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  • Abandon Shipping: A good portion of fans stopped shipping Kal'tsit and the Doctor together after Episode 8 reveals that the Doctor killed Theresa, something that Kal'tsit can never forgive the Doctor for even with the Doctor's current amnesia. Then after the Babel Event, a good portion of the remaining fans jumped ship when it turns out Kal'tsit was closer to a daughter figure to the Doctor, with them being the one to name her and give her purpose, and Kal'tsit learning the Awful Truth of the origins of Originium and Oripathy makes it harder for Kal'tsit to make amends with the Doctor, if at all. Still, those who remained held onto the belief that the revelation make their relationship suitable for a Pygmalion Plot.
  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • There's an Operator named "Rope", who is a Cautus (i.e. a bunny). While her codename may reference her rope-based weapon, one could easily think of the slang "rope bunny" instead. As such, NSFW fan-artists did not let this one slide, sometimes drawing Rope being tied up.
    • Texas the Omertosa's Character song, "Thorns in You". While those "Thorns" could mean rose thorns, it doesn't help that it's the codename of another Operator. The innuendo is not lost on fans, and jokes and memes are abound due to the accidental Double Entendre of the name.
      • Tequila's Operator Record is named "Taste of Thorns" (alluding to why Tequila hasn't completely cut ties with Bolivar). For the record, Operator Thorns makes no appearance in that side story, and he has yet to interact with Tequila in canon.
    • Weedy's second module ended up with an amusingly off-colour name. As a Push Stroker specialist (a subclass with an Unfortunate Name of its own), her modules start with the prefix PUS. So her first module was PUS-X, but this meant her second module is PUS-γ (PUSH Module Gamma), which is often written as PUS-Y because most users don't apply greek lettering, and that looks unfortunate all on its own.
  • And You Thought It Would Fail: From the mere mention of its Tower Defense genre alone, skeptics in the Western gacha communities thought that Arknights at its international launch, would completely flop outside of China and won't be embraced by the global anime gacha fans because the tower defense genre is a rare niche in gacha games filled with Turn-Based Combat and real-time action RPG (the remnants of this still remain in videos showcasing beta gameplay; the comments are mainly from disappointed people who expected the gameplay to be different). Others simply claim that the game won't become popular online. However, these opinions turned out to be drowned by those who are curious of how Tower Defense gachas work, so there was a built-up hype of interest. Arknights then had devoted fanbases in the English, Japanese and Korean markets, and had attracted lots of fan artists online. In terms of profitability, it somehow managed to earn higher revenues than fellow Yostar-published game, Azur Lane, although lesser than the franchise-based, or PVP-reliant grindy gachas.
    • On a smaller scale, the operator Mountain. His reddit announcement post is still ridden with comments saying he's dead on arrival, especially since he initially seemed to have no innate dodge talent that the other Brawler Guards do have - not to mention that Brawler Guards are underused in the meta in general. Their block count of one and piss-poor attack stat was the cause of this. Exacerbating the situation was that exact numbers and the second talent of 6-star operators are not known at the moment of introduction (in Mountain's case, it was the physical dodge talent that was expected). And then as those were revealed...he became a staple for high-risk teams, as it turned out that he's pretty good at addressing the main weaknesses of the class by increasing his block count, DPS and survivability overall.
    • Angelina was similarly considered the worst 6-star Starter Mon from the beginner's banner. A long time, she was rendered useless due to her not attacking when idle in her S2 and S3, and her S1 where she does attack is nothing to write home about. However, Contingency Contract rolled around and Angelina quickly became the star of the show, to the point that she was considered mandatory for Pyrite Gorge and still managed to play a key role in further Contingency Contracts like Blade. This is because Contingency Contract buffs certain enemies that were annoying before but could be pound into putty with decently leveled operators into near unstoppable high-danger menaces, that need to be dealt with by buying more time to do it. Nowadays, Angelina is far from her initial state as she's revered for her passive global healing and ASPD buff, her potent slowing, burst damage on her S3 bypassing Caster bans and her unique weight reduction enabling some meme strats with Shift Specialists. Funnily enough, Angelina is also in-universe known for being a rookie brimming with potential.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: See here.
  • Applicability:
    • There have been... questions about the precise nature of the messages Arknights is trying to send with its choice of how to depict Reunion, the primary antagonist group.
      • Reunion is a group of oppressed individuals who are "othered" because of conditions beyond their control (namely their infection with oripathy) — prejudice we get to see first-hand as Rhodes Island members also must deal with it — and Reunion members have decided to take to violent means to achieve their liberation. Their aesthetic has a distinctive "anarchist" or possibly "anti-fascist" vibe to it, with lots of facial concealment (especially via mouth bandanas and masks for the lower-rank units) and hoods... which also happens to be a fairly common image of the protestors in places like Hong Kong. This aspect, at least, does appear to be coincidental (the HK protest movement contemporaneous to the game's international release began in June 2019, while even the earliest trailers for the game from 2017 already depicted Reunion using their present aesthetic) but for many outside of China, it does feel very unfortunate. There have also been a number of objections to the Reunion mooks being depicted as they are, as it seems to perpetuate the idea of anti-fascists being terrorists. And then there's questions, especially in the U.S. (with a long history of the oppressed seeking redress of wrongs done to them and often feeling a need to resort to violence to defend themselves, though not to the point of endangering innocents) of just what the game is saying by seeming to frame Reunion as being wholly in the wrong for resorting to violence.
      • The counter-argument mostly coalesces around the fact that Reunion militarizes very quickly (they graduate from "guys with molotovs" to heavily-armored SWAT-style troopers, lumbering axe men, exploding spiders, guys with literal jet packs, and toting mortars pretty rapidly in game progression) and that a number of the Reunion leaders don't seem to have the same zeal for the theoretical cause of the group that the rank-and-file (and Talulah) do; this argument largely boils down to the message being "militarizing for the purpose of ending oppression only results in you becoming the new oppressor and welcoming those into your fold who are useful, rather than those who believe in your cause" and that it is, perhaps, commenting on the arc of the Russian Revolution and CPSU (with bonus points for the game's story kicking off in the world's equivalent to Russia) and even, through heavy allegory, the arc of the Chinese Communist Party. As the game's first arc is still in progress, it's a bit difficult to say for certain what the final message will be, but the whole thing does tend to inspire, shall we say, debates.
      • The closure of the Reunion arc in Episode 8 brings a few more elements to the table: Reunion did start off as a more virtuous, peaceful organization dedicated to genuinely fighting for infected rights, with most of its members being relatively non-violent and good-intentioned. However, Talulah's Despair Event Horizon and Kashchey's possession of her body let him appeal to their worst aspects to radicalize the organization and whip them into a frenzy, turning them from an Infected rights organization to a mere puppet for his plan to start a war with Yan, while Theresis was also enabling them to stir the pot and draw attention away from his plans. Thus, it can be interpreted that the arc doesn't necessarily condemn righteous anger and rebellion per say, but moreso the risks of letting it run unchecked or allowing a third party to manipulate it for their selfish ends, as well as the dangers of allowing ideals to shift from helping the oppressed to hurting the oppressors, the latter of which being something that the new Reunion still struggles with even in the later chapters.
    • Lungmen has been a particular headache in this regard, even for Hypergryph themselves; the city is pretty clearly a stand-in for Special Economic Zone cities of the 21st century in China, with the most obvious parallel being Hong Kong. The initial emphasis, however, is fairly obviously more meant to be on the pressures it faces with inequality and wealth (with the first story arc having an emphasis on the cycle of hatred and revenge that stems from poverty, sudden deprivation with no safety net, and the resulting desperation & violence), and is meant very much to come across as "Hong Kong by way of magical unobtainium supertech Cyberpunk"... and then, a good hot one month and some change after the game's launch, the HK protests and the events around them began, which offered completely different allegorical readings of the game's events and made the topic of Hong Kong period incredibly sensitive in China (and internationally, made the Lungmen chapters stick out a bit more). There's a decent bit of suspicion that the notable delay in the game's sixth chapter coming out (five months after the fifth) may have had to do with Hypergryph having to consider if and/or how the story had to change to ensure no one in power (or in the domestic audience) took issue with the narrative. The fact that the arc proceeded the way it did (most notably with the Yan government effectively holding Lungmen at gunpoint to enforce their brutal anti-Infected policies, and Wei subsequently attempting genocide on his own Infected citizens) could be considered bold already.
    • Similarly to the Reunion arc, the portrayal of the Sarkaz and specifically the Military Commission in Act 2 flip-flips between depicting the Sarkaz as violent warmongers with a Lack of Empathy and horrific dark magics, and a race that have been oppressed and beaten down so many times by the entire world (to the point that it's practically instinct) that they only know violence and feel that it is their right to lash out in retribution. This then leaves the story to play a balancing act of keeping them unambiguously villainous at minimum by showing just how far their thirst for revenge goes to justify them being an enemy, and outlining that the Sarkaz essentially had their world invaded and stolen from them by extraterrestrial colonists, then demonized by said colonists and branded the enemy of the world for trying to fight back. Further muddling things is the presence of the Myriad Souls, their ancestral Hive Mind that literally prohibits them from going against their generational hatred and desire for revenge (ensuring they're indoctrinated into hate from their very birth), with the ultra-conservative Royal Court fully supporting this desire, until Theresa sacrifices her life to sever them and truly free the Sarkaz - and even then, Kazdel is only allowed to exist not out of charity or Terra turning a new leaf, but because they now have the equivalent of a nuclear deterrent in the Amnannam thanks to Theresis, preventing the world from ganging up on them despite now hating them more for the KMC's militant actions in Londinium. The Sarkaz themselves and their treatment by Terra also largely draw inspirations from historical minority ethnic groups who were heavily persecuted in the past, particularly the Abrahamic peoples and Biblical Jews, which to both historians and laymen may make the story hit a bit too close to home. Although the protagonists notably do not take either extreme and acknowledge Kazdel's right to exist, but still must strive for a middle ground as they cannot allow them to sacrifice all of Terra to do so, the act of many Terrans demonizing the entire Sarkaz race and culture, innocents and all, because of the KMC's crimes in Londinium may strike a nerve.
  • Arc Fatigue: At least from the English fanbase, the earliest story chapters are usually criticized for their odd or inconsistent pacing, with some parts thought to be dragged on longer than expected.
    • The "Evil Time" arc being an obvious case of a Prolonged Prologue. It consists of two Episodes accounting for approximately 20 missions. The concern is related to how limited-time events like "Grani & the Knights' Treasure" require this arc to be finished first, so someone with a fresh account has to sit through these 20 missions even before they get a chance to play these limited-time events.
    • Chapters 2 and 3 are also seen with an arc fatigue mainly because they somehow play out similar to the "Evil Time" arc (as in, a Rescue Arc that spans for 2 chapters or approximately 20 missions, but this time, the rescuee is Misha and the villain is Skullshatterer).
    • The length of dialogue lines are often attributed to the localization, especially when some of them appear to be too "wordy" or too long depending on the characters or topics involved. One scene that was joked because of its length is the conversation of Hellagur and Patriot during the Operational Intelligence event's "The Anonymous Ones' War" story arc. If the dialogue is set to auto-play, this cutscene takes around 36 minutes to complete, but Hellagur and Patriot cover around 25 minutes out of those 36.
    • The entirety of some story arcs rivals that of novels.note  A website (EN, CN) keeps track of the word count of all the story arcs, and on CN, Absolved Will Be the Seekers tops it at 174,510 characters, although it's worth noting that these word counts tend to be a good bit lower when translated into English.note  The entirety of the game's story (not even including things like Operator Records, the mangas, or other supplementary texts) is over 1 million English words and counting, and many of the stories also require reading of one or more previous stories to understand.
    • Act 2, better known as the "Victoria Arc", has gamed some infamy for simply how long it's dragged out for, accounting for Episodes 9-14, a chunk of other events (like What the Firelight Casts, Ending a Grand Overture, and When Elegies are Ashes, to name a few), and looming over a boatload of seemingly unrelated faction events like due to the sheer scope of the crisis it depicts, to the point where even 3 years after its release, the flow of Victoria-related content has only just started to slow. It doesn't help that although it contains some of the more memorable moments in the plot, it was also responsible for some controversial story beats, such as numerous characters losing the spotlight or getting written out of the plot, fan-favorite Mandragora getting seemingly killed offscreen, the established-to-be-invincible Nachzehrer King being slain in a cutscene without a proper battle, and the beginnings of the story Going Cosmic, the last of which didn't sit well with those already dissatisfied with the world-ending stakes of the arc and preferred smaller-scale, more personal stories. Although many players enjoyed the arc overall, even those who liked it sometimes agree that it may have overstayed its welcome.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Ch'en. On one hand, she's a six star operator with great Game-Breaker skills and a cool design to make her popular with fan artists. Story-wise, first impressions of her aren't that great in the fandom despite some Character Development later on. She's disliked because of her initial callous attitude towards the Infected, including her allies in Rhodes Island, treating them either as illegal immigrants at best or terrorists at worst. Not helping her case is that she allows her boss, Governor Wei to treat Rhodes Island like disposable pawns and the reveal that's she's a Boomerang Bigot as she too is also infected. However, in Chapter 7 and 8, she finally has enough and calls out Wei, cutting ties with Lungmen before setting off to battle Talulah, eventually fighting her alongside Amiya, eventually joining the ranks of Rhodes Island at the end of Chapter 8.
    • Mephisto, particularly when it comes to whether or not he's redeemable. While he has a tragic and miserable past which shows how all his attempts to do the right thing backfired and drove him to madness (and depicts his villainy to be at least partially thanks to Talulah's manipulation), lost his only friend in Chapter 6, seems to have significantly sobered up as a result in Chapter 7 (even having a Pet the Dog moment with the last of Faust's troops), and is actively seeking redemption at that point, whether that excuses his extreme and seemingly pointless sadism and countless sickening atrocities across the earlier story remains a topic of discussion, especially when his actions in Children of Ursus are concerned. Things get a little more complicated in Chapter 8, where he undergoes a gruesome transformation and forces you into a tragic final battle complete with Sad Battle Music and a heartbreaking final monologue. To further cause divide in the fanbase, his battle lets you decide to spare him or kill him (though it is not very well explained how to do the former), and his fate is ultimately left ambiguous.
    • Kal'tsit. On one hand, she has an attractive design, extremely powerful abilities, a cold yet caring personality, a mysterious past with vast amounts of wisdom to offer, and a personal connection to the Doctor and their past (including the popular meme depicting them as ex-lovers providing lots of shipping material). However, she has also drawn ire for her in-story characterization as an unquestionable, invincible, all-knowing hero who always does the right thing and can solve any problem, making her seem almost too perfect; even in regards to her gameplay, most people believe that the reason she is classified as a regular Medic, despite having completely different attributes compared to other Medics of said archetype (ie. Kal'tsit having a unique attack range of 3x5 at Elite 2 instead of 3x4), is likely done so that no other Medic can replicate her performance as a Medic that can deploy an attacking summon, making it so that a "Summoner Medic" archetype is unique to her and only hernote . Her mysterious nature might have also worked a little too well, since she now also has a reputation for never giving straight answers, instead only speaking in riddles and lengthy Purple Prose, not helped by an attitude that is often seen as condescending and even pretentious at times. And then there's what she did in the past with regards to Kazdel, which boiled down to organizing its complete destruction in the name of preserving future civilization and claiming Civilight Eterna, which retroactively causes many of her criticisms of the Doctor and other characters to be seen as hypocritical.
    • Surtr is sometimes divisive for her simple, abrasive personality, near-complete lack of lore, and her absurd Game-Breaker abilities that practically turned the game upside down on her release. She's still one of the most popular operators in the game, likely owing to her attractive design and possibly because of said power and harsh personality making for lots of fanworks depicting her as a Tsundere.
    • To a lesser extent, the Abyssal Hunters can be this: they're one of the most popular factions in the game thanks to an array of attractive designs, a cool Bloodborne inspired aesthetic, and expansive lore with their involvement in the lovecraftian Seaborn and Aegir storylines, along with a powerful team synergy to boot. At the same time, the amount of favoritism Hypergryph seems to show towards them is divisive at times, particularly with regards to how much attention they and the Seaborn get in the story compared to many of the other side factions, how the Hunters conspicuously have universally good Modules in a system notorious for doling out mediocre ones (with the free Gladiia's module single-handedly turning the entire faction from somewhat niche to game-breaking overnight), and how they have a team synergy that instantly makes them a near win condition for most levels while most other factions (like Kazimierz, Glasgow, or Rhine Lab) either don't have any team buffs or underwhelming, situational ones. Not helping is how the playstyle of the Abyssal Hunters mostly revolves around brute-forcing challenges with sheer stats with no regard to mechanics or strategy, which some players deride as boring and antithetical to the strategy aspect of the game; it's a common sentiment (used both to praise and criticize them) that a full squad of Abyssal Hunters might as well be the game's unofficial easy mode.
    • Gnosis is highly divisive in certain sections of the community due to the contrast between his wholehearted dedication to Kjerag and his friend SilverAsh, and his utter callousness towards everyone and everything else, particularly the way he takes advantage of Monch's trust in him to trick her into being used as a pawn, even though he immediately has a What Have I Done moment when Monch abandons his knife and disappears from his life afterwards.
    • Puzzle's appearance as a playable Agent Vanguard had some players questioning his presence after the way he takes civilian hostages in an effort to capture Reed during his debut event, with a number of them perishing during the fight that sparked when his team of Victorian soldiers got into a fight with a number of Eblana's troops.
    • Although she has a very popular design, there were a notable amount of players who were uncomfortable with Arturia/Virtuosa's Promoted to Playable status as of Zwillingstürme Im Herbst due to her introduction as the Arch-Enemy of Executor and the instigator of heinous crimes to satisfy her twisted curiosity for emotions. While Rhodes Island has many other operators of dubious morality such as Passenger, W, Harmonie or Ho'olheyak, most of them are more accepted whether due to more understandable motives, the lesser scale of their actions, or genuine remorse and signs of being The Atoner. In comparison, Arturia's Blue-and-Orange Morality leaves her mostly unrepentant for her actions even despite her signs of regret at losing people close to her, leaving her irredeemable in the eyes of many who have her playable status, likely ensuring she remains a Karma Houdini, leaving a bitter taste in their mouths. It's worth noting, however, that this was most prominent before the actual event was released on global, before which most players only knew Arturia's character through the limited perspective shown in Hortus de Escapismo and poorly or selectively transcribed content from CN, and people have been more receptive to her character since reading the event and with the knowledge that she is not free to do what she likes aboard the landship.
    • Pepe is beloved by many players thanks to her cute design courtesy of her artist Namie, comedic and often memetic tendencies, explosive skills that just amount to swinging her hammer really hard, the amount of love her artist gives her on social media, and an absolute Ear Worm of a theme. Another subset of players heavily criticizes her for how her traditionally cute design ends up being bland in comparison or clashes with the game's overall gritty style, her having a rather uninnovative kit, and her average performance for a Limited operator (who tend to be very strong as a whole), with some arguing that Narantuya (who has a more overtly flashy design and a more unique kit) should have been the Limited in her place. A yet smaller subset of players goes as far as to accuse the game of showing even more favoritism to her artist Namie, given that Mizuki had an entire IS season revolving around him and Goldenglow had gotten a whopping three skins before then, one of which was Live2D and another of which was a true limited collab skin. It also doesn't help that prior to her event (which showcased more of the contrast between her silly and serious aspects), all of her previous characterization and story presence was found in Tales Within the Sand, which only a small subset of players had experience with due to the demanding and often tedious nature of Reclamation Algorithm, meaning many players had no idea who she even was.
    • Similarly to Virtuosa, Necrass' playable debut left a subset of players scratching their heads given that she's repsonsible for a vast amount of death and suffering through the actions of Dublinn, including breaking Reed into an Empty Shell pre-Character Development and essentially foisting the responsibility of ruling a broken post-war Tara onto her after she got bored of it, spent the entire story being a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist driven by her own hunger for power rather than any true desire for Taran liberation, and ultimately got away with everything while gaining everything she wanted. In addition, she not only remains highly suspect or outright villainous even in her debut event and after joining Rhodes Island, unlike Virtuosa, Necrass also lacks a warped sense of morality and is entirely unrepentant of her own choice, with all the characters in the setting knowing well that Necrass just sees Rhodes Island and the Doctor as a new form of amusement that she'll easily throw away if they stop entertaining her. Although she remains immensely popular owing to her background and character design, there was a fair bit of discontent that she'd never face a real punishment for her actions, possibly because of said popularity that is often believed to be a factor that pushed the developers into making her playable in the first place in spite of her previous story role.
  • Breather Boss: See here.
  • Breather Level:
    • Compared to all other Contingency Contracts, CC#11 Fake Waves is generally considered to be the easiest. There are no complex mechanics outside of the water, nor are there any boss enemies or particularly dangerous elites, with the biggest threats effectively amounting to simple damage sponges. The map itself is very simple with only one lane in the middle, and even when you take the risk that takes away some deployment space by lowering the amount of platforms, nothing of note is impacted and the water remains mostly hostile to the enemies rather than your Operators. On top of that, many of the risks are relatively insignificant compared to some of the game-changers found in the previous CC maps; in fact, the -1 Block risk is potentially beneficial instead as it allows ranged units to be freely deployed in the path of enemies without being attacked, making them effectively invincible outside of the relatively weak casters and divers. It's telling that there's videos of solo Risk 18 clears with Texas the Omertosa, Ling, Dorothy, Magallan, and Pozëmka.
    • Due to Act II being technically accessible after clearing Episode 3 despite being chronologically after Episode 8, Episode 9 is generally more forgiving than Episode 8 before it, with comparatively less dangerous threats, none of the Escort Missions that made Episode 8 so painful, an easy to understand gimmick, and a single (relatively) easier boss compared to the three brutal bosses of Episode 8. Do note that this only applies if you did the chapters in chronological order: it's a steep Difficulty Spike if you enter it directly after Episode 3, and Episode 10 jumps right back up in difficulty.
    • Episode 14, despite being the climax of the game's second arc, is surprisingly lenient compared to the previous chapters. While not exactly easy, it lacks any particularly brutal gimmicks like the Londinium Cannon of Episode 10, disguise/identification gimmicks of Episode 12, or the payloads from Episode 13; the Originium Pollution/Storms are pretty easy to work around (and can be weaponized in your favor), and most of the deadlier enemies show up fairly late and rather infrequently. There are two bosses in the chapter, but the Kindling Revenant is a cinematic Puzzle Boss that goes down easily if you follow the stage gimmick, while Theresa boils down to a reading comprehension check whose difficulty dramatically drops if you just interact with her boss mechanics. Even the H-stages are noted to be a step down compared to the notoriously brutal Episodes 12 and 13. This may be justified by the release of the coinciding anniversary event allowing players to temporarily enter Episode 14 no matter their current story progress, so Hypergryph may have wanted to make the chapter more accessible to players of various progression and skill levels.
    • The fifth Integrated Strategies season, Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables is often considered to be a good step down in difficulty compared to the previous seasons. Not necessarily because of the levels and bosses being easier, but because the season offers many ways to scale your operators into oblivion, between the various uses of the Thought mechanic allowing amassing of shields and items while maximizing the number of nodes you can clear, ability to easily stack King's relics, the infamous Blueprint Squad/Talons of Hatred strategies letting you constantly fight Emergencies and obtain an absurd amount of items, and more. Even weaker units or outright Low Tier Letdowns have the potential to become game-enders on the highest difficulties due to how strong they can get when you have several dozen items under your belt, and it's surprisingly easy to get a build broken enough to pull it off if you know what you're doing. Even with subsequent expansions that added more difficult maps, expanding the difficulty to 18 levels, and added the fourth and fifth endings on par with or surpassing the difficulty of previous seasons, said expansions also added even more broken items and squads (including the Lamp of Wishes, one of the strongest and most accessible items in the entire mode's lifespan) that can lead to even weaker teams being able to make short work of them with enough preparation.
  • Broken Base:
    • The music outside of the official OST. There is a portion of fans who likes songs like "Save us from ourselves" or "Survive", but the vast majority (or the part that is the most vocal about it) dislikes these songs, saying they don't fit into the atmosphere, and have already fixed "Monster" and "Unbecoming" as the Arknights themes. They argue that it might be better that the Starset songs initially were put as 'well that just about fits' and unexpectedly became popular, than songs that are written to be forcibly associated with the game. However, the creators have been noticing this discourse, and have announced an Arknights-specific song from Starset. This discourse is mostly a thing of the past, given Hypergryph's current vast musical reputation.
    • One of the first debates in the English gacha communities are about the Sanity costs. One side likes how easy it is to drain the stamina resource in Arknights, making this game one of the best side-game gachas to play when taking a quick break since it doesn't demand too much playtime per day. The other side argues that this game should have more ways to refill Sanity since there are plenty of materials to collect, and a lot of Level Grinding and Money Grinding to fully upgrade Operators. To the first side's defense, the low sanity costs are good for the longevity of the game since players can easily become bored if they accomplish a lot within a short amount of time. The counter-argument to the last one brings up the idea that there are indeed people who wish to treat Arknights as a main game and would like to play it for longer periods of time everyday.
    • The common "There are no bad operators, just bad doctors" debacle. On the one hand, it is indeed true that the gameplay loops tends to put more emphasis on technical strategy over roster strength, meaning that even low-tier operators can be surprisingly viable if one knows how to play to their strengths, presenting a clear-cut case of Difficult, but Awesome when one beats a hard piece of content using nothing but Starter Mons or operators known to be below-par. On the other, there are operators that are severely hamstrung by low numbers or a poorly-designed aspect of their kit (Flamebringer, Ceylon, Deepcolor, etc...), who range from very niche to borderline unusable without significant handholding. There stands an undeniable fact that, without some of the Game Breakers, one is going to have a very bad time trying to clear the harder content updates, if not impossible entirely. Not helping matters is that this sentiment is commonly used by those who already have powerful operators to denigrate those with poorer gacha luck or conversely, more hardcore F2P players making fun of less experienced players who rolled high quality operators they don't know how to use yet.
    • In the months after the release of the EN client, there has been a growing divide between the EN and CN fandoms, particularly around EN content creators. There's been a growing dissonance among CN players targeting EN content creators, accusing them of spreading bad information and advice. Meanwhile, the EN community has largely risen up to defend them, accusing the CN players of being elitists due to having access to the game for longer as well as failing to understand that EN content creators largely tailor their content to cater to an EN audience, whose version of the game is at least a year's worth of content behind the CN version.
    • The motion to rush out content on the EN build of the game to catch up with the CN server was met with very mixed reactions. On the one hand, there are a lot of players who appreciate the ability to roll for their favorite operators such as Nian and W, without having to wait for a full year for them to arrive at the EN banners, as well as the popular quality of life upgrades to the game that come with them. On the other, there's an equally vocal camp who detests the way this rushing policy is screwing with banner orders (e.g. Nian coming out during mid-summer instead of New Year, and W looking like she'll be released far ahead of the game's 1-year anniversary at the time), and pushing events out the door at an uncomfortably breakneck pace. It really says something when CC#0 barely ended for a week and CC#1 loomed ahead in only 1-2 months, which put undue stress on a lot of players, who had to grind extra hard to keep specific operators viable when that happens. Eventually, Hypergryph settled on a permanent gap of 6 months, with the summer event and the event preceding it in the CN server having their places switched for the global anniversary.
    • There is some amount of debate on "Alter" characters and how many of them should be in the game. It's been noted that Alters taking the places on banners could prevent new characters from being introduced, while other arguments propose that this isn't a bad thing, as it helps prevent character bloat while fleshing out existing characters beyond what'd be possible with only one iteration. On a gameplay side, they are both seen as a way to salvage underperforming operators, or a solution that doesn't "fix" the existing unit as much as it does replace them. As for which characters "deserve" an alter the most, it's another can of worms entirely, with some fans basing this off of operators who are subpar in gameplay, operators with hanging plot threads to be explored, operators who have in-story hidden potential or are holding back, personal favorites, or other factors entirely. As a result, alters that don't match the criteria of parts of the fanbase will often be the subject of minor controversy or debate.
    • There's been some debate over how Hypergryph handles event medals - namely, that they become impossible to earn after the rerun ends, even when the event is added to the permanent record. While many fans are happy with this, some have expressed a desire for all medals that wouldn't be exclusive to the event's initial duration (e.g. ones relating to spending event currency) to be added back into the game, even if they are no longer guildable.
    • You'll find a somewhat surprising amount of debate on whether Limited operators (particularly "true" limiteds, like those exclusive to collabs) are justified in being a cut above the rest in terms of power. Supporters argue that a limited unit should have a lot of power to back up their rarity in order to justify the hype and resources you're incentivized to spend to get them, and that it ruins a lot of the hype behind a rare operator if they end up underperforming. Detractors point out that having the game's strongest operators locked behind time-limited (or worse, one-time) events is unhealthy for game balance as it not only forces players to go all-in on gacha to stay on top of the meta (by extension massively favoring whales), but also devalues every other unit as there'd be little incentive to roll for any standard unit one has a personal preference for if you know the upcoming limited will always be leagues stronger.
