Literature / Beyond Reality

Beyond Reality is an interconnected and ongoing Science Fantasy Genre Mashup novel trilogy and short story series written by Jeffrey Konkin. The series focuses on the perspective of various superpowered agents of the United Extradimensional Worlds and their allies, while also blending multiple genres together in an exploration of the multiverse and various dangers and threats therein.

So far, three novels have been completed: Cthulhu's Awakening, In the Shadow of Gods, and When Your Reality Cracks, with an anthology titled Tales of the Multiverse containing all the various short stories written to date. The series was originally released on November 27, 2021 with the story Watching A World End.

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Beyond Reality contains examples of:

• Actually Pretty Funny: What Nyarlathotep thought of God turning Cthulhu into a plushie.
• Always a Bigger Fish: A common trope that appears throughout the series.
  • In Cthulhu's Awakening, the titular Cthulhu is a practically unstoppable juggernaut once awakened, noted to be the size of a mountain and capable of inducing a star to go supernova under his own power. Once Sean and Sylvia lure him into God's universe, however, the Great Old One is literally turned into a plushie version of himself with ease.
  • While Cthulhu was dangerous enough on his own, Nyarlathotep is noted to be far more dangerous than him in In the Shadow of Gods. Subsequently, Celeste proves herself to be an even greater threat than Nyarlathotep during When Your Reality Cracks.
  • God himself takes the cake though, being the most powerful being we see. Anyone that enters into his universe tends to be wiped out on the spot if they are his enemies. Though it is hinted at several times that in the vast expanse of the multiverse, there are beings far more powerful than even him.
  • The United Extradimensional Worlds to the Earth Ascendancy. While the Ascendancy is an aspiring interdimensional empire who managed to conquer 15 different versions of Earth, the UEW's reach encompasses well over a million universes and includes a number of galactic and intergalactic polities under their banner.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: The personifications of beings like Death and Fate appear in When Realities Collide and When Your Reality Cracks, among various other minor gods and celestial beings who want to contain Celeste.
• Anti-Magic:
  • In an early story, Sean and Sylvia are noted to have these runes inscribed on their armor, and tattooed on their bodies, protecting them from some of the Alchemist's attacks. It's noted to be fairly limited though, as more powerful magic could overwhelm them.
  • Celeste's reality anchors in When Your Reality Cracks function in a similar vein, keeping the cosmic reality warping powers and mental attacks of Nyarlathotep, God's avatar and the various cosmic beings from affecting her. Like above, it's noted that enough power could still overwhelm the effect, and indeed, that ends up being what destroys them.
• Anti-Nihilist: A common theme among the series, especially when discussing the infinite vastness of the multiverse. Sean and Sylvia in particular posit that even if their lives don't matter in the grand scheme of the infinite multiverse, they can still find meaning in what happens around them.
• Armor-Piercing Question: God asks what Celeste wants when the two of them first meet. The fact that Celeste can’t think of an answer to that question is what starts her Heel–Face Turn.
• The Atoner:
  • Rachel and Jacob join the UEW Agency as liaisons partially to make up for their actions throughout In the Shadow of Gods.
  • Celeste also becomes this in the epilogue of When Your Reality Cracks, helping to repair the damage she caused, then combining her powers with God's to improve hopeless universes across the multiverse.
• Badass Fingersnap: Used quite often, by various characters. The most notable one takes place in the climax of When Your Reality Cracks, when God and Nyarlathotep do this simultaneously. The end result destroys a galaxy.
• Back from the Dead: What happens to Rachel and Jacob at the end of Cthulhu's Awakening.
• Battle Couple: Sean and Sylvia are this, and regularly fight alongside each other during their various missions for the UEW Agency.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: The last third of When Your Reality Cracks has this when the allied forces of the United Extradimensional Worlds, the Interdimensional Guardians, and all their respective allies, invade the border realm that Celeste has taken over, while she summons an army of her own to face them.
• Boring, but Practical: In a series where interdimensional travel is commonplace, Sean and Sylvia having the innate ability to generate interdimensional portals may seem redundant, especially since their patron organization of the United Extradimensional Worlds, has interdimensional teleporters as common pieces of equipment for their agents. However, in the rare occasions where someone can destroy those teleporters like Celeste did during her first rampage, the couple are still capable of traversing universes under their own power, while their fellow agents were stranded elsewhere. Furthermore, the ability to simply generate portals with a gesture allows them to use their ability in combat in a way that their fellow agents can't do so easily.
