History YMMV / BandOfBrothers

* CatharsisFactor: "The Breaking Point" is one of the harshest hours of the series, yet ends with Spiers taking command and running through the town ''twice'' without a scratch to show for it.
* CreepyAwesome: Spiers's mannerisms are incredibly disconcerting, such as the way he applies his combat paint (three vertical stripes on each cheek), the way he wears his helmet (pulled down so the shadow from the brim covers his eyes), and his stare (wide-eyed, never breaking eye contact, and unblinking). These make him incredibly awesome, and his actor doubly so.

** The opening interviews in the very first episode, "Currahee," feature one of the men saying "Well, our country was attacked. It's different -- it wasn't like Korea or Vietnam; we was attacked. And, you know, it was a feeling that, uh, maybe we're just dumb country people, where I come from, but a lot of us volunteered." The day that episode premiered? 9 September 2001. Promos were actually pulled post 9/11 due to the combat violence shown and how it might upset people.

** Sobel in general tends to provoke a lot of debate over his martinet-style approach, and whether it was justified as a way of training the men for the hardships of war or whether that was just a happy byproduct of his spiteful incompetence. For what it's worth, many of the men of Easy Company do credit Sobel with preparing them for war with his methods, though they generally have little else of warmth to say about him and this could be the result of a certain degree of NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead (Sobel had been dead for five years prior to the publication of the book the series is based on, had blinded himself in a suicide attempt twenty years prior, and was removed from his post prior to leading the men into actual danger, thus making it natural that his former subordinates might be willing to retroactively moderate their criticisms to a point),

* DracoInLeatherPants: To a lesser extent, Sobel of all people. Despite his jerkass tendencies and incompetence, he's often given some admiration for his training abilities, even by the vets who served under him who attributed it to their survival. This despite the fact that any competent drill instructor could have done just as good a job at it, while not severely compromising the morale and fighting ability of their unit to the point where every single NCO up and mutinies just before a major offensive as Sobel did. It may help that in a fit of depression, he tried to kill himself later in life, but missed and ended up [[AlasPoorScrappy blinding himself for the last of his 20 years.]]

** Sobel in general tends to provoke a lot of debate over his martinet-style approach, and whether it was justified as a way of training the men for the hardships of war or whether that was just a happy byproduct of his spiteful incompetence. For what it's worth, many of the men of Easy Company do credit Sobel with preparing them for war with his methods, though they generally have little else of warmth to say about him and this could be the result of a certain degree of NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead (Sobel had been dead for five years prior to the publication of the book the series is based on, and had blinded himself in a suicide attempt twenty years prior, thus making it natural that his former subordinates might be willing to retroactively moderate their criticisms to a point),

* BrokenBase: A minor one. Fans can't agree whether the POV character in Episode 1 is Sobel, whose training and leadership are the focus, or Winters, who actually appears throughout the entire episode and has the flashback back to Toccoa in the first scene.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: An odd example since it is a period piece. But the interview segments date it to 2001. For example in the first episode, one of the real veterans tries to rationalise why so many people enlisted voluntarily - saying "our country was attacked". The September 11th attacks happened two days after the episode premiered. The WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue speaks about the men who were still alive at the time of filming but have since passed on. What's more is that there are a few historical mistakes that come from testimony among the men - such as Joe Liebgott being Jewish (he was Catholic in real life) and Albert Blithe dying in 1948 (he lived until 1967) - which shows the miniseries was made in a pre-internet age when information like that would be harder to find.

* FunnyAneurysmMoment: In-Universe. In the ninth episode, Janovec is reading a newspaper as the Company is being transported by truck. Luz asks what the paper is about. Janovec replies that the paper details the reason why they [America] are fighting the war is because "The Germans are bad... very bad", which Luz finds quite amusing. Later, the Company discovers a concentration camp and find out just how bad the Germans were.

