Characters / Command And Conquer Tiberium Series Factions And Characters

This page is a listing of factions and characters from the Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series.

See also:

• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
• Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight
• Command & Conquer: Renegade

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Factions

Global Defense Initiative

Sanctioned by the United Nations, the Global Defense Initiative has one goal: to eliminate multi-national terrorism in an effort to preserve freedom.

-EVA Database briefing

The Global Defense Initiative (GDI) was originally a multi-national peacekeeping force sanctioned by the United Nations, founded in 1995 in accordance with the United Nations Global Defense Act. It was created to combat global terrorist groups like the Brotherhood of Nod. GDI's initial goal was to preserve world order by combating global terrorism, but eventually outgrew its original mandate to become a world superpower. It is capable of instantly deploying vast quantities of well-trained and well-equipped soldiers backed by powerful ground, air and naval assets to any point on the globe, and this in ways that are considerably more organized, advanced, and on a much greater scale than any conventional real-life military force today possibly could. GDI troops utilize both superior armor and firepower, making them typically much more powerful than Nod forces in direct open confrontation, but also more cumbersome and less flexible. Preferring overwhelming firepower to subtlety, GDI forces have few stealth units.

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• Achievements in Ignorance: Downplayed. Despite being unaware of the Scrin's true plans or what the Threshold Towers are meant for in Tiberium Wars, GDI is still able to not only make educated guesses about the aliens, but figure out their critical weaknesses from their connection to Tiberium, which proves decisive in wiping them out. Granted, GDI's leadership had foreknowledge of an Alien Invasion from research into the Tacitus and planned accordingly, but it still wasn't enough on its own.
• Airstrip One: Downplayed. By Tiberium Wars, the various Zones that the Tiberium-wracked world is formally divided into by GDI are given bland designations, such as Blue Zone B-2 for the US Eastern Seaboard and Yellow Zone Y-4 for the Australian Outback. While this fuels resentment especially among Nod's ranks, in practice GDI still makes use of the old placenames, whether due to persistent national identities in Blue Zones like England, or out of pure convenience.
• Animal Motifs: Downplayed. GDI eagle is a counterpart to Nod's scorpion (and symbolizes their air superiority and use of Kill Sat), but its shape or name aren't used in any design concepts beside Sigil Spam. Mammoth is another recurring animal whose name is used for at least four different GDI tanks (plus closely related Mastodon and Behemoth walkers), but holds zero symbolism besides the blaringly obvious meaning that they are big. Other vehicles also often feature animal-themed naming, but it does not affect their shape or function and is not even related to the animal being marine/land/flying, such as with the Orca assault craft.
• Artifact Title: GDI was formally founded as the Global Defense Initiative of the United Nations, even as the UN buckles under the global spread of Tiberium. By Tiberium Wars, the UN part is all but abandoned, the latte having been subsumed into the organization.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Steel Talons sub-faction in Kane's Wrath, which retains GDI's mecha arsenal from Tiberian Sun and Firestorm. While its units can unlock a damage-mitigating armor as well as unlock Explosive Overclocking with their Railguns, they lack a tech building that unlocks EMP grenades for Grenadiers (which are very good vs Epics), while said walkers are more expensive and vulnerable to anything that can get close to cripple their legs. It's no wonder the rest of GDI mothballed the majority of their mechs until Tiberian Twilight.
• Back from the Brink:
  • In Tiberian Dawn, GDI not only manages to recover from having its funding cut and a relentless counteroffensive from Nod, but succeeds in defeating the Brotherhood at Sarajevo. Granted, it's partly due to a ploy by GDI and the UN so as to trick Kane into thinking he's on the verge of victory, but it nonetheless pays off.
  • Despite the deteriorating conditions on Earth by Tiberian Sun, GDI prevents the situation from getting much worse than it could have, coming out stronger in the process. Not only does it manage to maintain order around Blue Zones by the time Tiberium Wars takes place, but it also becomes strong enough to begin actively reclaiming the planet through special divisions like ZOCOM.
  • GDI does this twice in Tiberium Wars. It manages to not only Hold the Line against Nod during the initial stages of the Third Tiberium War long enough for the A-Sat defenses and Ion Cannons to come back online, but also take the fight all the way to Sarajevo. It also succeeds in pushing back against the Scrin's onslaught, even dealing the killing blow to the aliens' operations on Earth.
• Badass Army: GDI has overwhelming firepower and a lot of money.
  • In Tiberium Wars, they have commandos who can massacre squad after squad of infantry while throwing out one great and memorable Bond One-Liner after another, Mammoth Tanks that grind entire armies under their massive treads, Powered Armor equipped special squads with railguns that can quickly shred even tanks to pieces, devastating Humongous Mecha artillery platforms, and the MARV◊, to name a few.
  • They also have the best win-loss record of the series' factions, having beaten Nod three times, and in the Third Tiberium War, managing to defeat Nod and the Scrin. By Tiberian Twilight, Kane realizes he can't outright beat them and instead decides to factor them in as a functioning part of his plan rather than an opposition.
• Badass Normal: From Tiberian Sun onwards, GDI becomes this, in contrast to Nod's obsession with the Technology of Peace and Bio-Augmentation, as well as the fully alien Scrin. Comprised by-and-large of just ordinary men and women equipped with the best military hardware money can buy, it's still able to hold its own against far more insidious and technologically sophisticated opponents.
• Batman Gambit: GDI pulls one off in Tiberian Dawn, tricking Nod into thinking that infighting has killed off their funding, crippling them as a result. This allows them to position themselves in such a way that they can wipe Nod's Temple/leader off the face of the Earth.
• BFG: Their Commando in Tiberium Wars fires a rapid-firing miniaturized railgun. Probably left handed. It's still mostly useless against vehicles, though. The Zone Troopers, on the other hand, use semi-automatic anti-tank railguns, and make short work of basically anything on the ground.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Where Nod puts fancy religious overtones on everything and has lasers up the wazoo, GDI's large edge in terms of tech comes from their expertise in engineering, practicality, and raw firepower.
  • GDI field conventional designs based off of modern military weaponry, with a lot of emphasis on projectile weapons like railguns. Nod by contrast uses experimental and exotic weaponry, which is comparatively unreliable, unstable and hard to manufacture. In-game, this is reflected in the Brotherhood's most advanced units being expensive, highly specialized, less armored, and have to be used properly in ambushes and guerilla warfare. GDI units are good all-rounders with massive firepower and many possible strategies.
• The Cassandra: The Steel Talons sub-faction in Kane's Wrath stubbornly double-downs on military R&D, as well as continued use of mechs like the Wolverine and Titan, believing that it would be foolish to assume that Nod or something like it wouldn't surface as a threat in the future. The Third Tiberium War, as well as the Scrin's invasion, ultimately proved it right.
• Characterization Marches On: While GDI has remained consistent in its war doctrine, professionalism, and generally benevolent mandate, it's evolved dramatically over the decades:
  • In Tiberian Dawn, it's a multinational task force under the UN Security Council that's largely reliant on conventional NATO-caliber hardware and a handful of experimental projects such as the Ion Cannon.
  • In Tiberian Sun, it's taken up significantly greater powers in the name of stopping Tiberium and Nod, deploying more sophisticated, if expensive, weaponry like walkers and railguns to achieve those ends.
  • In Tiberium Wars, it's become a de facto world government as it tries to fight Tiberium, compensating for the downsizing to its military forces by deploying streamlined versions of railguns and sonic weaponry.
• Chicken Walker: In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, the GDI trades its tanks for the Titan, a chicken walker with 120mm cannon. The Firestorm expansion adds the Juggernaut, an artillery variant with triple the firepower that needs to be deployed to fire. They go back to tanks in Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars, but the Steel Talons subfaction keeps the Titan. To drive the point home even more, one of their Juggernauts idle animations in CNC 3 is occasionally comically peck just like chickens!
• Cincinnatus: As GDI assumed more responsibilities and became a de facto One World Order, its leadership vowed to fully restore civic liberties and democratic government once the crisis wrought by both Nod and Tiberium is dealt with. GDI proves to be sincere, as by the end of Tiberian Twilight, there are implications that it's in the process of doing precisely that.
• Civil Warcraft: In contrast to Nod, GDI never succumbed to any significant infighting, even amidst the events Tiberium Wars. The only times GDI seemed it be fighting itself involved Nod infiltrators disguising themselves as the enemy. It’s not until the events of Tiberian Twilight that armed fighting between internal factions even occurs.
• Closest Thing We Got: GDI being forced to transition from a military force to de facto world government by Tiberium Wars and an outright one by Tiberian Twilight is due to the ensuring breakdown of global order since the First Tiberium War. Eventually, GDI-controlled sectors were just about the only places outside of Nod influence where some semblance of functional authority remained.
• Color-Coded Armies: In Tiberian Dawn GDI is yellow (to suggest Desert Camouflage ala Operation Desert Storm). Tiberium Wars somehow changed GDI's color to blue (in the HUD etc, their actual tech remained gold)
• Cool Plane: The Orca of the Tiberian Dawn era. Its twin tiltjet technology was so useful and reliable that in Tiberian Sun, GDI derived five different variants from the original Orca. Note that this is consistent with Real Life military doctrine. Modern militaries, perhaps especially the US military, find designs that work well and milk them for all their worth. ^note All NATO nations use the same ammunition for almost all infantry weapons, and all US military vehicles are powered by jet fuel. It has to be said that NATO nations use the same ammo out of convenience. That way a US or NATO force fighting in Europe wouldn't have to scramble for ammo. No matter where a NATO force was fighting in Europe, they'd have a readily-accessible supply of ammo in the fight against the Soviet menace.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: By the 2040s, the GDI-controlled Blue Zones are shown to be getting closer to this, with their pristine settlements, general prosperity, and futuristic aesthetic standing in sharp contrast to the more destitute Yellow Zones.
• Decapitated Army: In Tiberian Dawn, GDI comes closest to being terminally crippled after the UN cuts funding though that's revealed to be a risky gamble to get Kane lulled into a false sense of security. From Tiberian Sun onwards, however, this is defied, with GDI maintaining protocols and backup headquarters purposefully designed to ensure cohesion even in the event of some catastrophe or decapitation strike.
• I Did What I Had to Do: The designating of Blue Zones, Yellow Zones and Red Zones by the time Tiberium Wars takes place is part of a triage operation on a global scale that's instituted by GDI to curtail Tiberium's spread. Unfortunately, this also meant leaving much of the world's surviving population to fend for itself, and driving some of them to Nod's hands in the process, as GDI couldn't be everywhere all at once.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Part of the reason why GDI still keeps going despite Kane's machinations, two massive conflicts with Nod and an Alien Invasion. They will reclaim the world from Tiberium, uphold their mandate and protect freedom, or die trying.
• Drop Pod: The Tiberian Sun iteration crash drops a handful of veteran low-tier GDI infantrymen on the battlefield. The Tiberium Wars variant, on the other hand, lands a commander a few squads of veteran GDI Zone Troopers which are powerful enough to turn a pitched battle into a devastating curb-stomp. On the other hand, the Tiberian Sun pods have a function that clears the landing area...with gunfire. Helpful if you're dropping your boys into a hot zone and need to take out a cluster of high-level enemies. The Tiberium Wars pods land gently, slowly, and are generally sitting ducks until the Zone Troopers get out.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: In addition to GDI being originally comprised of some of the best military troops the UN Security Council could spare, various elite subfactions within the organization emerge in the succeeding decades, some of which are playable by Kane's Wrath:
  • The Steel Talons is a military R&D division run by veterans of the Second Tiberium War and Firestorm Crisis. Not only does it retain access to upgraded versions of GDI's mothballed walkers, but it proves to be a persistent thorn on Nod in the years prior to the Third Tiberium War.
  • Zone Operations Command, or ZOCOM, is a special unit set up to not only operate in some of the most hostile regions of the planet but also protect anti-Tiberium reclamation efforts. Given this often involves traversing Red Zones, it's comprised of some of GDI's hardiest troops and the best hardware money can buy.
• Emergency Authority: Played With. Over time, Nod invokes GDI's evolution into a One World Order, by virtue of being more often than not the only functional authority left, as fodder for propaganda, painting it as an oppressive military dictatorship. In practice, while GDI does implement what amounts to martial law, it still tries to maintain human rights and some semblance of normalcy, while vowing to restore democratic government one day.
• E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: Thanks to even just a partial decrypting of the Tacitus, GDI is able to accelerate scientific and technological breakthroughs by decades. By Tiberian Twilight, GDI is also able to reverse-engineer enough Scrin tech to develop their own stasis fields, shields, and even the beginnings of an offworld fleet.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • While GDI would do what it takes to stop the spread of Tiberium and fulfill its mandate, there are lines that it will not cross. Such as canonically not deploying the Liquid Tiberium bomb Director Boyle orders the commander to use in Tiberium Wars.
  • Kane's Wrath reveals that not long after the Firestorm Crisis, GDI was doing its own clandestine research into Liquid Tiberium in order to control the substance. This proved so risky and ethically dubious that even before LEGION detonated the lab complex containing it, the nascent GDI Council was already unnerved enough to consider shutting down the project.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: While GDI by the end of Tiberian Dawn comes to see Tiberium as a threat to humanity, it nonetheless isn't blind to its economic and scientific value. When not trying to eradicate the substance from the face of the Earth, GDI's also been finding ways of containing it, in the hopes of getting the green crystals' utility without the drawbacks.
• Faction Calculus: Powerhouse, through and through. GDI's units are more expensive, and can invariably power through the Brotherhood's equivalent in a direct conflict.
  • The two subfactions introduced in Kane's Wrath are also Powerhouse, but they specialize on two opposite approaches, making them Unit Specialist as well. The Steel Talons focus on ground armored vehicles at the cost of high-tier infantry and air force, while ZOCOM focuses on armored infantry and air superiority at the cost of inferior tanks.
• The Federation: GDI becomes this over time, especially as its duties expand far beyond its original military core. Though still officially having member nations, by Tiberium Wars these have all been subsumed into GDI itself.
• The Fettered: From the very beginning, GDI has sought to stay true to its mandate and founding principles. Even at its worst or in the face of oblivion, it consistently refuses to let go of its humanity.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • The Scrin's invasion during the Third Tiberium War is all but stated to have prompted GDI to, among others, revive and modernize its walkers. This could be seen in the final act Kane's Wrath (set in 2052), with the Steel Talons' arsenal being deployed to defend the Rocky Mountains complex containing the Tacitus. It's not until Tiberian Twilight, however, that they're once again seen in full force alongside tanks.
  • Director Boyle tries invoking this to the GDI commander in Tiberium Wars to justify the use of the Liquid Tiberium Bomb. Said commander can either go through with it, or stay true to GDI's principles.
• Gunship Rescue: Their iconic Orca VTOL gunships.
• Hazmat Suit: ZOCOM can equip standard infantry squads with specialized Tiberium-resistant protective gear, which are a necessity given how often they traverse Red Zones. GDI's standard protocol likewise emphasizes protection from Tiberium more than Nod, especially by Tiberium Wars.
