YMMV / Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2

• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Shepard DIED and yet seemingly takes it all in stride over the course of Mass Effect 2, casually joking that he/she “got better” to virtually anyone who brings this up. It's possible Shepard believed that he/she thought he/she was only severely wounded and that the line “only mostly dead” was the truth.
  • After Jacob Taylor's loyalty mission where Shepard and company find out that Ronald Taylor has forced his crew to eat toxic food, driven off or murdered the males, and kept the women as sex slaves, he merely shrugs it off (and becomes offended if Shepard insists that he should express anything otherwise). This becomes Fridge Brilliance when Shepard gains access to the Shadow Broker's dossiers and finds Jacob was placed on the team because he's a "stabilising element." He's supposed to be this way, and with good reason, considering how screwed up the rest of Shepard's squaddies are.

• Anti-Climax Boss
  • The Final Boss, The Human Reaper Larva is fairly easy though it's somewhat of a relief considering all the crap you went through to get to it.
  • At the end of Grunt's loyalty mission, killing Uvenk and his minions is quite easy compared to killing or surviving against a Thresher Maw.
• Ass Pull: While the Reaper IFF uploads on the Normandy, Shepard and his team leave the ship to go..........somewhere? This moment happens to exist just to set up the rest of the Normandy crew getting kidnapped by the Collectors.
• Best Level Ever: The famous and much-touted "Suicide Mission" of Mass Effect 2. Considering it is essentially what the entire game is building up to, it better be worth it, and by god is it intense. From the initial run through the Omega-4 Relay to the furious assault upon the Collector Base itself, with all the firefights and interesting gimmicks being thrown at you, having you on the edge of your seat the entire time because you are on pins and needles about whether all your decisions throughout the game were enough to have your team make it through — and make no mistake, if you didn't do enough, they will die. And then the final boss comes. It's a monstrous (thankfully not even close to being finished) construct that turns out to be a human Reaper, built out of, and feeding off of, all the human colonies that were abducted. Shepard then proceeds to Punch Out Cthulhu for the second time in their career. And even after all of that, if you didn't do things right, Shepard themself will die! It's rare for a game to spend its entirety building up to one intense mission, but it all paid off in the end. Unless, you know, you lost your favorite party members.
  • Also, throw in some of the best music in the game/franchise. Let's just say that Jack Wall earned his paycheck on the tracks in this mission alone.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Ask about Mordin's singing career. Although it is completely in character for Mordin, it happens pretty randomly.
  • During the trip through the deactivated Collector Ship, just after learning that the Collectors are genetically modified Protheans, the player is randomly given the choice between gaining another weapon, or for Soldiers, an upgraded and powerful weapon. Nothing about this is setup either; as soon as the previous scene ends, Shepard randomly is looking over a collection of guns, the player picks, and then nothing is said or referenced either.
• Broken Base: The Lazarus Project has been a hotly debated topic since the release and continues to be controversial up until today. While one half thinks of it as a great start for the game, properly introducing Cerberus, its vast resources and the lengths they are willing to go to succeed, the other half of the fandom thinks of it as stretching the Willing Suspension of Disbelief too much, especially considering that Shepard didn't just die, but was spaced, suffocated and then their body re-entered the atmosphere of a planet.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Archangel, scourge of Omega's underworld, turns out to be Garrus. Nobody who'd previously played the first game didn't see this coming.
  • The being called 'Harbinger' who regularly possesses Collectors to fight Shephard turns out to be a Reaper, which is...entirely obvious from the moment you first encounter it, from the voice, the Boss Banter it has, and the fact that you already know the Collectors work for the Reapers.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • The Reave power is considered by many to be the best bonus talent in the second game, period. There is thereby no point in using any of the others.
  • The DLC weapons outclass all of the ingame weapons or are on par with the Infinity +1 Sword weapon of choice found halfway in the game. There is no reason to even pick up any of the other weapons like the Tempest and Vindicator when you already have the Locust and Mattock for example.
• Complete Monster: Ronald Taylor is Jacob Taylor's father and cares only about himself. Serving as Acting Captain when his ship crashed on a remote planet, Ronald discovered the food on the planet caused neural decay in whoever ate it. Restricting the ship's rations to him and his officers before killing them, Ronald exiled all the men so that he could keep all the women as his own personal harem for years. Ronald eventually activated the distress beacon only to save himself after the men became dangerous, and when confronted on what he's done, Ronald only comes up with excuses on why he wasn't to blame.
• Contested Sequel: There has been something of an anti-Mass Effect 2 sentiment resurging with the Legendary Edition's release as many fans of the first game still resent or downright hate Mass Effect 2 for removing planetary exploration, RPG mechanics and control over Shepard's morality plus the game darker and sexier direction it went which they feel aged the game badly. You only need to look for comments sections on videos discussing the franchise to see people that enjoy and resent the game fighting each other over the game's quality, mechanics and writing.
• Crack Pairing:
  • Jack x Miranda presumably interprets their dislike of each other (and possible Love Triangle with male Shepard) as Belligerent Sexual Tension.
    • Lampshaded in the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3, where Shepard can propose that they hook up. Both immediately ask for another drink.
  • Admiral Xen and Legion get shipped a lot, likely because of Xen calling Legion a "marvelous machine".
• Crosses the Line Twice: Some of the Renegade interrupts are hilarious in their sheer audacity.
  Random Mercenary: (After Shepard has been interrogating him) I've got nothing more to say to you. If you-
  (Shepard shoves him out of the window behind him)
  Shepard: How about "goodbye"?
  Jack: Damn, I should be taking lessons from you.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Rocket troopers. Their attacks will frequently stun you and knock you out of cover, allowing other enemies to fill you with lead. Worse, their rockets can curve around or even ignore cover in some circumstances.
  • Scions. Their shockwave attack can instantly deplete your shields and prolong your regeneration, it can hit you even if you are behind cover, and it has very long range. On top of all that, Scions can take a lot of damage before going down. Scions are the reason that the Reaper IFF mission has become That One Level for many players.
  • The various Pyros also qualify, as the flamethrower mechanics and the game's lack of Mercy Invincibility means that if they get close to Shepard and score a hit, Shepard will likely end up trapped in the hit animation as the Pyro roasts them to death. Not that it takes them long to do that in any event, as their flamethrowers can cause a lot of damage. The only saving grace is that Pyros only have a basic health bar (except, of course, on Insanity), although even then they can take more punishment than most mooks. Thankfully, a skilled Soldier or Infiltrator can snipe the gas tanks on their backs to make them explode.
  • The Engineers that Eclipse, the Shadow Broker and The Project deploy. They are shielded, spam combat drones to flush you out of cover, then nail you with incinerate attacks. And like good Engineers, they prefer to stick to cover.
  • On Insanity, by far the most dangerous enemies are the basic mooks with assault rifles. The Elite Mooks tend to use shotguns and burst-fire rifles while their lower-ranked minions fire on fully automatic; normally this is balanced out by the elites having better accuracy and higher damage per shot, but when every enemy can hit 100% of the time anyway, the grunts' DPS really begins to tell. This is quite noticeable on Korlus and Tuchanka; sections full of nothing but krogan berserkers are a cakewalk because their low ROF means they can't insta-kill you or suppress you. The minute a single vorcha walks on to the scene, on the other hand? Your shield is stripped in about a second and you're forced to hug the nearest thick stone wall. Simply shooting you with an assault rifle is so disproportionately effective on Insanity that enemies who stop to do practically anything else (like an engineer who throws an easily-dodgeable fireball) are less of a pain.
  • Harbinger, appropriately creates this through Demonic Possession. While he can only possess a single mook at a time, killing one will merely cause Harbinger to possess another on the field.
