YMMV / Helldivers II

• Accidental Aesop: Helldivers II makes a case for how effective actual propaganda can be. While audiences (rightfully) laugh at the over-the-top brainwashing Super Earth commits in-universe, the pride the real life community takes in symbolic Major Orders such as winning Malevelon Creek (which was already mostly liberated and had minimal strategic advantage) and in culling the generally weaker Terminid faction (despite the Automatons presenting a more pressing territorial threat) demonstrate how easily people can be motivated to rally behind victories that serve a sense of identity or establish superiority.
• Annoying Video Game Helper:
  • Whenever a Helldiver approaches an Automaton Mortar Base on an Automaton-controlled planet, Mission Control will chime in with "Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery" ad nauseum every time one of the mortar turrets fires, and there are three of them in the base. While allegedly there are a few variations of the line, there's barely any difference in the inflection of their voice; not only is it borderline Narm-inducing, it can be seriously aggravating to hear the same voice line repeated over and over until you manage to actually take out the damn thing. Even more annoyingly, this line triggers even if you, personally are not in range of the mortars, so it can be hard to tell if you've accidentally wandered into the range of an alerted mortar station or if a random stranger on your squad ran off into one by themselves.
  • You'll similarly be reminded very often that extraction is available once the main objective has been completed. Not a big deal if you decided to explore the map and do secondary objectives first before focusing on the primary objective, but if you decide to do it the other way around and complete the main objective in the mission's first 10 minutes, prepare to be reminded about extraction every few minute for the rest of the mission.
• Awesome Music: Has its own page.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Cold worlds are considered the only positive modifier. The lower rate of fire is more than offset by the lower heat build-up on energy weapons, making laser weapons like the Sickle better than ever. While not directly related to the temperature, the lack of plants and plentiful rock/glacial outcroppings on such worlds also mean generally clear lines of sight, but with no shortage of cover if needed. Even the hostile plants found on ice worlds, which generate a severe slowdown area when detonated, are a mere annoyance to Helldivers but can tie up enemy forces if used tactically. This is a distinct departure from their incarnation in the first game, where they were purely negative, necessitating the use of cold-weather gear or vehicles so as not to get constantly bogged down in the knee-deep snow.
  • Overall, players seem to prefer missions where a planet is defended over attempting to liberate the planet, in part because higher-difficulty missions lack enemy-generated modifiers such as AA Defenses and Spore Clouds that make the missions far more difficult than they should be.
  • Evacuate High Value Assets is infinitely better than Evacuate Scientists. Instead of escorting Too Dumb to Live scientists with bad path finding, you need to Hold the Line against the enemy advance, and stop them from destroying a pair of generators. Three sets of gates form chokepoints to help you out. One pair and two singles. Getting pushed back a gate moves the enemy spawn further up. As the mission progresses, the enemy spawns get more and more intensive. On helldive difficulty against Automatons, they start you off with Hulks right off the bat supported by Devastators and Troopers. Towards the end, it becomes a tidal wave of devastators, and multiple tanks closing in on the generators.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Railgun, Shield Backpack, 500kg Bomb, Orbital Gas Strike and EMS Mortar are the five stratagems pretty much anybody runs when doing high level missions. If they're feeling daring, they may switch out the Shield Backpack for a Resupply Pack. For primary weapons, the - appropriately - Breaker automatic shotgun is generally regarded as the best all-round primary. Grenades are either going to be Impact, or Flashbangs.
  • The Railgun was the Game-Breaker on launch. With the ability to pierce all armour in the game with massive damage when on Unsafe mode, ability to One-Hit Polykill, and extreme range, its only real drawbacks are its single-shot capacity, basic holo/reflex sight rather than a full high-magnification optic, and the risk of Explosive Overclocking when in Unsafe mode. It could kill Bile Titans with a single shot. It got nerfed fairly hard and is no longer 'the best' option, suffering reductions to its armour penetration and damage, and requiring the use of Unsafe mode for maximum results.
  • The Shield Backpack provides some insane durability, both against the melee strikes of the Terminids and the gunfire of the Automatons. In a game where you die in just 5 or so good hits, being able to tank an additional 5-7 is game changing. Especially since the shield regenerates but your health doesn't, so the shield can soak up grazing hits that would otherwise add up over time, as well as stop you from getting outright oneshot by certain enemies. It's become less vital now that the bug that caused Helldivers to get absolutely obliterated by explosions has been fixed, but it's still a very popular choice (much as it was in the first game).
  • 500kg Bomb is your average Smart Bomb. It can One-Hit Kill almost anything in the game if it's centered dead on the blast zone, and it has respectable AOE to wipe out fodder. It also has a short cooldown of 2 minutes for its ability to wipe out hordes - and you get two per rearm pass if you fully upgrade the Eagle, giving you two of those on an at-most seven second cooldown between them both.
  • Orbital Gas Strike has a really short cooldown of just 75 seconds, the lingering gas can be used as area denial, and if you have any stims on you then you can survive calling it down on yourself to wipe out swarming terminids. Automatons are usually too slow to escape the gas cloud once they enter it, and even if they do manage to escape, the Damage Over Time is usually a death sentence for them. Bonus points if you combine it with the EMS Strike, which has a similarly short cooldown and ensures that nobody will be escaping the gas cloud. Oh, and it can occasionally take out fabricators too.
  • The EMS Mortar does no direct damage, but can stunlock a huge amount of enemies quickly and efficiently. This is much more useful on evacuation and extermination missions, where friendly fire is a huge threat that the regular mortar turret has. It can be combined with the Orbital Gas Strike to clear out entire hordes of enemies with little fuss or muss.
  • The Breaker shotgun combines rapid fire and good firepower with decidedly non-Short-Range Shotgun tendencies, being capable of making short work of enemies much further away than one would expect. It cannot deal with heavy armour in the slightest (particularly Chargers, Titans, or Tanks), but it can still take out most smaller units either by targeting their weak spots or through simple raw power. Despite several nerfs that reduced its capacity and increased its recoil, it's still considered the go-to primary weapon.
