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  • Accidental Innuendo: Hard Man — as Seanbaby put it, "This guy's outfit looks like a frat boy's "Armored Penis" halloween costume, and his name makes you think of gay porn."
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: How human the robots act is up for interpretation. Sometimes they're almost human in every way, other times only Rock, Roll, Blues, and Bass act human while the Robot Masters only have shades of humanity. Even then some interpret Rock and Roll don't act entirely human either.
  • Annoying Video Game Helper: Eddie is very infamous for giving you the power-up you don't need. Weapon Energy in a Robot Master level, which usually isn't long enough to warrant it, and a Health Pellet when you already have full health. The rare E-Tank or extra lives are always useful, though.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: Quint should be one of the most epic bosses in the series, given that he is Mega Man from the future. In practice, most intro bosses put up a better fight.
  • Archive Panic: Thirty-one games in the Classic era alone, not counting ports, remakes and mobile game releases.
  • Awesome Art: The sprite work for the series is consistently top-notch. The NES games alone feature some of the most detailed sprites on the platform, and have aged very well in the art aspect.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Bass. Regardless of opinions about the game itself, many agree he was the best thing to come from Mega Man 7, and there was much rejoicing indeed when he was announced as playable for 10. With that said, fan reception to him post-debut is mixed; either he's an interesting counterpart to Mega Man and gives Wily the chance to have a robot who can actually counter him, or he's a cliché anime rival with no interesting characteristics other than being Wily's anti-Mega Man. Others dislike him for considering him a jealous, whiny brat.
    • Bad Boxart Mega Man, based on his baffling appearance on the front cover of the American version of the first game. When fans looked back on it at first, it became one of the most iconic cases of Covers Always Lie. As people dove deeper into it over time, it became pretty funny. Then Capcom caught on and started making nods to it, making the Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 'box arts' very much in a tongue-in-cheek style reminiscent of the first game. Gradually, it started getting run into the ground, the climax of that being his appearance in Street Fighter X Tekken, depicted as a fat, washed up loser. This appearance solidly broke the base's opinion on it between "pretty funny joke" and "tired one-note joke." It didn't help that in 2011, this was about the only thing that wasn't straight-up cancelled in the Mega Man franchise. His later appearance in reference in Resident Evil 3 (Remake) split opinions further.
  • Broken Base:
    • Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 and 2. Parts of the fandom complain about Capcom splitting the games in two collections instead of launching a single collection, like the Anniversary Collection did. The lack of other classic games like Mega Man's Soccer, Mega Man: The Wily Wars, Mega Man & Bass, Mega Man: The Power Battle, and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters is another issue pointed by the critics. Others think it was an interesting idea splitting the collection into the classic NES era and the SNES/PSX/Saturn era and this made possible the release of the first half to 3DS.
    • The topic of Zero is contested among classic fans, especially with regards to whether he should appear in the classic games since he's a creation of Wily's and was intended to be the original Mega Man's ultimate enemy/challenge. While some fans would like this plot point expanded upon in the classic games, others dislike how the tone of it clashes with the Lighter and Softer classic series and point out how Word of God specifically denied that Zero ended up destroying the original Mega Man.
    • Should Mega Man stick to the 8-bit classic Retraux style of Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10? Those who defend it often say it's the only way to get truly accurate Mega Man classic physics in the games, citing Mega Man 7 and Mega Man 8 (and to a lesser extent, Mega Man & Bass) as prime offenders of having wonky physics because of the graphical style. Those against it cite it as causing Mega Man's infamous reputation for having Mission Pack Sequels and want a more fresh, modern take on the Mega Man art style. Though Mega Man 11 was in 3D and had physics near 1-for-1 for the NES games, it's done little to quell arguments over this. (With some people going as far as demaking the game in the NES style.)
