History Platform / GaiaOnline

* ProngsOfPoseidon: Both types: Water Trident for Type 1 and Demonic Pitchfork for Type 2.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: [[Characters/GaiaOnline So... many... characters.]]

* WrenchWench: Sam

* {{Meganekko}}: Several! Meredith the [[OfficeLady bank teller]], Cindy Donovinh the reporter, and Flynn in the Cash Shop, for starters.
** And arguably Alruna in her office outfit, although it's not so much her glasses she relies on for her appeal...
** Gaia-sama.
** And if you'd [[MyEyesAreUpHere look up]] [[MaleGaze from]] [[GagBoobs Vanessa's tits]]...

** Vladimir Von Helson had a goatee with a SkunkStripe in it.

** One word. [[FanNickname "Sagatha"]].

*** CutenessProximity: Brennivin's reaction to the jellyfish-like demigod [[FanNickname Cutethulhu]].

** Cresento. He crushes the [[FanNickname Hoboverseer's]] puny ship and does not give a flying crap about it or its pilot.

* NoFourthWall: The Gee Boi Turbo item is a minigame wherein the dark elves and their pet owl go to a Gaia-centric anime convention. Kuro sets a cosplayer on fire and [[ShipSinking sets the book straight on his relationship with Devin]], Cordell sings karaoke and embarrasses her brother with cuteness, and Caesar (the owl) commissions some HeadTiltinglyKinky fanart of "[[YaoiGuys Devin and the delivery guy]] doing WHAT?!"

* NoobCave: [[AbsurdlySpaciousSewer The Barton Sewers]].
* MineralMacGuffin: Null crystals.

* PlayingWithFire: Fire Rain and Hot Foot. And possibly Solar Rays.

* PowerUp

* RespawningEnemies: Justified in the storyline.

* RingOfPower: Well, duh!

* UnfortunateNames: Rubella the farmhand. See [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubella German Measles.]]
** One of the Believers at the Old Aqueduct is named "Hairy". And is conveniently located right next to a Believer named "Dick"... who is, in turn, standing beside someone named Tom.
** Kamila is the boss of Dead Man's Shadow (and thus, the game to date). Her name is also a porn actress' stage name, something that was incredibly easy to discover before Google filtered out most of the obvious porn from their image search results, usually when someone forgot to specify "gaia" or "zomg". Uh, oops.

** Rigel, Mintaka, and their pet Dark Kitten Star: a grown man, woman, and their animal sidekick (who talks) planning something to defeat the "heroes" by cheating. [[Anime/{{Pokemon}} Now why does that sound familiar...]]

* NiceHat: Gaia has a ''very'' good selection...

* Theatre/TheNutcracker: Embodied in the Sugarsuite item.

* FriendlyNeighborhoodVampires: Louie and Ian.

** During the Christmas 2K9 event, [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments he wanted to use the Sentinel's hair for a scarf]].

* GranolaGirl: Devin. He's what's known as an ultra-vegan; he'll only eat plants if they died a natural death without human interference.
** ... but he'll make an exception for chicken pot pies ("Pie Hard").

* ValleyGirl: [[TheDitz Sasha]], but only in her shop dialogue. In the manga, she's pretty coherent and occasionally even shows some common sense.
** This seems to have been toned down a bit since her shop's updating. Except when she shows off [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments the poem she wrote for her community college course]].

** Peyo, is the creator of [[TheSmurfs those little blue and white creatures]] in the forest.

* {{Cuckold}}: [[http://www.gaiaonline.com/marketplace/itemdetail/2015/ This item]]. It's notable for being one of the earlier items on the site.

* ElementalHair: Named literally that, with fire, wind (and the softer, curlier breeze), earth, ice, water and life for choices.

* ZettaiRyouiki: Because of a lot of skirts being closer to the knee (or, the newer ones are), it's hard to pull off this trope on Gaia. However, [[http://public5.tektek.org/img/av/1009/d02/1420/53e6490.png with the right skirt and stockings]], it's easy to achieve Grade A.
** Cindy Donovinh's work outfit has Grade A.

* FairyTale: The theme of the Snow Apple RIG, which features an Eskimo-themed [[http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/gaia-community-discussion/snow-apple-images-with-story-done/t.57104889/ retelling]] of "Literature/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs", and grants items based on classic tales such as "Donkeyskin" and "Literature/PussInBoots".

