The Hohenzollern Empire / Tropes A to M

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A-F

• 0% Approval Rating:
  • During the Anarchy, Malcolm Bethune usurped the throne after killing Kaiser Martin II and then ordered a purge of the Hohenzollern family. This caused the entire population of the Reich to rebel and ultimately overthrow him.
  • Subverted with Elias Anhorn's regime, which knows the dangers of having a 0% approval rating but also does not try to get 100% approval either. Instead, it just focuses on entertaining and placating the masses, keeping them docile and apathetic so they have no reason to rebel. For more restless groups, it plays them off against each other, dividing them in pointless competitions and conflicts with each other so they don't unite against a common enemy.
• Abusive Parents: The character Josh grew up with an abusive father who beat him and his mother, forced him to adopt extremely hypermasculine and chauvinistic values, and even killed his dog when he learned Josh had feelings for a Muslim girl.
• A Child Shall Lead Them:
  • When he was little more than a baby, the Song emperor escaped China with a massive fleet, which elected a leader from among its admirals. The fleet sailed south, eventually discovering the continent of Penglai, where the emperor grew up and led his people through the settling of the continent.
  • Following the death of her father Friedrich the Glorious in 1126, a sixteen-year-old Princess Wilhelmina is crowned Kaiserin of the Romans. Her first order of business is to mend the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, reuniting Christianity under a single church. Saint Wilhelmina would reign for the next seventy years, presiding over a cultural golden age in which the Reich truly became united.
  • After his father was murdered by Persian assassins in 1917, just a year into his reign, the five-year-old Prince Otto became the new Kaiser as a global war raged, millions of Romans died in the trenches, and ambitious generals and nobles plotted to seize power in Berlin. A regency was formed for Otto until he came of age, and he was powerless to watch as his regent, Markos Angelos, pursued a brutal foreign policy that left the Reich's enemies humiliated and eager for vengeance. Once he turned 18, he officially took the throne and began trying to heal the social divisions within the Reich, realizing there were flaws in the system which led to many people being treated unfairly. However, the young Kaiser was soon threatened by Angelos' return to politics. By 1939, Angelos had consolidated enough power to attempt a coup against Otto, which failed and instead set off a massive civil war. Otto led the loyalist forces through four years of chaos and darkness before he finally triumphed over Angelos, but no sooner did he do so did the Soviets seize large parts of the Roman east, beginning a Cold War which saw the Reich divided. Otto spent the next forty years defending against the Soviet threat before he again prevailed, leading a reunited Reich into a new golden age of meritocracy.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • The Metternich and Ottonian systems, on which Roman governments from Part 3 on are based, are way too centralized on the Kaisers and assuming they will always be the same. The latter system, despite giving far more power to civilian governments and thriving under Otto the Great, still has failsafes and loopholes through which the Kaiser can legally rule with absolute power. These loopholes were later exploited by Otto's successor, Wilhelm Karl, and then by Elias Anhorn, who blackmailed Wilhelm Karl and seized power through him using those loopholes.
  • The aliens seeking to invade Earth are said to dislike cold climates, which the Syndicate exploited by threatening to plunge humanity into nuclear winter if they did not come to the bargaining table.
• Advanced Ancient Humans: An ancient human civilization of 150,000 years ago had technology far exceeding that of the modern day. They had space travel, advanced energy weapons, medical devices that could heal very serious injuries in minutes, an extensive communications network implied to span the solar system, and even a device that could manipulate the fabric of reality itself. Occasionally, their artifacts are dug up in the modern day.
• Agent Mulder: Anders Humbodt is directly based on Fox Mulder from The X-Files, inheriting his belief in the paranormal.
• Agent Scully: Angela Hansen is explicitly based on Dana Scully from The X-Files, inheriting her skepticism and faith.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The COS AI created by a Roman programmer in the 1990s. Originally designed as a smart hub for a tech company's headquarters, it gained sentience and murdered several people to protect itself. After recovering from X-Division's attempt to shut it down, it hacked into Roman military servers and attempted to use the Strategic Defense Initiative satellites to destroy all those opposed to it. After recovering from a second attempt to shut it down, the COS returned twenty years later to try the same thing again, only to be defeated again by X-Division.
• Alien Abduction: In Part 5, the Jotun aliens frequently abduct humans to experiment on, usually aided by their human collaborators in the Syndicate. The Jotun even abduct family members of Syndicate leaders to ensure their compliance, with the smoking man giving up his daughter and Conrad Humboldt losing his granddaughter Annie. At various points in the story, both Angela Hansen and Anders Humboldt are briefly abducted.
• Alien Invasion: In Part 5, the Jotun aliens are encountered at Agadir in 1947 (Roswell), and human collaborators establish the Syndicate to negotiate with them and prepare Earth and humanity for an impending invasion and subjugation. The Syndicate secretly stalled their plans to buy time for humanity to develop countermeasures to the invasion, but the aliens had predicted this and created a second conspiracy, Sentinel, to complete the mission. Both were ultimately defeated by the X-Division, Athanatoi agents investigating unexplained occurrences.
• Alien Space Bats:
  • In the 13th century, the Aztecs, called the Mexica Empire (and in the game as the Triple Alliance), came to Europe with advanced technology on par with Europeans of the time, despite the Aztec Empire having not even existed in real life at that point. Not only did they come to Europe, but they had the military strength to invade with an army of hundreds of thousands of jaguar warriors. Zen has repeatedly attempted to make this somewhat justified, as the Mexica Empire apparently learned Norse technology from captured Norse settlers in Vinland who made their way down to Mexico, and the ruling Acatl dynasty seems to have some Norse ancestry. The Mexica remained a major power throughout this timeline before they were thoroughly defeated by the Reich in the late 18th century, after which they began a period of steady decline. In the 20th century, the monarchy was overthrown and the country suffered through multiple dictatorial regimes, the last of which was violently deposed and replaced with the Acatls by a Roman invasion in 2003. Modern Mexico, as it is now known as, is a minor nation with a poor economy propped up by the Eimerican Federation, although since joining the EF it has stabilized and began reviving its economy.
  • Zen also admits the whole idea of the Pagan Resurgence makes little sense, since by the 11th century many formerly pagan regions in Europe, Central Asia, and Africa had already been Christianized or Islamized. Ethiopia even converted from Christianity to Judaism, while Central Asians revived the long dead Zunist religion. Again, this was somewhat justified in that the Pagan Resurgence was masterminded by the angel Wilhelm as a way for the people of the world to stand up to the Worm cult, which had infiltrated the Abbasid Caliphate and Catholic Church, among other powerful institutions of the 11th century.
• The Alliance:
  • In the leadup to World War I, the Reich formed what it called the Central Powers, a military alliance of it and its likeminded allies to counter China and its own imperialist ambitions. It is nowadays referred to as the Schengen Pact, which has a focus on free trade. Schengen still exists as of 2038, even after the Reich itself, as the totalitarian Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem, withdrew from the bloc and then attacked its remaining members in World War IV. Russia originally took up the mantle of leadership of the rump alliance, but after its fall to Jerusalem, leadership passed to Persia. However, by 2039, there are effectively only three members of Schengen left (Persia, Turkestan, Afghanistan), as the other members have all been conquered or otherwise destroyed by Jerusalem.
  • China's Tianxia Alliance was formed to counter the Reich's bloc in World War I. Despite losing many members as the century went on, the alliance still exists as of 2038. For most of its existence, its primary goal has been to establish and maintain Chinese economic, military, and cultural hegemony under the doctrine of Sinocentrism.
  • The Soviets established their own Warsaw Pact, just as in real life.
  • The Meskwaki Empire established its own alliance of Eimerican nations to counter the Roman and Chinese blocs. It has variously been called the Eimerican Federation/Confederation and shouldn't be confused with the Eimerican Federation supranational entity of the 21st century.
• Alliterative Name:
  • Theodor and Thea Tesla.
  • Lothar Lorenz, Roman senator.
  • Murad Mozaffar, Minister of Defense of Persia.
  • Valentin Varennikov, Soviet general and Party chairman.
• Allohistorical Allusion: In Part 3, Gavrilo Princip kills a random Chinese soldier during a battle in Siberia. This wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary if Gavrilo didn't look at the soldier's nametag, revealing he is Mao Zedong.
• Altar Diplomacy:
  • Friedrich the Great engineered a political marriage between his son and heir, Prince Wilhelm, and Crown Princess Anna Doukas of the Byzantine Empire. After Anna became the Byzantine empress, Byzantium and Friedrich the Great's Holy Roman Empire entered into an alliance, and Wilhelm and Anna's son Friedrich inherited both empires, uniting them into a single realm which came to be known as the Reich.
  • Throughout Part 2, the ruling Opeatako family of the Meskwaki Empire weaponized altar diplomacy to put Opeatakos on the thrones of neighboring native Eimerican kingdoms and then have them be inherited into the main line, expanding the empire more through diplomacy and marriage than outright conquest.
• Alternate History: This is stated to be a work of alternate history, with multiple points of divergence.
  • The most important one is in September 1066, when the Pagan Resurgence began and Friedrich the Great first appeared.
  • Several decades before the Pagan Resurgence was another point of divergene, when a crew of Vikings settling Vinland were captured by natives and ultimately made their way to Mexico, where they integrated into the local society and taught them their technology, giving rise to the Mexica Empire.
  • Finally, in the distant past of 150,000 years ago, there was an ancient technologically advanced human precursor civilization.
• Alternate Timeline: This whole story is an alternate timeline from real life, but there are also alternate timelines within the Hohenzollernverse.
  • The Hohenzollernverse itself is an alternate timeline based on an original one where the Worm and Its cult took over the world and wiped out the Reich, with Wilhelm going back in time to avert this outcome.
  • The Annionaverse is an alternate timeline running concurrently with the Hohenzollernverse.
  • In Part 5, the Inquisitor Munster reveals that the "previous" Hohenzollernverse timeline saw nuclear war break out in 1962, wiping out humanity, before the Inquisition reset time.
• Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: Plenty.
  • Gavrilo Princip of this universe was a friend of Franz Ferdinand, unlike his real life counterpart. He was a Great War veteran who had a big share of fighting against the Chinese. After the war, he serves as the vessel for angel Wilhelm, but at the end of Part 3, the Archangel Gabriel removes Wilhelm's angelic essence and makes him human. This causes a danger to both of their consciousnesses, but Wilhelm resolves this by gaining his angelic essence back in Part 4. In Part 5, Gavrilo remains Wilhelm's vessel until he decides he wants to live his life normally again, and Wilhelm later says they parted ways. Gavrilo is last mentioned as having died during World War III. His Lithuanian cousin, Gediminas Principas, replaces Gavrilo's OTL counterpart in this timeline. His son, Mihailo, becomes a resistance fighter, war hero, and later general and politician who seems to resemble John McCain. His grandson, Slobodan Princip (Slobodan Milosevic), is not a Balkan war criminal but, ironically, mediated an end to the equivalent of the Balkan Wars (the Eimerican Wars).
  • Adolf Hitler becomes this universe's Walt Disney, leading to such memes like "Adolf Hitler Pictures," "the Hitler Renaissance," "the Hitler Channel," and "Hitlerwood".
  • Joseph Stalin of this universe is Ecumenical Patriarch Joseph I, who finished his studies in the seminarium and became a staunch anti-equalist who fully supported the ruling Hohenzollern dynasty.
  • Mohandas Gandhi went by the pen name of Chandra Gupta and is this world's counterpart of Adolf Hitler, appropriately being named Neta of the Indian Raj, leading the Rasa party (counterpart of OTL's NSDAP and based on OTL's Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). Wilhelm notes it's the most bloodthirsty version of Gandhi he ever encountered in all parallel timelines, and is quite amused while listening to his shenanigans. There's also another Gandhi who was transported into the story's timeline through Gabriel's meddling, who was an Imperial royalist war veteran in his own world (the world of Dragoon9105's Annionas), but his life wasn't so colorful by the '30s.
  • Vyacheslav Molotov plays a much bigger role than in OTL, taking over CSSR after Trotsky after he's assassinated in Mayapan. Apparently even without ever being Stalin's protege (as said above, his Hohenzollernverse counterpart is a pro-Roman Ecumenical Patriarch, mind you) he's still capable of carrying out what our Stalin did without hitch, and what's more, outplaying the Reich by having the Soviets steal the Angeloi nukes, making them the first one to use them, unfortunately on Roman cities, and then even fucking Heaven of all places.
  • Hirohito is now the equivalent of Gandhi, while the Shiba Shogun (original character) seems to have filled in the role of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
  • In this timeline, Anne Frank lived through World War II and became a famed Athanatos (the equivalent of the FBI, CIA, and MI5/6 combined into one super intelligence agency) codenamed 'Valkyrie'. She served during the Siam Wars, the Carpathian and Bohemian Revolutions, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which she became the arch-nemesis of the Soviet war hero and later General Secretary Valentin Varennikov, culminating in their showdown during World War III. She also lived long enough to have a family, with her daughter Diana becoming one of the founders of X-Division.
  • Ousabe Wyota Witko of the Commune of the Southern Socialist Altepetls is an original character native to the Hohenzollernverse who is most likely, as some Paradox Forum posters believe, Josep Broz Tito. "Witko is Tito" has since become a meme.
  • Jared Karasi, a history professor turned popular musician, is later revealed to be based on Chilean singer and activist Victor Jara.
  • Most of the chancellors of the Reich as of 2021 are based on real German leaders, with the exception of Roland Wilson, who is literally Irish Ronald Reagan (and related to Woodrow Wilson, what?), and Kurt Georg Kiesinger, who is based on an Austrian chancellor (and possibly Harry Kissinger). These chancellors also seem to share personality traits and policies with postwar American presidents.
    • Adenauer implemented an "Autobahn" (interstate) program, set up the Roman space program RANA (NASA), and pursued an "Adenauer Doctrine" (Truman Doctrine), mirroring the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy.
    • Ludwig Erhard presided over the escalating war in Siam, passed civil rights reforms, passed legislation as part of a "Great Society" program, and oversaw the expansion of RANA to keep up (and then some) in the Space Race, like Lyndon B Johnson did.
    • Walter Scheel was literally Watergate'd. Ironically, Richard Nixon's direct counterpart here, Senator Richard Mason, was responsible for leading the Wassertor (Watergate) investigation and prosecuting Scheel.
    • Willy Brandt seems to have some similarities with Jimmy Carter.
    • As said above, Roland Wilson is Irish Ronald Reagan. He and his cabinet form an "unholy" trinity made up of notorious right-wing leaders such as Margaret Thatcher (who gets involved in yet another Falklands War) and Golda Meir.
    • Helmut Kohl is a combination of George HW Bush (Gulf War) and Bill Clinton (1990s political donations scandal=Monica Lewinsky scandal).
    • Schröder is obviously George W. Bush. The war in Mexico is almost shot for shot the war in Iraq, although Schröder justified it from the opposite side of the political spectrum.
    • Zen has said Merkel incorporates elements of the later Bush years, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden as well as the real Merkel, becoming the personification of the mainstream political establishment.
    • Candidates for chancellor who didn't win also count, although they are more direct analogues most of the time. There are too many to count, but some examples include Bobby Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, and Jimmy Carter himself. In modern times, Osama bin Laden is very obviously a Trump analogue (the Trumps themselves were mentioned in Part 4 but also said to have never entered politics), while Martin Schulz (in real life still a German SPD leader) is based on both his real counterpart and on Bernie Sanders. Andrea Nahles and Olaf Scholz make brief appeaerances as well.
  • Viktor Orban is apparently a football player instead of a right-wing populist (Zen may have said something about Gerald Ford also being a football player), while George Soros is replaced with a Muslim woman and Holocaust survivor (who is still hit with all those conspiracy theories). Zhao Yu has filled in Orban's role as a right-wing populist.
  • Tsai Ing-Wen (the current president of Taiwan) served as chancellor of China with roughly the same policies as the real Tsai. However, her successor, Han Xianyu, is said to be loosely based on a combination of Jair Bolsonaro, Ben Shapiro, and Vladimir Putin.
  • Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg didn't embrace the Nazis here and instead fought against them.
  • Mao Zedong was a librarian who was drafted into the Imperial Chinese Army during World War I.
  • Wang Jingwei wasn't a Japanese collaborator here, but he instead became a Chinese dictator. Chiang Kai-Shek is basically the same as he was in real life, as was his son and successor Jiang Jingguo.
  • Benito Mussolini (known as Andreas here) was a famous IBC (BBC equivalent) news anchor. Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite also appear as IBC anchors.
  • Gnupa I af Steinvikholm, the first king of Kanata, is based on George Washington.
  • Lin Zexu went from a Chinese magistrate in real life to the equivalent of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Other Chinese democratic leaders and Western-educated individuals like Kang Youwei and Yung Wing fill in similar roles.
  • Thierry Baudet is a real life Dutch populist and Eurosceptic, and here his platform takes on an environmentalist leaning too.
  • Valentin Varennikov and Dmitry Yazov have real life equivalents who didn't amount to much.
  • Empress Sita uses a portrait of a famous Indian actress from the 1940s, while Tsaritsa Sbyslava uses Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands' portrait.
  • Savitri Devi, a Nazi sympathizer and occultist in real life, is a neo-Angeloi leader here.
  • Jorvik Thordarsson, a chancellor of Kanata turned leader of the Eimerican Federation, uses Justin Trudeau's picture. His father Petur Thordarsson, another Kanatan chancellor, is based on Pierre Trudeau.
  • Alexei Navalny makes a cameo appearance as a human rights activist, as he is in real life.
  • Vladimir Putin started out as a KGB spy, just as in real life, but after World War III, he left the KGB and the political world altogether and started over as an actor, eventually becoming a world-famous action movie star. He is now more of Keanu Reeves' counterpart instead of being based on his real self.
  • Siegfried Anniona is the counterpart of Christopher Lee, whose career is even more illustrious with the addition of starring roles in Doctor Who, X-Men, and Harry Potter.
  • Hedy Lamar became far more successful here as she made millions off many of her patented inventions.
  • Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra is based on Princess Diana. Princess Wilhelmina's birth and childhood were loosely based on Prince William's, from whom she got her Wombat nickname.
  • Anne Frank survived World War II, although at the cost of her parents being murdered by the Angeloi, and spent the rest of her life hunting Angeloi and fighting the Soviets as a feared assassin and spy known as the Valkyrie.
  • The senator Izinchi Ochimeca is loosely based on the senator Ilhan Omar.
  • Francisco Franco, who in real life was a fascist Spanish dictator, here is the Norse captain of the Varangian Guard and fought against the far right Angeloi.
  • The Inquisitor Owen Niederung is a Germanized version of the paleontologist Owen Marsh.
• Always a Bigger Fish: After Gabriel was defeated, Wilhelm decided to go explore the multiverse and relax. He was drawn back because of a bigger threat to all of reality. The Worm made Its presence known by manipulating certain humans into doing its bidding, which unnerved even the archangels. Wilhelm then decided he must protect humanity and angelkind against this new threat.
• Americasia: The western half of North Eimerica (North America) was colonized by the Chinese Jin Dynasty in the 13th century and grew to be a powerful empire in its own right, ruling much of what it called Fusang. Tawantinsuyu adopted many elements of Chinese culture, including the Chinese writing system, from the Jin. Even in the 21st century, Jin Fusang's influence still permeates much of the continent.
• Amicable Exes: Anders Humboldt and Diana Frank were in an unlikely romance during their time in the Athanatoi academy, but then World War III happened, and they eventually parted ways, with Diana transferring to a distant field office and Anders settling in the newly established X-Division. They remained on friendly terms, and Diana even befriended Anders' cousin Angela. When they finally reunited, they worked together on X-Division with few disagreements, conducting each other as professionally as they could (relative to X-Division's standards). Ultimately they got back together.
• Ancestral Weapon: The legendary sword Enonon was passed down through the Hohenzollern family from Friedrich the Great, the founder of the dynasty.
• Ancient Artifact: Multiple.
  • Diana Frank and Angela Hansen came across a crashed ancient human spaceship in West Africa holding stone tablets containing bits of ancient humanity's knowledge.
  • Another ancient human spaceship was found in Scandinavia, from which X-Division found an advanced healing device which could heal serious wounds in seconds.
  • The reality-destroying superweapon of the Fringe arc is an ancient human invention they dismantled and buried instead of using.
  • The Philosopher's Stone is a Worm artifact that allows a holder to see the future...but not to change it. Handling it too closely can cause the holder to transform into something...unnatural.
• Ancient Astronauts: This was subverted in that the ancient human precursors made social and technological advances not with extraterrestrial help but on its own, giving rise to the advanced spacefaring civilization of 150,000 years ago. There were actual aliens present on Earth at the time, but they did not influence humanity's early development.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Worm cult has existed in the hidden corners of human society for 150,000 years, having survived planetary genocide, social and technological regression to the Stone Age, and the revival of civilization.
• Ancient Rome: The Reich is a continuation of the Roman Empire (known as the First or Western Empire) through the joint imperial succession of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire (collectively the Second or Eastern Empire). However, calling the Reich the "Third Empire" is intentionally not used.
• And Man Grew Proud: The Worm cult believes ancient humanity grew proud in its technology and strove to became gods. They then decided to punish humanity for its pride and brought it all crashing down.
• Angels, Devils and Squid: Hohenzollern Empire's supernatural lore is heavily inspired by Supernatural, most notably in its depiction of angels and demons. Angels reside in Heaven but aren't moral paragons, demons come from Hell but can be purified and redeemed in specific circumstances...and then there is the Worm, an eldritch abomination living outside of time and reality.
