeks after a season launch.
  • Despite crafting being a very useful mechanic to secure must-have supplies such as ammo, shield batteries, and upgraded Evo Armor, a lot of players forgo the mechanic; depending on where you look, some react to weapons getting rotated into the Replicator as if they've been outright removed from the game. The reasoning is likely connected to the aforementioned mentality about drop locations: players tend to not like it when gameplay slows down, which is the ideal situation to start crafting resources. It doesn't help that when using a replicator, nearby squads can see both the crafting indicator and a blue ring pulse every time it's used, potentially revealing the location of your squad to nearby enemies.
  • Ultimate Accelerants are only for Lifeline and Wattson. The former has by far the slowest Ult charge in the game (taking a full six minutes in a game where the average Ultimate charges in around two) and is vital for getting good gear early in the game, whereas the latter can carry twice as many, and her Passive allows them to charge her Ult instantly (as opposed to the 35% charge other Legends get), basically translating into a free Interception Pylon. Few other Legends get enough of a benefit from them to justify the inventory space.
  • Because Lifeline has the unique ability to revive teammates without taking herself out of the fight, if you have a Lifeline on your team and you find a Legendary knockdown shield^* allows its owner to revive teammates with 70 health and 50 shields instead of just 20 health like normal, it goes to her, no questions asked. This has become so ingrained into the collective player mindset that, if someone with a Lifeline ally takes a gold shield for themselves, it's not uncommon for that player to get chewed out by their non-Lifeline teammate. If there is no Lifeline or she already has one, then next on the priority list are Newcastle,^* can move while reviving and gets higher shield health from his knockdown shield while doing so Mirage,^* when reviving, he and the teammate he's reviving turn invisible and Gibraltar^* revives teammates slightly faster when inside his dome, in that order: after that, it's fair game for anyone.
  • In a sort of inverted example from the above, players of Octane and Mirage can expect to be thoroughly berated by their teammates if they pick up a Legendary helmet^* reduces Tactical and Ultimate cooldowns by 25% for themselves, seeing how those two Legends already have the shortest cooldowns in the game by a significant margin.
• Crack Pairing: Any ship with Revenant can count, due to Revenant being a bloodthirsty Killer Robot who is obsessed with picking at other legends' trauma whenever he can. Nonetheless, Revenant/Bloodhound (Revhound) still has a dedicated fanbase, even though their only interactions are Revenant being rude to Bloodhound in thank quips (he's that to everyone else, and they respond by reminding him of their gods' judgement) and through Shadow Revenant delivering a breaking speech mocking their faith during Shadow Royale, should Bloodhound become a shadow.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Just about anything done by Octane is this - from blowing up his own legs to break a speed record, repeatedly stabbing himself with syringes to enhance his own speed, to apparently playing 3 video games at the same time in the opening of Season 3's cinematic trailer.
  • Rampart totes a minigun that she uses to mow down squads, all while laughing maniacally and chewing gum she found on the bottom of her shoe.
• Creator's Pet: Mirage is quickly gaining a reputation as one, thanks to him being upfront and in the center in terms of lore and promotional content. In reality, he is far less important in terms of lore compared to other legends, lacking a true ongoing character arc in comparison to characters like Bangalore and Wraith. When Mirage was revealed to play a major role in Season 13's story, which focused on Bangalore's tense and long-awaited reunion with her brother, Newcastle, fans were less than pleased to see him involved so heavily in a key storyline in Bangalore's character arc after not being a part of it.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Many Legends show signs of having at least one disorder, to the point that it's almost universally accepted among fans that certain legends have disorders.
  • Mirage's personality does a complete 180 if he's the last person on his team - from jovial to self-depreciating as well as riddled with anxiety - and combined with his desire to be around people it's likely he suffers from generalized anxiety disorder and/or has depression stemming from his fear of being alone. Some of his other traits, such as being socially awkward; bouncing from one idea to the next; frequent distraction even mid-sentence; hyperfixation on certain words/ideas, and increased focus on subjects that interest him (e.g. holographic engineering) to the point of neglecting others aspects of his life (e.g. not knowing how to use a phone's recording feature) suggests he has autism or ADHD.
  • Octane has never been stated to suffer from any disorder, but his lack of patience and constant need for sensation are symptoms of ADHD. Due to his hyperactive nature when pursuing a death-defying stunt that excites him, a number of fans specifically peg him as having hyperactive-impulsive type ADHD. The waters are further muddied by an interview from Tom Casiello, a former head writer for Apex, which states that Octane's neglectful parents could also be a cause of his need for stimulation and attention — and also suggests that Octane could be addicted to the stims, which might be having other effects on his personality.
  • Until Voidwalker gave her more backstory, Wraith was this too. Her bio stated she had spent some time in an IMC detention facility for the mentally ill. Her disorder has never been specified, but her blunted emotions can be indicative of depression and/or PTSD due to the trauma she suffered, which in turn may have played a part in her development of amnesia.
  • Wattson’s stated to have issues understanding people, is socially awkward, and has hyper-focus according to her biography. It was later confirmed by the devs that she has ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), though the aforementioned traits may also be an indicator of her having ADHD as well (or at least the real-life symptoms of it).
• Die for Our Ship: To say Valkyrie's budding relationship with Loba developing rather quickly, in comparison to Loba and Bangalore spending many seasons growing closer to each other, was not exactly well-received by a certain sector of Loba/Bangalore shippers is an understatement. The disdain only grew when Valkyrie and Loba received increasingly flirty dialogue with each other in game, with Bangalore and Loba eventually reverting to having no unique dialogue come Season 14. While the Loba/Bangalore and Loba/Valkyrie sides of the fandom mostly get along, expect Loba/Bangalore shippers who don't like Valkyrie to get very annoyed with her and Loba's flirting and reduce her personality to "horny" due to how forward she is with Loba.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Mirage. While not the most popular legend gameplay-wise, Mirage is beloved for his personality. The fandom loves him due to his charm; sympathetic backstory of losing several of his family members in a war as well as struggling with anxiety from it; and the fact he still cares for his mother who has dementia - problems which cut close to home for several people who have dealt with (or are currently dealing with) similar circumstances. Also, his jokey yet grounded personality makes him the most relatable legend besides Lifeline.
  • Bloodhound for being an openly non-binary character that has amassed a legion of fans, especially since they are easily open to interpretation due to their masked appearance and mysterious nature, appealing to a broad range of people.
  • Despite lacking lore at his initial release, Seer has proven to be a smash hit, thanks to his badass trailer, unique aesthetic, being a well-needed Breather Episode character who is light on any Wangst, and his status as being openly pansexual.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Caustic, the game's original villainous Legend, exerts an extremely threatening presence and has a menacing demeanor that fans find very cool. As detailed under Base-Breaking Character, that he recieved some redeeming qualities later on has got some fans disappointed.
  • Revenant is an unstoppable, unkillable hitman that dismantles his victims practically with just his bare hands, and said victims are anyone and everyone he can lay said hands on. He's also a massive Jerkass, the lengths of which he goes to in order to actively be a thorn in everyone's backside — especially during the Games themselves — are also weirdly charming.
  • Ash is a No-Nonsense Nemesis that cares for nothing except demonstrating perfection and cutting down everyone in her path with ruthless efficiency. Every line of her drips with the impression that she's not here for the fame or camaraderie of the Games: she's here to demonstrate that she's an Apex Predator, and anything not in service to that is a waste of time.
• Fanon:
  • Old concept art showed Wattson with a cybernetic arm that would help her conduct electricity. While this was ultimately scrapped, it's not uncommon to see fans drawing her with one.
  • Early on in the game's history, many fans wanted to see Caustic take on a parental role with Wattson, and in season four this became implied and in season five, confirmed.
    • Subverted by the end of season 5, when it was revealed that Caustic was only using Wattson for his own personal gain, but by season 8 they're back to their father-daughter relationship.
  • Though we've never actually seen it, it is almost universally agreed upon that Bloodhound has red hair, based on the fact that their only relative with an on-screen appearance has red hair.
    • Likewise, before we got Octane's official face reveal, most people drew him with dyed green hair. We actually saw his hair before his face in the season 7 comics, with green-haired Octane becoming Ascended Fanon.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Multiple for gameplay concepts:
    • "Stick" and "stuck", used to refer to a direct hit on enemies with the Difficult, but Awesome high-damage Arc Star.
    • "Cracked" or "flesh", for when an enemy's shield is broken and allies need to be told to push an advantage. This ended up being a part of the game, with Legend voice lines for doing that occasionally saying an enemy's shield is cracked.
    • Reviving teammates that have been knocked down tends to be called "rezzing", likely stemming from Overwatch's name for one of Mercy's abilities.
    • "Ratting", referring to hiding during the game and actively trying to avoid conflict to fish for match placements; see Cheese Strategy above.
  • Gibraltar, Bangalore, Revenant, Valkyrie, and Pathfinder are shortened to Gibby, Bang, Rev, Valk, and Path/Pathy respectively.
