YMMV / Bullet Club

• Awesome Music: Both the club's stable themes ("Last Chance Saloon" and "Shot'Em") as well as most of the individual members' themes within the club can count as this. Gallows and Anderson's new WWE theme "Omen in the Sky" must be mentioned as well.
• Badass Decay:
  • Anderson and Gallows, full stop. In NJPW, they were loud and belligerent and combined a penchant for comedy spots and a vicious asskicking attitude which they backed up by dominating the tag team division. In WWE, they still have the penchant for comedy and the brutal attitude, but the promo intensity has been toned down, the comedy has been geared more towards Vince McMahon's peculiar tastes than some fans would prefer, and going by their gradually dwindling importance^* with the exception of the early goings of their spring/summer 2016 feud with The Usos and Roman Reigns and their brief Raw Tag Team Championship run in pre-WrestleMania 2017 and tendency to lose every feud they're in, the viciousness, like with most heels these days, has been effectively booked as glorified posturing. In AEW and Impact, they've become the resident low-brow humor suppliers, never achieving much aside from being Kenny's goons and doing barely funny routines that are only made to pop themselves, a shade of what they used to be.
  • Many longtime fans of Bullet Club, and even some members of the NJPW roster, believe that Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks have caused this to happen to Bullet Club as a whole since taking over the leadership, thanks to the disproportionate focus they put on themselves and their friends on Being the Elite as well as some of their antics running entirely counter to the Club's original badass image. In fact it's been said that Bullet Club has been divided in two, similar to how the nWo in 1999 had both a "Wolfpac Elite" (the BC version being Kenny, the Bucks, Cody, Marty Scurll, and Hangman Page) and a "B-Team" (the BC version being the Guerrillas of Destiny, Bad Luck Fale, Yujiro, Chase Owens, and now Leo Tonga). Difference being the "B-Team" are the ones who many believe still hold true to the spirit of the original Bullet Club, and with Tama Tonga and Fale's marked improvements in the ring and credibility as the Club's OGs, many are suspecting the Tongans and/or Cody (who's taken Adam Cole's spot opposite Kenny in the Elite dissension angle) will soon attempt to launch a coup to remove The Elite and return Bullet Club to its roots under the leadership of Cody, Tama, and/or Fale.
  • Cody attempted the coup on his own and has since declared himself the leader of Bullet Club despite the lack of consensus from anyone on either the BTE or OG side, with Tama in fact signaling a lack of regard for either Cody or Kenny on a number of occasions since Cody's attack on Omega. This, along with Cody's controversially sketchy arguments with fans on Twitter of numerous political stripes, blatant-diplomatic overtures toward WWE and specifically Vince McMahon, and the overt focus on the sexualities of the Rhodes couple and the Golden Lovers tag team in the ensuing angle, has all caused many fans of Bullet Club's original leanings to see Cody as being an even further departure from the stable's foundation than Omega despite being one of wrestling's biggest heels in 2018. Predictably, Cody would rejoin the BC/Elite contingent following one last match against Kenny in San Francisco, becoming one of many bodies laid out by the Tongans when they finally launched their mutiny by attacking Omega and company.
  • The House of Torture is collectively this to both EVIL and SHO, both of whom were heralded for generally good in-ring work that massively deteriorated upon joining Bullet Club and their excessive use of interference and cheating in their matches. While such tactics are a calling card of the Club, most of its members have taken to winning off their own skill - combined with a change in perception that decries such tactics as being actively hurting the New Japan product as opposed to being a unique novelty introduced during its earlier years, it has led to House of Torture being an actively dreaded part of the roster because of how awful their matches can be.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • AJ Styles. Was he given too many wins over Kazuchika Okada in their debut feud? Did he win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship from Okada too soon?
  • The Young Bucks. Are they an enormously talented and creative tag team who are great at drawing heel heat, or are they a couple of useless spot-monkeys with no sense of ring pscyhology and poor selling ability?
  • The Elite. Are they hyper-talented forward-thinkers taking independent wrestling to the next level, or are they a bunch of pretentious pricks in it for themselves responsible for fragmenting and changing Bullet Club into something hollow which doesn't reflect the group's former "brotherhood of men" appeal under Devitt, Anderson, and Styles? Much of it depends on one's view of how much the Elite's storylines on both the main products and their own YouTube channel play into a future setup for their eventual ouster from Bullet Club and how much of it is just them blatantly playing to trends and shilling catchphrases and T-shirts.
