Literature / Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

Due to its nature as a Shared Universe spin-off to Sword Art Online, spoilers partaining up to Phantom Bullet Arc will be unmarked ahead. You Have Been Warned!

Welcome to the World of Guns!

Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online is a Light Novel series written by Keiichi Sigsawa with illustrations done by Kouhaku Kuroboshi under supervision by Reki Kawahara. A spinoff from Sword Art Online, existing in the same Shared Universe but taking place in the virtual world of Gun Gale Online. It centers on a Tokyo university student named Karen Kohiruimaki, who's insecure about her height and an introvert. One day, she decides to join GGO on the advice of a friend in order to improve her self-esteem, using the name LLENN. Along the way, she makes friends as she plays the game with other GGO players and fight against hostile players aka PKers and monsters.

It consists of a light novel series, published by Dengeki Bunko, with a manga adaptation by Tadadi Tamori under ASCII Media Works and serialized in Dengeki Maoh, which started in 2015 and an anime television series adaptation by studio 3Hz, which premiered on April 8, 2018 in Japan under Tokyo MX, BS11, GYT, GTV, MBS, TVA and CS NTV Plus. The first two are licensed by Yen Press (the LN under the Yen On label) for English-speaking countries. For the anime, Aniplex is releasing it for North America, Spanish-speaking countries and Poland. French and German-speaking countries can watch this under Wakanim.tv. As of 2020, it is also on Netflix. The show is also available in Crunchyroll and Hulu for legal streaming in some territories.

A second season was announced at Dengeki Bunko's Light Novel Festival in July 2023, again to be animated by Studio 3Hz. It will begin airing in October 2024.

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Alternative Television Tropes Online:

• 12-Episode Anime: The anime is comprised of 12 episodes, excluding a midway recap episode.
• Aborted Arc: The second volume of the light novels brings up how Karen is taking great pains to keep her Gun Gale Online playing a secret from her family, who disapproves of VRMMO games after roughly 4,000 people died playing Sword Art Online. As Karen begins putting even more hours into GGO to prepare for the second Squad Jam, her sister becomes concerned about her not answering the phone, and Karen can't say why. Volume 4 skips ahead to months after the second Squad Jam, during which time Karen barely played at all, so this plotline has presumably been forgotten about.
  • After Squad Jam 2 Karen barely plays GGO except for some times with Pito and for SJ which only lasts around one hour so it's super easy to hide it from her parents. She also never bring her Amusphere if she goes back home to Hokkaido specifically to hide her hobby.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Discussed. Pitohui comments that the system assist makes it easier to hit long-range and difficult shots without a lot of aiming skill. If Gun Gale Online were completely realistic with its bullet physics, attacking from a distance would result in a lot of missed shots, and it wouldn't be as fun. But such a break acts as a double-edged sword to experienced marksmen, as the assist is a crutch that might tempt them to neglect their real-life aiming skills.
• Acquainted in Real Life: LLENN faces off against Team SHINC as her final opponents in the Squad Jam tournament. The next day she discovers Team SHINC are actually the girls from the rhythmic gymnastics team she has frequently passes by in real life. All of them want to be her friend and they vow to fight again at the next tournament.
• Action Prologue:
  • The manga opens up with LLENN and Pitohui in the desert going up against some squadrons who had joined forces to identify LLENN due to getting sick of her PKing.
  • The anime's first episode turns out to be a Flash Forward to the first Squad Jam tournament.
• Adaptational Comic Relief: The anime is a bit more light-hearted than its source material and the manga adaptation. One big example comes from the moment when M has his emotional breakdown after reading Pitohui's letter and then tries and fails to kill LLENN before confessing to her Pito's threat to murder him in real life, the anime treats this event as a hilarious moment, going so far as to include a memetic reaction shot from LLENN. In contrast, the light novel and manga treat it much more seriously, with LLENN's face in the manga being alarmed, and the light novel specifically noting she is disturbed. Another example comes during Squad Jam 1, when P-chan starts "talking" to LLENN for the first time, the anime greatly exaggerates her reaction to it, whereas the light novel and manga are more subdued in how she dismisses her talking gun.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The manga is the only version of the story that shows LLENN and Pito fighting bounty hunters in the desert: the light novel mentioned there were players teaming up to hunt down the Pink Devil and claim a bounty on her head but that was the extent of this subplot. The anime didn't cover it at all.
  • The anime expands a lot more on LLENN taking the tutorial in Gun Gale Online, showing us why she sucks with pistols and sniper rifles. It was a very brief affair in the light novel, which didn't even describe what the trainer NPC looked like, and was skipped over almost completely in the manga.
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: The light novels mention that Karen's family is very well off, which is why they can afford to pay for her huge apartment and why she can afford to try out so many games before settling on GGO. This detail doesn't come up in the anime, although it can be inferred.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Inverted with Karen. The anime doesn't show that early on, Karen's a bit conflicted about using GGO as a way to escape her problems (to the point that she briefly wonders if she should quit), or that a rift gradually seems to be forming between her and the rest of her family.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole:
  • The anime omits a crucial bit during Squad Jam 2. Were you wondering where Pitohui got that segment of starship plating to use as a handheld shield? In the novels, M used two sections of what was left of his deployable shield to carry her into the log house. This was omitted in the anime.
  • Another detail about SJ2 that is omitted is how LLENN and Fuka are able to communicate with Boss, given that the previous SJ had established radios only work with members of your own team. The light novel detailed that the three of them scavenged radios from one of the enemy teams LLENN killed in the grasslands dome, and since those radios are hard-coded to work with each other, the three of them can still use those radios even though they're from different teams.
• Adapted Out:
  • The light novels occasionally mention Karen's older sister, brother-in-law and niece, such as a brief scene in which Karen sees her sister and niece shortly after Goshi leaves. They don't show up at all in the anime.
  • Some teams in the light novels never appear in the anime. Team ZAT in Squad Jam 2 is one (meaning Zangiri Atama no Tomo, "Cropped-Headed Friends"), featuring the guy trying to record his experience as a Let's Play, and Team NSS ("New Soldiers") was replaced by The Expendables in Episode 9. Both of these teams are mentioned in Volume 4 to be back for Squad Jam 3.
• After-Action Report: The first part of the Episode 5.5 Clip Show is presented as M giving Pito one of these about Squad Jam.
• After the End: Gun Gale Online is set on a dystopic Earth in a Bad Future ravaged by war involving futuristic technology. In the light novel, it's pointed out that various places in the in-game world help tell the story of what happened.
• All Men Are Perverts: GGO is full of male players, with many of them being perverts who show their less pleasing side when alone with females. Hilariously lampshaded by Fukaziroh in Squad Jam 2 when after she and LLENN had the bad luck of running into two such examples in a row (and the 2nd one turned out to be a girl), she bluntly asks LLENN "Do only lechers play this game?"
  • In Volume 3, as Pitohui is materializing all her weapons and armor, one of the guys in the pub asks if the sight of a hot woman getting suited up for battle is getting anyone else turned on. Another guy then wonders out loud if there's anyone in the bar who's not a pervert.
• An Arm and a Leg: GGO features non-visceral dismemberment, as seen in previous titles. As per game rules and gratuitous use of in-game medical healing supplies, limbs regenerate after 2 minutes if the player's HP isn't fully depleted.
  • Fukaziroh loses both her legs early on in SJ2 from a mine and was unable to move for a short period of time.
