History YMMV / KingdomOfLoathing

* UglyCute: The Pet Cheezling, a disgustingly adorable grinning blob of cheese, which makes disgustingly adorable burbly noises, and heals you by melting your enemies and pumping you full of an unknown substance, which is pretty disgustingly... [[GrotesqueCute disgusting.]]

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: The Council of Loathing. Are they just the simple standins for the king who give you your quests or an evil group of individuals in league with the Naughty Sorceress. They start off simply getting you to do some of their dirty work (What do they use that mosquito larva for?) and as you get stronger try to send you to your death. (I mean come on go and start and finish a war all by yourself, bonus points if you kill both sides.) And when you finally defeat the Sorceress and free the King they pretty much outright tell you to go kill yourself, as soon as you oblige the Sorceress suspiciously comes back and steals the King again.

* UglyCute: The Pet Cheezling, a disgustingly adorable grinning blob of cheese, which makes disgustingly adorable burbly noises, and heals you by melting your enemies and pumping you full of an unknown substance, which is pretty disgustingly... [[GrotesqueCute disgusting.]]
* UnfortunateImplications: Avoided in one Bad Moon-exclusive adventure, where your character gets stuck in tar, titled "[[http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/A_Potentially_Offensive_Reference_Has_Been_Carefully_Avoided_Here A Potentially Offensive Reference Has Been Carefully Avoided Here]]".[[note]]If you're curious, it's likely that the reference in question is the "Tar Baby" from the tales of Br'er Rabbit.[[/note]]
* UrbanLegendOfZelda: Persistent rumours regarding the LordBritishPostulate about [[http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Killing_the_hermit killing The Hermit]], an NPC "shopkeeper". Eventually played for laughs with the Deck of Every Card; one card lets you fight the Hermit... who kills you in one hit while taking no damage himself.
** Also, as per {{The Wiki| Rule}} (linked above), "Killing the Hermit" has become [=KoL=] slang for ADateWithRosiePalms, including joke advice that [[DoubleEntendre it's necessary to reach the]] [[IncrediblyLamePun Orc Chasm]].

** Also, as per {{The Wiki| Rule}} (linked above), "Killing the Hermit" has become [=KoL=] slang for ADateWithRosyPalms, including joke advice that [[DoubleEntendre it's necessary to reach the]] [[IncrediblyLamePun Orc Chasm]].

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: The Council of Loathing. Are they just the simple standins for the king who give you your quests or an evil group of individuals in league with the Naughty Sorceress. They start off simply getting you to do some of their dirty work (What do they use that mosquito larva for?) and as you get stronger try to send you to your death. (I mean come on go and start and finish a war all by yourself, bonus points if you kill both sides.) And when your finally defeat the Sorceress and free the King they pretty much outright tell you to go kill yourself, as soon as you oblige the Sorceress suspiciously comes back and steals the King again.

*** The [[spoiler:pyramid]] portion is extra-nasty. You have to get a certain noncombat adventure (or farm or buy a particular item) several times to change the contents of the lower floors, so that you can get a token, buy a bomb with the token, and blow up a pile of rocks with the bomb. If you go to the bottom area at the wrong time, [[BanditMook rats will steal your token before you get to use it]], or [[GuideDangIt the bomb will be wasted on the wrong rubble pile]]. Once you finally blow up the correct rock pile, you can fight the boss...[[spoiler:''seven times'', using up an adventure for each iteration. The boss has less health each time, but always has full attack power; if he beats you up, you have to go through all seven forms of him again]]. [[spoiler:Perhaps sofened a bit by the fact that said boss is [[EnsembleDarkhorse Ed]] [[CrowningMomentOfFunny the]] [[NotHyperbole Undying]].]]

** The "cornbeefadon" is a recurring meme, sparked ages ago when someone jokingly suggested that Mr. Store sell a familiar that's just a dinosaur with a corned beef sandwich taped to its face.

