These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
Arc Fatigue: Invoked. Church is trying to re-enact the events of Season 1 to draw Tex out, and it mostly consists of standing around and waiting for stuff to happen.
Broken Base: Some fans enjoy the Freelancer segments and Monty Oum's animation, while others prefer the more lighthearted moments set in Blood Gulch.
Round 1/Bullfight from episode 10 during Maine, York, and Wyoming's fight against Tex.
Falling Towards The Sky in Episode 15. Played when the freelancers are trying to load the sarcophagus into a Pelican while freefalling. Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Funny when it turns out that Maine's warthog is apparently playing the music as well.
Not to mention "Extraction", "Pelican Escape", Hell, let's just say the entirety of season 9's soundtrack is MADE of this trope
Fridge Brilliance: Because Freelancers are human soldiers and not SPARTANs, they're drawn the same size as normal human characters, despite using SPARTAN player models. This is apparent in the scenes where Wash is interacting with the base medics and The Director.
God Mode Sue: Tex's introductory video, where she effortlessly takes down a squad of soldiers again, soldiers who were supposed to be talented fighters, was met with complaints.
Harsher in Hindsight: All of Wash's interactions with the Meta have to be seen in a different light now since the Season 9 trailer revealed that both he and Maine used to be friends.
Not to mention Wash's admiration for the Director in Season 9, considering how badly he gets screwed over later.
Also this quote from Out Of Mind:
York: Well, you were kind of responsible for that eye...
York tried to jump out of the way of a live grenade tossed by his teammate during a sparring match and she glues him in place as it goes off. (He tried to switch teams after he realized his teammates Wyoming and Maine were using live rounds instead of the glue-paintballs issued for the exercise)
she was actually coating him in a layer of protection, as Wash says in the next episode that the glue paint hardens the armor. This is a Genius Bonus for people who have read the old Halo novels, as the SPARTANS use a similar trick at one point. She tried to warn him to get away at first, but he was too beaten up to move, so she did what she could.
Which would explain her response in Out of Mind:
Tex: It's because of me that you still have one good eye.
I Knew It: People were so sure that C.T's initials stood for Connecticut, that it's been treated as practically canon as far back as season seven. However it is only now in this season that Connecticut's full name is used on screen.
It's the Same, so It Sucks: Half the season is a retread of the first season, with several jokes and plot points from the first season, and none of the Character Development the cast has gone through. Might be an Invoked Trope, since Church's experiences in the memory unit lead him to realize that he needs to let go of the past.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Like with Revelations, a good deal of fans don't like the fast-paced, dramatic CGI parts and prefer the in-engine moments that are more like the old days. May be leading to a Broken Base, as there are people who like the story of the freelancers better, and feel like the time spent in the Epsilon Unit is retreading on old ground and taking up space that could be used for more character development.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Since they've split the "CGI prequel" and "Machinima sequel" parts of the series, rather than need to make the CGI look like the game, Monty can just make it look as good as he is capable of doing. The point being, he is extremely capable.
Season 10
Base Breaker: Wash as a blond, as revealed in episode 6, has been met with a lot of resistance. Especially considering general fandom consensus was he was a brunette, based on Luke McKay's work and that Burnie said he would never reveal Wash and Maine's faces.
Counterpart Comparison: The Director can easily be compared to Gendo Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Both wear glasses, are very ruthless, seem very sinister, head a morally questionable project, are willing to do things that will likely get their men killed, and were devastated by the death of their loved ones, making many duplicates of them. And in the end, they were shown to genuinely care for their son or daughter, despite the hell they put them through.
Likewise, Tex can be compared to Rei Ayanami. Both are designed to be the Replacement Goldfish of either Yui or Allison, both are reborn in the form of a near-identical counterpart after their deaths, both undergo some level of existential angst at least once in the series, and both turned on either Gendo or the Director at one point. Oh, and considering their natures, they could technically be considered the mother of one of the characters (Shinji or Carolina).
Crowning Music of Awesome: Jeff Williams continues to impress, this season. One of his best, named "Fragments" which plays during Tex's massacre of the project mooks, captures both the tremendous rage Tex carries with her, and what every agent and AI fragment of Project Freelancer eventually boils down to in time.
Net Surfing guy from Episode 1 is pretty popular. Some parts of the fandom started shipping him with coffee guy from the last season not long after he first showed up.
