YMMV / Achievement Hunter Minecraft Series

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• Arc Fatigue:
  • King became this after King Gavin, having previously been fairly regular up until that point. There were almost 180 episodes after King Gavin without a new King. Apparently this was due to confusion as to who was going next^note It was meant to be Ryan, but he at one point tried to pawn it off on Jack, and waiting for certain updates. Episode 300's milestone celebration finally brought it back with Sky King Ryan, the aforementioned ruler foregoing his original Dark God plan for the time being due to Minecraft VR still not yet being at a point he's happy with. The following King wasn't even the winner of the previous King, but Matt hosting Christmas King, though it was relatively soon after Sky King Ryan, but it took one and a half years for Jack's kingship to finally debut.
  • Sky Factory reached around forty parts due to Achievement City breaking for the second time, to the point that even the guys admitted how long it had gone and confirmed that it would end. Jeremy named Sky Factory as "Minecraft 2017".
• Archive Panic: Let's Play Minecraft has more episodes than any other Rooster Teeth production; the show reached its five hundredth episode in December 2021.
• Badass Decay:
  • Mogar suffers this in Episode 48 when Ryan forces Michael to run. Gavin mocks him by calling him "Rungar".
  • Among the guys, Ray suffered from this when it came to winning the Tower of Pimps. Whereas the early days had him win it practically every other week or so (to the point that some viewers complained it was unfair to the others), Ray's wins started to come less frequently as Ryan and Jack became far more skilled in playing the game. After Episode 61, it got to the point where he would never win the Tower of Pimps (he came close to winning the game in "Mad King Ryan" before Ryan changed the parameters to win and he had his victory taken away by Gavin, of all people). It took until Episode 101 for him to reclaim the Tower, a full forty episodes (nineteen competitions) after his last win (and over nine months later, for viewers).
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Ryan Haywood when he won four episodes in a row (as mentioned in Broken Base below), with a portion of AH fans getting sick of him for his heavy Loophole Abuse.
  • Team Building Exercise taking over Let's Build from Geoff and Gavin. Granted, considering that two of the team members are several times better at Minecraft construction than Plan G (well, in appearances anyway), it was pretty much going to happen sooner or later.
  • Michael is gaining some flak for the end of "Temple Run"^note part 3 of "Legends of the Hidden Tower" for his fight with Gavin. To explain, Gavin was saying that the tower shouldn't be given out this episode since it was a team game, and they never give out the tower for team games. But Michael, somehow forgetting that this is actually true, demanded that Gavin prove that.
    • His use of Insane Troll Logic only makes this worse. For one thing, Michael demands that Gavin name "one three-part team let's play centered around the Tower of Pimps" where the Tower was not given out at the end, and he constantly sticks to this demand during the argument (even though, while not three-parters, there have been Tower-centric team let's plays before such as Capture the Tower where the tower was not awarded at the end). He also keeps saying that, paraphrased: "[Gavin is] saying 'we never do that' but we just did it!", referring to the erection of the Tower after team games - even though technically they hadn't even erected the Tower by that point - and repeats this constantly as his main defense whenever Gavin tries bringing up other points. He consistently interrupts Gavin when he tries to speak, and ignores Ray and Ryan who are taking Gavin's side. And lastly, as the argument develops, he eventually just resorts to immature insults at Gavin's expense, even more so than usual. Apparently he skipped class the day they went over ethos, logos, and pathos.
      Michael: (in a terrible British accent) I'm king of the Lads, guys! I'm in charge!
  • Geoff has become one over time. He's either a really funny guy with an acceptable and hilarious Hair-Trigger Temper (or, to some people, a justified one due to being Surrounded by Idiots), or he's a Bad Boss who just cares about making content whether or not it's good. This is at its worst in the Minecraft series, but still applicable in others; when he participates in videos rather than hosting, he comes across as a Sore Loser and self-centered to an extent. When he hosts, he changes rules on a dime, seems completely uncaring with whether or not the game even works, and will actively troll people, which ranges from some slight gags that confuse them to outright interfering with their progress. And in either scenario, he often tells stories that depict him as (by the standards of non-Rooster Teeth workplaces) borderline abusive to his employees - Gavin especially - such as one example where he, after a few drinks, kept kicking people's Xbox systems and laughing about it (and still thought it was funny during the video, while he was presumably sober), and got genuinely angry with his wife because she didn't kick Gavin's (special edition, won in a charity) Xbox. In essence, Geoff's broken base boils down to the standard "are they funny or annoying", as well as whether you take his stories as funny trolling or seriously obnoxious. It's at least worth noting that his employees take these things in stride.
