History Literature / TheNeverendingStory

* ABoyAndHisX: Atreyu starts off as A Boy and His Horse, with his talking horse Artax as his only companion. Artax's loss in the Swamp of Sadness is what makes Atreyu realize how truly arduous his journey will be. Later, the story becomes a Boy and His Luckdragon when Atreyu rescues and befriends Falcor. The two become inseparable for the rest of the book.

* NotEvilJustMisunderstood: Ygramul the Many is spoken of as a force of evil by the greenskins, who sing a song about the danger of falling into his clutches if they should venture into the dead mountains. Despite this, he is just a creature who needs food to survive like any other, although his meals tend to be rather large and some of them are sentient, like Falcor. He gives Atreyu some helpful advice; he must measure his quest in terms of The Childlike Empress's life and not his, which means he can't afford to take months or years to find her a cure. He even gives Atreyu the means to reach the southern oracle instantly, although the means are fatal; his poison bite allows the victim to teleport to anywhere their heart desires. Ygramul can't help this as it's simply his nature, and he suggests that it's [[TheEasyWayOrTheHardWay still a better deal]] than sitting around waiting for the Childlike Empress to die and the nothing to overtake all of Fantastica.

** The top of the Ivory Tower, where the Childlike Empress herself resides, is shaped like an enormous magnolia bud. Its petal-wall sometimes "blossoms" to reveal the Empress herself seated in the center, a sight Falcor has witnessed.

* UnbuiltTrope: The second half of the book deconstructs the idea of [[spoiler: TheChosenOne TrappedInAnotherWorld. After physically entering Fantastica and rebuilding it, Bastian's newfound ego runs amok. Rather than heal the world, he does tremendous harm to feed his power fantasies, leading to a number of tragic events. He is ultimately only able to go home when Atreyu and Falcor selflessly agree to fix all the damage he did]]. But the book predates these tropes becoming very commonplace in children's fiction by a wide margin.

** The AURYN can grant any wish, but [[spoiler:does so at the cost of Bastian's memory of his human life. At first Bastian isn't particularly concerned about the loss; by the time he finally realises that without human memories he will be stuck forever in Fantasia as a madman, he's down to his most basic memories]].

** Fantasia itself, if the incident at the Star Cloister is any indication. Bastian uses an enchanted stone to produce a light so blinding it pierces the heavens, and the space beyond is revealed to be... ''the attic of Bastian's school''. In other words, he is looking out through the pages of the book.
** The Ivory Tower, which is basically a mountain the size of a city nearer its base, is always at the center of Fantasia. However, since Fantasia has no borders and is infinite, its center is nebulous. Ivory Tower has been stated to be equally near to and far from everywhere in Fantasia and that how far they must travel is dependent on the state of the travelers.

* InDefenceOfStoryTelling: The human neglect of story-telling doesn't just make Fantasia sick, but our world too. Bastian's job as storyteller is to "make both worlds well".

* ShoutOut: Quite a few meta-examples, meant to imply that other famous authors had at one time visited Fantasia:

** [[ShoutOut/ToShakespeare William Shakespeare]] is mentioned by one of the knights as having visited Fantasia in the past, and the knight then quotes a song Shakespeare taught him (from ''Twelfth Night'') that begins:

* SpiritAdvisor: The Purple Buffalo that Atreyu didn't kill in his ritual hunt to officially become a hunter becomes this in Atreyu's dreams. He is the one who points Atreyu to Morla as a thanks for not killing him and instead answering the call of Cairon, whose job was to send him on the mission to save Fantasia.

The story purposefully has lots of loose ends (in the form of left-off side stories and secondary characters), to drive home the point that it ''is'' a "Neverending Story". In addition, there was a scene in the original novel where to convince Bastian that this was [[UpTheRealRabbitHole "real"]], the Childlike Empress tells the Historian to read the story over. Which includes what Bastian had done that day. This gets them all stuck into a time loop until Bastian accepts it and enters the story.

The story purposefully has lots of loose ends (in the form of left-off side stories and secondary characters), to drive home the point that it ''is'' a "Neverending Story". In addition, there was a scene in the original novel where to convince Bastian that this was [[UpTheRealRabbitHole "real"]], the Childlike Empress tells the Historian to read the story over. Which includes what Bastian had done that day. This gets them all stuck into a timeloop until Bastian accepts it and enters the story.

Has received [[Film/TheNeverendingStory three major film adaptations]], though only the first film tried to follow the plot of the novel, being an adaptation of roughly the first half, with the second only making a few loose references to the book's plot (mainly the second half), and the third one going off to do its own thing entirely. There was also a short-lived AnimatedAdaptation, and a TV miniseries called ''Tales From The Neverending Story'' that created an entirely new plot loosely based on the premise of the book and its characters. More recently, the Creator/WarnerBros fighting game ''VideoGame/MultiVersus'' was announced to have The Nothing as the major antagonist/driving force.

