Iji/YMMV

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Dan Kataiser's a manipulative bossy jerk and some of his early dialogue veers almost into Kick the Dog territory, but anyone who didn't cry at his potential death is a lying bastard.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Ansaksie a selfless Knight in Sour Armor heroine, a lunatic, a Necessary Evil Knight Templar or a Well-Intentioned Extremist who is going way too far?
• Anticlimax Boss: Invinciblity or otherwise, Iosa's second phase goes by quite quickly. And the first phase is just easy; she insists on patrolling back and forth below platforms conveniently located for you to jump out of reach of her guns.
• Awesome Music:
  • The entire soundtrack, no question.
  • But out of them all, the final boss theme is generally considered the best.
• Best Boss Ever: The fight with General Tor. Not only is it the most difficult and intense one in the game, it is fought at the sound of Awesome Music.
• Breather Level: Sector 6. Sector 5 is an extremely long slog through a couple of very large buildings, with crossfire everywhere, your Mission Control gone and very urgent music Seven Four. Sector 6 takes things slow and steady, with small groups of weak enemies separated by stretches where you can just saunter along and enjoy the atmosphere while Iji looks for Dan, with the same peaceful music as in Sector 1, Kinda Green, playing.
• Complete Monster:
  • Krotera's certainly the least sympathetic Tasen in the game. Unfortunately, he's also the one in charge.
  • Asha. The game goes at great lengths to assure you that if you like this guy, you're missing the point.
  • Iosa. We're talking about someone who kills all the last survivors of an entire species without any remorse. And laughs about it when questioned.
• Crazy Awesome: The battle with Tor is just about the most epic one in the game.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The Tasen in general, really. While there are a few good ones, they apparently contrast so much with the Komato that many, many fans make them out as almost saintly. While they aren't as vicious as the Komato, there's still the problem that they tried to wipe out life on Earth, and that's not touching on all their war crimes in the backstory... what they did to Iosa's planet stands out.
  • There's also a surprising amount of people who view Krotera as a Well-Intentioned Extremist doing whatever he needed to do to protect his people. You'd think that the game established well enough that he's a jingoistic tyrant with a 0% Approval Rating who chose to Alpha Strike Earth instead of making peace with the humans because he could.
  • Ansaksie can also be subject to this, although there's a bit of justification in that her more dickish actions are never mentioned in the game.
  • While it's rare, despite the fact that the game gives absolutely no reason to like him (and every reason not to), some players inexplicably love Asha, of all people.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Ansaksie is rather popular considering her limited screen-time.
• Family-Unfriendly Aesop:
  • Some of the Komato state the logical, if abhorrent, conclusion that since their species is doomed anyways, the Tasen's desperate attempts to avoid their fate only lead to more suffering for all involved. Krotera makes the exact same point with regard to humans.
  • 1.7 ultimately comes to the conclusion that absolute pacifism doesn't work. Against an enemy you can't reason with, the proper solution is to execute them in cold blood if you don't want them coming after you.
• Game Breaker: The Null Driver is a literal example. Firing it will lead to random changes in crucial data, up to and including changing the size and shape of the level geometry. Fortunately, the changes aren't permanent. Also a straight example as well. Proper use of it allows you to fully level up all attributes by Sector 2.
  • Which is why it's only unlocked once everything else is, and has to be reacquired every time you start the game.
  • It only lasts for thirty seconds, but Explosive Shotgun buff + Buster Gun (automatic shotgun) = Fully-Automatic, Unblockable, Instant-Hit Explosive Goodness.
• Goddamned Bats: Komato Skysmashers, flying turret guns that dodge around so you can't easily hit them and pack some serious firepower. When they do go down they explode, which hurts you. To quote the game creator, "No-one likes the Skysmashers".
• Memetic Badass: reallyjoel's Dad. After a Youtube user named "reallyjoel" posted a comment on Daniel Remar's own speedrun video saying that his dad could do better, there's been a running joke that reallyjoel's Dad is the best gamer in the world, and that there's a top-secret "reallyjoel's Dad" difficulty mode. Daniel said that reallyjoel's Dad played said difficulty and beat it so hard that it was wiped from existence. However, It's still in the game, and it's as impossible as they say.
  • Also, Yukabacera.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • PEW PEW
  • reallyjoel's dad.
  • No one likes the skysmashers...
  • "I approach you friendly, and you are firing blue lettuce at me?"
  • "You promised me a pony! With missiles!"
    • "No missile pony for you."
• That One Boss: Asha, the second time you fight him. While having ludicrously low Hit Points, even lower than you, he teleports around like crazy, dodges every attack except the shotgun and the buster gun, which he considers it cowardly to dodge, and constantly attacks you with his Laser Blade as well as spamming his Plasma Cannon. Fortunately, he's a Skippable Boss on Normal, Hard and Extreme difficulties. Unfortunately, he's not skippable on Ultimortal. That in itself is half the reason Ultimortal is harder than Extreme. Oh, and he's harder too.
• Ugly Cute: Annihilators. Hell, there's an Annihilator plushie in the game.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Ansaksie is mistaken for a guy fairly often. Ironically, she was specifically made female to differentiate her from Asha. Also, many players thought the diary writer to be a guy from reading her diaries, since it's all just text logs with no voice for comparison and the number of times she refers to her girlfriend outweighs the number of references to her own gender.
• The Woobie: Iji, and to a lesser extent, the Diary Writer.