YMMV / Monster Hunter: World

Tropes A-E

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Bazelgeuse's method of attacking can sometimes look less like a B-52 Bomber and more like a bird dropping... something else.
  • Additionally, plenty of people unfamiliar with Barroth from previous games think he's flinging something other than mud.
  • When are Nergigante's thorns signalling that he's going to do his infamous divebomb? When they're Long, Black, and Hard.
  • What does the Handler tell you about weakening Kulve Taroth's golden mantle? Beat/shoot her chest. Then you proceed to strip her of her mantle.
  • The Iceborne expansion introduces a Lethal Joke Item called the Juicy Well-Done Hammer, which is a Hammer made to look like a Well-Done Steak. In this case, it's the meat that beats you.
• Americans Hate Tingle: The Handler is very popular in Japan for her cute quirks, but Westerners have a less forgiving attitude toward her propensity for running headlong into danger. She doesn't tend to be quite The Scrappy, as she does know when to fold 'em and actually is smart once she realizes things have gotten dangerous, but she tends to lose a lot a sympathy when the player character is the only reason she's still alive after rushing headfirst into a dangerous area.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Palicoes are still at this, even after all these years. While the main ''Monster Hunter'' YMMV page complains about their attempts to knock a hunter out of stun, the issue in World is exactly the opposite. While equipped with most gadgets, they will often quite competently slap the sense into a stunned hunter... but if they're equipped with the Coral Orchestra gadget then you are so out of luck. The Orchestra does grant the useful Negate Stun buff if your Palico remembers to use it, but if it drops off (or was never applied) and you're stunned as a result then your Palico will often run right up to you or dig their way there... and then proceed to try and apply Negate Stun, which takes longer than it would to slap a stunned hunter. However, this appears to have been at least partly corrected as of Iceborne, where your Palico is MUCH more likely to smack you out of stun than previously.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The final battle with Zorah Magdaros has become infamous for being 15 minutes of attacking rocks and loading cannons. Granted, you're not trying to kill the poor thing, but it is still considered a resounding disappointment. The Arch-Tempered version is at least more involved. ^note 25 minute time limit, Zorah deals much more damage to the barrier, and Nergigante will not leave on its own.
  • The mystery final boss, Xeno'jiiva, also is this for a lot of hunters, but that's more because anyone who gets to it had to be forged in the fires of Nergigante and Teostra first. Compared to the other late-game monsters, Mystery Monster is enormous, but if anything this makes it easier to get around and to hit (especially for Insect Glaive users) and it's rather bad about using its bulk to try and punish you outside of a few very heavily telegraphed attacks, usually preferring to try and use Slow Lasers instead (which aren't too difficult to dodge). Having no elemental weakness but conversely no elemental resistance also doesn't help, along with having very large and easy-to-hit weak spots, and simply has a ton of HP to drags things out. There is some story justification for this, given that it's implied - then confirmed in Iceborne - to be an infant. The Arch-Tempered version significantly ups the difficulty, not just with its massive HP and a shorter time limit but with having multiple new attacks and additions to its older ones.
  • Your first fight against Ruiner Nergigante at the end of Iceborne's main storyline was a preview for what's to come when you are allowed to fight it again at Master Rank 99, which can take weeks to grind for (or one very agonizing day, if you know what you're doing.) Alas, by the time you reach that rank, you've likely fought significantly tougher opponents, especially with free title update monsters like Raging Brachydios, Furious Rajang, Safi'jiiva, and Alatreon; these are fights that are clearly designed for people who are skilled enough to tackle Tempered and Arch-Tempered monsters, yet their entry requirement is a lowly MR 24, which is only a few ranks gained after clearing Iceborne's story and far below what you'd expect for assignments that take place in the grueling Guiding Lands. In comparison, Ruiner Nergigante is only accessible for hunting after reaching MR 99, and the fight proper is the same as the one fought before Iceborne's final boss, only with more HP. This is even moreso the case if you fought and defeated Fatalis beforehand, as you'll then have access to the single strongest set of equipment in the game to make mincemeat out of a foe that was likely already within your capabilities by the time you defeated Shara Ishvalda.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The Handler does have a few fans in Western countries, but she isn't nearly as liked as she is in Japan. This is mostly to do with the differences between how Leeroy Jenkins behavior is perceived, which in the West is usually seen as irritating, or even worse.
  • Anjanath is either loved for being a badass fire-breathing semi-realistic T. Rexpy and a cool choice for an early-game big boss, or hated for its frustrating boss battle and underwhelming power and uninspired design compared to previous T. rex monsters such as Deviljho. A common criticism of the monster is that it shares many characteristics with Glavenus without having any of the unique aspects that made Glavenus so memorable, which became even more glaring when that monster returned in Iceborne.
  • Is Lunastra a perfect challenge that forces players to stop going Glass Cannon, or an exercise in frustration even with defensive skills equipped? No one can really agree.
  • Kushala Daora. A reasonable challenge that just requires you to swap to a ranged weapon, and thus, a fair challenge, or complete bullshit because of it?
  • Bazelgeuse is either cooler than Deviljho, equally as cool, or a lot more annoying as an invading monster.
  • Kulve Taroth, Behemoth, Ancient Leshen and Safi'jiiva. Monster Hunter has always had a multiplayer aspect to it even while allowing solo players access to all substantial content if they wish to earn it on their own, but a solo siege of Kulve Taroth and Safi'jiiva can take upwards of hours, while Behemoth and Ancient Leshen are both actively balanced around being fought by a group. Some take issue that these three monsters all hold some of the most powerful and useful gear in the game and the time commitment or difficulty of the solo fights makes them outright unfair, while others contend that their uniqueness and the transitioning of the franchise justifies their existence.
  • Arch Tempered Elder Dragons event quests are all over the spectrum depending on the quest. They're either seen as fun and rewarding challenge to endgame players or a bad case of artificial difficulty whose changes do nothing but make the fight more frustrating and serve as filler.
  • From a lore perspective, Nergigante. Some (particularly fans of previous titles) take issue with its theme, particularly when its opponents in turf wars don't make full use of their unique abilities, simply bum-rushing a creature who specializes in physical brawling. ^note Compounding that is that the inclusion of Elderseal led to Capcom getting rid of the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors dynamic between Kushala Daora, Teostra, and Chameleos (and even just completely throw out Chameleos entirely), which fundamentally changed the nature of the Kushala fight and elevated it to becoming a Goddamned Boss. Others will argue that Nergigante still takes significant damage in all of its turf wars, and offscreen the regular variant had been failing to successfully hunt in spite of being an invasive species that the native Elder Dragons are unfamiliar with. At the same time, these setbacks undermine Nergigante's reputation as The Dreaded to critics, and the in-game claims that it served as a "reactionary force" against Elder Dragons disrupting the environment flies in the face of Nergigante interfering with efforts to repel the dying Zorah Magdaros, who would have destroyed the entire New World if not driven away, although Iceborne shows this claim in action when Ruiner Nergigante kills the Not Quite Dead Final Boss. It also raises the question why it never responded to the serious ecological near-disasters in previous titles.
  • The revamped Alatreon is either a fair but challenging boss fight, with the race to nullify its Escaton Judgement via elemental damage being a rewarding mechanic; or it's Fake Difficulty incarnate, with the aforementioned gimmick on top of Alatreon's relentless attacks making it nothing more than a crock of shit; or it's a fight that averts the usual Scrappy Mechanic components of previous high-end fights (most notably tremors and wind pressure) while providing many clean hitboxes... and then ruins all earned goodwill with an unfair DPS check that was not asked for nor needed.
• Breather Boss:
  • Of the Low Rank monsters required for Assignments, Radobaan is fairly easy due to it being a weaker Uragaan with no major gimmicks and easily breakable armor, and it never goes into the hazardous lower areas of the Rotten Vale. It's also the last monster you face before you start getting quests to fight the apex monsters of each region that cap off Low Rank.
  • Both of the Zorah Magdaros fights qualify; the first time, you just fought your first Anjanath (who is your introduction to truly dangerous big critters and a major wall for new players) and the second time, you're hot off of fighting Rathalos and Diablos, the two biggest threats in low rank. Zorah, meanwhile, involves shooting him with some cannons, running around breaking rocks on his back, and having a few token exhibition fights with Nergi. The first one is completely scripted, and even the second is hard to lose so long as you have a pulse. Hell, you can even IGNORE IT COMPLETELY in favor of going around and breaking more Magma Cores and the like, in which it will simply just stand there for a few minutes before flying away, which is a godsend for solo players and a huge convenience for groups.
  • Upon entering High Rank, the first monster the player has to hunt is a lowly Pukei-Pukei. While the huge jump in stats it gets can be startling, it behaves just like it did in Low Rank and anyone with enough experience fighting it can beat it with a Low Rank loadout. The next High Rank monster you're required to hunt for an Assignment (after you finish tracking Pink Rathian)? Anjanath.
• Broken Base:
  • Is there enough endgame content in the base game? Is the amount of monsters on launch acceptable? Some say it's okay since not only is World using a new engine requiring everything to be done from scratch, while others point out that Capcom is a big company and should have the funds to hire more people to help add in new models. The Iceborne expansion seems to address this problem.
  • The Earplugs ability. No one will tell you the skill is worthless, but there is contention over whether it's worth the cost to have higher level versions of the skill. Some argue that it's wiser to practice rolling through roars so you can concentrate on damage-increasing abilities, while others feel that perfectly dodging roars is too difficult and that being able to simply ignore them is worth it.
  • Whether or not G-Rank should have been added to the game from the start instead of coming with the expansion is this. Some argue that it's series tradition that G-Rank doesn't come in the first game of a new generation. Other say that sticking to tradition has robbed World of a more meaningful endgame.
