For YMMV tropes related to the original series, click here.
For YMMV tropes related to the Ares continuity, click here.
- Accidental Innuendo: Kaiser's full name, Michael Ballzack, is a reference to the real life German football player, Michael Ballack. However, the added "z" in his surname causes it to sound like "ball sack", which just so happens to be slang for Scrotum.
- Anti-Climax Boss: Universal in the first game. They're the team you face for the semi-finals and they're billed as one of the strongest opponents in the competition, and their striker is supposed to be one of the best ever (and it shows in his stats) Wouldn't expect them to fall into this trope, right? Well, you happen to get two back-to-back Eleventh Hour Superpowers, each more ridiculously Game Breaking than the last, and it's one of the very few times where Raimon get a scripted goal, so the whole thing quickly devolves into a Curb-Stomp Battle in your favour.
- Base-Breaking Character:
- Beta. More so in the Asian fandom than in the overseas fandom. She is considered sadistically cute/badass by some, yet annoying by others, who especially hate her for capturing Mark.
- JP became very divisive over the years in the western hemisphere. While he's still well-liked for his personality, his cute design, his special moves and for being a supportive friend for Arion, other people find him annoying or preferred him as a defender. Many fans are also salty about JP being hit with The Worf Effect in Chrono Stones and sneaking on the Earth Eleven's ship, essentially forcing himself onto the team, in Galaxy.
- Kaiser is either an interesting and well-developed character or gets ire for the way he treated Arion in the beginning. Having one of the worst scoring records in the anime also doesn't help his case.
- People's opinions on Dodge are split between those who enjoy his overall arc of going from somebody who only joined the football club for his student report to somebody who genuinely enjoys football and those who dislike his arrogant personality and the way he deserted the team.
- Breather Boss: Kirkwood in the first game. After the first two teams of Saints' Way's national stage, these guys are surprisingly easy, as most of the mid-match scripted events are in your favour, giving your team a new tactic that lets you ignore the arena's gimmick and giving one of your members a Fighting Spirit. Also, unlike the first two teams, these guys don't know the arena's gimmick in advance, so it hurts them just as much as it hurts you. Justified, since there's massive infighting within the team as to whether to support Fifth Sector or rebel against them, and the team's captain is more concerned with having a fun match than winning at all costs.
- Captain Obvious Reveal: The plot twist that Alex Zabel was the one who saved Arion's life. Anyone familiar with the original games would've recognised Axel Blaze in the flashback cutscene immediately, so when The Reveal that the two are one and the same comes it's easy to put two and two together. It's also very easy to see coming from a plot standpoint: the Big Bad had a personal connection with Mark, but not with the new main character, Arion. This plot point fixes that by making him a Broken Pedestal, giving Arion some angst and later motivation.
- Cargo Ship: Arion x Football. Heck, Arion x the sport of Football itself is practically canon.
- Complete Monster: From Galaxy, Ireid Orbes is the first ruler of Falam Orbius, whose evil is still felt centuries after his death. During his rule, Ireid started countless wars to steal the resources of his enemies, with planets like Ixar being obliterated by his fleet. Ireid also tries to mold his son Arculus into a ruthless strategist, criticizing him for caring for their loyal soldiers, which Ireid considers expendable resource to be sacrificed. When the Queen is caught in a battle, Ireid coldly orders his son to leave her to die, and when Arculus refuses to obey, Ireid tries to murder his own son, considering him a failure.
- Contested Sequel: The GO series is this for fans of the original. Some think that it is much better than the original while others think that it is a step backwards, which is not helped by how gimmicky GO felt with the introduction of Fighting Spirits, Mixi Max, and Totems. That said, GO has been Vindicated by History over the years when Ares and it's continuity, prove to be even more divisive in several ways.
- Critical Dissonance: Chrono Stones and Galaxy have fans that look at them fondly. But the games' sales flopped so badly that the series as a whole went defunct for a few years until the Ares Continuity Reboot, not helped by the localized version of Chrono Stones receiving very little marketing and Galaxy not getting localized at all due to a trademark dispute.
- Die for Our Ship: Roleia Orbes gets this reaction from the Arion/Victor fans because she kidnaps Victor to marry her.
- Disc-One Nuke:
- In the first game, some of the downloadable moves are disproportionately strong for how early in the game you can get them. In particular, it's possible to get Emperor Penguin 7 extremely early in the game note , at which point it's basically an automatic goal.
- Leroy Kingsley can be acquired very early if you know what you're doing note , long before you have access to most of the plot-relevant Fighting Spirits. And it's actually stronger than most of the spirits you get for a while. And White King's special ability boosts the odds of boys succeeding in duels, which, considering all your starting lineup (and pretty much 90% of the recruitable players) are male...
- Fan Nickname: In the Japanese fandom, JP gets the nickname "Soccer Pikachu" due to his likeness to the Pokemon.
- Fanon:
- It is near universally agreed-upon by fans that Aitor is the adopted child of Xavier and Jordan.note
- In fanarts and fan content, it's generally agreed that the players chosen for New Inazuma National from the Inazuma Eleven GO Vs. LBX: Little Battlers eXperience W movie, with the exception of Fei and GoldieExplanation, are likely candidates who would have been chosen for Inazuma National in the FFIV2 if the events of Galaxy didn't take place.
- It is generally agreed among fans that, just as Simeon and Zanark are all but stated to be the respective direct descendants of Arion and Zack, the other Hyper-Evolved Children are also the direct descendants of present-day characters, based on the fact that some of them not only resemble characters from the present day to varying degrees but also share some of their special moves in their movesets, with the most universally agreed on examples being that Zetoh and Macah are both descendants of Axelnote , Tzeikh is a descendant of Xaviernote , Chell is a descendant of Nathannote , Yuh is a descendant of Shawnnote , Yurkeh is a descendant of Paolonote , and Garreau is a descendant of Davenote .
