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Yeah, it's kind of exactly like that.
"What I hold in my hand... is not just gonna blow your mind. It's going to blow your soul."
Eddie Riggs is the king of all roadies and a heavy metal aficionado who tires of working for a pretentious "nu-metal" band. One night, he injures himself trying to prevent an on-stage accident, and spills blood on his belt. Unfortunately for him it's an incredibly important belt that summons the dark god Ormagöden, "The Fire Beast, Cremator of the Sky, and Destroyer of the Ancient World". Ormagöden sends Eddie to a strange fantasy landscape that appears to be inspired by heavy metal album covers, where Eddie fights Grim Reapers, big ugly demons who are disguised as nuns, rides half-motorbike half-boars and electrocutes people with his guitar. And all to one HELL of a soundtrack.
Another normal game from Tim Schafer, then. Released in Rocktober, 2009, just getting the title out the door was a worthy story itself. After first being announced in 2006, the game was set to be published by Sierra. After Sierra merged into Activision, the title's publishing status fell into limbo along with its release date. Eventually, Activision dropped their publishing rights and the title's future was placed in jeopardy. In what was considered by many to be a Company's Saving Throw, Electronic Arts stepped up to publish the game instead. When EA threw their entire marketing muscle behind the project and it turned into a major AAA release for 2009, Activision stepped in to sue them and take the game back just mere months before the release. Eventually all the lawsuits dropped and the game was cleared for release.
This game provides examples of:
- Acquired Situational Narcissism: Eddie after he first gets his wings. Notable in that he doesn't get punished and learns a lesson, he just gets over it.
- More like he was just screwing with everyone. In his own words,
Eddie Riggs(World's Greatest Roadie)': "A good roadie knows his whole job is to make someone else look good, keep someone else safe, help someone else do what they were put here to do. A good roadie stays out of the spotlight. If he's doing his job right, you don't even know he's there."
- Action Girl: Ophelia, Lita, the Razor Girls, and, of course, the Zaulia. Which covers every woman in the game.
- Action Mom: Subverted with Succoria, as she never really got the chance to be a mom...
- Actor Allusion: Ozzy Osbourne plays the father of an obnoxious family of bats, that threatens to bite off your head.
- All Part Of The Show: When Ormagöden is summoned in the game's opening scene, no-one seems to realize his suddenly appearing and killing the entire band isn't part of the show.
- All There In The Manual: Much of the world's backstory can be found in the relic logs scattered throughout the game world.
- Already Done For You: Used and subverted. Your early objectives are to save the Headbangers and the Razor Girls from slavery. After you saved the former, turns out Ophelia saved the latter...trouble is, she got injured for her trouble and now you have to spend the next few missions healing her.
- Amazon Brigade: The Zaulia. Y'know those scantily-clad, scary looking women on some metal album covers? Yeah, imagine an army of those.
- And they have KISS makeup.
- And ride giant, fire-breating jungle cats.
- An Axe To Grind: "The Separator," your main melee weapon.
- A God Am I: "Silence, groundwalker!"
- Are You Pondering What Im Pondering: The Baron and Eddie, on how to deal with Metal Beasts-
Eddie: Ok, I have a plan...
Eddie: No.
Eddie: No...
Eddie: No, we're going to recruit them!
Baron: ... You must be joking.
- Awesome But Impractical: Doviculus' Quad Guitar, as made famous by Michael Angelo Batio?
- Lars is, in-universe, a living version of this trope: so inspiring that the armies of man will follow him to the gates of Hell, but completely incapable of organizing the logistics of an army. That, of course, is why he needs...a roadie.
- Bad Ass: Eddie Riggs, the greatest roadie in history, the hero of Ironheade, the son of Riggnarok and Succoria.
- Badass Biker: The Fire Barons.
- Bad Boss: Lionwhyte.
- Beat Still My Heart: Doviculus is able to rip out his own heart to use in some attacks. But it's not his own heart, so he's cool. Drowned Ophelia, on the other hand...
