YMMV / M.U.G.E.N

• Archive Panic: An engine that's been around since The '90s with who knows how many characters. Good luck experiencing every character and matchup this engine has to offer.
• Base-Breaking Character: Googoo64's characters. Some people hate them for their cheap A.I. and general shoddiness, and as such make bashing videos about them, generally disliking uploads related to their characters, and so forth. Others like them because they're that bad, and enjoy how much of a mess they can make — some people have even made edits and A.I. patches for said characters, and even The_None got in on it by remaking the Kinyo Roadshow character (if only for April Fools' Day).
• Broken Base: Those who like to use the engine in an attempt to make actual, balanced characters in an attempt to make their own fighting game vs. those who make Purposely Overpowered "meme" characters for the fun of it. You'll be unlikely to find anyone who likes the engine for both.
• Character Tiers:
  • This is generally impossible due to the large roster and the varying quality thereof, since analyzing them and their match-ups would take years. Some have tried to do this by separating cheap characters from normal ones, but there is no official tier list outside of a full M.U.G.E.N game.
  • SaltyBet uses a form of tiers in its custom system. Characters who are excessively strong (read: cheap as all hell) get pushed into X-Tier by default. All other tiers are decided by a character's winning record; if a character wins or loses enough matches in a row, they are either promoted (up to S-Tier) or demoted (as low as P-Tier). This tier system does not prevent overly unfair matchups (or system crashes), but it generally produces better random fights than if characters were left to fight each other willy-nilly. The tier system is thrown out for Exhibitions, where players can request fights between characters from different tiers.
  • Taken further with certain characters that are meant to be overpowered, to the point where they'll ouright damage the computer the user has to win.
• Crack Fic: Anyone with a copy of the engine and movie editing software can contort all their favorite fighting game characters (and some from outside the genre) into their own twisted concoction of a storyline. Even more so with IKEMEN and its derivatives, which have vastly expanded tools to assist in creating arcade and story modes, such as dialogue between characters and custom arcade paths that can create specific routes with specific battles.
• Crack Pairing:
  • Would it not be easier to list the characters that haven't been put into a strange fan pairing by Japanese MUGEN fans?
  • Jam Kuradoberi/Anyone. A secret move from AOAO's version has her knocking the opponent into the bed, where she proceeds to dry hump both of them into unconsciousness.
  • You can find all pictures related to this weirdness on Crossover Shipping.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • It's pretty safe to say that Dee Bee Kaw wouldn't be anywhere near the powerhouse he was if he wasn't completely bugfuck insane.
  • Pepito and Juan. One's a Pop-Cultured Badass Spaniard, the other's his marijuana smoking best friend. Both are REALLY Improbable Weapon Users, are a laugh a minute in their fights, yet can easily go toe-to-toe with the best of the MUGEN world. Quickly getting a small yet DEDICATED fanbase completely devoted to their craziness and Memetic Badassery.
  • Ahuron's Mukuro seems like an ordinary Mukuro until you hold start while selecting him and see him in action. He has a large variety of intros and outros and summons tons of characters from other games. With an A.I. patch, he's even more insane.
  • Uppercut by The_None. His base sprite rapidly cycles through several of Ryu's over the years (including Super Gem Fighter and the digitized sprites from Street Fighter: The Movie), and from there, things only get weirder. His oddly named special moves, all of which are Rule of Funny-abiding anagrams of the original attacks, consist almost entirely of punches, ranging from a sideways, corkscrewing Shoryuken (SURE HONKY) to Balrog's Dash Upper (UP PHRASED) to Ralf's Vulcan Punch (LUNCH CUP VAN) to Dudley's New Wave Raucous ^note more commonly known as Thunderbolt in 2nd Impact and SSFIV (NEW, VACUOUS WEAR). Notable exceptions to this theme include K''s Chain Drive (INVADE RICH), an improvised Hadoken (HA! OK NUDE) that summons Ken to Shoryuken the opponent on contact, and a bizarre Alpha Counter (OUCH! PRENATAL) featuring pictures of Ice Cube and a monkey eating a taco (which stems from a mishearing of Mr. Jones' "Funky Impacto"). His Level 2, INTONATE DEATHFUL INDIGNITY, sees Uppercut turn into Dio Brando and slam his fist into the ground, causing a gigantic Infinity Gauntlet (ripped straight from the title screen of Marvel Super Heroes) to rise up from underneath the stage and clobber the opponent for massive damage. The random shapeshifting even extends to more mundane occurrences like jumping or taking damage (such as Kung Fu Man running in place in the air or The Angry Video Game Nerd uttering "Fuck!" after a knockdown), and nearly every successful attack of his, as well as several win poses, is accompanied by the memetic YEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH! of "Won't Get Fooled Again" more commonly associated with Horatio Caine. A 2v2 matchup between Uppercut and Sad Claps (see the Funny page) as well as a 2v2 Uppercut Mirror Match ended up being immortalized as classic SaltyBet moments due to the sheer insanity of the fights.