* IdiotHair: There is an item on Gaia [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin named this]] and has only one pose considered to be the generic idiot hair. Everything else is based on [[Webcomic/AxisPowersHetalia Hetalia]]; what made this obvious was the white flag it came with.

* OurElvesAreBetter: ChristmasElves have been around for a few years now. Dark elves were introduced in the comic during the '08 Rejected Olympics event. Rather than living underground like typical dark elves, they ''are'' [[TheMafia the underground.]] Elves of a few other shades appeared in the '08 Halloween comics.

** With the same inspiration as the above, a Gaia-tan item has been created based on the classic girl n00b image, with better assets, [[GenkiGirl cheerful attitude,]] ZettaiRyouiki, {{BFS}}, [[EveryGirlIsCuterWithHairDecs an old-school G-Hairpin]] and GratuitousJapanese included.

* ZergRush: Most boss fights usually start like this, before getting to fight the actual boss.
** Who continues to throw mooks at you even while you're fighting it.

* CharacterSelectForcing: In Dead Man's Shadow, a [[VideoGame/{{Zork}} Grue]] can randomly attack your party. This is not an actual enemy encounter, but a rare scripted event. If you are not carrying Solar Rays when the Grue strikes, you are instantly KO'd.
** The best way to get around the Grue is by simply not being in Dead Man's Shadow during the time frame he's known to strike: midnight to 1 AM Gaia time. Avoiding the area for what translates into ten real life minutes allows you to easily avoid taking solar.

* GreenHillZone: The Village Greens, a ''golf course'' inhabited by psychopathic gnomes and killer plastic flamingos.
** Get far enough into it, and you can get rained on by Gnomish flak cannons.
*** You have to. You're not allowed to get those [[TwentyBearAsses mushroom tops]] any other way. I've tried.

* HolidayMode: For quite a few major holidays. It gets hectic.

** Played straight by the Mantis ring, though. Short cooldown time, and a very low Stamina cost.
*** Debatable, since it doesn't deliver the punch Hack does. Still one of the best melee rings, mind.
* KillerRabbit: Gramsters (killer hamsters) and cherry fluffs. Sweet Joan, the ''cherry fluffs...'' After attacking them once, they (and any other cherry fluffs nearby) descend upon you and kamikaze attack with an explosion that can take half the life of a low level player easily.
** Also, don't forget the Grunny Subs (Killer Rabbits ''in submarines'')

* NonLethalKO: When your HP reaches zero, you are "Dazed." Someone can bring you out of it with a "defibrillator ring," or you can wake up in the null chamber.

* ParentalBonus: More like a Grandparent Bonus at this point, but there's a parody [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave Burma-Shave]] jingle on the garbage cans in the Bassken Lake area.

* {{Polyamory}}: Papa Saw in the Bassken Saw Mill apparently has two wives, "Big Mama" and "Little Mama". (This might only be true for the harder difficulties.)

* RandomlyDrops: Lots of random drops. In fact, even the items that allow you to level up are random drops, which makes the entire level system a LuckBasedMission.
** The devs have attempted to mitigate this with repeatable quests, since nearly all quests feature the level-up items as rewards. Also, the further you are in the game, the more of the item you get when a monster drops them or you complete a quest. Now the problem is stopping players from farming the items to grind past the game's content...

* ReadTheFreakingManual: ALL YOUR RINGS ARE SOULBOUND. YOU CANNOT SELL THEM ON THE MARKETPLACE/GIVE THEM TO YOUR FRIENDS ANY MORE. Half the threads on the zOMG! forum are STILL people who don't understand this. (This is because rings created before a certain date can still be sold/traded until they're equipped).
** There's also "How do I get stronger?" and "How do I unsuppress my CL?" Though the latter isn't/wasn't readily available in the in-game help, but there are enough existing topics for this to become Search The Freaking Forums or Read The Freaking Stickies.
** Hell, just go to your inventory. There's a note there, saying "Rings are soulbound and cannot be sold, with certain grandfathered exceptions".
*** Except then people post on the forums saying they don't know how to grandfather their rings so they can sell them...
* RealMenWearPink: One of the new "random events" has Zhivago, AxeCrazy vampire PsychoForHire, siccing ''ladies' handbags'' on you in the Zen Gardens.

