For YMMV items applying to Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area, go here.
YMMV tropes with their own pages:
Other examples:
- Accidental Innuendo: In one of the flashbacks from "It's Dolphin Time", Nairobi comments that the Professor "must have weird things as a boyfriend" as she and Tokyo watch him and Raquel finishing a relaxation exercise. Netflix's SD English dub that translates the original Spanish version's dialogue as most accurately and literally as possible via subtitles translates Nairobi's line as saying that the Professor "must do some freaky boyfriend shit", which can be misinterpreted as her saying that the Professor must have... a rich sex life, to say the least.
- Adorkable: The Professor. From his shy demeanor, his fashion sense, the moments he acts as the team's dorky dad, and especially every time he gets excited when a plan comes together.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Arturo always an asshole from the series' beginning, and only showed his true colors more and more as the series progressed and he became an ambitious Miles Gloriosus? Or was he initially a fairly normal person, who then experienced a moral slippage after he went through hell during the Mint heist and ended up losing both his wife and affair in the process? The series provides implications for both ways, as Tokyo's narration tends to be ambivalent towards Arturo whenever it talks about him, and during the Mint heist he doesn't start being a Jerkass until some time after the robbers had taken over the Mint, with his early behavior in Season 1 being rather emotionally impulsive.
- Arc Fatigue: Gandía's arc as an Arc Villain between Seasons 4 and 5 is often agreed by fans to have been dragged out a bit too much for a villain like him, arguing that it would have been better if he was permanently defeated and killed off at the end of Season 4 rather than being sent back in as part of Sagasta's army squad in Volume 1 of Season 5 and then properly dying at the end of said volume. For all the logical issues that Season 4 had in regards to Gandía and how the heist team fought against him, plenty of fans think that the storyline was otherwise well structured within the season, and that it would have been better if Gandía's arc were closed with the robbers killing him at the end of Season 4 rather than sending him out to the police and military at the beginning of Season 5 because of the Professor's sudden insistence that they need to use him for negotiations, since it would have helped set Sagasta's squad apart from him and give the squad's members time and space to develop on their own.
These fans also consider that having the robbers kill Gandía right after they apprehend him and exploit him to help with the Professor's scheme to send Raquel into the bank would have been much better for both the robbers themselves and the audience, which is mainly hinged on the fact that he had killed Nairobi for his own sadistic amusement after capturing her and putting her through humiliation for most of the season. Not only would the audience have been satisfied by a more fitting retribution for Gandía instead of the non-lethal one he's initially given (especially as Gandía had personally killed Nairobi, unlike the previous robbers who either died because of incidental circumstances with the hostages and police, or let themselves die for a Heroic Sacrifice), but it would have been a far more practical decision for the robbers, since the fans think the robbers should have figured out Gandía had proven to be too dangerous to be kept alive due to all the things he did against them throughout Season 4. Additionally, they believe it would have been interesting to see how the Professor would deal with the possibility of the robbers needing to break his Thou Shalt Not Kill rule in order to deter an enemy (especially when compared to how such plot point was done in Volume 2 of Season 5 after Gandía had died alongside several soldiers of Sagasta's squad). - Awesome Music: Has its own page.
- Base-Breaking Character:
- Tokyo's oftentimes impulsive and uncooperative behavior with the rest of the heist team made her a very divisive character among the fanbase, especially during the time of the first three seasons, to the point that even her actress, Úrsula Corberó, commented on it in interviews. Some fans like Tokyo for being an engaging wild card in the narrative, while others think that her mistakes and antics feel like vehicles for manufactured drama that have the sole purpose of keeping the plot in motion whenever no other major events happen.
