YMMV / Supernatural

YMMV Items with their own subpages:

• Alternative Character Interpretation
• Base Breaking Character
• Complete Monster
• Die For Our Ship
• Ensemble Darkhorse
• Evil Is Cool
• Fandom Specific Plot
• Fanon Discontinuity
• Magnificent Bastard
• Memetic Mutation
• Narm
• Seasonal Rot
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot

The live-action series:

A to D

• Abandon Shipping: A portion of Samifer (Sam/Lucifer) fans who liked the ship in Season 5 jumped ship once Season 11 onwards confirmed that Season 7's Hallucifer personality was more or less canon.
• Actor Shipping: Infamously, to the point of being the co-fandoms responsible for the trope's old name of "Tinhatting".
  • Many fans ship Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles and call it "J2" or "J-Squared" for short. This is because, in the earliest seasons, it was impossible to make an In-Universe ship of any durability that had neither Original Characters nor incest. Jared/Jensen was originally the most popular ship in the fandom, and the shipping heated up even more than before because Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki lived together for quite a while and the whole cast tends to be very...tactile in interviews/con appearances etc. The term "Tinhat" ultimately came from the infamy of many of its fans stalking the actors or sending threatening messages to their families due to having convinced themselves they were genuinely dating and that there was an actual homophobic conspiracy by the studio to hide their relationship, including fake wives and children. While certainly not the only fandom to engage in this (The Lord of the Rings had a similarly infamous movement known as "Domlijah"), they were among the most visible, and outsiders derisively referred to them as "Tinhats" in reference to the Tinfoil Hat worn by stereotypical crazy conspiracy theorists.
  • Other ships or pairings include Jensen/Misha (Cockles), Jared/Misha (Mishalecki), Jared/Richard, Jensen/JDM, Jared/Jensen/Misha... You get the picture?
• Adorkable:
  • Dean. More visible in the earlier seasons, but applies nonetheless. Despite his repeated insistence that Sam is the bigger nerd, Dean is actually the one who references pop culture nonstop, takes to LARPing with an astonishing amount of enjoyment, and exhibits an almost-childlike glee for things as mundane as cool weapons, movies, and mini-golf.
  • Prior to pulling Dean out of Hell, Castiel never had much cause to go amongst humans, and it shows in his interactions with the other characters, especially when he first started appearing on the show. He initially had a hard time understanding sarcasm, along with the most basic of human traditions, and has a habit of doing his signature Quizzical Tilt whenever he comes across something that manages to confuse him yet again. While most characters on the show just find him strange, out-of-universe many fans find his awkwardness to be positively endearing and a big part of his charm.
  • Jack's general cluelessness about sex and romance balanced with his eagerness to experience one or both while also trying to save the girl land him in this category.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy:
  • Bela and Jo were hated for the majority of their run, the former for being a selfish, treacherous Smug Snake who made making the boys look like idiots her hobby without much comeuppance, the latter character because fans thought she was an immature, somewhat moronic Flat Character who didn't deserve to be Dean's Love Interest. Fans begged the writers to give the characters the boot — preferably with a nasty death scene. Well, the death scenes came — Bela was revealed to be a sexual abuse victim and got ripped up by hellhounds and dragged off to Hell for eternity, while Jo got a heap of Character Development that established her as a matured, pragmatic hunter who risked (and lost) her life to save Dean, and then performed a tragic Heroic Sacrifice — much to the fans' horror. Since then, there have been campaigns to get the characters back, they are better-embraced in the fandom in general (saying that you like them won't get you open-mouthed stares or bewildered questions anymore, at any rate), and those who still don't really like the characters will admit that they got pretty sad send-offs.
  • Becky was disliked for the majority of her existence, for appearing to be a caricature of particularly clueless fangirls, and even moreso after getting a widely reviled episode where she forces Sam to marry her with a Love Potion. She's at least sane enough to step down from selling her soul in exchange for a hollow love life with a hypnotized and unwilling Sam, and when she reappears in season 15 she's clearly cleaned up her act, having gone through therapy to deal with her issues and settling down to a quiet family life with a father of two. Then her former boyfriend Chuck, who is actually God (and evil), reappears and engages in a very cruel Bait the Dog with her, wiping her loved ones from existence before erasing Becky as well. This is even more disturbing because it's never confirmed at the end of the series if she was revived along with the rest of humanity.
• Alternate Self Shipping: Courtesy of his visit to the post-apocalyptic future, Dean Winchester gets shipped with his alternate selves in fics, both in the form of Dean×himself from the future and Dean×himself from the future×Castiel from the future.
• Angst Aversion: Can sometimes fall victim to this, especially in later seasons. Virtually every character who isn't Sam, Dean or Castiel inevitably winds up dying horribly, the "heroes" often behave in ways that are just as morally reprehensible as the villains, the main characters' obvious mental health issues are never fully addressed or resolved, and the brothers seem to be locked in a permanent cycle of lying to and keeping secrets from each other, all of which has lead many viewers to wonder why they should bother caring.
• Anticlimax Boss: An annoying trend in the series. Each season Big Bad, no matter how powerful they are hyped to be, typically ends up dead due to being stabbed/shot by the anti-whatever-creature-they-are Plot Device in a fight lasting about 30 seconds.
• Anvilicious: In keeping with the political tone of S7's second half, Charlie ended up being a rather unsubtle mouthpiece for the writers' political beliefs. She's seen hacking into a political website and stealing millions of dollars of other people's campaign contributions and then funneling their donations away to causes that she would prefer to support, which is obviously illegal, but she's presented as being a wonderful and heroic person for doing it because the campaign she steals from is conservative and therefore obviously evil. However, Dean and Sam have spent the entire series performing credit card fraud, so perhaps what is and isn’t illegal doesn’t mean quite as much in the series as in reality.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • Sam's possession by Gadreel, with seven straight episodes hitting the exact same notes of Sam noticing something weird and Dean making increasingly obvious lies about it, while in half of them Gadreel also acts as a cheap Deus ex Machina.
  • Some fans have argued that, as much as they love Mark Sheppard, Crowley's story seriously wore out its welcome, with the writers visibly struggling with how to give him anything new to do since Season 8, and several episodes (including the whole time he spent in the bunker in Season 9) where Sam and Dean forego a perfect opportunity to kill him for literally no reason at all.
  • Castiel and any angel storyline in general. Angel-centric episodes generally pull lower viewership ratings, and as Castiel's angelic powers continue to decrease as the series progresses, there have been repeated debates over his and other angels' continued presence and purpose in the show. Word of God is that episodes that heavily feature Misha give Jared and Jensen an opportunity to spend time with their families, which helps to justify Castiel's continued role in the series.
• Ass Pull:
  • Although it's part of the show's lore now, an angel pulling Dean out of Hell was at the time a huge surprise, given that the writers had up until then insisted that angels would not appear on the show.
  • Although it didn't surprise people very keyed into the fandom and aware of the show's habit of jettisoning female love interests, Anna's disappearance and Face–Heel Turn in Season 5 seemed to come out of nowhere.
  • Castiel becoming the Big Bad of Season 6 and going power-mad. This didn't exactly fit with the character's history and it didn't help that he was suddenly, thanks to a long monologue, responsible for every loose end the writers forget to tie up. Fans didn't react well to his death and he was brought back.
  • Season 10 was clearly designed to be the end of the show for most of its length, until it was renewed towards the end. The result is that in the finale the nature of the Mark of Cain is abruptly revealed to be completely different than we were always told, and we get a complete repeat of Season 8 where Dean decides to hell with the rest of the world if he can be with his brother a bit longer.
  • In Season 11 Lucifer can suddenly possess angels, which makes most of the drama from Season 5 completely pointless.
    • Then again, it should be noted that he was only shown to possess Castiel, who is subject to unique circumstances as he is the only entity in his body, raising the possibility that this contributed to Lucifer being able to use him as a vessel where other angels may have required the angel and the human to consent.
  • Also in Season 11, Sam's death by gunshot. He was actually in shock and had no problem taking out two non-bleeding werewolves minutes after waking up.
  • In the Season 14 finale, after Dean refuses to kill Jack, and Chuck suddenly begins ranting that "this isn't how the story ends!". In the end, Dean and Sam still refuse to go along with His story... after which, Chuck decides that the story's "over", kills Jack, and resurrects many evils while leaving himself as the Big Bad of Season 15.
• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • The ninth season had a subplot where Castiel lost his angel grace and was turned into a normal human. Not only was this a retread of a story they'd already done in Season 5, the writers didn't seem to have any idea how to keep the De Powered Cas involved in the main plot, so human Cas episodes largely featured him bumbling around making a fool of himself and trying to get laid until the Monster of the Week showed up to torture him. Thankfully, the arc only lasted nine episodes.
  • On a larger scale, Seasons 1-5 are generally regarded as good, setting up the universe and the main cast of characters and gradually increasing the scope of the conflict before ending with a satisfying conclusion to the show's initial Myth Arc. Season 6-10 are regarded as a series of lackluster attempts to reinvent the series in the Post-Script Season era, with a glut of discount bad guys after already having worn out the Sorting Algorithm of Evil and endless contrived drama between the Winchesters.
  • For some, Andrew Dabb's era (officially Seasons 12 to 15) is this, trading out the drama for completely putting the established characters Out of Focus, with a lot of episodes including B-plots focused entirely on several newcomer characters (as opposed to previous seasons where most B-plots were concentrated on Castiel, both a fan favorite and someone who'd had significant interactions with the brothers), and almost completely doing away with Monster of the Week episodes. While there are clear attempts to introduce new plots through previous worldbuilding, the characters very rarely have anything to do with their initial lore and oftentimes completely contradict established canon. Not helping the execution of referring back to concepts from a decade ago is that the special effects budget seems to have massively diminished from the prior eras, making simple things like the glow of an angel's eyes look ridiculous.
• Badass Decay:
  • Ruby is a snarky, fearless Action Girl in Season 3. In the next season, she... isn't. This is at least partially due to Genevieve Padalecki wanting Ruby to seem vulnerable and innocent and so she plays her differently than Katie Cassidy does, but the writing itself for Ruby provides for less badassery in Season 4.
