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The dust and the fire and the smoke and the hellish haze rose up, clouding the battlefield as crimson beams and blasting thunderbolts filled the air. The entire world shuddered, and every crack of a railgun firing was like a fist to the ears. For the men standing on or lying behind the wall, there was nothing out there they could see through the fog of war but the glowing lights of the Avatars and their laser cannons. Night vision was useless, thermal was obscured, and normal eyes couldn't hope to penetrate the maelstrom.
But there was noise. That was what they remembered. Both Nod soldiers fleeing to cover in the urban landscape and cheering GDI troops knew nothing of the battle that followed except the hammerfall of chaos: the thundering steps of Avatars, the deadly deep whine of their laser cannons firing, the grinding peals of the treads of the mechanized cavalry resounding like distorted battle cries, and the bone-cracking detonations of their blasting cannons.
As its name indicates, Tiberium Wars is a Novelization of Command And Conquer: Tiberium Wars. The fanfic was written in direct response to the Wall Banger-worthy official Novelization. As would be expected, it follows the actual game's plot fairly closely, though it takes a highly in-depth look at the Tiberium universe, and creates numerous characters to populate the otherwise faceless armies of the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod, as well as exploring the respective factions' technology, history, and mindset. Established characters are used (with some of them even getting their own extra subplots) as well as original characters filling in the roles of infantrymen, tankers, pilots, and the faceless commanders.
The fic is notable for its brutal, stark, and explicit vision of the endless war being waged between GDI and Nod, with heavy emphasis on realistic military operations and the chaotic and merciless nature of war. Combat is meticulously described, and the war itself is savage, violent, and often senseless. At the same time, though, neither GDI nor Nod are depicted as monsters, and a number of both sympathetic and despicable characters are portrayed. The author admits that he places more emphasis on GDI, having hinted that he considers them to be the series' true "good guys."
The author himself has stated that he was heavily inspired by Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts series, as well as Warhammer 40000 in general. Other inspirations include nonfiction works like Generation Kill and House To House: A Soldier's Memoir. As the fic is based on the military and warfare, expect to see lots of Military And Warfare Tropes.
The series is also very quotable, as the sheer number of excerpts that have been quoted on This Very Wiki prove.
Tropes contained within Tiberium Wars include:
- A Death In The Limelight: Gutirrez, Sergeant Bendis, and subverted with Lieutenant Wallace.
- Amusing Injuries: Kane finds his people banging their shins against consoles in the dim light of his facilities to be endlessly amusing.
- Anyone Can Die: The author kills off several well-developed viewpoint characters. Given his insistence in portraying war as realistically as possible, this is not a surprise.
- Armor Is Useless: Subverted somewhat. Against GDI body armor, lightly armed Nod militants have to aim for weak points, though more well-equipped troops have no problem taking them out. Against Zone Trooper or Black Hand armor... well... if you're really lucky, you might get a lucky shot on their optics and throw off their aim a bit. Otherwise, anti-tank weapons work.
- Attack Attack Attack: Notably averted in Chapter Sixteen, when the Mammoth Tanks arrive. Rawne withdraws his forces, knowing they don't have the firepower to go toe-to-toe with them.
- Attempted Rape: In chapter 14, a Nod militant attempts to rape Sandra Telfair. She fights him off long enough for Brother-Captain Allen to arrive and beat the would-be rapist to death.
- Author Tract: Aside from the boiling hatred the author has for the official novelization, there are some much more subtle jabs and pokes in the story, such as an apparent dislike of large walkers, some commentary on the interaction between the media and the military, and a general impression of War Is Hell.
- Badass Creed: Chapter Seventeen has one from a Mammoth Tank crewman:
Yea verily, though I charge through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am driving a house-sized mass of "fuck you."
- Badass Grandpa: Colonel Nick "Havoc" Parker is pushing eighty, yet he is still the most hardcore bastard in GDI.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Brutally averted in the case of Private Marona, an attractive young Nod soldier who has her face shredded by shrapnel from a grenade, destroying her eyes and doing a lot of damage elsewhere in the process.