  • Later on, she gets all of her limbs sniped off by Pitohui.
  • LLENN herself has her hands cut off by Fuka upon her request, so she can be freed from Pitohui's grasp and be able to attack her.
• Amazon Chaser: Being small and cute certainly helps but demonstrating great skill in combat is what truly scored LLENN a legion of admirers. During Squad Jam 2, most of the audience is cheering for her with one guy in particular repeatedly calling her "my LLENN". This guy is shouted down by a chorus of "She's not yours!"
• And the Adventure Continues: In Episode 12, Pitohui is defeated in-game by LLENN, and as promised, refuses to take her own life. After meeting in real life, LLENN and Pitohui go monster hunting once again, and spring into action when their booby trap goes off.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The LN explains that as more and more teams get eliminated in Squad Jam, the game will start randomly generating vehicles at a higher rate, as the SJ maps are huge and the time intervals for players to encounter each other when there are only a few teams left would be unacceptably high if everyone could only run on foot.
• Anyone Can Die: Downplayed and actually rather light-hearted example. While both LLENN and M survive the first Squad Jam, the second one ends with LLENN and Fuka, having just defeated PM4, getting unceremoniously finished off by T-S. SJ3 then ends with LLENN being literally the only survivor while the rest of LPFM, and BTRY which she ended up joining, kicking it, while SJ4 has everyone who took part in the mall battle dying with Fire, the only non-combatant, being the Sole Survivor before he resigns, at which point ZEMAL end up being the last ones standing. And even then, Sophie, Tohma, Anna and Tanya of SHINC and Clarence ended up dying before they even reached the mall. All in all, while you can be assured most of the main will survive long enough for an epic Final Battle, it can be hard to tell whether or not they'll actually survive and win the tournament.
• Arms and Armor Theme Naming: The GGO lobby/city SBC Glocken. You can guess who/what the city's named after.
• Arranged Marriage: A side plot in the Squad Jam 4 arc is Karen being asked to attend an omiai with a businessman who hates MMORPGs and would prohibit her from playing GGO should they marry, and Pitohui challenging him to fight in the upcoming Squad Jam, and if his team beats Karen's, she doesn't have to go. Karen loses the bet and attends the omiai, only to find that seeing her in action as LLENN scared him to the point that he calls the relationship off.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • It looked like Squad Jam 2 would end with LLENN's climactic defeat of Pitohui. However Team T-S, the last remaining team arrive out of nowhere and shoot LLENN and Fuka dead.
  • Upon meeting in real life, Goshi attempted a ruse to make it look like the music club owner Rei Satou was Pitohui. However Karen sees right through the act and realizes Elsa Kanzaki, who was sitting nearby, was the real Pitohui.
• Bathos: An important part of the show. Gun Gale Online is a grim, serious game filled with people who can often get a bit too grim and serious for their own good, but it's still a game, and moments of high drama are usually deflated by silly Acceptable Breaks from Reality.
• Bloody Hilarious: A major source of comedy. Even the most extreme injuries in GGO will only cause minor pain to the players, and the gore is stylised and censored enough to be more ridiculous than disgusting, meaning that the extreme brutality the players dish out to each other is something of a Running Gag. Karen/LLENN in particular gets a lot of comic mileage out of the contrast between her cutesy avatar and her willingness to rip out throats with her teeth, slice off things that really should not be sliced off with her knife, and turn other players into Swiss cheese with her P90.
• Bulletproof Human Shield:
  • During the first Squad Jam, when LLENN ambushes Team Narrows, she uses one of their dead bodies as cover from which to shoot from. This is effective because the corpse temporarily becomes an Immortal Object, which also forces the survivors to get up and close to have even a chance of hitting her. (Spoiler alert: They don't even hit her).
  • During the second Squad Jam, this happens numerous times, from LLENN once again using a recently killed player as hard cover, to Pitohui outright throwing a corpse into the line of fire. It later reaches its peak when team SHINC exploits this by deliberately TK'ing one of their squad members... after said member took a PTRD anti-tank rifle out of her inventory. The purpose here was that another member would not only use the dead teammate's body as a rest for the very heavy rifle, but also use them as a shield to protect them from M's return fire.
• Bullet Time: A couple of instances in the first Squad Jam — time slows down so we can see LLENN ducking as bullets pass overhead.
• Call-Back:
  • The purple "Immortal Object" popup is the same one that was used throughout SAO.
  • Satellite Scan Terminals that were first introduced in the BoB make a return in the Squad Jam tournament. However a change from BoB is that it only displays the Squad leader's position rather than each individual player. Another change is that their depiction in the AGGO anime, that of a ruggedized smartphone, is more in-line with the description of the item taken from the novels for Phantom Bullet.
  • Episode 6 reveals Pitohui is an "SAO loser", a beta tester for SAO who was a day late at logging in on launch day due to real-life obligations, which caused her to be left out. Pito, being obsessed with life-threatening challenges, hit the Despair Event Horizon at having lost this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
  • Episode 10 reveals Pitohui owns a Photon Sword much like Kirito did back in Sword Art Online.
  • Episode 11:
    • Sentient P-chan makes its return to assist LLENN by shielding her from bullets.
    • Water causes slow continuous damage to a player's health, just as it did to Kirito when he tried swimming in the Phantom Bullet arc.
  • Episode 12:
    • LLENN tells Pitohui that M had informed her about Pito's past and being left out of SAO when they met in real life in Episode 6.
    • LLENN reminding Pitohui of the promise they made to meet in real life from Episode 2.
    • Miyu does indeed propose to the real life M, just as she said she would in Episode 7.
    • Karen remembers the fan letter she sent to Elsa Kanzaki, figuring out that was how M knew her identity and that Pitohui was really Elsa Kanzaki.
    • Elsa reveals she saw the video of LLENN kissing Clarence in Episode 9.
• The Cameo:
  • During LLENN's explanation of BoB, a brief shot of Dyne is seen in flashbacks.
  • In Episode 10, a silhouette of Kirito's GGO avatar can be seen, where he's shown wielding his purple photon sword.
• Cartridges in Flight: Averted much like in Sword Art Online, where the bullets are fired off without their casing.
• Casting Gag:
  • Yōko Hikasa playing a beautiful mature woman who is a crazed hedonist that gets a thrill out of blood shed, may or may not be the villain, and is obsessed with The Hero. Where have we heard that before?
  • Speaking of which, this isn't the first time Chinatsu Akasaki played a badass Action Girl who has partaken in a fantasy themed RPG Verse setting, as she previously played Mikoto Yamato in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?.
  • In the dub, one of the Red Shirts in Episode 1 happens to be voiced by Bryce Papenbrook, who voices Kirito from the main series.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • During M's assessment of LLENN's skills prior to the first Squad Jam, he shows her how his own sidearm, a Heckler & Koch HK45, runs a mag through it, and shows her where the pistol's safety lever is and how it's used. This knowledge saves LLENN from being betrayed by M during the latter half of the tournament as she manages to put the pistol back on safe without M noticing while being held at gunpoint by the latter.
  • When LLENN decides to continue on during the first Squad Jam alone, she places the satellite scan terminal in the left breast pocket of her uniform. As later noted in Pocket Protector, the SST ends up saving her when she's downed and at Eva's mercy, as when the latter dumps the rest of her pistol's magazine into LLENN's upper torso, most of the shots were stopped by the SST due to it being an "Immortal Object".