  • In Season 5, Castiel's power is nerfed and he begins to be used for more comical scenes after being cut off from Heaven; since he's a regular character now, he's not allowed to become too powerful. Completely reversed in the following seasons when his angelic powers are fully restored.
  • Angels in general were described as the most unbelievably powerful entities besides God during Seasons 4 through 6, and everyone in-universe reacted with awe at them... until the Leviathans showed up and were described as being scary even to the angels. That said...
  • The Leviathans. They went from being an ancient evil that was sealed away by God for being too dangerous to unleash upon the world... to suddenly being taken out by normal humans and demons, left, right and centre. And their shtick was being shapeshifters that ate people, which wasn't much more scary than any other monster. In fact, they were less powerful than the previous season's Big Bad Eve, despite them deriding her as a "mutt". Then again, out of all the Leviathans, the heroes managed to kill a grand total of one in the whole season.
  • Crowley. By Season 10, he comes and goes more or less at the Winchesters' beck and call, seems genuinely upset that they don't consider him a friend, and has lost almost all of his viciousness and cunning. Gets called on it by his own mother and Dean of all people.
    • When Sam even calls out how far gone Crowley has gotten it speaks volumes on how much of a downward spiral Crowley is in.
  • For a while, Sam was on a downward spiral starting with Season 9, where he got knocked out in almost every single episode of that season, even after Gadreel was expelled from his body and subsequently healed of the damage the Hell Gate Trials had done to his body. It's ridiculous how many times Sam — a supposed veteran hunter who has previously displayed an immense amount of prowess in combat — is so easily incapacitated in service of another plot, either giving Gadreel a chance to show himself or giving Dean an opportunity to show how badly the Mark of Cain is starting to affect him.
    • This trend continues for quite a bit even past Season 9, as Season 10 doesn't really give Sam much to do until "Inside Man," episode 17. From there on, he steadily begins to improve, getting an arc of his own that enables him to be a little more dangerous, and proceeding to harden into a more capable hunter come Season 11.
  • Lucifer has also been getting this since Season 11. Though still not weak exactly, he was originally the ultimate Big Bad in the show and the one character who couldn't be taken on, only contained. There was a time he could singlehandedly wipe out an entire room full of gods with ease. The introduction of more powerful characters has seen him captured and powerless repeatedly with even Crowley getting to dominate him for a while. This has culminated in him losing some of his grace, much of his power, and being overpowered by one of the Princes of Hell he himself once created. After he steals Jack's grace, he once again becomes the single-greatest threat in the cosmos, planning to murder Sam and Jack and annihilate all reality.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • Season 9 included a Poorly Disguised Pilot for a spinoff that wasn't picked up, meaning Chicago being secretly run by monsters will likely just become a weird little thing on the fringes of the show's canon.
  • "Shut Up, Dr. Phil" is mostly a regular episode, but is notable for how it completely screws up Dean's storyline at the time. He's supposedly feeling guilty for killing Amy and then lying to Sam about it, yet here he and Sam both have no problem letting a pair of murderous immortal witches go on to continue killing people during their inevitable next marital spat. Even one line about how they were completely outmatched and had to accept they lost this one could have cleared it up, but instead we're just not supposed to think about it.
  • "Man's Best Friend with Benefits." Puts the Season 8 story arc on hold to build an entire episode around the idea that bestiality is wacky, and make everyone uncomfortable by having the title character be a black woman who wears a dog collar and calls a white man her "master."
• Broken Base:
  • Most agree that the first five Eric Kripke-led seasons are the strongest, and view everything that came after as an inferior attempt to recreate what was done better in Seasons 4 and 5. Where the Broken Base emerges is the split between those who subscribe to Only the Creator Does It Right and believe that the Kripke seasons as the only seasons that matter, that the fifth season finale is the true ending, and that everything that came afterwards is glorified fanfiction, while others believe that even if not as good, the Post-Script Season parts of the show (Seasons 6-15) still did interesting enough things to be worth watching in their own right, or at least choose to place the cutoff point for Fanon Discontinuity at a later point in the show's run than Season 5. Since the show managed keep going for an additional ten years after Kripke left the show, this has lessened with time.
  • That latter group of Post-Script Season fans (mirroring a similar division among fans of the first five seasons only) can also be further split into two distinct camps:
    • The first camp prefers the show to be a family drama about the Winchester brothers going on weekly monster hunts and wish it would've stayed that way, disliking Castiel and the increasingly large cast of long-term characters for being unnecessary distractions. Chances are they also prefer Seasons 1-3 to Seasons 4-5. You'll find most, but not all, Wincest shippers or brothers' fans in this camp.
    • The second camp believes that the show really hit its stride once Castiel entered the story and it transitioned to a longer Myth Arc format, and find the Heaven Versus Hell backdrop and expanded cast to be more interesting than the episodic monster hunts. Destiel shippers are probably the most vocal but certainly not the only fans in this camp, and are likely to suggest skipping straight to Season 4 to watch Castiel's debut.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Lilith holding the contract for Dean's soul. Considering the only other demon of any importance at that point was already dead, it's a bit weird that they even tried to play this as a twist.
  • Ruby being Evil All Along surprised Sam, but probably not anyone else, in-universe or out. Ditto Metatron.
  • The existence of the angel tablet. Once the leviathan and demon tablets were introduced, it just seemed like common sense that the angels would have one, too.
  • That Ezekiel wasn't who he claimed to be was presented as a big twist halfway through the ninth season. Thing is, fans had predicted that as soon as his first episode. They also saw it coming that he would be bad news for the brothers, to the point were anything fans spun casting him as a good guy with no ulterior motives was in the minority and knew it.
  • Thanks to Jensen Ackles being a mite too heavy-handed with his hints about the ninth season finale, Dean turning into a demon; to be fair, it had already been widely speculated by fans after the Mark of Cain was introduced, but after Jensen said the last few seconds would "be a real eye-opener", many fans knew to expect black eyes.
  • It was portrayed as a big surprise in the S8 finale that closing the gates of Hell meant sacrificing yourself even though Sam and Dean themselves had pointed out how obvious this was almost as soon as the arc was introduced, with Dean telling Sam "We've been through this before, Sam. With Yellow-Eyes, and Lucifer, and Dick Roman... We both know how this ends. One of us dies.")
• Cargo Ship: It's not uncommon to see fans ship Dean with pie or the Impala. Not helping is that he calls the latter Baby.
• Catharsis Factor: Just about every major villain's downfall but especially:
  • John literally escaping from Hell and holding Azazel down long enough for Dean to straight-up kill him with the Colt is extremely satisfying, given everything the bastard pulled up until that point, as well as finally avenging Mary's death. Even better is Azazel's massive Oh, Crap! face once he realizes he's utterly screwed.
    Dean: That was for our mom...you son of a bitch.
  • Overlapping with Take That, Scrappy!, Ruby suffering a short but painful death, courtesy of Dean, with help from Sam, brought much rejoicing from fans who were sick and tired of seeing her not-so-subtly manipulate Sam. The fact that it happens right after she engages in a very smug round of Evil Gloating is the icing on the cake.
  • Abaddon is one of the evilest and most egotistical demons in the series whose lethal brutality is rivaled by few, so when Dean manages to overpower her, wiping the smug smile from her face as he finally kills her with the First Blade, watching him go Ax-Crazy on her corpse is somewhat cathartic as the cruel demon is finally dead but by that point, Dean was just stabbing an empty vessel and was falling further under the corrupting effects of the Mark of Cain, thus the moment is almost subverted.
  • Okay, let's be honest here, Lucifer's death in "Let the Good Times Roll" is made of this trope, as we finally see him pay for all the trouble he's caused for Sam and Dean and their feud with him has finally reached an end after plaguing them for their whole lives.
  • Last but not least, there's God Himself. When the ever cruel deity is stripped of all His power and immortality by Jack and condemned to grow old, die, and be remembered by no one, it feels extremely fitting, given all the cosmic havoc He wreaked, lives He ruined/erased, and manipulation and torment He levied against the Winchesters; He faces the punishments He fears the most, and those are to walk in the shoes of what he saw as his own failed creation and to never be worshipped again.
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • Back in the show's heyday, John Winchester was mostly seen as a flawed yet ultimately benevolent parent who did what he thought was necessary to keep his sons safe, even if it strained his relationship with them. However, come The New '10s, with the public becoming more aware of how deep the effects of child neglect are, many have turned around on their original perception of John and deemed him an absolutely horrible parent who ruined his sons' lives due to his obsession with avenging his dead wife. As a result, John is now the most controversial character in the entire series, with fans split over whether or not he's a good portrayal of Parents as People or the worst father in the world.
  • Jo received tons of hate when the show was in its prime, particularly among fans who shipped Dean with Sam, with many finding her a dull and uninteresting Damsel in Distress and a poor Love Interest for Dean. As a result, she was written out of the show shortly after the second season. However, her return in season five, in which she received an incredibly emotional death scene and an epic final stand won some people over. This only increased with time, with fans new to the series being confused as to why Jo received so much hatred, causing old fans to look back at her character and actually agree that she wasn't as bad as they made her out to be. Nowadays, a lot of her previous hate has been chalked up to "Wincest" shippers who just weren't happy that their ship wouldn't happen.
• The Chris Carter Effect: Many fans agree the show was hit with this during Seasons 6-7. Since Eric Kripke stepped down as showrunner after Season 5, fans in general have become increasingly less happy with the course the show is taking, feeling that new showrunner Sera Gamble has abolished most of the important plot threads and popular secondary characters that were a large part of the show's success and is now relying purely on a series of one-shot guest stars to maintain viewers. Judging by the ratings, it didn't really work out well. However, general consensus seems to be that since Sera Gamble's departure and Jeremy Carver's debut, the show — while still not as good as the earliest seasons — has managed to get back on track, having completely abandoned the boring Leviathan mythology, and returning to the Angel and Demon mythology.