*** The [[spoiler:pyramid]] portion is extra-nasty. You have to get a certain noncombat adventure (or farm or buy a particular item) several times to change the contents of the lower floors, so that you can get a token, buy a bomb with the token, and blow up a pile of rocks with the bomb. If you go to the bottom area at the wrong time, [[BanditMook rats will steal your token before you get to use it]], or [[GuideDangIt the bomb will be wasted on the wrong rubble pile]]. Once you finally blow up the correct rock pile, you can fight the boss...[[spoiler:''seven times'', using up an adventure for each iteration. The boss has less health each time, but always has full attack power; if he beats you up, you have to go through all seven forms of him again]].

* UrbanLegendOfZelda: Persistent rumours regarding the LordBritishPostulate about [[http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Killing_the_hermit killing The Hermit]], an NPC "shopkeeper". Eventually played for laughs with the Deck of Every Card; one card lets you fight the Hermit... who kills you in one hit while taking no damage himself.

** Done intentionally with the final boss of the License to Adventure path, [[spoiler:"Blofeld" (quotes included) a cowardly man with pathetically low stats compared to even the game's normal enemies at that point, whose attacks consist almost entirely of trying to run away.]] He's ''so'' pathetic that players have speculated that there's an as-yet-undiscovered TrueFinalBoss of the challenge path.

* AcceptableTargets: Hippies, frat boys, snooty artists, furries, Canadians, Goths... this game makes fun of everyone.

** Less arguably, the Smith's Tome. What does it do? It lets you, up to 3 times a day, summon a Lump of Brituminous Coal, a handful of Smithereens, and a Flaskfull of Hollow. The Brituminous Coal can be smithed into equipment that gives you a few small boosts, including +5 to a new stat called Smithsness... and one very ''large'' boost that scales with your current Smithsness. Yes, Smithsness is essentially a redo of Hobo Power, but much more accessible. As for the other two, the Flaskfull of Hollow adds +25 Smithsness and a Smith-scaled boost to all stats for a whopping 150 turns. And the Smithereens can be crafted into fairly useful combat items, or fairly good consumable items which (RuleOfThree, everyone) can grant ''a buff adding to your Smithsness''. More annoyingly, the Smiths equipment can be pulverized into more Smithereens, adding ''even more'' value to the turn-free smithing from Degrassi Knoll moon signs that were already regarded as too good. Nearly every discussion by StopHavingFunGuys on the forums now includes some form of the question "how the hell are Jick and co going to make the game stop centering around Smithsness without just making a new even breakier GameBreaker?"[[note]]The easiest answer is "let it type69 out", but that won't happen until 2016, and not everyone is happy about Smithsness dominating for that long.[[/note]] Jick has stated that a new Tome item won't be available until Smith's type69s out for exactly this reason.

* UrbanLegendOfZelda: Persistent rumours regarding the LordBritishPostulate about [[http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Killing_the_hermit killing The Hermit]], an NPC "shopkeeper"

* BaseBreaker: The Level 9 revamp (see ThatOneLevel below). Some players found the new content hilarious and original; others, however, found it tedious, the Smut Orcs area puerile, and the peaks boring and full of spiteful bashing of the StarWars prequels and re-edits. Speedrunners are generally united in their hatred of the revamp, meanwhile, as an area that could (with proper preparation) be completed in one turn has given way to one that cannot be solved in less than several dozen.

* UnfortunateImplications: One of the factoids for the Erudite Gremlin basically describes it as being autistic. Yes, Jick and Skully make fun of everyone, but the ''disabled''?
** [[http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Put_on_the_Smooth_Moves This adventure.]] Female characters flirt with a guard until he wanders off to get some flowers, so they can sneak past him. Male characters flirt with a hot sorority girl until she lets her guard down, and they knock her out...so they can sneak past her. Because that isn't sexist at all, and the latter definitely doesn't resemble date rape.
*** Given that your character is a HeroicComedicSociopath, flirting with a girl so you can clobber her on the head and skedaddle before anyone notices is more RefugeInAudacity. Heck, the quest could even be considered a callback to the Roofie item (Which is a roofing shingle, not a drug. [[CrossesTheLineTwice That fratboys clobber their dates with]]) After all, this game plays SlapstickKnowsNoGender straight.
** Avoided in one Bad Moon-exclusive adventure, where your character gets stuck in tar, titled "[[http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/A_Potentially_Offensive_Reference_Has_Been_Carefully_Avoided_Here A Potentially Offensive Reference Has Been Carefully Avoided Here]]".[[note]]If you're curious, it's likely that the reference in question is the "Tar Baby" from the tales of Br'er Rabbit.[[/note]]