  • M's lesson on how to use a knife proves valuable after all. With P-chan destroyed, LLENN draws the knife M gave to her and fights Eva with it, succeeding in killing her.
  • The trench knife Fuka uses to pin her hair up seems like it's just a decorative piece for most of Squad Jam 2. She uses it in the final fight to free her hands from the duct tape that kept in bound, before cutting off LLENN's hands at the wrists to free her from Pitohui's grasp and kicking LLENN into Pito.
• Clip Show: Episode 5.5 of the anime involves M describing to Pito the events of Squad Jam.
• Companion Cube: LLENN's P-chan. It becomes bizarre when she briefly imagines her weapon talking to her.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In Karen's origin story, the "SAO Incident" is seen on the news with a visual of Aincrad.
  • The first game LLENN tried was ALfheim Online, where she had a Sylph avatar that basically looked like a taller Leafa.
  • LLENN mentions that she can eat all she likes in GGO without having to worry about getting fat; it was previously brought up in SAO and ALO that players can't get fat in VR since their real life selves are not actually eating.
  • Pito actually participated in the previous BoB during the Phantom Bullet arc. However she was eliminated in the second round of the preliminaries by a sniper.
  • Squad Jam only came into existence because a certain gun otaku novelist enjoyed seeing Kirito and Sinon tag teaming in the BoB, so he begged the creators to make a new event specifically involving teams (large cash "donations" also played a part). In the anime, Pito only mentions two unnamed players who worked together as a team, however it's very obvious who she's talking about.
  • When M states if he died in the game he would die in real life, LLENN replies that "this isn't Sword Art Online."
  • While Karen is back home in Hokkaido for her spring break in February 2026, Miyu reveals to her about how she got beaten in Alfheim Online by a super-strong player named Zekken, which is the moniker for Yuuki.^note In the Sword Art Online timeline, this was when the Mother's Rosario arc took place, so it's almost certain that Fuka fought Yuuki when the latter issued the challenge to all ALO players
  • M/Goshi mentions "Player Killers" from Sword Art Online, with the most notable group being Laughing Coffin.
  • When Fukaziroh joins the game with her short, blonde avatar, the same guy who asked to buy Kirito's effeminate avatar asks to buy hers.
  • In Episode 9, Sinon finally gets mentioned by name when some players are talking about anti-materiel rifles and remember Sinon used one in the previous BoB.
  • The Harassment Code^note a safety measure that prevents male players from sexually assaulting female players, by giving said players an ability to report anyone who makes prolonged physical contact with them which was first implemented in SAO appears to be present in all games connected to The Seed, including GGO.
  • Kirito is mentioned when Team MMTM get taken out by a Photon Sword that belongs to Pitohui. His name isn't brought up, but a silhouette of his GGO avatar is seen as well as a description of him being a new player in the previous BoB.
  • In the second light novel, Karen thinks of GGO as "a game, but not something she was playing," knowing that she has to win to prevent Pito from killing herself. Said words were used in reference to the SAO game.
  • The ending of Volume 6 prominently features the Medicuboid, the device Yuuki tested, as it turns out that the leader of the "NPC" team was actually soldier using said device, with the rest of his team being A.I.s based on his real-life squadmates.
  • In Chapter 3 of Volume 7, the main characters have some time to kill before Squad Jam 4 and spend some time chatting with each other. The narration mentions in passing that one of the topics they discussed was "the bottom-up AI incident that shocked society." SJ4 occurs just a few days after Rath's press conference revealing Alice Synthesis Thirty and Project Alicization to the world.
  • In Volume 8, when Fire makes an alliance of the teams, he says that when they're done, they can all use a grenade to die together and be made co-champions, like in the third Bullet of Bullets tournament (i.e. the one shown in the Phantom Bullet arc, which Kirito and Sinon won).
  • In Volume 9, LLENN and Eva have a quick-draw duel in which they fire at each other when a thrown bullet hits the ground, an idea inspired by Kirito and Sinon's duel in the BoB preliminaries.
• Continuity Snarl: Fatal Bullet has a contradiction with this series, such as showing the use of radios in the BoB Tournament, even though here Pitohui had emphasised Squad Jam was the first tournament that had allowed them.
• Creator Cameo: The unnamed novelist who pitched and sponsored the Squad Jam is blatantly just Sigsawa. He even briefly voices himself in the anime. He also partakes in some gleeful Self-Deprecation in the process, as people in-universe call him a weirdo obsessed with guns to the point the cops should probably take him in.
• Creator Thumbprint: LLENN tries to give herself a Rousing Speech in her head when battling Team SHINC, and ends up projecting her inner voice to her gun. The author of this story is certainly known for gun-toting heroines accompanied by a talking inanimate object.
• Crisis Catch And Carry: After LLENN gets non-fatally shot by a sniper, M picks her up and flees to a hovercraft where they get away from their attacker.
• Dark Horse Victory:
  • In the second Squad Jam, after LLENN finally takes down Pitohui by attacking her with her teeth after losing all her weapons, the victor is sniped by a squad that had spent the entire battle avoiding combat, to the general boos of the audience.
  • In the fourth Squad Jam, after LLENN ends up dying to the monsters in the mall and Fire resigns, the victory goes to Team ZEMAL, of all people.
• Death Is Cheap: Deconstructed. Unlike Sword Art Online, death in Gun Gale Online isn't permanent, although anyone who dies in a tournament is out for the rest of the match. However, Pitohui turns it back into a death game by putting the risk of killing her teammates for real if they die in the game. So while death isn't permanent in-game, it's still very much consequential.
• Designated Girl Fight: Played with. Due to most of the main cast being female and the majority of GGO being inhabited by male players, on the rare occasion LLENN comes across a female enemy the fights tend to be more drawn out and difficult for her, as opposed to her typical fodderizing of other teams. In the second Squad Jam, two teams in completely different areas have their sole surviving member be a girl, one to befriend LLENN, and the other to come within a millimeter of killing Pitohui. In the third Squad Jam, this trope is almost named verbally in "A Woman's Battle" between Clarence and Shirley.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Back in the Phantom Bullet arc it was mentioned that purely AGI builds were no longer the best for an avatar to have, since the best guns require a good amount of STR. So by the time of the first Squad Jam, LLENN (who is a pure AGI build) is actually using an avatar with a sub-optimal build. However that doesn't stop her from being a force to be reckoned with, compensating for her lack of heavy firepower with her incredible speed to keep herself from being hit.
  • M's playstyle revolves around long-distance sharpshooting without revealing his position. To this end, he perfected a technique wherein he only places his finger on the trigger of his rifle when shooting, rather than keeping his finger on the trigger at all times, which keeps the Bullet Line from activating. This also prevents the Bullet Circle from activating: thus, without the aid of GGO's aim assist system, he must rely entirely on his own dexterity and mental calculations to aim. Having perfected his technique, however, he is one of the most dangerous snipers in GGO owing to his ability to stay concealed.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The anime's ED, "To see the future", is performed by Tomori Kusunoki (Karen/LLENN).
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: The tutorial NPC for GGO is one of these. She spends the duration of the tutorial yelling at LLENN, calling her a "dung beetle", and constantly remarking how LLENN was a goner who would quickly die, all the while instructing her on how the game works and assessing her play style.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: The official subtitles decided to alter LLENN's nickname for Pitohui from "Demon King" to "Grim Reaper", which turns her subsequent break into singing Franz Schubert's "Erlkönig" ("The Erl-King", which was indeed translated in Japanese as "The Demon King") into a bit of a non-sequitur.
