Tabletop Game:
- Common Knowledge: The idea that the hunters in Hunter: the Reckoning were "overpowered" or "too supernatural" and therefore the game was bad. Especially when used to compare this game negatively to Hunter: The Vigil as what a hunter game "should be", given that several of the Conspiracies in Vigil are arguably quite a bit more powerful than the Imbued ever were (like the Lucifuge). The small but passionate fandom for Reckoning is familiar enough with arguing about this that it almost qualifies as a Fandom-Enraging Misconception.
- Fridge Brilliance: The kiswah being able to telepathically communicate via meditating on the scriptures without having to use hunter-net feels like an Ass Pull, until you remember the lore from Mage: The Ascension about the Ahl-i-Batin — Muslim mystics who held the seat of the Correspondence Sphere on the Council of Nine Traditions before the Virtual Adepts — and their ability to communicate each other through the Web of Faith centered on Mount Qaf, which was replaced by the Digital Web after the Batini vanished and the Technocratic paradigm was imposed on it via the invention of the mundane Internet.
- Fridge Horror: Imbued can get into fights with supernatural horrors in public places. Places crammed with Muggles with fully operational Weirdness Censors. What do they see? Someone going on a killing spree.
- It's implied that the Ebon Dragon might be behind making the hunters. How bad has shit gotten that the cosmic embodiment of being a Jerkass pulled a Heel–Face Turn?
- Friendly Fandoms: Hunter: the Reckoning and Demon: The Fallen were "sister games", with Demon being released a few years after Hunter and with a lot of the same people working on both. They shared a lot of themes with each other and fit together very well metaplot-wise, with Hunter and Demon being opposite points of view of the same universe (hunters being almost totally ignorant and powerless mortals and demons being former rulers of Creation). It wasn't uncommon for Hunter and Demon fans to see themselves as embattled allies against fans of the rest of the World of Darkness, especially with how controversial the metaplot elements were that emerged from these two games that impinged on the other, more established gamelines (mainly the idea of Demon establishing the Biblical backstory of Vampire — "Noddism" — as objectively true for the whole World of Darkness).
- Funny Moments: At one point in Fall from Grace Vassago has Rigger read a few books he's picked out, so that Vassago can read them through his eyes. Rigger has objections to one particular one...Rigger: I'm not reading the one about faggots!Vassago: Ecce Homo is not... Oh, fuck it. Just look at the page, you brachiating dimbulb!
- In Name Only: A lot of White Wolf fans were initially mad that the title of Hunter: the Reckoning implied it would be a Creator-Driven Successor to Hunters Hunted and the Year of the Hunter supplements from previous editions, only to take a big swerve into a totally different kind of game about a supernatural The Chosen Many in an apocalypse scenario rather than mundane human organizations fighting a long secret war against the supernatural conspiracies. Ironically, since then the shoe has gone on the other foot — Hunter: The Vigil was very much a Creator-Driven Successor to Hunters Hunted that ignored almost everything unique about Hunter: the Reckoning to bring the Hunter of Monsters concept "back to its roots". People who actually like the unique lore and feel of Reckoning now feel like a highly neglected corner of the fandom, since the Fifth Edition "reboot" of Hunter: the Reckoning leaves out the Imbuing and the Messengers completely and is very clearly actually a Hunter: the Vigil reboot, and most people who talk about playing a Hunter campaign almost always mean the Vigil kind of hunter. (As if to rub it in, the Hunter brand name got a huge Colbert Bump with the debut of Hunter: The Parenting in 2021, but as of July 2022 there is no sign that any of the characters are Imbued and they are clearly much more like Hunters Hunted or Vigil characters.)
- Never Live It Down: Hunter spent its whole existence haunted by characters like Crusader17 and God45 who had a seemingly successful career of indiscriminate homicidal tactics against supernaturals, which ignored how the game itself showed that most such characters were deeply flawed and likely to get themselves killed off very quickly, that they were by no means the majority of all Imbued characters and that the conflict between people like this and other Imbued made up much of the lore of the game.
- Paranoia Fuel: The whole basis of the game. It's a Perspective Flip on the World of Darkness — inspired by sources like They Live! — where you play a random Muggle who suddenly becomes aware of the ridiculous panoply of sinister supernatural conspiracies they're surrounded by at all times and have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. What's worse, you don't even have any way of knowing for sure you aren't being manipulated by evil forces, or just plain going crazy.
- Spiritual Successor: White Wolf repeatedly argued Hunter: the Reckoning was not meant as a direct successor to Hunters Hunted, Project Twilight or any other "humans vs. the supernatural" book in the gameline, but it was pretty clearly seen as such by most people anyway. Notably, even though the Imbued are repeatedly stated to not be the same kind of thing as Inquisitors from the Order of Leopold and many of them are outright hostile to Christianity and traditional religious faith, White Wolf nonetheless published the Dark Ages: Inquisitor book showing medieval Inquisitors to have analogous powers and organization to the Imbued (thanks to True Faith being far more prevalent then).
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: From some fans of WW's earlier takes on hunters. Every game in the line had a "Mortals" supplement at some point, dealing with ordinary human hunters working with the backing of the church, the government, or their own ancient conspiracies, and some of those splatbooks were actually pretty good. This was also how many fans of the original Hunter: The Reckoning reacted to the fifth edition reboot of the game due to it being far closer to Hunters Hunted/Hunter: The Vigil than Hunter: The Reckoning.
- They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Compared to previous Old World of Darkness gamelines. One of the most frequent criticisms of this game was that it was promoted as a game about humans fighting back against all the supernatural beings... and then gave supernatural powers to the hunters anyway, making them just as much supernatural outcasts as the monsters they hunt, which most felt defied the point. One of the major reasons its spiritual successor Hunter: The Vigil was seen as an improvement was because it avoided that pitfall by including mostly non-powered hunter factions (though one or two do have powers). Ironically, this is how many people felt about the 5th edition reboot of the game for removing the Imbued, viewing it as an inferior copy of Hunter: the Vigil.
Video Game:
- Fan Nickname: Often called Gauntlet: the Reckoning by fans of the original tabletop game, especially when it first came out, due to the play style. People were expecting something more akin to the style of Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption.
- Fridge Horror: For Werewolf fans. There's an early mission in Redeemer where the hunters, at Kaylie's urging, decide to cooperate with the local werewolf population, but this only happens after you've plowed through a couple of dozen of them. Given the typical low population of Gaian Garou, it's possible at this point that the one werewolf you're now talking to is the last one left in the tri-state area. Way to help the Wyrm out, guys.
- Porting Disaster: The Nintendo GameCube port of the original game was criticized for its downgraded graphics and audio, and decreases in frame rate when faced with multiple enemies as well as in multiplayer mode.
