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- Savage Wolves: While heroic Lupes are typically portrayed as Noble Wolves, villainous Lupes are always portrayed as either snarling, savage beasts or cruel predators.
- Balthazar is a Faerie hunter who makes his living capturing Faeries and selling them in bottles. When he's not doing that, he loves eating cute little Petpets.
- Wild Lupes appear as enemies in NeoQuest, in opposition to the player character, a White Lupe.
- Captain Scarblade, the Big Bad of the Curse of Maraqua plot, is a brutal pirate captain who desires the riches of Maraqua for himself.
- Scary-looking Lupes appear as enemies in the game Hubrid's Hero Heist, and can throw spinning bones at the player character.
- Schizo Tech: All over the map - literally, since it's dependent on region. There's sticks and stones in Tyrannia, the various Fantasy Counterpart Cultures have the tech level you'd expect, Moltara is Steampunk, Neopia Central is closest to real life but has nothing like computers or cars, and then there's the Virtupets Space Station and moon colony on Kreludor… Editorial 527
claims that aside from the last two, Neopia is set in a "pre-industrial period". - Schmuck Bait: The "Lever of Doom" on the Virtupets Space Station, labeled "DO NOT PULL." If you pull it it steals 100 Neopoints from you. And that's all it does. Of course, a relevant avatar is sometimes awarded at random, meaning that plenty of schmucks come back for seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths.
- Scienceville: The Kingdom of Brightvale is characterized as a kingdom of peaceful scholars, whose king is obsessed with studying and likes to give out or receive bits of philosophy and wisdom. They practice magic, their local wheel is known as the "Wheel Of Knowledge", and they're contrasted with the next-door kingdom of Meridell, which is more like The Dung Ages and doesn't care much for intellectual pursuits.
- Scunthorpe Problem: A common complaint about the neoboards. It's hard to say Basement, Grape, Cucumber, Snowballs, and Skill, thanks to the filters.
- Sea of Sand: The Lost Desert is portrayed as just a vast ocean of sand. Travelers are often depicted as having to trudge over endless sand-dunes, and a lot of food available to buy, both in Sakhmet and Qasala, is literally made of sand because little grows in the desert.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: Actively encouraged by the team, from collectibles to galleries to high-level battledome fights.
- Serious Business:
- Avatar collecting.
- Painted/labbed/unconverted pets, especially Neopets in colors that can fetch up to 1,000,000 NP or more.
- Transfers and Pound surfing. Congratulations on nabbing that beautiful Faerie Peophin! Oh, wait, it was supposed to go to sirherpderp_2033 and now they're bombarding you with angry Neomails demanding you return it to them. Oops.
- Trading pets. Look, buddy, your Royal Mynci is not worth as much as my unconverted Maraquan Aisha, got it?!?
- The Altador Cup. Which teams are cheating? Which team is going to win? Which team is going to lose? Is the bracket system fair? What rank are you? What team are you? How many wins do you submit per day? Can you score with a Darigan Yooyu in less than 30 seconds?
- Draiks or Krawks, which both cost insane amounts of Neopoints to get, no matter what method you use.
- Lending of items or Neopets, especially ones required to get an avatar. Running off with someone's prized Super Attack Pea or Chokato (TCG) automatically deploys TNT's patented Freeze Ray 5000 in 3...2...
- Customization. How many NC Mall items can you pile on? How many NC Mall items can you buy? Does your pet look good enough for the Customization Spotlight? Are you even allowed to use Neopoints items?
- Feeding Kadoaties at the Kadoatery. Is it worth it to feed them unbuyablesnote ? Should you stop feeding after 75 Kadsnote to give other players a chance to get the trophies and the avatar? What's the fastest way to feed? How many times do you need to refresh? Do you need to use the Kads board?
- Serpent Staff: Several Lost Desert-themed weapons and wearables have this aesthetic, including the Golden Cobrall Staff, Staff of the Bewed, and Cobrall Wand.
