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Real Life
"Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?"
—Sherlock Holmes, 'The Sign of the Four'

"Real life is for people who can't imagine anything better."
—The Simpsons, ""Lisa The Drama Queen""

That dull, gray place you visit when you're not slaying vampires, traversing time and space, dressing like a flying mammal to fight a clown, learning wizardry, stopping terrorists, saving the world, dissing the Korean War from the rear, riffing at awful movies, piloting giant robots, going boldly where no man has gone before, fighting monsters all over the country and driving a reallly cool muscle car, keeping your homeroom classmate from abolishing the cosmos, stomping on evil, brown mushrooms or some other horrendously addictive activity.

Supposedly contains the Daystar, that terrible orb that burns you and gives you cancer. Sometimes considered an inaccurate reflection of the true world of fiction. Recommended as part of a balanced diet. Beware of characters who end up here.

Also the name of a webcomic whose actual connection to real life varies. "Varies" having the meaning here of including Time Travel and Humongous Mecha.

Compare Truth In Television.

Not to be confused with Half-Life.
Tropes:
  • Aborted Arc - People were really stoked over this "Betamax" thing...
    • Also the Segway.
    • HD too.
  • Absent Aliens: So far...unless the UFO folks are to be believed.
  • Acceptable Breaks From Reality: Subverted. Oh. So. Much.
    • Occasionally played straight with dreams.
    • " Legal fictions" are laws that are based on false "facts," but are followed as written anyhow because they seem to work.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: As most people who have traveled from their country to the U.S. can tell you.
  • All Planets Are Earth Like: Totally averted. While there may be lots and lots of earthlike planets in the universe, they still form only a tiny fraction of the total number of planets in the universe.
  • All There In The Manual: The background is quite sophisticated. Thus it is often hard to understand what's going on. Luckily some fans created a wiki with everything you need to know. Except for what they don't consider notable, anyway.
  • All Just A Dream: Suspected by many, especially Buddhists.
  • And Now For Someone Completely Different: According to some religions, this happens when a character dies.
  • Anti Poop Socking: Sleep.
  • Anyone Can And Will Die: Even you!
  • Apocalypse How: Strangely (yet happily) subverted...for the most part. In spite of numerous viruses (some engineered), natural disasters, and ur-example, the nuclear weapon. The fact that humanity and its homeworld are still here is proof to some that God truly exists.
    • And to the cynics, proof that he doesn't.
    • And to others, just proof that karma doesn't.
    • And to others, that maybe humans are not complete bastards afterall.
  • Applied Phlebotinum: There is a liquid substance called "oil" which is the energy source of almost every sea, air and ground vehicle and is also required to manufacture various useful chemicals and materials (like plastic). Bloody conflicts over its control ensue. It also turns out to be formed from the bodies of ancient dragons micro-organisms.
  • Alternate Universe: We create an infinite number of these every single instant. Maybe.
  • Arc Words: "Weapons of mass destruction" was the most recent. The 2008 season finale seems to be a "Financial Crisis" miniarc that will carry over to the next season.
  • Archive Binge: People have spent their entire lives exploring the backstory. This has lead to the ultimate Archive Panic. Just to make things even harder, much all of the archive is written by Unreliable Narrators.
  • Author Avatar: A few characters throughout the story have been identified as Author Avatars. Whether or not any of them actually are, or even if there is an author, is the cause of much controversy, Fan Wank, Epileptic Trees, and Internet Backdraft.
  • Awesome But Impractical: Non-reproductive sex. Also, such things as video games and some most places on the Internet.
  • Awesome Yet Practical: Reproductive sex.
  • Badass Normal: The entire human race is an example. With nothing but intelligence and opposed thumbs, they have managed to become the masters of the planet, topping beings with natural flight, built-in weapons and super-speed. Need to fly? They made airplanes. Need weapons? They can obliterate entire cities. Need to move fast? They made motorcycles, cars, and planes that can move faster than sound.
    • As the only possessors of intelligence wouldn't it count as Humans Are Special? That presumes humans are the only possessors of intelligence; plenty of reports exist implying other creatures can do many of the things we ascribe to humans, up to and including willful deception.
    • A power most humans don't cultivate any more is endurance running. We're good at it. We're really good at it. In hot enough weather, a fast, fit, trained human can chase a horse until it collapses of heatstroke, and antelope are easier; before the domestication of dogs and the invention of ranged weaponry, this was the most successful hunting method. It's mostly a forgotten ability - most people actually believe that only being intelligent sophants sets us apart, and we'd be helpless otherwise. That sort of hunting is still regularly practiced by various tribes in Africa. Though there are some notable differences such as wearing Nikes and water bottles.
    • Humans are also considered to have excellent vision compared to most other animals.
  • Best For Last: Millions upon millions are involved with various religions because of this trope.
  • Best Level Ever: This.
  • BFG: Staple military equipment. Especially tanks and artillery. http://www.provehicles.co.uk/top-10-heaviest-and-biggest-military-tanks-ever/ For those that don't want to look at the link, the largest tank ever proposed used a 800 mm cannon that shot a 7 ton projective up to 23 miles. Normal tanks use something in the range of 100-120 mm cannons.
