Dream SMP / Tropes H to Q

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0–G (Famous Last Words | Foil) | H–Q (One Steve Limit) | R–Z (Wham Episode | Wham Line)

H

• Hair-Contrast Duo: Heavily zig-zagged regarding Tommy and Tubbo. Typically, Tommy is the younger and more energetic blond to Tubbo's older, more serious, and more cynical brunet.^note Tubbo is almost universally portrayed with brown hair despite his skin having blond hair, further reflecting the two's real life appearances and to show contrast between them. However, who fills what role and how varies over the server's history.
  • At the beginning of the Pogtopia arc, Tubbo filled the spot of the "blond" to Tommy's "brunet", being a lot more idealistic and innocent, hopeful to the prospect of L'Manburg's recovery while working as a Pogtopian spy in Manburg; whereas Tommy was banished from his country and forced to go into hiding, and also has to deal with Wilbur and his mental health issues, and as a result was quickly forced to mature and support the rest of the Pogtopians.
  • However, after Tubbo was elected President of New L'Manburg, Tubbo fell into the role of the "brunet", especially after having the harsh reality check of having to choose between his country and Tommy, giving up his more optimistic traits and becoming a lot more serious, having to make difficult decisions and losing his close friends and support because of it. On the other hand, Tommy, despite still being Hot-Blooded as ever, didn't quite fit the bill of the "blond" of the duo, mainly because he spends most of the season going through a massive Trauma Conga Line.
  • After the Lockdown arc, the two both show shades of both sides of the spectrum. Tommy has bounced back to being the loud and energetic "blond" as much as ever, but it's incredibly clear that all his past trauma has affected him, causing him to become more wisened by experience; while Tubbo has holed up in Snowchester as a "brunet" who puts up the front of a "blond", his experiences as the President of a nation that he failed to save have evidently changed his demeanor a lot over time.
• Hammerspace: The dead are able to materialize items from the Afterlife, such as Schlatt summoning alcohol and drugs to experiment with, and Wilbur summoning a set of playing cards to play Solitaire.
• Haunted Headquarters: L'Manburg was heavily implied to be this in Seasons 2 and 3, as Ghostbur, the ghost of the country's founder, felt that "something [kept] drawing [him] to L'Manberg" even after its annihilation in the Doomsday War, and he had lived there for part of the time before Doomsday as the resident Friendly Ghost.
• Haunted House: The "Haunted Mansion" episode of Tales From the SMP takes place in one.
• He Who Fights Monsters:
  • Heavily discussed and deconstructed. Tommy and Tubbo are very aware of the looming possibility of them falling into Wilbur and Schlatt's footsteps, respectively, and try their hardest to avoid it and preserve their friendship. However, Dream is their biggest obstacle, as he continually sows the seeds of conflict in order to break them apart, and even though they're aware of it they don't have a way to stop it from happening.
    Tommy: Tubbo, you can't turn into what you hate. You can't be the next Schlatt. If you exile me, you're following in that man's footsteps.
    Tubbo: ...Okay. Well, as long as I can't be the next Schlatt, you can't be the next Wilbur.
  • However, Quackity seems to play this trope fully straight via Became Their Own Antithesis in his "Las Nevadas" series, going from a Wide-Eyed Idealist who opposed abuse of power to a disillusioned man who would resort to torture by exploiting abuse of power to achieve his increasingly morally questionable goals.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Eret, who had betrayed Wilbur and Tommy during the L'Manburg War for Independence, begins to have second thoughts after Jschlatt takes over L'Manburg, and ultimately voices full support for Pogtopia despite knowing the dangers of denouncing Jschlatt.
  • Extremely zig-zagged with Dream, the Arc Villain of the L'Manburg War for Independence. He winds up providing secret support to Wilbur and Tommy during the L'Manburg Civil War, making it seem like this, but he betrays them near the end because Jschlatt has promised him something special. He then defects back to their side because Jschlatt is an idiot and Dream doesn't want to go down fighting a losing battle... except he later reveals that he made a deal with Wilbur to destroy Manburg. Dream is stated to still be an enemy by Tommy when the war is done, but Dream and Tommy (as well as Tubbo) all manage to enjoy a friendly moment together before they go back to being foes. By Season 2, though, Dream's status as the Big Bad is quickly cemented with his orchestration of Tommy's exile from L'Manburg and the chain of events that lead to the city-state's complete and utter annihilation, alongside the abuse he doles out throughout Exile.
• Hellhole Prison: Invoked and deconstructed with Pandora's Vault, in particular its main, maximum-security holding cell, where the prisoner is locked inside 24/7, unable to see the light of day, and is forced to eat raw potatoes. A lore stream in mid-September 2021 reveals Sam, the builder and Warden of the prison, initially had a courtyard where prisoners could have some leisure time under the sun, and had plans for a cow farm so they could be served steak. However, Dream shot all of this down and insisted that the conditions inside the jail be as inhumane as possible. This backfires on Dream, however, when he's the one locked up in Pandora's Vault in the end. When he complains to Sam about the horrible conditions, Sam reminds him that he's the one responsible for the prison's conditions in the first place.
• Hereditary Suicide: Both Wilbur and Fundy have had some sort of confrontation with their respective fathers before killing themselves in one way or another, by proxy or otherwise. At least in Fundy's case, it's not his last canon death and Wilbur didn't stab him...
• Hide Your Gays: Implied in the Tales From the SMP episode "The Lost City of Mizu". In the lost city, it is claimed that Sapnap had a Bed Full of Women when his room was shown to have three beds. However, considering that Quackity's room also had three beds, it seems far more logical to conclude that history has been straightwashed and the knowledge of the polyamory between the two and Karl has been lost to time.
• Hijacked by Ganon: With Jschlatt being a Disc-One Final Boss for the L'Manburg Civil War's final battle, the role of Big Bad is fought over by many, including Wilbur and Technoblade. However, the true Big Bad is revealed to be Dream, the previous Arc Villain of the L'Manburg War of Independence, having played both sides for fools and having manipulated so many of the events in his favor that the only spanners in the works (Jschlatt's drunken stupor and Techno's Face–Heel Turn) end up working out for him anyways — as the former results in the death of his biggest threat and the latter draws the Pogtopians' attention away from him, allowing him to blatantly confess how he manipulated the war and still get away with it.
• Holy Ground: The Holy Land, also known as the Suburbs of Prime (or The Subs for short), is a district on the server considered "holy". Killing and the usage of weapons and armor are not allowed within the borders of the district, which are visibly marked out by smooth stone. As a result of the no-violence policy of the Holy Land, it is also used as a Truce Zone by various server members in conflict with each other, and the independence of El Rapids was also negotiated in the district.
• Honor Before Reason: Played with. While the Pro-Omelette attendees of the Red Banquet are renowned for being some of the more moral members of the server, Foolish and Puffy still smuggled diamond weapons and armour and shields into the place where the Banquet would be held beforehand, as a back-up plan. Unfortunately for them, Hannah was there when they made the plans, and tipped off the Eggpire before the Banquet began, and no one thought to bring extra weapons and armour in case both Puffy and Sam's backup plans for the Banquet failed. It takes a plan completely independent of the Banquet attendees for the Pro-Omelette alliance to score a victory.
• Honor Thy Abuser: Heavily defied on two different occasions.
  • During the Season 2 finale, after Tommy finally gets the upper hand on Dream, the man who exiled him from his home, trapped him alone on a deserted beach, physically and psychologically abused him for weeks, and nearly murdered his best friend in front of him, Dream tells Tommy that he knows he won't kill him, since they're such good friends. Tommy is having absolutely none of this, and forces Dream to hand over all of his gear (using the same line Dream would use when forcing Tommy to give up his armor and tools every day during Exile), backs him into a corner, and proceeds to take two of his three lives, and would have killed him off for real if Dream hadn't told him about his ability to bring people back from the dead.