- Big Bad: Emperor Doviculus.
- Blade On A Stick: Lita
- Blofeld Ploy: Ormagöden is just about to finish Eddie off during the game's opening sequence, then decides to kill the Boy Band he works for instead. It turns out that's because he's one of the world's Big Goods, whose death at the hands of treacherous monsters allowed the world to flourish, not the Big Bad he looks like, but you don't find that out until later.
- Born In The Wrong Century: Eddie is sick of the current trends of music and longs for the days of the early seventies. Then Time Travel happens.
- Boy Band: The band that Eddie is a roadie for in the beginning are a bunch of posers with a tween demographic. They've actually managed to create some kind of twisted fusion of metal, pop, and rap. It's horrific.
- Bullfight Boss: Lampshaded with the worm-like boss.
Eddie: Ha! I can't believe you fell for that twice!
- Buffy Speak: Eddie, all the time.
- Cameo: The game features numerous appearances from major figures in metal:
- Rob Halford plays General Lionwhyte and The Baron.
- Lemmy Kilmister plays the Kill Master.
- Lita Ford plays the Zaulia leader Rima (not Lita Halford).
- Ozzy Osbourne plays the "Guardian of Metal," who basically is Ozzy.
- Ronnie James Dio was originally set to play Doviculus and even recorded lines for him, but the part was later deemed a better fit for Tim Curry and was recast.
- The douche wearing the red "Kabbage Boy" shirt in the opening is voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz, who was previously Raz.
- He also voices the Headbanger who mans the Death Rack. Even wears Raz's goggles!
- Kyle Gass, the other half of Tenacious D, plays the role of a neurotic mortar cannon operating Bouncer who even has the same head as him.
- See the Intercontinuity Cross Over entry below.
- Camera Screw: The camera in the first boss battle automatically adjusts to give an excellent view of the boss and its attacks, at the cost of twisting your control plane around at odd angles.
- When passing by side missions, the camera insists on showing them to you.
- Car Fu Used prior the final fight
- Chekhov's Armory: Eddie has a hell of one.
- Combination Attack: You can do this with all your units. There are achievements/ trophies for doing it with all units of each side.
- Cool Car: "The Deuce" AKA "Druid Plow", which can be customized with machine guns and missile launchers, among other things.
- Cosmic Deadline: After Lionwhyte's palace, the speed of story resolution picks up suddenly. Drowned Ophelia and Doviculus get far less screen time and development than Lionwhyte did, which reaches its unfortunate peak when they are forced to share the same boss fight.
- It wouldn't be so bad if armies of the Tainted Coil and Black Tears weren't so Crazy Awesome, the fact that their individual armies barely get any development on screen makes it all the more groan inducing.
- This is questionable due to the fact that much of the early missions revolve purely around building up your army, so it's only natural that once that business is out of the way the plot will pick up in speed. To put it in perspective, the player engages Lionwhyte and the Black Tears in the same number of Stage Battles each.
- However, the Tainted Coil only get one stage fight. It's not even an actual Stage Battle at that, since the Coil gets to spawn its troops almost anywhere on the map without having to first produce their heirarchy units. Their one saving grace, and it's a minor one at that, is the fact that Tainted Coil troops will show up from time to time throughout the rest of the campaign to support Lionwhyte and Tears forces, and the two escort missions where you're being chased by Tick Choppers.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: Given the source material, it's impossible not to have a couple.
- The moment just after Eddie defeats the first boss, wailing a guitar solo on his axe.
Eddie: DECAPATATIOOOOOOOON!
- Both times he yells that.
- Escaping from Lionwhyte's palace after Doviculus kills Lars and starts raining down fiery destruction while "Through The Fire and Flames" plays from the speakers.
- This was actually not as awesome as it was supposed to be. It was originally supposed to have Iron Maiden's 'Run to the Hills' there, but due to the legal screws made by Activision, they couldn't have Maiden in the game.
