History YMMV / TheNewOrderLastDaysOfEurope

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Free France gets a lot of sympathy from a vocal segment of the playerbase. This is despite them being an ultimately imperialistic force that that will expolit and outright abuse thousands of Africans for the chance of potentially retaking the French metropole and would likely renege on any political concessions being offered to the Africans under their thumb. This sympathy often comes from both the perception that total world hegemony led by the OFN is the best route for humanity, France collapsing due to Sidos or Poujade offering a good means for Free France to retake the mainland with OFN and Iberian support, as well as De Gaulle's plight receiving a degree of sympathy in the narrative and the fact that being exiled to the Kerguelen Islands if Cameroon were to win being seen as too bitter of a fate considering what Free France went through.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: As part of the West African War's depiction as a GreyAndGrayMorality conflict, Free France is characterized as a desperate band of exiles who want to return to their homeland and liberate it from the Vichy regime. But it is impossible to ignore the expansion of French imperialism that comes with Free France's continued presence in West Africa. This would mean the exploitation and abuse of thousands of Africans, all for the slim chance of potentially invading mainland Europe and benefiting the French at everyone else's expense. While the mod has some world news events bringing up the costs of French colonialism, many do not think it goes far enough in its condemnation, especially since many of these same events bring up the possibility of Free France taking a lighter hand than OTL France, promises that many are skeptical about them keeping. It also doesn't help that the French Reclamation, which requires a French victory in the West African War, is portrayed as an unambiguously good thing; while few will dispute that Vichy France is the greater evil and deserves to be destroyed, it does not bring sufficient attention to the French colonial antics back in West Africa and the fact that the Reclamation will cost the bones and blood of thousands of Africans who will never receive the rights they were promised.

** The Chinese fandom of TNO affectionally refers to [=ThePinkPanzer=], the original lead developer of the mod, as "Chairman Pink".

%%** In the mod, Thatcher is at worst a British nationalist with authoritarian tendencies. Despite this, jokes about Thatcher being "cursed" to the point of claiming that a ''Burgundian System'' England would be preferable are common in the fandom. A lot of this has to do with the IRL Thatcher’s public image; she’s both Britain’s most beloved and hated Prime Minister, with the latter being much more common on the internet.
** Wallace F. Bennett gets this quite a lot for being more right leaning than the US paths generally seen as good, working with conservatives and even Dixiecrats with regards to Civil Rights. This being despite the fact that, in his best path, he can pass effective civil rights, push other nations in the OFN to end racist policies, and turn the OFN into a strong alliance of equals rather than an simple appendage for US foreign policies. As with Thatcher, a lot of this has to do with in real life controversies, particularly the growing perception that compromising with right leaning and reactionary figures in working towards greater racial justice actually harms race relations in the long run.

** With enough skill from the player, Long Yun can successfully liberate all of China from the Japanese occupation [[spoiler:and, even better, invite Sun Fo to the newly freed nation and put China on the road to democracy, finally fulfilling Sun Yat-sen's dream.]] It's incredibly cathartic for those who want to restore independence to China and don't have the patience for Gao to do it himself in a future expansion.

** Like the DSR, Gus Hall had fans before his early content was added. He is stated by the devs to be the second worst path for the USA, though the specifics remain unknown. Even after it was revealed that he would carry out massive purges of the FBI and the CIA at literally the worst time possible as his very first act, he kept many fans because the thought of wiping J. Edgar Hoover's little empire is too appealing. It was only when he tried to invoke a lavender scare, outing J. Edgar Hoover's sexuality to discredit him and others in the CIA ([[{{Hypocrite}} after signing radical civil rights legislation to equalize all sexualities no less]]) that he started to lose support and the degree to which he was destroying American democratic institutions began to become clear.

** Taking one step further from the aforementioned character interpretation differences, prior to the mod's release, Sablin was very often subjected to this from the fanbase, both from players who support Yagoda and players who oppose the communist warlords in general. The former group sees Sablin as [[IdiotHero an incompetent buffoon who has no idea what he's doing]], and will only lead to the [[NiceJobBreakingItHero needless destruction]] of the Soviet government [[WellIntentionedExtremist Yagoda]] worked so hard to maintain, while the latter group believes that Sablin is inevitably going to become just as brutal as Yagoda in order to maintain his regime anyway. Come release, this had significantly died down for a time when it was revealed just how wholesome Sablin's progressive Russia could be.

