YMMV / X-Men: The Animated Series

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Wolverine outwardly blames Cyclops for Morph's presumed death during the two-part pilot. However, the circumstances of what led to Morph being critically injured was shoving Wolverine out of the way when a Sentinel responded to Wolverine's trash talk by firing a energy blast at him, leading Morph to take the hit himself. How much of Wolverine's resentment is genuinely blaming Cyclops and how much it is projection to hide that Wolverine maybe blames himself for getting Morph presumably killed with his own Leeroy Jenkins attitude in the field? Jean's comments seem to lean towards the latter as she starts after Wolverine by telling him that "It's not Cyclop's fault" then more quietly "It's not yours either..."
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: Thanks to its massive popularity, this series tends to have a pretty big effect on how general audiences picture the X-Men (if their impressions aren't based on the live-action movies, that is). Notably, it uses the distinctive futurist art style and stylized character designs of Jim Lee (who only drew the comics for a brief window of time in the early 1990s), and it prominently features Gambit and Jubilee (who were both very recent additions to the franchise at the time). For that reason, many people tend to picture Cyclops wearing a blue Kevlar suit with yellow cross belts and a wraparound visor (when he wore a tight spandex costume with a full-face mask for most of his history), they tend to picture Rogue with a bomber jacket and a huge mane of brown hair, and they tend to assume that Jubilee is the team's resident teenage Audience Surrogate (even though Kitty Pryde had that role for much longer).
• Awesome Ego: Apocalypse has a massive god complex, views all life as beneath him, that only his vision of reality has a right to exist and scoffs at any morality outside of his own, and looks awesome doing all of it.
• Awesome Music:
  • The original 90s theme music is the first thing that comes to certain fans' minds when they think of the X-Men. Ron Wasserman knows how to make music that just pumps you up, while fitting the feel of a superpowered team coming together, and this theme just suits the merry mutants in a way that very little else can. The shorter remix used in the fifth season is no slouch, either.
  • The first Japanese OP ain't slacking off either, even if it did sound a little too much like "Rising Force".
• Base-Breaking Character: Jubilee is either hated by fans that find her increasingly annoying and her powers to be stupid, or loved by fans that enjoy her spunkiness as well as her playful and innocent attitude. It's a similar case for her in the comic books as well. Some also dislike her for not being Kitty Pryde, as Jubilee had largely replaced Kitty in the comics as "Wolverine's sidekick", and Jubilee tended to replace Kitty's role in the story adaptions, with stories like "Kitty's Fairy Tale" being adapted to animation as "Jubilee's Fairytale Theater".
• Bizarro Episode: Mojovision, in which the entire X-Men team is suddenly kidnapped out of nowhere by an alien television mogul who intends to use them as "actors" in his new lethal TV shows for greater profit. There is no way to see this episode coming.
• Can't Un-Hear It: X-Men: The Animated Series provided a lot of very iconic and popular voices for characters associated with the X-Men that fans, particularly the ones who grew up in the 90's, tend to read the comics in the show's voices. Due to the large popularity the show has, fans tend to hear Cedric Smith as Professor X, Norm Spencer as Cyclops, Catherine Disher as Jean Grey, George Buza as Beast, Cal Dodd as Wolverine, Alison Sealy Smith or Iona Morris as Storm, Chris Potter or Tony Daniels as Gambit, Lenore Zann as Rogue, and Alyson Court as Jubilee. Additionally, the series provided popular voices for the enemies of the X-Men, especially David Hemblen as Magneto, and John Colicos as Apocalypse.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Continuity Lock-Out: The first two seasons are pretty heavy on story arcs. The first season even sees most episodes leading directly into the next, meaning you'd have no choice but to watch the premiere and the episodes in their proper order. Season 3 was a bit better in this regard—having more stand-alone adventures, but also a major story arc and prominent sequel episodes. With few exceptions, Seasons 4 and 5 were generally more episodic.
• Creepy Awesome: More like Terrifying awesome, but Apocalypse's Awesome Ego and general coolness makes him one of the most memorable villains in the show.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • While Graydon Creed's crimes make him despicable, his Freudian Excuse — being a human raised by two mutant Abusive Parents — can make his anti-mutant Fantastic Racism at least more understandable than most others'.