    • Teambuilding itself tends to be surprisingly controversial for a strategy RPG, particularly with regards to units that only shine with synergy with other units. Detractors claim that units that need other units to shine are failures of design, especially in a gacha game where it may be difficult to put together a full team of your choosing, while supporters argue that not only is team synergy essential to preserve the strategic depth of the game, totally self-sufficient units are actively harmful for the game's health by diminishing the need to understand the game in favor of "pull this unit and have them do everything for you". The Primal Caster branch is particularly subject to this due to being highly ineffective without Element support and having the misfortune of their most viable partners currently being elusive Limited units, with some arguing that they're conceptually fine and just need more enablers, and others arguing that this type of forced synergy has no place in the game to begin with.
  • Casual-Competitive Conflict: A surprising amount for a non-PvP game.
    • For the Character Tiers – Because the Early Game Hell of Arknights makes it difficult to gather up resources in promoting characters to Elite 2, beginners may get stuck on deciding which Operator should they invest on first. Casuals who play the game at their relaxed pace prioritize their favorite characters regardless of their rarity or abilities. Competitive players invest first on the higher-rarity operators or Game Breakers available to them in preparation for harder events such as "Contingency Contract". This conflict of comparing characters brought upon the "There are no bad operators, just bad doctors" meme phrase in the fandom, as well as the "Waifu vs. Meta" debates.
    • For the Direct Playstyle Conflict – The Hardcore or competitive players would usually remind the other players to optimize the skills of their support Operators who can be borrowed by others, especially if one skill defines an operator or makes them a Game-Breaker. This is because the Friend Support system requires the players to manually assign skills in that specific menu, something that players usually forget after promoting Operators. Take an Elite 2 SilverAsh for example, someone who set him with his third skill is more preferred than someone who still assigned him with his basic first skill. This was eventually phased out altogether with a later update which allowed players to freely change the skill and even Module of a chosen support unit.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • Near the end of the Rainbow Six Siege crossover event "Operation Originium Dust", Ash completely and savagely beats the Big Bad Drudge to near death with just her bare fists after the latter tries to weasel his way out of punishment, as revenge for all the crimes he's committed and for Miarow's death. She only stops short of permanently ending the bastard when Blitz reminds her to save her strength for the other Big Bad waiting. Schwarz even admits that seeing that was completely satisfying.
    • "Lone Trail" had a truly satisfying moment when Loken Williams angers the Doctor due to the way he talks about Rosmontis, leading to a dialogue choice for the player where all three options involve hitting Loken physically (the choice to punch, kick, or slap Loken). In addition to establishing the Doctor as being fiercely protective of Rosmontis, it also is a moment where Loken proves to be such an unpleasant man that for this brief moment, the Doctor's distaste of Loken is strong enough that their reaction briefly synchronizes with the player's desire to hit Loken and their only thoughts are of violence.
  • Character Tiers: Given the huge amount of characters typical for a gacha game, Arknights is bound to have Tier Lists as well, such as this one, where Operators are ranked depending on their utilities and skills within the same Class.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
    • In the current state of the game, there are good operators, and there are very good ones. And then there are the Game Breakers, 6-star operators that boast incredibly busted skills and talents that make them hilariously broken to use. For a more detailed breakdown, look no further than this page. And even within that category, Wiš'adel takes the cake, to the point that there is an ongoing meme of 'Wiš'adel brainrot rehabilitation'.
    • According to the data shown in the first anniversary livestream for the game's Chinese server:
      • Cuora ranks first among the five most-used 3★-4★ Operators, followed in order by Melantha, Gitano, Jessica and Vigna.
      • When it comes to the top 3 most-common operators promoted to Elite 2, we have in order: Texas, Ptilopsis and Lappland for the 5★ Operators, and SilverAsh, Exusiai and Eyjafjalla for the 6★ Operators.
      • The top 3 most common operators used in the RIIC base are Jessica, Haze and Fang in descending order.
    • During Contingency Contract:
      • During CC Beta, FEater and Angelina were the most common operators brought to stall the Avengers on the top-right lane of the Area 59 map, thanks to the former's push and the latter's slow debuffs.
      • Angelina remains to be seen in 90% of all clear videos of Pyrite Gorge, the permanent stage in CC Pyrite. In that stage, there is a Zerg Rush of wraiths and Crownslayer, whose teleporting this time cannot be disabled and there is a risk where she is weighted.
      • Also in Contingency Contract, other operators often seen are Ceobe (due to her ability to pierce RES and scale her damage with the DEF buffs enemies get irrespective of her own ATK being lowered), and units with immortality like Specter (the Unchained) and Surtr, who are often the only way to withstand the hardest-hitting enemies in the mode, if it's even feasible to tank them at all.
      • According to the anniversary livestreams, Myrtle was the single most commonly used operator across CC Cinder, Lead Seal, and Spectrum, placing above powerful 6★s like Saria and Surtr, and even her own 5★ counterpart Elysium. Myrtle in general is potentially the single most used operator in the whole game, thanks to a combination of her low rarity and near-unchallenged DP generation.
      • A combination of Mostima and Shift operators was one of the most commonly used combos to defeat the Hateful Avenger boss in Operation Basepoint, as while the shifters were able to keep him at bay while he was vulnerable, Mostima's passive slowing field boosted by her Module and S3 were one of the only things that could slow an invulnerable enemy, allowing her to stall out the Avenger's lengthy invincibility until the shifters could attack him again.
      • Ines was ubiquitous in Battleplan Pyrolysis thanks to her lingering invisibility field being one of the only ways to reveal the invisible and extremely bulky Withering Collector Disciples to allow her allies to shoot them down, as their buffed drone swarms would instantly kill any visible operators in range.
      • Lin was essentially omnipresent in Battleplan Underdawn's permanent map due to her unique gimmick being the only feasible way to tank the massively buffed Nethersea Reefbreakers while also limited to high ground by the spreading Nethersea Brand.
    • When it comes to Chapter 8's True Final Boss, expect to see Nightingale almost all of the time. Her substantial RES buffs are a massive boon in the stage when it comes to surviving the very dangerous waves of fireballs in the boss fight (you can't just retreat everyone and deploy after the fireballs are gone, because there are enemies trying to sneak through, and you need to block them) and pretty much brings the SNK Boss fight from 'very difficult' to 'manageable'.
    • Qiubai is rarely seen being used without Suzuran, as while she technically pairs with anyone that can inflict Slow and/or Bind, Suzuran not only has an ability that applies a perpetual wide-area Slow, but also applies Fragile to Slowed enemies to massively boost Qiubai's damage while having a similar skill cycle. Logos would later be added to the mix as his second talent (which debuffs enemy RES and adds a flat bonus to all Arts damage taken by them) synergizes immensely with Qiubai's rapid multi-hit Arts attacks, with the Qiubai-Suzuran-Logos trio being able to output stunning multi-target damage to virtually any enemy.
    • For Integrated Strategies, recruiting operators goes per sets of generated class tickets, but there are a few operators who are considered universally solid picks:
      • Thorns. He's possibly one of the most versatile operators in the mode bordering on Master of All, as he's able to deal ranged damage (also letting him shoot down drones) coupled with Damage Over Time to get rid of armored enemies, block 2 enemies, and - when promoted to Elite 2 - use his wide-ranged S3 to let him output high sustained DPS while his passive healing lets him handle many enemies by himself and defend isolated lanes. All of this made him a borderline no-brainer pick if players owned him and had the resources/Guard voucher, especially in the first two themes that had a starting loadout that instantly promoted Guards.
      • May. Her low rarity meant a low cost of 2 Hope upon recruit, and gave players a fast-firing DPS along with crowd-control to boot. She was especially useful during Duck Lord bonus encounters due to the Lord's high speed and inability to be blocked, as May's rapid crowd control had the potential to almost trivialize him, netting you a free Collection.
      • Scene. While Summoners aren't often seen in the overall meta, picking any of them during Integrated Strategies didn't just mean picking only them, but their army of summons as well. The survivability of Scene's summons, their low cost, her ability to infinitely regenerate them, and the relative commonness of isolated lanes during the event (or even smaller, as per the 'Ambush' map) gave her her nickname 'Queen of Integrated Strategies'.
      • Jaye. Similarly to May, he has the favor of being of a low rarity, which he returns for a solid pick when it comes to taking care of isolated lanes and acting as a pseudo-Medic (especially when one hasn't been able to get one yet) due to his ability to steal the life out of anything he hits proportionally to his damage. He scales well with a lot of artefacts, either increasing his ASPD, his damage and thus his Life Drain, or making his downtime so short that it may as well not exist.
      • For both Integrated Strategies and Stationary Security Service, Goldenglow has been high on the popularity list due to her rapid Arts attacks, a talent that greatly increases her damage potential and her passive RES ignore. Her third skill expands her range to the entire map while simultaneously keeping the same priority, making it very effective at catching leaks. The icing on the cake is that buffs for ASPD and ATK are very accessible within these gamemodes, letting her reach the rampup on her talent much quicker while she will rapidly spam her drones all over the map in her third skill, spending very little time to off each individual target.
    • For Integrated Strategies 1-3, the absolute best choice of starting Operators would be the First Move Advantage team (Vanguard, Sniper, Specialist) consisting of Fang, Jaye, and Kroos/Blue Poison. This team has everything you need to ensure a smooth start. DP generation, 2 melee Operators for separate locations, long-range/anti-air capability, insane DPS to kill everything, even Metal Crabs, healing, and fast-redployment. The team also cost only 5 Hope at higher difficulty so you can always afford them, and low DP cost so they can be plopped down early. Look at Arknights' That One Level entry for the early part of Integrated Strategies, and know that this team can take each and every one of them with no issue, even the Emergency version. They can even take on the early Metal Slimes thanks to fast self-heal, high dps, and 2 Operators to reveal the invisible one. However, Expeditioner's Joklumarkar saw this start begin to lose relevance due to their inability to handle a Zerg Rush, the specialty of the early floors.
    • Integrated Strategies 4 instead changes what is popularly agreed to be the most optimal start to be the Overcoming Your Weaknesses team (Guard, Medic, Supporter) consisting of Popukar, Reed the Flame Shadow, and Orchid. Expeditioner's Joklumarkar has an emphasis on handling hordes of weaker enemies early into the stage, which the team excels at: Popukar as a laneholder able to block and damage two enemies at once, Reed providing both damage and healing while having S2 to supplement Popukar with massive close-ranged DPS (or her crowd-wiping S3, if you got a Medic promotion early), while Orchid can slow down incoming enemies while dealing consistent damage further boosted by Reed's Cinder. Given the brutal earlygame where many starting teams can fail to pass even the first node without life loss, this team almost guarantees safe passage through the first floor even at higher difficulties, buying enough time to expand the team and grab more items, while Reed in particular scales fantastically into the endgame as well.
      • However, the second expansion reduced this squad's early safety due to the addition of the addition of the stage "No More Than Four", which features Dublinn troops with massive RES from Refraction that Reed struggles to deal damage against. The best starting squad after the expansion was agreed to still be the Overcoming Your Weaknesses team but now with Degenbrecher, Orchid, and Ansel/Hibiscus, with Degenbrecher's massive physical AoE burst and ability to negate damage from elite enemies with Tremble allowing for easy wins through early stages while also serving as a strong win condition.
    • For Integrated Strategies 5: Sarkaz's Furnace Side Fables, Narantuya is the most popular starting 6-star by a mile. She has a fairly low DP cost, area of effect to easily clear mobs, high damage per hit on her skills allowing to break the Spines of Epoch to gain extra Plans which allows for an earlier snowball, a low charge time on her first skill with a permanent uptime allowing her to mostly shrug off the effects of Necrosis, and above-average defensive stats allowing her to tank the occasional hit. All of this amounts to a character who is perfectly suited for dealing with all of the combat stages on the starting floors while still scaling well enough to hold her own later.
      • On the same topic, the Tin Man is practically a requirement for high difficulty runs, not necessarily for his kit but instead because of his mode-specific Talent which allows him to grant you over twice the Toil bonus that other operators can provide at Elite 2, allowing you to hold more Thoughts to empower your squad, roll for collectibles or take more nodes. This is especially important for players going for the third ending as one of the required items increases the Toil value of all Thoughts, making it extremely difficult to hold onto all of the valuable Thoughts that you would like to use. Additionally, since his Talent also reduces his Hope cost, he is free to recruit at difficulty 12 or below (and only costs 1 Hope above it), giving you no reason not to recruit him if get a Specialist voucher while low on Hope.
      • The first expansion of IS5 has added what may be the most effective, cookie cutter plan of any iteration of Integrated Strategies to date. Step 1: Recruit Wiš'adel (or Rosmontis with her Specialized Module) in your starting squad, preferably with either Blueprint Squad or Tactical Ranged Squad. Step 2: Grab the Lamp of Wishes on the first floor. Step 3: Reroll a Wish Fulfilled node and pick up the guaranteed Hand of Rumble. Congratulations, you're pretty much set to steamroll the entire mode on anything but the highest difficulty with complete freedom to set up the rest of your squad to deal with any of the end bosses. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with the Lamp of Wishes in terms of manipulating its mechanics to guarantee the most gamebreaking collectibles to completely break the mode's difficulty into tiny pieces, particularly by bringing yourself to 1 Life Point and then grabbing the whole King's Set for free, or mugging Cannot near the end of a run to guarantee a Golden Chalice and roll right over even the toughest end bosses with your ridiculously inflated ASPD.
  • Continuity Lock-Out: Because several plot points or backstories are scattered and require the fans to make an effort in putting them together, the story of Arknights can be complex and confusing at certain points, especially to newcomers who missed out on limited-time story events. Fortunately, lore discussions, lore documents, wikis, and cutscene archives exist to help in catching-up with the overarching stories.
    • Lone Trail, already a direct sequel to Dorothy's Vision, stands out for not only requiring you to be familiar with many other details spread out across the game's lore for full context as to what's going on, but also continuing plot threads introduced in the spin-off manga Records of Originium: Rhine Lab.
    • Zwillingstürme im Herbst expects the player to already know the stories and characters from Lingering Echoes and Hortus de Escapismo, as it serves as the conclusion to both of their plotlines. To a lesser extent, it also features Viviana from Near Light as a main character, but her role is mostly self-contained and can be understood on its own.
    • To Be Continued is a story collection dedicated entirely to characters from previous events and what they've been doing since then.
  • Difficulty Spike: Several in the Main Story, which extends to the stages based around their difficulty level.
    • Episode 2 is where the game starts to take off its easy mode gloves and assume you know what you're doing. Not only does the level design start to get less straightforward, the new enemies are significantly stronger than before, particularly the large numbers of heavy units and enemy Casters (especially the Senior Casters that do splash damage). Furthermore, the boss fight against Skullshatterer, is significantly more dangerous than the ones against Crownslayer and W before them. These new enemies will handily dismantle an unprepared defense, so unless you pulled a Disc-One Nuke from the gacha, it demands that you raise your units to a high level and develop the appropriate strategies to deploy them, particularly when it comes to drawing aggro.
    • Episode 5 is a smaller but still noticeable one. The stage layouts tend to be very open and are more complex than ever, and the chapter very rapidly starts rolling out improved enemies - basic soldiers and casters are upgraded into their significantly stronger Spec Ops variants, while new and dangerous enemies like the Breakers and regenerating Possessed are introduced. Notably, up until this point the aerial threats were limited to the rather weak Monsters, but the chapter adds in special drones like the Bombtail, Frost and Arts Master units which require specific planning to work around and will decimate you if you give them half the chance.
    • Episode 6. The first half of the chapter is similar to Episode 5 up until the Enraged Possessed start appearing, upon which the difficulty goes up several notches due to their hyper-inflated stats that can rip right through even a well-leveled squad. The difficulty only goes up past that point, as the Yeti Squadron and their annoying Cold mechanic is thrown at you - their often unavoidable freeze debuffs are essentially guaranteed to collapse your defense if you plan poorly, and nearly every enemy past this point (along with some of the indestructible hazards) will either inflict Cold or deal significantly boosted damage against Frozen targets, letting them overwhelm you. And no, this isn't something that high-rarity units can solve alone, because even units with Status Resistance or consistent Silencing abilities can still be easily frozen forever due to the sheer number of ice-based threats the game throws at you at once.
    • Episode 8, but not for the reasons one might expect. The new enemies are quite powerful, but the focus now lies on Escort Missions where the player must safely ensure Ursus Civilians (or Talulah) make it to the end of the level without dying. The latter isn't too bad since they're a formidable fighter, but not only are the former slow, weak, and defenseless, about every enemy in the chapter is programmed to prioritize them, meaning that they will easily kill them and make you fail if you aren't able to eliminate or stop the enemies as fast as possible. Further complicating things is the fact that the Civilians often take long paths to the exit that may be obstructed by very tanky roadblocks that you have to get rid of before they get mauled to death by enemies. Any level that isn't an escort mission is instead stuffed to the brim by Demonic Spiders like regular and enraged Possessed, and there are no less than three boss fights which are each candidates for That One Boss.
    • Episode 10 features the Londinium Cannon, one of the most dangerous stage mechanics to date, and marks the start of when the player must actively plan around the level mechanics or risk complete annihilation. You'll be tough out of luck if you don't have the ability to juggle block efficiently to keep cannon shots away from your main defenses, while also making sure they're delivered to where they're needed lest you get overrun by the ever-growing hordes of slugs that are incredibly resistant to all other types of damage. Even a single mistimed deployment or slug blocked when it shouldn't have been can lead to your entire lineup being obliterated in a flash, and it's exceedingly hard to brute-force the mechanic like several of the other chapter mechanics. On top of this, the game also starts rolling out Demonic Spiders even faster beyond this point, starting with the Sarkaz Wrathgorgers and Chain Casters, with more to come in future chapters.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?:
    • Silence's over-protectiveness of Ifrit and refusal to let her see Saria after a Noodle Incident in the past sounds a lot like two parents fighting over custody of their child. Further evidence can be found if you scrutinize their CGs, where both Ifrit and Saria seem to possess one of Silence's feathers, a token she only ever gives to those close to her heart.
      • That Saria still holds onto hers implies that Silence still means a lot to her, not dissimilar to how the dads in many separated families still hold onto keepsakes of their (ex-)wives for their sentimental value. The rift between them was torn when something happened to Ifrit in the past and Saria apparently "walked out" when she needed her the most, something she only came to realize later and Silence never forgave her for, much like a neglectful father having a sudden Heel Realization. As typical for such fathers in reality, Saria has a strong desire to make up to Ifrit for her absence, despite objections from the "mother".
      • Ifrit, meanwhile, acts as the typical child who's utterly confused by the tension between her "parents", something she's too young to understand. More revelations from the official Record of Originium: Rhine Lab comic show that she blames herself for whatever drove the wedge between Saria and Silence, something that children from broken families can relate to all too well.
    • In Gnosis's operator record, a young Enciodes Silverash is captured by a group of kidnappers intending to hold him for ransom. Gnosis, being the one who unwittingly led Enciodes into their trap, feeling both guilt and dissatisfaction with the leader's attempts to bargain with him, brings Enciodes his food. Enciodes's hands are tied behind his back, so he asks Gnosis to feed him, which Gnosis does without complaint, while Enciodes is completely unperturbed at being tied up. It's also very easy to read Enciodes as harboring a crush on Gnosis throughout the entire record, as Enciodes not only tells Gnosis about how he was observing Gnosis watching the birds and how he's noticed Gnosis is different, and especially the way Enciodes tells Gnosis he knows Gnosis wants to leave Kjerag because it's boring and he's going to make Kjerag less boring in the future, and ends the record keeping Gnosis's role in the kidnapping a secret in favor of calling Gnosis the "hero who rescued him" and promising Gnosis that he'll make Kjerag big enough for Gnosis so that Gnosis will stay. Knowing that they're still "partners-in-crime" twenty years later, the whole record reads almost like a Rescue Romance and Childhood Marriage Promise.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • In general, many of Rhodes Island's Operators aren't exactly paragons of virtue even discounting those with violent pasts or abrasive personalities, with the crew including sadistic mercenaries like W or Ho'olheyak, morally ambiguous scientists like Dorothy, war puppeteers like Passenger, or sociopathic fugitives like Virtuosa. In fan works, fans tend to heavily downplay those parts of their personalities, outright remove them, or spin them in a way that makes them more appealing.
    • FrostNova is potentially the single biggest example of this in the game, especially due to Chapter 6 revealing a significant amount of her character and backstory, as well as giving her a lot of interaction with the Doctor themselves. The fandom's adoration of her reaches Fix Fic levels at times, with many pining for an eventual Heel–Face Turn despite her death at the conclusion of Episode 6 and her body being disposed by cremation next Episode due to being a biohazard. With the announcement of the Destiny 2 crossover looming in the game's future, her fanclub began clamoring loudly for Yelena to return as a resurrected Guardian, even if it meant sacrificing her old memories to come back from the dead this way. Endfield introducing the heterocore clone of Angelina created a new round of demands from Frostnova fans to let her return to the living and become playable by reviving her as a heterocore, so that she can tie the lore together by being the forerunner of the process that would beget Endfield's Angelina in the future.
    • Likewise, her dear ol' daddy Patriot is also reasonably popular, especially after players found out how he's just a Punch-Clock Villain who's actually a very chill person, and is still quite chummy with his old friend Hellagur despite working for opposite factions. His sheer indomitable strength combined with his story being possibly the most tragic of all the Reunion leaders earns him even more points, particularly since he tragically joins his daughter in death after a last stand at the end of Episode 7.
    • From the Knight's Treasure event, there's Big Bob. Not only is he one of the sanest Reunion bosses seen so far and not actually evil, the fact that he qualifies for status as The Woobie endeared him to a lot of players.
    • Among the event bosses, Jesselton gets some love from fans thanks to his cool design, his composed and charismatic Faux Affably Evil personality, his iron manipulation and enhancements giving him Armstrong-like powers that let him fight toe-to-toe with the likes of Mountain, and some Awesome Music for his fight on top of it. Even his status as a Butt-Monkey sometimes only seems to make him more popular, with him often being the subject of amusing memes.
    • Fans and fan works often downplay Mandragora's murderous instability, seething hatred for Victoria, and various crimes (particularly executing civilians for petty reasons and killing off Bagpipe's old squad) in favor of playing up her somewhat innocent design to paint her as a Troubled, but Cute girl who must be protected. Her getting more backstory, alongside being left for dead by Dublinn and rescued by Misery in Chapter 10, left many fans hoping that she'd undergo a Heel–Face Turn and become playable in spite of it all. Even after her seeming death in Chapter 14, her fans still cling to their hope that she might have survived.
    • Dame Gertrude, from Lingering Echoes, for all her willingness to sacrifice Ebenholz and an entire hall of bystanders in order to kill a number of Witch King's loyalists in what was ultimately an act of petty revenge, has had a number of fans of her own due to her generous figure, her unusual resemblance to the later released Texas the Omertosa, and snappy dress sense. A number of her down-bad fans lamented her death at Biegler's hands and proclaimed they would have been willing to rehabilitate her just to recruit her into Rhodes Island.
    • Ho'olheyak, from Dorothy's Vision, despite being a morally ambiguous mercenary who is rather cavelier with people's lives and almost gets Muelsyse killed at Saria's hands, has had a number of people 'down bad' for her due to her shapely figure, smug demeanour, and flattering dress. With the announcement of her becoming a playable character, the reveal of her maniacally delighted smile in the Lone Trail PV, and her selection of teasing and seductive voiced lines in both Japanese and English, her growing fan crowd was utterly delighted at actually becoming able to bring her home.
    • Lone Trail saw Ferdinand Clooney warming up to some players despite being the Big Bad of Dorothy's Vision. He still very much remains the morally questionable egomaniac from before outside of being slightly tempered by his time in exile, but the story further fleshed out his personality and motives along with his valid criticisms of Kristen's obsession, as well as further elaborating on how his enormous arrogance is legitimately backed up by his intellect and genuine, unshakable drive for science as he repeatedly spits in death's face just for a chance to salvage Kristen's research, all while continuing to be a a massive narcissist as he all but laughs at her for not thinking to bring her findings to earth. And come Endfield, the provided lore indicates that he succeeded - not only was his data crucial to the voyages beyond Terra and colonization of Talos-II, he's remembered fondly by academia as a renowned genius who helped pave the way for the future, just as he had always dreamed.
    • From the same event is Justin Fitzroy Jr.. He's a slimeball with a propensity for bribery and foul play, along with being almost comically corrupt when it comes to money and business, but he still earned some fans due to his immense charisma and interesting backstory leading into his desire to take control of opportunity itself.
    • Kristen Wright herself is generally honored as a visionary and legendary pioneer for her role in shattering the false sky and revealing the truth of space to Terra, even with all the in and out-of-universe concerns about how her obsession paved the way to her goal with suffering and apathy.
    • Arturia, Executor's morally-dubious yet attractive-looking cousin who delights in watching tragedies unfold after enabling repressed people with their own memories, has her own fanclub who wants her to play them like she plays her cello. Players who liked her are extra pleased that the CN server has already revealed her to become the playable operator Virtuosa, and have already declared their intent to save headhunting tickets and Orundum to pull for her when that event banner arrives on the Global servers.
    • Eblana's (pun unintended) increasingly sinister appearances in the plot do nothing to curb her appeal to players due to her charismatic leadership as well as being just as attractive as her sister Reed/Loughshinny (some even consider her confidence and smugness to make her more attractive). Even with the subtext and Talulah's accusations that her intentions for Dublinn are actually self-centered making her a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist, many still hope that she may become a proper ally of Rhodes Island and become a playable character regardless. The fact that Loughshinny still cares about her and doesn't regard her as an enemy adds some weight to the possibility. As of the "When Elegies Are Ashes" event, those fans got their wish, with her being introduced as the 6-star Shaper Caster Necrass, which many players called when the archetype was introduced.

    E-G 
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Ace, the bearded Rhodes Island Operator is popular with Western fans since he's a normal-looking older mannote  amongst the cast of pretty animal people and looks like he came from Rainbow Six Siege.
    • Big Bob is perhaps one of the most well-liked Reunion leaders because of his personality, Punch-Clock Villain status, and receiving a genuinely happy ending by the end of his debut event.
      • His close friend Mudrock would follow suit when they appeared as the Arc Villain of Twilight of Wolumonde due to their sympathetic characterization and motives, but especially because at the same time the event debuted on Global, it was announced that she would be joining Rhodes Island as an Operator on CN, while also revealing what she looks like beneath her armor. To put things into perspective, the fandom were even more excited for her than they were for Rosmontis, the Limited Operator she debuted alongside and a hotly-anticipated character in her own right.
    • The Emperor very quickly became a Memetic Badass after his formal introduction. While he didn't get as much screentime during Heart of Surging Flame, Code of Brawl firmly cemented his position as a fan favorite due to the silly antics he and the rest of Penguin Logistics got into. Such is his popularity that a decently-sized portion of the fanbase actually lobbies for him to be implemented as an actual Operator in the future, and they actually got their wish (albeit in the form of a joke stage) in April Fools 2021.
    • Code of Brawl featured a subplot with Waai Fu fighting the mafia together with an Ursus cook named Fillet. Though Waai Fu was introduced as an Operator when the event launched, Fillet was just an NPC, but he quickly gained fans for his cool design, combat prowess, and the fun dynamic the two had together, to the point that there was still a demand for him to become an Operator long after the event was over. He finally made his playable debut alongside the rerun of Heart of Surging Flame under the new name Jaye, where he picked up even more fans for being surprisingly powerful despite his low rarity.
    • Viviana Droste, the Candle Knight, quickly became a fan favourite after she became a prominent character in Near Light due to her unique and stylish clothes and the way she quickly established a strong rapport with Nearl. Fans of Viviana were quite happy when she was revealed as a 6-star Arts Fighter in Zwillingstürme Im Herbst.
    • The Nightmare Knight Tola and the Blood Knight Dikaiopolis are also quite popular. The former is due to his status as one of the wandering last descendants of the ancient Khagan, his insane idealistic persistence in making sure his traditions stay alive, his cool armor design and illusory Reality Warping powers (particularly the moment where he summons an illusory horde of his ancestors), and his unknown future after venturing into the unexplored northlands. Meanwhile, the Blood Knight is fairly popular due to invoking Dark Is Not Evil by being a towering, immensely powerful crimson warrior with dangerous blood Arts and a brutal boss fight, only to turn out to be a hero to the Infected and a genuinely nice man just trying to survive in the cutthroat world of Kazimierz.
    • Sharp became the most popular of the four Integrated Strategies-exclusive operators after Break the Ice gave him his day in the limelight. His calm, professional nature won him a lot of fans, as did the climax of the event in which he faces off against the Black Knight and, despite being clearly outmatched, is able to win her respect and buy enough time for the Doctor's plan to succeed. His Western popularity is also helped by the fact that, much like Ace before him, he's a realistic-looking grizzled soldier in a world of cute Little Bit Beastly girls.
    • The Black Knight, Degenbrecher, also became a massive hit among the fanbase with her introduction in Break the Ice. With her sharp-dressed and attractive design, and her absolute badassery in battle, she is among the most requested characters by players to make playable. Her fans would finally have their prayers answered when she was announced to be a playable 6* Operator in "The Rides to Lake Silbernherze".
    • The Chained Sarkaz Girl, from a Schmuck Bait encounter node in Integrated Strategies, quickly got herself a bunch of fans who made fan vids and fanart of her, due to how attractive she was and the nature of her encounter. Hypergryph seems to be aware of this, as a similar event with a nearly identical Sarkaz woman has appeared in every iteration of Integrated Strategies since then.