    • The topic of whether or not it's "okay" to ship Roll and Mega Man. They're supposed to be brother and sister, but Mega Man Powered Up depicts their relationship as a little too tender for a brother and sister, and there are several pieces of supplementary art that show her as clingy towards Mega Man or glaring angrily when Mega Man is involved with a girl. Some fans claim that it's fine because they're robots with no DNA and therefore no possibility of inbreeding and the "sister as love interest" trope is common in Japanese media, and therefore, see these moments as genuine Ship Tease. Others are disgusted by the idea of shipping Mega Man with his own sister, and dismiss the occasional "couple-like" moments between the two as accidental and/or fueled by confirmation bias. Fans who ship Mega Man and/or Roll with other characters (like Mega Man/Kalinka, Mega Man/Bass, or any of the many, many, MANY Roll ships) also tend to have a sour view on Mega Man/Roll shipping because it siphons attention away from their preferred ships.
  • Common Knowledge:
  • Complete Monster: See here.
  • Director Displacement: While he was the lead artist on all the games up to 8, Keiji Inafune didn't actually become the head designer until partway through production of 3. The first two games were designed by Akira Kitamura, while the third was initially designed by Masayoshi Kurokawa, who subsequently quit during production, forcing Inafune to take over.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Dr. Cossack only appeared in 4, 5 (only as part of the backstory and the Complete Works' Navi Mode), and the RockBoard spinoff, but is popular for being one of the only other robot scientists seen in the classic series. His daughter Kalinka is even less present but just as popular, frequently getting a place in fan works that extend into the Mega Man X continuity.
    • Splash Woman is quite popular for being an attractive female Robot Master, and currently being the only female boss in the classic series.
    • Out of all the Robot Masters, Guts Man and Cut Man are easily the most well-known, mostly due to appearing in almost every episode of the cartoon show. Cut Man frequently returns as a hidden boss fight in later games; Guts Man's design motif is shared with the recurring Metall enemies, bosses designed after him such as the Guts Dozer and Guts Man R appear in the fortresses of later games, and, thanks to Memetic Mutation, his ass has become the butt of many jokes.
    • Mega Man 4 gained mixed reaction from fans, but it had two cool-looking Robot Masters that became quite popular; Skull Man and Pharaoh Man. The latter became even more popular from his animated adaption.
    • Air Man's (semi-undeserved) reputation for being That One Boss thanks to fan music makes him a popular choice for fights and in-jokes in fan games.
    • Time Man and Oil Man aren't part of the official DWN line of Robot Masters due to only appearing in a poorly selling remake, but they're both fan favorites for being new additions to bring the first Mega Man game's boss roster up to eight. Time Man has a leg up on Oil Man (Oil Man has a controversial design and is one of the weakest characters in the game), but people were happy to see both of them return in the comic series, with the latter getting a slight redesign to make him look better.
  • Epileptic Trees:
    • Fans believe the RT-55J enemy in Mega Man X is an upgrade of Auto (or is at least related to him), owing to their shared color schemes and its location near a Light Capsule, even in spite of external material explaining it as a sumo wrestler robot with no mention of it being related to Dr. Light in any way.
    • People keep trying to link the Evil Energy in 8 and the Roboenza virus in 10 to both each other and Mega Man X's Maverick Virus.
    • The various alien robots in the series, such as the Stardroids, Duo, and (possibly) Shadow Man, are often thought to be related. The Archie comic even took this and ran with it.
  • Even Better Sequel:
    • Mega Man 2 is considered one of the textbook examples in gaming history. It took everything that was great about the first one and improved upon it, and took out the things that didn't work or didn't matter. It was also less difficult, providing a challenging but not frustrating experience.
    • About half the fandom believes 3 is even better than 2. The mildly slippery movement was finally fixed, Mega Man's sluggish ladder speed was upped, and this entry gives him his defining slide ability, which adds an incredible amount of depth to the game.
    • Some fans consider 4 to be the most balanced entry of the NES games, even compared to the above, thanks to a more balanced weapon roster and lack of major difficulty spikes like in the first three games.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • The peashooter/P-shooter for the Mega Buster, as its symbol on the weapon select screen is "P" and due to its Boring, but Practical nature.
