Franchise / League of Legends

League of Legends describes the franchise beginning with Riot Games' Spiritual Successor to the widely popular Warcraft III custom map, Defense of the Ancients. League of Legends has since exploded into a massive multimedia world of shared settings, characters, and stories centered in the fantastical world of Runeterra.

The original game's popularity spawned a board game titled Mechs Vs. Minions and a Heavy Metal virtual band called Pentakill. And on the occasion of the game's 10th anniversary in 2019, Riot announced a massive slew of new projects based on League of Legends including a streamlined mobile port of the game called Wild Rift, a mobile port of Teamfight Tactics gameplay mode, the digital CCG Legends of Runeterra which entered open beta in early 2020, the 2D fighting game 2XKO, a top-down multiplayer adventure game currently known as "Project F", and even a management sim called LoL Esports Manager. Other announcements included the animated series Arcane, as well as their new publishing division, Riot Forge, dedicated to third-party/indie development of League-related side games, and would publish games between 2021 to 2024.

In mid-December 2020, Rioter Ghostcrawler casually revealed on Twitter that Riot had begun development on the much-desired League of Legends MMORPG.

Other media includes:

Animation

• Tales of Runeterra (2020 - ongoing): A series of shorts by Axis Studios to promote the games, each one centering on different champions and settings.
• Arcane (2021 - ongoing): A television series animated by Fortiche Productions.
• Valoran Town (2023): An animated series of Slice of Life shorts, taking place in a modern-looking Alternate Universe.

Comics

• League Of Legends: A tie-in series with Marvel Comics, each story centered on a different champion.
  • League of Legends: Ashe, Warmother (2018-2019)
  • League of Legends: Lux (2019)
  • League of Legends: Zed (2019-2020)
• Katarina: A prelude series to The Mageseeker; published on Webtoon.

Literature

• Garen: First Shield (2020)
• Ruination: A League of Legends Novel (2022)

Live-Action TV

• Players (2022)

Music

• Pentakill
• K/DA
• True Damage
• Heartsteel

Tabletop Games

• Mechs vs. Minions (2016)
• Tellstones: King's Gambit (2020)

Video Games

• League of Legends (2009)
  • Teamfight Tactics (2019)
• Legends of Runeterra (2020)
• League Of Legends: Wild Rift (2020)
• Ruined King (2021)
• Hextech Mayhem (2021)
• The Mageseeker (2023)
• CONV/RGENCE (2023)
• Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story (2023)
• Bandle Tale (2024)
• 2XKO (2025)
• Untitled MMORPG (TBA)

The Characters pages list every commercially-released champion, detailing tropes related to their backstory, appearance, and gameplay mechanics, and a few other characters to boot. The numerous memes spawned by the community can be found here. The numerous Shout Outs to other medias can be found here. For details on the professional teams and its members, see Professional Gaming under the MOBA folder. For the truly daring, the Drinking Game page can be viewed here. Recaps on individual stories in the universe can be found here.

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Tropes have spawned!