      • The fourth iteration of Integrated Strategies introduced the "Northwind Witch" who continued the trend the Chained Sarkaz Girl set; rivaling the popularity of the prior two Sarkaz woman upon her. As an Ascended Extra in the "A Kazdelian Rescue" event, her name is revealed to be Qalaiša, only fueling her popularity further as her character got expanded upon in the event as a NPC.
    • Introduced in "A Light Spark in Darkness" as a full characterization of the Hateful Avenger Elite Mook, Red, the Redblade grew popular due to his design and the existing popularity of the Avenger-class enemies, along with his personality and how helpful he had been to Goldenglow throughout the event story. Fans are quick to attribute the Operation Blade lobby theme to him whenever he draws his sword.
    • Andoain from "Guide Ahead" garnered significant popularity due to a combination of his charismatic design, his sympathetic ideals which to some make him more compelling than the main characters of the event, and his boss theme which quickly became one of the most well-known songs in the entire game.
    • Ulpianus, first appearing in "Stultifera Navis", quickly became popular for being an Abyssal Hunter with a badass design, his backstory as a mentor and leader to Skadi (some even fanon him as a Parental Substitute to her, usually for comedic purposes), his stoic and no-nonsense personality, and his impressive feats within the plot, namely being the one to finish off the Endspeaker after a drawn out Rasputinian Death. Many fans hope for him to be eventually added to the roster as the first male Abyssal Hunter, which would eventually come to fruition in Path of Life where he debuted as a 6* Crusher Guard.
    • Logos managed to win over the fanbase before he even had a character design. He made a great first impression as the unseen viewpoint character in Rewinding Breeze — Recollection, where he saved the lives of Mudrock and her squad and brought them to Rhodes Island, making him directly responsible for another dark horse becoming playable. While further information about him was scarce, this air of mystery only piqued further interest. It wasn't until Episode 11 that he'd make his onscreen debut, and it quickly became one of the most talked-about aspects of the chapter, and eventually grew popular due to the contrast of how goofy he can be off work (the stool race incident mentioned in a furniture set) while being a powerful One-Man Army. He eventually got Promoted to Playable by the release Episode 14 himself, and boy, does he prove that One-Man Army trope well as a very good Caster operator.
    • Shovel, the faceless Sarkaz general from Vendela's story in Episode 13, gained a surprising following after the chapter's global release, thanks to his surprisingly gentle interactions with Vendela and appreciation for her gardening, and how he's a Reluctant Warrior who is just as much a victim of the war as Vendela herself, to the point of going against orders to try and at least save her and her flowers. His tragic conflict with Vendela culminating in his effective suicide by her hands had many players considering him one of the biggest stand-outs of the chapter.
    • Savage gained a rejuvenated popularity after "Babel" revealed her as the first character who offered to start a family with the Doctor to take care of Amiya. This caused a great number of players to review her profile and Operator Records to learn about her background stories, with some even shipping her with the Doctor and writing an alternate ending where the Doctor accepted her offer.
    • Eureka, the chronically unlucky and accident-prone host of the CN server's livestreams, had enough fans calling for her to appear in-game that she, under the new moniker of U-Official, got to be the star of The Ultimate Beautiful Girl and Promoted to Playable— albeit as a Joke Character to celebrate April Fools' Day. The event even directly references her popularity with the CN playerbase in the "true" ending where she meets head producer Hai Mao's Author Avatar, who tells her that if she doesn't join Rhodes Island, he's going to have a lot of angry fans knocking on his door.
    • Bellingham Suffolk, the most prominent Trilby Asher (one of the Duke of Caster's elite agents) wasn't particularly well-liked during the main plot due to his antagonistic role and faux-friendly relations with Rhodes Island, along with his fellows being a rather annoying Elite Mook, despite being the more sympathetic among the Trilby Ashers, but his various misfortunes throughout The Rides To Lake Silberneherze along with his more sincere affability due to the less personal stakes of his mission has changed that perception among many players. Throughout the story, he mostly plays the role of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who continuously gets blindsided and tricked by everyone in Kjerag while trying and failing to remain composed and professional throughout. His nerdish, excited fascination with Kjerag traditions and hobbies such as burdenbeast riding, ice skating and collecting burdenbeast trophies from blind boxes also gives him some unique character traits following up from his previously alluded interest in poetry, making him far more memorable.
    • The Tin Man, who made his first in-game appearance in Phantom & Crimson Solitaire as a random encounter, already drew a fair bit of attention among the fanbase due to his mysterious background that sparked a lot of theories and his Film Noir themed design. His story event debut in Lone Trail which expanded upon his background as a Sarkaz Revenant, while also showing his amiable personality and his power via effortlessly defeating Ho'olheyak, made him even more interesting to players. Many were pleasantly surprised when he joined the roster as the free Operator for Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables, the fifth iteration of Integrated Strategies, also introducing the new and interesting Alchemist archetype for Specialists, with the additional perk of being a great unit within that mode as well. His addition was in fact so popular within the CN community alone that the views on his announcement actually surpassed that of several 6-star units released before him, including the long-anticipated Ascalon and Ulpianus.
    • It took mere moments after the reveal of elite operator Raidian (formerly only mentioned in story dialogue) in the Stronghold Protocol game mode for her to become an unexpected hit among players thanks to her cute and quirky appearance which juxtaposes her stated motherly personality and warm smile in her character art. Cue the immediate fanart and lamentations of her not being a permanent Operator... at least until the announcement that she will be obtainable as a permanent welfare Operator from the sixth Integrated Strategies, to the delight of many fans.
  • Epileptic Trees: The game is littered with Story Breadcrumbs in every Operator's profile, event cutscenes, and oblique references in furniture and designs, so it's no surprise that it spawned so many bizarre fan theories:
    • Kal'tsit's interactions with the Doctor have lead to the popular interpretation that the two were romantically involved at one point prior to the Doctor's amnesia, and that she's being a tsundere this time around. Chapter 7 and 8 confirms this to be completely untrue. Kal'tsit holds the Doctor openly responsible for killing Theresa, and actively hates them. The Babel event debunks it further by revealing that Kal'Tsit is created by the Doctor.
    • As written on the WMG tab, it's quite a mystery why Kroos doesn't want to open her eyes. The fandom interprets that once Kroos does open them, it's a sign of getting serious, or showing a hidden side of her personality that was repressed for too long.
    • The Archive Files and Operator Profiles are vague at explaining Texas's "old self" and why Lappland or some characters in the Code of Brawl event mention it. This also makes her dynamic with Lappland quite confusing.
      • The most common fan theory is that Texas lived to the thrill of fighting and they used to duel a lot, judging from the lore tidbits that hint how Lappland hates the currently coward version of Texas and is seeking to restore her more serious side. The Penguin Logistics trailer also implies that Texas scarred Lappland in the face. Texas herself is noted to be holding back her true strength, while Lappland's backstory covers the theme of revenge. Because of these, it's common in the fandom to think that Lappland wants to have a rematch with Texas at their peak performance. However, a line from Lapplandnote  hints that she wants the old Texas back without necessarily resorting to violence nor a rematch. Il Siracusano sheds some light to this and instead reveals that Lappland was fixated on Texas for how she willingly made the decision to leave the Mafia on her own accord, and thus jossing and mitigating this theory.
      • Another popular theory about the whole "Lappland and Texas" plot is that the former is a stalker Yandere. It's a bizzare theory because there's nothing in the profiles or archive files that imply Lappland having a crush on Texas. Even though it's as simple as it sounds, this theory is a reason for why Lappland and Texas are very popular in the fandom in terms of shipping, fanart and memes.
    • Due to the existence of old concept art from Girls Frontline that depicts a character that resembles W being part of AR Team, one of the theories among the fandom is that W is in fact a recycled concept character from Girls Frontline that was carried over to Arknights when people from Mica Team split off into Hypergryph. Fueling this is the revelation of an Girls Frontline artbook with many old discarded concepts, such as animal people, magic, crystal outgrowths; things that seem the basis of Arknights.
    • There's a massive whale-like skeleton in the background of the base menu that hasn't been acknowledged by anyone in-game, leading to speculation as to why that skeleton is seemingly integrated into Rhodes Island's ship. "Darknights Memoir" hints that that the skeleton was always inside the ship as Babel operators discover it when they're securing the vessel that would eventually become Rhodes Island. Episode 13 fuels the flames by revealing Theresis is in possession of a similar skeleton which is the remains of a fallen Feranmut, and that it's capable of some form of space-time bending despite being a mere corpse.
    • Amiya and the Doctor are seen facing a massive reptilian eye behind several windows in trailers and promotional art. Said massive reptilian eye has not actually shown up in the game yet, leading to mass speculation as to what the thing actually is.
    • The "Heart of Surging Flame" event had some Arknights fans from communities like Reddit who thought that the music artist D.D.D. is supposedly Closure in disguise. What doesn't match though are the characters' races (Vouivre and Sarkaz respectively) and the sizes of their chests (Closure is noticeably busty). This theory is later Jossed in one of the event's side chapters which reveals D.D.D. talking with Closure on the phone and both of them are friends.
    • There are many FrostNova fans holding hope that she actually survived Chapter 6 and is just in hiding at the moment. They point out that her body was last seen in the Doctor's custody, and there do exist methods of seemingly bringing people back from the dead (such as the procedure used on the Doctor). In addition, the chorus line for the official character song of Chapter 6 is "You haven't seen the last of me.", implying FrostNova's eventual return. Despite the fact that as of Chapter 7, Frostnova's body has spent some time in an incinerator, some fans refuse to give up hope. Unfortunately for those fans, she seems to have been permanently laid to rest in Chapter 8... only for the theory to be resurrected upon the revelation that Originium preserves every information about its Infected victim as data, with FrostNova (or a fascimile of her) being manifested inside the world it generates on Chapter 14 at one point.
    • When Folinic, the first Medic with the capability to damage enemies, was added to the game there was speculation among fans that Hypergryph may have been using her to test the waters before reintroducing Kal'tsit as an Operator, as she had previously appeared as a Medic with a damaging summon in the closed beta before being cut from the final game. Whether or not this was the case, a playable Kal'tsit would eventually be re-implemented come the second anniversary event Under Tides.
    • Several descriptions in Ceobe's Fungimist hint that there is something terrifying hidden in the frozen northern regions of Terra that people either don't know about or don't want to know about. The collections associated with it (a frozen claw and a piece of incredibly dense connective tissue, as well as an unknown project in the tundra that was terminated upon finding said tissue), and the existence of the Frozen Monstrosity (who was turned into a demon by becoming assimilated by "the tundra's curse") hint towards things ranging from an Eldritch Abomination beneath the surface of the ice, a curse permeating the tundra, the icy land itself being an Eldritch Location like how the game describes the sea, or all of the above. A Walk in the Dust confirms that there are extradimensional demonic entities encroaching on Terra through Sami, while ''Expeditioner's Joklumarkar gives them A Day in the Limelight, now properly identified as the Collapsals.
    • Executor's distant relative was theorized to be Sora as his Trust Increase 1 line mentions a distant relative who had great musical talent and managed to pursue that path against all expectations, all the while using illusions for her craft. This was seen as fitting with Sora's unknown race as she uses illusions to make herself appear as a Lupo, but it was officially revealed to not be the case in "Guide Ahead" as his relative is named Arturia, the reason Executor has enmity with her is because she's a declared criminal of Laterano, and she's been hiding in Leithania for the past several years.
    • The second anniversary post-credits PV has several scenes (Most notably Amiya and Theresa's voices overlapping, and an older-looking Amiya with Theresa-like pink eyes and white arts) that seem to be implying that not only is Amiya Theresa's successor, but Theresa may be actually be inhabiting her body as a second consciousness, similar to Kashchey and Talulah.
    • Because of how abrupt their reveal was and the sheer lack of information on them despite their seeming significance to the grander story and the Doctor's backstory, pretty much everything regarding Priestess is this. One particularly popular fan theory posits that she's a colleague or close partner of the Doctor from a bygone era, who put them into the Sarcophagus to save them from some apocalyptic disaster that turned Terra into its current state. Many of these theories also involve the disaster in question involving the creation of Originium or the Little Bit Beastly races of Terra, the latter of which stems from the fact that neither the Doctor or Priestess have any visible animal traits. Lone Trail elaborates that the Doctor and Priestess did work together at some point, and that Priestess is supposedly "responsible" for Originium, although the circumstances of the Doctor being put into the Sarcophagus or their relationship to the Ancient races remains unclear. Babel and the fifth anniversary elaborate on this more: Priestess and the Doctor (then known as the Oracle) were responsible for the creation and spread of Originium as a means to preserve their kind, while Priestess specifically was credited for the conception of the project as well as the creation of Kal'tsit, as well as its current state. As for the Ancient races, it's heavily implied that they were originally creatures from the First Civilization that were mutated by Originium into the image of the First Civilization "humans".
    • Tecno's release brought a can of worms when her archives show that the events of the second Rainbow Six Siege collaboration, "Operation Lucent Arrowhead", happened with different details from the collab story itself. While likely a result of Hypergryph being bound by copyright, and implying the same Broad Strokes treatment also applies to every other collaboration event, some fans speculated that the collabs did happen as presented on the actual events, but Kal'tsit intentionally censors certain information surrounding them in-universe in a way that allows Plausible Deniability, as the first R6S collab made it a point that any information about knowledge, power, or technology that don't exist in Terra would be dangerous if leaked to parties outside of Rhodes Island, such as guns that don't use Originium Arts to fire.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory:
    • While most of the plaque furnitures are obvious references to fairytale literature with matching Flavor Text, the "Uniqueness" plaque is instead, interpreted by some fans to be an allusion to the story Virgin Mary's Child. The story details how a girl opens twelve doors, behind them she finds the 12 Disciples. And after the 13th door, which she shouldn't have opened, she finds the Trinity.
    • There are several allusions in this game to the biblical story of Noah, the Ark and the Great Flood:
      • The game's title itself, Arknights might be named after the Ark that Noah built. The Chinese title of the game, Tomorrow's Ark, certainly indicates that specific context is appropriate.
      • The Catastrophes are natural disasters that broke the society, similar to the Great Flood that wiped the Earth clean.
      • The game's usage of "mobile/nomadic cities" that move around in order to avoid Catastrophes. The Ark was built to safeguard those inside, as it travels across the sea. The protagonist party, Rhodes Island, is also noted to be using one in a smaller scale, and it might mean that among the mobile cities, Rhodes Island is the allusion to the Ark.
      • All of the Operators that ally with Rhodes Island are classified based on their Ancient race. The Ancient races represent individuals with animalistic physical traits, similar to how the Ark housed several pairs of animals from different species. The only non-animalistic Ancient races are Sankta and Sarkaz, which represent Biblical angels and devils respectively.
      • A Trust line from SilverAsh speaks a desire to let his bird Tenzin to fly on the deck. In the Biblical narrative, Noah sent out birds to seek for signs of life after the rain calmed down.
        Could you show me to Rhodes Island's deck? No, I'd just like to get a view of the area. Tenzin needs to spread his wings every once in a while as well. He must be longing to soar through the night sky.
      • At the end of the flood, no one survives except for those in the Ark. This has led to fans theorizing that at the end, Reunion will lose, but anyone not in Rhodes Island (i.e in the Ark) will die too. It turns out that this may have been correct on a larger scale: the closest equivalent to an "Ark" is Originium itself, designed to assimilate and preserve life in the face of an existential cosmic threat.
      • And then there's all of the hints about a Greater-Scope Villain in the form of the Abyssal Hunters, who live under the sea and have their own plans for the surface world. Although this was later disproved: the Abyssal Hunters themselves are unscrupulus yet heroic figures, although the undersea lands of Aegir and the Seaborn are decidedly less friendly towards the surface.
      • The backstory contains a number of biblical references that ties into this, like the Law of the Sankta being like the Ten Commandments that Moses received, the original Tower of Babel event that divided the Sarkaz in an attempt to unite the world against the will of its "Creator", and Horn's responsibility for breaching the great defensive fortress walls of Londinium to break the stranglehold the Kazdel Commission held over the city, as lampshaded by Manfred, being a sly nod to the blowing of the horns that broke the walls of Jericho.
    • Mudrock's Silent Night swimsuit skin has her offer you an apple that evokes the icon of the original Forbidden Fruit, and her hammer has Biblical references engraved into it.
    • The history of the Sarkaz as a whole draws heavily upon Biblical mythos, but one particular example depicts the first Lord of Fiends committing the "original sin" of unleashing the first Catastrophe, "cursing" the world with Originium and Oripathy, paralleling the biblical tale of the Forbidden Fruit cursing the world with sin. As a result of this, the Teekaz were demonized by the other races and cursed with their intrinsic link to Originium for countless generations, while Adam and Eve were similarly expelled from Eden and humanity forced to bear the weight of their sins. Fittingly, Episode 14 ends with Theresa, the biggest Messianic Archetype in the game, sacrificing herself to free the myriad souls from eternal purgatory in Originium - in other words, dying for their sins.
  • Evil Is Cool: The villains of the various stories in the game often get as much if not more characterization and focus as the heroes, leading to many examples of this.
    • The Emperor's Blades may be the cruel top-ranking soldiers of the warmongering Ursus Empire, but their inhuman designs, incredible combat prowess, supernatural abilities, and the revelation that they're empowered by Eldritch Abominations from beyond civilization and work to keep them at bay wins them a lot of points with the fandom, helped by them having a memorable but tough-as-nails boss fight in the form of the Pursuer.
    • The Witch King, Herkunftshorn. A terrifying tyrant and dictator responsible for one of the most brutal regimes in Terra's history, but one with an Awesome Ego who is one of the most brilliant and powerful beings to have ever lived in Terra, who may have unlocked the truth of Originium and opened a dimensional rift to singlehandedly fend off the Collapse and whatever greater horrors lies beyond. Despite his relatively brief appearance in Zwillingstürme im Herbst being nothing more than an echo and his death likely being final, he left a strong impression on players and has legitimate supporters for his sheer power and charisma.
  • Fanon:
    • Lappland is often treated as an honorary member of Penguin Logistics by fans, both for her close association with Texas and for being drawn by the same artist who handled the team. This does go against her Archive Files, which note the Penguin Logistics Operators don't like her and she rarely interacts with any of them besides Texas, but at the same time she's never shown any intent to harm them, and this piece of official art showing them all playing video games together suggests it's not out of the question that she could befriend them someday.
      Lappland: It's been a while... I see that Texas has gained some buddies. Ha... very well, I'd love to get to know them.
    • In the Operational Intelligence substory Survival Notorization, Executor decides to become Vermeil's bodyguard until she can be brought to Rhodes Island for treatment. Fans like to take it a step further and make him a full-blown Parental Substitute for her, usually for the sake of cuteness and comedy. The manga anthology chapter A Life Less Lived would later use this same interpretation of the characters, though the game itself has yet to show them interact following their arrival at Rhodes Island.
    • One scene from Twilight of Wolumonde in which Mudrock talks about the farm Big Bob and his squadmates started in Columbia following Grani and the Knights' Treasure, and shows an obvious interest in the fact they're growing hops, has led to a moderately popular depiction of her as a heavy drinker.
    • Saria tends to be treated by the fandom as a Bumbling Mom who makes lame dad jokes. In canon, while Saria is very kind and caring towards Ifrit, she is generally a serious, no-nonsense hardass.
    • The fanbase have collectively agreed that the King Mook Avenger who serves as the boss of Contingency Contracts Beta, Operation Blade, and Operation Basepoint is actually Red from A Light Spark in Darkness, as he's heavily based on the Avenger enemy type himself, and the lyrics of Basepoint indicate that Red came back for revenge after Beta and Blade. It helps that the Avenger of Area 59 and Basepoint is also called "Reid" in the commented gamecode, the same as Red in the CN script for "A Light Spark in Darkness".
  • Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
    • Mistaking canon from fanon-only content and memes, especially when somebody wants to have a serious discussion about the lore. This is why the "SilverAsh Bloodline" memes note  from the English fanbase are being discredited by lore enthusiasts. He doesn't actually have a desire for the Doctor to bear a child with his sisters, yet it was quite common for some fans to admit they were led to believe in thinking that it's SilverAsh's canon characterization. The "Ex-wife Kal'tsit" memes are also derided and received flak for similar reasons as they disregard the Doctor's murder of Theresa and Kal'tsit's justified hatred and distrust towards the Doctor over it, as well as the later revelation that Kal'tsit was made as a bionic robot by the Doctor themself and thus is more like their daughter.
    • Mispronouncing names. This is one reason the sponsored WatchMojo videos aren't taken seriously. An infamous case is when they pronounced Ptilopsis's name like "Tioplsis" or "Tea Apple Sauce". The latter was so memorable that the English fanbase uses it as a comical nickname for Ptilopsis.
    • For some Global players, stating that Yostar is the game's developers will earn ire from others. This is because the game is developed by Hypergryph and Studio Montagne while Yostar is the publisher for the game's Global and JP server.
    • While encouraging players to keep up with the meta and "must-pulls" is commonplace, specifically citing that the game will balance itself to make it impossible to beat content without absolute top-tier units will elicit a few raised eyebrows in return. It's generally agreed that outside of the most brutal endgames (ie. high-risk Contingency Contract, difficulty 15-18 Integrated Strategies, and hard mode Reclamation Algorithm), the game itself has lenient difficulty creep relative to power creep, to the point where once powerful units that have "fallen off" can still easily wipe out most content with a basic understanding of strategy. It doesn't help that criticisms of content getting more difficult to balance around a new Game-Breaker have little to no actual evidence backing them up - even the release of the absurdly broken Wiš'adel has not majorly impacted the difficulty of the content that has come after her, with some of it being even easier than it was before her, even for players that don't use her. Given that these aspects are often praised as being one of the game's strengths, insinuating that you need the strongest units to stand a chance at clearing anything will usually just get you derided for refusing to actually learn the game in favor of steamrolling everything with braindead units.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • With Girls' Frontline, big time. A fair bit of this extends to the bad blood between the developers themselves; Hypergryph, the game's primary developer, was founded by developers who left Mica Team due to substantial creative differences and wanted to create the game they felt GFL "could" have been. This has bled over into the fanbases, thanks especially to Arknights' broader concept bringing players who are otherwise turned off by some thematic aspects of GFL. Also fueling things from the GFL side is Yostar's (A long time rival of Mica) involvement in both Hypergryph and the game.
    • On January-February 2020, Epic Seven got compared a lot to Arknights simply because both are published by Yostar in Japan. Some E7 fans claim that AK stole the thunder and fanfare from their game in terms of marketing and online presence, especially since AK got released in Japan just 3 months after E7 did. But as some time passed, this was dismissed as a minor thing by fans who play both games and explain that they can be played together instead of being rivals. The debates about the games' popularity also ended when fans just accepted how the choices of games between the Western and Japanese audiences can vary.
    • In a similar case to how the E7 fanbase initially reacted, there are some tensions in the West between Azur Lane fans and Arknights due to feelings of the latter getting a bit more focus from Yostar when it was released, and the former game having feelings of toes being stepped on (Artists and players jumping ship). In China, things are worse with the playerbases at outright war for a number of reasons. Fortunately, there still exists an overlap of Friendly Fandoms in most other areas.
    • A rather toxic and serious rivalry cropped up between the Arknights and Genshin Impact fanbases, especially in China. Stuck in a relative content drought, Chinese Arknights fans began blaming Genshin Impact and various other popular mobile games for taking attention away from Arknights, and vented their anger by deliberately posting extremely graphic art of characters from rival games on their respective fan forums. Needless to say, this was the start of a bitter Flame War between ''Arknights' fans and multile mobile game fandoms. This rivalry resulted in a significant amount of gloating when the controversy of Genshin Impact's lackluster first anniversary came out alongside the follow-up controversy of Mihoyo attempting to whitewash over the outrage by spamming fake reviews to prop up their Google Play Store review ratings, with Doctors around the world persuading angry Travellers to ditch their Emergency Meals and come to Rhodes Island instead.
  • Foe Yay Shipping: Lappland is reaaaaaally obsessed in getting Texas back to her "old self" and stalks her constantly. It's highly implied that they've dueled a lot in the past and probably always end in a stalemate. Since Lapp is a Blood Knight, well you get the idea. After their fight at the end of "Il Siracusano", Texas holds Lappland's hand and outright states she is both her friend and her enemy.
  • Fountain of Memes: Quite a few, actually, namely Kroos, Skadi, Shaw, Exusiai, and a lot more that can be found here.
  • Gateway Series: From the general gacha communities, a lot admit Arknights as their first entry to the Tower Defense subgenre of gacha games, especially after the Turn-Based Combat and real-time action genres have oversaturated the market. Aside from this curiosity of knowing how a tower defense gacha plays like, the anime art style worked in attracting the audience. It also helps that there aren't that much anime-styled tower defense games competing with Arknights in the first place.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • Some materials exist in real life.
    • Given that most of the in-story nations are Fantasy Counterpart Cultures of existing countries, a lot (in fact, nearly all) of their fictional histories and figures can be traced back to real-life historical facts and events, to the point that trying to list all of them is an exercise in futility.
    • Several concepts are taken from the field of medicine. Fitting for this game's main organization that focuses on the care and treatment of the sick.
      • Rhodes Island may have been named after the real-world Isle of Rhodes, which was occupied by The Knights Hospitallers at one point of its history. The Hospitallers were known to provide care for the sick and wounded pilgrims, and possessed some of the best medical knowledge of its time.
      • The Faction Motto of Rhodes Island ("May I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times"), is an excerpt from the Hippocratic Oath.
      • Perfumer is a reference to aromatheraphy, a healing treatment that uses plants and natural oils which may come from flowers. Even in the ancient times, perfumery used flowers and herbs. In this game, Perfumer also has a Talent named after the Lavender, a flower used in many ways including perfumes.
      • Myrrh is named after the resin that can be used as an annointing oil, a frankincense or a perfume. It has also been documented as an analgesic or a painkiller.
      • Hibiscus is named after the flowering plant which also has supposed medicinal benefits aside from being a perfume. It could also be served as an herbal tea.
      • Lancet-2 is named after the alternate name of scalpel ("lancet"), both of which refer to the surgical knife.
      • Warfarin is named after the drug that reduces blood clots in veins or arteries. There could also be a sense of irony here if we remember that the playable Warfarin in Arknights is a vampire...
      • Nightingale is named after Florence Nightingale, the founder of Nursing.
      • Folinic is named after Folinic Acid, a multi-purpose chemical used in treating cancer, certain poisonings, among other complications. Though the In-Universe reason why Folinic chose that name is because it was the answer to the first mistake she made during a study session.
    • The various "Ancient" races are categorized depending on the characters' animalistic features, and are named from the foreign words describing their respective animals or mythological creatures:
      • Anura - Latin for "no tail", which represents frogs in this game.
      • Archosauria - Derived from a Latin word that represents the division of large reptiles, such as crocodiles.
      • Aslan - Turkish for lion.
      • Elaphia - Derived from "elaphos", the Greek word for deer.
      • Feline - Latin for cat.
      • Liberi - Derived from "liber", the Latin word for "free". The name could also be a reference to the idiom/phrase "free as a bird".
      • Lupo - Italian for wolf.
      • Oni - Japanese for demons, devils, ogres or trolls.
      • Perro - Spanish for dog.
      • Petram - Derived from "petra", the Greek word for rock. In Arknights, this race is represented by turtles.
      • Pilosa - Derived from the very same genus name of sloths and anteaters.
      • Sankta - Derived from "sanctus", the Latin word for "sacred", which also applies to angels.
      • Savra - Derived from "saura", the Greek word for lizard.
      • Ursus - Latin for bear.
      • Vouivre - Also known as "guivre", a mythological creature with the head of a dragon and a body of a serpent. It's also a reference to vipers and their Latin etymology of "vipera" which alludes to how some vipers reproduce via live birth. This is also how we now have the word wyvern, which alludes to vipers.
      • Vulpo - Derived from "vulpes", the Latin word for fox.
    • The name of the theme that plays during Frostnova's death is titled "37°C" in Volume 2 of the OST, which is the commonly accepted normal human body temperature. A fitting name considering how the perpetually-freezing Frostnova's body only warms up to a regular temperature in the moments before her demise.
    • The epilogue of the "Break the Ice" event shows a CG of the Doctor and SilverAsh in a chess game that ends in a draw. The state of the chessboard seems to be a reference to this chess game. Note that SilverAsh is playing White (he instigated the conflict of the event) and is apparently forced into a draw by threefold repetition (the payoff of his plan was much smaller because of the Doctor's involvement).
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
    • The game itself gets this treatment. Since its global launch on 2020, Arknights quickly got devoted English, Japanese and Korean fanbases, with the game and its characters getting traction in the anime/gacha communities in just a short amount of time. Members on online platforms like Twitter, Reddit, Pixiv and YouTube are aplenty, so do the number of fanarts and doujinshi. Some factors in its popularity were the built-up hype in the gacha communities leading to a number of Friendly Fandoms with several gacha IPs. There's also the idea that the Tower Defense genre is unique in the gacha market that's oversaturated with Turn-Based Combat and real-time action games, so quite a lot of players admit Arknights as their first tower defense gacha game.
