< Yu-Gi-Oh!

Yu-Gi-Oh!/YMMV


  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Practically every prominent member of the cast has seen their share.
  • Americans Hate Tingle: Haga (Weevil) is quite popular in Japan, but the Western audience doesn't like him too much for his methods and is regarded as annoying. His ear-splitting dub voice doesn't help.
  • Asshole Victim: A ton of them, especially Marik's father.
  • Ass Pull: Oh, no! Yugi's gonna lose! Good thing he just topdecked a card we've never seen before in the last ten duels (and will probably not see again) and is the exact thing he needs to win! Yugi and friends are probably the most lucky bastards ever, since this seem to happen in every -- single -- duel.[1]
    • While this is true, is also kind of justified. What do you want the writers to do, stop the action every time a character is introduced and go over the entire contents of their deck? Because that would really help the pacing.
    • The Millennium Puzzle has the power to alter fate, so even if this is ludicrous, it generally makes contextual sense.
    • And in a way, the show lampshades this via the Egypt Arc where the cards are at least loosely connected to monster spirits and abilities.
    • Not to mention that it generally involves the protagonist of any given duel, by having the antagonist gain hand and field advantage first, pushing the protagonist into a corner.
    • Melvin Yami Marik. The whole of Battle City arc set Marik up as an evil motherfucker with a complex character and solid motivation. Then in the finals comes this evil alter ego out of nowhere. He's twice the evil motherfucker Marik was, and that's about everything he's about. Even his motivation comes down to rubbing how evil he is into other people's faces, then laughing manically.
      • Then again, that was probably what made him such a terrifying villain. He just wants to ship everyone off to the Shadow Realm. Where Marik was a villain, Yami Marik was a Complete Monster who was off his rocker. Which would scare you more?
      • And we were getting Marik's backstory in bits and pieces anyway. Marik's dark side and the fact that he killed Marik's father were likely planned from the beginning, since it's the crucial point of Marik's backstory that sets up why he's evil, why he's against the Pharaoh, and why Odion is serving him at the time we first meet him.
  • Badass Decay: Honda/Tristan, who goes from a cool character with actual abilities in the early manga to a cheerleader for the others by the Duelist Kingdom arc.
    • Not to mention his role in "season 0" (the original TV show). Instead of being that kind of badass Jerk with a Heart of Gold, he's some kind of goofy student council member.
    • Jonouchi/Joey in the anime. When Bandit Keith tries to steal his card during the Duelist Kingdom Arc, Jonouchi beats him up, claiming that while Keith may be good at card games, he's the best at fighting. (Consider that Keith is taller and more muscular than Jonouchi.) In the anime, Jonouchi gets beaten up rather ungracefully instead.
    • Anzu in the anime too, whose cheerleader role is played up, and her violent side greatly reduced.
    • Kaiba in the anime. Still has his moments of being very, very Badass though (usually ones kept from the manga, though on occasion an anime-original moment has him be awesome as well, particularly in the filler arcs) - it's just that they don't quite compare to threatening traitorous employees to jump off a helicopter while holding them at gunpoint, or stuffing a man's face in a briefcase while putting his foot down on it and holding out his gun for good measure.
  • Base Breaker: Seto Kaiba. He's either the coolest and most badass character in the show, or he's the pure embodiment of "Stop Having Fun!" Guys who took up too much space of screen time.
  • Non Sequitur Episode: Episode 28, full stop. Yugi receives a psychic dream (or a simple nightmare, it's ambiguous) from his grandfather encouraging him to defeat Pegasus, there's a few shots of Mai adjusting her deck (which don't conclusively explain what she's doing and simply lets us know she's changing things around). And then Anzu, Honda and Bakura sneak into Pegasus' room to see how he knows his opponent's moves, and find a peephole looking down onto the dueling field which they take to mean he could have a minion with a telescope spying for him. Then Pegasus arrives and teleports them to an ancient temple full of robed figures, including Pegasus himself, who duels and defeats a cloaked figure, then makes to attack the trio before the spirit of the Millennium Ring appears and teleports them all back to their rooms, erasing their memories of the incident. The only thing that occurs in this episode of relevance is resolved in about two minutes over three scenes - Bandit Keith steals Jounouchi's entry card to the tournament.
  • Broken Base: DM, GX, and 5D's, anyone?
    • And now we have the third spin-off: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal.