  • There's been a heated debate on whether end-game hunters should use end-game gear to help Low/High Rank SOS. Does it rob the SOS sender the challenge of a fair fight if someone comes in and demolishes the monster in 1-3 minutes flat? Or does using an SOS mean they want to trump the monster, challenge be damned? This mostly counts for Assignments and not Optionals, Investigations, etc.
  • Alatreon's Escaton Judgment is either a well-designed mechanic that is easy to manage using the right weapons or a poorly-designed DPS check that severely limits the weapons that are allowed to be used.
  • In fact, DPS checks and connecting them to quest failures in general. Extreme Behemoth, Alatreon, and Safi'Jiiva all sport area-wide moves that, at least at one point in the fight, will require inflicting sufficient damage on it in order to provide a means of survival. Kulve Taroth, in both the High- and Master-rank hunts, has a misleading mission timer that does not accurately reflect the fact the Elder Dragon will simply leave if in any phase you do not damage it sufficiently enough. And in Fatalis's final phase, unless its horns are at least partially broken, its fire attacks will all be insta-kills even with defense and elemental resistances pushed to their absolute peak.
  • Are the truncated time limits for the Fatalis and Arch-Tempered Velkhana fights justified in providing extra challenge that don't get in the way of succeeding or failing hunts? Or are they another layer of artificial difficulty that punish players for not having as optimized of a build as possible?
  • This game's take on Event Quests. Some like the improved production values such as crossover monsters and decorated hubs, as opposed to just hunting existing monsters that are somewhat related to the theme or the work being crossed over so that one can get armor and weapons related to that work. Others, particularly those coming from previous generations, were stymied by the events being time-gated and strictly requiring online access. Fortunately, every event quest later became permanently-available at all times (with a few exceptions due to copyright terms ending), while the various siege quests/Gathering Hub events would regularly rotate.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • For those who disliked fighting Dalamadur in 4 and 4U, the Rotten Vale can be an oddly pleasant sight, since it's mostly made up of the monster's corpse.
  • Is there a certain monster you don't like? Thanks to the turf war mechanic, some monsters suffer The Worf Effect, one such example is Rathalos beating the shit out of Anjanath.
  • Those who really hate Deviljho finally got this when The Greatest Jagras showed up - not only could this overgrown Warm-Up Boss beat the stuffing out of Jho, the World Eater actively tries to run away from the fanged wyvern. And in Iceborne, Yian Garuga knocks the Brute Wyvern to the ground with a tail slap.
    • On the flip side, those that hate Yian Garuga for constantly tormenting Yian Kut-Ku and being an annoying monster to hunt (mainly in previous generations) celebrated when the Bird Wyvern gets defeated easily by Rajang.
  • Special mention goes to Kirin. Kirin is infamous for being a pain in the neck to players in vanilla ''World'' because of HR49. It's very satisfying to some players to see it not only get effectively owned in a cutscene by Rajang, but also always lose its turf war in such a brutal fashion to the Fanged Beast.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Has its own page
• Contested Sequel:
  • The game has been praised far and wide for dramatically streamlining the more clunky elements of the series and having the most beautiful visuals of any Monster Hunter game to date, to the point where it's hard to go back to old/"traditional" MonHun games. On the other hand, however, it does have its critics, who feel that the game doesn't offer enough in terms of monster variety (while more monsters were added over time, this has led to accusations that World was released as an incomplete game), has a lackluster endgame, makes event quests a hassle by making them and their rewards time-limited, and makes things a little too simplified. As such, Iceborne addresses many of the aforementioned complaints, including higher difficulty and a large number of returning monsters.
  • Furthermore, World is exclusively for home consoles and PCs; while this does mean that the game is designed around much more powerful hardware thus allowing it to do things that the Switch, much less the 3DS, cannot, for many longtime fans, a big part of the appeal is meeting up with friends in person to play; while the game can be played handheld via a Steam Deck, you still need to connect to online servers for multiplayer. This last one is a much bigger point of contention in Japan, where the series took off because of its prominence on the PSP.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Gajalakas. While they're not too durable, they do a lot of damage for their size AND they can cause some nasty ailments to the player. Thankfully, large monsters are not immune to them either and they're smart enough to know large monsters are a bigger threat to them than hunters when both are present. Of course if you're between a downed monster and Gajalaka you're likely to get hit in the crossfire.
  • The basic Jagras summoned by the Ancient Leshen become this in the second The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt crossover event mission. Not only do they have ridiculously more health than usual, but the Ancient Leshen can also mark a player, causing the Jagras to relentlessly attack them, forcing the unlucky player to divide their attention between both the Leshen and the pack before they get swarmed. To make matters worse, unlike normal Jagras who will flee after a few of them are killed, these ones will not let up until you've slain all of them.
  • Bazelgeuese in High Rank quests is an invading monster that actively intervenes whenever a player has engaged in a fight against another large monster ^note Bazelgeuese are programmed to automatically follow any monsters that roars and their relentless bombing will almost always give the player an uneeded amount of interference and trouble to the point that players are forced to carry Dung Pods just to to deal with the Bombing monster. Fortunately in Iceborne, they are only found in Elder's Recess and they don't actively invade a player's hunts even if they're on the map.
  • Banbaro in Iceborne. It's one of the weaker monsters in Master Rank, so it wouldn't be a big deal, right? Think again. This dino-moose is huge, aggressive when encountering other monsters (otherwise it's docile until damaged), and hits like a truck, with charge attacks that deal huge damage and knockback. But the kicker is that it will show up in every map at some point and doesn't just keep to itself; it's all to happy to crash your hunts a la Deviljho or Bazelgeuse and either waste your valuable hunting time or cart you outright. Hope you remembered to pack Dung Pods.
  • Due to it's unique mechanics, a few monsters that normally wouldn't be this are such in the Guiding Lands, because they can potentially appear in all (or nearly-all) regions instead of just one or two, taking up room for the monsters you actually wish to fight if you don't have lures on hand. Namely Tigrex, Ebony Odogaron, Banbaro, Fulgur Anjanath, and those on an Elder Dragon level or similar include Velkhana, Savage Deviljho, and Ruiner Nergigante.
• Difficulty Spike: Master Rank in Iceborne. To put it simply, bog-standard Master alloy armor has nearly double the defense of fully-upgraded armor from World's Final Boss, and you'll quickly find that you'll need it/better stuff soon; there's a good reason your first three Master Rank quests can all be done in Expedition mode.
  • Generally, Master Rank monsters have this scaling resistance to repeated usage of certain items, such as Shock Traps, Flash Pods, and more - if you use too many in a short span, the window that they're affected by them gets progressively lower until they become (psuedo-)immune for a time. This also applies to Hunter-inflicted effects like stun, tripping, and mounts, if to a lesser degree.
  • The last main story mission of Iceborne pits you against two consecutive Elder Dragon threats rather than one, though the first does go down relatively quicker than you'd expect, because despite 'slaying' it, Ruiner Nergigante is only hurt badly and comes back after you beat Shara Ishvalda to kill it. Best come prepared with as many healing items as possible, and don't waste too many on the first boss, because otherwise you're gonna be in trouble.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Hub Lass, despite not having an impact on the story, is well-liked - particularly by Western fans - due to being professional and attractive.
  • Fans were immediately taken with Yian Kut-Ku's new cousin, Kulu-Ya-Ku, due to its adorable, yet funny dodo-like design and goofy mannerisms involving the rocks it's fond of digging up.
  • The Great Jagras, despite being a Warm-Up Boss along the lines of Great Jaggi or Velocidrome, quickly gained infamy for its habit of swallowing entire monsters whole and looking appropriately bloated as a result, leading to a flurry of vore-related memes about it.
  • Tobi-Kadachi immediately garnered fans upon its reveal due to its unique snake-ferret design, its flying squirrel-esque flight, and for being a new Fanged Wyvern. All in spite of appearing for about six seconds in its reveal trailer.
  • Great Girros quickly became loved after release due to its ability to paralyze other large monsters, which made it a Helpful Mook for many, as well as its awesome-looking Plague Doctor armor set.
  • Likewise, Tzitzi-Ya-Ku is a favorite among hunters tackling Legiana or Paolumu due to their habit of turning up out of nowhere seemingly just to flash the flying monster out of the sky.
  • Dodogama also has its own share of fans due to its comical appearance, especially compared to its much fiercer neighbors in the Elder's Recess. It also helps that it's not aggressive, happy to eat rocks instead of picking a fight with players.
  • Odogaron thanks to being a terrifying badass hellhound, and a source of one of the most popular armor sets visually on both males and females. It doesn't hurt that said armor is quite good before going in to fight the stronger threats.
  • Among the endemic lives, the Wiggler is very popular in the Pixiv community thanks to the Wiggler Head Alpha headgear: a goofy, wiggling headgear that makes several items to affect nearby allies via the Wide-Range skill. It's also adorable.
  • Paratoads, another endemic creature, is popular for its ability to paralyze (most) large monsters. A well-timed kick on a yellow boi is sometimes all it takes to turn a bad hunt around.
  • Pukei-Pukei picked up a lot of fans after the Witcher III crossover event both for the efforts taken in keeping it alive in the mission, and the intelligence it shows in trying to thank Geralt afterwards, more than any non-Lynian monster in the entire series. To the point that many players have stopped slaying them or hunting them altogether.
  • The Serious Handler became this in Iceborne - including for those who don't like the Handler - after a short segment early in the story, when she temporarily takes over Handling duties while your Handler goes off searching with the Tracker. She even has her own animations for things like the Steamworks and cooking at the campsite. A lot of players are fond of her smart, coolly professional personality.
  • Namielle earned quite a few fans, not only for it's insanely awesome design, but also for being one of the few water themed elder dragons.
