History Videogame / WolfensteinTheNewOrder

** Newspaper clippings mention that the Nazis drove wildlife into near extinction, and are responsible for rendering Gorillas as a critically endangered species. The real life Nazis are ''fervent'' protectors of wildlife and are the pioneers for environmental conversation efforts, there's a reason they only use HumanResources in concentration camps.

* ObviousBeta: Came out with a massive Day One patch, and the PC version still had a lot of problems running on AMD graphic cards. Has the same texture pop-in problems ''Videogame/Rage2011'' had (though not quite as glaringly obvious as Rage was), an issue with the Tech 5 engine that's never been solved by Id almost three years after the earlier game came out, and framerate is often uneven. That's on top of there being a glitch in Chapter 14 where some collectibles disappear if you reload a post-death checkpoint. A little tinkering with the graphical options (a few effects do not improve the visuals much while being resource hogs, and texture problems are reduced by setting an higher FOV) makes things good even on mid-range systems, and said glitch repairs itself if you reload a checkpoint while still alive, although it's still evident the PC version wasn't tested enough before release.

* ForcedToWatch: B.J. has to watch Deathshead execute whoever he chooses to die but for the player it's a GoryDiscretionShot. [[spoiler:Averted near the end when the dissection [[OnceMoreWithClarity is revisited in a flashback]] and far less discretion is used.]]

-->-- '''B.J. Blazkowicz''', announcement trailer

** Italy and Japan were [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder conquered after the Nazis]] [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness betrayed them]] near the end of the war. Italy was merged with Germania, and Japan is now a puppet state controlled by the Nazis.

** "Mond, Mond, Ja, Ja" by ''Die Käfer'', is a song in the style of ''Music/TheBeatles'', especially their early years music. (It is heavily implied that ''Die Käfer'' actually ''are The Beatles'' who has changed their name and started singing in German to comply with Nazi censorship laws. It also doubles as a HistoricalInJoke as ''The Beatles'' cut their teeth as muscians by performing in Hamburg, where they did indeed sing exclusively in German.)

[[quoteright:259:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wolfenstein_the_new_order.png]]
[[caption-width-right:259:''Es gibt ein Haus in Neu-Berlin...'']]

* RatedMForManly: [[TheBigGuy Built like a]] [[MadeOfIron brickhouse]], dual-wielding big guns and singlehandedly taking on the ''entire'' Third Reich while speaking in a [[GutturalGrowler grizzled macho whisper]], B.J. Blazkowicz is as manly as they come.

* AnAesop: This is one of the few pieces of [[NaziHunter Nazi-killing]] media that reminds us that Nazis are bad specifically because they're racist and genocidal. Most neo-Nazis ignore the racist part in favor of Nazis just being a totalitarian force; this game reveals just why letting the Nazis have anything at all is bad, reconstructing the idea of Nazis as AcceptableTargets. The game takes great pains to show that the Nazis were the worst of humanity, and that there is no justification for their behavior.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology / AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Blazkowicz winds up spending 14 years in a semi-comatose state, aware of his surroundings but unable to move -- realistically, a ''lot'' of his muscle mass would have atrophied over that period of time, and it would take at least months, if not years, for him to actually move on his own again. The most acknowledgement this gets is that he falls over immediately after killing his first Nazi and has trouble picking up his pistol before gameplay takes over and he's as nimble and articulate as he was in 1946.

* SurprisinglyGoodForeignLanguage: So far it's one of the best, if not ''the'' best Polish in video games made by non-Poles. Someone even made an effort with properly Americanized accent for Blazkowicz.
** The accents are also spot on for Anya and the Southern Slavic inmates from the camp. Anya has the perfect accent for a native Polish speaker that spent time in an English speaking country. Not surprising since the actress (Alicja Bachleda) is Polish. In fact, almost all represented ethnicities are voiced by actors of that ethnicity, which is almost unheard of in the video game industry.

* ArtificialBrilliance: The AI controlling enemies in combat is solid, with occasional moments of brilliance. They understand cover, flanking, use grenades, and shoot fairly accurately. Enemies also act according to their roles, with commanders hanging back while Ubersoldaten/Fire Troopers closing the distance to turn B.J. into Schweizer Käse.

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: London and Berlin aren't particularly close to each other. At least not close enough that BJ can drive from London to Berlin (though several implied checkpoints) in anything less than a few hours. Yet somehow [[spoiler:BJ manages to reach the rebel HQ in Berlin while the Nazi attack (that started right about when he reached London) is still ongoing]].

* MilitaryAlphabet: Blazkowicz uses the US World War II one to spell Da'at Yichud while on the radio with the Doylist benefit of spelling out the word for players.

* AluminumChristmasTrees:
** A nuclear cannon might sound bizarre, but the United States had nuclear artillery shells and put cannon-fired bombs on battleships in the late 50s through the 80s.
** One note makes reference to the ''Sonnegeweher'', a solar powered KillSat that essentially acts like a giant magnifiying glass. Well, this was actually [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_gun a real concept]], albeit one that never got past the initial idea.
** The soundtrack features a selection of period tunes from fictional bands, a few of which serve as direct Nazi propaganda, boasting about the Eye of London and their space program. While Nazi Germany despised jazz for its black and Jewish influences (and briefly tried to "Wagnerify" the genre to remove them), Goebbels recognized how much American and British servicemen loved swing, and created a Ministry of Propaganda-sanctioned big band combo, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_and_his_Orchestra "Charlie and His Orchestra"]], to play hits with new English lyrics mocking the Allies in order to demoralize the enemy.

** In the prologue, Deathshead makes a comment suggesting that English is a dying tongue. While it seems like a snide remark about how badly the war is going for the free world, it foreshadows a plot point in ''VideoGame/WolfensteinTheNewColossus'' where the Nazis make speaking English illegal in the occupied American territories.

* EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs: A newspaper reveals a Nazi scientist's idea to recreate extinct species for a prehistoric zoo, and if used properly, the military.

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: BJ and Anya are quite frisky when time permits (and sometimes when it doesn't). Which sucks for the resistance because they can be heard through the wall. By contrast, on the Nazi side, there's evil old woman Frau Engel and her bitch-boy Bubi.

* ShotgunsAReJustBetter: Especially when they're automatic.

** The game shows a remarkable degree of this. In [[SchrodingersPlayerCharacter Wyatt's timeline]], when escaping from Eisenwald Prison in game, Wyatt knocks over a Nazi loudspeaker with a brick. He takes the loudspeaker with him, which can be seen in his hands throughout the rest of this levels cutscenes ''and'' gameplay. When you reach the Kreisau base, you learn Wyatt was keeping the loudspeaker with him to give to [[HistoricalDomainCharacter J]]. It's quite impressive continuity.

** [[spoiler:In Wyatt's timeline, J, fed up with all of the running and silence he's had to deal with his life, cranks his music to [[UpToEleven its loudest]] and blares "The Star Spangled Banner" for all of Berlin to hear, enough to make the (solid concrete) ceiling shake.]]

** The London Nautica is a research center that also acts as a center for lunar travel. Out front is a statue of Wehrner von Braun who, in the real world, worked on Nazi missiles and would go on to design rockets for [=NASA=].