Burnie has stated that he started the season with York and Delta due to both being fan favorites, particularly Delta.
The unnamed blue Freelancer, better known as Agent Florida, or Captain Butch Flowers, who cameoed in the previous season shows up again with Wyoming. He gets taken down by the leader of the Insurrection throwing an axe across a bunker in Episode 9, but gets up in Episode 10 and gets rid of the Twin Turret Soldiers.
Episode 12 reveals that York was still obsessed over Carolina during the events of Out of Mind, and was bitterly disappointed when he found out the rogue female Freelancer he was hearing so much about turned out to be Tex. It makes you think about why he really joined up with Tex at the time.
Episode 15 shows every freelancer present breaking down and screaming for Allison. The only one who wasn't at that moment? Wash. Talk about irony.
Episode 17 shows that Connie left information about the Director in Tex's care because she was the only one that could be trusted with it. Considering that Tex was the one that killed Connie...
With the finale implying that Carolina is the Director's daughter, all of her interactions with him get cast into a much harsher light.
Also, Episode 22 shows us the true purpose of Project Freelancer. The Director didn't form PF to fight the Aliens or the Insurrectionists, but to find a way to resurrect Allison.
A more fandom related one but Carolina's more popular ships involved her with Tex, york and the director. Carolina ends up being related to two out of the three of them.
Hilarious in Hindsight: When seeing Theta for the first time, Wash comments on how small he is and wonders if that's as big as they come. Fast forward to Episode 18 where Epsilon, his AI, grows to three times the size of the main cast.
Hell Is That Noise: The hair-raising shrieks and growls coming from the sarcophagus in Episode 15, and Carolina's own screaming as the Artificial Intelligences in her head start freaking out.
In Episode 1. "...I think I just got dumped by Caboose." "It's not me, it's you." And the implication that Caboose has transferred his odd obsession to Wash.
Also a bit for Doc and Donut. Let's see... one is very camp, the other is noted for being into "alternative lifestyles" and they're living together in a small shack in the middle of a large canyon.
The idea that the C.T. we all met in Recreation wasn't actually Agent Connecticut has been tossed around ever since Washington revealed that C.T. was a girl.
Fans also successfully called an Engineer being the contents of the Sarcophagus.
With all the theories floating around about the Mysterious Blue Guy, someone was going to get his identity right; the crowd of fans that guessed he was Flowers were correct, though fewer also guessed he was also Agent Florida.
Jerkass Woobie: Agent Maine at the end of Season 10, when we find out why he became so vicious. He'd been a vicious bastard before, but he had been loyal to his teammates until Sigma completely wrecked his mind.
Gamma seemed for a long time like the most harmless of the evil A.I's but when it's revealed that It was actually him that drove Alpha permanently insane, by making him believe that he had caused the death of Tex (Something even the Director feels is out of line), Gamma crosses the line.
At first much of the harm Sigma causes could be seen as accidental "collateral damage", but when he possesses Maine and uses him to attack Carolina, (a woman that Maine once took a bullet for) brutally rip her A.I's out of her head, and throw her off a cliff, it's clear that there's no way to redeem this guy.
The Director has done terrible things, yes, but is generally played off as a Jerkass Woobie. However, Episode 21 shows that in the process of making Allison come back to him through the use of Texas, he induced a hefty dose of Mind Rape on Tex, who is technically Allison, through the process of making the army of Tex robots, to the point of putting her into a similar state to that of the Alpha by the end of Episode 19. Any justification that the Director used to have has apparently been completely thrown out the window in his growing insanity.
He may have crossed it earlier during Carolina's breakdown - the fact that he coldly left his own daughter screaming on the floor is irredeemable.
The female insurrectionist falling to (what is presumably) her death by drowning in full armor is taken a lot less seriously than it should, due to the fact she looks ridiculous with her limbs spread everywhere and the way she hits the edge.
After one and a half seasons of building up to it, we finally see Carolina with Iota and Eta go insane. And how does it happen? By having Carolina roll on the ground screaming "Make the voices stop!", which, a) is incredibly cliche for the tropes involved and b) not delivered extremely convincingly.