  • "Streamer building" which refers to one of two buildings in Fragment on World's Edge: either the six-story one with two zipline elevators at the southwest corner, or the four-story one with a single zipline elevator near the middle of Fragment, close to the bridge but not connected directly to it; they're named such because streamers love to drop there.
  • The HUD will name the area near the center of Storm Point "Forbidden Zone" if you enter it, but fans better know it as "Jurassic Park" thanks to its ridiculous density of Prowler dens.
  • Since they're very critical to staying on top of one's total hit points, Shield Batteries are shortened to just "batts".
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • If AO3 is indicative of anything, the most popular ship in the game is Mirage/Bloodhound, in spite of the lack of interaction between them.
  • As of May 2022, Crypto/Mirage has surpassed Mirage/Bloodhound.
  • Wattson/Wraith is also a fairly popular ship especially among Yuri Fans.
  • Fuse/Bloodhound exploded into popularity and it only grows with each passing season based off their deep friendship and understanding of each other. This has only escalated in recent seasons, with the duo gaining in-game interactions with each other that are...less than subtle.
    • Now an Official Couple as of Season 15, with an official kiss to seal the deal. The overwhelming positive reception to the canonization speaks for itself.
  • Loba/Bangalore, to the extent that when Valkyrie got added as Loba's potential love interest, she received waves of hate.
    • Although over time, thanks to a combination of the Bangalore/Loba/Valkyrie love triangle plotline becoming a point of nuisance for fans of all three and the increasingly romantic interactions between Loba and Valkyrie, Loba/Valkyrie has seen an increase in shipping.
  • Seer/Octane is a growing contender in terms of Apex shipping. Adding into this is the unexplained hostility in their in-game interactions, Seer's canon pansexuality, Octane's unconfirmed sexuality, and how their personalities play in contrast with each other, has many theorizing that something was going on between the two that didn't last.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • As to be expected, it has a fairly significant rivalry with Fortnite's Battle Royale mode as both are free-to-play, and among the more polished Battle Royale Games available, despite both games' comparisons ending there. There's a sizable hatedom that wants Apex to dethrone Fortnite as the battle royale king. The rivalry only got worse when Fortnite began rather blatantly stealing several gameplay mechanics from Apex, such as the ping system, respawning fallen squadmates and sliding. That said, there's still a decent amount of people that consider both titles divergent enough to where comparisons can hardly be made.
  • It also shares a much stronger rivalry to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4: Blackout gamemode, as both emphasize fast-paced realistic combat with more polish than other Battle Royale games. Detractors are quick to point out that Blackout is stuck behind a $60 paywall and hasn't been dynamically updated. None of this is even remotely helped by the fact that Respawn Entertainment was formed by members of Infinity Ward, the studio responsible for Call of Duty, who left when spurned by Activision to form a studio with the help of arch-rival Electronic Arts — a trend returning from the Titanfall 2 vs Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare rivalry. More recently, Call of Duty: Warzone has replaced Blackout in this rivalry, mainly due to being free-to-play and borrowing many mechanics from Apex. It didn't help that in the latter half of 2021, many Warzone players switched to playing Apex due to persistent cheating and the absence of a competitive ranked mode in Warzone.
  • Also with Overwatch. While the gameplay doesn't overlap that much beyond both being team-based Hero Shooters, the fact that both games focus on a diverse cast of quirky, larger-than-life characters has also sparked a rivalry. In fact, much of Apex's player base actually consists of former Overwatch players.
  • There is a rivalry with Battlefield V: Firestorm, which launched just 6 weeks after the release of Apex Legends. Although both BR games are published by Electronic Arts, Apex Legends ended up overshadowing Firestorm. It didn't help matters that Firestorm is locked behind a purchase of the controversial Battlefield V and quickly died off after a month while Apex continues to have an active community more than a year after its launch.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Revenant/Loba (Revloba) has gained a small following on fanfic sites. Despite the ship in question being between a bloodthirsty, homicidal robot, and the woman who watched him murder her parents right in front of her. For an added bonus, the aforementioned murders happened when Loba was a young girl.
  • Brokengravity (which is Horizon/Ash). No matter how you spin it, Ash is completely responsible for Horizon's entire predicament, separating her from her son with no clear way to see him again. Most Brokengravity shippers like to create content of the pairing that take place before Ash's betrayal for a reason.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Surprisingly, fans of this game are on good terms with fans of Player Unknowns Battlegrounds. Although both games belong in the Battle Royale genre, they are distinct enough from each other that they don't cannibalize audiences as Apex Legends is a fast-paced Hero Shooter while PUBG is a slower-paced Tactical Shooter. It also helps that the PUBG creator, Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene, openly congratulated Apex Legends for its milestones, and Respawn Entertainment credited PUBG for kickstarting the Battle Royale craze that made Apex Legends possible. Then there's the fact that fans of both games are united in their opposition to BR king Fortnite.
  • Despite the initial backlash, fans of Titanfall 2 are actually quite happy with the positive reception that Apex is receiving, due to a resurgence in Titanfall 2's population and general interest.
  • Several fans of this game also enjoy modern cartoons like Steven Universe and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, largely for also having colorful cast of characters some of whom are LGBTQ.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Alternator became one upon the launch of Season 2, which not only buffed its base damage, but also introduced the fairly common Disruptor Rounds hop-up, which increased the amount of damage compatible guns deal to body shields by 125% (i.e. more than double). These two factors combined allowed an Alternator equipped with this hop-up to completely shred shields, and since its post-buff base damage isn't too shabby, it could make quick work of unshielded targets as well. Suddenly the Alternator found itself at the top of the weapons tier, outpacing even guns that are intended to be stronger like the R-99 and R-301. Respawn responded by knocking the Disruptor Rounds damage boost to 70% and then later 55%, making a fully-kitted Alternator still a tough gun to deal with, but overall much more manageable. Disruptor Rounds were removed the following season, but Respawn recognized their strength — so when the Alternator was put in the care package starting Season 10, it received a slightly weaker innate version of the hop up.
  • Season 3 introduced the Charge Rifle which has quickly become this. It's a hitscan beam rifle with infinite range, no fall-off and VERY good damage for how piss-easy it is to shoot with. The wind-up beam can also do moderate damage while slowing targets, making it even easier to land a hit. About its only weaknesses is that it's very conspicuous for a sniper and has a very slow reload, but most weapons aren't much less noticeable, so that point is moot. Aside from a scope, it doesn't need any attachments to wreak havoc on the World's Edge, which favors long-ranged fighting. It didn't take long from its introduction for everyone to call for a nerf on the weapon. Sure enough, Respawn nerfed the Charge Rifle by increasing its ammo consumption and reducing its max damage at range.
  • Gold armor circa Seasons 3/4, full stop. In seasons 1 and 2, the Fast Use perk was relegated to the Gold Backpack, and while it was still very useful, its effectiveness was limited by what level armor you had. When the perk transferred over to gold armor in Season 3, it guaranteed that players would get the maximum level of effectiveness out of it since players would always have the maximum possible shields. When a player with gold armor could replenish all 100 shield health using a Shield Battery in less time than a player with any other type of armor could recharge a paltry 25 shields with a Shield Cell, you can tell just how lopsided of an advantage the former had if not focus fired to burst them down, and why trying to duel an opponent with gold armor was effectively a suicide mission unless you had it yourself. Season 5, however, inflicted a hefty nerf in which the universally-applied double heal speed was replaced by the potency of syringes and shield cells being doubled, with other healing items being unaffected. It's still a strong advantage to be sure, but it's nowhere near as ridiculously broken as 2.5-second shield batteries and five-second Phoenix Kits. It also helped boost the viability of Evo Shields; before the nerf, the extra 25 shields granted by a fully-leveled Evo Shield paled in comparison to the broken healing mechanics of standard gold armor, whereas now it's viewed as an equal if not better perk.
  • The initial version of the Legacy update's Bocek Compound Bow was infamously strong; it is incredibly quiet and its arrows' tracer trails were harder to see, fully charged arrows had the Sentinel's high single-shot damage but could shoot almost three times as frequently, the bow bypasses the need to reload by drawing directly from the user's ammo pool — something the L-Star compensates for with an overheat mechanic, and it has two hop-up slots to bolster its firing speed even more and give it a shotgun-blast spray to cover close-range damage. In the hands of someone who could consistently land their shots, it was an absolute damage-dealing monster, with the only things really holding it back being the uncommonness of the weapon itself and its ammo, though the latter is partially negated by being able to retrieve one's own arrows. It received a nerf to its damage and firing speed a week after release.
  • There's a reason the Triple Take was moved to the Care Package for Seasons 9 and 10. It's extremely accurate at long range, is ammo-efficient, and connecting with just one of its shots will take off a decent amount of health. As a marksman weapon, you'd think it'd struggle at close-range, but it works great as a Short-Range Shotgun when hip-firing. Excelling at all ranges, the Triple Take is a Master of All of a gun that is almost never a bad choice. When it was removed from the Care Package and placed back on the ground, it immediately became the most powerful gun in the game. Season 12 finally took measures to reign it back in, removing the bullet growth it had as a sniper weapon to rectify its uncharged damage and make it fit better as a marksman weapon.