• Angelic Abomination: Humans are unable to see an angel's true form as they are shrouded in holy light so bright their eyes are burned out. Instead, angels merely speak to humans telepathically or possess a human (with their consent) to interact with the mortal world.
• Angels in Overcoats: Wilhelm is a fan of wearing overcoats.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: In 2037, the world is in a massive economic crisis, with the Reich using its economic clout to force smaller nations into submission. A meritocratic Russia, led by Olga Kirova, holds out as the lone voice of freedom in an increasingly authoritarian world, but its situation is unstable. A famine looms on the horizon, and the people cry out for an end to Olga's aggressive anti-Roman policies, which they believe has worsened their economic situation. Learning of Russia's situation, Elias Anhorn exploits it by sending Josiah Burkard to Russia to negotiate a trade deal which would avert the famine but render Russia subservient to the Reich. Even if Olga rejects the deal, its popularity as an apparent lifeline from impending economic crisis will ensure the public tosses her out of office and replaces her with a new government that will take the deal. In short, Josiah made an offer Olga couldn't refuse. Averted at the last minute when an eleventh hour appeal from Princess Wilhelmina sways the hearts and minds of the Russian people, leading them to come out against the deal and give Olga an opening to safely reject it.
• Anti-Intellectualism: The official policy of Elias Anhorn's regime, which hunts down intellectuals and left-wing activists as heretics, equalists, and traitors. Ironically, Elias has an intellectual in his inner circle, the economics professor Josiah Burkard. Other members of the inner circle, specifically Philemon Moria, make no attempt to hide their disdain for him, calling him "Professor Bookworm" among other things.
• Anyone Can Die:
  • Horst von Hohenzollern, a justice-minded military commander, suddenly died in his second appearance with no warning.
  • Prince Georg, who had begun an arc of standing up to his brother's apparent dictatorial turn, also suddenly died in much the same manner as Horst.
  • Thierry Baudet, the co-protagonist for fifteen years, was suddenly murdered along with half of his inner circle during Elias Anhorn's coup at the beginning of 2030, pushing the story down a dramatically different path than was previously thought.
  • Simultaneously, the coup also claims Diana Frank, who was on the cusp of uncovering the truth behind Elias Anhorn.
  • In 2034, former protagonists Anders Humboldt and Angela Hansen are killed while trying to expose the truth and protect their families.
  • Disgusted by the work he had done, Jacob Baldouin attempted to leave the Committee, but the next day he was suddenly killed, and his death was used as a propaganda moment by Elias Anhorn.
  • In 2037, Kurt Moreau, a recurring character since 1992, was suddenly killed when he refused to be married to a literal child, who then accused him of homosexuality (banned by Elias) and had him executed by orbital space laser on the spot.
  • Finally, Wilhelm Karl himself worked up the courage to oppose Elias Anhorn, only for another orbital space laser to suddenly kill him.
• Apathetic Citizens: The Roman public of the early 21st century, who became apathetic and generally politically inactive after Kohl's donations scandal in 1998, the November 9 attacks in 2001, the war in Mexico in 2003, the Patriot Act, the 2008 recession, the Sentinel scandal of 2015, and the rise of Internet mass media. Elias Anhorn seized on this apathy to first elevate Thierry Baudet's obscure CB party to power and then kill Baudet, take over CB, and turn the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship that has convinced the people to remain apathetic because "both sides are the same".
• Apocalypse Cult: The Worm cult was responsible for the destruction of ancient humanity’s civilization and regressing humanity back to the Stone Age. 150,000 years later, they now seek to do the same to modern humanity so they can rebuild civilization in their image.
• Apocalypse Maiden: As the culmination of his plan to destroy and remake all of reality, Wilhelm Tesla injected Angela Hansen with large amounts of Cortexiphan, a medical drug that can draw out latent psionic abilities, so she would become an "engine" to power his reality destroying mechanism.
• Apocalypse Wow:
  • The literal Apocalypse in the 17th century, during which both Wilhelm and Raphael were completely obliterated, spells designed to kill/destroy anything failed against Lucifer, and the chaos of the Fifty Years' War reflected the events of the Apocalypse.
  • The first Kaiser of Part 2 immediately getting killed by Raphael to set the stakes.
  • The entirety of angelkind being expelled from Heaven end of Part 3, caused by Gabriel, which sets up Part 4 right afterward.
  • Wilhelm showing visions of the doomed timeline he escaped in Part 1.
  • Wilhelm and Diana receiving visions of the doomed future for both humanity and angelkind in Part 5.
  • World War IV starting in 2038 with nuclear armageddon which wipes out 800 million people in less than a day. Yes, it started with that.
• Arc Villain:
  • The Mexica Empire was the main antagonist of Parts 1-2. Part 1's plot revolved around the Reich leading military campaigns against the Mexica and liberating the British Isles, Norway, and Iceland from them. Most of Part 2 focused on the Reich building up a large navy to take the fight to the New World, culminating in the Sunrise Invasion and the crippling of the Mexica Empire. On Part 2's supernatural side, Raphael manipulated historical events, including killing a Kaiser, to start the Apocalypse, and Wilhelm constantly fought against him.
  • In Part 3, with the Mexica Empire's decline, China became the main antagonist, as it steadily gained power over the course of Part 3 before challenging the Reich for world hegemony in World War I. On the supernatural side, the demons became the main threats to the Inquisition in the first half. Once they were defeated, the angels returned to fighting each other as in Part 2.
  • In Part 4, the Angeloi rampaged across Europe and slaughtered millions of innocents, while on the supernatural side, Wilhelm rallied likeminded angels under his banner to fight against the rogue archangel Gabriel, who had taken over Heaven and planned to replace God.
  • In Part 5, the Soviets were the main villain until their defeat in 1986, after which they were replaced by the Syndicate/Sentinel in the X-Division arc and then Elias Anhorn in 2030. On the international level, the Reich itself has become the villain to the entire world, though China is also another big antagonist. On the personal level, the protagonists have to deal with a wave of rising populism and xenophobia in Persia which threatens to undermine all of the gains they have made.
• Arc Words: Every X-Division mini-arc has at least one mention of the mysterious Sentinel conspiracy, which the team is apparently looking into on the side. This culminates in the ultimate reveal of Sentinel at the end of the first arc, although references continue in the next two arcs.
• Archaeological Arms Race: The 1940s archaeologist Arabia Gruber was in a constant competition against the occult-obsessed Rasa general Patel in a hunt for possible ancient superweapons.
• Archangel Gabriel: Gabriel himself appears as a recurring character in Part 3, where he helps Wilhelm and the Inquisition build a spell to seal off Hell for good, and then as the main antagonist of Part 4, where he expels all angels from Heaven in an attempt to replace God. Throughout Part 4, Wilhelm rallies a resistance movement of angels to take him down, ultimately prevailing and toppling him from power. After Part 4, Gabriel disappears from the plot, although he can occasionally be seen in Zen's comments remarking on certain story events or responding to other users who mention him. It is unclear what really happened to him and if these comments are canon.
• Archangel Michael: A sort-of antagonist of Part 2, alongside Lucifer. During the Fifty Years' War, he attempts to convince the Inquisitor Friedrich von Hohenzollern to be his vessel so he can battle with Lucifer (who would possess Friedrich's friend Friedrich von Habsburg). When Friedrich (von Hohenzollern) refuses, Michael instead possesses his friend Frederick von Sigmaringen. Wilhelm and Friedrich von Hohenzollern crash Michael's fight with Lucifer and ultimately lock them both away in Hell, stopping the Apocalypse.
• Archangel Raphael: An antagonist of Part 2. Introduced after killing off literally the first Hohenzollern Kaiser of EU4 barely a month after Part 2 starts. His goal is to introduce as much chaos and destruction as possible, focused on the Reich, to trigger the Apocalypse. Wilhelm constantly interferes with his plans by protecting the Hohenzollerns and helping them handle secular threats to their rule, although he fails to stop one incident in which Raphael reenacts the events of Macbeth in real life by helping the mad usurper Malcolm Bethune seize power. After the Apocalypse happens, Raphael soon realizes the archangel Michael doesn't care about the rest of angelkind and would let them all die as part of the Apocalypse. He switches sides and helps Wilhelm stop the Apocalypse by locking Michael and Lucifer in Hell. Throughout the rest of Part 2, he and Wilhelm observe the Reich's progress, taking bets on whether it would collapse or survive. In Part 3, Wilhelm and Raphael continue their observations, but Raphael does not intervene (as opposed to Wilhelm) when demons begin terrorizing the mortal world in the 19th century. In Part 4, he is depowered like all other angels due to Gabriel's machinations and forced to ally with Wilhelm against their new enemy. By Part 5, he has worked out his disagreements with Wilhelm, and the two have again resumed their observation of the Reich, though they are concerned by the return of the Worm cult.
• Archangel Uriel: A recurring character of Part 4 who specializes in multiverse theory and timeline divergences. Possessing Gediminas Principas, he assassinated Franz Ferdinand to start World War I and cause a significant divergence from other timelines, being locked up in Landsberg Prison with his human host for twenty years afterward until Wilhelm and Raphael rescue him. When the Hohenzollernverse and Annionaverse threaten to converge and destroy each other after Annionaverse Otto crosses over to the Hohenzollernverse, Uriel helps Wilhelm, Raphael, and the Vienna resistance get Senator Otto back home. In Part 5, he has joined Wilhelm's little group of angels.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Norse Scandinavia is the nemesis of the Acatls, a dynasty founded by the descendants of Erik the Red, who are seeking vengeance against the ones that wronged them back in the Old World. The mere mention of the Norse sent Ocuil Acatl spewing a litany of curses upon them.
  • The Mexica Empire was the Reich's archenemy for Parts 1-2, driving the plot for most of Part 1 and a good chunk of Part 2 before being finally defeated.
  • China became the Reich's archenemy in Parts 3-4 after the Ming defeated the Tran and united the four dynasties into one empire. Their arms struggle and diplomatic rivalry steadily escalates over several decades before erupting into open war in 1914. The Reich and China would fight once more in 1941 before they enter into a temporary alliance against the Soviet Commune. After World War III, China democratizes and ends the rivalry.
  • The Soviet Commune is the archenemy for the first half of Part 5, having scored an upset victory against the Angeloi during World War II and taken the Occupied Territories. This culminates in World War III and the Soviet Commune's final destruction at the hands of the Reich and China.
  • On a smaller scale, Anne Frank's archenemy was Valentin Varennikov. The two faced off in many flashpoints during the Cold War, both rising in rank, until Athanatoi Director Frank defeats General Secretary Varennikov during World War III.
  • Elias Anhorn considered the entire Hohenzollern family as his archenemy, blaming them for the death of his sister and the slaughter of his comrades while fighting in Mexico. After returning from Mexico, he masterminded a plot by which he would get revenge and "give them what they deserve." He has particularly latched on to the princess Wilhelmina as his greatest enemy and target of his revenge...but ironically, Wilhelmina barely knew he even exists.
  • To the rest of the world, Elias Anhorn himself is their archenemy because he nuked every major city, killing over 800 million people, and declared a war of annihilation against everybody.
• Area 51: It was a Syndicate/Sentinel black site known as Site 51. Similar black sites existed all over the Reich.
• The Armies of Heaven: The angels can mobilize a heavenly host to collectively fight a major supernatural threat, such as Lucifer, Gabriel, or the Worm.
• Ascended Demon: The demon leader Fergus MacLeod, once a Caledonian man who went to Hell after he died, seized power in Hell during the power vacuum that arose after Lucifer was imprisoned. Inquisitor Bernadette Soubirrous, seeking to seal off Hell so its demons stop terrorizing the mortal world, realizes the final component of her sealing spell requires her to purify a demon at the cost of her life. Bernadette captures Fergus and uses him as part of the spell, giving her own life so Fergus's demonic essence is purified. Once the spell is complete, Hell is sealed off, with all demons in the mortal world sent back there, and the purified Fergus goes to Heaven with Bernadette.
• Ascended Meme:
  • After several viewers made comments asking about the painter Adolf Hitler's fate after Part 4, Zen suggested that since Hitler had remained an artist instead of becoming a genocidal dictator, he could have gone into animation after the war. This, combined with similar questions about the fate of Walt Disney, led many to start believing Hitler had replaced Walt Disney and founded the equivalent of Disney. After several comments about how Disney properties would be hilariously renamed to their Hitler equivalents (Hitler Channel, Hitlerland, Hitler Renaissance), Zen officially made Hitler Disney canon.
  • An older version of this page had an incorrect but humorous entry which claimed that the nation of Perm was the most powerful nation in the world, having been the only one to have defeated the Reich. While the entry was later corrected, several viewers noticed the entry, including Zen, who made it canon by including it in the mythology of Yavdian nationalists, who claim Perm, a predecessor of Yavdi, was the most powerful nation in the world.
• As Long as There Is One Man:
  • Anne and Tatiana refuses to give up in their fights against the Angeloi and the Soviets, even as their friends and allies died or gave up. Anne went as far as to stand in front of a line of tanks to protect civilians in Prague.
  • A similar show of defiance happened during China's democratization in 1989, when the Emperor of China, having disguised himself as a commoner, stood up to a line of tanks to protect democratic protesters.
  • Anders Humboldt refuses to give up on his quest to expose and defeat the Syndicate, knowing that if he and his friends gave up, there would be nothing stopping the Syndicate from triggering an alien invasion. As long as he was still alive, he would keep up the fight to protect humanity.
  • After Elias launches a coup to murder his enemies and turns the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship, Angela, Anders, and Diana come back together for one last mission. Even as the situation around them deteriorates and their lives are threatened again, they refuse to give up on their new quest to expose the truth behind Elias Anhorn's machinations. As long as they were still alive, they would continue fighting for meritocracy and freedom. Ultimately, death was the only way their crusade ended.
  • On April 2, 2039, the last defenders of the free world make their stand against Jerusalem as it invades Persia and pushes all the way to Isfahan, fighting against impossible odds not because they have a shot of winning, but because they were still able to resist.
• "Ass" in Ambassador: After 2030, LKR Guy is appointed as UN ambassador for The Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem, but he barely does anything other than insult other delegates and scream "BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!" constantly.
• Assumed Win: Walter Scheel being projected to defeat Konrad Adenauer in 1950, only for Adenauer to win after the newspapers had already printed "Scheel defeats Adenauer." One commenter even photoshopped the iconic photo with the in-universe headline and Adenauer and Scheel's faces.
• Attack Drone: Theodor built an entire army of attack drones he could summon on command to murder his enemies from a distance. Some are aerial drones which can descent on enemies from above, while others are grounded four-legged drones specializing in brutally murdering enemies up close. More sinister are the Panopticon implants put in the brains of soldiers, which have a feature allowing Theodor to remotely control their every movement and even their thoughts.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Alien robot bounty hunters can only be killed by being stabbed or shot in the back of their necks.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant:
  • In 1941, China attacked the Roman colonies in Indochina, believing the loyalist cause was doomed and the Angeloi would focus on Europe. However, the devastating attack on Singapura only spurred the loyalists to fight harder...as well as provoke the Angeloi to launch a counter-invasion of the Chinese mainland.
  • In 2038, a nuclear decapitation strike against the Eimerican Federation fails to accomplish its goal of wiping out all Eimerican leadership and keeping the nascent power out of the coming war, but it instead galvanizes the entire population of the New World to join forces against their new common enemy.
• Back from the Brink:
  • In 1941, Kaiser Otto and his loyalist forces were reduced to just Athens and a few villages outside Constantinople, while the rebellious Angeloi had taken the rest of the nation. But after a daring and successful attack on Constantinople, he turned the tides and ultimately took back his nation.
  • In 2039, World War IV has progressed to the point where the world has been divided up into the occupation zones of the two totalitarian superpowers, Jerusalem and Han's China, and most of the free nations have been either conquered or outright destroyed. However, two free countries still stand, Persia and Ryukyu. Despite being heavily outmatched and outgunned by their respective opponents, they still manage to fight on, and by April 2039 they finally managed to turn the tides and pull themselves back from oblivion.
• Badass Cape: Catman takes the place of Batman as a comic book superhero in this universe, but there actually was a real "Batman," retired billionaire Tobias Wagner. Tobias adopted Anne Frank after her parents died and trained her in the martial arts. After sacrificing himself to steal Angeloi secrets on nuclear weapons, Anne adopts the superhero name Valkyrie in his honor.
• Badass Family: Anne Frank and her daughter Diana both earned their fame as talented resistance fighters and Athanatoi agents. Tatiana Kirova and her daughter Olga also qualify, and with Olga considering Anne as her second mother, it is like both families are really one.
• Bad Future:
  • The Worm showed Diana a bad future where the Reich had been completely obliterated by the Worm-corrupted Holy Terran Empire of the Annionaverse, Earth was glassed from orbit, and the last hope of the Hohenzollerns was killed.
  • Wilhelm traveled back in time from a bad alternate 1453, based on a previous game Zen played, which ended when the Worm corrupted most of humanity to team up against the Reich. The Reich was completely obliterated, and Wilhelm’s brother Constantine sacrificed himself to send Wilhelm back to 1066 to change the future.
• Balkanize Me:
  • In Part 3, after Scandinavia surrenders in World War I, it is partitioned into three occupation zones run by the Reich, Kanata, and Russia. When Kanata and Russia themselves are overthrown in revolutions, their occupation zones become actual governments in exile which remain throughout Part 4 and into Part 5. Once the governments in exile are restored to their homes after World War III, the occupation zones are dissolved, and Scandinavia is reunited.
  • In Part 5, following the Eimerican Commune's defeat in World War III, it and the neighboring Commune of Socialist Southern Altepetls both explode into many breakaway states which eventually stabilize into independent nations.
• Banana Republic: In Part 2, Rome launched the Sunrise Invasion and invaded the Mexica Empire in revenge for the Sunset Invasion, winning and permanently crippling it. Over the next few centuries, the country declined economically and politically, until it became an irrelevant corrupt dictatorship which swapped between various extreme ideologies. As the 20th century progressed, it got taken over not only by ideologies but also by powerful unregulated businesses, religious fundamentalists, and military regimes. After the Reich's 2003 invasion, Mexico became a corrupt meritocracy with a weak central government, an underpaid and poorly trained army, rampant religious terrorism, separatist and ideologically radical militias roaming the countryside, and Roman companies controlling large parts of the economy. However, from 2018 onward, Mexico stabilized and restored some semblance of social order, especially after joining the Eimerican Federation in 2020. By the 2030s, Mexico had moved past its period of civil unrest and is no longer a banana republic.
• Bargain with Heaven: In order to possess a human so they can safely interact with the mortal world, angels must get the consent of their potential host, which opens up room for bargaining on the human's behalf. Of course, once the angel is let in, there is nothing stopping them from not keeping their word.
• Battle Chant:
  • The Roman battle cry has been "Saints Wilhelmina and Gunhilda, guide us in battle" for centuries.
  • Chinese soldiers frequently shout "Huangdi wansui" ("Long live the emperor!")
  • Soviet Army soldiers used to shout "URA!" to intimidate their enemies.
  • Rasa Indian soldiers shouted "Jai Hind!"
  • Jerusalem's Crusaders shout "Deus vult!"
  • Following the sacrifice of Olga Kirova, Russian and Lithuanian soldiers begin shouting "We will never forget!" in her honor.
• Battle Couple: The tag-team duo of Kaiser Friedrich the Glorious and his tactical genius wife, Saint Gunhilda. Together, they conquered half of Europe and brought their pagan neighbors to their knees.
• Beauty Is Bad: The authoritarian strongman Han Xianyu is described as having the handsome looks of a Korean popstar.
• Been There, Shaped History: Wilhelm has lived through the Reich's entire history, from helping Friedrich the Great form the Reich in the 11th century to helping X-Division in the present day.
• Behind Every Great Man:
  • Friedrich the Great was backed up by his wife, Kaiserin Ida...at least officially.
  • Friedrich the Glorious' victories on the battlefield were won with the help of his wife, Saint Gunhilda.
  • Otto's long reign couldn't have reached the heights it did without the constant help and support of his wife, Victoria Louise.
  • Anders Humboldt is remembered as the man who leaked the Sentinel files and brought down a global conspiracy that lasted for decades, but he couldn't have done it without the help of his wife, fellow X-Division agent and later Athanatoi Director Diana Frank.
• Benevolent Precursors: Ancient humanity left behind archives of their knowledge for their descendants to find and learn from, hoping they would avoid their mistakes.
• Berserk Button:
  • If anybody threatens his daughter Elisabeth Alexandra or his wife Victoria Louise, Kaiser Otto won't hesitated to personally beat them up, even if he is in his sixties and has no actual combat training.
  • Same goes for messing with Anne's daughter or Tatiana's daughter. Anne and Tatiana will hunt down those responsible and end them.
  • Same even goes for Diana's son. Harm him in any way, and Diana will go on a rampage, as the neo-Angeloi Alfred Hoffmann found out.
• Betrayal by Offspring: Wilhelm Karl killed his own father, Kaiser Otto, to take the throne for himself. He later regretted his actions and sought to make amends for it.
• Big Bad:
  • In Part 1, the Mexica Empire was the main villain. It kicks off the plot by invading the Reich and occupying the British Isles. Kaiser Wilhelm III was murdered by Ocuil Acatl, motivating his son Siegfried to avenge him. Over the next few centuries, the Mexica Empire remained the Reich's main rival, encouraging it to build up its military, especially its navy, to fight back. Even after retaking the British Isles and driving the Mexica Empire out of Europe, the Reich planned to take the fight to the New World, setting in motion Part 2.