- Better Than Canon: The author RetCons the defense of the Pentagon to after the battle at Langley AFB. Also, certain units from Kane's Wrath see use during the main game's plot, like Spectres, Reckoners, Slingshots, and Shatter tanks (which the author refuses to call "Shatterers").
- According to just about all the reviewers, the novelization does indeed vastly outshine the official novelization. Some go as far as to say its actually better than the game itself.
- On the one hand, apples to oranges. On the other hand, the battles feel infinitely more epic, the units from the top of the Tech Tree are here right from the get-go, and we don't spend half an hour reading how Commander Karrde/Rawne harvested Tiberium and built up a base before trying a TankRush. Given how the author has handled just part of the First Act, we're in for a real treat once things get to Sarajevo, and later when the Scrin actually arrive.
- Better To Die Than Be Killed: Nod's forces firmly believe that GDI will torture their captured Brothers and rape their Sisters, so when they are forced to fall back and leave their immobile wounded behind, one of their captains personally executes each and every invalid. GDI sees this as Nod denying them intelligence and prisoners.
- Big Damn Heroes: the GDI Marine Corps gets one when they save 4th battalion from a massive Nod counterattack.
- Havoc does this for Sandra Telfair in Chapter Sixteen.
- Big Damn Gunship: GDI Hammerhead gunships during the above.
- Blood Knight: Lieutenant Wallace, who seems to enjoy killing Nod simply for the sake of killing Nod.
- Boom Headshot: The only reliable way for a GDI infantryman to even slow down a Black Hand soldier is to shoot out his helmet's combat optics.
- Both averted and played straight by Sgt. Joshua Havers who sometimes takes the time to line up a shot, but will usually just shoot whatever body-part falls under his crosshairs first. Not that a headshot is all that important to a .50-caliber discarding-sabot round fired from a scoped RAILGUN.
- Bring My Brown Pants: In Chapter Sixteen, Corporal Bowles voids himself when he realizes he's being shot at by Mammoth Tanks.
- Bunny Ears Lawyer: Lt. Kirce James comes off as very self-important, overly serious and dramatic, but Karrde figured it didn't matter as she does her job incredibly well. I mean, what else can you say about a person who gets you such support as an Ion Cannon, the marines, a thousand Mammoth Tanks on short notice?
- Cannon Fodder: The Nod militants' main job is to tie up enemy troops.
- The Chains Of Commanding
As they rumbled off to battle, Alexander Karrde let the noise and the chaos slip away. He found a chair, and dropped down into it. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and his hands trembled.
- Brother-Captain Alvarez of the Black Hand is characterized by something similar, having been deeply affected by executing his own wounded while withdrawing from Washington. In contrast, Commander Rawne is notable for not being affected by the deaths of his troops, if only because he refuses to get close to them in order to remain detached.
- Chekovs Gun: Those Reckoners Havoc captures early on in the story? They're used to destroy an Avatar and allow Havoc's rag-tag band of irregulars to retake the White House.
- Church Militant: The Brotherhood of Nod, in spades. Doubly so for the Black Hand.
- Cluster F Bomb: Colonel Creden of the GDI 2nd Heavy Armored, a british officer who has a ridiculously foul mouth.
" . . . and I don't give a damn about the fucking collateral damage. I've got three million people to my arse who are going to be eating out Kane's crotch if we don't stop Nod, so blow the fuckers to shit and toss the rest."
- Cold Sniper: Sergeant "Simo" Havers and his spotter, Corporal Terrence
- Colonel Badass: Colonel Nick "Havoc" Parker, who comes back out of retirement.
- Complete Monster: Private Grigorovich, who establishes his sliminess the moment he tries to rape Sandra Telfair.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: Happens from time to time.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny: The low lighting in Nod's facilities exists only because Kane likes hearing his people smash their shins against low-hanging consoles.