• Aborted Arc: The entirety of the pre-retcon lore, aside from a few archetypal starting points for some champions, and even that's not a guarantee. In an extensive post, Riot said the old lore was extremely limiting and prevented them from truly exploring unique and interesting avenues for their characters. They weren't wrong, as the old lore was filled with Excuse Plots, excessive Fanservice, and other general nonsense. So, they started over. Clean slate. The lore since then has taken many by surprise.
• Aerith and Bob: There are champions with names like "Annie", "Vladimir", and "Diana", as well as ones with more exotic names like "Rek'Sai", "Teemo", and "Thresh".
• All Love Is Unrequited: Zoe has a crush on Ezreal, who is implied to have a crush on Lux, who is either uninterested or oblivious. Averted in Alternate Universe versions of Lux and Ezreal, as Star Guardian Ezreal is treated as an Implied Love Interest to Lux and in the Battle Academia universe, they seem to be dating.
• Alternate Universe: Quite a number of the alternate skins for champions play with this, with in-game skin descriptions and other promotional materials tying them together in similar thematic universes. More information can be found on the Groups and Skin Themes page, but some notable ones:
  • Academy: The champions live as students, teachers, and professors in high-school. Taken further with the Riot-endorsed series of Academy Adventures fan comics, which shows exactly what happens when you have a school filled with super powerful beings who have much of their original personalities.
  • Arcade: The champions are video game characters... wait a minute...
  • Battlecast (or "The Evolution"): Viktor has realized his Glorious Evolution. In turn, he's created a number of machine monstrosities, based on several void champions, Xerath, and Skarner.
  • PROJECT: The champions are part of a Cyberpunk future, and turned into cyborgs meant for battle, and forced to often undergo torturous memory wipes to suppress their humanity and memories of their former lives. Master Yi in particular has suffered from this, but has flashes of his original memories. However, a resistance faction led by Ashe have broken away to avoid having their memories of their human selves taken away, and fight to free other PROJECT members from being used as mere weapons.
  • Pulsefire: Future setting where champions have access to time travel and other alternate universes. Ezereal has become a "time explorer", but is actually considered a criminal because of his habit of taking artifacts from their correct timelines, causing the butterfly effect. He is now chased after by this universe's Caitlyn as she tries to stop him and others who negatively effect the various time streams from their rightful course.
  • Rift Quest: A number of the champions re-imagined as characters in several Dungeons & Dragons Tabletop RPG parties.
  • Star Guardian: Champions living in a modern day world, school students by day, and Magical Girl Warriors by night. Two parties exist: the first of Lux, Lulu, Janna, Jinx, and Poppy, and the second of Ahri, Miss Fortune, Soraka, Syndra, Neeko and Ezreal with Zoe, Rakan and Xayah being treated as the Big Bad.
  • Pentakill: Mordekaiser, Yorick, Karthus, Olaf, Sona, and Kayle as members of a Death Metal rock band. Defictionalized with Riot's in-house band Pentakill releasing an actual album, with songs named after various items, gameplay features, and lore pieces.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Seemingly invoked by The Void and the Shadow Isles but subverted when you read up on their characters and lore. It's certainly the case for a majority of champions in those factions, but not all of them.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Each region but Targon has a Yordle that exemplifies their region's overall traits:
  • Piltover has Heimerdinger, a gentlemanly scientist with a love for Hextech.
  • Zaun has Ziggs, a student of Heimerdinger's who is both more creative and destructive than his master, loving bombs above any other kind of invention and being at least a little mad.
  • Noxus once had Veigar, an Obviously Evil dark mage and pawn of Mordekaiser. Since Mordekaiser's fall this role has been filled by Kled instead, representing Noxus' bloodthirst, individuality, and refusal to ever give up.
  • Poppy represents Demacia's finest virtues; she is just, honourable, and a defender of the weak, while also being humble to a fault, causing her to not realize she is the Hero Orlon forged his legendary hammer for.
  • Fizz represents both Bilgewater's people, being a Wild Card trickster out for himself, and its sea life, being an aquatic Yordle.
  • Kennen represents Ionia as a highly spiritual Yordle with a connection to both the spirit world and the human world, attempting to keep both in balance through his position as The Heart of the Kinkou.
  • Rumble represents Shurima as a life-worn, irritable Yordle who makes mechanical marvels with what scraps he can get his hands on. Shurima is torn between many battles (with the Void, Noxus, and Azir attempting to reclaim the Throne of Shurima) and its people are similarly hardened and must make do with what few trades they can ply. Piltover, the region most often associated with high-tech machinery, was also once part of Shurima.
  • Vex represents the Shadow Isles with her deep gloom, hatred of the living, and appreciation for the dead.
• Arch-Enemy: The League is host to several of pairs of champions who would love to see each other dead. See the various character pages for details.
• Art Evolution:
  • As part of League's ever-evolving nature, its artstyle and fidelity began as a mostly amateur-quality, with splash arts being poses of in-game models, voiceovers being brief and limited, etc. As Riot's resources and talent continually increases, they've taken to greatly update assets they deem outdated in many different fields, from higher-quality splash arts, to entire champion relaunches that rebuild their art, model, effects, audio, and voices to modern standards. An extensive list of individual updates for each champion can be found on the wiki.
