YMMV / LEGO Marvel Super Heroes

• Adaptation Displacement: The characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe are based off of those designs while the X-Men seem to be based on the '90s cartoon show, and thus the Jim Lee designs. (Except Wolverine and Storm, who have their Astonishing looks). Beyond that, the game takes a Pragmatic Adaptation approach, mixing and matching various portrayals into a new whole—including one level featuring the both the comic and movie versions of the Mandarin (the Asian one and Aldrich Killian).
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: If your primary exposure to the Marvel universe comes from the movies, it seems quite strange to see Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the X-Men all in the same game. (The game even lampshades this, giving you an achievement if you pair Captain America and the Human Torch on a team with both controllers active.)
• Awesome Music:
  • The music for jumping off the Helicarrier, and just about any of the boss fights.
  • The end credits use the theme of the Merry Marvel Marching Society (Marvel's old fan club, running from 1969 to 1971. Also used as the credits song for the very old Marvel animated shorts).
• Base-Breaking Character: Captain America and Spider-Man are considered awesome to play as or a Spotlight-Stealing Squad who take up too much attention from the other characters in the story. Them being playable for 3 levels in a row doesn't help matters.
• Best Boss Ever: The final battle against Galactus quite possibly dwarfs them all (no pun intended), which is especially notable since this game has many other boss fights that could be included here.
• Cargo Ship: Iron Man and the Tesseract.
  "You are a naughty, naughty spacebending cube. But I bet we could have some fun."
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Magneto is really popular with the fans. He's a Magnificent Bastard who plays his part in the story well and is shown to have standards by agreeing to help stop Galactus and Loki from destroying the world. His magnetic powers also makes him unique from the playable characters who are copy pasted (with the exception of Polaris, who is the only other character with magnetism powers). He's one of the most requested to be in a new Lego Marvel game since he wasn't in Avengers and Super Heroes 2.
• Event-Obscuring Camera: Your co-op partner can inadvertently cause camera issues by going too far or in the wrong direction, thus causing the split-screen to split in such a way that you are interacting with objects that aren't actually visible to you. Worse yet, you can be put in a position where you can't even see the object you need to interact with to complete the level (by your partner, as opposed to the example above, which is the game's doing).
• Game-Breaker: A lot of the jumping puzzles can be circumvented by switching to a flying character with no penalty for completing them non-conventionally. Iron Man is especially useful since he's often your hub character even while the main story is still going on, and appears in numerous story mode levels where this can be exploited. Super-Skull is the one that really breaks gameplay, though, as he's an invisibility-capable flyer with a heap of other very useful abilities, so once you can find and buy his token, it will massively trivialize both combat and the majority of puzzles, especially stealth platforming.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During Stan Lee's first cameo in The Simpsons, there was his comedic line: "He can't be the Hulk! I'M the Hulk!" and then failing to transform into the green giant. Fast-forward to 2013, and Stan Lee in Lego Marvel can transform into the (Stan) Hulk.
  • A side mission involves Howard the Duck holding up the Marvel staff because they won't make a new film with him. He would later go on to cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).
    • Additionally, The Vulture also assisted him for the exact same reason. He would later be the Big Bad of another movie.
  • The ending artwork side mission "House Party Protocol" shows Hulk dancing with Black Widow. Two years later, the pair are an official couple in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
  • Magneto manipulated the Statue of Liberty into a Humongous Mecha. Lego would later on acquire the licence to Doctor Who, where the Statue of Liberty could already move around by itself...
  • The climax features the heroes teaming up with the villains to defeat the new threat. A few years later, The LEGO Batman Movie would do the same thing. The heroes even give the villains a head start after the day is saved.
  • Mr. Fantastic performs a reference to The Incredibles. Cue that movie getting its own LEGO video game.
  • Spider-Man and Iron Man are treated as Bash Brothers in their interactions together throughout the game, a few years before the MCU would introduce Peter and have Tony portrayed as his mentor figure.
