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.
Number 48, Number 66 (Barry The Chopper), Gluttony, Kimblee, Envy, Sloth and Bradley.
Hohenheim invokes this on Father in the Brotherhood adaptation, standing solemnly at the site of the battle and reflecting on how Father always used to talk about how he just wanted to be free from his flask.
Did Bradley's last words show that he really did care about his family or that he was a Complete Monster who didn't give a shit about them at all? It's actually fairly obvious (see Alas, Poor Villain) but people love to argue.
4 Koma Theater. Scar. Winry’s Parents. Will never be able to look at Scar the same way again. We need a “Crowning Moment of Ridiculous” page, but “Funny” will do for now.
Being an Ensemble Darkhorse has been passed down the Armstrong line for generations!! Both the Major and his sister are definite favorites of the fandom.
Amongst the bara fans, Scar is a big time example. Darius and Heinkle were also popular enough in fanart to get a doujinshi.
Envy is a bastard/bitch in every sense. S/he's just so damn awesome at it that the fans tend to find him/her amusing anyway. Kimblee also fits. Greed also seems to lampshade this trope as he alternates between Cool Evil and Cool Good at massive Face Heel Turn and Heel Face Turn speed.
And of course, there's Wrath. A guy who can do all those feats of implausible awesome should have been here by default. He took down a tank. With a sword.''
Heck, most of the Homunculi, then.
Fan Disservice: Al's severely malnourished real body from beyond the gate.
Genius Bonus: Van Hohenheim is named after Paracelsus, a.k.a. Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. In-story, the dwarf in the flask i.e. Father names him Van Hohenheim but initially suggests he take on the name Theophrastus Bombastus.
The scene in Brotherhood where Ed and Al see Bradley while talking with his wife and son is already quite unsettling for them because they know that he’s a homunculus, but it gets even worse if you know that his son is a homunculus, too. One has to feel sorry for Mrs. Bradley.
In a flashback to Xerxes, the king ordered a "waterway" to be dug around the kingdom. One of the workers comments "Nothing less to be expected from the King of Xerxes, he even thinks about commoners like us!" Eeeeugh.
Hell Is That Noise: When the mannequin soldiers are awakened during the Promised Day. If that first scream from one of the mannequins was from a character in any series being tortured by Satan in Hell, it would've been among the more terrifying examples. Which, considering their very state of existence as well as the Big Bad of the series, well…
Ed mentions that if he ever went to see God, he'd probably get sent right back to earth. Guess what he does twice; once to escape certain doom, and again to save Alphonse in the final chapter. And that's without accounting for the very start of the story in the first place, meaning he's secretly speaking from experience and then it happens again.
Travis Willingham and Laura Bailey, who are the dub voices of Roy Mustang and Lust respectively, are now married. With that knowledge, just try to watch episode 19 without laughing at some point.
They might be on the heroes side, but it's hard to ignore the fact that several of Ed's allies in the military participated in the genocide of the Ishvalan people. You can't really atone for something like that.
Heck, throughout the series Mustang talks about wanting to become the Fuhrer specifically so something like that never happens again.
Bradley not only headed Amestris during the rebellion, but rejected Loug Lowe's proposal to sacrifice his own life to end the violence, saying one life is only equivalent to one life (and presumably intending to kill all the Ishvalans).
Also, Shou Tucker turning his daughter and the family dog into a chimera. Some even believe him to have already been past the MEH back when we first met him, as he had already done the same thing to his wife.
Envy killing Hughes and almost getting Maria Ross executed for it, and starting the Ishval rebellion by killing a child and framing an innocent soldier for it (who got court-martialed and presumably executed).
Arguably Pride crosses one when he eats Gluttony. Given the reactions of everyone else involved in the incident.
Homunculus Father crossed his in his backstory when he manipulated Hohenheim, the King of Xerxes, and the King's Alchemists into making Philosopher's Stone bodies for both himself and Hohenheim out of every single soul in the country. Seeing the MO of this guy's Satan-based objective in action is truly horrifying.
