YMMV / Twisted Wonderland

A-D

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Say Rook Hunt's name too fast and you'll hear something else.
  • Maybe. In Leona's Fairy Gala SSR personal story, after enticing the fairies at the venue with his modeling, they enthusiastically ask him to shower them with his fairy dust, which sounds a lot like an euphemism.
  Fairy A: Please! Shower us in your fairy dust!!
  Fairy B: Scatter it all over us!
  Leona: Here! [scatter]
  Fairies: [screaming]
  • Jamil Viper's name can become unintentionally funny when you know that "Jamil" is Arabic for "pretty/beautiful" and then know what snakes in general are sometimes a euphemism for...
  • "The Bliss of Meat". ^Explanation"Meat" is also a slang for muscles.
  • Vil smugly responding to Epel and Deuce's epiphany by saying that he likes it when people prostrate themselves before him.
  • This magic gem of a Malleus line from the egg themed Master Chef event with Ruggie:
  Malleus: Bucchi taught me about edible weeds.
  • Cater seems to be following Malleus's footsteps in the Potato themed Masterchef event featuring him and Rook:
  Cater: Rook's so skilled with his hands! (Rook raises his hands as if to agree)
  • Sebek's Battle Start line is as follows:
  Sebek: I'll swallow you whole!
  • Trey has this to say about Jade during Jade's Ceremonial Robes vignette:
  Trey: I...clearly pegged him totally wrong.
• Adorkable: Malleus may be intimidating to other students and has moments to back up that reputation, but he also has several moments that make him more endearing than he initially appears to be. Instances include geeking out over gargoyles to Silver and being a huge fan of the Tamagotchi-esque Gao Gao Dragon-kun, to the point where during the Wish Upon a Star event, when Idia and Ortho ask him what he wishes for, he replies with "to give Gao Gao Dragon-kun friends".
• Alas, Poor Villain: While the arc villains of each chapter tend to deserve what's coming to them, their reactions to everything crashing down around them and backstories can induce sympathy towards them nonetheless. Special mention goes to Riddle and Azul, who both end up in tears and are aided by some strong voice acting.
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • When Rollo Flamme is revealed in Halloween 2022, excitement was high over his debut but in the west, he was quick to become a Base-Breaking Character due to who he is inspired and twisted from, and even after the Glorious Masquerade event was live then and much of the story had been unveiled, there are still fans who dislike Rollo simply due to Rollo being twisted from one of the most depraved villains in Disney Animated Canon history. In Japan, however, he is a popular Breakout Character in contrast due to Japanese fans finding appeal in his design and tragic backstory.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Yuu is a young teenager that has been mysteriously transported to a strange, nonsensical world that they're now trapped in with no known way of getting home and have no real way to defend themselves from the magical inhabitants. Despite this, Yuu is rarely shown being concerned over it outside of the prologue, despite being aware that their only hope of ever getting home exists in the form of the eccentric and useless Headmaster Crowley who shows very little interest in helping them return their world and, in some theories, might have a hidden agenda. In game time, it's now been quite a few months since they've been transported to Twisted Wonderland and dialogue expressing that they care at all about returning home has appeared less and less as they've seemingly settled into their role as the casts resident Unfazed Every Man. The characters seem to be more concerned than Yuu is, as some have asked Yuu in their homescreen dialogue how they feel about being so far from home. Their reactions to Yuu's unseen response seem to further indicate that there's not much stress on Yuu's part.
  • Kalim. From an early age, Kalim has been poisoned and kidnapped so many times that he's already lost count, and sometimes the perpetrators are even from his own family. Moreover, the only person he trusted would never betray him (Jamil) did in fact stab him in the back—brutally at that—and even went as far as saying he'd always, always wished that Kalim would just disappear. And yet, in spite of all this, Kalim still remains as optimistic, kind, and forgiving as ever.
• Arc Fatigue: To several players, the Pomefiore chapter comes across as this due to the long delays that took place before and in between the release of the chapter. The end result of the chapter had some players feeling disappointed due to how long it took for Pomefiore to be completely released as a whole.
• Awesome Art: It's not a stretch to say that Yana Toboso's art is downright gorgeous, from the character illustrations to the in-game cards. The Live2D models are also beautiful, as they’re rigged to be incredibly fluid, detailed and display a wide arrange of emotions. It helps that Toboso herself is a Disney fan.
• Awesome Music: You know your ears are in for a treat when even the loading screen music sounds fantastic.
  • The Rhythmics might use background music, but said music is still amazing in its own right. The first Rhythmic level of Chapter 3 is one example with a wonderful jazz track playing in the background, befitting the Mostro Lounge the level takes place in.
  • The dorms' respective Leitmotif BGM's are no slouch either, being of various genres that depict the setting of the Disney movie each dorm is twisted from. For example, Ignihyde's EDM/techno BGM has a dark, foreboding tune as if you are directly in the underworld itself, representing the dorm's Magitek specialization as well as its founder's domain.
  • To say that "Piece of My World" by Night Ravens is fantastic would be an understatement. Combining rock guitars with a larger-than-life orchestra, it absolutely revels in the fantasy settings. It's so catchy that even the characters sing it in the game!
  • The song Vil enters the Vocal and Dance Championships, Absolutely Beautiful, is a very catchy dance piece that perfectly displays the singing talents of the Night Raven College team (Hiroki Aiba in particular) and the lyrics display how beauty isn't just for show.
  • "Make a Wish" from the "Glorious Masquerade" event is a piece local to the City of Flowers that captures the atmosphere of being at a grand masquerade and revolves around themes of hoping for a brighter world and having the courage to make one's dreams a reality. Sung by Malleus with Azul and Idia as back up.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Grim, who functions as the series mascot. You either find him cute and like him as a Non-Human Sidekick to Yuu, along with liking the Character Development he gets as the story goes on, or find him annoying and have little patience for his Small Name, Big Ego attitude in addition to all the trouble that he puts the cast through because of said ego, Yuu included. With the ending of the Pomefiore chapter confirming that Grim overblotting is inevitable, players are either dreading the moment they have to fight and put Grim down as they have grown fond of him (or perhaps are hoping that Grim can at least be saved after the fight), or are looking forward to putting him down once and for all. For the latter party, it's either because they like the idea of Grim as the Final Boss of the first overarching arc of Night Raven College, or they are just glad to potentially get rid of him because it means that they don't have to deal with his annoying, bratty Small Name, Big Ego attitude anymore.
  • The Player Character, Yuu themselves. Due to generally being Out of Focus and lacking any other traits to their character as a whole, a good chunk of the playerbase think that Yuu is a flat Player Character, as all they are seen doing is making comments (General or snarky comments otherwise) on the events going on around them and beyond the prologue and Chapter 3, they lack much contribution to the story at large, causing these fans to argue that the story would change little even if the Player Character existed and that the more interesting bulks of the story are in events and the Personal stories of the other cast to showcase that the Player Character does not need to be involved for someone's Character Development. This is especially since a good majority of the players also compared Yuu to the likes of Player Characters from other games such as Ritsuka from Fate/Grand Order (published by Aniplex) and A3's Izumi Tachibana (a joseimuke game), among a few others, as they are far more proactive and contribute more to the plot of their respective games than Yuu does, and thus argue that Yuu is basically useless and generally irrelevant beyond being someone that the players can insert themselves into.^note This fact especially is the reason why Yuusonas, OC replacements of Yuu, are so popular in the West due to Yuu themselves being a Protagonist Without a Past, and why Episode of Heartslabyul protagonist Yuuken, a much more proactive character, was so well-received. Others, however, point out that Yuu is magicless, and hence, it's understandable that they can't fight back since they lack any offensive means to be able to defend themselves, and they contribute much to Octavinelle as a story and held a hope that they'll have more importance to the plot in the future. Some, however, like Yuu regardless, especially if they liked some of the theories involved regarding the role Yuu would play in the grand scheme of Twisted Wonderland.
  • Headmaster Dire Crowley. To many, he is a funny and mysterious figure who is way more than what he lets on and has done some good such as providing Yuu shelter and making them (and Grim) a full fledged Night Raven student, but to others, he is a prime example of Adults Are Useless who constantly dumps his responsibilities on his students and/or Yuu, forces Yuu to reside in a torn-down dormitory and ignores them whenever they try calling for help or even threatens them if they deny a request, and continuously insists that he's a kind and generous person while many of his actions paint him more as a Jerkass. Many theories surrounding him, notably whether or not he really had a hand in summoning Yuu to Twisted Wonderland (based on what seems to be him conversing with the mirror at the very start of the game) or to what extent he allowed the overblots to happen as fueled by the ending of the Pomfiore arc seem to make him that much more divisive. The fact that he was able to send the Tsum-tsum's back to their original world in the end of the Twisted Wonderland and Disney Tsum-Tsum collaboration event in July 2022 but does not do the same for Yuu only adds fuel to the fire that Crowley has no plans to send them back for reasons unknown but still made Yuu live in poor conditions due to the initially torn down state of Ramshackle dorm at the start of the game.
  • Rollo Flamme from the "Glorious Masquerade" event has become quite a peculiar example primarily due to who he's twisted from. From his introduction many became dismayed that a character based on Claude Frollo was going to be included in the game due to his association with religious fanaticism, genocidal racism, and violent lust. While these concerns have been taken into account (especially since "The Righteous Judge" was revealed to be hailed as always in the right), others have pointed out that while Frollo's sins are particularly visceral the other major villains' are also guilty of crimes that are close if not on par with his and yet are not mentioned as often. With that said many are interested to see how Rollo's story will play out as well as any future involvement he may have (not to mention he's become something of a Fountain of Memes), and for what it's worth Rollo seems to be based primarily off of Frollo's self-righteousness in his disdain for magic rather than prejudice towards a particular group.
  • Malleus Draconia is either loved for his surprisingly dorky side and the close friendship he is developing with Yuu due to the understandable loneliness of his situation, or he is disliked or viewed as annoying for his adorkableness coming off as too naïve for a Really 700 Years Old being ^noteWhile Malleus is prone to moments of naivete as a sheltered prince, some of these moments contradict the fact that Malleus would also be educated in politics and the like as a future ruler so he isn't as exaggeratively naïve as some story vignettes and event stories would depict him to be as well as for the growing amount of Ship Tease between him and Yuu as some believe both are potentially undermining Malleus's characterization as the Wise Prince and future king of Briar Valley and would prefer to see more of that instead.
  • The incorporation of Mickey Mouse, beginning with chapter 3. Some welcome his addition and argue that it makes sense to include him since it is a Disney crossover game at its core. In contrast, others hate his addition and find his inclusion to be shoehorned and out of place in a game that had no real overt Disney elements prior (unlike Kingdom Hearts or other Disney crossover games).
• Broken Base:
  • In the Western fanbase, there have been ongoing debates since the release of the fan-translated stories surrounding whether or not Yuu has a canonical gender. While the main writer, Yana Toboso, has been consistent about keeping writing in regard to Yuu gender-neutral (or as close to gender neutral as she can) ^noteThe usage of first person pronouns from Yuu has been avoided, likely because most first-person pronouns used in Anime tend to be interpreted as masculine or feminine. Characters also avoid the usage of pronouns when referring to Yuu indirectly, as they instead call them by the title Prefect, a nickname, or more rarely, their Canon Name/the one given to them by the player This has not stopped the existence of dialogue and lore implications that contradicts the notion that Yuu's gender matches the players, going hand in hand with the fact that Yuu behaves more like a Player Character than just an audience avatar after a certain point in the prologue, with multiple groups arguing on whether or not Yuu is female, male or non-binary or gender-neutral. As per the norm with these kind of debates, it's more of a Western fandom-centric issue with the Eastern fans and players generally being more accepting and having their own generally agreed rules on how they depict Yuu in fanworks. The official manga serialization giving Yuu a physically male appearance (though implied by Word of God to be unique to him) has only further split the base between people who like his design and the fact that Yuu has become a character, and those who wish that they remained ambiguous on the matter like in the game. The novel version of Yuu also being male and having a described physical appearance has only added fuel to the flames with vocal "Female Yuu" camp players in the West crying foul at how the creators are "ignoring the main demographic of female fans" due to Twisted Wonderland being a Joseimuke Genre game while the other majority of the fans welcomed Yuuken and Yuuya's addition and accept them as characters in their own right. The Manga adaptation of Chapter 2 later switches things up by instead bringing in a Bifauxnen female Yuu, Hirasaka Yuuka, causing some fans to be happy that they are switching around between genders for variety in between the many adaptations of the game while some aren't pleased and prefer that they stick with Yuuken for the manga, with a good number of fans in this camp fearing the Continuity Lockout that this may cause if future adaptations are going to have different "Yuu's" for each of them.
  • Whether Twisted Wonderland should receive an official localization or not. A good portion of players want the game to be officially translated into multiple languages so that it can be accessible to everyone, as Fan Translation projects usually only target English speakers which leaves out other potential fans who may be interested in the work. On the other hand, some fans don't want the game to receive an official translation for fear of how newcomers will react to it or "ruin" the game once it becomes popular in the West. Then there's those fans that don't want it to be localized simply because they don't want Disney to have another avenue to make money. The debate grows further with the official localization being released at 2022 with arguments of whether or not would the localization be faithful to the game or not being a point of contention among some group of fans and players.
