Line #87 VideoGame/CrimeOClock


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/crimeoclock.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Crimes wait for no man!]]
3	''Crime O'Clock'' is a MysteryFiction HiddenObjectGame by Bad Seed, released on July 21, 2023. As a member of the TimePolice, the player is tasked with investigating images depicting five different eras: the Information Age, the Lost Age, the Atlantean Age, the Steam Age, and the Aeon Age. Each Age consists of ten "ticks", allowing you to see how events play out across an entire day and track the routes of suspects and evidence in order to solve anomalous crimes and keep the timeline intact.
4	----
5	!!Tropes:
6	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The Aeon Age occurs in 2099 A.D., a scant 84 years from the Information Age when most of the other Ages are thousands of years apart, yet shows that society has completely changed into being {{Cyberpunk}} thanks to the reintroduction of ancient and powerful technology.
7	* TwentyMinutesIntoThePast: The Information Age is specifically Milan, Italy (the developers' hometown) in 2015 A.D.
8	* AdvancedAncientHumans: The Lost Age showcases a civilization that's aesthetically based on ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, but also has technology comparable to modern day and a series of "[[Series/StargateSG1 earthgates]]" used for quick commutes.
9	* AdvertOverloadedFuture: The player's EVE, the futuristic VirtualSidekick vital to keeping the timeline from collapsing, is a "freemium subscription" version that's in disbelief that you'd rather wait the seconds it takes to install new subroutines than to watch a targeted advertisement.
10	* AIIsACrapshoot: [[spoiler:The various criminal masterminds causing crimes in the past with the goal of changing the future mostly turn out to be EVE-like artificial intelligences that don't want EVE to assimilate them. It emerges that the AI they form when complete, ORACLE, was supposed to safeguard the timeline but could only focus on [[HumansAreBastards how humans always seemed to be their own worst enemies,]] leading it to conclude that the only way to save time was to erase it entirely.]]
11	* AnachronicOrder:
12	** As a time traveler, [[spoiler:Walter Heisenberg]]'s Fulcrum Story in the Atlantean Age jumps around from tick to tick rather than progressing from tick one through to tick ten like everybody else.
13	** The Fulcrum Story for "MAIN CHARACTER" in the Aeon Age is backwards, getting an assignment in Tick 10 and escaping with the loot in Tick 1.[[note]]He's a ShoutOut to "The Protagonist" in ''Film/{{Tenet}}'', moving in inverted time along with his partner who is a visible reference to the Protagonist's partner Neil.[[/note]]
14	* TheBet: One case in the Lost Age features two merchants, Shoshan and Ufa, playing a game called "Kahp'tl'sm" in which the goal is to make the most profit (which of course evolved over time into modern capitalism). It then turns out that the loser had to permanently forfeit their marketplace stall to the winner, which, combined with a little prodding from "RAGE", led to an anomalous crime taking place.
15	* BigBadDuumvirate: The five antagonists, who each make their mark on the timeline in different ways.
16	** OBLIVION [[spoiler:is a shapeshifter who can take the form of multiple beings to trick other characters.]]
17	** RAGE [[spoiler:encourages characters to act out of irrational anger.]]
18	** AVATAR [[spoiler:crushes victims with heavy objects and scatters the event through spacetime.]]
19	** CHIMERA [[spoiler:moves and replaces objects into characters' paths to influence them to act in certain ways.]]
20	** [[spoiler:LEGACY is capable of removing people and even their motivations from the timeline entirely.]]
21	* BookEnds:
22	** The first true case you tackle (and the first involving a rogue AI) involves a band's singer and frontman getting crushed by a falling object, as does the last case before EVE [[spoiler:assimilates the last AI]]. Thankfully, the latter case isn't fatal--the crime that needs to be prevented instead is [[spoiler:the theft of Johnny Silvercat's cybernetic arm]].
23	** The first tutorial case is about a man breaking into a rooftop apartment to commit a robbery, with a key hanging over the door. The final mission before the endgame, [[spoiler:catching and assimilating LEGACY]], ends with examining that key.
24	* ButterflyOfDoom: The antagonists' goal is to disrupt the true timeline by introducing small changes that snowball into bigger ones, usually resulting in a vital person's death.