* BrokenAesop: TNO claims to champion the message "Hate Destroys" yet the entire Black League Plotline is pretty much nothing but a glorification of racial hate and genocidal ambitions. While there are a few token events showing the darker side of the Black League, they are at this point the only Russian Nation (with the Divine Mandate being currently unplayable) to get special "interactions" with other Russian Warlords. These often present the League as the LesserOfTwoEvils despite most of these regimes not intending on ending the entire world and thus having far lower bodycounts. [[spoiler:But what really goes against the aesop the most is that the Black League actually succeeds in their goal when they cause the nuclear war, as the post apocalyptic world is presented in most events as a peaceful utopia, completly freed from the horrors of facism, making the Black Leagues actions seem justified in the end. Also while it`s mentioned that Yazov fosteres a certain guilt in his descendants over what he and the league did, at no point is the apparent complete genocide of the german people ever presented in a negative light. Whole thing reads more like "it was good (or at least necessary) that the league wiped all the germans out, just bad it got the rest of the world destroyed as well". Meaning TNO's aesop comes of as: Genocide and racial hatred are bad... most of the time, if applied against "deserving targets" it actually makes the world a better place.]]

** Due to the abovementioned real-world support of the US for right-wing dictatorships[[note]]often coming to power after the CIA-instigated overthrow of left or populist leaning democratically elected Latin American leaders that are seen to be not compliant with American interests[[/note]], Latin American players also tend to be far more critical of outcomes where the OFN, even under a relatively benign president, coming out on top as the "good ending" for the world, instead preferring outcomes where the OFN at most exerts its' influence over Europe, but leaves Latin America to its' own devices.

** Himmler and Burgundy are controversial in the fanbase, related to arguments over whether ''TNO'' should lean more into fantasy or realism, stick to the original ideas of the mod or undergo dramatic refashioning. Supporters of the former enjoy Burgundy's role as a BigBad who represents the worst excesses of Nazism and tries to [[spoiler:manipulate global tensions in an attempt to start thermonuclear war]], arguing that it heightens the tension and scary tone of the mod, was an iconic part of the original story and setting, gave the country a uniquely colorful role in the Cold War, antagonistic towards all three superpowers, and not only tapped into real world neo-Nazi doomsday accelerationist ideas [[spoiler: like ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries'']] but tied into the mod's central themes about the inherent self-destructiveness at the heart of Nazism. Those in the latter camps dislike Burgundy for competence-washing the SS as [[spoiler:a fiendishly-capable organization capable of influencing global events]] rather than FascistButInefficient and reducing the complex politics of the Cold War to a "cartoonish" conspiracy where a clear villain [[spoiler: is behind all sorts of massive global problems]]. Closely related, there are also divisions over exactly how stable Burgundy should be, with opinions ranging from Burgundy lasting all the way to its originally intended lifespan of 1981 to Burgundy not existing at all. There is also the debate over if the existence of Burgundy and-back when Esoteric Nazism was an ideology for even more unhinged Nazis and Nazi-adjunctent figures unintentionally whitewashes the evil of non-esoteric Nazis (to the point of supposedly promoting the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth) vs. the argument that it doesn't and non-esoteric Nazis can be appropriately written as vile with enough ideological distinction with esoteric Nazis.