• Crack Pairing: The show's fandom runs on this. Examples include: Michael/Lucifer, Bobby/Raphael, Dean/The Impala, Dean/Pie, Dean/Dean from a bad future, Castiel/Casifer, Castiel/Claire Novak, Gabriel/Sam...the list is very long.
• Creepy Awesome: Azazel, Alastair, Death, and Abaddon have been big hits with fans, either because or in spite of the fact that they're all incredibly unsettling on-screen. Although most of those listed are evil, though, Death manages to be both Creepy Awesome and largely benevolent... or at least he helps the Winchesters from time to time.
• Critical Dissonance: The show as a whole has always received fairly positive reviews, yet many fans view the series as a mess that varies between being genuinely good, mediocre, So Bad, It's Good, and just bad. This is mostly seen when looking at the response to the series finale: critics and the general audience have given the finale generally positive reviews, calling it an overall satisfying conclusion, while fans (particularly those engaging in transformative fandom) have been more divided, with some calling it one of the worst series finales ever.
• Designated Villain:
  • The Phoenix from "Frontierland," who was perfectly justified in killing the people he did and doesn't want to hurt anyone else. But Dean says he's a monster, and they need his ashes to kill Eve, so he's played as one anyway.
  • Balthazar in "My Heart Will Go On" is portrayed as being the villain because he changed the past by un-sinking the Titanic, even though it seems to have had exclusively positive consequences. The only downside was the deaths of people who wouldn't have been alive at all otherwise.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Castiel displays awkward traits that the other angels in the series don't have. Such as missing social cues, speaking in an overly sophisticated manner, and by his own admission, having "rusty" "people skills." One could interpret Castiel as on the autism spectrum because of these traits, though it's never outright confirmed in the series.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Many fans still believe Ruby actually loved Sam. It is implied that she did, in some twisted way, hope that they could rule under Lucifer together. Doesn't make her any less evil, though.
  • The fanbase tends to focus on the Trickster's humorous qualities and Heel–Face Turn, ignoring the enormous body count that his "jokes" leave behind him. This may be because he killed a grand total of two people on-screen — but remember that he was on Earth as the Trickster and viciously killing/traumatizing people he thought deserved to be taught a lesson for millennia. The Trickster turned out to be decent enough to try to stop his brother, but at best he was a seriously sadistic Knight Templar.
  • Lucifer gets this from quite a few fans, especially after the "Hallucifer" episodes that portrayed him as much funnier than he was initially; fans tend to forget that what was portrayed there was not his actual personality. His "humor", woobie and unfavorite roles that compare him to Sam, and the idea that God and Heaven are all jerks are all played up in these interpretations of him, while ignoring or downplaying the terrible things he did.
  • The Darkness is getting a lot of this, with a worrying amount of fans claiming that her attempt to destroy Creation wasn't so bad by arguing that either she's really just misguided and not evil, or even more disturbingly, that beings as powerful as her have the right to do whatever they want, no matter how many people die in the process.
  • Some fans demonize Sam and Dean for being angry at Castiel for his betrayal despite the fact he was responsible for Sam being pulled from Hell without a soul, lied to them about it, allowed them to work for Crowley to get Sam's soul when he knew it wasn't possible and that his plan to absorb the souls of purgatory was so extreme it inspired an Even Evil Has Standards moment from Balthazar. He is also responsible for bringing back Sam's traumatic memories of being tortured by Lucifer which even Cas aconowledges Dean has every right to hate him for.
• Dry Docking: Despite the intense Shipping culture of the fandom, and just how many of the top ships are various permutations of Sam-Dean-Cas, there still exists fans who are staunchly against shipping specific characters period.

E to L

• Ending Fatigue: The show aired for fifteen years in its entirety, leaving several moments where it feels like the story will end only for the season finale to introduce a new plot hook or threat at the very last minute:
  • The Biblical Apocalypse in Season 5 was intended to be the show's original ending. After the brothers defy their destiny to kill each other, Sam sacrifices himself to stop Lucifer and Michael, and Dean retires from hunting, but the show was renewed for a sixth season, forcing the writers to undo that resolution and put the brothers back on the road.
  • Season 11 sees yet another end-of-the-world scenario, coinciding with the brothers finally reconciling their personal issues with each other after many seasons of fighting, incorporates The Reveal of the universe's God, and is ultimately resolved with a very happy ending, as Dean's choice to talk things out with the Darkness, results in a happy ending where she and God make up and leave Earth be—but then Sam gets shot by the British Men of Letters because there's still four seasons left.
  • The penultimate episode of Season 15 has Sam and Dean in their darkest moment where they actually give up after God erases everyone in existence except for them and Jack. However they are able to outsmart the Big Bad, who they leave powerless, and save the world for a final time before riding off into the sunset while a montage plays of the many moments and characters in the show, the Winchester brothers finally feeling free and happy. And then it's followed by one last episode which is very controversial due to killing off Dean in an anticlimactic way.
• Escapist Character: Charlie is a female geek (like much of the show's fandom) who's smart, pretty, capable, and just vulnerable and flawed enough to be likable. She even gets picked up in Sam's big, strong arms over the course of the episode. She's a lesbian, so there's no chance she'll interfere with the Sam/Dean ship and be castigated by the fandom for it.
• Esoteric Happy Ending:
  • The series ends with Dean dying on a hunt, while Sam goes on to get married, have a son named Dean, and eventually die at an old age, at which point the two reunite in heaven. This is treated as a happy ending, yet it plays out like Sam and Dean doing nothing for decades but wait around for Sam to die: all the audience is shown is Dean driving around heaven by himself and Sam raising his son, with no suggestion that the two have any other relationships or even interests during this time. This also comes off as implying that the show's theme of "family don't end in blood" was a lie and none of Sam and Dean's non-blood relationships meant anything to them.
  • The decision to kill off Dean at all also falls under this trope. After fighting for years to finally achieve the free will he wanted, and after Castiel sacrificed his life and sentenced himself to an eternity of damnation to keep him alive, giving him an entire speech about his intent to let him discover that new purpose, Dean dies before he gets a chance to do anything with it. He then ends up in Heaven, a place that he was previously shown to have decidedly mixed feelings about, right next door to his parents, with whom he has a difficult relationship. Some fans also felt that treating Dean's death and ascent to heaven as a happy ending sent the Accidental Aesop that "some people are too broken to ever find peace in life."
  • Despite the ending having Bobby explain how Jack fixed Heaven, people have taken issue with the fact he didn't do the same to the Earth. Not only did he do nothing to save Dean, but with all his power he could have easily cured all the monsters so that Sam and Dean wouldn't have needed to hunt anymore. Since he didn't, that means he has done nothing to make humanity safe and instead allows monsters to carry on like they did when Chuck was in charge. Plus characters like Garth won't go to Heaven to be reunited with the Winchesters and instead will end up in Purgatory where they will be hunted for eternity.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Many characters who only appeared in a few episodes and/in one season tend to pop up in lots of fanfic. Rufus, Jo, Ellen, Pamela, Jimmy, Lisa, Ben, Balthazar, Eileen pop up all the time in fanfic.
  • After Jack became the new God, did he bring any of the angels besides Castiel back from the Empty? And what is Heaven like after he knocked down the walls and let people interact with each other?
  • Dean making it to Heaven in the finale despite the previous ban against people who'd been to Hell getting there indicates Jack changed the rules of Heaven. This, combined with Rowena deciding "people end up where they belong," makes it possible some characters tricked into selling their souls, such as Bela and Borrower Witch Elizabeth (assuming she had fully sold her soul in the first place), might have made it to Heaven.
  • What became of God after being Brought Down to Normal and left alone by the Winchesters and Jack? Did he eventually have a Heel Realization or does he continue being an Entitled Bastard who refused to take responsibility of his actions?
  • The Time Skip in the finale was deliberately left ambiguous, with the actors saying they envisioned it as being several years of casual hunts, leaving fans plenty of space to envision what could have happened.
• Fan Nickname: There are dozens of these. A lot of them were coined by Television Without Pity, and some of them (mostly Sam and Dean's nicknames) even make it on the show.
  • Due to the parallel between the two sets of brothers, Television Without Pity have dubbed Sam and Dean collectively "The Hardy Boys". This was actually used in "Abandon All Hope..." and "A Very Supernatural Christmas".
  • Sam and Dean also have their own individual nicknames on Television Without Pity: Dean is known as "El Deano" or "Dashing El Deano", "Ducky Lips" (A.K.A Dean's pouty mouth), and "Li'l Stumpy" (referring to his bowlegs and his lack of height in comparison to Sam). Sam has been dubbed "Sasquatch", "Moose", "Gigantor", and "Sam the Ginormotron", all in reference to his height; "Puppy", and "Darling Sammy". "RoboSam" was used to refer to Sam without a soul in Season 6.
  • John: Daddy Shut Up/Shut Up Daddy—a nickname applied to John on Television Without Pity, who has taken a lot of heat across the forums and in the recaps for his actions (or non-actions) and the consequences of those on the show. Also "Papa Winchester".
  • The Impala is known as "The Metallicar" in fan circles, in part for the type of music that is often played on its stereo. Also from Television Without Pity, but it's even been picked up by TV Guide. It's also the Trope Namer for Metallicar Syndrome. When Sam merged with the Impala in "Changing Channels", fans dubbed it the "Sampala".
  • The show's creator, Eric Kripke, is nicknamed "the Kripkeeper".
  • In the early days, Meg was called "Demon!Meg" to tell her apart from her host (who was called "Human!Meg" or "Real!Meg" for the same reason). Most of the fandom has stopped doing this because demon!Meg rose into much greater prominence than her first host and stuck around way longer, to the point that nowadays it's generally expected that when you're talking about Meg, you're talking about the demon who possessed her instead of the human herself. As with Ruby, you may also find people discussing the differences between "Blonde Meg", "Meg 1.0", or "Nikki's Meg" for the first-season version of the character, "Evil!Sam" or "Meg 2.0" for the second-season version of the character, and "Brunette Meg" or "Rachel's Meg" for the last incarnation.