- Good Bad Bugs: In Inazuma Eleven GO, when the game's graphics engine decides what direction to draw a character facing, acceleration seems to take precedence over velocity. In most cases, this makes perfect sense.note But with the Slippy-Slidey Ice World physics of Snow Land Stadium, characters may be slowly decelerating due to skidding, meaning they should be facing the direction they're moving in but their acceleration vector is in the opposite direction. This causes characters to start moonwalking. Even if they're simultaneously dribbling the ball.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: The series introduces a new power called Fighting Spirits, which are said to be a player's Fighting Spirit given form- wait, that sounds familiar...
- To take it even further, a year after GO began in Japan in 2011, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure aired it's anime adaptation for the first time.
- Ho Yay: Has its own page.
- I Knew It!: The Reveal that Alex Zabel is actually Axel Blaze. The same voice actors, the fact that Axel's character design for GO wasn't out yet, the fact that the name "Alex Zabel" is an anagram of "Axel Blaze" and even several similar details they have.
- Iron Woobie:
- Arion. His dream school is under heavy jurisdiction of regulated football right on the first day, he has to fight on to bring free football back, and that's not counting the events in Chrono Stones and Galaxy. Yet even with these huge roller coaster of events, Arion stays positive.
- The alternate timeline version of Vladimir from the start of Chrono Stones. Even as he disappears to make sure history is restored, he is only hoping for Victor to continue in his stead.
- Jerkass Woobie:
- While Aitor does start off as a troublemaker, it's hard not to feel sorry for him when it's revealed that he was abandoned by his father and lose trust in people as a result.
- Heck, even the Big Bad of the first game, Gyan Cinquedea is one. His methods of controlling football are brutal, but you can't help but admit that his childhood sucked, having grown up in poverty and being forbidden from ever playing the sport after stealing a football.
- Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
- Magnificent Bastard: From Chrono Stones, Simeon Ayp is the leader of N-Gen, an organization comprised of Hyper-Evolved Children—powerful mutants with a low life expectancy—who rebel against societal mistreatment and their own mortality. Already having won when the story starts, Simeon counters El Dorado's attempts to erase football using Time Travel by sending his lieutenant Fei Rune, whose memories are altered to take advantage of the kind-hearted nature of the Raimon team. When the Raimon discovers the truth, Simeon breaks his ceasefire with El Dorado to destroy their headquarters and announce the Ragnarok Tournament to decide the fate of the world, planning to annihilate regular humans if he wins. During Ragnarok, Simeon awakens Fei's memories and tests his loyalty by making him score an own goal against the Raimon yet also accepts Fei leaving N-Gen after that. In the final match against Chrono Storm, Simeon uses diverse techniques to win the advantage, and despite his despair at realizing his own limitations, he remains Defiant to the End alongside his friends, accepting his defeat as he promised and renouncing his powers.
- Memetic Loser: Due to Sidewinder's lousy performance in the anime, Kaiser is often a laughing stock in the fandom.
- Salvaged Story: The problem fans had with JP is that, despite becoming a goalkeeper, they feel he is reliant on his Fighting Spirit and Mix 'n' Match to be an effective goalkeeper, which makes it hard to swallow that he's the goalkeeper of Chrono Storm. The Galaxy anime remedies this by upping the usage of Jumping Whack and giving him another new technique called We Have Liftoff! and have him not use his Fighting Spirit or Mix 'n' Match at all, which makes it feel he is using his own strength rather than relying on his crutches from Chrono Stone.
- The Scrappy: You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who is fond of Sor, as many fans feel that he's introduced far too late into the story of Chrono Stones and too flat of a character to justify him not only joining Raimon but also getting a spot on the Ultimate Eleven (which is not helped by the fact that he had never even played football prior to his introduction and spends most of the time between his recruitment and the final battle Out of Focus), particularly over the more popular and more developed members of Raimon, such as Aitor, who many feel would've been a perfect fit for both Sor's spot on the Ultimate Eleven and Sor's Fighting Spirit.
- Scrappy Mechanic: The scouting system in the games is widely criticised by fans for turning scouting into a tedious fetch quest in which you need to obtain items and sometimes multiple other characters for just one, though it is still seen by many as a step up from Inazuma Eleven 3's scouting system, though not by much, as you once again have control over which characters you get.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Shawn not showing up in the Inazuma Eleven Dream Match on either the Inazuma Best Eleven or the Inazuma Battle Eleven left fans scratching as he's the only main character across both the original series and GO not present in the match at all, especially with the possible interactions with similar characters in Fei and Falco. Though since the lineup for Inazuma Best Eleven was determined via poll, in which Shawn was included as an option for one of the team's three forwards, where he ended up losing to Axel, Tezcat, and Victor, it seems the fans only have themselves to blame for this instance.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: For Galaxy, some fans lament that the concept of Earth Eleven would be more appealing if the team consisted of players of various nationalities from across the world instead of limiting itself to only consist of Japanese players. Tellingly, when that exact sort of team is formed for the final battle of Orion, consisting of players from various FFI teams, some fans deemed that team to be a better version of Earth Eleven.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: Gabi. It's impossible to tell that he's a boy unless you either play the games or notice that Gabi is referred to as a "he", in fact he's so feminine to the point that some people have actually accused him of being a crossdresser.
- The Woobie:
- Sol is terminally ill and yet still loves football despite it.
- Tezcat, whose little sister got used as a Human Sacrifice thanks to losing a football game and blames himself for it.
- Woolseyism: One case where a Dub Name Change actually fits: Tezcat's name is vaguely Mayincatec, which makes sense when you learn his backstory, as using ball games to determine Human Sacrifices was Truth in Television for those cultures.