  • In Part 2, Lucifer and Raphael were the overarching villains. Raphael directly murdered at least one Kaiser and manipulated historical events in an attempt to destroy the Reich or at least cause a war so big it would trigger the Apocalypse. Raphael was also responsible for the chaos of the Anarchy, when Malcolm Bethune murdered Kaiser Martin II and seized power for himself. Once Lucifer was released, he took over as the main villain, as his goal of triggering a battle with Michael to end the Apocalypse led to chaos all over the Reich as part of the Fifty Years' War and was opposed by the Inquisition and Wilhelm.
  • In Part 4, Gabriel took over as the main villain, having kicked all of the angels out of Heaven and depowering Wilhelm as part of a plan to replace God. Several recurring angels like Naomi were killed by him, and Wilhelm spent much of Part 4 trying to recover his angelic essence and keep his and Gavrilo Princip's consciousnesses intact.
  • In Part 5, Valentin Varennikov becomes the main villain after assassinating Gorbachev and reversing perestroika before invading the Reich, starting World War III. He captured Anne Frank, his rival during the Cold War, and threatened to unleash a highly potent biological weapon on the world. On the supernatural side, Wilhelm encounters the Worm, a powerful eldritch abomination existing outside of reality which wants to insert itself into reality and corrupt humanity into It's servants.
  • The Syndicate and Sentinel are established at the beginning of Part 5's timeframe. The Syndicate is a massive government conspiracy existing since the 1940s which covers up the existence of alien life and paves the way for the invasion and colonization of Earth by the Jotun, an alien species which wants Earth as its new home. Sentinel is a conspiracy within the Syndicate made up of alien agents which sabotage all efforts by the Syndicate to slow down or avert the invasion. Both conspiracies are responsible for historical events like the assassinations of Ragnar Beck (JFK) and Abraham Green (MLK), the rise of Zolton Huicton (Saddam Hussein), and the murders of Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra (Princess Diana) and Anne Frank as part of the November 9 attacks (9/11). They also directly oppose the protagonists of this arc, X-Division, and attempt to kill, discredit, or otherwise silence them multiple times.
  • After 2030, Elias Anhorn reveals his true colors as he puts a decades-long plot into action. In one day, his allies slaughter the entire Diet, including dissidents within his own faction, and pin the massacre on Mexicanist terrorists. He blackmails the Kaiser himself, forcing him to obey his every command, and then uses imperial decrees to dismantle the Reich's meritocratic institutions and turn it into a totalitarian dictatorship. By 2037, the "Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem" has become an international pariah using its economic and military clout to bully former allies into submission.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Prince Wilhelm Karl initially positioned himself as an antagonist and all-around guy to be disliked, as his circumstances portrayed him in a negative light and he insisted his main goal was to demand control and respect, but in 2030 he was sidelined and rendered politically impotent by the true big bad, Elias Anhorn.
• Big Good: The angel Wilhelm kicked off the entire plot when he escaped a doomed timeline and took matters into his own hands to avoid that future, setting the world onto a better path.
• Big "NO!":
  • Played humorously with Boris Bradziunas, who lets out a string of "NO!"s similar to Michael Scott in the Office at one point due to being a huge fan of that show's equivalent in this timeline.
  • After witnessing the slaughter of her husband and son at the hands of Elias Anhorn, Princess Wilhelmina lets out a string of "NO!"s as everything falls apart around her.
• The Black Death: The Black Death of the 14th century still happened here and was responsible for the decline of the feudal system, as in real life.
• Black Magic: Demons make use of black magic. Their deal is tricking humans into selling their souls and corrupting them into more demons when they end up in Hell. The Inquisition also makes use of black magic, as many of their spells rely on blood sacrifices, but they use it mostly benevolently. In the modern day, blood sacrifices have been phased out in favor of spell-casting technology.
• Blackmail: Elias and Gertrude Anhorn are masters of blackmail.
  • Gertrude blackmails then-senator Brad Folger with evidence of his marital infidelity, forcing him to pass laws she and Elias wants.
  • Gertrude later blackmails Senator Lothar Lorenz after manufacturing a scene that gives off the appearance of marital infidelity, forcing him to bring Elias and Thierry Baudet into a governing coalition. Elias then kills off everyone else involved to prevent them from exposing the plot.
  • Elias then blackmails a comedian who made a harmless joke about him.
  • In 2030, it is revealed Elias blackmailed Kaiser Wilhelm IV himself. For the last few years, he and Gertrude had gathered evidence showing that Kaiserin Ida had numerous affairs, and two of her children with Friedrich the Great were illegitimate. It just so happened that all Kaisers after the 16th century were descended from these two illegitimate children, meaning the current Kaiser is illegitimate. Fearing social and political chaos if the news were to get out, Wilhelm Karl is forced to obey Elias' every order, with disastrous results. The blackmail is later revealed to be based on false or incomplete information, but by the time Wilhelm Karl finds out, it is too late for him.
• Black Shirt:
  • The Rasas and Angeloi made use of paramilitary organizations, among them the blackshirts and the Black Tagmata, during their rise to power. These militias went around terrorizing their opponents and intimidating others into at least doing nothing.
  • After being bought out by the tech CEO Theodor Tesla, who has ties to Elias Anhorn, the Argus private military corporation becomes a paramilitary organization which murders left-wing activists, political opposition leaders, and ethnic and religious minorities. After 2030, Argus soldiers can be easily identified by the black shirts and tactical gear they wear.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The trio of Olga Kirova, Diana Frank, and Angela Hansen, respectively. Their respective hairstyles made them a target for a numbers-obsessed serial killer during one of their cases. Also applies to Tatiana and Tania Kirova (blonde), Anne Frank (brunette), and Alexandra Hansen (redhead).
• Blue Blood: A few royal families are listed below.
  • The Hohenzollerns (the Reich).
  • The Paramaras (India).
  • The Seljuks (Persia).
  • The Acatls (Mexico).
  • The Rurikids (Russia).
  • The Ming (China).
  • The Tran (Vietnam).
  • The Song (Penglai/Australia).
  • The Jin (Fusang/North America).
  • The Palemonids (Lithuania).
  • The Estrids (Scandinavia).
• Blood-Splattered Innocents:
  • Six-year-old Ilyana Romanova and Friedrich von Hohenzollern are forced to watch as Ilyana's grandfather and Friedrich's father and grandfather are brutally killed in front of them, with Ilyana even being trapped underneath her grandfather's dead and bloody body.
  • Later on, as Ilyana and Friedrich end up in a refugee camp for their protection, they are bullied by a group of xenophobic children. Ilyana responds by picking up a metal pipe and brutally beating them with it, showing no remorse as their blood splatters on her.
• Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Members of the Lithuanian Black Hand, a 20th century anarchist group, threw bombs at their opponents, including one failed assassination attempt against Franz Ferdinand.
• Book Burning: The Angeloi and Rasa regimes of the 20th century burned books from ideologies and authors they didn't like. In the 21st century, the Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem has revived the practice.
• Brain Uploading: After X-Division's second encounter with the COS AI, the hacker Skye decides to upload her consciousness to the Internet and live as data. In a later meeting with X-Division, Skye expresses that she misses being in the physical world and the idea of living as data is overrated.
• Brainwashed: Multiple times.
  • Numerous loyalist generals, including Wolfgang Ludendorff, were brainwashed into serving the Maximists during Part 3. In Wolfgang's case, he was at least possessed by a demon.
  • Boris Kirov was brainwashed into being a double agent for the Soviets in 1972.
  • Olga Kirova was brainwashed by the Soviets just like her father.
  • The Panopticon brain implants have a feature which allows Theodor Tesla to override a user's mind and either remotely control them himself or recondition their personality to something more suitable.
• Bread and Circuses: Elias Anhorn uses a bread and circuses tactic to distract the Roman public and keep the people divided and subservient, not caring enough to form any opinion against him.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Archangel Gabriel abuses this trope so much in the Uncertainty arc at the end of Part 4, even taking over Zenphoenix's Paradox Forums account, and then presenting himself in-universe as "Zen the Phoenix" while healing a boy that was shot trying to cross the West Berlin-East Berlin border.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Wilhelmina is introduced as a dorky but good-intentioned princess satisfied with talking about video games and space travel. Over the course of 8 years, she is put through hell as the government strips her of her inheritance and then of all of her rights, she is marked for execution and is forced to flee into exile, she watches her home descend into totalitarian chaos, the rest of her family is slaughtered, making her the unwilling heir to the throne, and finally her husband, son, and daughter-in-law are all killed, with the first two dying right in front of her.
  • Wilhelmina's grandson Friedrich was forced to go through everything his grandmother did as well.
  • Ilyana Romanova lost her parents in a car accident as a toddler, forcing her to grow up earlier and adopt a stubborn and willful personality as a coping mechanism. Then on top of this, she had to go through everything Wilhelmina and Friedrich did above. Not wanting to lose anyone else, she fiercely defended Friedrich against bullies by brutally beating them with a pipe at the age of 6.
• Broken Angel: Wilhelm lost his powers due to the machinations of the rogue Archangel Gabriel at the end of Part 3 and remained powerless for much of early Part 4. All of the other angels were also depowered to a lesser extent around the same time, only getting them restored at the end of Part 4 once Wilhelm defeated Gabriel.
• Byzantine Empire: One of the predecessors of the Reich. In the 11th century, it was ruled by the Doukas family, which Friedrich the Great formed an alliance with when he married off his heir, Prince Wilhelm, to Princess Anna Doukas, who later became the Byzantine empress. Their son, Friedrich the Glorious, merged it with the Holy Roman Empire after inheriting both realms. In-universe, it is never referred to as "Byzantine Empire" or "Byzantium" but rather as the Empire of the Greeks, the Eastern Empire, or just Roman Empire.
• Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards: The Varangian Guard was originally made up of Norse Vikings hired as imperial bodyguards, but by Part 2 the bodyguards were hired from the Roman population, although there were still many Norse Romans who eagerly enlisted.
• The Caligula: Reinhard I was known as the Mad Kaiser. He sent two men to single-handedly defeat the Norse sieging Berlin, claimed to take control of every single legion himself after losing that battle, appointed a horse as a councillor, restored the King Odon of Greece to the position after a day, claimed him to be a heretic that he fooled (even if he wasn't). The Hungarian king's last words as he was hacked to pieces by the overwhelming force of the Vikings were cursing Reinhard for his utter idiocy.
  Everybody: Why… won’t… you… die?!
  Reinhard: Because… GOD WANTS ME TO LIVE AND REIGN!!!!!!!!
• Catchphrase:
  • Tatiana Kirova's catchphrase is "Like I always do," which she says when promising to do or accomplish something. The catchphrase is later adopted by her daughter Olga.
  • Ocuil Acatl's catchphrase, which he says upon landing in Europe for the first time, is "All this has happened before and will happen again."
  • While sounding similar, Ocuil Acatl's catchphrase doesn't seem to be related to the catchphrase of the Worm cultists: "What was shall be, what shall be was!" However, some characters have pointed out similarities.
  • Pavel Novak had his own catchphrase, "Surprise motherfrakker!" He tried using it as often as he could, but everyone hated it, including his own allies. Even the Smoking Man himself would rather die than hear it.
• Caused the Big Bang: Raphael claims that the Big Bang is merely the result of God creating the universe, as written in Genesis.
• Cavalry Betrayal: In Part 3, Persia, Mali, and Ethiopia defected to China's Tianxia Alliance during World War I because their governments were overthrown by the Chinese Jinyiwei secret police and were replaced with pro-China regimes. Each time this happened, the Asian front lines were pushed back significantly as former allies began attacking Roman troops. In Part 4, many loyalist troops themselves defected to the Angeloi throughout 1940 and 1941 because they were convinced the loyalist cause was doomed and they believed Angeloi promises of amnesty, better pay, and respect.
• Celebrity Paradox: Subverted in that Wilhelm Karl is described as looking like Charles Dance while the actual Charles Dance still exists as a separate person. Wilhelm Karl hates being compared to Charles Dance and constantly insists on not being his twin.
• Celestial Bureaucracy: Heaven is depicted as a giant ethereal office building where angels run celestial affairs and oversee events in the mortal plane.
• Celestial Paragons and Archangels: Played straight with the four biblical archangels being the effective leaders of Heaven, although after Part 2 it is only three as Archangel Michael becomes indisposed.
• Central Theme: Zen has said different story arcs and parts of the story have certain themes attached to them.
  • The overarching theme of the entire series, as established in Part 5 but retroactively applied to Parts 1-4, is that people from all backgrounds can work together to achieve something greater. Wilhelm always insists in the inherent desire for humans to cooperate as opposed to Raphael believing the Reich would collapse into infighting and competition. Roman meritocracy emerged from Friedrich the Great's and Wilhelm's desire to build a world where everybody had a fair chance to succeed.
  • The Fifty Years' War arc of Part 2 shares Supernatural's themes of defying destiny and forging one's own path, as the three Friedrichs reject the destinies angelkind forced upon them.
  • Part 5 delves much deeper into themes with its story arcs, recontextualizing earlier parts with new overarching themes.
    • The X-Division story arc emphasizes reaching out for the truth. The truth is something that should always be revealed to the public, even if it is something they don't want to hear.
    • The Fringe story arc is about family and the ties that bind family, even across universes.
    • The Forum story arc is about the need to always hold political leaders accountable for their actions, as well as the benefits of allowing new voices and opinions to be heard.
    • The story arc after 2030 warns about the dangers of political apathy, the decline of liberal and free society in the absence of people to defend it, and the fact that "it can happen here" at any time. Zen states his other themes focus on exploring what the Reich is and should stand for; the idea of legacy and if it is worth defending; and how people worry about how they'll be remembered, if at all.
• Chariot Race: Chariot racing remained popular in the Reich well into Parts 2-3 but ultimately died out.
• Childhood Friend Romance:
  • Otto and Victoria Louise met as children and ended up happily married for many long decades.
  • The two six-year-olds Prince Friedrich and Ilyana Romanova seem to have crushes on each other, but Friedrich doesn't know how to act on it and Ilyana doesn't want to show she knows.
• Church Militant: Militant Mexicanism appears in Part 5 as a brutally intolerant, violent, and regressive sect of Mexicayaotl, the Mexica religion, calling for violent holy war and the expulsion of all foreigners, including the Acatl dynasty, which has some foreign ancestry.
• City of Gold: In Part 2, Roman explorers in South Eimerica searched for a legendary city of gold they called Die Gulden, but their expeditions turned up nothing.
• Civilization Destroyer:
  • An unknown entity wiped out ancient humanity 150,000 years ago so thoroughly that very little of that civilization has survived to the present day.
  • The Worm's ultimate goal is to destroy modern civilization so it can be rebuilt in Its image. Indeed, it actually succeeded in doing so in Wilhelm's bad alternate future.
• Civil War:
  • The Anarchy and the following Fifty Years' War happened because the usurper Malcolm Bethune seized power and declared himself Kaiser, provoking the surviving Hohenzollerns and their supporters into rebellion, leading to a chaotic religious and political situation over the next fifty years which heretics take advantage of, forcing the Inquisition to wage a continent-wide war against them.
  • Throughout Parts 2-3, Heaven had its own civil war between the angels. One faction, led by Wilhelm, wants to protect humanity, while the other, led by Raphael, intends to bring the Apocalypse immediately.
  • The Maximist Wars occurred in the 1850s between the Maximists (supporters of Prince Maximilian, who was a puppet emperor who didn't want to become a ruler, while the Ministerprasident Konrad von Habsburg was the one in charge) and forces loyal to Kaiser Siegfried II.
  • In Part 4, another civil war erupted in 1939 after Markos Angelos launched a coup against Kaiser Otto I to seize direct control of the country, dividing the Empire into pro-Angeloi and loyalist camps.
  • In Part 5, between 2035 and 2037, several various rebel groups attempted to resist Elias Anhorn's totalitarian regime, although they frequently focused on fighting each other more than teaming up against their common enemy, and the Ottonian system's administrative reforms, which ironically were designed to prevent another Angeloi-style mass rebellion, worked exactly as planned and limited the amount of manpower and territory they could control. In the end, the civil war was little more than a group of loosely associated insurgencies which was eventually crushed.
• Cliffhanger:
  • At the end of Part 3 in 1936, Gabriel fully depowers Wilhelm and expels all angels from Heaven, causing a worldwide meteor shower as millions of angels crash land around the world. Wilhelm realizes that with so many angels on Earth at the same time, chaos will ensue, setting up the events of Part 4.
  • Part 4 ends in 1946 with Kaiser Otto about to give a national address to his people discussing how the world has changed over the last ten years and the challenges the Reich faces in the years to come.
  • The first X-Division arc ends with Anders Humboldt on the run after being sentenced to death by Sentinel and forced to go on the run. Simultaneously, Sentinel masterminds the November 9 attacks, which kill 14 thousand civilians, including Anne Frank and Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra, and gives the Sentinel-controlled government an opportunity to pass the Patriot Act. With few allies and the entire nation looking like it had just rejected the truth Anders had so desperately sought, he wonders what he will do next.
  • The Fringe arc initially seems to end with Walter shooting Angela in the head to stop her from psychically powering a device that will destroy all of reality...but this is merely a cliffhanger for the real ending. The real ending has another cliffhanger in the form of a future Wilhelm teleporting into Annionaverse Walter's office with a dire warning of a grim far future he just escaped and the need to prepare in some way.
• Les Collaborateurs:
  • There were many collaborators with the Angeloi during World War II. Among them were Anne's teachers and bully. Reinhard Heydrich and Phillippe Petain were also collaborators who betrayed the loyalists for the Angeloi cause.
  • In Part 5, almost the entire Roman population sides with Elias Anhorn and willingly collaborates with him, whether out of fear or genuine support. By 2039, it becomes clear that the collaboration only happens due to fear due to the regime's increasingly repressive actions.
• Commie Land: The Soviet Commune is the main example of this, having established an equalist (communist) regime in Russia following World War I which lasts until World War III.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror:
  • Manfred is conditioned to accept the horrors of the Jerusalem regime from an "enlightened centrist" and politically apathetic standpoint, believing that as long as the horrors don't affect him and his livelihood is fine, he doesn't need to do anything. Of course, this comes back to bite him in the end.
  • Josh is conditioned to accept the horrors of the Jerusalem regime because he outright embraces such horrors as the natural order of things and actively perpetrates them.
• Conscription: This has been a part of Rome for centuries. Conscription stopped being enforced after Siam in 1979, but has been brought back by Elias Anhorn as all men are now required to own a gun, go through military training, and be ready to mobilize should war break out.
• Conservation of Competence:
  • In Part 4, once the Angeloi join the Axis Powers, all of the focus and competency goes to them. Although Rasa India was the biggest, most influential, and most threatening member before they joined, afterward they mostly fade from relevance, and by 1943 the loyalist Romans and China easily crush them in a joint invasion.
  • In Part 5, as Valentin Varennikov rises in the ranks and becomes more powerful, his friend Dmitry Yazov fades into his shadow, going from his almost equal in 1944 to an insane lunatic who shoots his own generals for no reason in 1986.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Anders and Annie Humboldt are the archetypical 1990s UFO conspiracy theorists, but they are disgusted by all conspiracy theories from afterward.
• Continuity Nod: Multiple examples, including but not limited to the following:
  • Kyrillos, a pirate who stole the formula for Greek Fire in Part 1, later has a high school named after him in Part 5.
  • The White Stag, which frequently appeared throughout Part 1, occasionally appeared throughout Parts 2-5.
  • Raphael, who murdered two Kaisers at the beginning of Part 2, is still known as a "Kaiser-killer" in Parts 4-5, centuries later.
  • In Part 5, the angel Sarah brings up the time she married Kaiser Wolfram in Part 2.
  • In Part 5, the wise Basque elder Alberto Garcia-Diaz is later revealed to be an older Ludwig Angelos, son of the dictator Markos Angelos, who had distanced himself from his past and redeem himself for his father's actions. At the end of Part 4, Ludwig Angelos had settled in Basque country so as to not be a rallying symbol for any of his father's remaining supporters.
    • In 2037, Alberto Garcia-Diaz's grandson Pablo is seen fighting against Elias Anhorn's regime, but he is tragically killed.
  • The political liaison Yulia Ilyushina, who works on behalf of the Russian government, is later revealed to not only be the recurring character Jessica from the Fringe arc but also married to Olga Kirova.
  • In Part 1, Kaiser Reinhard founded a tavern in Lübeck he called the Bottomless Tankard. It later reappears in Part 5, still open for business... but not for much longer.
  • In Part 3, Bernadette Soubirrous became a renowned Inquisitor and Prophet of God who briefly met the angel Saint Wilhelmina and later sealed off Hell for good, ending demonkind's tormenting of humanity at the cost of her life. In Part 5, it is mentioned that she was eventually canonized as a saint.
  • The cities of Alençon, Normandy and Perpigan, Eastern Pyrenees were major locations frequented by X-Division over the course of their story in the 1990s and 2000s. In the 2030s, they again reappear, but it is revealed they have become ghost towns after their entire populations were slaughtered by Elias Anhorn.
  • On one of X-Division's cases, the team encounters a genie who has been around for a thousand years who says she lost a sack that is eternally full of turnips many centuries ago. In 2039, when the protagonists visit a village in the Urals, the local cooks get their turnips from a sack seemingly without end.