** Within the NPP itself, both of the failstate presidents for the US are rather divisive due to debates over whether they fit TNO's narrative or if it is actually possible for the US to break down completely that radical fringe voices can take over in the first place(with those that believing that it isn't possible believing that a Wallace that doubles down on Jim Crow or Schafly are sufficiently bad enough for the US), and if there were more plausible options on the extreme left and right for leading the US than the failstate presidents the game currently has.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: As part of the West African War's depiction as a GreyAndGrayMorality conflict, Free France is characterized as a desperate band of exiles who want to return to their homeland and liberate it from the Vichy regime. But it is impossible to ignore the expansion of French imperialism that comes with Free France's continued presence in West Africa. This would mean the exploitation and abuse of thousands of Africans, all for the slim chance of potentially invading mainland Europe and benefiting the French at everyone else's expense. While the mod has some world news events bringing up the costs of French colonialism, many do not think it goes far enough in its condemnation, especially since many of these same events bring up the possibility of Free France taking a lighter hand than OTL France, promises that many are skeptical about them keeping. It also doesn't help that the French Reclamation is portrayed as an unambiguously good thing, in which a Free French victory in West Africa is required for this scenario to fire; while few will dispute that Vichy France is the greater evil and deserves to be destroyed, it does not bring sufficient attention to the French colonial antics back in West Africa and the moral baggage that's coming with the invasion in the first place.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: As part of the West African War's depiction as a GreyAndGrayMorality conflict, Free France is characterized as a desperate band of exiles who want to return to their homeland and liberate it from the Vichy regime. But it is impossible to ignore the expansion of French imperialism that comes with Free France's continued presence in West Africa. This would mean the exploitation and abuse of thousands of Africans, all for the slim chance of potentially invading mainland Europe and benefiting the French at everyone else's expense. While the mod has some world news events bringing up the costs of French colonialism, many do not think it goes far enough in its condemnation, especially since many of these same events bring up the possibility of Free France taking a lighter hand than OTL France, promises that many are skeptical about them keeping.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: As part of the West African War's depiction as a GreyAndGrayMorality conflict, Free France is characterized as a desperate band of exiles who want to return to their homeland and liberate it from the Vichy regime. But it is impossible to ignore the expansion of French imperialism that comes with Free France's continued presence in West Africa. This would mean the exploitation and abuse of thousands of Africans, all for the slim chance of potentially invading mainland Europe and benefiting the French at everyone else's expense. While the mod has some world news events bringing up the costs of French colonialism, many do not think it goes far enough in its condemnation, especially since many of these same events bring up the possibility of Free France taking a lighter hand than OTL France, promises that many are skeptical about them keeping. It also doesn't help that the French Reclamation is portrayed as an unambiguously good thing, in spite of Free France's colonial antics back in West Africa.

** There's also the uphill battle of staying true to your ideals as [[WideEyedIdealist Sablin]] and managing to pull it off regardless of the odds stacked up against you. Buryatia's outright noted as the [[NintendoHard second-hardest unifier to play as]], and various people both in-universe and out would say that realistically achieving what you've just done wasn't possible - but you did. To anyone who happens to agree with Sablin's views or at least respect his idealism, that's ''extremely'' satisfying.

** Oleksander Ohloblyn, who leads the Spivavtory party in the Republic of Ukraine and pushes for re-entry into the Einheitspakt as a client state of the Reich, is sometimes seen as a PragmaticHero who knows what he needs to do to protect Ukraine's multiparty democracy and some semblance of sovereignty (in contrast to the more idealistic or naive Vasyl Stus and Ivan Dziuba, who will always get Ukraine invaded or be forced to unconditionally surrender). Granted, this interpretation of Ohloblyn ''was'' accurate to how he was portrayed and teased early in-development, until more research was done and exposed how seedy he actually was. By the time of release, Ohloblyn was rewritten to reflect this side, but the old perception of him persists in some circles. The head Ukraine developer had to clarify that while Ohloblyn is not a pure evil fascist, he's far from a good guy himself--by collaborating with the Reich, he is complicit in its crimes, allowing the Holocaust to happen with no attempt to stop it and no remorse after the fact in order to save his own people.

** Gerard Wallop is easily the most discussed of the new British collaborationist leaders introduced in The Ruin due to his utterly bizarre ideology - a mix of GoodOldWays and CallToAgriculture sustained using a universal basic income and antisemitism - which he gets to implement in his Social Credit route.