- Rio. A lot of fans have come to dislike him after he was well established midway through the series, as despite his talent as the heist team's resident hacker, he was perceived by many as being a bigger Millstone than even Tokyo because he relies a lot on his relationship with Tokyo to stay competent and self-confident, to the point that he tends to be rather ignorant at times, repeatedly puts his teammates at risk of being defeated by their enemies, and even almost sabotaged both heists due to his issues with Tokyonote . They also think that his specialty eventually got undermined when his role in the Mint heist was taken over by the squad of Pakistani hackers for the Bank heist (especially as from the Bank heist onward, Rio got hardly involved in any IT issues within the Bank itself, notably acting as an assistant surgeon instead of maintaining the Pakistani doctor's contact line stable during the surgery on Nairobi at the beginning of Season 4). Fans who defend Rio, meanwhile, think that his ignorance and screw-ups are mostly understandable, due to him being the youngest of the robbers and lacking any experience in actual robberies and in-person criminal activities beyond his hacking expertise, and cite that for his lack of competence and awareness, he's one of the kindest and most moral robbers whenever he's not emotionally pressured. They also think that he was still useful for the team in the Bank heist, as he became more competent and diversified his role after Season 3, allowing him to contribute efficiently in the robbers' shootouts during late Season 4 and most of Season 5.
- Arturo:
- Some people think Arturo's a compelling Hate Sink character that you Love to Hate, provides a good contrast with the other characters, and that he's used for some intriguing subplots (especially in the Mint heist storyline), not to mention he greatly benefits from his actor Enrique Arce's engaging performance. Others consider that his character progressively became so cartoonishly evil and over-the-top that he ended up being more of an annoying character than anything else, and that ultimately he doesn't add much to the narrative other than cheap Catharsis Factor moments whenever he gets punished or humiliated (especially when it comes to his role in the Bank heist storyline).
- One big point of contention for Arturo, even among his biggest fans and detractors, is the plot point in Season 4 where he tricks Amanda into taking some sleeping pills so he can rape her, and later tries to do the same to Manila. The fact that Arturo would be willing to commit outright rape was seen by many fans as being too out-of-character for him (a sentiment shared by Enrique Arce himself, who was disappointed by Álex Pina and the producers' decision to go ahead with its inclusion despite his pleas to have them scrap it entirely), since for all of his egotisical and life-risking character, Arturo doesn't feel like someone who would commit rape, especially to a fan of his like Amanda, since he's always established himself as an apparent savior who tries to get as many supporters for his plans as possible and would do his best to ensure they stay loyal to him (meaning that he wouldn't do anything to directly harm or harass his loyalists and fans). Said detractors also think that the decision to have Arturo start raping women was hastily thrown in together so he can have something to do in the midst of his otherwise inactive presence in the season, and to give a flimsy excuse for people to hate Arturo even more than ever before so he can be humiliated once again. Defenders, meanwhile, think that rape does fit Arturo's personality, given his problems with maintaining stable relationships with women that were established in the past seasons, plus his initial obsession with making amends with Mónica when he first enters the Bank and meets her there in Season 3, which for these supporters imply that he was most likely trying to get laid somewhere in the middle of the Bank heist. Additionally, they consider Arturo's rape attempts to be a good way of showing the start of the Sanity Slippage he goes through between Seasons 4 and 5.
- Better on DVD: The show's audience ratings when it first aired on Antena 3 in Spain had a steep decline towards the end of Season 1 and beginning of Season 2, mostly due to some arguable dragging in the narrative that apparently tested the patience of audiences who watched the show one episode per week. In this sense, the show benefited immensely from the binge-watching format of Netflix, which allows viewers to get through the story at a faster pace, thus making its pacing issues easier to overlook.