- Chapter 18; not only does Rawne fall victim to Temple Prime's dim lights, but we get his thoughts on Kilian;
"Deep down, Rawne envied Kane, if only for the fact that he was surrounded by so many leggy blondes who felt the need to fondle him"
- Anyone else find the part where Brother-Captain Allen beats the rapist to death to be very darkly humorous?
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: Karrde's request for volunteers from the survivors of 4th Battalion, where he goes in expecting them to hate and deride him for getting so many of them killed. Instead, they almost all volunteer, believing that without his leadership, they would have been completely slaughtered. The response causes Karrde to tear up the moment he manages to get out of eyeshot of the troops.
- Death From Above: Anytime a named character gets into an aircraft's cockpit, something on the ground dies hard.
- Chapter Sixteen has a six-paragraph segment that consists of nothing but aircraft blowing the crap out of Nod troops and vehicles on the ground.
- Chapter Seventeen has the CBU-1007, a smart cluster bomb that dispenses a mixture of high explosive bomblets and white phosphorous incendiaries. It is described as "God scooped up a bucket of hell, took a piss in it, and then poured it down over the men below."
- Did Not Do The Research: For a story that is as well-researched as this, there are a few standout examples, such as one of the Oxen aircraft losing cabin pressure at far too low an altitude, and some errors regarding the difference between coilguns and railguns. The author had admitted that he knows more about infantry combat than tanks or aircraft.
- Dies Wide Shut: Averted in Chapter Sixteen.
- Dodge The Bullet: Cristos does this in Chapter Sixteen. Lampshaded by Gutierrez.
- Dynamic Entry: Brother-Captain Allen, while preventing Grigorovich's rape attempt on Sandra Telfair.
- From Rawne's perspective, during his first flesh-and-blood encounter with Kane, he might as well be meeting God.
- Earth Is A Battlefield: Especially once Nod gets going.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: Played with. perspectives shift between both elite troops and regular infantrymen, especially on the Nod side of things, though focus is more often than not on Black Hand troops.
- Encyclopedia Exposita: At the end of certain chapters, there will be excerpts from Fictional Documents that explain various elements of the author's view of the Tiberium universe. Subjects range from GDI infantry organization to Tiberium-based economics to analysis of Nod's power structure.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The Brotherhood of Nod may be loose on the rules of war, but certain crimes such as rape are classified as "Crimes Against the Messiah" and are punished by summary execution.
- In Chapter Sixteen, Lieutenant Cristos comments to herself that she believes Nod has "some semblance of a moral code," unlike her perception of GDI.
- Eyepatch Of Power: Commander Karrde lost his eye during a battle sometime between the Second and Third Tiberium War, and replaced it with an artificial one. Word Of God from the author on Spacebattles.com is that it was lost during the Rio Uprising in Kane's Wrath, which involved both Commander Rawne and LEGION. The Rio bit has entered the fic proper as of Chapter Eighteen, and LEGION in Nineteen.
- Eye Scream: Private Marona's eyes being shredded by shrapnel.
- Fan Fic Chopsuey: A rare example of the trope done incredibly well.
- Feel No Pain: Anyone under the effect of Nod combat stims.
- Fix Fic
- Frickin Laser Beams: Nod uses them quite extensively, and the Black Hand mix up laser weapons with their flamethrowers - even the flame troopers carry laser pistols for close-quarters work where they can't set everything they see on fire.
- Gorn: Happens from time to time, where the author seems to take a little too much enthusiasm in describing just how brutal the combat really is.
- Genre Shift: The specialty of the 'fic is portraying war as realistically and terribly as possible... with the exception of the parts of the story involving Havoc, who seems to be enjoying himself immensely and somehow emits a reality-warping aura that allows him to behave as if he was in a Schwarzenegger or Stallone 'flick. This is justified because hell, he's Havoc, and by the Rule of Awesome.
- Green Rocks: The most horrifying substance known to exist, Tiberium.
- Grey And Gray Morality: Neither GDI nor Nod are represented as angels, nor are they overwhelmingly villainous. Atrocities, brutality, compassion, and mercy occur with troops on both sides.