• Difficulty Spike: Any level involving the Collectors. The geth as well, but to a lesser extent. Their rifles will strip your shields just as fast as the Collectors', but do less damage against health and the geth themselves are weaker. It probably helps to know which squadmates to bring along when you can anticipate what you're about to face; for example, the Collectors' defenses are usually armors or barriers (both, in the case of Harbinger and the Praetorian), so biotics would be very useful against them. The Collectors also usually bring with them the nuisance that is Harbinger.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Aria T'Loak. Memetic Precision F-Strike. Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Worthy Opponent to one of the most popular characters in the fandom (probably). Her popularity far overshadows her screen time.
  • Matriarch Aethyta is at least as popular as some of Shepard's squad thanks to her combination of being a Cool Old Lady and Deadpan Snarker.
  • Quite a few players have expressed the desire to take Urz back to the Normandy with them after watching him follow Shepard adoringly around Tuchanka.
  • Kal'Reegar. To the degree that some fans wanted him back in ME3 as a squadmate. Most people wanted him as a squadmate as early as in ME2 after seeing him for the first time in one of the pre-release trailers. Of course, being voiced by Adam Baldwin doesn't hurt.
  • Tela Vasir. For such a short amount of screen-time, she's quite a popular character. Possibly due to an awesome boss fight, her being a total badass, and a remarkable Shut Up, Kirk! speech.
• Even Better Sequel: This is considered amongst the fandom to be The Empire Strikes Back of the Mass Effect trilogy. It even ends the same way, with Shepard looking out at the galaxy and the cliffhanger that the Reapers are now very close. The pack Lair of the Shadow Broker can be seen as this for the previous DLC packs, which makes it an Even Better Expansion to an Even Better Sequel.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Space Hamster has been dubbed "Boo" by the fanbase, since it was obviously included as a Shout-Out.
  • The game that gave birth to Garrus being called Space Batman.
  • SuZe was Jack's nickname before people knew it was "Jack". Short for "Subject Zero". It's fallen out of use now, probably because hardly anyone in the game calls her "Subject Zero." For good reason.
  • There are some who call The Illusive Man... TIM.
  • The Virmire Survivor for Kaidan/Ashley, which is typically used by fans to refer to the role the surviving one of the two plays in 2 or 3, unless talking about a specific one.
• Faux Symbolism:
  • A Shepard dies and is resurrected by the Lazarus Project. Shepard must go to Omega and then a bar called Afterlife to recruit an Archangel. Later, Shepard must go to another bar named Eternity and a prison named Purgatory. With all the downloadable content, Shepard will have twelve followers they receive help from in order to save humanity.
  • There's also a gun called the Revenant.
  • Go ahead and pick the Renegade ending in the Overlord DLC. Does that final image look familiar at all?
• Game-Breaker: See here.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The ship that Morinth left Illium on is the Demeter. In Greek mythology, Demeter was an extremely powerful goddess who lost her daughter Persephone to the underworld and walked the earth endlessly searching for her. Sounds a bit like a certain justicar... which makes this a literal Mythology Gag. For bonus points, the Demeter was also the name of the ship the Count traveled on in Dracula.
  • Does the name of Jacob's father's ship (the Hugo Gernsbeck) sound familiar to you? If you're a sci-fi buff, it should. Hugo Gernsbeck is generally considered the father of modern science fiction and founder of the Amazing Stories magazine. It's who the Hugo Award is named after. Although considering that the ship named after him is populated in the game by a bunch of self-centered jackasses who routinely perform Mind Rape on their crew, it's not the best tribute they could have given the father of modern science fiction...
  • One of Legion's random comments when hacking geth rocket turrets during their loyalty mission is "Executing sudo command." "Sudo," short for "superuser do," is Linux syntax that allows an admin to give other users temporary admin privileges. "Geth do not use windows" indeed...
  • Another thing from the Legion loyalty mission, you are told that the Geth virus affects the AI decision making process by changing the result of one calculation to be out by a very small amount. In real artificial neural networks, each artificial neuron has an activation threshold. If all its inputs add up to be equal to or greater than the threshold, the artificial neuron will fire, otherwise it won't. A small error in the sum can influence whether a given neuron will fire or not when it normally should, and if it fires in error it will have a knock-on effect on all the downstream neurons. If geth use artificial neural networks of the sort understood by current computer science then a small maths error is a plausible way of getting a geth to reach a different conclusion than it normally would.
  • This remark from Shepard when commiserating with the tech store clerk on the Citadel for a discount:
    Shepard: "You wouldn't believe how often I hear 'Why is the ship turning around? We're only halfway there!'" ^note Because space has no friction, a ship that wants to brake needs to turn around and apply thrust in the opposite direction.
  • Jack's dossier in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC includes a poem she penned under the pseudonym Jacqueline Nought. One of the lines goes, "This is not a place of honor/No esteemed dead are buried here". This is a reference to a warning to be posted on top of a nuclear waste disposal facility to dissuade future societies from breaking the seal and exposing themselves to radiation.
  • The weapons you find on the Collector ship are a Krogan shotgun, a Geth sniper rifle and the Revenant machine gun. How did the Collectors get those items? Recall that Krogan and Geth formed the bulk of Sovereign's minions in the first game, so most likely they were the source of these weapons' blueprints. The Revenant's presence however acts as both a Continuity Nod and as a Foreshadowing. Who do you see using this weapon? Blue Suns and the Shadow Broker himself. The blue Suns were who Liara had to initially fight while getting Shepard's body in Redemption and Lair of the Shadow Broker ultimately reveals that the broker was also doing the bidding of the Collectors. So it is perfectly plausible that these guys passed on the Revenant's blueprint to the Collectors.
  • The process by which the Collectors process captured humans. The Collectors are an insectoid race and store their victims in pods that resemble conventional insect pupa. Why use these to liquify the captives? In real life, insects that have an intermediary pupation stage between the larval and adult (imago) state do not simply grow into their adult form like a vertebrate or amphibian would. Instead, most of the body is liquified, after which the blueprints within their genetic material re-arrange the cells in such a way that the adult body can then be grown. Opening an insect pupa mid-transformation will yield a liquified body. The Collectors simply apply the same process through their pupas, but abort the process halfway through with their captives.
• Goddamn Bats: Husks, on any difficulty. They don't use guns, they just run up to you and start whacking you. Mowing them down before they can get to you can be hard because they move ridiculously fast. They also tend to swarm you while you're focused on trying to shoot down something else. They have a few Weaksauce Weaknesses (biotics, being set on fire, being frozen^note They get taken down in two shots from the freezing heavy weapon even on Insanity, being shot in the legs), but these tend to not be particularly useful if you're facing ten at once. Excepting Soldiers with a Revenant machinegun and Adrenaline Rush.
  • Or a single Adept or Vanguard (or Jack, which is really the same thing) with a well-leveled Shockwave. At that point, the difficulty shifts from "shoot them before they rip you to shreds" to "get them to line up for maximum awesome points."
  • On Insanity, Harbinger is this. When you die incredibly quickly to generic mooks, Harbinger's pitiful damage, slow rate of fire, and knockback of his attacks are not remotely threatening in comparison to everything around him. The knockback leaving Shepard exposed to enemy fire is generally the worst he can do, meaning he's more a nuisance not worth chipping at until he's the only one left than a target to fight.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Hitting melee halfway between the Claymore's reload animation causes it to auto-complete, and you can fire instantly with it. The Claymore is the single-shot uber-tier shotgun, and this trick turns it into a semi-automatic.
    • This trick actually works on any non-heavy weapon in the game... even the Widow. The key is hitting the melee button once the ejected thermal clip is visible.
  • There was also a button trick that allowed a character as early as level 6 to max out every ability. This was removed by a patch on May 17, 2010.
  • The save file transfer doesn't properly import your handling of Conrad Verner. It defaults to the Renegade response, which has you "shoving a gun" in his face and inadvertently making him go "hardcore". There are hex fixes that allow one to see the ''ME1'' Paragon Flagged start.
  • If certain conditions are met while Charging as a Vanguard, Shepard's shield will shoot through the roof, going from between 150-325 to somewhere close to 4000. It only lasts for a single mission but you could essentially go through the rest of it meleeing things to death; and yes, charging would indeed refill it to max.
  • There's a sound glitch (triggered by certain biotic powers, like Pull) that can result in dead/incapacitated enemies screaming nonstop due to a looping voice file. This is particularly amusing/appropriate (and, apparently, easier to trigger) in Arrival, because of the indoctrinated troops you fight on the asteroid (quite fitting despite being unintentional).