• Brought Down to Badass: What happens when God learns how to leave his universe. He has to use a stable dimensional connection (usually either from Sean, Sylvia or Celeste) to make an avatar body, and even then, his avatar's power is only at a fraction of his full might. Of course, being The Omnipotent on a universal scale, a fraction of his full might is still a Reality Warper on a planetary scale.
• Bullying a Dragon: The Core Universe Authority by the end of When Your Reality Cracks. The assembled Interdimensional Guardians and cosmic beings are so fed up with their antics that when a platoon of Core Universe troopers try to lay claim to Celeste and everyone else, the gods just end up erasing those particular soldiers from existence.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: This was the response of Sean and Rachel when Celeste briefly displaced them into the universe of MI6 agent Emma McIntyre. While she and her fellow agents immediately had their guns pointed at the two intruders, Sean and Rachel were initially confused about why they were so on edge, and it took them a moment to realize that they had been in their universe before.
• Cast from Hit Points: A variation. One of the limitations of God's avatar when he's in another universe is that he runs the risk of burning the body out if he uses too much power.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: This is said to be a prominent trait of Acra, an interdimensional archeologist and part-time Transdimensional Thief who is known to be hated by quite a few people as a result.
• Cosmic Horror Story:
  • The short story Eldritch Tunnels plays out as this, following the journey of two brothers who end up trapped inside a series of tunnels connected to R'lyeh.
  • Ironically, the ending of Cthulhu's Awakening plays out like this for Cthulhu himself. After being awoken from his slumber and following Sean and Sylvia through several universes, Cthulhu ends up in a universe that's home to a being who is incomprehensibly powerful compared to him, a being who can (and does) destroy him and his army with a thought.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: What happens to the Alchemist in the end. Nyarlathotep rips the Alchemist's soul out of his body and uses it to beat him to death with it.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Anyone who ends up in God’s universe as his enemy tends to end up on the receiving end of this.
• Dark and Troubled Past: What little we know of Sean's backstory indicates that he was the Sole Survivor of an apocalypse that destroyed his world, with his powers manifesting just in time to escape from it, but leaving those he loved behind. By the time he figured out how to get back, his parents and his entire world had been destroyed.
• Deconstruction: The series deconstructs a number of common multiversal plots and tropes simply by highlighting the sheer infinite scale of the multiverse and beyond. It's often lampshaded that given the vast size of the multiverse as well as the constant addition of new universes all the time, the idea that anyone could ever affect the entirety of the multiverse is absurd, no matter what they do. Even when Celeste affects trillions of universes simultaneously during When Your Reality Cracks, she herself acknowledges that in the grand scheme of things, she's affecting an absolutely miniscule fraction of existence as a whole.
• Deity of Human Origin: After being abducted by aliens and undergoing various experiments, Celeste ended up with the power to open interdimensional cracks anywhere in the multiverse and the necessary omniscience to use that power effectively. She’s referred to by the narrative and various characters as an interdimensional goddess more than once and she more than lives up to the title.
• Devil, but No God: Inverted in God's universe. While Heaven and Hell exist as part of his cosmos, it's explicitly said that God never created angels or demons, and thus there is no Devil figure in his universe. Zig-Zagged elsewhere, as at least two other versions of the Devil have shown up, and while it's been said that there are other versions of God in the multiverse, they're never actually shown directly.
• Didn't See That Coming: How God found out the multiverse existed. With omniscient knowledge of the past, present and future, as well as knowing every single living being that existed within his universe, God found it impossible to be surprised. So when Sean and Sylvia emerged from an interdimensional portal one day, God was definitely surprised, as he hadn't seen that event in his omniscience, nor did he have any idea who they were.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • In Cthulhu's Awakening, Sylvia ends up in Hell pursuing her target, and in her frustration, she shoots Satan in the face. One smackdown later, and she admits that wasn't her smartest idea.
  • Played for laughs in When Your Reality Cracks: When God asks Celeste to help repair the damage she wrought throughout the multiverse by teleporting various displaced beings back to their own universes, he neglects to tell anyone that Celeste had undergone a Heel–Face Turn beforehand. As a result, Sean, Sylvia and a few thousand other beings arrive in his universe believing Celeste had escaped again.
• Dimensional Traveler: All the major characters in the series are this, though the methods of how often vary. Some like Sean, Sylvia and Celeste have the innate power to travel between universes, while others like the Alchemist use magic to generate portals between universes. Meanwhile, the bulk of the UEW Agency rely on technological methods implanted in their armors to travel around the multiverse.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: God's inability to travel beyond his universe at full power, as having an omnipotent who could use his powers in any universe would trivialize almost every conflict.
