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    A-C 
  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • Teemo's quotation on Tristana could sound like a totally lame Double Entendre joke.
      "If there's one person I'd trust to take on a difficult mission, it's Tristana — all day long!"
    • Given the prominent subtext between the two, this excerpt from Vi's new lore when she mysteriously disappears then suddenly reemerges as Caitlyn's partner is... head-tilting:
      "She also seemed somehow older, as if she’d seen and done things that had changed her forever."
    • A milder example is one of Corki's passives, "The Package." This might only be a little snicker-inducing on its own if you have a filthy mind, but it's led to a few times during professional games where shoutcasters accidentally blurt out really suggestive things while providing a live play-by-play.
    • Act 2 for Taliyah's story in Another Sky has her call Kai'sa "...the captain of sucking" for making a mistake in their practice duel, which probably isn't really something that teenagers would say without intending to be crude.
  • Adorkable: Ezreal's outer egotism belies a very dorky side, turned up to 11 for his Battle Academia skin.
  • Americans Hate Tingle: While Seraphine's reception is mixed among most of the servers, she's reviled in the Korean community due to the usage of Chinese voicelines in the Korean dub of the game.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: Viego was hyped up as being the biggest overarching villain League of Legends had seen to date, with years of quiet buildup and him eventually getting a giant Story Arc whose threat extended to the entirety of Runeterra. Sadly, all it takes is the Sentinels confronting him at the Shadow Isles (which includes him "winning" by reviving Isolde, only for her to reject him before sacrificing herself for the Heroic Second Wind)note  before he gets blasted and banished away in a few fell swoops, widely seen as a rushed and unsatisfying resolution to such a major conflict.
  • Archive Panic: The League of Legends wiki lists 257 short stories alone; between the short stories, comics, Legends of Runeterra, Arcane, the seasonal cinematics, the Tales of Runeterra shorts, Garen: First Shield and Ruination, and of course, the game itself, there's a positively overwhelming amount of content— much of which contributes to plotlines that are as of yet unresolved. It can be hard to get into League of Legends when there's an absolute mountain of content to get through due to the over-160 champions in League, almost all of which have some lore, and some of whom have a lot.
  • Arc Fatigue: With a setting as massive and abundant in storylines as Runeterra, it's safe to say that some storylines stall out.
    • Demacia's status as an oppressive Anti-Magical Faction was brought to the forefront with the revelation and release of Sylas, an Anti-Villain whose goal is to tear Demacia apart in retribution for the way he and his fellow mages were treated by Demacia. While the Lux comic, Sylas' own short story, and the 2020 season cinematic focus on this conflict and all made major progress in some regard, a drought of content related to it has left it stagnant— especially since the 2020 season cinematic ends with Lux openly using magic to summon Galio and standing at the head of Demacian forces while clearly wielding her staff with magic, seemingly backed by Demacia's army in doing so, events that should have huge consequences on the conflict that haven't come to fruition since the cinematic was released. The Mageseeker, centered on Sylas, retroactively manages to undo a lot of fatigue exposing Sylas as having changed motivations to be more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist and revealing that Demacia has officially ended the oppression of mages before the cinematic started, which eases a lot of the damage since the major plotline of Demacia persecuting mages has been resolved, but we still haven't seen the resolution of the battle.
    • Noxus is isolated from their typical wars with Demacia and left with its two factions plotting against one another, a plot that has not made progress of any sort with the ultimate goals of Swain and LeBlanc still completely unrevealed to the audience, with the entire Black Rose plotline pushed on the backburner while simultaneously being the only major story event going on in Noxus at any given time other than Darius' fairly nondescript conquests.
    • The Ruination plotline is a lengthy and complicated event, with plot points spread out and one of the messiest continuities in the otherwise mostly coherent League canon (Riot's official stance is Schrödinger's Canon). It primarily focuses on the Sentinels, a group of secretive heroes who've never been seen before and Viego, the Ruined King, who quickly became a Base-Breaking Character. By the time Viego's conquest had ended, the plotline had taken up a massive amount of time and left relatively little impact on the world, with Viego bound once again in Camavor and the world essentially reverting to normal after Viego was defeated by Senna, leaving it a long arc that ultimately accomplished little. Of note is that it also has a large number of related media (Some of which are just adaptations) by the lore's standards, including Rise of the Sentinels, multiple cinematics, a Legends of Runeterra retelling, the Steadfast Heart comic, Ruined King, and the novel Ruination, meaning it sticks around in the lore even after its original plotline finished.
  • Awesome Art: Especially as the game continues to go on, the quality of splash arts has risen significantly, especially for cosmetic skins to the point where many fans admit they buy them just for their splash art. Other promotional images also look gorgeous.
  • Awesome Ego:
    • We could say nothing else about Draven aside from this and we would still be mostly right.
    • For a character whose character ISN'T solely his ego, Aurelion Sol manages to be just as, if not more smug and self-assured. It's hard to argue with him, what with him being the creator of the cosmos, moreso considering his surprisingly sympathetic backstory.
  • Awesome Music: So much so, we had to make a page for it!
  • Awesomeness Withdrawal: Brought up in an Ask Riot article as a possible reason why some people stop playing League after playing vanilla URF — after URF, normal games might feel sluggish and less fun. This player drop is the reason URF game modes don't come around often and are modified in some way when they do (ARURF, Snow Battle URF).
  • Badass Decay: The handling of the new Sentinel recruits during the Ruined King saga has been greatly contentious, but Diana arguably suffered the hardest in this regard. Despite having been established for years as a deadly One-Woman Army and the Aspect of the Moon in human form, arguably making her one of the most innately powerful recruits, she contributes almost nothing to the whole operation, with her depiction in Rise of the Sentinels showing her close to giving up entirely upon seeing Ruined Pantheon. While the Sentinels' general lack of victories up until the very end isn't a problem specific to her, fans were pretty unflattered by the serious Worf-ing needed to contrive her into it.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Shares a page with Broken Base.
  • Better as a Let's Play: Having to deal with unskilled players, Griefers, AFKs, and unbalanced champions often leads to extreme frustration, so many players agree that simply watching someone else play the game can be a much more pleasant experience.
  • Bizarro Episode: Patch 8.11, particularly on the competitive scene (it was the first patch played at the start of the 2018 Summer split). A massive nerf to critical strike items that eviscerated most marksmen led to a competitive meta straight out of wackyland, with very serious, hardcore, professional teams running comps that completely eschewed running a marksman whatsoever in favour of mages or even double bruisers in the botlane, running a support (as in a pure support like Taric, not a support/mage being played as an off-mage like Karma) in the midlane, and seeing a ridiculous surge of champions who hadn't been considered valid picks in competitive LoL for years, such as Nunu, Nocturne, Karthus, Mordekaiser, Aatrox, Master Yi, Heimerdinger, and more. The commentators in every single region were constantly lampshaded what a weird and wonderful meta they were watching, regularly being on the verge of hysterics at just how bizarre things were.
  • Broken Base: Has its own page.
  • Casual-Competitive Conflict: As with many other MOBAs, there is a huge disparity between casual to competitive to professional levels due to how the game is designed around communication, coordination and understanding of an absolutely gargantuan ever-changing meta. One major reason for the game's notoriously toxic fanbase is the wildly-varying difference in levels of understanding players have of the game, and it's exceedingly rare for a champion or other mechanics to be manageable in both solo queue and even most ranked situations vs. high-level professional play. For better and for worse, Riot generally prefers to prioritize the competitive side to dictate balancing, with disagreements on their decision-making are just as much of of a conflict as the actual PVP gaming experience.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The game is jam-packed with various mechanics that allow for a greatly fluid metagame, but it's been well-known for it to stagnate from time to time. Individual cases of champion-specific metas are perhaps too common to comprehensively list (usually because of the same reason of something being really strong, which can be remedied by regular balance changes), but the game does have a few broader trends that are almost always considered the "correct" way to play:
    • Unlike, say, Dota 2, League has a generally pretty rigid accepted structure on how teams are played: tank/bruiser at the top, AP carry or melee AD assassin mid, marksman and support at bot, and one bruiser/assassin to farm and roam throughout the jungle, transitioning into a splitpushing mid-game and teamfighting late game. Unconventional picks tend to be exceedingly rare for a multitude of reasons, and whether they end up turning out functionally disastrous or Crazy Enough to Work are based on countless individual factors from the state of champions themselves, itemization, map mechanics, and even the willingness for players to cooperate with their teams (picking an unconventional pick without consulting your team before locking in is a surefire way to get very angry allies). Riot has been increasingly experimental with unconventional champion archetype/lane designs, from the likes of Bard (a roaming support), Kindred (a marksman jungler), Pyke (an assassin support), Senna (a marksman/support fusion), though their viability has generally remained just as variable as any other champion.
    • Before it was removed, every game of Dominion went like this: Step one: One person goes bottom, four go top. One person gets the mid turret and then joins the fight at the top later. Step two: If you capture the top, then everybody runs around and tries to push the mid or the bottom... when the other team respawns right there next to them. Step three: They leave one person (maybe two) to defend their captures while everyone else constantly pushes. Step four: If you have a Twitch, Rammus, Teemo, Shaco, or Evelynn, then you steal their nodes while they're too busy pushing another one. If you don't, the other team does and they win.
    • There's also the fact that for Summoner Spells, most people usually end up using Flash alongside another spell of their choice. It's not uncommon to see most, if not all of the players in any given match using it due to its sheer movement potential outweighing the movement speed buffs from the other options, as a short-ranged teleport that's able to go through walls can easily help secure or deny a potential kill.
  • Crack Pairing:
    • Zac X Riven has become popular after someone realized Riven's Bunny Girl splash art was an Early-Bird Cameo for him. While it has its roots in LoL's Rule 34 crowd, it's since begun spreading and rivals many other popular pairs in the fandom.
    • Another pairing that is quite popular in the Japanese fanbase is Lulu X Kog'maw, likely due to their in-game synergy.
    • "Lightcannon," Lux X Jinx is a somewhat popular crack ship, mainly stemming from a brief appearance together in a trailer, despite having never actually met in canon (and Lux still being romantically linked with Ezreal in the trailer's universe besides).
    • Vel'Koz X Karma. The reasons seeming because they tie together thematicallynote  as well as other reasons. Both have a color scheme involving lots of purple. Both have beam attacks. Both have AoE delay slows. However, one is supportnote , the other is damagenote . One is concerned only with himself, while the other can't stop thinking about the many. They are similar, yet opposite. And opposites attract. Even more so when they're also similar.
      • A couple years later, and fans have begun to pair Vel'Koz with Rek'Sai due to being almost complete counterparts to each other. Vel'Koz is a well spoken, multi-eyed, floating ranged champion who has to keep his distance to decimate targets or get destroyed himself thanks to his fragility, and is rather solitary thanks to his hunger for knowledge rather than for food. Meanwhile, Rek'Sai is hissing and roaring, eyeless, burrowing diver champion who excels at chasing down targets with her durability and melee attacks, and is the animalistic Hive Queen of a race of ravenous insectoids.
    • There is a not inconsiderable amount of fan art pairing Diana with a moon-themed heroine from Dueling Game Dota 2, Luna. Most of it is of the Rule 34 variety so search at your own risk.
    • Miss Fortune X Sona has seen a rise of pairing preference solely because of being the first humanoids that have the Arcade Skins (Hecarim is non-humanoid, Veigar is being the Final Boss). That, alongside other reasons, something that the other humanoid Arcade skin holder, Riven, lacks.
      • Aside of that, Miss Fortune is often seen being paired together with Nami, for those who likes'em yuri, since MF likes to travel in the ocean with her ship, and Nami's link to Bilgewater exists via Fizz... but Fizz is very non-humanoid, so the next best thing is with MF. And seeing that Nami is a good-hearted soul, it's more plausible that she's close to the closest we can get for Bilgewater's good force: MF.
