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.
Kamiya's original vision was that Vergil had been kidnapped as a child (when Dante lost a mother and brother to evil twenty years ago), and was never anything but a good guy who managed to break loose to help his brother. The author of the first novel decided to ignore that, and wrote Vergil as an evilbadass who was around during Dante's teens. One of these Vergils was obviously much cooler than the other, and DMC3 made the novel's version of the character canon.
Eva as well. Silk Hiding Steel or Action Mom? Dante saying that Trish, who is an Action Girl, lacks her "fire" implies the latter, as does the fact that she was able to keep Mundus from getting her children in the attack that killed her. Except in the original version, she didn't: Vergil was kidnapped and Dante was killed.
Also, Vergil's been confirmed for the Updated Rerelease, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3... Okay well, he's not so much confirmed as he was leaked, THEN confirmed when Word Of God acknowledged the leak.
Awesome Music: Love should also be given to the battle music, particularly the two tracks from Devil May Cry 3, "Taste the Blood" and "Divine Hate." "Taste the Blood" crosses over with both Crowning Moment of Awesome and Crowning Moment of Funny when Dante gets the Nevan weapon—a literal electric guitar—and tests it out by performing the aforementioned song. Complete with sounds of an audience cheering (though no actual audience is seen) and stage pyrotechnics.
The first track of 3, "Dante's Office (7 Hells Battle)" is the perfect track to get you pumped for a hyperkinetic battle in the Devil May Cry office.
"Swipe of Sword" from 4 is essentially its successor, being used for Angelo Credo, an expy of Nelo Angelo himself. It is undoubtedly one of the best tracks in the game.
The music that plays inside the cathedral of the first game is also certainly deserving of this.
Phantom's reappearance towards the end of 2. He just randomly pops out of nowhere, despite (in his last appearance) melting after being impaled on a spiked pillar. The fact that he's inexplicably mute doesn't help, although the description for that particular mission hints that Time Travel may be involved.
Breather Boss: Baal in 4 isn't a very hard fight, probably because he comes after a long slog through the castle collecting all the Gyro Blades. He telegraphs his attacks from a mile away, they're all easy enough to dodge, and he gives you tons of opportunities to damage him.
He can become a pain in hard mode though. Echnida however, is this on any difficulty.
Arkham especially. While it's implied that Arkham was actually a kind man before his obsession with the supernatural, the guy killed his wife with no remorse whatsoever and was probably going to do the same thing to Lady, his only daughter. Additionally, his Blob Monster of a One-Winged Angel is said to not be caused by his inability to control Sparda's power, but the result of the vast evil within his heart. Wow.
Demonic Spiders: Blitz from DMC4. They're more like Demonic Beetles, really, but most players can agree they'd rather fight an actual boss than one of these. Far from the only one though.
Blitz isn't so hard with Nero: Charge Shoot 3, Showdown and the Buster make fin soup of it quickly enough. Dante however, doesn't have such convenient moves, and it will require much more skill.
The Arachne from DMC3 also fit this trope when you fight them in swarms.
The first game has Phantom, a giant lava spider/scorpion and the Kyklops, large demon spiders.
Designated Hero: Trish in 4, for giving the most powerful weapon in the game to the Order, allowing them to wreak havoc much faster than they would have originally. The only thing possibly keeping Trish a hero is that she's sided with Dante.
It's heavily implied that she did such an act out of boredom but also to quickly rise up the ranks of the Order in a short period of time and then relay info back to Dante. Granted, it was still a terrible decision, but it doesn't make Trish that bad of a person, not to mention that she and Dante manage to contain and quickly clean up her folly.
Ear Worm: "Devils Never Cry" from Devil May Cry 3. The battle music ("Taste the Blood" and "Divine Hate") will also get stuck in your head eventually, considering how often you'll be hearing it.
Epileptic Trees: Some fans believe that the zweihander Nelo Angelo wields is actually a corrupted version of the Yamato. Similarly, they believe that Nelo's death factors into the Yamato's broken appearance in 4.
The collection of swords along the walls of Dante's shop could be a collection of Devil Arms from his offscreen missions.
Besides the Continuity Snarl behind the Word Of God-confirmed facts that Vergil is dead and Nero is his son, there's questioning over whether or not the Yamato is acting as his Soul Jar, considering that Nero's DT looks considerably like a fusion of Vergil's DT from 3 and Nelo Angelo. Not to mention that the quote in Nero's section is a psuedo-Call Back to one of Vergil's Motive Rants in 3.