  • The conclusion of the VDC in chapter 5 has proven to be quite divisive among fans, specifically how Rook ended up being the deciding vote for RSA's win. Detractors bemoan that the ending is a predictable "heroes always beat villains" outcome, that all of Vil's attempts to win amounted to a "Shaggy Dog" Story, and have grown to hate Rook for his decision (to the point of threatening his seiyuu AND Yana Toboso over it); defenders point out that the outcome makes sense due to the fact Rook is based on the Huntsman (who actually helped Snow White in the film) and that it would be worse for Vil if Rook simply voted for NRC just so "they could win" and not because they actually deserved it, and that the detractors in general missed the chapter's intended lesson that one's true beauty shouldn't be decided by a number or by becoming the best in the world.
  • In the West, due to Values Dissonance, discussions and opinions about how well the diversity of the casts' race are handled varies, especially in light of the Fairy Gala event. While some fans don't see much of an issue and think Yana does a good job, others think that Yana does a shoddy and weak representation of non-white characters. Especially Leona, and believe that he is white-washed, as the Afterglow Savannah, his home country, is based on the Lion King (Which in turn, is inspired by Africa), and thus think that Yana failed to portray Leona as a dark skinned African equivalent citizen (The fact that Leona is also often treated poorly by the teachers in several Personal stories and events gave unfortunate implications regarding Leona's character as well to these fans). Jamil and Kalim also gets this from these fans on a lesser extent as they feel that their skin tone seem lighter than an actual Middle Eastern resident with Kalim having Massive Numbered Siblings being drawn to contention as perpetuating bad stereotypes regarding actual Middle Eastern residents. Then there are those on the middle ground, those who agree that while the representation of diverse characters could use some work, they still enjoy the characters nonetheless.
  • The slow update pace of the game. Joseimuke card collecting games like Twisted Wonderland are expected to have plenty of events and story updates to make up for the simple gameplay, and Twisted Wonderland seems to be going this way until the pace came to a screeching halt in June 2020. While there has been more story releases and events since then, they are very sporadic and there are obvious Padding methods being employed (training camps, chef events, reruns). Many people have made guesses as to why this is. Some think this is justified since the game came out in the COVID-19 pandemic and the developers and voice actors have to adjust to the pandemic restrictions, not to mention that Yana Toboso does a lot of work for the game in addition to working on her manga Black Butler, which is her main job. Others think that the slow pace is killing the hype for the game and there is bad management involved with the developers and those in charge of Twisted Wonderland. It doesn't help that there has been zero explanation from the developers as to what happened to cause the slow paced updates. However, as of 2022, it seems that the game has pick up on the pace of it's updates and no longer slow crawling as it's first year.
  • The event stories. Are they a fun and entertaining diversion from the more tense main story or are they meaningless fluff that should have been used to expand on the main story or the other characters?
  • The distribution of limited cards. The game seems to wait for a dorm's main story chapter to finish before giving them more event focus and cards. Unfortunately, the slow story release pace means that fans of dorms like Pomefiore, Ignihyde, and especially Diasomnia will have to wait a while before they can roll for their favorite character's limited cards. This has caused some to accuse the devs of favoritism, while others think it's just an unfortunate side effect of the slow pace.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: For a lot of fans, it didn't come as a surprise when it was revealed in Chapter 4 that Jamil was the one mind-controlling / manipulating Kalim into acting like a tyrant considering who he's based on and how abrupt the changes in Kalim's personality were. Not to mention Kalim's eyes...
• Cargo Ship:
  • Jade and mushrooms. This is a combination of Memetic Mutation and Jade's SR lab card Groovy! CG, where he marvels at the mushrooms like he is staring at a lover.
  • Deuce and cauldrons, to a lesser extent, due to Deuce's combat magic consisting almost entirely of summoning cauldrons to drop on his opponents during the early main story. Shipping Deuce with eggs, his favorite food, has also popped up here and there.
• Catharsis Factor: In Episode 4 of "Scary Monsters", the story involves the members of every dorm taking care of and scaring the Magicam Monsters away. Considering the grief they caused to the cast mid-way to the point of vandalizing the historical Great Seven statues, it's fair to say that many players agreed that the Magicam Monsters get what they deserve as they beat the NPCs down.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Possibly unintentional, but NRC's description of Hades as a diligent ruler who commanded respect is actually pretty well in line with his mythological counterpart, as opposed to the hot-tempered Large Ham villain of Disney's Hercules.
  • Chen'ya seems to take cues from the original "Alice in Wonderland's" Cheshire Cat, who while a trickster never became an outright antagonist like his Disney counterpart and even offered advice. It helps that Chen'ya attends Royal Sword Academy instead of Night Raven College.
  • In "Glorious Masquerade", the City of Flowers refer to how the Righteous Judge (Frollo) and the Kind Bellringer (Quasimodo) had a family like trusting teacher and student relationship, an interpretation that is more in line with the original The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo where Claude Frollo is a genuinely good Parental Substitute to Quasimodo until his obsession for Esmeralda caused him to descend into insanity and villainy.
• Come for the X, Stay for the Y: Come for the gorgeous art and character designs by Yana Toboso based on various popular Disney villains (and later, heroes). Stay for the fun character dynamics and interesting story.
• Common Knowledge:
  • That the game is a Dating Sim or a gacha game, due to the prevalence of attractive casts of characters in collection-type games (especially those based on popular media), in addition to Aniplex's also having published Fate/Grand Order and Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story, two gacha games based on popular franchises. While players do get more powerful cards via a gacha system, gameplay is actually battle- and rhythm-based instead.
  • To a lesser extent, that NRC is explicitly a school for villains (that is, a school that teaches and encourages villainy). While many students are openly self-centred and underhanded, the school itself is simply a prestigious school of magic, although Crowley laments the selfishness of his students at times.
  • There's also a misconception going around that Kalim is meant to be twisted from Jafar's animal sidekick Iago, thanks to the feathers present in his design. He's actually based on the Sultan.
  • That the main characters (or at least the dorm leaders) are gender flipped/Pretty Boy reimaginings of classic Disney villains. This is commonly believed by people unfamiliar with the work, which often leads to criticism directed at the character designs for not being faithful to the original characters. In reality, while the characters are based on (or twisted from, as the lore would say) the stories of the Disney villains, they’re otherwise not actually connected to them (with the exception of Malleus, who is implied to be a descendant of Maleficent), let alone being gender-flipped versions of them. In fact, the closest Twisted Wonderland has gotten to a gender flip of a Disney character is Neige LeBlanche, who not only looks incredibly similar to Snow White but also fulfills a similar role.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Dorm Uniform SSR Riddle and Dorm Uniform SSR Leona are heavily recommended as a starter SSR to reroll for during the tutorials for players who like to follow the game's battling Meta because both are attack typed units, very powerful in their own right stats wise, and their utility can last until late-game content. Riddle's SSR in particular currently has the highest attack stat among many of the in-game units.
  • Outside of tutorial rolls, Dorm Uniform SSR Azul is a heavily recommended card to roll for and obtain. While he is a Balanced type card unlike the former two fellow dorm leaders Riddle and Leona, he makes it up by having two very useful utilities of being able to heal and raise his attack in one skill if you sufficiently level them up, along with one of the best stats, with Azul having very High HP and decently high attack. Not to mention, his Duo Magic partner is Riddle, making him a must have unit if you have Riddle's SSR, who has Azul as his Duo Magic partner.
  • With the introduction of Defense tests, Dorm Uniform SSR Trey gained prominence and is heavily recommended as the best healer of the game, as Defense tests requires players to survive with as many HP as possible, and thus, he is heavily recommended for Defense tests in general.
• Creator Worship: Fans love to praise Yana Toboso for their involvement. Considering that Yana is credited for nearly everything about the game (save for the gameplay itself), it's fairly warranted.
• Creator's Pet: Some people have accused Heartslabyul and Scarabia of being this, because of their perceived overexposure in events and stories. This came to a head in January 2022, when the four new cards released during the month were Deuce (twice), Kalim, and Jamil.
  • Not helping is that Toboso admitted in a 2020 interview that Heartslabyul is one of her favorite dorms, notably because of how long it took to develop its story. Riddle in particular also tends to be one of the more promoted characters alongside Grim and Malleus.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Experienced players of rhythm games in general are in for a nasty surprise with Rhythmics, where in order to hit the notes, you do not need to tap on the note itself; you can just tap anywhere (green Rhythmics) or whichever side has the same colour as the note (red and blue Rhythmics). And let's not mention the purple Rhythmics where the notes are timed...
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Chapter 6 amped up the progression of chapter difficulty in part of breaking the previous chapter trends with many mini-games that can be difficult at some points and the battles generally being harder than the previous chapters that players need to level up and strengthen their own cards to proceed. The final stretch starting from Part 66 introduces a new buff in "Critical hit" and re-introduce the "Guts" buff from Vargas Camp on enemies along with reintroducing debuffs from older boss fights like "Burn" from Overblot Leona.
  • Chapter 7 increases the difficulty by starting a Hopeless Boss Fight with OB Malleus twice, and when the group finally reaches Lilia's dream, your activities are locked via use of the story only Mystium stamina which is locked via daily login unless one uses 10 gems to refill the Mystium. Additionally, for the dream section, the cards all have their own Stamina meter so you cannot use the same card over and over again for each fight.

E-H

• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The battle and Rhythmic levels are largely considered So Okay, It's Average, but most players follow the game for the well-woven story, the intriguing and compelling characters, and the gorgeous art. It doesn't help that, due to No Export for You, most fans outside of Japan have to skip the gameplay and instead rely on fan translation videos to experience the story.
  • In January 2022 the game became available in English to those in the United States and Canada, but the above will most likely still apply to other international fans or those not interested in the gameplay.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Among the staff, Divus Crewel grew popular within the fanbase very quickly, not only for his attractive design but also for his voice actor. The fact that he looks to be one of the youngest among the Night Raven College staff also helps.
  • Che'nya. He's a One-Scene Wonder introduced in the first chapter of the main story but grew popular among fans due to his Cheshire Cat motif. The fact that he attends Night Raven College's rival school also drew attention and had many clamoring and hoping that he'd make more appearances in the future.
  • Despite appearing in only one scene like Che'nya, Cheka gets attention for being an adorable Cheerful Child whose presence allows a closer look at Leona's family life.
  • With the release of the Scarabia chapter, the Scarabia NPC student labeled "Scarabia Student B" became popular among players for that specific NPC's voice acting and characterization.
  • Eliza, the ghost bride from the Ghost Marriage event, quickly grew popular not only for being one of the first female characters shown on-screen ^notewhile the fairy queen from the Fairy Gala event was the first female character shown, she had a less active role and far less screen time but also for her cheery personality, comically high standards, backstory and design, all of which endeared her to a lot of players.
  • Neige LeBlanche has seen some popularity due to being the Snow White to Vil's Evil Queen and overall adorableness.
  • In Japan, Beta Riddle gained popularity after his original design was revealed in the Official Guidebook, along with details of what his personality could have been hadn’t Toboso Yana redo the script she had in mind for Heartslabyul. With fanartists, especially Riddle fans, making and drawing scenarios of how interactions could have gone if Beta Riddle was finalized and interact with the other casts.
  • Najma Viper, Jamil's little sister, has also gained a following soon after her introduction due to her adorable design, cunningness that matches her brother's as well as their overall sibling dynamic, and being another active female character in the male-dominated cast.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Just what is that monster from the Action Prologue? Many believe that the monster is Overblot!Grim due to the fact that Grim has been eating the gems containing leftovers of the Overblot from the Overblot victims and from the prologue monster itself. In addition, the prologue monster looks like a mix of the Overblot forms of several characters combined, plus the same blue flames as Grim. This has gained more evidence after Chapter 4, where Grim starts acting weird once he eats the stone left from Jamil's Overblot.
  • Questions and theories about Grim's origins abound between fans for what his origins might entail, their links to the Overblot!Grim theory and what this means for Twisted Wonderland as a whole.
  • Due to Silver's quote from pre-release materials having him ask Yuu if he'd met them before as well as Yuu's interactions with Mickey, Yuu's very own origins are often theorized about with regard to what role they have in the grand scheme of the story and what this means for their fate in future chapters.
    • Silver's P.E. uniform card has a homescreen line where he says that Yuu has a talent for the sword. This has inspired theories around the possibility that Yuu is inspired by the Alice of the original book written by Lewis Carroll and that Grim is twisted from the Jabberwocky, and that Yuu will one day use a sword to put an end to Overblot!Grim so they can return to their original world in the same way that Alice defeats the Jabberwocky in both the original book and the live action movie directed by Tim Burton.
    • Of the many fan theories surrounding Yuu, one of the most common ones happens to be just how much of you is Yuu supposed to represent. While they more or less serve their purpose of being the Audience Surrogate, there are times when the game's dialogue suggests that Yuu has characterization of their own, as their own values which may or may not align with the player's appear, and at times cannot be challenged. Then there's the implied backstory that suggests that Yuu does have some connection to the Twisted Wonderland world after all. It's gotten to a point where some players have chosen to no longer see Yuu as a self-insert for themselves, and instead treat them as if they're their own character in their own right.
