History Literature / TheNeverendingStory

* AnimatedArmor: Xayide's guards are this, being nothing but empty suits of armor animated by her magic.

** Bastian is TheChosenOne to stop The Nothing.

* EatDirtCheap: The entire race of the Rock-Chewers, who subsist on a diet of rocks and stone.

** One can easily replicate what Atreyu saw. to do so one must simply close their eyes as they normally do at night. However try to focus on what you see and well, you can't. In other words, ThePowerOfTheVoid, at its most frightening form.
** There's also the Manipulators, Gmork's employers, who wish to drive humanity mad with lies and delusions born out of Fantasticans who have been erased by the Nothing.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Even evil Fantasticans respect AURYN and its bearer.
** Gaya, the Princess of Darkness. Though she is never shown as a character, [[spoiler: she sweet talks and captures Gmork for his EvilPlan to destroy her home of Fantastica and herself.]]

* ExtremeDoormat: Xayide acts this way towards Bastian, as part of her gambit to manipulate him.

** Stay away from the Nothing, or you'll get what the Bark Trolls did. Even Gmork, magically chained, refused Atreyu's offer of food, preferring to die of hunger before the Nothing could get to him. According to him, a Fantastican who enters the Nothing enters the human world as a fantasy that no one believes in, that is a lie.
* FisherKing: The Childlike Empress.

* GiantFlyer: Falkor. It is implied that his body is so light that he can swim through the air, even without wings.
* AGodAmI: [[spoiler:Bastian driven semi-insane by excessive wishing decides that he should become the new Emperor -- like dozens of saviors before him, who are now all stuck in Fantastica as idiot children.]]

* HeroicBSOD: Bastian, which drives him to utilize his last wishes a bit more carefully.

** The Yskalnari, being so much a community that they lack any form of individualism, when a member of the crew dies not only does nobody seem to care, nobody even seems to notice.

* IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace: The Swamps of Sadness and Spook City.

* TheIlluminati: The "Manipulators" spoken of by G'mork, implied to live in and, to a great extent, control the human world.

* ItWasWithYouAllAlong:
** [[spoiler:In both Atreyu's quest ''and'' Bastian's.]]
** In Bastian's case, his ability to enter Fantastica and to leave it was with him all along, [[spoiler:though he had to read the story and then live as a part of it until he could make use of either. In the former case, all he had to do was give the Childlike Empress a name by calling it aloud in the human world. In the latter case, all he had to do to return to the human world was to give up AURYN of his own free will.]]

--> ''You wish for something, you've wanted it for years, and you're sure you want it, as long as you know you can't have it. But if all at once it looks as though your wish might come true, you suddenly find yourself wishing you had never wished for any such thing.''

* KnightInShiningArmor: Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn. Hynrek might also qualify.

* {{Manipulative B|astard}}itch: Xayide.

-->'''Bastian:''' Where are we Moon Child?\\

* TheMirrorShowsYourTrueSelf: The Mirror Gate trial shows your true inner self, which sends most would-be heroes screaming in the other direction. Atreyu looks in the Mirror Gate and sees [[spoiler:Bastian.]]

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler: Bastian, after turning to the dark side for a while and nearly killing Atreyu....in fact, he thought he flat-out HAD killed Atreyu, which makes his "My God, What Have I Done?" even more dramatic.]]
* MysticalWhiteHair: The immortal Childlike Empress.

* NoEnding: The book purposefully leaves almost all subplots -- such as what happened to the four messengers, Cairon's fate after meeting Atreyu, the adventures of Hero Hyrneck, what became of Ghemmal and of Sikanada -- hanging. Hence the title. However, Bastian's main plot is resolved.

** The point of the book was that the book Bastian was reading was luring Bastian into breaking the fourth wall of the book. His scream is heard in the book, Atreyu enters into his image in the second gate to the Southern Oracle, and Bastian actually sees the Childlike Empress as Atreyu first saw her. Eventually, Bastian broke through the fourth wall.

* TheNothingAfterDeath: "The Nothing". Characters from Fantastica who are swallowed are "reborn" in the real world - as lies (at least that's what Gmork claims). It's implied that The Nothing is caused by people in the real world becoming less honest and happy.
* ObviouslyEvil: Xayide, although [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter Bastian fails to realize this]].

* OnlyOneName: Everyone in Fantastica.
* OurDragonsAreDifferent: Falkor is an Eastern dragon in a story otherwise employing Western characters and other stuff. In addition, there is a western dragon named Smerg.