  • Thanks to being an adorable, lovable grandma cat with a spitfire attitude and a heartwarmingly adorable cooking animation, Grammeowster Chef was a hit with fans when Iceborne dropped.
  • The Zinogre has been a fan favorite in the series for a long time, and that fact was cemented with the "A Farewell to Zinogre" event, which states outright that it was the most hunted monster in Iceborne. This is especially notable because it can only be faced after the main story is completed, meaning it managed to beat out everything else despite having a steep barrier to entry.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • While not actually evil, the Eater of Elders, Nergigante, consistently offers an extremely violent fight all around, making it very memorable. This opinion only reinforced itself in Iceborne, where the stronger Ruiner Nergigante would emerge as an Anti-Hero who saves the protagonist twice over by personally taking care of the threat.
  • Similarly, the vanilla Final Boss, Xeno'jiiva, is more overtly harmful to the environment than Nergigante, and boasts a very visually stunning design and boss fight. It's also a cool concept in general, being a godlike and otherworldly take on the classic, mythological fire-breathing dragon.
  • Iceborne's Final Boss, Shara Ishvalda, at first appears to be a giant rock creature, until they fall away to reveal this creepily-awesome, Hindu demon-like Draconic Abomination. Between its physical features suggesting that it may actually be part plant, wings that resemble multi-armed deities, unique ability to use sonic vibrations to manipulate the earth, and its eyes tracking the player rather than the Hunter, this Elder Dragon made quite an impression on many players.
  • The Red Dragon Safi'jiiva is quickly becoming one of the most popular Generation 5 monsters introduced thanks to its absolutely terrifying appearance and lore, resemblance to Grigori and Smaug, breathtaking Leitmotif, and the sheer difficulty of its siege fight. Most fans acknowledge the irony in a mundane-looking red dragon (evolved from the more alien-looking Xeno'jiiva, no less) being one of the scariest and most powerful antagonists in the franchise, though there was a precedent with Fatalis.
  • Alatreon returns stronger and meaner than ever. If its introductory cutscene (read: showing off its power over ice and fire and laying waste to Safi'jiiva's now-vacant lair) didn't tip you off, you are in for the fight of your life against a natural disaster who keeps chugging one elemental attack after another.
  • After the Serial Escalation that started with Safi'jiiva and Alatreon, it's only fitting that Iceborne, and by extension World, would conclude its title update with an overhaul of the OG Final Boss, the Black Dragon Fatalis, who graces the battlefield with the greatest show of firepower and savagery one can ask for.

Tropes F-M

• Fandom Rivalry: With the announcement of Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate finally being localized, the classic "Nintendo vs Sony" wars came back, with certain people saying they would drop World for GU. Others refuse to touch GU due to what they perceive to be a massive downgrade due to missing a lot of World's refinements and visuals.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Bazelgeuse has been nicknamed "The B-52" due to its habit of suddenly showing up and carpet bombing you during high rank hunts. ^note Hilariously, Bazelgeuse landed in exactly 52th place during Capcom's 2024 Monster Rankings. Also, Beetlejuice on account of its name being very similar to Betelgeuse, which Beetlejuice is a corruption of, and the equally hilarious "Bagel Goose". It's also known as the "minecone" due to its explosive scales making it rather resemble a pinecone.
  • "Meat Dog" for Odogaron, because of its wolf-like howls and canine-like body shape, as well as its appearance resembling exposed muscle. Also, Clifford.
  • "Paparaptzi" for the Tzitzi-Ya-Ku, because it's a raptor with the ability to blind you (or an Odogaron or such out for your blood) with a flash, similar to the blinding flash from a paparazzi photographer's camera.
  • "Swolecat" for the Meowscular Chef who runs the canteen in World, for just how meowscular and GAINS obsessed he is.
  • Nergigante is "Spiky Boi" for obvious reasons. Additionally, its infamous move where it flies up and slams downward with a massive Hitbox Dissonance is commonly called the "Pepega Slam", and Tempered Ruiner Nergigante reprises the move when fought much later in Iceborne.
  • "Eyeball" for the Handler, due to her repeatedly greeting the Hunter (in Japanese) with "Aibō!".
  • The Temporal Mantle added in the Version 4.0 update was dubbed the "Ultra Instinct Mantle" since it makes your character reflexively dodge powerful attacks.
  • The Grammeowster Chef in Seliana is lovingly referred to as "Babushcat."
  • World: Iceborne's version of Savage Deviljho is sometimes called "Devilbro" for its penchant to target other monsters and not the players, often helping the latter actually finish their hunts.
  • The base game is sometimes jokingly, sometimes dismissively called "Oops! All Wyverns"^note After the "Oops! All Berries" version of Cap'n Crunch cereal due to having only reptilian and avian wyverns and Elder Dragons for large monsters (save for the Stra duo, added a year after release). Iceborn added a lot of non-wyvern enemies, as well as more wyverns with mammalian designs.
  • The Garuga Greaves Beta+ are affectionately referred to as the "Purple Panties" or "Garuga Panties", due to the leg piece essentially being just that and some leg armor on female hunters. They've also been called the "Meta Panties" since they were frequently featured in metagame builds.
  • The mysterious new Elder Dragon first teased as part of the Stygian Zinogre trailer was given the nickname "Jeff," long before its actual name of Safi'jiiva was revealed.
  • With Iceborne, the Rocksteady Mantle was given the unfortunate nickname of "Suicide Mantle", since removing hitstun and knockdowns (which most players use to check their HP and see if they need to heal) is a very bad idea in Master Rank, where most monsters can cart even a well-armored Hunter in 3 or 4 big attacks — and it's even worse if you're using the Clutch Claw. Alternatively, some have also taken to calling it "Cartsteady Mantle"
• Fridge Logic: The claim that Nergigante instinctively preserves the ecosystem by killing monsters that threaten the natural balance has gotten sidelong glances from some players. Even if you believe it's simply a New World monster hunting only New World threats, it does make you wonder if it tried to do anything to stop the earlier Old World threats, like Fatalis or Gogmazios.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Slicing shots made nearly any other ammo type irrelevant on release. They are fast with a huge hitbox, incredibly accurate, deal a ton of consistent and focused damage, ignore critical distance and deal max damage at any range, sever tails ridiculously quickly, and can stunlock very easily. Their only downside is that careless gunners can trip other players incredibly easily due to Slicing shots' large hitboxes, and that's negated in singleplayer. As such, virtually every Heavy Bowgunner used Slicing shots. This was such a breaker, in fact, that Slicing got nerfed heavily in an early balance patch (which dropped it down to the mere depths of "really good in the right guns").
  • Spread Ammo, with a bowgun that can use them effectively ^note Destruction's Fusillade HBG, Taroth Assault "Glutton" HBG, or Taroth Blitz "Spread" LBG (Rarity 8), a properly assigned set of skills^note Spread Power Shot + Maximum Might + Attack Boost + Peak Performance + Weakness Exploit, and three Close Range Up mods, can result in a damage output comparable to hitting a monster with a charged Greatsword per shot, without any risk of bouncing off from the monster. If you happen to have Taroth Blitz "Spread" LBG (Rarity 8), you can even plant 3 Wyvernblasts to rack up the damage output even further. Even the most hard-shelled monster can be pelted like a Jagras. Iceborne upped the ante with Safi's Burstcannon which usurps all previous Spread HBGs. Combined with shield mods and defensive skills, it's possible to make a shotgun tank build that can block things as good as a Lance, while still dealing good damage.
  • The Deviljho HBG Dark Devourer is one of the best HBGs in the game, rivaled only by the Taroth Assault "Glutton." Take its enormous base damage, stir in its exceptionally good reload/clip size for cluster and sticky ammo, sprinkle 3 pieces of Xeno'jiva armor to give a chance of not consuming ammo; and you have the recipe for what basically amounts to an extremely high damage ranged hammer in group play and a weapon capable of melting even the highest ranked monsters in literal seconds in solo play. Blindfolded runs are easy to pull off with this beast of a gun.
  • Iceborne introduced automatic reloading for Sticky 3 HBGs^note Solemn Reflection and Rajang Destroyer, these take the ability of the aforementioned Deviljho HBG, and allow them to fire much faster since the auto-reload animation bypasses the recoil.
  • The Nergigante and Vaal Hazak armors are extremely powerful for melee hunters. Their high defense stats allow the player to tank powerful attacks and their built-in healing abilities let the player recover that damage through aggressive play.
    • Both armor sets were dethroned by the Drachen set, especially in tandem with the Gae Bolg insect glaive that it comes with; not only does the armor itself have some very desirable natural skills that increase damage, it gives two good set bonuses, the first of which increases airborne element damage (useful for the insect glaive that it comes with) while the second negates sharpness loss for every critical hit, significantly boosted thanks to the high natural affinity of the weapon. The only downside besides its low fire resistance in a game where many of the strongest monsters employ fire damage is that it requires farming Behemoth, no easy task.
  • Prior to the 3.0 patch, there was "flash-locking". Players discovered that flashing certain flying monsters when they were trying to fly out to another area could get them caught in a loop where they'd try to continually fly out after they recovered from the flash. Players could abuse this to keep them from getting away, forcing to crash to the ground and take massive amounts of damage before they'd try to fly off and get caught in a flash again. This was patched out in the 3.0 patch by making it so that Tempered Monsters could now only be flashed 3 to 4 times before they'd become immune. The same goes with every Master Rank monster in Iceborne.
  • While many skills from previous games were adjusted such that multiple points of it would be required to have the same effect as in the previous games, one skill that wasn't was Fortify, a skill that provides a sizable boost to attack and defense based on how many times you've carted. While further impractical for multiplayer or during investigations that allow for fewer carts, there are literally no penalties using it during expeditions, it can be crafted after defeating the very first boss monster, and later on there are level 1 Fortify Jewels, allowing them to be easily thrown into nearly any set.