- Grim Dark: Shouldn't come as any surprise, considering the source material, but this fic is notable for making the Tiberium setting Darker And Edgier, and doing it well.
- Gun Porn: Considering the author's love of guns and the military, this comes as no surprise.
- Handsome Lech: Commander Rawne is an unabashed skirt-chaser, and at one point he promotes an attractive female soldier who was wounded in battle to his personal guard, and gives her improved eye implants to replace the damage she suffered to her own. It is implied the only reason he did this is because she's cute. Later on, Kilian Qatar "bribes" Rawne by giving him a billet in a mostly-female Hand of Nod. Rawne is very appreciative.
- Rawne's lechiness is traceable even in the first chapter:
Rawne: "I will admit that even I managed to notice the troops massing here."
Alvarez: "You only noticed there were many more Sisters present than normal."
- He Who Fights Monsters: Havoc's words of wisdom from Chapter 18. The last part is Leaning On The Fourth Wall a bit.
We forge futures out of pain and grief, Commander. The computers and the communications officers and the EV As and the displays only serve to isolate us so we can be inhuman. We're monsters, son. Cold, mechanical, rational monsters, and the only way we win is by being colder, more mechanical, and more rational than the next monster moving his little pieces on the screen. That's how war has been fought since Stalin rolled into the Allies a century ago. You point, you click, and they die. It's how it works.
- Hero Of Another Story: Colonel Franklin of the Pentagon Guards, Major Norman of Talon Squadron, and Major Hagen of Skull Squadron.
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: At least one reviewer has described the descriptions of Nod's combat stim drugs to be genuinely terrifying.
- Hold The Line: the defense of the Pentagon.
- Humongous Mecha: Nod Avatars. Despite the author being vocal in thinking bipedal walkers are impractical, they're portrayed as terryifyingly powerful.
- I Did What I Had To Do: Brother-Captain Alvarez executing his own wounded.
- Immune To Bullets: Black Hand troopers are practically invulnerable to most GDI weapons; even headshots aren't a reliable kill.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Cristos, a Nod commando, manages to shoot the fuse off a thrown grenade.
- Kill It With Fire: Standard operating procedure for the Black Hand.
Their work was quick and efficient. Tongues of blazing fire leapt from their weapons' nozzles, white-hot fury engulfing the building. Allen's men divided up the front of the four-story building into individual areas of responsibility, and they put quick jets of fire into each window and doorway they saw. Glass melted, paint blistered, and ceramic wept orange tears as it melted under their wrath.
He thought he heard screaming, but over the roar of the flames, he couldn't be sure.
- PFC Cale Winters notes that his white phosphorous grenades are actually able to cut clean through the combat stims and actually hurt Nod troops, if only a little.
- Flame tanks. The description of the flame tanks in action is chilling.
White-hot flames lanced out in a ragged, conical spread, washing over the entire group of soldiers. Brick and asphalt were melted and smoothed into steaming glass. Armor simply sloughed off in an instant, liquefied and spreading out in glowing pools of molten plastic and ceramic. Flesh was incinerated outright, the soldiers not even having time to scream before the fires reduced them to ash. Flashes of light came as the Zone Troopers' power packs cooked off and exploded like demolition charges.
- Kill Sat: GDI's iconic Ion Cannon, which gets a near Scenery Porn-esque description the first time it fires.
- Loads And Loads Of Characters: Whose population are kept in check through very violent means.
- To give you a rough idea, the author has a separate text document solely devoted to force organization, and apparently filled out the entire battalion roster for the 103rd Recon Division's 4th Battalion. To put this in perspective, 4th Battalion is explictly said at one point to have more than five-hundred and fifty soldiers in it. And they're only one of the units focused on in the story.
- Magnificent Bastard: Kane, of course.
- To give you a rough idea, at the end of Chapter Sixteen, virtually the entire army assaulting the Pentagon is destroyed, GDI is counterattacking, and he's lost more than a million soldiers in a single day of fighting, and his response is to smile and remark that everything is going exactly as planned.