    • Related to the Yuu is twisted from Alice theory, the appearance of Ambrose the 63rd, who serve as a Twisted version of Merlin, brought theories and connection to Arthurian Mythology where Yuu is instead twisted from Arthur, Silver as Excallibur, Ambrose the 63rd as Merlin, and Grim as the Cath Palug that is slain in Arthurian mythology.
  • Just who or what is Silver twisted from? The most common theory is that he's based on the sword that slew Maleficent, due to his loading screen icon being a sword and the fact that silver is often said to be a weakness of fairies. Another theory is that he's twisted from Aurora herself, and there's strong evidence within the stories to support this theory^note Silver's first few chats have him recount the tale of Sleeping Beauty from Aurora's perspective. He's a Sleepy Head with the trait of being a Friend to All Living Things. He is a human that was adopted and raised by fairies, Malleus and Lilia, with Sebek who is also a fae being one of his childhood friend. Vil even outright refers to him as Sleeping Beauty in a passive way when he falls asleep during their filming a movie. In addition, his being able to use rare light magic like Kalim and Rook could be another indicator that he's twisted from a non-villainous character, as well as him being the Token Good Teammate of Diasomnia overall in character. On the other hand, his difficulty staying awake has led to another theory that he's twisted from the sleeping curse itself or the spindle that Aurora pricked herself on. Some fans have speculated that Silver may be an amalgamation of all of these things, potentially making him the first character to be twisted from multiple sources. Chapter 7 eventually gave the answer that he was twisted from Aurora herself and his backstory had similar thematic parallels with hers.
  • The main question surrounding Scarabia's chapter prior to its release in the main story was which character would Overblot. Some theories believed that it would be Kalim as aside from the prologue, every character who had Overblotted in previous chapters had been a dorm leader, while others thought Jamil would be the one to Overblot to break this trend in addition to his being twisted from Jafar. Or both. The main story reveals that it's Jamil who Overblots.
  • Royal Sword Academy. What is their connection to Night Raven College outside of being Rival Dojos with each other? Are the students attending the school twisted from the original Disney Heroes? As of Chapter 5, this gained more traction with the appearance of Neige LeBlanche, a RSA student who is twisted from Snow White herself.
  • While the Great Seven are highly revered at Night Raven College, the lore revealed in character conversations and the main story makes many a player wonder just how much they're actually admired in the world of Twisted Wonderland as a whole, as some events of the original movies seem to have happened to some degree in the Twisted Wonderland universe as well. This gets even more muddled in Chapter 5 when Kalim talks about Aladdin's story as it happens in the original movie, but Jafar's involvement in Aladdin's story is near non-existent.
  • The Time Loop theory is talked about by players and fans both in and out of Japan. Due to the Action Prologue opening with a Hopeless Boss Fight and the cryptic words of Crowley in the prologue itself, it's commonly speculated that Crowley's unique magic has to do with time, and that he reset the timeline shortly after summoning Yuu and sent them back to the beginning in the hopes that Yuu could help stop the Overblotted Grim and save the students of Night Raven College. It's also commonly speculated that the Overblot incidents happened as dictated by the story in the original timeline, but Yuu was not there to stop and save the Overblot victims, resulting in the reset timeline where Yuu was summoned at the beginning of the game. This has gotten traction following the final moments of Pomefiore, where Yuu sees a vision of the black carriage followed by a scene where an Overblotted Grim is wreaking havoc in Night Raven college in static view, and followed by Grim acting hostile and manic, attacking Yuu in his blot induced hostility and assumption that they have come to take the leftover blot stone away from him.
    • Following the release of the manga and the confirmation of the light novel adaptation, another variant of the Time Loop theory is that Yuu does exist, but every time that the timeline resets, the "Yuu" that would come to Twisted Wonderland changes and will not be the previous "Yuu". This is mostly supported by the fact that the Manga's adaptation of Yuu, Yuuken, is a far cry from the Yuu that is described in the games.
  • If certain fancomics from the Japanese fanbase are any indication, due to the gacha revealing the characters via coffins, first-years (and Yuu) being transported to Night Raven College in coffins and the Black Carriage resembling a hearse, Twisted Wonderland may be an afterlife of sorts with the students (and possibly the teachers barring Crowley) having died in the real world through harsh circumstances à la the Act of Reality and reincarnating there. This would explain Yuu not having anything on their person to identify themself and why the Mirror says that they don't have a world to go home to.
  • Ace's unnamed older brother is also a source of Epileptic Trees among the fanbase. This is mainly due to his brother being an alumnus of Night Raven College, along with theories of what his brother's connection to the main scenario could be in the future.
  • What is Jack Howl twisted from? He’s the only character sorted into a dormitory he cannot possibly have any Disney-related connection to, as there are no wolves in The Lion King or any of its sequel movies. Speculation has gone around suggesting that he may be twisted from one of the wolves seen in Beauty and the Beast. There’s also the possibility that he’s based on the titular white wolfdog from the 1991 live-action movie White Fang, which was produced by Walt Disney Pictures. Then there is the fact that Jack uses dark magic for his non-elemental attacks, a strong indicator that he is at least twisted from a villainous character.
  • A new theory from Chapter 7 is the possibility of Crowley being Malleus's missing father due to the fact that Leverne's body was never found, Crowley and Malleus having enough similarities in design where familial relation could be believable, Crowley saying things that match pretty well to things that Leverne had told Lilia, and etc. However, this is mitigated by the fact that Leverne's title was Dragon Duke which implies that he is at least a Draconic Fae like his wife was while Crowley has more of a bird-like theme which doesn't support the theory, but even then there have been instances that Malleus has had suspicious allusions to crows such as his Glorious Masquerade attire as well as a crow holding a key sitting on top of his coffin in the group promo art.
• Evil Is Cool: Design wise, the general consensus of the players is that the Overblot design's of the OB victims shown are amazing and had a huge well of fanart over the years since the game was launched.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • If you value your life, please don't call Twisted Wonderland a Dating Sim or otome game. While it has become something of an in-joke within the fandom, most players will gladly hammer the fact that it's a battle-rhythm game into you.
  • Go on, say that Kalim is based on Iago. Scarabia fans will come after you with a tweet from the official Twisted Wonderland account stating explicitly that Kalim is twisted from the Sultan and not Iago, despite the feathers.
    • Back before the game was released some had believed Kalim to be based on Jafar and Jamil was based on Jafar's staff which sparked a similar reaction.
  • Even before the official release in Japan, a number of Western fans wanted a global/English release due to the game's being a Disney IP, to the point of starting a petition for one. Other fans had to tell them that 1. it takes a long time before a global server is even considered, and 2. just because it's Disney, doesn't mean it'll automatically be released in English.
  • In the West, insisting that Yuu is canonically male or female will make a good portion of players come after you and hammer in the fact that Night Raven College being an all-boys school doesn't automatically mean Yuu is male, or the fact that the game being a joseimuke/marketed towards women doesn't mean they're female. ^noteFrom an in-game perspective, the fact that Yuu's lack of magic is remarked on but their gender is not implies that they at least pass as male (note that Ace and Grim remark on Epel's feminine features on separate occasions and are shocked to see a “girl” in an all-boys school, while no one has this reaction to Yuu). Cater also offers to show Yuu girls in the form of the Roselia painting, Leona (who's known to respect women) treats them as dismissively as he does the rest of the cast, and Deuce, who Cannot Talk to Women, is one of Yuu's closest friends. On the other hand, one of Vil's school uniform lines has him saying that Yuu's school uniform is too big on them, implying that they have either a smaller build than the average male student or were given the wrong uniform size. Floyd calling them "shrimp" also seems to imply that they're on the smaller side, though none of the other characters comment on their height. Whatever the case, the fact remains that Yuu's gender may never be confirmed, leaving everyone free to imagine them however they want.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Some fans of Black Butler are resentful of the game because they believe that Yana Toboso working on it simultaneously with her manga is having a negative impact on it. Since the game's launch, the manga's recent chapters have become very short for a monthly manga (at one point only 17 pages) and the pacing had slowed to a crawl, getting stuck in an endless number of flashbacks and potentially contributing to Arc Fatigue.
  • To a lesser extent, fans of Kingdom Hearts also get into heated debates with fans of Twisted Wonderland over which franchise overseen by Disney Japan is superior. Fans of Kingdom Hearts point out the Allegedly Free Game nature about Twisted Wonderland's gacha system, while fans of Twisted Wonderland point out the Kudzu Plot nature of the Kingdom Hearts series. The fact that Twisted Wonderland is getting an anime adaptation while the Kingdom Hearts animated series never came to fruition hasn't helped matters, either. That being said, there is some overlap of both fanbases due to the similarities between both franchises.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • When it comes to depictions of female Yuu in the eastern playerbase, it's extremely common for Yuu to be drawn or depicted as a Bifauxnen ala Haruhi Fujioka to explain why the characters don’t react to them^note In-universe, the thing the characters usually focus on is the fact that the player lacks the ability to use magic and that they're from another world, which led to the interpretation that if Yuu can be female, they must look masculine enough to get by unnoticed by everyone and how they’re able to attend an all boys school without an issue. This is eventually made canon with the debut of Hirasaka Yuuka, the "Yuu" for the manga adaptation of Chapter 2 who is a Bifauxnen.
    • Related to this, it is generally frowned upon for fans to give Yuu a design that "upstages" the main cast, to the point where there's even been drama over it in the Japanese fanbase. This is why most fan depictions of Yuu generally border on Ridiculously Average Guy (Or a Stock Light-Novel Hero) if male and if female Yuu isn't being drawn as a Bifauxnen, a fairly generic looking Stock Shoujo Heroine. This is in contrast to the Western fanbase where they have more freedom to design Yuu however they want. That said, there is a specific tag for artists who do design Yuu in a way that makes them look less average in #創作監督生 (Original design Prefect) so as to not overlap with the general tags. This also includes to Yuu having their own personality and backstory beyond what is shown in the game.
  • Angsty fan-art of the fae dorm members of Diasomnia outliving Silver has become a common plot point, as Lilia being implied to be an ancient being has left the impression that fae in general are either Long-Lived or immortal^* This goes by the original Sleeping Beauty movies standards, as Maleficent, who was a fairy, was killed at the end of that movie.. Lilia is usually depicted as the one hit the hardest by this as he has told Silver that a human's life is short which implies that he knows he’ll one day see Silver go before him, and because Lilia raised him.
  • In several fanworks in the Eastern fanbase, it's common to depict Yuu as someone who had to get used to having low budget and running their way around it due to having to spend it on fixing Ramshackle dorm and dealing with Grim's Big Eater habits until they got the financial help they needed.
  • Due to a long-standing and popular theory of how the android Ortho Shroud is not the real Ortho, but rather someone made in the real Ortho who might have been deceased at some point, especially before Chapter 6 was released, fanarts and/or fanfiction where Ortho is human and sometimes able to attend school together with his brother, befriend the first years and interact with the cast, is abound, especially in the Japanese fanbase such as these two fanarts.
  • Lilia's implied "True form" from Silver and Sebek's account is more often than not depicted as an older, adult form of Lilia with longer hair and taller in fanarts and fancomics. Chapter 7 instead mitigated this revealing that except for having longer hair, Lilia remained the same height as he did in the present day.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Due to Ambiguous Gender and the Player Character nature in place, it's common for fanartists to create their own version of Yuu or have someone from a different franchise take Yuu's place, e.g. depicting Ciel as the protagonist.
  • The cast being based on Disney villains and other characters makes Twisted Wonderland a rich and fertile soil in which to create OC's twisted from other Disney characters from Disney Animated Canon. From The Jungle Book (1967), Peter Pan, The Emperor's New Groove, you name it!
  • The shocking appearance of Mickey Mouse near the end of Chapter 3 has brought up questions as to whether other classic characters will appear and what this means for the game as a whole.
  • Due to the concept of Overblot, fan-artists have taken to drawing Overblot designs for characters who haven't yet Overblotted in the game, as well as the circumstances which could lead to said Overblot.
  • Having characters wear special outfits from events is also popular among fan-artists, especially characters who are not shown wearing them in the event proper, e.g. Riddle wearing the Beans Camo outfit from the Happy Beans Day! event.
• Fan Nickname:
  • After the game's launch, the fandom gave the Overblot forms a variety of nicknames such as Sans Mode, Doppels, and even Half-Nightmare forms.
  • The characters who join Yuu's circle of friends (the first years, commonly) are known as the 'Dumbass Squad' within the Western fanbase due to the initial Fire-Forged Friends being various forms of Idiot Heroes.
    • Following Chapter 3, Ace, Deuce and Grim are also known as the 'braincell trio' due to the action they did that caused the conflict of the chapter.
  • The game itself is often called "Disney High School Host Club" by some fans due to the similarity of the Player Character, Yuu, to Haruhi as the Only Sane Man surrounded by a Cast Full of Pretty Boys in an academic setting.