  • Wild Rift, in spite of being a mobile version of the game, was built from scratch using much better graphical technology and resources than what the PC game had up to 10 years prior, so many of the older champions have received enormously improved models, animations, splash arts, and other assets compared to their PC counterparts.
• The Artifact: Before the great retconning, the League of Legends itself descended into this. It's one of the primary reasons why Riot went through with the retcon.
• Artifact Title: Double Subverted, in that while the in-universe organization of the League of Legends has been retconned, it could be considered that the game itself is a league of actual legends, with many characters since the retcon either being ethereal beings who couldn't possibly be restrained if the League had still existed such as Bard or Kindred, or Folk Heroes given flesh for combat such as Kled and Kindred.
• Ascended Meme: As to be expected for a regularly-updating game by a development team that regularly interacts with the community, many. See the Memes page for more.
• Athens and Sparta: Piltover and Zaun have this dynamic, with Piltover being the clean, shining beacon of achievement to Zaun's polluted, grungy atmosphere. The twist is that they are the same city and that Piltover has only been able to get so far by exploiting the working class in Zaun.
• Back from the Dead: A number of champions invoke this as well such as Yone, Sion, Viego, and Pantheon.
• Bait-and-Switch Lesbians: Former lore writer Runaan wrote a Twitter post where she accused Riot of queerbaiting with Graves and Twisted Fate after the Double Double Cross cinematic. Within the post, she explained she had been trying to write the pair as married for years and faced open hostility about it from her higher-ups, only for Riot to claim the Homoerotic Subtext between the pair was intentional after the fandom responded positively to it, suggesting that teasing the pair was okay but actually having the two be married was unacceptable.
  • As of 2022, the pair have received confirmation with the release of several Pride-related emotes.
• Battle Couple: A few champions are in romantic relationships with each other and fight alongside each other in the lore. They can also be made to fight against each other on the Rift.
  • Xayah and Rakan, the Vastayan freedom fighters, a classic case of Uptight Loves Wild and Ladykiller in Love.
  • Vi and Caitlyn have received a fair bit of Ship Tease over the years, especially in Arcane where the two have a heavily romantic-coded dynamic. As such, the two of them canonically fight many battles together, like against Urgot in Warriors, and have a special passive in League which rewards bonus gold if they score takedowns together.
  • For years Lucian was only one of these in his backstory, but his wife Senna was restored to life in 2019 and they're resumed their former relationship and job as monster hunters.
  • Ashe and Tryndamere are a married couple, and although it was at least initially a political marriage to help Ashe unite the Freljord, it's been confirmed that they do actually care for each other.
  • Graves and Twisted Fate are this plus Outlaw Couple, putting a heavy action-comedy twist on the trope where they'll bicker Like an Old Married Couple during gunfights and fall for obvious traps together. Though the two do show an attraction to each other, they're both also too stubborn to admit it properly.
  • Subverted with the game's most prominently-shipped couple, Garen and Katarina, who actually would be more likely to fight against each other, but meet up for dinner dates in secret after dark.
  • Leona and Diana are canonically at odds to their warring factions, but can still team up in-game to fight alongside each other.
  • Varus is actually a Fusion Dance of a gay couple, a pair of Ionian hunter-warriors called Kai and Valmar, combined into one body which they share with the Darkin Varus that possesses their bow.
• Battle Cry: Lux, Jarvan IV, and Garen all shout DEMACIA! This proceeded to be parodied, many times, by other champions.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism:
  • Mild case with the Yordles. From the champions we're shown, female Yordles are always blue-furred with white hair (Tristana, Poppy), while male Yordles vary from having tan fur (Corki), tan fur and blonde hair (Heimerdinger), to looking like anthropomorphic hamsters (Kennen, Teemo, Rumble). This is mostly to pin on them originally being two races (Meglings and Yordles) that were Retconned into one, and later designs tend to downplay this trope. This became more downplayed in Legends of Runeterra which showed more female yordles with the previously "male" coloration such as the Yuumi's master Norra, as well as a few males with coloured fur like the Yordle Smith.
  • Many of the Vastayan champs face this issue as well. With the exception of Rakan, most of the men like Rengar and Wukong are depicted as more animalstic in appearance, while all of the women are Cute Monster Girls at most (like Nami and Neeko), and Little Bit Beastly at the least such as Ahri and Xayah.
• Cain and Abel: Siblings of Runeterra seem to be incapable of getting along with almost all depictions of family being on opposing sides of the various conflicts throughout the world. Even Lux and Garen who get along quite well for the most part only do so by ignoring the giant elephant in the room that is the fact that Lux is a mage and Garen is suppose to kill or arrest any mage he finds. According to Braum everyone in the Freljord comes from the same family, and they are all constantly fighting.
• Cast of Snowflakes: In addition to each champion having a very different physical appearance, they each perform a very unique role in team compositions, at least in theory.