25	* ButtMonkey:
26	** William Gloom, a character in the Steam Age, is murdered in multiple cases; [[spoiler:he's even murdered multiple times in the same case, as Walter Heisenberg tries to abuse time travel to keep him dead before he uncovers powerful Atlantean relics.]]
27	** Aqua from "The Brown Clay Pot" also ends up dead twice, first from falling to her death, [[spoiler:and then later on she's crushed by a statue's head along with her partner]].
28	** Roberto Beniamino is a non-victim recipient of this after the second case; after being reamed out for vandalizing public property, he attends Axl Blood's concert, where he accidentally throws his drink over another concertgoer, gets into a fight, and subsequently gets kicked out.
29	** Jasper, an influencer who has a Fulcrum Story, gets kicked out of the same concert venue at an earlier point in time. Undeterred, he sneaks in anyway, gets chased out again, and eventually gets blasted with water by an elephant at the zoo.
30	* CainAndAbel: "The Amethyst Gate" has a pair of sisters named, fittingly, Kain and Havel, with Kain deciding to MurderTheHypotenuse to court Havel's husband.
31	* CharmPerson: The case "The Brown Clay Pot" involves a man being granted an amulet by "Chimera" that has some power of the Mind Stone and makes him irresistible to women, including the victim, who is too distraught after reading a letter from her heartbroken boyfriend to notice [[NoOSHACompliance she's about to walk off of a building]].
32	* CheatersNeverProsper: "The Coral Trophy" involves [[spoiler:a sports team coach dosing his team with performance boosters so they can win a match. He comes out of it badly either way - either his star player murders him when the player catches him dumping the evidence, or he's arrested for the crime of Pride.]]
33	* ClassifiedInformation: The player Detective will often come across characters and events whose full importance to the True Timeline requires "Crimson"-level security clearance to declassify, though it will be divulged to them if it's pertinent to a case they're currently investigating.
34	* CloseEnoughTimeline: The TimePolice are unable to completely prevent crimes, but as long as neither the victims nor the culprits are removed from the timeline, history isn't in danger of completely collapsing.
35	* ColourfulThemeNaming: Every case title is constructed out of a color (which is then the color used for the non-black-and-white elements in the UI for that case) and something connected with the case itself. As examples, the first two cases are "The Apartment in Pink" and "The Enigmatic Lime Drink".
36	* CreatorCameo: The Bad Seed office can be seen in the Information Age, and by the time of the tenth tick they're having a launch party for the game.
37	* CrystalSpiresAndTogas: The Atlantean Age, which is known for "its magic crystals and its peaceful and utopian civilization". It's so utopian, in fact, that the TimePolice have to manipulate time themselves and introduce the concepts of punishment and the SevenDeadlySins in order to prevent more catastrophic timeline changes such as murder caused by anomalies.
38	* {{Cyberpunk}}: The Aeon Age, which is stated to be a world of "bright lights, ruthless corporations and underground struggles".
39	* DatingCatwoman: "The Blue Electric Sheep" ends with Deckard, the detective, starting a relationship with Nina, the wanted thief who would have killed him without the TimePolice intervening.
40	* DeathFromAbove: AVATAR's modus operandi is to [[spoiler:cause something big to fall on a victim and crush them, scatter the event across the timeline, and lock the individual fragments behind various sigils that appear one at a time before the event.]]
41	* DefiantToTheEnd: [[spoiler:Most of the AI react like this during their boss battles, with the sole exception of Chimera, who [[VillainsWantMercy begs for you to stop]] before realizing that [[ButThouMust EVE isn't actually giving you any choice in the matter]].]]
42	* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The entire game is done with uncolored lineart, save for marking objects that an activated power can be used on.
43	* EarlyBirdCameo:
44	** Most of the future cases' events can be seen while dealing with past ones.
45	** [[spoiler:Walter Heisenberg]] shows up as a Fulcrum Story in [[spoiler:the Atlantean Age]] before becoming directly involved in main cases in the Steam Age.
46	* EngineeredPublicConfession: Of a sort in "The Iris Poisonous". [[spoiler:In order to prevent the pharaoh's food taster from being murdered by the pharaoh for fraternizing with his wife, the Detective and EVE redirect his Earthgate wormhole so he steps out of the palace gate instead, the one that you can only use if you have royal blood (which the food taster has, being the pharaoh's brother-in-law). This is right out in the open in front of several witnesses.]]