  • BFS: Heavily averted. NOBODY uses these. Well, except Jack Churchill. Granted, it was "only" a Scottish broadsword, but he used it to capture Germans with machineguns.
  • Big Bad: Real Life has featured millions of memorable villains of all varieties but consistently turns to Evil Overlord types for the really massive, arc-based evil. Examples include Caligula, Timur the Lame, Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin. (Note that alternate interpretations exist for all of these characters. Stalin in particular retains a strong fandom in Russia, where he was voted the third greatest Russian. Despite speaking Russian with a thick Georgian accent.)
  • Bonus Level Of Hell: If it exists, it's an Unwinnable Bonus Level slash Nonstandard Game Over unlocked in the afterlife from which there is no return.
  • Bonus Stage: Vacations.
  • Boring But Practical: School and work, which help you get the better classes and earn money, respectively.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Subverted. Most awards you earn can be used to level up incredibly fast, gain massive amounts of prestige, and/or win even more awards, and more!
  • Bribing Your Way To Victory: Often the easy way for those with access to large amounts of cash, often draws the resentment of those less fortunate as it is considered a game breaker
  • Broke Episode: The Great Depression. And the current episode. Some predict that the "Credit Crunch" arc is leading to another one of these. Others think the "Credit Crunch" arc is a hoax.
  • Bruce Lee Clone
  • But I Play One On TV: You'd be amazed how common this phenomenon is.
  • Butt Monkey: More of them than you'll ever be able to shake a stick at.
  • Canon Sue:
    • Joan of Arc - a teenage girl who almost singlehandedly ended the British occupation of France, and was then burned at the stake, becoming a martyr.
    • Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, after being crippled by polio, went on to be elected President of the United States, leading it through the Great Depression and World War II, and being the first and only US President to serve more than two terms in office (he died at the start of his fourth).
    • Alexander the Great. At the age of eight, he mounted a horse no one else could mount. He went on to rule Macedonia later, conquering more land with his Macedonian army - all while not losing a single one of those battles. He's even named several cities after himself. Surprisingly, he didn't die in battle either, considering how many times he was in them - instead, he dies from malaria from a mosquito bite.
  • Capital City: Several, though the main ones are New York, Moscow, London, Tokyo, Milan, Paris, Hong Kong, Washington D.C. and Berlin.
  • Cast Herd : Due to the six billion plus characters it's not all the surprising that they organize themselves into smaller groups based around nationality, religion, profession, politics, personality type, hobbies, etc., which makes it much easier to keep track of them.
  • Character Development
  • China Takes Over The World: It had the largest growing economy in the world and is increasing its military power as we speak. Also India to a lesser extant
  • City Of Adventure: London, Paris, New York - really, all of the larger cities seem to be cities of adventure to some extent. Not a day goes by without a dramatic murder mystery to solve, or a new romantic interest cropping up for one of the main characters. Tokyo and New York, however, get most of the spotlight.
  • Class And Level System: The most extensive one ever devised, and more are added whenever an expansion to Science or Commerce occurs.
    • Prestige Class: Movie mogul, President/King, CEO of a major corporation, Nobel Prize winner...
  • Commie Land: Popular during the Cold War arc, however, writers have kept a few pieces of the old arc alive (like Cuba or North Korea) for the sake of nostalgia.
  • Complaining About People Not Liking The Show: Suicide prevention groups.
  • Complaining About Shows You Dont Like: Related to the above, many people get thoroughly disenfranchised with this series, for any myriad number of reasons. Some have reached a Dork Age in their "high school" story arcs, become Butt Monkeys, suffered Character Derailment, Gone Mad from the Revelation, found themselves in the cast of a Crapsack World, etc. Many people complain about mini-games and a few cutscenes not being grounded in the main game's physics. Of course, most of these people are no fun.
  • The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard: Computers can accomplish certain goals far more efficiently than humans can.
  • Complete Monster: Many people in the world through the ages. From around-the-corner criminals to most influential dictators.
  • Conservation Of Ninjitsu: How often do you think you could rely on public opinion?
  • Continuing Is Painful: Regressive tax.
  • Continuity Porn: It is very difficult to understand any one part of Real Life without knowing the circumstances leading up to it (e.g., you can't understand the War on Terror without understanding the Cold War, which you can't understand without understanding World War II, which you can't understand without understanding World War I, which you can't understand without understanding the Congress of Vienna, etc.).
  • Cool Boat: People love to sail in nice boats.
  • Cool Plane: So many they get their own page.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: All over the place. An overt and well-known example is the Enron story arc.
  • Cosmic Plaything: Everyone.
  • Crack Is Cheaper: Guaranteed to absorb all your money, free time, work time, energy and attention, before you know it.
  • Crapsack World: Selected episodes and settings. Is the default setting for most of the human race.
  • Critical Annoyance: Shortness of breath, heart attacks, and other such symptoms of impending death. Wheezing, and allergies, which is your immune system being fucktarded.
  • Critical Existence Failure: Notable in that it's mostly averted. However, it is occasionally played straight with things like Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
  • Crowning Moment Of Awesome: So many that it has its own section. You'll be inspired by how many of these your fellow tropers have.
  • Crowning Music Of Awesome: Also has its own page, but the organic soundtrack gets its own mention too: I mean, songbirds? Humpback whales? Music of the spheres? Genius!
