YMMV / Darwin's Game

• Accidental Innuendo: Considering the depths of his villainy, Wang is certainly a 'dick'. Possibly intentional.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Shirogane a man whose Start of Darkness was the death of his favorite student, or was he secretly Evil All Along with a Freudian Excuse of prosopagnosia and a Self-Serving Memory?
• Fan Nickname: "Bullshit Detector" for Ryuji's Sigil.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The plot of this series has a few similarities to Zero Escape:
    • A villain is motivated by their prosopagnosia (Shirogane here, and Ace of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors).
    • An antagonist rigs events to prevent themselves from being Retgone (the Greed here, and the respective masterminds of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Zero Time Dilemma).
  • It also has a few similarities to Future Diary: a mobile phone (Kaname's smartphone, Yuki's flip phone) kickstarting the protagonist's journey, a major antagonist committing Save Scumming via time travel, and the ending creating a timeline where the premise never existed.
  • It has a few things in common with Star Ocean: Till the End of Time as well (massive spoilers for the latter):
    • A villain sees the world as a simulation, and is able to edit the "data" of information-based beings. Shirogane here is arguably delusional, but Luther Lansfield made the whole universe. Imagine them interacting.
    • The world ends, but a higher power restores it in its own little corner, separate from the source that formed it. The First Guardian here, and Blair Lansfield.
• Too Cool to Live: Hiragi Ishiro proved to be both a formidable opponent and ally to Kaname during the first event. Willing to both puppeteer from behind the scenes and charge into battle himself decked out in a suit of armor made from tree roots, he was involved in Darwin's Game solely to make enough money for his daughter's heart transplant. He ends up giving his life distracting the Eighth Clan and taking out the Co-Dragon Sig, the rest of his impromptu clan going on to form the Sunset Ravens, honoring him post-mortem by making him an Honorary True Companion, and looking after his daughter in his stead.
• Woolseyism: Ryuji's Sigil is officially named "Truth or Lie", but one fan translator renamed it "Bullshit Detector", which the fanbase considers a better name.