History VideoGame / WingCommander

* ChargingAttack: The Charging Mass Driver from ''Prophecy'' and ''Secret Ops'' is a modified Mass Driver rigged with a special capacitor that deals more damage than the standard variant based on much energy the gun has built up by holding the trigger button. When fully charged, depending on the enemy fighter, a direct hit can either take out its shields entirely or destroy it outright by chance. This gun is exclusively mounted on the Tigershark medium fighter and the Shrike bomber.

* StoryToGameplayRatio: The prevalence of plot and cutscenes increased from the original game, which didn't have much at all, on to ''Wing Commander IV'', which shipped on [[{{Doorstopper}} 6 CD-ROMs]]. (For context, ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life 2}}'' takes 5.) Thereafter it receded sharply.

** Chris Roberts provides the Communications Officer voice for the TCS ''Coventry'' in ''Wing Commander III'', as well as being a random pilot in the funeral cutscenes.

* TheRemnant: The Kilrathi are this in ''Prophecy''. Subverted in that they aren't the antagonists and actually are willing to help their former enemies, the Terrans.

* IdTellYouButThenIdHaveToKillYou: Blair, in ''Wing Commander IV'' when he comes aboard the TCS ''Lexington'', uses this line to poke fun at Maniac, taunting him with made-up classified comments from Admiral Tolwyn.
* IfYouDieICallYourStuff: In ''Prophecy'', one of the in-flight "flavor" communications:
--> '''Zero:''' Hey Maestro. If you die, can I have your stereo?\\
'''Maestro:''' You can burn in hell.
* InSpaceEveryoneCanSeeYourFace: The series averts this trope, for the most part. At most one only saw the area immediately around the eyes of the pilots wearing the helmets, and it wasn't illuminated other than by the light in the cockpit (which just shifted the problem out of the helmet, but that's not this trope).

* UsedFuture: In particular the ''Tiger's Claw'', to try and get that WorldWarTwo feel. Later games were somewhat more spit-and-polish, though the ''Victory'' and ''Intrepid'' were still pretty duct-tape-and-prayers kinds of ships.

** The ''Franchise/{{Ultima}}'' games, for instance, have had various hints that Brittania was located on a planet in the Wing Commander universe. This included a ship-wrecked Kilrathi pilot in ''VideoGame/UltimaVII''.

** The first game references the ''Franchise/{{Ultima}}'' RPG series. The [=TrainSim=] high scores include the pilots Knight and Paladin, Sutek, and Seggallion. Seggallion is also a star in the Vega system.

* ''[[VideoGame/WingCommanderPrivateer Privateer]]'': Grayson Burrows is a Han Solo {{Expy}} just trying to make a living in a CrapsackWorld of space pirates, slavers, drug-dealers, and worse (some of which he can participate in).

* CopyProtection: The original game and its add-ons asked a question of you when you loaded the game, with answers available from the manual or [[{{feelies}} the blueprints that came with the original releases]]. The protection was removed when ''Wing Commander'' was modified for the ''Kilrathi Saga'' collection.

* SchematizedProp: The original ''Wing Commander'' came with blueprints of the space fighters you flew in the game, and as mentioned above served as a form of CopyProtection in the original games.

* SinkTheLifeBoats: One of the Kilrathi aces in the original ''Wing Commander'' has a reputation for shooting ejection pods. This doesn't seem to come up if you eject when flying against him, though.

* WingedHumanoid: The Firekkans from the add-on ''The Secret Missions 2: Crusade'' are only seen in cutscenes, but are pictured as winged humans with avian traits, like beaks and talon-like hands.
* WingMan: Given the genre, this should go without saying. Given the media, it should also go without saying that they're occasionally[[ArtificialStupidity useless]], especially in the older games.

* YouGotSpunk: At the end of a mission briefing for a mission in ''Wing Commander III'', after Blair enthusiastically says to consider an enemy transport convoy destroyed and leaves to go to his fighter, Captain Eisen comments to [[CommunicationsOfficer "Radio" Rollins]], "God I love that boy's spunk!" The sound clip is also used for the sound test, when configuring the original DOS version of the game for digital sound.

* {{Badass}}: most ''Tiger's Claw'' pilots. Well, on a carrier with a bunch of veterans who've survived some pretty intense years of combat, ''of course'' they're going to be {{badass}}. In-universe, Blair is considered this by the third game: his previous victories follow him around, and people look up to him as a role model for Navy pilots. Maniac is also considered this (to a lesser extent) in the fourth game.

* InformedAbility: The wingmen you fly with are all supposed to be truly {{badass}} veteran pilots, but with a relative few exceptions... well, [[ArtificialStupidity they aren't]].

* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Cobra in ''Wing Commander III'', who is the first of your usual wingmen to be KilledOffForReal when [[spoiler:Hobbes betrays the Confederation]].

* DarkerAndEdgier: Happened little by little over the main series, with the situation growing ever more desperate and moral ambiguity creeping in. The first game depicts humans and Kilrathi being evenly matched in the war, with humans standing a good chance of winning. The second game introduced a faction of human traitors, and the Kilrathi ready with plans to recoup their losses in the end. The third game makes it clear that humans are slowly but surely losing the war, and the only hope of victory is a sneak attack on the Kilrathi homeworld with an experimental WeaponOfMassDestruction. With the Kilrathi pacified, the fourth game deals with a civil war between humans, with more [=WMDs=] and an EvilutionaryBiologist cabal orchestrating the events. ''Prophecy'' made a deliberate return to straightforward righteous battle against evil aliens. On the other hand, Prophecy makes it clear that the Nephilim pose an even greater threat than the Kilrathi and what the player faces is more or less a 'scouting party' and the much creepier mission music makes the game feel a lot scarier.

* NightmareFuel: More often implied than explicit, the most overt example is the liquefying corpse of a settler who fell victim to the apocalyptic gen-select plague distributed by the Black Lance. The plague consists of a modified form of GreyGoo nanites that examine the DNA of a potential victim and if it isn't up to snuff, set about terminating the victim in an extremely painful and gruesome manner.

** Several to ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', including the [[ManosTheHandsOfFate Torgo]] star system. In Wing Commander III, the sound card check audio clip is Joel and the Bots chorusing "[[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S05E12Mitchell Mitchell!]]"

** You have [[Franchise/StarWars Luke Skywalker]] dropping a bomb in a trench run to save the good guys, not to mention said pilot name is [[Film/TopGun Maverick]]. And if you lose in ''Wing Commander III'', you get a nice apocalyptic scene where [[Film/TheTerminator a furry cat foot crushes a human skull during a nuclear holocaust]].

* ''[[VideoGame/WingCommanderPrivateer Privateer]]'': Grayson Burroughs is a Han Solo {{Expy}} just trying to make a living in a CrapsackWorld of space pirates, slavers, drug-dealers, and worse (some of which he can participate in).