  • Hammerpoint Rounds were never really too strong, only really serving as an impromptu buff for the P2020 and Mozambique, turning these awful guns into something that could potentially be useful to deal high damage to shieldless opponents and finish them off. When they were pulled from the loot pool starting Season 9, these weapons got a buff to make them no longer reliant on Hammerpoints to be usable, a buff that stayed when Season 12 brought Hammerpoints back as a weaker version. They still are merely average at best... in Battle Royale. In early Season 12 Arenas, a Hammerpoint Rounds pistol is cheap enough to be bought every single round of the game while having amazing damage due to the weaker shields early on, in some cases outclassing the DPS of weapons that are more expensive than them. A nerf the month of Season 12's release increased the price of the Hammerpoint Mozambique, making it far less economical for its high damage.
  • The Spitfire LMG has historically been a rather problematic weapon, ironically mirroring its previous Titanfall counterparts. It's bullet damage is comparable to most viable weapons like the R-301 assault rifle, but in exchange for a slight reduction in fire rate, it boasts an absolutely massive magazine size, making its suppressing fire extremely oppressive and easy to use for players who can't hit all the shots in the mag. And unlike LMGs in other shooters, the Spitfire has good hipfire accuracy and fast reload, allowing it to compete in close-range combat on top of the mid-range combat where it already excels at. It's telling that, when it was moved to the Care Package in Season 10, its Care Package incarnation only undid a few of its most recent nerfs... and even then, that version isn't even the strongest the Spitfire's ever been, with the original version having higher damage per shot and a larger magazine size.
  • Gold knockdown shields ended up causing a lot of competitive frustration until Season 14 removed their self-ressurect. While they're merely Awesome, but Impractical in casual play, in ranked, their ability to eke out a couple of seconds of survival when the whole team goes down ended up being a ticket to easier rating point gain, as ranked mode's RP system is determined by how many other teams you outlast, and final rings in ranked often have multiple teams fighting against each other. This gave gold KO-shield-carrying teams an opportunity to outlast and rank above enemies without them despite going down first, and ended up being the impetus for the gold KO shield to be changed in Season 14.
  • The R-301 Carbine is Boring, but Practical in its purest form. It has everything you want in a gun — High DPS, a versatile effective range, very little aim drift or spread, and doesn't use too much ammo compared to other automatic weapons, and if you can find the Anvil Receiver hop-up, its single-fire mode turns it into a Marksman weapon to further enhance its unmatched versatility. There really is no reason to use any other gun beyond personal choice if you happen to find one early in the game. This is to the point that the devs introduced the Nemesis AR in Season 16 just so the playerbase will use something else.
• Genius Bonus: Some animations feature Caustic holding a mug, of which is printed with an image of a molecule and a chemical IUPAC name. Fittingly for the good doctor, the compound depicted is that of mustard gas.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Thanks to the deep character lore as well as personable characters, season based story arcs, and emphasis on teamplay, the game is very popular in many Asian countries, especially Japan, as it became EA Japan's front and center in their most featured games. To a wider scope in Japan, it is one of the games that also helped introducing the gamers to the PC-dominated e-sports scenes as well as bringing back PC gaming from the decades of irrelevance to one of the most-popular platforms there.
  • It's also inexplicably popular in Latin American countries, to the point where it's a fairly common occurrence for an English-speaking player to be put in a squad with two teammates speaking Spanish.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The general player response to Prowlers on Storm Point seems to be this. Unlike spider nests, Prowlers will actively seek out players if they move near a den, attack relentlessly, will lunge to avoid gunfire, and are fairly beefy to kill. And that's without mentioning how killing them with guns will alert nearby enemies, as well as how enemies can play defensively around Prowler nests to create severely disadvantageous locations to have to push through.
  • Charge Rifle users are an annoyance, especially if they can't hit the strong attack of the weapon. Constantly being pecked at by weak hits from ranges that no other rifle can really contest makes them a thorn in players' backsides, especially in the Control gamemode when everyone has the option to pick one up, its high ammo consumption stops being an issue, and taking damage is an annoying wait to heal up instead of a nailbiting deprivation of healing resources.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Season 7 had a bug that let Rampart place her turret on Crypto's drone, allowing for silly flying minigun strategies.
  • Season 10 allowed Crypto to open Lifeline's care package while it was still descending; doing so instantly teleported it to its destination, but while ignoring the collision of any players that might be standing there. This allowed for ambushes to be started by having an entire squad appear unexpectedly out of a placed care package.
  • During Season 12, a bug existed that allowed players to clip into explosive holds via a placed Sheila, allowing for more "last place to expect an ambush" attacks by camping in them until an enemy squad attempts to open them normally.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Caustic's in-game interactions with Revenant become this after he turns out to be The Mole.
  • The whole reason Octane and Lifeline went through a friendship break-up is because Octane found a video of his father Eduardo saying he loved his son, and believed that he had finally shown that he did love him...come to find out, Eduardo was actually dead all along, replaced by his grandfather Torres—which means the video was of Torres talking about Eduardo, not Eduardo talking about Octane.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Pathfinder being the first to join Horizon's team back in the Season 7 trailer has an added layer of heartwarming with the reveal that her son helped create the MRVN.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Mirage's plotline in the community-illustrated comic for Season 6 concerns him making up with his friends for his wrongdoings. Getting a bouquet of wrenches for Rampart and sending flowers to Pathfinder is cute, but exceptionally touching is how he dug through IMC files to find Wraith's birthday — and the warmth in her smile when she received his letter.
  • If the squad is spread out, the characters will often say lines boiling down to "Hey we're spread out, we need to stick together". What does Seer say? "We're too far apart. I can be intense, but I am very friendly."
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Over the course of the first couple seasons, Gibraltar would receive changes to make him stand out, which would slowly but eventually draw ire from competitive players. Like fellow entry Caustic above, during Season 2 he gained a natural damage resistance buff and was no longer slowed by enemy bullets due to the introduction of the extra Fortified passive perk. At the start of Season 3 is where things really started to take off for him, though - his Dome Shield could now be thrown slightly further at the expense of having a slightly-longer cooldown, he and his teammates could now heal and apply shields faster while underneath his dome, he could eventually revive teammates off the ground much quicker while doing so underneath the dome shield, and his ultimate ability charged much quicker and could be thrown further, at the expense of not lasting quite as long. At first, these changes were met warmly, but over time players began to notice how threatening he could truly be. With both his natural damage resistance and his gun shield, he became the only Legend who could shrug off a Kraber shot with almost all of his health intact, and naturally, this gives him an edge in sustained one-on-one firefights at close-to-mid range. Furthermore, the enhanced utilities of his dome shield and his ultimate made his team much harder to push, while also undermining other Legends' abilities, most notably Lifeline by making her faster resurrection and health drone less impressive, as well as Bangalore, by possessing abilities that are comparable to hers in how their abilities create cover and call an airstrike, yet his are more potent. Even with several nerfs to his kit - decreasing the health on his gun shield, reducing the duration of his dome shield and the faster speed of healing underneath his dome (eventually removing it altogether as of Season 8), upping the Kraber's headshot damage so that he's no longer exempt from its One-Hit Kill potential, and increasing his ultimate cooldown - his natural tankiness, faster revives under his dome and powerful ultimate have led to many players complaining that they went a little overboard with tuning him up.
  • Horizon proved to be very frustrating to fight against in the first couple seasons after her debut, largely due to her tactical ability, Gravity Lift. It comparative ease of use with little delay, amazing squad movement capabilities (compounded further with Horizon herself, whose passive ability allows her greater air maneuverability and softer landings, meaning she can enter a lift and dodge incoming fire while healing herself inside it) and difficulty of counterplay against it give Horizon players a quite lofty edge over their competition. With a lack of the 'low profile' passive unlike her high-tier contemporaries and a respectable ultimate ability that synergizes with tons of other legend abilities, Horizon enjoyed a high pick rate from ranked professionals. Season 9, however, would see her Gravity Lift get nerfed hard, reducing the acceleration of her and her teammates inside the lift and automatically shunting them off a couple of seconds after reaching max height above the lift. While still useful for displacing her squad, this makes healing and recharging shields while using the lift a lot riskier and prevents her team from abusing it to maintain high ground over nearby opponents, though this drew complaints that it was overnerfed, something that was slightly reigned back in with Season 10.
  • For the first few seasons, Pathfinder quickly became an unstoppable force, both because of his unmatched mobility and his non-standard hitbox making him incredibly difficult to hit, to the point where even the increased damage he took due to having Low Profile wasn't enough to compensate. This was made all the more apparent during the temporary Solos mode, in which matches quickly devolved into endless seas of Pathfinders zipping across the map to the point that anyone not picking Pathfinder was virtually guaranteed to lose if they didn't have godlike aim. In Season 3, his Grappling Hook had its speed reduced and the cooldown for his Zipline was increased, but it took a drastic nerf in Season 5 that more than doubled his grapple cooldown in order to finally dethrone him as the undisputed king of the roster. With the introduction of more movement characters though, Pathfinder's steadily lost out to Power Creep.