  • After getting a substantial buff to its direct and burn-over-time damage per second, the Flamethrower has become a top contender for replacing the Railgun against the Terminids. What it lacks in range, it makes up for in horde killing and area denial. Lighter bugs are roasted to a crisp in seconds, while Chargers will survive little more than a couple seconds of concentrated fire (at least when you're the host). About the only thing it can't do against Terminids is kill Bile Titans or close their nest holes. It even has a Tier 4 upgrade that increases its damage by a further 25%.
  • Impact Grenades are just shy of anti-tank levels of damage, and deal a hefty amount of damage. The fact that they don't need to be cooked, or predicting enemy movement means you can easily just toss one and not have to worry about enemies escaping or blowing yourself up. Two impact grenades to the back of an Automaton tank or Hulk can instantly kill them, and a dead-on hit will one-hit kill Devastators (unless you hit a Heavy's shield arm). Likewise they work on most Automaton emplacements (turret towers, mortars, anti-air turrets). They require a little more finesse to take out bug holes and fabbers with, but this is a minor tradeoff given the benefits.
  • Flashbangs can stun anything smaller than an Automaton Tank or Bile Titan. This makes it easy for you or your teammates to line up shots with precision weapons like the Anti-Material Rifle or Railgun, or with stratagems that take time to land like the 500kg bomb. They also make for great escape tools. If a bunch of Hunters or Berserkers are right in your face or are nipping at your legs as you run, you can safely pull a flashbang out and hold onto it, stunning your attackers, while merely slowing you down, giving you plenty of time to retaliate or escape.
  • The Quasar has quickly become a favorite among Helldivers because it addresses many of the weaknesses the other AT weapons have. As an energy weapon, it effectively has unlimited ammo so you don't have to keep calling in resupply stratagems or replacement EATs. In addition, while the time it takes to cool between shots is comparable to that of the Recoilless Rifle or Spear's reload time, the Quasar will passively cool while stowed away, meaning the wielder can swap back to one of their other weapons to keep fighting and moving, rather than risk being caught by a Berserker or Hunter mid-reload. Finally, the Quasar doesn't need to use up a valuable backpack slot to store extra ammo, granting the user more flexibility (or survivability, as anyone facing the Automatons will probably be taking the shield). In comparison, the requirement for a wind up time before firing and the lack of splash damage seems like a small price to pay for an AT weapon that a single Helldiver can effectively wield solo.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Automatons in the sequel. Even the "weakest" types of them are all quite well armored and can tank an obscene amount of damage unless you hit their weakpoints, and unlike the Terminids they have ranged weapons, which they make liberal use of to the point that its rare for any point of an Automaton mission to not be full of laser fire or explosions. They reward precise shooting, which is difficult when they shoot back and suppress you!
  • Automaton Scout Striders. Common automaton infantry and even all three devastator models can be defanged if not relatively easily killed by any small-arms weapon (though the degree of 'easily' will vary on range, type, etc.), but Scout Striders? If you don't have anything with Medium Armour Penetrating or Explosive damage, you need to flank them. Even then, with just Medium AP you're stuck shooting out their legs before taking out the pilot - because the pilot's plating can shrug off absurd amounts of firepower. Add onto this they have a gun that can casually two-shot all but the heaviest armour and that they will doggedly pursue you across rough terrain whilst easily keeping pace the entire time even if you're sprinting around with a stamina booster, and they're just absolute nuisances that can be incredibly frustrating or resource-consuming to quickly kill. Oh, and your Super Destroyer can consider them a priority target for railcannoning over much more dangerous targets like Hulks, if you're not careful with where you drop the beacon.
  • Of particular notoriety are the Devastators. While all Automatons are considerably more durable than the Terminids, Devastators stand out for being so heavily armored that the only way to reliably damage them is to hit their heads and shoulder joints, which are disproportionately small and hard to hit compared to the rest of their massive body, especially when you're already in the thick of battle with other Automatons firing at you from all angles. And to add insult to injury, they can spawn as early as Easy tier. If you have a pair of Heavy Devastators pinning you down, you can say goodbye to your chances of taking them out first. Worse yet, their standard cannon hits hard enough that even a grazing hit will flinch you out of the vast majority of actions, such as injecting stims or throwing beacons.
  • If Devastators were bad, when a Hulk joins the fray, it's a near guarantee someone will die unless your team is well-prepared and/or coordinated. They are heavily armored to the point that nothing short of armor-piercing weapons or stratagems can kill them, are equipped with both rockets and flamethrowers, are deceptively quick despite their large frame, and on higher difficulties, a dropship can spawn up to 3 of them. While they do have a weak spot on their backs, they are so aggressive that it's nearly impossible to hit it. Their other weakspot? Their tiny little head, on the front. Good luck hitting that whilst it's bearing down on you though.
  • Chargers from the Terminid faction. They're strictly close-range, unlike the Automatons, but they hit like a train, are outrageously aggressive (it's not unusual for a Charger to pursue its quarry across the entire map) and on harder difficulties can pop up in groups of three or more. They're also covered in armor plate except for their backside, which itself has heavy damage resistance. Their biggest weakness is also unconventional: rather than shooting their backside, you need to blow off the armor on one of their legs, then shoot the exposed leg a few times. Chargers are such a terror that high-level parties have one or two Helldivers kitted out solely to deal with them, which typically involves a Railgun, which can punch through their armor and break the plating off their legs, and a shield backpack to mitigate damage and stagger/slowdown from the armies of lesser bugs that accompany them. An update around the same time as the Railgun nerf mentioned earlier on this page softened them up enough where a well-aimed shot from a recoilless rifle or expendable anti-tank launcher to the head will kill them in one hit, but if the player firing the rocket isn't a good shot or they can't get the shot lined up then Chargers still fit this trope.