• The Ending Changes Everything: In Volume 6, it turns out that the supposed NPC players are actually vets who are playing with the Medicuboid, in a procedure that's meant to cure them of the desire to return to the battlefield.
• Enhance Button: In Volume 6, as Team LPFM uses a small quadcopter drone with a camera to survey the battlefield, M is able to zoom in as much as he wants without losing any image quality. The narration simply says it's due to "the wonders of the video-game world."
• Enemy Mine:
  • In Episode 9, several teams form an alliance to go up against Team PM4 who hold the mountain. Their allegiance ends up so strong that one player holds onto another guy and keeps him from falling off a cliff, even though they belong to different teams.
  • In Episode 10, LLENN join forces with her rivals, Team SHINC, who agree to help after hearing about Pitohui's life being at risk. Eva devises a pincer strategy of attacking from the south as a distraction, willing to let her while team go down if needed, while LLENN attacks from the north.
  • In Volume 6, the team of enemy NPCs proves too difficult for any one team of former Squad Jam champions to handle, so they're all forced to work together to defeat them.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Because Karen can't tell her family about playing a VRMMO, her parents assume her Important Haircut came after a breakup. Her sister, noticing that Karen doesn't answer the phone (because she's playing GGO), asks if Karen's still depressed about not making any friends at school.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Averted. Karen overhears the high school girls commenting on her height, and assumes (not unreasonably, given her past experiences) that they're making fun of her. In reality, the girls find her "cool," a part Karen didn't overhear.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: One of PM4's hired muscle notices after Pitohui gets sniped that she survived the headshot, was overstimulated, and passed out. He's concerned that she didn't disconnect, because the AmuSphere has preventative measures to monitor a player's heart rate and consciousness to avoid another SAO incident... elements that were absent in its predecessor. Pito's using a NervGear.
• Eye Scream: M teaches LLENN that a good way to kill someone with a knife is by stabbing them in the brain through the eye. Late in the second Squad Jam, Pitohui takes out two opponents by skewering them through the eye with her photon sword.
• Feminist Fantasy: Part of the appeal of the spin-off is that The Protagonist is a Badass Adorable Action Girl who is more than capable of holding her own. This is in contrast to the main Sword Art Online which while also featuring badass girls, they are often sidelined to empower Kirito, the male protagonist, and sometimes depend on him to save them. In contrast GGO has a cast of mainly girls, and The One Guy is firmly a sidekick to one of them (specifically, an Understanding Boyfriend).
• Fire-Forged Friendship:
  • LLENN and Pitohui's first meeting in the anime had Pito holding a gun to LLENN's head, but almost immediately afterwards the two hit it off as friends due to both of them being girls.
  • In the light novel, it's revealed that the two members of the rival squads that allied to take down Team PM4 started off not getting along- the man in the red jacket scolded the one in the desert camo for needlessly talking en route to Team PM4. By the time Pito has them at their mercy, the former refuses to let go of the latter, while the latter insists that the former let him go to save himself. Anime adaptation even has the two sharing drinks together in the spectator room.
• Flash Forward:
  • Episode 1 of the anime "Squad Jam" is a Flash Forward to nine months after the real start of the series in Episode 2.
  • Furthermore, the ending of Episode 1 with Team SHINC watching in-game footage of LLENN is actually the start of Episode 6 and taking place after the first Squad Jam.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In Episode 5.5, M revealing he's a fan of Elsa Kanzaki and finding her beautiful is a major clue to both the real identities of M and Pito. Further clues are given by Goshi (M's real life self) who reveals he's in love with Pito.
  • Also from Episode 5.5, Pito muses about how she'd like to sponsor another Squad Jam tournament. The next episode then reveals the second SJ's sponsor is not the same as the first one.
  • In the first volume, Karen, after overhearing the high school girls she passes every day remarking about her height, wishes she could shoot them with her P90. Since said girls are the members of Team SHINC, LLENN ends up getting her wish. The second volume of the light novel says that since the encounter with the girls had provoked Karen into taking part in Squad Jam, it was "quite a bit of foreshadowing."
  • In Squad Jam 3, when the Special Rule activates and Team Betrayers is formed, as the lift drone lands to pick up the chosen betrayer, Pitohui quietly asks herself if this will actually work. It's later revealed that LLENN is the actual betrayer and Pitohui had no idea at the time if the lift drone would have even functioned when she got on it.
  • In Volume 6, the NPC team is able to shoot without a bullet line appearing, and Pito, when asked whether it's possible, says that if M, a player, can do it, so can the NPCs. For reference, M's expertise with a gun comes from training at live shooting ranges overseas. The "NPC" players turn out to be actual soldiers in the Medicuboid.
  • LLENN notices that the NPC team taking her prisoner is completely unheard-of behavior for them, as well as for human GGO players. It turns out that the soldiers who play as the "NPC" team are neither NPCs nor GGO players.
• Four Is Death: The trope is discussed with the name of Pito & M's team in Squad Jam 2 (the two of them plus four Hired Guns), "PM4" as its alternative meaning could also be "Pitohui & M's Death." Squad Jam 2 also takes place on 04/04/2026, an appropriate date for a tournament about teams gunning each other down.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Episode 2 showcases numerous Play Station Vita games on sale, such as Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth.
  • In Episode 12, pausing at the shot of Pitohui's HUD shows the names of their hired muscle: Alphon, Borno, Clint, and Dominic.
• "Friends" Rent Control: Karen's apartment in Tokyo is huge for Japanese standards (even by American standards, it's still big). Her living room has a big-screen TV and an entire home theater setup, and there is more than enough space for her and all 6 members of Team SHINC to sit, talk, and eat comfortably with room to spare. In addition to that, her bedroom is quite spacious and her mattress looks to be queen-sized, with plenty of room for her to walk around. In the light novel, it's pointed out that this is a luxury apartment that her family pays for. Her family is quite well-off, which explains why she flies first class back home.
• Future Society, Present Values: An aversion: Volume 3 says the reason why Shirley in real life is able to be a legal rifle owner at the very young age of 24 is because in 2018^note About four years before the SAO incident, the Japanese government amended the Firearms & Swords Control Law of 1958 to reduce the 10 year shotgun ownership prerequisite down to only three years (shotgun ownership becomes legal at age 20). The light novel was originally written in 2015: Sigsawa was clearly being far too optimistic, as 2018 has come and gone and the only change that occurred in real life of that year was that the Firearms & Swords Control Law was amended to become even stricter by enacting even more stringent, micromanaging regulations on knife blade lengths when carrying in public.
• Godlike Gamer: The series follows suit from its parent series with LLENN, who becomes an elite gamer in Gun Gale Online. Despite only being a newbie, she finds out she's a gaming prodigy with natural talent, able to destroy entire squadrons of enemy players by herself. It's up for debate how much of her feats are actual skill and how much is due to her advantageous avatar that gives her Super-Speed and a short stature, but nonetheless she ends up Famed In-Story and comes out as the champion of a PvP tournament. Pitohui even describes LLENN as "God's gift to FullDive."
• Gratuitous English: The series frequently makes use of snippets of English words in dialogue, which is fitting considering Gun Gale Online is an international game with lots of Western elements thrown in.
• Groin Attack: More brutal than the usual. In SJ2, LLENN slides between a male player's legs, and uses her knife to slash at his vulnerabilities. Men in the audience are disturbed.
