Line #146 Literature/Remnants


1	[[quoteright:324:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/remnants_9038.jpg]]
2
3	->''The end of the world has come... and gone.''
4
5	Written by Creator/KAApplegate and Creator/MichaelGrant (the co-authors of ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' and ''Literature/{{Everworld}}''), ''Remnants'' is a 14-book [[MiddleGradeLiterature middle grade]] series published in the early 2000s. The series ''begins'' with a giant asteroid called "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast The Rock]]"[[note]]Not [[Wrestling/DwayneJohnson that one.]][[/note]] striking Earth, obliterating the planet and all life on it. A last, desperate gambit by humanity is enacted, the Mayflower, a space shuttle rapidly retrofitted with experimental technology, including hibernation berths. Eighty people are shot off into space for the distant hope that someday, they can awaken and find a new planet to refound human civilization on. When they're plucked from space by a sentient super-ship called "Mother", and come into contact with the aliens that call her home, the series proper begins. No one gets out without sacrificing their body or sanity in some manner.
6
7	The series is roughly divided into two arcs, though it is a continuous narrative. The first seven books deal with the group attempting to take control of Mother, while the second batch of seven deals with their returns to the broken ruins of Earth. Along the way they deal with internal power struggles, mutations, war, violence, trauma, and MindRape. Additionally, as Mo'Steel says, the kids from ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'' have nothing on this group. Everyone has secrets, personality flaws, hidden agendas, and some are just plain crazy, and despite the fact the group dwindles daily, there's still plays for power and control being made.
8
9	''Remnants'' is a dark series, with violent deaths in nearly every book. Aside from the art history and group politics, this is what happens when you combine a large cast with AnyoneCanDie. The author promised that Jobs and Mo'Steel would survive; anyone else is fair game. And yes, believe it or not, [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids this is a kids series.]] That does not stop it from being one of the darkest things ever written.
10
11	The series consists of fourteen books:
12	# ''The Mayflower Project''
13	# ''Destination Unknown''
14	# ''Them''
15	# ''Nowhere Land''
16	# ''Mutation''
17	# ''Breakdown''
18	# ''Isolation''
19	# ''Mother, May I?''
20	# ''No Place Like Home''
21	# ''Lost and Found''
22	# ''Dream Storm''
23	# ''Aftermath''
24	# ''Survival''
25	# ''Begin Again''
26
27	In 2021, KA Applegate and Michael Grant confirmed the rights to the series were given back to them, and [[https://twitter.com/kaaauthor/status/1475532695803416584 the series was rereleased in Spring 2022]].
28
29	See also the ''Literature/{{Gone}}'' series by Michael Grant, which serves as a SpiritualSuccessor of sorts to ''Remnants'', as it's about kids with freaky mutations that are distrusted by regular humans, all of whom deal with the politics of their surviving group.
30	----
31	!!This series provides examples of:
32
33	* AbsentAliens: Played with. There are two separate alien races onboard Mother, but they're just [[HardLight products of the ship's systems]]. Mother was built by a race called the Shipwrights, of whom only one is ever seen, the [[spoiler: mutation of Tamara's baby. They otherwise appear to be extinct, and how the baby ended up being an alien is obscure. When Tate explores the universe during the latter part of ''Survival'', the only life she ever finds is a kind of bug swimming in tar, and by that time she's an old woman]].
34	* ADayInTheLimelight: ''Survival'', starring Tate, who is more or less a {{Recurrer}} otherwise. [[spoiler:Also ends up being ADeathInTheLimelight.]]
35	* AGodAmI: Yago comes to think he's a messianic god destined to lead humanity.
36	* AccidentalMurder: [[spoiler: D-Caf]] does this to [[spoiler: Anamull]]; he just intended to scare him, but lost control of his mutation.
37	* ActionSurvivor: All of the Remnants are human beings, and a ''small'' handful have experience in fighting or physical activity. Yet a surprising number of them survive a long time.
38	* AdultsAreUseless: Olga, Mo'Steel's mom, is the only adult who isn't completely useless, but she's pretty close since she does little of actual importance. Everyone else is entirely useless, especially Wylson, Violet's mom, who only makes everything worse by trying to run the group when she's obviously got no clue what she's doing. [[spoiler: In the end, all the adults but Olga die anyway.]]