    • Notably in Iceborne, most of the progress in its endgame zone, the Guiding Lands, is done entirely through expeditions. While there is a nominal carting penalty like in quests (each death decreases rewards earned at the end of the expedition), this only counts if you faint during combat. You can instead easily cheese Fortify's activation by removing your armor, having a Fortify deco in your weapon, and simply blowing yourself up twice with bombs just outside camp to fully activate Fortify, all before you even start hunting and completely without penalty except the time and items spent.
  • For speedrunners, the Bow as a class would frequently clock in kill times that were *minutes* faster than any of the other weapon classes, whose differences could be measured in seconds. This is due to the Bow's high damage uptime from being a ranged weapon, combined with the fact that its max level charges would do similar damage as the strongest spread heavy bowguns, and the fact that the bow has incredible mobility that exceeds even light bowguns, means the weapon class far outstripped all but the most powerful of heavy bowguns. For certain match-ups the bow stands alone. Here are the Time Attack times for Extreme Behemoth, touted as the most difficult monster in the game. An expertly played Heavy Bowgun can reach 15 minutes. A solo Bow has recorded a 11 minutes, 37 seconds kill on Extreme Behemoth.
  • Master's Touch, native to Teostra Armor and the above-mentioned Drachen Armor, is more or less the meta-defining skill for Blademasters. It negates sharpness loss when you land a critical hit, which sounds balanced at first...except between augments and skills like Weakness Exploit^note 50% added affinity when striking weakpoints providing large affinity boosts, it is ridiculously easy to achieve 100% affinity with just about any weapon, allowing you to sit on infinite white sharpness and not even think about sharpening while tearing monsters apart.
  • The Cactaurs that now appear in the Wildspire Waste since Behemoth's arrival. Much like the Paratoads and their cousins elsewhere, you can kick them, which causes them to unleash a 1000 Needles attack that can rack up a lot of damage. Add in proper trap placement, and you can use them to kill some monsters outright.
  • In Iceborne, the Loyal Thunder, Zinogre's Heavy Bowgun. It's genuinely a very good heavy bowgun, but what puts it over the top is that it can be equipped with three Shield mods, which combined with the Guard 5 and Guard Up skills, gives it the best shield in the game, equivalent to a Lance's—i.e., completely negates all damage for a modest Stamina cost—all while still doing very good damage. Moreover, it's supremely easy to use, since it automatically blocks attacks as long as you're facing the incoming attack and not doing anything else. Since it also has a fairly quick fire rate, you can easily fire a few times, wait for an attack, sit pretty to block it, and recommence as soon as it's safe.
  • Safi's Burstcannon is what happens when you take the aforementioned Zinogre Heavy Bowgun and give it an extreme array of customization options, with recommended awakening paths being geared towards augmenting the gun's Spread Ammo clip size. With the right decorations, skills and bowgun mods, the Burstcannon can easily shred through most Master Rank top tier threats in record time, making it one the most used weapons for speedrunning.
  • In Iceborne, Furious Rajang's Demonlord Beastbuster. It’s currently the only Heavy Bowgun able to naturally fire Level 3 Sticky ammo with Low recoil, giving it by far the highest damage output with that ammo type. While it won’t do quite as much damage as the Zinogre Heavy Bowgun, it makes up for it with the ability to repeatedly stun monsters, almost to the point where they barely get a chance to fight back given how they’ll often be knocked down as soon as they get back up. And because Sticky ammo ignores hitzone values, even if you don’t hit the monster’s head, you’re still guaranteed to get decent damage with every shot. The only drawback is that you’ll very quickly burn through your supply of Blastnuts unless your Botanical Research is harvesting all the materials you’ll need to craft lots of Sticky ammo.
  • The Alatreon Dominator is easily the best elemental Light Bowgun thanks to the Rapid Fire ability on all elemental ammo types, including Dragon Ammo and its hilariously long chain of piercing damage. Only the PS4-exclusive Adept Stormslinger and Safi's Aquashot gain an edge over it in their respective elements, but there's something to be said about the Dominator's extreme versatility, allowing you to bring it just about everywhere and apply minimal decoration changes for a given element focus. It's also one of the ideal weapons to use against Alatreon in the event that you can't break its horns and are forced to fight it under a different element.
  • Most of Fatalis' weapons are Purposely Overpowered, but one stands above them all; the Vor Buster, Fatalis' Heavy Bowgun. At first glance, it may not seem like anything special; above-average raw damage and a nasty -20% hit to affinity, like all the other Fatalis weapons...but then you see that, aside from elemental, buffing and status ammo, it can run any level of every ammo in the game.^note The Light Bowgun, the Fatalis Depths, is capable of the same feat, but is less widely used due to the Safi's Aquashot doing a better job with the ammo it can run, many of which are shared with the Fatalis Depths. It may not be able to outperform every other Heavy Bowgun build, but the ones that do outclass it are either only good in really niche situations or are meant for elemental builds. The end result is an amazingly flexible Heavy Bowgun that can be fit into just about any Heavy Bowgun builds, especially when combined with Fatalis' armor. It even dethroned the aforementioned Safi's Burstcannon as the premier Spread monster-flaying apparatus! With the right decorations, it can decimate monsters with damn near any type of ammo you want. Also, it can equip four Shield mods (as opposed to the above Loyal Thunder, which can only equip three.) If you wish to forgo raw power in favor of more survivability, you can equip 5 levels of Guard and one level of Guard Up on top of those Shield mods, stop firing whenever the monster tries to attack, watch as the attack bounces harmlessly off your gun, then continue the assault. The only thing that could pose a potential problem is the weapon's high Deviation for Piercing, Normal and Sticky ammo, and high Recoil for Spread ammo, but the right set of modifications will fix that.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The Hub Lass in the Gathering Hub was well received in western countries, despite having a far smaller impact in the story.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Paratoad. Note that the Paratoad isn't inherently hostile, but if interacted with, it sprays a paralyzing gas that has the same effect as a Shock Trap... except it effects anything in its vicinity. That includes both monsters and Hunters, and anything in between, even Elder Dragons. This can cause problems in the middle of a hunt, since you can be in the middle of an intense fight one second, then the next second you're face planted on the ground while the monster is following suit; or managing to time it right and getting the monster paralyzed only for a small misstep causing you to also wind up paralyzed right next to it, wasting any openings that could've been had. The same thing is true for their sleeptoad and nitrotoad cousins, though neither are as ubiquitous (sleep effects are nullifiable with consumable items, and the nitrotoad explosion has a longer delay and doesn't stick around as a cloud like the other two).
  • Anytime you step into water you are almost guaranteed to be hit by the Gajau sooner or later, which might as well be named 'water Bullfango'. Unlike the Bullfango however they have an annoying habit of circling you before charging - and do so from quite a distance - which means if you're busy fighting something else, they'll most likely hit you from off camera.
  • Any hostile small monster, such as Jagras, Girros and Barnos. These monsters stop posing a challenge after the first few missions and only serve to annoy you as you hunt large monsters, and prevent you from fast-traveling. Special mention goes to flyers like the effluvium corrupted Raphinos in the Rotten Vale and the Barnos in the Elder's Recess. Whereas ground-based monsters like Jagras are likely to get hit by (and die from) your weapon swings sooner or later, these flying monsters like to swoop in, knock you over and quickly fly out of reach.
  • Vespoids aren't as actively annoying as the small monsters, being less likely to attack normally. They make up for this with the fact that they can paralyze with one attack, and their willingness to do so while you're fighting a monster (and/or using a whetstone).
  • The Gajalaka in the Kulve Taroth raid quest; they're already obnoxious as it, but unlike the ones found in the main game, these little bastards will interrupt you at the worst possible time.
  • In the Guiding Lands, where only three monsters are allowed at any time, Ebony Odogaron and Fulgur Anjanath are found in every single region. Most of the time, you can expect either one or two of them to appear often over other monsters that you desire to hunt, such as Elder Dragons.
• Goddamned Boss: Anjanath, Paolumu, Bazelgeuse, Lavasioth, Kushala Daora, Vaal Hazak, Lunastra, and Ancient Leshen. Iceborne adds Banbaro, Barioth, Nargacuga, Shrieking Legiana, Acidic Glavenus, Gold Rathian, Silver Rathalos, Ruiner Nergigante, and Alatreon. See this page for more details.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Bazelgeuse's enormous body, wide wingspan, and habit of flying low to the ground means it tends to get stuck in terrain a lot, especially while online.
  • The quest to hunt a tempered Deviljho had a way to reliably get him stuck in the terrain, even after being knocked down, until you beat him, trivializing the quest. Capcom took care of this by moving the quest from the Ancient Forest to the Elder's Recess.
  • The Switch Axe's Zero Sum Discharge allows you to latch onto a monster's body part while attacking. If done on Xeno'jiiva's tail when its tail is severed, you'll latch onto thin air.
  • There was a glitch that allowed you to chain a Super Amped Element Discharge into an Amped Element Discharge, but that was fixed in the 4.0 update.
  • Palico weapons with negative Affinity normally have a chance to deal reduced damage, but instead they're glitched so that they always crit. This would later be fixed with Iceborne's 11.50 patch.
  • Guiding Lands-exclusive monster materials mainly come from special shiny drops. For some reason the Geology skill triggers for these shinies^note Aside from a few odd exceptions, like Great Jagras and Kulu-Ya-Ku, allowing them to be gathered twice. As such it's considered mandatory to have at least one level of Geology when farming Guiding Lands monsters.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Unlocking all of the canteen ingredients is nearly impossible without a guide, as some ingredients can only be unlocked by gathering very rare items that can only appear during an "Upsurge", and in very specific areas to boot.