  • Terminid Stalkers only spawn whenever Helldivers are near a Stalker Lair tactical objective. These freaks of nature are almost transparent when attempting to take down Helldivers until they're within striking distance. While invisible, they don't show up on the radar, and cannot be pinged. When they do strike, they hit hard and fast, and can launch you several meters with their tongue attack. To top it all off, they have medium armor, on most parts of their body, so you'll usually have trouble punching through with your primary weapon. It's not uncommon for the team to immediately drop whatever they're doing and beeline to the Stalker Nest the moment a single Stalker makes itself known, or when it shows up on the radar from completing a Radar Station side objective.
  • Terminid Hunters. These jumpy bastards are Glass Cannon and Fragile Speedster in bug form. While they only take a few rounds to put down, they will constantly side step and juke to throw off your aim whenever you begin looking in their direction. They also possess a Deadly Lunge that they can use to quickly close the distance, and then follow up with a tongue attack that slows you down. They're essentially a weaker Stalker, but unlike the Stalker they spawn VERY frequently, independent of a specialized nest. Some would argue that they're more dangerous than Bile Titans, as while Bile Titans can be ran away from, or even manipulated to take out their fellow Terminids, Hunters can't be easily ran away from, and their slowing attack guarantees other bugs can and will catch up to you.
  • Automaton Gunships are capable of one-shotting a Helldiver regardless of their armor, cover, and seemingly whether or not they actually hit their mark. Worse, they spawn infinitely from a specific sub-objective on higher difficulties, meaning that if you can't get them down (which is near-impossible to do when you have gunships, heavy devastators, hulks, tanks, and Democracy-knows-what-the-fuck-else swarming your squad) you're going to be using up your entire reinforcement budget in the space of seconds. Even worse: a Hellbomb is required to get rid of their fabricators, and the gunships can blow them up with one shot.
• Discredited Meme: When the Reclamation storyline came around, focusing the playerbase on the bot front, Malevelon Creek went from a beloved in-joke to being regarded as a wasteful boondoggle. (Fitting for a world already nicknamed "Space Vietnam".) Many Helldivers went to it because of its reputation and to be part of the meme, but players who check the supply lines (which is only possible with 3rd party tools) noticed that it is strategically entirely unimportant. The Creek and its fanbase was eventually blamed for the failure of Super Earth to achieve the second part of the Reclamation storyline, and the devs decided to give a Major Order with the express purpose of taking the Creek once and for all to end the toxicity (not that it helped much in that regard, as now some people are teamkilling or immediately kicking anyone who dares to wear the Malevelon Memorial cape instead). On April 1st, 2024, The Creek finally fell to Super Earth's onslaught.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Both Eagle-1 and Pelican-1 are well loved and respected in the community despite only playing minor support roles. For Eagle-1, she always provides prompt air cover to any Helldiver that requests it, no questions asked (unless the beacon lands too close to a Jammer or AA Site). For Pelican-1, he will always land on the drop zone no matter how hot it is to get as many Helldivers out alive as possible. This has led to many fans creating fanart and fan depictions of both pilots, even going so far as to ship them together.
• Evil Is Cool: The Automatons. Unlike the Terminids, the Automatons are more sophisticated, have their own society, have a slick red and black aesthetic, are shown to attack the Helldiver Dreadnaughts in space, and even have their own marching chant. This, combined with their intimidating appearance and a level of sympathy given how they are fighting Super Earth to avenge and liberate their creators, the Cyborgs, make them insanely cool and threatening, becoming a bit of a Worthy Opponent for much of the fanbase. So much so that when the Automatons were (seemingly) eradicated, a number of fans have expressed melancholy over it.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Terminids and Automatons in the are near-universally referred to among the playerbase as 'bugs' and 'bots' for convenience's sake. It's simple, descriptive, and alliterative. They're often referred to as such by the Super Destroyer crew as well. This has lead to occasional confusion when discussing the Bugs from Helldivers, who are thus usually capitalized to distinguish them from the bugs and prevent misunderstandings.
  • Almost all Fantastic Slurs across fiction directed toward robots get used by the playerbase against the Automatons, including "Clankers" and "Toasters".
  • Players who spend a lot of time on Malevelon Creek are referred to collectively as "Creek Crawlers" or, less affectionately, "Creekheads".
  • The Detector Tower is the "Eye of Sauron". The comparison is near universal, as the tower looks so much like the eye does in the movies (a black tower with a glowing "eye" between two spires that slowly sweeps across the land) the similarity is almost certainly intentional. The term is so widespread that random teammates are probably less likely to immediately know what you meant if you call it by it's proper name.
  • Players refer to difficulties by the number associated with them, rather than their names; for example, instead of saying "Looking for Suicide Mission difficulty", one would say "Looking for Difficulty 7".
  • The Quasar Cannon is jokingly referred to as the Queso Cannon.
• Fanon:
  • Contrary to popular belief, Pelican-1 and Eagle-1 are NOT married. This statement started to float around when fans found a Tumblr account that people mistook as an official Helldivers 2 account due to its name that claimed that the two pilots were married. This was later disproven when Arrowhead Studio devs confirmed that they don't run an account on Tumblr. Despite this, it hasn't stopped many fans from shipping Eagle-1 and Pelican-1 with each other and there's quite a bit of fanart of them "flirting" by offering to apply for a C-01 form with each other.
  • Ever since it was made public that Joel was the gamemaster that dictated the flow of which planets get attacked and need to be liberated/defended, a portion of the fandom have headcanoned him as a traitor Helldiver. Though when it came to the Automatons, he would be J.O.E.L., the main strategic AI/supercomputer for the bots that plans their every move.