- Shown Their Work: The hierarchy of the Habitarium is set up similarly to a real beehive or ant's nest, with Petpetpets being assigned at birth to produce eggs, gather resources or fight enemy pests.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Sibling Rivalry: The two brothers, King Skarl of Meridell and King Hagan of Brightvale, have a bit of a rivalry because the latter thinks the former is a "scruffy oaf".
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Skarl and Hagan. The former is a grumpy, careless king who only cares about eating or sleeping, while the latter is interested in knowledge and looks over his people.
- Sigil Spam: Practically every item that can be bought in Faerieland is shaped like a pair of Faerie wings or has actual Faerie wings on it.
- Significant Anagram:
- Eliv Thade, whose spirit haunts a castle: Evil/Vile Death/Hated. Appropriately enough, the game featuring him centers around anagrams. Also: the Sword of Skardsen/Darkness, Grimoire of Thade/Death, Amulet of Thigl/Light, and Shield of Pion Troect/Protection.
- Five more swords were added to the Hidden Tower to complement Skardsen, all based on the elements: the Sword of Tawre (Water), Sword of Thare (Earth), Sword of Reif (Fire), Sword of Ari (Air), and Sword of Thigl (Light).
- Single Specimen Species: Several characters seem to be this, such as the Money Tree, the Brain Tree, the Esophagor, Dr. Sloth, the Tiki Tack Man... Mr. Chipper was also this until the Lutari species was made available.
- Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Neopets (of all species) are Neopia's dominant life form, with Petpets playing the equivalent role of animals in our world (albeit of a Nearly Normal Animal sort). While the Neopets you adopt on the site tend toward Civilized Animal, many NPCs and plot characters lean more into Funny Animal territory. That's not even touching the many fanmade depictions—including those published in the Neopian Times and on the Beauty Contest and Art Gallery pages—that take it all the way into Little Bit Beastly.
- Slobs vs. Snobs: The Sibling Rivalry between King Skarl and King Hagan is reflected in the cultures of their respective kingdoms, Meridell and Brightvale.
- Smart People Wear Glasses: The "Genius Negg" available at the Neggery is just a Negg wearing glasses.
- Snake Whip: Played with by the Kazeriu Whip, which resembles the setting's equivalent to an Eastern dragon.
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: Averted. Any pet that gets transferred or sent to the pound will leave behind all the Battledome items they were equipped with.
- Soup Is Medicine: Neggdrop Soup, which is said to be for when you're not well, and Blazing Hot Soup, which was said to be a treatment for the prank disease The Scourgies. There's also Feel Better Soup, a Battledome item that restores 50% of your pet's hit points and has the description "Nothing like some warm soup in your belly to get you feeling better!"
- Soup of Poverty:
- If you have less than 3,000 Neopoints to your name, you can feed your Neopets for free at the Soup Kitchen, which is run by the kindly Soup Faerie. Unlike most examples of poverty soup, her soup is so delicious that rich Neopians sometimes come to the Soup Kitchen and pretend to be poor just to get a bowl.
- Several food items have gruel in them, which appears as an unappetizing greyish-brown slop. The description of the Zafara Gruel is "This cute bowl might just help you forget that you are eating gruel." Meanwhile, the Gruel Ice Lolly is said to be "for those that want a cold refreshing treat without breaking the bank," and the Gruel Cake is "perfect for those planning parties on a tight budget!"
- Space Whale Aesop: The game "Attack of the Marblemen" — always put your toys away before bed, or else they'll be very angry, come to life and take over the world!
- Special Occasions Are Magic: During the "Faerie Festival", Marina uses magic to heal all pets that come her way, as opposed to her usual fare of alternating between healing them completely, healing them partially, and giving out items.
- Spelling Bonus: The letters in "Hasee" show up as collectable doughnutfruits in the game "Hasee Bounce". Completing the word "Hasee" gives an additional 20 seconds if the fruits are of different colors or 40 seconds if they are of the same color.
- Stealth Pun: A prize available in the Apple Bobbing Game, the "Apple Spyder."
- Stone Punk: Tyrannia is built on this.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: The "Completely Non-lethal Sandwich," a sandwich with a cartoony sci-fi ray gun sticking out of it.Go on, try it... but point it away from me, would you?