  • Dr. Gaster is the A.I.-controlled SNK Boss of Gram Parson's Undertale screenpack. While already chaotic as hell in the screenpack itself, the pattern to defeat him (enter the doors he spawns and attack his followers) is at least possible. But when you put him in regular MUGEN, the man who speaks in hands is able to K.O. characters in a matter of seconds, with epileptic attacks that do serious damage, Windows errors flashing across the screen, and many more batshit insane attacks.
  • A large number of Brergrsart's characters fit the bill. Special mention goes to Uncle Joel and Sauceboss Vinny, King of Games,Bitch!, Shotoclown and Gweelay, That Guy, Spin To, Real Police Dude, and Don't Worry... These Pizzas Are In Good Hands.
  • GTFoxN6Ys Ohio Final Boss is something that could match Brergrsart's creations mentioned above; while the recolored Yamazaki sprites can throw you off, Ohio Final Boss is an entirely equally hilarious and awesome to play as thanks in part to the massive amounts of fun his source actor is having, a combo-platter of anime powers, and a Basara K.O that causes the victim to explode.
• Discredited Meme: Cheap character-busting with supposedly balanced or weak characters used to be an extremely popular fad in the past, especially popularized by members who were prominent back then. Nowadays cheap character-busting is far less prevalent thanks to many "cheap-busters" turning out to have overpowered abilities of their own or being even more overpowered, even if they were Lethal Joke Characters. Prominent examples of "cheap-busters" with overpowered abilities include Metool by N64Mario^note had weak attack and defense, but was also very short meaning that most attacks sailed over it, sported a very spammable Spread Shot that could stunlock an opponent, a Nigh-Invulnerable helmet guard that was immune to anything short of a cheapie (which weren't around back then) and an unblockable One-Hit Kill giant Metool to finish off the opponent once it got 3 power bars and Misuzu_M by Markyjoe1990^note had a Healing Factor, One-Hit Kill, and unblockable Counter-Attack, could easily stunlock opponents, especially with the help of Yukito, and tear through Super Armor with Bahamut. What's more is that she can be customized to also have Super Armor and use her One-Hit Kill at any time.
• Fan Nickname: A version of Geese Howard known as Master Geese was called Master Cheese a lot back in the day.
• Fridge Horror: If you lose to Ricepigeon's Yukari, she says that if you had beaten her, she would have merely shifted the boundary between victory and defeat. What if she already had?
• Fountain of Expies:
  • Kung Fu Man. Justified in that he's a template character who's designed to help newcomers understand how to make characters.
  • There's also Ryu, Ken, and Akuma (the last of which has a whole game that jabs at them) have a large number of edits dedicated to them. More bizarrely, Kula, Orochi and Len have a large amount of edits as well.
  • Original Generation character Daniel (specifically, the old version) had a large amount of edits that were used as self-inserts by other MUGEN creators.
  • When it comes to cheapies, many of the better-known ones tend to be edits of the above-mentioned Orochi, or Ronald McDonald.
  • In a creator example, P.O.T.S.-style character edits are very popular in the community due to the variety of gameplay mechanics incorporated and love put into the characters. Prominent P.O.T.S.-style creators include Infinite, Trololo, varo_hades and RagingRowen.
  • Another creator example with OHMSBY, who's near-perfect recreation of the Cross Tag Battle style he's translated to several other character's has matched P.O.T.S style in popularity. The notable imitators of OHMSBY's style include Resentone, Ichida, and Tornillo Oxiado.
• Funny Moments: Has its own page.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Though there are too many examples to specifically list them all, there are a lot of characters that are more or less walking doom machines. Many characters from games with unique or unorthodox mechanics become either this or Joke Characters when they are initially ported, but newer versions of those characters may or may not clever coding or mods to balance them out.
  • Honorary mention goes to Master Mecha Sonic, who has a "Hyper Kamehameha" that can deal over 999 hits. Only the creator of his MUGEN can tell exactly how many hits it does.
  • A built-in example is the F1 key. It ain't called "The Heart-Attack Button" for nothing. It was eventually made into its own character.
  • There are characters who literally K.O. the opponent before the battle even starts, and are also immune to the F1 key.
  • There are even characters that can beat characters that literally do nothing like the DEAD HORSE (which is just a punching bag that cannot die, apparently) and Rick Astley (a dummy character that has no attacks or collision detection AT ALL).
  • There are characters that literally break the game itself—when they are loaded, they use a file or .exe to hack MUGEN and make them win. More information can be found here, and there's even "gameplay" videos of them.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Altoiddealer coding from scratch a MARRIAGE PROPOSAL to his fiancee while creating a Jailbot character, with her accepting his proposal You can watch it here.