** One of the Believers at the Old Aqueduct is named "Hairy".
*** And is conveniently located right next to a Believer named "Dick". Whups.
*** Who is standing beside someone named Tom. So take joke as you will...

* UnusualEuphemism: In the zOMG forums, expect to see "fluff" used instead of an F-Bomb. Especially in the form of "motherfluffing-!" (Considering how innocent the various fluffs look and how much damage they can do the further you get through the game, this makes some sense.)

It's come a long way since its humble beginnings, going from a simple forum to an enormous multi-faceted community. And with the release of "zOMG!", Gaia has also gained its own {{MMORPG}}. Unfortunately, zOMG! came to a close in late 2014, citing various major security bugs and exploits being too much a time-waster to fix as none of the staff at that point knew how to work with the code, but has been revived and will be brought back to the public in March 2017.

* CriticalAnnoyance: A heartbeat sound if you're low on health, heavy panting if you're low on Stamina, both bordering on MostAnnoyingSound. And they don't get muted if you turn off game sounds or turn down the volume in the options menu.
* CuteMonsterGirl: The Water Spouts, which are all extremely curvaceous humanoid females formed of Animated water.
** This is played up to 11 with the pictures of them that are shown on the loading screens.

* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: Getting KO'd by Animated, of course. In a more meta example, WordOfGod is that the death of [[spoiler: Johnny K. Gambino]] in the comic will not keep him from being involved in ''[=zOMG!=]'' [[spoiler: Though this may be a HalfTruth, since ''his clone'' is plotting to take over Gaia with the Animated, which means he's already involved.]]

* NoSmoking: On November 20, 2009, as part of an ill-conceived sponsorship deal with the American Cancer Society, all cigarettes and related items were pulled from Gaia shops and owned ones were soulbound to the players so they couldn't be sold in the marketplace. It was repealed three days later by [[WordOfGod Lanzer]], so Gaia has learned AnAesop from this: Censorship = InternetBackdraft.\\\

** "[[ScheduleSlip The]] [[IncrediblyLamePun Cold Case]] [[ScheduleSlip of Pietro]]". However, since the artist didn't make it clear it was ''herself'' [[TakeThatMe she was dissing]], this was taken the wrong way by [[SeriousBusiness the GCD]], who [[InternetBackdraft freaked out]].

* ClumsyCopyrightCensorship: The Bento Bunny controversy. [[InternetBackdraft Let's just leave it at that.]]

* SmokingIsCool: There are a few tobacco-related items on sale in Gaia. A brief attempt at banning them caused Gaia a great deal of InternetBackdraft, mostly because of the poor communication involved in the ban. Not to mention the incredibly poor implementation. Sure, you couldn't buy cigarettes in the gold shops... but there were far, ''far'' more offensive items available across the site. During the backdraft, it was a pretty common sight to see people displaying the most outrageously inappropriate avatars they could put together, while sarcastically claiming that it was obviously okay because at least they weren't ''smoking''.

* EverythingsDeaderWithZombies: [[CaptainObvious Gaia loves zombies.]] And now there's a potion item turning your avatar into a zombie!

* HenshinHero: Reiko (Anima Adamantea) and the [[Franchise/SuperSentai G-]][[Series/PowerRangers Rangers]].

* [[HenshinHero Henshin Heroine]]: Reiko (Anima Adamantea) and the [[SuperSentai G-]][[PowerRangers Rangers]].

* BribingYourWayToVictory: Power-ups are primarily bought with Gaia Cash, which requires real monies. Though they are also allowed to be resold on the Marketplace, inevitably for high amounts of Gaia Gold. Rings also used to be allowed to be freely sold, before the [[YouFailEconomicsForever massive backlash of this trope]].

* HerCodeNameWasMarySue: The Crystal Overdrive RIG took the form of Rina and Kanoko's attempt to co-write a fanfiction. Kanoko tried to center it around her character, an amalgamation of Mary Sue traits, while Rina tried to tone it down (mainly by shifting the focus to [[PossessionSue her version of Ian]]) and stick to the original story.