    Tommy: Dream, you have caused me nothing but pain. And now... Now it's your turn.
  • Another example occurs during the first "Las Nevadas" stream, where Schlatt tries rekindling his past relationship with Quackity, who was traumatized by him throughout their relationship, and currently hates him and refuses to engage in anything more then a business relationship with him, while establishing clear boundaries on their interaction. It's also heavily implied that Quackity seeking out Schlatt for Las Nevadas is a last resort rather than a first choice, after the revelations in the second "Las Nevadas" stream.
• Hope Spot:
  • Wilbur had multiple moments where he appeared to give up on his plan to blow up L'Manburg, to the point where, before the Manburg-Pogtopia War, he said — out of character — that he wasn't going to blow it up because he wanted people to be able to download the world. Even when he was about to press the Button, Philza appeared and intervened, and seemed to be getting through to him... but then Wilbur presses the Button anyway.
  • At the start of Season 2, Tommy finally gained some leverage over Dream, as he has the leather of Dream's old horse, Spirit, in his possession. Tommy threatens to burn the leather if Dream does not take down the walls around L'Manburg and it appears to work, as Dream seems sullen and angry, and listens to Tommy's demands to take down the obsidian walls around L'Manburg. Tommy and the other L'Manburgians celebrate, laughing and mocking Dream… until Dream goes eerily quiet, and starts to build the walls around L'Manburg even higher. Dream then drops from the wall and states that he never really cared about Spirit's leather, and now plans to completely seal L'Manburg off from the outside world if Tubbo does not exile Tommy.
  • After spending an entire week with only Dream for company in the prison, Tommy is finally about to get to leave the prison and return to his hotel. That is, until Sam messages him and Dream, telling them that they need to wait even longer before Sam can free Tommy. At the end of both of their respective ropes, Dream and Tommy begin an argument which eventually escalates into Dream taking Tommy's final canon life. While Tommy is eventually brought back, the sheer process of dying has had a clearly negative impact on his psyche.
• Hypocrite:
  • Tommy is quick to accuse Techno of betraying him and L'Manburg during the Doomsday War. Except throughout both Seasons 1 and 2, Techno has been nothing short of completely honest about his anarchistic motivations, meaning that any blindsiding is on Tommy for failing to see that Techno's goals clearly don't align with his. The hypocrisy comes in when Techno promptly points out that it's actually Tommy who turned against Techno, having led him to believe they were allies only to suddenly switch sides on a whim and leave Techno to stand alone against a dozen people that had previously tried to execute him (and who currently seek to finish the job).
  • Techno is considered by some to be a contender for the poster pig for hypocrisy on the server. In the midst of Techno's fury at Tommy's Heel Realization, he claimed during the Doomsday War that Tommy was using him from the start, and had been lying to him about what he was actually planning. This is extremely rich considering that, a day before the Green Festival, Techno outright admitted that he was only keeping Tommy around to further his own ends, and had been lying to Tommy for weeks about his true intentions of destroying L'Manburg (which Tommy had said from the start that he didn't want to do).
• Hypocritical Humor: Wilbur says this while in the process of taking a chunk of the server for himself.
  Wilbur: This is just your formal notice that this is our server, this part.
  [...]
  Dream: What happens if the rest of the server decides to take over your land?
  Wilbur: They can't, 'cause it's literally– that's not how servers– Dream, you're supposed to be smart, man, that's not how servers work. You can't just take over another person's server.

I – L

• I Call It "Vera": Several of the players have named weapons that are most noticeable in death messages. Among them:
  • Dream's arrow-loaded crossbow "DEFINITELY NOT PENIS", and his enchanted netherite sword, "Nightmare".
  • Techno's sword, the "Orphan Obliterator", and his firework-loaded crossbow, formerly named "Subscribe to Technoblade".
• I Have No Son!:
  • Inverted and subverted in the L'Manburg Civil War. Fundy claims that Wilbur is not his father after the latter refuses to support Jschlatt's rule. However, this is just a ploy by Fundy to make Jschlatt think he's really on his side — in actuality, Fundy is a mole siding with Wilbur.
  • Played straight in the events surrounding Technoblade's execution. Philza refuses to cooperate and is forced into house arrest by Butcher Army. Fundy, who was also in the Butcher Army, tries to gave Philza a piece of brown dye as what seemed to be a peace offering after the failed execution, which Philza promptly throws away, indicating that he was on rather negative terms with Fundy at the time. Despite this, the two begin to rekindle their relationship after Wilbur is brought back to life.
• I Lied: The Anarchists warn L'Manburg that they would attack the next day at 3pm. Turns out they were actually attacking 30 minutes early, catching L'Manburg completely off guard.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Tubbo needed an excuse to leave Schlatt's side to sneak off to Pogtopia. What excuse did he use? He told Schlatt he's pregnant.
• Idiot Ball:
  • Wilbur's plan for the election was to sign himself and Tommy up, then immediately shut the polls so they'd be the only party running. The two of them then proceed to immediately tell Quackity about this plan, before shutting the polls. Naturally, Quackity starts his own campaign, and the Election arc is born.
  • The reason the Manburg Festival didn't end in a giant explosion was because Wilbur lost the button that would set off the TNT.
• If I Can't Have You…: Wilbur's supposed reasoning for wanting to blow up Manburg. He knows that even if he kicks out Schlatt and becomes president again, he'd be an illegitimate president, no longer allied with the Dream SMP because there'd no longer be an Enemy Mine, and going back to the way things were would be pretty much impossible, as many major landmarks have been destroyed and relations have changed drastically. Wilbur decides that, if he can't have his country back, Schlatt can't have it either. This turns out to all be a front for him, as he has also stated in private that his reasoning for doing so is that the beliefs and ideals that he built the nation for no longer existed. These polarizing claims have caused many to develop conflicting views on him, to put it lightly.
• In Case of X, Break Glass: In the "Las Nevadas" finale, after noticing fireworks being set off over Las Nevadas, Foolish presses an Emergencies-only button behind a sheet of glass. Its purpose is to call Quackity's slime army which he spent the previous months creating and training in case he got cornered in an attack on the country — and in that case, he is, by Dream and Purpled teaming up to get their revenge.
• In Spite of a Nail: A minor example occurs during the L'Manburg War for Independence. Tommy was the one who pushed the button to trigger the Final Control Room's trap, though it was out of genuine curiosity and is regarded as an accident. However, it doesn't matter in the long run, as Eret would have betrayed L'Manburg regardless of who actually pressed the button.
• Inconsistent Spelling: There are about four accepted ways of spelling L'Manburg / L'Manberg / L'manburg / L'manberg, and nobody has settled on one.
• Ineffectual Death Threats: Subverted in the L'Manburg War for Independence. Dream threatens to detonate a single block of TNT within L'Manburg's walls if they do not concede the war. The L'Manburgians, clearly not worried about a single block of TNT, call his bluff, and Dream lights the block of TNT... which in turn activates the countless other blocks of TNT underneath L'Manburg the Dream Team had planted before their parlay.
• Internal Reveal: During the one-year anniversary of L'Manburg's founding, Tubbo tells Wilbur that Technoblade and Philza were the ones who reduced L'Manburg to bedrock and not himself like Wilbur had thought.
• Ironic Echo:
  • During Tommy's exile, Dream frequently ordered him to "put [his] armour in the hole" that he dug to destroy his items. Tommy echoes this in the Disc Confrontation after The Cavalry arrives, borrowing Sapnap's pickaxe to dig a hole in the floor of the vault and tell Dream to place all his armour and weapons in it as an act of surrender, showing for once that Tommy has the upper hand over his abuser.
  • When Tommy got inadvertently trapped in prison with Dream, he continuously screamed at Sam to let him out, to which Dream semi-tauntingly replied that he could scream as much as he wanted, as Sam wouldn't come. Weeks later, Quackity manages to convince Sam to let him bring weapons into Dream's cell, which he proceeds to use to torture the method to reviving people out of him. As soon as Quackity pulls out the weapons, Dream starts screaming for Sam to come help him... to which Quackity replies that he could scream for Sam as much as he wanted.