  • Despite being a Complete Monster, it's pretty damn hard not to feel bad for Sabretooth when he has flashbacks of his Abusive Dad and cries in "Weapon X, Lies, and Videotape".
    "I'll be good...!"
• Designated Villain: Magneto fell into this a lot, due to the show treating him as a bad guy even when adapting storylines where he wasn't. "Sanctuary" in particular shows him creating a safe haven for mutants and liberating a Genosha concentration camp, while the X-Men watch in shock and claim that this will definitely have horrible consequences (the plan does eventually fail, but only because he was betrayed by one of his Acolytes).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Morph was present in the first episodes entirely for the purpose of being killed off so the writers could show how serious the series would be. However, his unexpected popularity led to him being revived in the second season.
  • Nightcrawler's episode was so well-received they wrote a second one just to bring him back and the writers seriously considered having him join the X-Men after "Bloodlines." Which would have been quite appropriate, seeing as how Nightcrawler was part of the original New X-Men lineup from the 70s — alongside Wolverine and Colossus.
• Epileptic Trees: Almost three decades after the series ran, Word of God would confirm that Cable's mother — who Jean Grey glimpsed in a vision — was Madelyne Pryor.
• Escapist Character:
  • Jubilee is a hybrid of this and Audience Surrogate for the show's target demographic, being introduced in the first episode as a young new mutant who is quickly adopted into the X-Men.
  • Colossus. Of an unusual sort in the superhero genre, as while many superheroes exist to serve as a power fantasy, Colossus's main purpose over the years has evolved into being a Romance fantasy. A Hunk with Chronic Hero Syndrome and Incorruptible Pure Pureness, Colossus could have stepped whole and breathing from the most wholesome books of the Romance Novel genre. Most of what he does and who he is is defined by his love relationships, another trademark of the romance novel love interest.
• Evil Is Cool: Apocalypse is an unapologetically theatrical would-be mutant overlord who chews the scenery every single time he shows up while plotting the destruction of mankind and mutantkind alike. He's also easily one of the most powerful characters on the show, such that it takes the entire X-Men team to even slow him down.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Many of Jean Grey's screams and moans in the show have been referred to by fans as "Jean gasms".
  • The show itself is frequently referred to as "X-Men: The Animated Series" among fans (the official title is simply X-Men).
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Storm/Wolverine after "One Man's Worth."
• Genius Bonus: Magneto once said to Wolverine, Cyclops and Storm "Oh, brave new world that has such people in it!" That quote is taken from the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which in turn cites William Shakespeare in-story for that quote. Or it may be directly a quote to Shakespeare; but in any case the words do not belong to Magneto.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The ending to the first season, where Xavier crashes the Blackbird into Master Mold and blows him up. It may still be pretty awesome, but seems too similar to a certain real life event to some.
    • To make matters worse, in "The Phoenix Saga Part Two: The Shroud", the crash-landing space shuttle is seen flying by a pair of skyscrapers...
  • The Friends Of Humanity hate group seems uncomfortably like a secular Westboro Baptist Church, complete with Waving Signs Around.
  • In "The Cure", Rogue is tempted to undergo a process removing her mutant powers and live as a normal human. The following episode reveals that it's a machine created by Apocalypse to brainwash and alter mutants into his Four Horsemen, which Rogue narrowly avoids by deciding against it. In Marvel: Avengers Alliance, Rogue's Leeroy Jenkins antics gets her abducted and brainwashed by Apocalypse to serve as his Horseman Famine for a short while.
    • There's also the fact that Rogue ended up choosing not to take the cure, while Angel wanted to go through with it. In X-Men: The Last Stand, Angel rejects his father's attempts to cure him of his mutation, but Rogue does end up deciding to take it.
  • Wolverine's threat to Cyclops after he marries Jean, warning him "If she's not happy, make sure I don't find out." Considering what Cyclops does with Emma Frost, with Jean finding out...
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In "Hidden Agendas", Rogue decides to introduce herself to Sam as Miss Lebeau. At the end of the episode, Sam calls her by that name while Gambit (whose real name is Remy Lebeau) is nearby. Grinning upon hearing that, Gambit asks her "When's the honeymoon, Miss Lebeau?" Years later, in X-Men: Gold, Rogue really does become Miss Lebeau when she and Gambit get married.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "The Phalanx Covenant" two-parter: While taking over the Earth, the Phalanx intend to assimilate mutant powers to further their goals. Beast shudders at the thought of (essentially) one being having every mutant power on Earth. Flash forward a decade later to the New Avengers arc, "The Collective"...
