"Breaking the cycle of revenge isn't something that's easy even for the greatest soul."
—Soma
Tropes from round three of Airlocked. Please note that the ending twist to Round One is treated as a Late-Arrival Spoiler on this page, as the remainder of the series cannot be discussed without it.
- The Alcatraz: The setting for this round is Starfield Penitentiary and the characters are referred to as "inmates" until they officially become Champions.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The jail is attacked and boarded after the first week, at which point Rule 7 is added to the regulations.
- Almost Dead Guy: When the others recover Akande from the gas-filled cell, he can still cough out half a word before finally keeling over.
- Angry Guard Dog: K-9, one of Blaze's killer robots, is designed to resemble a dog. He seems to be okay when he's tasked with giving Mozu a cake, though.
- Anti-Hero Team: The inmates-turned-Champions are all killers and many are morally grey at the best, but they're still the heroes the story follows.
- Any Last Words?: Blaze Dudely asks this of culprits before he executes them.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: The day the Round 3 survivor pool finally unites with the rest of the survivors happens to be Yuuri's birthday, which is lampshaded repeatedly (to her embarrassment).
- Black Dude Dies First: Inverted. Price is the only crew member to survive the invasion. While Akande does die, it's in the last case.
- Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Mozu mentions that they do these back home in Hoshido.
- Bond One-Liner: Blaze gives these at body announcements, despite being the Overseer, not the killer.
- Book Ends: Shirou, the first PC death of the round, and Blaze, the Overseer and round mastermind, are killed in the same way.
- Bring My Red Jacket: When Mako is killed, the blood blends in with his red scarf.
- Cassandra Truth: Kiss-Shot is open about being a vampire right from the intro log, but a few of the others think at first that she's just a chuunibyou kid.
- Catapult Nightmare: C.T. sits upright suddenly in bed upon waking up in the intro log.
- Cheap Costume: The inmates who don't just use their boon costumes for the costume party throw these together.
- Christmas Creep: The deadland Costco has Christmas decorations already, Truth in Television as Costco tends to put them out much earlier than other retailers. Mai takes home the ugliest tree in the store.
- Comedic Underwear Exposure: When the first culprit refuses to cooperate in the strip search, Cheryl pantses him.
- Condemned Contestant: The premise of this round is that all the Champions were kidnapped and imprisoned for homicide.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: If by "main character" you mean "entire cast." Round 2 had only one unrepentant culprit and half the sympathetic ones didn't even intend to, and everyone was at nearly endgame-level bonds almost right away. Round 3, in fitting with its "murder" gimmick to contrast R2's "love," had all intentional murders and even the sympathetic ones weren't exactly repentant, and most of the survivors didn't even fully trust each other at endgame, let alone throughout the round.
- Curiosity Killed the Cast: Alexander's curiosity gets him killed when he sneaks into the area where Blaze's robots are constructing the round's courtroom, and gets punished for it.
- Cycle of Revenge: Blaze's motive was to get back at the network for what they put him, his crew, his people, and Round Zero/Four through. While he believed that E.P. was among the Champions, it still meant running a murdergame full of people who hadn't hurt him and making them want to get him back too. Soma cites the cycle of revenge in the end.
- Denied Food as Punishment: Week three has a starvation motive.
- Dies Wide Open: The first victim is found with open eyes.
- Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Mozu misidentifies a robotic dinosaur as a dragon because that's what she's more familiar with.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Shortly after the round in deadland, Mai adopts a Pet Baby Wild Animal, a bear she and Lee name "Bear-san."
- Doomed Hometown: The first motive, which threatens the characters' homes, shows these places at the characters' true canon points. This reveals that a lot of the characters have already lost their homes, even if they don't remember it.
- Dressed to Plunder: Oda and Leon dress as pirates for the costume party. (Leon's came out of the regains, but Oda had a Cheap Costume he just threw together.)