  • After surviving and escaping his execution, Techno declared that he would put a pickaxe through Quackity's teeth in their duel, which he proceeded to do. Almost nine months of real time later, when Quackity drops by Pandora's Vault to visit Dream and Techno, he attempts to kill Techno in revenge for taking his canon life, screaming that he would put a pickaxe through Techno's teeth... only for Techno to be teleported out of the prison by Phil using the Ender Pearl Stasis Chamber right before Quackity could enact his revenge.
• Irony:
  • Technoblade, the literal Pig Man, is pretty much the only player on the SMP who isn't a Large Ham.
  • Right before Ranboo officially joined the SMP he was starting his political campaign and made a list of things he would outlaw as president, one of those things was TommyInnit himself. A few days later, the two have become friends, and Ranboo is visibly upset when Tommy is exiled from L'Manburg.
  • Jschlatt renames L'Manburg to Manburg under his term, claiming the nation doesn't take Ls. In actuality, it takes nothing but Ls, having been on the losing side of all three major wars it participated in (the War of Independence, the Civil War, and the Doomsday War) — one of which was under Jschlatt's own rule. That's also not saying anything about the fact that it's been horribly destroyed in all three wars, and its only victory (gaining independence in the first war despite losing overall) is offset by the fact that said victory led to nothing but trouble.
• It Amused Me: After Doomsday, Tommy tearfully asks Dream why he didn't just burn the discs or otherwise punish Tommy in particular. Dream's response?
  Dream: This is much more fun.
• Join or Die: Dream has this ultimatum for L'Manburg: Either cease fighting for independence or he'll utterly thrash them. They refuse as expected, Dream does exactly what he promised to.
  Dream: I want to see white flags! White flags outside your base, by tomorrow, at dawn, or you are dead!
• Karma Houdini:
  • Dream is this at the end of the L'Manburg Civil War. He betrays both Pogtopia and Manburg and helps a mentally-unstable Wilbur to destroy the latter. Tommy outright calls him an enemy when the war is done, but Dream goes unpunished (even enjoying a quick moment of relaxation with Tommy and Tubbo, his supposed enemies) on both sides, with those on Tommy and Tubbo's side too focused on restoring L'Manburg to its former glory to actually punish Dream and those on Jschlatt's side being dead or non-existent.
  • Not a single member of the Arctic Anarchist Commune is punished for their destruction of L'Manburg in the Doomsday War. The few setbacks they do suffer — namely, Techno losing a vast majority of his Hound Army, Phil being angrily called out by his son Ghostbur, and Dream being forced to go into hiding for a while — are minor at best.
• Kill the Cutie: Season 2 of the Dream SMP introduces Ghostbur, the spectral counterpart of Wilbur Soot, who essentially embodies many of his pre-spiral traits. For the rest of the season, he acts as the resident Friendly Ghost who loves his pet sheep and wishes to atone for his living counterpart's past crimes. Of course, since the Dream SMP is a Crapsack World, Ghostbur gets sent on a one-way train trip to "Jubilee Hell" when Dream brings Wilbur back to life halfway through Season 3, rendering the poor ghost recursively dead.
• Killed Off for Real: The Dream SMP isn't a hardcore server, so even events like Tubbo's execution avert this. That is, until the final battle of the L'Manburg Civil War, where Jschlatt dies of a heart attack or stroke and Wilbur has Philza kill him to complete his suicidal "destiny"... and neither of them come back. Wilbur's final death is even coupled with him ending his stream. This is explained with the addition of the 3 lives system to the SMP canon from the end of the L'Manburg Civil War and onwards.
• Kill It with Fire: Awesamdude's current method of disposing of the Blood Vines spreading across the server is by breaking them to pieces and throwing them into fire — blue fire specifically, as regular fire doesn't seem to affect it.
• Land of One City: L'Manburg (and to an extent, Manburg)'s territory primarily consisted of the territory encompassed within the walls of the faction. Even after the annexation of Rutabagville during the Manburg era and of Pogtopia during the Tubbo administration, the lands are rarely accessed and are essentially L'Manburgian territory in name only, to the point that they are completely ignored during the Doomsday War and thus stand to this day.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Jschlatt orders Tubbo's execution after outing him as a traitor, and forces Tubbo's ally Technoblade to carry it out via a firework-loaded crossbow. When Techno finally makes the shot, Jschlatt is immediately killed by splash damage from the firework, becoming the first of many casualties in the Manburg Massacre.
• Last Disrespects:
  • Jschlatt's funeral was taken seriously by literally no one in attendance other than BadBoyHalo. It involved having pictures of the man being shot off the walls around the cemetery or defaced with penises, people stealing his body parts (renamed items placed in a chest, as Minecraft corpses disappear upon death), and Tommy and Tubbo playing with his bones. But most egregiously of all, Quackity sang a horribly autotuned song while playing his untuned guitar about how Schlatt is burning in hell, and ate his heart (no, we're not kidding about either, here's the footage). Many months after the funeral was held, Eryn also reportedly pissed on his grave.
  • On a sadder note, after receiving the news that Tommy was brutally murdered by Dream, Bad, Ant and Punz (while Brainwashed and Crazy by the Egg) decide to celebrate by throwing a party in Tommy's house, placing down a cake and swapping out the floor from grass to a garish checkerboard pattern of yellow concrete and quartz. When Puffy finds them, tears into them and kicks them out, they decide to rent a room in Tommy's hotel instead to continue celebrating.
• Last Episode, New Character: Usually near the end of a story arc, several new players join the SMP.
  • The Election Arc sees Technoblade joining the server, after a cry for help by Wilbur and Tommy due to Schlatt's rebranding of L'Manburg and subsequent change.
  • The Manberg Rebellion sees Ph1LzA joining the server right before Wilbur blows up L'Manburg, and CaptainPuffy, Ranboo and ConnorEatsPants join the server after the destruction of L'Manburg and its subsequent reconstruction.
  • Towards the end of the Disunion Arc and the beginning of the Imprisonment Arc, FoolishG, Hannahxxrose, and Slimecicle join the server.
  • Five months after the SMP's end, Aimsey's character finale introduces minor appearances from Gravel, Michela DarkEyebrows, and indirectly, Scott Smajor (who has admittedly made a non-canon voice-only appearance before this).
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Every season or even livestream practically runs on this, hence the spoiler warning at the start of most pages.
• Like Father, Like Son: Philza references the trope by name when acknowledging how both himself and his son Wilbur have blown up L'Manberg. A penchant for using TNT to destroy former homes seems to run the family, as Fundy has also done something similar by blowing up his home on two separate occasions.
• Loads and Loads of Races: The diversity of Minecraft skins naturally leads to this, and some characters also have other details not seen on their skins. In addition to bog-standard humans, the world of the SMP is also home to animal people of both the Beast Man and Little Bit Beastly varieties, uplifted mobs, Demons, Ghosts, sentient humanoid Diamond blocks, a semi-immortal Winged Humanoid, a Physical God of undeath, and several characters of ambiguous species^note Dream, Eret, and Karl, to name a few. There are also Dreamons, who can possess people and may or may not be a species in their own right, and Foolish mentions witches and warlocks at one point.
• Lobotomy: While this doesn't actually happen in canon, Schlatt once very casually threatened to turn Quackity "into Rosemary Kennedy" if he didn't meet his standards of attractiveness.
• Love Hurts:
  • Sam and Ponk were valentines and dated briefly, but saying that their relationship didn't end well is an understatement — Sam flirting with Andrea Botez during her date with Jack prompted Ponk to join the Eggpire, blaming Sam for breaking his heart; later in the series, Ponk is caught stealing a key card to Pandora's Vault, which is Serious Business to Sam... who proceeds to canonically kill him in retaliation, torture him to get the key cards back, and cut Ponk's arm off. Ouch.
