Evil Is Sexy: Hotaru, a very attractive antagonist who successfully gets Mugen's attention and nearly manages to poison him by seducing him.

This includes Sara (due to her intense arc), Yatsuha (due to her hilarious appearance and manipulation of Mugen, whom she's shipped with), Yukimaru (a significant figure from Jin's life, also often shipped), and Shino (due bringing out Jin's softer and more romantic side in her bittersweet appearance, again frequently shipped).

Ensemble Dark Horse: Several characters are quite popular despite their brief appearances and are prone to crop up in fanfiction.

Crazy Is Cool: Mugen's nonsensical style of fighting works perfectly for him, and is pretty damn impressive to watch.

Targeting a gold-bearing vessel, Mukuro savagely slaughters all aboard before using explosives to kill his own followers, uncaring as long as he gets to keep all of the loot for himself. Going on to form his own pirate crew, Mukuro murders all aboard a merchant ship and brutally wipes out a village, only allowing the strongest of the young men to survive to serve as hired muscle for his latest scheme.

'Misguided Miscreants' two-parter: Mukuro is a bloodthirsty criminal who tricked Mugen into helping him escape the island they grew up on before betraying him.

Seeking to enhance his skills, he hunted down countless samurai and brutally slaughtered them with Hakkei to satisfy his ego and lust for blood until attempting to do the same to Mugen. Growing arrogant upon his return to Japan, Shoryu murdered another student in a sparring match before wandering the land and killing other dojo leaders.

'Lethal Lunacy': Shoryu, born Ukon, was a samurai who ended up in China and learned the art of 'Hakkei'.

by a burning field of weed, which gets the antagonists all chummy with each other while completely forgetting about whatever they were supposed to do.

Episode 9 ('Beatbox Bandits'), at least towards the end, where the conflict is resolved.

The baseball episode ('Baseball Blues'), as the bizarre plot involves the gang playing baseball against a bunch of Americans intending to invade.

It starts off with Jin and Mugen eating rare mushrooms, and ends with a nuclear explosion and the villain leaping out of his grave, and it is never mentioned again.

The zombie episode ('Cosmic Collisions').

Mugen samurai champloo