• Game-Breaker: The Eruptor, added in the Democratic Detonation Warbond, is what would happen if the Slugger had a baby with a Grenade Launcher. Despite being a primary weapon, it being explosive means that it can close bug holes, blow up fabricators, and has medium armor penetration; one headshot from this will core out the skull of any type of Devastator on any difficulty below Helldive, and it can kill Hive Guards with a single well placed shot at times as well. What sets it apart is that its projectile essentially has hitscan-level aiming; provided you're not moving and not getting hit, the grenade will go exactly where you're aiming it. Its main drawbacks, which any reasonably competent player can work around, are its low ammo capacity (five rounds per magazine), low rate of fire (being a heavy bolt-action rifle), and the fact it has a hard range limit of around 150 meters (at which the projectiles detonate).
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Helldivers 2 has gained quite a bit of popularity in the UK. One reason may be the game's nature as Satire and the jabs at American neoconservatism.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Terminid hunters. A single hunter can readily be taken down with a shell or two from a shotgun and has no particular armor to protect itself... if you can hit the thing. Hunters jump strafe when aimed at, deliberately flank the Helldivers, and despite their fragility, pack a nasty hit if they get in range. And on higher difficulties, there's always more of them. Their flanking tactics also have a way of scattering them, so they rarely form clumps that can be cleaned out with a grenade or other explosive. Finally, their attacks slow the Helldivers, making it difficult to escape once they're on you.
  • Terminid Scavengers and their relations are individually the weakest and least dangerous breeds, but their attacks are capable of staggering hapless Helldivers to weaken them for their bigger cousins. There's also never just one Scav — they're often found in small packs either scouting the map or guarding mission-critical objectives, and if you alert one before you take them all out, they'll summon a Bug Breach. Bile Spitters in particular are especially annoying, as getting hit by one will slow you to a crawl.
  • Terminid Shriekers are Airborne Mooks that fly quickly and hit moderately hard with their swoops, but have low health to compensate. Their main dangers are that they will continuously appear in swarms from any of their nests (which often tend to be clustered together), and worst of all, if they're killed while swooping at a Helldiver, gravity and momentum will turn their entire dead body into a high-velocity projectile (with a disproportionately large hitbox) that can One-Hit Kill any Helldiver it hits.
  • Automaton Marauders are the most annoying unit you can face. They are equipped with rocket launchers, and while they may go down like any other automaton unit, one hit from their rocket will knock you to the ground, rendering you vulnerable for a few crucial seconds. It gets especially bad when you are already surrounded by other enemies, or preoccupied with doing something else, where they can attack you at a fairly long range.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • By spam pinging the map, players can find secondary and tactical objectives without needing to see them first. The ping will transform into a square, and the side/tactical objective will appear on the top compass bar.
  • While its usefulness is debatable, the Grenade Pistol on launch had a bug where the first shot fired wouldn't consume a round, essentially giving your first magazine an extra shot.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: As to be expected of any fanbase of an indie game series suddenly and unexpectedly shoved into the mainstream, there are some old-guard Helldivers fans who dislike how II has become the next gigantic gaming phenomenon, as it supposedly devalues the once-intimate experience they had with the series and has flooded the sequel with bandwagoners and casuals who aren't really dedicated fans of the games and are just following a trend.
• Like You Would Really Do It: At the conclusion of a major offensive campaign against the Automatons in early April 2024, all Automaton presence was completely wiped off of the galaxy map with Super Earth leadership declaring the Automaton threat destroyed and turning all attention towards the Terminids. However, none of the players were buying it at all, and sure enough, barely a week later, the Automatons launched a new offensive into Super Earth space with an even larger invasion force.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Marksman Rifles are considered some of the least effective weapons in the game, due to issues with aiming down the scope and universally having low damage for freaking Sniper Rifles. Upon its release as part of the Democratic Detonation Warbond, the BR-14 Adjudicator was immediately trashed as a waste of Medals. It has a lower damage and a higher recoil than the R-63 Dilligence that's available as part of the free Warbond, and its medium armor penetration doesn't even remotely make up for it. Marksman Rifles as a whole are in such a pathetic position that the SG-8S Slugger, a rare aversion of Short-Range Shotgun in Video Games, is considered a better sniper rifle than the actual sniper rifles, even after a Nerf to its damage and ability to destroy objects; a poll posted by the developers on the game's official Discord had around 80% of respondents overwhelmingly agree that Marksman Rifles were underpowered and needed tuning. Though it should be mentioned that, as its name implies, the Slugger doesn't fire buckshot but slugs, making its range and lack of spread entirely justified.
  • Secondary weapons are okay, but basically all of them have severely limited ammo and, as of the Democratic Demolition Warbond, there are only 5 total options. The achievement "Hold My Primary, I'm Going In", which requires the entire team to go without firing a primary or support weapon for an entire mission on Hard or harder is pushing into That One Achievement territory as a result. Probably the two most popular options are the P-4 Senator, a functional but unremarkable revolver, and the Redeemer, a powerful machine pistol that runs out of ammo very fast due to high fire rate and limited spare magazines. The grenade pistol isn't great in combat, but still has a niche since it's the only secondary that can destroy fabricators/bug holes.
  • On the armor side of things, the EX Prototype armors from the Cutting Edge Warbond are basically considered useless; their passive provides a 95% damage reduction to arc damage from the Tesla Tower and Arc Thrower stratagems. The Tower is stationary and most players pretty quickly learn not to go anywhere near it. Meanwhile the Arc Thrower is absolutely prone to friendly fire, especially in the hands of inexperienced players, but it's still not even close to worth trading a different consistently valuable armor perk to occasionally save you from a careless teammate with a specific weapon. Finally, there are also no enemies that currently deal arc damage. Barring coordinated teams who choose to all take the above stratagems and armor, pretty much the only reason to wear it is fashion reasons.