  • YED is a common fan abbreviation for the Yellow-Eyed Demon.
  • In the style of Azazel's Fan Nickname, there's CRD (crossroads demon) and RED (Red-Eyed Demon) for crossroad demons in general. The specific crossroads demon who appears in "Crossroad Blues", "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part Two", and "Bedtime Stories" is also sometimes called "Dean's crossroads demon" (even on This Very Wiki), since there are multiple crossroads demons and she mainly appears to Dean.
  • Fans use nicknames to differentiate between the actresses portraying Ruby. "Blonde Ruby", "Old Ruby", and "Ruby 1.0" refer to Ruby as portrayed by her original actress, Katie Cassidy. "Brunette Ruby" (or "Dark Ruby"), "New Ruby", and "Ruby 2.0" refer to Ruby as played by Katie's replacement, Genevieve Padalecki. To a lesser extent, Anna Williams' Ruby is called "Secretary Ruby" or "Ruby 1.5" and Michelle Hewitt-Williams' Ruby is "Maid Ruby" or "Ruby 3.0".
  • Castiel: Cas, Clairestiel (when possessing Jimmy Novak's daughter Claire's body), Thingstiel (Castiel's celestial form), Godstiel (after Castiel declared himself God).
  • Alastair: Fake Brando. A Television Without Pity-coined nickname for Hell's best torturer in Season 4, who, no matter what host he is in, always sounds like he's doing an incredibly horrible Marlon Brando impression.
  • Lucifer: Lucy; Samifer—Lucifer in Sam's body; Markifer—Lucifer in Nick's body (named for actor Mark Pellegrino); Hallucifer—Sam's hallucinations of Lucifer; Casifer—Lucifer in Castiel's vessel.
  • Sam has frequently been referred to as Moose and Puppy by the fandom at large. Some even refer to Sam as Sasquatch, Jolly Giant, and Jörmungandr (which is also known as The World Serpant).
  • Deanmon or demon!Dean for Dean as of the season 9 finale.
  • Sam has a particular look of disapproval (usually directed at Dean) that fans call his "bitchface". The expression is never named or described in the show proper, but the script for "Nightmare" calls it "a dry 'fuck you' look".
  • After "Despair" aired, fans annoyed by the Bury Your Gays treatment given to Castiel took to jokingly calling The Empty "Super Hell", "Ultra Hell", "Mega Hell", "Turbo Hell", or "Super Ultra Mega Turbo Hell", although it has little in common with Hell.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Although the main characters are paired up with various women over the course of the show's run, the most popular pairing was Wincest (Sam/Dean) early on and then Destiel (Dean/Castiel):
  • For the first three seasons, Wincest was the most popular ship in the fandom by a wide margin. Part of this was that there were basically no other recurring characters to pair them up with in these early seasons that weren't father figures or women who always ended up dead, evil, and/or hated by many fans, but part of it was also that Sam and Dean's relationship was consistently depicted as the most important thing in both of their lives with them willingly giving up everything else to save each other's lives on multiple occasions. The ship's popularity was even acknowledged in-universe in a season 4 episode where Sam and Dean learn that fanfiction has been written about them and are hilariously squicked out by it.
  • Starting in season 4, Dean/Castiel (or "Destiel") exploded in popularity and eventually took Sam/Dean's place as the fandom's most popular ship. Like with Sam/Dean, it attracted fans with its depiction of an emotionally intense relationship between two good-looking males who regularly risked everything to protect one another and made heartfelt declarations about how much they needed each other, but unlike Sam/Dean, it wasn't an incestuous ship and it had the added draw of being an Interspecies Romance between a human and an angel which made it more widely appealing to viewers. It became so popular that it's been the most written-for pairing on Archive of Our Own from all fandoms since 2015 and it got a Shout-Out in a season 10 episode where the characters attend a fan convention that includes a fan putting on a Destiel-centric play. Eventually it was revealed in the third-to-last episode that it is canon after all on at least Castiel's end, though whether Dean reciprocates is left completely ambiguous (and fully reciprocated in the Spanish version, making it no longer an example of this).
• Fandom-Specific Plot: Quite commonplace. For more specifics, see the main page.
  • For a very specific example that borders on Memetic Mutation, the infamous Alpha/Beta/Omega (or ABO for short) subgenre of erotica, which eventually became so popular that entire lawsuits were fought over who gets to claim credit for the idea, ultimately stems from an example of this within the Supernatural Real-Person Fic community. More detail on its origins can be found here.
• Fountain of Memes:
  • Despite (or perhaps because of) his Spock Speak, almost every other line out of Castiel's mouth is meme gold.
  • Dean is also a fountain of gifs because of his priceless expressions.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Superwholock. At least until the Superfandom practically collapsed in the wake of DashCon.
  • With Good Omens for some small reason.
  • With Voltron: Legendary Defender following Season 15, Episode 18, due to both shows featuring egregious instances of Bury Your Gays and a finale that smacks of Aesop Amnesia and Diabolus ex Machina.
• Growing the Beard:
  • While Season 1 was really quite good, "Devil's Trap" (or perhaps its first half — "Salvation") is widely believed to be the point when the show started to hit its stride.
  • For specific eras, Jeremy Carver's turn as showrunner seems to have accomplished this around the time the "Men of Letters" subplot was introduced in Season 8, after a spotty first half which left fans feeling that the Seasonal Rot that had really set in during the previous year was just continuing on.
  • While fan opinion on Andrew Dabb's writing is decidedly mixed, the addition of Jack Kline was well-received as it gave the Winchester brothers and Castiel a new source of conflict, with them getting to act as surrogate/adopted parents to a young man rather than another endless round of Daddy or Mommy issues. It would appear that the show ran so long, it avoided the dreaded Cousin Oliver syndrome and fans welcomed a younger main character.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Bobby's outburst in "Lucifer Rising" — "[Family] is supposed to make you miserable, you idiot! That's why they're family!" — becomes pretty cringe-worthy when you find out what his childhood was like in "Death's Door".
  • Sam's words to Dean in the Season 6 episode, "Let it Bleed" about erasing Lisa and Ben's memories of Dean: Dean, I've seen you pull some shady crap before, but this has got to be the worst..." Come Season 9, Dean has tricked Sam into allowing the angel Ezekiel to possess him, and keeping knowledge of the fact from Sam.
  • Dean's nightmare in "Dream a Little Dream of Me" has him confronting a version of himself who has died after his deal has expired, has gone to Hell, and become a demon, with the demon Dean screaming "You're going to die! This is what you're going to become!" Although he doesn't become a demon following his death at the end of Season 3, he does become one at the end of Season 9.
  • Lucifer's whole Season 5 attempt to bring about the apocalypse came from a deep disgust at humanity, and resentment that God threw him down into Hell for it. In "Don't Call Me Shurley", it turns out that Chuck has actually come around to agreeing with his favorite son about the toxicity of human nature since then, which explains why he was willing to let Lucifer burn it all down and why he's willing to let Amara wipe everything out now. It also explains why Chuck refuses to see Lucifer as the bad guy.
  • The entirety of Chuck's quasi-friendship with the Winchesters becomes this in the Season 14 finale, where he flips out at Dean's refusal to kill Jack, murders the poor boy himself, and then kicks off The End of the World as We Know It out of spite.
  • Arguably this can apply to the fandom's love and devotion to Chuck, as the they considered him a genuinely likable character before the reveal that he was God, leaving to the famous jokes of interchanging " Thank God" to " Thank Chuck", so having him become a Big Bad despite no build up whatsoever comes off as bizarre and a bit shocking.
  • Throughout the series, it's been said in a joking manner that Castiel has a crush on Dean. Come Season 15, not only does this turn out to be true, but confessing his love to Dean gets Cas killed by the Shadow.
  • In the sixth episode of Season 1, Dean says Sam's alright for lying and the truth sucks. That one came back to haunt them as the two lying to one another in later seasons has far more dramatic effects.
  • "Cas, are you God?" Harmless in the fifth season finale. Too bad it was foreshadowing for the sixth.
  • Dean's line to Bela in "Red Sky at Morning": "What, Daddy not hug you enough?" Then you find out Daddy hugged her a little too much, to put it extremely lightly.
  • This innocuous exchange in Season 8 in light of Season 10 where Crowley's mother casts a mortal curse on Castiel.
    Crowley: Where's your angel?
    Dean: Ask your mother.
  • Virgil's attack on Misha Collins in "The French Mistake" becomes much harder to watch after the real Misha was attacked and mugged in August 2015.
  • Gabriel shutting up Cas in "Changing Channels" by causing duct tape to appear on his mouth was funny. Not so much after "Devil's Bargain", where Gabriel's mouth had been crudely sewn shut by Asmodeus.
  • "The End," an episode set after an apocalypse caused by an out-of-control virus, includes a joke where Future Chuck advises Dean, "You hoard toilet paper. Hoard it like it's made of gold." Hoarding of toilet paper and other necessary supplies actually was a massive problem early on during the COVID-19 pandemic, with some people even buying up huge quantities of in-demand items like toilet paper and hand sanitizer in order to profit off the artificial scarcity.
  • In "My Heart Will Go On", Balthazar bragging how, thanks to his meddling with the timeline, Céline Dion is now a "destitute lounge singer somewhere in Quebec" can sound extra mean-spirited since Dion was diagnosed with a rare and crippling neurological disorder in 2022. Presumably in the new timeline, she would have to deal with that in addition to being destitute.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: It's treated as a joke when the Prophet Chuck thinks that he made the lives of the Winchesters so horrible and apologizes for it, but then it's revealed that Chuck is God, and he was sincerely apologizing. But then the Season 14 finale and Season 15 reveals he was telling the truth about being a "cruel, capricious god", but not the apology.