    • The filler arcs, i.e., the Doma arc: Fans either hate them for getting in the way of the main storyline, while others enjoy them and don't find them too intrusive or inorganic to the plot, with the exception of Noah's arc, which just about everyone found to be a pointless diversion.
  • Cargo Ship: Seto Kaiba is very attached to his Blue Eyes White Dragon. At first it doesn't seem so bad. And then it turns out that back in ancient Egypt, the Blue Eyes was born from the soul of a woman he loved.
    • Admit it, TCG players, you've gotten "attached" to a specific card or cards that have served you well over the years.
    • Three words: Dark Magician Girl. By far the most popular female of the series, even above main protagonists Anzu, Mai, and Shizuka. And she is frequently seen with Yami Yugi in many fanarts and fanfictions.
  • Creepy Sexy: Yami Bakura
    • Yami Marik is this to some, Nightmare Fuel to others.
  • Crossover: Yami apparently lives in Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo's afro. And in Issue 2 of the American Shonen Jump, Kazuki Takahashi drew Hellboy (he's a big fan), and Mike Mignola drew Hellboy in a Yami Yugi shirt in response.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Yami Marik, the Split Personality and dark reflection of Marik Ishtar given life and sentience from the Shadows, tends to take his evil to extreme levels, especially in the manga version where he is positively obsessed with slowly torturing his victims in every possible way before ending their lives. Worse is that he has no valid reason for any of it - he just wants to exercise his malice on the world and kill as much of the human race as he can just for kicks!
    • Yami Bakura in actuality a piece of the soul of Zorc the Dark One in possession of Thief King Bakura's spirit counts as well, just to a somewhat less frightening extent due to being such a Magnificent Bastard and having a case of Even Evil Has Standards in regards to the games that he plays.
    • Zorc Necrophedes, the Dark One himself is also a qualifier, being evil incarnate of the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe who wasn't content with simply ruling over his realm of shadows and spreading evil around, so he set out to destroy the entire world so that his dark power could reign supreme over Heaven and Earth. He's shown to be relentlessly cruel, even burning children alive in the anime, and it's his corrupting influence that turns Bakura and Priest Aknadin into Monsters as well.
    • Gozaburo Kaiba and Ishtar Senior are nasty pieces of work as well. One mentally abused his son and forced him to work without rest, while the other mentally AND psychically abused his son, daughter, and the adopted Odion, and took pleasure in it. Neither men cared for anyone and anything other than what suited them. The anime made both worse than their manga incarnations, with Gozaburo even threatening to launch nuclear warheads just to frame Seto and his company in a filler arc.
    • Dartz from the fourth season filler arc hit all notes of being one, despite his Ass Pull Karma Houdini (via Death Equals Redemption) in the end.
  • Crack Pairing: Step into the "wonderful" world of doujinshi (not to mention fanfiction) and keep some Brain Bleach handy. The pairings they come up are absolutely baffling.

Marik: I will force Yugi to duel the one he loves most! And judging from all the fanfics I've read, that would be Joey.

Odion: But sir, it's obvious that Yugi is in love with Tea.

Marik: What? No way, that's insane! What kind of messed-up fanfics have you been reading?!

    • Aside from the obligatory mass quantities of yaoi/yuri, incest is also popular.
    • You can occasionally find a OT3, too (and some of them have incest too for good measure).
      • Ahaha, it goes way beyond just OT3 pairings. The Shippers List contains all of the 'official' ship names, and it goes up to six-way pairings and possibly more. It's more surprising when a ship in this fandom isn't named than when it is. Midriffshipping, anyone?
        • Crackier segments of the fandom have even created inter-continuity ships - i.e. crossover ships with people from different shows. Please note that all of the shows take place at least 10 years after the original series ends, and in the case of 5D, it takes place DECADES later. Yu-Gi-Oh is, by far, the weirdest fandom in terms of shipping.
          • Someone hasn't seen the Kingdom Hearts fanbase....
          • The Pokemon fandom called, they want their title back...
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: The Japanese dub had some epic orchestrated pieces like Passionate Duelist.
  • Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The ending of the series is a mix of this and out-and-out Tear Jerker.
  • Cult Classic: Dub-wise, it's one of 4-Kids' few decent dubs, and for its original version, it's a masterpiece that has yet to be surpassed by any of its spin offs.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Kaiba, Yami Malik, Yami Bakura, and even Yami Yugi—incidentally, almost all of them wear leather pants. (It's surprising the Abridged song "Leather Pants" has nothing to do with this.)