- Manly Tears: Karrde in Chapter Seventeen.
- Meaningful Name: Corporal Damon Goodman, who, surprise, turns out to be a decent guy. Sandra Telfair ends up killing him while escaping, though not without it affecting her.
- Mercy Kill: A strange example in Chapter Seventeen, where Brother-Captain Alvarez executes his own wounded troops at the White House because he believes that they will be tortured and raped by GDI if captured.
- Minovsky Particle: Tiberium, as a whole, which is a departure from how it has been handled in the actual series.
- Mood Whiplash: Annual Black Hand Taco Fiesta
It was a Ragnarok in a bottle. Judgment Day in a can. A little slice of the Four Horsemen charging in with horns sounding and seals breaking, of Fenrir snapping his jaws shut on the world, of the universe kicking Bahamut in the crotch to cause the world to tip into the cosmic seas.
- More Dakka: Oh, yeah.
- New Meat: PFC Cale Winters.
- No One Gets Left Behind: An exceptionally brutal example in Chapter Seventeen, where Brother-Captain Alvarez holds his position at the White House to allow Nod troops to evacuate to safety and to receive wounded. His position is eventually overrun, and he executes the remaining wounded to keep them from being captured by GDI.
- Not Quite Dead: Lieutenant Wallace
- Oh Crap: both sides, quite often. Corporal Colt has a particularly potent one when he spots the Black Hand.
- Apparently, GDI training instills a deep fear of the Black Hand in every soldier. Considering how the Black Hand are portrayed, it's not surprising.
- Nod soldiers have this reaction when they first catch sight of Mammoth Tanks.
- No Holds Barred Beatdown: Brother-Captain Allen proceeds to beat the tar out of Grigorovich after the latter attempts to rape Telfair; quoting rules from the Nod handbook while doing so (and causing some pretty severe damage to the room they're in). Then he throws him out a window. I think everybody was rooting for Allen in this particular instance, I know I was.
- The Nod invasion itself can be considered one of these, too.
- The fight between Gutierrez and Cristos in Chapter Sixteen, too.
- Pet The Dog: Rawne gets one when he opts to push up Private Marona's eye implants to top priority, and gives her an upgrade so she can return to active duty instead of being stuck in a rear posting.
- Brother-Captain Allen gets one when he prevents Grigorovich from raping Sandra Telfair.
- Corporal Damon Goodman is one big Pet The Dog for all of Nod. Shame that he gets his throat cut a few minutes later.
- Plot Tumor: the author has admitted that these creep in from time to time, with side stories about individual groups of soldiers rising up to take up major narrative roles, such as the skirmishes involving Mitchell Colt, or Sandra Telfair being captured by the Black Hand.
- Powered Armor: GDI's Zone Troopers and Nod's Black Hand.
- Pretty Little Headshots: brutally averted; nearly every shot to the head thus far has resulted in a massive mess.
- Punch Clock Villain: The Nod soldiers range from bloodthirsty fanatics fighting for the Church Militant to ordinary, decent soldiers and everything in between.
- Reality Ensues: Characters die. A lot. And many of those deaths are very shitty, sudden, and, overall, realistic. In fact, one of the few truly dramatic deaths ( Lieutenant Wallace's} ends up being subverted.
- Refuge In Audacity: In Chapter 15, the suicidal Zone Trooper charge. The Nod troops are literally stunned into holding fire for a moment.
- Peptuck has obviously read retired USMC NCO William S. Frisbee Jr.'s essay on psychological warfare.
- Retired Badass: Colonel Nick "Havoc" Parker
- Right Hand Versus Left Hand: The story explores the conflict between Redmond Boyle and General Malcolm Granger, indicating that both of them are to a degree, equally right.
- Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Only a slight hint at the Scrin's presence thus far, but that slight hint is pretty chilling.
- Scenery Gorn: The author decries the violence and destruction with lengthy, multi-paragraph relish. The battle between the Mammoth Tanks and the Avatars outside the Pentagon deliberately uses imagery evocative of clashing gods and The End Of The World As We Know It.