- 'Course, that made the whole scene its own kind of awesome.
- Eddie and Ophelia kissing at the Screaming Wall.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny: Some of the reactions as he's about to die, usually after driving to his inevitable death:
Eddie: Wanna make out before we hit the water?
- There are far, far too many of these to list on this page (not that anyone here should be surprised by this), but here's a favorite, which occurs while fighting the giant worm boss:
Worm: *screams at Eddie*
Eddie: Ugh! Smells like a whale . . . ate some cabbage . . . then died in your mouth . . . like a year ago!
- Crowning Music Of Awesome: Inevitable considering the soundtrack consists of original work, remixes of various metal songs, or actual album compositions.
- While the soundtrack as a whole is indeed thoroughly awesome, special mention goes to "Through The Fire And Flames," which plays during the escape from Lionwhyte's palace. It just fits the onscreen action so well.
- There's also Superbeast by Rob Zombie during the Final Boss.
- Or, alternatively, Painkiller by Judas Priest.
- Mirrorthrone's So Frail being included despite being from a lesser known avant/black metal outfit.
- Brocas Helm's "Cry of the Banshee" outro playing as you enter the metal spider queen's lair, then the whole song playing during the metal spider queen boss battle.
- First Road trip mission, Eddie is tasked with protecting a bus by using chainguns on his car to kill hordes of Tick Choppers. Music selected for this mission by default? Machine Gunn Eddie
- In the Swamp Mission, Ozzy Osbourne's Diary of a Madman is the default song. And it makes the mission over 9000 more times atmospheric.
- During the flashback cutscene showing Ophelia throwing herself into the Sea of Black Tears, Ozzy's Mr Crowley plays, which perfectly underscores the scene.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: Inverted, or perhaps subverted? Kinda hard to tell with this game, but a majority of characters are wearing crosses that are not just metal style crosses.
- This all started, as these things often do, with Black Sabbath, who all (at least, all of the first lineup) wore crucifixes onstage. Bloody big ones.
- Dangerously Genre Savvy: Emperor Doviculus. Dear sweet Crystal Dragon Jesus, Emperor Doviculus. "Well. That was easier than I thought."
- Dark Action Girl: Drowned Ophelia.
- Dating Catwoman: Eddie and Ophelia, who followed in the footsteps of Riggnarok and Succoria.
- Dead Horse Genre:
- Given that this is a game about Metal, there's sure to be plenty of ribbing of unpopular music styles - such as the Hair Metal-themed villain group.
- Subverted because this is a game set in a world without critics to badmouth any specific genre. Any Metal in this game, that is not said to be awful in game, is an affectionate nod to it's genre. Rob Halford even said, "[Lionwhyte] is a cross-section of everything I know and love in Heavy Metal music.".
- The nu-metal band Eddie roadies for in the opening.
- Deus Sex Machina: Remember kids, enough orgy can initiate time-travel.
- Development Gag: The older roadie in the intro is based off discarded concept art for Eddie.
- Distracted By The Sexy: Doviculus, when sending his soldiers to march off to their doom:
Doviculus: Your motion pleases me...
- Of course, most of those soldiers are his kids, but he's a devil and probably doesn't care.
- Doing It For The Art:
- Tim Schafer has wanted to make a heavy-metal inspired game since 1995, and has lavished vast amounts of love on the project.
- There's also the fact that Jack Black is playing Eddie. While Eddie was based on Black's mannerisms from the beginning, Schafer and his team never expected that they'd actually get Black to play the character. How did they get him? He loves rock, he loved the concept, and he loved Psychonauts.
- Doppelganger: Drowned Ophelia.
- The Dragon: Drowned Ophelia.
- Dual Wielding: Ophelia
- Technically, Eddie's also dual-wielding axes.