• Harmony Versus Discipline: GDI wants to - depending on who you ask - eradicate or harness and exploit Tiberium as a resource while Nod wants to embrace it as a new way of life.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Even as GDI evolves from being the UN's military task force to a global government, it consistently makes an effort to avert this trope. Which is especially impressive, given the spread of Tiberium, multiple worldwide conflicts against Nod and an Alien Invasion.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Downplayed. Thanks to the chaos wrought by Tiberium, Nod propaganda and Kane's manipulative schemes, GDI has constantly struggled with bad PR. That said, however, GDI's actions in upholding its mandate to humanity prove strong enough to sustain genuine support.
• Humongous Mecha:
  • Tiberian Sun gave GDI the chaingun-toting Wolverine scout walkers to the Titan main battle walkers, and the AT-AT lookalike Mammoth Mk. II , which sports railguns. Firestorm added the Juggernaut, an artillery platform on legs. In Sun there seemed to be a conscious design choice that GDI only used mechs and floating vehicles.
  • Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath had GDI return to tanks except for the Juggernaut, although Wolverines and Titans are still used by the Steel Talons sub-faction. In-game fluff material mentioned how the factions were discontinuing walker production, because commandos kept running up and disabling the things with a well-placed explosive on a leg joint. Indeed, the factions' commando units can do just that in-game, taking down an enemy walker instantly.
• Impartial Purpose-Driven Faction: GDI was intended to be this at its founding, being an anti-terrorist task force independent of any national agenda or great power politics. As time passes and its mandate evolves to combat Tiberium, however, it's forced to do its own share of Realpolitik in combatting Nod, and eventually becomes a nascent One World Order out of necessity.
• Informed Attribute: Despite being called the Global Defense Initiative, their units mostly have nondescript Western accents, unfitting of an organization that was designed to combat terrorism all over the planet and is composed from members of every UN member state's armed forces, with one of the few exceptions being the Engineer in Tiberian Sun, who had a vaguely Scottish accent. This is subverted in the Renegade spinoff with the Dead-6, which consist of the American Nick Parker, the Scottish Dariel MacInnis, the Afro-British Nigel Grant, the Israeli Shai Aviv, the German Erich Wulfe, and the Japanese Sakura Obata.
• Irony:
  • GDI is often demeaned, especially by Kane, as being both less technologically advanced and far more encumbered by conventional thinking. Yet their signature superweapon is the Ion Cannon, which is substantially more sophisticated than the Brotherhood's nuclear missiles. Moreover, their tried-and-tested doctrines and sheer determination to cling onto their humanity ultimately make them even more powerful than Nod at its peak.
  • Their signature unit, the Mammoth Tank, is based off of the Devastator unit exclusive to the Harkonnen faction in the Dune II series of games, but the GDI are the main heroes of the Tiberium series as a whole, in contrast to House Harkonnen, who are a villainous faction.
  • For all of GDI's refusal to weaponize Tiberium or utilize it any more than necessary, Tiberium Wars reveals that the sonic resonance systems used for countering the crystals are so power-intensive that they require them. This isn't lost on GDI, however, but unlike the Brotherhood, it not only sees this as a necessary evil but also considers using Tiberium to destroy itself a kind of "poetic justice."
• Kill Sat: Has a network of orbital artillery platforms, beginning with its trademark Ion Cannon platforms.
  • The Ion Cannon has a humble start killing small targets but eventually moves to levelling military bases. As of Tiberian Twilight, it even has adjustable power settings, and there are even some foot-soldiers that can call down a strike (first seen in Renegade).
  • In the Kane's Wrath expansion, GDI has an additional orbital attack protocol: Thor's Hammer orbital attack satellites that fire Mjolnir rods at the surface, decimating Kane's little armor divisions with impunity.
  • In Tiberium Wars, one of the Intel logs note that GDI took a sworn oath to never deploy nuclear weapons, then promptly unveiled the Ion Cannon shortly after. Critics note how the firepower of the Ion Cannon made their oath a hell of a lot easier to keep...
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: In contrast to the Brotherhood and its laser weaponry, GDI continues to rely on good old-fashioned hitting power, whether delivered by explosive or electromagnetic catapult. This trope is usually played straight since GDI's weapons tend to pack more of a punch.
• Knight Templar: Downplayed, but the ZOCOM subfaction is described as being thoroughly committed to eradicating Tiberium, with an almost zealous kind of fervor that it infuriates Kane.
• Lensman Arms Race: Downplayed. While Nod is more than willing to deploy exotic weaponry and cross more than a few ethical lines, GDI is much more focused on practicality and improving on existing conventional technologies. That said, those efforts still result in highly sophisticated weapon systems over the course of decades that are a far cry from the modern-day hardware used in Tiberian Dawn.
• A Lighter Shade of Grey: GDI has a few blemishes on its otherwise heroic façade, whether it be its origins as a covert division called "Special Operations Group Echo, Black Ops 9" prior to the First Tiberium War, propping up proxies within Nod around the time of Tiberian Sun, or seemingly abandoning much of the globe for the safety of Blue Zones by the 2040s. Even at its worst, however, it's short change compared to the Brotherhood or the Scrin.
• Lightning Bruiser: GDI is huge, tough, and hits hard but is still fast, with a couple of exceptions.
• Loophole Abuse: From the beginning, GDI has vowed to never use nuclear weapons, and implicitly other known WMDs. Given that it has access to Ion Cannons and by Tiberium Wars, orbital artillery platforms, that vow becomes a lot easier to keep. Potentially averted as well should the commander reject Director Boyle's suggestion to use the Liquid Tiberium Bomb.
• Magnetic Weapons: The Global Defense Initiative first brought railguns to the battlefield in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun on their Mammoth Mk II. By C&C 3, all of their main-line tanks came equipped or could be upgraded to fire railguns, while their Zone Troopers carry infantry-sized versions. The Snipers have a small caliber long range version while the Commando have a rapid fire carbine version, these modified variants are only effective vs infantry (though still powerful enough to punch through Cyborg armor effectively).
  • On the other hand, those infantry-sized railguns (especially the Commando variants) are mentioned to be horrendously expensive to build and maintain, hence their only being issued to Commando forces.
• Mighty Glacier: Mammoth Tanks are the poster boy (tank?) for this trope. Aside from the Mammoths (and its bigger cousin, the MARV), however, GDI is almost as fast as Nod.
• Mildly Military: Downplayed. While GDI takes firm pride in its discipline and professionalism, its Commandos and elite, late-tier units are noticeably more snarky and less by-the-book than one would expect. Moreover, it's seen its fair share of maverick commanders such as Michael McNeil in Tiberian Sun, who will get the job done even if it risks annoying the top brass.
• Military Mashup Machine: GDI is in love with Land Battleships, typically in the form of their Mammoth Tanks, which are so huge and durable they can run over other tanks. In the Kane's Wrath expansion, GDI also gains the MARV, which is an even bigger mobile treaded deathmobile with three railguns, garrissionable infantry bunkers, and the ability to consume entire Tiberium fields instantly. Given how they're designed to operate for long periods of time in Red Zones, it's justified in-universe.
• Multinational Team: GDI was initially comprised of military contingents from the G7 nations, as well as other UN member states. Though this remains fairly consistent, by Tiberium Wars it's evolved into a nascent One World Order.
• Mundane Utility:
  • By the time Tiberium Wars takes place, GDI's Ion Cannon network has become so well-established that the tutorial mission implies that blasting any Nod base larger than an outpost is considered standard operating procedure. It's no wonder Kane has the network disabled, alongside blowing up the GDSS Philadelphia, in order to instigate the Third Tiberium War.
  • Railguns and sonics, which see battlefield use during Tiberian Sun, are initially treated as experimental and relatively expensive systems. By Tiberium Wars, railguns have advanced to the point of being scalable (from Mammoth Tanks down to small arms), while the technology behind the Disruptor is used both as powerful weapons and a practical means of containing Tiberium.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The GDI campaign in Tiberium Wars has many homages to the Soviet Campaign from Red Alert 2, including an early mission involving the Pentagon and a virtually identical opening to the second mission.
  • Also, the game's entire Database holds subtle references to characters and events from the previous games. The game also has a statue of Havoc, the commando from Renegade. The novelization also makes references to Tiberian Sun, even going so far as having the GDI player character, Michael McNeil, as a character. In a "criminal dossier" from the game designers, a subtle reference to Red Alert is made.
  • In Renegade a cutscene shows that GDI controls their troops with the exact interface the player used in Tiberian Dawn. In fact, it shows part of an actual mission in the original game, then switches to the game level with the exact same layout. Several audio clips were also used, such as the death sounds of Nod infantry or EVA lines like "reinforcements have arrived". During the credits, the same "news report" that was shown during the GDI ending is also played here.
  • In Tiberian Sun you can find an abandoned GDI base made from buildings found in the first game, as well as functional Mammoth Tanks.
  • In Tiberium Wars, GDI's arsenal has echoes of the US military as portrayed in Generals, from its reliance on rugged professionalism and conventional yet highly-advanced firepower to a penchant for Death from Above.
• Nay-Theist: Downplayed. By Tiberium Wars, GDI's all but abandoned trying to handwave Kane as an ordinary man. It still doesn't stop them from stopping him or dismissing his claims as a Messiah.
• Not the Intended Use: Justified in-universe. As revealed by the Disruptor in Tiberian Sun, GDI had originally developed "harmonic resonance" technology as a means to create a sonic-based weapons platform. It wasn't until after the events of Firestorm that GDI scientists realized that by tuning in to Tiberium's natural frequency, those same systems could also be used to effectively contain and shatter the substance. Setting the stage for the sonic barriers, Sonic Emitters, and Shatterer artillery seen by the Third Tiberium War in the 2040s.
• N.G.O. Superpower: GDI was this trope at some point, but it is a bit unclear when it entered it^note GDI explicitly answered to and was reliant on funding from the UN Security Council during Tiberian Dawn, making it ultimately an arm of government (multiple governments, but still government), and when it left this trope behind to be a government that just happened to have descended from the military arm of the United Nations.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: According to Nod, the GDI are interchangeably filled with these and Corrupt Corporate Executives. In Tiberium Wars, Acting Director Redmond Boyle turns out to be this, to the dismay of many within GDI.
• One-Hit Polykill:
  • In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, GDI railguns would penetrate through anything standing between the shooter and the target (read: Friendly Fireproof isn't in effect here), dealing equal damage along anything in that line. Because of the extremely high damage output invested in every shot, a railgun is quite lethal to fragile targets. Canny gamers would then set these weapons to force-fire behind the unit or structure they wanted to kill.
  • Another weapon that polykills is the GDI sonic emitter, first used by GDI Disruptor tanks from the same game. It's essentially a railgun with more sophisticated rules: the emitted sonic beam takes time to reach its target, hurts less to anything in between that's not an intended target, and hurts friends and foes alike, unless it's another Disruptor. In short, it's safe to cluster Disruptors among themselves, but not with other kinds of things. This reappears as the Shatterer (and upgraded ZOCOM-only version, the Zone Shatterer) in Kane's Wrath.
• One-Way Visor: Most their infantry units from Tiberium Wars.
• Photoprotoneutron Torpedo: The GDI's ion cannon.
• Powered Armor: The X-0 Battlesuit seen as a prototype in Tiberian Dawn eventually leads to what GDI's Zone Troopers start wearing in Tiberium Wars, and by Twilight this extends to most of its infantry. Interestingly, the Zone Troopers can actually take more abuse than Nod's cyborgs.
• Properly Paranoid: By Tiberium Wars, GDI has very much become this, making it more prepared to not only confront Nod, but even the Scrin. Justified, in that GDI had fought Nod in two global conflicts by then. Furthermore, General Granger reveals that GDI had partially decrypted the Tacitus the results of which included an unspecified warning of an alien invasion.
• Realpolitik:
  • In Tiberian Dawn, GDI is shown supporting various governments opposing Nod influence and assassinating figures aligned with the Brotherhood, while its leadership continually deals with the UN Security Council for funding and PR.
  • By Tiberian Sun, GDI is revealed as backing puppet moles within Nod itself to keep the Brotherhood divided and under relative control. This backfires hard, thanks to Anton Slavik and Kane not only eliminating said moles, but also exposing this to the world.
  • Kane's Wrath, meanwhile, reveals that GDI tried to exploit Brother Marcion of the Black Hand as an Unwitting Pawn to keep the Brotherhood fractured, leading to Slavik's death after the events of Firestorm. Once Kane and LEGION are through putting Marcion back in line, however, GDI effectively abandons this strategy altogether.
• Rock Beats Laser: Downplayed. Unlike Nod, GDI utilizes more conventional and comparatively primitive technology such that by Tiberium Wars, Kane derides it for boasting advancements the Brotherhood made decades earlier. On the other hand, said conventional and primitive tech is rugged, efficient and much more reliable than Nod's more advanced arsenal, while still potent enough to hold back the Scrin.
• Slave to PR:
  • In Tiberian Dawn, GDI is shown to be dependent on UN Security Council funding and public support, with Nod trying its best to deny through propaganda and false-flag attacks. At one point, it seemed to have worked only for it to be a clever if risky gamble by GDI to trick Kane into a false sense of security.
  • By Tiberian Sun, GDI continues to present a heroic public image while also reaching out to the Forgotten as friends and allies, which doesn't always work.
  • Tiberium Wars has GDI remaining sincere about its mandate, though some within its leadership like acting Director Redmond Boyle are clearly more fixated on looking good rather than staying true to those principles even if it means using a Liquid Tiberium bomb.
• Tank Goodness: Has several iconic tanks, including the iconic Mammoth Tank, which appears in some form or fashion in just about every title.
  • Almost every Tiberium RTS featured a new iteration of the tank, except for Tiberian Sun, in which Mammoth Tanks from Tiberian Dawn were bonus or recoverable units and otherwise replaced by a quadrupedal Humongous Mecha.
  • In Kane's Wrath, their Epic Unit is the Mammoth Armed Reclamation Vehicle (MARV), the big mommy of all Mammies—it's a humongous tank with three main sonic cannons, four secondary turrets whose function changes with the unit inside, and a fully functional on-board Tiberium refinery.
• United Nations Is A Super Power: GDI was founded under the UN's auspices first as a black-ops, counterterrorist unit, then as a multinational task force in response to the Brotherhood of Nod's coalition of disaffected Third World nations. As the First Tiberium War dragged on, however, it effectively became the UN's military in all but name. Meanwhile, as Tiberium spreads across the planet, most of the UN's member nations collapse under the strain of dealing with the catastrophic ecological damage, leaving GDI as the only organization capable of keeping order. Eventually, by Tiberium Wars, the United Nations itself has been effectively subsumed by GDI, a would-be One World Order opposed by its old enemy the Brotherhood of Nod, which has performed a similar stabilizing role in the Tiberium-racked Third World. By the end of Tiberian Twilight, they become a One World Order by default, due to Nod leaving.
• Unwitting Pawn: GDI has unintentionally factored into Kane's plans in a number of occasions.
• Warfare Regression: In Tiberium Wars, GDI reverts back to using tanks, since it was just more cost-effective. Justified, as it turns out mechs and hover tanks are too expensive to maintain. The Scrin invasion, however, forces GDI to bring its walkers and more experimental equipment back into action, with updated models serving alongside tanks by Tiberian Twilight.
• What the Romans Have Done for Us: Especially outside its original sponsor nations and what later became the Blue Zones, GDI is often maligned as alternatively negligent elitists, imperialists, and reactionaries holding back humanity from the Technology of Peace. Yet contrary to Nod propaganda, GDI actively goes out of its way to not only reclaim the planet from Tiberium (while also finding ways of reaping the benefits safely), but also reaching out to both the downtrodden and Forgotten, going so far as to set up special shelters for the latter.
• Zerg Rush: In the earlier games, GDI players use tank rushes. It's different from most other uses because it tends to be used with GDI's Mammoth Tank, which can steamroll over the opposition even without a significant numbers advantage - due to the cost and build time of Mammoths, this is more of a late-game tactic. It is gruesomely effective, as fending off all those heavily armored tanks can be extremely difficult to near-impossible.

