History VideoGame / KnightsOfTheOldRepublic

* SchmuckBait: On Korriban you can be offered the job of hauling a box from there to Tatooine. You are repeatedly warned, whatever you do, to not open the box. Nary a player will reach Tatooine before doing so.

* DealWithTheDevil: In a way, this can be applied to anyone who turns to the Dark Side. The person often gets new powers and abilities which make them better but it usually comes back to haunt the person and the price is ultimately too great. Many Sith are betrayed by their allies and results almost always end with either the traitor of betrayed dying (the Sith Academy on Korriban is a good example of this) but some ([[spoiler: like Darth Revan]]) manage to undo the deal by turning away from the Dark Side and earn their happy ending, with Carth's son Dustil being a fine example.
** The second game has a much more direct example. Darths Sion and Nihilus learn from Darth Traya's teachings of Force Wounds and become strong, [[FaustianRebellion eventually overthrowing her]]. Nihilus becomes a nearly unstoppable force while Sion essentially becomes immortal. But the prices were very high. Nihilus is described as being not a man but more of an essence of what remains of his being and always hungers through the Force. [[HorrorHunger Draining other beings of their very essence]] sustains him for a while but the hunger always returns greater than last time. Sion lives in constant agony and looks like a walking corpse.

* HesBack: Calo Nord and [[spoiler: Revan]] in the first game. Darth Sion and a male-modeled Exile in the second.

* PersonOfMassDestruction: Going of Canderous' war stories, a single Mandalorian was quite the warrior and conqueror, especially if they were in a Basilisk War Droid. Darths Malak and Nihilus are other examples. Malak annihilates Taris and then gives Dantooine a nice attack as well. Nihilus also wipes out a planet and all who inhabited it (save one, the person who would become his apprentice) but does so with [[OhCrap only the Force]].

* LukeIAmYourFather: An unconfirmed theory speculates that [[spoiler:Kreia]] is actually [[spoiler:the Handmaiden's mother, Jedi knight Arren Kae.]] There's lots of clues in dialogue (such as both being said to be [[spoiler:Revan's first and last master]] but nothing conclusive. {{Word of God}} (by ChrisAvellone) is "[[ShrugOfGod Can't comment, but good catch. Sorry.]]" God's previous use of "nice catch" in the {{Fallout}} Bibles make this close to "Not intended, but [[SureWhyNot god likes]]".

* LaserBlade: [[CaptainObvious This is a Star Wars game after all]].

* LaserBlade: And plenty of them.

** But the Exile is the only Jedi to ever willingly sever connections to the force, which is why Kreia chose her.

* WarIsHell: In the second game. Much of the characters' backstories come from how horrible the Mandalorian Wars (and the Jedi Civil War) were.
** [[spoiler: Malachor V]] is the source of nearly all the conflict in the game, as [[spoiler: atrocities on that scale send "echoes" through the force which are the source of both The Exile's severed connection to the force and Darth Nihilus' ability to consume life through it.]]

** [[spoiler: Malachor V]] is the source of nearly all the conflict in the game, as [[spoiler: atrocities on that scale send "echoes" through the force which are the source of both The Exile's severed connection to the force and Darth Nihilus' ability to consume life through it.

-->'''Calo Nord:''' I am hard to kill, Lord Malak.

* TheParagonAlwaysRebels: [[spoiler: Bastila]].

* BadassBookworm: The player character. One minute he is reading, the next he is meditating while making several objects orbit around him, then dueling Bastilla.

* CurbStompBattle: Sherruk the Mandalorian. If you have any trouble at all with his flunkies, do not even bother fighting him. The sudden difficulty increase also makes him a WakeUpCallBoss. The first battle with Darth Malak also qualifies. [[spoiler: He takes your two party members out of the equation effortlessly, no matter what level they are or how powerful their equipment and weapons are]].

* PosthumousCharacter: Coorta in the Peragus level. He is referred to by several of the holocrons that serve as the ApocalypticJournal and being someone who wanted to sell the Jedi and was shown as being a troublemaker around the mining facility. By the time you finally make it to the dorms, you find that he (as well as everyone else) were killed by the HK-50 droids.

* BigBadEnsemble: Darth Nihilus, Darth Sion and Darth Traya, aka [[spoiler: Kreia]]. Nihilus is by far the most powerful and dangerous )[[GameplayAndStorySegregation except when you fight him]]), given that he is a threat to the galaxy's very existence, but [[spoiler: he is the first Sith you defeat]].

* GambitPileup: The Exchange power struggle on Telos winds up like this, with Luxa,Czerka, Slusk, Goto and even a poor door guard involved ultimately. Most of time, [[spoiler: everybody winds up dead]].

* GasChamber: The Jekk'Jekk Tarr in the second game is a bar for aliens where the atmosphere is so toxic to humans that they need an environment suit just to get in. A gas mask can alone won't save you ([[GameplayAndStorySegregation except it does]]). Lampshaded when you show up at the bar without a suit and the crime lord in the back comments on how foolish you are to do so.

* UntrustingCommunity: Dantooine does not like Jedi. Understandably so, given what happened in the last game.
* UnusualEuphemism: Quite a few. Some are obvious, such as "hooking up power couplings" or "charge up her loading ramp." There is also one for entering hyperspace: "Let's burn sky until we see lines." Then there is the VERY interesting one that takes at least two playthroughs to notice. If your character is male and plays pazaak with Atton, you can say "This better not be Nar Shadaa rules." "No, blasters stay in their holsters." Oh, you say that is not odd? Well, take into account that when your character is female, he instead says "Nope, our clothes are gonna stay on." Puts the "blasters" comment in a whole new perspective.