  • Originally Hangman Page was more-or-less unanimously accepted as the hateable dickhead that ensured the pseudo-babyface BTE cast was still connected to the core heelish Bullet Club in more than name, but March 2018 cast some serious doubt into that assertion. Not only did he engage in a feud with Joey Ryan through Being the Elite which incorporated Ryan's controversial "penis power" gag spot into a storyline connected to the lore of New Japan Pro-Wrestling, an act seen by some as a step too far into indulging the whimsical off-color humor that Omega and the Bucks like, his attempt to rally the US fanbase with an ironically Roman Reigns/John Cena-esque false-shoot promo against "Switchblade" Jay White as a United States Champion was summarily shut down by White's completely kayfabe response calling out the ridiculousness of the issues in Bullet Club and Page's own status in such as a lackey to the Bucks and Cody, and predictably, White beat Page clean in their match to retain his title. While not a lightning rod issue, the extent to which this damaged Hangman's image as a serious competitor is something of a debatable topic.
• Broken Base:
  • Some fans don't like the new "Junior" focus brought by Kenny Omega and later Adam Cole (see below) compared to Styles and Anderson, arguing with those who think G.O.D., Fale and Hall are enough outside junior coverage, while others point out that the group originally had a junior focus with Devitt.
  • The Club incorporating their Kingdom rival Adam Cole generated grumblings among some fans who don't like the "new" direction (though not enough to stop the "Too Sweet" chants), even though others say it puts them more in line with how they've always been in New Japan.
  • The entire "Elite" direction of the Omega-era Bullet Club compared to the "brothers of the covenant" of the Devitt and Styles eras is as divisive within the fanbase as within the group's kayfabe. As the Omega era became more distinct for its self-created^* with Gedo's approval division storylines, pseudo-babyface leadership, and various Ho Yay antics, not to mention all these being mainly exclusive to the Elite/ROH group which is treated as the stable's "A-Team", many who were fans of the previous eras became disenchanted with the Club's new direction, perceiving it as being Lighter and Softer, while others who are moreso fans of the Elite and company consider them to be the recognizable and memorable ones due to their off-color antics and high quality wrestling matches and the Devitt and Styles era remnants as simple hangers-on. While Elite fans point out that the variety, sales, and accessibility of BC merchandise have all expanded under the Elite's leadership, others point out that this could have been accomplished without introducing the divisive elements and that the aftershocks of the Devitt and Styles runs are both still prevalent in the growth of Bullet Club's success in several ways to this very day. ^i.e. the iconic Bone Soldier T-shirt design that most of the newer individual shirt designs are offshoots from came from the Devitt era; the Club's international explosion to fame first took place through the Styles era, with AJ himself drawing many Western fans to NJPW in the first place; the influence of BC alumni from the leadership of both prior eras achieving some levels of success as well as occasionally reuniting in WWE also tends to get more people talking about Bullet Club; etc.
  • The above issues manifested in the early 2018 schism storyline in which Bullet Club is ostensibly being forced to choose sides between Kenny Omega and Cody on the surface, but with Tama Tonga lurking in the wings as a potential leader as well. Many are divided as to who should be the leader between the three, who should remain in Bullet Club and who should leave and form their own faction, or even how long Bullet Club should last at the conclusion of this storyline.
  • The Official. The Original. The Only Club that matters. Is "The OC" and its catchphrase a corporate-ordered shot at Bullet Club, or just another subtle nod Writing Around Trademarks? Hell, could it be both? Based on how notoriously isolationist WWE is and especially how confrontational they've become towards fan discontent or the idea of having competition (particularly in the wake of All Elite Wrestling), it would seem to be the former. There's also a small pocket of fans who tend to swim against the tide of support for Club reunions under the WWE umbrella, accusing them of trying to "recreate" Bullet Club; at the very least it could be a shot at that. However, the controversial Catchphrase itself was debuted on Anderson's Twitter; similarly, a comment about how they started it in Japan but now it's coming all over the world can also be found on Anderson's Twitter, hinting that Bullet Club, in spirit at least, is the OC they're talking about. For his part, Tama made a tweet on the subject suggesting he takes this view on it as well, in contrast to the veiled shots he was taking at The Elite while they were under the same roof. He also retweeted Gallows' tweet celebrating The Good Brothers' second Raw Tag Team Championship victory, and claimed Anderson gave him an OC shirt when asked if he bought one.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Despite being villains the group is widely popular and well liked with their merchandise being one of the top sellers at events. Their T-Shirts sold out quick when New Japan had its co event done with Ring of Honor in New York. In fact, by mid-2015, they're not even villains anymore outside of New Japan because no American promotion is willing to fight against the tide of how over they are! In response to NJPW's need to establish that Bullet Club was still strong after losing Styles and Anderson (and Gallows) to WWE, ROH tried to play the club's characters straight again as heels by running a takeover angle with them in 2016. So far, the ROH faithful still refuse to treat them to cold boos.