• Darker and Edgier: The lore, and game as a whole, became this as it grew and matured. Originally, League was just a fun game with campy characters, pop culture references, and enough Fanservice to bleed the nose of the Pope. When Riot decided to start over with the lore and make a clean slate, things changed. Blatant Fanservice, while still continues in fun skins, was toned down in base champion appearances. Pop culture references became limited to in-game jokes, and newer champions started acting in much more serious and complex ways. Compare older champions who haven't been updated yet to one released or updated since the retcon, and the divide is really noticeable.
• Family-Unfriendly Death:
  • In contrast to the mostly Bloodless Carnage of the earlier cinematics, several of the champions killed in 'A New Dawn' suffer quite nasty deaths: Draven gets ripped apart by Rengar's claws, with his blood flying everywhere, Katarina gets her head blown off by Graves' explosive round-firing shotgun, Jax is smashed to death by Nautilus' gigantic anchor, Graves has his back broken by the same anchor and uses his Collateral Damage shell to blow himself up, and Nautilus is brutally crushed flat under the massive stone pillar Graves' sacrifice collapses on him. Averted by Zyra and Darius, who are killed by Ahri's magic, which isn't that painful-looking and Leona, who actually survived being smashed with Darius' giant axe.
  • Arcane has quite a few deaths in its first season alone, including many that are quite graphic. Mylo and Claggor for example, two young boys mind you, are both killed in an explosion that ends with them being cut up and stabbed by debris and then crushed by a falling ceiling.
• Fanservice: Zig-zagged. In the game's earlier years, it had a large reputation of being a Hotter and Sexier MOBA with many a Ms. Fanservice present in the early roster. As time has went on, the game has tended to skew more canonically modest designs, with pure fanservice being relegated to the occasional non-canon skins, and even that alternates on an individual champion basis. This also applies to male champions, similarly alternating between modest and fanservice-y for those who are interested.
• Fantastic Firearms: The Sentinels of Light, such as Lucian, Senna, Akshan and Vayne, all use "relic-stone" weapons that run on light magic, perfect for fighting the undead and creatures born from darkness. This means as long as the user has their soul to draw from, they don't need actual bullets to fight.
  Lucian: "How do you kill what's already dead? With a fistful of gunlight."
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: A lot of champions and their cultures/ethnic groups draw inspiration from real world ones in a way that influences their visuals, voices, and homelands.
  • Piltover and Zaun combine element of Victorian England and modern punk aesthetics. A lot of Piltovans like Caitlyn and Camille have posh British accents as a result, while the lower class society of Zaun sound more Cockney.
  • The Freljord resembles Nordic-Scandinavian cultures like Denmark and Norway. Many champions like the demigods, such as Volibear and Ornn, have runic decor across their design, whereas human champions like Udyr borrow from shamanistic aesthetics.
  • Shurima Combines North African and Middle Eastern aesthetics such as those of ancient Egypt, hence why the emperor Azir resembles the Egyptian god Ra. Many others have Arab elements like Sivir, Taliyah and Samira, the latter of whom has an Arab accent.
  • Ixtal derives it's look from Mesoamerican groups like the Aztec and Mayans. Qiyana, the representative of the region, has a Mexican-Spanish accent as a result.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Downplayed; guns, cannons, and other gunpowder-based weapons exist in various places across Runeterra and are wielded by many champions, but they're not omnipresent, not merely because magic exists (the lore has shown that firearms are perfectly valid weapons), but because guns are expensive; through a combination of monetary value, required resources, and level of expertise needed to craft them. Guns are more prominent in Piltover and Zaun specifically because they are so much richer than most of Runeterra, but they're still not produced en masse due to the resources —most prominently, hextech crystals— still being scarce, or with the case of Zaun, the manufacturing itself often being hasty and reckless to keep up with high demand.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: League's champions draw from all sorts of lore and genres of both fantasy and sci-fi. There's are your standard wizards, warriors, and rangers, but there's also a Kumiho, Sun Wukong, various flavors of Bare-Fisted and Warrior Monks, Eldritch Abominations that want to gain knowledge by vaporizing the things it analyzes, vampires, werewolves, characters that wouldn't feel out of place in the genre of Wooden Ships and Iron Men, the dual embodiment of death itself, a young Adventurer Archaeologist who has made a name for himself exploring ruins of a civilization that's an Expy of Ancient Egypt, the gods of said civilization, and a race of animal-like humanoids that are expert trackers and inventors. Oddly enough, outside of non-canon cosmetic skins, there's nary a mention of elves, dwarves or orcs, three staples of the fantasy genre. There are trolls, though. Riot specifically tries to invoke this in a unique way by taking something from stereotypical fantasy, and putting a unique and different spin on it.
• Fictional Constellations: In the lore, constellations are a significant cultural aspect on Mount Targon, as the constellations are each a symbol of the Aspects.
• Fun with Acronyms: Do you honestly think it was an accident that a name was chosen that could be shortened to "LOL"?
• A Good Name for a Rock Band:
  • "Pentakill" (the Announcer Chatter when one player kills 5 enemies in a very short space of time). It's been officially recognized, with Sona (on keyboard), Yorick (on bass guitar), Mordekaiser (on guitar/axe), Karthus (lead singer), Kayle (backup singer), and Olaf (drums) getting Pentakill skins.