• Cool Old Lady: Olga Kirova at seventy years old has not shown any signs of slowing down. Even without any enemies to physically fight, she has instead gone into politics and become the chancellor of Russia. At least until World War IV begins and she finally gets new opponents to fight, which she does.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Theodor Tesla hates government regulations of any kinds, as he both sees them as equalist and cutting into his profits. Once Elias Anhorn welcomes him into the Committee, he uses his new authority to abolish all regulations, turning his workers into little more than slaves working under dangerous conditions, and roll back human rights. He is also given contracts to deport minorities such as Jews and Muslims to other countries by airplane, but to save on money, fuel, and time, he refuses to pressurize the planes, killing all passengers, which massively increases his profits.
• Council of Angels: The angels effectively have their own council where they oversee celestial and mortal affairs, with the archangels ranking above the others though generally not actively leading. Since God hasn't been seen in millennia, the task of running the multiverse falls to the angels.
• The Coup:
  • The Chinese Jinyiwei funded multiple coups in Central Powers members during World War I to install pro-China regimes.
  • Markos Angelos staged a coup against Kaiser Otto in 1939 to eliminate the last obstacle to his rule, but Otto resisted, starting a civil war.
  • In 1984, Valentin Varennikov assassinates Mikhail Gorbachev and seizes power to reverse perestroika and start World War III.
  • In 2030, Elias Anhorn and his conspirators launch a coup against the Roman government, in which the entire Diet is massacred, the Athanatoi is crippled, Diana Frank is killed, and judges, provincial leaders, lawyers, and generals who would oppose them are murdered all across the Reich.
• Crapsack World:
  • The epilogue of Part 1 reveals that the timeline the angel Wilhelm originates from (the original timeline of the world in universe depicted in the AAR) was completely devastated by heathen powers (mainly Aztecs and the Mongols) because the Roman Empire failed to endure the 13th Century Crisis, and by the 15th century all of them have entered the great coalition against the Roman Empire, destroying Berlin in 1421, and finally bringing its final end in a particularly devastating version of the Siege of Constantinople in 1453, which resulted in the city and its inhabitants being wiped off the face of the Earth due to excessive ransacking, which lasted an entire year. Christianity was destroyed, and shortly after, the rebellious angels succeeded in bringing the Apocalypse, Lucifer rose from hell and fought Archangel Michael, utterly destroying both heaven and hell in the process.
  • Part 5 reveals this original timeline suffered even worse than Part 1 let on. The Worm was responsible for all of the chaos of the alternate 1453. Far from trying to stop the Apocalypse, Wilhelm actually started it to stop the Worm from taking over, but it failed, and his brother was erased from the timeline sending him 400 years into the past as a last resort.
  • Following Elias Anhorn's actions in 2030, the world slowly spirals into a dystopian nightmare. By 2037, the Reich has turned into the totalitarian Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem, which has taken all of the Reich's old values and reversed them to promote the exact opposite. India, traditionally the other major meritocratic power, has been "politically neutered" after an invasion by Elias' Argus mercenaries slaughters its left-leaning government, installs a right-wing Hindu nationalist regime, cripples the Samrat Chakravartin, and permanently occupies Delhi. Meanwhile, China slowly abandons democracy under the nationalist Han Xianyu, who wants to return to the glory days of Wang Jingwei. The Eimerican Federation, while still supporting democratic and meritocratic values, is more concerned with domestic affairs in the New World. That leaves only a handful of nations, led by Russia, still strongly opposing rising global authoritarianism, but their crippled economies lead many to begin selling out. The authoritarian movement, meanwhile, continues going from strength to strength, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon, even after the two leading totalitarian dictatorships start a nuclear world war which kills 800 million in a single day just to stroke their leaders' egos.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Otto's loyalists asking help from the Soviet Commune against the Angeloi. Although they were ideological enemies, they now had a common enemy in the Angeloi, and the resistance saw it as necessary for victory. It did work...although none of them counted on the Soviets taking Roman land as well.
• Crossover: Most prominently with Dragoon9105's Annionaverse megacampaign.
  • The first crossover happens in 1941 and starts in Dragoon's thread with Senator Otto von Hohenzollern, the irrelevant Annionaverse counterpart to Kaiser Otto, discovering a film reel depicting Kaiser Otto's impending death at the hands of Markos Angelos. Resolving to avert this, Senator Otto (unknowingly accepting help from Gabriel) crosses over to the Hohenzollernverse and inadvertently becomes a key member of the anti-Angeloi resistance cell in Vienna, led by Osterhild Anniona (the Hohenzollernverse counterpart of Dragoon's Empress Octavia). Over the next several months, he helps the Vienna resistance win numerous victories over the Angeloi and even bring the Soviets into the war against the Angeloi, before he travels to Constantinople and meets Kaiser Otto. There, he convinces the Kaiser to stay hopeful and keep fighting against the Angeloi before returning home with Wilhelm's help. Concurrently with this main story, another Annionaverse character, an alternate version of Gandhi, crosses over and is captured by his counterpart, the bloodthirsty Neta Gandhi. After two years in prison, he was broken out by generals disgusted by the Neta's atrocities. Working with the rogue generals and royalist forces under the leadership of Princess Sita, Gandhi killed his evil counterpart and then impersonated him to disband the Rasas and ensure their prosecution during the Vijayanagara war crimes tribunals. Afterward, Gabriel secretly sent him back home.
  • The second crossover happens 70 years later, although it is rooted in events happening 30 years after WWII. In 1977, the scientist Walter Humboldt, who had previously lost a daughter to an alien abduction, loses his second daughter Anna to a rare disease. When he develops technology to peer into the Annionaverse and reverse engineer the technology his counterpart develops, he sees the other Anna also succumbing to the same disease. Not wanting her to die again, he finds a way to cross over to the Annionaverse to save her. But in doing so, Anna is left stranded in the Hohenzollernverse, and Walter raises her as his own. Roughly 30 years later, X-Division (led by Anna's brother Anders) is reinstated to investigate new unexplained incidents. Walter finds most of the unexplained incidents stem from experiments he and Tesla Dynamic CEO Wilhelm Tesla conducted. This conflict is set in motion when the Annionaverse, led by Minister Walter Humboldt, sends agents to the Hohenzollernverse in preparation for an invasion. Anna then learns she is from the Annionaverse. Later on, she negotiates a truce between the two sides, and the two universes work together to defeat Wilhelm Tesla and his conspiracy against reality. There are also callbacks to the original crossover where the now-aged Kaiser and Senator Ottos meet up again.
• Crushing the Populace:
  • This is what the Angeloi do when they crush a Resistance base, such as when the Angeloi agent Alfred Hoffman murdered Anne's parents in cold blood as part of the liquidation of the Frankfurt resistance. Later on, the Soviets would do this all over the Occupied Territories as the Cold War rages, with soldiers and tanks gunning down peaceful protests in cold blood in places like Berlin, Budapest, and Prague.
  • Elias Anhorn is even more brutal than the Angeloi. Common punishments for criminals under his regime are brutal and violent and can even be extended to the criminals' families. He was also willing to nuke over a dozen of his own cities during a ceasefire just to wipe out all rebel forces.. Entire towns like Alençon were wiped out by conventional means just because they hosted resistance fighters.
• Cult: The Worm has a cult of worshippers across the series. While their true numbers are unknown as of now, it is believed they are present in every nation. They are a very esoteric order, so secret that even the Syndicate and Inquisition are largely unaware of them. The cult has existed for over 150,000 years and was responsible for the destruction of ancient humanity's civilization. Their goal in the modern day is to take positions of power so they can reorganize society in their own image, or failing that destroy everything and remake society from the ground up. What they want is to bring the Worm into reality and corrupt humanity into being It's servants.
• Curse of the Pharaoh: In 1941, the adventuring archaeologist Arabia Gruber explored a tomb underneath the Egyptian sphinx and was confronted with unspeakable horrors inside.
• The Cycle of Empires: This is a key idea surrounding Chinese reunification during Part 3, which believes it is inevitable for the four imperial dynasties (Ming, Tran, Song, and Jin) to combine back into one Chinese empire.
  "The empire, long divided, must unite!"
• Cyborg: Argus mercenaries are all outfitted with a brain implant that gives them a heads-up display in their heads and tactical information delivered in a fast and up to date manner. In 2038, it is revealed these implants also alter the soldiers' perceptions, dulling some senses and changing their brain chemistry so they become unhesitating killing machines who will blindly follow orders.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Kaiser Otto's father died in an assassination attempt. Otto's land got divided by fascists and equalists for decades. With his old family gone, Otto built a new one, but he lost his favorite daughter and heir to the Sentinel conspiracy, something he considered his greatest failure.
  • Wilhelm came from a dark alternate timeline where the Worm had entered reality and humanity was already corrupted into serving It, with only him and a few other angels holding out in a hopeless battle. At the end, his brother Constantine sacrificed himself to send Wilhelm back in time and avert this dark future.
• Darkest Hour: In Part 4, the world is engulfed by World War II, and the Roman Empire is torn apart in a bloody civil war between the pro-Hohenzollern meritocratic loyalists and the pro-Angelos fascists, and the latter came close to total victory in 1941. Most Eimerican nations went red, the Reich's influence wanes in favor of the other factions that attracted the smaller states formerly allied with it, and the angels were cast down to Earth by Archangel Gabriel, who are forced to cooperate with the Roman Inquisition, or hide from the Soviets and Rasa, who want to use them for their own goals. Three factions vie for supremacy: the Tianxia (led by China), the Axis (led by India) and the Equintern (led by the Soviet Commune). The Reich attempted to stay as a fourth faction, but the other three all want a piece of them, and so they are doomed to fight alone against them all once all of their allies are taken over, and the results aren't pretty.
• The Dark Times: What some people view the era between 476 and 1105, commonly known as the Dark Ages, an era where the Catholic Church suppressed innovation and creativity to maintain its control, although this idea was discredited by modern historians. Elias Anhorn, in turn, had those historians executed, and his "official" history again labels the medieval period as a Catholic Dark Age.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Theodor Tesla does not approve of his sister Thea's choice in men, namely the geeky and politically moderate Alex Humboldt. He eventually comes to hate Alex, seeing him as a far left terrorist (if only because he is so far to the right everything else is far left by comparison) and Thea as a traitor to the family for siding with him against Theodor.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart:
  • Erich Hansen's Annionaverse counterpart is dead, while his friend Martin (who died in the Siam Wars) is still alive over there.
  • Director Schulz's counterpart was still alive in the Annionaverse after his Hohenzollernverse counterpart died.
  • Anne Frank and Tatiana Kirova's Annionaverse counterparts were still alive after their Hohenzollernverse counterparts died.
  • Victoria Louise and Elisabeth Alexandra's Annoinaverse counterparts similarly outlived their Hohenzollernverse counterparts.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Multiple examples.
  • Anne Frank's parents were killed by the Angeloi, beginning her journey to becoming the Valkyrie.
  • Olga Kirova's parents were killed in battle, sending her down the path of becoming the Firebird.
  • Princess Wilhelmina lost her parents in a car accident in 2001.
  • Prince Friedrich lost his mother in a high-stakes spy operation in 2035. In 2038, his father was executed by Elias Anhorn himself during a military operation.
• Deconstruction:
  • X-Division succeeds in leaking the truth and exposing Sentinel's nefarious plot, saving the world and freeing humanity from a decades-long global conspiracy. Normally, this would be the end, but Zen continues the story after the victory, showing the consequences of X-Division's actions. The entire Roman government is shaken by the revelation, with many current and former leaders arrested and imprisoned. The public loses faith in government and turns to groups outside the establishment like Thierry Baudet's Forum movement.
  • The entire idea of the Reich and the contradiction of a meritocracy with a monarchy is explored in Part 5. Previously, it had been taken for granted that the Reich was the world hegemon and a voice meritocracy and fairness. But after it collapses into totalitarianism, people point out this could only have been achieved due to the Reich's unique culture, mindset, and values. Even Romans begin to ask what the Reich truly stands for, if the belief in meritocracy was merely a cover for darker instincts that were never truly suppressed, and if it is worth saving in the end. Furthermore, after Wilhelm Karl appeared to mastermind the totalitarian shift, everybody begins wondering why the Hohenzollerns are still on the throne with no official limitations on their power, especially in a society which stresses a fair chance for everyone.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: The Syndicate thought it was invincible, having amassed a stockpile of alien technology and boasting deep political, military, and economic connections around the world. X-Division struggled for well over 5 years to just expose it to the world, but they failed every time. Ultimately the Syndicate was destroyed not by X-Division but by a rogue alien faction opposed to colonization, to which the Syndicate had no defense against. Later on, Sentinel filled in the Syndicate's role, taking over the old conspiracy's technology and connections. Sentinel built an army of super soldiers with the goal of infiltrating world governments so that there would be no resistance to the invasion. X-Division also attempted to expose Sentinel, but they failed. Anders was abducted by aliens (although he came back), his sister Annie had to go into hiding, and everyone else had to go on the run after Sentinel had X-Division shut down and arrested, their benefactors in Director Anne Frank and Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra were killed, Kaiser Otto was intimidated into silence, and the World Trade Center Twin Towers were destroyed in the November 9 attacks, allowing Sentinel to pass the Patriot Act to increase its influence over all of society. But X-Division came back from this, and utilizing time travel to embed a mole in Sentinel from the very beginning, they amassed unrefutable evidence pointing to Sentinel's existence. The "smoking gun" ultimately exposed Sentinel, and the conspiracy came crashing down. It helped that the aliens themselves had all but abandoned the planet years ago.
• Deus Exit Machina: The aliens, after being a recurring threat for most of the 1990s and planning to invade once the Syndicate's plans were completed, never actually invaded. Instead, they simply abandoned Earth after taking too many losses in a civil war, abandoning the Syndicate to its own demise by alien rebels.
• Diabolical Mastermind:
  • The Smoking Man was a recurring villain throughout the 1990s. Once a friend of Conrad Humboldt and Hans Hansen, he eventually became the leader of the Syndicate and oversaw its many plans for world domination. He personally assassinated Ragnar Beck (JFK), Abraham Green (MLK), and Gorbachev when they threatened to ruin the Syndicate's work. Under his leadership, the Syndicate worked on a plan with which to infect humanity with a virus which would turn them into a slave race for the aliens and sent robot assassins after X-Division. His agents also killed Conrad and Hans when they threatened to expose the plot they themselves created. He even gave up his own daughter to be experimented on by the aliens.
  • Elias Anhorn suddenly reveals his true colors when he masterminds a plot to massacre the Diet, blackmail the Kaiser himself into doing his bidding, and eliminate any possible opposition all at the same time.
• The Dictatorship: Multiple examples.
  • The regime of Malcolm Bethune in Part 2.
  • Parts 3 and 4:
    • The Soviets.
    • The Rasas.
    • Reza Khan's Persian dictatorship.
    • Abyssinia and Tawantinsuyu's fascist dictatorships.
    • The Angeloi.
    • The Eimerican equalist regimes.
  • Part 5:
    • The Soviets again through the 80s.
    • The Chinese military junta of the 1940s to 80s.
    • Various Eimerican dictatorships, both far left and right, across the 20th century.
    • Zhao Yu and Han Xianyu's authoritarian regimes in the 2020s and 30s.
    • India's Hindutva regime in 2034.
    • The Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem starting in 2035.
• Did Anastasia Survive?: Yes, and then some. Not only did the equivalent of Anastasia (Princess Sbyslava) survive the massacre, but also her brother (the equivalent of Alexei, although without hemophilia). Sbyslava was later declared the Tsaritsa in exile in Sweden.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • In 1941, after Heydrich's betrayal handed Constantinople to the Angeloi, Otto's loyalists were reduced to just Athens and a few Greek villages, while the Angeloi controlled the rest of the mainland. Angelos and even many loyalists believed it was all over for Otto. But Otto didn't give up, and within several months, he had not only taken back Constantinople but also turned the tables on the Angeloi and started liberating Greece and Anatolia.
  • Elias Anhorn's coup in 2030 comes out of the blue, with little warning it was going to happen until it did happen and leave almost the entire Roman government dead and the survivors in his pocket.
  • Wilhelm Karl's death was similarly unexpected up until it happened. Up until then, the narrative had been building up towards him overcoming Elias' blackmail and then fleeing the country for Russia, where he would help the meritocratic resistance, but that was suddenly interrupted.
• Different World, Different Movies:
  • In the Annionaverse, many movies are different from OTL and the Hohenzollernverse. For example, while Star Wars in OTL is about Luke taking down the evil fascist-inspired Empire, in the Hohenzollernverse it is Starkrieg and features Leia taking down the evil equalist-inspired Republic, and in the Annionaverse it is again Star Wars and centered on Luke but with some state propaganda fed in.
  • Doctor Who in the Hohenzollernverse is vastly different, with all of the Doctor's actors being different people like Christopher Lee, Patrick Stewart, Tom Hiddleston, and Hayley Atwell.
  • Final Fantasy VII is actually a fully completed Xenogears in the Hohenzollernverse, as in real life Xenogears was original pitched as the story for FFVII.
• Different States of America: Unlike in OTL, the Roman Empire survives as the Reich in medieval times. The Native Eimerican states survived contact with Europe because of the insane technological advancements of the Aztecs (which were a deadly adversary to the Romans for few centuries, mind you), Mayans and Incans. Later on they embrace Marxist ideology and align with the Equintern during WW2 and the Cold War. After the Soviets are defeated in World War III, Marxism crumbles in the New World, and the Eimerican states first go through a period of warlordism and civil war before stabilizing, liberalizing, and banding together in the Eimerican Federation. Overlaps with Divided States of America.
• Divided States of America: The Meskwaki Empire was defeated in World War I, shattering its dreams of Pan-Emericanism. After the war, it shatters, is reunited under an equalist dictatorship, and then shatters again for good. The Eimerican Federation finally unites the New World in the 21st century and even gives Pierremaskin's descendant the symbolic title of "Eimerican Emperor," fulfilling Pierremaskin's old dream.
• Divided We Fall: The regime of Elias Anhorn abuses this by turning his own people against each other, playing on social divisions to make them hate each other so they don't join forces against him instead.
• Divine Right of Kings: The Hohenzollern dynasty claimed to rule the Reich through divine right, but in the modern day this is no longer the case, as true sovereignty comes from the people and the Augustinian Code. At least until Elias Anhorn came around and brought back "actual" divine right.
• Doomsday Device: Ancient humanity built a machine capable of destroying the entire reality of a universe. Fortunately, it was never used and ultimately destroyed.
• Double Agent: In Part 4, Reinhard Heydrich was secretly a double agent for the Angeloi and sabotaged Otto's government from within, while Inquisitor Theodor Innitzer was a double agent for the loyalists, feeding the Vienna resistance important information on their enemies.
• Dragon Ascendant: Dmitry Yazov seized power as the new Soviet General Secretary after his friend and predecessor Valentin Varennikov was captured and effectively deposed.
• Driven by Envy:
  • Valentin Varennikov was envious of the praise of Anne Frank. Agent Frank was revered across the Reich over her long career as an Athanatos and later Director, and Valentin was jealous of her adulation while he remained just a career soldier for decades. He acted on this envy when he seized power and orchestrated an elaborate plot to capture and kill Anne with an extremely dangerous bioweapon before invading the Reich and starting World War III.
  • Edmund Remmele was envious of how his brother Gebhard got into a military academy seemingly by chance, while he personally had to serve on the front lines in World War III and witnessed many of his comrades die in a nuclear strike.
• Duel to the Death: After accusing Kaiser Wilhelm I of infidelity, a lowly count challenged him to a duel for honor. After defeating the Kaiser, the count then killed him in cold blood, to the shock of all in attendance.
• The Dutiful Son: Diana hopes she was the best daughter to Anne, even following her mother into the Athanatoi. In 2030, her dying words were to ask her mother if she made her proud.
• Dystopian Edict: After 2030, Kaiser Wilhelm IV decrees a series of Nullification Acts aimed at stripping rights from women, minorities, and the political opposition.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Part 1 was full of plot points, characterization, lore, and a different writing style that were later dropped. Friedrich the Great was said to have completely wiped out the French, Polish, and Arab cultures and eradicated Islam and Catholicism. He had ordered the Holy Roman Empire dissolved and replaced with a "German Empire." The writing was more tongue-in-cheek and doesn't take itself too seriously even in light of the above events. In Part 3, the Reich was said to firmly oppose the rising tide of liberalism by maintaining absolutism. However, the writing style and tone dramatically changes from Part 4 on, with early Part 1 events reinterpreted in the new style. The French, Poles, Arabs, Muslims, and Catholics are said to have survived in smaller numbers, and their plight is examined in a more nuanced light. Friedrich the Great now gets a characterization as an idealist and humanist who united all of the peoples of Europe under his tolerant rule. The writing style becomes much more serious with a focus on detail and worldbuilding. The "German Empire" is retconned out, among other things.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Worm exists outside of reality. Its true form cannot be perceived by mortal eyes. It has the power to warp reality in various ways, and It has a cult carrying out Its will across 150,000 years. It cannot be permanently defeated due to Its very nature.
• Eldritch Location: The Worm-associated tomb under the Sphinx is weird, anachronistic, internally inconsistent, and full of impossibilities that mess with the archaeologist Arabia Gruber's mind.
• Emperor Scientist: Friedrich the Glorious built an observatory and patronized the sciences. His daughter Saint Wilhelmina continued such patronage, and under her reign the 12th century Renaissance occurred, and the empire saw a scientific revolution.
• The Empire:
  • India gave birth to the most brutal counterpart of Gandhi in the multiverse, a commonality shared with a fellow Axis leader, Markos Angelos^note an original character based on Saint Markos from CzokletMuss's This is Madness megacampaign, who rebelled against Kaiser Otto to seize power for himself.