- Semper Fi: the GDI Marine Corps.
- Shout Out: Numerous.
Shout Outs
- Lots of shout-outs to Warhammer 40000; for example, the Commander of the Nod forces is named Rawne, one of the female GDI troopers is named Penlan, GDI uses heavily armored infantry squads referred to as "Armored Fist" platoons, and Nod troops, especially the Black Hand, refer to one another as "Brother" similar to Space Marines. The Avatar pilots being wired into their machines is quite evocative of Dreadnoughts, and on that matter, "Avatar of Kane." And the members of the GDI 4th Recon Battalion are vague expies of the Ghosts.
- A subtle shout-out occurs when Corporal Colt spots approaching Black Hand troops: "Target the Black Hand. Target the Black Hand! Target EVERYONE! SOMEBODY FIRE!"
- Sergeant Bendis seems to be another play to Firefly, as he shares a name with an unfortunate private in the series' pilot. Like said private, Bendis is killed when his position is overrun.
- But then, it shouldn't really be any surprise that the author uses a lot of Firefly references, as he is a fan of the series, and has a recommended fanfic in that fandom here too.
- GDI Commander Karrde, who shares a name with a certain smuggler in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
- In one chapter, there is a brief scene involving a quartet of GDI troops riding a Pitbull, where the fireteam acts much like the Marines in Generation Kill; one of the troopers is even eating coffee crystals right out of the bag, just like in the book.
- There's a reference to Mass Effect in the form of a reporter named Emily Wong, as well as her cameraman Tim, whose description resembles that of the "gargoyles" from Snow Crash.
- There's a shout out to the Gears Of War commercials at the beginning of Chapter 14, with the poem "Rendezvous With Death" by Alan Seeger quoted at the beginning of the chapter.
- "Simo" Havers' nickname is a reference to Simo Häyhä, who is generally considered the greatest sniper in history.
- Chapter Sixteen has a very, very brief glimpse at the Scrin, with what is presumably the AI controlling their mothership. The AI is referred to as a "Mind".
- There's also one near the end of chapter 3.
- Chapter Sixteen also includes references to the early Metal Gear series, including the Zanzibar Land hamsters.
- Chapter Seventeen has a group of recon troopers with the callsign of Caprica, and also has "Jericho" cluster missiles. There's also a Master Sergeant Lyons, which may be a reference to Fallout 3.
- The Mammoth Tank nicknamed "Plaited Daisies" is a reference to a ship in Schlock Mercenary.
- The Nod commando's name, Cristos, might be a reference to Oxanna Kristos from Tiberian Sun.
- In Chapter Fifteen, while Sergent Bendis is being treated by a medic, he yells, "Where the fuck did you learn field medicine? Butcher school?"
- In Chapter 18, LEGION'S preferred voice of choice is Tim Curry. Rawne even comments that if LEGION starts singing Sweet Transvestite, he's shooting his way out.
- Shown Their Work: the author sometimes goes out of his way to show an understanding of military tactics and firearms, with particular emphasis on small-unit tactics.
- Especially command and unit structure, going so far as to have a separate document to track everyone in the story.
- Sliding Scale Of Idealism Vs Cynicism: Strongly cynical. It does depict a war, after all.
- Squick: From chapter 14:
As he did so, a fresh wave of pain flashed through him from his leg. He looked down, filthy brown water dripping off his nose and hair, and saw the nasty waste was seeping into his wound. The pool of brown fluid was already darkening with his blood.
- Take That: the author is...vocal...about his hatred for the official novelization, and includes a few choice jabs at the book. At one point Havoc pulls off a shot with a handgun at long range that deliberately mocks a similair scene in the book.
The Nod biker was a hundred meters away, with a dozen Nod soldiers between him and the man by Nigel's bike. A normal soldier, straight out of boot on his first day, would never have made that kind of shot with a pistol. Even an experienced target shooter might find it difficult.