  • Collecting Brute Tigrex, Silver Rathalos, and Gold Rathian investigations is more involved than other monsters. After raising the correct zone of Guiding Lands to Level 6 (Rotting, Coral, and Wastelands respectively), the monster has a chance of spawning there. The player must then fight and capture the monster to unlock the related Special Arena fight. Completing this then unlocks the chance to receive the investigations from tier 6 monsters, but only in the Elder's Recess rather than the equivalent to the Guiding Land zones. Later in the game's lifecycle, their investigations were added to the random pool and events involving them became permanently available, so it's easier (if still random) to find investigations for them.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Many joked that Kulve Taroth was basically a Queen Great Jagras when she debuted back early in the game's cycle. Nearly a year later, we got the Greatest Jagras, which itself is massive and powerful.
  • In Soul Calibur VI, Geralt's story mode has him back home. Shortly after the former's release, Geralt finds himself in another universe, making many joke that Geralt wasn't done being forced into traveling through portals.
  • Odogaron is often seen as an expy to Tigrex due to its aggressiveness. Not only does Tigrex return in Iceborne but it resides in Rotten Vale and gets into a brutal turf war with Odogaron.
  • These videos from an animator known as NCHProductions are quite prophetic in hindsight.
    • This fan animation predicted a Zinogre/Rathalos turf war two years ahead of Zinogre's debut in Iceborne.
    • This fan animation of the Arch Tempered Zorah raid featured a Rajang coming out of nowhere, holding up a banner complaining that it is not in World. Jump forward to early September 2019...
    • This fan animation of a crossover between Splatoon and Monster Hunter featured Brachydios being the green team's fourth member, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate allows the Inklings to fight a Rathalos. Now look at the Namielle Armor in Iceborne...
  • The playable Hunter, as well as the meteor from the Tale of the Five, are called the "Sapphire Star." Come to think of it, didn't some paper-thin plumber get tangled up with a Sapphire Star before?
• Hype Backlash: Deviljho's announcement was treated with great reverence by veterans who told many a horror story about it to newer hunters. Once it was released many newer hunters wrote Jho off as easy, didn't get why the older hunters feared it so much, and became just a bit too cocky for their own good as they forgot they were in endgame gear and far out-scaled a standard Jho. The older hunters got the last laugh however once tempered Deviljho arrived.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: A common complaint before the release of Iceborne (which gave Master Rank) was that the game was made "too easy". Many veterans were caught between appreciating the quality-of-life improvements and feeling that World went a little too far and "dumbed it down".
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: The (initial) lack of G Rank once again for Western players ^note this ignores the fact that no MonHun game that has begun a new generation of games in the series has ever had G Rank combined with a monster roster significantly smaller than 4 Ultimate and Generations led to a lot of complaints that there wasn't enough to do in the endgame. While Capcom did add new monsters over time free of charge, this has led to accusations of artificially extending the life of the game and punishing early adopters. Confounding this is the fact that new monsters release at a glacial pace.
• It Was His Sled: A lot of the monsters that could only be fought in the Guiding Lands are no longer a secret due to event quests hosting them.
• Just Here for Godzilla: When it was announced that Behemoth would become a huntable monster in collaboration with Final Fantasy XIV, many MH fans seemed less interested in hunting the Behemoth and more hopeful that its unique (to this game) but familiar skeleton might provide the means for fan-favorite Zinogre to make it to World. Zinogre would eventually be introduced in Iceborne using its own skeleton.
• Meme Acknowledgement: In the Iceborne expansion, there is a parallel quest involving Dodogama in which the Chief Ecologist states that research in the Elder's Recess has stopped due to a rambunctious Dodogama. However, most of the hunters are refusing to hunt it because it's cute to them. This references the "Best Boi" nickname meme the community gave Dodogama for it's silly and endearing appearance.
• Memetic Badass:
  • The Paratoad garnered this status among fans for being able to instantly paralyze Elder Dragons with its gas despite its small size.
  • Due to how much stronger Lunastra is, she's usually depicted as a protective and loving mother towards Teostra rather than as a mate.
  • The A-Lister immediately became this with the Fatalis update due to a number of reasons. Most notably, he's the only NPC hunter to actually accompany and fight with you, which alone would be enough since he tags along with you to fight Fatalis. He one-ups that by being an absolute beast of a hunter, blasting Fatalis with his HBG with nary a care while the player Hunter is most likely struggling and would be carted if not for the A-Lister continuously applying Lifepowder to keep you alive. Finally when Fatalis flies up in the air for his ultimate attack, the A-Lister pushes our Hunter to a safe spot while he gets bombarded with Fatalis's signature carpet flame breath...and lives! Suffice to say, now everyone knows how he earned his Rusted Kushala armor. And to put a pin on it, after the hunt he's the first NPC to get an actual name - Aiden - which was unprecedented in mainline Monster Hunter games (prior to Rise).
• Memetic Loser:
  • The Great Jagras joins the Great Jaggi and Yian Kut-Ku in the pantheon of Warm Up Bosses that everyone loves to bully.
  • Despite his initial status as That One Boss among newer players and The Dreaded in story, base Nergigante is seen as a literal punching bag by most of the fandom due to its unique spike mechanic making it easily to consistently chain trips until it dies.
  • Another That One Boss for new players, Anjanath, is mocked by a sector of the fanbase for being a "generic" T. Rexpy in a franchise that had previously introduced much stronger and scarier Brute Wyverns reminiscent of the dinosaur, as well as being a mid-tier predator with sneezing attacks that gets curb-stomped in turf wars with Rathalos. Its Fulgur species gets overall better love, thanks to it being much closer to an apex monster - it ties with Barioth, Tigrex, and Diablo in Turf Wars - along with its electricity usage making them more visually-impressive when enraged.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "WHERE'S MY DRAGONATOR?!" ^ExplanationA line from one of the World trailers that quickly became popular, spoken at the end of the final Zorah Magdaros fight. Comparisons to Frozone and his super suit abound.
  • "GAINS" ^ExplanationThe Meowscular Chef who runs the canteen in Astera in World is obsessed with this. Both in terms of bulking up the canteen, and the hunter.
  • "Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series" ^ExplanationWith the reveal of the Devil May Cry collaboration, the infamous meme from the PAL release of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne pretty much came along automatically. Acknowledged by the official Monster Hunter twitter account when they used the phrase to announce the event going live.
  • "THIGHS" ^ExplanationSeveral leg armor pieces —more specifically the female ones— feature bare thighs. The most well-known example is the female Odogaron armor's generous "thigh windows".
  • Jokes about Kulve Taroth actually being a superior female Great Jagras came about due to it using the game skeleton and animations of the latter.
  • The legendary second Attack Boost decoration. ^ExplanationDecoration farming is what takes up a large chunk of play time for many after they finish fully upgrading most of their armor sets. This is partly because some of the most crucial ones have appraisal rates as low as .30% from Warped Feystones. The Attack decoration usually is the most known for this as countless players usually only have the one given to them by the Smithy, but Release and Handicraft decorations are just as rare. Capcom seems to have acknowledged this as the Witcher collaboration assignment can reward players with an Attack decoration if they meet certain conditions. While it was somewhat alleviated in Iceborne, as Attack Boost is actually relatively common when stapled onto another skill, the expansion also introduced Attack Boost Plus Decorations, which increase Attack Boost by two levels as opposed to one...that only drop from Sealed Feystones. Since Attack Boost+ Decorations are almost required for most meta sets to avoid your your gear becoming a hot mess of level 1 skills and otherwise useless ones, many fans jokingly call these decorations a downright Urban Legend of Zelda.
  • "Oops! All Wyverns!" as a criticism to the game's lack of monster variety.
  • Kushala skeleton ^ExplanationMost Elder Dragons in World use the skeleton wireframe of Kushala Daora, leading them to share many moves and animations. When Velkhana, the flagship of Iceborne, was revealed to also use the Kushala skeleton, it led to much flak among the fanbase who feared it would be a simple ice-themed Moveset Clone of Kushala. Though it was eventually revealed that Velkhana fights very differently from Kushala (only sharing its out-of-combat animations and its charge), the term is still used (usually) jokingly by fans to mock the fact many monsters share the same few skeletons anyway.
  • Brachy Drumsticks ^ExplanationMany fans hate how a lot of the game's weapons are just basic weapons with a monster part slapped onto them. The Brachydios Dual Blades are especially infamous for this, since they went from looking like swords made out of Brachydios in the previous games, to looking like a pair of drumsticks with Brachydios parts attached to it◊.
  • Cats are more important than weapons. ^ExplanationPeople have noticed that the animations for the Felynes doing various tasks in Seliana Campground were incredibly detailed, to the point where they, jokingly or not, claim the developers were more concerned with making detailed animations for the Felynes than making unique weapon designs.
  • ZoDaZoDaZo, aka The JoJo Build ^ExplanationA mixed build refering to pieces of the Zorah Magdaros and Damascus armor. Many noted it sounded like something out of Jojo due to the manga's use of "oras" and "mudas" as battlecries
  • BIRD UP ^ExplanationDue to a Running Gag in a certain series of web animations about the games, this meme crosses over from The Eric Andre Show. Usually affiliated with Kulu-ya-Ku and its crystal variant from the Final Fantasy collab event.
  • "Oh Wiggler of the item box, share me your wisdom." ^ExplanationA glitch allows players to land inside the item box in the camp in the Guiding Lands. Some players took this, wore the Wiggler helm, and created a meme template out of it, showing a hunter asking a wiggler popping out of the item box for advice, that quickly spread through Reddit.