• The Earth-Prime Theory: The basis behind the existence of the Core Universe Authority, who believe their universe is the original one that the rest of the multiverse was created from. It's deconstructed in that this belief makes them conclude that all universes are inferior copies of theirs and thus, they can do what they want to people and things within them, giving them a superiority complex that makes them hated by other multiversal organizations. It's also subverted as several other factions and beings have noted that the CUA has no actual evidence that their universe is the first to exist, while there's plenty of evidence showing universes that are much older than theirs.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Played straight by Rachel and Jacob, who are forgiven pretty quickly by Sean and Sylvia for trying to kill them throughout In the Shadow of Gods. Justified as both of them were being influenced by Nyarlathotep at the time.
  • Zigzagged by Celeste in When Your Reality Cracks. While God is willing to help her and Sean and Sylvia are willing to give her a chance, it's made clear that many people still hate Celeste for all the chaos and death she caused during her rampage.
• Eldritch Abomination: Nyarlathotep and Cthulhu obviously qualify. There's also Tanya, who's a benevolent version and protector to Kaitlin Holmes.
• Eldritch Location: The border realm Celeste takes over in When Your Reality Cracks has become this. It's described as a mish-mash of various worlds from across the multiverse, with some landscapes just torn straight out of their universes and joined together by spider-webs of terrain. Gravity is said to be all over the place, though the dimension strangely has atmosphere that anyone can breathe.
  • Honestly, quite a number of universes and dimensions that appear throughout the series can be classified as this. From the alien geometries of R'lyeh to the perverse locale of the lust dimension, to various realms that are empty voids, the multiverse isn't short of any locations that could be considered eldritch.
• Even Evil Has Standards: For a given definition of evil, but even during the height of Celeste's madness-induced rampages, she notes there are several universes and beings that even she wouldn't dare mess with. Furthermore, as God points out near the end of When Your Reality Cracks, she could have easily teleported the armies that attacked her into much more lethal locations than she did, allowing quite a few to survive her rampages unharmed.
• Everyone Is a Super: The version of Earth that hosts the UEW Agency's HQ. Every single human being on the planet is born with a unique superpower. This ends up hindering the Cabal when they attempt to invade, as the entire world is capable of fighting back.
• Evil Is Not a Toy:
  • This is noted to be one of the Alchemist's biggest flaws, binding himself to powerful entities like Cthulhu or Nyarlathotep. While he manages to get away from his deal with Cthulhu unscathed, bargaining with Nyarlathotep ends up costing him dearly.
  • Ironically happens to Nyarlathotep himself in When Your Reality Cracks, though for a given definition of evil. While he respects Celeste's power, he ultimately regards her as an easily manipulated mortal who he could effortlessly hide from, he learns the hard way that Celeste is a lot more dangerous and harder to control than he gave her credit for. This ends up causing his death.
• Evil Is Petty: Nyarlathotep embodies this trope to a T. It's especially noticeable in In the Shadow of Gods where he caused a cross-universal war between the Cabal and the UEW for his own entertainment. Worse, he considers the entire event a sideshow compared to the more personal conflict between Sean, Sylvia and the Alchemist.
• Evil Overlord: The ruler of the Cabal, whose title is simply "The Overlord". The Dread Lord also bears this role to the people on Quintala.
• Expy:
  • Celeste is one to Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite in terms of having similar powersets, though there are a couple of differences between them. Elizabeth at the height of her power was capable of altering whole timelines, something Celeste is shown to be incapable of doing. By contrast, Celeste has Resurrective Immortality that allows her to simply walk right out of any afterlife she gets sent to when she dies, which is something Elizabeth can't do.^note While Elizabeth was shown to have survived getting killed due to her powers, she was effectively locked out of ever returning to the universe she died in, and had to give up her powers in order to return to that universe. This is a problem Celeste doesn't have.
  • Lustaka, the Fucking God is essentially lauv'abrarc, the Lustful God from Lust for Darkness and Lust from Beyond if he was Played for Laughs as opposed to being played for horror. While Lustaka's ability to induce anyone to undergo a rabid sexual frenzy is shown to be similar to what lauv'abrarc can do, it's portrayed as much more harmless than the games in question, and Beyond Reality shows how an entity like this would be more of a Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond when compared to various other Gods and eldritch horrors that exist in the multiverse.