  • Quackity had been working on a secret project, Las Nevadas, and hadn't seen his fiancés, Karl and Sapnap, or his friend George in a long while. When he reunites with George outside Pandora's Vault, he is told that George, Sapnap, and Karl, the old citizens of El Rapids, had formed Kinoko Kingdom and left El Rapids and by extension, him, behind.
    • George had also claimed that Karl was tasked to invite Quackity over to the Kingdom, but it is heavily implied that his time travelling-induced amnesia is finally kicking in, and thus he forgot to do so, making the circumstances utterly beyond his control.
    • It is also during this conversation that Las Nevadas was revealed to have been built with Karl, Sapnap, and George in mind, with customized casinos for each of them, and Quackity implied that he had plans to formally propose to his fiancés, but in a cruel deconstruction of Poor Communication Kills, their relationship took a huge hit and Quackity is finally is left heartbroken by the end of the conversation.
    • Quackity in general seems to be the victim of this trope, as many of his past relationships have utterly failed to work out, or ended badly. Most notably, his past toxic relationship with Schlatt still traumatizes him to this day, and when he finally got into a somewhat stable relationship (for once) with Karl and Sapnap, their unintentional abandonment is the last straw that finally pushed him over the edge to follow in Wilbur's footsteps.
    • On the Kinoko Kingdom side of the story, Karl's own memory problems presumably start to worsen tenfold to the point of only remembering Quackity as his murderer and exactly none of the history (friendship, romance, etc.) that they had shared, to the point of enforcing a restraining order against his own fiancé.
• Love Triangle: Two have formed in the server's history.
  • In late Season 1, we have Karl, Quackity, and Sapnap with Karl at the center of it. Karl and Quackity definitely had some romantic tension even when Karl was engaged to just Sapnap. Eventually, Sapnap decided to get together with Quackity to get back at Karl, which eventually leads to the issue being resolved by the three of them deciding to all get engaged with each other.
  • More recently, Foolish, Sam and Ponk have been involved with one, Ponk showing Yandere-like tendencies towards Foolish, while Foolish hopes to help mend Sam and Ponk's broken relationship, as well as promising a date with Sam.
• Lured into a Trap:
  • After an encounter gone wrong, the L'Manburgians hide in a bunker prepared by Eret. Except Eret reveals himself to be a traitor and activates a piston door in the wall^note technically, Tommy pushed the button out of curiosity, but the button to trigger the trap would have been pressed regardless, in the context of the situation, allowing Dream and his allies to storm the bunker and kill the L'Manburgians in a Curb-Stomp Battle.
  • Two seasons later, the Red Banquet serves as an opportunity for the Eggpire to lure multiple members of the server, several of whom are vocally pro-Omelette, into be killed and fed to the Egg.
  • In seeking revenge for the destruction of his UFO, Purpled tells Quackity and Slime about a strange chest that he found, which none of the Las Nevadas members placed. As Slime opens the chest in question with its contents undisclosed, Purpled pulls a nearby lever that causes the sand beneath them to drop into a platform suspended over lava. Purpled proceeds to confront Quackity over this and demands the knowledge of the revive-book, and when Quackity tells him that he doesn't have the book and wouldn't give its contents to Purpled even if he had it, Purpled knocks Slime into the lava below. This doesn't end well.

M

• MacGuffin: Deconstructed with the discs, especially in Season 2. Materially speaking, they're worthless, and indistinguishable from any other copy of Cat or Mellohi on the server. However, Tommy ascribes a lot of sentimental value to them, and both Tommy and Dream give them more and more symbolic value as the struggle between them progresses, becoming representations of the power Dream has over Tommy and L'Manburg. Over the course of the Vengeance Arc, Tommy starts to believe that getting the discs back will remove the power Dream has over him and thereby end all conflict (which is wrong, but not an unreasonable conclusion to come to), and with Techno egging him on, goes to greater and greater lengths to get them back. His Heel Realization at the Green Festival happens when he realizes he'd been wrong to put the discs over his friends and country, and while he doesn't stop chasing them, he keeps his priorities in check from that point onward. However, Dream has no such realization and continues to treat them as all-important to the point of putting them on literal pedestals, and sabotages himself at multiple points to get them, and his taunting Tommy with the discs is what ultimately leads to his downfall. Tommy and Dream both experience the consequences of giving the discs ultimate importance, but while Tommy uses those consequences to learn and grow into a better and wiser person, Dream refuses to confront any realistic flaws, and that's why Tommy wins.
• Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: For some reason, it always seems to revolve around the family trees and relationships of the characters.
  • Apparently, Wilbur had an affair with a female salmon (later named Sally) that led to him becoming the biological father of Fundy. When the chat on one of Philza's streams tried to interpret the salmon as a shapeshifter, Wilbur rejected the notion.
  • Wilbur explains through a public message in Philza's stream that Wilbur himself is the biological son of Philza... and a Samsung Smart Refrigerator. When the chat tried to make sense of the fridge (interpreting the fridge as if it was an Ice Queen) Wilbur rejected the chat's interpretation, cementing the fact that an actual refrigerator is Wilbur's mother. Philza later retcons this out, but still.
  • During the negotiation to attempt to scam Schlatt out of his presidency, Quackity claims that he was pregnant with (possibly) Schlatt's child. Later in the series, he also claims to have given birth to his then-newly formed country, El Rapids. However, none of this is ever explained in canon, such as how Mpreg works in the context of the Dream SMP, or how it is possible to give birth to a chunk of land. To top it off, since the livestream where this was initially announced would be considered a "lore stream" in later seasons, it can be inferred that this is somehow canonical, in a similar vein to Wilbur and Quackity's "borderline romantic" relationship as seen during Niki's birthday party (once again, a proto-lore stream).
• The Man They Couldn't Hang: Techno once again proves that he never dies by foiling his own execution with a Totem of Undying.
• Meaningful Appearance: Boomer wears a frog hat with mystical powers that was gifted to him by his family, in exchange for his coloration.
• Meaningful Background Event: During the fight between Tommy and Tubbo, Techno can be seen in the background, spying on them.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • As he betrays L'Manburg during their war for independence, Eret says, "It was never meant to be." During the L'Manburg Civil War, Wilbur says the same thing in the same context, echoing Eret's words as he destroys Manburg. They were later echoed by Niki as she burned down the L'Mantree.
  • After gaining independence from the Greater Dream SMP, Wilbur shouts, "SUCK IT, GREEN BOY!" while signing the L'Manburg "Decree of Independance" [sic]. During the Disc Confrontation, where Dream is once again defeated and imprisoned, Tommy and Tubbo celebrate their victory by "[making] Wilbur proud" and shouting at Dream to suck it.
• Meaningful Name: Unintentionally, L'Manburg/L'Manberg has one, through its use of suffixes in both spellings of its name. In old Germanic languages, '-burg' means "fortress, fortification, castle", while '-berg' means "mountain". Fitting for a nation (at least initially) surrounded by walls, with "great hills to [their] south".
• Medium Blending: While most of the Dream SMP takes place on a Minecraft server (excluding content creators' facecam), there have been a couple of media-related shifts throughout the series.
  • There have been a few scenes that take place entirely in live-action, including The Stinger of Quackity's 1st and 4th Las Nevadas streams (the former showing his plan to torture Dream until he gets the revive-book, and the latter being a merchandise advertisement) and the first Stinger of Wilbur's lore finale (of him returning to Utah).
  • The second Stinger of Wilbur's lore finale is an animation by Twitter user scivious_, depicting friend the sheep being dropped off to Ghostbur via the Afterlife Express.
  • The Wilbur Van is presented on Archive of Our Own as a short story, though this is enforced due to the content creators involved having issues in (presumably) scheduling for lore streams.