* DeusExMachina: [[spoiler:Light side ending: Malachor is being torn apart by the Mass Shadow Generator, but the Exile is saved in the nick of time by the Ebon Hawk, which rises up from below the platform she's on and whisks her away to safety. The last we saw or heard of the ship before this was it crashing into a cliff, then falling down a chasm.]]

* BadassBookworm: The player character. One minute he is reading, the next he is meditating while making several objects orbit around him.

* BaldOfEvil: Uthar Wynn and Darth Malak.
** Darth Bandon, too.

** Definitely the game's WakeUpCallBoss. If you've been searching every corner, defeating every enemy and gaining as much experience as possible, he isn't too bad. But if you've been doing very little and rushing through the game, expect to be on the receiving end of a CurbstompBattle.

** According to Jolee, this "changed the political course of the entire sector for centuries to come."

* CurbStompBattle: The aforementioned Mandalorian boss battle. If you have any trouble at all with his flunkies, do not even bother fighting him.

** The actual born and raised Sith take this to the extreme: They believe themselves to be superior to Jedi or Dark Jedi converts to the point of insulting newcomers just on the chance they might be a Jedi or Dark Jedi.

* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: It is remarkably easy to bamboozle, sneak around, or outright overpower nearly every Sith soldier in the first game.
** Except for the first Sith Guard underground in Taris who is accompanied by Turrets. There's no getting by him since he will not budge in dialogue options (even hackers using max stats can't make it through) and the turrets do the "one hit = dead" thing some characters have.

* IAmNotAGun: An assassin droid on Korriban in the first game.
** HK-47 averts this hard by claiming, "I am the weapon, not the wielder."

* ThePowerOfLove: You can [[spoiler: turn Bastilla Shan from the Dark Side]] with this.
** Jolee Bindo is an advocate of Force users using love because he believes love can save a person. This is the reason he and the Jedi Order are not on good terms.

** The Sith on Korriban are the best example. They believe themselves to be above the rest and comment on the inferiority of Jedi and Dark Jedi converts in front of newcomers who might be one of the two.

** Fitting since there was a vicious war not too long ago. Many planets get destroyed or nearly destroyed (Dantooine) as a result of it and there simply hasn't been enough time to undo the damage.

* DodongoDislikesSmoke: The giant rancor in the sewers has to be killed by getting it to swallow a grenade, although it is possible to kill him by using hit-and-run grenade throwing, as he can not follow you back into the tunnels.

* LeftHanging: BioWare is focusing on ''MassEffect'' and the Star Wars MMORPG ''StarWarsTheOldRepublic'', leaving all unresolved plot threads open. The fact that nothing has been said about [[spoiler:Revan]] after he went to the outer rim of the galaxy infuriates many fans. Thanks to the rushed release, many of the plot threads in the second game are left unresolved even though they continue to just before the end.
** Well, from Drew Karpyshyn's ''Revan'' novel and leaked footage of TOR's plot, we've at least been given more of Revan and the Exile's story. However, the fandom generally seems to consider it one of the worst possible ways it could have been done - for example, [[spoiler:Revan lives for centuries due to 'Sith alchemy' and is killed in a fucking boss fight in ''The Old Republic'', while the novel spends an awful lot of time trying to undermine and mutilate everything interesting about the Exile before dropping a bridge on her]]. The lesson is probably that unresolved plot threads are preferable to hack-job CharacterDerailment forced conclusions.

* TheLibby: Lashowe comes across as one, especially if you first encounter her as a female character.
-->'''Lashowe:''' Quite literally, whether you live or die depends upon our whim. What do you think of that, hmmm?
-->...
-->'''Lashowe:''' What do you say? Amuse us. Make us laugh, and we just might consider allowing you to live.
** Which makes it all the more satisfying when you get to kill her later.

* UnusualEuphemism: Quite a few. Some are obvious, such as "hooking up power couplings" or "charge up her loading ramp." There is also one for entering hyperspace: "Let's burn sky until we see lines." Then there is the VERY interesting one that takes at least two playthroughs to notice. If your character is male and plays pazaak with Atton, you can say "This better not be Nar Shadaa rules." "No, blasters stay in their holsters." Oh, you say that is not odd? Well, take into account that when your character is female, he instead says "Nope, our clothes are gonna stay on." Puts the "[[IfYouKnowWhatIMean blasters]]" comment in a whole new perspective.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: When Atton Rand first meets you, he asks if you're the Jedi. Given the ensuing conversation, that might be easy to figure out. However, when the player character and Kreia run up to make their escape with him, Atton says, "Whoa, another Jedi? Are you reproducing?". How would he know Kreia's a Jedi just by looking at her? [[spoiler:Because he's Force sensitive and used to be an assassin trained specifically to hunt Jedi.]]
** A more blatant example comes right after your conversation with Atris. If you use Kreia's Force Sight to see through the walls of her chamber, [[spoiler:she has a Dark Side aura]]. This even manages to stay internally consistent: you as the player know this fact, but Kreia herself would not divulge it to the Exile.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: When Atton Rand first meets you, he asks if you're the Jedi. Given the ensuing conversation, that might be easy to figure out. However, when the player character and Kreia run up to make their escape with him, Atton says, "Whoa, another Jedi? Are you reproducing?". How would he know Kreia's a Jedi just by looking at her? [[spoiler:Because he's Force sensitive and used to be an assassin trained specifically to hunt Jedi.]]