• The Federation: The United Extradimensional Worlds. They are noted to prefer diplomacy to open conquest and have a reach spanning well over a million universes across the multiverse. A fair amount of those universes in question tend to be on a single world, though it's been stated that a few galactic governments are a part of the UEW. Humans tend to be the most prominently seen species among the UEW, though multiple alien species have been shown amongst their ranks as well.
• Fighting Across Time and Space: A staple of all three novels. The bulk of the conflicts in each novel involves various characters hopping between universes while fighting their opponents.
• Fighting a Shadow: This is the reason God had difficulty with defeating Nyarlathotep. While the Outer God's avatars are easily dispatched within seconds while in God's universe, he has over a thousand such avatars spread across the multiverse, so the moment one was destroyed, Nyarlathotep simply summoned another. It took Celeste using her power to summon every single one of Nyarlathotep's avatars into God's universe at the end of When Your Reality Cracks that the Outer God is finally destroyed.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Kaitlin Holmes hosts a powerful eldritch entity made of sonic energy that is known to manifest a gigantic tentacled form that can tear apart giant robots like tissue paper. Kaitlin calls this entity Tanya.
• Foil: God with Celeste, as shown throughout When Your Reality Cracks. Both are incredibly powerful cosmic beings who were initially blind to the multiverse until outside forces caused them to discover it, but while God is a Time Abyss omnipotent being who always had his power, Celeste is a Deity of Human Origin who's much younger and gained her power as a side effect of a random experiment. While Celeste's discovery of the multiverse caused her to breakdown when combined with the information overload, God's response to learning of the multiverse was a combination of wonder and awe. God cannot leave his own universe personally, while Celeste can travel between universes at will. Their conversations in the epilogue of When Your Reality Cracks only highlight just how alike and different they are from each other.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Dialogue in Interdimensional Diplomacy reveals the Earth Ascendancy has shades of this, refusing to acknowledge the existence of the divine and argue that any being claiming to be such is merely a pretender. This bites them in the ass when they unknowingly invade Lustaka's realm, and subsequently invade God's universe during that same story.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Used to rather chilling effect in When Your Reality Cracks. About halfway through the story, Celeste speaks directly to the readers, asking if they’re enjoying what they see as a work of fiction and questioning if they’re sure that they’re in the universe they were born in, indicating she could have moved them between universes without the reader even noticing.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: At one time Celeste was just an ordinary human being living in a random universe. One alien abduction and various experiments later, and she's become an Interdimensional Goddess who can affect trillions of universes at once.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The Transdimensional Thieves are noted to have this appearance as standard.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: God's eyes occasionally flare up like this when using his powers, or simply to just intimidate people.
• God Is Good: While he certainly has limits, God has been shown to be a Nice Guy who's friendly and compassionate towards everyone he meets.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: The root cause of Celeste's rampages. Seeing the extent of the multiverse and all the horrors and suffering that exist within have left her a broken shell of a human being. It takes God's help to pull her out of this mindset.
• Guardian of the Multiverse: The Interdimensional Guardians, a group of powerful robotic beings, take this role. The UEW also acts as this, though to a lesser extent. As a result, the two groups have been known to have issues with Jurisdiction Friction.
• Hero of Another Story: Shows up on occasion, with characters like Evelyn Monet, Kaitlin Holmes, and the Interdimensional Guardians indicated to have been having their own adventures in between their various appearances.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Nyarlathotep releases Celeste from her prison to cause havoc across the multiverse in When Your Reality Cracks, but this ends up being his undoing when she reforms and displaces all his avatars to God's universe.
• Human Sacrifice: Rachel and Jacob end up being used as this to complete the necessary ritual to awaken Cthulhu. It doesn't stick.
• Hypocritical Humor: At one point during his musings, the Alchemist derides the Overlord's title as uninspired and dull. He has no right to criticize someone for an uninspired name, as many other characters have pointed out.
• Instant Armor: The UEW Agency is noted to have this as standard issue, generated by nanotechnology from an implant in their agent's bodies. It's so ubiquitous that they hand them out to all their liaisons as well.
• Inventional Wisdom: At the end of Raiders of Lost Artifacts, Acra and her partner EL-GA lampshade this in regards to the planet-killing sword known as the Rod of Eck'tua.
  EL-GA: You mean the planet destroying sword? Speaking of which, who's brilliant idea was that?
  Acra: Right? 'Let me just swing my sword and blow up the planet I'm standing on.' Someone somewhere was lacking common sense when they made that.