Brotherhood of Nod

Brotherhood. Unity. Peace.

-Nod motto

The Brotherhood of Nod is a mysterious Abrahamic Church Militant society of allegedly ancient origins. Throughout its struggle with GDI, Nod is shown possessing characteristics of a vast religious movement, a MegaCorp and a decentralized nation-state, while being none of the three in itself. The Brotherhood of Nod represents a flexible, elusive and worldwide guerrilla army which thrives on the sophisticated synergy between low-tech militia troops and elite forces equipped with ludicrously advanced weapons and defensive technologies derived from the Brotherhood's unparalleled understanding of Tiberium and its military applications. The Brotherhood's military is centered around the concepts of stealth and speed, preferring outmaneuvering their enemies, hit-and-run attacks, guerrilla tactics, wave attacks, and subterfuge.

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• Aerith and Bob: Normally, most Nod commanders have exotic names, often with historical or Biblical references... and then we have Anton and Oxanna, both of which are incredibly common Eastern European names. Anton's surname Slavik, too, is identical to a diminutive form of given name Stanislav, often used for kids (though the authors probably wanted to use a variant of Serbian surname Slavic or even a general Slavic ethnicity name). Alexa is also a pretty common name.
• Ancient Conspiracy: Their influence stretches as far as World War 2, hinted to be stretching centuries further back^note one character noted that they've been biding their time for centuries, and now it's the time to reveal themselves and if Kane is to be believed, they have existed as far as human history itself.
• Animal Motifs: Scorpions. It's in their emblem, and they certainly love their buildings modeled like it, most notably the Obelisk of Light and Temple of Nod.
• Apocalypse Anarchy: Outside Nod's cities and bases, any semblance of order or civilization has long crumbled across much of the Yellow Zones by 2047, where life is a constant struggle for survival. Unsurprisingly, the Brotherhood has exploited the chaos to both fill its ranks and hide its operations.
  EVA: Decades of war and civil unrest have brought these regions in a state of social collapse. The Brotherhood of Nod operates virtually unchallenged in these zones. They take advantage of the chaos to recruit members and disguise their military infrastructure.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: From the First Tiberium War, the bulk of Nod's armies had been drawn from the vast populations of the Third World (and later the Yellow Zones), who resent GDI and the Western countries that backed it for abandoning them to poverty and social collapse; they also have no qualms about accepting experienced and notorious terrorists and mercenaries, such as Mendoza, a major character for about half of Renegade and a former member of an extremist Colombian separatist group that decided he was too extreme even for them.
• Artificial Zombie: The Marked of Kane is a Nod subfaction comprised entirely of these, based on CABAL's cybernetic experiments in Tiberian Sun an Firestorm. Unlike the supercomputer's cyborgs, however, the Awakened are by and large fanatics who voluntarily allowed themselves to be made into these, while also still retaining enough of their personality.
• Back from the Brink:
  • By the start of Tiberian Sun, Anton Slavik's Black Hand and a band of loyalists are all that remain of the core Brotherhood, while the largest Nod clique is ruled by GDI-backed puppet General Hassan. Regardless of the campaign, it's effectively reunited under Slavik and Kane's firm grip.
  • Kane's Wrath shows this happening twice more. First, with LEGION helping reconsolidate the fractured Brotherhood after the events of Firestorm. Then in the 2050s, when the underground remnants of Nod awaken the Marked of Kane and under LEGION's command, succeed in retrieving the Tacitus from GDI.
• Badass Army: Nod has fanaticism and advanced technology.
  • In Tiberian Sun, they have access to tanks that could hunker down into strong turrets, stealth tanks that could unload their payload before cloaking themselves, Banshee aircraft reverse-engineered from alien technology, and cyborg troops that dish out as much damage as they could take them.
  • In Tiberium Wars, they have heavy armor-clad flamethrower wielding anti-infantry troops, cloaked tanks that can unload missile after missile into a target before it can react, soldiers armed with weapons that spew tiberium, attack bikes with twin missile launchers, and Avatar Warmechs armed to the brim with lasers and other weapons it could cannibalize from friendly units.
• Badass Creed: The Brotherhood has plenty, being a Church Militant army loyal to Kane, the most prominent being:
  • "One Vision, One Purpose!"
  • "Brotherhood. Unity. Peace."
  • "Peace Through Power!" (Sometimes combined with the previous one)
  • "For The Technology Of Peace!"
  • "Kane Lives In Death!"
  • "In The Name Of Kane!"
  • And, in one scene from Tiberian Sun:
    Slavik: In the name of Kane!
    Army of Nod Troops: Kane lives in death!
    Slavik: In the name of Kane!
    Army: Kane lives in death!
    Slavik: In the name of Kane!
    Army: Kane lives in-
    Kane: KANE... LIVES!
• Badass Normal: Downplayed. The bulk of Nod's forces is largely comprised of militiamen and expendable fanatics armed with assault rifles, portable missile launchers and light vehicles, yet can still face down the heavy firepower of the Global Defense Initiative and eventually, even the alien Scrin. As time goes on, however, the Bio-Augmentation, cybernetics and Tiberium-based enhancements enjoyed by its elite troops become more widespread within the Brotherhood, such that by Tiberium Wars, even lowly militia can benefit from Liquid Tiberium infusions.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy / Historical Villain Upgrade: The Black Hand, Nod's elite special forces group is most likely the same Black Hand that had Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated. The Brotherhood itself claims to be around since the dawn of mankind itself, which is plausible.
  • Nod's Black Hand and the Real Life Black Hand being one and the same could either be viewed as a Historical Villain Upgrade due to the fact that the real Black Hand proved to be a largely incompetent organization that only killed the archduke due to dumb luck after screwing up their first several attempts, or the organization Took a Level in Badass.
  • Kane claims to be the biblical Cain. Given his statement in Command & Conquer 4 that he has been on Earth for thousands of years, this is not as far-fetched as it would first appear. Starting with the Scrin in Command & Conquer 3, the series drops some not-so-subtle hints that he is an extremely long-lived, if not immortal, alien that just happens to look human.
  • In Renegade, you can find what appears to be Abel's tomb in one level, further cementing the fact that he really was that Cain.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: Subverted. The Brotherhood of Nod is one of the most scientifically and technologically advanced organizations on the planet. They are often ahead of the GDI in the technological and scientific curb. This is in no small part because of their willingness to ignore morality, ethics, and sanity, though it also makes them more reckless and prone to infighting.
• Beneath Notice:
  • Prior to the arrival of Tiberium, the Brotherhood had largely worked in the shadows, working through intermediaries and front organizations like the Black Hand. This proved successful enough that Interpol had initially dismissed Nod as just another terrorist group, until they found out too late just what kind of threat it truly posed.
  • Downplayed in the final act of Kane's Wrath, set in the 2050s. The Brotherhood is reduced to a shell of its old power, largely being forced underground. That said, GDI still considers Nod enough of a threat to keep its guard up in the event of renewed hostilities. Kane, meanwhile, considers this state of affairs more preferable, as only the most faithful and loyal could join in his Ascension.
• Biblical Motifs: Most prominent in the first game. Their leader is Kane, and Cain in the Bible is said to went to the land of Nod. Their weapons and techs also take names cribbed from the Bible, such as Ezekiel's Wheel Stealth Tank, which equips the Lazarus Shield cloaking tech.
• Bread and Circuses: Tiberium Wars background reveals that the Brotherhood of Nod have become the last hint of civilization and order in the devastated Yellow Zones of Earth. For the people living there (about 80% of the human population) they are seen as the good guys, those who bring infrastructure, food, medicine, security and hope to the masses. Also, they look really cool.
• Cannon Fodder: Nod has always had a penchant for using cheap, expendable troops and vehicles to soak up the brunt of enemy assaults while their elite units strike where the foe least expects it, though this becomes especially evident in Tiberium Wars.
• Characterization Marches On: The Black Hand's war doctrine changes wildly during each of the wars:
  • In Renegade (and presumably Tiberian Dawn), the Black Hand are a versatile Elite Corps that make use of stealth troopers and prototype laser weapons, as well as Tiberium-infused mutants.
  • In Tiberian Sun, they're the personal vanguard of Anton Slavik, and take leadership of the Brotherhood of Nod.
  • In Tiberium Wars, they become a subfaction within the Brotherhood, making extensive use of flame weapons while ditching any stealth technology and aircraft. They lend their basic flamethrower battalions to the basic Nod armies, who act as Elite Mooks.
• Chef of Iron: In Renegade, Havoc can sometimes find chefs in the mess halls of Nod bases, who will attack with flamethrowers.
• Church Militant: Kane's Wrath introduces the post-Second Tiberium War Black Hand, a powerful Nod faction composed of highly trained religious zealots with an obsessive tendency to equip all their squads with flamethrower weaponry. Additionally, these guys have a tendency to resist incredible amounts of damage and fight harder than any other faction due to their fervent religious beliefs.
  • To better understand the Black Hand, just have a look at the weaponry they tend to use: the Purifier, the Confessor Cabal, the Black Disciple and the Purifying Flame Upgrade.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Without Kane constantly leading them, or even in many cases, with, Nod falls apart into various factions and fights more amongst each other than GDI, which is all too happy to sit back and watch. It's become tradition to expect at least one Starscream to rear their head during the Nod campaigns.
• Civil Warcraft:
  • Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn had an inversion in the Nod campaign where you had to take out a GDI base with stolen GDI equipment because a traitorous commander sent your normal forces halfway across the world.
  • The Nod campaign of Tiberian Sun starts off as a civil war between various factions of the group. Later there's a subversion where you hijack GDI equipment to fight the Forgotten (who are using a mix of GDI and Nod equipment, often from the first war).
  • In Command & Conquer 3, Nod missions at Sarajevo and Ayers Rock involve the player Kane-loyalist Nod army facing off against rogue Nod soldiers. Also done well in the Kane's Wrath expansion, with the first Act involving Nod forces loyal to Kane and LEGION fighting against the Black Hand, a subfaction.
• Color-Coded Armies: In Tiberian Dawn, the Brotherhood of Nod in the campaigns had red-colored buildings and white/grey-colored units (a combination not possible in Multiplayer). Subsequent games made them red all the way (and mixed in black), though in the latest part of the "Kane's Wrath" expansion campaign, they were suddenly purple instead.
• Cool Boat: While Red Alert got most of the attention for ships, the Tiberian series has a few notable ones, namely the Massive Nod Cruisers in Tiberium Wars which have considerable range with their missiles (not to mention looking like a giant end of a scorpion's tail) and the Nod Hovercrafts, which look like giant flying manta rays.
• Cool Plane: Nod eventually catches up with GDI's technological advancements of aircraft, though, namely with the introduction of the Scrin-based Banshee attack aircraft and in Tiberium Wars, Venom gunships and the Vertigo stealth bomber.
• Covert Group with Mundane Front: For much of its existence, the Brotherhood had operated through various proxies and organizations like the Black Hand to conceal its plans. This is most evident during Tiberian Dawn, with Nod using terrorist activities, making black market deals through shell companies, and playing up being an anti-imperialist movement. It largely drops the act afterwards, though it still tries to mask its less savory actions through propaganda campaigns and espionage by Tiberium Wars.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: Nod's cities and bases in Yellow Zones are this, of all things, only the crystals in question are red. That said, most of the rank-and-file militia and rabble are lucky enough to have a morsel of that, compared to the Brotherhood's elite and more zealous followers.
• Cult: Nod started out as a secret society/cult whose members believed Kane's prophecy Tiberium will allow humanity to achieve ascension. When Tiberium actually arrived on Earth in the 1990's, Nod gradually went from a secret society to a global terrorist movement to something resembling the Islamic State in terms of reach, influence and ability to field armed forces. In Tiberium Wars, Kane uses Tiberium to summon an Alien Invasion. In Tiberian Twilight, he and his followers use a portal left behind by the aliens to actually ascend.
• Cult of Personality: While Kane's is a given, the Brotherhood is also prone to lionizing his "chosen" leaders almost as much, notably seen with Anton Slavik and Brother Marcion.
• Cyborg: The Brotherhood make use of cybernetics for their elite forces, first seen during the events of C&C Renegade and later much more prominently in Tiberian Sun. During the Firestorm expansion, however, Nod's combat AI goes rogue and takes the cyborgs with him, so when Tiberium Wars rolls around cyborg forces are conspicuously absent. The Kane's Wrath expansion brings them back in the form of the Marked of Kane, made up of Nod's fallen soldiers resurrected through technology and linked to the new LEGION AI.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul:
  • Nod cyborgs don't tend to have a whole lot of free will (how much isn't specified). On the plus side, they're extremely powerful.
  • Kane's Wrath introduces the 'Awakened' and the Marked of Kane in general, cyborgs that retain all of their free will. Fortunately for the Brotherhood, they are also fanatically loyal to Kane.
• Deadly Gas: In Tiberian Sun, the Brotherhood of Nod weaponizes Tiberium in the form of a Chemical Missile, which detonates over the target area and saturates it with noxious clouds of highly-corrosive gas. Its effects on infantry are... unsettling, to say the least.
  • Before that, the Covert Ops addon for the first game had Chemical Troopers, a variation on the normal Flamethrower infantry who sprayed Tiberium gas, instantly fatal to any non-Chemical Trooper infantry. They also feature in Renegade, albeit renamed to "Chem Warriors.''
• Decapitated Army: For Nod, Kane is their keystone. As demonstrated post Tiberian Dawn, at the beginning of Tiberian Sun and during the events of Tiberium Wars, the Brotherhood of Nod is often brought down to near-collapse due to in-fighting between the sub-factions if Kane is not present or taken out of commission.
• Doom Troops: Several Brotherhood units such as the Black Hand Confessors and Awakened Cyborgs fit the bill.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Nearly all of the Brotherhood's military facilities have some kind of extensive underground component. For example, the Hand of Nod has a massive training and fitness area, as well as a mock-up forest environment for combat practice, and an interrogation cellar.
• Elite Mooks: Behind their masses of expendable militia and cheap vehicles, Nod deploys a much smaller, yet far more professional fighting force of elite troops, most notably exemplified by the Black Hand.
• Energy Weapon: Nod's signature weaponry. It started as early as the first game with the Obelisks of Light, defensive towers that melted tanks with ruby rays of death, Tiberian Sun featured laser fences, and by Tiberium Wars many Nod vehicles can be upgraded to use them.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Nod's cast is as diverse as GDI's. Justified, considering they are recruiting from all over the globe, and hardly have the luxury to deny any recruit who's able and willing.
• E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: In Tiberian Sun, Nod was able to reverse-engineer recovered alien technology (implied to be Scrin) to develop the Banshee. By Tiberian Twilight, the Brotherhood comes to field even more advance tech derived from the Tacitus, as well as reverse-engineered Scrin data.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • By Tiberian Sun, neither Kane nor Anton Slavik's Brotherhood has room for traitors or drug-addled loose ends.
  • Nod in Tiberium Wars actively tries to help Yellow Zone populations and avoids wanton massacres, though this is much more out of expediency and PR than genuine concern.
• Expy: The Brotherhood of Nod has a lot similarities to the Cobra organization from the G.I. Joe franchise. A secretive paramilitary and quasi-terrorist organization themed after a venomous animal? Check. Arch-enemy to an elite force of good guys based on US spec ops? Check. Have a taste for red visors and black armor, as well as sleek and futuristic designs combined with nearly medieval ceremonial uniforms? Check. Helmets and masks for Nod troopers, in particular, look like something right from the stash of G.I. Joe villains.
• Faction Calculus: Subversive, the Brotherhood's basic infantry and vehicles are less powerful than their GDI equivalents but are cheaper and can be fielded in larger numbers. Later tier units, however, are much more expensive and pack an assortment of nasty abilities, usually stealth.
  • The Black Hand subfaction in Kane's Wrath is Powerhouse. They lack stealth and air units, but make up for it with the most powerful infantry army in the game, and their Purifying Flame upgrade gives their flame units explosive firepower that can melt enemies in close combat.
  • The Marked of Kane subfaction in Kane's Wrath is even more Subversive than the regular Nod. They lack the flame weapons and their cyborg infantry aren't as strong as the Black Hand infantry, but they have various special abilities to disrupt their enemies.
• False Flag Operation: A few missions in the Nod campaigns deal with this.
  • A mission in Tiberian Dawn has you capturing one of GDI's new Orca aircraft and using it to destroy a civilian village.
  • The final TD cutscene has Nod hackers taking control of the Ion Cannon and using it to destroy a world landmark.
  • In Tiberian Sun, the Brotherhood uses stolen GDI units against the Forgotten mutants in order to win their trust.
  • In Kane's Wrath, LEGION is tasked with instigating some of these, such as blowing up a GDI research center in the Australian Outback containing Liquid Tiberium (in order to both thwart GDI environmental efforts and help bolster Nod's propaganda amongst the downtrodden), and pinning a Nod raid against the GDI Treasury on a Forgotten militia called the "Sons of Umagon" (both to have Redmond Boyle delayed and keep GDI InOps distracted long enough for Kane to set off the Third Tiberium War).
• Family-Friendly Firearms: Occurs within the Command & Conquer novelization of Tiberium Wars. Within the novel, the regular infantry of Nod are armed with energy weapons. While Nod do have lasers within the game, its only limited to special forces, while the regular mooks get conventional weapons. The trope is almost invoked by one soldier "Where the hell'd they get-" after seeing the lasers. The change isn't because of censorship, but as a result of a continuity error.
  • In the expansion to Tiberium Wars, the Black Hand subfaction can upgrade their basic mooks to use lasers. That said, they are Elite Mooks, since the Black Hand is apparently Nod's elite.
• Flanderization:
  • As the series went on, Nod's depicted as far more a religious organization. In the original game, there were only small hints of it, with their main base being referred to as a temple and scattered Biblical references. These grew a bit more pronounced in Renegade, set in the later stages of the First Tiberium War and reflecting Nod being more open about those aspects. In Tiberian Sun, it became more prominent with some of Kane's speeches and the more overt cult mantras invoked by Brotherhood members. By Tiberium Wars, their religious aspects are one of their main characteristics. Most of their infantry's uniforms have a religious look to them, contrasting with earlier games where they looked more akin to army uniforms, albeit fancier than GDI's, many of their vehicle names have religious themes to them, and in descriptions of subfactions (especially the Black Hand) and dialogue of units depict them as more religious.
  • Their backstabbing ways also got pronounced over time, as have the possible repercussions. In the first game, only one member had any backstabbing tendencies, aimed towards the player character for threatening his rank within the Brotherhood, though Kane implies that it’s not uncommon. By the second and third games, however, basically whenever Kane wasn't around, every single Nod Leader would end up in a free-for-all slapfight for control, at least some of whom would quickly denounce Kane as a heretic.
• Flesh Versus Steel: Though both sides are super hi-tech, Nod is definitely on the side of steel with their use of morally questionable technology like free thinking computer AI and cybernetics.
• Futuristic Pyramid:
  • During Tiberian Sun, Nod was in love with this trope, having their major headquarters within large, technified pyramids. They're actually converted ancient pyramids rather than purpose-built ones, as they're in Egypt and Central America specifically
  • By Tiberium Wars, Nod largely went back to their original awesome base in Sarajevo, but they did deploy their Epic Unit from a pyramid-shape structure.
• Gas Mask Mooks: All Nod soldiers in Command & Conquer: Renegade, except for plot-important NPCs. May be more justified there since Nod likes to toy around with Napalm and Tiberium. Not that the superiors seem to care much about safety...^note this was most likely due to limitations in the game as seeing the same face on every soldier you killed would get boring, and also to try and skirt around censorship in Germany, much like the original C&C renaming civilians "farmbots" for the German release
• Got the Whole World in My Hand: In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, the 'barracks' of the Brotherhood of Nod was the 'Hand of Nod', a monumentally impractical building resembling a huge hand grasping the planet. In the sequels, they downgraded to something more... practical.
  • In Tiberian Sun (the first sequel), the barracks instead resembled a hand grabbing the ground itself. It's back to being a hand holding a globe in Tiberium Wars.
  • In Renegade, the symbol of the Black Hand, the elite corps of the Brotherhood, is a, you guessed it, black hand tightly grasping a red-tinted planet Earth.
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: By Tiberium Wars Nod went from clearly villainous to the only group seemingly caring about the people trying to survive in the Yellow Zones, which on the surface undermined GDI's status as the only good guys. In practice, however, this is more a case of A Lighter Shade of Black, given Nod's continued reliance on propaganda, terror and wanton spreading of Tiberium.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: At least twice.
  • At the start of Kane's Wrath, much of Anton Slavik's efforts to consolidate Nod into a force to be reckoned with is seemingly undone after the events of Firestorm, with the fractured Brotherhood torn between Kane and LEGION on the one hand, and the rogue Black Hand on the other.
  • Played with by the final act of Kane's Wrath, set in 2052. The Brotherhood is only a shell of its power, being largely driven underground and only able to stage the kind of operations seen in the Third Tiberium War after reactivating the Marked of Kane. On the other hand, the vestigial remnants are far less fractious than before, being comprised of Nod's most fanatical, loyal, and competent.