After Father swallows Hohenheim, he looks like he's pregnant. This is offset by the fact that Father's One-Winged Angel is absolutely terrifying.
Father's appearance before swallowing a god also qualifies. How ridiculous it looks only makes the shit that much crazier.
The aforementioned eyecatches actually manage to come off as pretty badass in episode 44, where they're played just after the title character's triumphant and unquestionably awesome reentry into the series after being missing for an entire episode.
Nightmare Retardant: If something terrified you in a volume, chances are the omake will make fun of it in a such a way you'll never be able to take it seriously again.
In the Manga, Riza's pupils ocasionally tend to change from completely black to with an iris from scene to scene (sometimes even from panel to panel). They became brown in the Anime however. Done intentionally with Al's armor though (Going from detailed to a blob), a trait carried over to the Anime.
In Brotherhood, Alphonse is a very frequent victim of this trope. It borders on They Just Didn't Care at times.
Portmanteau Couple Name: Royai for Roy Mustang/Riza Hawkeye, Edwin for Edward/Winry, LingFan for Ling/Lan Fan and AruMei or AluMei for Alphonse/May Chang.
Envy's chibi true form is guaranteed to make you giggle or want to huggle him/her even when s/he's being broiled alive. Perhaps even more in that case. Also, Gluttony.
Slicer could count, when he's reduced to just a helmet.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The Ishvalan genocide has been noted by many people to be essentially the 2003 invasion of Iraq taken Up to Eleven. Word Of God, however, says it's really based on the plight of the Japan-native Ainu people.
The Woobie: Basically half of the sympathetic portion of the cast need hugs.
Woolseyism: Xing's answer to alchemy (renkinjutsu) is rentanjutsu. This word refers to Chinese alchemy, but actually using something like "Oriental alchemy" or "Xingese alchemy" would get pretty stale and unwieldy after a while. The rentan refers to the goal of Chinese alchemy, the elixir of life. Drawing off of this, Funimation renamed it "alkahestry", after alkahest. As a universal solvent, alkahest was another hypothetical goal of alchemy and would have had valuable medicinal applications; if you understand the reference, "alkahestry" manages to convey Chinese alchemy's greater concern with medicine than with gold and sounds exotic next to "alchemy". Not to mention, the substance was supposedly invented by Paracelsus, whose birth name was Von Hohenheim, and the fictional Von Hohenheim was the inventor of Xingese alchemy.
Before the Brotherhood adaptation, this was probably what many western fans immediately thought of when someone mentioned "Fullmetal Alchemist" rather than the original manga.
Angst? What Angst?: Being kidnapped and nearly killed by a serial murderer would traumatize most people for life, but Winry seems to bounce back pretty quickly.
Alternate Character Interpretation: Hohenheim gets a lot more of it here than he did in Brotherhood, where he's seen as more unambiguously benevolent: is he a wise atoner who feels bad for all the BodySurfing he's done or a suicidal Jerkass whose excuse to abandon his children and wife Trisha doesn't cut the test and who unintentionally helped the Nazis.
Base Breaker: Envy and Wrath are two of the most polarizing characters.
Mugear wanted to use an extremely toxic chemical on pregnant women to produce an alchemic amplifier, after trying to produce it at the expense of the villagers' health and lives didn't bring the results and murdering the inventor of the chemical, after he tried to stop him from producing it by such horrible means.
Dante: A 400 year old bitch with a penchant for Body Surfing, she's stayed alive this long by jacking innocent people's bodies, ditching them when they start to rot, and repeating the process infinite. When her own Philosopher's Stone runs out, she sets in motion a plan to cause so much misery in Amestris that someone will be desperate enough to recreate the Stone, allowing her to steal it with no risk to herself. She's abusive towards her Homunculi "children", arranges for Ed to kill Greed, jacks her own assistant's body, and finally, attempts to steal the body of one of heroes Love Interests, who had been severely traumatized, solely so that she can screw him. Said hero is a teenager, and her ex-boyfriend's son. She's never shown in a sympathetic light, and doesn't even have the excuse of not being human to protect her.