47	* EvilLuddite: The Steam Age has numerous cases involving "New Dawn", an organization originally composed of laborers that toiled for wealthy industrialists and came to the conclusion that their lives would be a lot better without any industry at all.
48	* EvilTwin: The case "The Golden Heart" involves Bartholomew Gifford, the assistant to a roboticist creating [[WesternAnimation/TheIronGiant an iron giant]], and Nathan Gifford, his twin brother that's part of the EvilLuddite "New Dawn" faction and wants to sabotage the machine.
49	* FunWithAcronyms:
50	** [[spoiler:The six AI of the story, Oblivion, Rage, Avatar, Chimera, Legacy and Eve are all components of the super-AI ORACLE.]]
51	** The mysterious informant is only known as "GM". [[spoiler:In the final beat of the story, after being convinced to spare the timeline and seal the ORACLE Protocol away, EVE thinks up a few things the letters could stand for: Game Master, for setting the player and EVE up as partners; Gray Matter, for guiding the former to stop the latter with a lengthy plan; and Guardian Memory, for sacrificing himself for the sake of preserving the timeline.]]
52	* FunnyBackgroundEvent: Given that this is a Hidden Object Game, there are many things happening in every tick of every age, not all of which are drawn attention to, such as the woman in the Information Age who grows a [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Piranha Plant]] and is then eaten by it.
53	* GoodIsNotNice: This is one of the things that EVE has you understand early on, that it may not necessarily be the culprit's ''fault'' that they're doing what they are, but maintaining the true timeline by having them arrested is your number one priority.
54	* GreaterScopeVillain: While the BigBadDuumvirate is the direct cause of your problems, the MysteriousInformant informs the player that [[spoiler:the Aeon Age versions of Crimson Vow and Eye of Ra, not wanting "humanity to collapse into a black whirlpool of degradation", used the Sacred Stones of Atlantis to create the Artificial Intelligences and form the ORACLE protocol]].
55	* HeroicMime: Of the SilentBob variant. It can be inferred that the player Detective is actually quite talkative, but all we see are EVE's responses.
56	* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Just as the timeline is about to be erased by the ORACLE protocol, your future self offers themself up as the final key to breach the AI's defenses and reach out to EVE to show her the good in humanity. This sheer willingness to give up their life for the greater good--along with all the prior evidence of good deeds and virtues being exercised by humanity--is what finally convinces her to stop the timeline's obliteration and restore the erased Ages.]]
57	* HighClassGlass: Members of the Volpin family, a lineage of classy thieves that are repeatedly involved in the cases investigated throughout history, can all be identified by the monocles they wear.
58	* HintSystem: Clicking on EVE during a case will show your current objective and up to three covered hints. If a minute passes by without progress, a lightbulb icon will appear next to EVE, and one of the hints can be uncovered. Usually, the first hint will indicate what to look for and the last hint will state where to find it. However, these hints aren't available when EVE is preoccupied, such as [[spoiler:finding a key while she's assimilating an AI]].
59	* HumbleHero: In "The Iris Poisonous", [[spoiler:the reason Ra-kha-ka, the royal food taster, hid his true identity of Ra-hakama-kh, Queen Chione's biological brother, is because he wanted to protect his brother-in-law Pharaoh Sebekem III instead of being treated like fellow royalty]].
60	* InelegantBlubbering: Before her case is solved, when Lady Adler in the Steam Age finds that her property has been stolen by Arsene Volpin in around tick four, she spends the entirety of the remaining ticks throwing a screaming tantrum and rolling around on the floor crying.
61	* InterfaceScrew:
62	** EVE's Time Defrag subroutine takes up so much of her processing power that she has to suspend her human interface, so while it's running the screen changes color and the only messages you get from her are barely comprehensible.
63	** [[spoiler:Pre-boss battle searches take place with the screen becoming an increasingly bold shade of the mission's color. The Minutes to Midnight cases have three hunts in each age with the screen becoming increasingly whiter, as ORACLE comes closer to deleting history.]]
64	* InterfaceSpoiler: Switching from tick to tick will fade out everything that has a chance of changing, not just the characters. This includes [[spoiler:the large objects AVATAR drops on top of their victims.]]