- T. Rexpy: Grarrls, one of the few species to be designed as "badass" rather than "cute", though they seemed to have adopted a rather cheesy smile after the pet conversion.
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- Take That!:
- The description of the Pink Poogle Toy is one to a fansite of the same name.Item Description: This lovely pink poogle moans about banner ads and frozen accounts when you squeeze it!
- The Gallery of Evil book features a shadowy creature chewing on what appears to be a Pikachu if you mouse over it. There's also an old creature from the same book called the "Pikachu Eater" which lives on Pokémon
- And then there's the infamous filtering that happened when the Twilight movie was coming out. It changed anything referring to the series into something else, such as turning Twilight itself into My Little Pony.
- The description of the Pink Poogle Toy is one to a fansite of the same name.
- Taken for Granite: The Relic Paint Brush turns Neopets into cracked stone sculptures, complete with bedrock stand, but not the least bit petrified that usually comes along with this trope. Before that was the long-retired Stone paint brush.
- Tastes Better Than It Looks: This Neopian Times article talks about how some of the foods listed as "gross foods" may actually taste OK.
- Temple of Doom: The Deserted Tomb in Geraptiku, although its only real booby trap is an arrow trap. If you're lucky, its free items are there for the taking. Although there is that giant, constantly voracious Ghost Hissi that's always running around in there…
- Temporary Online Content:
- Several avatars were plot prizes or only available from sponsor promotions, and are thus retired, preventing newer accounts from ever acquiring them. One major example is the Advent Calendar on December each year- miss a day on it and that day's door is sealed forever. Even more jarring considering that several prizes in recent years are classified as Neocash items. Most prizes can be found (cheaply) on the shop wizard, but with these, the only way to get them is for another user to buy a gift box for you.
- The team actively tries to avert this with flash games, with (almost) all retired games being still playable in the Game Graveyard. With sponsor games, though, which made up a large part of the site's history for a lot of players, they didn't have a choice in the matter.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Sharp-eyed users can spot subtle clues that differentiate a male Neopet from a female one, such as eyelashes on a female Usul or wider eyes on a male Ruki.
- "Test Your Strength" Game: In the Deserted Fairground, Arnold the Mynci oversees such a game.
- Theme Naming: The Lost Desert Petpets are named after Egyptian deities.
- Tie-In Cereal: In-Universe. A few of the cereals you can feed your pets are based on games, locations, and things all around Neopia... one of which includes Captain Scarblade cereal.
- Time Zones Do Not Exist: Neopia is an entire planet, but it has only one timezone, called NST (Neopian Standard Time). Perhaps this could be explained because magic explicitly exists on Neopia.
- Toilet-Drinking Dog Gag: It's against the rules for the Neopian Times stories to feature Neopets acting in a "demeaning manner" and gives drinking from toilets as an example.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Shenkuu has two notable pairs: Princess Terrana (aka Shenkuu Warrior) and peaceful older sister Princess Lunara, who really wants to see the world outside the palace walls. Then there are twins Mirsha and Atsumi Grelinek, respectively the captain of Team Shenkuu at the Altador Cup and the kimono-clad curator of the Charity Corner.
- Too Dumb to Live: The owner is implied to be this at times, especially in the Deserted Tomb of Geraptiku.You've never seen so many traps in your life. Seriously. Someone must really not want you to be here. You wonder how many traps there really are, and who put them here. And, while you were thinking that and not paying attention, you set off another one. You watch as the arrows fly right at you, but luckily (your active pet) was paying attention and pushes you out of the way just in time.
- This is especially jarring if you do this once-a-day activity daily. Your pet saves you so many times in there that you'll almost wish for it to stop saving you.
- Toothy Bird: When a Pteri or Lenny is angered, they have visible teeth that they clench.
- Totally Radical:
- Neopetz.
- Also, the "Extreme Potato Counter" game.
- TNT seems to LOVE spoofing this trope.
- In the early days of the site, the Kacheek's predecessor, the Badeek. Like the modern incarnation, but it had Cool Shades.