- Dude Wheres My Respect: Lars ends up getting the credit for Eddie saving Ophelia early on. Later, Eddie willingly lets Lars and Lita take credit for saving the world. He's a roadie after all, it's not his job to be in the spotlight. Subverted in that even though Eddie doesn't want the glory, it's clear everyone else appreciates him and his actions. Played straight with Kabbage Boy, who give Eddie absolutely no respect, though the feeling is mutual.
- Dying Like Very Very Gay Animals: All of Lionwhyte's faction, of the Les Collaborateurs type. Though Lionwhyte is the only one who could seriously be considered gay, since most of them are in it for the chicks and booze.
- Ear Worm: Once you hear the commercial, you will never unhear it.
- Emo Teen: The Drowning Doom's basic infantry unit.
- Evil Counterpart: Lionwhyte's army is bascially a glammed-up version of Ironheade.
- Evil Is Sexy: Look at Drowned Ophelia and tell me otherwise.
- Also, the Battlenuns, from the neck down.
Eddie: You are the definition of a butterface!
- Expressive Mask: the mouth hole on Doviculus's bondage hood moves like a pair of lips.
- Eye Scream: If you fail the stage battle against the Tainted Coil at the end.
Doviculous: You have your mother's eyes. I'll have them too. [[Camera shifts to Eddie's POV]] On a necklace, I think. [[Pauses for a moment, then shoves his hand into the POV]]
- Face Heel Turn: Subverted. Turns out Drowned Ophelia was actually a Doppelganger created by the Sea of Black Tears itself, which the real Ophelia was at the bottom of for the second half of the game.
- Fake Ultimate Hero: Lars.
- Fetish Fuel: The Tainted Coil is this trope. Or Nightmare Fuel; Your Mileage May Vary.
- Final Boss Preview: Doviculus gets one hell of one. It involves one casual murder, a few words of truth, the destruction of a city with a bored snap of fingers. All set to Through The Fire And Flames.
- Four Is Death: Out of all the characters and monsters in the game, only four can wield the Power Of Rock in battle. That said, not all of them get out of the game alive.
- Fridge Brilliance: The gothy poem Drowned Ophelia recites (see Love Hurts on this page) makes perfect sense when you know that it's not actually Ophelia speaking, but the Sea of Black Tears itself.
- Friendly Fireproof: As long as Eddie's the one dishing it out, his soldiers show an amazing immunity to fire, explosions, lightning, lasers, and zeppelin crashes.
- Gameplay And Story Segregation: Totally averted. Everything in the game has an in-story explanation, like why Eddie is so good with a battle axe, why you are only gradually given units for Ironheade's army, the basis for the Command And Conquer Economy, why Eddie can fly around the battlefield to give orders, even why your car has a radio in it. Everything.
- Genius Bruiser: Not only is Eddie an axe-wielding Badass, he can build or fix anything given the appropriate materials.
- Genre Roulette: The core of the game is a third-person brawler, mixed with vehicular combat, with Real Time Strategy boss battles, all connected by a Wide Open Sandbox.
- Genre Savvy: Eddie somehow becomes this after about five minutes, successfully predicting that an apparent nun is actually some kind of big ugly demon. "Kinda sexy in a weird way though."
- Go Go Enslavement: Mentioned, but not shown, to the Razor Girls.
- Good Bad Bugs: due to some flaw in the shape of the sickle-wraith's hitbox, running over it with the deuce causes the vehicle to flip upwards several meters, sometimes even doing a barrel-roll.
- Grim Reaper: The Reaper unit strongly resembles the Fourth Horseman
- Half Human Hybrid: Eddie
- Happiness In Slavery: Formerly, The Tainted Coil to the Titans, who saved them from extinction and kept them as pets. The reason for their pain-inducing bondage gear? They wanted to look as much like their merciful and wondrous masters as they could. When the Titans leave, they are very, very upset.
- Hard Head: The Headbangers, who were forced to mine with nothing but their heads. They're not particularly bright at first, but they are valuable allies.
Lars: What do you do with a bunch of kids who don't know how to do anything but bang their heads all day? Eddie: (as Manly Tears form) You start a revolution, Lars!