  • The Mexica Empire was the main antagonist of Parts 1-2. It practiced atrocities like human sacrifice and sought to conquer both the Reich and Scandinavia as part of its growing empire. Ocuil Acatl personally murdered Kaiser Wilhelm III, and his troops engaged in brutal slaughters of local populations across the British Isles.
  • In Part 5, both the Reich and China start to qualify after 2030, with both descending into brutal authoritarianism and tyrannical dictatorship. By 2035, the Reich has become a global totalitarian nightmare, visiting constant atrocities on its own people and using its economic clout to force its neighbors into doing its bidding. Starting in 2038, the Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem no longer bothers with economic bullying and has instead started a global thermonuclear war of conquest and annihilation against the entire world.
• Empire with a Dark Secret:
  • The Reich was founded as a way to provide an army for Wilhelm to fight an unwinnable war against an eldritch abomination and Its cult.
  • The doomed timeline Wilhelm came from was already doomed by the Worm, and his brother sacrificed himself to send Wilhelm back in time to set in motion the events of this playthrough. Not even the other angels knew about this until Raphael in 2023.
• End of an Era: At the end of Part 3, Kaiser Otto I proclaims that the Imperial Century has already ended after the First Weltkrieg, knowing full well that the world is heading towards another war.
  Kaiser Otto I: "One hundred years ago, the world was much simpler. The Industrial Revolution had just begun, and the Reich had just emerged from the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. There were few factories, few railroads. There were no fascists, no corporatists, no republicans, no socialists, no equalists. The Kaiser reigned as he saw fit, without any ambitious chancellors, union leaders, or generals standing in his way. Those were the days of Metternich and Bismarck, Sigismund II and Franz Joseph. But I am not asking you to look back to those days as a lost era of greatness to be returned to. I am asking you to use what we learned from that time to look forward and prepare for the hardships ahead of us. The Reich in 1935 is not the same as the Reich in 1835. The world is different now. Instead of balloons, trains, and horses we have planes, cars, and barrels. We have sprawling factories pumping out goods and products on a scale never seen before. We have weapons of mass destruction. The Weltkrieg differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. … Europe and large parts of Asia and the Eimericas became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Eurasian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility. Samarkand is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years. The Imperial Century has ended. We must prepare for what the future holds for the Reich."
  • Fittingly, Otto's death in 2018 also marks the end of an era, as entire generations had grown up with Otto and knew no other Kaiser. All they knew was the peace and prosperity they enjoyed under his reign. It is a similar situation to the death of Franz Joseph a hundred years earlier, as Franz Joseph also reigned for a long time and nobody remembered any other Kaiser before him.
• The End of the World as We Know It: A fifty year period of peace and prosperity following the end of the Cold War is brought to an end twice: first when the Reich and China turn into totalitarian dictatorships and then when Jerusalem nukes every major city, killing hundreds of millions of people and starting World War IV.
• Enemy Civil War: In Part 4, the Angeloi and Soviets went to war with each other. Although the Soviets were ideologically enemies of the monarchical loyalists, the loyalists sought their aid against the Angeloi, hoping they would weaken each other enough for the loyalists to defeat both. In Part 5, the Reich drew militarist China into World War III against the Soviets, although militarist China was an enemy in the triple-sided Cold War, successfully predicting that it would destroy both enemies (as a result of the war, China became democratic and ended the Cold War).
• Enemy Mine:
  • After Wilhelm lost his powers and Raphael was kicked out of Heaven along with every other angel, the two former enemies (who in Parts 2-3 had clashed over preserving humanity or starting the Apocalypse) decided to set aside their differences and deal with their new common enemy, Gabriel.
  • The Tianxia Alliance and the Central Powers, enemies in the previous two world wars, set aside their differences in World War III to defeat the Soviet Commune, which is ideologically a threat to both of them and far worse than anything the monarchical Reich and China could do to each other.
  • Subverted when the dozens of rebel groups which arose out of opposition to Elias Anhorn DIDN'T join forces, instead turning on each other as illegitimate or ideological enemies.
• Energy Beings: Angels are made of pure divine energy so bright and holy that mortal humans cannot look directly at it without their eyes burning out.
• Escaped from Hell:
  • Mansur Shah Mukhtar was broken out of Hell in Part 2.
  • Bernadette Soubirrous broke into Hell with a squad of Inquisitors in Part 3 and just as easily got back out.
  • Since Bernadette's mission in Part 3, Hell has been sealed off from the mortal world, so demons are no longer able to leave Hell.
• Eternal Recurrence: The Worm as an eldritch abomination that can't be permanently defeated. It's cultists frequently say "what was shall be, what shall be was" to remind people that the Worm is inevitable, and once It is summoned in reality, there is no stopping It.
• Et Tu, Brute?:
  • Georg finding out that Kaiser Wilhelm IV would be willing to kill Georg while Georg reviles the thought of killing his brother. Initially believed to be fulfilled when Wilhelm Karl apparently has Georg killed in a drone strike, but later revealed to be subverted when it turns out Elias was the one responsible for killing him.
  • Thierry Baudet thinking to himself right before being executed by one of Elias' assassins during his coup. The last words he hears are "Elias Anhorn sends his regards."
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Nationalist China, an enemy of the Reich, is willing to work with the Reich against the Soviets, which they see as worse.
  • Wilhelm Karl realized Elias Anhorn was even worse than he could have ever been, which led him to reflect on his own personality and change for the better.
  • Theodor Tesla is generally a corrupt and amoral corporate executive who seeks profits above all else, aligning with far right interests in order to achieve this. He has heavily invested in the Panopticon technology, which turns all soldiers it is implanted in into emotionless killing machines. However, even he is scared of Josh Johansen, who is already an emotionless killing machine even before his Panopticon enhanced him and actually asks for his Panopticon to make him even more efficient at killing.
• Evil All Along: Elias Anhorn, an ally of Thierry Baudet and a member of his inner circle helping to bring his political movement into the mainstream, masterminded a coup in which he slaughtered Baudet, the entire Imperial Diet, and almost all of his potential opponents in a single day, leaving him in control of the Reich.
• Evil Chancellor:
  • Markos Angelos gradually seized power in the Reich over the 1920s and 30s, while Otto was a child and teenager unable to rule in his own right. When Otto came of age, quickly negotiated an end to a massive general strike, and married Victoria Louise to unite both the Siegfriedist and Maximist lines of the Hohenzollerns for good, Angelos began viewing Otto as a threat and devised a plan to remove him. As chancellor, he amassed power and influence over the Reich and quickly gained a large support base, culminating in a coup in 1939 in which Otto was forced to flee to Constantinople while half the nation rallied behind Angelos.
  • After 2035, Elias Anhorn technically counts. In 2030, he had been the Vice Chancellor. But after disposing of his puppet chancellor, he seized power for himself, and the chancellery itself effectively becomes defunct.
• Evil Feels Good: After he kills his first man in battle, Josh Johansen loves the feeling, and gradually embraces the life of a cold and merciless killer, eventually slaughtering innocent lives on behalf of Elias Anhorn for no reason at all, even when his orders weren't to kill.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • After seizing power in the aftermath of Olga Kirova's rebellion and abduction of Valentin Varennikov, Dmitry Yazov proves to be even more brutal and petty than his predecessor, executing his own generals for no reason.
  • Elias Anhorn blackmailed a comedian solely because he made a joke about him on TV.
  • Theodor Tesla, passes a law abolishing women's rights and giving women's property and financial assets to their male next of kin. His reason for passing this law affecting hundreds of millions of women? Just to punish his own sister for choosing her boyfriend over him.
  • Elias and Gertrude both call Wilhelm Karl by "Guglielmo" after blackmailing him to humiliate him and assert their dominance, although Gertrude stops doing it eventually.
  • Early on in the Committee, Elias causes a ridiculously long chain of telephone calls involving the Kaiser, several generals, multiple government officials, and a couple corporate executives just to tell Heinrich his decision to begin research into biological weapons. When Heinrich asks why he didn't just call him directly and save a lot of time, he gloats he did it just because he could.
• The Evil Prince: Wilhelm Karl expressed no remorse (even joy) at his older sister's death, which made him the heir to the throne. When his mother died, he also showed no remorse. He has a reactionary worldview and wants total control over the Reich when he becomes Kaiser. Finally, he murdered his father Otto, his brother Georg, and his cousin Horst to ascend to the throne and eliminate any potential rival claimants. The future does not bode well for his niece, Princess Wilhelmina. Subverted when it is revealed this was all a persona inadvertently cultivated by his own detached personality, the media wanting controversy, and Elias Anhorn. He never actually wanted to be a dictatorial absolute ruler, but everyone thought he did. He claimed the media took his lack of remorse over his mother's death out of context. He did not actually kill Georg and Horst but took credit for it anyways. However, it is quite clear he did kill his father and did not shed a tear over his sister's death, although he eventually did come around to realizing his actions were wrong.
• Evil Plan: Elias Anhorn's evil plan is to destroy the Hohenzollerns and "give them what they deserve," not only by killing them but also destroying their precious Reich by turning it into a totalitarian dictatorship.
• Evil Reactionary:
  • Valentin Varennikov saw the Reich as led by reactionaries due to the country being a monarchy with landed nobility. He believed the nobility only sought to oppress the common people economically and ideologically to maintain its own wealth and influence, and Otto was complicit in this suppression.
  • Markos Angelos sought to take the Reich back to older times where Germans and Christians were at the top of the social hierarchy and the nation was much "purer." He labeled leftists, Muslims, and Kaiser Otto as traitors for forgetting the Reich's traditions.
  • Elias Anhorn also seeks to "purify" the Reich, taking Angelos' ideas even more to the extreme with the help of modern technology.
• Evil Uncle: What Wilhelm Karl initially seems to be to his niece Wilhelmina. He had killed his father, apparently killed his brother and cousin, showed no emotion over the death of his sister and mother, and passed laws specifically targeting Wilhelmina's rights. Subverted when he reveals he had nothing against her, the lack of empathy was mostly taken out of context, he became regretful over killing his father, he did not kill his brother and cousin, and he had been forced to pass the laws by Elias Anhorn.
• Expanded States of America: The Eimerican Federation united the two Eimerican continents, aside from Neurhomania (a larger Brazil). It now encompasses all of North Eimerica and a good chunk of South Eimerica.
• Failed Future Forecast:
  • Gorbachev implementing perestroika in the CSSR in the 1980s, but then subverted when he is killed and his successor starts World War III, after which the collapse of the CSSR and the end of the Cold War became inevitable.
  • However, nobody expected the Chinese military regime to collapse soon after that due to widespread public protests.
• Failsafe Failure:
  • Dmitry Yazov desperately ordered nuclear missiles launched at the Reich to end World War III in the Soviets' favor, but only five missiles were fired. The Romans activated their failsafe, SVI (Strategic Defense Initiative), to shoot down the missiles, but the system crashed and was unable to neutralize the fifth missile, which detonated over Chernobyl and killed fifty thousand. Diana Frank, who had worked to bring SVI online, blamed herself for failing to stop the crash.
  • During the culmination of the Sentinel arc in 2015, Sentinel activates SVI to lay waste to the world's cities and begin its takeover. However, Diana Frank intentionally crashed the SVI system much in the same way as thirty years ago to avoid the satellites from firing, saving the world in the process.
• Failure Gambit: With SVI being automatically programmed to fire on multiple major cities, X-Division panics as there is no apparent way to stop it. However, Diana Frank thinks on the last time she worked with the system, remembering a crucial fatal flaw in it that broke the system previously, and decides to intentionally trigger that flaw now. It works, and SVI shuts down, saving the world.
• Fake Defector:
  • Theodor Innitzer, after seemingly defecting to the Angeloi in Part 4, showed that he was secretly on the side of good when he leaked the Angeloi's information to the loyalists, allowing them to retake the city from the Angeloi.
  • Gertrude Anhorn, the wife of Elias Anhorn, initially joined a small conspiracy which included Wilhelm Karl and General Heinrich Dandolo, but it is later revealed she had sold them all out to Elias from the very beginning.
• Fake King:
  • Malcolm Bethune murdered Kaiser Martin II and his heir and then declared himself Kaiser. Once in power, he started eradicating all of the Hohenzollerns, repealed the Augustinian Code, and packed his court full of corrupt yesmen and loyalists. This provoked a massive civil war as almost all Romans refused to acknowledge his legitimacy.
  • Elias Anhorn threatens Wilhelm Karl with this scenario if he releases his blackmail, which would "prove" he and all of the Hohenzollerns are illegitimate descendants of an affair by Ida, Friedrich the Great's wife, and cause mass social chaos.
• Fallen Angel: Multiple times.
  • Saint Gunhilda was later revealed to be a fallen angel who had incarnated into human form and lived a normal human life before returning to Heaven.
  • Sarah Milton also incarnated into human form and was reborn as a baby, although she regained her angelic powers while mortal. After returning to Heaven, she retained the name Sarah.
  • Lucifer is the original fallen angel, said to have fallen from Heaven in the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs.
  • After 1936, all angels were expelled from Heaven, losing their ability to teleport, due to Gabriel casting a spell kicking them all out. However, Wilhelm had it the worst of all, as Gabriel specifically cut out his angelic essence and forced his now-mortal consciousness to reside in his host Gavrilo Princip's body, which obviously already had Gavrilo's consciousness in it. But by 1945, Wilhelm had defeated Gabriel and reversed the spell, restoring the angels to Heaven.
• Fallen Princess: Princess Wilhelmina, the daughter of Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra, was originally the second in line to the throne after her mother. But after her mother's untimely death in 2001, her uncle Wilhelm Karl was named the heir after the nobility put pressure on Otto to choose an older man over a teenage girl. As the imperial succession now followed the line of Wilhelm Karl and his son, Wilhelmina faded into obscurity with no chance of becoming Kaiserin. After Elias Anhorn's coup, the Roman government passes laws stripping all women of their rights, including one specifically targeting Wilhelmina by taking away all of her noble titles. She ultimately leaves for Russia, where she was little more than a pro-meritocracy activist. Even that was later taken away when Russia is nuked and she is forced to flee with only a few supporters, many of whom are then hunted down and killed. And it gets worse after that, as in her new home of Persia, when it seemed like she finally regained some power and was rebuilding her movement, the Persian government shut it all down, expelled all Romans, and has now kept her imprisoned in a hospital where she can't contact anybody.
• Fallen States of America: The Meskwaki Empire, after centuries on the rise, was ultimately brought down in World War I by the Reich. Afterward, it exploded into numerous dictatorships due to Soviet-funded revolutions before reuniting as the Eimerican Commune, which itself would collapse back into smaller states in 1989 due to ethnic and sectarian tensions (like in Yugoslavia). The small Eimerican states would eventually join together in the Eimerican Federation in 2020.
• Famed In-Story:
  • Centuries after their exploits, the lives of Friedrich the Great, Friedrich the Glorious, and Saint Wilhelmina are remembered in countless legends, tales, and even children's playground games.
  • Even while she was still alive, Anne Frank was well-known around the world as the Valkyrie.
• Fame Through Infamy:
  • In Part 4, Gandhi went from a nobody using a pen name to an infamous war criminal who slaughtered six million Muslims in his mad bid for world domination.
  • Defied in Part 5 with a former Angeloi who tormented Anne and Diana over seven decades. He tried to restore the Angeloi in the modern day and start a race war, but Diana defeated him, and the media refused to name him, thus denying him his recognition (just like in this entry).
• Family Extermination:
  • Malcolm Bethune purges the Hohenzollerns in hopes that no Hohenzollern come back to rebel. Markos Angelos does the same to the Maximists when it became clear he lost the war and the Soviets were about to take Berlin from him.
  • What Elias Anhorn does to the Hohenzollerns in 2038, as it is apparently "what they deserve."
• Far East Asian Terrorists: Chinese nationalists rose up in Malaya in the late 2010s, attempting to annex the country back into China due to its large Chinese population. They were defeated by Prince Horst von Hohenzollern, whose death in battle there galvanized the ASEAN integration movement.
• Feather Motif: Angels have invisible feathered wings that can only be seen through shadows cast by holy light from their true divine forms, or by hearing them flap when they teleport.
• Feud Episode: Most of the three Friedrichs' story during the Apocalypse arc of Part 2 revolves around a decades-long feud between Friedrich von Hohenzollern and Friedrich von Habsburg, which is so old neither of them remember why exactly they started feuding to begin with. By the end of the Apocalypse, they have finally agreed to abandon the feud.
• Final Battle:
  • The Mexica invasion of the Reich was halted in its tracks at the decisive Battle of Ergyng. Although the Mexica remained in Europe for several more centuries, their military strength and controlled territory never expanded afterward.
  • Malcolm Bethune was defeated in the climactic Battle of Wawel Castle, where he was unable to avoid his prophesied downfall at the hands of Princess Sophia, the rightful heir to the throne.
  • The final battle between the archangels Michael and Lucifer to complete the Apocalypse was averted by the human Inquisition before it could be completed.
  • On April 2, 2039, the Battle of Isfahan took on final battle undertones as the protagonists all banded together for one last act of defiance against the forces of Jerusalem, with nearly every major protagonist facing off against their opposing antagonist: Princess Wilhelmina against Elias Anhorn, Thea against Theodor Tesla, and Alex against Josh Johansen.
• Final Boss Preview: Throughout Part 5, even as terrible things like World War IV rage around the world, the Worm is built up as the "ultimate threat" and "true enemy." Characters who interact with it, including even previously untouchable angels, suffer unimaginable mental and physical agony, with those particularly unlucky being subjected to fates worse than death.
• Final Solution:
  • The Rasas carried out the equivalent of the Holocaust, also known as the Nakba here, against the Muslims of India, Arabia, and Central Asia. Six million Muslims were slaughtered in concentration camps in Turkestan. The Angeloi participated in this genocide by shipping off the Reich's Muslim population to its own camps.
  • Elias Anhorn has revived the Final Solution with modern technology, rounding up the French, Poles, and Arabs into concentration camps. He also enticed Jews, Muslims, and Africans in Europe with a "deportation" plan in which they would be put on planes flying them out of the country, but most of these planes were depressurized to save money, causing them all to suffocate.
• Fiery Redhead: Angela Hansen has red hair and a temper to match, initially as a teenager and young adult. She is snarky, rebellious, and has a weird obsession with electrocuting cadavers. Even when she was locked up in the Annionaverse following a botched crossover mission there, she couldn't help but threateningly yell about electrocuting cadavers. As the years go by, though, she mellows out and calms down to be more like her also red-haired but less feisty daughter Alexandra.
• Fish out of Temporal Water:
  • The angel Wilhelm came from a doomed timeline where the Apocalypse happened in 1453 and set about changing history to set things right. He has some knowledge of the future, but as the changes piled up, his knowledge became less useful. Still, he kept many secrets from the other angels, including his guilt over seeing his brother sacrifice himself to send him back in time to begin with.
  • In Part 4, Senator Otto (a counterpart of Kaiser Otto I) came from Dragoon9105's timeline, where the Anniona dynasty rules a different Holy Roman Empire. He suffered significant culture shock from seeing a culture and society that was so similar yet so different from his own, particularly pointing out the differences in comic book superheroes. He also could not believe his counterpart was a Kaiser as he himself amounted to nothing in his world. Concurrently with Senator Otto's visit, his version of Gandhi also crossed over thanks to Gabriel's meddling. In the Annionaverse, Gandhi was a drunk and traumatized war veteran who had just lost his wife to suicide, and he had no idea what was happening when he ended up in the Hohenzollernverse and met his counterpart, Neta Gandhi.
  • In Part 5, X-Division interrupts a Worm cult's attempts to interfere with history. The cult brings forward a woman, Theodora Doukas, from 1910 in an attempt to kill her before she becomes the Reich's first female senator and advances the cause of women's rights. Theodora expresses confusion as to the modern day (especially because she found herself in the middle of an underground bunker being fought over between X-Division, Sentinel, the Inquisition, and Worm cultists) before concluding she will not understand it. She eventually returns home to set history on its proper course... and also help X-Division by embedding a descendant as a spy in Sentinel from the very beginning.
• Flanderization: Otto von Bismarck in Part 3 gets hit by it quite hard, to the point where he just can't shut up about iron and blood. Same with Dmitry Yazov in Part 5 who descends from Valentin Varennikov's friend and closest ally to a sadistic madman who fires nukes at random, shoots his own generals at random, and then surrenders without a fight. In Part 5, the LKR (Liberal-Conservative Reformers) is a centrist political party disgusted by the ideological extremism and outdatedness of the traditional socialist/social-meritocratic SPR and center-right CMU. But their legitimate grievances are quickly flanderized quite hard as the LKR is represented by a single unnamed politician who frequently interrupts random Diet speeches with shouts of "BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!" Thus, nobody takes these alleged centrists seriously (Merkel and the CMU still consider themselves actual centrists). By 2035, LKR Guy has completely lost his marbles. He now spends most of his time simply screaming "BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!" for little reason.
• Foregone Conclusion: Diana's Worm-given visions of the future, including her death and the annihilation of the Reich and Hohenzollerns, which she fears she can't change. In 2029, Diana sees a vision of her death as well as those of the other members of X-Division, as well as who kills them. Despite her best efforts, everything happens exactly as she was shown.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The end of Part 4 was Gabriel/Zen Breaking the Fourth Wall, by posting the end of the Kingdom Come AAR. That world was purged of all life due to XA-1005C virus. Guess what makes an appearance in Part 5?