*** [=BurgSys=] Komi: The chaotic Komi Republic is a source of much speculation, and one early dev statement sayign that "Komi can go every ideology" quickly led to speculations of a possible Burgundian System Komi path. The devs later statements flip-flopped between supporting [=BurgSys=] Komi and rejecting it[[labelnote:These include]]"Komi has one of the worst path in Russia, and one of the worst paths in the mod"; "Komi can go every ideology but one, and it's not the one you expect", "There is no [=BurgSys=] in the Komi power struggles", as well as a loading screen quote about a Russian who supports the Burgundian System.[[/labelnote]], causing further confusion and led to many off-the-wall guesses. Until release, practically nothing about this "worst Komi path" has been revealed by the developers. In the final game, [[spoiler: it turns out this speculation of the worst Komi path being Burgundian System Komi is ''real'', the one ideology they can't go is ''Conservative Democracy'', and earlier dev statements about [=BurgSys=] not being in Komi are ExactWords distractions intended to [[TrollingCreator screw with the community]] -- there's no [=BurgSys=] in the power struggle because the leader in question, Sergey Taboritsky, is first classified as a Despot and does not reveal his true ideology until he has consolidated his rule and unified Western Russia.]]

** Save games from previous versions of the mod will break while in a higher version. One of the funniest consequences of this is an immortal Adolf Hitler; the event to kill him will sometimes never fire, meaning that Germany remains united throughout the entire game.

** Albert Speer [[EvilAllAlong isn't reforming Germany out of goodness of heart]] and only is doing it to [[PragmaticVillainy reform National Socialism to a state where it can endure the cold war]],[[TheBadGuyWins even winning it.]] And to make Germany genuinely democratic, you have to let the [[InternalReformist Gang of Four]] sideline him.

** In general, the creators of the mod aim to [[DefiedTrope defy]] this with Fascists and Nazis who would be attracted to an Axis victory scenario by pulling no punches in showing how awful the world would be if their side won World War II, where extreme-right leaders would inflict unimaginable damage to the world through genocide, war, and other atrocities. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop many them from being attracted to the mod and using it to live out their fantasies anyway, but those that make their extremist views known often end up ridiculed and mocked by the rest of the fanbase and banned from the community very quickly.

* NintendoHard:
** Picking Heydrich as the successor, e.g the player character when Hitler croaks is THE most difficult faction to play with, bordering on UnwinnableByDesign: even Omsk and other warlords start in a quiet wasteland to build up and expand for decades. Not only you start around Luxembourg and Strassbourg with a bunch of lightly armed fanatics, but in full-scale war versus a superpower that is made of three fighting giants with fully mechanized, fully industrialized country of 100 million. Exploit an opening and start expanding, and all three will join in an alliance against you, particularly painful since you have no cores during the fight, eating whatever tiny garrison force you can trickle down. If by some inhuman luck (or cheating) you dismantle the three-way alliance, the center of Germany, Speidel's "Schutzzone", declares that "Germany will not accept a monster like Heydrich", unleashing the sleeping Wehrmacht remnants.
** Rather realistically, it’s incredibly difficult for any U.S. President to achieve all their goals to perfection ''and'' ensure their party wins re-election. Barreling through without compromise typically table your popularity and ability to achieve future goals.

* RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap: At release, Kaya's path was widely recognized as the most incomplete path of Japan, featuring tons of game-breaking bugs that would always result in the collapse of his government. Following the Toolbox Theory update, it was reworked from the ground up to not only fix the bugs, but also fix its characterization of Kaya and his cabinet and bring it closer to their OTL personalities. Now, it's arguably the most complete and bug-free path that the player can pursue in a Japan campaign. Tellingly, whereas the announcement of Takagi and Ikeda's removal in an upcoming Japanese rework was largely met with indifference, there are some fans hoping that Kaya's path would be kept to some degree.

** The much-reviled ''Ugly American'' update reworking a lot of early United States content is almost universally disliked for, in a noble effort to make quagmire Cold War conflicts actually ''feel'' like pointless quagmires, just being overcomplicated and out of a player's hands, and for severe technical issues that lead to heavy slowdown and require frequent restarts each in-game month just to be playable. (Note that the entire country of Brittany was cut for the latter problem.)

* TheInverseLawOfFandomLevity: This is a depressingly dark ans nihilistic mod about a Nazi victory, including a cold war involving UsefulNotes/NaziGermany and UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan, Himmler ruling a state under fundamentalist National Socialism and nuclear war being an actual possibility in several paths, with a generally oppressive and hateful atmosphere. As such, the fandom has [[Memes/TheNewOrderLastDaysOfEurope memes]] such as "Gamer moves" to describe racist or dystopian policies, "funny clock man" to describe a delusional madman, and printing Speer shorts.