- Have A Nice Death: Go on, lose a plot stage battle. I dare you.
- Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut: They häd to do this. Yahtzee, who studied German, had some fun with this.
- Heavy Mithril: Not only are several of the game's songs of this sort, the entire setting is pretty much a physical manifestation of the genre.
- Hell Bent For Leather: This being a game fueled by heavy metal, pretty much everyone wears some amount of leather, but special mention goes to the Zaulia, who dress in nothing but spiked leather.
- The demons dig up the old hotrods and motorcycles the Titans made specifically to get the leather.
- Help Face Turn: The main reason the Bouncers join Ironheade.
- Hero Unit: Eddie, (or the other "commander" units) of course, but Lars, Ophelia, and Lita also function similarly in the story mode. They're no more than above-average with respect to combat prowess, but as plot-essential NPC's, they automatically respawn during battles if killed.
- Hey, It's That Voice!: Jack Black as the hero.
- Hoist By His Own Petard: General Lionwhyte dies because he tries to avoid being crushed by a giant falling mirror by shattering it with his voice...leading to him being impaled on the falling shards of glass instead.
- Humans Are Special: Miniature versions of the Titans, in fact.
- Hyper Competent Sidekick: Eddie is meant to fulfill this aspect of the roadies. The resistance group that he allies with are shown to be lacking the skills required to create a proper army. May even be a case of Almighty Janitor
- This involves stage building. In a world where Eddie's guitar works as a weapon, it actually makes sense to scale things up.
- I Call It Vera: Eddie's guitar is named "Clementine," though it wasn't a weapon until the events of the game. Mittens also calls his fist Fear and Pain lovingly.
- Instant Expert: Lampshaded near the beginning of the game. Ophelia comments on how naturally Eddie handles the axe, and Eddie replies "Yeah, that's kinda strange, isn't it? I mean, I've never touched an axe before." Turns out he inherited the ability from his demon mother, Succoria.
- Instrument Of Murder: Do I really need to explain?
- Intercontinuity Cross Over: With Metalocalypse, appropriately.
- Kill It With Fire: Pyrotechnics are prominently featured in the game, in fact Eddie himself is powered by The Fire Beast
- Also the Metal Beasts, fire breathing monsters ridden by Amazons, and the Barons who make good use of pyrokinesis and Molotov Cocktails. While riding choppers.
- La Resistance
- Large Ham: "HELL, YEAH!"
- The Legions Of Hell
- Les Yay: Drowned Ophelia dancing with the Bride as part of her Double Team, cemented with a couple of the Bride's lines after initiating it ("So commanding!" comes to mind). It doesn't help that Drowned Ophelia sometimes says "Was it good for you?" when ending a Double Team.
- Love Hurts: We have this little gem from Drowned Ophelia:
Through the woods a girl came sadly
Something broken in her chest
She had dared to love another
Alas, no better than the rest
Up my path a girl came gladly
Something opened up my doors
I longed to stop her bleeding heart
So I drew her to my shores
Those you trust will hurt you badly
Something now I'm sure you see
So drown your tears in me, my dear
As you drown, my dear, in me.
- Love It Or Hate It: The RTS elements of the game, apparently.
- Luke I Am Your Father: Odd case, more along the lines of "Luke, I used to work for your Mom."
- Magnificent Bastard: Doviculus, without a single doubt.
- Make Me Wanna Shout: General Lionwhyte never misses an opportunity to do this. He even possesses a sonic yell that can shatter glass. Creating his Karmic Death, naturally.
- Manly Tears: Eddie seems on the verge of these when he says the quote in the Hard Head entry.
- The Medic : "The Kill Master" oddly enough. He actually chose the name to scare people off.
- Meaningful Name: Lemmy Kilmister plays a character called "The Kill Master," a magic bass guitarist whose powers can only heal. Canonically, he chose the name to scare people off.