    • There's also his tendency to treat Gavin as The Unfavorite, which often mixes with his aforementioned stories. This is either extremely aggravating, especially to Gavin fans, or just more funny trolling. Lampshaded in one episode where Michael kills Geoff, who just responds with a verbal shrug, and Gavin mutters how if he had killed Geoff he would've gotten a lot more pissed off.
  • Gavin is a breaker all over in a very simple way: is his stupidity A) funny and deliberate, B) funny and accidental, C) unfunny and deliberate, or D) unfunny and accidental. Those in camps A and B typically have his back (but the more mature ones acknowledge his flaws), camp C will admit his intelligence and occasional competence but generally dislike his play style, and camp D just doesn't like him. Arguments within the camps often break out about how much to call him out, and arguments between the camps for obvious reasons are a frequent contaminator of the comment sections. Naturally, this contributes to both of the above points regarding Geoff and Michael.
  • Lindsay toes the line between Base-Breaking Character and outright Scrappy, due to her relative incompetence at Minecraft and trolling that can surpass even Gavin's antics, especially in episodes centered around competition. Videos with Lindsay often have a disproportionately high number of dislikes compared to videos without her.
• Broken Base:
  • Caleb's cheating in the series was either funny or extremely irritating. People will still never let him live it down.
  • In Episode 32, a little one popped up when Geoff jumped into the pig pen from Episode 27 to find the brown wool. Michael stepped in and ended it.
  • In Episode 35, people think that Gavin is either going too far, or giving everyone their just desserts (particularly for the Wool episode). We'll explain below.
  • Ryan's victory in Episode 36. Quite a few people say that it shouldn't have counted because the potion drank had no effects, but others say that rule for victory was "drink a potion", and since it was technically a potion, the victory is legitimate.
  • Ryan's four-win streak in which that for two consecutive episodes he won by building a high tower to the sky making him out of the other Hunters' reach, causing viewers to debate over whether or not he played fair.
  • Part 1 of Legends of the Hidden Tower. While the first and third events were completely fair (some people complained about the spread out placement of bread in the third, but that's what happens when it's randomly placed), lots of people hated the second and fourth.
    • The second was because Lindsay would often screw up the rules, continuing to read the question after someone has buzzed in, and then give the answer of the question if one team got it wrong rather than letting the others try and steal it. This caused Michael and Geoff to constantly yell at her, leading to people in the comments either joining in and calling her dumb, or saying they were being too mean with her and that she just wasn't used to it. She also made the game go on one question longer then originally intended, taking the victory from The Magenta Mooshrooms (Michael and Ryan) and giving it to the Cyan Squids(Gavin and Jack).
    • The fourth was because, as it turned out, Geoff and Ray's building area was too small on one side, throwing them off and seemingly costing them the victory (whether or not they would have won otherwise is also up for heavy debate, seeing as they got about as much done as Michael and Ryan while Jack and Gavin nearly completed the house, but they apparently wasted a lot of time going back and forth trying to figure out what seemed off about it which they wouldn't have done if the field was even). The fact that Gavin and Jack's building area was directly in front of the example house was also brought up.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Ryan's treatment of Edgar often falls under this.
  • Episode 306, the end of the "Ya Dead Ya Dead" playthrough. Michael lamenting the loss of his friends, living alone as king of an empty castle, and dying of old age? Tragic. Meeting everybody in the Nether and finding out they've started new lives without him (such as Lindsay getting remarried)? Also tragic. Lindsay's new husband turning out to be a zombie pigman named Gary (and Michael's response)? Hilarious. Michael's wheezy old man voice throughout makes it even sillier.
• Goddamn Bats: In "Mega Dig," the Silverfish, given how many deaths were either directly or indirectly responsible to them.