- Neopetz
- Tournament Arc: The annual Altador Cup.
- Tournament Play: With a battle system almost as complicated as Pokémon's, there is of course a large subculture of professional battledome fighters.
- Toy-Based Characterization: If a Chia plushie is played with by a Lupe, they'll break it. This is because Lupes have a rivalry with Chias and used to eat them in the olden times.
- Toy Transmutation: The Aisha Pogo Stick is said to be a real Aisha that got transformed.
- Tragic Abandoned Toy: The Discarded Magical Blue Grundo Plushie of Prosperity is a very sad Grundo plushie lying all alone in the clouds of Faerieland (or in the trees after The Faerie's Ruin in 2010), who can be visited once a day for the chance to win a prize. Sometimes, just looking at the poor plushie can make your active Neopet feel sad.Flavor text: Seeing the poor discarded plushie seems to dampen [Neopet name]'s mood. Perhaps you should return a different day.
- Training Dummy: Punchbag Bob. Who just happens to be alive. He sure screams a lot.
- The Trees Have Faces: The Brain Tree, a spooky tree with a face and a large exposed brain instead of leaves, that appears in the Haunted Woods that become accessible during Halloween events.
- Trivially Obvious: If you don't have an account at the National Neopian Bank (which is the only bank in the game), the bank manager will say, "I see you don't currently have an account with us. I can offer you some of the only interest rates in town today!"
- Troperiffic: Being a Fantasy Kitchen Sink planet with two sci-fi-based worlds orbiting around it AND dozens of stories both major in the plots, and minor in the Neopedia, site games and events, AND users that submit art AND fiction to the site does that.
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- Uncatty Resemblance: A few painted Petpets are modeled after a Neopet painted the same color, creating this effect when they are paired together. For example, the Mutant Nedler looks like the Mutant Kau, the Royal Faellie looks like the Royalgirl Kyrii, and the Tyrannian Nuranna looks like the Tyrannian Flotsam.
- Unconventional Food Usage:
- This site has Jelly World, a world entirely made up of literal jelly, including the buildings pets live in. These pets are also made of jelly.
- This Neopian Times article suggests putting a Pusberry (a type of Neopian berry) into a book like you would a flower and passing it off as art if you find the book boring.
- Uniqueness Rule:
- Your pets aren't capable of reading the same book twice.
- In the Battledome, each pet can only equip one item that can heal, and one item that can freeze the opponent. Other equipment may also have similar restrictions on a case-by-case basis. Some items that can potentially heal and freeze, such as the Sword of Lameness, will occupy both slots.
- Unpredictable Results: The lab ray. It can alter a pets' stats; or change its color, its species, battle stats, or even its gender.
- The Petpet Lab Ray can change your Neopets's Petpet's, into all of the above (except gender), but can also turn the Petpet into a Pile of Soot, an item, or make it disappear altogether.
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- Vague Age: In terms of actual gameplay, Neopets don't have a life cycle—the only way to get a "baby" or "elderly" Neopet is to get paintbrushes involved. This technically means that Neopets are created fully-grown, but what that means is a little shaky; the site tends to treat all Neopets as children in care of their owner, notwithstanding the occasional alcoholic drink. Even your oldest Neopet will happily play with a plushie if it's offered.
- Vapor Ware: Neoschools. They were in development for quite a while in the early 2000s, until TNT said they pulled the plug on them because supposedly they realized it was just boring and couldn't make the concept work in a fun manner.
- Vengeful Abandoned Toy: The TCG card Scary Abandoned Plushie◊ shows a creepy-looking stuffed Acara lying on the ground in the pouring rain.Description: Through the sheets of rain, one eye glinted malevolently.
- Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: Neopets (and Petpets) painted Faerie gain a beautiful new pair of pastel-colored wings, if they didn't already have them, to go with their new look.
- The mutant Krawk has an extra set of arms.