  • Kalim gained the nickname 'Sunshine Boy' for his optimistic, forgiving nature and for generally being the least shady of the cast of Grey-and-Gray Morality characters.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, Crowley gained the nickname 'Neglectful Crow Dad' (or just Crow Dad) due to being essentially responsible for Yuu's well-being and neglecting said well-being.
  • For Jade, he’s called 'Sebastian', 'Sebastian 2.0' or even 'Budget Sebastian' due to his similarities to that character.
  • Jade and Floyd are also sometimes referred to as "The Tweels".
  • Following the manga adaptation's design of Yuu revealed, many started to nickname the Manga's Yuu as "Lobster" due to being a far contrast to what little is known of the game's Yuu, who had been referred to as tiny a handful of times in the game, and canonically gets called "Shrimp" by Floyd due to how tiny they are.
  • Riddle has a slight reputation for being called a Pomeranian or some other small, quick-to-anger creature.
• Fanon:
  • Many players believe Ruggie to be the vice-leader of Savanaclaw due to his closeness and assistant position to Leona, similar to the usual close relationships other vice-leaders have with their dorm leaders. However, according to Leona, Savanaclaw does not have a vice-leader as candidates would be required to defeat him in combat, leading those who are aware of its not being canon to suggest that Ruggie is an unofficial vice-leader instead.
  • In parts of the Japanese fandom, it is common to see fanart of Cater and Ace being the past and future Heartslabyul dorm leaders respectively. For the former, this is fueled by the theory that Cater is the laidback previous dorm leader Riddle defeated in a duel, which is popular among Japanese players.
  • In the Wish Upon a Star event, Floyd refers to his father as 'oyaji' and mentions that his father taught him to 'pay attention to details' and 'spare no expense' to gain respect. Combined with the twins' threatening demeanours and the nature of their work for Azul, this caused many fans to speculate that Jade and Floyd's parents are part of the Coral Sea equivalent of The Mafia. Jade's birthday card Personal Story only fuels this notion even more as he mentions what his parents' does at one point.
  • The headcanons that Neige LeBlanche is faking his The Ingenue demeanor to hide his jerkass nature (at best) or that Neige is a Yandere (at worst) are widely accepted as a fact by fans due to characters in the main story sharing the same speculations. This is eventually jossed and lost some traction when the final parts of the Pomefiore chapter revealed that Neige is a genuine Nice Guy.
  • Comparatively a minor one when you view the above examples, but many fans have taken to headcanoning and/or drawing that Yuu and Grim wore the same wizard Halloween costume in Scary Monsters over the curtain ghost costume Yuu is described to have been made/given by the ghosts, likely because the idea of a curtain ghost costume is boring and too plain compared to Grim's costume even with Yuu's lack of powers and status as The Ghost considered.
    • Alternatively, a few have designed Yuu's ghost costume to be cuter or more elaborate than a simple bedsheet.
  • Fan depictions of Ace’s currently unseen older brother usually depict him also having a heart symbol magically affixed to the left side of his face like Ace, though smaller and under his eye in a similar fashion to Cater and Trey’s facial markings.
  • In the Japanese fanbase, while there is no official confirmation yet many believed and/or guessed that Crewel was sorted into Pomefiore back when he was still a student due to his high regard for fashion and his mastery in creating poisons.
  • Ortho, despite being a third year in all technicalities due to his 2-in-1 student situation with his brother Idia, he's considered a Honorary True Companion to the first years group in several fan content. This gained fuel in Ortho's Birthday Personal story where it's implied that Ortho would actually be sixteen instead of being far younger than he looks. And as of Chapter 6, Ortho has been given the full priveledges of a first year student.
  • Due to Vil's father appearing in the story, but not his mother, it's commonly believed that Vil's mother passed away when Vil was younger.
  • Some in the fandom have taken to the idea that, because of their presence during the overblots and being referred to by Crowley as a "beast tamer", Yuu has become Night Raven's de facto therapist and continues to help the overblotters (and possibly other students) through their issues after each incident. This is in spite of in canon Yuu doesn't provide such support, not to mention chapter 6 reveals Night Raven does have student counselors available to those who overblotted and are willing to contact them.
  • After Chapter 7 reveals that Sebek's older brother is also a Night Raven College alumni, fans believe that Sebek's older brother had been a classmate or a peer of Ace's older brother, who is also a Night Raven College alumni.
• Fashion-Victim Villain:
  • To some, Overblot!Jamil can be hard to take seriously. This is because while the design itself is well-accepted and invokes the image of Jafar... the goatee that Jamil gained in his Overblotted form just looks odd and out of place.
  • This also applies to an extent to Divus Crewel, of all characters, in the second Vargas Camp event where the costume he wears to kidnap the campers can cross the line from camp to just plain ridiculous, especially the over-the-top back decorations. Though in his defense, Vargas was the one who designed the costume, with Crewel also clarifying that he usually never wore the kind of outfit that he is currently wearing to Vil, a fellow fashionista in the event story.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Fans of Tokyo Disney Sea's Recruiters tend to get along with Twisted Wonderland fans, since their characters are also based on popular Disney villains.
  • The involvement of Yana Toboso in this game gained many a Black Butler fan's interest.
  • Quite oddly with Paradox Live, as a lot of fans of the former also play Twisted Wonderland. In particular, fans of Savanaclaw tend to vote for Akan Yatsura whenever they're involved in a rap battle.
  • In spite of the game being Dueling Works with Fate/Grand Order, a good amount of Twisted Wonderland players actually play both games, and fanart and scenarios of a male or female Ritsuka taking the place of the Player Character, Yuu, are abound due to this, especially within the Japanese fanbase. It helps that Aniplex helped publish both games and they both have a similar Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game appeal to the respective player base.
  • To a lesser extent, part of Twisted Wonderland's playerbase overlaps with Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story due to both games being developed by f4samurai and published by Aniplex.
  • There is an overlap with players of games similarly catering to a female-majority audience, such as Touken Ranbu and A3!, and of grindy games such as Granblue Fantasy and Arknights, with Twisted Wonderland being treated as a refreshing break from their main game.
  • The fanbase sees some overlap with that of Ensemble Stars!, due not only to both games being female-targeted but also to the perceived similarities between some characters, e.g. Riddle and Tsukasa (refined redheads with Sweet Tooths) or Deuce and Hokuto (serious dark-haired, blue-eyed boys devoted to the women who raised them).
  • To a lesser extent, some players of Twisted Wonderland are also players of SINoALICE, as both games share five stories between them^noteAlice in Wonderland, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid along with a darker take on familiar media, to the point where many players of both wish for a legitimate crossover event between the two. In fact, SINoALICE's producer on the Square Enix side, Yoshinari Fujimoto, joked on Twitter that Pokelabo wanted to release Hameln on the same day as Twisted Wonderland, but were too impatient.
  • The game's fandom also sees an overlap with Kingdom Hearts as both are Japanese Disney games heavily featuring a Disney Animated Canon Crossover. Like the SINoALICE example above, many players wish for a collab event with Kingdom Hearts due to how much both series have in common.
  • There are some fans of Harry Potter that have taken interest in the work due to Twisted having similar methods of sorting the students into dorms, and both settings taking place in a Wizarding School.
  • With Tokyo Revengers, especially in Japan. A good portion of Twisted Wonderland players in Japan read Tokyo Revengers and beyond the majorly Bishounen casts, the two series share a similar tone at how morally gray their respective stories can get.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Vil/Neige is shipped because Vil is known to consider Neige his bitter rival in the main story, while Neige himself is unaware of Vil's own resentment and jealousy towards him.
  • Rollo Flamme from the "Glorious Masquerade" was quickly paired with Malleus as both a consequence of being twisted from Frollo and from his plan to remove all magic, targeting Malleus in particular for being one of the most powerful magicians. The end of the event even features Rollo and Malleus dancing together at the masquerade with Rollo vowing to one day defeat Malleus and Malleus looking forward to that future showdown.
• Genius Bonus: Players familiar with Egyptian mythology will notice that Sebek's name is most likely derived from one of the alternative names of Sobek, the Egyptian crocodile god. Bonus in that Floyd's nickname for Sebek translates to "crocodile".
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Despite not having an official localization and being explicitly marketed toward a Japanese audience^note Twisted is set in another world but still takes heavy inspiration from Japanese culture and cultural norms. For example, there was an event centered around the Tanabata festival, upon release Twisted gained a notable and growing fanbase in many Western countries due in part to Yana Toboso’s involvement in the work. As a result, many fans have come together to do unofficial Fan Translation projects to make the game more accessible to new players.
  • Less popular characters like Jack Howl, Ortho Shroud and Sebek Zigvolt get more individual attention from Western fans than they do over in Japan. When it comes to dorm leaders, however, while still generally overshadowed by the likes of Leona or Riddle, Malleus and Vil seem to have growing fanbases in the West than they do in their home country (while still being fairly popular).
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Early on, Vil gained the ire from several fans due to how he treated Epel and easily consider him as a villainous person. Come the Pomefiore chapter, it's revealed that Vil absolutely loathes the notion of being seen as a villain and have been type-casted as such for years, to a point he nearly got bullied for his roles.
  • In Grim's 1st anniversary card story he tells Yuu of how he will continue to look after and stay together with them and the rest of the first years during their stay at Night Raven College, with his Groovy! voice line saying that he wished these fun days would go on forever. Cut back to the ending of the Pomefiore arc, as well as the implications of Grim overblotting in the future...
  • Before Chapter 6 was released, Alive! Ortho fanarts and AU's can be found in the Japanese fanbase exploring on what if Ortho is a living human instead of being an android robot. Then chapter 6 reveals that the original Ortho, whom the robotic Ortho that the players know is based on, is still alive... as a Phantom.
  • Before Chapter 7 was released in 17 December 2022, a lot of theories on how Malleus might overblot had to do with how Malleus might overblot due to something happening to Yuu. Come the actual chapter, it's revealed to be the opposite. It's Yuu who unwittingly and unknowingly gave Malleus the idea for his plan that would shape him up to be the Arc Villain of Chapter 7, that would eventually snowball to Malleus overblotting down the line. Nice job breaking it, Yuu!
  • A handful of facts and tidbits regarding Malleus's character becomes somber with everything that comes to light about his past in Chapter 7:
    • Some fans view Malleus to be too naive for a supposedly Really 700 Years Old being and a prince. Chapter 7 later reveals that Malleus was initially born during the height of the war between humans and fairies in Briar Valley, and would have been born then and there were it not for the war taking his parents lives away due to dragon eggs only being able to hatch from the magic and love of its parental figures. Add to the fact that he is currently 178 years old despite being born 400 years ago, and had a form of awareness regarding his surroundings and people that approach him as an egg, Malleus was essentially stuck in a And I Must Scream situation where he remains unhatched for two centuries and had his own growth stunted as a result.
    • The Running Gag of Malleus not being invited to things gets a lot harder to swallow when you learn that it's one of the potentially unintentional side effect of his mother's blessings for Malleus who has yet to hatch at the time she gave that blessing, one that is meant to protect him from harm no less, backfiring on Malleus due to Malleus actually hatching out of his egg during a time of peace and the blessing instead became a curse that caused Malleus to be isolated by people who would be his peers, a majority of whom feared him in some degree with a few exceptions. Even without the blessing, the existence of the Royal Senators who prove to be classist and elitist had a hand in his growth and further isolation from people in general.
    • Malleus hating being left alone and his episode level up quote to Yuu being his fear of losing Yuu becomes one as it's hinted that the Royal Senators of Briar Valley had painstakenly isolated Malleus from Lilia all because they are too offended that a lowly dirty bat fae's parental love is what ultimately caused Malleus to finally hatch. Malleus already lost Lilia, whom he long subconcsiously accepted as his Parental Substitute even before he gets to know him, once. Before then, he lost both his parents in the Human-Fae war.
  • In Silver's Halloween SSR Personal story vignette, he mentions his fear that he might one day fight against Lilia in the future. Cut to Chapter 7, where we see Silver, in his despair at the Awful Truth of his origin, imagine Lilia attempting to kill him as the Dawn Knight in revenge for Mellenoar and Malleus...
  • Lilia's character is subjected to this in light of what has been revealed in Chapter 7:
    • Lilia mentioning that "History is written by the winners" in Chapter 6 becomes tragic when you learn that Lilia is unfairly exiled with his achievement and contribution, such as how he saved the Draconia royal bloodline by hatching Malleus was erased and hidden from history by the Royal senate over things that aren't even Lilia's own fault.
    • Lilia being happy and proud of being praised for how he looks in his Ghost Marriage SR Card vignette gets harsher in the context that Lilia was never praised for anything he does and the one time he actually saved the Draconia Royal Family, his heroism was returned with ungrateful prejudice.
    • Lilia's likes (solo travelling) and dislikes (finding things) seems innocent and normal until Chapter 7 reveals that he started traveling all over Twisted Wonderland to find another way to hatch Malleus but never could find what he was looking for.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • In Ace's birthday card personal story, he mentions how his father is magicless and he speaks of him respectfully throughout that section of the scene. This makes Ace punching Riddle for mocking Yuu's lack of magic much more heartwarming. Ace may have made fun of Yuu for it early on, but he respects his father greatly, and by that point respects Yuu enough to punch Riddle for mocking them.