    • Kaiba is arguably the anime equivalent of Draco himself. Remember in the manga he was an antagonist, him and Mokuba trying to kill Yugi and his friends several times. The manga also didn't have the anime's Filler Arcs, so whatever heroic tendencies he demonstrated in such are absent too. Besides his stint of being a villain, he's a supreme Jerkass at any turn. Yet he still became the Breakout Character. Being Tall, Dark and Snarky is a big factor in that, seeing as how Evil Is Cool.
  • Designated Villain: Dinosaur Ryuzaki/Rex Raptor. Most of the early villains were jerks who just happened to get Yugi involved to please their own ego, rather than the later villains who had much more elaborate plans. In the manga and the early episodes of the anime, while a bit of a jerk, Dinosaur Ryuzaki wasn't really a bad guy. The later episodes of the anime portrayed him as Haga's partner in crime. Hell, he practically advises Jonouchi against dueling Roba! You'd think he'd have been happy to see him lose, but no. He's also pretty pissed when he learns Jonouchi lost his Red-Eyes to Seeker.
    • Vivian Wong in the KC Grand Prix filler arc is billed as one of its prominent antagonists along with Zigfried Von Schroeder and his brother Leon (the latter of whom isn't an actual villain), but she doesn't actually do anything all that antagonistic aside from acting like an annoying and cocky Loony Fan, being a Stalker with a Crush on Yugi and Kaiba, and having one major Jerk Ass moment towards Grandpa. Her first "offense" is simply being careless and bumping into Rebecca by complete accident, though she's not apologetic for it and blames Rebecca instead. Afterwards she's given scorn and insults by Anzu and Rebecca for daring to flirt with Yugi, who very clearly has no interest in her, rendering her not a threat to any potential romance. Even her worst act is easily fixable and not taken all that seriously by the characters, making one wonder why they're expected to put any investment in rooting against her at all when she's pretty much a Joke Character.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Seto Kaiba. Was first a one-shot antagonist of the day, then returned as an Arc Villain, then became an Anti-Villain, an Anti-Hero, and The Rival to the main character, with a past life of his own that tied deeply into the Pharaoh's forgotten memories. In the first anime adaptation he was made the Big Bad, and in the second he's the Deuteragonist.
    • Interestingly enough, the same could be said of the card game, which was only meant to be featured in a single arc but got so popular they had to base the entire series around it. Yay.
    • Bandit Keith. He was a secondary villain in the Duelist Kingdom arc but is popular among many fans and even Takahashi himself stated he's one of his favorite antagonists in the series next to Kaiba.
    • In terms of actual cards, there's the Dark Magician Girl, because she was powerful and very pretty. She even appears in the spin-off series Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, as well as a cameo in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, another spin-off.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Bakura loses about 30 pounds of baby fat when he transforms into Yami Bakura.
    • Conversely, Marik gains about 30 pounds of muscle.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Yugi/Yami Yugi, Jounouch/Kaiba, and just about every combination of Bakura, Marik, Dark Bakura and/or Dark Marik. On the hetero side, Yami Yugi/Dark Magician Girl (or Atem/Mana), Shizuka/Kaiba, Isis/Kaiba, Mai/Yugi, and among others.
  • First Installment Wins: The original manga is seen by many as the best product in the franchise to this day, for good reason.
    • Third Installment Wins - the second series anime adaptation is still the iconic and definitive Yu-Gi-Oh! media in the minds of many. Among Western fans this is assisted by 4Kids at least making an effort to make their changes to the dub work (see Woolseyism below), while subsequent dubs have seen a lot more Adaptation Decay. 4Kids themselves recognize this and cater to the fans through scripted duels at conventions with the series' voice actors.
  • Foe Yay: Let's see. Kaiba spent most of Season Zero either spying or stalking Yugi to see if anyone was trying to defeat him in a card game, can't go more than four episodes without sending his top minions to attack Yugi's friends and family in an attempt to defeat him, and spent millions of dollars developing advanced hologram technology and building a sky scraper for the sole purpose of defeating him. And we haven't even gotten to Duel Monsters yet.
    • Season Zero also has lines like this:

Kaiba: Looks like we really are connected by the thread of destiny. Try to cut it, but it cannot be broken...A thread that entangles us.

    • Also comes up between Jounouchi and Kaiba. Kaiba refuses to acknowledge Joey as a duelist, Joey blusters at him, Kaiba insults and ignores him, and Joey has potentially homoerotic dreams about being defeated by him. Certain parts of fandom have fun with that.
