One of the first card games to give the dominating Magic the Gathering a hard time, Yu-Gi-Oh became a massive game around the late nineties
As mentioned with the main protagonists, there is no equivalent in a universal mascot for Magic, leaving it to feel quite bare in the grand scheme of things as fans do not really have a character to get behind as a collective
He is also briefly captured and threatened with being flushed down the toilet by Jaden if he doesn't tell Jaden about what really happened in the Abandoned Dorm with him and Kagemaru, and about Nightshroud
Having a spike in popularity is huge for a card like this, as its an iconic tech that I even had the chance to use over the past 10 years
In theory, this would make Null Monsters incredibly broken- Xyz, Synchro, and the occasional Fusion Summon would become far too easy to pull off
This makes bounce spells incredibly bad against mutations compared to bouncing a creature with a bunch of auras where they normally just all go away