• Humongous Mecha: In the later games, they begin to feature these as part of their arsenal.
  • The Avatar walker in Tiberium Wars, as well as it's Black Hand exclusive counterpart, the Purifier, in Kane's Wrath.
  • Or the Redeemer, an Avatar on steroids with the added ability to cause a Hate Plague.
  • There's also CABAL's Core Defender that appears in Tiberian Sun: Firestorm. It makes Mammoths Mk. II look puny, its BFGs can kill anything in 2-3 hits, and they have rates of fire like machine guns. It takes an army to beat it.
• Hypocrite:
  • In Tiberian Dawn, Nod has little trouble burning villages, propping up tinpot warlords and violently disposing of said warlords in favor of new ones, in spite of its claims of standing up for the Third World.
  • In Tiberian Sun, Nod treats the Forgotten mutants even more poorly than GDI, despite all the talk of "Divination" and embracing the Technology of Peace.
  • By Tiberium Wars, the Brotherhood's shown excoriating GDI for walling itself off in Blue Zones and seemingly leaving them to rot in the chaotic Yellow Zones, despite extolling the virtues of Tiberium.
• Icon of Rebellion: The scorpion tail of the Brotherhood of Nod. In addition to their emblem (a scorpion's tail), the motif includes tank names, their Obelisk's of Light shaped like a Scorpion's tail, and their Temples designed to look like a scorpion. In addition, Kane himself is just a ubiquitous icon for Nod.
• Interfaith Smoothie: By Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath, Nod has since appropriated various Abrahamic religious influences into its ideology, complete with Biblical allusions retooled to serve either Kane or the Technology of Peace.
• Interservice Rivalry: Even when not in constant bouts of Civil Warcraft, the various Nod subfactions don't always get along, which Kane himself uses to keep the Brotherhood sharp. Kane's Wrath in particular shows that by the 2050s, there's considerable competition between the Black Hand and Marked of Kane for the Messiah's favor.
• Invisibility Cloak: Nod is rather fond of Invisibility Cloaks and is specifically mentioned to be the leader in that field.
  • The first game gives us what Kane calls the "Ezekiel's Wheel," a tank that can vanish, appear just before firing its rockets, then vanish again.
  • In Tiberian Sun, the stealth tank returns, and Nod also has a structure that allows for cloaking an entire base and aptly-named Chameleon Spy. A mobile version is introduced in Firestorm.
  • EA and Westwood even made sure that the continuity between Tiberian Dawn and Tiberian Sun stayed consistent: Renegade's Black Hand Chameleon soldier◊ is, apparently, the precursor to Tiberian Sun's Chameleon Spy.
  • In Tiberium Wars we have disruptor towers that cloak other structures, but are themselves visible. Placing several around becomes a way to try and throw off enemies searching for your base. The stealth tank also returns, this time able to unleash a torrent of missiles at land or air targets. Just a few of them can tear through even Mammoth Tanks. Kane's Wrath gives us the spectre, basically a cloaking artillery unit.
• Irony:
  • They consistently have employed the use of superior and more advanced technology over their fated enemies the GDI, but their iconic superweapon, which is just a nuclear missile, is extremely conventional and relatively primitive next to the Ion Cannon, the superweapon of the GDI, who contrast with them by using more conventional and comparatively primitive technology.
  • The Brotherhood makes a big show about embracing the Technology of Peace as part of the next step in evolution, yet views the Forgotten mutants, who've had more than their fill of Tiberium, as sub-human cannon fodder at best.
• Kill It with Fire: Flame-based weaponry is the hallmark of the Brotherhood of Nod. At first, Flamethrowers and Flame Tanks. The Black Hand subfaction runs with this in Kane's Wrath, as all of the units will have some sort of fire-based weapon (either they were fire based to begin with, or they gain a Black Disciple, a Black Hand Squad commander with a flamethrower). Not only that, but the upgrade "Purifying Flame" makes all flame-based weapons extremely damaging to all unit types.
• Klingon Promotion: Nod commanders in every game. While Kane implicitly tolerates this, he nonetheless steps in should it devolve into outright Civil Warcraft.
  Seth: Power shifts quickly in the Brotherhood.
• Knight Templar: Nod in general is fanatical in upholding the virtues of Tiberium and Kane's word. The Black Hand subfaction, meanwhile, takes this even further.
• La Résistance: Nod tries to present itself as this in Tiberian Dawn. Kane pulls this act again in the immediate aftermath of the Firestorm Crisis by instigating (through LEGION) the Rio Insurrection.
• Lensman Arms Race: Both out of wholeheartedly embracing the Technology of Peace and out of a desire to trump GDI, Nod continually finds ways to make ever-more exotic weapons to use against Kane's foes.
• Macross Missile Massacre:
  • Nod Multi-Missile superweapon from Tiberian Sun is, put simply, Macross Missile Massacre plus Recursive Ammo. It's the only weapon that can let off more than two missiles in a go, until Firestorm added the Cyborg Reaper, which lets off four missile a salvo.
  • The mode of attack of the Nod Stealth Tank from Tiberium Wars is — you guessed it — a triple-M, a feat that its older versions could never pull off in the previous installments. To make it clear: older Stealth Tank models let two missiles off per salvo; these new toys let off at least three to four times as much.
• The Man Behind the Man: Nod secretly controls the Soviet Union in the first Red Alert game.
• Manchurian Agent: The Brotherhood is generally fond of using spies and deep-cover operatives to achieve its goals. Some among the Marked of Kane, meanwhile, are also mentioned as being sleeper agents almost indistinguishable from ordinary humans, awaiting the signal to activate.
• Meaningful Name: The Brotherhood of Nod is named after the Biblical land of Nod. "And Cain went out of the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod." Even their logo (the scorpion tail) is a pun, as scorpion's stinging move is actually named "nod".
• Mildly Military: Played With as the series progressed. While Nod's rank-and-file are initially made up of mercenaries and trained recruits, by Tiberium Wars they're reduced to throngs of militia who make up for their lack of discipline with numbers and utter zeal. The Brotherhood's more specialized and elite units, meanwhile, are shown to be either incredibly deadpan even in the thick of battle, or combining rigid professionalism with outright religious fervor.
• Mook Lieutenant: Among the otherwise Cannon Fodder militia, militant rocket squads are considered more valuable assets, being explicitly chosen based on former military or partisan experience and trusted enough even by the Black Hand for anti-tank/anti-air duty. The Confessors, meanwhile, act as this for Nod's infantry in general, leading them through zealous fervor.
• Mundane Utility:
  • By Tiberium Wars, Nod's cloaking technology and the high-powered lasers used for their Obelisks of Light have advanced to the point of being fairly commonplace among their elite and most fanatical adherents.
  • Renegade reveals that as early as the First Tiberium War, Nod had been experimenting on enhancing human beings with Tiberium in the form of the ReGenesis mutants. Though the project is deemed a failure, the Brotherhood is shown to have continued ironing out the kinks over the following decades. This lead to "Divination" research in Tiberian Sun, which though still a costly blunder, culminated in Liquid Tiberium infusions by Tiberium Wars, granting immunity and enhanced performance without the drawbacks of either dying, mutating into a visceroid, or becoming a Forgotten mutant.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Many of Nod's lower-tier units in Tiberium Wars have echoes of the Global Liberation Army from Generals, whether it's a similar focus on hit-and-run tactics, Fanatics who could blow themselves up like GLA Terrorists, or the Brotherhood's own take on the Scorpion Tank. Given that the GLA itself is a Corrupted Character Copy of Nod, it's not too surprising.
  • Kane's Wrath, meanwhile, gives them some attributes of China, also from Generals, as they now have the Voice of Kane defense structure, which is essentially the Speaker Towers they used, down to even using propaganda to induce positive status effects, although the Voice of Kane is limited to friendly infantry only and does not heal them. The Black Hand sub-faction is even somewhat similar to China's Infantry General, Shin Fai, due to their shared focus on superior infantry.
• N.G.O. Superpower: Before the events of Tiberian Dawn, Interpol viewed the Brotherhood of Nod as just another terrorist organization, until they realized just how widespread that organization was and uncovered secret dealings between Nod and major US defense contractors. When Tiberium arrived on Earth, Nod quickly exploited the alien substance to gain the financial and military resources to challenge the Global Defense Initiative in open war, and though Nod suffers major defeats, each time it's able to come back with ever more advanced technology and greater numbers. By the third game, Tiberium Wars, the Brotherhood has grown into an actual state by offering humanitarian aid, governance and protection to the inhabitants of the Tiberium-ravaged "Yellow Zones," who consider GDI to have abandoned them in favor of the affluent, pristine "Blue Zones."
• Not Even Bothering with an Excuse:
  • In Tiberian Dawn, Nod downplays its religious aspects, instead opting to present itself as a resistance movement against the First World, as well as working through proxies like dictators and shell companies. Towards the later years of the First Tiberium War as seen in Renegade, however, it starts being a bit more open.
  • From Tiberian Sun onwards, however, they largely drop the act and flout their more esoteric aspects for all to see. Though they still consistently present themselves as, in one way or another, La Résistance.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The Inner Circle, formed by the events of Tiberian Sun, is a council comprised of Nod's most powerful figures and nominally second to Kane in terms of power in the Brotherhood. In practice, however, it's so factitious and prone to infighting that when CABAL eliminates much the original members in Firestorm, Anton Slavik considers it an improvement. By Tiberium Wars, however, it's implied that Kane purposefully fills the Inner Circle's ranks mostly with sycophants and unquestioning loyalists, with Killian Qatar intended to serve as a latter-day Slavik, to prevent this trope from happening again.
• Nuke 'em: The Brotherhood's most common superweapon is a good old-fashioned nuclear-tipped ICBM.
• Powered Armor: The Black Hand by Tiberium Wars is shown to have their own, both out of intimidation and as a response to GDI's Zone Troopers. On top to protecting them from their potent flamethrowers, they also provide ample protection from small-arms fire.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Downplayed. From Tiberium Wars onward, Nod seems to have softened up a bit and provides neccessities for survival and some level of hope for impoverished people in the Yellow Zones. Though this might be just to keep the masses entertained/distracted so Nod can use them a constant supply of Cannon Fodder or human guinea pigs. And in the end, Nod still considers its basic militias to be expendable for military actions. They're just not as blatantly cruel about it like they were in Tiberian Dawn or Tiberian Sun.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: The Nod brotherhood's chant "Peace. Through. Power."
• Putting on the Reich: In Tiberian Sun, the Brotherhood has its share of this trope, complete with black uniforms, Stahlhelm-inspired helmets and public speeches before rows of stormtrooper-styled soldiers. Slavik and Oxanna having the looks of stereotypical blonde Aryans straight from propaganda posters adds to this (ironic, considering that in-universe Slavik is a Bosnian Serb and Oxanna supposedly a Greek). Subverted in all other games, though the Stahlhelm does appear here and there, like on Black Hand troops in Tiberium Wars.
• Realpolitik: Especially evident during the First Tiberium War, with Nod being more than happy to work with (and bring in) various third world nations and tinpot dictatorships, so long as it serves the Brotherhood's purpose. From Tiberian Sun onwards, however, Nod largely drops the act in favor of taking a more proactive approach.
• Recursive Ammo: Nod's primary superweapon in Tiberian Sun is the Cluster Missile which, upon detonating over the target and causing damage, releases several dozen small bombs that will fall around the original target and can devastate a sizable chunk of someone's base.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: After the first game, contrasting with GDI's color scheme being modeled after realistic camouflage.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: Nod has a chronic problem of these, often when Kane's not around to unite the competing factions together. Here are a few notable examples:
  • The Black Hand, led by Anton Slavik. They go renegade when Hassan (Nod's leader and GDI puppet) tries to execute Slavik.
  • CABAL, after manipulating both sides to accomplish it's goals. It was so much of a threat that both GDI and Nod work together to eliminate it.
  • The Marcion-led Black Hand, which was but one of the many splinter factions after CABAL's defeat and Slavik's death. Believing the Brotherhood strayed from it's "pure" path, Marcion took the Black Hand into exile, and reformed the group into a religious order.
  • The Nod Separatists, who opposed Kane's alliance with GDI. They saw it as a betrayal to their own core beliefs.
• Rock Beats Laser: Downplayed. The Black Hand subfaction favors flame weaponry while forgoing the more advanced Nod techs (for instance, they don't have access to Avatar mechs, and are instead stuck with the prototype Purifier version). Sounds low-tech, but they still utilize powered armor and some of the same Tiberium-based tech as the rest of the Brotherhood. They also have certain upgrades that compensate for shortcomings, most dangerously Purifying Flames that really boosts flame damage. A Purifier that gets in range will burn down a Mammoth Tank faster than the Mammoth can take it down, despite taking potshots beforehand.
• Rule of Cool: Several of Nod's unit designs embody this concept.
• Sealed Army in a Can: The Marked of Kane, originally forged during the Second Tiberium War and kept hidden even from CABAL, are reactivated in the 2050s on Kane's orders, giving the Brotherhood the push needed to seize the Tacitus.
• State Sec: The Black Hand. It started out as Kane's personal body guard, developed into a religious secret police and special ops group, then eventually became a subfaction of its own. By the third game expansion, the Black Hand have their own military, political and religious wings, and act as a second army of Nod. Also, it's not a coincidence that it shares the name of the organization that was behind the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which started The First World War. It's pretty much stated that that was them.
• Super Prototype: As early as Tiberian Dawn, Nod's shown to have a knack for deploying these to thwart GDI, such as the first-generation "Ezekiel's Wheel" Stealth Tank and early laser-armed Obelisks of Light.
• Super Soldiers: ReGenesis mutants (Renegade), Cyborgs (Tiberian Sun/Firestorm), and liquid tiberium drinkers (Tiberium Wars).
• Tank Goodness: Has two iconic tanks in the entire series, the Flame Tank and the Stealth Tank. Compared to what GDI has, they're weaker and much more specialized in what they do.
• Transhuman: The Brotherhood as a whole is more than willing to use cyborg soldiers and Tiberium-assisted Bio-Augmentation. The Black Hand diverged starkly from the rest of the Brotherhood on the subject of cybernetics by the time of Tiberium Wars, however, due to CABAL's rebellion and mass-hijacking of Nod's cyborg troops in the middle of the Firestorm Crisis.
• Undying Loyalty: While the Brotherhood in general is known for its fanaticism, this is especially evident among the two subfactions that become playable in Kane's Wrath.
  • The Black Hand, which has existed in various forms over the generations, is an elite State Sec and religious order comprised of Kane's most fervent followers. Equipped with flamethrowers and some of the best equipment in the Brotherhood, its members will gladly march to their deaths in the service of their Messiah.
  • The Marked of Kane, meanwhile, are highly advanced cyborgs dormant since the Second Tiberium War, who are described by Kane himself as an "army of the deathless, the enlightened, the redeemed". Unlike the cyborgs fielded by Slavik and later CABAL, however, these voluntarily chose to become killer machines and remain genuinely loyal to their Messiah.
• The Unfettered: Unlike GDI, the Brotherhood is far less squeamish about things like ethics, collateral damage, or spreading Tiberium.
• Unwitting Test Subject: A lot of Nod's dog-kicking involves using war prisoners or kidnapped civilians for some rather twisted experiments involving Tiberum and/or cybernetics. More obvious in Tiberian Dawn and Tiberian Sun, but gets a little toned down from Tiberium Wars onward.
• Vestigial Empire: By the early 2050s, as seen in Kane's Wrath, the Brotherhood has largely gone underground, its reduced armies only able to stand up to GDI forces by being reinforced with the Marked of Kane. As Kane himself remarks, however, Nod's predicament is "how it should be, for only the chosen few will be allowed into the Promised Land."
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: A very notable aversion.
  • In all C&C games, Nod's flame arsenal is rightfully feared as the bane of infantry and buildings, although for balance reasons it barely damages vehicles.
  • By Tiberium Wars, this is amplified further by how the Black Hand can not only stand toe-to-toe with GDI's best, but are also equipped with flamethrowers powerful enough to fry light vehicles. With the Purifying Flame upgrade made available to the titular subfaction in Kane's Wrath, even Mammoth Tanks aren't safe.
• Villainous Valour: While this is a series with Black-and-Gray Morality, the soldiers of the Brotherhood of Nod, the 'bad guys' of the game, show during Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars exceptional bravery, just consider the bulk of Nod military is formed of civilian militia from the ravaged and impoverished Yellow Zones armed with assault rifles, portable missile launchers and light vehicles (they are backed by some elite forces), these guys first manage to outmatch for some time the Global Defense Initiative, which is a coalition of the world greatest powers, and then they hold their ground against a massive alien invasion force with technology capable to disrupt the laws of physics and GDI's full operative military power. It helps that their leader, Kane, is a very cunning strategist, and most of their generals are competent as well.
• Villain Protagonist: The Brotherhood of Nod in general, and Kane in particular, have more than their fair share of moments.
  • The Nod campaign of Tiberian Sun largely follows Anton Slavik's efforts to both rebuild the Brotherhood as it ought to be, and to fulfill Kane's plans, no matter the cost.
  • This is especially evident in Tiberium Wars, where a large part of the Brotherhood's basic motivation stems from economic woes, health problems, and perceived oppression and marginalization by the Global Defense Initiative (helped along by constant propaganda by Nod's leadership).
  • Taken up to eleven in Kane's Wrath, where you learn that a previous mission you played in Tiberium Wars, where you were defending as the bad-guy Nod and were attacked by a rogue group of Nod traitors supposedly led by Killian, where you learn the truth of the treachery. However the perpetrator did it in belief that she would be helping Nod rid themselves of an unbeliever, but unintentionally (however it was planned by Kane) triggering the arrival of the Scrin. What makes this a villain protagonist is that you are now in command of the traitor army. It's hard to understand exactly who she ended up helping in the end, but she's definitely a villain to all factions.
• Walking Spoiler: The Brotherhood is the true benefactor behind the USSR the first Red Alert.
• Warfare Regression: In Tiberium Wars, Nod ends up abandoning subterranean burrowing vehicles due to environmental changes, as well as jettisoning cyborg technology due to the events of Firestorm, at least until the Marked of Kane are awakened in Kane's Wrath.
• Washington D.C. Invasion: In Tiberium Wars, the first act of the Nod campaign is a multi-stage invasion of DC and the environs, with special attention paid to the White House and Langley AFB.
• We Have Reserves: Nod's fanatical legions of militia are considered completely expendable. Which is fine, because there's always plenty more where they came from. In Kane's Wrath one of Nod subfactions, the Black Hand even encourages this as their main tactic, given how good their infantry is, so you can eventually overwhelm nearly any enemy.
• What the Romans Have Done for Us: Played With. Nod consolidates its influence in the Third World (and the future Yellow Zones later on) by serving as a stabilizing force, offering some semblance of order especially as Tiberium wracks the planet as opposed to the seemingly elitist and negligent GDI, which seemingly abandoned them as everything crumbled. On the other hand, it's deliberately invoked by the Brotherhood as a means of attracting throngs of Cannon Fodder and zealots to its banner, of which it has in droves by Tiberium Wars.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: In Tiberian Dawn, Nod certainly would, even while consciously using pretenses of upholding the rights of Third World nations. By Tiberium Wars, however, the Brotherhood has resorted to using Yellow Zones as fertile recruiting ground, attracting followers through Bread and Circuses. That being said, it's not above treating civilians as collateral damage at best, at worst fodder for a False Flag Operation.
• You Cannot Kill An Idea: Despite GDI's best efforts and the Brotherhood's own fractious nature, Nod proves to be almost as difficult to put down as Kane himself. Even GDI comes to admit as much by Tiberium Wars.
  Granger: For 28 years of fighting Nod, there's one thing I can say with absolute certainty: As long as there's Tiberium on Earth, Nod is a serious threat. If our intel says otherwise, it's because Nod wants us to take them off our radar.
• You Have Failed Me: Tiberian Dawn indicated that this was how the Brotherhood of Nod handled incompetent officers, with Seth, Kane's second in command, warning the player that if you failed you died. Seth, it is worth noting, starts seeming wary of you (noting that "you are rapidly becoming Kane's favorite") as the campaign progresses and continues sending you on difficult missions with faulty intelligence. He eventually tries to send you on an outright Suicide Mission against the Pentagon (all the way across the ocean from the African theater where you're fighting). Then Kane introduces himself by executing Seth in mid-sentence, pushing him out of the chair, and promoting you.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Nearly the same as with GLA. Nod declare they're fighting against GDI oppression while in the first game they were a blatant terrorist organization (although with the stock market and corporate image), and in all others, still employ terror tactics in spades. In Tiberium Wars, they even have suicide bombers with explosives strapped to their chests. Still, in Yellow Zones Nod is viewed as anything but terrorists, as in many regions they are the only form of organized beneficial government.
• Zerg Rush: The Brotherhood makes use of this at lower tech levels, able to produce huge numbers of cheap, expendable militia troops, as well as light, fast attack bikes, buggies, and tanks. However, while most soldiers fighting for Nod are poorly-trained, poorly-armed rabble, the other end of the spectrum is comprised of a much smaller group of super elites using technology that's often superior in many ways to that of GDI. If Nod has a single overarching approach to warfare it's not just zerging the enemy, it could probably best be described as sending favored sons to stab him in the back with a billion-dollar dagger made from alien technology while he's busy fending off the ragged but huge and fanatic mob in front of him.

