For YMMV items applying to Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area, go here.
- Adorkable: The Professor. From his shy demeanor, his fashion sense, the moments he acts as the team's dorky dad, and especially every time he gets excited when a plan comes together.
- Awesome Music: Has its own page.
- Base-Breaking Character:
- Tokyo's oftentimes impulsive behavior made her a quite divisive character among the fan base. Specially in the first three seasons, to the point that even her actress, Úrsula Corberó, commented on it in interviews. Some fans liked her for being a quite engaging wild card in the narrative, while others think that her antics feel more like a vehicle for manufactured drama.
- Arturo. Some people think he is a compelling Hate Sink character that you Love to Hate, that he gives a good contrast with the other characters, and that he's used for some intriguing plot twists, specially in the Mint of Spain storyline, not to mention he greatly benefits from Enrique Arce's engaging performance. Others consider his antics so cartoonishly over-the-top that he becomes more annoying than anything else, and that ultimately he doesn't add much to the narrative other than a cheap Catharsis Factor when he gets his comeuppance, specially in the Bank of Spain storyline.
- Better on DVD: The show's audience ratings when it first aired in Spain had a steep decline towards the end of Season 1 and beginning of Season 2, mostly due to some arguable dragging in the narrative that apparently tested the patience of audiences who watched the show one episode per week. In this sense, the show benefited immensely from the binge-watching format of Netflix, which allows viewers to get through the story at a faster pace, thus making its pacing issues easier to overlook.
- Broken Base: While the character himself is overall well-liked, the Professor's plans have gotten mixed reactions from audiences, especially as the series progressed. Due to the fact that the writers largely write by the seat of their pants, whenever a plot twist or some other sudden thing takes place, the writers usually insert in the middle of it a flashback to the Professor explaining how he predicted something like that would happen, and how he and/or the rest of the heist team prepared beforehand for it. Supporters consider this technique to be a more than valid method of introducing amazing things that keep viewers on the edge of their seats, while detractors feel like the writers use it as a means of cheating, since even the more full-fledged twists aren't normally foreshadowed, making it break their Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
- Catharsis Factor:
- Any time Arturo gets beaten, punished or humiliated in some way. It's particularly satisfying when other hostages do it, such as Monica knocking him out in Season 2, or Mario giving him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech in Season 4.
- Bogotá giving Gandia one hell of a Curb-Stomp Battle at the beginning of Season 5. Not only does Bogotá try to avenge Nairobi, but he takes his time to give Gandia a blow for every single slur he uttered to his friends. Although the rest of the gang stop Bogotá from killing Gandia, since they needed him to negotiate with the police, the beatdown was immensely cathartic.
- Gandia getting his due Karmic Death finally happens in the Season 5 Volume 1 finale, when Tokyo blows up a grenade on him. After getting a rather light punishment for his many evil misdeeds in the previous season, this one felt very cathartic.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Benjamín, Manila's father. He became a fan favorite throughout seasons 4 and 5 for being surprisingly useful to the Professor despite being in his 70s and relatively frail looking. Also, there is something really funny about seeing an otherwise sweet old man preparing himself for a gun fight without losing his good manners (which is a bit of a stock character in Spanish action comedies, but relatively fresh to international audiences). Also, bonus points for being completely supportive to his daughter's transition.
- Foe Yay Shipping: Berlin and Nairobi argue often and despise each other, but they form a pretty popular ship under the name of "Berlobi". Their heartwarming moment in the Season 2 finale before Berlin's sacrifice mostly contributed to this.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
- The show aired in Spain in 2017 in the TV channel Antena 3, and it had very high audience ratings in the early episodes. However, due to some factors, ratings declined as the series progressed, and Antena 3 ended up considering the show a failure, ready to cancel the show with the end of Season 2. The rights were then purchased by Netflix, which included it in its international programming and it became a smash hit in the US and Latin America, which in turn green-lighted the second heist's storyline.
- It's also significant that the show's harshest critics tend to be Spaniards, who consider the show overall overrated. Some are baffled that of all Spanish shows, Money Heist is the one that got to become a worldwide hit, arguing that it's far from being the best the country has to offer in terms of TV shows.
- The country were the show seems to have had its biggest success is actually India. It had the largest audience share second only to Spain itself, and the biggest audience in raw numbers. So much that India is pretty much the only non-Spanish speaking country Netflix has created videos
specifically for, each one with view counts in the millions. - Italy loves this show, especially due to the references to Italian Resistance, as well as Berlin singing three Italian songs, including "Bella Ciao". It helps that Berlin is probably the most popular character among Italian viewers.
- Arturo's actor, Enrique Arce, has given a shout-out to the Filipinos who viewed the show.
- Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Arturo is easily the most hated character on the show for being a selfish, slimy, perverted jerk, and eventually raping Amanda (one of the most innocent hostages) in Season 4. He gets much more hate than Gandía, the Big Bad of the same season who, on top of being a bigot, is willing to torture and kill the robbers. Some fans give Gandía the Draco in Leather Pants treatment and claim he's just doing his job to stop the heist team, even if Gandía is clearly sadistic and kills Nairobi for his own amusement. There's also the fact that Gandía is a pretty badass One-Man Army, while Arturo is a pathetic Dirty Coward who manipulates the other hostages into doing things for him.
- Mind Game Ship:
- In the first heist, the Professor and Raquel, due to their Battle of Wits.
- In the second heist, Sierra, who manages outsmart the Professor and Raquel, has been shipped with the latter in a Foil dynamic.
- Moral Event Horizon: Season 4 has two cases:
- Gandia crosses it when he unrepentantly kills Nairobi, this after putting her through a humilliating ordeal that involved torturing her while convalescent from an operation that managed to save her life earlier in the season.
- As if it were even possible, Arturo sinks to a new low not only when he offers Amanda pills to help her anxiety and rapes her while she's under the pills' effects, but also when he later tries to pull the same stunt with Manila.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Tokyo was one of the most divisive characters in the first three seasons due to being The Millstone, but later episodes gave her Character Development and her Dying Moment of Awesome was one of the saddest moments of the show.
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: Arturo might be a disgusting and selfish human being, but he starts off the series with significant redeeming qualities. Plus, his idea to try to stop the heist team in the first heist are somewhat heroic at first, on top of him being one of the few hostages who actually tries to fight against the group. He loses this status come Season 3 however, where it's laid out clearer how much of a selfish jackass he truly is.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: A minor example with Raquel's daughter Paula, who flat-out refuses to believe that her father is a bad man who hurt her mother. While this childish naivety may have been more believable if Paula were a younger child, she is at least seven or eight years old, and most children that age would definitely notice things going on in their home such as their parents arguing, especially when it happens on a regular basis for more than a year. She may not fully understand what Domestic Abuse is, but would surely be able to notice that something wasn't right.
- Unpopular Popular Character:
- In the first heist, Berlin is hated by almost everyone in-universe (except the Professor), is the Token Evil Teammate and The Friend Nobody Likes among the heist team, and falls for a woman who finds him repulsing. Many fans, on the other hand, love him for being a smart and charming Cultured Badass, especially as the later seasons' flashbacks explored his past with large detail. By the end of the series, he was popular enough for an upcoming spin-off centered around him to be greenlit.
- Colonel Tamayo is portrayed in-universe as one of the most morally bankrupt antagonists of the show, particularly because of his disposition to use under-handed tactics and even ignoring Spanish law or police/military protocol as if it was his prerogative, and he's constantly called out by people on his side. As a character, however, he's pretty popular among audiences due to his cutting sarcasm and Fernando Cayo's impeccable acting, which makes him very entertaining to watch.