  • The same principle was given for "K/DA" (a play on the Kill/Death/Assist ratio), an edgy K-Pop-inspired Girl Group featuring Ahri, Akali, Kai'Sa, and Evelynn as members, each getting K/DA skins.
  • After the success of K/DA, Riot followed up with True Damage (the third damage type after physical and magic, which ignores defensive stats and cannot be reduced), a rap group featuring Akali (who split off from K/DA to form it), Qiyana, Senna, Ekko, and Yasuo.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: An anti-villainous version occurs with the three factions fighting for control of the Freljord. Ashe is the most conventionally Good, fighting for peace and unity. Sejuani is the Bad, being perfectly willing to raid and pillage innocent villages. And then there's Lissandra, who while having the noble goal of delaying the Watchers' return, loosely fits Evil due to the extremes she goes to and her occasional megalomaniacal tendencies. (Before Lissandra was rewritten to be an anti-villain this was played much more straight.)
• I Call It "Vera": A lot of champions name their weapons. Miss Fortune's twin pistols are named Shock and Awe, Graves' enormous shotguns are Destiny and New Destiny, Jinx has Pow-Pow the minigun and Fishbones the rocket launcher, Trundle has his giant club Boneshiver, and more.
• Improbable Weapon User: When you have over 150 characters who need to be unique and distinct from each other, you end up with a LOT of these.
  • Jax currently provides the page image for being a renowned master of many weapons, but presently chooses to wield a lamppost. Admittedly, it's implied to be tinged with ancient Icathian light, but viably wielding a lamppost against enemies with swords, guns, or magic is quite the accomplishment.
  • Gragas beats people with a cask full of wine, which he also rolls or throws at people, causing it to violently explode.
  • When Nautilus was being dragged him to the ocean floor by some unknown force, he desperately tried to cling to his ship's anchor, but his former crewmates cut it loose. Now he uses it as a club and grappling hook.
  • Braum bashes people with a heavy metal door which he mainly carries as a shield (making it also a Shield Bash).
  • Illaoi is a priestess who crushes her opponents with her god's heavy golden idol. Judging from the handle on it, it was admittedly designed with this function in mind. Nagakabouros is not a gentle god.
• Insistent Terminology: The characters are champions, not heroes. This was a move by Riot to distance themselves from DOTA and its more direct clones though some players (and even professionals on-camera) still refer to them as heroes for familiarity and brevity. This also extends to the classes; while Riot has the term 'Marksman' to represent champions who deal physical damage from range, players called them all ADCs after doing so for years, but you'll rarely see a Rioter use the term, always using the term 'Marksman.'
• Loners Are Freaks: Exaggerated Trope for yordles - they require far more social interaction with their own kind than humans do, and so are generally kind and benevolent. If they are isolated from their own kind too long, they risk becoming sullen. If they already have a tendency toward immorality, they will become sadists; Veigar providing an extreme example of this (well, sorta).
• Mage Species: The highly spiritual and animalistic Vastaya, from which several Champions originate, are a race of chimeric beings who are greatly attuned to and fluent in utilizing the magic of Runeterra. This is because they are descended from the Vastayashai'rei, shapeshifting heroes of the ancient times. It is mentioned that human interference with the world has affected their magic, and in turn their birth rates.
• Magical Girl: The Star Guardian skin line invokes this. Their promotional website absolutely revels in being a blatant homage to Japanese Magical Girl Tropes, with its own Troperiffic side-lore and character profiles.
• Magitek: The technology Hextech is essentially this, but with Steampunk aesthetics. Hextech weapons and items basically are meant to allow anybody to use magic, whereas otherwise, in Runeterra, magic is only accessible by those born with it.
• Martial Pacifist: The faction of Ionia and the majority of its champions. As Noxus found out the hard way, just because they preach balance and pacifism, it doesn't mean they won't fight back hard against invasion and fight back dirtily if they have to.
• Monster and the Maiden: Downplayed with Lamb and Wolf, the Kindred. The two are a pair of spiritual entities representing death across Runeterra. Lamb is an anthropomorphic female... well, lamb in contrast to the much more animalistic male Wolf.
• Morality Kitchen Sink: Not only do individual characters run across the morality gamut, no major faction in Runeterra can be called a fully "good" or "evil" nation, making things close to Grey-and-Gray Morality. Those who ascribe to traditionally positive traits can also be guilty of negative traits and vice versa (for example, Noxus is a brutal expansionist meritocracy known for its intense Might Makes Right attitude, but protects everyone under its rule and gives them the same opportunity to succeed, at least in theory). There are also Big Goods with Runeterra's protective deities and pure Big Bads with grand omnicidal threats, most primarily that of The Void.
• Muggle in Mage Custody: Inverted with Sylas. He's a mageborn who is imprisoned for years by Demacia's intensely anti-magic government. He eventually escapes though and leads a rebellion of mages against the royal family.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Very few of the champions' actual names, but a great deal of their associated titles (The Terror of the Void, The Crimson Reaper, The Eternal Nightmare, The Saltwater Scourge, et cetera) count as these, especially if they're aligned to Noxus.