- Broken Base:
- While the character himself is overall well-liked, the Professor's plans have gotten mixed reactions from audiences, especially as the series progressed. Due to the fact that the writers largely write by the seat of their pants, whenever a plot twist or some other sudden thing takes place, the writers usually insert in the middle of it a flashback to the Professor explaining how he predicted something like that would happen, and how he and/or the rest of the heist team prepared beforehand for it. Supporters consider this technique to be a more than valid method of introducing amazing things that keep viewers on the edge of their seats, while detractors feel like the writers use it as a means of cheating, since even the more full-fledged twists aren't normally foreshadowed, making it break their Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
- Netflix's Re-Cut for the first two seasons used by the platform's international release of the series outside of Spain, which split multiple episodes from the original cut, as well as omitting some scenes or shots plus other edits, to accomodate to Netflix's usual episode length and editing standards. Some fans believe that it's a fair improvement over the original cut in technical and narrative terms, as it makes the story better structured, better paced and more comfortable to watch through, and condenses/removes a good chunk of scenes and shots that they think feel like filler. Detractors of the re-cut, on the other hand, think that the original cut's episodes are fine as is (if not outright better than those of the re-cut), feel that its story building is more linear and coherent than that of the re-cut, and criticize that the condensed/removed scenes made the re-cut feel like it focuses too much on the robbers and doesn't give the cops and hostages time and space to develop on their own (with Raquel and Alison being the characters whom they most frequently cite as being badly affected by their shortened screentime). They also complain that the re-cut made the first two seasons' listing rather unusual when compared to the later seasons and other live-action series released on Netflix (for instance, Season 1 ended up having 13 episodes with Season 2 not being far behind at 9, whereas the next three seasons never surpass the count of 10 episodes and have more even numbers of 8 episodes for Seasons 3 and 4, and 10 episodes for Season 5).
- Whether the seasons comprising the Bank of Spain heist (Seasons 3-5) are as good as (if not better than) the seasons of the Royal Mint of Spain heist (Seasons 1-2), or a letdown for the series. Ever since Season 3 was produced and released in response to the first two seasons' sheer international success after Netflix picked up the series, there has been a still-ongoing heated debate over whether or not the Netflix-era second heist lives up to the first heist that was intended to be the only one back when the series aired on Antena 3. One major camp of fans likes the Bank heist for its improved production and aesthetics thanks to Netflix's larger budget, its bigger and higher-staked plot than that of the Mint heist's, its introduction of beloved characters such as Bogota, Marseille, Tamayo and Gandía, and its more extensive worldbuilding and character backstory development that took off from where the first two seasons left it. The other camp dislikes the Bank heist for reasons such as its plot and character writing being more complicated, watered down and/or outright nonsensical, the lack of the well-liked Berlin's presence in the present time and/or the overreliance of him in flashbacks, the absence of the things that gave the Mint heist its charm (e.g. the grandiose yet relatively grounded heist plan and schemes, the focus on the characters' moral issues and psychology, the Professor following a disguised life in public at the same time he leads the robbers throughout the heist, etc.), and partially overriding the Mint heist's ending (which they believe is a more satisfying conclusion for the entire series).
- The series' prominent use of flashbacks to detail the present story and the characters' backstories. While it's widely agreed that they play an essential role in the series' story structuring, how and how much they should be used has gotten divisive within the fanbase as the series progressed, with these two aspects creating different points of debate among fans.
- The ways in which the flashbacks are used in regards to the story development. One major camp of fans enjoy the flashbacks for not only being used as a framing device for explaining the heist team's ongoing plans and operations during the heist, but also allowing viewers to learn about the characters' backstories and see them interact with each other outside the heists, regardless of the relations said flashbacks have with the ongoing present plot. The other camp believes that the flashbacks should be more firmly organized and managed in a way that correlates with present events, as they feel that by the time of the Bank heist, there were a handful of flashbacks from the Bank heist's storyline that would have fit better in the Mint heist's storyline or shouldn't have been included at all, arguing that they took away runtime that could have been used to extend and better write various parts and plot points of the Bank heist itself. Additionally, some fans within both camps wish that the focus points of the flashbacks were used in a more diverse way beyond the near-exclusive main focus on the robbers, such as exploring the backstories of police members and hostages.