  • Cyberspace: Known in the previous season as "ARPAnet", nowadays known as "Internet".
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Shade is a welcome refuge from the wrath of the dreaded Daystar. People with dark skin/hair/clothes are no more inclined to evil than anyone else. And dark chocolate in moderate quantities can improve the Constitution stat.
  • Deathworld - Played "deadly" straight.
  • Deconstructed Trope: Almost every single trope.
  • Designated Victim: Look around you. Look in the mirror.
  • Deus Ex Machina: The World War Two arc was resolved via Superweapon Surprise. This was foreshadowed via dramatic irony when Rutherford made his statement that only fools could think that harnessing atomic power would ever be a possibility. Some of the codenames were somewhat "inspired".
  • The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything: And I mean everything. No matter what you do, real life has rules for it.
  • Did Not Do The Research: You'll often find teachers and professors who apparently don't know a thing about what they're teaching.
  • Die For Our Ship: Unfortunately, in extreme cases, it can become literal.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu: Nietzsche. (maybe)
  • Difficulty By Region: People in more prosperous or peaceful countries like the United States, Canada, and Western Europe tend to have it easier than people in, say, Africa or the Middle East
  • Difficulty Spike: Trying to level from poor to middle class, as well as from middle class to rich. To further compact this problem, governments tends to increase the percentage of money you pay in taxes as you earn more money. There are many loopholes, of course. Many of which can are used by the characters with the Politician class.
  • Discontinuity: some people pretend the Holocaust arc never happened. This is frowned upon by the majority of the fanbase, however.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Played straight with far too many law codes.
  • Doomed Hometown: The Doomsday Clock stands at 5 minutes to 12 now in 2009. This has happened in many previous arcs as well. Seems that the end of the world happens often, and none of the characters notice.
  • Down The Drain: Occasionally subverted by deep sea diving tours. In general it's harder to survive the water levels than the surface levels.
  • Dropped A Bridge On Him: Played straight, often there are no hints at all that a character is going to be killed off. Indeed, many characters were unexpectedly and anticlimactically killed off, some accuse this as being gratuitous use of the reset button to prevent anyone, especially potential world-conquerors like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union from taking over the world.
  • Eagleland Osmosis: Played straight, and subverted by the 'Financial Crisis' arc.
  • Egopolis: See Alexandria or Ho Chi Minh City
  • Easy Mode Mockery: The stigma that comes with being an adult and still living with your parents in times and places that put a lower emphasis on the extended family, let alone relying on them for money. This applies especially to trust fund kids, many of whom are Rich Bitches.
  • Empty Cop Threat: if you run afoul of the wrong cops.
  • Energy Being: The human race, and in fact all the other lifeforms. The energy is just contained as mass.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Especially in the form of Posthumous Character, see below, but not exclusively.
  • Epileptic Trees: There are a numerous fan theories that the government secretly staged elements of series canon, such as the Apollo moon landing and the WTC terrorist attack. Every religion has a few.
  • Eternal Engine: Certain boats, oil platforms, factories, towers, and whatnot can fall under this trope, but certain cities, like the Energy Corridor of Houston Texas, or Pittsburgh before the 1960's also can be considered.
  • Everybody Owns A Ford: Subverted.
  • Everything Trying To Kill You: Both averted and played straight depending on where and when you live.
  • Everythings Messier With Pigs (Subverted. The recent "Swine Influenza" arc seems to be focusing on intrahuman transmission, rather than zoonoosis.)
  • Evil Is Sexy: Inverted, according to some, who regard sexy as evil.
  • Evolutionary Levels: Shockingly averted. "Evolution" seems to describe the process by which species adjust to outside influences to maximize survival, as opposed to a process by which living beings get bigger, smarter, and more powerful over time that can be measured by "levels". An unheard of concept outside of this setting, one that remains controversial to this day.
  • Expansion Pack World: The uninhabited continent of Antarctica was retconned onto the bottom of the map to allow for a better budgeted, more dramatic remount of the popular "Race to the Pole" Tournament Arc. Of course, the much promised "Mars Mission" expansion has proven to be vaporware. Some would argue that everything beyond Europe, Asia, and north Africa is part of the Expansion Pack, with various degrees of justification. The Americas and the whole "people went there before 1492" retcon is particularly jarring. We stilled haven't finished uncovering all the juicy info about the Pacific Depths (version 3.2 Ocean Floor Patch) or the Amazon, there's still a lot of wildlife to catalogue and several Bestiaries to fill with creature names.
  • Filler: Be honest. You're reading this at work, aren't you?
  • Fake Difficulty: You get only 1 life, no save points, and quest items/paths can easily be lost forever. Though, according to some religions, you get multiple lives, taking the form of a different character with each respawn. In addition, there are countless quest paths/items/what have you, to the point that no one will ever be able to write a full strategy guide (though many partial ones are in the works). Unless you mess up some early story arcs, you can usually have a decent score by the end.
  • Fake Longevity: Considering how Real Life boasts years of play, it's no surprise that almost a fourth of your time is spent either being in school/work or doing work that you've been given to take home from school/work. Also, you spend quite a bit of time doing things such as eating, sleeping (which takes an average of a third of your time), and bathing. And exactly what you're doing at this moment.
  • Fandumb: Hard to keep track.