- To say nothing of Ophelia
- Merchandise Driven: In-universe example. All of the stage battles run off this trope, because making merch booths for the fans is the only way to build and upgrade your army. It gets to the point where Eddie realizes Drowned Ophelia is going to be a problem just because she has merchandise.
- Mood Whiplash: It happens from time to time.
- Mr Fixit: Eddie
- Musical Assassin: Eddie and Lionwhyte both wield the power of weaponized stage effects through the power of a guitar and a microphone, respectively. Later on there's Drowned Ophelia and Doviculus, both with guitars of their own.
- Names To Run Away From Really Fast: Several, but special mention goes to the Kill Master. He's deliberately invoking this trope in order to scare off people who might otherwise bother him.
- Nightmare Fuel: The Spider Queen's lair.
- Also, Hextadons. From behind, they look pretty much like normal mammoths with chrome tusks; nothing too disturbing. From the front, though, it becomes clear that they lack trunks, and their faces seem to be frozen in wide-eyed Slasher Smiles. It's . . . unsettling.
- Ratgut, enough said.
- Is he a bunch of rats inside a shell or is he a person with rats wriggling inside him? It will be answered someday... but not today.
- The entire Drowning Doom and Tainted Coil armies have the potential for this, really.
- Guillotars are giant... things with what look like decayed cat-faces, guillotines for legs (with the blades still attached between them), and a bladed pendulum for a tail. They tend to appear in foggy areas, so they seem to come out of nowhere. Eep.
- Nightmare Retardant: The metal spider babies. Normally they're fairly creepy, but when you Earthshaker them off of Eddie, they die with the noise of popping popcorn.
- Offhand Backhand: Eddie and Ophelia both pull this when they first meet.
Eddie: Uh . . . right shoulder. Ophelia: * shank*
- There's an even more hilarious (and adorable) moment of this later on; Eddie dreams about running along a beach with Ophelia, happily slashing down Druids together with nary a glance away from one another.
- Off With His Head: "DECAPITATIOOOOOOOOOONNNNN!"
- One Hundred And Eight: Exactly 108 hard rock and heavy metal songs have been licensed for the game. Coincidence or significance?
- The Ophelia
- Ordinary High School Student: The Mac Guffin was meant for a Physical God, not for a roadie!
- Our Demons Are Different: Well, they're, uh...sexy in a weird way. Also if you think about it, humans sort of count.
- Painting The Fourth Wall: The command beacon.
Headbanger: How did you make that light shine down from the heavens?
- Player Punch: There's three, all of them caused by the same person:
- When Lars comes out and tells Doviculus that he's the king of humanity, Doviculus kills him on the spot.
- Doviculus rips out Ophelia's heart. In front of Eddie. later you find out that it's not the real Ophelia, but still...
- During the final battle, Doviculus more or less calls Eddie's mother a whore.
"You know, I'm GLAD now that your mother refused my advances all those years ago. Because at least I KNOW you're not my son. There aren't many who can say that."
- Playing With Fire: The Fire Barons.
- Plotline Death: Lars. They do try to save him, but he's too far gone for the Kill Master to do anything.
- Polygon Suit Actor:
- Eddie looks and acts a lot like Jack Black. But that's the idea.
- Tim Schafer recounts that originally he merely was basing the character off Jack Black. Sierra however chose to just get Jack Black to do the role.
- Ozzy Osbourne is pretty much playing himself. "Who, me? Oh, I'm nobody. Just The Guardian of Metal."
- The Hunter looks exactly like stand up comedian (and metal fan) Brian Posehn, who also provides his voice.
- The Kill Master looks just like Lemmy Kilmister, his actor.
- The Power Of Rock: Pyros. Headbanging. Face-melting guitar solos. And the hero is "the world's greatest roadie." This game is literally built around this trope.
- Precision F Strike: Lars has one during the siege on Lionwhyte's palace.
"Lionwhyte, the time has come for you to shut the hell up!"
- Precursors: The Titans.
