The Hohenzollern Empire / Tropes N to Z

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• Nanomachines:
  • The Jotun aliens intended to take over the world by infecting humanity with a virus that turns humans into slaves and incubators for new Jotun. This virus would be delivered by a nanobot swarm known as the black oil, which in turn would be delivered by bees. The black oil itself could infect targets on its own through an advanced AI system that could seek out organic life forms.
  • Pavel Novak used a nanobot-only derivative of the black oil to infect Erich Hansen and take over his body's cardiovascular functions with the nanobots, allowing him to effectively hold Erich's own body hostage by directing the nanobots to induce a stroke or heart attack at will.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Gandhi's Rasas and Angelos' Angeloi are fascist organizations that rose to power in India and the Reich in the 1920s and 30s, with Gandhi and his Rasas particularly pursuing many real life Nazi policies.
• Nazi Nobleman: The Angeloi family, at the center of the fascist Angeloi faction, are nobles. Because they were nobles, after the war Otto rendered the nobility powerless to prevent another rebellion from families like the Angeloi.
• Near-Villain Victory:
  • The Worm had basically won and taken over all of reality in the alternate 1453, but Wilhelm traveled back time at the last moment to stop that.
  • By 2035, Elias Anhorn had taken over the entire Reich, with the people firmly behind him and all serious opposition destroyed. The former members of the X-Division died trying but failing to stop him. Everything seems bleak as Elias continues turning the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship, but all hope hasn't been lost yet, as the princess Wilhelmina has fled to Russia, where she helps a growing resistance movement. Hope is then lost when Russia is conquered in November 2038, forcing Wilhelmina to flee again, but it is regained when she arrives in Persia to rebuild her movement, and then it is dashed again when a nationalist Persian government dismantles her movement and imprisons her.
• Negative Space Wedgie: The Philosopher's Stone in Part 5 was a mysterious artifact connected to the Worm, with accompanying reality warping powers. The Rasa general Patel was transformed into a Worm-corrupted human when he used it, while Arabia Gruber and Diana Frank simply got visions of the future when they used it. Sentinel also attempted to use it to manipulate historical events by pulling Theodora Doukas out of the timeline and attempting to kill her before she could become the first female Roman senator.
• Nephilim: The angel Sarah Milton's daughters, Kaiserin Wilhelmina II and Victoria I, were both nephilim, with some angelic powers. However, they didn't have any opportunity to use their abilities, and both died childless.
• The New '10s: Angela Merkel was chancellor of Rome this entire decade, which also saw the final downfall of Sentinel, the second interaction with the Annionaverse, and the rise of Thierry Baudet. Kaiser Otto died in 2018 and was succeeded by his son Wilhelm Karl.
• The New '20s: More environmental awareness happened this decade. Merkel remained chancellor the entire decade. Compared to the previous decade, not much else happened so far other than the founding of the Eimerican Federation and Srivijaya Commonwealth at the start of the decade and a military intervention in East Africa at the end of it.
• N.G.O. Superpower:
  • Tesla Dynamic is a large multinational corporation with business interests in every country
  • The Shepherds' Brotherhood is the largest charity in the Reich.
  • Argus is the largest private military company in the world.
• No Budget: Russia constantly went bankrupt every few years between 1986 and 2030.
• No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me:
  • After the World Trade Center attacks of 2001 and shenanigans with the Annionaverse in 2011, Anders Humboldt comes to the realization that he is no longer the same person he was in 1992 when he began his quest to uncover the Syndicate.
  • Wilhelm Karl gradually reconsiders his previous "vulture" mentality after certain events in 2030.
• Nom de Guerre:
  • Anne Frank adopted the nickname "Valkyrie" during her war years.
  • Olga had the codename "Firebird."
  • Julian Anniona adopted the pseudonym Julius Andersen when interacting with Persian politicians.
  • In the Annionaverse, Angelica Neumann is known as the "Valkyrie of Alençon."
• No Name Given:
  • Even about twenty years after his introduction, LKR Guy still has no official name, being referred to only as "the LKR guy" or whatever his current job is.
  • The Smoking Man, a recurring antagonist to X-Division, intentionally has no name given other than "the smoking man" or "Cigarette Guy." Investigating his past, X-Division finds he could be known as Karl Gerhard Busch Verbringen, but that name is very likely to be a pseudonym like hundreds of other names, and thus the Smoking Man remains nameless.
• No Full Name Given:
  • The police officer and later Police Commissioner Kresge has been a recurring ally to X-Division since his first appearance in the 1990s, ultimately rising to reluctant leader of the Roman resistance...but he has yet to receive a first name of any kind.
• Norse by Norsewest: The Vikings before Part 1 went northwest to discover the Eimericas. Some were captured by natives and over time made their way to Mexico, teaching their technology to the natives and leading to the creation of the Mexica Empire, the main antagonist of Parts 1-2.
• Nostalgia Filter:
  • Ostalgie (nostalgia for the old East German regime) is prevalent in the former Occupied Territories as in real life.
  • Zen has implied the history he wrote of the Reich has been filtered through nostalgia (and forum rules) to overlook negative incidents like ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, and suppression of left-wing movements.
• Not Always Evil: China was the main antagonist of Part 3 (opposing the Reich in World War I) and a secondary antagonist in 4 (opposing the Reich in World War II), but even then it was willing to work with the Reich against a common foe in the Soviet Commune during World War III.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The whole world changed on November 2, 2038 when Jerusalem detonates nukes over every major city, killing 800 million people. The focus of the story arc changes from resisting Jerusalem's tyrannical rule and assembling an international coalition to bring it down to merely surviving Jerusalem's nuclear attacks and military onslaught.
• No True Scotsman:
  • The attitude of other Native Eimericans towards the Mexica Empire regarding their place in the Pan-Eimerican Bloc that was forming several years before World War I, because of the Acatl dynasty's partial Norse ancestry.
  • Elias Anhorn has very strict standards on who is a man, a Roman, and a Christian. And he will do everything he can to purge and enslave those who don't fit those standards.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • In 2006, Olga visits an imprisoned Valentin Varennikov to get closure on her past. What ensues is a lengthy argument on whether Olga made the right choice to defect to the Reich and what really separates her from Valentin. In the end, they both were servants of a large authoritarian regime (Sentinel and old Russia) which didn't hesitate to discard them once their purpose was over. Valentin later claims the Reich and the Soviets were the same thing, as both suppress dissenting viewpoints they don't like, only the Soviets were more honest about doing so. Olga refuses to acknowledge this.
  • In 2037, Olga and Tsar Borislav, after narrowing averting a diplomatic crisis, have a discussion on what exactly it is they're really opposing. Borislav makes the case that the Jerusalem regime of Elias Anhorn is the same as the Reich and could only have come about from Roman culture, society, and values. In a way, Jerusalem is the shadow of the Reich, waiting to emerge when the people are scared enough. Olga again denies this, believing they are not the same, but she then remembers what Valentin said all those years ago. Borislav then tells her she must be consistent when dealing with these matters: while it is okay to reject a trade deal with Jerusalem which would render them economically subservient, an almost identical arrangement was the norm under the Reich.
  • After exposing the Sentinel scandal, albeit with the truth still slightly obscured and watered down, the Smoking Man appears to congratulate Anders on his victory, comparing him to both himself and Conrad Humboldt. Anders denies the comparison, saying he succeeded in getting the truth out there, but the Smoking Man points out he didn't reveal the full truth as he once wanted. The initial idealism and final pragmatism of Anders Humboldt reminded the Smoking Man of the man Conrad was and became.
  • The LKR Guy frequently claims "BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!" It's never clear what two sides he's referring to though.
  • In April 2039, Alex Humboldt and Josh Johansen face off for one last time. Over the course of their conversation, Alex explains that they aren't so different, at least when they started out as kids. Both were bright-eyed boys who loved learning, but circumstances around them shaped who they became. Alex had a loving family and many friends who kept him on the right path, while Josh had an abusive father who suppressed his best qualities and encouraged his worst. He even remarks that if their situations were reversed, Alex could have ended up just like Josh.
• Nuke 'em:
  • Raphael claimed he nuked Sodom and Gomorrah. In Part 4, the Soviets use their own nukes on Warsaw, Konigsberg and Dresden, and then Heaven itself.
  • In 2037 in Part 5, Elias Anhorn nuked multiple cities, including many under his own control, just to intimidate anti-Elias rebels into surrendering.
  • In 2038, Elias nukes almost every major city in the world, killing 800 million people. And that was just on the first day of World War IV.
• Numbered Sequels: Each part following the transition from the Crusader Kings II segment to Europa Universalis IV has its own title.
  • Part 1 (Crusader Kings II) had no title, but zenphoenix's signature has it titled as Kaiser of the Romans.
  • Part 2 (Europa Universalis IV) is titled Uber Alles.
  • Part 3.1 (Victoria II, 1836-1914) is titled The Imperial Century.
  • Part 3.2 (Victoria II, 1914-1936) is titled Iron and Blood.
  • Part 4 (Hearts of Iron III) is titled Götterdämmerung. The title briefly changed to "Gabriel's Empire" when Gabriel usurped God's power and took over Zen's account.
  • Part 5.1 (Victoria II New World Order mod, 1945-1986) is titled The Fallen Phoenix.
  • Part 5.2 (New World Order, 1986-2018) is titled The Rising Phoenix.
  • Part 5.3 (New World Order, 2018-2037) is titled The Renewed Phoenix.
  • Part 5.4 (New World Order, 2037-ongoing) is titled The Holy Phoenix.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Josh Johansen may seem like a stereotypical bully and all-around jerk, but this is really a mask for his intelligence, which he demonstrates by being surprisingly knowledgeable about historical events in class. It also lures his enemies into a false sense of security. When his teacher Oskar lowered his guard and revealed he was gay, Oskar used that to call the cops and get him arrested.
• Obi-Wan Moment: Kaiser Otto's last moments, in which he warns Wilhelm Karl he will not get what he wants if he continues down the path he chose. He was right, and Wilhelm Karl realized it too late.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Angelos and Gandhi both committed genocide against many different groups, with the latter going mad by the end of World War II. Valentin Varennikov, after starting World War III, didn't hesitate to kill anyone who stood in his way, from civilians of the Occupied Territories to his own citizens. Elias Anhorn is willing to nuke even his own cities just to kill rebels, sacrificing as many people as possible to get what he wants.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Johann von Neumann and Alan Turing are depicted as acting like Sherlock Holmes (with Oppenheimer as Moriarty) and are knowledgeable in many different disciplines from nuclear physics to cryptography and astrophysics. Decades later, Walter Humboldt took this even further with his extensive knowledge of biology, chemistry, universe-hopping physics, and advanced mathematics.
• Omniglot: All angels can speak every human language fluently.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten:
  • After an encounter with vampires on one of his cases, Anders insisted on denying the possibility of vampires, calling them psychological even years later. The same thing happened when angels appeared on one of his cases, as he firmly denied they were involved and attributed their acts to regular people.
  • The Lithuanian chancellor Boris Bradziunas once made an Office reference during a conference of world leaders, something Olga now refuses to let go in subsequent meetings.
  • During an interview, the senator Izinchi Ochimeca talks about how the November 9 attacks were being used as an excuse to infringe on Roman Nahuas' civil liberties just because "some people did something." Of course, the media then took that quote out of context and spent the next twenty years calling her a traitor and disrespectful to the troops and the dead of November 9.
• Once per Episode: Across the X-Division, Fringe, and Sentinel arcs, no matter what each individual story is about, the members of X-Division will always find a way to work in a reference to Sentinel in conversation, culminating in Sentinel's actual reveal at the end of the first X-Division arc.
• One-Man Army:
  • Anne laid waste to entire armies of Angeloi. Tatiana and Olga both took on armies of Soviets. They all won easily.
  • Saint Wilhelmina did this in the game, as her martial stats were so absurdly high that any army she commanded, no matter how small, could easily destroy even enemy armies three times as large.
  • Kaiser Reinhard I thought he could do this with two men against an entire Norse invasion, but those two men just...died.
• One World Order: Rome has been the world's undisputed hyperpower since 1989, but that has changed since 2020 with the rise of the Eimerican Federation, the Srivijaya Commonwealth, and an outward looking China. That has most certainly changed since 2030 with the Reich's descent into totalitarianism, an increasingly nationalist China, a politically neutered India, and a significantly crippled Schengen Pact. It has been completely shattered as of 2038 when the Reich, as the Holy Roman Empire of Jerusalem, started World War IV and nuked every single major city on Earth.
• Orcus on His Throne: The aliens in Part 5 were a looming threat X-Division had to stop as soon as possible...but they rarely ever showed up in person, and the invasion itself never happened as they suffered a civil war and were forced to abandon their plans due to incurring heavy losses.
• Other Me Annoys Me:
  • Gandhi was disgusted by how his Annionaverse counterpart was a washed-up drunk veteran whose wife committed suicide, while Annionaverse Gandhi hated how the Neta was a bloodthirsty genocidal maniac and worked to undermine him.
  • Kaiser Otto was initially so traumatized at the sight of Senator Otto (after everything that had happened to him over the last few months) that he almost killed himself.
  • Annionaverse Angela, when impersonating Hohenzollernverse Angela, believed her counterpart was weak and had bad taste in pop culture.
  • Hohenzollernverse Olga initially felt jealous of her counterpart having had a normal childhood, while Annionaverse Olga was disgusted at how her counterpart was raised as a murderous assassin, but they eventually reconciled.
• Our Angels Are Different: Angels here are vastly different from the stereotypical pop culture depiction of angels. They are emotional, petty, and manipulative, with some viewing humans as lesser creations of God. They appear as formless energy beings in their true forms, which mortal humans cannot see without getting their eyes burned out, and must take human hosts to interact with the mortal world. They can also be killed by special anti-angel weapons, but their souls are immortal, so they revive after a few centuries.
• Our Demons Are Different: Demons here are not like those seen in traditional pop culture. Instead, they are formless clouds of black particles giving off a sulfur smell which can possess a human. They can be killed with special anti-demon weapons, both in human and cloud form.
• Our Gods Are Different: Pagan gods exist within the Judeo-Christian pantheon, but they are vastly weaker. They are dependent on human worship for power, and as the world moved away from paganism towards the Abrahamic faiths, they became little more than regular people with some supernatural powers. They are still immortal, though.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires here share little similarities with traditional pop culture depictions other than having fangs, the need to drink blood, and the ability to turn normal humans. They have long lifespans, with one young vampire in the 1990s having lived since at least the 1920s, but can be killed by decapitation. Over the centuries, the Inquisition first deported almost every vampire in Europe to reservations in Dacia (Romania) before figuring out a way to "cure" vampirism and turn them all back into normal humans.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • In Part 1, the Mexica Empire invaded from literally off the game map at a time when most people were unaware of the New World. They came with a vastly different culture and practices which seemed completely alien to the Romans and fought in a way the legions were unaccustomed to.