  • Every weapon's firing rate slows down tremendously during Adrenaline Rush... except the DLC Mattock.
  • Could also be a little of Guide Dang It!. On Aria's side quest with the Eclipse cache, standing in just the right place and firing the ML-77 missile launcher allows you to complete the quest with no crates destroyed. The bug - the missile homes in on anything classified as hostile and when one of them hits the mech while fired just outside of the area that triggers the crate destruction, that mech will walk towards you without activating the other mechs. This allows you to essentially bait all the mechs into attacking you one by one, allowing you to ambush them. You can do this to only one mech at a time and must ensure that your squadmates don't blunder into the area that triggers crate destruction.
  • In the Legendary Edition the limit on credits that could be brought forward from the first game was accidentally removed, making it possible to buy all available the store upgrades right at the start of the game, and turning the early missions into a complete joke. This naturally got patched out pretty quickly.
• Growing the Beard: While Mass Effect was well-loved for its story and universe, 2 fully/further fleshed out the setting, races, and characters and developed the moral grayness/complexity, all of which solidified it's popularity with fans. Whereas the first games gameplay was seen as a slog and it's weakest aspect, 2 streamlined it into a fast-paced and engaging experience that, while some criticized as overly dumbing down the RPG aspect, set the foundation for Mass Effect 3 to improve upon and fix those flaws such its multiplayer mode, at first derided as a cash-in mechanic, became enjoyed unironically.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Shepard initially baulks at Tali wanting to suppress evidence of her father's experiments on live geth. Tali says that revealing it would mean that her father would be held up as an example of a monster as a cautionary tale. You find Tali's dad dead and may even comfort her over it. Then you get to Project Overlord and see an even worse experiment performed on live geth. Feel like suppressing that evidence now?
  • So you convinced that asari on Illium to get back together with her krogan boyfriend, hopefully to get married and have kids and live happily ever after, right? Well, at least until Mass Effect 3, where you find out Charr died on a mission and Ereba will now be left to raise their daughter alone. So much for Good Feels Good...
  • Shepard talking to Jacob may mention that he could always use "spare parts". In the Citadel DLC for 3, the clone who was made to supply "spare parts" for Shepard comes back to bite him in the ass.
  • At the end of Overlord, Gavin Archer tries to justify what he's done on the grounds it could "spare a million mothers mourning a million sons." Mass Effect: Andromeda has a character in a sidequest who was part of Overlord before she wisely managed to GTFO... because they tried to plug her son into the geth before David, and it's left her with a deep fear of AI of all kinds. Care to repeat that line, Dr. Archer?
  • The Horizon mission summary has Cerberus using front corporations to funnel aid and supplies to the colony. Come Mass Effect 3, Cerberus is behind Sanctuary, a refuge advertised as the only place safe from the Reapers, on Horizon. It is really a labratory studying huskification and indoctrination using the refugees as test subjects. Guess they were just setting up their atrocity factory under the guise of aid.
  • Omega is infected by an airborne plague, it has entire areas in lockdown, the plague spreads across species and seemingly resists attempts at containing it, with symptoms like respiratory damage that can easily be confused for something else until its too late. What few clinics are available are unable to help everyone. At the time of release, a dreadful prospect. At the time of the Updated Re-release... It hits very close to home no matter where you are from...
  • During his mini mission, Joker wonders if he's dooming the galaxy by hooking up EDI. At one point, he mutters, "...now I have to spend all day computing pi because Joker plugged in the Overlord." Then comes the Overlord DLC...
  • A YouTube user made a video that depicted the series ending like Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was meant to be a joke, but it turned out to be prophetic when the third installment came out and the fans' reaction towards the endings being similar to Evangelion's 16 years earlier.
  • One of Jack's lines is "If I die, I'm haunting you, Shepard," a typical Badass Boast that shows her Hidden Depths that she believes in that sort of thing. In Mass Effect 3, those who have died haunt Shepard.
    • This also potentially becomes horrifyingly accurate in Mass Effect 3. If you fail to complete Jack's mission in that game, she's captured by Cerberus, indoctrinated, and you'll later come across an enemy with her name. What's the specific enemy type that Jack becomes? A Phantom.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jack comes across like a sociopathic loner who can't connect with people and she can't fathom why Shepard (particularly the Paragon version) is the way he/she is. Courtenay Taylor would later voice the female vault dweller in Fallout 4, who is basically an everyman version of Shepard.
  • During Kasumi's loyalty mission, she mentions that part of the cover story she put together for Shepard was an article on them in Badass Weekly. This reference was part of the reason the author of Badass of the Week wrote an article for Shepard after completing the trilogy. In a way, Kasumi did get that article on Shepard written.
  Badass of the Week Writer: [about the video clip where Kasumi mentions the article] Scroll ahead to 0:20 to witness what is either a cruel coincidence or the single greatest moment of my writing career.
  • After his loyalty mission is done, Grunt expresses his desire to rip out Uvenk's spine as a trophy. Five years later, his voice actor would go on to play Sub-Zero, who is infamous for doing that very thing.
  • Jacob Taylor with his shirt off
  • This game features a Phantom Thief named Kasumi who's not available in the vanilla version of the game. For extra points, Legion shares a voice with the aforementioned game's Starter Villain.
  • The Lazarus Project required Cerberus to take the original Shepard, keep what worked, and then rebuild & fix what didn't work without straying too far from the original - a challenge Bioware would also face about a decade after this game's release with the remastering process of Mass Effect Legendary Edition. The developers themselves actually referenced the Lazarus Project on the blog post about the remaster's visual changes and additions.
  • If you romanced the Vermire Survivor in the first game, Joker asks how your brief reunion on Horizon went. If you respond "It went well", he'll breathe a sigh of relief over avoiding that awkward situation and mention that that's why he doesn't date crewmembers. Come the third game, he's not just dating a crewmember, but the ship itself!
• Low-Tier Letdown: The companions with the shotgun/pistol combination as a part of their loadout aren't as popular combat wise because, without the Geth Plasma Shotgun in the Firepower Pack, their damage output is simply pathetic compared to squadmates with assault rifles and sniper rifles (as part of all non-GPS shotguns in general being Scrappy Weapons). The GPS somewhat fixes this and makes them actually capable of doing more than picking off the occasional mook with their pistols, but even with this upgrade they still lag behind the AR users.
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Niftu Cal, the biotic god. Fear his great biotic wind!
    • Despite not actually appearing in the third game, Niftu Cal being in London and performing a single Volus smackdown of a Reaper has become a popular signature on the BioWare forums.
  • Blasto, the first hanar Spectre, with a girl in every port and a gun in every tentacle. He's one big Shout-Out to Dirty Harry. He was actually created as a memetic badass in the first place on the forums before even appearing.
  • Also, Sir Isaac Newton. THE DEADLIEST SON OF A BITCH IN SPACE!!!
• Memetic Bystander: The turian groundskeeper, the Alliance drill instructor who gives the Sir Isaac Newton speech, and the "techno turian" who is seen dancing in Thane's loyalty mission.
• Memetic Mutation: See here.
• Misaimed Fandom: This is the game that created a legion of Cerberus sympathizers (especially PS3 owners who couldn't see any of Cerberus' crimes and horrible experiments in the first Mass Effect), with defenders taking everything the Illusive Man says at face value. To say the least, there were people who wanted to protest the third game when it was revealed that Cerberus were antagonists once more.
• Narm:
  • The increasingly obvious pronoun dodging regarding Jack, which just makes it even more obvious that she's going to be a woman.
  • Everything about the original Normandy's destruction is pretty traumatic and desperate. Well, all except for Joker's downright bizarre tone of voice when announcing that "I CAN STILL SAVE HER!" From that same scene, the fact that Joker is sitting in the cockpit wearing a helmet and his usual service fatigues, despite the CIC being blown apart and exposed to hard vacuum. Yes, the cockpit itself is shielded, but how he managed to survive the walk from his station to an escape pod is never explained, and he looks comical.
  • The Illusive Man's sudden Milking the Giant Cow moment when he first suggests saving the Collector base instead of destroying it, which slightly undercuts the tension in what's meant to be the biggest moral decision in the game.