• Gun Fu: LLENN and Pitohui both incorporate heavy agility moves into their gun-oriented combat. LLENN leaps about the battlefield, while Piothui dances and twirls while she slaughters everyone.
• The Ham Squad: Team ZEMAL are a whole squad of Boisterous Bruisers who announce their presence by shouting Badass Boasts and non-stop machine gun fire. Of course they always end up getting killed quickly due to giving away their location to other teams.
• History Repeats: Happens in Squad Jam 2, with LLENN's first battle involving her gunning down a team by overwhelming them with her Super-Speed and using a corpse as a Bulletproof Human Shield. Then later as she goes up against the Final Boss she sacrifices P-chan as a shield against gunfire.
• Improbably Female Cast:
  • Despite Gun Gale Online being a male-dominated game where females are a rare sight, three out of the four main characters are female. This is largely due to the primary protagonist being woman and the other two being her best friend and an existing player who wanted to see the new girl racking up player kills. Pitohui even jokes about women needing to stick together. By the fourth Squad Jam, they have a crew with two new female members, while M remains The One Guy.
  • Team SHINC is an Amazon Brigade comprised entirely of females. Justified in their case by already being a squad of high school rhythmic gymnasts who tried out VR gaming to improve their coordination and ended up enjoying it for its own sake.
• In Medias Res: The anime begins with LLENN & M entering Squad Jam. The manga begins a few weeks before Squad Jam with LLENN & Pitohui fighting a squad of players who are fed up with LLENN's constant PK'ing antics and have teamed up to hunt her down. The second volume of the light novel begins with the "wall-pinning" scene between Goshi and Karen, but doesn't refer to Goshi by name or explain why he's in Karen's apartment building.
• I Shall Taunt You: When LLENN and Pitohui are one on one, LLENN gets Pito to open herself up to attack by mocking Sword Art Online. Pito, who's carrying a lot of baggage over SAO, charges recklessly and gets knifed multiple times by LLENN for her mistake.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: During the final showdown between LLENN and Pitohui, the latter says:
  Pitohui: That's my LLENN-chan! You're so irresistible! So irresistible... I wanna kill you!
• In-Universe Soundtrack: Elsa Kanzaki songs are featured in-universe which LLENN is quite fond of listening to, however at times they are also played as a soundtrack, most notable "Independence" which serves as LLENN's Theme Music Power-Up but was also once requested to be played in-universe by Pitohui.
• Kids Driving Cars: While Fukaziroh isn't actually a kid (aged 19), her in-game avatar is only around 150cm tall so that she has the appearance of one. Despite her size she's able to drive a large humvee with no difficulty.
• Killed Mid-Sentence:
  • A guy named Lucas is wiped out by another team during the first Squad Jam while he was lamenting how he's the last survivor of his team in "Squad Jam".
  • In the second Squad Jam, one team member in the dome responds to the pink smoke with "It's her! The Pink Dev-" DEAD.
  • Shortly afterward, LLENN holds an enemy player at gunpoint and orders him to tell his friends that he killed her and they should stop shooting. Instead, he says, "Tell 'em yourself, you little-" and she shoots him dead.
  • Near the end of Squad Jam 2, after performing the coup de grace on Pito, LLENN starts to say "Pito-sa-" before being gunned down by Team T-S.
• Know When to Fold 'Em:
  • After witnessing how LLENN wiped out four members of the pro team, the remaining two survivors resign from the first Squad Jam. M speculates that they were professionals looking for practice, and a small girl who could run inhumanly fast wasn't a realistic enemy for their purposes.
  • After Pitohui slaughters the teams that worked together to take her down, then tracks down their leaders, one of them resigns before she can kill him.
• Lampshade Hanging: LLENN is as disbelieving as the audience when Eva catches a thrown pistol magazine in her pistol.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Several of these from episode 5.5.
  • While M is downloading footage of the first Squad Jam, he tells Pito she should probably listen to some music while waiting and asks for requests on what to pick. Pito tells him to go with some music that burns with passion and makes you feel the thrill of battle. The opening sequence immediately starts playing as if that was the music chosen for Pito.
  • The fact that Pito and M are watching footage from the Squad Jam and the footage is identical to the actual footage that the viewers watching the anime sees. So Pito and M are essentially watching as viewers about a show with them in it.
  • Pito makes another request for M to play music, to which he picks an Elsa Kanzaki song (which was the same one already playing as background music for that scene).
  • The post-credit scene is supposed to be an In-Universe Breaking the Fourth Wall as a joke done by the in-universe Sigsawa, however it really veers close to actual fourth wall breaking with some of the dialogue. Especially the one where the theme song starts playing in-universe and LLENN complains it shouldn't be used for others since she was the main character.
• Lethal Joke Weapon: The Remington XP-100 is an odd hybrid of a pistol and a rifle, being too big and hard to aim compared to other pistols and having too low range for a rifle, so few people use it. However, in the mall in Squad Jam 4, in which players can only use handguns, it becomes one of the more deadly long-range weapons available.
• Let's Play: An in-universe example: the second light novel shows that one of the participants in Squad Jam 2 is treating the tournament as a Let's Play by recording his first-person perspective and providing constant commentary on the battle, which he plans to later upload to his online video channel. It turns out to be a major hindrance because he has to disable his comm device to do the commentary, and thus cannot communicate with his squadmates.
• Lighter and Softer: The spin-off is far more light-hearted than the Phantom Bullet arc of Sword Art Online, given that GGO can now be shown off in its full glory without the constant threat of a psychotic Serial Killer on the loose.
  • Squad Jam 3 itself is this, as unlike the first two Squad Jams, nobody's life is in danger and Karen is over her height angst so she's not playing to escape her real life psychological issues. It's solely a tournament for everyone to have fun.
  • The status of female players in GGO. In the original series, Sinon was very uncomfortable with some players sexually harassing her, but here, Fuka walks around and makes a game of seeing how many guys she can pick up. Although there's still some sexual harassment issues present, it was represented in more lighthearted tone with the girls mostly treats it just as small nuisances that they could handle relatively easy.
• Little Useless Gun: The pistol class in GGO gets a pretty poor showing in general. Numerous instances of pistols are used throughout the Squad Jam tournaments, but the only time a pistol is actually shown killing someone is when the shooter took them by total surprise and got them In the Back. It's to the point that most teams don't even bother carrying side-arms in favour of more ammo, grenades, or attachments for their other guns, the only exceptions being Eva and Tanya from SHINC and David from MMTM. This is lampshaded by Pitohui during Squad Jam 2 when she shoots an enemy player hanging onto another player on a cliff with a stolen M1911A1 but despite taking almost half a dozen bullets, he is still not dead and she whines about how weak pistols are. However, Squad Jan 4 has a rule specifically designed to avert this, saying that at certain times, the pistol will be one of the only usable weapons. Specifically, the mall where the climax takes place is designated as a pistol-only zone.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: LLENN is shown doing this in the opening sequence. She and her teammates also do so before the start of every Squad Jam.
  • For the first part of SJ2, Pito mainly uses weapons taken from her enemies. However, once the field has narrowed to just a few teams, she equips a number of powerful weapons from her inventory.