    • The Mega Buster's shots are also referred to as "lemons" by the fans due to their lemon-like appearance.
    • The disappearing and reappearing blocks prominent in the series are referred to as "yoku blocks", with yoku being the Japanese word for appearing. While the term was used before, it gained in popularity with the release of the fan game Mega Man Unlimited and one of the bosses in the game, Yoku Man, whose stage has these blocks as its primary gimmick.
  • Fanon:
  • Fanon Discontinuity:
    • Many fans disregard all the entries not produced in the 8-bit style (meaning 7, 8, and Mega Man & Bass). Some of the more hardcore fans prefer to think that Dr. Wily got fatally crushed in 3 and so ignore everything from 4 onward. The mentality mostly faded away by the time 11 released, though the NES style are still the most popular choice for fan content.
    • On the spin-off side of things, Rockman & Forte: Challenger From the Future and both PC entries are often ignored, due to questionable Robot Master designs (most infamously in the former), poorly-written stories (even by the series' standards), and being all-around mediocre games.
    • Due to Quint being ridiculously weak despite his backstory, some fans pass him off as just being another Copy Robot rather than a future version of Mega Man.
  • Foe Yay Shipping:
    • Mega Man/the Robot Masters is inevitable. Thanks to Hyadain, the most popular of those are Mega Man/Crash Man, Mega Man/Flash Man, and Mega Man/Quick Man. One of the most popular non-Robot Masters ships is Mega/Bass.
    • Metal Man/Cut Man is also popular given that Metal is Cut's stronger successor.
    • Despite the fact that Gemini Man canonically hates snakes and is weak to the Search Snake (or perhaps because of it), Gemini Man/Snake Man remains one of the most popular ships in the fandom.
  • Game-Breaker: The series has enough to warrant a page unto itself.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • A glitch in earlier games allowed you to make specific enemies disappear by aligning the place where they turned around at the edge of the screen. Very handy with those Goddamned Bats that moved across the ground quickly when you were level with them and were too short to be hit by the peashooter.
    • In the first Mega Man game, you could use any weapon (most often Elec Man's Thunder Beam) to repeatedly damage a boss by pausing the game frequently while the beam is in collision. Really handy for getting past the Yellow Devil.
    • In the NES games, if a weapon took more than one shot to use a unit from the weapon energy bar, you could more or less use it infinitely by pausing between shots.
    • If the player reaches an Eddie room and leaves before he teleports out, then he'll reset when the player returns, even if Eddie's already given out a power-up. As long as the player doesn't pick up that power-up (which will also cause him to leave) they get an infinite number of do-overs if Eddie gives them a power-up they don't want.
  • Goddamned Boss:
    • Many fans will agree that all of the Wily Capsule fights introduced in almost all the games after Mega Man 4 are just plain annoying. All the fights are very similar and can be easily summarized: Wily teleports to a random spot in the arena, shoots Mega Man, then teleports away, waits a moment, then continues. The fact that Wily spends so much of the fight invulnerable and can appear near the top of the arena where Mega Man can't hit him can drive some people up the wall.
    • All of the "Devil" bosses, too. They also follow a closely related attack pattern: assemble itself from goo, eye opens and shoots, disassemble goo, rinse and repeat. Like the Wily capsule fights, the annoying bit about Devil bosses is that most of the fight is spent with them invincible: the eye is the only vulnerable part of it, and it's only open for a second after each cycle of the attack, and this drags out the fight quite a bit. Not helping is most of them also disassemble and reassemble themselves from goo in the exact same pattern every time, leading the fight to just being about monotonous memorization. And if you thought that wasn't nasty enough, 11 equips it with the Speed Gear with each of nine mini Devils hopping and running about to harass Mega Man, meaning if you don't keep up with it, you're going to eat a lot of damage.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • This scene is from a game that never came out of Japan, depicting Quick Man saving Mega Man's life by taking a shuriken in the back; later in Japan, nearly the exact same thing happens in the first issue of Naruto. What makes this even more hilarious is that Quick Man died from some relatively small shuriken, while Iruka survived a really big one in his spine.