  • The showstopper Seer debuted in a supremely powerful state and remained that way through much of the Season 10's launch month. His passive, Heart Seeker, has a very similar effect to Bloodhound's scan, revealing enemy positions to the user when aiming down the sights of his gun with the same maximum distance. However, Seer's has no cooldown, he can ADS without even holding a weapon, and the passive lacks the conspicuous orange glow or HUD indicator to alert to enemies that they are being watched. His tactical, Focus of Attention, is where things truly start getting ridiculous - he throws out a large cylinder as wide as a small building in front of him that travels and hits enemies through terrain, reveals enemy positions for more than twice as long as Bloodhound's scan, interrupts any healing/revives/abilities in progress, and also reveals their armor and health to his entire squad, allowing Seer and his teammates to pick and choose which moments to push in or plan ahead without even having to directly engage the enemy in a firefight. It still does most of this, but at the start of Season 10 it also damaged opponents and blinded them for a short time, and Seer could toss this out while moving at a full sprint if he wanted to. Compounded with his frequently useful and powerful ultimate, which detects enemies moving quickly and firing their weapons through walls in a large radius, Seer had been labeled as a reconnaissance nightmare and a must-pick for Battle Royale by experienced players right out of the gate, where both abilities make him amazing for third partying enemies, while his passive's discreet intel prevents his squad from being third partied themselves. Not very surprisingly, he soon received an all-around nerf the month of his addition, reducing the frequency of how often his passive checks for enemies, reducing its field of view, removing his tactical's damage, making it slower to execute, and increasing the time it takes for his ultimate to charge up to two minutes from the 90 second charge it had before.
  • It took time for players to learn how to best apply Valkyrie's strengths, but once they did, she caused a massive meta shift in ranked. In public games, she enjoys a high pickrate thanks to her passive allowing a great amount of individual movement, while her tactical is a functional and useful offensive attack. In serious tournament play, she's even better: her Skyward Dive is an insanely powerful macro-game repositioning tool thanks to its modest cooldown, the long distance it covers, and the difficulty of countering a Skyward Diving squad without also having a Skyward Dive to chase; due to ranked and tournament play's much higher emphasis on wins over kills, being able to play the long game and escape or reposition when necessary is a must. As a result, her pickrate is reliably in the top 5 in public matches, but in the official Apex Legends tournament ALGS, she's practically omnipresent for every team composition. That she's been basically untouched balancing-wise since her debut has led to competitive-minded fans growing an increasing ire towards her overcentralization of the meta. Respawn took a little bit of a hint when they nerfed her Skyward Dive, where she couldn't turn during the lift off, making it more riskier of being attacked while taking off.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A brief discussion took place in the game's early days about how, while Titans were not present, it was more than understandable. How overpowered would a giant nigh-indestructible mech be in a Battle Royale game? Fast-forward to the Fortnite Season X update, which introduced the BRUTE...
  • Bangalore is a former IMC soldier. This might not mean much until you remember that at her core, this basically means she was an IMC grunt during the war, or you know, the ones that get aced by and literally wiped onto the floor in the hundreds by the player character Pilots in the Titanfall games.
    • Relating to Bangalore, the fact that she spent a lot of the season 5 quest brushing off Crypto every time he spoke and being seconds away from calling him a nerd gets funnier once you find out, 4 seasons later, that seven years ago a teenage Crypto had used his tech know-how to aid her in her search for Jackson. She doesn't realize this, of course.
  • This fan concept for a legend named "Fuse", with a kit built around grenades that was posted about two years before the actual Fuse was revealed, with a similar passive to the fan submission.
• I Knew It!: Many players immediately caught on that the short-lived "Elite Queue", reserved for players who placed in the top 5 squads during the Legendary Hunt event, was little more than a Poorly Disguised Pilot for a proper ranked mode. Sure enough, less than a week after Legendary Hunt started, ranked mode was announced to debut in Season 2.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Some longtime fans of Titanfall feel resentful of Apex's breakout success as it lead to Respawn shifting all of its resources towards this game instead of a third Titanfall game. This in turn has lead to some Titanfall fans accusing Respawn of "selling out" and "trend-chasing". Not helping matters is how Apex became a billion dollar title whereas both Titanfall games were deemed as financial disappointments by publisher Electronic Arts. That said, the animosity is tempered by the game providing a Colbert Bump to Titanfall 2.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Loba is this, with a bit of Iron Woobie mixed in. While she's a thief, one of the very best at that and therefore a criminal, she witnessed her parents (and many others) get murdered by Revenant when she was young, leaving her the sole survivor of the massacre, traumatizing her greatly growing up. When she learns of Revenant's reappearance at the games, despite her trauma resurfacing, she joins in to avenge her parents' deaths.
    • This gets even worse in Season 7. After initially agreeing the team up with Revenant and destroy his source code, Loba eventually betrayed him, throwing his source code into the phaserunner. The fact that she will now have an immortal Axe-Crazy robot haunting her for the rest of her life is something she brought entirely on herself.
  • Speaking of whom, Revenant is the game's cream-of-the-crop Jerkass, actively being a massive dick to his teammates and not giving a single lick of empathy for anyone else, whenever he isn't doing things For the Evulz. He's also a massive Tortured Monster, never having asked to be granted immortality, having centuries' worth of suffering in his memory banks, living every second of his life with the knowledge that it probably won't end anytime soon, and having an implied self-loathing complex.
  • Octane growing up without his father around has led him to perform stunts for fame and thrill, all while hurting and manipulating the people who care about him so he can continue his bad habits. Come to find out, his father had abused him physically before, with the Season 9 comic "Checkmate" showing that he is also verbally and emotionally abusive. In Season 12, his Only Friend Lifeline has grown tired of him and has begun complaining about him being The Load, making him all the more manipulable when Eduardo suddenly needs Octane to further his political career, showing that despite Octane's fears he did get some of his bad traits from his father, in addition to causing his friendship with Lifeline to break.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Some Titanfall fans play Apex or otherwise follow up with it for the primary reason that the games share a universe, helped by the fact that Valkyrie and Ash's connections to Titanfall 2 feel almost fanservice-y.
  • A significant amount of players aren't all that interested in engaging with the Battle Royale aspect of the game, instead playing primarily to get into fights. This can put them at odds with people who do play for the battle royale, as playing for the win and playing for kills are strategically at odds with each other, especially when joining a game with randoms.
• LGBT Fanbase: Apex has earned itself a notable LGBT fanbase for its many steps to include LGBT characters and players. The game has multiple characters that express same-sex attraction to varying degrees of visibility and overtness (from Valkyrie being an Official Couple with Loba to Octane being Ambiguously Gay), as well as nonbinary representation in Bloodhound and transgender representation in Catalyst. In-game splash notifications will celebrate Pride Month, and players can customize their banner to have the Progress Pride flag as a badge on it.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • The Legacy update's comic's first chapter ends with a cliffhanger; the floor Loba is standing on breaks and she falls right into open air, from a Floating Continent. Because this update's new Legend is well-known for her ability to fly, Valkyrie pulling a Big Damn Heroes moment and saving Loba from certain doom is the incredibly obvious continuation of the story.
  • Jackson being alive. Given that he was the subject of a cinematic short just before Season 12, the Williams Sendoff chronicle revolved around how we was definitely dead, and that she was departing the games to go back to Gridiron after, the reveal that he's actually alive and is the next legend to be released surprised very few since, if he really was dead, then Bangalore would have left the games and there would be no in-universe reason for her to continue being playable. And effectively removing a character from the game would be impossible for all practical purposes, since not only would it drastically alter the gameplay, it'd scam the money out of everyone who bought that character's cosmetics, which would be a PR disaster — so the obvious outcome would be that Bangalore would stay in the games after finding her brother being alive again.
  • The premise of the Kill Code saga is that the Legends are making another decisive attempt to get rid of Revenant for good. Seems pretty definitive, but like with Bangalore and Jackson, doing so would cause Revenant to leave the Apex Games for being Deader than Dead, and as such the saga ends with Revenant still alive.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Upon release, Bloodhound was commonly viewed as underpowered, and most of this stemmed from complaints regarding their tactical ability, Eye of the Allfather. Its main utility is to reveal enemies and traps hidden behind walls and in buildings, but this comes at the cost of instantly revealing their location to enemies, as the ability causes a flashing ring to disperse from Bloodhound's location the moment they use it. Enemies will also instantly know a hostile Bloodhound is in the area due to a HUD notification. This is an intentional balance measure put in place to prevent Bloodhound players from scanning as soon as it is available, but in Season 1 it almost wasn't worth it to try and use at the right time anyways, as before Eye of the Allfather was buffed, the scan resulted in static yellow images showing up instead of tracking opponents' real-time movements, which could get in the way of Bloodhound's or their teammates' line of sight and throw off everyone's aim. The start of Season 2 would see pretty substantial changes to their kit.