  • Rapper Shara Ishvalda ^Explanation Thanks to TerminalMontage's take on the Iceborne expansion, which featured a Shara Ishvalda with giant, tattooed arms rapping ''Gas Money'' by Xavy Rusan, players cannot unhear said song playing during the climactic final battle of Iceborne. The meme has gotten to the point where an entire mod exists just to replace Shara's theme with the aforementioned song.
  • "He's a gentle, simple sailor!" ^ExplanationA hilarious mishearing based on listening to Safi'jiiva's first theme, joining White Fatalis' "Give me hot fish" in that regard. You'll probably be unable to un-hear the joke lyrics when going back to hunting the Red Emperor.
  • "It's Banbaro time!" ^ExplanationAnother parody video from NCHProductions, this time about everyone's favourite invasive Brute Wyvern from Iceborne and done as an almost perfect replica from Hamtaro's North American opening credits roll.
  • Rajang's theme goes with everything ^ExplanationIcerborne's arrangement of Rajang's theme is noted to have a groovy, jazz-like feel to it that compels you to dance to it. It's quickly become something of a rival to the old "KFC guy shaking chicken drumsticks to Teostra's theme" meme. It's also a MHW take on the "Guile's theme goes with everything" meme of Street Fighter fame.
  • MR 24 ^ExplanationEvery new monster since Iceborne's launch always come with the base Master Rank requirement of 24, which can be obtained not long after the story's completion. While this wasn't much of an issue initially with Rajang and Stygian Zinogre, it's still the entry requirement for later additions with their difficulty way higher than what the rank would suggest, starting with Master Rank Kulve Taroth and eventually Alatreon and Fatalis. This meant that anyone that just finished Iceborne's story could essentially enter a quest well above what their gear was capable of, provided they got far enough to receive the assignment.
  • "It only took 40 years." ^ExplanationA line from the Huntsman at the end of the Zorah Magdaros boss fight, since the Research Commission had spent forty years studying Zorah's activity, and only then did the Sapphire Star drive it off. Used to joke about something that took an obscenely long time to complete or obtain, similar to the "It's been 3,000 years..." meme.
• Memetic Troll:
  • Did the USAF just order a bombing run on your High Rank hunt? Nope, just Bazelgeuse.
  • Wingdrakes in High/Master Rank have a habit of constantly dropping hunters off in a random part of the map instead of camp at start of a quest, oftentimes in front of that Tempered monster that is the target.
• Misaimed Fandom: To some players, the Handler's occasional comments of "We did it!" and similar sound as if she's taking credit for the PC's kills, while actually doing nothing of note. Except that Hunters and Handlers work in pairs, so they equally share the team credit as much as receive individual credit for doing their respective jobs. Moreover, the Handler consistently has faith in the PC's hunting ability, even toward the likes of Fatalis.
• More Popular Replacement: For those who don't like/can't tolerate the Handler, the Serious Handler - who temporarily replaces the Handler as the player's guide for a few missions - is more well-received, even to the point of some hoping to have her as an alternate player's guide choice as a possible DLC.

Tropes N-Z

• Narm:
  • Can be invoked by the player through the use of mixing armours, for themselves and their Palicos. The ridiculousness can be turned up to eleven with the Wiggler Head, Kulu-Ya-Ku Head or even a Faux Felyne Head. The Handler can also get in on this if she's in a cutscene wearing one of her sillier event outfits.
  • Evade Extender. Much like the past games it plays the same animation at roughly the same speed but increases your distance. In this game, it's even more notable because your character seems to suddenly perform a dodge-roll in slow motion yet they are practically sliding on the ground.
  • When a Tzitzi-Ya-Ku gets knocked over, it makes a very prominent chicken squawk as it goes down.
  • Xeno'jiiva sounds like a squished plushie when you topple it. It's somewhat understandable once you learn that it's a juvenile Elder Dragon, but it becomes ridiculous when Safi'jiiva uses the same sound when you topple the latter.
  • When Fatalis gets stunned or toppled, it just... lays there. No struggling to get up, no distressed noises like other monsters, it just plops onto the ground for a few seconds like a ragdoll tossed aside. The only exception is when you deal enough damage while in the air - ie, the Dragonator - where he does flail for a little before getting up.
• Narm Charm:
  • Bazelgeuse's roar, while unnatural sounding, can come off as more comical than terrifying for some...without context. Once you know it means that a nasty airplane wyvern has come to ruin your day, you know things are going south.
  • Some weapon descriptions read like something straight out of Warhammer 40,000 lore. The Nergigante, Vaal Hazak and Deviljho weapons are especially guilty of this. But that's what makes them so fun to read and what sets them apart from the other, dryer weapon descriptions.
  • Kulve Taroth usually announces an attack beforehand by making an incredibly squeaky noise. This would normally be funny coming from what is a gigantic elder dragon, except that it means that it's usually about to roll along the ground and squelch you and your party underneath for massive damage with wonky hitboxes. Once you've heard it enough, you'll learn to loathe it.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The Rotten Vale. Essentially a monster graveyard, the whole place is practically coated in bones, monster corpses, and rancid viscera. And that's before going into Great Girros, Odogaron and especially Vaal Hazak.
  • Even before that, there's the introduction to the Great Jagras. Watch as he immediately eats an Aptonoth alive and whole and you have to fight him knowing that you're wailing on a recently-eaten monster inside of him. And it doesn't stop there: a viable strategy to make the fight easier is to pummel his stomach enough to where he throws up the bits and pieces of the monster. Yummy.
• Older Than They Think:
  • This isn't the first time a Monster Hunter game has been on PC; the now-defunct games Monster Hunter Frontier and Monster Hunter Online predate it, having been released in 2007 and 2013, respectively. Most Western fans don't know this since they were released in East Asian countries only.
  • Online had visible damage numbers, and a monster-tracking camera years before World did it. Online was also the first Monster Hunter game to be made as a native HD game much like what World is, rather upscaling the models and textures of non-HD (i.e. 480p and below) titles^note like in the cases of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on Wii U, Frontier on PC and various HD platforms, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD Ver. on PS3, and Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate on Switch.
• One-Scene Wonder: The giant, Crystal-wielding Kulu-Ya-Ku in the Behemoth questline only appears in one, non-repeatable quest, but its uniqueness, surprising difficulty, and the Chobobo Race theme used as its fight music have made many clamor for a repeatable version of the assigned quest.
• Padding: In this game, you have to actually track the monsters. While this isn't seen as bad, with the Elder Dragons, you have to track them across multiple quests just to unlock them.
• Power Up Letdown: Alatreon, the semifinal monster to be added to Iceborne, offered players what is potentially the most spectacularly difficult fight in the game bar the soon-to-be-added Fatalis, and its weapons were generally considered decent at worst. The same can't be said about its armor set, which while possessing good stats, skills, and slottage, also came with Alatreon Divinity, which on paper sounded like a good set bonus but ended up being notoriously undertuned for the difficulty of even beating Alatreon in the first place. It granting a bonus to elemental attack scaling with total elemental defense sounds good on paper, but not only does Iceborne heavily favor increasing raw damage and affinity over element, the conversion rate is a paltry 5%, meaning that even with maxed out resistances, you'd still only be getting a comparatively miniscule damage buff considering you'll be all but forced to slot in resistance jewels to bump up the numbers; the three-piece bonus did little to help, as a 20% resistance buff is still too small to make any meaningful difference. The result is a set bonus that forces you to pay a prohibitive cost for a benefit that is easily outclassed by things like Safi'jiiva Seal or Namielle/Velkhana Divinity, and is a defensive armor at a stage in the game mostly revolving around maximizing damage output - monsters mostly dealing physical and not elemental damage makes massive elemental resistances only really good for neutralizing blights, which can be done far easier with Blight Resistance. To throw salt in the wound, Fatalis' gear added afterwards actually lived up to its endgame position by overthrowing every other meta set in the game - and the next game Monster Hunter: Rise would introduce Dragon Conversion, likened to a strictly better Element Conversion that was not only properly tuned for its place in the game, but actually ended up defining a new meta because of its strength.^note Dragon Conversion converts a much higher 25% of resistances into element, provides flat resistance buffs instead of smaller percent-based ones, and has synergy with the game's wider variety of element-boosting armor skills and more generous caps for elemental values.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: After being regarded as one of the most obnoxious apex monsters throughout the series, Yian Garuga gets some redemption points for fearlessly standing up to a Deviljho and putting up enough of a fight to make it give up and run away.
• The Scrappy:
  • Gajalakas due to their annoyance factor, along with Gastodon in the Elders Recess. Not helping in the case of the former as they love to smack you in the Kulve Tarroth repel quest, where you can't afford such distractions.
  • Lavasioth, mainly due to its perpetually-hardened lava armor that makes most attacks bounce off, having a powerful attack that can OHKO many hunters, and having its abilities from older games removed. In fact, it was the least hunted monster in the first year of the game's life.
  • Banbaro in Iceborne is considered to be a pointless annoyance by many players. Despite being based on a moose and clearly designed for the Hoarfrost Reach, it randomly shows up in every biome, sticking out like a sore thumb in places like the Coral Highlands and Rotten Vale. Additionally, despite being described as a Gentle Giant, if it encounters another monster or takes any sort of damage, it's highly aggressive and will attack both hunters and monsters (mostly the former) with extremely brutal attacks that are hard to escape. To top things off, Banbaro is far less rewarding than similar invader monsters Deviljho and Bazelgeuse, as its carves are used to create relatively weak Crutch Character armor and weapons rather than ones of Infinity -1 Sword caliber, and many players just find that its concept (a moose-dinosaur hybrid) simply lacks the cool factor of those two. Its saving grace is that its female armor set is popular and considered to be very cute.