** The Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot familiar. It needs a pineal gland! They don't even drop anymore. The only way to get one is to spend over a million Meat in the mall, or (if you're lucky) beg your clan leaders to give you one from the stash. WordOfGod is that once the prices get too high, they'll invent a way to introduce new pineal glands into the Kingdom, but that's a long way off yet.
*** In the same vein, all the antique map quests will cost you a huge hunk of dough, largely because rich Monster Manuel addicts used up three of each one to get boss factoids.

** The ever-dreaded "Kittycore" mode, a run where the player must use the Black Cat familiar (which, as opposed to helping out in some way like most familiars, [[SelfImposedChallenge will instead hinder you at nearly every opportunity]]) for almost the entire run. The point of this is to allow you to do a Bad Moon run whenever you want (ordinarily, you need to have not used a single ten leaf clover in the previous run to do a BM run). Fight a single battle without the cat at your side, and you can kiss your reward goodbye. To make this worse, there are a few points in the game where you NEED to use another familiar to proceed with the game (namely, finding the Black Market, and 2 spots in the Sorceress' Lair). There are horror stories of players switching to the necessary familiar, only to forget to switch BACK to the cat before they engage a monster, thereby ruining their entire run (especially vexing because aforementioned points in the lair are immediately before the FinalBoss herself).

** Fernswarthy's Basement. 500 grueling, repetitious levels of tough monsters and "tests" that mainly test your ability to spend tons of meat on potions. Actually, there's ''infinite'' levels, but most people stop at 500 because that's when you finally get the telescope. No, sorry, one-seventh of the telescope. You've got to do 500 levels of the basement six more times to finish upgrading it, or it won't be very useful. Have "fun!" After the Tower revamp, you can stop at a rank five telescope and see all the Lair previews, but it still ''goes'' to seven, in case you want that extra 10% to all stats for 10 turns a day.

** Fernswarthy's Basement. 500 grueling, repetitious levels of tough monsters and "tests" that mainly test your ability to spend tons of meat on potions. Actually, there's ''infinite'' levels, but most people stop at 500 because that's when you finally get the telescope. No, sorry, one-seventh of the telescope. You've got to do 500 levels of the basement six more times to finish upgrading it, or it won't be very useful. Have "fun!"

** "[Answer: YES!]", coined when a SingleIssueWonk edited the latest iteration of their demand that [[EscapeBattleTechnique tattered scraps of paper]] be {{nerf}}ed to misleadingly imply that WordOfGod had chimed in to agree with them.

** The old version of the adventure queue. Simply put, the adventure queue smooths out the RNG by remembering the last 5 combat and non-combat adventures you've had in each area and making them less likely to occur. The old version was the same, minus the phrase "in each area", meaning that to play optimally you would have to juggle as many different tasks as possible and rotate through them each time you made the tiniest bit of progress. The new version can't be manipulated this way, removing the obligation to do it for all high-level SpeedRuns. Ironically, the new adventure queue heralded cries of TheyChangedItNowItSucks, precisely because it couldn't be manipulated, even though the actual method of manipulating the old one was a total pain in the ass.

* ScrappyMechanic: The one they may yet remove is ()delay (which deliberately makes it take longer for you to get quest items). The one they'll probably never remove is Ronin (which cuts off any outside support for 1,000 turns in Normal ascension runs).
** They did, however, introduce the Casual ascension path; you have no Ronin period, but gain no Karma from the run. (Other rewards are unaffected.)