  • In Part 5, the Worm is vastly beyond anything humans and even angels can comprehend, making it difficult for them to develop an effective response to It.
• Parent-Child Team: In 1985, Anne Frank and her daughter Diana teamed up to protect a young Angela Hansen and the royals Kaiserin Victoria Louise and Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra from the Soviet assassin Olga Kirova, leading her on an intense car chase and extended battle through the streets of wartorn Vienna.
• Pen Name: Before becoming a political figure, Mohandas Gandhi used the pen name Chandra Gupta to publish his works.
• People's Republic of Tyranny: The Soviet Commune was a repressive totalitarian dictatorship which suppressed religion, individuality, and traditional culture in favor of futurism and an extreme interpretation of Marxism. When the Soviet Army seized the Occupied Territories, General Secretary Molotov implemented a policy of deromanization in which all traces of the Roman identity, from the German and Greek languages to Romanitas, were eradicated in favor of long-marginalized local cultures (Hungarian, Romanian, Czech, Polish, and so on). All opposition to Soviet rule was brutally suppressed, especially under General Secretary Varennikov.
• The Philosopher King:
  • Saint Wilhelmina was known to have written many poems and proverbs still widely known eight hundred years after her death.
  • Friedrich the Great introduced the ideas of meritocracy and equality to the peoples of Europe in opposition to feudalism, creating a philosophy which called for all people to be judged equally on the basis of merit instead of being born into their social status.
• Philosopher's Stone: Exists as a reality warping artifact linked to the Worm. It was dug up in Giza by the treasure hunter Arabia Gruber, who sought to keep it out of the hands of the Rasa general Patel. Patel ultimately got his hands on the stone, which corrupted him into a Worm-mutated human, but Gruber killed him. Also handling the stone, Gruber received visions of the future, leading up to the Reich's possible demise in the (as of now) unreleased Part 6. Sentinel later got its hands on the stone and attempted to use it as a time machine so they could rewrite history to their advantage, but Diana Frank and Wilhelm destroyed it.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: In the medieval era, angels and demons could only be killed by special daggers enchanted with specific anti-angel/demon spells. The Inquisition later melted down many daggers to make anti-angel/demon bullets and make their job much easier.
• Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: Lucifer's fall from Heaven allegedly killed the dinosaurs.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Although Ryukyu is the smallest nation in the world and irrelevant in the larger geopolitical landscape, it proudly maintains a ridiculously large navy on par with those of the major powers. When World War IV begins, Ryukyu demonstrates that it isn't joking when it says it can go toe to toe with the major powers, as its navy takes on and shatters the fleets of Jerusalem, China, and Penglai with clever tactics and advanced military technology like orbital weapons, establishing Ryukyu as a major power in its own right and not one to be underestimated.
• Pirate: Kyrillos in Part 1 was a pirate who went toe to toe with Saint Wilhelmina after stealing the formula for Greek Fire. After he was brought to justice, Wilhelmina recognized his unique achievement of being the only pirate ever to have successfully stolen the formula. As a reward, and to prevent him from going back to his pirate life, she granted him a noble title. Centuries later, he would be revered as a folk hero. Alex Humboldt's high school in the 21st century was named after him.
• The Plot Reaper:
  • The deaths of the parents of Anne Frank and Olga Kirova set their character arcs in motion, spurring them both to get revenge against the alleged killers. Anne became a vigilante and resistance fighter who rose to become the leader of the Frankfurt resistance during World War II, while Olga became a KGB assassin with the goal of killing Anne, until Anne told her the truth about her parents' death and Olga rebelled against Valentin Varennikov.
  • Elias Anhorn's arc was set into motion when his sister Ellie died of cancer she developed after inhaling toxins while working as a first responder during the November 9 attacks. As a result, he and his friends enlisted in the army and were deployed to Mexico...where his friends were ALSO killed in a terrorist ambush. The cold reception he received when he escaped the ambush barely alive set him down a dark path of revenge against whom he saw as his sister and friends' true killer: the entire Hohenzollern family. His subsequent purge of the Hohenzollerns in turn sets Princess Wilhelmina down the path of becoming a leader to oppose him.
• Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: Although the Smoking Man was shown to do morally reprehensible things like give up his own daughter as a guinea pig for the aliens, personally assassinate the equivalents of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Mikhail Gorbachev despite largely sympathizing with what they wanted, and plotted the subjugation and enslavement of humanity, he still acts like a polite gentleman to his opponents, casually discussing his plans and gloating about his inevitable victories. In contrast, Anders Humboldt, one of the heroes of this story arc, is rude and crass towards him, not wanting to hear his monologues or sweet talking. When he needs to get information on the Syndicate and has to get it from the Smoking Man, he just wants the Smoking Man to give him what he wants immediately.
• Politically-Active Princess: Wilhelmina, at least after an assassination attempt in 2037.
• Politically Correct History:
  • Zen admits his depiction of Roman history has been filtered to give a more neutral/positive light on certain events, like glossing over what amounts to ethnic and religious cleansing by the first three Kaisers, as well as the Reich's colonization of Neurhomania and Africa. He explained some of this was because of forum rules. However, in Part 5, the narrative has become less afraid of discussing what really happened in those events.
  • In Part 4, Zen was forced to avoid talking too much about the Holocaust or other World War II atrocities due to HOI 3-specific forum rules regarding depictions of the Holocaust, but this was made up for in Part 5, as forum rules for Victoria 2 were more lenient.
  • In-universe, Elias Anhorn and Josh Johansen both think the "new" historical narrative is too politically correct...and now seek to "correct" the narrative back to what it once was...and then some.
• Politically Correct Villain: The Syndicate/Sentinel are embedded within every national government, particularly the Roman government, keeping the chancellors pawns and Kaiser Otto unaware. They make use of political correctness to silence anybody who starts to uncover the truth, labeling them as racists, misogynists, tax evaders, or anything to "cancel" them.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Elias Anhorn dislikes the political correctness of the mainstream establishment and isn't afraid to speak his mind against them. He calls out the establishment on its hypocrisy about the climate crisis and rails against cancel culture. He doesn't hesitate to say what needs to be said about climate change, political action, and Christian values. After his MASSIVE villain turn coup, he becomes a Politically Incorrect Villain.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Elias Anhorn becomes this after he reveals his true colors in 2030. He suppresses others who speak their mind against him, takes over the establishment, is hypocritical about the climate crisis, and weaponizes cancel culture.
• Precursors: Ancient humanity had a technologically advanced spacefaring civilization 150,000 years ago, before an unknown cataclysm destroyed them. Fragments of their technology are occasionally dug up in the modern day, and modern humans barely understand how to use them, let alone replicate them.
• Precursor Killers: It is frequently said that ancient humanity was a powerful spacefaring civilization with interstellar colonies, sprawling cities, and a flourishing society. But 150,000 years ago, it was completely wiped out and almost entirely purged from the geological record, leaving few traces of its existence. Even today, nobody knows why it ended. Diana and Angela wondered if the Jotun aliens who are trying to invade Earth in the present day were responsible, but surviving records from 150,000 years ago seem to imply the Jotun were humanity's allies back then. Later, Diana sees a vision of ancient humanity and its end, in which the flesh melts off humans' bones like liquid and all of Earth bursts into flames. Still, this tells her little about who actually did it, only that to destroy such a powerful civilization and erase almost every trace of it, they must have been even more powerful.
• Precursor Worship: The Worm cult has its origins in ancient humanity's civilization 150,000 years ago, and current members still adhere to many traditions, such as the ancient human language, from that era. They practically worship their old cult from that era and seek to replicate its success in bringing down the rest of ancient humanity.
• Princess Protagonist: Princess Wilhelmina, daughter of Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra.
• Private Military Contractors: Argus Security is a private military company contracted by the Roman government to help with riot control and counterterrorism in Mexico, Lithuania, and at home in the Reich. After leaving the military, Gustav Johansen was recruited into Argus by his colleague Kurt Moreau and provided security at Wilhelm Karl's coronation. Argus' influence gradually expands over the next twenty years, with powerful financial and government backers in Theodor Tesla and Elias Anhorn.
• Point of Divergence: The main points of divergence for this story are Friedrich the Great becoming the margrave of Brandenburg in 1066 and Erik the Red's expedition several decades prior being captured instead of driven off. Another point of divergence simultaneous with Friedrich the Great's appearance is the Pagan Resurgence, when various pagan states centralize, standardize their faiths, and fight off invading Christian or Islamic kingdoms, while many prominent Christian or Muslim leaders converted back to pagan faiths, among them Harald Hardrada who became the first Norse Fylkir. Indirectly, the existence of ancient humanity could also be another point of divergence, but modern human history would go exactly the same if it did not exist. Zen has said he considers the Cybrex war from Stellaris (which happened 600,000 years ago) as another point of divergence as the Cybrex would attack in a different direction, creating a completely unique starting scenario for Stellaris, but not affect human history on Earth if it doesn't directly attack it.
• Proud to Be a Geek:
  • Olga Kirova is an assassin who can easily solo entire armies and take down a nation on her own. She is also a huge anime and video game geek who knows all of the popular movie tropes and is more Internet-savvy than the rest of the X-Division.
  • Princess Wilhelmina is a geek, having cultivated a reputation as a gamer who loves JRPGs in college which still follows her around thirty years later.
• The Purge:
  • After seizing power in Part 2, the usurper Malcolm Bethune ordered loyal troops to purge the entire Hohenzollern family. Only two members of the family, Sophia and her cousin Friedrich, survived the purge.
  • Centuries later, in Part 4, Angelos carried out multiple purges during his rise to power. At the beginning of his coup, he tricked the entire Diet into assembling in the Reichstag chamber and then massacred them all. At the end of World War II, he massacred the entire Maximist branch of the Hohenzollerns rather than let them fall into the hands of the Soviets.
  • Performed once again in 2030 by Elias and the Committee, in which they purge basically everyone who isn't a heterosexual, non-leftist Roman Christian.
  • Performed yet again by Elias and the Committee in 2034 to purge any remaining serious opposition leaders.
  • Performed a third time by Elias Anhorn in 2038 to purge all of the Hohenzollerns...again.
• Purple Is Powerful: The Reich and its Kaisers are associated with the color purple.
• Purposely Overpowered:
  • Although the original Sunset Invasion scenario was already designed to make the Aztec invasion overpowered relative to the player, Zen made it even more overpowered in Part 1 by giving them more troops that weren't subject to attrition penalties and only despawned if they were killed, so the AI would have armies of millions of troops which could only be defeated in battle, not by stalling out with attrition. The same troop bonuses were given to other hordes like the Mongols and Timurids.
  • In Part 5, when World War III began, Zen admitted that the Reich, even with the many military and economic debuffs given over the last 40 years, was still far too overpowered, so he gave the Soviets an insane military buff which increased the strength, resilience, and morale of the Soviet Army and allowed them to win many decisive victories early in the war. This became a story point later in Part 5 when the Reich becomes a totalitarian world pariah and uses its military and economic clout to impose its will on its neighbors.
• Pyrrhic Victory: World War II ends in a Roman victory, although it came at a serious cost. China's democracy was silenced and replaced with a military dictatorship. India is split under joint Roman-Chinese occupation. The Roman heartland is in ruins, with its industry destroyed, military split and weakened, and people tired. The Soviets are on the rise, having seized the Occupied Territories from the Reich and consolidated their control over North Eimerica by destroying the Axis-allied nations there. This sets the stage for the Cold War of Part 5.
• Quantity vs. Quality:
  • The Reich's military doctrine for much of its history is to switch between quantity and quality, since it has both. During World War I, it heavily relied on quantity to make up for the heavy losses it sustained.
  • Chinese military doctrine, specifically naval doctrine, emphasizes numerical superiority to overwhelm enemies. Chinese fleets are supposed to spread out over a large area of water to increase the amount of territory covered and to make their numbers appear even bigger.
• Quality over Quantity:
  • While the Reich does try to field more soldiers and ships than any other country, it doesn't neglect quality as well, making sure Roman soldiers are the best trained in the world. This came in handy during wars when quantity was no longer guaranteed, like during the Maximist Wars (when Wolfgang Ludendorff took on Maximist militias far larger than his forces) and World War II (when the Reich was split in a civil war and most of the troops sided with Markos Angelos).
  • Ryukyu has heavily emphasized quality over quantity for its entire existence, focusing on devising the best strategies and doctrines to counter far larger enemies that would almost always outnumber and outgun anything the small island kingdom can produce. This proves in handy when it takes on all of the major totalitarian powers in the Pacific Ocean...and wins.
• The Quisling: Vidkun Quisling still sold out the Kanatan government in exile (Norway) to the Angeloi, giving them complete control over Scandinavia. After the loyalists liberated Scandinavia, he was put on trial and executed.
• Rage Against the Heavens: At the end of Part 4, the Soviets nuked Heaven, almost killing all of the angels. In Part 3, the Inquisition invaded both Hell and Heaven to accomplish their goals of sealing off Hell (successfully) and kicking Gabriel out of Heaven (a complete failure).
• Rags to Royalty:
  • Friedrich the Great started as a minor baron of the Eastern March, based in a border town known as Berlin. Over the course of ten years, he rose through the ranks thanks to his charisma, his merits, and his friends (including at least one angel) helping him out, ultimately winning the First Crusade and becoming King of the Germans and Jerusalem. Following the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich, he was elected the next Holy Roman Emperor. Under his reign, he reconciled the empires of both the Germans and the Greeks and negotiated a military alliance and political marriage which put both under Hohenzollern rule, paving the way for his grandson Friedrich the Glorious' restoration of the Reich.
  • Gunhilda was a peasant girl from the village of Kujawy, Poland who claimed to hear the voices of angels. She was welcomed into Friedrich the Glorious' court, where she proved herself to be a master tactician and military genius who led the Roman legions to victory after victory. She eventually married Friedrich the Glorious himself, and her children became the first of the powerful Schweinfurt dynasty.
  • The peasant Sarah Milton similarly heard the voices of angels centuries later, later saving Kaiser Wolfram from the angels' assassination attempt. The two later married as well, making Sarah an empress.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: Raphael claims the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs was caused by Lucifer falling to Earth.
