History Literature / Redshirts

* SandWorm: Borgovian Land Worms, who eat two ensigns in the Prologue.

-> ''Within five minutes of getting to my new post I heard three different stories of crew buying the farm on an away mission. Death by falling rock. Death by toxic atmosphere. Death by pulse gun vaporization.''
-->-- '''Maia Duvall'''

* ShoutOut: The name itself is a shoutout to the Trope RedShirt, codified and named by Star Trek. In addition, the very site itself got its own shout out in a NEw York Times article advertising the novel, claiming that the author had himself gotten the name from...Tv Tropes!

* {{Expy}}: Abernathy, Q'eeng, West, Hartnell and Kerensky for [[StarTrek Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Bones, and Chekov]]. [[spoiler: Justified in-universe since ''Chronicles of the Intrepid'' is pretty much a ''Star Trek'' ripoff/remake.]]

** [[spoiler: Hanson, who does nothign most of the book, only to confirm to Dahl that he's the main character.]]

* AMillionIsAStatistic: Lampshaded. An entire planet had to die just so Kerensky could get a flesh-eating bacteria.

* ChekhovsGunman: [[spoiler: In-Universe it's Hester, in that he doesn't have an interesting background or much character development, nor does anyone know his first name, yet in the "real world" he's played by the producer's son, who also happens to be in a coma. Through the liberal application of HollywoodScience and DeusExMachina, Hester and the son are able to switch bodies, leaving the son healthy once again and Hester healed once he was back under control of the Narrative.]]

* [[GunsAreWorthless Pulse Guns Are Worthless]]: Pulse guns only drive Borgovian Land Worms crazy.

* RedShirt: Obviously

* WhatMeasureIsAMook: Quite a large one, when the mooks are the focus characters.
** [[spoiler: The head writer for ''Chronicles of the Intrepid'' suffers a HeroicBSOD over this when he learns that people actually die when he writes death scenes. He gets over it after a dream in which all the Redshirts he's ever killed talk to him and explain that what they hate isn't the fact that he killed them, but the fact that he killed them in idiotic ways and that their deaths served no purpose except to up the dramatic tension.]]

* BlackBox: The box, a microwaved shaped device that if given a sample of any xenobiological problem, will go 'ding' and provide the solution when dramatically appropriate. Truly unusual due to the fact that [[spoiler:even the writer for the show doesn't know where it came from, since it never appears in any scene that is filmed. It just appears out of nowhere so that all the miraculous cures needed in the show (often for Kerensky) are possible.]]

* HollywoodScience: Anytime the Narrative takes control, the science team pulls out the box, which ignores any and all laws of physics to find the solution to the problem, oftentimes producing results that cannot be replicated under any other circumstances. [[spoiler: Also, using black holes to travel back in time/to the real world]]

* [[spoiler: Real World Episode: Dahl and the others travel to the real world in order to get ''Chronicles of the Intrepid'' cancelled. Later subverted when Dahl realizes the people in the "real world" are just as fictional as he and the rest.]]

* ChekhovsGunman: [[spoiler: Hester, in that he's played by the producer's son, who also happens to be in a coma. Through the liberal application of HollywoodScience and DeusExMachina, Hester and the son are able to switch bodies, leaving the son healthy once again and Hester healed once he was back under control of the Narrative.]]
** [[spoiler: Hanson, who confirms to Dahl that he's the main character.]]

* RomanceOnTheSet: A bizarre InUniverse example: [[spoiler: Jenkins, whose wife had been Redshirted years before, sends a love letter to the actress who played her in ''Chronicles of the Intrepid'' when Dahl and the others go to the real world. In one of the epilogues, she then ends up in a relationship with the actor who played ''him''.]]

* AMillionIsAStatistic: Lampshaded. An entire planet had to die just so Kerensky could get a flesh-eating bacteria

* Retirony: Poor Grover, his tour of duty was over in a couple of days, and he was going home to get married. He didn’t stand a chance.

Redshirts is ''very'' trope heavy, and many of them are Played With, Parodied, Lampshaded, Zig Zagged, Subverted, or Double Subverted. Naturally, the examples below contain many spoilers, so tread carefully.

Ensign Andrew Dahl, fresh out of the Academy, has received his first assignment on the Universal Union’s flagship, the ''Intrepid''. His excitement at this very prestigious posting quickly wanes as he discovers something odd about his new ship. His shipmates seems terrified of Captain Abernanthy and his fellow head officers, mysteriously disappearing whenever one of them is around, and everyone is ferrified on the dreaded "Away Missions." Ensign Dahl’s suspicions come to a head when a mysterious figure approaches him in the corridor and warns him to "avoid the Narrative."