Award Snub: Heartcatch Precure! The Movie: Fashion Show in the City of Flowers?! was nominated for the Kidscreen Award along side Zhu Zhu Pets: Quest for Zhu and Wapos Bay: Long Goodbyes, the latter of which won. (Want to watch the winning movie? Well, good luck with that!) No word, though, if it did better against Zhu Zhu Pets.
Crosses the Line Twice: Erika, Itsuki, Coffret, and Potpurri gutting the bodies of three Snackeys to wear their skins as disguises in Episode 47 already sounds super dark and disturbing even in context... but them being able to pull off their Paper-Thin Disguise and momentarily successfully tricking the real Snackeys (even with Coffret Not Even Bothering with the Accent) brings it back to a lighter shade of Black Comedy.
Demographically Inappropriate Humour: Episode 1 has a scene where Chypre & Coffret hides under Tsubomi's shirt to evade Sasorina's capture, with said villain revealing she suffers from A-Cup Angst. This is the first - and last - time the franchise has ever done a Boob-Based Gag.
Ensemble Dark Horse: The fandom seems to have quite a fixation on certain supporting characters, particularly Sayaka and Kenji. The latter gets quite a bit of fanart of his imagined alter-ego from episode 21, Cure Fire. There's also a lot of fanart of his mom.
Even Better Sequel: To Fresh. While Pretty Cure fans enjoyed Fresh for reinventing the formula after GoGo! along with being the first series to have a villain redeem herself and become a Cure, HeartCatch is regarded as one of the best series due to its characters and dynamic fight scenes.
Fan Fic Magnet: Tsubomi's little sister Futaba from the finale. Quite a handful of fanfic writers and fanartists have spent some time thinking of what she would be like as a Cure.
"Zetsubou Sensei Kamen" or "TuxedoMegane" for Tsubomi's Mysterious Protector before he was revealed to be Tsubomi's grandpa and eventually Coupe, due to his resemblance to a certain suicidal teacher and/or a certain other mysterious protector.
"Heartcatch Precure!: The Movie" was apparently popular enough in France that it was simply dubbed into French, and has a surprising number of fans in the West who consider it to be one of, if not the best Precure movie, which brings the question why no Movie Theater/TV Station wants to air that film.
The show in general has quite a few Western fans for just being a great show.
Growing the Beard: The series really began to take off after episode 8, which provided great character development.
With his fluffy hair, Kenji Ban could be easily mistaken for a shounen anime character. Two years later, Yoshihiko Umakoshi, character designer for Heartcatch, went on to work on an actual shonen anime.
Unintentionally speaking, Cure Blossom and Cure Marine, inclusing Coffret and Chypre respectively reminds some fans of Robotboy and Robotgirl from Robotboy.
In episode 37-38, the girls have to fight their shadows, who are a representation of their real thoughts and insecurities and in the end they accept them as part of themselves... Hold on, that sounds awfully familiar...
In the finale, the heroes defeat the Big Bad by fusing into a super-powerful being that delivers a Curb-Stomp Battle in order to save the Earth. Years later, Yoshihiko Umakoshi would work on another anime that ends with the heroes fusing into a super-powerful being that delivers a Curb-Stomp Battle against a rampaging villain in order to save the Earth.
In 2015, Haruka joined Erika in being a cure with a sister named Momoka.
Tsubomi's deceased grandfather was named Sora, a named that later was given to Cure Sky.
Inferred Holocaust: No one really stops to talk about or mourn for the many people who would have likely died from Dune pummeling the earth during their final confrontation. And even if all the people we see survived the world being turned into a desert long enough for it to get restored to normal, what would happen to all the marine life that can't survive that long in those conditions?
Iron Woobie: Yuri, also a Stoic Woobie. The poor girl has her fairy die, but she still keeps going in battle.
There is fanwork pairing up Tsubomi with every other Cure in the series, a number of supporting characters and a couple of villains. A few fans even joked that the series was actually all about her building a harem.
Itsuki, arguably, given how popular she is with the ladies.
Try watching episode 41 when you are in the supposed target age range. Because you are mean in class, your kindergarten teacher turns into a huge dinosaur with mean claws.
Chair. Chair!! CHAIR!!!
One-Scene Wonder: Keiko Ban, who so far only appeared in a single scene from episode 18 but has an oddly disproportional quantity of fanart.
Semi-averted. Keiko made a return cameo in episode 36.
Squick: The Heart Seeds needed to save the Heart Tree — the fairies poop them out. Um, ew. This leads to rather humorous Oh, Crap! (no pun intended) moment in episode 28 when they realize what was about to happen after saving so many Heart Flowers at one time. Thankfully, after a while the Heart Seed sequence gets cleaned up just a little, though you still know they're pooping.
Yuri's meeting up with Cologne, her deceased fairy partner. Made sadder by the episode making it seem like he would be revived. Instead only his spirit appears before her.
As noted elsewhere, Dark Precure's death is also quite saddening. Many viewers are reported to have broken down in tears during this scene.
The story of Kaoruko and Sora. They met while she was training for a martial arts tournament and eventually got married, with Sora promising to create a garden full of Kaoruko's favorite flower. But after they had Tsubomi's father, Sora suddenly passed away and Kaoruko spent years thinking that their plan was never going to be fulfilled. Cut to the end of episode 27, where it's revealed that Sora did accomplish his goal and planted a field of lavender in the mountains for her.
Tough Act to Follow: This season is so popular that the ones that followed have come across as inferior. It doesn't help that this series has some of the highest ratings in the franchise's history, right after (if not up there with) the original series.
Trailer Joke Decay: Yuri's transformation sequence would have been much more badass and surprising if it wasn't the only damn thing shown in the next episode preview.
Viewer Gender Confusion: It's not uncommon for people to mistake Itsuki for a very cute boy upon first watching the series. If Tsubomi is any indication...
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Heartcatch is regarded as one of the most serious and dramatic Pretty Cure installations to date, as many of its character episodes bring up appropriately serious topics. And that's not even getting into the whole predicament and suffering Yuri experienced throughout the series, as she has two people closest to her dying. And no, they didn't come back to life after that.
◊ that has the characters modeled after Fist of the North Star. Come Doki Doki! PreCure, the title of Episode 23 has the words Ai Wo Torimodose in it.