• Pac Man Fever: Invoked with the Arcade skin line, where characters are given outfits and ability effects heavily reminiscent of 80's-90's video games, retro-style graphics, bright colors, digitized sound effects and all.
• Power of the Void: The Void is an eldritch world that seeks to consume all that it encounters. This is exemplified in its associated champions, all of which 'hunger' for something, be it literal hunger, or something metaphorical like a hunger for knowledge or change.
• Queer Establishing Moment:
  • In Pride Month of 2021, Leona and Diana starred in a short story called "Rise With Me", firmly establishing the two as a canonically sapphic pairing. This was complimented by an emote of the two locking hands to form a heart.
  • Months after Leona and Diana's confirmation, Arcane released and featured an explicitly romantic dynamic between Vi and Caitlyn, two other champs that had been teased years before. Caitlyn's ASU that released soon after also added several lines alluding to their relationship.
  • After years of Homoerotic Subtext and internal conflicts among Riot management, TF and Graves received pretty blatant confirmation of being a male-loving-male couple on 2022's batch of Pride cosmetics. One of the items is an emote that bares a direct reference to Brokeback Mountain, a gay romantic drama about two cowboys.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Between Jarvan IV, Garen, Swain, Darius, Swain, Ashe, Tryndamere, and Sejuani, the game has quite a few badass royals and generals.
• Retcon:
  • The lore entries of many champions have changed over the years, some in slight details, others in major character overhauls. The Institute of War and the League itself have been officially retconned away due to Riot believing the original "Combat by Champion" idea mediated by all-powerful Summoners was too restricting for the IP, so the premise of the game is now "What If? important persons from Runeterra fought each other?" Keep in mind though, due to the insane amount of characters with interconnected lore, while all the stories have slowly been unified, some of the backstories are considerably outdated.
  • Even the Institute-era lore had retcons. Yordles and Meglings were originally separate races — the tiny Yordles varied from somewhat animalistic little critters like Teemo to gnome-looking fellows like Heimerdinger and Corki, while Meglings were equally tiny, blue-skinned and white-haired, but otherwise humanoid. This was eventually retconned to make Tristana and Poppy yordles as well, with female Yordles having a "Megling" appearance and male ones having a more furry or hairy appearance. Devs state that this change was made because players would be confused by two species of tiny humanoids at once, as well as being somewhat redundant in the first place.
  • The name of the tribe of warrior mountain-dwellers to which champions Pantheon and Leona belonged changed from the Stanpar to the Rakkor, most likely to make the parallels to the Greek Spartans a little less obvious.
  • At the same time Xayah and Rakan were released, Season 7 introduced the vastaya as a distinct taxonomy, essentially chimeric half-human/half animals. Several already-existing champions that fit the bill were retroactively made vastaya, including Ahri, Wukong and Nami, and other champions such as Udyr are implied to have vastayan blood.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter:
  • Poros appear on the Howling Abyss map, who are tiny furry ball-shaped animals with goat-like features and huge tongues that they frequently stick out like a dog. They were added to the map because playtesters thought the map was just a bit too dark and serious, and they've been considerable Breakout Characters ever since, taking the spotlight (until that went to Braum by its end) for the Trials of the Poro promotional video, then incorporated into "Legend of the Poro King" game mode, which introduces adorable variants such as gentlemen poros and astronaut poros.
  • Many of the Little Legends from Teamfight Tactics that serve as your playable "icon" are this, usually as fun-sized versions of monsters and critters from Runeterra's lore.
• Schrödinger's Canon:
  • Given that League of Legends as a video game isn't a directly linear, canon-integrated experience, what actually is canon is very much in flux. Especially after the game opted for a full reset of the universe to undo the limiting yet superfluous Combat by Champion dynamic, there are many conspicuous patches (whether they be storylines, worldbuilding aspects, or even entire playable characters) that appear greatly outdated and may or may not be strictly canon until Riot finally decides to mention them again. Riot may elect to overwrite them, redesign them entirely, sometimes they might be lightly adjusted and recontextualized with supplementary content, and sometimes they might undo their undoing of certain lore as they find a better way to integrate it. It can be really tricky to determine what's really in date and what is really canon, though fortunately, that's what the comprehensive Universe site is for.
  • The Ruined King saga falls into a bit of this by way of having a few "official", yet differing versions of the canon story playing at once: the comic miniseries, Steadfast Heart, which primarily depicts Senna and Lucian recruiting new Sentinels across Runeterra to battle Viego, and a client-based intra-gameplay Visual Novel called Rise of the Sentinels, a much lighter, more comedic and action-y version that also vastly expands its cast to include more antagonists, from Ruined champions to more encounters with Viego himself. While their general trajectory is the same, it's unclear to what degree either of them represent the "true" canon as each of them depict different series of events in different orders. There's also the one-shot "Before Dawn" cinematic which depicts a moment of the story that plays closest to the Rise of the Sentinels version (Vayne teams up with Lucian and Senna to fight a Ruined Shyvana, contrast to how in Steadfast Heart, Shyvana is absent and Vayne attempts to kill Senna on sight) and even that doesn't fit in correctly (neither Gwen nor the Rookie are anywhere to be seen, and the exact time placement of their battle is different).
