Which ones would those be?
Fate Extra (the Netflix one), Tsukihime: Lunar Legend, and Studio Deen's adaptation of Fate Stay Night. While there are other series that are actually in the franchise that are also questionable or niche, these are the only ones that I feel are actually bad.
... I have many questions about how you took that path
I saw a really funny instagram meme about Carnival Phantasm and decided to watch it without any prior knowledge or context with my irl best friend and we loved it, so we decided to watch a bunch of other stuff at random. I think Fate Zero was the last thing I watched, and that was some time last year.
And even as far as "actually bad" goes, people are generally unkind to even animes that are just kind of okay. Fate/Extra Encore wasn't received very well and neither was Apocrypha.
I see a lot of mixed opinions of Apocrypha. My dad says that he liked it a lot and even complimented the animation, but I also see a lot of people saying it was just decent or disappointing.
It is genuinely disorienting to the average fan where most series are either entirely self contained to a single anime, or have -- at most -- a single spin-off that covers a prequel/sequel or maybe an alternate timeline. Fate has a ton of stuff, and the naming convention doesn't even really tell you anything about what's what.
While I agree that the naming can be confusing, I find it to be barely more confusing than Mobile Suit Gundam (in terms of naming only. I haven't actually seen much of the series, only the millions of titles while I scroll through Crunchyroll).
There's no obvious reason why Fate/Zero (as a title) is connected to Fate/UBW-SN-HF
there isn't, but it's not impossible to infer that. If my mom can do it, I have faith that others can too.
It's genuinely very confusing
I know it is, but I feel that some people make it more confusing than it needs to be, from both fans and people who haven't watched the series. It also doesn't help that the series is based off of a visual novel, which is hardly even a concept in some people's minds.
if there's one thing I love about Fate in general is that it has some really amazing OST.
100% agree. some of the best music I've heard from a series is from Fate.