- Due to the Dead: Along with the usual afterparties, the Champions start to make custom license plates with the names of their dead friends, both in the prison and those they remember have died back home.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Rox Petuu sends the brief message that kicks off the end of the round. She's introduced properly later on.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: Will and Akande have a conversation where they muse that, if it really is the year 6972, then everyone they know back home is dead.
- Fastball Special: Since there are more action scenes from the start as well as a good number of either very large or very small Champions, people get thrown around at each other a lot.
- Fatal Family Photo: Blaze's photos and videos of his crew members, shown before his last scene. Similarly, Scraggly talks about his niece when he meets Pyrrha, and he doesn't live long after.
- Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: "Existing" is among Erika's crimes on her profile, so clearly the network feels this about her.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Some of the "other crimes" on the character profiles include things like engaging in a Food Fight or being too polite.
- Fight Clubbing: The Champions start an event to take turns fighting each other. Rick sets up a betting pool on the results.
- First-Episode Twist: In the intro log, we learn the twist that this season was filmed in full in advance rather than just on a week's time delay like the others, so Team Temerity's hopes of rescuing the inmates before anyone dies are doomed from the start. The fact that the jail will be overthrown and turned into a Deadly Game is also this, due to the series it's part of.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: Diego, before his execution, comments on the possibility of this happening to the victims and culprits. True to his own inflated ego, he says that obviously they'll all forget the others, but his memory will endure forever.
- Four Is Death: A total of four cases are scheduled this round, and with a higher character count and stricter enforcement of punishments, a bloodbath is all but guaranteed.
- French Maid Outfit: One week's boon gives maid outfits to the men and butler costumes to the women.
- Goroawase Number: Something similar happens, only with phone keypad letters or letters that resemble numbers instead of Japanese syllables. Doomfist's number spells "Talon," for instance, and Rick's spells "Morty." Leon's looks like his own name, which was significant in his canon.
- Groin Attack: When Leon explains to the non-sports-minded Varric that a baseball bat is made for "hitting balls," Varric imagines this.
- I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: When Rick disparages his lack of knowledge about spaceships, Will says, "I worked for the FBI, not NASA."
- I Never: The group plays a game of this in week three.
- Instant-Win Condition: Blaze offers to let everyone go free if someone murders the Wild Card. Most people don't believe him, or suspect him of using Exact Words. It turns out that there is no Wild Card, though Blaze truly believed it existed.
- Institutional Apparel: The Champion unitards are swapped to prison orange for this round.
- In Vino Veritas: Rick's loud drunken breakdown at the end of Never Have I Ever, going on about how messed-up his life is.
- In Working Order: The untrained survivors can still manage to operate Blaze's ship, and Pyrrha does the same with a lazersword, though she had a little help from its previous owner's ghost.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: When implying that there's a mole in the cast working against him and them, Blaze calls them "it."
- Jail Bake: Rick implies that he's baked a shiv into a cake at least once.
- Long List: Some of the profiles' "Other Crimes" sections. Rick's in particular just gives up and ends with "etc."
- Magic Versus Science: Many of the inmates, such as Will, Max, and especially Erika, have a very low opinion of the idea of magic and those who believe in it. This causes conflict with others who come from worlds where magic is real and out in the open, who think they're being ridiculous.
- Make an Example of Them: When Alexander is caught sneaking around in the under-construction courtroom, rather than be killed there, he's dragged off so Blaze can kill him in front of everyone.
- Malicious Misnaming: Akande calls Diego "Dave" just to insult him after the latter rants about how great he is.
- Odd Friendship: John and Cheryl. She is normally everything he dislikes, but due to him not being her type and the two bonding over their spouses, they end up being pretty good friend.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted starting here. This round adds a player character named Max, and an existing NPC is also called Max. Rick is almost a second aversion, but manages to avoid ever being called "Ricky" like the player character from round 1.
- Post-Stress Overeating: After the takeover, Noctis makes a ridiculous amount of pancakes for everyone to eat and, in his case, bake off the stress. (Even if they aren't all that great; most of them are burned.)