  • In their WWE spinoff, where heel Anderson and Gallows were trying to help face Styles against Roman Reigns in an angle designed to get the Creator's Pet Reigns over as a sympathetic babyface, fans instead quickly sided with Styles. What helps in the case of the WWE Club is that AJ is portrayed as someone being abused constantly for trying to simply defend himself and his own honor, and Anderson and Gallows are just guys trying to help their boy obtain his dream. Keep in mind they also never got involved in the title matches unless it was legal within said match (didn't get involved at Payback until match became No DQ, at Extreme Rules... well, it was an Extreme Rules match). It can also be argued that they stooped to less lows than even The Usos, who outright prevented Styles from making what would've been a match-winning pin on Reigns. Then of course, when AJ finally makes his true Face–Heel Turn, it's against John Cena. If nothing else, the WWE Club had the good fortune of running into the two least liked faces in the company. If they tried these tactics against, say, Dean Ambrose or Sami Zayn, their antics would've been much less enjoyed.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: While Cody Rhodes and Kenny Omega fight over who should be the leader of the Bullet Club and try to get the Elite members (as well as the fandom) on their side, a growing undercurrent of Bullet Club fans have been leaning towards support for the lower-card "Bullet Club OG" members primarily operating in New Japan, particularly wanting to see Tama Tonga take the helm of the Club and bring it back to its roots along with fellow day-one member Bad Luck Fale. With Tama's passionate screed in Sapporo about no longer following those he doesn't respect and the open hints on the Guerrillas of Destiny YouTube channel about the BCOG faction's issues with the BTE faction, the "Tama for leader" crowd continued to subtly grow alongside the GOD subscriber base. However, this suddenly exploded with the BCOG faction's appearance on BTE episode 93, in which Tama's savage display of zero fucks given during Cody and Kenny's pull-apart brawl in the locker room was praised and noted in nearly every other comment on the video. Given that this same display has also positioned Tama as the story's Devil in Plain Sight, this may in fact be the Intended Audience Reaction.
• Epileptic Trees: Pick any potential or approaching significant milestone in the WWE career of Finn Bálor. Odds are there's a few "Imagine this…" theories going around with the end result being a Bullet Club appearance. Funnily enough, come 2016, the Club entering WWE became a reality, though outside of a tease, they allied with AJ, not Bálor, at first. That is, until the beginning of 2018, when Finn, needing a pair of partners for a six-man tag match, enters with… Gallows and Anderson. And a giant smile on his face. The Bálor Club lives.
• Evil Is Cool: Per Leather Pants above, the group basically runs on this.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • As two definitive factions in wrestling in The New '10s with inherently opposing themes in separate companies, Bullet Club has had a lot of this going on with WWE's The Shield.
  • Probably the most intense rivalry among any section of NJPW fans is the international fan feud between the two sides of Bullet Club itself, the Elite contingent led by Omega and the Bucks or the Tongan-guided unit returning to BC's covenant roots. Even after the official split, Elite fans and Bullet Club fans will clash in comment sections of videos where one side brings the other up.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The sequence frequently used to end Bullet Club matches in the US with A.J. Styles and the Young Bucks (Superkicks, Indytaker/Meltzer Driver into a Styles Clash after another pair of superkicks) has become known in fan circles as the Bullet Club Fatality. This makes the use of the combo's end by the Bucks and Kenny Omega to punctuate Styles' ejection from the club oddly fitting.