39	* AfterTheEnd: The entire series starts with Earth being destroyed, and picks up with the handful of survivors that escape.
40	* AIIsACrapshoot: Mother is a sentient ship/computer that has spent centuries, perhaps millennium, wandering space. With no sensory input, she ended up [[GoMadFromTheIsolation Going Mad From The Isolation]].
41	* AllLoveIsUnrequited: Kubrick loves 2Face, but she doesn't feel the same, as the main reason Kubrick loves her is her deformity.
42	* AmbiguouslyGay: Tate has a ''very'' close friendship with Tamara, but it's not clear if it's deeper than that. [[WhatCouldHaveBeen Applegate wanted to make this relationship more concretely romantic, but Scholastic wouldn't let her.]]
43	* AndIMustScream: When Billy enters cold sleep on the Mayflower, his body shuts down but his mind continues to function. As a result, he spends ''500 years'' completely awake but unable to move.
44	* AnyoneCanDie: Aside from Jobs and Mo'Steel, no one is safe. The human characters die often and without warning.
45	* ApocalypticGagOrder: In the first book, the US government tries to keep the impending disaster secret in an effort to keep society from breaking down. It fails when a piece of the Rock breaks off and hits San Francisco ahead of the main impact.
46	* ApocalypseHow: Where do we start? It would be a class 4, if not [[spoiler: for the survival of small amounts of humans and other creatures.]]
47	* ApocalypseWow: The destruction wrought by the Rock is described in exacting detail in the first book. First a small chunk that broke off the main asteroid utterly destroys San Francisco midway through, then the real thing at the end of the book.
48	* AwesomeMcCoolName: Some of the survivors have this, as in the future taking a new name is essentially the fashion trend of the decade. Mo'Steel takes the cake; he's not sure if it stands for "More Steel" or "Man of Steel" (he's broken so many bones most of them are made of metal now).
49	* BabiesEverAfter: [[spoiler:In the epilogue, several of the survivors have children of their own.]]
50	* BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: At one point, [[spoiler:Yago, Amelia, and Tate]] all telepathically fight over who should take control of the body they share.
51	* BerserkButton: Do not mess with Mo'steel's mom. This is a lesson that [[spoiler:Rattler]] learns the hard way.
52	* TheBigBadShuffle: The main antagonist changes several times, and includes Mother, The Baby, Yago, the Troika, and [[spoiler:a few of the human survivors on Earth.]]
53	* BigBadWannabe: Yago is a candidate for main antagonist, but only by virtue of being the most recurring one; he actually doesn't do much in terms of seizing power, and the few chances he gets to do so, he bungles it and is put in his place by the more dangerous villains.
54	* BigCreepyCrawlies: The Riders and the Slizzers are described as giant insects. Slizzers are implied to be [[spoiler:mutated cockroaches.]]
55	* BlessedWithSuck: Billy has psychic powers that drive him insane and back again. Also, the mutations, especially Violet's and Tate's, and ''especially'' the Troika, are not the kind they like having.
56	* BlobMonster: The entire Troika becomes these in the penultimate book.
57	* BloodyMurder: The Blue Meanies have incredibly caustic blood, which contributes indirectly to [[spoiler: Anamull's death.]]
58	* BodyHorror: Characters lose limbs, get impaled, mutilated, etc, in horrific detail.
59	* BrainsAndBrawn: Jobs and Mo'Steel, the series' two core characters, have this relationship. One is a teenage science prodigy named after UsefulNotes/SteveJobs, the other is an extreme sports enthusiast who got his nickname because so many of his body parts have been replaced with steel prosthetics.
60	* ColonyDrop: The Rock is an asteroid that hits Earth.
61	* CrapsackWorld: Anything that can go wrong in this series does. There's a ''very'' short reprieve in Book 8 when the group has finally taken control of the ship and is leading semi-normal lives in a recreation of an urban neighborhood, but it only lasts until the end of that book and there are still some problems brewing.