• Narm Charm: All of Harbinger's combat lines. They are all extremely over-the-top, cliché Evil Overlord gloating done in an Evil Sounds Deep Large Ham voice, but they do serve to keep the fights with Collectors entertaining.
• Never Live It Down: Councilor Sparatus becomes a crucial ally to Shepard and the Alliance early in 3, and winds up being the only councilor who doesn't make Shepard's job harder in a very substantiatal way. Doesn't change the fact that he'll never get away from the infamy of the "Ah yes, Reapers" clip.
• One-Scene Wonder: Several of the celebrity-voiced and/or returning characters.
  • Kal'Reegar, the RPG-wielding quarian near the end of Tali's recruitment mission, is voiced by Adam Baldwin. Unless you take the Paragon interrupt and keep him away from the succeeding fight, or kill the Geth Colossus fast enough with his assistance, he definitely fits this trope.
  • "The Council thought that Blasto, the first hanar Spectre, would play by the rules..." Luckily, you can hear this more than once if you wander around on Illium long enough.
  • Niftu Cal. "But then, I began to smell my greatness!"
  • The hapless merc standing near a window during Thane's recruitment mission. "I've got nothing more to say to you—"
  • The unnamed Krogan who approaches you on Illium has been dubbed "the most polite Krogan in the universe", for how unfailingly, well, polite he is. Which, if you know anything about how Krogan society operates, speaks volumes about how frighteningly badass this dude must be to be so calm.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • See those cameras in Overlord? They track you. Everywhere. (At least you can shoot them.)
  • The ads on the Citadel, which seem to know EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU, right down to who your Love Interest is.
  • "Nine out of ten Tupari drinkers recommend Tupari to their friends! The last one is on my list."
    • "I know you're weakening. Tupari is on your mind! Give in."
• Player Punch:
  • The destruction of the Normandy. Being reunited with Ashley/Kaidan. Seeing your crew get kidnapped when the Collectors attack the second Normandy. Seeing what happens to the people abducted by the Collectors, especially if it happens to your crew because you didn't get to them in time. Plenty more. Mass Effect 2 likes this trope.
  • A good chunk of the loyalty missions are also this. You have a really messed up squad.
  • Project Overlord may as well be entitled "Player No-Holds-Barred Beatdown" after you reach the end and find out the real reason why David went Ax Crazy. Pistol-Whipping the person responsible is the Paragon response.
  • If anyone was actually thinking or hoping they would find all of the abducted colonists from Horizon alive at the end and be able to save them, they were tragically mistaken. The sight of what happens to one trapped in a Collector pod is not an image you'd easily forget.
  • The ending of "Arrival" DLC is an enormous punch in the gut for both player and Shepard. Shepard is forced to destroy a solar system and its 305,000 batarian inhabitants in order to prevent an imminent Reaper invasion. Hackett notes that even though he knows Shepard did the right thing, the Alliance will force them to pay for this and that the batarians will attempt to do the same thing.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Mako planet-roving gets replaced with two: The Hammerhead (in DLC only), and planet scanning. Even BioWare admits that, in retrospect, planet scanning was handled poorly in Mass Effect 2. On the official forums at least one BioWare employee has said that "nobody liked" it, and as a result the planet scanning system has been completely overhauled for Mass Effect 3 so that it's less tedious and time-consuming.
  • The Hammerhead replaces the Mako, and to its credit, while it's faster, handles better, and doesn't have problems going up gentle hills, it is not very durable. When it takes too much damage, it sounds an alarm to alert you. Its weapon has subpar aim, unlike the Mako's guns. Finally, the Legendary Edition replaced the few short beeps after finishing a scan with a loud buzzing sound.
  • For some, the Charm and Intimidate skills being replaced with speech checks tied directly to your Paragon or Renegade score, making it a bit harder to play a character with mixed morality. The next game tied speech checks to your combined Paragon and Renegade scores, alleviating this problem.
  • The auto aim, providing you're using a sniper rifle, due to the fact that you're unable to turn it off. It can and will make getting a proper shot off much more difficult than it needs to be if multiple enemies are nearby. Doubly so if you're aiming for one when another enemy is closer to you, but more to the left or the right of your target, since it forces you to move the scope off of who you're not aiming at. You also have to actively fight the system when it does this as well, since it slows down look scope movement speed to prevent you from looking at anything but what it thinks you want to fire at.
  • Legion was a very popular character with pretty much everyone. So it's a pretty big shame that after recruiting them, you are placed into the endgame, and you are given only 2 more outings after recruiting Legion before you need to use the Omega Relay (at least if you want to save your entire crew). This means that you really only have time for Legion's loyalty mission and either one other mission or a final shopping trip before going to stop the Collectors. This means you have very little time to enjoy Legion in your party. At least if you don't want to watch your crew get dissolved painfully into goo before your eyes. It's less than ideal to say the least, especially because it means you'll likely miss out on Legion's potential interactions with Quarians in all of Tali's missions.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Tali’s recruitment mission on Haestrom gives you an opportunity to impose one during the Colossus battle. The injured Kal’Reegar offers to provide you heavy weapons support with a missile launcher, while you move in close to destroy the Colossus. However, not taking the Paragon interrupt to convince him to just stay down, means there is a hidden timer before the Colossus fires at Kal’Reegar and kills him. Your challenge is now, to fight through all the Geth mooks, get to the Colossus and destroy it fast, before it notices Kal’Reegar.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Sort of. The game isn't really any harder than the first, for the most part. However, the redesigned combat mechanics mean that fighting like you did in the first game is a good way of getting yourself totally slaughtered, even on the easiest difficulty setting. Once you get used to the new mechanics (or if you're coming in fresh without having played the first game), the difficulty rapidly evens out. However, the change in mechanics and the streamlining of the character building process means that you'll never be able to throw yourself into combat without worrying about tactics like you could eventually do in the first game. So it's less about the game getting harder, and more that it doesn't get easier as much.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Kolyat (Thane's son) and Oriana (Miranda's younger sister) are fairly popular for a couple who've never even been on the same planet at the same time.
• Special Effects Failure: Despite being a visually sound game, it does fall into this on a few occasions. Most common are issues with clipping, which, if you tried to list them all, could probably get a whole page all to themselves.
  • The shiny doors on Illium rotate when opening, and the reflections rotate with them.
  • Miranda's physical features sometimes verge on this trope.
  • During the first conversation with Garrus on the Normandy, Shepard is meant to be leaning on a railing, but ends up leaning on thin air.
  • During the meeting with the Council, Udina's eyes notably clip through his character model when he walks in.
  • When you wake Grunt up and he pins Shepard against the wall, his shoulder armor visibly clips through his upper body, and Grunt's upper arms always clip through his armor.
  • Mordin's eyes often clip through his eyelids, and Miranda's neck tends to clip through her collar.
  • Literally every time you go speak to Joker, his chair swivels around to face you...and clips through its own mounting.
  • Because there's twelve party members, and they're largely interchangeable during missions, cutscenes often use the same animations for each character. This works fine for the most part, but can get strange if you have Garrus and/or Grunt in your party—their models are noticeably larger than the rest of the characters', meaning that an animation or pose which works for the other ten characters ends up...not working for Garrus or Grunt. For example, bring Garrus on Tali's loyalty mission—during Tali's trial, check the background. Garrus is sitting in the stands...with his arms clipping through his legs.
  • Bringing Zaeed to Garrus' recruitment mission triggers an extra conversation between him and Tarak. At the end, there's a closeup of Tarak's face—with his head clipping through the camera◊.
  • During character customization the player can select a variety of eye shapes for either Shepard. It's possible to pick eyes for fem Shep which are incapable of fully closing because her eyelids have a fixed size.
  • The Illusive Man's cigarette has been known to move independently of his hand. Presumably he cuts his tobacco with eezo.
  • A long-standing glitch during Garrus' loyalty mission causes the entire back wall of the area it takes place in to not be textured properly. On one hand the trippy effect created by it helps with the overall uneasy atmosphere of the encounter. On the other hand, there's zero doubt that this isn't intentional and it's straight up broken.