  • Fan Fic: Fiction based off of real life is a multi-billion dollar industry. Real Life Fan Fiction often has very little to do with the source material, and is popular enough that there exists a wiki dedicated to categorizing common tropes.
    • Bio Pic: Fiction focusing on particular characters.
    • PWP: The pornography genre.
    • Crack Fic: Fantasy, and those weird tales that Grandpa NPC tells you.
    • Song Fic: Musicals
  • Fan Myopia: Oh, come on. Who doesn't know about Real Life?
  • Fanon: Hoo, boy.
  • Fan Service: Many, many characters.
  • Fetish Fuel: Way too many to count!
  • Final Death: You die, that's it for your character. Most believe that a Fluffy Cloud Heaven or The Nothing After Death follows. You may or may not be able to start over again, with a new character. No one's really sure. And depending on your beliefs, starting again may not be something to be proud of.
  • Flame War: Both figurative and literal applications.
  • Forced Level Grinding: School.
  • Foreshadowing: If you watch real closely. Alternatively, you may call a psychic, but a lot of players believe they don't work. Nostradamus' strategy guide is believed by some to be canon, but others argue otherwise.
  • Four Lines All Waiting: Europe, India, China and the New World civilizations developed independently for thousands of years.
  • Fourth Wall: Possibly the sturdiest Fourth Wall in existence. But see also dreams or psychoactives for the most reliable challenges to it.
  • Fridge Logic: Men have nipples.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Look at the incredibly subtle foreshadowing to the rise of any historical leader and you'll be quite surprised how far back the signs go. Inferior writers usually can't get this except by accident.
  • Functional Magic: Rule Magic(the laws of physics) is slowly and laboriously decoded and verified by science and arcane mathematics, and implemented into Device Magic(technology) which anyone can use provided they can afford to buy it. Most players take this for granted. Also, Vancian Magic is the case for some of the particularly restrictive aspects of Real Life's Rule Magic, like thermodynamics and the conservation laws.
  • Game Breaker: Each era has an example. Steel, gunpowder, and the airplane are good examples. Currently, nuclear weapons. Such an extreme example that their usage is formally banned, and many want them to be removed completely.
  • Gay Option: Until recently, those who were found to have taken this option were ostracized at best. Nowadays you're allowed to take this option with little or no repercussions provided you live in the right area.
  • Genre Savvy: So-called common sense, though of course it's not nearly widespread enough to vitiate the drama.
  • Getting Crap Past The Radar: The people have a right to know - but only what (and how) the Mainstream Media considers 'newsworthy', and in the process...
  • Get On With It Already: Characters in Real Life spend at least 12 years learning the background and physics of the world. Subverted in that those who finally finish find out that work is even worse.
  • Ghibli Hills: Some regions, but they are few and far between. And diminishing.
  • Glass Cannon: Humans are far from the toughest creatures on the face of the planet, but have invented powerful weapons to compensate for their poor defense. Thus, a human with a shotgun has a decent chance of slaying a bear in a fight, but if that bear manages to take the damage and keep going, despite heavy penalties to movement and HP, then it can quickly wipe out the human who attacked it.
  • Government Conspiracy: There are some unconfirmed theories and several confirmed ones throughout the ages.
  • Green Hill Zone: Yards and public parks.
  • Grey And Gray Morality: Most conflicts between character groups are this.
  • Guide Dang It: And to make it worse, there are lots of different guides with different advice!
  • Happiness In Slavery: Dogs, the poor bastards. Inverted with cats, the smug bastards.
  • Harder Than Hard: The International Baccalaureate high school program, said to exceed the difficulty of Honors and Advanced Placement classes. And of course, difficulty also depends on region - the school systems in some countries, like Japan or India are harder than anything you could find in say, the U.S.
  • High School Rocks: But only for those who manage to be popular because of good looks (usually), funniness and/or some respected talent. For others, high school is four consecutive Scrappy Levels.
  • Hitlers Time Travel Exemption Act: Either we never ever manage time travel, or this rule is in effect.
  • Hope Spot: While there's life, there's hope.
  • House Rules: Many groups of fans have come up with their own sets of rules for playing, some considerably more restrictive than others. The game may well be more fun without them, but they are convinced that following these extra rules is worth more points. Disagreements about these different play styles have led to many nasty Flame Wars.
  • Humans Are Bastards: A common belief on Earth, but it seems there's just about as many good people to counteract this.
  • Humans Are Special: They're the only known species to communicate complex abstract ideas and make tools for making other tools.
  • Hyperactive Metabolism: Mostly averted, though a few lucky people subvert it by being Big Eaters that don't gain much weight.
  • Idiot Ball: Alcohol is often used to this end.
  • Idiot Plot: An unbelievable amount of characters had to be involved in a giant Credit Card Plot to start the current Financial Crisis miniarc.
  • Infant Immortality: Brutally subverted: According to UNICEF about 25,000 children under the age of five are Killed Off For Real every day. In fact, the vast majority of animals die as larva or infants.
  • Infinity Plus One Sword: Again, the nuclear bomb. Restricted to people who hit the maximum Job Level for Politics, and with a lot of restrictions on it even then. That said, there are persistent rumours of bugs in the code that might allow unlevelled characters to gain access to assorted Infinity Plus One Swords. None have yet been demonstrated, but the rumours alone have made many in the fan base quite upset, especially a few seasons ago.