  • Kung Fu Man's ending in Kung Fu Man Another History ends with him successfully rescuing his girlfriend from Suave Dude. After so many years with him failing to rescue her due to Suave Dude not being created or his nemesis creation by other creators not being acknowledged, is quite satisfying to see him happy with his beloved one for once. You can watch it here
  • The Deltarune trio can spare their opponents who have low health, and while the victory still goes for the trio, they allow the opponent to use their Victory Animations to celebrate their victory alongside them.
  • There are Mortal Kombat (or MK-inspired) characters with Friendships that spare the opponent by befriending them instead of killing them.
  • Instead of fighting or dealing any damage, SCP-999 instead attempts to tame its foes by hugging them and doing nice things to their opponents with the objective to make them happy and make friends with them. Some of its "attacks" consist of sharing M&Ms, Necco Wafers, and SCP-871 cakes with the opponent, all of which heal the opponent, but increases happiness even more than usual if it healed them. Two of its winposes also has it perform an aforementioned Mortal Kombat "Friendship" move on a befriended opponent.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Usually, characters branded as cheap re hated for pulling off incredibly unfair methods to win either caused by poor coding, unfair advantages/abilities or flat-out cheating, and had been the subject of many beatdown videos before retard beatdowns became more popular.
    • YOUKAI's Naruto-kun and Hanyou's "Super Mario 64" are probably two of the more infamous examples, as the former spams substitution, uses a Desperation Attack repeatedly that leaves him invincible and deals a lot of damage if hit, and has several hard-hitting, trapping regular attacks; while the latter can repeatedly use overpowered attacks such as swinging around Bowser and taking off about half of a regular fighter's lifebar (and if it's blocked, it actually deals more damage instead). Both of them also can spam super moves (like the aforementioned Bowser swing) without lowering their super meter, and they only get this luxury if the A.I. and not a player is controlling them.
    • Gulthor's three characters in Nightmare SSJ3, Sephiroth and Himan Zellode were very overpowered characters and prominent targets of cheap character beatdowns. All three have jacked-up stats on offense and defense, Hitbox Dissonance, Teleport Spam, insane power gain, attacks that dealt insane damage with several super attacks that were strong enough to flat out insta-kill most balanced characters, and actual One-Hit Kill super moves.
    • Another example was the demon Elque. Not only was it extremely fast with painful attacks that were quickly executed, it could stun-lock the opponent in a corner and spam its "Evil Claw" move to chip their HP into nothing if they blocked, a bunch of extremely powerful supers such as a fullscreen lightning attack that hit about a third of a character's health if blocked, and a One-Hit Kill. Finally, it also had a Turns Red mode where the screen turned dark (making it hard to see) and also caused it to regenerate health quickly. This got bad enough that a nerfed edit of Elque was made with almost all of the cheap elements taken out or given harsher restrictions. ^note For example, the One-Hit Kill could only be used either at very low health and full super meter, as a finisher where Elque was healthy with a full super meter and the enemy was at low health, or in a Cast from Hit Points mode where using it would lower his HP to One.
  • A lot of Touhou Project characters based on the official spin-offs like Scarlet Weather Rhapsody tend to fall into this. The Touhou games are known for their sheer Bullet Hell, which even extends to the fighting game spin-offs — they are quite projectile-heavy for being fighting games. Meanwhile, most regular characters in MUGEN tend to be more melee-oriented, with few projectiles and countermeasures against projectiles. This means that Touhou characters are fine fighting against each other, but a fighter from a different series will have a lot of trouble making it into melee range through their countless projectiles. This earns Touhou characters a lot of bile from the community for being "cheap" and "overpowered", and some creators like RicePigeon specialize in creating Touhou characters with more reasonable playstyles for a regular fighting game and few if any projectiles.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Metool Daddy summoned by Metool is an unblockable instakill that instantly squishes the opponent. Years later, the Metool Daddy boss from Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch is capable of also instantly killing the player if it lands on them... and not even God Mode protects from that.
  • KOF-centric Vans gave his take on Kyo Kusanagi an aerial version of his classic Orochinagi DM. Fast forward a few years later, and Kyo actually has the move in-game in The King of Fighters XIII.
  • Nightmare SSJ3 is an infamous edit of Broly by Gulthor that is damn cheap and consists of stolen code and super broken attacks and is supposedly in Super Saiyan 3 (though it really looks more like a Super Saiyan 4). Then came Dragon Ball: Raging Blast, and guess who got a Super Saiyan 3 form?
  • Primeus, the giant fish out of nowhere, whose intro was knocking out Yukari Yakumo. Then Touhou Hisoutensoku gave us a giant catfish boss...