  • Small Show and Medium Show for Anderson and Gallows in WWE, being bald guys with goatees.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The stable are hated Foreign Wrestling Heels in their home promotion of New Japan Pro-Wrestling, but in America the stable members can generate massive pops just from standing in the ring. It helps that the members most willing to travel to America, AJ Styles and The Young Bucks, are some of the best technical performers in the world and rarely put on anything less than a 3 star match. It also helps that the club's original leader Prince Devitt has become an even bigger star in America since joining WWE NXT as Finn Bálor, as has Styles since going straight to the WWE's main roster. Fittingly, in American promotions such as Ring of Honor, they are booked as an Anti-Hero Tweener group rather than the Heels they are in their home country.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • AJ Styles' last storyline in TNA prior to joining ROH and NJPW (and thus the club), in which it was implied that "friends" were sponsoring his trips to other promotions in which he defended his "unsanctioned" TNA World Heavyweight Championship in defiance of President Dixie Carter, is this in light of his seamless integration into the club's camaraderie. Styles and Devitt borrowing each other's moves since AJ entered the club the same night Devitt left^note thus not only placing Devitt as being "in" on the aforementioned gag, but also hinting that his Heel Realization Face Turn and subsequent departure left no lingering animosity between him and the club only adds to this. And then everything involving Styles and Devitt has become this in light of 2016's early developments. It seems that Bullet Club's reach has had seeds in both TNA's past and now WWE's future. Speaking of which…
  • Just before that storyline mentioned above, TNA stable Aces and Eights teased that Styles would be joining them, but turned out to be a ruse by Styles to attack them. At one point during what was supposed to be Styles' "initiation," leader Bully Ray told him "You can give your heart to Jesus, but your soul belongs to the club." Oh Bully Ray, you've never been so right. Well, except that it's not your club, but the club that would end your WWE career.
  • During the first year of the club's existence, when Prince Devitt was leader, he once cut a promo warning the rest of the NJPW roster. He gave a quick rundown on their names, ending with "Captain fookin' New Japan?!", his tone seemingly straining in disbelief at the idea of the club sharing the same promotion with such a cartoonish character (as his name implies, he was a pastiche of Captain America). Well, in September/October 2016, Captain fookin' New Japan is now with Bullet Club, being given the new ring name "Bone Soldier". Devitt, now Finn Balor, was quick to... voice his displeasure. Even better: after a few months and a winless G1 Tag League showing alongside Bad Luck Fale, Omega himself would agree with Devitt's assessment, calling Bone Soldier an "intergalactic disaster". His tenure in Bullet Club and in NJPW overall ended with February 2017. By June, during a Bullet Club promotional ad for NJPW's G1 events in America, Omega was putting Bone Soldier in the same category as Kazuchika Okada, Tetsuya Naito, and Hiroshi Tanahashi…as guys New Japan was shoving down people's throats who couldn't sell out a bingo hall in America. He also cited himself, Cody, and the Young Bucks as the ones who should be in that position instead, but called Nick the equivalent of Bone Soldier, which had Nick noticeably reeling through the last minute of the advert, complaining at the end about Captain New Japan. Finn Bálor would be proud. Even a year later, the "return of Bone Soldier" was met with groans to the point that Kenny Omega set himself up to be trolled by Cody on Twitter about it when it turned out that this was actually Tama Tonga introducing Taiji Ishimori to take over the role. On June 24, 2018, during the post-match press bit with Yujiro and Ishimori, Yujiro, while boasting with excitement about Ishimori, admitted regret for having introduced the original Bone Soldier, flatly stating twice that he sucks.
  • The Kingdom's feud with Bullet Club looks pretty hilarious now that one of their former members, Adam Cole, not only defected but spent a year as the face of their American operations.
  • When Kenny Omega took the leadership at New Year Dash by ousting AJ Styles, one of his closing statements was that "Bullet Club is 4- 4- 4-Life! —Except for AJ Styles." Two and a half years later, the Tongans have mutinied under the banner of Bullet Club OG after getting tired of being treated as background noise to Kenny's shaky leadership of the Elite/Ring of Honor contingent, to the point that Tama Tonga has dismissed the idea of Kenny and the Elite as being Bullet Club members while affirming former front-runners Finn Bálor and AJ Styles as being Bullet Club 4 Life.
  • Cody's insistence during the schism that Marty should form a real Villain Club, after he stayed in ROH and introduced Villain Enterprises.
  • WCPW booking Gabriel Kidd as a one night only member of Bullet Club, over half a decade before Kidd would officially join the David Finlay-led iteration of the club.