* PortalBook: The "The Neverending Story" book works as a portal to Fantastica.

* RealityWarper: AURYN identifies what the wearer really and truly wants, and can then guide them on their task or, if they have memories of the human world to give up, turn those wishes into reality. Humans can also warp reality in Fantastica without assistance; since Fantastica is the land of imagination, peopled with beings who cannot fashion anything new, anyone from the real world with a little creativity can do it. If you actually ''tell a story'' in Fantastica, it will become true, and will always have been true, even if history must be changed to accommodate that, because reality and fantasy are one and the same in Fantastica.

** Really700YearsOld: The Childlike Empress is as youthful as her name implies, but has existed as long or longer than Fantastica itself. [[spoiler:Slightly subverted, as on a metaphysically level, giving her a new name makes her a new person, just as Fantastica is reborn whenever it is rescued. As the book itself explains, a story written yesterday can be about something that happened a thousand years old, therefore everything in that story ''is'' a thousand years old to those within the story.]]
* RescueRomance: Subverted with Hero Hynreck, who saved his one true love Princess Oglamar but decided he no longer wanted to marry her.

* SapientSteed: Atreyu's horse Artax, Falkor the luckdragon, who carries Atreyu and on occasion Bastian on his back, and Yikka the talking mule.

* ShiningCity: The Ivory Tower, the Silver City of Amarganth.

*** The dragon Smerg, which sounds an awful lot like [[Literature/TheHobbit Smaug]]
*** Smerg's lair is said to be in a land called Morgul, which is a name applied to multiple places and objects in Middle-Earth [[note]]It is Sindarin for "black magic"[[/note]].

** Grogramann every night.

* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou:
** Bastian looks out at the fourth wall outright of the book he was reading during one chapter...
** And the Childlike Empress outright demands for the Old Man Of Wandering Mountain to read the book that YOU are reading, creating an endless loop based round that one event!
* TheResenter: This is Gmork's reason for wanting to see Fantastica destroyed; the Fantasticans have a world to call home, and he never did.

* YearInsideHourOutside:
** Atreyu spends what he feels is just less than a day at the Southern Oracle but actually a week has passed for everyone outside the Oracle, though it is slightly averted as time did pass for Atreyu as he notices his wounds are significantly healed.

* MageSpecies: Witches are mentioned among the doctors who come to inspect the Childlike Empress, and the inhabitants of Spook City. Xayide is also an evil sorceress. Since none of the natives of Fantastica are truly human, they must be this.

*** Smerg's lair is said to be in a land called Morgul, which is a name applied to multiple places and objects in MiddleEarth [[note]]It is Sindarin for "black magic"[[/note]].

* EvilIsSexy:[[invoked]]
** Gaya, the Dark Princess, while unseen in the book, is said to have been very beautiful...and both her moniker and her status as a princess of Spook City suggests she was probably not a nice person. Although Gmork said she was attractive to ''his'' sensibilities, so who knows if a human being would agree.
** Xayide is described as very alluring, and is also the closest thing the book has to a villain other than the Nothing itself.

* SymbolicWeaponDiscarding: The magical sword Sikanda will leap into Bastian's hand and fight for him whenever he is threatened, making him practically invincible. However, he has been sternly warned never to pull it out himself, but he forcibly draws it to fight Atreyu's well-meaning coup. This causes its blade of light to turn dark, indicating that it's now corrupted and will no longer make sure he's doing the right thing when he wields it. After he kills Atreyu, [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone he comes back to his senses]], and sorrowfully buries Sikanda so it won't cause further harm -- and, more broadly, he stops seeking Fantastica's power and accolades.

* NobodyPoops: {{Averted|Trope}}, {{lampshade|Hanging}}d, and {{discussed|Trope}} by Bastian in the real world while reading the book, where Bastian thinks to himself that the need to go to the bathroom is often one of his most pressing, immediate, and embarrassing needs. During his bathroom trip he remembers how he once asked in class if {{Jesus}} ever peed, which made his classmates laugh and got him in trouble with the teacher. After he goes into Fantastica, it is then played straight.

* NobodyPoops: {{Averted|Trope}}, {{lampshade|Hanging}}d, and {{discussed|Trope}} by Bastian in the real world while reading the book, where Bastian thinks to himself that the need to go to the bathroom is often one of his most pressing, immediate, and embarrassing needs. After he goes into Fantastica, it is then played straight.

** Subverted with Al Tsahir, which [[spoiler:Bastian uses for something else before he can use it for its intended purpose]].