62	* CryonicsFailure: Because the cryonics technology was still in the experimental stage when it was employed on the Mayflower, many of the passengers don't survive. Some of them were wiped out by micrometeorite punctures, some devoured from within by parasitic worms, some, the machinery just failed over the 500-year cryosleep, so they died of old age in their sleep. By the time the Mayflower is picked up by Mother, roughly two-thirds of the 80 souls on board are dead.
63	* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Virtually every death in the series, but one standout is Big Bill's death. Worms ''eat his leg'' from the inside out, while he remains completely able to feel pain. The worms then spread to the rest of the body, and Billy does a MercyKill by shutting down his mind.
64	* CuteAndPsycho: Yago is a male example. He is described (by himself) to be one of the most desirable teenagers on the planet, starting all sorts of trends and having tons of fangirls. He's also an egomaniac with a strong ability to manipulate and control others.
65	* DeadGuyJunior: [[spoiler:Jobs and Echo]]'s daughter is named after [[spoiler:Tate.]]
66	* DeadlyPrank: [[spoiler:In ''Dream Storm'', D-Caf decides to scare Anamull with his [[TheWormThatWalks worm form]]. Unfortunately, he loses control of the worms and ends up eating Anamull entirely.]]
67	* DeathWorld: [[spoiler:Post-Rock Earth. For starters, the planet's rotation has stopped, causing it to be divided into two extreme climate zones with a mild Shadow Zone in between. Second, the surface randomly spews columns of flames-which kills one of the characters. Lastly, there are a variety of hellish beasts making life difficult for whoever decides to live on its surface.]]
68	* DisabilitySuperpower: Played subtly. Noyze was born deaf, but is able to hear now thanks to an expensive operation. She's one of the handful of Remnants that doesn't have any kind of mutation or power, but, thanks to spending the first few years of her life communicating entirely in Sign Language, she is very observant and quickly learns to "speak" the Blue Meanies' Sign Language.
69	* DistantFinale: [[spoiler:The final chapter of the last book takes place ten years later.]]
70	* DownerBeginning: It starts with TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.
71	* DreamingOfThingsToCome: Billy has psychic dreams to this effect sometimes. He had these ''before'' he went insane aboard the Mayflower, by the way.
72	* DrivenToSuicide: The captain of the Mayflower shoots himself rather than going to sleep with the Eighty because his family was left behind.
73	* DrivesLikeCrazy: Averted. In Applegate's version of the year 2011, cars have been made that can drive by themselves, so kids as young as twelve can ride them legally. The first book opens with Jobs taking a cruise on the highway.
74	* DwindlingParty: They only sent eighty people in the first place, more than half of them died on the way there, and AnyoneCanDie is in full effect for the thirty-some-odd people who made it to Mother. Not ''everyone'' dies in the end, and some more characters turn up when [[spoiler:they return to Earth]], but only seven of the Mayflower's passengers survive to the end. If you're curious, the survivors are Jobs, Mo'Steel, [[spoiler: Olga, Edward, Violet, Noyze, Roger Dodger, and D-Caf.]]
75	* DysfunctionJunction: A large number of the characters have serious psychological problems and limited social skills. Some were like that on Earth (like Yago and 2Face), others got that way either because of the mutations or what they experienced during the trip (like Billy). Being the last survivors of Earth and subsequently getting put through hell wouldn't be good for anyone's psyche, mind you.
76	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first book is the only one where nobody dies violently (unless you count Cordelia, the girl Jobs has a crush on, who gets impaled by a support beam when a chip of the Rock destroys San Francisco Bay), although it technically has the highest body count of any book in the series, since [[spoiler: almost]] every human on Earth dies in it. It's also the only one where the plot approaches what could be called "normal."
77	* EarnYourHappyEnding: The characters go through endless hell, yet at the end of the series, [[spoiler:Earth has been restored to its former beauty and everyone is living a peaceful existence]].
78	* EarthShatteringKaboom: The Rock causes one. Literally; Earth splits apart in a huge explosion.
79	* EarthThatWas: For most of the series, the characters believe that Earth was completely annihilated by the Rock. A later story arc involves them returning to Earth to see what became of it after The Rock hit. [[spoiler:Turns out that Earth is still habitable, if only just barely.]]