    • Proto Man is voiced by Ryōtarō Okiayu in 8, Super Adventure Rockman, and Battle & Chase. What makes it funny is that this was the same guy who voiced Zero in the X series, when there was a prevalent fan theory in the old days that Proto Man is Zero.
    • There was a scrapped form for Rush in Mega Man 3 called Rush Drill. This became one of Mega Man's hyper combos inMarvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes.
    • Quick Man's vehicle in Battle & Chase is named "Sonic Formula". Appropriate, given that Quick Man's a super-fast robot. Then, almost 20 years later in Archie's Worlds Collide crossover between Sonic and Mega Man, Quick Man's inevitable showdown with the blue hedgehog ends rather poorly for Quick Man and his fellow "sorta-fast" Robot Masters (Metal Man, Charge Man, Slash Man, Turbo Man, and Nitro Man), with Quick Man getting tripped, sent into an uncontrollable spin while yelling "HATE THAT HEDGEHOG!", and ending up in a pileup with the rest of the "sorta-fast" Robot Masters, all topped off with Sonic taunting "Though he may not have your speed...you don't have his skills!"
  • Hype Backlash: When people talked about the classic games they mainly focused on 2 and 3 which were considered the best of the series and most of the other NES games being seen as more of the same nothing special retreads. However, thanks to a bunch of new fans being able to play the series with recent re-releases people have been more critical of 2 and 3 and in turn appreciating the improvements 4,5 and 6 made to the series. Some going as far as stating 4 is actually the best of the NES games although this is far from universal.
  • It Was His Sled:
    • Even people who haven't played Mega Man 3 are likely to be aware that Proto Man was Dr. Light's first robot and thus Mega Man's brother.
    • If you play 7 now, you'll probably already know just what Bass's deal is.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Bass. He was created to do one thing specifically (kill Mega Man), but he's done nothing but fail and get effectively disowned by his father. He has Proto Man's independent spirit, alienating him from his creator, but because of his Hot-Blooded nature and obsession with killing Rock, he can't find any sort of absolution with Light either. Wily even calls Zero his greatest creation to Bass's face, making him The Unfavorite. As a Robot Master and not a Reploid, it's natural for him to want to fight Mega Man without much he can do about it. It's hard to have any sympathy for him at times, but he's very high on the list of characters that need a really, really big hug.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Some people are only interested in the Mega Man series because they like the Robot Masters, whether it be because of their colorful designs and personalities or because they're a large cast of shippable male characters.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Roll and Splash Woman, due to being the only female Robot Masters in the entire series.
  • Memetic Badass:
  • Memetic Loser:
    • Bubble Man is one both in and out of universe. Not only is his theme bubbles, but he's saddled with the Bubble Lead, one of the silliest weapons in the franchise.
    • Top Man, due to having a similarly ridiculous theme and having one of the hardest weapons to use in the series.
    • Spring Man is a distant third due to the inherent goofiness of his concept, which was brought to many a fan's attention in this fan animation. Said video, on the other hand, also managed to turn Spring Man into a strangely endearing character because of how silly his design is.
  • Memetic Molester: Crash Man, thanks to Hyadain's song CRASH!! (Let's Do It).
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • YOU GET: Meme
      ... And Rush JetExplanation 
    • Though the fad has died down, the late 2000s saw various "remixes" of Robot Master themes syncing voice clips and sound effects from other games to the music. The Scout and Morshu were often seen during this period, but other sources were not unheard of (such as Bloody Roar).
    • Native to Brazil is "Patel de Carica" (or simply just "Carica"), which is what you get when you take Search Man's theme and mash it together with a picture of Jerry Trainor's head. For example...