65	* ItWillNeverCatchOn: The case "The Green Energy Idea" revolves around a female scientist named Timothea Craft who RAGE manipulates into a theft after she's a victim of ProducePelting. Said pelting is caused by making a presentation about swapping from coal to more renewable energy sources, with EVE noting that she really was right about her theories.
66	* JusticeByOtherLegalMeans: A "Justice for Another Crime" variant that, due to time travel, prevents the initial crime from happening in the first place. For most murders and notable destruction of property, it's fairly easy to figure out who the culprit is. The problem is, because those crimes can't happen to keep the timeline intact, you have to instead track the culprit's route earlier in the day and catch them committing a lesser offense in preparation of the major crime in order to get them arrested before the greater crime can occur.
67	* LeetLingo: The fourth descendent to take on the Volpin identity, encountered in the futuristic Aeon age, stylizes their name as "[=V0lp1n x4=]".
68	* LoveTriangle: Multiple cases involve one that leads to one member instigating a crime, such as "The Brown Clay Pot" showing a man vehemently breaking up with a woman after he catches her falling for a CharmPerson, "The Scarlet Snake" having a woman in an affair upsetting the man she's cheating with so much that he frightens her husband to death, and "The Amethyst Gate" having a girl murder her sister via TeleporterAccident so she can hook up with the sister's husband.
69	* MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight: The BigBadDuumvirate causing anomalous crimes by influencing people in the past are motivated by trying to change the future and create a timeline where their goals are achieved.
70	* MiniGame: Whenever the player needs to activate one of EVE's subroutines to decode a clue, it takes the form of a minigame, such as analyzing chemicals by organizing mixed stacks of symbols or looking up a suspect's profile by stopping roulette wheels of facial features at the right times.
71	* MyFutureSelfAndMe: In "The Orange Clockwork", [[spoiler:time traveler Walter Heisenburg, after failing to kill William Gloom under LEGACY's orders before he uncovers the Atlantean Sacred Stones, nearly causes a paradox by meeting his past self and warning him that their timeline is doomed. This is also the case where the player's informant reveals they're from a future in which ORACLE caused devastation and that they've set things up so the player got partnered with EVE in order to stop it before it's too late]].
72	* MysteriousInformant: After EVE [[spoiler:defeats RAGE and starts assimilating him]], EVE's systems start being hacked into without her awareness. From that point on, one of these starts contacting the player while asking to be kept a secret from EVE, wanting to help from outside the boundaries of the law and worried about EVE's increasing adaptability. [[spoiler:Towards the end of the story, they turn out to be the player's future self, trying to mitigate the damage that a fully-restored ORACLE could cause.]]
73	* NeverTrustATrailer: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq3FT-PKDgU The official Launch trailer]] shows a summary of how to investigate cases, then ends with a sequence of the BigBadDuumvirate walking through the various eras. In the game itself, only OBLIVION and RAGE directly interact with anyone, with the faces of the others only seen on the profiles EVE makes for them.
74	* NoodleIncident: EVE will occasionally reference "historical" events that take place in the future and don't seem to make sense, such as puppets being declared illegal after the Information Age and how goats became legally punishable for their acts of destruction after the Great Goat Guerrilla of 2356.
75	* NoOSHACompliance:
76	** The [[AdvancedAncientHumans technologically gifted]] Lost Age's preventative measure to warn people about a malfunctioning earthgate that has the capability to TeleporterAccident them is a single wooden sign with an "X" on it placed in front of said gate, which is easily removed in one case to get someone killed. Once the case is completed, the post-crime fix can be seen: ''multiple'' wooden signs with "X" on them.
77	** The death that occurs in "The Brown Clay Pot" is due to a woman accidentally walking off of a building without any guardrails while reading a letter from her heartbroken boyfriend, who saw her cheating on him with a CharmPerson.
78	* OneDegreeOfSeparation: The Fulcrum Stories (optional assignments that aren't crime-focused) tend to cross over with each other as well as the main investigations in order to connect everyone, such as the Information Age showing "Johnny Weak" having to save his dog from accidentally being run over by Lorenzo Cinghialone's scooter and online influencer Jasper sneaking into the concert of Axl Blood, the victim of the case "The Red Blood-Stained Band".