    • The game has a strong playerbase in developing countries, particularly Southeast Asian developing countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia, due to having high production values for a game that does not strictly require money to play, and many gamers in those countries already have a smartphone but cannot afford high-end PC hardware or game consoles. It helps that many players consider the story-acquired Operators to be quite reliable in their own right, and so the player isn't necessarily prevented from progressing further just because they don't have the money to spend on Originium Primes for gacha rolls or good luck with said gacha.
    • Several characters enjoy more popularity in other countries than they are in their home country of China. To note:
      • Myrtle is much popular in Japan than in China, regularly scoring top ranking among fan favorite polls and voted as one of the Vanguards that fans like to bring along in the Japanese server. While Myrtle still had fans in China, it's not to the same level of love that Japan has for Myrtle.
      • Sharp and Ace, are both an Ensemble Dark Horse among fans, but they are even more popular in the west due to their more realistic designs in an otherwise Anime inspired art direction for Arknights along with being awesome and cool.
  • Goddamned Boss: See here.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • You're now drowning in the Hymn of Respite. note 
    • Jesselton moonwalks his way out of the battlefield.explanation
    • We've taken Crownslayer bullying to another level.
    • Faust surrenders himself to Rhodes Island.
    • Beanstalk has bred the ultimate lifeform. Explanation
    • Due to wonky interactions with Shu's Samsara, which would forcibly teleport entities back to her, it became possible to instantly kill Hortus de Escapismo's Gardener, otherwise an invulnerable Puzzle Boss, by messing with his pathing and making him fall into a hole to his death when he tried to correct himself. This was patched before the rerun arrived on Global servers.
    • During the rerun of Zwillingsturme im Herbst, an amusing bug involving Logos' first skill and the Aspect of Annihilation was discovered, where if it was placed in his range while his S1 was running, it would lead to the Aspect of Creation firing a shot that would deal enough damage to one-shot anything, even the Witch King himself. Explanation This was eventually patched after the rerun of the event.
    • When Episode 15 was first released in the CN server, the boss of the episode had a bug where its main body could be shifted by Yu's second skill, which teleports several enemies caught in its initial activation to be blocked by him if their path would make them pass by his lane, even though the boss isn't supposed to move. This had the effect of lowering its difficulty by manipulating the boss' location from its isolated position to one where many Operators tend to be clustered around. It was ultimately patched.
  • Good Bad Translation:
    • The "ANNIHILATIO" written in the Loading Screen of Annihilation maps. Some may say that it fits because the word is based on Latin, while others see this as a misspelled word. Hypergryph did patch it on mid-2020 to display "ANNIHILATION", but the misspelled word returns for a few frames just before the stage loads. The fanbase then joked on where the letter "N" went, or believed that Hypergryph intended it as an Ascended Glitch. This too, was finally fixed in another update.
    • When you're searching for clues in the Reception Room, the text on the bottom left reads "Searchin". Is it a misspelled word? Or a radical slang? Fans agree on the latter, as if it's something Croissant would say with her accent.
  • Growing the Beard:
    • The earliest main story chapters (e.g. the Prologue to Chapter 4) are considered weak in terms of writing or characterization because they either stretch a plot point for too long, miss chances to expand scenes, or miss potential to expand backstories of characters who die early on. Another oddity has the story sometimes inserting new details when recounting past incidents. It's only from Chapter 5 onwards where the fanbase notices improvements all around. Even limited-time story events like "Code of Brawl" and "Darknights Memoir" are considered to be superior than those early main story chapters.
    • On the technical aspect, it's the English voice lines. Originally, the English voice lines were subjected to scrutiny for not relying on the more well-known English voice actors from the US, as Hypergryph instead relied on less-known British voice actors or English actors from other regions. While decent, the English voice lines originally didn't leave much positive feedback from the players due to the voice actors' relatively unknown reputations. However, the voice lines are steadily getting praise, particularly with Horn's and Ebenholz's English voice lines (by Anna Burnett and Atilla Akinci) that are felt more in tune with their character lores' and origins (Horn being a Victorian and Ebenholz being a Leithanien), and some even sprinkling in dialogue in their "native" language. Starting with Ideal City, fans who wanted renowned English voice actors to join the cast would get their wish, with Cardigan and Istina's VAs in particular being the first Genshin Impact voice actors to voice Arknights characters.
      • Adding to this, Italian voice actors were hired to deliver Italian lines for key characters in the Il Siracusano event, which takes place in the game's equivalent of Italy. Fans hope that this opens the possibility of other foreign voice overs for characters who are from outside the game's equivalent of the US and UK. Their wishes were granted when Hypergryph later added German and Russian dubs for certain characters from Leithania/Ursus respectively along with regional dialects for certain Yan (Chinese) characters, with potentially more to come.

    H-L 
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Shortly after the game launched in China, the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests began to spring up, drawing uncomfortable parallels with Reunion and Lungmen. Shortly after the game launched globally, news of a deadly coronavirus outbreak in China began to spread, resulting the Chinese government quarantining large sections of the country, mirroring the in-universe treatment of those infected with oripathy. This has led to troubles for players who want to introduce their friends into the game and its lore.
    • The fanon portrayal of Saria as a Bumbling Dad can be seen in a new light with the Rhine Lab manhua showing both a glimpse of her childhood and her early interactions with Ifrit. Saria's own dad only showed her Tough Love, which affected how she approached everyone, including Ifrit.
    • The results of Levi Klitschko's Originium experiments (after twenty years back on Rainbow Six Siege's Earth, plus six months on Terra) may have been Foreshadowing a shocking implication in "Lone Trail": specifically, Preserver implying that the current nature of Originium on Terra was an accidental result of Priestess's experiments on it.
    • In "Vigilo", pre-amnesia Doctor advocated for a traitor to be exiled, but Kal'tsit wanted that traitor executed out of prudence. In Episode 7, Kal'tsit relieves Guard of his duties to Rhodes Island since he sees himself as part of Reunion now, which is apparently rewarded in Episode 9 with him being a crucial part of the reformed Reunion breaking Talulah out of Rhodes Island custody. In the moment, you would think Kal'tsit executing traitors on the spot now sounds justified, since Guard exploited his knowledge of Rhodes Island's security. This is lessened by the scene hinting that this was ideal for Rhodes Island's political situation with Victoria and Yan: Talulah's captivity could only give them leverage for so long before either nation decided to attack the landship themselves, and Reunion managing to break her out lessens the political pressure on Rhodes Island by "absolving" them of fault.
    • "Babel" alone may have caused the most examples to be seen in a darker light, so it gets its own section here:
      • Every interaction between the Doctor and Kal'tsit becomes this in light of the event's reveals: Kal'tsit was created by the Doctor and Priestess, effectively making her their artificially created daughter, and she once treated the Doctor with much more care and respect akin to a parent, even choosing to awaken them early under the belief that they would help save Terra from the damage of Originium and was thrilled when the Doctor appeared to come to love Terra and be willing to help Babel. Except Kal'tsit had no idea that the plan was always for Originium to consume the land so that the precursors could create a new world, and the Doctor ended up (albeit regretfully) killing Theresa because her actions were getting in the way of that plan being achieved. Essentially, Kal'tsit put her trust in the Doctor and they betrayed it in every way imaginable. The fact that she acts so coldly towards the Doctor and is practically an Emotionless Girl now is almost certainly because she's realized that her entire purpose was never to help Terra survive and her only connection to the precursors intended to speed the process of its destruction along. Her only silver lining is that the Doctor now no longer remembers that purpose and is genuinely trying to fix things this time, but it's clear that Kal'tsit is unable to trust them ever again and has a very good reason to be afraid of them getting their memories back.
      • You as the player can directly spend Originium Prime to gain a stamina-like resource; this turns out to be Foreshadowing Gameplay and Story Integration. The Precursors, including pre-amnesia Doctor, planned to turn all of Terra into Human Resources via the spread of Originium. The initial hard cap of 10 OP per day may have been post-amnesia Doctor's subconscious resolution to not resort to using Originium to succeed.
      • The event gives Arknights common ground with Infinite Space. The Precursors in the former and the Overlords in the latter happen to share a modus operandi.
      • One of Gitano's fortune-themed skill lines is "The Priestess will destroy all." Priestess would definitely destroy all of Terra if it was for the Precursors' sake.
      • Pre-amnesia Doctor advocated for the exile of a traitor to Babel instead of an execution. Ironically, Marco was more loyal to Theresa than the Doctor was, but the Doctor probably made up Marco's motive (him losing his faith in Theresa) using the Doctor's wavering faith in the plan to save their fellow Precursors as a basis. Worse still, the Doctor reporting Marco's suicide (which was actually Marco letting Ace execute him on Kal'tsit's orders) may have been the Doctor's own desire to do just that after arranging for Theresa's death had she not wiped their mind in her dying moments.
      • Arturia's voiced lines indicate she is specifically forbidden from performing her music to the Doctor. Considering her Arts have the ability to cause one's most important memories to surface no matter how deeply buried they are, it's possible this is because she could potentially make the Doctor remember anything about their past and their plans to let Originium consume the world.
  • He's Just Hiding: The fandom seems to be rather skeptical about the fates of certain popular characters, despite them dying (or at least implied to be) the last time they're part of any major story development.
    • Ace and FrostNova are especially popular examples of this, and the latter's case is even more complicated due to her body being put in an incinerator as of Chapter 7, and said incinerator is now frozen. Chapter 8 seems to have put both of them to rest for good, although this hasn't stopped the latter's more fervent fans from claiming otherwise any time the chance arises. The developers even seem aware of this, as Episode 14 tempts the fans with the Doctor having a hallucination of FrostNova joining Rhodes Island, complete with a unique CG for her in the uniform.
    • Another such example would be Ines, who was reportedly killed by Talulah for knowing too much. However, her body was never visually confirmed, and the way a certain Sarkaz messenger reacted to Hoederer's order at the end of Darknights Memoir and W's Promotion Record both imply that she's very much alive, only in hiding.note  This was eventually made explicit in Vigilo, with W learning of her survival, along with Episode 12 making Ines playable.
    • In Episode 10, Mandragora suffers a brutal, humiliating Curb-Stomp Battle at the hands of Manfred, learns that her Leader has abandoned her to her fate, and is left to die on the streets of Londinium. However, since Misery approaches her in her final moments, it gave fans hope that he could have brought her back to Rhodes Island for treatment, and that she could go on to redeem herself in the future and become a playable operator. What the Firelight Casts cast some doubt on this idea, with Dublinn talking about her as if she was dead, but this was brushed off as them making assumptions after she was sent on a suicide mission and didn't come back to them. However, Episode 14 effectively put an end to any rumours of her survival with Horn stating that she buried Mandragora's body after the fight was over.
  • High-Tier Scrappy: Although some Operators recieve flak for being too weak, there are certain operators who recieve the same fan reception but for the opposite reason:
    • Surtr was one of the first major examples of an operator who was disliked by many for being too powerful. Although Operators with nuclear area damage weren't uncommon even back when she was released, Surtr specifically went about it in a way that basically circumvented any reasonable weaknesses she'd normally have: Twilight's +5000 HP makes her nearly unkillable before she obliterates the area even with her limited (but still fairly decent) time limit, said HP buff with Twilight's miniscule windup means there's almost no way for Surtr to get killed during her helidrop, Remnant Ash's temporary immortality turns the "nearly unkillable before killing everything" into actually unkillable while almost guaranteeing you'll be able to retreat her for the half DP refund, and Molten Flame's massive RES piercing means that the usual strategy of not using Arts against high-RES foes can just be completely ignored. In essence, unlike the other game-breakers of the era who can suffer greatly if you use them incorrectly (eg. SilverAsh turning into a Glass Cannon with S3), Surtr is seemingly designed to overwhelm any defense and wall any offense: there is almost no way to misuse Surtr, there's almost no situation she can't excel in, and she has so many failsafes in place that you're virtually unpunished no matter how or when you use her. All of this, while making her arguably the most iconic example of Complacent Gaming Syndrome in the game's history, has also led to players scorning her gameplay for being incredibly stale, since everything she does revolves around circumventing difficulty, strategy, and even game mechanics through brute force, and her gameplay is simply dropping her directly on the target and pressing her skill once to kill everyone, repeated as many times as needed. Surtr is also disliked by some players because she marked the start of an era of higher-difficulty content seemingly balanced around her, seeing the introduction of enemies with considerably higher RES and HP, mechanics made to shut down burst, anti-helidrop mechanics, and more changes seemingly built to keep her from bulldozing all content in the game, with the side effect of making the game more difficult for all other operators.However...
    • Ch'en the Holungday got a significant amount of backlash since her reveal due to the powercreep she brought at the time. Her kit as a 6-star Spreadshooter Sniper is deemed too overtuned, especially her S3, which functions like her S2 but ridiculously buffed, with features like ATK buff, double hit, range extension (which also extends her archetype's trait to cover her entire range), flat DEF ignore, and movement speed debuff. Her release also dooms every other Spreadshooter Snipers because the gap between her as a 6-star operator of her archetype with the non 6-star operators is larger than the typical gap (even with the flaws of Executor and Aosta in mind), with Pinecone arguably only standing up as a viable alternative because of her Simple, yet Awesome kit as a 4-star. Not helping matters is the perception of how Hypergryph seemingly broke their promise of only doing 4 limited banners a year during a livestream since they didn't reveal that they would introduce a pool of limited units every summer, how Ch'en the Holungday's release came just months after the highly-anticipated Ash and Skadi the Corrupting Heart, and the idea that her power in gameplay is unjustified by her lore as "just" Ch'en going on a vacation and picking up a water gun, especially when compared to her base form's underwhelming gameplay performance despite using a legendary sword.
    • Texas the Omertosa was somewhat panned on release not just because of her absurd power, but because of the way her existence overturns the nature of the game itself. Her kit seems tailor made to curb-stomp the majority of content with no prior preparation: massive RES shred and Arts damage on her S2 make her not have to worry about defensive matchups like Surtr (and in fact can rival Surtr's DPS), her S3 is essentially an Arts nuke that also permastuns everything in range for up to 8 seconds, and she gains damage reduction before a kill and a full heal+skill reset when she gets one, letting her play incredibly recklessly even for an Executor. And that's where the selling point comes in: she's an Executor, a unit with a maximum 18 second cooldown and miniscule cost normally designed as a meat shield or extra push against a priority target, with more offensive power than many long-term Operators. Not only did she pretty much invalidate the entirety of the Fast-Redeploy archetype from the moment she came out, having such power on demand whenever you want means the inherent risk factor of the game mostly goes out the window, as not only can most priority targets be eliminated just by haphazardly tossing her at them, you can enter a map with zero preparation and make as many strategic mistakes as you want, before just using Texas to plug the holes and wipe out anything that gets past. Such is her power that she can solo certain difficult maps that'd normally otherwise take a whole team working together, upon which the game becomes less tower defense and moreso a "tower offense" game of whack-a-mole with no interaction between units besides Texas nuking them off the map. This is especially the case if you pair her with the later released and also absurdly strong Kirin R Yato, upon which you basically don't have any need for any other units because cycling those two will usually be enough to wipe the map clean.
    • Degenbrecher, although well liked as a character and revered as a Living Legend, recieved a sizeable amount of backlash upon her release, not just because of her S3's jaw-dropping damage matching that of the already strong Mlynar, but because of how said S3 is an almost exact Moveset Clone of Ch'en and Irene but with far more effectiveness, while also breaking the unspoken rule of Swordmasters only using Offensive Recovery by being a fairly fast-charging Auto Recovery skill. Fans of Ch'en and Irene tend to outright despise Degenbrecher for basically copying their playstyles and movesets but with even more strengths and none of their weaknesses,note  pretty much invalidating both of them outside of personal preference, which is particularly notable as while Arknights is no stranger to Power Creep, very few instances of it actually involve a carbon copy of a previous unit or skill. Even for those who don't necessarily use Ch'en or Irene sometimes find her contentious not just because of her Auto Recovery skill blatantly eliminating one of the main restrictions of Swordmasters, but sometimes find her kit to be wasted potential that could have been more creative (especially regarding the Frighten debuff which is actually well used by her S2, but becomes a footnote with her S3), as opposed to being another "win button" nuker that only really stands out due to having overtuned numbers.
    • Wiš'adel quickly became infamous shortly after her release due to how much of a Master of All she is. Damage output? Absurd across all 3 skills along with offering limited crowd control, with her S3 having some of the highest damage models in the game in an area half the size of the map. Skill cycling? Her S3 uses ammo to give it incredible cycle control, has a pretty good cooldown for what it does, and can even be helidropped. Damage without her skill? With the extra damage from her talent and the 3 permanent, respawnable Arts turrets she can summon, her base DPS can already outstrip many Operators with their skills running while also Slowing enemies. Survivability? She completely bucks the usual weakness of ranged units being Glass Cannons by gaining permanent Camouflage as long as at least one of her summons are next to her, with said summons having bulk comparable to Defenders and immunity to melee attacks, making her damn near immortal. Flingers struggling as a class? Not only does she do enough damage per hit to ignore their usual weakness of falling off against high DEF, her S3 even hits air, spitting in the face of the branch's explicitly stated blind spot, which was particularly upsetting for fans of the previous 6-star Flinger Rosmontis.note  Although her kit was fairly unique, Wiš'adel's release was contentious because of just how overloaded she was: pretty much every conceivable weakness she might have had was covered by some part of her kit (whereas many other Game Breakers at least have some clear limitations, even if small), including weaknesses that would normally be no-brainers, with a playstyle tailor made to overwhelm all opposition through sheer numbers without much nuance involved, to the point where she can outright remove the challenge factor of even super-endgame events like max-difficulty IS or RA. This was also on top of the minor controversies already surrounding her release, most notably how she was a limited alter of the already limited W, with some even accusing Hypergryph of riding the fan hype behind W to intentionally make Wiš'adel overtuned and cash in on another limited anniversary unit. For reference, her release partners Logos and Civilight Eterna are both also considered extremely powerful (especially the former), but were comparatively much better recieved than Wiš'adel due to having more visible weaknesses as well as unique kits that offered more usage beyond just nuking everything in sight. Wiš'adel is also disliked by a section of the community for being so overcentralizing that every single meta discussion just boils down to her, with her existence making every other operator look so much weaker by comparison that many players simply dismiss or deride all other characters in the game as a result, no matter how good they are on their own merits or how unique their kits are.
    • A non-operator example is the Lamp of Wishes from Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables' first expansion. While undoubtedly one of, if not the biggest Game Breakers in the mode due to it letting you easily guarantee top-tier items without the need to rely on RNG, many players who played around with it for a while started to criticize that it was too powerful even for the standards of a season that heavily favored the players, and more importantly almost entirely removed the Roguelike aspect of the mode as runs would become a linear game plan of "pick up the Lamp, force a full King's set and any Hands of your choice, and maybe rob Cannot later to force a Golden Chalice" before snowballing into an instant win. The only feasible downside was giving up the previously abused Talons of Hatred, which for most players was a no-brainer since you were giving up a risky feast-or-famine playstyle for one that had no risk and immense reward. Not helping was that the bosses and stages added in the two expansions were such an absurd Difficulty Spike at even moderate difficulties that it was a common conjecture that they had been intentionally overtuned to accommodate the Lamp, which was even more frustrating since now you had to abuse the Lamp to even stand a chance of winning, which further hurt the replayability and variety that IS had been previously known for.
      • Another point of frustration regarding the Lamp that borders on being a flat out Scrappy Mechanic is that because it prioritizes class and archetype-based relics over all else, it greatly disincentivizes picking operators who would otherwise be strong picks solely because they would force you to pick up to two more collectibles before you could get to the coveted King’s relics, leading to even more Complacent Gaming Syndrome as players would specifically prioritize archetypes who guarantee a broken relic (e.g. Flingers for the Hand of Rumble) then build the rest of the squad specifically around not getting any other Hand or class-based relics so that they can get the aforementioned King’s set in as few nodes as possible, leading to not only the relic selection but the teambuilding aspect itself becoming far less interesting in general.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Gamepress's April Fools' 2020 concerned around multiple Reunion leaders becoming playable with hilariously overpowered skillsets. 25 days later, W would be announced in the CN server to become playable for real. Gamepress had to put a notice on her April Fools' page that that page isn't real. Crownslayer then follows her 4.5 years later.
    • In early March 2020, the CN server received its first official Contingency Contract PV (a.k.a. Operation Barrenland). The electronica music in the video really pumps up the player to get ready for the challenge. Then in early April, the Dancing Pallbearers (a.k.a. Coffin Dance) meme became viral on internet. Its background music, "Astronomia", sounds familiar to the PV soundtrack. Given how challenging CC is considered, fans joked that Hypergryph had foreshadowed that most doctors won't survive the event with their operators. For additional information, this is a comparison version of the two songs, headphones recommended for comparison purpose.
    • In June 2020, the Code of Brawl event premiered in the English server. This tumblr post speaks of wanting an operator version of one of the newly introduced NPCs named Fillet, tagged 'arknights stop giving me cool ass npcs then just leave them'. Come end July, said NPC was introduced as an actual operator named Jaye.
    • The 2020 fanfic Another Destiny imagines operators from an Alternate Timeline where they're in a different class due to changes in their past (eg. Shining being a Guard instead of a Healer or Ifrit became a Healer instead of a Caster) arriving to the canon Arknights universe. Alter Operators are a possibility with Amiya gaining a class change ability and Operators like Lava and Skadi gaining alternate "Diversity" forms, with fans hoping other Operators get to change their class as well.
    • All of the fandom's jokes comparing the game to Plants vs. Zombies came full circle with the release of W's Epoque: Fugue skin, which has her placing potato mines for her second skill. This would happen again with DH-EX-4, a stage that essentially recreated Plants vs. Zombies' pool levels in Arknights.
    • A section in Blaze's Archive Files mentions that her Hot-Blooded, reckless nature makes her a terrible role model, and ends with the plea "Whatever you do, don't become another Blaze". The writer of this file would likely have an aneurysm if they met Flint, an operator added later down the line who idolises Blaze and joined Rhodes Island in the hopes of becoming her apprentice.
    • Many jokes and memes about Hypergryph being secretly a music company due to all the Awesome Music they made becomes this with the fact that Arknights officially had a collaboration with Rayark's Cytus II in December 2021. This later gets doubled into hilarity in 2023, when that year's Ambience Synesthesia concert won the HMMA Awards.
    • Lancet-2's "Shore Rescue Modification" skin, an alternate chassis for her with a built-in floatation device for use in deep water, is probably the closest we'll get to seeing her in a swimsuit like she suggested back in Gavial: The Great Chief Returns.
    • All of the "chrisposting" memes about SilverAsh wanting the Doctor to continue the SilverAsh bloodline by pairing the Doctor with his sisters becomes this come the "Break the Ice" event and his Operator Records revealing that SilverAsh's stance is the complete opposite of the memes. It's SilverAsh who is interested in the Doctor rather than his sisters.
    • A few days before the 3.5th anniversary livestream was held, one Tumblr user joked they should add a new operator to the game that was just the various small animals seen in other operators' artworks stacked on top of each other and wearing a trenchcoat. During the livestream, it was announced that Arknights would be crossing over with the Monster Hunter series, which would bring its own unique operators with it. The first of the operators to be revealed? The Terra Research Commission, a trio of Felynes, stood atop each other's shoulders. All they were missing was the trenchcoat.
    • The community often likes to portray the Doctor poking fun at Kal'tsit's age, being well over 10,000 years old. Then "Lone Trail" reveals that the Doctor themselves is actually even older than Kal'tsit, at over 13,000 years old. Cue the hilarious reversal of roles.
    • Many a chuckle was had about Sideroca's operator files detailing how she was assigned to ensure the Doctor didn't skip out on their physiotherapy sessions. The joke got even funnier as of Lone Trail, as it turns out the physio was enough to strengthen the Doctor to the point that when they got angry at Loken's treatment of Rosmontis and struck him, Loken had the wind knocked out of his sails and was left wheezing.
    • A Black Comedy example. This isn't the only game where a character named Ace dies from being incinerated. The only difference is that the latter only meets this fate in one ending, while Operator Ace is definitively dead.
    • Back in 2020, some players shipped Silverash and Siege based solely on their common background of used to live in Victoria. The webcomic Sharp Blade, Silver Edge revealed that Silverash's mother is the Duke of Caster's grand-niece, while Siege is her niece. This doesn't justify the pairing, but it is hilarious to see that the two characters are related after all.
    • When Delicious in Dungeon's anime started airing, it prompted a wave of crossover fanart with Laios trying to convince the rest of his party to eat monsters from other series. This included Arknights fans drawing the party attempting to cook Originium Slugs, which proved prophetic when the CN 5th Anniversary stream announced an actual Delicious in Dungeon collaboration with a skit of the Doctor doing just that.
    • This piece of fanartnote , drawn before the global release of Babel, was originally intended as a joke about the PRTS AI's tendency to screw up during auto-deploys. With the added context of Babel, and later Episode 15, it takes on a new, far more darkly comedic meaning.
      girbo: the post has gained more context than i intended 💀
    • An old fancomic by the artist DOS, in which W tries to prank Amiya with a fake cave painting of Kal'tsit that leads to her being punished for hitting too close to the truth concerning Kal'tsit's true age, became even funnier as of the sidestory Adventure That Cannot Wait for the Sun, in which an ancient Sargonian hieroglyphic mural is revealed by Zubayr that happens to have a very familar white and green cat figure as part of the collection of historical figures depicted.
    • In 2023, fan animator harlequin wheels posted a video that paired each Sinner from Limbus Company with an equivalent Arknights operator. Two years later, Limbus would hold an official Arknights crossover event, with four Sinners receiving an E.G.O. based on an operator — and three of thosenote  were the same ones wheels predicted. Amusingly, the only one he got wrong was Irene for Ishmael, who still ended up being a major character in the event's story despite Skadi being the basis for Ishmael's E.G.O..
      • Also from wheels, to commemorate the release of Guilty Gear -STRIVE-, he made a short animation of Mudrock performing a Potemkin Buster on Blaze. Come Episode 15, the final shot of the Rhodes Island landship exploding into a giant Originium crystal from the impact would prove prescient.
  • Ho Yay: In a game that has both a large female cast and a notable male cast, this was inevitable.
    • Lappland is obsessed with Texas, many of her actions revolving around "bringing the old Texas" back, behavior which only continues and deepens during the Il Siracusano event where Texas returns to her homeland.
    • During Near Light, Margaret Nearl shares a moonlight dance with Nightingale, while Shining smiles and looks on. The Kazimeirz Red Wine Newspaper (a tabloid) also fuels this in-universe by spreading gossip about Nearl and Viviana taking a walk and going to a hotel together.
    • Silence and Saria joining forces to take care of Ifrit during her time at Rhine Lab can easily be read as having romantic undertones, especially in the Records of Originium: Rhine Lab manga, where a whole chapter is devoted to Saria asking Silence about the keepsakes at her desk and what they mean to her. Silence also gives Saria one of her feathers, something which Saria still wears on her belt even after they had their rift, and for a time, Silence admires Saria intensely, and Saria reprimands Silence's co-workers harshly for speaking ill of Silence and Ptilopsis. Silence admires Saria so much that Parvis even uses her feelings to manipulate her into keeping Saria out of the project, by pointing out to Silence how exhausted Saria is and making it seem like it's Silence's own fault.
    • Along similar lines, Saria and Kristen. They promise to build a company together and Saria swears to always protect Kristen, and though they have a falling-out later, Kristen refuses to accept Saria's resignation from Rhine Lab, maintaining the position of Head of Defense unfilled because she believes it belongs to Saria and that Saria will eventually return to it.
    • Ebenholz and Kreide in Lingering Echoes are all but an official couple. Ebenholz falls all over himself to buy Kreide a new cello and new clothes for their performance, lashing out at anyone who questions or says anything mean to Kreide, even going as far as to sleep in Kreide's room (in Kreide's bed as there is only one bed) so they can practice. There's also the fact that Kreide dies in Ebenholz's arms as he succumbs to the Voice of Terra and tells Ebenholz to defy fate and live on. The distraught Ebenholz refuses to let Kreide's body go at first and even gets Infected in the process, but doesn't care.
    • SilverAsh and Gnosis also have a lot of subtext in Break The Ice, from Enciodes commenting that Gnosis has lost weight and Gnosis blaming him, to Scirius straight-up calling Enciodes Gnosis's "sugar daddy," Gnosis saying that Enciodes "promised him a future" and calling Enciodes his "partner-in-crime," to the two of them promising that they'll still work towards their mutual dream of making Kjerag great as they part ways as children, and Enciodes telling Gnosis they "will have plenty of time to argue later" when Gnosis nags him for enjoying a challenge he can't afford to lose (and tells him he hasn't changed in twenty years). It doesn't help that most of Gnosis's voice lines have some comment about SilverAsh, and that the lore tidbit of his "Forerunner" skin states that he becomes the first Speaker of Kjerag's new parliament by Enciodes's recommendation. Even Gnosis's JP VA joked that Break The Ice was an otome game after he finished reading it. Further fuel was added with the release of the "Sharp Swordbreaker, Silver Edge" prequel manga, which features more of Gnosis's nagging and his acting like a jealous, overprotective boyfriend towards Degenbrecher as he insists that "[he] can get Enciodes all the [bargaining] chips he needs" and Enciodes doesn't actually need her (much to her amusement).
    • The way Leonhardt specifically limits his trust of the Doctor because he prefers Ayerscarpe has led fans to believe that they are in a relationship.