  • Diana's visions throughout Part 5 after coming into contact with a Worm-influenced artifact seem to be hinting to future events, including her and X-Division's deaths and a far future war between the Annionaverse and Hohenzollernverse. Despite her best efforts, her visions came true exactly as she foretold.
• Forever War: The Fifty Years' War of Part 2 looked like it would never end, as heretic militias kept rising up to replace those that were destroyed as soon as the Inquisition cracked down. The Commonwealth Wars also looked like they would never end as it always seemed like Lithuania and Russia wanted to fight each other.
• Forged by the Gods: The legendary sword Enonon was technically forged by normal humans, but it was blessed by angels to give it the power to resist the Worm's eldritch influence.
• For Great Justice:
  • Friedrich the Great and Wilhelm fought for justice in Part 1, hoping to unite the people of Europe against a common enemy and towards a better and more just future (as well as freedom from the Worm). Otto upheld the principles of justice against the Angeloi and Soviets in Parts 4-5 by rejecting extremism and defending meritocracy and the Augustinian Code.
  • It was also Prince Horst's driving belief that justice was something everyone deserved.
• Former Regime Personnel: Reza Khan ruling Persia once again after getting defeated. Originally rising to power as the first fascist ruler in the world, he remained hugely popular after the war, and the Romans restored him to power as a meritocratic leader. After the 2003 invasion of Mexico, the Reich appointed former regime general Huicton Ollin as a temporary leader for a new meritocratic Mexico.
• For Want Of A Nail: Due to this being an alternate history, there are many examples.
  • Erik the Red's expedition proceeded almost exactly as in real life, but the natives he fought being slightly more aggressive led to his expedition being captured instead of forced to leave, with the end result being the rise of the Mexica Empire and its invasion of Europe centuries later, leading to centuries of hatred and war between the Reich and Mexico.
  • Friedrich the Great replaced an existing margrave of Brandenburg who has been largely ignored by history. But just taking his spot was enough to completely change the course of history, bringing the Reich into existence.
  • The Song fleet's decision to not make a stand in the Pearl River delta against the Mongol hordes leads to the Song emperor's survival and the birth of a new nation in Penglai.
  • Franz Ferdinand's car randomly breaking down in a side alley in Lublin left an opening for the assassin Gediminas Principas to kill him, sparking World War I and leading to the rise of the Soviet Commune.
  • Inquisitor Engelbert Dolfuss' spur of the moment decision to murder Leon Trotsky and frame the Angeloi to bring the Soviets into World War II worked exactly as expected, in that it brought the Soviets into the war. Engelbert, though, did not count on the Soviets to take Roman land as well, setting the stage for the Cold War.
    • Engelbert's return to Vienna by way of a train through Vienna inadvertently leads to the Angeloi cracking down on the local resistance cell, which kills Anne Frank's parents and leads her to become the Valkyrie, as well as indirectly leading to the birth of Diana Frank and ultimately her saving the world in 2015 when she figures out how to shut down SVI and stop Sentinel from using it.
  • The Syndicate's decision to abduct Annie Humboldt instead of her brother Anders leads Anders to get interested in researching UFO phenomenon, ultimately founding the X-Division and bringing down the Syndicate years later. In the Annionaverse, the Syndicate abducted Anders instead and never fell there. The fall of the Syndicate in the Hohenzollernverse creates a political climate which allows Elias Anhorn to rise to power. Elias' regime ultimately kills Anders Humboldt.
  • Diana Frank and Angelica Haus's attempt to stop Elias Anhorn's coup leads to a high speed car chase through the streets of downtown Berlin, causing a car crash which leads to Princess Wilhelmina's car getting stuck in a traffic jam, indirectly saving her from Elias' massacre at the Diet, her destination.
• Founder of the Kingdom: Friedrich the Great is traditionally considered the founder of the Hohenzollern dynasty and the Reich, although it was his grandson Friedrich the Glorious who really founded the Reich by uniting both the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire under his rule.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: At the end of Part 4, Gabriel absorbs enough divine power to begin breaking the fourth wall, "taking over" Zen's forum account and directly interacting with other viewers on the thread, generally gloating about his divinity and demanding everyone worship him. Even after he is defeated, he continues to "take over" Zen's account, even posting a fake ending for Part 4 attempting to trick the viewers before posting the link to Part 5. Occasionally, he still appears in Zen's posts, identified by crossed-out text complaining about certain story events, mostly events involving the Worm (which even he is terrified by).
• Full-Circle Revolution: The Maximists temporarily overthrew the old meritocratic regime and set about making a superior democratic one, but they themselves suffered several revolutions which ultimately ended establishing dictatorships far worse than what they believed the old regime was.
• The Fundamentalist:
  • Af-Quetzalcoatl and the so-called Mexicanist State of Cemanahuac are crazy religious fundamentalists practicing human sacrifice and calling for the expulsion of all foreigners from the Eimericas.
  • Elias Anhorn and the Committee are crazy Christian fundamentalists calling for a purification of the state and a return to traditional values.

G-J

• Gadgeteer Genius:
  • Nikola Tesla was a brilliant scientist in the early 1900s who discovered many new applications for electricity and electric power. He founded Tesla Dynamic, a multinational corporation that is still in existence 100 years later under his descendants Wilhelm Tesla (who invented many different biological weapons and methods to cross over into the Annionaverse) and Theodor Tesla (who reverse engineers Annionaverse technology).
  • Walter Humboldt was Wilhelm Tesla's friend and colleague, and together they invented many crazy things like a drug that draws out latent psionic powers and universe-crossing technology.
  • To some extent, Alex Humboldt, Alexandra Hansen, Magnus Kvensen, Thea Tesla also fit, having built a revolutionary particle accelerator which led them to discover a completely new element.
• Game-Breaking Bug: A bug with the political parties scripting in the Part 5 mod caused the game itself to crash throughout the in-game year 2001, forcing Zen to replay that year multiple times.
• Gamer Chick:
  • Despite being a feared assassin trained from childhood to take down entire governments, Olga Kirova is open about her love for anime, manga, Internet culture, and video games like Final Fantasy and Persona.
  • Princess Wilhelmina herself has inadvertently cultivated a reputation as a "college gamer" for having played many video games during and after college. Even in her fifties she is still a huge JRPG fan, even quoting iconic Final Fantasy and Xenoblade lines to inspire the people during tense situations.
• The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek reigned as a brutal right-wing dictator as in real life during his decades-long dictatorship over China between the second and third world wars. Han Xianyu is a huge fan of him and seeks to emulate his brutal reign.
• Generic Federation, Named Empire: More nuanced than usual, due to the 1000 years of history and multiple polities with differing origins and goals. There is no "generic" federation as all countries have names, though not all are federations or empires. Examples of federations and related entities include the Eimerican Federation, the CSSR, Srivijaya, the CSA/CSSA, Eimerican Commune, and Livonia. Examples of empires include the Reich (which because it's called the Reich could fit into the "generic empire" category), China, India, Russia, Scandinavia, Persia, Mali, Penglai, and Fusang.
• Gentleman Adventurer:
  • The Inquisitor Owen Niederung used his regular job as a paleontologist to travel around the world digging up supernatural artifacts.
  • Captain Nemo, an Indian prince, left India after being disgusted by court politics and land wars to travel through the world's oceans in an advanced submarine, the Nautilus. After his death, the Nautilus passed to his successor, Petros Arronax, who continued its journey until his own death, after which Nemo's granddaughter Sita took command of the Nautilus and used it to take her country and throne back from the Rasas.
• Gilligan Cut: In 2038, as Elias Anhorn's Crusaders and Chinese forces independently storm a Yavdian bunker where the remains of Wilhelmina's government in exile is hiding, general Gebhard Remmele orders his men to hold the line and not let any enemy soldier get past them into the bunker. Of course, right after he says that, the scene changes to "not that long afterward" when Elias Anhorn is executing survivors in the bunker command center, Kresge has been captured, Gebhard is badly wounded and hiding, and everyone else is dead.
• God and Satan Are Both Jerks: God is implied to have appeared as an Italian guy who likes to play checkers in the 1990s, while X-Division was investigating a serial killer. He didn't help much, but he gave Diana some good music tracks. Lucifer appeared in Part 2 as a malevolent archangel who wants to start the Apocalypse.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: Pagan gods are dependent on human worship for their powers. When their followers convert to other religions, the gods' powers weaken.
• The Good King: Kaiser Otto reigned as a just Kaiser for well over 100 years, leading his country through many crises to an era of peace and prosperity. He upheld the country's meritocratic traditions and reformed the old Metternich system into something much fairer and representative of the population.
• The Good Kingdom: The Reich of the 21st century is a beacon of liberty and freedom to the rest of the world. Its Augustinian Code is a constitution which guarantees certain rights and freedoms to all citizens equally, and many successive Kaisers have upheld the nation's traditions over the centuries, even in the face of threats like the Mexica Empire, the Angeloi, and the Soviets which all sought to destroy the Roman way of life. Brutally put to an end after Elias Anhorn's takeover turns the Reich into The Empire.
• Good Republic, Evil Empire: The Sunset Invasion saw the Reich, which had just left a century of peace, pitted against the Mexica Empire, an invading conqueror bent on destroying the Reich and enslaving and sacrificing its people. When Wilhelm III was killed by Ocuil Acatl, his son Siegfried rallied the legions and fought back for the sake of the peoples of Europe. In Part 5, this dynamic can again be seen in the meritocratic Reich's showdown with the totalitarian Soviet Russia, and then ironically in reverse with Elias' totalitarian Reich's showdown against a meritocratic Russia.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil:
  • In the Cold War and World War III, the Reich fought for liberty, meritocracy, and freedom for the people of the world against totalitarianism. Meanwhile, the Chinese dictatorship under Chiang Kai-Shek simply sought to maintain its own power, with the added ideology of Sinocentrism (the world should revolve around China) in opposition to the Reich, so while it is bad it isn't too bad. The Soviet Commune outwardly wanted world revolution and the replacement of capitalism and monarchy with equalism and republics, with Molotov and Varennikov going further and calling for the complete eradication of the Roman identity, making it even worse than China.
  • By 2035, the world has again been forced into a tense stalemate between two rival ideological blocs, the nationalists and religious fundamentalists led by Elias Anhorn's genocidal totalitarian Reich and an increasingly authoritarian China and its alliance of authoritarians. Wedged in between these two authoritarian blocs are a few scattered meritocracies and democracies, led by Russia, which lack the economic or military clout to stand up for themselves.
• Gold Digger: Maike Richter took advantage of a mentally unstable and recently widowed Helmut Kohl to seize control of his finances and affairs, representing him "in his name" as a far right activist who cozied up to neo-Angeloi militias and foreign dictators, even butting heads with the Kaiser himself.
• Golem:
  • The Inquisition made use of combat golems as shock troops in World War II, notably in the siege of Vienna.
  • An original Islamic version of a golem, which Zen named the takwin, appeared in much the similar role as the original golem. It was summoned by a grieving Muslim family to avenge their relative, who was killed by neo-Angeloi racists.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: In the finale of the Sentinel arc, it is revealed that Strughold, the leader of the former Syndicate, has been imprisoned inside a Sentinel black site for almost twenty years after the Syndicate fell. He has since gone mad, with Pavel Novak explaining his insanity was the result of learning the existence of Sentinel within the Syndicate. However, the contents of his ramblings, namely the phrase "What was shall be", implies he may have instead been exposed to the Worm's influence.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Taken to the extremes across all of angelkind. There are millions of good and bad angels, each influencing different people in various ways. Wilhelm constantly tries to suggest good things, while Raphael sows chaos by starting rebellions, usurping thrones, causing fifty-year-long religious wars, beginning the Apocalypse itself, and murdering several Kaisers outright.
• Good Ol' Boy: Josh is an extreme example, having embraced regressive far right views regarding women, political authority, and human rights and using violence to enforce those views on others.
• Götterdämmerung: What Archangel Gabriel ultimately intends to accomplish by becoming God and remaking the universe in his image, and is the title for the fourth installment of this story, focusing on this universe's World War II.
• Government Conspiracy: The Syndicate and Sentinel were conspiracies within the Roman government. The former's goal was to pave the way for an alien invasion, while the latter's goal was to subvert the former from within after the Syndicate began devoting resources to stalling and preventing the invasion.
• Government in Exile: The Samrat Chakravartin Purandarandasa of India flees to the Indian colonies in Africa following a revolution in 1918. His government is dissolved in 1940 after fascist Ethiopians conquer Indian Africa and execute him, but his great-granddaughter comes back to avenge him and take her birthright. The kingdoms of Kanata, Scandinavia, Russia, Yavdi, and Fox were also overthrown a few years later. After World War III and the fall of equalism, all were restored to their proper countries. In Part 5, a Roman government in exile is established in Kyiv after Elias' takeover, with Princess Wilhelmina taking part in its creation but refusing to lead it. As circumstances develop, Wilhelmina gradually accepts her responsibilities and takes up leadership roles, but by then it becomes too late as in 2038 Russia is steamrolled and conquered within a week of World War IV starting, and she is forced to flee to first Yavdi and then Persia, each time seeing more and more of her supporters be killed. It then gets even worse, as even though Wilhelmina firmly accepted her role as the next Kaiserin and leader of the Romans, the increasingly nationalist Persian government shut down her government in exile, expelled all of her supporters, and imprisoned her in a hospital with no way of contacting anyone.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Princess Wilhelmina is associated with the color purple and likes wearing purple clothes.
• Grand Finale: Zen wrote the final mission of X-Division in 2015 as a grand finale in itself, despite not even reaching the chronological halfway point in Part 5. To send off a story arc that lasted two real life years, there were plenty of callbacks, both to the original X-Division arc of 1992-2001 and the Fringe arc of 2008-2011. Anders and Angela visit Normandy again, seeing all of the sights they did on their first mission there in 1992. They meet the characters of Nick and Sarah again, whom they worked with during the Fringe arc. After 23 years of open hostilities, X-Division finally dealt with Pavel Novak, learned what Sentinel truly was, and got the truth out to the public. Finally, Anders met the Smoking Man one last time and Angela was reunited with her long-lost daughter Alexandra, while Wilhelm appears to ominously hint about the future.
• Grease Monkey:
  • As a teenager, Diana Frank liked tinkering with cars and motorcycles, having been taught how to do so by her mother Anne.
  • Thea isn't afraid to get her hands dirty while fixing particle accelerators, which impresses Alexandra's husband Magnus as he assumed she was a sheltered rich girl.
• The Great Depression: A massive economic downturn happened in 1929 as in real life, causing unemployment to skyrocket and productivity to decline. This created the desperate circumstances that led many to join Markos Angelos and give his movement greater power and influence. In Part 5, the world descends into an even worse economic depression after Elias' takeover of the Reich and the ensuing complete collapse of the global economy.
• Greek Fire: Greek Fire remained a potent Roman weapon from the medieval period onward. It was briefly stolen by a pirate in Part 1, forcing Saint Wilhelmina to recover it herself. It was even used during World War I but has since been phased out in favor of more effective napalm.
• The Greys: The Jotun aliens fit the description of stereotypical Roswell Gray aliens.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: In World War IV in 2038, the major powers are the Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem and Han's China, both totalitarian superpowers. The only free nation that can still stand up to them is Persia, but even that country has its own major flaws, namely a powerful xenophobic grassroots movement that has swept into power nationalists who hate Roman refugees and want to expel them all, among other anti-Roman policies adopted out of vengeance to Jerusalem. Despite its drawbacks, Persia is still the world's best chance at freedom.
• Gut Punch:
  • In 2001, Anders Humboldt was arrested and put on a show trial. However, X-Division broke him out. Just when it looked like they were going to get away with it, Sentinel brought down its hammer. The division was shut down and the agents were declared fugitives. Anders' mother was assassinated, and so was the Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra, X-Division's biggest ally. Just when it looked like it couldn't get worse...the November 9 attacks happened, and Diana's mother was killed in it. The attacks would directly lead to the Patriot Act, which would vastly expand Sentinel's influence. X-Division ended up isolated in a cabin in the woods, watching as Sentinel won over and over again.
  • In 2030, Elias masterminds a coup in which assassins loyal to him massacre the Diet during a national address from the Kaiser. Diana and her Athanatoi agents, having learned about the plot, rush to stop it, but they find Elias had known of their efforts for some time, and despite their best efforts, the massacre proceeds as planned. Diana is then killed by Elias' men.
  • In 2034, Anders Humboldt returns to Constantinople to write one last story about Elias Anhorn. Although he gets most of the article written, Argus storms the office and kills him before he can escape. Meanwhile, Angela Hansen heads to Damascus to drive her family out of the country. But the drive does not go as planned. Although they narrowly escape the nuking of the Middle East, her parents are killed in a car crash, Alex's friends are brutally lynched, and she herself is ambushed and killed by Argus literally a hundred feet from the border.
• Have You Seen My God?: No one in Heaven can contact Him, leaving the angels to their own devices and doing what they believe to be His will. Temporarily subverted when God seems to have shown up in an Italian neighborhood in Constantinople in the 1990s to dance and talk about music before leaving again.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam:
  • Wilhelm Karl, after being constantly humiliated and forced to obey Elias Anhorn's every order to tear down the Reich and everything it stood for, realized the error of his past "vulture" ways. Hoping to make amends for his actions, he found a way to undo the blackmail binding him. Freed from Elias's control, he immediately left the country to help overseas resistance forces. After a dream in which he makes amends with dead family members he had previously wronged, his plane is suddenly blown up by an orbital space laser, and Elias uses his death as a rallying cry to boost his own power.
  • Jacob Baldouin was a former member of Thierry Baudet's inner circle who was promoted to Elias Anhorn's Committee after 2030. After two years of presiding over the Committee's authoritarian policies, he decided he'd had enough and that he had become no better than the corrupt mainstream establishment he thought he was fighting against. He walked out of the room, intending to figure out what he would do next, only for a suicide bomber to blow him up, allowing Elias to turn him into a Committee martyr murdered by Mexicanist terrorists.
• Heroes "R" Us:
  • The main four members of the X-Division (Anders, Angela, Olga, and Diana) count. Their mission from 1992 to 2015 is to stop an impending alien invasion and their human allies in the Syndicate and Sentinel.
  • By 2037, the torch seems to have been taken up by X-Division's children (Alex Humboldt and Alexandra Hansen) as well as Princess Wilhelmina, Thea Tesla, and Magnus Kvensen, as they work to oppose Elias Anhorn's regime from abroad.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Olga Kirova was introduced as an enemy assassin and super-spy to defeat Anne Frank in World War III, but after learning of her past (long hidden from her by the Party) and meeting Anne herself, she eventually turns on the Soviets and joins Anne in taking down Valentin Varennikov.
  • In Part 4, Ludwig Angelos, the son of dictator Markos Angelos, is introduced as a kid who is being bullied. He got rid of his bully by leaving him to die in a loyalist bombing run while everyone else escapes to a bunker, embracing an ideal of strength. However, by the end of that part, he realizes the error of not only what he had done but also reject his father's brutal regime. By Part 5, he has become a Basque elder who intentionally abandoned the Angelos name and peacefully leads his adopted community for the better.
  • By Part 5, many of the main antagonist nations from Parts 1-4 have redeemed themselves as heroic meritocracies and democracies opposing authoritarianism in the Reich.
    • In Part 1, the Mexica Empire was first introduced in the form of Ocuil Acatl's invasion fleet. In Part 5, the meritocratic nation of Mexico leads an Eimerican Federation civilian fleet across the Atlantic to deliver supplies and evacuate European refugees. The flagship of this fleet is called the Ocuil Acatl.
    • In Parts 1 and 2, Persia was a recurring antagonist in the Middle East, fighting the Reich numerous times over parts of Mesopotamia. In Part 5, Persia welcomes thousands of Roman refugees fleeing totalitarianism and is committed to a meritocratic way of life. Unfortunately, this hospitality doesn't last, as by June 2039, all of the Roman refugees have been expelled by a nationalist government.
    • In Parts 1-3, Lithuania and Scandinavia frequently declared wars on the Reich and Russia, notably in the Commonwealth Wars which saw the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth rampage across Eastern Europe. By Part 5, both nations have given up their militaristic culture, with Scandinavian adopting a pacifist democratic system and Lithuania becoming a meritocracy, and now they are firmly opposed to totalitarianism. Lithuania in particular has developed the Tiger's Defense military cybersecurity network designed to protect the world's Internet against malicious actors. However, by 2039, Scandinavia has returned to militarism as a survival mechanism after Jerusalem began a genocide against its people and poisoned its very land with chemical weapons, while Lithuania lost Tiger's Defense and likewise takes up militarism once again.
    • Russia was an antagonist in the later Part 3, some of Part 4, and the first half of Part 5 as the Soviets, but after World War III, it became a meritocratic monarchy. After 2030 and the Reich's descent into totalitarianism, Russia has effectively become the leader of the free world and the anti-authoritarian movement. At least until the Reich invades it and effortlessly crushes it within a week in 2039.
    • After Russia is nuked on the first day of World War IV and conquered a week later, former antagonist Persia, which had fought the Reich repeatedly during Parts 1-2 and before the point of divergence for thousands of years, takes up the mantle of "leader of the free world" against the totalitarian powers.
• Hegemonic Empire: Rome has been the dominant superpower throughout the whole series, with land on almost every continent, the largest military and economy, and a political system and national language copied all over the world.