Scrin

And we thought we were alone in the universe! Oh, the hubris!!

-Garbled transmission from a GDI soldier during the invasion of Munich

Scrin is an extraterrestrial force is trying to terraform Earth with Tiberium and harvest Tiberium deposits. They aren't referred to by name; they are only called by GDI as "invaders" and "Aliens" and by Nod as "Visitors". They have remained dormant along the edge of the Solar System for a millennia, until awakened by the massive detonation of liquid Tiberium beneath the Brotherhood of Nod's "Temple Prime". The Scrin swiftly proceeded to launch an assault on Earth's cities, wreaking havoc on GDI and Nod alike. These attacks were actually diversions that allow the Scrin to construct large "Threshold Tower" structures. Scrin units and structures show a distinctly bio-mechanical and insect-like appearance. Furthermore, they possess several economic and military advantages related directly to Tiberium, including the ability to promote the growth of the substance, to store infinite amounts of it, and to use it to enhance their units and weaponry. As they are Tiberium-based, the Scrin are immune to the radioactive effects of Tiberium. However, they are vulnerable to anti-Tiberium weapons like Nod's catalyst missile and GDI's sonic emitters. The Scrin has the passive ability to create wormholes to instantly teleport units around the battlefield. Of all the factions, the Scrin possess the most powerful aerial force, consisting of fighters, warships, and carriers.