• Tainted by the Preview: The first teaser for the game was met by quite the reaction, as was Jack's reveal.
• That One Boss:
  • Tela Vasir. If having her use the same Charge power as Vanguards wasn't enough, she can also knock you out of cover with a Shockwave power, and can use a Barrier power to make her even more of a Damage Sponge than she already is. Plus, she can summon Rocket Drones and Shadow Broker Engineers, making her a Flunky Boss.
  • In Arrival, the Object Rho battle if you are going for the Last Stand achievement. Luckily, this one's optional; the game will continue even if you fail.
  • The Praetorian. The potential of being hit by its Death Choir drop attack has every player, regardless of class, desperately scuttling away whenever it drifts too close for comfort. Which is to say, constantly.
  • The geth battleship cannon in Overlord. It fires automatic One Hit Kills. And it has a very wide area of effect.
  • The Shadow Broker, to Adepts. With only Liara to help you, biotic powers are all you have to throw at him, which are all negated by his shields and armor.
• That One Level:
  • Mordin's recruitment level is rather infamous for being Early Game Hell. Being one of the first levels of the game, and the one that the game itself encourages you to do first proves to be rather challenging as you are stacked up against Vorcha with Pyros and long-distance rocket launchers. Being one of the first missions of the game also means your party will likely be limited to just Miranda and Jacob. And while Jacob's Squad Incindeary ammo, in particular, can be incredibly useful for this Armored-Enemy dominated level, if you are not playing with a Max-Leveled imported Shepard, then the chances are you will not be anywhere close to unlocking this skill.
  • Grunt's recruitment mission is also a pain. Literally every other weapon is armed with a homing missile launcher, which can easily stunlock you or knock you out of cover, and there are several times where you have to fight multiple high-level enemies at once, culminating with the final battle, where you're fighting krogan, a YMIR mech, and the boss all at once.
  • The disabled Collector ship can be this, especially the first room. The problem is, you hardly ever get anything other than low cover, which Harbinger excels at knocking you out of, which results in you getting cut apart by Collectors and Scions unless you get back in immediately. It doesn't help that the Illusive Man forces you onto it, and that he's leading you into a trap because you're taking too long.
  • Horizon. If you pick the wrong team or class it may be easier to just begin the game from scratch.
  • Corang in the Firewalker DLC. The only place in the game where you will encounter multiple Geth Colossi, Primes and Destroyers, but you have the Hammerhead to take them on with. Should be fun right? The Hammerhead can't tank like the Mako as it's made of very flimsy armor, and it's true advantages in speed and ability to leap is countered by the fact that the map is set up like a platform game where if you don't time and judge your jumps exactly right, you will end up in an acid bath. And in one section you must get by three rocket turrets who have a nice straight line of sight at you with almost no room to maneuver. And you can't save your progress. Enjoy!
  • Thane's loyalty mission initially doesn't appear to be that hard, then you have to track the target. If you aren't looking directly at the target, you don't update Thane, and you only get one chance. Oh, and if you try to skip through the stockboy scene, you can glitch out and lose the mission that way. You will be restarting endlessly in order to finish the mission correctly.
• That One Sidequest: Aria's side mission to retrieve the crates. It's an incredible amount of effort to go through (three freaking YMIR Mechs!) for the three or four surviving crates. Given how early this mission is given, it's one of the hardest fights in the game.
  • This can be averted if you happen to have unlocked the ML-77 Missile Launcher beforehand. The missiles can track and hit one of the YMIR Mechs, forcing it to come after you without triggering the crate destruction sequence. And you can do this for all 3 of them, provided you have 3 shots available.
• The Scrappy: See here.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Warlord Okeer, a krogan scientist, would have been an interesting addition to the team. Sadly, he dies shortly after being introduced and Shepard settles for Grunt instead.
  • Because Legion shows up so late in the game and with a hard time limit for the Golden Ending afterward, it's really unlikely you'll see the hours of interactions and dialog they have available on all the other main and side quests.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • In the first game, it was revealed that Cerberus was behind the Thresher Maws that killed a Sole Survivor Shepard's squad. Shepard works with Cerberus in this game, but is never given a chance to call anyone in Cerberus out for the events on Akuze or the background-specific sidequest from the first game (in which it's revealed that there was another survivor, Corporal Toombs, who was captured and used as a test subject by Cerberus scientists). All you get is a very angry email from Toombs calling Shepard out for working with Cerberus, much like everyone else in the game.
  • A portion of the fan base believe that Shepard’s death at the beginning of the game was wasted potential, as it had little to no ramifications to the overall story and just appeared to be nothing more than marketing hype, and to justify why Shepard would ever work with Cerberus. Once the game starts proper, nothing really seemed to change with time while everyone in the universe is already aware and unsurprised by Shepard is seemingly back from the dead, including Anderson who immediately sends an email asking you to come visit him once you board the Normandy. Even Shepard does not treat it as a big deal or have any moments where he questions himself. They could have simply said he was in a coma and nothing would change.
  • Squadmate conflicts in general. They got hyped up prior to the game's release as being a result of the squad's Teeth-Clenched Teamwork situation. In the final product, only two of these instances actually pop up in the story; one between Miranda and Jack and the other between Tali and Legion. In these instances, Shepard runs the risk of losing the loyalty of the character they don't side with, but in both cases, the player can squash the conflict right then and there if they have a high enough Paragon or Renegade level. Even failure then, Shepard can still make up with the other character individually. The fact that this was an undercooked feature and that Grunt and Mordin's conflict didn't make the final cut and Jacob's antagonism towards Thane seemed to hint that those two would also have one, left many unsatisfied with the final result.
  • If you chose to enter a relationship with a teammate in the previous game, that subplot is barely advanced during the base game of Mass Effect 2. You get to meet the your loved one, but they won't join your team, and your relationship with them is only addressed in a short exchange, after which it doesn't affect the plot at all. It's almost as if the game wants you to break up with them and enter into a new relationship with one of your new teammates. If you romanced Liara in the previous game, the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC ameliorates the situation somewhat, as it adds some dramatic relationship moments with her, and at the end you can choose to continue your relationship with her, which leads into a sweet, poignant love scene. But if you romanced one of your human teammates, there's no such content available.
• Tough Act to Follow: Not only is ME2 the highest rated game in the franchise, it also strongly contends for the distinction of being atop many publication's lists of great BioWare games and greatest games of the 2010s. In several ways, it was the last game by the company that released to universal acclaim and minimal controversy. Every single game BioWare has released since has been mired in controversy either starting at the time of release (DA2, ME3, ME:A, Anthem) or in retrospect following media reports of mismanagement at the company (DAI). For fans who may be dismayed or disillusioned, ME2 is looked at especially fondly because it is more than just Mass Effect at its peak; it's also BioWare at its peak.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The batarian colony that Shepard is forced to slaughter in the Arrival DLC is portrayed as being an extreme and unfortunate side-effect to delaying the Reaper invasion. However, considering the batarians are portrayed almost exclusively as an Always Chaotic Evil race who enslave sapient species and commit genocide on the regular (this especially applies for anyone who has the Colonist and/or Ruthless background), it could almost be seen as doing the galaxy a favor.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Eyes are very hard to animate well. Samara's eyes look stunning.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • C-Sec has instituted new security and travel rules, including seemingly random no-fly lists and item confiscations, as a knee-jerk reaction to a massive attack. They're so ineffective they label a pair of asari as geth infiltrators and fail to notice the geth in your party. Anyone familiar with post-9/11 airport security in the US will recognize the system and the common criticisms of it.
  • Also, a great deal of the background dialogue in the planet of Illium appears to be an elaborate satire of extreme anarcho-capitalist political beliefs.
  • Purgatory, a prison ship. Involves selling prisoners and the information provided under torture under a veneer of doing good. It's a For Profit Hellhole Prison IN SPACE!.