      • It gets even worse than that now that some people (the Rule 34 crowd again, mostly) have started shipping MF with Tahm Kench. Why? Well MF is the most attractive female Bilgewater champion and Tahm has that long tongue you see...
    • Wukong/Seraphine (KDA Seraphine specifically) enjoyed a minor period in the spotlight after the creation of a Twitter account made by a Wukong roleplayer photoshopping Wukong into all of Seraphine's twitter posts and claiming to be Seraphine's overprotective boyfriend was discovered.
    • Sett and Aphelios ended up a surprisingly popular ship despite never interacting in canon, largely due to being released around the same time (only a month between one another) and unintentionally forming an Opposites Attract dynamic with Sett the big, loud brawler vs. Aphelios the quiet, graceful assassin. Riot later took notice of this for the two's Spirit Blossom incarnations, where Aphelios is apparently Sett's "mooncake". It got even more attention in Legends of Runeterra where Sett noticeably softens up around Aphelios and promising to protect him, then later on they have a lot of Ship Tease as bandmates in HEARTSTEEL.
    • Aatrox and Mordekaiser, despite having no canon interactions or references to each other, are portrayed by fans as at least best bros, as a nod to how much people who main either love teaming up with the other.
    • In 2020, Nami has gained a new ship, not with any champion... but with Samus Aran. Similar to Zac x Riven, this Crossover Ship has its roots in the Rule 34 community. The nature of the relationship has ranged from a childhood friendship, to a full-on Interspecies Romance. The logic behind the pairing is that both Nami and Samus are hybrids; the former is a mermaid, and the latter having Chozo and Metroid DNA in her body. As Metroids do resemble floating parastic jellyfish, it would technically mean Samus is related to fish. As shown in Legends of Runeterra, Nami values all ocean life, so she'd take a quick liking to Samus due to her Metroid DNA. Coupled with the fact that both characters are the chosen ones of their kind, it would be logical that they would get along as they are used to traveling alone to save those in need. Although Samus is from a completely different franchise, she seems to unintentionally synergize well with the Tidecaller due to her colour schemes, aesthetic designs, and her personalitynote .
  • Creator Worship:
    • The champion designer Xypherous is loved amongst the community for his champions. News that a champion is being designed by Xypherous tends to get "First day buy!" responses. In addition to that, he's also loved on the forums for discussing his intents and history behind his champion designs openly, calmly and clearly.
    • IronStylus works in champion design and lore rather than mechanics, but receives a similar level of adoration from the fanbase, if not more. His twin masterpiece champions, Leona and Diana, made him beloved in the fanbase to the extent that every player who cared at all about aesthetics and story got excited for his newest development. Tears were shed upon realizing he unceremoniously appears to have left Riot around May-June 2016.
    • Jaredan, mainly because he's the only person from Narrative who actually talks to the players. Plus, he promised lore updates, and better lore, and by god did they deliver.
  • Creepy Cute: Briar might be a bloodthirsty little goblin girl, but her cheery and earnest demeanor make her a very endearing champion.
  • Cry for the Devil: Viego is an awful and selfish person who has doom thousands to unending torment, but even he gets in a bit on this. Beyond the fact that he's doing it out of a genuine, even if horribly misguided love, when he finally resurrects Isolde, he's met with her telling him that he is a madman and while she once loved him, she can only pity the monster he became before she's killed in front of him again by Akshan, then he himself is sealed away in Camavor for eternity, doomed to agonizing forever over his pointless quest, all alone. It's very hard not to share in Isolde's pity for him.

    D-F 
  • Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: There are definitely people who could not care less for League Of Legends, the game - but who are still very much invested in the stories told in the Runeterra setting. Why exactly varies, but the often-cited reasons include the game genre not being interesting and the game itself having a reputation for attracting a certain kind of people.
  • Ethnic Scrappy: Nidalee has drawn increasing scrutiny over the years for her Jungle Princess design in League, which is evocative of generic Mesoamerican "native" stereotypes (including bestial nature, Fur Bikini, and greatly flirtatious dialogue), with arguments pointing to her character being rooted in racist and misogynistic tropes towards indigenous women. For what it's worth, Riot's devs and artists have shown awareness of the more uncomfortable implications of her design and have taken steps to distance the character from outdated concepts, including redesigning her in subsequent appearances like Legends of Runeterra and redoing her voice work, including the removal of racier lines.
  • Evil Is Cool: League has plenty of evil factions and characters, and it's unsurprising that, considering the World of Badass it's set in, many of them radiate awesome.
    • Noxus is a Social Darwinist empire where war runs in the very blood, and is nonetheless full of Anti-Villain characters, like the demonically-empowered master planner Swain, the hulking juggernaut Darius and his narcissistic brother Draven, assassins like Talon and Katarina, and the long-spanning plotters of the Black Rose such as LeBlanc and Vladimir.
    • The Shadow Isles produce a number of undead monstrosities such as the sadistic Torture Technician and manipulator Thresh, the imposing yet cunning Evil Overlord Mordekaiser, the warlike centaur Hecarim, and Viego, a man who nearly pushed Runeterra to its knees in his quest to revive his dead wife.
    • The Void produces a number of terrifying Eldritch Abomination characters that are nonetheless quite fleshed out, from the inquisitive and disturbing Vel'Koz, the perpetually hungry Cho'Gath and Kog'Maw to the menacing yet overall less evil Bel'Veth. The Void's influence also created Malzahar.
    • Shurima produces villainous badasses like the maddened Crocodile demigod Renekton and the incredibly powerful Magus Xerath, each of which has a tragic backstory and an archenemy and the willpower to last centuries.
    • Zaun, fitting with its Wretched Hive nature and focus on powerful technology and chemical substances, has plenty of evil champions: Multiple flavors of Mad Scientist between the cold, calculating genius of Viktor and the sadistic experiments of Singed, vicious and strong cult leaders like Urgot, smooth corrupt businessfolk like Renata Glasc, and, of course, the delightfully destructive Jinx, who makes explosive violence look like a good time.
    • Even a good faction like Demacia has evil badasses like the Mageseeker Order, a ruthless organization that nonetheless gets the job done and has awesome outfits, and of course Sylas, a Well-Intentioned Extremist who seeks to bring the whole kingdom crashing down as revenge for his and his fellow mages' torment at Demacian hands.
    • Ionia may be overall "good," but it still produces champions like the flamboyant Serial Killer Jhin and the shadow-lurking assassin Zed.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • With its primary competitor game, DOTA 2. The stereotypical Dota player claims that League is an inferior rip-off title with watered-down gameplay to please the braying crowds, and its fans are clearly inferior players who couldn't take a real game. Meanwhile, League fans commonly argue that the changes made in the transition make for a better, more stable game, and the Dota fanbase are just a bunch of conceited snobs who want new players to stay out of their game so they can feel special. The fact that both games are infamous for their unpleasant fanbases adds an extra layer of vitriol when they start arguing over which is worse.
    • Prior to the success of Dota 2, players who refused to move on from the original Defense of the Ancients: All-Stars or who instead played Heroes of Newerth were often guilty of similar complaints, though neither game quite enjoyed similar success.
    • Wild Rift against Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (to an extent, maybe also Arena of Valor and Honor of Kings, but that was less fiery). League fans has not forgotten on how MLBB used to shamelessly rip them off and thought they're still doing the same (they're not), and additionally, the more PC-attuned League fans in the West just still hate mobile games by default. Unfortunately, as steady as Wild Rift is going, it's just too late in the race when Mobile Legends has gotten an enormous headstart by focusing more on Southeast Asia (which are more accepting to mobile format), and they find the bashing from League fans asinine, annoying, willingly underinformed, and they've been too into MLBB's format which caused some Damn You, Muscle Memory! issues; and finally, they find the 'mobile hate' mentality bashing also extremely conceited and elitist due to Values Dissonance. It's almost like it's going to be the mobile version of the rivalry between League and Dota 2, with League ironically taking Dota's place as the 'slower, more complicated MOBA' between the competition, thus League fans can now be the recipient of the insults they threw towards Dota fans.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: In terms of depicting the Ruined King saga, Rise of the Sentinels has received a chilly reception by fans for its questionable handling of the lore and its characters, with the most common complaints being that champions were acting significantly out of character from their usual selves to contrive continual victories on Viego's end. It also features the most verifiable canon activity regarding the Ruined champions, the handling of which have been especially contentious, namely with Karma and Pantheon getting Worf'd and Miss Fortune taking a sudden level in jerkass. Riot later conceded that due to their loose depiction of canon between adaptations, all versions are equally in and out of official ruling, and despite the in-game event containing many elements that alternate official takes on the saga (such as the Steadfast Heart comic) do not, many fans have willingly taken up the offer to ignore it. In some cases, Riot provided continuations that are a lot more accepted.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple:
    • Jarvan IV/Shyvana is a very popular couple in the fanbase, despite certain Riot staff stating a preference for J4/Quinn. The Lux comic runs with this, with Jarvan IV being very reluctant to marry anyone due to already being in love. He later states this someone is not so different from Sylas in terms of magical ability, which rules out this someone being anyone but Shyvana (since most Demacians have to hide their magic or risk exile or death).
    • Graves and Twisted Fate were both paired together ever since Graves' release, given that the two had once been partners and Twisted Fate had betrayed Graves in exchange for power. At the time, Twisted Fate and Evelynn were listed as exes and TF was far from over her. However, as canon was expanded, Twisted Fate's backstory was retconned so he did not in fact betray Graves, Graves only thought he did. After the Burning Tides event, the two rekindled their friendship and fan content for the pair exploded in scope, so that Graves/TF is one of the fandom's most popular pairings. Ex-Riot staff Runaan even said she intended for them to be married in the Double Double Cross cinematic. Note  It all came to a head in 2022 where during Pride Month, not only did Graves and TF finally get romantically suggestive emotes (including one where they replicate a famous scene from Brokeback Mountain in another), the short story "The Boys and the Bombolini" prety much removed all subtext and confirmed they were a male-loving-male romantic couple.
    • In the Star Guardian universe, Ezreal and Lux share heavy Ship Tease suggesting the pair are in love with one another. However, Jinx/Lux (a.k.a. "Lightcannon") has taken off in popularity. These shippers argue that Lux/Ezreal lacks as compelling a dynamic or stable a foundation as other canon couples, while Lux/Jinx has more parallels that can be drawn between the girls as well as an Opposites Attract dynamic. Just for comparison, Lux/Jinx has about five times the number of works associated with it on Archive of Our Own than Lux/Ezreal.
  • Foe Yay Shipping:
    • Old Warwick pretended to befriend Soraka so he could later betray her and get her (physical) heart to help stabilize a potion which turned him into the wolf creature he now and will cause him to lose his human mind if he does not. This forced Soraka to step out of the grove she lived in and sacrifice her very immortality by harming others with her powers to help him in a losing fight against supposed men who killed his "wife" - clearly, she did not think plainly of Warwick to do this. The possibility to interpret "heart" in the story in a metaphorical manner does not help.
    • And then, of course, there's the "Garen gets out of bed in the morning on the hope that he has a scrap with Katarina" thing.
    • Some fans have started shipping Jhin and Sona. Is it extreme tension on Jhin's part,(Jhin wants to legitimately kill Sona, because people like her music more than his "art"). Sona doesn't know who Jhin is and expresses confusion about his desire for multiple autographs in her voicelines. Then again, the ship might also be because that Jhin and Sona are a surprisingly good combination botlane.