- Premiseville: This round names Flavourtown, Blaze Dudely's home, named for its weird food items.
- Protective Charm: John writes a lot of these after regaining The Long-Lost Friend and the second trial, and passes them out. Leon having some on him is part of why Oda ended up not killing him as planned.
- Publicly Discussing the Secret: Will comments that Oda is strangely open about his involvement with The Mafia. Oda replies that the profiles already ruined that secret anyway and keeping it wouldn't make it any less likely that his employers would kill him for going AWOL (i.e. being kidnapped). Shirou also sees others' public conversations about magic as this, since people are Killed to Uphold the Masquerade all the time where he comes from.
- Relationship Upgrade: Here
, for Pyrrha and Apollo. - Retcon: Much of the first weekend log had to be removed due to a misunderstanding in order to facilitate a mid-Sunday plot twist.
- Robotic Reveal: Akande's, for most of the cast, comes in the fight when Blaze boards, as his sleeve is torn and reveals his metal arm. However, Rick and the audience actually learn it earlier. A few days later, Rick returns the favour and shows Akande that he's also a cyborg.
- Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: Akande says in one trial that, if he'd killed the victim, it would have been with something like this.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Fourtinbras and Scraggly are killed during Blaze's takeover of the ship.
- Sequel Escalation: The usual 20-character cap was raised to 25 due to high player demand and the fact that this is the last round with characters appable to Round 5. The death count was raised to match.
- Ship Sinking: Shirou and Pyrrha were teased throughout the first week, but it was stated OOCly that the former isn't from an ending where he gave up his relationship with his existing girlfriend for his ideals. Then Shirou got himself killed.
- Shirtless Scene: Shirou has one late in week one, where he exercises shirtless in the hallway. Soma also shows up to fight club with his bodysuit only halfway on and is the only one to agree to the first trial's strip search with no problem at all.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Blaze's goal in taking over the prison is to find and kill E.P. In the end it's revealed that she was never even there—he killed two of his old crewmates, directly or indirectly caused the deaths of sixteen Champions, and wasted the last weeks of his life, on a wild goose chase.
- Sickening "Crunch!": Though the thing that actually crunches in the first investigation is a broken bottle, this sound is still used and draws comparisons between said bottle and the victim's broken neck.
- Swirlie: In the third investigation, when Akande checks the washroom, narration asks if someone died from one of these.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Many of the characters, since in order to be applicable to this round, a character has to have knowingly killed someone. These backstory murders include accidents, self-defence, and the like along with worse motives.
- Teach Me How To Fight: Fighting lessons start for all three Cast Herds this round: Akande starts Fight Club for the prisoners, Xander and Ardyn continue teaching their fellow survivors how to use swords and knives, and Mai starts giving lessons with NERF arms in deadland, though she's not very good at teaching.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Varric says this even to sympathetic culprits.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Noctis likes to do this. Soma calls it "sword-ball."
- Trail of Blood: The first body discovery starts with one of these.
- Villainous Rescue: The survivors are tipped off by a stranger, who turns out to be Rox Petuu, Round 4's Big Bad.
- Where Is Your X Now?: Akande asks "Where is your God now?" when he finds John's body.
- Wild Card: One of the inmates is stated to be "not what they seem" and actually be an old enemy Blaze Dudely is hunting down. Part of the exercise's rules state that, if this person is killed, the rest can go free. The person in question is E.P., and turns out to not actually be there.
- Worf Had the Flu: The soon-to-be Champions probably would have wiped the floor with Blaze and his robots and crew if they'd had all their powers and memories during the ship's initial invasion. Of course, they don't, and they get steamrolled.
- Wrong Context Magic: Diego blames the goings-on in the prison on a mysterious enemy Stand.
- You Are Fat: Rideaux calls Cheryl fat in his personal notes, which insult nearly everyone.
- You Are Number 6: Everyone is assigned a prison ID number instead of the usual Champion titles. Titles are soon assigned after Blaze's hostile takeover.