Three babes and a kickass devil-hunting business? Totally worth it.
Evil is Cool: Vergil seems to have more fans than Dante, even though he gets defeated in both of the games that have him.
Vergil and Dante are badass on different scales. Dante's the carefree badass, and Vergil's the refined badass. Either way, both suffer from Stupid Sexy Sparda.
Excuse Plot: Actually averted, despite the great possibility to go in this direction (as the protagonist is a fearless badass and the whole point of the game is to be as stylish as possible, both of which would move product without any need for further exposition). There's a pretty well-woven tapestry of backstory and even some supplementary material for this series.
Plot is still not exactly a strong point of the series. The first game had few cutscenes and not much interesting dialogue and nobody can remember the story of 2 (or whether it even had one). 3 and 4 are just a little more decent, especially in the dialogues and character development, but don't explain a whole lot in the end (the threads Left Hanging for Nero are a sad example).
Fake Ultimate Mook: The Mega Scarecrows in 4 are huge and have a crapload of health, but that's about it. They are even slower than regular Scarecrows, flinch at the slightest hit and rarely replicate - you just have to watch out for their roll attack, and their back blade which falls back two seconds after they die.
Fanon: Nero being Vergil's son is never said explicitly in 4; the novel stating it and the guy from Capcom's localization having heard this somewhere are of dubious legitimacy. The game just says that he has "Sparda's blood"; which doesn't leave many possibilities, but at least two (Vergil and Sparda himself).
Flanderization: Dante started out in 1 as a DisneyAnti-Hero (a Knight in Sour Armor). He posed as a mercenary and was picky about which jobs he took, but he would only refuse if the job lacked demons of any sort, taking the mission regardless of how much he got paid as long as demons were involved. Despite the wisecracking personality he had, he knew when to serious the hell up if it meant saving the world. Dante in 1 was kind enough to offer mercy to Griffon and Trish despite both of them wanting him dead (and it pays off on Trish's end; she joins him). Despite the animated series happening a short time after 1, they basically inverted his character as he is much more money-minded than demon-minded and prone to Out of Character and hypocritical moments, such as calling Modeus "pathetic" for wanting to avenge his dead brother. His debt to various people we've barely heard of are played up to uncomfortable laughs, and he's suddenly grown some Destructive Savior tendencies along with it. The later games just make him a Jerkass.
A bonus picture of 3 has Lady holding up the handlebar of her destroyed bike, with Dante shrugging in the distance. While it's understandable that she would want to be paid back for it, like the "debt" point, it's overplayed. Her later appearances end up having to do with either money Dante owes her for her bike, or money Dante owes in general.
Trish's Heel Face Turn in the first game was remarked on by Mundus as being "sudden" ("Failure is one thing, but taking on an odd behavior like that..."). Later games have her as extremely impulsive and moody for no reason.
Characterization Marches On: These personality traits first surfaced in The Animated Series and subsequently stuck for 4.
Until 4, however, this could have been justified as Dante mellowing out over time. He makes the expected leap from Jerkass to Jerk with a Heart of Gold over the course of 3, which would naturally bring him up to the more Knight in Sour Armor portrayal of 1. As stated before, however, 4 more or less Jossed this.
Freud Was Right: The entire theme of Trish (specifically, the implication was that Mundus was using her as a Honey Trap for Dante in the first game), but subverted. As said in Oedipus Complex under Dante's entry in the characters sheet, it doesn't work on Dante — he's visibly disturbed by her appearance.
Game Breaker: Devil May Cry 3's style Quicksilver puts Dante into bullet time for rather long periods of time, though it eats up is devil gauge. However, with enough devil gauge restoring items it becomes a little broken.
When playing in a unlocked mode with a certain costume, Dante has unlimited Devil Trigger. The game then essentially becomes "Dante slaughters everything in bullet time", so long as the player wants to be cheap.
Goddamned Bats: From DMC4, you have the Chimera Seeds. Bladey Planty thingies that just love to attach to other monsters so they can interrupt your combo. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as on higher difficulties pretty much every mook is one.
The Nefasturris boss in 2 is apparently made of them.
Good Bad Bugs: Jump Cancelling, which allows for infinite aerial maneuvers.
He's Just Hiding: Vergil, Sparda... Eva might be next, at this rate.
Doubly so if you consider Arius' international enterprise and the fact that Possessed Arius sports some psuedo-Ouroboros tentacles.