    • Kayn and Rhaast have become incredibly popular as a romantic pairing akin to the subtext of Eddie Brock and Venom, Rhaast's parasitic reliance on Kayn making for compelling drama and their natural Blood Knight tendencies playing well off each other.
  • Franchise Original Sin:
    • An interesting one as it still takes place in the same game, in regards to Seraphine and the lore: much noise was made about her backstory and how she exploits Brackern crystals for her own gain, but MANY other champions (mostly from Piltover and Zaun) use the same crystals in the form of Hextech gear and they're still popular with the community. Even Camille, whose backstory blatantly spells out that her family are the biggest harvesters and suppliers of said crystals, gets a passing mention at bestnote . However, it only really stuck to Seraphine as she's the only person in-lore that can "understand" the crystal's song, with her first biography implying that she outright knew that it came from the souls of once-living beings, painting her in a bad light considering she willingly used them instead of speaking out against their use (Riot has since made clear that this was a mistake via ambiguous wording and tweaked the wording to make clear that she's just as unknowing as everyone else).
    • Seraphine design was harshly criticized for being a generic hot girl that didn't really fit into the world, but looking back at many of the champs released before her people started to notice a huge trend with Riot's champ design being made with marketing appeal in mind even if it didn't really make much sense design-wise or lore-wise. note  These champions came with interesting lore ideas so people did not notice. However with the combination of being overhyped, not having that interesting of lore, and how many normal looking pretty people league got in a row before her, it caused a huge backlash against the champ. It's also intern made people much more critical of champion designs that came afterwards with most of them fitting into the genetic pretty girl or pretty boy archetype.
    • League events are often guilty of Arc Welding and using the Invincible Villain trope, both of which were beloved during Burning Tides and Shadow and Fortune— each of which people felt integrated the game's lore seamlessly into the stories they were telling and combined different characters and arcs, said Invincible Villain being respectively Miss Fortune, an Anti-Villain at worst whose planning out Burning Tides is generally agreed to be a wonderful twist that has huge consequences on the long-running story, and Thresh— one of the most popular villains in League of Legends who, while surviving without much of a scratch, also takes his fair share of losses. Both were also confined to Bilgewater, with fairly limited casts. None of these factors applied to Rise of the Sentinels, which seemingly picked who became a Sentinel or a Ruined champion at random (With accusations of being Merchandise-Driven), never paying enough attention to any of its characters due to its enormous scope, and which requires contrivances, The Worf Effect, and out-of-character heroes to achieve Viego's Near-Villain Victory, only for it to be reversed in the last moment and ultimately turn out inconsequential. Suffice it to say that while Burning Tides and Shadow and Fortune are still well-received, Rise of the Sentinels brought these issues to people's attention.

    G-I 
  • Genius Bonus:
  • Genre Turning Point: This was the game that put the MOBA on the map of mainstream gaming after mods like Aeon of Strife and Defense of the Ancients (to which this game is a Spiritual Successor) first developed its core elements, and the game that made e-sports popular outside South Korea once it became clear that it was as fun to watch as it was to actually play.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Due to the nature of the game, it's quite regular for some champs to be very favored in certain regions in detriment to others. It's especially noticeable in competitive play: one specific example involved Rumble, who upon release was deemed worthless for the NA pros while the European scene realized he was broken.
    • Despite the Japanese League of Legends community is known to be really small (since PC gaming in Japan requires being rich or geeky enough to have two square meters to spare for a desktop computer); "cute" champions such as Fizz, Ahri, Sona, Lux, Annie, many yordles (such as Teemo, Tristana, Lulu, Kennen, and Veigar), and lesser extent Kog'Maw have gotten a lot of popularity among the Japanese playerbase. In fact, it's common for Japanese League of Legends fanart to depict the said "cute" characters more than manlier champions such as Darius and Garen; and it wouldn't be a surprise that if Japan gets their own League of Legends servers, the said cute champions will be the most played champions among the casual Japanese playerbase. Competitively speaking however, the Japanese meta is relatively similar to the Korean meta because the Korean servers is where most professional Japanese players look at.
      • If the booru sites are to be trusted, Lulu is the second most popular characters for the Japanese/Asian player-base, only beaten by Ahri.
      • Similarly, Ezreal and Varus has also gotten a lot of popularity in Japan, due to the fact their appearance easily fit into the Bishōnen character archetype (not to mention that they are viable competitive choices).
    • The game itself, have garnered a lot of popularity in East Asian countries, specifically in China and South Korea where PC gaming is dominant. However, it also has some growing popularity in Japan as well to the point that in 2015, Japan opened their first LCS tournament and allowed to enter the international LCS stage via the Wildcard Tournament. Some speculate this is most likely the free-to-play nature of the game, as well as numerous "cute" champions that has gotten a lot of appeal among the Japanese fanbase (more specifically Lulu). Riot has announced plans to open up Japanese servers as well.
      • Ultimately, the Japanese server has been announced to be truly on the works, with some prolific anime cast members to boot. And to acknowledge further on Lulu being of this trope especially in Japan, they got Aoi Yūki, better known as the massively popular Madoka Kaname, to dub Lulu. Wow.
    • League of Legends is also big in Venezuela compared to other games, with a large percentage of the LAN server being made up by Venezuelans despite this country having barely more population than Mexico City alone in a region that also covers Colombia, Central America and the Caribbean. However, this isn't really because Venezuelans actually like it, but more because LOL is actually the only mainstream-ish game an average Venezuelan can play — Venezuela's nationalist import policy multiplies the price of all imports by tenfold, meaning that a computer capable of running modern AAA games literally costs there a large family car (and an iPhone there is literally worth its weight in gold), whereas a computer capable of running League with medium graphics costs "only" $1000 dollars in Venezuela.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
  • Growing the Beard:
    • Not the game itself, but the skins. Back in the days all the skins were just recolors (of both the loading screen and the champion itself). Now you'll have to look hard to find a new skin that isn't a remodel with brand-new loading screen art.
      • And these days, it's becoming more and more common to get new particle effects and secondary changes (like Teemo's mushrooms instead being Easter eggs in his Easter Bunny skin, satellites as Astro Teemo and poison bombs as Omega Squad Teemo).
    • The post-mass Retconned lore, by quite a longshot. The initial announcement of the plan to completely reset the universe without the titular league or Summoners didn't make a good first impression, exacerbated by the mostly so-so-to-lukewarm reception of the 2013 Freljord and 2014 Shurima events that immediately followed. However, the new lore team really buckled down starting with the 2015 Bilgewater event, and while there have been a few hiccups every now and again, it's generally agreed that the lore has gotten much higher-quality with a lot more emotional depth and worldbuilding than before, especially since most regions and champions have been properly rewritten to fit the new universe.
    • The level of in-game storytelling has also increased quite a bit. While champions used to get just enough voice lines to flesh out their personality a little but nothing more, newer champions frequently have specific interactions for everything from buying certain items to interacting with certain ally or enemy champions to interacting with aspects of the map.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • The champion Diana was somewhat inspired by Lady Gaga, who made a song about the late Princess Diana and her death a few months ago during her debut. IronStylus admits that this tidbit of news was a bit creepy.
    • Many fans of Arcane have commented that many of the previously fun or funny things around Jinx (even her name itself!) are much grimmer having seen how she becomes the Jinx we know.
      • The "Paint the Town" comic already had a harsh moment where Jinx — upon blowing up a warden station — feels genuine shock and guilt when it hits her that she probably just killed a lot of innocent people from it (though thankfully, everyone made it out safely). With Arcane revealing that her big screw-up as a child was creating and setting off a bomb so big that it both obliterated a building and killed her friends, it's easy to guess retroactively that she was having a very personal flashback.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: On the flipside, the Odyssey line, where Jinx is now part of a crew and seems to be fairly stable, suddenly becomes a lot more bright, as many have commented in the "Welcome Aboard" trailer for it.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Kha'Zix is an Alien Expy whose primary damaging spell is heavily reliant on an isolation mechanic. Kha'Zix was released in 2012, but fast forward to 2014...
    • One of Dunkmaster Darius's opening lines is "I don't need a buzzer to tell me when to start dominating." Following his rework, his passive makes him tremendously powerful when it triggers. Which, on this skin, is signaled by a loud buzzer.
    • There's a custom mod that can turn Leona into Saber. In the Japanese server, she would be voiced by Ayako Kawasumi, Saber's voice actress.
    • When Sion got reworked, one of his jokes with Urgot is claiming that they can't hang out as 'overlooked ugly old champions' anymore because he's reworked and cool now. In 2017, Urgot received a rework that's on par with his, if not better. Perhaps Sion might wanna rethink his decision.
    • After his rework, Urgot's line when he lands the initial hit from his ult on Lucian has him mocking him by saying that Senna will never escape Thresh's lantern. Two years later, she did exactly that and became her own champion.
    • In Vi's original lore she was amnesiac and didn't know anything about her own background, even her real name, with her instead naming herself after the mysterious "VI" tattoo on her face (which was most likely meant to be a Roman numeral instead), which gave her the Mad Libs Catch Phrase "Vi stands for (violence/vice/vicious etc)". When Arcane gave her a new backstory, any references to amnesia or the tattoo having any special significance were written out and it turns out that all along Vi stands for Violet.
  • Hype Backlash: Not quite to the game itself, but the popular and anticipated Ultra Rapid Fire Mode has started to gain an increasing amount of detractors ever since its regular inclusion in the Rotating Game Mode queue was announced. While many fans are still happy to play a mode where all their characters are hilariously overpowered, a growing minority has sprouted saying that some of them are still significantly more powerful than others (namely high mobility, high damage burst assassins), which may inevitably lead to Complacent Gaming Syndrome and suck out all the fun (as well as the appeal) of the game mode.
  • I Knew It!: In 2020, Riot teased one of their new champions as a masked assassin who refused to die, and was already present in the lore. Thanks to the subtle clues, several fans suspected it was Yone long before the above-mentioned leaks confirmed it.
  • Incest Yay Shipping: While uncommon, several sibling pairs are shipped together, notably Garen and Lux, as well as Morgana and Kayle have somewhat of a following.
  • Informed Wrongness: Sylas in the Lux comics is depicted as being in the wrong for stealing Lux's magic and stockpiling it to free himself from being executed. But given that if he hadn't, he would have been murdered on the spot without trial (after already having been imprisoned unfairly for a decade), it's hard to see what other choice he had.
  • Iron Woobie:
    • Lux feels like she lives an empty life on the inside, but she doesn't let it show.
    • In Poppy's old lore, she saw her father murdered by Noxian assassins, but continued with her delivery anyway. In her new lore, she's on a seemingly-endless quest to find the legendary hero of Demacia, unaware that she probably IS the legendary hero.
    • Being the only survivor of Unfriendly Fire Deadly Gas caused Riven to break her treasured runesword, self-exile herself from her city-state and wander for a way to serve the philosophy of power she has followed her entire life. She refuses to give in to self pity despite all she's been through.
    • Nasus. He and his brother came to aid Shurima only to find it destroyed, the Emperor obliterated, and his Court Mage transformed into a raging nexus of magic. He had no choice but to seal Renekton and Xerath away together, and when the tomb was finally reopened, Renekton had lost his sanity and wanted to see Nasus dead. The only bright spot was the return of Shurima with the resurrection of Emperor Azir — and even Azir fails to accept responsibility for what happened, leaving Nasus with no one to blame but himself.
    • Yasuo. He spent years trying to clear his own name and track down the assassin who murdered his mentor, only to find that Elder Souma died in an accident which Yasuo (thinks he) could have prevented. He had the strength of spirit to forgive Riven, who was responsible, but he can't forgive himself.