  • There was a Floating Continent named MUGEN in Juuni Senshi Bakuretsu Eto Ranger a few years before, which had a prominent structure that contained every fictional universe and its characters. That's one possible explanation of why all these radically different characters are in the same place, at least.
  • A lot of Homer vs. Peter videos are all the more hilarious with the actual crossover episode having the two duke it out.
  • Twilight Sparkle would occasionally fight Dragon Ball Z characters here. A DBZ-styled fight eventually became canon in her show.
  • Zeku (Guy's master in Bushinryu ninjutsu from his Street Fighter Alpha 2 ending) being added to the game as a Palette Swap of his student isn't anything out of the ordinary. What is interesting, however, is the fact that Zeku's eventual debut as a playable fighter in SF canon employs the use of Razor Wind, complete with the trademark Audible Sharpness of Strider Hiryu's Cypher—not unlike certain edits of Guy. ^note The only real difference is that Zeku uses his legs to generate said Razor Wind, whereas the Guy edits employ Hand Seals.
  • The Space Invader's only attack is a Painfully Slow Projectile, and only one can be on the screen at a time... but it's a One-Hit Kill on anything it hit. Years later, Space Invaders Infinity Gene gives us the Classic ship, which can only fire one slow bullet at a time... and is a One-Hit Kill on anything it hits.
  • It eventually became possible for Looney Tunes characters to fight DC Comics superheroes outside of here in an official Warner Bros. game, thanks to MultiVersus.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Some people who use MUGEN care less about the play balance and more about what the special and super moves look like. Shallow? Maybe, but they're still having fun.
  • Other users are just here for cartoon and platformer characters.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Metool, back when cheap character beatdowns were a fad thanks to being able to fight and win against some of the most notorious Game-Breakers of its time. Especially if it manages to connect with the Giant Metool, causing the text "0WNED!!!" to appear on screen.
  • Chuck Norris and Weegee.
  • Ronald McDonald and The Colonel, the two of them being so beloved by the community to the point of becoming the characters with most edits on the engine, most of these increasing the characters strength to absurd limits.
  • Thanks to Saltybet, Veku has become known as "the king of P-tier."
• Memetic Loser:
  • Everyone hates Homer.
  • Barney. He loses in pretty much every video involving him.
  • The Coronavirus was made into a MUGEN character and predictably became a target of beatdown videos.
• Memetic Mutation: Tons.
  • 0WN3D!!! ^ExplanationBack when cheap character-busting was popular, one of the most prominent cheap busters was Metool thanks to its Lethal Joke Character status. Being defeated by any of its hyper moves would cause the screen to flash and the text "0WN3D!!!" to appear on the screen, and most often this occurred when the Metool Daddy squished the cheap character for a One-Hit Kill.
  • X character rides the Yukari Express. ^ExplanationYukari Yakumo, a Touhou Project character, has a very powerful attack (taken from the Touhou fighting game spin-offs) which summons a train from a portal to run the enemy over. Looped videos of various characters getting hit by the "Yukari Express" are common, often set to Kylie Minogue's "The Loco-motion."
  • The Rugal/Krauser/Goenitz/Kyoshiro/Juli/Sayurispin. ^ExplanationAll of these characters (among many examples) share an attack that has a form of spinning involved, usually looped to Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)" when it connects. The Rugalspin (also known as "Rugal takes X character for a spin") is the best known due to the over the top nature of Rugal's Dead End Screamer and how frequently he's used in GF202020's videos, to the point that one video put the Rugalspin up against the above Yukari Express to see which meme would come out on top. Rugal won.
  • Being drunk makes you a god as strong as a DBZ character, you got to remember that... ^ExplanationJudge Spear's Homer Simpson has a "Drunk Mode" which damages him, but gives him extremely powerful attacks.
  • Mario as Freddie Mercury, Krizalid as Billy Idol, etc.
  • The winquotes on Linkmyu's Kyo. For example: LOOK AT ME FUCK BITCH! ITS FACE ME BITCH, LOOK MY EYES!/YOU THINK YOU CAN FUCK THIS?! EH?! YOU THINK YOU CAN FUCK THAN ME EH?!
  • FUCKING AT WHORE ^ExplanationIn a rant, Ainotenshi says this in a rant against his detractors.
  • I saw nothing. NOTHING! BUT RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!!! ^ExplanationRage Rock, a "joke" version of Rock Howard created by Vans and later updated by The_None, has a HSDM (Mark VIII) where he screams the above line (audio taken from The Ultimate Warrior but pitched way up as per a YTP by DurhamrockerZ entitled Helium Leak In The WWF!!!) and then proceeds to Rage Quit via planetary destruction, causing the "Connection with other player(s) has been lost" message from Street Fighter IV to pop up. This isn't just for show either: the move forcibly crashes the game engine, giving Rage Rock a certain degree of infamy every time he shows up in SaltyBet, including his EX variation's debut.
  • BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT! ^ExplanationFrench for "GOAL!", used as the "KO!" announcement of a screenpack used by The_None.
  • Everyone hate Homer (yes, most people spell it incorrectly), where characters perform supers, infinites, and fatalities on Homer Simpson and is usually accompanied by "Yakety Sax." Homer also often taunts his opponent with "You suck-diddly-uck" before each finisher. Started by Judge Spear, who used Homer a lot and eventually modified him.
    • Which led to "Everyone hates X", where a not-so-liked character suffers a thorough trouncing at the hands of as many fighters as they could possibly find.
  • From SaltyBet:
    • Mexican/Mexihealth/Mexidamage: Spun off from poorly made DBZ characters who had gimped health and damage and used Latin American DBZ voice clips. While most of them have been trimmed...
    • ALWAYS BET DBZ: There are still a BOATLOAD of glitchy, shittily made DBZ characters.
    • Related is the Mexibeam, stemming from how characters of this mold tend to have beam supers that deal so much damage they can potentially win the round with a single use. Naturally, this trait seeped into higher quality and significantly more broken characters, many of whom occupy SaltyBet's S and X tiers.
    • On the subject of "Mexican" characters, there are also "Canadian" characters, who get their title from dealing so little damage that you might as well consider all of their attacks to be considered Cherry Tapping.
    • DISRESPECT: When one character begins attacking before the round starts proper, during the "Place your bets" phase. Usually when a Guilty Gear character steps up to bat. ^note This is due to GG characters having insanely broken A.I.
    • Potato: A fighter characterized by being poorly made, having crappy or nonexistent A.I., or was meant to be bad on purpose. They're not known for their impressive win rates.
    • Potato Match: When you put two of these said potatoes together, expect disaster and a really boring fight. Now in musical form (courtesy of one sonicmega)!
    • Scam/Self-Scam: When a character wins/loses as a result of a glitch. Typically happens when a poorly coded character knocks someone off screen in a state where they can't take any more damage, randomly turns off its hitbox, or flies away and doesn't come back down.
    • Plot: Whenever a fighter has a super animation so long that it might as well be a cutscene. Special mention goes to "Servant Emiya" by an unknown author ^note as in, the author field is completely blank who has his "I am the bone of my sword" speech for his intro, meaning that every time he shows up you'll need to sit through it.
    • Canon: When two or more characters from the same main or crossover franchise are met.
• Moment of Awesome: A creator known as altoiddealer coded from scratch and without help a MARRIAGE PROPOSAL to his fiancee on his Jailbot W.I.P. The best part? She said YES! You can watch it here.
• My Real Daddy: Several of Warner's characters only became popular after other authors edited them to be more distinctive and accurate to the source material: Homer Simpson (Team S.M.R.T) and Wario (@ndroide) are particularly notable examples.
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • La=Gooth, a pathetic attempt at making an Eldritch Abomination by some guy.
  • An unknown character called "Chaos" (LucasX3 in earlier versions) fits this trope well, with said character being filled with ear-blasting sound effects from La=Gooth, and generally mediocre gameplay.
  • Guro Saya is meant to be Saya as she appears in her true form. This would be disturbing had the author not merely given her the appearance and playstyle of a brown Shuma-Gorath.
• Nintendo Hard:
  • A lot of AI patches go here. For a specific example, look at the work of Misobin_ISM: He turns mild-mannered (but still challenging) characters into absolute monsters. His patch for Vergil basically pits you against an encyclopedia of his combos. Dio lays you out with some crazy tandems and abuses his teleport while defending. Geese will counter all of your moves and force feed you a Deadly Rave. His Shin Akuma is as insane as you would expect. There is also Hutano, who basically unlocks the true power within 9's Melty Blood characters and shows you some of the most nightmarishly evil combos ever seen.
  • Muteki's Guilty Gear characters are built with an aggressive AI that fully exploits the computer's natural advantage against human players. It blocks most attacks without a second thought and links together very long strings of attacks and supers to make sure that the human player can't fight back for more than a second; combined with the extremely fast gameplay of the franchise, this tends to turn anything not incredibly fast-paced into chowder.
  • Any of the Cyberbots characters (save for Z-Akuma) have unbelievable AI.
  • Ironcommando made an AI patch that turns Metool (who lacks a proper AI) into an absolute nightmare reminiscent of its "Cheapie Buster" days, causing it to guard almost perfectly, lock the opponent into a Cycle of Hurting with a Spread Shot Spam Attack, and drop the One-Hit Kill Metool Daddy as soon as it gets 3 bars of power.
