- Anvilicious: Charlie Brooker's never been one for subtlety, but many consider the series' messages extreme even by his standards. Technology as we know it is meant to be helpful, but many episodes dedicate their stories to spelling out the potential consequences for futuristic technologies.
- Broken Base: Season 5 had a pretty mixed reception with the fanbase, with a clear split between those who felt it was a decent season that just happened to come after the Tough Act to Follow that was Season 4 and those who felt it was a complete letdown. "Rachel, Jack, And Ashley Too" was especially controversial due to its Denser and Wackier plot and the inclusion of Miley Cyrus.
- Complete Monster: Judge Wraith; Arquette; Robert Daly; Rolo Haynes; Catherine Ortiz; Ian’s Accomplice; Michael Smart & Tim Simons. See those pages for details.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
- The show has a pretty big following in China, where the series has been subject to rave reviews, including the claim that it's "better than a masterpiece". Also lead Chinese bloggers to dub surreal tech-related events "Black Mirror Moments".
- Something similar happened in Brazil after Season 3, when the series became popular in the country, with the coining of the expression "dude, that's so Black Mirror!".
- Not to mention the huge following it got in all of America after Netflix acquired the rights and cranked out a much-beloved third series.
- Growing the Beard: While the series was already considered good, it really came into its own in the third season, which included what many consider to be the best episode of the entire series: "San Junipero".
- Harsher in Hindsight: "San Junipero" was happy? The stories of "Black Museum" show the horror that people had to go through in order to make that technology possible.
- Magnificent Bastard: Demon 79: Gaap is demon-in-training who was sent to convince meek sales lady Nida to kill 3 people to prevent the apocalypse and keep him out of purgatory. While being a compassionate and kind person to Nida, even using a form she liked through Bobby Farell from Boney-M, he uses manipulation and his powers to make her see the incoming apocalypse as well as the crimes of her potential victims, convincing her to kill a child rapist and murderer. Despite Nida going against him to kill Micheal Smart against his wishes, and despite Nida failing, Gaap takes his incoming fate with stride as he finds a loophole in the rules to take Nida with him to purgatory so the two can spend eternity together as the world that rejected Nida burned.
- Memetic Mutation:
- In Brazil, "Isso é tão Black Mirror" ("This is so Black Mirror"), said in reaction to a strange or surreal event.
- Similarly, "This episode of Black Mirror sucks" in English speaking online circles when something in real life seems dystopian.
- The "just like Black Mirror" meme in the UK (typically used in the same vein as "1984 was not an instruction manual") took on a very meta meaning in the wake of "PigGate" - an event that bore striking resemblance to the very first episode of the show - leading to Charlie Brooker himself using a version of the meme on Twitter.
- "what if phones, but too much?" from Daniel Lavery’s parodying of the show’s concept
. Became an Ascended Meme when Charlie Booker acknowledged it inspired the episode "Playtest"
- In Brazil, "Isso é tão Black Mirror" ("This is so Black Mirror"), said in reaction to a strange or surreal event.
- Misaimed Fandom: Join any online discussion about Black Mirror, and you will find at least one person that subscribes to the "digital copies are just code, even if they're self-aware" point-of-view espoused by the series' villains to justify abusing and torturing the copies.
- Retroactive Recognition:
- Jem (Tuppence Middleton) from "White Bear" is known best as Riley in Sense8.
- Daniel Kaluuya played the main character of Bing in "Fifteen Million Merits". While his performance in the episode was properly acclaimed at the time, he reached a new level of stardom when he starred as Chris in the breakout hit Get Out (2017) and earned an Oscar nomination.
- Selma from "Fifteen Million Merits" and Sonja from "Playtest" (Hannah John-Kamen) is Dutch in Killjoys. She also would later become more familiar to general audiences as Ghost in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
- Nish (Letitia Wright) from "Black Museum" is Shuri in Black Panther.
- In another MCU example, Cooper from "Playtest" is John Walker, and the black woman who helps guide him through the VR process is Hunter B-15.
- The actress who plays the young Kelley in "San Junipero" is Gugu Mbatha Raw, who would also join the MCU in Loki as Judge Ravonna Renslayer.
- Alex Lawther, who stars as Kenny in "Shut Up and Dance", would go on to portray James in The End of the F***ing World and Karis Nemik in the Star Wars Disney+ series Andor.
- Seasonal Rot: The fifth series is seen by many as a drop in quality, though not by that much.
- The sixth series was seen as a much sharper drop in quality. Although it had hits like Joan is Awful, it's generally agreed that the misses were more plentiful. Mazey Day in particular is held as one of the entire show's low points.
- Signature Scene:
- Given the fact the show is an anthology, each episode has its most memorable moment, most of which are for disturbing reasons. But when it comes to the show overall, the one moment most fans agree they will never forget is the Prime Minister having sex with a pig from “The National Anthem.”
- The Plot Twist of “Shut Up and Dance” is also extremely memorable. And as usual, not for good reasons.
- The ending to "San Junipero" due to it being one of the only episodes that actually has a happy ending.
- Signature Song: Irma Thomas' "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is", which was first featured in "Fifteen Million Merits" and used several more times throughout the show.
- Spiritual Successor:
- To The Twilight Zone, in its intent and in its effect on viewers.
- In many ways, Black Mirror could be considered a tv version of Tharg's Future Shocks, given how the episodes are self contained, have a science fiction theme to them, and often involve a Cruel Twist Ending.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: "Mazey Day" is the first Black Mirror episode to feature explicitly supernatural elements and is considered one of the worst episodes (if not the worst) in the whole show almost solely for that reason, especially due to the poor Foreshadowing. Ironically, the following episode "Demon 79", which is even more explicitly supernatural, didn't receive those same criticisms, most likely because it established its more experimental nature very early on and was far more comedic in its execution.
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Nothing will ever turn out well for anyone, so why bother?
- This came into play in an interesting manner after the release of Season 3, regarding "San Junipero", a Breather Episode between two extremely dark episodes. Though it was critically acclaimed and has a sizable fandom of people who find it one of the show's best episodes, it wasn't immune to criticism from other fans who found it too saccharine to fit the rest of the show. The episode still had some depressing moments, but it goes to show that there are many people who watch the show specifically because of how dark it gets.
- The show also subverted this in Season 4, particularly with the fates of the protagonists in "USS Callister" and "Hang the DJ".
- Fully exploited in "Black Museum," where Charlie Brooker's Author Avatar is a sadistic monster spreading chaos for fun and profit, lacking any kind of human empathy for the stories he tells. Season 4 also includes two (arguably three) episodes with straight-up happy endings.
- Took the Bad Film Seriously: The highest praises of even the lowest reviewed episodes tend to revolve around the cast, who either genuinely turn in stellar performances or do the best with what they've got. Case in point, while Season 6 is listed in Seasonal Rot, the performances in every episode of the season always received positive reviews.
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