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• Achilles' Heel: The Scrin are exceptionally powerful thanks to their mastery over Tiberium. This is also their biggest weakness. Without access to their precious "Ichor", they will die due to being thoroughly addicted to it. While the fact that everything from their machinery to their bodies are infused with the substance means that they're especially vulnerable to anti-Tiberium countermeasures, such as GDI's sonic weaponry and Nod's Catalyst Missiles.
• Alien Invasion: Invoked by Kane with the Scrin. Except it's not really an invasion, but they try to make it look like one, to divert attention from their mining operations. Kane is aware enough of this, though they are not aware that they were brought to Earth earlier than they planned.
• Aliens Are Bastards: They seeded the Earth with Tiberium with intent of wiping out its indigenous life by the time their harvesting operation got there, and we get hints that this is routine for them.
• Aliens Steal Cable: At the beginning of the Scrin campaign, the mothership's AI taps into satellite communications to run a cryptanalysis on the television broadcasts that appear throughout the other campaigns, learning Machine Monotone English from them; it takes them less than 10 seconds. In an interesting subversion of this trope, the Scrin expect from experience that Tiberium would have driven humanity to near-extinction but after almost getting blown out of the sky by GDI ion cannons, they tap into military frequencies and eventually conclude that humanity is fragmented yes, but they're also "warlike to the extreme". Finally, the Supervisor intercepts the cutscene where Kane explains the part of his plan involving the Liquid Tiberium Bomb and realizes they've been duped into invading at least a century too early.
• Aliens Never Invented the Wheel: In addition to lacking any tracked or wheeled units, the Scrin are notable for being the ONLY faction in the series to not have some kind of transport vehicle. Instead, they make up for this with the Wormhole ability that the Signal Transmitter gives them. Justified in-universe due to how Tiberium-heavy environments aren't always suitable for wheeled or tracked transport.
• Asteroids Monster: Their initial transport fleet is 6 large ships. When GDI unleashes its ion cannons against them, they merely activate "defensive dispersal functions" and split into 39 smaller Drone Platforms after being hit directly. After briefly spending some time reorienting themselves, most of the Drone Platforms continue on as if nothing happened.
• Attack Drone/Mecha-Mooks: Their "army" (actually an escort for the mining fleet) seems to be composed of automated troops commanded by Scrin Foremen in spaceborne Motherships. All of their units and even their buildings immediately shutdown and decompose once their Control Node is destroyed.
• Ax-Crazy: Reaper-17 are stated to be the most violent subsect of the Cult of Reaper, and said cult's purpose is to violently subdue planets that pose a threat to the Scrin.
• Badass Army: The Scrin have all sorts of space-bending nastiness and Tiberium tricks.
• Beam Spam: Their Devourer Tanks and Annihilator Tripods are equipped with proton cannons that fire beams that deal continuous damage the longer they're active.
• Bio Punk: The Scrin's arsenal, by and large, is bio-mechanical in nature, all of which being infused with Tiberium in some form or another.
• Blessed with Suck: The Scrin have technological and Tiberium-based mastery that makes humanity's best efforts look pitiful by comparison, seemingly bending the laws of physics like they're nothing. All this comes, however, at the cost of being so addicted to the crystal that not only are they nigh-incapable of functioning without it, but they'd die if deprived. GDI realizes this and commits to eliminating the Control Node to wipe the invaders out in one stroke.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: One of the worst cases in recent video gaming history. Last we see of the Scrin, they are preparing for an all-out assault on Earth. By Command & Conquer 4 they are conspicuously absent and only mentioned a couple of times.
• Color-Coded Armies: The Scrin use a purple color scheme with hints of green Tiberium.
• Cool Starship: Their Devastator Warships and Planetary Assault Carriers.
• Crippling Overspecialization: A species-wide case, as the Scrin's incomprehensible mastery over Tiberium has made them glorified, terminally-dependent drug addicts. This is reflected in how they're especially vulnerable GDI sonic weapons and Nod catalyst missiles.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Subverted. The Scrin initially deal a sweeping blow to both GDI and Nod, though this doesn't last long. Not only do they find out that Earth's indigenous sentients are capable of fighting back effectively, but the aliens are eventually put on the receiving end.
• Deflector Shields: They can equip their larger ships and ground units with them.
• Didn't See That Coming: The Scrin weren't really expecting any viable resistance, or any sentient lifeforms, after an "Ichor LQ detonation event". They soon found out that not only did Earth still have organized indigenous sentients, which the aliens never really anticipated, but that mankind's more than capable of fighting back.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The crashed UFO discovered by Nod around the First Tiberium War, which was in turn used to reverse-engineer an alien warship by Tiberian Sun, is all but stated to be a Scrin vessel.
• Expy:
  • Some of their elements, namely their team color being purple and how some of their units have a Mind Control gimmick, such as the Cultists, the Masterminds, and the Prodigies all bring to mind Yuri's faction from Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2.
  • In addition to The War of the Worlds parallels as seen in the Scrin’s use of tripods, the Traveller-59 subfaction’s penchant of using mind-controlled cultists and slaves as the vanguard of an invasion force calls to mind the the Tyrannids.
• Faction Calculus: Balance. Their units comprises of a mix of cheap and disposable units (the Buzzers are as cheap as Nod's Militants and also just as frail) and elite powerful units (the Seeker is more powerful compared to the Pitbull and the Attack Bike).
  • The Reaper-17 subfaction introduced in Kane's Wrath is Powerhouse, forgoing their air superiority in favor of devastating combat walkers.
  • The Traveller-59 subfaction introduced in Kane's Wrath is Subversive. Their brute force is lacking compared to other Scrin factions, but they have unique units with enhanced mind-control and teleportation abilities.
• Evil Counterpart Race: In a perverse sense, the Scrin are a dark mirror of the Brotherhood of Nod. More specifically, they're the logical endpoint of what obsession with Tiberium and the Technology of Peace will do to a species in the long run, becoming so addicted to the substance that they literally die without it.
• Higher-Tech Species: They can create wormholes and can instantaneously teleport and summon units anywhere on the map.
• Hypnotic Creature: Scrin Masterminds and their advanced Traveler-59 cousins, the Prodigies. They can take control of exactly one enemy unit or building at a time and has the additional ability of teleporting allied units around the battlefield. Other than that, it has no actual means of self defence.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: Downplayed, but it's revealed that the Scrin are rather unnerved by humanity, treating mankind as "warlike to the extreme" and a threat to the species. Whatever Kane is, it's also shown they view him as even more of this trope.
• Humans Are Warriors: Why the harvesting operation goes bad for the Scrin in Tiberium Wars. While it's true that the Scrin's "invasion" was actually just a mining operation that harvests Tiberium-infested planets when all the inhabitants are dead, they still view humanity as "warlike to the extreme" and a major threat to the survival of their entire race. They are also puzzled as to why humans continue to fight each other instead of uniting against the Scrin, but they aren't complaining.
  Scrin Intelligence Database: "...Indigenous population is warlike to the extreme - once Threshold construction is complete and gateway is open, entire indigenous population must be cleansed from the surface of the planet."
• Humongous Mecha: Scrin have Tripod that straight out of The War of the Worlds. The Kane's Wrath expansion also has an upgraded version of the Scrin's tripod mech called the Reaper Tripod. The Scrin also have a giant 6-legged bug monster mech called the Eradicator Hexapod, though people tend to say it's the worst epic unit because its special ability is bad.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum:
  • Threshold 19. By the end on the Third Tiberium War, it was the only alien tower completed (and hence indestructible). It was meant as a massive Tiberium mine and a wormhole to transport it to other worlds, but the aliens never got to use it. In Tiberian Twilight, it's at the center of the Tiberium Control Network, which basically extends its power to mine all the Tiberium on the planet. Kane also wants to use its wormhole to Ascend, along with his entire Brotherhood, which he does.
  • Some of the advanced technology in Tiberian Twilight also qualifies, since it's obviously based on reverse-engineered Scrin equipment. Examples include shield technology and the time-stopping stasis fields.
• Improvised Weapon: Downplayed.
  • While the Scrin units in general are described as befitting a security detail, with only a handful of actual military-grade hardware like Tripods and Devastator Warships sprinkled in, some are heavily implied to be equipment meant for mining Tiberium that are hastily retooled to serve as weapons.
  • The Devourer Tanks are more straightforward, which look scrapped together in a pinch by the Scrin based off human-designed armor, with a proton cannon plopped on them.
• Inscrutable Aliens: Played With. The Scrin's true goals and motivations, including why they seeded Tiberium on Earth, are generally incomprehensible to humanity. That said, however, GDI is been able to piece enough together to make sense of what the aliens are doing and organize a decisive counteroffensive thanks in no small part to what they'd been able to decipher from the Tacitus. This is also what allows Kane to see through the Scrin even more clearly, directing Nod to respond accordingly.
• Keystone Army: All the units of the Scrin harvest escort fleet are powered by Tiberium radiation emanating from a "Control Node" established at the original Tiberium meteor's crash site, in Italy. While the Node has an operational range that goes as far out as the Moon, its destruction stops every Scrin unit on Earth dead in its tracks, and some even break apart. The Scrin are aware of its importance: it's ludicrously well-defended with everything from stasis shields, Storm Columns and a space fleet to phase fields that render it invulnerable temporarily.
• Kill Sat: Having a bunch of support starships beyond Neptune's Orbit, as well as wormhole capabilities, Scrin can deploy a Tiberium-laced asteroid against ground targets, as well as call down a Tiberium-seeding beam from orbit. None of these are superweapon-grade, however.
• Kryptonite Factor: The Scrin, due to their Tiberium-based nature, are weak to GDI sonics which can easily shatter Tiberium crystals. According to the in game database, this weakness was discovered by a particularly smart engineer who reactivated a Sonic Emitter grid. One soldier in particular noted that Sonic Emitters "Rip through them like a plasma knife through polybutter!". Nod meanwhile developed the Catalyst Missile, which straight up detonates Tiberium in a sub critical reaction, turning any Scrin lifeform hit by a Catalyst Missile into a soon to be bomb
• Leave No Survivors: Part of the Scrin's standard procedure for mining Tiberium-laced planets is to eliminate any indigenous sentient life that's managed to survive for that long, with the equivalent of a security detail seen as more than sufficient for the task. When they try to do the same thing to Earth not only do they discover that they arrived at least a century too early, but that the locals can actually fire back at them effectively. The Traveller-59 subfaction plays with this, meanwhile, given its reliance on mind-controlled cultists that are implied to be captured prisoners.
• Mistaken Identity: They have mistook the humans as the Scrin, their "brother" and enemies, implying that the aliens are not the "true" Scrin. In the cutscene before their mission, the in-game subtitles, which can be activated through patches, has the Supervisor state that.
  Supervisor: "No precedent exists for viable indigenous resistance after Ichor LQ detonation event. Species must be Scrin."
• Mundane Utility: The Scrin treat seeding life-sustaining planets with Tiberium, and sweeping in to mine them of it, as just another day in the office. They never expected humanity, however, to not only survive, but remain strong enough to fight back.
• No Name Given: They are actually not referred to as "Scrin" by the GDI, Nod, or themselves, while Kane simply refers to them as "Visitors". An entry in the Intelligence Database mentions another alien species they previously encountered as "brother", "ascended", "enemy", and "Scrin". This implies that the aliens that invaded Earth are not the Scrin after all, but rather a related or derivative species. Their true name is unknown.
• No-Sell: Being thoroughly dependent on Tiberium, the Scrin are not only immune but also gain bonuses from exposure to it.
• Oh, Crap!: Despite the Scrin's technological superiority, they are genuinely taken aback by how Earth's indigenous sentients are putting up a much tougher fight that they'd anticipated.
• Not So Above It All:
  • For all the Scrin's pretensions at being a superior alien race, they are about as beholden to Tiberium as they are masters of it. Kane all but outright calls them a species of drug addicts.
  • As nigh-inscrutable as the Scrin are, their tactics and overall plan to mine the planet of its Tiberium soon come off as all too recognizable to humanity. Their Foremen also aren't above trying to fight their way out of an increasingly hopeless (for them) situation.
• Planet Looters: Scrin seed planets with Tiberium, then wait for the spread of the material to drive the planet's inhabitants into extinction. Then they begin collecting up the Tiberium on the now dead world, with any lingering resistance dealt with by a security detail. Unfortunately for them, they didn't expect GDI and Nod to still be existent when they arrived on Earth. The whole series was a plan by Kane to make this happen.
• Puny Earthlings: Defied. While the higher-ups initially write off Earth's indigenous lifeforms as primitives on the verge of extinction, after overcoming their initial surprise that there even still are sentients after prolonged Tiberium exposure, the Scrin Foreman commanding the invading forces on the ground discovers the hard way that humanity is "warlike to the extreme."
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: The Scrin construct things with nano-assemblers, and teleport most of their forces from their fleet at the edge of the Solar System via wormhole portals.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Scrin just want to harvest Tiberium, and stumble across humanity in the process. Having no precedent for a civilization surviving the Liquid Tiberium explosion that attracted them, the Scrin invade with force to attempt to go about their job anyway, leveling cities as "diversionary tactics" to keep the humans off balance from this goal. When humanity kicks them back off the planet except for a single Threshold Tower, the Scrin Overlord declares that a full invasion will commence.
  • One of the absolute best parts of the Scrin Campaign is when the aliens land and encounter heavy resistance... Their response is outright amazement at the humans' not even stopping their internal war as they were being invaded: "Factions continued combat operations between them even as they were threatened with extinction by our initial attack; Indigenous population is warlike to the extreme; entire indigenous population must be cleansed from the surface of the planet".
  • The expansion, Kane's Wrath, introduces two Scrin sub-factions. Reaper-17 are Scary Dogmatic Aliens played straight, in that they take any actions necessary to annihilate things that stand in front of progress, using a religious sort of fervor. Traveler-59 are more a cult of subversion (no, not the trope kind) who actively co-opt humans via a method of The Virus. Note that those aren't their only armies. Cult of Reaper is mentioned to have numerous sects, Reaper-17 are stated to be the scariest and act violent even for an army supposed to overtake planets. Traveler-59 is stated to be the newest of the traveler sects, so much so that they haven't seen action yet.
  • In Kane's Wrath, Kane himself calls the Scrin a "cult of addiction in the guise of a species," giving the mental image of an entire species of militant, highly advanced crack addicts who are turning planets into giant rocks to snort... which isn't that far from the truth, given that it is stated that they require regular Tiberium infusions in order to survive. It's implied that at some point in their past they adapted to living with Tiberium at the cost of a species-wide addiction to it.
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: Inverted. The Scrin find out the hard way that the "Ichor LQ detonation" had awakened them at least a century ahead of the projected apocalypse.
• Starfish Aliens: So alien in fact, that we don't even know how they look like. All we get is the shimmering, cephalopoidal avatar of the Supervisor during his Warp-Link transmissions. It's entirely possible that the none of the Scrin units we see are actually the Scrin themselves, just bio-robots or piloted bio-machines.
• Shrouded in Myth: It's not even clear if they are the Scrin, since the GDI translation computers returned several terms for their name.
• Squishy Wizard: Their units are, in general, either overpriced for their actual firepower, but have a variety of tricks the other factions can't duplicate, such as not needing silos, flying MC Vs, and various Tiberium-related gimmicks.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Played With. With their mastery over Tiberium and technology that casually bends the laws of physics, the Scrin are undoubtedly light-years beyond what humanity's capable of. On the other hand, the Scrin have a massive Achilles' heel in being terminally addicted to Tiberium, which both GDI and Nod exploit as mankind fights back. And as powerful as their units are, they can still be taken down with enough firepower.
• Those Were Only Their Scouts: As threatening as the Scrin forces that attack Earth in Tiberium Wars are, they're not only the equivalent of a mining operation with some armed security detail, but said aliens are just a comparatively small fraction of a vast armada spread out amongst the stars.
• Tripod Terror: Their Annihilator Tripod, which, while less durable than the Mammoth Tank and Avatar, outguns them since it has multiple cannons (mammoth tank will still beat it due to its armor). Reaper-17 has the Reaper Tripod, basically a stronger version for the same costs, which will beat the Mammoth. Unless it's a Steel Talons Mammoth.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Kane, of all people. Upon learning that they'd arrived on Earth far ahead of schedule, the Scrin don't take it too well.
• Villainous Breakdown: Downplayed, but the Scrin leadership doesn't take kindly to their forces on Earth being defeated by humanity, despite said forces being just a harvesting operation. Given how they treat seeding and mining planets as routine, it implies that this might have been the first time in ages that they were even beaten back at all.
• We Have Reserves: After it was clear that the Scrin were fooled by Kane to attack Earth, their leading Overlord wanted more information about him, at the expense of the portals of the Scrin towers for the invading forces. When the Scrin AI pointed this out, The Supervisor, Overlord's representative, tells her that the invading forces were "expendable" and commands the Foreman to spend more time on investigating Kane and less time on defending the towers.
  • Considering that the Scrin force is able to hit targets around the world and is big enough that what GDI took for an army was nothing more than a harvesting operation, and that their descriptions of their subfactions imply they have dozens of armies devoted to subjugating planets that get in their way, they really seem to have reserves.
• Wrong Assumption: The Supervisor assumed the humans are Scrin after displaying a "viable indigenous resistance after Ichor LQ detonation event."
• Zerg Rush: They can readily spam Disintegrators and buzzers while building an army of tripods in the background. And, since they're actually aliens, they are the real Zerg of this series. And let's not mention the mind-controlling cultists used by Traveler 59.

The Forgotten

Never say "Trust us" to a mutant.

-Kane

A third faction that has emerged in the years since the First Tiberium War, the Forgotten are comprised of Mutants, humans who have been corrupted by Tiberium, to the point that it is actually growing out of their skin. Largely shunned by society, with whom they share a mutual dislike and mistrust, they band together wherever they can. During the Second Tiberium War, they ally with GDI in the hopes of using the Tacitus to create a cure.

---

• Body Horror: The Mutant Marauders in Tiberium Wars are Hired Guns whose bodies have become bulkier than both an average human and other Forgotten mutants thanks to greater exposure to Tiberium.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: In addition to jury-rigged equipment, the Forgotten are fond of deploying leftovers from past conflicts, including old hardware from Tiberian Dawn, such as the original Mammoth Tanks. This is mainly due to them having little other choice.
• BFG: The Forgotten are particularly fond of using Railguns and Miniguns as infantry weapons due to their superhuman strength and durability.
• Color-Coded Armies: Green-colored in Tiberian Sun.
• The Corruption: Mutations due to Tiberium exposure.
• Cursed with Awesome: The Tiberium Mutations they have are slowly degenerating their bodies and is implied to have drastically shortened their lifespans. On the flip side, for what little time they have, the Forgotten can heal Tiberium and are capable of wielding Railguns without fear from it's radiation (although whether they are outright immune or will simply expire before the radiation do cellular damage to them is never explained). They also seem to get superhuman strength and durability.
• Defector from Decadence: Some of the Forgotten had once served alongside Nod, if not having been members themselves. By Tiberian Sun, however, they had turned against the Brotherhood, whether due to Fantastic Racism, or seeing Kane's rhetoric of Divination and the Technology of Peace as a lie.
• Demoted to Extra: By Tiberian Twilight, the Forgotten are ironically all but ignored by GDI and Nod, being reduced to neutral scrap hovels.
• The Exile: Generally live away from the rest of society, which is further reinforced after the Firestorm Crisis as the majority of them retreat further into what would later be called Red Zones.
• Fantastic Racism: There is mutual mistrust and dislike between the Forgotten and normal humans.
• Future Slang: Normals refer to them as "Shiners" and they call normals "Blunts."
• Hired Guns: By Tiberium Wars, there remain a handful of Forgotten living close enough to civilized society who offer their services as mercenaries, using old habitat modules set up by GDI as "Mutant Hovels".
• Home Field Advantage: Being mutants tied to Tiberium and (relatively) safe from its effects, the Forgotten excel in using it and the surrounding hostile landscape to their advantage.
• Hufflepuff House: In Tiberian Sun, they act as a third faction, reached out to by GDI and manipulated by Nod. Their units are, appropriately enough, cobbled together from odds and ends and include old vehicles left over from Tiberian Dawn.
  • After Tiberian Sun, they are reduced to background references and as neutral Hired Guns in Tiberium Wars. Losing two leaders in Firestorm was very likely a heavy blow to them.
  • In Sun, it was Umagon who reached out to GDI in an attempt to rescue Tratos, and with her death, the Forgotten couldn't/didn't find another ambassador to represent them.
  • The Forgotten are given a passing mention in Kane's Wrath as being blamed for a Nod False Flag Operation on the GDI Treasury, with LEGION using the "Sons of Umagon" militia as a scapegoat.
• La Résistance: In Tiberian Sun, the Forgotten see themselves as this against both the Brotherhood's lies and wider humanity's prejudices. While most of them had long since retreated deep into the Red Zones by Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath, however, some militia groups like the "Sons of Umagon" remain active enough for Nod to use as scapegoats.
• Information Broker: Their main strength was information. Tratos was one of a very small group who can translate the Tacitus. The Forgotten themselves made excellent scouts when ion storms can knock out advanced communications, and Tiberium is toxic to human scouts.
• Mutants: They are the result of both Tiberium exposure and the Brotherhood's human experiments with it, and each faction views them differently: the Brotherhood outright loathes the mutants, the shiners are nothing more than a convenient ally for GDI, and The Forgotten view themselves "a people of honor". Naturally, they always get shafted.
• No-Sell: The Forgotten are impervious to Tiberium exposure and can even heal from it.
• Put on a Bus: They almost completely disappear from the story after Tiberian Sun and Firestorm when they go into a self imposed exile from the rest of society. They were supposed to have a crucial role in the story of Westwood's original C&C 3.
• Rock Beats Laser: Compared to every other faction, the Forgotten seem woefully outmatched. Yet despite having to make do with scavenged gear, leftover weaponry from earlier conflicts, and their own mutant capabilities, they're able to not only survive in the wasteland, but hold their own against much more organized and technologically sophisticated opponents.
• Scavenged Punk: The Forgotten, living in the margins of civilization, are forced to make do with whatever they could get their hands on, from bolted-together junk to leftover weaponry from earlier conflicts.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In order to live free from either GDI or Nod meddling, the Forgotten had for the most part migrated deeper into the desolate Red Zones by the time of Tiberium Wars. Some however, still live close enough to the rest of humanity, offering their services as Hired Guns.
• Unwitting Pawn: Played With during the Nod campaign of Tiberian Sun. While the Brotherhood manages to dupe the Forgotten with its False Flag Operation, some are savvy enough to see through the ruse and align with GDI instead.
• Was Once a Man: Once the Tiberium mutations become advanced, the Forgotten would be unrecognizable as humans.

Characters

Kane

"You can't kill the Messiah"

Played by Joseph D. Kucan

Affiliation: Brotherhood of Nod/USSR (former)
Rank: Prophet
Role: Nod Supreme Leader/Self-Proclaimed Messiah/Soviet Advisor

The enigmatic leader of the Brotherhood of Nod, self-proclaimed prophet, and most magnificent of bastards. He has led Nod every time they rose against GDI through the years. Wherever Tiberium goes Nod is never far behind, and Kane calls the displaced and downtrodden to his cause. He is convinced Tiberium heralds a new age, one that mankind must embrace and views GDI's attempts to control and remove Tiberium as foolishly shortsighted which leads him into conflict with them time and time again.