* ActorShipping: Given that the series has only about two female characters with speaking parts, there's rather a lot of same-sex ships. Eion Bailey (Webster) and Ross [=McCall=] (Liebgott) get a bit of it, due to playing the two translators. The most popular ship seems to be Creator/MichaelCudlitz and Creator/NealMcDonough, possibly because they were significantly older than most of the cast. Someone in the ten-year reunion interviews asked Cudlitz if he could fight Neal [[GuyOnGuyIsHot shirtless]]. James Madio gets shipped with lots of his cast members, after numerous stories about him on set were told. One in particular says he once bit Neal [=McDonough=] on the chest for no real reason.

** Eion Bailey plays a Harvard student of Literature, who went on to become a writer. Fast forward to ''Series/OnceUponATime'' when he's once again playing a writer who carries around a manual typewriter with him -- and actually ''is'' a storybook character ([[spoiler:Pinocchio]]). What's more is that the real life Webster wrote a book about sharks and Bailey's character in ''Once Upon A Time'' nearly gets eaten by a whale.

** Ross [=McCall=] (Liebgott) ended up engaged to Jennifer Love Hewitt for a while. Fellow cast member Scott Grimes (Malarkey) had previously starred alongside Hewitt on ''Series/PartyOfFive'' and tried to date her -- unsuccessfully. That's not to mention that he lived with Matthew Settle for a while too -- who played a RomanticFalseLead of Hewitt in ''Film/IStillKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer''.

** Weirdly enough with ''{{Series/Supernatural}}'' of all things. There are more crossover fan fictions than you'd expect. It's even more surprising, given that the only connection the two shows have is that Richard Speight Jr stars in both -- and in minor roles at that.
*** Though, as mentioned directly above, Muck was well-loved, and Gabriel, his character on ''{{Series/Supernatural}}'' was a huge EnsembleDarkHorse.

* ActorShipping: Given that the series has only about two female characters with speaking parts, there's rather a lot of same-sex ships. Eion Bailey (Webster) and Ross [=McCall=] (Liebgott) get a bit of it, due to playing the two translators. The most popular ship seems to be Creator/MichaelCudlitz and Creator/NealMcDonough, possibly because they were significantly older than most of the cast. Someone in the ten year reunion interviews asked Cudlitz if he could fight Neal [[GuyOnGuyIsHot shirtless]]. James Madio gets shipped with lots of his cast members, after numerous stories about him on set were told. One in particular says he once bit Neal [=McDonough=] on the chest for no real reason.
* AdaptationalDisplacement: This series is based on the book of the same name, which most people only find out after watching through the show or do enough research beforehand.

** In episode 2, when Buck Compton kills a German by hitting him with a well-timed grenade that explodes on impact. This actually happened -- except Compton's grenade hit him in the ''head.''

* AluminumChristmasTrees: The series invests a lot of effort in being very very accurate. But there are a few unbelievable but true events omitted or toned down to preserve suspension of disbelief. One is in episode 2, when Buck Compton kills a German by hitting him with a well-timed grenade that explodes on impact. This actually happened -- except Compton's grenade hit him in the ''head.''

** During D-day, Malarkey meets a captured German P.O.W. and finds out that the P.O.W. is actually a German American who went back to Germany to fight ''for'' the Nazis, and that the P.O.W. even lived on the other side of the city as him. In real life, they lived on the opposite sides of the same ''street''.

* BetterOnDVD: Since the miniseries is essentially a ten hour long WarMovie, it's a lot easier to keep track of the large cast and {{Call Back}}s when watching all the episodes back-to-back.

** Sobel could be considered one in RealLife, according to Wiki/TheOtherWiki. He was a DrillSergeantNasty who proved himself wholly incompetent in the field, but eventually tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the temple. The bullet severed both optic nerves, permanently blinding him before exiting the other temple, and he lived for another twenty years. Worse yet, when he finally did die, no one came to his funeral. No one from Easy Company, not his ex-wife, and none of his children. The only person to show him any concern is Guarnere, who pays his membership dues into a veterans group composed of Easy Company vets, but otherwise has nothing to do with the man. Even worse is the manner of his death: malnutrition in a VA assisted-living facility. The reason he was buried without a service is because the VA didn't actually contact his children until after he was buried.