  • Kelly believing in her unborn son, that he's a force of good becomes this when Jack not only proves to be an extremely valuable ally to Team Free Will, he ends up becoming God.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • Gabriel, due to numerous fake-outs in previous episodes leading them to theorize that he faked his death again, the fact that God repeatedly resurrects Castiel for choosing to fight against the Apocalypse and Gabriel choosing the same thing in the end, and constant teases that he might not really be dead and rumors that writers are trying figure out how to bring him back to the show he does return as a Metatron construct on S9 episode 'Metafiction', however, his status is left ambiguous. Time will only tell if he'll be back for good. As of "Devil's Bargain", he's back, but it turns out that he's Asmodeus' prisoner, who wants him to kill Lucifer.
  • Linda Tran for some. Eventually turns out that she wasn't hiding, she'd been kidnapped and held hostage, but is still very much alive.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Before taking the part of Dean, Jensen Ackles appeared in the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde, where he played the lover of Patrick Dempsey's character... a man named Cass. Later on the show reveals that this show's Cas(s) is also in love with Dean.
  • In "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester", Castiel coldly tells Dean that he's "not here to perch on [Dean's] shoulder". Cas spends the rest of the series displaying a complete lack of regard for Dean's personal space; when the two of them aren't having a conversation face-to-face, Cas is usually seen (metaphorically) hovering by Dean's shoulder.
  • In Road Trip, Gadreel possessing Sam kills an angel possessing a teen idol inspired by Justin Bieber. Jared Padalecki is somewhat infamous for having a Twitter rivalry with Bieber, and had just tweeted against the singer a few days before the episode aired.
  • In "Mannequin III: the Reckoning", Dean muses that as they're going to New Jersey they might see Snooki. When Sam asks, "What's a Snooki?" Dean quips, "That's a good question." Snooki turns out to be a crossroads demon in Season 9's "Blade Runners."
  • In one episode, the brothers finds a picture of their father holding a bat. The actor would later join The Walking Dead as Negan who enjoys killing people with a bat.
  • "The French Mistake" gets a lot of mileage about how the show is on Season 6, and how long Jared and Jensen have been playing their characters. This is either funnier or harsher in hindsight given the show went on to run more than twice that long, with the end finally announced at Season 15.
  • Season 8 "Hunteri Heroici" has a character named Fred Jones who exists as a Shout-Out to Scooby-Doo. Season 13's "Scoobynatural" is a full-blown crossover where they meet the real Fred Jones himself.
  • Long before the episode "Scoobynatural" was made, this meme existed.
  • Season 13 in 2018 introduced a demon named Asmodeus, and then later had the crossover episode "ScoobyNatural". The very next year, the actual Scooby Gang would deal with a ghost/demon called Asmodeus.
  • In "Frontierland" Sam's alias is Walker, Texas Ranger. A few months after it was announced that S15 would be the last season, Jared Padalecki was slated to produce and star as Cordell Walker in a reboot of the series.
  • Season 11's "Don't Call Me Shurley", written by Robbie Thompson, has Metatron panicking after insulting Supernatural, taking it back and claiming it deserved a reboot. Sure enough, after the show ended on an extremely controversial note, it was announced a few months later that it would be receiving a prequel produced by Jensen Ackles with Thompson as one of the main showrunners.
    Metatron: I didn't mean what I said about Supernatural! It's underrated, due for a reboot!
  • Dean in "Bad Day At Black Rock" at one points jokes "I'm Batman!". Fast forward fourteen years later and Jensen Ackles really is Batman. Even before this, he had portrayed a former sidekick of Batman. And Jeffrey Dean Morgan would also play Batman's father in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Even better is that same episode introduced Bela, played by Lauren Cohan who would go on to play Bruce's mother in the same film as Morgan.
  • In "The Real Ghostbusters" Chuck has a throwaway background line where he talks about how he finally lost his virginity, only for the girl to then go around telling everyone that it "didn't count". The reveal that he's God insinuates that he is in fact talking about the Virgin Mary and her immaculate conception turns this into a downright hilarious moment, especially considering the ambiguity of Jesus and the new testament in Supernatural.
  • Raphael claiming God Is Dead becomes incredibly ironic come the reveal that the Prophet he's protecting, Chuck Shurley, is God in disguise. On that note, Castiel interacting with Chuck while trying to find God and Zachariah threatening Chuck.
• Incest Yay Shipping: During the first three seasons, Wincest (Sam/Dean) was the uncontested juggernaut ship of the fandom, largely owing to their actors' chemistry, the characters' devotion to each other, and a lack of recurring love interests who were both liked by the audience and not dead. Although its popularity has since been eclipsed by Dean/Castiel, it remains one of the two most popular ships. Further examples can be found here.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Any hunter on the show would qualify, since hunters are usually created when their normal lives are ripped apart by some supernatural monster. Rather than drown in despair and alcohol, they pack up their lives, hit the road and chase those monsters.
  • Castiel, especially in Season 5 when he's falling. But even after he's re-angelfied and accepted into Heaven, he finds that he has to become the figurehead for an incredibly personal civil war between his brothers, and he's more or less had to go it alone.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The existence of angels was supposed to be a major plot twist in Season 4, but now anyone who knows anything about the show knows what Castiel is.
  • Crowley becomes the King of Hell.
  • Even nonfans are aware that Castiel confesses his love for Dean and is immediately killed off right afterwards due to its unfortunate timing with the 2020 presidential elections.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The show has had no small amount of nefarious villains and monstrous demons literally from Hell, but John Winchester, Sam and Dean's less than stellar father, tends to get far more flack than all of them put together, to the point that the announcement that the prequel series, The Winchesters, would be about him and Mary immediately made fans cry foul. The reasoning is simple—no one in real life will ever meet a demon like Crowley or Lucifer, but many fans have had abusive or problematic fathers that they see in John.
• Jerkass Woobie
  • Gabriel. It's rather sad when you consider that, given how easily Castiel recognized him while the latter was being assaulted and blinked away in order to keep him from alerting the Winchesters, that he has probably never had any interaction with his family since he left them to avoid the fighting. He finally shows some loyalty (to humans) and is killed by Lucifer. (To those who haven't forgotten his truly Jerkass tendencies in all the other episodes he's appeared in, his Karmic Death is indeed karmic.)
  • Bela Talbot. Despite being a selfish person, some fans feel sorry for her because of her backstory. She was sexually abused by her father as a young girl and made a deal to stop the abuse. She's then killed and Dragged Off to Hell, presumably for eternity.
  • Meg becomes this in Seasons 7 and 8.
  • Crowley. It turned out that his mother, Rowena, sired him at a solstice winter orgy, so he didn't know his father, she later abandoned at the age of 8, tried to sell him for two pigs (when he was worth at least three)…
• Karmic Overkill: Bela Talbot was a notoriously irritating thief who constantly backstabbed and made life hell for the Winchester brothers, showed no concern that her actions could end up getting several people killed, and frequently got away with her actions, causing many fans to bay for her blood. When karma finally catches up with her however, it's revealed that she made a deal with a demon as a child to kill her sexually abusive parents, and all her past actions were simply a way to get out of said deal. Her final scene consists of her crying alone as she waits for hellhounds to kill her and drag her to Hell. Even those who desperately desired to see Bela get punished for her actions thought that this was way too brutal and cruel even for her.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • There's a reason this show gets coverage on AfterElton.com. As of Season 9, the show also has at least one openly gay writer, Robert Berens. Over time however this relationship has soured, culminating in Destiel becoming canon going memetic for being one of the fastest Bury Your Gays moments ever.
  • The series finale confirming that Sam and Dean were Heterosexual Life-Partners even after Dean's death has drawn in a number of aromantic and asexual fans who view the show as a compelling example of how your most important relationship doesn't have to be a romantic or sexual one.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Dean. Let's see — he generates a disturbing amount of Ho Yay with any male he's in the room with, has enough tension with everyone from Bela to Lucifer, and every straight woman on the show (except his own mother and Ellen) will attempt to get him into bed at least once. The writers haven't been helping, either!
  • Castiel. If he's not being shipped with either one of the Winchesters, he's being shipped with Meg (Megstiel), Crowley (Crowstiel), or any and all of his angel brothers from Balthazar to Lucifer. And that's not even counting the people who ship him with Claire Novak, Jimmy Novak, Misha Collins, or even Castiel as God and Castiel as a Leviathan.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • The main trio have died so many times and always come back that any drama about them being in mortal danger is severely undercut. Even if they die, they'll be back.
  • Still arguably Subverted by the ending of Season 3, which still shocks unspoiled people who assume that some last-minute solution will be had for Dean's deal. And even new viewers who know that somehow Dean will return, still find the vision of him in Hell to be shocking.
  • Subverted with 15x18 and the series finale 'Carry On' where Castiel and Dean respectively die and don't come back to life. Both end up being in Heaven according to the final episode.
• Love to Hate:
  • Azazel, the original Big Bad. He's responsible for a majority of events in the series and practically ruined Sam and Dean's lives, however he's well-loved by fans for his scheming nature, dark charisma, and being the Winchester brothers' most personal enemy. Some were actually disappointed that he didn't live past Season 2.
  • Meg Masters, particularly in Season 1. She rivals her father, the aforementioned Azazel, in being a manipulative snake, yet her charisma, badassery, and endless snark make her quite entertaining to watch.
  • Zachariah. He's a Jerkass of the highest order and a massive Smug Snake, although he tends to be seen as one of the show's best antagonists due to how punchable he is.

M to Z

• Memetic Molester: Meg, Azazel, Alastair, Lucifer, and Crowley tend to be seen as sexually harassing/abusing other characters (with a focus on the Winchesters), or just as sexual and creepy in general. Justified in the cases of Lucifer and Alastair, who have actually both been implied to be rapists in-universe.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Fans seem to forget that deals with the Devil are rarely a good thing and Sam and Dean are morally complex characters.
  • Some say that Dean being the vessel that Michael needs makes him a special snowflake while at the same time robbing him of agency. The whole point of bringing it up was so that he could reject it and continue to fight in the human way.
• Moe:
  • Cloud Cuckoo Lander Hunter Garth Fitzgerald IV, The Fool who once questions a pre-teen suspect with a sock puppet.