Even more than Carolina's breakdown, Wash's own breakdown, with Epsilon "committing suicide in [his] head", hyped for years was nothing more than Wash half heartedly moaning in pain while staggering around, set as the B scene to Tex discovering her identity no less.
The whole army of Texas robots at the end of episode 20. It should be terrifying, but each one ends up doing the same knuckle crack and neck crack. On the Epsilon version, it was pretty awesome, badass, and at times terrifying, but with a whole army of them, it looks kind of ridiculous. Especially since the way the animators have them do it is out of sync and with robot sound effects. It looks more like they had the same clip of Texas a couple of dozen times and copy and pasted. With all of them so poorly animated it looks more like a bunch of mooks in black armor than an army of Texes.
Narm Charm: Despite the above occurrences, those scenes still work out for some fans.
Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: The moral of the season: "No matter how much it hurts, you have to let go of the past." This is hammered especially hard by the finale, and is what makes it a great ending.
Special Effect Failure: Some have noticed the quality of the animation tends to vary from scene to scene, likely because of all the new animators.
Interesting example. Episode 8 has a well animated and interesting fight throughout most of the episode. Episode 9 shows the ending of that fight, but the CGI is notably worse. Within the same episode however, there is another sequence that shows markedly better animation.
Episode 11 shows us our first extended view of people out of armor. It isn't that impressive.
Some of the movements in Episode 13 were a bit painful to watch.
Some people believe that the animation of the Robot Texas army in Episode 20 is pretty bad, mostly due to the most notable action given is done out of sync with each other, but at the same time, making them all look sort of ridiculous.
In 21, Carolina's helmet and unique armor pieces are a different color than her armor for most of the episode. Though it might just have the wrong shaders, it seems "off" to some people.
Squick: When the Gatling Good duo get crushed, the splatter on the ground under the crate that fell on them is yellow, not red. However, this might just be from spray paint cans.
Carolina and Washington's mental breakdowns end up being nothing more than a few seconds each, despite both of those scenes being hyped up for several seasons. Washington's is particularly noticeable, since it's implied to be the defining moment of his life that turned him into the Byronic Hero he is in The Recollection, yet he seems basically the same, with no known memory of events in the breakdown, when he wakes up with no AI in him anymore. Of course, knowing he remembered nearly everything Epsilon drove into his head, one might look at it as him deceiving the other freelancers when he woke up, making it somewhat awesome.
The Insurrection subplot cuts off abruptly when all of the Elite Mooks from the previous season are killed in Episode 9, and their leader escapes only to be Doomed by Canon, accomplishing nothing of importance before his death. However, the end of the season implies that this plot line might be revived in a later season.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Maybe the effects described above didn't look too good, but other very much were. For example, the scene of the Mother of Invention crashing into the planet in episode 19 looks as good as a current gen video game.
The Woobie: The Alpha definitely comes across as this when we see him in the flashbacks.
Caboose was originally written in just to balance out the teams after the Reds got Donut, and then as a catalyst to annoy Church. But as Caboose grew more and more stupid (and more and more lovable), he soon became probably the most popular character.
Grif's Deadpan Snarker attitude led to an increase in his popularity among fans.
Wash, despite showing up six seasons in, is one of the most popular characters on the show. His backstory makes him quite the splash with female fans, and he's probably the fandom bicycle.
Iron Woobie: Tex consistently fails at whatever she's trying to do, not that it stops her from trying or being a Badass while doing so.
Simmons: Join us next time for part 2 of our series: sequels.
Grif: Parts 3 and 4 are about that, too.
Despite this being jokingly referenced, Season 9 is way more popular than the previous seasons ever were.
Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: Revenge is shown with most characters to A) leave them worse off than before or B) leave them unsatisfied.
Best shown in the Recollection with Wash, who ends up imprisoned in Reconstruction before being betrayed by Meta after the two have teamed up in Season 8.
Another example in Season 8 (again) with Tex, who ends up caught in a capture unit and then wiped from existence by Church Things would likely have turned out differently had she not tried going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
Another great example in Season 10 with Church and Carolina, who almost end up dead and eventually declare it isn't worth it after seeing a broken down Director.
The Woobie: Due to his childlike personality, Caboose gets a lot of sympathy for suffering that the show generally inflicts on its characters.
Church gets pretty well established as this (well, as a Jerkass Woobie) once his backstory is unveiled.