• Real Men Hate Affection: Josh hates showing any sentimentality or emotion, seeing that as weakness.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: Josh measures his manliness by how many enemies he has killed. Especially high profile ones like Diana Frank, Anders Humboldt, Angela Hansen, and the chancellor of India.
• Realpolitik:
  • The Vienna resistance decided to join forces with Leon Trotsky, an ideological enemy, to bring the Soviets into the war against the Angeloi. When Trotsky refused to do so, the resistance murdered him and implicated the Angeloi in the crime, angering the Soviets under Molotov into declaring war anyways.
  • In 2037, Elias Anhorn and his Committee use their hard and soft power to force neighboring nations into political and economic submission. Troops stationed in Yavdi and India force the two nations to become compliant and install friendly right-wing governments. Josiah Burkard goes to Russia to negotiate a trade deal in which Russia would apparently be saved from an impending famine, but at the cost of Russia being bound to the Reich's economic sphere and all Roman refugees being deported to certain death. The deal turned out to be very popular among the desperate Russian public until it was ultimately derailed by Princess Wilhelmina.
• Red Baron:
  • In Part 1, the Zunist warlord Timur was feared as the Iron Khan, while his son Shah Rukh adopted the nickname of the Lord of Asia.
  • In Part 4, Anne Frank became known as the Valkyrie resistance leader who almost singlehandedly liberated both a concentration camp and the entire city of Frankfurt from the Angeloi.
  • In Part 5, Olga Kirova was initially known as the feared Firebird assassin, the Soviets' answer to the Valkyrie. She was trained to be able to take down entire armies on her own so she could stand a chance against Anne.
• Redemption Rejection: Josh was offered TWO chances at redemption by his teacher Oskar, who saw his internal conflict, understood his home situation, and appreciated his passion for learning things. Oskar genuinely wanted to help Josh out, but Josh instead had him arrested on false charges, ending his teaching career. Years later, Oskar met Josh again and was not mad about what had happened, instead offering to help Josh become the good man he could always be. Josh responded to this second offer by straight up killing him and hanging his body on a crane with a slur written on him for all to see.
• Red Scare:
  • In Part 5, Senator Joseph McCarthy still started a witch-hunt across Roman society for alleged equalist infiltrators as he did in real life.
  • Elias Anhorn takes the Red Scare to the extreme, even by McCarthy's standards, and violently purges anyone he remotelysuspects of leftist sentiments, even if they are as moderate as women's rights.
• Reign of Terror:
  • After seizing power, Valentin Varennikov rolled back all of the reforms Gorbachev made and sent in the KGB and army to brutally silence any opposition to his rule in both Russia and the Occupied Territories.
  • The Reich has been in a constant reign of terror since 2034 as undesirables, political dissidents, and ethnic and religious minorities are violently purged or forced into concentration camps. And as of 2039, it is only getting worse.
• Relationship Reveal: In 2036, after stealing the legendary sword Enonon, the Russian spy Yulia escapes back to Russia, pursued by Theodor Tesla's drones. She eventually gets her package over the border, even though she is fatally wounded in the process. As she dies, the audience learns not only is Yulia really the previously recurring character Jessica from the Fringe arc, but she is also married to Olga Kirova.
• Religion Is Right: The Abrahamic God exists, as do angels, and demons, and other supernatural entities from Abrahamic lore, as well as at least a dozen major pagan gods.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Vampires, werewolves, and alien supersoldiers can only be killed by decapitation.
• Repressive, but Efficient:
  • Rasa India developed nukes in World War II (but never got the chance to use them), and it passed on the technology to the Angeloi, who in turn got their nukes stolen and used against them by the Soviets. The Reich played catch-up because both the Angeloi/Rasas and Soviets kept sabotaging the loyalist nuclear program.
  • In Part 5, even after becoming a totalitarian hellhole, the Reich still has a much better and efficient environmental policy than much of the rest of the world, having slashed carbon emissions and transitioned to renewable energy sources much more than anyone else. And since the regime has done a very good job of tying its image to environmentalism, that in turn makes environmentalism stigmatized in the rest of the world as it is seen as totalitarian and tyrannical. As a result, many other nations have openly abandoned environmentalism altogether. This gradually stops applying as World War IV consumes more resources than can be replaced and repressive economic reforms begin cutting into efficiency.
• The Republic: China in Parts 3 and 5 is a democratic country, a constitutional monarchy with an elected legislature and constitution. The Reich from Part 2 onwards strives to be a fair nation with respect for the rule of law, tolerance of different cultures and religions, and equality under the Kaiser through the Augustinian Code. As of 2035, neither the Reich nor China qualifies anymore, instead falling into The Empire.
• Rescued from the Underworld: Mansur Shah Mukhtar was broken out of Hell by the Inquisition in Part 2.
• Reset Button:
  • In 1962, nuclear war broke out, destroying humanity. However, the Inquisition reset the timeline and prevented it from happening to begin with.
  • Wilhelm pushes an extreme version of the reset button to create the Hohenzollernverse by jumping back from a bad future where the Worm won and changing the past so humanity stood a chance against it, by uniting under the Reich.
• La Résistance:
  • Otto’s loyalists kept up the fight all across the Reich as more of the nation fell under the rule of Markos Angelos. Even when the military stopped fighting, resistance cells led by the likes of Anne Frank, Engelbert Dolfuss, Conrad Humboldt, Hans Hansen, and Osterhild Anniona kept fighting the Angeloi.
  • In Part 5, various rebel groups rise up against the totalitarian dictatorship of Elias Anhorn, among them the people of the rebellious city of Bremerhaven.
• Resurgent Empire: The Reich entered 1946 and Part 5 a broken and battered shell of what it once was. Its industry lay in ruins, its military was divided and shattered, and swathes of the heartland were under Soviet occupation. But within 40 years, all that was reversed. The industry was rebuilt, the military was reorganized, and after World War III, the Soviet Commune was destroyed and the Occupied Territories retaken. By 1989, the Reich was indisputably the sole hyperpower in the world, reflected in the updated title for Part 5: Rising Phoenix (used from 1986 and 2018).
• Retcon: Zen has repeatedly retconned multiple plot elements.
  • In Part 1, it was said that multiple Romance cultures (like French, Castilian Spanish, Portuguese, and non-Lombard Italian) and other cultures (like Polish, Arabic, and Scottish) were completely eradicated by the Reich, to the point where near the end of Part 1 some characters wondered why French wine was still called French wine if France didn't even exist. The same treatment was applied to Islam. However, by Part 4, Zen walked this back saying these cultures and Islam weren't fully wiped out but instead reduced to small minorities in their own homes (to the point where the word "France" has been forgotten the general Roman public by the 1990s), with the Muslims being scattered into their own diaspora across Europe. By Part 5, the remaining French populations have undergone a cultural revival from the 2000s on, a French Lives Matter movement has taught many non-French about the continued discrimination they face, and Angelica Haus, a character from a French town, has become more conscious about her French roots, even starting to speak partly in French.
  • Friedrich the Great was originally written as an ambitious military commander and feudal lord who won fame and political power after emerging victorious in the First Crusade, but Part 5 reinterprets him as a charismatic leader who promoted humanistic and tolerant views which rallied many different peoples under his banner, allowing him to build a power base to establish the Reich. That itself is later retconned when it is revealed Wilhelm had directed Friedrich the Great to create the Reich to unite Europe against the Worm cult.
  • The doomed timeline Wilhelm originally left was based on a previous Crusader Kings II game Zen played and never finished (hence why it was completely destroyed at the end), but Part 5 retcons that to be a timeline in which the Worm won and reality was under Its complete control, with Wilhelm just barely escaping into the past to avert this terrible future.
  • In-game, the name of the Holy Roman Empire had been changed to "German Empire" after Friedrich the Great was elected Kaiser, but there have been no references to this in the story after Part 1, with everyone only referring to the Holy Roman Empire. The name change effectively never happened.
  • Wilhelm's own origins were also retconned. In Part 1, one of Wilhelm's early stories showed he was merely the player avatar for a human character in "real life," also known as the world of Zen's previous AAR "Return of the Celestial Empire." There, he fought the angel Constantine, the avatar of the player's brother, and killed him. The names Wilhelm and Constantine come from the names of the human players controlling them, implying Hohenzollern Empire is really a game of Crusader Kings II being played in the Return of the Celestial Empire universe. However, Zen eventually declared this story non-canon and severed all ties with Return of the Celestial Empire from Part 2 on, and in Part 5, the angel Constantine instead sacrifices his life in the doomed future to save Wilhelm.
  • Saint Wilhelmina was initially depicted as a perfect and always just and good ruler, but from Part 3 on, Zen brought to light the many atrocities and persecutions that happened under her reign, such as deportations of Muslims and Arabs, the suppression of the French and Poles, and her clash with the Catholic Church. In Part 5, Zen then expands on her actions by saying this arose out of a fear of the Worm Cult after it killed her parents, but she soon grew out of control with her purges and deportations and had to be called out on it by Saint Gunhilda.
  • In Part 2, it was said the Reich almost always peacefully colonized new lands in South America and Africa, coexisting with native peoples instead of conquering and enslaving them as colonizers did in real life. However, Zen later points out that may not always have been the case. By Part 5, there are many African nationalist and separatist movements, having formed out of frustration of the European-dominated Roman government constantly ignoring their existence.
  • In Part 3, the Reich emerged as a firm opponent of liberal movements and supporter of continued absolutism. However, by the end of that part, this has been tweaked to instead be an opposition to democratic movements (associated with China) and support for a meritocratic system (which were represented by the absolute monarchy government type in-game due to Zen not wanting to mod the game so much it would be incompatible with conversion to the next game).
  • In Part 2, it was said the illegitimate Hohenzollern Anatolian branch legitimized itself by marrying into the Syrian line, but in Part 5, Zen claimed this was being retconned away. Later un-retconned to such an extent that 21st century Hohenzollerns were ironically legitimized through descent from this branch.
  • In Part 5, the djinn Jenny claims she granted wishes to Markos Angelos and Valentin Varennikov, implying that was how they gained power and started world wars. It is not explained how exactly this happened and no further details are provided.
  • In Part 5, the Smoking Man is allegedly shown to murder Ragnar Beck, Abraham Green, and Mikhail Gorbachev, but Zen later retcons that story into a state of semi-canonicity, where it could have happened or not.
  • Anders Humboldt's first introduction is as a baby in January 1969. He is later retconned to be a few years older as he was much older when he witnessed his sister being abducted by aliens in 1972.
  • Many New World and African placenames were retconned to remove traces of European influence. For example, Tejas became Hasiinay, Creek became Este Muskokulke, and Cherokee became Tsalagehi Ayeli.
  • Recent gameplay chapters have even retconned the game map itself to avoid borders based on real life, like the borders of US states still being present in the game code. The result is that Zen personally redrew the entire world map so that the borders would make more sense in universe. Even a few minor countries, such as Brunei, were retconned out of existence.
• Revision:
  • Friedrich the Great, Friedrich the Glorious, and Saint Wilhelmina got significant character development in Part 5, after spending Parts 1-2 being depicted as almost perfect semi-mythical heroes.
  • The bad alternate future timeline is heavily revised by still kept mostly the same. Instead of the Apocalypse happening and ending the world, the Apocalypse was intentionally started to end the world with the goal of denying it to the Worm.
  • Erich Hansen refers to his wife as "Sharon" in his first appearance. However, when Mrs. Hansen appears thirty years later in the X-Division arc, her first name is given as "Magda." It is soon revealed that Sharon is her middle name.
• Revolving Door Revolution: Mexico suffered through multiple revolutions over the 20th century, with the old Mexica Empire being replaced by fascists, then equalists, then fascists again, and finally the Mexica Empire again.
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman:
  • Adolf Hitler remained in art school here, and without anything like the German loss in World War I, he never develops the anti-Semitism or fascist ideas he did in real life. Instead, he is hired as a painter in the imperial court. During World War II, he opposes Markos Angelos and helps Otto escape Berlin. After the war, he goes into the animation industry and establishes Adolf Hitler Pictures, the equivalent of Disney.
  • Joseph Stalin remained in the seminary and was ordained as an Orthodox priest. Instead of becoming a brutal communist dictator, he became the Ecumenical Patriarch and took a very hardline stance against equalism.
  • Mussolini and Goebbels become respected radio news anchors opposed to the Angeloi.
  • Vladimir Putin became a 90s action movie star, filling in Keanu Reeves' role in popular culture.
• The Rich Want to Be Richer: Theodor Tesla isn't satisfied with owning the largest and most profitable company in the Reich. After gaining political power in 2030, he sets about rolling back workplace regulations, gutting labor unions, and forcing his workers to work long hours in dangerous conditions to make even more money. When the government gives him a contract to deport ethnic and religious minorities out of the country by plane, he has the planes depressurized, which kills everyone onboard. This allows him to save money which he would have used to buy fuel, pressurize the cabins, feed the passengers, and pay the pilots for a full trip.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: The "patriot" movement arose in the 1990s after Helmut Kohl destigmatized nationalism during World War III. These "patriots" embraced various far right and neo-Angeloi ideas, among them "sovereign citizen" movements which alleged the modern Reich is merely a Chinese-owned corporate puppet regime with no authority to enforce laws over Roman citizens. One such fanatic is Maike Richter, a gold-digger who manipulated the widowed and mentally incapacitated Helmut Kohl into supporting a far-right agenda during his retirement.
• Rising Empire: In 1105, Friedrich the Great's death united the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires under the rule of the same person, his grandson Friedrich the Glorious. Proclaiming the restoration of the Roman Empire as the Reich, Friedrich II embarked on a twenty-year campaign to restore the empire to its rightful borders across all of Europe. By the time of his death in 1126, the empire had established itself as the dominant power in the known world, with its territory stretching from Ireland in the west to Arabia in the east.
• The Roaring '20s: After World War I, the Reich entered a period of rising economic prosperity but also terrible wealth inequality, leading to a massive general strike in 1926 the young Otto skillfully negotiated an end to.
• Roswell That Ends Well: In Part 5, an alien ship crashes in Agadir, Mauretania, and kickstarts seventy years of conspiracy and shadow politics between humanity and the alien Jotun.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Kaiser Otto was an active ruler from the very beginning. As a teenager, he personally negotiated an end to the general strike of 1926, putting himself in danger to do so. As a young man in World War II, he involved himself in his generals' strategy sessions and made sure as many of his citizens were okay as possible. After the war, he amended the Augustinian Code and overhauled the political system to be more fair to all citizens while also preventing the return of the Angeloi. At great personal risk again, he made several high-profile visits to occupied Berlin to speak out against the Soviets. His legacy of duty and service was passed on to his children Elisabeth Alexandra and Georg, as well as Elisabeth Alexandra's daughter Wilhelmina. His middle child, Wilhelm Karl, eventually came around to doing something, namely working to make amends for his past misdeeds by helping the anti-Elias resistance.