• Metaphorically True: Both in regards to Dream telling Pogtopia that there's a traitor among them. At the time, Dream had made a pact with Jschlatt when he otherwise stated he didn't want to go with either side to not make easy enemies, making him the traitor. Later, when Tommy questioned Dream about there being any traitors during their victory over Jschlatt, he claims that he lied and that there wasn't a traitor. There were actually two: Wilbur and Technoblade.
• Meta Twist: After a long string of major era-ending plot events that happened on the 16th of the month (the L'Manburg Election in September 2020, the Manburg Festival in October 2020, the Manburg-Pogtopia War and Season 1's finale in November 2020, and Technoblade's Execution in December 2020), January 2021 breaks said trend with the Doomsday War in January 6th (the end of the Vengeance Era) and Dream's imprisonment in January 20th (the end of the Disunion Era and Season 2 of the SMP as a whole).
• Mickey Mousing: Used during the opening montage of Quackity's April 12th stream as he's torturing Dream over the course of an entire month, à la A Clockwork Orange.
• Might Makes Right: The Dream SMP is a world where this is the norm, and those who try to prove otherwise — case in point, L'Manburg — usually get crushed, and idealists and peacemakers often end up resorting to violent methods that they previously opposed to survive and achieve their noble goals, to the point that several ex-diplomats have had their ideologies turn a 180 altogether due to their traumatic lives on the server.
• Misplaced Wildlife: "The Wilbur Van" mentions that Wilbur almost got attacked by scorpions and a king cobra while working in his burger van next to Las Nevadas. While this is presumably playing on the idea that Las Nevadas is a desert, in reality, the place is an artificial desert built in what used to be a mountainous biome, to the point it blatantly snows there on livestreams. The fact that king cobras are native to jungles in South and Southeast Asia doesn't help either. The part about the scorpions in relation to the artificial desert environment is later confirmed by Wilbur to be invoked by Quackity during the construction of the country; still no news on the king cobras, however.
• Mistaken for Terrorist: Whenever Technoblade talks about commmitting terrorism, he makes sure to specify that it's in Minecraft, afraid the FBI might think he's being serious.
• The Mole:
  • During the Manburg/Pogtopia arc, Tubbo was a spy for Pogtopia while being Schlatt's right-hand man. Unfortunately, Tubbo was quite conspicuous about this, leading Schlatt to quickly find out his true allegiance and eventually have him executed for treason.
  • Also in the Manburg/Pogtopia arc, Fundy was an even more secretive spy against Manburg who gathered information about Schlatt and his country to try to restore L'Manburg to its former glory.
  • At the Red Banquet, Hannah reveals herself to be this for the Eggpire, having found out about the Pro-Omelette attendees' backup plan to store weapons in the banquet hall and used this knowledge to out-gambit them.
• Mood Whiplash: This trope is extremely prevalent in pretty much all the streams of the SMP as the streamers often break character to crack a joke or make a mistake during an otherwise serious moment in the roleplay. The inherent goofiness of Minecraft doesn't help, either.
  • The L'Manburg election was mostly lighthearted, with the two leading parties being named silly things like POG2020 and SWAG2020, Fundy getting ridiculed publicly for getting caught trying to commit election fraud, and Quackity playing the role of the ineffectual Card-Carrying Villain. However, things go south when, due to some last minute deals with Quackity's campaign, Jschlatt wins the election. In a speech that sounds legitimately terrifying, Schlatt declares himself Emperor of the country, has Tommy and Wilbur chased out of L'Manburg with nothing but the items in their inventories, demands the walls be torn down, and declares his desire to... expand the nation. That's right, an election in a Minecraft server ends with the new president going full fascist dictator and his opponents being exiled from the country that they built.
  • The prelude to the Battle of the Lake has Tommy give an epic speech to Sapnap that he ends by claiming he has Techno on his side, which gives him the advantage over Sapnap. As if perfectly timed, Techno himself joins the game a second later in an equally epic move... and then he immediately begins to complain about losing sleep because Tommy woke him up.
  • The day after the Manburg Festival, Tommy, Wilbur, and a recently-defected Quackity grief Manburg together by building a giant cobblestone cock right in front of the flag. The three of them are cracking jokes and having fun, Wilbur in particular almost seems like he's his old self again... and then he leads Tommy and Quackity to the Button room. Tommy's reaction says it all.
    Tommy: Holy– HOOOOOOLY SHIT!
  • This happens again during Niki's birthday stream. For the most part, it's all fun and laughs and celebration, with Quackity and Wilbur playing the guitar and flirting (though Wilbur seems fairly out of it)... until at the very end of the stream, where Wilbur jumps right back to his plot to blow up Manburg, giving Quackity an ultimatum to schedule a meeting with Jschlatt before Friday before it explodes.
  • Phil's perspective provided a pretty heartbreaking one. He wanted to listen to Tubbo's speech, so he turned on Wilbur's stream and listened to it live. He spent a little while expressing his pride in Tubbo while laughing at the fact that he doesn't know what a president is supposed to do... but then Wilbur excuses himself and leaves the voice chat.
    Phil: Wait, where's Wil going?
    Wilbur: (sigh) Chekhov's Gun...
    Phil: Is he done? Is he done streaming?
    Wilbur: I've... I'll be honest with you, chat. I've been wondering this whole time if it still works.
    Phil: (smile drops, eyes widen) ...Oh, no.
  • During the Manburg-Pogtopia War, Technoblade gives a fairly long and terrifying speech to Tommy, comparing him to Theseus and warning Tommy that good things don't happen to heroes. After yelling a terrifying line, he turns to summon two withers and make good on his threat... only to struggle to summon them after misplacing a wither skull.
    Technoblade: You want to be a hero, Tommy? Then DIE LIKE ONE! Okay. Why isn't this spawning. Why is this not spawning. This is very awkward.
  • In the last Exile/Logstedshire stream, Dream finding out about Tommy's secret stash leads into a dramatic moment... but as he's destroying the stash with TNT, he accidentally blows himself up as well, which causes Tommy to uncontrollably laugh for a full minute while Dream quickly tries to clarify that it was a blooper and was not in the script. invoked
  • When Ghostbur makes his dramatic entrance to tell Tommy he wants to be brought back to life, Tommy just mumbles "What?" in shock... then immediately gets struck by lightning, an event so unexpected and out of the blue that everyone starts corpsing for several minutes. invoked
  • Sapnap deciding to go visit Dream in prison came on the heels of him, Karl, George, BadBoyHalo, (and later, Foolish), messing around and building mushroom based houses for the last few hours. Not to mention how literal minutes before, everyone was joking around about splitting Sapnap's viewercount with Foolish, so the viewers were very confused and initally thought it was just a bit Sapnap was pulling so he stopped losing viewers.^Explaination Dream came into the call and joked about how Sapnap was stealing viewers from Foolish, who was also streaming, so he told Sapnap's viewers to go to Foolish's stream and several Sapnap's viewers actually obliged and several viewers started leaving to make Foolish's viewcount go up.
• Morality Kitchen Sink: The nature of the server gradually shapes into this as time goes on, ranging from characters with lighter-grey morality like Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo, close-to if not already morally black characters like Schlatt and Dream, and everything in between, with several characters toeing the line between 'hero' and 'villain' on a semi-regular basis and thus zig-zagging across the shades of grey depending on the day.
• Morality Pet:
  • Technoblade would drop everything on the spot for Philza, his long-time friend. Case in point, when Techno was captured by the Butcher Army, one of his main concerns was Phil being held under house arrest rather than his own impending execution.
  • In the Las Nevadas storyline, Slimecicle starts as a downplayed one for Quackity, but eventually becomes a fully fledged one.