• Is This Thing Still On?: In Aiming for the Big Leagues, when Sean is captured by a spy-themed villain, the former correctly guesses that the villain's new partners are the Earth Ascendancy and warns the villain that the deal isn't going to go in their favor. This prompts an argument about the subsequent plans between the villain in question and the Ascendancy representative, the latter of whom eventually asks if the microphone is still on.
  Sean: Yeah, I can still hear you. Thanks for telling me exactly what you plan to do.
• Jurisdiction Friction: After Celeste's defeat in When Your Reality Cracks, an argument regarding this breaks out regarding who will be in charge of imprisoning her again. The Interdimensional Guardians, United Extradimensional Worlds, and the various cosmic beings, all argue over who should be put in charge of keeping her contained until God puts his foot down and offers to contain her himself.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After causing the conflicts of In the Shadow of Gods and escaping without anyone being able to stop him, Nyarlathotep is soundly humiliated in When Your Reality Cracks and meets his end at the hands of God and Celeste, two deities he had previously dismissed as being unable to permantly harm him.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: This is what Cthulhu does to Sean for the bulk of the first novel, erasing his memories save for the time under his control. Sylvia eventually restores his memory with a her engagement ring’s unique properties.
• Logical Weakness:
  • For all her power, Celeste ultimately has the body of a human being. As a result, she can be tired out and even killed just like anyone else. Her Resurrective Immortality helps mitigate the second part though.
  • Mid-way through the big battle in When Your Reality Cracks, Celeste realizes that God is using her own powers to create a hijacked connection for his avatar to exist in her border realm because he can't actually leave his universe or create any such connections himself. In response, she simply shuts every single interdimensional rift she made into his universe, cutting off the connection and causing his avatar to vanish.
• Loophole Abuse: How Nyarlathotep intended to take his revenge against Sean, Sylvia and God at the end of In the Shadow of Gods. Since he gave his word to stay away from the UEW, the Outer God broke Celeste out of jail instead, knowing that her subsequent rampage would cause chaos to everyone in the UEW and beyond.
• Lovecraft Lite: This is a series where Cthulhu himself is killed by turning him into a plushie of himself.
• Machiavelli Was Wrong: This is subtly displayed when comparing the United Extradimensional Worlds to their enemies, most prominently the Earth Ascendancy. Thanks to preferring diplomatic and peaceful options, the UEW's reach encompasses well over a million universes. Meanwhile, despite being conquerors willing to take over worlds by force, the Earth Ascendancy's territory is much smaller, massing a mere 15 different versions of Earth when they're first introduced. It's noted that when they tried to conquer a world under the dominion of the UEW, the resulting conflict was brief and the Ascendancy was quick to sue for peace to prevent themselves from being utterly destroyed.
• Magitek: Noted to be a fairly common staple among the UEW. One of the most prominent examples that appears in the among the series are healing syringes that use a combination of nanotechnology and magical healing potion to instantly heal any wound.
• Malicious Misnaming: Midway through In the Shadow of Gods, Sean, Sylvia, and God take to calling Nyarlathotep by the derogatory name "Gnarly" and continue to call him such throughout that book and its sequel. He's more annoyed by it than anything else.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": This is the reaction to Celeste's escape by everyone who knows of her. Everyone who doesn't quickly realizes why they need to be afraid when she starts generating portals and causing chaos across the multiverse.
• Medium Awareness: To the point where it overlaps with No Fourth Wall. The series has brought up more than once that what is fictional in one universe is reality in another and vice versa, but it's really on display in When Your Reality Cracks. During Celeste's rampage, she sends Sean, Sylvia, Rachel and Jacob to a couple of universes beyond the Fourth wall, first to one where the events of the story are being filmed as Film of the Book (with the film stage in question being set up as a scene where the actors meet the characters when it actually happens), then to a universe where the author of the series is in the middle of writing the book in question. Furthermore, besides the above mentioned The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You event, the book also ends with God and Celeste directly addressing the audience.
• Merged Reality: A small scale version of this appears in One World's Nightmare is Another World's Workday. After some searching, Zoey and McConnell discover that the interdimensional anomaly the UEW Agency detected was a facility from a Bio Punk universe that had somehow been shifted into the mines underneath a werewolf-infested summer camp. When they go to personally investigate, the more contemporary mine tunnels abruptly change into much more organic looking pathways, making the alien nature of it obvious.
• Mind Rape: In When Your Reality Cracks, the Devil subjects Celeste to this when her reality anchors are destroyed in an effort to subdue her. This backfires. Horribly.