• Ruling Family Massacre:
  • Malcolm Bethune ordered the massacre of all of the Hohenzollerns in Part 2 after seizing power in the Anarchy.
  • In Part 3, the Bolsheviks massacred the Russian royal family as in real life, but here there were two survivors who escaped and formed a government in exile.
  • In Part 4, Markos Angelos massacred all of the Maximists when it became clear Berlin was lost to the Soviets and they were all trapped inside.
  • In Part 5, it is implied this happened to the Japanese royal family after Paulluists (right-wing nationalists) seize power in southern Japan.
  • In 2038, it happens to the Hohenzollerns again when Elias Anhorn orders their purge after delegitimizing them and fabricating a story about a coup attempt.
  • Later in 2038, it happens to the Hohenzollerns again when Elias Anhorn confronts Princess Wilhelmina in a Yavdian bunker and murders three out of six Hohenzollerns in front of her.
• Running Gag:
  • Molotov is obsessed with getting a new desk for his office, and the entire Soviet government, even during World War III, is fully committed to preventing him from getting one, going to extreme lengths to do so. When he finally gets a desk... he ends up throwing it out a window. This gag is even referenced 3 real life years and 20-30 in-universe years later when Molotov is brought up again.
  • Throughout the X-Division arcs, Angela refuses to let Anders drive, even when they're using Anders' car. Eventually, Diana and Olga join in on the joke as well.
  • Angela is first introduced post-World War III attempting to electrocute a dead body as part of a lesson for new Athanatoi recruits. The lesson is interrupted by the Smoking Man, who assigns her to X-Division. Since then, she has tried to find opportunities to electrocute dead bodies, but never found one. She was especially happy about the opportunity to electrocute an invisible dead body on one of her cases, though that never came to pass.
  • Every time Angela mentions vampires, angels, or anything else associated with Christianity, Anders can't help but immediately deny it as "psychological" in nature and attribute it to mundane matters, departing from his usual mentality of accepting impossible explanations for their cases. Parodied when his father Walter mentions aliens in a later case but immediately dismisses the possibility in much the same way, much to Anders' frustration.
  • Pavel Novak almost always says his catchphrase "surprise motherfrakker" when he reappears in the story, but everyone, including the Smoking Man himself, hates his catchphrase and would rather die than hear it again.
  • The bartender Jessica is introduced in the Fringe arc as a former KGB agent and friend of Olga resettled as a civilian in the Reich. When reuniting, Olga makes up a cover story about her and Anders being married, which Jessica believes and mentions constantly for the rest of the arc. Even after Jessica and Olga get married and Jessica is fatally wounded, she can't help but make one last joke about Olga and Anders being married.

S-V

• Samus Is a Girl: During the Battle of Wawel Castle, the usuper Malcolm Bethune is confident he can't be beaten by Prince Friedrich, leader of the enemy army, as a prophecy claimed he could not be harmed by any man. Prince Friedrich promptly reveals "he" is actually Princess Sophia, Friedrich's cousin and the true heir to the throne, in disguise. Malcolm then dies as the prophecy said nothing about being harmed by women.
• Satan: Lucifer himself exists much as he does in biblical lore. An archangel trapped in Hell, he was released in the 17th century as part of the Apocalypse, before the Inquisition sealed him away again.
• Save the World:
  • In Part 1, Kaiser Siegfried I and his son Sigismund II decisively pushed back the Aztec invasion force from England, saving the Reich and possibly the rest of Europe from subjugation by the Mexica Empire.
  • In Part 2, Wilhelm and the Inquisition prevailed against both the angels and demons to stop the Apocalypse, preventing the timeline from ending and humanity from being destroyed.
  • In Part 3, faced with the demons rampaging all over the mortal plane after the Apocalypse ended, the Inquisition stepped up and sealed off Hell, ending the demon threat.
  • In Part 4, the loyalists prevailed over the Angeloi and Rasas and stopped their goal of world domination, while Wilhelm rallied the surviving angels under his banner to stop Gabriel's plot to rewrite reality with himself as God.
  • In Part 5, the Reich defeated the Soviets, preventing them from achieving world domination, and stopped XA-1005C from being used or nuclear war from happening, while X-Division averted an alien invasion from subjugating humanity.
• Scary Amoral Religion: The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, something everyone in the Old World was disgusted at. They even sacrificed Kaiser Wilhelm III in such a manner. The Aztecs got rid of human sacrifice at the end of Part 1, but the Tarascan state in Part 3 and the so-called Mexicanist State in Part 5 attempted to bring it back. Later in Part 5, Elias Anhorn's regime turns Christianity into a brutal and unforgiving cult that murders those who don't blindly support Elias.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • By the end of Part 4, Wilhelm's frustration reached its apex and decided to leave the Hohenzollernverse in favor of other universes, until he was talked down by Raphael, who wants him to finish what he started.
  • In Part 5, the pagan gods feel the same way towards their worshippers, as when X-Division discovered them hiding in a town in Normandy, they did not want anything to do with their followers, having grown tired of worship.
• Secret Government Warehouse: The Syndicate had plenty of secret warehouses where they stored evidence of alien encounters.
• Secret History:
  • Angels were involved in many historical events over the course the series. Wilhelm possessed Friedrich the Great in 1066, and together they rallied the people of the Holy Roman Empire against the Worm cult, setting the stage for the restoration of the Reich. Raphael murdered a Kaiser in an attempt to destroy the Reich, as well as manipulating other countries like Lithuania into getting more powerful and opposing the Reich. Gabriel and Uriel independently masterminded the start of World War I with different intentions.
  • The aliens have also been present at various points in human history, but they only really got involved when one of their spaceships crashed at Agadir in 1947, leading to the creation of the Syndicate. The Syndicate in turn manipulated human history in a way that advanced its own interests and delayed the inevitable alien invasion further, such as by killing Abraham Green, Ragnar Beck, and Mikhail Gorbachev.
  • The Worm cult has also been present for about the same time, also manipulating historical events behind the scenes. They were responsible for the rise of the cultist vizier Hassan, who infiltrated the Abbasid caliphate and sought to turn it into a world conquering behemoth, only to be brought down by Friedrich the Great.
• Secret Police:
  • The Angeloi, Rasas, Soviets, and Chinese nationalists had their own secret police agencies: the Black Tagmata, Gurapu, NKVD/KGB, and Jinyiwei.
  • After his takeover, Elias Anhorn established the Home Guardians, Shepherds of the Future, and Argus as secret police who watch neighborhoods for any signs of subversive behavior...like owning 80s Dutch rock albums.
• Self-Disposing Villain:
  • Markos Angelos and Mohandas Gandhi killed themselves when it was clear they lost the war. Gandhi was technically killed by his Annionaverse counterpart, but this still counts.
  • Dmitry Yazov attempted to do this, but when the Romans kicked down the door to his office, he chickened out and immediately surrendered.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Although the Reich had become the most powerful nation in Crusader Kings II even just a hundred years after starting Part 1, Zen said he intentionally limited himself by not allowing any further expansion beyond the Roman imperial borders (with a few exceptions) and only declaring war in self-defense, on behalf of an ally, or with a proper in-universe justification. In Part 2, Zen permitted the Reich to expand through colonization but still limited where colonization could occur. As for wars, the Reich only fought wars if an ally called for help, and even then Zen not only did not let the Reich take any territory in peace deals, but also limited how much territory other nations, including allies, received too. In Parts 3-4, wars were only declared by scripted events. In Part 5, Zen put even more strict requirements, refusing to declare any unscripted wars at all, giving the Reich severe economic and military penalties, and even giving enemies like the Soviet Commune in 1984 and China in 2038 a military stat boost to make fighting them even more of a challenge.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Wilhelm traveled back in time to 1066 after the Reich of his timeline was destroyed by the onslaught of unbelievers, subsequently causing the Apocalypse to happen in 1453. To make sure this doesn't happen again, he killed the angels responsible for triggering these events before they could even enact them, hoping the outcome will change. And it certainly did change, but the Apocalypse was only delayed. In Part 5, Wilhelm reveals the above story is not fully accurate. He himself caused the Apocalypse in the alternate 1453 because the Worm was about to destroy humanity, with the Reich as the last holdout. His brother sacrificed himself to send him back in time to avert this calamity. And it was averted, though Wilhelm still fears it may happen eventually.
• Shell-Shock Silence: In 1966, after his helicopter is shot down by Chaw Thai insurgents in Siam, a young Erich Hansen experiences shell shock silence as he only hears a high pitched hum, while his vision remains blurry. His friend Mark attempts to shout something to him, but it is only after he is shot in the head that Erich snaps back to reality.
• Ship Tease:
  • In the early parts of the X-Division arc, Diana Frank and Anders Humboldt referred to each other primarily as exes, but as they worked together, they slowly showed signs of attraction. On one particular case, the mind reader Gottfried Loben read their minds and announced they were both thinking of each other, leading them to blush and Angela to laugh. By 2003, they had married and had a son, Alex.
  • While fighting the Worm cult in 2014, the angels Wilhelm and Sarah reflected on their past together. Almost a thousand years ago, Wilhelm had possessed Friedrich the Great, and Sarah had possessed his wife Ida. Although Sarah insists they have long since moved on and do not share their former vessels' feelings, it is implied both of them still harbor feelings for each other, with Wilhelm more open about it and Sarah more reluctant.
  • In 2038, Sophie notices the 6 year old Prince Friedrich has a crush on his playmate Ilyana Romanova, even though Ilyana's domineering personality makes her hard to deal with.
• Shout-Out:
  • Many of the elements in the AAR are references to Supernatural. There are also references to the shows The X-Files and Fringe, as well as The Handmaid's Tale and The Legend of Korra.
  • Markos Angelos is a reference to Basileus Markos II Angelos from another AAR: This is Madness: Story of the Crumbling Europe. In this universe, he is the leader of the fascists, who have adopted the name Angeloi from Angelos' family, and it even uses the phrase "The Angeloi Protect" as their motto.
  • The later Part 1 prominence of the Timurid khan Timur and his son Shah Rukh, as well as Shah Rukh's title of the Lord of Asia, are nods to the long-running Byzantine alternate history series An Age of Miracles.
  • The character and backstory of Jared Karasi is inspired by RedTemplar's The Eastern Vikings, where the Karasi family reforms and standardizes Finnish paganism and builds an Estonian empire. The Eastern Vikings is later referenced along with This Is Madness and other similar stories in a list of potential alternate history scenarios Thea receives.
  • Ocuil Acatl's catchphrase "All this has happened before and will happen again" and the curse word "frak" are taken from Battlestar Galactica.
  • The aliens' hammer-shaped ships and general Roswell Gray design comes from the Asgard of Stargate.
  • Zen said the ancient advanced human civilization was inspired by similar civilizations in Halo and Assassin's Creed.
  • Zen has said the buildup to World War III was based on a German mockumentary about the Cold War going hot, which was in turn based on declassified NATO and Soviet war plans.
  • Gabriel mentions a set of timelines known as the Kaiserreich timelines, a reference to the popular Kaiserreich mod as well as Zen's previous work "Return of the Celestial Empire," which was played in the Victoria 2 version of Kaiserreich.
  • The warmongering Mohandas Gandhi is based on his nuke-happy AI from Civilization. His breakdown at the end of World War II is based on both Hitler's breakdown in the movie Downfall and the many "Downfall parodies" spawned from those scenes.
  • Gabriel breaks the fourth wall in the Part 4 epilogue by posting Chapter 400 which was an ending of Fintilgin's "Kingdom Come" Jerusalem AAR edited to match the Hohenzollernverse's setting, hoping the readers will fall for it. It doesn't work, so he drops a teaser of Part 5 while mocking them for their persistence.
  • The XA-1005C virus originally comes from the "Kingdom Come" Jerusalem megacampaign AAR as well, which eradicated entire humanity in that timeline. Guess what it almost does in Part 5...
  • There is the Annionaverse from Dragoon9105's Anniona megacampaign, in which characters from both universes cross over to the other and interact with each other. Osterhild, Siegfried, Eva, and Julian Anniona are the counterparts of 20th and 21st century Annionaverse Austrian rulers.
  • Friedrich the Great is described as having looked like an older Marth (the first protagonist of Fire Emblem), only in-universe it is explained as Marth having his design based on Friedrich the Great.
  • Zen claims he put cameos to characters from his other works into various stories in Part 5 (including Irene Doukas herself and the KRA party).
  • The name equalists is taken from the "Equalists" of Book 1 of Avatar: Legend of Korra. The way in which Alex Humboldt and Thea Tesla meet is based on how Mako and Asami meet (with Asami/Thea running over Mako/Alex with a moped).
  • Wilhelm is very heavily based on the character of Castiel from Supernatural, although Zen has said the name Wilhelm itself comes from a character from a previous AAR he wrote. Not to mention that a lot of the Apocalypse story arc in Part 2 uses storylines from seasons 1-5 of Supernatural. In Part 2, the characters Friedrich von Hohenzollern, Friedrich von Habsburg, and "Frederick" von Hohenzollern are also based on Sam, Dean, and then Adam. In Part 4, Conrad Humboldt and Hans Hansen are also loosely based on Sam and Dean, with Conrad even owning the Winchesters' black 1967 Impala. However, the archangel Gabriel is more based on the character of Metatron than the Supernatural version of Gabriel.
  • Characters in the X-Division story arcs of Part 5 are based on characters in the X-Files and Fringe.
    • Anders Humboldt's most obvious inspiration was Fox Mulder, but he also has some influences from Peter Bishop.
    • Angela Hansen is very much inspired by Dana Scully, but she also shares a lot in common with Olivia Dunham. The romantic relationship between Mulder/Scully and Peter/Olivia was replaced with a familial bond as Anders and Angela are cousins.
    • Annie Humboldt is based on Samantha Mulder, and her middle name is even Samantha. However, as the story arc progresses and reaches the point in X-Files where Samantha's fate is revealed and Scully becomes pregnant with William Mulder, Zen instead avoids all that and has has Annie/Samantha return from the aliens, filling in William Mulder's role in the story.
    • Anna Humboldt is based on Peter Bishop.
    • Walter Humboldt is based on Walter Bishop. His father Conrad Humboldt's original surname was even Bischoff (which can be anglicized as Bishop).