  • Upon release and for a good while, Caustic initially suffered from many of the same problems as Gibraltar (large hitbox, situational abilities), leading to an overall miserable ranked pick rate. Caustic has always been seen as borderline useless in the open since his gas traps are only really effective in close quarters, and before Season 5 his gas traps commonly proved to be more of an active detriment to his squadmates by damaging, blinding and slowing them down as well as his enemies. His passive tied directly into his own ability by giving himself immunity to Nox gas from his and enemy Caustic's barrels while highlighting enemies within his own Nox gas clouds, but he wasn't able to utilize it much due to the utterly pathetic initial damage output of his gas, meaning enemies rarely even viewed it as a threat and could simply move out of it or use a movement ability to dart away.
  • Despite starting off with a rather large bang in his cinematic trailer, Fuse had a pretty lackluster debut competitively and was typically cited as one of the worst Legends power-wise. His tactical flushes enemies out of cover, but it did piddling damage and didn't linger very long - you were basically tickling your opponents every time you used it. His passive, an arm-mounted grenade launcher that extends his throwing distance, is okay at longer ranges but is detrimental in some cases, such as throwing a grenade straight up outside a doorway to catch approaching enemies by surprise. His ultimate is slow, hard to aim, easily countered by other legends' ultimate and even tactical abilities in some cases^* Gibraltar, Pathfinder, Wraith and Loba can use their tacticals and Wattson can use her ultimate to block or escape the fire ring; Valkyrie's, Octane's, Pathfinder's, Ash's and Wraith's ultimates and Horizon's tactical can move their entire squads out of it — whenever the terrain itself doesn't counter it by having buildings create gaps in the ring of fire's circumference or make it all but impossible to use indoors without smothering yourself in flames. All of this combined into making his Legend-specific abilities very situational to nearly worthless, with playing as him typically focusing on using guns more than abilities. This perception would change somewhat in Season 10, which saw Fuse receive buffs all across the board to give him more utility and versatility.
  • Around the time of the game's launch, Gibraltar was often looked down upon and saw little competitive use. He was one of the easiest target to hit thanks to having the bulkiest hitbox, and at launch he didn't possess the damage resistance he does now. Although Gibraltar's gun shield and dome shield were intended to improve his survivability, both seemed to struggle in practice as the gun shield only covers his front side and is rather easily destroyed, while his dome shield actively hinders his squad by also blocking their shots as well as the enemy's. His only saving grace was his powerful Defensive Bombardment ultimate, which was and still is considered one of the best ultimate abilities in the game for its sheer raw power and ability to force teams out of camping spots or keep them trapped inside buildings, but most Gibraltar players couldn't live long enough to capitalize on it due to his glaring weaknesses.
  • For well over the first year of the game's development, Mirage was consistently cited as the game's worst Legend due to the weird ways his kit worked. While his Tactical ability to send out decoys saw plenty of use, his Passive and Ultimate were seen as situational at best and borderline useless at worst. His Passive only worked after Mirage was downed (something that would typically be discouraged in a game where you lose if your squad is wiped out), and only bought him a few extra seconds to get away provided the enemy didn't just camp the nearby area and wait for him to decloak.^note This isn't even getting to the fact that, by virtue of how it worked, he effectively became the sole Legend with no Passive ability whatsoever during the short-lived Solo mode; Lifeline could at least extend supply bins His Ultimate, meanwhile, spawned a bunch of decoys that literally stood in a circle and did nothing while Mirage himself turned invisible for a few seconds (though he could still take damage, essentially making it a gimped version of Wraith's Tactical ability).^note It was even worse in Season 1, where Mirage wasn't even completely invisible, instead remaining highly visible while cloaked. A Season 2 patch finally gave him full invisibility, but it didn't really help him much in the long term as smart players immediately knew to start combing the area once they saw a circle of Mirage clones just standing around. Players had been calling for a complete rework of Mirage practically since the game's launch, and they finally got their wish in Season 5.
  • For a while after his debut, almost everything Octane could do, other Legends could do better. His Stim was outclassed as a personal mobility option by Pathfinder's grapple and Loba's translocator, his Jump Pad was overshadowed by other team mobility options like Pathfinder's Zipline and Wraith's portal, and his passive health regeneration was considered all but useless outside of allowing him to recover from Stim without having to waste Syringes. The one advantage he had over Legends with similar abilities is that his kit typically operates on very short cooldowns, but an increased delay between uses is typically seen as a more-than-fair tradeoff due to just how more useful the alternatives are in comparison.
  • Ever since her debut in Season 6, Rampart had remained as one of the least used Legends, largely because of her counter-intuitive defensive kit. Her abilities are built around proactively setting up powerful positions, which clashes with the favored faster-paced, run-and-gun most players like to employ. Her amped covers can be easily destroyed while setting up and even when properly deployed they can be countered by flanking them or blowing them up with explosives, which were an instant kill to her walls when she first released. Her passive only benefits LMGs, which have a rather high skill curve to use and are one of the less common weapons, with only three types at her release. Her ultimate skill, a stationary high-rate-of-fire turret named Sheila, seemed effective at locking down areas on paper, but in practice was easily countered and destroyed by a single well-tossed frag grenade, not to mention the myriad of offensive ultimate abilities that call in air strikes and other ordinance, on top of having noticeable bullet spread that made it less effective at longer ranges. She steadily received buffs every season since her debut, but her pick rate hardly improved until Season 10's Emergence update reworked Sheila into being able to be wielded and fired like a normal gun in addition to its stationary turret mode, albeit with limited ammo reserves. Even then, her other abilities still don't do her much justice, and she remains one of the least-picked Legends on the current roster.
  • It didn't take long after Revenant was introduced for him to plummet straight to the bottom of the scrappy heap. Among the many problems he had immediately after his launch were a highly situational Tactical and Passive ability, with Silence proving devastating against some Legends and almost completely ineffective against others, an Ultimate that left him and his squad extremely vulnerable when used properly (it brought players back to the Death Totem after losing their health, but with only one hit point left, meaning something like an enemy Caustic laying down a single gas trap at a Death Totem could easily wipe an entire squad), and him being inexplicably hit with the Low Profile passive despite being one of the larger Legends on the roster. Some massive buffs to his Tactical and Ultimate and the removal of Low Profile finally propelled him into viability, and ever since he's been seen in a much better light, especially after a buff to his passive in Season 9 that drastically increased his traversal distance up walls. His Silent ability being able to shut down Gibraltar's gun shield also makes him an effective counter against him. However, these buffs did contribute towards a rather hated synergy with Octane later down the line - see Octane's folder for more details.
  • Much like Caustic, Wattson is a contentious character when it comes to her competitive viability and has caused many a Casual-Competitive Conflict over her kit and her capabilities. Players who play in public lobbies often decried her tools as being too obvious to spot and play around - her electric fences can be seen brightly lit up from across the map and through opaque windows, and take a mere couple bullets from any gun to the base to be destroyed, meaning unless other players really aren't paying attention they're unlikely to set them off. Her passive and ultimate were seen as relatively situational - Ultimate Accelerants give her her ultimate right away instead of 25% ult charge, and her ultimate, Interception Pylon, was intended to be used to destroy incoming ordinance like grenades and air strikes, but had rather ineffectual range and was easily destroyed in a few shots. Bizarrely, she was also given the Low Profile perk despite her generally upright stature compared to other Legends she shared it with, notably Wraith, which negatively impacted her survivability. As time went on, however, Ranked players, similarly to Caustic, began to realize Wattson's abilities encouraged a more camping-oriented playstyle that was virtually impossible to counter, especially with buffs to the range on Interception Pylon's ordinance detection, fence damage increases and, eventually, a proper passive in the form of slow natural shield regeneration. When paired with other defensive Legends like Gibraltar or Caustic, Wattson became a top-tier Legend who is still very much prominent in Ranked mode, especially after being buffed considerably in Season 11, to the surprise of some players, giving her fences even more damage and stun, allowing them to be set up further away and increasing their reactivation speed after allies pass through them, while giving her Interception Pylon ultimate a faster shield recharge at the expense of finite shield regeneration.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Fuse, due to being completely unfazed by his missing arm.
  • Maggie, ripping a Syndicate soldier's throat out with her bare teeth...and this was after she had knocked her own tooth out and used it to blind the judge sentencing her to death.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Mirage has become somewhat of a joke among the community for his goofy personality, pathetic attempts at creating a dating profile and unintuitive abilities, along with dying in most trailers and often being the butt of the joke.
  • Bangalore among some fans. While intended as a grounded accessible legend with her simple abilities and light backstory, some find her to be a rather boring stock soldier archetype compared to the more colorful legends. The fact that she is a former IMC grunt makes her a target of mockery among Titanfall fans as in those games, grunts are Cannon Fodder who exist solely to be killed en-masse by Pilots and Titans. Even the marketing hasn't been kind to Bangalore as she gets slain in order to showcase the flashier abilities of her fellow legends.