* BrokenAesop: TNO claims to champion the message "Hate Destroys" yet the entire Black League Plotline is pretty much nothing but a glorification of racial hate and genocidal ambitions. While there are a few token events showing the darker side of the Black League, they are at this point the only Russian Nation (with the Divine Mandate being currently unplayable) to get special "interactions" with other Russian Warlords. These often present the League as the LesserOfTwoEvils despite most of these regimes not intending on ending the entire world and thus having far lower bodycounts. [[spoiler:But what really goes against the aesop the most is that the Black League actually succeeds in their goal when they cause the nuclear war, as the post apocalyptic world is presented in most events as a peaceful utopia, completly freed from the horrors of facism, making the Black Leagues actions seem justified in the end. Also while it`s mentioned that Yazov fosteres a certain guilt in his descendants over what he and the league did, at now point is the apparent complete genocide of the german people ever presented in a negative light. Whole thing reads more like "it was good the league wiped all the germans out, just bad it got the rest of the world destroyed as well". Meaning TNO's aesop comes of as: Genocide and racial hatred are bad... most of the time, if applied against "deserving targets" it actually makes the world a better place.]]

* BrokenAesop: TNO claims to champion the message "Hate Destroys" yet the entire Black League Plotline is pretty much nothing but a glorification of racial hate and genocidal ambitions. While there are a few token events showing the darker side of the Black League, they are at this point the only Russian Nation (with the Divine Mandate being currently unplayable) to get special "interactions" with other Russian Warlords. These often present the League as the LesserOfTwoEvils despite most of these regimes not intending on ending the entire world and thus having far lower bodycounts. [[spoiler:But what really goes against the aesop the most is that the Black League actually succeeds in their goal when they cause the nuclear war, as the post apocalyptic world is presented in most events as a peaceful utopia, completly freed from the horrors of facism, making the Black Leagues actions seem justified in the end. Also while it`s mentioned that Yazov fosteres a certain guilt in his descendants over what he and the league did, at now point is the apparent complete genocide of the german people ever presented in a negative light. Whole thing reads more like "it was good the league whiped all the germans out, just bad it got the rest of the world destroyed as well". Meaning TNO's aesop comes of as: Genocide and racial hatred are bad... most of the time, if applied against "deserving targets" it actually makes the world a better place.]]

* BrokenAesop: TNO claims to bring champion the message "Hate Destroys" yet the entire Black League Plotline is pretty much nothing but a glorification of racial hate and genocidal ambitions. While there are a few token events showing the darker side of the Black League, they are at this point the only Russian Nation (with the Divine Mandate being currently unplayable) to get special "interactions" with other Russian Warlords. These often present the League as the LesserOfTwoEvils despite most of these regimes not intending on ending the entire world and thus having far lower bodycounts. [[spoiler: But what really goes against the aesop the most is that the Black League actually succeeds in their goal when they cause the nuclear war, as the post apocalyptic world is presented in most events as a peaceful utopia, completly freed from the horrors of facism, making the Black Leagues actions seem justified in the end. Also while it`s mentioned that Yazov fosteres a certain guilt in his descendants over what he and the league did, at now point is the apparent complete genocide of the german people ever presented in a negative light. Whole thing reads more like "it was good the league whiped all the germans out, just bad it got the rest of the world destroyed as well". Meaning TNO's aesop comes of as: Genocide and racial hatred are bad... most of the time, if applied against "deserving targets" it actually makes the world a better place.]]

* BrokenAesop: TNO claims to bring forth the message "Hate Destroys" yet the entire Black League Plotline is pretty much nothing but a glorification of racial hate and genocidal ambitions. While there are a few token events showing the darker side of the Black League, they are at this point the only Russian Nation (with the Divine Mandate being currently unplayable) to get special "interactions" with other Russian Warlords. These often present the League as the LesserOfTwoEvils despite most of these regimes not intending on ending the entire world and thus having far lower bodycounts. [[spoiler: But what really goes against the aesop the most is that the Black League actually succeeds in their goal when they cause the nuclear war, as the post apocalyptic world is presented in most events as a peaceful utopia, completly freed from the horrors of facism, making the Black Leagues actions seem justified in the end. Also while it`s mentioned that Yazov fosteres a certain guilt in his descendants over what he and the league did, at now point is the apparent complete genocide of the german people ever presented in a negative light. Whole thing reads more like "it was good the league whiped all the germans out, just bad it got the rest of the world destroyed as well". Meaning TNO's aesop comes of as: Genocide and racial hatred are bad... most of the time, if applied against "deserving targets" it actually makes the world a better place.]]