  • Late in the game, after Iron Man quips that he'll have to remove the Submarine Toss from his Stark Land Theme Park (because they were in a submarine that had been thrown by a Magneto controlled Statue of Liberty), Spider-Man replies that, despite that, he was keeping the Iron Man musical. 8 years later, the Avengers (but mostly Captain America) would indeed get a musical in Hawkeye (2021).
  • Captain America complementing his butt becomes even funnier in Avengers: Endgame where Steve Rogers comments on "America's Ass" after beating his variant up.
• Ho Yay: Iron Man referring to his mission with Thor as a "date".
• Magnificent Bastard: Magneto is an extremely powerful mutant with mastery over magnetism, and the longtime archenemy of the X-Men. Leading a cabal of supervillains seeking to take over the world by weaponizing Cosmic Bricks alongside Doctor Doom and Loki, Magneto proves instrumental to the group's plans thanks to the manpower provided by his Brotherhood of Mutants as well as his obscene strength and guile. Whether it's leading successful attacks on the Raft and the X-Mansion, using the Statue of Liberty as a weapon and transportation device to great effect, or employing Mystique's convincing shapeshifting skills to distract the heroes while he lifts the cabal's base into space, Magneto constantly beguiles the heroes and snatches victory after victory from them, all the while oozing with charisma and charm. He's also the only villain suspicious of Loki, and when Loki confirms his suspicions by betraying the group, he's quick to check his pride at the door and mobilize the villains to help the heroes save the planet from a Loki-controlled Galactus.
• Moral Event Horizon: Loki crosses it in the penultimate mission by revealing that he plans to mind-control Galactus into eating both the Earth and Asgard. This disgusts the other villains (on grounds of pragmatism to a degree, admittedly) into joining the heroes to help fight against him.
• Narm: The final battle with Galactus on the Helicarrier is epic, but slightly ruined since Galactus never shuts up and repeats the same 4 or so lines on a loop. Hearing "Foolish creatures, to come between Galactus and his meal!" every ten seconds sort of lessens the effect.
• Narm Charm: "You can't escape the long reach of justice, Ock!" Sounds incredibly cheesy on paper, but Dee Bradley Baker's delivery somehow makes it work.
• Nausea Fuel: The symbiotes, given how they infect others and react to loud noises by tearing themselves off the skin of their host.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • There was a fan campaign to have Venom be a Big Fig or be able to turn into one (to more accurately represent the fact Venom is huge). They actually succeeded and Venom can turn into a Big Fig.
  • Gambit was one of the characters put in because fans really wanted him in the game.
• Polished Port: The Switch version runs very well in both docked and handheld mode and loading times are decreased. It also adds all the dlc, which was completely unavailable for Nintendo fans on the Wii U version. It's essentialy XBOX 360/PS 3 port but being able to play on handheld.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Lego Marvel Superheroes is one to Lego Batman 2: DC Superheroes in terms of open world super heroing with improved flight mechanics, a more interesting overworld with different sidequests and remembering there was more than 3 superheroes to play as.
• That One Sidequest: Racing missions can be a real pain, especially if you're flying or racing another character. Special mention goes to the RC rooftop race. It's very difficult to make the jumps without the car going out of control, and you've got a tight time limit.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A self-contained example, several fans were let down after finding out that Green Goblin could not transform into Ultimate Green Goblin, despite early demo videos showing that he could.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Jeffrey Combs is brought into the game to reprise his role as The Leader... And he only shows up in one mission, as a throwaway mini boss.
  • Black Panther has a red, white, and blue cat named Mr. Tiddles. While it is a silly name, they missed out on naming him Captain Americat!
  • Many players were dissapointed with the outcome of Galactus being playable only in his minifigure form and just having a standard laser beam as a special power.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A mission involves following Magneto to an mysterious new island that doesn't show up on any of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s charts. Was anyone else expecting it to be Krakoa the living island?
• Unexpected Character: The character roster in includes characters like H.E.R.B.I.E., Howard the Duck, and Aunt May! Even Howard's introductory caption seems confused to see him there.

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