  • Malleus having featured cards in Al-Ab Nariya and Glorious Masquerade becomes this in light of Chapter 7, where it's revealed Lilia has traveled there and told Malleus of his experience all while he is still an egg, and Malleus subconsciously remembers them all. Though Lilia kept out the unpleasant parts of his travels, Malleus gets to truly enjoy his time in those countries in a time of peace.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Before Twisted Wonderland was released, a now-deleted fan translation blog translated Azul's countdown poster quote to include the French phrase 'raison d'être', accidentally causing many fans to speculate whether or not Azul was fluent in French. Turns out the blog was correct about there being a student who could speak French—it just wasn't Azul, it was Rook!
  • This Tumblr blog focusing on content related to hypothetical students enrolled in Royal Sword Academy has included Original Characters twisted from Belle and Cinderella as well as an O.C. Stand-in for Prince Rielle (mentioned in Chapter 3 and commonly speculated to be twisted from Ariel), all three of whose origins are the princesses, rather than the princes of their respective movies. Come Chapter 5, the story introduces Neige Leblanche, a RSA student who is twisted from Snow White herself.
  • With the news of a Twisted Wonderland version of Tamagotchi, players can now have their own Gao Gao Dragon-kun, especially if they get the Diasomnia version.
  • In the light of the release of Enma Yuuken, many fans called him "Lobster" due to how radically different he was from the in-game Yuu. As it turns out, come the "Vargas Camp ~Spring Happenings~" event, there is someone that Floyd nicknamed "Lobster"... it's the sports teacher Vargas himself!
  • When Enma Yuuken's design is revealed for the manga adaptation, many fans compare him to Nozaki from Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun appearance wise. Come early April 2021, the second volume for the anthology comic is announced with Izumi Tsubaki, the mangaka of said series listed as one of the illustrators for the anthology.
  • After "Happy Beans Day" was first released in 2020, fan-arts of the cast in other event outfits are abound. (E.g. drawing Riddle in a Beans Camo or Fairy Gala couture outfit). Come the 2021 rerun of "Happy Beans Day", it's announced that a new story will be running together with the rerun and some of the characters are announced to be getting a whole new Beans Camo version, following an approach similar to what Fate/Grand Order had with some of their event reruns.
  • Epel had made clear that he wanted to join Savannaclaw instead of Pomefiore before he gets his Character Development. It's later revealed that Rook was initially sorted into Savannaclaw before being transferred to Pomefiore. In other words, Rook was the opposite of Epel.
  • In "Vargas Camp ~Spring Happenings~", Floyd mentions how much Jade is envious of Floyd's training camp to the Dwarf mines and wished that he could go if only to find rarities and mushrooms. Come the September 2022 announcement, Jade is revealed to be the event reward SR for "Vargas Camp ~Happenings Return~". In short, Jade now gets his wish to go camping in the mountains.
  • Shortly after the game's launch in 2020, many fan-artist created original characters inspired by other Disney characters along with original magical schools as a mean to expand the world of Twisted Wonderland in their own ways and a majority of the fan-created characters are based on villains. The October 2022 Abema stream introduced a new magical school named Noble Bell College and also the release of Rollo Framme, a student of Noble Bell College who is twisted from Frollo.
  • Chapter 7 of Twisted Wonderland has Malleus's plan to be putting everyone into a Forced Sleep and stop time so the cast could live through their idealized lives through their dreams and so they won't leave him... all of which was a near blow-to-blow re-enacment of Persona 5 Royal's bonus content. Specifically, that of the True Final Boss's motive in the bonus scenario of Royal and how the True Final Boss attempted to make that motive come to fruition, and how Joker unintentionally gave the True Final Boss the means and motives to commence that plan, in the same way Yuu unintentionally convinced and gave Malleus the idea for his plan to get Lilia to stay. Additionally said Updated Re-release was launched into multiple platforms in October 2022, 2 months before Chapter 7 was first launched in Japan.
  • An artist and fan comments this, hoping for Rollo to potentially cameo in Chapter 7. It ended up being a close prediction as the September 2023 announcement of Rollo getting a limited SSR also mentions Chapter 7 part 5 being part of the September content update and a Milk dish themed Masterchef event is also announced for Mid-September 2023.
  • One Japanese Fan-artist made OC's based on Gideon and Honest John from Pinocchio. A few years later, the 2023 Twisted Wonderland Fes and the 2023 Halloween special Abema stream reveals Gidelle and Ferro Honest, implied to be twisted from Honest John and Gideon, will debut in the 2023 Halloween event, Stage in Playful land, with the artists rendition of a twisted Gideon and Honest John being a near dead ringer to the actual characters.
• Ho Yay: While downplayed compared to most Cast Full of Pretty Boys works, there still does exist some elements of this in the interactions between the characters.
  • The boys seem to love to shower Kalim with compliments as shown in the Fairy Gala event, much to Leona's costernation.
  • Silver says he thinks of Malleus when asked what he imagines his ideal prince to be in Epel's Groom for the Day personal story.
  • Sebek's excessive enthusiasm toward praising and serving Malleus. Fans have straight up dubbed him a "simp" for Malleus because of this.
  • In the "Tsum Tsum" crossover event, Tsum!Sebek affectionately brushes up against Malleus' cheek.
  • Rook has fairly suggestive dialogue with everyone he interacts with, only fueled by his Stalker without a Crush (maybe) tendencies.
  • Vil’s R School Uniform story has Cater saying he thought about dating Vil because of how cool and pretty he is. Vil responds by implying that he’s expensive rather than outright rejecting him. Cater in general seems to have a flirty demeanor toward the other male characters, frequently calling them "Cute".
  • The fact that Floyd loves teasing Riddle the most out of all the other characters makes it seem like Floyd might have a one-sided crush on the latter, as his provocations can easily be read as classic pigtail-pulling.
  • In the Ghost Marriage story event, one of Eliza’s guards admits to his heart skipping a beat after hearing Riddles romantic proposal. Epel and Ace praise him and Epel calls Riddle "Handsome", much to his embarrassment.
  • In Scary Monsters it’s shown that even the male visitors have a thing for Vil.
  • Again in Scary Monsters, to drive off the 'magicammonsters' for good, Vil and Epel pretend to be real vampires and bite their fellow Pomefiore residents on the neck.
  • In Rook’s SSR dorm outfit story, there’s a mob cinema studies student that devises a plan to have Epel and Rook expelled from the club by framing some Savanaclaw students for tearing up Vil’s costume, which angers the rest of the Cinema studies group enough to go after them and start a fight. The reason he does this? Because he’s jealous that Epel and Rook are able to interact with Vil in a way that he isn’t, despite him doing everything he can in the cinema studies club to be noticed by Vil. Even when Epel tries to break the illusion that he and Vil are buddy-buddy by informing him that Vil is domineering to him when they interact, the student doesn’t care because any sort of interaction is fine. Rook points out that the student did all of this out of love for Vil, which he doesn’t deny it.
  • Played with at one point in the first chapter of the manga story. Yuuken performs a Diving Save in an attempt to protect Riddle from Grim's flames which leads to Yuuken falling on top of him. When Yuuken asks if he's okay Riddle sports an absolutely adorable face that looks damn near wonderstrucked...then in the next panel it's replaced with a fearsome Nightmare Face as Riddle tosses Yuuken off him and berates the newcomer for mistaking him for a weakling.
  • Multiple characters have commented on how close Riddle and Trey seem to be, and at one point the two are compared to the Queen and King of Hearts. Rook even believes that Trey holds a deep affection for Riddle until Trey sets the record straight.
  • Trey and Cater also have quite a few moments, one of the more prominent being in Cater's Wish during the Wish Upon a Star event. After Cater gives Trey his wishing star Trey laments that Cater doesn't want to share with Trey and be honest with him. It comes across like as him feeling insecure by his love interest not letting him in.
  • At one point Azul calls Jamil "handsome" when he makes Jamil believe that he's under Jamil's spell and continues to show a peculiar interest in Jamil (or, rather his true potential) afterwards that borders on being an Abhorrent Admirer.
  • Azul (unwittingly) falling asleep on Riddle's shoulder and Riddle not appearing to mind one bit.
  • Earlier in Ch. 6 there is Riddle unknowingly using Leona's lap as a pillow with Leona merely griping about it later.
  • Idia's "Scary Monsters" card features part of his costume getting stuck onto Leona. Idia borderline swoons over Leona about to pull a suave move to cut it free...until Leona ends up cutting into Idia's costume instead.
  • The rhythmics for "Glorious Masquerade" feature some of the boys dancing together in pairs. Special mention goes to Malleus and Sebek for having a particularly intimate looking dance (at one point their heads going close enough to nearly resemble a kiss).

I-P

• I Knew It!:
  • Many fans predicted that the Ortho that we are introduced to at the start is actually made in the image of the original Ortho Shroud who is presumably deceased. Come Chapter 6, they were proven right that the android Ortho Shroud is a robot and AI that Idia created in the original Ortho's image. But what caught most fans off guard is the fact that the original Ortho has overblotted and become a Phantom, nor the fact that the original Ortho was killed 8 years ago under Idia's hand accidentally.
  • Due to who Rollo is inspired from, many players predicted how Rollo's main motive in "Glorious Masquerade" had to do with Fantastic Racism in some level. They were proven to be right that Rollo does in fact have a case of Fantastic Racism, but rather than a dislike towards those who aren't human as these players initially predicted, Rollo instead hated magic users and magic in general, contrasting the magic-capable casts who all had majorly positive things to say about magic, all while being a magician himself.
  • When it's teased in the 2023 Twisted Wonderland Fes that the 2023 Halloween event will be Pinocchio inspired, fans predicted that Ortho and/or Ace would be one of the SSR's due to the two sharing a trait that Pinocchio himself had in the movie. The Halloween special Abema stream a few months later confirms that both Ortho and Ace are among the SSR's featured for the 2023 Halloween event, with Kalim being the third featured SSR.
• Incest Yay Shipping:
  • It did not take very long for certain areas of the fandom to ship Jade and Floyd Leech as a Twincest pairing due to them being very close-knit, with Jade's apparent favoritism of Floyd and Floyd's huge dependence on Jade. Jade has also outright said more than once that he values Floyd's happiness most (in their duo magic lines and in one of Floyd's SR card stories); considering Jade mostly uses others without caring for them, him saying he wants Floyd to be happy is saying much. The occasional hints that they may not be real twins, but instead brothers(?) who chose each other to survive together, have also contributed.
  • Ace is frequently shipped with his currently unseen older brother. His constant talks and praise of his brother certainly hasn’t helped much in that regard.
  • To a much lesser extent, Leona and Cheka are also shipped together. He’s also shipped with his brother, Farena (who is given a fan design due to not being shown as more than a silhouette in canon) and more rarely both Cheka and Farena at the same time.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Ruggie Bucchi. It's stated a number of times through personal story vignettes and event stories that he grew up in extreme poverty and even faced racism for being a Hyena beastman. Add onto how his mother died from childbirth and his father gone to who knows where (and presumably dead), this results in him becoming a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing conman who, while he looks for honest work, rarely passes an opportunity to try stealing what he wants or needs because he knew that the world won't do him any favors unless he seeks the opportunity himself. He later found some faith in Leona for being far different than he initially expected for someone who is part of royalty but when all their plans turn to dust in the Savanaclaw chapter, Leona fell to despair, throwing down everyone who joined and cooperated with his plan in faith of Leona trying to change things up and nearly got killed for it. In spite of it, Ruggie has a strong loyalty to his family and community in his neighborhood area and even though he has all the reasons to dislike and fear Leona for nearly being killed and Leona stomping on his faith in him, he was able to move on from the incident relatively quickly and work towards his own future where he and his family back home lived well.
  • Kalim Al-Asim was born the eldest of many children in the Asim merchant family with the main scenario and personal story vignettes implying a lot of Backstory Horror where he lived much of his life with the threat of being killed by opposing merchant groups and/or greedy relatives and being named heir and future head of the family on top of that makes the threats double up and he has to deal with assassination and kidnapping attempts on a near daily basis, and that's not counting how he also had to deal with so much betrayals from his own family members that he declared and thought of Jamil as his only best friend and someone who won't betray him... only to be proven wrong come Chapter 4 where Jamil's frustrations and repression of self comes to a blow and eventually led to Jamil overblotting when his scheme to overthrow Kalim was exposed. Even with all that, Kalim remains a bright, optimistic individual who wishes to help people however he can.