* BrokenAesop: TNO claims to bring forth the message "Hate Destroys" yet the entire Black League Plotline is pretty much nothing but a glorification of racial hate and genocidal ambitions. While there are a few token events showing the darker side of the Black League, they are at this point the only Russian Nation (with the Divine Mandate being currently unplayable) to get special "interactions" with other Russian Warlords. These often present the League as the LesserOfTwoEvils despite most of these regimes not intending on ending the entire world and thus having far lower bodycounts. [[spoiler: But what really goes against the aesop the most is that the Black League actually succeeds in their goal when they cause the nuclear war, as the post apocalyptic world is presented in most events as a peaceful utopia, completly freed from the horrors of facism, making the Black Leagues actions seem justified in the end. Also while it`s mentioned that Yazov fosteres a certain guilt in his descendants over what he and the league did, at now point is the apparent complete genocide of the german people ever presented in a negative light. Whole thing reads more like "it was good the league whiped all the germans out, just bad it got the rest of the world destroyed as well". Meaning TNOs aesop comes of as: Genocide and racial hatred are bad... most of the time, if applied against "deserving targets" it actually makes the world a better place.]]

** Oleksander Ohloblyn, who leads the Spivavtory party in the Republic of Ukraine and pushes for re-entry into the Einheitspakt as a client state of the Reich, is sometimes seen as a PragmaticHero who knows what he needs to do to protect Ukraine's multiparty democracy and some semblance of sovereignty (in contrast to the more idealistic or naive Vasyl Stus and Ivan Dziuba, who will always get Ukraine invaded or be forced to unconditionally surrender). The head Ukraine developer had to clarify that while Ohloblyn is not a pure evil fascist, he's far from a good guy himself--by collaborating with the Reich, he is complicit in its crimes, allowing the Holocaust to happen with no attempt to stop it and no remorse after the fact in order to save his own people.

** With the addition of an original soundtrack in the Unfinished Business update (and future updates adding new songs to the soundtracks), several tracks standout in particular such as the bassy synth laden [[https://youtu.be/FLUU3zqGa1U Pulling Strings]], the martial stomp of [[https://youtu.be/FLUU3zqGa1U Goosestep]] and the Music/EnnioMorricone-esque [[https://youtu.be/nWtdwWlIWCI False Dawn]].

** John Glenn, a former potential R-D candidate in the 1968 US elections, is very popular due to being a former astronaut who’s very supportive of space exploration. He’s often styled by the fandom as “Glenn!” in reference to the popular Jeb Bush meme. His popularity has only skyrocketed in release when it was discovered that [[spoiler:he can land a man on Mars]]!

** The adherents of various toxic ideologies, including most permutations of authoritarianism and fascism, are given the tongue-in-cheek nickname of "gamers," and enacting their policies is sometimes called "gamer moves." Far-Right ethnostates such as Burgundy are also referred to as "Gamer Utopias" given that the only people with any hope of privilege are straight white males. For context, this is based on the "Gamers Rise Up" meme as well, which was formed as an ironic backlash to News Media depciting gamers as sexually-frustrated, hateful bigots, never mind that gamers come from all walks of life, only to be [[MisaimedFandom immediately co-opted by actual sexually-frustrated, hateful bigots with no sense of irony]] [[PoesLaw who did not realize they were being mocked]]. Thus, the meme proclaims that said politically incorrect and sexually frustrated gamers will eventually fight back against the women and minorities "oppressing" them and that the actions of ''TNO's'' worst leaders are being done for gamer-kind. The degree of irony surrounding the use of the term "gamer" varies, but is ''usually'' not a complement.

* George Wallop is easily the most discussed of the new British collaborationist leaders introduced in The Ruin due to his utterly bizarre ideology - a mix of GoodOldWays and CallToAgriculture sustained using a universal basic income and antisemitism - which he gets to implement in his Social Credit route.