Squadmates

Grunt

• Base-Breaking Character: A mild example compared to Jack and Miranda, but some people saw him as the Replacement Scrappy for Wrex, as he is a lot less developed compared to him. Even his Loyalty mission is by far the most shallow one (a simple arena fight). However, he is still very well liked for having a variety of funny lines and being very useful in combat.
• Fanon: For a lot of people, Grunt is officially Shepard's Krogan son. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Jack

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is she a Jerkass Woobie or simply a Jerkass? Part of that might depend on whether fans play as female (whom Jack is not as horrid with) or male (to whom she is a Fetishized Abuser) Shepard, and how a romance is handled.
  • Jack even lets a female Shepard down lightly if the latter tries to keep talking to her.
• Base-Breaking Character: Whilst possessing her share of fans due to sympathizing with her past and Character Development, many others dislike Jack for her psychopathic and violent tendencies. Often it depends on if one takes her abrasive and sometimes abusive behavior in stride as part of her character and the story being made (and thus find the moments of vulnerability from her all the more rewarding), or if you take it personally (especially as it's not always clear how to get her to warm up to you). The intensity of her emotional turmoil doesn't help.
  • Also, for most playthroughs (the only exception is a male Shepard who romances her), her loyalty mission comes across as an Ignored Epiphany, where she learns that she was mistaken about a large part of her childhood. Instead of learning or growing, she simply resolves to ignore everything she learned and remains an angry, violent psycho. Fortunately, her Character Development kicks in the sequel but looking only at this game's narrative, she comes across as a boring Static Character.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Take Jack with you on Legion's loyalty mission, and she'll say, "If you screwed with my head, made me nod and smile at everything, I'd rather you blew my head off, let me die as me." If you don't go to the Grissom Academy side mission in 3, Shepard will have to kill a Brainwashed and Crazy Jack.
• Jerkass Woobie: As revealed by her loyalty mission, Jack was constantly tortured by Cerberus in order to turn her into the ultimate weapon. When she was a kid, she would be thrown into an arena to fight to the death against wild animals and other biotic kids, in addition to the brutality she had to endure from the scientists and guards.
• Les Yay: With Miranda, at least as far as some fans are concerned. Mocked and Lampshaded in the Citadel DLC where Shepard can "helpfully" suggest that the two get laid, even claiming that all of their supposed sniping surely must indicate hidden feelings.