  • Wraith. Whenever the playerbase wants to make jokes about toxic players that do any combination of trash talking their teammates, leaving the match the moment they get downed, or solo launching into popular drop points, the Legend that they main is more often than not Wraith.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Some minority man" ^explanation  Among the game's detractors is a vocal minority complaining on Reddit and review bombing the game on Metacritic due to the diverse launch roster that includes two black women, a gay man (of Pacific Islander ancestry), two characters of ambiguous ancestry, and a nonbinary character. One post to the Apex subreddit complaining about this got universal flak, mocking the label given to Mirage (as "some minority man").
  • Toxic white male. ^explanation The launch roster's only unambiguously white male character specializes in poisonous gas, which some have taken as a political joke (as he is a literal toxic white male).
  • The Mozambique is a bad/great gun.^explanation As explained below, the Mozambique has become a Scrappy Weapon due to its terrible range and inconsistent damage, turning it into a source mockery. This has also led to ironic memes praising the gun, since killing other players with it is no small feat, and people will often ping one as a joke. Even the devs get in with this one. However, with Season 2 introducing a new hop-up for the Mozambique that allows it to pound unshielded targets like a sledgehammer, the joke's slowly starting to fade at it starts to become a genuinely useful weapon in the right situation.
  • Gibraltar's hitbox.^explanation One of the more jarring revelations about the game was the sheer difference in hitboxes; Pathfinder, despite being one of the thinnest models, has one of the widest torso boxes, and Gibraltar's hitboxes are about '140%' bigger than Wraith's. Exaggerations ensued.
  • Space Maui.^explanation Given how they are both big bois of Polynesian descent and have larger-than-life personas, many fans compare Gibraltar to Maui from Moana.
  • (X) here. Level (1-4)! ^explanation The ping system allows you to label and announce any item you can find, from ammo to guns to attachments and their level. That, coupled with the ease of pinging means you're bound to hear you and your squad shout out "[Item] here!" almost every other moment. Players have started to use a snowclone both inside and out of the game's community for anything, from mundane objects to even in conjunction with other memes/fandoms.
    • I need it./Dibs.^Explanation You can claim “dibs” on any pinged loot, leading to this being a common response (especially if the thing in question is particularly useless).
    • Bangalore's pings. ^Explanation Whenever Bangalore pings a weapon, she'll often provide a heads-up on what it does, with many of her descriptions often being incredibly obvious. While this is undoubtedly an inclusion to give new players a basic rundown of the weapons, fans have turned her into a Captain Obvious with lines like "door here, separates the outside from the inside" and "ultimate accelerant here, it accelerates your ultimate".
  • You committed the ultimate cardinal sin, you got personal.^Explanation In a Reddit thread detailing the much-hated Iron Crown event, one developer called out some of the more toxic players for being "ass-hats" and jokingly referred to free players as "freeloaders". This spawned a lengthy rant that was quickly derided and parodied.
  • "Wattson has an important message" ^Explanation The game's subreddit has drawings of Wattson holding a sign with the community's request written on it.
  • There's a very special little legend I'd like to bring attention to...AND HIS NAME IS FORGE! ^note Many fans immediately compare the Season 4's Forge to the legendary John Cena thanks to his pro-wrestler physique, Walking Shirtless Scene, and background as a five-time Hyper Fighting Federation champion.
  • "Oh my god, he killed Jimmy! You bastard!"^{Explanation (spoilers)} After Forge's death, many fans immediately compared him to Kenny McCormick since they have the same last name and got unexpectedly killed.
  • Surprise man-hug!^{Explanation (spoilers)} Thanks to the Gory Discretion Shot, Revenant backstabbing Forge comes off more like Revenant is hugging him. Naturally, this has lead to many fans shipping the two.
  • What the hell are you? Death^Explanation In the season 4 launch trailer, Revenant lifts up Marcos Andrade by the throat. Marcos asks, "What are the hell are you?" and Revenant responds, "Death" before killing him. Naturally, this became a popular object labeling meme.
  • Thicc Loba^Explanation Season 5's Loba became the most sexualized female legend thanks in part to her Supermodel Strut animation and the camera focus on her body. This resulted in many, many jokes and fanart about her prominent butt and curvaceous figure. Some have gone so far as to transpose her sexy animations onto Gibraltar and Mirage just for fun.
  • Ms. Frizzle^Explanation Season 7's Horizon bears a passing resemblance to Ms. Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus. It helps that she first appears in the launch trailer picking up Mirage in a trident and even has a skin titled "Field Trip" that shares the coloration of the school teacher's outfit.
  • Within hours of Fuse's Stories From The Outlands episode, people were making jokes about him losing his arm:
    • "Oh no! ...Anyways."
    • "He'll be right."
  • Butt Slap^Explanation In the Season 8 trailer, Fuse slaps Caustic's ass then tries to do the same to Bloodhound only to be stopped at gunpoint. Needless to say, many have interpreted Fuse's act as a sign of affection with many shipping Fuse and Caustic.
  • "Player is dropping solo." ^Explanation The much-dreaded call sign of a player, usually a Wraith or Octane, about to go full Leeroy Jenkins.
  • "There is no such thing as a coincidence." ^Explanation Seer has instantly drawn comparisons to a TikTok personality William Knight, known for his inspiring yet bizarre videos which he opens with that phrase. It's gotten to the point that Knight has cosplayed Seer in a video.
  • "So basically I had an idea where crypto had a passive called 'off the grid'...". ^Explanation A copypasta poking fun at fairly common fan suggestion that Crypto should be immune (or at least resistant) to being scanned due to his backstory as a fugitive hacker hiding from the Syndicate.
  • Sad Saggie.^Explanation A nickname for Mad Maggie, and alternatively spelled Sad Saggy. It's derived from the general player response to her playability: of all the Legends during their original release, she had one of the lowest pickrates thanks to her mediocre kit and her release competing with the temporarily released-for-free Octane, Wattson, and Valkyrie. And as of early Season 13 writing, her pickrate has managed to plummet even further, now roughly tying at less than 2% for the least picked Legend in the game with Crypto — a character infamous for being rough to play for his passivity.
  • "I love the part where [Legend] did [sequence of events, usually ending with an Epic Fail]. Truly an Apex experience."^Explanation A copypasta that sees itself spammed in the official Apex YouTube videos for Last Hope and the Eclipse Launch Trailer. Examples include Wraith turning into a box immediately after running off by herself and getting downed, Seer quipping that he hears no heartbeats before getting jumped by 5 squads, and tons of jokes about saying "it's [Legend] time" and/or them "[Legend]-ing all over the place".
• More Popular Spin Off: This game became more popular than the Titanfall games would ever be as it managed to achieve 70 million unique players in 1 year. Subsequently, this game's popularity led to newcomers trickling into Titanfall 2.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Become the last team standing, and a victorious theme plays while the announcer declares "You are the Apex Champions!". A satisfying capstone to a match well played.
  • Those fortunate enough to own the Iron Crown music pack get a victory theme that will have them feeling triumphant.
  • The "glass shattering" sound made when you crack an enemy's shield. Nothing says "you've got them on the ropes" quite like hearing it.
  • Similarly, the low, charging hum that your Evo Shields will make if you get them to the next level.
• Narm Charm: Mirage's sudden appearanace at the 2019 Game Awards. While his trademark narcissism and terrible attempts at humor can be painful to watch for some, there's no arguing that it suits his own unique charm as a character pretty well. It helps that the event also had host Geoff Keighley playing the straight man to balance out Mirage's jokiness.
• Obvious Judas: In Season 5's story, The Mole's identity being Caustic. He's the only real evil character aside from Revenant himself. If one of the more heroic characters turned out to be the mole, their whole personality would have to be rewritten.
• Pandering to the Base: The Gun Run gamemode's constant action, heavy emphasis on improvisation, and minimal long-term strategy seems like it's supposed to be this to players who only play Battle Royale to fight other players and not to win, hotdropping Fragment and Skulltown in doing so (which, not so coincidentally, were its starting POIs when it was added). While it certainly delivers on that experience, it's obvious that Apex wasn't designed for such a mode: Legends whose abilities can be in constant use or serve combat/movement purposes are way better and are borderline omnipresent picks (such as Horizon, Octane, and Wattson), while kits that favor long-term strategy or team support get absolutely shafted (Loba especially, whose passive and ult are almost useless because there's no loot in Gun Run).
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Wraith's "Voices from the Void" passive ability gives you a reminder that you're never safe. At any moment, you can hear her saying in a chilling, alarm like voice things from "They might be watching you" to "They're aiming right at you!". After all, it's a Battle Royale Game, and everyone but two other people wants you dead. "Voices from the Void" just make sure that you acknowledge that.