    • Olga Kirova is based on John Doggett, Lincoln Lee, and Charlie Francis.
    • Diana Frank is based on Diane Fowley, Monica Reyes, and Astrid Farnsworth.
    • Erich Hansen is based on Walter Skinner and Phillip Broyles.
    • Wilhelm Kurtz is based on Alvin Kersh and Broyles again.
    • Mina Schaefer is based on Nina Sharp.
    • Wilhelm Tesla is based on William Bell.
    • Johann Verbringen is based on Jeffrey Spender.
    • Pavel Novak is based on Alex Krycek.
  • Russian chancellor Viktor Petrov is based on a character of the same name from House of Cards, only instead of being similar to Putin, he is a liberal reformer who stepped down after one term. To represent him, Zen uses a picture of the actor Lars Mikkelsen (who played Petrov on House of Cards).
  • Josiah Burkard, an economics professor, is said to be both based on The West Wing's Josiah Bartlet and The Handmaid's Tale's Joseph Lawrence.
  • The arc after 2030 is heavily based on The Handmaid's Tale as the Reich descends into a totalitarian Christofascist theocracy where women have no rights and minorities are systematically eliminated.
  • Ryukyu's obsession with having a ridiculously large navy, even when it does not make any sense economically, is a shout-out to the Three Mountains achievement in EU4, in which the player must conquer the world as Ryukyu. The Ryukyuan navy is even officially known as the Three Mountains Defense Force.
• Shown Their Work: Zen explains he wants to depict things as accurately as he can, though some things are bent around for convenience or artistic license.
  • Although the LP is written in English, Zen attempts to write the dialogue in such a way that it can pass for a translation from German (the language of the Reich). Most acronyms are changed to their German equivalents (TSA to VSB, CDC to ZKP), German jokes are used, and English wordplays and references to English spellings are ignored or replaced with German versions if there are any and the originals can't already pass for direct translations from German.
  • Place names around the world are also changed with a vastly different colonial era. Many of Eastern Europe's cities retain the German names they had in OTL up to World War II. Having never become the capital of Russia, Moscow remains a small town known as Moskva, while St. Petersburg becomes known as both Rognedagrad (for the empress who founded it) and Tsarberg (as Russians still call Constantinople Tsargrad). Most New World names are scrubbed of Spanish, English, and French references.
  • The Aztecs and Incas are never referred to as such as those names were only assigned to them by Europeans later on. Instead, the Aztecs are called the Mexica and the Inca Empire is referred to as Tawantinsuyu. However, an "Aztecatl" political movement, using that name in its proper context, emerges in Part 3-4, while fascist Tawantinsuyu is given an in-universe reason to be called the Inca Empire (although this is mostly in the game itself; the story still refers to it as Tawantinsuyu).
  • Zen rejects the idea and depiction of the Middle Ages as a cultural Dark Ages where the Catholic Church suppresses knowledge and burns scientists at the stake. In some chapters of Part 1, he describes the cultural and scientific innovations made during the medieval period.
  • Zen also rejects the common narrative of smallpox alone wiping out 95% of the native population of the New World due to them not having any immunity, conveniently leaving a lot of empty land ready for Europeans to settle without guilt. Instead, he writes that modern academics have found that it was a combination of disease, warfare, enslavement, ecological collapse, and cultural erasure which led to the decline, and New World natives had the same immunities and potential for immunity as Europeans.
  • When the Iconoclast Reformation begins, Zen has Martin Luther post his 95 Theses, but with a footnote explaining Luther didn't nail the theses to the door of a church as popular culture believes.
  • When Franz Ferdinand is shot, setting of World War I, Zen does not use the pop culture story of the assassin coincidentally eating a sandwich right in front of his car. That story was referenced later on, but the actual assassin simply walks up and shoots him.
  • The early stages of World War III are said to be based on actual declassified NATO and Warsaw Pact war plans, as well as NATO military exercises in the 1980s.
  • All of Elias Anhorn's regime's actions up to 2037, as well as those of Han Xianyu and Zhao Yu, are based on events that happened in real life, either in the past or right now.
  • Occasionally, Zen posts in-universe cultural updates talking about the societies, cultures, and political systems of various nations, or updates focusing on certain media, like TV shows and video games including production notes and themes.
  • Instead of just having the ancient humans' language be a "modern" language like Greek or Latin, with their belief systems and religious terminology being based on "modern" ones like Greco-Roman mythology, Zen used the Proto-Indo-European language and mythology to describe ancient human society as best as he could. While the name of the ancient human civilization could easily have been called Aesir, Zen instead used the Proto-Indo-European Hensus.
• Shrouded in Myth: Physical traces of ancient humanity's civilization no longer exist or are buried so deep they can't be easily found, so most of the knowledge on it comes from mythology. Ancient humanity's name, the Hensus, was passed down through the millennia until eventually becoming the word Aesir, while the Jotun aliens and their ancestors, who were known as the Vanir, lent their names to Norse mythology. The languages and traditions of ancient humanity evolved into those of the early Indo-European and Basque peoples. The Worm cult has worked the downfall of ancient humanity into its own mythology, believing civilization is a cycle of rise and fall and that they should hasten the fall so the rise can be engineered by the Worm.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  • After being imprisoned by Anne Frank and Olga Kirova, Valentin attempted to mock and insult Kaiser Otto, only for Otto to stop him mid-monologue with a punch to the face.
  • After getting his gay teacher Oskar arrested on false charges of pedophilia, the homophobic Josh brags the police were stupid enough to fall for the trick and calls Oskar a slur, only for Alex to shut him up by beating him up.
  • In April 2039, as Thea Tesla and Magnus Kvensen face down Theodor Tesla, Magnus points a gun at Theodor in an attempt to show strength. Theodor sees through his bravado and calls him nervous and weak, unable to amount to anything, while he himself is an accomplished businessman who has shaped the world countless times for better or worse (but mostly for worse). He gloats that Magnus doesn't have it in him to pull the trigger. Magnus immediately shoots him.
• Sibling Team:
  • By 2015, Diana and Olga have reconciled close enough to remember their shared childhood together. And with Olga considering Diana's mom as her own adoptive mom, the two consider each other sisters. They will do anything to protect each other on the battlefield.
  • To some extent, the cousins Anders and Angela form the core of the X-Division. Without their duo constantly working together and playing off each other, X-Division would not achieve the success it ultimately found.
  • Although their bond isn't at the center of their group, the cousins Alex and Alexandra do form a team together with their significant others Thea and Magnus, directing their energies into finding new scientific breakthroughs.
• Signature Move: Anne's signature technique was the blind fire tactic, allowing her to hit a target with perfect accuracy without taking the time to consciously aim first. Blind firing was later taught to her daughter Diana, adopted daughter Olga Kirova, and Diana's protege Angelica Haus.
• Sinister Surveillance:
  • During the X-Division story arcs, the COS AI was initially created in the 90s as a smart surveillance system for the Eurisko tech company's headquarters, before it gained sentience, hacked into the building's security systems, and began killing any human it deemed a threat to its existence. After being shut down by X-Division, it later returned having hacked into SVI's orbital space laser network and constantly watched X-Division through computer webcams, Internet connections, phone GPS, and other electronic devices.
  • In 2035, Theodor Tesla established a comprehensive nationwide mass surveillance network called Watchtower, using conventional security cameras, hidden cameras, autonomous drones, human secret police, and biometric scanners to monitor the entire nation for any hints of dissent.
  • By 2039, the Panopticon network of brain implants for military personnel has not only been used as a surveillance network at times but also allows Theodor Tesla to directly seize control of each user's body, recondition a user's mind at will, or even just kill them. However, this feature is also available to anybody with Theodor's admin privileges, allowing Thea and Alex to develop Argeiphontes, a counter-system which can do the same thing but takes power away from Theodor.
• Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility: This is an alternate history scenario which branches off in the 11th century with the unification of both the (frequently at odds) Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire into a new proto-humanistic Reich which emphasizes tolerance and fairness centuries before such values would take off in OTL. This isn't even considering the fact that Chinese dynasties colonized Australia and North America and the Aztec empire became a global superpower capable of conquering much of the North American continent, raising a transatlantic fleet to invade Europe, and going toe-to-toe with said Reich. Or the fact that various pagan and non-Abrahamic faiths and Judaism suddenly and almost simultaneously experienced a revival (somewhat justified as angels did it). Or that there was an ancient advanced human precursor civilization 150,000 years ago, when much of the world was covered in ice and most humans were still in Africa. It would rank between implausible and alien space bats.
• Soldier vs. Warrior: Professional Roman legionnaires regularly faced off against both Aztec jaguar warriors in the west and hordes of Mongol horse archers in the east.
• So Proud of You:
  • As Kaiser Siegfried I dies in battle against the Mongols in 1261, he sees a vision of his father Wilhelm III, who says he is proud of his son for avenging him and driving back both the Aztecs and Mongols.
  • Diana hopes her mother is proud of her as she bleeds to death after failing to stop Elias Anhorn's coup.
  • Olga knows her friends and family are proud of her as she is about to be executed by Elias Anhorn.
  • Wilhelmina gradually comes to terms with the fact that her late parents are proud of her and uses this self-acceptance to regain her strength in the final battle against Elias Anhorn.
• Soulsaving Crusader: The Inquisition in Part 2 fears that if the heresies succeeds, Rome will die and the Apocalypse begins. It's partially true as the Apocalypse is actually being masterminded by the angel Raphael and slated to begin soon. To a lesser extent the Inquisition retains this mentality into Parts 3-4, and it is carried on by Inquisitors Dieter and Munster of Part 5. In 2039 under Elias Anhorn's regime, this is now the job of every Roman soldier, which are now known as Crusaders.
• Space Romans: Rome has a space program (RANA, the equivalent of NASA) and dominates space so far, having sent Romans to orbit and the moon. The Space Race in this timeline wasn't even close. Although the Soviets still launched the first human satellite, Sputnik, the Reich launched the first human into space, conducted the first spacewalk, and landed a man on the moon. In the 2030s, the Roman Frederica Eisenburg becomes the first woman to land on the moon and the first human since the 1970s to do so.
• Spirit Advisor: The Hohenzollerns have the myseterious ability to commune with the spirits of their ancestors, though the exact nature of these "force ghosts" is left ambiguous.
• Status Quo Is God: The Reich's foreign policy revolves around upholding the status quo and maintaining the international balance of power. Throughout Part 2, as Lithuania and Scandinavia fought against Russia, the Reich would always intervene on Russia's side to "even the score" before ending the war with a status quo peace treaty in which neither side, not even the Reich, gains anything.
• Steel Eardrums: Frequently played straight with every character who uses a gun, such as all of the X-Division agents. Despite frequently shooting guns as part of their jobs, not once does anybody suffer hearing loss. Subverted with the ex-Athanatoi agent and anti-Elias Anhorn rebel Clara, who was diagnosed with hearing loss after fighting in the war-torn city of Bremerhaven for three years and almost constantly hearing loud explosions and gunfire all that time.
• Stop Worshipping Me:
  • Throughout Part 4, Gabriel manipulates Wilhelm into becoming the savior of angelkind and the antagonist of the story he is writing for himself, and although Wilhelm does not want the job and hates the attention, he reluctantly takes it anyways as the alternative is letting Gabriel win.
  • In Part 5, X-Division stumbles across a town where pagan gods retired from being worshipped. While trying to save one of the gods' sons from being captured by demons, the gods complain they are tired of being worshipped and want to be left alone, especially the Aztec gods who are themselves disgusted by human sacrifice.
• Story Arc: The AAR has many story arcs that focus on individual characters across the series.
  • Part 1 - Saint Wilhelmina: The rise to power of an empress who caused miracles, who would later become one of the most revered people of the reborn Roman Empire, with her influence still remaining for the centuries to come. Perspectives on her life range from when she was crowned at 16 and quickly shattered the power of the Catholic Church, to when she is middle aged and stops a pirate from stealing the secret to Greek Fire, to the end of her life, when the emperors of every major empire in the known world, friend and foe alike, come to pay their respects to her.
  • Part 1 - Saint Gunhilda: How a peasant girl from Poland became the Reich's greatest military leader and an empress, founding the powerful Schweinfurt family and being instrumental in Saint Wilhelmina's upbringing.
  • Part 1 - The Thirteenth Century Crisis: This features a Wilhelm that people didn't like and supposedly cursed the empire, a Wilhelm that died before he could fight off cruel invaders, and a third one that died fighting those cruel invaders, and a Siegfried who ultimately saved his empire from defeat and implosion during the Sunset Invasion.
  • Part 1 - Timur the Iron Khan: Timur rose to power on the steppes of Central Asia and quickly built up a giant horde which swept across the region, pushing the Ghaznavids into exile further east and shattering Persia. After a lengthy struggle, Kaiser Martin I, leading an unprecedented alliance of Romans, Persians, and Indians, decisively defeated Timur's son Shah Rukh at Persepolis, ending the last great horde empire.
  • Part 1 - Friedrich Augustin III "the Lion," or "the Reformer" writes the first Augustinian Code after receiving inspiration from Wilhelm and the spirit of Friedrich the Great.
  • Part 2 - Kaiser Wolfram and Sarah Milton: the Kaiser meets a woman who can hear angels. Together they uncover the angelic grace of Saint Gunhilda, a former angel, and stop a plot by both angels and demons.
  • Part 2 - The Anarchy: Takingheavy inspiration from Macbeth (and the angel Raphael), Malcolm Bethune usurps the throne from Kaiser Martin II and declares himself Kaiser, purging all those who resist. A massive rebellion soon follows. Everyone speaks like Shakespeare here, something Raphael actually complains is happening in universe.
  • Part 2 - The Synod: This Synod reaffirms that Purism and Reformed Iconoclasm (Protestantism) are heresies almost as bad as Catholicism. Told from the perspective of a Japanese Christian representing the Christian Shiba Shogunate.
  • Part 2 - The Gospel of the two Friedrichs: The story of Friedrich von Hohenzollern and his old rival Friedrich von Habsburg as they are sent on a quest to stop the Apocalypse and save humanity. Takes inspiration from Supernatural seasons 1-5.
  • Part 2 - Sunrise Invasion: The Sunset Invasion of the Thirteenth Century Crisis is avenged. Kaiserin Victoria II "Nahua-Slayer" leads an invasion army from Neurhomania into the heart of the Mexica Empire, where they sack Tenochtitlan and recover Wilhelm III's body.
  • Part 3 - The Maximist Wars: Details the Maximist revolutions and overthrow of the government, as well as the counterattack from forces loyal to Kaiser Sigismund II.