Jacob Taylor

• Fetish Retardant: Not only is his "But the PRIIIIIIZE" line extremely cheesy, the fact that he says it while looking at Shepard with cold, unfeeling eyes after he's just admitted to sneaking into her cabin adds an unintentional creep factor to the encounter.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In 3, Jacob voices his skepticism when Shepard mentions that they'd eventually like to settle down. Over the course of the game, there is reoccurring implication that Shepard is Resigned to the Call and is slowly becoming a Death Seeker because of it.
• Memetic Molester: Regardless of the heavy risk, Jacob only wants his prize.
• Narm Charm: His romance path is not known for being especially well-written, though it did provide a nice meme, as shown above.
• No Yay: His romance is absolutely despised. Even platonic lines from Shepard will sound uncomfortably flirtatious against him, the whole thing is regarded as flat and uninteresting, and to top it all off, he'll cheat on you no matter what in the next game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: While the idea of a morally complicated former black ops soldier joining a terrorist organization in the name of helping others sounds like an awesome character on paper; Jacob’s black ops past receives minimal exploration, his motives for joining Cerberus is basically just to excuse his presence, and his loyalty mission does nothing to explore either or better flesh Jacob out.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Clearly meant to be a naive every man soldier. The problem is, he shows vitriol towards some squadmates, admittedly for valid reasons, but not others whom he'd also have plenty of reason to do so with. This, by itself, would be a downplayed version of the trope at worst, since he only does this when they're first recruited, and lets it go after that. But come the third game, he cheats on you, should you have romanced him. The Racial Stereotypes he exudes in that game (and arguably, during his romance), do not help.

Kasumi Goto

• Les Yay: A tiny hint in the intro to her loyalty mission. When commenting on how great female Shepard looks in her Little Black Dress, the camera angle makes it seem that Kasumi is staring straight at her boobs.

Liara T'soni

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Because the story itself never acknowledges the issue, fans heavily debate Liara's reason for not telling the rest of the original squad about the Lazarus Project. On the more sympathetic side, it's argued that Liara was too consumed with guilt and unsure that it would even work to begin with, so she didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. On the unsympathetic side, Liara is accused of purposefully keeping them in the dark so she can get her romantic rivals out of the way without getting her hands dirty, citing her criticism of Kaidan/Ashley for not trusting Shepard despite it being Liara's fault that the Illusive Man's intentional information leaks were their only source of information and that Liara admits to knowing that Tali was in love with Male Shepard back in the first game but never said anything because she didn't want to hurt her own chances with him.

Miranda Lawson

• Base-Breaking Character: Quite possibly one of the biggest examples in the entire trilogy. Most fans either love Miranda or absolutely loathe her. Its hard to find a fan who has a neutral opinion of her.
  • She's obviously very physically attractive, but while some fans think she has a legitimate reason to be sexualized (being something of a Femme Fatale character), others find her blatant status as Fanservice annoying (complete with many a close-up shot of her ass, which were so blatant the developers removed some of them in the remastered version; let's just say Miranda is responsible for most of the "Ass Effect" puns). A third camp pointed out that those who bemoan Miranda's Ms. Fanservice status neglect or ignore Thane's Mr. Fanservice status - Bioware outright said ''every aspect of Thane'' was deliberately developed to be fanservice for women.
  • Some feel a great deal of sympathy for her and think her backstory and emotional struggles make her complex and interesting, while others think she's whiny and arrogant.
  • Some who don't like her for her initial loyalty to Cerberus, while others love that Miranda possesses such strong opinions and point out that Miranda's entire character arc revolves around realizing that her previous views of Cerberus were wrong and the result of years of calculated manipulation by the Illusive Man.
• Jerkass Woobie: She's tortured over the manner in which she was "created", had to spend her early childhood having to live up to her father's crazy high expectations, (and it's also heavily implied that he murdered Miranda's older "siblings" for not meeting said expectations) and worst of all, is incapable of conceiving a child, something she desperately wants (as the Shadow Broker files on her clearly show). Needless to say, when one takes all that into consideration, its easy to see why she can be so cold and nasty sometimes. It also makes it unsurprising that either Paragon or Renegade dialogue choices acknowledging her flagellation over not having a single good aspect of hers to take credit for can start a romance with her. Paragon Shepard will compliment her service record, and more pointedly, her body; Renegade Shepard will try to push her buttons further until she claims Shepard himself as an example of her "damned good work".
• Les Yay: With Jack, at least as far as some fans are concerned. Mocked and Lampshaded in the Citadel DLC where Shepard can "helpfully" suggest that the two get laid, even claiming that all of their supposed sniping surely must indicate hidden feelings.
• Ron the Death Eater: Miranda gets this badly from some fans, who are unable to understand that in spite of her being a part of Cerberus she is not in fact a heartless sociopath who would commit genocide if the Illusive Man told her to.
• Wangst: The main reason she's reviled by certain fans is the accusation that she fits this. It's not that she doesn't have a reason to be upset, it's because as far as many are concerned she drones on and on about how much it hurts her to be perfect and how her father was emotionally distant, whereas every other character arguably has bigger or equal problems that they don't complain about. The fact that she says that she was always given what she wanted and grew up in wealth has not helped matters, though she also makes a point of mentioning that there was always a catch to getting what she wanted. Still, if you play the "Lair of the Shadow Broker" DLC and read the file on her it turns out that Miranda's pain goes deeper than she lets on. She wants to be a mother but cannot conceive, and even worse, it's implied that this is just one of many ways her father has tried to control her. It's also relevant to Miranda's character that using expensive gifts and privileges "with a catch" to control and emotionally abuse others while treating them like whiny, privileged assholes for complaining is an extremely common and devastatingly effective tactic even in real life.

Mordin Solus

• Broken Base: Invoked, Genophage morally ambiguous action. Many opinions on matter. Great debate. Believes justified, but still feels guilt. Some fans disagree, others say Mordin correct, still others point out Mordin himself realizes own error. Discussions...violent.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Sang "Major General's Song". Played for comedy. Then Mass Effect 3 came. Not so funny in replays.
• Too Cool to Live: Survival during final assault unlikely. Escort assignment recommended.
  • If present in third game, dies curing genophage (or killed trying). Also can be convinced to sabotage it. Latter only available if both Wrex and Eve dead.

Samara

• Iron Woobie: As expected from a Asari warrior almost a millenium old.
• Ron the Death Eater: A lot of Morinth sympathizers blame Samara for Morinth's addictions. This of course completely ignores that Morinth has two sisters who did not succumb to Morinth's vices.

Thane Krios

• Stoic Woobie: For most of the game, he will not angst about his condition. He breaks down during the romance scene however.
• Too Cool to Live: He is likely to die in the suicide mission and he will die in the third game if he has not already.

Zaeed Massani

• Cargo Ship: This video ships Zaeed with his rifle, Jessie.
• Memetic Badass: Zaeed has a lot of badassey facts about him, that he's slowly being considered as the metaverse's equivalent to Chuck Norris.
• Moral Event Horizon: Letting the refinery and everyone inside burn to make sure he kills Vido. It's a bit more debatable in the Paragon resolution though, since for all his wanting to kill Vido, he does help Shepard save the refinery workers if Shepard decides to save them, and Shepard can still get his loyalty with a high enough Paragon score. And finally, he is shown to be better in 3, restricting his brutality to Cerberus, who definitely deserve it.