- Promoted Fanboy: Jack Black, who voices Eddie Riggs. He wanted to make his own awesome game after playing — are you ready for this? — Psychonauts
- Rated M For Manly: Literally!
- Really Gets Around: Most of the Tainted Coil is made up of Doviculus's children.
- Considering Tim Curry plays Doviculus, this really shouldn't surprise you.
- Replacement Goldfish: Inverted with the Tainted Coil, as it is the Goldfish that are trying to replace their masters: The Titans. They're only partially successful...and go batshit crazy as a result.
- Rousing Speech: Lars is fond of these.
- Subverted by Lars right before the final battle of act one.
Lars: Lionwhyte, the time has come for you to shut the hell up!
- Rule Of Cool
- Scenery Porn / Scenery Gorn: The art design of the world is truly breathtaking. And to make sure you don't miss any of it, the game includes mounted tourist binoculars of the best vistas and gives an achievement for viewing them.
- Sissy Villain: Lionwhyte.
- Shout Out:
- Just reading the IGN preview alone reveals so many different rock song references that this is shaping up to be a rock fan nerdgasm.
- Not only do some metal legends provide voices for the games (and two of them effectively playing themselves), Lars looks suspiciously like Dave Mustaine.
- The guy Eddie rescues in the opening scene was doing the "Eh eh eh" dance done by Bobby Zilch and Rasputin in Psychonauts.
- Did we mention the amounts of Tenacious D references such as Kyle being the massive bouncer and more specifically the Game Stop pre-order exclusive guitar, "The Love Giver"?
Eddie: (while performing the Shocker with The Love Giver) Rocketsauce!
Eddie: (while doing the Powerslide with The Love Giver) POWERSLIIIIIIDEEEEE!
- Shut Up Kiss: Eddie, to Ophelia. Ends up being quite amusing due to the topic of conversation.
- Smoking Is Cool: Eddie Riggs certainly seems to think so.
- Smug Snake: Lionwhyte
- Sour Supporter: Lita
- Standardized Leader: Lars. On the other hand, he does make one very boneheaded mistake...
- Spikes Of Villainy: Inverted. Since spiked belts, bracelets, etc. are largely emblematic of heavy metal, anybody wearing spikes is probably either a good guy, or will be soon.
- Spiritual Successor: The RTS elements are sort of this to Sacrifice. The heavy metal theme and prevalence of bikers also tie it closely to an earlier Schafer gamer, Full Throttle - as does returning voice actress Kath Soucie.
- Sound Effect Bleep: Optionally, the game lets you censor swearing with bleeps. Just before the first curse in the game, it prompts you to choose - the button for turning on the censor says "It's funnier if it's bleeped out."
- Sticks To The Back: Eddie's axe and guitar. Lita's Blade On A Stick also sticks to her back when not in use, and Ophelia's swords stick to her hips. The only one with a proper scabbard for his weapon is Lars.
- Stripperiffic: The Zaulia and Drowned Ophelia.
- Super Dickery: Anyone who played just the demo can be quite forgiven for thinking that Ormagöden was an evil monster and the overall Big Bad of the game. In truth, he's anything but. He was more like a force of nature for one, and while the Tainted Coil are his spawn, much of the rest of what he left the world was all meant to be used for good.
- Supporting Protagonist: Eddie acts like he's one of these, but everyone else knows better.
- Take That: Kabbage Boy is a very obvious Take That against the likes of Linkin Park, Korn, or the Beastie Boys. That said, even if you like that kind of music, it's done in an amusing enough way that you don't mind.
- Lars telling off Lionwhyte in his Pleasure Palace sounded suspiciously like an angry classic metal fan insulting a hair metal fan.
- Terminator Twosome: Inverted in every respect. Succoria, the former Emperor of the Tainted Coil, went to the future to bring back its technology. Along for the ride came Riggnarok, humankind's hero, masquerading as one of her slaves. Upon reaching the future, Succoria went into a Villainous BSOD when she realized that humanity won out in the end, and rather than finish her off, Riggnarok took pity on her. Eventually the two fell in love, and Eddie was the incredibly badass end result.