    • Galio; created to be an Anti-Magic bulwark whose sudden consciousness is treated as an accidental afterthought, he only comes to life when great magic for him to fight is near, and when it's over, he's left to slumber for decades, even centuries until the next big battle. While he squeezes as much enjoyment out of the little life he can experience smashing baddies for Demacia, and has the excited personality to show for it, even he acknowledges it's with the bittersweet knowledge that once it's over, he has to go back to sleep.
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks!:
    • In general this is a criticism of the game when compared to other MOBAs; the gameplay is simplified and less unforgiving in many respects. These criticisms became a lot less common as other MOBAs came out that were even more streamlined than LoL, leaving the ultra-hardcore games like Dota 2 as the extreme outliers of the genre rather than the standard.
    • Even though Sona isn't considered overpowered, she's still looked down upon because it's entirely possible to play her well just by spamming Q-W-E and pressing R occasionally, occasionally having to worry about her passive, but likely at the bare minimum for the game.
    • Karthus' ultimate is nicknamed "Press R to Win" for a reason, and his passive actually makes him more deadly if he gets killed. Many a team has been aced by killing Karthus, only for his teammates to keep them around for Death Defied and an uninterruptable Requiem to clean house.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
    • The instant Seraphine was announced as a playable champion, she got hit with criticism for being a retread of Sonanote , with detractors derisively referring to her as a "Sona 2.0", seemingly being pushed to overshadow a beloved champion who fans have felt has been neglected over the years. Thematic and gameplay overlap isn't uncommon in League, and Seraphine's kit is significantly different in execution to Sona'snote , but combined with the other controversies surrounding her character in lore and marketing, critics were far less tolerant of her supposed lack of evolution.
    • Over the years, "mecha"-based skins have been met with ever-increasing resistance rooted in this. Riot maintains multiple theme lines based on giving champions robotic/futuristic/sci-fi makeovers (including Mecha, PROJECT, Steel Valkyries, Mecha Kingdoms, Hextech, etc.), but a repeated criticism is that most of them look fairly homogenous and interchangeable, to a point where it occasionally raises concerns of in-game clarity making it difficult to identify champions apart while using the skins. Fans get especially loud if a champion ends up with multiple skins fitting in the same archetype, which get blasted as being even more redundant.

    L-N 
  • Les Yay:
    • It didn't escape the community's notice that in one of their Easter Egg interactions, Vi calls Caitlyn "cupcake".
    • When in the Star Guardians skins, Jinx will comment that an ally Lux "even makes boring look beautiful".
    • As of 2020, there's a lot of Les Yay in the K/DA verse between Evelynn and Akali and to a lesser degree, Evelynn and Ahri. Seraphine gets on this as well with her Ship Tease with Akali, with the implication that there might be something going on between them being present on her character blog, though it never goes anywhere. Kai'Sa stands out as the only one that doesn't get ship tease with the other members of K/DA.
  • LGBT Fanbase: While there have been bumps in the road on Riot's end, the games' roster of canonically queer champions have been well-received by fans. There's Vi who was the first foray into a Butch Lesbian character, and who became even more popular after Arcane released and fleshed out her relationship with Caitlyn. The game's Pride events have confirmed several characters as gay and having romantic attachments, namely Diana and Leona in 2021 then Graves and Twisted Fate in 2022. Newer releases have introduced definitively queer characters (i.e. the lesbian Neeko, the bi Rell, and the gay K'Sante) or have fleshed out older champions and their identities (Nami being confirmed as bi and poly, Udyr and Lee Sin receiving heavy Ship Tease, the heavy implications between Seraphine and Akali in the K/DA-verse), and that's not to mention the number of queer artists who have stuck with the game and its world across its long life.
  • Memetic Badass:
    • Little is known about General Du Couteau (not even his given name), but everyone agrees he's a badass. He's said to be the single greatest blademaster in the entire world.
    • IronStylus, concept artist of Riot Games, got a thread on himself like this due to being a popular Rioter from posting often on the forums.
    • Master Yi is the manliest badass ever existed with his dunking skills.
  • Memetic Bystander: The knight with helmet that keeps getting obliterated by the more malicious champions garnered a following that he's eventually given the affectionate nickname "Helmet Bro".
  • Memetic Loser:
    • Champions with a noticeable drought of alternate skins over long periods of time tend to get a lot of memetic attention, often leading to accusations of neglect from Riot and cries of "X skin when?" at any available opportunity. Newer champions that go at least a year or more without getting a second skin get this much harder; Aurelion Sol, Kalista, Kayn, Kindred, Ivern, Kled, and Ornn are just a few examples of those doomed with this status (and occasionally still do even after they all eventually received more skins).
    • Kai'Sa in the context of K/DA gets this treatment. She had no singing lines in POP/STARS, causing some to question why she was even part of the band. When K/DA released more content in 2020 and this was finally rectified, her appearance on the Worlds 2020 stage was mocked (see Special Effects Failure below) and the concept video for DRUM GO DUM, her solo song, was of significantly worse quality than VILLAIN, Evenlynn's song, which had Visual Effects of Awesome. Cue jokes that Evelynn took all of Kai'Sa's budget for her own.
    • Yorick steadily developed a reputation of this as the Ruined King Story Arc took hold, as despite having some of the closest relevance to the Ruination's origins of any champion opposing Viego, he was a complete no-show for almost the entire thing, only showing up near the climax of the story. Considering how egregiously wasteful his absence was, the joke has spread that despite his famous protests, Riot somehow managed to forget Yorick Mori.
    • LeBlanc also slowly developed this reputation among lore-heads due to how despite her being portrayed as a frightening chessmaster slowly controlling the course of Noxian history, a lot of her more present-day operations have failed in ways that are highly unlikely as being part of the plan: on top of her gambit to have Swain sent to die in Ionia only resulting in him coming back with demonic powers and becoming the new Grand General of Noxus, her attempt at assassinating Swain losing her her greatest assassin and turning Katarina against the Black Rose as a whole, the attempt at claiming the Chalikar resulted in Xerath, Renekton, and Azir's return and the resurgence of the ancient Shuriman empire, and the attempts to raise living weapons from childhood like Rell, Annie, and Briar have resulted in the former two escaping and destroying the Black Rose academies they were raised in, and Briar became a colossal Ax-Crazy liability that failed two missions before being sealed up by Swain, later also escaping. With that track record, many lore nerds question if LeBlanc is actually as intelligent as she thinks she is, and that somewhere, Mordekaiser is laughing at all the measures intended to keep him at bay going awry at once. It doesn't help she's also effortlessly defeated by Ekko of all people in humiliating fashion in a Legends of Runeterra cinematic.
    • Of all the lanes roles (including jungle), the top lane gets most frequently hit with this status. While all lanes have their own ever-updating quirks of design and balance in the metagame, top lane is most commonly cited as being the most easily-forgettable — in the early laning phase, mid lane builds up commanding champions fast and allow for wider map control, bot lane helps establish early control over farming dragons, and roaming junglers also establish vision control and enable ganks that can snowball other lanes to victory, but the top lane is frequently seen as its own island with very little avenues for interaction until later phases of the game (it doesn't help that most top lane champions are juggernauts, bruisers, and duelists designed to absorb and defuse pressure, further discouraging engagement). Riot has occasionally tried to give nudges to make the top lane feel more worthy of attention (most notably the introduction of the Rift Herald in preseason 6 as an objective to take way before Baron Nashor spawns), but the common joke is that while all the other lanes are having a 4v4 skirmish in the lower side of the map, the two top laners are spending their time farming minions and only ever dueling each other.
  • Memetic Molester: Some of the characters are seen as one such as Ahri, Baron Nashor, Vel'Koz, Zyra and Ivern (at least when his teaser trailer was released). Taric is also an offender, usually at Ezreal's expense.
  • Memetic Mutation: Has its own page.
  • Memetic Psychopath: Teemo has been interpreted as an Ax-Crazy psychopath for years, and Riot has taken notice. Many, many characters express fear, horror, or revulsion at him. Thresh, one of the game's many big bads, flat-out says Teemo is more evil than he is, and Gatekeeper Galionote  refers to him as "my lord". Riot further acknowledged Teemo's psychopathic reputation with two skins for him: Little Devil Teemo, which depicts him as Satan, and Omega Squad Teemo, in which Teemo is a Shell-Shocked Veteran planning to murder every other champion on Summoner's Rift.
  • Misaimed Fandom:
    • On almost every single one of Phreak's champion spotlight videos, there are people saying that his builds don't work that well or that he plays terribly. Despite the fact that these videos are to demonstrate the mechanics of a champion, rather than how to play them well. Possibly this is the reason he no longer recommends builds in spotlights.
    • This video by the Riot Games Support channel is meant to warn players about free RP scams that pop up all over the place online, but since most people don't fall for them to begin with, many viewers pay more attention to Tristana instead.
  • Mis-blamed:
    • Stanwick Pididly stole Viktor's notes, plagiarizes and takes credits for his works, yet the fans didn't even notice him, and instead blamed Jayce as being the stuck up jerk that made Viktor miserable in the first place. Then again, his outrageous first lore might have something to do with it, but still, it's kind of jarring that Stanwick so far remains a Karma Houdini for Viktor's sufferings.
    • Morello is a particularly big case as the Lead Champion Designer. Many people who don't realize what he, or other reds, actually do. He's embraced the title of "Nerf Master Suck Town" bestowed on him in a patch preview comic; other devs often commend him on his impressive forum aggro tanking abilities.
    • Lead Game Designer Ghostcrawler got a ridiculous amount of hostility for the much-maligned jungle changes in the middle of Season 8, with claims he was responsible for destroying the game's balance and not caring about the players' experience, escalating after it was suggested that he doesn't even regularly play the game himself. It got so bad that he had to step in to directly address many of the complaints himself, including reminding fans that he isn't the only one working on balance, and he doesn't have control over every decision Riot as a whole makes.
    • During the heavily controversial Rise of the Sentinels event, a common narrative held by critics, especially on Reddit, was that its writing was heavily dictated by the skins team and not "the official lore team", leading to accusations that the champions chosen to represent the Sentinels and the Ruined were done out of financial incentive and how much the skins would sell rather than what would make sense for the narrative. However, as has pointed out by several Rioters, there is no singular "lore team". Broadly speaking, League's general narrative direction and major plot beats are spearheaded by its lead producers, while Riot has historically handled the actual minutiae as an ongoing collaboration process between various individual teams and their narrative contributors (including champion designers, loose short story authors, as well as the various visual novel, comics, and CG cinematic departments for the Ruined King saga in particular), with skin design only being one group of many with a say in the matter for how the event actually played out.
  • Moe:
  • Moral Event Horizon: Gangplank murdered Miss Fortune's parents right in front of her, shot her in the head, then set her house on fire; she was only a child when all of this went down.
  • Most Wonderful Sound:
    • "Pentakill!"
      • LAN has "P-P-P-P-PENTAKIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!".
    • "Ace!", caused by the deaths of all players on one side, means that you're safe to push and destroy towers for a while.
    • "Shut down!" for when someone on the enemy team is on a killing spree and you put an stop to it.
    • For newbie players, the jangle of coins that comes from last-hitting a minion, especially if heard a few times in a row.
    • For Yasuo players and their allies, the metallic clang from landing a second Steel Tempest in less than ten seconds, since it means his next casting of it will generate a tornado — and possibly an ultimate if it's up.
    • The fiery BOOM of the Elder Dragon's burning buff as it executes a low-health enemy is immensely satisfying if its your team that's using it, the perfect way to signify that you're about to win the game. Smolder — another dragon who himself has an evolving passive that gives him a similar executing buff by the late game — produces a similar sound effect from executing enemies, and it's just as badass.