80	* {{Egopolis}}: After Billy merges with Mother, he creates a simulation of a pre-apocalypse suburb for the rest of the humans to live in. They decide to call it "Billyville".
81	* ElegantGothicLolita: The "Janes", girls who model themselves on Creator/JaneAusten characters in dress and manner - represented among the survivors by Miss Violet Blake - are like a somewhat more grown-up version that hasn't been filtered through Japanese culture and puts rather more emphasis on rejecting technology.
82	* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: The beginning of the series is this.
83	* EnergyWeapon: The Blue Meanies shoot them. They turn out to be [[InstantDeathBullet Instant Death Bullets]], as demonstrated by [[spoiler:Shy's death.]]
84	* EnsembleCast: Though Jobs is the central hero, there is a large and diverse cast with their own stories going on around him.
85	* {{Expy}}: of the Literature/{{Animorphs}} characters, naturally, although some of the parallels are a little loose.
86	** Jobs -> Jake, as the level-headed [[TheHero Hero]].
87	** Mo'Steel -> Marco/Rachel, as the snarky action-inclined [[TheLancer Lancer]].
88	** Billy -> Tobias, as the estranged and tormented outsider.
89	** 2Face -> Rachel, with Rachel's negative traits ramped up to create a crazed DarkActionGirl.
90	** Violet -> Cassie, as the emotional core of the group. Also a bit of one for Ax, as the alien ship creates environments based on classical art and thus she ends up acting as MrExposition to the group.
91	* EyeScream: One of the more obvious mutations Tamara's baby has is that its eyes melted. This doesn't seem to inconvenience it, but it's still pretty horrible.
92	* FateWorseThanDeath: Several characters end up wishing they were dead after what they went through. A few get their wish eventually, given AnyoneCanDie.
93	* FeelNoPain: Kubrick, due to having his skin replaced with some kind of clear covering... stuff. In fact, he doesn't feel any touch at all.
94	* {{Fingore}}: In ''Destination Unknown'', one of Violet's fingers gets eaten by worms.
95	* FireForgedFriends: All of the Remnants who support each other. The only people who knew each other at the start of the series were Jobs and Mo'Steel, but by the end, they're extremely close. Being the last humans alive probably does that to you.
96	* FirstEpisodeTwist: Mark's death.
97	* FlatWhat:
98	-->''And then [Noyze] was falling through a crater in the ground, a hole that had not been there a moment before but was there now, yawning, gaping, huge. She fell past walls of dirt and rock, her body impossibly straight, feet down, arms raised over her head. Her brain was blank but for the word ''what'' repeated over and over and over until it was one long word ''whatwhatwhatwhat'' that had no real meaning.''
99	* FlingALightIntoTheFuture: The Mayflower was a pretty solid example of the non-warning variety, although it had more people on it than the usual.
100	* ForcedToWatch: Mr. [=DiSalvo=] had to watch while his son's skin was cut off piece by piece.
101	* FutureSlang: Appears in a minor capacity, especially from Mo'Steel.
102	* GainaxEnding: Hooooo boy, a classic example. [[spoiler:After returning to Earth and finding that Mother has somehow traveled through time to crash on Earth and become a ruin worshiped by the Marauders, some sort of "ritual" is performed using Echo's baby, Mother, Billy, and "the Missing Five" that Billy somehow carries inside him. Whatever this ritual entails is never clear, but in the epilogue it apparently has restored life to Earth and we have BabiesEverAfter]]. And that's not getting into the many plot points that go unresolved. The epilogue itself lampshades this; Jobs has no idea how the world works and wonders if it's all a dream or if he's dead and in the afterlife, but decides it doesn't matter.
103	* GeniusLoci: Mother, although she could also be considered a SapientShip, since she has aspects of both.
104	* GoMadFromTheIsolation: It's a common theme in the series. For one thing, it's the reason that Mother is so insane. Billy seems to have avoided [[BoredWithInsanity ultimately]] going completely unhinged, but it definitely affected his head. Although it's hard to tell what's [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane mundane trauma and what's him being]] TouchedByVorlons.