* BetterOnDVD: Since the miniseries is essentially a ten hour long WarMovie, it's a lot easier to keep track of the LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters and {{Call Back}}s when watching all the episodes back-to-back.

* CriticalResearchFailure:
** Private Albert Blithe is portrayed as a reluctant soldier, is shot in the neck and dies of his wounds in 1948. In real life, he was shot in the shoulder, recovered and remained in the US Army until his death in West Germany in 1967, serving abroad in Korea and as a military adviser in Taiwan. This rather major error is present in Ambrose's original book too. The rest of the company were unaware of this and felt awful after Blithe's family contacted the studio to correct them.
** The book itself contains several major examples, a lot of which [[AuthorsSavingThrow the TV series actually prunes]]; Ambrose refers to every German tank as a Tiger[[labelnote:In fact]]Tigers were quite rare during the Normandy campaign (5.3% of all German armor committed) and Commonwealth forces faced most of the ones that were there.[[/labelnote]], he says the 101st had 5000 men on D-Day[[labelnote:In fact]]Records show it had less than half that number.[[/labelnote]], he frequently gets various technical details wrong, such as gun caliber, every German unit is described as "crack" or "elite"[[labelnote:In fact]]German records show Easy Company fought mainly regular Wehrmacht forces.[[/labelnote]], both he and Winters criticize Major-General Taylor (the 101st's commander) for being "on holiday" during the Ardennes assault[[labelnote:In fact]]He was on Christmas leave -- something he had in common with Eisenhower -- and was also attending various Pentagon conferences on how to improve the US Airborne divisions.[[/labelnote]], he claims Easy Company was dropped by inexperienced pilots who had never flown at night and who did not have experience dropping partroopers and who took evasive action to save themselves[[labelnote:In fact]]The troop carriers were all proficient in dropping paratroopers and night flying. No pilot has less than 450 hours. Airborne complaints about the rough drop likely have more to do with the fact that the wind at the [=DZs=] was 20-30 knots (the present day safe limit is 13 knots). Incidentally, the complaints mostly came from the 101st; the 82nd, who had jumped before, actually commended the pilots.[[/labelnote]] and he misidentifies the British colonel rescued by Easy as "O. Dobey"[[labelnote:In fact]]His name was David Dobie.[[/labelnote]]

* FriendlyFandoms: Weirdly enough with ''{{Series/Supernatural}}'' of all things. There are more crossover fan fictions than you'd expect. It's even more surprising, given that the only connection the two shows have is that Richard Speight Jr stars in both -- and in minor roles at that.
** Though, as mentioned directly above, Muck was well-loved, and Gabriel, his character on ''{{Series/Supernatural}}'' was a huge EnsembleDarkHorse.

** Doc Roe is one of the top favourites, despite minimal appearances outside his one POV episode. He was also barely mentioned in the original book. His actor Shane Taylor even expressed surprise at the amount of fans he had, as he took a hiatus from acting for several years. His episode is also ranked as one of the best out of the series.

** Liebgott and Malarkey, especially after the heartbreak both characters have to go through. In Malarkey's case, his actor Scott Grimes was a recognisable enough name from ''Series/PartyOfFive'' and a music career.

** Doc Roe is one of the favourites, despite minimal appearances outside his one POV episode. He was also barely mentioned in the original book. His actor Shane Taylor even expressed surprise at the amount of fans he had, as he took a hiatus from acting for several years. His episode is also ranked as one of the best out of the series.
** Speirs actually appears far less than you'd expect -- not really joining Easy Company until Episode 7. You wouldn't know it from the amount of fans he has. It helps that he's a MemeticBadass in and out of universe.