- Video Game Caring Potential: You can keep your Neopet happy by feeding it periodically, giving it toys to play with, buying cool things for it, and the like. Adopting an unwanted Neopet from the Pound also falls under this category.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- On the other end of the scale, you can also starve your Neopet until it's "dying", force it to eat Gross Food, make it sick on purpose, or make it wear embarrassing clothes. Or abandon it, which usually falls straight into Kick the Dog territory. However, the last one can be subverted into Video Game Caring Potential, as some users adopt pets from the pound and then abandon them after healing them back to full health or zapping them with the lab ray, to give them unique colorations and increase their chances of finding a permanent home. D'aww!
- You can feed Petpets to your Grarrl or Skeith, or Aquatic Petpets to your Jetsam (and you will get an avatar for the latter).
- Villain Protagonist: A few flash games have the player taking control of a villain.
- Snowbeast Snackrifice and Feed Florg are games where the player feeds innocent petpets to the titular character. Snowbeast Snackrifice even has the Petpet Protection League as the Hero Antagonists.
- The Great Qasalan Caper has the player take control of Heermeedjet & Meerouladen, more commonly known as the Meerca Brothers, as they rob the Qasalan Royal Treasury.
- Virtual Paper Doll: In 2007, the site was updated to add Customisation, a feature which makes applying clothes and accessories to your Neopets a core element of gameplay.
- The game Fashion Fever revolves entirely around dress-up. You choose either a Kougra, Lupe, or Acara, with a select handful of colors available for each species, drag and drop clothes on them, click on the background to change it if you so desire, then hit "submit" for an easy 300 Neopoints.
- Hannah and the Wardrobe of Adventure's main focus is dressing up the titular Usul. Print Mode is akin to Fashion Fever, albeit without the ability to gain Neopoints. Game Mode adds Excuse Plot missions where Hannah has to pick the right clothes to assemble specific outfits for the best outcome.
- Virus and Cure Names: Several of the medicines have the name of the disease or related words in their names:
- Bubbles is cured with a Bubbles Herbal Drink.
- Hoochie Coochies is cured with Hoochie Coochie Tablets.
- Itchy Scratchies is cured with Itchy Scratchy Cream.
- Kikoughela is cured with Kikoughela Drops.
- Neezles is cured with a Neezles Jab.
- Neggitus is cured with a Neggitus Injection, while NeoMites are cured with a NeoMites Injection.
- NeoFlu is cured with NeoFlu Jelly Pills.
- NeoPox is cured with NeoPox Pizza.
- NeoWarts are cured with Neowart Fungus.
- Shaky Flakies is cured with Shaky Flaky Cream.
- Visual Pun:
- Caption Contest #868 featured Imiya the Aisha hurling her alarm clock out the window, i.e. making time fly. One of the winning captions was "I am not entering this Caption Contest because the punchline is way too obvious."
- Since The Neopets Team is commonly referred to as "TNT", their collective account used for communicating with players has a unique avatar◊ depicting a bundle of dynamite exploding.
- Caption Contest #868
- Volumetric Mouth: All Kadoaties are afraid of the dark and will cry loudly until the lights are turned back on. Every night at 11 p.m. NST (Neopian Standard Time), the lights go off in the Kadoatery and all of the Kadoaties' sprites change to crying ones with cascading tears and huge, bawling mouths, even if they've already been fed.
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- Waddling Head: JubJubs and Chias — the latter were one of the most prominently-featured neopets in the earliest days of the site because they were so easy to draw.
- Wales: The founder was of Welsh descent and quite proud of it. As such, St David's day is sometimes an in-game event.
- Was Once a Man:
- Edna the Witch was previously a human with green skin and a long nose, resembling the Wicked Witch of the West. Her transformation into a Neopet was explained as the result of her falling into her cauldron.
- Dr_Death replaced a human woman named "Mrs. Worley" in January 2001.
- Likewise, the Island Mystic, formerly a short, pointy-eared human who talked in Yoda-speak, was turned into a Kyrii after falling into the Mystery Island Cooking Pot on March 2003.
- Thankfully averted with the Tiki Tack Man - users started noticing a pattern, and the staff had to go out of their way to allay any fears that he would be next."No, the Tiki Man is quite safe, if he fell into the Tombola he would just be covered with little pieces of paper."