• Hell Has New Management: After the Apocalypse ended in Part 2, Lucifer was locked away in a cage somewhere in Hell, and the demon Fergus seizes power as the new king of Hell.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Having embraced the Committee's anti-feminist propaganda, Josh hates women and views them as less than him, even beating his own wife and having her sent to her execution for a minor offense, then beating his second wife to death for not making a dinner he liked.
• Heroic Bastard: Prince Kirill, the illegitimate son of Tsaritsa Sbyslava of Russia and Kaiser Friedrich the Glorious, pressed his claim to the Roman throne but was not a jerk about it, instead fighting his half-sister, Saint Wilhelmina, honorably and respectfully and expressing regret that they have to fight at all. His descendants, known as the Romanovs, remain influential nobles in Russia, with the youngest being Ilyana Romanova.
• Heroic Lineage: The Hohenzollerns claim descent from the hero Friedrich the Great, who united most of Europe under his rule by both diplomacy and conquest.
• Heroic Neutral: A perfect description of the Reich trying to keep the status quo, as its main diplomatic stance is neutral interventionism where it will only fight to maintain balance in the world. Throughout Part 2, Russia, Lithuania, and Scandinavia went to war with each other constantly, and although the Reich always came to Russia's aid, when negotiating the peace the Reich enforced the status quo whenever possible.
• Heroic Russian Émigré: A large number of the Russian population, including most of the nobility and the two surviving Rurikid heirs, fled to the Tsarist government in exile in Sweden.
• Heroes Prefer Swords:
  • The weapon of choice of Friedrich the Great and his successors was Enonon, a medieval sword symbolizing their legitimacy.
  • Subverted with the angel Constantine, who used a lance as opposed to his sword-using brother Wilhelm.
  • Once guns become commonplace and easy to use, swords become a rarity until Princess Wilhelmina begins wielding Enonon again in 2039.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: The Smoking Man initially seems to be helping the aliens take over the planet, but secretly he was actually working to stop the invasion by developing a cure and vaccine to the alien virus which would enslave humanity.
• Hiding Behind Religion:
  • In Part 2, angels and demons hid behind the Iconoclast Reformation to start the Apocalypse. There was nothing wrong with the religion itself, as Wilhelm pointed out, but the movement was corrupted by supernatural influences.
  • In Part 5, Elias Anhorn and his Committee hide behind Christianity, specifically an extremely warped interpretation of the Bible, to commit unspeakable atrocities, and murder anyone else who interprets the Bible differently.
• The High Middle Ages: This series begins in the 13th century, during this era, but it often jumps back 200 years to fill in the gaps between the start of the game in 1066 and the Aztec invasion of the 1240s.
• Hired Guns:
  • The mercenaries in Part 2. Some seemed to be very well educated and tried to exploit legal loopholes to get excused for war crimes, leading to the Trial of the Hundred Mercenaries, a defining moment for the development of the rule of law in the Reich.
  • In Part 5, Argus is a prominent private military corporation which trains mercenaries for hire until being bought out by Tesla Dynamic and becoming a paramilitary organization under Elias Anhorn.
• Historical Character's Fictional Relative:
  • The fictional Gediminas Princip is the Lithuanian cousin of the real life Gavrilo Princip...and also took his role as a terrorist assassin who set off World War I.
  • Gavrilo Princip eventually survives World War I, gets married, and has a family, raising a fictional son Mihailo (who in Part 5 becomes the equivalent of John McCain). Mihailo in turn has his own son, Slobodan Princip...who is a (non-war criminal) counterpart of the notorious real life figure Slobodan Milosevic.
  • Victoria Louise is based on the real life German duchess Victoria Louise, one of the children of Kaiser Wilhelm II, but Zen moved her birth year back to make her a similar age as Otto, and her father is the fictional Duke Franz Ferdinand, leader of the Maximist branch of the Hohenzollerns (and who should not be confused for his friend Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand, who is actually based on the OTL archduke). Duke Franz Ferdinand is depicted with photos of Wilhelm II.
  • Anne Frank survives World War II, marries Peter (the boy who had hidden with her in the attic in OTL), and has a fictional daughter, Diana, and son, Tobias.
• Historical In-Joke:
  • The Inquisitor Munster explains that in 1962, nuclear war erupted between the Reich and the Soviet Commune over Cuba, but the Inquisition reset time to avert that.
  • The Hohenzollernverse's version of Forrest Gump has Forrest be responsible for much the same events in the original film, only at the end he runs into the battlefield of Parnu and trips a fleeing Dmitry Yazov, ending the war.
• Historical Rap Sheet: The Smoking Man was responsible for murdering Abraham Green (Martin Luther King Jr.), Ragnar Beck (John F. Kennedy), and Mikhail Gorbachev. He also installed Zolton Huicton (Saddam Hussein) as a dictator in Mexico and caused the Miracle on Ice hockey victory.
• History Repeats:
  • When her grandson Friedrich is born, Wilhelmina flashes back to her own childhood, remembering her earliest memory of her great-grandmother Zita taking her to visit Otto in 1985, while her mother was trapped in Vienna. This scene was previously shown in 1985 and featured a conversation in which Zita encourages Otto to come out of his slump. Wilhelmina sees it from her own point of view as a three-year-old girl. In the present day, she promises Friedrich she will make sure his childhood isn't as dark.
  • In 2036, Wilhelmina visits an abandoned house where fifty years earlier, her mother signed the peace treaty ending World War III. She sees echoes of that past event there and listens to her mother's words during the conference.
• Holy City: Jerusalem remains a holy city here as in real life.
• Holy Roman Empire: One of the predecessors of the Reich and the empire Friedrich the Great eventually came to rule. It was united with the Byzantine Empire by political marriage and became a single realm with it under Friedrich the Glorious.
• Hope Springs Eternal:
  • Even in the darkest hours of 1941, when all else seemed lost and he was reduced to a handful of Greek villages against the Angeloi onslaught, Otto remained hopeful he could turn things around, and he ultimately did.
  • Sixty years later, in the aftermath of the November 9 attacks and Sentinel triumphant, Anders maintained hope, believing that as long as he was still alive, there was still a chance of defeating Sentinel.
  • In 2037, although global meritocracy/democracy is at its weakest, there is still hope the future will be better, as the true heir to the throne, Princess Wilhelmina, is still free to lead global opposition against Elias Anhorn. A year later, though, that hope is quickly snuffed out when Elias detonates hundreds of nukes over every major city and conquers Russia, starting World War IV. Hope does return when Wilhelmina ultimately takes up the mantle of leadership and begins organizing a resistance in Persia, but in 2039 that is again snuffed out when Persia dismantles her movement, imprisons her, and exiles her supporters to die. Still, there is a shred of hope even after all that as the supporters resolve to find a new home where they can keep their ideals alive.
• The Horde: The Mongols and Timurids were hordes of horse-riding nomads coming in from the east to plunder and conquer. While not horse riders due to not having horses, the Aztecs fulfilled the same purpose but from the west.
• Hordes from the East: The Mongols and Timurids of Part 1 invaded from the east, sweeping aside the Saray and Ghaznavid empires like they were nothing and going toe to toe with the Reich.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen:
  • The Soviet Commune went from being a spacefaring nuclear superpower on par with the Reich and China to being a second-rate backwater with a perpetually broken economy and a problem with drug cartels and corruption. However, by 2030, under the leadership of Olga Kirova Russia had stabilized its economy and overcome the cartels and corruption...just in time to deal with a hostile totalitarian Reich south of the border.
  • Mexico went from being the feared Mexica Empire, whose territories spanned across the New World and both sides of the Atlantic and whose armies went toe to toe with the Reich, to being a third-rate backwater with a perpetually broken economy and a problem with sectarian terrorists and corruption. However, after 2020, investment and aid from the Eimerican Federation succeeded in stabilizing Mexico, leaving it still mostly poor but at least stable now.
• Humanity's Wake: This describes the aftermath of ancient humanity's end 150,000 years ago. After an unspecified cataclysm, humanity started over as hunter-gatherers, with few ruins of their former greatness.
• Human Sacrifice: Practiced by the Aztecs in Part 1 before being abolished in Part 2. Mexicanist extremists in Part 5 and Tarascan in Part 3 attempted to bring it back.
• Humongous Mecha: Near the end of Part 2, a mysterious giant humanoid robot appears in the countryside outside Naples, wreaking havoc on local villages before Kaiser Friedrich Augustin IV leads an army to fight it. After the ensuing battle, the giant disappears, leaving no traces.
• I Am Not My Father:
  • Princess Wilhelmina ultimately came to realize that to be a good person and great ruler, she did not have to constantly emulate everything her mother did. She did not have to be a second Elisabeth Alexandra, only be true to herself and her ideals.
  • Wilhelm Karl insisted he was not his father and spend his first twelve years on the throne attempting to be the opposite of Otto, believing this was how he could forge his own path. He later realizes that he didn't have to tear everything down to be himself, but by then it was too late.
  • Josh similarly insisted he was not his father, who was an abusive alcoholic who beat him and his mother and shot his innocent dog in the head while trying to turn a young Josh from a kindhearted kid into a cruel man. When he meets his father again years later, he realizes they aren't so different after all...but then Josh rejects his father again, saying he is what his father failed to be.
  • Alex Humboldt intentionally went down a different path from both his father and mother, as his parents wanted him to have a civilian life far from any fighting.
  • Anders Humboldt grew up believing his father Walter was an insane and immoral scientist who got an assistant killed in a lab accident and was subsequently institutionalized. For decades, he refused to call Walter anything other than "Walter," believing he was a madman. Anders raised himself to be different from Walter and not follow in his footsteps. His sister Anna likewise holds the same views towards Walter.
  • Conrad Humboldt likewise also hated his father Robert Bischoff, even adopting his mother's last name to reject him. Conrad considered Robert a traitor for apparently siding with the Angeloi during World War II (while Conrad sided with the loyalists), not realizing that Robert had been forced to work for the Angeloi against his will and was secretly sabotaging their nuclear weapons research program. Even after learning the truth, Conrad kept the Humboldt name and passed it down to his son, Walter.
  • Theodor Tesla claimed he was much different from his adopted uncle and predecessor as CEO, Wilhelm Tesla, who had masterminded a crazy plot to destroy both the Hohenzollernverse and Annionaverse to make himself the god of a new reality. At first, it seemed like he was quite different as CEO of Tesla Dynamic. However, Theodor ended up being just as crazy in the end, if not even crazier.
• I Have No Son!:
  • Wilhelm Karl feared Otto thought of him like this, especially after he killed him, but this is subverted when Wilhelm Karl converses with the ghost of his father, who explains he was only sad and disappointed in himself for not guiding Wilhelm Karl better.
  • Josh Johansen's abusive father Danuta definitely thought of his son like this, as Josh as a child was kind and timid instead of hypermasculine and violent like Danuta. However, by the time Josh meets his father again to receive this revelation, he has become even more bloodthirsty and brutal than his own father... and this time, he himself disowns his father.
  • As children, Theodor Tesla and his younger sister Thea were orphaned after Red Army Faction terrorists killed their parents in the 1990s. Theodor grew up to be a bitter and spiteful man hating everything remotely left-wing, and once Elias Anhorn seized power, he joined Elias' regime and passed strict laws against anything he perceived as left-wing, including women's rights. On the other hand, his sister Thea, who had fallen in love with her coworker Alex Humboldt, did not share her brother's hatred. When Theodor ordered Thea to choose between him or Alex, Thea chose Alex. This led Theodor to attempt to hunt down the two of them with Argus. When Argus surrounds and prepares to execute them, Theodor declares Thea is no sister of his for constantly siding with Alex against him...but Thea herself embraces the disowning.
  • Ruby Moreau has disowned her little brother Kurt Moreau for staying with the Argus private security corporation after Argus became the Committee's paramilitary secret police.
• The Idealist:
  • Anders Humboldts is an idealist who believes in revealing the objective truth to the public, even when it is a painful truth the public does not want to hear. He fought for 23 years to expose a government conspiracy to support an alien invasion of Earth, believing it was in the people's interests to know of it.
  • Prince Horst von Hohenzollern believes in a universal ideal of justice which is his duty to uphold. He went into the military with the hope of bringing justice to evildoers and protecting the weak and helpless, in line with traditional ideals of knightly chivalry.
  • Thierry Baudet envisions a Reich free of what he views as the party cartel, the mainstream political establishment which has ruled the Reich for two hundred years. He considers the establishment as having grown stagnant and complacent, content in keeping the unsustainable status quo while social inequality increases and the environment collapses around the world. Forming a new political faction, The Forum, Thierry hopes to present a new opinion and political voice to represent those forgotten by the party cartel. With The Forum in politics, he hopes that the party cartel can either be set on a new and better course or be replaced with The Forum to bring new blood into government.
  • Olga Kirova calls Wilhelmina an idealist and encourages her to remain hopeful while Olga handles all of the gritty and pragmatic stuff.
• I Just Want to Be Normal:
  • Princess Wilhelmina doesn't see anything wrong with being a princess, but she also doesn't want to stay above everyone else. Sometimes, she just wants to have a normal life.
  • Anne Frank attempted to raise her daughter Diana away from the rough and lonely life of a resistance leader, spy, and Athanatoi agent, making sure Diana had both of her parents growing up (unlike Anne, who lost her parents at 12). But her efforts weren't successful, as Diana ultimately followed her mother into the Athanatoi against her will.
  • Diana herself also tried raising her son Alex away from the life of an Athanatoi agent, going as far as to not teach him any fighting skills. Unlike her own mother, she was definitely successful, as Alex instead became a physicist.
• Immortality: Various supernatural and celestial beings are immortal, although most can still be killed.
  • Vampires don't age, but they can be killed by decapitation, among other things, or turned back into normal humans by the Inquisition's technology.
  • Angels and demons, as celestial beings, are immortal, but they can be killed with specific anti-angel or anti-demon weapons or spells. However, angels cannot be permanently killed, instead reviving after several centuries.
  • Presumably God is immortal, but little is known about God.
  • Pagan gods are also immortal, with many having existed for thousands of years, but they can be hurt like normal humans and possibly killed by supernatural abilities like demonic powers. One pagan god sacrificed his life force to fuel a powerful spell, although he said he would revive after several centuries, much like angels.
  • A 10th century Frenchwoman named Jenny inadvertently gained immortality after making a wish with a traveling djinn that turned her into another djinn. She spent the next thousand years granting wishes and watching the wishes inevitably backfire on everyone, until X-Division met her and Anders used his wish to grant her own: to become mortal again.
  • Sentinel's supersoldiers are a rare non-magical example. They are almost completely invincible, surviving the most deadly situations like being tossed in an ocean for months, being crushed by a garbage truck, electrocuted on power lines, shot dozens of times, blown up in big explosions, and being set on fire. They can only be killed by decapitation or after being reverted to normal humans by a Sentinel failsafe.
  • The Worm is immortal due to existing outside of time.
• Imperial China: China is still a monarchy under the Ming Dynasty, although the Song (Australian), Jin (Californian), and Tran (Vietnamese) dynasties also still exist. China was Rome's archnemesis in Parts 3-4 and a friendly ally and rival to Rome after 1989 in Part 5. However, as of 2030, the Song Dynasty was overthrown and replaced with a republic, while the Jin Dynasty was marginalized by a powerful nationalist legislature and the Tran ceded most power and influence to the transnational Srivijaya Commonwealth. And throughout that decade, the nationalist Han Xianyu amasses power in mainland China, by 2039 turning it into another totalitarian regime opposed to the Reich.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Initially played straight during Otto's escape from Berlin in Part 4, where the Angeloi soldiers shooting at him all missed, something he remarked on, but later revealed to be subverted because the now-angel Saint Wilhelmina, secretly possessing Victoria Louise, redirected all of the bullets away for their safety.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: In the Fringe arc of Part 5, the Annionaverse counterpart of Angela Hansen secretly switches places with her Hohenzollernverse counterpart as part of the Annionaverse X-Division's plan to spy on its counterpart and sabotage all of its operations. This trope is actually subverted because the imposter herself did a very bad job of disguising her own identity, like naming the wrong actors for movies, the wrong movie endings, inadvertently insulting late family and friends her counterpart was very close to, and even dismissing the entire Sentinel conspiracy. Yet she only says this stuff to Anders Humboldt, who despite dozens of warning flags overlooks everything and sees nothing wrong. The imposter soon learns of Anders' cluelessness and takes it up a notch by intentionally saying more errors just to see how far she can go. She is ultimately only busted when her Hohenzollernverse counterpart herself escapes imprisonment and outright calls Anders about her situation.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Anne Frank developed a tactic she called "blind firing," in which she learned to instinctively fire without stopping to aim but still hit her target with a generally fatal shot. This tactic was passed down to her daughter, Diana, and Olga Kirova and Angelica Haus.
• In Medias Res: The story begins in 1236, when the Roman Empire was dealing with the 13th Century Crisis, with events from 1066 to 1236 revealed later on.
• Insecure Protagonist, Arrogant Antagonist: As of 2035, there are multiple insecure protagonists and arrogant antagonists.
  • Princess Wilhelmina is nervous and shy. She does not like leading people, nor does she think she is a good leader. She fears herself or her family being targeted by her many enemies if she stands up. However, when she realizes she will still be targeted regardless of what she does, she becomes more assertive.
  • Alex Humboldt and Alexandra Hansen barely escaped a genocidal regime which wants them dead. Now in exile, they are split on what to do next: either protest the injustices happening at home and risk their family still trapped there being targeted, or stay quiet and concede to the regime that way. Alex is worried about his new life and if he can really make a difference in the world.
  • Josh has become a smug and arrogant man who gloats about his superiority, beats down everyone who opposes him, and constantly spouts hypermasculine and ultranationalist propaganda. Sometimes, he mocks his enemies, saying he will kill their families right before killing them, or mocks any opponents who are still alive, saying he has completely won.
  • Many protagonists remark on how supporters and important individuals of the Jerusalem regime, among them Elias Anhorn and Theodor Tesla, have a trademark smug look on their faces, as if gloating about their victory.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite the point of divergence happening in the 11th century, many elements of 20th-21st century society are still remarkably familiar compared to OTL. Many movies, video games, books, and even video game mods are still the same, with varying degrees of difference. World War II even plays out similarly to real life, with the final Eastern Europe postwar borders nearly exactly the same. The archangel Uriel justifies this as something called dimensional convergence, where two universes start to overlap in events and cultures despite having very different origins. He warns the ultimate outcome of convergence is the two universes overlapping so much that they destroy each other, and his goal is to cause a major event in one universe (World War I) which would cause the two universes to diverge again.
• Interdimensional Travel Device:
  • Walter invented two separate methods of crossing over to the Annionaverse, one which would tear a hole in reality to get there (destabilizing the Annionaverse's reality in the process), and the other by means of Angela Hansen tapping into psychic powers to bring everyone over there.
  • David Jansen created another method of crossing over by tearing open a similar portal at a weak point in reality, only he powered it by using a crystal in Mina Schaefer's robotic arm.
  • Annionaverse Walter Humboldt found two other ways of crossing over. In the first method, he waits for the two universes' frequencies to line up and then "pushing" the person/object into the other universe. In the second, he uses the law of conservation of mass to "swap" two objects of the same mass.
• Invaded States of America: The Reich launched the Sunrise Invasion in the late 18th century with the goal of avenging the Sunset Invasion and permanently ending the Mexica Empire as a major threat. A century later, Roman troops invaded the Meskwaki Empire from allied Kanata as part of the Great Eimerican Wars to maintain the status quo in North Eimerica.
• Invading Refugees:
  • In the 2010s, many Mexican refugees fled Mexico because of the brutality of the so-called Mexicanist State terrorist group (MSC). They settled in Roman Neurhomania, where locals feared they could have been infiltrated by terrorists and turned into an invasion force for MSC.
  • In the 2030s, many Roman refugees fled the Reich because of the brutality of the so-called Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem regime. They settled in Russia and Persia, where locals fear they may have brought the regime's spies and beliefs with them as a fifth column. These locals ultimately influence the Persian government, which becomes nationalistic and xenophobic to the point where it expels all Romans and exiles them to certain death in 2039.
• Invincible Hero: Saint Wilhelmina never lost a single battle and even received an in game power up that boosted her martial stats to ridiculous levels so that it was almost impossible for her to lose any game battle, even if she was ridiculously outnumbered.
• Invincible Villain: Josh Johansen shaped up to be an invincible villain, as he hadn't lost a single battle since his fight with Alex in middle school. Every single battle he participated in only makes him stronger and more arrogant. He went from beating up protesters to slaughtering East African rebels to teabagging the body of the chancellor of India right after murdering her and crippling the emperor of India. He even went up against the legendary Olga Kirova herself and easily won. His gear also got an upgrade as he continues. After defeating Diana Frank, he took her motorcycle and modified it into a dangerous weapon of war. After killing Olga Kirova, he takes her weapons and makes them his own. In April 2039, he ultimately got his comeuppance due to the ingenuity and teamwork of Alex and his friends countering his strength and brutality.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves:
  • The Soviets claim this of the capitalist system in Parts 3-5, believing the Reich would inevitably collapse in on itself due to the wealth inequality and social stratification of its society. In 1986, Vyacheslav Molotov warned that if the Reich continued on its current path, it would suffer the same fate as the Soviets within fifty years. In a way, he was completely right, as by 2036 the Reich had become an even worse totalitarian regime.
  • When negotiating a deal with the aliens, the Syndicate threatened to make humanity destroy itself in nuclear war to deny a habitable Earth to the aliens.
  • The Worm cult wants humanity to destroy itself in nuclear war so they can rule over the ashes.
• Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher still exists as the Iron Lady (known as the Eisenfrau) and pursued a hawkish foreign policy alongside Roland Wilson and Golda Meier.