Envy. His manga counterpart was pitiful enough in the end to avert this trope. This version on the other hand, is not, and takes the former's evil and JerkasseryUp to Eleven. He's a malevolent sadist who gets his kicks out of ruining people's lives, crosses the Moral Event Horizon with Hughes' murder and then follows it up with a string of murders and mind games that end with his killing Ed. He's got a Freudian Excuse, but it doesn't come close to justifying his homicidal mania, and he's a Karma Houdini to boot, gaining the death he'd always wanted while taking Hohenheim with him. Must be In the Blood.
King Bradley/Pride: You know he's not going to be a nice guy right off the bat, what with the whole "military dictator" thing. It gets worse when you realise that he's the one who ordered the genocide in Ishbal and worse still when he has those actions repeated in Liore. Then he crosses the Moral Event Horizon with his murder of Marta and throttles his own son, who had served as his Morality Pet, to death in the finale, thus establishing himself firmly as a totally irredeemable bastard.
Kimblee. A Psycho for Hire, Nietzsche Wannabe, and Misanthrope Supreme par excellence, he Loves the Sound of Screaming and isn't afraid to share it with you. He comitted genocide in Ishbal, blew up his fellow prisoners in order to escape from prison, betrayed Greed to Archer, tries to murder Al soon after his reinstatement, reenacts the Ishbal genocide in Liore, and finally dies while trying to take Al and Scar with him. A truly appalling mix of rage, hatred, and pure nihilism.
Some fans view The Movie as a touching send off to the characters that ties together most of the loose ends left over from the series. Others see it as a kick in the junk that resolves nothing and simply screws everyone over worse than they were screwed in the series.
Deader than Disco: Has sadly become this among most anime circles, though somewhat averted given how Brotherhood hasn't sparkled the amount of ratings or gateways here in America.
Die for Our Ship: Rose gets it a lot here, too, from some Edwin shippers and Yaoi Fangirls. Even with all the horrible things that happened to her, getting an expanded role in this version did not help her with shippers. Winry also gets this from the latter group.
Foe Yay: Because Greed is the incarnation of one of Dante's lovers, he involuntarily feels affection towards her and is drawn to her home, despite the horrible things she does to him.
Gateway Series: Love it or hate it, this series was one of the driving forces behind the big Anime boom of the early-mid 2000's.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Maes Hughes is very popular with the American fanbase, much to the surprise of the Japanese creators.
Selim Bradley. A human boy in the first anime and King Bradley (Pride)'s adoptive son. Bradley kills him in a fit of rage in the finale. In the manga and the second anime, Selim turns out to be Pride (Bradley is the manga's Wrath), oldest and deadliest of the Homunculi, and Bradley works for him.
In one of the flashbacks, a young Ling Yao can be seen, wearing sunglasses similar to Greed; while he has no important role in this anime, he becomes the new Greed in Brotherhood and the manga.
At the end of the (non-canonical) OVA "Kids", there is a prominently displayed photograph of an elderly Ed shaking hands with an important-looking, formally dressed man who bears a moderate resemblance to Barack Obama. (The OVA was made more than three years before he was elected President of the United States.)
Iron Woobie: Ed, Al, Izumi, Mustang, Hawkeye, honestly, most of the good guys.
Moral Event Horizon: Crossed by both Scar and the Homunculi. Envy crosses it with the murder of Hughes enjoys dancing over it again and again. Depending on who you ask, Bradley's came with either Marta or Selim's murder.
And then there's the fangirls who ship Kimblee with Archer. As if the fact that they're both psychopaths wasn't bad enough, one of them is a half-mechanical cyborg!
What an Idiot: Wrath takes Ed's sample of Mrs. Elric's remains into himself to deny Ed using them on Sloth. Wrath fuses with Sloth. Ed and Sloth figure out what is very stupid about this, pretty much immediately.