  • Kevin Tran, the Badass Adorable, Momma's Boy prophet who's Afraid of Needles and wants to be the first Asian-American president, before getting involved with the Winchesters.
  • Jo (albeit not right away), due to being a Cute Bruiser who goes through a couple of grim ordeals (something her actress is good at being expressive for), has some interesting Like Brother and Sister interactions with the Winchesters, and rejects a Must Not Die a Virgin proposition in a funny and memorable way.
  • The combination of nervous vulnerability and cute ramblings that Ava Wilson displays in her first episode is just adorable, although by her second and final appearance, she is in full Corrupt the Cutie mode.
  • A lot of the adoration and protective feelings Sarah Blake elicits from the fanbase in her two episodes has to do with her lovely smile, quiet but firm determination to help people, and the way she can combine concern and witty optimism in the same scene.
  • One-Shot Character Jenny Klein is quite endearing, given her sunny demeanor, cupcake-baking tendencies and the confused way she replies "Ew" when accused of sleeping with her womanizing boss.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Zachariah used to be Jerkass-personified, even if they were (arguably)well-intentioned. And there could be some (flimsy) rationale behind their motives as presented in the Season 4 finale. But they showed that Light Is Not Good in the Season 5 premiere, when they threatened to cripple Bobby for life, removed Sam's lungs, and gave Dean Stage 4 stomach cancer, all to give Dean incentive to work with him. For what it's worth, Dean tells them to fuck off, each and every time.
  • Samuel Campbell selling his own grandsons out to Crowley in "Caged Heat" is seen as his crossing-over the Moral Event Horizon, in- and out-of-universe.
  • Lilith, the Big Bad of Seasons 3 & 4, either crosses this when she massacres a police station that Sam and Dean has just saved or possessing the body of a little girl and killing members of her family for angering her, and then allowing Dean to get mauled to death by a Hellhound while laughing.
  • Alastair crosses the line off screen when he tortures Dean for three months (thirty years in Hell-time), offering him the chance to be free of the torment if Dean tortures some souls himself. Dean eventually relents, which was part of Alastair's plan to break the first seal imprisoning Satan.
  • Dick Roman, the Big Bad of Season 7, crosses the line when he kills Bobby Singer, and unlike with Satan (mentioned below), he didn't get better.
  • Abaddon, a secondary villain of Season 8, and one of the Big Bads of Season 9, crosses the line when she forces Dean to surrender his grandfather in exchange for Sam, and then going back on the deal anyway. It is later shown that she actually crossed it much earlier when she possessed the wife of her mentor Cain, and then tricking him into killer her.
  • Metatron, one of the Big Bads of Season 9, not only causes the fall of the angels and blames it on Castiel, ultimately crosses the line when he orders Gadreel to kill Kevin Tran, an sympathetic teenager, which hurts Dean so bad he considers killing Sam just so Gadreel dies. Metatron even crosses it when he kills Dean in front of Sam, resulting in Dean coming back as a violent & sadistic demon.
  • Bartholomew proves himself to be no better than Metatron when he tortures and kills and angel despite Castiel's protests.
  • Despite what the fangirls may say about him, Lucifer himself has done several things that prove he is nothing more but an irredeemable monster:
    • Torturing the above mentioned Lilith into becoming the first demon.
    • Causing the events of the series by having Azazel find his vessel, which resulted in the death of Mary Winchester among other tragedies.
    • Blowing up Castiel for molotoving Michael with holy fire, because "nobody dicks with Michael but him", snapping Bobby's neck (he got better), and then beating Dean to a bloody pulp, all while wearing Sam's body.
    • Torturing Sam's soul in a fit of rage after being locked up in his cage again.
    • After God leaves Earth with Amara, Lucifer takes out his rage by murdering innocent humans for fun.
    • And in case you still thought that there was still hope for him, Lucifer truly crosses the line for good when he kills an innocent refugee named Maggie, and even states with a smirk on his face that he enjoyed it. When his son Jack rightfully calls him a monster, Lucifer goes completely insane, steals Jack's powers for himself, tries to force Sam and Jack to kill each other, and just when you think he couldn't get any worse, proclaims his intentions of destroying the universe, remaking it in his own image, and ruling over it as the new God. All this, combined with his above actions, make his death at the hands of Dean immensely satisfying.
  • If having hundreds to thousands of monsters killed, even harmless ones, including human psychics, out of absolute discrimination towards them wasn't enough, Doctor Hess, one of the Big Bads of Season 12, crosses it when she has Ketch kill Mick Davies when he sides with the Winchesters, and is revealed to have crossed it decades before when she ordered student Mick and his friend Timothy to kill each other to prove that they would "execute orders without question".
  • The Alternate version of Archangel Michael, the Big Bad of Seasons 13 and 14, is already over it when he's introduced, as he has decimated the Apocalypse World and desires to do the same to the main reality, but we see that he's not fucking around anymore when he sends Kevin Tran as a suicide bomber filled with Angel Grace. And if he didn't cross it either then or when he kills Gabriel, then he definitely crosses it when he goes back on his deal with Dean, by taking full control of Dean's body after he powered him up in order to kill Lucifer.
  • Chuck arguably crossed it with locking his sister away for billions of years, the creation of Hell and/or Purgatory, or locking his son, Lucifer, away in the Cage (it's up for debate). However, he unambiguously does so when he murders his own grandson and decides to end the world just to spite the Winchesters.
• Older Than They Think: To most Christian viewers, and other Westerners, Lucifer's origin story probably sounds unique. It's actually taken directly from Islam. The idea of Satan refusing to honor humanity in turn can be traced to the apocryphal Life of Adam and Eve written circa 1st Century A.D./C.E.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Samhain gets summoned and sent back to Hell to never be seen again within the same episode, but he leaves a hell of an impression.
  • In "Bad Seed" has two memorable minor characters who only appear in one and two scenes respectively: an unnamed demon who shares a drink with an angel in a bar, and Claudette, a Lovable Coward witch with some funny lines.
  • The unnamed group of angels from Hell's Angel only appear for a couple of back-to-back scenes of that episode. However, their performers do a great job of selling being utterly terrified of both Lucifer and the Darkness while still having enough backbone not to submit to their silver-tongued brother easily.
• Only the Author Can Save Them Now: The show gets like this sometimes. The Winchesters have no magical abilities of their own and routinely go up against demons and monsters with telekinesis or other powers that render the boys' weapons (even the magical ones) useless, and yet something always allows the boys to pull out a win.
• Only the Creator Does It Right:
  • Many fans blamed the Seasons 6 and 7 showrunner Sera Gamble for the show's less-than-stellar state after Eric Kripke, the creator and original showrunner, stepped down (though Kripke still had some input on the show). After Season 7, Gamble also stepped down and was replaced by Jeremy Carver. Whether or not he was doing better than her was a bit of an issue amongst the fandom, but both were generally seen as being inferior to Kripke. Now that the series has ended, the number of fans who consider the first five seasons canon, "Swan Song" the real ending and everything after to be glorified fanfiction is growing.
  • A lesser example, but some fans think the way Lucifer was written in Eric Kripke's run is better than how he was written in Jeremy Carver's run. In Kripke's run, Lucifer is a Faux Affably Evil Knight Templar but with a few Hidden Depths and genuine (if not extremely twisted) care for his brothers, making him somewhat of a complex villain. In Carver's run, any semblance of a redeeming quality in Lucifer is long gone, with him becoming an openly hostile, Laughably Evil Card-Carrying Villain. The two versions of him are so different that it can sometimes be hard to remember that they're supposed to be the same character. While the Carver version is found by some to be a delightfully entertaining villain, most found the Kripke version to have deeper characterization, making him more interesting.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Season 15, while the final season of the series, tends to be more well-known for the infamous scene where Castiel declares his love for Dean, effectively rendering Destiel canon, only for him to be killed in a hilariously anticlimactic fashion almost immediately after, making for one of the fastest Bury Your Gays moments ever and pissing off both shippers and non shippers alike. Even those who didn't watch the show became aware of it due to how much it trended on social media, up to the point where it's widely considered an example of how Pandering to the Base can go horribly wrong.
• Pandering to the Base: When it comes to the female guest stars, the show is certainly guilty of this.
  • Jo was a love interest for Dean; she was hated by the fans and so got booted.
  • Bela was introduced — to say that she was hated would be an understatement — and she got ripped to pieces by Hellhounds (off-screen). It was then revealed that Katie Cassidy as Ruby had to leave too (however, that was because they didn't have the budget to pay for her return). Kripke has also ended up apologizing for the oft-reviled "Red Sky At Morning" and a few other unpopular episodes.
  • Having Castiel admit his love for Dean, followed by his Bury Your Gays death, came off as a toxic mix of pandering to the base and queerbaiting that managed to piss off everyone.
• Paranoia Fuel: Demonic Possession is good for a lot of this, especially since the show has made an art form out of having seemingly innocent conversations turn sinister by revealing that a person is possessed.
• Periphery Demographic: Though the show was seemingly aimed at general audiences leaning male (indeed, it was once stated that the first two seasons were the most requested DVDs by armed forces in the Middle East), it attracted quite a few female fans (as well as LGBTQ men) interested in the attractive, angsty male cast and their homoeroticism with one another.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: With all their touchy-feely clinginess and suicidal co-dependent devotion being canon, even the creator of the show has admitted that he can see why the fangirls see Ho Yay in the brothers' relationship.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • The two biggest ships in the fandom are Destiel or DeanCas (Dean/Castiel) and Wincest (Sam/Dean; the portmanteau comes from their last name Winchester and them being brothers). The show has referred to these ship names in episodes where the characters find fanfiction or fan conventions based on books written about their adventures; when Sam learns about Destiel in one of these episodes, he muses that it should be pronounced "Deastiel".
  • For those not into Destiel or Wincest, Sassy or Sastiel (Sam/Castiel) is a third option and Wincestiel (Sam/Dean/Castiel) is a fourth option.
  • Sam/Lucifer is Samifer, but this term is also used to describe when Lucifer is using Sam as a vessel in The End.