Ho Yay Shipping/Foe Yay Shipping: Dante and Nelo Angelo—and arguably Mundus—from 1, Dante and Vergil in 3, and somewhere out there is Dante/Nero... not to mention Dante/Weapons, which is what happens when the fanbase starts personifying them.
And in a case of horrible, horrible Squick, Cerberus/Dante.
Well to be fair to the fanbase, the games personified them first. Hi, remember Nevan?
Magnificent Bastard: Vergil in the first novel. The third game, which otherwise copied the first novel's version of the character ended up with him as the Unwitting Pawn instead.
A slight one came after Dante's redesign, where people drew other famous characters such as Mario and Sonic in a similar style, mocking the "edgy" look of Donte. Being drawn in MS Paint helped.
The response from Ninja Theory director Tameen Antoniades regarding how people feel about the remake, as follows:
Tameen looked at me a moment and took a drag of his cigarette. Then without blinking, and without pausing to exhale the smoke from his mouth he said, "I don't care."
Memetic Sex God: Everyone wants to get into Dante's pants. EVERYONE.
Most Annoying Sound: KULUE!!! KULUEEEEEEE!!!! Made even worse when Nero starts to have a reverse puberty similar to Dante's below when he cries after fighting Agnus.
Narm Charm: The writers are bad at dramatic moments... DMC1 being especially bad, and DMC3 being somewhat more competent.
Dante: "I should have been the one to fill your dark soul with liiiiiiiiiiiight!"
For bonus points, Dante's voice cracks very unmanfully right at the end of that line, like he was suddenly struck with reverse puberty.
Nightmare Fuel: Depending on your personal threshold, Nobodies and The Underworld in 1. But especially Nobodies.
Fittingly enough, Nightmare. Yes, it is a large mass of gelatinous darkness with human bones stuck inside and it's slithering towards you. Have fun.
Mundus's crumbling appearance during the final fight with him can only be described as this.
The sequence inside the Leviathan in 3. Especially running away from the hungry, giant Gigapede in the intestines.
Most of the guardians of Temen-ni-Gru, especially Beowulf.
Phantom, for those who hate spiders.
Griffon. His head is composed of several upper jaws around a hole.
Trismagia and anything relating to Argosax (excluding The Despair Embodied) in 2
Porting Disaster: The port of 3 from console to PC, thanks to Capcom outsourcing the porting job to another developer. Thankfully, Capcom learned their lesson after DMC3 and Resident Evil 4, resulting in the above.
A general complaint about DmC is that Ninja Theory and Capcom have somehow managed to make Dante a Replacement Scrappy to himself.
Ruined FOREVER: How seemingly 95% of the fandom reacted to the debut trailer of DmC.
Not even the members of developers' official forums bother defending Dante's redesign in the newest entry of the series.
It also doesn't help when the higher ups more or less tell the fanbase that their opinions are wrong, and then claim that "Old Dante isn't cool anymore.
The general idea for DmC seems to make Dante a young jerkwad who's even prouder and more arrogant than he will be as he gets older. This also, apparently, extends to his fashion and hair sense. It's not clear whether this would have a mollifying effect on the complaining fandom.
Of course, they are rather justified in this respect - the whole "half-angel" thing doesn't even remotely gel with existing canon, as Eva being Dante and Vergil's human mother was a central plot point in both DMC1 and DMC3. In short, it's an example of Canon Defilement.
What is this? It's suddenly back to being a Rebirth with Capcom trying to humanize Dante (despite them putting him as a half-angel/half-demon in this game already). Capcom, MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MIND!
Also, it's T-rated. Cries of Capcom completely missing the point of the entire franchise abounds.
Of course, complaints have extended straight out to the gameplay as well, mostly because of slow and dull-looking combat and how Dante seems to take forever and a half to kill a single enemy. Really, when people think Devil May Cry 2 looks like a halfway-decent entry to the series compared to this, you're doing something wrong.
"I don't care". These three words, uttered by Tameen Antoniades himself regarding the outcries against the reboot, have pissed off damn near every single fan.
Scrappy Mechanic: Okay, so whose great idea was it to invent the Proud Soul system and have it work the exact same way as the regular Red Orb purchases?
It works because earlier games forced you to choose whether you wanted to spend your Red Orbs on items or abilities, and refunds weren't allowed. However, in 4, you can return abilities for a refund in Proud Souls (and at the current price!), allowing you to effectively customize your moveset.