• Series Mascot: With such a long lived game, who is the face changes a lot over the years.
  • Most promotional art and advertising features the "classic" champions but Ryze and Katarina tend to take front-and-center focus.
  • Almost all the rotating game modes' promotional art are primarily represented by Ziggs, sometimes with Garen as his victim.
  • Over the course of the game's 10+ years of life, it's actually Lux who's become the game's most-prominent poster girl.
  • Slowly but surely Jinx's popularity has dwarfed that of all other characters, to the point of becoming the face of Wild Rift and to get a fully animated show on Netflix detailing her origins.
• Sex Sells: A common complaint early on was that any upcoming female champ with questionable choices in clothing meant that Riot is concentrating way too much on Fanservice. This became less prevalent later in the game's history, to the point where any given female champion is just as likely to be dressed sensibly as skimpily. More modern female champions such as Kalista, Illaoi, and Taliyah, as well as their skins, are dressed and proportioned without fanservice in mind, as well as a number of modest skins. These are alongside pure fanservice skins, which now also extends to male champions, so everyone's roughly receiving equal treatment.
• Ship Sinking:
  • Riot, after seeing the fan-preferred pair of Rengar-Nidalee, designated the two as rivals in order to curve shipping.
  • During the Bilgewater event, in lieu of several fan-teases between Gangplank-Miss Fortune, they shot it down by having Miss Fortune attempt to murder Gangplank cold-bloodedly in the name of her mother's vengeance (making Gangplank her mother's murderer that she hates).
  • During the Targon event, they sunk the teasing between Pantheon-Leona by making them no longer childhood friends and the current identity of Pantheon, Atreus, being the one who caused Leona to be branded heretic by the Rakkorians and even after her departure, Atreus didn't seem to be fond on Leona's defensive approach... which is then furthered when Atreus died and then the real Pantheon, now an Aspect of War, took over his body, erasing his personality and memories.
    • Even after Atreus reclaimed the body from Pantheon, the only woman he confided with was Iula, the wife of his dead friend Pylas (and it was strictly non-romantic, just friends), while Leona did not lift a finger to free Atreus when he was under the thrall of Viego (it was Diana, of all people, who did the job) but also attacked him when he reclimbed the summit of Mount Targon when he was broken after the ordeal with Viego, until eventually in his rock bottom state, he miraculously reclaimed his ascension. But safe to say that Pantheon and Leona have been officially rivals now (though not in a greater extent than Leona-Diana).
  • The Ship Tease between Ezreal and Lux had become seriously downplayed over the years, which seemingly culminated with Lux's updated voiceover, where she asks if they were supposed to be dating when they canonically never even talked. However, the inclusion of Zoe revealed she (one-sidedly) considers Lux a rival for Ezreal's affection, implying the ship is still around, albeit one-sided on Ezreal's part. Averted in the recent years, as in some Alternate Universe timelines, Ezreal is treated as an Implied Love Interest to Lux. They even seem to be outright dating in the Battle Academia universe.
• Ship Tease:
  • The ship between Garen and Katarina, with several champions such as Tahm Kench and Jhin making reference to them in their taunts.
  • Vi and Caitlyn get hinted at a lot but it's not until Arcane that the subtext becomes full on text.
• Shout-Out: See this page for the exhaustive list.
• The Social Darwinist: Noxus as a whole has this as an integral part of their culture. In contrast to Demacia (which has a strict hierarchy for its leadership and military), basically anyone can rise to power if they are strong enough, which explains the assortment of somewhat unsavory characters that are allowed to be champions. Exemplified in its extreme form by Darius who declares things like "Strength above all!" and is on a mission to eradicate the corrupt Noxian nobility on the grounds that they've done nothing to earn their positions of authority, and in its more realistic form by Riven who believed that individuals with merit have a responsibility to lead those that do not (at least prior to being broken).
• Spirit World: The Spirit Realm adjacent to the realm of mortals, while it hasn't been directly explored as its own location, in many ways is just as important as the rest of the human world of Runeterra given just how often it seems to interconnect. Several traits of the realm:
  • Spirits from it come in all shapes and forms. Some are completely divorced from the concerns of humanity and exist to maintain and protect the natural world, with any interference from the equilibrium treated as equally immoral. Others hinge their entire existence on mortals, from the Freljordian spirit demigods representative of human behaviors and have power directly based on their level of reverence, or demons that foster and subsist on the negative emotions of mortals. It's also largely believed to be an afterlife which mortals normally depart to upon death, but where they go beyond that is unclear.
  • The realm itself is multifaceted. While described as largely nonphysical and abstract (and as such has never been canonically visualized), it's also said to have several distinct "locations" where certain spirits take up residence over others. Just for a few examples, the same plane of existence contains Bandle City (a mythical Hidden Elf Village, home to the nomadic, cheery yordles) and Mitna Rachnun (a kingdom of undeath that Mordekaiser is attempting to drag the land of the living into).