  • Wolverine's black and gray spacesuit from "Sanctuary: Part 2" looks a lot like the uniform he'd wear many years later in the revamped X-Force comic book.
  • In the alternate timeline where the X-Men never were, due to Xavier's death, the familiar heroes are battling the human forces, leading to the eventual deployment of "the first wave of superhumans" against the mutants, which are Crossover Cameos of The Avengers. A decade and a half later, a Crisis Crossover takes place titled, Avengers vs. X-Men...
  • The Storm-focused "Storm Front" two-parter has Storm become engaged to Arkon, a seemingly affable alien ruler, but Wolverine and Beast consider Storm's acceptance to be too quick; when Storm refers to Arkon as the man she loves, Wolverine quips, "who you just met." The series' DVD releases were licensed by Disney, who later released a movie with a very similar line and theme, and which similarly focused on a main character with Elemental Powers. Plus, the comics would later make Storm and Black Panther a couple, which was quite controversial with the fans for seeming to come out of nowhere for the sole purpose of hooking up two high-profile black characters.
  • Apocalypse has the exact same vocal inflections as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, albeit not muffled at all which helps him come across as much less silly.
  • In "X-Ternally Yours", Gambit gets hurt because of the wedding ring that Bella Donna forced him to wear. When Wolverine tries to remove the ring, he quips to Gambit "You ain't the marrying kind." Many years later, in X-Men: Gold, Gambit ends up marrying Rogue after Kitty Pride got cold feet over her own wedding with Colossus.
  • In "Longshot", Mojo has a bootleg Jurassic Park set called "Camp Cretaceous". Fast forward to 2021...
• Ho Yay: Vindicator's attitude towards Logan comes across more like a crazed, possessive ex than a former best friend.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Erik Lehnsherr, AKA Magneto, can occasionally go too far in his efforts to protect his fellow mutants, especially in his debut, but it was born out of an absolutely traumatic childhood that involved his country becoming enveloped in a disastrous civil war. Seeing how badly humans could turn on each other, it's no wonder he'd become so paranoid about humanity potentially exterminating mutantkind just for being different.
  • James Hudson, AKA Vindicator, comes off as one. He took Wolverine leaving Alpha Flight very hard, which implies that they were at one point, very good friends. "Repo Man" has him essentially try to conscript Wolverine back into service by siccing Alpha Flight on him when he returns to Canada, but then he rants to him about him leaving. Heather implies that the whole situation with Logan caused him to act this way.
  • Mystique, whose self-serving nature has left a trail of emotional trauma and baggage with her children (Graydon Creed, Nightcrawler, Rogue), with little to no hope of mending her relationships with them. With Rogue, she wants to try and restart their relationship, but when Rogue finds out the truth, she rejects her. With Nightcrawler, she's blunt about abandoning him and the reasons but it's implied she feels tremendous guilt over the incident and is trying to cover for the shame she feels. Eventually, she takes a shot meant for Nightcrawler (by Graydon Creed no less), and survives. But she simply leaves tearfully, preferring to let both Rogue and Nightcrawler assume her demise than reunite with them.
• Les Yay:
  • Rogue has plenty of moments with Storm that could be read as the two of them being a couple.
  • In the episode "A Rogue's Tale", Mystique shapeshifted into Storm, and more or less copped a feel off the latter's chest while she was incapacitated.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • After losing his family in a civil war in a small European country, a young Erik Lehnsherr revealed his mutant powers and became Magneto, a champion for mutant rights. Believing humanity will destroy mutantkind, Magneto started committing acts of violence against humanity: attempting to nuke several American cities, attacking a chemical plant, and attempting to kill Senator Robert Kelly. Magneto secretly recruits Sabretooth and sends him to a courthouse where Beast is being held for trial, knowing that Charles Xavier will take him in when the cops injure Sabretooth and orders him to destroy Xavier's mansion as soon as he can. After being lured to the Savage Land by Mr. Sinister and stripped of his powers, Magneto is able to use his wits to survive the Savage Land and help the X-Men defeat Sinister. Later Magneto becomes an ally to the X-Men, able to see through the lies and false promises of Fabian Cortez and Apocalypse, helping the X-Men save the world and reality itself. In the finale, after Xavier is attacked by Henry Peter Gyrich, Magneto is able to rally several mutants into starting a new uprising, only to give up his revolution to use his powers to save Xavier's life.