  • Idiosyncratic Ship Naming:
    • "1-11" for Adnachiel x W, due to the Scripted Event of map 1-11 where the former tries to Hold the Line against the latter.
    • "Flying Fish" for Irene x Lumen, due to them being a Liberi and Aegir respectively.
  • Informed Wrongness: In "Guide Ahead", Patia constantly accuses the Sankta of oppressing and discriminating against Laterano's Liberi population, and we know that the Sankta are capable of Fantastic Racism if their attitudes towards the Sarkaz are any indication. However, from all portrayals of Lateran society so far, while the Sankta empathy does raise some barriers between Sankta and non-Sankta being able to understand each other, most clearly shown through Fiammetta's emotional turmoil, it is hard to go as far as to call it "oppression". Their leader, Pope Yvangelista XI, is shown to be a highly tolerant man who is willing to turn a blind eye to even Sarkaz if they don't cause any harm. Fiammetta, being Liberi herself, was able to rise to the highest ranks of the Notarial hall on her merit alone and is close friends with equally high ranking Sankta, and her adopted grandfather, Patrizion, is supportive of her and the two have little trouble communicating with each other. All of the Sankta characters seen so far both in and out of Rhodes Island show no issues with working or living with Liberi. This gives the impression that Patia is simply projecting her own feelings of inferiority against the Sankta.
    • The Masses' Travels would go on to make a lot of Patia's grievances Harsher in Hindsight by showing front and center the issues Sankta empathy causes them when communicating with others outside their race, and how Condescending Compassion has been so deeply ingrained into their culture that although they show no hostility towards Liberi, they're so used to treating them as second-class and "unenlightened" that they don't even realize they're discriminating against them, excluding those Sankta that actually venture beyond Laterano and learn how to better interact without their empathy as a crutch. That being said, it's still argued that although the discrimination and bigotry towards Liberi is very much real, it's still a reach to call it outright oppression, especially given that Laterano still treats its "second-class" citizens far better than every other nation on Terra.
  • It Was His Sled: Because the Chinese server is way ahead of all the other servers, any plot twists in the lore can easily spread to the other communities through translated discussions on the Internet, even before the other servers finally catch up.
    • For story-related events, the English fanbase already knew that FrostNova dies in Chapter 6, and that Patriot is going to be a main antagonist in Chapter 7, etc...
    • Because the 1st Anniversary announcements and the "Darknights' Memoir" event in the Chinese server were hyped by the entire fanbase, the fact that W is Promoted to Playable and that she's actually affiliated with Babel are already known then and there.
      • Though the fact that W is Promoted to Playable isn't this anymore since they were playable on Tribulation mode for one of Twilight of Wolumonde's stages.
    • When Mudrock appeared as the antagonist of Twilight of Wolumonde, their appearance and gender were a mystery on account of their armour, and despite being an Anti-Villain with goals that aligned with Rhodes Island, they still parted ways with the organaization as enemies. By the time the event made its way to the Global server, the fandom were fully aware that she was a woman under her suit and would end up joining Rhodes Island in the future, mostly because at the same time Global was fighting her she was introduced as a playable Operator on CN.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Many players admit having been drawn into Arknights by the Awesome Music and extensive worldbuilding, themes, and lore rather than the game itself.
    • Another subset of players only play the game just for whenever the Breakout Character group that is the Sui fragment siblings (Nian, Dusk, Ling, Chongyue, Shu, Ji, Wang, Yu, and Yi) shows up in an event or otherwise. Helps the Dragon Bubbles they are often associated with (or "beans") are memes unto themselves.
  • Late Character Syndrome: Amiya's Guard form would've been a decent option as an Arts Guard for early players if she didn't come so late in the game in the climax of Episode 8, as players who reached that point are most likely to have already E2'd a lot of other Operators, including most likely other Guards. The things that make "Guardmiya" unique are her Arts Dodge with her S1, her True Damage with her S2, and her passive global buff to ATK and DEF. The specific situations where players might need Arts Dodge are fairly rare, as most enemies in those particular maps with a lot of Arts damage would have fairly high RES as well, which hampers Guardmiya's damage against them, and her S2 is limited to exactly one use per battle even if she is retreated and redeployed. Combined with the lateness of her availability and her niche skills, Guardmiya struggles to be relevant as a Guard option. This is even more the case for her Medic form unlocked in Episode 14, who while decent on paper faces stiff competition from the other Incantation Medics that can be obtained far earlier than her, especially since her S1 has an enormously high cooldown for what it does and her stronger True Damage S2 still suffers from a once-per-battle limitation, which is especially bad since the main meat of her Talent isn't even active unless her skill is also active. On top of this, Episode 14 also nets you Civilight Eterna, who has better healing, similar True Damage application, and doesn't suffer from a once-per-battle restriction. However, Amiya's Medic form does have a niche in Integrated Strategies due to being able to be drawn from Guard/Caster vouchers, making it less likely that the player bricks and spends a chunk of the game without finding any healers.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
    • Despite their ambiguous gender, the Doctor is mostly depicted as a male in fanarts, paired romantically with female characters. At first he was paired with Kal'tsit, Amiya, Angelina, and Warfarin, and then came Pramanix, Cliffheart, Blue Poison, and Ptilopsis because of memes. It doesn't stop there, as multiple operators canonically openly show their interest in them - Platinumexplanation and Gravelexplanation latch on to them fiercely, while Angelinaexplanation, Ambrielexplanation, Blue Poisonexplanation, Ptilopsisexplanation, Skyfireexplanation, Skadiexplanation, SilverAshexplanation, Ho'olheyak explanation, and Swireexplanation have all openly expressed their interest.
      • In turn the Doctor has several characters that they've shown strong interest in, like Frostnovaspoilers, Muelsyse spoilers, and Priestess and/or PRTSspoilers.
    • Bison, as of Code of Brawl. His most popular pairing seems to be with fellow Forte Defender Croissant, with Mostima as a close second due to all the time they spend together during the event and his obvious admiration of her, but he's also been shipped with basically every other member of Penguin Logistics too.
    • Texas from the very launch of the game has commonly been shipped with numerous other characters, particularly her Penguin Logistics coworkers with the leading candidates being Lappland, Exusiai, and Sora. This has led to memes and jokes that Texas is in reality a harem protagonist, albeit a reluctant one.
    • Mostima, like Texas, has her own pick of shipping partners, from Exusiai and Lemuen (yes, yes, we've all heard the shimaidon jokes), the other members of Penguin Logistics (especially Bison), and Fiammetta. Between her and Texas, one wonders if the Emperor allows fraternization in his workplace, as long as they get their jobs done.
    • Ch'en is spoiled for choice when it comes to pairing options, with Hoshigumaexplanation, Swireexplanation, Lin Yühsiaexplanation, and Bagpipe explanation all having their supporters.
    • Margaret Nearl, the Radiant Knight, has managed to forge strong companionships with many others that fans take to also include those who have fallen for her gallant, strong-willed, and caring nature. Amongst the people she has been shipped with include both of her fellow Followers Shining explanation and Nightingale explanation, and she has gotten a bunch of ships with others, including Viviana Droste the Candle Knight explanation. There's even a subset of Nearl fans that ship her with the Doctor, and a small fringe group that vocally ships her with her own relatives in defiance of incest shipping taboos.
    • Platinum has her fair share of ships - She's been paired up with both Margaret and Maria (and sometimes even Zofia) Nearl, the Doctor, and Gravel. She sure takes after her predecessor (the previous Platinum) a lot more than she's willing to admit.
    M-S 
  • Memetic Badass:
    • Hateful Avengers are infamous for causing leaks and/or losses in high-level Contingency Contract runs. Even though every CC event has one or multiple enemies that take the spotlight of the map, the Avengers are still notable for being the main threats in the very first CC event, as well as appearing twice throughout the Contingency Contract seasons. Some even say that Contingency Contract Blade's theme song, Art of Blade seems to boast about how badass and unstoppable they are. They even later get an entire Contingency Contract built up around them, Operation Basepoint, that features a Boss version of the Avengers, who came back for revenge.
    • Based on the few tantalizing glimpses we get of them in flashbacks and the reputation they'd built up in the eyes of other characters, the fandom have decided that prior to losing their memory, the Doctor was the single greatest tactician the world has ever known. If you look up a video of someone completing a max-risk Contingency Contract stage or some other brutal Self-Imposed Challenge, you'll likely see someone in the comments suggesting this is what it would look like if the pre-amnesia Doctor was in command.
    • Passenger, mostly due to the sheer dissonance between his gameplay performancenote  and his in-game lorenote . Fans tend to exaggerate his characterization as a living god or joked that is simply just ridiculously strong, but was just holding back/pretending to be weak. When the game buffs him from Dossoles Holiday onwards, fans started joking that he is becoming way too strong now, putting even more emphasis on the "Badass" in Memetic Badass.
    • High Inquisitor Dario quickly became known as one of the most powerful men on Terra in the wake of Under Tides, simply because he was able to stop Kal'tsit from waxing philosophical at him. And that isn't even getting into how he managed to attack Skadi and come out on top. Not even his death in Stultifera Navis was enough to put a dent in his reputation, since he made such a formidable Last Stand against the Sea Terrors that he managed to instill a species-wide, instinctual fear of him into a species with no concept of fear.
    • Lappland rapidly became one during the events of "Il Siracusano" due to her sheer insanity and willingness to defy vastly more powerful opponents without a care, including throwing the proverbial middle finger at Sicilia and her own father. At the end of the story, she duels Texas the Omertosa and is noted as her equal, with the two of them actively trying to kill each other, and in the epiloge she forces Zaaro to submit to her through sheer willpower and insanity over a three month long battle of endurance. This, coupled with the fact that she was already a Game-Breaker due to her Anti-Magic Power Nullifier ability in game has led to her being commonly referred to as an overpowered 6-star unit disguised as a 5-star.
    • Degenbrecher, from essentially the moment she was introduced during Maria Nearl as a mere cameo in the Hall of Champions where it's revealed that she won the Kazimierz Major three consecutive years, and probably would have continued her winning streak if the Kazimierz General Chamber of Commerce hadn't tried to get rid of her because her continued appearance was boring and if SilverAsh hadn't bought her. Her sheer badassery has made her a very popular character in the fanbase due to just how cool and powerful she is. Come her actual appearance as an NPC in Break the Ice, and her badassery continued: not only are basically all the opposing clans' warriors scared stiff of her and immediately submit the moment she appears in front of them, but she also effortlessly cuts through a steel wall that "crumples like shredded paper," and Rhodes Island Elite Operator Sharp can only manage to stall her in battle for a mere ten minutes, during which she makes it clear that she doesn't care for notions like honor and fair play, only destroying her opponent as efficiently as possible, and after which she recommends he not overuse his arm for the next several months (an arm he's already lost sensation in). This continues even further during the prequel manga "Sharp Swordbreaker, Silver Edge," where during a flashback to her last few days in Kazimierz being hunted, she mocks Roy the Lazurite and comments that Darksteel must be very upset to have lost so many arrows to her, implying that not even the leaders of the Armorless Union can take her down (further confirmed by her file which states she parried their spear at the cost of breaking her sword in half), and not even her injured shoulder prevents her from goading the Lazurites to come at her all at once. Her strength continues in The Rides to Lake Silberneherze where she makes her playable debut: she single-handedly holds off an army of one thousand Victorian soldiers. Players have concluded she's effectively one of the most powerful living warriors on Terra, and there's basically nothing she can't do, and she's frequently pitted against the likes of Mlynar and Margaret Nearl in power level debates. As of her playable release, many players have also said she is truly the embodiment of "playable boss" due to the fact that she is a Game-Breaker in her own right and brings all of her overpowered lore with her to the battlefield, dealing Mlynar-levels of damage and breaking the unspoken rules of her archetype with her S3 being auto recovery rather than offensive. She's also something of a Memetic Badass In-Universe, as despite her retirement, she still has many adoring fans who are excited to see her and ask for photos and autographs (with Sharp even commenting during their duel that he's disappointed she isn't the symbol of rebellion she used to be).
    • Theresis becomes one after Episode 15 was released when he meets his abrupt demise at the hands of Priestess. However, he has been able to disrupt Priestess' plan by taking away her control over the piece of First Originium he was carrying during the battle and forcing her to delay the attack on Rhodes Island for three years. This also impresses Priestess enough for her to display a bit of Villain Respect for him. With most of his goals accomplished, he then dies with dignity by sitting atop the Throne of Westhaleg in a rather authoritative pose. This results in players declaring how he's still "aurafarming" after his death.
  • Memetic Loser:
    • As a general rule, being an Anti-Climax Boss is one of the easiest ways to earn the fanbase's mockery:
      • Being the Warm-Up Boss for every player, Crownslayer has a very limited repertoire and the most she can do is sneak past your defenses in order to infiltrate your blue base. However, as she lacks the innate resistances to being jostled by Shift-type Specialists, she becomes one hell of a pushover (literally and figuratively) once the player has gotten at least one, usually Shaw. Thus, the "Crownslayer bully" meme was born, and now every time poor CS is mentioned, it's usually at the expense of herself with said Specialists asserting their dominance over her in a number of ways. In a response to this, her appearance during Contingency Contract: Operation Pyrite has modifiers in place to specifically protect her against Shift operators by significantly increasing her weight, along with a slew of other buffs, yet not even that was enough to stop players from forcing her to bully herself. Not even being made playable was enough to save her from this, as her lackluster kit made the player community decide that she was still being bullied by the developers.
      • Mephisto found himself becoming the favorite punching bag of many players. Due to a combination of his roles as a Hate Sink and a Non-Action Guy, as well as the fact that he has an obscene amount of HP in his Challenge stage, many players typically reserve him for last in 5-10, in order to to bully him even more than they're already doing Crownslayer, with more creative methods still being discovered as more operators are being added to the game. The perennial favorite of the community seems to be trapping him in a Cycle of Hurting with creatively set-up Shift Specialists.
      • Jesselton is often ridiculed for his rather low difficulty, him being prone to an infamous bug that made it possible to send him off the map indefinitely, and his in-story boasting to Saria and subsequent Curb-Stomp Battle, giving him a reputation of an egotist who talks big only to immediately get stomped into the dirt by anybody. This is a borderline Ascended Meme with To Be Continued as Jesselton's story is not only a nonstop Humiliation Conga for him, but also implies his suffering in jail is being televised as a reality TV show. Ironically, "Lone Trail" event saved Jesselton's face by demonstrating the incredible power of Saria's Calcification(strong enough to survive the fall and burn from atmosphere). Fans began to realized that Jesselton did not lose in a short fight with Saria, but withstood three solid blows before defeated. On top of this, he also gets quite a lot of ridicule during his appearances in the seasonal Duel Channel event due to his tendency to constantly lose matchups despite his boss status, causing the majority of players to instantly bet against whichever side he appears in.
      • Jokes at Pancho's expense got circulated due to his being one of the easier sidestory bosses, and grew to include memes about how the Doctor effectively took custody of his kids after he got arrested by Candela, and a pathfinding bug that could cause him to slip and fall overboard during his second phase in the boss battle only made more jokes surface.
      • Zaaro, despite being a strong, immortal Wolf Spirit of Siracusa, quickly gained a reputation as a sore loser and a dumb punk after Il Siracusano had him made a fool of by his own Fang, disrespected repeatedly by The Emperor, driven off by his kin for being a cheat and a sore loser in their Great Game, and finally he was unable to best Lappland after three continuous months of duelling with her for dominance. It didn't help that his boss battle in IS-10 was relatively easy due to his somewhat lackluster stats and his gaining a weakness for Stun-based status effects during the second phase.
      • Ya, the boss of Where Vernal Winds will Never Blow, is considered to be exceptionally weak for a Feranmut by the fan community, since they get stymied in-story repeatedly by mere mortals before being forced to leave Yumen after a veritable Curb-Stomp Battle by Chongyue (who at this point has given up almost all of his godly powers), and their lackluster performance in their fight in WB-9 with a predictable (and often ignorable) gimmick soon caused players to create strategies to put them on Trust Farm status.
      • Mateo quickly became one of the biggest losers both in the community and in-universe, as he spends all of Operation Lucent Arrowhead as a Big Bad Wannabe trying to mess with people for personal gain and flaunt his power as a proxy of the Coalition Government, totally unaware of Reynell and Candela running circles around him and watching him flounder for fun (to the point that Reynell infamously mocks him by using his face to create Terra's first NFT), while also being a totally incompetent Psychopathic Manchild who can only rely on violence to get what he wants, is completely and utterly ruined by Reynell and Team Rainbow, and is thrown away like trash by the Coalition Government he spent so much time sucking up to by the end of the event. On top of that, he's also considered an extremely lackluster boss that behaves more like one from an event several years prior, who is even subject to an Easy Level Trick on his EX stage where he can trip and fall into a hole with no actual intervention from the player themselves.note 
    • Gameplay-wise, Amiya is considered to be a big loser by the fandom because of her stifled growth (her tokens are tied to the main story, which isn't even fully released at the start), and her later skills are very situational if not outright useless. It doesn't help that there are characters better than her in every aspect, such as fellow Caster Eyjafjalla, or Supporter Angelina.
    • The release of Hellagur instantly shunted Skadi into this category. Despite boasting vastly superior ATK, Skadi lacks most of the flair that makes Hellagur such a broken Guard, like his absurd survivability and burst damage potential. While Skadi herself is still a perfectly strong and viable unit, she's so badly Overshadowed by Awesome that the meta had shifted away from her, and many memes have been made at her expense. This ended up being almost reversed as the game went on, as Skadi's powerful modules and extremely strong synergy with the Abyssal Hunters earned her back a spot in high-end gameplay while Hellagur was increasingly relegated a more niche pick.
    • Eyjafjalla was this for a time (until the rerun of Gavial: The Great Chief Returns), not for gameplay or lore reasons, but rather being the only 6-star available since the release of the game who had the longest period of time without any skins; by the time of the 1st anniversary of Arknights, she was the only launch 6-star left without a skin, only to finally receive a skin after over two years of waiting.
      • After Eyjafjalla finally got her first skin, it has become a trend to label this trope on the oldest-released Operator that has no skin released yet. With the announcement of Vanilla's skin alongside the upcoming "Vector Breakthrough" game mode, Vulcan and Estelle are now the only launch Operators without a skin.
    • Passenger fell victim to this mere days after his release due to taking Low-Tier Letdown to its logical extreme, and arriving as not only a member of a famously bad archetype, but with skills so hamstringed by various deficiencies that players were unable to find any good uses for him, to the point where he is regularly outperformed by 4 or even 3-star Operators. Although many still like him for his design, thematics, and lore, in terms of gameplay he has the dubious honor of almost unanimously being declared the worst 6* Operator to date, with many jokes being made at his expense. The recent buff to his archetype did help alleviate him from this trope to an extent, though some fans didn't forget his former infamy. After obtaining his Module in Near Light, he has finally abandoned this trope.
    • Goldenglow became this for a very long time, due to the fact that she was one of the few operators who was shown in a teaser at the end of the 1st Anniversary livestream, alongside Thorns, Surtr, Saga, Archetto, and Mountain, but unlike said group, Goldenglow was not released at any point before the 2nd Anniversary of Arknights, remaining unmentioned and unannounced until her proper debut in A Light Spark in the Darkness, about three months before CN's 3rd Anniversary. The long gap of time until that point resulted in her becoming the butt of many jokes, such as depicting her sad and jealous when a new Operator joins the roster.
    • To a much lesser extent, poor Dorothy suffered a similar fate on global servers due to the altered schedule which delayed her event by multiple months, spawning many memes and fanart of her being sad over being forgotten by Yostar. Even worse was the fact that while Dorothy is a very good unit, the delays meant that she ended up being released in-between Pozëmka and Młynar, two of the biggest Game-Breaker units released thus far, meaning a lot of people skipped her banner due to either having their coffers drained from the Ideal City banner or stocking up for Młynar's banner instead, which only spawned further jokes about her finally arriving only to be forgotten immediately.
    • Bison is a highly skilled messenger who has been part of the industry since childhood, and holds the position of executive manager to one of the largest corporations in Lungmen; a job he clearly takes very seriously. However, his young age and role as the out-of-his-depth Only Sane Employee during his stint with Penguin Logistics in Code of Brawl saddled him with a reputation as their put-upon intern, and as a result his appearances in fanworks often involve the poor guy getting teased by the Penguin Logistics girls. Amusingly, one of his Archive Files suggests this is how he's seen In-Universe as well.
    • Many jokes are made at Phantom's expense due to him being one of the biggest victims of Power Creep in the entire game, as not only were the flaws in his kit starting to show with more recent content, he was subject to the release of two utterly game-breaking Executors in the form of Texas the Omertosa and Kirin R Yato, who completely blow his capabilities out of the water. It doesn't help that as much attention as Hypergryph gives him outside of gameplay, they seem to enjoy repeatedly rubbing salt in the wound in gameplay, such as his second Module being almost comically lackluster, and even him being put up for Distinction Certificates during the global release of Kirin R Yato. Partially mitigated with the release with his absurdly powerful Specialized Module released with the Adventure That Cannot Wait For the Sun summer event, which made him a viable pick again... but only for Integrated Strategies, which in its own way feels like a blow to his fans who would like him to be more competitive in other modes. The jokes only got worse when Texas the Omertosa received a masquerade-themed skin that shares a sense of style with his Blood Diamond skin, thus leading to jokes that Texas even powercreeped his drip. It wasn't until the release of his absurdly powerful Ritualist alter Tragodia that his reputation picked back up.
    • Drudge from "Operation Originium Dust" became one of these, because, not only is he a mere puppet for the Columbian backers and easily been tricked by Levi into becoming his pawn, but, after he is released from his cell, he gets beaten to a pulp by a mere Homo sapiens in a straight up slugfest. This is despite Drudge, a Terran, being far stronger than baseline humans in the physical department. The fact that he can't defend himself against the likes of Ash made him a laughing stock in the eyes of the fandom.
    • Vigil's underwhelming combat strength as a Tactician Vanguard, which saw him immediately get power creeped by Muelsyse when Lone Trail debuted, has led to fans joking about Mumu being the first real six-star Tactician, or cracking that they only hired Vigil to run their reception room(s) as a clue-hunter.
    • Viviana had the dubious honor of being the second six-star Arts Guard, and unfortunately remains overshadowed by Surtr despite her kit being totally different from Surtr's to try to set her apart. Viviana's more defensive nature as a boss and elite duelist left many fans disappointed in her lackluster combat performance, further exacerbated by the fact that she lacked many of her signature moves from her boss self, namely her long-range fireball explosion. Her playable debut is frequently contrasted negatively/memed on with Degenbrecher (who released shortly after Viviana), with fans lamenting that Viviana was poorly translated to playable while Degenbrecher retained all of her boss characteristics. Despite this, however, Viviana remains beloved by many for her character and design, as well as her later-added Delta Module that salvaged her reputation.
    • The Trilby Asher first introduced in the main story arc, Bellingham Suffolk, has become this as of his reappearance in "The Rides to Lake Silberneherze". Despite being introduced as a deadly member of the Duke of Caster's elite spy force, he loses all of his intimidation factor from all of his various misfortunes while in Kjerag. He spends the entire story flipping between competent and the most conspicuous spy ever while being led on a Snipe Hunt, gets repeatedly threatened and assaulted by the legendary Degenbrecher which escalates into getting literally kicked off the top of the statue of Kjeragandr, is mocked by practically everyone who sees him with Leto straight up calling him terrible at his job, gets completely toyed with by Kjera using her Feranmut powers, and finds himself completely blindsided twice while inspecting the trains to Kjerag by unexpected passengers, the second time making an incredible Double Take at seeing a Kazimierz spokesman with an entire cabin full of campaign knights as escorts, followed up by none other than Elite Operator Sharp, the Doctor, and Muelsyse, the combination of which makes him flat out give up and acknowledge there is no possible way he can complete his mission, while his 'coworker' Harold, who has been playing the role of comic relief/mediator throughout the story becomes the main threat instead. Mind you, the aforementioned abuse and mockery has actually made him significantly more popular, considering how he was mostly just considered a thorn in Rhodes Island's side during his role in the main plot.
    • Arts Protectors are one of the most memed on class branches in the game due to the seeming neglect they get from the game's developers, having only four members, no 6-star, and no Modules, despite having existed since nearly the game's release. Even Primal Protectors, their Elemental cousins who got their first member in the fifth year of the game's life, managed to get a limited 6-star mere months after the branch was conceived. It was only with the release of the 6-star Hoshiguma the Breacher for the sixth summer event Ato that the Arts Protector finally got its first 6-star unit, more than six years after the branch's introduction.
  • Memetic Molester:
    • Lappland is commonly depicted in fanworks as such due to her obsession with Texas. It's all but stated in-game that Texas avoids her like the plague but Lapp is dead-set in following her around and bring her back to her old self. Fans did not let this one slide.
    • Warfarin tends to do some "unladylike behavior" because of her strange attraction to the Doctor's blood, to the point where Kal'tsit placed a restraining order on her. While this wasn't detailed in the lore, fan comics and memes depict Warfarin being clingy, sexual or perverted towards the Doctor.
    • Because of a certain NSFW image that turned into the "UnderTable" meme, fans now see Ptilopsis as a pervert, especially when the Doctor is sleeping in his desk.
    • As a result of certain undertones in Theresis's dialogue, the way he had Theresa's body kept in his basement in his Victorian mansion in Chapter 8, and then reviving her Empty Shell to be his puppet princess in Chapter 10, certain corners of the fan community mock the Sarkaz regent for being a creepy siscon obsessed with Theresa. It certainly doesn't help that a fan theory posits that the Theresa is modelled after one of the Hapsburg princesses, which only adds to the "incestuous royals" memes surrounding him. This is in spite of the fact that he holds great respect for her and actually wanted to let Theresa rest in peace, and had to be convinced to revive her in the first place.
    • Ribald jokes about Pozymka being a Durin-con begin circulating around the fandom after Ideal City launched, complete with gags of her being arrested by Ch'en (LGD) or Ash (FBI) for inappropriate behavior after she gets caught doing suspicious things with Myrtle and Durin.
    • Dorothy herself gets called out for checking if the Doctor's office has active noise-cancellation when she notices the Doctor napping in her Idle line; fans immediately took this line, combined it with comparisons of Dorothy's Vision's plot with Neon Genesis Evangelion, and jumped to the conclusion that Dorothy intended to take advantage of the sleeping Doctor.
  • Memetic Troll:
    • Warfarin. If she's not depicted by fans as a pervert out for the Doctor's blood, she's turned into a stalker who wants to drug Skadi into sleep, often with hilarious results like in this video. It's all because of a Flanderization from Skadi's Archive Files that state Warfarin attempting, but failing to sedate her for dissection.
    • Closure. In addition to being a shopkeeper eager to help Doctors empty their wallets, she's also shown to have a touch of prankster to her that fans love to play up. The gag treadmill that lifted off the ground and didn't let you down until you watched the ads that she was revealed to be responsible for in Vigilo certainly contributed to her reputation, as did Kal'tsit admonishing her not to 'go too far' teasing the Doctor.
    • Biegler started getting this treatment after killing Dame Gertrude at the end of Lingering Echoes, appearing in memes to mock her substantial Draco in Leather Pants following with tasteless jokes about how their waifu is dead and will never be playable.
    • Lappland turned into one after "Il Siracusano" was released, due to the majority of her actions being done to either piss off her father Alberto or to disrespect the famiglia system. She goes so far as to smash a truck into a courtroom in the middle of a trial, grinning with joy after goading Alberto into beating her, and leaving bad reviews for the opera.
  • Moe: Predictably for a gacha game, there's plenty of characters who fans consider adorable.
    • Amiya, the game's poster girl, may be the kindhearted yet capable CEO of Rhodes Island who gives her all fighting for the Infected, but she's also an Adorably Precocious Child who is forced to put on a show of maturity in spite of her tiny frame and cute mannerisms while off duty. She's perhaps the character who invokes the most familial protective instincts within the community, especially since Babel shows the Doctor all but adopted and raised her back when she was a child, where she was even more innocent and endearing than she is in the present.
    • Suzuran is a nine-tailed Vulpo supporter known for instantly charming everyone who meets her, in-universe and out, due to a combination of sheer cuteness, kindness, and earnest desire to help Rhodes Island any way she can.
    • Jessica, the feline sniper operator has endeared herself to many with her timid disposition and very low self-esteem, leaving players uncertain if they want to bully her or pamper her. Her strengthened resolve and character development as Jessica the Liberated, where she's still timid at heart but determined to fight for what she believes in, only made some players want to protect her more.
    • Pramanix, due to her chibi sprite and animations being quite adorable combined with her droopy eyes, sweet personality, and Lazy Bum tendencies.
    • Maria Nearl, the Blemishine, with her younger and cuter air compared to her sister Margaret, idealistic views of knighthood and (initial) naivete towards the darker sides of Kazimierz, strongwilled determination to protect people, and earnest interest in engineering, manages to evoke strong feelings of moe as a result.
    • Reed, with her quiet demeanor and the warmth she exudes in her trust lines, manages to evoke in a number of Doctors a strong desire to cherish and protect her from the horrors she was forced to experience and partake in as part of Dublinn, especially from her manipulative and overbearing sister. Those fans were overjoyed at her character development leading to her Flame Shadow form, which shows Reed smiling and confident for the first time.