      • Note that the dream is nowhere near so homoerotic in the manga. The anime tends to ham this sort of thing up.
    • Marik and Yami Bakura's pissing-contest-turned-alliance definitely counts. The scene where they first meet veritably crackles with sexual tension.
    • Kaiba also get the rare male/female version of this with Ishizu/Isis in Season 2. Her repeated attempts at beating an acceptance of his past into his head read like romantic interest to a decent-sized part of the fandom.
  • Fridge Brilliance: You'll get a lot of this, about the series' concepts in general, if you do a little bit of study on ancient Egypt. For example, the ancient Egyptian concept of duality; that nothing can exist without its equal but opposite double.
  • Fridge Horror: Yami Bakura has a creepy, evil-themed occult deck. Okay. Kazuki Takahashi says that decks reflect the hearts and souls of their owners. Okay. Now, whose deck was that in the first place?
    • It could just mean that Ryou's something of a Nightmare Fetishist.
      • He actually admits that in the manga at one point. Cue Jonouchi freaking out a bit.
    • Or imagine what happened to all the souls at the end of the Doma arc returning to their bodies? Imagine a ten thousand year old soul returning to a corpse.. zombie apocalypse anyone?
    • Pegasus' love for his Toon Monsters may come off as creepy at first, but realizing why Pegasus declares them immortal, claims they never die, that they've never betrayed or hurt him, or states they are the perfect lifeform can be potentially horrifying. It's not just about how cartoon characters can dodge any attack, but also how much of an impact Cyndia's death had on him... he pretty much moved back into childhood on a mental level, where everything was still good and innocent, and attempted to deny death by embracing his immortal creations.
  • Game Breaker: Pegasus' Toons and Thousand-Eyes Restrict, Five-Headed Dragon, the God Cards, the Seal of Orichalcos.
  • Genius Bonus: Orichalcum is a legendary metal used as currency in Atlantis.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: "Bandit" Keith is generally considered amusing... in America!
    • Actually, the freaking creator Kazuki Takahashi mentioned that he liked Bandit Keith in the US Shonen Jump's second issue.
  • Growing the Beard: The Death-T arc in the original manga, marking Kaiba's ascension to Big Bad and Yugi finally revealing the existence of Yami Yugi to his friends. From then on, things got less episodic and more plot-oriented. Although some fans wish they'd continued playing other games rather than just the monster card game, but Word of God justifies this as he was running out of ideas for games to be played anyway.
    • The Battle City Tournament Arc is where the anime became less of a Duelist of the Episode or Two and far more dramatic and plot-driven, particularly halfway through with Yugi's duel against Strings and all the events that followed.
  • Ho Yay: Goes without saying.
  • Jerk Sue: Kaiba, in the anime. In the manga, he learns his lesson at the end of Battle City, and his only appearance after that is a cameo in the final arc. In the anime, he never learns his lesson, gets an entire Filler Arc and large parts of two more to himself, takes down two anime-exclusive Big Bads (though people didn't really complain about these since they were both Crowning Moments), and even gets a chance to humiliate Jonouchi one last time.
  • Kick the Dog: During a duel using the Orichalcos, Weevil makes the mistake of claiming he has Yugi's soul in his hand, then tearing it in front of Yami Yugi (which was really a normal bug monster card, that made it much worse as he was using it as a way to mess with the already broken duelist), this does not end well for Weevil.
  • Like You Would Really Do It: Tea says this practically word for word to the Rare Hunter who threatens to drop a crate on her head if she doesn't shut up.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Pegasus. During Duelist Kingdom, even Kaiba fears and respects him. Also in GX against Chronos and Napoleon, who ambush him with the pleas to accept them into Industrial Illusions. In order to get rid of them, he duels against the two, but not before riling them up to deplete each other's Life Points with a seemingly innocent offer.
    • Pegasus was more of a subversion of a Magnificent Bastard in the original series. He may appear to be one, when really he's just a big cheater at the game he created in the first place, albeit a cheater with just enough magnificence to at least work that to his best advantage. He seems to have gotten better by GX.
    • The biggest Magnificent Bastard in the series is Yami "Spirit of the Ring" Bakura, who pulled off a Gambit Roulette which took over 200 episodes/chapters to complete.
