History TheLordOfTheRings / TropesAToC

** One of the most powerful anvils dropped, yet oddly one of the most often missed, was how truly evil despair and defeatism are. All of the heroes keep pushing on despite apparent hopelessness, and eventually win through and defeat the BigBad. By contrast, the secondary villains -- Saruman and Denethor -- are both corrupted by their own despair into joining the wrong side, or giving up and committing suicide while leaving family and friends to die; and are both eventually destroyed.

* AchievementsInIgnorance: Pippin unwittingly buys the remaining Fellowship a little more time by accidentally touching the palantír because he's compelled to. How? [[spoiler: Seeing him in the palantír makes Sauron think he's captured by Saruman. And he had just enough resistance and fear to tell Sauron nothing and maintain this illusion. Thus Sauron ends up spending extra time sending messengers to Saruman rather than going for Gandalf and the Hunters instead of Gondor or Rohan.]]

* CallBack: The Battle of the Black Gates has one to ''The Hobbit'', with Pippin hearing the shout of "The Eagles! The Eagles are coming!" In a parallel with the Battle of the Five Armies as well, [[spoiler:Pippin is knocked unconscious immediately after hearing it, as Bilbo was just after saying it. He doesn't even believe that he actually heard the cry, since he thinks 'That came in his [Bilbo's] tale, long long ago.']]

* ApeShallNeverKillApe: Hobbits. Used in a heroic example during the [[spoiler:Scouring of the Shire]].

* BottleEpisode: The arc with Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-Downs. It comes out of nowhere, then almost never gets referenced again. Basically the only purpose it serves is to arm the minor hobbits.

* AssInAmbassador: Between Gimli, Legolas, and Boromir, the Council is sufficiently full of this trope. And then there's the MouthOfSauron, who spends the entire time of the "negotiations" gloating and taunting everyone, even accusing them of striking him when the King of Gondor gives him a DeathGlare that has him recoiling.

* AncestralWeapon: Narsil; notable in that it wasn't a whole weapon, but rather the broken pieces. King Elendil's sword during the War of the Last Alliance, it was broken by Sauron but Elendil's son Isildur took up one of the pieces and cut the ring from Sauron's hand, winning the war. The shards were then passed down to Isildur's heirs through the generations until Aragorn; they were then reforged into a new sword, Anduril.

** And, of course, the obvious messages of the One Ring: "Power Corrupts", and "The End Does Not Justify The Means". If you start using your enemy's methods against them you'll become a villain yourself. See Saruman, who at the mere prospect of being able to use the Ring, becomes a prospect attacking the lands of Men, torturing hobbits, and imprisoning his fellow wizard, Gandalf.

* AbandonedMine: The mines of Moria were once overflowing with dwarves, but their mining awakened an ancient demonic like being that slaughtered them all. Now, the mines are empty except for unmanned equipment and decaying skeletons, with only said being and the Goblins living in the mountains remaining.

* CallAndResponseSong: "The Ent and the Entwife" is written as a back-and-forth duet between a male and a female Ent. In the first four verses, the two alternate between the Ent pleading for the Entwife to join him in his forests and the Entwife rebuffing him and instead praising her farmlands. The last two verses instead discuss the world's eventual death, with the Ent mourning the death of forests and the Entwife the death of fields, before singing the last lines -- a promise to find each other and seek a better land -- in harmony.

* ContraltoOfDanger: Galadriel speaks in a deep contralto, and she's often described by lesser mortals as incomprehensible and dangerous (which isn't surprising considering she hails from an age when her kin were the main source of trouble in the Middle Earth).

::'''Tropes from ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' (the book)'''

::TheLordOfTheRings/TropesDToF -- TheLordOfTheRings/TropesGToI -- TheLordOfTheRings/TropesJToL -- TheLordOfTheRings/TropesMToO -- TheLordOfTheRings/TropesPToR -- TheLordOfTheRings/TropesSToU -- TheLordOfTheRings/TropesVToZ

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking:
** Théoden is King of Rohan and pretty handy with a sword as well, Aragorn is Chieftain of the Dúnedain and [[spoiler:King of Gondor]] and hacks his way through a whole mess of orcs and Uruk-hai.
** Gil-Galad. Last High King of the Elves, was described as an unmatched fighter/leader and [[TakingYouWithMe died taking Sauron with him]] (who may have been barely weaker than Morgoth at the time).
** In Gondor, being king denotes military leadership as well as political; [[LikeFatherLikeSon Elendil and Isildur]] are both on the battlefield in the Battle of the Last Alliance, with the former dying in combat and the latter defeating Sauron.
** Tolkien's works are generally rife with this trope - as is most High Fantasy. The Silmarillion provides further examples from Tolkien's world.

* AfterActionPatchup: After the mines of Moria, the Fellowship spends some time resting and healing amongst themself. This also gives them time to mourn Gandalf.