105	* TheGrotesque: How Kubrick views himself, due to, you know, having see-through synthetic skin that shows his organs. And how everyone else views 2Face due to her face.
106	* HappilyEverAfter: Assuming you survived to the end of the series, you actually got a pretty good ending, all things considered. A GainaxEnding, but a happy one.
107	* HardLight: All the living creatures (and only the living creatures; the inanimate objects are real) native to Mother's world are made out of force fields and holograms, which does nothing whatsoever to stop them from being dangerous.
108	* TheHeroDies: The books don't shy away from killing ''major'' characters, most surprisingly [[spoiler:2Face and Billy]] in the final book.
109	* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:At the end of ''Survival'', Tate takes the ship back in time to several centuries before the Rock struck Earth, then crashes it on Earth so that the other characters can find it and start the ritual that restores Earth to its pre-Rock state in the next book.]]
110	* HideYourLesbians: Tate's sexuality was ambiguous, as were her feelings toward Tamara, but she was intended to be as least bi-sexual with an interest in Tamara.
111	* HomeworldEvacuation: In an effort to ensure at least a small part of humanity survives the apocalypse, the US government loads eighty people onto a space shuttle modified with experimental cryonics technology and launches them into space in hopes of finding a habitable planet. However, many of the ship's passengers suffer CryonicsFailure as it's traveling through space, and it ends up being taken in by an enormous starship run by an unhinged AI.
112	* HorrorHunger: [[spoiler:Tate]]'s ability is that whenever she's afraid, her mouth becomes ''enormous'' and she tries to eat whoever is threatening her. This results in her eating [[spoiler:Yago, Charlie, and Amelia.]]
113	* HumanoidAbomination: Tamara's "baby" is humanoid, but clearly ''not'' human. [[spoiler: It's ultimately revealed to be a [[{{Precursors}} Shipwright]] in disguise.]]
114	* IAmAHumanitarian: Tamara's baby needs to eat people to get power to fight the Riders. Also, [[spoiler: Tate's mutation involves her eating people that threaten her. Yago, Charlie, and Amelia all get eaten, eventually.]]
115	* ImprobableInfantSurvival: Not exactly (since the youngest person in the Mayflower was around ten), but when the Mayflower lands, they note that you were [[OnlyFatalToAdults far more likely to live if you were a teenager than if you were older.]] However, it gets subverted when the vast majority of those teenagers die. [[spoiler:However, all but one of the Remnants to make it to the end of the series are under twenty.]]
116	* {{Jerkass}}: Yago spends most of his time lording his imagined superiority over other people.
117	* JustBeforeTheEnd: The first book covers the events leading up to Earth's destruction.
118	* KudzuPlot: To the point it sees like WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants. Plot points and characters comes and go as needed, the story swerves several times, many mysteries and ideas are brought up and never resolved... it's a mess.
119	* LateArrivalSpoiler: Originally, it was a big revelation that the Remnants had landed on a ship instead of a planet. But it's been spoiled by so many blurbs and descriptions for the series that it's not really worth hiding here.
120	* LeParkour: It isn't referred to by name, but Mo'Steel appears to be a practitioner, presented as part of his general enthusiasm for extreme sports; he and Jobs use it to get around their neighborhood quickly and stealthily in the first book.
121	* MeaningfulName: [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Shy]] Huang, 2Face's dad, is a quiet and meek man.
122	* MeaningfulRename: The books' future society is one where peoples selection of nicknames is far looser. They tend to choose something that that reflects them, ie--Anamull ("animal") and Yago (from [[Theatre/{{Othello}} "Iago"]]).
123	* MindScrew: ''The entire series'' is full of sudden plot twists and unknown mysteries. It gets exponentially worse once the Remnants decide to [[spoiler:return to Earth]], and suddenly the plot becomes almost incoherent.
124	* MistakenForApocalypse: Played with. [[spoiler:It turns out the Rock didn't destroy the Earth to quite the extent that they thought, but it was definitely an apocalypse.]]
125	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: In ''Nowhere Land'', the Remnants witness a battle between the Blue Meanies and some kind of... squid... things... around a sculpture while they were in an old-fashioned boat. The boat had cannons, so the Remnants decided to win the Meanies' favor by attacking the squids. But the cannons hit the sculpture, angering the Meanies. This caused them to attack.