• Memetic Loser: "Creek Crawlers" have become this due to their insistence on capturing— and failure to capture— Malevelon Creek after over a month of combat, which many insist resulted in a major order to liberate Tibit failing, leading to portrayals of them as Military Mavericks obsessed with revenge who are overall doing more harm than good for the war effort by refusing to prioritize actual objectives in favor of resuscitating their injured pride. These portrayals swiftly evaporated after Malevelon Creek was the prime subject of a Major Order and was finally reclaimed on April 1st of 2024, giving Helldivers everywhere a much-needed morale boost.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Are we the baddies?"^ExplanationJokingly mentioning out loud your reservations about Super Earth's expansionist practices, totalitarian government and propaganda machine. Said out-loud burst of realization will immediately be followed by the other members of your squad promptly emptying all their ammo on you like you deserve.
    • "Hello, Democracy Officer?"^ExplanationA Play-Along Meme themed response to similar sentiments being expressed on public discussion forums, in which the responder takes the role of a Helldiver reporting the original poster for expressing dissident sentiments. Further variations on the joke often include images of a Helldiver dialing on a cellphone with the number pad replaced by the game's trademark directional-arrow terminal inputs.
  • >Watches propaganda >Buys it unquestioningly^Explanation A meme taking the piss out of a 4chan greentext post where the original poster seems to not understand that the opening cinematic is an in-universe Propaganda Piece and thinks that Super Earth is really the utopia that it claims to be. Variations on this phrase are thus deployed in response to members of the games' Misaimed Fandom clearly interpreting the story and world incorrectly.
  • Space Vietnam ^Explanation An apt description of the gameplay is that it's The Vietnam War IN SPACE! This phrase is often used in conjunction with the famous "Thousand-Yard Stare" image but modified to be of a Helldiver, denoting that playing Helldivers changes a man. What solidifies this meme is the fact that Malevelon Creek, one of the more infamous planets under Automaton control is very much a lush jungle.
    • In a similar vein, Erata Prime is Bug Afghanistan or Bug Iraq. Similar comparisons have been drawn for other planets (Draupnir / Verdun, Heeth / Siberia, etc.).
  • REMEMBER MALEVELON CREEK! ^ExplanationThe battle for the Automaton-controlled planet Malevelon Creek quickly became the first major cultural touchstone, with hundreds of thousands of valiant Helldivers banding together and giving their lives trying to liberate the planet from Bot rule despite heavy resistance. Unfortunately, despite staggering casualties on both sides, The Creek ultimately fell to the Automatons on February 27, 2024. Many veteran players compared the experience to The Vietnam War, the future war scenes in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the machine war during the 2nd renaissance, the Battle of Umbara, or the Battle of Reach, leading to the common sentiment that there ain't no dropsite like The Creek. However, in a striking and heroic upheaval of events powered by the burning conviction of countless revenge-hungry Helldivers, Super Earth managed to turn the tide and completely liberate Malevelon Creek in early April. Suffice it to say, the memory of the Divers who gave their lives during the Fall shall never be forgotten by the playerbase.
  • "The trees speak binary..." ^ExplanationThe typical Madness Mantra of a Malevelon Creek Shell-Shocked Veteran player.
  • Up Right Down Down Down / ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️ ^ExplanationThe code for the 500kg bomb stratagem, usually used as a tongue-in-cheek counterargument.
  • “That missile is targeted directly to the Giant’s position! Where’s the Giant, Mansley!?” ^ExplanationA reference frequently used to poke fun at players who call down orbital or air strikes right on top of themselves, typically getting them and their allies killed
  • "For your consideration...the Jericho."^ExplanationRecreating the famous scene from Iron Man where Tony Stark shows off the Jericho Missile's destructive power by obliterating a mountainside in-game using the myriad Kill Sats, Orbital Bombardments and other means of Death from Above that Stratagems permit has become very popular, especially since a certain taunt allows the player to imitate Tony's "arms outstretched" pose from the scene.
  • “Damn it Joel!” ^ExplanationArrowhead revealed they have a staff member named Joel who acts as a game master coordinating the war macro game. Fans were quick to label Joel a Killer GM and blame him for every setback Super Earth has suffered. While Joel does have macro-level control over the general direction of the campaign, he has no direct control on things like the planetary liberation percentages (which players learned much later regenerate over time like HP during non-peak hours), though he CAN increase the enemy reinforcement percentages a little.
  • "Look for the dick/mushroom shaped rock". ^Explanation Super samples, unlike rare and common samples are only found near rock formations with a rather phallic look to them. When newer players ask where to find super samples, people usually say this or some close variant of it.
  • Automaton psi-ops. ^Explanation Due to the Demand Overload that the game experiences on a regular basis, the servers have been known to bug out or outright collapse during points of high volume traffic, including missing rewards and levels displaying incorrectly. The fanbase has since joked that it's an Automaton retaliation for strategic losses in order to stifle Super Earth morale.
  • Blue Beams. ^Explanation Players have reported and even recorded blue beams, apparently coming out of nowhere to snipe Helldivers. Terminids don't use ranged weapons, and Automaton weapons are all red, ruling them out. The Illuminate from the first game were known to have powerful cloaking technology and use blue beam weapons... but on the other hand, the Helldivers' own scorcher weapon also fires blue plasma bolts, and ricochets are marked in blue and can cause friendly fire incidents. The devs have added stealth updates before, leading to serious Paranoia Fuel.
  • "Bugs can't fly." ^ExplanationIn mid-March, players noticed that flying terminids were added unannounced in a patch, leading to Suspiciously Specific Denial by Arrowhead's CEO and other players jumping in character to declare the idea of flying bugs offensive and treasonous.
  • "Ha ha...look familiar?" ^Explanation A trend to use the announcer from the intro cinematic superimposed over other videos in a similar manner to other interrupting memes.
  • Democracy!/Liberty! ^Explanation Words that are often sarcastically parroted by players at the start of a mission, or when discussing the game overall on reddit or Discord.