• I Knew It!: Summer/fall 2018 saw a number of events that were first hinted at slyly and instantly caught by fans at least several months in advance before they came to pass.
  • Cody Rhodes would be replacing Adam Cole in the Being the Elite schism storyline with Kenny Omega, a guess that was made after Cody was held back from throwing in the towel by the Young Bucks during Kenny's title match against Kazuchika Okada at Dominion in June 2017.
  • Tama Tonga would orchestrate the removal of Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks from Bullet Club and possibly become the stable's leader, a guess that had been made since their G1 match in July 2017 and only grew in popularity with his "Zero Fucks Given" moment during the NJPW-based BC members' guest appearance on Being the Elite.
  • Jay White would eventually join the Bullet Club and also become part of its leadership/main focus, a guess that was made since the day he returned from excursion with the Switchblade gimmick in late 2017 due to both the Darker and Edgier look and his history with Devitt and Fale. Bonus points for those who did not abandon this possibility when he joined CHAOS on January 6, 2018, instead adding to it that he would betray CHAOS.
  • The entire ROH/The Elite faction would be splitting off from Bullet Club, first seen as a possible extension of Tama ousting Kenny after their G1 2017 match, became a more guaranteed piece to the same puzzle when the Guerrillas of Destiny started posting YouTube videos in which they gave clear hints that they saw the Elite as a disturbance to the Club.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • #BeatUpJohnCena^note On the July 4, 2016 episode of Raw, the Club decided that they were in the best position in the WWE because of their ability to beat up John Cena. They then start planning how they would celebrate different holidays, concluding with beating Cena up.
  • From the first year of the club's existence, we have Prince Devitt's now-infamous "Captain fookin' New Japan?!" promo.
  • Tama Tonga: zero fucks given.^note On Being the Elite episode 93, when Cody Rhodes and Kenny Omega got in each other's face and had to be pulled away from each other by Bad Luck Fale, The Young Bucks, Gino Gambino, Chase Owens, and Tanga Loa so they didn't fight and tear apart the locker room, Tama's reaction was…to do absolutely nothing but sit and watch.
  • Bullet Club is fine.^note One of Cody's catchphrases in his attempts to kick Kenny Omega out of Bullet Club, deliberately denying the schism that he is actively causing in the stable, particular with the ROH/Being The Elite cast. Some say it ironically, going along with the joke, while others believe the statement is true if one treats the Elite cast and the core Bullet Club as being two separate entities, as implied when Tama Tonga said it in BTE episode 93.
  • Fuck Em! ^note Bad Luck Fale's new catchphrase which debuted During a G1 Climax 28 press conference by revealing his colors as part of Firing Squad/Bullet Club OG.
• Moral Event Horizon: During Day 4 of G1 Climax 27, Bad Luck Fale (and in extension to some fans, Bullet Club in general) crosses this when he tears apart Hiromu Takahashi's plush cat, Daryl.
• More Popular Replacement:
  • Taiji Ishimori is generally seen as a way better fit to be Bone Soldier than the former Captain New Japan, Mitsuhide Hirasawa.
  • Likewise, Hikuleo is generally considered a superior Young Gun compared to Cody Hall, showing a sense of swagger and confidence as well as improvement in his ring work during his time in Bullet Club.
• Older Than They Think
  • Jeff Jarrett becoming the benefactor and "chairman" of the Bullet Club got fans worried that it would lead to an Audience-Alienating Era for the group, to the point that Jarrett is often blamed for the group's deliberate homages to the two child stables of The Kliq (DX and nWo, the latter which once featured Jarrett as its world champion). Not only were the Kliq homages a thing they were doing pretty much from the beginning, before Jarrett was ever a part of the gang, but Devitt would later admit while sitting on Anderson's "Talk'n Shop" that the "Real Rock-n-Rolla" gimmick he used with the Club (which even included a guitar weapon at one point) was actually his own spin on Jarrett's "Real Double J" gimmick. (The fears of a Dork Age ended up being moot anyway, as Jarrett had a very passive role in the group before quietly parting ways.)