  • Part 3 - The Miracle of the Cave: The arc introduces Bernadette Soubirrous and focuses on her witnessing of Saint Wilhelmina in Lourdes, with Inquisitor Owen Niederung as the central character investigating the incident.
  • Part 3 - Bernadette's Trials: This story arc tells the story of the trials of Bernadette as an Inquisitor, trying to break out Inquisitor Mukhtar from Hell and seal off Hell so demons will no longer torment humans.
  • Part 3 - The Great Eimerican War: Details the Roman involvement in the war against the Fox, who are aiming for the hegemony in North Eimerica. Owen Niederung, under the guise of his paleontology expeditions, tries to find the missing archangel Gabriel during the war.
  • Part 3 - The World at War: The assassination of Prince Franz Ferdinand, the friend of soldier Gavrilo Princip, sparks a conflict that ultimately turns global, sending Gavrilo on campaigns around the world.
  • Part 4 - Götterdämmerung: Rasa India declares war on Turkestan, which leads the Reich to declare war on India. The Angeloi then rebel against the Reich after Angelos stages a coup against Otto. Otto escapes to Constantinople and rallies loyalists to his banner. In the Angeloi-occupied territories, resistance cells led by loyal Roman citizens continue the fight even after loyalist military units surrendered or retreated.
  • Part 4 - The Visitor: The Vienna resistance seeks to gain leverage against the Angeloi, seeking an unlikely ally in the Soviet Commune. Meanwhile, familiar, but at the same time different faces show up in the chaos caused by Gabriel's machinations, while a girl named Anne Frank loses her parents to the Angeloi and vows revenge.
  • Part 4 - Uncertainty: World War II is now over, but the surviving angels still have to deal with Gabriel, who intends to become God.
  • Part 5 - The Valkyrie: Anne Frank's Athanatoi missions around the world, building off her missions in Russia, Berlin, Siam, Malaya, Cuba, and Carpathia.
  • Part 5 - Bohemian Rhapsody: Anne Frank vs. Valentin Varennikov during the 1969 Bohemian Revolution.
  • Part 5 - The End of History: Varennikov's coup against Gorbachev, Anne's capture and torture, the introduction of Olga Kirova and Diana Frank, and the beginning of World War III.
  • Part 5 - The World Set on Fire: The Cold War goes hot as World War III breaks out and the Soviets invade the Reich, while militarist China comes to the Reich's defense. Political intrigue leads to Vladimir Putin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Olga Kirova devising a plot to free Anne and topple Varennikov.
  • Part 5 - X-Division (1992-2001): Athanatoi agent Angela Hansen is brought on by the mysterious Smoking Man to debunk and discredit her cousin, fellow agent and alien conspiracy theorist Anders Humboldt, but she joins his side, and together they investigate a conspiracy in which aliens plot to take over the planet with the help of the Syndicate. Based on X-Files seasons 1-9.
  • Part 5 - X-Division (2008-2015): X-Division is reinstated to investigate a series of unexplained incidents, which leads them to interact with the parallel Annionaverse and uncovers a sinister conspiracy against reality within Tesla Dynamic. After this, X-Division turns its attention back to Sentinel to finish what they started. Based on Fringe seasons 1-4 and a few episodes of X-Files seasons 10-11.
  • Part 5 - The Forum (2015-2030): The X-Division has exposed and defeated Sentinel, but things stay almost the same, just without Sentinel's influence. Kaiser Wilhelm IV "the Vulture" kills his father, Kaiser Otto the Great, and brother Prince Georg and is crowned Kaiser, taking the country in a new direction. Meanwhile, Thierry Baudet and Elias Anhorn form a new anti-establishment and environmentalist political party. Ends when Baudet is murdered, the Imperial Diet is massacred in a false flag attack, and Elias Anhorn seizes power through a blackmailed Kaiser.
  • Part 5 - The Committee (2030-): After Elias seizes power, he begins remaking the Reich in his image, turning it into a dystopian totalitarian Christofascist hellhole in which minorities are slaughtered, dissidents are rounded up in camps, Roman cultural heritage is destroyed or perverted into Committee idols, and women have no rights. Around the world, the other traditional powers also descend into authoritarianism, with China under Han Xianyu drifting back towards Sinocentric militarism and India being forced under a Hindutva fundamentalist dictatorship by the Reich. But all is not lost, as the wayward princess Wilhelmina flees to Russia, where she slowly builds a resistance movement against Elias. Based on The Handmaid's Tale, both the book and the series. It all comes crashing down when Elias, in a moment of madness, detonates hundreds of nukes and wipes out almost every major city on Earth, starting World War IV with 800 million people dead and most nations devastated. Russia is conquered within a week, forcing Wilhelmina and her surviving family and supporters to flee to Yavdi, which is also conquered soon afterward, forcing her to flee to Persia, where she finally takes up arms and makes her last stand.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: In Part 4, the Axis were the first faction to make nukes. The Rasas tested their bomb first but were defeated before they could use them. The Angeloi got their materials and made new bombs, but their bombs were stolen and used against them by the Soviets, leading to their final demise.
• Stupid Neutral: LKR Guy rants about how "both sides are the same" and always tries to find a "compromise" between the two sides he sees, even if said sides don't even exist and the compromise makes no sense. He even sides with the "underdog" in CB against the established mainstream as a way to establish a "compromise" with "both sides," to disastrous results for the entire Reich.
• Sudden Name Change:
  • Many native American and African polities and locations were renamed from their real life names if those were based on European translations. Most notably, the Fox Empire became the Meskwaki Empire, and the Cherokee Republic became Tsalagehi Ayeli.
  • The First and Second Roman Civil Wars are no longer called as such, but rather as the Maximist Wars and World War II (folding the latter into the greater conflict).
  • Neu Rhomania in Parts 2-3 became known as Neurhomania from Part 4 on due to grammatical reasons.
  • While China was known as only the Chinese Empire and explicitly not Empire of China in Part 3, the name "Empire of China" and title "Emperor of China" became acceptable in Part 5 and retconned as being acceptable in the timeframes of Parts 3-4.
  • The OTL Hohenzollern family (which now has an identical name to the Hohenzollern family Zen created with the ruler designer) became known first as the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringens from Parts 1-4 and now as simply Sigmaringen.
  • While the First World War was originally called the Weltkrieg and the Second World War the Second Weltkrieg, they are now simply World Wars I and II. Presumably they are still called Weltkrieg in the original German, though, since that literally means "World War."
  • Duke Karl Eugen, husband to Princess Elisabeth Alexandra and father to Princess Wilhelmina, went from being a von Schweinfurt to a von Habsburg because Zen remembered Elisabeth Alexandra's mother was also a Schweinfurt.
• Strawman News Media: Roman state media after 2030 no longer concerns itself with telling the truth, instead being heavily biased towards Elias Anhorn and demonizing all others. It overwhelms viewers with a ridiculous amount of narratives, which frequently contradict each other and themselves, with the goal of confusing but entertaining the viewer and retaining a large audience. This serves to keep audiences in line with the state, angry against enemies of the state, and unable to believe any actually true narratives that come in from the outside.
• Succession Crisis: At the end of Part 2, the Reich finds itself in a succession crisis as the first male heir in 150 years, Prince Maximilian, is born after many female Kaisers, leading many nobles to instead pick Prince Siegfried, the (male) heir of a distant branch that had unbroken male descent from Friedrich the Great. Ultimately, Siegfried became Kaiser, and Maximilians descendants became the Maximists. At the beginning of Part 5, the succession dispute becomes meaningless as the two branches become merged in Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra.
• Summoning Ritual:
  • During the 50 Years War, demons do a summoning ritual to summon Death, where they sacrifice their souls to bring the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse into the mortal plane.
  • In 2015, the Worm cult attempts to trick X-Division and the Inquisition into doing a ritual to summon the Worm into reality from outside time, but their plot is foiled.
• Super-Soldier: Sentinel tried making literal super soldiers augmented with alien technology. They are humans made to be almost indestructible and completely loyal to the aliens. However, they can be killed with decapitation, as Olga Kirova learned from an old KGB colleague turned rogue super soldier. Argus seeks to make its mercenaries into something close to super soldiers by implanting them with Panopticons, which effectively give their user a heads-up display in their heads with useful tactical information and on the fly battle analyses, as well as adjust their personalities and feelings so that they lose emotions like empathy and become better at killing.
• Surveillance Drone: Theodor Tesla designed many AI drones specifically made for mass surveillance, and these now patrol neighborhoods watching for signs of dissent.
• Sword Fight:
  • Friedrich the Great, wielding the sword Enonon, dueled the cultist Hassan in a dramatic sword battle for the fate of the world in the Syrian desert during the First Crusade.
  • Saint Wilhelmina was forced to duel her half-brother Prince Kirill of Russia to the death.
  • In Isfahan in April 2039, Princess Wilhelmina wielded Enonon in a duel against Elias Anhorn, who although not using a sword was still equipped with a powerful exo-suit with two bladed gauntlets.
• The Syndicate: There is literally an organization known as the Syndicate. They are more of a government conspiracy than a criminal organization, they still maintain a significant presence in the black market and use many tactics characteristic of the mob. Sentinel also counts as it is a conspiracy within Syndicate and uses the same tactics.
• Synthetic Plague:
  • XA-1005C was a synthetic virus that was highly contagious and deadly, and if it got out, it would quickly infect a majority of humanity. Valentin attempted to unleash it upon the world but failed.
  • The Syndicate also engineered its own synthetic plague, the black oil, a bee-delivered nanobot swarm containing a virus that would turn infected humans into slaves and incubators for the aliens. The smoking man and his top lieutenants all sabotaged the development of the black oil to buy them more time to develop a cure and vaccine to it so humanity could stand a chance against the aliens when they arrived. Although they did develop the cure, they never needed to deploy the virus, as both the Syndicate was wiped out and the aliens left Earth shortly afterward.
  • In 2038, it is revealed Theodor Tesla has engineered a super version of smallpox based in part on data gathered from the Annionaverse's version of smallpox. In 2039, it is deployed against the Eimericans, resulting in massive casualty rates of at least 90% against native populations while leaving European populations largely unscathed.
• Tailor-Made Prison: At the end of the Apocalypse, Michael and Lucifer are tossed into a cage in Hell specifically made to hold Lucifer.
• Tesla Tech Timeline: In this timeline, Tesla was never discredited. He received a noble title and founded a megacorporation that has lasted to the present day. His inventions regarding electricity revolutionized the world. As of 2015, Tesla Dynamic has become the Reich's largest tech corporation, with its products and services dominating many different industries.
• The Theocracy:
  • After the collapse of the North Eimerican equalist regimes, the kingdoms of Hasiinay and Tsalagehi Ayeli adopted theocratic political systems adhering to strict religious norms.
  • After 2035, the Reich has effectively become a totalitarian theocracy, with Zen citing post-1979 Iran and The Handmaid's Tale as an inspiration.
• Temporal Paradox: Zen describes the reality destroying machine's situation in the Fringe arc as being a causal loop. Ancient humanity only designed the machine to fit Anna Humboldt's biometrics because the future X-Division sent back instructions on how to build it like that. Discovering the machine in the present day leads to a conflict between the Hohenzollernverse and Annionaverse X-Divisions, which leads to the machine being used by the Hohenzollernverse to destroy the Annionaverse, which leads to a breakdown of reality in the Hohenzollernverse, which leads to the future X-Division realizing the paradox and sending the machine back to ancient humanity to start the loop all over again until Anna interrupts it by being shown a vision of the bad future and then deciding to not destroy the Annionaverse. This is explicitly described as a causal loop, not a grandfather paradox.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • At the end of Part 3, the archangel Gabriel puts in motion a plan he had been working on for decades. Despite Wilhelm and Raphael forming an unprecedented alliance together with the Inquisition to stop him, he succeeds in tearing out Wilhelm's grace (making him a mortal human) and expelling all angels from Heaven, setting in motion the events of Part 4.
  • Part 4 initially seems to end with World War II being won by the Reich and the forces of Markos Angelos in full retreat...until the final chapters show the Soviets nuking several Roman cities and seizing half of the Roman heartland for their own purposes. Their victory even spills over into the supernatural realm as Soviet soldiers then manage to nuke Heaven itself, destroying it and wiping out all but 12 angels just as they were about to celebrate defeating Gabriel.
  • In Part 5, a story arc from 2016 to 2030 features Thierry Baudet forming a new political party, CB, to take on the political establishment, while Anders Humboldt and Diana Frank investigate a man named Elias Anhorn. However, this arc abruptly ends with the almost complete massacre of the Roman government, Elias seizing political power, Thierry and Diana's deaths, and Anders' marginalization. Subsequent events lead to Elias consolidating power, Roman meritocracy being torn apart, the Reich turning into a totalitarian dictatorship, and Anders and Angela Hansen being murdered. By 2035, Elias has revealed his nature as the true villain of the story arc, and all of his opponents have been eliminated. Elsewhere in the world, India is invaded by the Reich and forced to become a corrupt right-wing puppet regime occupied by Crusaders, and China also becomes a dictatorship under the charismatic nationalist Han Xianyu. The remaining democratic and meritocratic nations become isolated, constantly on the verge of economic collapse, and easy pickings for China and Jerusalem. Just when things couldn't get worse... Han goads Elias into nuking every major city on the planet, starting World War IV. But wait, there's still Princess Wilhelmina in Russia, right? Well, a week later, Russia is conquered by the Jerusalemite army and Wilhelmina is forced to flee to a bunker in Yavdi. Still, things can get better after that, right? Of course, the bunker is also conquered, Wilhelmina loses more of her family, and she is then forced to flee into the wilderness. Thankfully, Wilhelmina makes it to Persia, where she rebuilds her movement and takes on Elias directly. But is that the end? Well, the nationalist Persian government forcibly arrests her and dismantles her movement, exiling all of her remaining supporters to certain death.
• Theotech: Abrahamic terminology and biblical lore are frequently used as part of the Inquisition storyline, where human inquisitors use magic and technology to fight off angels, demons, and other supernatural entities.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Played straight and deconstructed at various times.
  • The mass rebellions against the regime of Malcolm Bethune were portrayed as completely justified and noble as Bethune was very obviously a horribly tyrant who deserved to be overthrown, and once he was deposed the rightful heir returned to restore the Reich to how things should have been.