  • In Name Only: Goths today have nothing to do with the Goths that sacked Rome. Sadly, few people have even heard of the latter.
  • Inventory Management Puzzle
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks: Prominiscuous women, also known as My Girl Is Not A Slut. Subjective value: See also My Girl Is A Slut.
    • In some regions, people try to make life hard for themselves as much as possible through a combination of multiple jobs and full school workloads.
  • It's Short, So It Sucks: Averted. Some believe that life is short, yet so they try to make the most out of life. Ironically, unless you believe in an afterlife, this is the longest game you'll ever play.
  • It Gets Worse: The recent wave of celebrity deaths.
  • Insignificant Little Blue Planet: All known events that humanity(apart from astronomers, astrophysicists and cosmologists) considers to have any worth have occured on an insignificant little pale blue mote of dust called "Earth" by its even more insignificant inhabitants. Given the scale of the universe, what goes on here is an unimaginably small fraction of what goes on in the expanded Real Life-verse. Many fans hope for expansion packs to allow exploration of the rest of the 'verse, but most refuse to think about it. A lot of fan work contains guesses about the content that might be in any such expansion pack, however.
  • Izchaks Wrath: Try to rob a gun store and see what happens.
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Used a lot during the "Holy Inquisition" arc and now again during the current "War on Terror" arc.
  • Karma Houdini - Not everyone, thankfully, but we all know of a few.
  • Killed Off For Real
  • Kill Em All - Every single member of the cast has eventually been killed off, and there doesn't seem to be any change in the script anytime soon. A few characters have been rumored to have been Put On A Bus, including Elijah, Enoch, Jesus, his mother, and Apollonius of Tyana.
  • Killer Rabbit - All animals (and people) fall under two categories: those that don't look dangerous but can kill or injure you horribly, and those that do look dangerous and can kill or injure you horribly.
  • Kill It With Fire: A form of Applied Phlebotinum called "fire", Older Than Everything But The Universe Itself, that has been adapted into various forms of Depleted Phlebotinum Shells(flaming arrows, black powder bombs, flamethrowers, napalm, fuel-air bombs and laser-guided thermobaric missiles, to name just a few) in order to Kill Em All. See also Hellfire.
  • Kill It With Water: According to some sources, the writer decided after the first few seasons that the characters and plot were going completely off the rails. The writer felt that the best course of action was to drop a flood on everyone except for a few of the characters; just enough for a Reboot.
  • Kudzu Plot
  • Kobayashi Mario (It just keeps going and going until it stops.)
  • Leave The Camera Running: Most of the time.
  • Lensman Arms Race: If humans are 200,000 years old, the last 0.05% of the story's seen us go from crude rafts and sticks with sharp stones attached to nuclear weapons and space flight.
  • Lighter And Softer: The "Western Civilisation" subplot seem to have gone this way in recent seasons, though arguments abound that it's actually a very cunning and cruel subversion.
  • Light Is Not Good: Literal examples (sunburn, skin cancer) as well as regular examples (The Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, The Crusades.)
  • Literary Agent Hypothesis: the Trope Maker.
  • Loads And Loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of Characters
  • Long Runners: 12,000 years of human civilisation measured from the start of the Neolithic, with many Missing Episodes along the way. 15 billion years back to the presently held beginning though, the Big Bang, which itself could be questionable. Several other series set in the Real Life-verse were also Long Runners, such as some fan-favorites, including the dinosaurs and mammoths, who were Killed Off For Real, but some scientists speculate that they could be resurrected through inserting their genes into other animals. Whether this will work is questionable. Dinosaurs weren't exactly Killed Off For Real. They've been having smaller, feathery appearances since before the Mammalian Order became prominent. And mammoth's smaller, bald cousin shows up from time to time. Others, like the Arachnids, have been around far, far longer, and show no signs of stopping.
  • Lost Forever: Too many to count, and there generally isn't a warning.
  • Love Dodecahedron but usually not Played For Laughs
  • Love Hurts, but also Love Redeems, and sometimes Love Makes You Crazy.
  • Make The Bear Angry Again: Recent seasons, especially the high-point in the Southern Ossetia arc in the middle of season 2008.
  • Luck Based Mission: The lottery. Or surviving the Plague.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: Favorite tactic of militaries across the world, heavily used in air and naval combat. Combined with nukes to make a game breaking superweapon called the ICBM. It's becoming less popular as newer doctrines become popular. Especially in light of recent developments in the manner of war.
  • Magic A Is Magic A: Those dang laws of science.
  • Magical Computer: Most notable aversion... even if some seem not to realize this.
  • Magical Realism: May or may not be explainable by the psychiatry profession
  • Magnificent Bastard: Played in every direction. Particularly memorable was during the WWII arc, where they ran rampant all over the place. The same arc featured a deconstruction with Oskar Schindler, a racketeer concerned mostly concerned with filling his pockets who has one of the most moving Heel Face Turns in the entire series.
  • Misplaced Wildlife: Zoos. And invasive species.
  • Missing Episode: The reason archaeologists are still in business.
  • Mohs Scale Of Sci Fi Hardness: Way, way over on the hard side, to the extent that it accurately represents laws of physics that have not yet been discovered.