Secret Characters *SPOILERS*

Morinth

• Draco in Leather Pants: Some of the fanbase consider her actions to be completely the fault of her genetics, which are in turn Samara's fault, and thus Samara's the monster for hunting down a serial murderer. As awful as her early life may have been, she's spent the subsequent four hundred years developing an addiction to burning out the brains of innocent victims, and there's no reason to believe she'll stop, as she get's a thrill out of it.
  • In the third game (provided she survived in 2), she sends a series of emails to her sisters showing that she still cares about them and just wants them to be happy, but the emails were intercepted and her sisters never got to read them. It could also be just another example of her being a Manipulative Bitch.
• Memetic Molester: Given what she does on-screen, it's quite self-explaining.

NPCs

Quarian Admirals

• Fanon: Based on the above Crack Pairing, a popular fan interpretation of Admiral Xen is that she's a Robosexual.
• Moral Event Horizon: Possibly Rael'Zorah experimenting on hacking geth, an act that Zaal'Koris doesn't see as any different from torturing living beings, with the presumed end goal of hacking all the geth into forced obedience.

The Illusive Man

• Draco in Leather Pants: While not completely wrong all the time and also doing some genuinely good things for Shepard, the Illusive Man is still a ruthless Knight Templar and the leader of an amoral terrorist organization, and yet inevitably some people focus far more on the former than the latter. The next game reveals that he invoked this by intentionally filling the Normdandy with Cerberus's least objectionable members.

Veetor'Nara

• The Woobie: Poor, poor, poor Veetor. Much like Tali, he is a young and naive Quarian who is still developing as an individual. Already he has a history of panicking when in large crowds, prompting him to spend his pilgrimage on a small human colony. He has to witness said-colony come under attack by "monsters" and "swarms", abducting the many humans Veetor likely made friends with. By the time you find him, he's a broken shell of his former self, paranoid beyond rational capacity. And it gets much, much worse if you turn him over to Cerberus.

Kelly Chambers

• Annoying Video Game Helper: Yes Kelly, we get it, we can check our private messages ourselves without you repeating the same line over and over again!
• Base-Breaking Character: Yet another polarizing character, due to her "psychological assessments" being generic with no real insight, her apologist attitude, and her memetic status as a complete slut. On the other end of the spectrum, some people like her sweetness and her status as Cerberus' Token Good Teammate
• Player Punch: Remember when you told her you'd get everyone through the mission alive? If you didn't go through the Omega 4 Relay quickly enough after the Collectors invaded the Normandy, you get to watch her get liquified into organic paste, alive and screaming.

Aria T'Loak

• Epileptic Trees: There are more than a few involving her, one being that she's acquainted with Wrex, which is heavily hinted at, yet never explicitly stated, in-game.

Urz

• Ugly Cute: Just look at that face◊. Good varren.

Matriarch Aethyta

• One-Scene Wonder: She only appears in Conrad Verner's sidequest and has a single unchanging set of dialogue options afterward, but that was enough to make her beloved by fans for being a Cool Old Lady that's Seen It All.

Harbinger

• Awesome Ego: Just like Sovereign in the first game, he's a monumentally arrogant being who hands out Badass Boasts like candy and the fans love him for it.
• Base-Breaking Character: Some fans see him as a Replacement Scrappy to Sovereign^note On the basis that Sovereign was a cold, stoic, intimidating presence of pure power, while Harbinger's constant, repetitive hamming is pretty annoying and not scary. while other see him as a superior villain.^note The main argument being that Sovereign was a dull, boring villain with barely-explained motives and no personality traits besides arrogance, while Harbinger is not only entertaining and highly quotable, but also provides context and meaning to the Reaper's actions and intentions, which were glossed over with the "You wouldn't understand" brush in the first game.
• Crack Ship: It's mostly a joke, but Harbinger/Shepard, drawing upon such lines as "I KNOW YOU FEEL THIS," is oddly popular.
• Fountain of Memes: Nearly every one of his lines have been subject to Memetic Mutation.
• Love to Hate: Full of Badass Boasts, while proclaiming to be humanity's salvation through destruction. Plenty to love, plenty to hate.
• Memetic Molester: His memetic taunts towards Shepard make him this. See his line on Crack Ship entry.

Gavin Archer

• Moral Event Horizon: Forcing his brother to take part in Project Overlord. That said he is shown to have defected from Cerberus in 3 and has also come to seriously regret what he did. Unfortunately for him, he's a case of Reformed, but Rejected in 3.

Tela Vasir

• Best Boss Ever: Vasir is an asari Spectre. An asari Spectre Vanguard. Especially awesome if your Shepard is also a Vanguard. If so, biotic jousting can ensue
• Draco in Leather Pants: The reason she works for the Shadow Broker is similar to why Shepard works for Cerberus. She has no choice, because the Council gives SPECTREs squat. The Commander would be going nowhere fast without the intelligence and funds Cerberus provide, funds that always match or better what credits you can scrounge. She has much less to work with.
  • While her situation is understandable, she takes way more enjoyment in what she does than she needs to. She has a worryingly sadistic grin when threatening her hostage, her troops shot down civilians who were wounded, and she killed a lot of security guards at the hotel, even though she could have gotten them on her side by pointing out she was a Spectre. Her racism against purebloods also makes her motivation for targeting Liara very suspect.
    • Though a lot of this loses weight when you compare this to how Renegade Shepard acts. Tela Vasir herself lampshades this. Of course, given that Renegade Shepard also gets the Draco in Leather Pants treatment, perhaps it's not surprising.

Overlord

• The Woobie: Born autistic, exploited by his own brother, turned into a machine against his will, and insane from the strain of being in charge of a computer network. This guy's life is just one heartbreak after another. Unfortunately, he's incredibly unstable and dangerous, and become so withdrawn and broken he doesn't realize the harm of his actions. Thankfully, if you save him, he is shown to be doing a lot better during the Grissom Station mission in the third game. He even apologises to Shepard and his squad for his actions.

Kaidan/Ashley

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Were they ungrateful and overly paranoid about Shepard, or was their reaction a natural one to their former commander (and possible lover) coming back into their life after two years of being dead as part of a terrorist organization? The former cause some who didn't have a problem with them in the first game to hate them with a passion while those who thought of the latter, even to those that hate them in the first game, felt that they were unfairly spat on in favor of the love interests in this game and Liara.
• Fourth Wall Myopia: Many players don't seem to notice that nearly all of the information that may have convinced them that Shepard is still trustworthy was actively withheld from them, or that the information they did have was intentionally leaked by the Illusive Man, who has openly been trying to isolate Shepard from non-Cerberus resources.
• Informed Wrongness: If you're playing a Renegade Shepard (especially one who shows contempt for the Alliance and the Council and prefers Cerberus) then they are kind of right to say that you've betrayed the Alliance and thrown your lot in with a terrorist organization versus a Paragon or Neutral Shepard's doing it only because it's necessary; even then Shepard never actually gives any proof of that.

Ronald Taylor

• Moral Event Horizon: After being stranded on Aeia, he killed most of his male crew, exiled the rest and used the fruit of the planet and it's mental degradation properties to keep the females as slaves, with Jacob even referring to them as his Harem. That's bad enough, but then there's him knowing about the distress signal the entire time, but never telling anyone or activating it until he finally wanted to leave.

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