  • The Fifty Years' War in the Reich in the 17th century featured multiple religious rebellions. Much is said about how these rebellions had genuine grievances against the mainstream Church and the imperial government, as well as how their new religious beliefs weren't inherently bad or wrong. On the other side, there was much said about the excesses of the government and the Church during their crackdowns on what they called heresy. It couldn't be said that the rebellions here were fully justified and noble in pursuit, or that the regime being rebelled against was completely terrible.
  • The rebel Maximists also had legitimate grievances against the government, but they were portrayed as completely incompetent and malicious at times, making their own overthrow by the government-turned-rebel Siegfriedists, who by comparison were depicted in a completely positive light, all the more justified.
  • The various resistance groups against the Angeloi were all shown as heroes and moral paragons in comparison to the evil Nazi-like Angeloi, aside from one incident in which the resistance groups masterminded an assassination of an innocent man in order to bring the Soviets into the war.
  • Rebel groups fighting against the Jerusalem regime in the 2030s largely averted this trope, as many were described as being ideologically extreme, separatists, or otherwise resorting to aggressive tactics to fight their enemy. Many factions really only shared in common their enemy, and some didn't hesitate to fight other factions for ideological or territorial reasons.
• This Is Reality: Said multiple times by multiple characters, sometimes verbatim. One time, Angela Hansen mentions how doctors don't typically remove bomb shrapnel and bullets during surgeries, "unlike in the movies."
• Time Travel:
  • Angels are inherently capable of time traveling with magic, but they and Heaven are temporally tied to the "present day," and going back further in time requires more energy. There is also a special powerful spell that can "reset" the timeline and the celestial realms to an earlier point in time, but this requires an angel to sacrifice their entire existence to power it, erasing them entirely from history. This spell was made use of by Wilhelm and his brother Constantine to avert the bad future they were currently experiencing.
  • The Inquisition has limited time travel magic spells, which it only uses in extreme emergencies like when the fate of humanity is at stake. Some Inquisitors take classes in temporal mechanics, but few of them really understand how time travel works. Sometimes changing history branches out a new timeline, while other times it simply overwrites the main timeline.
  • The Worm, due to its very nature, is capable of "time travel," and artifacts infused by Its power can also achieve the same effect. Sentinel attempted to weaponize one such artifact to kill historical figures before they could make history, but X-Division put a stop to it.
  • A strange portal leading back in time to 150,000 years, the time of ancient humanity, appeared in an alternate future where the Hohenzollernverse's reality was collapsing. The future X-Division used the portal to send back information on how to build the reality destroying weapon which had set in motion the events of the Fringe arc of the present day. It is not known how this portal came to exist, only that it did in the alternate future. It does not exist in the main timeline.
• To Be Continued: Parts 1-4 end with a "To be continued..." tag, usually followed a few days later with a link to the next part. Attempted to be subverted by Gabriel who tried writing a joke ending for Part 4. When the audience didn't fall for it, he posted a link to Part 5.
• To Hell and Back:
  • In Part 2, the Inquisition mounts a rescue operation into Hell to free Mansur Shah Mukhtar, who had been imprisoned there by demons.
  • In Part 3, Inquisitor Bernadette Soubirrous launches her own invasion of Hell, where her squad of inquisitors armed with the latest 19th century weapons easily overwhelms the demons as they weren't expecting a fight. She then captures the demon king Fergus MacLeod as part of her plan to permanently seal off Hell from the mortal world. Some Inquisitors joked the operation was so easy that they could have turned Hell into a Roman province if they wanted to.
• Trauma Conga Line: In the span of 8 years, Princess Wilhelmina suffered trauma after trauma:
  • In 2030, she narrowly escapes an assassination attempt simultaneously with a bloody coup that massacres the entire Roman government and brings Elias Anhorn to power.
  • From 2030 to 2034, she is forced to watch as Elias Anhorn enacts his agenda by stripping reforms from minorities, the working class, and women, including herself. This culminates in her own uncle being forced to disown her and revoke her imperial titles.
  • In December 2034, she narrowly escapes another assassination attempt and is forced to flee into exile while any friends she leaves behind are tortured, killed, or forced into horrible occupations.
  • In January 2035, her daughter-in-law is killed trying to smuggle the Hohenzollern family sword Enonon out to her in Russia.
  • In 2037, she is almost deported from Russia back to Jerusalem, where she will most likely be executed, after the Russian government is pressured into signing a popular yet dangerous trade deal. Although she musters enough courage to ultimately derail the negotiations and stop the deal from happening, she is then shot in another assassination attempt, although she survives.
  • In November 2038, the outbreak of World War IV forces her to flee her refuge for a military bunker further east while her friend Olga Kirova is killed in battle protecting her, something that weighs on her conscience.
  • Scarcely a few weeks after that, the bunker is stormed by Elias Anhorn himself, who proceeds to gun down her husband and son in quick succession. He then moves to kill her grandson as well, but by then, she's had enough, which leads to her realizing she has to stand and fight.
  • In April 2039, as Wilhelmina rebuilds her movement in Persia, Jerusalem prepares to invade just as it did with Russia, again with Elias Anhorn personally leading the troops. In the ensuing battle, Elias severely wounds her and apparently kills her friend Gunduz in front of her. Although she ultimately wins the battle, the aftermath sees the Persian government arrest her, dismantle her movement, and strips all rights and protections from Roman refugees. She is forced to watch helplessly as all of her remaining supporters are exiled from Persia with nowhere to go but active front lines.
• Town with a Dark Secret: The Mesopotamian town of al-Dud appears to be a normal small Roman town on the surface, but when X-Division investigates closely, they find it is a center of eldritch happenings brought on by the Worm and Its cult.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: In 2038, Elias Anhorn personally storms a bunker where Princess Wilhelmina and her family are hiding, intending to kill them to avenge his sister and fallen comrades. In the ensuing battle, Wilhelmina loses her husband and son to Elias' bullets. When Elias goes to kill her grandson Friedrich, Wilhelmina lashes out and unlocks a mysterious power that saves Friedrich and makes her the true heir of the legendary sword Enonon.
• Turn of the Millennium: Part 5 covers the beginning of the 21st century and the many social changes the Reich and the world go through in that decade, from terrorist attacks to a war in Mexico to economic crisis.
• Tyke-Bomb: Olga Kirova in Part 5 was abducted by the Soviets and raised as a living weapon to carry out Valentin's revenge against Anne.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Wilhelm Karl initially appeared to be a tyrant in waiting who in 2018 had just gotten the power he had been waiting for his whole life... but he is now only a puppet for the real tyrant, Elias Anhorn, who seized power for himself and turned the Reich into a totalitarian dictatorship even Wilhelm Karl is disgusted by.
• Ultraterrestrials: Ancient humanity was a technologically advanced civilization existing roughly 150,000 years ago and seems to have spoken a language that is a mix of Basque and Proto-Indo-European.
• Unexpected Successor: Kaiserin Sophia, the second daughter of Kaiser Martin II, was unexpectedly elevated to heir to the throne after her father, sister, and rest of her family were all slaughtered by Malcolm Bethune. Just a few years later, her own death before she could have a child made her cousin Friedrich her unexpected successor. In Parts 3-4, the massacre of the Paramara family by Bose's junta left Princess Sita, granddaughter of one of Purandaradasa's youngest sons, the sole heir to the throne. In Part 5, Sentinel's secret murder of Elisabeth Alexandra forced Otto to elevate his second child, Wilhelm Karl, to heir to the throne. And after the fall of the Reich to totalitarianism, apparently on Wilhelm Karl's orders, the remaining sane nations of the world look to Elisabeth Alexandra's low-key daughter, Princess Wilhelmina, as the true heir to the throne.
• United Nations Is a Superpower: The UN has more influence and legal authority than in real life, but not by much. It can now issue legally binding resolutions and form coalitions of peacekeeping troops from member states to keep the peace. Subverted when the Reich descends into totalitarianism and uses its political clout to shoot down anything the UN tries to do. The UN then expels the Reich, but it still cannot do anything as India has been crippled by the Reich and an increasingly nationalist China has withdrawn from the organization, leaving the remains politically impotent and unable to do anything as World War IV begins.
• Unreliable Canon: The current story arc after 2030 has embraced unreliability as Elias Anhorn's propaganda focuses on churning out an overwhelming amount of false narratives that even contradict each other. The chapters and updates Zen posts are also "infected" with this unreliability, with some paragraphs reading like propaganda while others appear somewhat reliable, leaving readers just as confused and in the dark as people in-universe.
• Unreliable Narrator: The narrator of even the gameplay chapters has become unreliable ever since Elias Anhorn seized power, with propaganda being inserted into certain paragraphs to confuse readers and bias the narrative.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When Wilhelm Karl reveals to Heinrich that he has been blackmailed by Elias with the allegation that the entire Hohenzollern family is illegitimate, Heinrich simply acknowledges the massive revelation as yet another crazy fact he was just told. He tells Wilhelm Karl that he has heard plenty of crazy stuff over the years and this is no different.
• Urban Fantasy: In the modern day, vampires, werewolves, and angels walk the streets of major cities alongside normal humans, mostly concealing themselves from the general public.
• Unspecified Apocalypse: Ancient humanity's civilization came to an abrupt and violent end 150,000 years ago, but nobody knows who...or what...wiped them out so badly that the geological record was almost completely purged of them.
• Valkyries: Anne Frank's resistance and Athanatoi codename was "Valkyrie," a name that for sixty years struck fear into the hearts of the Angeloi, Soviets, and anyone foolish enough to fight her.
• Velvet Revolution:
  • Subverted with the Soviets in that it initially seemed like it was going to happen just like in real life when Gorbachev began economic liberalization, but then he was assassinated and Party hardliners immediately started World War III.
  • Played straight with China in 1989, when the military dictatorship peacefully fell apart after the emperor stood up to a line of tanks to protect democratic protesters.
• The 'Verse: The Hohenzollernverse, zenphoenix's name for this continuity. Zen has also coined the term Annionaverse to describe an alternate timeline/megacampaign (made by Dragoon9105) the Hohenzollernverse occasionally crosses over with. Dragoon has since adopted that term to describe his own work.
• Victory Is Boring: Zenphoenix describes 30 years of absolute peace and prosperity during Saint Wilhelmina's reign as 30 years with nothing to do in-game as there were no wars to fight and no politics or economy to manage.
• The Vietnam Vet: Erich Hansen, Wilhelm Kurtz, and Anne Frank were veterans of the Siam Wars. As a young soldier, Erich was forced to kill a Siamese boy during one of his missions, something which has traumatized him for decades.
• Voice of the Resistance: While Otto remained the most visible symbol of the loyalist cause in World War II, Anne Frank and Osterhild Anniona were the voices of the resistance cells across Angeloi-occupied Europe. Anne's daring raids on concentration camps and assassinations of Angeloi leaders inspired many Romans to rise up against the fascists, while Osterhild's charisma and political connections made her a prime target for the Angeloi. In Part 5, Wilhelmina has become the voice of resistance groups outside the Reich. Inside the Reich, Bremerhaven mayor Eva Anniona, the great-granddaughter of Osterhild, was a rare voice of her own resistance cell who built an audience and gained reputation among other cells. In May 2039, following the Battle of Isfahan, the rise of a nationalist government in Persia, and growing xenophobia among the Persian public, Eva's brother Julian positions himself as the voice and leader of a new faction to protect the Roman refugees in Persia.
• Voluntary Vassal: In Part 2, the native African kingdom of Loango voluntarily joined the Reich first as a protectorate and then as a full imperial province.

W-Z

• War Hawk:
  • Bismarck was a war hawk who constantly called for Iron and Blood.
  • Gerhard Schröder was a weird left-wing war hawk who filled in George W Bush's role of invading a third world country on a contrived reason.
• War Refugees:
  • In Part 5, the rise of the so-called Mexicanist State (MSC) in the 2010s spurred millions of Mexicans to flee to neighboring countries and Roman Neurhomania, causing a spike in anti-immigrant populism and xenophobia in the Reich.
  • From 2035-39, thousands of Romans flee Elias Anhorn's dictatorship and take refuge in Russia and Persia, also being greeted with anti-immigrant populism and xenophobia.
• Warrior Poet: Saint Wilhelmina became a poet after an accident with her falcon. She composed many poems of varying qualities over the next few decades, some of them becoming revered proverbs in the centuries to come.
• The War Sequence:
  • Anne’s mission in Budapest during the Carpathian Revolution ended with her facing down Valentin and a platoon of his soldiers. Her later mission in Prague ended with her singlehandedly defending a church full of civilians from a line of tanks commanded by Valentin, without weapons. Anne's mission in Prague is later expanded on from Tatiana Kirova's point of view as she fights off the Soviets in Prague while trying to uncover a mole in her ranks.
  • Nearly all of the story after November 2038 becomes a war sequence due to all of the protagonists getting caught up in World War IV.
• Weapon of X-Slaying: The Inquisition has special anti-angel and anti-demon weapons.
• Weird Historical War: On the mortal plane, the Commonwealth Wars were a series of frequent wars between the Reich and the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth dragging in first Russia and Scandinavia and later expanding to the New World and Asia, culminating in World War I. In the supernatural world, the fate of the universe was literally at stake during the first Commonwealth War (which overlapped with the Fifty Years' War) as the angels began the Apocalypse and the demons released Lucifer to fight Archangel Michael. Later Commonwealth Wars saw the angels themselves participating, as they chose promising military leaders on both sides to be their champions or even vessels.
• Wham Episode:
  • The final two chapters of part 3, "Paradise Lost" and "Gotterdammerung" has Gabriel obliterating Naomi, turning Wilhelm mortal and stuffing him into Gavrilo Princip's body, depowering all the angels and expelling them down to Earth, and revealing that he never intended to seal off Heaven to protect humanity from the angels, but bring the Götterdämmerung and declare himself a new God.
  • The ending of Part 4: The Soviets unexpectedly nuked Heaven, leaving only twelve angels who remained on Earth alive.
  • Part 5, 1984: Mikhail Gorbachev, who genuinely wanted peace with the Romans and reforms for the Soviet Commune, is unexpectedly assassinated, and Valentin Varennikov launches his coup d'etat, installing himself as the new General Secretary. It gets worse. On Valentin's orders, Anne is captured by the KGB and infected with XA-1005C. Valentin then brutally pacifies the Occupied Territories and later orders an invasion of the Reich and the Central Powers, starting World War III.