  • For a non-fighting example, pitting fhqwhgads7's The Kid and Yukari Yakumo together will start the match with The Kid in a scrolling obstacle course. Keep in mind that like in the game, The Kid dies with one attack, and you can't fight Yukari unless you get through the course. Even then, the match simply becomes a boss fight against Yukari... and Primeus.
  • For a long, long time, Sander 71113's Wolverine was known as an absolute monster and the bog standard for players looking for a challenge.
  • OHMSBY's characters, mostly thanks to the simple to understand button layout, are absolute terrors to overcome, sometimes outright needing another character similar in coding to beat. Even if you do manage to land a combo, there is the burst system you have to worry about.
• Popular with Furries: Since this is a game engine where any skilled enough creator can make fighters however they like, there are bound to be many characters of varying degrees of furriness and scaliness in the community. These include bestial characters, of both biped and quadruped variety, from preexisting fiction alongside original furry characters and self-inserts.
• Quirky Work: We're talking about Velociraptor Gods taking on a mutant cyborg Tiger Woods that utilizes a robot claw and airstrikes. Wholesome Crossdresser nuns teamed with evil witches with truth-based magic systems that beat up UNSTOPPABLE! God-powered roid ragers that spew Uncle Tomfoolery. Inside the womb of a birthing God. Reality Warpers fighting against sadistic vigilantes. And Chuck Norris.
• Remade and Improved:
  • This is standard in many M.U.G.E.N creators that update their outdated versions of their characters by fixing glitches and/or introducing new attacks in the update releases.
  • In general, this happens when a poorly received character receives a good edit.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Shaq, from Shaq Fu, is a surprisingly popular character despite hailing from one of the worst fighting games of all time. Most of it has to do with the rather humorous additions to the character, including merch-based moves, voice lines, and other types of silliness. His famous battle against SSJ Goku shot him into greater fame.
  • In a similar vein, Fourthrhyme's Bubsy, who is based on one of the most divisive characters in all of video game history, is given quite a lot of creative attacks and edits in order to save him from the heap he has a tendency to get stuck in.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya after an author, Zero-sennin, made her less cheap along with adding his own twist to the character.
  • In general, when a hated character receives a good edit.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • SaltyBet has a pre-match betting announcer voiced by Sean Chiplock a few years before his breakout roles. He also contributed several Filk Songs to the site's playlist.
  • Kira Buckland contributed original voicework for several M.U.G.E.N characters back when she went under the online handle of Rina-chan.
• The Scrappy:
  • Gouken by Alexlexus has been beaten by... pretty much everyone, thanks to his overpowered gameplay and Out of Character tendencies (like having the Shun Goku Satsu/Raging Demon, a move that Gouken is vehemently opposed towards in canon).
  • EvilSlayerX5's Rugal_E was one of these thanks to the character not only being unfinished, but the creator also having attitude issues towards several members of the community back then.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya's hate-level got up to the point where fight vids of newly-made characters involving her usually have a half-hearted disclaimer of "No, you're not finding any bashing here." It died down after some time and with her being Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
  • Characters that have been dubbed "retarded" by the community. These tend to have hideous spritework, stiff animation, terrible hitboxes, graphical errors, crappy movesets, programming glitches, or any combination thereof, therefore making battles containing them an excruciating experience.
  • Spriteswapped characters are highly frowned upon by a majority of the community because they show laziness as well as disrespect towards the original characters' author. In particular cases the original's fighting style or hitboxes don't even fit the "new" character, and in other cases not all their sprites are properly changed causing them to flicker back to the original character. In even worse cases, no credit is given to the original creator or the filenames aren't even changed from the original's at all.
  • "Symbiote edits" are much-maligned in the community as they are considered one of the laziest forms of character editing. Most of them are just characters whose only edits consist of increased stats, a Palette Swap to dark gray/black, and sound clips modified to have a deep aggressive voice or overly loud scream sounds.
  • Cheap characters are not that well regarded either, since cheap-busting had been a fad in the past.
  • Yu-Toharu's Hatsune Miku also gets this. While there is no doubt that the character is well-made, many people hate her due to her brutal A.I., bloated amalgamation of game mechanics and numerous Shout-Outs, and her ridiculously large file size of nearly 90MB (the majority of which is taken up BY said Shout-Outs), which causes many MUGEN setups to lag both during fights, and while loading.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Can happen with the more customized fighters, as they are made to suit the maker's personal tastes. Take (the currently only known existing version of) Leela, who has a suspiciously large number of poses showing her butt, a seemingly random Midnight Bliss attack, a Thong of Shielding swimsuit outfit that makes up more than half of her palettes, and a Freeze-Frame Bonus during her Transformation Sequence hyper where she's naked. (With Barbie Doll Anatomy, but still, the fact that her toes and navel are visible shows that this is the intent.)