  • Sam/Gabriel is Samriel or Sabriel, the latter which can be a bit of a Mind Screw for a Supernatural fan who also enjoys the novel of the same name.
  • Other ship portmanteaus: Samby or Suby (Sam/Ruby), Megstiel (Meg/Castiel), Denny (Dean/Benny), Destiny (Dean/Castiel/Benny), Crobby (Crowley/Bobby), Samelia (Sam/Amelia), Saileen (Sam/Eileen), Calthazar (Castiel/Balthazar), and that's not even all of them for characters who've actually interacted in canon.
  • Through the 2010s, shipping culture moved more towards placing the start of the names next to each other instead of the start of one name and end of the other, much like Japanese fandoms do, though mostly because some of the ship names were too short, leading to the aforementioned Destiel also being known as "DeanCas", Wincest becoming known as "SamDean", Sastiel into "SamCas", Denny into "DeanBenny" and so forth. While most of these ship names are more or less completely synonymous with their traditional portmanteaus, "SamDean" has also become an umbrella term for any content that simply focuses on the brothers' relationship to each other, without necessarily being Incest Yay Shipping.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • While not hated, Lilith is usually seen as inferior to Azazel in the role of "Big Bad who wants to free Lucifer", mainly because she lacks the menace, charisma, and personal villainy towards the Winchester siblings that Azazel had. There's also the fact that she usually takes on little girls as her hosts, which, while occasionally genuinely creepy, means that some scenes intended to be Nightmare Fuel can be hit-or-miss depending on whether or not one finds the child actresses' performances actually scary.
  • Genevieve Cortese's Ruby is this to Katie Cassidy's portrayal. While Katie Cassidy's Ruby was not liked to begin with, Cortese's Ruby was outright hated, both due to Ruby's Badass Decay and Cortese's terrible acting.
  • Billie is this in regards to Death, as she not only replaces a beloved character that nobody wanted replaced, but she's also quite petty in regards to her attitude towards the Winchesters. While it's clear that the writers were attempting to make her as distinct as possible in regards to her predecessor, the fact remains that not only was he an Ensemble Dark Horse, but Billie simply can't compare to him in regards to sheer presence. To add insult to injury in the eyes of the fans, not only is she (obviously) much less impressive than Death, but everyone around her acts like she isn't.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Bela in "Time is on My Side". It helped that her background and her motivations were finally shown, helping viewers who were annoyed by her selfish personality understand her better and feel sympathetic. Doubles as an Alas, Poor Scrappy moment.
  • Jo. It arguably began in "Born Under a Bad Sign", when she showed up sadder, wiser, and older than before and went through an ordeal that had even some haters sympathizing with her and saying they wouldn't mind her reappearing if the writers continued to portray her as a little sister-type figure rather than as a Love Interest. The process was completed when she Took a Level in Badass, amusedly turned down a night with her old one-sided crush Dean, and made a beautifully written, horribly sad Heroic Sacrifice in Season 5. Also an Alas, Poor Scrappy.
  • Suddenly, after a whole season of hating her, fans like (or at least don't mind) Katie Cassidy's portrayal of Ruby after Genevieve Cortese showed up.
  • Metatron was rescued in "Don't Call Me Shurley", where he showed signs of improving, such as giving food to a stray dog, later acknowledging that his Face–Heel Turn was a "pitiful cry for attention" and that he was a terrible "God", and giving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to God Himself for being apathetic about all the strife and pain that has occurred in the series. And for those who doubt that he was genuine about it, those doubts are erased by his Heroic Sacrifice in the episode afterwards, where he buys time for the Winchesters and dies trying to convince the Darkness to spare the Universe, and that God meant well. Took a Level in Kindness, indeed. Just find a Metatron-related post on Tumblr, and chances are that it's comparing his Humans Are Special speech to Gabriel's from Season 5. Note that Gabriel is a 100% Ensemble Dark Horse, so the fact that the fans are comparing the two says something about how they viewed Metatron after those two episodes.
  • While not a scrappy, Charlie Bradbury, as noted above, was a Base-Breaking Character throughout Seasons 7 through 10. Her completely senseless death in "Dark Dynasty" made her more popular among fans than ever before, and her alternate counterpart being introduced in Season 13 was embraced by many. She's still alive as of "Let the Good Times Roll", having gone on a road trip with Rowena, and thus bringing up the possibility of future appearances for her.
  • Becky Rosen was introduced in Season 5 as an In-Universe Supernatural fangirl who was largely a comedic (sometimes meanspirited) acknowledgement of real life fans. While she was seen by some as annoying and a poor representation of fandom, she didn't become reviled until Season 7, when she drugs Sam with a Love Potion and forces him to marry her, with many fans pointing out that she basically intended to Date Rape him. Come Season 15, however, she's gone to therapy and come out happier, being married with children and a loving husband, and when Chuck/God shows up to condescend her, she gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, saying she doesn't need his approval anymore and criticizing his writing for being so bleak and hopeless and being horrified that he was the one who put Sam and Dean through all that trauma. While she is far from beloved, fans have admitted they didn't think they'd feel bad when Chuck kills her family in front of her and then does the same to her.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Due to how long the show's been on now, newer fans watching the earlier seasons will probably recognize Season 3's additions of Ruby and Bela respectively as Laurel Lance and Maggie Greene.
  • Many people might recognize Dr. Garrison from the Season 3 episode "Bedtime Stories" as Ted Beneke.
  • Likewise, others may recognize Duane Tanner from Season 2's "Croatoan" as either Mike Faber or Donald Ressler.
  • Tommy Collins' younger brother, from the Season 1 episode "Wendigo", is played by Alden Ehrenreich, whom people are more likely to recognize nowadays as the young Han Solo.
  • Susan Thompson from Season 2's "Playthings" may be more recognizable to fans now as Renee Walker, Tess, or even the Borg Queen.
  • Tracy Davis in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester" is played by Ashley Benson, would later become well-known as Hanna Marin.
  • Octavia Blake gets the crap beaten out of her by a possessed girl in "After School Special."
  • Leslie Odom Jr.. as Guy in "Season 7, Time for a Wedding!" is a lot more recognizable now as Aaron Burr after the success of Hamilton.
  • Sterling K. Brown, who played Gordon Walker, garnered wide acclaim for his work on This Is Us.
  • Hilary, the Littlest Cancer Patient who Dean is forced to reap when he substitutes for Death in Season 6, is Apple Bloom.
  • The teenage Claire Novak is played by Kathryn Newton who has appeared in Big Little Lies and feature films like Pokémon Detective Pikachu and Freaky.
  • Corbett the dead gay intern from "Ghostfacers" is played by Dustin Milligan, who later became famous for playing Ted on Schitt's Creek.
  • One of the teenagers who finds a dead body in the episode "Pac-Man Fever" is played by Manny Jacinto aka Jason from The Good Place.
  • Jordie Pinsky from "Thin Lizzie" is played by Finn Wolfhard aka Mike Wheeler from Stranger Things.
  • Bonnie/ Vesta from "Rock and a Hard Place" went on to play Cassandra Cillian in the cult series The Librarians 2014 one year after the episode aired.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Sam/Amelia in Season 8. Ignoring Garth isn't that much of a deal breaker, as Supernatural is the story of the Winchesters. No, what pushes this into Romantic Plot Tumor territory is that Sam and Amelia's romance serves no purpose in the story and doesn't deepen our understanding of the characters.
• Ron the Death Eater: While John Winchester was not a good parent in canon, fanfics have a tendency to make him even worse, amping up the emotional abuse well beyond what was shown in canon and adding physical abuse as well, even though Sam in "Nightmare" was explicit that John was not physically abusive.
• Sacred Cow: Seasons 1-5, specifically Eric Kripke's tenure as showrunner, are pretty universally agreed to be the golden age of the series, with everything afterwards being deemed inferior. Therefore, saying that any of the first five seasons are bad or—even worse—saying that the later seasons are better is considered a horrible sin amongst the fandom.
• The Scrappy:
  • Ruby was hated before she even debuted, thanks to inflammatory press releases claiming that she was a new hunter being introduced who was better than Sam and Dean. Fans' irritation only grew when she started to come between the brothers and seemed to be encouraging Sam's dark side, which made the brothers have their first real rift in their relationship (and made fans take sides with their preferred brother, breaking the fanbase for the first - but not last - time). Katie Cassidy's version of the character, however, was more well recieved than Genevieve Cortese's, who was criticized for her acting. It's interesting to note that Cassidy has said that her departure from the show was due to the writers seeming not to know what to do with her character, while Kripke has said that it was due to budgetary restraints.
  • Becky Rosen was disliked by a majority of fans due to serving as one big Take That! towards overenthusiastic fangirls of the show, with most finding her annoying and grating rather than funny. However, it wasn't until the infamous "Season Seven, Time For A Wedding" that made fans genuinely loathe her, in which she forces Sam to marry her via a Love Potion, with most of it being played for laughs, and she basically gets off scot-free in the end. It's safe to say that she became one of the most hated characters in the series after that.
  • Fans liked Metatron well enough... until it was revealed that he was manipulating Castiel for his own ends and he cast all the angels out of Heaven after killing Naomi for the sake of (misplaced) vengeance. In the space of one episode, he went from loved to hated. Don't be surprised if fans now say he's worse than Lucifer. This got even worse in Season 9, where the writers can't seem to decide whether they want him to be a smart and dangerous Magnificent Bastard or an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who just wants people to like him, resulting in him constantly switching between the two rather contradictory personalities. Sometimes, within the span of a single episode. Also not helping is his tendency for his schemes to rely more on giving other characters the Idiot Ball than actually doing something clever himself.