• More than Mind Control: Discussed: During In the Shadow of Gods it's mentioned that Nyarlathotep tampered with the minds of Rachel and Jacob, though to what extent is never made clear. Even after they get cured of their mutations, it's not made clear just how much of their actions were their own and how much was Nyarlathotep's influence.
• Mouth of Sauron: The aptly named Voice of Cthulhu serves as this to Cthulhu himself, a unique Star-Spawn speaking to the Alchemist and making deals on behalf of the Great Old One. Doubles as The Dragon to Cthulhu.
• Mugging the Monster: Indicated to be what happened when the Earth Ascendancy tried to invade a world under the dominion of the United Extradimensional Worlds. The end result had the Ascendancy quickly suing for peace lest their empire get smashed flat by the UEW.
• Multiversal Conqueror: The Cabal are a single universe empire that aspires to conquer other universes. This attitude is also deconstructed by various characters who point out that the ever growing size and scale of the multiverse means that this is practically an impossible goal for anyone to accomplish.
  • The Earth Ascendancy are a more traditional example of this, as their introduction has them noted to have conquered 15 different versions of Earth.
• The Multiverse: The main setting of the series, with a wide variety of locales and one-shot universes that appear throughout each story. The series also discusses and explores the idea more in depth with acknowledgements about the relationship between reality and fiction, the differences and similarities between dimensions, universes, and timelines, various afterlives and pantheons, as well as concepts like the megaverse and omniverse.
• Never Live It Down: In-universe example. In the opening of Cthulhu's Awakening, Sean accidentally brings himself and Sylvia into the middle of a forest undergoing werewolf mating season. Once they deal with all the enraged werewolves, Sean is aware that Sylvia is never going to let him live this down, and indeed, this event is brought up occasionally in subsequent works.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Discussed and appears on a number of occasions, but a specific example would be Lustaka, the Fucking God. Among the vast scales of the multiverse, and the various other Gods and cosmic beings that appear, he's treated primarily as a joke. Compared to powerful entities like God, Nyarlathotep, Celeste, Death, Fate, the Devil, the Interdimensional Guardians, and more, his primary ability to force people into a sexual frenzy is extremely lacking by comparison. Even members of the United Extradimensional Worlds don't treat him that seriously as a threat. With that said, when the Earth Ascendancy sent an invasion force to his lust dimension, the entire army was rendered completely helpless by his power. For all the UEW has mocked him and his title, they still understand that Lustaka is called a god for a reason.
• Not Me This Time: During the diplomatic talks between the Earth Ascendancy and United Extradimensional Worlds in Interdimensional Diplomacy regarding their interdimensional cold war, the former accuses the latter of costing them an entire invasion army, confusing the UEW ambassador who knows that they have not faced an entire army of the Earth Ascendancy since their ill-fated first contact. Upon checking the multiversal maps, she realizes that the Ascendancy invaded the lust dimension and thus were almost certainly enthralled by Lustaka, the Fucking God.
• Odd Friendship: God, the omnipotent creator deity of his own universe, ends up becoming close friends with Sean and Sylvia, two humans with superpowers who came from an entirely different universe than him.
• Oh, Crap!: Nyarlathotep has this reaction quite a few times throughout When Your Reality Cracks, the first time is when he realizes that Celeste can not only see him, she's more than capable of hurting him. He manages to regain his composure, only to get this reaction again when she threatens to awaken Azathoth, which could potentially wipe out Nyarlathotep alongside his entire universe. He goes through it yet again in the epilogue when Celeste teleports every single one of his avatars into God's universe, allowing him to wipe out the Outer God completely.
• The Omnipotent: God is only this within his own universe and can't leave it under his own power. While he does find a way around this limitation, it requires creating an avatar body that can access only a fraction of his own power.
• Outside-Context Problem: Happens occasionally throughout the series, but a prominent one takes place in the short story ... What Just Happened?!: An MI6 agent named Emma McIntyre is undercover trying to get information from an arms dealer about a terrorist organization at a fancy party. As she's trying to seduce him, however, Sean and Rachel's conflict from In the Shadow of Gods spills over into their universe and the collateral damage ends up killing the arms dealer in question. While Emma is able to get the information regardless, she and MI6 are clearly shaken, especially since they have no idea as to what just happened or why.
• Pass the Popcorn: Sean and Sylvia do this in the short story A Day in the Life while watching werewolves and vampires fight each other to the death. They also mention an event that happened with the UEW Agency who did something similar when the Core Universe Authority drew the ire of the Interdimensional Guardians.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: In One World's Nightmare is Another World's Workday has Zoey and McConnell realize that the Bio Punk facility that had been transported underneath the summer camp used this as a power source, with countless humanoid bodies drained of their life. They also realize that the facility has targeted the werewolves above as replacement power sources because their regenerative healing abilities essentially makes them infinite batteries.