  • After the final update, Brute Tigrex was reported to be the least hunted monster in the game not only because of accessibility issues ^note You can only initially encounter it if you level up the Rotted region of the Guiding Lands to at least Level 6, or wait until an event quest like "A Roar That Splinters The Sky" shows up; only then can you acquire Investigations featuring Brute Tigrex., but also because it's a Tigrex that just won't stop screaming, making it one of the most annoying monsters to hunt in Iceborne. At least Lavasioth ended up being hunted more due to an event quest where it drops decoration jewels; Brute Tigrex has no such event, and by the time an Armor Sphere farming quest featuring it appeared, it was too late, with the quest even lampshading its "least hunted monster" status.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The purely randomized nature of acquiring Decorations. While this isn’t too much of a problem in casual play, it can become very annoying and time-consuming trying to get the decorations you need in order to more comfortably take on the more difficult endgame content. Not having decorations for Critical Eye, Crit Boost, Weakness Exploit, Attack Boost, etc can severely hamper your DPS, and they’re typically all very rare to come across, having a very slim chance of obtaining at the end of hunts. This is somewhat alleviated thanks to Events and Arch-Tempered Master Rank quests, however it’s not uncommon to have to grind for a long time in order to get all the decorations you need.
  • The weakening aspect of the clutch claw is disliked by some people, mostly those who find that it disrupts the normal flow of a hunt, and/or those thinking it doesn't last long enough to be meaningful^note Initially, it only lasted 30 seconds; the last major update tripled that to 90 seconds.. Moreover, the Master Rank monsters are somewhat balanced around the assumption that you'll be using it at least every now-and-then (namely when monsters flinch backward) - if you don't, fights will take longer, if usually only a couple of minutes more in many cases. It's even worse for "light" weapons, which have to do so twice to properly weaken a monster part - this is mitigated by the Clutch Claw Boost skill, which removes the second attack from being necessary, but barring a lucky Decoration drop, it's only meldable late into Iceborne's content.
  • Multiplayer-based monsters tend to have a DPS check where if you fail to inflict enough damage to them, they inevitably wipe out your whole team and/or end your run almost immediately. This greatly restricts your playstyle and forces you to play aggressive, risking your own life lest you lose in only the first few minutes of the hunt. Kulve Taroth, Extreme Behemoth, Safi'jiiva and Alatreon come to mind.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • Longsword users are the Memetic Loser of this game's fourteen weapon types as they are infamous for tripping other players in multiplayer, and for crowding around the head of a downed monster to try getting damage even when a Hammer or Hunting Horn main is in the party. Interestingly, the Switch Axe (which also has wide sweeping arc attacks) does not receive the same treatment, possibly due to being a less common pick.
  • Some bowgun builds, for a different kind of scrappy. Light bowguns with Spread have jaw-dropping damage potential along with some of the best mobility of any weapon. Heavy bowguns with Sticky and a shield mod have the same (some say even better) KO potential of a Hammer without the same risks for even bigger payoffs, and just as good defensive utility as a Lance while pumping out damage that puts any Lance build to shame. What makes it worse is that a) bowguns always become a more sensible option in a game where erratic, super-aggressive monsters with high-burst damage are The Dreaded, and b) all other bowgun builds range from "fairly viable" to "terrible", so bowgun players are pigeonholed into two extremely limited playstyles that are kind of braindead to play.
  • Lance lies on the other end of the tier scale from Sticky Heavy Bowguns. Especially by Iceborne where criticisms of the weapon's lackluster damage have flared up. In layman's terms, hunting a monster with a Lance is like peeling a potato with a toothpick - the potato won't be able to do a damn thing to you, but it will take forever and it will suck. It's not without reason that in speedrun rankings, Lance is very often stone-dead last.
• Self-Fanservice: Humanoid fanart on Kulve Taroth usually depicts her as a rather curvy young lady. Others take the "elder" part into account and make her into a very curvy MILF-aged lady. The fact that a lot of her fight is essentially undressing her makes sure they keep coming, too.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Deviljho's turf wars against many of the other monsters are savage to say the least, but perhaps the one that terrified everyone the most was when Diablos gets suplexed brutally. Deviljho picking up Odogaron like a chew toy had a few of these as well.
  • Most people were expecting to get a Final Fantasy XIV themed armor and weapon set when the collaboration was announced. Then Behemoth was revealed as the next huntable monster.
  • By the time that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt crossover was announced, most people were expecting that something similar to the Final Fantasy one mentioned above. Then came the reveal that Geralt is coming to Monster Hunter and will be completely playable.
  • The general reaction to Iceborne was already extremely positive when it was revealed that classic monsters like Tigrex, Nargacuga and Glavernus would be coming back in next-gen glory. Then the third trailer teases at the return of Brachydios, and the fandom went wild.
  • Yian Garuga, previously a really annoying monster, creates one of these in Iceborne when it not only fearlessly stands up to Deviljho, but even gives it a surprisingly good beating.
  • While Rajang preying upon Kirin was somewhat established by the lore in the Frontier games, this was mostly seen as an Informed Attribute in the main series since regular monsters could not intrude in Elder Dragon quests. Rajang's introductory cutscene in Iceborne made their respective positions in the food chain clear by having it absolutely destroy a Kirin in a fight, snapping off and eating its horn in the process.
  • The Stygian Zinogre update did this, not because of the aforementioned monster, but because Capcom snuck in Safi'jiiva, the much awaited adult form of Xeno'jiiva. Safi'jiiva's fight is also pretty jawdropping, with it borrowing a couple of elements from the Behemoth fight, including the ability for players to earn its enmity, while also unleashing a powerful area of effect attack that players must survive by hiding behind an object. Additionally, this fight is just a recon quest, meaning that Safi'jiiva escapes and that the real fight is likely to be even more impressive.
• Sequel Displacement: Not necessarily to the point where people are unaware that older games in the series exist, but the runaway success of World has led people to assume that whenever you're talking about Monster Hunter, you're referring to World and Iceborne in particular, with those who still play the older games, including the infamously released-after-World-in-the-West Generations Ultimate, having to clarify which line of Monster Hunter they are referring to.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Many of the weapons in the base game were derided for looking almost exactly the same only with a different tint and/or parts of the specific monster tacked on. Many players excused or at least forgave the issue as a factor of spending so much time on such a large and detailed world. But it flared up again in Iceborne when it not only continued, but many weapons from returning monsters that already had much more unique models from previous games got replaced with the much more "generic"-looking weapons in this style. Standout weapons include nearly half the Brachydios weapons, the entirety of the Barroth and Lunastra weapons, and the Glavenus Great Sword, made even more apparent by the fact that the Palico Glavenus weapon is indeed a miniaturized version of the original weapon.
  • Turf wars can fall into this. The movements of the monsters tend to look smooth and natural from your close, low angle, but watching from a distance as two monsters attack each other reveals that their movements are actually somewhat stilted and unnaturally quick considering their size. And sometimes they don't even appear to be touching.
  • When mounting a monster, the player will be shifted to the nearest of three mount spots. Depending on where the player's attack connects and the size of the monster, this can result in their model suddenly gliding through the air to latch onto the monster.
  • Monsters that are far away from the player are animated at a reduced framerate compared to normal gameplay. This is obvious with Wingdrakes, who frequently flap their wings, making the choppiness of their animation obvious.
• Squick: Accidental Innuendo aside, Bazelgeuse's explosive scales essentially amount to it dropping explosive skin tags on you.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: On the PC version in particular, some players will install client-side mods that measure the DPS of themselves and their teammates...which they will gladly abuse to boot out players just because they aren't sufficiently skilled or their build isn't focused on damage at the cost of basically everything else.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: The Coral Highlands in World. First of all, the place is absolutely stunning and very colorful, and full of interesting-looking, almost alien-looking endemic life. Even the boss monsters that call this place home are rather pretty.
• Tainted by the Preview: Upon early reveal, some of the changes in World rubbed a few veterans the wrong way, including the use of an on-screen command guide, damage numbers, a heartbeat monitor that acts similarly to an Enemy Scan function telling you how much life the monster has left, and proper voice acting. However, it was later confirmed that most, if not all of these options can be turned off or otherwise changed, which softened the blow.
• That One Attack:
  • Arch-Tempered Nergigante's flying leap-and-slam, otherwise known as the "Pepega Slam", is easily one of the cheapest moves in the game, given it has little windup and next to no notice when the dragon will use it to screw players around. What makes it even more infuriating is that it's typically a One-Hit Kill when taking into account most players will attempt it in High Rank gear before Iceborne.
  • Lunastra's Nova Attack. The attack does massive damage over time that even high fire resistance and defense only negligibly reduce ^note Because it - and many of her attacks period - does heat damage rather than fire damage, which is only mitigated somewhat by a Cold Drink and/or the Heat Guard skill, and it hits with two heatwaves that stagger the player - once when the attack first lands, and again right when a player that doesn't have stagger negating skills would finally be able to move again. It's basically a One-Hit KO pretending it isn't one, and even if you manage to panic dive to avoid the first heatwave you don't stay on the ground indefinitely anymore like previous games, meaning you have to dive again to avoid the second heat wave. And during the time between getting up and diving again, you'll be taking damage, meaning anything less than a perfectly-timed dodge may chip off up to half of a maxed-out health bar.
  • Though most of Behemoth's moveset is deadly and annoying, none of its attacks are nearly as infamous as Charybdis. If the long casting isn't interrupted by a Flash Pod or staggering it, Behemoth summons a tornado right on top of whoever it's targeting. This tornado covers a wide area, deals not-insignificant damage, obscures your vision, lasts for an incredibly long time, and since Behemoth casts Charybdis near-constantly, there can be numerous tornadoes active at a time. While Behemoth stops casting Charybdis if it's in enmity mode, that comes with its own problems and doesn't last very long anyways. Extreme Behemoth takes it further in that the casting time is even shorter and Extreme Behemoth has the Tempered Flash Pod resistance. The tornadoes are easily the most hated part of the Behemoth fight, more than even Ecliptic Meteor.