  • As usual, in the beginning, there is an element of manipulation to Quackity's kindness, and he did only keep him alive in the first place to use him as an asset. Despite that, Quackity does seem to be warming up to him and does try to look out for him, such as being concerned for him developing a gambling addiction and stopping him from recklessly jumping off a skyscraper. Eventually, it gets to the point that Quackity starts showing protective tendencies to Slime after learning that Tommy 'kidnapped' Slime as a hostage in exchange for Linda, his shovel, causing this trope to gradually be played more and more straight.
    • This played fully straight by the November 27th "Las Nevadas" stream, where Quackity prepares Slime to inherit Las Nevadas if/when he dies in spite of Slime representing Quackity's repressed old values and demeanor, and when Slime is knocked into lava by Purpled in his betrayal, Quackity dives in to try to save him with zero hesitation. After that, in the weeks following Slime losing his canon life, Quackity is seen to be hit hard by the loss.
• Morton's Fork:
  • During the Disc War Finale, Dream took Tubbo hostage and gave Tommy a choice: either give Dream the Mellohi-disc, or Dream would kill Tubbo. Tommy ultimately chose to hand over the disc, only for Dream to reveal that the disc was a fake, force them both to drop their armor, and after taking them to the Vault of Attachments, revealing that his ultimate plan was to kill Tubbo and lock Tommy up in prison forever. Even if Tommy had chosen the disc over Tubbo, the outcome would've been the same, with him being Forced to Watch Tubbo die, before being locked up in Pandora's Vault for the rest of his life. That is, if Punz and the others hadn't stepped in.
  • Tommy encounters another one when he goes to the Egg, deliberating whether or not to break it. If he breaks it, he will have the entire Eggpire after his life (though Niki and Jack were already hunting him down without his knowledge), and if he doesn't break it, then he will get blamed once again for not stopping a problem before it gets worse when it's really not fully his responsibility. He decides against destroying the Egg, instead taking a piece of it to the hotel in hopes of finding a way to control it.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The entire concept of the SMP. Only the YouTubers involved could turn a multiplayer Minecraft server full of goofy, comedy-based creators into an epic tale revolving around one small nation's efforts to attain independence and the months of war, political alliances, betrayal, and destruction that resulted.
• Mundane Solution:
  • During the Manburg Massacre, everyone in attendance either dies to Techno's rampage or runs away before Techno gets a chance to open fire on the crowd... all except for Antfrost, who simply uses his shield to No-Sell the damage.
  • When Quackity tries to overcome his fear of Techno, he ends up fleeing for his life as Karl barricades the gate to his newfound nation, Rutabagville, to lock Techno out. Techno just climbs over the fence.
  • Half of the SMP has gathered in defense of L'Manburg for the Doomsday War, and the Anarchists are outnumbered. So what do they do? They just start their assault a half hour earlier than planned, completely catching L'Manburg off-guard.
• Mundanger: In a world where gods and supernatural creatures exist^* the latter in Minecraft mobs, the most heinous acts in the majority of the series are committed by player-characters, in scenarios that can be easily transplanted to real life. The most notable examples of this are abusers and corrupt figures in power^* power in terms of political and economic power alike, and the two characters that the fandom typically regards to have crossed the MEH are both of these: both Schlatt and Dream are tyrants in their own right, with the former being a Bad Boss and a Domestic Abuser, and the latter abusing a teenager to the point said teen attempted suicide. Meanwhile, the Eggpire plotline has a cult leader as the Arc Villain which recruits and brainwashes characters when they are emotionally vulnerable, which is still applicable to the real world even when the supernatural elements are removed.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In "Arrival", Phil mentions that the ice reminds him of an empire, and how he helped a friend take over the world. This is a reference to SMPEarth, specifically when the Antarctic Empire — led by Phil and Techno — took over the entire map. Additionally, their proto-faction, the Arctic Anarchist Commune (before the Syndicate was formed), is even named in honor of the Empire.
  • Variations of The Cuck Shed and "Eat Pant Conar" statue return from SMPLive.
  • Dream is sometimes jokingly referred to as "Dre", a gag that carried over from Minecraft Championship, where, during one tournament, his name got shortened to "Dre" on the tab-list.
  • Philza started with one life instead of three in the SMP's canon life system. This is because Phil is primarily known for playing Hardcore Minecraft, where the player character cannot die even once or the world is permanently deleted, and became famous after getting the world record for longest lasting Hardcore-world (just over five years in real life).
    • Techno freaks out every time he sees a baby zombie trying to attack Phil, as Phil lost his five year Hardcore world to a baby zombie, which has become a huge meme on his channel.
  • Dream really dislikes iron doors and fears being trapped behind one, and they're cited to be a weakness of Dreamons. This is a reference to when Dream got stuck in an iron door trap for almost the entirety of the Sands of Time minigame during the ninth Minecraft Championship tournament.

N – P

• Nasty Party: Ultimately what the Red Banquet turns out to be, as the invitees are Lured into a Trap to be publicly executed to give power to the Egg.
• National Anthem: Wilbur wrote one for L'Manburg, which has been sung multiple times throughout the server for various reasons.
• New Neo City: Under the Tubbo administration, New L'Manburg was rebuilt on the ruins of Manburg (and before that, L'Manburg) after the nation-state was destroyed in the Manburg-Pogtopia War. Despite this, the nation is still often known as L'Manburg, indicating it was intended to be a continuation of Wilbur's legacy.
• Next Sunday A.D.:
  • The L'Sandberg subplot, a mini-arc played out in the middle of Season 3, was confirmed to take place in the future, after the events of the Egg arc. Specifically when, however, is unclear.
  • The Tales From the SMP episode "The Haunted Mansion" similarly takes place after the current events of the SMP.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Between Ranboo, Tommy and Tubbo, Ranboo is the mild-mannered and polite Nice Guy, Tommy is the abrasive and hot-headed Jerk with a Heart of Gold (Mean), and Tubbo is the friendly yet chaotic In-Between.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: After Sam informs them that, despite the waiver stating that he can only keep Tommy in Dream's cell for a week, he needs to stay longer after all, tensions boil over between Tommy and Dream and they get into a massive fight. While they both throw punches, Dream keeps punching despite Tommy's warning that his health is low, and winds up beating Tommy to death.
• Non-Action Guy: Both Wilbur and Quackity are renowned orators who are far more leveled-up in the charisma and persuasion stats than actual combat skills. Considering the oftentimes-Might Makes Right attitude the server seems to have, it's no wonder that both of them had most of their idealism crushed to the point of going through severe mental health spirals down the line.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: No one really bats an eye at the canonically LGBTQ+ characters, which comprises of about half the cast.
• Non-Human Non-Binary:
  • Dream's deceased horse, Spirit, is said to be nonbinary and used singular they/them pronouns.
  • Shy, a nonbinary enderman, lives in a glass case in Niki's underground city. They are said to be one of the only things that Niki loves.
  • Ranboo, the resident half-enderman, is revealed to have some trouble understanding human concepts like gender and pronouns, and seems to go by both he/him and they/them pronouns.
  • Slimecicle is, as his name indicates, a slime, and is confirmed to use both he/him and it/its pronouns.
  • Eret might classify as well. He prefers not to label himself as any particular gender, and uses any pronouns (though most members of the server default to using he/him). They are also not (fully) human, having a connection to Herobrine.
• The Nothing After Death: While everyone's Afterlife is different, Tommy's Afterlife manifests as a dark, colorless, soundless void.
• Nuke 'em:
  • TNT is used very copiously to cause huge amounts of damage. Most notably, L'Manburg gets subjected to this three times:
    • In the War for Indepedence, Dream demands unconditional surrender from L'Manburg or else he'll detonate a block of TNT within L'Manburg's walls. Wilbur, unfazed by merely one block of TNT, declares that he'd rather die defending L'Manburg's right to independence. Unfortunately for Wilbur and L'Manburg, however, doesn't just have that one block within the walls — he also has an entire nuke's worth of TNT hidden right under L'Manburg itself, and detonating the one block above ground causes nearly every block underground to detonate as well, destroying a majority of L'Manburg from the inside out and dealing its defenders a blow they never recover from.