• Powerful and Helpless: God is The Omnipotent within his own universe, but it's just one single universe among an infinite number in the multiverse. To make things worse, God can't actually leave his own universe personally and has to create a much weaker avatar body to control in his stead. And even doing that much requires someone else to provide a stable interdimensional connection he can piggyback off of.
• Power Incontinence: While Celeste is able to generate interdimensional rifts at will, she couldn't shut off her omniscience so easily, which was driving her insane. After meeting God and gaining his help in controlling that problem, this no longer applies.
• The Power of Love: Used by Sean and Sylvia to defeat the Alchemist in In the Shadow of Gods and used in conjunction with Fate's power to destroy Celeste's reality anchors in When Your Reality Cracks.
• Prison Dimension: The Panopticon, and the United Extradimensional Worlds are noted to have access to several of these. The Interdimensional Guardians are also indicated to have a few of these under their control.
• Reading Ahead in the Script: Discussed Trope. During the events of When Your Reality Cracks, when they end up in a universe beyond the fourth wall, it's suggested at one point by Rachel that they try to read ahead in the story's script to give them an advantage against Celeste. This is shot down when it's pointed out that not only can Celeste do the same thing, but given the infinite scale of the multiverse and the variety of changes that would result, the characters can't be sure if the script they can access is even the one that they're living through right now, or if it's merely a similar variation.
• Resurrective Immortality: This is what makes fighting Celeste so difficult. Her powers over the interdimensional walls are tied to her very being, so she can just walk out of whatever afterlife she’s sent to. It’s noted (and shown) by several characters that killing her only slows her down for a few seconds.
• Rule of Cool: Why God walks around in ostentatious golden armor when he doesn't need it. He even tells Celeste that he once briefly had a cape for the ensemble but decided to get rid of it because he felt it was too much.
• Running Gag: Throughout When Your Reality Cracks, there are various moments where Celeste launches thrones at a number of characters she dislikes, mainly those who played a part in her imprisonment. Crosses into meta territory when a version of the writer of the novel itself becomes a victim of this gag, with him noting that it's not as funny when it's used against him.
• Seen It All: The general attitude of the UEW Agency and most multiverse travelers in general.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Snowdrop Anomaly in Paulina Stewart's universe is explicitly noted in the Author's Notes of Tales of the Multiverse to be a reference to the Half-Life 2 mod Snowdrop Escape, with the anomaly and dome (not to mention the story title) in the short story Snowdrop Studies having similar functions to the ones in said mod.
  • God being called a Random Omnipotent Being or "ROB" by the UEW Agency evokes the term used by Space Battles.
  • The Speed Demon's final resting place in Wrath of the Speed Demon evokes The Backrooms in appearance.
• Small Name, Big Ego: The Alchemist tends to think rather highly of himself, evident by calling himself "The Alchemist". Downplayed in that he's aware of how little he matters in the grand scheme of things and wants to change that.
• Space Cold War: More like Interdimensional Cold War, but in the short stories taking place after When Your Reality Cracks, this kind of conflict is shown to be shaking up between the Earth Ascendancy and the United Extradimensional Worlds. While officially both sides have a peace treaty, the UEW Agency has repeatedly sent agents to foil the Ascendancy's own operations to conquer neutral worlds in the multiverse.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Celeste’s go to tactic is to summon various powerful entities to fight for her as a makeshift army. Given her power can reach across the multiverse and summon anything she wants, it’s incredibly effective.
• Story-Breaker Power: God is omnipotent, but only within his own universe. Celeste is an Interdimensional Goddess who can shift entire worlds across the multiverse. When they work together and combine their powers in tandem, they could trivialize pretty much everything in most stories that take place post When Your Reality Cracks, which is why they explicitly focus their efforts on the infinity of worlds in the multiverse that are completely devoid of hope, leaving the UEW Agency to their own devices.
• Super Wrist-Gadget: A staple of the United Extradimensional Worlds, as part of their standard Instant Armor. It includes, among other things, various scanners, communication devices, and most importantly, an Interdimensional Travel Device.
• Taught by Experience: In the short story When Realities Collide, Celeste is ultimately defeated by being tricked into following Sean and Sylvia into an interdimensional corridor that could be made to prevent her from leaving it by a number of cosmic beings. In When Your Reality Cracks, she refuses to make this mistake again, staying primarily in a border realm that amplifies her powers and forcing all her enemies to come to her in order to face her.
