YMMV / Mother

The video game series:

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Due to Itoi's penchant for leaving a lot of elements of characters' personalities, motivations, and stories implicit or merely hinted at rather than stating them outright, as well as the relative drought of direct interactions between major characters during the first two games, you can find any number of interpretations of just about any character in the series.

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• Cult Classic: The whole series has a strong fanbase even years after the release of all three games, and in spite of their poor sales and/or not getting released outside of Japan.
• Discredited Meme: Among the fangame circle, naming your fangame along the lines of "Mother /insert number 5 through 10 here/" has become this, thanks to a long list of parody fangames poking fun at people trying to follow the success of Oddity(Then MOTHER 4)'s attempt at being an Original Flavour fangame for the series. It's gotten to the point that attempting to post such a game on the Starmen.net Forum, whether serious or not, will get you temporarily banned after posting it unless you change the name for it almost immediately.
• Hype Backlash: The Newbie Boom that happened after the Wii U Virtual Console re-releases of Earthbound and EarthBound Beginnings caused some newcomers unaware of the Sacred Cow status of the series to point out its otherwise overlooked flaws, some even going to the point of calling it overrated. This more affected Earthbound and Mother 3 though, since EarthBound Beginnings being a divisive game has made it an Acceptable Target for criticism. This has not gone well with the older fans. Even the newcomers who praise it have been given backlash because...

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• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Surprisingly, given the series's Sacred Cow status over the years. Upon Earthbound and EarthBound Beginnings being released on the Wii U eShop and thus allowing it to be known to a larger audience, a Vocal Minority of old guard has been in an uproar about it the more newcomers get into the series. It's gotten to the point where a few have proclaimed they don't want Mother 3 to be rereleased in America, so it can "stay something unique" to the people who were in the cult fanbase years before the above rereleases. ^note Along with general worries that an official Nintendo translation would end up Bowdlerising some of the game's darker moments and completely get rid of Kumatora's occasional swearing, but generally these two go hand and hand with the above.
• Memetic Badass: The art style being what it is, it often overlaps with Memetic Badass Adorable. Ness and Lucas are strong kids with powerful psi, but fans would have you believe their bats could kill gods and Rockin'/Love Omega would damage the fabric of the universe if both were done at the same time. Princess Kumatora is joked to be a powerful spellcaster that other princesses of Nintendo franchises would do well to stay away from, even if the princess part isn't technically accurate. Cue jokes that the likes of Zelda, Lucina, and Palutena gave sighs of relief when she was clearly too powerful to join the Smash roster.
  • Flint qualifies too. He survives two PK Love Omega and is shown standing perfectly. Also helps he's dressed the same as Chuck Norris.
• Memetic Mutation:

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  • You cannot grasp the true form of Giygas' attack! ^Explanation Giygas' only attack from his already infamous battle.
  • Clay models means we totally mean business, guys. ^Explanation Among the fan work scene, there's a tendency to make clay models for fangames / ROM Hacks ala' what the main series does. Nine times out of ten, the clay models are often the only things that come from these projects, so as a result people often like to poke fun at it when the clay models are the only things revealed about the game / hack when announced. The only one that can possibly get away with this is Oddity back when it was MOTHER 4, thanks to doing it before it became common place to poke fun at the practice.
  • We've been taking Shigesato's nostrils too lightly! ^Explanation A reference / joke from Gintama, which in turn was referencing Mother 1. Naturally, the fanbase quickly latched on to it.
  • His nostril hair already has a vice grip on our heart! ^Explanation A further continuation of the above.
  • "No problem here!" ^Explanation The stock text whenever you press an action command on something that can't be interacted with, usually a wall or door the player can't open yet. The Mother series being what it is, there's a high probability there's something significantly wrong with the current situation, coming off as a bit of Black Comedy relief.
  • "Is Ness 'x'!?!" ^Explanation Based off of Game Theory's infamous "is Ness sans!?!" video, any theory that involves the Mother games will inevitably have someone make this joke.
• Sacred Cow: Boy, was it ever...Though this status has become increasingly downplayed over the years thanks to more people getting into the series (and pointing out its flaws).
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The cartoony style and odd sense of humor make it hard to believe at first that this is one of Nintendo's darkest franchises. On the other hand, those traits can serve to make it even darker.
  • To show how dark it is, the third game begins with the player's wife dying, the player having a mental breakdown, and the player's son going off to fight the creature that killed his mom.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Quite a few under certain conditions.
  • The Reconstructed Caribou is a force to be reckoned with when you fight it...until you pin it down with Wall Staples and unload the bombs you got from the Bazaar on it. Or if you don't have bombs but are great at comboing, just do that.
  • The Fierce Pork Trooper can cause a ton of damage to you, but if you have any DCMC merchandise, he's a joke. This is the case for both of his fights.
  • The Cactus Wolf may be a bit difficult, but keep in mind that Fassad can bum-rush for much more damage than your attack or Monkey Mimic. He also occasionally throws a Bomb for an easy 300 damage. Not to mention you probably got a few bombs of your own...

The film:

• Magnificent Bastard: Jin-tae blaming Do-joon for vandalising the expensive car, knowing he can’t recall anything else. Quite a dick move, considering how poor Do-joon and his mother are.
• Tearjerker: Oh yes:
  • Do-joon recalling his mother trying to commit murder-suicide.
    Do-joon: Don’t bother coming to visit me again; I don’t want to see you.
  • Near the end, when the mother asks Ah-jung’s boyfriend if he has a family; he says he doesn’t, with an ignorant smile, and she breaks into tears, knowing that no-one will save him from the murder accusation.
  • At the end of the film, when Do-joon reveals the pins his mother forgot in the house where she killed the only witness who can confirm that Do-joon actually killed Ah-jung, and the mother finally uses them on herself.