- And, as mentioned above, the curious case of the Bruces, Myncis and Kaus...
- Weaksauce Weakness: Faeries are ostensibly the most powerful species in all of Neopia. They are regularly bottled by a scraggly mutant-wolf with no magical powers, sold away, freed, then caught again a few weeks later.
- Weird World, Weird Food: There are food vendors all over Neopia, each with their own unique types of food based on the culture of the setting. What all of these locations have in common, however, is the fact that much of the food being sold would either be gross or outright inedible in real life. For example, the "desert food" stand includes generic food made of Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables, but they also have a lot of food that is simply made of sand. Meanwhile, most shops in Neopia Central sell "basic" food items like pizza, hot dogs, and baked goods... But those pizza, hot dogs, and baked goods include combinations like the "sour lime pizza," "brain hotdog", and the "French onion soup cake", among others. It's clear that Neopia doesn't even consider these dishes gross, as "gross food" is an entirely separate category.
- What Does This Button Do?: The Lever of Doom is marked "Do Not Pull." It exists to steal your money. Most people who use it repeatedly know exactly what it does, but pulling it over and over is the only way to get a certain avatar.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The Tear Jerker ultimate fate of the Grey Faerie (whether she got her powers back or not) was never solved.
- What Have I Become?: Played for laughs in the Petpet Park Mini-Plot. You come upon an adorable Cybunny with the choice of four options. # Upon executing any of the options, the Cybunny would turn around to reveal itself to be half-robot. If you chose A ("become inexplicably hostile"), it pulls a mirror out of nowhere and says, "ERROR: WHAT HAVE I BECOME?"
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Subverted in the stories that circulate, where anyone can be a hero; but read the basic descriptions of the Neopets and you'll notice it's the cute, fluffy, huggable Aishas and Lupes and Boris that seem to be friendly and easygoing, and the less-cute or fluffy pets such as Skeiths or Jetsams that are… less agreeable.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Although all Neopets and Faeries are officially regarded as sentient beings, there's some confusion over where entities such as Petpets lie. It's particularly odd since there are games in which you play as a Petpetpet.
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: In Hubrid's Hero Heist, the Poogle Apprentice knows exactly two spells: one to teleport, and one to turn enemies tiny so he can run over and squish them. With those, he can defeat every enemy in the game.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Neopets are not limited by gender as to what they can wear. The clothes at NC Mall can fit neopets of any gender, and a Strange Potion can make Royal Neopets change gender while their attire remains the same.
- Wishing Well: There is a wishing well which can give out items and an avatar.
- Worm in an Apple: A "Wormy Rotten Apple" is a food you can get for your pets. Predictably, almost every pet hates it.
- Written-In Absence: Once Shenkuu joined the Altador Cup in 2007, there were 17 possible teams competing, so an odd team out was always written out (due to training accident or some such) in order to make a nice, neat, 16-team bracket. That continued until the issue was fixed in 2010, when Moltara joined and made it an even 18 teams.
X
- X on a Stick: One food item is "Meat A La Twig", described as "A lightly heated piece of meat on a stick."
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- You Mean "Xmas": There is a holiday-themed land (Happy Valley) note and an Advent Calendar in the Month of Celebrating (December), but December 25 is the "Day of Giving." Strangely, pets can still be painted "Christmas," which gives them a festive holiday look.
- The Winter Starlight Celebration.
- One Neopian holiday, Illusen Day, takes place on March 17.
- Younger Than They Look: Neopets are fully-grown upon creation (or at least fully at the Vague Age Neopets have by default), and a Neopet a few hours old looks no different than the oldest pets on the site unless you get paint brushes involved. Pets of any age can be painted "Elderly."
- You Wanna Get Sued?: The game "Whack-A-Kass" eventually had its name changed to "Kass Basher". The exact same thing happened to "TNT Staff Smasher", which was changed from "Whack-A-Staff-Member"; for bonus points, the latter is a Whack-A-Mole style game featuring caricatures of the Neopets staff.