• Logical Weakness:
  • As mentioned on the main page, lightsaber users in GGO are reliant on being able see the prediction lines, or even being able to predict where the prediction lines will appear. So what does this mean for weapons that don't get free concealed first shots, or for snipers unable to break contact after firing their first free shot? They're not completely out of luck. Following Kirito's exploits during his BoB run, players have found another method for those scenarios, and is something even sniper rifles can benefit from: Line-less shooting.^note This is where a player first takes aim without touching the trigger (and therefore not triggering the Bullet Circle or the Prediction Line). When they're ready to fire, they'll touch and squeeze the trigger in one quick, smooth motion, firing the rifle before the game system recognizes that the player has touched the trigger. This concept is first explained and demonstrated against regular gun-toting players during the first Squad Jam by M (as he uses this technique with his Mk14 EBR to engage enemy players with reduced risk of retaliation), but it's during the second one where we read about this in action and learn how effective it is against lightsaber wielders. During the prelims, Team KKHC, a team made entirely of hunters living on Hokkaido, were matched against an enemy team that decided to activate their lightsabers and charge at them. As all the members of KKHC had extensive firearms experience, and did not rely on the bullet circle for aiming, the opposing team crumpled within one or two shots from each member, which the saber-wielders couldn't deflect or even dodge because there weren't any bullet lines generated by the line-less shooting.
  • As explained in the tutorial, optical guns have energy-based ammunition which fire straight and without any environmental factors influencing speed, however they can be easily blocked with deflector shields. Live-ammunition guns use bullets with mass that punch through shields, but the trajectory and speed will be influenced by the wind. For this reason optical guns are more suited to monsters, while live-ammunition guns are better for PvP.
• Loophole Abuse: In the Squad Jam tournament, M tells LLENN that the corpses of players who are killed during battle linger on the battlefield for about ten minutes, during which time they're also immune to all damage. He tells her to use the dead body of one of the pro team as cover after her initial ambush attack. Due to her small size, she is able to completely hide behind the body, and kills the other two members. In the second Squad Jam, a member of Team SHINC uses this by killing one of their own to make an indestructible shield and sniper stand.
• MacGuffin: Discussed and name-dropped in Volume 6. After the Excuse Plot of the special match is revealed- prevent a group of soldiers from using a WMD on the already ruined world- Karen recalls how it doesn't matter what a MacGuffin is as long as it drives the plot forward. She also doesn't care about the plot as long as she gets to fight Team SHINC again.
• Made of Plasticine: An in-universe example. GGO has highly stylised gore to keep it reasonably family-friendly, and avatars literally fall apart like they're made of red plasticine when they're killed or injured. The show is very fond of using this for comedy when the in-game action starts getting a little too real.
• Man Bites Man: At the climax of Squad Jam 2, with all her weapons gone and her arms sliced off, LLENN defeats Pitohui by ripping her throat open with her teeth.
• Mr. Smith: In the document explaining the rules for the new game event, The Novelist mentions an acquaintance from Zaskar who thought of the idea, and refers to the man as Mr. Smith.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In the light novel, Sinon is mentioned as having been approached by at least two people introduced in this spinoff and asked about her rifle. Pitohui wanted to buy it off her, while Team SHINC wanted to know how she got it in the first place.
  • M mentions that he's not surprised if GGO is used as a special forces training tool. It's been mentioned a lot in SAO novels that governments around the world are considering the use of VRMMORPGs as a new training tool, and one major character that is explicitly noted as using GGO as such is Gabriel Miller, CEO of Glowgen Defense Systems.
  • M telling LLENN to shoot and she doesn't have to hit them so long as she distracts them, mirrors Kirito's dialogue to Sinon when they're being chased by Death Gun on the highway.
  • In the conclusion of the first Squad Jam tournament, M and the last member of Team SHINC fire their sniper rifles at each other simultaneously. The bullets in flight pass each other in a Slow-Motion Pass-By identical to how Sinon and Death Gun's sniper duel went in the climax of Phantom Bullet.
  • In the light novel, Team Narrows are revealed to actually be working for Kikuoka Seijirou to assess GGO's potential on being used as a military training tool.
  • One of PM4's hired muscle intentionally projects a Bullet Line from his rifle in order to get his target to do something that gets them killed (Anna dodges the "Phantom Bullet" right into M's sights), much like how Sinon lased Death Gun with a Bullet Line from her rifle in the Phantom Bullet arc to cause him to do something that gets him killed (He stops attacking, and tries to cloak up. His cloak is disabled by pistol fire and then is killed by Kirito.)
• No Antagonist: One of the most notable departures from the main Sword Art Online; there is no villain menacing the heroes. It's all about LLENN learning to play GGO, befriending Pitohui, and competing in Squad Jam as part of a team. The closest we get to antagonists are opposing players, but they don't count as actual villains. Pitohui also veers close to being an antagonist due to the Death Game stakes she set for the tournament, but ultimately she's still a main character and not a true villain.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In Squad Jam 2, the seven leaders of the allied teams are essentially anime versions of The Expendables.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Pitohui was able to see straight through LLENN and tell she played GGO as a form of escapism. She knows this because she was in the same boat herself.
  • After hearing Team SHINC's backstory, Karen notes that they're not so different from herself, as Team SHINC also played GGO as a means of escapism so that they could become better people in real life.
  • During their final confrontation, it's revealed that when LLENN responded with "because it's fun!" when he asked why's she's fighting, Jacob immediately (albeit mistakenly) realizes that she's like him; too addicted to the battlefield to just leave it behind despite the risks.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • In light of LLENN's inadvertent use of the Satellite Scan Terminal as a Pocket Protector during the climax of the first Squad Jam, the item had its "Immortal Object" attribute removed for the second SJ to prevent a repeat of such a tactic.
  • Due to Team T-S "stealing" the victory of Squad Jam 2 after doing nothing but camping in a corner the whole tournament, the third SJ takes place on a sinking island to ensure that all teams are constantly on the move and getting closer to each other. T-S still manages to end up camping in a corner on top of a tall skyscraper. At least this time, it was unintentional on their part since the rising water level wasn't announced and was meant to be a surprise to all the players. They end up being killed when Pito steers the cruise ship into them.
  • Anti-camping measures were introduced in Squad Jam 4. Any squad that doesn't move within a five-minute timeframe will come under attack by mobs spawning within their vicinity.
• One-Steve Limit: One of the members of ZEMAL happens to be called Shinohara, which is Fuka's surname, but there is no implication that the two are related.
• Plug 'n' Play Technology: Modern VRMMO games made using "The Seed" allows players to easily transfer character data between games. Karen took advantage of this when, after trying ALO, she got stuck with a tall avatar, transferring to several games before finally getting an ideally tiny avatar in GGO.
• Pocket Protector:
  • During the first Squad Jam, LLENN was saved from a sniper shot when the bullet struck one of her P90's magazines instead, which caused her to lose a full 50 rounds of ammo when it broke and sent the cartridges flying everywhere.
  • Later on, LLENN is saved from certain death again when she went up against the leader of team SHINC. When said leader, Eva, opens up on LLENN with her Arsenal Strike One pistol, all of her initial shots hit the Satellite Scan Terminal that LLENN was carrying in one of her chest pockets. As the device was considered an "Immortal Object", it effectively no-selled the kill-shot. At the start of Squad Jam 2, it's specifically noted before the fighting starts that Satellite Scan Terminals no longer have the Immortal Object tag.
• Real-Place Background: The battlefields for Squad Jam tournaments are randomly generated and are more concerned with being a fun gaming experience instead of realism, but two of the locations in SJ2 are based off of Yosemite National Park: the waterfall cliffsides and the field of geysers.