• Tempting Fate: Happens quite often by various characters. Ironically, a personification of Fate appears as a central character in When Realities Collide and When Your Reality Cracks.
• Thinking Up Portals: Sean and Sylvia’s powers involve this, allowing them to travel to practically any universe they want. Celeste can also do this on a much grander scale, allowing her to move entire worlds at will while also generating trillions of cracks in reality across the multiverse.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Tend to show up in multiple different universes and regularly get destroyed.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Necronomicon serves as this when it appears.
• Totally Trusting Love Interest: Sean and Sylvia have this relationship, as best shown in When Your Reality Cracks. When Lucy tries to drive a wedge between the two of them by showing an out of context video of Sylvia and McConnell kissing during an undercover operation, Sean immediately guesses the correct context behind what happened and questions Lucy as to why she thought that would work. As an added bonus, when Sylvia sees her husband later, she's initially unaware of Lucy's visit and immediately tells Sean that she had to kiss McConnell during said operation without needing any prompting.
• Touché: In Daily Lives Across Time and Space, Celeste asks God if he really thinks that giving Zeus and Hera marriage counseling is really going to work for them. He counters that it worked for Celeste herself, leaving the Interdimensional Goddess briefly stunned before replying with this trope.
• Trapped in Another World: Evelyn Monet's initial situation in the fantasy world of Quintala. Becomes much less of an issue after meeting Zoey and Nate, and subsequently joining the UEW Agency as a liaison, allowing her to go back and forth between universes.
• Truce Trickery: The Earth Ascendancy attempts to pull a poorly thought out version of this during the story Interdimensional Diplomacy, by asking the United Extradimensional Worlds to set the stage for diplomatic talks, only to launch an invasion force upon the universe they chose to set those talks in. Unfortunately for the Ascendancy, the UEW had anticipated they might try to pull something like this, and thus set the talks in God's universe. Cue the Ascendancy army being rendered completely impotent the moment they try to attack. The UEW ambassador also points out how stupid this was, as it means the word of the Earth Ascendancy is worth nothing.
• Underwater Base: The Multiverse Learning Center run by the UEW is located in one of these, and it's been noted that they have access to several such facilities and cities in their influence.
• Villainous Underdog: Most of the non-deity/eldritch horror antagonists in the series. Compared to the United Extradimensional Worlds and all the forces they can bring to bear, factions like the Earth Ascendancy and Core Universe Authority would get outright destroyed by them in open war, forcing them to rely on more subtle methods of building up power, which is further hindered by the UEW Agency. Special mention goes to the Transdimensional Thieves, who are regarded as annoyances or vermin by not only the UEW, but the aforementioned Ascendancy and CUA as well. Any time they end up in conflict with someone else capable of interdimensional travel, it's the Transdimensional Thieves who are generally on the losing end of that fight.
• Void Between the Worlds: A number of these appear and/or are referenced throughout the series, referred to as border realms by most people who know of them. These are dimensions where a number of different universes can be easily accessed.
• Weapon Specialization: Sylvia’s preferred weapon is an energized whip that can be used to cut through enemies or incapacitate them, depending on the needs of the moment.
• Wildlife Commentary Spoof: Done briefly by Sean in A Day in the Life when he and Sylvia discover that a population of werewolves and vampires have come into conflict.
  Sean: And here you see the werewolves encountering their natural enemy: the vampires.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Celeste in a nutshell. She has multiversal omniscience to allow her to generate portals to anywhere she pleases, but she has little control over it and sees all the countless horrible things in the multiverse at once. It takes God's help at the end of When Your Reality Cracks for her to get a handle on this.
• The World Is Just Awesome: God's general mindset, especially when he discovers the existence of the multiverse. He relates this mindset to Celeste when he helps her control her powers, seeing beauty in everything she can see across the infinite expanse of existence.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: In play amongst the United Extradimensional Worlds. With the ability to access universes that are literally made of money, the UEW has little actual use for it themselves and mainly use it to pay their liaisons who come from worlds that are still reliant on more conventional economic factors. In Escaping Authorities, Evelyn outright says that they get paid millions for the work they do, to the point that it's difficult for her to bank it all at once without getting asked awkward questions about where the money came from.
• You Can See Me?: In When Your Reality Cracks Nyarlathotep believes that he's successfully concealed his presence from Celeste, boasting about this to God's avatar. Celeste pulling him into her dimension right after saying that clues him in that she's well aware of his presence.

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