History VideoGame / JaggedAlliance

* CanadaEh: Referenced on the description of the Diemaco assault rifle. Amusingly enough, the branch of Sir-Tech that developed ''[=JA2=]'' [[SelfDeprecatingHumor was based in Canada.]]

* CoolGuns: And how! Nearly every single gun on the CoolGuns page appears at least once in the game. There are only seven that don't. It only gets crazier in v1.13, in which ''all'' the listed guns appear.

* BrickJoke: Hamous left AIM by stealing an Ice Cream truck in Paris and heading to Istanbul in it, according to his bio on the AIM site. [[EpicFail He managed to wind up on a South American country...]]. Not that he's '''[[DirectionlessDriver lost]]''', he's just... ''[[NoSenseOfDirection lost]]''

** The research into the Fallow Trees from JA 1 has [[JustForPun borne fruit]] in the form of Metaviron. It's an instant healing item for all wounds and health for your mercs and needed for several quests.

* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: In 3, either after you meet with [[spoiler:Biff]] or you are contacted by [[spoiler:Santiago]] to 'clear' the confusion and meet up in a certain place, you will be too late to realize that [[spoiler: your former employers have decided that [[HeKnowsTooMuch you know more than they want you to]] and is [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness planning to Order 66 you and your associates.]]]] After escaping the encounter all the towns and mines you control will come under attack by by an overwhelming force by [[spoiler: not the Legion, but rather the rebellious Grande Chien Army]].

* DiscOneNuke: In JA 3 if you helped out the Refugee camp enough [[spoiler: Sangoma the Witch Doctor will give you his armor from when he was in a death squad. Meaning you get a full set of heavy armor as soon as you get onto the mainland.]]

* {{Foil}}: Both of AIM's top mercs are this to each other. Mike and Gus are both affable, TheAce, and have a price tag to match, but Gus is simultaneously more professional and more personable, and prefers to live a life of simplicity (as evidenced by the fact he lives in a mobile home despite ostensibly being wealthy.) Mike is a JerkAss ItsAllAboutMe who is OnlyInItForTheMoney. Best exemplified by what they do when not recruitable in the games; Gus runs a personal merc crew to deal with international threats, while Mike [[spoiler: signs on with the BigBad of JA2 for no other reason than she pays well. Notably, there's a lot of bad blood between Gus and Mike, and Gus will express enthusiasm and appreciation at being given the opportunity to kill him in 2.)]]

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

** You can actually solo assassinate Dedrianna by drawing her out of her palace, but the way to do so is incredibly obscure and with no hint that it can work anywhere in the game. In order to do it, you have to [[spoiler: wear one of the Dedrianna T-shirts as chest armor and send your IMP merc into enemy territory on their own. After a couple of rounds of fighting the enemy troops will try to capture you. If you surrender, you'll be taken to a military prison to be interrogated by Dedrianna personally. You can then escape and assassinate her. If you send anyone beside your first IMP merc, they'll just be captured and have to be rescued later on.]]

** Also appears in ''3''. [[spoiler: If you have both the Major and Pierre in your party, the Major states that he intended for Pierre to kill him and take control of the Legion, and that he is desappointed that Pierre never got around to it.]]

** In 3, a Sanatorium is named Creutzfeldt-Jakob, the name of a horrifying prion disease in humans that turns the brain into a sponge like consistency. [[spoiler: So it's hardly a surprise it's the source of a zombie outbreak.]]

* PutOnABus: Many characters from the first two games, as seen in the ''Alumni Section'' of the AIM website. [[spoiler: Some of them, like Mike, show up later.]] In Jagged Alliance 2 proper, this can happen to mercs you don't hire right away - they'll be put "On Assignment", taking other missions besides yours. In most cases, at least one or two mercs will be unavailable for this reason when you start your campaign.

** [[spoiler: Sadly leads to a FaceHeelTurn in the sequel; Deidrianna offering more money than AIM ever could which, combined with his bad blood with AIM since the first game, leads to him becoming an antagonist. He never loses his cockiness even when facing down your well-trained heavily-armed merc army, and a few AIM vets who know him will have comments on both his betrayal and his death.]]
*** 1.13 makes it possible to [[spoiler: make him join you, if you have a merc with high leadership critically wound him and attempt to speak to him.]]

* TwentyMinutesIntoThePast: ''Jagged Alliance 3'' is set in 2001, which sidesteps the issue of the offscreen deaths of certain mercs, such as [[spoiler: Igor and Raider]], mentioned in ''Rage!''

** In both ''Jagged Alliance'' and ''Jagged Alliance 2'', enemies will sometimes try to reach an alarm trigger to set off a major trap or to blow up a building. If you get to that point first, you can pick off the enemies one-by-one with the other enemies behaving defensively.

* PresentDayPast: Despite ''3'' being set in 2001, several cultural references are made from twenty years later, such as social distancing and Karens.

* ShooOutTheClowns: ''2'' was much darker and more serious in tone than the first game. Accordingly, the list of mercs removed from the roster largely consists of characters who were useless, silly or just plain implausible.

* IncrediblyLamePun: When Ice complains about his squad (done by using the talk command out-of-battle and clicking on him), he'll say the mercs he work with are more like... '''Jercs.'''

* MissionPackSequel: ''Deadly Games'' can come quite close to this. However, the amount of additions and improvements would make it very expansive mission pack. ''Unfinished Business'' can be considered an another example of this, although it was actually marketed as stand-alone expansion to ''Jagged Alliance 2'' (and not a separate game).

* ThePlague: An optional feature in the ''1.13'' mod introduces various diseases, from merely catching a cold to getting infected with a pandemic disease.

* AnyoneCanDie: If you screw up bad, or if your luck runs out...

** [=jaggedalliance=] takes place in an South Atlantic island where you are contracted a researcher named Jack Richards to back the island and recover his research from a treacherousr researcher
** [=jaggedaliance2=] takes place in a BananaRepiblic where you're hired by the countries deposed King to depose and kill his wife the current ruler.
** [=jaggedaliance3=] takes place in western africa where you're hired by the President's daughter to to rescue her father the President from a warlord named the major.

** As the story of ''Jagged Alliance 3'' progresses, not only are references made to African-themed war films like ''Film/TheWildGeese'' and ''Film/TearsOfTheSun'', but also [[spoiler:''Literature/HeartOfDarkness'', especially once the Legion's true nature is revealed]].

** [=jaggedalliance=] takes place in an South Atlantic island where you are contracted a researcher named Jack Richards to back the island and recover his research
* [=jaggedaliance2=]

** Initially played straight early in the third game, however. The citizens on Ernie Island couldn't care less about the simmering three-way civil war and just want to be free from the Legion. They become more willing to be involved, eventually fielding militia soldiers with the help of your mercs, if you've liberated the region. The same goes for the rest of Grande Chien if National Pride is high enough.

* {{Bulungi}}: Grande Chien in the third game is a small French-speaking country somewhere in West Africa. It is dependent on diamond mining, and trapped in a three-way civil war between [=LaFontaine=]'s loyalists, the Legion, and communist militias.

* ArbitraryGunPower: Played straight in the first game with the weaker guns, but mostly averted in JA 2, especially 1.13, a shot from any old pistol with glaser ammo on an unarmored opponent is almost always lethal, and nearly all of the 5.56 and 7.62 weapons do the same amount of damage. Zig-zagged in the third game, when outdated guns like the Gewehr 98 can be about as lethal as their more modern equivalents in type and ammo, such as the PSG-1. However, assault rfles generally do about a third of the damage of sniper rifles in the same caliber.