Survival of the Fittest/YMMV
General
- Complete Monster: Cody Jenson of V1 after his first two kills. Characters like Danya, Riz, Lenny Priestly, Adam Reeves, Sarah Atwell, Maxwell Lombardi, and Aaron Hughes have all also been referred to as such.
- Crosses the Line Twice: Several scenes, noticably Wade Wilson's rampage and Carson Baye's death.
- Crowning Moment of Awesome: Most characters will get one at some point. Some of the better examples can be found on the relevant page.
- Mary Sue: Plenty of them show up in the application process. Some make it onto the island, but far less than there used to be.
- Narm: Due to the written medium, a poorly-placed typo or the like can utterly ruin a scene's mood. Also, the gore in some scenes is so hilariously over the top and childish (not to mention some of the one-liners...), that it's almost impossible to take seriously. On the other hand...
- Nightmare Fuel: ...some scenes use gore in a skilled enough manner to give the reader a serious case of the willies. A classic example would have to be Damien Carter-Madison's death scene, where he is heavily implied to be dragged into the gates of Hell by his former classmates. It's... unnerving and frightening, to say the least.
- Paranoia Fuel: It's all too easy to start applying the mindsets of characters to your own classmates.
- Tear Jerker: Several, although given the premise, that isn't really surprising.
- World of Woobie: For obvious reasons. Let's just say many, many characters get broken pretty quickly.
Version 1
- Moral Event Horizon: Cody Jensen raping and murdering Madelaine Shirohara, and then accidentally killing Amanda Jones.
Version 2
Version 3
- Alas, Poor Scrappy: The death of Liam Black was considered to be well-written, and genuinely saddening, in spite of the fact that the character was extremely unpopular whilst alive.
- Memetic Badass: Bobby Jacks, who in-game managed to headshot a student from behind without looking at them. This led to tales of Bobby ricocheting bullets Revolver Ocelot-style (which led to the nickname Bocelot,) killing students from several threads away, and firing his gun in v3 and killing a student in v4.
Version 4
- Base Breaker: Maxwell Lombardi. He's either hated for being cliche and over the top, or loved for those exact same reasons.
- Liam Brooks, full stop. Same reasoning as above post-breakdown.
- Ensemble Darkhorse: Mr. Kwong. It's very unusual for a none-student to get much attention (either in or out of character), but you'd be hard pressed to find a handler that doesn't like him.
- Memetic Sex God / Memetic Molester / Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Rosa Fiametta tends to be seen as such tropes by handlers. Your Mileage May Vary whether or not this is a Discredited Meme, however. For a period of time, there was an actual rule on the kink meme about requesting her.
- Moe: Sierra Manning, a cute emotional girl whose cuteness is only amplified by her lisp.
- This trope could also easily explain why Orn "Dutchy" Ayers is so popular on the board. Dutchy is an Icelandic, free-loving comic book nerd who watches soccer and cries Tender Tears over the plight of third-world countries among other things. Add in his in-game posts, which makes many handlers see him as The Woobie, and his habit of wearing a Pointless Band-Aid over his nose, and you have a character who most of the board adores.
- Which makes his mental scarring and subsequent death all that more painful.
- This trope could also easily explain why Orn "Dutchy" Ayers is so popular on the board. Dutchy is an Icelandic, free-loving comic book nerd who watches soccer and cries Tender Tears over the plight of third-world countries among other things. Add in his in-game posts, which makes many handlers see him as The Woobie, and his habit of wearing a Pointless Band-Aid over his nose, and you have a character who most of the board adores.
- Moral Event Horizon: Sarah Atwell's slow, calculated torture of Eve Walker-Luther.
- Alex White's abuse of Rosa in Monsters.
- Portmanteau Couple Name: The broship of Liam "Brook" Brooks and Jason Harris is generally referred to as "Brason", while Garry Villette and Saul Fetteralf are commonly referred to as either "Garul" or "Gaul".
- Sarah Xu and Reiko Ishida, who are often called "Sareiko" when mentioned together.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Jimmy Brennan and Liam "Brook" Brooks both qualify. In Jimmy's case, he was a small kid who got picked on quite a bit, and now he's snapped. Brook was a rather sweet guy, but after being shocked with his greatest fear repeatedly and watching the girl he loved die in front of his very eyes, he's gone off the deep end a little.
Mini
- Cargo Ship: As an officially canonical example from Virtua, no less: Sycanus Appletin and her teddy bear are... rather close. At one point she is shown making out with it.