  • Money Sink: Some of which are required to survive.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Crossed frequently throughout the series, many consider this an unfair ploy by the writer to endear the viewer to the other side.
  • More Dakka: A popular tactic in recent past seasons.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Cancer, diseases, vehicle wrecks, wars, terrorism, the Titanic...
  • Nintendo Hard: Life isn't fair.
  • No Fame No Wealth No Service
  • Nonstandard Game Over: The death penalty.
  • No OSHA Compliance: While usually averted, it is played straight occasionally.
  • Nothing Can Save Us Now and Nothing Can Stop Us Now: These tropes have gotten a workout in recent seasons.
  • Not So Harmless: Many characters, although prominent examples include Adolf Hitler, an out of work ex-soldier wannabe artist turned fascist dictator, and Osama Bin Laden, a quiet, nice religious boy from a moderate, prosperous family turned mass murdering terrorist mastermind.
  • Novelization: Biographies, textbooks, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
  • Official Couple: Too many to count. Unlike nonreality, you might actually have a chance for a romantic fan fic not written about you.
  • One Hit Point Wonder: The human race is extremely fragile and can easily be killed with a single attack. Also subverted because humans are tougher than they look - time, though, eats up HP something fierce. Also, modern weaponry have made humans one-hit kills, and it would take a much longer time to bring one down with just hands.
  • One Steve Limit: Averted massively.
  • Only Sane Man: "All the world is queer save me and thee; and sometimes I think thee a little queer." - Quaker expression.
  • Only Smart People May Pass: You're repeatedly tested on your knowledge in the "School" phase as well as the optional "College/Uni" phase. Depending on the character class you choose, you'll also have to do this kind of thing frequently during your job.
  • Ontological Mystery: Characters enter the world naked and crying with no idea whatsoever of their purpose for existence. Might all be a giant Shaggy Dog Story.
  • Our Presidents Are Different: Even more so starting with the Turn Of The Millennium arc.
  • Peoples Republic Of Tyranny: The more a country's name sounds like the personification of an ideal, the more likely it is to be the opposite.
  • Perpetually Static: Subverted.
  • Possession Sue: A common practice in Real Life fan fiction.
  • Posthumous Character: Influential characters from early seasons can have surprising influence on later plotlines even after they die. The Doomed Moral Victor from the Rise of Rome storyline is now (arguably) the posthumous main character. The Wide Eyed Idealist from the Arabia arc and the Jerk With A Heart Of Gold from the Bo Tree arc have been almost as influential, and even the Crazy Awesome Mad Scientist from the Restoration Arc (and his later counterparts in the World War I and World War II storylines) is still considered important.
  • Power Perversion Potential: My, my, my. Where do we begin? This trope was the founder of one of Real Life's first job classes.
  • Present Day, Present Time: Always.
  • Prequel: "Real Life AD" is the most agreed upon example, but has still not official canon.
  • Protection From Editors: The creator clearly believes the work is perfect as it stands and needs no editing. According to one (possibly apocryphal) anecdote, when one of the staff criticized the early script, the creator had him and his friends fired. Said ex-staff member and his friends would go on to form their own rival studio that would attempt to derail the characters and plots even further.
  • Ragdoll Physics: Actually done right.
  • Random Number God: Character generation, which is especially weird thanks to requiring two players to generate a new one, each from a distinct half of the player base. Their stats are used as a basis for the new character, but with some mediocrely-coded randomization in choosing whose stats to use for the new character (and there are a LOT of stats!). Some other tiny random changes are also implemented, giving unique new values for stats, but a lot of the time these either have no effect on gameplay or actually hinder the new character. A good number of new characters are also deleted before gameplay really begins due to a poor stat roll or problems during the later stages of character generation. All in all, Real Life character generation is really fun at first, but becomes highly inconvenient later on, and downright painful at the end. Recent patches have introduced methods to generate characters without the usual player pairing, making a new version of the same character (with zero experience, of course), and even customizing the new character from the VERY START with much less interference from the RNG. All of these methods are still in the early beta stages, and have gotten a lot of outcry from the player base due to their game breaking potential, plus distaste at the high wealth requirement to even attempt them.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: Trope Namer
  • Reclusive Artist: So reclusive that there have been thousands of opinions about the artist: Some consider there to only be one artist, some consider there to be multiple artists, and some think it's all a big conspiracy and the work was produced without any artist.
  • Refuge In Audacity: Oh, so many, many examples...
  • Replacement Scrappy: Too many examples. From the staff of your favorite Starbucks to world political leaders, at some point in your life you're guaranteed to have someone you like replaced by someone you don't.
  • Ret Con: Changing the origin story from creation by a higher power to gradual, random evolution over billions of years. Note that the former was a Ret Con itself; some long-time fans fondly recall the various gods and divine intrigues that dominated the early seasons. Retconning also comes in the form of amnesia and blocking out memories (usually of traumatic experiences), though it's handled quite differently here than in most other series.
  • Rule Of Cool: Partially subverted by the obsessive emphasis on consistent physics, chemistry, biology, etc.—much of which turns out to be incredibly cool in itself.