  • The High Evolutionary is a geneticist who lives in the fabled Wundagore valley in Romania. When Magneto's wife Magda fled from him after he became radicalized, she was deathly ill from the harsh winter weather but stumbled onto Wundagore. Magda soon died, but not before giving birth to Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver and gives them over to a Roma family to raise them. Decades later, the High Evolutionary has Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver's adopted father Django tell them the truth and has him tell them to go to Wundagore. When they arrive, the High Evolutionary tells them that Magneto killed their mother, so that they will seek revenge. The High Evolutionary reveals that Magneto is Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver's father and plans to use their DNA to create more of his human-animal hybrid New Men, believing his creations will bring enlightenment to the world. The High Evolutionary is one of the most cunning foes Magneto has faced, with his ploy being emotionally devastating to Magneto.
• Memetic Loser: This version of Jean Grey is mocked for being utterly useless. She constantly needs to be saved and she faints every time she does anything. The absurdity of it gets to the point where she loses to a power cord. It's often joked that Scott screams her name out of his frustration with her instead of concern.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • From Season 1, Episode 5, Wolverine looking longingly at a framed picture of Jean (with Scott, though) it's often used as a meme for people who miss or long for something.
  • Also from Season 1, Episode 5, a shot of Scott and Jean kissing in the background while Wolverine stands sadly in the foreground is often used for memes, most commonly labeling Scott and Jean as two people or objects in a pair, while Wolverine is labeled as a third person/object that's in some way emotionally hurt by the pairing.
  • For one frame in a battle with Apocalypse, Rogue's butt was drawn bigger than usual. It has lead to countless memes.
  • "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!"^ExplanationA famous overdub of "Phoenix Saga Part 3: Cry of the Banshee" features this line, spoken by the titular character. The line would go on to take a life of its own, spewing several sequel videos and other variants. It would eventually become an Ascended Meme when the line was used by Juggernaut in X-Men: The Last Stand.
  • "SCOTT!" "JEEEEEEEEEEAN!"^ExplanationCyclops and Jean Grey yell out each others' names a lot, with one usually coming soon after the other. Fans will commonly meme this trait in a way that would make one think these are their Character Catchphrases.
  • Jean Grey fainting^ExplanationJean's seeming inability to do literally anything without fainting immediately after is commonly joked about in the fandom, leading Jean to gain a Memetic Loser status. It's such a prevalent joke among the fans, that when the second episode of X-Men '97 ended with a second (and as revealed in the next episode, real) Jean Grey showing up, many fans claimed that it's obvious that this Jean is the real one, because her first act upon arriving was to faint.
  • Holocaust Beam^ExplanationThe climax of the series' 4th episode, "Deadly Reunions", involves Xavier using his telepathy to force Magneto to have a flashback to his childhood as a war survivor (said war being unspecified in the series, likely to avoid mention of the Holocaust in a show with a child audience), causing Magneto to have a PTSD-induced panic attack. This scene is commonly memed on by fans, said memes usually portrayed Xavier as a psychopath who will telepathically force people to have visions of the Holocaust in order to win a fight.
• Narm: Nimrod can come off as an unfortunate name associated with idiot or fool, especially to an audience who don't know the origin of the name.
• Narm Charm: The cheesy voice acting often serves as one of the major draws for the show. Storm in particular is celebrated for being an over-the-top Mistress of Ham. This was even played up in the show's crossover with Spider-Man: The Animated Series, with Peter Parker having his typically snarky and nonplussed reactions to their dramatics.
• Never Live It Down: Angel/Archangel's appearances entirely revolved around Apocalypse's turning him into a Horseman, and his vengeful streak afterward, apart from the very last example when he abandoned his obsession with revenge just in time for Apocalypse to try to remake time and space into his own image.