- How many flashbacks should be used and how much time they should take in relation to episode runtimes. Plenty of fans on one side don't mind how much runtime the flashbacks take when compared to the present plot, and believe that the story structure was always constructed by jumps between the present story and the flashbacks that try to distribute the respective runtimes of both parts in a fair manner and connect them with each other as best as possible. Meanwhile, many fans on another camp think the series relied more on storytelling in flashbacks and less of it in the present as it went on, to the point that by the time of Seasons 4 and 5, they felt that there were too many flashbacks that took larger portions of episodes than what should have been necessary story-wise, leading to detrimental effects on said seasons' quality.
- The Genre Shifts given to Seasons 4 and 5. In the documentaries, the series' production crew explained that they wanted to diversify the genres featured in Seasons 4 and 5 to both give them their own appeals and keep the audiences hooked with new stuff they haven't seen before; namely, Season 4 was intended to evoke Suspense and Horror via Gandía as the Arc Villain, and Season 5 was meant to explore the use of the War genre in a heist-based story via the formal introduction of the Spanish military among the antagonistic forces and the prominent use of Military and Warfare Tropes plus related genre conventions. Supporters of this genre orientation consider it to make an interesting and unique take on a Caper story and be a creative way to raise the stakes for the last two seasons. Detractors, on the other hand, feel that the mere idea of incorporating prominent Horror and War elements is too out of place for Money Heist, and think that it makes Seasons 4 and 5 tonally inconsistent with the more Caper-standard and mundane nature of the first three seasons. They also think that the writing and execution of the Genre Shifts is rather poor, due to the accused presence of many story & logical inconsistencies and plenty of Narm-y moments in the seasons that end up undermining the aimed genres.
- Catharsis Factor:
- Any time Arturo gets beaten, punished or humiliated in some way, especially as he becomes a bigger and bigger Jerkass over the course of the series. It's particularly satisfying when other hostages do it, such as Mónica knocking him out in "A Matter of Efficiency", or Mario giving him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech in Season 4.
- Bogotá giving Gandia one hell of a Curb-Stomp Battle at the beginning of Season 5. Not only does Bogotá try to avenge Nairobi, but he takes his time to give Gandia a blow for every single slur he uttered to his friends. Although the rest of the gang stop Bogotá from killing Gandia, since they needed him to negotiate with the police, the beatdown was immensely cathartic.
- Gandia getting his due Karmic Death finally happens in the Season 5 Volume 1 finale, when Tokyo blows up a grenade on him. After getting a rather light punishment for his many evil misdeeds in the previous season, this one felt very cathartic.
- The Coconut Effect: Due to being the series with which many audiences around the world had first learned about the Spanish Royal Mint and the Bank of Spain, Money Heist has become responsible for painting people outside of Spain an idea of how the Mint and Bank look like based on how they're depicted in the series, despite the fact that, unbeknownst to most international audiences, other Spanish government buildings were used as sets for them instead of the actual Mint and Bank buildings. While many of the facilities and security mechanisms seen in the series itself are accurate to the Mint and Bank's architecture in real life, both the exteriors and interiors of the buildings used as sets look significantly different from the actual institutions' buildings, not helped by the fact that the model maquettes for both the Mint and the Bank, featured prominently as part of the series' promotional visuals, are directly modeled after the set buildings (the Spanish National Research Council and the Nuevos Ministerios government complex, respectively) rather than the real Mint and Bank. While the National Research Council's architecture shares some similarities with that of the Mint's, most viewers who took a look at images of the actual Bank of Spain were surprised that it looks far more decorated and complex than how it's depicted in Money Heist, featuring a lot more lighting and a color scheme of marble white and gold in its interior (rather than the more subdued color scheme similar to the Mint that it has in the series).