  • Narm:
  • Narm Charm:
  • Never Live It Down:
    • Despite its lack of canonicity following the lore's global retool, Demacia will never live down Lux's League Judgment due to it showing a serious dark side, one including mandatory conscription and Lux being forcibly dragged from home in tears against her will. It paved way for people to flanderize Demacia as a tyrannical empire hiding behind shiny 'good guy' propaganda, just based on that event, even if a lot of those shiny "good guy" stuffs could also be genuine.
    • Seraphine's detractors and even some are her fans are not going to let her live down her poorly worded champion bio and voice lines which implied that she was fully aware of the suffering her usage of the crystals caused to Skarner's kind. Even after Word of God adjusted her bio, removed the offending lines (reportedly early draft material not intended to be shipped out) and made clear to say that she isn't actually aware of it like we the audience are, it's still memed and used to denounce her character as a whole.

    O-P 
  • Older Than They Think:
  • Pandering to the Base:
    • K/DA's comeback in 2020 amped up the Les Yay between the members (sans Kai'Sa) after the ships exploded in popularity post the groups original debut back in 2018. Seraphine has also gotten some Ship Tease with the units most popular member Akali right out the gate.
    • K/DA Seraphine is seen as this for the Chinese playerbase, as she's Chinese in the alternate universe K/DA is set in, has been to Shanghai where Worlds 2020 was taking place, and part of her musical shtick is her ability to sing in both Chinese and English as shown in her verse in "MORE" and one of her original songs "You Made Me This Way".
    • Battle Academia and Star Guardian have Ezreal and Lux as a couple or on the verge of becoming a couple respectively, which is clearly meant to pander to fans that weren't too fond of the ship being shot down in League's canon universe.
  • Paranoia Fuel:
    • Whenever stealth-based characters such as Shaco or Twitch disappear, you're going to be seriously worried about an ambush.
    • Both Nocturne and Twisted Fate have abilities that let them travel great distances instantly. Twisted Fate's allows the entire enemy team to see where you are. Nocturne's prevents you from seeing where any teammates not right next to you are. Both can be quite a scare when you're alone.
    • Warwick's Blood Scent lets him see enemies that have less than 50% health in a pretty big radius. If you hear howling and see a pair of evil-looking eyes above your head, you'd best call for backup. Or run. Ever since his rework, Blood Hunt as it's now called instead gives Warwick a more emphasized movement speed boost....on top of an eerie ambience that EVERYONE in the game can hear.
    • Fiddlesticks isn't really much of a threat early game, more of a slight annoyance with a silence, fear, and refusal to die with Drain Health. He becomes a major problem after he picks up Crowstorm and starts roaming. If you can't see him, there's a chance he can jump over a bush or wall with Crowstorm active. Not only is the ability devastating if you're standing in it's area of affect, it's also incredibly shocking due to its accompanying sound effect of "LULULULULULUCAWCAWCAWCAW."
    • Once Karthus gets his ultimate, cue the entire enemy team rushing each one a Zhonya's Hourglass if that's what it takes to not die to his ultimate that hits everyone in the map at the same time.
    • Same with Akali having her own ultimate. She can dash out of the jungles and slay you in seconds, and trying to run is often futile.
    • If you're fighting on the opposing team against Yasuo, being thrown up the sky in any manners is the LEAST thing you want because who knows when he'll suddenly pop out of nowhere, juggle you in the air with his Last Breath and just prepare to slice and dice you up with his sword (or get his teammate to help him kill you), if that Ult hasn't killed you yet (not to mention, with his usually high Crit rate, it's like facing someone who's more than likely slash your vital parts accurately). Like Akali, Yasuo can also pop up out of the jungles provided that someone else is sending you to the air on the other side.
    • Sion post-rework has a notification sound whenever he uses his ultimate, Unstoppable Onslaught, that both teams can hear. It's a loud, deep metallic bang. HOWEVER, the enemy team will only hear it when they can see him using his ultimate. In short: They likely won't be aware of the unstoppable juggernaut barreling towards them until it's far, far too late.
    • Kayn, especially in either of his final forms. Shadow Step allows him to travel through walls and fire off his other abilities while inside. Once he's landed a hit on you, Umbral Trespass blinks him inside your champion and makes him almost impossible to escape from. If you see a glowing black spot on a nearby wall, chances are he's coming to ruin your day.
      • Riot apparently loved the concept of Shadow Step so much that in ARAM during the 2018 Bilgewater event, they made the boot item Ghostwalkers to potentially allow any melee champion to do the same thing with whatever initiation/flanking powers they have, with the glowing black spot being replaced with much more vague invisibility effects that are also much easier to miss if you're not paying full attention.
  • Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: Nightbringer Aphelios's skin suggests he and Alune, a Daybringer, were meant to do battle but instead ran away together after being 'drawn together' by the moon. This would be all well and fine, but in canon Alune is Aphelios's sister, making this either a lack of research on the creator's part or blatant Incest Subtext.
  • Popular with Furries: Between the various Vastaya champions, the Ascended of Shurima, the elemental demigods of Freljord, the Kindred and even the Yordles, LoL has a huge subset of furry fans.

    R-T 
  • Remade and Improved: Visual-Gameplay Updates tend to invite some degree of controversy and dissent, whether it be because of fans disliking the changes made to the champion or simply missing the previous options, but there have been a handful of champion relaunches that are almost universally beloved:
  • Ron the Death Eater:
    • Ask anybody who doesn't like Ahri about her character and you're almost sure to hear her being compared to a succubus who still sleeps with men to devour their life essence. While it's true that she used to steal the life essence from men, a major point of her backstory is that she only did that before she became human enough to understand that what she was doing was wrong, and once she did she resolved to find a way to become human without taking any more innocent lives. Technically, it's only mentioned that she used her charms to lure men to her. Whether or not she actually slept with them isn't mentioned (and the short story 'Stray Fox' makes it quite clear that she devours their essence by sucking it out of their face while they're dying, making it extremely unlikely that she goes as far as to have sex when she only needs to lure them close enough to snap their necks).
    • For many, Jayce is often seen as a stuck-up Glory Seeker Jerkass who's the source of poor Viktor's sufferings, thanks to his outrageous first lore that made Viktor look like a straight up villain. This is ignoring that Jayce himself also genuinely loves Piltover and wants to protect it as much as other citizens there, and also ignoring that there's a possibility that Viktor acted that way because of how he was driven to that position thanks to Stanwick Pididly. But the haters usually forgot Stanwick existed (maybe because he's not playable, and with League's lore reset, they think he stopped existing), and then just full on blame Jayce and 'demonize' him.
      • Unfortunately, following the post-lore retcon, this is actually much more of a canonical interpretation, since Jayce is being portrayed as an unlikable Tony Stark-esque Jerkass who ends up defeating Viktor, who while removing the free wills of others on his own will, was actually doing it to prevent the suffering of his patients, and is deemed a hero for it.
    • Much like how people often give way more merit to Noxus' Social Darwinist issues than intended, Demacia is often very harshly condemned by fans to be a Knight Templar fascist state, only masquerading themselves as champions of justice. The most popular basis behind this comes from their treatment of magic-users (specifically Lux and Sylas), but the degree to which they enact their persecution — which is harsh; their mass imprisonment, "curing", and exile of mages would indeed fall under a technical definition of genocide — is often way more exaggerated relative to how Demacia and its champions are represented. There's nothing to suggest that the beliefs of upholding peace, honor, and justice present in almost every Demacian champion isn't genuine, and virtually all of them (even the villainous Sylas) are depicted as being in the right for seeing the anti-mage rhetoric as abhorrent and morally backwards for those virtues (though whether that's still enough to actually keep Demacia and its champions sympathetic is a deeper, more subjective issue as the rest of this page attests).
    • On the similar lines to above, post-relaunch Kayle is a very contentious character. While she isn't portrayed as a particularly nice character in canon, even by standards of other Demacian champions, many of her detractors tend to reduce her heavily law-centric thinking and warlike personality as her being a Lawful Stupid Light Is Not Good villain, filing down the nuance to said judgement and the quiet moments where her mask falters to indicate that her flaws and self-dishonesty are intentional. Conversely, this interpretation is often paired with making Morgana and her more sympathetic personality far less flawed than she actually is. It doesn't help that modern depictions of Kayle either depict her as a full-on Ungrateful Bitch and Jerkass (such as in the 2024 Season Start cinematic) or associate her with the Mageseekers (The Mageseeker).
    • Both classic Seraphine and K/DA ALL OUT Seraphine got hit with layers upon layers of this during her very tumultuous announcement phase.
      • For classic Seraphine, the initial impressions of her being extremely similar to Sona drew the ire of Sona fans who proceeded to characterize her as a petty Alpha Bitch who bullies her predecessor. Things got even worse when her voice lines came out and players took umbrage with the fact that her voice lines made her comes off as catty and sarcastic, even from lines that weren't meant to be taunts. Most infamously about classic Seraphine is the fiasco regarding her relationship with the brackern and Skarner, with many blowing Seraphine up as a cold-hearted psychopath that knowingly butchers the brackern for callous reasons due to her original voicelines and poorly-worded lore leaving the impression that she was fully aware of suffering her usage of the brackern crystals caused to Skarner's kind, but continued to selfishly use them anyway. After some time, Riot acted on damage control to explain the context and misunderstandings and even adjusted the Seraphine's lore to reassure the players that she was unaware of what the voices inside the crystals were telling her, making her just as ignorant as everyone else in Piltover is. However by that point, the damage was done, with many continuing to demonize her champion.
      • K/DA ALL OUT skin Seraphine came with her own share of demonizing for various reasons such as; the skin being ultimate upon Classic Seraphine's release; Seraphine's now highly controversial Character Blog; Riot apparently concieving the K/DA skin and it's story before the classic champion; and also accusations of Seraphine being self-insert cashgrab that takes attention away from the original members of K/DA. Like classic Seraphine, her skins the voice lines caused people to jump on her for sounding bratty and overly-sarcastic, with special attention being directed at her K/DA ALL OUT Superstar dialogue where she taunted her now-bandmates seemingly out of newfound narcissism, which was seen as very much unlike the Seraphine people had gotten to know from her character blogs. Once again, Riot enacted Author's Saving Throw by releasing the tie-in K/DA song "MORE" as intended, which revealed that she was merely teasing the bandmates with lines they sung all along. Even so, there's still some that don't like her insertion into the bands universe and how big a part she plays in the bands comeback.
  • Rooting for the Empire:
  • Scrappy Weapon: Many items and Support Powers come and go in various metas, but many longstanding ones have received reputations of just being plain bad:
    • Probably the resident Memetic Loser of items is Ohmwrecker, introduced in late 2012 and removed in late 2019. For a fully built item, it provided a remarkably paltry and gold-inefficient amount of tank stats, but as a "tradeoff", it had an active ability that could disable nearby enemy towers... for about 3 seconds —not enough to securely towerdive with as a tank, especially by the late game teamfighting phase— before going on an extensive cooldown and turning into a useless stat lump again. Because there was no practical reason to pursue Ohmwrecker over any other item that would better suit a valuable item slot, it languished for years in its alternating reputation as "that item nobody uses" and "that item that's mysteriously still in the game" until it was quietly killed off for good.
    • Maw of Malmortius had fluctuated in and out of meta since its introduction in 2012, but had a considerable trough in favor following the preseason 10 item overhauls. Compared to other Lifeline items (items that grants you shield when your health reaches 30% or less after being hit by an enemy champion), Maw was substantially overspecialized as its focus was on AD and magic resistance, providing neither the health bulk of Sterak's Gage nor the sustain and Mythic passive of Immortal Shieldbow, on top of having a weaker magic-exclusive-shield and not the general damage shields of its competition. Even within its niche as an anti-mage defensive weapon, it didn't really make sense as its shield scaled off of the user's health despite providing none itself, suggesting a build composition for more health that ultimately made itself seem redundant. Season 12 finally reworked it by scaling its shield to the user's attack damage, so while it still exists as a Situational Sword for damage-dealers against AP-heavy enemy teams, it's a more internally-consistent and functional one.