  • Rule Of Fun: Subverted. Learning to play guitar takes months of lessons and practice, shooting up friends kills them off for real and is a criminal offense, fighter jets have far more controls than an 8-way stick and "fire" and "bomb" buttons and can only move forward, making whole lines of blocks doesn't make them vanish, and sports take lots of practice, require you to be in great athletic shape, and can cause more serious injuries than worn-out thumbs.
  • Rule Of Funny: Played straight.
  • Rule 34: It's to the point where Real Life porn is a major industry.
  • Save Scumming: Cruelly averted; you only get one save, and nobody's found a way around it. Try not to screw up.
  • Scenery Porn: 126 million light receptors per eye makes for some really good graphics. Full 3D, pan and zoom.
  • Schizo Tech: Because of a lack of Product Placement, new equipment has to be bought, resulting in people with the latest game console, a 5-year old cell phone, 13-year-old car and a fridge that's older than its owner. Increasingly averted for characters that buy from companies that practice planned obsolescence. With a little careful purchasing though, one can still play this straight.
  • Science Is Bad: It becomes responsible for most of the more horrific weapons used throughout the series. This is somewhat of a derailment, for the majority of the main continuity science has been largely beneficial, it is only really in the last couple of seasons that this becomes an issue. Subverted somewhat when the most destructive weapons wind up encouraging peace via mutually assured destruction. There are also hints that lesser weapons sometimes have a similar effect, but this seems to be far less consistent. That, and it's been proven many times before in the series that science overall is a great thing when it's used for good.
  • Schematized Prop - many, most notably the digestive system. The reproductive system also deserves mention.
  • The Scrappy: Bill collectors for very justified reasons. Have a very bad reputation for being rude, acting like thugs, and attracting the criminal element. Make their money at the expense of families going through tough times. This round of exceptionally rough economic times has become the golden age for collections.
  • Scrappy Level: Middle school, for most people. High School too, it varies. Large numbers of the fanbase might argue that its entirely made up of Scrappy Levels.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: Certain diseases/symptoms, also the fact that you have to queue up for many things because of limited server capacity.
  • Screw The Money I Have Rules
  • Screw The Rules I Have Money
  • Screw The Rules I Make Them
  • Sealed Evil In A Can: Many viruses.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: The reason why a child sees everything in the world as wonderful, while with most adults, familiarity has bred contempt.
  • Serial Killer: A few characters seem to be this.
  • Sequel Displacement: World War II is far more remembered than World War I.
  • Ship Tease: Spreading rumors about characters dating each other. Prevelant in many characters' high school arcs.
  • Show Within A Show: With a large cast of characters, it's not surprising that every major group have a large number of fictional and nonfictional novels and books, a tribute the the attention to detail the Creator of the series took in his/her worldbuilding.
  • Single Biome Planet: Averted.
  • Sliding Scales
  • Slippy Slidey Ice World: Antartica, Siberia, the local ski resort... all there.
  • Spoiler: Subverted, since many characters purport to offer information about future story arcs, which later will turn out to be blatantly wrong. Possibly the best example in the current arc is a spoiler about The End Of The World As We Know It found in ancient Mayan hint books which will fail to happen in the year 2012.
  • The Slow Path
  • So Bad Its Horrible: Some people think so.
  • Squick: Approximately 25% of the internet. Shock sites compose at least 10% of this. Certain sites can actually be High Octane Squick. Heck, there's a bunch of this outside the Internet.
  • Standard Status Effects: Humans are vulnerable to poison, paralysis, blindness, confusion, and death. Some would say cursing can happen as well. Petrification is rare but a gamebreaker, see Pompeii.
  • Star Trek: While there is no Starfleet, there is NASA, which is a civilian agency which utilizes military personnel and attempts to explore space. It even includes a ship called Enterprise in its fleet (though it doesn't fly), and includes the phrase "Where no man has gone before" in its literature. They're still working on warp drive and teleporters though.
  • Stop Having Fun Guys: The responsibilities and reduced free time that comes with growing up.
  • Stop Helping Me: Parents. Sometimes this persists well into the adult arc and even the married-with-children arc for some characters.
  • Sweet Polly Oliver: Female crossdressing for a good cause.
  • Tactical Rock Paper Scissors - Fighters beat Bombers and each other. SA Ms can take out either. SA Ms can be disabled by either. Tanks beat infantry, but infantry with rocket launchers or tanks or helicopters or planes beat tanks. Planes beat helicopters. Both beat infantry....
  • That One Boss: The SATs.
  • Theory Of Narrative Causality: Usually averted. But occasionally played straight.
  • The Power Of Rock: Played straight. Rock music was played to get Manuel Noriega to surrender during Operation Just Cause.
  • The Tetris Effect: Billions of people are addicted to Real Life. Curiously, those who try to end their addiction are considered mentally disturbed and given psychological "help" to keep them addicted.
  • Thirty Xanatos Pileup: When you've got over 200 states and polities competing for every possible advantage, as well as countless factions within each one, it's more or less inevitable.
  • This Is Reality: Justified.
  • Throw It In: The series is an ambitious project, in that none of the actors are given scripts to memorize, and almost all of the dialogue is ad-libbed.
  • Timed Mission: Each human has, on average, 66.12 years to live. This time limit can be extended if you're healthy enough. Unfortunately, it's also luck based, as your time limit can be drastically reduced depending on where your character lives; for example, a character based in Africa is likely to have a lower time limit than one in Europe. Sometimes your characters time limit is unexpectedly ended by just plain unfair things, like being hit by a car.