    • Dartz had 10,000 years to complete his master plan, and it shows. He's set everything up so that no matter whether he and his minions win or lose, he still wins. He is the richest and most powerful man in the world owning a tiny piece of every company on Earth, and has enough capital to buy out Kaiba-Corp for no other reason than to provoke Kaiba. He has supernatural powers that outshine anything Yami Yugi has in his arsenal (The Power of Friendship excluded, naturally), has assembled the most broken deck in the series, and is an Implacable Man who survived monster armies, Egyptian Gods and the loss of his own soul before he was defeated.
  • Mary Sue: In pretty much all the video games based around the franchise, your character will usually be a blank slate with no personality, no relevant backstory and no dialogue. However, they will inevitably become best friends with the heroes, if they aren't already, will become an excellent duelist capable of defeating the best duelists in the franchise, and will become The Hero of the game and defeat the villains while the anime heroes act as cheerleaders. Most prevalent in The Sacred Cards and Reshef of Destruction, where your hero is the one who defeats the villains (including Marik, Bandit Keith, Pegasus, and the Rare Hunters), can control the God Cards (and gets all three of them to boot), duel all the supporting characters of the anime and defeat them, all the while of which Joey, Kaiba and Yugi are next to useless—not to mention that you will also eventually duel and defeat them.
  • Memetic Hair: Yugi's & Kemo's.
  • Memetic Mutation: Yugi's hair.
    • Futsukushii...
    • Kaiba's face chin from the legendary episode 200. Heck, just the episode itself for its mind blowing animation.
    • DORO MONSTA KAADO, ORE NO TURN and ENEMY CONTROLLER probably count too.
      • ↑, ↑, ↓, ↓, ←, →, ←, →, B, A!
    • AIBOOOOO! (Explanation: Yugi's soul is stolen during the DOMA arc, and it was partially the Pharaoh's fault. The Pharaoh... does not take it well. The scene where he screamed "AIBOOOOOO!" [his nickname for Yugi, meaning 'partner'] rapidly became a meme.)
    • In Japan, the green hairstyle of Seto and Noah is compared and even referred to as a cabbage. A few examples ...
    • What time is it?
    • What does Pot of Greed do again?

"Greed is good!"

    • According to the Japanese fandom, the pharaoh is pretty much obsessed with silver.
    • Pretty much the entire scene where Yami goes completely batshit on Haga/Weevil just for joking about killing Yugi counts as a meme, what with the insane amount of remixes it's gotten.
    • "SNOT HIM!"
    • TELL ME!
      • Oh, you'll find out! I'm about to summon it!
    • Ittekimasu~!
    • YOU CAN'T WIN X.
      • The pharaoh is the world's biggest musical fan.
    • A 4chan frequenter had a habit of making "If my post number ends in 5" bets accompanied by pictures of Yami Yugi from Season Zero and consistently winning (or if it were funnier, losing). He was then dubbed the "King of GETs. Apparently when they meant "King of Games", that includes forum games.
  • Mind Screw: The Memory World arc is a mild version. In general, things make sense and you can follow what's going on, but some really bizarre stuff happens too.
    • Shadi, good lord.
  • Misaimed Fandom: Various Kaiba fans. A troubled past alone does not a Woobie make. Especially when you're one of the top-ranked duelists AND the richest man in the world, and tend to be pretty apathetic towards other people's suffering at times.
    • Not to mention the card game. The main point of Yu-Gi-Oh! was originally intended to be friendship. Unfortunately, the children's card game element got out of control and is now the dominant aspect of the franchise, while the friendship aspects which are still present are regarded as Narm.
  • Misblamed: Fans who complain about 4Kids skipping the very first series. This series is a different show based on the same manga—it's not in continuity with the show they did dub, and directly contradicts it in several places.
    • Indeed, it should be noted that they were different shows made by different companies—4Kids did not buy the rights to the Toei animation, and thus never dubbed it.
  • Moe: Once you get past the crazy hair, it's difficult not to go "Aww, lookit" with Yugi.
    • Rebecca.
    • Cyndia, especially as a child.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Yami Marik could be said to have been born on the other side of this. He proves this by attempting to stab a comatose Odion, and then with the merciless, sadistic Mind Rape and torture he puts Mai through.
    • Yami Bakura's plan to resurrect Zorc into the modern world so that he may tear it apart qualifies and rule over it in total darkness, as does his involvement with Zorc's rampage in Ancient Egypt, where the Dark God slaughters many innocents, including children.