  • Much of the criticism levied at the booking of Gallows and Anderson in WWE is often summed up as them being made too goofy, which forgets that both were comfortable being comedic in New Japan, with Anderson often breaking into goofy comedy spots during the middle of matches while in Japan. Gallows has also long played the punchline in a tag team (as the redneck Festus) within the WWE over a decade ago. Doesn't exactly justify the massive Badass Decay they've suffered since coming to WWE, especially upon their unwilling split with AJ via the revival of the brand split, but it would be more correct to say that they were made less agressive rather than too goofy.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • The Bullet Club Block Party on April 7, 2019 was the moment that it could be said Bullet Club have gone past Villain with Good Publicity status to now having a sizable pocket of wrestling fans who openly support their villainy and want them to own everyone else, acknowledged In-Universe. During the opening speech, fans reacted to Tama's recount of Bullet Club's previous eras leading up to the Cutthroat Era by cheering for Prince Devitt and AJ Styles, booing the "Elitist era" and chanting "Fuck The Elite!", and backing Tama in his praise of Jay White as the future to the point of chanting "Switchblade!", calling for "Justice for Jay!", and even dubbing Kazuchika Okada a "soyboy", showing outrage over Jay's loss of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship to Okada at the previous night's NJPW/ROH G1 Supercard co-op event in Madison Square Garden. When White took his turn to speak he was moved enough to exempt the party attendees from his usual remarks of scorn towards wrestling fans and then make a borderline-heroic speech about how he will keep rising, get back on top, and claim the IWGP Heavyweight Championship for Bullet Club once again. When members of the Whatculture Wrestling crew who Tama had been antagonizing for months came by to crash the party, there was no shortage of fans running beside Tama and Haku as they fought away the intruders. For a 21st century pro wrestling heel stable to be earning increasing loyalty like this while closing out its sixth continuous year of existence is an incredible feat.
  • One could say The Elite's fandom was also a Periphery Demographic, though in a polar opposite sense to the Bullet Club Loyal. While Bullet Club fans care about NJPW as a whole being successful and believe the path to that runs through the villainous Bullet Club consistently being a dominant adversary that all the top faces must overcome, The Elite's fans believe that their characters and their vision are ultimately trying to do great things for pro wrestling in general and don't really care in what way or to what degree their vision might specifically affect NJPW. The two sides are on such opposite extremes that moreso than just the two stables themselves, many Elite fans find that they cannot get behind Bullet Club without the stories of Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks, especially after they left NJPW for good, and many BC fans are glad to see The Elite gone and highly skeptical at best towards All Elite Wrestling.
  • On the merchandise side, a significant portion of their prolific T-shirt sales are allegedly from people who aren't NJPW/ROH fans, or even wrestling fans, but just people who think the design is cool and have never actually heard of the stable.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The very moniker of Bone Soldier, a term associated with BC loyalty. It was just fine as a thing written down on certain Bullet Club shirts during the Phenomenal Era, but when Yujiro Takahashi convinced Hirasawa to drop the mantle of Captain New Japan and take on the Bone Soldier name during the Golden Elite era, that run was so awful that it killed both Hirasawa's career in NJPW and the credibility of the Bone Soldier name. Adverts for the return of Bone Soldier were met with widespread groans, as well as Cody trolling Kenny Omega for heel heat during their in-house feud. And then Tama Tonga came out after a Will Ospreay match, distracting Ospreay long enough to get taken down by a brand-new, ripped-as-heck-looking Bone Soldier — who promptly unmasked himself as former Young Lion Taiji Ishimori, followed by a press interview in which Tama yet again alluded to what later became the mutiny of the Firing Squad. One Best of Super Juniors tournament later (especially the finals against Hiromu Takahashi, which was rated 5.5 stars by Dave Meltzer), both BCOG fans and fellow members would welcome this Bone Soldier with open arms as the prime junior heavyweight representative of Bullet Club in the Cutthroat Era. As Ishimori himself likes to say, "It's REBORN!"
• Rooting for the Empire: Fans of wrestling, especially Japanese fans, are known for begging pro wrestlers to do their moves to them and despite being an evil foreign stable, it is no different for the Bullet Club, especially Karl Anderson. Even when Styles, Anderson and Gallows moved to WWE and made their own spin-off faction, the trio have amassed a lot of popularity and respect from the IWC, moreso since they began to feud with the Creator's Pet face duo of Roman Reigns and John Cena.