• Isn't It Ironic?: Attempted to be averted by Zen every time he posts a link for recommended listening music, such as using "Every Breath You Take" when X-Division is literally being watched by the Sentinel conspiracy as they escape certain death. Even the genre and era of the songs chosen is tailored to the time period and character. When Angela is one of the main characters, the songs chosen are usually hits from the 80s and 90s, as Angela constantly listens to them on her Walkman. When Wilhelmina becomes a main character, Zen begins using video game music as Wilhelmina grew up on video games. In newer chapters, Zen even posts commentary on the context each track was originally used in and how that same context even applies to this story.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Due to this being an alternate history, there are plenty.
  • Of course, Istanbul is Constantinople. In the Annionaverse, Constantinople was renamed to Konstanstadt.
  • Many Central/Eastern European cities still have German names. For example, Gdansk, Wroclaw, and Kaliningrad are still known as Danzig, Breslau, and Konigsberg.
  • New York City is known as both Manhattan and Gunnolfsfell.
  • Quebec City is known as Markland.
  • Boston is Harbor City.
  • Germany, France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Balkans, Romania, and Turkey are known as Germania, Gallia, Britannia, Hibernia, Caledonia, Hispania, Lusitania, Italia, Illyria, Dacia, and Anatolia.
  • Although the name Iran is used by Persians, the nation is still generally known as Persia by non-Persians.
  • Ethiopia is mainly known as Abyssinia, although Ethiopia is also acceptable.
  • The Americas are known as the Eimericas, although China calls it Fusang and Mexico calls it Cemanahuac.
  • Australia is known as Penglai.
  • The Byzantine Empire was never known as such and is always referred to as either the Empire of the Greeks, the Eastern/Sceond Empire, or simply as the Roman Empire/Basileia Rhomaion.
• Jack of All Stats:
  • Saint Wilhelmina's game stats in Part 1 were the highest of any playable Hohenzollern ever.
  • In Part 5, when war broke out between the Reich and the Soviet Commune, Zen gave the Soviets an insane boost to all military-related stats. In 2039, when World War IV began, the same stat boost was reused and given to China.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Josh arguably comes across as even worse than the main villain of the Committee story arc, Elias Anhorn. While Elias' motives are understandable and he is brutal and crazy in his methods, Josh is even worse as not only shows no remorse but in fact feels nothing but glee and euphoria when he kills, making even Theodor Tesla scared of him. He has a terribly warped view of toxic masculinity and is willing to insult and abuse his own uncle Gustav if Gustav doesn't adhere to those standards. He has no qualms with murdering innocents at all and just lives to make people suffer.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Josh is an irredeemable jerk whose jerkiness gets worse and worse with not only nobody to call him out but also everyone around him encouraging and celebrating his worst qualities. He has now become a brutal soldier who feels nothing but euphoria when he guns down innocent civilians, and he'd gladly do it again. For higher profile kills like the chancellor of India, he will even teabag their bodies to assert his dominance.
• Justice Will Prevail: Prince Horst's motto during his campaign against terrorist groups in Mexico and Malaya. He believed in a universal code of justice and spent his life (also sacrificing it) in defense of it. Ironically, Elias Anhorn also believes the same thing...though his definition of justice wildly differs.
• Just the First Citizen: Friedrich the Great considered himself merely the first citizen among the Roman people, and Wilhelmina wants to follow in his footsteps.

K-M

• Kaiserreich: The Reich has been occasionally referred to as the Kaiserreich. It is a German-style monarchy which in the past had heavy militaristic, aristocratic, and industrial themes. The head of state is referred to as the Kaiser, and portraits of historical German and Austrian monarchs were used to depict various Kaisers. The ruling dynasty is also named the Hohenzollerns, although they are not the historical Hohenzollerns. In the game code for Part 5, Zen explains he gave the Reich a special government type called "Kaiserreich."
• Kick the Dog: Josh's father Danuta straight up forces Josh to shoot his dog in the head as a punishment for not being manly enough.
• Kid Hero All Grown-Up: Anne, Diana, Olga, Angela, and Otto were all introduced as children or teenagers and are/were last seen in old age.
• Kill It with Fire: The go-to solution for neutralizing Worm artifacts is to have an angel teleport them into the sun and incinerate them there. Sarah outright says to kill them with fire.
• Kill Sat:
  • The Reich pursued its own version of the real life Strategic Defense Initiative (here called SVI from its German translation), a network of satellites designed to shoot down incoming nukes and get around mutually assured destruction. Unlike in real life, the project was completed and the satellite network went online in 1985. Over the next few decades, it was upgraded to not only shoot down nukes with lasers but also hit targets on the ground with energy blasts and rail gun tungsten rounds. In 2038, it met its end as China destroyed it with anti-satellite weapons, filling Earth's orbit with high speed debris and rendering space travel extremely difficult.
  • In April 2039, Ryukyu deployed its own orbital weapons network, dubbed Ten-Gushiku. Each Amamikiyu satellite in the Ten-Gushiku network is equipped with multiple independently firing coilguns which fire projectiles with far more power than the Roman system ever did, obliterating an entire Chinese fleet in its initial deployment.
• King Incognito: In 1989, as pro-democracy protesters gather in Nanjing to demand an end to the military junta ruling China for the last 50 years, the junta instead sends in tanks to crush them. As the tanks roll in, a lone man in a suit emerges from the crowd to stand in their way. He announces he is the Emperor of China himself, having gone incognito to participate in the protests away from the prying eyes of the junta, and orders the soldiers to stand down. They oblige, and the junta collapses soon afterward.
• Klingon Promotion:
  • After he returns from Europe defeated by the Reich and Scandinavia, Tlacaelel Acatl bribes the Mexica court and then kills the huetlatoani with a single gunshot, taking his throne for himself at the end of Part 1.
  • In Part 5, Valentin Varennikov has General Secretary Gorbachev assassinated and then seizes power for himself.
  • After Valentin is himself captured by Olga Kirova and Anne Frank and effectively deposed, Dmitry Yazov releases a fake story claiming he had been killed and then seizes power for himself.
  • In 2030, with Thierry Baudet's CB party victorious in the recent examinations and about to form a new administration, Thierry's second-in-command Elias Anhorn stages a coup which not only wipes out almost all of the Roman government but kills Thierry and most of his inner circle, leaving nobody to oppose his seizure of power.
  • In April 2039, after the Battle of Isfahan in which Elias Anhorn is killed and Theodor Tesla is captured, the remaining members of the Committee reorganize their own government to sideline Theodor, forget Elias, and strip all lower-ranking Committee leaders of their authority, centralizing power in the top three Regents: Philemon Moria, Josiah Burkard, and Heinrich Dandolo.
• Lack of Empathy: Wilhelm Karl initially showed a lack of empathy when his sister and mother died, although this is implied to not be the full story, and Wilhelm Karl claims the media took his reactions out of context to create controversy. He most certainly showed no sympathy (even fake sympathy) when he murdered his father and his brother died. In one high-profile case involving Japanese democracy activists protesting outside the palace, he not only showed no empathy but ordered them all arrested and deported back to certain death in Japan... although by this point he was forced to show no sympathy and do all this by Elias Anhorn. In reality, he felt completely disgusted by what he had done.
• Lady of War: Even as older women, Anne and Diana Frank still maintained an aura of elegance and strength as they put their enemies in their places. In her older years, Olga Kirova still joined the battlefield on some occasions, intervening to save Alex Humboldt and Alexandra Hansen from Argus at the age of almost 70. Here, she used her commanding and intimidating presence, as well as her reputation and political power, to secure the outcomes she wanted independently of fighting.
• The Late Middle Ages: Part 1 continued through to the Late Middle Ages, when the Mexica Empire was decisively pushed out of Europe and the Augustinian Code was written.
• The Last Dance:
  • The angel Constantine went down in a blaze of glory at the end of the doomed timeline, using all of his remaining strength to save his brother Wilhelm and send him back in time.
  • Angela Hansen also went down in a blaze of glory at the end of her life. Surrounded by Argus mercenaries out to slaughter her and her family, she sacrificed herself and took out as many of Argus as she could to save her family.
  • To protect her friend, Princess Wilhelmina, from being captured by Elias Anhorn's Crusaders, Olga Kirova sacrificed herself to take down as many enemies as possible to distract them from Wilhelmina's escape, ultimately being executed by Elias.
• Last of His Kind:
  • Kaiserin Victoria Louise was the last of the distant Maximist branch of Hohenzollerns. The rest of her family had been murdered by Markos Angelos in the final days of World War II, while her children were legally considered descendants of her husband Otto's main Siegfriedist branch. Subverted when it is found that both branches are really descended from the same original branch, making the distinctions pointless.
  • The senator Izinchi Ochimeca is the only survivor of Elias Anhorn's Reichstag massacre, having luckily escaped by virtue of being out of town for her sister's wedding.
  • August, an aspiring doctor, finds himself the last survivor of the Schweinfurt family after Elias Anhorn ordered them purged.
  • As of April 2039, Ilyana Romanova is the last of the Russian Romanov family, and the main branch of the Hohenzollern dynasty has been reduced to two members: Princess Wilhelmina and her grandson Friedrich.
• Last Stand:
  • After the fall of Constantinople in 1941, it looked like it was the end of the loyalist cause. From a village outside Constantinople, Otto rallied his troops for one last offensive to retake the city, knowing if he lost, it would be all over for him.
  • In April 2039, as World War IV reaches its climax, the remaining forces of the free world make their last stand against the armies of totalitarianism. In Scandinavia, the former rebel Clara leads the townspeople of Tingvalla in a desperate battle to defend their town against an invading army. In Lithuania, Boris Bradziunas and his men engage their enemies in trench warfare despite being heavily outnumbered. In Mesopotamia, the young soldier Samir Tetchu and his comrades are besieged by an overwhelming and unrelenting onslaught, leaving them no choice but to dig in and hold the line. At Hawaii, the brilliant Ryukyuan admiral Higa Ryunosuke leads his fleet of outdated battleships, old aircraft carriers, captured enemy ships, and exiled navies from conquered nations against the most powerful enemy fleets in the Pacific. And finally, in Persia, Princess Wilhelmina's resistance faces its greatest challenge as Elias Anhorn personally leads an army to invade Isfahan, while the scientists Alex, Alexandra, Thea, and Magnus prepare to fight Theodor Tesla and Josh Johansen.
• Lawful Stupid: Manfred believes if he and everyone else follows the law, no matter how ridiculous the law gets, everything will be okay. That is why he does absolutely nothing and tries to follow the law even as the Reich turns into a totalitarian dictatorship and begins "disappearing" his fellow citizens. Of course, this doesn't end well for him.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Diana Frank inadvertently does this twice.
  • The first time is in 2001 when she meets an eccentric Italian man implied to be God and plays checkers with him. The man makes cryptic allusions as to all of reality being just like the game of checkers, to which Diana refuses to believe that all of her reality is merely part of a game being played by someone and watched by someone else.
  • The second time is in 2014 when she escapes a highly realistic virtual reality created by the latest incarnation of the COS. Upon returning to the real world, she briefly questions if she isn't in yet another simulation, staring off into nowhere in particular (implied to be the "camera"), before saying everything is too real to be another simulation.
• Leave Him to Me!: On April 2, 2039, as the Battle of Isfahan rages on, Princess Wilhelmina faces down her sworn enemy, Elias Anhorn. Her friend and ally, Gunduz, offers to instantly obliterate him with a single tank round, but she refuses, as she wants to deal with him herself.
• Legendary Weapon: The sword Enonon is well known as the legendary heirloom of the Hohenzollerns, a symbol of their legitimacy and right to rule for having elevated Friedrich the Great from a lowly baron of a Holy Roman Empire border march to the Kaiser of the Romans. Pretenders to the throne, as well as exiled princes and princesses, seek to claim the sword to prove they are the rightful rulers of the Reich. Many Romans, including Wilhelmina's daughter-in-law Lisa, the Varangian Justin Wassermann, and Jessica/Yulia Ilyushina, sacrifice their lives to either protect the sword or get it to the rightful heir to the throne. In 2038, it is revealed that Enonon has a latent power that can be drawn out by the right wielder, or rather that it can channel the latent power within the right wielder to enhance its use.
• Like Father, Like Son:
  • Diana Frank and Olga Kirova certainly followed in the footsteps of their mothers Anne Frank and Tatiana Kirova by becoming special agents and highly trained spies. However, neither Anne nor Tatiana wanted their daughters to follow them into their dangerous careers.
  • Alexandra Hansen inherited some degree of her mother Angela's feisty temper (at least the temper Angela had when she was younger), as well as her red hair.
  • Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra inherited her father Otto's charisma, eagerness to help others, and tolerant and understanding personality. In turn, Elisabeth Alexandra's daughter Wilhelmina inherited these same traits, being very similar to her mother as a result, to the point where she based almost her entire personality around emulating her respected mother.
  • Ultimately seen to be fulfilled by Josh with his father Danuta. However, although Josh acknowledges they are very similar, he claims they are ultimately different in that he succeeded where his father failed and has become what his father failed to be, a vulture who ruthlessly takes advantage of every opportunity.
  • Funny enough, Olga's niece Tania Kirova followed in her footsteps, despite both Tania's mother and Olga herself disapproving of her career choice. But instead of becoming a spy, Tania is now an admiral and a sniper.
• Like Father, Unlike Son:
  • Alex Humboldt certainly did not follow in his mother Diana's footsteps, which was something she actually wanted. Instead, he became a physicist.
  • Initially seen to be fulfilled by Josh Johansen and his father Danuta, as Josh intentionally tried to be different from his abusive father, but later subverted when he realizes he ended up almost exactly like his father.
  • Wilhelm Karl did not approve of his father Otto's perceived weakness, instead striving to be himself, be a man, and be the exact opposite of his father by taking control and commanding respect from the nation. He later realizes he was a fool to do this and sought to make up for it.
• Like a Son to Me: Anne Frank considers Olga to be like her second daughter, hoping to make up for failing to save Olga's mother, her best friend. Olga also considers Anne to be her second mother and Diana Frank to be her sister.
• Little Miss Badass:
  • At the age of 12, Anne Frank lost her parents to the Angeloi and vowed revenge. With the help of the billionaire and retired superhero vigilante Tobias Wagner, she trained in martial arts, and by the age of 13 she was a feared fighter who exacted justice upon the Angeloi.
  • Decades later, Olga Kirova was orphaned at the age of 6, allegedly by Anne. Valentin Varennikov adopted her and raised her as a KGB super-assassin. At 16, Olga could singlehandedly take down entire Roman platoons with little more than a pistol and her bare hands. When Anne told her the truth about her parents' deaths, Olga immediately turned on Valentin and easily defeated him and all of the soldiers he sent after her.
• Living Legend: Kaiser Otto's long reign exceeds the lifespan of the Soviet Commune, the Chinese junta, and the Angeloi regime. Ascending to the throne when he was 6 in 1918 and reigning until he was 107 in 2018, he lived through many different eras from the Imperial Century to the modern day and established many hallmarks of the current world order.
• Lost Technology: The ancient human civilization had technology far exceeding that of the 21st century. It had healing machines that could heal critical wounds in minutes, spaceships, advanced energy weapons, and even a machine that could destroy the reality of an entire universe (though that was due to time travel from the future). 21st century humanity does not know how to build any of this.
• Love at First Sight: After being accidentally run over by Thea Tesla when he tried to jaywalk, Alex Humboldt instantly fell in love with her when she took off her helmet to apologize. To his benefit, she also fell in love with him and asked him on a date.
• Lovecraft Lite: The fight against the Worm currently seems to fit. The focus isn't on this conflict, but from what has been seen there have been few Lovecraftian tropes fully implemented. Wilhelm doesn't go fully insane from encountering the Worm (although it's implied he and his human host would if they had encountered It longer), there are no themes of hopelessness in the face of an uncaring cosmos, and it seems like there may be a definitive end to this fight (even if the Worm Itself can't be destroyed permanently).
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Thea Tesla is Theodor Tesla's little sister and his equal when it comes to technological matters. However, she did not inherit Theodor's blind hatred for all things left-wing and eventually betrays him to protect her boyfriend, Alex Humboldt.
• Magic Versus Science: Subverted in how the Inquisition integrates science and technology with magic. They now have guns firing magic-infused bullets, phones that can cast spells on the go, and combat golems to deploy in wartime, among other things.
• Magitek: The Inquisition explaining, controlling, and manipulating magic with the newest technology. Magic-infused knives made in the medieval period to fight angels and demons were replaced with guns that could do the same thing but more effectively. Spellbooks and tomes are now replaced with phones.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: At least two of Kaiserin Ida's children with Friedrich the Great were actually illegitimate, having been fathered by two other men.
• Mama Bear: One neo-Angeloi thought it was a good idea to hold Diana's son Alex hostage. He thought wrong as Diana put him in his place.
• Manchurian Agent: Olga Kirova was secretly brainwashed by the KGB as a failsafe against betrayal, with the programming triggered by listening to certain codewords on a tape. Her father Boris Kirov was similarly brainwashed.
• Martyrdom Culture: The Norse in Parts 1-3 before World War I believed dying in battle guaranteed them a place in Valhalla, and so they made every effort to martyr themselves in combat. This practice died out after Scandinavia's defeat and partition in World War I, after which the Scandinavians abandoned the more militaristic elements of their faith.
• Masquerade Enforcer: One of the Inquisition's primary goals is to keep the supernatural world hidden from the mundane world.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • America is named Eimerica instead, after the explorer Kristoff Eimerich. The Aztecs call the New World Cemanahuac, while the Chinese call it Fusang.
  • Sometime in late Part 3 or early Part 4, "barrels" (a shout-out to the TL-191 book series) became referred to as "tanks" as in OTL. Zen initially made this retcon for his own convenience, but in Part 5 it is explained that the name change also occurred in-universe.
  • Between the 2010s and 2030s, many names in the Eimericas became renamed with native or Norse names. Manhattan (despite being a native-based name) became Gunnolfsfell.
  • After 2037, the Reich is officially dissolved and replaced with a regime known as the Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem.
• Men Don't Cry: Josh believes it is unmanly to cry or show any emotions.
• Mentor Archetype: Oskar sought to be this for his students Alex and Josh, but while Alex took his advice and teachings to heart, Josh outright rejected them.
• Mexico Called; They Want Texas Back: The region that in OTL would be Texas (here known as Hasiinay) has been part of the Mexica Empire/Mexico for centuries, but it was taken by the Meskwaki Empire and would be fought over for many decades. By Part 5, Mexico has not only lost the region to an independent Hasiinay, but Hasiinay has itself taken territory south of the Rio Grande from Mexico. Mexico naturally wants the land back.
• The Middle Ages: This is when the series begins, with the Reich forming in the twelfth century.
• Mission Control: Annie was the "girl in the chair" for the Bremerhaven rebels, specifically Clara, Angelica, and Anna, but she wasn't particularly good at it...
• Modern Mayincatec Empire: Justified, as the Native Eimerican civilizations of this world were much more advanced than their counterparts in real life, having already been in control of large swathes of land by the time the Europeans arrived in the New World (an earlier Norse visit which went wrong was responsible for the natives getting their new technology). The Inca Empire still rules a good chunk of South Eimerica in the 21st century, bordering the Roman colony of Neurhomania. The Aztecs were the dominant Eimerican superpower until the 18th century when they were permanently crippled by the Reich's Sunrise Invasion, while the Mayans remain a major commercial and trade power into the 21st century. All three and the other Eimerican nations are now united under the Eimerican Federation, a supranational entity much like the European Union only much more powerful and centralized.
• The Mole:
  • Reinhard Heydrich in Part 4 was secretly an Angeloi spy feeding loyalist information to Angelos. This led to the loss of Constantinople to the Angeloi and Otto being forced into a small village in the countryside.
  • In Part 5, Gertrude Anhorn was a mole within Wilhelm Karl's secret plot to escape Elias' blackmail.
• Moral Disambiguation: In the early 2000s, much emphasis was placed on the fact that politics and diplomacy was morally gray, and even the Roman government made questionable policy decisions like waging overseas wars and ignoring many social issues at home. This went out the window starting in 2030 when Elias Anhorn took over and turned the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship that commits genocide and other human rights abuses and then sought to conquer and genocide the entire world starting in 2038.
• More Despicable Minion: Josh Johansen proved to be more despicable than his own bosses in Elias Anhorn and Theodor Tesla. He gleefully kills everyone he's told to kill without feeling anything, in fact feeling euphoria as he does so. He won't hesitate to bash in a little boy's skull and then teabag his corpse. He sent his own wife to execution for a relatively minor offense, then afterward has no problems with marrying a child and then abusing her so badly she dies. Family ties mean nothing to him: he delights in killing his own abusive dad and tormenting his uncle. Even Theodor Tesla is shocked at how monstrous Josh can be.
• Multiversal Conqueror:
  • Wilhelm Tesla sought to destroy both the Hohenzollernverse and Annionaverse so he could become the god of a new universe.
  • Diana's visions imply the Annionaverse of the future will invade and possibility conquer the Hohenzollernverse.
• Multi-Mook Melee: Anne Frank, Tatiana Kirova, Diana Frank, and Olga Kirova frequently took on many enemies at the same time, easily defeating them all.
• Multiverse: Many universes where history diverged in various ways exist simultaneously, but divine realms such as Heaven, Purgatory and Hell are separated from it, therefore encompassing every universe in existence all the same. And then the Soviets of the Hohenzollernverse managed to nuke Heaven first.