  • Revenant's pre-buff Ultimate came with its own weird brand for those using it. Taking lethal damage while under a Totem's Death Protection would respawn you back at the Totem with 1 HP. Nothing inherently paranoia-inducing about that... except for the very real possibility that there would be a Caustic trap or two waiting for you when you respawned, in which case you were already dead unless you were a Caustic yourself. After its mid-season 4 buff, you now respawn with up to 50 HP depending on how much health you had when you used it, making this a non-issue.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • Much like Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch, Apex Legends is very popular among animation fans for having a diverse cast and animesque style.
  • The game is also highly popular among people who aren't normally fans of Battle Royale thanks to its more intuitive features like a ping system and the ability to respawn teammates.
• Ron the Death Eater: Certain fans like to theorize that Wattson isn't as sweet and bubbly as she comes off as, believing that it's all a front so her more dubious actions, such as forcing Crypto to reveal his identity and blackmailing Caustic with evidence of his planned mass poisoning so that he behaves, don't come into question. Expect fans of this interpretation to dislike how Wattson is portrayed now because they believe her nice girl persona is holding her writing back.
• Scenery Porn: The game has some absolutely stunning vistas in some locations. Especially with the skyboxes: special note goes to Storm Point's perpetual thunderstorm, the sprawling and perpetually-active Malta cityscape below Season 12 Olympus, and the ashen-clouds-versus-cool-alps contrast of Season 10 World's Edge.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Season 1 battle pass was poorly received by most fans for its unrewarding grind. A large chunk of the rewards were fairly worthless stat trackers and badge modifications. It also took forever to level up and there were no challenges or objectives to spice things up.
  • While the Season 2 battle pass was considered a significant improvement for its challenge-based system and better cosmetics, some challenges require playing as Legends that some players haven't unlocked yet.
  • While Ranked mode was well-received at first, as the weeks wore on a significant problem started rearing its ugly head: it was too easy to climb out of the lower ranks. The effect it had was catastrophic: because most players who started playing the mode right after it launched ended up climbing into the middle tiers fairly quickly, this left late adopters and those with not as much free time to rank up utterly screwed, with queue times often rocketing into hours simply because the matchmaker didn't have enough players to work with at the lower brackets. Changes to the way ranks are calculated made this much less of an issue from Season 3 onward.
  • Season 5 introduced Charge Towers to King's Canyon. They're simple in premise; after spending a few seconds activating a control panel, everyone in close proximity to the tower instantly has their Ultimate fully charged. However, most Legends' Ultimates charge so fast that they're usually worthless after the first minutes of a match, with the uncommon exceptions in getting Lifeline's slow ult charged more often and maybe extending the distance a team can cover with Valkyrie's ult.
  • The Season 7 battle pass progression changes were met with overwhelming derision from the community right out of the gate, with the XP progression system of previous battle passes reworked completely in favor of earning 'stars' for completing daily and weekly challenges. This wouldn't be a big deal, as some challenges award multiple stars, except even the less rewarding one-star challenges require a much larger time commitment, as the criteria for completing these challenges was massively increased by three to even five times the amount they were in previous seasons.^note As an example, 'Win 1 ranked game' was changed to 'Win 5 ranked games' The kicker? You need TEN stars to earn one battle pass rank. While you can earn stars by earning XP, at launch it took 10,000 XP to earn just one star. Players were furious with this change, with some reporting playing six to eight hour sessions just to earn one level of the battle pass, leading some to believe that these changes were solely implemented to force players into manually purchasing battle pass levels. Eventually the backlash lead to the XP requirements for each star getting halved to 5000, among severely toning down the daily and weekly challenge requirements back to their pre-Season 7 limits and making challenges grant more star rewards.
  • The Holo-Day Bash 2020 skin bundles in the shop were met with some ire on the game's subreddit. While players were more welcoming to the absence of seasonal lootboxes this time around, things quickly turned sour again once players noticed that weapon and legend skins designed to match one another artistically were swapped around between bundles, meaning if you wanted to purchase a matching weapon and legend skin you had to buy two separate bundles that could cost upwards of about 16 dollars each. This was a mere month after the similarly-derided battle pass incident detailed above, which certainly didn't help the situation.
  • Spend enough time on the game's subreddit, and you'll notice that nobody has anything positive to say about scans, thanks to a scan meta that has most teams running at least one of the Recon Legends and the belief that scans make the roster homogenized since multiple characters share them.^note While it is true that almost all of the Recon characters have a scan in some form, collecting information is the whole point of their class; it would be like complaining that every Defense Legend places objects down, or that multiple Offense Legends have a movement or attacking ability.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Mozambique developed a reputation as a terrible gun barely a week since the launch of the game. The spray pattern is inconsistent, the range is terrible even for a shotgun, and the gun doesn't have a unique gimmick to help it work. Even the developers joke about it. Unlike some other battle royale games, Apex features pretty-good handguns (the Wingman and RE-45), so the Mozambique's terribleness is even more prominent; some players think even being unarmed is better than picking it up. Season 2 introduced the Hammerpoint Rounds hop-up, which doubles the damage the gun deals against unshielded targets; this transformed the Mozambique from a weapon that was virtually useless in any situation into a decent sidearm that can be used to finish off low-health enemies with relative ease. Skilled players can even one-shot unshielded opponents with a well-aimed shot at close range.
  • The P2020 pistol is a similarly terrible weapon as it's a semi-automatic with the weakest per-shot damage, a short effective range, and a small magazine. It can be aimed fast with no speed penalty, but the penalties for shotguns and SMGs are already quite small, not to mention this already puny benefit is totally negated by the equally common, fully automatic RE-45. A small portion of the community considers the P2020 to be even worse than the aforementioned Mozambique, citing that at least the latter can pack a punch in close range.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Almost all of the women get this treatment to an extent. While their body shapes are realistic and the only one who dresses anything close to provocatively is Loba in her clothes Of Corsets Sexy, many fan artists draw them with curvier figures or wearing revealing outfits.
  • Caustic, who has a Gonk appearance with sickly skin and receding is drawn by fans as having a more natural skin tone, full head of hair and either a muscled physique or at least making him a Big Beautiful Man.
  • Octane, likely due to his midriff-baring clothing and thin runner's build bodytype, is often drawn by fans to have a much more pretty-boy look than the mildly-disheveled face-reveal in Pathfinder's Quest shows, especially by East Asian fans. Notably, some official comics (but not all of them) actually do lean more into a prettier Octane rather than the rough-and-tumble look we got in the book.
• Strangled by the Red String: Valkyrie and Loba becoming a couple might just feel somewhat sudden and surprising, especially compared to the lengths Bangalore had to go through to start being Fire-Forged Friends turned lovers. Bangalore and Loba took multiple seasons to open up to each other, starting with Bang seeing Loba as a thief that's Sleeping Their Way to the Top and ending with Loba about to bring Flowers of Romance to a recovering Bangalore; by contrast, Valkyrie and Loba hit it off pretty much immediately after the end of The Legacy Antigen, at which point they've pretty much only been on one adventure together to Gaea. That said at least, it doesn't look like their relationship is disingenous; The final community comic of The Legacy Antigen has Loba grateful for Valkyrie's emotional support at a moment where she's sitting on the edge of a building and mentioning she's "thinking of flying away [her]self", and in chapter 6 of Friends Like These Valkyrie goes to extensive lengths behind Loba's back to try and finally get Revenant to stop ruining her life.
• Tainted by the Preview: Defied – Respawn Entertainment didn't reveal the game until its launch date because the studio didn't want a marketing campaign that could potentially mislead or alienate their fans and instead wanted players to draw their own opinions.
• Tear Jerker: "Stories from the Outlands - Northstar" gut-punched every Titanfall 2 player out there. Valkyrie comes to settle a score with Blisk over the death of her father when she was a child, intercut with scenes of her life with her dad. But her father was Viper, whose fight ended with Jack Cooper(i.e.: you, the player) personally putting a bullet in his head. And to twist the knife, they even show Viper solemnly bidding his daughter goodbye right before he sets off for Typhon.
  • Caustic has been dying of cancer as a result of constant exposure to his own noxious chemicals. That was never a secret, nor is it sad, given who he is. What was confusing is why he never told his mother that he was still alive, something that Crypto himself cannot understand. In Season 9, he finally gets an answer from Caustic:
  "BECAUSE THE CANCER WAS SUPPOSED TO KILL ME BY NOW!"
  • This makes his eventual reunion with his mother even more sad. He even removes his mask so she can see him clearly.
• That One Achievement: While there are several banner badges that are extremely difficult to obtain (the "20 kills in a match" and "4000 damage in a match" badges being the most recognizable examples), none scream "what the hell were the devs thinking?!" quite like the infamous "888" badge from the Legendary Hunt Event. How did one earn the 888 Badge? Simple: by winning eight games, with at least eight kills on each win, with eight different Legends. Winning just one match with eight kills is a significant feat for the average player, much less 64 of them. And given that there were only nine Legends in the game during the Legendary Hunt event, earning this badge required complete mastery of virtually every character in the game. To give an idea of just how nigh-impossible this badge was to earn, take a guess at the portion of the player base who walked away from the event proudly sporting the 888 badge. Give up? Less than a thousandth of a percent, i.e. the total number of players didn't even break 1,000. Needless to say, if you have the misfortune of being dropped into a match with someone who has this badge on their banner, run far, far away, as you're up against one of the certified best players in the world.