  • Misblamed: A lot of fans chastise Capcom for "running out of ideas" for the Robot Masters, without knowing that Capcom (and other developers who've worked on the series) didn't make most of them. From 2 all the way to 8 (except Astro Man and Tengu Man), they're fan designs submitted for contests, chosen by Capcom and slightly modified for their in-game designs.
  • Moe: As a rare male example, Mega Man himself qualifies, along with Roll and many others. Justified because the series is inspired by Astro Boy from story to design, of course.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Wily either crossed it when he kidnapped Kalinka and forced her dad to work for him, or the carnage he caused posthumously through the maverick in the next series.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: While Pow pow pow pow pow! is horrible when it means you're dead, it becomes this when it's an enemy Robot Master dying.
  • Obvious Beta:
    • Mega Man 3 was subject to a rushed and troubled development, and it shows in the final game. Alongside many noticeable bugs and the absence of a planned intro, a number of areas suffer from slowdown, what appear to be unremoved development tools can be used with a second controller, and the difficulty in the second half is unbalanced (with the Wily stages being much easier than the preceding Doc Robot stages). Despite this, 3 is still considered one of the best games in the series.
    • Soccer, up to and including the lack of an ending or credits. Strangely enough, they're both in the game's code, but unused for some reason. Even the English translation was rushed; one of the two stage selection screens refers to a "Rock Field" and a "Blues Field".
    • Mega Man II had less than a year of development, and it shows in the bland level design, annoyingly high-pitched sound, glitchy collision detection, and some obstacles not even working properly.
    • The Wily Wars isn't quite as bad in this regard, but suffers from horrendous slowdown in places, which can render certain sections near-unplayable in the PAL release. Some of the backgrounds also look a little weird while scrolling, suggesting the developers may have had a more elaborate scrolling method planned, but were forced to ditch it due to the performance hit.
  • Polished Port:
    • Mega Man: The Wily Wars for the Sega Genesis. It takes the first three games NES games and give them enhanced 16-bit graphics and updated sound effects, cranked up the difficulty, adds a save feature, and adds an all-new Wily Tower game once unlocked.
    • The Complete Works series of ports of Mega Man 1-6 for the PlayStation not only retains the NES version of these games, they also feature a new Navi Mode which adds a revised menus and HUD, a hint system for new players, memory card saves in addition to passwords (when available), and for those with a PocketStation can level-up Mega Man and the Robot Masters. These ports also fix the sprite flickering and slowdown from their original version, the ability to use the shoulder buttons to cycle through weapons in real-time, remixed music (the first three only had few taken from the two arcade games, while the later half of the Complete Works games have proper remixes), unlockable items to use in Navi Mode, a database with a wealth of information on characters and enemies, and a Mission Mode where players can complete various challenges. Unfortunately this series of ports never got an official English release; although the first four games in the Complete Works series were re-released through PlayStation Network in North America, they are not translated in any way and Mega Man 5 and 6 were never released overseas.
  • Porting Disaster:
    • The images featured in the ending credits of Mega Man 7 were missing in all three versions of Anniversary Collection because the developers (Atomic Planet) couldn't figure out how to properly emulate the Mode-7 features of the SNES. The Nintendo GameCube version of Anniversary Collection also received flak for switching the shoot and jump buttons. Regardless, the ports of these games are still very playable, and it was nice to not have the music get muddled by certain sound effects, as well as removing the sprite flickering. Having an actual save feature while keeping the password feature for the first seven games was also appreciated.
    • The GBA port of Mega Man & Bass made Bass's dash far more difficult to perform due to the lack of a dedicated dash button and suffers from a lot more Screen Crunch.
    • The European version of Mega Man 4 was rendered near-unplayable due to severe 50 Hz slowdown. The Virtual Console re-release fixes it somewhat, but it can still be noticeable when there are a lot of enemies on the screen.
