History YMMV / PlantsVsZombies

*** He was ''this'' close to finishing his sudoku/crossword puzzle.[[labelnote:Explanation]]Whenever the Newspaper Zombie is showcased, it's almost customary for someone to make a comment quoting his Almanac entries.[[/labelnote]]

** Due of their similar appearances, fans like to depict Fume-Shroom, Puff-Shroom, and Scaredy-Shroom as brothers or a BadassFamily. This interpretation is also common among plants that also look like their related such as Wall-nut and Tall-Nut, the pult plants being known as the Pult Bros. thanks to ''WebVideo/LuigiFan00001'', Sunflower and Twin Sunflower, and Peashooter with Repeater, Snow Pea, Threepeater, Split-Pea, and Gatling Pea.

** Due of their similar appearances, fans like to depict Fume-Shroom, Puff-Shroom, and Scaredy-Shroom as brothers or a BadassFamily. This interpretation is also commong among plants that also look like their related such as Wall-nut and Tall-Nut, the pult plants being known as the Pult Bros. thanks to ''WebVideo/LuigiFan00001'', Sunflower and Twin Sunflower, and Peashooter with Repeater, Snow Pea, Threepeater, Split-Pea, and Gatling Pea.

** Due of their similar appearances, fans like to depict Fume-Shroom, Puff-Shroom, and Scaredy-Shroom as brothers.

** "''[[DemographicallyInappropriateHumor Bullshit!]]'' My TONGUE [[DownToTheLastPlay touched the finish line]] first!" "You're the one bullshitting!"[[labelnote:Explanation]]A conversation between Red Stinger and Pea Shooter lifted verbatim from one of the official manhuas, ridiculed by the subreddit for being so unexpectedly vulgar for a family-friendly franchise (and surprisingly in-character for most {{Fanon}} portrayals of Red's personality.) It should also be noted that the manhuas are written for younger children in mind.[[/labelnote]]

** "''[[DemographicallyInappropriateHumor Bullshit!]]'' My tongue [[DownToTheLastPlay touched the line]] first!" "It's ''you'' who's bullshitting!"[[labelnote:Explanation]]A conversation between Red Stinger and Pea Shooter lifted verbatim from one of the official manhuas, ridiculed by the subreddit for being so unexpectedly vulgar for a family-friendly franchise (and surprisingly in-character for most {{Fanon}} portrayals of Red's personality.) It should also be noted that the manhuas are written for younger children in mind.[[/labelnote]]

** The soundtrack for the "Day" levels and the sound effect played when the the player optains a new item are also popularly used in memes and edits.

** If a [[GameOver zombie manages to break your defenses]], the same scare chord from the main menu plays as you then have no choice but to watch it stroll into your house (or slide down the chimney if you lost a roof or roof night level), followed by the hideous sound of it crunching into the player's skull along with a gut wrenching "[[BigNo NOOOOOO!]]". Many kids who have played the game were understandably horrified. And despite the comical tone of the game, this is actually played out considerably seriously. In ''Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time'', the game over screen is ''''' even scarier''''', as instead of a GoryDiscretionShot like the first game, we get to see the player's brain on a plate with a ghastly bite taken out of it!

--->'''Crazy Dave:''' You're gonna hate this level. It's one bungee zombie after another. I hate those bungee zombies. With a passion. And a vengeance. Here come those idiots now.

** The Chinese story ''The Legend of Heroes'' reveals [[VideoGame/PlantsVsZombiesHeroes Solar Flare]] [[HurtingHero has been through a lot]]. Even before the Herotron incident, she was a rich kid without a proper home life due to her parents working overseas, and [[SpoiledSweet gave back to her friends since she really didn't have any other idea of what to do with all her money]]. All was fine until her friends (a Jalapeno and Lotus Shooter) saw her with a young Green Shadow/Penelopea, and immediately broke off (whether this was due to a broken promise or [[MistakenForGay some other form of jealousy]] is never specified) until Flare found the motivation from a Torchwood to speak to them again. In the present, Flare is, among other things, subject to a DeadlyPrank that stiffs her university out of an extremely valuable grant program, MistakenForTerrorist by an adult Penelopea and forced to fight her (causing ''another'' PR disaster that eventually forces Citron[[note]]The Far Future plant, not the Hero[[/note]] to quit LEAF), and it's implied that Flare and Penelopea's relationship is quite ironically ''not'' all sunshine and rainbows no thanks to the amount of times they've been turned against each other. [[SadClown All that, and yet the kid continues fighting with that huge smile of hers]].

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The reception to the Game of the Year Edition update which changed the Dancing Zombie (after official objections from the estate of Michael Jackson) from a blatant reference to Music/MichaelJackson's ''Thriller'' video to a DiscoDan. Though, the new disco zombie is at least amusing, and makes for a clever VisualPun regarding [[DiscoSucks disco being... well, dead]]. However, some fans who have the old version will '''never''' update it for obvious reasons.