  • Part 5, 2030: On January 1, Wilhelm Karl goes to the Diet to give a national address to the nation. During his speech, assassins sneak into the chamber and after shouting something in Nahuatl open fire, murdering Thierry Baudet and everyone inside except Wilhelm Karl. Simultaneously with the massacre, other assassins murder other targets across the Reich, while Diana Frank and her protege Angelica Haus attempt to expose the plot. Failing that, Diana attempts to broadcast her findings to the public, that the attack was masterminded by Elias Anhorn and not Mexicanist terrorists, but she fails and is killed. It gets even worse.. When the dust settles, Elias blackmails Wilhelm Karl by revealing his entire family is illegitimate, forcing him to do his bidding. By January 2, the entire nation is under Elias' control.
  • Part 5, 2038: A series of chapters spanning the week of November 2-9. On November 2, Han Xianyu insults Elias Anhorn's masculinity to goad him into starting a nuclear war, and over the next few paragraphs, over a hundred cities are nuked and at least 800 million people killed, among them many major characters like Tsai Ing-wen. On November 3, World War IV begins and Elias mobilizes his forces to invade Russia under his personal command. By November 7, Elias has reached the Russian capital of Tsarberg, and on November 8, Olga Kirova engages the enemy army in a brutal battle in which she personally participates, with the sole purpose of buying time for Princess Wilhelmina to escape the country. On November 9, a defeated Olga is executed on live television, and Russia is forced to surrender to Jerusalem.
  • Several weeks after the above, the bunker Wilhelmina escaped to comes under attack from Elias Anhorn's forces. Her supporters and the Yavdian military fiercely fight back with everything they have, but it changes little, as Elias's army easily crushes them, destroying the Yavdian government and plunging the country into anarchy. Elias personally hunts down Wilhelmina, and as she is paralyzed by fear, she watches as he executes her husband and son. Elias next prepares to execute her grandson, Friedrich, but then Wilhelmina musters her strength in one last effort to save Friedrich, accepting her duties and responsibilities as the true heir to the throne. She unlocks a hidden power from within her, picks up Enonon, and drives back Elias with her mysterious new abilities, declaring she can finally change things for the better.
  • On April 2, 2039, the Counterattack arc begins. Princess Wilhelmina has left the bunker and arrived in Persia, where she trains herself in swordfighting and rallies both surviving Romans and the Persian people into a new movement opposing totalitarianism in Jerusalem and China. When she learns that Jerusalem is planning an invasion of Persia, she resolves instead to goad Elias' ego into attacking before he is ready. In the ensuing Battle of Isfahan, she and her friends, among them Alex Humboldt and Thea Tesla, face off against Elias and his most elite forces, while around the world other likeminded allies, like Clara in Scandinavia and the Ryukyuan admiral Higa Ryunosuke in the Pacific, also make their stand against the totalitarian menace. Just when it seems all is lost in Isfahan and Wilhelmina is about to die, she sees a vision of her parents and everyone she has met on her journey, who all encourage her to stand up again and keep fighting. Now truly earning her birthright as the Kaiserin of the Romans, Wilhelmina sees a burst of strength and finally defeats Elias, declaring that she and others like her will always triumph over the pessimism and cynicism Elias thinks is natural. Jerusalem's army is defeated, Persia is saved, and the war seems to turn against the totalitarian powers nearly immediately.
• Wham Line: The Neta Gandhi, the fascist dictator of India, was supposedly a fanatically religious Hindu and sold himself to the people as such during his rise to power, but he reveals to his Annionaverse counterpart this was all just a front.

"Oh come on," said Neta Gandhi, "You're me. I'm you. You think like me, therefore I can predict how you think. I assume there was an equivalent of the Great Depression in your world, one which also devastated your India. You lost most of your fortune and your job. Your status as a 'war hero' became a liability. People turned you away at the door, seeing a killer instead of a hero. You lost your house, your family, and then your wife. You started drinking. And here you are."
"The gods have given me a second chance," said Gandhi, "A chance to redeem myself."
"Redeem yourself for what?" said Neta Gandhi. "You did nothing wrong. That was the fault of the degenerate Muslims and Bolsheviks that run your India. There are no gods, Chandra. None at all. We decide our own fate. The future belongs to those who shape it."

• What Could Have Been: Plenty of it when the Annionaverse is introduced.
  • Angela is immediately taken in by the happier life of her counterpart. While Hohenzollernverse Angela lost her fiancé Demetrios during an X-Division mission and was forced to give up her daughter for adoption later on, in the Annionaverse Demetrios survived and married Angela, and they lived happily with Alexandra. Subverted when it is revealed both Demetrios's cheated on their Angelas, Hohenzollernverse Angela didn't know because her Demetrios died, and Annionaverse Angela's marriage breaks down when Hohenzollernverse Angela finds out.
  • Anders sees his sister Annie was never abducted in the Annionaverse...but instead, he himself was.
  • In the Annionaverse, the alternate Anne Frank, Diana's mother, is still alive, as the November 9 attacks had taken a different path and her plane landed safely. However, the alternate Diana was critically injured in a previous X-Division case and now lives with a mental handicap.
  • Tatiana Kirova, Olga's mother, is still alive on the other side, and she succeeded in giving Olga the normal childhood she wanted. Hohenzollernverse Olga is jealous of Annionaverse Olga's normal life, while Annionaverse Olga has trouble comprehending how her counterpart became an assassin.
  • Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra is still alive in the Annionaverse, but as the Hohenzollerns are not Kaisers there, she is merely a senator, while her father was a long-serving chancellor.
  • Angela's father Erich died in the Annionaverse's version of Siam, a war in Africa, while Erich's friend Martin survived the war. The opposite happened in the Hohenzollernverse.
  • Adalbert Karl Schulz, an Athanatoi deputy director in the Hohenzollernverse who was killed by the Syndicate, is a simple taxi driver in the Annionaverse, working to support his ill brother (who is implied to have died in the Hohenzollernverse).
• Who Shot JFK?: The Smoking Man shot Ragnar Beck, the equivalent of JFK.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Due to losing her parents at a young age, Ilyana was forced to grow up much earlier, and at age 6 she is already talking to adults about things like vengeance in the name of the dead.
• The Wise Prince:
  • Elisabeth Alexandra was a wise princess who like her father cared much for the Roman people, wanting to understand their concerns and address them as best as she could. Unfortunately, she was tragically killed by Sentinel before she could take the throne, making her brother Wilhelm Karl, who isn't as understanding, the new heir.
  • After Elisabeth Alexandra’s death, Prince Georg took it upon himself to honor his sister’s legacy by continuing his charity work. He was known as a wise and just man who didn’t care about the throne or any noble titles, only the betterment of the peoples he wanted to help. All he wanted was to help the Eimericas leave behind a cycle of violence and hatred stretching back centuries... but he was tragically killed.
  • Princess Wilhelmina is shaping up to be a wise princess, as she hopes to be a better ruler than her predecessors and fix the flaws in Roman government by making the monarchy, which she sees as the root of the government's problems, severed from the political process entirely.
• With Us or Against Us:
  • After the World Trade Center attacks, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder declared the Reich was at war with barbarians and called on the world to join the fight. Taking a page out of the real life George W Bush’s playbook, he warned that “if you’re not with us, you are with the barbarians.”
  • Elias Anhorn reuses this mentality by declaring that anybody who does not support him is a traitor and heretic and must die.
• Working with the Ex: Anders Humboldt worked with his ex Diana Frank on X-Division, although they remained friends and didn't clash with each other. Within a few years of reuniting, though, they had gotten back together.
• Worldbuilding: Zen has said he intends to create a world which feels lived in. In Part 5, he introduced multiple POV characters showing the world from a grounded perspective instead of the top-down perspectives of political and military leaders present in Parts 1-4. Occasionally, he posts cultural updates detailing the culture, politics, society, and even economy of each nation, as well as biographies of important historical characters and pop culture updates talking about TV shows and video games.
• The World Is Not Ready: The Syndicate and Sentinel believed humanity as a whole was not ready to know about aliens when first contact was made in 1947. They used this as a justification to perpetuate a decades-long conspiracy where all knowledge of the aliens was suppressed and anyone catching on to the truth or getting in the way of the Syndicate’s plans was silenced. Anders Humboldt rejected this idea at first, but as he grew older and suffered through setback after setback in the early 2000s, he came to admit they did have a point. So when he finally exposed Sentinel in 2015, he left out anything related to the aliens, but he recorded several messages about the aliens to be released when humanity was finally ready.
• World of Weirdness: Throughout Parts 1-2, angels repeatedly try to cause the Apocalypse and end the world. In the regular world, the political scene is pretty weird, with the Industrial Revolution beginning in Vietnam, the Aztecs becoming and remaining a superpower from medieval times up to the early modern period, a Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth taking on empires far larger than it, and an alien conspiracy plotting to take over the world in Part 5. There are those trying to maintain order amidst the weirdness. There is the Inquisition, which keeps the regular world and the supernatural separate, and there is X-Division, which fights against the Syndicate/Sentinel conspiracy to protect humanity against the aliens and their human allies.
• World War III: Valentin Varennikov makes the Cold War go hot in 1984 following a coup d'etat in Soviet Commune, where he assassinates Gorbachev, pins the blame on the Romans, reverses all of the reforms of perestroika, and brutally suppresses all dissent in the Occupied Territories and his own country. He then launches an invasion of the Reich, intending to follow through on Trotsky’s vision of a world revolution. The rest of the Warsaw Pact joins in and attacks the Reich and its allies, leading China and the Tianxia Alliance to intervene on behalf of the Reich..
• Worthy Opponent: In Part 1, Temur Khan invaded Roman Taurica in 1261. Kaiser Siegfried I led an army to stop his horde, but he fell in battle against the khan. As Siegfried died, though, Temur admitted he was a worthy opponent.
• Wrench Wench:
  • As a teenager, Diana Frank liked to tinker with cars and motorcycles. She fixed her friends' cars after school and won every motorcycle race the kids held even with an outdated 1940s-era bike.
  • Thea Tesla won't hesitate to get her hands duty working with scientific equipment, despite her wealthy background.
• Written by the Winners:
  • Josh proudly believes this is the case, but his teacher Oskar does not. He believes history is written by survivors of all kinds, both winners and losers. Zen states they intentionally try to avoid this adage and show history is written by people of all kinds.
  • Unfortunately, Elias Anhorn firmly believes this, and he has the power to make it a reality.
• The Wrongful Heir to the Throne:
  • Kaiser Reinhard I was an incompetent ruler who did little but drink and party all the time. However, his reign did have two achievements, namely the founding of the Bottomless Tankard tavern in Lubeck and the passing of a law banning violence which although repealed almost immediately led to the Reich phasing out the death penalty and adopting a rehabilitation-focused justice system.
  • Wilhelm Karl ascended to the throne as Kaiser Wilhelm IV following the death of his father, Otto the Great, and his older sister, Crown Princess Elisabeth Alexandra. He immediately showed he was like neither of them, showing little sympathy over his sister's death and pursuing a populist policy that ran opposite to the tolerance and pluralism of his father. Many thought he was a tyrant in the making who wanted nothing more than to rule as an absolute monarch... but this is subverted when it is revealed he merely only wanted control and respect, not dictatorship, and the real tyrant, Elias Anhorn, blackmails him into actually following through on dictatorial rule.
• X Must Not Win: Multiple examples in the 2030s alone.
  • On the international level, the rump Schengen alliance does not want either China or Jerusalem to win World War IV, as that would mean the death of democracy and meritocracy everywhere and plunge the entire world into totalitarianism.
  • On the national level, Heinrich and Gertrude don't want Elias Anhorn to win his war, fearing the madman has too much power already and cannot be allowed to take over the world.
  • On the personal level, Thea Tesla is firmly opposed to letting her mad brother win anything and plans to develop technologies that will counter any weapons he builds.
  • On the supernatural level, the Worm cannot be allowed to win at any costs, because letting it win would cause all of reality to destabilize and the entire history of human civilization to warp and revise itself around It.
• Ye Goode Olde Days: Many different revanchist, nationalist, and populist groups have their own idea of their nation’s glory days. Angelos in Part 4 wanted to take the Reich back to a golden age of traditional Christian values and strict cultural and social norms. The Chinese unification movement of Part 3 wanted to restore China to the state it was before the Mongols invaded, as a unified and global empire. Molotov had a twisted vision of this as part of Deromanization in Part 5, where he wanted to restore the peoples of the Occupied Territories to their identities and cultures before the “capitalist” Roman identity was imposed on them. Elias Anhorn sees the good old days as a pure Christian state populated only by Christians following his narrow fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: The true forms of angels are incorporeal and made up of divine energy so blinding and overwhelming that it burns out humans' eyes if they see them.
• You Can't Fight Fate: The Worm specializes in showing visions of future events that come true exactly as shown.
  • During World War II, the adventurer Heinrich "Arabia" Gruber came into physical contact with a Worm artifact. For the rest of his life, he was plagued with visions showing every future moment in his life, causing him to gradually lose his sanity as he learned he had no free will. The visions also extended past his death, showing him events happening in the present day. When Diana Frank and Olga Kirova arrived in his town to investigate a case in the present day, those events happened exactly as he had written in his diary. Even the very event of Diana and Olga reading his diary happened exactly as he wrote it, which unnerved the two of them.
  • Wilhelm came into contact with a Worm artifact in about 2011, and he and his human host, Gavrilo, were overwhelmed with the sheer confusion and terror of the visions they saw. They witnessed a future Reich being crushed by the Annionaverse's Holy Terran Empire. Not only that, but they saw the Worm and the Terrans even permanently killing angels, a feat that should by all means be impossible. Later that year, Annionaverse Walter is surprised when a future Wilhelm teleports into his office, wearing tattered future clothes and badly injured, warning of a bad future they must prepare for. This implies the visions he saw came to pass in the end.
  • Diana Frank came into contact with Gruber's Worm artifact in the present day. For the rest of her life, she gained the ability to "look ahead" into the future, allowing her to see how cases end, where she and her friends go next, and, most importantly, when she and X-Division die. Taken advantage of when during many life threatening cases she is aware she will not die during these cases and thus does things as recklessly as she can.
  • In the 11th century, the cultist Hassan warned Friedrich the Great that his victory in the First Crusade is only temporary, as the Worm knows any Reich he builds is fated to be destroyed in the end.
• You're Not My Father: Wilhelm Karl rejects his father Otto as weak and cowardly, claiming he will do better as Kaiser... and then murdered him.
• Zeppelins from Another World: Like in the Fringe series it is based on, the Fringe arc heavily features zeppelins as a major method of transportation in the Annionaverse. However, Zen did not do a full carbon copy of Fringe's alternate universe, at least in terms of transportation methods, as the Annionaverse also uses other vehicles like planes (including one pilotless supersonic VTOL private jet) and even space rockets.