History YMMV / TheWho

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny:
** "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" were among the first rock songs to feature synthesized patterns. Now it's common in every pop song.
** ''Tommy'' often gets this treatment now that its revolutionary factor has worn off. Many fans see the production as being rather thin and the songs lacking compared to those on ''Who's Next'' and ''Quadrophenia''.
** ''The Who Sell Out'': The idea of rock stars shilling for various products isn't as nearly as funny now as it was in 1967, since everybody does it nowadays.
** Their tendency to [[RockersSmashGuitars wreck their instruments onstage]] was radical and even subversive in 1964. It's become almost a cliché now.

** For all of his antics, Keith was genuinely kind to a young kid at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. That kid? [[RedHotChiliPeppers Anthony Kiedis]].

* FaceOfTheBand: Averted. In the band's heyday, all the members were well-known. One could make the case that in the pre-''Tommy'' period it was actually ''Daltrey'' who was the least distinctive in the eyes of fans. However, once he grew his hair out and found his voice, he became an icon as well.

** "Baba O'Reilly" for parody imaginings of InMediasRes HowWeGotHere story intros, coming with a RecordNeedleScratch and a freeze frame.

%%* NightmareFuel: "Fiddle About."

** ''Tommy'' often gets this treatment now that its revolutionary factor has worn off. Many fans see the production as being rather thin and the songs lacking compared to those on ''Who's Next'' and ''Quadrophenia.''

%%** The main character of "Behind Blue Eyes", no doubt.

* NeverLiveItDown:
** Pete Townshend (supposedly) getting caught with child pornography while researching sexual child abuse in the early 2000s[[note]]"Supposedly" in that he was suspected of buying child pornography with his credit card over the internet when in reality he was just on a normal porn site and the charge got mixed up with a pedophilia site.[[/note]]. It didn't help that his was the latest in a string of British rock stars getting busted for pederastic crimes, coming of the heels of both Jonathan King and Gary Glitter's respective scandals, which made his "research" claim seem flimsy to many.
** Townshend has always blamed the start of his hearing loss on Moon's exploding drums prank on the Smothers Brothers show.
** Townshend still feels awful about the aftermath of the 1979 Cincinnati disaster. The band's management elected to proceed with the show, on the logic that canceling would cause even more panic and chaos, but, crucially, the band members weren't told about the deaths until after the concert, and Townshend says it still makes him angry to know they were playing while being unaware of what happened. He also feels like they should've postponed the tour and stayed in Cincinnati while the details were being sorted out, rather than continuing on to their next stop (Buffalo) the next night.
* NightmareFuel: "Fiddle About."

* OvershadowedByControversy: The 1979 disaster at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum in which 11 of their fans died in a crowd surge outside the arena before the concert. While at first the MoralGuardians put the band under scrutiny for the incident, later investigations established that the poorly-regulated use of "festival seating", bad information directed at concertgoers (leading to a huge crowd showing up several hours before the show) and bad crowd management (only one set of doors to the arena was open, creating a bottleneck) led to the tragedy. The Who themselves made a return appearance in Cincinnati in 2022, with several memorials to the victims during the show.

** "Baba O'Reilly" for parody imaginings of InMediaRes HowWeGotHere story intros, coming with a RecordNeedleScratch and a freeze frame.

* OvershadowedByControversy: The 1979 stampede at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum in which 11 of their fans were trampled to death. While at first the MoralGuardians put the band under scrutiny for the incident, later investigations established that the poorly-regulated use of "festival seating", bad information directed at concertgoers (placing a sizable crowd outside the arena several hours before showtime) and bad crowd management (only one set of doors to the arena was open, creating a bottleneck) led to the tragedy. The Who themselves made a return appearance in Cincinnati in 2022, with several memorials to the victims during the show.

* OvershadowedByControversy: The 1979 stampede at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum in which 11 of their fans were trampled to death.

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* CrowningMomentOfHeatweartwarming: For all of his antics, Keith was genuinely kind to a young kid at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. That kid? [[RedHotChiliPeppers Anthony Kiedis]].
* DorkAge: Many fans consider everything the band did after Keith Moon's death to be an extended DorkAge. Even more will agree that it started with John Entwistle's death in 2002.

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: When Pete and Roger were honored by the Kennedy Center in 2008, the video montage placed emphasis on their reuniting to support the police, firefighters, and soldiers who volunteered in the aftermath of 9/11. Later on, during Rob Thomas' performance of "Baba O'Riley," the stage opened up to reveal hundreds of firefighters and policemen/women, singing along (and fist-pumping) to the "teenage wasteland" section. The two were pretty moved; after all the performances, Roger and Pete simply looked at each other and shook hands. They'd done alright, it seemed.

* CrowningMomentofHeatweartwarming: For all of his antics, Keith was genuinely kind to a Moung kid at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. That kid? [[RedHotChiliPeppers Anthony Kiedis.]]

* CrowningMomentofHeatweartwarming: For all of his antics, Keith was genuinely kind to a young kid at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. That kid? [[RedHotChiliPeppers Anthony Kiedis.]]

* Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: For all of his antics, Keith was genuinely kind to a young kid at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. That kid? [[RedHotChiliPeppers Anthony Kiedis.]]

* Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: For all of his {{SexDrugsandRockandRoll}} antics, Keith was genuinely kind to a young kid at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. That kid? [[RedHotChiliPeppers Anthony Kiedis.]]

* Crowning MomentofHeartwarming: For all of his {{SexDrugsandRockandRoll}} antics, Keith was genuinely kind to a young kid at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. That kid? [[RedHotChiliPeppers Anthony Kiedis.]]

* CrowningMomentofHeartwarming: For all of his {{SexDrugsandRockandRoll}} antics, Keith was genuinely kind to a young kid at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. That kid? [[RedHotChiliPeppers Anthony Kiedis.]]

* CrowningMomentofHeartwarming * For all of his {{SexDrugsandRockandRoll}} antics, Keith was genuinely kind to a young kid at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. That kid? [[RedHotChiliPeppers Anthony Kiedis.]]

* CrowningMomentofHeartwarming* For all of his {{SexDrugsandRockandRoll}} antics, Keith was genuinely kind to a young kid at the Rainbow in Los Anegel4s. That kid? [[RedHotChiliPeppers Anthony Kiedis.]]

*** In fact, Roger is on record saying that the other three members genuinely thought that he was {{troll}}ing them about being dead, expecting him to pop out of his coffin at the funeral and laugh at how he fooled everyone.

* FunnyAneurysmMoment:
** The line "Hope I die before I get old," in "My Generation", after the deaths of Keith Moon and John Entwistle. In another FlipFlopOfGod, Townshend took in TheNineties to claiming that "oldness" is a state of mind, not a descriptor of physical age.
** "A Quick One, While He's Away" is this for Pete Townshend. He initially wrote it on a whim as a light-hearted story about affairs and a love triangle. But years later, he started seeing it as a metaphor for the sexual abuse and other bad experiences he suffered while living with this grandmother as a child. In his autobiography, he claims that he might have subconsciously written the song as a way to cope. They retired the song from their concerts for many years until TheNewTens, when they began include more deep cuts.

* HarsherInHindsight: The cover for ''Who Are You'' has a photo of the band with Keith Moon sitting in a chair with the words "Not to be taken away" on the back. Sadly, he died of a drug overdose one month after the album was released. (The reason he was sitting on the chair in the first place was to hide his noticeable weight gain.)