    • Season 7 experimented with the Poacher's Dirk jungling item, which rather infamously flopped, falling into disuse until its retirement at the end of season 8. A mini-objective starter item similar to Cull and Dark Seal, Poacher's Dirk rewarded counterjungling by gaining stacks upon killing enemy jungle camps, where upon completion would convert it into the Serrated Dirk, a more flexible component item, and at a net gold discount. However, this ended up crippled by an arbitrarily long cooldown between jungle clearing (anywhere between 30 to 60 seconds, not an ideal length of time to spend in the enemy jungle during early game), meaning more often than not, it was just easier and safer to bite the bullet and pay directly for the Serrated Dirk. Riot eventually realized that this counterjungling fantasy only appealed to power-farming junglers who were doing just fine with what they had, and removed it as it only really practically served as a trap for new jungler players.
    • Sanguine Blade was given a rework for the 2020 seasonnote  and immediately caught flack as many dreaded its design — a lethality/lifesteal item which gave massive bonus attack speed if the user was near one or no enemy champions — which became worse once it went live and those concerns were validated. Serving as a tool for splitpushing melee carries, the item is really strong when it's doing its job, but its efficiency drops like a cliff otherwise, including in all-important teamfights where there's obviously going to be more than one nearby enemy champion. Even for a Situational Sword, this sword was considered too situational and toxic for its intended purpose and sharply dropped off in popularity following necessary nerfs to its passive. With the window of powers it opened up being so limited, Riot decided to replace the item entirely with a more broadly AD/tank-focused splitpusher item in mid-2021 in the form of Hullbreaker, which has gone over better due to to its design better aligning with bruisers who carry more innate utility, and thus aren't completely defined by raw damage.
    • Only a handful of Summoner Spells have rotated in and out of play in the game's history (most now-removed ones only existed for a short period in the game's formative years), but there's one that inexplicably lasted longer in spite of how terrible it was: Revive. Its ability? If you die, you instantly revive back at the fountain. The cost? A nine minute cooldown, the longest cooldown of any ability in the game's history by a wide margin. Aside from a few extremely niche meme strategies (namely involving Karthus to pair up alongside with Teleport to die in a teamfight, create space with his passive, revive, teleport back into the teamfight to make even more space), the option was considered a massive waste of a Summoner Spell slot, with just about any other option providing more benefit in keeping you alive in a more regular basis. Due to it being so impractical to use yet also potentially risky to buff in any way, it was eventually removed in early season 5 — Riot wouldn't end up bringing a revive mechanic back until 2021 with Akshan, who implements the concept in a substantially different way.
    • In terms of runes, no keystone option has been met with as much disdain as the Prototype: Omnistone of the Inspiration tree. A replacement of the Kleptomancy rune (which was itself controversial, but it had a significant fanbase), Omnistone's gimmick was that it fluctuates between other keystone runes, theoretically allowing players who could master use of all of them a significant edge over everyone else with only one. However, not only did it rotate on a randomly-generated basis, making it hard to extract consistent value out of whatever given runes it pops upnote , virtually no champion fits the all-encompassing archetype that Omnistone largely caters to, and will often "reward" players with a dead rune that doesn't benefit them, or worse, they outright can't use. Even champions that could make decent use of Omnistone were usually far better off with a much more consistent single rune, and given that there's otherwise no direct payoff beyond perhaps relatively low cooldowns-per-activation, Omnistone carries a reputation of being too unstable for its own good. Few mourned its removal in preseason 2022, with it being replaced with the much more consistent First Strike keystone.
  • Self-Fanservice: Whether or not a champion is sensible or skimpy, expect plenty of fanarts portraying the champion in a skimpier outfit. For example: Fans are happy to think up their own versions of a champion's Pool Party skin.
    • If they're not trying to bash him or anything, there are certain circles who like drawing Teemo not as a cute yordle, but a rather hunky or handsome yordle. Riot acknowledged this themselves with the release of the "Annie-versary" skin for Annie on the game's 10th anniversary which replaced Tibbers with a giant, heavily-muscled Teemo.
    • Can you guess who's one of the most-commonly lusted-after and sexualised female champions (behind only Sona, and Ahri)? Jinx.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat:
    • Those who care about such things are split between those who prefer shipping Jarvan IV with Shyvana and those who prefer pairing him with Quinn.
    • There's also a bit of conflict between Garen/Katarina shippers, the Garen/Lux shippers and the Lux/Katarina shippers.
    • Also Riot's Ship Teasing of Ezreal and Lux has split the base between those who think it's a cute idea and those who refuse to acknowledge anything except Ezreal/Taric.
  • So Bad, It's Good: Reading some of the really old lore that became Canon Discontinuity. It becomes quite apparent Riot had no idea what they wanted to do with the setting so some of the bios came off as quite hilarious. Some highlights include Ryze being a runaway student from a place called The Magi's Academy for Unpleasant Boys, and Taric and Malphite being straight up aliens.
  • Special Effect Failure: The Worlds 2020 K/DA performance featured the band as virtual performers, a feat that Riot had previously pulled off successfully in K/DA and True Damage performances from years prior. Unfortunately and for whatever reason, apart from Evelynn, the group's models were all clearly low-resolution, with Kai'Sa in particular being compared to a PS2 model.
  • Spoiled by the Format: The Ruined King Saga throughout 2021 was poised to be League's most dramatic storyline yet, but the intended impact of some major moments were a little garbled due to the fact the story is ultimately secondary and subject to the whims of the game itself, which has its own priorities:
    • Many of the Ruined and Sentinel skins were revealed and heavily advertised before their canonicity were properly delineated. Perhaps the most egregious collision is the matter with Ruined Pantheon and the Prestige Ascended Pantheon skins, whose bios blatantly exposit that he would be Ruined, but would also soon get better. The fact that the skins and their biographies effectively are Riot's means of exposition for segments of the plot creates an awkward conflict of interests and intended priorities.
    • Retroactively, much of Ruined King: A League of Legends story was subject to this due to it chronologically taking place before several major beats revealed before the game could be released (namely Miss Fortune's fall to the Ruination and Pyke's recruitment into the Sentinels), an unfortunate circumstance of its production being set back from its early 2021 release date. It ended up getting around this by presenting a drastically different conclusion that almost completely ignores said event, acting as its own entire conclusion (presumably due to the event's negative reception of and calling for a do-over).
  • "Stop Having Fun" Guys: The initial fanbase was born out of DOTA: All Stars. To put it lightly; if you don't know what DOTA had a bad reputation for... it's best just look at the trope name.
  • Strawman Has a Point: Qiyana is an unrepentant Alpha Bitch who believes Might Makes Right. However, she's not wrong in that Piltie miners entering Ixtal and freely stripping their resources needs to be punished, lest Ixtal lose their authority over the region. Furthermore, in her color story Fit to Rule, her sister is completely unable to protect the village under her control from miners and probably shouldn't have been assigned that role.
  • Surprise Difficulty: Anyone who doesn't read up on a champion a bit before trying them out might run into this. Some champions are listed as "Easy" or "Medium" when they're actually a bit tougher than other champions in their "Difficulty" level, and vice versa. Thankfully, people may practice in Co-op vs. AI if they don't know how a champion works.
    • Not to mention, a lot of people assume that because bots have Artificial Stupidity, that they can just think "Co-Op vs, AI? FREE EXP/IP!" and just spend half an hour dinking around and are somehow surprised to find bots at level 18 with tank-like stats, free gear, and loads of crowd control (and Anti-crowd control) or finding bots focusing on a turret and it going down before they can do a thing. Should we also mention that some bots like Tristana Bot even have massively crazy timed maneuvers in the past, like firing one of her abilities mid-Rocket Jump?
    • The recommended items for champions frequently are not what you should buy, according to the champion's dedicated players. They're not awful, sometimes even good, but (perhaps intentionally, in order to promote experimentation) the most devastating/effective items for that champion are often left out.
    • Some players also hold the theory that simple champions are sometimes more difficult than complex champions, because simple champions force you to face all kinds of situations with nothing but a few basic moves.
  • Tainted by the Preview: Seraphine's announcement provoked what is likely the most controversial and intense pre-release backlash towards a single champion by a significant margin. Her first impressions created some kindling as she was teased and announced as a part of the newly-returning K/DA before being a proper champion in the League of Legends universe, but once she was properly announced with her default League version alongside her design, gameplay, and lore, controversy regarding every aspect about her lit up the fanbase. It's clear that Riot was intending for an exciting one-two-punch of Seraphine's addition as a part of League and of K/DA, but the sheer division towards her definitely hampered much of the hype.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Regarding champion reworks, Riot often has to tiptoe around making functional, improved kits, while also preserving parts of the original champion's identity as to not alienate their existing fans and cause this trope, which can be difficult if said parts of their identity are the problems. It became such a severe problem by late 2018 (a year which was a 50/50 split of new champions and champion reworks) that Riot announced its decision to greatly slow down these sorts of projects in large part due to this type of vitriol, regardless of how often-requested and well-received they are.
    • One instance where it seemed to cross the line was LeBlanc's pre-season 7 Assassin Rework, which sought to replace her hard-to-counter instant burst damage with a more workable Confusion Fu playstyle. This broke the base wide open, with LeBlanc fans considering the changes to be a butchering of her assassin status (turning her more on a planning control mage) that made her feel clunkier to play, despite her damage being explained as why she was reworked in the first place. Notably, this rework was completely reverted a year later (though it was less to do with fan outcry and more of Riot finding the changes not reaching the gameplay fantasy they were going for).
    • Aatrox had an unfortunate case of suddenly coming back into meta within weeks of his already-announced full visual/gameplay update going live in 2018, leading to a pushback of the update with claims of it being unnecessary, among many others. Of course, the devs had to step in to remind everyone the reasons why he was getting a rework in the first place in spite of his occasional (but assuredly short-lived) success, but it hasn’t made the vitriol lobbed from former Aatrox mains any less potent. The backlash was so severe that Riot promised never to so drastically overhaul a champion's kit and backstory in a rework ever again.
    • While most would agree that Swain's original kit was awkward and needed a rework, not everyone was particularly happy with the overhaul his character underwent. For starters, he went from being a a random low class boy who rose up to power through sheer tactical brilliance despite being crippled at a young age (and also possibly being possessed by a crow demon) to an aristocrat who, while still brilliant, was born into wealth. He was also changed from having a leg that didn't heal properly after being broken to having lost his arm during combat. And he lost his rather distinctive appearance to become a dead ringer for Lucius Malfoy. And he lost his crow that sat on his shoulder (the one that may have been possessing him).