  • Time Keeps On Slipping: Which, combined with Final Death and the lack of Save Points makes for incredibly unforgiving difficulty.
  • Too Awesome To Use: Money, especially amongst the upper classes.
  • Too Dumb To Live: There is a reason why The Darwin Awards exist.
  • Travel Cool: A lot of the human race's engineering efforts yield cool machines to suit their Badass Normal style. The higher-level examples of the Cool Starship, however, have not yet been unlocked as nobody has the cash for that expansion pack yet.
  • Trope Maker: While it is under recognized as a source of tropes, the fact remains that this series is, quite literally, the baseline for most any work you can name.
  • Trope Overdosed: Check Truth In Television; second only to, perhaps, Avatar And The Airbending Fellowship Of Vampire Slayers.
  • Truth In Television
  • Uncanceled: Depending on who you ask, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the most prominent example.
  • Unobtainium: Oil, uranium, gold, diamond, and lots more(depending on what you want, where you are, and what you can give for it). An extreme case would be antimatter, which is extremely difficult to create and annihilates anything it touches into pure energy(and hence must be stored in electromagnetic fields).
  • Unpleasable Fanbase
  • Unreliable Narrator: To many, the mass media.
  • Unstable Equilibrium: Played brutally straight, with the poor being stuck in the infamous cycle of "can't earn money -> can't go to school -> can't get a job -> can't earn money", while the rich are able to buy up other businesses, making them even richer.
  • Unwinnable: Go ahead. Just try it.
  • Useless Useful Spell: The aforementioned Game Breaker nukes. Everyone is so afraid of facing retaliation for using just one that they remain stuck in the inventory.
  • Vaporware: Fusion reactors, flying cars, nanobots, etc. The slower-than-expected development of some things, though, is counterbalanced by surprise inventions like cheese, nuclear bombs and lasers. Flying cars have been completed, but they turn out to be nothing more than Awesome But Impractical gimmicks. They're still being worked on, alongside Orbital Tourism.
  • Violation Of Common Sense: Laws don't stop people from doing bad or completely stupid things. In fact, the Darwin Awards exist to reward blatant violations.
  • The Virus: Way too many to count; some of them are also High Octane Nightmare Fuel. Some of these tend to be Game Breaking Bugs that lead to many a Downer Ending.
  • Wall Banger: Some stupendously stupid things have occurred throughout its history.
  • War Is Hell: Though the degree varies from war to war, country to country, soldier to soldier, and citizen to citizen. It also depends on the technology in play: An F-22 Raptor pilot flying at a cool altitude of 50000 feet, casually shredding enemy planes while remaining invisible and practically invincible himself, certainly has a much better time than a poor infantry grunt in the trenches of World War 1 or the jungles of Vietnam.
  • Wham Episode: Numerous:
    • For the European characters, the "Fall Of Rome" arc, which brought radical changes to the show's universe and ushered in a new era. After that, there was the "Invention of Gunpowder" arc, which created a new Game Breaker technology that revolutionized European warfare. Also, when the Nazis were revealed to have truly, truly crossed the Moral Event Horizon during the "World War II" arc.
    • Speaking of the World War II arc, the United States of America has had at least two. The first, the Pearl Harbour arc, brought the country into full scale war. Then, the 9/11 attacks would bring it into another war.
    • On the subject of The War On Terror, aside from the still-running Indian Subcontinent nuclear escalation arc, there's the Bombay terrorist attacks near the season finale of 2008.
    • A more minor section of the world's characters, Australia, received one with massive bushfires in Victoria in early season 2009.
    • The world in general got a Wham Episode during the Hiroshima/Nagasaki arc, especially the Japanese characters.
  • What Could Possibly Go Wrong: Averted so far (at least insofar that the Earth is still in one piece), but scientists are always finding new ways to design planet-destroying machines that will 'never' destroy the planet. Examples here.
  • Wide Open Sandbox: The effective playing area is a single small planet that requires immense resources even to leave for a few days, so almost no one does. Thanks to the planet's transparent atmosphere, you can see immense distances into the Wide Open Sandbox; you just can't get there. May be a Broken Bridge, or the content just hasn't been added yet.
  • Wild Teen Party: Can you say, spring break?
  • Word Of God: Too many to count. For many religions, the Bible (in whole or part). For Catholics, the Pope (under certain circumstances). For Muslims, the Qur'an and Hadith. For still others, the voices inside their head.
  • World Half Empty/A World Half Full
  • Xen Syndrome: Old age.
  • Year Inside Hour Outside: "I swear I was thirteen just twenty minutes ago- wait, it was twenty years? Wow. I knew The Nineties were in there somewhere but....Wow."
  • You Killed My Father: Played straight with Genghis Khan, who decided to kill everyone in the Tatar clan to get his revenge after his father was killed by them. He didn't stop there. It actually became a very large story arc which affected millions and is still looked back on by many of the fanbase.
  • Your Mileage May Vary: See Difficulty By Region, Nightmare Fuel. Some characters get over 100 seasons and others don't even get one.
  • You Should Know This Already: Certain pieces of information are required to survive.
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