79	* PhantomThief: The Volpins are a dynasty of these, with a descendant appearing in every era in order to steal Atlantean technology and fulfill ThePromise made by their ancestor. Due to the family's importance to the timeline, namely [[spoiler:how their thefts helped lead to the creation of ORACLE]], the investigator can only mitigate the damage they do and are unable to ever properly apprehend them for their crimes.
80	* PoorCommunicationKills: The case of "The Iris Poisonous". [[spoiler:Thanks to the aid of Chimera, the Pharaoh of the Lost Age sees his wife playing with his food taster and orders him poisoned, having her arrested for the crime. Over the course of the case it emerges that the food taster is actually the Pharaoh's brother-in-law, and he mistook sibling playfulness with infidelity.]]
81	* PostStressOvereating: Prior to "The Brown Clay Pot" being solved, once Ceraon has written his angry letter and Aqua is on her way to falling to her death, the former indulges in a ''lot'' of ice cream through a flood of tears.
82	* ProducePelting: Timothea Craft is a victim of this in "The Green Energy Idea", as she's presenting her theory on how renewable energy will be better than coal to a bunch of coal barons that care more about their wealth than the environment.
83	* ThePromise: "Rust Tears in the Rain" reveals that the millennia-long streak of thefts by the Volpin family is motivated by a promise their ancestor made back in the Atlantean era. [[spoiler:Having befriended the construct that was the prototype of the Atlantean robot guardians, the ancestor promised to help put it back together after the fall of Atlantis no matter how long it took.]] Unfortunately, this also makes the family an UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom, as [[spoiler:the construct's soul, once it's reassembled in the Aeon Age, would also be used to create EVE and the AI threatening the entire timeline]].
84	* RetGone: [[spoiler:LEGACY can completely remove a person or their motivations from an Age, and solving the case doesn't bring the person back; at best, EVE can set up a different person to take their role.]]
85	* ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: Occasionally, you have to solve a crime committed by someone that's in charge of the Age's law enforcement, which means you have to find a way to remove their motive instead of getting them arrested. Examples include [[spoiler:helping the head Guardian find a compatible partner so he doesn't crush another guardian out of Envy]] in the Atlantean Age, and [[spoiler:showing the Pharaoh that his wife's "affair" with the food taster was actually just sibling playfulness]] in the Lost Age.
86	* SecretWar: During "The Golden Foot", EVE admits that one of these [[TheUnmasquedWorld becoming no longer secret]] is the reason the Information Age eventually ended. The factions involved (all of which the Detective, by this point, has been introduced to in their ages of origin) were the Crimson Vow, the Atlantean Age-originating society [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow to keep Atlantis' preserved secrets shrouded in myth after the Eternity Gauntlet ruined everything]]; the Eye of Ra, the Lost Age sect that believed in providence through technology; and New Dawn, the EvilLuddite faction from the Steam Age.
87	* ShoutOut: The game is flooded with them.
88	** The second part of the Tutorial before you can start officially working in the TimePolice is called the "[[Franchise/StarTrek Kobayashi Test]]".
89	** The case "The Bronze Eternity Gauntlet" focuses on a squid gaining access to the titular gauntlet and [[Film/AvengersInfinityWar empowering it with the Sacred Stones of Space, Power, Soul, and Mind to bring about Atlantis' fall too early]]. EVE wonders during the investigation if the culprit is purple, and said culprit does turn out to have a beard patterned like Thanos' chin. EVE also mentions that the reason the actual fall of Atlantis fell into legend as "the Eternity Saga" instead of being recorded as history is partly because [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow the knowledge that such magic is real is dangerous]], and partly because its [[Film/AvengersEndgame endgame]] was lacklustre. [[spoiler:The Eternity Gauntlet goes on to have a recurring role throughout the story.]]
90	** During the case "The Copper Machine", EVE will congratulate the player for uncovering a clue by stating "[[Literature/HarryPotter Ten points to Gryffindor]], as they said in the Information Age."
91	** The case "The Blue Mask" has the manor of [[Franchise/SherlockHolmes Lady Adler]] broken into by [[Literature/ArseneLupin the notorious thief Arsene Volpin II, real identity novelist Maurice Lenoir]]. Some later cases involve the rest of the family tree, starting with the wackier [[Franchise/LupinIII Volpin III]].