Though Nod has been defeated many times, and Kane himself declared dead just as many, he always manages to return, despite being vaporized by an Ion Cannon and run through with a jagged piece of metal. Though they assure the world each time that he's really dead now, GDI leadership often wonders if they will ever truly be rid of this madman...

---

• Affably Evil: Kane very rarely loses his cool and is a strikingly erudite, educated, and charismatic leader who seems to somewhat genuinely care for his followers. Even when confronting his hated enemies of GDI, he always shows them a little smile and offers a few words of respect, even while mercilessly taunting their powerlessness or promising to gut them like the swines they are.
• A God Am I: Kane plays with this a fair bit. He concedes that he is not God Himself, but certainly a good runner-up. More often he calls himself "The Messiah" and the Brotherhood of NOD "the chosen people". Kane has been alive and unaged for over a century now, and has successfully deflected shots from an orbital laser cannon with his face, so why not? Not even the Sufficiently Advanced Aliens know what he is. In Renegade, it's hinted that he may be, or at least may lead his followers in believing that he's that Kane.
  McNeil: You're not God, Kane!
  Kane: No, I'm not God... but I'm a close second.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Long before The Reveal in Tiberian Twilight, there is a very subtle hint at Kane not being fully human in-universe - he never blinks. Moreover, the mere fact that he keeps popping up over the decades without any visible aging has both fueled Nod's propaganda of him being a messiah, and defied GDI's attempts to study him.
  • As far back as Red Alert 1, in his guise as a Soviet advisor, there's an inkling that there's much more to him than meets the eye, namely in how he manages to get Stalin's undivided and uncharacteristically quiet attention whenever he's whispering into the dictator's ear.
• Ancient Astronauts: Tiberian Twilight makes it clear this is what he is, spending the past millennia guiding humanity into advancing as a species, at least to the point wherein he could finally "Ascend".
• The Antichrist: Subverted, he certainly fits the bill: an extremely charismatic religious leader with Resurrective Immortality and self-styled "messiah" trying to Take Over the World during an ecological crisis caused by an asteroid impact. However, 1) he never succeeds in creating a One World Order, 2) he misses the boat (7 years with the Colony Drop occurring roughly in the middle of his reign) by 50-odd years, and 3) turns out to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist Scary Dogmatic Alien trying to get back to his homeworld instead of ol' Scratch wearing a Meat Puppet.
• Anti-Hero: Kane becomes a very bizarre kinda-sorta case in Twilight. At the end of the game one could even call him an all-out good guy, because his designs and GDI hardware create a win-win situation for both sides: the Tiberium Control Network turns Tiberium from a direct threat to the existence of life on Earth into a tightly controlled, effective, regenerating resource, while Kane gets to finally go home after being trapped on Earth for thousands of years and takes his most loyal followers with him, thus giving them the promised "Ascension".
• Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: What happens in the Nod ending of Tiberian Sun, as well as his stated goal for his aptly-named "Ascension" plan. This is finally achieved at the end of Tiberian Twilight with Kane bringing his Brotherhood faithful along for the ride.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • Tiberian Twilight, since Kane achieves ascension.
  • Technically in Tiberium Wars. Kane got what he wanted when he started the Third Tiberium War; the technology of the Scrin, including their portal tower so that the Brotherhood of Nod can ascend thirty years later, not the ultimate defeat of GDI. Then again destroying the GDSS Philadelphia also counts as it crippled GDI command temporarily.
  • Also in the Soviet campaign of Red Alert, where he serves as Joseph Stalin's mysterious adviser until the Soviet Union has succeeded in conquering all of Europe; him and his underlings immediately murder the victorious Premier and he resumes Nod's conquest of the world abroad, thus setting in motion the events of the Tiberian Saga.
• Bald of Authority: He is the bald, charismatic leader of the Nod faction who also considers himself a god. Also overlaps with Bald of Evil as he is the main antagonist of the Tiberian Series.
• Batman Gambit: Turns out GDI did exactly what he wanted when they fired the Ion Cannon at Temple Prime, causing a liquid Tiberium explosion that attracted the Scrin to Earth.
• Becoming the Mask: While Tiberian Twilight suggests that Nod's very existence may have simply been a means to an end for Kane to return home, he nonetheless has long come to embrace being the Brotherhood's guiding figure. Or at the very least, he's since shown to have cared enough about his role to the point of bringing his loyal followers along with him in his Ascension.
• Beneath Notice: Prior to the First Tiberium War, Kane took up different unassuming guises in public while making sure that no one outside the Brotherhood knew of his true identity. This is also how he's able to get close to Stalin as an advisor in Red Alert 1.
• Benevolent Boss: Unless his subordinates screw up too badly or plot against him.
• Big Bad: Of the entire Tiberium series, since he's the direct instigator of the various Nod-GDI wars.
• Biblical Bad Guy: Kane is implied to be Cain (in Renegade, you actually find Abel's tomb), or at least the person who inspired the story, which certainly puts an interesting spin on the whole "anyone who kills Cain will have retribution brought upon them sevenfold" thing. Makes sense, if one realizes that Nod has brought back even bigger forces every single time GDI "won".
• Cain and Abel: Is hinted to be the (immortal) Biblical Cain, and Renegade even has his Temple in Cairo being built around the tomb of his murdered brother Abel.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You:
  • Over the course of the series, Kane arrives at the conclusion that if GDI couldn't be defeated, then it could be manipulated into forwarding his plans anyway.
  • After Firestorm, he also starts developing a habit of keeping certain rogue Nod elements alive and close, notably Brother Marcion, due to their talents or perceived usefulness.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "You can't kill The Messiah."
  • "Peace through Power!"
  • "One vision, one purpose."
• The Chessmaster: One of the Nod mission briefings in the original Tiberian Dawn has Kane actually playing a game of chess while explaining the upcoming mission to the player. He even ends the briefing, and starts up the operation, with a smile and a simple "Your move."
• Consummate Liar:
  • To his own subordinates in Tiberium Wars. Many players were left guessing as to what his plans really were since he lied about planning to defeat GDI. Kane's Wrath reveals that this is intentional, as since Slavik's death and especially after Killian's later on, he couldn't trust even Nod's Inner Circle of his actual goals.
  • GDI actually has a dossier on him that everyone considers to be utterly useless. Why? Because every single bit of info turned out to either be from a Brotherhood source, or outright written by Kane. The only reason they still keep it is so they can say they at least tried.
• Contractual Immortality: In-universe example.
  • Kane never stays dead for long, which his followers take as proof of his divinity. Even after the series' end, a news report shows how people are unconvinced he's gone for good.
  • Kane's penchant for hiding from and re-emerging in the public spotlight has becomes such a recurring trend that by Tiberium Wars, GDI takes the notion of him still being alive seriously enough to have contingency plans for it.
• Covert Pervert: The greenscreen stage mentioned elsewhere? In Renegade, there's a very lavish bed in it, surrounded by cameras...
• Crucified Hero Shot: He adopts this, fittingly enough, as the GDI Kill Sat destroys his base in Sarajevo.
• Cult of Personality: Kane has cultivated one within the Brotherhood, which is a major constant throughout the games. This comes to bite him in Kane's Wrath, however, when Alexa Kovacs manipulates Killian Qatar's seeming betrayal solely out of loyalty to her Messiah.
• Dark Messiah: Kane is a Messianic Archetype in the eyes of his own followers.
• Deadpan Snarker: In the first two games. Some of his moments are outright hilarious such as his You Are in Command Now line to the player in the original game.
• Depending on the Writer: Since nearly every game in the series has a different writing team, his objectives widely differ with each installment of the series.
  • In Red Alert, he had the Soviet Union to create chaos in Europe so that he'd be in a better position to bring the Brotherhood into the world stage in the following decades.
  • In Tiberian Dawn, he simply attempted to Take Over the World, while vaguely alluding to Tiberium's role in mankind's evolution.
  • In Tiberian Sun he attempted to bring about the next step in the evolution by turning all life on earth into Tiberium based life forms.
  • Then, in Tiberium Wars as well as Tiberian Twilight, he's attempting to complete the ascension and return to his home world.
• Determinator: No matter what setback he suffers, he will return with greater force than his previous attempt in his quest for ascension, a journey that has spanned thousands of years and four of the bloodiest wars in history.
• Didn't See That Coming: He always a step ahead. Of everyone. GDI, Scrin, his own generals. That said, he's had his moments of being blindsided.
  • In Tiberian Dawn, he's fooled into thinking that the United Nations had cut GDI's funding. It turns out to be a trap, however, exposing the Brotherhood enough for GDI to strike directly at Sarajevo and ending the war. That said, he still manages to get the last laugh.
  • Then in Command & Conquer 3 he undergoes a Villainous Breakdown when Killian's forces ally with GDI. And then in Kane's Wrath, when it's revealed just how proficient Kane is at playing a Gambit Roulette, he's yet again surprised when Alexa reveals to have tried to destroy LEGION, and tricked Kane into executing Killian, out of her devotion to Kane (she deserves a CMOA for such a feat). That said, he still wins out in the end.
• Doing In the Wizard: He is, or claims to be, the Biblical Cain, cursed to wander the Earth forever as punishment for killing his brother Abel, and while his origins and motivations are vague the fact that he is Really 700 Years Old and that he does indeed seem unkillable backed up his supernatural claims. Then the final game Tiberian Twilight came out and it turned out that he was really an ancient, immortal alien all along, stranded on the planet for millennia and guiding humanity to a sufficient technological level that would enable him to escape again and return to his home planet.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: Kane likes to announce his return or have a heart-to-heart with an enemy commander this way.
• Emperor Scientist: Kane is not only the leader of a militant cult whose power rivals that of every first-world nation combined, he's also a brilliant inventor (of weapons, naturally). He started the Third Tiberium War intended to lure aliens to Earth so he could reverse-engineer their technology.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • In this particular mission briefing from Tiberian Dawn, even Kane concedes and acknowledges that Tiberium is dangerous to human contact and he admonishes the player to deploy their troops "accordingly".
  • The soldiers of Nod are willing to die for Kane and he is well aware of this. However, Kane does not seem to condone meaningless sacrifices or a senseless slaughter of his troops. This may be a secondary reason Kane disposes of Seth in Tiberian Dawn. Aside from punishing Seth's betrayal, Kane undermines Seth's scheme to send the player and their army on a suicide mission to attack the Pentagon. Had Seth's gambit succeeded, Kane would have lost scores of Nod soldiers and a highly talented commander.
  • As seen in Tiberian Sun, Kane also doesn't take kindly to treason or in the case of Vega, getting high off your own suppply.
• Evil Gloating:
  • Kane does this to the player midway through the GDI campaign of Command & Conquer, probably aware that GDI is Faking the Dead.
  • Kane also gives a good one to Mike McNeil after breaking through the Hammerfest defenses in Tiberian Sun and stealing the sonic crystals, leaving behind a broadcast in which he glibly informs him that the sonic tank "will make an excellent addition to my collection", and that he is sorry to hear that McNeil's brother died a slow and painful death in the raid.
• Evil Is Hammy: He's not above making grandiose speeches to his followers, and goodness, it's GLORIOUS.
• Evil Laugh: Kane himself indulges in this trope during the intro to the GDI campaign of Tiberian Sun. Being the Magnificent Bastard that he is, however, his laugh is a confident chuckle instead of a crazed cackle.
• Finger-Tenting: Kane occasionally does this along with a self-satisfied smirk when he's in scheming mode.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Kind of a downplayed example. Kane had shades of this in the first two games, Tiberian Dawn and Tiberian Sun. However, he becomes a much more fleshed-out Anti-Villain/Anti-Hero character from Tiberium Wars onward.
  • In Tiberian Dawn, Kane's apparent "goal" was to hijack GDI's Ion Cannon to destroy a random world monument...just because. This also involved destroying villages and killing thousands of innocent civilians along the way.
  • In Tiberian Sun, Kane's goal was to assemble a massive missile with enough tiberium to contaminate the whole world. Assuming the player wins the Nod campaign, Kane succeeds and it's likely that all human life on Earth is wiped out by the total tiberium contamination all over the world.
• God Guise: Downplayed. He calls himself "the messiah." He's really an alien tricking a few gullible ape-creatures into helping him get home, although he does take them along when he finally makes it.
• Good All Along: He spent 10,000 years trying to get home and performing a century-long act of Superdickery to pull it off. When he succeeds, he takes his followers along with him and leaves his erstwhile foes with an inexhaustable resource.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • In Renegade. You can't meet him personally nor fight him, but he's still the leader.
  • In the Soviet Campaign of the original Red Alert, he is revealed to have manipulated the Soviet Union for The Brotherhood's own ends, through Nadia.
• I Am the Trope: At the end of the Red Alert 1 Soviet campaign, we get this exchange (they're talking to the player character).
  Nadia: "Fight our battles where you must, and you will remain our loyal, and obedient servant. For the foreseeable future."
  *Gunshot, Nadia falls over forward*
  Kane: "The foreseeable future...? Comrade chairman, I am the future."
  *Fade to black*
• I Let You Win: It's implied that GDI's victory in Tiberium Wars may have been intentionally invoked by Kane as part of his greater plans for Ascension and due to how they're in a stronger position to fight off the Scrin anyway.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: At the end of Tiberian Sun.
• Indy Ploy: Kane is as much capable of exploiting events and outright making plans up as they come along as he is in long-term scheming if it means achieving the same results. Which can explain why his goals seem to change between games.
• Is This Thing Still On?: Early in the first Tiberium game, after a mission in which you (playing GDI) save a town from being wiped out by Nod, there is a cinematic featuring a reporter in front of a scene of destruction saying that the town was wiped out by GDI. It then cuts to a green-screen in a studio, where Kane walks onto the set and gives distribution orders... "Is that camera still running?!?" BANG.
• Just Between You and Me:
  • Throughout the series, he tends to divulges more on his true plans to trusted Nod commanders, most notably seen with Slavik in Tiberian Sun and LEGION in Kane's Wrath.
  • He also has a habit of mockingly doing this to GDI commanders, given his penchant for hacking into enemy comm channels specifically to rub it in their faces. This is due to him thinking that they'd soon be dead anyway.
• Just the First Citizen: Zig-zagged. Kane styles himself as "The Messiah" and "God's close second", which is hardly modest, and his name is revered by Nod as that of a living saint and a great leader. However, his mannerisms are very down-to-earth, he is witty, friendly and easy-going with his subordinates, and everything about him emphasizes that his power certainly does not come from his title nor raw brutal might, but from himself. His followers, with a few exceptions, consider him a human rather than a divine figure, and are pretty quick to question his ideas or admit his errors every now and then (though not always without consequences).
• Large Ham:
  • "And he cried in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come forth!' And Lazarus did arise from the grave..."
    Kane: Kane LIVES!
    "Go ahead my son. Push the button. Inscribe your place in history with the blood of GDI."
    "How could my own brothers believe that what transpired at the Temple Prime did not unfold exactly as I had planned? Of course I could not have planned for an ambush BY MY OWN FORCES!"
  • In the intro to Kane's Wrath, Kane's epic speech is so hammy that it comes complete with earthquakes punctuating his sentences.
    Our enemies believe that we have been defeated, and that I am no longer among the living. They are. Gravely. Mistaken. (thunder crack) You and I are all the remain, but are all that is necessary. For together we shall raise a great army. Together we shall show the world's downtrodden who the real enemy is. GDI has promised them prosperity, but in the slums of Rio, the homeless and hungry know the truth. They have been forgotten. They have NOTHING! BUT. THEIR. ANGER! You will take that spark and start a fire that shall become a great conflagration! PEACE! THROUGH! POWER!
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste:
  • In the Soviet victory scenario in Red Alert, the entire war effort was an Evil Plan by Kane to expand the USSR, then topple it, and use the ensuing chaos to strengthen the Brotherhood of Nod.
  • In Tiberian Sun, Kane exploits the brewing civil war between Anton Slavik's Black Hand and Hassan's clique to reassert his authority over the Brotherhood through Slavik.
  • In Tiberium Wars, Kane purposely exploits the Scrin's invasion to secure a completed Threshold tower for his own ends, while having GDI bear the brunt of mopping up the aliens.
• Like a Son to Me: It's evident that Kane not only came to respect Anton Slavik by the end of Tiberian Sun, but saw him as worthy to lead the Brotherhood. Tellingly, after Slavik's death, he never quite trusts anyone (even within Nod's Inner Circle) apart from LEGION to carry out his plans. That said, it's strongly implied that he had been grooming Killian to be another worthy successor, at least until her supposed betrayal.
• Made of Iron: Whoever, or whatever, he is, Kane's clearly inhumanly durable: he tanks an ion cannon blast to the face (though admittedly this took a while to walk off) and lives for at the very least centuries without ageing a day. Nod propaganda, and Kane himself, play this up heavily to give the illusion of divine powers, and the phrase "Kane Lives!" is a popular Nod catchphrase.
• Man Behind the Man: Occasionally likes to stay in the shadows and let others (Stalin, Marcion, Parker) be the titular leader.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In Kane's Wrath Kane is genuinely disturbed when he realizes that he executed a truly loyal subordinate after mistaking her for a traitor.
• Never Found the Body: In-universe. Despite GDI's best efforts and repeated statements of Kane being KIA, he keeps coming back.
• Never My Fault: A bit subtle, but still there. When Slavik and Oxanna fall into a trap set by GDI in the Tiberian Sun Nod campaign, while Kane sends help to rescue them, he berates them for falling into it even though they suspected that it was a trap and he ordered them in anyway. In Tiberium Wars, he berates Killian for not seeing that he didn't plan to defeat GDI, even though nearly everything other thing he says regarding GDI has him painting them as the source of every problem on Earth.
• New Era Speech: Got at least one of these in most of the Command & Conquer games, and he is really good at doing so. Probably the best example is Kane's speech to his followers at the end of the Nod campaign in Tiberian Sun:
  "This morning was the most glorious morning in the history of the earth! Peace is upon us, a gift to every man, woman, and child from the Brotherhood of Nod. Victory, not just for our people, but for our species! The time for questioning is over. Rising from our trenches, our bunkers, our factories, we must all now partake in the Technology of Peace. One Purpose. One Vision. Tiberium is the way and the light. Today the sun rises on a new world, and a new people. The end... is the beginning."
• No Such Thing as Space Jesus: For all of Kane's pretensions as a Messiah, he's eventually revealed to be an alien with tremendous charisma and long-term planning skills.
• Nuke 'em:
  • In Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars Kane's discovery of Killian Qatar's apparent betrayal and alliance with GDI results in a slightly angry response. His subsequent orders are to, well....
  • In Renegade, he decides to nuke a small town just to eliminate the protagonist and his squad. Justified in that he just killed his way through a mansion filled with Nod's elite.
  • In Tiberian Sun Kane, dissatisfied with General Vega (an Eye Candy addict), decides to reprimand him. With a tactical nuke. Sadly, he misses Commander McNeil by a few minutes.
  • In ancient history, in Tiberian Dawn you get nuked by Kane during the final mission. He sure likes his nukes.
• The Plan: Kane's strategies tend to hinge on these, bordering on Gambit Roulette at times - though in Kane's Wrath, we get to see just how much planning and effort went into making Tiberium Wars unfold the way it did. In the first game, however, Kane gets played by GDI, which faked having its UN funding cut in order to lure Nod into the open, before hitting them with their latest wave of weapon technology.
• Pet the Dog: Kane can be generous to those in the Brotherhood who have dutifully helped forward his goals or are otherwise seen as useful for some future scheme. In certain cases, notably with Anton Slavik and Killian Qatar, he will even elevate a chosen few into positions of actual power and in his small circle of trust.
• Piggybacking on Hitler: Kane is revealed to have done this with Stalin and the Soviet Union, as revealed in GDI's "criminal dossier". Regardless of the war's outcome in Red Alert 1, he was evidently using the USSR to lay the groundwork for the Brotherhood to emerge publicly in time for the arrival of Tiberium.
• Propaganda Machine: A consistent trait is how he makes considerable use of media manipulation. As early as Tiberian Dawn, he made a point to fund (and fabricate) slanderous media reports to both discredit GDI and bolster support for Nod. With each subsequent entry, his methods have only grown more elaborate and thorough.
• The Purge: Kane's Wrath suggests that he always intended for the Third Tiberium War to prune the Brotherhood down, one way or another, until it's reduced to a seeming shadow of its former self: largely driven underground yet comprised of its most loyal and fanatical followers, supplemented by the Marked of Kane. Given how prone to overreach and infighting Nod tends to be, it's justified.
  "The Third Tiberium War is over. And Nod is but a shadow of what it was, but then that is how it should be - for only the chosen few will be allowed into the Promised Land."
• Reckless Gun Usage: Tiberian Dawn cutscenes seem to have him constantly fiddling with a gun, sometimes pointing it straight at the camera/player. Not to mention his penchant for point-blank executions.
• Really 700 Years Old: His earliest appearance in the series is in 1946 and he doesn't seem to have aged at all in that timespan and it's occasionally implied that he might actually be the biblical Cain. In Tiberian Twilight he states that he has been around since the early stages of humanity and he has been helping them develop as a species ever since.
• Red Right Hand: In Tiberian Sun, he has massive scarring on his face (presumably as a result of the Ion Cannon blast he endured in the previous game) to the point where he has to wear a metallic mask covering much of it.
• Shrouded in Myth: It's heavily implied he's the biblical Cain.
• Smart People Play Chess: Kane is holding a chess piece during the briefing of the 9th NOD mission in the first game.
• Tank Goodness: He's admitted to being a tank enthusiast.
• Title Drop:
  • A couple times in Kane's Wrath, when he speaks of those who will suffer his wrath.
  • At the end of the GDI campaign of Tiberian Sun: "I am the future. The Tiberian Sun has risen!"
• Treacherous Advisor: He was part of Stalin's staff, even as he was orchestrating Stalin's downfall...and Nadia's, too, in the Soviet ending at least.
• Unexplained Recovery: Each time he returns after Nod's defeat. Subverted in that Firestorm and Kane's Wrath show he had an extensive recovery period between defeats and reappearances.
• Unreliable Narrator: Kane isn't always truthful even to his own Brotherhood acolytes. Usually, it's not until after a Nod commander proves themselves to be trustworthy or circumstances force his hand that he becomes more forthcoming regarding his actual plans.
• Villain Protagonist: Kane turns into this in Tiberium Wars, surviving all three campaigns. He gets his own spin-off game, Kane's Wrath. He wins the whole game by the time of Tiberian Twilight.
• Villainous Breakdown: "How could my own brothers believe that what transpired at the Temple Prime did not unfold exactly as I had planned? Of course, I could not have planned for an ambush BY MY OWN FORCES!"
• Villains Out Shopping:
  • The Dinosaur missions briefing in Tiberian Dawn make Kane look like he's just on vacation.
  • He also gave Havoc an autograph and a photo together back when the commando invaded WestWood to make sure Renegade got released with no more delays.
• Villain Respect: Kane admits that Dr. Ignatio Mobius in Tiberian Dawn is actually brilliant, due to both his competence and recognition of Tiberium's "limitless" possibilities. Later on, he also develops some modicum of respect towards Solomon and McNeil in Tiberian Sun, and eventually a begrudging one towards GDI by Kane's Wrath.
• Villain with Good Publicity : He attained much of his power in the First Tiberium War through clever manipulation of the media against the Global Defense Initiative, painting them as the very same violent, bloodthirsty murderers his own Brotherhood of Nod usually turned out to be. He continues his fine tradition well into the Third Tiberium War, with the Brotherhood playing the role of being the only stabilizing influence in Earth's Yellow Zones, feeding and protecting the population of the economically ruined and poor regions of the world. All the better to stoke the fires of their hatred for the perceived oppressors of GDI.
  "Your powerful GDI forces have been emasculated, and you yourself are a killer of children... Of course it's not true, but the world only believes what the media tells them to believe... and I tell the media what to believe. It's really quite simple."
  • One could also say that the first two wars did exactly this. In the first, he was a terrorist with a daring plot to seize control of the world. He was defeated, but his followers started to see him as a liberator, and religious undertones started popping up. In the second war, he was a madman leading an army. Again he was defeated, but Nod evolved into a full-blown religious sect, seeing Kane as the saviour and messiah.
  • The reason that Nod is alive and strong in the Third Tiberium War is due to the fact that over 50% of the world was classified as "Yellow Zones" and seemingly abandoned by GDI, while still containing a vast portion of the human race. Nod came and brought humanitarian aid to the otherwise doomed people, which made them genuine saviors in their eyes. This is probably the only time Kane legitimately had popular support.
• Visionary Villain: Famous example, though exactly what his vision is very inconsistent, varying from game to game, the first game not even going into details on it.
• What You Are in the Dark: In most Nod campaigns, the full truth behind Kane's schemes is often deliberately withheld, with even Nod's Inner Circle being partially aware at best. This is especially highlighted in Kane's Wrath, in which he divulges his real plans to LEGION that he'd never otherwise share, trusting the AI enough to be his Secret-Keeper.
• The World Is Not Ready:
  • In Red Alert 1 he not only kills Stalin, but also Nadia, likely to prevent word of the Brotherhood's existence and its secrets from coming to light too prematurely.
  • In Kane's Wrath, it's shown that part of the reason Kane keeps Nod's resurgence as low-profile as possible (and periodically puts LEGION to sleep) is because he believes mankind isn't ready yet for the next phase of his plans.
• Worthy Opponent: In Tiberium Sun, Kane seems to treat McNeil and Solomon as worthy-enough opponents to taunt them personally, while as far back in Tiberian Dawn, he's also shown to have some begrudging respect for Dr. Ignacio Mobius if only for being one of the first to recognize Tiberium's potential. Over time, however, he appears to extend this to GDI in general, eventually going so far as to ally with his old foes in Tiberian Twilight in order to complete the Tiberium Control Network.
• You Have Failed Me:
  • In Tiberian Dawn Kane personally shoots Seth after finally having enough of his incompetence and power-grabbing schemes.
  • In Renegade the player can also overhear a conversation between Kane and an incompetent Nod officer who is ordered to "report to Interrogation for 'faith restructuring'."
  • In Tiberian Sun's GDI campaign, General Vega has just lost to the player character GDI commander McNeil and is beseeching Kane for reinforcements. Kane's response is to nuke Vega's island base.
  • In Tiberium Wars, Kane has Killian Qatar killed on charges of treason amidst the Scrin invasion only to find out that she was purposefully framed by Alexa Kovacs and a misled LEGION.