  • Enemy Posting ^Explanation A flavor of reaction image where anyone criticizing the government of Super Earth, expressing sympathy to the situations the enemy factions are in, or complaining about overpowered weapons will have someone post a picture of a Terminid Charger with a laptop, implying that the critic in question is an angry and seething alien bug. Then it spread to other enemies like Hunters, Scavengers, Troopers, Hulks and even Annihilator Tanks getting their own computers. This eventually resulted into a 3d render and animated gif of a Charger typing away on a comically undersized laptop, with the Trooper and Scavenger following suit, and even culminated into versions of the Helldivers themselves typing on laptops as retorts.
    • "I'M NOT A BIG FAN OF THE GOVERNMENT (30 ON 30)"^Explanationan extension of the "enemy posting" meme co-opting a viral video of Vegeta singing a bizarre rap song pretending that it's an illegal Terminid/Automaton broadcast dissing Super Earth's government.
  • [Comment under investigation for treason]^ExplanationIn keeping with the Helldivers fandom's Play-Along Meme of always pretending to be in-universe civilians who wholeheartedly support Super Earth, on any YouTube video or social media post of the games you can invariably expect to see a handful of comments that say nothing but this, implying that the original poster said something critical of Super Earth or the Galactic War.
  • "I'm doing my part!" "I'm doing my part!" "I'm doing my part!" "I DIDN'T DO FUCKIN' SHIT!"^ExplanationA meme playing into the propaganda of Super Earth that also mocks players who don't contribute very much to the overall success of a mission.
  • "SWEET LIBERTY, MY [X]!"^ExplanationMemes about the Helldivers' much hammier voicelines in the second game abound, especially those that they shout when having a limb damaged. It's sometimes crossed over with the "MY LEG!" guy or modified to be cruder by having the Helldivers reference their genitals.
  • "Somehow, the Automatons returned".^ExplanationA meme ribbing the obvious satire behind Super Earth claiming that the Automatons were completely defeated after the success of Operation Swift Disassembly and holding massive "Mission Accomplished" celebrations, only for the Automatons to return not even a day later with an even bigger fleet and immediately take over the Valdis sector.
• Memetic Psychopath: Joel, the real-life Arrowhead employee who runs the Galactic War, is often jokingly regarded as the Greater-Scope Villain of the game. Sometimes fans go so far as to portray Joel as an in-universe character, usually a Helldiver who committed a Face–Heel Turn and is now working for the enemy by feeding them information on Super Earth's tactics a la Gaius Balthar. Alternatively, he's sometimes characterized as an Automaton super intelligence known as J.O.E.L.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Like its prequel, there are plenty of fans who unironically celebrate Super Earth's government as a democratic utopia. More troubling, fascists, Nazis and other authoritarians don't care that the game is supposed to be satire, or claim that the game is somehow satirizing modern democracy as a whole. The over-the-top nature of the propaganda and the Large Ham lines from the Helldivers themselves are meant to be funny in how enthusiastically they're delivered, with most of the humor deriving from the fact that the player can clearly get that this is all a big joke at the expense of warmongering authoritarian governments. The expendable nature of the Helldivers, the hand-waving of discrepancies in the propaganda, and the virulent culling of anyone who even slightly dissents make it clear that this is a Crapsack World with a nice coat of paint. Even if some players are going along with the idea of Super Earth being awesome, it's done in a tongue-in-cheek way where it's meant to be understood that they're just kidding. The fact that some players miss how over-the-top and silly this all is means that they are, rather ironically, demonstrating that such propaganda can actually work.
  • While Arrowhead Game Studios is technically an "indie" game studio, basically all of their games have had larger publishers, Sony Interactive in this case. Overall the game has a lot more in common with AAA releases than it does with small-team indie games in terms of budget and promotion. Despite this, there are frequently claims made that the game's runaway success is somehow "Indie devs sticking it to AAA gaming" and "setting an industry standard" even though the game is literally being financed by the group it's supposedly rebelling against.
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
• Pop Culture Holiday:
  • October 26th celebrates the Super Earth holiday of Liberty Day^note Chosen because October 26th, 1959 was the original publication date of Starship Troopers, which the Helldivers series takes great inspiration from, which is accompanied by an in-game celebration on the menu and (usually) new content as well as out-of-universe festivities from Arrowhead Studios, including livestreams and giveaways.
  • Malevelon Creek Rememberance Day is on April 3rd, to honor the smashingly successful offensive to liberate Malevelon Creek on April 1st, 2024 and the thousands of brave Helldivers who perished during the Fall of Malevelon Creek in late February of that same year.
• Play-Along Meme:
  • Fans of Helldivers II have been known to respond on social media posts related to the game by acting as in-universe citizens who are completely convinced that Super Earth is every bit the democratic utopia that Super Earth claims to be. But it's done in a tongue-in-cheek way where these players are clearly meant to be joking, and it's understood as such. That being said, some people still miss the fact that it's a joke.
  • Treating the Battle of Malevelon Creek with such severity as if it were a real battle in real life which claimed thousands of players. Divers who were there during the Fall will describe it with all the pain of a Shell-Shocked Veteran, and "REMEMBER THE CREEK!" is just as common of a Battle Cry to hear over comms as "VIRGINIA!" or "DEUS VULT!" would have been in olden times.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Fire damage as a whole, whether it be from the flamethrower, Napalm stratagems, or the Breaker Incendiary, is considered borderline useless due to the fact that fire damage doesn't apply a Damage Over Time effect to enemies unless one is the host. It works just fine on other Helldivers, but if you thought a bot or bug would actually burn to death when it's on fire, you have another thing coming. Worse, patch 01.000.200 increased fire damage by 50% both ways... meaning the host's incendiary weapons work great, as do any enemy ones — but if you're not the host, you're still screwed. People have been pleading for an armor that resists fire damage, to no avail. Toxic damage is likewise bugged and unreliable at the moment.