  • Magic is abound where the spirit realm touches Runeterra. While the origin of magic is unconfirmed, involvement of spirits is definitely a cause. Ionia, the "First Lands" of Runeterra is the most twinged with spirits, to the point where the mortal locals describe it as "alive," demonstrated to not be that much of an exaggeration.
  • It appears to have a connection to the moon. Details are scant, but the moon over Runeterra supposedly exists in a physical and spiritual form in two different orbits, and when they intersect every few centuries or so, drastic shifts in celestial magic occur.
• Symbolism: Because Riot make games, not trophies, when they crafted the Summoner's Cup as the prize for the Season 2 World Championship, they forgot to take into account the fact that the winners would actually have to hoist the huge, ornate goblet. As a result, the Cup weighs 70lbs (about 32kg), the heaviest trophy in esports, and generally cannot be lifted by a single player, requiring the efforts of the entire team to lift it- which, it has been noted, is a nice metaphor for the game itself. The Cup was remade a few times to make it lighter, but it was completely redesigned for the 2022 Worlds with a much simpler, sleeker design, with its most notable feature being 5 handles placed evenly around its sides. Their purpose became apparent when DRX won the grand final and were able to collectively lift the cup with each player holding one of the handles.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: A prevalent view in the metagame is the presence of different carry-support bot lane compositions: "sustain" (focus on healing to stay in lane and farm more), "poke" (harass the enemies until they are softened up or forced back to base), and "kill" (go aggressive and try to get kills early on) types. In theory, sustain beats poke by simply healing back damage done by harassment, poke beats kill by whittling down enemies from afar to the point where attempting to be aggressive is suicidal, and kill beats sustain by inflicting too much damage at once to heal back, hopefully enough to be lethal.
• The Unfettered:
  • Expanding on the idea that Demacia and Noxus are both morally neutral (see Morality Kitchen Sink above), the main difference between the two superpowers is that Noxus is willing to do whatever it sees necessary to come out on top. This explains why they use unsavory methods that some other factions wouldn't even consider like bringing their best soldiers Back from the Dead and liberally using assassins to eliminate threats. Likewise, their city-state champions include some shady characters that would likely be turned away by others since Noxus doesn't care who or what you are, so long as you have strength.
  • This is also the original main difference between Piltover and Zaun — in Piltover they are all about science, ethics, environmentalism and progressive politics, whereas Zaun practically has For Science! as the city motto. Though in the current lore it's a bit more nuanced. Piltover isn't nearly as clean as it likes to present itself, and uses Zaun not only as cheap labor but most of the less moral scientist it has become infamous for were originally from Piltover and often still receive support just in secret. In the end both cities have their dark sides Zaun is just more upfront about it.
• Wham Episode:
  • The 2014 Burning Tides event set up a massive status quo change for Bilgewater: Twisted Fate and Graves bury the hatchet! Miss Fortune seemingly kills Gangplank and successfully usurps his authority on Bilgewater! Gangplank survives his decimation, missing much of his power and an arm, but carving his way back!
  • Issue 4 of the Lux comic introduces another drastic change in the world, this time with Demacia: After Sylas' escape and formation of a rebellion, it ends up nearly succeeding! Jarvan IV is defeated in battle and set to be publicly executed, and Jarvan III — the king of Demacia — is dead under mysterious circumstances not even Sylas is aware of.
  • The final issue of Zed gives us a significant end with Zed, Shen, and Akali successfully defeating Jhin, but also throws a major twist in revealing who originally unleashed him onto Ionia in the first place: Master Kusho, who was not only alive, but the ruthless true leader of the Order of Shadows and Navori Brotherhood. While Zed finally kills him for good, the loyalties of the Order are splintered and the number of those under Zed's rule greatly reduced, seemingly leaving only Kayn and a few others on his side.
    Zed: The Navori, the Kinkou, the rest of the Shadow Council — Now we are against everyone.
    Kayn: Meh. Sounds like fun.
• Wham Line: In Vi's colour story 'Child of Zaun' she's investigating a spider-themed cult forming in the Zaunite Sump that has even the chem barons afraid. After listening to the demagogue known as The Voice preaching about the coming of their savior, she asks her friend Roe who exactly it is that is coming. Roe answers "It's the Dreadnought."
• Wham Shot: The final issue of the Zed comic ends up revealing the man who released and weaponized Jhin on Ionia: Master Kusho.
• World of Technicolor Hair: The world of Runeterra is full of very out-there hair colors, both for human and non-human characters.
  • Red hair: Miss Fortune, Sett, Katarina, Zyra, Annie, Xayah.
  • Blue hair: Jinx, Caitlyn, Sona, Gwen, Irelia.
  • Green hair: Zeri, Vex.
  • Purple hair: Neeko, Lillia, Morgana, Lulu.
  • Pink: Vi, Seraphine, Trundle.
  • White^note Not including those whose hair is white from age.: Riven, Varus, Viego, Soraka, Qiyana, Ekko, Diana.
• World War III: A sort of parallel in the pre-retcon lore — according to the August 3rd entry to the Journal of Justice, there were 5 horrific Rune Wars. To avoid another, where Real Life has the United Nations, pre-retcon Runeterra has the League of Legends.
• World of Buxom: It would be shorter to try to list the non-Yordle humanoid adult females that aren't well-endowed.

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