  • Lilia Vanrouge was a poor orphan that Maleficia Draconia picked up and eventually grew up to be the childhood friend of Meleanor Draconia, Malleus's mother and best friends with her future husband, Leverne. Though faced with discrimination from humans and even fellow fae, the former for being fae and the latter because he's a bat fae, Lilia moved forward with the motivation of wanting to serve and prove his loyalty to the Draconia royal family. Eventually rising ranks to become a top soldier. However, he later lost his two friends in the human-fae war, too grief stricken to argue back when the Royal Senators berate and deride him for his failure to protect Meleanor, order Lilia's exile, and let them take Malleus away without question in his grief despite Meleanor's Last Request for him to hatch Malleus in her and Leverne's stead. Ten years after Meleanor's death, he was secretly tasked by Queen Maleficia to hatch Malleus again and does so, taking 200 years to travel all around the world to find another method for a dragon egg to hatch. When Malleus finally hatched, the Royal Senators, once again, berate and spit out vitriol at Lilia for "dirtying the Draconia family's blood" by hatching him despite Lilia doing so much work to save the royal family for the past two centuries and had Malleus taken away from him, prevented from interacting or acting too fatherly at the child whom Lilia truly gets to love like his own son. And yet, the day Malleus hatched was the happiest memory for Lilia and the fact that Silver, Sebek, Grim and Yuu's venture in Lilia's dream show that nothing major changes like what they've seen of Sebek's show that Lilia is already content with how his life turned out, with that love and his experience being what eventually fuel him to adopt Silver as his own and Lilia genuinely wishing a peaceful world where the Fae and humans can co-exist in peace.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Chapter 7 introduces the Briar Valley Royal Senators, whose first actions in their Establishing Character Moment was to deride Lilia for supposedly being a coward prioritizing Malleus's safety under Meleanor's orders and then demand Lilia to hand over Malleus to them for they cannot trust a "dirty bat orphan from unknown origins" to care or hatch Malleus. When Lilia eventually hatch Malleus 200 years later when neither they nor Maleficia, Malleus's own grandmother, could do so. They instead act ungrateful towards Lilia and claim that Lilia is "sullying" the Draconia royal family's blood. With their Establishing Character Moment having them act as classist, elitist assholes towards Lilia who did a whole lot to save the Draconia family bloodline, only to be paid with petty vitriol just because Lilia is a bat fae, many players call for their blood and claim them to be even worse than Henrick, who himself is another Hate Sink introduced in Chapter 7.
• Jerkass Woobie: Most of the Overblot victims so far have been this.
  • Leona lived his entire life feeling inferior to his older brother, leaving him with a pessimistic outlook on his own capabilities and future. While it doesn't excuse him being a Jerkass in general and for his (and Ruggie's) role in injuring other students during the Savanaclaw chapter, having to live being compared for all his life no matter what he does really did a number on him.
  • Azul was bullied when he was young due to his being a physically slow, chubby octopus among more sleek, single-tailed merfolk. He studied magic and created his unique contract magic to get even with his bullies, but this then led to his targeting anyone who would enter into a contract with him. While he is still very much greedy after his recovery, you have to admit that he doesn't have the best childhood.
  • While Jamil betraying Kalim and trying to overthrow him as a dorm leader after all the trust Kalim put in him is terrible, Jamil also lived most of his life being told that he must never outdo Kalim despite being more than capable of doing so because of the hierarchy Kalim and Jamil's families had as master and servant—a servant shouldn't be better than their master. Jamil yearned for freedom so that he could freely aim to do better. Kalim being bought the position of dorm head instead of earning it only further drove the nail in the coffin. Despite Kalim seeing Jamil as a person and acknowledging how capable he is, Jamil would still forever be bound to his role as a servant regardless of how he feels about Kalim.
  • Idia has proven multiple times to usually be quite the condescending and antisocial individual, and in Ch. 6 he not only participates in kidnapping his fellow classmates for purposes of forced experimentation but also goes along with Phantom!Ortho's plan of destroying and resetting the world into their liking. With that said it turns out Idia doesn't really have a genuine interest in STYX and is only involved because he (and the rest of the Shrouds) are pretty much being ordered to by their superiors, the Jupiter family, effectively depriving him of the freedom to choose his own destiny. And to make things worse, the Ortho that we know is actually a robot that Idia built in his brother's image, the very brother that Idia accidentally killed when they were young children which left him further in perpetual guilt and despair up into the present.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of people became interested in the game because of the bizarre Disney meets Yana Toboso of Black Butler fame premise.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Leona is particularly prominent in this regard, being shipped with Ruggie, Jack, Malleus, Vil, Rook, Yuu and Cheka, to name a few.
  • Yuu themself is this due to being the Player Character and they are shipped with nearly everyone. From Azul, Malleus, Che'nya... you get the idea.
• LGBT Fanbase: In the West, the series attracts a good amount of LGBT fans with the attractive cast. Vil, in particular, is popular among fans who identify as non-binary despite being a cisgender man and identifying himself as such in dialogue.
• Memetic Badass: Shortly after he is revealed, the Manga adaptation of Yuu, Enma Yuuken, gained a strong popularity due to his Hunk appearance, and added onto how he was close to be ready to attacking Crowley on the spot for being brought to Twisted Wonderland by force. With how far different he was from the game's depiction of Yuu, in addition to that, he becomes a certified Memetic Badass to the fanbase who joked that he would just plow through as a Badass Normal Shounen protagonist with his Kendo blade instead of being the Supporting Protagonist that the game's Yuu is depicted to be.
  • Yuuken further cements this status when he defeats Overblot!Riddle with his prowess in kendo and with no assistance from the others.
• Memetic Mutation: See here.
• Memetic Psychopath: Trey Clover. Despite being a genuine Nice Guy who strays from committing as heinous of deeds as his peers he's grown a bit of a reputation as this thanks to his habit of catching others off guard when his grudge-holding, calculative, and manipulative side peaks through. The "potential" of what Trey could possibly do with a power like "Doodle Suit" has also not been lost on those who see him as this.
• Moe:
  • Admit it—Cheka, Leona's nephew, is ADORABLE. So cute, one of Yuu's options when they meet him for the first time is to call him "an innocent angel".
  • In addition, there's also Ortho, who is basically a bright little ball of sunshine.
  • From what little we’ve seen of him, Neige LeBlanche has gotten this reaction from fans due to his cute appearance and humorously questionable Snow White themed fashion choices that also add to his charm.
  • Whenever Riddle pulls off a genuine smile, he lands here.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: Twisted Wonderland is a joseimuke targeted, Cast Full of Pretty Boys game that doesn't cater exclusively to that demographic, making it accessible for anyone to get into if they like stories with shounen-esque elements, fun character dynamics and a rare lack of romantic tension between the player character and the cast. There's also the fact that it's a Rhythm Game, an Adventure game, and a gacha game that doesn’t require a lot of time or effort devoted to it.
• Narm: In the opening, there's a scene where Leona appears to be crying over something...and the animators chose this moment to slip in a hidden Mickey Mouse head (in the splatter pattern his tears make).
  • Diasomnia's leitmotif is an elegant, strong, and ominous orchestra piece that wouldn't sound out of place in an intense moment and typically plays whenever Malleus appears. However, there are a few cases that it plays during a rather lighthearted or calm moment which makes it sound jarring and out of place. Admitably it could emphasize how outsiders view Malleus on a normal basis, but the point stands.
  • There are also a few cases where the character animations might not capture the same energy as the situation and dialogue, one example being when Trey screams Riddle's name right before Riddle overblots but looks almost like he's bored doing so.
• Not Badass Enough for Fans: A group of players, especially those from the west, find Yuu to be less enjoyable than the Player Characters of the similar genre, believing that Yuu doesn't contribute much to the grand scheme of the story. They don't find Yuu proactive enough due to them prioritising tactics and getting the students to temporarily work together for a cause instead of going on the offensive, as well as their tendency to lay low and not provoke anyone unless absolutely necessary.
• One-Scene Wonder: Che'nya and Cheka have appeared in one scene in their respective main story chapters regarding the characters they're connected to and have yet to show up onscreen again. These short scenes were enough to make both characters hugely popular within the fanbase. As well, Che’nya’s presence sparked interest in Royal Sword Academy overall.
• One True Threesome:
  • Shipping the Octavinelle trio as a threesome is extremely popular, what with the three being friends from the same hometown and the Leech twins choosing to stick with Azul because they find him interesting.
  • Having Ace, Deuce, and Yuu paired together is fairly common due to their Fire-Forged Friends dynamic in the main story.
  • Once it's revealed that Lilia had once been in love with Meleanor while also being very close friends to her husband Leverne with Meleanor explicitly saying that Lilia also loved her husband, fans interpret that they are in a threesome together.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • The "proposal" scenes of the Ghost Marriage event can be seen as this, though downplayed considering the scenes context. When showing their ideal prince proposals to one of Eliza’s servants, Ace, Rook, Riddle and Epel will be centered on screen, giving their reasoning for why the "princess" (Eliza) should marry them while romantic music plays and sparkles glint around the screen, similarly to a scene out of an Otome game. The characters notably aren’t talking to the Audience Surrogate character while this happens, the lines are cheesy and the mood is killed immediately after they finish their lines for comedic effect, but in the moment any yumejoshi^note The Japanese term for women that are into Otome games. Means "Dream girl"/"delusional girl" due to how the girls imagine fictional men being in love with them watching could easily imagine that the characters are talking directly to them due to how the scenes play out.
  • The Episode Level Up voice lines, which serve as a break from the lot of characters being dismissive or rude toward the player. A majority of the lines veer heavily on the platonic side if the characters aren't outright declaring that you're a friend to them, but the few that don't are vague enough to be interpreted as budding interest ^NoteMalleus in particular being a notable example.. That said, it's likely left to just being pandering material as these lines currently do not have any follow up and don't affect the other parts of the story.
• Paranoia Fuel: Some of the students' Unique Magics can be pretty big sources of this.
  • Rook Hunt is walking paranoia fuel. Imagine being someone who piques the interest of this Stalker without a Crush who's also a Scarily Competent Tracker.
    • His unique magic completes the package. It's a Tracking Spell, plain and simple, which in and of itself is paranoia fuel galore. What's worse, it enables tracking over great distances and stays on a victim even when the victim has anti-magic technology, and will be enabled whenever said technology is turned off
  • Silver's unique magic. It's dream walking. He has access to things going on in your head at night, and he can't control whose dream he travels into whether or not he has permission. He can theoretically walk in on your Erotic Dream any time.
  • Malleus takes Silver's up to the nth degree by not only being a Dream Walker who can control his travels (again, with or without permission) but can create dreams specifically tailored to his target for whatever reason with information that the target hasn't even given to him. Oh, and he can Force Sleep among other things...
  • To a lesser extent, Lilia's unique magic, which grants him psychometric visions of the past of any object or location. He can theoretically see embarrassing things you did at any given location.
  • Jamil's unique magic is the ever classic hypnosis and he's been shown to be skilled enough to use it in a way in which the target can't even tell that he's got them under his control. And in a similar vein Jade's unique magic also can take control of a target, unknowingly or forcefully, in order to pry the truth/information out of them.
  • As Ace and Deuce find out the hard way, Vil can use "Fairest of Them All" in order to curse whatever item he wishes and in a way in which the curse cannot be detected until it is too late.
• Player Punch:
  • The scene where Grim, in his high from eating the black stone left from Vil's overblot, attacking Yuu and mistaking them for a thief that comes after the stone he is eating in that near maniacal high, comes across as this to many players who had started to grow attached to Grim, Base-Breaking Character issues aside. Many players felt torn as they've gone through the story with Grim for company outside of Ace and Deuce, and now that Grim overblotting is now inevitable, they now have to face that they may have to kill him off for good whether they like it or not. Luckily he gets better in book 6.
  • With the trend of characters based on the Great Seven being each chapter's Final Boss, Diasomnia fans are also dreading the day where they'll have to potentially face off against a Overblotted Malleus due to Yuu's interactions with him.
  • For some, seeing Ramshackle Dorm getting destroyed at the beginning of Chapter 6, especially after all of the effort taken to rebuild the dorm can certainly feel like this. Though the dorm does get not just fixed but fully renovated by the chapter's end.

R-Z

• Realism-Induced Horror: Though it is heavily offset by the fact that Fellow's boss called off the deal of targetting the Night Raven College students last minute in Stage in Playful Land, the story's set up heavily resembles that of a human trafficking scheme in real life, that unfortunately still remains a problem that occurred in several countries.
• Retroactive Recognition: Who knew that Yoshino Aoyama was young Chenya before being cast as Hitori "Bocchi" Gotoh and Nidothing?
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Combined with Values Dissonance, Rook's stalkerish tendencies have made him a Base-Breaking Character in the western fandom, and those who dislike him will bring up not only his stalking of his fellow NRC students, but his actions towards his Celebrity Crush Neige as well. The thing is, while Rook definitely is dedicated to Neige, he is never shown to be stalking him in an inappropriate manner. He buys his bromides and keeps them in his room, goes to his meetups, sends him fanmail, and is a member of his fan club, all of which are perfectly normal things to do if you're a fan of an idol in Japan, because things like bromides and tickets to meetups are a big part of how they make their income. Even when he sees Neige face to face in the Pomefiore chapter, Neige is nothing but delighted to meet him, and Rook acts very humble and polite. Rook definitely takes a lot of questionable actions, but his treatment of Neige is not amongst them.
  • In the western fandom, Vil is sometimes subjected to Flanderization by several fans due to some misinterpretation of his interactions with Leona and his actions in the original Fairy Gala (i.e. whipping Leona with magic ) causing them to have the impression of Vil being a white supremist or having racist tendencies. In the game itself Vil never said anything particularly racist at any point and Vil's dislike of Leona in the game had less to do with where he came from but over wasting his already good looks and talents by being a Brilliant, but Lazy Prince Charmless. And Vil himself praises Jamil's performance in Book 5 while having a cordial friendship with Kalim.