    • Yuumi's 2023 rework to attempt to make her less hated by the fanbase did nothing to help. While its goal was to remove Yuumi from pro-play and make her skewed towards beginners by forcing her to remain with her ADC rather than attaching to her jungler or toplaner and gutting her ability to provide free stats to her attached champion while forcing her to leave their side, it did the opposite; Yuumi instead was forced to remain on her ally even more by disincentivizing her from ever leaving her lane partner and became even more heavily contested in pro-play and high elo while becoming a troll pick in low elo with a sub 40% winrate. To make matters worse, fans of the character were devastated, begging Riot to revert her rework and give her more skill expression to balance her properly. All attempts at trying to change her power budget around to boost her low elo winrate failed, and in the end Riot simply gave up, nerfing all her abilities and keeping her around 40% winrate in all elos.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: During the Ruined King saga, many people expressed disappointment that the bland Player Character Rookie wasn't Ezreal instead. Ezreal already had a Sentinel persona, Jarro Lightfeather, and would have perfectly fit in the wisecracking Naïve Newcomer role that the Rookie embodied and could have tied down the Rookie's existence in canon in a more definitive way. Instead, the Rookie's canonical existence is mired in uncertainty and confusion and did little to endear fans to the visual novel's plot, and Ezreal is conspicuously absent from the event altogether.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Ruined King saga was a very high-stakes, high-scope event that ended up finding itself in conflict with its limited scope of involved characters, with one of the biggest criticisms being that certain major aspects of the world weren't given the focus they probably deserved. While it seems expected that many things were going to be overlooked given the sheer size of the universe and its playable roster, some missed opportunities were lamented upon more than others, to the point that Riot themselves admitted that they squandered a ton of potential from poor decisions on their part.
    • One big issue is that the actual severity of the Ruination is underexplored, only limited to the relevant Sentinel recruits and their immediate surroundings (in turn tying to debates on the quality of the chosen champions). Consequently, no attention is paid to how the factions at large (either governments or broad populous) handled the Ruination, and even places that do set up dire widespread consequences (such as Ionia and Targon, featuring Karma and Pantheon being overtaken by the Black Mist) don't clearly establish what's at stake for the world once it gets quickly resolved.
    • Many characters who had established ties to Viego and the initial Ruination went significantly unnoticed — Kalista and Hecarim each had short stories released during the preamble to the Rise of the Sentinels event, but then never appeared once. Maokai is also never acknowledged, and Yorick only appears at the very end of the event, relegated to a tertiary Spear Carrier role to hand off the Maiden of the Mist to the Sentinels. By the time Viego is defeated while the story ends with Thresh usurping the Black Mist, the questions related to how this affects any of these individuals is left unresolved.note 
    • The handling of the characters actually chosen for the event left a lot to be desired, with much criticism being held on how most of the Sentinels and Ruined champions, as heavily promoted as they were, don't really do anything. Rise of the Sentinels got particular flack for its out-of-character or overly-reductive writing, so any given moment for a champion to shine was usually received as confusing at best, an unflattering waste at worst, and overall adding little to no weight in the course of the plot. It's rather telling that other depictions of the Ruined King saga — including Steadfast Heart and the cinematics — are able to completely excise a majority of Sentinels and Ruined while the story remained much of the same.
    • Most major regions and their respective Sentinel choices are liked or at the very least seen as appropriate, but Graves representing Piltover and Zaun caused controversy as he's far more associated with Bilgewater (whose actual representative was Pyke). Rise of the Sentinels attempted to compensate for this by introducing a completely new pair of Sentinels stationed at the PNZ, Ada and Dess... who then promptly disappear and contribute almost nothing of note afterwards. While Sentinel Graves as an individual character has been very well-received, without a true champion representing the PNZ, many believe that they in general were snubbed from the whole event.
    • With Diana being made a Sentinel, some expected that Leona would be her Ruined opposite, perfectly tying into the confirmation of their Star-Crossed Lovers status shortly before the event and finally getting them to tangle in current canon. Instead it's Pantheon, who has much less story ties to Diana, who is corrupted instead, with Leona not factoring in at all. Similarly, many were hoping that Graves would join the Sentinels because his True Companion, Twisted Fate, was Ruined, but TF doesn't even appear and is barely mentioned, despite him and Graves being inseparable otherwise.
    • The big finale cinematic to the event, "Absolution." For players who spent weeks grinding, unlocking all the Sentinels and expecting a big climactic finale, it's instead relegated to a barely 5 minute cinematic with half the Sentinels (Irelia, Pyke, Rengar, Riven, Diana and Olaf) MIA, only one Ruined champion appearing (Pantheon) and doing very little, and the entire thing ending in a literal one shot from Akshan. Based on storyboards, it seems like there was at least going to be way more Ruined champions, but due to whatever reason, it's now sadly a case of What Could Have Been.
  • Tough Act to Follow:
    • In terms of lore, the Bilgewater: Burning Tides event has remained a benchmark for awesome lore events, mostly due to its intense and drastic storyline, which integrated exceedingly well in-game; not just skins, but an additional game mode, a new map, and the famous reveal and fake-outs of the newly reworked Gangplank. Riot's admitted that Burning Tides was an absolute monster to produce, leading them to prefer smaller-scale lore updates in the following years and reserve big intra-gameplay/lore shakeups for Alternate Universe events.
    • In spite of being non-canon, the Spirit Blossom event of 2020 ended up becoming one of the most beloved lore developments since Burning Tides, being rich in theme, as well as being accompanied by the charming Spirit Bonds Visual Novel. Riot attempted to capitalize on this format with the bigger, more dramatic, higher-stakes-to-canon Ruined King Saga the following year, but as it wasn't received nearly as well for various reasons, both fans and Rioters themselves have since considered Spirit Blossom the true benchmark on how to do an effective intra-gameplay/lore event.
    • With the in-game Ultimate skins, each one proves to be a bigger challenge to produce for than the last due to their need to ostensibly "top" the previous one. It seemingly reached its peak with Elementalist Lux (a skin with 10 alternate forms, each with their own voiceovers and particle effects), and neither Gun Goddess Miss Fortune (only having 4) or K/DA ALL OUT Seraphine (having 3 and an in-game sidequest system) have been received anywhere near as warmly as a result.
    • K/DA was a smash success for Riot, gaining major mainstream attention with "POP/STARS" as a genuine phenomenon beyond the confines of League of Legends as a game. True Damage succeeded them the following year, and while they and their song "GIANTS" were also positively received and successful in their own right, it's generally agreed they simply couldn't reach the same lightning-in-a-bottle monolith status previously achieved by K/DA.
    • K/DA itself saw some of this in 2020 with ALL OUT, whose response wasn't as universally captivated as their 2018 phase. While still largely well-received, the general opinion is that singles like "The Baddest" and "MORE" didn't quite reach the bar set by "POP/STARS", and other content like their new designs and the inclusion of Seraphine were met with much controversy.
  • Trans Audience Interpretation: One oft-discussed aspect of Taliyah during her development is that her lead writer and creative team originally drafted her as being a transgender woman, and while this was left out of the final product, they and many of her fans still hold onto this as a personal headcanon. The fact that much of the core of her story — a young girl who wants to accept herself and her powers, as well as be accepted by a loving tribe — is still intact makes it fairly easy for audiences to interpret as a transgender parallel. Riot is also not above nods to this aspect of her creation. The shapeshifter Neeko was released with a voiceline towards Taliyah saying "Neeko not the only one who changes." Hints are also found elsewhere, such as the Riot Games Music twitter account posting art of a series of doodles by Taliyah, including triangle shapes colored in pink, blue, and white, the colors of the transgender pride flag.

    U-W 
  • The Un Twist: When the Katarina comic first launched, many fans were of the belief that everything was going to be revealed as being orchestrated by LeBlanc, primarily with the idea that Marcus Du Couteau — having suddenly revealed himself to be alive out of nowhere to assign her a mission — was LeBlanc in disguise, compounded by his insistence that Swain was a traitor to Noxus and needed to be seen as an enemy, which would fit in her MO. Garen: First Shield also previously implied her presence in Demacia, greatly suggested to have killed and impersonated Garen's great uncle, leading to further belief that the suicide mission to assassinate Jarvan III was part of another long-con Xanatos Gambit to destabilize the kingdom or House Du Couteau. Fans ended up surprised by the final issue, where LeBlanc was merely the Woman Behind the Man for the real Marcus, with his validity confirmed by Talon, who helped fake Marcus' death. Furthermore, both Talon and Marcus were willingly going along with the anti-Swain plot of their own accord.
  • Underused Game Mechanic:
    • While most of the event-based game modes have been well-received, a common criticism by fans is their ridiculous exclusivity. A few popular theme-based events, including PROJECT: OVERCHARGE, Black Market Brawlers, and Star Guardian Invasion events have only been available for a few short weeks and have never returned to the Rotating Game Queue, meaning if you weren't there, you will likely never experience them for yourselves.
    • Alternate "permanent" game modes besides Summoner's Rift and ARAM have also received discussion with this reputation, namely Dominion and the Twisted Treeline. While both were designed to be lighter, more casual and condensed experiences to relieve the traditionally "full" Summoner's Rift experience, neither of them were very popular while active and had reputations of being significantly less well-designed and balanced than Summoner's Rift. Once they were both discontinued, a lot of blame was shifted back and forth on whether their failures were because players legitimately weren't interested (and the backlash was exaggerated by non-fans who were more angry that they didn't have an option to play them anymore), or if it was because Riot didn't dedicate any time to make them more appealing in favor of focusing on Summoner's Rift, but generally speaking, a lot of this is shared in frustration that there are not many casual alternative means of playing League.
    • Similarly tied to above events, several modes have had alternate Announcer Chatter, including Thresh during Dark Star: Singularity, Gangplank during the Bilgewater event, and Star Guardian Ahri during the Invasion event (the latter two even announcing regular Summoner's Rift games). Again, these assets were removed after only a few weeks, and a significant demand has increased for announcer voice packs à la Dota 2. Rioters had briefly teased announcer packs circa 2019, but development appears to have been halted due to to the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Ugly Cute:
    • Kog'Maw. It helps that he chases his tail as one of his idles, hums a cavalry charge as his joke, and does this as his dance. His skins are also pretty adorable, turning him into a butterfly and a reindeer. Then it was taken up to eleven by Pug'Maw!
    • Maokai's saplings have glowing green eyes and a large mouth made of grooves in them. They also have amusingly short limbs that mesh also amusingly by their moving animation resembling a sprint from a normal human being that is highlighted by the glowing leaves attached to their head, and make a sort of "Whhhhheeeeeeeeeeee" sound while being thrown through the air.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic:
    • We're clearly supposed to see Annie's step-mom as a typical Wicked Stepmother. But when looking at it from her point of view, this child your new husband has already killed one parent, clearly can't control her magic, and is responsible for her biological daughter dying.
    • Viego in the Sentinels of Light event was meant to be seen as a Royal Brat deserving of comeuppance after causing the Ruination of the world. However, the botched writing of the event meant that many people saw Viego as a distressed man under a curse still trying to save his lost love rather than a monstrous character. Some even called Viego the best part of the event or a character with greatly wasted potential being manipulated by far worse villains such as Thresh and Vex, who want to cause wanton misery and the end of the world respectively. In comparison, Viego simply wanted to restore Isolde's soul and return to Camavor to be with her again, and many found Isolde's rejection of him ultimately to be cruel and undeserved. Some people even expressed a desire for him to win over the Sentinels, whose writing was considered extremely poor over the course of the event and who generally came off as Unintentionally Unsympathetic.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The developers have stated that all of the factions are mostly neutral, including Demacia and Noxus (though Noxus is much more often portrayed as the more "evil" of the two). However, as the lore developed both Demacia and Noxus come off as quite despicable, making fans feel like it's more of a case of Evil Versus Evil than Grey-and-Gray Morality.
    • How Noxus is portrayed as being filled with various Social Darwinists and sadists who are very brutal and sinister in doing their jobs, not to mention often taking the 'bad guy' role during cinematics... Well, we have a reason Noxus is often considered the Always Chaotic Evil faction.