* ReplacementScrappy: The new Disco Zombie is this for fans of Music/MichaelJackson.

** For some inexplicable reason, there was a strong urge to regard Hypno-shroom as female to the point where even the Wikia site based some of their trivia off of it for a period of time.[[note]]As of December 2016, the wiki has forbidden usage of gender-specific pronouns on plant pages to prevent this trope from occurring in other plants, along with the argument that plants are a species and therefore cannot always be one gender. [[BrokenBase There have been some recurring attempts to change this, though, but as long as the species argument is in place, it's unlikely this will be changed.]][[/note]] Thankfully, this isn't happening again anytime soon since the second game has confirmed him to be a guy.

* ItsEasySoItSucks: A while after the first game came out, this complaint started to become more common, especially among fans who prefer the sequel. Since it’s designed as a casual game, the original ''Plants vs. Zombies'' doesn’t offer much challenge to someone more accustomed to the game’s mechanics — zombie waves are pretty small, instant kill plants make it easy to clear them out, and spamming Sunflowers to amass huge quantities of sun isn’t hard in most levels. For other fans, however, the sequel [[ItsHardSoItSucks goes too far in the opposite direction]] compared to this game’s reasonable level of challenge.

* TheScrappy: Officer Ron from ''Adventures'' wasn't very well-liked, due to his mechanic of forcing you to carpool with real-life Facebook friends, which started out as 2 at the least, but said amount would gradually increase as you progressed through the game. If you didn't have enough friends, you would instead have to pay a gradually-increasing amount of gems. Because of this, more than a few would have wanted to see him get eaten by the zombies.

* ScrappyWeapon: [[ScrappyWeapon/PlantsVsZombies Has its own page.]]

** The Cactus. It's a slightly more expensive Peashooter that doesn't synergize with Torchwood, whose only real use is countering Balloon Zombies, and even in that one niche, it's outclassed by Blover (which wipes out every Balloon Zombie at once) and Cattail (which is just plain better). You'll probably only use it once for the level that introduces the Balloon Zombie and then never again.
** The Chomper has the dubious honor of being the worst instant-kill plant in the game, and one of the worst plants in the game period. Sure, it's one of the only instant kills that can be used multiple times (aside from Cob Cannon), but it only eats one zombie at a time and takes forever to digest. Nearly every other instant-kill hits multiple zombies, which makes them infinitely better for dealing with big waves; spending 150 sun on a Cherry Bomb almost always kills more zombies than spending it on a Chomper. It's not even good at dealing with early lone zombies because Squash, Tangle Kelp, and Potato Mine do the same thing for less sun, and its short range makes it undesirable as an offensive plant with all of the long-ranged options available. The only environment where Chomper sees much use is in speedruns of the game, due to its fast cooldown time for an instant-kill plant.
** The Hypno-Shroom, unfortunately, ends up as an extremely CoolButInefficient instant-kill plant. Although its ability to [[MookFaceTurn make a zombie fight for you]] sounds powerful for its price of 75 sun, especially on targets like the Football Zombie, the hypnotized zombies are deceptively weak; [[RedemptionDemotion their bites do less damage than they do as an enemy]], and since the zombie at the front will most likely be the one that eats it, it'll likely already have taken some damage, making it easier for the other zombies to defeat. Since a Hypno-Shroom must be eaten to take effect, it doesn't even work on many of the most threatening zombie types. Outside of night levels, its price doubles to 150 sun due to the Coffee Bean needed to wake it up, when a Cherry Bomb or Jalapeño can clear out way more zombies for a similar price.

* ScrappyWeapon:

** The Cactus. It's a slightly more expensive Peashooter that doesn't synergize with Torchwood, whose only real use is countering Balloon Zombies, and even in that one niche, it's outclassed by Blover (which wipes out every Balloon Zombie at once) and Cattail (which is just plain better). You'll probably only use it once to deal with the first Balloon level and then never again.

** In the final battle with Zomboss, you know that moment when he freaking throws ''that RV'' on your roof. Although this attack ''is'' predictable (immediately after getting back up, less than half his max HP left), there's ''absolutely nothing'' you can do to stop it from insta-killing 6 of your plants. And the worst part? If you can't kill him off fast enough, he can do that '''a second time.''' It's even worse in the minigame "Dr. Zomboss's Revenge", where Zomboss has twice the health he had in Adventure Mode. The increased health pool means that Zomboss will almost assuredly live long enough to start using his attacks at random, which means throwing [=RVs=] at you ''whenever he wants''.

** In the final battle with Zomboss, you know that moment when he freaking throws ''that car'' on your roof... Although the attack ''is'' predictable (immediately after getting back up, less than half his max HP left), there's ''absolutely nothing'' you can do to stop it from insta-killing 6 of your plants. And the worst part? If you can't kill him off fast enough, he can do that '''a second time.''' It's even worse in the minigame "Dr. Zomboss's Revenge", where Zomboss has twice the health he had in Adventure Mode. The increased health pool means that Zomboss will almost assuredly live long enough to start using his attacks at random, which means throwing [=RVs=] at you ''whenever he wants''.