• One-Scene Wonder: Apocalypse making such an impression whenever he shows up can make it easy to forget that he only appears once a season.
• Periphery Demographic: Despite running as a Saturday Morning kid's show, the material did not shy away from the darker content of the comics and thus continued to appeal to older comics fans as well.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Mr. Sinister's voice actor, Chris Britton, would later voice Soichiro Yagami & Star Swirl The Bearded.
  • Jubilee, Quicksilver, Mystique, and Jean Grey share voices with Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Annette Birkin and Jill Valentine respectively.
  • Gladiator would go on to voice Batou, Myotismon and Old Joseph Joestar.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The main refrain of the intro is near-identical to the main refrain of Whitney Houston's "I'm Your Baby Tonight".
  • As mentioned above, one of the Japanese intros for the show ("Rising"/"Shock" by AMBIENCE) sounds eerily identical to "Rising Force" by Yngwie Malmsteen.
  • Going back to the main refrain of the theme song, it also resembles the theme song for a popular Hungarian TV series, Linda the Policewoman, which first aired around a decade before the animated series. The resemblance is allegedly uncanny, enough for a Hungarian representative of the estate of the now-deceased TV series theme's composer to sue Marvel and associated companies for that rip-off.
• Tough Act to Follow: The series is considered to be among one of the greatest comic book series of all time, and the best X-Men series out of the ones created, which has made it harder for the later series (such as X-Men: Evolution and Wolverine and the X-Men) to stand out.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Professor X and Magneto are stranded in the Savage Land for almost the entire second season. For the most part, it rarely took up more than a minute or two per episode. These scenes did ultimately tie into the main story arc. Sauron and a few Mutates were introduced one-by-one to set up their roles in the season finale. Mister Sinister's machinations, the reason why mutant powers were disabled in the region, and the fate of Ka-Zar's tribe were also foreshadowed. On the other hand, Xavier and Magneto just seemed to be wandering around the area rather than trying to figure out what was going on or trying to escape^note it wasn't until the season finale that they made a point of trying to reach the mini-jet that Xavier had flown there, which contributed to the sense that these scenes were just there to take up time.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: This version of Lady Deathstrike is a Composite Character of the original and Mariko Yashida, as she was Wolverine's lover originally but hates him for killing her father (even though it wasn't really his fault). This could have let to an interesting arc, possibly with her even managing to forgive Wolverine eventually. Unfortunately, she's only in two episodes at the start of season 3 and is never seen again.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Jubilee is an extremely cringe-worthy ugly American in "The Lotus and the Steel," down to expecting everyone in Japan to speak English.
  • The portrayal of Gambit as a Dogged Nice Guy who's constantly trying to get women to kiss him has seriously fallen out of favor, and just makes him seem like a sexually harassing creep. This also has the interesting effect of the early teasing that he could pull a Face–Heel Turn being a bit more believable to people now discovering the show.
  • Similarly, Wolverine's crush on Jean and resentment of Scott casts him in much worse light nowadays. While in the 90s, a badass loner wooing a Nice Girl away from her square boyfriend was seen as an acceptable, even cool and admirable behaviour, modern attitudes on women's consent, toxic masculinity, and romantic entitlement just makes him come off as creepy instead of cool, especially as during the series, Scott never does anything to warrant why Jean should choose Logan over him. Not helping matters is both how melodramatic Wolverine is about it (outright quitting the team at one point because Jean continues to be in love with Scott, and running a Danger Room scenario so he can kill Scott repeatedly rather than attend their wedding) which just further makes him look pathetic.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: This show was pretty ambitious and revolutionary for its time. Characters could be Killed Off for Real, and serious subjects like death and bigotry were handled well.
• The Woobie:
  • The series' rendition of Kevin "Proteus" McTaggert. He's de-aged to teenagehood and his powers don't kill people any longer, so he's seen in a far more sympathetic light.
  • Nightcrawler after the events of "Bloodlines", where he meets his mother and learns that she abandoned him at birth because his blatant mutation would make her life difficult.
  • Morph, during his second season subplot and any of his later guest appearances, since it revolves around him being left for dead and then brought back as a mind-controlled puppet of Mister Sinister.
  • Rogue is this for the usual reason: her Life Drain touch means she can never have a romantic or sexual relationship, or even simply touch people without gloves.

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