Although to compensate for the customizeability, you can only get additional Proud Souls after you finish a mission, making it so that you can't get any new abilities mid-mission, and the cost of every single ability goes up when you buy one, making maxing out all abilities prohibitively expensive, far more expensive than the total cost of all abilities in any of the previous games... and naturally there's an achievement for getting all abilities. Furthermore, few people actually use the Red Orbs for anything beyond the storebought Blue and Purple Orbs and thus most of them just end up going to waste after you get the maximum number of both. The only good aspect about them is the fact that Proud Souls are shared between characters, meaning Dante won't start off with zero abilities when the game switches over to him.
Whose great idea was it to put a time limit on Bloody Palace?
The style system in 3. Why the hell should the player choose between the ability to Flash Step and that to guard? Between multi-aiming with guns and additional melee attacks? This is a great source of Fake Difficulty against bosses or enemies you face for the first time, and gets especially annoying in the penultimate boss, where the fact of having Vergil fighting with you prevents you from using any of your styles. Thankfully, 4 allows you to change styles whenever you want, including mid-combo, making the system much more interesting to exploit, if tricky to master.
Seinfeld Is Unfunny: When it came out, reviews lauded the first game for its fast action and deep gameplay; today many players who try it find it kind of slow, clunky and limited (not to mention the infamous triangle jump). It has the right to be, since it basically set all the foundations of the modern Beat 'em All genre, three years before God Of War and Itagaki's Ninja Gaiden.
Ship-to-Ship Combat: Oh man, is there ever. Expect Dante/Trish fans to bash Lady from being too tsuntsun with Dante (at least in 3), Dante/Lady fans to be Squicked out by the former, and both to utterly derail Dante/Lucia fans mainly because Lucia was in a less popular game. There's also a vocal minority for the Cargo Ship of Dante/Nevan. With the release of 4, Dante/Nero has seen its fair share of popularity (although it doesn't seem to cause tension with the relatively untouched Nero/Kyrie). And there's Dante/Vergil, perhaps the most popular pairing in Fan Fics... ever. Then, there's the faction that believes that Dante, being an Action Hero, has no canon partner. That's not even getting into the even palpable art of Crossover Shipping, such as the immensely-popular Fan Preferred Couples of Dante and his Distaff CounterpartBayonetta or Dante and Morrigan...
DmC: Devil May Cry is getting an astronomical amount of this, with several fans refusing to acknowledge its existence. We're talking about even more flak than Devil May Cry 2 got.
That One Attack: If you get swallowed by Nightmare, you're sent into a demonic dimension where you must fight several Sargassoes and one of the previous bosses to get out.
This also doubles as Nightmare's Achilles Heel. Escaping from this dimension deals a sizable portion of damage to Nightmare's health bar. However, it only works once; you can only be swallowed up by Nightmare once as all subsequent attempts to eat Dante simply results in a normal bite.
That One Boss: Griffon, Nightmare, Trismagia, Leviathan's Heart, Arkham, Dante, etc... You take your pick.
In general, Vergil Mode in 3:SE. It's a full-on retread of Dante's story, complete with facing a red-clad Vergil (dubbed "Vante" by fans). Playing as Vergil is undeniably cool, but it's a crying shame that you only get a glimpse of his side of the tale for all of two cutscenes.
Not only that, but They Wasted A Perfectly Good Character to fight against in Bloody Palace mode. When playing as Nero or Dante in Bloody Palace mode, the final boss...is Dante/ShadowDante respectively. You never get to fight an AI controlled Nero as the last boss when playing as Dante.
Unnecessary Makeover: Lady in 4, considering she wasn't unattractive to begin with and appealed to a lot of fans in 3.
Villain Decay: When you first see Arius in 2, he's a calm, cunning, and competent villain who actually poses a threat to Dante. He even seems to be slightly Genre Savvy, considering that he tries to use Lucia being held hostage against Dante. The next time you see him, it's like he's a completely different person. And there's no viable reason for it.
What an Idiot: Trish. Taking a powerful sword capable of subduing the Prince of Darkness and handing it to a Corrupt Church is NOT a good idea.
Not necessarily idiotic and possibly done because It Amused Her. Judging from the way she and Dante act throughout the course of the game, it was a stunt she pulled without his permission because it was fun. Considering that Dante is a One-Man ArmyBadass and will curbstomp the bad guys anyway, any entertainment is welcome.
