Disappointing Last Level: The final level is much harder than anything in the campaigns, mostly because it forces you to fight a war on two fronts.
Most Wonderful Sound: The sounds of heavy turrets firing, whether it be the distinctive booms of the Heavy Rail Tower or the indescribable sound of the Neutron Accelerator.
That One Level: Level 5 in the first game, no matter whose side you were on. For the Freedom Guard, it was a Hopeless Level where you have to collect 30,000 credits while holding off wave after wave of devastating Imperium tanks. For the Imperium, you have to destroy the Freedom Guard base, while making sure the Water Extraction Compound, sensibly located inside the Freedom Guard base, wasn't destroyed. Aside from being an infuriating mission on its own, it also signifies a major upswing in difficulty for the rest of the game.
From the Comic Book
Alternative Character Interpretation: The American public's unfettered trust in Osborn. Was it an inevitable, if unfortunate, end result of the prior Skrull invasion and a severe lack of communication between them and the superhero community, or are they nothing more than ungratefulsheep who don't deserve the protection of the real heroes?
Arc Fatigue: Every comic in 2009 was related to this storyline in some fashion.
Complete Monster: Zodiac is a knowingly evil lover of chaos and wickedness who makes it his life's mission to cause as much random destruction in life as possible. Appearing in Dark Reign: Zodiac, Zodiac tortures over a hundred people to death to send a message to Norman Osborn, then viciously beats the Human Torch to near death before bombing the hospital he is transported to, killing almost everyone inside. Later unleashing a giant robot onto a city that kills hundreds more, Zodiac uses the chaos to pull off even more murderous schemes. Decorating his hideout in severed heads and manipulating his partners into servitude even while he endangers their lives with zero concern, Zodiac ends up using the teen supervillain gang the Young Masters to declare war on the old guard of supervillains, leading to terrorist attacks across the world—notably Latveria—that end countless lives. Believing himself to be a harbinger of a new, better evil to plague the world, Zodiac plans to change the entire game of heroes and villains, downright gleeful over the lives that will be lost.
Fan Nickname: Lyra is called Thulkdra which was lampshaded when they put this nickname on one of her mini's variant covers. Molecule Man's team (despite being a Red Herring) is called "The League Of Ultimate Evil And Enchantress". Bullseye in Hawkeye's costume is called "Bullhawk". Daken earned himself the name Trollverine.
Like You Would Really Do It: Let's face it, no matter how Matt Fraction tried to draw out the drama, nobody reading the Iron Man comic actually believed that the whole long-term suicide concept would end in death, even those who hadn't seen the future solicits for the book. Because of this trope, the video message in issue twenty ended up re-igniting some backlash over Iron Man's characterization, as many readers saw Tony's noting that his life was in the others' hands as viciously manipulative, since he knew heroic nature would keep them from just letting him die, while others saw it as a very badly handled attempt at contrition.
Nightmare Fuel: Sentry/The Void in Siege. Not only his newly revealed secrets are damn scary, but also the way he kills Ares by tearing him apart, without a single word or any emotion can make you scream like hell.
In Dark Wolverine, Bob has one scary scene, when Daken provokes Venom to fight with him. Sentry out of the blue says "stop" and everybody in the room ceases to move and looks at him scared.
Siege #3: Sentry vs Asgard, more literal than expected. Also, the final page, with the scorpion/void/storm/HELL-thing!
Daken's battle with The Punisher would practically be grounds for a Mook Horror Show if shown through Frank's eyes (and, y'know, if Frank wasn't too psychotic to feel fear). He shrugs off every last bullet and grenade that Frank throws at him, then messily shreds him into pieces — and he does this because he wants to, he could have killed the Punisher a lot quicker if he'd wanted to.
Only the Author Can Save Them Now: With this arc, the Marvel universe was placed in such an uncertain and almost utterly hopeless spot that more than a fair number of readers were left with this sentiment.
Daken was The Scrappy to some, but this era garners him some actual fans.
Iron Man was rescued for many people who didn't like him after Civil War (2006), when he deleted the entire superhero database except himself from Norman's systems.
Squick: There are a lot of icky match-ups (Goblin/Menace, most of Daken's relationships...), but the big one right now is Hank/Jocasta. Readers who know anything about Jocasta's background tend to gag profusely whenever they do anything romantic towards each other, and the creepiness has been pointed out more than once by other characters as well.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Coming off the heels of two storiesnote Civil War (2006) and Secret Invasion which already saw the heroes face heavy losses, Dark Reign can best be described as "proverbial rock bottom incarnate". Osborn almost always seems to be one step ahead of his opposers, who themselves are much too divided to do anything to effectively challenge him, the public's trust in Osborn and the Dark Avengers reaches unprecedented levels of Horrible Judge of Character, and the above-mentioned Arc Fatigue can make the whole thing such a slog that many readers were left wishing that the real heroes would bury whatever hatchets they had and do something already. Things fortunately began to look up with Steve Rogers' resurrection, and Siege definitively put an end to this before it could escalate further.
Unexpected Character: No one saw Nate Grey, who'd last been seen 8 years ago, to return.
The Un-Twist: After all the guessing about which new or forgotten character would turn out to be Norman's "secret weapon" against the Cabal, it turned out to be the Sentry/Void, which many readers had dismissed as too lazy or obvious.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? - In the last issue of "Siege", Loki uses the power of the Norn Stones to power up the heroes. So, the god of imagination decides to favour the heroes over the mindless engine of destruction. Hmmm.
The Sentry and the Void. Sentry is supposed to be the "ultimate hero" while the Void is the "ultimate villain". Dark Reign began with the Sentry joining with the villains, the fall of the ultimate hero, and it ended with the Void's death, the defeat of the ultimate villain.
The Woobie: Jessica Drew. Henry Pym, a little, though he's been getting better.
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