    • The mobile ports of the NES games, which are probably the laziest Mega Man ports ever released (somehow even beating out the infamous Mega Man X port). The controls are imprecise and unresponsive (unforgivable offenses with the degree of precision these games require), but even worse, all six games run like molasses even when nothing but Mega Man himself is on the screen, despite numerous areas where the graphics have been noticeably downgraded from the original games.note  And, seemingly just to rub salt in the wound, they're priced at $1.99... for each game. The entire affair just reeks of half-heartedness.
  • Recurring Fanon Character: This is inevitable given the series' lengthy history and its 8-bit origins making character sprites easy for anybody to design. The two most prominent would be Bond Man, a glue-based Robot Master cut from the first game (and who was not restored for Mega Man Powered Up in favor of two new Robot Masters filling out the 7th and 8th boss spots), and Honey Woman, an early concept character for Mega Man 9 who eventually became Hornet Man. Both received nods in the Mega Man (Archie Comics) series.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: When first unveiled, Sheep Man was widely hated due to being seen as dumb and overly-childish. However after the game came out, he ended up becoming quite popular due to his powers, stage design, and Narm Charm factor. The weapon he gives you is still almost unanimously hated, though.
  • Rooting for the Empire: Due to their distinctive designs and personalities, many fans find the Robot Masters more likable and interesting than Mega Man.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Or rather the Scrappy Mechanic being the lack of a mechanic. Some complaints against 9 and 10 are leveled at the lack of the slide and charge shot mechanics to make the games more like series darling Mega Man 2.
    • If you die to a boss, more often not you're dumped back at a one-way hallway between the main body of the stage and the boss room, minus whatever weapon energy you used up. You may end up having to use the far weaker Mega Buster over whatever weakness-hitting weapon you were using.
    • Enemies respawn once you scroll far enough for their respawn points to be off-screen. Meaning that if you destroy a rather annoying or dangerous enemy but something (like a hazard or a pit) pushes you back, you'll have to fight it again.
    • A comic mocking the disappearing and reappearing blocks is the page image. The gist of them is that the blocks will follow a set pattern that one must memorize in order to avoid falling off, but the fact that the games tend to pair them up with Bottomless Pits and One-Hit KO hazards means that this process of memorization often amounts to Trial-and-Error Gameplay. Certain items such as Item-2 and Rush Jet can help make things easier, but they have to be unlocked beforehand and aren't in every game.
  • Scrappy Weapon: Due to how many entries there are in this series, there will always be one or two weapons in each game that aren't very good.
    • The Power Stone from Mega Man 5. It creates three or four rocks that make circles around the screen until they fly out of bounds. The problem? It never works like you'd want it to. It's very hard to hit anything with it and it's not as powerful as you'd think it is, making it one of the worst shield-type Special Weapons — if not the worst.
    • Top Spin is easily the most iconically bad weapon in the series, requiring Mega Man to make contact with the enemy in a game with collision damage, and the weapon is insanely finicky over how much weapon energy it drains (sometimes taking the entire meter in one go) or whether it'll even work at all. It's also the final boss' weakness.
  • Self-Fanservice: Several fan artists not only portray the Robot Masters as so close to human that them being robots may as well be an Informed Attribute, but they also make them significantly prettier.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: The series is notorious for the sheer amount of these tied to it. Probably one of the most popular and well-known is playing an entire game using only the Mega Buster and never exploiting the more useful weapons unless required by the plot. This is well-known enough that it got a nod in the Archie comics where Mega Man chooses to take on the Yellow Devil using only the Mega Buster (though he could at least charge it up there).
  • Shocking Moments: Bass's ending in The Power Fighters 2; Wily gloats to Bass about a robot he's working on that will surpass Bass and destroy Mega Man, and lowers the blueprints for Bass to see. It's Zero.
  • That One Achievement:
  • That One Attack: The Wily Capsule in 7 probably wouldn't have his That One Boss status if it wasn't for that damn quadruple homing shot that required either pure luck or superhuman reflexes to dodge.