    • A similar issue with Vil is his treatment of Epel, notably forcing the rambunctious Country Mouse to suppress many aspects of himself that are native to his hometown and taking excessive control in how Epel presents himself from his speech patterns to even what kind of interests he can show in public. While it doesn't excuse Vil's rough treatment, this has nothing to do with Vil's views on Epel's culture and more to do with those sorted into Pomfiore (the oldest dorm in NRC, at that) being expected to conform to it's image and values no matter where they originally hailed from (like Rook ) with the dorm leader being responsible for taking whatever actions to maintain said conformity.
• Rooting for the Empire: Inverted, as the students attending Royal Sword Academy aren’t evil (as far as the players are aware) and are twisted from "heroic" Disney characters. At worst, they’re just Rival Dojos with Night Raven College and that rivalry with them is reflected through the character writing (such as Leona calling the boys that attend the school "pompous, pampered little princes"). That said, there are some fans that would prefer to see more of the students from that school, or have an arc where the focus shifts from the main cast over to them.
• Sailor Earth: Post-release, many fans have made their own original characters to insert into the game's universe, usually assigning the characters to one or more of the many dorms or making them students in a different wizarding school like Royal Sword Academy, or creating their own wizarding school entirely (Night Raven College and Royal Sword Academy are only two of the many wizarding schools in the world of Twisted Wonderland). That is, if they're not inserting their original characters to take the place of the canonical Player Character, Yuu.
• Ship Mates: There's a lot of cross-over in the fanbase when it comes to shipping, as many shippers that ship what are considered to be the go-to pairings for the characters (Kalim/Jamil, Ace/Deuce and Leona/Ruggie, for example) will also go for similarly common pairings.
• Shipping: The game has quiet a lot due to the interactions the boys had, albeit in a much more downplayed manner in contrast to other games of a similar genre.
  • Jamil/Kalim is one of the most popular ships in the fanbase helped by Chapter 4's being centred entirely on their master/servant dynamic and long history together.
  • Leona/Ruggie is another extremely popular ship due to their canon dynamic that has Ruggie acting more or less like a traditional housewife and/or caretaker to Leona, as he's been seen doing his laundry, preparing his meals, and even cleaning up around his dorm room for him. Jack being thrown into the mix further makes it seem like they're a family raising a child together.
  • The Octavinelle trio (Floyd/Azul/Jade) has beaten out any other potential ship for any of those characters due to their canon dynamic. Even when the three of them aren't being grouped together, they're being shipped with one another just as much. It helps that all three characters are individually extremely popular and come from what is currently the most popular dorm.
  • Idia/Azul is also very popular, especially since Azul is one of Idia's only friends.
  • Pairing Floyd with Riddle is the most popular choice for Riddle ships, mostly due to Riddle apparently being Floyd's favourite teasing target. In addition, three out of Floyd's five personal stories have him interacting with Riddle and he is always the first to approach and instigate conversation, while Riddle avoids him and none of his personal stories include Floyd, leading fans to speculate that Floyd, at the very least, might have a one-sided crush on Riddle.
  • Trey/Jade is a popular pairing that has spawned countless fanart, stemming from Jade's SR ceremonial robes personal story where Trey initially sympathises with Jade, believing him to be completely under Azul's thumb, and is disturbed to discover the truth later on. In the Japanese fanbase in particular, they're often shipped alongside Floyd/Riddle due to the canonical relationships between the four characters^*(shipping aside, Trey and Riddle are Childhood Friends, Jade and Floyd are twins, and Riddle and Jade are classmates, leaving Trey and Floyd as the only pair without a canonical connection).
  • Ace/Deuce is popular due to their shared position as tritagonists and their constant bickering. In addition, they're often (superficially) considered a 'classic' ship due to the general popularity of 'flashy redhead'/'serious dark-haired character Not So Above It All' pairs in Japanese media, such as Hinata/Kageyama and Subaru/Hokuto.
  • Yuu and Malleus has always been a prevalent ship in regards to Yuu, but traction has picked up thanks to their particularly amicable interactions and potential Ship Tease as noted in their character sheets.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Has a few due to how infrequent certain characters combinations are, despite the work being otherwise being good about the main cast interacting with each other.
  • Shipping Che’nya with any character outside of the Heartslabyul dorm group is this due to his One-Scene Wonder being limited to interactions with those characters.
  • Neige/Epel is picking up steam quickly despite the two having yet to be seen interacting. As well, most Neige ships in general count as this since he has yet to be seen directly interacting with anyone and Vil is the only NRC student known to have met with him in person for work.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: In the west, Malleus/Yuu fans are more often than not, at odds with other fans who prefer to ship either Malleus or Yuu with someone else from the cast (Excluding Grim due to his Non-Human Sidekick nature). The vocal Malleus/Yuu fans would deride on others who don't ship Malleus/Yuu as people who "ignore the canon evidence of the Ship Tease between them" while the other side believed that these very fans are undermining people who are neutral and/or not interested in said ship by pointing out that just because that Yuu has prominent Ship Tease with Malleus doesn't mean that the devs will fully go through with pairing them up as doing so will beat the point of Twisted Wonderland being a Joseimuke game whose main draw is more on individual growth of the characters than growing relationships of Yuu with the cast. These group of players also point out that some Malleus/Yuu fans often subject Malleus to Flanderization of his character as a whole over his Ship Tease with Yuu. This is in stark contrast with the Eastern fanbase of Twisted Wonderland where such discussions and quarells are rarely seen.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The fandom had quite the surprise when Mickey Mouse's silhouette appeared in Ramshackle dorm's mirror at the end of Chapter 3.
  • For those that didn’t see it coming, Jamil being revealed to be the culprit behind Kalim’s mood swings and tyranny is this. Him also being the first non-dorm leader to Overblot was also shocking for a number of fans.
  • Happens again towards the end of Chapter 4, but this time, not only does Mickey get to introduce himself and talk to Yuu, the fandom promptly lost their shit when it was implied that he may be plot-relevant in what's otherwise a Disney Villains game.
  • Neige LeBlanche's appearance in an in-universe commercial in Chapter 5 of the main story was this for the fanbase, as since Chen'ya hadn't made an onscreen appearance since Chapter 1, no one was expecting to see more Royal Sword Academy students get spotlight, let alone anyone twisted from Snow White herself.
  • When Happy Beans Day is announced to get a rerun at April 2021, not many players are too excited at the notion of a rerun beyond the hope that several fan-favorite events will return such as Ghost Marriage. No one expected for there to be a "side-story" for Happy Beans Day which focused on what the other students are doing while Yuu is teaming up with Cater and Jade, or the fact that other characters get a Beans Camo version in the rerun, with Vil, Rook, Floyd and Jamil being the characters announced to get a Beans Camo version in the 2021 rerun.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Twisted Wonderland is technically this for Ensemble Stars!, 100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Dreams and virtually a good portion of Joseimuke games with a similar concept of a Player Character who starts out as unfamiliar of the new environment and/or world that they are brought to (Either through school transfer or getting Trapped in Another World), ending up in an all-boys school or surrounded mostly by men and forming friendships and/or romance along the way (With Yume 100 having a strong focus of romance). Twisted Wonderland is the opposite in that it's established multiple times in events and stories that the students of Night Raven College are majorly a Jerkass in some level and getting along with them would be difficult, with most of the stories placing great focus on the casts own personal growths and their interpersonal relationship with those in the school along with focus of their own goals and motives, with the Player Character, Yuu, rarely ever playing a part in their stories. Additionally, by chapter 6 of the game's main story, even after they got involved, Yuu's circle of close friends only consist of Ace, Deuce, and Grim, and their relationship with the other casts being closer to friendly acquaintanceship at best.
• Squick: Several examples exist in the Western community, though not so much anywhere else due to Values Dissonance.
  • Most Incest Yay Shipping pairs will be met with scrutiny if not outright harassment, particularly ships involving Floyd/Jade due to the two being twins, or Leona/Cheka, especially since Leona is Cheka's uncle and Cheka is only 5 years old in the story. To get around this, some fan artists tend to age Cheka up for the ship, though whether that makes it marginally better or worse depends on the individual.
  • A similar reaction occurs with shipping the characters in Diasomnia, particularly targeted at ships involving Lilia paired with Malleus or Silver, as he was a parental figure to both characters. It's more obvious in Silver's case, as Silver outright calls Lilia "Father" when they're not around the characters that aren't aware of their relationship. Malleus is also heavily implied to either have been raised alongside Silver or to have raised Silver with Lilia, though it's unclear due to the inconsistencies in fan translations and the vagueness of the characters dialogue. The fact that Silver regards Malleus as his superior rather than his father or a brotherly figure certainly doesn't help matters, either. Sebek escapes this a little, as as far as the players are informed, his familiar connection to the former three characters is comparatively minuscule, as he’s only been being implied to be the Childhood Friend of Silver.
• That One Boss:
  • Every chapter has you fight the Overblot victims... and they can deal damage thrice, which hurts a LOT. In the case of Overblot!Azul especially, he's also a strong healer. Woe betide you if you don't have 1. a healer on the team, or 2. cards strong enough to withstand their attacks.
  • In a twist, while Overblot!Leona is considered easier than the other bosses, the one battle players might have a difficult time with in Chapter 2 is the battle with Jack while chasing after Ruggie.
  • The fight with Overblot!Jamil. He's just as tough, if not worse than the dorm leaders, especially since he's a vice-leader. Not only does he deal massive damage, players have to fight him twice, and he can potentially start with a buff that raises his attack stat by three stages. On top of that, he will also cast a debuff that can potentially blind your units. Good luck if your cards aren't strong enough...
  • To add onto the list is Overblot!Vil. Like his fellow dorm leaders, he's just as tough. On top of having a high HP, he'll cast multiple debuffs ranging from one that decreases your team's attack and/or defense respectively, prevent a heal to save your team's health, and one that renders any buff that your cards will have completely moot. He'll even cast more than one debuff at the same turn, meaning, he'll whittle your team's health away in a swift. God forbid if you didn't level your cards magic levels and buddies enough...
  • The Overblot Titan battles for chapter 6 Part 66 and 67 are this as they come packing with new buffs and also debuffs. And even without it, they also pack a punch and can K.O. an unsuspecting team. Unlike the previous entries here, Character Select Forcing is in play as due to Gameplay and Story Integration reasons, you are only able to use the cards you have on your own account and as such, you can not borrow a Friend's Unit at all until you have cleared the bosses. If you slack levelling a single character until then, best of luck. And not to mention, said Titans return in Part 67 buffed. The sheer difficulty due to the Character Select Forcing makes the fight with Overblot! Idia and Overblot! Ortho look easier in contrast.
• That One Level:
  • For the Rhythmic sections, Prologue 14 is this. For starters, it's the first Rhythmic where the double segments are vertical instead of horizontal. Damn You, Muscle Memory! kicks in when players tap the notes instead of the sides where the colours are.
  • Rhythmic sections with purple timed notes are this in general. Examples include the levels where Yuu helps Heartslabyul dorm paint the roses red, and where Yuu and Grim help Jamil cook in the Scarabia chapter. Not only are the notes timed, some of these notes are also easier to miss, even on Normal difficulty. The former is egregious in that you have to do the same Rhythmic level at different parts of the story at least three times.
  • Among the tests available, Null/Void tests in general are considered this. Due to the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors of the game, Null element has the most defense, as any damage received would just be turned to neutral damage. Meaning, you don't have any elemental advantage if you attack and have to clear the test prequisites via the raw power of your team alone. The introduction of defense tests made Null tests bearable due to defense test prequisites, but it's still considered as That One Level in general.
  • All-elemental tests. While it's considered slightly easier than Null/Void tests, what makes the All-elemental tests egregious and difficult is that every choice you made basically depends on RNG and there's also a good chance you'd end up on the receiving end of getting an elemental disadvantage. Unlike your regular tests, team elemental balance plays a big key in clearing these tests in general so if you lack the right amount of card element balance or even guessed your opponent's elemental magic wrong, you are screwed.
  • Chapter 6 has part 66 and 67 as Pomefiore and the other kidnapped overblotted victims split up into 3 sections to reach down to Tartarus. Unlike the previous fights where you are able to borrow a friends unit so you can cheese through the story, Character Select Forcing is in play and you are only able to use characters in your own account and there's no friend unit select in sight. Not to mention, the enemies use powerful debuffs that would make it harder to steamroll the rest of the stages. That's not counting the Phantom titans fight, especially in part 67, where they are buffed up from their last encounter in part 66. If you quit midway so you could change the team you will use for each section, you are forced to start all over again from the beginning. Have fun!