• Replacement Goldfish: Played for laughs. After P-chan is destroyed in the first Squad Jam tournament, LLENN scours the gun markets until she finds another P90 for sale and buys it. As she's leaving with it, she wonders what to call it, such as P-chan II or P-chan the Second, but just settles on P-chan again. After losing the second P-Chan late in SJ2, she buys another P90.
• Reverse Grip: M trains LLENN to use a knife like this, adding further cues on how to use her miniscule size and amazing mobility for additional advantages.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Just like in the Phantom Bullet arc, Gun Gale Online is described as a rather unforgiving game in which it generally takes one good shot to kill a character, not just a Fragile Speedster like LLENN.
• Sealed Orders: In the first Squad Jam, M is carrying a letter to be read after the first hour. It was a letter from Pitohui telling him that if he's killed during the tourney, she'll kill him in real life. However, nowhere in the letter did it mention anything about resigning. This leads him to draw his pistol on LLENN and trying to betray her in hopes that the squad leader status would be passed onto him, which he would use to resign from the tourney and save himself.
• Serious Business: Considering that for most players, Gun Gale Online is just a regular MMO with regular stakes, a surprising number of players take it very personally when their fellow teammates die, or when they are cornered and about to be taken out. Most of them react as if they are in a death game; desperately fighting, cowering, and dying screams of anguish included. Ironically, the actual trained soldiers are the only one to treat the game with any sort of levity (one of them reacting to their death with merely a frustrated "oh come on!"), casually bowing out once they had concluded they had lost.
• Shared Universe: Exists within the Sword Art Online universe, but focusing on a new set of characters completely unrelated to Kirito and his adventures. Although there are numerous nods to characters and events from the main Sword Art Online.
  • Sinon has been name-dropped in the light novels and the anime, and even met Team SHINC offscreen sometime before Squad Jam 2, although she has yet to appear in person.
  • Kirito has been referenced through his Photon Sword wielding and teaming up with Sinon in the previous BoB.
  • Yuuki is referred to as Zekken, and has encountered Fuka in ALO.
  • Team Narrows is under the command of Kikuoka Seijirou.
• Shout-Out: Has a page of its own.
• Shown Their Work: Keiichi Sigsawa is a major Gun Nut (his penname even refers to the weapons manufacturer SIG Sauer), so you can expect every detail about the firearms in the series to be accurate.
  • As a whole, the show avoids You Always Hear the Bullet. When a character is shown to be on the receiving end of sniper fire, the bullet's impact occurs a split second before the gunshot is heard. When we're on the sniper's perspective, the gunshot is done normally.
  • The P90 is a perfect weapon for LLENN to use. It is a light firearm, even with half a dozen fully loaded magazines on her person, and its compact shape and the 5.7mm round's soft recoil allow her physically weak avatar to use it effectively while giving her the extra punch that her first weapons, a pair of CZ Skorpions chambered in much weaker .32 ACP rounds, lacked.
  • During the Training Montage when LLENN was new to GGO, she absolutely stinks at using pistols and sniper rifles. The latter is easy to explain as those weapons are meant for a high STR build, but the pistols are bad for her because her grip is terrible. She holds the grip too low and her support hand is in the wrong position entirely. If someone were to give her proper instruction, she could probably use pistols more effectively.
  • The HK 45 is a very appropriate sidearm for M to use. A guy who is of that size and strength would easily be able to handle the harder recoil of the .45 ACP round instead of the more standard 9mm sidearm most real-life shooters use, and it is much more common and cheaper than the legendary Mark 23 pistol (which he could also easily use).
  • While Fukaziroh is buying her weapons, everything the salesman in the store says about the Milkor MGL-140 is spot-on accurate and may as well have been read verbatim off of Milkor USA's website.
  • During LLENN's first fight in Squad Jam 2, the last member of the enemy squad fires 3 shots from a shotgun in extremely quick succession, much faster than what most shotgun rates of fire would be. The man is performing a slamfire, a technique where the shotgun fires by holding the trigger down and rapidly working the pump. Today, most shotguns cannot slamfire due to trigger disconnectors being installed to guard against lawsuits, but many pump-action shotguns in the late 19th and early 20th century lacked such disconnectors and were capable of doing this. The light novel details the man is using an Ithaca M37, which was prized by Navy SEALs during the Vietnam War for precisely this ability.
  • When Eva is sniping enemies in Squad Jam 2 across the train tracks, she aims very high above the target. This is accurate to real life physics, as sniping across long distances requires the sniper to account for windage, the curve of the Earth, weather effects, and other factors, sometimes resulting in some very odd points of aim.
  • Clarence's description of her AR-57 rifle is a pretty spot-on description of its components.
  • Volume 3 shows the finer details of hunting in Hokkaido, including the use of sommerskis for maneuvering in mountains^note skis that make use of sea lion pelts where the fur grows in a specific direction, allowing one to climb slopes without worrying about sliding down the wrong way, covering a rifle's muzzle with a gauntlet, and the growing number of female hunters.
  • Two-thirds of the way into Volume 4, the narrative spends a few pages explaining the differences between full metal jacket (FMJ) and jacketed soft point (JSP) bullets.
  • Volume 6, Chapter 8 spends some time going into a lengthy description of how the RPG-7 launcher works and the many different types of warheads it can fire, and also spends some time explaining the history of the M9A1 Bazooka from World War II.
  • Volume 7, Chapter 4 takes some time to describe an interesting feature of the Type-89 assault rifle's fire selector switch. The kanji inscribed on the receiver are prounounced "A" (Anzen, safe), "Ta" (Tansha, semi-automatic), and "Re" (Rensha, fully-automatic). The urban legend is that combining these together makes "Atare" which sounds like saying "hit the target."
  • Volume 8, Chapter 9 goes into a lot of detail on how to zero rifle sights. Then Chapter 11 gives us a brief history of the Heckler & Koch M110A1 rifle, even noting that there is a big difference between it and the very similarly named M110 rifle.^note The original M110 is based on the Knight's Armament SR-25, while H&K's replacement for it is based on the H&K G28, an accurized version of the HK417 battle rifle.
  • Volume 9, being the longest volume of the series, is packed with plenty of details:
    • Chapter 15 goes into an explanation of the L129A1 rifle, also known as the LM308MWS and lampshades how confusing gun names can be when they have both a civilian name and a military designation.
    • Chapter 16 then gives us some trivia on the Ruger Precision Rifle and the Mk. 12 Special Purpose Rifle.
    • Chapter 19 goes into the biomechanical difficulties of using pistols as opposed to rifles.
    • Chapter 20 then introduces the Remington XP-100, and subtly alludes to the nonsensical quirks of American Gun Politics by explaining how an 18-inch long gun chambered for the .308 Winchester rifle round, with a bipod and optical scope, can be considered a pistol: because it lacks a stock, it can legally be considered a "pistol" (without falling afoul of short-barreled rifle (SBR) regulations in the National Firearms Act). That, and the manufacturer markets it as such.
    • In Chapter 21, David resorts to bumpfiring his Beretta APX pistol by simply changing his grip on the gun (to exactly like it is in the linked video) at Pitohui when she drops from the ceiling right in front of him and he has less than a second before she stabs him with her Photon Sword. Although that same video shows that the Beretta APX, in an unmodified form, would be very difficult if not outright impossible to bumpfire due to its long trigger reset and controllable recoil.
  • Volume 13:
    • One of the members of the Team Greedo in Chapter 13 announces that he's on "death duty." The narration takes a moment to point out this term was used by the Shinsengumi police force in Bakumatsu era Japan for the man who would be first to go on patrol.