    • Wilbur decided to do this during the Manburg Festival due to his suicidal spiral, wanting to destroy Manburg because he believed the beliefs that his country stood for no longer existed, and also so that Schlatt would lose power.^note And the kicker? The reason he chose to destroy (L')Manburg by explosion of all methods was a deliberate echo to Dream's explosion of L'Manburg during its War for Independence. Trauma, much? He eventually does carry out this plan during the Manburg-Pogtopia War, detonating 11 and a half stacks of TNT with his Big Red Button, and leaving a massive crater where his country once stood. Technoblade quickly helps "clean up" the mess Wilbur left behind... by spawning two withers during the battle, generating even more rampant destruction for Tubbo's administration to deal with.
    • The Doomsday War takes all of this up to eleven. While L'Manburg is fighting Technoblade, Philza takes them by surprise by launching fifteen withers into the air, completely decimating most of the nation. And just as they are starting to overcome the withers, it turns out that it was just meant to buy time for the real attack — Dream's obsidian TNT launchers, which rain enough Death from Above to turn what was once a nation into a gaping hole to bedrock.
  • Volume 1 ends with Project Early Dawn, i.e. the detonation of the Snowchester nukes to take out Dream once and for all, as a last resort. The end result is Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies for everyone who didn't get out of Dodge in time.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Wilbur is the wordsmith of the group, with the ability to write impressive speeches and generally always having a comeback to everything. However, after Jschlatt revokes his and Tommy's citizenship to L'Manburg and has them chased out, Wilbur just stares in shock, and barely says anything for a good long while. He even lampshades this later.
    Wilbur: I'm... genuinely, did you not– I went speechless! That is the first time, I was live in front of 30,000 people, completely speechless. That's the first time that's EVER happened.
  • Although Dream is a Manipulative Bastard and a liar, one thing that remains sure is that he doesn't want to irreversibly harm Tommy, given it's too fun for him to continue toying with Tommy to outright kill him off — it's to the point that he ends up surrendering in the finale of Season 2 when Tommy tries to pull a Stop, or I Shoot Myself!. So when he goes back on this in Pandora's Vault and outright murders Tommy over something as trivial as the existence of a book, it means that Dream has likely snapped during his time in the Vault — and that, either way, something is very different about Dream. This is eventually subverted by Dream bringing Tommy back to life, and revealing that he did this to prove the revival book's existence... which later turns out to be a lie as well.
    • However, this becomes played straight when Quackity catches wind of this, where he pays Dream a visit in his cell, pulls out a sword and an axe, and tells him in no uncertain terms that, while he can't kill him, it won't stop him from making Dream's life a living hell. Within seconds, Dream is backed up into a corner of the cell, screaming for Sam to come help him; even though Dream had previously always had this air of triumphant smugness about him, where nothing really seems to phase him, even when he's trapped in a maximum-security cell of a high-security prison.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Dream makes this to each L'Manbergian during the L'Manberg Revolution: join him or die. None of them take the offer, except for Eret.
• Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Almost all of the canonical romantic couples have had their relationships ruined or put through the wringer for various reasons. For example, Mexican Dream got killed by his girlfriend's Spear Counterpart, and for more notable relationships, refer to the Love Hurts part above... and that's not even going into Wilbur's unorthodox choice of partner and said partner's fate. Currently, the only (semi-)stable relationship on the server appears to be Puffy and Niki, who have barely interacted at all in months.
• One-Person Birthday Party: During the Exile arc, Tommy held a beach party in Logstedshire, and invited practically everyone on the server. However, only Dream showed up, and when he did, it was twenty minutes late. Not even Ghostbur, the one in charge of delivering the invitations, showed up. Later, this turns out to be invoked; Dream took the invitations from Ghostbur, sent him off to go for a walk in the snow (Ghostbur melts when he touches water, though he thankfully survived that ordeal), and played dumb when Tommy asked if anything happened to the invitations.
  Dream: I made sure nobody would show up to your party, so that you'd have no friends except me.
• Only in It for the Money: Both Punz and Purpled are Hired Guns who would fight on the side that pays them better, even if it means switching sides.
• Only One Afterlife: There is only one afterlife and all the dead can interact with each other. It's just that everyone sees it differently.
• Only One Name: About half of the cast's in-game names consist of one word only, making this technically the case. However, this is often played around with not just in the fan consciousness, but in canon as well.
  • Some player-characters have in-universe surnames, subverting this, e.g. Philza Minecraft, Tubbo Underscore, and Ranboo (My) Beloved.
  • Some go by their real-life names as well as their IGNs, e.g. Niki (Nihachu) and (Alex) Quackity.
  • Some are referred to with their well-known out-of-universe usernames and nicknames, former or current, e.g. Dream (WasTaken, after his Twitch account), Purpled (Bedwars), and Eryn (Cyberonix).
  • Despite all this, there are still exceptions, such as Antfrost, Callahan, Eret, Fundy^* before the reveal of his canonical full name in his Las Nevadas contract, fan-works defaulted to giving him the surname 'Soot', being Wilbur's son in-universe, Punz, and Technoblade.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: During his first campaign speech, Wilbur passionately begins a speech about keeping the "filthy Americans" out of L'Manburg, before cutting himself off, stammering something generic about upholding the nation and leaving the stage. It only gets funnier with The Reveal in Wilbur's lore finale that he himself was born and raised in the U.S.
  Tommy: Wilbur, a large majority of our viewers are American.
  Wilbur: I realized that half-way through the word 'Americans'...
• Or Was It a Dream?: When Ranboo visits the prison the first time around, he finds Dream acting... peculiar, treating him like an old friend. Then Ranboo finds out that his chest is full of copies Ranboo's memory book, before Dream tells him he's not real and the prison collapses around him, implying that it wasn't real. Ranboo dismisses it all as just a nightmare. But in a later stream, when Ranboo visits the prison for real, Awesamdude tells him he had already visited...
• Origins Episode: The first half of the 12 February 2022 lore stream "The Origins of Eryn" covers various sections of Eryn's backstory, including how his parents met and how he befriended Tommy, which, in turn, gives hints towards Tommy's own pre-SMP backstory.
• Orphaned Etymology: Possibly. Since the Dream SMP takes place in what is presumably another universe or reality to our own (e.g. the existence of the undead, as per Minecraft), many references to our real life might not have existed in that universe due to it evolving differently — for instance, the prevalence of religions based on video-sharing and/or livestreaming platforms instead of Abrahamic religions. On the flip side, many plot points or conversations may have basis in real-life elements, creating paradoxes: the L'Manburg War for Independence featuring direct quotations from Hamilton songs, Technoblade and his passing references to Greek mythology (e.g. "Theseus" and the Syndicate code names), various Trump jokes, etc. What further muddles things is Wilbur's backstory alleging him to be from Utah, as in the US state, and it's never quite confirmed whether he genuinely sailed there or teleported, due to a flash cut of him suddenly appearing in the Utahn desert at the end of his final lore stream.
• Orphan's Ordeal:
  • This trope applies to Fundy after the end of Season 1. His father was dead and his mother is missing (apparently misplaced or eaten by Wilbur), and although Fundy's relationship with Wilbur wasn't the best, Fundy still missed his father. This is subverted in Season 3 once Wilbur was brought back to life.
  • In the Tales From the SMP episode "The Village That Went Mad", Robin lost both of his parents in the Red-Eyes Villager Wars, then his surrogate father figure was executed by the townsfolk under suspicion for being a murderer, before finally being executed himself by the town, being too despondent to fight against their accusations.
• Our Demons Are Different:
  • BadBoyHalo is a Demon, whose Demonic blood grants him semi-immortality, as his life force is tied to Skeppy (who serves as his Soul Jar) and he only loses a canon life when Skeppy does. He is also incredibly tall, standing at 9 feet and 6 inches (289.56cm) — not that you'd be able to tell by looking at his character in-game.
