These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
Ensemble Darkhorse: Lucky Girl, who is ironically one of the leads in disguise. Her nemesis Charmcaster qualifies on the villain side of things.
Naturally, some of Ben's aliens are more popular than others, but the one who takes the cake (from the original series, at least) is Heatblast. He's enough of a dark horse than a Ultimate Alien DVD was titled the Return of Heatblast.
XLR8 is also pretty popular, which makes it extra baffling that they went and made Fasttrack.
Buzzshock and Articguana, two of Ben 10,000's aliens, are surprisingly rather popular among the fanbase, despite the fact neither have ever appeared outside of that episode aside from a cameo in Ultimate Alien's theme. Articguana is finally used by the 16-Year-Old Ben in Omniverse.
Grandpa Max, as detailed in the Just Here for Godzilla entry, even moreso as of the newer series' when he's not a main character anymore.
Escapist Character: Ben; seriously, who wouldn't love having a watch like the Omnitrix?
Franchise Original Sin: One complaint about the sequel series is how redundant some of Ben's aliens can be. The first series has many aliens who, while having unique abilities, some have similar advantages to one alien that leave another alien functionally redundant (particularly Benvicktor/Frankenstrike, who on top of having super strength, has lightning abilities), indicating that there were ability and redundancy problems even before the sequels.
Fridge Logic: So, if Ben was so desperate to unlock the secrets of the Omnitrix, why didn't he just use Grey Matter's intelligence to do so? Amusingly, Kenny in "Ken 10" does think to do this.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Gwen is apparently popular enough in Southeast Asia that Cartoon Network Asia gave her a website and a good amount of merchandise.
The franchise is also very popular in Denmark, where many stores hold entire sections of Ben 10 merchandise.
The franchise has a strong following in Latin America as well, seeing as at one point nearly all of its schedule was devoted to showing Ben 10 episodes.
That's only for CN's younger audience. Ben is pretty loathed among teenagers/young adults due to being a Creator's Pet, sometimes the schedule changes going as far as replacing Halloween and Christmas specials for entire months of Ben 10. Other transgressions include post-poning Pokemon new episodes and movie in favor of Ben 10 specials, and the infamous "Ben 10 hour", an hour that is actually 2.
Remember that ending in Gwen 10 where the Omnitrix ultimately ended up on Grandpa Max? Several episodes later, some alien named Xylene, a person from Max's past, revealed that the Omnitrix was originally for Max. But thanks to the fact that Ben's DNA was close to his, and Ben was the one who discovered it, it ended up on him.
In the end of "Kevin 11", Ben offers Kevin to join him and become allies. Soundfamiliar?
In "The Big Tick", while trying to figure out what his new alien does, he lists powers of aliens he will receive in the future.
I Knew It: Some guessed that Ghostfreak would turn evil when they found out the Monster of the Week was an Ectonurite in "Ghostfreaked Out", despite some sources saying that it was a completely separate Ectonurite. When the episode aired, the truth became apparent after a nightmare detailing Ghostfreak telling Ben to let him out of the watch, and then subsequently escaping the watch after dealing with Zombozo's unemployed henchmen.
Just Here for Godzilla: Some people just watched the show to see Grandpa Max be completely awesome.
Moral Event Horizon: Kevin was going to crash two trains together, one full of cash, the other full of innocent lives. Most of the other antagonists before this were more formulaic in their general supervillainy, but this? That's going too far.
Vilgax destroys the planet where all of Tetrax's race lives, killing hundreds of innocent lives for no reason other than to test his brand new toy.
And Ghostfreak wanted to plunge Earth into darkness, the result of which is shown to be horrifying mutations of all living things.
Also note, that was just a side effect of his plan that he didn't even care about.
Zombozo gets his by kidnapping a 10 year old girl and draining her of her energy until she's nothing but a shrivaled husk of her former self, speaking of it so lightly that it's implied it's not the first time.
My Real Daddy: Since this was the only series produced by Man of Action, there are a sizeable amount of fans who consider it alone canon and regard the various sequels as Fanon Discontinuity.
Older Than They Think: There really was a secret organization called the Plumbers - Richard Nixon's private police who did the illegal surveillance of the Watergate hotel.
Relationship Writing Fumble: Ben and Gwen, in an almost reverse case of the usual trope. The writers PROBABLY viewed them as just bickering, if still loving, cousins (and nothing else), and tried to write them as such. To most of the rest of us...
This actually created a Periphery Demographic all by itself. Older viewers initially hated the show, partially because of the flat, immature, two dimensional characters. The instant they decided Ben and Gwen had crushes on each other, the characters gained two or three levels of depth, skyrocketing it to the top of a lot of teen's lists.
Seasonal Rot: The third season is generally considered the weakest due to less impressive episodes and overall story arc than the other seasons have.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Race Against Time. Dear lordy, Race Against Time. Some fans were NOT happy when they realized the aliens were not voiced by the original voice actors.
They Wasted A Perfectly Good Character: At the end of the third season, Ben gets three new aliens, each based off a different monster. A werewolf, a mummy, and Frankenstein's monster. Despite all being pretty cool, they don't appear at all for the rest of the series, and it isn't until an alternate timeline episode in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien that any of them reappear. They aren't even properly named, being referred to as "Ben*monster name*" in the credits. It took until Ben 10: Omniverse for them to even be given proper names.
Viewer Gender Confusion: Ben 10's character, Ripjaws, is part deep-sea creature and merMAID, so he might seem like a female, but he's actually a male.
Visual Effects of Awesome: "Destroy All Aliens" has particularly impressive CGI effects, with the Galvanic Mechamorph's fluidity being especially noticeable.
