YMMV / Word of Honor

• And You Thought It Would Fail: A team on Douban (a Chinese social network site) asked users to vote on which series filmed in 2020 was most likely to flop. Word of Honor was the winner. Virtually no one thought it would be a success. Then the first episode aired and the series got a rating of 8.2 on Douban — and its rating's now increased to 8.6.
• Broken Base: There is a divide on whether the series did the characters justice or butchered them, and whether some changes were necessary or not. For example, Wen Kexing being more evil and causing direct harm to innocents, Zhou Zishu being nicer and having regrets over his actions, Wenzhou having more fights and altered dynamics — is it an upgrade, or a disservice?
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Nothing infuriates the fans more than saying this series or its source novel is a rip-off of The Untamed. They're based on two different novels by two different authors, and Faraway Wanderers was published in 2010 — five years before Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi was published and nine years before The Untamed aired.
• Fandom Rivalry: Certain parts of the Immortality fandom have a rivalry with the fandom of Word of Honor. Apparently it's because some Immortality fans blame Word of Honor's popularity — and the censors' reactions to its popularity — for causing Immortality to be delayed.
• Genius Bonus: Wen Kexing's dialogue is full of references to and quotes from poetry.
• He Really Can Act: A reoccurring theme in adaptions, this time people doubted Gong Jun's ability to act the complex character Wen Kexing due to multiple factors, including that he is still considered a new actor, and his acting in a Chinese BL Advance Bravely wasn't the best. When the series aired, all of those claims were debunked.
• Incest Subtext: Many fans have noticed that Zhao Jing and the Scorpion King act much more like lovers than father and son (adopted father and son, but still).
• Moral Event Horizon: Cao Weining's Master kills him and then Gu Xiang on their wedding day because he absolutely refuses to let them marry. It's no surprise that everyone cheered when Wen Kexing gives him his just desserts shortly after.
• Narm: Side characters suffer from this, as some scenes with the Five Lakes Alliance brothers just shouting and crying can be less serious and more funny.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Wenzhou for Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Xiyuan for Wu Xi and Jing Beiyuan, and Yexie for Ye Baiyi/the Scorpion King (Xie Wang).
• The Scrappy: Even with the justification that Word of Honor is an extremely loose adaptation of Tian Ya Ke in terms of both plot and characterization, you'll find no one who has any fondness for Prince Jin whatsoever, with novel fans decrying him as a piss-poor imitation (or an outright bastardization) of Helian Yi.
• Special Effect Failure: Chinese dramas often fall victim into this trope and Word of Honor is no exception. One of the most obvious examples would be Mu Yunge getting captured by the badly edited red ribbon in Episode 5, and the cliff jump green screen failure in Episode 32.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Due to being in the same genre, some fans of The Untamed accuse Word of Honor of copying it, or at least that The Untamed paved the way for Word of Honor to thrive. This backlash also stems from fans expecting The Untamed 2.0 and finding the show is vastly different.

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