    • Eyjafjalla is a cute-looking, earnest, kind, and hardworking young prodigy whose severe Oripathy has left her deaf and partially blind while dooming her to an early death, and is still suffering from unresolved trauma from her parents' sudden passing when she was a child. Yet she still keeps her chin up and is even willing to use her limited time to continue her parents' work despite the inherent danger, leading to many players vowing to coddle her and cure Oripathy for her sake.
    • Warmy, the precocious young girl from Rim Billiton, is often considered just as adorable as Suzuran if not moreso thanks to her perpetual beaming smile, fuzzy appearance, and being a compassionate hard worker who uses her culinary expertise to care for people as much as she can, despite herself suffering from Oripathy that she takes on the chin (even admiring how her Originium lesions can be interpreted as jewelery).
    • Ceobe, despite her Cerberus origins and huge strength, has been best described as a golden retriever puppy in human form: eternally cheerful and kind, full of energy, endearingly empty-headed, and simple-minded to the point that she doesn't care much for things besides food and amusement. Many players have expressed a desire to pamper her and spoil her with snacks, despite how Rhodes explicitly warns against doing the latter.
    • Snowsant, the hardworking yet cripplingly poor engineer from Lungmen, is adored by fans thanks to her cute design, shyness rivaling Jessica, and past of financial troubles giving her incredibly frugal habits (such as eating only once every two days or constantly scrounging for change), leaving many players with a strong urge to help with her finances and ensure she can live the cozy life she dreams about.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Chapter 6 pretty definitely shifts Wei from a ruthless but well intentioned businessman to an outright genocidal dictator, as it is all but shown that he took advantage of Reunion's attack to completely purge Lungmen's slums without attracting unwanted attention. This proves to be the last straw for Amiya, who witnessed countless Chernobog survivors and Lungmen residents forced to flee the city to escape Wei's secret death squads, and Ch'en, who finds the mass graves of slum residents hidden in the sewers. Chapters 7 and 8 do go more into his motivations, backstory, and reasoning being explained (mostly that his hand was forced to prevent Yan from executing an even harsher punishment), while also revealing his secret police ended up abandoning his orders and helped the slum dwellers evacuate instead, but some still have an understandably hard time forgiving him for even trying to pull this off.
    • For many, Mephisto crosses the line in Children of Ursus where he locks all the Chernobog students in Peterheim Middle School regardless of their social standings, leading to horrific infighting that killed countless innocents and scarred the U.S.S.G. for the rest of their lives. This is all while it's implied that watching them tear each other apart was his entire purpose for doing so. While The Reveal of his absolutely horrific backstory, where every attempt he made to do something good completely and utterly failed won back some sympathy, several players feel that his actions are irredeemable regardless of his past.
    • In Hortus de Escapismo, Oren's displays of Fantastic Racism towards Sarkaz to the point of gleefully anticipating genocide against the innocent refugees of the Sanctilaminium Ambrosii shifted perception of him from a character who, in Guiding Ahead, initially seemed somewhat amoral and slimy but hadn't done anything inexcusably terrible, to an outright Hate Sink. Even the cast all unanimously despise him by the end of the story, with Lemuen who was shown to be gentle and patient with practically everyone resorting to assaulting and threatening him after Oren made a comment too personal with her. He then continues to be racist when he tries to execute a group of Sarkaz in Episode 15, which results in him becoming a Fallen Sankta to tease "The Masses' Travels", where the Law starts malfunctioning and turning every being into a Sankta, without Oren's appearance or even mention.
  • More Popular Replacement: The Chained Sarkaz Girl encounter from Phantom & Crimson Solitaire is one of many repurposed events from Ceobe's Fungimist, replacing a similar one with a Cautus girl feigning injury to try and lure you into an ambush. While her predecessor was largely forgotten, the Sarkaz girl became an instant fan favourite thanks to her appealing design and more interesting characterisation as a powerful Vampire noble as opposed to a mere wasteland bandit, and proved popular enough to receive an expy in every subsequent Integrated Strategies season.
  • Most Wonderful Sound:
    • The moment all chaos from battle goes silent and there is a single voice proclaiming: "Mission accomplished!" Even more satisfying if it was a particularly difficult level that you managed to clear without losing a single life.
    • The sound effects generated from certain powerful game-breaking skills can be immensely satisfying as you watch the operation in question go to town against an unsuspecting wave of enemies, with certain examples including:
      • The "SHRIING SHRIING" from SilverAsh's Truesilver Slash or Mlynar's Unbrilliant Glory is one of the most iconic sound effects in the game, and for good reason: they're generally accompanied by entire enemy waves being pummeled into dust in seconds.
      • "Apple pie!" from Exusiai or "Dadadadada!" from Ceobe as they unleash a hailstorm of bullets or knives to eviscerate an unlucky foe. Doubly so if it was Ceobe ripping apart an enemy that would have otherwise been much sturdier and difficult to bring down, or Exusiai after stacking enough buffs to overcome her low ATK and vaporize something that she should have had no right killing.
      • Schwarz's Final Tactics, accompanied by an eerie drone and the sound of her bowstring being drawn, followed by violent, almost otherworldly impacts as she blasts enemies to bits irrespective of their defenses.
      • The ethereal clock tower chimes of Mostima's Key of Chronology as it completely immobilizes and chunks half a map's worth of enemies.
      • The fiery roar and repeated metallic impacts of Surtr's sword during Twilight as she defies death to melt everything in front of her into slag.
      • Mudrock's attacks with Crag Splitter or Bloodline of Desecrated Earth are weighty and carry the force of her weapon and blows, with the sheer impact of her attack sounds giving the impression that her blows are physically shattering the enemies' body and armor with each swing.
      • Irene's Judgement sending enemies skyward and shredding them with a hail of gunfire, accompanied by what can best be described as the firearm version of Audible Sharpness.
      • Goldenglow's exploding drones from her Beacons' Wrath talent, which emit a resounding, glassy shattering sound to notify you that she's hit the small chance for her drones to explode, and that a group of enemies has paid for it in massive Arts damage taken.
      • The otherworldly, mechanized whirring and clicking of Typhon loading the next arrow into her Great Bow using "Eternal Hunt", which not only properly conveys the weight of such a heavy weapon, but indicates that the next thing to step into her designated off-limits zone is about to have a very bad time.
      • The repeated, heavy thumping of Ray's "See the Light" as she locks down an area of your choosing with several thousand physical damage per bolt.
      • The mechanical lock-on sound of Wiš'adel's Explosive Dawn and subsequent deafening explosion as she blasts half the map into dust in a single shot.
      • The booming foghorn-like sound of Logos' Extended Acuity as his Arts lay low everything in his now gigantic range.
    • When you pull a 6 star, a holy-esque sound accompanies the exploding golden light, giving off a very good feeling that your hard earned orundums have paid off in the end... unless the 6 star in question happens to be a duplicate of an operator you already have, in which case, all your hard earned orundums have been wasted.
    • The appearance of Sora, Ethan, and Skadi the Corrupting Heart as they enter the battlefield is accompanied by the musical sounds that briefly ​overwrite whatever the BGM playing in the stage. The latter is also notable for her enchanting vocalizations, reminiscent of the calls of sea mammals, whenever she activates a skill.
    • Specter the Unchained switching to her substitute is accompanied by an enchanting ethereal vocal as the substitute's prayer hamstrings every enemy in the vicinity.
  • Narm:
    • The WatchMojo advertisement videos aren't taken seriously, as their advice is mediocre at best. They make basic mistakes (e.g., calling Projekt Red a Guard when she's actually a Specialist), mispronounce a lot of names (e.g., Ptilopsis as "Ti-opl-sis" or "Tea Apple Sauce"), and give bad strategies in general (e.g., saying that FrostNova should be taken down in the bottom lane in 4-10). These errors made them infamous for not doing their due diligence, especially "Dave", the person who covered most of them.
    • The attributes in the Who Is Real event being renamed Hui and Ming, while they are obvious references to Yin and Yang and were initially named as such in the Chinese version.
    • Rockrock is generally a serious operator who fights for revenge against the Sarkaz who killed her father. Players have a hard time taking her seriously though, because of her codename. Seriously, her codename is Rockrock? explanation
    • Several levels, such as 6-17 and BB-9, are scripted story-only levels that exist for dramatic embellishment and to convey heartwrenching events or lore. On the other hand, the fact that the game still plays the "mission accomplished" sound and subsequent triumphant victory music can make it less emotional than it should be.
    • The codename for Eblana, Necrass, spawned quite a lot of mockery when it was revealed. It's meant to be a portmanteau of the words "necro/necromancy" and "grass" which alludes to her Arts and contrasts with her sister Reed's codename, but to most players it just seems like a low-effort attempt at translating the meaning of the characters used for her codename in Chinesenote by fusing two words together into a made up word, and instead draws attention to the other words that can be taken from it instead, particularly those involving her lower regions.
    • Amiya's shocked expression in the background during the third season of the anime when Fumizuki berates Wei for how he's been treating Ch'en is meant to convey how unusual it is for Fumizuki to show such expression. However, her wide-eyed and mouth agape expression ends up being seen as an unintentional source of hilarity due to how silly it looks.
  • Never Live It Down:
    • Lappland is most likely going to be forever remembered as a stubborn, Texas-obsessed maniac who won't stop at nothing in order to bring her rival back to her old self.
    • Because of a Trust dialogue line, Projekt Red is mostly remembered for wanting to touch the tails of other Lupos like Texas or Provence. Any fan content about Red usually includes her obsession with fluffy tails.
    • Originating from the Chinese fandom and their Bilibili videos, this trope is the reason why Warfarin is treated as a Memetic Molester and a Memetic Troll in fan content and memes. She had awkward incidents in the Archive Files about her "unladylike behavior" when near the Doctor (because she's attracted to their blood), and her failed attempts to sedate Skadi (because Warfarin wants to dissect and study her body).
    • Surtr's lack of story relevance and background information so far despite her popularity and Game-Breaker status has caused Flanderization of her character as an arrogant Jerkass with an ice cream obsession, though her voice lines and archive files portray her as more of a Defrosting Ice Queen to whom ice cream is mostly considered as a Comfort Food.
    • Hoederer was just one of many operators who could randomly show up in U-Official's chat during The Ultimate Beautiful Girl, but since this happened before he was Promoted to Playable and was one of the first pieces of evidence the fans got that he would survive the Victoria arc, they really latched onto it. As a result, Hoederer's perception among the fandom quickly shifted from a stoic Reluctant Warrior to a fawning U-Official superfan.
  • Older Than They Think: Yostar's advertisments for this game in YouTube are animated scenes with original music playing in the background, such as "Code of Brawl"/"Speed of Light". This marketing strategy is well-received in the gacha fandoms, with Arknights being praised as proof that mobile game ads can be comparable to music videos. However, this game isn't the first to do such kinds of ads. Honkai Impact 3rd also uses original songs in their ads before AK did, "Befall" being their most popular example.
  • One True Pairing:
    • Texas x Lappland is one of the most popular pairings in the game. Fans really love them because of their interesting connections with each other, the latter's utter obsession with the former, and both being some of the most popular characters in the game. The amount of their fanworks together is just outright absurd, especially after the game launched internationally.
      • Texas x Exusiai is a close second since the two of them are close friends and are almost never seen apart. Exusiai likewise is one of the most popular characters in the game.
    • Exusiai is often paired with Mostima, since Exusiai is constantly looking for her and seems to get exasperated whenever Mostima vanishes for too long, while Mostima seemingly cares for Exusiai in her own way. Helping are the implications that they have a lot of history together, what with Exusiai specifically mentioning Mostima in her voice lines (with them even being implied to have been classmates before), and the fact that they're both Sankta with opposing color schemes.
      • With the advent of "Guiding Ahead", Mostima's preferred shipping partners quickly became Fiammetta, who has been keeping an eye on Mostima in the background since before "Code of Brawl", and Lemuen, Exusiai's sister, who was previously only mentioned in both her and Exu's files, and is someone that Mostima had a strong connection to. As a result of the three-way rapport shown between all three of them during Guiding Ahead, the fan consensus quickly shifted towards Mostima, Fiammetta, and Lemuen as a threesome.
    • The speculation of Kal'tsit's relationship with the Doctor in the past made Kal'sit x Doctor quickly become one of the most popular pairings among fans as they latched onto the "tragic romance" potential. Not even The Reveal that the Doctor and Kal'tsit both hated and distrusted each other during their Tower of Babel days and the fact that Kal'sit's hatred for the Doctor deepened after the Doctor killed Theresa stopped several fans from shipping the pair, and "Lone Trail" only gave it more fuel. However, the revelations in Babel has many fans abandoning the ship.
    • Doctor x Blue Poison got a lot of traction or fans not only because of the "UnderTable" memes, but also because of her high Trust line: she wants them to hold her hand in front of everyone.
    • For yuri fans, many prefer shipping Blue Poison with Glaucus. Not only this has to do with the fact they're both connected with the Abyssal Hunters but in game lore reveals Glaucus likes eating Blue Poison's cakes unlike most operators who are afraid to eat her food under a mistaken belief it's poisonous. There's also the Fridge Brilliance over the animals they're based on, Poison Dart Frogs(Blue Poison) and Sea Slugs(Glaucus), since Sea Slugs can eat poison unaffected meaning Glaucus has no problem in "eating" Blue Poison. This got expanded into a love triangle by the events of Preluding Light, which not only adds more shipping fuel between Blue Poison and Glaucus, but also adds some attraction between Blue Poison and Indigo, given how the former ended up tranquilizing and then recruiting the latter into Rhodes Island to keep her close, and Indigo's operator records also detail that Blue Poison made her a special pair of gloves to protect her from contact with poisons.
    • When the "SilverAsh bloodline" variant of the "Chrisposting" meme from Resident Evil surged in popularity within the western community, the Doctor is commonly shipped with Pramanix or Cliffheart, or both.
      • However, in the Asian side of the fandom (with some western supporters as well) the Doctor would much rather continue the bloodline with SilverAsh himself. This becomes Hilarious in Hindsight come the "Break the Ice" event and SilverAsh's Operator Records revealing that SilverAsh was so interested in the Doctor that he boarded Rhodes Island as an Operator after "Break the Ice".
      • Meanwhile, Cliffheart is often paired with Courier, with SilverAsh as the unapproving big brother.
    • Grani is typically shipped with Skadi, due to their bevy of close interactions during Knights' Treasure. Other fans ship Grani with Carol, the heroine of Knights' Treasure event thanks to the amount of Ship Tease between the two with Grani acting as Carol's knight and Carol constantly worried about Grani.
    • Skadi is commonly shipped with fellow Abyssal Hunter Specter. They even have their own moniker of "Deep Sea Lovers" among CN fandom. The pairing stems from the (normally-taciturn) Skadi's concern for Specter's wellbeing, as well as the implication of a shared past, even though Specter doesn't seem to remember her. Grani and the Knights' Treasure happened due to Skadi looking for a way to help Specter. Once Under Tides came out, it gained more steam as Specter being kidnapped caused Skadi to chase after her, thereby setting the event's plot in motion.
    • Midnight, the Casanova Wannabe he is, is frequently shipped with his boss Orchid, due to his perceived interest in her and her own particular awkwardness when referring to him in her quotes. It smells like a load of Belligerent Sexual Tension to a large portion of the playerbase, to be sure.
    • Saria and Silence, whose tense present relationship alongside their mutual protectiveness over Ifrit has strong overtones of "divorced couple that both want the best for their daughter, but disagree strongly over each other's methods". The Record of Originium - Rhine Lab supplemental manhua from the Terra Historica collection shows that their relationship was once of a very senpai-kouhai bent, with Silence rapidly developing a strong admiration for Saria and having few difficulties with her strict adherence to proper protocol during work hours, as well as Saria appreciating Silence being able to cling hard to her ethics and morals despite some of the more questionable practices at Rhine Labs; it also revealed that Saria was indeed given one of Silence's feathers as a token of extremely close friendship and trust. To put the cherry on the top, when they argued over the handling of another Infected child named Darya, their argument (tragically) reminded little Darya of her own parents having a domestic dispute. Furthermore, one of the in-game Side Stories (as well as one of the other supplemental manhua) showed that ultimately Saria and Silence managed to come to terms and agree to cooperate more for Ifrit's sake. The events of "Lone Trail" seem to have allowed them to finally bury the hatchet and openly trust each other, and in front of Ifrit.
    • Hoshiguma and Ch'en became one of the most favored pairings in the game as they are shown to be very close to each other in the story, with Hoshi typically being portrayed as having a Subordinate Excuse just so she could always be close to her boss.
    • Schwarz and Ceylon recently had a surge of popularity thanks to the "Heart of Surging Flame" event which gave them the spotlight. Same as Hoshiguma and Ch'en above since Schwarz has an Undying Loyalty for her Mistress, is very protective of said Mistress, and both also have a Lady and Knight dynamic. Their voice lines and archive files are rather shippy as well, with Ceylon's flat-out stating that Schwarz is dearest to her heart. Although there is evidence that they are considered sisters to each other, this is very likely an instance of Incest Yay Shipping.
    • Due to them both being penguins as well as good friends with each other, Magallan and the Emperor are often paired together. That is if Magallan isn't paired with Typhon first, due to Typhon being her Cloudcuckoolander's Minder and sharing some sweet moments with her in The Black Forest Wills a Dream.
    • Franka and Liskarm are typically paired together, since they are actual partners who are almost never seen apart and are Vitriolic Best Buds. It also helps that when Franka was diagnosed with Oripathy and sent to Rhodes Island for treatment, Liskarm immediately requested a transfer to Rhodes Island to stay with her. Their theme song, "Beautiful and Lovely", has massive shipping fuel in it once you realise that the lyrics are Franka singing about how Liskarm appearing in her life added 'You and I' to her vocab.
    • Immediately after Jaye/Fillet was made into a playable character, people started shipping him with Waai Fu, due to them already being introduced as close friends during Code of Brawl.
    • Warfarin and Aak, the 怪医组 in China, by favor of both being Team Killers with their buff skills and taking a much more morally dubious approach to medical practice compared to other medical professionals at Rhodes Island. It helps that Warfarin is the only operator outside of Aak's colleagues at Lee's Detective Agency he gets along with, and the two regularly hold research meetings to discuss their latest findings, which often devolve into loud cheering and laughter from both parties.
    • Leonhardt was shipped with Ayerscarpe the moment the latter was introduced, and it's not hard to see why; the two are inseperable childhood friends turned client and bodyguard and act Like an Old Married Couple, down to essentially sharing their finances.
    • There many fans who ship Scavenger, one of the few Arknights characters confirmed to be a lesbian and LGBT, with Provence, since the former has a crush on her but she Cannot Spit It Out due to the death of Scavenger's first love which has made the former reluctant to seek a relationship. Fans are hoping Scavenger might got over her past and confess and hopefully become a couple with Provence. It also helps that Scavenger and Provence are both drawn by the same artist who also ships them both.
    • And then there's another case of Incest Yay Shipping between Whislash and her nieces, Nearl and Blemishine, particularly the latter. Throughout the events of Kazimierz Major, Whislash shows constant worries for Blemishine, who acts more like a lover than a worried family member. Fans have no problem with this ship due to the low age gap since Whislash is just a few years older than her nieces and is actually a distant relative. And there's also some In-Universe shipping as well since Kazimierz tabloids mistaken Whislash and Blemishine hanging out at the same bar as a lovers liaison.
    • There has been quite a bit of shipping between Lava and Nian, especially after the events of both "Ancient Forge" and "Who Is Real", which shows both girls being rather close with Nian being something of a Trickster Mentor to Lava. And despite how much Lava claims that she doesn't like Nian, she often ends up collaborating with her on projects such as writing movie scripts. Lava even goes out of her way to help Nian find her sister Dusk.
    • Pallas and the anonymous Sarkaz mercenary she is partnered with in "Preluding Lights" have been commonly paired together after Pallas' debut, primarily because of their back and forth banter as well as the Sarkaz mercenary stepping up to protect Pallas from a Sarkaz assassin and being concerned enough about her Oripathy that he brought her to Rhodes Island.
    • After Fiammetta had been Promoted to Playable, there's been a surge of fans shipping her together with Mostima due to their history together, their Vitriolic Best Buds status, as well as the two of them teaming up in the "Guiding Ahead" event.
    • Flametail and Ashlock are commonly considered to be a couple by fan shippers due to the sheer amount of chemistry they have with each other. Ashlock regularly teases Flametail about various things, including the time she stole points from her during a competition, and will generally settle down if Flametail asks to her to chill even if someone (like the Plastic Knight, for example), pushes her buttons; she even completely loses her shit when Roy seemingly kills Flametail and goes berserk on him, only cooling off when Flametail tells her to chill. Flametail, who's known to collect cute things, also has a small and growing collection of Ashlock merch, and has complete and utter confidence in Ashley's ability to defend herself against Ingra the Brassrust, and yes, she calls Ashlock by a pet name that she doesn't like Iwona using. They generally share a chemistry that Iwona and Justyna don't quite match.
      • As a result, Wild Mane and Fartooth in turn are sometimes also paired together, not just to match up the remaining members of Pinus Sylvestris, but thanks to the contrast between the hotheaded and brash Iwona, and the quiet, introverted Justyna.
    • The events of "Near Light" saw an explosion of shipping between Nearl and Viviana, given how the two of them became very fast friends who found a lot in common in their ideal vision of knighthood, and is even pointed out in-universe with many tabloids claiming an illicit affair between the two of them. This isn't even getting into the fact that some of their dialogue together can be interpreted as flirting or outright sexual innuendo.
    • SilverAsh and Gnosis have a small but dedicated fanbase on account of their fierce dedication to their mutual childhood dream of uplifting Kjerag and their secretly plotted coup d'etat. It's not helped that even in-universe, Sciurus calls SilverAsh Gnosis's "sugar daddy" and they refer to each other with monikers like "partner-in-crime". There's also the fact that despite Gnosis being Hated by All, SilverAsh just flat-out ignored anything anyone says about Gnosis and made him CTO and is implied to give him anything he wants. With the release of Gnosis's "Forerunner" skin and the flavor text mentioning Gnosis assumed the position of inaugural Speaker of the new Kjerag parliament by SilverAsh's recommendation, fans have portrayed them as founder-like figures who have brought Kjerag into modernity with the rest of the world.
    • "A Light Spark in Darkness" has many fans shipping Goldenglow with Red the Red blade due to their interactions and how much Red had been saving Goldenglow from peril throughout the event story in several occassions. Namie explanation herself certainly approved of Red's protectiveness of her daughter during the livestream where she read the story of A Light Spark in Darkness.
    • Lumen and Irene have their decent amount of fanart and shippers thanks to their interactions in "Stultifera Navis" that grows into a close friendship as of later events, as well as their Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy dynamic, with Lumen as the tall, placid gentleman and Irene as the short, feisty Tsundere.
    • Ebenholz and Kreide are basically treated as a married couple (and Ebenholz as Kreide's widow) by the entire fandom.
    • "Lone Trail" saw whole new ships spring up between the Doctor and Muelsyse, due to both being long-lived and alone without others of their race for company, plus the surprisingly tender and romantic voiced lines she uses when chatting with the Doctor. Also, the Doctor and Ho'olheyak, due to her interest in the Doctor's long history and fascination with his bloodline, coupled with her teasing and seductive voiced lines which includes her performing ASMR and breathing in the Doctor's ear, causing him to blush, stacked on top of the fan community's suddenly inflamed wild lust for her after her animated appearance in the Lone Trail PV and the release of her English and Japanese voiced lines.
    • The Ines/Hoederer ship only seems to get stronger with each story chapter which features them, as for all of Ines's tendency to snark at Hoederer when given the opportunity it is clear she cares about him, with the Ship Tease reaching its peak in Chapter 13 in a conversation in which they essentially discuss W's future as well as their own plans to settle down together in Kazdel once the Victorian conflict ends. As a result, it's become commonplace to regard the Darknights Memoir trio as a family at this point with W (and sometimes also Paprika) being the pair's adopted daughter. Mitm's Operator Record would further show that after the war, the two are in fact living together, and Hoederer is still trying to save money from his job as a tutor to help start Ines's store, making their comparisons to a married couple seem even more intentional.
    • In the sea of ships involving the Doctor, two of them have stood out far more than others in more recent times: Doctor/Theresa and Doctor/Priestess. For the former case, you have the Doctor learning to love the land of Terra and Babel's mission, the ultimately tragic bond between the two that was broken when the Doctor caved to the pressure of fulfilling the goals of the Precursors, and Theresa trusting Doctor's humanity even afterwards and wiping their memory so they could live a fresh life. For the latter, the two of them seemingly have a history that dates back millennia along with a bevy of tender interactions, and when Doctor's flashback/vision in Episode 14 has them asking Priestess if their relationship was intimate, Priestess responds that saying "intimate" doesn't even come close to describing it. More fuel for the latter sprang up from the discoveries made in the ARG content on 2025 Valentine's Day, where the chat logs revealed involve an intimate debate between Priestess and the Doctor, and the 6th anniversary music video Eclipse, which shows some of Priestess and the Doctor/Oracle's intimate interactions with each other.
  • Parody Displacement: Mudrock's codename, as confirmed by her artist m9nokuro, is a nod to the RX-78-6 "Mudrock" Gundam prototype. Given that the RX-78-6 is a fairly obscure mobile suit only seen in Expanded Universe materials, while Arknights' Mudrock is one of the game's most popular characters, she quickly eclipsed her namesake in popularity.
  • Popular with Furries: The games boasts a pretty big roster that also involves a few characters that are Little Bit Beastly and some outright anthropomorphic. No surprise that members of Kemono and Furry Fandoms are quite enamored with this game. Hung, Mountain, and Waai Fu are some of the more popular anthro/furry playable characters from this game.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name:
    • "Texland" for the Texas x Lappland shipping.
    • "Gloopy" is often used for Glaucus x Blue Poison, drawing from the latter's Fan Nickname of "Bloopy".
    • "Wines" is used for W x Ines.
    • "Lumrene" for Lumen x Irene.
  • Play the Game, Skip the Story: With memes ragging on Kal'tsit's Wall of Text dialogues, along with the general sense of Continuity Lock-Out and/or Jigsaw Puzzle Plot players can feel throughout the game's chapters and events, this ended up being a very common behavior, particularly amongst the majority of EN players. With a fairly addicting and difficult tower defense game at the helm, players often come to Arknights just for the gameplay and little else of note in regards to the world of Terra. One may come across a player that treats the Operators more as tools to help win missions, rather than decently well-made and well-written characters that, more often than not, have a lot of things going for them.
  • Player Punch:
    • As the Doctor, the player controls how well the operators perform in the mission. But fail a mission with Ifrit and she would blame you for making a fool out of her.
    • In Babel, it's revealed that the Doctor made an agreement with Theresis to kill Theresa by sending nearly all of Babel's personnel out and disabling the ship's defenses from within when the assault began, and In BB-9, the player is forced to participate in the act by placing a roadblock that prevent the assassins from going to the blue box, leading them straight to Theresa instead. To make matters worse, not only is Storyteller playing in the background, Amiya was coincidentally also in the room with Theresa when the assault began - even having her own unique sprite on the stage - and both the Doctor and the player could only watch as Theresa desperately fights the assassins off to protect Amiya, even when her HP has reached 0, and by the end of it both the Doctor and the player are left feeling absolutely horrible from what they've done.
  • Robo Ship:
    • You'd be surprised by how many people unironically ship Lancet-2 and Castle-3 together.
    • According to her voicelines and Archive Files, Eunectes views Lancet-2 as a Cool Big Sis, but this hasn't stopped some fans from pairing the two of them romantically thanks to the former's... intense reaction upon realising the latter is a talking machine at the end of Gavial: The Great Chief Returns.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Given the Gray-and-Gray Morality of the setting, this trope is inevitable when it comes to certain characters.
    • While he takes up the role of The Heart of the reformed Reunion to keep the movement from re-degenerating into a violent group similar to Talulah's days and remains true to his morals even up until his Heroic Sacrifice, some players consider Guard as an Ungrateful Bastard who rendered all of Ace and Scout's sacrifices in Chapter 1 moot by essentially joining the very group that caused their deaths in the first place just because Guard thought Reunion's visions of advocating the infected's rights are better than Rhodes Island's after spending some time with Patriot's Shieldguards during the Reunion arc. Even though Kal'tsit canonically let Guard go from Rhodes so that he can be freed of his obligations for the company when fighting for the infected's rights and his eventual death is treated as a somber moment, his reputation is most likely damaged for good in the fanbase's eyes due to his fully conscious decision to "betray" Rhodes Island due to his fanboying for Patriot's ideals.
    • Arturia is an example of both this and Draco in Leather Pants. While there's no question that her morals are warped as a consequence of her Arts making her an extremely dangerous person to be around, many players are quick to label her as a sociopath or put the entire blame on the terrible situations that she gets involved in such as the tragedies of the Hortus de Escapismo event entirely on her as though she intended it all to happen rather than the culmination of multiple different events behind the scenes. Even with the exploration of her character in Zwillingstürme Im Herbst which shows exactly how her Arts work and giving her a moment of clarity during her conversation with the Witch King that potentially puts her on the road to getting better, many players still wish she could be "properly" punished as a villain rather than being treated as a person with the equivalent of severe mental illness who needs help, and consider her joining Rhodes Island as becoming a Karma Houdini even though it is explicitly shown she is practically a prisoner with very limited freedom.