  • Dropping stratagem beacons when your Helldiver gets hit. Sometimes it's not big deal and it just means your resupply gets knocked out of your hand; other times, it means that the airstrike you meant to call in on the bot fabricator is now landing squarely on your squad's position, and the only thing you can do is run.
  • Hellbombs are cool in theory but very disappointing in practice. For one thing, the stratagem has a long and complex dial combination needed to call it in. For another, apparently Super Earth manufactures them with the finest wet cardboard that Managed Democracy can find, because a glancing blow from a hunter's claw is capable of destroying it— and despite maps often being littered with 'dud' Hellbombs that are capable of taking out hordes of enemies when shot, a fresh Hellbomb, even if it's armed and a fraction of a second away from actually detonating, will not blow up if it's destroyed, and Hellbombs can potentially be on a thirty-second cooldown, depending on mission modifiers. Several players have stated that they would be willing to eat a reinforcement if it meant that they could just shoot the damn thing to blow it up after it lands. Thankfully, a lot of objectives that allegedly require a Hellbomb can be done with things such as anti-tank weaponry for mortar and anti-air emplacements, or a 500kg bomb or orbital laser for things like shrieker nests, detector towers or illegal research facilities, or even incidentally blown up by taking out nearby fabricators like Stratagem Jammers. The only sub-objective that outright requires a Hellbomb 100% of the time is destroying gunship fabricators.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The release version of the Breaker Pray & Spray could not even pierce the leathery shells of Terminid eggs. Buffs took it out of this category; it's mostly considered an overall downgrade to the Breaker, but it's at least usable, and does at least clean up scavengers and the like nicely.
  • The Spear is generally considered the worst anti-tank option. It's a Homing Projectile that requires locking onto a target to shoot it and said lock-on has historically been awkward at best and outright non-functional at worst. Even at appropriate distances with a clear view it often still fail to lock on to the intended target or at all, and locked on missiles will still sometimes miss. The Recoilless Rifle is fairly similar but without the lock-on, but is arguably the more reliable option, as you might miss more without the lock-on, but you can at least consistently shoot it when you want to. Plus it has more extra ammo in the backpack.
  • The preview version of the Airburst Rocket Launcher was met with much derision by the playerbase due to how overly sensitive and unreliable the proximity fuse of its rockets are. You essentially cannot fire the weapon with your teammates anywhere in your line of sight because there is a high chance of the airburst rocket fusing on them and blowing up your team (and in many cases, yourself as well) instead of the enemy. Even when you have a clear lane of fire, the airburst rocket is prone to simply just exploding spontaneously in the air or triggering on a different enemy instead of your intended target. And most damning of all, in addition to all of these drawbacks, the airburst rockets simply don't do any real damage, only being effective against basic mooks while being useless against anything even vaguely armored.
• Scrub:
  • Several people on the Helldivers subreddit have reported facing backlash from other players for wearing the Malevelon Creek Memorial Cape^note Due to lingering resentment towards "Creekheads" for supposedly taking the Malevelon Creek meme too far at the expense of actual objectives, ranging from being kicked from squads to active Griefing, such as having stratagems thrown on top of them or being subjected to intentional friendly fire.
  • Several people also report a certain subset of players getting salty at not being called in for reinforcements for an extended period of time, apparently not comprehending that the presence of a Stratagem Jammer prevents all stratagems, including Reinforcement.
• Spiritual Successor: The game is largely considered by Halo fans to be the sequel to the original trilogy that they always wanted, due to the many similarities Super Earth's war against the Automatons and Terminids has with the UNSC's war against the Covenant and Flood as well as the namesake Helldivers being direct analogues to both the SPARTANs and ODSTs.
• That One Achievement:
  • "Kill It With Fire!", requiring the player to kill 100 enemies with fire damage in one mission, is this due to the fact that fire damage does not work as intended . Fire is supposed to apply a Damage Over Time effect, but it only works for the host, meaning that bringing stratagems that use Napalm or the Flamethrower weapon is an active hindrance to your squad.
  • "Hold My Primary, I'm Going In!" specifies that nobody on your squad can use a use primary weapons or support weapons, only secondaries and stratagems like turrets or airstrikes on Hard (Difficulty 5) or higher. Hard is where heavily-armored enemies such as gunships, factory striders, and bile titans start showing up far more often, and unfortunately, out of all 5 secondaries currently in the game, 4 only have light armour penetration and the P-4 Senator only has medium armour penetration.
• That One Disadvantage:
  • Certain missions have modifiers to them on harder difficulties. Two of the worst are "AA Defenses", which reduce the number of stratagem slots for each Helldiver by 1, and "Complex Stratagem Plotting", which formerly doubled the deployment time of all Stratagems except Reinforcement. The latter was especially bullshit, as it doubled the deployment time of extraction, meaning players had to fight off waves of enemies for four minutes instead of two. Both of these turn what should be fairly simple missions into bloodbaths, as your squad is inevitably not going to be fighting at 100%. The latter was eventually given a Nerf down to just increasing deployment times (including extraction) by 50%, which still sucks, but is marginally less painful.
  • The Stratagem Scrambler prior to its removal from the game was a particularly infamous mechanic that would cause your inputted code sequences to have a chance to replace whatever it is you chose replaced by another stratagem in your inventory. This lead to a lot of incidents such as players calling in their support weapons upon first landing only to be met with a carpet bombing over their own heads instead. Even when players are aware of the presence of a scrambler and know how to work around it (simply cancel and redial your stratagem), it still makes calling vital stratagem completely unreliable during emergency situations, causing the inverse of the previous situation where players trying to call in an orbital bombardment on a horde of enemies closing in on them are repeatedly given the stratagem to instead call in a support weapon instead.