126	* NightmareFuelStationAttendant: The Mother, for most of the series. Interfacing with her causes instant MindRape; only Billy can survive it.
127	* TheNightThatNeverEnds: [[spoiler:When the main cast returns to Earth, they find that the impact has stopped the planet's rotation, leaving one half in darkness. At one point, they actually venture into that half with the Marauders.]]
128	* NoahsStoryArc: The series is centered around eighty humans who blast off in an experimental rocket ship to escape the destruction of the Earth by an asteroid.
129	* NobodyPoops: Averted, though it isn't focused on, the need for bowel movements is not hidden.
130	* OddFriendship: Jobs and Mo'Steel, as lampshaded by Violet in ''Nowhere Land''.
131	* OfficialCouple: Jobs and Violet, Mo'Steel and Noyze, [[spoiler:Jobs and Echo, Violet and Sanchez.]]
132	* OhAndXDies: Inverted; Applegate informed us beforehand that Jobs and Mo'Steel would make it to the end; everyone else was fair game.
133	* OnlyFatalToAdults: Only a few adults survived the hibernation in the Mayflower, but the majority of the kids aboard made it. [[spoiler:Out of all the adults to survive the journey, only Olga is still alive the end of the series.]]
134	* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: A large number of the (human) characters, because of the rename-friendly culture they come from. We do generally know their birth names - for example, Jobs is Sebastian Andreeson, Mo'Steel is Romeo Gonzalez, 2Face is Essence Hwang, and Violet is Dallas Lefkowitz-Blake - but they're only used by their parents.
135	* ParentalAbandonment: Most of the parents are ''dead'', either due to hibernation failure or getting killed off during the series. The only parent that makes it to the end of the series is [[spoiler: Mo'Steel's mom, Olga.]]
136	* PatchworkWorld: Most of the action takes place in a spaceship that can generate any kind of environment within itself, so this tends to happen. For a few books, the characters make their way through a patchwork of worlds straight out of famous human artworks (for example, they wake up in a terrain that looks like an impressionist painting on one side and a black-and-white photograph on the other).
137	* PlanetSpaceship: The humans who awaken when the ship reaches a destination initially think they've landed on a bizarre alien world. They soon discover it's a massive spaceship controlled by a sentient AI that brought them aboard as a curiosity.
138	* PrecisionCrash: In ''The Mayflower Project'', the planet-killing asteroid runs over a comet on its way in. A fragment breaks off and hits San Francisco, killing a minor character whose camera catches the whole thing and blows the secret to the world. The main body of the asteroid hits Portugal.
139	* ProductionForeshadowing: Probably an unintentional example, but in ''Them'', Yago says that it'll be "freaks vs. normals", and he spends much of the rest of the series trying to create that conflict. The phrase "freaks vs. normals" would be very important in Grant's next series, ''Literature/{{Gone}}''.
140	* PromotionToParent: Pre-series, Mark Melman to D-Caf. During the series, Jobs tries to take this role for his brother Edward.
141	* ProudWarriorRace: [[spoiler:The Marauders. Living in the hostile environment that is post-impact Earth, they are naturally very hardened and willing to fight.]]
142	* PsychicPowers: Billy has them, though it isn't explained how.
143	* RadiationInducedSuperpowers: It is speculated by the characters that the reason that some of them have superpowers is that they were exposed to radiation during the 500 years on the Mayflower, although they also acknowledge that this isn't an adequate explanation.
144	* RedOniBlueOni: Mo'Steel is the action-loving HotBlooded red, Jobs is the intelligent and careful blue.
145	* RobbingTheDead: The group is not shy about taking supplies from their fallen members, as they don't have the luxury to be frugal.
146	* SapientShip: "Mother" is a sapient starship. Unfortunately, after having been abandoned by her creators for centuries, she's also kind of insane.
147	* ScrewTheRulesItsTheApocalypse: Almost everyone has this attitude to some extent, but the ones that really do are Mark and D-Caf, who break onto the Mayflower and get a berth so that they can survive, rationalizing "what's anyone gonna do?". [[spoiler: This doesn't really work out for Mark, who dies before the ship takes off, but it does for D-Caf.]]