    • In that same chapter, Vivi reveals that Team ZEMAL's secret weapon is an M2 machine gun. The narration proceeds to spend several paragraphs talking about the history of the M2 and the specific model they have, which is the M2HB-QCB (M2 Heavy Barrel, Quick Change Barrel) and the incredible power of its .50 BMG ammunition.
• Simultaneous Arcs: The events of AGGO overlap with its parent series. Episode 2-3 takes place in the background of Phantom Bullet, with Pitohui even competing in the BoB. Squad Jams 1 and 2 take place during Mother's Rosario, with SJ2 occurring on the final day of that arc. Squad Jam 3 takes place shortly after Alicization begins while the Test Play battle occurs around the time that that arc is ending.
• Talking Weapon: In LLENN's Imagine Spot, P-chan sprouts eyes and starts talking to her. LLENN freaks out.
• There Are No Therapists:
  • Karen could use a chat with a professional about her height complex and associated social anxiety.
  • Elsa is in dire need of intervention since self treatment via VR games isn't preventing her from placing conditions with real life consequences. She managed to find a masochist to exercise her sadism on, but her Death Seeker desires (and severe reaction when thwarted, as when she missed out on SAO) place herself and those around her at high risk and prevent her from acknowledging the feelings of others for her. Karen asks Goshi if he's considered having Pito talk to a psychologist, but he refuses.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In Episode 4, M has just sniped out an entire enemy team riding hovercrafts, until there's just one guy left. M throws a grenade at him and blows him out of the water. Still alive on the shore, LLENN unloads several magazines into him to finish him off. The light novel explains that she had to make sure the guy didn't trigger a grenade.
• Title Drop: The ending of "One Summer Day" has this, courtesy of one of the soldiers who challenged LLENN and the others.
  But never will I forget the events that took place one summer day.
• Training Montage:
  • When LLENN takes the tutorial for GGO, she tries out a variety of guns and performs poorly at most of them until she finds a submachine gun which the tutorial NPC says works best for her.
  • After meeting M for the first time, he puts LLENN through a more intense training regimen in preparation for the Squad Jam tournament that focuses on teaching her about movement, reloads, and rapidly switching between semi- and full-auto fire.
  • A much more informal training session occurs when Fukaziroh enters the game, as LLENN takes her out to the desert to hunt monsters and get Fuka acclimated to GGO and her new grenade launchers.
• Truth in Television:
  • LLENN's pink outfit ends up camouflaging her well in the desert and is used to conceal her from other players until she ambushes them. In real life, the British military has used pink land rovers for desert ops.
  • One elite squad is an actual combat group using GGO for training. Real life militaries have subsidized the development of FPS games for use as training tools, such as America's Army, the Arma series, and China's Glorious Mission.
• Unflinching Walk: M, Pitohui, and two of their hired muscle do this, walking away from an explosion after Pito blows up the final two survivors with a grenade.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: In the first Squad Jam, LLENN asks M what his plan is for dealing with the pro team. "All right. First...." [Draws his knife. ...And cut.]
• Urban Warfare: Some of the stages in GGO take place in bombed cities, subdivisions and towns.
• Video-Game Lives: Unlike in Squad Jam and Bullet of Bullets, in which dying results in a player losing, in Volume 6, each player in the special battle royale has three lives. As one might expect, most of the participants die at least one or twice.
• Wall Pin of Love: Amusingly subverted. Karen is the recipient, and Goshi asks her whether she's loved anyone else before. She says no, at which point he says that he feels that way about Pito.
  Karen: My first "wall-slamming"... and it's to hear someone confessing their love for another person.
• Wham Line:
  • Near the start of Volume 2, the man following Karen to her apartment identifies himself as M.
  • Late in Volume 3, Karen walks past Rei, who'd claimed to be Pito, then approaches Elsa Kanzaki herself and compliments her on her rendition of "The Demon King," showing that she knows Elsa is Pito.
  • Near the end of Volume 4, the special rule is announced, one that pertains to certain players from each team.
    “The chosen players will leave their teams as betrayers. The betrayers will form a new team that will fight together from this point onward.”
  • Immediately thereafter, someone exults, "“Whoo-hoo! Yeah! It’s meeee! Now I get to fight Llenn!” It's Pitohui.
  • Late in Volume 5, there are only five contestants remaining- LLENN, M, Fuka, Pito and Eva, the latter two of whom are apparently part of the betrayers' team. When a three-on-one confrontation seems likely between Pito, who'd been chosen for Team Betrayer, and her former teammates, Pito then drops the following revelation.
    Pito: But this possibility is much more likely: that I was just a huge liar.
    Fuka: I see! And that’s why it’s three on one! Meaning that Pito and M and I are on LPFM, and Llenn is on Team Betrayer!
  • Late in Volume 6, LLENN gets into a fight with the NPC enemies, which ends with her radio connection cutting off. The other members of LPFM notice that LLENN isn't dead yet, though, and come to the same conclusion.
    Fuka: Whoa, LLENN got captured!
  • In Volume 7, Karen meets a man named Fire Nishiyamada when accompanying her father to a party. Not long afterward, Nishiyamada sends Karen's father a message saying, "I would like to formally begin a relationship with Karen, with an eye toward our eventual marriage."
  • A bit later in Volume 7, Nishyamada's character walks up to LLENN in game and addresses her by her full name, which is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what he knows about her.
  • The protagonists hear that Squad Jam 4 will have a special rule, but don't know what it is. Clarence finds out the hard way.
    Clarence took her time getting up. She was about to take a step forward—but couldn’t.
    “Huh?”
    A hand reaching up out of the ground had a firm grip on her right foot.
  • As Squad Jam 4 begins, the protagonist notice that there are seven teams in an alliance. The last one comes as a shock to LLENN.
    The last of the clustered teams presumably forming an alliance was SHINC.
  • At the end of Volume 9, following the conclusion of Squad Jam 4, Karen goes to meet Fire in person. After the meeting ends, Karen shows her friends this message from Fire.
    "If Karen and LLENN are the same person, then I think I’m afraid of you. I don’t think I can be with you. I’m really sorry. Please, just forget about me. I’m really sorry."
  • In Volume 10, the first of the Five Ordeals has LPFM, SHINC, and Clarence and Shirley face some strange opponents in the first round. During a break in the action, Pito shares that she's figured something out, which Clarence guesses.
    Clarence: All those monsters were players, right?
  • In Volume 10, after the players clear the fifth ordeal, Suuzaburou tells them that they're not done yet, as one task remains.
    Suuzaburou : Once you finish it, this trial is truly over. The quest will be complete.
    Clarence: What? Six?! I thought you said it was the five ordeals, not six!
    Suuzaburou: It is not so taxing that I would call it an ordeal. It will be over very quickly. I want you to kill me.
  • In Volume 11, as LLENN hopes for a normal Squad Jam, Fuka mentions a message that has been sent to everyone besides LLENN, which she insists is no big deal.
    Fuka: No, really, it’s nothing big. All it says is that whoever eliminates Llenn in the next Squad Jam will be paid a hundred million credits, that’s all.
• World of Action Girls: It is semi-often mentioned that female avatars are rare in Gun Gale Online because most of its players are guys. However, GGO Alternative's main cast of characters are largely female so this can appear to be the case.
• You Are the New Trend: Kirito's time in GGO started a trend of players taking up Photon Swords in an attempt to parry bullets.