  • When Banbaro rips a tree from the ground, it suddenly puts on a huge burst of speed as it rushes towards the player with the trunk in its antlers. It hits incredibly hard, and to make matters worse Banbaro goes for a second pass before the tree is destroyed, which practically guarantees that players hit by the first attack will get hit by the second. It usually isn't too hard to deal with if you're fighting Banbaro 1-on-1, but if it wanders by while you're fighting another monster and flips out, the tree and its horrifying damage output can and will ruin your day.
  • Velkhana's Ice Breath. A direct copy of Vaal Hazak's move, its long range, can cover a wide area, does a lot of damage, applies Iceblight and cannot be blocked without a special skill. What makes it a real pain is that it ignores Velkhana's own ice wall's and can hit Hunters through the floor, which makes dodging it even more difficult. And unlike Vaal Hazak, Velkhana loves to spam this move.
  • On the second and bottom floors of the siege, Safi'jiiva can slam its four limbs on the floor, causing a massive ground explosion that keeps expanding out in a ring. Huge damage, huge area of effect, hard to dodge, and hard to block. If you manage to superman dive, good; if not, be prepared to run away from the rapidly expanding ring of destruction.
  • Alatreon's Escaton Judgement lets out a huge nova attack that rapidly inflicts huge amounts of damage over time to all players to the point where it will easily outdamage even the strongest healing effects. There's nowhere to run or hide, it doesn't trigger post-hit i-frames, it ignores the Temporal Mantle's auto-dodge, and you can't farcaster out of the arena. The only way to mitigate it is to inflict enough Elemental damage beforehand, and unless the DPS check is cleared at least once, you are going to be eating a cart. You're also going to get carted if you manage to pass the check once, but forget to heal yourself during Escaton Judgement's animation.
  • Fatalis' Schrade's Demise attack, easily identified by the camera panning out before it begins the attack. Huge AoE that deals huge amounts of damage over time (which means it won't trigger Temporal Mantle). While this attack does leave a big opening to its head, hunters who got caught in the middle of the attack will almost always lead to an instant cart.
    • One of Fatalis's attack in its Final Form breaths a spinning circle of fire across all angles which is very difficult to dodge and even worse, unless its head is broken at least once, will easily one-shot any hunters caught in it.
  • Arch-Tempered Velkhana's unique Limit Break, which sees it shoot a sweeping ice beam into the ground, trapping anyone caught in the radius just in time for an expanding ring of icicles to burst out from the ground. Not only is the beam unblockable even if you have the Guard Up skill, but it also deals heavy damage, leaving you with a sliver of health that's likely to be finished off by the icicle burst that you can't reliably walk away from while having your movement hampered. The only ways to avoid this attack is to run far away from Velkhana, or move exactly under the Elder Dragon.
• That One Boss: Anjanath, (Black) Diablos, Bazelgeuse, Nergigante, Tempered Kirin, Tempered Teostra, (Tempered) Deviljho, Lunastra, Greatest Jagras, and Behemoth. Iceborne adds (Frostfang) Barioth, (Brute) Tigrex, Fulgur Anjanath, Velkhana, Seething Bazelgeuse, Savage Deviljho, Shara Ishvalda, (Stygian) Zinogre, (Scarred) Yian Garuga, (Furious) Rajang, Raging Brachydios, Alatreon, and Fatalis. To see why, visit this page.
• That One Level: Ancient Forest, Rotten Vale, and the Azure Rathalos arena quest. To see why, visit this page.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • World deviating from traditional MonHun fare even moreso than Generations, especially with its focus on open-world gameplay, caused quite a stir from series traditionalists. Coupled with a total lack of information about localization of XX for over a year, fans felt like Capcom was trying to market a totally different game as Monster Hunter to western countries in an attempt to appeal to what some Westerners consider a good game. Although World became the best selling title in the series within a month of launch, it still gets flack from those fans due to these changes detracting from the expierence for them.
  • On a smaller note, some Hunting Horn mains were particularly upset that World did not bring back Double Notes from Generations, which were seen as a game-changer for Hunting Horn that encouraged aggressive play. World still has the Encore mechanic, but now requires using the Play action twice in succession, which eats up some extra time.
  • Many fans are not happy with the weapon designs, since Capcom tried to make the weapons more realistic by making most of them look like an ordinary weapon with a monster part slapped onto it; instead of looking like the weapon was made out of monster parts from scratch. While Iceborne does feature more weapons with unique designs, there are still many weapons that have the "basic weapon with monster part slapped on" design. Even some weapons made out of old monsters suffer this, even though they already had unique weapon designs in the earlier games.
  • Any changes to the mechanics or flow of a fight against a previously featured monster in Iceborne ellicit this response, especially if it elevates the monster to That One Boss status.
  • There are a fair number of fans who don't like that World is exclusive to home platforms, as Monster Hunter is fondly known by many fans as a handheld game series, especially by those who gather in-person with others to play together.^note Theoretically, one could make the game portable by installing it on a laptop, but then there lies the issues of keeping it near a power source, and laptops are far bulkier than handhelds. A Steam Deck could also do, but the game would still need to connect to the game servers for multiplayer, as no option exists for LAN or WLAN-based multiplayer.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Arch Tempered Zorah Magdaros does not have an Arch Tempered Nergigante as a preview, which is rather jarring as Arch Tempered Teostra gave a preview of how an Arch Tempered Kushala Daora would function. This ended up being justified by the fact that AT Nergigante ended up being by far the most difficult hunt reserved for the end of vanilla World, as well as the fact that it was meant to be a surprise.
  • Namielle doesn't get any attention during the story of Iceborne, despite being a new and never before seen species of elder dragon. While this could be justified in-universe as the Commission having much more pressing issues to deal with at the time, it still feels like a lot of wasted story potential.
• Ugly Cute:
  • Captured monsters are stored in a pen near the Ecologist's area in either Astera or Seliana, where for a quest or two, you can watch as the vicious monster that was spending so much time trying to kill you sleeps peacefully. One example in particular is Anjanath. It looks like a mix of a T. rex and a marabou stork, but when it's asleep, it kicks its legs a little and raises its head like a dreaming dog.
  • Even some of the Elder Dragons can get in on this. When Nergigante isn't fighting you, what is it doing? Rolling around and preening himself like an oversized housecat.
  • It may be a hellish, draconian dog that looks like its been flayed alive, but the Odogaron is still a dog and whimpers like one when it's mortally wounded or trying to find you if you give it the slip. Thanks to this, it can come off as oddly adorable despite looking like something that came crawling out of the deepest pit of hell.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Nobody was expecting subspecies to show up in World. This applies In-Universe too; when the player confirms the first sighting, the entire Research Commission is baffled by its presence in the New World.
  • Lunastra was a surprise largely due to her last appearance in a title being eight years ago.
  • Behemoth caught a lot of people off guard since there was no idea of it appearing until the announcement of the Final Fantasy XIV collaboration at E3 2018 and because it wasn't in the popular leak that included the other monsters added post-release. The fact that crossovers didn't include an actual monster from another franchise was something that was discussed as well.
  • Arch-Tempered Zorah Magdaros was the least expected of the Arch-Tempered Elder Dragons because there was never a "regular" Tempered Zorah Magdaros.
  • When the collaboration with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was announced, many expected a monster from The Witcher to appear, and anticipated it to be a beast like a Fiend or a Griffin. None, however, expected Leshen, a supernatural humanoid, to be the representative. Leshen was not included in the popular leak, either. Not many people were expecting Geralt himself to be playable, either, since normally, players do not change characters in the course of one playthrough.
  • The reveal that Glavenus would be making the jump to the New World caught many players (and Rathian) by surprise, especially because it would also introduce a subspecies. While by no means an unpopular monster and its teaser was well-recieved, "lava-shooting Carnotaurus with a red-hot knife for a tail" is a design one would expect to see in a Frontier game, not so much the more grounded & realistic setting of World. While Glavenus is a flagship monster, few people expected it to be announced first, expecting more popular monsters such as Zinogre, Barioth or one of the Fatalis trio.
  • A trailer for Iceborne slipped in the appearance of a Yian Garuga, a monster that was nowhere near anybody's list of expected/speculated/wanted monsters.
  • Due to the lack of his skeleton in the base game or Iceborne, very few were expecting Rajang to make it in as Iceborne's first post-launch monster.
  • Almost everyone expected Zinogre to appear, but almost nobody expected Stygian Zinogre to appear.
  • Following on the previous entry, nobody expected Safi'jiiva, a new elder dragon to make an appearance in the same update that added Stygian Zinogre.
  • It was expected due to leaks that Fatalis would be added in as DLC. What nobody expected was that you'd go back to Caste Schrade to fight it.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Even though it's incredibly powerful and dangerous, with its adult form being capable of terraforming entire biomes into hostile hellscapes, more than a few players feel bad for killing Xeno'jiiva. This is thanks to the developers doing a bit too good of a job at conveying it as a juvenile Elder Dragon, what with its clumsy attempts at fighting and eerie roars that sound a lot like a distressed baby's crying. The fact that you kill it right after it's born also gives it sympathy points.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The main reason why some Western fans dislike the Handler is because she constantly puts herself in mortal danger by accident. While the intent is for her to come off as endearingly plucky and naive, the execution can make her look pretty foolish, and her being a lot more cautious in the Iceborne update wasn't enough for them to change this view. Interestingly, other non-Hunter NPC's who do the same thing - studying their focus in the field, usually right where monsters regularly stroll past - don't seem to get the same reaction.