- Crosses the Line Twice:
- In the flashback to the Professor teaching medical anatomy to the heist team from "Trojan Horse", after Nairobi is asked to set herself up on the table as a living model for Tokyo to mark the important anatomical regions that the Professor had elaborated on, Nairobi immediately gets furiously defensive with Tokyo when the latter pulls up her bra a bit, assuming she wanted to take a perverted look at her breastsnote . Alleged perverted gazes at people in anatomy lessons wouldn't normally be funny, but the way the scene is set up with its surrounding context, plus the rest of the robbers trying to prevent Nairobi to beat up Tokyo, makes it completely hilarious.
- Arturo's punishment for his second attempt at executing an escape plan to break hostages out of the Mint in "What Have We Done?" involves Helsinki forcing him to strip himself down to his underwear and strapping a set of bombs on him (which latter turn out to not be really active for exploding) to keep him on his nerves at all times. Already ridiculously hilarious in itself, considering it's Arturo the one receiving the punishment, but both Berlin and Rio also take their sweet time humiliating Arturo further, the latter in particular making the bombs beep for a moment in order to scare Arturo of his ass. It's capped off by Helsinki scaring Arturo with a pistol gunshot while the bombs are still strapped to him at the beginning of "Bella Ciao", making Arturo go on a tirade of threats to report Helsinki for committing crimes against humanity.
- In the middle of the otherwise sad scene in "What Have We Done?" where Raquel interrogates the Professor and is in disbelief that he'd confess to be genuinely in love with her, Raquel repeatedly gives the Professor a Dope Slap every single time he repeats to her that he's in love with her, complete with Raquel daring him to say it over and over, and the Professor actually going ahead with her dare.
- Palermo's sexist insults and explanations to justify why he's gay are so over-the-top that it's hard to not get a chuckle from them. Some examples:
- In the flashback from "Aikido" where Palermo scolds Denver, Nairobi and Mónica for being awake at 3 AM in the most excessively screaming way possible, Tokyo tells him to calm down, prompting Palermo to yell at Tokyo to go wash the dishes.
- In "48 Meters Underground", when Tokyo tells Palermo that she'll try to take out the glass shards Palermo had gotten in his eyes from the prior shootout with the Bank's security guards with tweezers, not only does Palermo object that tweezers are very riskful tool for eye treatment, but he adds that the tweezers must be the same ones "she uses to trim her jungle down there". This prompts Tokyo to put a pistol in his mouth and force him to say that he'll stop saying sexist insults to the female robbers.
- Palermo's "Boom, Boom, Ciao" theory from the episode of the same name, which according to him, explains that gay men are how they are because women reject them after sex whereas other men are more tolerable with them. Even better, after all the female heist team members tell him that women have various sexual advantages against men, most of the male robbers except the Professor and Marseille join Palermo in a "boom, boom, ciao" chant; bear in mind that only Helsinki is also gay like Palermo, while Denver and Bogota are straight.
- In one of the flashbacks from "Aikido", Mónica accusing Denver of being sexist when the latter tells her that it's best for her to stay at the Italian countryhouse during the heist out of his concerns for her safety and Cincinnati's health initially starts off as a depressing moment presented as an event Denver has regretted ever since it happened, but it eventually gets more and more tense with more robbers joining on the arguing until it eventually erupts into a big, chaotic debate wherein both Denver and Palermo are accused of being sexist (the latter being genuine compared to the former) and everyone is yelling their own cents on the matter uncontrollably. The cherry on top is Nairobi yelling "ME AND MY COCK, MY COCK AND I, ME AND MY COCK-" in the middle of it all.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Benjamín, Manila's father. He became a fan favorite throughout seasons 4 and 5 for being surprisingly useful to the Professor despite being in his 70s and relatively frail looking. Also, there is something really funny about seeing an otherwise sweet old man preparing himself for a gun fight without losing his good manners (which is a bit of a stock character in Spanish action comedies, but relatively fresh to international audiences). Also, bonus points for being completely supportive to his daughter's transition.