But that was why they called him "Havoc."
- The author also admits he hates Humongous Mecha, and goes on a couple of rants about them.
- Tank Goodness: Nod Scorpions, GDI Predators, and in the most recent chapter, Mammoth Tanks.
- Tempting Fate
Everything was going according to plan, and it would take an act of God to stop this advance.
- Took A Level In Badass: Sandra Telfair goes from surrendering without a fight to slitting a man's throat, gunning down a few more, and blinding a Black Hand to escape. However, it's presented in an extremely plausible way, given the circumstances.
- Unexpected Genre Change: Chapter 11 has a sudden shift to focusing on Firehawk pilots and an air-to-air battle with Nod Venoms.
- Unflinching Walk: Havoc does one of these after killing a Nod Avatar.
- Unusual User Interface: Nod Avatars work with a sort of mind/machine interface that involves the pilot being closely linked to the Avatar and the AI controlling it. As a result, the pilot effectively shares his mind with a machine intelligence, and controls the Avatar as an extension of his own body.
- War Fic: Of course.
- War Is Hell: GDI troops covered in dirt and grime, men bleeding out while looking for limbs, Nod soldiers wading through rivers of excrement (with one man even getting some of it into a fresh bullet wound!), soldiers being burnt alive, a soldier remarking that they found one too many left hands while clearing a bombed-out bunker, and one extremely chilling pre-chapter quote about a GDI trooper seeing a young girl missing both her legs...
"There was a little girl. Maybe, eight years old? I dunno. She'd lost both her legs. Just kept staring at them. Little stumps, cauterized by fire somehow. A little girl, all alone, looking at where her legs were, not understanding anything. Just . . . staring. Blank little eyes. Staring."
- At one point, Kane even casually remarks that a million people have died before the end of the first day of the war.
- That's a million on each side, plus several times as many civilians.
- And three weeks into the war, GDI has managed to fill an entire stadium with three hundred thousand body bags from the casualties around Washington DC alone.
- The death of Corporal Goodman seems to be a deliberate play to this. His death is fundamentally disturbing, as not moments before he was feeding Sandra Telfair, and apologizing to her for the rape attempt on her by his squadmate. And then she's forced to cut his throat to escape.
- There's also the fact that the story didn't shy away from the danger of female POWs being raped, to the point that the Brotherhood actually authorizes summary execution of anyone caught in the act.
- Chapter Sixteen shows what its like to be on the receiving end of a Mammoth Tank assault. Its about as hellish and terrifying as one can imagine.
- Brother-Captain Alvarez executing his own wounded because he believes they will be tortured and raped by GDI troops if captured is one of the most stark examples of just how cruel war can really be.
- The War Room: numerous; the Nod and GDI officers spend just about all their time being shuffled from one war room to the next.
- Warrior Monk: The Black Hand, a pious brotherhood of elite soldiers with the equipment and dedication to stride through firefights without wavering. They also seem to display more chivalry than the average Nod fanatic, but are no less devoted to Kane for it. Making them Command And Conquer's equivalent to Space Marines is both obvious and awesome.
- We Have Reserves:
Commander Logan Rawne leaned back in his chair, watching his chess pieces advance. He had lost countless troops and vehicles thus far, but he had a glut of resources on hand. He cared nothing for his losses; he knew any true Brother or Sister would give his or her life gladly for the cause.
- What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: The battle between the Avatars and the Mammoths in Chapter Sixteen has description and imagery evocative of Armaggeddon.
- The Women Are Safe With Us: Well they're safe with the Black Hand, at any rate.
- The Woobie: Lieutenant Sandra Telfair, who is injured, captured by Nod, beaten and nearly raped, and has to cut a man's throat to escape, which clearly traumatizes her.
- Your Head Asplode: rather frequent, whenever a laser beam or sniper round hits someone in the head.
- You Shall Not Pass: Lieutenant Wallace and the remains of his Zone Trooper squad hold off the Nod forces for several minutes so the rest of their battalion can evacuate to the Pentagon.
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