  • Amelia was brought in as a love interest for Sam in the first half of Season 8. She was received so badly by the fandom that not only did the writers acknowledge it, she received only a single scene in the Season Finale Recap despite being in a third of the season's episodes. Part of why she's so hated is that the writers intended for her to be the reason why Sam quit hunting and didn't look for Dean, but showed little — if any — reason for Sam to honestly do so. And while her forcing Sam to adopt the dog he hit (with absolutely no idea if he was equipped for it) wasn't a great place to start, the fact that she's a massive Jerkass in nearly all of her appearances is what clinched it. Even Lucifer, of all people, chews Sam out for hooking up with Amelia in "The Devil In Details". To make matters worse, she's an inverted version of Saved by the Fans; the writers decided to let her live precisely because she was so despised, which meant that fan favorite Sarah died in her place during the events of "Clip Show".
• She Really Can Act: Paris Hilton's performance as a sinister Pagan deity was surprisingly impressive.
• Ship Mates: A Destiel writer often hooks Sam and Gabriel up as a Beta Couple if they feel an urge to pair Sam off with someone, and vice-versa. If not Gabriel and since the series finale, Destiel writers often pair Sam with Eileen, making her his unseen wife.
  • There is also those who ship Castiel with Dean and those who ship him with Meg. When Dean and Meg argue about the tablet that Cas is holding, one would think that they are arguing over Cas instead. Despite this, the two ships agree that for who Cas romances: "Meg, then Dean." is a response.
• The Ship's Motor:
  • Despite the prevailing opinion of the fandom, Sam and Dean having amazingly bright/pure souls that angels are drawn to — despite everything they've been through — has never actually been stated in canon.
  • Many Dean/Castiel fics posit that Castiel accidentally formed a soul-bond with Dean when he pulled him out of Hell and left a handprint on his shoulder.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat:
  • Tensions have existed between Wincest and Destiel fans for eleven years since Castiel's introduction, and has only gotten more volatile since the infamous Season 15 episode. Certain fans can be so vitriolic that it spills over to the actors, with both Wincest fans taking shots at Misha Collins and Destiel fans taking shots at Jared Padalecki.
    • Many Destiel fans do not take kindly to Wincest due to its incestuous nature, which they find Squicky, its being a Destructive Romance ^note in this case, not the usual ship-bashing, as the show itself also explicitly describes the brothers multiple times as having this effect on one another in-universe or a belief that the two brothers' high-octane codependency/conflict issues are a large source of Seasonal Rot due to writers' tendency to endlessly rehash it as a cheap source of drama.
    • Meanwhile, Wincest shippers do not take kindly to Castiel, who they believe is the one who contributed to the show's Seasonal Rot by causing the show to abandon its "two brothers Walking the Earth" format, because he competes with Sam for Dean's affection when Sam came first.
    • That said, some will split the difference and ship both at the same time.
  • For a time, this wasn't the case with Destiel and Megstiel shippers, with Destiel shippers often acknowledging that Cas was attracted to or even involved with Meg at some point and vice versa. However, the Memetic Mutation of Castiel being referred to as "the gay angel" has upset some Megstiel shippers who feel that Destiel fans are trying to erase Meg, especially since they have no problem calling Dean bisexual.
  • Chuck help any fans in the early days who shipped the brothers with any female. It wasn't pretty. This, however, has faded over time. Since the show basically gave up trying to pair either brother with a female, at least until the fairly well-liked Eileen, any fans that do ship the brothers or Castiel in het pairings are basically left alone and/or treated as a curiosity.
• Song Association: "Carry on my wayward son... there'll be peace when you are done..."
• Squick: Some of the heavier gore is just too much for some to handle.
  • Sam's fingernail being pulled out in "A Very Supernatural Christmas".
  • The teeth and maggot scenes in "Malleus Maleficarum."
  • The teaser of "My Bloody Valentine"; a couple in love eating each other.
  • The end of "Hammer of the Gods," when Pestilence spews mucus all over everything.
  • The Egyptian Plagues in action during "The Third Man", especially the locusts crawling out of a man's head after eating his brain.
  • "Caged Heat". The room in which Dean is attacked by ghouls.
  • Not gore, but some of the scenes between the brothers can get a little too subtextual for people:
    • "Playthings" had an oddly sensual scene where a drunken Sam begs Dean to kill him if he turns evil, which apparently drove off a subset of fans in 2007 who thought Sam was actually going to kiss him.
• Spell My Name with a "The": An example of a universe rather than a character (and no, it's not a Genius Loci): Apocalypse World often gets referred to with a "the" by the fandom when using its name, when it's only referred to without the prefix by the characters in the series.
• Starboarding: Some people who do not ship the Castiel/Dean pairing nevertheless believe there's a good case that can be argued for at least Castiel having canonical feelings for Dean, given the staggering amount of single-minded devotion and sacrifice he's willing to undergo for Dean's sake, some fairly blatant I Want My Beloved to Be Happy scenes from him towards Dean, plus a good deal of the show's other characters frequently pointing out Castiel's strong attachment to Dean (and more often in this direction than the opposite). These fans' theories were proven correct in episode 15x18 when he confesses that he's always been in love with Dean, whereas Dean's own feelings towards him are left ambiguous.
• Take That, Scrappy!: While fellow Scrappies Bela, Jo, and Metatron all found either sufficient pity or redemption in the eyes of enough fans to escape this fate, the demon Ruby most definitely did not, starting an especially smug round of Evil Gloating before quickly suffering a short but painful death on the end of their own weapon as their Unwitting Pawn turns on them to assist in their death and their killer adds insult to injury by literally twisting the knife in the wound in what is easily the most drawn-out kill of many kills with that weapon. While their Evil Plan was ultimately successful, the fans were still thrilled by the Winchesters brothers reconciling long enough to kill her and list it as the Moment of Awesome of the episode.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • As mentioned in Broken Base, for many the arrival of Castiel represented a bad change in the show where it was no longer about "two brothers Walking the Earth" dealing with a Monster of the Week.
  • Castiel's new trenchcoats in Season 9 and onwards got a lot of negative reactions from fans for looking plain and ugly compared to his original Badass Longcoat.
  • The second Ruby (as played by Genevieve Padalecki). Fans hated her from the get-go, much preferring Katie Cassidy's version of the character, but Kripke believed that with enough time and characterization, fans would like her. Towards the end of Season 4, it appeared to be working, but the final reaction in light of The Reveal (namely, that Ruby was Evil All Along, complete with gloating) was overwhelmingly negative, and fans were just happy she was finally gone.
• Unexpected Character: Season 13 features the first crossover in the series, and it's with Scooby-Doo, a series characterized by how campy and lighthearted and non-supernatural it is.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Generally, when any Angel shows off their wings counts as this.
  • The Season 8 finale has this in spades in the final scene, when all of the Angels fall out of Heaven.
  • And the Season 10 finale even more so, during the Darkness being released and spreads across the Earth.
  • While the fight between Dean and Lucifer during Season 13's finale falls into Special Effects Failure, Lucifer's death immediately afterwards this full of this. While all previous Angel deaths have shown their eyes and mouth lighting up and seemingly imploding, Lucifer's has him burning instead of simply lighting up. And he's in mid-air, unlike other Angels, which also helps.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • The fan reaction to Season 7 was so poor that the show's ratings tanked, putting it on the verge of cancellation. In response, the show brought back fan-favorite Castiel (whose death at the start of the season was originally intended to be permanent), introduced compelling new lore in the form of prophets and tablets, and changed showrunners from Sera Gamble to Jeremy Carver. While fans weren't necessarily enthusiastic about all of these changes, enough started watching again that the show was able to run for another 8 years.
  • A Zig-Zagged, possibly unintended example in Season 15. The Fountain of Memes that erupted from Castiel's Dying Declaration of Love wound up pulling back in a lot of former fans, as well as bringing in a small Newbie Boom of curious non-fans interested in what the hubbub was all about, causing people who hadn't watched Supernatural in years to tune into the final two episodes. However, the fans who were drawn back in by Cas' confession and Destiel becoming sort-of canon were understandably not happy when that plot point was followed by Cas' total exclusion from the remainder of the show and Dean's death in the finale, resulting in the fandom being much larger and more active than it had been in years, but also much angrier and more critical of the show.
  • The series finale being solely about the brothers won back several fans who left the show when the brothers' relationship started being put Out of Focus.
• The Woobie:
  • Too many, given that it is a crapsack universe. Jimmy Novak, Adam Milligan, that kitsune boy, and many others come to mind.
  • Season 14 goes out of its way to make Nick, Lucifer's vessel, into a bigger woobie than he was already, with most of Team Free Will unable to look at him due him reminding them of Lucifer, some mental deterioration thanks to housing an Archangel, and it's implied that he murdered his family while being possessed by a demon. He also harbors guilt from saying "yes" to Lucifer, which not only nearly brought the world to an end *twice*, but also prevented him from assisting officers form solving his family's murder.
• Writer Cop Out: One of the reasons the finale was so controversial was that many viewers felt it was CW hitting the Reset Button on fifteen years of Character Development and deciding to wrap up most of the remaining plot threads by killing Dean in the most anticlimactic way possible. There's also a larger, if stranger discourse on one specific aspect (which is Cas declaring his love for Dean and immediately getting sucked into the Empty. Most versions have it vague whether Dean reciprocates or not, but in the Spanish dub he explicitly does.

The Anime:

• Bizarro Episode: "The Spirit of Las Vegas" has screwier and more Animesque humor than other episodes. Fitting, as the Monster of the Week is Japanese.
• Broken Base: The quality of the anime is debated, though generally most of the criticism is about how Jensen Ackles didn't reprise his role of Dean until the last two episodes and that those episodes which are remakes of episodes from the original show don't have the same level of impact due to being shorter. However most people enjoyed the episodes with original stories and others think that Andrew Farrar did a good job as Dean.
• Continuity Lock-Out: Given that little to no effort is made to explain what the hell's going on to any new viewers, it seems as though you're expected to have already watched the TV show and just know these things. God forbid someone decides to try Supernatural out through the anime first. Particularly bad in the first episode, which jumps right into a side hunt without laying out the main characters' backgrounds and why there are flaming women on the ceilings.
• Ugly Cute: The Kappa in "What Lives in the Lake," which looks like a scaly cross between a monkey and a frog. It helps that he does good turns for people who give him snacks.

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