YMMV / New World Order

• Arc Fatigue: The first year or two of the nWo was a peak time in wrestling, and there's probably no way it can ever be topped. The problem arose when the nWo became a black hole and collapsed into a super-dense object, sucking in more people to work for them and growing bigger. Eventually about 90% of the roster had been converted to nWo members. Then, of course, the nWo split into factions, and booking it all was like trying to solve a puzzle of blue sky.
• Ass Pull: Vince Russo must have loved watching the nWo's WCW run, since they pretty much ran on this. Wrestlers turning heel left and right and joining the nWo, the split creating nWo Hollywood and nWo Wolfpac, the Finger Poke of Doom, etc.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Rockhouse", a slick guitar tune. It was a mix of assorted Jimi Hendrix jams, and it showed.
  • The Wolfpac theme, a laid-back yet still intimidating rap.
• Evil Is Cool: They weren't just cool, they were one of the coolest things wrestling has ever seen. Kids went from denying that they watched wrestling to wearing nWo shirts to school. That the heels were so irreverent was a big part of that. Having some of the best talkers in the business (Hogan, Nash and Hall) was another. Since that time, nearly all heels have tried to be cool.
• First Instalment Wins:
  • The original trio of Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Hulk Hogan, which lasted around two months after the faction's founding, is generally what most people will think of when the nWo comes to mind, especially since once the group began expanding, excessive membership bloat became one of its biggest issues.
  • The original nWo run, from the formation of the original trio up until its split into nWo Hollywood and nWo Wolfpac, is also usually the best-remembered incarnation, as while the nWo Wolfpac was popular in its time, all other incarnations afterwards (nWo Elite, nWo B-Team, nWo 2000, etc.) were considered textbook examples of diminishing returns.
• Fountain of Expies: Virtually every Heel stable since the group's heyday has in some way been influenced by the nWo, or at least compared to them.
• Franchise Original Sin: One of the nWo's first additions beyond the original trio was Vincent as their "Head of Security", who basically existed to be the group's valet and take beatings while everybody else scurried away. It wasn't a huge deal at a time when the faction's size was still manageable, but it nonetheless foreshadowed two major issues with the group as time went on: Its propensity for adding random new members with nothing to do but pad out the nWo's roster even more, and the Badass Decay that inevitably ensues when not every member of the group has Nash/Hall/Hogan levels of charisma and protection.
• Fridge Logic: It wasn't just about "We want to beat everybody up, win all the titles, make a lot of money and have everything revolve around us." They were trying to take over World Championship Wrestling, which was owned by Time-Warner. Why would a company keep people who wanted to do this around? It really kicked in once Eric Bischoff turned heel, since he was the Executive Vice President. Why would someone try to take over a company he was already running?
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The nWo started months after the "Billionare Ted" skits that mocked Ted Turner, Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage among other things and portrayed "the Huckster" and "Nacho Man" as a washed up old has-been. Fast forward and WCW absolutely slaughtered the WWF in ratings thanks to the nWo.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Related to Arc Fatigue above. A big problem for WCW was that the nWo always came out on top. Week in and week out the nWo would cheat and run in to prevent the WCW faces from ever getting ahead and eventually the hardcore fans that were the heart of WCW got sick of it.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • nWo 4 liiiiife. Tooooo sweeeet! *does Wolfpac gesture*
  • "New World Organization, brother!"
• Mis-blamed: A common story about Hogan's Face–Heel Turn at Bash at the Beach '96 is how, when Hogan came out, Bobby Heenan said "Whose side is he on?", basically risking "spoiling" it. However, if you were familiar at all with Heenan on commentary, that was exactly what you'd expect Heenan to say in that situation. Heenan's character had never trusted Hogan, so he's dubious, which is ludicrous until somehow it isn't. There was no backstage heat on Heenan after the fact. Tony Schiavone talked about it on an episode of his podcast and basically said the same thing. Schiavone also said that the announcers were kept in the dark, so the reactions were all genuine.