- Fan Nickname: As a member of the heist team's auxiliary, Benjamín has no proper codename and is thus only referred to by his actual name in the series itself. However, as soon as he debuted in Season 4, fans were quick to adopt the nickname of "Logroño" for him, which Sierra originally gave him out of confusion when she first sees him and wonders what codename he supposedly has. It eventually became an Ascended Fan Nickname, as Benjamín's character poster for Season 5 labeled him as "Logroño".
- Foe Yay Shipping: Berlin and Nairobi argue often and despise each other, but they form a pretty popular ship under the name of "Berlobi". Their heartwarming moment in the Season 2 finale before Berlin's sacrifice mostly contributed to this.
- Franchise Original Sin: One of the aspects of Season 4's story most glared at by fans is Gandía's apparent capability to avoid and/or survive the hundreds of bullets that the heist team shoots at him during their gunfights, practically feeling the vibe of Plot Armor given to Gandía so that he can persist as an Arc Villain throughout the season and be eventually taken down in a non-lethal manner in the end. At that point in the series, characters being able to dodge and/or survive barrages of bullets aimed at them was nothing new to Money Heist, as the previous seasons have featured a diverse range of firearm and armor-related inaccuracies during shootouts (plus several other forms of Artistic License regarding weaponry in general), such as the big presence of Made of Iron for armored characters and Concealment Equals Cover for shields and objects characters conceal themselves behind. The key reason these blatant inaccuracies hardly received any notable criticism was because neither the target audience(s) nor the series' production crew have much professional knowledge about the specifics on how firearms and armor actually work, and the fact that the shootouts mainly involved multiple people on both the robbers' side and the antagonistic sides at least helped give them a certain sense of realism. By contrast, the Season 4 shootouts involving Gandía consist of him, a single person, fighting most of the robbers, who amounted to 8 active people in total (not counting Gandía's personal hostage, Nairobi), and for the most part Gandía gets away unscathed while some of the robbers get injured; it's not until Tokyo turns the tables on Gandía that he begins facing losses up to the robbers catching him for once. Due to this, many fans think the fights against Gandía are too unrealistic even for the series' standards, as they argue that not even an established One-Man Army like Gandía would be able to easily survive on his own against 8 robbers constantly firing tons of bullets at him.
- Friendly Fandoms: Fans of Money Heist get along well with fans of Squid Game, due to both series being Netflix's two most popular non-English shows with similar criminal settings and themes of political and socioeconomic commentary, as well as the frequent comparisons between the Money Heist robbers and hostages' uniforms and those of the Squid Game guards. It helps that Park Hae-soo, the actor of Cho Sang-woo from Squid Game, would later play Berlin in Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area, even giving the original Berlin's actor, Pedro Alonso, a special thanks upon Park's casting announcement.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
- The show aired in Spain in 2017 on Antena 3, and it had very high audience ratings in the early episodes. However, due to various storyline and production-related factors, ratings declined as the series progressed, and Antena 3 ended up considering the show a failure, ready to cancel the show with the end of Season 2. The show's rights were then purchased by Netflix, which included it in its international programming, and it ended up becoming a smash hit in the US, Canada and Latin America, which in turn green-lighted the second heist's storyline. In fact, Season 4, the series' overall peak in views (with a total of 105 million views as of January 2025), was the most-viewed season of any non-English show on Netflix when it came out, until Season 1 of Squid Game surpassed it with more than double the amount of views to become the entire streaming service's most watched season.
- It's also significant that the show's harshest critics tend to be Spaniards, who consider the show overall overrated. Some are baffled that of all Spanish shows, Money Heist is the one that got to become a worldwide hit, arguing that it's far from being the best the country has to offer in terms of TV shows.