    • The entire Demacian faction. Initially and after the lore reboot, they were set to be The Good Kingdom. Built on the principles of chivalry, duty, honor, justice, community, and helping others in need. It was added that they also were founded as a refuge against the dangers of magic, following the devastation of the Rune Wars, to provide a home to all those escaping from the lethal and uncontrollable sorcery unleashed. The problem is that they keep doing this by persecuting their own mages by imprisoning them in the name of "treating their illness", or simply exiling them, to the extent that this has sparked a magical revolution inside their frontiers. Which would make for a fine shade of gray... if it wasn't for the fact that said persecution is ALL we are shown in Demacia stories. We are being constantly TOLD that Demacia has a strong sense of community, where everyone helps each other, and admires the heroes and defenders of the capital, who protect the less fortunate. But we are only SHOWN constantly how angry mobs in the villages attack mage hunters that come from the capital, looking for mages of poor families who they incarcerate and "treat" with painful magic suppressing medicines. And how those same distrustful mobs set fire to houses of neighbours they suspect of being mages, all the while the heroes of Demacia think about how "this isn't their Demacia", and "the people of Demacia are normally good and helpful of each other". Meanwhile, the number of stories showing the supposed good qualities of Demacian acceptance and generosity can be counted on one hand.
    • Lucian in the Rise of the Sentinels event came off as a major Jerkass. He constantly berates, yells at, and insults the rest of the cast, including the Rookienote  and Senna, the love of his life, in a way that some believed to be approaching Fetishized Abuser territory. Lucian attempts to deny Senna's agency several times throughout the story despite her being a more powerful Sentinel than he is. Then, making things worse, Lucian also conspires with Thresh, his mortal enemy, in a particularly stupid way that leads to Thresh escaping the Shadow Isles, free to torture and abuse others in the same way that Lucian had fought so hard to free Senna from in the first place. Fans quickly called foul on this, calling it an Idiot Ball at best and Out of Character at worst given how adamant Lucian was to destroy Thresh before this. The writers stated that Lucian was meant to be bad-tempered due to the stress he was under, but acknowledged he was not given enough kind moments to not come across as an asshole 24/7.
  • Unfortunate Character Design:
    • The chest hair in Gangplank's old portrait really looks like it could be sprouting from... somewhere else.
    • Lord Mordekaiser's pre-VGU splash art had a large, conspicuous black hole/gemstone set into his belt. Why? Well, his original design had a metallic spike there, with a very... ill-conceived shape. It was caught and changed before the skin was sold, but it gave lots of commentators a good laugh in the meanwhile.
    • Arcanist Zoe wears a long, floppy cap in place of her long hair, which looks perfectly fine in its normal version. With its Prestige version, however, while making it more gold and bright, the designers initially made the tip of her cap a little more translucent, which was quickly rectified while in PBE after many pointed out that it looked like she was wearing a giant condom.
  • Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
    • During the summer of 2015 and the second wave of Pool Party skins, the official Team Up page used the Pool Party splash art used for the champions, which is perfectly normal, but before it was updated, the Garena website gave us this version that makes Lulu look utterly horrifying.
    • Kog'Maw's "Pug'Maw" skin treads this line — while many are for the idea of making Kog'Maw resemble an actual dog, just as many players and even developers found that applying a pug-like face onto Kog'Maw's bizarre, alien silhouette was unnerving, and the textures had to be significantly altered on the PBE a few times for being both aesthetically out-of-place and just feeling too realistic and creepy, even by Kog'Maw's Ugly Cute-standards.
    • The animated splash art for Seraphine's K/DA ALL OUT Ultimate skin Indie form moves disturbingly, swaying in a way that just looks wrong. Her delayed and unnatural blinking and barely moving mouth do not help matters.
    • Many of Seraphine's "seradotwav" pictures — which put an intentionally artificial CG character in real backgrounds — run the gamut from "mostly innocuous" to "very unintentionally creepy" due to looking so unnaturally smooth and doll-like.
    • Battle Academia Wukong got complaints surrounding this not from his splash art, but from his actual in-game model. While the artwork opted to scale him down from an anthropomorphic monkey man to a normal human with only a few monkey-like features, the model (especially his head and face) doesn't quite go all the way with either interpretation, simply looking weird. When combined with Wukong's distinctly outdated base rigging and low-fidelity animations, he ends up looking pretty freakish in movement too.
    • Smolder made a very contentious first impression because of his face (both for his in-game model and supplementary arts), which was criticized for looking too human-like for what was supposed to be a cute dragon, an effect compared to that of Sonic the Hedgehog's first live-action design. Fortunately, Riot responded almost immediately to the backlash and adjusted his face to look less unnaturally smooth and baby-like while emphasizing his draconic features, nudging him out of the valley.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: Amumu thinks of himself as The Unfavorite to the point where his selection quote is "I thought you'd never pick me...". In the season 2 meta-game he was on the permanently-banned list for his game-changing initiation and people scrambled to pick him whenever he wasn't banned. Even seasons later he's considered a solid pick and gets summoned in a decent percentage of matches.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • After the game's splash arts were unified across all regions in 2016note , some referencing smoking and alcohol were subject to changes, most infamously the removal of Graves' cigar, but also others like the removal of wine from Gentleman Cho'Gath's glass. After many complaints from western fans, a middle-ground was reached in having regional edits, only censoring the images in the regions of concern.
    • All the "Mafia" skins were renamed to "Crime City" (a previously-used brand title encompassing several criminal-themed skins, explaining why "Gangster Twitch" was also renamed) due to cultural sensitivity outcries from Italian players, as the synonymous association between the term "mafia" and crime syndicates in general has been met with increased pushback over the years.
  • Woolseyism: Many non-English versions of the game contain some references unique to that certain language by mentioning translations of video games, movies, TV series, songs, shows or other media in the characters' taunts, jokes or even lores.
    • LAN woolseyisms:
      • Prom Queen Annie and Almost Prom King Amumu — High school prom in Mexico is nowhere nearly as much of a big deal as it is in the USA. However, there is a different dancing gala attended by teenagers which is a huge deal: 15 Years parties. As a result, their LAN names are "Annie Quinceañera" and "Amumu Casi Chambelán".
      • All Star Akali became "Akali Supercampeona" in reference to Captain Tsubasa, known in Mexico as Supercampeones.
      • Hot Rod Corki became "Enchúlame la Corkinave" in reference to Pimp My Ride, known there as Enchúlame la Máquina.
      • Bandito Fiddlesticks became "Fidel el Pistolero" due to this being a Mexican Wild West skin, and "Fidel" being an actual Hispanic name.
      • Ghost Bride Morgana, whose launch coincided with the opening of the LAN server, became "Morgana la Llorona" in reference to the eponymous Mexican myth.
      • French Maid Nidalee became "Nidalee Mon Amour".note 
      • Due to a lack of unified rural stereotypes across Latin America, Hillbilly Gragas became simply "Gragas Rural".
      • Jinx's "Super Mega Death Rocket!" became "¡Supermegacohete Requetemortal!", which sounds much more hyperactive and spirited than the literal translation.
      • LAN Ahri sounds even sexier than NA Ahri, down to her champion pick line which was changed:
    NA Ahri: Don't you trust me?
    LAN Ahri: We're feeling playful today, eh? (Hoy nos sentimos traviesos, ¿eh?)
    • The Chinese servers:
      • Wukong's ultimate is named after the very prequel tale of the original Sun Wukong himself, "Dànào Tiāngōng" (大鬧天宮, lit. "Havoc in Heaven"). The servers also deem Wukong an incarnation of the the actual Handsome Monkey King himself in the flesh, as opposed to him actually being based off of him.
      • Xin Zhao's name is flipped around into the more traditional Eastern naming order, which is "Zhao Xin".
      • The names of all of Graves' abilities are not only Chinese idioms regarding criminal activity, they all double as Shout Outs to titles of the Young and Dangerous series. For example, End of the Line translates to "人在江湖", literally meaning "a person in river and lake" (a euphemism for a dead person), and is based on the title of the first Young and Dangerous.
    • JP made Jinx yell "Sukireta!" when she uses Zap!
  • Writer-Induced Fanon: Seraphine being LGBT, or more specifically a lesbian, is widely accepted by the LGBT portion of the fanbase that likes her, despite it only being hinted at in her character blog with the release of the characters cover of T.A.T.U's "All The Things She Said", a single tweet that implies that she was coming to terms with her sexuality and the subtle Ship Tease between her and Akali. This notion doesn't carry over to her in-game form and neither Riot nor the writers for her character blog have confirmed her sexuality either way.
  • WTH, Costuming Department?:
    • Seraphine's default outfit caught a lot of controversy upon reveal, with the biggest criticism being that her bright, Idol Singer-influenced design didn't fit the style of League and is more like a Star Guardian outfit than something that would fit in base Runeterra. While modern-skewing aesthetics have previously found their way into the game's canon, especially in Piltover and Zaun (Legends of Runeterra has the Chempunk Shredder, a full-blown rockstar), Seraphine's kawaiiko-inspired aesthetic combined with her bright pink colored hair doesn't quite gel with the Art Deco and Steampunk stylings Piltover is known for, making her stick out like a sore thumb, perhaps not even in a verisimilitudinous way (where even if she's supposed to be flashy in-universe, it still looks implausible within the aesthetics of Piltover and Zaun). Many fans refer to her earlier concept art depicting her with more steampunk elements incorporated into her idol-esque design as a way to do the concept better justice — when Legends of Runeterra leaned into this and subtly redesigned her costumes towards this direction, she was conversely met with significant praise, with many hoping they find their way back into League proper.
    • Prestige edition skins in general have gotten a mixed reaction from fans due to the heavy (to the point of being excessive in some cases) usages of yellow/gold to give the skins a lavish appearance. Ahri's K/DA prestige skin was initially received negatively due to her tails looking like "bananas" or "crystalized piss", according to detractors before Riot made changes.
    • In 2022 Riot decided to change their approach to Prestige skins, taking a fashion approach to new Prestige skins rather than making them predominantly gold and white, as Senna, Qiyana, and Yasuo's fashion-themed Prestige skins were more positively received by the community. However, this has just led to feedback that new Prestige skins have little to nothing to do with the skinlines they come from anymore (with skins such as Lunar Eclipse Senna being particularly poorly received for looking like a Battle Queen skin and not an Eclipse skin), which has irritated many mains of the skins in question.
    • Similarly to Ahri's example, Zoe's prestige hat initially looked like an inflated condom. The ensuing backlash was very quick to have Riot change its coloring and shape.
    • Star Guardian Neeko Prestige also suffered some backlash for different reasons, as fans claimed that there was way too much going on with her design compared to the base form, which made it look worse, not better and not worthy of being called a "Prestige skin" according to some.
    • Unbound Thresh is — to put it very lightly — a very controversial redesign for Thresh for a multitude of reasons. Initial reactions were already very negatively slanted as thematically and aesthetically, it's almost exactly like Thresh's default appearance except he's given a human face, earning the derisive nickname of "Thresh Thresh". While concerns were mildly quelled given the skin's status as a non-purchasable event-based reward before being relegated to a modest 750 RP price (meaning Riot wasn't expecting/demanding players to spend money that much on it compared to other Ruination skins), backlash resurfaced once it was announced that it would be his default appearance for Wild Rift, with Riot admitting the change was done to justify adding him at all due to age-appropriate content/regional censorship concerns. Ignoring the controversial discussions surrounding that reasoning, fans felt the design strayed too far away from his identity as a fearsome undead spectre, looking too clean and normal to be threateningnote . Making it odder is that Legends of Runeterra already had a regional variant of his design that shifted his undead traits with spooky metal masks, which were met with relatively less controversy, with many questioning if making him more human-looking was worth the trouble. The design's reputation was salvaged to an extent following the "Thresh Unbound: A Night At The Inn" short that instead depicted him more as a visibly-aged 50-something Man of Wealth and Taste, which was so well-received that other in-game assets were tweaked to reflect it, but whether that adequately solves any issues had with a fundamentally less-monstrous Thresh is still up for debate.

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