* AlternateCharacterInterpretation:
** The [=EDF=] as rather brutal KnightTemplar who genuinely care about and are fighting for the survival of Earth - and, by extension, the entire species - and see the miners as ungrateful children unwilling to do what is necessary to keep society functioning.
* AnticlimaxBoss: [[spoiler:In ''Guerrilla'', General Roth is just a mook in a tank. The final fight is over in seconds. Hell, you can kill him before you even ''see'' him if you bring a railgun.]]
** Masako, the [[InformedAbility reportedly]] {{Badass}} leader of the [[PsychoForHire Mercs]] from the first game, is the last person you fight before the finale. She has a boss nanoshield as well as a custom rifle that kills you in 3 hits on Normal difficulty, as well as being the fastest enemy in the game once she loses her nanoshield. Still, she's no [[VideoGame/{{Doom}} Cyberdemon]] and goes down relatively quickly.
* CatharsisFactor: ''Guerilla'' offers this in spades. There's no feeling quite like bringing down an EDF base with only your [[DropTheHammer trusty sledgehammer-]] and [[StuffBlowingUp gratuitous amounts of explosives.]] ''Armageddon'' offers up a bit more, though not nearly as much due to it's linear storyline. You can't fault it for trying though, especially when it gives you the option of reassembling what you just blew up with the [[NanoMachines Nano Forge]]... so you can ''[[UpToEleven destroy it again.]]''
* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: The Major League Gaming Playlist in ''Guerrilla''. No Health Packs. No Remote Charges. No Rail Driver. No Handicapping. No Proximity Mines. No Vision Packs. [[spoiler: [[SuperSmashBrothers Fox Only. Final Destination.]]]]
* CompleteMonster:
** Colonel Joseph Broga, is the commander of the artillery base in the Free Fire Zone, and ends up on the receiving end of a morally dodgy PayEvilUntoEvil scene with a side of ColdBloodedTorture in the mission ''Catch and Release''.
** Captain Halvar [[MeaningfulName Gunnarsen]] was responsible for the deaths of over ''300'' miners in Chryse (we are not given many details, however), and attempts to trap workers during a protest in one of the industrial zones with a message over a PA system. They expect a peaceful protest, but he's given his troops orders to open fire.
** General Bertram Roth is an incompetent liar if the Voice of Mars is to be believed, and is constantly assuring the citizens that, even as the Faction tears it's way towards the mass accelerator on Mount Vogel, the Red Faction is a crippled organization that is on it's last legs and in it's final death throes.
** Admiral Lucius Kobel ([[EvilPlan who has been engineering the entire situation to take over from Roth]]) takes his bigass spaceship to Mars to put the Faction down via all out assault and orbital bombardment. The civilian population? ...''expendable''.
** Capek, from ''Red Faction 1''. He performed horrifying [[{{nanomachines}} nanotech]] experiments on the miners, turning them into disfigured monsters. He's also behind the [[TheVirus the plague]] that is painfully killing off the civilians, but then anyone who's ever played a videogame before knows "mysterious plague" + "evil corporation" = "evil experiments" anyway.
** Adam Hale
* DemonicSpiders: The railgun-wielding Merc Commanders in ''Red Faction'', who could kill you with 1 shot. ''From behind a wall.'' Those darned Elite Guards, too, who are MadeOfIron and dodge your shots like it's ''Film/TheMatrix''.
* FranchiseKiller: People generally really enjoyed ''Guerilla.'' The franchise seemed quite revived. Then came ''Armageddon'' which abandoned the "rebels fighting oppression" recurring storyline for a generic BugWar plot, threw out the WideOpenSandbox of its predecessor for a linear third-person shooter game, and the ability to destroy terrain was often a ''detriment'' as you'd destroy critical paths and need to rebuild them constantly with the nanoforge. The game wasn't really ''bad'' but it was certainly not what anyone was hoping for and it sold so poorly that THQ said they no longer have plans for more Red Faction games for now. They said that about Red Faction 2, as well....
** This likely contributed to Koch Media ''not'' buying the rights to Red Faction along with Volition.
* GameBreaker: In online multiplayer, the eponymous sledgehammer of ''Guerrilla''. There's a known bug in the game where the hammer's reach extends far beyond what it should ever be. Complaints filled the message board and the responses from the developers give only one concrete explanation for the phenomenon: TheyJustDidntCare]. More charitably, online wasn't the main focus of development. Also Heal Packs: designed to keep you alive in the heat of combat by speeding up the rate you regenerate health, or [[TheJuggernaut as lot of players like to do, exploit its ability to make you invincible for its 30 second duration.]] There are also mods that include an assault rifle that shoots the explosions from singularity bombs.