• That One Level:
  • For players who play for the fights, Storm Point is reviled for being too big and not having a dedicated "everyone will drop here" location like Fragment. For anyone who doesn't drop as soon as possible, this largeness contributes to a lot of actionless downtime where nothing engaging happens.
  • Conversely, extreme Abridged Arena Array around Fragment at World's Edge causes headaches for anyone who plays to win the game. Many players will downright refuse to land anywhere but Fragment, creating situations where you either engage with a quarter of the lobby at the minimum right on drop, or be forced to proceed with your original plan with one less squadmate (who will very likely get themselves killed and disconnect before you can even try to save them).
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Treasure Pack system seems almost hostile to the player. Once per day, players can pick up a Treasure Pack item for a bonus goodie after the game. But it only spawns from supply bins, which pretty much soft-blocks you from playing Arenas for them due to the far more limited quantity of bins in that mode. Additionally, teammates aren't cued into pinging them for players who need packs like they are with weapons, and Loba's loot-spotting and retrieval abilities work differently for packs — ie, not at all unless it's already on the ground.
  • Location-based Battle Pass challenges. These challenges required you to complete a certain objective in a certain part of the map (e.g. deal 500 damage in Thermal Station, or get three knockdowns in Harvester). For starters, they were borderline Luck Based Missions due to the way players typically drop (see Abridged Arena Array above), with damage, knockdown, and kill-centric challenges at rarely-visited locations like Outlook and The Tree being nigh impossible without literal hours of grinding and hoping for the best due to how infrequently players typically go to those places. What made them absolutely insufferable was that they were all multi-tier challenges, meaning you needed to complete the same task in anywhere from three to five different locations in order to complete the challenge. These problems were then exacerbated further when the map rotation was introduced in the middle of Season 4; at the time, all of these challenges were based in World's Edge, so if the map rotation switched to King's Canyon, you were SOL since the Ranked mode was always on King's Canyon. Respawn finally did away with location-based challenges entirely in Season 5, to the rejoicing of pretty much everyone.
  • In the same vein, challenges that can only be completed in Ranked mode. Due to the way Ranked works, these challenges get significantly harder as your Rank improves (it's much more difficult to earn 120 RP in Diamond or Masters than at Bronze or Silver, for example), leading to a weird scenario in which players who have put in the time to improve their Rank end up effectively being punished for it. They've been phased out of the game later, thankfully.
  • The "Respawn a teammate in Battle Royale" challenge. Teammates can only be respawned if they've been downed, then killed or left waiting too long while down. However, rarely do players actively attempt to finish off a downed opponent since it often makes more sense to kill the rest of their teammates instead. Having one or two dead teammates also severely hampers your chances of coming out of the engagement alive, since you're more than likely to be outnumbered by their assailants. You also can't get this challenge if your team is too good to get killed, nor if everyone gets downed with no survivors. That's not to mention if your teammates are too impatient to wait for you to respawn them and disconnect early, or that you're competing with any still-alive teammates to get credited for the respawn, since it will only go to one player.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • While the lack of Titanfall's famous Titans in a Battle Royale setting is understandable, as it would be disadvantageous to players on foot, the inability to perform Le Parkour is largely deemed as an undersight, being seen as a missed opportunity with how central it was to the main games. Respawn, for their part, have said they had parkour in the game for a long time during development, but while the wild angles of attack and ambush it allows for are certainly fun to do, it ended up feeling fairly rubbish to be on the receiving end of in a battle-royale-style game with only one life (as opposed to in Titanfall, where Death Is a Slap on the Wrist).
  • Regarding the divisiveness surrounding Wattson and Crypto: lore from 6 seasons after Crypto's release show he's not 31 as initially stated, now suddenly indicating he may be 22, exactly Wattson's age. This angered critics of their relationship, believing that his new age is a retcon designed to make him more viable with Wattson, pandering to shippers by avoiding an issue that a known community creator, Ryonello, had brought up to the writers in regard to Mirage and Rampart's relationship.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Seer's view of the Apex Games as a place to show off his performance and his status as a prophecized Walking Disaster Area are compelling and present some interesting plot hooks, but at his introduction he didn't have much going for him narratively. After Quests were added to the game, due to Season 11 not having any in-game story whatsoever he's the second character to not have any role in his season's story since Horizon. But unlike Horizon, whose plot has had developments within her own season's event and has strong links to other characters through the Project: Iris team, Seer's had no story developments whatsoever and his history with the existing cast tends to be much more mild, sans possibly Octane. Season 15 seems to finally be doing him some favors: in addition to taking place on the moon that he "destroyed", it adds another Legend who has multiple bones to pick against him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In Season 13, Ash misses quite a few opportunities for characterization and world-building via in-game dialogue given her intimate connection with the history of the Titanfall universe. She could talk down to Bangalore about the inefficacy of standard IMC infantry like her (or inversely Bangalore shooting up about how Pilots aren't as cracked up as Ash implies, having killed one herself), take note of Wraith's pre-amnesiac life as an IMC Pilot and how Wraith might feel about it, or even just spook out Mirage (who is supposedly scared of Ash, but only as mentioned by Pathfinder). It seems the writers are taking steps to remedy this, at least: her long-awaited interaction lines with Valkyrie about Viper have been added to the game.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The Shadow Royale version of an earlier gamemode, Shadowfall, introduces a number of changes to make playing as a Shadow more fun and balanced, such as weakening their once-menacing 150-damage melee and allowing them to wallrun to flank enemies by surprise. A number of other changes to the new version, however, also undermine players' ability to use the Shadow form: players no longer infinitely respawn, only doing so until the last living player dies, (discouraging players from willingly entering Shadow form to prevent elimination,) respawning slower with each successive death, and the mode never progresses to an "all remaining living players versus all Shadows" phase. As a result, the touted Shadow form unique to Shadow Royale just kind of ends up being "that thing you do during the 30 seconds your team can stay alive before being entirely eliminated during a teamfight", if you're lucky enough to not be the last one alive.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Nikolai's son, Michael. While he may have been right to be angry with Gibraltar when he first heard about the incident between him and his Dad back when they were teenagers, he continued to carry that grudge for many years even though it happened long before he was born and Nikolai made peace with it before even that, not to mention that Nikolai chose to take the fall for the bike theft despite Gibraltar's protests. Michael continuing his animosity despite Gibraltar saving him and his father paints him in even more of a Jerkass light.
• The Woobie:
  • Wattson in her backstory is torn up by her father's death, to the point that even Caustic felt sorry for her.
  • Mirage's jovial attitude breaks down when he's the only character on a team, where he's talking to himself and is rather solemn about being alone. An Easter Egg in the Holo-Day Bash version of World's Edge also implies that his mother is losing her memory and forgets who he is.
  • Crypto tried to do the right thing when he discovered an algorithm for rigging the Apex Games, and it blew up in his face. He spent an indeterminant amount of time on the run, framed for the disapperance of his foster-sister. In the Games, he started to bond with his fellow legends (particularly Wattson), but Caustic put an end to that, leaving him more lonely and distrusted than ever. A mid-Season 7 cinematic, however, finally gave him a break, with him and Wattson finally making amends and the former regaining the latter’s trust.
  • Bangalore had to watch her home planet go up in flames during the Frontier War and after waking up from a medically-induced coma, discovers that her brother is now wanted by what's left of the IMC for desertion. Initially, she outs him out to the IMC, but chooses her brother over her duty when a Pilot is sent to kill him, her decision to give the IMC a means to pursue them now a decision she has to live with. After living on the run for a while, an explosion on their ship ejects Jackson onto Solace, separating them. A young Crypto seemed to finally give her a break by giving her a lead onto Jackson, only for Wraith's Voidwalker counterpart to steal its drive. Now far from home and with no family, she joined the Apex Games to fund her trip back to Gridiron and find Jackson. In Season 9, her crush falls in love with someone else, while in Season 12 she learns from Wraith that her brother was dead for more than five years, and her aforementioned crush burns bridges with her just for associating with Revenant, who offered her a ride back to Gridiron. Season 13 has things look up for her briefly when Jackson reappears as Newcastle, and then she learns he's taken on a new identity as a dad in a neighborhood of refugees from the very same war she fought in, so she can't associate with her long-lost brother outside the Games since it could very easily ruin his life. Life just isn't fair for Anita.
  • Seer grew up being blamed by his entire homeworld for the slow death of his planet, for which he was ridiculed in school by his classmates and a transition screen lore text implies that teachers held a bias against him as well. One of the writers has stated that Seer has one of the most traumatizing childhoods among the Legends.

---