• The Scrappy:
  • The original Bone Soldier, formerly Captain New Japan. While he was already disliked back when he was doing his dorky ersatz Captain America shtick, there were still a few people thinking that it was endearing; however, turning heel and joining Bullet Club only made fans hate him more as becoming Bone Soldier took away everything that made him notable past his nondescript in-ring skills. Thankfully, the group appeared to be aware of his unpopularity and quickly kicked him out of the stable. When Bone Soldier's return was advertised, many fans groaned at the thought that he was actually coming back, only to be utterly relieved when this turned out to be a new Bone Soldier in the form of Taiji Ishimori. Yujiro Takahashi, in a post-match interview with Ishimori following a successful tag match at one of the Kizuna Road events, actually admitted to feeling bad about introducing the first Bone Soldier to Bullet Club.
  • Similarly you'd be hard pressed to find any genuine Cody Hall fans. From his lack of charisma, generic look, to accusations of nepotism directed at him due to his father being Scott Hall, very few mourned his 2016 injury and subsequent silent removal from the group.
  • EVIL and Dick Togo's run in Bullet Club has been widely seen as a horrible fit. Part of it is because of perceived Badass Decay from EVIL when he betrayed LIJ to join Bullet Club, part of it is from the obvious setup for another leadership schism arc between EVIL and Jay White which many Bullet Club fans had grown tired of after The Elite's divisive run, but mostly it stems from the fact that EVIL's matches are extremely formulaic and paint by numbers: he wrestles a match until the very end with Dick Togo by ringside, where the referee gets distracted and Togo interferes to strangle the opponent to get the win. Repeat ad naseum for every. Single. Match. The routine very quickly became tired and many began to decry EVIL and Togo as a woefully inferior replacement for Jay White and Gedo, who ran the interference heel gimmick much more smoothly and naturally. Things cooled down when EVIL began integrating with other Club members and the hostile dynamic between him and Jay seemed to be dropped... until the two formed House of Torture with Yujiro Takahashi and the newest member SHO. Being an all-Japanese crew centered around EVIL's faux-Halloween motif, this subgroup was seen as an obvious power play as well as a steep departure from the "international street team" aspect that had made Bullet Club so renowned. Worse, the team promptly resumed the exact same "Togo interferes at the end" dynamic that gotten tired with EVIL before. They very, very quickly became widely hated, particularly Dick Togo, as well as criticized for not only bogging down SHO, who literally just turned heel and whose brand of absurdly petty dickery is the only part of the stable's act widely seen as entertaining, but also having Yujiro, thought to be a Bullet Club lifer, become involved in a subplot that is antithetical to "the covenant" as it were. Many now decry House of Torture as the worst thing in the entire company. Note, not just Bullet Club, but all of NJPW.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The main riff of The OC's theme clearly borrows from "Renegade" by Hollywood Undead.
  • For that matter, the main riff of "Shot'Em" is very similar to the bass-line of "Gin and Juice" by Snoop Dogg.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Thanks to AJ Styles and Prince Devitt, ironically ever since that fateful night where the former replaced the latter.
  • On AJ's part, not only was he the quintessential face of non-WWE American wrestlers in today's era, to the extent he still wrestled as a face while representing the Bullet Club (and being the IWGP Heavyweight Champion) in America, most fans who followed AJ's career in TNA and saw how management killed it off both in and out of kayfabe are definitely sympathetic to his cause. Even in Japan, in spite of the club's stated opposition of Puroresu tradition and values, Styles has benefited from a mix of his own sheer prowess and tending to wrestle cleanly — two famous examples being his G1 Climax matches against Karl Anderson^note other than two cheap pin attempts and an Anderson eye-poke it was a clean bout and Anderson proudly raised Styles' arm in victory with no cheap shots and Minoru Suzuki.^note where Suzuki heeled it up so hard on Styles and caused a ref bump leading to a TAKA Michinoku run-in that the fans actually cheered for Anderson and Gallows running him off and chanted for AJ post-match! Styles' popularity even extends to joshi promotion World Wonder Ring Stardom, where he's been seen taking photos with members of the company's locker room, and he and the Young Bucks are the reason that World of Stardom Champion and total babyface Kairi Hojo considers Bullet Club to be "cool".