    • Seto Kaiba crossed it in the manga's Death T arc when he put his own little brother Mokuba through a penalty game not unlike what he himself had suffered through at the hands of Yami Yugi. There was chance of a voluntary redemption after that, so it's just as well that his heart got shattered.
    • Seto's stepfather, Gozaburo Kaiba, goes over the line in the virtual world filler arc when he coldly disowns his biological son Noah for being of no use to him, and then launches nuclear warheads around the world and create an apocalypse just to get Kaiba Corp. shut down and destroy Seto's legacy.
    • You always knew that Dartz would dispose of any of his servants at anytime and that his plan involved the sacrifice of billions of monster and human souls from several millenia, but to find out that he messed with his three subordinates' childhoods just for them to join him while blaming it on someone else that proved how sick he was.
    • Pegasus' treatment of the Kaiba brothers, especially after he takes Seto's soul. It flat out gets a This Is Unforgivable! response from Yugi.
    • The High Priest of Darkness' murder of Kisara. Made worse in the anime when the blow was intended for Seto, his own son!
  • Narm Charm: Half of the charm in this increasingly outlandish romp of a series is made up by the sheer levels of scenery-chewing attained by some of the voice actors.

"AIBOU WA DOKO DAAAA??!!"

    • And then there's the very concept of the show itself—ancient Egyptian magic is brought back to life in the 20th century and the reincarnations of the ancient priests and warlords who controlled that magic battle each other to determine the fate of the world once again...by using a collectible trading card game as a medium through which to channel their powers.
      • Or (pre- Magic and Wizards Duel Monster takeover), any (penalty) game that gives Yami Yugi excuse to mentally or physically screw you over if he wins.
    • The 4Kids version of the show is this by some. Mostly the ones who came into the series via the dubbed version.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Relinquished and Thousand-Eyes Restrict, and possibly Pegasus crazy Toon Monsters. In the anime, his out-of-nowhere Slasher Smile during the duel with Yugi could also qualify. Then there's every scene with the Millennium Eye involved...
    • Also the Death-T amusement park, Yami Marik, and Zorc's unusally placed dragon head.
  • Relationship Writing Fumble: Jounouchi and Mai are "Just Friends". Yeah, sure.
  • Real Women Never Wear Dresses: Tea's no duelist. How dare she.
    • Oddly enough, she often wears skirts or shorts. She never does wear dresses.
  • Ron the Death Eater: A lot of Kaiba fans have seen Yugi and his gang of friends as this, either for finding their friendship spiel lame in comparison to his angst and love when he snarks on them even when he gets to the point of a Hannibal Lecture, or that they're in fact just a bunch of jerks who don't care to understand what he's been through (who cares if he never really lets them know what he's been through?)
  • The Scrappy: Anzu, chiefly for Die for Our Ship reasons, or because her "friendship speeches" (which she actually doesn't make any more of than any other main hero in the cast.) There's actually a fanfic about that: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1962963/1/A_Public_Service_Announcment
    • Rebecca, until her makeover in season 4. Vivian Wong in season 5 is also one for those who are not amused by her Fan Girl antics.
  • Smug Snake: Good lord, Noah Kaiba and Bandit Keith.
    • Kaiba back when he was a Big Bad.
    • The Big Five qualify too. Kaiba even called them out on it with some choice words.
    • Zigfried Von Shroeder. He's not particularly bad at what he does, but he's not as good as he thinks he is, and gets completely outplayed by Kaiba.
  • So Bad It's Good: The Toei anime's production value, which suffers from generally sloppy animation quality and some amateurish voice acting—yes, there is such a thing in Japan, anime nuts. There's a REASON this series was never dubbed and has no connection to the second anime, after all.
  • Tear Jerker: Here's a fun game to play. Watch the entire series, familiarize yourself with the characters and bonds between them (especially the one between Yuugi and Atem). Then, watch the ending. Try not to cry.
  • Uncanny Valley: Ryou in the manga, especially during Duelist Kingdom.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Probably why Black Magician name was changed for the dub.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Almelda.
  • Villain Sue: Dartz was responsible for almost every major event in world history, was present in Ancient Egypt long before anyone knew anything about it, successfully laid plans to cause one of the Pharaoh's few fair losses, has an easy time with Mind Rape regardless of the victim, was Easily Forgiven by his family in death... Did we leave anything out?
  • Wangst: Kaiba, after losing Battle City to Yugi. Seriously, you want to blow up the island and end the tournament prematurely just because you lost!? Get over it!