  • That One Boss: It has its own page.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Certain parts of the fanbase can be a bit... Passionate about the NES games in the series, looking down on any of the games not made in the NES style, regardless of quality. It's to the point where practically every Mega Man Classic game that wasn't on the NES or a Retraux has gotten a Fan Video Game Demake in the NES stylings.
  • Theme Pairing: Given how fond the fans are of shipping Robot Masters with each other, this is a given. Some notable examples:
    • Quick Man x Elec Man, because both of them are confident and speedy- not to mention Quick Man was canonically based on Elec Man.
    • Wood Man x Plant Man, since they're both plant-based Robot Masters.
    • Bubble Man x Splash Woman, since they're both aquatic Robot Masters that are more suited for water than land (Bubble Man can only move on land by jumping, and Splash Woman can't move on land at all due to being a mermaid).
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • The second Game Boy game: Doctor Wily stole a time machine, travels thirty years into the future, kidnaps the future Mega Man, and reprograms him into Quint. What does this brilliant paradox-causing plan amount to? His boss fight consists of him jumping around on a pogo stick/jackhammer and not being particularly effective at it. There's no explanation as to what happens after you defeat him, although he shows up briefly with the rest of the Killers in V (though likely as a copy). The only other game to address anything related to this is Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousensha, one of the most obscure games in the classic series.
    • Navi Mode in the 3 and 4 remakes. Not so much the concept, but rather the execution. The beings used as Mission Control for those two games each induce a Late-Arrival Spoiler. Proto Man in 3, who you fight on four occasions, and Kalinka in 4, who's been kidnapped. How'd she get to the radio room? Though it's kind of hard to have someone different in 4 due to the fact that Proto was rescuing Kalinka. The only option left would be Roll reprising from 2. There was also a missed opportunity to use the supposedly reformed Dr. Wily as the Mission Control for 3.
    • Mega Man 3, Mega Man V, and Mega Man 8 all introduce some level of alien involvement or presence, however the series never expands on this, the three mentioned extraterrestrial involvements don't seem connected whatsoever (the comic does do a fairly decent job at welding them together, however), and the semi-important plot point of alien robots is completely dropped by the time Mega Man X and beyond came along.
  • Unintentional Uncanny Valley: As a general rule, Mega Man does not look good when realistically rendered, but since laughably ugly boxarts quickly became a beloved series tradition, Capcom has naturally rendered him so for kicks a good number of times. One "classic" example.
  • Unfortunate Character Design:
    • Some take note of Hard Man's strong resemblance to a beer keg. The character's costume, along with his name, gives him rather phallic undertones.
    • Oil Man originally resembled a blackface stereotype from the 1920s before his colors were changed overseas to hide it.
  • The Woobie:
    • Many of the Robot Masters who are reprogrammed into villains by Wily. The Robot Masters from Mega Man 9 stand out, since they were about to be scrapped for parts when Wily enslaved them.
    • Bubble Man, who can't walk well due to his design and has the worst weapon ever. Wily could fix his walking problems, but doesn't because he thinks it's funny.
    • Dr. Cossack, a nice guy who Wily sets up as the Red Herring for his latest scheme by kidnapping the man's daughter. That's just low.
    • Dynamo Man from Mega Man & Bass used to have a job giving school children tours of a power plant. After King replaced his power generator to convert him into a Walking Wasteland (its energy output made him lethal to be around), he resented humanity for avoiding him and leaving him in isolation.
    • Also from Mega Man & Bass is Burner Man, whom King motivated to burn a forest to the ground daily by making him believe that if he didn't, a non-existent bomb inside him would blow up, destroying him.
    • Dr. Light as of Mega Man 11. The poor man just wanted to create truly intelligent robots, but thanks to a single moment of callousness towards Wily's Double Gear system, he's now the series' ultimate Unwitting Instigator of Doom, and every single bad thing that happens throughout the franchise (ultimately culminating in the extinction of mankind at some point before Mega Man Legends) can be traced back to him.

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