  • On Devitt's part, his rise through WWE's NXT brand as the "Demon King" Finn Bálor at the same time as the Club's popularity soaring in the States, combined with the fact that he openly remains friends with the others (especially Anderson) behind the scenes, has caused a feedback loop of appreciation to where his individual success in WWE and the Club's continued success in his absence are often considered parts of the same whole since he's still unofficially "part of the family". It's gotten so big that WWE has moved to take advantage of it, trademarking "Bálor Club" as a merchandise brand (with a T-shirt already out on WWE's web store as well as a graphic motif in his entrances now), a Fan Community Nickname, and possible seed for a Power Stable should Finn turn heel anytime soon. Oh, and he's wearing a black leather jacket again. In fact, when WWE visited Tokyo on the 4th of July for The Beast in the East special show, negotiation rumors and fantasy booking alike both surfaced about the possibility of a one-night reunion scenario where the Club would either appear to help Bálor defeat Kevin Owens for the NXT title or (more likely) come out to celebrate with him and the Japanese faithful after the fact.
  • Tama Tonga and the break out of the Bullet Club OG. Their actions during the G1 Special in San Francisco were supposed to look like a Moral Event Horizon where they took out pretty much everyone indiscriminately including long time friend Yujiro Takahashi and "Honorary Tongan" Chase Owens. However, most people agreed with Tama's sentiment that Kenny took the Bullet Club for granted far too often and left BCOG behind. On top of that, at the G1 Press Conference, instead of Kenny rebuffing any of Tama's arguments and calling him out for the cheap attack instead of just talking to him normally, he instead doubles down and says that the Bullet Club needed him as a Leader to get them all the recognition and merch. Many things that the OGs themselves never really got to see because it was all about the Elite branding. He also claims he never actively sought the leadership role when the entire story of January 5, 2016 was him and the Bucks usurping the front position from Karl Anderson and especially AJ Styles, making him an Unreliable Narrator with a case of Protagonist-Centered Morality. All Kenny did was reinforce Tama Tonga's point, that Kenny only ever cared about himself and his close friends and the rest of Bullet Club was "expendable" which makes the division even more justifiable. To the point that Styles, as one of WWE's top babyfaces, confirmed his support for the "firing squad" actions of BCOG when asked about it at a panel, and even Don Callis, noted stan/stooge for Kenny Omega, outright approved of Tama Tonga's actions saying it was the best thing he and his brothers could do for business and themselves.
• The Un-Twist:
  • Despite being brought in by Tama Tonga, Taiji Ishimori didn't make any noise when the BCOG vs. The Elite civil war started, as he was taking care of some final dates with Impact Wrestling while introducing the Bone Soldier gimmick to a Western stage at the same time as the 2018 G1 Climax tour was happening. Because of this, his continuing to act as a nominal babyface on Impact, and Don Callis referencing him as being "under the Kenny Omega learning tree" due to his BC membership, speculation abounded as to what side he was on. Sure enough, when his dates with Impact were done he casually reappeared alongside Bullet Club OG as though it wasn't even a plot point and won the NEVER Six-Man Tag Team Championship in his first match teaming with the Tongans. Tama lampshaded this in the post-match interview.
  • For that matter, the entire Bullet Club OG vs. BC Elite storyline has become this, as following the Firing Squad mutiny many fans expected a white hot feud between two sides which each believed they had the claim to Bullet Club which would ultimately culminate in either a bait-and-switch reunification a la nWo or some sort of match to determine which team could hold the name. However, the G1 tour, which many thought would function as a cooldown and setup period before things got heated, ended up being the high point of the feud. The BCOG faction repeatedly defeated The Elite members in tag team action at the major events following the tour, and then restacked the roster with Jay White, Jado and Gedo's defection from CHAOS as well as the addition of Robbie Eagles, while still publicly hinting at more on the way through two separate storylines (the Tongans claim to still be recruiting, White claims he has yet another inside man in CHAOS). Meanwhile, BC Elite seemed to quietly let go of the Bullet Club identity, increasingly accepting just being called The Elite while joining NJPW official sources in referring to the OG/Firing Squad faction as simply "the Bullet Club", before finally confirming their departure from Bullet Club and reestablishment of The Elite as a full faction on the Jericho cruise. Indeed, The Elite seemed to be more actively interested in fueling rumors of their discontent with changes in NJPW's management and the idea that they were considering leaving for WWE at the start of 2019 than actually carrying forward any feud within NJPW itself besides Omega vs. Tanahashi. Ultimately, The Elite revealed the launching of a new promotion called All Elite Wrestling, while Bullet Club recaptured the IWGP title via Jay White a month after Omega lost it to Tanahashi.