  • Scrappy Weapon: Well, items, but the King's Collectibles from Integrated Strategies see very little use outside of extremely niche strategies. The buffs they give are fairly substantial, but they only trigger when you're at 1 life, forcing the user to intentionally bring themselves to 1 HP and then fight under the pressure of not being able to leak even a single time. Furthermore, many encounters, squads, or buffs can force players to pick up Life Points, which would instantly invalidate the items and force you to leak again just to trigger their effects, even if you took Spearhead Squad, which is otherwise perfectly suited for the items - albeit with no guarantee of whether or not you'll even get them that run, with the randomness of the mode also severely undermining the game seemingly want you to collect as many as possible and synergize their effects. Integrated Strategies 3 and 4 also penalize life loss with the Light/Collapse mechanics to make it more punishing to even trigger the effect, with the former additionally punishing you harshly for fighting at low life points, meaning you have to shoot yourself in the foot to even use the items. If you can't meet all of these requirements, all of the items are dead weight, especially the King's Crown which not only has the 1 LP requirement, but only reaches its full power with three or more King's items, with no guarantee whether you'll get either the Crown or the other items. And while "useless" is still not actively detrimental, the King's Crystal defies this and drains 2 LP on every battle in exchange for Hope and Ingots, which while setting up for the King's items...also doesn't guarantee that you'll get any to make use of it, which makes it an active liability in most situations, especially if it was forced onto you as a random Collectible.
    • This was completely turned around with Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables, which among other benefits (such as more chances to get items in general, and an encounter that guarantees King's items), added the Thought and Toil system allowing you to reduce your lives to 1 whenever you want with little to no other penalties while stacking a ton of Objective Shields, making it far easier to activate their powerful buffs.
  • Self-Fanservice:
    • There are fanarts (like this one) that depict Hellagur with a younger adult appearance and build, seemingly making him look Bishounen in the likes of Geralt of Rivia, Sephiroth, or Alucard. It helps that Liduke originally envisioned Hellagur to be significantly younger than he appears in the final version of the game.
    • A number of operators with visible signs of Oripathy have it downplayed in some of the more fanservicey artwork. For example:
      • A few regarding Lappland:
      • Lappland has black crystal patches on her legs and they cover a significant portion of her thighs as seen in her Elite 2 artwork. In fanarts such as these, the black crystal patches are usually omitted, covered, or downplayed.
      • Her Elite 2 artwork implies that she's wearing a midriff-baring top underneath her jacket. Unfortunately though, the position of her arm obstructs most of her bare stomach from view, which can come off as a letdown to some fans. That being said, most fanarts of Lappland have her remove the jacket in favor of a tube top that fully shows her midriff.
      • Just like Lappland, Angelina has blue crystals protruding from her right thigh, as seen in her Elite 2 artwork. But in fanarts such as these examples, the crystals are gone, showing her with normal thighs instead.
    • Ch'en wears her coat normally as seen on her initial artwork and story images, but fan artists mostly base their works on her Elite 2 art instead because she loosens up her coat to reveal more of her bare shoulders and inner shirt. To Ch'en's fans, this is a form of Fanservice and some artists would even depict Ch'en without her coat, leaving her sleeveless skin exposed.
    • During gameplay, whether she's fighting enemies in the field or relaxing back at the base, Mudrock is never seen without her bulky, fully-concealing suit of armour. When appointed as an assistant, she'll explain this is because she's not yet comfortable showing her face to others. The vast majority of fanartists prefer to disregard that and draw her as she appears in her Elite 2 artwork, which depicts her in a black sports bra with her helmet and the upper half of her armour removed, her Coral Coast: Silent Night skin, which is a black bikini, or her Ambience Synesthesia skin, which is a sleek and flattering black dress.
    • Several operators, like Sideroca, Utage, and Fiammetta, often have their generous bust size exaggerated even more in fanart.
    • Saria and Hoshiguma, among others, get drawn with visible abs (or even bodybuilder-level six-packs) by fanartists to exaggerate their butch attributes — even though Hoshiguma's Seeker SK97 costume shows she doesn't have much in the way of abdominal muscle visibility at all.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge:
    • A common challenge involves clearing stages with the least amount of Operators possible. However, this mostly relies on having overpowered characters, or those with situational gimmicks. The infamous "Shaw 4-4" challenge is an example of the latter kind.
    • As a reverse of the above, there's also a challenge of clearing harder content using only low-rarity or starter operators, or simply clearing it without using the top-tier Game Breakers that would otherwise make them far easier.
    • Another type of challenge is using only one class to clear a map and trying to get around inherent disadvantages like the lack of healing from Medics or most non-Defender classes not being able to block as many enemies. This type of challenge coined a term among the community, called "XXX-knights" (ie. Vanguardknights, Casterknights, Defenderknights. The term used to generally describe this is "Nicheknights"). However, a "Medicknights" run is the least feasible challenge to perform since the class has very few offensive options (limited to Incantation Medics, Folinic, and Kal'tsit) compared to the other seven Operator classes.
      • Sometimes, players will also impose stricter team restrictions like that of specific archetypes (eg. "Enmityknights" for Juggernauts/Reapers/Soloblades), or ones that don't have to do with gameplay at all, such as using only operators from one faction, one race, one demographic, or even those drawn by one artist.
    • Because of the game's playable roster being heavily slanted towards female Operators, there's a challenge to try and beat maps with male Operators only (often called "Maleknights") due to the notable variety of tools this cuts off from the players (ie. before Chestnut and Lumen were released, the only Medic that could be used in this challenge is the 3-star Ansel, making maintaining heals on a Marathon Level a lot more tricky).
    • "1-operator relays", essentially limiting the player to only having one operator on the field at any given point in time, and generally retreating them them as soon as their skill finishes. Without abusing fast-redeploys, this involves using Operators that can fire their skills quickly on deploy, as well as a considerable amount of foresight to balance all your redeployment timers with intercepting every oncoming enemy either in advance or at the last possible moment.
    • A particularly humorous one that propagated in CN as the "Wiš'adel rehabilitation challenge" to "cure" players from the brain rot caused by abusing Wiš'adel, involves defeating the Last Steam Knight in 11-20 using a squad made from only the first 6* operator a player obtained in each class. There's a fair chance that this will predominantly be made of units from the first year of the game's life, putting them at a disadvantage compared to newer teams, but the challenge has seen surprising success with a variety of team compositions.
    • The "Contingency Contract" event is an entire mode built around this trope. Players can freely choose what Risks would be enabled to make the stage harder just like the Challenge Maps. The higher the Risk level cleared, the more rewards can be obtained and more options are unlocked after turning over some tasks.
      • Because FEater became a popular or recommended operator in the event's Area 59 map, various content creators on YouTube had their own self-imposed challenge of not using her on the higher Risk levels.
  • Ships That Pass in the Night:
    • As a literal example of Angel/Devil Shipping, Executor and Flamebringer make for a popular couple. However, despite both of them debuting in Operational Intelligence, they have yet to interact in canon.
    • On a similar note, Executor is also paired with Ptilopsis due to their similarly-robotic demeanor.
    • Fans began pairing Ifrit with Eyjafjalla due to both girls being relatively young 6-star fire Casters inflicted with serious Oripathy despite both of them having yet to interact with each other. Ifrit's Operator Record has since provided fuel: she's Eyjafjalla's team captain for a mission, calls her "little goat" while they're being pursued by Originium Slugs, and orders her (and Mint and Beeswax) to run to safety so she can let loose on the Slugs. "So Long, Adele" may have shaken it a bit since Eyjafjalla the Hvit Aska's age was confirmed to be 22 (making her base version 20) and Ifrit is essentially a minor mentally, if not physically (the Rhine Lab manhua notes that her mental age is 4-6 years behind her physical one).
    • Since the 4.5th anniversary livestream, some players on global have taken to shipping Amiya and Zuo Le despite their lack of interaction in the game itself due to a brief moment on the stream where Amiya calls Zuo Le "handsome while holding a sword". It helps that, canonically, the two are very close in age with Zuo Le estimated to be only a few months or a year older than Amiya at most. Responses range from the Doctor being an enthusiastic Shipper on Deck or an aggressive Boyfriend-Blocking Dad, depending on their view of Zuo Le's worthiness as a suitable boyfriend for Amiya.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: Surprisingly, "Babel" stoked a pre-existing rivalry between Doctor/Priestess and Doctor/Theresa shippers. Fans on both sides discredit each other for mind-controlling Doctor via memory altercation. It's also not surprising to see that fans on each side have differing opinions on Doctor's betrayal. Doctor/Priestess fans believe that this is justified, as Doctor is supposed to be responsible for the Precursor Civilization. Doctor/Theresa fans believe that Doctor's actions were actually Priestess's decisions, and Theresa saved Doctor from Priestess's manipulation.
  • Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: With Integrated Strategies becoming a permanent roguelike game mode with multiple versions, it is not uncommon to spend hours upon hours just experimenting with operators you never thought you'd use in combination with the mode's wide array of collectibles. For those who are more into base building and exploration, Reclamation Algorithm is a similarly massive time sink with an even more expansive array of mechanics ripe for experimentation, and permanent progress saving ensuring you can keep building upon the same run over an extended period of time.
  • Starboarding: Those not dissuaded by either Kal'tsit's hatred of the Doctor for killing Theresa or "Babel" painting the pair as akin to a parent and their daughter might have a hard time pairing them after reading "Lone Trail": she explicitly tells the Doctor that their Strictly Professional Relationship over 10,000 years being anything more than that simply won't help either of them in their mission to protect Terra, which makes the idea of her reciprocating their affection quite implausible (at least up to that point in the timeline).
  • Strawman Has a Point:
    • In Chapter 7, Ch'en confronts Wei over his decision to purge the Infected from the Lungmen slums. However, Wei points out that even though everybody knew Reunion was infiltrating the slums, not a single Infected resisted them or tried to warn the LGD. The Infecteds' complicity with Reunion's infiltration demonstrated their lack of trust in Lungmen's institutions, and therefore that meant they would always be a potential threat to the city as long as they remained.
    • In "Hortus de Escapismo", despite Oren's prejudice, his decision to purge the Sarkaz is perhap a practical decision to minimize the damage caused by the tragedies in the abbey. Aside from being the only Sankta present to witness the destructions and atrocities committed in Londinium by Sarkaz force firsthand, should words get out that a Sankta abbey is harboring Sarkaz nomads (including former criminals and mercenaries), the scandal will potentially destroy all of Latereno's foreign relations, undoing the Pope's accomplishment with the Summit of Nations.
  • Superlative Dubbing: When it comes to the English dub, the voice acting direction has been given much praise by many fans and players for the many voice actors who dubbed the characters for matching the character they are voicing and their backstories, in addition to often giving them accurate regional dialects. To note:
    • Allegra Clark voices not just one, but three characters that shows off her versatile range from Dorothy, Proviso and Penance, with her performance as Penance being given praise as Allegra was able to make Penance sound distinctively native to the nation her character is inspired from. For additional points, Allegra is of Italian descent.
    • Anthony Howell as Młynar was well received by fans for his richly textured voice acting that conveyed the depth and tiredness of this Nearl family member from the many life experiences that turned him into the man he is today. His well articulated Polish for a non-native speaker was the cherry on top to pull it all together.
    • Christina Kowalchuk's performance for Lappland is well received due to the hammy energy she brought out to match Lappland's Ax-Crazy air and several Italian players commend on how wonderful she sounded along with her accent.
    • Khoi Dao's performance as Puzzle is met with high praise for the direction taken for his voice acting to match Puzzle's calculating nature along with his well-articulated British accent to match Puzzle's origins.
    • Cat Protano's voice acting for Virtuosa is well received by players, even among those who find her a Base-Breaking Character as Cat's voice acting captured the allure and depth of Virtuosa's Blue-and-Orange Morality, with her Latin voice acting in some voice lines also being given praise.
    • Greg Haiste's performance as Harold is well received from both the West and Eastern side of the pacific. Much of the praise goes to how Haiste captured both of Harold's friendly whimsical aura of being a foppish elder gentleman and as a veteran soldier with decades of experience in the battle field on his belt.
    • Javier Bañas as Thorns is given a lot of praise among players, with fans feeling that Javier Bañas's voice work for Thorns in English might as well double as Thorns' own Spanish dubbing, due to the Spanish ad-libs in several voice lines being praised to give an added layer to Thorns' character.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: Hypergryph's internal investigation confirmed that the composer of the two songs for the Cinder map in "Contingency Contract" outright plagiarized the references they gave him, so they blacklisted that composer and replaced his songs.
    • The initial song's reference was Taishi's "Strayer" from CROSS×BEATS.
    • The Risk 16+ version's reference was "Calling" by rejection.
  • Squick:
    • Courier is noted to have a Signature Scent that he leaves on the letters he delivers. He's based on musk deer. Male musk deers have scent pouches in their crotch. Granted, it is used as a base ingredient for perfumes.
    • Magallan's "Rhodes Kitchen: Aftertaste Frost and Snow" skin replaces her weapons and those of her drones with Surströmming (a.k.a. fermented herring). While it looks funny at a glance, Surströmming is widely-known for its extremely pungent odor that will make even the most hardened person retch if they haven't been acquainted to it. Such is its pungency that Surströmming is basically banned by most hotels and airlines worldwide, and merely opening a can of it in public is considered fair grounds for legal action against you. Which all makes it better that she's making enemies suffer with it instead of you. In fact, has made several fans wanting the skin more.

    T-W 
  • Tainted by the Preview: The Content Leak of a playable Theresa met this reaction from many players who bemoaned that Theresa should have stayed dead and that Hypergryph was breaking their previously established status quo of not making deceased characters playable. Even after said unit, which was revealed to be the crown of the Lord of the Fiends, "Civilight Eterna" itself taking on Theresa's image, and thus individually different from Theresa, which some group of fans accepted and warmed up to her for it, other players weren't convinced and argue that she's just a playable Theresa in all but name.
  • That One Achievement: The Stationary Security Service game mode is already largely considered That One Level due to the multitudes of Scrappy Mechanics, but another thing that fuels the ire towards it is the fact that the there is a trimmed medal for completing all eight stages of a mission without resetting once. Considering how much of a ridiculous Luck-Based Mission the entire mode is due to the inflated stats of the enemies coupled with depending on getting the right combination of units to get properly buffed up to withstand the waves of enemies, managing to do an entire perfect run is considered almost entirely a matter of luck, making this possibly one of the most difficult and frustrating medals to acquire in the game. Not helping is the tendency of the game mode to randomly crash due to its relatively new release on global, which counts as a mission failure if happening in the middle of a stage and would fail the medal's conditions. The icing on top of the cake is that this medal will no longer be acquirable in six months from the game mode's release once it gets overhauled, meaning players aiming for 100% Completion are on a (albeit fairly long) timer.
  • That One Attack: Several foes (especially bosses) have at least one particularly messy attack.
    • If any enemy has the ability to self-destruct for area damage, chances are that it'll be this, since it forces you to be careful where you dispatch the enemies or suffer massive damage or even a Total Party Wipe. The most infamous of them are the Infused Originium Slugs that often come in large swarms, and their Glacial variants that inflict Cold and potentially Freeze onto anything nearby.
    • AoE attacks in general are a huge pain when used by enemies, as following the game's general emphasis on building up fortified chokepoints will only result in your whole team being blown apart faster than a healer can patch them up, aggro be damned, which heavily restricts positioning just by virtue of their existence. There's a reason that the Senior Casters and Skullshatterer amount for a lot of Episode 2's Difficulty Spike.
      • Anastasio's Gospel Spray gives players a feeling of what it's like being on the receiving end of Irene's Judgement, being a ten-hit AoE attack inflicting huge amounts of physical and Corrosion damage to multiple targets at once, with a fairly short cooldown to boot. Every squishy in the attack radius (and even slightly outside of it, thanks to the splash damage on each shot) is likely to be instantly shredded by the gunfire, while even non-Defender melee units are likely to suffer huge HP loss or death, especially if every other target dies and the remainder of the shots all go onto them. Defenders have enough defense to hold on for a time, but the repeated applications of Corrosion will eventually get to a point where even they will be overwhelmed if you can't kill him or safely disengage in time. Worse still, since he takes hugely reduced damage in the second phase if he isn't being blocked, you'll usually have to engage him at an unsafe range if you want to kill him.
      • Mechanist's Targeting Algorithm is among one of the most powerful AoE attacks in the entire game and will account for most of the difficulty in his first phase (or even make it harder than his second), firing three cluster bombs that each deal 8 hits of 80% ATK each in a 3x3 area, on a boss who already has a sizeable base ATK. Each individual hit can deal upwards of a thousand damage (giving the skill a total damage well into the five digits) meaning a single cluster bomb deals enough damage to vaporize almost anything in the blast radius twice over, much less three bombs in a row. To make matters worse, if the target dies, he can choose to retarget the remaining bombs another unlucky victim in range, meaning you can't even use a disposable unit to bait the attack if he's already in range of the main force.
    • A handful of bosses have "true" instakills (ie. ones that force-retreat units instead of reducing their HP normally), which tend to be a massive pain in general for exactly the reasons one might expect. In particular are FrostNova's black ice spikes which are psuedo-random and permanently disable tiles they hit, and the Pursuer's Dominion zones which not only make wide areas permanently prone to being one-shotted, but also makes him extremely hard to damage if he or his attackers are in one.
    • Attacks that inflict Stun can really ruin your day, as a stunned operator not only can't fight back, but also can't block, meaning a single ill-timed stun is often enough to let enemies breach your defense. Certain bosses or stronger enemies will have the ability to do this to multiple friendlies at once to maximize the chances of opening a hole in your lines. By extension, Nervous Impairment in general is also this, as it not only triggers a lengthy Stun on full buildup, but also deals a massive burst of true damage that can kill the victim outright.
    • Certain bosses have moves that can simultaneously hit every unit on the map, sometimes for overlapping splash damage. With the difficulty of making sure everyone on the entire map has enough healing to survive, this can often instantly wipe out chunks of your defense that were either unattended or already under pressure from existing enemies, on top of whatever other secondary effects the attacks carried.
      • Harold's Vapor Rain from The Rides to Lake Silberneherze is a particularly nasty example that almost singlehandedly propels the character into That One Boss territory despite being a relatively standard Caster-type enemy otherwise, as it deals extra damage for every one of the event's Emergency Heaters that is unlit on the stage, which on top of the fact that the boss himself can also instantly extinguish them two at a time makes it a very difficult attack to play around, and if used while too many heaters are unlit will deal enough damage to lead to an immediate Total Party Kill.
      • Punishment of Foolishness, used by the Witch King and Fremont, is also this but for a slightly different reason: instead of killing operators, it randomly repositions them around the map. There's nothing you can do to predict or influence this, and it might as well be an instakill if a unit gets placed in a terrible position that either gets them shredded or is so useless that you're forced to retreat them. While the Witch King's can be baited out as it only targets 2 units, Fremont will do this to everyone during a phase transition, made even worse by his mechanics making it unsafe to just retreat anyone in a bad spot.
    • Several bosses like Mandragora, Manfred, and Duq'arael have defensive abilities that render them Nigh-Invulnerable and can only be temporarily neutralized by exploiting the stage mechanic on the levels they appear. Actually doing this is often more unwieldly than it sounds, especially while the boss themselves are threatening you, and it's often very unforgiving if you miss a precious opportunity to hit them hard, since said mechanics are generally not readily available. Miss enough chances and the boss will shrug off everything you can throw at them, outside of particular cheese strategies such as those using the rare sources of True damage.
    • ATK-lowering abilities fortunately don't appear too often, but will often ruin your day if they do. They're generally unavoidable and cripple not only Operators' ability to fend off enemies in time, but also their ability to heal, letting enemies easily overwhelm them. Worse still, the enemies that can inflict ATK down can generally do so to multiple units at once, gradually weakening your entire team.
    • Andoain's Light Unto Sufferers is particularly infamous for letting him create permanent zones that massively buff up the damage reduction and evasion of every enemy in range, leaving your ability to kill them in time at the mercy of RNG and making them painfully durable even if the odds are in your favor. He will also use this move a minimum of four times over the fight, which if you're not careful can render every enemy on the map near immortal.
    • "Clip" Cliff's Stroke of Thunder in his second phase will be responsible for the majority of losses against him, as it's a six-shot barrage that stuns in an area and, when killing the target, refreshes its cooldown and teleports Cliff a distance forward. Cliff's sky-high ATK and DEF-shredding attacks ensure that unless you've trapped him in a Waste Heat Vent to reduce his power, anything short of an immortal operator will be vaporized, and the cooldown reset means that Cliff can cause rapid Disaster Dominoes by one-shotting units left and right, then just teleporting past what remains of the defensive line. And before you try to manually retreat an operator to deny him the reset, it still counts.
  • That One Disadvantage:
    • In Phantom & Crimson Solitaire, getting the Survivalist hallucination can lead to an instant loss if you don't have any healer in the team, as it applies constant health drain and increased offenses for both you and enemy units, meaning teams without healing will be nearly helpless on any level where enemies aren't squishy enough to also die from this. Mizuki & Caerula Arbor makes its somewhat more manageable by removing the health drain, but changes it to a massive penalty to healing received, making it just as much of a death sentence at deeper floors or higher difficulty.
    • Not as lethal but potentially even more annoying than the above is the Obsession hallucination, which grants bonus Originium Ingots per action, but destroys all Ingots you get on that floor at the end of the floor, which is incredibly annoying when you are trying to stock up Ingots to spend or fuel the various ASPD-boosting Collectibles.
    • Out of all the Rejections Operators can get in Mizuki & Caerula Arbor, the most reviled one of them all is Metastatic Aberration. The other Rejections can range from mildly inconveniencing to dangerously lethal to even beneficial depending on the circumstances, and can often be worked around with some effort.note  Not so much with Metastatic, which halves the HP/ATK/DEF of an Operator, with the only upside being it also halves deployment cooldown and DP cost, the two stats that the majority of operators won't be making use of. Halved stats renders almost any combat-based operator near useless, and if you get Metastatic Aberration on one of your core Operators, it has the potential to end the run right then and there, especially on higher difficulties where you need every advantage you can muster. Plus, as per a Rejection, if your Light isn't full (which it won't be if you're on higher Surging Waves or doing the third/fourth endings), you have no way of deciding who it lands on, when it will appear, and if you're able to cure it since that relies on several exceedingly rare boons, not to mention that a cured operator has a chance to just contract it again later. Furthermore, if one operator gets Metastatic, that will be the only Rejection you get for the rest of the run, potentially rendering half of your team dead weight for the simple crime of having bad luck.
    • The most infuriating difficulty modifiers you'll likely come across in Caerula Arbor are the global increases to Hope costs and enemy RES. Unlike the later seasons, this also affects standard 3-star units, meaning that you'll be slowly losing hope if you even so much as want to use anything that isn't the Reserve Operators, who amount to cannon fodder even weaker than the Starter Mons at higher difficulties. Meanwhile, every single enemy gaining +20 RES is already a huge middle finger to anything dealing Arts damage thanks to the way RES scaling works, enemies in the season already tend to have high RES in general (especially the bosses, whose 70 base RES will turn into 90), meaning a whole season where Character Select Forcing that rules out half of the main damage types, unless you luck out and get Broken Wand - Solving.
    • Downplayed in Expeditioner's Joklumarkar. Collapsal Paradigms aren't as punishing as Rejection, and while they can be gained at any time (instead of only at the start of a floor) and can stack, they are also much easier to remove. But among the bunch, the worst is Propagating Collapse and its stronger variant, Substantial Collapse, which put 4 and 8 Dominion zones on random spots in the map, with the stronger variant also buffing the Dominion's ASPD debuff to -75. Considering how crippling Dominions are, this can gimp your operators' performance to the point of not being able to deal with the enemy waves. What really makes it this is that unlike most of the other Paradigms, which can be very dangerous but also have more ways to work around them,note  if the map places a Dominion on an essential tile, there's nothing you can do to mitigate it.
    • Bosky Passage side areas randomly debuff and buff your team, but a few of them stand out for being a much bigger hinderance than they are a help:
      • "In this place, allied units have reduced ATK, but deal significantly more damage to enemies 2 or more tiles away": Your team's ATK is reduced by a whopping 40% while doubling damage dealt from attacks 2+ tiles away from an enemy, which is a requirement that you may not be able to take advantage of if you lack long ranged units in the first place, causing the rest of your team to hit like wet noodles; on top of this, the buff being a damage multiplier means that if your unit can't punch through the target's DEF with their reduced ATK, then the buff ends up being totally negated anyways.
      • "In this place, you have a lower deployment limit, but Operators' Redeployment Time is greatly reduced": The deployment limit is reduced by 4, which in most cases will leave you stuck with the minimum limit of 2 operators while being faced with several ferocious battles that were not designed to be able to be beaten with only 2 units. In exchange, redeployment time is reduced by 80%, but if your team is ill-suited to helidropping (like units who need to charge up or scale) or doesn't have enough DP to fund the constantly ramping costs, then you're in serious trouble.
      • "In this place, all enemies have reduced Movement Speed, but gain increased Weight, DEF, and RES": All enemies get +800 DEF and +30 RES along with a +1 Weight increase, which turns almost all of them into unstoppable bulks despite also halving their speed, as they can simply disregard all but the strongest of attacks as they march towards the goal. This is even worse with ranged Squishy Wizard type enemies, as not only does the "squishy" part of their name get dropped entirely, the movement speed slow actually helps them as they'll be able to spend more time pelting your units before moving into range.
    • In "Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables", we have Epochs, which are similar to Rejections and Paradigms in that they passively debuff you or buff your opponents while active. While these wear off after five moves and therefore won't hinder you throughout your entire run, some of them are so dangerous that they could instantly lose you the game in the short time they're active.
      • King of Sarkaz increases the ATK of all Sarkaz enemies (in other words, almost everything) by up to +50% and prevents you from manually retreating units standing in Marks of Epoch. The ATK buff makes everything significantly dangerous and can make it so your units who could otherwise reliably tank the incoming enemies suddenly can't withstand their damage anymore (and yes, this effect also applies to bosses), and being unable to retreat your units when you want to means you have no choice to either let them die, denying you a refund on your DP, or have them remain in place, likely useless because they're also be under Necrosis and therefore unable to activate their skills, which can completely ruin your strategy if you're not ready for it.
      • Commerce makes all items in the shop cost as much as double their normal price, which could already be a bad thing if you were intending to use a Rogue Trader node. However, what's worse is that it also increases all your units' DP cost by as much as 5 points. If you haven't got a Vanguard, some stages can be flat out unwinnable because you simply cannot place down a crucial unit in time to stop an early rush, and even your Vanguards will be barely DP-positive after their first skill use.
      • But what's probably by far the worst of them all is Sufferings, which immediately damages any unit you place down by as much as 70% of their hit points. In stages where there are pre-deployed units that cover a large amount of area, such as Land Reclamation or Divine Desires, this ensures that any unit you try to place down is just going to die immediately, again rendering certain stages practically impossible to win. The only saving grace with this effect is that if you have anything that gives you Shield on deployment, such as the Medicine Sticks or the Wall inspirer, it will absorb the damage for you. Heaven help you if you’re unfortunate enough to get this Epoch while trying for the fifth boss without a counter or chance to get rid of it, as it can make the stage flat out Unwinnable.
    • The Possibilities, which function like Bosky Passages, also applies random effects for stages inside of them, but unlike the previous iteration these are done via collectibles that only apply inside of Bizarre Fragments, which means you keep these effects for every subsequent Possibility, meaning the more of them that you do, the harder they get overall. And some of them have truly detrimental effects on your units.
      • Crystal Mystery is probably the worst one to get. It increases the DEF of any operator on ground tiles by a massive 600 points... at the cost of having them be Frozen for 15 seconds on deployment. While you units could survive for that long with the help of the buff, it means they're useless at clearing an incoming wave or to be helidropped if you need them to do something immediately. Not to mention it does nothing to protect from Arts or Necrosis damage.
      • Blood Tax Mystery reduces the HP of both allies and enemies by 35%. Usually not too bad... but if you run into the Rogue Mercenary stage, this means that the civilians who could normally take one shot from the Londinium cannon suddenly lack enough HP to do so, which means you could instantly lose the game if the cannon hits a group of them. The stage is already That One Level for most players, now remove the slight margin of error that you have, and...
      • Silk Bond Mystery could either be an asset or a complete liability depending on the stage and your lineup. It makes it so your Operators constantly lose HP (but cannot be directly killed) if they have any other Operator in the eight tiles around them. If not, they get a massive +50 ASPD buff. While this is great for long-ranged units who love attack speed such as Goldenglow, it also makes it extremely difficult to position your units to hold the line without everybody constantly bleeding out. And depending on the stage, there's sometimes no way to avoid it. Better hope you brought a multi-target Medic.
    • Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables arguably most painful difficulty tweak is the one for Facing Souls 13, which gives 50% Phys/Arts damage reduction to any enemy in a Mark of Age. The same Marks of Age that will spawn everywhere in mass numbers, whether from slain Dreadkaz that can spawn en masse, the Spines of Epoch that will show up all over the place, and the Sarkaz Maze Spellweavers who can spawn massive Marks on demand. Unless you're packing immense amounts of damage or True/Elemental damage, it's entirely possible to lose a whole run because a Mark spawned on your chokepoint and made every enemy unkillable, which you'll often be forced to contend with as they have a tendency to show themselves in cramped map layouts.