- The country were the show seems to have had its biggest success is actually India. It had the largest audience share second only to Spain itself, and the biggest audience in raw numbers. So much that India is pretty much the only non-Spanish speaking country Netflix has created videos
specifically
for
, each one with view counts in the millions. - Italy loves this show, especially due to the references to Italian Resistance, as well as Berlin singing three Italian songs, including "Bella Ciao". It helps that Berlin is probably the most popular character among Italian viewers.
- Arturo's actor, Enrique Arce, has given a shout-out to the Filipinos who viewed the show.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: In the only Professor's lesson flashback from "A Matter of Efficiency", the Professor starts giving the robbers an idea of Plan Cameroon by proposing a hypothetical situation of a soccer match between Brazil and Cameroon, and asks which country they'd be rooting for, with Moscow, Nairobi and Denver all replying that they'd side with Cameroon. Six years later, the Berlin spin-off premiered, and Berlin's heist team from said series features a Sixth Ranger woman codenamed Cameroon.
- Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Arturo is easily the most hated character on the show for being a selfish, slimy, perverted jerk, and eventually raping Amanda (one of the most innocent hostages) in Season 4. He gets much more hate than Gandía, the Arc Villain of the same season who, on top of being a bigot, is willing to torture and kill the robbers. Some fans give Gandía the Draco in Leather Pants treatment and claim he's just doing his job to stop the heist team, even if Gandía is clearly sadistic and kills Nairobi for his own amusement. There's also the fact that Gandía is a pretty badass One-Man Army, while Arturo is a pathetic Dirty Coward who manipulates the other hostages into doing things for him.
- Memetic Loser: Arturo is already the series' main Hate Sink, but the fandom loves to exaggerate him into an absolute moronic Jerkass who can't do anything correctly or courteously, owed to his jerkassery, idiocy and annoyance for the audience growing as the series progresses and eventually reaching its zenith in Seasons 4 and 5, with the former season having Arturo rape Amanda and later try to do the same with Manila, and the first few episodes of the latter involving him trying to start a hostage revolt against the robbers by taking control of their weaponry, only to recklessly use their weaponry without approaching their best efficiency/strategy, and eventually getting himself just a step shy of death. Much of the time, fans tend to ignore his competence and redeeming qualities in the earlier seasons, such as his concern for Mónica's life (which is genuine, if only a bit twisted due to the fact that he constantly tries to use her for his schemes whenever she's not at risk of death, much to Mónica's own hesitation) and the fact he had successfully planned a stunt to free a chunk of the Mint's hostages in Season 1, and latter almost succeeded in escaping with the remaining hostages in Season 2's "A Matter of Efficiency" (even getting close to killing Denver in the process as a last-resort measure over Rio locking the entrance). Most of the jokes fans make at Arturo's expense picture him as an idiotic scumbag whose only legitimate competence is his capability to rape vulnerable women (with emphasis on vulnerable), and hardly any fans will joke about the ups Arturo had in the earlier part of the series, at most only mentioning them as a way of indicating a transition of both his character and performance getting worse and worse. Even Netflix's YouTube channel for Spain seems to have gotten in on this treatment, as it has uploaded several clip compilations dedicated to mocking Arturo (such as these
two
examples). - Memetic Mutation:
- Original "La Casa de Papel" title vs. translated "Money Heist" titleExplanation
- Arguing/voting with gunsExplanation
- Memes dedicated to hating/mocking ArturoExplanation
- Shortly after Squid Game's premiere, viewers of that show have compared the uniforms worn by the Guards of that series to characters and outfits in other popular media at the time, among them being Money Heist's signature Dali costumes.
- Mind Game Ship:
- In the first heist, the Professor and Raquel, due to their Battle of Wits.
- In the second heist, Sierra, who manages outsmart the Professor and Raquel, has been shipped with the latter in a Foil dynamic.
- Moral Event Horizon: Season 4 has two cases:
- Gandia crosses it when he unrepentantly kills Nairobi, this after putting her through a humilliating ordeal that involved torturing her while convalescent from an operation that managed to save her life earlier in the season.