• Older Than They Think: Most fans know about the nWo being based on a New Japan angle stuff, but not the USWA stuff. According to Last Word on Sports, the concept of a company-wide feud actually originated in a Memphis storyline. Additionally, WWE did test runs of some of their Attitude Era-characters in USWA in Memphis. See this series for more.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Several wrestlers whose popularity had been waning got this treatment by either feuding with or joining the nWo, not the least of which was Hogan himself.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • Rooting for "the bad guy" was cool. Being the "outsider" was cool. The half-shoot, half-work promo incited enough heat that at Bast at the Beach some fans were ripping up and throwing down their Hogan merchandise, and a few people were even crying. Still, according to live reports, approximately 25% of the fans were still cheering The Outsiders. Nash and Hall received a predominately babyface reaction when the show first began. And if you want a new weekly game to play, play "Spot the nWo T-shirt on the hard cam" when watching Raw. There's always one. We were distinctly told in '97 that if we're nWo, we're nWo for life, after all.
  • The nWo Wolfpac sold so much merchandise that they were turned from an equally heel stable vying an Evil Versus Evil power struggle with the nWo Hollywood into a genuinely babyface stable. Their popularity arguably exceeded that of the original nWo. At least a quarter of the audience was covered in Wolfpac merch and signs, and during the Nash/Goldberg match, the commentators had to no-sell very audible "Goldberg sucks" chants from Wolfpac fans. The crazy testament to how over Nash and the Wolfpac were at the time is that the crowd went nuts for Nash winning even with taser. It was only after the Finger Poke of Doom that the Wolfpac lost all respect.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • To the Kliq. Not everyone remembers that the Wolfpac consisted of ex-Kliq members (Nash, Hall, and Waltman). In theory, Shawn Michaels was the main inspiration for The Outsiders once they crossed over to WWE. He was the leader of The Kliq and would even sometimes give the "nWo 2 sweet" sign. (See: his entrance at WM13).
  • After Bischoff and other WCW executives had the SMW invasion cut off before it could get going, they decided they liked the idea of an "invasion" anyway, and started their own version based on the successful NJPW storyline.
  • The Nexus was the nWo, but updated for the reality of there not really being any competition anymore. They didn't want to take over the company, they just wanted to get revenge on WWE for humiliating them in NXT, and what better way than taking out the face of the company, John Cena?
  • Bullet Club. The nWo was a New Japan ripoff, so maybe they prefer to think of it as New Japan taking back what's theirs.
  • While they lack the invading aspect, The Bloodline can be perceived as sort of a new age nWo, with Roman Reigns as the Hogan-like leader, Paul Heyman in the Bischoff role and The Usos as Hall & Nash. Like the group, they too employ The Bad Guy Wins & Invincible Villain, and are the top merch sellers of their company. In fact, the Bloodline's storyline of having perennial mid-carder Sami Zayn try to join their ranks before finally being accepted as a "Honorary Uce" looks remarkably similar to the nWo's storyline of having perennial WCW midcarder Disco Inferno try to join the ranks of the nWo Wolfpack before finally being accepted the night of the infamous Fingerpoke of Doom.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • "Rockhouse" was a mix of assorted riffs from four Jimi Hendrix songs: "Highway Chile", "The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice", "Hey Joe", and "Stone Free".
  • The "Wolfpac Theme" of "Burn" by a little-known rap group called Militia. It went to the point that "Burn" was actually used at house shows.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The first Souled Out. The commentary team were provided by the nWo, a disembodied voice buried all the faces, and the matches were called by their corrupt referee Nick Patrick. It was so obviously a predetermined victory that the fans didn't react much one way or the other. Frankly, it was so out-of-the-ordinary that it kind of creeped them out a little bit. In an nWo documentary made years later, Kevin Nash agreed that, in retrospect, that PPV showed some of the limitations they'd ran into and that the nWo was going to run its course fairly soon.

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