Tiberium

Tiberium hazard symbol

Tiberium is a new life form. Quite simply put, it seems to be adapting the Earth's terrain, foliage and environment to suit its own alien nature. If this is the case, ladies and gentlemen, we are facing a killer beyond that of our most turbulent nightmares. It is not an exaggeration to state that the future of the entire planet may be in jeopardy. May God have mercy on our souls.

-Dr. Ignatio Mobius during the First Tiberium War

GDI and the Brotherhood view the benefits... and the threats of Tiberium differently. They see a scientific anomaly, a curiosity. I see the future. In their stubborn ignorance, they continue to try and forestall this future.

-Kane

Role: Extraterrestrial crystalline substance

Tiberium (called Ichor by the Scrin) is a mysterious crystalline material that arrived on Earth in 1995, and is the foundation of the Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series.

It is both an existential threat to carbon-based life and an immensely valuable resource, serving as a major catalyst setting in motion all events of its timeline.

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• Aesoptinum: Similarly to Dune's Spice, Tiberium serves as this for the setting. It's extremely valuable as it leeches minerals and valuables from the soil and brings it to the surface for easy harvesting in the form of green crystals, which grow blue as they grow more saturated and valuable. It's also radioactive, mutagenic, spreads like Alien Kudzu - because it is - by assimilating everything it touches into more of itself if not handled correctly, and, if blue, has a tendency to set off explosive chain reactions at the slightest provocation. Ironically enough, Tiberium used as a fuel is actually a source of incredibly efficient clean energy compared to alternatives like fossil fuels or nuclear power, which leads humanity to become more or less dependent on it even though it's completely destroying Earth and all life upon it. In short, it's the stuff of Al Gore's nightmares, and fought over even more intensely than oil is today.
• Alien Kudzu: Early on, Tiberium spread throughout the planet through mutated plant life, most notably through "blossom trees" which periodically released crystalline spores into the surrounding area. By Tiberium Wars, however, these were no longer needed given that Tiberium itself had gained the ability to convert any material it touches into more of itself, releasing radiation in the process.
• Body Horror: Tiberium has a nasty habit of warping organic matter, including the human body. Whether it be mutating into a visceroid, becoming one of the Forgotten, or dying a slow death from Tiberium infestation.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Tiberium itself comes in two main colors:
    • Green Tiberium, also known as Tiberium Riparius, is the most common variant and the first to be identified.
    • Blue Tiberium, also known as Tiberium Vinifera, is first introduced in Tiberian Sun and contains a much higher concentration of leeched minerals, making them especially valuable.
  • By Tiberium Wars, the world map had been significantly redrawn, with GDI classifying regions by degrees of contamination.
    • Blue Zones, comprising about 20% of the planet, suffer the least ecological damage from Tiberium and are under GDI control.
    • Yellow Zones, making up roughly 50% of the Earth's surface, feature severe environmental deterioration and complete social collapse as a consequence of widespread Tiberium infestation, with Nod having de facto control over much of them.
    • Red Zones, forming the last 30%, are contaminated by vast amounts of Tiberium, frequently hit by massive ion storms, and are utterly hostile to carbon-based life.
• Death World: Any region with prolonged, intensive exposure to Tiberium will devolve into Red Zones - alien wastelands wracked with ion storms, which are inhospitable to terrestrial life. Earth itself comes close at points to becoming this.
• Depending on the Writer: While there are consistent aspects about Tiberium throughout the series, the specifics of how it behaves seem to change with each game, from being spread by "blossom trees" in the first entry to a self-replicating Von Neumann crystal by Tiberium Wars.
• Green Rocks: One of the original codifiers of this trope in Real-Time Strategy, Tiberium is the most valuable substance in the world (leading to GDI and Nod fighting over it) and will either kill or mutate anybody who steps in it.
• Grey Goo: Technically green, but between Tiberian Sun and Tiberium Wars, the substance had evolved into a self-replicating proton-lattice capable of transforming any matter it came into contact with into more Tiberium, giving off powerful radiation in the process.
• Hope Spot: While both GDI and Nod devise (relatively) safe means of harvesting and processing Tiberium early on, it's not until after the events of Firestorm that humanity made a breakthrough in controlling it. By tuning in to Tiberium's natural frequency, GDI scientists realized that their sonic resonance systems could be used to effectively contain and shatter the substance. And it seems to work...at least until Tiberian Twilight.
• Hostile Terraforming: Tiberium in all its forms also corrupts the land and any organic matter to further spread itself. Tiberium Wars confirms that this is intentional, given its purpose for the invading Scrin.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Tiberium first arrived on Earth in 1995, with 22% of the crystals being composed of unknown material. Subsequent games further underscore its alien elements.
• Meaningful Name:
  • According to GDI, Tiberium was named after the Tiber river, the site of the meteor impact that first brought the alien substance to Earth. Kane, however, claimed that Tiberium was first discovered by the Brotherhood, and that he personally named it after Tiberius Caesar.
  • The Scrin's name for it, Ichor, also translates to "Blood of the Gods." Which aptly summarizes both how powerful and terminally dependent the aliens are on the substance.
• Outside-Context Problem: No one in the 1990s, aside from Kane, saw Tiberium coming. And with its arrival on Earth, human history changed forever.
• Ridiculously Potent Explosive: Under the right conditions, Tiberium can be detonated if not cause a chain reaction that can eliminate anyone near a Tiberium field. Liquid Tiberium amplifies the explosive volatility, with a warhead sized bomb said to provide a yield 10 times greater than a 200 megaton thermonuke, on top of chain reactions if detonated correctly as what Kane planned by stashing a sizable deposit beneath Temple Prime.
• Toxic Phlebotinum: Tiberium leaches minerals from the soil and forms them into easily-harvested crystals on the surface, which is a hell of a lot easier and dramatically more efficient than mining. This comes at the expense of being harmful to just about all forms of carbon-based life and transforming the surrounding environment into a hellscape, if not more of itself. Meanwhile, its volatile nature has been exploited, particularly by Nod, as potent weapons.

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