- As if it were even possible, Arturo sinks to a new low not only when he offers Amanda pills to help her anxiety and rapes her while she's under the pills' effects, but also when he later tries to pull the same stunt with Manila.
- Obscure Popularity: Following its acquisition by Netflix, Money Heist gained some mainstream recognition for its instant popularity in the Americas, making it Netflix's first non-English-language series to have a viewership on par with Netflix's most popular English-language shows at the time, such as BoJack Horseman and Stranger Things. Despite its large viewership and decently-sized dedicated fanbase that's active on social media, however, the series is hardly, if ever, actually talked about by most mainstream outlets aside from its release date announcements, and even Netflix users outside the fanbase and Internet places outside of social media rarely discuss anything about the show beyond its iconic "Salvador Dalí jumpsuits", its tributes from musicians, and its status as Netflix's most popular non-English series during the late 2010s and early 2020s; even then, that status was later usurped by Squid Game, which ended up having a much larger mainstream popularity after becoming Netflix's most viewed series overall. Not even its Korean remake received much attention despite it sharing a handful of actors and crew members with Squid Game, the rising trend of South Korean media earning international acclaim, and the Friendly Fandoms between Money Heist and Squid Game.
- Padding: The pre-Mint heist flashback of Berlin and Moscow arguing over the latter defecating at the Toledo countryhouse's bathroom during noon from Season 3's "Boom, Boom, Ciao". It's a scene focusing on two characters that had died in the last couple episodes of Season 2, which unexpectedly appears between a police tent scene and a Bank scene in the middle part of the episode, and unlike most other flashbacks with Berlin in Season 3, has no relation to ongoing events in the present storyline. To some fans, it feels like a Deleted Scene from the first two seasons that was lumped in as part of a Season 3 episode just to ensure that said episode has the season's consistent average episode runtime of 45-50 minutes. Said fans also think that the scene was seemingly added to the episode not only to incorporate Berlin in an episode where he's otherwise completely absent, but also give Moscow (who, unlike Berlin, has no notable relevance in the big picture of Season 3's story whatsoever) some plot-irrelevant screentime in the season.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Tokyo was one of the most divisive characters in the first three seasons due to being The Millstone, but later episodes gave her Character Development and her Dying Moment of Awesome was one of the saddest moments of the show.
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: Arturo might be a disgusting and selfish human being, but he starts off the series with significant redeeming qualities. Plus, his plans to try to stop the heist team in the first heist can be considered genuinely heroic, especially since he's the one of the only few hostages in said heist who actually tries to fight against the group. He loses this status come Season 3 however, where it's laid out clear how much of a selfish jackass he truly is.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: A minor example with Raquel's daughter Paula, who flat-out refuses to believe that her father is a bad man who hurt her mother. While this childish naivety may have been more believable if Paula were a younger child, she is at least seven or eight years old, and most children that age would definitely notice things going on in their home such as their parents arguing, especially when it happens on a regular basis for more than a year. She may not fully understand what Domestic Abuse is, but would surely be able to notice that something wasn't right.
- Unpopular Popular Character:
- In the first heist, Berlin is hated by almost everyone in-universe (except the Professor), is the Token Evil Teammate and The Friend Nobody Likes among the heist team, and falls for a woman who finds him repulsing. Many fans, on the other hand, love him for being a smart and charming Cultured Badass, especially as the later seasons' flashbacks explored his past with large detail. By the end of the series, he was popular enough for an upcoming spin-off centered around him to be greenlit.
- Colonel Tamayo is portrayed in-universe as one of the most morally bankrupt antagonists of the show, particularly because of his disposition to use under-handed tactics and even ignoring Spanish law or police/military protocol as if it was his prerogative, and he's constantly called out by people on his side. As a character, however, he's pretty popular among audiences due to his cutting sarcasm and Fernando Cayo's impeccable acting, which makes him very entertaining to watch.