92	** The sequence of EVE [[spoiler:assimilating another AI]] is depicted as [[VideoGame/PacMan EVE gobbling the items anchoring their target and then the target itself]].
93	** The case "The Blue Electric Sheep" is centered around preventing the death of a futuristic detective in old-fashioned apparel named [[Franchise/BladeRunner Deckard]] [[Creator/RidleyScott Scott]]. A later case in the same Age is titled "Rust Tears in the Rain".
94	** Hanging around in the junkyard of the Aeon Age is [[Series/StrangerThings a couple of kids that befriends a new member with short hair, who saves them with her psychokinetic powers]].
95	** One of the central characters of the "The Violet Plum Jam" case is a former cyber-surgeon with wild hair and goggles named [[Franchise/BackToTheFuture Doc Brown]].
96	** One of the late-game Steam Age cases is "[[Film/AClockworkOrange The Orange Clockwork]]". During it, EVE describes how the culprit is messing with them by saying "[[Music/BritneySpears He played with our brains, and we got lost in the game]]".
97	** The victim of "The Red Right Hand' is a futuristic rockstar with a prosthetic silver arm named [[VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077 Johnny Silvercat]].
98	** Many of the Fulcrum Stories focus on characters based on other works of media:
99	*** The Information Age has you track [[Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles four "Hero Turtles" being trained by a rat]], [[Film/PulpFiction "Vincenzo Vegano" and his partner chasing after a briefcase]], [[Film/JohnWick retired special agent "Johnny Weak" saving his dog]], and [[WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty "Rick Harmon" using portals to go on adventures with his nephew]].
100	*** The Lost Age has you track [[WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}} "Ali" courting a princess upon a flying carpet]], [[Film/TheForceAwakens the spherical robot "Bee Bee Hot" ditching its scrap trader creator]], [[VideoGame/Journey2012 a "Nomad" collecting sprites that look like scraps of cloth]], [[Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar "Ken the Fighter" using his secret martial arts technique to repair damage caused by the "fury of the goats"]], [[Film/TheMummy1999 a time-traveler from the Steam Age named "Rick O'Riordan" accidentally awakening a mummy while looting treasure]], [[Literature/{{Dune}} a prince named "Paul Haderach" gaining a pet sandworm]], and [[Franchise/PrinceOfPersia the deposed "Prince Mechner" parkouring around the city while plotting to reclaim his birthright]].
101	*** The Atlantean Age has you track [[Manga/OnePiece the "Straw Hat" of young pirate Donkey M. Rufus being blown away and helping him meet a navigator and a marksman]], [[WesternAnimation/{{Moana}} "Dwayne" the shapeshifting sea god looking for someone to repair the sail of his raft]], [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989 "Sébastien" the crab escaping from a chef and reuniting with his mermaid friend]], [[Series/BreakingBad "Walter Heisenburg" the time traveler from the Steam Age intending to discover the city's mysteries]], [[WesternAnimation/{{Luca}} "Marco Valdo" the surly fisherman and his pet cat accompanying his adopted son as he visits his friend]], and [[ComicBook/{{Aquaman}} "Aquamodel" the actor posing around town so an artist can paint the perfect picture]].
102	*** The Steam Age has you track [[VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends a bazooka-toting rabblerouser named "Blue Hex"]], [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos the secretly non-human writer "Howard Hatecraft" as he looks for inspiration for a story]], [[Franchise/{{Pinocchio}} "Mister Giuseppe" as he builds a robot son]], [[Film/TheIncredibleShrinkingWoman a suburban housewife named "Mrs. Saltpot" that starts shrinking due to a spoon-shaped pendant]], [[VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}} "Young Gherman" as he hunts down a mysterious beast that turns out to be a stray cat]], [[Literature/AroundTheWorldInEightyDays "Jean Passport" that's practicing a dance he learned while on an eighty-day excursion with his boss]], and [[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean the pirate "Jack Colibri" sailing into town on a sinking raft, flirting with a lady, and then escaping from the lady's enraged suitor]].