  • Tina is also allegedly a Demon, and has white horns that can be covered up by wool to look like cat ears. However, whether she displays similar traits to Bad is still yet to be determined.
  • It has also been confirmed that Eryn is half-Demon and half-human, and thus has one red eye and a violent and chaotic (or as cc!Eryn says, "evil") streak.
  • Dreamons are a completely different type of entity than Demons. They can take on Hosts to do their bidding, but have a variety of weaknesses, which the Dreamon Hunters use for exorcisms and preventing detection by them. Transmuted Dreamons are a rare variation where the Host and the Dreamon constantly and rapidly shift between each other.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The dead are able to return to the living world in the form of ghosts.
• Out-Gambitted: After Tommy gets possession of Spirit, the remains of Dream's first horse, Dream spends months letting Tommy believe that Spirit is of sentimental value to him. As Dream no longer has Tommy's discs, Tommy believes that he has leverage over Dream but not vice-versa, eventually causing Tommy to bank his freedom on Spirit when Dream attempts to exile him. However, when Tommy finally reveals his hand, Dream promptly reveals that Spirit has no sentimental value to him at all, and that Tommy's placed all his hope on a worthless piece of leather.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Blood Vines and Crimson Egg that BadBoyHalo found shows up while most of the SMP plot at the time had been focused on the political intrigue. Whilst paranormal elements (like Ghostbur and the Dreamon slaying) have existed before, they were small-scale and ultimately don't have much of a threat to the server's status quo. In comparison, the Egg is a flowering red horror that is brainwashing everyone it can and could pose a large-scale threat to the entire server if not stopped soon.
• Overly Long Name:
  • Fundy and Niki's defunct faction Dry Waters had a very long official name, 'Smokey-Corn-on-The-Cob-Waterville-Dry-Hands-Desert-Land'.
  • Fundy's own full name is revealed to be 'Fun Jonatahan micahel vincent georgina james sus Dy' when he signs the Las Nevadas contract.
  • During the Tales From the SMP episode "The Masquerade", one of the attendees' names, coincidentally also played by Fundy (the content creator), is 'Oliver Arechtenshire Smitselist Cumbucket'.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: In Season 2, Technoblade briefly stands in front of a wanted poster in L'Manburg. It's even thinner as the clothing skin Techno's wearing is distinctly different from the one on the poster. Downplayed as Tubbo and Ranboo both instantly see through the disguise, but are either too confused, intimidated, or amused to point this out.
• Paranormal Episode: As of the Imprisonment Era, at least two prominent stories have shown up.
  • The Dreamon Slayer episodes, where Tubbo, Fundy, and Sapnap go slaying what are apparently demons based off of Dream's species.
  • The appearance of the Blood Vines and the Crimson Egg during the Exile arc, which involve other characters that are not involved in Tommy's exile getting into a conflict involving said botanical horror, with some being brainwashed to spread it, others trying to stop its spread, and one sacrificing themselves to the Egg in an attempt to save the others lives. This becomes a crucial plot point in Season 3, where much of the conflict revolves around the Crimson, which serves as a Big Bad Ensemble with Dream throughout the season.
• Personalized Afterlife: It turns out that whenever any character loses all of their canon lives, the Afterlife they're faced with is unique... in the worst possible way, making it more of a personalized hell. For Tommy, it was a colorless, soundless void of sensory deprivation, and for Wilbur, it was a train station platform, where he was stranded for thirteen and a half years.
• Phallic Weapon: A name-based example (combined with Suspiciously Specific Denial) with Dream's crossbow, named "DEFINITELY NOT PENIS". Another name-based example occurs with Sapnap's enchanted netherite sword, "Sapnap's Schlong".
• Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: Several characters have scars from their canon deaths, which are indicated to be heavily traumatic events, with Tubbo and Quackity's deaths at Techno's hand being the most prominent.
• The Place: The main series is titled after the Minecraft server the roleplay primarily takes place in, the Dream SMP, much like many other Minecraft-based roleplay and Let's Play series. Its spin-off is similar in being titled Tales From the SMP.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: During one eventful Manburg stream, when Quackity accidentally strips, Tubbo asks him to put his clothes back on.
• Please Select New City Name: After being taken over by Jschlatt, the nation of L'Manberg (or L'Manburg; both are correct spellings) gets renamed to "Manberg/Manburg" to signify that the country would "no longer take Ls". Characters sympathetic to the original L'Manberg administration, most prominently Niki, have been told by Manberg-side characters to refer to the nation by its new name, but they often refuse to comply to this, to the point calling the nation by its original name was often a signifier of the character's allegiance. However, once the country was taken back after the Civil War, it gets renamed back to its original L'Manberg/L'Manburg, though some people call it New L'Manberg/L'Manburg to distinguish it from the original administration (by Wilbur).
  Niki: He tore down L– the walls of L'Manberg, he wants to call L'Manberg "Manberg" now, but obviously I'm not going to go with that.
• Please Subscribe to Our Channel: This is a Running Gag of Techno's, to the point where he apparently has a timer set to go off every half-hour for the sole purpose of reminding him to plug his channel. Even better, the timer is a limit rather than a reminder — he decided to start setting it so that he didn't plug it even more often. For a brief period of time, his crossbow was named "Subscribe to Technoblade". He also plugs his channel at inopportune moments, such as during the Manburg-Pogtopia War, where he pulls an epic Face–Heel Turn and summons two Withers... then turns back around to name one of them "Subscribe to Technoblade" before siccing them on L'Manburg's ruins.
• Polyamory: Karl, Sapnap and Quackity are currently all engaged to each other, though the relationship itself is currently very strained due to a variety of complications, most prominently Poor Communication Kills.
• Poor Communication Kills: Deconstructed. This is a common problem throughout the server, which causes many, many conflicts and a lot of friction between the characters.
• Precision F-Strike: While many members of the server swear, some — including Dream — choose not to. When Dream drops an F-bomb on Tommy, it signifies that this time, Dream is genuinely angry.
  Dream: Tommy... okay, listen, you fucked up this time.
  Tommy: What the fu– okay, Dream, don't swear, please.
  Dream: No no no no no no no no... I don't give a fuck about Spirit.
• Public Execution: A surprisingly large number of them have occurred on the Dream SMP.
  • At the Manburg Festival, Tubbo is revealed to the public to be The Mole for Pogtopia and Schlatt orders him to be publicly executed at the Festival he decorated for, to the horror and objection of practically everyone else present. Unfortunately for Tubbo, Technoblade doesn't do well under what he claims to be peer pressure, and shoots the firework rockets in his face anyway.
  • Techno himself becomes on the receiving end of this trope after the Butcher Army arrests him for destroying the remains of L'Manburg with Withers during the Manburg-Pogtopia War, in addition to their personal grievances against him for traumatizing them for life. However, Techno manages to survive and escape the execution with help from Dream, and vows revenge for what he believes to be an act of injustice against him.
  • The Green Festival on January 5th, 2021 was initially planned as a public execution for Dream, but this became subverted when all of the Butcher Army's plans get thrown out the window, as Dream reveals the destruction of the Community House and the shit hits the fan for everyone in attendance.
  • During the Red Banquet, Foolish is ritually sacrificed to the Egg in front of the attendees of the Banquet, because he tried to protect Eret from being made an example of by the Eggpire.
• Puppet King: George was this as "king" of the Dream SMP. His title was official, but he's got no interest in politics or even ruling. It's blatantly obvious that even after formally giving up his crown, Dream's the true leader of the Greater Dream SMP (being the one to actually deal with the politics, warfare, and ruling that a leader must handle and being quite good at it in the process), while George was just a figurehead leader at best. Eret also plays the same role when he's chosen as king, or at least until Dream got locked up in prison.

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