148	* SharingABody: [[spoiler:This happens to anyone eaten by Tate when she's in her transformed state-they continue to exist as separate consciousnesses inside her head.]]
149	** [[spoiler:This apparently happened to the Missing Five-their minds somehow end up inside Billy's head.]]
150	* ShoutOut: Doesn't happen enough to be a real motif or a proper example of ThemeNaming, but Music/TheBeatles get two: the Blue Meanies, and the title of the fourth book, ''Nowhere Land''. Also, [[ComicBook/TwoFace 2Face]].
151	* SwallowedWhole: When Tate is afraid, she transforms into a creature called "The Mouth" and devours whatever is threatening her.
152	* ThereIsAnother: The Mayflower survivors think they're the last humans alive until [[spoiler:they go back to Earth and meet the Alphas and Marauders.]]
153	* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: [[spoiler: Duncan's blobby evolved form]] was so durable that it required isolation in a force field, exposure to a 100% ozone atmosphere, and then further exposure to 100 times Earth's atmospheric pressure to kill. And just to make sure, the remains were ThrownOutTheAirlock.
154	* TimeMarchesOn:
155	** Jobs took his name in honor of Steve Jobs; at the time the books began, 2000+, Steve Jobs was a comparatively obscure figure and is treated as such in the text, with other characters even asking Jobs why he didn't prefer Bill Gates. Ten years later, who ''doesn't'' know who he is?
156	** Played with in regards to some of the technological advances. Things like "links" (essentially blue-tooth headsets with internet access and video and audio streaming) and self-driving computerized cars were not too out of left-field for a 2000s author imagining the world of 2011, and they still might come around in our lifetimes, though now several years late.
157	* TokenEvilTeammate: Yago. All of the remnants have to work with him to survive, but he's ''definitely'' evil and not trusted.
158	* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: 2Face is the tomboy to Violet's girly-girl.
159	* TouchedByVorlons: Quite a few of the characters (it's never explained whether their superpowers appeared during the voyage or after landing on Mother), but especially Billy.
160	* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: All of the kids do this a lot, but Yago in particular. Considering what they go through, not surprising.
161	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Published in 2001, the first book begins in 2011, before Earth is hit.
162	* TwoActStructure: Books 1-10 are about escaping the Mother alive, [[spoiler: books 11-14 are about restoring Earth to its former glory.]]
163	* TwoferTokenMinority: Tamara, Tate, and Noyze are all black women. Tate has HoYay with Tamara that was [[WhatCouldHaveBeen almost]] explicit homosexuality, and Noyze grew up deaf. 2Face is an Asian girl whose severe facial burns could be considered a disability, though they don't really inconvenience her that much directly.
164	* TheUnreveal: The Ancient Enemy, the source of the mutations, the Missing Five, just what the "Troika" are, Roger Dodger and D-Caf's dreams, how a Shipwright became Tamara's Baby (or maybe vice-versa), how [[spoiler:Earth possibly reformed and civilization on it survived]]. Yeah, there's a lot of questions left hanging.
165	* VillainWithGoodPublicity: Yago, being the President's son, knows that he has to get people to like him in order to have control. This works to a surprising extent, dispute his being ObviouslyEvil.
166	* WhiteMaleLead: Jobs. In the extremely diverse EnsembleCast, he's the closest thing the series has to TheProtagonist.
167	* WorldOfChaos: Mother's artificially generated environment, which was mostly created from paintings. All sorts of paintings.
168	* TheWormThatWalks: [[spoiler:Violet]]'s mutation is the ability to dissolve into a mass of worms that can actually bring back the dead. She eventually [[ContagiousPowers passes it on]] to [[spoiler:Rodger Dodger, D-Caf, and 2Face.]]
169	* YouKillItYouBoughtIt:
170	** Mo'Steel is chosen to be the leader of [[spoiler:the Marauders]] after he kills their previous leader.
171	** This is how the Riders' hoverboards work - they're mentally controlled by whichever Rider originally owns them, unless you kill that Rider, at which point, control goes to whoever is riding the board.

Context Literature / Remnants