  • December 2023's United Exam event in the Japanese launch introduced a new variant of tests, Attack tests. You are provided ten turns where you have to take out your opponents as fast as possible. It seems simple enough, but to make up to this, all your opponents have high HP that can reach even to 200,000+ in Extra Difficulty. This changes the tests from how Basic Tests generally works to a Timed Mission where your card's raw power and how fast they can steamroll enemies swiftly to get a higher score are tested, but with how bulky of a HP your opponent has in these tests, this won't be easily done so your cards Magic level, the magic's features of whether they can buff your chosen character or the team, and your card's general level are huge key factors to acing these tests.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A Rhythmic from Chapter 5 of Neige and the Dwarfs VDC performance where they cover "Heigh-Ho" that is noted to have become an In-Universe Nursery Rhyme was removed in the English localization of the game. Many players, especially those who have played the Japanese launch, were furious at the removal as removing it also removes the full context to why and how Vil actually overblots.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Yuu, the Player Character gets this from many players. However, this applies to the game's version of Yuu, rather than their manga and novel counterparts. When players first play the story and find out about them, they expect that they have their own proactiveness and relevancy to the plot. However, except for chapter 3 and the prologue, where they are an active player to the plot of those respective chapters, fans lament and are disappointed at how Yuu remains a bystander who does nothing but watch, leading to a strong Not Badass Enough for Fans sentiment from many players. This notion gets stronger when the Manga adaptations were later released and the Manga counterparts of "Yuu" get an Adaptation Deviation, showing themselves to be an active player to their respective arcs. In general, players feel that the game's version of Yuu is too much of a blank slate at the moment of writing that their manga and novel counterparts were instead well-liked for having a far more defined personality and goals. And the blank slate nature led to people using an O.C. Stand-in for Yuu in fan-novelizations to add variety for the fan-novelization.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Regarding Chapter 2 of the main story, some players are disappointed that Leona is the one who Overblots as they had hoped for Ruggie to Overblot instead. This is because Leona barely used his own magic outside of his own insecurities taking him over while Ruggie, in contrast, had been using his magic for most of the chapter at Leona's bidding, and the moment Leona called him useless would have been the perfect moment for Ruggie to snap and Overblot. However, that never came to pass. While most players understand why as Leona is the one twisted from Scar, some players still feel disappointed by this, given that the game never established that only the great seven based characters can experience this and because it would have been a great opportunity to break what would eventually be revealed to be a trend.^{Explanation (spoiler!)}By Crowley’s explanation of what Overblotting is, any character can go through it so long as they’re under an extreme amount of stress and use magic while in this state of emotional distress. However, so far story wise it has been limited to the Great Seven based characters. Chapter 4 only averts the trend of it being a dorm leader who overblots, but continues on with it being one of the characters twisted from the Great Seven, continuing the repetition some fans are now bothered by. Overall, it feels that the general consensus for this chapter is that it was lacking and Ruggie not overblotting when it would have made the most sense adds to it.
  • Chapter 5, Pomefiore. The build up of the chapter makes many players wish and root for NRC winning for once, as they have been seeing and looking at how the participating students have trained and wanted them to actually win. The end result? RSA won by a one vote difference from NRC, the vote to RSA coming from Rook. While some players think it makes sense, considering the Mythology Gag standpoint that Rook is twisted from the Huntsman who let Snow White live from the Evil Queen's first attempt to murder her. The same can't be said to other players who actually wanted to see the "Villains" win. Especially since many felt that "Absolutely Beautiful", the participating casts song, deserved to win instead of a covered version of "Heigh-Ho", and the outcome comes across as "Heroes always prosper while Villains will always lose" as a result.
  • Chapter 5 of Pomefiore also introduced some plot-threads of Epel's relationship with Vil and his own struggle due to his placement in Pomefiore, and the tension between Kalim and Jamil following the end of chapter 4. However, Epel ended up resolving some of his issues with Vil fairly quickly and what issues Jamil and Kalim had with each other wasn't put in a big forefront. Instead, the chapter gives more development to Vil and Deuce, leading to some disappointment from several players.
  • Several event stories are seen as this, since they seem to run in an alternate timeline that have no effect on the main story and are mainly for fanservice or to expand on the pasts and history some of the cast had. Scary Monsters ~Endless Halloween Night~, the 2021 iteration for the Halloween event, got the most complaints from the playerbase when it comes to events so far because of The Reveal of Malleus wanting to hold a party for the ghosts was thought as an underwhelming twist, considering the set up of a mysterious other world. Some wished that the villain was someone like a Twisted Wonderland version of Jack Skellington, especially since the appearance of Najma in the Land of Scalding Sands event means that the developers aren't averse to introducing other Disney-inspired characters in events.
  • One regarding the Glorious Masquerade event has players hoping that Yuu could become an active player due to them receiving a Disability Immunity from the parasitic crimson flowers that are terrorizing the mages in the event and hope for Yuu to potentially be a key player due to the conflict being about how Rollo tries to erase magic from Twisted Wonderland. However, Yuu instead chose to save the civilians of Fleur City with Trein and Grim and left out of the main action. Yuu could also prove to be an interesting foil to Rollo due to being a magicless human who does enjoy the presence and influence of magic to an extent, but that never fully come to pass due to Yuu remaining a passive presence despite their newly obtained Disability Immunity.
• Unexpected Character:
  • For a game based on the Disney villains, no one was expecting Mickey Mouse, face of Disney himself, to make an appearance. If Chapter 4's any indication, it's heavily implied that Mickey will be a plot-relevant character instead of being a one-off cameo.
  • A variant with Najma, who is technically her own character, but is spun-off from an obscure character who appeared in a spin-off video game from 2001—more specifically, Jafar's sister Nasira, from Disney's Aladdin in Nasira's Revenge.
  • Due to Yuu being a self-insert Featureless Protagonist in the main game, and their having been Adapted Out of the official anthologies, no one expected Yuu to not only make a physical appearance in the official manga, but to also be male considering the games primary demographic. However, this example is downplayed as this Yuu (or Enma Yuuken) is actually a separate entity from the Yuu present in the game, therefore the game's Yuu has yet to make a real appearence and potentially never will.
  • After 2 and half years of no new magical schools being introduced, the 2022 October Abema stream reveals a new Wizarding school and new character inspired by Frollo, surprising the fanbase on both sides of the pacific.
  • No one expected Stitch himself showing up when the August 2023 event announcement was live, making him the first character from the Disney Animated Canon since Mickey to show up in the game.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Connected to the general opinion that Scary Monsters ~Endless Halloween Night~ has wasted potential, several players felt that the twist in how the whole event occurred just because Malleus took pity of the ghosts who arrived late and end up stopping time and kidnapping nearly the whole school for it comes across as Malleus being completely impulsive and it results in a heavy case of Poor Communication Kills where the victims rescued from possession and those who come to the rescue thinking that the situation is far more dire than it looks, and those coming to the rescue gets blamed for refusing to hear the ghosts, who had been helping Malleus arrange the party out. What does not help Malleus's case is that at least some of the ghosts that possessed the students are shown on screen to have no plans to end the possession of their victim and some of the students actually tried to settle the matters peacefully, only to be met with hostile reception and the ghosts attacking them as a result. Thus the whole twist makes it come across as Malleus being utterly impulsive and forgetting that he's a member of the royal family of his country for a moment, when he is consistently shown to be doing his duties well in spite of the trappings that his position as the heir to the throne gives in other stories, and thus nearly causing a disastrous political mess for endangering so many students, some being highly important people like Leona ^noteEven if Leona's chances to become king is slim, Leona is still an important member of Sunset Savannah's royal family. In-Universe, only Ace called out Malleus for causing the massive Poor Communication Kills case throughout the event in his Halloween Personal Story while everyone else decided to let bygones be bygones after the initial shock has passed.
• Unnecessary Makeover: Inverted Trope. After the release of the "Armor of Eternal Knight" Sebek card and learning of it's context and involvement in Chapter 7, fans lament and wish that Sebek kept his hair down instead of his official hair style that is kept up with hair gel as they saw and think that Sebek looked far more attractive with his hair down.
• Unpopular Popular Character: This can apply to every dorm leader to a degree with the exception of Kalim (who is relatively well-liked in-universe due to being an all-around stand up guy in a cast full of misfits) as each dorm leader has a negative reputation following them, usually not without reason. For example, Riddle has a bad reputation in-universe due to his unrelenting strictness (pre-Character Development) and temper, but he was quickly endeared to the fanbase and become one of the most popular characters because of his design, Natsuki Hanae's voice acting and the reveal of his sympathetic backstory. His mannerism that made him unpopular within the work also helped to make him popular with fans.
  • Leona Kingscholar is the biggest example of this in spite of his in-universe reputation for being a lazy, self-centered Jerkass that never wants to do anything, sometimes not even when it will benefit him. Most of his interactions with the rest of the cast consist of him being being disagreeable in some way which makes them not want to be around him (Save for Jack after Leona softens up on him), not that he cares as he usually just wants to be left alone. Even Ruggie, who acts as his vice dorm head in all but title, is shown to not always be willing to put up with his abuse. And even futher, the NPCs of his dorm seem to dislike him as well, and only show respect to him as the "leader of the pack", otherwise bad-mouthing him when he's not around. Despite all of this, he's not only the most popular dorm leader, but one of the most popular characters, if not the most popular character, overall. As well, his disagreeable, antagonistic attitude didn't stop him from becoming the biggest Launcher of a Thousand Ships character in the fanbase, besides Yuu, of course. Leona is Jerkass Dissonance pushed here, likely helped by the fact that it's implied through his Pet the Dog moments that he may not be all bad underneath.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Leona, Kalim and Jamil were selected to be the infiltrators of the Fairy Gala venue in the titular Fairy Gala event because they visually fit the "exotic" theme of the event. Naturally due to the racial implications of term "exotic" in the west, particularly when applied to non-white characters ^*Though the characters are only visually non-white. Leona isn’t human and is considered a "beast man" while Kalim and Jamil are considered the Twisted Wonderland equivalent of middle-eastern, as it doesn’t actually exist in the Twisted universe., western fans weren’t happy with this reasoning and discussions surrounding the event sparked for some time. This wasn’t a problem in eastern fandoms as they didn’t see the issue with the term being used, particularly since the context it was used in was innocuous. The first Fairy Gala event rerun in 2022 eventually does a Retcon and changed the theme to "Fabulous".
  • Many western fans find it hard to believe that Neige is considered more beautiful than Vil, instead seeing Neige as cute, but not much of a stunner. In Japan and other Asian countries, cute round faces and natural or near-natural makeup are considered the beauty ideal for young men and women, which Neige fits to a tee. On the other hand, Vil's longer face, heavy makeup, and glamorous fashion sense, all fit much more closely to the western standards of beauty. Japanese fans are a lot more likely to understand Neige's popularity in this regard.
  • While Japanese fans are neutral and/or indifferent at the stance of the presence of Yuu, the Player Character being the way they are, the same cannot be said in the west as Yuu is Not Badass Enough for Fans to the western playerbase due to their lack of proactive actions and preferred a more plot active protagonist.
• Values Resonance: A partial reason to why Twisted Wonderland gained an LGBT Fanbase are how the cast are shown to have interest and do things that gives no regards to the gender norms without being made fun of. Trey, Ruggie and Jamil are praised for their cooking in separate occasions (be it in the Main Story or Personal Story). The main casts and a good portion of the NPCs are also depicted in wearing makeup, high heels, and other traditionally feminine clothing and nobody, including Yuu who is from a completely different world, bats an eye or mentions how odd it is. Vil's words to Epel in the Pomefiore chapter regarding gender norms also resonated with a good portion of the fanbase.

  Vil: There's no such thing as "For Men" or "For Women" when it comes to dance and clothing. To say that it's embarrassing to perform feminine dance moves just because you're a boy? Such attitude is so last era.

• Viewer Gender Confusion: As expected due to how androgynously they're drawn, the usual suspects Lilia, Epel, Vil and more rarely Malleus get this reaction from those that aren't aware of the fact that Twisted's main cast consists entirely of male characters. Neige also gets this, due to looking like Snow White if she was a short-haired Visual Novel character.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids? / What Do You Mean, It's Not for Little Girls?: Despite its association with the Disney Animated Canon and being promoted as such, Twisted Wonderland is a joseimuke work with a target demographic of working class women over the age of 18 (which form the other half of the smartphone population). As such, the game does contain some Fanservice, gacha mechanics and touches on darker themes some such as child neglect (or what amounts to outright child abuse in Riddle's case), particularly in the main story, though its contents are relatively tame compared to some other joseimuke works like Ensemble Stars! (which ironically looks even more child-friendly due to its colorful art style). That said, Twisted Wonderland being a joseimuke has not stopped Disney from promoting it in Disney magazines meant for kids and other child spaces.
• The Woobie: Riddle, oh Riddle. He was forced to live under ridiculously restrictive rules set by his Abusive Parents (notably his mother), causing him to become the tyrannical, order-obsessed dorm leader we see in Chapter 1, all of which he claims to do in reluctance due to thinking he needs to be this way to maintain order. He's so far the most sympathetic of the dorm leaders in terms of backstory and the reason he acts the way he does in the present.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: While Yana Toboso's art and ideas have otherwise been praised, some of the dorm outfit design choices have been regarded as rather questionable. Pomefiores dorm outfit, for example, has raised some eyebrows due to the full outfits resembling a strange kimono-like, stage curtain combination.◊

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