* DemonicSpiders: Has [[DemonicSpiders/PlantsVsZombies its own page]].

* GoddamnedBats:
** The Bungee Zombie drops down and randomly steals one of your plants, and it's not easy to kill him before he escapes. He can be hard-countered by Umbrella Leaf, but that requires [[CripplingOverspecialization wasting a seed slot on a plant that doesn't do much other than countering Bungees]]. On Roof levels, they also drop off fellow zombies onto your front lines during huge waves. This is invoked in-universe by Crazy Dave, who outright states how much he hates them.
** Balloon Zombies, unless you planted a Cattail or put a Cactus in each lane. Otherwise, you have to plant a Blover every time one shows up, or it'll float right over ''every'' defense you have. They're easy to stop, but when you're trying to get enough sun for something fairly expensive, it can get REALLY frustrating to have to keep using up 100 sun to get rid of them. Strangely enough, [[ConservationOfNinjutsu a group of them tends to be less dangerous than a single one]] for this very reason.
** Digger Zombies. Similar to the Balloon Zombies, they totally wreck you unless you have specific plans to deal with them. Most players put all their heavy defensive units at the front, and have the shooters sitting behind them, facing forward. Diggers tunnel underneath you to the patio, then turn around and start attacking you from behind, where all your most vulnerable but important plants are. You'll need Magnet-shrooms or Split Peas to deal with them, and even then you'll probably have to replace your sunflowers quite regularly or put Pumpkins on all your rear-most plants.
** Dolphin Rider Zombie also gets hated for his dolphin's annoying screeching sound and how quickly he speeds down the pool lane until he runs into a plant to jump over. He's usually more of an annoyance than an actual threat, though, due to his [[FragileSpeedster low HP]] and losing his speed after jumping.
** In the puzzle mini-game "I, Zombie" where you play as the zombies, the Snow Peas and Kernel-pults are these. The Snow Peas slow down your zombies, and the Kernel-pults will [[RandomNumberGod randomly]] stun them with a block of butter. Heaven help you if a Kernel-pult and Snow Pea are in the same row, slowing and stunning your Football Zombie. While he's on a bed of [[SpikesOfDoom Spikeweeds]].

** "''[[DemographicallyInappropriateHumor Bullshit!]]'' My tongue [[DownToTheLastPlay touched the line]] first!" "It's ''you'' who's bullshitting!"[[labelnote:Explanation]]A conversation between Red Stinger and Pea Shooter lifted verbatim from one of the official manhuas, ridiculed by the subreddit for being so unexpectedly vulgar for a family-friendly franchise (and surprisingly in-character for most {{Fanon}} portrayals of Red's personality.)[[/labelnote]]

* SelfImposedChallenge:

** The Chinese story ''The Legend of Heroes'' reveals [[VideoGame/PlantsVsZombiesHeroes Solar Flare]] [[HurtingHero has been through a lot]]. Even before the Herotron incident, she was a rich kid without a proper home life due to her parents working overseas, and [[SpoiledSweet gave back to her friends since she really didn't have any other idea of what to do with all her money]]. All was fine until her friends (a Jalapeno and Lotus Shooter) saw her with a young Green Shadow/Penelopea, and immediately broke off (whether this was due to a broken promise or [[MistakenForGay some other form of jealousy]] is never specified) until Flare found the motivation from a Torchwood to speak to them again. In the present, Flare is, among other things, subject to a DeadlyPrank that stiffs her university out of an extremely valuable grant program, MistakenForTerrorist by an adult Penelopea and forced to fight her (causing ''another'' PR disaster that eventually forces Citron to quit LEAF), and has enough vitriol built up to prank Penelopea while she's still in the hospital. [[SadClown All that, and yet the kid continues fighting with that huge smile of hers]].

* TearJerker: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2q94ofpwzs The Chinese New Year trailer]] for the Chinese exclusive ''Plants vs. Zombies Online'' is the saddest official ''Plants vs. Zombies'' media. It stars a Buckethead Zombie whose son [[WhenYouComingHomeDad can't get along with him for being gone so long]], and they soon have a good time together. On Chinese New Year night, a long while after the Buckethead Zombie puts his bucket away and leaves, his son grows restless once again for not returning sooner, just when he reads the note his father left him and sees the TV showing zombies seemingly being fired at with firecrackers. He opens up the box containing the bucket his father wore and placed on his son's head when they bonded, and sheds a tear, implying his father died. [[WhatMeasureIsAMook This will definitely make you regret killing all of those zombies.]]

* MemeticBadass: If you see Newspaper Zombie in a difficulty mod, [[LetsGetDangerous be ready for hell]].