* NameAmnesia: After making his final wish, [[spoiler:Bastian forgets the last memory he had, his own name. Afterwards, the narration refers to him as "the boy with no name".]]

* NameAmnesia: In the final chapter, [[spoiler:Bastian overuses the powers of AURYN (which are powered by his memories) and forgets his own name, condemning himself to an eternity as a nameless shade. Fortunately for him, his friend-turned-enemy-turned-friend finds him and gives him at least his name back.]]

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: And this after the villain is dead! [[spoiler: After Gmork dies, Atreyu gets too close and Gmork's jaws clamp down on his leg, holding him fast. Intended to keep him from leaving as the Nothing moved in, it also keep him from walking into the Nothing, which attracts Fantasticans who get close to it. This allows Falkor to arrive in time to save him.]]

* DubNameChange: The German name of Faulkur is "Fuchur" /Foo-Xoor/ you can imagine why there was a name change.

* GiantFlyer: Falkor.

** The words on the back of AURYN: DO WHAT YOU WISH. For Bastian, it was a double sided rule as his wishes led him both good and bad.

** The Nothing. There are quite literally no words to adequately describe it, as shown in the first chapter when one of the messengers struggles through describing a lake being replaced by nothing. Not like a hole or a dried-up lake, because then there would be a hole or a dried lake bed there. No, it's ''nothing''. And when Atreyu takes a look at it from afar, he can't even glance at the Nothing head-on, and his eyes hurt just from seeing it, because his brain can't comprehend it. It isn't just blackness, because black is a thing that can be comprehended. It isn't even empty space which matter once occupied, because empty space is still ''something'' that can be occupied. It is, long story short, something that ''should not be''... because it ''isn't''.

* AllStoriesAreRealSomewhere: Because Fantastica is a land literally made of stories, Bastian finds that his storytelling can bring things into existence. Not only that, if he tells a story of something set in the past, that something will have ''always'' existed.

* InformedAttractiveness: Gaya, the Dark Princess, is described by Gmork as "very beautiful... to me anyway". Given that her admirer is a ferocious werewolf who loves the sinister and fiendish, a human might find her to be either a [[EvilIsSexy malevolent yet alluring temptress]] or a stark reminder that other beings' preferences may be a ''tad'' different than our own.

** Bastian spends 100 years in Fantasia while only about 12 hours pass on Earth.

* InexplicablySpeaksFluentAlien: When Bastian enters Fantastica, he has no problem conversing with anyone.

** The AURYN can grant any wish, but does so at the cost of Bastian's memory of his human life. At first Bastian isn't particularly concerned about the loss; by the time he finally realises that without human memories he's condemned to forever stay in Fantasia as a madman, he's down to his most basic memories.

** The AURYN can grant any wish, but does so at the cost of Bastian's memory of his human life. When Bastian finally figures this out, he's down to his most basic memories.

* VoiceForTheVoiceless: Interesting variant on this. The Childlike Empress only hears The Old Man of Wandering Mountain as if she remembered that he just spoke. His mouth never moves.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: And this after the villain is dead! [[spoiler: After Gmork dies, Atreyu gets too close and Gmork's jaws clamp down on his leg, holding him fast. Intended to keep him from leaving as the Nothing moved in, it also keep him from walking into the Nothing, which attracts Fantasticans who get close to it. Thus, Falkor and Atreyu arrive in time to save him.]]

* HardWorkHardlyWorks: Hero Hynreck is a professional hero who spent his whole life being the best at everything he does, but he can't hold a candle against Bastian, who outmatches him with ease by virtue of holding AURYN.

** Bastian has it invoked on him.

* LogicBomb: Why Bastian's plan to become Emperor is doomed. As Argax eplains, AURYN's power comes from the Childlike Empress and you cannot use her power to strip her of her power.

*** Smerg's lair is said to be in a land called Morgul, which is a name applied to multiple places and objects in MiddleEarth.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: And this after the villain is dead! [[spoiler: After Gmork dies, Atreyu gets too close and Gmork's jaws clamp down on his leg, holding him tight, unable to move. Intended to keep him from leaving as the Nothing moved in, it also helped to keep him from walking into the Nothing, which attracts Fantasticans, when it came closer, allowing Falkor to find Atreyu and save him.]]

** In his own language, Atreyu means "Son of All". This is in comparison to Bastian, who feels like the son of no one.

** 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.