• Growing the Beard: The earlier episodes of the series suffered from some Early-Installment Weirdness, though when the show found its feet is debatable. One episode worth mentioning is "Capture the Tower" (24), since it features the first inclusion of Ryan, who would go on to become The Sixth Ranger, and Team Lads and Team Gents.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the first "Capture the Tower" video where "Team Lads" was formed, they ended the video with Ray, Micheal and Gavin posing near the tower, only for Ray to lose his connection to the server and pop out of the game. This is a bit bittersweet after he left Achievement Hunter in 2015.
  • In "Fishing Rodeo And Jamboree III", which is stated to have been filmed around the same time as the Halloween Spooktacular two-parter, Michael makes a comment about waving a fake gun at a cop and deserving the consequences December 2014 saw a kid killed by an overzealous cop because he pointed a toy gun at him.
  • In "Wolf Spa", Jack named his wolf Cosby, after Bill Cosby, which led to lines such as "No Cosby!" and "Cosby, get away!", which became much darker after Cosby's real life rape and sexual assault allegations.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During the King Gus vs King Ryan episode of Jeremy's "Epic Rap Battle of Roosterteeth", the last line was Ryan saying "When you're just a king bowing to a Dark God." In RTX 2015, Ryan revealed that the third King Ryan, at the time, was planned to be Dark God Ryan.
  • While "Legends of the Hidden Tower" was cited as a huge example of a trainwreck, a few months later Kirk Fogg would have an interview about his retrospective of Legends of the Hidden Temple and revealed that, among other things, there was a lot of enforced Fake Difficulty because the show's funding was too poor to give out a lot of prizes, and a lot of the props and setpieces were so shoddily made they routinely broke, including the Silver Monkey idol itself, which would sometimes cost teams a victory by outright refusing to click into place. Suddenly the difficulties the cast had with the Let's Play seemed more accurate than if it had gone off without a hitch.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The Tower of Pimps.
  • After people found out that Ryan had imprisoned a cow in his house in Achievement City and called it Edgar, the fans jokingly launched a campaign called "FreeEdgar2013". Some YouTubers even set up a fake account with fictional characters running for president, while using that as a campaign starter.
  • In episode 61, after Michael freed Edgar (who may or may not have been killed by Geoff), Ryan noticed that he was missing, repairs everything, and leads a cow into the hole. When asked whether it was the real Edgar or not, he answered, "You don't understand. Edgar is the one in the hole." The line became memetic almost immediately.
  • In-Universe, the guys are extremely fond of the conversation they had in Voyage of the Dumb Treaders regarding Jeremy misreading the compass, particularly Gavin's irritated statement "If we have the smegging compass, Jeremy, we don't need the farting sun, because you got the compass in your shitting hand, Jeremy!"
• Mis-blamed: Discussed concerning "Ya Dead Ya Dead". Gavin and the others talk about how a lot of viewers thought that the gang had scripted out the entire thing, as if the team knew that something would happen and let it happen. As they explained, they're only getting the 20/20 hindsight thing thanks to the editing - none of the deaths were scripted, though Lindsay claims hers was, which might have been a joke.
• Seasonal Rot: As time has gone on and Minecraft has grown less and less relevant, the series has suffered some. Some fans are irritated at more recent episodes being somewhat phoned in and that Achievement City and the Tower of Pimps, two things that helped skyrocket the series to popularity, haven't been focused on in a long time in favor of messing around with Xbox game modes and PC mods. (In their defense, the Achievement City map is so old that it's supposedly corrupted and unusable.) There's also the fact that episode thumbnails and titles have gotten a lot more clickbaity in the years; more recent thumbnails now have the Hunters' avatars and some other Minecraft elements like mobs given overly expressive faces like in the thumbnails of other YouTubers' Minecraft videos.
• So Bad, It's Good: Certain episodes where they messed up the building or mechanics of the Let's Play; in particular:
  • Episode 55, "Creeper Soccer", where the build-team made numerous questionable building choices, such as constructing the arena out of dirt (one of the most destructible materials in the game), placing the dispenser and redstone connections where the explosions could destroy them, having a bedroom so small that most of them ended up spawning outside of the room, no way to get into the arena, a camerawoman who had to manually build up to the viewing platform (and ending up falling off more than once), having to reset the game every time the creepers caused too much damage or even if they scored a goal, and arena lights that were irregularly sized.