103	*** The Aeon Age has you track [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} the robotic "Eliminator" that's supposed to destroy all romance but ends up falling in love]], [[Anime/AstroBoy the little robot "Astro Guy" defending the city with energy beams and jet-powered legs]], [[Series/TheMandalorian "Din Djar Djar" the part-time bounty hunter and adoptive father of a being he's named Baby Yogurt]], [[Manga/BattleAngelAlita "Doc Daisuke" the roboticist that finds the head of a young cyborg girl and builds her a new body]], [[Film/{{Tenet}} "Main Character" an agent from a classified organization who's operating in inverted time]], [[Franchise/MenInBlack "Agent Molly" of the They in Grey organization that wipes the memories of anyone that discovers secret Atlantean Age descendants living in their era]], and [[Franchise/TheMatrix the "Chosen One" that's trained to bend metal with his mind and fly in the air]].
104	* {{Steampunk}}: [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The Steam Age]], which features automata walking around alongside Gothically-dressed people, and has abundant gear-themed and steam-emitting architecture.
105	* TeleporterAccident: The case "The Amethyst Gate" focuses on a LoveTriangle between Jonas and two sisters, Havel and Kain, that ends with [[MurderTheHypotenuse Kain removing a warning sign for a broken earthgate and watching Havel disintegrate herself with it]]. Unfortunately, the paradox is Kain getting away with it, not the murder itself,[[labelnote:because]]in the original timeline she was found guilty of stealing the sign, but Chimera moved a brazier to her so she could burn the evidence[[/labelnote]] [[GoodIsNotNice so Havel must remain dead in the True Timeline]].
106	* TemptingFate: After passing the "Kobayashi Test" and officially joining the TimePolice, EVE states that you can relax due to how rare disturbances to the True Timeline actually are. Immediately after, an alarm activates, and the player is thrust into a series of cases in which a group of masterminds are trying to alter the True Timeline.
107	* TimePolice: The player's job is to respond to temporal divergences caused by anomalous crime and identify the culprits in order to keep the timeline intact and prevent periods of history from being irreparably warped.
108	* TheUnmasquedWorld: In the True Timeline, the Information Age transitions into the Aeon Age after New Dawn manages to leak information about their SecretWar with the Crimson Vow and Eye of Ra to the public. In the Aeon Age, there are three huge towers each dedicated to one of the three warring factions, while regular people are stuck in the "Flow", otherwise known as the sewer and garbage disposal layer. With that said, the Fulcrum Stories do show that the world is still not completely unmasqued, with one organization still helping to keep the existence of the squid-like Atlantean descendants a secret.
109	* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: All Roberto Beniamino wanted to do in "The Enigmatic Lime Drink" was [[spoiler:play a prank by putting a pop-up puppet inside his university textbook,]] but it ended up scaring a teacher to death.
110	* VerbalBackspace: During the final cases of the game, EVE starts referring to her own prowess and power upon [[spoiler:absorbing the other artificial intelligences]] before rectifying it as "our" accomplishments and accuses the player of misunderstanding her.
111	* VirtualSidekick: Accompanying the player on their investigations is EVE, a digital assistant that helps keep track of clues found and can accomplish various tasks like decrypting ancient languages and tracing calls through quick mini-games.
112	* WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove: "The Amethyst Gate" focuses on a LoveTriangle, and EVE becomes confused when one of the girls in it, Kain, acts more like a bird than a human (despite the fact that [[WorldOfFunnyAnimals said character IS a bird]]). The Detective, [[SilentBob in their own way]], then has to inform EVE that Kain strutting around like a peacock in front of the newly-widower Jonas means that Kain's enamored by him.
113	* WorldOfFunnyAnimals: The various settings all feature a mix of human and anthropomorphic animal characters, such as one criminal in the Lost Age being a rat [[MeaningfulName named Aten Black Tail]] that EVE notes is identifiable from other rats by his black tail. Despite this, EVE refers to all non-robot characters outside of the Atlantean Age [[OurHumansAreDifferent as being humans]].
114	* XRayVision: After [[spoiler:assimilating RAGE into their system]], EVE unlocks a subroutine that allows them to construct simulations of the interiors of buildings, allowing the Detective to find clues and characters previously obscured by walls. In the Aeon Age, it's also used to see through the thick smog that separates the three pillars of future society with the slums and sewage that most people actually live in.

Context VideoGame / CrimeOClock