For its Spiritual Successor, see Ninjago.
Tropes present in LEGO Exo-Force:
- Aborted Arc: The jungle arc only got one comic, and the books were canceled before it got there. Just as well, Meca One doesn't appear, and there's no major plot-relevant enemy mechs.
- The Ace: Hayato...or at least he tries to be one.
- After the End: Sort of. Sentai Mountain is said to be the last remaining outpost of mankind.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Meca One's realization that he's too far above mankind to serve them, and his subsequent robot rebellion.
- Animal Mecha: A sizable portion of the jungle-themed 2008 range.
- Anime Hair: The line's most distinguishing feature among the fandom. Almost every minifigure hair piece is ridiculously large and spiky - no other minifigure hairpiece ever is this enormous. It actually is a massive contrast with the artwork, which is much more reasonable in how it depicts the characters' hair. The hair pieces were so ridiculous that one model in a LEGO Ideas book used Takeshi's do as a head of lettuce. Yeah.
- Animesque: The accompanying artwork, the webcomics, and the Minifigures have this in spades. This is further elevated by the character names, mechas, and random kanji seen just about everywhere.
- Attack Drone: Each machine in the jungle arc also houses a small detachable robot somewhere on them.
- Color-Coded Characters:
- It started off this way: Takeshi had red mechs, Hikaru had blue, Ryo had orange, and Hayato had white. The first two kept loosely to this rule for the Golden City arc, but soon this was basically abandoned.
- Devastators are color coded by their specialty.
- Combining Mecha: Deconstructed, in a way. The mecha (in-story and out) are combined by literally breaking them apart and mixing the pieces, usually after having been annihilated in battle.
- Cool Tank:
- Ryo's Mobile Defense Tank, an anti-Sonic Phantom weapon. Also present is the Hybrid Rescue Tank, which Keiken co-pilots.
- Meca One answers with the Mobile Devastator, a really freaking huge rolling fortress practically bathed in artillery. One has to wonder how those tiny bridges don't collapse under it.
- Darker and Edgier: Than most LEGO Themes, seeing as it is implied to take place After the End.
- Elite Mook: The Devastators, which get the bigger and more powerful machines.
- Gatling Good: More than a few of the mechs feature gatling cannons of some kind. Meca One LOVES this trope: both the Striking Venom and Mobile Devastator are equipped with a HUGE pair of gatling cannons. Takeshi's also a fan of this, seeing as his first two mechs were both armed with 6-barreled gatling guns.
- Humongous Mecha: Granted, hardly any of them qualify as truly humongous- the average ones stand approximately 7-8 meters tall, and even the largest combination models are no more than 9.
- Mecha Expansion Pack: The Aero Booster is basically a tiny mecha attached to a GIGANTIC jetpack. The Combat Crawler X2 is a variation: the tiny Iron Condor II attaches to the front of the fairly large crawler mostly just for additional artillery.
- Mini-Mecha: The smallest sets in the line were designed to be this.
- Mook: The Iron Drones, which usually pilot tiny equally mook-like machines, or are just sent out on foot.
- Mountain Warfare: The raging war between the last remnants of humanity and the robot rebellion takes place on the north and south sides of Sentai Mountain.
- The Power of the Sun: The Supernova.
- Real Robot Genre: All the mechas are manufactured by their owner faction, and don't have anything in the way of superpowers.
- The Something Force
- Scotty Time: After Takeshi ends up absolutely wrecking the Grand Titan going up against the Striking Venom, Ryo doing quick scans on the machine shouts it'll take weeks to fix. Takeshi weakly points out that they have minutes with the Striking Venom and the entire robot army blasting away at the gates and because only the Grand Titan has the raw firepower necessary to pierce through the Striking Venom's weak spot Takeshi managed to discover. Sensei orders Ryo to do whatever it takes to bring the Grand Titan back up to bare-minimum functionality even if that means diverting every mechanic to the patch job and even then, one of the most important power cables comes undone at the last second, forcing Takeshi to scramble out of the cockpit and fix it himself while Hikaru distracts Mecha One from noticing before he can fire the shot needed to cripple the enemy.
- Transforming Mecha: One can see the alternate models this way, though they're never seen in the comics.
- Spider Tank: The Striking Venom, Meca One's original personal mecha. Also present are the Combat Crawler X2, Shadow Crawler, and Arachnoid Stalker.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: LEGO's long-standing "no military or war sets" rule apparently does not apply to Humongous Mecha fighting a Robot War.