  • The Woobie: Everyone. With one or two exceptions, pretty much everyone has undergone or is currently undergoing bullying, abuse, betrayal, torture, genocide, or any combination of the above, and is either broken as a result, or refusing to let it break them (which paradoxically makes them more of a woobie). You'll pick out your favorite woobie early enough in the series.
    • No one is a bigger Woobie than Ryo Bakura though, who spends the entire series under the control of a sadistic ancient spirit.
    • Iron Woobie: Yugi, Joey.
    • Stoic Woobie: Mai, Yami Yugi.
    • Jerkass Woobie: Kaiba, Pegasus, and for a more extreme version, normal Marik.
  • Woolseyism: The dub's "Shadow Realm", an alternate dimension that may or may not even be Hell, where the Shadow Games take place and people's minds, souls or entire bodies can be banished. The original anime contained no such concept, there were just "Dark Games" and people who lost died or went comatose. The "creation" of the Shadow Realm gave 4Kids an excuse to Never Say "Die" while still keeping the Dark Games and their fatal results, and also was a bit easier to swallow in terms of suspension of disbelief, that is people being banished to and coming back from an alternate dimension instead of people dying, bodies fading into nothingness, and then somehow they come back to life.
    • The Accent Adaptation with Joey and Bakura. In the Japanese Joey had rude and loose speech while Bakura was polite and formal. In the dub Joey has a Brooklyn accent and Bakura is British.
    • During Yugi's duel with Mai in the original version, Yugi's mind was only focused on dueling Pegasus, causing him to become cocky and not take Mai seriously. In the dub, Yugi is holding back Yami because he's still traumatized by Yami nearly killing Kaiba in the last duel and isn't sure he can trust the spirit. The dub also foreshadows the fate of Pegasus's wife by having him give an internal monologue about it, which his VA Darren Dunstan delivers excellently. In the original version it was a filler conversation between Yugi's friends and Bakura.
    • Pegasus' plan behind the Duelist Kingdom tournament in the original version was simply to defeat Yugi in a duel so that the Big Five, with ownership of Kaiba Corp, could sell the company's assets to him and he could use it's holographic technology to create a virtual image of his deceased lover through use of a card with her picture on it that he'd made. In the dub, this is still the way he plans on creating a new form for his lover but he also now seeks all 7 Millennium Items so that he can open the door to the afterlife and bring his lover's soul out as well, sealing it in the hologram body so that she lives again. This gives him a secondary motive for getting Yugi to participate in his tournament - he wants to take his Millennium Puzzle. This not only makes sense seeing how it turns out the Millennium Items can indeed open the door to the afterlife, but it raises the stakes in the conflict since bringing the Items together could also risk letting out the shadow powers and bringing Zorc back into the world.
    • In Season 2, Marik wants to kill Yami Yugi and doesn't care about the Millennium Puzzle, while in the dub he wants to take the Millennium Puzzle from him and is only allowed to do so by beating him in a duel, by the laws of Ancient Egypt. This gave a convenient Hand Wave to the Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him problem Marik has, he can't just kill Yami Yugi/banish him to the Shadow Realm, he has to beat him in a duel first, then he'll kill/banish him. Additionally with the Shadow Realm, Marik's plans to kill Yami Yugi were rather foolish in the original Japanese since Yami Yugi is an ancient spirit inhabiting the Millennium Puzzle, you effectively can't kill him by chopping off his legs or drowning him, you'll just kill his host. In the dub, Marik plans to send Yami Yugi to the Shadow Realm, so 4Kids made his death traps magical in nature and thus they pose a danger to him.
    • Though it isn't actually part of the translation, the dub changes the images on a lot of the cards for various reasons, and some come out looking cooler for it. In fact, with some cards use the US anime designs over the Japanese anime designs, even for their Japanese real-world releases. Some examples include Mystic Box, Brain Control and Shadow Spell, all of which look much more vibrant and mystical than the original Japanese versions.
    • The music is universally awesome. The Egyptian God Card theme is an iconic track, consisting of Ominous Latin Chanting and a full orchestra. It also helped sell Obelisk's Establishing Character Moment, which the track was quite obviously written for because the music and the action line up perfectly.
  1. ↑ It was hardly every duel. Sure, he had some ridiculous top-decking (Exodia comes to mind), but he's also won plenty of duels with carefully-planned strategy initiated turns before the end
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