  • There's also Tifa Lockhart, who has an overdose of breast bouncing and panty shots, combined with her Boobs-and-Butt Pose win pose and Genki Girl voice.
  • And that's not even getting into all the edits of female fighting game characters who are made naked.
• So Bad, It's Good:
  • Bebum Ryo. This ridiculous edit of Ryo Sakazaki has a Zanretsuken that does insane amounts of hits, combos that should never be possible, hair resembling that of an 80s glam rocker, and FATALITIES. One of his intros is about a minute long, featuring him getting punched in the nuts by Johnny Cage, who is in turn chased down by Shao Kahn. And that's just the beginning.
  • Q by Drowin. Melty Blood, Fist of the North Star, and a whole lot more collide to make this massive ball of hilarity.
  • RicePigeon released Primeus aka Gay Bahamut, who's essentially a parody of crappy characters. The end result is something that's So Bad, It's Good. And hilarious to boot. While RicePigeon did strive for a "King of Shitty Characters" type, he managed to not overkill Primeus which made him somewhat a decent foe.
  • Grand Master Ryu is Ryu as a Old Master after training with Oro for years. Seems like a pretty standard and forgettable Ryu edit, but then you see it in action. The moves in his repertoire were much more badass in the author's head than in actuality. One of them has him doing a horse stance while firing a huge Hadouken with Dragon Ball sounds. One of them has him fire a bunch of odd looking, almost Metroid-ish projectiles. One of them has him punch the victim so far they slam against the wall, and he gives chase and beats them down in the corner. The highlight, however, is one where he throws a punch that launches the enemy, then proceeds to LAY DOWN ON HIS BACK AND FIRE A SHINKUU HADOUKEN UP AT THE VICTIM.
  • Adrian's Buzz Lightyear is a half-assed sprite edit of Zangief that's so badly edited (complete with his suit turning piss-yellow for certain frames and a perpetually derpy expression) that it looks absolutely hilarious as a result.
• So Okay, It's Average: Warner's characters: While his characters are pretty well-liked for their spritework on them, the many special moves featuring compatibilities and their faithful portrayal of the characters, they're also criticized for their coding, having KFM-copied moves (at worst being spriteswapped from other characters, a trait he averted on late creations), and being unbalanced.
• Special Effect Failure: If not created correctly, characters or their effects can have bizarre color schemes, appear in the wrong places, or generally not work.
• Spiritual Successor: The readme claims that inspiration for the engine was taken from the PC homebrew Street Fighter II clone SFIBM (at least in part). It also had a modular engine that facilitated editable characters to the point that some gained new moves and others were completely broken. Not unlike many MUGEN characters.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: Mostly in the shape of SNK extremists, who still declare that the only good fighting games were those made by SNK on its glory days and will put down (most of the time, violently) people who use characters from doujin games or with new-generation mechanics. This is not to deny the doujin side of its share of meanies, either—a lot of them seem to really hate the characters of The DCU, The Flash and Superman being prime victims, and fans of DC Comics sometimes come under fire as a result.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • In the Duck Hunt bonus game made by PotS, you can attack the dog when you miss a duck.
  • Many sandbags of unpopular characters or companies are made with this intention.
• Tear Jerker: When you think about it, Kung Fu Man's ending (being unable to save his girlfriend due to Elecbyte not making a Suave Dude character) is pretty sad. It even shows him sitting in a corner crying.
• That One Boss:
  • Many characters in MUGEN are known to be SNK Bosses in their source games. It therefore goes without saying that there are too many examples to list that could be considered difficult or cheap (though the difficulty of the boss varies depending on which fighters you use).
  • Cheap or brutal A.I. characters can count due to either Perfect Play A.I., cheap move set, counters, fast reactions or all of the above.
  • Purposely Overpowered, Nigh-Invulnerable characters can be placed into Arcade Mode and there's nothing stopping the player from doing so. Woe betide any standard character, SNK Boss, or Perfect Play A.I. who has to face things like Rare Akuma, Ultimate Chimera, the F1 Button, Omega Tom Hanks, A-Bomb, or heaven forbid, a "cheapie"/"uber-cheap" character.
  • Surprisingly enough, Bandana Dee is this, considering he was a joke boss from his game (DS remake only). Though he is still pathetic as his source game, his Collision Damage works a bit different. Due to a bug oversight(?), Bandana Dee can damage you if you make literally any physical contact. He can also combo you and fling you across the stage making it hard to combo him. He is still easy to beat if your character has long-range attacks, projectiles, super armor or a throw. But if your combatant solely fights close-range and lacks a throw...
