YMMV / Crisis on Infinite Earths

• Broken Base: The comic itself is well-regarded, but many fans felt that the DC multiverse was a cool concept that provided lots of story potential, and that there was no real need to erase it. Grant Morrison, who would become a DC writer a couple of years after Crisis, was one such fan; their Animal Man run included a hearfelt tribute to all the characters lost along with their alternate universes, and they would eventually be among the key people at DC who brought the multiverse back.
• Complete Monster: The Anti-Monitor is a being of the anti-matter universe. Seeking to dominate existence, the Anti-Monitor strengthens his universe by wiping out all others, annihilating thousands of universes and all their inhabitants from existence. With only 5 universes remaining, the Anti-Monitor uses Psycho-Pirate to crush the minds of countless beings to force them to turn on one another, before trying to exterminate the final universes. Defeated by the Heroic Sacrifice of Barry Allen, the Anti-Monitor drains the lives of millions of worlds in the anti-matter universe, killing all there. Causing the universes to merge into a single one, the Anti-Monitor unleashes his forces to wipe out humanity and Earth, intending on rebuilding everything in his own twisted image.
• Ending Fatigue: The comic was a long time ending, particularly because the Anti-Monitor just didn't want to die. When Superman finally kills him, he outright does it saying "I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!"
• Franchise Original Sin: The New 52 relaunch of DC was criticized for abandoning the previous continuity in favor of one that, for at least some aspects, was Darker and Edgier than the previous one, and didn't quite give up all the old continuity. When DC did a similar relaunch here, they did away with less continuity, and it was only because of the start of the The Dark Age of Comic Books (which happened in books that weren't tied into the main DC universe) that the post-Crisis continuity became darker than the pre-Crisis one.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Psycho Pirate's Madness Mantra ends with "These days... y-you just never know who's going to die... and who's going to live." Hello, The Dark Age of Comic Books!
  • In the Who's Who guidebooks, it is said that if Kal-L, Earth-Two Lois Lane, Earth-Three Alexander Luthor, Jr. and Superboy-Prime ever returned to the surviving universe, it would mean its destruction.
  • The series makes a big deal about Yolanda Montez being the new Wildcat, taking a lot of time out from multiversal Armageddon to see her start as a hero. She didn't make it a full decade before getting Killed Off for Real by Eclipso in 1993, and was largely forgotten about until the Stargirl TV series restored her pedigree.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • DC's attempt to clean up their messy continuity with a rebooted universe using strict rules on time travel, a winnowing down of characters who duplicated each other, and no alternate Earths. Except they didn't do a clean sweep of the slate (Power Girl and Donna Troy in particular), leaving too many loose threads that required further reboots to try and fix the previous errors. Eventually DC decided to reboot everything again and introduced a new multiverse, though it was still very limited (only 52 Earths this time). One cannot help but imagine DC's editors throwing their hands up into the air in frustration after being asked for years about the loose ends and contradictions resulting from Crisis.
  • Earth-D's Robin, who is Batman's son in this Earth, which has become a prediction for Damian Wayne, the first canonical Robin to be Batman's biological son who was introduced at the start of Grant Morrison's run.
  • A superheroine named Harbinger is mind-controlled by an exceptionally powerful Eldritch Abomination to do his bidding. You could almost say he was assuming direct control of her.
  • The Monitor was originally intended to be the Big Bad. In the Arrowverse, he started out as an antagonist due to being a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
• Jerkass Woobie: The Psycho Pirate is a sicko and a coward yet it is easy to pity him when he goes mad from fear.
• Love to Hate: The Anti-Monitor could serve as a textbook example of a Flat Character with little real motivation. However, he is such an Epic threat to the Multiverse and consistently shown to be a no-nonsense nemesis who goes toe-to-toe with DC's Most Powerful Heroes that it doesn't matter. The Anti-Monitor is the single biggest bad of the entire DC Universe and really lives up to that title, being an Eldritch Abomination able to consume existence itself. He has since become one of the most popular Villains in the entire DC Comics Universe.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The gruesome death of the Silver Age Flash/Barry Allen, crumbling away into a skeleton and dust as he makes his Heroic Sacrifice. Punctuated when the other heroes arrive and witness Psycho-Pirate frantically tugging on his empty costume deliriously calling for his help.
  • People being eradicated by the encroaching white wall of anti-matter.
  • The sight of every single super-villain of five Earths gathered into one massive army is scary enough. The fact they're able to conquer three worlds with ease shows how damn powerful the bad guys can be if they try.
  • The scene where some of the heroes travel to where Earth-2 was, where there's now nothing but a dark void. Then Kal-L starts trying to fly into it, saying he feels something "calling" him in.
  • Not to mention the situation of Superman, either Superman, being pushed so far by the situation that they frequently express a desire to kill the Anti-Monitor.
• Once Original, Now Common:
  • The concept of an annual Crisis-level crossover event was pretty daring in the early 1980s. Today, the major universe continuities - Marvel and DC - have done so many they've become expected.
  • The killing off of A-list heroes - The Flash and Supergirl in particular - along with C-list and D-list cannon fodder characters was rare before DC made it a major selling draw.
• Production-Related Period Piece: Like many future Crisis Crossovers, a number of subplots expanded out of the original series and into the crossover issues. Fortunately, a number of these were footnoted so fans would know where to look to find their resolution, and by 2019 all of the crossover issues were reprinted by DC in separate collections.
• Signature Scene: While all the covers have become iconic, the one where Superman is holding a dead Supergirl is by far the most famous. While it wasn't the first instance of Pietà Plagiarism in comic covers, it's considered one of the most significant ones due to the tragic and surprising death of one of DC's most beloved heroines.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Even if you thought pre-Crisis DC was a mess, it's still pretty upsetting to see several different alternate continuities come to an end in a single story.
  • The death of the Crime Syndicate. Bad guys they may be, but it's still a harsh way to go. Ultraman's is worst of all. In his last moments he smiles sadly, looking exactly like Superman.
  • That the Crime Syndicate was trying in vain to defend their world is also affecting, as well as future versions of them never having the same comraderie this team did.
  • The aforementioned death of Barry Allen. He does get a dying moment of awesome, wearing down the doomsday machine by running across it, all the while the anti matter is draining his life. What really sells the tearjerking part, though, is the Psycho-Pirate desperately pulling on the empty costume, begging for help.
    Psycho-Pirate: C'mon, Flash. You said you'd save me. You promised you would, you promised. The Anti-Monitor lied to me, but I know you won't. You're one of the good guys. Good guys never lie.
  • After Supergirl's death, Clark has to go right back to his reporting job, unable to tell anyone about why he's so affected by it. Though a few people noticed how gloomy he's behaving.
  • Earth-2 Superman not taking it well when he finds out he's among the people who aren't supposed to exist in the new universe and despairing over the realization that his Lois has vanished from existence for all he knows.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: You'd think, given Supergirl's death is a pretty big moment in the event, that Power Girl, her alternate universe counterpart, might get a little screentime showing her reaction. She only gets a silent panel in #12 where Kara and Superman are mourning their respective losses once the crisis is finally over.
• The Woobie: Pariah initially believes he accidentally destroyed his own universe through his pursuit of knowledge and has his torment prolonged by being teleported to every universe being wiped out by the Anti-Monitor during their final moments of existence, unable to do anything beyond warning the worlds' inhabitants that the end is approaching. Honestly, who wouldn't want to hug anyone who's gone through what he has?

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