* GoddamnedBats: The Creepers in ''Armageddon'', fast, weak vermin that leap around the caverns to try and slash at you up close.
* GoodBadBugs: In the PlayStation 2 version of the original, using fine aim mode with the Shotgun caused all pellets to hit the same exact spot, turning the balanced shotgun into an overpowered sluggun.
* IdiotPlot: Armageddon. [[spoiler: After Hale's terrorists sabotage the terraformer, thus apparently ruining the surface environment of Mars for human inhabitation, nobody attempts to fix it. It's implied that the governing body of Mars is making too much of a profit from the citizenry's suffering in the underground to allow the repair to take place, but that seems to be a fairly weak attempt to plaster over the plot hole. This is especially infuriating when you remember that the protagonist, Darius, is capable of repairing almost anything man-made by ''pointing his hand at it'', and this is exactly what he did at the end of the story. If it was that simple he could have turned around on the day of sabotage and solved the problem right there. The surface seems to have breathable air anyway given that all the missions on the Mars Surface are done without any character using any kind of respirator. The ease of this solution also makes the act of killing the Queen Alien largely unnecessary.]]
** For that matter, [[spoiler: why did Hale think he could tame the aliens, given that the only contact with them prior was an Ultor survey team that got ''completely obliterated?'' How ''did'' he tame that one alien, given that up to this point they'd done nothing but slaughter everything they came across? Why, as soon as that seal came off, did the aliens pour out and start murdering everything, when up to that point they'd apparently been perfectly fine underground? If Earth-like air is their one weakness, ''why did they not start massacring colonists when Ultor first colonized the planet?'']]
* MemeticMutation: [[http://redfaction.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Toots Mr. Toots.]]
* RootingForTheEmpire: The Earth Defense Force occasionally gets this. Partly because their brutality is so insanely overplayed that it just becomes implausibly hilarious, and partly because they get [[EvilIsCool cool uniforms]].
* StopHavingFunGuys: The online mode once the Major League Gaming Playlist was added.
* ThatOneSidequest: Ever wonder why Oasis is the most-requested sector for Demolition Master walkthroughs? Getting the pro time on one Demolition Master there involves demolishing a watchtower by hitting it with a batted exploding barrel. You have, at most, two shots before the pro time elapses and both of them need to have the precision of guided missiles to actually knock the tower down. With no consistent way to control the variables, especially the flight path and direction of the barrels, this is a nigh impossible LuckBasedMission. Combined with the fact it takes more than twice as long to reset it as it does to fail it and you have an ideal recipe for frustration.
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: In Armageddon, the concept of the Nanoforge is wonderfully realised in gameplay, but the plot almost entirely neglects it. The focus is entirely on the painfully unoriginal BugWar concept instead. The Nanoforge is the most scientifically advanced and ridiculously useful devise in the whole of creation, yet the Faction lets Darius run around with it. A power struggle between the new government, Darius and the cultists all over the [[MacGuffin Nanoforge]] and it's seemingly [[AppliedPhlebotinum limitless power]] would have made for a much more compelling plot. It would also have been more in keeping with the primary theme of the series: government oppression and civil war.
* ToughActToFollow: You could argue that the popular ''Guerilla'' would be setting up any sequel for a disappointment, but frankly, considering ''Armageddon'' was the polar opposite of its predecessor in terms of game design this was probably not the way to endear fans.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: The first game is a bit guilty of this. A group called '''Red''' Faction, fighting for the rights of workers, against a megacorporation more concerned with making profit than with the well-being of their employees, and which sports a particularly communist-looking symbol ? The implications are baffling.
** The third game arguably more so: instead of underground, the game is now set on the surface which is mostly comprised of desert, Mars is now occupied, its valuable natural resources exploited and its population oppressed by the vastly technologically and numerically superior army of a superpower (which routinely engages in killing of civilians and torture of prisoners) and you play as the member of a group of "[[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters freedom fighters]]" committing several acts of terrorism against the occupying forces. In other words, you're playing as obvious stand-ins for [[http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/09/24/wot-i-think-red-faction-guerrilla/ Iraqi insurgents]].
----