  • Episode 142, "Legends of the Hidden Tower", mainly the trivia quiz and house building sections. The trivia section because Lindsay kept forgetting not to say the right answer after a team gets the wrong answer, not noticing who buzzed in first multiple times, and giving the wrong correct answer for two questions. The house building section because they built the building perimeter of one team incorrectly so that it was impossible to reconstruct the given model correctly, so there was no way they could finish. In both cases this caused epic freak outs from members of the Let's Play (in particular Geoff).
• Special Effects Failure: Less than two minutes into episode four of Ya Dead, Ya Dead, Michael's "kingdom" that he would supposedly spend the next fifty years building is visible on the horizon only a few chunks away from the base.
  • Similarly, you can clearly see a gold nugget and Nether brick stairs in Michael's inventory.
• Win Back the Crowd: Sky Factory seems to be doing this for the fans who have gotten bored of more recent Minecraft videos. It helps that the AH team greatly enjoys them as well.
  • The "Ya Dead, Ya Dead" series started out as one for those tired of Sky Factory, as it was a 9-person ^note Geoff, Jack, Ryan, Michael, Gavin, Jeremy, Lindsay, Trevor, and Alfredo hardcore vanilla playthrough; in short, the exact opposite of Sky Factory. It ended too quickly, as everyone except Lindsay (who died in Episode 1) and Michael died of murder and stupid mistakes in Episode 3. Epsiode 4 was a 27-minute epilogue that started with Michael bemoaning his late friends, followed by a "50-year timeskip" sequence in which he builds and becomes king of an empty castle, sees the ghosts of the other players and dies in his sleep, and eventually meets everyone in the Nether. Ultimately it was an ending nobody expected and few wanted.
  • Its followup, Achieveland, is shaping in the direction to do this again - now that the Achievement City map has finally been fully corrupted, the Hunters take the opportunity to A) start a new map with and build a new Hub City in a place which has up-to-date resources, B) bring in the new Hunters who didn't have a separate house in Achievement City (Lindsay, Matt, Trevor and Alfredo), C) have the option to add mods later to spice things up, and D) like YDYD, play the game as it's meant to be played.
• The Woobie:
  • After the events of Episode 32, many people started to feel bad for Gavin, mostly because the other guys ganged up on him to stop him from completing his wool puzzle, allowing Geoff to win and get the Tower of Pimps. It didn't help that Michael was busy gloating over the victory and Gavin spent the rest of the episode so eerily silent. Though in the behind the scenes video for that episode, Gavin is very clearly laughing despite proclaiming his annoyance, so while he may have been angry, he was at least taking it all in stride and not being too serious about losing. On the other hand, when it turns out that Geoff tricked him into potentially throwing away the victory^note Gavin had contributed to the build and so he and Geoff agreed that they would go slow at first until they reached a point where they could seriously compete. Geoff never gave Gavin a heads up before he took the win which, despite his laughter, Gavin later mentioned actually did make him angry, he can very easily fall back into this.
  • Ray fits the bill as an Iron Woobie, at least in Episode 90. He has just won his fourth and final piece needed to win the Tower and then Ryan tells everyone that it was all for nothing. In order to actually win, a person needs to slay Edgar. Ray does not slay Edgar and thus loses because of an unexpected twist on Ryan's part. Despite all this, Ray does not complain and congratulates the winner. (He would finally with the Tower again in Episode 101.)
  • Ryan in #161, when Michael ends up killing Ryan's pet triceratops Pointy^note they're playing a modded PC version including a dinosaur mod, and both had two Dinosaurs loyal to them; when Michael hits Ryan's triceratops, who proceeds to attack him in response, Michael's pet Pachycephalosaurus attacks and kills Pointy to defend him. Michael's subsequent taunts combined with Ryan's clear upset makes him an easy woobie, one who quickly graduates into Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds when his psychopathic tendencies kick in and he sets up plans for revenge...