    • If you're playing on Difficulty 17 or higher in Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables, you'll be saddled with a random cursed relic if you reach the third floor, similar to the third season. Most are painful but manageable, but woe betide you if you get Gul'dul's Silence, which gives all enemies +3000 DEF with the caveat that they lose 100 of that DEF every time they take damage. This brings any physical-based strategy to a screeching halt, doubly so if you lack the means to quickly rip through the defense with rapid attacks (which is still a tall order since it takes 30 hits just to neutralize it, and the enemy will still have their base DEF intact), and can completely screw you over if you get sent to a stage with enemies that are also resistant to Arts. Unless your strategy almost entirely revolves around Arts, your only real option is to use a Lost and Found node to trade it in before moving on to more dangerous floors, and hope that you don't leak too many enemies before then.
    • In Reclamation Algorithm, the region's seasons would cycle from Lush, to Monsoon and Drought, which in turn would influence local node's weather. Thank the heavens for the Omni-Umbrella gadget introduced in the second expansion, because going through these weathers without one would suck royally.
      • Monsoon debuffs your Operators with -40% HP and -1 Block for the entire season. This is a real hair-puller because your Executors and Dreadnoughts now have 0 block, unable to stop the enemy's advances or gather resources, and your beefy Guards and Defenders almost have their HP halved, which given the sheer attack power of many RA enemies means even tanks are liable to get one-shotted. As an added bonus, the previously sunny skies will now have either Acid Rain (constant Corrosion damage, so long-term defense without a Wandering Medic is near-impossible), Thunderburst (periodic True Damage lightning strikes, which can easily one-shot your Operators due to the HP debuff), or Thunderstorm (both Acid Rain and Thunderburst). And as a final bonus, the first boss will pop up on day 30, ensuring you will be dealing with the boss while stuck with the HP and block debuff.
      • Hot Weather and Scorching Sun deal constant Burn damage to your Operators, so without Medic support, don't expect anyone to be able to hold their ground for long. The periodic stun from the heat is incidental compared to this.
      • Sandstorm and Habub bring back the mechanisms first introduced in Walk in the Dust. You can block the sandstorm with constructs or Operators, but sometimes there's just no space. Have fun trying to stop a Zerg Rush raid with a -30 or -50 ASPD debuff.
  • That One Sidequest: Some of the collectibles in Integrated Strategies can be real hair-pullers to get if you want to complete your collection.
    • Phantom & Crimson Solitaire had the Guard Cap, which required players to deploy 200 operators in a single completion. If your team doesn't rely on fast-redeploys, most combat nodes will be lucky to have 10 or more operators deployed in total, and you generally don't encounter that many combat nodes, meaning you'll have to actively go out of your way to stall out levels and redeploy as many units as possible, which is a colossal time waster. To add insult to injury, the actual item is somewhat underwhelming for the effort needed to unlock it, giving a 25% HP buff that increases by 25% each time a unit is redeployed, limiting its usefulness to units with short cooldowns like Executors, Merchants, or Agents. Expeditioner's Joklumarkar brings back this requirement with the Inextinguishable Torch, although this item is at least pretty powerful to justify its lofty requirement (units gain +30 ASPD for every unit in the adjacent tiles).
    • Mizuki & Caerula Arbor tops this with the Pathfinder Fins, the finding of which is a gigantic Luck-Based Mission unmatched by any other item in the game, as the Fins will only show up if the player rolls a 7 or higher on the reroll of Cannot's shop. This essentially forces you into Resourceful Squad from the get-go and making even hitting the criteria for its appearance a colossal RNG check, as you only get one reroll per shop, and shops in themselves aren't even guaranteed to be readily accessible outside of the first and sixth floors. Secondly, the item is a relatively low-grade one compared to the others, meaning that it's highly likely that it'll be pushed out of the rerolled shop by other higher-rarity items, making it border on Permanently Missable Content once your item pool has grown a little bit (before which you likely didn't even know about its existence or criteria). It says something when the main strategy for unlocking it is just to repeatedly beat the first floor with Resourceful Squad, gamble on Pathfinder Fins on the first shop, and restart the run if you don't get it. It's also technically is unlocked by default and only has a strict criteria for appearance, so even if you find it once, you're likely to never see it again afterwards, making it near useless for a normal player despite its fairly strong effect (+30 Light). To add insult to injury, the Light restoration is mostly made obselete by other, more accessible Light regeneration items from the second expansion.
    • For Expeditioner's Joklumarkar, rather than an elusive collectible, it's instead the two secret Collapsal Paradigms, Partial/Complete Cecity and Image Corruption/Blackout. Firstly, there is absolutely no hint in the game that these two effects even exist, since their slots in the records only appear after you've seen them. Secondly, the chance of encountering them when you receive a paradigm is extremely low, with the probability being estimated to be below 1%. There is no trick or secret to finding them, all you can do is simply raise your Collapse and hope you get lucky, with the most efficient method being to choose the Eternal Hunting squad and intentionally leak on every stage to get your Collapse up more quickly, which becomes quickly tedious. Not to mention that besides the satisfaction of having a 100% Completion, there's no real benefit to doing so at all, which means the majority of players simply never bother to even try to make them appear, since even hardcore enthusiasts of Integrated Strategies who have played upwards of hundred of runs still have a good chance of never seeing either of them even once.
    • In Reclamation Algorithm: Tales Within the Sand, the Stay-awake Goggles are going to be the last token that a good number of players acquire for a list of reasons. Firstly, you have to pick an Encounter node in order to acquire it, which is a fairly inefficient use of your Acts per day. Next, you have to pray to the Random Number God that one of the encounters is the very rare Silent Vestiges node. After that, you have to know the right options in order to progress down the right dialogue path. And then you have to roll the dice once again and hope you get the path that actually grants you the token even if you do select the right option. And then you need to specifically have the Sous Vide Meat provision to then trade for the goggles. And what do the Stay-awake Goggles actually do? Reduce the Elemental damage your operators take by a mere 10%, when there are much more effective ways to handle the dangerous cases of Elemental damage to begin with. Really, considering the amount of time you have to spend to luck out of finding the encounter in the first place, there's not much reason to aim for the token other than to say that you got it.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Marketing-wise, the decision from Yostar EN and KR to somehow switch to a new operator introduction promotional image template starting from the Adventure That Cannot Wait for the Sun event has been met with nothing but absolute vitriol because of how questionable the template is. While the EN fandom usually has no problem with occasionally changing templates every year from Yostar EN's side, the switch from this template (as an example) to this only invited widespread criticism because it looks highly amateurish compared to the previous templates. Particularly insulting to the fandom is how Yostar JP actually uses the nearly same new template but with more competence and effort put into it (image for reference). As a result, the backlash from the EN fandom is so immense, many outright demanded Yostar EN to hand back the game's promotion to Hypergryph because of their incompetence and some even proceeded to "fix" the promotional template into a more desirable quality (example can be seen here). The fans finally rejoiced when the template was switched over to a new one from the Ending a Grand Overture event onward.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: This mostly applies to characters who died very early in the main story with little backstories to expand their characterization:
    • Ace. He's noted to be a loyal member of Rhodes Island. But in the first chapter, he dies trying to stall Talulah just to give his team a chance to escape. He does get a little more screentime after this, when he treated a fellow soldier's wounds despite himself losing an arm, but that's it. Fans view his role in the story as a Sacrificial Lion who's only killed to prove that death exists in the game's lore. Not helping his case is that one of his scenes is treated as an example of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
    • Skullshatterer, or specifically, Alex is remembered by fans as a one-dimensional, revenge-driven Reunion member with a goal of taking Misha back home and with a Freudian Excuse for a backstory. These are basically what Chapters 2 and 3 tell about him. It doesn't help that Misha is the center of these chapters, which means his spotlight is shared with her. This is especially the case in Chapter 3 when he dies in the first half for Misha to take on his identity. Then there's the implication that he's such a leader worth serving for since his men seem to have an Undying Loyalty to him as they risk themselves to drag his body back to their base, and the medics desperately try to revive him with first aid. Unfortunately, the story doesn't show in detail how he interacts with is men. Not helping the matters is W claiming that Skullshatterer doesn't really care for his men at all, which begs the questions of why his men are still loyal to him if this is indeed true, or if W is actually lying. Lastly, Skullshatterer is one of the major Reunion figures in the main story who didn't get his face revealed.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • The Doctor's amnesia is brought up as a huge mystery right from the prologue along with cryptic scenes such as a mysterious voice speaking to them, and a flashback of Amiya talking to them in an old place. But for a large part of the next story chapters (e.g. Chapters 1-6), this whole amnesia plot is rarely brought up again and sidelined in favor of Rhodes Island stopping the Reunion Movement's plans in Lungmen. The prologue also hints that the Doctor may recover memories through flashbacks, but that's the only flashback instance in those chapters. Some characters like Kal'tsit and Amiya are also hinted to know more about the Doctor's past but don't actively try to help recover their memories despite being on the same side. And judging from her Cryptic Conversation in the first chapter, W is also hinted to know a lot about the Doctor, but unfortunately, she barely interacts with them after this scene. It's worth mentioning that the "Darknights Memoir" and "Vigilo" side stories, well as Chapter 7 of the main story, are well-received among fans in terms of worldbuilding and lore because at least, those finally try to focus on the Doctor's past, slowing solving this whole amnesia thing as compared to the earliest chapters.
    • The fight between Ace and Talulah in Chapter 1. It's a Curb-Stomp Battle with Talulah as the unscathed victor while Ace dies losing an arm. However, the part that begs an expansion to this plot point is when Mephisto and FrostNova are quite amazed that Ace lasted longer than they expected. It implies that Ace did manage put up a fight even when he knows that he's about to die. Unfortunately as the game details it, Ace is just Killed Offscreen, without any dedicated scenes, narration or background CGs depicting how he fought the Reunion leader by himself.
    • Chapter 9 is generally seen as this, especially since it follows up the extremely popular Chapters 7 and 8, which reveal quite a lot about the Doctor and Amiya's pasts. However, Chapter 9 largely ignores the Doctor and Amiya in favor of focusing on Bagpipe and Saileach and setting up the brewing conflicts and conspiracies within Victoria. Chapter 9 also hardly even mentions Siege's role in Rhodes Island's journey to Victoria despite it being heavily teased at the end of Chapter 8. There's really no new revelations about the Doctor, Amiya, or Siege. All in all, players felt that they were just playing a very large sidestory rather than anything relevant to the main plot.
      • Stage 9-21 is extremely controversial due to its plot. While the entire plot of this stage is played out logically and reasonably in hindsight, it hits almost all the wrong sentimental buttons of the audience. Simply put, a rag-tag group of reformed Reunion Movement members, with a former Rhode Island Operator involved, breached Rhode Island security to rescue the imprisoned Talulah so that they could put her in their custody instead... Done using a high-speed transportation out of nowhere. While ignoring the potential collateral damage their rescue heist had caused, despite promising that they will not follow Talulah's path. The backlash caused by this stage is possibly one of the reasons why Reunion Movement played a role in "A Spark of Darkness", elaborating on their reformation, as well as how they managed to acquire such transportation in the first place. In later chapters of the main story, the Reunion members have at least one designated stage for them to tell their stories. As of Episode 13, Reunion took up a quarter of the storyline to tell their rescue of the Victorian infected, Talulah's redemption arc, and culminated in Guard's heroic sacrifice, which marks the rebirth of Reunion Movement as a revolutionary organization to free the infected from being oppressed. By this time, unfortunately, there are some who see Guard's sacrifice as a convenient way to dispose of a character that had been hated since Episode 9.
    • The Victoria arc is overall seen as focusing too much on the subplot about dealing with the Sarkaz's generational wrath that it ends up pushing Siege's struggle to reclaim the Victorian throne to the sidelines. Another point of contention with Siege's plot is that her conflict with Clovisia isn't given much focus, as Clovisia only appears briefly in the main story before suddenly being revealed as a villain in "Ending a Grand Overture", only to quickly dip out. Even within the Sarkaz subplot, there are fans who feel that the plot has been resolved too quickly, thus wasting a more substantial confrontation with the KMC, which ultimately ends up confined to Victoria instead of extending to Kazdel itself. A third subplot that went under-explored is the new Reunion arc, where Talulah's travel to Victoria ultimately amounts to briefly confronting Eblana and losing a new member of Reunion before going back to Ursus to pursue her revenge against the Deathless Black Snake, which is felt to be something that could have been expanded and better integrated into the wider plot or cut entirely for Reunion to stay in Ursus for the confrontation with the Deathless Black Snake.
  • Trans Audience Interpretation:
    • It became fairly popular to interpret Stainless as a trans man after his Elite 2 art was unveiled, which noticeably featured a calico cat laying by his side.note 
    • A screenshot and dialogue in Chapter 13 between Logos and a Sarkaz mercenary who was confused to why Logos is male when Banshee's are majorly female, with Logos answering with a simple "Correct" to clarify her, has many fans interpret that Logos is trans and had successfully completed his transition, further reinforced by "Babel" showing he looked very feminine as a child.
  • Unnecessary Makeover: A group of fans prefer that Logos kept wearing the same outfit he wore as an NPC instead of putting on his Rhodes Island Elite Operator fit for his playable debut. In-Universe, this sentiment is shared by his mother via PhonoR-0, who outright said that he looked better with his formal uniform.
  • Ugly Cute: Originium Slugs, the most basic Mooks in the game, may be Big Creepy-Crawlies covered in Originium shells, but their somewhat dopey demeanor, the fact that they generally aren't hostile if not agitated, and the fact that they can be domesticated to be outright friendly makes them somewhat endearing both in-universe and out.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Skullshatterer is supposed be a tragic villain with a horrible past that many would feel sorry for him. Instead, the fandom saw the opposite as they see him as a big hypocrite with a severe case of Moral Myopia where he constantly accused Rhodes Island of being traitors to the Infected and killing them despite the fact Rhodes Island has done more for the Infected than Reunion has while the latter commits war crimes and attack innocents including fellow Infected, something he ignores or refuses to acknowledge (or if he does, he simply justifies it by saying they deserved it for not actively taking a stand or being complicit in their plight) when Amiya calls him out for it. Even after he dies, Skullshatterer still refuses to admit he is just as bad as the people who ruin his life, still insisting Rhodes Island are the bad guys who betrayed the Infected and not Reunion. It says something that Mephisto, who is all around built up as and acknowledged to be worse than Skullshatterer, not only has a more sympathetic backstory, but actually acknowledges his actions were terrible and tries to atone for them after hitting the Despair Event Horizon, despite being more depraved than Skullshatterer ever was. It's telling that even the writers of the anime adaptation seem to have recognized this and toned down most of his worst aspects, most notably changing his delusional last words towards Amiya into a much more sympathetic cry for his sister instead.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: Quite a few Operators get this treatment.
    • W is unsurprisingly disliked within the Rhodes Island landship due to her stint as a Reunion-affiliated mercenary along with her provocative behavior that leads her to pick fights with other operators for her own amusement, with many characters seeing her as a madwoman. Many fans on the other hand adore her for her attractive design and have a clearer view of her Hidden Heart of Gold that even she denies, which many find endearing.
    • Młynar, while not hated by people who know him, has few friends due to his cynicism and abrasive personality to the point that he even keeps his own family at a distance. Within the fandom he is one of the most well-loved characters due to his character depth as well as being ridiculously strong both in story and gameplay (many consider him one of the most powerful Operators in the game), and for being an extremely handsome man in a primarily female cast.
    • Ho'olheyak has no friends and several enemies within Rhodes Island thanks to a combination of her volatile personality and shady history prior to her onboarding, with not even the Doctor, who generally at least is willing to hear out their operators, being willing to deal with Ho'olheyak for long. In fact, the only reason she's on Rhodes Island is because she effectively held them and the Columbian government at gunpoint using Friston's backed-up consciousness as a hostage. In the fanbase, however, she's an extremely popular figure due to her sultry demeanor, attractive design, and interesting lore.
    • Virtuosa/Arturia is treated with suspicion and caution by Rhodes Island, being effectively imprisoned within the landship due to the nature of her musical Arts being able to release the inhibitions of whoever hears it, on top of being a wanted fugitive in Laterano that Executor is constantly on the hunt for. In spite of this, she is a very well-liked Operator among the community, thanks to her affable personality, beautiful design, and excellent gameplay prowess.
    • Outside of the playable roster, we have post-Chapter 8 Talulah, after being freed from Kashchey's possession. To the world at large she is viewed as a notorious criminal who manipulated Reunion and turned it into a terrorist faction that committed atrocities against entire nations, with only a few who know the truth about her and are still alive. To the fanbase who are aware of her backstory, she's generally considered one of the biggest Woobies in the story so far, with many hoping to see a redemption arc and potentially her becoming a playable operator.
    • Necrass, or the undead Eblana, outright has her existence concealed from most of Rhodes Island's members for safety reasons, with so much as interacting with her being forbidden, and is treated with extreme caution by the Rhodes Island higher-ups owing to her volatile personality, violent background, and unnatural powers, with her onboarding being theorized to be more of a way to monitor her and keep her under their watch. Those who do know about her don't have a higher opinion either: Loughshinny cut off all contact with her owing to the amount of psychological trauma Eblana caused her and how she held countless innocents at gunpoint to force Reed into taking the throne of Tara, Harmonie is nothing but horrified at how she managed to cheat death, while even the Doctor expresses a veiled distaste towards her demeanor and is keenly aware that Necrass' only true loyalty is her own greed, being prepared for the likely event she turns on Rhodes Island the moment she finds a new "toy" to play with. That being said, she's one of the most popular characters in the fandom, largely owing to her attractive design and cold, domineering personality, her interesting background, and the fact that she's the first "true" evil Operator in the game.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion:
    • Ansel is a male, even if he looks androgynous and is voiced by a female actress.
    • On a similar note, Earthspirit receives the opposite treatment, with her typically being mistaken for a male character due to the androgynous design of her default CG, her attire, and Aoi Yūki putting up a much deeper vocal performance compared to her usual voice.
    • Mizuki, another male, also gets this treatment due to his androgynous looks when he was first revealed (but unlike Ansel, he is voiced by Ayumu Murase)
  • Viewer Species Confusion: Certain characters are occasionally mistaken as a member of another race before their race is officially revealed through suplementary materials or promotion to playable status due to having features that look similar to another race. Some examples include:
    • Goldenglow, a Feline who was mistaken as a Perro from her teaser in the first CN anniversary livestream until her release almost two years later as her teaser only showed her dog-like Scottish fold ears.
    • Crownslayer, a Reproba who was mistaken as a Lupo prior to the release of the first artbook volume due to similarities between the hyena and the wolf and her seeming wolf associations.
    • Nowell, a Vulpo who was mistaken as a Feline before being made playable due to hailing from the Feline-dominated Victoria and having his fox ears and tail mistaken as cat ones.
    • Record Keeper, a Perro who was assumed to be a Feline due to his triangular ears before his introduction in "Fantasy in the Mirage" and Elite 2 art reveal his actual race.
  • Win Back the Crowd: A Content Leak occuring near the time the Babel event is announced, where Theresa is said to be a Playable character had fans grow skeptical, wondering if Hypergryph is going against its previous established quo of not having deceased characters playable if the leak is true. When the 5th anniversary livestream reveals the new operators, the Theresa unit leaked is instead named Civilight Eterna, with Chapter 14 revealing that it's the crown itself projecting a physical body with Theresa's likeness, rather than it being the real deal Theresa herself being brought back to life, most of the fans skeptical about her were convinced and welcome her.
  • WTH, Costuming Department?: A fair number of Doctors find W's updated outfit as Wiš'adel contentious due to abandoning her original incarnation's more conservative but still stylish design in favor of greatly upping the Stripperific factor, which seems to be done for Fanservice but is blemished by how overdesigned her costume looks to the point of feeling extremely messy and incoherent to most players. Not helping is the fact that her much more well-received Chapter 10 outfit never managed to see the light in gameplay as a skin or otherwise which many saw as wasted potential, leading them to wish Wiš'adel's design had just been based on that outfit instead or at least have taken more inspiration from it.
  • Woolseyism:
    • The "ANNIHILATIO" text in the loading screens of Annihilation Maps may be seen as a "Blind Idiot" Translation or a text field limitation to some English players (because the mode's name is correctly spelled everywhere else), but "annihilatio" is actually the Late Latin word from which the English word "annihilation" was derived from. When keeping in mind that the Ancient race names are derived from foreign words, it can be easy to understand the text as an intended translation instead of a misspelling. This was fixed in an update, now properly being read as "ANNIHILATION". Though for a few seconds before the loading screen ends, the text would briefly switch to "ANNIHILATIO", yet this too was eventually patched.
    • Lappland's 3-star victory line actually refers to mille-feuille (as in corpses mille-feuille). The translation renders it as "slice'n'dice" instead, until her lines were rewritten for her English dub, with her line now appropriately using the Italian term for the dessert (mille foglie).
    • The English localization changed Eyjafjalla's nickname for the Doctor from "Sempai" to "Professor". While some fans think that the change is jarring since her voiced lines do not match, especially for Risa Taneda's popular Casting Gag, one side argues that the change is more appropriate when the relationship between the two is treated as professional/medical co-workers instead. A neutral side argues that this is merely a minor thing, and that the Translate the Loanwords, Too trope is in effect.
    • When breaking down Cronin's office door in the "Heart of Surging Flame" event, Vigna's one liner quip in the original Chinese version is based on their "Express Delivery!" meme. In the English localization, this got turned into the "FBI open up!" meme instead.
    • Projekt Red's name in the Chinese version is 红, which simply translates to "red". The official English localization translated it instead as "Projekt Red", making her reference CD Projekt RED.
    • Vulpisfoglia's greeting line as Assistant is, in its original CN/JP acting, "(You) speak, and I listen." But the EN version of this line uses much more fitting phrase for this exact scenario, especially when taking into account her huge Fennec fox ears:
      Vulpisfoglia: I'm all ears.
    • Rose Salt/Pascuala's voice uses cutesy way of speaking before using a more rough and crude language when she's tired of pretending. The EN version of her speech instead alternates between sickeningly cute English and a rapid Spanish, resulting in a Foreign-Language Tirade.
      Rose Salt: (Onboarding line) Hola, everyone, pleased to meet you! I'm your newest operator! Señores Elysium and Weedy recommended this place to me. I hope we can all get along—Hey, Pelirrojito! ¿De qué vas pretendiendo vomitar? ¿Tienes algún problema conmigo?!note 
  • The Woobie: It is hard not to feel very sorry for some operators due to the hardships they've faced in their lives.
    • Children of Ursus basically turned every single Ursus student into one following the destruction of Chernobog, especially Gummy. Long story short, due to the food shortage of the place they're kept in, Gummy is hinted to have resorted to eating the corpses of her fellow students in order to stay alive. The PTSD caused by this still haunts her to this day, where being hungry enough or shrouded in darkness will cause her to go feral and start biting people indiscriminately. Worse still, she is aware of what she had become, but is unable to do anything about it. It is extremely hard not to feel sorry for her, since of the three starting members, Gummy stood out as the most cheerful and happy, if a bit childish, and always optimistic about everything. After learning of the truth of their past, one comes to realize that it's a coping mechanism, since while she still has her friends, who love her despite what she had to go through, Gummy is ultimately terrified of herself, and constantly haunted by the nightmares of her past.
    • A Light Spark in Darkness showed how tough life in Victoria had been for Susie Glitter before she joined Rhodes Island as Goldenglow. Along with having Oripathy that makes her constantly suffer from static shocks, a mob that was persecuting Infected nearly beat her to death, another mob burnt down her barber shop, and corrupt cops that were aiding and abetting the mobs kidnapped and threatened her. She actually hit her lowest point when her shop was burnt, was depressed enough to seriously consider suicide, and was only talked out of it by Haze. Even as an operator, her portraits look like she's been crying, with her E2 portrait in particular having a backdrop referencing the anti-Infected mob that persecuted her. Not helping is that Goldenglow is based on a Scottish Fold, out of all cats, who constantly suffer from medical problems due to their mutation causing their folded ears.
    • Ebenholz had a constant roller coaster of suffering before joining Rhodes Island. In addition to his painful history that had a lack of personal freedoms and dodgy Arts experiments performed on him by Witch King loyalists, during the event, the only truly good friend he makes is taken from him because of the consequences of said dodgy Arts experiments Kreide and himself were subject to. The musical performance he wanted to deliver was ruined by this, and then he ends up losing Kreide to aggravated Oripathy and contracts it himself. The title screen for Lingering Echoes drives the knife home by changing its look after you beat Story Mode and unlock the Extra Stages, changing from Hibiscus watching Kreide and himself practising under Czerny's watchful eye to Ebenholz all alone on the now-darkened stage, and his potential token will always remind you of what he's lost.
    • Rosmontis's past is a very prolonged parade of pain that angers and confuses her whenever she remembers it - her memory problems and all her heartache stems from the rushed and brutal experimentation that she was subject to, and said experiments also claimed her brother's life. Her Epoque skin in particular is a callback to her days shortly after destroying Loken's lab, complete with her grieving over a picture of her late brother and wiping her tears. It doesn't help that her fearsome performance as an Elite Operator at Rhodes Island spooks people and has left a number of people fearful of her abilities, which leaves her alienated from many, with only her fellow Elite Operators, Amiya, and Ifrit as her closest friends.
    • Ifrit herself. While she may cover it up with an attitude, it is apparent that she's still suffering from the trauma inside. Found as a young Savra girl after the explosion in Trimounts, Rhine Lab took her in, and due to her severe Oripathy they proceeded to see her as their ideal test subject, in particularly Parvis, who said that the only way to reliably slow down her progression was to embed shards of the old Diablo race into her. While Saria and Silence did manage to get her out of Rhine Labs eventually, Ifrit had grown a dislike of doctors (which she luckily grew mostly out of by the time of Lone Trail) and her worryingly high Oripathy remains. Not only that, Ifrit is also mentally age-regressed even before she was found by Rhine Labs, and it's unknown where it came from but given that real age regression usually stems from trauma of sorts, it wouldn't be all that weird to think it is in her case as well.
    • Lutonada, a Shell-Shocked Veteran Child Soldier (yes, mutually) who was forced to make a living scavenging off of the dead and dying on the battlefield, doing her best to relieve their suffering as they pass. Even after joining Rhodes, the voices of the dead still haunt her to the point where she tries to fulfil their last wishes as a means of penance, and feels immense guilt for what she sees as her living as a scavenger feeding on corpses.
    • Amiya. She lost her parents at the implied age of 7 in an accident that also infected her with Oripathy, only surviving thanks to the Doctor's intervention. Immediately thrust into a harsh world and forced to contend with the notion that she's destined to suffer all her life and die early from an incurable illness, she grew to see Doctor, Theresa, and Kal'tsit as her parental figures to latch on to, only to lose Theresa and Doctor in a single day, with Theresa killed by the Doctor's betrayal, and the Doctor needing to be put into stasis. Not even long after, she's suddenly put in the position of the CEO of a company with a near-impossible goal, with Kal'tsit also keeping her in the dark about the truths behind Rhodes Island and Babel. When it comes time to rescue the Doctor, not only does Kal'tsit oppose the decision, not only are countless lives lost in the raid, but the Doctor has completely forgotten about her. She's then immediately forced to handle Reunion, the political turmoil in Terra, and the Military Commission's invasion while grappling with the Doctor's amnesia, and since Theresa (begrudgingly) had her inherit Civilight Eterna and her destiny as the Lord of Fiends without her input, she's expected to not just help cure Oripathy, but bear the weight of being the ruler of an entire race fractured by endless war and the burden of having to reconcile thousands of years of oppression. On top of this, she eventually has to confront the truth that her parental figures aren't as squeaky-clean as they seem: namely Doctor's role in the Originium project and their killing of Theresa, and Kal'tsit's attempts to exterminate the Sarkaz and inadverdently perpetuating their cycle of hatred. All of this happened before she even had a chance to celebrate her 18th birthday. It's a miracle that the poor girl is able to remain as steadfast and kind as she is instead of completely cracking under the trauma.
      • Think "our" Amiya hasn't suffered enough? Enter Amiya's "Furnace's Finale" incarnation from the final What If? scenario depicted in Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables, or what happens when Amiya does crack. Born in a timeline where Terra is somehow even more fractured by war, the Sarkaz have been completely exterminated, and the Doctor was never awakened, Amiya serves as a doctor despite despairing at how futile her actions are in a world where death is everywhere and doctors are actively targeted. Mortally wounded in an expedition, she ends up inheriting full power over Originium thanks to a chance encounter, which she uses to preserve the dying in stasis until she figures out a "cure" to suffering itself. When the world turns on her afterwards and uses her existence to justify further atrocity, Amiya devours the whole world in Originium, before becoming self-aware and somehow traveling to the other scenarios of the Furnaceside Fables that the main party leaves behind, assimilating each scenario in order to save them from future suffering. Yet Amiya is not only aware that she's just a simulation and won't be able to truly interact with the real world nor witness the version of herself that is happier, she's still resigned to continue her lonely existence in the void between stories, putting stories into stasis as she struggles to solve the impossible task of curing suffering itself, for the rest of eternity.


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