YMMV / Home and Away

• Absent Animal Companion: Dag Dog, the Fletchers' dog, vanished without explanation after a few years.
• Arc Fatigue: The 2005 storyline "Paternitygate", as dubbed on the Backtothebay messageboard, a love triangle between Hayley Lawson, Scott Hunter and Kim Hyde, fueled by a faked paternity test result which several people found out about but were prevented from revealing it for one reason or another, thus dragging the drama out for over nine months.
• Artistic Licence-Law Enforcement: Constable Jack Holden threatening Aden Jeffries that the town would "lynch him" if it turned out he poisoned Annie Campbell with alcohol was deeply unprofessional. Much more dubious still was Jack's killer Angelo Rosetta being released from prison because he apparently was the only one capable of investigating a people-smuggling ring - with the head of the ring being Jack's cousin Hugo Austin!
• Brits Love Australian Soaps: Like its competitor Neighbours, the soap is very popular in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
• Creator Backlash: According to Norman Coburn, producers regretted killing off Alan Fisher so soon after his debut. Coburn himself stated that he felt Simon Kay was a great actor and Alan would have been an asset to the series had he stayed. The writers tried to work out a way for Kay to return to the show and came up with a story where a doppelgänger would play Alan in a movie version of his book but nothing eventually came of it.
• Die for Our Ship: Sam Holden by Jack/Martha shippers, though mostly a result of Derailing Love Interests, as she was sympathetic and well-liked during her first stint in 2006.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: When the show first started there would be a brief scene (typically an extension of the final scene) between the closing credits and the show's copyright information. This was dropped after the first forty episodes.
  • Early episodes would mistakenly give the Tom and Pippa's foster kids the Fletcher surname, when as foster children they would still have retained their own surname.
  • The girls' school uniform was originally a blue checked dress, which was replaced with the more recognisable purple tartan number the following year.
• The Faceless: When Sarah Lewis returned in flashbacks in 2005 to tie into the Summer Bay Stalker storyline, instead of Luisa Hastings Edge reprising the role she was only seen in shadows or from behind.
  • In a quite unique example, when Vinnie Patterson (who had been in witness protection for the last couple of years) wanted to see his wife Leah and son VJ one last time without endangering them, he turned up for VJ's 3rd birthday party wearing a bear costume. He never took off the mask and didn't tell anyone who he actually was, but did leave a letter behind for Leah telling her the truth.
• Funny Moments: Alf finds Jett illicitly hiding in the boot of a car, and gives this brusque, no-nonsense reprimand:
  Alf: You are in more strife than Flash Gordon!
• Harsher in Hindsight: The 2016 storyline in which Alf Stewart collapsed from a heart attack, soon followed by a stroke which put him into a coma, happened to air the same week as the much-publicised death of ALF-actor Michu Meszaros, also from a stroke.
• He Really Can Act: In 2005, Todd Lasance played Aden Jeffries, a fairly shallow Jerk Jock Romantic False Lead for Ric Dalby and Cassie Turner. When he was reintroduced as a regular in late 2007, no one really had high expectations. However, the scene where Aden confronted his father over his grandfather's sexual abuse of him years earlier turned everyone around on him, earning Todd Most Popular Actor at the 2009 Logie awards.
• Ho Yay:
  • Geoff Campbell and Aden Jeffries. One episode was basically nothing but them sarcastically flirting with each other, and now they argue like an old married couple..
  • Also, Xavier Austin and Romeo Smith. In one episode Romeo is helping Xavier practise breaking up with his girlfriend, only for John Palmer, Xavier's mother's boyfriend, to walk in on them and seemingly mistake it for a genuine lover's tiff. In another, Xavier asks Miles and Alf for romantic advice - specifically, starting a relationship with your best friend. Miles asks if it's Romeo.
• Hypocrite: Whether or not people think that Aden Jeffries was at all justified in beating up his hitherto best friend Axel as punishment for him sexually assaulting Melody Jones, either way it is ironic, given that Aden himself seduced a girl through alcohol poisoning just a few months earlier.
  • The way Romeo treats Casey to begin with is incredibly patronising, especially considering that Romeo himself has to repeat a year at school and comes from a tough background with an estranged alcoholic mother and deceased violent father.
• Memetic Mutation: Alf Stewart's Rape Dungeon.
  • As with Neighbours, there are often jokes about the number of famous stars who started off here to the point where it's considered weird if a popular Australian actor hasn't appeared in either.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Dexter Walker.
• The Original Darrin: During her stint on the show in 1988, Barbara Stewart was played by Barbara Stephens however when Barbara returned in 1996 (with a completely new personality, attempting to kill Donald Fisher as she was a beneficiary in his will) she was played by Rona Mcleod. When Barbara returned again in 2005 for Alf's 60th birthday, Barbara Stephens reprised the role.
• Retroactive Recognition: Heath Ledger, Isla Fisher, Melissa George, Chris Hemsworth, Simon Baker, Guy Pearce, Ryan Kwanten, Tammin Sursok, Samara Weaving, Isabel Lucas, and Naomi Watts all got their big breaks here. In fact, Chris Hemsworth once dropped by the set to visit some of his old co-stars and made an uncredited cameo in a diner scene as a patron in the background.
• Rich Language, Poor Language: Partially subverted by the Braxtons, who relative to their social class aren't really that broad-accented. All the same, when contrasted with e.g. the thoroughly middle-class Walkers there is still a difference.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The show's season-ending cliffhangers regularly qualify, with standouts such as Sally's stabbing in 2006 or the explosion at the hospital in 2013.
  • The show also has a tradition of Olympic cliffhangers, when the show is taken off for two weeks so that Seven can broadcast the Olympic Games. Standouts include Sarah holding ten characters hostage at Leah's house in 2004, Elliot kidnapping Geoff and Nicole in 2008, and a Literal Cliffhanger in 2021.
• The Woobie: Pretty much everyone at one point or another. Standouts from recent years include Spencer Harrington (after being targeted by an online predator posing as a teenage girl), Denny Miller (after losing her boyfriend Casey to a vengeful drug dealer right when he was about to propose), Jett James (raised by an addict mother who couldn't even keep track of how old he was, then loses his foster mother Gina to a sudden aneurysm right when she and John were about to adopt him), Skye Peters (loses her sister in a car crash after switching seats with her, leading her mother to blame her and grow distant from her, later turning physically abusive after Skye speaks out about their situation) and Evelyn Maguire (loses her mother to cancer, brought into a cult by her father, who is later killed in an explosion after kidnapping her and her brother Oscar, dates the controlling and abusive Tank, who ends up assaulting and blinding her ex Josh after she leaves him, finds out that her older sister Denny has been murdered by Charlotte King, and then, after reconciling with and getting engaged to Josh, she loses her brother and her aunt to a gas explosion, and then Josh gets arrested for killing Charlotte and opts to go on the run with his brother).
  • Jerkass Woobie: Evie crossed into this after she found out about Josh and Charlotte and chose to blackmail Kat into keeping quiet about it.

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