  • Yee. Yes, that Yee. It first started out as an April Fools' Joke with the creator, Garchomp Matt, disguising it as his Rotom character. Now as its own character, this boss consist of Peak and Oro doing specific roles. Peak sings his memetic song and when it's over, Oro peaks his head out saying "Yee". Rinse and repeat. It's a pretty easy since Peak never moves, making him open to attacks and Oro only attacks if the song is finished. While he sings slowly and attacks less frequently on easy mode, when setting it up on higher difficulties, he starts to sing faster meaning Oro will frequently pop his head in, attacking you. This forces you to kill him faster before you do, and at times nearly impossible. Putting the difficulty to Hard 8 makes it literally impossible to win - Yee will become invincible and Oro's head attack consists for the entire round, meaning that you won't be beating him unless you're packing something like Rare Akuma. Set the difficulty to 8 but forgot to remove Yee from your roster? You're setting up quite the catastrophe...
  • Certain characters, while otherwise balanced, may have a color palette (usually 11th or 12th) that makes them overpowered. Palettes can be selected at random... and said overpowered palette can be chosen in Arcade Mode:
    • Daniel is a well-balanced original character, but his 11th palette is a different story. He is constantly in unlimited Burst Mode from the get-go, which allows him to use EX special moves, Alpha Counters, and most Limit Breaks without losing his super meter.
    • YU-TOHARU's Hatsune Miku, is already infamous for her brutal A.I.... But when you put her into her 11th or 12th palettes? Her 11th palette gives her infinite super meter, which is bad enough on its own, but can be a nightmare in team matches. Her 12th palette gives her a slowly regenerating super meter, regenerating health, a helper in the form of Beat at the start of the match, the ability to fully heal once when low on health, and can revive with full health when KO'ed, meaning you have to defeat her twice in a single round.
  • Kong's MvC2 characters, all of them, have three different difficulty levels that can be coded in and out — Easy, Medium and Hard. And if they're in Hard Mode... good God, you're in for Hell. In Hard Mode, these characters become very buggy, broken and cheap, and have a ludicrously aggressive A.I. To give you an idea, Kong's Omega Red in Hard Mode defeated Rare Akuma. ^note Admittedly, this was before Rare Akuma was updated and became even cheaper. Yeah.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!:
  • As noted above, POTS-styled characters usually get this reception.
  • "Spriteswapped" characters usually tend to get a bad reputation in the community due to replacing the sprites of an existing character done by another author but barely touching the coding of the character.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Many, many MUGEN videos are instantly dated either by their content or contemporary fads:
    • Cheap-busting videos were a big fad before 2010.
    • Any videos referring to defunct MUGEN forums were clearly made before said forums shut down.
    • Any time a character is updated, making his or her pre-update videos obsolete.
    • Many 2010s videos will refer to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Regular Show, Adventure Time, Undertale, Five Nights at Freddy's, Steven Universe, Frozen, and/or The Amazing World of Gumball.
    • Anything mentioning a retired player or creator.
    • Anything with a character that is lost forever was clearly made before the character's download links were all removed.
  • Even the characters themselves can become dated based on how they're designed:
    • Warner's Wario, for example, was designed in 2000 and shows it in several ways, with his design being that of the older long-sleeved design rather than the more iconic short-sleeved design or biker outfit, voice clips from 1996's Mario Kart 64 and a very simplistic moveset that borrows heavily from the Wario Land series.
    • Likewise, ShinRyoga's Mario was made in 2001, has voice clips from 1996's Super Mario 64 and 1999's Super Smash Bros. 64, and lacks anything introduced in Super Mario Sunshine and onward.
  • In regards to stages, Arpa made one crudely drawn in MS Paint featuring statues of JudgeSpear, Ampchu, MarkyJoe1990, The_None, WildTengu, himself, AshramVII, Orochi Gill, and MC2. All of these MUGEN users were big hits in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the only ones who haven't retired as of this writing are The_None and Arpa, and even the latter is far less relevant today.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Everything about Dragon Claw! His sprites, his effects, his move animations...
  • Quite a few stages count, especially the ones on 1.1. Some people have taken it to the next level, making 3-dimensional stages to give the game a very well done 2½D like feel.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The game has plenty of pornographic, grotesque, profane, and/or gory content, and a hateful community that bashes everything it can think of. For example: Kuromaru and Slime are essentially hentai incarnate, Lucy from Elfen Lied has a gory One-Hit Kill accompanied by a slideshow of some of the darkest scenes from her own series, lots of female characters wearing revealing outfits are playable, more than one Ronald McDonald edit has a Jump Scare, the cast of The Black Heart is a great source of Nightmare Fuel (especially Noroko), and there are Dragon-Tier cheapies that literally destroy your game and computer! Many children and unsuspecting parents alike have been led to M.U.G.E.N by content from kids' media made for it, then were horrified to see all the family-unfriendly content.

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