- And This Is For: Used during the penultimate boss fight. Car Fu is involved.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Even in the face of "brutal defeat" (as the game puts it), Eddie manages to keep his cool most of the time.
- Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer at the end of the demo, as well as the TV commercial to some extent, spoil Ophelia's Face Heel Turn.
- Trapped In Another World: Based on 1980s heavy metal album covers. However, in a twist, Eddie doesn't really want to leave.
- Troperiffic: It's a game by Tim Schafer that revolves around The Power Of Rock. This was pretty much inevitable.
- Underboobs: The Zaulia. I mean, WOW. They wear maybe enough leather to make a wallet out of.
- Unexpected Genre Change: A bit of an odd case, as it seems to be played straight but is partially a subversion. Brütal Legend was marketed as a brawler, complete with combos you can learn, weapons you can equip and the occasional boss battle. Yet the game is at its core a Real Time Strategy title; many of the game's missions (both primary and secondary) and its multiplayer center around giving orders to units, casting spells (guitar solos) to support those units and a few even involve gathering resources to produce units in army-on-army engagements. So it's played straight at first glance, subverted when you realize this was an RTS all along, then played straight for real this time when the grand finale is a straight-up boss battle with the Big Bad.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Eddie seems to acclimate to the heavy metal world extremely quickly; acting pretty calm about hacking evil nuns to death with an axe and teaching the local women "of french kissing". Eddie seems to be the kind of guy who would acclimate pretty quickly to anything. Besides, as he says himself about the world near the game's opening, "Some might call it hellish, but I have to admit, it's pretty badass."
Lita: "Don't you long to return to your world?"
Eddie: "Pfft."
- Weaksauce Weakness: What cosmic, god-awesome force could have killed Ormagöden? Mud; no, seriously.
- Weaponized Car: While at first you're limited to just ramming people, The Deuce can be upgraded with machine guns or missile launchers, among other things. Said upgrades being sold to you by Ozzy Osbourne.
- Well Intentioned Extremist: Lionwhyte claims to be one of these, making humans more presentable and useful to Doviculus and making them more likely to survive. Lars isn't hearing it.
- What Are You Looking At
- What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome?: The History of Metal is told as an epic.
- What Happened To The Mouse: Ormagöden at the Kabbage Boy concert.
- Also, Lita Halford during the final battle. Seriously. You have your three "hero" characters during the Lionwhite Arc, and Lita stays with you for at least the fights against the Drowning Doom. But the only ones who help you during the last battle are the Red Shirt Army.
- With Great Power Comes Great Emoness: The fate of all who drink or bathe in the Sea of Black Tears.
- Woman Scorned: Drowned Ophelia. Considering how quickly Eddie turned on her after making a big scene of promising he'd never mistrust her, it's not hard to see why.
- World Of Ham: This is a game built on The Power Of Rock after all.
- Wide Open Sandbox: Though the campaign is heavily story-driven, it's threaded through an open world.
- Winged Humanoid: Eddie, from the second stage battle onwards. You can only use the wings during stage battles, though.
- Xen Syndrome: While the actual quality of the game stays high throughout, after Lionwhyte's palace, the story moves and an almost uncontrollably fast pace. See Cosmic Deadline.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: Lampshaded by Eddie, who tacks an "e" onto Ironhead to make it cooler.
- Villains Never Lie: Awwwww... Eddie, why the hell did you believe the crazy-ass leather demon over your Perky Goth love interest? Ironically, Doviculus wasn't lying - Eddie just misinterpreted who Succoria was.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: Your resource here is "Fans." Think about it: the battles are basically staged as competing rock concerts, so more fans equals more power.
- Your Mom: Doviculus provides an oddly subtle example, quoted in the Player Punch entry. It could also be a joke about his nature.
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