  • Terminid Spore Clouds modifier disables your Enemy-Detecting Radar, and also hides the Terminids' location on the initial drop map. The latter half can potentially cause a death spiral that drains you and your team of your reinforcement budget if you just happen to drop into a large outpost with a Bile Titan and its Charger escorts. And while to some this might not seem so bad compared to other modifiers that hinder or outright remove stratagems, this modifier is especially bad on blitz missions. Due to not being able to see where the Terminid outposts are, it'll be a mad scramble to actually find them in the twelve minutes you have. If you're unlucky, you'll be short just one or two bug holes, and will be stuck trying to find one last outpost to obliterate before the Super Destroyer leaves and Pelican-1 is called early.
• That One Level:
  • There's a reason, out of the myriad procedurally generated planets, Malevelon Creek has achieved Memetic Mutation as "Space Vietnam" and, for certain kinds of players, the Best Level Ever. It's inhabited by the Automatons, who are generally seen as more dangerous than the Terminids for their use of military equipment including but absolutely not limited to: strategic jammers, anti-aircraft guns, mortar pits, bulletproof armor and main battle tanks. Going from a planet where the most dangerous thing is a bile titan or a stalker, to a battlefield where the first sign you've been spotted is the air becoming majority tracer by volume takes quite a bit of getting used to. Helping the "Space Vietnam" meme, they're also dirty commie robots (according to Super Earth propaganda). It is a swampy jungle world, with poor sightlines on the shore. The sightlines are better in lagoons, but with Helldivers' Super Drowning Skills and the slow movement through the shallows, that's just asking to get shredded by Automaton fire from the shore. Other jungle worlds are often bright, but Malevelon Creek is shrouded in a dark blue twilight even at high noon. While Automatons' fire can be disrupted by smoke and such, the darkness doesn't seem to affect them as badly as it affects players. The addition of planetary weather effects in later patches only adds to the fun - the Creek has ion storms, electromagnetic disturbances in the atmosphere that block your stratagems for short periods of time (often when you've got an irate Killer Robot horde on your tail who you'd very much like to get rid of). All of these combine to make a unique experience: creeping through the thick jungle, hoping to spot Automaton red in the dark blue foliage... before the Automatons spot the Helldivers and the jungle erupts in red tracers.
  • Hellmire has earned its place as the Terminid front's answer to Malevelon Creek. While the Creek is mostly dangerous because it suits the Automatons well, Hellmire is an outright Death World. Every few minutes on Hellmire, the entire sky bursts into flame, with fire tornadoes descending to wreak havoc. Hellmire is also a world of narrow, craggy canyons; Liberty help the Helldiver who is stuck in one when the flames descend. The only partial silver lining is that the flames of Hellmire do not differentiate between Helldivers and Terminids... but even then, the single-minded Terminids will continue to assault Helldivers while on fire, and can potentially set said Helldivers alight before giving into the flames.
  • Dedicated "Extract Essential Personnel" missions have this reputation. The objective is to get scientists from their hiding spots to a shelter, which sounds simple on paper, but is a nightmare in practice: the area the mission takes place in will soon grow absolutely clogged with enemies that will kill any scientist they can get at while also overwhelming the players, often to the point that it's impossible to get the scientists to start moving towards the shelter without risking life and limb. Further aggrivating the matter is the fact that every scientist that dies penalizes your Requisition Slip total for the mission. Finally, unlike most other mission types where the time limit is roughly 40-50 minutes, these missions always have a time limit of 15 minutes, and it is very easy to run out the clock due to how many scientists you need to escort and how many enemies you have to fight through at any given moment. The version of this mission that takes place on full-scale maps tends to be much more forgiving, making the intensity of the 15-minute evac variant seem even more wildly out of hand than it already is. On top of this, if you're unlucky enough to be on a squad that doesn't prioritize the objective and just go around doing points of interest needlessly, especially on higher difficulties, you're going to inevitably fail.
  • Vernen Wells lacks the fire tornadoes or massive rainstorms of either Hellmire or Malevelon Creek. What it does have are skyscraper-sized mesas and plateaus that are capable of obstructing stratagems. You thought that airstrike was going to take down the fabricator, or that the 500kg bomb would obliterate the Detector Tower? Nope! Caught on a massive cliff instead.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Destroying Gunship Fabricators. It doesn't matter what you throw at it, from two 500kg bombs to an orbital laser to half a dozen blasts from a Quasar Cannon, the only thing that's destroying them is a Hellbomb. Gunships are already Demonic Spiders, and they are more than capable of destroying a Hellbomb just by glancing at it. Even better? Sometimes two fabricators spawn next to each other, and you have to call in multiple Hellbombs to take them out.
  • Destroying a Stratagem Jammer is basically a flip of a coin. Did a fabricator spawn right next to it? If so, blow that up and you're golden. If not, the fight is going to be arduous, as only the explosion of either a fabricator or a Hellbomb is powerful enough to take it out, and if you're forced to use the latter, you need to activate a terminal and defend it from hordes of bots dropping in. Hellbombs universally have the durability of rotten wood, so even if one does manage to call it in and arm it, there's no guarantee it will actually detonate, as a glancing blow from a Bot's weapon can destroy it without it exploding. This is before one considers that if the Host dies and doesn't get respawned immediately (impossible to do because of the Jammer blocking reinforcements), they might get salty and decide to kick other players from the game out of spite or impatience.
  • On the Terminid front, Spore Spewers reduce visibility to mere inches until they're blown up. Good luck avoiding the chargers you can't see. On top of this, they have a similar visual profile to Shrieker Nests, and if you haven't highlighted them on your map, it can be hard to tell if you're in for flying bugs or a fog of spores. Thankfully, they're not well-armored, and a shot from any explosive weapon will easily take them down.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: This game is Arrowhead Game Studios' first venture into making a AAA title, and it shows with the graphical jump to photorealism compared to the first game's stylized artstyle. There are countless examples of both Scenery Porn and Scenery Gorn to be found across the varied biomes of every planet you can drop on.

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